McCain's 10th Daily Show

Senator John McCain (R–AZ) appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight for the tenth time. They discussed McCain's Presidential campaign and what he will need to do to pull it out of its low poll numbers and even lower finances. McCain is touting a new book, but he's also among the most frequent guests on The Daily Show, averaging more than once a year. Since there has been considerable interest in what Senator McCain has said on other recent appearances on the show (2007-04-24, 2006-07-24, and 2006-04-04), here is the interview.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, original air date 2007-08-16, ©2007 Comedy Central

Jon Stewart: Welcome back! My guest tonight, a Republican Senator from the State of Arizona who is also running for President. His new book is called Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People who Made Them. Please welcome back to the program, Senator John McCain. [applause and cheers]

[Stewart and McCain move to the main set, but McCain sits in the host's chair and Stewart in the guest's chair.]

John McCain: Now, did you hear him say that I was taking over the show and he was goin' to the Senate? Did you hear it? Look at that!

Stewart: You know, I don't have that much time to waste.

McCain: But you know what that means, if he's goin' to the Senate?

Stewart: Cloture?

McCain: He's goin' to be President of the United States! And —

Stewart: Get back in your seat. Damn you! You know, last time you were here — I'm glad to see you again. We got in a tiff last time; I don't remember what it was about, but I'm glad to see you again.

McCain: I've forgotten about it.

Stewart: I've completely forgotten about it. You've written another book. What is this, —

McCain: Yeah, I'm glad to see you, but just to mention again, I think this could be quite a moment in American political history, if you're gonna run for President — [to the audience] all Senators have to run for President.

Stewart: No, they do not.

McCain: Unless you're under indictment or detoxification, you automatically consider yourself a candidate for the President of the United States.

Stewart: When was the last Senator that won, though? See now, that's the thing: why don't Senators win?

McCain: Ah, you had to bring that up.

Stewart: What is it about being in the Senate?

McCain: [to the audience] It's not funny. It's not funny.

Stewart: [Stewart giggles] This book is your fifth — are you, like, Steven King now? How many books — what do you do? You're running for President, you're in the Senate, you're writin' books; do you hate your family? What's going on? What's going on here? This is —

McCain: Well, we —

Stewart: — the third this year.

McCain: No, it's —

Stewart: Is Voldemort in this? [McCain is speechless; audience cheers]

McCain: You know, I liked it a lot better sitting over there.

Stewart: Yeah? This is where all the jokes are, my friend!

McCain: Congratulations, and thank you for having me on, for the tenth time.

Stewart: Tenth time?

McCain: My tenth appearance, and it goes back to the 2000 campaign — long before some of you were born — and I'd like to thank you.

Stewart: A simpler time.

McCain: A simpler time in American history. The best of times, the worst of times.

Stewart: Now, what's going on with your campaign? People are — I read that people are leavin', it's just you now on that big bus. What —

McCain: In the words of Chairman Mao, it's always darkest before it gets totally black.

Stewart: Has this been a trying period? What's — what's goin' on?

McCain: Sure. You go through trying periods, these things go up and down; we're doin' fine. I'm happy with where we are, we've spent a lot of time in the town hall meetings, and it's very enjoyable, and we're gonna be —

Stewart: You're staying with it?

McCain: Oh, sure. It's —

Stewart: What would — Let me ask you a question: is Romney human?

McCain: I will leave that to those who have the —

Stewart: Scientists? Let me ask you a question: At what point, because all the —

McCain: Let me tell you how much fun it is to be in a debate with nine other candidates.

Stewart: Those things are absolutely ridiculous!

McCain: It certainly is a little bit numbing when you know it's gonna be 9 or 10 minutes before you're asked another question.

Stewart: Do you ever go to sleep?

McCain: Zzzzzzz.

Stewart: You just kind of shake around and pop your head up?

McCain: Occasionally, yeah. It gives one a chance to think about family, friends —

Stewart: No, it's nice. Is there something that could happen, like — what's are you lookin' at for the first couple of primaries, you feel like you gotta take two out of three? What's your —

McCain: In political history since 1980, the nominee of both parties has had to win two out of the first three: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.

Stewart: Right.

McCain: We have to win, and we will. I have great confidence, I'm very confident. [applause]

Stewart: So, you're feelin' it?

McCain: [gesturing to individual audience members] Thank you very much, God bless you. Thank you. No thanks to you.

Stewart: Do you feel like there's anything that you would change as to what's gone down so far? What would you have done — anything differently? Because, after — maybe so you wouldn't've had to hit the rough spot?

McCain: No, I think some of the planning on the finances, we obviously coulda changed, but I think that most people are gonna focus, probably, in September, when we start really gettin' into this. And, by the way, you know it's escalated, moved back, so that it's gonna be decided, apparently, some time in January, now.

Stewart: The nomination?

McCain: Everybody's movin' their primaries up.

Stewart: How is it to run to the Base? You know, these primaries — it does seem like, like, for the Democrats, they have to visit every special interest group. You know, they have the union debate, they had the black caucus debate, the gay forum debate —

McCain: YouTube.

Stewart: — YouTube, leprechauns. For the Republicans, the Base is more homogenous, but it seems like it's also — it allows the candidates, and, you know, I watched the debate, and the candidates are running on who's tougher. Like, you see Romney, "I'd triple the size of Guantánamo!" you know, and Giuliani is like, "I'd eat the testicles of terrorists!" Why does that have to be that way? Because, you know, when the general election comes, they're gonna be like, "I don't know what that guy was talking about!"

McCain: Well, let me just tell you: I'd close Guantánamo Bay, and I'd declare we never torture another person in American custody. [audience cheers loudly] And we would keep bad guys in prison, but we would have a process for taking care of some kind of tribunal, so that —

Stewart: Why is that such a difficult issue for people to wrap their heads around? I keep hearing these guys going, We've gotta be able to — we've gotten great information!

McCain: I think it's because life is not 24. As much as I love Jack Bauer, you know:

• Tell me where the nuclear weapon is!
• No.
• [boom!]
• I'll tell ya where it is!

That's all ya have to do, ya know?

Stewart: That's not how it goes down in those things? All right, very interesting.

McCain: And Jack Bauer and I have a lot in common, you know. Really, we do.

Stewart: Are you fictional, sir? Is that what this is about?

McCain: He gets captured, I get captured. He escapes, I don't escape. But, you know, it's close.

Stewart: It's very close. Here's what I wanna see in the next upcoming run: I wanna see the old John McCain —

McCain: You got it.

Stewart: — I wanna see the guy out there, speakin' it like it is, doin' the thing, not givin' a crap about the — but doin' what's he's gotta do to do the thing. Is that what I'm gonna — what?

McCain: Yes. [waves his book to the audience]

Stewart: No, don't. You know what, you can buy this book, but in a week and a half, he'll have another one, so it doesn't really matter, but it's called Hard Call; it's good to see ya again, and —

McCain: Thanks for having me on, Jon. It's a great joy to be back.

Stewart: — Stop it! It's always a pleasure to see ya. Hard Call is on the bookshelves now, Senator John McCain, always nice to see ya.

I'm greatly pleased to hear McCain's unequivocal rejection of the interrogation and detention policies that have been a hallmark of the Bush years, but I can't help that voice in the back of my head that won't stop saying, "But McCain knew all this about Bush in 2004!" If McCain wants to regain any of his reputation for "straight talk," he's got a lot of lost ground to regain.

Technorati tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, John McCain, Transcript

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Huckabee on Colbert re: Bush

Other people have written about this already, but here, for the record, is the full quote of Governor Mike Huckabee's comment on tonight's Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Huckabee suggested (again) having Stephen Colbert as his running mate. Colbert asked Huckabee, "George Bush: 'great President' or 'the greatest President'?"

Next to me, he'll rank right up there with McKinley and Harding and several others. It's gonna be a great moment of history, but Stephen, when you're Vice President, just remember: when my pulse stops, you'll take over the Free World.

President William McKinley started a war under false pretenses, with the help of the Rupert Murdoch and Fox News of the day, William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers; President Warren G. Harding was so corrupt — specifically in the area of oil! — he makes Richard Nixon look like a poster boy for good governance. In other words, Bush is a corrupt war-monger, and you heard it right from the lips of a Republican candidate for President.

Earlier in the interview, Huckabee deflected a question about his disbelief in evolution, replying, "I believe in devolution, and here's what I mean by that. Evolution says that we once were monkeys and now we're people. I've been watching Congress; I'm convinced that we once were people, and, if you look at Congress, we're turning into monkeys." Your summary of evolutionary theory, Governor Huckabee, is as thorough and as accurate as reducing the Bible to, "There was this Moses guy, and this Jesus guy, and a bunch of other people, so boys shouldn't kiss other boys." Same level of distortion of the message.

Anyway, I'm working on a transcript of John McCain's interview on tonight's Daily Show, which I'll have up here very shortly.

Technorati tags: Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert, Mike Huckabee, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, Evolution

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Kos on Colbert

Despite the clear warnings by Bill O'Reilly, Stephen Colbert, and others, I recently attended the second YearlyKos Conference in Chicago, where I met (in the sense of "was in the same room with") such luminaries as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd, John Dean (Nixon Administration), Anthony Romero (ACLU), and, of course, Markos Moulitsas, the "Kos" of DailyKos.com. DailyKos is one of the big liberal blogs, pulling in more visitors in an average hour than I have in a year and a half. I occasionally post diary entries in my little corner of DailyKos. On The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert has been keeping up the pressure on DailyKos, exposing our rampant dedication to liberty and free expression for all the world to see; on Wednesday night's show, he had Kos on to answer for the "hate speech" that Billo has decried so stridently.

(The video is also downloadable from the Crooks and Liars web site.)

The Colbert Report, original air date 2007-08-15, ©2007 Comedy Central.

Stephen Colbert: Nation, you cannot swing a cat these days without hitting a hate group. In fact, lots of cats are in hate groups. There's your Nazis, your neo-Nazis, and your neonatal Nazis. Their baby food of choice: Goebbels. You've also got your Basque separatists, your Islamofascists, your librarians — they're hiding something — and, worst of all, your Democrat open-forum web sites, led by the goose-stepping blog-schtapo at DailyKos.com. (Oh, I'm goin' after 'em, don't worry.) This Fourth Reich was rooted out by a man who knows his Fatherlands, "Papa Bear" Bill O'Reilly.

2007-07-31: It is the Ku Klux Klan. There's no difference.

2007-07-30: Nothing different than the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan.

2007-07-31: ... the left-wing Nazi hate sites ...

2007-07-16: It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi Party.

There is one difference: Nazis build bunkers; DailyKos bloggers build pillow forts. Now, over the weekend, the head of the Ku Kos Klan, Grand Dragon Markos Moulitsas appeared on Meet the Press. You know who else has been on Meet the Press? Fidel Castro and Judas. I haven't confirmed that, but the show's been on forever. Well, I for one will not appease this rising threat. Nation, I recently went undercover as a DailyKos blogger, registering under the discreet name of notstephencolbert. To complete my blogger disguise, I also did an exercise, played three hours of Halo, and ate onion dip with a spoon. Now, I am going to log onto my account right now, folks, and expose just how hateful this web site truly is. Let's see here: "Hungarians are dirty ghoulies who wash in peanut oil. Heil healthcare!!!" And ... post! Okay, now let's see what's on DailyKos today. Oh my god! "Hungarians are dirty ghoulies"? I can't read this on the air! This is unforgivable! Here now to defend the indefensible, is the führer himself, DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas! Markos!

[music: Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner]

Thank you. Oh, Jimmy, could we get the banner, please? [red banner with white circle and black stylized K-morphed-with-swastika] This is the banner on your web site, right?

Markos Moulitsas: I don't think it is.

Colbert: You don't think so? Does that look like anything to you?

Kos: I don't think so. It doesn't ring any bells.

Colbert: Doesn't ring any bells? That's a K. That's a K. Okay, all right, now, let's get straight to this: what do you have against the Hungarian people?

Kos: In reality, some of my best friends are Hungarian.

Colbert: Well, it's hard to tell, because you've some hate speech on your site right here! Why did you write that?

Kos: Considering I was backstage at your show, I don't think I kind of wrote that.

Colbert: But it's on your site. You're responsible for anything anyone posts on your site.

Kos: It's called an open forum. It's called democracy, and sometimes some idiots get on there and write things about Hungarians.

Colbert: But if you — it doesn't matter. [audience roars] No, no, I can take care of myself; I'm a big boy. Okay, but if it's on your web site, don't you have to take responsibility for it? I mean, the New York Times has to take responsibility for what's on their editorial page, and who writes their letters to the editor. You're no different.

Kos: Well, in reality, the beauty of what we're doing at DailyKos and other blogs like it is, we're giving regular Americans a voice in their politics to go on and talk about the things that they're passionate about. Now, at DailyKos, we don't allow truly hateful speech, but, you know, Papa Bear thinks that anything that disagrees with his point-of-view, his conservative point-of-view, is hate speech, so that's where this whole argument is really coming from.

Colbert: But if somebody does say something that's hateful on here, and it's your web site, by the transitive property of hate, it's your words. Just admit O'Reilly's right. Just admit it. Just admit it.

Kos: You know I can't do that. You know I can't do that.

Colbert: [typing] "O'Reilly is right." It's on your web site! You just admitted that O'Reilly is right. You just admitted it right there.

Kos: You know, if you gave me that computer, maybe some other things would be on there.

Colbert: [snaps the laptop shut] Okay, you've made your point. I'm a fair guy, I'll let you have the last word. Let me just ask you a question I ask all my guests: just show me with your hand, how tall is, like, a Great Dane?

Kos: A Great Dane?

Colbert: Yeah, just show me.

Kos: About this tall. [gestures about waist high]

Colbert: How tall is a pony? How tall is a pony?

Kos: [gestures about shoulder high]

Colbert: Freeze it! [still camera misses the gesture] Ooh, you missed it! You wanna show me how tall a horse is?

Kos: [gestures above his head]

Colbert: Freeze it! Well, I'm not gonna sit here and let you "Sieg heil" America! Markos Moulitsas, thank you for joining me.

Kos: Thank you very much.

Colbert: Markos Moulitsas, everybody; we'll be right back.

You can read the Kossacks' reaction in the "How Funny is Stephen Colbert?" thread on DailyKos.

I don't think there's much I can add, other than to say Nem beszelek magyarul!

Technorati tags: Stephen Colbert, Colbert Report, Comedy Central, Transcript, Markos Moulitsas, Kos, DailyKos, Hungarians, Hate Speech

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Cheney's biographer on The Daily Show

I just posted the transcript of Bill Kristol's interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from Monday; as I was typing it in, tonight's show came on, featuring an interview with Stephen Hayes, a senior writer at Kristol's publication, The Weekly Standard, a neoconservative magazine now owned by Rupert Murdoch. Hayes was on the program to discuss his new biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, but he wound up getting a grilling over the disservice that the neocons — including Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney, and many others — have done to our national interest by distorting the debate about how most effectively to deal with terrorism.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, original air date 2007-08-15, ©2007 Comedy Central

Jon Stewart: Welcome back. My guest tonight, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard, he's also a best-selling author. His latest book is Cheney: the Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. Please welcome back to the program, Stephen Hayes. Nice to see you again. How are you?

Stephen Hayes: I'm good, for now.

Stewart: Cheney! The book is called Cheney! You sat with him, in the same — this close?

Hayes: This close. Not this close, a little bit farther.

Stewart: Does he smell like pastry? What is it, when you walk into his office — is there a cinnamon candle lit in the corner, and he's meditating? What's the vibe?

Hayes: I don't think there's a lot of meditating for Dick Cheney. No, it's just, we were casual, I interviewed him at his house in Jackson [Wyoming]. He has one in Maryland. He's casual; he wore jeans, fleece jacket, tennis shoes, relaxed.

Stewart: Why not? Never know when a "hunt" might break out. You've written an editorial also today in the Wall Street Journal. I think, in many ways, very supportive, saying that Dick Cheney is a very solid Vice President. I'm glad you wrote this now, because when Rupert Murdoch takes over this paper, you're not gonna get away with this kind of thing. In it, though, you say we need more Dick Cheneys.

Hayes: We need more Dick Cheney. You know, as I wrote that line last week, honestly, I thought, "Jon Stewart is gonna like this."

Stewart: I am, though, because, here's why: given this administration's position on embryonic stem-cell research, we will never get to the point where we can create more Dick Cheneys. They need to change that position now, for this to come true.

Hayes: I did not know you were pro-cloning.

Stewart: Well, I am now, now that I've read this article. Here's the thing I can't figure out about Dick Cheney, and I think you kind of speak to it. He has this — the idea of him is this straightforward, no-nonsense, capable leader, but everything that I've heard him say publicly seems to turn out wrong. So, how do we jibe those two, this man that you've interviewed and you've written as, behind the scenes, a very powerful and smart and steadfast man, with the one who talks to us, the American public, and seems to not know a lot?

Hayes: Well, I guess I would argue that one of the negative consequences of him not being out more is that, the things that he says that he does get wrong, get a lot of attention. When you don't talk much, that's what people pay attention to. So, I think there's a focus on the mistake because he's not out more.

Stewart: But he's had an awful lot of time. For example, the clip from 1994 where he says we were right not to go to Baghdad because it would be chaos; that seemed right. But then when he came out later and said we'll be greeted as liberators, I don't see this thing lasting more than a few weeks, that was wrong. Explain that to me.

Hayes: Well, in the book, I actually have a speech that he gives in 1992 and then another one in 1996 where he says much the same thing that he said in 1994. I think his argument would be, things changed after September 11th.

Stewart: But the space-time continuum didn't change after 9/11. I mean, that whole argument about "things changed"; what changed about "it would be chaos"?

Hayes: Well, I'm not sure that he would say it wouldn't've been chaos, necessarily; it's just that he would've argued that the nature of the threat from Saddam Hussein after September 11th, with his relations with terrorists, we thought he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiles (but he did have programs) — was an unacceptable level of threat.

Stewart: But even given the unacceptable level — let's say he decides it's an unacceptable level of threat, we have to go in. Clearly, 1994 Dick Cheney foresaw all kinds of crazy complications of that, but 2002–2003 Dick Cheney didn't apparently plan for those complications. So, where's the — why didn't 2002 or 2003 Dick Cheney remember that '94 Dick Cheney — I have a headache. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Hayes: I do, I do.

Stewart: Their argument is always, "9/11 changed everything!," but it didn't change that, did it?

Hayes: Well, I think you can make a criticism that it didn't, but I think what he would say is, even if it were the case that it was going to be much more difficult, after invading Iraq, after overthrowing Saddam in post-war Iraq, it was worth it because Saddam Hussein was an unacceptable threat.

Stewart: I get what you're saying about the unacceptable threat; my point is, why didn't 2002–2003 Dick Cheney come out and say to the American people, "This is going to be chaotic. The reason we didn't go in before was, we knew the issues."? But they didn't. Person after person after person in the administration said, "Ah, it's gonna be like a million dollars, it's gonna take a week, this guy's a — baah."

Hayes: I know. I'm not sure they said that.

Stewart: They came out person after person. That is the essence of people's anguish, is they feel that they've been —

Hayes: I mean, I'm not sure that they said exactly that, but I will say that, when I asked him —

Stewart: I was using hyperbole, and also a funny accent, but the essence of their argument was, this wasn't gonna be a problem.

Hayes: When I asked him about that, it was interesting, because he, I mean, as you've pointed out on your show, numerous times, he's not someone who likes to admit mistakes, and one of the things he did say was, we underestimated, obviously, how difficult it was gonna be. He also spoke to the Coalition Provisional Authority, and said that that was not the right way to have handled post-war Iraq.

Stewart: Then stop making the rest of us feel like idiots when we question their strategy in the war on terror, and stop making the rest of us feel like — and I don't mean you, I mean them — I think that they've seemingly gone out of their way to belittle people. You know, he's actually literally come out and said if you don't elect us, we might get hit again. That to me is — I can't jibe the portrait you paint of the steadfast leader with the fear-mongering not-bright guy that I've seen.

Hayes: Yeah, but, no, really, isn't it the case that, I mean, that's essentially what this debate has been about, the political debate has been about, since 2001?

Stewart: No. They keep saying that we don't understand the nature of this war, and critics keep saying, "We understand the nature of it; you've been doing it wrong."

Hayes: Right, so what's the quality of difference there?

Stewart: Well, no, the difference there is, we're not calling them traitors.

Hayes: Yeah, but I don't think that the administration has called anyone a traitor. [audience groans and boos] When has it happened? I mean, I'm serious; when has that happened?

Stewart: Let me say this: I think there's a real feeling in this country that your patriotism has been questioned, by people in very high-level positions, not fringe people. You know, I myself had some idiot from Fox [News Channel] playing the tape of me after September 11th, very upset, and them calling me a phony, because, apparently, my grief didn't mean acquiescence. So, I think that it's a fair point to say —

Hayes: I think we can agree that we shouldn't be questioning other people's patriotism; on the other hand, I think it's totally legitimate to talk about different ways of handling the war on terror and for them to make their case.

Stewart: If they were to make their case on that, I'm saying to you, I think we'd have a fair argument and agreement on how to move forward. They haven't done that, and the evidence that they haven't done that is, he made that case in 1994, he knew those were the problems, and they never brought it up in the run-up to the war. And that to me proves the entire — but that's — we gotta get going, obviously. Again, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you coming on and hearing it, and I didn't mean to get, you know, whatever; I just — you know, you can't read 400 pages of Cheney and not have it make you a little rrbrr-rr-rr. Cheney is on the bookshelves now; Stephen Hayes was here. Thank you.

For Stephen Hayes to say with a straight face that no one in the administration has impugned the patriotism of people who have challenged the Bush Administration's approach to terrorism, demonstrates an alarming disconnection from reality. The belittling of their opponents has been the cornerstone of their political strategy, dismissing as "pre-9/11 thinking" any position that questions their authority or wisdom, saying that opponents don't understand (or don't take seriously) the threat of terrorism, saying that we will be attacked again if the other side wins an election, and damned nearly every word that has come out of the mouths of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Fleischer, McClellan, Snow, and all the rest. It has been an unremitting barrage of attacks on the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with the Official View. As to the legitimacy of discussing different ways of handling terrorism, that's precisely the point: the administration has systematically shut off that discussion, clearly because they don't know what the hell they're doing.

Anyhow, enough for tonight; tomorrow is John McCain on The Daily Show.

Technorati tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, Stephen Hayes, Transcript, Cheney biography, Dick Cheney, Iraq War, Politics, War on Terror

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Bill Kristol on Monday's Daily Show

Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard and cheerleader for ubiquitous and eternal war throughout the Middle East, was the guest on Monday night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. Despite the overwhelming evidence that neither Kristol nor Bush nor Rumsfeld nor any of the rest of the neocon cabal had any remote clue, Kristol defiantly maintains that we are on the right course in Iraq. Jon Stewart did a fairly good job of holding his feet to the fire, but he was unable to pierce Kristol's reality-proof bubble. Looking through the server logs, I see that a lot of readers are looking back at the transcript of Kristol's appearance back in December, so here is this week's exchange.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, original air date 2007-08-13, ©2007 Comedy Central

Jon Stewart: Welcome back to the 5th or 6th edition of "Two Jews Disagreeing."

Bill Kristol: I can't recall. I can't recall anything any more.

Stewart: You can't recall? Ah, it is viral, it is communicative [communicable], I tell you! Obviously, you and I have differing views on Iraq. You have just been to Iraq. You've spent — how long were you there?

Kristol: About eight days.

Stewart: Eight days. I assume it was to check on the surge?

Kristol: It was, yeah, to find out what's going on, trying to learn for myself.

Stewart: And you have found — and I'm just gonna go out on a limb here — it's all going well. Am I right? [Kristol nods.] I am right. What do you think?

Kristol: It is going well.

Stewart: It is going well.

Kristol: It is going well. It was going badly in 2005 and 2006; one of the most striking things — no, seriously, talking to the soldiers, their morale is high because we now have a serious strategy, which is being executed down the line and is succeeding. Now, it's late, we've wasted two or three years, a lot of damage was done, it's a tough situation, but things are better than they were in January.

Stewart: Here's what — now, I, obviously, have been against the war from the start, didn't think it was a very good idea. How, if it doesn't go well, if it continues to go badly, how will that be my fault?

Kristol: It will be your fault if we pull the plug on a strategy that is now working. We finally have a good commander —

Stewart: This is interesting to me.

Kristol: No, I'm being serious, though. Look —

Stewart: No, I know.

Kristol: I said somewhere, about a month ago, I don't really blame the voters for electing a Democratic Congress in 2006, much as I don't much like a Democratic Congress, because Bush and Rumsfeld had so mismanaged the war that it was a reasonable reaction to say, "We need to send a message." Bush took the message, though. He fired Rumsfeld, he brought Petraeus in, they're running a serious counterinsurgency, and it is working.

Stewart: Can you see how someone who is skeptical — basically, we're hearing from people like yourself, people like the President, "Trust us to undo the terrible thing that we did." Don't you see where it's — it's tough to say —

Kristol: Don't trust me, not that you were going to —

Stewart: Who should I trust?

Kristol: Well, trust skeptics of the war, like Mike O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack, who went over, who've been there before —

Stewart: They weren't "skeptics."

Kristol: They were. They came back and they had seen it in real time —

Stewart: Ken Pollack would like us to invade Iran, for god's sake.

Kristol: That's an idea.

Stewart: I mean, those are two very hawkish guys.

Kristol: It's not a bad idea. Or, trust other people, trust even Democratic Congressmen who come — look, things are getting better. That's the whole point. [Stewart laughs.] No, no, seriously. Look, don't trust me, but look, and don't trust President Bush. On the other hand, he is the President. We have to make a serious decision, do we let General Petraeus play this out for the next six months, or do we pull the plug on it next month? That's the practical decision. It's not a matter of trusting.

Stewart: When you say "play it out," what does "play it out" mean? That's the part I'm having trouble figuring out. What is the end game?

Kristol: The end game is increase security. The Sunni areas, which are now flipped against Al Qaeda, are now becoming pretty stable, and I think we have a pretty good shot in Anbar and elsewhere at a reasonably stable situation there —

Stewart: But Anbar is not the surge; that's a different place. The surge is Baghdad.

Kristol: No, no, we added actually an important brigade into Anbar, which cleaned out Ramadi, and we walked around Ramadi, and it's pretty amazing what's happened there. Baghdad is very difficult and complicated; we are making progress there, but don't trust anyone; I mean, you just have to make a serious decision going forward. Things are getting better; no one doubts that. The question is, are they getting better enough, and can we end up in an acceptable end state where there's enough security that we don't have a terror state —

Stewart: Why the anger towards people that were against the war? I'm trying to wrap my head around, and I read the editorials. The vitriol that's heaped on people [who] were against the war, seems so misplaced to me, this idea of, like, they're defeatist, they're cut-and-runners, they don't understand the threat — where do you think that comes from?

Kristol: Well, I don't think I'm angry at people who were against the war. I am angry at people who would pull the plug now, based not —

Stewart: If you were to call someone a defeatist and a cut-and-runner, who is making it so that they don't support the troops, would you say that's anger?

Kristol: No, I would say if you — look, some people think — Harry Reid said we have lost the war; is it fair to call him defeatist? What is he saying? He's saying we've been defeated and we should acknowledge it and get out. He thinks we need to acknowledge —

Stewart: But you said Sunni and Shia would get along. You've said a lot of things that, if we went back and picked through, I could say to you, should I call you terrible names? No, of course not, you're just a simple fellow who's devised a plan that the President executed. My point is this — isn't it, when people say —

Kristol: I've been wrong about plenty of things.

Stewart: One thing you've said is, you feel like President Bush has been a steadfast leader. How?

Kristol: Yeah, he's been mistaken about some things.

Stewart: But where has he displayed leadership? Isn't leadership —

Kristol: No, he's stuck with this war when it was unpopular, and I think he was right to.

Stewart: He's displayed stubbornness. Isn't leadership bringing along a country and not chastising those who disagree and making them feel like pussies?

Kristol: I don't think he's ever —

Stewart: He does!

Kristol: He's never made you feel like a pussy.

Stewart: He called me a pussy.

Kristol: No, he's never felt — I've talked to the President about you, and I want to assure you, he told me to tell you this, he does not consider you a pussy.

Stewart: What does he go with?

Kristol: He's showing leadership now, which is he is making a case for sustaining the surge, I think he's making it responsibly, he's not demagoguing the issue, Petraeus is a non-partisan general, he will come back in September —

Stewart: All he's saying is, "Trust Petraeus." If we get the security down, then they build a democracy, and then that flourishes and spreads throughout, like pretty flowers throughout the Middle East, and then —

Kristol: I think they could have a decent regime there, which would have an effect elsewhere in the Middle East, but certainly — look, you cannot go there and talk to our soldiers and talk to the Iraqi army soldiers and hear the stories of what al Qaeda does and hear the stories of what the Shia militias do —

Stewart: You're exactly right.

Kristol: — and then say cavalierly, "It's ludicrous, we're not doing any good there." We are doing a lot of good there.

Stewart: Nobody says we're not doing any good there. Here's what they say, honestly, and this is what I think, if the President would say, he'd do a lot better with people. They say, "Al Qaeda and terrorism were a huge threat, and going into Iraq was a big mistake that diverted our resources from that actual fight." And as you see them become resurgent in Afghanistan and in that area of Pakistan, by not acknowledging that, is, when I speak of that arrogance, it is hard for people to get past original sin. It's hard for people to get past it, and a real leader —

Kristol: Well, we Jews have no problem. We don't believe —

Stewart: [laughing] How could you bring it back to that?

Kristol: We don't believe in original sin. I mean, I think they're doing their best, and let's see what General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker say in September, and they will convince you, and you will be for sustaining —

Stewart: Have you talked to General Petraeus?

Kristol: I saw him when I was over there, yeah.

Stewart: Will he come and sit on the program?

Kristol: He thinks you're a pussy.

Stewart: [laughing] That's the best line I've heard in a very long time!

Kristol is correct, by the way, that the "surge" is not only Baghdad, but also Al Anbar governate. However, Kristol and the other salesmen of the invasion were off on another planet with their expectations of what would happen after the invasion, and Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney's decisions to throw out plans that had been worked out by experts familiar with both the physical terrain and the demographic challenges of Iraq, in favor of ideologically driven fantasies, created a far worse quagmire than we would have faced with competent leadership in the early days of the war. I agree that it was wrong to invade Iraq, and particularly with Jon Stewart's point that it was a diversion from the real fight against terrorism, but given that we did invade, we could hardly have done a worse job of managing the occupation if we had tried. Bush thinks of himself as "the CEO President," but if he were the CEO of a corporation, the stockholders would have run him out of town on a rail, with the SEC in hot pursuit for criminal charges of breach of fiduciary duty.

The bottom line: Bill Kristol had no answer for why we should give the Bumbler in Chief any slack at all, or trust him to do anything to undo the mess he himself has created. Bush is a woefully incompetent leader, and the tragedy is that it has taken so much of the American public so long to wake up and realize it. The further tragedy is that, even now, most of the Democratic Party is too timid to stand up to Bush and tell him to his face that we don't trust him, we don't think he has done a good job so far, we don't think he's doing a good job now, and we don't have faith that he will do a good job in the next 17 months. More than anything else, Bush has squandered the American people's trust in him.

Technorati tags: Bill Kristol, Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, Iraq War, Bush, Politics, Surge

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Smackdown: Dan Abrams takes out Karl Rove

I occasionally used to watch former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R–FL-01) on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, because, although Joe is considerably to the right of me politically, I respect his integrity that he is at least trying to be even-handed. A few weeks ago, though, the post-Olbermann time slot went to Dan Abrams. I've been pretty impressed with Dan, but tonight he was, if I may say, Olbermannesque in his "My Take" segment on the departure of Karl Rove. The video clip is up on MSNBC's web site. Dan, a former reporter for CourtTV, makes the case against Karl Rove from a traditional conservative perspective of respect for the Rule of Law, and he does it with vigor and flair. I'll give you the LincMad View of Dan Abrams' "My Take," below the fold.

The blockquotes below are all from the broadcast of MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, 2007-08-13. The unindented text is my comments.

Dan Abrams: "My Take": If Karl Rove had been a professional wrestler, they might've called him The Constitutional Crippler. I'll leave his political legacy to others, although I think it's foolish when looking for explanations for the 2000 [sic] Republican political rout to blame Rove the political operative as opposed to Rove the chief policy analyst. That was the war speaking, how the Republicans talked about it in the campaign, wouldn't've changed a thing.

But in terms of his legal legacy, Rove has long applied basic political strategy to the courts: accuse your opponents — or critics — of engaging in the very behavior that could become your own Achilles Heel. Rove has accused judges of "bending the law" to fit their personal agenda — it's true, some do — but I can't think of a federal judge who has done that more than Karl Rove himself.

Rove called the federal judiciary "fundamentally out of touch with mainstream America." A nice campaign slogan, but it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of judges. They're not supposed to reflect popular opinion. It also demonstrates some hypocrisy: he cites The Will of The People, until, of course, it comes to The People's reaction to this administration's policy. Then he ignores it, and he even said, quote, "I'm not gonna stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob"!

Bottom line: Karl Rove cares about getting and keeping raw political power for its own sake, more than he cares about a great many issues affecting the well-being of our nation. I've still never been able to find corroboration for the quote, but I remember seeing Karen Hughes, another Bush political advisor, interviewed in early 2001, saying that the Bush legal team was fully prepared to go to court to argue for the supremacy of the popular vote over the electoral college if, as was thought quite possible, Bush had won the popular and not the electoral, instead of the other way around. It's all right for politicians to want political power; that's kind of up there with saying it's okay to breathe and eat and sleep. What is emphatically not okay is to want political power as an end in itself, whether you're talking about Willie Brown and John Burton or Karl Rove and George W. Bush.

Rove's legacy is littered with examples of shifting rules to accommodate his own political objectives. We don't know exactly how involved he was in certain administration decisions, about everything from the NSA spying to Guantánamo; we do know, according to Justice Department e-mails, that in January 2005 Rove was asking about firing all 93 U.S. attorneys, that he passed along specific complaints about others, then reportedly advised on how to make the firings seem "merit-based." And to avoid being scrutinized — EVER — he sent more than 140,000 e-mails through the Republican National Committee's computer system, instead of through the White House, thereby circumventing federal law; that's according to a House oversight committee.

His philosophy: expand the power of the Executive Branch, often meaning his own power, and demean the branch of government willing to rein him in, the Judicial Branch. Rove used court appointments as a political carrot, privately assuring religious groups, for example, that court nominees would share their beliefs. And for the fired U.S. attorneys, it was also about politics, but in the form of political punishment. He may be one of the great political operatives of all time, but from a lawyer's perspective, as someone who studies the Constitution, relishes the Rule of Law, appreciates our courts, I will not shed a tear at his farewell bash.

I have become, over the years, more and more of a "yellow dog" Democrat, but this is one area in which I hold on with pride to my conservative values from the bedrock of my days as a young Republican, before Watergate. The process of being elected President is intrinsically political, and many aspects of the process of governing are as well, but there are some areas in which We the People must demand that the President figure out how to minimize the political damage of doing the right thing, instead of figuring out how to get away with the politically desirable thing. He or she must act with integrity as a public servant and as a guardian of the Rule of Law.

I capitalize the phrase Rule of Law as a mark of reverence, in exactly the same sense that Christians revere the Holy Bible or Muslims revere the Holy Quran. While individuals may believe in this or that or another god, the only official religion of the State must always be the Rule of Law, and that religion may not lightly be transgressed. In plain English, all who hold positions of political power, believe in whatever you believe in, but act only according to the laws of men.

I'm pleased that Dan Abrams has made the case so passionately, but I can't help feeling some of the same frustration Keith Olbermann voiced in his first "Special Comment" last year. Keith finally realized that no one else was going to speak up. I've been waiting for someone to make the conservative legal case against the Bush legacy, and Bruce Fein and now Dan Abrams are stepping up to the challenge. I couldn't fill that void by myself, because I have neither the conservative credentials nor the legal. I'm pleased that it is happening, but I am dismayed that it has taken so long when the evidence has been so clear for so long.

Dan goes on to have a discussion with the guests, "Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman from New York, and author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush, Josh Green, Senior Editor of The Atlantic, whose cover story on Rove appears in the magazine's September issue [cover photo: storm clouds over the White House, headline: LESSONS OF A FAILED PRESIDENCY], and talk show host Michael Reagan." I won't transcribe the whole thing here — hopefully MSNBC will do that, though — but I still have a few comments.

Dan put Michael Reagan, Ronnie's son who is now a talk radio host, on the spot, making him show how out of touch the Bushies' talking points are with conservative values. Reagan not only claimed that Rove showed no disdain for the Rule of Law, but even that "the fact of the matter is, most of America does agree with what's going on" [U.S. Attorney firings, NSA wiretapping, etc.]

Wait, wait, wait. Let's be clear, Micheal. Let's not confuse the words criminal with wrongdoing. They're not the same thing. Just because no one could be charged with a crime, doesn't mean there wasn't any wrongdoing.

Elizabeth Holtzman, though, put Dan on the spot for his reflexive (a polite way of saying "knee-jerk") "No one is suggesting that it was illegal to seek to fire all of [the 93 U.S. Attorneys], or to seek to fire some of them; the question isn't illegal or legal." As she pointed out, that very much is the question, because, if, as has been seriously alleged, the President of the United States, or his loyal assistants behind whom he steadfastly stands, sought to encourage or discourage criminal prosecutions for partisan political reasons, then that is the very definition of obstruction of justice. In her words, "To call the U.S. Attorney scandal political is wrong: it could be criminal."

To his shame, Dan continues, saying that he thinks Holtzman is "on something of a fringe there, in suggesting that there is going to be some sort of criminal investigation into the firings of the U.S. Attorneys." After what you just said about "relishing the Rule of Law," you're going to tell me that investigating the possibility of criminal obstruction of justice in a case where it appears that the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and other officers of our government sought to politicize the justice system, is a "fringe" position? C'mon, Dan, seriously.

Michael Reagan, though, goes way out into Neocon Neverneverland, but Dan brings him back, with some help from Josh Green.

Michael Reagan: If [Karl Rove] did something that is in fact "illegal," "wrongdoing," whatever, they certainly would've said something in the grand jury. They did not invite him, for however many times he was brought in there, and I think everybody is searching, they're saying, "Oh, we couldn't get George Bush, let's get Karl Rove, let's get him," and make sure he's a criminal on the way out of the building.

Dan Abrams: But again, ... that's the difference: just because he's not a criminal, and just because he hasn't been indicted for a crime, does not mean that he's not someone who we can criticize for his views on the Constitution and his position on judges and the judiciary in this country. ...

Josh Green: You called him the Constitutional Crippler, but the one bit of poetic justice in all this is that the person Rove wound up "crippling" was his own reputation, and so he leaves the White House not indicted, but in many ways disgraced, I think.

Elizabeth Holtzman: ... This is a man who has shown complete contempt not only for Congress, not even showing up, even after being subpœnaed, but contempt for the Constitution, ... but here you have a Justice Department that was perverted for political purposes. ... [As a prosecutor,] I never, before prosecuting a rapist or a murderer, said, "Well, are you a Republican or a Democrat?" ... Karl Rove took government and tried to make it all political, including things that we think are pretty sacred, like justice that's fair ... — you're gonna be dealt with on the merits, not on the basis of politics. I think his legacy has been a disaster.

Michael Reagan goes on to argue in one breath that Karl Rove did nothing wrong, and he's only being picked on because he was successful at getting Bush elected and re-elected, and in the next breath that it doesn't matter, anyway, because before you know it Rove will be "old news," and that anyway it's always like that in the White House. Josh Green shot down that particular attempt to sweep Rove under the rug:

Josh Green: There really never has been a figure in the modern American Presidency quite like Karl Rove, a political advisor who had that much say — not just over politics and policy, but apparently over the judiciary — and who acted from as raw a set of political motives as Rove obviously did. Of course, Michael [Reagan] is right to say that politics is always a thought in the White House, but never were they put forward to the degree that they were in the Bush White House, and Karl Rove was the main driver.

Exactly: Karl Rove represents an unprecedented radical attempt to change the way the Constitution functions. He won't be forgotten in a month, as Michael Reagan so offhandedly believes; he won't be forgotten in a generation, and he will be the subject of Constitutional Interpretation classes for centuries. The only reason to try to minimize his importance is to make the desperate argument that we shouldn't bother holding him — and those who took his advice — accountable.

Keith Olbermann had Howard Fineman and John Dean on to talk about Karl Rove, which was fine to watch, and now I'm looking forward to seeing what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have to say about Turd Blossom.

Technorati tags: Dan Abrams, MSNBC Live, My Take, Keith Olbermann, Karl Rove, Turd Blossom, Michael Reagan, Josh Green, Elizabeth Holtzman, Constitution, Rule of Law

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No End in Sight

Over the weekend, I went to see the new documentary No End in Sight, a chronicle of the mind-numbing series of blunder upon blunder upon blunder committed by the Bush Administration in its conduct of the Iraq occupation. The overall themes are agonizingly familiar by now: meticulous plans crafted over years by experts with knowledge of the country and its people, tossed out in favor of ideologically driven fantasies thrown together off the cuff by people who in many cases had never been to Iraq, didn't speak Arabic, and knew nothing of the fissures within Iraqi society; personnel chosen more for their views on Roe v. Wade than for any relevant expertise; military and civilian experts on the ground in Baghdad overruled by the White House; catastrophically inadequate planning for the aftermath of the invasion; insensitivity to the Iraqi people; and just plain obviously stupid mistakes.

At the core of the quagmire, though, stand three glaring mistakes.

1. Failure to secure Baghdad — except, of course, the oil ministry — in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.
   
   
2. De-Ba'athification on an insanely overbroad scope, eliminating not only Saddam loyalists, but also thousands of government employees who joined the Ba'ath Party only because it was a requirement of their jobs.
   
   
3. Abruptly disbanding the Iraqi army without any plans for mitigating the disruption to society.

A number of senior administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Jerry Bremer, declined requests to be interviewed for the film, but a few officials did appear, including Richard Armitage (the man who outed Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative, and who was Deputy Secretary of State), Larry Wilkerson (Colin Powell's chief of staff), Gen. Jay Garner (L. Paul Bremer's predecessor in Baghdad, head of ORHA, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance), and Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad in the early days of the occupation), to name a few.

The failure to secure Baghdad created an atmosphere of lawlessness in which the only sources of protection available to most Iraqi citizens were the various sectarian militias, including the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade of SCIRI, among others. Baghdad quickly turned into a patchwork of zones controlled in effect by rival warlords. Furthermore, in the eyes of the Iraqi people and of the world, the United States, particularly in the person of Donald Rumsfeld, showed its indifference to the citizens of Baghdad, to their vital infrastructure, and to their cultural heritage tracing back 7,000 years. Guarding only the oil ministry sent an unmistakable signal as to our intentions and our priorities.

Casting aside a great swath of the government and the entire structure of the army created a pool of hundreds of thousands of people who were suddenly unemployed, broke, humiliated, shut out of public life (and in many cases unemployable in their areas of expertise), and heavily armed. And yet the administration still claims that "no one could have predicted" the rise of an insurgency against the U.S. occupation — never mind that many people not only could have but in fact did predict exactly that. The "commanders on the ground" that Bush so often proclaims his deference to, felt strongly that it was an enormous mistake to disband the Iraqi army, but the order from Washington left Bremer no flexibility: send them home with $50 severance pay (weeks later) and all the firepower they can carry, and cross your fingers in the hope that they don't turn those weapons against U.S. soldiers and diplomats. What could go wrong?

The Bush administration's plans were predicated on the fantasy, promulgated by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi, that the Americans would be "greeted as liberators," and that in the space of a few short months there would be a functioning Iraqi government (with Chalabi as prime minister, of course) moving forward with the rebuilding of a prosperous, democratic Iraq. Advisors who were "reality-based" in any way were systematically shut out of the process.

I still believe that it was a mistake to invade Iraq. It posed no immediate military threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. By our government's own estimation, Saddam Hussein was hemmed in, without the freedom to act on any large scale. Yes, the sanctions were a leaky sieve, funneling money through the black market to Saddam and his friends while at the same time devastating the public, but the gaps in the sanction regime were not sufficient cause to invade. Nor were the various UN Security Council resolutions that Saddam violated or simply ignored. All of those were reasons to maintain pressure on Saddam, and perhaps to begin building an international consensus for regime change, but not enough to invade before that consensus had formed. However, the decision to invade was the least of the mistakes made by the Bushies.

If we had gone into Baghdad with enough troops to secure the city — and to secure the various ammunition stashes Saddam left dotted across the countryside — we would be facing a completely different situation today. We would have had to go through the government and the army to root out the Saddam loyalists, the war criminals, and others unfit to serve their country. It would have been difficult and tedious work, requiring considerable expertise, judgment, patience, and experience. However, at the end of that process we would have had the basic framework of a government and an army capable of taking over when the coalition troops left. We would not have had hundreds of thousands of trained, heavily armed ex-soldiers with nothing better to do than attack our troops. Seems like that might have been a good idea, dontcha think? We might even have had an exit strategy on a timeline measured in months rather than decades.

Of course, if you're reading this blog, you probably never had any illusions that the Bushies knew anything at all about what they're trying to do, so your seeing this film would be to some extent a case of preaching to the choir. What we really need to do is get the dwindling minority of Americans who approve of Bush's handling of the Iraq occupation — including, at least by their floor votes, many Democrats in Congress — to see this film.

No End in Sight is currently showing in the following metropolitan areas: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Portland OR, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It will screen in over 80 cities in 35 states (plus D.C.) over the next two months; for details, click on "Theatres" in the main navigation menu on the web site.

Technorati tags: No End in Sight, Iraq War, Iraq Occupation, ORHA, Coalition Provisional Authority, De-Ba'athification, Insurgency, L. Paul Bremer, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney

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A feast of Al Jazeera today

I tuned in to Al Jazeera English this morning to watch the weekly discussion program Inside Iraq, something I consider must-see viewing for anyone who wants an unfiltered perspective on the Iraq occupation. However, I wound up staying tuned for several hours. In addition to the News Hour, today featuring extensive coverage of the upcoming elections in Sierra Leone, Al Jazeera had a news special called Inside Gaza. With 40% unemployment and rampant poverty and malnutrition, events in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories have a ripple effect throughout the Middle East, including within Iraq itself. Today's Witness was an Al Jazeera exclusive: host Rageh Omaar had several interviews with Maulama Abdul Rashid Ghazi, one of the key figures in the Red Mosque madrassah, beginning a few days before the siege. The students were aggressive and even sometimes violent in pushing their interpretation of Islamic law outside the school, but inside they were quiet and studious. The madrassah itself provided medical care and other assistance to the students and to others in the community, with a well-stocked clinic and a general store. A bit later, the Talk to Jazeera interview program featured former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sherief, talking about the desperation of the government of military dictator Pervez Musharraf to hold power.

The key lesson of 9/11 that the Bush administration has never learned is that events in the rest of the world, and particularly the way the rest of the world views American involvement in those events, directly affect the security and prosperity of the United States. Palestine matters because it is a flashpoint for Muslim anger at what they view as the US-Israel axis of oppression. Right or wrong, that view affects the willingness of Muslims to sacrifice their own lives to harm the United States. Events in Pakistan are vitally important, because they affect the safe haven that Al Qaeda and the Taliban enjoy in the provinces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, not to mention the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

Sierra Leone's importance is a bit less obvious. Finally emerging from a long and bloody civil war, Sierra Leone is ranked the second poorest nation on earth. Seventy percent of the people live on less than one dollar a day. However, Sierra Leone has vast mineral riches, including diamonds that were used to finance both sides in the civil war. Extreme poverty, malnutrition, and devastated infrastructure have created the conditions that could easily lead to further violence, possibly including terrorism. Many of the nearby West African countries have recently had civil unrest or outright civil wars in recent years.

Today's Inside Iraq explored the attitudes of Iraq's neighbors to the U.S. invasion and occupation. Some of Iraq's neighbors initially welcomed the removal of Saddam Hussein, but all of them now view the occupation as an ongoing disaster. The guests were Dr. Faysal Al-Miqdad, Deputy Foreign Minister of Syria; Dr. Nabil Shaath, former Foreign Minister of Palestine; and Hisham Yusuf, a spokesperson for the Secretary General of the Arab League. Syria currently has more than 1.5 million Iraqi refugees. The Palestinian people, even in the midst of their own struggles, feel a strong bond of kinship with the struggles of the Iraqi people. The Arab League is deeply concerned by the possibility that the civil war in Iraq might expand to a regional war. Unfortunately, all three agreed that there are no good options in Iraq, and that national reconciliation must come from within Iraq. Neither the United States nor the Arab League nor the United Nations can push the factions together; they must find the political will to form a functioning nation-state.

Technorati tags: , Al Jazeera English, Inside Iraq, Iraq War, Witness, Red Mosque, Al Masjid, Pakistan, Rashid Ghazi, Sierra Leone, West Africa

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Colbert's WØRD: The Dark Side

I just got home from the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago yesterday evening, in time to catch a splendid new Colbert Report, including a segment specifically about YearlyKos, further extending Bill O'Reilly's comparison between the DailyKos folks and the Nazis and KKK. However, what especially caught my eye was the WØRD segment, talking about the Bush administration's push for absolute and unlimited power in the name of fighting terrorism.

[video no longer available on ComedyCentral.com]
Transcript follows below the fold.

The Colbert Report, 2007-08-07, ©2007 Comedy Central.

Of course, there was another big story over the weekend, folks. President Bush signed into law a bill passed by Congress that allows him to monitor the e-mails and international phone calls of U.S. citizens without a warrant — even citizens not suspected of having terrorist ties. I believe there are three of those left: Alberto Gonzales, Toby Keith, and my dog Gipper. [to the dog:] Who's not a terrorist? Who's not a — you're not a terrorist! No, you're not! You're not a terrorist!

Now, I'll admit this sounds great at first: 16 Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House siding with the Republicans, the President getting what he wants, and terrorists are now forced to revert to smoke signals. But, Nation, legalizing warrantless surveillance is actually a dangerous step backwards, and it brings us to tonight's WØRD:

The Dark Side. Folks, just five days after September 11, the Vice President Cheney told us what it would take to win the War on Terror, explaining, "We have to work the Dark Side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows..."	• The Dark Side
Exactly: it's just like math class. When you're confronted with a difficult problem, turn the lights off.	• Then, Torture A Nerd For The Answer
You see, the Vice President knew we cannot win this war if we go by the book.	• Or The Constitution
You do whatever it takes, you go beyond what's legal, you go past what's acceptable.	• You Shoot A Man In The Face
But, thanks to this new law, all that Dark Side is now allowed, and we know doing what's allowed is not enough.	• Nobody Tempted By Approved Fruit
Now, tragically, folks, we are illuminating more and more of the Dark Side every day. Now that indefinite detention, enhanced interrogation, and domestic spying are acceptable, it is getting harder and harder to find those things that we as Americans theoretically cannot bring ourselves to do.	• Vote?
I mean, what's left that's beyond the pale? Hollowing out enemy combatants and using them as hand puppets to act out episodes of 24? We shouldn't be even able to conceive of the actions necessary to win this conflict.	• Troop Withdrawal?
But, Nation, we must. I am calling on you, the heroes, to imagine scenes of physical depravity and shocking illegality, quickly, before Congress legalizes them, because, if we keep allowing the things that we as a people have agreed we shouldn't be doing, who's gonna win this war?	• The Dark Side

And that's the WØRD. We'll be right back.

The argument isn't whether the government should be able to listen in on terrorists, it's how we make sure it's only the terrorists the government is trying to listen in on. That's the whole point of warrants, the whole point of the Fourth Amendment, and a large part of the whole point of the American Revolution. In order to prevail against the terrorists, the United States needs to shine light onto the Dark Side, not expand it into our homes.

Technorati tags: Colbert Report, Comedy Central, The Word, The Dark Side, Transcript, Warrantless Wiretapping, FISA Law

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Support Our Troops

I went to a coffee meeting this morning with the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) to hear about the efforts by and for veterans who oppose the Iraq Occupation. The occupation is breaking our military — for example, the 82nd Airborne, "The Tip of the Spear," is meant to be able to deploy anywhere in the world within 24 hours, but that capability is no longer available because of the strains President Bush has placed on our military preparedness in an enterprise that is making us less safe every single day. Not only that, but the diversion of financial resources to the occupation is starving projects here at home. The Minneapolis bridge collapse this week highlighted the dangerous state of decay of our domestic infrastructure; for example, if the money we have spent in Iraq had been applied instead to our highways, every highway bridge in America could be repaired to at least a "B+" grade. But the most shameful aspect of Bush's War is the way the Bushies, and therefore our nation, have treated our men and women in uniform. Forty years ago, some soldiers began Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which was a cornerstone of the movement to end the war; today, we have IVAW on a similar mission.

Soldiers in Iraq are re-enlisting in large numbers. Why would they do that, given the fact that most of the soldiers oppose our continued presence in Iraq? Part of it is patriotism and commitment to the other soldiers in their unit, to be sure. But there is also a much darker reason. Let's suppose you're a soldier in Iraq, nearing the end of your enlistment. You have two choices:

1. Re-enlist, get a substantial bonus, get the promise of lifetime medical care in the V.A. system if you're injured, get benefits to your family back home, and hope that you don't get blown to bits.
2. Let your enlistment lapse and go into the Individual Ready Reserve, also known as the Backdoor Draft. You can be recalled to active duty up to 8 years from your enlistment date, unless of course the military decides to call you up later than that. In that case, you are no longer an active-duty soldier or Marine; you are classified as a Reservist. As such, you get no re-enlistment bonus, no benefits for yourself, only two years of V.A. medical care if you're injured, and no family benefits.

So the very real possibility is that you're going to be sent back to Iraq, no matter what you do, so you might as well get the benefits. The threat of involuntary servitude as a second-class soldier certainly casts the re-enlistment figures in a different light.

Clearly the Bush Administration's talk of supporting the troops is largely empty rhetoric, but what can the rest of us do to actually support the troops? For the troops returning to civilian life, it's a profound adjustment. I can tell you that it's a bit of a shock just spending a week in the desert north of Reno and then returning to civilization, and I'm sure that the contrast from the desert north of Baghdad is orders of magnitude sharper. It's like comparing a skinned knee to a double amputation, and that simile carries forward on another level: one is short-term, the other a lifelong issue. Being shot at, having no safe place to let down your vigilance, having to kill other human beings, and seeing widespread death and destruction, has to leave an indelible mark. If you know a returning veteran in your community, let him or her know that, even though you oppose the war, you don't hold the troops to answer for the damage the war is doing both to Iraq and to the United States. Let that veteran know that you want to help in any way you can. You probably won't have to sit through bloodcurdling stories of combat, IEDs, or other horrors, because the veteran may not be ready to talk about those things.

On a larger policy level, call your Congressman and tell him or her that you feel that the Backdoor Draft is a national disgrace, that Reservists deserve the same medical benefits as regular soldiers if they're injured on active duty, that it is immoral to send our troops to Iraq and Afghanistan for ever longer tours with ever shorter breaks between deployments, and that you want him or her to support the troops by bringing them home alive. The soldiers don't support the occupation, the American people don't support the occupation, and the Iraqi people don't support the occupation. It's only the two governments that think it's a good idea, and it's time to say enough is enough.

Technorati tags: Iraq War, Iraq Veterans Against the War, IVAW, Support the Troops

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YKos redux

The YearlyKos Convention is all over, except for a "multi-faith service" and an informal brunch tomorrow morning, plus a few affiliated gatherings, like the Iraq Veterans Against the War reception. This afternoon, we had the Presidential Leadership Conference, with 7 out of 8 Democratic candidates for President, and smaller meetings with individual candidates, followed by a cookout with the Teamsters Union on a deck overlooking Lake Michigan. The evening wrapped up with a closing keynote by DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas. The whole event has been, if I may toss in a cliché, "like drinking from a fire hose." I'll try to piece together some of the highlights of my YearlyKos experience.

I arrived in town on Wednesday night, much too late to schlep down to the convention center and pick up my credentials, but there wasn't much of a line Thursday morning. I spent the rest of the day in wall-to-wall meetings, barely squeezing in a moment to snarf a quick, overpriced chicken sandwich from the food court. We talked about holding Congress accountable, state and local blogging, promoting your blog (Hey, look at me! Over here!), consolidation of traditional media outlets, GLBT issues, and science issues. The highlight, though, was the opening keynote address. Dick Durbin, the senior Senator from Illinois, was scheduled to appear in person, but the FISA vote kept him in Washington, so he appeared via video linkup. Still, he spoke with conviction about the value of the netroots community in promoting an agenda of change for America. DNC Chairperson Howard Dean appeared in the flesh,

Friday, I missed a big chunk of General Wesley Clark's morning keynote because of my groggy fuzzy-headedness, but I did at least get to hear some of his commentary about how badly executed the Iraq War has been from even before the actual invasion. General Clark opposed the war all along, but he also said that if circumstances did require U.S. military action in Iraq, we should have sent at least 500,000 troops, instead of less than 1/3 that number. I'm paraphrasing, but we opened a can of worms and were shocked to discover that there were worms in that can.

My next session was "Left Behind by the Right," a panel discussion with Cenk Uygur ("The Young Turks" on Air America Radio, plus The Huffington Post), David Brock (Media Matters), John Dean (from the Nixon White House to Conservatives without Conscience), and Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post) — except that Arianna wasn't able to make it due to a broken ankle; she sent a stand-in. I was most interested to hear from John Dean, since I grew up on the Watergate hearings in the summer of 1974. (I was 10 years old, but there was nothing else on TV.) Dean talked about the notion that, by today's standards, Barry Goldwater, "Mr. Conservative" himself, would be considered a liberal. Goldwater was definitely a libertarian, which is political ground the neoconservatives seem determined to cede to the liberals. Dean said that his own views had not changed much since his years in the White House, but that he now was well to the left of center. It was also interesting to hear the stories of what prompted the shift by these prominent activists from conservative to liberal. David Brock, in particular, was an insider in the right-wing media, there in the room watching the vendetta by the "independent" prosecutor's office against the Clintons. He became so disgusted by the distortions and outright lies by the right-wingers that he founded Media Matters for America, dedicated to exposing their misstatements. He also talked about the difficulty of being an openly gay man in the right-wing.

I attended a couple of sessions on the subject of "framing," meaning choosing the language of discussion for a particular topic. The right wing has been extraordinarily successful with tactics such as referring to the inheritance tax (which is, quite literally, a tax upon inherited wealth) to "the death tax" (which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a tax on death). The left has been extraordinarily unsuccessful with phrases like "gun control" (suggesting government agents coming to take away your means of self-defense). The left also tends to clinical, cerebral abstraction. One potent example was a clip of Al Gore from the 2000 Presidential debates. Gore went on at some length about the figures of how much Medicare costs would increase under Bush's plan. It turns out that Gore was completely right: Medicare premiums increased significantly as a direct result of Bush's programs. However, his rhetoric was so disconnected from emotion that it left the audience stupefied. I read Gore's recent book The Assault on Reason, and I agree with much of its argument, that we have allowed emotion disconnected from reason to hold sway in our political debates, but the answer is not to flip the coin to reason disconnected from emotion.

On Saturday, I attended a session with Anthony Romero, the head of the ACLU. Romero took office literally a week before 9/11, and he's been busy ever since, combatting the Bush administration's assaults on freedom and the Constitution. Romero was, by his own admission, feeling somewhat disheartened by the Congress' capitulation to George Bush's sudden rush to gut the FISA law, the main protection we as Americans have against the government's power to eavesdrop on our communications without our knowledge and without a warrant. The ACLU has also been involved in a number of "canary in the coal mine" cases around not only the warrantless wiretapping but also Guantánamo and habeas corpus. To many Americans, those concepts are meaningless abstractions, but consider the cases of John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla [puh-DIL-luh, not puh-DEE-yuh]. Both are U.S. citizens, but the Bush administration claimed the right to hold them indefinitely without charge and to torture them while in custody. We can be sure of one thing: it will take years to undo the damage George W. Bush has done to our Constitution and our legal system.

Technorati tags: YearlyKos, DailyKos

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Meeting the "Hope-monger"

Barack Obama came to the YearlyKos Convention this afternoon for a candidates' forum with all of the candidates (except Joe Biden, who is not well loved in the DailyKos community) in attendance. After the forum, the audience divided into separate "breakout" sessions with the individual candidates; I attended Barack Obama's. Asked whether he has the LBJ-like moxie to make the kind of deals needed to accomplish real progress on important issues, or just a sunny disposition, Obama's reply was, "Welcome to Chicago." Obama got his political start in a city known for bare-knuckle politics and back-room deals. However, he also cautioned against an excess of cynicism, saying that it is necessary to maintain a sense of hope that progress is possible, remarking that some might call him a "hope peddler" or even a "hope-monger." There are a lot of people in this country who could use a dose or three of that hope.

I tried to get a photo of Obama, but my camera was being somewhat recalcitrant, probably owing to weak batteries. Harrumph. Still and all, being in the same room with these figures was an electric experience, well worth the trip to the Windy City.

Technorati tags: Barack Obama, YearlyKos

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Cruel irony

I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Those of you who know me, which is most of you, know that I almost never get up that early. However, I had a special reason today: the morning keynote at the YearlyKos Convention by General Wesley Clark. I got up, ate a couple of granola bars for breakfast, showered and shaved, and made my way down to the corner at about 7:20, just in time to catch the bus to the convention center. I got about a third of the way there and started looking for my badge, but it wasn't in my tote bag where I thought I had put it. Oh, no! I must have left it in the hotel room! I got off the bus, looked in the tote bag again, confirming that the badge wasn't there, and caught a bus back towards my hotel. But no, the badge wasn't anywhere to be seen in the hotel room, and I knew I had seen it last night before bed. Since the maid hadn't yet been in, there was only one other possibility: I had the badge with me the whole time, in the front pocket of my backpack. I dashed down to the corner again and caught another bus, but arrived more than half an hour late for a one-hour keynote. Harrumph.

The moral of the story: don't ever try to get up before the crack of noon.

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Net Neutrality, Media Consolidation, and the FCC

I'm at the YearlyKos convention in Chicago, live-blogging so as to avoid the exorbitant fees my hotel wants for their curiously named "Free Public WiFi" network. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a hotel that offers me a one-liter bottle of water for $7 wants $10 per day for Internet access, but I digress. I just sat in on a panel discussion featuring FCC Commissioner Michael Copps talking about a variety of telecommunications issues. Appropriately enough, he was talking about issues of corporate "toll booths" on the Internet and the threat they pose to the Internet and to citizen journalism in particular. He also talked about media consolidation, specifically including Rupert Murdoch's pending conquest of The Wall Street Journal.

If you want to see the future of a country with runaway media consolidation, just look backwards to the Soviet Union. There was one source of news, and it never strayed from the official government line. Rupert Murdoch isn't exactly Joseph Stalin, nor even Leonid Brezhnev. In fact, he isn't in the government at all. However, Fox News might as well be an extension of the Republican Party. Murdoch openly admitted a few weeks ago that Fox News slanted its coverage in the run-up to the Iraq War in favor of going to war; so much for "fair and balanced," not to mention "we report, you decide." The WSJ is already editorially a mouthpiece of the far right, so much so that I need to have my Rolaids handy whenever I venture to read their op-ed pages. However, the Journal maintains a clear separation between its news reporting (mostly of business issues) and its opinion pieces, with the former mostly untainted by the bias in the latter. After all, most people buy it to find out whether their stock portfolio is going to fly or sink. But Murdoch has a track record we and the Journal's readers should find quite alarming. When he bought The Times of London, he promised to stay at arms length from editorial decisions, but he didn't keep his word for very long; before the year was out, he had replaced the editor. The new editor resigned less than a year later, citing Murdoch's breach of his pledge to maintain the editorial independence of the paper. His other papers, and most especially Fox News on cable TV, show the unmistakable imprint of his worldview, not only in editorials, but often in "objective" news coverage.

The other issue of the day was network neutrality. It's not a very sexy term, but it's an important issue. The way things are now, with a de facto neutral network, I as a web surfer get to decide what I want to look at or what I want to download. I pay my ISP for the privilege, and it's between us whether that's on a flat monthly rate or with a meter ticking up each passing megabyte. Conversely, the person or company whose web pages I'm visiting pays their ISP for passing the data out into the Internet. The two ISPs share the cost of passing the data along the "backbone" connection between them. However, many of the ISPs, especially those owned by large telephone or cable companies, want a second bite. They want the owner of the web page to pay for the privilege of having their data carried to my browser, even though I'm already paying them for exactly that. If the site owner refuses to pay my ISP, the data may still reach me eventually, but at substantially reduced speed; in the case of high-bandwidth applications like streaming video, it may be unusable. I will thus have an incentive to switch to a different web site, either owned by my ISP or at least paying protection money to keep the ISP's electronic goons from dropping my data packets into a dark alley. At issue is whether or not I get to decide what web sites I visit. Whether I'm reading Daily Kos or downloading a new computer game or watching Al Jazeera or streaming a porn video, the choice should be mine, not my ISP's.

Unfortunately, the FCC Commissioners are appointed by the President, and the current Commission shows the influence of George W. Bush in much the same way that the Supreme Court now does. The Commission is a friend to big business interests, but not to ordinary citizens. Thankfully, we have at least one strong voice who can sometimes shame his fellow Commissioners into doing the right thing instead of the right-wing thing.

Technorati tags: FCC, Michael Copps, DailyKos, YearlyKos, Network Neutrality, Net Neutrality, Media Consolidation, Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street Journal

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