Category: The Dish

No one lies like the Clintons lie. Especially when they’re threatened.

A reader dissents:

I am sorry, but I must once again vehemently disagree with your assertion that we were misled.  All of this uncertainty was apparent before the decision to go to war was taken.  Did you not watch the Scott Ritter debate on Tim Russert? Every uncertainty was made clear in various ways. Was the administration adamant about things that turned out to be false? Yes, they were. I cannot speak for you, but I fully considered the possibility that Saddam had no serious WMD before we went in. It is true probably that many did not, that they listened only to what the president and his staff said. I cannot claim that nobody was misled, but I certainly was not. I supported the war, because I saw no reasonable alternative. I still don’t.

You assert that maybe the threat of invasion could have propped up sanctions and inspections. That may be, but only for a time. To believe that Saddam never would have escaped the sanctions is not reasonable. There were good reasons to argue against the war. In retrospect many people are justified in saying we should have looked harder for an alternative. But for those who make a living following the debate to claim they were misled is to make a claim that subverts either their credibility or their competence.

I am sorry I had to say it that way.

I don’t get the hostility from some American Jews (although the "cynicism" line in his AIPAC speech was lame). Neither does Matt Yglesias. MetaDC has an explanation (hint: JesseJackson). Beth Gottfried thinks the criticism reflects Obama’s increasing appeal to Jewish Americans.

John Samples writes:

To believe in the liberal-libertarian proposal, you have to believe that huge, unprecedented numbers of Democrats are going to change their minds about increasing government spending or that libertarians are going to stop caring about increases in government spending. I am sure the former will not happen.

That’s my fear too.

If you don’t believe the U.S. Attorneys scandal is a big deal, consider the way the administration viewed Patrick Fitzgerald. Money quote:

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.

The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

The complete politicization of the justice system – completely of a piece with the methods and rationale of men like Rove and DeLay – is a real threat to the impartiality of American justice, and the important appearance of impartiality. That this news comes on the same day that Bush has reaffirmed support for Gonzales is a reminder of how deep the rot (or the denial) goes.

A fascinating take. Money quote:

"War isn’t natural. Humans are social primates; we need to live in densely clustered groups. As a result, we’ve evolved a set of powerful moral instincts that prevent us from hurting each other. Killing makes us feel bad, even when we are killing Sunni insurgents. It’s one of the more uplifting facts of human nature: each of us is born with a powerful moral compass, and this compass constrains our behavior.

Going to war forces soldiers to void this innate moral compass. Violence is normalized in battle, but violence isn’t normal, at least from the perspective of the brain. Thanks to fMRI research, we can now begin to see the neural source of this morality…."

"HRC is almost worthless and has been since the day it was born. I totally agree with Andrew that it is a cash cow milking gullible gay men and women and providing scant evidence that it is money well-spent. Every once in a while they manage a minor victory in Washington but hardly one to merit their existence. I say this sadly. I’ll tell you one thing: that they are able to corral so much money every year is scary. It’s scary that so many of us believe they are doing good stuff. What are they seeing that I can’t see? We are in worse shape in Washington than we have ever ever ever ever ever been. Washington is HRC’s turf. I shudder," – Larry Kramer, to Rex Wockner.

Larry has an op-ed in the LA Times today as well. I think his description of straight hatred for gays is far too excessive. I’m increasingly impressed by how many straight people – and straight men – are now sticking up for us. But I profoundly agree with his analysis of how gay people enable straight prejudice. Too many of us have internalized the sense that we are not worth every bit as much as straight people. The fundamental reason why we do not have our equality is not straight hate. It is gay self-hate. The minute all gay Americans believe they deserve marriage equality, believe they should be treated exactly the same as their heterosexual peers, gay equality will come. My deepest issue with HRC is not their lack of transparency, their lack of accountability and their miserable record. It’s their cravenness, their supine deference to politicians, their inability to see that compromise based on strong convictions is not the same as enabling politicians to find ways to duck or avoid the manifest justice of our cause.

Larry has always deep down believed that gay people are as good as straight people. So many gay people still don’t. That’s the problem. To take one simple example: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs says publicly that some soldiers under his command are immoral just because they are gay. Why is he not fired immediately? Why are we not demanding that any new money for this war be linked to liberating gay soldiers from the obloquy they have to serve under? How callously must we be treated before we declare we have simply had enough?

(Illustration courtesy of Bay Windows, which has done a great job covering HRC’s lack of transparency.)

I don’t think taking ad money for specific blogs from specific campaigns is that big a deal, but I’m glad it’s now fully disclosed.

Caracas, Venezuala, 7.45 am.

It’s well worth reading his account of the decision-making time-line before the war. It’s worth it because it reminds us that there never was an easy solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein. Iraq was going to be a headache for the civilized world – and a living hell for most of its inhabitants – war or no war. After 9/11, concern about Saddam’s potential for possibly terrifying mischief was not misplaced. And yes, the U.N. had been grotesquely impotent in enforcing its own resolutions. Much of what was motivating the French and Russian governments was contemptible. But … there are obvious weaknesses in Hitch’s case. Here’s one key sentence that now reads a little hollow:

All Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD.

That was not the basis on which we went to war. If the president had told us that he could only safely verify that Iraq had "latent programs for the production of WMD," then his case would have been far more honest but far less cogent. We were told rather that there was no doubt that stockpiles of WMD existed.  We were even led to believe he had some nuclear capacity. If the actual, unrigged intelligence data had been presented at the UN, if the statements of president, vice-president, defense secretary et al had been carefully parsed to ensure that we knew exactly the knowable risks of action and of inaction, then a ramped-up inspections regime might well have been preferable to war. We may not have achieved such a regime without sending troops to Saddam’s doorstep. But that leverage might have enabled us to achieve more effective containment, while supporting Shiites and Kurds by indirect means. The threat of imminent war might even have brought the Russians and French into backing a tougher containment strategy. This is hindsight, of course. But hindsight is exactly what Hitch is asking us to use.

But the real point my friend doesn’t mention is much more important and much more damning for us war supporters. The real question is: if we knew then what we know now about the caliber, ethics, competence and integrity of the president and his aides, would we have entrusted them to wage this war? Would we have trusted their presentation of pre-war intelligence? And the answer to that, I venture to guess for my friend as well, is: no. If we had known that war meant sending Iraq into a vortex of uncontrollable violence; if we had known that proving Rumsfeld’s theories would turn out to be more important than providing basic law, order and security for the invaded country; if we had known that this president would unleash torture indiscriminately throughout the conflict and destroy America’s moral standing in the world; if we knew that there was no post-invasion plan; if we had known all of this – would we still have supported the war? Of course not.

Some of this was our own fault – our own psychological captivity to the trauma of 9/11, our own excessive trust in a president many saw through already, our own good intentions with respect to Iraqis’ suffering taken to levels where self-delusion was involved. But some of it, we now know, was also a function of being misled. Quite how we were misled and how consciously is still not entirely clear. But that we were misled is indisputable. Why more war-supporters are not angrier about this deception escapes me.

The supporters of this war therefore fall into two camps: those of us who deluded ourselves, and those of us who deluded others. They are not mutually exclusive groups. But the moral burden for this hideous, brutal war falls primarily on those in the administration whose responsibility it ultimately was, who had access to intelligence the rest of us didn’t, who were privy to arguments the rest of us never knew about till later.

Yes, I am glad Saddam is gone. Yes, I believe my own intentions before the war were honorable, if mistaken. Yes, I believe Hitch’s were as well – and those of many others. But we were fools not to see the true nature of the people we were trusting; and too enraptured by our own sense of righteousness to realize that we could have been wrong. And wrong we were.