Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate....

From the president and Cheney down to media aides stationed in every battleground state and volunteers who dress up like Flipper the flip-flopping dolphin at rallies, the Bush campaign relentlessly portrays Kerry as elitist, untrustworthy, liberal and a flip-flopper on major issues. This campaign is persistent and methodical, and it often revs up on Monday mornings with the strategically timed release of ads or damaging attacks on Kerry, including questioning medical and service records in Vietnam and his involvement in the peace movement afterward. Often, they knock Kerry off message and force him to deflect personal questions.

One of the writers is Dana Millbank, and this article is as reasoned and well-researched as his work on the aluminum rods et. al. before the start of the war (read: the whole thing is worth reading). Obviously it's not helping Bush, but his plan--as always--is to try to make himself appear the lesser of two lessers. He's trying to poison the voting pool against politics altogether, knowing that his twisted base will never forsake him. If he can boil the electorate down far enough, so goes the plan, those in the base will form a majority of whatever's left. It's nasty, but that's the only card he has left to play--fear and loathing.

We're unclear just what the Democrats are afraid of. Perhaps they fear that if this plan is successful, their hopes of eventually raising taxes to cover higher state spending will be dashed.

She didn't back down, and tomorrow the House will meet solo. It's an unprecedented move and has no legal standing. Without Senate approval, no legislation can go through. But Minnis isn't afraid to use whatever tiny reserve of goodwill that remains to try to rend the state further apart. We will now watch the GOP spend days or weeks passing phony laws and calling Dems rat bastards--all on the government dime. (Hey, fiscal responsibility is only good when you're cutting programs that benefit Democratic constitutencies.)

Once upon a time, Oregon was a model for cross-aisle partnerships, and in the 1960s and 70s produced a series of landmark laws. What's playing out now is a political stunt by the far-right to try to commandeer the Oregon legislature by staging a publicly-funded campaign for GOP lawmakers in an election year. Thanks to the echo-chamber of Republican politics, Minnis is sure Oregonians will respond by sending the Dems packing in November. She's partly right--it's time for voters to send politicians packing. Let's hope this little stunt confirms for the voters just where the problem really lies.

A gun that Saddam Hussein was holding when US forces caught him is now kept by President Bush at the White House....

Mr Bush keeps it in a small study adjoining the Oval Office used for displaying memorabilia, and is said to show it to select visitors. (BBC)

The house of Bush, having avenged itself, now displays trophies.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

His answer is hard to dispute.

"The attorney general's unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide and far exceeds the scope of his authority under federal law."

[The court] added "that the attorney general has no specialized expertise in the field of medicine" and that he "imposes a sweeping and unpersuasive interpretation" of the Controlled Substance Act, which "directly conflicts with that of his predecessor," Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

Makes me feel all warm inside to hear a court vindicate our lil' state's democratic choices.

Meanwhile, government documents made public on Wednesday said lawyer Brandon Mayfield was held for two weeks under the material witness law because of a fingerprint analysis that later proved faulty and because of his ties as a convert to Oregon's Muslim community, which included advertising in a Muslim yellow pages and attending a mosque under government surveillance.

We have created a system in which the race or religion of a US citizen is itself a evidence of guilt. Thanks to the Patriot Act's many violations of the Constitution, the government can track people secretly, gather evidence secretly, and prosecute people secretly, without ever revealing its evidence or methods. Had the Spanish government not been involved in this case, I have no confidence that Mayfield would be free now.

And guess what? Because Mayfield is a white American, his jailing caused a lot of people to reconsider the Patriot Act. The scales of bigotry now failing to occlude their vision of this fine white boy, they were able to see the rampant violations of his rights. And, because he was not a Jordian-born Muslim, we didn't hear too much of his "Islamic beard." This time around, it didn't seem quite as much a forgone conclusion that he was guilty just by looking at him. Remove the blinding force of racism from a case, and it looks a whole lot different.

Today's post on the American Street

A radical Muslim cleric linked to Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid was arrested Thursday in London and accused in a U.S. indictment of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, U.S. officials said.

The charges allege that he helped al Qaeda volunteers travel from Britain to Afghanistan, of plotting to establish a "violent jihad training camp" in Oregon and of providing a satellite phone to the leader of a 1998 kidnapping in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four hostages.

This isn't going to look good on the ol' tourism brochure. (And we still have that Tonya Harding and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh thing hanging over our heads.)

But some intelligence officials, terrorism experts - and to some extent even Mr. Ashcroft's own F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III - offered a more tempered assessment, saying, "For the next few weeks we have reason to believe there is a heightened threat to the U.S. interests around the world.'' And some opponents of President Bush, including police and firefighter union leaders aligned with Senator John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, said the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush's sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq.

Time was, anything Bush said was accepted at face value. Tax cuts for the wealthy in order to benefit the poor? No worries. Invade Iraq to defeat Osama? Makes sense.

But this week, when Bush rolled out the notion that in a month we'd be offering Iraq "full sovereignty" and no one outside the offices of the National Review took it seriously. And now everyone suspects the terror threats are Bush wagging the dog.

I got in a debate in the comments threads over at Jack Bogdanski's site yesterday, wherein he argued that Bush could turn things around with an "October Surprise." It's only May, said he (and others), lots of time for the Bush smear machine to destroy Kerry. The Bushies will certainly try. These are corrupt, dirty people, and they will stop at nothing to keep Bush in power. But that doesn't mean they'll succeed. As long as everyone recognizes that it's just the machinations of corrupt, dirty people--as they apparently now do--Bush's "surprises" aren't going to surprise anyone.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

"Credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that fighting al-Qaida is George W. Bush's only winning issue. Therefore I am today announcing that al-Qaida plans to attempt an attack on the United States in the next few months. This disturbing intelligence indicates al-Qaida's specific intention to hit the United States hard. You better vote for Bush or dem scary Muslims'll getcha."

[Monday's speech and the draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq] betray a willingness to see the world as you would like it to be rather than as it is, and a readiness to hope that the gap goes unnoticed or unexamined. With all respect, sir, that is not leadership. Leaders address inconvenient reality and then seek explicit and reasoned support from the nation for dealing with it.

Your recent vacillation on policies -- unilateralist one day, U.N.-centered the next -- suggests you are letting yourself be pulled in different directions by putative allies and your aides in daily, desperate improvisation. By letting King Abdullah of Jordan and other Sunni leaders poison your view of what Shiite rule in Iraq would mean, you leave the impression that you had not thought through your promise of democracy for Iraq before going to war.

Dionne? Cohen? No, Jim Hoagland, of all people. Which shows just how bad things have gotten for the President. (Thanks to CP who tipped me--I've long since quit bothering to read Hoagland's bizarre rants.)

An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."

NYT, May 26

(2000 Winner) State - leader - Margin

(Bush) Florida - Kerry +1.4%*
(Gore) Iowa - Bush +5.2%
(Bush) Missouri - Kerry +3.3%*
(Bush) Nevada - Kerry +3.8%*
(Bush) New Hampshire - Kerry +9.6%
(Bush) Ohio - Kerry +4.6%
__________________
*Within the margin of error

Overall, Kerry is winning in 12 of the 16 states. Moreover, some of those states that Bush hoped to poach are looking pretty woeful right now:

Washington - Kerry +8.1%
Pennsylvania - Kerry +8.2%
Michigan - Kerry +8.3%

Moreover, Bush's margins in the four states in which he's leading is a mere 3.7%; Kerry's average lead in his 12 states is 6.3%. Yeah, I know--there're five months left to the election, snapshot, yadda yadda. Never mind that, Bush is big trouble and everyone knows it.

On June 30, full sovereignty will be transferred to a government of Iraqi citizens.

At that time, the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Ambassador Paul Bremer, will cease to exist and will not be replaced.

Iraqis will govern their own affairs.

I suspect we'll be hearing more about what this actually means, but the White House hasn't left itself much room: it's getting the hell out.

The context of the speech was also fascinating (to me, at least). Bush gave a familiar speech, replete with descriptions of a reality to which few others have access (the transcript's not available yet, so I can't quote text). It was his somber mode, punctuated occasionally by his strange blinking, wherein his delivery was that of a daddy trying to explain death to his four-year-old.

But then, with about 20% of the speech left, he switched gears. He shifted to Preacher George, messianic George, absolutely certain of his goodness. It was actually quite moving, in a sort of twisted way. He contrasted the horrors of wahabism fundamentalist Islam (using "Taliban" as shorthand) with the purity of American democracy. Where before the words tangled his tongue with their foreigness, now he seemed to be speaking from the heart. It seemed clear that this is a guy who is, at the end of the day, pleased with how things have gone. There was a bad guy there who oppressed his people; we took him out and offered up our perfected ways like a toe-headed boy offering up a golden ring. All is well. God bless America.

To watch the speech, it was hard not to take away the message that this is pretty much how Bush saw it playing out. There wasn't confusion or lack of planning. This is a guy, remember, who exists only in the black-and-white mode. So Iraq is either a success or a failure. Today Bush declared it a success. If the lesson of Iraq seems more nuanced to the majority of Americans, that's their failure. They elected a guy of moral clarity. Now they see what that means.

[Correction. A commenter noted that the Taliban aren't practitioners of Wahabism. As I'm a little dim on my strains of fundamentalist Islam, I've made the correction.]

[Update: link to the speech is here.]

The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades.

What else do you think the number 41 augurs?

Of course, Mr. Moore is being selective in what he chooses to include in his movie; he's a polemicist, not a journalist. But he implicitly raises the issue that much of what we've seen elsewhere during this war, often under the label of "news," has been just as subjectively edited. Perhaps the most damning sequence in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the one showing American troops as they ridicule hooded detainees in a holding pen near Samara, Iraq, in December 2003. A male soldier touches the erection of a prisoner lying on a stretcher underneath a blanket, an intimation of the sexual humiliations that were happening at Abu Ghraib at that same time. Besides adding further corroboration to Seymour Hersh's report that the top command has sanctioned a culture of abuse not confined to a single prison or a single company or seven guards, this video raises another question: why didn't we see any of this on American TV before "60 Minutes II"?

...Mr. Moore says he obtained his video from an independent foreign journalist embedded with the Americans. "We've had this footage in our possession for two months," he says. "I saw it before any of the Abu Ghraib news broke. I think it's pretty embarrassing that a guy like me with a high school education and with no training in journalism can do this. What the hell is going on here? It's pathetic."

This points to what has become the emerging central meme of the Bush failures--incompetence. Last night, that was the charge Anthony Zinni made on 60 Minutes. ("If I were the commander of a military organization that delivered this kind of performance to the president, I certainly would tender my resignation. I certainly would expect to be gone.") As more and more GOP politicians watch the horror unfold, they'll have a choice to make: back the White House and its absurd claims about why Iraq is a mess, or take the best excuse they've got--that the war was conducted by idealogically-driven incompetents. It appears that however well things may go after June 30 (and it's hard to imagine a positive scenario), in theaters, at least, things will still be looking pretty horrific.

In recent public statements, Bush administration officials have said that the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" in Iraq. That has put American-run prisons in Iraq in a different category from those in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been declared unlawful combatants not eligible for protection. However, [a] Dec. 24 letter appears to undermine administration assertions of the conventions' broad application in Iraq....

The letter, drafted by military lawyers and signed by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, emphasized the "military necessity" of isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their "significant intelligence value," and said that prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.

"The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face the reality? Pull this curtain back.

"The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader. These policies are not working. But speaking specifically to Iraq, we have a situation where -- without adequate evidence -- we put our young people in harm's way.

"I believe that the president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers.

"His activities, his decisions, the results of his actions are what undermines his leadership, not my statement. My statements are just a statement of fact."

Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader, yesterday

"I'm a sychophant for my country."

Rush Limbaugh, this morning

"Human beings are imperfect, and some are much more imperfect than others. But traditional norms of shame usually serve to keep their excesses within bounds. When these norms collapse, as they have done in our society, abuses like those of Abu Ghraib are among the results. Much has been made of the supposed special shame of Muslim prisoners at being stripped in front of female captors, but what about the vanished shame of American men and women in front of each other?"

NRO, of course.

Mr. Nader, whose campaign most likely cost Mr. Gore victories in two states in 2000 and who many Democrats fear could similarly help sink Mr. Kerry by eroding his support on the left, let Mr. Kerry know in the meeting that he would be attacking President Bush, primarily, rather than trying to hold Mr. Kerry's feet to the fire....

Mr. Nader acknowledged as much afterward. The difference between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gore "is the difference between a spruce tree and petrified wood," Mr. Nader said.

"Gore was petrified wood," he said. "He was stiff as a board, he didn't want to have these kinds of meetings. He didn't want to have meetings like this when he was vice president three years before the election. Kerry is much more open."

Post continues...

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure....

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. The accounting office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government without identifying the source.

The accounting office said the administration's misuse of federal money "also constitutes a violation of the Antideficiency Act," which prohibits spending in excess of appropriations. Under the law, the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, must report the violation to Congress and the president, with "a statement of actions taken" to prevent a recurrence.

The Antideficiency Act, derived from a law passed in 1870, is one of the major statutes by which Congress exercises its constitutional control of the purse.

The Bush administration--bringing honor, honesty, and transparency back to the White House.

"We must find ways and means to resolve all outstanding problems that have been a source of friction and the unfortunate history of our relations with Pakistan," said Singh, born in what is now Pakistan. "We should look to the future with hope."

I'm back...

Now for your obvious first question. "How can I know this is the real Andy Kaufman, and not some prankster punk kid?" Well, all I can say is that definitive proof that I am the real Andy Kaufman will be forthcoming. For now, you'll just have to trust me.

A search on the 'net for the DNA proof led me to a promising link at eMediaWire. The lead reads "Andy Kaufman faked his own death 20 years ago and has returned, alive and well. DNA tests prove that this is indeed the real Kaufman and not another hoax." Ah, but wait! The release has been pulled:

"We're sorry. This release has been placed on 'Dispute Hold'."

Well, I'm sure it's a fake, but I'll say this: if Andy Kaufman is alive and this is for real, I'm damn pleased he fired up a blog.

"He said he told the foreign leaders: 'Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing.'

"Do you suppose those were his exact words? After all, he is quoting himself. Or is this just what happens to reasonably intelligent people after more than three years of serving a President whose favorite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar?"

Enjoy.

For India, his swearing-in will be historic, and not just because of the extraordinary political drama of the last week. A Sikh, Mr. Singh will be India's first non-Hindu prime minister. In a milestone that says much about this vast nation's diversity and capacity for co-existence, Mrs. Gandhi, an Italian-born woman raised a Roman Catholic, is making way for a Sikh prime minister who will be sworn in by a Muslim president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Born in western Punjab in 1932, Mr. Singh was educated at Punjab University, then at Cambridge University. He later earned his doctorate from Oxford University. He has held almost every important political post in the country, from governor of the Reserve Bank of India to economic advisor for prime ministers starting with Indira Gandhi....

[On his 1991 economic reforms] Mr. Singh quickly devalued the rupee, though he did it in two stages to avoid provoking political opposition. He also began dismantling the "license permit raj," the complex, suffocating system of permits and permissions that essentially gave bureaucrats control over business decisions. He lowered taxes and tariffs, initiated deregulation and began opening the economy to foreign investment and competition.

Sonia, for her tireless, behind-the-scenes work for the past decade, in some senses deserved to be rewarded with as PM. But Singh, who has been in politics since 1971, also richly deserves the helm. Personal politics aside, this is probably a far better result for India. Sonia, no matter how capable she may have been, would always have been dogged by the BJP for being Italian. She would have been further hampered by distrust on both the left and right as she tried to forge an effective economic policy.

Singh, on the other hand, comes in with great credibility across the board. In authoring the liberalisation of the 1990s, he pleased free-market types. But he has never been a free-market economist in the GOP mode and has credibility on the left, as well. In terms of foreign policy, having a Sikh in office immediately changes the dynamic of India-Pakistan relations. He is described as a "multilateralist"--meaning he will seek international solutions to global conflict. While this will alienate him from Bush, it will be a welcome move for India. And, as our own DF notes, he's a "towering intellect." All things considered, Singh is a fantastic choice.

Votes cast for Presidential nominee

282,379 - George W. Bush
281,133 - John Kerry

Don't be fooled--Oregon will go Kerry by a mile. Turnout was predicted to be just under 50%, reflecting the deep split between the parties' faithful. The turnout will be larger in November, and the majority will go Kerry. Still, it is just the slightest bit alarming.

"There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet...."

Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.

"The post of prime minister has not been my aim," she told a meeting of Congress members of parliament. "I would follow my inner voice. Today it tells me that I must humbly decline this post."

For those of you not fully steeped in Indian politics and society, let me give you some subtext here. Hindu nationalists, much like fundamentalist Christians, have a sort of messianic view about their role in history. As Brahmanic caretakers to the universe (literally), they must strive against corruption. Corruption, in the old fundamental, Vedic sense, comes from everyone who's not "twice-born"--or from the upper castes. That of course includes Italians.

Their pressure on Sonia is the worst kind of race (karmic?) politics, and Sonia's retreat is a victory for the theocrats. That's the bad news. The good news is that, after a golden period of economic growth that obscurred their true nature, the Hindu nationalists are again reminding the nation why they are so dangerous. By demanding Sonia step aside, they prove their unfitness to rule.

Talk now is that Manmohan Singh, the architect of India's 1991 economic liberalisation is the front runner to take office. Truth is, he may be a better leader than Gandhi. (Though Gandhi's willingness to step aside for the good of the country ironically recommends her to the post.) This is just dirty politics--nothing worse than the far right here who argue that "God hates __________." The democracy is still fine. Still, if anyone needed a reminder of why it's good to see the BJP the hell out of office, this is it.

The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today.

And the Veep, in remarks in support of Georgia Congressman Max Burns, made this fairly shocking comment:

"Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness."

Evidence, if you needed it, that the man is dangerously insane.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A small amount of the nerve agent sarin has been found in a shell that exploded in Iraq, the U.S. army says -- the first announcement of the discovery of any of the weapons on which Washington made its case for war.

The questions raised are three:

1.) Will the administration use this to justify the invasion and subsequently revise their stump speeches to include the news as part of the Bush "successes?"

(Answer: yes.)

2.) Will American citizens be convinced?

(Answer: yes--those who didn't care if we found them in the first place, and no--everyone else.)

3.) Will the tiny quantity found provoke conspiracy theorists to assert that the US planted to Sarin?

(Anwswer: yes.)

When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.

Meanwhile, Seymour Hersh continues his weekly expose of Pentagon misdeeds in the New Yorker.

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

For those who don't read the New Yorker, much of the same information is available in a new Newsweek article.

But a NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war....

The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK.

Hey, at least no former Bush official was on 60 Minutes to promote a tell-all book about administration incompetence. When reports are coming out that are tantamount to fingering you for war crimes, I guess you take your victories where you can find them.

The list goes on. After saying the U.N. would have only a perfunctory role in rebuilding Iraq, Bush went back to the world body seeking aid in September and more recently looked to U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to help form an interim government in Iraq. After announcing he would file an amicus brief opposing affirmative action at the University of Michigan, Bush instructed his solicitor general to file a last-minute brief that essentially punted on the issue....

More recently, the president departed from his program of de-Baathification and allowed former Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh to take command of Iraqi forces in Fallouja in the hope of neutralizing insurgents holed up in the city. When news that Saleh had been a commander in Hussein's Republican Guard leaked out, Saleh was pushed aside, although not out of the new Fallouja Brigade, and replaced by Mohammed Latif, who was merely a military intelligence officer under Hussein.

While there are a number of red-meat issues to which lefties consistently direct their attention, this habit is actually what makes Bush most vulnerable. In the past, he was able to appease disgruntled supporters by arguing political expediency demanded some concessions. But in so many of the cases, the political expediency backfired and the policy decision became a liability. When Bush was king of the world, supporters were willing to overlook Bush flip-flops. They're less willing now. A wise election strategy for targeting moderate Republicans and Independents would exploit Bush's lying and incompetence. It's a way to appeal to the moderates without offering serious policy concessions, and it keeps the focus on Bush's failings.

They were instructed to take the photos because, knowing that the pictures would eventually get leaked, they'd spark the massive horror we're now seeing. Thus the horror is intentional. The reason for intentional horror is either: 1) to spark a Pearl Harbor-like reaction, riling Americans up to go kick some A, or 2) to spark a Vietnam reaction so we can cut and run without political cost.

I dismissed it as "not particularly convincing." Based on what Colin Powell said yesterday, I'm starting to find it more so:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy and Japan on Friday in declaring that they would honor any request by Iraq's new government to withdraw foreign troops after June 30, when it is to receive limited sovereignty....

"I have no doubt that the interim Iraqi government will welcome the continued presence and operation of coalition military forces," Mr. Powell said, adding that he was "absolutely losing no sleep thinking that they might ask us to leave."

But he said that, in the interest of clearing up any confusion, "were this interim government to say to us, `We really think we can handle this on our own; it would be better if you were to leave,' we would leave."

I'm with Powell--I can't imagine they'd ask us to leave. I mean, this is the same country who welcomed us with flowers as liberators. Why on earth would they want us to leave.

No theory is to weird to be true with this regime (Bush, that is).

Postwar Iraq was supposed to be a bonanza for American companies. The Commerce Department hosted a series of conferences attended by thousands who dreamed of investment opportunities promised by a free Iraq. The administration characterized the more than $21 billion Congress allocated to the reconstruction as a down payment, an initial investment that would spark the economy and bring riches to the Iraqi people as well as American entrepreneurs.

The reality a year after President Bush declared the end of major combat is far different.

Though many dozens of U.S. corporations have government contracts to help rebuild the country, relatively few American companies have invested their own capital. The volatile security situation has kept many potential investors away, and even as the U.S.-led coalition government has called on businesses to come to Iraq, the State Department has warned Americans to stay out of the country.

If they ain't suckling the taxpayer teat, they ain't in Iraq. "Free" indeed.

Geneva Conventions
Under the Geneva Conventions, all detainees fall into one of two categories. Either they are prisoners of war (whose rights are set out in the 3rd Geneva Convention) or they are civilians who are being held as criminal suspects or "for imperative reasons of security" whose rights are specified in the 4th Convention....

The 4th Geneva Convention applies to all people who "find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals," and who are not covered by the other Conventions. They must "at all times be humanely treated" and protected "against all acts of violence or threats thereof" (Article 27). The Convention requires that no "physical or moral coercion" should be exercised against those covered by it, "in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties" (Article 31).

Customary International Law
Fundamental guarantees that would be accepted as customary law are listed in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Article 75 of the first Additional Protocol of 1977. Common Article 3 requires that detainees "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely." Murder, cruel treatment and torture are forbidden, as are "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

The Torture Convention
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was agreed in 1984 and ratified by the United States in 1994. It defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person," and prohibits it under all circumstances. It also prohibits government agents from carrying out "other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

While polls show Bush and Kerry neck-and-neck, a sophisticated econometric model operated at Yale University -- the same kind of model used for simulating the entire U.S. economy -- is calling Bush the winner by a wide margin, with almost 58 percent of a two-party vote.

Fair has found that presidential elections can be explained by just six factors. And his track record is spectacular. His model explains elections since 1960 with an average forecast error of only 2.4 percent — far better than any conventional predictions derived from polling.

Oh, just one caveat. Those six factors--they don't account for Iraq. Luskin's conclusion? Ready for a good chortle?

Fair’s model is no political deus ex machina, but it has the virtue of grounding our subjective appraisals of a very emotional matter in solid historical reality. With the beating that George W. Bush is taking every day in the liberal media over real and imagined problems in Iraq, Fair’s model may go a long way toward explaining why Bush’s poll numbers are staying surprisingly strong, and Kerry’s surprisingly weak.

Think about it this way. If you were going to bet on the election, whose opinion would you trust? The rigorously proven econometric models of Prof. Ray Fair, or the editorial page of the New York Times?

(Shhhh--don't tell him that it wasn't Krugman who conducted recent polling...)


Byron York authors the second humorous piece, which analyzes why Kerry's doing so poorly in the polls (leaving one to assume that the NRO's teletype machine is down). He knows this because he's consulted a wide sampling of objective analysts. Just kidding--he actually just called Bush's chief political strategist, Matthew Dowd. Surprisingly, he's critical of Kerry (by way of commentary, I'll just italicize the good parts):

"I think it's because Kerry as an alternative is becoming less and less acceptable," says Dowd. "In troubled times, people want someone who's resolute, who is firm, who knows where he wants to go. I think what has happened to Sen. Kerry is that the public has said, 'Does this guy have a firm set of convictions? Does he really know where he wants to go?' In this environment, having that weakness — which I think the public has discovered — that's a problem."

I may or may not get to some satire today. But with the NRO passing off this kind of thing as "analysis," what's really the point?

The day after a stunning upset of the NDA, senior Congress leaders dismissed the idea of any other leader, from within Congress or outside, heading the new government. "She will be elected leader by the Congress Parliamentary Party on Saturday and should take oath by Monday," a close aide of Sonia told timesofindia.com....

Congressmen now trash any talk of a compromise candidate like Manmohan Singh or Pranab Mukherjee. In this hour of glory, leaders like Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Salman Khurshed, Mohsina Kidwai are clear -- it’s only Sonia Gandhi. As Soni said: "This is a clear mandate for Sonia. She herself had said that the next Prime Minister would be picked by the people of the country."

(I had forgotten the punchy language newspapers used. It's fairly bloggish.)

Something else about Congress's stunning upset occurred to me yesterday. Although I don't think it was a primary reason, this result is yet another example of a country rejecting leadership allied with the US. Congress won largely because it courted the bottom third of wage-earners who had been left behind in the BJP's "India Shining" economy. Nevertheless, the Bushies can't be pleased.

We bishops, like most Catholics, hope and expect that our fellow Catholics in political life will be guided by and live out the truths of the faith which God has given us. But many prominent Catholics in the political realm continue to fail to deliver on these hopes and expectations. Some probably do this to pursue political advantage. After all, it is difficult to take an unpopular position, particularly when one is seeking the votes of a majority of citizens. But integrity is a quality all people rightfully expect from their political leaders. In my judgment, Catholics who publicly ignore or oppose clear church teaching in serious matters fail the litmus test with respect to integrity. This becomes a problem for Catholic and non-Catholic voters alike.

While he wouldn't issue direct instructions for priests to deny Kerry Communion, he did say that "Catholics who publicly disagree with serious church teaching on such matters as abortion or same-sex marriage should refrain from receiving Holy Communion." The message was clear. And then Vlazny went on to target Kerry voters--an especially bold foray into the political sphere.

If they vote for them precisely because they are pro-choice, I believe they too should refrain from the reception of Holy Communion because they are not in communion with the Church on a serious matter. But if they are voting for that particular politician because, in their judgment, other candidates fail significantly in some matters of great importance, for example, war and peace, human rights and economic justice, then there is no evident stance of opposition to Church teaching and reception of Holy Communion seems both appropriate and beneficial.

You may have noticed that he also targeted supporters of same-sex marriage there--an issue currently working its way through Oregon's legal system. According to the Archbishop, those who believe the state should comply with its own constitution and issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples (a belief that is clearly not religious nor the purview of the Catholic Church. What's particularly bad is that the effort to target Kerry will have substantial effect long after the election. Oregon's governor and a number of elected officials are Catholics. Their views will henceforth be subject to review by bishops, priests, and fellow parishoners to see if they past religious muster.

Why isn't anyone asking how Berg went from our hands to terrorist hands? I'm not a conspiracy nut but something isn't right here.


I have to say, with my tinfoil hat at the ready, it was almost strangely too perfect--the timing, the action, the 'greater atrocity than thou-ness' of it all.

At a certain point, the effort to comprehend something of this chaos and magnitude isn't whacko at all--it's the reasonable product of a logical mind. Sherlock Holmes said something like that--eliminate all possibilities and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.

Why did they take pictures? The cannard about "a few bad seeds" has already been shot to hell. (As the conspiracist above told me--my job has greater safeguards than that. This is the US military--you're telling me a bunch of rank privates are running around snapping pics on their cell phones of naked Iraqis and the military doesn't know. Come on.) So somehow, someone decided it was okay to at least allow this photos to be taken. Why?

I don't have a pet theory, nor have I heard a particularly convincing one (no, the "rile 'em up" hypothesis did not convince). Anyone have a reasonable guess? Or an unreasonable one that fits? I'm still waiting....

"I have confirmed that your son, Nick [Berg], is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly."

Beth A. Payne, from the US Consular office in Iraq, in an email to the Berg family

It's getting difficult to keep up with the atrocities and damn near makes blogging obsolete. I have nothing to add. We're right and well screwed.

(Originally posted at The American Street)

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he and other top officials kept President Bush "fully informed ... in general terms" about complaints made by the Red Cross and others over ill-treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

"We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that that's what he expected us to do," Powell said.

So the question is, what's more surprising--that Bush has been lying about his ignorance, or that the good soldier seems to be dabbling in impertinance? Obviously, the latter. So why would Powell, shamed, discredited, and powerless, at this late date suddenly find a backbone? Partly because, as a good soldier, he has to protect those underneath him as well as above him. But maybe also because the jig is up for Bush:

Powell met with Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in January 2003 before the Iraq war; on May 27, 2003, after Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq; and in mid-January this year....

During his January visit to Washington, Kellenberger met not only with Powell but also with Rice and, reportedly, with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

I'm serious--if we don't start hearing rumblings of impeachment, I'll be surprised (even if they're just rumblings). Things are that bad for Bush right now.

Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee, touted as the ruling coalition's show-stopping, vote-catching statesman-politician, had called the polls six months early on the back of his peace initiatives with nuclear rival and neighbour Pakistan and a perceived heady feeling over robust economic growth.

His party spin doctors had coined the phrase "India Shining" - a reference to what they said was a feel-good factor sweeping the country....

The television exit polls after the initial rounds had given the first signs of warning: most of them showed the main opposition Congress and its allies narrowing the gap with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition.

"But the margin of NDA's defeat is truly stunning. The odds that the Congress could so soon become the largest party of India were certainly very low. It is a most surprising result," says Professor Ashutosh Varshney, who teaches political science at the University of Michigan.

Gandhi is the apparent heir to the position of Prime Minister--she's run the Congress Party since 1998, and energized the campaign. Her son Rahul further helped Congress's cause by winning a seat in parliament from Uttar Pradesh (where four other Gandhis have won seats). Still, it's not a done deal. As Congress begins to assemble its coalition, there will be pitched political maneuvering. Gandhi, for all her popularity, still has staunch critics (that Italian thing has always unnerved Indians, never mind the last name). For this old India watcher, even the prospect is amazing.

It's hard to say what it means to the world. Vajpayee, to his credit, had been making strong overtures to Pakistan--India's historic nemesis--for peace. The Indian economy is steaming along, but Vajpayee apparently lost because the bottom third of the wage-earners have been left behind. They may have backed Congress this time, but bringing 200 million people out of poverty won't be easy--they may not vote Congress next time. India has become a fairly stable democracy, however, and the changes are likely to be relatively small--at least for those of us looking East.

Wow. My jaw's still hanging open.

[Update: Gandhi declares the peace process will continue: "Most certainly. I would also like to add that from the very beginning we have been supporting Prime Minister Vajpayee's Pakistan policy."]

Two central claims of the Christian faith are crucial in our thinking: that every person, as a child of God, is of infinite worth; and that all persons, as participants in God’s one creation, are related in their humanity and vulnerability. This is why the World Council of Churches has asserted that “war is contrary to the will of God” - because it destroys that which God has made sacred.

In a sinful world, some of us may hold that there may be times when war is a necessary evil. But Christians should never identify violence against others with the will of God and should always work to prevent and end it.

We believe, with these things in mind, that the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy must be to build up the whole, interdependent human family and to promote reconciliation whenever possible. Yes, this means standing firmly against all acts of terror, but it also means envisioning a world in which war is truly a last resort.

Current U.S. foreign policy, however, is not aligned with this principle. Many people see our policy as one based on protection of our country’s economic interests narrowly defined, rather than on principles of human rights and justice that would serve our nation’s interests in deep and tangible ways. We are convinced that current policy is dangerous for America and the world and will only lead to further violence.

We, therefore, call for a change of course in Iraq, and we encourage you to do the same. Specifically, we are calling upon our country to turn over the transition of authority and post-war reconstruction to the United Nations - and to recognize U.S. responsibility to contribute to this effort generously through security, economic, and humanitarian support - not only to bring international legitimacy to the effort, but also to foster any chance for lasting peace. We would ask that members of our churches, as they feel appropriate, contact their respective congressional delegations to urge the U.S. to change course in Iraq.

It includes a number of signatories whose member churches number in the thousands (including Bush's own Methodists). What's really remarkable is that the group is encouraging member churches to read the letter aloud from the pulpit in the coming month.

But let's not make too much political hay out of it now. The Christian Churches are not making a political statement so much as a religious, humanitarian one. In the spirit of my earlier post, it is a wonderful message to receive on this dark day.

Editorial pages editors have long wrestled with the question of how to treat letters to the editor. Should a newspaper publish letters in proportion to what it receives, or should it be sure it prints equal numbers of letters on each side of an issue in contention? When Columbia Journalism Review sampled letters-to-the-editor at newspapers around the country in March and April of last year, it found that letter writers who opposed the war in Iraq dominated. Despite that, editors of three out of ten newspapers studied chose to publish an equal number of pro-war and anti-war letters. In Eugene, Oregon, the Register-Guard received seven antiwar letters for each pro-war letter, but its policy was to print one pro-war letter for every antiwar letter. So also with the Nashville Tennessean, where 70 percent of all letters-to-the-editor were antiwar but 50 percent of letters printed were pro-war. In Lexington, Kentucky, letters were 2-to-1 antiwar in one week and 1-to-1 in another week; yet both weeks the Lexington Herald-Leader selected letters at a 1-to-1 ratio.

Now wait a second, let me think. I dimly recall something about this--wasn't, wasn't, oh yes, I remember:

After a summer of sliding polls and an autumn of tough questions in Congress, the White House is hoping to boost public support by convincing Americans that the cynical national press is getting the story wrong. Last week President George W. Bush himself complained about the national media’s fixation on bad news, and made a show of going around them by granting interviews with local TV reporters. "I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels," he told one interviewer, "and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people."

An Islamist Web site posted a videotape on Tuesday showing the decapitation of an American in Iraq, in what the killers called revenge for the American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison....

After the militants read a statement, the tape showed the men pushing Mr. Berg to the floor. As he screamed, one of the men put a knife to Mr. Berg's neck and the men yelled "God is Great!"

The head was held up to the camera.

It's almost impossible to think of a way to react to this news that doesn't involve hatred on some level. This is an extremely dangerous time, a moment where we're looking into the abyss of revenge. Here's what we should do: resist the urge.

Sitting in my kitchen with a cup of joe, I can read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with dispassion. It's easy to observe the cycle of revenge and easy also to see the only solution--for both sides to stop, no matter how wrong the other side has been. It's easy for me to see that because I haven't passed beyond the point of reason. By virtue of my distance, I can see that alternative. But it wasn't my friend who was just killed; not my street that was just bombed. I have the luxury of dispassion.

There are volatile moments in time when that dispassion is compromised. They are the moments we should all fear--the moment when our reason is so consumed by hatred that we can't consider anything but sating it. I'm a Buddhist, and the central teaching is that we are all subject to the forces of our own confused reactive minds. The more confused and reactive our minds, the less chance we have of pulling back into peaceful dispassion. At the vanishing point, it's not possible.

In the next few days, all around us, people will have passed beyond that point. I hope that's not the mood that starts driving US action.

Handle the Iraq situation better

May
Kerry: 45%
Bush: 48%

Late March
Kerry: 39%
Bush: 54%


Worth going to war?

May
Yes: 44%
No: 54%

Late March
Yes: 56%
NO: 41%

But who are you going to believe--the polls? They have Nader at 5-7%. I think the rising pitch of Rush's bleat may be the best indicator.

How many voices were raised suggesting the White House was being too optimistic about the way American troops might be received in the long run? Even if we were greeted as "liberators," in Cheney's famous phrase, many Iraqis who would be happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein might soon want to be rid of us as well....

Voters will ask now, and historians will ask later: Why did this administration take such an enormous gamble with apparently so little planning against what could go wrong? Why did it rush into war -- a war whose date it had complete freedom to choose -- without working through the potential problems that senators such as Joe Biden and Richard Lugar, both war supporters, kept raising? I guess when you have the best secretary of defense the United States ever had, you don't sweat the details.

Oh, all right, one more, and the I promise I'll stop. This is from an interview Democracy Now did with Seymour Hersh yesterday:

There's nothing -- this is -- there's no way back on this. This is not just a question of the Arab world being mad at us for the mistreatment or seeing hypocrisy. The Arab world really sees sexual perversion in America. We are talking about the moderate Islamics. They have always had problems with the loose -- loose ways of America, you know, and the sexuality and the openness about it. It's always been very confounding for the average Islamic believer. And now they just see this as a perverse society.... So, I would venture to say you're going to see a significant drop-off of business and travel and contact with the moderate groups. I think this is a very, very damaging and way beyond Iraq. This is a very damaging event in that part of the world.

We went into Iraq with what, in retrospect, seems like a childish fantasy. We were going to topple Saddam, establish democracy and hand the country back to grateful Iraqis. We expected to be universally admired when it was all over.

We didn't understand the tragic irony that our power is also our weakness. As long as we seemed so mighty, others, even those we were aiming to assist, were bound to revolt. They would do so for their own self-respect. In taking out Saddam, we robbed the Iraqis of the honor of liberating themselves. The fact that they had no means to do so is beside the point.

Of course, one feels compelled to offer the usual told-you-so (in September of 2002, I argued that all of this would come to pass--the link appears dead, however), but there's something more significant here. Brooks has lately been confronting the failure of the Bush agenda. In arguments with Shields (on the Newshour) and Dionne (on NPR), he has tended to toe the Bush line. He got those jobs originally because he had an independent streak--and I bet his employers were wondering what happened to it. This editorial marks a serious about-face for Brooks. It's also the hardest kind of editorial to write--admitting that your assumptions, strategies, and loyalties were all misplaced. Hats off to Brooks for having the courage to write it.

When the world first learned about the abuse of prisoners, President Bush said that it "does not reflect the nature of the American people." He's right, of course: a great majority of Americans are decent and good. But so are a great majority of people everywhere. If America's record is better than that of most countries — and it is — it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances.

Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system.... Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe was inevitable.

That's but one selection from a really nice piece of rhetoric. It's a potent indictment--one of the best I've seen.

Have you noticed the uptick in WalMart advertisements reassuring us that they make excellent stewards of our future? They're underwriters on NPR and there's a full page ad in the NYTimes today that trumpets their $40M contribution to "education". I'm frightened that press like this will be hard to fight.

I know that our local WalMart sends employees into area schools to lead activities, like Earth Day projects. They wear their WalMart vests while they're doing it. They come back to the store, share pictures they took and everyone feels great about themselves, which is understandable. So why aren't unions getting reps wearing their union buttons and t-shirts in the schools to lead activities that the children and teachers would enjoy? We're losing this fight on every front.

Source: Fact-esque

The Pentagon official told me that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year. The official chain of command flows from General Sanchez, in Iraq, to Abizaid, and on to Rumsfeld and President Bush. “You’ve got to match action, or nonaction, with interests,” the Pentagon official said. “What is the motive for not being forthcoming? They foresaw major diplomatic problems.”

Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib.

Hersh also touchs on some of the arger questions, separate from individual culpability in the Abu Ghraib torture case. In one chilling section, he describes private citizens conducting torture:

Civilian employees at the prison were not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they were bound by civilian law—though it is unclear whether American or Iraqi law would apply.

One of the employees involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, according to the Taguba report, was Steven Stefanowicz, a civilian working for CACI International, a Virginia-based company. Private companies like CACI and Titan Corp. could pay salaries of well over a hundred thousand dollars for the dangerous work in Iraq, far more than the Army pays, and were permitted, as never before in U.S. military history, to handle sensitive jobs. (In a briefing last week, General Miller confirmed that Stefanowicz had been reassigned to administrative duties. A CACI spokeswoman declined to comment on any employee in Iraq, citing safety concerns, but said that the company still had not heard anything directly from the government about Stefanowicz.)

In fact, far from an isolated incident, the Abu Ghraib tortures seem to be part of regular policy. (Though possibly "coercive" beyond even the Pentagon's standards.)

In his report, Taguba strongly suggested that there was a link between the interrogation process in Afghanistan and the abuses at Abu Ghraib. A few months after General Miller’s report, Taguba wrote, General Sanchez, apparently troubled by reports of wrongdoing in Army jails in Iraq, asked Army Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general, to carry out a study of military prisons. In the resulting study, which is still classified, Ryder identified a conflict between military policing and military intelligence dating back to the Afghan war. He wrote, “Recent intelligence collection in support of Operation Enduring Freedom posited a template whereby military police actively set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews.”

It's pretty much guaranteed to get worse as more evidence comes out. And even Rummy admitted that there's a lot more intelligence.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration asked Congress Wednesday for an additional $25 billion for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional Republicans said, a retreat from the White House's earlier plans not to seek such money until after the November elections....

It seemed likely that the $25 billion proposal would be only the first portion of funds that will be needed for next year.

"The system works. The system works. There were some allegations of abuse in a detention facility in Iraq. It was reported in the chain of command. Immediately it was announced to the public. Immediately an investigation was initiated. Six separate investigations have been undertaken over a period of months since January."
Rumsfeld, yesterday

"So investigations have been underway; actions ha[ve] been taken by the chain of command during this period."
Colin Powell, this morning

I suspect there is a legal/political reason for identifying a sequence of accountability--any wrongdoing can be passed off to the guy (or gal) below you. It allows senior officials to deny that they knew what was happening--and therefore weren't responsible.

But it also reveals how the administration thinks about things, and is probably one of the central causes for so many of the White House's failures. When Bush came to office, he was keen to present himself as the MBA president--the man who would shape up the government and run it properly, like a business. Part of that was bluster, but part of it was authentic. For Bush, running something properly meant hiring all the right people. They would actually do the running. Bush's legendary incuriosity was enabled by his management style--he quite literally felt the "details" weren't his responsibility.

He's always wanted it both ways. When things go right (or are spun to appear to have gone right), Bush wants all the credit. For these successes, his CEO style is responsible. But when something goes wrong, the administration invokes the "chain of command"--the failure is attributable to some loser down the line. Lately, everything's been falling apart. Pretty much everything Bush has overseen with regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, or terrorism has been plagued with serious problems. Bush blames, in each case, some different loser down the line.

But that's not how the corporate world works. If you helm a company for 3 years and over your tenure it is plagued with scandal, failure, and embarrassment, you're held accountable. Particularly when, as was the case with Bush, the company was doing great before you got there. Government is an organism, certainly. But when you lie to improperly invade a country to "free" the citizens, seriously botch the reconstruction due to ignorance and stubbornness, and fail to properly support the troops on the ground who are doing the reconstruction, it's hard to blame it on the chain of command. Now that we're seeing the horrible, horrible results of this record of failure, it's time to ask who in that chain of command is ultimately responsible.

I have a candidate.

We saw war and grief arrive on a quiet September morning. We pursued the terrorist enemy across the world. We have captured or killed many key leaders of the al Qaeda network. (Applause.) The rest of them will learn there is no cave or hole deep enough to hide from American justice. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

*

When Dick Cheney and I came to office, we found a military that was underfunded and underappreciated. So we gave our military the resources and the respect they deserve. And today, no one can question the skill, and the strength, and the spirit of the United States military. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

The other side hasn't offered much in the way of strategies to win the war, or policies to help people find work. We're well into the campaign and all we hear is bitterness and outbursts instead of calm debate. They will find out that anger is not an agenda for the future of America. (Applause.) I will take on the big issues with optimism and resolve and determination. And I will make it clear, we stand ready to lead this country for four more years. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

*

On the ground in Iraq, we still face serious challenges. It's hard work, but it's necessary work. Illegal militias and remnants of the regime joined by foreign terrorists are trying to take by force the power they could never gain by the ballot. They know a free Iraq will be a major defeat for the cause of terror. These groups have found little support among the Iraqi people. And they will find no success in their attempts to shake the will of America. You see, they don't understand our country. We will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

*

Our men and women in the military are taking great risks, and they're doing great work. (Applause.) At bases across our country and the world, I have had the privilege of meeting with those who defend our country and sacrifice for our security. I've seen their great decency and their unselfish courage. And I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, the cause of freedom is in good hands. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Bush! Bush! Bush!

*

As we did that day, these men and women searching through the rubble took it personally. I took it personally. I have a responsibility that goes on. I will never relent in bringing justice to the enemies. I will defend the security of America, whatever it takes. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

- Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

- Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick;

- Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

- A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.

There's no context, but that last one seems like a euphemism for rape.

Army officials said the military had investigated the deaths of 25 prisoners held by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and determined that an Army soldier and a CIA contractor murdered two prisoners. Most of the deaths occurred in Iraq.

This is mind-boggling. It appears that the armed services had covered it up.

An official said a soldier was convicted in the U.S. military justice system of killing a prisoner by hitting him with a rock, and was reduced in rank to private and thrown out of the service but did not serve any jail time.

Rummy responded brilliantly by denying that it was torture: "I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture ... And therefore I'm not going to address the 'torture' word." The mind boggles further....

I have no sensible thing to say.

Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

(There are further provisions, but they all address logistics for presidents in office when the amendment was ratified.) So the question becomes one of interpretation: "and no person ... shall be elected to the office of the President more than once." If you run as Veep, does that count? This seems like one of those D'oh! moments--it probably never occurred to lawmakers that an ex-president would want to run as Veep. Until recently, it was an ignominious position--a consolation prize for a lame politician. Who'd want it? But post-Cheney, we may have to reconsider.

Seems from my reading that it would be constitutional for Clinton to join Kerry on the ticket. Perhaps there are more learned opinions out there than mine (by which I mean any opinion).

The Congressional Research Service says the Bush administration apparently violated federal law by ordering the chief Medicare actuary to withhold information from Congress indicating that the new Medicare law could cost far more than White House officials had said.

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

The actuary, Richard S. Foster, has testified that he was ordered to withhold the cost estimates last year, when Congress was considering legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare. The order, he said, came from Thomas A. Scully, who was then the administrator of Medicare.

Mr. Foster said Mr. Scully threatened to discipline him for insubordination if he gave Congress the data.

Bush has spent a slacker lifetime living at the margins of the law, waiting for someone powerful to bail him out once he inevitably screwed up. This pattern goes back to well before his time in elective office, to when he skipped out of his Guard commitment and cashed in his Harken stock right before the company failed. As president, he's followed the same pattern--leap before thinking, bungle, cover up. This revelation is but a bullet in a long list of dubious actions--some of which certainly seem illegal.

The "American Idol" bloc are sensitive to politics only on the grossest level. For them, the news must be negative for so long that the impression shifts from "plainspoken Christian" to "another corrupt rich guy who thinks he's above the law." How many of these stories can Bush sustain before he's permanently in the latter category?

Both of my parents taught me about public service. I enlisted because I believed in service to country. I thought it was important if you had a lot of privileges as I had had, to go to a great university like Yale, to give something back to your country.

Remind me again--how's the other candidate stack up?

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I went to the link they provided to discover this blurb:

BLOGGERS:
Bloggers interested in applying for credentials should first apply to the Senate Periodical Press Gallery. The deadline for applications is May 28th, 2004. Bloggers that do not fit the Congressional Press Gallery criteria can also apply to the DNCC Press Gallery.

But wait! The Senate link only takes you to a page with the following blurb (containing not a whit of info about criteria):

In order to request information from the Executive Committee of Periodical Correspondents about credential procedures, please send a brief e-mail with contact information to Periodicals@saa.senate.gov.

The DNCC Press Gallery, on the other hand, has a straightforward applications page (on which there's even a box to tick for "blog"). So maybe you can just skip that whole Senate thing after all.

(Anyone who has more info should alert me.)

[Update: You have to fill out some security forms after you apply online. Those forms are available here (in .pdf) or here (in Word).]

On who leaked the name of Wilson's wife:
[T]here was a meeting in the middle of March 2003, chaired by either [the vice president's chief of staff] Scooter [Libby] or the vice president ... at which a decision was made to get a "work-up" on me. That meant getting as much information about me as they could: about my past, about my life, about my family. This, in and of itself, is abominable.

On Bob Novak, who accidentally "outed" Wilson's CIA wife
With respect to the rest of the press, there's got to be some bottom below which you don't sink in terms of sleazy reporting. I don't think that this met the test of fair and balanced coverage. Novak tried to portray me as some Clinton appointee, when the only political appointment I'd ever received was from George H.W. Bush. By and large the press, in reporting on this case, felt a genuine fear about this White House.

Random observation
If you're fiscally responsible, this is not your party. If you believe in a moderate foreign policy characterized by alliances, free trade and the ability to operate in an international environment, this is not your party. If you believe in limited federal government, this is not your party. If you believe that the government should stay out of your bedroom, this is very definitely not your party. In fact, I would argue that unless you believe in the American imperium, imposed on the world by force, or unless you believe in the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations, this is not your party.

4. Ignoring the advice Gen. Eric Shinseki regarding the need for more troops in Iraq – now Bush is belatedly adding troops, having allowed the security situation to deteriorate in exactly the way Shinseki said it would if there were not enough troops.

5. Ignoring plans drawn up by the Army War College and other war-planning agencies, which predicted most of the worst security and infrastructure problems America faced in the early days of the Iraq occupation.

6. Making a case for war which ignored intelligence that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

11. Trusting Ahmed Chalabi, who has dismissed faulty intelligence he provided the President as necessary for getting the Americans to topple Saddam.

12. Disbanding the Sunni Baathist managers responsible for Iraq's water, electricity, sewer system and all the other critical parts of that country's infrastructure.

13. Failing to give UN weapons inspectors enough time to certify if weapons existed in Iraq.

The list continues through the topics of Counterterrorism, Afghanistan, WMD, Foreign Policy, Economy, Education, Health, and the Environment. It's really a monumental work to have collected all this in one place.

The White House nominee [Allen Weinstein] has a controversial history involving charges of excessive secrecy and of ethical violations. Almost two dozen organizations of archivists and historians have expressed concern about his nomination, and will almost certainly speak against it at Senate hearings later this year.

The charges against Weinstein center on ethical issues involving access to research materials he used in writing two books. Other historians have not been permitted to see his documents and interviews, which violates the standards of the American Historical Assn. and the Society of American Archivists.

And why, pray, would W. want this man for the job? Well, his politics are right, for one thing:

Yet there has been little fallout for Weinstein over his conduct. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) praises his nomination and Henry Kissinger sits on the board of Weinsten's nonprofit organization, Center for Democracy.

Oh, and then there's this factor, too. Not that you'd want to suggest a political motive, or anything:

The archives collects and preserves the records of government, including many presidential papers and documents from hearings such as those conducted last month by the 9/11 commission. In the next year, the archives will be preparing the release of papers from President George H.W. Bush's term in office.

Probably just a coinicidence.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party voted against his plan to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, according to exit polls reported by Israeli television.

Jerusalem Post analysis:

In retrospect, the idea that Sharon could depend on Likud voters to ratify his plan reflected a fair degree of hubris. The plan, after all, is difficult to distinguish from that put forward by Sharon's rival in the 2003 elections, Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna. Sharon won handily opposing that plan, and his own Likud voters deeply opposed any unilateral concessions, let alone the unilateral dismantling of settlements.

What has changed is Sharon's acquiescence to US opposition to forcibly removing Yasser Arafat, combined with a US willingness to proffer significant diplomatic dividends in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal. Just because these changes were sufficient to change Sharon's mind does not mean that he could persuade the core of the natural opposition to his move to go along.

In his reaction to the tentative results last night, Shinui leader Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said that what the Likud had just done was to put itself at odds with the people of Israel, just as the Labor Party did when it refused to distance itself from the failure of Oslo. Indeed, the choice of Likud members may have been a political watershed marking the beginning of the end of its relatively short dominance as a ruling party.

Joseph Wilson -- levels direct and serious accusations against the White House. He says the administration not only lied, but that someone close to the president may have committed a crime by revealing the identity of an undercover operative for the CIA -- Wilson's wife. Why did it happen? And who does he think was responsible?

Horrible, isn't it? And yet Nightline Dateline is one of the first outlets I've ever heard use the word "lie." Nightline Dateline used it seven times in the story. They also managed to give a concise (if sensational) account of the Plame outing so that all the Americans watching could understand it. Whether this has any influence on Bush--who can say? It may have been more damaging than all the Krugman articles put together.

Within days, officials at the White House seemed to acknowledge there'd been a mistake, saying the claim shouldn't have made it into the president's speech. But instead of blaming the people who made the mistake, Wilson says the White House blamed him for pointing it out.

Wilson: “Now I don't know about you, but if I'm the chief executive officer and somebody puts a lie in my speech, I'm going to want the head of the person who put that lie in my mouth. Instead of wanting the head of the person who put the lie in his mouth, the White House trained their guns on me.”

Actually, Wilson and his wife. The attack came one week later in an article, critical of Wilson, by columnist Robert Novak. Citing "two senior administration officials," Novak reported that Wilson's wife "Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." With those words, the identity of an undercover CIA agent was revealed to the world, her cover blown forever.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

--W., a year ago.

Or maybe not. "The battle of Iraq," which George and the neocons never understood, was not the invasion. This is the critical misunderstanding not just of the battle of Iraq, but of all US foreign policy. After 9/11, we listened ad nauseum to a coterie of bloodthirsty hawks lecture us about how "everything has changed" even while they failed to grasp that basic point.

Everything has changed. We understand now that the great ignored, neglected parts of the globe with little money, little infrastructure, and few weapons are our greatest threat. We understand now that the speeding integration of the world (congratulations new EU members) means that those who are not in a position to integrate will fall further behind. Trapped in a world of poverty, political instability and repression, where information neither flows in or out and education is the exception, people play by different rules. It's not the Chinas, who are amenable to adopting our basic rules about human rights and liberty if it means stable trading, that are our threat, but those countries with no hope of of integration. Our vast military can influence China, where the government is strong and stable. But it is completely toothless to threaten a suicide bomber.

The neocons thought we could bring peace and stability to Iraq with the barrels of our guns because they imagined there was an Iraq. What so many warned and which they failed to heed, however, was that there is no Iraq. Like other troubled regions, in Iraq there are people with no sense of national unity, no experience of government as a stable, positive force. For those who understood that Iraq was merely a circle drawn in the desert by the last colonists, the current situation is perfectly predictable.

If we are going to make any progress in the "war on terror," we have to quit regarding it as a war. It's something far larger and more complex. It's the reconstruction of decades or centuries of instability. Guns are the worst medicine. In those dangerous regions, the instability has always come from the barrel of a gun, always accompanied by some hollow rhetoric about freedom and peace. If the US wants to truly bring peace to Iraq and all unstable reasons, it's got to abandon the war. Peace, education, infrastructure, food, water, basic services and real freedom is what these countries need. If Iraq has shown us anything, it's that guns don't bring them.