The Dish

Here’s a quote to get you sitting up straight:

"If I were at the CIA now and was asked to work on an National Intelligence Estimate [on Iraq], my first response would be, ‘How the f*** do I get out of this?’ The most courageous, honest person in the place would be reluctant to do it because every time someone says the emperor has no clothes he gets his head lopped off."

That’s a former "senior CIA official" talking to Ken Silverstein, in a new blog post. There seems to be a real crisis at the CIA, especially with respect to Iraq. Honest assessments of the situation are ignored and their authors punished. And so our intelligence on the ground has deteriorated to the point of useless. Money quote:

The New York Times and others have reported that in 2003, the CIA station chief in Baghdad authored several special field reports that offered extremely negative assessments of the situation on the ground in Iraq‚Äîassessments that later proved to be accurate. The field reports, known as "Aardwolfs," were angrily rejected by the White House. Their author ‚Äî who I’m told was a highly regarded agency veteran named Gerry Meyer ‚Äî was soon pushed out of the CIA, in part because his reporting angered the See No Evil crowd within the Bush administration. "He was a good guy," one recently retired CIA official said of Meyer, "well-wired in Baghdad, and he wrote a good report. But any time this administration gets bad news, they say the critics are assholes and defeatists, and off we go down the same path with more pressure on the accelerator."

This cannot be good news for the effort in Iraq. We need empirical clarity if we are to make good policy. But empiricism has been replaced by blind ideology. 

A reader comments:

I applaud your efforts to call out the Christianists. At the same time, I wonder why you don’t have more company in doing so. I want to draw a parallel between Islamism and Christianity that points to something I’ve never quite been able to understand: the apparent willingness of many Muslims and Christians to allow the appropriation of their religion’s public face by those who seem to constitute only a small fraction of believers.

Tom Friedman, among many others, has been correct to point out the hypocrisy of Muslim leaders who quickly condemn many American actions as anti-Muslim while barely uttering a word when Islamic terrorists bomb mosques and murder Muslims. Similarly, many Muslims are eager to point out the unfair perception that violence inheres in Islam, but it seems (to me) that Muslims are more vocal and more mobilized in denouncing the West for stigmatizing them as violent than they are in opposing actual violence carried out in the name of their faith.

An analogous observation can be made of American Christians. Many of my Christian friends hate – indeed, are offended by – the notion that as Christians people assume them to be intolerant, bigoted, and (worst of all) Republican. But how is it that Christians in the States have allowed American Christianity to be more commonly associated with intolerance than humility? If the perception has been allowed to slip so far, don’t all Christians deserve the blame? Isn’t their faith important enough to be defended from those who would, if you’ll pardon the term, hijack it?

Well, two points. The first is that the Christianists are not involved in anything like the extremism of the Islamists; and the Constitution protects us from full-bore theocracy. And so acquiescence among American Christians is far more defensible. Secondly, the Christianists have a lot of authority on their side. The Vatican has embraced the politicization of Christianity; and the Christianists in America have proven able to deliver votes to Karl Rove, thus cementing their own political power. Ordinary Christians, especially those whose faith is a little less dogmatic and a little more self-effacing than the Christianists’, can easily be intimidated into silence or acquiescence. But that silence is slowly ending. As the political project of the Christianists crumbles – as all such political projects inevitably do – we’ll see another cycle of withdrawal from politics and concentration on, you know, actual Christianity. That’s my hope, at least. And history gives it credence.

(Photo: Thomas Michael Alleman for Time.)

Frankie went to Hollywood and saw Al’s new movie. He’s a convert. Yes, I know he’s editor of TNR. But you have to suck up to Gore to get the job, not to keep it. (Unless you’re Mike Kelly, I suppose. Oh, well.) Foer’s for Gore. I’ll see the movie just as soon as I’ve read Ramesh’s book. Promise.

They refused to carry one magazine because it included the Muhammad cartoons. Will they now refuse to carry Harper’s? Let’s see, shall we?

Count ’em.

A reader writes:

I read a profile of O’Reilly in the New Yorker recently. The article indicated that people on the left side of the spectrum are increasingly reluctant to appear on the Factor, and that O’Reilly is having trouble booking the guests he would like to. This may be O’Reilly’s fault because he’s such a jerk, but apparently it’s not his preference to have a one-sided "intra-Republican" debates.
But my main point is that I truly believe that although Fox News in general is right-leaning, it does want to provide both sides of a debate, assuming that it can actually get persons from both sides of the debate to appear.

I was available. So, I’m sure, were actual Republicans who oppose the FMA. Besides, it’s now left-wing to believe in states’ rights? And leftist to want to stop meddling with the Constitution? Will someone please wake me when this nightmare is over?

I missed it. We were watching the new Woody Allen movie, "Match-Point." It’s not available on the Daily Show site yet, but I’ll make sure to watch when it is. I saw Ramesh on "Real Time" and, in a debate about abortion, he never actually stated his position. Odd. A reader comments:

The first word that came to my mind after watching him last night was "evisceration". Besides his extremely offputting voice and deer-in-the-headlights manner, Ramesh didn’t make any statement that approached coherence. Stewart’s question asking Ramesh to justify killing innocent people in the war was the highlight. Ramesh’s only response was that he was opposed to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gulp!

Oh, be nice. That whole just war argument is so pre-Benedict. Opposing war is not part of the Party of Life. Neither is opposing torture. Puhlease. Besides, in Ponnuru’s mind, more full-fledged human beings die in a womb in an average fertile woman’s lifetime than have perished in many wars. Priorities, priorities.

Update: I just saw it. I’d say Stewart did an extremely good job of flushing out the absolutism of Ramesh’s position. And the title of the book is obviously a huge impediment to constructing the kind of debate we need. I wonder if Ponnuru regrets it now. I should say I will read this book as soon as I get a chance. It isn’t fair to keep commenting on it without reading it. Today, I finish the copy-edits on my own. So time will open up, I hope.

This one’s a doozy – from someone who voted for Bush twice in 2000 and is no fan of the Democratic Party. Money quote:

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and its rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point who’s buying the act?            

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

I take some comfort from this fiscal conservative revolt in Pennsylvania. But I think the entire Bush-Rove edifice has to be destroyed for a conservative renaissance to begin.

A town in Missouri starts evicting households who do not conform with the family standards its majority finds morally acceptable. An unmarried couple with three children has just been denied the right to live there. I’m not making this up. More here. The couple in question have been together for thirteen years.

It’s all the rage at National Review. It’s defended as "human nature."