Trust Everybody, But Always Cut The Cards

Politico has reported that nearly three dozen House Democrats have sent to the White House a letter proposing that the President relinquish sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. Alternatives suggested include one which would require the Speaker of the House or the vice president  "neither of whom can be removed by the president if they disagree — to concur with a launch order.”

As usual, the right-wing propaganda machine is not arguing against the merits of the proposal, instead borrowing from their bag of ad hominem attacks.  This includes Gateway Pundit retweeting the remark "Joe Biden is mentally compromised and they know it" and concluding "Biden is not nearly as sharp as he used to be. Anyone who has watched him trying to speak knows this."

In 2019 Elizabeth Warren introduced (with six co-sponsors) the Senate version of a bill to declare as USA policy no first use of nuclear weapons. The proposal was met with hostility from Republicans and skepticism from some Democrats. However, it should bring to mind this BBC story of a Cold War near-miss:

In the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union's early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

But duty officer Stanislav Petrov - whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches - decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.

This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to refer up.

But his decision may have saved the world.

"I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it," he told the BBC's Russian Service 30 years after that overnight shift.

Mr Petrov - who retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel and now lives in a small town near Moscow - was part of a well-trained team which served at one of the Soviet Union's early warning bases, not far from Moscow. His training was rigorous, his instructions very clear.

His job was to register any missile strikes and to report them to the Soviet military and political leadership. In the political climate of 1983, a retaliatory strike would have been almost certain.

And yet, when the moment came, he says he almost froze in place.

"The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it," he says.

The system was telling him that the level of reliability of that alert was "highest". There could be no doubt. America had launched a missile.

"A minute later the siren went off again. The second missile was launched. Then the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Computers changed their alerts from 'launch' to 'missile strike'," he says.

Mr Petrov smokes cheap Russian cigarettes as he relates the incidents he must have played over countless times in his mind.

"There was no rule about how long we were allowed to think before we reported a strike. But we knew that every second of procrastination took away valuable time; that the Soviet Union's military and political leadership needed to be informed without delay.

"All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders - but I couldn't move. I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan," he told us.

Although the nature of the alert seemed to be abundantly clear, Mr Petrov had some doubts.

Alongside IT specialists, like him, Soviet Union had other experts, also watching America's missile forces. A group of satellite radar operators told him they had registered no missiles.

But those people were only a support service. The protocol said, very clearly, that the decision had to be based on computer readouts. And that decision rested with him, the duty officer.

But what made him suspicious was just how strong and clear that alert was.

"There were 28 or 29 security levels. After the target was identified, it had to pass all of those 'checkpoints'. I was not quite sure it was possible, under those circumstances," says the retired officer.

Mr Petrov called the duty officer in the Soviet army's headquarters and reported a system malfunction.

If he was wrong, the first nuclear explosions would have happened minutes later.

Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief," he says with a smile.

One of President Reagan's favorite quips- "trust, but verify"- was a translation of the Russian "Doveryai no proveryai." It's critical that other nations trust that the USA will avoid using nuclear weapons as a first option. When Senator Warren was asked at an 8/19/15 debate about her bill, she explained "We don't expand trust around the world by saying, ‘You know, we might be the first ones to use a nuclear weapon." 

In order to trust that a decision by the federal government to order a nuclear strike is reasonable, there should be two very high-ranking officials, neither beholden to the other, to agree. If that policy were known to our rivals- as obviously it would be- they would be less likely to mistake an act of ours for a nuclear attack. Thus, it probably wouldn't be necessary in the coming decades or centuries for another Stanislav Petrov to save the world.

 

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Weapons Of Mass Disinformation


"I’d come to realize that all our troubles sprang from our failures to use plain, clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak—and to act—quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track."

- Tarrou in Albert Camus' The Plague, 1947



President Obama has sent to Congress the draft of a resolution authorizing military force against Syria.  The seventh of its whereas(es) argues "The objective of the United States' use of military force in connection with this authorization should be to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction."  

The President

is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines is to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria in order to-

(1) prevent or deter the use or proliferation (Including the transfer to terrorist groups or oehr state or non-state actors) with, to or from Syria, of any weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological weapons or components of or materials used in such weapons; or

(2) protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.

Here we go again.  Three days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003, President Bush gave a speech from the White House in which he claimed

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

Characteristically bellicose, he warned

It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction...

Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."

In May, 2003 President Bush claimed "we found the weapons of mass destruction."  In July, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer contended "I think the burden is on those people who think he (i.e., Hussein) didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

Visions of mushroom clouds were to be imagined. September, 2002 had brought the loathsome implication by Bush's loathsome National Security Adviser that the invasion would prevent "a mushroom cloud" unleashed by Saddam Hussein.  Usually, however, the Administration argued that the Iraqi tyrant possessed chemical and/or biological weapons.

That did not stop Bush and his supporters from frequently referring to Baghdad as wielding "weapons of mass destruction" or, in the more trendy terminology, "WMD."  And now Damascus- which no one has suggested is even planning to develop nuclear weapons-  is purported to have "weapons of mass destruction." The Administration asks to be authorized to use the armed forces to respond to the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of "mass destruction because the "regime" (an interesting and significant substitute for "Bashir Assad") "has already used weapons of mass destruction..."

No, it has not.  Very likely, the "regime" already has used chemical weapons, though it is less certain recent use was authorized by Assad or the upper echelons of his military.Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction.  In this instance, the WMD dodge is intended to minimize the horrific use of conventional weapons by the Assad regime, which has been largely condoned by the Obama Administration.  It also diverts attention from the unpleasant reality that only one nation in world history ever has used nuclear weapons.

But in a larger and more critical sense, the conflation of chemical and/or biological weapons with "weapons of mass destruction" serves to panic the intended audience, to convey the false impression that human life is being exterminated on an extraordinary, perhaps even unprecedented, scale.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic in October, 2002 explained

The phrase "weapons of mass destruction," then, obscures more than it clarifies. It lumps together a category of truly terrible weapons (atomic bombs) with two other categories that are either less dangerous than conventional weapons (chemical arms) or largely an unknown quantity (biological agents). This conflation, moreover, muddies the American rationale for military action against Iraq. That rationale should be to prevent Saddam from acquiring atomic weapons. This alone is reason to go to war. 

Though chemical weapons are associated with gruesome mortality, in actual use they have caused horrible choking and blisters--see the poetry of Wilfred Owen, the World War I British soldier whose famed work concluding "The old Lie: Dulce de decorum est/Pro patri mori" concerns troops being gassed--but have proven less deadly than bombs or bullets. Fewer than 1 percent of battle deaths during World War I, the only war in which chemical arms were extensively employed, were caused by gas. As John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, and his son Karl, a RAND Corporation analyst, have written, "In the First World War, only some two to three percent of those gassed on the Western front died while, by contrast, wounds caused by traditional weapons were some 10 to 12 times more likely to prove fatal." American fatalities followed exactly this ratio: 2 percent of those gassed during the war died, compared with 24 percent of those struck by bullets, artillery shells, or shrapnel. 

Moreover, during World War I the Germans and British expended one ton of gas on average to achieve a single fatality on the opposite side. Chemical weapons were used in huge amounts to small effect because they are hard to deliver and hard to control. They waft on the wind, missing their targets and attenuating to the point that they cease to be lethal. Sunlight breaks down many chemical agents. And artillery shells don't carry chemicals well, because impact tends to immolate the chemical. Finally, in close combat, chemical weapons are as likely to blow back onto your position as to remain behind enemy lines.

The Syrian regime's weapon of choice, according to Secretary of State Kerry, is sarin gas.   Easterbrook continued

Though more frightening than the mustard gas of the Great War, modern chemical arms such as sarin also fare poorly in pound-for-pound comparison. Writing a decade ago for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in an article presciently titled "The Myth of Chemical Superweapons," Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson estimated it would require one ton of sarin delivered under perfect conditions to inflict substantial casualties on unprotected civilians. And perfect conditions for gas--no wind, no sun, a very low-flying plane that no one is shooting at--almost never happen. A terrorist crop duster trying to spray sarin over a city, for example, would have to fly at least several hundred feet above the ground to avoid hitting buildings, meaning most of the gas would waft away harmlessly. A 1993 study by the Office of Technology Assessment found that one ton of perfectly delivered sarin, used against unprotected civilians, could kill as many as 8,000 but that even light wind or sunlight would drop the death toll by 90 percent. Eight hundred dead would be horrible, surely, but not "mass destruction" compared with what conventional arms do all too readily. A single U.S. bomb dropped against one Iraqi bunker during the Gulf war, for example, killed 314 civilians.

Words matter, as very smart people who use them inaccurately understand.  If they did not, politicians and their allies would not obfuscate their words and would speak plainly with more clear-cut language. Whenever a policy-maker or his/her apologist invokes "WMD," he or she is trying to pick your pocket.  Whatever the merits of any resolution authorizing President Obama to employ military force against Syria, members of Congress would be exceedingly irresponsible to vote in favor of anything which conflates chemical weapons with "weapons of mass destruction."


                                                     HAPPY LABOR DAY

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This Is Not About Martin Luther


She's not even Lutheran, though she is a Protestant. But Katie Couric's obituary should read, "like Martin Luther...."

Martin Luther, a man of many character flaws- not the least of which was blatant anti-Semitism- nevertheless sparked one of the greatest social movements in world history, the Reformation.

And so it is with Katie Couric, a woman of many professional flaws, one of them on display on last Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes. Couric and Gates discussed "weapons of mass destruction" in this segment of the interview described by CBS News:

"What scares you the most? What worries you?" Couric asked.

"I think what I and most of us would say, it would be a terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction," Gates said.

"In this country?" Couric asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Or anywhere in the world?" Couric asked.

"Well, anywhere, but especially in this country," Gates said.

Asked how likely that is, Gates said, "For years, we've received intelligence that they're trying to acquire a weapon of mass destruction. So far, they've been singularly unsuccessful, as far as we know. But it is the one thing that could be a huge challenge."

The flavor of this puff piece can best be appreciated by watching the video itself, available on the CBS website, though apparently not on youtube.

But the most significant part of the interview, which no one will recognize, is Gates' repetition of the term "weapons of mass destruction"- with no explanation or definition, and no request for clarification from Couric.

We've passed this way before. (Video of song by Seals and Crofts, which has nothing to do with this post, below. As to this issue, they were wrong. And on abortion, which is even more unrelated.) Dick Cheney referred to "weapons of mass destruction." George W. Bush emphasized "weapons of mass destruction."Secretary of State Powell, even in his detailed, albeit horribly misleading, address (transcript here) to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, employed the term "weapons of mass destruction" at least six times. The media repeatedly referred to "weapons of mass destruction" repeatedly and without clarification, helping lay the groundwork for public support of the war President Bush launched.

Repeat a phrase often enough and it becomes part of the lexicon, whether or not the individuals using the phrase, or their audience, know what it means or has any meaning at all. Presumably,if most members of the media had understood the phrase, they would have offered an explanation or at least asked the policymakers what they were referring to. Even now, many Americans regrettably believe chemical and biological weapons are of mass destruction.

This is not inconsequential because there was much evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and/or biological weapons but little reason to believe he had, or intended to develop or acquire, nuclear weapons. Moreover, Administration sources conflated biological/chemical weapons with nuclear weapons in part to exaggerate the destructive capacity of the former. In a post entitled "Saddam Does Not Have 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'," Timothy Noah on 8/27/02 explained

(Noah) That chemical and biological weapons don't deserve to be called "weapons of mass destruction" is a point long familiar to arms control experts. Here, for example, is Gert G. Harigel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

The term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), used to encompass nuclear (NW), biological (BW), and chemical weapons (CW), is misleading, politically dangerous, and cannot be justified on grounds of military efficiency. …Whereas protection with various degrees of efficiency is possible against chemical and biological weapons, however inconvenient it might be for military forces on the battlefield and for civilians at home, it is not feasible at all against nuclear weapons.

(Noah) Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky spells out the comparative lethality of nuclear versus chemical and biological weapons in the April 1998 issue of Arms Control Today, in an article headlined "Dismantling the Concept of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' ":

The weapons detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed about a quarter of a million people, had an explosive power about one-tenth that carried by a modern nuclear weapon. … If a 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead exploded at optimum altitude over a large city, little would be left standing or alive within five miles. A firestorm could be ignited, further extending the range of destruction. In a large-scale exchange, lethal fallout would cover an entire region.

(Noah) Biological and chemical weapons, though certainly very nasty, are not nearly so deadly:

If virulent BW materials were to be widely distributed over an exposed population, then the ratio of potential lethality to the total weight of the material could be comparable to that of nuclear weapons. However, for this horrifying scenario to occur, the materials cannot be dispersed by a single-point explosion, but instead must be spread by an appropriate mechanism such as spray tanks or by "fractionating" a missile's payload and dispersing separate mini-munitions over a wide area. Moreover, survival of BW material depends critically on local meteorological and other conditions which define the delivery environment. The survival of agents is generally of short duration and effects are delayed for days. … There is little question that the lethality of chemical weapons—as measured by per unit weight of delivered munitions—is lower by many orders of magnitude than it is for nuclear weapons or the undemonstrated and inherently uncertain potential of biological weapons.

Noah's piece is infinitely (o.k., much more; "infinitively" is like referring to chemical and biological weapons as those of "mass destruction") more informative than Couric's adoring interview. Still, if Katie Couric continues to be a substandard journalist, she will have performed in her professional career a service, though dwarfed by that of Martin Luther, which will have overshadowed any of her deficiencies.

For it was Katie Couric who ever will be remembered as the media personality who asked Sarah Palin what Supreme Court decisions, other than Roe v. Wade, she disagreed with and what newspapers and magazines she "regularly read(s)." Palin's response to those questions helped transform her image as a bold, candid maverick into an immature and unsteady running mate for a 73-year old man. Unfortunate statements and erratic behavior have followed, but Couric's interview helped sink the McCain-Palin ticket, thus shielding the nation from the risk posed of Palin being first in succession to the Presidency. The political career of the former Alaskan governor continues on a downward spiral. And however a McCain presidency might have turned out, that is a major contribution to civilization

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Bipartisanship Follies


Every week brings a new benchmark in bipartisanship.

For the new START Treaty, there have been at least two. Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal reported

The Senate's No. 2 Republican said Tuesday that he opposed a vote this year on President Barack Obama's signature arms control treaty, dealing a blow to a top White House foreign policy priority and possibly to U.S.-Russian relations.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona said there wasn't time to deal with his concerns over a treaty that would cut U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons deployments by about one third and restore weapons inspections that were halted nearly a year ago. Treaty ratification requires 67 votes in the Senate. Mr. Kyl's decision likely pushes a vote to next year, when the Senate Democratic majority shrinks to 53 from 58.

Mr. Kyl's announcement took the White House by surprise. A White House official said that just last Friday, officials from the Defense Department, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Strategic Command briefed the senator and offered an additional $4.1 billion over the next five years that he had demanded to modernize the remaining nuclear arsenal.

Kyl (allegedly) didn't like the deal, demanded a concession (more money for nuclear weapons), and got it. Now those goalposts are being moved again for, according to The Washington Post

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has reserved judgment on how she will vote until the resolution comes to the floor, said it could make a difference if Obama could get George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, both former presidents, to appear with him in support of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START.

Neither Bush has taken a public position on the pact, which would continue trends they established with the original START agreement signed in 1991 by the elder Bush and the Moscow Treaty approved by the younger Bush in 2002.

The New START treaty continues most verification procedures established in the 1991 agreement that ended last December while adding new ones; it also lowers slightly to 1,550 the deployed warheads allowed under the 2002 pact, which were 1,700 to 2,200.

Ratification of the agreement has been endorsed by several individuals who have served a Republican administration, each of whom probably knows more about national defense and nuclear proliferation than the oil industry executives, the profession of the 41st and 42rd presidents. Consider: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Dick Lugar; former Bush-41 National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former Secretary of State James Baker; former Secretary of State George Schultz; Reagan Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein; Reagan Chief of Staff Howard Baker; and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

They all may be wrong, of course, but they all are Republicans which, in normal times, would be considered bipartisan support. This apparently is insufficient for Collins, who says "It would be wonderful if President [George H.W.] Bush would come out for the treaty. That would be so powerful and definitely help."

Nor, apparently, is it enough for David Broder, who maintains Senate Minority Whip Jon

Kyl and Obama have been negotiating through intermediaries and have satisfied each other on most but not all points.

The Republicans could ask Obama to sit down directly with Kyl and see if they can compromise on the rest. That would be a fair first test of Obama's sincerity.

Polls generally show most Americans opposing repeal of health care reform and extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet following the recent election which will result in his elevation to Speaker of the House, Ohio's John Boehner warned "I think it is important for us to lay the groundwork before we begin to repeal this monstrosity" of health care reform. The returning Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, meanwhile offered "if there's some tweaking we need to do with the healthcare bill, I'm ready for some tweaking" and "if we need to work something out with the people who are really rich (on tax cuts), I'll have to look at that."

For his part, the President, who acknowledged a "shellacking" in November and promised "to do a better job," has said also "what I've tried to suggest is that this is one of those times where we've got to put that kind of (partisan) behavior aside, because the American people can't afford it." In February, 2009, as he began his presidency, with big majorities in both chambers of Congress.

It is a strange and wondrous bipartisanship that has Democrats reaching out to the GOP while some Republicans are defiant and media-anointed "moderates" such as Susan Collins are willing to consider supporting a treaty only if an ex-President of her own party gives his blessing. This won't, unfortunately, stop David Broder and others in the media from complaining, after Barack Obama caves, that liberals won't allow the President to compromise.

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Benign Motives Secondary

There may be a legitimate reason for Republicans to oppose the new START treaty, which modernizes the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty negotiated by the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations with the former Soviet Union. But not according to Richard Burt, chief negotiator during the latter administration.

On the PBS NewsHour (transcript here) on November 17, Mr. Burt contended

Well, again, I don't think it's because of problems with the treaty. Jim talks about ballistic missile defense.

The -- there are no constraints on this administration or any future administration's options for developing ballistic missile defense. The language in the treaty which is in the preamble is exactly the same as in the language in the treaty I negotiated and previous administrations negotiated.

Why is it getting so politicized? Well, first of all -- and, here, I can say this as a Republican -- this is the first time a Democratic administration has sought to get ratification for a strategic arms treaty. And I think that is a -- it makes -- creates a difficult dilemma for Republicans.

It's hard for Republicans to oppose a Republican administration's treaty, particularly in the current hyper-partisan and polarized atmosphere in Washington. I think it's much easier for Republicans to oppose this administration.

In a panel discussion (transcript here) sponsored by the Arms Control Association on November 8, Burt explained in greater detail this line of reasoning, as well as its potential repercussions for national security:

.... as people describe it to me, Kyl is part of a number of Republican members of the Senate that are more worried about Obama, and this almost kind of reminds you of some of the rhetoric you’ve heard over the last two years, and the argument is this: that yes, the treaty has some problems but they’re not big problems and under normal circumstances we could support it. But you know this guy Obama has talked about eliminating all nuclear weapons, and I don’t know if we could support a treaty when Barack Obama is president because we don’t know where he’s going in the long term on nuclear arms control.

That’s a tough one, it seems to me, because what you’re really saying there is you’re not so much interested in the details of the treaty, what it constrains, it doesn’t constrain. You don’t trust the commander-in-chief, and that’s sort of the augment you’re beginning to hear, and what I’m worried about is that if that argument gets traction, particularly if the treaty isn’t ratified in a lame-duck session, I think some of the new Republicans who are coming into the Senate could buy into that argument that it’s not the treaty, it’s the president, and that I think would be very dangerous and very corrosive.

By the way, it was an argument that I remember when I was a young reporter for The New York Times covering the SALT II debate because Republicans in the 1970s made a similar argument about Jimmy Carter. They said, you know, we just don’t know with this guy and it makes it hard for us to vote for the SALT II Treaty.

Burt did note, however

an old tactic that’s usually done in these arms control debates. People want money for their favorite programs and projects, and of course they dress it up as saying that this is necessary, this spending is necessary to keep the country strong under this arms control regime. As I understand it, most of the money is for basically the nuclear weapons themselves, the warheads and keeping them secure, keeping them reliable and ready....

While Republican Senators Inhofe of Oklahoma and tea party heavyweight DeMint of Tennessee (and incoming tea party favorite Rand Paul of Kentucky) oppose the treaty on ideological grounds, Arizonan Jon Kyl (as Minority Whip, in a powerful position) seems to be fronting for the nuclear-industrial complex. Having already squeezed from the President $10 billion (deficit hawks, doncha know) for nuclear weapons modernization atop the $80 billion already planned, Kyl is negotiating for more and more. Burt observes that administration officials

have clearly walked the extra mile to deal with Senator Kyl's concerns. They are talking about spending $80 billion on the infrastructure that actually makes nuclear weapons, not the missiles or bombers or so-called delivery vehicles, but the weapons themselves, that -- that ensures that they continue to be reliable and effective.

And they're talking about $80 billion over 10 years, and adding another $4 billion in the coming year to ensure that the nuclear weapons labs and the country's infrastructure is capable of maintaining our nuclear stockpile.

And I have to say that, again, not speaking for the administration, but this is a much larger amount of money than was spent by the previous administration on the nuclear weapons complex.

Digby contends that on MSNBC on November 19, host Andrea Mitchell

.... said, "I haven't seen Richard Lugar that fired up about this issue in quite a long time, and it's because, on the face of it, what is the explanation? When you read this treaty, the preamble to the treaty, what is the explanation for saying that this is bad for U.S. interests? He replied, and I kid you not, that he thinks Republicans only want nuclear treaties to be signed under GOP administrations.

Mitchell largely ignored the comment, and a transcript of the exchange seems to be unavailable except by subscription.

There is ideological opposition from a few Republicans and an appeal to Senator Kyl of increased campaign contributions from corporations poised to benefit from increased nuclear weapons appropriations. Nevertheless, there is GOP opposition to the treaty because it is being proposed by a Democratic administration, as reflected by Digby's recollection (whether or not strictly interpreted) and Burt's remark

If we can’t ratify this treaty, we are going to send a signal, I believe, of almost total incompetence to the rest of the international community. People on Capitol Hill love to talk about American leadership. Well, I’ve got to tell you, this is not American leadership. I mean, this is what J. William Fulbright in the Vietnam period called America as a helpless giant and that’s what we become if we can’t pull ourselves together to get this treaty ratified.

This would fit in conveniently with the charge of the Republican right that Barack Obama is a weak president for whom there is no respect abroad, and who is damaging the prestige of the United States everywhere. He cowardly denies, the drumbeat goes, American exceptionalism, as expressed in the demagogic words of the former half-governor of Alaska: "Could it be a lack of faith in American exceptionalism? The fact is that America and our allies are safer when we are a dominant military superpower - whether President Obama likes it or not."

The U.S. Senate may end up yet ratifying the new Start treaty. But President Obama, as with so many issues, is fighting GOP intransigence little based on substance but more so by the party's responsiveness to powerful special interests and its determination to bring this president- and with it, possibly the nation- down.

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Quote Of The Week

"WMD. I never liked that term. Say what you mean."

-Chris Matthews of "Hardball" on 12/4/08, commenting about the Bush Administration's habit of using the ambiguous term "weapons of mass destruction" (nuclear? chemical and biological? nuclear, chemical, and biological?)

Palin And The Bush Doctrine

No portion of Sarah Palin's interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson has received as much attention as the exchange on the "Bush Doctrine" which took place in the first of the interview's three segments. Here are the transcript and the YouTube video:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

In light of all the debate about whether Governor Earmark should have known what the "Bush Doctrine" is, I figured I would hunt down the doctrine as it was first enunciated. Apparently, the National Security Strategy was released by the White House on 9/20/02. In an article written in December, 2002, Keir A. Lieber, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and Robert J. Lieber, Professor of Government & foreign Service at Georgetown University, argued that it contained four elements:

1. preemption, "use of military force against terrorists or state sponsors of terrorism that attempt to gain or use WMD." (This is inaccurate on three counts: a)not premptive war, but preventive war; b) the state does not need to be a sponsor of terrorism or attempt to gain or use destructive weapons; c)not "WMD," chemical and biological weapons- which, unlike nuclear weapons, are not of mass destruction- also qualify);

2. military primacy, apparently intent to build up military force sufficiently to deter any potential rival from attempting to compete with us;

3. a new multilateralism, in which "the Bush administration appears to reject the single-minded pursuit of multilateralism for its own sake; that is, as something inherently necessary for international legitimacy or morality;"

4. the spread of democracy, which "commits the United States to spread democracy worldwide and promote the development of "free and open societies on every continent." (This really is the core of "neoconservatism.")

Obviously, the Liebers write favorably about the Bush Doctrine- but then this was late, 2002, when it looked like Iraq and Afghanistan were going to turn out fairly well. And they make the philosophy look fairly complicated.

Nevertheless, the core of the Bush Doctrine has come to be known as principle #1, the euphemistically-termed "preemption." Here is George F. Will, in a column entitled "The Bush Doctrine at Risk," on June 22, 2003 (after it began to appear that our Iraq policy had sprung a leak) writing

And overshadowing the military achievement is the failure -- so far -- to find, or explain the absence of, weapons of mass destruction that were the necessary and sufficient justification for preemptive war. The doctrine of preemption -- the core of the president's foreign policy -- is in jeopardy.

And here and here is a YouTube video of President Bush arguing "we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and contront the worst threats before they emerge"- and Senator McCain agreeing with him.

Unless Governor Earmark is a foreign policy intellectual on par with academics holding a Ph.D. in international relations (and maybe not even then), she, like Bush, McCain, Will, and most of us, would understand the Bush Doctrine to be about preemptive/preventive war.

She didn't. But I don't find that the most disturbing aspect of her answer, or rather, her process of fishing around for an answer. James Fallows, writing in atlantic.com on 9/12/08, captures the concern effectively:

What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.

She didn't know and, at least up till now, didn't care. And that is in an individual who hopes to be the first in succession to the presidency of the United States. And an individual who was chosen by an erratic 72-year-old who has put politics above country while cynically claiming "Country First."

Another Nation, Another Failure

No liberal in his/her right mind should agree with John Bolton, a conservative (not neo-conservative) and former George W. Bush Undersecretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations. Apparently, I am not in my right mind.

Bolton appeared on GOP TV's "Hannity and Colmes" on June 26 to discuss, primarily, " what Sean Hannity described in his lead-in as a "clear foreign policy victory" for the Bush Administration. Thanks to Think Progress, we have this video of the interview and a transcript of the beginning of the conversation, in which Hannity does an about-face when he discovers that Bolton does not reflexively defend the object of Sean's affection. The relevant, and humorous exchange follows:

HANNITY: The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way? Joining us now for analysis, former ambassador to the U.N. and a Fox News contributor, John Bolton. What do you think this means?

BOLTON: I think it’s actually a clear victory for North Korea. They gain enormous political legitimacy…In return, we get precious little. I think this is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the U.S. without raising a sweat.

HANNITY: Boy I tell you they’ve done it time and time again, and I’m sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven’t kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan’s “trust but verify”?

In May, 2003 Mr. Bush boasted "we will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea... we will not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program." The Clinton Administration had established direct dialogue with Pyongyang, which had one or two nuclear weapons when Bush, who ended the talks, took over. Five years later, North Korea has ten nuclear weapons, according to Jon Wolfsthal, described here as a monitor at North Korea's nuclear complex at Yongbyon and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The North finally has produced a record of how much plutionium was produced at its main reactor facility but no accounting of its nuclear bombs, its attempts to enrich uranium, or how it helped Syria build a suspected nuclear plant. Wolfsthal explains "there's no way the verification process will be even running by the time the Bush administration leaves office."

In the end, it is doing a disservice to George Walker Bush to view his legacy merely in terms of the damage the war in Iraq has done to the fight against terrorism, our standing abroad, and the families of soldiers killed in that Gulf nation, and its impact on strengthening the Iranian regime. No, his foolish machismo amid dangerous miscalculation have demonstrated yet again that his failure of leadership extends far beyond Iraq.

Remember Those Nuclear Weapons?

As a Democrat, my heart leaped a few weeks ago at very hopeful news. Condoleezza Rice's name was floated as a possible veep selection for John McCain.

Oh, I knew there was almost no chance. Rice is not associated with any state and therefore would be unlikely to bring any particular electoral votes into the Repub column. Further, there is no indication that she has any particular knowledge of, or interest in, anything except foreign policy- not unlike the fellow at the head of the ticket. Presumably, her name was thrown out as a Repub bid for the "political correctnesss" so many of zthem excoriate, figuring that any black at the tail end of the GOP ticket would take some of the wind out of Obama's sails. That's fairly absurd, but the idea of taking black Americans for granted by the party that claims the Democratic Party does so is not surprising.

Recently, though, as the San Diego Union-Tribune's website reported on 3/21/08:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she called Obama to apologize for the unauthorized access to his computerized passport file by three department contract workers, two of whom were fired over the incidents.
“I told him that I was sorry and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file and therefore, I will stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it,” Rice told reporters.

Give her credit for effort here, though given Rice's record (think Middle East peace process and U.S.-Russian relations), I wouldn't assume any effort will be met by success. Far better would be a mere acknowledgement of a mistake that she made a few years ago. I bring you back an interview she had with Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2003, which the CNN anchorman reported on January 10, 2003: "Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world. '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.'"

The famous "mushroom cloud." Condi Rice in the vanguard of the fear merchants of the Bush Administration. On March 7, 2003, twelve days before the President launched Gulf War II, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei reported in "The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update"

There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.
Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.
As I stated above, the IAEA will continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

And the relevant conclusion: after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.

What have we heard from the foreign policy "expert" of the Bush regime, Condoleezza Rice? No apology and no acknowledgement that she misled the American people. The idea that this individual could even be considered for national, elective office demonstrates the contempt for the truth- and lack of talent- of the Republican Party.