Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not, as Bob Novak suggested, a CIA analyst....

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover....

I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this....

I was in the same class with her. I was Larry J. In fact, when I first saw her last name I didn't recognize her until one of other my classmates who's out now called me up and said, hey. To realize this is a terrific woman, she's a woman of great integrity and other people that don't know her were trying to suggest that she is the one that initiated that. That is such nonsense. This is a woman who is very solid, very low key and not about show-boating.

(Emphasis is, of course, mine.)

Apparently, righties have mounted a counterattack on Plame and Wilson. I wonder what they might say to Johnson?

(And I have to say that the fact that it was a conservative columnist who "outed" Plame is delicious in its irony. Conservatives lied about the Niger connection, and then they played payback, and the instrument of their payback was the pen of a conservative. So who can they blame? As to the question of Novak's ethics, the other half of the above interview addresses that. Criminal? That's another story.)

Conservatives believe liberals resent Bush in part because he is a rough-hewn Texan. In fact, they hate him because they believe he is not a rough-hewn Texan but rather a pampered frat boy masquerading as one, with his pickup truck and blue jeans serving as the perfect props to disguise his plutocratic nature.

Conservatives will take exception, of course. They will point out that being a pampered frat boy doesn't preclude the possibility that you might actually enjoy clearing brush from the barren wastes of your West Texas "ranch." Okay, but who cares what righties think? We’re talking what pisses us off. Bush might well like to go dumpster diving after high tea--that doesn't mean he understands what it means to be homeless.

So I think Chait's right. It seems that part of the reason he's written what amounts to an apology cum tantrum is so that he can move forward. Hate, after all, is important to acknowledge; it's death to nurture.

So I read with interest a debate Chait conducted over the past week with the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. It deviates from Chait's article thesis--Ponnuru isn't interested in why lefties hate (though he's happy to see it)--focusing more on the events themselves. For many of us lefties, the Bush presidency has been an exercise in credulity, or more likely, sanity. We listen to the news, watch the polls, and then look at Bush and his actions and begin howling madly at the moon: surely there is no way to reconcile the two versions of reality.

Chait and Ponnuru examine these realities to illuminating ends. One gets the sense by reading their versions that conservatives must not be that much more excited by what they see on the news than we are; apparently, it substantially differs from their view as well. And the result is something remarkable: comprehension. We see how reasonable people might arrive at differing positions. I'll give a particularly provocative example: tax cuts.

Ponnuru:
It's true that Bush hasn't executed a partial retreat on his tax cut, as Reagan did. But it's also true that Bush's tax cut was modest in size compared to Reagan's. The Gingrich Republicans wanted to abolish four Cabinet departments, cut spending, and kill Americorps. Bush has created a Cabinet department, increased spending--including on education--and pledged to boost funding for Americorps. Reversing the New Deal? This president won't even take on the Tennessee Valley Authority. Or Title IX. Or the National Endowment for the Arts. You're quite right to say that Clinton was willing to offend liberals on some important issues. Bush is willing to offend conservatives on some, too: racial preferences, for example.

Chait:
You assert that Bush's tax cut was "modest in size" compared to Reagan's. In fact, Brookings scholars Bill Gale and Peter Orszag showed that, if you allow for some technical corrections (which I'll explain if I you make me) Bush's tax cut is 2.3-2.7 percent of GDP, compared to 2.1 percent for Reagan. Plus, in 1986 Reagan felt bad that he had opened so many loopholes for the rich and pushed for a tax reform that made the tax code more progressive. Bush, to put it mildly, shows no sign of doing anything like that.

Ponnuru:
It's hard to evaluate your claim about the size of Bush's tax cuts without knowing what "technical assumptions" Gale and Orszag make. Having followed Mr. Orszag's work on Social Security, I suspect that I don't share those assumptions. The tables in this Treasury paper back up my assertion. In any case, Bush's tax cuts were not so large that they are expected to result in income taxes as a percentage of GDP being lower at the end of the decade than they were at the start.

Chait:
You asked for the technical assumptions on the tax cuts, you got 'em. Before 1985, the tax code was not indexed for inflation. This meant that people would be pushed into higher brackets every year even if their real income stayed the same. (TNR forcefully advocated indexing, by the way.) This meant that without regular tax cuts revenues would naturally rise as a percentage of the economy very rapidly. So, about 45 percent of the Reagan tax cut merely offset natural revenue growth from inflation. Secondly, Reagan agreed to scale back his tax cut in 1982. If you want to look at the actual revenue loss of the Reagan tax cut, you need to consider the net cost. So, examined in light of realistic comparisons, Bush's tax cut was larger than Reagan's.

Chait gets the last word there, but do you think for a minute that Ponnuru would leave it at that if he had another shot? [Update, 10/1. Mr. Ponnuru alerts us that he does indeed have a response.]

We started at hate, so let's return there. What I particularly enjoyed about this exchange is that it had exactly the opposite effect of hate. I enjoyed Ponnuru's honest take on the questions and his lightness and humor (he's the funnier writer). While I don't find it difficult at all to muster hate for Bush or Tom DeLay, I do for Ponnuru. He's a reasonable, honest guy (at least here, in my only exposure to him).

My home state of Oregon once had a reputation for innovation. We led the way on conservation, land-use planning, recycling, and on and on. During that great phase of innovation, our left and right worked very closely together. They did not indulge in hatred, but rather had the kinds of exchanges we see here. In the 1980s, political polarization struck Oregon, and last year we were such a laughingstock that Doonesbury mocked us.

Hate dooms political movements--inevitably. What's less obvious is that it dooms political processes as well. But then, I guess that looking at the way the federal government has operated over the past 15 years would have confirmed that. As Dems move forward, I suppose it's wise to remember that those whom you demonize today are those you'll be crafting legislation with tomorrow. Talking about what a pinhead Bush is may feel good, but it sows evil seeds.

President Bush's aides promised yesterday to cooperate with a Justice Department inquiry into an administration leak that exposed the identity of a CIA operative, but Democrats charged that the administration cannot credibly investigate itself and called for an independent probe.

The story comes from Walter Pincus, who's been doing great work on exposing the White House's "darn good intelligence" over the past few months.

"And they are still not sure if "outing" her mattered. Well, if they don't know whether her secret past is important, the White House aides probably don't know either. The absence of any intention to breach national security will be politically, if not legally, helpful."

Mark Kleiman has been following this for months as well. You'll find his thoughts here. Pithy comment:

"When this story first broke, I mostly didn't believe it, because outing a covert CIA officer would have been such an intolerable violation of everything this Administration claims to stand for: not just "honor and integrity," which were obviously mere prolefeed, but putting the national security first and keeping secrets secret.

When the country finds out about this, Bush is going to take a big hit. A year ago, he was a hero, and this might have bounced off. Not now."

The inimitable Kevin Drum was also one of the earlies. He got his series of blogs off to a start with this comment: "Holy shit." (For Kevin, that's real surprise.) He's posted a number of thoughts on this, all worth reading. Just go to Calpundit start here, and read up blog. Pithy comment:

I doubt that blowing Valerie Plame's cover actually did much harm in the end. But that doesn't matter. This episode exposes the viciousness and amorality at the very heart of the Bush administration, and I hope it opens some conservative eyes about the nature of the administration they support. These guys are not who you think they are and they aren't pursuing their policies for the principled reasons you think they are. After all, if they went to war with Iraq because of a genuine commitment to humanitarian relief and Middle East democracy, don't you think they would have paid a little more attention to postwar planning? What does it tell you that they didn't?

Remember: this is not just some run of the mill political dirty trick. It's perilously close to treason. No truly principled conservative administration would do a thing like this, and the fact that they've been trying to dodge it for two months tells you everything you need to know about them.

And of course, Josh Marshall has a thought or two himself. Interestingly, the fact that he's so close to the story means his commentary is of the more fragmentary, microscopic variety. Go here after you're familiar with all the names and theories. Pithy comment:

Let's say, hypothetically, that the "two top White House officials" who blew Valerie Plame's cover were in the political and/or communications operations at the White House. That's what is widely suspected. But, for the moment, let's assume that is the case.

If so, how did they find out that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA employee working under non-official cover (in common parlance, undercover)?

Oh, one more thing. Condi Rice, three-card monty dealer for the administration, made the rounds today. You can see her Fox News comments here.

A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co.

Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14 that he has "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." His assertion came during a discussion of Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. Cheney said he had "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests."

In response, Cheney's office said he had purchased an insurance policy so he would be paid even if Halliburton failed. And his office also has announced he has agreed to donate the after-tax proceeds from his stock options to three charities.

However, the congressional report said that neither the insurance policy nor the charity designation would change the public official's disclosure obligation.

Among the Democrats running for president, nobody stirs more passion and excitement from party activists than Dean. The once-obscure Vermonter's blunt talk and early opposition to the war in Iraq have turned him into a fundraising and grass roots phenomenon. Most of the other Democrats sharpened their anti-Bush rhetoric to tap the angry Democrats excited by Dean.

Dean is expected to pull in more than $10-million in the quarter ending Sept. 30, and his success is triggering an internal struggle over the soul of the Democratic Party. Some worry the party is headed toward a repeat of the humiliations of Walter Mondale and George McGovern, Democratic candidates tagged with the liberal label.

It isn't even a hypothesis anymore--it's a mostly-accepted truth. Media are in this habit--they want a quick thumbnail sketch of any figure. In political campaigns, the frontrunners are those who have already established a sketch; the outsiders are those unknown to the media echo chamber. So Lieberman, despite having no apparent supporters, is the front runner because he was the candidate for Veep last time around. He's a nice guy to the media, so that's what you hear about--amiable front-runner Joe Lieberman.

When Howard Dean, whom the media had labeled a marginal anti-war liberal from New England, emerged on the national scene with hosts of supporters, the re-sketching ensued. After all, you can't very well be marginal if you've got the most supporters and seem to be most in step with the party. So who is this guy, the media wanted to know. Funny thing about the echo chamber is, though, whoever yells in it first and loudest creates reality. Voila: Howard Dean, angry candidate who will only inspire party "activists" through his hateful speech while alienating "mainstream" voters.

Fortunately, it's a sketch that hasn't completely gelled yet. So before it does, I think liberals need to ask the question--where did this characterization come from?

Where else could this have come from? Certainly not from those who know his platform. His anger at the Bush follies was real (and is shared by his 9 co-candidates, who condemn the President harshly), but he came out of the gates with a fully-developed platform. He immediately began talking issues and talking specifics. He took the Republicans to task, certainly--but on the issues.

But that's not what the Dean sketch looks like. Thanks to folks like the DLC and George Will --who have an active interest in seeing Dean defeated--the image of Dean is not positive. Whether his anger causes the commentator to call him a latter day McGovern or Newt Gingrich makes little difference--he's just angry. You know, like Gore was boring.

To his credit, Dean hasn't enforced this characterization so far. But if last night's debate is any guide, people are really going to try to stick him with negative labels. That's all part of politics. But as good bloggers and policy wonks, we shouldn't submit to the simplistic characterization. All candidates are far greater than the sum of the media sketch. Often they don't actually even resemble the sketch (remember Bush's characterization as a man-of-the-people, an everyday salt). More importantly, before we accept the characterization, it doesn't hurt to look at the people doing the characterizing and getting a handle on what they have to gain from it.

Dean may be angry, but he's not "the angry candidate." That's just conservatives trying to marginalize a serious threat to their power. If anything, it's what recommends Dean the most.

Free trade creates winners and losers. The benefits that go to the winners are very large but spread out throughtout the economy while the costs are highly concentrated in particular areas (e.g. apparel manufacturers in the Southeast).

What we ought to do but never have really done is really offer substantial assistance to workers dislocated by trade. Use high quality research (some of which exists and more of which needs to be done) to target the right kinds of assistance (e.g. training) to these workers. There is a program called Trade Adjustment Assistance that has been poorly run and has offered only a pittance to these workers. It has recently been "reformed" but as Dean often says "we can do better"

Focus on upskilling the workforce. A coleague of mine often talks to unions who grill him on free trade and he always asks them what they expect of their kids...are they sending them to college or are they planning on their kids having the same factory jobs? The answer is of course...they want them to suceed by developing better skills. Of course there is a transition that is painful...but we can't stop progress, we just have to make a commitment as a country to cushion the blow as best we can by providing real opportunities to those hard-hit by trade. When we industrialized there were some who wanted us to return to agrarian life...that wasn't the right answer and going backwards is not the right answer now. We also need to think about how to help encourage the development of higher skill industries.

Another economist, who can identify himself if he wishes, came at the question from the other direction. He's a development economist, and he responded in particular to the demand for stricter labor and environmental controls for our trading partners.

My support of free trade actually comes more from a development perspective: free trade is absolutely essential for the development of the third world. Free trade can benefit all nations, but the problem for a country like the United States is that free trade will cause structural changes that are resisted by Unions and others. Generally, free trade will cause labor intensive light manufacturing jobs to go overseas in rich countries. Also, some of the other labor intensive service jobs like call centers. This is not a pretty process - people lose jobs, have to learn new skills, have trouble adjusting. New jobs will be created in their place but in areas that are not traditionally unionized. So what you get in response is union driven not-so-free trade where lots of industries are protected - mostly the labor intensive ones. This tends to hurt developing countries most because it is through these labor intensive jobs that developing countries stand to gain but are precluded from doing so yet pressures to open up their markets to big conglomerates who put small scale farmers and the like out of business. So what we need is free and fair trade, not just free trade (which is a misnomer anyway in the presence of protections). So I find the anti-free trade logic, especially when wrapped up in concern for the poor countries, totally wrong.

I do have concerns about environmental protections - but this is a very tricky proposition. Quite simply, we have relatively strong environmental laws because we are a rich enough country to afford them. In a country where people are starving and dying from unsanitary conditions and lack of access to health care, clean air is definitely a second-order problem. As a public health issue, worrying about the harmful affects of dirty air does not even register while cholera epidemics are common, for example. This is why the now infamous exporting-dirty-industries logic is both tragic and, in some senses, correct. What I am concerned about is a free-trade induced race to scuttle out protections so that out dirty industries can remain competitive.

I also sent an email to Max Sawicky, but my question was sufficiently garbled that he couldn't answer it. More as that becomes available.

At hearings, at press conferences and in interviews, Democratic lawmakers unleashed a torrent of criticism, finding fault with everything from the administration's rationale for the war and a lack of postwar planning to its diplomatic efforts and even Mr. Bush's decision to leave the United Nations Tuesday before others finished speaking.

Don Rumsfeld was on the Hill yesterday, cooly defending the quagmire.

In a sign of mounting partisan fighting over Iraq, triggered by President Bush's $87 billion emergency supplemental request, Democratic senators declared the recovery effort so far a political failure and accused the administration of having misled the country into an exceedingly costly mess.

Tom DeLay, never one to leave a caustic remark unrebutted, waded in with a series of personal attacks:

Facing mounting criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, supporters of the president hit back Wednesday, calling on congressional critics to state what they would have done differently after the 9/11 attacks....

"John Kerry says, 'We really need a regime change in Washington.' Bob Graham suggests that the president's actions in Iraq might warrant impeachment proceedings," Delay said.

"Nancy Pelosi says of the Iraqi liberation, 'We could have brought down that statue for a lot less.'

"Howard Dean questions whether the liberated Iraqi people are really better off than under Saddam Hussein's boot heel," DeLay said.

Speaking of belligerent Texas Republicans, the redistricting seems to be really reaping fine rewards for that state. It's a proud legacy of bipartisanism for Bush's resume.

State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio accused the GOP of using recount, recall and redistricting efforts in Texas and nationwide in a "new playbook for a narrow Republican majority attempting to use government to expand partisan power."

(And of course, we have Cali for comic relief.) Not that I'm complaining--in times like these, you never really want for material when you sit down to blog. Let the sideshow continue!

The report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material". They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.

I doubt very seriously if this will stir a yawn here (possibly the Brits will howl), but it does provide us an opportunity to revisit this most central claim of the Bush/Blair rush to war.

Let's go ahead and assume the best: the Bush/Blair team did have intelligence about Saddam's WMD and they were actually scared he'd use them. What does this tell us? Right off the bat, I'd say it blows a hefty hole through the whole Bush doctrine of pre-emption. Remember that jewel of the neo-con brain trust? We could invade anyone we regarded as threatening; not imminently threatening, as fifty years of international law has suggested, but any potential threat. Except Iraq wasn't. Sorta like how we've been executing criminals cause we knew we had the right guys.

It also tells us the Bush foreign policy folk are dangerously incompetent. They have commited the US to a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar (half a trillion, probably) boondoggle. US troops will be used to secure a region previously contained, but now festering with hatred and real terrorists. Those US troops will not be available for other regions or for the "war on terror."

It tells us that the 11,000-page document that Iraq submitted to the UN was accurate: Iraq did not have WMD. Recall that the incompetent Bushies never considered that a possibility. They declared that Iraq was in "material breach" by virtue submitting this accurate document and said this justified invasion. (Colin Powell: "Our experts have found it to be anything but accurate full, or complete. It should be obvious that the pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration is not the result of accidents or editing oversights or technical mistakes. These are material omissions that, in our view, constitute another material breach.") They also demanded that Hans Blix pull out of Iraq because they asserted he was incompetent. Seems "incompetent" is the key word--on that we can all agree.

In a certain sense, White House critics were mistaken to label Bush a liar. It distracted focus from a charge verifiably obvious: he is dangerously incompetent. Now he is "rebuilding" a country by paying private corporations (selected in a secret process) billions with taxpayer money. So many of this administrations policies are abject failures--economic policy, jobs stimulus, terror issues, the "roadmap," the Afghanistan reconstruction, and the Iraq debacle--that it's incomprehensible Congress would consider pulling his chestnuts out of the fire now. I still think the White House lied its butt off in the ramp-up to the war, but that's immaterial. The whole thing's a debacle, lie or no. That's the last thing the whole affair tells us.

The report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material". They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.

I doubt very seriously if this will stir a yawn on this side of the pond, but it does provide us an opportunity to revisit this most central claim of the Bush/Blair rush to war.

Let's go ahead and assume the best: the Bush/Blair team did have intelligence about the WMD and they were actually scared he'd use them. What does this tell us? Right off the bat, I'd say it blows a hefty hole through the whole Bush doctrine of pre-emption. Remember that jewel of the neo-con brain trust? We could invade anyone we regarded as threatening; not imminently threatening, as fifty years of international law has suggested, but any potential threat. Except Iraq wasn't.

It also tells us the Bush foreign policy folk are dangerously incompetent. They have commited the US to a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar (half a trillion, probably) boondoggle. US troops will be used to secure a region previously contained, but now festering with hatred and real terrorists. Those US troops will not be available for other regions or for the "war on terror."

It tells us that the 11,000-page document that Iraq submitted to the UN was accurate: it did not have WMD. Recall that the incompetent Bushies never considered that a possibility. They declared that Iraq was in "material breach" by virtue submitting this accurate document and said this justified invasion. (Colin Powell: "Our experts have found it to be anything but accurate full, or complete. It should be obvious that the pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration is not the result of accidents or editing oversights or technical mistakes. These are material omissions that, in our view, constitute another material breach.") They also demanded that Hans Blix pull out of Iraq because they asserted he was incompetent.

In a certain sense, White House critics were mistaken to label Bush a liar. It distracted focus from a charge verifiably obvious: he is dangerously incompetent. Now he is "rebuilding" a country by paying private corporations (selected in a secret process) billions with taxpayer money. So many of this administrations policies are abject failures--economic policy, jobs stimulus, terror issues, the "roadmap," the Afghanistan reconstruction, and the Iraq debacle. I still think the White House lied its butt off in the ramp-up to the war, but that's immaterial. The whole thing's a debacle, lie or no.

With the AFL-CIO's prized endorsement dangling before them, several [Democratic presidential] candidates are sounding a more protectionist note as they side with labor unions in criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Clinton signed into law in December 1993, and warning that they will oppose future pacts if they do not include stricter and more enforceable labor and environmental standards. Critics warn that such standards could curtail U.S. trade because some nations cannot meet them.

Don't get me wrong--I'm enormously in favor of trade unions. There's always going to be a tension between profitability and worker payrolls, and trusting employers to look out for their employees' best interest is just foolish. On the other hand, unions aren't necessarily the best group to define trade policy. If employers are short-sighted about the benefit of happy employees, then unions are often short-sighted about the benefit of trade.

The reason candidates are sidling up to unions is simple: cash. Even with McCain-Feingold's restrictions, a union endorsement and union organization is regarded as critical to get traction in a primary with ten competitors, particularly now that Clark has stepped into the ring, Clinton rolodex in pocket.

From my perspective--the voter's perspective, that is--it's bad news. Unions want to protect jobs, and this call for labor and environmental standards has nothing to do with global economic justice--it's merely a way to covertly stop jobs from being exported to countries that can't possibly meet the standards. That's okay as far as it goes, but what are unions doing at home? The mass of workers sit behind computers or work retail jobs in employment cul-de-sacs like Wal-Mart and Hooters. Unions have alienated Americans because they're seen as trying to protect $30-an-hour skilled manufacturing jobs that almost no one has anymore.

And for the candidates, toeing the union line means ignoring trade policy that, for example, would support small business--where unions don't have a presence. Or ignoring other investments that would help business innovate so it can more readily compete in a global market. Or worrying so much about jobs that they ignore systemic problems like irresponsible corporations.

I hear this kind of thing, and I think of the Dems isolating themselves, kowtowing to a political minority (albeit a powerful one) and alienating a much larger group while supporting policies that, in the long run, won't benefit workers.

In his speech today to the U.N. General Assembly, President Bush tried to walk a fine line between defending a war deeply unpopular in much of the world and looking for help from reluctant countries to rebuild Iraq. The result left diplomats and lawmakers puzzled about his ultimate intentions.

Or maybe the Post is crazy, too.

Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.

Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup and recruit and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history.

I guess the implication is that, with the barbarians at the gate, you best not stop to consider (like the fey French), but attack now and often. History loves a winner.

Then he described the great work the international community had done in Iraq:

In the nation of Iraq, the United Nations is carrying out vital and effective work every day. By the end of 2004, more than 90 percent of Iraqi children under age five will have been immunized against preventable diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and measles, thanks to the hard work and high ideals of UNICEF. Iraq's food distribution system is operational, delivering nearly a half-million tons of food per month, thanks to the skill and expertise of the World Food Program.

Our international coalition in Iraq is meeting it responsibilities. We are conducting precision raids against terrorists and holdouts of the former regime. These killers are at war with the Iraqi people. They have made Iraq the central front in the war on terror, and they will be defeated. Our coalition has made sure that Iraq's former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction. We are interviewing Iraqi citizens and analyzing records of the old regime to reveal the full extent of its weapons programs and its long campaign of deception. We're training Iraqi police and border guards and a new army, so the Iraqi people can assume full responsibility for their own security.

I don't know, but as my diseased mind recalls it, the body he addressed was the same one who turned down his request to invade, and who rebuked the US for unsanctioned invasion. Apparently I was wrong--I guess they were in on it the whole time. In fact, I was under the misapprehension that the whole reason he set foot into that Godless democratic gathering was to ask for help. I listened to the speech and I've scanned it online, and I can't find any evidence of that. My bad, apparently. The closest he got was a request an anti-nuclear proliferation treaty.

After that, he started talking about victims of slavery and the sex trade. A worthy issue indeed, but is there some logical connection to hitting up the UN for dough to pay for the war they didn't authorize in Iraq?

Seriously, I don't really know what the hell he was talking about.

(Tom might, but I can't divine it from this, either.)

While we are all enthusiastic about Dean, we do not intend this site to be a center for expresssions of blind devotion to our man. Our analysis will be critical, and where we think Dean's got it wrong, we'll say so, and we expect our readers will, too.

At this point, this is neither an endorsement or slag, but just an advisory. May be a blog to watch.

As blogs begin to proliferate, I think we'll see more of this kind of specific intellectual advocacy. It's an interesting phenemenon, because as politics and the media become more saturated in money, reasonable people have fewer places to turn for objective opinion. Into the gap step like-minded people with relevant backgrounds. Yeah, O'Reilly screams loudest, but who are you going to trust--a guy who's paid millions to criticize Dems, or a bunch of unpaid economists with a genuine interest in the future of America?

(Which is not to say that's what this blog offers. The economists are unnamed, so for all we know, they might be sophomore econ students at Wisconsin. Even then you've got more insight than O'Reilly, but not as much as, say Max Sawicky.)

America is in a dangerous place right now. Economic and governmental power is divided among fewer and fewer entities. While in office, George Bush has consolidated these gains in ways unthinkable just three years ago. With the tragedies surrounding 9/11, he's solidified the conservative party line, and made it safe to fear again in America.

In my judgment, the antidote to this should be profound, radical change. Not necessarily in terms of policy--I'm not advocating Communism--but rather seizing back from conservatives the very definitions of politics. We need someone who advances a positive, hopeful agenda for Americans. Someone who will remind Americans of the enlightened values on which this country was founded, not the narrow, fearful, hate-fueled politics of the Republican party.

Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate with this vision.

More...

In an Oval Office interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Bush said that while he respected Kennedy, the senator "should not have said we were trying to bribe foreign nations."

"I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game," Bush said in the interview that will air tonight. "But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say — use words that they shouldn't be using."

In order to reach maximum irony, the story should include something about the Hammer weighing in, right? Ask and it shall be delivered:

Kennedy's comments, part of the drumbeat of criticism Bush has received lately from Democrats, were described as a "new low" by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Kennedy dismissed DeLay's comments, saying that GOP leaders are avoiding questions about Bush's policies "by attacking the patriotism of those who question them."

That sounds a nice note for a Monday morning, don't you think?

A Muslim chaplain at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo who counseled suspected terrorists and taught fellow troops about Islam is the first known U.S. soldier to be detained in the U.S.-led war on terror.

Yee, of Chinese descent and reportedly from New Jersey, converted to Islam from Christianity in 1991 after his military studies at West Point. He left the Army for Syria, where he received religious training. He returned to the U.S. military soon after.

As an Arabic-speaker, Yee counseled the detainees, advised them on religious matters and made sure all of their dietary needs were met at the base in eastern Cuba.

(Those paragraphs have been rearranged for clarity.)

This comes after two moderate Canadian Muslims were not allowed to enter Florida because, according to one border agent "You've chosen to fly on the wrong day." (It was September 11.) These are exactly the kinds of situations that raise some of the most pronounced debates between the pro-control and the pro-liberty camps (which don't divide along liberal/conservative lines).

There are legal issues here, certainly. Given that we don't know the details in these cases, it's pointless to speculate about whether they were legal actions. But I can tell you what really chafes from the card-carrying ACLU member perspective: it's that the current government actually wants two things: it want to remove liberties and it wants to remain secretive about it.

This Army chaplain, like all the people in Cuba, are being detained without charge. That's two layers of secrecy--the accused doesn't know of what, and we as citizens have no way to get access to the case or find anything out about it.

This amounts to bad faith. If the federal government seeks to remove our rights, it better be transparent about it. If it would rather try to navigate in the waters of very strict regulation and remain secret, that's something else. But I'm reminded when I hear these cases that they're doing both--functioning without sufficient oversight, and subjecting people to legal methods loosened to evade Constitutional requirements.

So I don't know what the story is with this chaplain. But because the Ashcroft Justice Department is so secretive and abusive of citizen rights. I now suspect foul play.

Eighteen months later, key administration officials have concluded that Bush's [steel tariffs] order has turned into a debacle. Some economists say the tariffs may have cost more jobs than they saved, by driving up costs for automakers and other steel users. Politically, the strategy failed to produce union endorsements and appears to have hurt Bush with workers in Michigan and Tennessee -- also states at the heart of his 2004 strategy....

But in this case, the facts may be less important than the perception in key states where the tariffs have been debilitating. The tariffs failed to give Bush the allegiance of the United Steelworkers of America, the industry's largest union and one the White House had hoped to win over. In August, the union endorsed Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) for president and issued a statement saying any of the Democratic candidates would offer better than "the reactionary policies of the current administration."

Perhaps worse for Bush, the tariffs alienated thousands of small businessmen who run steel-consuming companies. "He didn't win the steelworkers over, and he sure as hell didn't win the users over, and there are a hell of lot more of us," said Jim Zawacki, chief executive of G.R. Spring & Stamping, Inc., a small manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Mich. "A lot of people feel burned," said Mike Lynch, vice president of government affairs at Illinois Tool Works, a large machine tool company outside Chicago.

Ooops.

Adbusters Media Foundation intends to sell $60 pairs of plain canvas shoes marked with a black spot as a contrast to the flashy shoes made by Beaverton-based Nike. In the process, the group says it hopes to "transform capitalism" and make a statement about anti-corporate activism....

Adbusters plans to take out a full page ad in The New York Times within the next two months to promote its blackSpot sneaker campaign, designed to "show that we have the power to un-cool megabrands," said Kalle Lasn, the organization's founder. Proceeds from blackSpot shoe sales will be used to expand the campaign, which Lasn said could later target companies including McDonald's, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart.

Sixty bucks? That's a lot for a shoe that looks a whole lot like, ahem, Nike-owned Chucks. But I digress. Adbusters appears to be taking it straight at Nike, making Portland ground zero for the campaign. The shoes are called BlackSpot, which is a pretty clever idea--for the assault, they can plaster black spots all over the city. Presumably, there's going to be some semi-legal, informal Nike ad blackspotting (Portland offers thousands of disgruntled "agents").

It's an interesting idea: capitalism as anti-capitalist advocacy. Adbusters' theory is that Nikes sell not because they're worth a hundred bucks, but because they have the cachet of Nike. So they'll use the inverse cachet to sell their own shoes. Like Royal Tenenbaum said it's, "kind of a 'fuck you' to the old man."

The old man, for his part, is not terribly frightened. He's been doing this a lot longer than Adbusters, and knows that pretty much any news is good news. The Nike spokesman immediately turned the campaign into a positive: "It's a testament to the strength of the Nike brand that Adbusters decided to specifically target Nike to leverage its own agenda."

In any case, it'll be pretty fun to watch from my prime seats here on the fifty-yard line. I'll keep you updated.

We're sorry. Due to Hurricane Isabel, all ThinkQuest systems are currently down. We expect the sites to be available sometime after 12 noon (US Eastern time) on Friday.

Everyone all right out there? I guess it's time for me to stop whining about the Portland weather.

We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s....

With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

Well, according to the President, you do. Or maybe not. After making his nice, clear declarative statement ("we've had no evidence"), Bush indulged in the same kind of backing-off-while-not-looking-like-you're-backing-off that Rummy and Condi modeled two days ago:

"Now, what the vice president said was is that he has been involved with Al Qaeda. And al-Zarqawi, an Al Qaeda operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat.... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties."

So I guess what Cheney said was true. "I think it's not surprising that people make that connection." I mean after all, that's the impression the White House has been pushing for a year. And sorta kinda continues to push, apparently.

And on that note, I'm outta here--at least for the rest of the morning.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

Rummy did, however, try to keep suspicion alive with other insinuations.

''We know he was giving $25,000 a family for anyone who would go out and kill innocent men, women and children. And we know of various other activities. But on that specific one, no, not to my knowledge.''

Condoleezza Rice

Rice, asked about the same poll numbers, said, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."

''What we have said is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them (and) was a threat in this region that we were not prepared to tolerate.''

I'll be interested to hear how the apologists will spin this.

In a rare television interview yesterday, Cheney expanded on an effort by President Bush and top aides to argue that there should be no further changes in Iraq policy despite bipartisan and international calls for different approaches. He declared "major success, major progress" in Iraq, said most of the country is "stable and quiet" and asserted that Americans are viewed as "liberators" there.

The vice president offered an unqualified defense of virtually all administration actions leading up to the war in March and its aftermath, even as the administration has opted to seek a U.N. imprimatur for the occupation after five months of resisting that. Cheney said the administration did not underestimate the financial cost, the resistance or the troop strength needed to pacify Iraq, and he said that prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction would be vindicated.

Perhaps only RJP will be shocked by this. But Cheney didn't just play defense with Russert, he went on the offense and made some statements I think most people will find shocking.

We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization....

With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

As far as I know, this last part is a blatant lie. The FBI and CIA have discredited it, the Czech government has denied it, and even after months of trying to make the link, the US hasn't been able to find a single shred of evidence. Back to the Post:

An FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place. Czech authorities, who first mentioned the alleged meeting in October 2001 to U.S. officials, have since said they no longer are certain the individual in the video of the supposed meeting was Atta. Meanwhile, in July, the U.S. military captured the Iraqi intelligence officer who was supposed to have met Atta and has not obtained confirmation from him.

Moving along. Cheney characterizes everything as a success:

The fact is that most of Iraq today is relatively stable and quiet.

Fine. I actually think that, given everything we knew going in--and we did know it, even I knew it--Iraq was bound to be a quagmire of racial and religious hatred, retribution, and violence. It's reasonable to say that it's going as well as expected. But this isn't what the Bushies tried to sell to the American people as the definition of "going well."

More significantly, I think this is a great opportunity for critics of the White House's foreign policy to get some traction. Hold the Bushies to it. Every time something bad happens, remind the American people that the White House thinks this is how it should be. This is "going well." Make them, for once, stand by one of their damn policies.

Russert then ran through a series of predictions Cheney made before the war and confronted him with the reality now. Listen:

CHENEY (March 16): I disagree. To suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don’t think is accurate. I think that’s an overstatement.

MR. RUSSERT (yesterday): We, in fact, have about 140,000 troops, 20,000 international troops, as well. Did you misjudge the number of troops necessary to secure Iraq after major combat operations?

CHENEY (yesterday): Well, you’re going to get into a debate here about—talking about several years, several hundred thousand troops for several years. I think that’s a non-starter. I don’t think we have any plan to do that, Tim. I don’t think it’s necessary to do that. There’s no question but what we’ve encountered resistance. But I don’t think anybody expected the time we were there to be absolutely trouble-free. We knew there were holdover elements from the regime that would fight us and struggle. And we also knew al-Qaeda was there, and Ansar al-Islam, up in northeastern Iraq, which we’ll come back to, talk about in a minute.

So I don’t think there was a serious misjudgment here. We couldn’t know precisely what would happen

On the cost of the war. Russert led in by pointing out that Pentagon estimates were $50 billion and that Lawrence Lindsay was fired for suggesting it would cost between $100-200 billion (it's already at that figure, six months in).

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know. And if you ask Secretary Rumsfeld, for example—I can remember from his briefings, he said repeatedly he didn’t know. And when you and I talked about it, I couldn’t put a dollar figure on it.
MR. RUSSERT: But Daniels did say $50 billion.
VICE PRES. CHENEY Well, that might have been, but I don’t know what is basis was for making that judgment.

The Iraqi reception:

VICE PRES. CHENEY (March 16): Well, I don’t think it’s unlikely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with various groups and individuals, people who’ve devoted their lives from the outside to try and change things inside of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT (yesterday): We have not been greeted as liberat[ors].

VICE PRES. CHENEY (yesterday): Well, I think we have by most Iraqis. I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there, that we came and we took down the Saddam Hussein government.

On the Niger story.

... I guess the intriguing thing, Tim, on the whole thing, this question of whether or not the Iraqis were trying to acquire uranium in Africa. In the British report, this week, the Committee of the British Parliament, which just spent 90 days investigating all of this, revalidated their British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa. What was in the State of the Union speech and what was in the original British White papers. So there may be difference of opinion there. I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

On domestic issues, he defended the tax cuts:

MR. RUSSERT: If you froze the tax cut for the top 1 percent of Americans, it would generate enough money to pay for the $87 billion for the war, if you did it for just one year. Would you consider that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think it’d be a mistake, because you can’t look at that without considering what its impact would be on the economy. An awful lot of the returns in that top bracket are small businesses, and they provide an awful lot of the job growth in this economy. If you’re going to go increase taxes on small businesses, you’re going to slow down the extent to which we’re able to reduce unemployment. So I think it’s a serious mistake; the wrong time to raise taxes.

Increase taxes on small business? These are exactly the kinds of lies and misdirection that inflame reasonable people. Did Russert mention raising taxes on small business?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tax cuts accounted for only about 25 percent of the deficit.

MR. RUSSERT: But we see deficits for the next 10 years, big ones. How do you deal with that, when you have Social Security, Medicare, coming up?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We anticipate even with the added spending that we’ve asked for now we’ll cut the deficit roughly in half from where it’ll be next year over the next five years.

What do you bet that if this regime manages to stay in power that in four years Cheney will say he didn't say that on "Meet the Press?"