Month: November 2006

From Woodward:

"You always told me the truth," Barbara Bush opened, drawing Boren aside for a private chat. [David L. Boren was the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma who had been the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.]

"Yes, ma’am," Boren replied.

"Will you tell me the truth now?"

"Certainly."

"Are we right to be worried about this Iraq thing?"

"Yes. I’m very worried."

"Do you think it’s a mistake?"

"Yes, ma’am," Boren replied. "I think – it’s a huge mistake if we go in right now, this way."

"Well, his father is certainly worried and is losing sleep over it. He’s up at night worried."

"Why doesn’t he talk to him?"

"He doesn’t think he should unless he’s asked," Barbara Bush said.

Eventually, my guess is: he was asked. Or Barbara picked up the phone herself.

"MEHLMAN OUT AT RNC." Er, ….

I have been accused of "outright falsification" by David Frum because of an offhand tease that he was a no-show on a Canadian radio show earlier this week. Since I was sitting in the radio studio, waiting to debate him, on time, and was told he hadn’t shown up, my comments were entirely accurate. I called the producer yesterday, after Frum’s accusation, to ask whether I had been hallucinating. She told me that indeed Frum had not turned up on time for the interview, he was in the gym, but they had tracked him down. She also confirmed to me that if he had arrived on time, we would have gone ahead. Unbenownst to me, the producers then decided to cancel the entire segment because of the Rumsfeld resignation. "If he’d arrived on time, we would have taped it, but probably been unable to use it," the producer told me. That I didn’t know till I spoke with her again this morning. So David was a no-show and subsequently the show was canceled. My little tease falls a little flat. But I was not outright falsifying anything. I don’t do that.

It’s a lyric, actually. Another song – "Anthem" – from the great Leonard Cohen. It sums up exactly how I feel after this week’s electoral intervention.

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
The widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

Can’t run no more
With the lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We have to win this war. And we have managed to get rid of some of the madmen who were busy losing it, and exposed some of the charlatans who were enabling them. It’s a start.

(Window photo: Florence, Massachusetts, 3.51 pm.)

"They did this to protect themselves, but they couldn’t protect us?" – a Republican congressional aide on the timing of Rumsfeld’s resignation.

Actually, the timing was entirely about the president’s pride and ego – certainly not about the troops, or the war. Bush preferred to keep his inerrant leader image intact rather than do all he could to retain the Congress or win the war. Such pride almost always cometh before a mid-term realignment.

Here’s an average homeboy, just speaking out for the upper lower middle class – and their right to hip-hop too. Enjoy.

Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq, 2 pm. Know hope.

Another Limbaugh classic:

"No, I’m not lying … I’ve not lied about anything I’ve said. Let me try this a different way. (sigh) I’m going to have to think about this. I tried to make it as clear as I can. I’m not going to eat my own, and I’m not going to throw my own overboard, particularly in a campaign, and particularly when the country is at war – and I’m not going to do it for selfish reasons, and I’m not going to do it to stand out, and I’m not going to do it to be different. I’m not going to do it to draw attention from our enemies. I’m not going to do anything I do so that the Drive-By Media will like me or think that, "Ooooh, Limbaugh has changed! Ooooh, Limbaugh is coming around!" That’s not my thinking.

My thinking is: the left doesn’t deserve to win. My thinking is: the country is imperiled with liberal victory. We may not have the best people on our side, but they’re better than what we have on the left. But it has been difficult sometimes, when these people on our side have not had the guts to stand up for themselves, have not had the guts to explain what they really believe and why they’re doing what they’re doing. When they haven’t had the courage to be who they are, when they haven’t had the courage to be conservatives."

Hmmm. So if I have this straight, Limbaugh knowingly supported people he actually believed were indefensible, who were not conservatives. He is saying loud and clear that he deliberately misled his listeners – because he couldn’t bring himself to back "the left," whatever that means to him. Then there’s this from Hugh Hewitt:

"It is a wonderful day for new media, especially talk radio. For two years we have had to defend the Congressional gang that couldn’t shoot straight."

Say what? Says who? Is he on the GOP payroll? "We have had to defend …" Why, exactly? No one was forcing Hewitt to defend anything. He could have been honest with his readers and listeners. He could have called this Congress the "gang that couldn’t shoot straight" last week. Why didn’t he?

The one thing you learn from this: Hewitt and Limbaugh are party animals. They put loyalty to party above intellectual honesty. They have admitted that they knowingly misled their readers and listeners. They can and will do it again.

Greg Djerejian feels relief:

Regardless, what we saw [Tuesday] was American democracy at its finest. We saw the public mount a critically needed intervention, because without it a President well beyond his depth would have likely continued to cast his lot with discredited cocksure ideologues and/or Jacksonian nationalists like Rumsfeld.

In Gates, we have an anti-ideologue and a realist. In his role with the Baker-Hamilton commission (a welcome dose of bipartisan sanity in an increasingly moronic Washington, media and blogosphere), he will have had access and been influenced by distinguished peers grappling with what to do next in Iraq in a climate characterized by sober appraisal of the national interest, rather than the agenda-driven hysterical harrumphing afoot in all the usual quarters.

What we are seeing is an almost Shakespearean drama in which the wayward son is forced back to the advisers of the father he once rejected. Two words: Poppy’s back! His arch-nemesis, Rumsfeld, is gone. Two of Poppy’s closest allies and friends are now trying to figure a path out of the hole Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld dug. So the Bush presidency is back! The other Bush presidency. The one that, in retrospect, seems sane and wise.

The Pulitzer-prize winning AP photographer has been detained without being charged by the U.S. military for seven months now in Iraq. His life may be in danger. He has been accused of being a terrorist for taking photographs of terrorists. He has seen no evidence against him. There is no due process for him. Now Rumsfeld has gone, decency may return to the U.S. military. But this story from the American Journalism Review is the most thorough I’ve yet read about this case. I think the military should charge Hussein and produce the evidence allegedly incriminating him. Or they should set him free. For such outlandish ideas of fair treatment, I will no doubt be called a "liberal." I just believe in a free press, even in wartime. And in due process, even in wartime. I thought that was something we could all agree on. Apparently, it isn’t.