Christie Honors Betrayal Of The Country

Now that the third GOP presidential debate is over and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are labeled winners, John Ellis Bush is labeled as a loser, and Carly Fiorina has continued on as the most loathsome creature on the planet, it's time to give Chris Christie some attention.   CNBC's Jim Cramer asked

Governor Christie, there has been a lot of political rhetoric that some bank executives should have gone to jail for the 2008 financial crisis.

But General Motors paid more than $1 billion in fines and settlements for its ignition switch defect. One hundred and twenty- four people died as a result of these faulty switches. No one went to jail.

As a former prosecutor, do you believe the people responsible for the switch and the cover-up belong behind bars?

Before switching gears and almost answering the question, the New Jersey governor maintained

You bet they do. And if I were the prosecutor, that is exactly where they would be. The fact is that this Justice Department under this president has been a political Justice Department.

It has been a Justice Department that decided that they want to pick who the winners and losers are. They like General Motors, so they give them a pass. They don’t like somebody else like David Petraeus, they prosecute them and send a decorated general on to disgrace. It’s a political Justice Department.

No Republican- or even Democratic- politician would dare remind Christie that on March 3, 2015 the former Army general and CIA director admitted

that he gave highly-classified journals to his onetime lover and that he lied to the FBI about it. But he only has to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor that will not involve a jail sentence thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors. The deal is yet another example of a senior official treated leniently for the sorts of violations that lower-level officials are punished severely for.

According to the plea deal, Petraeus, while leading American forces in Afghanistan, maintained eight notebooks that he filled with highly-sensitive information about the identities of covert officers, military strategy, intelligence capabilities and his discussions with senior government officials, including President Obama. Rather than handing over these “Black Books,” as the plea agreement calls them, to the Department of Defense when he retired from the military in 2011 to head the CIA, Petraeus retained them at his home and lent them, for several days, to Paula Broadwell, his authorized biographer and girlfriend.

In October 2012, FBI agents interviewed Petraeus as part of an investigation into his affair with Broadwell — Petraeus would resign from the CIA the next month — and Petraeus told them he had not shared classified material with Broadwell. The plea deal notes that “these statements were false” and that Petraeus “then and there knew that he previously shared the Black Books with his biographer.” Lying to FBI agents is a federal crime for which people have received sentences of months or more than a year in jail.

Under his deal with prosecutors, Petraeus pleaded guilty to just one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information, a misdemeanor that can be punishable by a year in jail, though the deal calls only for probation and a $40,000 fine. As The New York Times noted today, the deal “allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.”

That is Chris Christie's proof that the Administration "picks winners and losers."  He's fine with the numerous whistleblowers prosecuted by the Obama Attorney General's office, more than all other presidents combined.  Five of these have gone to prison and Edward Snowden is likely to be sent there if he ever returns from exile in Russia, where he enjoys a modicum of freedom, to the Land of Exceptionalism.

The Obama Administration so viciously pursued David Petraeus that he was sentenced to probation (though with a $100,000 fine, as noted in the video below) and became an adviser to the White House. That's quite "a political Justice Department."  Christie might have mentioned the same Justice Department has sent to jail zero (0) bankers for their role in the mortgage fraud which brought down the economy.

He might have but didn't, because it was Chris Christie, and it was  the Republican Party. And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?














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Selective Justice

The Wall Street Journal reminds us

The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned.

Still, according to "a senior U.S. official briefed on" the news, "it is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy.”   It seems that

Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

It is one thing for Israel to spy on the USA to enhance its own security; it's quite another to take those secrets and undermine this nation's effort to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But lest you conclude that the American government will turn a nearly blind eye toward this outrage because Israel is involved, consider

Petraeus gave mistress Paula Broadwell – author of his biography, “All In” – access to eight “black books” that collectively contained classified information from his time leading military efforts in Afghanistan. He then lied about doing so to FBI investigators.

The books included “classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and [Petraeus’] discussions with the President of the United States of America," the court documents say.

The books also contained "national defense information, including Top Secret//SCI and code word information,” the documents state.

For that, General David Petraeus got two years probation, something less onerous than a slap on the wrist for someone who endangered national security and then obstructed justice by lying about it.

(Before Petraeus' rear end was kissed with the plea deal, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) argued the former general had "suffered enough" because “He lost his job as CIA director because of it. I mean, how much do you want to punish somebody?"

Next up: a guy from south-central L.A. gets arrested for burglary, loses his job, stays in jail for 10 months because he cannot raise bail, and loses his wife and children. Feinstein demands that he be released from jail, given the key to the city and awarded 1,000 shares of Apple stock- tax-free, preferably. After all, he has "suffered enough.")

The Guardian's Trevor Timm wants us to

Compare that to the actions of Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years for leaking classified information. As Ellsberg noted: “Chelsea Manning had access to SCI every day… where she worked in Iraq. She chose to disclose none of it, nothing higher than Secret”.

Or there’s John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer, who passed on to an investigator the names of two covert agents whose names were also never published. He received thirty months in jail and a felony conviction 2013. (As CIA director, Petreaus praised Kiriakou’s conviction just days before lying to the FBI about his own leak.) And Ellsberg himself faced 115 years for his leaks: “The Pentagon Papers I disclosed were all Top Secret. I’d been cleared for SCI too, but disclosed none of it, unlike Petraeus.”

Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, was also just convicted of leaking classified information to New York Times journalist James Risen last month, “having first revealed it to Congress, as I did”, according to Ellsberg. Sterling was convicted of felony counts under the Espionage Act, and faces sentencing at the end of April. Ellsberg says Sterling’s “violations of security regulations were in no way more serious than what Petraeus has now admitted to”, and that, while it’s too late to do anything about his conviction, the judge should take the Petraeus plea bargain into account at his sentencing.

And then there is Edward Snowden, who leaked not to his love bunny but to the American people (photo below from US News not of the real Edwin Snowden, Barack Obama, or of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, trying to offer Snowden a passport in February 2014). But then he is neither Bibi Netanyahu nor Mr. Wonderful, General David Petraeus, who brought us victory in Afghanistan and Iraq and similarly transformed the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Beneficiary Of The New Economy

Salon's Alex Pareene has written a hilarious piece  about General David Petraeus' new gig as Visiting Bus Driver for Burlington Trailways in Iowa.   That may not be as farfetched as it seems.   Petraeus has been hired for $150,000 to teach a course entitled "Are We on the Threshold of the North American Decade"  (There is no question mark, which is not a good sign.). He will be laboring at the MacCaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, which usually pays adjuncts, according to Gawker (which broke the story), less than $3,000 per course.

Gawker reports that Petraeus will be giving two lectures and working approximately three hours a week, "aided by a group of graduate students to take care of 'course research administration, and grading."   The university describes the course thusly:  "In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will examine in depth and then synthesize the history and trends in diverse public policy topics with a view towards recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy." A post on the blog of the union which represents faculty and staff at CUNY explains

The course will be limited to 16 students who must complete an application with faculty recommendations and be vetted by a selection committee. Petraeus will be simultaneously teaching part-time at the University of Southern California. He has also just been hired by private equity giant KKR, where he will chair an internal institute focused on public policy and investments in emerging markets.

Good work if you can get it.  CUNY's director for communications and marketing claims, as does the application for admission to the course, "the seminars, one in the fall and another in the spring, would pertain to the areas of energy, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences and would focus on the policies, laws, regulations, and practices needed to enable the United States to capitalize on the opportunities each area presents."    He did not explain, however, how General Petraeus developed  "expertise" in "energy, advanced manufacturing, life sciences and information technology," which McCaulay College lists as the foci of the course.

For that matter, it is not clear how expert Petraeus has displayed expertise in military strategy, after commanding U.S. forces in the latest of the two wars we have lost, the latter of which was salvageable when he took over.    Aside from unionists, there has been criticism of the appointment from two important sources, including New York Republican Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor, who recognizes the appointment as a symptom of our celebrity culture, and Public Advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio. The latter notes the arrangement "is symptomatic of what’s gone wrong in higher education. The focus on grabbing headlines and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is sending education costs higher and higher, and putting college out of reach for working and middle class families." Blogger and CUNY associate professor Corey Robin remarks

One of the odder angles of this story: In 2009, disgraced ex-governor of New York Eliot Spitzer taught a course at CUNY. In fact, it was in poli sci. The New York Times was on it in a New York minute. Why? Because Spitzer was being paid $4500. The highest possible rate for an adjunct. Seemed like too much. Obscene. Now here’s David Petraeus readying to make $75,000 per course. And the Times? Not a peep.

And unlike Petraeus, Eliot Spitzer was an extremely effective public servant, as Attorney General of the State of New York earning the title "The Sheriff of Wall Street."  But Spitzer was compelled to resign as the state's governor upon a report of his dalliance with a call girl. At least General Petraeus was not disgraced by a sex scandal.  Oops.

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Failing, Heroically


David Petraeus' executive officer, retired Colonel Peter Mansoor, was referring to Paula Broadwell when he said "In Iraq, General Petraeus was adamant that he didn't want reporters embedded within his headquarters in any way.   What troubles me is why he decided to change his own guidance and allow her unfettered and lengthy access."

The answer to that is embedded in the word "embedded."I think we all know why, the answer fittingly embedded in the word "embedded."

Or maybe not, because General Petraeus was not motivated exclusively by his hormones.   Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post has written

Since his first combat tour in Iraq in 2003, Petraeus had cultivated a cadre of a few dozen loyal staff officers, many of whom had doctoral degrees from top universities and taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Usually, he personally selected these men and women to serve on his staff.

In Afghanistan, the retinue grew as people drawn to his fame and eager to launch their own careers took up positions for him in Kabul. “He didn’t seek out these people, but he also didn’t turn them away,” said an officer who spent 40 months working for Petraeus in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prominent members of conservative, Washington-based defense think tanks were given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.

Some of Petraeus’s staff officers said he and the American mission in Afghanistan benefited from the broader array of viewpoints, but others complained that the outsiders were a distraction, the price of his growing fame.

Apparently, the General needed a posse, for we learn from the Daily Beast

The sisters are also believed to have attended the farewell party for Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the former British ambassador to the U.S., in Washington last year. Peter King, a Republican congressman for New York who was at the event, told CNN yesterday that he had met Kelley at “one or two events at the British embassy.” An embassy spokesman declined to check, saying that it would take too much time.

Kelley, a mother of three and an unpaid “social liaison” for the U.S. military in Tampa, is said to have spared no expense at such parties to honor top brass stationed at nearby U.S. Central Command. She was pictured at one event at her $1.2 million mansion in 2010 with General Petraeus, who arrived in a 28-man police motorcycle escort.

There is no word yet whether congressional Republicans will target extravagance by military officers as part of their assault on the evil deficit.    Nor do we know if the Washington establishment will connect the dots on the portrait of the now-disgraced General who in his dissertation at Princeton University in 1987 wrote "What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters- more than what actually occurred."    Michael Hastings explains

There’s his war record in Iraq, starting when he headed up the Iraqi security force training program in 2004. He’s more or less skated on that, including all the weapons he lost, the insane corruption, and the fact that he essentially armed and trained what later became known as “Iraqi death squads.” On his final Iraq tour, during the so-called "surge," he pulled off what is perhaps the most impressive con job in recent American history. He convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war.

The establishment included the Brookings Institution's Micheal E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, who wrote of the war in Iraq "Today, morale is high.  The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results; and they feel they now have the numbers needed to make a real difference."

That was over five years ago, but the General is still bamboozling opinion makers.  Following the resignation of the guy who presided over defeat in Iraq, defeat in Afghanistan, and an intelligence scandal pertaining to Benghazi, USA Today editorialized "David Petraeus made a doozy of a mistake, one that cost him his job and tarnished his sterling reputation. But if the frenzy passes without further surprises, he can drive on to new pathways and continue to be of service to his country."



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With Gender, Missing The Point


Female Democratic U.S. Representatives recognize that attacks upon Susan Rice over the Benghazi assault have been overwrought and unfair and

Republican senators’ angry criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over her initial account of the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya smacks of sexism and racism, a dozen female members of the House said Friday.

In unusually personal terms, the Democratic women lashed out at Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham who earlier this week called Rice unqualified and untrustworthy and promised to scuttle her nomination if President Barack Obama nominates her to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“All of the things they have disliked about things that have gone on in the administration, they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, the next chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by unfortunately Sen. McCain and others.”

Rice's G.O.P. critics have not complained that she is hysterical, angry, manly, or conniving and have avoided stereotypes of women.  Her supporters appear to have forgotten

The House has voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal, the first time Congress has taken such a dramatic move against a sitting Cabinet official.

The vote was 255-67, with 17 Democrats voting in support of a criminal contempt resolution, which authorizes Republicans leaders to seek criminal charges against Holder. This Democratic support came despite a round of behind-the-scenes lobbying by senior White House and Justice officials - as well as pressure from party leaders - to support Holder...

Since the Justice Department would have to seek an indictment of Holder - a department he oversees as attorney general - no criminal charges will be brought against him. Previous administrations, including the Bush administration in 2008, refused to seek criminal charges against White House officials when a Democratic-run House passed a criminal contempt resolution over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Boehner’s office, though, is expected to submit a criminal referral to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald Machen, in the next few days, according to a Republican official.

Holder, as with Rice, is black, and racial animus may play a role in Repub criticism of both officials.   But Holder is a man and, properly, there was no suggestion when he was under attack by Republicans that males were being targeted- and they were trying to remove an individual from office, not merely (as in Rice's case), prevent a promotion.

Clearly, the primary motive of the U.N. ambassador's critics is that she serves a Democratic president.    But a disaster has taken place and responsibility should be determined.   Evidently, that is not going to be the Republican whose first name is "General," although

Petraeus testified that the CIA draft written in response to the raid referred to militant groups Ansar al-Shariah and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, but that those names were replaced with the word extremist in the final draft, according to a congressional staffer. The staffer said Petraeus testified that, to get the CIA talking points out quickly, he allowed other agencies to alter the draft as they saw fit, without asking for final review.

The congressional officials were not authorized to discuss the hearing publicly and described Petraeus' testimony to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.) said Petraeus explained that the CIA's draft points were sent to other intelligence agencies and to some federal agencies for review. Udall said Petraeus told them the final document was put in front of all the senior agency leaders, including Petraeus, and everyone signed off on it.

"The assessment that was publicly shared in unclassified talking points went through a process of editing," Udall said. "The extremist description was put in because, in an unclassified document, you want to be careful who you identify as being involved."

Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) said it remained unclear how the final talking points developed. The edited version was used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice five days after the attack when the White House sent her out for a series of television interviews. Republicans have criticized Rice for saying it appeared that the attack was sparked by a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video.

According to published reports, everyone- including the esteemed David Petraeus- signed the document whose contents were to be used by an administration representative when responding to the media.   Those comments substituted "extremist" for mention of any terrorist groups. 

King added "The fact is, the reference to al-Qaeda was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community.   We need to find out who did it and why."  

They certainly do.  Presumably, it was not the C.I.A. director who took out the reference, especially because his agency apparently suspected the involvement.   But he agreed with the others that the American public ought to be deceived, a decision which will be disregarded by Democratic, and eagerly so by Republican, members of Congress.

So too, though, ought Ms. Rice's defenders avoid excessive deference to the awesome power represented (and until his resignation, held) by The Man Called Petraeus.    Once they take a break from charging sexism, perhaps Susan Rice's defenders might notice what others refuse to, that the man who failed in Iraq and failed in Afghanistan went on to fail at the Central Intelligence Agency.


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Teflon General, Still

Spencer Ackerman at least realizes he was bamboozled or, in contemporary terms, "punked."  He notes what should be obvious, that the affair conducted by General David Petraeus with the latter's adoring biographer, Paula Broadwell, "had nothing to do with his military leadership or achievements."

Perception of those achievements, Ackerman courageously admits, was enhanced as "Like many in the press, nearly every national politician, and lots of members of Petraeus' brain trust over the years, I played a role in the creation of the legend around David Petraeus."   Nevertheless, now that Petraeus has been brought down, one would expect soul-searching, or at least an objective evaluation of the General's leadership.  One would be wrong.

Broadwell wrote All In with with Vernon Loeb, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, who composed, as he puts it, "a real-time narrative from the torrent of e-mails, documents, and interview transcripts Broadwell sent my way" about Petraeus' year commanding the Afghanistan war.    Apparently a sheepish over his failure to recognize the relationship between Petraeus and Broadwell, Loeb nonetheless now writes, with no hint of self-reflection

The only contact I had with Petraeus during my work on the book came in 2011 during one of his trips back to Washington while he was still in command of the war. He invited me to go running with him along the Potomac in a gesture that was vintage Petraeus.

No one cultivated e-mail relationships with journalists better than he did; no one could be more personable on a kind of superficial level that nonetheless made people feel good about their interaction with him....

We drove six miles out along the Potomac, were dropped off, and ran back along the dirt tow path. The commander of the war in Afghanistan and I ran side by side, talking about great world events. I could scarcely believe I suddenly had this kind of access.

That tingling feeling may have ensued because "As Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, I had briefly embedded with the 101st Airborne Division under Petraeus' command in northern Iraq in the fall of 2003, and found the general - and what he'd accomplished - impressive and inspiring. Mosul, and much of his sector in the north, were largely pacified."

Similarly, Loeb's newspaper yesterday editorialized 

The resignation of David Petraeus as CIA director is a serious blow to the nation’s national security leadership, and it comes at an unfortunate moment. With the expected departure of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a possible reshuffling of senior officials at the National Security Council, President Obama could have benefited particularly from Mr. Petraeus’s knowledge and seasoning as he begins to grapple with second-term challenges in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Mr. Petraeus understands those issues as well as any American, and his record of service as a military commander is without equal in his generation...

The editors conclude "the loss of Mr. Petraeus' service" is "a harm brought about by his own actions, for which he has taken responsibility. But it will hurt the country no less."

The usually sober editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer claim

After only 14 months at the CIA, Petraeus can be replaced, which is not the same as saying his leadership won't be missed. He is an exceptional commander, as demonstrated by his successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq and results-oriented tour of duty in Afghanistan. In time, he was expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA.

Fortunately, with his nearly inevitable resignation, Mr. Petraeus no longer will be "expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA."  Journalist Juan Cole, who (unlike this blogger) opposed the escalation of American troops in Afghanistan, explains

What I had been concerned about, despite my admiration for Petraeus, is that he wasn't the right person to head the CIA when among its major tasks was to evaluate the counter=insurgency effort in Afghanistan. Since Petraeus authored that strategy and oversaw a stage of that war as commander, it actually was not fair to have him head the evaluative effort, and he shouldn't have been put in that position.

Counter-insurgency as Petraeus defined it involves a four-stage process. The army has to taketerritory away from a guerrilla movement. It has to clear that territory of the enemy. It has to hold that territory for long enough to reassure the local population that the guerrillas are not coming back and won't punish them as collaborators if they have something to do with the US. It has to build, i.e. build up local institutions such as police, so as to provide security and prosperity in the long run. Counter-insurgency is long and slow and requires winning over local hearts and minds.

Petraeus and other officers boxed Obama in in late 2009 and more or less imposed a counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan on him. They only gave him this one plan, when he asked for 3 to choose from.

The counter-insurgency idea derived from the view of some in the officer corps that they had had a victory of sort because of the troop escalation or "surge" in Iraq late in the Bush period. As far as I can tell, however, violence in Iraq fell through 2007 not mainly because of US GI's but because a Shiite ethnic cleansing campaign chased most Sunnis from mixed neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had convinced Petraeus to begin with the Sunni armed groups, and to disarm them. Once they were helpless, the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army went in and ethnically cleansed the remaining ones.

Through 2007 forward, as mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods became more solidly Shiite, the death toll began declining. Angry Shiites who wanted to kill a Sunni would have had to get in their cars and drive for a while to find one.

Petraeus knew about the ethnic cleansing campaign. He was aware that it was creating a new wave of Sunni refugees. But he saw the troop escalation or ‘surge' as the primary reason for the fall in violence.

Based on this misunderstanding of what had happened in Iraq, Petraeus hoped to do in Afghanistan what he thought he did with Baghdad. Hence the mantra, take clear hold build.

But this kind of counter-insurgency would have required hundreds of thousands of fresh troops. Petraeus didn't have them. It was a huge endeavor.

It has largely failed, though US politicians and journalists seem reluctant to say so.

That failure of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is dangerous and poses special dangers for our troops. It is dangerous for the future, since it cries out for clearsightedness lest we plunge into more such mistakes.

As coverage of the issue plays out, the emphasis on l'affaire Petraeus will demonstrate greater interest of the corporate media in matters sexual than in the conduct of foreign policy and national intelligence.     Little attention will be given to the massive human suffering which American policy, though in Afghanistan well-meaning, has helped bring about in the two Asian nations.   Still, the apparent disinterest in deaths of soldiers and civilians alike pale in comparison to the obliviousness, not so well-intentioned, of the American media to the causes and implications of both wars, and to the role played by the sainted General David Petraeus.






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Change Of Heart



One person said all of the following about Colin Powell (h/t* to Max Bergmann and Brad DeLong):

after Powell's selection as Secretary of State, on NBC Nightly News on 12/15/00:   "I'm exuberant over the prospect of his [Colin Powell] stewardship of American foreign policy. There's a lot of very dangerous places in the world due to the fecklessness of the Clinton administration"; and the following day on the same program:  "I think his credentials and his charisma will have a significant effect, a beneficial effect, on the conduct of American foreign policy."

when asked for an assessment of the General (I think) on CNBC on 4/20/04:  "Well, Colin Powell's one of the most honest men that I've ever known and I admire and respect him enormously, and so obviously I'd take his word for it." 

upon Powell's departure from State, to the New York Times on 11/15/04:  "When he took the helm at the State Department nearly four years ago, I was confident that Secretary Powell would lead with honor and distinction.   I have not been disappointed."

upon being asked about torture on CBS on 3/9/08: "I don't know the answer to that. I think one of the failures maybe was not to listen more to our military leadership, including people like General Colin Powell, on this issue."

upon being asked on MSNBC's Hardball on 4/23/03 whether President Bush was "blessed" to have Powell working for him:  "I think the president is blessed to have two extremely talented people (Powell and Rumsfeld), experienced people, working for him, and others, but particularly those two."

upon being asked by the Times on 7/13/08 about the U.S. response to genocide: "We have to have effective ways of addressing genocide. I know what you are leading to and that is Darfur, where Colin Powell, a man who I admire as much as any man in the world, person in the world, declared genocide in Darfur several years ago." 

Who is that masked man?  Last Thursday, he reacted to the endorsement by Colin Powell of President Obama for re-election by saying on the (Brian) Kilmeade and Friends radio program "General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime.”   The following day, he wrote “it was Colin Powell,with his testimony before the U.N. Security Council, that go us into Iraq.

If John McCain didn't exist, he'd have to be invented. It's never easy to predict how the consistently mercurial Arizona senator will react to anything.  In 2004 he would have taken Colin Powell's word for just about anything and admired him more than almost anyone else in the world, and now he's an apologist for fecklessness.

But give McCain credit for boldness, if nothing else.   In 2008, he was the lone presidential candidate of a major political party willing to accept public financing, and has been probably the leading senate supporter of campaign finance reform.   After recklessly placing a demagogue from Alaska on his ticket, he corrected a campaign supporter when she called Barack Obama "a Muslim," which, compared to the pandering and cowardice of the current GOP nominee, stands out as an act of remarkable political courage.

But criticizing a man who wears the uniform, anyone whose first name is "General," is a risky proposition with little political upside.  Just ask MoveON, which was roundly condemned for its largely accurate ad criticizing General David Petraeus, then in charge of the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Two years later Petraeus was appointed top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, after which the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated.    Now General Petraeus inarguably remains one of the most admired individuals in the nation, and General Powell is not far behind.    John McCain, bless his heart, is one of the most entertainingly impulsive.



*pretentious term used by bloggers for "hat tip"


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An Open And Shut Case To An Open And Shut Mind



In his 2010 book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of continually apologizing for the nation.  Now shamelessly exploiting the recent attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Romney on September 11 told reporters "I think it's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation.  An apology for America's values is never the right course." At the second presidential debate, the Repub candidate claimed "the president's policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes."

Romney's claim at Hofstra that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror," as well as the "apology tour" he imagines, have been thoroughly debunked, the latter even by Politifact.   His contention, however, that "the administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction," is not completely ludicrous, given that there were conflicting statements from administration officials in the weeks following the attack.

But the charges that all the violence there was assiduously planned, and that the Administration therefore did not with one voice immediately and consistently label it as nothing more than a terrorist plot for nefarious political purposes, are way over the top.      David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times reports

To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video. That is what the fighters said at the time, speaking emotionally of their anger at the video without mentioning Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or the terrorist strikes of 11 years earlier. And it is an explanation that tracks with their history as members of a local militant group determined to protect Libya from Western influence.

“It was the Ansar al-Shariah people,” said Mohamed Bishari, 20, a neighbor of the compound who watched the assault and described the brigade he saw leading the attack. “There was no protest or anything of that sort.”

To the simplistic Republican mind (but I repeat myself), angry Muslims were involved, and any suggestion of spontaneity is tantamount to apologizing for America.   But the Muslim world- especially- Islamists but including the 'Arab street'- have complaints (legitimate or otherwise) against the U.S.A., including the Iraq War, U.S. support for Israel, and the Administration's extensive use of drone attacks, causes Mitt Romney is hardly critical of.

Arguably, the attack was of a terrorist nature but precipitated by the video; unarguably, intelligence was imperfect. Initial intelligence reports suggested the likelihood that the militants had reacted to the distasteful and offensive anti-Muslim video.  But counter-terrorism veteran extraordinaire Richard Clarke cautions

I dealt with scores of incidents and military operations over 30 years in the Pentagon, State Department and White House. I never saw a case where there was initial and accurate clarity about what happened.

In the case of TWA 800, the FBI thought for months that it had been shot down by a missile, only to learn much later that it was a maintenance problem that caused the fuel tank to explode. When the destroyer Cole was attacked in Yemen, it took the CIA director weeks to decide that the attackers were from Al Qaeda . The Iranian hand in the attack on the U.S. Air Force barracks at Khobar, Saudi Arabia, did not emerge for months.

News media and members of Congress may want instant answers when something explodes, when Americans die, but national security professionals know that “first reports are always wrong.” That is why, when pressed by reporters to say what had happened, UN Ambassador Susan Rice qualified her response by saying that the investigation was ongoing. She then said what the intelligence community had reported to her at that time.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius writes

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

It would never occur to Mitt Romney, who blasts the Administration for not definitively and consistently laying the blame entirely on "terrorism," to question the nation's primary agency responsible for gathering intelligence, upon which the Administration relied.   Its head, tellingly, is David Petraeus, and one never is to question the sainted General.

The Times' Kirkpatrick concludes

United States intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have said they intercepted boastful phone calls after the fact from attackers at the mission to individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. But they have also said that so far they had found no evidence of planning or instigation by the group. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, described the participation of individuals “linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic with Al Qaeda” — acknowledging, at best, a tenuous or indirect link.

“It is a promiscuous use of ‘Al Qaeda,’ ” Michael Hanna, a researcher at the Century Foundation, said of those charging that Al Qaeda was behind this attack. “It can mean anything or nothing at all.”

The Cold War, with the United States on one side and the Soviet Union, is over, a situation little understood by Mitt Romney, who maintains that Russia and not terrorism, Iran, or nuclear proliferation is the greatest threat to world peace.    Contemporary world affairs is complicated and confusing to a lot of us, but we don't have the temerity to present ourselves as fit to be leader of the Free World.





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The Preposterous Ms. Rice


If at first glance, the following statement appears stupid, remember: this individual has been, unofficially, given immunity from criticism by American media. Media Matters, with emphasis, has reported this exchange (video, below) between GOP TV's Brian Kilmeade and former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

BRIAN KILMEADE: The president in his speech — did a great job on his speech Sunday night — talked about coming together like we did on 9/11, he wants to see it happen again. Do you think a nice gesture would be to invite President Bush out on Thursday when he comes down to Ground Zero to greet the families?

RICE: Well, obviously, I'll leave that to the two of them and to the administration. But President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history. It was when this wounded nation watched their commander-in-chief stand on that rubble and say that they will hear us, we are going to avenge this. And it's not just avenging Osama bin Laden, as important as that is. But it's all the field generals that have been brought to justice over the last years, it is improving now the prospects for an Afghanistan that might actually be stable, it's a worldwide net against al Qaeda, it's victories of democracy in places like Iraq. And so, slowly but surely this is all coming into place and President Bush began that with that call to the nation — that clarion call to the nation at Ground Zero.

In December, 2001 the Administration (with the advice of General Tommy Franks) let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora into Pakistan as it outsourced the operation to local Afghan warlords. Four months later, President Bush declared of bin Laden, "We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run." In June, 2005 the C.I.A. closed "Alec Station," the unit dedicated to tracking down bin Laden. Three months later, Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes commented President Bush "just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources."

And now, the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee exclaims "We thank President (George W.) Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory." The House Majority Leader says "I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice."

Republicans are not speaking with one voice and their remarks about the bin Laden kill have varied dramatically. But only one person has:

-with hearty machismo, paraphrased George W. Bush as declaring "we are going to avenge this" as the President was preparing to use the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq;

-refered to "victories of democracy in places like Iraq" (places like Iraq- were there several?), now the beneficiary of a regime friendly to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran); and

-claimed "President Bush began that with that call to the nation — that clarion call to the nation at Ground Zero." The eloquence of that "clarion call"- an effective use of the bully pulpit- led to two wars paid for with borrowed money as the President ran up a huge debt so he could bestow tax breaks on the wealthy. Bush neglected to use his "clarion call" to ask of Americans any sacrifice while he ran two wars- and the more important one, Afghanistan, on the cheap.

There always will be persons of teflon, such as General David Petraeus. But the mainstream media has a couple excuses there- Petraeus is a man in uniform (see Powell, Colin) and he did enjoy considerable success in Iran. But why no scrutiny of Condoleezza Rice? The mushroom cloud woman was a failure as a foreign policy figure in the Bush Administration. That didn't prevent her, however, from incomprehensibly claiming "President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history." Posting at DailyKos, Joan McCarter nails it:

Gettysburg, Yorktown, Pearl Harbor, 4 July 1776, 20 July 1969.... Bush shouting inanities. Yeah, that seems right.

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Shakeup


Anyone remember this?

In late 2008, shortly after he had helped pull Iraq back from the brink of catastrophe, Gen. David H. Petraeus prepared to turn to that other American war.

“I’ve always said that Afghanistan would be the tougher fight,” General Petraeus said at the time.

Apparently, General Petraeus was right. Although- or perhaps because- the news from Afghanistan has been troubling, we read today

CIA director Leon Panetta will become U.S. defense secretary and be replaced at the spy agency's helm by U.S. Army General David Petraeus, current head of military operations in Afghanistan, ABC News reported on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama will also nominate veteran diplomat Ryan Crocker as the next U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, according to an NBC News report.

When The New York Times on June 23 published its report under the heading "Petraeus Is Now Taking Control of a ‘Tougher Fight,’" Alissa Rubin and Dexter Filins maintained

In Iraq, General Petraeus helped turn the tide not just by sending 30,000 more American troops into Baghdad, but also by fostering deals with insurgent leaders who had spent the previous four years killing Americans. As much as the surge, the movement in Iraq known as the Sunni Awakening helped set in motion the remarkable decline in violence there that has largely held to this day.

Rubin and Filkins noted the arduous task of turning around the American war effort in Afghanistan, and added

To turn the tide, General Petraeus will almost certainly continue the counterinsurgency strategy he devised with General McChrystal: protecting Afghan civilians, separating them from insurgents and winning public support. But he will also have to convince his own troops, who are increasingly angry about the restrictions on using firepower imposed to protect civilians.

And General Petraeus will probably also try to employ some of the same novel tactics that worked so well in Iraq. Most notably, he will continue to coax Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with promises of jobs and security. And he may even try to strike deals with senior leaders of the Taliban as well as with the military and intelligence services in Pakistan.

A former aide to General Petraeus in Iraq who is now in Afghanistan put it this way: “The policy is to make everyone feel safer, reconcile with those who are willing and kill the people you need to.”

As a candidate, Barack Obama emphasized that the U.S. national interests were far more at stake in Afghanistan than in Iraq. As President, Barack Obama asserted thirteen months ago in Kabul

We can’t forget why we’re here. We did not choose this war. This was not an act of America wanting to expand its influence; of us wanting to meddle in somebody else’s business. We were attacked viciously on 9/11. Thousands of our fellow countrymen and women were killed. And this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership. Plots against our homeland, plots against our allies, plots against the Afghan and Pakistani people are taking place as we speak right here. And if this region slides backwards, if the Taliban retakes this country and al Qaeda can operate with impunity, then more American lives will be at stake. The Afghan people will lose their chance at progress and prosperity. And the world will be significantly less secure.

Our broad mission is clear: We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear: We’re going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We’re going to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. We’re going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people.

When the President assigned Petraeus the position of Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), it was widely hailed as a brilliant political move, virtually eliminating the popular general as a potential 2012 GOP presidential nominee. But assignment to the C.I.A. is not politically imperative.

Perhaps President Obama has given up on the war in Afghanistan. Or, less likely, he has given up on David Petraeus, arguably the most respected American general since Dwight Eisenhower, as a commanding general in the region from which terrorists intent on the destruction of this nation operate. Someone needs to ask the President (and Petraeus during his confirmation hearing) why he has decided to make this move- though it has been rumored for months- while we continue in combat with victory obviously not within our grasp. If the answers are unsatisfying, worth consideration is David Dayen's theory:

Panetta was Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton and before that a US Representative from the Central Coast of California. He’s been CIA Director in the Obama Administration, which as I understand it now is basically the Secretary of Defense job, given all the covert operations. And then you have a military commander moving to the CIA. So the merging of the military and the intelligence community is complete. Within a few years it’ll just be one big black op. The good news is they can cut the military budget then, and put everything into the secret, off-the-books intelligence budget so as not to raise suspicion.

The Senate Intelligence Committee (and the full Senate, which would confirm Petraeus for anything he's nominated to) and the media cannot have it both ways: either General Petraeus has been vastly overrated or something else is going on here. In this democratic republic, the 800 pound elephant must not be ignored.

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