Alberto Gonzales is in it for the long haul unless it puts Cheney's job in jeopardy. A recent story revealed that Dick Cheney, not President Bush, sent Alberto Gonzales in 2004 to pressure heavily , bed-ridden Attorney General John Ashcroft to stop resisting the warrantless eavesdropping program. In other words, Gonzales is Cheney's man.
Then again, doesn't everyone answer to Cheney? As former vice president Walter Mondale wrote in yesterday's , Dick Cheney controls what the President hears, knows and decides:
Through his vast government experience, through the friends he hadbeen able to place in key positions and through his considerablepolitical skills, he has been increasingly able to determine theanswers to questions put to the president -- because he has been ableto determine the questions. It was Cheney who persuaded President Bushto sign an order that denied access to any court by foreign terrorismsuspects and Cheney who determined that the Geneva Conventions did notapply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ratherthan subject his views to an established (and rational) vettingprocess, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff beforetaking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush hassubsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of theConstitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.
So actually our current Vice President is really the man in charge. All decisions will be made in a way that benefits Cheney, not Bush. For example, President Bush is already slated to go down as probably the worst president since the Great Depression. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, will go down as the most powerful and politically influential vice president since Harry Truman. That is Cheney's legacy. He knows what he is doing -- even if the 'what' is hurting our country.
Any Democrat would have handled Katrina better than any Republican. When your party's philosophy is based on cutting government aid and selling it to the highest bidder, it should not surprise people when large projects become less manageable -- whether it be , or . Just as many companies profited off Katrina, the same thing has happened in Iraq.
One in Iraq spells out how so much has been privatized:
Iraq is a country awash with private security companies that haveblossomed in the chaos of the country's post-invasion era. It isestimated that around one half of all development dollars being pouredinto the country (currently in the billions) goes to private security.My organisation, a small NGO working to build the capacity of Iraq'scivil society, was no exception.
Approximately 40 percent of our $60 million budget went to protecting the 15 international staff.
If you can't win a war, at least make sure your friends profit off it.
There is an even larger problem about all this. When you privatize half of such a huge reconstruction effort, there is less accountability -- especially if a lot of the companies signed on are your campaign contributors. Who keeps them from overcharging taxpayers? Who forces them to do the job right? The link between contract awarding and campaign contributions was quite evident even in the of the war.
Contractors even the amount of US troops now in Iraq.
In order to protect the United States from terrorism, as experts would agree, we need to address the many root causes behind Islamic extremism -- such as the Saudi government. of all foreign-born insurgents now in Iraq are Saudi. on 9/11 were Saudi. now in US detention facilities are Saudi. Also, documents show the Saudi government paid $5,340 to the back in 2002. So while the Bush Administration engages in tough talk about terrorism, they turn around and offer Saudi Arabia a $20 billion military arms deal.
But the $20 billion US-Saudi arms agreement will not slide through as easily as the White House had hoped. Two House Democrats have that would block the deal from going through:
Standing in front of theSaudi Consulate, Reps. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat of Brooklyn andQueens, and Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat of Manhattan and Brooklyn,yesterday condemned Saudi Arabia as a sponsor of terrorism unworthy ofAmerican military support.
"The folly of this arms deal is beyond belief," Mr. Nadler said."Saudi Arabia is the no. 1 exporter of terrorism in the world today."
He continued: "They are not our friends. We cannot trust how theywill use their arms. … We don't have to give them high-tech weaponswhich may be turned against our friends or us."
These two lawmakers need our help. The Saudis have been able to effectively lobby the US government for years. We need everyone to the House representative in their district, and tell them to block the Saudi arms deal.
If we can push this through the House, the Senate will have to debate it. And while in the Senate, we dare the Republicans to filibuster a fill that blocks arms for a state sponsor or terrorism. Nothing looks more hypocritical than a party that wants people to live in fear, yet gives arms that could be used against our own troops.
As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:
General Petraeus is " that they will not be kept past their 15-month tours," meaning that a troop draw-down could begin next April. The only way the Pentagon could sustain a surge is if those troops remain there longer.
The US and European Union are on all airline passengers.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown traveled to the US on Sunday for his first . He downplayed the strain in US-UK relations. "It is a relationship that is founded on our common values of liberty,opportunity and the dignity of the individual," Brown said in astatement. "And because of the values we share, the relationship withthe United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in theyears ahead."
US Ambassador to the UN because he said they have helped destabilize the situation in Iraq. "Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries are not doing all theycan to help us in Iraq," Khalilza said Sunday. "At times, some of them arenot only not helping, but they are doing things that is undermining theeffort to make progress." This statement may have been the Ambassador's way of criticizing his boss, George W. Bush, for approving a arms sale to the Saudis.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was in Sunday's election. Ichiro Ozawa's Democratic Party won decisively.
Karl Rove told a closed-door group of House Republicans that it was less the Iraq war than corruption that in 2006.
North Carolina is changing its election law so that its , instead of having winner-take-all distribution like the 47 other states.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Vilsack, who now works for Hillary Clinton's campaign, at Barack Obama for wanting to meet with US foes without preconditions: "I would hope the senator would clarify his comments as to whether ornot he is for preconditions or not and would cease and desist fromdistorting the record and comments of Senator Clinton."
The Republicans will hold a on August 11th.
If we left anything out, feel free to add any stories in the commentbox.
Today on CBS' Face the Nation, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said his committee will give Alberto Gonzales to re-clarify his statements. Last week both and the contradicted the testimony of Gonzales a few days prior. Leahy is giving Gonzales and then the gloves are off:
"He has a week to correct it if he wants," Sen. Patrick Leahy,D-Vermont, said. "If he doesn't correct it, then I think that there areso many errors in there that the pressure will be very, very heavy,whether it's a special prosecutor, special counsel efforts within the –within the Congress."
This next part is where it gets tricky. Obviously the Judiciary Committee prefers to have a special counsel. But that may not happen. Congress can request a special counsel. Ultimately though, the decision is made by . The problem is that Clement is a Bush official, and may be instructed by Dick Cheney not to appoint a special counsel for fear of it opening the executive branch up to further investigations regarding the legality of the warrantless eavesdropping program.
Even though the congressional request can be denied, the Democrats still have political leverage. Judiciary Committee Chairman can call for impeachment of Gonzales. So in other words, the Democrats' message to the Administration should be this: allow Clement to appoint a special counsel, or else face an impeachment trial for their Attorney General.
In the post-2004 political era, nothing ticks off progressive Democrats more than when politicians allow boldness to be trumped by political calculation. Voters respect courage, not slogans that went through five focus groups before ever being uttered on camera.
However, even though there certainly is too much political calculation today, having at least some respect for strategy sure beats not having a brain at all. Unfortunately, some Democrats appear to lack both boldness and political calculation. For whatever reason, they are scared of a President whose approval rating is at . The Democratic House majority is drafting a much weaker Iraq bill that would not require all troops to leave Iraq until Bush says so. Even supports this plan:
Early in the week, rumors were spreading that Rep. John P. Murtha(Pa.), one of the first pro-war Democrats to turn against the conflict,was apparently prepared to drop the spring deadline for troop pulloutsthat House and Senate Democrats had been demanding for months.Specifics of his plan were hard to come by, and even Democratic leaderswere in the dark.
Since the surge began, the political and military situations have grown more unstable. So if anything, Democrats like Murtha should be asking for more demands than they did a few months ago, not less.
The Red Crescent Society in the Northern Iraqi town of Mosul is concerned that will pose unprecedented health care challenges in the coming years. Six percent of all US injuries on the battlefield, whether they be friendly or unfriendly, result in amputations. The rate is twice as high as in previous wars.
While no major international organizations keep track of how many Iraqi civilians have lost limbs, the Red Crescent Society is aware of the :
In the north of Iraq, the Red Crescent Society and the director generalfor health services in Mosul have told US forces, there is arequirement for up to 3,000 replacement limbs a year. If that estimateis applied across the country, it suggests an acute and loominglong-term health challenge that has been largely ignored by the world.
This report underscores how violent this war has been -- something that non-military families here in the US have been so distant from. This weekend at a book forum in St. Petersburg, Florida, ABC reporter said that her experience as a correspondent in Iraq has brought to light how distant Americans truly are from the realities that happen on the ground each day:
"It breaks my heart that so few Americans are connected to this war," Raddatz said. "It really does."
After all, we were early on by our former Defense Secretary about the "care" and "humanity" that goes into modern warfare. Many took his word for it. But after more than four years of the media being spoon-fed sound bites and slogans, we are finally getting a glimpse of how destructive this war has been to the lives of those involved. And it is not a pretty picture at all.
Over the last few days, the political situation in Iraq has decayed so rapidly that, with the largest Sunni bloc announcing a of the government, the Pentagon is now turning to their last available option -- putting Iraqi .
As the Iraqi parliament readies for their , very little on the political side will get accomplished between now and when General Petraeus gives his long-awaited report to Congress in September. Shiites are divided. Sunnis are boycotting. The Prime Minister hates our top general. The Iraqi government is refusing to take control of more than 1,000 US taxpayer-funded that American contractors are still managing for them. Depressingly so, the only hope left for the Pentagon, before Congress pulls the plug, is for friendly neighborhood militias to establish security. Therefore, the those militias:
The U.S. military in Iraqis expanding its efforts to recruit and fund armed Sunni residents aslocal protection forces in order to improve security and promotereconciliation at the neighborhood level, according to senior U.S.commanders.
As you might imagine, there are several risks of arming neighborhood Sunni groups:
It could cause a rift between the Shiite-led government and the Bush Administration. Iraqi Shiites fear that those US weapons could be used by Sunnis against the government before and after the US pulls out.
What would stop the Sunni neighborhood groups from using those weapons against US soldiers if it is in their interest to do so?
This is the de-Baathification nightmare all over again. When you give out guns to ordinary people and let them roam as they please in an anarchic environment, it becomes much tougher for any ruling body to keep order.
This decision to arm militias is another way of saying that the Bush Administration has very little confidence in the Iraqi military and police forces to keep security.
The importance of the wimp factor is not necessarily thatevery Democratic candidate should come out on stage chewing red meat andgrowling loudly. It is instead mostevident in the way in which the candidates respond to challenges. It is the political equivalent of facing upto the bully on the playground. It ispartly my thesis that undecided voters will look to how the candidates respondto negative challenges during the course of the campaign. Often, it is less about the nature of thechallenge than it is how the candidate responds. At an instinctual andintuitive level, voters look to those episodes as a window into the characterof the candidate.
These examples should help to crystallize the concept.
Wimpy Moments in Democratic Campaign History
This may be a painful exercise, but I think it will beworthwhile to look back at some recent and memorable moments of wimpiness exhibited by Democraticpoliticians.
Without being cruel to what appears to have been a good man,poor Michael Dukakis will forever serve as the prime example of how to be awimp and lose an election.Look at this picture of poor Mr. Dukakis in his tank and try not to laugh. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Michael_Dukakis_in_tank.jpg)
This idiotic photo op was created to try toovercome his wimpy image in part created by the ridiculous flap over hisresponse to the hypothetical question about his wife being raped and whetherthe death penalty should be imposed. The tank incident was such a distillation ofhis campaign that it is a prime entry in his Wikipedia page.
This photograph is a graphic reminder that you cannotovercome the wimp factor by how you dress or by photo ops (but you can beportrayed as a wimp based on how you dress). The point is, the fundamental attitude and actions of the politician willdetermine whether he/she is viewed as a wimp.
After that election in 1988, in talking politics withfriends, I would label such episodes as a "Dukakis moment." Unfortunately, they have been more numerousthan they should.
Dukakis himself had several (hence the reference). The tank episode was simply the most amusing.He was subjected to many unfair and scurrilous attacks. The undisguised racist "WillieHorton" ads are but one example. The entire Bush senior campaign seemed tobe based on a steady challenge to Mr. Dukakis’ figurative manhood, perhaps inpart to defray the voters from looking at the “soft†persona of Bush senior,especially contrasted to Reagan’s.
Infamously, Dukakis was asked what he would do if his wifewere raped and should the death penalty be imposed on the perpetrator. Presumably, the question was designed tochallenge him over his beliefs that the death penalty is unfair and should notbe imposed.
He fumbled the answer. He gave a dispassionate and perhaps even overly thoughtful response, buthe appeared cold and inhuman doing it. No matter how one thinks he should haveresponded, it is undeniable that his response to that challenge revealed a"wimp factor" to the American public and he was blitzed in theelection.
John Kerry, to our lasting regret, also failed the wimptest. It is sad, even amazing, that a genuine war hero could be turned into a wimp (especially compared to a "deserter" opponent), butindeed that is how his handling of the “Swift Boat†attacks made him appear. Itis ironic also, because many primary voters had voted for Kerry because of thatwar record, under the belief that he could not be made into a wimp. As it turnsout, Howard Dean was probably the non-wimp in that race.
In a too typical Dem response to such tactics, Kerry tookthe “high road†and would not “dignify†the attacks with direct response. Thatwas the equivalent of walking away from the schoolyard bully. If he hadresponded with an angry and passionate rejection of the attacks, he would havemet the challenge and faced down the bully. He was actually being given a greatchance to revive his war record as part of his response and to remind voters ofhis own personal courage.
He also could have taken the opportunity to decry theimplication of the attacks that his fellow soldiers were “cowards†too. Thoseattacks were not just on him, but on every member of his crew. He should havebeen indignant and angry that his crew was impliedly included in the attacks onhim.
Another example, in years past, was the failed primarycandidacy of Edmund Muskie, a front-runner in the primary campaign. He was thesubject of some GOP dirty tricks, and in his response, he cried. End ofcandidacy.
In the next installment, I will look at how and why the Wimp Factormakes a difference in general elections.
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