THIS POIGNANT PIECE EXAMINES THE TENSION INHERENT IN ENVIRONMENTALISM.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/29/2004 07:25:00 PM

 
YESTERDAY PAUL CLEMENT TOLD THE SUPREME COURT that the US does not torture detained "enemy combatants" because it is a poor way to get accurate information. But that doesn't stop our troops for torturing just for fun, and photographing the proceedings to keep the good times rolling:

One picture depicts an Iraqi soldier standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. He was reportedly left on the box for a long period and told that he faced electrocution if he fell off. Another shows prisoners kneeling on each other, naked except for hoods covering their heads, to form a human pyramid. Another shows naked prisoners being forced to pretend to have sex with one another.

In case you were wondering, this is the problem with war--not what our enemies do to us, but what war allows us to do to others. By systematically demonizing and dehumanizing others, we justify killing them. And once we can kill them, why not force them to sodomize each other? And so we are dehumanized.

ADDITION 5/3/04: Josh Marshall says it better:

Put tens of thousands of young men and women in a hostile situation, give them near absolute control over people they learn to both fear and hate in equal measure, and awful things are bound to happen.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/29/2004 03:15:00 PM

 
THE TASTEFULLY NAMED GREGG EASTERBROOK'S EASTERBLOGG at The New Republic is going defunct so Easterbrook can work on his book. He concluded Tuesday with his "All Suck-Up Edition," guaranteed to boost his own Google results. But don't forget--Tuesday Morning Quarterback resumes regular posts when the NFL preseason starts.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/29/2004 08:34:00 AM

 
AS PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED, I REVERE DAHLIA LITHWICK. Her acerbic observations in reporting on the Supreme Court for Slate are among the high points in my little legal world. From today's report on the Padilla hearing:

Ginsburg asks whether the government has any justification for trying certain defendants (John Walker Lindh, Zacarias Moussaoui, James Ujaama) and locking up others. Clement replies that those terrorists had "no intelligence value," so it was fine to put them into the judicial system. (The notion that the government will learn more from interrogating Hamdi, a Taliban foot soldier, than Moussaoui, a man who ate ice cream with ranking al-Qaida members, is so preposterous that it cannot just be left on this page to die.)
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/28/2004 05:11:00 PM

 
THIS NY TIMES PIECE--A PROFILE OF KERRY'S PERSONAL ASSISTANT--IS BAFFLING. The why of it, that is: "why did anyone incur keyboard wear and tear writing this?" And the where: "Why is this in the Times rather than the Enquirer?" But from it we get this factoid: Kerry owns, and travels with, a Serotta.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/28/2004 03:14:00 PM

 
GIANT BLIMPS--FOR SPOTTING ENEMY MISSILES. It'd be funny if it weren't so freakin' sad.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/27/2004 06:15:00 PM

 
HEY CRACKHEAD! (link from Brooks)
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/27/2004 09:53:00 AM

 
YOU CAN BUY THE ARK OF THE COVENANT ON EBAY. And you should. The minimum bid is US$10M, but I'm sure the seller would accept any form of exchange used by Old Testament prophets...goats, slaves, virgin daughters.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/27/2004 07:51:00 AM

 
IT'S DEPRESSING HOW PREDICTABLE THIS HAS ALL BECOME. Check out this story--from November, 2001--
about the polarization between a multilateralist State Department and a unlateralist, empire-building Defense Department over Iraq and other Middle East issues. And yes, this story is by the same Jason Vest who wrote Fables of the Reconstruction, about which I earlier blogged here.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/26/2004 09:38:00 AM

 
JOHN KERRY IS A DOUCHEBAG BUT I'M VOTING FOR HIM ANYWAY. (link from Brooks.)
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/23/2004 04:59:00 PM

 
I THOUGHT I LIKED DAHLIA LITHWICK A LOT, BUT I NEVER CREATED A FAN WEBSITE. But I'm thinking of creating a fan website celebrating the US DOJ lawyer and sometime Georgetown professor who created the Dahlia Lithwick fan website.

I just confused myself.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/23/2004 09:19:00 AM

 
BROTHER JOSIAH NEEDS ONE OF THESE.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/23/2004 09:12:00 AM

 
THE FOURTH CIRCUIT HAS RULED IN ZACARIAS MOUSSOUI'S CASE. Moussaoui, you'll recall, was accused of being the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 plot, and is on trial in Virginia. Dahlia Lithwick has done a brilliant job covering the circus-like antics of both the defendant and the federal prosecutors seeking to put him to death. The trial judge, Leonie Brinkema, has had a job tougher than a Montessori teacher's. She has had to deal with Massaoui's nutty pro se pleadings on the one hand, and the government's steadfast refusal to cooperate with its obligations to produce possibly exculpatory witnesses and information.

The government, you see, has some al Qaeda guys in custody who Moussaoui wants to testify at his trial. Presumably they would say "Zac? Oh he was way too carzy and stupid for us to trust him with anything big. The only aid and support he provided us was when he got us ding-dongs and all-syrup slushies from the Quik-E-Mart." Moussaoui, understandably, wants to interview the guys. The government says no. He wants to make them appear in person at trial. The government says no. The judge orders that the government make the al Qaeda dudes available. Big mistake: the government says no.

As a sanction for this prosecutorial muleheadedness, Judge Brinkema had ordered that the prosecutors were not allowed to seek the death penalty, and not allowed to even mention 9/11. Y'see, there's this thing called the Sixth Amendment--and remember, the early ones are very, very important--says that defendants get to confront their accusers, put on evidence in their own defense, etc. As the Fourth Circuit notes in its opinion, once the defendant demonstrates that a witness' potential testimony could be helpful but the government still refuses to produce that witness, "dismissal of the indictment is the usual course." Opinion, p. 30. In this case, though, the Fourth Circuit concludes that the government may provide a substitute for the in-person testimony of the witnesses so long as that substitute ""will provide the defendant with substantially the same ability to make his defense as would disclosure of the specific classified information." Id., (emphasis added).

To make a long opinion short, the Fourth Circuit rules here that written statements of the withheld withnesses--which Judge Brinkema must help craft--are an acceptable substitute. There are at least three huge problems with this:

1. There is no substitute for interviewing someone face-to-face. Sending someone a list of thirty written questions and expecting them to mail you back full and complete written answers to those questions is just dopey. In person, you can pin a deponent down, follow up evasions or partial answers, read body language and tone of voice, etc. There is no comparison--these appellate judges have not dealt with witnesses in too long, or are being intellectually dishonest.

2. It obligates the trial judge to collaborate in the presentation of defense evidence, which is just as repugnant as requiring her to collaborate in presenting prosecution evidence.

3. The Fourth Circuit's opinion, by quoting redacted parts of the District Court's opinion, makes clear how useless these statements are. The redactions are marked with asterisks:

"Several statements by Witness * * * * tend to exculpate Moussaoui. For example, the * * * * summaries state that * * * * This statement tends to undermine the theory (which the Government may or may not intend to advance at trial) that Moussaoui was to pilot a fifth plane into the White House. Witness * * * * has also * * * * This statement is significant in light of other evidence * * * * indicating that Moussaoui had no contact with any of the hijackers. * * * * This is consistent with Moussaoui’s claim that he was to be part of a post-September 11 operation."

Just look at page 32 of the opinion. What a pathetic travesty. So much for fair trials. I won't do better than Judge Gregory's dissent:

[E]every criminal defendant in every Article III proceeding has a panoply of rights that we are duty-bound to protect, even in the face of the Government’s interest in keeping sensitive or damaging evidence secure. See, e.g., Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 294, 302 (1973) ("Few rights are more fundamental than that of an accused to present witnesses in his own defense."); Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 19 (1967) ("The right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense . . . . This right is a fundamental element of due process of law."). The defendant’s rights may have to be satisfied by some means other than complete disclosure of the information at issue (or, in this case, complete access to the witnesses), but his rights do not evaporate simply because the Government’s national security concerns make satisfying those rights more complicated than in the run-of-the-mill criminal prosecution.
Dissent, pp. 56-57.

- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 05:50:00 PM

 
ISAAC LAQUEDEM HAS THIS INNOVATIVE SUGGESTION to deal with campaign finance disparities in Portland City Council Races.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 03:51:00 PM

 
NOT JUST COMMENTS, BUT A SITEMETER AND AN RSS FEED AND A LINK ON ORBLOGS...WOOOOO! Glad I had a productive morning.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 03:45:00 PM

 
ALLI'S BACK! Frolic and Detour was down for a long time because Alli changed jobs (a 0.75 FTE job? For a lawyer?!?? I am dying inside) and started spending far too much time writing about TV shows for TWOP and not nearly enough writing about herself.

She is more interesting than TV.

But now she's back with a fly-ass new site design and the promise that she will no longer neglect her blogging duties. And she mentioned me in one of her first posts. And called me smart. I am blushing.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 03:14:00 PM

 
I NOW HAVE COMMENTS. Post away. Thank you, Haloscan.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 02:53:00 PM

 
REMEMBER JAMES YEE? He's the Army chaplain who was accused of aiding and abetting al Qaeda members detained at Guantanamo Bay. The espionage claims were dropped. Then he was administratively convicted by a military tribunal of downloading pornography onto his Army computer and having an adulterous affair. Those convictions were vacated. Bafflingly, Yee chooses to stay in the Army now that he has been cleared, and has been re-stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. His new commanding officer has given him this order, which looks awfully like a gag order (see paragraph 2.e) preventing him from talking about his experience as the victim of a witch hunt. Nice.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/22/2004 10:28:00 AM

 
B.D. WILL LOSE A LEG. That's what AP is reporting that UPI is saying about what Trudeau is writing.

So to paraphrase Minnie Driver's character in Grosse Pointe Blank, what is this that I'm feeling? Relief? Shock? Sadness? I've been reading Doonesbury for literally as long as I can remember. I started reading early, and Doonesbury was collected in the 1970s in thin paperback-sized volumes. They had both words and pictures, and I read for the sake of reading. So at age seven or eight, I was reading Trudeau's take on Watergate, Jerry Ford, feminism, the OPEC embargo--all things that I understood not at all, being an unworldly and bookish kid. I read those strips now and am devastated by how spot-on Trudeau was, and has remained for more than thirty years now. I started reading it on a current basis before I was ten, and watched as Trudeau demanded (successfully!) that his strip not be downsized as publishers were shrinking layout size. I remember his year-long vacation, and that when the Oregonian brought Doonesbury back, it did so on the editorial page. This was a blessing, because then I had to turn to the editorial page every weekday, and as mentioned, I read for the sake of reading.

I have grown up with this strip, and its characters are real to me. B.D. is the very first character that appears in Doonesbury--as I recall, he is in profile, sitting slumped in an armchair with a can of beer, pondering the upcoming semester optimistically, when his new roommate Mike Doonesbury waltzes in, full of Iowa farmboy savoir-faire. B.D. is bummed.

Trudeau has killed off other characters before. Andy died of AIDS. Lacey Davenport died of Alzheimers'. There may be one or two others (Duke was a zombie for a while.) But our main characters have aged, matured, reproduced. So I guess I'm just feeling glad B.D.'s coming home at all.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/20/2004 05:21:00 PM

 
MULTNOMAH COUNTY GAY MARRIAGE RULING IS OUT.

Here is the quick gloss of Judge Bearden's ruling, for those of you who always skip through the reasoning and get to the "it is so ordered" part:

1. Multnomah County is enjoined from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

2. Because ORS ch. 106 contemplates only opposite-sex marriages, it discriminates against same-sex couples by not allowing them the privileges and immunites extended to opposite-sex couples, in violation of Art. I, sec. 20.

3. Bearden follows the Vermont approach, because the Oregon and Vermont constitutions are similar. Therefore, the Legislature has 90 days from the beginning of its next session, whether regular or special, to deal with this issue. Implicit is that if the Legislature does not deal with this issue, we go back to Multnomah County issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

4. Writ of mandamus issues requiring the state (Department of Human Services) to process the licenses and associated paperwork for the same-sex couples already married under Mult. Co. licenses.

5. Steve Bushong from the DOJ must prepare the form of judgment by April 27, and must make it appealable. By ordering DOJ to prepare the judgment, Bearden is not designating the state a prevailing party.

In case you're wondering who the counsel of record are, at least as referenced in the opinion:

For the plaintiffs ACLU, Basic Rights Oregon, and nine same-sex couples with different interests (some married, some wanting to get married but refused by Benton County, one couple wanting the option): Lynn Nakamoto and Kenneth Choe.
For the plaintiffs' amici: Mark Johnson and Beth Allen.
For Multnomah County (intervenor): Agnes Sowle.
For the State: Steve Bushong.
For the intervenor/defendants, primarily the Defense of Marriage Coalition: Kelly Clark, Kristian Roggendorf, Ray Cihak, Herbert Gray, Kelly Ford, Pamela Hediger, Kevin Clarkson, Jordan Lorence, and Benjamin Bull.

Interesting crack by Bearden near the end: "Prior to the 1930's and certainly prior to our rural and agrarian society becoming more urban and over-legislated, there were few rights and privileges bestowed by any level of government that would be worth mentioning, much less fighting for. Everyone was equally deprived."


- posted by thegusdad @ 4/20/2004 04:48:00 PM

 
THE SUPREME COURT HEARS THE GUANTANAMO DETAINEES CASES TODAY. Click here for Findlaw.com's excellent page of resources. Some people actually think these cases are about the merits--whether the government can detain people incommunicado, without charges. Sorry, that's Jose Padilla's case, due to be argued April 28. What the court hears today is a jurisdictional case--that is, do the U.S. courts even have any power over these poor saps? In legalese: "Whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba."

The position of those arguing for the Camp X-Ray detainees is that the administration has created a "lawless enclave" beyond the purview of the courts. The Government's response? "Damn straight." Here is the brief filed by Solicitor General Ted Olson, on behalf of the US. The section you're looking for is page 21 of the brief, at page 33 of the .pdf. The argument is that because the detainees are not on US "sovereign territory," there is no jurisdiction. After all, Camp X-Ray is in Cuba, which means that Cuba has ultimate authority over the detainees. Not that we would ever let Cuba exercise any such authority...
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/20/2004 12:09:00 PM

 
JUST FOLLOW THIS LINK. It will take you to American Prospect writer Jason Vest's expose Fables of the Reconstruction, based on an internal memo generated by an American functionary in the Coalition Provisional Authority. One key excerpt:

The CPA memo also validates key points of the exceptionally perceptive February 2003 US Army War College report, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." Critical of the U.S. government's insufficient post-war planning, the War College report asserted that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious." It also cautioned that insufficient attention had been given to the political complexities likely to crop up in post-Saddam Iraq, a scene in which religious and ethnic blocs supported by militias would further complicate a transition to functional democracy in a nation bereft of any pluralistic history.

But read the whole thing, it's only two pages.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/20/2004 09:21:00 AM

 
THE THINGS I LEARN FROM GOOGLE NEWS....

From The Advocate.com: "The International Gay and Lesbian Ice Hockey Association and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network called upon the National Hockey League on Monday to take immediate action in response to the arrest and nature of the allegations against Danton."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/19/2004 01:57:00 PM

 
I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. That may not make right now any different from any other time, but still.

Iraq is in the comics. It's in today's Get Fuzzy and Doonesbury. And I say I don't know what's going on because seeing the war situation on the news and in the print media makes me mad, and has from the beginning. But seeing it in the funnies has just left me... shaken.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/19/2004 12:38:00 PM

 
WHEN BILL KRISTOL APPLAUDS YOU, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE:

The WaPo leads with Kristol saying nice things about Kerry's Iraq stance, never a good thing:

"The judgment of President Bush's presidency will hinge on whether he made the right decision on Iraq, and whether he has managed Iraq well,' Kristol continued. 'Senator Kerry I think is being wise both politically and I think actually statesman-like really in saying, 'But you know what, if I take over, I'm going to inherit this situation and I'm going to have to manage it,' and right now, I don't think Senator Kerry has radically different ideas on how to manage it than President Bush.
***
"Essentially Kerry's argument is not over whether the United States should have gone to war in Iraq -- since he continues to insist his vote was the right one -- or whether the United States should stay in Iraq and finish the job. The question is, will the voters who count most -- the swing voters -- see enough of a difference in the vision of the two men to make Iraq a decisive issue in November?"

Of course, this mis-frames the question in a few ways. One of the most important is that even if Kerry and Bush had exactly the same vision they don't have the same ability to effectuate it. One of the most damning critiques of GWB is that he and Rummy and Cheney have squandered our credibility with the international community. To the extent that internationalization of peacekeeping in Iraq is part of the "shared vision," Kerry would enjoy the benefit of a fresh start.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/16/2004 03:17:00 PM

 
BOB WOODWARD WRITES:

"Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there 'you're going to be owning this place.' Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called 'the Pottery Barn rule' on Iraq -- 'you break it, you own it,' according to Woodward."

(soul-sucking WaPo online registration required)
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/16/2004 01:04:00 PM

 
PLEASE, IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE, CLICK THIS LINK.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/15/2004 10:17:00 AM

 
OH MY GOD.

This is the July 10, 2001 memo from the Phoenix FBI office about al Qaeda members going to flight schools in Arizona. Read it. "Precedence: Routine"?
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/13/2004 11:00:00 PM

 
DAVID BROOKS IS GETTING ON MY NERVES, AND NOT BECAUSE OF BOBOS IN PARADISE. In his column today, he reminds us of history: the Reagan administration was split. On one hand, there was State under George Schultz, which favored agressive action against terrorists in order to dictate the terms of engagement. On the other hand, Defense, under Casper Weinberger, favored caution and prudence. Their different approaches were grounded in the same principle, that we never have as much information, when we are forced to deal with terrorism, that we have when we deal with enemy nation-states. In today's terms, we might define their approaches as disagreeing about what level of intelligence was "actionable."

Brooks then misapplies this nice lesson to the present:

"If you follow the 9/11 commission, you find yourself in a crowd of Shultzians. The critics savage the Clinton and Bush administrations for not moving aggressively enough against terror. Al Qaeda facilities should have been dismantled before 9/11, the critics say.

"Then you look at the debate over Iraq and suddenly you see the same second-guessers posing as Weinbergerians. The U.S. should have been more cautious. We should have had concrete evidence about W.M.D.'s before invading Iraq.

"Step back and you see millions of people who will pick up any stick they can to beat the administration. They're perfectly aware of the cruel uncertainties that confront policy makers, but, opportunistically, they ignore them."

No, David, that's not it. While I will gladly beat this administration with any stick at hand, the twin failures of the Bush administration are manifestations of the same mindset, and it is that mindset that gives rise to our criticisms. What has come out in the hearings before the 9/11 commission (and don't forget that the administration opposed the creation of the commission, and has fought it tooth and nail over production of documents and presentation of administration witnesses) is the administration's groupthink when it came to power. It had an agenda that consisted of two primary topics: get Saddam, and don't do anything Clinton did. Two things have followed from this agenda: 9/11, and the current war in Iraq. Now, Bush doesn't get all the blame for 9/11; that wouldn't be fair. No one knows whether if rather than blowing him off, the incoming administration had listened to everything Richard Clarke had suggested, the plot wouldn't have gone off as plotted. But the point is that the incoming crew didn't listen--they believed they had all the answers, and the answers involved invading Iraq, creating a missile defense system, and other ideological pet projects that had languished in the Clinton years.

The idea that either Clinton or Bush could have absolutely prevented 9/11 by "decapitating" al-Qaida, whether by sending a sniper squad or arming a Predator drone to put the kibosh on bin Laden, seems farfetched. But the administration definitely missed opportunities to take prudent preventive measures which did not require "actionable intelligence." The warnings about hijackings in the summer of 2001, combined with the long-known weakness of US airport security at the time, creates an agenda item which could have been dealt with swiftly--and maybe, just maybe, with good effect.

Clarke's anecdote about the immediate aftermath of 9/11 illustrates the flip side of the administration's pernicious agenda. Haled into a room with GWB, Clarke was instructed to look into connections between the attacks and Saddam. RC: "But Mr. President, we know who did this. Saudis did this."

In that short exchange, GWB showed the limits of his vision. He had averted his eyes from the looming crisis that burst on 9/11, and again looked to Iraq. Invading Iraq, in a sad way, was GWB's comfort zone. But even in that comfort zone, there was plenty of room to go wrong, as we have found out.

Where Brooks goes wrong is in attributing Schultzian/Weinbergerian schizophrenia to critics of the administration, rather than to the administration, where it belongs. The administration is timid and cautious even where it costs no lives to be bold--for example, in jacking up airport safety in response to memoranda warning of potential hijackings. And it is bold even where the cost is terrible. Again, we see two sides of the same coin when we evaluate the administration's approach to 9/11/01 and the current situation in Iraq. The difference is that in Iraq, it's not too late to change our approach.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/13/2004 02:09:00 PM

 
FROM THE DAILY KOS:

"U.S. commanders in Iraq want rebellious Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr dead or alive but they said on Monday his militia's control of the holy city of Najaf was not a widespread uprising by the Shi'ite majority.

"'The mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr,' Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a video conference from Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon.

"Why is this depressing? It's not that killing Sadr will likely inflame anti-US sentiment and action further, and it's not that turning him into a martyr is about the last thing we need right now.

"What's depressing is this infuriating penchant for Bush to villify individuals, as though our battles can be won by exterminating a few well-placed leaders. We have seen this with al Qaida and OBL, we have seen it with Saddam Hussein, and now with our two latest boogeymen -- Sadr and Abu Musab Zarqawi.

"The enemies we face are bigger than one person. Killing Sadr would be as effective in ending Shiite opposition as capturing Saddam was in ending Sunni opposition (or killing his sons, for that matter). Killing or capturing Osama bin Laden would make us all feel good (especially killing him), but it wouldn't have any real effect on Al Qaida operations."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/13/2004 01:16:00 PM

 
WHO IS BEVERLY MANN? (I Googled her and nothing stood out--there's a prominent actress, and a lawyer who has litigated her wrongful discharge from the City of Chicago's Corporation Counsel office for a very long time, but not prominent journalists or Brooking Institute wonks) I ask because she has money quotes in this dissection (in the Slate Fray) of Condi's lies and prevarications that are, as Josiah would say, ballin':

"...[W]hat is clear to me now—after watching Rice's testimony and then reading some of the more astonishing quotes from it last evening in various news reports—is that Rice isn't a national security adviser at all. That is, her job—unlike that of all the others, such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John Poindexter, Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger—was, and is, not to give the president national security advice but instead to carry out orders given by those who actually were devising national security policy: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith.

"Rice was simply a glorified supervisory bureaucrat. Her job was to take and carry out orders—or, as she repeatedly put it, to be "tasked"—to carry out this or that bureaucratic aspect of the national security policy set by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the input of Wolfowitz and Feith.
***
"Rice didn't get Clarke a meeting with the principles because Rice couldn't get Clarke a meeting with the principles. Rice didn't order the FBI director to "shake the trees" of that agency—nor even to notify the field offices of the stunningly clear indications from al Qaeda intercepts about a very, very, very, very big and imminent terrorist attack possibly within this country, or even inquire whether the field offices that were tracking al Qaeda cells within this country had any information that, viewed in light of the intercepted messages, might help pinpoint any such plot within the U.S.—because Rice lacked the authority to do so on her own.
***
"[O]f all the many bizarre comments Rice made yesterday, the loopiest, in my opinion— and anyway the most starkly factually inaccurate—was her incessant claim that because of structural and legal prohibitions, the CIA director couldn't tell the FBI director that there were certain known al Qaeda operatives who had entered the country.

"Is she claiming that at the 'battle stations' shake-the-trees meetings that Clarke and others say occurred in late 1999 among the various national security 'principles' including the CIA director and the FBI director didn't really occur because of structural problems? Or that those meetings occurred but that the CIA director didn't tell the FBI director any valuable information he had because it would have been illegal to do so? Or that the CIA director did pass along to the FBI director the information he had, and that his doing so violated the law?
***
"The structural problem is simply this: Bush was the president in name only, a genuine figurehead, with no intellectual decisionmaking capability whatsoever, and that Cheney was the actual president at least with respect to national security matters. The information in the Aug. 6 "PDB"—the presidential daily briefing—wasn't given to the actual president. Nor were Tenet's daily oral and written reports. They were given only to the figurehead president, and not transmitted to the real one, who already had determined the administration's national security agenda and therefore wasn't interested in them."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/13/2004 10:51:00 AM

 
FROM TALKING POINTS MEMO::

"The CIA didn't need to deliver him a turnkey solution to rolling up the terrorist plot wrapped in a bow. The question is whether, when faced with a dire warning and given a few clear hints as to where and when, the president exerted some leadership and got everyone focused on the problem.
***
"Clearly no one is saying that if the president got a warning at that late date that he should necessarily should have been able to roll up the plot. I don't think anyone expects him to have. But what's damning about this isn't that he didn't prevent what happened.

"I think what people would want to know -- having now seen the warnings the president received -- is that the White House snapped into action and was trying to put together every clue it had to get to the bottom of what was coming. After the attack came they could say to the public, 'There were some warnings something was coming. We put all the resources we could into it. We scrambled to turn over every stone. But we were in a race against the clock. We did our best. But we didn't figure it out in time.'"
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/13/2004 09:03:00 AM

 
HERE'S THE AUGUST 6, 2001 PRESIDENTIAL DAILY BRIEF.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/12/2004 09:52:00 AM

 
"IN OTHER WORDS, MERCENARIES ARE NOW PAID TO PROTECT AMERICAN TROOPS."

More from Robert Fiske on the delegation of security and warfighting to mercenaries and un- or poorly-trained Iraqis:

"At my own hotel in Baghdad, some of the security services have set up shop and they're young employees. They swagger in and out with heavy weapons, with automatic weapons and pistols as if they're cowboys. They seemed to have learned their fighting spirits in Hollywood. It's a little bit too much of, if I can put it frankly, spraying of testosterone on the ground. My colleagues feel this is making our own hotel dangerous and a possible target: undefended barracks. There are thousands of them, and it appears to be correct, there are now more British Mercenary Security Service men here than there are British soldiers in Iraq. The question many Iraqis were asking, is this the new face of the occupation? The Americans disappear, the British disappear, and this army of mercenaries wearing flak jackets and an assortment of weapons with little badges, some South African, some clearly British and some Americans are now supposed to be the security services? And of course we have the Iraqi police and the Civil Defense Corps, which is the Paramilitary Militia. If you go to Sumara, which I did recently, you get stopped at checkpoints by Iraqi paramilitaries wearing black facemasks standing next to U.S. Troops. What they do, why they do it, and what their real purpose is, we don't know. They say when I talk to them, I don't know who they are because I cannot recognize them, they wear the face mask to obscure their identity, in case they go home and get killed, which is understandable if you decide to work for the Americans in a place like Sumara. I would do the same. I wouldn't do what they are doing, but if I was, I would be doing the same. The danger, as I said, is that we don't have any rules of engagement. We don't know under what rules they operate, if any at all. Some of the security companies are perfectly above-board. We know their names, and they carry their weapons concealed, but they themselves are complaining that they're worried about some of the other mercenaries coming in. They may not have sufficient knowledge, expertise and certainly the way they walk around in the streets, the way they carry their weapons in vehicles suggests they're not professionals."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/09/2004 11:26:00 AM

 
SAM FISHER RULES! I got Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow yesterday. I bought it for the PC, because SC:PT is bannered as a bad-ass multiplayer game (I had the original SC for xBox, but don't have xBox live for multiplayer). After about five minutes of gameplay, I found myself wondering how I had ever played SC on xBox--the PC version is so much cleaner to look at and listen to, and the trackball is so much easier to control.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/07/2004 09:49:00 AM

 
UMMM....CHOW YUN FAT? In discussing the bewildering appeal of William Hung of American Idol infamy, Emil Guillermo makes this equally bewildering statement:

"Bruce Lee's combative persona has been the most virile and most enduring icon for Asian-American males. But the stereotypes that predominate are the sinister and inscrutable or ineffectual and effeminate."

Addition 4/7/04 9:41 a.m.: Jet Li.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/06/2004 03:57:00 PM

 
IN 2000 WE SAID THERE WAS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSH AND GORE. WE WERE NAIVE. That's why this is good news. Ralph needs to get the message. He apparently thinks both that his supporters value hoops more than policy:

"Nader said that having to compete with Monday night's NCAA basketball championship game likely contributed to the low turnout at his event.

"'The ball game, it had to be the ball game,' Nader muttered as he climbed a stairway leading to the stage. "

and also thinks that his supporters draw from GOP ranks:

"He denied that his candidacy would help President Bush's reelection campaign, saying he expected to draw more votes away from Republicans than from Democrats.

"'This candidacy is not going to get many Democratic Party votes,' Nader said."

But does anyone think that those 741 people who showed up at the Roseland have Rs on their ballots?
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/06/2004 07:21:00 AM

 
THE MORE I READ ABOUT RICHARD CLARKE--and I am studying this issue, inasmuch as my ADD will let me--the more I respect not only what he says, but the way he says it.

The Bush adminstration is pathologically opposed to nuance. GWB ran for office as the guy who doesn't read newspapers, a "big picture" guy unlike the pocket-protector policy wonks (think Al Gore's PalmPilot in its belt clip) who run Washington, a person just as dim, impatient and brutish as the average American voter. In contrast, Richard Clarke is one of those policy wonks, a career civil servant, and he is not afraid of nuance. He has been described by former colleagues as "shrewd," and what I've read justifies that description. In an interview with Joe Conason, Clarke says:

"Q: Why do you think Cheney -- and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?

"A: They had a preconceived set of national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103 in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.

"Q: Dr. Rice now says that your plans to "roll back" al-Qaida were not aggressive enough for the Bush administration. How do you answer that, in light of what we know about what they did and didn't do?

"A: I just think it's funny that they can engage in this sort of "big lie" approach to things. The plan that they adopted after Sept. 11 was the plan that I had proposed in January [2001}. If my plan wasn't aggressive enough, I suppose theirs wasn't either."
***
"Q: Did you see the PDB for Aug. 6, 2001 [which reportedly contained references to an impending attack by al-Qaida]?

"A: I really can't recall it. I think its importance has been overblown. What happens in the presidential daily briefing is that the president asks questions of the briefer, which is usually Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the briefer then takes notes of the questions and goes back to CIA to get papers written to respond to the questions.

"In response to the drumbeat day after day of intelligence that there was going to be an al-Qaida attack, the president apparently said, "Tell me what al-Qaida could do." And in response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper that listed everything possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn't say we have intelligence that tells us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will be this or that. It was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do"

Note what's going on here. Clarke is staying on message, and his message now is that he stayed on message throughout 2001, while the Bushites pursued an agenda that was based on preconception bias rather than actual data. What do we need to do? Get rid of Saddam. What drives our policy? Outmoded conceptions of the US as winning state vs. state rivalries, or attacking state-sponsored terrorism instead of transnational, culture-sponsored terrorism. When Clarke is offered an opportunity to twist the knife, though, he doesn't do it--he doesn't say that the August 6 PDB was the red flag that any prudent leader would have seen, and in response taken action that would have prevented 9/11. Instead,

"Q: [Bush press secretary] Scott McClellan said he was deeply offended that you suggested the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented, but I didn't hear you say that.

"A: I didn't say it. I said we'll never know, and I've said that over and over again. We will never know. There were certainly some steps that, had they been taken, would have perhaps resulted in the arrest of two of the hijackers. But we'll never know whether that would have led to the arrests of the others."

He doesn't pretend omniscience. He is simply saddened, angered and offended that the administration didn't do a better job.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 05:46:00 PM

 
NEEDLES! HEAVENS, NO! A pair of flight attendants have sued pro rasslin' organization WWE, some rasslers (including Nature Boy Ric Flair, whome Josiah used to watch on NWA broadcasts from Marietta, Georgia in the early '80s), and the charter jet company for which they worked. In their lawsuit, they allege a varety of inappropriate conduct during a WWE-chartered flight. It's mostly sex stuff, but note paragraph 25.h, at lines 22 and 23 of line 6:

"other wrestlers...gave them needles to dispose of."

What, I ask you, what could those rasslers have been doing with those needles?
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 05:11:00 PM

 
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? My "Multiple Intelligences" scores:

"Linguistic: 10

"Logical-Mathematical: 6

"Spatial: 3

"Bodily-Kinesthetic: 7

"Musical: 5

"Interpersonal: 4

"Intrapersonal: 5



"A Short Definition of your Highest Score

"Linguistic - the ability to use language to describe events, to build trust and rapport, to develop logical arguments and use rhetoric, or to be expressive and metaphoric. Possible vocations that use linguistic intelligence include journalism, administrator, contractor, salesperson, clergy, counselors, lawyers, professor, philosopher, playwright, poet, advertising copywriter and novelist."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 03:34:00 PM

 
CONCRETE FRISBEES. An interesting thing about his story is that the text ads at the bottom of the story, which are presumably computer-selected, are all for disc golf supplies.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 11:55:00 AM

 
A GOOD LONG INTERVIEW WITH RANDY LEONARD by Jeff at The Oregon Blog.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 11:03:00 AM

 
I'M PAUL KRUGMAN. Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

"You are Paul Krugman! You're a brilliant economist
with a knack for both making sense of the
current economic situation and exposing the
Bush administration's lies about it. You
somehow came out as the best anti-war writer on
the Op-Ed staff. Other economists hate your
guts for selling out to the liberals. To hell
with 'em."


- posted by thegusdad @ 4/05/2004 08:31:00 AM

 
CALL A SPADE A SPADE AND A MERCENARY A MERCENARY. MarKos may by the most influential liberal blogger around. Everybody, I mean everybody, reads The Daily Kos. Yesterday he made the tactical mistake of correctly naming as mercenaries the four Blackwater employees who were killed in Fallujah Wednesday. The conservative blogosphere erupted, calling on Kos' advertisers (generally Dem candidates trolling for donations) to pull their ads. Some did!

Then Kos explained.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/02/2004 05:24:00 PM

 
JUAN COLE HAS GREAT PERSPECTIVE on the killing and mutilation of four American mercenaries this past Wednesday:

"Although we are calling them security, the four American civilians killed were very likely ex-US military, most probably from special operations units like the Navy Seals. The special ops units have been losing men to the private security firms, who pay between $100,000 a year and $200,000 a year, rather more than do the US armed services. And, it seems to me likely that the people in Fallujah knew that they had hold of US military men.

What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate 'freedom.' They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the 'helpless' and the 'humiliated,' and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies."
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/02/2004 04:00:00 PM

 
HOLY SMOKES! The story tells it:

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege"
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/02/2004 03:42:00 PM

 
LSD USAGE IS AT AN HISTORIC LOW.This Slate article credits low supply, due to a mammoth (2 billion hits) DEA bust in Kansas, and poor distribution, due to Phish no longer touring. Seriously.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/02/2004 09:14:00 AM

 
HELLBOY! HELLBOY HELLBOY HELLBOY HELLBOY! It just got GOOD REVIEWS! From Slate! And the NYT! Hellboy Hellboy Hellboy!
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/01/2004 05:16:00 PM

 
A GIGABYTE OF EMAIL STORAGE FOR FREE? THAT'S GOTTA BE A JOKE! Nope.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/01/2004 11:30:00 AM

 
STADIUMS. The word has become shorthand for "inappropriate government largesse to greedy professional sports teams, motivated by politicians' ego, fear, and emotional connection to pro sports." Here in Portland, Katz & Co. attempted to lure major league baseball to Portland with promises of a luxury-box stadium, and their efforts were bitterly mocked as evidence of Portland policymakers' disconnect from the real, troubling issues that face our cash-strapped city.

Here's a story from Slate about a stadium deal in San Diego that actually may be delivering on its promises of economic development.
- posted by thegusdad @ 4/01/2004 09:46:00 AM