Rich Pickings: Patriots Who Love the Troops to Death

Patriots Who Love the Troops to Death - New York Times: By Frank Rich

It was a rewriting of history that made the blogosphere (and others) go berserk last week over an Op-Ed article in The Times, “A War We Just Might Win,” by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. The two Brookings Institution scholars, after a government-guided tour, pointed selectively to successes on the ground in Iraq in arguing that the surge should be continued “at least into 2008.”

The hole in their argument was gaping. As Adm. Michael Mullen, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said honorably and bluntly in his Congressional confirmation hearings, “No amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference” in Iraq if there’s no functioning Iraqi government. Opting for wishes over reality, Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack buried their pro forma acknowledgment of that huge hurdle near the end of their piece.

But even more galling was the authors’ effort to elevate their credibility by describing themselves as “analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.” That’s disingenuous. For all their late-in-the-game criticisms of the administration’s incompetence, Mr. Pollack proselytized vociferously for the war before it started, including in an appearance with Oprah, and both men have helped prolong the quagmire with mistakenly optimistic sightings of progress since the days of “Mission Accomplished.” ...

A similar over-the-top tirade erupted on “Meet the Press” last month, when another war defender in meltdown, Senator Lindsey Graham, repeatedly cut off his fellow guest by saying that soldiers he met on official Congressional visits to Iraq endorsed his own enthusiasm for the surge. Unfortunately for Mr. Graham, his sparring partner was Jim Webb, the take-no-prisoners Virginia Democrat who is a Vietnam veteran and the father of a soldier serving in the war. Senator Webb reduced Mr. Graham to a stammering heap of Jell-O when he chastised him for trying to put his political views “into the mouths of soldiers.” ...

Anyone who questions this bleak perspective need only have watched last week’s sad and ultimately pointless Congressional hearings into the 2004 friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman. Seven investigations later, we still don’t know who rewrote the witness statements of Tillman’s cohort so that Pentagon propagandists could trumpet a fictionalized battle death to the public and his family.

But it was nonetheless illuminating to watch Mr. Rumsfeld and his top brass sit there under oath and repeatedly go mentally AWOL about crucial events in the case. Their convenient mass amnesia about their army’s most famous and lied-about casualty is as good a definition as any of just what “supporting the troops” means to those who even now beat the drums for this war.

It is an astonishment to me that one who has written so often on this topic can continue to summon up the resources of passion and cogency so brilliantly displayed by Frank Rich in this (and so many other) columns. Thank you to a great journalist.

Bedtime for Gonzo

Eugenewashingtonpost.com: By Eugene Robinson

It's way past bedtime for Gonzo. At this point, every day Alberto Gonzales continues as attorney general means more dishonor for the office and the nation -- and higher blood pressure for Senate Judiciary Committee members trying desperately to get a straight answer out of the man.

Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. After his pathetic act in front of the committee Tuesday, it's no surprise that Democrats are threatening to investigate him for perjury. But it was Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, who looked Gonzo in the face and told him, 'I do not find your testimony credible, candidly.'

Specter seems ready to pop a gasket. 'The hearing two days ago was devastating' for Gonzo, Specter said yesterday. 'But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that.'...

Asked about the glaring discrepancy, Gonzo said Tuesday that the disagreement and the hospital visit were about "other intelligence activities," and "not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

Specter's response: "Mr. Attorney General, do you expect us to believe that?"

No one believes it. The most generous interpretation is that Gonzo, fearful of facing a perjury rap, is insisting on an artificially and dishonestly narrow definition of "the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced" -- leaving out "intelligence activities" that any reasonable person, including Comey, would consider part of the program. The nice word for that would be dissembling.

The not-so-nice word would be lying. Hence the call yesterday by a group of Senate Democrats for a perjury investigation.

I hope they nail him. Anyone tempted to feel sympathy for Gonzo should check out his weaselly explanation for why he would think it appropriate to buttonhole a sick man in his hospital room, regardless of the issue.

"There are no rules governing whether or not General Ashcroft can decide 'I'm feeling well enough to make this decision,' " Gonzo said. When Specter pointed out that Ashcroft had already turned his powers over to Comey, Gonzo replied, "And he could always reclaim it. There are no rules."

"While he was in the hospital under sedation?" Specter interrupted, before giving up on getting a straight answer.

Gonzo answered the question, all right -- inadvertently, of course: "There are no rules."

That's the guiding philosophy of this administration. As far as these people are concerned, there are no rules of common decency. There are no rules of customary practice. There are no rules governing respect for the truth, or even respect for the privacy and health of an ailing colleague. ...

More on Alberto's Excellent Adventure

New York Times:

The panel’s chairman, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and its ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, assailed Mr. Gonzales on a host of issues involving the Justice Department, including the firings of nine prosecutors last year and the White House’s assertion of executive privilege to keep key aides from testifying about those events.

Perhaps, Mr. Specter suggested, it was time for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the prosecutors. “There is evidence of low morale, very low morale, lack of credibility,” Mr. Specter said, scoffing at Mr. Gonzales’s promise to repair his agency. “Candidly, your personal credibility.”

“What is this White House so desperate to hide?” Mr. Leahy asked early on, alluding to the administration’s invocation of executive privilege. “This White House claims to be above the law.”...

Mr. Specter signaled that he did not accept Mr. Gonzales’s explanation about the hospital incident. “What credibility is left for you?” the senator asked at one point.

Mr. Specter has accused Mr. Gonzales before of dodging questions, and he did so again today. At one point, the senator said, “I see it’s hopeless.” At another point, he said acidly, “Let’s see if somewhere, somehow we can find a question that you’ll answer.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, also expressed exasperation. “I listen to you,” she said. “Nothing gets answered directly. Everything gets obfuscated.”

Yet for all the hostility vented at Mr. Gonzales, there was no sign that today’s hearing would change anything. ...

And Mr. Gonzales, besides promising that he “will not tolerate any improper politicization of this department,” said he would not leave under a cloud.

Actually, it's the politicization that he considers proper that worries me. That, and the Class Five hurricane swirling around his head.

Taylor made for keeping White House secrets

The Carpetbagger Report :

But even more annoying, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick explained, was that Taylor was selective when it came to what was privileged information. In short, when she liked the question and wanted to answer it, Taylor testified. When she didn’t, she claimed she was forbidden from speaking.

Specter opines that Taylor correctly asserted the Fielding privilege in response to Leahy’s question about her conversations with the president. This makes it doubly strange later in the day when Taylor elects to answer that same question. (The president did not discuss the firings with her.) See? It’s not just the senators fighting about the scope of this amorphous executive privilege; even the witness can’t fix upon a clear rule. Taylor spends the morning huddling with her lawyer, Neil Eggleston, who in a most unlawyerly fashion urges her to disclose more, not less, ostensibly privileged information. The result is a session of bizarre push-me-pull-you testimony in which Taylor asserts this “privilege” that is not hers to assert, and then arguably waives that same “privilege” over and over again as she discusses in detail things that clearly fall within its vast scope.

At first this pattern of half-compliance with the subpoena just confuses the senators. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., huffs that “the fact that you are answering some questions but not others weakens the executive privilege claim even further. It shows how specious their claim is.” But later, Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Leahy begin to observe that in fact Taylor’s notion of the executive privilege seems to be that she can testify at length to exonerate friends at the White House, then clam up when she might implicate them. As Leahy growls toward the end of the day, “each time the finger points at you, you hide behind your oath to the president.”

Earlier this week, when the White House claimed privilege, Dems asked the Bush gang to explain the basis for the claim. The White House refused — effectively saying, “We can’t talk and we can’t talk about why we can’t talk.”

Taylor’s testimony raised a different possibility: the White House can’t explain the claim because their argument doesn’t make any sense, even to them.

So, is there some kind of test the rest of us can use in hiring, that measures the candidate's ability to forget only those things that might be embarrassing to the employer, and that locates loyalty to the person of the employer as the supreme (and perhaps sole) value? Sounds handy.

The surge is working: another benchmark achieved

International Herald Tribune:Guards steal $282 million from a bank in Baghdad

BAGHDAD: In an astonishing heist, guards at a bank here made off with more than a quarter-billion dollars on Wednesday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

The robbery, of $282 million from the Dar Es Salaam bank, a private financial institution, raised more questions than it answered, and officials were tight-lipped about the crime. The local police said two guards engineered the robbery, but an official at the Interior Ministry said three guards were involved.

Both confirmed that the stolen money was in American dollars, not Iraqi dinars. It was unclear why the bank had that much money on hand in dollars, or how the robbers managed to move such a large amount without being detected.

When we stand down, they steal our wallets. At least incompetence is not pervasive; it just goes in the wrong direction.

How Alberto Gonzales' incompetence became a defense for his wrongdoing

Slate Magazine: By Dahlia Lithwick

A few months ago, just after Alberto Gonzales turned in about the most dismal performance in the history of Senate testimony, I observed that he might have—oddly enough—done just what his boss had expected of him. Musing over his lame defenses for the partisan firings of nine U.S. attorneys—defenses ranging from 'I had no idea what my subordinates were doing' to 'I can't recall my middle name' to 'I didn't actually bestir myself to prepare for this hearing'—it occurred to me that Gonzales was the perfect attorney general for this administration. Way better, really, than John Ashcroft.

Viewed in that light, Gonzales' performances in the House and the Senate this past spring were in fact a tour de force. Why? Because if you accept as truth the great myth of the Untouchable Unitary Executive—and Gonzales surely does—it must also be true that the highest form of fealty to that Unitary Executive is to thwart congressional oversight any way you can. If you must behave like Beavis or Butthead in order to achieve that constitutional effect, so be it. Alberto Gonzales has it in him. ...

It's difficult to ascertain the precise moment in the Bush administration in which confessing not to have been doing one's job at all became the best defense against the claim that one did one's job badly. But given the choice between admitting to perjury or incompetence, you can bet that Gonzales will easily, indeed gleefully, cop to the latter. From the very beginning of the U.S. attorney scandal, he has admitted to being checked-out, hands-off, apathetic, and incurious. It's enough to have gotten him fired from a job at Dairy Queen, yet all part of a day's not-work, it seems, from the perspective of the White House. ...At the end of it all, the bargain the president seems always willing to accept is a tragic one: The lunatics are running the asylum, but at least the asylum is all his.

This Administration has entered its bunker for the duration. Let's hope the rest of us find a way to survive. Where is Nurse Ratched when we need her?

FDA Officials Criticized for Secrecy

My Way News : By ANDREW BRIDGES

WASHINGTON (AP) - For years, the public calendars of two top federal drug safety officials were largely blank - devoid of the required detail about their contacts with the industry they regulated.

Open government experts and lawmakers said it is only the latest example of the lack of transparency at the Food and Drug Administration and a violation of the spirit of open government. The FDA attributed it to administrative oversight....

Federal regulations require the FDA to maintain a public calendar that details all "significant meetings" between its top brass and anyone outside the executive branch. There is no punishment for failing to disclose the information, but open government experts called it crucial to make public all the same.

"It's important to disclose this kind of stuff so the public knows who these high-ranking FDA officials are talking to and who has their ear. That's part of the process of assessing what's going on at FDA and are decisions being made in the best interest of the public," said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. ...

Frequent FDA critic Dr. Sidney Wolfe called it "ridiculous" that the FDA had failed to post the calendar listings but suggested the requirement should be expanded to cover even lower-level employees at the agency. It's those employees, Wolfe said, who spend the most time meeting face-to-face with drug companies.

"Before decisions that seem to be going in the wrong direction from the public health perspective, it might be nice to know a company was in there," said Wolfe, of the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Whay's the problem? It's not like the drug companies are like the oil and energy companies meeting secretly with The Dick.

Oh, you think so?

Bushs Amnesty Gaffe

New York Times Blog:

This morning President Bush tried to take on critics of his stance on immigration while casually dropping by (along with a big press contingent that set up long before he arrived) a meeting among his key officials dealing with the issue.

And, in defending the bill pending in the Senate, he said:

“I’ve heard all the rhetoric — you’ve heard it, too — about how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you’ve got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that.”

Dick, can't you get this guy to read the script properly?
It's been more than six years. Time to trade him in?

Nine other oaths Karl Rove could swear to Congress

Slate Magazine (an oldie but goodie): By Hart Seely

1. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, maintaining an overall average of at least 70 percent truth, subject to later verification by an independent panel, so help you God?

2. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, but in ways that are carefully cloaked in metaphor and allegory, so they require lengthy interpretation, in a Zen sort of way, so help you Buddha?

3. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, unless in your opinion we are not worthy of it, in which case you shout like Jack Nicholson in that movie, 'The truth? You can't handle the truth!' so help us all?

4. Do you solemnly swear to answer all questions in a semitruthful fashion and not claim things that are totally ridiculous, such as that George Bush actually reads a book every week, so that we all don't have to sit here and feel embarrassed by what you're saying, so help you God?

5. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, except for when you claim that you can't remember, in which case we promise not to press the issue and later bring forth Tim Russert to testify that you are nothing but a dirty liar?...

And, in memory of Richard Rorty:

6. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with the understanding that—hey, who are we kidding here?—there is no real truth, life is an illusion, and let's all get together later and smoke up a doobie, so help you God?

Who still likes Bush?

From The New York Times Blog:

Conservatives wanted Bush to retain Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but last Thursday Bush dumped him. Conservatives want Bush to pardon Scooter Libby (who, after all, merely lied under oath to impede a national security investigation), but Bush refuses to do it. Conservatives want Bush to dump attorney general Alberto Gonzales (whom they consider an incompetent toady), but Bush won’t do that either. So here’s the right-wing recipe thus far: Keep Pace, free Scooter, ditch Gonzo. Whereas the Bush recipe is: ditch Pace, ditch Scooter, keep Gonzo.

Fitzgerald on Libby sentencing

From Salon.com:

'While the disappointment of Mr. Libby's friends and supporters is understandable,' Fitzgerald writes, 'it is inappropriate to deride the judicial process as 'politics at its worst' on behalf of a defendant who, the evidence has established beyond a reasonable doubt, showed contempt for the judicial process when he obstructed justice by repeatedly lying under oath about material matters in a serious criminal investigation.'

Fitzgerald continues: 'Mr. Libby's prosecution was based not upon politics but upon his own conduct, as well as upon a principle fundamental to preserving our judicial system's independence from politics: that any witness, whatever his political affiliation, whatever his views on any policy or national issue, whether he works in the White House or drives a truck to earn a living, must tell the truth when he raises his hand and takes an oath in a judicial proceeding, or gives a statement to federal law enforcement officers.'...

"The judicial system has not corruptly mistreated Mr. Libby; Mr. Libby has been found by a jury of his peers to have corrupted the judicial system."

Spelling it out...

Untitled Document: "St. Lawrence University President Blasts U.S. Education Secretary in Speech

CANTON, N.Y., May 21 (AScribe Newswire) -- At its commencement ceremony held on Sunday, May 20, St. Lawrence University President Daniel F. Sullivan blasted U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, calling a recent report issued by a commission she appointed 'a national embarrassment.'

In his remarks before 551 graduates and their guests, Sullivan said that the education department is out of touch with what America wants and needs from its educated populace and lashed out at the Spellings' proposed reforms.

'Almost every day we read in the newspaper of efforts by Spellings to dumb down the education for life we seek to provide at St. Lawrence and substitute something that is woefully inferior,' Sullivan stated.

He added that the report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the 'Spellings Commission') was 'meant to be a bold outline for how higher education in America should be reformed to meet the needs of students and the nation in the 21st century. Instead, it is in its major thrusts, in my view, a national embarrassment.'

Sullivan said, 'The vision of higher education suggested in the report is a cafeteria 'grab-and-go' system about as far removed from intentional, serious, dedicated and demanding study as one can get. And in the entire document, the word 'faculty' is used only once, in an aside, as if the future strength and vitality of the nation's professoriate were somehow irrelevant to creating and sustaining excellent higher education in the 21st century."

Just in time for Spellings appearance on the Daily Show?
UPDATE: Which was pretty lame.

Maybe these bozos aren't entirely clueless

VA Bonus Winners Sat on Review Boards - RedOrbit: By HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON - Nearly two dozen officials who received hefty performance bonuses last year at the Veterans Affairs Department also sat on the boards charged with recommending the payments.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press raise questions of conflicts of interest or appearances of conflicts in connection with the bonuses, some of which went to senior officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1.3 billion short and jeopardized veterans' health care.

The documents show that 21 of 32 officials who were members of VA performance review boards received more than half a million dollars in payments themselves.

Among them: nearly a dozen senior officials who devised the flawed 2005 budget. Also rewarded was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who manages a system with severe backlogs of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Bloggers on the World Bank scandal

Bloggers on the World Bank scandal. - By Blake Wilson - Slate Magazine:

Wolfowitz may soon be history, but what's next for the World Bank? Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly's Political Animal writes: 'Good news: it looks like Wolfowitz is toast. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Bad news: Can you imagine who Bush is going to nominate as a 'screw you' replacement? Doug Feith? Rick Santorum? Monica Goodling?'

You just can't make this stuff up

Commerce Inspector General Broke Whistle-Blower Law, Report Finds - washingtonpost.com: By John Solomon and Joe Stephens

The Commerce Department's inspector general, who is supposed to look into complaints of wrongdoing by government officials, committed 'egregious violations' of the federal law that protects whistle-blowers by retaliating against two subordinates, a government investigation has concluded.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found that Inspector General Johnnie E. Frazier wrongly demoted the two employees during an investigation of his spending, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post. It concluded that Frazier's actions violated the Whistleblower Protection Act.

Comments from (former?) friends and political allies

From Bloomberg.com:

"The country doesn't believe George W. Bush, it doesn't trust him, and with 19 months to go it's only going to get worse," predicts Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who ran Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign. "There is nothing the president can do to get his (poll) numbers back up."

Bush is reviled around much of the world, has precious little political capital at home, and seems surrounded by hacks or the forgettable and faceless.

One does worry that comments like this end up being replayed as "famous last words."

Would that we had more of a tradition of resignation after "loss of confidence" motions.

Does anyone really think Bush will be another "Truman"? Anyone out there able to comment, from memory or careful study?

Jeopardy: The answer is Jan. 20, 2009

A Feeble Performance - New York Times:

...it is part of a long chain of evidence that Mr. Gonzales does not have the ability or the moral compass to do his vitally important job.

It was a reminder that Mr. Gonzales’s record was deplorable before the prosecutor purge. He was an architect of policies in the war on terror that the Supreme Court has held to be illegal and unconstitutional. He has defended President Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping operations with a zeal terrifying in the head of an agency that is supposed to uphold the Constitution — not manufacture excuses for the president to trample on it. There is also evidence that he allowed ideologues to pack career positions at the Justice Department with thinly credentialed hires, chosen for their party affiliation.

AND THE JEOPARDY QUESTION: When will it ever end?

Mr. Gonzales can cling to his office as long as the president supports him and Congress does not impeach him.

More significantly, Bush can cling to his office as long as Cheney supports him and Congress does not impeach him.

A handy reference guide to GOP scandals

By Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch - From Slate Magazine:
Bushies Behaving Badly: A guide to GOP scandals.

The real issue is Bush

Gonzales Is Said to Seem Confident He Will Stay - From The New York Times:

“For anybody to be suggesting that this matter is over or closed is pretty far off base,” Mr. Conyers said, adding, “My experience is when the president says he’s standing behind you, that’s when you should really be concerned.”

Premature plan to close Gitmo

TheHill.com - Feinstein proposes plan to close Gitmo:
By Chris Good

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation Monday that would close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“Guantánamo Bay has become a lightning rod for international condemnation,” Feinstein said. “Rather than make the United States safer, the image projected by this facility puts us at greater risk.”

My own view is that Gitmo should be maintained as a (mandatory) retirement home for members of the current Administration.