Look Who Now Doesn't Like Iran

Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, penned (old term) a column recently in the friendly pages of The Wall Street Journal in which they concluded

American freedom will not be secured by empty threats, meaningless red lines, leading from behind, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies, or apologizing for our great nation—all hallmarks to date of the Obama doctrine. Our security, and the security of our friends around the world, can only be guaranteed with a fundamental reversal of the policies of the past six years...

 President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.

Oddly- given those baseless charges of the Cheneys, Dick and Liz were right about one thing.

It's not about the remainder of their conclusion,in which they maintained "In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, 'If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.'"

The duo, seriously memory challenged, argued in the Bergdahl deal "we violated basic tenant (sic) first of all, in negotiating with terrorists..."  Paul Rosenberg reminds us that from 8/12/85 through 10/28/86 there were eight arms shipments to Iran in response to 96 individuals (mostly American and western European) taken by the government of Lebanon.  Ultimately, four American hostages were released and four others abducted or murdered, with a net gain of zero hostages released. (President Obama, by contrast, got one released with no direct damage.) Moreover

Not only did Reagan deal with terrorists as president, as revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal, the preponderance of evidence now supports the charge that his campaign negotiated with Iranian hostage-takers while he was running for president in 1980, to delay the release of hostages before the election, which could have helped Carter win reelection — what was known as “The October Surprise.” Given that Reagan wasn’t president then, but was negotiating to thwart a president’s attempt to get hostages released, this is not simply questionable behavior, it is arguably an act of treason. 

The Cheneys snark

Our president doesn't seem to. Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.

It is possible, rumor has it, that an Administration can work on more than one problem at a time, and Obama's attention to global warming with its potential to destroy the planet is more than frivolous, though it does discomfit Dick Cheney's favorite charity, the non-renewable energy industry. And a President too busy to play sports is entitled to golf from time-to-time. Cheney might not be aware that, as Obama was preparing for a vacation last August at Martha's Vineyard, he had taken part or all of 92 days as a vacation, whereas at the same point in his presidency, George W. Bush (whom Cheney served as vice-president) had taken 323 days.

This is not a direct equivalence, given that President Bush sometimes worked during vacations at his ranch in Crawford .  Such was the case when a  CIA briefer on August 6, 2001 handed him the Presidential Daily Brief (photograph of the meeting, below) "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," which suggested Osama Bin Laden- whom the Administration was assiduously ignoring- might hijack commercial airliners inside the USA.  Not the slacker Barack Obama is, Bush reportedly told the courier "You’ve covered your ass now" and then went fishing.

The Cheneys mistake a quick fix for a resolution when they claim "when Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge." But much of the success attributed to the surge was achieved by the Anbar Awakening months before American soldiers arrived.  The surge functioned as a band-aid (actually, Band Aid; adhesive bandage is the generic term) which staunched the bleeding, but eventually the bandage had to come off. And sometimes, as in the case of Iraq, the bleeding will return because the underlying problem has not been addressed.  The major achievement of the surge probably was the election of a Prime Minister but but

The litany of Maliki’s failures to accommodate Sunni aspirations is well known: his failure to live up to power-sharing promises made in 2010; his extra-constitutional abuses of power; his persecution of Sunni politicians; his failure to sustain ties with Sunni tribes in western Iraq; his refusal to follow through on commitments to integrate “Awakening” fighters into Iraqi security forces; and his heavy-handed response to Sunni political protests in Anbar province last year.

"Now, in a move that defies credulity, he toys with the idea of ushering Iran into Iraq," the Cheneys write of Obama. They add "Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror."   One could hardly imagine, then, that it is members of the Bush-Cheney Administration which have bragged about the surge, which resulted in the ascension to Prime Minister of the staunchly pro-Iranian Maliki.

Dick Cheney (and his daughter) should not be silenced.  But he should be confronted (and not only by Megyn Kelly, as in the video below) because- as with virtually every one  of President Obama's critics- he offers no solution and has been part of the problem. Rand Paul noted "I don't blame President Obama.  Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame those who are for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran. These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry."

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Clinton Off The Mark

To be fair to him, Bill Clinton has a point.  Almost.

This would not be when he told Senator John McCain (R-AZ) during an event for the McCain Institute for International Leadership (hat tip to outsidethebeltway.com) "'Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!' I think that's a big mistake.  I agree with you about this. Sometimes it's just best to get caught trying, as long as you don't overcommitt- like, as long as you don't make an improvident commitment."  Informants have assured us that the former President was not referring to avoiding over-commitment and detection when befriending female interns..

According to Politico's Maggie Haberman, Clinton maintained that as President, if "there was a poll in the morning paper that said 80 percent of you were against it … you’d look like a total wuss."  He contended additionally

Nobody is asking for American soldiers in Syria. The only question is now that the Russians, the Iranians and the Hezbollah are in there head over heels, 90 miles to nothing, should we try to do something to try to slow their gains and rebalance the power so that these rebel groups have a decent chance, if they’re supported by a majority of the people, to prevail?...

My view is that we shouldn’t over-learn the lessons of the past,” Clinton said. “I don’t think Syria is necessarily Iraq or Afghanistan — no one has asked us to send any soldiers in there. I think it’s more like Afghanistan was in the ’80s when they were fighting the Soviet Union … when President Reagan was in office [and] got an enormous amount of influence and gratitude by helping to topple the Soviet-backed regime and then made the error of not hanging around in Afghanistan” to try to cash in on the gains.

President Obama has been unnecessarily passive, as Tom Rogan argues here. But to suggest his approach has been motivated largely by public sentiment is sheer speculation on the part of the husband of Senator Obama's primary (pun intended) Democratic rival of 2008.  

You might have noticed that the Big Dog avoided advocating a particular course of action, which would have been helpful, though exposing him (and perhaps his wife) to some hard questions if the recommendations were adopted and failed.  You might also have recognized a former President knocking a current President for allegedly subjecting his policy to popular sentiment while arguing that "rebel groups" must be given "a decent chance, if they're supported by a majority of the people, to prevail."

Dismayed by a Democratic President who considers the will of the people, Clinton commends a (former) Republican president who chose a politically popular position (alliteration intentional) by opposing those nasty Russian commies or, as Clinton put it, aiding "rebel groups" in Afghanistan "in the '80s when they were fighting the Soviet Union... when President Reagan was in office (and) got an enormous amount of influence and gratitude by helping to topple the Soviet-backed regime and then made the error of not hanging around in Afghanistan."

It is common wisdom, as Clinton clearly displayed, that the biggest mistake the U.S.A. made in that era in Afghanistan was not "hanging around," taking some of the credit for defeat of the Soviets and helping effect a pro-American, democratic regime in Kabul.   In this case, common wisdom is wrong.

As the former President should have learned by now, victory by the most powerful military in world history is the relatively easy part.  Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Muammar Khadafi can be removed from power, but the aftermath is exceedingly treacherous.

Clinton demonstrates the common perception that aiding the rebels in Afghanistan was a slam-dunk.  (And at the time it seemed so.) Maybe so, but hardly in the way he believes. Casey Gane-McCalla of NewsOne gives us a history lesson, the broad outline of which seems to be generally lost to history.  He explains

During in the 1970s, when the Russia was the biggest threat to America and radical Islam was not as a concern of the USA’s, the USA began funding and training Islamic militants to fight our Russian enemies in Afghanistan.

These militants, known as the mujahideen would rebel the Russians out of Afghanistan and later become the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

One of the most prominent members of he mujahideen was a wealthy son of a Saudi Arabian businessman named Osama Bin Laden.

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Afganistan in 1979 and met with Bin Laden and even took a picture with him. Brzezinski would tell the mujahideen

We know of their deep belief in God, and we are confident their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours, you’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again. Because your cause is right and God is on your side.

The BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Russian journal Demokratizatsiya have all written that the CIA and U.S.A. funded and supported Bin Laden during the Afghan war.

Former British Foreign secretary, Robin Cook said:

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

Several other authors, journalists and statesmen have all made the claim that Bin Laden was funded, armed and trained by the CIA to fight off the Russians.

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

The U.S.A. would fund Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader and alleged heroin dealer who worked closely with Bin Laden. Hekmaytyar and his political party/paramilitary group would receive more than $600 million from the USA. Author, Alfred McCoy, would claim that the CIA supported Hekmatyar in his illicit heroin trade to allow him to fund the mujahideen.Like Bin Laden, Hekmatyar has also become an enemy of the U.S., waging a war against coalition forces in Afghanistan after 2001.

The mujahideen was a forerunner of Al Qaeda and morphed into the deadly terrorist group. But, as Brzezinski's remark reflected, the USA in Afghanistan opposed an overrated enemy and ignored the threat posed by an up-and-coming one because the officially atheist Soviet Unionwas a godless nation fought b people convinced God was on their side.   There is a moral to that story (perhaps more than one) which Bill Clinton, with his famously superior intellect, ought to understand.
 



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Priorities Skewed, And Not

Every child in public school is introduced to the United States Constitution, including Article IV, Section 2.  Perhaps you remember that it begins "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States, including the right to an Academy Award."

Weren't you aware of that provision?   Neither was I until directed to it by co-chairperson Amy Pascal of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is the production/distribution company for Zero Dark Thirty, nominated for five Academy Awards, including best movie.   By all accounts it is an impressive movie but Martin Sheen and Ed Asner, two actors accustomed to liberal advocacy, have criticized the film.  And deciding that principle trumps artistry, actor David Clennon has announced

I firmly believe that the film Zero Dark Thirty promotes the acceptance of the crime of torture, as a legitimate weapon in America's so-called war on terror. In that belief, following my conscience, I will not vote for Zero Dark Thirty in any category...I cannot vote for a film that makes heroes of Americans who commit the crime of torture.

Appearing on Cenk Uygur's The Young Turks, former CIA operative Lindsay Moran explains

It is an amazing movie, but very revealing about the entire hunt for Osama bin Laden.   It contains a lot of disturbing scenes of detainees being tortured...  What I find ironic is the government claiming that this is classified information and would put Americans at risk at the very same time that two Hollywood filmmakers were given unprecedented access to the CIA -- basically made an infomercial about CIA interrogation.

But exploding in righteous indignation, SONY President Pascal thundered

To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and [screenwriter] Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie. We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda.

Competing values sometimes make for a difficult ethical decision.  Not this one.

Barry Bonds, who (along with other baseball greats) this month received far fewer votes than necessary for induction into the Hall of Fame, is a difficult ethical decision.  Bonds was front and center of the steroid era who, as Sports Illustrated put it in 2006, took "a wide array of performance-enhancing drugs over at least five seasons in a massive doping regimen that grew more sophisticated as the years went on."  He also was inarguably the best player of his generation and arguably the best player ever, a sensational outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants before he even began 'doping.'

So go ahead- ponder away about whether Bonds and the other players (all rejected) up for the Hall should have been denied admission for 2013.  But the argument of Amy Pascal about another sector of the entertainment field is askew and just plain hypocritical.

Pascal criticizes Clennon on two fronts:  Zero Dark Thirty is "extraordinary" and the actor/voter merely is "advanc(ing) their own political agenda."   The first is probably true but subjective, and irrelevant.  It is a zero sum game, with one film winning and the others losing in each category, and presumably each of the films merits a place on the ballot.

And advancing one's own political agenda?   This would hardly be the first time political considerations have entered into nominations or voting for awards in the industry.   Hollywood, further, is rife with politics and would-be politicians.  Perhaps, someday, there will even be an actor who goes on to become a big-state governor and two-term U.S. President.  Nah.  That'll never happen.

But the controlling factor is whether Zero Dark Thirty a political movie.   This is not A Hard Day's Night or even North by Northwest.  It is a movie about Osama binLaden, and one which strongly implies torture is efficacious, a highly controversial position.  It serves, intentionally or otherwise, as propaganda for the U.S. government and its approach to terrorism and whose screenwriter and director apparently benefited from a curious relationship with the C.I.A.

It's good entertainment, though, and is making lots of money for lots of people.  And that, apparently, is all which matters for people who embody Hollywood's sense of entitlement.  There is no Constitutional right to win an Academy Award.   Amy Pascal may not understand that, but at least a few people, David Clennon among them, do.



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Reprise, Of A Sort



Appearing on C-Span's Washington Journal, powerful anti-income tax fanatic Grover Norquist was caught by Think Progress speculating of President Obama

We got lots of things Obama claims to be for, and we will make — we, the Republicans in the House and Senate — will make him actually make those spending restraints, in order to get the continuing resolution out [for] a week, two weeks, a month. Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years. He’s not gonna have any fun at all. He may decide to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.

Where did we hear politicians and pundits previously impugn the motives of a Democratic President with the charge that he might order a military attack to divert attention- or just for funsies?  Oh, yeah:

Clinton came under intense criticism in 1998 by the GOP after he launched an attack on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top associates were meeting at a training camp when U.S. missiles were fired at it, just weeks after al Qaeda terrorists bombed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The attack was launched on the same day Lewinsky, a former White House intern, wrapped up her testimony before a grand jury investigating whether Clinton lied under oath about their relationship or encouraged anyone else to do so.

"During that time when the attack was launched in Afghanistan and Sudan, there was a movie out called 'Wag the Dog,' " Cohen testified Tuesday. In the movie, an administration launched a fake war as a political ploy. "There were critics of the Clinton administration that attacked the president, saying this was an effort on his part to divert attention from his personal difficulties.

The former Secretary of Defense added "I would like to say for the record under no circumstances did President Clinton ever call upon the military and use that military in order to serve a political purpose."

The military attack ordered by Bill Clinton was denounced by many individuals who were obsessively hostile toward the 42nd President- or were blind to the danger presented to the U.S.A. by Islamic extremists.  The 9/11 commission's report noted

After launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration applied diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert operations to use CIA-paid foreign agents to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants. These actions did not stop Bin Ladin or dislodge al Qaeda from its sanctuary.

Alas, the Clinton Administration applied insufficient pressure to destroy Al Qaeda's base camps in Afghanistan or Sudan, the incoming Bush Administration virtually ignored the problem, and disaster ensued on 9/11/01.   And now Grover Norquist, whose puppets in the G.O.P. deserve a great deal of the blame for the soaring national debt, says President Obama may "blow up small countries" because "he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to."  Pretty clever: Norquist demands low taxes; Republican members of Congress vote unanimously for the past 22 years against raising income taxes; the national debt climbs to unprecedented levels as Bush 43 cuts taxes again and again while we fight two wars; and Norquist claims the Democratic President may bomb countries to avoid dealing with the debt Grover arguably did more than anyone to create.

And no, other than CAP and a few other liberal bloggers, he won't get called out for it.




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Total Failure, Total Disgrace

Maybe we have been a little too harsh on former President George W. Bush.    Perhaps it wasn't only Mr. Bush who was grossly ineffective in his/her job prior to the Obama Administration, and played a key role in the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

Today, not coincidentally on September 11, a commentary appears in The New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald, a Vanity Fair editor and former reporter for The NYT.    Eichenwald says he read excerpts from the (not released) presidential daily briefs preceding the famous one of 8/6/11, as well as other recently declassified reports, and found

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Neoconservatives believed Saddam Hussein was more dangerous than Bin Laden, whom they argued merely was pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration. On September 8, 2002- a year after the terrorist strike and prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq- CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who maintained

We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon.  And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought -- maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

To be fair to Rice, it was neoconservatives at the Defense Department who downplayed the threat of  bin Laden and played up the that from Saddam Hussen.   However, even after the terrorists struck on 9/11/01, the National Security Adviser, who had been lauded as the individual who taught Bush everything he knew about foreign policy, radically exaggerated the threat presented by the Iraqi dictator.   And it was partly on that premise that the Bush Administration began Gulf War II and minimized the menace posed by the leader of Al Qaeda- after largely ignoring those presidential daily briefs which warned of a possible attack by the evil Saudi national.

At the first GOP convention following his departure from office, George W. Bush is ignored at the party's national convention by all but his brother, who lamely protests "My brother, well, I love my brother" and claims- more bizarrely than ostentatiously- "during incredibly challenging times, he kept us safe."

Condoleezza Rice, however, was honored by being given a time-prime speaking slot during which she rhetorically asks "where does America stand?’ ... Indeed that is the question of the hour."   She answers "You see when the friends or foes alike don't know the answer to that question, unambiguously and clearly, the world is likely to be a more dangerous and chaotic place.

Noting that allies and enemies both have more respect for the U.S.A. under the current President than the one who was si disastrously served by Rice, Slate's Fred Kaplan responds "a top adviser in the most disastrous, reputation-crippling foreign-policy administration in decades—has no business lecturing anybody on this score."

Obviously, George W. Bush was a dreadful president in more ways, especially in the economic sphere, than in turning a figurative blind eye to Osama bin Laden.  But he has been, justifiably, pilloried; the individual who advised him first as a Director of the National Security Council and then as Secretary of State has been given a pass by her party, Augusta National Golf Club, and in the media reports following her speech at the Republican National Convention.   It is more than "chutzpah,"a term ably applied to Rice by Kaplan; it is virtual collective amnesia.




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That Moment Of Crisis



Evidently, the 43rd president was not nearly as stupid or dumb as some made him out to be. Say what you will about George W. Bush as president- and most of its deserved- he has had the good sense as ex-president to do as little and say as little as possible.

Dick Cheney, however, is a different sort of fellow.    Hosting a fundraiser in Wyoming for the presumptive presidential nominee of the Gas and Oil Party, the former V.P. remarked

Sooner or later there is going to be a big surprise.   Usually a very unpleasant one. Whether it’s 9-11 or the other kinds of difficulties or crises that arrive, they always do. That’s when you find out what kind of leader your president is.    When I think about the kind of individual I want in the Oval Office in that moment of crisis, who has to make those key decisions, some of them life and death decisions, some of them decisions as the commander-in-chief who has the responsibility of sending our young men and women into harm's way -- that man is Mitt Romney.

Cheney, oddly, wasn't referring to the kind of guy who would make the right decision about Osama bin Laden or Somali pirates.   He was, presumably, talking about the Bush-Cheney administration. Or the Cheney-Bush administration.

You'd almost think the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in the Obama administration, that it ignored the terrorist threat and was replaced by a Bush Administration which ramped up efforts, eventually ordering the elimination of Osama bin Laden.   Instead, as early as October, 2002 the UK Guardian reported

According to today's Time magazine, Mr Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger and Mr Clarke outlined the threat in briefings they provided for Condoleezza Rice, George Bush's national security adviser, in January 2001, a few weeks before she and her team took up their posts.

At the key briefing, Mr Clarke presented proposals to "roll back" al-Qaida which closely resemble the measures taken after September 11. Its financial network would be broken up and its assets frozen. Vulnerable countries like Uzbekistan, Yemen and the Philippines would be given aid to help them stamp out terrorist cells.

Crucially, the US would go after Bin Laden in his Afghan lair. Plans would be drawn up for combined air and special forces operations, while support would be channelled to the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies.

Mr Clarke, who stayed on in his job as White House counter-terrorism tsar, repeated his briefing for vice president Dick Cheney in February. However, the proposals got lost in the clumsy transition process, turf wars between departments and the separate agendas of senior members of the Bush administration.

It was, the Time article argues, "a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat".

Documents released only last month by the C.I.A. include a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief written on 6/23/01 warned, under the sub-heading "International:  Bin Laden Attacks May be Imminent," "multiple reports indicate that extremists expect Bin Laden to launch lattacks over the coming days, possibly against U.S. or Israeli interests."     And there was one from 6/25/01 with the sub-heading "Terrorism: Bin Laden and Associates Making Near-Term Threats," which warned "Expect Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days."    A document from five days later read "operative linked to Usama Bin Laden's organization expect the near-term attacks they are planning to have dramatic consequences, such as major casualties."

From June through September, there were four additional CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs maintaining attacks were imminent.     But the Administration, whose National Security staff had ignored a CIA proposal to increase drone attacks, did not call a Principals' Meeting (downgraded to a Deputies' Meeting) until just days before the 9/11/01 attack.    

Not all of the documents were revelations, some of the information having been contained in the 9/11 committee's report.     And we learned a lot from publication in 2004 of Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine," which slammed Vice-President Cheney's fanatical approach to foreign policy.     Most famously, while President Bush was in Crawford, enjoying what was tied with one of Richard Nixon's vacations as the longest vacation ever taken by a U.S. president, he was presented by a CIA briefer with the famous 8/6/01 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In U.S."     Bush's reply: "All right, you've covered your ass now."

There is little doubt that Dick Cheney is suggesting that Mitt Romney would- well, we don't quite know quite what he could be thinking.    From the evidence, though, it appears that the former Vice President envisions Mitt Romney as his kind of President, one who, when confronted with evidence of an imminent terrorist attack will go jet skiing, water skiing, maybe waterboarding.

   

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Denying The Obvious


Rush Limbaugh is right, you know.    He was right, yesterday, about one thing when he said of the raid in Abbottobad

Not Mitt Romney. Not John McCain. Not Jimmy Carter. Joe Biden is the only guy that said: Don't go get Bin Laden.

Jimmy Carter did not say "don't go get Bin Laden"- there has been no report of the former President's argument in favor of, or against, entering Pakistani territory to pursue Osama binLaden.  

There was, as we have been helpfully reminded, comment by both Mitt Romney and John McCain urging caution toward violating the sovereignty of a foreign nation and possibly upsetting Pervez Musharraf, who was later driven in disgrace from Pakistan.      But President Obama's decision to approve a helicopter raid to assassinate public enemy #1 was especially bold because Joe Biden was not "the only guy" to oppose the action, unless Bob Gates sexual identity is at issue.

Limbaugh argued in the same rant about President Obama "And he wasn't even the man in charge of the actual operation.  That was the guy named McRaven."

Fortunately, writing in The New Yorker on August 8, 2011, Nicholas Schmidle puts to rest both the claim that only the Vice-President opposed the raid and the inference that the decision to proceed was primarily that of Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven.    He explained

In late 2010, Obama ordered Panetta to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound. Panetta contacted Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the SEAL in charge of JSOC. Traditionally, the Army has dominated the special-operations community, but in recent years the SEALs have become a more prominent presence; McRaven’s boss at the time of the raid, Eric Olson—the head of Special Operations Command, or SOCOM—is a Navy admiral who used to be a commander of DEVGRU. In January, 2011, McRaven asked a JSOC official named Brian, who had previously been a DEVGRU deputy commander, to present a raid plan....

On March 14th, Obama called his national-security advisers into the White House Situation Room and reviewed a spreadsheet listing possible courses of action against the Abbottabad compound. Most were variations of either a JSOC raid or an airstrike. Some versions included coöperating with the Pakistani military; some did not. Obama decided against informing or working with Pakistan. “There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,” a senior adviser to the President told me. At the end of the meeting, Obama instructed McRaven to proceed with planning the raid.
Brian invited James, the commander of DEVGRU’s Red Squadron, and Mark, the master chief petty officer, to join him at C.I.A. headquarters....

On March 29th, McRaven brought the plan to Obama. The President’s military advisers were divided. Some supported a raid, some an airstrike, and others wanted to hold off until the intelligence improved. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, was one of the most outspoken opponents of a helicopter assault. Gates reminded his colleagues that he had been in the Situation Room of the Carter White House when military officials presented Eagle Claw—the 1980 Delta Force operation that aimed at rescuing American hostages in Tehran but resulted in a disastrous collision in the Iranian desert, killing eight American soldiers. “They said that was a pretty good idea, too,” Gates warned. He and General James Cartwright, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, favored an airstrike by B-2 Spirit bombers. That option would avoid the risk of having American boots on the ground in Pakistan. But the Air Force then calculated that a payload of thirty-two smart bombs, each weighing two thousand pounds, would be required to penetrate thirty feet below ground, insuring that any bunkers would collapse. “That much ordnance going off would be the equivalent of an earthquake,” Cartwright told me. The prospect of flattening a Pakistani city made Obama pause. He shelved the B-2 option and directed McRaven to start rehearsing the raid.

Brian, James, and Mark selected a team of two dozen SEALs from Red Squadron and told them to report to a densely forested site in North Carolina for a training exercise on April 10th.

The Vice-Admiral was the manager overseeing the operation.    But the plan was devised by a guy identified as "Brian," who was one of three individuals who scheduled training of the Navy SEALs.      McRaven, at Obama's direction, chose the specific night of the raid, but only after in late April then-C.I.A. Director Leon

Panetta and the rest of the national-security team met with the President. For the next few nights, there would be virtually no moonlight over Abbottabad—the ideal condition for a raid. After that, it would be another month until the lunar cycle was in its darkest phase. Several analysts from the National Counterterrorism Center were invited to critique the C.I.A.’s analysis; their confidence in the intelligence ranged between forty and sixty per cent. The center’s director, Michael Leiter, said that it would be preferable to wait for stronger confirmation of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. Yet, as Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser, put it to me recently, the longer things dragged on, the greater the risk of a leak, “which would have upended the thing.” Obama adjourned the meeting just after 7 P.M. and said that he would sleep on it.

President Obama didn't merely order action to eliminate (capture or kill, apparently at the SEALs' discretion) Osama binLaden.    He opted- against the advice of Secretary Gates and others- for a helicopter assault rather than an airstrike, even though it exposed Americans to being killed, which would have been damaging operationally and disastrous politically.     He ordered the raid to take place within a few days of a meeting with his national-security team (which would not include McRaven) rather than to wait until the intelligence community might be able to confirm binLaden's presence.

Of course, President Obama's superb judgement in the events leading to the death of Osama binLaden sholdn't in itself be enough to warrant his re-election.   (His opposition is.)   But given the panic displayed by Republicans accusing the President of "spiking the ball," it appears the GOP fears that it will be a decisive factor.      If Barack Obama were taking untoward political advantage of this military action, he might have done something like this (from dailykos):

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Franklin Roosevelt, Indeed


No guffawing.  No fingers crossed.    Not even a smile crossed his lips.

Apparently, incomprehensibly, Joe Biden was deadly serious when today in Wisconsin

“I’ve watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s hair curl,” Biden told the crowd of 150 inside the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee, according to a pool reporter on scene

Biden, who has said he’s the last man in the room with Obama before a tough call, often attests that his boss has a “backbone like a ramrod.”

And today he said that mettle — and the “serious problems” Obama faced upon taking office — put the president in a class of his own.

“I think I can say … no president, and I would argue in the 20th century and including now the 21st century, has had as many serious problems which are cases of first-instance laid on his table,” Biden said. “Franklin Roosevelt faced more dire consequences, but in a bizarre way it was more straightforward.”

The vice president claimed that the complexity of the 2008 financial crisis presented challenges in a way the Great Depression of 80 years ago did not.

The suggestion that President Obama has had it more tough than Roosevelt 32 is loathsome.     As Digby notes, "I think we can all agree that the Great Depression and Hitler were just a little bit more difficult than dealing with this recession and Mitch McConnell."

The vice-president's boast about his boss' courage is hard to square with the facts, especially as they pertain to the Administration's national security policies.      Today, New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal wrote

The Bush administration kept secrets largely for bad reasons: It covered up its torture memos, the kidnapping of innocent foreign citizens, illegal wiretapping and other misdeeds. Barack Obama promised to bring more transparency to Washington in the 2008 campaign, but he has failed to do that. In some ways, his administration is even worse than the Bush team when it comes to abusing the privilege of secrecy.

One example of this abuse is the government’s effort to block public scrutiny of its “targeted killing” policy – the use of drone aircraft to kill specific people identified as threats to the United States. The most notorious case is the Sept. 30, 2011, drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who United States officials say was part of Al Qaeda’s command structure. Another American was killed in the strike, and Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also an American citizen, was killed in an attack two weeks later.

The Obama administration has refused to make public the legal documents underpinning the president’s decision to order the killing of an American citizen without any judicial review before or after the attack. So far, it has not even made those documents available to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Accordingly, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed two lawsuits aimed at forcing disclosure. One predates the Awlaki killing, the other followed the attack. The New York Times is party to the latter: Our paper wants the government to release the legal reasoning behind the attack. The ACLU is asking for more: It also wants to see the factual information that led to the decision to kill Mr. Awlaki.

But the government is blocking any consideration of these petitions with one of the oldest, and most pathetic, dodges in the secrecy game. It says it cannot confirm or deny the existence of any drone strike policy or program.

That would be unacceptable under any condition, but it’s completely ridiculous when you take into account the fact that a) there have been voluminous news accounts of drone strikes, including the one on Mr. Awlaki, and b) pretty much every top government official involved in this issue has talked about the drone strikes in public. 

I generally agree with Bill Maher, and disagree with Glenn Greenwald, that drone strikes are an unavoidable tool in combating terrorism.     When an American citizen leaves the U.S.A. and plots, or aids, terrorist attacks, he ought to be subject to assassination.      But secrecy is not the mark of courage, and it's not too much to ask the Obama administration to release whatever written material exists to justify its policy, particularly when, as Greenwald points out, Obama and other officials "have repeatedly boasted in public about this very program."

It should be enough to boast, as Biden has, "the best way to sum up the job the President has done if you need a real shorthand: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”       The ironic thing, given the Administration's pride in its drone program, is that the difficult decision made by the President was not in giving the go-ahead on Bin Laden but in eschewing a drone attack in favor of an operation on the ground by Navy SEALs in coordination with the C.I.A.        Approving the killing of America's greatest public enemy of the last half century should have been a no-brainer for Barack Obama; if he had decided to forego any operation, he would not have gotten the virtual pass from his political opponents that President Bush was largely afforded when he outsourced the effort to kill Bin Laden.       But the Navy SEALs prevailed, intelligence was preserved, and Obama earned a notch in his belt.

In the continuing struggle against terrorism- misnamed the "War on Terror"- the President has enjoyed significant success.         But secrecy is, as Greenwald notes, "the linchpin of the abuse of power."     If Mr. Obama really wants to exhibit the "mettle" ascribed to him by the Vice-President, the White House must stop leaning on the state secrets privilege, end its assault on whistleblowers, subject itself to normal oversight, and start turning an opaque presidency into a transparent one.








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Ahead, For Now


Unemployment is up, now to 9.1%, and the widespread belief that Barack Obama will be re-elected President has been called into question.

Not quite so for The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart who, though conceding that the economy may actually worsen and imperil the incumbent's re-election, argues that Obama still should be a heavy favorite to occupy the oval Office in 2013.

Beinart notes that each prominent GOP contender or would-be contender has one or more serious handicaps. Of the two most likely nominees, Beinart asserts that Tim Pawlenty appears to much of the public not to be "up to the job" while Mitt Romney is not perceived widely as "a person of conviction" or "able to relate to ordinary Americans." Credit Beinart with this- unlike the Washington Post's Dan Balz and Jon Cohen or other pundits, he does not cite "overall dissatisfaction with the GOP field." Barack Obama will not have the luxury of running against Romney-Pawlenty-Bachmann-Perry-Huntsman-Palin-Gingrich-Cain-Santorum-Palin et al. He will be faced off against one, whose image when will be vastly enhanced by his (yes, his) successful navigation of the maze of primaries and caucuses. At that point, he no longer will be some ex-governor or ex-congressman but the victorious nominee of a major political party.

But Beinart focuses his argument on an analogy with President Bush's re-election, when Americas were in "a sour mood" but voters re-elected the incumbent because

people’s feelings about him outpaced their feelings about the state of the country. Despite saying the country was on the wrong track, a slight majority of Americans approved of his job performance, and he was reelected by essentially that margin.

For what it's worth- and, admittedly, it's not worth much, given that its only a snapshot- President Obama's approval ratings are now 50% while at the same point in his first term, President Bush's number was 62%. And this was reported by Gallup from a survey taken May 30-June 5, post-bin Laden (truly, post bin Laden) and, aside from one day, before release of the latest, gruesome unemployment figures.

Typically, right track-wrong track numbers track fairly closely with the perceived state of the economy and Beinart contends

Throughout the summer and fall of 2004, a clear majority of Americans said the country was on the wrong track. The numbers, in fact, were only marginally better then than they are now.

On October 25,2004, however, ABC News reported "fifty-five percent of likely voters say the country is on the wrong track." By contrast, Balz and Cohen report that a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken June2-June 5 indicates "by 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track." (Seriously on the wrong track? And what percentage opted for "laughingly" on the wrong track? Seriously, folks, this is The Washington Post!)

Results of the poll, Balz-Cohen observe (observes?) "continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak." Those are nasty numbers- but they may get worse. While commenting not on the prospects for Obama's re-election but for the economy generally, Dean Baker notes

there are more factors pointing to slower growth than faster growth going forward. In addition to the state and local cuts kicking in next month, the new fiscal year for the federal government begins October 1. This is also likely to involve further cuts in spending. And the payroll tax cut is scheduled to end 3 months later, as is the extension of unemployment benefits. At some point, the pain of high unemployment across the country may lead to some new thinking in Washington, but until that time, welcome to the second Great Depression.

There is another chink in comparing 2012 to 2004. Unlike in 2004, the incumbent President on the ballot in 2012 will not have the advantage of a raft of state referenda boosting his bid. In November, 2004, individuals in eleven states voted on measures to ban gay marriage- and all eleven passed. GWB would have captured the electoral votes of Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah even without the highly popular measure. But he could not have been re-elected without Ohio, in which the Republican prevailed by only 2.1% while the marriage ban passed 62%-38%. Some analysts (not all) believe only this enabled the incumbent to carry Ohio. Your opinion, like mileage, may vary.

Barack Obama still is a favorite to be re-elected. In match-ups with possible opponents over the past year, he has come out anywhere from slightly behind to well ahead and will amass a campaign war chest far exceeding that which he had in 2008, itself a record. With the elimination of Osama binLaden, it will be difficult (though not impossible) to cast the Democrat as soft on foreign enemies, as Republicans are wont to do. His Administration has been virtually, if not completely, scandal-free. While the White House employs a "to scare your core voters about the other side" (as Beinart puts it) tactic, the President will continue to occupy the ideological center of American politics.

This should count with independents- and will need to. Because when an incumbent is as dismissive of his core supporters as this President is, enthusiasm of the base will suffer and he will be dependent upon independents recognizing that he is one of them, and his opponents well beyond the mainstream.

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Roger Ailes, King-Maker


Say what you will about MSNBC and its stable of liberals. It has had Ed Schultz (suspended), David Schuster (fired), Keith Olbermann (dismissed), Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews- whom no liberal would claim as his or her own. (And who can forget Phil Donahue?) Matthews sometimes seem as if he's auditioning to replace Jay Carney, but MSNBC is not the leftist equivalent of the rightist Fox News and clearly not the communications wing of a major political party.

We know, of course, about Fox News employing as on-air talent Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, then all prospective GOP presidential candidates. But it all began much earlier and goes way beyond Roger Ailes giving an extremely valuable forum to major Republican talent. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson writes that the dejure GOP political operative turned defacto GOP political operative in his role as head of the most profitable arm of News Corp

likes to boast that Fox News maintains a bright, clear line between its news shows, which he touts as balanced, and prime-time hosts like O’Reilly and Hannity, who are given free rein to voice their opinions. “We police those lines very carefully,” Ailes has said. But after Bush was elected, Ailes tasked John Moody, his top political lieutenant, to keep the newsroom in lockstep. Early each morning, Ailes summoned Moody into his office – often joined by Hume from the Washington bureau on speakerphone – and provided his spin on the day’s news. Moody then posted a daily memo to the staff with explicit instructions on how to slant the day’s news coverage according to the agenda of those on “the Second Floor,” as Ailes and his loyal cadre of vice presidents are known. “There’s a chain of command, and it’s followed,” says a former news anchor. “Roger talks to his people, and his people pass the message on down.”

When the 9/11 Commission began investigating Bush’s negligence in the lead-up to the terrorist attacks, Moody issued a stark warning: “This is not ‘What did he know and when did he know it?’ stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate. Remember the fleeting sense of national unity that emerged from this tragedy. Let’s not desecrate that.” In a 2003 memo on Bush’s overtures for Middle East peace, Moody again ordered the staff to champion the president: “His political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting throughout the day.” During the 2004 campaign, Moody highlighted John Kerry’s “flip-flop voting record” – a line that dovetailed with the attacks coming out of the White House. In fact, Fox News was working ­directly with the Bush administration to coordinate each day’s agenda – as Bush’s own press secretary, Scott McClellan, later conceded. “We at the White House,” McClellan said, “were getting them talking points.” (Ailes and Fox News declined repeated requests from Rolling Stone for an interview.)

When Bush was re-elected, Murdoch and Ailes toasted the victory together in the control room of Fox News, celebrating until three in the morning.

Ailes deserved to take a victory lap or two. Indispensable to the election to the presidency of Richard Nixon, Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6), and George HW Bush (the latter by way of the racially-charged Willie Horton ad), Ailes left nothing to chance on election night 2000. Dickinson noted

The man he tapped to head the network’s “decision desk” on election night – the consultant responsible for calling states for either Gore or Bush – was none other than John Prescott Ellis, Bush’s first cousin. As a columnist at The Boston Globe, Ellis had recused himself from covering the campaign. “There is no way for you to know if I am telling you the truth about George W. Bush’s presidential campaign,” he told his readers, “because in his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.”

In any newsroom worthy of the name, such a conflict of interest would have immediately disqualified Ellis. But for Ailes, loyalty to Bush was an asset. “We at Fox News,” he would later tell a House hearing, “do not discriminate against people because of their family connections.” On Election Day, Ellis was in constant contact with Bush himself. After midnight, when a wave of late numbers showed Bush with a narrow lead, Ellis jumped on the data to declare Bush the winner – even though Florida was still rated too close to call by the vote-tracking consortium used by all the networks. Hume announced Fox’s call for Bush at 2:16 a.m. – a move that spurred every other network to follow suit, and led to bush wins headlines in the morning papers.

“We’ll never know whether Bush won the election in Florida or not,” says Dan Rather, who was anchoring the election coverage for CBS that night. “But when you reach these kinds of situations, the ability to control the narrative becomes critical. Led by Fox, the narrative began to be that Bush had won the election.”

Dwell on this for a moment: A “news” network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives – including those that helped elect the candidate’s father – declared George W. Bush the victor based on the analysis of a man who had proclaimed himself loyal to Bush over the facts. “Of everything that happened on election night, this was the most important in impact,” Rep. Henry Waxman said at the time. “It immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds that he was the man who won the election.”

We never will know whether Osama binLaden was similarly exultant upon hearing of the election of George W. Bush to the presidency. He probably didn't know at the time, however, that the chance of success of his plan for a devastating attack upon the U.S.A. would be enhanced by the blind eye toward Islamic terrorism that would be turned by the new President.

Now, that was a cheap shot. But one that is as well-deserved as is grudging admiration for the powerful man who makes Republican presidents.

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Getting After The Widows


I must be missing something. The New York Times' David E. Sanger reports

President Obama’s national security adviser demanded Sunday that Pakistan let American investigators interview Osama bin Laden’s three widows, adding new pressure in a relationship now fraught over how Bin Laden could have been hiding near Islamabad for years before he was killed by commandos last week....

The United States government is demanding to know whether, and to what extent, Pakistani government, intelligence or military officials were complicit in hiding Bin Laden. His widows could be critical to that line of inquiry because they might have information about the comings and goings of people who were aiding him.

“We have asked for access,” Mr. Donilon said on the CNN program “State of the Union,” “including three wives who they now have in custody from the compound, as well as additional materials that they took from the compound.”

No doubt this is important information. While not excusing Islamabad's civilian leadership, Stephen Grey, one of the authors of the Frontline documentary The Secret War, maintains

I think there are some pretty clear 'Red Lines' in Pakistan politics that exclude civilians from getting involved in key issues - like policy to Kashmir, the ISI, and nuclear issues; frankly the civilian leadershp wants to be involved but there is mutual suspicion with the military. So I don't think the civiilan leadership is complicit....

The Administration is rightfully delighted at the intelligence trove uncovered in the raid in Abbottabad. Let's determine the nature of the relationship between Pakistan's civilian, and its intelligence/military, establishment and whatever role either is playing in harboring terrorists within its borders. But..... didn't U.S. commandos on May Day conduct an enormously successful raid on a home in which those ladies were living?

The raid resulted in the death of the primary target- Osama bin Laden- and of what was probably the secondary target, a son of his. No American was injured and there is little indication any was in danger of being injured. According to Slate's William Saletan on May 5, NBC reported

The SEALs then made their way up a staircase, where they ran into one of bin Laden's sons on the way down. The Americans immediately shot and killed the son, who was also unarmed. Once on the third floor, the commandos threw open the door to bin Laden's bedroom. One of bin Laden's wives rushed toward the NAVY SEAL in the door, who shot her in the leg. Then, without hesitation, the same commando turned his gun on bin Laden, standing in what appeared to be pajamas, and fire two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head.

Saletan comments

Read that passage again. The SEALs encountered a man—bin Laden's son, who reportedly "lunged toward" them," according to the Times—and shot him dead. Next, a woman "rushed toward" them, but instead of killing her, they shot her in the leg. Then, "without hesitation," the guy who had just shot the woman in the leg turned and put two fatal bullets in a man standing in pajamas. No rule of perceived resistance can explain this sequence. It looks like a simple policy of neutralizing women but killing men.

On May 6 boston.com summarized

The Americans who raided Osama bin Laden’s lair met far less resistance than the Obama administration described in the immediate aftermath. The commandos encountered gunshots from only one man, whom they quickly killed, before sweeping the house and shooting others, who were unarmed, a senior defense official said in the latest account.

In yesterday’s revised telling, the Navy SEALs mounted a precision, floor-by-floor operation to find the Al Qaeda leader and his protectors, but without the prolonged, intense firefight officials had described for several days.

From available evidence, the SEALs had everything under control, though we presumably would know definitively if the White House were to deign to release the live video feed, as David Sirota persuasively argues it should. And now we're demanding return of individuals present at the compound? Perhaps- perhaps- the individuals now wanted for interrogation were not secured by the Americans because firefight officials in fact had expected greater resistance. But this may not have been the primary factor, and someone ought to be asking: why weren't these women, who might possess critical intelligence, placed into American custody at the time of the raid?

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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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Invitation Rejected


President Obama has extended an invitation to former President Bush to join him at Ground Zero on Thursday. Mr. Bush has declined, his spokesman stating his boss "appreciated the invite but has chosen in his post-presidency to remain largely out of the spotlight."

A blog entitled "Main Street Liberal" must commend Democratic President Obama for being classy and attempting to reach out to his predecessor, in the one show of bipartisanship it is difficult to find fault with. No doubt, in a display of gracious magnanimity, Obama will (as he would have were Bush present) extend gratitude to the former president for his effort in the war on terrorism.

Classy, yes. But also tactically brilliant and, it appears from this corner, transparent.

The scene: one man, now in retirement, having failed for seven years to apprehend the evil force behind the attack which cost 3,000 American lives. The other, a sitting President, approving the operation which brought Osama bin Laden to justice in a mere 2+ years. And all of it to be recorded, videotaped, and played over and over again- especially in the autumn of 2012 as a paid political advertisement.

Informed as to the whereabouts of bin Laden, the President had two choices. They did not include a refusal to move on actionable intelligence. As a presidential candidate, Obama had promised to act in such instances and had he failed to do so, it probably would have become known, with disastrous political consequences.

The President, however, might have chosen an air strike to take out bin Laden. But assassination by drone is an inexact art and probably would have resulted in more death and destruction than the option selected. Instead, according to a United States counter-terrorism official, the commandos scooped up

electronics and storage media such as CDs and DVDs. That official said the cache was larger than expected, since bin Laden was communicating by courier and his compound had no phone or internet service.

Investigators will be looking first for any sign of attacks being planned, then for anything that leads them to other top operatives of the terrorist network, the counterterrorism official said. A task force was being set up at the CIA to comb through the evidence seized in the raid, according to a senior intelligence official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Credit, justifiably, has been given President Obama for exceptional decision-making under stress and will be given for extending the invitation to George W. Bush. But the latter deserves credit, too, whether he declined the offer because he wishes to keep a low-profile, to avoid being humiliated, or to avoid being a prop in a campaign commercial likely to be used against the standard-bearer of his party next year.



Next up: Not all the Bushies should be applauded.

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Rationalizing Torture- Er, Enhanced Interrogation


Retired CIA officer Marty Martin once led efforts to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Defending those infamous "harsh interrogation methods" supporters are loathe to identify as torture, Martin says "We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day." Iowa Republican Steven King tweeted "Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?" Another King, Republican Peter of New York, maintained "We obtained that information through waterboarding. So for those who say that waterboarding doesn’t work, who say it should be stopped and never used again, we got vital information, which directly led us to Bin Laden."

The charge was led on Monday by the GOP's de facto head, Rush Limbaugh, who asked rhetorically

Also, folks, will the Bush lawyers, who suggested harsh interrogation techniques -- suggesting that constitutionally and legally those techniques were okay -- be hailed as heroes, or will the regime continue to pursue them legally?

Tuesday, Rush would maintain that the Obama administration has

not reinstituted the Bush and Cheney human gathering methods. They have not reinstituted enhanced interrogations. They've wiped that stuff out. They have done away with much that they utilized or that was utilized to permit the successful operation on Sunday.

Actually, the Bush administration itself ended those "enhanced interrogations"- and prior to gaining most, if not all, of the information which led to the successful raid. Although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured in a CIA black site in Europe, most evidence indicates that he gave up information under standard interrogation techniques.

According to the Associated Press

in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.

If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, they'd find bin Laden....

Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

We don't know for sure that waterboarding contributed nothing to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, although even former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld now acknowledges that it probably did not. There is little evidence thus far that it assisted the effort- and many Bush apologists want us to believe that it, as well as rendition, were the primary tactics responsible for acquiring the information needed. Most of all, many conservatives, characteristically, are expressing certitude- better to be certain and wrong than uncertain and right.

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Not So Fast

No one can accuse Maureen Dowd of mincing words, fence-sitting, or ambivalence. She wrote in her Saturday column in The New York Times:

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

....Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

There is far, far more to it than that. In making another point(s), a "driftglass," at crooksandliars.com reminds us:

Once upon a time, there was a President named Bill Clinton, who was, by most historical standards, a typical Centrist Republican, although by a fluke of geography and circumstances he ran for public office with a "(D)" after his name.

Under his Administration, many Conservative ideas which had long gathered dust on the shelf -- ideas such as welfare reform, a balanced budget, debt reduction, a strict “Pay as You Go” fiscal regime, a boom in technology jobs, budget surpluses, NAFTA, GATT, official bans on gay marriage, etc. -- were finally realized.

And for all of his good work on behalf of their ideology, Conservatives spent eight, long years treating Bill Clinton -- a Southern, White, Christian man -- as if he were a case of flesh eating nuclear syphilis.

Because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name.

And because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.

And counterpointing the 24/7 slime campaign, there were those endless, endless hearings. Whitewater. Travel office. Christmas Card lists. Lincoln bedroom. Etc ad nauseum.

Or don’t you remember?

He was “Not my President!” (Ollie North: War criminal, terrorist arms dealer, GOP Senate Candidate [1994] and FoxNews Contributor.)

He was warned “not to set foot in my state.” (Jesse Helms: Professional Bigot, Confederate Senator, 1820-2003)

His picture was used for target practice by G. Gordon Liddy. (Watergate felon, would-be assassin, radio 'personality' and Republican hero.)

From "The American Prospect":

...it's worth remembering just how virulent the opposition to Clinton's presidency was. Republicans began plotting to impeach Clinton long before anyone had ever heard the name "Lewinsky," and many on the right simply refused to accept that he legitimately occupied the office he held. Then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, when talking to Democrats, used to refer to Clinton as "your president."

It was a warped, hysterical campaign funded by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Richard Mellon Scaife and propagated by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Rupert Murdoch who made sure the lies were jack-hammered into the headlines day after day, year after year.

It didn't begin with Barack Obama and it has continued to the present day, sinking with help of the mainstream media, including Maureen Dowd (described here and here), the candidacy of Al Gore. Attacks on President Clinton were routine, as these quotes indicate:

“Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?”
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

“This is President Clinton’s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.”
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

And my personal favorite, uttered in the days when Tom DeLay and other prominent Republicans thought Al Qaeda was a minor nuisance and Osama bin Laden a mere annoyance:

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

There are reasons for the remarkable and despicable (but not extraordinary) and irrational hatred directed against President Obama. One of them is the disturbing influence of the self-serving antics of the second most popular radio talk show host in the nation, who has described himself as "a rodeo clown;" and of the nation's most popular radio talk show host and loyal corporate apologist. Race is a factor but easily overrated and making the charge without powerful evidence that it is the prime catalyst behind the right-wing assault on the presidency denies recent GOP history and obscures more complex motivation, preventing a full exploration of the extremist mind of the early 21st century. And it is a backlash waiting to happen.