Valerie Wilson with Olbermann on "a world free of nuclear weapons" (video)

Current, with video (07:16):

Keith and Valerie Plame Wilson, anti-nuclear weapons activist and former CIA officer, discuss President Obama's call for a world free of nuclear weapons during his speech last week at the United Nations. Wilson is now working with the Global Zero campaign, which seeks to eliminate nuclear weapons. Next month, she will be launching an ad campaign with actress Naomi Watts, who played her in the movie "Fair Game."

Howie P.S.: H/t to Darryl's always awesome "Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!" Other highlights there this week are "Actually, Occupy Wall Street's Message Couldn't Be Any Clearer" (Sam Seder), "Rachel Maddow gives compelling argument for Occupy Wall Street protest," "LIVE at Occupy Wall Street: Interviewing the Occupiers" (Sam Seder), and "Markos Moulitsas on Roger Ailes' attempt at rebranding Fox."

"Obama follows Bush in defense budget" (with video)

PressTV with video (01:43):

Obama recently announced that the United States is going to invest USD 85 billion on modernizing its nuclear weapons.

"I think there is one thing we know from the Obama administration… there is not much sunlight between it and its predecessor, the Bush administration, when it comes to defense spending," Washington-based national security analyst Wayne Madsen told Press TV on Sunday.

"The defense budget is going up at the same time [as] the administration is considering massive cuts on social spending, on social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance," the expert added. MORE...

Howie P.S.: More good news on the foreign policy front:

A decision by US President Barack Obama to extend the presence of American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 is likely to increase the remaining cost of the unpopular war to USD 413 billion.
(SNIP)
Calculating costs based on USD 1.1 million per soldier per year, Harrison assesses that the new description of the deadline will cost the American taxpayers an additional USD 125 billion through 2014 alone.

Obama's New Nuclear Plan: "a big, positive step forward" or "Plan Leaves Missiles On Hair Triggers"?

"Obama's New Nuclear Plan Leaves Missiles On Hair Triggers" (Dan Froomkin):

President Obama's new Nuclear Posture Review is being hailed as a commonsense acknowledgment that in the modern age, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism are of greater concern than an apocalyptic battle between superpowers, and that no country, including our own, should use nuclear weapons except in the case of a threat to its very survival.

But the review doesn't recommend any change in the alert status of our nuclear arsenal. That leaves over 2,000 American and Russian nuclear weapons ready to launch on a few minute's notice, a dangerous legacy of the Cold War that not only puts about 100 million of us potentially less than an hour away from annihilation at any moment, but also hugely increases the risk of a mistaken launch or a weapon falling into the hands of terrorists.

"Obama Goes Nuclear -- and We Should Be Glad" (David Corn):

The survival of civilization simply isn't as compelling a topic of political conversation as what the polls say about health care reform or the 2010 elections. I don't mean to come across as snide. Nuclear weapons policy can be complicated. People trying to get by in tough economic times cannot be expected to spend hours absorbing the intricacies of Start. But I suspect that many of us would rather not think about something so damn overwhelming. Decades ago, I worked on a magazine devoted to arms control, and I found it rather daunting to have to ponder the possibilities of nuclear warfare on a daily basis. After two years of that, I quit and headed to Europe to backpack. Denial serves us too well in this regard.

Yet as we get caught up in the daily political shout-fests and the significant developments of "American Idol," we should realize that Obama and others are indeed trying to figure out how best to make sure we homo sapiens don't destroy ourselves and our pleasant planet. It would be heartening to see more citizens involved in this existential effort -- or, at least, following it. But when nukes are up for discussion, most of us just want to duck and cover.

Howie P.S.: I had a hard time selecting just a paragraph or two from Corn's piece.

Robert Scheer: "Earning His Nobel Prize"

President Barack Obama discusses the START treaty during a phone call with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 26, 2010, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

Robert Scheer:

At last, a believable sighting of that peace president many of us thought we had elected. Give Barack Obama credit, big time, for the startling progress he has made in tempering the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review Report for the first time prohibits “first use” of nuclear weapons against nations complying with the nonproliferation treaty. It also pledges a halt to U.S. efforts to modernize such weapons, as had been proposed by then-President George W. Bush in his call for new nuclear “bunker busters.”

Whereas his predecessor succeeded only in eliminating the nonexistent Iraqi nukes, this president has forged a treaty with the Russians that will reduce the world’s supply of the devil’s weapons by one-third. But it was essential to follow that up with a clear departure from the always-insane policy that the U.S. has a right to develop and use such weapons as conventional tools of war.

That is the right that Harry Truman acted on in perpetrating the most atrocious act of terrorism in world history when he annihilated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is what spawned the nuclear arms race that so troubles us today, especially regarding North Korea and Iran.

Yet until Tuesday no American president had renounced the immoral claim that our nation had some God-granted right to use those weapons again. While we consistently insisted it was morally repugnant for any other state to follow in our footsteps, we continued to build ever deadlier versions of these intrinsically heinous weapons.

But that madness ended when Obama on Tuesday affirmed an all-important distinction that Bush, more than any other president, had insisted on blurring—the distinction between nuclear and all other weapons, including the chemical and biological varieties. Lumping them together as weapons of mass destruction denies the global life-ending threat that nukes alone present.

Ironically, the most important section of Obama’s strategy statement, instantly attacked by his knee-jerk critics, could help fulfill the penultimate goal of Ronald Reagan. Because of Obama’s declaration that the “United States will not develop new nuclear warheads ... or provide for new [nuclear] military capabilities” there is now a plausible case to be made for anti-missile defense. Reagan always insisted that his Strategic Defense Initiative program was a means toward nuclear arms cuts and ultimately the abolition of these horrific implements of mass death. But SDI could be properly criticized as a cover for aggression unless we cut the arsenals as opposed to refining and expanding them.

In his historic meeting with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan embraced the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons—just as Obama did in his April 2009 speech in Prague. It is a position that commends itself to all who honestly confront the threat these weapons pose to human existence. We have indulged the luxury of not confronting that ultimate horror because of the time that has passed since the explosion of those now relatively small nuclear bombs over Japan. As Henry Kissinger puts it in the documentary “Nuclear Tipping Point,” which was screened at the White House on Tuesday night: “Once nuclear weapons are used, we will be driven to take global measures to prevent it. Why don’t we do it now?”

The answer is that we have become inured to the danger and lulled into accepting these weapons as usable implements of war, an attitude reflected in Tuesday’s reaction by Arizona Republican Sens. Jon Kyle and John McCain, who in a joint statement denounced Obama’s policy as limiting the nuclear “option.” They repeated the old canard that nuclear weapons are a legitimate choice in response to a non-nuclear threat.

That will be the line of those who oppose the Senate’s ratification of the new START agreement with Russia and the long-overdue passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If they win in that debate there is no serious possibility of progress in preventing the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and breaking the death wish of those who still toy with the idea that such weapons are legitimate. Those in the peace movement who think Obama should have gone further in his efforts to put the nuke genie back in the bottle should tread carefully here. Instead of demanding perfection, they should be gratified that we finally have a president who has at least laid down some important markers of progress.

After decades of both Republican and Democratic administrations indulging the absurdity that “nuclear war fighting” could have a humane outcome, Obama has reversed course. It took 150 meetings, including 30 at the White House, and the president’s frequent direct intervention. The outcome is a bold statement of nuclear sanity, and for that President Obama should be applauded.

Howie P.S.: Not everyone is as enthusiastic: "Revised US Nuke Policy Offers Few Changes" (Democracy Now! with video/audio). Ben Cohen (TrueMajority.org) wants us to "Help Obama end our long nuclear nightmare."

START Treaty: Another "Big F---ing Deal"? (with video)

AP, with video from RussiaToday (02:56):

The U.S. and Russia reached a breakthrough agreement Wednesday for a historic treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the former Cold War rivals, the most significant pact in a generation and an important milestone in the decades-long quest to lower the risk of global nuclear war.

After long and trying negotiations, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are to sign the treaty in two weeks in Prague, once final technical details are worked out, officials in Washington and Moscow said. The accord is expected to cut the number of long-range nuclear weapons held by each side to about 1,500, and it raises hopes for further disarmament in the years ahead.

The deal is seen as sealing an increased level of trust and cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, who possess the vast majority of the world's nuclear arms and have labored under strained relations in recent years.

Obama and Medvedev are expected to seal the deal when they talk by telephone this week, setting the stage for a White House campaign to win Senate ratification. The treaty also must win approval by the Russian Duma, and the two legislative processes are likely to take months.

Robert S. Norris, a longtime analyst of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, said Senate ratification would not be easy.

"Hard negotiations with the Russians will now be followed by hard negotiations with Republican senators to achieve ratification," Norris said.

Though the State Department said the two countries were still working out unspecified final technical details, spokesman Mark Toner said there had been discussions with the Czech government about holding a signing ceremony in Prague — where Obama last April declared his vision of a nuclear-free world.

In fact, Czech officials announced that Prague would host the signing.

They did not give a date, but Russian and U.S. officials said it was expected to be April 8.

The new agreement to reduce long-range nuclear weapons would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December. An important feature of the new deal is that it includes a legal mechanism for verifying that each side complies — an element that was absent from a 2002 deal, known as the Moscow Treaty, that accelerated the weapons reductions laid out in the 1991 treaty.

The Moscow Treaty set limits on both sides' strategic nuclear warheads at between 1,700 and 2,200. The new deal, whose provisions have not been made public, is expected to lower that to about 1,500. It also would reduce the permissible number of strategic launchers — the missiles and bombs that deliver warheads to their targets.

Obama spent an hour Wednesday in the White House briefing Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar, the committee's ranking Republican. Both would play major roles in ratification of the emerging treaty.

Kerry said he and Lugar would hold hearings to examine details.

"A well-designed treaty will send an important message to the rest of the world that America is prepared to lead efforts with key stakeholders to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons," Kerry said.

Maria Lipman, an expert with the Moscow Carnegie Center think tank, said this week the new treaty could not only reduce the size of both country's nuclear arsenals but also change the psychology of the U.S.-Russia relationship, which has been strained for at least the past six years.

"Gradually the attitude may change to where America is not seen from Russia as a force to be treated with suspicion," she said.

Richard Burt, a former U.S. ambassador and chief U.S. negotiator of the original START agreement, described the about-to-be-announced follow-on treaty as the first significant arms reduction agreement in nearly two decades. He said it advances momentum toward eliminating nuclear weapons.

"This agreement will set the stage for further cuts in U.S. and Russian arsenals and multilateral negotiations for reductions by all nuclear weapons countries," Burt said.

Two senior U.S. officials in Washington said the technical issues still to be resolved were in an "annex" to the main treaty, and they foresaw no hurdles to completing the entire deal within days. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive discussions. One official said an announcement that the treaty is complete is expected by Friday.

A Kremlin source, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press, said all the documents, including the treaty, had been agreed upon. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that the treaty was 20 pages long, with an extensive protocol attached.

Negotiations, which have been under way in Geneva since last spring, became bogged down in recent months on disputes over verification measures and Russia's objection to U.S. missile defense plans for Europe.

Russian negotiators have balked at including some intrusive weapons verification measures in the new treaty. The Obama administration has warned that without these, Senate ratification could prove difficult.

The agreement would still leave each country with a large number of nuclear weapons, both deployed and stockpiled.

Norris, the nuclear weapons expert, and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, estimate that the U.S. has 2,150 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and the Russians have about 2,600. The U.S. has another 2,600 warheads held in reserve, plus 500 non-strategic nuclear weapons, by the two experts' estimate. Another 4,200 retired U.S. strategic warheads are awaiting dismantlement.

Sunday Funnies: Nukes, Canada, Perpetual War and Rahmbo (Updated)

UPDATE: Today's NY Times turns the spotlight on David Axelrod: "Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him."

Eric Margolis (Toronto Sun):

Obama must scrap costly nukes---American ‘Peace President’ lacks courage to pull the plug on nuclear arsenal.

U.S. President Barack Obama will shortly issue a Nuclear Posture Review, a task each new president must perform.

The Nobel Peace Laureate must decide what to do with America’s 5,500 nuclear weapons — enough to destroy the planet at least five times over.

Obama, strongly influenced by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, will likely decide to spend $7 billion US modernizing nuclear weapons and plants. This when the U.S. is bankrupt and running on borrowed money.

The president is expected to reject a “no first use” policy demanded by many Democrats that would reaffirm the sole purpose of the U.S. arsenal is deterring nuclear attack.

He will probably leave an option to use nuclear weapons against other non-nuclear nations or anti-American groups — particularly so if the U.S. is attacked by chemical or biological weapons.

The U.S. and Russia are nearing agreement to cut their deployed strategic warheads by 1,000 units, down to 1,500-1,675 each. But much of these reductions would come by storing rather than dismantling active warheads.

Thousands more tactical nuclear warheads will remain, though Washington hints it might remove some from Europe and Asia.

But what is the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal which costs an estimated $52 billion annually?

The conventional view holds that nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent against any nuclear attack on the United States and its allies. But since the Bush administration, the hard right has been pushing for using small nuclear weapons against deeply buried targets — like Iranian nuclear plants — or guerrilla groups. A new, small tactical nuclear warhead — a.k.a. “Muslim-buster” — was evaluated.

No military value

Republicans are again beating the war drums over the supposed nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran. They accuse Obama of near treason for having even considered junking America’s huge nuclear arsenal.

These low-IQ Republican scaremongers don’t know, or don’t care, that North Korea has no long-ranged nuclear capability and wants nukes for defence against a possible U.S. nuclear attack. Or that Iran has no nuclear weapons as of now and poses no threat to the distant U.S.

Retired U.S. generals and admirals have repeatedly advocated junking all nuclear weapons, calling them ruinously expensive and of no military value.

The 1970 UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty mandated all signatories to quickly dismantle their nuclear weapons. The U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China are in treaty violation. Israel, Pakistan and India refused to sign and secretly built their own nuclear arsenals.

In the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev earnestly proposed total nuclear disarmament, but President Ronald Reagan foolishly refused to scrap the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“Peace President” Barack Obama has the chance to get rid of America’s largely useless nukes, or at least reduce them to a dozen strategic missiles. But while Obama may slightly narrow nuclear doctrine, it appears America’s increasingly potent national security complex and angry Republicans have pushed him into retaining the nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is promoting its new “prompt global response” system: U.S.-based missiles with conventional warheads that can rapidly strike anywhere on the planet.

When one of these missiles is fired at some Muslim malefactors, one hopes Russia or China will not confuse it for a nuclear strike aimed at them. In 1995, Soviet air defences mistook a Norwegian scientific missile for a U.S. nuclear strike. Soviet nuclear missiles came within minutes of being fired at North America. The Cold War was filled with such terrifying nuclear false alarms.

Global nuclear disarmament means intensive inspections of all nuclear capable powers, including Brazil, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, both Koreas and Taiwan.

Mutual and international inspection is the answer. For good example, let Israeli experts inspect Iran and Iranians inspect Israel.

U.S. President Obama should lead the way by sharply reducing, then scrapping America’s nuclear arsenal. What thwarts this sensible policy is not verification, but political willpower and courage.

It behooves the only nation to ever use horrific nuclear weapons to take the lead in freeing humanity from their curse.

"Canadian asks: Who you gonna bomb next, eh?" (Joe Bageant):

Hi Joe,

Greetings from one of the attic dwellers in Canada. We've been mocked as being eternally uninvited to the party going on downstairs. However, lately it seems more like someone has called in the cops to break up the bash. Canadians probably obsess over "America" even more than the Europeans and pretty much every other country, and why wouldn't we? You guys are the 800-pound gorilla in the global room, and when thing start going to shit down there, you can bet it's going to hit the fan up here too.

I was a year old when Vietnam ended, and I'm wondering how low the national mood was back then compared to today. Vietam was obviously an epic American ass-kicking, and the sense I get from some of your articles is that many Americans are finally waking up to the fact that they've been getting kicked in the teeth by their own governments and corporations for another 35 years since then. In clinical terms, you would be looking at a major PTSD patient whose shattered delusions of grandeur have been twisted into an ugly rage spiral -- all of which is now being expressed in, um, the Tea Party Movement?

Joe, many questions come to mind, but one of the most pressing is this: can you point readers to some kindred spirits of yours on the web who write in the same mold?

And, do you see any Hunter-esque gonzos coming down the pike? If he sensed a new rot creeping into the scene back in the early 80s, his ashes must be doing the funky chicken over Obama not even bothering to coat the horseshit with honey these days.

Little Bush made it easy for Obama to give away the store. The Cheney-Rove brain trust decided to put it all out in the open, damn the torpedoes, and the trick worked. Official White House policy, officially posted on the official White House website, officially listed criminal government actions that would have put Nixon in a fucking gas chamber. You don't have to know much about the system to realize the powers that be always have the ability to simply move the goalposts when it suits them. But BushCo seemed to be saying something else altogether, something to the effect of: "The goalposts don't even exist. And, for any of you legal Luddites who think the 'rule of law' does exist, or at least should exist, well, it only exists insomuch as our legal flunkies interpret that it exists. Which is to say, the rule of law doesn't exist in any other way than we say it exists. Try to think of it as the Rule of the Rulers of Law. Or something like that. Whatever floats your boat. We don't fucking care anyway."

Following an act like that, Obama can now take one long, protracted piss on the American public, and he doesn't even have to call it rain.

It could all lead to electoral disaster, but if Dems are going to rule like Repubs anyway, does it really matter all that much?

One last question Joe, just wondering where you're at with the Doomer type stuff out there these days -- obviously impossible to predict timelines for these sorts of things, but if it does go bad at some point and the food trucks stop running, where do you see all that American civilian and military firepower gunning for first?

Cheers,

Ryan

------

Ryan,

Well, in 1975 when the war ended, America was a different country. Damned near everyone was quite happy to see it over, some because they were glad to see an end of the horror and expense, others because it had become boring television. All we have left to document that war for your generation is what the media said at the time. Which is rather hyperbolic and full of gaps. Many of us who protested and whatever, felt that ending the war was a pyrrhic victory. Sixty thousand dead, 160,000 wounded and at least a million on the other side. Not to mention the wasted resources that could have done so much to lift the American people toward what we could have been, an educated, self-realized people. I feel my generation, or at least the best among them, were on the cusp of that before the war.

Anyway, the right wing ideologues and their following made big noises about "if we had only put more resources into it, and turned the generals loose to fig -- yada, yada." They spread that shit around until most knee jerk non-thinkers had it stamped on the tip of their tongues as their official answer to any question regarding the war we couldn't win.

You could go down to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars club and listen to ‘em piss and moan about how the politicians fucked up what should have been a certain victory. Even then, about half of us at the VFW and the American Legion Halls were out back smoking pot. And mocking the old guys saying all that shit, mostly the World War II vet set, whom we called "Big Vet."

As might be expected, all the New York intellectuals were doing their usual jerking off about the "meaning" of the war. As if any war meant anything but death for the anonymous "little people," both yellow and Caucasian, and profits for the big dogs. People like Norman Mailer were making essentially the same arguments you mentioned, that Nam shattered illusions and was a blow to white masculinity and all that stuff. The average American scarcely knew who Mailer was. Only intellectuals worry about such things as American masculinity, as if all of our peckers were linked together in some sort of sort of unified field.

To my mind the most important effect of the Vietnam War was that the 14-year war conditioned Americans to accepting ongoing warfare as an ordinary backdrop to their lives. Since then we've always been at war somewhere to some degree or another. It's language has penetrated the way we think. Corporations launch a marketing "offensive," We declare a "war on drugs." Likewise, the language of capitalist finance and war meld. Twenty thousand dead civilians become "collateral" damage. The aggregated corpses become "damage." The cumulative result has been the Orwellian Newspeak so nicely summed up by Gore Vidal in the phrase "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace."

The history of the era had to be rewritten to keep the military industrial complex and its associated rackets in business, lest we all end up unarmed, peace loving, educated people. So staring with lest the countercultural movement, starting with Newt Gingrich, the Heritage Foundation, et al, tens of millions were spent rewriting the Sixties era as the beginning of the end of America. Since then the neocon forces have perfected misinformation to the point of stirring up more meanness in this country than I would have ever thought possible Even the John Birchers are making a comeback.

And the Teabaggers? Looks to me like its national base, if it really has one -- it's hard to tell how much is neocon media manipulation and how much is real -- are pretty much the same ignorant characters as always. The frustrated, ill educated uninformed people who want to less government but more benefits, and to pay for operating the country with tax cuts.

Writers in the gonzo-esque mold? I really don't know any more than you do on that matter. I'd say James Howard Kunstler for one. You may not think of Jim that way, but if he were writing his stuff in 1970, he would have been seen as gonzo. But I'm not sure just who is out there. I really don't cruise the web as much as you might think.

But Hunter was one of a kind. Realistically speaking, Matt Taibbi is probably as good as Hunter was in many respects. But Hunter was the first. Taibbi is better than Hunter in nailing down the facts, but strains too hard at times to be entertaining (who doesn't?) Still, I have a lot of respect for Taibbi. Also, Hunter's political position inasmuch as he had one other than personal freedom, might be called armed and drugged-out libertarian. It was a different era. If Hunter were starting out today, I doubt Hunter could get published by mainstream mags and book publishers. Publishers' legal fears and all.

Regarding "rulers" who do not give a fuck: Nobody in either party has cared for the past 30 years. Only the Democrats feel compelled to keep up the charade. You are wrong about the way the legal system of lackeys works. When it comes to twisting the interpretation of the law so you can steal from the people, violate privacy or otherwise move the Constitutional goalposts, don't blame that on the politicians. We have a Supreme Court for that purpose.

I don't know why everyone seems so outraged at how we've been pissed on by the Obama administration. Actually, it's a long standing tradition. The same old crew of elites has always been pissing on the citizenry down here. They've just had different presidents holding their dicks for them. I wouldn't worry too much about it "leading to electoral disaster?" Our electoral process IS a disaster. The electoral college is designed to thwart the popular vote. And regarding "If the Dems are going to rule like the Republicans anyway." Neither party rules. Corporations do the ruling. Politicians conduct the public sing-along about democracy.

Like anyone else who has soberly observed this age of peak everything, and the avaricious clowns in charge of our future, I'm a doomer. Even if Abe Lincoln, FDR or Gandhi were in charge at this point, I'd be a doomer. But with enough booze, I can gut it out in relative cheer. As for making predictions, I try to avoid it. You see, I am in the racket of appearing as if I might know these sorts of things, so publishers will pay me money. It's a delicate balancing act. Readers believe way too much of what I say, and my wife doesn't believe anything I say. Fortunately, my dog is a good listener and never comments, unless there is bacon involved.

And finally, your question as to who we Americans bomb next will bomb next. The possibilities are endless. Given that up there in Canada you don't carry guns, I kinda like the idea of bombing you guys. Maybe we could win a war for a change. Barring that, maybe Australia. The place is so big and empty I doubt we'd hit anybody. Hell, it would take 'em a year to notice it.

But I'm sure God, Wall Street and the Pentagon and will let us know when the time comes.

In art and labor,

Joe

"Open war over Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's master of the dark arts" (Paul Harris-Guardian UK):

Rahm Emanuel, the president's tough backroom operator, has found himself at the centre of a career-threatening row--Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's outspoken chief of staff, has become embroiled in a public row with his critics amid accusations that he has damaged the standing of the presidency and undermined his boss.

Emanuel has become the subject of an intense war of words between those who blame him for the failings of Obama's tough first year in office and those who insist that Obama should have listened to him more. If the controversy deepens any further, some feel that he may be forced to resign.

The development has been remarkable for a man in Emanuel's job, which calls for him to adopt a behind-the-scenes role similar to that of a Mafia boss's consigliere, whispering advice in the ear of the president and then strong-arming political targets into obeying his master's will.

But critics say the row shows just how much of a strain Obama's first year of office has taken on his top White House team after a series of political setbacks, especially over healthcare. Officials in Obama's administration, who once appeared so united, now seem to be in siege mode and starting to fight among themselves.

"It was inevitable that this would happen on one level. You have a president with an ambitious agenda and they have not been getting as much done as they had hoped," said John Geer, editor of the Journal of Politics and a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.

The worsening atmosphere could become particularly difficult for Emanuel if November's mid-term elections turn into a Democratic rout. "Rahm Emanuel is burning the candle at both ends. I would not be surprised if he steps down after the mid-terms," Geer said.

By the standards of the Obama White House, the fight around Emanuel has been unusually public and appears to have employed many of the dirty tricks of media manipulation. It began when some public figures on the left of the party, including prominent bloggers and members of thinktanks, began to call for his resignation, accusing him of being a closet conservative who had failed to get meaningful healthcare reform and other liberal policy through Congress. One, the influential Jane Hamsher of the blog Firedoglake, even said the Justice Department should investigate him.

That growing chorus appears to have forced Emanuel – or, more likely, his supporters – to launch a counter-attack. A column in the Washington Post by the highly respected sketch-writer Dana Milbank reported that Emanuel had set up his own press outreach operation, separate to that of other top White House aides such as press secretary Robert Gibbs and top adviser Valerie Jarrett. It also stuck the knife into those aides and other senior Obama advisers, blaming them for Obama's problems.

"Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters," Milbank wrote. The piece concluded bluntly: "Obama needs fewer acolytes and more action. Rahm should stay."

Other pieces followed in which sources attacked Obama's top aides and repeated the line that Emanuel was the spurned saviour of the Obama White House, not its downfall. But there was a backlash, too. Anonymous sources reported that Michelle Obama had been furious at the Milbank column. "A knife in Obama's back?" thundered a headline in the Los Angeles Times.

There was much speculation that the pro-Emanuel pieces had done damage to Obama by undermining his authority in the frank way that they had spelled out that Obama's first year had been a disappointment. "The defence of Rahm favoured by some Washington Democrats is evidence of everything that is wrong with Washington ... no wonder people hate this city," fumed the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

Indeed, the civil war between pro-Rahm and anti-Rahm forces has also dragged in the Post. Not only did Milbank's column trigger much of the dispute, but soon Post columnists were attacking their newspaper for taking too much of a pro-Rahm line in its news stories.

At the end of last week the Post's longstanding political columnist, David Broder, used his column to attack Milbank and his fellow reporters. Broder called the pro-Rahm argument a "remarkable fiction" and was withering in his critique of his paper's reporting. Not surprisingly that, too, gave the story a fresh burst of life.

It was perhaps inevitable that Emanuel would end up being the centre of attention. "He is clearly a very strong chief of staff. He has very strong preferences for what should be happening," said Geer.

Emanuel's supporters hail him as a master of the political dark arts who gets things done. He is abrasive and renowned for his foul-mouthed tirades, like a real-life American variation on The Thick of It's fictional Malcolm Tucker.

"Fucknutsville" is apparently his preferred nickname for Washington, and he was recently forced to apologise for referring to liberal activists as "retarded".

Emanuel is known for his ability to dominate and intimidate politicians and cabinet members. No wonder he has made enemies. But he has also now broken one of the cardinal rules of his job: to control the story, not be the story.