Category: Old Dish

I’m pretty close to persuaded that Miers should not be confirmed because of her lack of basic competence or even interest in the field. Virginia makes a very strong case. I still think Miers deserves a hearing before final judgment, though. But two things: I see no reason why president Bush should have some “face-saving” option. He should withdraw the nomination or let the Senate decide. And if the Senate does get to decide, they need to address the recusal issue. Miers has been so intimately involved in certain issues – the legalization of torture, for example – that she must be asked if she will recuse herself from any related case. We have a right to know what topics she dealt with, even though we may forgo an attempt to find out details. We need a clear list of areas where she will recuse herself in the future. That list may help explain why she was nominated in the first place.

How it abused the innocent; covered up its crimes; and suddenly collapsed. Anyone who believes that the sexual abuse crisis was restricted to the U.S. needs to read more.

What Cheney believes in. I had dinner with an old friend last night and he made a good point about the Bush administration and torture. In every war, the executive tends to over-reach. In this one, they have over-reached to the point of subverting the very meaning of America and its honor. But the task of correcting such an over-reach is ultimately the Congress’s. We have seen the ramifications of an improvised, ill-advised, poorly executed policy of allowing abuse of detainees for purposes of “military necessity” as defined by the executive. What we need are laws to create a clear standard both for Geneva-protected combatants and non-Geneva-protected terrorists. That’s the Congress’s job, not the president’s. It’s staggering that the McCain Amendment is the first attempt to do that. We have known of these abuses for a long time now. John Kerry wouldn’t touch them in the campaign. The feckless Democrats in Congress are too scared of being labeled soft on terror to defend American and Western values; and the corrupt Republicans couldn’t give a damn, for the most part, or are too scared to stand up to a president of their own party. The legacy of torture is firstly this president’s. But it is also this Congress’s.

A Mormon conservative absorbs some personal news.

We have to resist two temptations, I think. The first is not to absorb the human cost of war. Every dead – and maimed – soldier has a story, a narrative, a family, a life and a soul. Their young deaths – so young in so many cases – are worthy of the deepest mourning; and their service of the deepest respect. I don’t think it inappropriate for the news media to show them in full, or to mark an anniversary like the one we just observed. It is an important part of our moral calculus.

But the second temptation is to move the goalposts on this war and to expect the impossible. If someone had told me three years ago that by October 2005, Saddam Hussein’s murderous tyranny would be over for ever, that Iraq would have a new constitution that emerged from a democratic process and that it will soon have a democratically elected parliament and government, I would have been thrilled. If I were further told that the inevitably embittered Sunni Arab minority had decided to throw itself into democratic politics to amend the constitution and protect its interests in a future Iraq, I would be amazed by how swiftly democratic habits can take root in a post-totalitarian country. If I had been told that, despite extraordinary provocation from Jihadist and Sunni Arab terrorists, the country had not dissolved into civil war, and that unemployment was dropping, I’d be heartened. If I had also been told that the United States had not suffered another major terror attack since the fall of 2001, I would have refused to believe it. The fact that the administration has made countless, terrible errors in the aftermath of the invasion and miscalculated badly on how the Baathists and Jihadists would fight back, should not distract us from these underlying realities. In 2002, I feared U.S. casualties approaching 10,000 in a brutal, urban war for Baghdad. The enemy gave us a simmering insurgency instead, shrewdly calculating that that was their best defense. They were right in the short term. But that makes it all the more imperative to prove them wrong in the long term. For the sake of the 2,000 who have already died; and the countless, innocent civilian Iraqis who have borne an even greater burden, let’s do all we can to make this work.

“[W]hen science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act.” – Harriet Miers, 1993. Maybe she really is a conservative after all – just not the theocon the hard right wants on the court. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to have an avowedly conservative justice on SCOTUS who supports the separation of church and state? Unfortunately, this is just one statement from her. Many others give an impression of political and philosophical, er, confusion.

THE KKK VS GAYS: They know whose side they’re on: the side they’ve always been on.

IF YOU THINK YOU’RE A LOSER: And waste your days doing pointless but occasionally satisfying things, then know this and know it well: You are not alone.

Two thirds of Americans now disapprove of president Bush’s handling of the Iraq war. But there appears to be a stabilizing in discontent: the numbers aren’t that much worse now than they were a few months back. Americans are mature enough both to grieve for the U.S. and Iraqi casualties while understanding that wars always mean casualties. As to the future, the public is now evenly split on whether things are going in the right or wrong direction. Count me among the 24 percent who don’t know for sure. I certainly hope that the political process will work in the end.

“I speak Italian and while Josh Marshall is waiting for a “professional translation” of the Repubblica series, I can confirm that Rozen’s summary is accurate, and that the original with its full detail sounds even more damaging. The Italian article mixes clearly-sourced reportage with common-sense speculation on what it must mean more freely than American journalistic practice would condone. But it keeps the two distinct; it is always clear what details are sourced, and (by local standards) relatively few of the sources are even anonymous.” Developing …

Kevin Drum homes in on the conundrum at the center of Plamegate: since Wilson never really debunked the notion that Saddam had merely sought uranium from Niger, and that was all that the president had ever claimed, why did the Bushies over-react the way they did to Wilson’s first emergence on the scene? Kevin speculates that it’s because they knew something we didn’t at the time. His argument can be read here. It’s certainly plausible, if still only a theory. I have to say that as someone who trusted the administration not to consciously lie or mislead about their evidence for Saddam’s WMDs, I’d be pretty pissed if it turned out they did. We have no solid evidence for that, though. Yet.

“In your apparent zeal to see Cheney taken down, you have failed to take into account a very important fact that easily explains the Libby/Cheney meeting on Plame where Libby took the notes that were made public today.
Cheney met with Libby on June 12, 2003. What happened on that day? Well, if you want to know, check out this link – which is the article written by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post on that day.
The subject of Pincus’ article is the CIA’s not sharing doubt on the Niger story. It was reported that

The CIA’s decision to send an emissary [i.e. Joe Wilson] to Niger was triggered by questions raised by an aide to Vice President Cheney during an agency briefing on intelligence circulating about the purported Iraqi efforts to acquire the uranium, according to the senior officials. Cheney’s staff was not told at the time that its concerns had been the impetus for a CIA mission and did not learn it occurred or its specific results.

So this article is printed, and the VP gets on the phone with Tenet to find out what he can about this emissary that was sent to Niger, supposedly at the direction of his office. He finds out that it’s Wilson, and that his wife works for CIA. He shares that info with Libby.
Thus, there is a legitimate reason for Cheney and Libby to be inquiring about Wilson’s trip and Plame’s identity. Nowhere is there any evidence that Cheney told Libby “Now go smear her and Wilson by leaking”. You say that Libby may be taking one for the team, but you have no evidence of that. You’re asking someone to prove a negative, which is impossible.
Now, if Libby didn’t mention this in the Grand Jury thinking that he was protecting Cheney from something Cheney doesn’t even need protection from, he could end up being the dumbest man alive. Plus, if he lied to the GJ or misled investigators he should be indicted and prosecuted. No question there. But you’re looking for some nefarious conspiracy that has no basis in fact based on what we know now.”

So either Libby is the dumbest man alive or Cheney has something to hide. This email is from bulldogpundit. He elaborates here. Make your own mind up. Neither of us knows for sure.