I finally decided to post this commentary by Josh Feit in The Stranger. Greg Nickels deserves every word. Tidbit:
"Mayor Nickels claimed he wanted to push an urban agenda: He was for density, development, and smart growth. He said he wanted to challenge a city that favors car-centric, quasi-suburban neighborhoods like Laurelhurst, Magnolia, and Green Lake with their single-family zoning and inaccessible grocery stores. But Nickels's claims were empty. This fall, Nickels decided to throw out elevated transit with the trash, revealing that, despite the big-city posturing, he's just a suburbanite at heart. Without keeping speedy, elevated transit in his equation for change, Nickels has negated any sense of an urbanist agenda.
Last summer, when the headlines got tough for the 14-mile monorail project—a project that urban-minded Nickels voters had approved four times—Nickels caved in to the shortsighted, anti-monorail hysteria, and came out against the project.
Nickels disingenuously claimed he wanted the people to get the final say, and he pushed the monorail to a fifth public vote. In addition to the fact that no mass transit project could ever survive a vote during the crisis phase that all transit projects face—when the realities of cost and route are generating negative headlines (can you imagine if light rail had been put to a vote just a few months after its initial plan came out?)—Nickels put a loaded and fundamentally dishonest question before the voters. From his bully pulpit, Nickels declared that the project's finance plan was unfair, and he said the agency's board had run amok. He then yanked the monorail's transit-way agreement. Then the mayor and his staff showed up at community meetings and campaigned against the monorail.
Nickels's bad faith on the issue became even clearer when he scoffed at a new-and-improved plan that the SMP crafted to address his objections. Instead of giving the new plan a chance, Nickels played to the public's bad mood over the infamous $11 billion plan that, in fact, the SMP board had voted down several months earlier. Here's what the SMP came back with for the voters: Recognizing that the public had lost faith in the board, the new plan proposed making five of the nine board seats elected. (Two others would be appointed by the mayor himself.) As for the finances, the board proposed a $3.9-to-$4.9 billion project (not $11 billion), for a West Seattle through downtown to Interbay line. It would cost the average car owner just $10.83 a month. In the SMP's progressive tax plan, 20 percent of the people—the owners of expensive cars—would have produced more than half the revenue for a crucial mass transit project. Eighty percent of Seattle residents would have paid between $0 and $200 a year for the system—a system that would have linked up with the Eastside's light rail, greatly enhancing both systems' ridership numbers. The monorail itself was slated to serve 42,000 riders a day by 2010 (57,000 by 2030), with trains arriving at stations every six minutes."
Monday, November 21, 2005
Sen. Graham: 'What I knew before the invasion'
"Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham (D) -- he of the meticulous notetaking -- lays out what most Democrats knew about Saddam and Iraq before the vote to authorize force. Needless to say, assertions by the administration that Dems knew everything the administration knew are pure bullshit:
'In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda [...]
At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.
Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.'
Note, that classified NIE was not available to every congressperson. Just to members of the Senate and House committees on intelligence. Graham asked Tenet to produce an unclassified version of the NIE. But what the CIA produced was a propaganda piece absent any of the reservations or caveats presented in the classified edition of the document. The vast majority of senators and congressment, much less the American people, did not see the full classified document. Hence, Bush's claims that congressional Democrats had access to the same intelligence that the administration had is pure bullshit:
'In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.
The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.'
Not just Congress, but the American people as well."-from Kos.
'In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda [...]
At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.
Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.'
Note, that classified NIE was not available to every congressperson. Just to members of the Senate and House committees on intelligence. Graham asked Tenet to produce an unclassified version of the NIE. But what the CIA produced was a propaganda piece absent any of the reservations or caveats presented in the classified edition of the document. The vast majority of senators and congressment, much less the American people, did not see the full classified document. Hence, Bush's claims that congressional Democrats had access to the same intelligence that the administration had is pure bullshit:
'In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.
The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.'
Not just Congress, but the American people as well."-from Kos.
Howard Dean on Air America's ''Morning Sedition'' Today (UPDATED)
"Maron: Well, look, Dr. Dean, I just gotta ask you right out, is there any way that we can get all the Democrats to agree that this war is the wrong thing right now and we've got to bring these troops home?
Dean: I think there is, and I think we're pretty close. I think Jack Murtha's leadership is just incredible. Oddly enough, the plan to get out, that I think we can get Democrats to coalesce around is a plan written by a Republican. By Lawrence Korb, who's a former Undersecretary of Defense.
Maron: We know him--he was on our show.
Dean: He's a very bright guy, and he's written a very interesting piece which I think is the key to how you get out of Iraq without endangering our troops or maximizing the terrorists' ability to cause mayhem over there. And I know Jack talked to him before he came out with his redeployment strategy. We need to redeploy our troops, the Guardsmen need to come home, there need to be a group sent to Kuwait to be on hand for the terrorist attacks, and there needs to be a group sent to Afghanistan so we can do the job there which the government wants us to do, and then we'll leave a few troops in Iraq over 2006 in order to stabilize the situation there which the President's made a huge mess of. So, I think that's a reasonable plan--I think Democrats ought to coalesce around. I think we can do that. It's gradual. The Republicans have practically signed onto it in the Senate. They know their Commander in Chief has got us into a big problem here. And you start to see them peeling away. You saw the Senate pass a resolution that 2006 should be the year of transition . Well, that was a step in the right direction for the Republicans to take, and I
Maron: So you think that what happened last week with the Republicans hijacking Jack Murtha's proposal and making their own to sort of call them on what they're seeing as some sort of bluff was the right move?
Dean: Oh, I think that the Democrats voting no on the Republican thing--that Republican proposal was just ridiculous. They did what they always do: they rewrote something, pretended it was honest, I mean, this is probably the most dishonest group of people we've had running America since Richard Nixon's administration. They actually reminde me a lot of Nixon's administration as well. You got Cheney in there talking about "pusillanimous pussyfooters" and you got the President out there saying "Victory is at hand". (Laughter) These guys, they wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face.
Riley: Dr. Dean, can red state Democrats, who seem to be the ones that at times will peel away from the Democratic consensus on many of these issues, particularly the ones who are up for re-election next year whether in Congress or the Senate, can they be depended on to stay the course on this? To hold with the rest of the Democrats?
Dean: I think they can, but I think we've got to sit down and draw this consensus and get people to sign on to this Lawrence Korb position. I think it makes sense, it's gradual. The Republicans have practically signed onto it in the Senate. They know their Commander in Chief has got us into a big problem here. And you start to see them peeling away. You saw the Senate pass a resolution that 2006 should be the year of transition . Well, that was a step in the right direction for the Republicans to take, and I was just delighted.
Maron: In terms of the Democrats who are seeking re-election, in terms of the Democrats coming together as we were talking about, do you think it's right to do what former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards did and admit that he was wrong in voting for the war in Iraq?
Dean: I think that was pretty courageous and it got a lot of attention. He didn't come out and dance around, he said, "Look, I was wrong. " Period. That was the first sentence of his piece, and I thought that was pretty courageous.
Maron: And what about some of the other parts of the platform you're looking towards in terms of the Democratic momentum.
Dean: Our agenda is very clear. What we want is, one, honesty back in government, and I want to have tough legislation passed that both Democrats and Republicans will have to abide by. Two, I really do want health insurance for all Americans. ?6 other countries have it, I think we should have it. Three, we want a balanced budget, only Democrats balance the budget. You can't trust Republicans--they haven't done it in 40 years in America. Four, we want jobs in America that will stay in America, and I think renewable energy is the key to that. And I think that's a pretty succinct agenda for the American people.
Maron: Hey, it sounds good."-via the post by Renee in Ohio on Howard-Empowered People.
She will be updating this post to include more of Dean's comments "shortly."
Update: As promised here's the rest of the interview:
Riley: Now, you were talking earlier, Dr. Dean, about ethics, and we see that there's a lobbying nest involving Jack Abramoff that has touched a couple of Democrats. Is the party itself really ready to change the way Washington does business, even if it hurts the party in the short term?
Dean: They’d better be, because the country is more important than the party. I’ve had enough of ethics problems in Congress and we need really good legislation that will stop this. You know, the Republicans came in in ’94 and suggested they were going to clean up Washington, and of course they’ve made it even more corrupt than it was before. I want to fix this problem. We need some honesty in politics, and I know some people think that can never be achieved, and we’ll never get to it 100%, but what’s going on now is awful! We’ve never been at a time, that I ever know of, where the Republican leader in the Senate was under investigation, the Republican leader in the House is indicted, Karl Rove, who has security clearance, for God’s sake, after leaking wartime information! The President can’t tell the truth—I don’t think he even knows what the truth is any more—
Maron: And the Vice President’s under suspicion!
Dean: Well, the Vice President, you know who the Vice President is. Spiro Agnew! (In background, laughter and “Ooooooh!” from the Marks.)
Maron: So how are you doing with money, Dr. Dean? You guys have enough to facilitate this thing?
Dean: I think so. We just broke the record in terms of off-year fundraising, without any soft money, so I think we’re doing fine. You know, we’ve really done what we had to do. We’ve got people working right now in all 50 states. We’ve got a strong way of communicating with the American people that doesn’t depend on the mainstream media, including thanks to you at Air America. I think we’re in good shape. There’s always more you can do, and the big thing we want to do is get small donors to give the Democrats money. I want everybody to go to Democrats.org and get a Democracy Bond. That’s ten or twenty dollars a month off your credit card. We want to make the party dependent upon Americans and not just big interests. And so we are trying to raise a lot of small dollars, and if you’ll go to our web site Democrats.org, people can help!
Riley: Okay, Doctor, there was a problem at one point with some congressional Democrats and your leadership. Has that beef been resolved?
Dean: Oh, I think it has. We now have the House, the Senate, the governors and the mayors all working together on messaging and agenda, and that stuff has been resolved. I’m always going to be an outsider, so you know, there’s going to be some discomfort. But Harry Reid has been an enormous ally, I mean, he really tells it like it is. And a lot of the real catalyst in questioning whether the President has been truthful or not started when Harry Reid decided to shut down the Senate over the fact that Republicans had lied to him about whether they were going to do a congressional investigation to find out what happened at the beginning of the Iraq war. He’s a great partner. And Nancy Pelosi has really brought the House Democrats together. So I do think that things are heading in the right direction, and I think things are going well that way.
Maron: Well thank you Dr. Dean. I was just in Vermont, and they wanted to wish you a belated happy birthday.
Dean: Well, thank you very much, and Happy Thanksgiving to you guys!"
Susan Hu picks up on this post on Booman Tribune. Lots of good comments there.
Dean: I think there is, and I think we're pretty close. I think Jack Murtha's leadership is just incredible. Oddly enough, the plan to get out, that I think we can get Democrats to coalesce around is a plan written by a Republican. By Lawrence Korb, who's a former Undersecretary of Defense.
Maron: We know him--he was on our show.
Dean: He's a very bright guy, and he's written a very interesting piece which I think is the key to how you get out of Iraq without endangering our troops or maximizing the terrorists' ability to cause mayhem over there. And I know Jack talked to him before he came out with his redeployment strategy. We need to redeploy our troops, the Guardsmen need to come home, there need to be a group sent to Kuwait to be on hand for the terrorist attacks, and there needs to be a group sent to Afghanistan so we can do the job there which the government wants us to do, and then we'll leave a few troops in Iraq over 2006 in order to stabilize the situation there which the President's made a huge mess of. So, I think that's a reasonable plan--I think Democrats ought to coalesce around. I think we can do that. It's gradual. The Republicans have practically signed onto it in the Senate. They know their Commander in Chief has got us into a big problem here. And you start to see them peeling away. You saw the Senate pass a resolution that 2006 should be the year of transition . Well, that was a step in the right direction for the Republicans to take, and I
Maron: So you think that what happened last week with the Republicans hijacking Jack Murtha's proposal and making their own to sort of call them on what they're seeing as some sort of bluff was the right move?
Dean: Oh, I think that the Democrats voting no on the Republican thing--that Republican proposal was just ridiculous. They did what they always do: they rewrote something, pretended it was honest, I mean, this is probably the most dishonest group of people we've had running America since Richard Nixon's administration. They actually reminde me a lot of Nixon's administration as well. You got Cheney in there talking about "pusillanimous pussyfooters" and you got the President out there saying "Victory is at hand". (Laughter) These guys, they wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face.
Riley: Dr. Dean, can red state Democrats, who seem to be the ones that at times will peel away from the Democratic consensus on many of these issues, particularly the ones who are up for re-election next year whether in Congress or the Senate, can they be depended on to stay the course on this? To hold with the rest of the Democrats?
Dean: I think they can, but I think we've got to sit down and draw this consensus and get people to sign on to this Lawrence Korb position. I think it makes sense, it's gradual. The Republicans have practically signed onto it in the Senate. They know their Commander in Chief has got us into a big problem here. And you start to see them peeling away. You saw the Senate pass a resolution that 2006 should be the year of transition . Well, that was a step in the right direction for the Republicans to take, and I was just delighted.
Maron: In terms of the Democrats who are seeking re-election, in terms of the Democrats coming together as we were talking about, do you think it's right to do what former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards did and admit that he was wrong in voting for the war in Iraq?
Dean: I think that was pretty courageous and it got a lot of attention. He didn't come out and dance around, he said, "Look, I was wrong. " Period. That was the first sentence of his piece, and I thought that was pretty courageous.
Maron: And what about some of the other parts of the platform you're looking towards in terms of the Democratic momentum.
Dean: Our agenda is very clear. What we want is, one, honesty back in government, and I want to have tough legislation passed that both Democrats and Republicans will have to abide by. Two, I really do want health insurance for all Americans. ?6 other countries have it, I think we should have it. Three, we want a balanced budget, only Democrats balance the budget. You can't trust Republicans--they haven't done it in 40 years in America. Four, we want jobs in America that will stay in America, and I think renewable energy is the key to that. And I think that's a pretty succinct agenda for the American people.
Maron: Hey, it sounds good."-via the post by Renee in Ohio on Howard-Empowered People.
She will be updating this post to include more of Dean's comments "shortly."
Update: As promised here's the rest of the interview:
Riley: Now, you were talking earlier, Dr. Dean, about ethics, and we see that there's a lobbying nest involving Jack Abramoff that has touched a couple of Democrats. Is the party itself really ready to change the way Washington does business, even if it hurts the party in the short term?
Dean: They’d better be, because the country is more important than the party. I’ve had enough of ethics problems in Congress and we need really good legislation that will stop this. You know, the Republicans came in in ’94 and suggested they were going to clean up Washington, and of course they’ve made it even more corrupt than it was before. I want to fix this problem. We need some honesty in politics, and I know some people think that can never be achieved, and we’ll never get to it 100%, but what’s going on now is awful! We’ve never been at a time, that I ever know of, where the Republican leader in the Senate was under investigation, the Republican leader in the House is indicted, Karl Rove, who has security clearance, for God’s sake, after leaking wartime information! The President can’t tell the truth—I don’t think he even knows what the truth is any more—
Maron: And the Vice President’s under suspicion!
Dean: Well, the Vice President, you know who the Vice President is. Spiro Agnew! (In background, laughter and “Ooooooh!” from the Marks.)
Maron: So how are you doing with money, Dr. Dean? You guys have enough to facilitate this thing?
Dean: I think so. We just broke the record in terms of off-year fundraising, without any soft money, so I think we’re doing fine. You know, we’ve really done what we had to do. We’ve got people working right now in all 50 states. We’ve got a strong way of communicating with the American people that doesn’t depend on the mainstream media, including thanks to you at Air America. I think we’re in good shape. There’s always more you can do, and the big thing we want to do is get small donors to give the Democrats money. I want everybody to go to Democrats.org and get a Democracy Bond. That’s ten or twenty dollars a month off your credit card. We want to make the party dependent upon Americans and not just big interests. And so we are trying to raise a lot of small dollars, and if you’ll go to our web site Democrats.org, people can help!
Riley: Okay, Doctor, there was a problem at one point with some congressional Democrats and your leadership. Has that beef been resolved?
Dean: Oh, I think it has. We now have the House, the Senate, the governors and the mayors all working together on messaging and agenda, and that stuff has been resolved. I’m always going to be an outsider, so you know, there’s going to be some discomfort. But Harry Reid has been an enormous ally, I mean, he really tells it like it is. And a lot of the real catalyst in questioning whether the President has been truthful or not started when Harry Reid decided to shut down the Senate over the fact that Republicans had lied to him about whether they were going to do a congressional investigation to find out what happened at the beginning of the Iraq war. He’s a great partner. And Nancy Pelosi has really brought the House Democrats together. So I do think that things are heading in the right direction, and I think things are going well that way.
Maron: Well thank you Dr. Dean. I was just in Vermont, and they wanted to wish you a belated happy birthday.
Dean: Well, thank you very much, and Happy Thanksgiving to you guys!"
Susan Hu picks up on this post on Booman Tribune. Lots of good comments there.
Pam Eakes at the 36th LD
Last Thursday night, Pam Eakes (Seattle resident, former Howard Dean presidential campaign finance co-chair) was on the panel at the 36th LD's annual auction and fundraiser at the Pacific Science Center. Here are some highlights of her remarks via Lynn at Evergreen Politics, in her post "Thursday Evening at the 36th":
"She said she came across the country to bring a message from Governor Dean to one of his favorite places – Seattle and the state of Washington. He has only been in office 9 months and this was his first challenge. She talked about the national wins and said that Tim Kaine’s victory in Virginia meant that the politics of Karl Rove is toast. His opponent’s attack ads backfired, as did bringing in President Bush to campaign. President Bush put it over the top for the Democrats.
Then she shared a few highlights. Blacks turned out in high numbers, perhaps as a result of Bush’s treatment of blacks in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In New Jersey, Democrats expected to win but not by the numbers that we did. She mentioned the defeat of Schwartznegger’s initiatives in California and then said that her favorite was the defeat of the incumbent mayor in St. Paul, a Democrat who had supported Bush last year.
She also said that the defeat of 912 made national news and that there was a big gender gap in the voting for and against 912. Women really came out against 912. She went on to say that the DNC is optimistic about 2008. At the DNC, Governor Dean has put together a great team and a great program. The DNC is paying for 4 staffers in each state. They are training them, giving them benefits, and consequentially planning to keep them in these roles and to raise the level of professionalism." Update: Bev Marcus wonders what Pam would say if asked whether Al Gore will run in 2008? Pam has worked with Tipper Gore and is from Tennessee.
"She said she came across the country to bring a message from Governor Dean to one of his favorite places – Seattle and the state of Washington. He has only been in office 9 months and this was his first challenge. She talked about the national wins and said that Tim Kaine’s victory in Virginia meant that the politics of Karl Rove is toast. His opponent’s attack ads backfired, as did bringing in President Bush to campaign. President Bush put it over the top for the Democrats.
Then she shared a few highlights. Blacks turned out in high numbers, perhaps as a result of Bush’s treatment of blacks in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In New Jersey, Democrats expected to win but not by the numbers that we did. She mentioned the defeat of Schwartznegger’s initiatives in California and then said that her favorite was the defeat of the incumbent mayor in St. Paul, a Democrat who had supported Bush last year.
She also said that the defeat of 912 made national news and that there was a big gender gap in the voting for and against 912. Women really came out against 912. She went on to say that the DNC is optimistic about 2008. At the DNC, Governor Dean has put together a great team and a great program. The DNC is paying for 4 staffers in each state. They are training them, giving them benefits, and consequentially planning to keep them in these roles and to raise the level of professionalism." Update: Bev Marcus wonders what Pam would say if asked whether Al Gore will run in 2008? Pam has worked with Tipper Gore and is from Tennessee.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Murtha on Meet the Press Today
"MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Why did this man, a 16-term congressman, a decorated Vietnam veteran, who spent 37 years in the Marine Corps and who in 2002 voted for the war in Iraq, now change his mind and say this?
(Videotape):
REP. JOHN MURTHA, (D-PA): Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: We will ask him. An exclusive Sunday morning interview with the Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, John Murtha.
MR. RUSSERT: By now the entire world has heard about your speech and proposals to redeploy the troops from Iraq. President Bush this morning in China said, "Your proposal would strengthen the terrorists' hand in Iraq." How do you respond?
REP. MURTHA: Well, Tim, I would hope--I saw he couldn't get out the door there in Beijing. I hoped we'd open the door for him to start a dialogue about how we change the course. We need to change the direction of Iraq. I said a year ago--and you remember me saying this--we can't win this militarily. The military has done everything they can do, so now it's up to the politicians, up to us in Congress. Only we can send people to war and it's up to us to find a way to solve this very difficult problem.
I've got an outpouring of people crying on the phone or looking for a solution to this very difficult problem. So I'm very hopeful that my proposal is something he'll take seriously, that he'll get a few of us to the White House and talk to us about this very difficult problem, which the whole nation wants to solve with a bipartisan manner.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, according to our military experts, there are only 700 Iraqi troops who are fully independent and combat ready. That being the case, if we withdraw our troops quickly from Iraq, won't the Iraqi citizens be overwhelmed by the al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists? Are the Iraqis capable of defending themselves without the U.S.?
REP. MURTHA: Tim, I'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all, and I've been complaining for two years that there's an overly optimistic--an illusionary process going on here. They keep trying to measure Iraqi troops by our standards. They don't need to meet our standard. And until we turn it over to the Iraqis, we're going to continue to do the fighting. Our young men and women are going to continue to suffer.
I go to the hospitals almost every week. I'm going to go out there again this week, and I see these young people doing the fighting and it's time to turn it over to Iraq. Give them the incentive to do the fighting themselves. They'll have to work this out themselves. This is their country. We've become the enemy. Eighty percent of the people in Iraq want us out of there. Forty-five percent say it's justified to attack Americans. It's time to change direction.
MR. RUSSERT: As you well know, this is a profound change in your own thinking. Last year in the epilogue to your paperback book, you wrote this: "A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America's foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America's judgment but also its perseverance." And this: "It would be an international disaster I think if we pulled out." Civil war, questioning America's perseverance, international disaster-- why is it any different now than it was a year ago?
REP. MURTHA: I'll tell you why it's different. It's different because there's no progress at all. When I went to Iraq about two months ago, I talked to the commanders. Now, I--the commanders say what they're supposed to say, but I can tell how discouraged they are. And this all started from the illusion it was going to be easy. For instance, in the first stage of it, they didn't have enough troops. You remember they fired General Shinseki because he complained, and then when they didn't have enough troops, they had people in the specialties they weren't supposed to be in. I found 40,000 troops without body armor when I went over the first time. I found unarmored Humvees. I found jammers that they needed and I came back and complained about it. It took us too much time to get that done. So the country got out of control.
So I'm convinced that we have to give the incentives to the Iraqis. We have to redeploy our troops to the periphery, and I've sat down with the former secretary of the Army, four distinguished officers who served in combat, and we've come up with a plan which we think will work. Since we've become the enemy, I don't think it'll work. Since they're attacking our troops and we've destabilized the area, I have changed my mind and have come to the conclusion now is the time to start to redeploy our troops to the periphery and let the Iraqis take over.
MR. RUSSERT: But if we did withdraw quickly, it could result in a civil war or a bloodbath.
REP. MURTHA: Well, I'm not sure of that. At one time I thought that, and at one time I thought Iran would have undue influence. But I tell you something, I've come to the conclusion these Iraqis are very proud people. They can run the country themselves. They've had a history of civilization that goes back much further than ours. And I think we just have to give them the incentive to take it over. They're going to let us do the fighting, as long as we're there, and, until we turn it over to them, they're not going to be up to standard. So I'm convinced that they can take over this battle and we could move our people to the periphery, out of danger. Here's the people being killed. They're--in the logistics, in supporting the troops who are out in the field, they--the convoys are being attacked every single day. And, of course, we lost six people yesterday. The troops don't complain. Members of Congress are the ones that can only send people to war and we have to be the ones to stand up, and we have to have a bipartisan approach to this thing. This can't be Republican and Democrat. It can't be recrimination. We got to work this thing out so that we come up with an equitable solution.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, have you heard privately from people at the Pentagon who are supportive and encouraging of you?
REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's nobody that talks to the people in the Pentagon more than I do. And they publicly--they have to say what the administration--and that's the way it should be. Soldiers in the field--I'll tell you how bad it's gotten in the field. I talk to sergeants who said to me "We're afraid to say anything because we'll stand to be recriminated by our superiors." I know we had a young captain come to see me that was complaining because the Geneva Convention was not being followed. And that's another point.
One of the problems with the lack of troops and the lack of trained troops was they put people into prison that weren't trained, and consequently we had Abu Ghraib. And if you look at the casualties, they have doubled. The incidents went--now we got more troops than we had last year at this time. We had--the incidents were 150 a week last year; there are 700 this year. So the people in the military are--they know that it's not possible to win a military victory. General Casey just said to me in a hearing, he said to the committee, he said, "We've become occupiers and we're looked at this way." And General Abizaid said, "And part of our strategy is to get out." We're going to get out, Tim; there's no question about it. We just have to work out a bipartisan way to let the Iraqis take over their own destiny.
MR. RUSSERT: As you know, the response on the House floor was extraordinary. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt of Ohio said that she had talked to a state representative in Ohio, also a former Marine, and she relayed the following message. Let's watch.
(Videotape, November 18, 2005):
REP. JEAN SCHMIDT, (R-OH): He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body...
Unidentified Man: Gentlemen...
REP. SCHMIDT: ...that we will see this through.
Unidentified Man: The House will...
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, when you heard those words, "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do," how did you feel?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I really wasn't on the floor when that happened. And I try to not put this in a personal basis, and I would hope the people would take this suggestion as a responsible recommendation, and then read the resolution that I put forward, redeploy the troops on the periphery as quickly as within the safety of the troops. You know, this is a new member, and sometimes they give her something to say that--they get out of hand. I try not to take this stuff personal.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Congressman, Jeff Davis of Kentucky said you were emboldening our enemies. The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and the White House press secretary both said this is "surrendering to the terrorists," and on Wednesday night the vice president of the United States, speaking about criticism about prewar intelligence, had this to say about members of Congress.
(Videotape, November 16, 2005):
VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone. But we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "Losing your memory or your backbone." What would you say to the vice president?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I tell you, Cheney's a friend of mine. We work very closely together. He was a good secretary of Defense, but he's wrong. They should have fired people. The president should be furious with this--the people that work for him giving him bad intelligence. We spend more on intelligence than any country in the world. We spend more on intelligence than the whole world spends together and our intelligence was wrong. There's no question we're going in the wrong direction and we're not winning. The incidents have increased and the economic indicators--oil, which was supposed to pay for all of this, is below prewar levels. There's nothing that's happening that shows any sign of success.
And the biggest problem is this illusion that--I remember going to Iraq a month or so after the invasion when they said it was all over. And one of the members said to Ambassador Bremer, "What do you think about this cleric named Sistani?" And he turned to his expert, and you know what she said? She said, "Oh, he's just a minor cleric." Now, two weeks later that guy had 100,000 people in the street. That's the kind of information they were acting on. They've been overly optimistic and illusionary about their policy. We got to--this is not a war of words, this is a real war where people are getting killed. Fifteen thousand people have been wounded, and half of them are desperately wounded, blinded, without their arms.
I mean, it breaks my heart when I go out there and see these kids. I see wives who can't look at their husbands because they've been so disfigured. I saw a young fella that was paralyzed from the neck down and his three children were standing there crying with his wife and his mother. So this is a real war, which--we have to find a solution. We--and since there's no progress, we've got to find a way to let the Iraqis take over.
MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said he's given the troops, the commanders on the ground, everything they've requested, including troop levels.
REP. MURTHA: Tim, Tim, come on. They fired Shinseki when he said they needed 200,000 troops. They had 44,000 shortage of armored vests. They had no--one brigade had one jammer in it. They had no--I mean, that's what the troops told me. I came back and they started to come up with that stuff. People had to buy their own armor. I mean, we had a young fella, and this is a tragic story. He's blinded and lost his foot. Walter Reed did everything and they're doing a marvelous job rehabilitating people there. But they put him out in the early stages of the war, and he went home and nobody was home. His father was in jail and there was nobody at home, he was by himself. But they sent him to John Hopkins to see--maybe he could see because they're one of the best in the world. They started sending him bills. And then they sent a collection agency. Well, you know, we obviously got that worked out. But the point I'm making is this has been mishandled and we should be firing people and going in another direction.
MR. RUSSERT: Should...
REP. MURTHA: The troops did not have what they needed. And...
MR. RUSSERT: Excuse me, sir. Should the president fire secretary of Defense Rumsfeld?
REP. MURTHA: Well, he's got to decide who he fires. I mean, he's got to make up his mind about who he fires. I recommend that Wolfowitz ought to be fired a long time ago because he was a professor, not an administrator and of course, they promoted him to the World Bank. But, you know, I'm convinced that the people--I have never seen such an outpouring in the 32 years I've been in Congress, of support and people with tears in their eyes, people walking along clapping when I'm walking through the halls of Congress, saying something needed to be said. So they're thirsting for a solution to this and the president can't hide behind rhetoric and neither can the vice president.
And members--Republican members of Congress can't say because I'm a Democrat--I led the fight to go to war in '91 with President Bush I. He knew what he was doing. But $60 billion was paid by our allies and we had a coalition, a real coalition of forces and he had an exit strategy and he didn't go into Iraq. And why didn't he go into Iraq? Because he said, "I don't want to occupy it. I don't want to reconstruct it." And he knew what he was doing. He was a an experienced president. He's got to get some experienced people to give him some advice and ask for some bipartisan support. President Bush I did this continually. He asked--he didn't like what we said sometimes but he listened to what we were saying.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you straight, do you have confidence in Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I'll put it this way: There have been an awful lot of mistakes made, and I don't know whether it's his fault, but when he forced the military--now this is what I hear from the military. He forced them to go in with inadequate forces. Then he thought we were going to be able to go through Turkey. You remember we had the best division, the most technologically advanced division, sitting off Turkey. And so, fortunately, we had enough troops to get through. But then for the transition where he completely miscalculated the transition--and so the president has to look at that and--and then Abu Ghraib. They had inexperienced people without super vision in Abu Ghraib and that caused us--that's when the tide turned. The casualties have gone from one a day to two a day to the last month, four a day casualties, and that's happened because you got to win the hearts and minds of the people. We are not winning the hearts and minds of the people. Even the military operations, Tim, when we throw people out of their homes, cause us tremendous problems. Inadvertently, that's the way that the military operates.
MR. RUSSERT: The Democrats have been somewhat tepid in their response to you, however. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House, said, "I think that Mr. Murtha speaks for himself..." Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate: "I don't support immediate withdrawal." John Kerry, the Democratic standard-bearer in 2004: "I respectfully disagree with John Murtha." So you have some work to do with your own party.
REP. MURTHA: Well, it's not--this is not a party issue, Tim. This is something that I'm offering as an individual, and it's only been out there for two or three days. Let me predict this: We're going to be out of there, we're going to be out of there very quickly, and it's going to be close to the plan that I'm presenting right now.
MR. RUSSERT: You think we'll be out of Iraq by the end of 2006?
REP. MURTHA: I think we'll be out of there; if not completely out of there, we'll be very close to being out of there. I think we could be out--yeah, I predict we'll be out of there--it'll be 2006.
MR. RUSSERT: By Election Day 2006?
REP. MURTHA: You--you have hit it on the head.
MR. RUSSERT: In hindsight, do you now believe your vote for the war in Iraq in 2002 was a mistake?
REP. MURTHA: Obviously, it was a mistake. I mean, all of us were misled by the information that we had. I remember going to Iraq right before--or going to Kuwait right before the war started, and they drew a line, a red line, around Baghdad, and they said, "They're going to attack us with weapons of mass destruction." I believed that, and so did the military, and they thought they could put up with that. But when they didn't use those weapons of mass destruction, when we didn't find them, and they kept saying "We're going to find them" till the very end, I knew we had made a mistake. We have increased terrorism in the Middle East, is what we've done.
MR. RUSSERT: Well...
REP. MURTHA: And since we're the target, we've increased instability in the Middle East. So the only way to do this is redeploy our forces outside and let the Iraqis handle this themselves.
MR. RUSSERT: Last question: Was the intelligence provided by the administration deliberately misleading?
REP. MURTHA: I wouldn't say that. I don't think any president would mislead the public on the intelligence. They certainly exaggerated, but I don't think they deliberately misled us.
MR. RUSSERT: How has your life changed in the last 72 hours?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I would say--you know, people said when I said this it would be an earth- shaking event. I didn't believe it, but it's not me. It's the public that's thirsting for an answer to this thing. They want us to solve this problem. They don't recriminations. They don't want a war of words. This is a real war where people are being hurt, and they want a solution to this very difficult problem.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman John Murtha, we thank you for sharing your views, and have a good Thanksgiving.
REP. MURTHA: Thanks, Tim. Nice talking to you."-from MSNBC. Here's some video from Crooks and Liars. Not surprisingly, Murtha is The Talk of the Town on Kos.
(Videotape):
REP. JOHN MURTHA, (D-PA): Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: We will ask him. An exclusive Sunday morning interview with the Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, John Murtha.
MR. RUSSERT: By now the entire world has heard about your speech and proposals to redeploy the troops from Iraq. President Bush this morning in China said, "Your proposal would strengthen the terrorists' hand in Iraq." How do you respond?
REP. MURTHA: Well, Tim, I would hope--I saw he couldn't get out the door there in Beijing. I hoped we'd open the door for him to start a dialogue about how we change the course. We need to change the direction of Iraq. I said a year ago--and you remember me saying this--we can't win this militarily. The military has done everything they can do, so now it's up to the politicians, up to us in Congress. Only we can send people to war and it's up to us to find a way to solve this very difficult problem.
I've got an outpouring of people crying on the phone or looking for a solution to this very difficult problem. So I'm very hopeful that my proposal is something he'll take seriously, that he'll get a few of us to the White House and talk to us about this very difficult problem, which the whole nation wants to solve with a bipartisan manner.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, according to our military experts, there are only 700 Iraqi troops who are fully independent and combat ready. That being the case, if we withdraw our troops quickly from Iraq, won't the Iraqi citizens be overwhelmed by the al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists? Are the Iraqis capable of defending themselves without the U.S.?
REP. MURTHA: Tim, I'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all, and I've been complaining for two years that there's an overly optimistic--an illusionary process going on here. They keep trying to measure Iraqi troops by our standards. They don't need to meet our standard. And until we turn it over to the Iraqis, we're going to continue to do the fighting. Our young men and women are going to continue to suffer.
I go to the hospitals almost every week. I'm going to go out there again this week, and I see these young people doing the fighting and it's time to turn it over to Iraq. Give them the incentive to do the fighting themselves. They'll have to work this out themselves. This is their country. We've become the enemy. Eighty percent of the people in Iraq want us out of there. Forty-five percent say it's justified to attack Americans. It's time to change direction.
MR. RUSSERT: As you well know, this is a profound change in your own thinking. Last year in the epilogue to your paperback book, you wrote this: "A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America's foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America's judgment but also its perseverance." And this: "It would be an international disaster I think if we pulled out." Civil war, questioning America's perseverance, international disaster-- why is it any different now than it was a year ago?
REP. MURTHA: I'll tell you why it's different. It's different because there's no progress at all. When I went to Iraq about two months ago, I talked to the commanders. Now, I--the commanders say what they're supposed to say, but I can tell how discouraged they are. And this all started from the illusion it was going to be easy. For instance, in the first stage of it, they didn't have enough troops. You remember they fired General Shinseki because he complained, and then when they didn't have enough troops, they had people in the specialties they weren't supposed to be in. I found 40,000 troops without body armor when I went over the first time. I found unarmored Humvees. I found jammers that they needed and I came back and complained about it. It took us too much time to get that done. So the country got out of control.
So I'm convinced that we have to give the incentives to the Iraqis. We have to redeploy our troops to the periphery, and I've sat down with the former secretary of the Army, four distinguished officers who served in combat, and we've come up with a plan which we think will work. Since we've become the enemy, I don't think it'll work. Since they're attacking our troops and we've destabilized the area, I have changed my mind and have come to the conclusion now is the time to start to redeploy our troops to the periphery and let the Iraqis take over.
MR. RUSSERT: But if we did withdraw quickly, it could result in a civil war or a bloodbath.
REP. MURTHA: Well, I'm not sure of that. At one time I thought that, and at one time I thought Iran would have undue influence. But I tell you something, I've come to the conclusion these Iraqis are very proud people. They can run the country themselves. They've had a history of civilization that goes back much further than ours. And I think we just have to give them the incentive to take it over. They're going to let us do the fighting, as long as we're there, and, until we turn it over to them, they're not going to be up to standard. So I'm convinced that they can take over this battle and we could move our people to the periphery, out of danger. Here's the people being killed. They're--in the logistics, in supporting the troops who are out in the field, they--the convoys are being attacked every single day. And, of course, we lost six people yesterday. The troops don't complain. Members of Congress are the ones that can only send people to war and we have to be the ones to stand up, and we have to have a bipartisan approach to this thing. This can't be Republican and Democrat. It can't be recrimination. We got to work this thing out so that we come up with an equitable solution.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, have you heard privately from people at the Pentagon who are supportive and encouraging of you?
REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's nobody that talks to the people in the Pentagon more than I do. And they publicly--they have to say what the administration--and that's the way it should be. Soldiers in the field--I'll tell you how bad it's gotten in the field. I talk to sergeants who said to me "We're afraid to say anything because we'll stand to be recriminated by our superiors." I know we had a young captain come to see me that was complaining because the Geneva Convention was not being followed. And that's another point.
One of the problems with the lack of troops and the lack of trained troops was they put people into prison that weren't trained, and consequently we had Abu Ghraib. And if you look at the casualties, they have doubled. The incidents went--now we got more troops than we had last year at this time. We had--the incidents were 150 a week last year; there are 700 this year. So the people in the military are--they know that it's not possible to win a military victory. General Casey just said to me in a hearing, he said to the committee, he said, "We've become occupiers and we're looked at this way." And General Abizaid said, "And part of our strategy is to get out." We're going to get out, Tim; there's no question about it. We just have to work out a bipartisan way to let the Iraqis take over their own destiny.
MR. RUSSERT: As you know, the response on the House floor was extraordinary. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt of Ohio said that she had talked to a state representative in Ohio, also a former Marine, and she relayed the following message. Let's watch.
(Videotape, November 18, 2005):
REP. JEAN SCHMIDT, (R-OH): He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body...
Unidentified Man: Gentlemen...
REP. SCHMIDT: ...that we will see this through.
Unidentified Man: The House will...
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, when you heard those words, "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do," how did you feel?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I really wasn't on the floor when that happened. And I try to not put this in a personal basis, and I would hope the people would take this suggestion as a responsible recommendation, and then read the resolution that I put forward, redeploy the troops on the periphery as quickly as within the safety of the troops. You know, this is a new member, and sometimes they give her something to say that--they get out of hand. I try not to take this stuff personal.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Congressman, Jeff Davis of Kentucky said you were emboldening our enemies. The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and the White House press secretary both said this is "surrendering to the terrorists," and on Wednesday night the vice president of the United States, speaking about criticism about prewar intelligence, had this to say about members of Congress.
(Videotape, November 16, 2005):
VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone. But we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "Losing your memory or your backbone." What would you say to the vice president?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I tell you, Cheney's a friend of mine. We work very closely together. He was a good secretary of Defense, but he's wrong. They should have fired people. The president should be furious with this--the people that work for him giving him bad intelligence. We spend more on intelligence than any country in the world. We spend more on intelligence than the whole world spends together and our intelligence was wrong. There's no question we're going in the wrong direction and we're not winning. The incidents have increased and the economic indicators--oil, which was supposed to pay for all of this, is below prewar levels. There's nothing that's happening that shows any sign of success.
And the biggest problem is this illusion that--I remember going to Iraq a month or so after the invasion when they said it was all over. And one of the members said to Ambassador Bremer, "What do you think about this cleric named Sistani?" And he turned to his expert, and you know what she said? She said, "Oh, he's just a minor cleric." Now, two weeks later that guy had 100,000 people in the street. That's the kind of information they were acting on. They've been overly optimistic and illusionary about their policy. We got to--this is not a war of words, this is a real war where people are getting killed. Fifteen thousand people have been wounded, and half of them are desperately wounded, blinded, without their arms.
I mean, it breaks my heart when I go out there and see these kids. I see wives who can't look at their husbands because they've been so disfigured. I saw a young fella that was paralyzed from the neck down and his three children were standing there crying with his wife and his mother. So this is a real war, which--we have to find a solution. We--and since there's no progress, we've got to find a way to let the Iraqis take over.
MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said he's given the troops, the commanders on the ground, everything they've requested, including troop levels.
REP. MURTHA: Tim, Tim, come on. They fired Shinseki when he said they needed 200,000 troops. They had 44,000 shortage of armored vests. They had no--one brigade had one jammer in it. They had no--I mean, that's what the troops told me. I came back and they started to come up with that stuff. People had to buy their own armor. I mean, we had a young fella, and this is a tragic story. He's blinded and lost his foot. Walter Reed did everything and they're doing a marvelous job rehabilitating people there. But they put him out in the early stages of the war, and he went home and nobody was home. His father was in jail and there was nobody at home, he was by himself. But they sent him to John Hopkins to see--maybe he could see because they're one of the best in the world. They started sending him bills. And then they sent a collection agency. Well, you know, we obviously got that worked out. But the point I'm making is this has been mishandled and we should be firing people and going in another direction.
MR. RUSSERT: Should...
REP. MURTHA: The troops did not have what they needed. And...
MR. RUSSERT: Excuse me, sir. Should the president fire secretary of Defense Rumsfeld?
REP. MURTHA: Well, he's got to decide who he fires. I mean, he's got to make up his mind about who he fires. I recommend that Wolfowitz ought to be fired a long time ago because he was a professor, not an administrator and of course, they promoted him to the World Bank. But, you know, I'm convinced that the people--I have never seen such an outpouring in the 32 years I've been in Congress, of support and people with tears in their eyes, people walking along clapping when I'm walking through the halls of Congress, saying something needed to be said. So they're thirsting for a solution to this and the president can't hide behind rhetoric and neither can the vice president.
And members--Republican members of Congress can't say because I'm a Democrat--I led the fight to go to war in '91 with President Bush I. He knew what he was doing. But $60 billion was paid by our allies and we had a coalition, a real coalition of forces and he had an exit strategy and he didn't go into Iraq. And why didn't he go into Iraq? Because he said, "I don't want to occupy it. I don't want to reconstruct it." And he knew what he was doing. He was a an experienced president. He's got to get some experienced people to give him some advice and ask for some bipartisan support. President Bush I did this continually. He asked--he didn't like what we said sometimes but he listened to what we were saying.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you straight, do you have confidence in Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I'll put it this way: There have been an awful lot of mistakes made, and I don't know whether it's his fault, but when he forced the military--now this is what I hear from the military. He forced them to go in with inadequate forces. Then he thought we were going to be able to go through Turkey. You remember we had the best division, the most technologically advanced division, sitting off Turkey. And so, fortunately, we had enough troops to get through. But then for the transition where he completely miscalculated the transition--and so the president has to look at that and--and then Abu Ghraib. They had inexperienced people without super vision in Abu Ghraib and that caused us--that's when the tide turned. The casualties have gone from one a day to two a day to the last month, four a day casualties, and that's happened because you got to win the hearts and minds of the people. We are not winning the hearts and minds of the people. Even the military operations, Tim, when we throw people out of their homes, cause us tremendous problems. Inadvertently, that's the way that the military operates.
MR. RUSSERT: The Democrats have been somewhat tepid in their response to you, however. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House, said, "I think that Mr. Murtha speaks for himself..." Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate: "I don't support immediate withdrawal." John Kerry, the Democratic standard-bearer in 2004: "I respectfully disagree with John Murtha." So you have some work to do with your own party.
REP. MURTHA: Well, it's not--this is not a party issue, Tim. This is something that I'm offering as an individual, and it's only been out there for two or three days. Let me predict this: We're going to be out of there, we're going to be out of there very quickly, and it's going to be close to the plan that I'm presenting right now.
MR. RUSSERT: You think we'll be out of Iraq by the end of 2006?
REP. MURTHA: I think we'll be out of there; if not completely out of there, we'll be very close to being out of there. I think we could be out--yeah, I predict we'll be out of there--it'll be 2006.
MR. RUSSERT: By Election Day 2006?
REP. MURTHA: You--you have hit it on the head.
MR. RUSSERT: In hindsight, do you now believe your vote for the war in Iraq in 2002 was a mistake?
REP. MURTHA: Obviously, it was a mistake. I mean, all of us were misled by the information that we had. I remember going to Iraq right before--or going to Kuwait right before the war started, and they drew a line, a red line, around Baghdad, and they said, "They're going to attack us with weapons of mass destruction." I believed that, and so did the military, and they thought they could put up with that. But when they didn't use those weapons of mass destruction, when we didn't find them, and they kept saying "We're going to find them" till the very end, I knew we had made a mistake. We have increased terrorism in the Middle East, is what we've done.
MR. RUSSERT: Well...
REP. MURTHA: And since we're the target, we've increased instability in the Middle East. So the only way to do this is redeploy our forces outside and let the Iraqis handle this themselves.
MR. RUSSERT: Last question: Was the intelligence provided by the administration deliberately misleading?
REP. MURTHA: I wouldn't say that. I don't think any president would mislead the public on the intelligence. They certainly exaggerated, but I don't think they deliberately misled us.
MR. RUSSERT: How has your life changed in the last 72 hours?
REP. MURTHA: Well, I would say--you know, people said when I said this it would be an earth- shaking event. I didn't believe it, but it's not me. It's the public that's thirsting for an answer to this thing. They want us to solve this problem. They don't recriminations. They don't want a war of words. This is a real war where people are being hurt, and they want a solution to this very difficult problem.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman John Murtha, we thank you for sharing your views, and have a good Thanksgiving.
REP. MURTHA: Thanks, Tim. Nice talking to you."-from MSNBC. Here's some video from Crooks and Liars. Not surprisingly, Murtha is The Talk of the Town on Kos.
''They don't know Jack''
"Moments after Walter Cronkite, fresh home from Saigon, declared that the war in Vietnam could not be won and the troops should come home, President Lyndon B. Johnson, a political giant unaccustomed to retreat, knew he was finished.
"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America," Johnson said.
From that moment in 1968, the Vietnam War consisted of a long, fatal denouement, every death a profound indictment not of a bad decision in 1964, but corrupt indecision between Tet 1968 and the day Richard Nixon welcomed home the POWs.
The loss of Vietnam rankled John Murtha deeply. I know this because I knew him 30 years ago, when I was a college sophomore and worked in the 1974 campaign that sent him to Congress. In a wretched little cubbyhole office on lower Bedford Street in Johnstown, I went through the Murtha family photo album looking for things to use in a brochure. One thing that stood out was a photograph of a photograph next to a framed document. It was Marine Reserve Maj. John Murtha's orders to Vietnam, next to his service photo.
He argued his way into Vietnam -- wanted to go, and once wrote an article for a service magazine about how the war could be won through motivation and leadership. The photo was fuzzy, faded and graphically useless even as it spoke with clarity about the man the Conemaugh Valley was about to send to Washington.
In Congress, Rep. Murtha has been a hawk among doves, a man filled with political acumen and suspicious of anything smelling of the post-Watergate reforms others in his congressional class embraced. When U.S. troops went to Lebanon, Mr. Murtha went to see them. When we invaded Grenada, he cheered them on. When America dabbled in El Salvador, he supported aid to defeat a communist insurgency.
Mr. Murtha was, in short, Johnstown: a place where working people expect others to work, are slow to embrace the new, and will happily join up for a war so long as the cause is good and they are sent there to win. Cambria County, in which Johnstown is the lone city, cast aside the leftover traditions of the New Deal last year and voted for George W. Bush. They voted for Mr. Bush because they believed him when he said the Iraq war was necessary, and because they accepted his sincerity about banning abortion, saving their guns and restoring old values that fit them like their fathers' steel-toed work boots. In short, they voted for George W. Bush because they believed he was like John P. Murtha.
Last week, with Walter Cronkite off the airwaves, and a once-aggressive press more than two decades at bay, George W. Bush lost Jack Murtha.
He lost Middle America.
Every death in Iraq from this moment on will be a mark of shame, first upon the president who took us there under an erroneous pretense, then upon a Congress that allows any more men and women to die while they cast about for a new pretense for staying.
But where Lyndon Johnson was a political giant, unwilling to lash out in revenge, President Bush is not. What remains ahead for Mr. Murtha is so obvious as to be harmless to him even as it is toxic to governance. Vice President Dick Cheney fired one of the first shots, questioning the congressman's judgment and, by implication, his honor.
"I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done," Mr. Murtha responded.
Expect Mr. Murtha's patriotism to fall into question. His morality in office will be questioned. Possibly his enemies will assign him Tom DeLay's finances and Bill Clinton's libido.
Soon the Swift Boaters will be afloat, suggesting that Mr. Murtha's Vietnam service was a charade (he won a Bronze Star), and that his Purple Hearts were undeserved. The Purple Heart gambit has been played before, first in 1982, then just last year. The answer to this nonsense will be the one that gave Mr. Murtha such cache as both a candidate and a member of Congress: big wound or small, he got it in Vietnam. He was there. They were not.
The second brick destined to crash through the Murtha family parlor window is Abscam. Mr. Murtha was one of eight members of Congress lured to a Washington townhouse by a team of FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik. They handed out briefcases filled with $50,000 in return for helping the sheik gain residency in the United States.
Mr. Murtha is on videotape telling the agents, "Not interested," but inviting the sheik to invest a few million in his struggling hometown, where unemployment reached 25 percent.
Mr. Murtha's probity might have been in doubt at that moment. Certainly he played the political coquette, suggesting they might do business later.
But where his companions were stuffing their pockets, he was trying to figure out how to get a fake prince to open a factory in Johnstown. Among agents of the government operating a fantasy, Mr. Murtha was attempting to get something real accomplished. That is what he is like.
Now, having learned through Abscam that good intentions cannot be achieved by appealing to false premises, Mr. Murtha is applying the same fresh truth to the Iraq war.
No man has more credibility on issues military and certainly none represents a district more attuned to the values Mr. Bush professes to love.
If Jack Murtha's district stands behind him on this, the Bush administration has lost that part of the body politic wherein the heart is kept."-Dennis Roddy in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. (PA) I still can remember when Jack Murtha endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, before Iowa. That surprised people, too.
"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America," Johnson said.
From that moment in 1968, the Vietnam War consisted of a long, fatal denouement, every death a profound indictment not of a bad decision in 1964, but corrupt indecision between Tet 1968 and the day Richard Nixon welcomed home the POWs.
The loss of Vietnam rankled John Murtha deeply. I know this because I knew him 30 years ago, when I was a college sophomore and worked in the 1974 campaign that sent him to Congress. In a wretched little cubbyhole office on lower Bedford Street in Johnstown, I went through the Murtha family photo album looking for things to use in a brochure. One thing that stood out was a photograph of a photograph next to a framed document. It was Marine Reserve Maj. John Murtha's orders to Vietnam, next to his service photo.
He argued his way into Vietnam -- wanted to go, and once wrote an article for a service magazine about how the war could be won through motivation and leadership. The photo was fuzzy, faded and graphically useless even as it spoke with clarity about the man the Conemaugh Valley was about to send to Washington.
In Congress, Rep. Murtha has been a hawk among doves, a man filled with political acumen and suspicious of anything smelling of the post-Watergate reforms others in his congressional class embraced. When U.S. troops went to Lebanon, Mr. Murtha went to see them. When we invaded Grenada, he cheered them on. When America dabbled in El Salvador, he supported aid to defeat a communist insurgency.
Mr. Murtha was, in short, Johnstown: a place where working people expect others to work, are slow to embrace the new, and will happily join up for a war so long as the cause is good and they are sent there to win. Cambria County, in which Johnstown is the lone city, cast aside the leftover traditions of the New Deal last year and voted for George W. Bush. They voted for Mr. Bush because they believed him when he said the Iraq war was necessary, and because they accepted his sincerity about banning abortion, saving their guns and restoring old values that fit them like their fathers' steel-toed work boots. In short, they voted for George W. Bush because they believed he was like John P. Murtha.
Last week, with Walter Cronkite off the airwaves, and a once-aggressive press more than two decades at bay, George W. Bush lost Jack Murtha.
He lost Middle America.
Every death in Iraq from this moment on will be a mark of shame, first upon the president who took us there under an erroneous pretense, then upon a Congress that allows any more men and women to die while they cast about for a new pretense for staying.
But where Lyndon Johnson was a political giant, unwilling to lash out in revenge, President Bush is not. What remains ahead for Mr. Murtha is so obvious as to be harmless to him even as it is toxic to governance. Vice President Dick Cheney fired one of the first shots, questioning the congressman's judgment and, by implication, his honor.
"I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done," Mr. Murtha responded.
Expect Mr. Murtha's patriotism to fall into question. His morality in office will be questioned. Possibly his enemies will assign him Tom DeLay's finances and Bill Clinton's libido.
Soon the Swift Boaters will be afloat, suggesting that Mr. Murtha's Vietnam service was a charade (he won a Bronze Star), and that his Purple Hearts were undeserved. The Purple Heart gambit has been played before, first in 1982, then just last year. The answer to this nonsense will be the one that gave Mr. Murtha such cache as both a candidate and a member of Congress: big wound or small, he got it in Vietnam. He was there. They were not.
The second brick destined to crash through the Murtha family parlor window is Abscam. Mr. Murtha was one of eight members of Congress lured to a Washington townhouse by a team of FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik. They handed out briefcases filled with $50,000 in return for helping the sheik gain residency in the United States.
Mr. Murtha is on videotape telling the agents, "Not interested," but inviting the sheik to invest a few million in his struggling hometown, where unemployment reached 25 percent.
Mr. Murtha's probity might have been in doubt at that moment. Certainly he played the political coquette, suggesting they might do business later.
But where his companions were stuffing their pockets, he was trying to figure out how to get a fake prince to open a factory in Johnstown. Among agents of the government operating a fantasy, Mr. Murtha was attempting to get something real accomplished. That is what he is like.
Now, having learned through Abscam that good intentions cannot be achieved by appealing to false premises, Mr. Murtha is applying the same fresh truth to the Iraq war.
No man has more credibility on issues military and certainly none represents a district more attuned to the values Mr. Bush professes to love.
If Jack Murtha's district stands behind him on this, the Bush administration has lost that part of the body politic wherein the heart is kept."-Dennis Roddy in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. (PA) I still can remember when Jack Murtha endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, before Iowa. That surprised people, too.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
''Spreading through the press like a toxic plume''
"If you wanted a quick course in what's currently wrong with 'mainstream' US journalism, you'd have a hard time beating this article by Tim Rutten. He convincingly shows the connections between Plamegate, the Dubya administration's manipulation of the news media, and the death throes of the investigative journalism tradition that started with Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate reporting in the 1970s. It's a must-read:
Two things have distinguished this Bush administration's efforts at press manipulation from those that have gone before.
One is their sweep and consistency. There has been bribery — as in the egregious case of the wretched Williams. There has been deception — as in the planting of phony news videos. There have been alleged violations of federal laws and regulations — as in Tomlinson's and Rove's efforts to subvert public television. There has been stealth — as in the whispering campaign to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
And, of course, there has been good old-fashioned bullying, as in the president's and vice-president's assertions that raising questions about their push to war or the torture of U.S. captives is somehow "reprehensible" and unpatriotic. It's a melancholy comment on the state of the American press that it takes a former director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Stansfield Turner, to identify Dick Cheney for what he has become — "vice president for torture" — and that he had to do it in a foreign forum, on Britain's ITV news, as he did Thursday.
The other reason all this has more or less succeeded and gone all but unremarked upon is that the administration has adroitly availed itself of the cultural complicity that prevails in a fin de siècle Washington press corps living out the decadence of an increasingly discredited reporting style. As the Valerie Plame scandal and its spreading taint have made all too clear, the trade in confidentiality and access that has made stars of reporters like Bob Woodward and Judy Miller now is utterly bankrupt.
It still may call itself investigative journalism — and so it once was — but now it's really just a glittering and carefully choreographed waltz in which all the dancers share the unspoken agreement that the one unpardonable faux pas is to ask who's calling the tune. Via LA Times." -from Pacific Views.
Two things have distinguished this Bush administration's efforts at press manipulation from those that have gone before.
One is their sweep and consistency. There has been bribery — as in the egregious case of the wretched Williams. There has been deception — as in the planting of phony news videos. There have been alleged violations of federal laws and regulations — as in Tomlinson's and Rove's efforts to subvert public television. There has been stealth — as in the whispering campaign to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
And, of course, there has been good old-fashioned bullying, as in the president's and vice-president's assertions that raising questions about their push to war or the torture of U.S. captives is somehow "reprehensible" and unpatriotic. It's a melancholy comment on the state of the American press that it takes a former director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Stansfield Turner, to identify Dick Cheney for what he has become — "vice president for torture" — and that he had to do it in a foreign forum, on Britain's ITV news, as he did Thursday.
The other reason all this has more or less succeeded and gone all but unremarked upon is that the administration has adroitly availed itself of the cultural complicity that prevails in a fin de siècle Washington press corps living out the decadence of an increasingly discredited reporting style. As the Valerie Plame scandal and its spreading taint have made all too clear, the trade in confidentiality and access that has made stars of reporters like Bob Woodward and Judy Miller now is utterly bankrupt.
It still may call itself investigative journalism — and so it once was — but now it's really just a glittering and carefully choreographed waltz in which all the dancers share the unspoken agreement that the one unpardonable faux pas is to ask who's calling the tune. Via LA Times." -from Pacific Views.
''Feingold says he'll filibuster Patriot Act extension''
"Thank you, jc, for pointing out this article from the New York Times.
A tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation.
"This is worth the fight," Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview.
"I've cleared my schedule right up to Thanksgiving," Mr. Feingold said, adding that he was making plans to read aloud from the Bill of Rights as part of a filibuster if necessary.
It's just such a pleasant change to see a Democrat say something is worth fighting for--even to the point of a filibuster, that I just have to give the guy a Howardly." -from Howard-Empowered People.
A tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation.
"This is worth the fight," Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview.
"I've cleared my schedule right up to Thanksgiving," Mr. Feingold said, adding that he was making plans to read aloud from the Bill of Rights as part of a filibuster if necessary.
It's just such a pleasant change to see a Democrat say something is worth fighting for--even to the point of a filibuster, that I just have to give the guy a Howardly." -from Howard-Empowered People.
Jay Inslee Defends Murtha, Explains Vote
"As you may have heard, the House voted tonight on a nonbinding resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. This resolution was introduced by a Republican in an effort to trivialize a serious exit plan proposed by Representative John Murtha, an influential Democrat from Pennsylvania and decorated Vietnam combat veteran.
I voted against this sham resolution, and I wanted to explain my vote and the circumstances that led to this irresponsible political stunt.
Yesterday, Representative Murtha introduced a bill that called for the withdrawal of American troops, the establishment of a rapid reaction force to respond to emergencies, and the pursuit of stability in Iraq through diplomatic means. Murtha said he believed the withdrawal could be accomplished in six months.
Representative Murtha is a retired Marine colonel with 37 years of military service. He is the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and one of the House's leading experts on the military. He was also a supporter of the war in Iraq. Yet he has become convinced that keeping our military in Iraq is not bringing us closer to victory there, but is instead exposing our troops to harm, encouraging and uniting the insurgency, and weakening our armed forces at a time we can scarcely afford it.
Whether or not you agree with Representative Murtha's proposal, it deserved serious debate. Instead, Republican leadership embarked on a campaign to discredit Murtha and trivialize his bill.
Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, introduced a one sentence bill that stated: "it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."
Throughout the evening, Republicans referred to Hunter's bill as the "Murtha resolution." They repeated it so many times that several news outlets also took to calling it the Murtha resolution. But the fact is, Hunter's bill was a shell of Murtha's proposal that approached the subject of withdrawing American forces with the same lack of foresight and consideration that went into the decision to invade.
Instead of engaging in an important and much needed debate, House Republicans staged a piece of political theater stunning in its lack of responsibility and its lack of shame. Their goal was to back Democrats into a corner by forcing them to vote on a bad bill. I refused to take the bait, and joined my Democratic colleagues in voting no.
There is nothing I want more than to bring our troops home as soon as possible. I also believe that the Iraqi people deserve an opportunity to establish a stable democratic government. Our current course, an indefinite occupation with no exit strategy, is not moving us towards either of those goals.
Next week, I will be traveling to Iraq to meet with American troops and Iraqi leaders to learn firsthand about the challenges we are facing. I will report my findings to you when I return. Please rest assured that I will continue working to achieve peace in Iraq and to bring our soldiers home.
Very Truly Yours,
Jay Inslee."
David Sirota adds this commentary: "Rahm, Please Tell Us: How Many More Have to Die for It to Be "The Right Time?"
I voted against this sham resolution, and I wanted to explain my vote and the circumstances that led to this irresponsible political stunt.
Yesterday, Representative Murtha introduced a bill that called for the withdrawal of American troops, the establishment of a rapid reaction force to respond to emergencies, and the pursuit of stability in Iraq through diplomatic means. Murtha said he believed the withdrawal could be accomplished in six months.
Representative Murtha is a retired Marine colonel with 37 years of military service. He is the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and one of the House's leading experts on the military. He was also a supporter of the war in Iraq. Yet he has become convinced that keeping our military in Iraq is not bringing us closer to victory there, but is instead exposing our troops to harm, encouraging and uniting the insurgency, and weakening our armed forces at a time we can scarcely afford it.
Whether or not you agree with Representative Murtha's proposal, it deserved serious debate. Instead, Republican leadership embarked on a campaign to discredit Murtha and trivialize his bill.
Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, introduced a one sentence bill that stated: "it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."
Throughout the evening, Republicans referred to Hunter's bill as the "Murtha resolution." They repeated it so many times that several news outlets also took to calling it the Murtha resolution. But the fact is, Hunter's bill was a shell of Murtha's proposal that approached the subject of withdrawing American forces with the same lack of foresight and consideration that went into the decision to invade.
Instead of engaging in an important and much needed debate, House Republicans staged a piece of political theater stunning in its lack of responsibility and its lack of shame. Their goal was to back Democrats into a corner by forcing them to vote on a bad bill. I refused to take the bait, and joined my Democratic colleagues in voting no.
There is nothing I want more than to bring our troops home as soon as possible. I also believe that the Iraqi people deserve an opportunity to establish a stable democratic government. Our current course, an indefinite occupation with no exit strategy, is not moving us towards either of those goals.
Next week, I will be traveling to Iraq to meet with American troops and Iraqi leaders to learn firsthand about the challenges we are facing. I will report my findings to you when I return. Please rest assured that I will continue working to achieve peace in Iraq and to bring our soldiers home.
Very Truly Yours,
Jay Inslee."
David Sirota adds this commentary: "Rahm, Please Tell Us: How Many More Have to Die for It to Be "The Right Time?"
''JOHN CLEESE'S ADDRESS TO THE US CITIZENS''
"In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA
and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her
Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties
over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas,
which she does not fancy).
Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for
America without the need for further elections. Congress and the
Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next
year to determine whether any of you noticed.
An inland revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's
Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all
monies due (backdated to 1776). Thank you for your co-operation."-excerpted from his full statement. Cleese was part of the "Mony Python" madness, in case you didn't know.
and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her
Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties
over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas,
which she does not fancy).
Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for
America without the need for further elections. Congress and the
Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next
year to determine whether any of you noticed.
An inland revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's
Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all
monies due (backdated to 1776). Thank you for your co-operation."-excerpted from his full statement. Cleese was part of the "Mony Python" madness, in case you didn't know.
''Shame on Them--Tell Col. Murtha Not to Back Down''
"I want to tell you about John Murtha. He's a Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania. He's also a combat veteran and retired Marine Corps colonel.
Murtha spent 37 years in Marine Corps, earned the Bronze Star, two purple hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. And for the last thirty years he's been one of the most respected voices in Congress on military issues -- universally respected by Democrats, Republicans and military brass alike.
Until now.
Republicans have disgraced themselves by viciously attacking John Murtha with such disrespect that not only veterans, but every decent American should be angry.
What did Murtha, a decorated combat veteran, do to draw fire from a White House led by a president and vice president who evaded service in Vietnam? He questioned their management of the war in Iraq.
Shameless Republicans immediately went on the attack. Dick Cheney, who has said that he had "other priorities" and collected 5 deferments while people like Murtha served in Vietnam, called Murtha's comments "irresponsible" and regretted that "the president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone." The White House spokesman, who has also never worn the uniform, pronounced himself "baffled" that Murtha, who volunteered for two wars, wanted to "surrender to the terrorists". A Republican Congressman said Murtha and others "basically are giving aid and comfort to the enemy".
Shame on them. Every one of us -- right now -- needs to let Jack Murtha know that we respect his service, respect his leadership, and respect his right to speak the truth. This man has spent his life serving us. The very least each one of us can do is let him know that no matter what dishonorable smear campaign Republicans wage we will be there with him.
Send Congressman Murtha a note telling him that you will not be silent while he is attacked.
I will deliver your message to him personally, along with my own thanks for his service to our country and his continuing courage in the face of threats.
Lies and manipulation characterized the Republican case for war, and lies and manipulation have been the primary weapon against anyone who questions their failed leadership.
First it was Senator Max Cleland, who left limbs in Vietnam, being savagely attacked in 2002. Then John Kerry, who received three purple hearts, being smeared in 2004. The history of this war has shown that Republicans value political posturing more than the service of America's veterans.
Republicans don't want a serious debate about Iraq because they know the American people are simply not with them. They cannot respond to the substance of Murtha's criticism -- or any criticism -- because they are wrong.
Jack Murtha is already fighting back. When told of Cheney's comments he reminded people where Cheney was while he was in Vietnam: "I like guys who got five deferments and have never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."
But Jack can't beat this back alone. Show him that Americans know that Republicans should be ashamed of themselves.Enough is enough -- we cannot allow another veteran to be smeared by George Bush's cronies.
Thank you for taking a stand.
Governor Howard Dean, M.D."-from his email.
Murtha spent 37 years in Marine Corps, earned the Bronze Star, two purple hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. And for the last thirty years he's been one of the most respected voices in Congress on military issues -- universally respected by Democrats, Republicans and military brass alike.
Until now.
Republicans have disgraced themselves by viciously attacking John Murtha with such disrespect that not only veterans, but every decent American should be angry.
What did Murtha, a decorated combat veteran, do to draw fire from a White House led by a president and vice president who evaded service in Vietnam? He questioned their management of the war in Iraq.
Shameless Republicans immediately went on the attack. Dick Cheney, who has said that he had "other priorities" and collected 5 deferments while people like Murtha served in Vietnam, called Murtha's comments "irresponsible" and regretted that "the president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone." The White House spokesman, who has also never worn the uniform, pronounced himself "baffled" that Murtha, who volunteered for two wars, wanted to "surrender to the terrorists". A Republican Congressman said Murtha and others "basically are giving aid and comfort to the enemy".
Shame on them. Every one of us -- right now -- needs to let Jack Murtha know that we respect his service, respect his leadership, and respect his right to speak the truth. This man has spent his life serving us. The very least each one of us can do is let him know that no matter what dishonorable smear campaign Republicans wage we will be there with him.
Send Congressman Murtha a note telling him that you will not be silent while he is attacked.
I will deliver your message to him personally, along with my own thanks for his service to our country and his continuing courage in the face of threats.
Lies and manipulation characterized the Republican case for war, and lies and manipulation have been the primary weapon against anyone who questions their failed leadership.
First it was Senator Max Cleland, who left limbs in Vietnam, being savagely attacked in 2002. Then John Kerry, who received three purple hearts, being smeared in 2004. The history of this war has shown that Republicans value political posturing more than the service of America's veterans.
Republicans don't want a serious debate about Iraq because they know the American people are simply not with them. They cannot respond to the substance of Murtha's criticism -- or any criticism -- because they are wrong.
Jack Murtha is already fighting back. When told of Cheney's comments he reminded people where Cheney was while he was in Vietnam: "I like guys who got five deferments and have never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."
But Jack can't beat this back alone. Show him that Americans know that Republicans should be ashamed of themselves.Enough is enough -- we cannot allow another veteran to be smeared by George Bush's cronies.
Thank you for taking a stand.
Governor Howard Dean, M.D."-from his email.
Friday, November 18, 2005
John Murtha's Full Statement
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
"General Casey said in a September 2005 hearing, 'the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.' General Abizaid said on the same date, "Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is part of our counterinsurgency strategy."
"For two and a half years, I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason for going to war has been discredited. A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait - the military drew a red line around Baghdad and said when U.S. forces cross that line they will be attacked by the Iraqis with Weapons of Mass Destruction - but the US forces said they were prepared. They had well trained forces with the appropriate protective gear.
"We spend more money on Intelligence than all the countries in the world together, and more on Intelligence than most countries GDP. But the intelligence concerning Iraq was wrong. It is not a world intelligence failure. It is a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused.
"I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the War. And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support.
"The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls at our bases in the U.S.
"Much of our ground transportation is worn out and in need of either serous overhaul or replacement. George Washington said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." We must rebuild out Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in the coming decades. This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. The burden of this war has not been shared equally; the military and their families are shouldering this burden.
"Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.
"I just recently visited Anbar Province Iraq in order to assess the condition on the ground. Last May 2005, as part of the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill, the House included to Moran Amendment, which was accepted in Conference, and which required the Secretary of Defense to submit quarterly reports to Congress in order to more accurately measure stability and security in Iraq. We have not received two reports. I am disturbed by the findings in key indicator areas. Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects have been spent. And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American causalities have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.
"I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won 'militarily.' I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.
"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are untied against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraq security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United Stated occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a "free" Iraq.
"My plan calls:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.
"This war needs to be personalized. As I said before, I have visited with the severely wounded of this war. They are suffering.
"Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our obligation, to speak out for them. That's why I am speaking out.
Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."-from the email from Howard Dean today.
The Village Voice tells us about Murtha: "What's the Deal With John Murtha?"
"General Casey said in a September 2005 hearing, 'the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.' General Abizaid said on the same date, "Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is part of our counterinsurgency strategy."
"For two and a half years, I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason for going to war has been discredited. A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait - the military drew a red line around Baghdad and said when U.S. forces cross that line they will be attacked by the Iraqis with Weapons of Mass Destruction - but the US forces said they were prepared. They had well trained forces with the appropriate protective gear.
"We spend more money on Intelligence than all the countries in the world together, and more on Intelligence than most countries GDP. But the intelligence concerning Iraq was wrong. It is not a world intelligence failure. It is a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused.
"I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the War. And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support.
"The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls at our bases in the U.S.
"Much of our ground transportation is worn out and in need of either serous overhaul or replacement. George Washington said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." We must rebuild out Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in the coming decades. This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. The burden of this war has not been shared equally; the military and their families are shouldering this burden.
"Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.
"I just recently visited Anbar Province Iraq in order to assess the condition on the ground. Last May 2005, as part of the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill, the House included to Moran Amendment, which was accepted in Conference, and which required the Secretary of Defense to submit quarterly reports to Congress in order to more accurately measure stability and security in Iraq. We have not received two reports. I am disturbed by the findings in key indicator areas. Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects have been spent. And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American causalities have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.
"I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won 'militarily.' I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.
"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are untied against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraq security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United Stated occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a "free" Iraq.
"My plan calls:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.
"This war needs to be personalized. As I said before, I have visited with the severely wounded of this war. They are suffering.
"Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our obligation, to speak out for them. That's why I am speaking out.
Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."-from the email from Howard Dean today.
The Village Voice tells us about Murtha: "What's the Deal With John Murtha?"
''News Coverage Before Election Week: Surprising or Predictable?''
"To research whether or not the news changed the week prior to the Washington State elections, this article focused on the three local News stations, KOMO, KING and KIRO at the 5:00 and the 11:00 o'clock time slot. The researchers started out their research wanting to focus on the then upcoming elections; however we soon found that the news focused little on the elections donating only less than 1% percent of the combined coverage to the elections. Even though it was the week before the election the amount of election coverage was modest."-from the article on Campaign Audit.org.
''House of Horrors''
"The talk of the town is the torture house they recently found in Jadriya.
One area which was well-known for its torture houses immediately after the war was Sadir City in Baghdad. Except they weren't called torture houses back then. The people who ran them called them 'ma7akim' or 'courts'. They would bring 'suspects' in for interrogation- often ordinary citizens- and beat and whip them for various confessions involving accusations and alleged crimes. A 'Sayid' would then come in and sentence the culprit- the sentence would sometimes involve cutting off a hand or a foot and at other times it might be death. We heard this from an aunt's neighbor who was mistakenly taken in and beaten as a suspected former security agent. His family connections with influential Shia clerics in the area were the only things that got him out alive- bruised and broken- but alive.
These torture houses have existed since the beginning of the occupation. While it is generally known that SCIRI is behind them, other religious parties are not innocent. The Americans know they exist- why the sudden shock and outrage? This is hardly news for Americans in the Green Zone. The timing is quite interesting- it shouldn't matter that this raid came immediately after the whole white phosphorous story came out, but the Pentagon and American military have proven to be the ultimate masters of diversion."-from Riverbend's post today on Baghdad Burning. Based on my experience at the U-Dub on Wednesday, I am wondering if this story will make it into the "Talk of the Town" in The New Yorker.
One area which was well-known for its torture houses immediately after the war was Sadir City in Baghdad. Except they weren't called torture houses back then. The people who ran them called them 'ma7akim' or 'courts'. They would bring 'suspects' in for interrogation- often ordinary citizens- and beat and whip them for various confessions involving accusations and alleged crimes. A 'Sayid' would then come in and sentence the culprit- the sentence would sometimes involve cutting off a hand or a foot and at other times it might be death. We heard this from an aunt's neighbor who was mistakenly taken in and beaten as a suspected former security agent. His family connections with influential Shia clerics in the area were the only things that got him out alive- bruised and broken- but alive.
These torture houses have existed since the beginning of the occupation. While it is generally known that SCIRI is behind them, other religious parties are not innocent. The Americans know they exist- why the sudden shock and outrage? This is hardly news for Americans in the Green Zone. The timing is quite interesting- it shouldn't matter that this raid came immediately after the whole white phosphorous story came out, but the Pentagon and American military have proven to be the ultimate masters of diversion."-from Riverbend's post today on Baghdad Burning. Based on my experience at the U-Dub on Wednesday, I am wondering if this story will make it into the "Talk of the Town" in The New Yorker.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress. "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there," Murtha said. "I like that. I like guys who got five deferments [Cheney] and [have] never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he [Bush] criticized Democrats for criticizing them."
Murtha, who has represented the southwestern Pennsylvania steel-making region since 1974, voted for the original resolution to go to war with Iraq. But his worries began early in the effort, and last year he said the Pentagon had to provide more troops and more resources for the war or it would be "unwinnable."-from the story in Friday's Seattle Times, compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and Chicago Tribune.
Murtha, who has represented the southwestern Pennsylvania steel-making region since 1974, voted for the original resolution to go to war with Iraq. But his worries began early in the effort, and last year he said the Pentagon had to provide more troops and more resources for the war or it would be "unwinnable."-from the story in Friday's Seattle Times, compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and Chicago Tribune.
''Journalism: R.I.P.''
"Mainstream journalism has cancer. The diagnosis – stage three, terminal – was made this week, by anyone with eyes to see
Before now, the symptoms were alarming, but there was still hope. Fox’s “liberal media” lie; the reduction of all debates to polarized left/right shouting matches; the triumph of infotainment and missing-white-women-as-news over information we actually need to know; the substitution of he-said/she-said for shoe-leather and fact-finding; the social coziness of reporters and sources; the bottom-line obsession; the consolidation of power in fewer and fewer owners' hands' the politicization of public broadcasting – these, and more, were tumors, but their fatal metastasizing was not inevitable.
But the coverage of the battle between the White House and the Democrats over the use of prewar intelligence, and the reporting on l’affaire Woodward, is the end of the road for the mandarin gatekeepers.
If the Judy Miller saga left anyone wondering what high-church journalism’s standards are about sourcing, confidentiality, and citizen responsibility, the Bob Woodward tale now makes it clear: They make the rules up as they go along. Guidelines and handbooks are for rookies and chumps. If you’re a diva, if you’re working on a book, if you don’t feel like being served with a subpoena, if you think you know better, if don’t want to piss off a source – well, then, you do what you damn well please. It turns out that investigative reporters have the same right to clam up or spin when journalists ask them questions as do White House press secretaries, oil barons or starlets.
We also know now that the MSM is largely useless for adjudicating between conflicting claims and establishing what the facts are. The Bush/Cheney onslaught against its critics is being covered lavishly – but only as theater. Look at the Democrats cry “manipulation”! Look at the Republicans cry “treason”! A war is at stake. The nation’s reputation around the world is at stake. Lives hang in the balance. And all the media can do is cover tactics, politics, the melodrama of thrust-and-parry. The rare reporters who have attempted to create a useful scorecard are battling their weasel-minded editors’ insistence on a bizarre postmodern notion of balance. You know the CYA drill: if you say a good word about Darwin, ya gotta juxtapose it with some intelligent design whackball’s counterquote; if you say Cheney lied about the Saddam connection to 9/11, you’ve still got to dredge up every nutjob’s assertion that the Atta meeting in Prague can’t be disproved.
The worst – and this is what pushed me over the edge – is the disgraceful mischaracterization of the impact of the Woodward revelation on Fitzgerald’s case against Libby. With the exception of Keith Olberman, everyone is parroting Libby’s lawyer’s lie that this disproves Fitzgerald’s assertion that Libby was the first person in the Administration to leak Valerie Plame’s name. Fitzgerald, of course, didn’t say that. He said that Libby was “the first government official known to have told a reporter.” This is not a small distinction; it is not quibbling about words. If Woodward hadn’t decided that the World-According-to-Bob rules meant that he could keep his mouth shut while the Grand Jury was still empaneled, then Fitzgerald would have been able to add the leak to Woodward to his timetable. (And if Libby hadn’t thrown sand in Fitzgerald’s eyes, the investigation could have gone deeper.)
And yet now the Washington Post, ABC News, CNN, NBC and the AP have spread the lie, and soon every lazy stenographer on the planet posing as a journalist will gladly cut and paste this Republican propaganda into their narrative of the most troubling chapter in modern American history. What does it say about the news profession when most of the voices determined to ensure accuracy are onliners working without benefit of staffs below them, editors above them, or brand-name seals of approval from the priesthood?
I know, I know: there are fine men and women toiling away at newspapers, magazines, and television and radio networks. It’s true. And there are journalism schools valiantly fighting to instill respect for fairness and accuracy in the generation coming up. But these good people are healthy cells in a dying body. For all the unreliability and anarchy of the Web, if it weren’t for the energy of the internet, the funeral for the Fourth Estate would be happening this week.
UPDATE: Add James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers (the chain that's up for sale!) to the honor roll that includes Keith Olberman. Any other nominees?"-Marty Kaplan on The Huffington Post, via Yahoo! News. I heard Randy Rhodes go nuts over something she saw yesterday on CNN. Nuts in a GOOD way, like they weren't just falling victim to what Kaplan is talking about. Media Matters for America gives us examples of Kaplan's point: "NY Times, Wash. Post omitted Democratic response to Bush, Cheney attacks on Iraq War critics."
Before now, the symptoms were alarming, but there was still hope. Fox’s “liberal media” lie; the reduction of all debates to polarized left/right shouting matches; the triumph of infotainment and missing-white-women-as-news over information we actually need to know; the substitution of he-said/she-said for shoe-leather and fact-finding; the social coziness of reporters and sources; the bottom-line obsession; the consolidation of power in fewer and fewer owners' hands' the politicization of public broadcasting – these, and more, were tumors, but their fatal metastasizing was not inevitable.
But the coverage of the battle between the White House and the Democrats over the use of prewar intelligence, and the reporting on l’affaire Woodward, is the end of the road for the mandarin gatekeepers.
If the Judy Miller saga left anyone wondering what high-church journalism’s standards are about sourcing, confidentiality, and citizen responsibility, the Bob Woodward tale now makes it clear: They make the rules up as they go along. Guidelines and handbooks are for rookies and chumps. If you’re a diva, if you’re working on a book, if you don’t feel like being served with a subpoena, if you think you know better, if don’t want to piss off a source – well, then, you do what you damn well please. It turns out that investigative reporters have the same right to clam up or spin when journalists ask them questions as do White House press secretaries, oil barons or starlets.
We also know now that the MSM is largely useless for adjudicating between conflicting claims and establishing what the facts are. The Bush/Cheney onslaught against its critics is being covered lavishly – but only as theater. Look at the Democrats cry “manipulation”! Look at the Republicans cry “treason”! A war is at stake. The nation’s reputation around the world is at stake. Lives hang in the balance. And all the media can do is cover tactics, politics, the melodrama of thrust-and-parry. The rare reporters who have attempted to create a useful scorecard are battling their weasel-minded editors’ insistence on a bizarre postmodern notion of balance. You know the CYA drill: if you say a good word about Darwin, ya gotta juxtapose it with some intelligent design whackball’s counterquote; if you say Cheney lied about the Saddam connection to 9/11, you’ve still got to dredge up every nutjob’s assertion that the Atta meeting in Prague can’t be disproved.
The worst – and this is what pushed me over the edge – is the disgraceful mischaracterization of the impact of the Woodward revelation on Fitzgerald’s case against Libby. With the exception of Keith Olberman, everyone is parroting Libby’s lawyer’s lie that this disproves Fitzgerald’s assertion that Libby was the first person in the Administration to leak Valerie Plame’s name. Fitzgerald, of course, didn’t say that. He said that Libby was “the first government official known to have told a reporter.” This is not a small distinction; it is not quibbling about words. If Woodward hadn’t decided that the World-According-to-Bob rules meant that he could keep his mouth shut while the Grand Jury was still empaneled, then Fitzgerald would have been able to add the leak to Woodward to his timetable. (And if Libby hadn’t thrown sand in Fitzgerald’s eyes, the investigation could have gone deeper.)
And yet now the Washington Post, ABC News, CNN, NBC and the AP have spread the lie, and soon every lazy stenographer on the planet posing as a journalist will gladly cut and paste this Republican propaganda into their narrative of the most troubling chapter in modern American history. What does it say about the news profession when most of the voices determined to ensure accuracy are onliners working without benefit of staffs below them, editors above them, or brand-name seals of approval from the priesthood?
I know, I know: there are fine men and women toiling away at newspapers, magazines, and television and radio networks. It’s true. And there are journalism schools valiantly fighting to instill respect for fairness and accuracy in the generation coming up. But these good people are healthy cells in a dying body. For all the unreliability and anarchy of the Web, if it weren’t for the energy of the internet, the funeral for the Fourth Estate would be happening this week.
UPDATE: Add James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers (the chain that's up for sale!) to the honor roll that includes Keith Olberman. Any other nominees?"-Marty Kaplan on The Huffington Post, via Yahoo! News. I heard Randy Rhodes go nuts over something she saw yesterday on CNN. Nuts in a GOOD way, like they weren't just falling victim to what Kaplan is talking about. Media Matters for America gives us examples of Kaplan's point: "NY Times, Wash. Post omitted Democratic response to Bush, Cheney attacks on Iraq War critics."
Thursday, November 17, 2005
''Senate tax bill attracts Democratic efforts to squeeze oil, gas companies''
"Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., proposed the ban on price gouging, which was defeated despite winning support from 57 senators. Under Senate rules, the amendment needed 60 votes to pass. Forty-two senators opposed the measure.
Cantwell blasted Senate Republicans for blocking the amendment, which she said would protect American families from skyrocketing fuel costs.
"Americans will spend over $200 billion more on energy this year than they did last year," said Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "That's hundreds of billions of dollars coming directly out of family budgets and the bottom lines of businesses across the country."-from the AP story, "Senate tax bill attracts Democratic efforts to squeeze oil, gas companies."
Cantwell blasted Senate Republicans for blocking the amendment, which she said would protect American families from skyrocketing fuel costs.
"Americans will spend over $200 billion more on energy this year than they did last year," said Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "That's hundreds of billions of dollars coming directly out of family budgets and the bottom lines of businesses across the country."-from the AP story, "Senate tax bill attracts Democratic efforts to squeeze oil, gas companies."
''Seismic'' Shift by Influential Hawk''
"Calling the announcement "seismic," MSNBC TV just reported that pro-defense House member John Murtha (D-Pa) has "called for the United States 'to immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces'." While Bush and Cheney are attacking their war critics, their most staunch, count-on-me supporters are slipping away, one by one, and more and more vocally.
"A leading pro-defense Democrat in the House of Representatives on Thursday urged the Bush administration to start the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," reports Reuters/Yahoo. "'The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home,' said Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a senior Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees military spending."
Yahoo/AP: "Murtha voted to give the president authority to use force against Saddam Hussein in 2002. In recent months, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee defense panel has grown increasingly troubled with the direction of the war and with the Bush administration's handling of it, particularly following the disclosure of purportedly secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe."
"With a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentified to take control," Murtha told the A.P. this morning. The Reuters/Yahoo story adds:
Murtha urged the administration to "immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces." He also called for creation of a "quick reaction force" in the region, keeping some presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.
"We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region," said Murtha, a leading Democratic spokesman on defense issues. (Reuters/Yahoo)
No statement is yet available at Murtha's Web site. The Yahoo/AP story also says that Murtha, "a decorated Vietnam War veteran," is a close adviser to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said. (Yahoo/AP)"- thanks to Susan Hu at Booman Tribune for the tip.
Update: Here's video from Crooks and Liars, thanks to Annie Robbins.
"A leading pro-defense Democrat in the House of Representatives on Thursday urged the Bush administration to start the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," reports Reuters/Yahoo. "'The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home,' said Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a senior Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees military spending."
Yahoo/AP: "Murtha voted to give the president authority to use force against Saddam Hussein in 2002. In recent months, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee defense panel has grown increasingly troubled with the direction of the war and with the Bush administration's handling of it, particularly following the disclosure of purportedly secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe."
"With a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentified to take control," Murtha told the A.P. this morning. The Reuters/Yahoo story adds:
Murtha urged the administration to "immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces." He also called for creation of a "quick reaction force" in the region, keeping some presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.
"We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region," said Murtha, a leading Democratic spokesman on defense issues. (Reuters/Yahoo)
No statement is yet available at Murtha's Web site. The Yahoo/AP story also says that Murtha, "a decorated Vietnam War veteran," is a close adviser to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said. (Yahoo/AP)"- thanks to Susan Hu at Booman Tribune for the tip.
Update: Here's video from Crooks and Liars, thanks to Annie Robbins.
''Conventional Terror...''
I was at the U-Dub yesterday, listening to the learned apes from The New Yorker magazine opine about Iraq. The first thing they said was something like this: "It is really hard for foreigners to get around in Iraq and find out what is going on." So I thought, why don't they just publish Riverbend???? Here's her post today:
"It sat on my PC desktop for five days.
The first day I read about it on the internet, on some site, my heart sank. White phosphorous in Falloojeh. I knew nothing about white phosphorous, of course, and a part of me didn’t want to know the details. I tried downloading the film four times and was almost relieved when I got disconnected all four times.
E. had heard about the film too and one of his friends S. finally brought it by on CD. He and E. shut themselves up in the room with the computer to watch the brief documentary. E. came out half an hour later looking pale- his lips tightened in a straight line, which is the way he looks when he’s pensive... thinking about something he'd rather not discuss.
“Hey- I want to see it too…” I half-heartedly called out after him, as he walked S. to the door.
“It’s on the desktop- but you really don’t want to see it.” E. said.
I avoided the computer for five days because every time I switched it on, the file would catch my eye and call out to me… now plaintively- begging to be watched, now angrily- condemning my indifference.
Except that it was never indifference… it was a sort of dread that sat deep in my stomach, making me feel like I had swallowed a dozen small stones. I didn’t want to see it because I knew it contained the images of the dead civilians I had in my head.
Few Iraqis ever doubted the American use of chemical weapons in Falloojeh. We’ve been hearing the terrifying stories of people burnt to the bone for well over a year now. I just didn’t want it confirmed.
I didn’t want it confirmed because confirming the atrocities that occurred in Falloojeh means verifying how really lost we are as Iraqis under American occupation and how incredibly useless the world is in general- the UN, Kofi Annan, humanitarian organizations, clerics, the Pope, journalists… you name it- we’ve lost faith in it.
I finally worked up enough courage to watch it and it has lived up to my worst fears. Watching it was almost an invasive experience, because I felt like someone had crawled into my mind and brought my nightmares to life. Image after image of men, women and children so burnt and scarred that the only way you could tell the males apart from the females, and the children apart from the adults, was by the clothes they are wearing… the clothes which were eerily intact- like each corpse had been burnt to the bone, and then dressed up lovingly in their everyday attire- the polka dot nightgown with a lace collar… the baby girl in her cotton pajamas- little earrings dangling from little ears.
Some of them look like they died almost peacefully, in their sleep… others look like they suffered a great deal- skin burnt completely black and falling away from scorched bones.
I imagine what it must have been like for some of them. They were probably huddled in their houses- some of them- tens of thousands of them- couldn’t leave the city. They didn’t have transport or they simply didn’t have a place to go. They sat in their homes, hoping that what people said about Americans was actually true- that in spite of their huge machines and endless weapons, they were human too.
And then the rain of bombs would begin… the wooooosh of the missiles as they fell and the sound of the explosion as it hit its target… and no matter how prepared you think you are for that explosion- it always makes you flinch. I imagine their children covering their ears and some of them crying, trying to cover up the mechanical sounds of war with their more human wails. I imagine that as the tanks got closer, and the planes got lower- the fear increased- and parents searched each other’s faces for a solution, for a way out of the horror. Some of them probably decided to wait it out in their homes, and others must have been desperate to get out- fearing the rain of concrete and steel and thinking their chances were better in the open air, than confined in the homes that could at any moment turn into their tombs.
That’s what we were told before the Americans came- it’s safer to be outside of the house during an air strike than it is to be inside of the house. Inside of the house, a missile nearby would turn the windows into millions of little daggers and walls might come crashing down. In the garden, or even the street, you’d only have to worry about shrapnel and debris if the bomb was very close- but what were the chances of that?
That was before 2003… and certainly before Falloojeh.
That was before men, women and children left their homes only to be engulfed in a rain of fire.
Last year I blogged about Falloojeh and said:
“There is talk of the use of cluster bombs and other forbidden weaponry.”
I was immediately attacked with a barrage of emails from Americans telling me I was a liar and that there was no proof and that there was no way Americans would ever do something so appalling! I wonder how those same people justify this now. Are they shocked? Or do they tell themselves that Iraqis aren’t people? Or are they simply in denial?
The Pentagon spokesman recently said:
"It's part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon,"
This war has redefined ‘conventional’. It has taken atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. ‘Conventional’ has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weapons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interrogation methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other occupation prisons…
Quite simply… conventional terror."-from Baghdad Burning.
"It sat on my PC desktop for five days.
The first day I read about it on the internet, on some site, my heart sank. White phosphorous in Falloojeh. I knew nothing about white phosphorous, of course, and a part of me didn’t want to know the details. I tried downloading the film four times and was almost relieved when I got disconnected all four times.
E. had heard about the film too and one of his friends S. finally brought it by on CD. He and E. shut themselves up in the room with the computer to watch the brief documentary. E. came out half an hour later looking pale- his lips tightened in a straight line, which is the way he looks when he’s pensive... thinking about something he'd rather not discuss.
“Hey- I want to see it too…” I half-heartedly called out after him, as he walked S. to the door.
“It’s on the desktop- but you really don’t want to see it.” E. said.
I avoided the computer for five days because every time I switched it on, the file would catch my eye and call out to me… now plaintively- begging to be watched, now angrily- condemning my indifference.
Except that it was never indifference… it was a sort of dread that sat deep in my stomach, making me feel like I had swallowed a dozen small stones. I didn’t want to see it because I knew it contained the images of the dead civilians I had in my head.
Few Iraqis ever doubted the American use of chemical weapons in Falloojeh. We’ve been hearing the terrifying stories of people burnt to the bone for well over a year now. I just didn’t want it confirmed.
I didn’t want it confirmed because confirming the atrocities that occurred in Falloojeh means verifying how really lost we are as Iraqis under American occupation and how incredibly useless the world is in general- the UN, Kofi Annan, humanitarian organizations, clerics, the Pope, journalists… you name it- we’ve lost faith in it.
I finally worked up enough courage to watch it and it has lived up to my worst fears. Watching it was almost an invasive experience, because I felt like someone had crawled into my mind and brought my nightmares to life. Image after image of men, women and children so burnt and scarred that the only way you could tell the males apart from the females, and the children apart from the adults, was by the clothes they are wearing… the clothes which were eerily intact- like each corpse had been burnt to the bone, and then dressed up lovingly in their everyday attire- the polka dot nightgown with a lace collar… the baby girl in her cotton pajamas- little earrings dangling from little ears.
Some of them look like they died almost peacefully, in their sleep… others look like they suffered a great deal- skin burnt completely black and falling away from scorched bones.
I imagine what it must have been like for some of them. They were probably huddled in their houses- some of them- tens of thousands of them- couldn’t leave the city. They didn’t have transport or they simply didn’t have a place to go. They sat in their homes, hoping that what people said about Americans was actually true- that in spite of their huge machines and endless weapons, they were human too.
And then the rain of bombs would begin… the wooooosh of the missiles as they fell and the sound of the explosion as it hit its target… and no matter how prepared you think you are for that explosion- it always makes you flinch. I imagine their children covering their ears and some of them crying, trying to cover up the mechanical sounds of war with their more human wails. I imagine that as the tanks got closer, and the planes got lower- the fear increased- and parents searched each other’s faces for a solution, for a way out of the horror. Some of them probably decided to wait it out in their homes, and others must have been desperate to get out- fearing the rain of concrete and steel and thinking their chances were better in the open air, than confined in the homes that could at any moment turn into their tombs.
That’s what we were told before the Americans came- it’s safer to be outside of the house during an air strike than it is to be inside of the house. Inside of the house, a missile nearby would turn the windows into millions of little daggers and walls might come crashing down. In the garden, or even the street, you’d only have to worry about shrapnel and debris if the bomb was very close- but what were the chances of that?
That was before 2003… and certainly before Falloojeh.
That was before men, women and children left their homes only to be engulfed in a rain of fire.
Last year I blogged about Falloojeh and said:
“There is talk of the use of cluster bombs and other forbidden weaponry.”
I was immediately attacked with a barrage of emails from Americans telling me I was a liar and that there was no proof and that there was no way Americans would ever do something so appalling! I wonder how those same people justify this now. Are they shocked? Or do they tell themselves that Iraqis aren’t people? Or are they simply in denial?
The Pentagon spokesman recently said:
"It's part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon,"
This war has redefined ‘conventional’. It has taken atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. ‘Conventional’ has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weapons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interrogation methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other occupation prisons…
Quite simply… conventional terror."-from Baghdad Burning.
''And have a happy I-AM-NOT-A-CROOK DAY''
"On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon told 400 Associated Press managing editors that he had not profited from public service. "I have earned every cent. And in all of my years in public life I have never obstructed justice. People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook," he declared. On April 3, 1974, the White House announced that Nixon would pay $432,787.13 in back taxes plus interest after an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and a congressional committee. Among Nixon's benefits to himself were improvements in his properties, supposedly necessary for his protection. These included a security ice maker, a security swimming pool heater, security club chairs and table lamps, security sofa and security pillows."-from pszch.
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