Friday, February 10, 2006

Bubble Boy Goes to War

Via the Washington Post, this Foreign Affairs article:

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq
By Paul R. Pillar

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.


From the Post:

Pillar wrote that the first request he received from a Bush policymaker for an assessment of post-invasion Iraq was "not until a year into the war."


Naturally.

Pillar writes:

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized.


Hmmm. Another career professional, criticizing Bubble Boy and cronies. But I know what's going on here. Pillar is Richard Clarke's lover. I think that says it all, don't you? No need to pay any more attention to this man or his fruity words.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Guess who?

The speech jerks, in a syntactical and grammatical mishmash, from topic to topic. It engages in flights of imagination to make its case without regard for fundamental corrections that have already occurred to the record or for the deep questions posed about central tenets of this administration's policies by Republicans and Democrats alike.


Hint: Bubble Boy

From here, via Froomkin.
Since I had oh so much fun with the Cheney-Lehrer interview yesterday, allow me to return to it.

Q You drew a lot of heat and ridicule when you said eight months ago, the insurgency is in its last throes. Do you regret having said that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think the way I think about it is as I just described. I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point; that putting in place a democratic government in Iraq was the -- sort of the cornerstone, if you will, of victory against the insurgents.


Here is today's news.

Report Says Number of Attacks by Insurgents in Iraq Increases

Sweeping statistics on insurgent violence in Iraq that were declassified for a Senate hearing on Wednesday appear to portray a rebellion whose ability to mount attacks has steadily grown in the nearly three years since the invasion.


Credibility and Cheney both begin with the letter C. And that's about all the two have in common.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Interview of the Vice President by Jim Lehrer

Shorter Cheney:
Congress? They can go you-know-what themselves.

...Ah hell, I can't just leave it at that. Here is more from VP Go Fuck Yourself.

...[not] in the interest of the country, ... if ... the legislative process leads to the disclosure of sensitive operational matters with respect to this program.


Huh. This would mean that any legislation regarding intelligence collection could disclose the details of that collection. So, legislation regarding intelligence is a threat to national security.

Boy, how have we missed this all along? We sure were silly to allow any legislation at all on intelligence matters. You know, we really should just leave up to the Executive, acting in secret.

So there was a consensus between those of us in the administration who were involved, as well as the leaders on Capitol Hill who were briefed on the program that legislation would not be helpful.

...there was no great concern expressed that somehow we needed to come get additional legislative authority.


Ah. Things that a man with zero credibility should not say. Things that have already been contradicted in public.

And at that point now, we've had some members head for the hills so to speak; forget, perhaps, that they were at the briefings and fully informed of the program.


Classy, Dick. Classy.

I think people are straining here to try to find an issue to some extent.


I, for one, didn't strain too much to find an issue.

We also had a Supreme Court decision in the Hamdi case, where the Court, in effect, found that there was implicit in the authorization of the use of force the authorization of the President to hold an American citizen. And clearly, that's a more intrusive, if you will, use of power and authority than is surveillance of the enemy.


I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that's what the Hamdi ruling said. Therefore, that nifty little logical leap from Hamdi to the "less intrusive" wiretapping is a crock.

Q You told CNN last week that thousands of lives have been saved by this NSA surveillance program. Are we talking about Americans lives have been saved?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't go beyond that. I do believe that a great many lives have been saved because of what we've been able to do with this program.


Which lives? You wouldn't know them. They live in Niagara Falls.

And on Iraq...

Q You drew a lot of heat and ridicule when you said eight months ago, the insurgency is in its last throes. Do you regret having said that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think the way I think about it is as I just described. I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point; that putting in place a democratic government in Iraq was the -- sort of the cornerstone, if you will, of victory against the insurgents.

Q But every report -- the inspector general, who is in charge of looking at what the reconstruction program is like, et cetera, was on our program just a few days ago, and said that the insurgency's strength is keeping the reconstruction from happening. They're not even back to power -- electricity and water -- what they had pre-war in
large parts of the country. That doesn't concern you about the --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Certainly we're concerned. But I think we'll find that the strategy that we've got in place, both on the security side and on the political side, is what's going to ultimately produce victory there...


Never never never admit you made a mistake. Never never never admit you said something wrong.

Q Why didn't we anticipate [the insurgency]?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you can't anticipate everything.


Oopsie!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Balancing Act by Democrats at Hearing

But the senator's warning might well have applied to the Democrats, who themselves could pay a large price — though a political one — if they do not strike the right tone in the debate over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program.


A president orders a wiretapping program. This wiretapping program appears to be contrary to specific written law. The administration claims a legal right outside of that written law. Senate hearings. Constitional issues. National security. An historic question of how our government is balanced, and how the law applies to the Executive branch.

You know what this calls for? A horse race article!

Tell me about how this issue might, could, possibly affect the political fortunes of the minority party!

No, wait. Don't tell me that. Tell me instead, what the fuck is the point of this article. Seriously. I want to know.
Holding Fast to a Policy of Tax Cutting

"This is cutting lean, muscular programs," said Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.


Seriously? There is a guy named Spratt on the Budget Committee, and he chose to use the word "lean" on the record?

Any word on what his wife thinks about this budget? Does she think there is fat that could be cut?

Unreal.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Let's see ... there was the long run by Parker. The trick play with Randle El passing to Ward.

Did anything else even happen in that game?

What is it about the Seahawks that make them so instantly forgettable?