Clova realpolitik

Archair politics at its worst

Its hard to sit back and listen to the tripe that is published sometimes, but we all do. However this piece is particularly over the top in its revisionist view of the state of affairs in 2001. Bush has his idiosyncrasies, but to suggest that he "broke the law" and "kill 30,000 of its people" (Iraq) is simply to ignore reality.

In 2001 we had just come off a Presidency famed for sticking cigars in certain womens private parts (Lewinsky) but how quickly we forget that. That was the story of the day, and he election was all about getting respectibility back. Then out of the blue, al qaeda struck on 9/11 and the world changed. Everyone has conventiently forgotten the pathetic attempt pre-Bush (by Clinton) to attack Bin Laden in Afganistan in 99 +/- to no avail. That attack was based on electronic cell phone surveillance by the NSA. How do we feel about that? Who was Bin Laden phoning then, and were we ok listening to that conversation?

Whats the difference? oh well, politics lives on.

MiamiHerald.com | 12/26/2005 | Fear destroys what bin Laden could not

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

December 27, 2005 at 02:46 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A Decisive Election in a Town Roiled Over Intelligent Design

The common sense of the people prevail in this microcosm of how religious fanaticism shows up in the US.

A Decisive Election in a Town Roiled Over Intelligent Design - New York Times

On Tuesday, the residents of Dover ousted all eight school board members running for re-election who had put their town in a global spotlight and their school district on trial for being the first in the nation to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science class. In swept the full Dover Cares slate of eight candidates, which had coalesced to oppose the change in the science curriculum.

November 10, 2005
Evolution
A Decisive Election in a Town Roiled Over Intelligent Design
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

DOVER, Pa., Nov. 9 - In the end, voters here said they were tired of being portrayed as a northern version of Dayton, Tenn., a Bible Belt hamlet where 80 years ago a biology teacher named John Scopes was tried for illegally teaching evolution.

On Tuesday, the residents of Dover ousted all eight school board members running for re-election who had put their town in a global spotlight and their school district on trial for being the first in the nation to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science class. In swept the full Dover Cares slate of eight candidates, which had coalesced to oppose the change in the science curriculum.

"I think the people of Dover are tired of the attention over such a minuscule thing and they want a change," said Lonny Langione, who had served on the board in years past and supported the challengers. "A lot of the people I talked to were upset because the school board came to using taxpayer money to advance their own agenda."

Before it took up intelligent design, Dover was a typical American town experiencing typical growing pains: family farmers selling out to developers, fields sprouting McMansions, crowded classrooms, S.U.V.'s speeding down roads built for tractors.

By wading into the great reawakening of a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the town of Dover was diverted from bread-and-butter issues, and found itself divided in surprising ways.

The lines were not neatly drawn. Christians who belonged to the same church found themselves on opposite sides. Fathers quarreled with sons. Next-door neighbors posted dueling lawn signs. Registered Republicans cast their party affiliations aside to run with the victorious Dover Cares slate when election rules forced all eight of its candidates to run on the Democratic line.

Voters themselves crossed party lines to vote for the candidates they favored. If they had not, the school board incumbents, all of whom ran on the Republican line, would probably have prevailed in a district where 70 percent of voters are registered Republicans.

In the end, the election was close. Only 26 votes separated the winner of one seat from his rival.

"I'm surprised that we won all eight seats," said the Rev. Warren Eshbach, the spokesman for Dover Cares, whose son, Robert, was among the winners. "It shows what good bipartisanship can do."

The incumbents did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The election came only four days after closing arguments in a six-week trial of the Dover school board and administrators in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, about 25 miles to the northeast. Eleven parents had sued the Dover board on constitutional grounds, saying that intelligent design was an outgrowth of religious creationism. The case will be decided by Judge John E. Jones III, who said he expected to rule by early January.

The majority of voters rejected the board's argument that it was only trying to expose students to a variety of theories about the development of organisms. The policy did not tell teachers to teach intelligent design, just to mention it in a statement to be read to students.

The statement said that evolution is "not a fact" and that students can explore intelligent design by reading "Of Pandas and People" in the school library.

The debate over Darwin versus intelligent design has played out in places like Myers Barbershop, where the owner, Barry Myers, has been trimming the hair of Dover residents for 37 years.

"I just don't think we got here by some Big Bang," said Mr. Myers, who said he voted for the incumbents. "I think if they have the right people to teach it, it should be taught."

Teaching intelligent design, he said, would help bring a "moral compass" to the classroom.

His son, Matt Myers, 34, expressed a decidedly different view, saying: "I'm glad the board's been voted out. I don't think science teachers are qualified to teach intelligent design."

Matt Myers said intelligent design should be offered as an elective, a position advocated by several Dover Cares candidates.

The campaign was hard fought and at times nasty. Board members sent out a mass mailing accusing the Dover Cares slate of allying with the American Civil Liberties Union, a group, it said in the mailing, that had also defended terrorists and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. The A.C.L.U. is representing the plaintiffs against the board.

Bryan Rehm, a member of the Dover Cares slate and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, "That's the level they were willing to sink to."

The suit will not be affected by the election in the short term, lawyers involved in it said. The judge must still issue a ruling on the intelligent design policy as it stands. But the new school board, which takes office in early December, could decide to revoke the current policy.

Terry Aguayo and Gary Gately contributed reporting for this article.

November 12, 2005 at 09:50 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Leaked Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale (highlights)

Names of the orchestrators of the rationale for the Iraq war. The Senate investigations though are politicaly motivated, and since no WMD were found, by definition the outcome will be dependant on political judgement rather than effective evaluation of the facts and situation of the time, shortly post 9/11.

Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale - New York Times

Mr. Libby's involvement in assembling the case that Iraq's weapons constituted an urgent threat began well before the invasion. Along with Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, then senior Pentagon officials, Mr. Libby was painting a dark picture of Iraq's capabilities and alleged that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda.

And the fight with the CIA over the rationale for war.

In late 2002 and early 2003, according to former government officials and several published accounts, Mr. Libby was the main author of a lengthy document making the administration's case for war to the United Nations Security Council. But in meetings at the Central Intelligence Agency in early February, Secretary Powell and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, rejected virtually all of Mr. Libby's draft as exaggerated.

The joke -- recounted by the aide, who no longer works in the administration -- sounded absurd at the time, given Libby's renown for canniness and prudence. He adheres to a favorite Cheney maxim that the vice president credits to the late Sam Rayburn, a longtime House speaker: "You never get in trouble for something you don't say."

Yet Libby could find himself in big trouble for saying too much. And this jibes with a lesser-known side of Libby, the audacious novelist and daredevil skier who has long been gripped with concern about exotic terrorist scenarios; who fervently argues his own viewpoints, particularly on matters of foreign policy; and who can become, friends and associates say, overly passionate in the face of opposing ones.

Libby, 55, has displayed this aspect of himself in a series of heady stations throughout his career -- at the State Department, the Pentagon and, for the past five years, in the Bush administration. Reporters have seen this side of Libby, too, in his full animated conviction. But almost always on deep background, out of public view.

Now Libby's cover of anonymity is blown -- and for possibly blowing the cover of a CIA operative. People close to Libby point out the incongruity of the whole thing.

"He's always been excruciatingly careful, which is ironic in his situation," says World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, a former deputy secretary of defense and a longtime mentor of Libby's.

The "situation," of course, refers to the Plame case. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to be focused on whether Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove had a part in divulging Plame's identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson.

Wilson, who undertook a mission to Africa in 2002, was widely critical of the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Fitzgerald is investigating whether officials in the administration sought to undermine Wilson by outing his wife.

Libby has testified in at least two grand jury appearances about his conversations with reporters on the Plame matter -- including two from The Washington Post. He also spoke at least three times with the New York Times's Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before accepting permission from Libby to tell the grand jury about their conversations. The Times published a nearly 6,000-word account last Sunday about Miller's dealings with Libby. The story revealed that the misspelled moniker "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook Miller used during an interview with Libby. (In a separate first-person article, Miller wrote she told the grand jury that she believed the name came from another source, whom she could not recall.)

The grand jury's term expires next Friday, and Fitzgerald is expected to reveal his intentions in a matter of days.

Friends describe Libby as engaging and unfailingly chivalrous; it is his habit to stand when a female dining partner excuses herself. He is diligent about returning reporters' calls, albeit on deep background and, in most cases, "telling you absolutely nothing," says William Kristol, a conservative columnist and longtime acquaintance of Libby's who served as chief of staff to Vice President Quayle. Kristol says Libby "is someone who would seem to spend a lot of effort at not getting caught up in something like this."

Libby, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is taut and compact, with small eyes and a short mop of graying brown hair. As has been the case through much of his career, he works long hours and complains that he doesn't see enough of his wife and two children. He's been hobbled after breaking a bone in his foot while running up stairs. He has looked gaunt and tired of late, according to those who have seen him, and he told at least two friends and associates that he was thinking of leaving the administration after the 2004 election to spend more time writing and skiing.

But those plans would seem to be on hold, at least until the Plame case is settled.

Among vice-presidential aides throughout history, Libby is distinctive for the power and authority he wields, a product largely of Cheney's outsize role in the Bush administration. Libby holds three titles: chief of staff and national security adviser to Cheney, and assistant to Bush. Like few other advisers, he attends the highest level of White House meetings. He attends the weekly gathering of Bush's top economic advisers and -- according to Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," about the Bush administration's run-up to the Iraq war -- was one of two non-principals who attended National Security Council meetings with the president after Sept. 11, 2001 (the other was Condoleezza Rice's then-deputy, Stephen Hadley).

In these meetings, Libby rarely speaks. He fixes his eyes on whomever is talking and often presses his fingers over his lips. "He sits there in the background with this little half-smile," says former senator Alan Simpson, the Wyoming Republican and one of Cheney's closest friends. Cheney vacations in Wyoming, and Libby usually goes along. "He's a dissector," Simpson says of Libby. "He is the ultimate, clinical professional."

Then there is the Libby whom Cheney adviser Mary Matalin calls "the other Scooter" and "the man who you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party."

It took him 20 years to complete "The Apprentice," a soaring, erotically charged novel set in rural Japan during a blizzard in 1903. "I went out to Colorado, drank tequila and wrote," Libby told CNN's Larry King in 2002 in a rare television interview, the bulk of which he spent discussing the 1996 novel, which had just been issued in paperback.

Wolfowitz, Libby's political science professor at Yale in the 1970s, recalls Libby telling him that "The Apprentice" was originally set in Vermont, but he eventually decided it would work better in Japan. He threw 300 pages away and started again.

The author's "storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy's emotional turmoil," the New York Times Book Review said of the novel.

A more recent piece of Libby's writing also drew attention, if not acclaim.

"You went to jail in the summer," Libby wrote in a letter to Miller, waxing pastoral after he freed her to speak to the grand jury about their conversations. "It is fall now. . . . Out west, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life."

The spy-novel dexterity of Libby's mind and the odd flamboyance of his prose raised questions that he might have been trying to say something more.

"How do I interpret that?" Fitzgerald asked Miller during her grand jury testimony, according to her account in the Times.

Friends say Libby cultivates an enigmatic bearing, one epitomized at the end of Miller's first-person account. She tells of her last face-to-face encounter with Libby, in August 2003 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., after she had attended a conference in Aspen, Colo. "At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me," Miller wrote. "He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

" 'Judy,' he said. 'It's Scooter Libby.' "

Several aspects of Libby are subject to varied interpretations, or at the very least, casual mystery. Libby is loath to disclose -- even to close friends -- what the "I" stands for in his name. Matalin credits USA Today with "breaking" the story that Libby's first name is "Irv" (though other publications had reported "Irving" and public databases list him as "Irve").

Cheney's office would not confirm or deny what the "I" stands for.

Likewise, there are differing accounts of where "Scooter" comes from. He told the New York Times in 2002 that his father, an investment banker now deceased, coined it upon seeing him crawl across his crib. The same year, in an interview with King, Libby spoke of a childhood comparison to New York Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto ("I had the range but not the arm," Libby said).

Libby was born in New Haven, Conn., raised in Florida and -- like Bush -- attended prep school at Phillips Andover and college at Yale. He lives in McLean with his children and wife, Harriet Grant, a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Until he broke his foot, Libby played in a weekly touch football game in Chevy Chase.

After graduating from Columbia Law School, Libby was practicing law in Philadelphia in 1981 when Wolfowitz, then an assistant secretary of state, recruited him as a speech writer. At the time, Libby was reading William Stevenson's "A Man Called Intrepid," which described the British and American spy operation before and during World War II. "The characters' lives seemed considerably more exciting and meaningful than Libby's work in Philadelphia," wrote James Mann in the 2004 book "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet."

Libby also worked for Wolfowitz during Wolfowitz's stint as policy undersecretary of defense during the first Bush administration. He had long been interested in unconventional warfare, particularly in the Middle East, and his portfolio included the biological and chemical capabilities of Saddam Hussein. Cheney, then secretary of defense, shared Libby's interest in weapons of mass destruction and was, according to a Pentagon official of that era, impressed by his diligence and analytical skill.

It was during the Gulf War that Miller also took notice of Libby. In a book that she co-wrote, "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," Libby is described as "a trim, boyish lawyer" who was frustrated that intelligence reports about Iraq's biological weapons program contained words like "probably" and "possibly."

"Libby," the book said, "told colleagues that intelligence analysts had an unfortunate habit: If they did not see a report on something, they assumed it did not exist."

The Gulf War era integrated several themes that have pervaded Libby's career: his interest in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, his frustration with the U.S. intelligence apparatus and his willingness to make leaps and support preemptive action. He shared the disappointment of his Pentagon bosses -- Wolfowitz and Cheney -- that the U.S. effort in the Gulf War had not toppled Hussein.

During the Clinton years, Libby practiced law at the Washington office of Dechert, Price and Rhoads, where he represented Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire whom Clinton pardoned hours before he left office. Libby was called to testify before a congressional committee investigating Clinton's pardons during the first months of the Bush administration.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks confirmed Libby's long-held view that Islamic terrorism was the foremost threat of the post-Cold War era. He had studied the topic for years and had spoken often of its horrific perils to the United States. "I was hounded by Scooter about what we were doing about things like anthrax," Wolfowitz says, referring to 2002. "He was very concerned about what he saw as a general lack of preparedness."

Libby greatly admires the work of Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian who posits that warfare is an inevitable part of civilization, evil is a basic condition of humanity, and tyrants must be confronted by the harshest possible means. (In late 2002, a few months before the Iraq invasion, Cheney -- also a Hanson devotee -- invited the historian to the vice president's mansion for a small dinner gathering that included Libby.)

Hanson's stark perspective comports with Libby's view on Iraq. He was among the administration's fiercest proponents of the invasion, and his office prepared a 48-page document of intelligence on Iraq WMDs for Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003. (Powell couldn't confirm a lot of the data and wound up not using much of it.)

In his office in the Old Executive Office Building -- once occupied by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt during their respective stints as assistant secretaries of the Navy -- Libby keeps a photograph of Winston Churchill. Like Wolfowitz, Cheney and many of the Bush administration's Iraq hawks, Libby reveres Churchill for his willingness to confront evil boldly and his unwillingness to compromise. In a December 2001 interview with James Mann, Libby read from "The Gathering Storm," Churchill's memoir of the years preceding World War II. "I felt as though I were walking with destiny," Churchill wrote of the moment he became the British prime minister, "and that all my past life had been a preparation for the hour and for this trial."

That passage, Libby told Mann, could also have applied to his boss, Cheney, on Sept. 11.

In this context of urgency, Libby can be impatient. And, associates say, he could become infuriated over discordant views over Iraq, both from within and outside the administration. On Friday the Los Angeles Times -- quoting former aides -- reported that Libby became so enraged about Wilson's public statements that he monitored all of the former ambassador's television appearances and urged the administration to wage an aggressive campaign against him. (Cheney's office declined to comment on the report.)

Friends and associates say Libby remains unbowed about the U.S. action in Iraq, and despite the setbacks of recent months has shown no hint of doubt. In times of travail, Libby recalls the excitement of his job and the grandeur of his mission.

"Cheney and Scooter play chess on several different levels," Matalin says. "That's how their minds work. It's not about what's right in front of him. They look at things in the sweep of history.

"The Wilson thing was almost mosquitoesque."

Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

October 23, 2005 at 05:16 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Slightly uneven playing-field for Japan

Last minute rejection of Japans membership by US frustrates the Japanese.

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Richard Lloyd Parry and Robert Thomson
Click here to read the full transcript of The Times's interview with Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister
JAPANESE and their leaders are frustrated at the country’s excessive financial contribution to the United Nations and its failure to secure a permanent seat on the Security Council, the country’s Foreign Minister told The Times.

September 29, 2005 at 06:31 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Who is the conservative?

Scathing but interesting attack on Bush by Andrew Sullivan.

Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one - Sunday Times - Times Online

Remember when conservatism meant fiscal responsibility? In a few years, few people will be able to. I used to write sentences that began with the phrase: “Not since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society spending binge. . .” I can’t write that any more. Johnson — the guns and butter president of liberalism’s high-water mark — was actually more fiscally conservative than the current inhabitant of the White House. LBJ boosted domestic discretionary spending in inflationadjusted dollars by a mere 33.4%.

September 25, 2005

The Sunday Times

Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one
Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.

Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and tonic. The man can’t help himself.

The first excuse was the war. After 9/11 and a wobbly world economy, that was a decent excuse. Nobody doubted that the United States needed to spend money to beef up homeland security, avert deflation, overhaul national preparedness for a disaster, and fight a war on terror. But when Katrina revealed that, after pouring money into both homeland security and Louisiana’s infrastructure, there was still no co-ordinated plan to deal with catastrophe, a few foreheads furrowed.

Then there was the big increase in agricultural subsidies. Then the explosion in pork barrel spending. Then the biggest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson, the Medicare drug benefit. Then a trip to Mars. When you add it all up, you get the simple, devastating fact that Bush, in a mere five years, has added $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The interest on that debt will soon add up to the cost of two Katrinas a year.

Remember when conservatism meant fiscal responsibility? In a few years, few people will be able to. I used to write sentences that began with the phrase: “Not since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society spending binge. . .” I can’t write that any more. Johnson — the guns and butter president of liberalism’s high-water mark — was actually more fiscally conservative than the current inhabitant of the White House. LBJ boosted domestic discretionary spending in inflationadjusted dollars by a mere 33.4%.

In five years, Bush has increased it 35.1%. And that’s before the costs for Katrina and Rita and the Medicare benefit kick in. Worse, this comes at a time when everyone concedes that we were facing a fiscal crunch before Bush started handing out dollar bills like a drunk at a strip club. With the looming retirement of America’s baby-boomers, the US needed to start saving, not spending; cutting, not expanding its spending habits.

This was one reason I found myself forced to endorse John Kerry last November. He was easily the more fiscally conservative candidate. Under Clinton, the US actually ran a surplus for a while (thanks, in part, to the Gingrich-run Congress). But most conservatives bit their tongues. Bush promised fiscal tightening in his second term and some actually believed him.

They shouldn’t have. When Bush casually dismissed questions about funding the $200 billion Katrina reconstruction with a glib “It’s going to cost what it costs”, steam finally blew out of some loyal Republican ears. When the house majority leader Tom DeLay told the conservative Washington Times that there was no fat left to cut in the budget and that “after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good”, a few conservatives lost it.

Here’s the chairman of the American Conservative Union: “Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression.” That would be correct. When you have doubled spending on education in four years, launched two wars and a new mega-entitlement, that tends to happen.

Here’s Peggy Noonan, about as loyal a Republican as you’ll find, in a Wall Street Journal column last week: “George W Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?”

Here’s Ann Coulter, the Michael Moore of the far right, a pundit whose book on liberalism was titled Treason: “Bush has already fulfilled all his campaign promises to liberals and then some! He said he’d be a ‘compassionate conservative’, which liberals interpreted to mean that he would bend to their will, enact massive spending programmes, and be nice to liberals. When Bush won the election, that sealed the deal. It meant the Democrats won.

“Consequently, Bush has enacted massive new spending programmes, obstinately refused to deal with illegal immigration, opposed all conservative Republicans in their primary races, and invited Teddy Kennedy over for movie night. He’s even sent his own father to socialise with ageing porn star Bill Clinton.” Ouch.

Conservatives have been quietly frustrated with Bush for a long time now. Honest neoconservatives have long privately conceded that the war in Iraq has been grotesquely mishandled. But in deference to their own party, they spent last year arguing that John Kerry didn’t deserve his Vietnam war medals. Social conservatives have just watched as the president’s nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court pronounced that the constitutional right to abortion on demand merited respect as a legal precedent. This hasn’t cheered them up. The nativist right, long enraged by illegal immigration, has been spluttering about foreigners for a while now. But since few want to question the war publicly, oppose the president’s nominees to the court, or lose the Latino vote, the spending issue has become the focus of everyone’s discontent.

All I can say is: about time. I believe in lower taxes. But I also believe in basic fiscal responsibility. If you do not cut spending to align with lower taxes, you are merely borrowing from the next generation. And if a Republican president has legitimised irresponsible spending, what chance is there that a Democrat will get tough?

This may, in fact, be Bush’s real domestic legacy. All a Democratic successor has to do is raise taxes to pay for his splurge, and we will have had the biggest expansion of government power, size and responsibility since the 1930s. What would Reagan say? What would Thatcher? But those glory days are long gone now — and it was a Republican president and Congress that finally buried them.

September 25, 2005 at 07:50 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Hitchens/ Galloway

It seems Galloway has reduced his book tour to a flamboyant display of rudeness, and controversial statements, which are actually hurting his image; an image that until now had some positive aspects inasmuch as he silenced the senators in the hearings earlier this year. Now he is coming across in his true colours.

The debate:

The surprise for me is that Hitchens allowed this to happen to himself. He got dragged down by this. Interestingly Galloway did not attempt to distance himself from his support of Iraqui insurgents or Hussein, and actually embellished on that.

Also, lets not forget Galloway is a Member of Parliament - no wonder the Amercians think Brits are flakes.

By Harry Mount in New York (Filed: 16/09/2005)

It was billed as the Grapple in the Big Apple and two of Britain's leading political bruisers did not disappoint as they traded punches in a heavyweight debate in New York.

In the red corner, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, was the new darling of America's Left, George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Coming at him from the blue corner was the columnist and apostate from the Left, Christopher Hitchens. It was not going to be a clean fight.

"You did write like an angel," Mr Galloway told his opponent as they exchanged insults over the war in Iraq. "You're now working for the Devil and damn you."

"The battle over which of us can be the ruder - I have already conceded that to him," parried Mr Hitchens. "The battle over which of us is the more cerebral he has already conceded to me."

The MP, expelled from the Labour Party for calling on British troops to defy orders, is on a nationwide tour to promote his book Mr Galloway Goes to Washington: The Brit Who Set Congress Straight about Iraq.

He is still basking in the glory of his May appearance before the Senate when he lambasted the war and called Mr Hitchens "a drink-soaked, former Trotskyist popinjay" in a brief encounter before his testimony.

"I am delighted to be called a popinjay in the proper sense of that word, which means a target for archery or shot," Mr Hitchens, a cheerleader for the war and now regarded by many of his old comrades as a traitor.

Mr Hitchens was once an elegant "butterfly", continued Mr Galloway. But "he had now done something unique in natural history: he is responsible for the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug. The one thing a slug does is leave a trail of slime behind it.

"I was told by my father never to wrestle with a chimney sweep, because you always come away dirty. You are not a chimney sweep. That is not coal dust on you. You are covered with stuff you like to smear on others."

Mr Hitchens opened the debate by supporting the motion: "The March 2003 war in Iraq was necessary and just."

But every time Mr Hitchens made a broad political point, Mr Galloway switched to personal invective. "The Hitch," as he is sometimes known, was forced to follow suit.

Mr Galloway accused Mr Hitchens of "Goebbelian tricks". Mr Hitchens fired back by accusing Mr Galloway of courting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the "human toothbrush, the slobbering dauphin son of a slobbering tyrant".

"For Mr Hitchens to use the word 'slobbering' is not wise," Mr Galloway said.

Known as "Gorgeous George" for his taste in expensive tailoring, Mr Galloway was turned out in an immaculate light brown suit with matching tie. Mr Hitchens dressed down for the evening in slacks and a sweaty, open-neck blue shirt.

"It is a disgrace that an MP should go before the Senate and decline to testify and sink to guttersnipe abuse," Mr Hitchens said.

"This war in which he glories; I wish he'd go and pick up a gun and go and fight himself," Mr Galloway responded. "He said that soldiers would be greeted by flowers. Two thousand young American soldiers are lying in the ground, a testament to the fact that they were welcomed by something else."

"This is self-discrediting," Mr Hitchens said. "Some of this is funny; a cheap laugh always is."

"How far has this neo-con rot seeped into your soul?" Mr Galloway asked. "You have fallen out of the gutter into the sewer.

"The pit of exculpation that you have attempted to dig will swallow you up," Mr Galloway continued, before claiming, to loud booing from the Hitchens fans, that "9/11 came out of a swamp of hatred created by us".

"You picked the wrong city to say that and the wrong month," Mr Hitchens said, to cheers, turning to the audience. "This is sinister piffle, masochism offered to you by a sadist."

September 16, 2005 at 10:30 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

How can this happen to Bush?

He had it together in 2001; he had it together, even when 'old Europe defied him in 2003, and he won that battle. But he got caught napping on Katrina ... this is a disappointing article. He has got to change some staff and get this turned around or its going to be a long three years till '08.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.

September 12, 2005 at 10:38 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Secondary results of Hurricane Katrina

Katrina was a terrible Hurricane, but it is a natural disaster. The obvious impacts on the Louisiana coastline are dramatic, and enormous.

There is a new theme emerging and which hasn't reached clarity yet, but it is reaching consensus. That is the US political model .... it doesn't matter whether they are Democratic or Republican on this either. It is the general approach to people management, which is generally referred to as the social security net. Other advanced countries, eg Japan, UK, Germany, France, Australia all have their issues, US has 37 million people (12%) living under the poverty line.

However, what is interesting, is the extent to which US is in fact different. It is useful to understand because Bush gets everyone more excited than the facts. Lets look at child povert as a proxy for poverty.

The real difference isn't between US and the rest. The difference is between US, Canada, UK, versus the rest. The rest being the socialist countries of Sweden, Norway, France etc, all of whom have big social security (and tax) nets. No question that the 2-3% + difference the US exhibits within the "top" group is consequential, but the overall picture is meaningful. So ... which model is best?

Definition: "Child poverty" index is defined as the share of the children living in the households with income below 50% of the national median.

Country Description Amount
1. Mexico 26.2%
2. United States 22.4%
3. Italy 20.5%
4. United Kingdom 19.8%
5. Turkey 19.7%
6. Ireland 16.8%
7. Canada 15.5%
8. Poland 15.4%
9. Australia 12.6%
10. Greece 12.3%
11. Spain 12.3%
12. Japan 12.2%
13. Germany 10.7%
14. Hungary 10.3%
15. France 7.9%
16. Netherlands 7.7%
17. Czech Republic 5.9%
18. Denmark 5.1%
19. Luxembourg 4.5%
20. Belgium 4.4%
21. Finland 4.3%
22. Norway 3.9%
23. Sweden 2.6%

September 10, 2005 at 01:22 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Perspective in weather watching ...

CNN.com - 4 dead as typhoon slams Japan - Sep 6, 2005
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Posted: 9:54 a.m. EDT (13:54 GMT)
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- A typhoon pummeled southwestern Japan on Tuesday, causing floods and landslides that left at least four dead and 14 missing, and paralyzing transport. Officials ordered more than 100,000 people to flee their homes.

September 6, 2005 at 11:55 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The View From Abroad - how US is viewed

The US has its issues, and Katrina brings home how complicated their relationship remains with the rest of the world. However at the same time, the "a bit slow" comment from Bernstein is a bit over the top too. Thats precisely the arrogance that the world hates about Americans.

The View From Abroad - New York Times

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: September 4, 2005

Berlin

THEY were perhaps a bit slow, but the expressions of sympathy and offers of aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina did materialize in Europe through the week.

There is a big credibility gap, inasmuch as the largest superpower in the world cannot deal with something as simple as adequate levees, as does Holland.

There were many comments to the effect that earlier predictions of the disaster did not lead public officials to make sure the levees would withstand any possible onslaught, and there was the unspoken opinion that such would not have been the case, say, with the dikes of the Netherlands, or in any of the rich European countries.

Then even in this atmosphere, there are still the voices of reason, that can see beyond the immediate issues, and realise that trying to make polirical gain out of this is a bad thing.

A few environmentalists in Europe seized on the situation to express one of their greatest irritations: the unwillingness of the Bush administration to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Jürgen Trittin, minister of the environment in Germany, was the most prominent among these, though others in Europe echoed this sentiment.

"The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina - in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures - can visit on his country," Mr. Trittin said.

But Mr. Trittin's comment, which made headlines in Germany, provoked as much outrage as approval. "Instead of standing by the Americans as they try to come to grips with the hurricane catastrophe, our environment minister Trittin shows the world the face of the ugly German," the mass circulation Bild Zeitung wrote Friday. A British commentator, Gerard Baker, called comments like those of Mr. Trittin and a few others examples of "intellectual looting." It was, he said, "the predictable exploitation of tragedy for political purposes."

September 4, 2005 at 08:08 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Galloway is now having fun!

The Americans will have no idea what to expect if they let him there to criticise alongside Fonda. This sounds quite political, and I wonder who is behind it.

Galloway and Fonda forge a fighting pact - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sarah Baxter
Left pounces
THE controversial MP George Galloway, who is to tour America this month accompanied by Jane Fonda, the Hollywood star, will be sharpening his critique of the Iraq war in the light of President George W Bush’s difficulties in coping with the effects of hurricane Katrina.

As Denise Bollinger, a tourist stranded in New Orleans said, “It’s downtown Baghdad.”

September 4, 2005 at 12:04 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The sheer extent of Katrina impact

The criticism of government response continues. There is also criticism of preparedness, and thats a different story, covered well here. at Lenins tomb. Here, lets look at government (ie Bush) response.

Its worth noting the sheer physical size of the predeominant impact of Katrina. Map below from the FEMA site. While New Orleans gets the TV coverage, consider the prime hit zone is 500KM wide (East/West), and 300 KM deep (North/South). Admittedly the NO situation is exacerbated by the levee damage, and accompanying flooding, but its clear the extent of this emergency is large.

Some are beginnning to compare the responses to 9/11 and 7/7, to Katrina, and they are simply not in the same category. Its not as simple as sending all your emerency personnel down to a fallen building or subway station, then going after the bad guys. Once the Army got involved, everything looks like its getting under control.

Download file

September 4, 2005 at 10:44 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

He said WHAT with WHOM!

Ok, by anyones standards this is incredidly bad timing and bad taste.

Focus: When the levees broke, the waters rose and Bush’s credibility sank with New Orleans - Sunday Times - Times Online

As chaos spread, the president seemed passive. He said on Friday that he was “satisfied” with the response, but not the results. What does that mean? Then he held a photo-op with Senator Trent Lott, whose house had been demolished. “The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before,” Bush said. “Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

According to the official White House transcript, laughter followed that remark. Lott was Senate majority leader until a few years ago, when he was forced to resign because he said he regretted that racial desegregation had taken place in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. So while the poor and the black were drowning or dying, Bush chose to chuckle in the South. It beggared belief.

September 4, 2005 at 02:06 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The politics of weather - Lenins tomb

Good research being done by Lenins Tomb on the organisation(s) charged with disaster management for New Orleans. This points to the real responsibility for results so far, rather than the usual suspect.

LENIN'S TOMB: The politics of weather 3: the shyness of experts

Remember my earlier point that disaster management in New Orleans had been privatised, the 'catastrophic hurricane disaster plan' having been handed over to Baton Rouge-based Innovative Emergency Management last year? Watching this nightmare unfold, I've been wondering why no XQ$@!# one is asking what exactly IEM got paid for.

September 4, 2005 at 12:10 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Bush bashing finds a new low

The mayor of New Orleans finds new ways to reach the low in leadership with his comments.

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

He continues with his leaderhip tone ....

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

Then you layer in the media coverage, as summed up here in the UK from Blithering Bunny
and you have a recipe for political disaster for Bush.

But BBC reporters are remarkably good at finding disaffected poor black people and even more disaffected middle-class white lefties who can be relied upon to say the right things. We did get a tantalizingly brief shot of dozens and dozens and dozens of trucks driving somewhere in the distance, but wherever they were going, the BBC reporter wouldn’t be there.

September 3, 2005 at 06:48 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The dark side of the humanitarian crisis in Lousiana

Let me speak the unspeakable ... note the following excerpt from cnn with my emphasis.

Water continued to rise in downtown New Orleans, reaching 12 feet in some places Thursday afternoon.

The city had no power, no drinking water, dwindling food supplies, widespread looting, smoke rising on the horizon and the sounds of gunfire. At least one large building was ablaze Tuesday.

Then we have this:

The U.S. Coast Guard said its crews assisted in the rescue Monday of about 1,200 people stranded by high water in the New Orleans area, and thousands more were rescued Tuesday morning.

As we watched the lone, young individuals being lifted from the roofs of residential neighbourhoods, one has to question why they are there. No network made this connection, and all felt sorry for those lone individuals sitting atop those single family residential homes.

August 30, 2005 at 09:42 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US Human rights group against deportation of UK moslem radicals

I haven't located the specific group(s) referred to in this BBC story, but this US group is against the deportation of moslem radicals.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Clarke believes bombings linked

"Those individuals concerned are now under detention, pending deportation, and that means they are removed from any particular ability to threaten us in that way. That is a very important step."

His comments came as New York-based Human Rights Watch said the UK could not legally deport suspects such as radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan despite a promise they will not be tortured.

August 16, 2005 at 08:22 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Able Danger - more detail on 9/11 commissions mismanagement during lead up to election

During the lead up to the 2004 Presidential election, this reporting from GSN is electrifying in its "politics at all costs" implications.

The 9/11 commission individuals need to be held to account. What else have the mismanaged in the commissions name, in order to manage their political agenda. The US and the worlds security are at stake here, and these are not things that should be let go lightly.

GSN Magazine

In September 2000, one year before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, a U.S. Army military intelligence program, known as “Able Danger,” identified a terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, NY, one of whose members was 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to “take out that cell,” according to Rep. Curt Weldon, a longtime Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is currently vice chairman of both the House Homeland Security and House Armed Services Committees.

The recommendation to bring down that New York City cell -- in which two other Al Qaeda terrorists were also active -- was not pursued during the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, said Weldon. That’s because Mohammed Atta possessed a “green card” at the time and Defense Department lawyers did not want to recommend that the FBI go after someone holding a green card, Weldon told his House colleagues last June 27 during a little-noticed speech, known as a “special order,” which he delivered on the House floor.

And to add additional clarity, and evidence, which surely no-one could invent, so it must have some truth, comes the yellow sticky angle ...

“We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn’t exist,” the intelligence officer told GSN.

August 12, 2005 at 03:10 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Able Danger: the 9/11 Commission findings suffer credibility loss

The Cap makes a startingly simple, yet key observation - the facts are often staring us in the face, and its lack of ability to assemble the right facts at the right time, that holds the intelligence agencies from better progress.

I see this every day at work too ... inability to focus on facts, and continual focus on "conventional wisdom" which often isn't supported by facts.

In the case of the 9/11 Commission, its finale co-incided with a horribly angry and political campaign. The true facts may well be driven out by Able Danger as the catylst.

Captain's Quarters

What does that mean for the Commission's findings? It meant that the cornerstone of their conclusions no longer fit the facts. Able Danger showed that the US had enough intelligence to take action -- if the government had allowed law enforcement and intelligence operations to cooperate with each other. It also showed that data mining could effectively identify terrorist agents.

August 12, 2005 at 02:32 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Able Danger: The Clinton/ Berger connection

Thanks to Dr Sanity for some clear thinking on this issue. Turns out there are at least two key issues with Able Danger:

1) the data on Atta was ignored in 2000, one year before 9/11. Note this is during Clintons time in office, not Bush.

2) the 9/11 commission chose to ignore this information too in 2004 becuase it didn't align with "their facts"

So this re-opens the prospect of the Atta/ Iraq connection again, something close to the Democrats heart, and something Bush took some big credibility hits on.

Dr. Sanity

In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.

And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.

And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.

August 12, 2005 at 02:23 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

What was known about Atta and when?

With this quote the Americans have themselves in quite a pickle. It appears a secret investgiation by a military intelligence group code named "Able Danger" identified Atta as part of an al Qaeda cell one year prior to 9/11. Again none of this is to say they knew what he was going to do, but the key element is that they decided to not investigate him.

9/11 Commission's Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker - New York Times

But Russell Caso, Mr. Weldon's chief of staff, said that "while the dates may not have meshed" with the commission's information, the central element of the officer's claim was that "Mohammed Atta was identified as being tied to Al Qaeda and a Brooklyn cell more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, and that should have warranted further investigation by the commission."

Able Danger were analysing travel records seeking patterns which might conclude further investigation was warranted. Using "computer-driven data-mining techniques, sought to call their superiors' attention to Mr. Atta and three other future hijackers in the summer of 2000". This points to the inability of different groups to work together, but on a deeper level, it points to poor investigative processes.

Investigators should always be willing to challenge conventional wisdom, and the mere fact one element (whether Atta was in US prior to 2000) doesn't align isn't enough to brush off other data driven evidence on cell membership.

Mr. Felzenberg said the commission's staff remained convinced that the information provided by the military officer in the July 2004 briefing was inaccurate in a significant way. ....

.... Mr. Felzenberg said staff investigators had become wary of the officer because he argued that Able Danger had identified Mr. Atta, an Egyptian, as having been in the United States in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr. Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed that he had not entered the United States until June 2000.

"There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report," Mr. Felzenberg said. "This information was not meshing with the other information that we had."

August 12, 2005 at 01:49 PM in Intelligence, US Politics, al-Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Return of the flat earth society

The US steadily moves iteself towards an extremist view of evolution, which appears to be an excuse to make the country even more fundamentally religious.

Intelligence: Intelligent design rears its head

Kansas is one of many states where teaching evolution is under attack. In Georgia's Cobb County, for instance, the local school district stuck labels on textbooks saying “Evolution is a theory, not a fact”. It was told to remove them by a district judge. Georgia's state superintendent of schools proposed removing the E-word altogether from the biology curriculum, though she later backed down.

The argument against Darwin and evolution is just that ... an argument against Darwinism. There is no compelling alternative argument; merely that humans are too complex to have evolved, but must have rather magically appeared. And this magical appearance is the opportunity for the "intelligent design" bunch to attribute to God.

Intelligent design asks interesting questions about evolution, but since all its answers are usually “God”, scientists have rejected it. As the National Academy of Sciences has said, intelligent design “and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life” are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own. (Instead, intelligent designers poke holes in evolutionary theory.)

Aside from anyones view, clearly this unequal debate between lay people with a religious agenda, versus scientists with an evidentoary and data based agenda, will debilitate scientific teaching in the USA, and thus, debilitate future US scientists. What was that movie where the scientists were the bad guys, and they all got locked up .. hmmmm

Whichever way the argument over intelligent design is finally resolved, it is likely to damage science teaching. This is not because bad science standards will necessarily be adopted but because—as Diane Ravitch of the Brookings Institution showed in “The Language Police” in 2003—the biggest threat to high standards is the unwillingness of state Boards of Education to offend any sort of pressure group, whether right or left. Instead, they avoid controversial topics altogether. In 2000, a survey by the Fordham Foundation found that only ten states taught evolution fully, six did so skimpily and in 13 the treatment was considered useless or absent. (Kansas received an F minus, and “disgraceful”.) These failings shame American evolution teaching, and the manufactured controversy over intelligent design will do nothing to make them better.

August 5, 2005 at 04:13 PM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Americans just can't help themselves from looking dumb sometimes

The "Special Relationship" that exists between US and British intelligence sometimes looks pretty one sided when this happens - UK provide full disclosure, in confidence/ secrecy, and Americans tell everybody, with a few errors for good measure. Then they try and rationalise their actions, and look pretty stupid as they defend the indefensible.

This is why certain sites exist ... there is just too much good stuff out there.

BBC NEWS | UK | NYPD clarifies bomb disclosures

The NYPD said investigators believed the bombs were made using a peroxide-based explosive that can be made from hair bleach and other ingredients.

Officials said the bombs had probably been made in Leeds and had been stored in a powerful refrigerator.

The substances used in the failed 21 July bomb attacks were "similar but not necessarily the same", a spokesman said.

The bombs were transported to the outskirts of London in drink coolers stashed in the boot of two cars and detonated by mobile phones that had alarms set to 0850 BST, the officials added.

August 5, 2005 at 12:12 AM in US Politics | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home