Bush "intelligence" fails again

In an article headlined, "Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength," the New York Times's Steve Weisman reports that

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that the United States had failed to understand the depth of hostility among Palestinians toward their longtime leaders. The hostility led to an election victory by the militant group Hamas that has reduced to tatters crucial assumptions underlying American policies and hopes in the Middle East.

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse." *

Well, what if they had just asked the Israelis? Apparently they did, but chose not to believe them. Consider this from Haaretz:

Before the Palestinian parliamentary elections the United States and Israel had an argument about their outcome. While American intelligence predicted Fatah would win and the new Palestinian government would be able to disarm Hamas, Israeli intelligence argued that there was no chance of a significant Fatah triumph, that Hamas would increase its strength considerably and that Hamas would win up to 50 percent of the votes. The Shin Bet also thought so. In any case, it figured, Fatah would not be able to disarm Hamas.

Israeli intelligence is respected the world over; the Israelis are in the neighborhood, know the players and speak the language. What on earth possessed Condi Rice to disbelieve them? Now consider this, from that same Times article:

Immediately after the election, Bush administration officials said the results reflected a Palestinian desire for change and not necessarily an embrace of Hamas...

Yeah, right. And the German people didn't necessarily embrace Hitler, either, when he promised economic recovery, nor did the Italians necessarily embrace Mussolini, but they loved what he did with the trains.

Well, President Bush and his cronies have a history of believing the intelligence that best matches what they want to have happen. And they've done it again and apparently will keep right on doing it.

*FOOTNOTE:
This would be the same Ms. Rice who said "no one could imagine people flying airplanes into buildings." And the person certain people are floating for President in '08 . . .

Predicting the new power of Lobbyists

I guess it's ok to claim a little prescience here. This letter to the New York Times is dated December 9, 1994 and was published under the title shown:

Lobbyists Will Rush to Fill House Caucus Void; Anger Creates Power

To the Editor:

It has been noted by others, but the point needs to be made again until the public gets it: Most of the overhaul, shrinking, committee disbanding and reorganization of the House of Representatives for the ostensible purpose of openness, streamlining and money-saving will lead inevitably and not coincidentally to one certain conclusion -- more power to Representative Newt Gingrich, the incoming House Speaker.

Your Dec. 7 front-page article reports, without any particular emphasis, that the $5 million "saved" by doing away with caucus-support financing will revert to the staffing allowances from which it came. Great. More funds will be available to Mr. Gingrich and his colleagues for maintaining their own support structure. And removal of support services from the designated caucuses will surely diminish their ability to operate effectively.

Dismantling committees and subcommittees to empty an office building will leave decision-maker gaps (guess who will fill them?) and remove potential safeguards against raging policy and draconian reforms. My guess is that any committee for which Mr. Gingrich did not have a hand-picked appointment ready was dismantled or moved under another with a Gingrich-approved chairman.

Mr. Gingrich refers again and again to the "angry electorate." I am reminded of the old truism that the one who worries the loudest about a dire event is probably secretly working to make it happen. With the cooperation of the print media and Sunday morning television pundits, Mr. Gingrich has made his career out of anger, and the sustenance of public anger will enhance the power he derives from it. What kind of country will we be if we go along with it?

NATHALIE GUYOL Waxahachie, Tex., Dec. 9, 1994

Let's hear it for democracy!

President Bush has pointed out to America that the Palestinian vote is one more example of democracy in action. He explained that Hamas won because the Palestinian people were sick and tired of corruption, incompetence and cronyism in their leadership.

Hm.

Anyone?

"Network," redux

Though it takes a subscription to read the entire piece online, here is the lovely nut of Ted Koppel's comment in today's NYTimes on the sorry state of television news, "And Now a Word for Our Demographic." He's quoting from a novel he means to finish someday:

The earls and dukes and barons of television news have grown sleek and fat eating road kill. The victims, dispatched by political or special interest hit-and-run squads, are then hung up, displayed and consumed with unwholesome relish on television.

They wander the battlefields of other people's wars, these knights of the airwaves, disposing of the wounded from both armies, gorging themselves like the electronic vultures they are.

The popular illusion that television journalists are liberals does them too much honor. Like all mercenaries they fight for money, not ideology; but unlike true mercenaries, their loyalty is not for sale. It cannot be engaged because it does not exist. Their total lack of commitment to any cause has come to be defined as objectivity. Their daily preoccupation with the trivial and the banal has accumulated large audiences, which, in turn, has encouraged a descent into the search for items of even greater banality.

No, Dorothy, we are not at war anymore.

The Bush administration insists that we are at war because he realizes he has to justify his abuses of power, and because it works politically. What a nation of sheep* we have become!

I yearn for a true patriot with a bottomless reservoir of courage who will make the case that we are NOT at war; we were at war in Iraq until we won and we are now an occupying force trying to defeat an insurgency. We are no more "at war" now than we were after V-J day.

If, on the other hand, the assertion that we are “at war” goes to the “war on terror,” then I guess it should also apply to the “war on drugs.” Then, in the unlikely event that Mr. Bush and his friends declare someday that terror is a thing of the past, the "war on drugs" will be a convenient rationale for continuing to cede to the President unchecked power.

But never mind; any even minimally informed citizen — including those who, unbelievably, still approve of the President's every word and deed — can figure out that the war on terror, like the war on drugs, has no end in sight.

I say we are NOT at war, and Bush is NOT a "war president." And I desperately wish the Democrats would make this point as relentlessly as Bush makes his. Else I fear we are doomed.

*Courtesy of The Constant Reader:

In an effort to influence our votes and our opinions, Congressmen--along with most other public servants--often forget that one of their primary functions is to inform the country about the conditions and problems of the nation; and to describe important issues so that we can understand them. It was because of this requirement that the post of "public information officer" (or public affairs officer or press attaché) was established.

However, in practice, public information officers have become prostituted. They have ceased serving you and me... Almost all of their energies and talents are spent keeping themselves and their bosses in power... In short, much of our government's energy is squandered in obtaining a pre-determined public opinion. Officials try by selective information releases to have us accept what they believe is proper; as if fearing the decisions we might make on our own if we had all of the truth.

The government has been shameless in its efforts to attract our attention to a particular point of view, and in this manner mold public opinion. We often are enmeshed into preconceived opinions by the very people we elect and support--the civil servants who are supposed to be doing what we want.

What is the result of all this? You and I are prisoners of our own government's self-generated publicity. Half the time we don't know what is really going on, and to find out we must apply the torch."

--William J. Lederer, from his book, A Nation Of Sheep (Greenwich: Fawcett). Published, incredibly, in 1961.

The Hillary Debate, UPDATED

TNR Online has a thought-provoking piece by Marisa Katz on The Hillary Debate:

[B]efore the Hillary-can-do-it-because-she-did-it-upstate narrative gets any more airtime, it's worth pointing out its fatal flaws. Namely, upstate New York is not that conservative. Clinton hasn't done all that well here--in fact, she lost the region in 2000 and remains a highly polarizing figure. And, when she has won people over, it's been through retail politics at a very local level. Ultimately, if she's going to do well as a presidential candidate, she and her advisers must accept that her Senate campaign doesn't count as a dress rehearsal. She's going to have to bring something else to the national stage.

Read the rest here.

It's only 2006 so it looks like we are in for two-plus years of this.

I suggest it's time for all things Bush and Clinton to move over and let fresh air in. Can we pul-leeze stop speculating about Hillary's chance of success and consider that there is no chance Republicans would allow her to campaign without going into full destruction mode, and we really, really don't need that again.

We need to choose candidates for ourselves and not let the Sunday pundits and Republican strategists tell us who our candidates will be.

UPDATES:

Read Molly Ivins, who tells it like it is:

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

Read on here.

And Chris Suellentrop, writing as The Opinionator (sub. req.) in the New York Times, talks of these two items and adds a lot more:

Hillary: Don’t Run!

In a bitterly divided and partisan nation, is there anything conservatives and liberals can agree on? Yes: Hillary Clinton, please don’t run for president. Lone Star liberal Molly Ivins kicked off a wave of anti-Hillary commentary with a column last week that began, “I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.”

Sen. Clinton’s primary shortcoming? Ivins believes she isn’t liberal enough: “Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.”

Arianna Huffington joined the chorus next, though for a different reason: She thinks Hillary can’t win. Huffington cited Marisa Katz’s New Republic piece examining the many differences between the red states in a presidential election and upstate New York. (The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, the New York Observer’s Ben Smith and the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber all expressed mild disagreement with Katz’s analysis and suggested that the junior senator from New York would have a shot at winning a national election.)

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo counts himself a Hillary Clinton fan, but he proposes a different reason for opposing her likely presidential candidacy: “political dynasticism.” “I think it’s just a bad thing for the republic, period. … George H. W. Bush left office to be followed by two terms of Bill Clinton. He in turn was followed by two terms of Bush’s son. If those two terms of the son are followed by the election of Clinton’s wife, I don’t see where that’s a good thing for this country. It ceases to be a fluke and grows into a pattern.” (Michael Barone, at his U.S. News blog, says he’s opposed to a Jeb Bush candidacy for the same reason.)

Conservatives are delighted about liberals’ newfound anti-Hillary animus. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg attributes the sentiment to Sen. Clinton’s recent moves to the right. “To be honest, I never understood what they saw in her in the first place,” he wrote in his weekly Los Angeles Times column. “[T]here’s something oddly satisfying in the possibility that Clinton being herself is politically disastrous. And, if she’s really just playing one more role according to some classically Clintonian political triangulation, there’s something equally satisfying to the prospect that even her fans aren’t falling for it anymore.”

How handy!

Consider the timing of the latest "CIA-confirmed" audio from bin Laden. Pretty much fits the pattern, doesn't it? After all, the Bushies have more on their plate now than ever before, most recently defending torture and eavesdropping without court authority as "allowed because we are at war." And, by the way, just to remind you that we are "at war," here's good ol' Osama to scare you into compliance with your Leaders.

Sometimes I wonder.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there's no one after you!"

UPDATE: Eleanor Clift, on The McLaughlin Group on January 22, reminded us of the tape that surfaced the weekend prior to the 2004 elections . . . case in point!

Are Republicans feeling the heat?

Beset by scandals and rumors of more to come, the Republicans are just doing what comes naturally: Trying to drag the Clintons through yet another investigation!

In the New York Times: Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

You really have to read through to the very end. But this paragraph midway gives a clue:

A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known. On Wednesday, Mr. Barrett declined to discuss the report, saying he would not talk about it until it was officially made public. [Emphasis added.]

And here are the last two paragraphs:

Initially, the panel of three judges that oversees the lingering issues involving the independent counsel law agreed in October to the public release of Mr. Barrett's report but said the section with accusations about Clinton officials must be deleted.

But after Congressional Republicans attached a rider to a Department of Housing and Urban Development spending bill requiring publication of the full report, the judicial panel in November ordered a full disclosure.