Politics: Juggle War Away!!

Alert reader AB notified us of this excellent example of why direct action protest is sometimes so stupid as to border on the absurd. Apparently some protesters did the old chains and PVC thing on Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street, near the White House. They were removed by police.

Another group of anti-war demonstrators dressed in colorful circus attire protested on the sidewalk near those arrested, carrying placards with slogans such as "Greed" and "Justice". One protester juggled while another did tricks with a hula-hoop.

NOT THE HULA HOOP! ANYTHING BUT THE HULA HOOP! NOW WE'LL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO STOP THE WAR!

Politics: Out of Step

One of the leading frustrating things about many Americans is this bottomless craving for sentimentality without any actual emotional connection. It's what makes us watch reality shows so we can feel bad when a person is crushingly disappointed, but makes us turn off the news when those disappointments could actually affect our lives. It's what makes us choke up at the quaint and heart-rending but drives us to disdain when something actually causes us to look inward, re-assess, to try and understand something which we may not enjoy.

Many Americans hate doing this, and often I feel this emotion is one of the leading dividing forces in the country.

It was this sensation, I believe, that makes a lot of Americans turn off their heads and not think about so much that makes our country trying at times. It is this drive which makes people respond viscerally when they are challenged in a belief that they have decided is 'settled.'

This sensation, an unctuous distillation of denial and sentimentality, explains why people so breathlessly flock to the right-wing radio demagogues: nothing is up in the air in the worlds of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. If a liberal wants you to believe something (and I'm speaking as a liberal), we appeal to someone's intelligence (we're always saying 'don't you see?'). But the right wing gabbers don't ever give you that option. They don't want you to think. They want you to hear what they say as if it came from your own head.

That rolls together with my point about the all-emotion/no-thought school of American thought. It's pervasive. People don't like to be reminded that a batch of racist purges, some good old fashioned ineptitude and the deady deception of the Supreme Court is how we got our current president. (Hush.) People don't care to know that this war is unjust and our leadership is pursuing it as a campaign strategy, not an actual war. (Be quiet.) They don't want to hear about our civil liberties falling away (Shhh) or our education system crumbling (Zip it) or anything else.

All this explains the recommendations of media consulting firms released recently and reported today in the Washington Post.

Read and gag:

That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who've been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.

"Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW: . . . Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion," advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a "War Manual" memo to its station clients. ". . . Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war."

The company, which describes itself as the largest radio consultant in the world, also has been counseling talk show stations to "Make sure your hosts aren't 'over the top.' Polarizing discussions are shaky ground. This is not the time to take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not when our young men and women are 'in harm's way.' "

The influential television-news consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates recently put it in even starker terms: Covering war protests may be harmful to a station's bottom line.

In a survey released last week on the eve of war, the firm found that war protests were the topic that tested lowest among 6,400 viewers across the nation. Magid said only 14 percent of respondents said TV news wasn't paying enough attention to "anti-war demonstrations and peace activities"; just 13 percent thought that in the event of war, the news should pay more attention to dissent.

Politics: The Sound of Minds Closing

The Kansas State Senate, apparently at a loss of things to be completely troglodytic about, decided to cut off funding to the University of Kansas unless it forces a teacher to remove some sexual videos from a human sexuality class.

The wildly popular class routinely reaches its 500-student capacity and it is taught by one of last year's outstanding educators, Dennis Dailey. The press release about his designation includes this laudatory paragraph:

Dennis Dailey joined the KU faculty in 1969. He won an Outstanding Educator in America Award in 1974 and the Budig Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1989. Dailey received the Chancellor's Professorship for Excellence in Teaching in 1990 and the Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator (H.O.P.E.) Award in 1994. Since, then he has been a H.O.P.E. Award finalist three times. Dailey earned a bachelor's degree from Hamline University, a master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Social Work and a doctorate from Washington University, St. Louis. Dailey has written more than 10 books on human sexuality. His current research focuses on male sex-role socialization and clinical practice effectiveness.

What idiots. Remind me to avoid Kansas at all costs.

Politics: Un-Embedded Ire

I think the points I was trying to make yesterday in my item about the dangers of the embedded journalist program are emphasised by this Washington Post item. I feel like Howard Kurtz wrote the item a little too tongue in cheek, like, "what a riot, this reporter is defying the military's embedded mouthpiece program and now nobody can find him." It isn't a riot, it's an attack on the freedom of the press.

The military is very aware of the value of the embedded reporters, but also the danger they perceive from unembedded journalists doing the work that helped Americans to understand what was actually happening in past conflicts. They've decided that this reporter, who had signed no document promising to censor his reports for the government (unlike embedded reporters), was a threat to them because he was speaking freely. They either confiscated his equipment or detained him. Shouldn't this be something we should worry about? Isn't it freedom that the Bush administration keeps claiming it is fighting for?

Politics: Take This Job...

Apparently, the Bush administration's plan to allow private industry to bid on work done currently by government employees has had a real impact on federal workers.

They want to quit.

The AP is reporting that an Office of Personnel Management poll (of more than half the federal workforce) found that 35% may have quit their jobs because of the effort to move work to the private sector. They also appear to be fairly annoyed that many outstanding workers don't get adequate recognition and that many crappy employees don't get disciplined or fired.

Sounds like a real fun place to work.

Politics: Justice Continues Its 10-Month Holiday

Federal prosecutors decided that they would again defy and appeal a judge's order that dirty bomb suspect (but charged with no crime) and former gang member Jose Padilla be allowed to meet with legal counsel. Padilla hasn't seen an attorney ever in his 10-month incarceration, currently taking place at a South Carolina naval brig.

Remember, Mr. Padilla is an American citizen, who has not been convicted of any crime in relation to terrorism. He was detained upon returning to the United States from Pakistan, based on a tip from some long-forgotten al Queda joker named Abu Zubaydah. That is where the actual facts of his case dry up. This news item does appear to confirm that Mr. Padilla's incarceration features sensory-deprivation interrogations techniques. That's real swell.

Anyhow, I'm not certain how they keep misplacing it, but if John Ashcroft's pals in the Justice Department need a fresh copy, here's a link:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Politics: Embedded Like a Tick

Jack Shafer in today's Slate.com makes the point that "the general who devised the "embedded" program deserves a fourth star." Shafer's point, made well, is that the embedded journalists are offering incredible coverage, all of which has been wildly pro-U.S. forces, and that this is something that "decades of spinning, bobbing, and weaving at rear-echelon briefings could never achieve."

However, there is an important line, which Shafer approaches, but doesn't cross. These embedded reporters are offering, as Shafer points out, "soda straw" views of the fighting, and these are more useful for snapshots which somehow should be bound together into a more cohesive narrative of the war. Shafer doesn't come to the necessary conclusion: that the picture we're getting at home is comprised entirely of these flag-waving, happy to be alive, reports from the front. (For something insightful, check out Jon Lee Anderson's excellent New Yorker "Letter from Baghdad.") These reports also betray the bond between the embedded journalists and their assigned military unit.

These rah-rah reports talk all about how "we" engaged some enemies, how "our" supply lines are working out, etc. etc. The reporters have gone native to their units, reporting as if they were just a slightly more cogent U.S. soldier talking to people back home. The information may not be biased in a traditional way (i.e. untrue) but it is biased because better outcomes get reported and worse ones get downplayed.

My friend AB points out why this is so critical. Relevant, valid, at times bloody reporting from the Vietnam war was what made America at large understand how badly things were going. (AB also points out, referring to an item we've agreed on before, that the protest movement in the United States didn't accomplish this task.) This trenchant reporting was possible because, in Vietnam, reporters moved about freely, pursuing information, seeing more than a soda straw view of the war. Per reporter, they were seeing more, and drawing more conclusions, by exercising their discretion and delivering those insights to the people back home. They were observing a line between themselves and the work of the soldiers and sailors they were reporting on.

In my opinion, this war is unjust. Still, I don't want a reporter to tell me only that things are going terribly. War is the sum of many battles. Some will go poorly and some will go well. Conscientious reporting will tell us about both, and offer analysis that demonstrates what those successes and failures mean to the overall effort. Would a reporter who spends all day with a bunch of soldiers under fire, embedded in their unit, freely offer critiques of their actions, tactics or methods when he videophones his remote in at the end the day?

Sadly for the American public, he won't. He will cheerlead. The Americans who rely on the media to maintain some freedom of thought will be denied that service if our media becomes this war's PR machine. And with an administration so willing to accept lies and distort the truth through its official channels, American's don't have a lot of hope for making reasoned, informed conclusions on thier own. And they certainly aren't getting any help from most of the mainstream media.

Music: Told Ya So

Here, yesterday I predicted that Pitchfork and other alternative music news sites would lead with Radiohead info today. See for yourself.

Politics: Shocking! Halliburton Subsidiary Awarded Iraq Contracts.

Alert reader AB sent over this item, which explains that Dick Cheney's old alma mater will start benefitting from this war almost immediately. I for one, am flummoxed that our fine government could be so... aw, what's the use. Read: CNN's Iraq Rebuilding Contracts Awarded.

Politics: Call Me Crazy, But Shouldn't the FBI Try To Be "accurate, relevant, timely and complete?"

This is a civil rights disaster. According to new changes in the US Privacy Act (1974), information added to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database no longer needs to be "accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Presumably, if information is added to the NCIC database without being verified, a simple case of mistaken identity could lead to a nightmare scenario where a person's rights are (a la Jose Padilla) permanently lifted.

Politics: Uh, Remember When Bush Said He Looked Into Putin's Soul?

I don't think he was expecting to see Russian support for Bush's sworn enemy in wartime.

Reuters is reporting that there is something of a high level diplomatic snit arising from Russian sales and on-the-ground training and support to Iraq for radar-jamming and night-vision technology. Let the Great Game begin!

Music: And Now For Something Completely Different

Radiohead has announced the name of their next record, which, if you're a Radiohead fan, is big huge news. Trust me, outfits like Pitchfork and the like will have this crap all over their websites tomorrow. Ananova tells us it will be entitled "Hail to the Thief." Click the link for a tracklist.

Politics: Are the Detentions Voluntary, Too?

So very evil:

The FBI has interviewed more than 5,000 Iraqis who live in the United States and has detained around 30 since war began with Iraq, officials said Monday.

The purpose of the interviews, which the FBI says are voluntary, is to gain intelligence about the Iraqi government and military and to learn the identities of any spies or terrorists in the United States, the agency says. The FBI says it is also seeking to assure U.S. Muslims that hate crimes against them will be vigorously investigated.

Although the FBI says it is not using the interviews to arrest large numbers of Iraqis, two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said about 30 have been detained on immigration charges since the program began last week.

Politics: Cunning Investigative Technique, Gentlemen

A family in Everett, Ma. was inexplicably searched at 7 am by some unidentified agents of some law enforcement body of the government. Literally, that's the level of information the people get these days. Anyhow, Ali and Najah Ali, who have been citizens since 1952 and 1963 respectively, and who are 72 and 65 years old respectively, had a bunch of agents come into their home, demand their passports, refuse to explain the search, and never display a search warrant.

Restaurateurs Ali and Najah Ali are renowned for their steak bombs, but the more than half-dozen people with badges who searched their Everett home Thursday morning were not looking to eat, said the elderly couple.

``We're Muslim,'' Ali Ali, 76, pointed out, ``and they're after Muslim people.''

Spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and Everett police, all of whom the couple claim came knocking, would neither confirm nor deny the cold-call took place.

``I have no information for you,'' said Paula Grenier of Homeland Security's Boston office.

Even if you don't know the Ali family, you may have dined in one of their three Angelina's sub shops located in Everett, Malden and Salisbury.

The affable grandparents, in business for nearly half a century, are native Palestinians, but have been U.S. citizens for decades - Ali Ali since 1952 and Najah Ali, 65, since 1963.

Nice, huh?

Politics: War Malaise

I'm sad to report that my muteness on Friday was the product of both workload and a surprisingly early onset of war-fatigue. I'm hitting a malaise. I can't sit on top of all this. I can't ponder whether that's the real Saddam Hussein, or one of his body doubles. I'm making jokes about Saddam and his henchdoubles. I'm not a sports fan and I'm paying an un-necessary amount of attention to the NCAA tournament (Butler! Auburn!). I'm stressed out by conversations when they turn to the war. I'm searching for parallels to free me from the angst and strain.

I can't say I've found one yet. I've forecast civil conflict in the United States before, so it doesn't matter what I say. But I think there is something mis-calibrated in our nation right now. We've still got so many people who don't care about anything, they don't show up at the polls, they don't demand information, they don't care about the crimes our government commits in our name, they don't care much about anything. The vast majority of Americans didn't take to the streets when democracy was abrogated in the 2000 election. In fact, more people watched the Super Bowl than performed their most basic duty as a citizen in the 2000 election.

The miscalibration arises from the fact that this same huge hunk of blase bastards have an opinion on everything. In poll after poll, Americans appear to be cleanly divided -- no Don't Knows, no No Opinions. These people who can't be bothered to vote, who blissfully toss litter into landfills and buy Ford Expeditions, who don't read the newspaper and who flip it over to Wheel of Fortune instead of watching the already anemic national news, these people suddenly are foreign policy experts? These people suddenly have some staggering insight into America's energy needs?

How is this possible? How can we be a nation of such lazy, windy, morons who happen to know enough about every subject that polling them isn't a meaningless activity in media-masturbation?

Unless. Waitasecond. Is it possible that our endless polling, our stupid people, all of it, can be clearly resolved by blaming the media? They sure have gotten on my nerves this week. They cover this whole wide war like a hostage standoff. They periodically break breathlessly into wildly inane regular broadcasting to provide "developments" in the war. They gin us up with these outlandish items from their pinprick emplacements on the war frontier. They saddled up with the President on the way to war, and now they've saddled up with the infantry divisions to get the war done. The shots we're seeing are phenomonal. But they are more of the same, and they feed America's disjointedness even more.

These amazing pictures, this incredible blow-by-blow coverage of this war is so disturbing. Americans are being trained to love the war and shown how cool it is, but also how much it is like actual entertainment. We get the highs (Oil-fields captured! Iraqis surrendering!), we get the lows (Resistance stiffens! Republican Guard fights back!).

We're also getting a heaping helping of what we've demonstrated to love the most: agonizing sentiment, in the form of something somebody in a suit tells us is 'chilling' (as in "Chilling photos tonight from Iraq as American POWs are shown ..."), or something somebody in a suit tells us is 'heartwarming' (as in "A heartwarming story tonight as a family sends one of its loved ones off to war, just as a new member of the family is born...")

And I guess that's how I got where I am right now. We're getting this war handed to us, and we're swallowing it up. It is the implementation phase of the war buildup, where we were told interesting lies in an effort to make this part of the war possible by slowly bullying public support over the 50% line. Now we're being shown interesting pictures and given the right dose of death and victory to slowly move public support in the sought-after direction. Meanwhile, Rove and co. will push the budget package with tax cut (Rove's War: 1 Senate, 1 massive tax cut; democracy: 0), the public will learn to hate Americans who exercise their free speech rights by listening to Fox News, and Nigeria's about to plunge into a civil war.

So I've got war malaise. I don't watch it, and I don't want to read about it any more than I have to. I'm not so smart to think I know how it's going to end up, but I have a pretty good idea. In the meantime, I'm going to try and keep my eye on the other balls in the air right now. I'm hoping that, by staring just to the left of the war, some clear picture of America will appear, like those magic eye diagrams.

---

(What the hell is a development in this war? As we're learning now, war hasn't changed in a long time. War means killing people and getting killed. That's your development. Some of your killers get killed. Some people who don't want to kill anyone get killed. Some people don't mean to kill anyone, but they do anyhow. War is not noble, hasn't been for hundreds of years. War is a nasty, terrible thing people do to each other when some of their number combine a staggering animosity with military hardware. It isn't developing for shit. Try this sentence and these different nouns. First the sentence: "Soldiers on ___________ confronted the enemy and after a fierce _________ battle, took over their position." Here are your nouns: (series one) Bradley Armored Vehicles, M1-H1 Tanks, Abrams Tanks, horseback, foot, hovercraft; (series two) gun, arrow, slingshot, taser, laser, esp, karate. Doesn't matter. It's all war.)

Politics: Scalia's New Low

Lean Left hits a home run with an analysis of Nino Scalia's shocking assertion that what we think of as the Constitution's protections in fact have lots of room to be "ratched down." That Scalia sits on the Supreme Court, deciding the rights and freedoms that all Americans will enjoy for decades into the future is enough to send shivers down the spine and plant serious doubts about raising a family in this nation.

Politics: I've Got An Election Reform For Ya

I will be the first person to sign a petition and raise some bucks to recall and or keel-haul Commissioner Mark Scott of the Berks County (PA) Board of Commissioners. A Pennsylvania judge ordered Berks County to print Hispanic ballots over the opposition of the county after a Justice Department undercover operation revealed that "Poll workers there turned away Hispanic voters if the workers couldn't understand their names, demanded photo identification even though it is not required by law, and made inappropriate or racist comments." Two of the three commissioners said they wouldn't appeal the ruling.

Commissioner Mark C. Scott said he favored an appeal.

"This is the exaggerated byproduct of a few malcontent activists," Scott said. "We think this is part of a national trend toward a bilingual United States, which we think is a mistake."

English-only advocates argued that Spanish-language assistance is an attack on the region's cultural identity and that non-English speaking immigrants aren't informed enough to vote, even if they are lifelong U.S. citizens.

It seems we just can't get enough racism in this country. I think it might be the new national pastime, since we're cancelling the old one.

Pure Entertainment: Not In the Onion

I know that Life has been imitating the Onion a lot lately, and here's another example:

Wis. Man Eats His 19,000th Big Mac

ASSOCIATED PRESS

FOND DU LAC, Wis. (AP) - Don Gorske is already in the Guinness Book of World Records for eating Big Macs - but it's not about the fame anymore.

Gorske, who downed his 19,000th Big Mac Tuesday, said he wouldn't know what else to eat if it weren't for Big Macs.

"I'd be clueless," he said, adding that he ate a piece of pizza recently, but it "just wasn't the same."

"It wasn't my first choice," he said.

Gorske, 49, of Fond du Lac, eats two Big Macs per day and drinks little else beside Coke. He also keeps track of everything he eats in a notebook.

"I admit I'm obsessive compulsive," he says. "I have so many compulsions."

At 6 feet tall and 180 pounds, Gorske said he proves that foods you love don't have to make you fat.

In fact, attorneys defending McDonald's against a lawsuit claiming its food makes people fat used Gorske as an example of someone who frequently ate fast food but stayed slim.

Politics: Fred Francis' Scoop

Last night, as I was skipping around the dial searching for a little more insight into the nascent war in Iraq, I returned to NBC several times. I felt they had the best coverage in the very short term. Dan Rather comes across too ludicrously serious at CBS and Peter Jennings showed up late at ABC, looking like he ran straight from a haircut to the chair. Tom Brokaw had a nice rapport with a smattering of war experts and affected the right tone for this tiny little beginning to what could be a huge war and what will be a massive occupation.

But Brokaw went over to Fred Francis for what I thought was the blockbuster bit of information for the evening. Of course, as I've mentioned before, I'm out of step with the American people, and that was proven by the fact that there has been almost no coverage beyond NBC's own of this item.

Francis, reporting from Kurdistan, explained that the U.S. has had months of in-and-out incursions into Baghdad, operated by CIA special forces troops. Francis also reported that they have been operating out of a secret base set up in the Kurdish autonomous zone. According to the report, which is based on information from un-named Pentagon sources, these activities have been continuing since last summer.

So this war, proclaimed to have begun last night, has been going on for nine months. Just so you know.

Politics: Time to Cut the Cord

Dana Milbank, reprising his role as "The Only Post Reporter Who Doesn't Kiss President Bush's Ass," reports in today's edition that people are understandably raising questions about the White House's arrangement with former White House Communications Director Karen Hughes. This longish chunk from the story gives you the good setup and takedown:

Former White House aide Karen P. Hughes, now a $15,000-a-month consultant to the Republican National Committee, has been playing a key role in advising President Bush and the administration on a communications strategy for the Iraq war.

Hughes flew with Bush on Air Force One to the Azores on Sunday and helped to draft his speech to the nation delivered Monday night. Hughes briefed reporters in the White House on Monday in advance of Bush's speech, saying he would offer exile as the only option to avoid an attack. And Hughes, who officials say has worked from the White House for the past week, has played a key role in developing the administration's plan for a coordinated communications strategy during the Iraq war.

The arrangement has prompted accusations from Democrats and government watchdog groups that the role of Hughes improperly blends politics and government business. Democrats complain that the presence of Hughes gives an inherently political tinge to the war effort. "George Bush should be focused on winning this war and making sure our troops are safe, not on how his partisan campaign hacks are going to score political points in the aftermath," said David Sirota, spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.

Milbank goes on to explain that by serving as a consultant seconded over from the RNC, Hughes dodges the ethics rules that govern White House operatives, plus she essentially increases her salary. (She is billing at $15,000/month plus expenses which calculates out to $180,000 per annum, about $35,000 more than she made as Communications Director.)

Nice work if you can get it.

Politics: We're at War

Iraqi helicopters fired on Kurdish positions in the first "shots fired intending to kill."
Read this news story from the UK Independent.

Bush sent the letter to the House and Senate required by the blank check for war in Iraq resolution:

And 15 Iraqi soldiers have already surrendered.

We're at war.

Politics: My Wartime Manifesto

As we march our children to war, America must hold fast to the freedoms our first soldiers won for us here. Espoused in our Bill of Rights and burnished with the blood of the generations of Americans since the Minutemen first defended this country, America's greatest strength is our commitment to liberty and freedom. Today in America, we find that commitment under assault. An oppressive atmosphere exists, stifling the core liberties of free speech and freedom to dissent.

This atmosphere is a treacherous dishonor to our fighting sons, daughters, mothers and fathers who swear an oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." This Constitution was our shield from tyranny 216 years ago. But today, in defiance of its protections, those who speak freely are accused of treason. Today, Americans are denied the right to face their accusers in a court of law. Today, Americans are harassed and intimidated because of their ethnicity. And sadly, many of America's leaders turn a blind eye as these freedoms slip away, even as they sing the praises of the men and women whose duty it is to defend them.

Every American, regardless of their feelings about this war, should stand proudly in opposition to actions that would weaken America's birthright as a free and democratic society for people of all races, religions and beliefs. I encourage all Americans to fight the atmosphere of oppression, bigotry and hate that threatens us today. Recommit yourself to understanding and acceptance, because we're going to need plenty before this nightmare ends.

Politics: What, This Old Thing?

FBI officials revealed that an original copy of the Bill of Rights, stolen in 1865 by a Union soldier from a courthouse in North Carolina, was recovered in a sting operation Tuesday.

Attorney General John Ashcroft immediately snatched the $30 million document from the hands of the agent who recovered it and doused it in kerosene before igniting it with a match.

Had you goin' there, didn't I?

Tractor: Endgame

Dwight Watson surrendered peacefully earlier this morning, after Park Police attempted to "shock and awe" him with some small munitions, and apparently kept him up all night with air horns and bright lights. Perhaps he will get to join the ranks of the un-citizen-ized like Mr. Padilla.

Politics: Democracy's Tiny Victory in Egypt

The New York Times editorializes on the release this week of Egyptian democracy advocate Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim from jail after more than a year of harrowing imprisonment. Ibrahim's arrest was one of the most jarring examples that Egypt had a long way to go to achieve real democracy. (Read about another recent chink in the democracy machine, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's apparent plan to hand over control -- despite the presence of a nominally democratic system in Egypt -- to his son Gamal.) The Times editorial mentions that the Egyptian government pursued Dr. Ibrahim, who has spoken out on the failings of Egypt's democracy, like a terrorist or a drug dealer. His trials were essentially military tribunals, and his defense was significantly hindered as a result.

Also mentioned, but not with enough irony for my taste, is the fact that the White House spoke out against Ibrahim's imprisonment by halting some aid to Egypt. This sort of subtle, tactical, diplomatic maneuver is what the State Department was once best at accomplishing. Of the many past and future casualties of tonight's war in Iraq will be our ability to successfuly execute such actions within the delicate and complex world of international relations. We've chosen our diplomatic weapon: the hammer. But in abandoning the more graceful tactics of negotiation and encouragement, we've surely weakened our ability to achieve meaningful change in our (one-time) allies.

It will be a long time before we can say for sure that it was worth it. But I'm afraid that smart money is on a disappointing return on our investment.

Tractor: Day 3, The Crisis Continues

Sure, we're sliding into a war with global implications, but Tractor-Man has captured the heart of this city. Literally.

Tractor-Man has become a local celebrity. As you remember, Dwight Ware Watson of Whitakers, NC, drove a John Deere tractor into a pond on the National Mall here Monday just before noon. Since then, Watson -- lovably known as Tractor-Man -- has been chatting with Park Police on his cellular phone, granting multiple interviews to the Washington Post, and simply having a great time out there in the three feet of water.

Although the first day and a half of T-Man's coverage was limited largely to the traffic implications of his little soaking sojourn, today, Watson's birds came home to roost.

The Washington Post had a cover story on Watson's demands (respect, and more subsidies to tobacco farmers), three related stories (here, here, and here), a news graphic showing exactly where Watson is on the Mall, and a Metro column by the largely forgettable Marc Fisher. There is also an editorial (creatively titled "The Man On the Mall), and an 8:20 am wire story updating Watson's progress this morning.

So you don't need to wade through that: Watson has said he will surrender peacefully tomorrow if the police give him some respect. What that means I have no idea. I do know that regardless of how he surrenders, he will spend the lion's share of his remaining adult life in a federal prison for making terroristic threats, if he isn't committed to a mental institution.

Also, the Post helpfully asks this question: if a lone nutbag tobacco farmer can paralyze DC for three days, what could a terrorist, say, with a plan do to us. Shudder to think.

Finally, there are two pictures I've lifted from the Post, which you can see there, too. The first is a stunning shot from the Washington Monument. My wife and I theorized that Watson could drive the tractor over to this island and live like Tom Hanks in Castaway, except for the snipers constantly trained on him.

The second image is an undated photo taken in Rocky Mount, NC, in which Watson demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that, contrary to the statement of a neighbor (Liquidly Listed here), Watson is a certified crazy guy, and didn't get pushed to the edge just the other day. Anybody who drives around town in this one-hundred percent vehicle of the unhinged was basically just killing time waiting until the day he could drive a tractor into a pond and get on the news.

Tractor: Death from a Tractor: Airborne!

Dwight Watson's siege on the Washington Monument's nearby pond has taken a surreal turn. In an exclusive interview granted when he called the Washington Post on his cellphone, Watson, quite frankly, made not a whit of sense and basically sounded like a real whack-job. Also, he revealed his middle name to be Mare, and referred to himself as "Jack" several times.

Gratuitous excerpts from the Post's interview:

He said he came to Washington on a "mission" to get a message to the American public that he and other tobacco farmers are being forced out of business by unfair government policies.

"I'm going to get my message out or die trying," he said in a telephone call to The Washington Post from Constitution Gardens, where he drove a tractor into a shallow pond at 12:30 p.m. Monday.

"I don't give a damn no more," Watson said. "If this is the way America will be run, the hell with it. I'm out of here. I will not surrender. They can blow my ass out of the water. I'm ready to go to heaven."

Asked when he might end the standoff, Watson said: "I've got the rest of my life to stay right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Later, Watson said he had plenty of food and, re-affirming that he had nowhere to go, added, "I'm broke. I'm busted." He also confirmed that he is against the war with Iraq. (Join the club, pal. Stick to the tobacco schtick. The war thing might get you locked up by General Ashcroft. -eds.)

The Post item closed with: "Watson said he is acting alone. Asked why he decided to protest this week, Watson said: "I just played it by ear. The Lord told me to do it. He said, 'Time is running out, Jack.'""

Tractor: The Stand-Off Continues

Tractor-Man Dwight Watson shocked observers today when, after 23 hours in the pond, he moved his John Deere tractor about 50 yards.

Otherwise, developments on the Tractor-Man front have been sparse. Interestingly, though, the U.S. Park Police is pursuing a containment policy against Tractor-Man (scroll to the bottom of this story). Frankly, ask a Washington commuter, and he or she will tell you that containment is the kind of policy a country should use against, say, Middle Eastern despots who don't pose an immediate threat. Containment, however, is not the course of action those commuters would recommend for Tractor-Man, who is seriously endangering his second consecutive afternoon rush hour since his appearance in that pond is forcing the closure of Constitution Avenue and a whole pile of numbered streets from 15th to 23rd.

Politics: Voice of Reason

Stanley Kutler, in today's Chicago Tribune, makes shocking sense, and brings together voices from America's past to dispell the belief that any form of dissent is akin to treason:

The freedom and diversity we so cherish for others is strikingly lacking in our public discourse. We must not forget our traditions of challenge and dissent. For openers, we can invoke the injunctions of Theodore Roosevelt, the most red-blooded and manly of our presidents--if that is to be the litmus test for strong leadership. In 1918, ex-President Roosevelt challenged Woodrow Wilson's sweeping crackdown against dissent after the American entry into World War I. "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong," Roosevelt said, "is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Read the whole thing.

Politics: Whaddya Mean, 'Good News?'

NYTimes says that the Republicans don't have the votes to get drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANRW). Of course, it turns out they will get drilling in the oil fields of Iraq. Eh, take a penny, leave a penny. (Thanks to TJ and The Note.)

Tractor-Man Watch: Day 2 Continues

As of 10:40 am, Tractor-Man Dwight Watson remained in his tractor, in a pond, in Constitution Gardens, behind the Washington Monument. T-Man's best quote of the day (scroll to the bottom of that story): "Can you hear me America? Can you hear me?"

We hear you loud and clear, Tractor-Man.

Politics(?): Tractor-Man, Day 2

Dwight Watson, a 50 year-old tobacco farmer from Whitakers, NC, continues his stand-off with Park Police on the National Mall. Though it isn't fully clear, some reports indicate that Watson is angry about government levies on tobacco, which is feels is putting the American tobacco farmer out of business. Watson claims to have explosives, apparently in the John Deere tractor he drove into the pond behind the Washington Monument.

Just one question: If an Arab guy drove a tractor onto the mall and said through a bullhorn, after playing some traditional Arab folk music, that he had explosives in the tractor, would he still be there the next morning to snarl traffic and get jokes from morning DJs? If he kept sticking his head out of the tractor, wouldn't he get it blown off if he were an Arab man? I think you know the answer to that.

Anyhow, here's the best quote from this local news story about Tractor-Man:

A neighbor of Watson's in North Carolina told the Washington Post that she believes Watson is "trying to make a point" about the government's tobacco policy.

The neighbor said she believes Watson isn't a crazy person, adding that he's "just been pushed to the edge."

You're telling me.

Politics: Hunnerts of Thoughts

In addition to saying hunnert twice, Bush repeated the amazingly un-proven lie about Iraq harboring elements of al Queda. The only elements of al Queda in Iraq, of course, are some dodgy Kurdish groups. It is obvious we are going to war. There is no reason to repeat this lie. This lie has never, ever been believable, nor has it been even marginally effective in convincing people (including fans of this war) that we should go to war.

Also, Bush accused Hussein of using bugs to spy on UN weapons inspectors. Maybe that is where we got the idea.

What a hole we are digging. It is actually a brilliant strategy. It is fairly well-recognized that an Iraq war, because it represents an un-warranted attack on a containable foe, will bring more terrorism. But hinting that these terror attacks were already imminent makes it seem like the US is attacking a nation that actually represents a threat to us.

Bush used the phrase -overcome hatred-. Interestingly, no comment was made in this 14 minute speech, of the threat to Arab-Americans, who will be victimized along with our unfortunate Sikh friends, simply because of their turbans. Bush did not mention the ten thousand strong FBI agents who will be conducting their own terror war on our rights, starting now. Nor did he mention Ashcroft's virtually insane pursuit of terrorists by targeting plots where no actual crime has occured.

Bush paid meaningless lip service to the Iraqi people, who will unquestionably get their asses blown off by 22,000 pound Moab missiles. I hope they can take comfort in Bush's expression of caring tomorrow (it is 4 am there now) night as they eat their last eighth cup of rice for the month, after the power goes out, as it does every night at around dusk. He hailed them, savoring already his long-awaited vision of Iraqi men dancing in the streets as their oppressors go packing. Sadly, that vision conveniently omits all the blown up homes and hospitals.

Bush also took time to bash the French by comparing them to the appeasers in Europe before WWII. Nice touch, really. Nobody, of course, will point out that while European apathy may have lead to appeasement, American isolationism fed that fire. And of course, nobody in the Europe of appeasement actually sold Hitler some of the tools of his horrible oppression. Remember, the Saddam Hussein of today, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the final product of a long campaign to play our great game in the Middle East. Those chemical weapons have -Made in the USA- stamped right on the tanks.

However, in this tiny little speech, Bush did specifically ask members of the Iraqi military not to light the oil fields on fire. I guess he has his priorities straight.

Politics: Forty-Eight Hours

Although there are no news stories up with the revised timeline, CBS News just reported that Bush will now give only forty-eight hours for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq, not seventy-two hours as earlier reported. The White House apparently is leaking this information now, so that most of the evening news programs can be breathless for war as they prepare to golf-announcer-like moderate Bush's eight pm statement.

Okay, the AP is carrying the new timeline. More when Bush makes his mealy-mouthed final final final speech for war.

Politics: Get Your Masks On

And (I knew they were good for something), Fox News is reporting that senior US officials are confirming Iraqi troops in the south armed with chemical weapons. Has anyone thought of the possibility that, with nothing left to lose, and nowhere to go but to war, Saddam Hussein may pre-emptively attack us? Wouldn't that be a whole different kettle of fish?

Politics: Get Your Turkey On

The Turks are getting ready to okay a northern front on the upcoming Iraq war. The bidding closed at near $30 billion.

Politics: Tractor + Pond

Some guy drove a tractor, playing patriotic music, hauling a Jeep, which in turn was sporting a motorbike into a pond near the Washington Monument this afternoon.

I love this town.

Let's have a competition in the Shout Out field to complete this items headline equation: Tractor + Pond = ?

Politics: I'll Mount Reagan For Ya

The empty-headed wizards over at Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project have struck again. This group, in case you haven't heard me make fun of them before, is committed to adding a monument to Ronald Reagan (who, FYI, isn't dead) in all 3,067 counties in America. They have amusing press releases calling for Reagan money, Reagan islands, Reagan highways, and more. In reference to a dispute over some out-of-date names for Oregon state park attractions, Norquist, who also runs about three dozen other evil interest groups, gave one of the best press release quotes I've ever read. "There is a simple way to resolve this matter of political correctness: name the mountain, creek or butte after a political hero: Ronald Reagan. Currently, Oregon does not have anything named after Ronald Reagan."

This time, Norquist and his Reaganistas have given a nasty bump to an American historical figure who has the memorial advantage of actually being dead and whose impact won't be measured in homeless families and empty missile silos. Liquid List reader AB reports that the New Hampshire House has changed the name of Mount Clay (as in Henry Clay) to Mount Reagan. (Scroll to the last item in Kamen's column.)

Politics: If it's Tuesday, then it must be bombing

I suspect we'll be dropping bombs on Tuesday evening in Baghdad. It will take that long to get the UN inspectors out, let this farcical deadline expire and alert the media.

Of course, the next thing will be the violence against Arab Americans. It always is. As an Arab American, I am explicity certain that the American people, who have demonstrated such maturity so far in this presidentially-manufactured conflict will not fail to once again show their stupid, close-minded, worst-among-us true colors again with a coming conflict with an Arab nation.

Let me tell you about the first Gulf War. I was in high school, a senior, and I was a chubby nerd. Remember, now, that the first Gulf War was a stunning display of U.S. military might. We ran sorties from January 17th until February 24th. During that time, as expected, the U.S. air forces destroyed a huge amount of Iraqi infrastructure and the light show led to mass desertions and speedy surrenders by a huge portion of Iraq's conscript army.

In light of these news reports, my gym teacher, who already resented me because I was not a presidential fitness scholar (I would, modestly, refer to myself as something of a regular scholar), decided to make fun of Arabs, knowing that I was an Arab American, during a class period. He joked with the class, egged on by some of the class assholes, about how "Them Arabs got good armies, huh? They're really giving us a run for their money, huh?"

I didn't care what this asshole had to say. Everyone knows that if gym teachers were sensitive, caring individuals, they would probably get beat up in their own classes. I knew as a matter of fact that this particular gym teacher once had a crush (though he was married) on a women who played in my grandfather's band. He would come to their shows and sit way off to the side so he could see her legs work the pedals as she played piano. He was a sad, lonely, racist, piece of shit in a little dung heap of a town that my mom still lives in. The town is still full of racists and idiots, whose eyes remain firmly sewn shut against almost every aspect of reality. They don't see that this war was started months and months ago as a strategy for Karl Rove to break the six-decade long mid-term election slump for the party in the White House. They don't see that the eminent threat to the United States by anyone will only be exacerbated by a war against a weakened, well-contained despotic regime while stronger, better-armed, and more terrorist-connected regimes flourish with the very weapons of mass destruction we'll be using as a raison d'etre when bombs start falling in two days.

Those racist people are the ones I'm most afraid of. They are the ones who vote, and let the television think for them, and harbor these strangely out of sync beliefs. My grandmother hallucinated about Mexicans when she was in the hospital a few months back. She's never met a Mexican in her life. My father in law urged my wife and I not to name our July-due baby "something crazy," which was his way of asking us not to call him Mohammed or something he would be ashamed of.

I'm certain I won't be the first person to state that this nation has a shortness of tolerance. I've never even liked the word tolerance, because it's very utterance indicates that you are thinking of hating something, but instead you'll tolerate it for a little while. But what's horrible is that we just keep moving the intolerance around, and we don't really seem to grow any new tolerance. At the dawn of the 20th century, we had plenty of intolerance. The white American upperclass hated the Italians, the Irish and the Jews. We hated the Poles and the other Slavs. Who had time to hate the blacks, who were already mostly "in their place" according to many. No, we saved our enmity for the not-quite white enough immigrants. Then the focus shifted, and we turned our ire on the blacks, who we punished and pushed from our small towns to our goddamn ghettoes. Even today, there is only an uneasy peace between black Americans and an increasingly large group calling itself "white." (Oddly, this group contains many who were hated only a hundred years ago, the Irish and the Italians and the Slavs.)

But recently, a new group has drawn our hatred, forming under the shadow of our stale-mated conflict with the African-Americans. We now hate our immigrants, and now institutionally, we hate our Arab-Americans. We feel comfortable indicating that their presence in our economy is a security threat. We send ten dozen FBI agents to arrest one computer science doctoral student and intimidate scores of his friends in a small town in Idaho. We don't care what it looks like, we say, we're at war.

What if that pile of racist Americans I'm so afraid of decide they don't care what it looks like, we're at war? Who will be in charge of protecting the car dealers, the shop keepers, the Halal butchers, the taxi drivers, the college professors, the physicians, the scientists and project managers? Who will stop the harassment of my family members at airports? Who will protect us from ourselves?

Politics: CHARLES PIERCE, BABY

Pierce is sitting in for Alterman today, as the Alternator is hocking "What Liberal Media?". Everyone should go there and read every word Pierce has to say. I want to have Pierce write two weblogs and column for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. Read:

Richard Perle should go. Today. He shouldn't simply be fired from whatever job it is he has at the Pentagon -- Strategist? Consultant? Pro-consul? -- but he should be fired as a talking head. What Perle said about Sy Hersh, which has Josh Marshall's dander up here, as well as my own, as well as the dander of anyone who takes this craft seriously, should disqualify him forever from a place in our national discourse. Now, I know from reading the above-mentioned volume that nobody ever gets fired from that job, at least not for lunatic Rightism, but shouldn’t the leaders of major journalistic institutions realize that they've been threatened here by a messianic unelected yahoo who's been agitating for other people's blood for a flat decade or so?

I mean, if Perle got up on CNN tomorrow and announced he was Napoleon Bonaparte, or that his politics were formed by dictates from Zonga, Queen Of Neptune, we never would see the man on TV again. What he said about Hersh was no less nutty, and considerably more dangerous to any of us who believe that a democracy should not have to be lied into a war. CNN should lose his card from the big Rolodex. The New Yorker should find him unavailable for comment. He should be sent off to declaim his geopolitical genius from atop an orange crate in Tompkins Square.

Argument to the contrary: every morning, in the lobby of the UN, I see my representative during this perilous time.

John Negroponte.

There’s never a wreath of garlic around when you need one.

Read it, and tell Pierce he needs a blog of his own or two.

Politics: Miguel Estrada Loves Puppies!

The Washington Post, which has been casting a downright Washington Times-esque shadow lately, this morning ran an elegantly nuanced love paen to Miguel Estrada, the stealth neo-conservative judicial nominee who is the subject of a filibuster in the Senate right now. He apparently loves puppies, especially dobermans. (Of course, dobermans.)

Politics: This Bible Sh*t is Getting Outta Hand

In case you missed it (and how did Oliver and I both opt not to blog on it?), the Air Force tested out just about the biggest goddamn bomb you've ever seen the other day. News reports actually called it "the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world," so we're obviously not screwing around. This in itself is the kind of disturbing thing you would expect our military to do, whether they were honestly preparing for war or just jacking around in the desert, right? Right.

But I want to put on my totally insane conspiracy theorist tin-foil hat for a second, okay? The name of the bomb is "Massive Ordnance Air Blast," or MOAB for short. Some have, as this hyperbolic New York Post item did, dubbed the bomb the "Mother of All Bombs," which also shortens to MOAB.

But the guy under the tinfoil hat can't help but notice what had better be a coincidence. Or maybe it's not.

There are a whole slew of websites and even a book positing that Saddam Hussein is the Antichrist and whatnot. Most of the people aren't just afraid of Hussein, they are actually getting all lathered up for the end of the world, presumably the rapture, and the final whatever that evangelicals are always talking about.

Of course, many of the Bush administration's biggest wigs are in fact nutso envagelicals with all kinds of rapture/endtime personal beliefs, which I couldn't even begin to understand. (I learned alot about these whack-jobs in Gershom Gorenberg's excellent review/explanation of Tim Lahaye's "Left Behind" book series.)

The intersection of these two threads is clear when you read some biblical quotes. Moab was the son (or in some cases, the grandson) of Lot. Lot, you may remember, had his wife turned into a pillar of salt after the two of them fled the hot sex and good times of Sodom and Gomorrah. Anyhow, the land of Moab is present-day Jordan. It is said that Lord communicated to the Israelites (dictating, it turns out, the book of Deuteronomy) through Moses in the land of Moab. It is also said that Moab was the place the Israelites pitched their final camp before entering the promised land.

In any case, it seems pretty clear that somebody in the government thought that a freaky biblical name would be a good way to wink at all the other evangelicals out there, and spook anybody who dug deep enough, or happened to be a dweller in the area. Rummy has already admitted that the bomb, and the earth-shattering test that occurred at Eglin Air Force base were mostly a psy-ops production. (Incidentally, my wife and I were married on property owned by the USAF adjacent to Eglin, and we had our reception at the Eglin Officer's Club)

The mention of Moab is generally made to talk about conversion: Ruth in the bible left Moab and converted from her religion to the religion of the chosen people. Another frequent reference to Moab is that staging area-affect. The Mormons named the Utah city of Moab to symbolize the border of the promised land; Moab is also the only major Utah city on the Colorado River, as the biblical land of Moab was on the banks of the Jordan. In both references, the idea seems vaguely hostile to non-Christians, and at the least a ham-handed way of cramming a little bit of Christian dogma into our bombs.

Politics: Mumbai Bombing Kills 10, Injures 65

Mumbai (Bombay) has had its share of violence in the past ten years. This LA Times piece covers the history pretty well. Mumbai is regarded as a safe place for Westerners. Sadly, it's not that safe for Indians.

Politics: This Means War

President Bush will begin massing troops in the Texas desert in forty-eight hours. Bush said in a press conference yesterday, "Has the Bill Richardson regime fully and unconditionally disarmed, as required by Resolution 1441, or has it not?"

Politics: Meat-Headed Reasoning

The geniuses at the Agriculture Department, like the rest of this administration, work so hard to twist and rend reality in order to serve their corporate masters that at times, it's disgusting and frightening. I mean, musn't these people just go home and cry because they feel like every single thing they do is about deception and untruth?

Take an example. The Ag department's undersecretary for food safety told a House subcommittee yesterday that the White House would oppose a measure requiring meat companies to reveal to consumers which grocery stores had received tainted meat.

Wait a second, you might be thinking. Shouldn't the government do whatever it takes to let people know when they've bought them some beef that will keep them in the bathroom for 36 hours? Doesn't it make perfect sense that there should be a law that makes it illegal for meat packers to withhold information which could keep people from serving their family pork that will have them converting one room in their home into a vomitorium?

In fact, there is no such law requiring tainted meat sellers from releasing their list of tainted meat buyers. If you buy it, screw you, is the attitude. And apparently, the White House's absolute devotion to protecting any and all industries from regulation even supersedes their commitment to keeping Americans from dying of dehydration from an acute 48 hour period of diarrhea.

The undersecretary, Elsa Murano, probably thinking of how much she enjoys a fine cut of tainted beef, told the subcommittee that such a regulation may make meat packers less cooperative. I think it was pretty damn uncooperative for them to peddle trichinosis in the first place, but I guess Elsa Murano probably knows how testy the donors at the American Meat Institute Political Action Committee can get when you regulate them. They may not match their $15,000 contribution to the Republican House-Senate Dinner Committee. Or the $14,000 they contributed to the President's Dinner Committee. Or the $10,000 donation made to Bush Cheney 2000. Or the $7,000 to Saxby Chambliss' execrable senate campaign. Or the $7,500 to the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees.

Politics: Somebody's Lying.

The General Accounting Office revealed yesterday that wildly expensive Air Force Boondoggle the F/A-22 Raptor had once again breached a new level of cost-overrun. Remember, the Raptor was originally envisioned when we had a Cold War to fight, as Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass) points out in this Washington Post item.

Since that original requisition for 750 Raptors, the plane has grown more expensive, and the costs have forced the number that the Pentagon could buy further down. As of right now, the Air Force can only buy about 300 of the planes, and of course, they won't be ready until 2005. So, no plane, $37 billion spent and, according to the GAO report, a new cost overrun of $1.3 billion to go with the $876 million cost overrun from last year. That's more than $2 billion dollars.

Scared yet? How about this: The Pentagon thinks that the congressional cap on the plane nobody's seen yet is too low. Congress wants to spend no more than $37 million on the plane. The Pentagon thinks that, not including the $1.3 billion overrun announced this week, the plane will actually cost about $43 billion.

Shouldn't we maybe spend some of that money on these people?

Anyhow, here are three quotes from the Post piece referenced above. Who's lying?

The GAO?

The GAO report released yesterday chastised the Air Force for its failure to improve the production process in such a way that would help contain costs. "The Air Force has not addressed ongoing problems with the developmental testing and therefore remains at high risk for further schedule delays," the report said.

Air Force Spokeswoman Teresa Connor?

"We feel that we have good visibility in our cost estimate," said Teresa Connor, an Air Force spokeswoman. "It would be premature to respond until we have had a chance to review the final report in its entirety. The Air Force stands by the F/A-22 program and we believe that we have a plan to provide our nation with the world's most advanced air dominance jet that will serve a critical joint war-fighting mission and ultimately save American lives."

Lockheed Martin spokesman Sam Grizzle?

A Lockheed spokesman said company officials have not reviewed the report. "F/A-22 production costs have declined over time," spokesman Sam Grizzle said. "We anticipate that they will be reduced further as production quantities increase and further cost reduction initiatives are enacted."

Politics: On Off Message

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who is apparently a committed realist and therefore unfit for service under President Bush, told Congress members yesterday a particularly hard chunk of truth: We're going to need "several hundred thousands" troops to hold, defend and rebuild Iraq after the war.

Of course, nobody in a suit (as opposed to a uniform) believes this is true. Sunshine-y estimates from Rummy and the gang don't believe that it would take more troops than the number currently toasting their toes in the Persian Gulf. After all, look at the great job we're doing in Afghanistan a year and a half after the first bombs started falling.

Politics: 340 and Counting

Try, try, try again. Jose Padilla was once again granted access to attorneys, over the protestation of the Justice Department. The judge had made the order a few months back, but Padilla continued to be denied due process while the DOJ asked the judge to revisit the ruling. He revisited it, and decided that he was still right.

Now, hopefully, John Ashcroft will understand that he isn't the only person on the planet. Padilla may be guilty of terrible crimes, but neither you nor I nor Mr. Ashcroft know that until some kind of trial happens. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but I believe the Framers said, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence."

You can bet that Ashcroft wishes they hadn't written that.

Politics: Cointelpro All Over Your Ass

The Nashville Tennessean is reporting that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) decided to play KGB with some peace protesters. TBI Agent Greg Elliot, a 17-year veteran of the force, decided to infiltrate and monitor the March 5 "Books not Bombs" rally at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfeesboro. It was the only rally they've investigated in the last year. Elliot snooped around, told people he was a TBI agent, and then asked the speakers to identify themselves, and took down their names.

Fortunately, there was an outcry. Once it became obvious that the TBI had no good reason to investigate the rally (the reason Elliot was there is unclear), the TBI realized it had a little problem on its hands.

The Tennessean reported today that any future investigations of "lawful assemblies" will require several layers of supervisory approval.

''Agents will not be assigned to lawful assemblies where no criminal activity is suspected, unless their presence is requested by a federal law enforcement agency for purposes such as dignitary protection,'' the new policy said.

The new policy requires that a supervising agent ''communicate in writing'' to superiors the specific reason the agent is needed at the event and where the request for them to be there originated.

After the event has been approved, the supervising agent must prepare a ''special operations plan'' stating what the agent is specifically supposed to do.

The plan also must state whether the operation is overt or covert and give ''specific instructions to the agents(s) as to what actions should be taken if an operation goes from covert to overt.''

And the plan must be approved by the TBI's legal office.

And Elliot has been re-assigned out of the TBI's Criminal Intelligence Unit. Damn straight.

Politics: Is Local

In addition to serving as the homebase of this Liquid Lister (not to mention the other one), Viriginia's Arlington County made history last night, electing its first Latino county board member. Walter Tejada won 11801 votes for 55% of the total in his victory over Republican Mike W. Clancy. Tejada, who hails from South Arlington recently and El Salvador much less recently, has been a powerful voice for the county's sizeable Latino population, but campaigned as a conscientious representative of all of Arlington. Tejada is only the second elected official to any countywide position in Virginia, after Fairfax County's Education Board Chair Isis Castro.

Congratulations to Tejada, and congratulations to Arlington County, which continues a bold tradition as the most progressive county in the commonwealth.

Politics: Shhh! The Government is Trying to Concentrate on Your Privacy

This week, in response to one of the many privacy-invading aspects of the USA Patriot Act, libraries in Santa Cruz started posting notices informing patrons that their library records could end up in federal government hands, and that the law specifically "prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you." Librarians rock.

Recently, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) introduced legislation to repeal Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the one that deals with library records.

Politics: Shocking!

The Washington Post is reporting that Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Co., is among the groups "invited to bid" on the nearly one billion dollar initial contracts on rebuilding Iraq after we blow it into a million little pieces. That's about 1000 bucks to repair each of those million little pieces. Not bad.

Politics: Out of Step

After the last election, after each environmental rollback, after every lame international mis-step, after each staggeringly audacious incident of doublespeak and revision of history, after each maddening Bush administration move is met with a shrug and a bleat from the fast-food addled listless masses of Americans, I'm reminded that I am clearly out of step with the American people. I don't agree with them on much of anything. But I hope the 55 percent in this poll who say that they support attacking Iraq pre-emptively and without UN Security Council backing have some great plan for recovering Iraq, repairing the U.S. economy, bringing all those dead soldiers back to life, ending global Islamic terrorism, protecting us from a nuclear-armed militant revolution in Pakistan and... oh, to hell with it.

Politics: Middle Ground

Oliver makes a point below, that we're backed into a corner, that we've got nowhere to turn. As distasteful as it is to him, he makes something between a suggestion and a plea that America limit its military assault to a tactical war instead of the stunningly-named 400 cruise missile a day "shock and awe" approach. Reaching this point was probably hard for Oliver. I'm not there yet.

I've got a middle ground proposal of my own. (All of this is keying off Josh Marshall's personal struggle to find some center on this war.) It's scary for me, but I don't think it's as scary as it could be.

The two things I believe are: 1) war shouldn't be an option; and 2) Saddam Hussein is a bad man who shouldn't be in charge of Iraq.

How do we get them both? Earlier talk about exiling Saddam Hussein hasn't really gone anywhere, mostly because the Arab world is so divided and conflicted that they aren't ever able to meaningfully propose a real exile plan. But there is still a chance that this could work. It has never been clearer to people everywhere that the United States has a pistol to Iraq's head and an itchy trigger finger. Shouldn't an exile plan be floated right now, by someone who has the integrity, contacts and muscle to make it happen? Doesn't the Arab world have an elder statesman who can team up with Jimmy Carter or somebody to get this thing going on? What about King Abdullah of Jordan. (Carter's got uber-cred in the Middle East, folks. Basically, Jimmy could take anybody with him to make an honest go of this. Who's got his number?)

If that isn't something really close to viable, try this. We've got 250,000 American soldiers and sailors waiting to fight a war under circumstances the American people (as well as the European people, and their leaders) don't like (without UN help). This war, even if it goes swimmingly by military standards will leave a lot of dead Iraqis and quite a few dead Americans (which nobody likes to talk about). Oliver's plan, outlined here, makes for probably less death, but as I've said, I'm not ready for a slightly-less-death plan. I want much less death. Here's my plan (remember the goal: no war, no Saddam Hussein).

Special Forces go all the way to Badghad and kill Hussein. Send a team to each palace, and get the job done. We declare victory, (more on that later) and go home. The rationale is this: If we do the war we're talking about doing, we're going to have deaths like we haven't seen in some time. We're going to have 19 year olds who don't know war from Chee-tos getting killed in the desert, and families who didn't ask for this and who have been starving for a dozen years getting caught in the crossfire. We're going to have a humanitarian disaster in six places and bloody reprisals in three more. We're going to leave our children with a splintered international community and a life-sentence to prop up whatever next government we put in there with a destroyed infrastructure and a decimated nation. Who needs this?

The lives of many Iraqis will be spared with this approach. Special forces will take casualties, and some will die. But if we can do it with only these deaths, isn't it better? When they agreed to become special forces wet operatives, these soldiers stopped being regular American military. They agreed to do unsavory and very dangerous things for our government, often-times without credit for their achievements or opportunity for escape. I don't think their lives are worth any less, but I do believe that they're prepared for this type of outcome, unlike the reservist from Cleveland or the water purification specialist who went to my high school and who was killed by a Scud missile in 1991 (Frank Keough).

So we've got intelligence assets in Iraq (or Powell wouldn't have all that information he is so sparing with at the UN). Why don't we hit each palace/compound, kill whatever Saddam Husseins we see (you know the decoy thing), and get out of this nightmare. Meanwhile, our intelligence folks start spreading the rumor that the military, in a bid to protect their nation, families and colleagues from utter military domination, pulled a coup and killed The Great Uncle. If we got the right one, great. If not, let the fervor take over. Hussein will be long gone, dead or in deep hiding. Watch the soldiers shave their mustaches, see the people sing and dance in the street, take credit for freeing the grateful Iraqis, and send some teams from Halliburton to start rehabilitating those oil fields. Let the French and Russians get their long-standing oil contracts honored, and the rift in the UN is healed. Bring in the Iraqi National Congress jokers from London to make some speeches (and protect the hell outta them) so nobody gets any big ideas. Make the Kurds happy somehow (perhaps extracting INC pledges for Kurdish autonomy). Food comes in from all four corners of the globe, the plight of Iraqi people ends at last! Face is saved, on middle ground!

I know this is too utopian, but it isn't bad. If we attack Iraq, win and kill Saddam Hussein in the process, we've got the entire Arab world ready to kill us, probably a hostile, nuclear-armed Islamist regime in Pakistan, a bunch of attacks on U.S. targets abroad (a la the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998), and about 50 liters of bad blood each between us and the French and Russians. My plan avoids some of this, and we can get down to the brass tacks of rebuilding Iraq as some kind of Arab model of democracy. (We'll see how committed Bush really is to this idea; I know a guy named Karzai who says don't trust the president's handshake when nation-building is at issue.) Plus, with my plan, international opinion is more apt to swing back in our favor, as opposed to be grudgingly nudged back to dead center. Everyone wants to get in on dancing liberated people in the streets. They'll have a little more hesitation if those people are dancing amid the totally obliterated rubble that included their homes and family members.

Politics: Tightrope

Pakistan has decided to abstain from the UN Security Council vote on war in Iraq. ABC News is carrying a Reuters item on the abstention. This puts one less vote in play, making it harder for the US to get the nine needed (not to mention dodge a Russian or French veto). Pakistan has been one of our staunchest allies in the war on terror, but they can't be so blind to not see that supporting an attack on Iraq could be the end of the government of Pervez Musharraf. Indeed, with or without Pakistan's vote in the Council, an attack on Iraq may spell Musharraf's undoing. (I don't feel like I need to mention that Islamists could seize Pakistan and its nuclear weapons without much trouble.)

Politics: Veto.

All tea-leaf reading and administration vote-counting can stop: Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov says that Russia will veto the UN Resolution. This is an upgrade from statements by Russia (and others) that they "assume full responsibility" for stopping a new UN resolution.

Politics: Huh. Wow.

Gideon Levy in the Jerusalem newspaper Haaretz offers an insightful piece on the actions of the Israeli Defense Force in response to the Palestinian uprising. It speaks to the chicken-egg argument that is the uber-metaphor for the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict: When Israel executes a search for a suspected terrorist by blowing up a building and the two adjacent buildings, killing a dozen innocent people (in the case in question, a pregnant mother of eleven and two other children during an attack on the Jabalya refugee camp), are their actions justified? Levy makes the point that the action is conducted under military cover to provide Israelis with the illusion of clean hands, but that there are no clean hands left in the Occupied Territories. An excerpt:

The moment the IDF sends tanks into a densely crowded refugee camp it puts all the inhabitants at risk. The moment the tanks open fire, innocent people are bound to be hurt. Tanks in Jabalya cannot fire shells without killing women and children, just as it was impossible to drop a one-ton bomb on the house of Salah Shehadeh in Gaza without killing 15 civilians, mostly children. Thus, anyone who decides to send tanks into Jabalya is making a decision to kill civilians.

The test of intention - the terrorists intend to kill civilians, whereas the IDF does not - is irrelevant. The Armored Corps soldiers who fired shells in Jabalya may not have intended to kill civilians, but they and their commanders killed civilians. They therefore bear the responsibility for the killing. An operation to kidnap a wanted individual from Hamas in the heart of Jabalya - a "surgical operation" in the spit-and-polish language of the divisional commander, Brigadier General Gadi Shamni - that ends, as could be expected, in a dozen Palestinians killed, most of them civilians, and large-scale destruction, is an act of terrorism.

Read the whole thing. (The piece loads a little slowly, so be patient.)

Politics: Iran? I-R-A-N? This whole time, I thought you were saying I-R-A-Q.

Yes, that's Iran that this Washington Post front page item explains has experienced 'startling' progress in nuclear bomb making. While US intelligence resources have been devoted to observing one particular site there, this other one has been chugging right along, and will be ready to produce a nuke every few months by the year after next. Yep, Iran, the country with real ties to actual terrorism. In fact, the country designated in 2001 by the State Department as the "most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world.

Now, why again are we going to send our army to burn women, kids, houses and villages in Iraq again?

Politics: Does Anyone Even Care What We Do?

Apparently, we've become a nation we should despise. Not only did we kill two men in our custody during intense interrogation in Afghanistan and then lie about it (see previous post), but we're now abducting children (almost). Pakistani police took the children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who is a very bad man who we already have in custody) into custody six months ago, and now that we have him in custody, the Pakistani forces have turned them over to us for safekeeping. According to this piece in the UK Telegraph, the boys are being held in a secret location, and are being used to make Mohammed talk about terrorist events. At least Jack Bauer only pretended to threaten the terrorist's kids.

Seriously, though, I can't help but feel this is strangely out of bounds. We wouldn't accept this from any other nation, would we? Would we want DEA agents to take a drug kingpin's family into custody and use them to make him talk about big drug buys? Would we be okay with abducting the children of a car-thievery ringleader? Of course not. And I know these things aren't the same, but is there a line? Should there be a line? What if this happens to us? What if terrorists abduct a family travelling abroad and threaten the children to get someone released? Will we have put children as bargaining tools into play, even though the terrorists kill women, children and everyone else indiscriminately? Aren't we supposed to be better than them?

Politics: Oops. We Killed You.

The Independent UK is reporting American military officials are admitting that suspects died during interrogations in Afghanistan. Dead. Both men, whose deaths were earlier reported as the result of a heart attack and a pulmonary embolism are now classified as 'homicides' from 'blunt force' injuries. I'm not absolutely certain, but I have a strong suspicion that there is a line or two in the Geneva Convention about actually killing prisoners of war.

Politics: Mea Culpa McGrory

That buffoon Andrew Sullivan decides to trash Mary McGrory in today's screed. Unfortunately for Sully, he's an idiot. And he doesn't have the journalistic credibility to rinse Mary McGrory's pantyhose in his sink let alone sit there on the page grinning like a fool and panning McGrory's change of heart on an Iraq war.

McGrory published a column (which I referred to in a disagreeing but not disrespectful manner here) after Colin Powell's excruciating and humiliating final relinquishment of his dignity at the UN last month. McGrory said that she was persuaded by Powell's half-truths and meaningless gesturing that Iraq wasn't totally innocent in the matter of weapons of mass destruction. Her exact words (helpfully cited by Sullivan, who apparently can't engineer a takedown without inadvertently giving his target lots of credit) were "I'm not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend..."

This is where I think McGrory (and a lot of other columnists, opinion leaders and mindless American drooling gibbons who can't differentiate supporting American troops from blindly following our leaders to war) lost the point. Saddam Hussein has always been a bad, bad man. He was a bad man when we sold him a lot of the chemical weapons we now want destroyed. He was a bad man when we collaborated with him in what we saw as a war against a worse man, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In the devastating accounting of how bad a person must be to deserve attention from a massive, sleeping, lazy, lone superpower like the United States, Hussein was actually pretty high on the list back then, and has kept himself high by invading Kuwait, igniting that emirate's oil fields on exit, and continuing to terrorize people inside his own country even while Iraq was regarded as an international pariah state.

But none of this is new. And none of it should be news. The biggest gas attacks on the Kurds took place in March, 1988. That same 15 year period includes Saddam Hussein's savage attacks on the Marsh Arabs and other Shi'ite groups in the southern part of Iraq who didn't agree with "The Great Uncle," as Hussein likes to be called. Nothing new here.

But there was Colin Powell! He convinced Mary McGrory! He's got such an earnest face! How could he lie to us, and convince so many of our columnists and right-wing ideologues?!?

I can't answer why he momentarily convinced so many people. Magically, Sullivan knows what was in McGrory's mind at the time, and now knows (though her recent column explaining the switch gives no indication) that she changed her mind because she was afraid of getting voted off the op-ed page by her loyal readers. The funny thing is that Mary McGrory has been on that page longer than Andrew Sullivan has been drawing breath on this blue earth. McGrory's story about the re-shift -- that she heard from a lot of readers, that she kept her mind open about subsequent developments in the news, that she is capable of change because indeed that sort of critical thought is what separates us from right-wing ideologues and the gibbons -- is perfectly acceptable.

McGrory acknowledges, by way of contrast with President Bush, that she did offend her base with her earlier column. She demonstrates what moved her to belief in Powell's first speech, and she cites what moved her back to skepticism in the letters, and events that have transpired since that address to the U.N. Oddly, Sully goes to the trouble of defending (lest he be accused of hypocrisy later) the right of an informed columnist or blogger like him- or myself to change their minds and regret something they wrote. He ascertains, though, that McGrory did something quite different. He proves nothing of the sort, and in the process he reveals himself to be a fiercely partisan, utterly close-minded simpleton, whose should be careful in his decisions to cravenly attack -- rather than respectfully criticize -- columnists whose Pulitzer Prize he isn't fit to polish.

Politics: Tom Delay Declares Self King of Congress, Fires All Democrats

Tom DeLay has decided that he's had just about enough of the federal courts messing with the Pledge of Allegiance. Where does he get off? And can we get him there any sooner?

Politics: OBL + SH = SOL

President Bush has set a news conference for tonight, though the White House says there won't be any announcement of war starting. However, the BBC is reporting that rumors are circling Washington that Osama bin Ladin has been captured. White House officials also deny that there is any truth to this statement. However, the timing of the event tonight and the leaks this morning from interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that OBL is alive and near the Afghan-Pakistan border do point to an interesting possibility: One way to blunt opposition to war (now grown to such a magnitude that three of the five UN Security Council veto-holders are opposed) would be to definitively connect OBL to Iraq. I have trouble believing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is singing about everything after only a short period of brutal torture and interrogation. There is a better chance that the impression is being created that he is talking so that Bush can effectively say tonight that OBL and Saddam Hussein are working together. Watch for this and other zany conspiratorial outcomes tonight at 8 pm Eastern.

Politics: So Answer the Questions!

Republican Senators failed to stop the filibuster on federal judicial nominee Miguel Estrada. More to come.

Uh: Not Sure How to React

With thanks to reader AB, we've come across a disturbing news story about a Chee-to the size of a lemon. In the end, the discoverer of the massive Chee-to gave it to some little town that raised about $200 to buy the thing, thinking it would be a huge boon to tourism or something. Apparently, the big chee-to has become the next Mahir.

Two spin-off auctions demonstrate how stupid it is. Here's one and here's another.

Politics: [Trite] Taxpayer Dollars at Work

Atrios yesterday commented that the White House had sent a letter asking the purveyor of the whitehouse.org parody site to lay off Lynne Cheney. He also said that he sent it to some reporters and nobody took the bait. Patience is a virtue, my friend, as this New York Daily News item will confirm.

Politics: Updating

The New York Times is carrying a more in-depth item from the AP on this. Best quote: "We will not allow a resolution to pass that authorizes resorting to force," France's Dominique de Villepin said at a press conference alongside his Russian and German counterparts. "Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume their full responsibilities on this point."