Democrats soften stance on Iraq

AFP
18/04/2007 19:30 - (SA)

Washington - Democrats softened their demands on Wednesday on the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq ahead of talks with US President George W Bush on funding for the four-year-old war.

Leaders of the new Democratic majority said before a scheduled meeting with Bush they preferred to negotiate an exit strategy rather than try to impose a withdrawal timetable fiercely opposed by the White House.

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives, said Democrats were determined to reach out and say: "Mr. President, we must work together. We must negotiate an approach that will wind down this war."

Pelosi and senate majority leader Harry Reid conspicuously avoided a demand for the pullout of US troops starting next year that was contained in a funding bill Bush has sworn to veto.

Pelosi said: "It's not a question of 'back down'. It's a question of negotiate a winding down of this war.

"It's necessary that we do that because the course of action we are in is a war without end."

There are 145 000 US troops in Iraq, and the number should rise to 160 000 by June under a "surge" ordered by Bush to try to restore order in Baghdad.

Locked in a weeks-long standoff over a $120bn emergency funding package for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush and the Democratic leaders were to meet behind closed doors at the White House.

Time to Change The ‘Back Channel’

March 26, 2007

By Rory O'Connor

Leave it to the New York Times to pronounce something “corrupt” and then wholeheartedly embrace it as “crucial.”

This week’s Sunday magazine piece by Max Frankel is the most recent and stunning example of the Times’ weird worldview. In a cover story, the paper’s former executive editor concludes that “the real lesson” of the recent Scooter Libby trial is that Washington’s “black market in information” — which the Times defines as “the messy and at times illicit traffic in secrets carried out among Washington officials and those who report on their doings” — is an evil necessary for democracy. “Leaks, backgrounders, favors, masked attribution: For decades, journalists and government officials have…manipulated one another and, to some extent, readers too,” the magazine noted. “It’s not pretty – as the Libby trial revealed. But it’s crucial.”

True, the trial provided a rare public glimpse at the corrupt nexus of Big Politics and Big Media — of which the Times is of course a charter member. While Frankel’s assessment that “it’s not pretty” is certainly sound, the rest of his analysis is unsurprisingly skewed. “Favors and masked attribution” do sound journalistically ugly and corrupt – as does “manipulating readers” – but the Washington back channel is certainly NOT crucial for anyone except perhaps the privileged players who participate in it. Moreover, it’s demonstrably BAD for our democracy. (Witness the ongoing carnage in Iraq, which the Times manipulated many of its readers into supporting!) Only charter members of the Big Media club, which performed so shamefully during the run up to both the war and the Libby trial, could conclude otherwise.

“So there I sat, watching the United States government in all its majesty dragging into court the American press (in all its piety),” Frankel’s article begins, mockingly, “Forcing reporters to betray confidences, rifling their files and notebooks, making them swear to their confused memories and motives and burdening their bosses with hefty legal fees — all for the high-sounding purpose, yet again, of protecting our nation’s secrets. Top-secret secrets! In wartime!”

Frankel is accurate in noting that Libby was indicted “as an agent of government who lied and obstructed justice to protect the misuse of secrets.” He is “no Daniel Ellsberg, who gave the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times to expose the nation’s devious drift into war in Vietnam.” Instead, Libby’s intent was “to defend misjudgments and misrepresentations on the path to war in Iraq.”

And that’s not all Frankel managed to get right. He also decried reporters’ “messy relations with officialdom,” as “celebrated correspondents routinely grant anonymity — better called irresponsibility — to government sources just to hear whispered propaganda and other self-serving falsehoods.”

To Frankel, it all sounds “so familiar”– and no wonder. As he writes, “government officials spreading secrets to shape a story and to advance their interests, large and small” have long been a staple of Washington. This is particularly of the New York Times, whether it involved LBJ whispering in Frankel’s ear or Scooter Libby nibbling on Judith Miller’s. A case in point, per Frankel: “On Tuesday, July 8, in what his normally detailed calendar listed only as a ‘private meeting,’ Libby spent two hours at breakfast with Judith Miller to enlist her help in countering Wilson’s attack. He told the grand jury that he admired her reporting, on Al Qaeda and chemical and biological weapons, and presumably also her prewar articles lending credence to the administration’s wild alarms about Iraqi W.M.D.’s — credulous articles that The Times eventually disowned.”

Frankel fails to explain, however, how the back channel relationship between Libby/Big Politics and Miller/Big Media was somehow “crucial” to our democracy. “Miller testified that Libby brought her selected excerpts from a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate to buttress his claim that long after Wilson’s mission, the C.I.A. still endorsed reports that Saddam Hussein had ‘vigorously’ pursued uranium in Africa,” Frankel reports. Credulous, indeed! Corrupt? Yes. Crucial? Hardly…

Instead of blaming the system, Frankel – like many Times writers before him – simply blames Miller, who he says should have realized, “that the remedy for bad leaks is more leaks.” He then takes a few gratuitous swipes at poor Judy, noting her “role in the case served no one very well. On cross-examination, she was rattled into multiple confessions of uncertainty, poor memory and wobbly note-taking.”

But somehow, while coming up with the correct diagnosis – “the shameless ease with which top-secret information is bartered in Washington for political advantage” — Frankel amazingly contends that the disease of corrupt relationships between Big Politics and Big Media is really good for all of us, and that our dying democracy needs no cure!

Explain to me, Max, why it is good for me that Vice President Cheney can use Meet the Press – “our best format,” as his communications chief Cathie Martin testified – to control “our message.” Maybe I’m dense – why are all your pals in Big Media so convinced they can do their jobs “only by subscribing to the convoluted code of conduct governing Washington interviews?”

After all, as you admit, “the system is sloppy and breeds confusion.” Scooter Libby, for example, often spoke “off the record” when he really meant “deep background.” And Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper seems equally confused, testifying that “off the record” meant a reporter couldn’t use the information given him – and then went ahead and used information Libby had given him “off the record.”

Despite these and numerous other examples of incompetence mixed with perfidy, Frankel somehow concludes it’s all for the best. “Clearly, from the perspective of the public interest, there are and always have been both good and bad leaks, true and illuminating betrayals of secrets as well as false and conniving ones.” To the Times man, “there are no neat lines of distinction.”

It’s quite clear how such ambiguity can serve the special interests of both sides of the Big Politics/Big Media equation. But how does it serve the reader, the citizen, and our democracy?

“Much as I enjoyed the human drama and revelations of the Libby case, I wound up regretting the rough ride of the law through the marketplace of information,” Frankel concludes. “Attorneys general should resist the temptation to interfere with newsgathering or to delegate such a decision to a single-minded special counsel. When a White House leak is suspected, it is hard to avoid an independent prosecutor, but it’s a pressure worth resisting.

“It may sound cynical to conclude that tolerating abusive leaks by government is the price that society has to pay for the benefit of receiving essential leaks about government. But that awkward condition has long served to protect the most vital secrets while dislodging the many the public deserves to know.”

In loose translation: Prosecutors of the realm let this back-alley market flourish. Attorneys general and others armed with subpoena power, please leave well enough alone. Back off. Butt out.

It’s true that the damage to newsgathering from the Libby trial “has been significant,” as Frankel notes. But it’s even truer that preserving the corrupt black market in information that pours through the “Washington back channel” is even more dangerous to journalism – and democracy – than a dozen Special Prosecutors could ever be.

Comment on this post...

Bill Maher to Bush: "New rule—traitors don't get to question my patriotism."

Bill Maher to Bush

Iran’s Operative in the White House: NICHOLAS KRISTOF - Dick Cheney

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Iran’s Operative in the White House

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 20, 2007

Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?

f an 18-year-old American soldier were caught slipping obscure military paperwork to Iranian spies, he would be arrested, pilloried in the news media and tossed into prison for years.

But in fact there’s an American who has provided services of incalculably greater value to Iran in recent years. So you have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?

Consider that the Bush administration’s first major military intervention was to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Iran’s bitter foe to the east. Then the administration toppled Iran’s even worse enemy to the west, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

You really think that’s just a coincidence? That of all 193 nations in the world, we just happen to topple the two neighboring regimes that Iran despises?

Moreover, consider how our invasion of Iraq went down. The U.S. dismantled Iraq’s army, broke the Baath Party and helped install a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better — so maybe they did write the script …

We fought Iraq, and Iran won. And that’s just another coincidence?

--MORE--

PELOSI'S BETRAYAL

Democratic lefties are are now distracted by the attorney firings issue, a minor one compared to nuclear war, wouldn't you say?

---

"ANTIWAR" DEMOCRATS CAVE ON IRAN

By: Justin Raimondo

Read it and weep:

"Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over Iraq. Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran. Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy."

This settles at least three matters once and for all: To begin with, the president has been given the green light to attack Iran. Withdrawing this provision from the spending bill is an act not just of complicity, but of open collaboration with the Bush administration's war plans. When the bombs begin to fall, and the Democrats rise up in a yowl of righteous indignation, the president will be quite justified in doing this.

Secondly, the Democrats are either being dishonest or they lack fundamental knowledge of geography, because Pelosi is attacking the president for his Iraq "surge" even as she gives him the go-ahead for a super-surge right across the border in Iran.

The Republicans, no matter what their particular views on the war, seem to understand that this is a regional struggle and requires a comprehensive, overarching solution. They just don't agree on what that solution ought to be. Someone along the lines of, say, Rudy Giuliani, wants to extend the war to include the entire region, while Chuck Hagel, on the other hand, envisions a regional diplomatic and political architecture to serve as the framework for a comprehensive Middle East peace initiative.

Addressing the recent AIPAC conference, Scooter Libby's boss, AKA the Father of Lies, spoke the unvarnished truth:

"It is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel's best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened."

What an easy target the "antiwar" Democrats make!

Third, one has to wonder how those who claim that recognizing the Israel Lobby's decisive impact on U.S. foreign policy is a hate crime are going to explain away this one. Those above-mentioned "conservative Democrats" are natural warmongers (although it wasn't always so), but exactly who, one wonders, are these other "lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel"? I'll bet Pelosi is one of them and Tom Lantos is another; no doubt the entire Democratic leadership belongs in that group.

No one is any longer pretending that Israel isn't the 51st state. To hear Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) tell it,

"There is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state. 'It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran,' she said of the now-abandoned provision."

Berkley is prepared to send the sons and daughters of her Nevada constituents into battle because, you see, there is "fear in Israel." What about fear in Nevada of the looming prospect of another war in the Middle East, this time involving a country with three times the population of Iraq and quite a bit more territory? I'll bet if you grab someone off the streets of Las Vegas and ask them if we ought to gamble on giving Bush the power to launch another war, only the very drunk would say, "Yeah, sure, dude, why the hell not!" On the other hand, if you went up to someone in say, Tel Aviv, you'd get a very different answer. In this context, it is fair to ask: whom, exactly, does Rep. Berkley represent?

The Israel Lobby would like to frame the debate in terms of the alleged "existential" threat to Israel, in spite of the CIA's official assessment that Iran is 10 years away from building viable nuclear weapons. Since Israel could be wiped off the map by a few well-placed nuclear strikes, according to this half-baked scenario, to oppose going to war is evidence of anti-Semitism – at least, according to the definition of the "new anti-Semitism," which goes way beyond the fevered fictions of the Protocols and includes Jewish advocates of a single biracial state in Palestine, such as Tony Judt. When it comes to Iran, therefore, to be antiwar is to be an anti-Semite.

This brings to mind the comment of Andrew Sullivan at his most unhinged – you remember, back when he was subjecting poetry to the pro-war litmus test – when he charged that participants at some antiwar rally were handing out copies of the Protocols. Sullivan darkly speculated that the infiltration of this ancient prejudice was "perhaps inevitable." But of course it is if you define anti-Semitism in the "new" way the neocons are trying desperately to legitimize. It's nonsense of the worst sort: is it "anti-Semitic" to note that the U.S. and Israel are, like, separate countries, or is this, too, evidence that you're a Hitlerite of the heart? To add to the intellectual dishonesty generated by this debate, we aren't allowed to point out the racist claptrap uttered by Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat representing the north shore of Long Island, who said:

"I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way."

Yeah, those wild-eyed Muslims can't be trusted with gunpowder, let alone nuclear power, so nothing is "off the table." That's why it's okay for Israel to have nukes, which pose an "existential" threat to Iran: the Israelis, after all, are normal and "civilized," just like us. No need to ask whom or what Ackerman represents: that ought to be clear enough.

In a study of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" published by Harvard University last year and summarized in a piece in the London Review of Books, professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt averred that the Lobby's power was "critical" in pushing the U.S. to invade Iraq, albeit not the sole factor. That same power is now being exerted to the utmost in order to get the Americans to take out Tehran, and, once again, it is critical – and intense, as the two professors note:

"The administration has responded to the Lobby's pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran's nuclear program. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a 'terrorist' regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing sanctions. Israeli officials also warn they may take preemptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington's attention on the issue."

The Iran Freedom Support Act – which is nothing less than an open attempt to pull off "regime change" in Iran – passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. The rush of op-eds has now turned into a tsunami. And AIPAC is using its well-known and widely feared clout with politicians to ramp up the pressure for war. According to one on-the-scene report, AIPAC's recent conference, which drew politicians from both sides of the aisle, featured

"Former CIA director James Woolsey expound[ing] upon the existential threats posed to the Jewish state by various Islamist entities. Six humongous jumbotrons behind him shuffle through images of a maniacal-looking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and an impotent-looking Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Israel advocacy is a high-stakes business, they beam at me."

Six-thousand AIPAC supporters cheering as major politicians of both parties ratchet up the rhetoric against Iran: what more evidence do we need that the Israel lobby is the command-and-control center of the War Party?

Mearsheimer and Walt saw this effort to gin up another war in the Middle East coming, and they make a good argument against it:

"One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the U.S. has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran's nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the U.S. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China, or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the U.S. would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but U.S. policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option."

Let anyone who doubts the unparalleled power of the Lobby watch as Congress once again abdicates its responsibility and trusts this administration to do the right thing. Rep. Ackerman now says he regrets his vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution:

"If I had known the administration lied, if I had known that the presentations were rigged. … I certainly wouldn't have trusted [the administration]. … The evidence was rigged, and the case wasn't proven at all."

So why is he giving the Bush administration the benefit of a doubt the second time around? How does he know the evidence isn't rigged, this time, too? Is he a fool, or a liar? Well, we know he recently referred to Omar Khayyam as "the great Iraqi poet," despite the fact that the medieval Persian was born in present-day Iran centuries before the creation of Iraq. Ackerman knows as much about Iran as he did about Iraq at the time of his pro-war vote, i.e., zero, but, unfortunately, that doesn't disqualify him as a decision-maker.

Ackerman attended what the above-cited news report described as "a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats" where it was decided that they had better not be "tying the hands of the administration." After all, as Matt Yglesias quipped, "Since history has, after all, shown that when granted broad military authority Bush usually uses it wisely as a subtle negotiating tool and with brilliant results. Or something."

Are all congressional Democrats fools, or liars? I would say both, but that's hardly unusual when it comes to politicians, regardless of party affiliation. The question is: will their ostensibly "antiwar" base allow them to get away with it? Where are the fabled "netroots" on this? Apparently nowhere to be seen.

Speaking of being seen: this is a perfect opportunity to point out that there's going to be a demonstration outside of Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office, on the steps of San Francisco's Federal Building, at noon on Monday, March 19, the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. The address is 450 Golden Gate, between Polk and Larkin. Go here for more information.

Show up and let the speaker of the House, who poses as an opponent of Bush's crazed foreign policy, know that her complicity in the president's rush to war with Iran is inexcusable, and needs to be reversed. I don't often endorse demonstrations, but this one is vitally important: time is of the essence. As U.S. warships – two aircraft carriers – take up positions in the Persian Gulf, menacing Iran, amid a stream of hostile rhetoric and accusations aimed at Tehran by this White House, it's time to step out and stand up against Pelosi's shameful betrayal.

The Dems on Iraq: More Bark Than Bite

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007

By Massimo Calabresi/Washington

Before they took control of the House and the Senate, Democrats had a lot to say about George W. Bush's use of Presidential power and what they claimed was Republican complicity in eroding both civil liberties and the authority of Congress. When the GOP pushed through a bill granting Bush the ability to suspend the ancient right of habeus corpus for terror suspects, the man who would become the Democratic Senate majority leader after the election, Harry Reid, said, "The framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but this bill discards them." Across the country Democratic candidates for both chambers of Congress painted their opponents as rubber stamps for Bush's failed policy in Iraq. And the day before the Nov. 7 vote that would vindicate his chairmanship of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, New York's Charles Schumer said voters were flooding to Democrats in part because they had decided that the country needed "some checks and balances in this government."

Now that they're in charge, Democrats are still talking the talk. This week, they are hammering away at Bush ahead of his Iraq speech while planning a resolution opposing his proposed troop increase in the war. Today incoming Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy held hearings on what he says are executive branch infringements on Americans' privacy. And on Thursday Leahy will have attorney general Alberto Gonzales appear before his panel for a wide-ranging oversight hearing, which the committee's spokesperson says will dig into the civil liberties issues Democrats raised in the campaign.

But when it comes to actually taking any action to check Bush's war powers, there's not much bark to the Democrats' bite. Which raises the question: will Democrats use their new power to rein in what they say is an overreaching president? Or will they choose to continue what proved to be a successful political strategy when they were in the minority: criticizing the administration for unpopular policies while avoiding taking action themselves that could prove equally unpopular?

On Iraq, Hill Democrats have chosen the latter course. Sen. Edward Kennedy yesterday introduced a bill to block funding for deploying additional troops to Iraq. But Reid and the Democratic leadership prefer a non-binding, "sense-of-the-Senate" resolution opposing the troop increase that is designed to embarrass Bush by peeling off dissenting Republicans, without actually taking any action to block the move. Kennedy's proposal, leadership aides say, is a stalking horse designed in part to placate the base by attacking Bush while leaving Democrats who support the leadership's alternative safe from accusations they don't back the troops.

And if war opponents are likely to be disappointed by the Democratic response to Bush's proposed troop increase, those who believe he is eroding American civil liberties will be even more downcast in coming weeks. Yesterday at a press briefing in the Senate Hart office building, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said that while Democrats had not been willing to obstruct Bush's war on terror initiatives before the November elections, he hoped the Democratic rout might have changed the political calculation. "We hope that the Democrats have found their spines again," he said.

Leahy, the incoming Judiciary chairman, is doing his part. In addition to the hearings, he and the ranking minority leader, Arlen Specter, have introduced a bill that would roll back Bush's habeus-overriding powers. Leahy, Wisconsin's Russ Feingold, and New Hampshire conservative John Sununu today will introduce a bill that would require executive branch agencies regularly to report on data mining efforts. On the record, Harry Reid's office is nominally supportive of these efforts. "The new Congress will review all aspects of the war on terror to see what improvements are needed," says Reid spokesman, Jim Manley.

But privately top Democratic Senators, aides and advisers say the political calculation has not changed since before the election. While Bush and his policies are unpopular in the extreme, Americans still support a strong hand at the White House when it comes to national security matters. From the Democrats' perspective, that means plenty of willingness to criticize Bush on all fronts when it comes to his handling of national security and even the use of his war powers — but, at least for now, no overt efforts to curtail them.

"You're going to see many more hearings," Schumer said yesterday when I asked him if there was increased willingness of Democrats to confront Bush's war powers. North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, the Democrats' third ranking member of the Senate and an outspoken administration critic, said he thought it was "a little early" to roll back Bush's expansion of executive power in the previous Congress. A Democratic judiciary staffer supportive of a rollback said, "We understand the political reality." And leadership aides say bluntly that short of new revelations that turn public opinion against expanded executive authority, the Democrats are going to avoid directly confronting the President.

Critics think this approach is short-sighted, arguing Democrats could get away with criticizing the President without curtailing him when they were in the minority, but risk looking hypocritical now that they're in charge on the Hill. The ACLU points to its own polling that it says shows Americans support pushing back against the President and cites three races to back the numbers up. In Montana and Ohio, Senate challengers opposed to the popular Patriot Act fended off harsh attacks from Republicans on their position, and in a key Connecticut House race the anti-executive authority position helped seal victory for the Democratic challenger. Still, "that doesn't guarantee that the Democrats have found their backbone," says ACLU Washington representative, Caroline Fredrickson.

Politically, however, it's hard to argue with a winning strategy. The ACLU's three races fly in the face of Harry Reid's victorious approach throughout the 109th Congress: hammer the President in every public forum on Iraq and executive overreach, but never, ever get on the wrong side of tough national security policies. Echoing the dominant centrist approach, California's Dianne Feinstein, who sits on both the intelligence and judiciary committees, told me yesterday she thinks, "it is right to give the government reasonable leeway to protect Americans," while "having hearings and oversight is also helpful in clearing the air."

In the end, that means little legislative push back in the war powers battle. Privately, leadership aides say there is no reason for Reid to get ahead of habeus cases working their way through the courts that could save Democrats the political pain of an open battle with Bush. Even Leahy's office holds out little hope of rolling back Bush's wiretapping program. And Reid's non-binding resolution on Iraq will do nothing to slow the reported imminent deployment of more troops to Baghdad. By the time the Administration's request for emergency funds for the war comes through next month, opponents of the surge will be in the position of having to vote against money for troops already in a war zone. And even the most outspoken critics of the Bush White House know that's a losing proposition.