TRIPPI ON KOS

An interesting take on the bloggers-for-hire issue. Trippi paid the bloggers for the Dean campaign. He ought to know what went on.

MICKEY BAITS: And I nibble! I’m afraid I don’t see his point. I have never said I don’t agree with Bush’s decision to go to war with Saddam. I’ve merely said the obvious – that we now know that, given Saddam’s lack of WMD stockpiles, the urgency, with hindsight, was misplaced. Does that mean I have to apologize to Howard Dean? Sure, if Howard Dean had argued that there were no WMDs and that was why we shouldn’t go to war, and I had trashed him for it. To Hans Blix? Sure, if he had said the same thing. But they didn’t. And I didn’t. Almost no one argued against the war on the basis that the WMD stockpiles didn’t exist (except, hilariously, Baghdad Bob). So Bush was right to go to war when he did on the evidence in front of him. The only apology I owe is to those, like Jim Falllows, who correctly foresaw the immense difficulties after the liberation. But my apology must merely be for not taking his argument seriously enough. I never attacked it. As for Mickey’s previous championing of Heather Mac Donald’s exoneration of the Bush administration on torture, he seems to have retreated. He acknowledges that Mac Donald is simply repeating the official Bush line, which has been torn to shreds by the evidence. And he’s right to say I have no memo from Bush saying “torture these guys”. But does he think that Bush would be dumb enough to do such a thing? Far smarter to sign a memo saying that our detainees are scum, deserve to be treated as such, but, er, be nice, except when you need to be nasty. And then to exempt the CIA from even these milque-toast restrictions. The case against Bush and Rumsfeld is so far about the terrible consequences of dumb decisions – and the need to take responsibility for them. But we do know from Gonzales’ documents released yesterday that the Bush administration wants to reserve the right to torture detainees for the CIA. Rice has also confirmed this. They refuse to specify what “coercive interrogation techniques” they are sanctioning for security reasons. They say they don’t want to tip off al Qaeda. So we don’t have a right to know if the government is practising torture as policy? I guess not. We have now crossed a line where the CIA can torture anyone they deem to be an enemy combatant, with no one outside the inner circle knowing, in places no one knows about. Isn’t that worth debating?