Get Real

It's late, I'm tired and I just finished watching an incredibly well done and riveting documentary on al Qaeda and 9/11 by National Geographic. And then I read this:

Bush Calls Iraq War Moral Equivalent Of Allies' WWII Fight Against the Axis. Of all the gall. Comparing the bunch of rag-tag guerillas that has the U.S. paralyzed in Iraq to the fascists and authoritarians of 1940s Germany, Japan and Italy is sophistry. "The Greatest Generation" knew what they were fighting for and knew it was right. Today, we don't know who we are fighting and we are "right" only in that we are acting as a pseudo-benevolent occupation force.

Remember that Bush vowed on 9/11 that he would hunt down those responsible and kill them. Osama bin Laden is still out there, and since 9/11 we've witnessed Madrid, London and scores of other major al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is growing more opium than ever before and Iraq has become a new rallying call for Islamic jihad against Western "infidels."

If Bush had any real courage, he would have nuked Islamabad when he had the chance. But then, throughout American history, it's been Democrats who fight wars, and Republicans who talk but don't walk. Get real, George; you cannot make history by wishing this were World War II. It's a different time, and a different war. The problem is, Iraq is the wrong war. We should be fighting terrorists, but instead we are just sowing the seeds for inevitably more terrorism against all of Western civilization.

 Posted by glenn at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

The Second Front

Now Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says in a classified report that the U.S. military's current commitments overseas may prevent it from adequately fighting future conflicts. Duh! Waging war on two fronts simultaneously has doomed armies from Napoleon to Hitler, so why should the United States be any different? Maybe the neocons running defense policy in the Bush Administration should have thought of this before embarking on the current, nation-building occupation of Iraq. At least Myers is honest. He's the one who admitted last week that the insurgency in Iraq hasn't lessened at all in the past year.

 Posted by glenn at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)

One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back

The insurgency in Iraq is "about where it was a year ago," in terms of attacks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday, but he also asserted that American and Iraqi troops are "gaining ground" in the two-year-old conflict. Yeah, right (not). It was a quagmire two years ago and is worse now. $300 billion and counting (it was only $150 billion last September) and we're not out yet. "Shock and awe" has been transformed into long lines of flag-draped coffins, pictures suppressed by the military in order to avoid letting the American people know the real price of this occupation.

I am all for spreading democracy and freedom, and am overjoyed that America is finally -- after many decades of Machievallian foreign policy -- fighting against fascism and tyranny. But in Iraq we're engaged, pure and simple, in nation-building to protect the human rights of people who bascially either hate or are indifferent to us. Who cares? Let them rot in the desert. We knocked off Saddam Hussein -- a very good thing -- so let's get the hell out of there, leave Iraq to the Iraqis, and go after the real "Axis of Evil" in the world. How about Al Qaeda, you morons!!

 Posted by glenn at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

The Rules of War In Occupation?

The Department of Defense is prosecuting a Marine Lieutenant, Ilario Pantano, for murder arising out of the shooting death, at an Iraq checkpoint, of two suspected "insurgents." Allegedly, Pantano ordered other troops to remove the suspects' handcuffs and look away, and then shot the pair in the back, vandalized their vehicle and hung a sign over their corpses bearing a Marine slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy."

Pantano protests that it's impossible to differentiate between innocent civilians and potential terrorists in the environment of "post-war" Iraq. The problem, here, hoewver, is that both sides are at least partially right. As the 1968 Mi Lai scandal in Vietnam shows, a civilized society must have rules of behavior even in warfare. But the situation in Iraq is poised precariously between war and police-state security. More than 1,700 of our troops have been killed, the majority in car bombs and other "IED" attacks, after "major combat operations" ended in May 2003. How in hell are these young men supposed to know who the bad guys are? Isn't this just second-guessing combat decisions made in the fog of war? Genocide is one thing, but in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, this prosecution strikes me as one making a scapegoat of a solitary solider in order to offer a patina of legitimacy to the atrocious inhumanity of what's really going on over there.

America decided long ago that we could not be the "world's policemen." Now the miltary is doing just that in Iraq. The "rules of engagement" need to be changed, fundamentally, so the troops can defend themselves and do their jobs without being blown up by rag-heads whose idealogy is to kill Westerners, not matter why, just because they are not Muslims. As long as America remains an occupying power in Iraq -- which is what we are in reality -- this problem will not go away by itself. Even worse, Pantano gave up a lucrative career as a New York investment banker to enlist in the Marines to defend this country. He deserves better thanks than a trumped-up murder prosecution.

 Posted by glenn at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

Putin's Revenge

Our intrepid President is treking all over eastern Europe, former Soviet satellites, singing the song of democracy. That's wonderful, because the U.S. was nowhere in 1968, when Russian tanks rolled across Checkoslovakia, in 1980, when Lech Walesa was leading democratic revolutionaries in Warsaw, or in 1989, when students holding Statues of Liberty confronted Chinese government tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Of course, George W. has little bad to say about his "soul-mate" Valdimir Putin of Russia, even though the latter is doing everything he can to turn back the clock on democratic reform in that beleaguered nation. Even today's headlines on their joint press conference in Bratislava, Slovakia -- where Bush again referred to Putin as "my friend" -- reveal that Dubya has morphed the "criticize in private, praise in public" principle from corporate management, where it works well, to foreign relations, where it flatly contradicts his professed objectives. On the other hand, honest Russians (there's an oxymoron for you) admit that there's no American backing of Putin's autocratic putsch.

Nothing to Celebrate [MSNBC.com]. Perhaps true, but we don't do the image of the United States any favors by sharply criticizing Iran -- indeed, implying invasion plans -- while turning a blind eye to a leader who has basically abolished the legislature, continued a civil war and tried to disrupt free elections in another sovereign country. Yes, Moscow and Putin have suffered from terrorism, too. But that doesn't mean we should remain close allies.

 Posted by glenn at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)

The Great Flip-Flopper

In a Newsweek opinion essay titled Hail to the Flip-Flopper, Fareed Zakaria writes that George W. Bush should be commended for not "staying the course" in Iraq.

Well Zakaria's right, of course. But it would be very helpful -- and certainly honest -- for the President to admit that the original Iraq war plan was a failure and that he's been forced to change his tune to accomodate reality on the ground. That's a sure sign of leadership. Pretending nothing's changed, when everything has, is just flip-flopping. Bush does it as good as any other cynical politician; his vaunted religious pieties and cowboy determination are all just for show.

 Posted by glenn at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

This is Torture?

Like many Americans, I was shocked and revolted by last Spring's revelations that detainees at the US-run prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq were subjected to attacks by dogs, naked human pyramids and other degradations. But this takes things too far, the wrong way. The Washington Post, in a front-page article titled Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators, reported yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were "abused" because "women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively." That's not torture and it's not anything like the sort of brutality outlawed by the Geneva Convention (which the Administration refuses to apply to Iraq).

Now we all know that sexual values and mores in Muslim countries are more restrictive than in America and most Western democracies. But still, using sex to entice men to talk is the oldest game in the book of espionage. And any man, Muslim or not, who would complain that some women rubbed their bodies provocatively while wearing skimpy clothing is just out of his mind. (We can leave aside the 72 virgins that Muslim martyrs are supposed to receive in heaven -- what are they for if not sex?) I mean, this is something for which most men would LOVE to be on the receiving end. Reminds me more of the way in which the Army won the Iraq war in the first three weeks. They used bullhorns to announce loudly in contested areas that Iraqi men had small penises and could not satisfy their women. So the stupid Iraqi soildiers were so angry they stormed out of their foxholes and got machine-gunned to death instantly.

They can't have it both ways. Either Muslim men are defiantly proud of their sexual prowess, in which case provocative body rubbing by sexy girls should be no big deal, or they are sexually deficient, in which case the provocation here was as offensive as Ginger Lynn accosting a bunch of gay men. Whatever, but if this is torture, send me to Iraq!!

 Posted by glenn at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

Fair & Balanced?

Carl Frank at No Oil for Pacifists has, once again, used me as his whipping boy, this time suggesting that I am some sort of lefty pacifist who is opposed to the U.S. using military force against terrorists.

Frank says I wrote him that "I don't 'resent' Bush, I just think it's ironic that a war started to stop an imminent threat that turned out not to be imminent." NO! Carl has disingenuously ommitted the most important part of my emailed comment, without even including an elipses.... Here's what I actually wrote:

Anyone who could just edit out all the stuff after the first dash is obviously not interested in a balanced or fair discussion of the issue. And any conservative who doesn't face up to the fact that the present rationale for the Iraq war -- making Iraq safe for democracy and to save Iraqis from Saddam's oppression -- is an ultra-liberal, leftist justification (Wilsonian foreign policy at its worst) is either self-deluding or just hypocritical. Without WMDs, the only reason for this war is "human rights," Jimmy Carter's albatross. Running away from accountability while presenting a shifting, neo-Wilsonian idealization of a war that started as a way to disarm a dictator who was said to have nukes pointed at Jerusalem and dirty bombs ready for explosion in New York is worse flip-flopping even than the greatest flip-flopper of them all, John Kerry.

Lest one think this is just another liberal or elitist Democrat talking (I am neither by the way), here's what George F. Will -- certainly not a liberal, leftist or even a Democrat -- says:

Duh. Will characterized the Bush doctrine of democratic nation-building as "the stunningly anticonservative idea animating the administration's foreign policy." Bush won't say "human rights" because it would expose him as a foreign policy liberal. His inauguration address was straight from John Kennedy in 1961, i.e., "bear any burden, pay any price . . . to ensure the survival of liberty" around the world. And to make matters worse, the day after the inauguration, the Administration immediately backtracked, using anonymous "sources" to announce that the speech did not mean what it said, that America would not intervene militarily in other nations to free people from tyranny and oppression.

Bush wants it both ways and so does his lapdog Frank. But reality has a way of intruding on idealism, which is what we have here. There needs to be an asterisk after the inauguration speech's stirring rehtoric about defense of freedom and liberty, namely "unless your country has lots of oil (e.g., Saudi Arabia) or supports the U.S. in the war on terrorism (e.g., Russia, Pakistan)." The rest of the world has long thought that American foreign policy was hypocritical because for decades this country supported dictators and repressive regimes out of Kissingerian realpolitik concerns. That caused the Iranian revolution in 1978 which started the whole Shiite Muslim backlash against America and the West.

Now we're finally at least fighting one war on the side of the oppressed, but our government is still caught in the same hypocritical trap. Putin and Musharef are oppressive, anti-democratic depots -- no need even to mention the House of Saud -- yet we support them without even a word of criticism. Oppressed people in other nations will rightly look at this, once again, as cynical, in turn devaluaing American ideals and the strength of our foreign policy. As Jonathan Alter observed, calling the liberty justification "a suspiciously convenient, third-string rationale for war:"

Two more things. First, Frank implies that I am opposed to preemptive war and American unilateralism. Not true. As I blogged 18 months ago, well before the 2004 presidential race even really began, "Unilateralism is one thing -- something I most definitely can approve of -- but ginning up fake rationales is quite another." Second, Frank ends his ranting post with this admonition to me: "My recommendation, Glenn: courage" (which he links to a Wikipedia entry on Dan Rather, whom I have always detested). Well, that was also the name of Walter Cronkite's sailboat (his old one, before retirement). The same Cronkite, liberal and all, who by coming out against Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam war changed the course of history. And it's the heart of JFK's book Profiles in Courage, from another liberal Democrat. So yes, Carl, "courage" indeed. Like the president you admire so much, you too are a closet liberal.

Oh, and my 13-year old son says "Don't mess with my dad." He's bigger than you, Carl (in so many ways, including character), so watch out!

 Posted by glenn at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

Banana Republic

Last evening on ABC's World News Tonight, commentator George F. Will said that the unprecedented security surrounding the presidential inauguration made America "look like a banana republic worried about a restive tank regiment at the edge of town. It was unworthy of the occasion." (Too bad they don't post transcripts on the ABC Web site.) It is really scary not only what 9/11 has done to liberty in America, but also that Will and I (once again) agree.

 Posted by glenn at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

Police State Security

The media reports predicted that the security precautions for today's 55th presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. would be "unprecedented." Well, one had to be there -- as I was this morning and afternoon -- to appreciate what 9/11 and the like have done to America.

Whole sections of downtown were locked off, blocked by buses and guarded by SWAT teams with high-powered rifles. Iron barricades lined all of Pennsylvania Avenue, so spectators were crammed together into small cordoned-off areas, and police and military personnel formed a human barrier for 1 1/2 miles down the entire parade route. In the skies surveillance aircraft hovered constantly, riot police with billy clubs in hand were everywhere, snipers positioned on every rooftop and it seemed like every other person in the crowd had a Secret Service radio ear-piece. (The photo below -- click for the full-sized shot -- is the presidential motorcade passing by on its way back to the White House. Note the salutes from the sailors on the right and across the street at the Justice Department.) Unbelievable. And scary.

All of this contrasts sharply with Dubya's attempt at stirring rhetoric of freedom and liberty. I remarked months ago that 9/11 was making D.C. look like Beirut. Today it looked more like the "Green Zone" in Baghdad. The ideals of America and our Constitution are indeed a beacon of hope. But while most of the country and the world will see only the photo op of Bush walking, smiling and waving for 1/2 block in front of the White House, the reality is that this Administration is so spooked it is afraid of its own citizens. Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy are turning over in their graves. It's just hard to understand how a president can pretend to represent the people when he governs inside a fortress, walled off from those who wait hours in the cold just for a glance. We now have a president and a government of the FBI, by the Secret Service and for the military -- not the people.

So the question is, does Bush "put up" with this like Clinton, or does he really like the sterility of a capitol city and political culture in which the citizenry and its leaders are separated by guns, military squadrons and miles of barriers? I hope it is not the latter, but fear that's exactly what is going on here.

 Posted by glenn at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

Comet-Blasting

So our NASA engineers have design a comet probe -- dubbed Deep Impact -- that will smash into the Comet Tempel 1 millions of miles away near Jupiter at about 23,000 miles an hour on July 4, snapping images until the last minute. The probe is designed to give researchers their closest look yet at a comet's surface and help decipher the origins of the universe, as comets are remnants of the beginnings of solar systems after the Big Bang. Comet-Blasting Mission is 'Go' for Launch [MSNBC.com].

But if that's the case, why can't our Pentagon engineers make a suborbital rocket that can hit an inbound nuclear missile? "Star Wars" for comets, but not people. Food for thought.

 Posted by glenn at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)

Permanently Ludicrous

This is a wickedly bad idea but one that fits perfectly with the Bush Administration's over-the-top approach to the war on terrorism. Now the Bushies want $25 million to transform the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a "permanent" prison for detainees "whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." [Reuters.com].

Although the Supreme Court decided emphatically last Spring that detainees must be afforded some process to challenge their confinement (writing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President"), the Pentagon plans to build a 200-bed prison at Gitmo "to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence," defense officials told the Washington Post. Even Lee at Right Thinking From the Left Coast calls this plan "lunacy" and "absolutely, unequivocally, fucking outrageous."

See, Lee, conservatism and libertarianism are not the same thing. As this sad episode shows clearly, the former often have far more in common with authoritarians -- a/k/a facists -- than democrats with a small "d." So no wonder that George W. Bush likes Russian President Putin so much. Putin rules with the iron fist that conservatives want to use here in America but are afraid to say so out loud.

 Posted by glenn at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

Pablum Politics

I generally detest George Will, politically and for his obsession with baseball, but he can be surprising. A Lethal Idea Still Lives [MSNBC].

So here we are, in the final stretch of the campign, post-debates, and prominent Reagan-era conservatives have had it both with George Bush and with the pablum dished out in American politics today. Will says that more forces were and are needed in Iraq if the task can hope to be accomplished. "How do the administration's nation-builders think elections are going to be held in this maelstrom." Yet he correctly observes that:

According to WIll, Kerry "seems incapable of mounting what the nation needs -- a root-and-branch critique of the stunningly anticonservative idea animating the administration's policy." This is scary. Not just because there are so many people in our politically polarized country who like Stepford citizens are hypnotized by the caricatures of policy presented by the candidates, but also that Will and I agree -- a pox on both their houses.

Neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any integrity on the most fundamental issues facing the country, So we're stuck either with a second Bush term in which arrogant idealogs run amok with our foreign policy, making the United States more hated in the world than at any time since "The Ugly American," or a Kerry administration that has over-promised and lacks the courage to execute the dramatic policy reversals necessary to extricate America from the quagmire of Iraq and smash terrorism, rather than catalyze it. This is not a choice, it's a tragedy.

 Posted by glenn at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)

Russian Democrat or Autocrat?

Today the Christian Science Monitor's lead editorial, titled Back To The USSR, cautions that "Vladimir Putin's announced changes to better secure Russia in the wake of the Beslan hostage tragedy work more to secure his own power than his country." Well, nothing new here, except the sophistry that Putin is a democrat (small "d").

Fact is that this is an ex-KGB fellow who longs for the good old days of the Politburo, has had his political opponents kidnapped and executed, and otherwise sought to subvert direct presidential and legislative elections in Russia. So the sad irony is that Mikhael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin -- both graduates of the hard-line Soviet school -- were better democrats in the old USSR than the only democratically elected president in the new Russian Federation. As Yeltsin prophectically said in 1995, "We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it."

Putin came to power on a specific pledge to destroy the power of the "oligarch," the mafia gangs that control most Russian business. Yet four years later, behind the smooth facade of a president firmly in control, oligarchs, obstinate regional leaders and corrupt ministers still obstruct efforts at modernization and reform. Now Putin is reversing course on the democratic reforms, first unleashed when Yeltsin stood on that tank in front of the Kremlin in 1991, by which he took power in the first place. Much more like Lenin than Lennon. National Public Radio asks whether Putin is "using incidents of terrorism as a pretext to finish what his opponents say has long been his plan, to become a dictator even as he claims Russia is building a new democracy?" The answer is obvious.

 Posted by glenn at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

Guns Don't Kill Elections, People Do

Flip-flopping twice in seven days, democratic presidential candidate John Kerry this week proudly held up a deer-hunting rifle in Western Pennsylvania and than lit into President Bush for not extending the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons. Kerry Says al Qaeda Benefits from Bush's Gun Ban Stance [SFGate.com].

This is way over the top. It was box cutters, you fool!! Automatic rilfes have little if anything to do with terrorism and nothing at all to do wth al Qaeda's attacks on 9/11, in Madrid and the like. Vulnerability of domestic police forces to drug-gang violence, yes. But the jihadists use suicide bombers, IEDs and the like. It's the sure sign of a dying campaign when its leader -- who ignores the real political and international defects of Bush's terorism policies -- is reduced to making such a transparently idiotic and pandering charge. No wonder that Bush is trouncing Kerrry 56-29 in polls for "taking a clear stand on the issues."

 Posted by glenn at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

Accounting for Abuse

I've posted previously on the subject of the lack of accountability and responsibility in American politics in general and relative to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in particular. Today's New York Times editorial, No Accountability on Abu Ghraib, gets it precisely right. "After months of Senate hearings and eight Pentagon investigations, it is obvious that the administration does not intend to hold any high-ranking official accountable for the nightmare at Abu Ghraib."

Donald Rumsfeld today defended the military's actions, despite internal investigations laying the blame suarely on his shoulders, by asking "Does it rank up there with chopping off someone's head off on television? It doesn't." This is correct but just dumb, internationally devastating and a farce. And unfortunately par for the course from these Bushie bozos.

 Posted by glenn at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

Eye of the Beholder

With two downed airliners, a bombed train and an exploding school filled with hundreds of children, Russis has seen its share of terrorist attacks in the past week. Russia Bites Back After Siege [BBCNews.com]. Most of the discussion has been of internal divisions within Russia over treatment of Chechnya and its rebels, with Russian president Putin shouting yesterday at Western reporters.

But the more important question is whether the Chechen separatists are revolutionaries fighting oppression or just terrorists. Are they part of a worldwide jihadist movement against Western society and interests, or rather an illustration of more historically routine efforts to achieve self-determination? In the long run, it matters greatly, although one man's terrorist is another man's "freedom fighter." And one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

 Posted by glenn at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

Sleeping Prosecutors

Judge Gerald E. Rosen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan has reversed the conviction of two Arabs -- the first to be charged with terrorism-related offenses after 9/11 -- after the government conceded misconduct in its handling of the case. "The prosecution's understandable sense of mission and its zeal to obtain a conviction overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law," wrote Rosen in his opinion in United States v. Karim Koubriti, et al.

Lest one think this was just liberal judging, the Court emphasized that 9/11 represents a "monstrous apparition of fanatical terrorism that presents to our Nation -- indeed, to the whole civilized world -- the gravest threat of the first decade of the new Millennium." And it was the government itself, concluding that exculpatory documents had been withheld intentionally from the defense (a clear constitutional violation for more than 40 years), that confessed error and moved to dismiss the indictment.

Last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft heralded the Detroit convictions as a clear message that the United States would work diligently to disrupt and dismantle terrorist "sleeper cells" at home and abroad. “Every victory in the courtroom brings us closer to our ultimate goal of victory in the war on terrorism. The Department of Justice will continue its aggressive battle in the courts to ensure the safety and security of all Americans," Achcroft crowed in June 2003. Well, it seems as if it's the Justice Department's own lawyers who were the real sleepers in this case.

 Posted by glenn at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

The Buck Stops At the Top

The Bush Administration has long claimed that the embarassing and internationally harmful abuse of detainees in Iraq by the U.S. Army resulted from a few low-level and over-enthusiastic enlisted personnel. But Long Island's Newsday, hardly a bastion of liberalism, editorialized today about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, laying out the case for why the Bushies are just plain wrong.

Bush set the stage for abuse in February 2002 when he declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al Qaeda prisoners and the Taliban were unlawful combatants unqualified for prisoner of war status. "When the man at the top says the rules don't apply, abusive excesses are a predictable result," says Newsday. The conclusion is unremarkable. What is striking is that, once again, no one in the White House or the Pentagon will admit to mistakes or accept responsibility.

In other cultures, government officials would have resigned immediately, perhaps even comitted hari kari. But not in the Bush Administration. No nothing, hear nothing, see nothing for these leaders. Rumsfeld even denies that there were any abuses during interrogations. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution concludes that "Rumsfeld refuses to admit it, but the horrors of Abu Ghraib lead right back to his doorstep." The guy's funny, but he's got to go.

 Posted by glenn at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Mistakes Were Made

Yasser Arafat acknowledged Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority had made mistakes, but "the rare admission appeared to be aimed more at deflecting criticism about his corrupt government than making real changes." Arafat Admits Mistakes in Speech to Parliament [washingtonpost.com].

And there, I naively thought from reading the headline that something may have changed in the Middle East. Not. But at least now some Palestinians are as upset for Arafat's bureaucratic incompetence and intransigence as the Israelis have long been for his overt support of Hammas and other terrorist organizations.

 Posted by glenn at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

Old Wine in New Bottles

Today controversy erupted over the Homeland Security Department's new "virtual border" system that is supposed to use biometric technology to identify visitors to the United States and link disparate databases at INS and other agencies into a seamless whole. Calling the US-VISIT program "a striking failure," Rep. Jim Turner lambasted DHS for naming Accenture as the prime contractor for a project that could be worth as much as $10 billion in coming years. "It appears that in their rush to get something out there quickly, they've gone down a path that's basically a repeat of our old technology systems."

What this illustrates is a problem inherent in all technology-driven applications. If all that is done in re-architecting a system is to develop new interfaces for legacy databases, then the information-retreival problems of the old systems never go away. As Forrrester Research reports, "When discovered midproject, data defects and data structure anomalies in legacy databases lead to time and cost overruns." In technical terms, a "mismatch between instance information and schema information." Duh! It's not much unlike what happened to Microsoft when it tried to build Windows 95 on top of old DOS code. Not until Windows NT and later Windows XP, which started fresh, did things really get straightened out.

So the lesson for government, once again, is to learn from the private sector. Except this time, don't try to emulate them. Learn from their mistakes. Ten billion dollars is a lot to spend when you're just putting old wine into new bottles.

 Posted by glenn at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)

Terrorism Anxiety

Living in Washington, DC, I am confronted often with visible signs of the effects on America and our lifestyle of the terrorism threat and the security steps taken by the government in response. Many of the streets near the U.S. Capitol, where I lived for nearly a decade, are now closed. The route on which I used to commute to downtown is now barricaded with armed checkpoints. More roads were closed yesterday on 15th Street near the Treasury Building. It looks like Beirut. [View Map].

But Thursday was particularly difficult, even though I stayed in the 'burbs. The news of new terrorism raids, captures, plots and counter-reactions just kept coming. Two jihadists arrested in Albany in a sting trying to buy a shoulder-launched guided missile. Houses in several cities raided for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks on the U.S. Senate. A major al Qaeda leader, along with 12 other suspects, captured in London. And an anti-western cleric, number 12 on the list of Saudi Arabia's 26 most wanted, was arrested without any resistance as he sat in a cafe in the kingdom's mountainous Abha province, close to the Yemen border. Meanwhile, and likely as a result, oil prices rocketed to new highs as the financial markets wrestled with all this uncertainty.

This stuff has got to wear people down. Civilization has gone through worse periods, but I wonder whether the British citizens huddled in the Underground to escape Nazi bombs felt the same say. Today, the enemy is faceless, invisible and seemingly everywhere. Not knowing what or when to fear is difficult.

 Posted by glenn at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

Something Old, Something New

Yesterday the U.S. government raised the terrorist threat warning, disclosing chilling "new" intelligence that al Qaeda was planning to attack major financial instiutions in New York, Washington and Newark. As the New York Times reported, "Counterterrorism officials and experts said they had noticed a shift in the statements attributed to Al Qaeda's leaders, and their allies, in recent months." Today, it became clear (from Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge himself) that the intelligence on which the warning was based is at least four years old and pre-dated the 9/11 attacks. Terror Alert: How Four-Year-Old Information was Transformed into Clear and Present Danger [Independent.co.uk].

Ridge says he is not "playing politics" with terrorist threats. There's no reason not to believe that, especially given the economic disruptions that the extraordinary security precautions at the World Bank, the New York Stock Exchange and other major financial locations entails. But then why were the Sunday background briefings premised on "new" intelligence about al Qaeda activities "since" 9/11? Ridge may not be playing politics, but someone sure seems to be playing fast and loose with the facts.

 Posted by glenn at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

Homeland Security, DC-Style

"Why don't you go and take care of some real crime?" This was the quizzical response by a middle-aged woman who was arrested this week for eating in the Washington, DC metro. She was searched, handcuffed and locked up for chewing the last bite of her candy bar after passing through the fare gates -- and released several hours later after paying a $10 fine, pending a hearing.

Silly me. Here I thought that the security and police forces of the nation's capitol were all geared up to protect us from bio-chem and other terrorist attacks. But no crime is too small for ever-vigilant law enforcement, now protecting subway riders from the hateful scourge of smacking lips and jihadist saliva.

 Posted by glenn at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

The Great Farce

There's a superb op-ed piece by Richard Cohen in today's Washington Post. It addresses the sad fact that despite the biggest intelligence failures of our generation -- 9/11 and the total absence of the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the invasion of Iraq -- the Bush Administration has changed little except its rhetoric.

Cohen observes that Pres. Bush said recently he wants to move "quickly" to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations (even though he opposed it's creation), while he could have done all of this stuff already. So "it takes a New York kind of chutzpah for Bush to suddenly announce he will do what he has put off doing for lo these past three years. In that time the president steadfastly stood by his team of jolly incompetents," like George Tenet at CIA, who was kept on "even after he had assured Bush that it was a 'slam-dunk' that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction."

The best part is his conclusion. Cohen writes, from the Democratic National Convention in Boston:

Touche!

 Posted by glenn at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)

A Failure of Nerve

The 9/11 Commission declared that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda resulted from a "failure of imagination," in that no one in the intelligence community could imagine that terrorists would use aircraft as weapons. With today's news reports -- based on careful reading of the Commission's final report -- that senior officials of the CIA in 1998 scrapped a plan to kidnap Osama bin Laden as "too risky," that conclusion appears suspect, homogenized for domestic political consumption. What we had was a failure of nerve. The CIA's leadership was risk-averse, but the head of the agency's bin Laden unit thought it was "the perfect plan."

You don't get anywhere in this world without trying. It wasn't that these bozos couldn't think outside the box. Rather, they were saddled with decades of covert action failure, so were afraid to do anything. Paralysis by analysis. The cinema glorifies the intelligence community as bold risk-takers. Well they're not; just a bunch of scared old ladies frightened of failure.

 Posted by glenn at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

"We Have Some Planes"

It's the title of the first chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report, released today, as well as a quote from the terrorists who hijacked American Airlines flight 11 and, after struggling with some brave passengers, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania instead of the White House:

The Commission says it is not attempting to assess blame and is "looking backwards to look forward." I sure wish someone would try and assess blame. The reality that a bunch of two-bit, box-cutter armed idealogs could bring this country to its knees, without a real defense -- and without the scrambled jet fighter pilots even receiving the President's orders to shoot down hostile civilian aircraft used as weapons -- is absurd.

Yes, al Qaeda was ingenious, and as the Commission concluded there was a "failure of imagination," but the dots were there and had been connected by the analysts. The lack of responsibility, and revulsion, about this horrific failure of the country's vital national defense system is just shocking.

 Posted by glenn at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

Yes, We Have A Constitution

High Court Deals Blow to Bush's War on Terror [Reuters.com]. So today the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees can indeed challenge the constitutionality of their confinement, rejecting Bush Administration assertions that the Executive Branch is entitled unilaterally to lock up even suspected terrorists without legal recourse. Last December I compared one of these cases to the infamous 1944 Korematsu decision, in which the Court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans in California concentration camps, with their property confiscated without any reasonable cause, merely because of their race, due to the "exigencies" of World War II.

Thank goodness those days are, at long last, gone. Today, the Court concluded that "it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court" just because the President says he should be detained. "[A] state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens." Yes, we still have a constitution, and it works.

 Posted by glenn at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

What's In a Name?

The Supreme Court ruled today, by a 5-4 vote, that the Constitution does not prohibit state laws making it a crime for a person to refuse to identify himself to the police, even where there is no probable cause to believe that the individual has committed or is about to commit a crime. People Must Give Police Their Names, Court Rules [WiredNews.com]. The decision reasons that police are allowed to stop people whom they have "reasonable suspicion" to conclude may have acted criminally, without a warrant -- known as a "Terry stop" for the 1968 case permitting them -- so the arrest is no greater intrusion.

But in Terry, the Court concluded that a warrant was unnecessary because individuals subject to a stop based on reasonable suspicion are "not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest." And the majority today also concluded that identity alone is not incriminating. As Justice Stevens pointed out in dissent, however, "if we accept the predicate for the Court’s holding, the statute requires nothing more than a useless invasion of privacy."

All of this goes to show just how screwed-up criminal law in the U.S. has become in the wake of 9/11. This case was about a man standing on the side of the road talking to his daughter through the open window of her pick-up truck. All he wanted was to be left alone. Now the law says the police can drive up and cart you off for doing nothing wrong, with no crime involved, just because you refuse to give your name. This is wrong. As Justice Brandies said nearly 100 years ago, the Constitution protects "the right to be left alone." At least it did until this conservative Supreme Court got through trashing privacy in favor of law enforcement.

 Posted by glenn at 08:13 PM | Comments (1)

Playing in Peoria

Today the Cincinnati Post editorialized against Dick Cheney's claim -- contradicted by the 9/11 Commission -- that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda before the war.

If the Bush line won't play in Cincinnati, America's heartland, it won't play anywhere. The President's answer is "[t]he reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda." Gee, that explains everything.

 Posted by glenn at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

Why Bush Has Failed Even Conservatives

Readers of his blog will notice that in the 15 months since the Bush Administration took the "War on Terrorism" to Iraq, my views have changed, roughly in proportion to the failure of proof of any of the real, near-term justifications -- WMDs, chem-bio weapons, harboring Al Qaeda, etc. -- for launching a preemptive invasion in the first place. I am certainly not alone in this position. Andrew Sullivan, host of Deep Dish, has this to say:

Right on, Andrew; you are not alone. If America is going to act unilaterally, we've got to be sure that the target is a "clear and present" danger not only to our own security interests, but those of the world in general. All that the War in Iraq has done is to squander the good will engendered by 9/11, provide a breeding ground for terrorism and make a mockery of American resolve by the equivocating and back-sliding on unilateralism itself.

There may not be a next time, but if there is America needs to act right, act fast and not overplay its hand. The Bushies were so intent on taking out Saddam Hussein that they broke all of these elementary rules. The irony is that Bush will probably win against John Kerry, if only because Kerry himself projects the same equivocation that Bush now epitomizes. So if the choice is between two wafflers, why should anyone really care?

 Posted by glenn at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

Beheading Revulsion

Last weekend I found the video of Islamic terrorists decapitating American Nick Berg on the Internet, and watched it. Two Held Over Berg Beheading [ITV.com]. The video is revolting, but the rest of the world has seen it. Let's hope Islamic law, with rapid, brutal execution by stoning, is applied to these folks accused of the crime. And if not, that the US government finally begins to understand that guerrillas and insurgents fighting against an occupation army will always win in the long run.

 Posted by glenn at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

War Crimes?

From bad to worse to an unmitigated disaster goes the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Newsweek now reports that "[t]he White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush Administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue." The memo itself strongly recommended that President Bush exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from the Geneva Convention in order to avoid possible liability for dramatically more agressive interrogation techniques approved by the White House.

The memo -- and strong dissents by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief legal advisor, William Howard Taft IV -- are among hundreds of pages of internal Administration documents on the Geneva Convention and related issues that have been obtained by Newsweek and are reported for the first time in this week's issue. So while top White House officials publicly talked about trying Al Qaeda leaders for war crimes, the internal memos show that Administration lawyers were privately concerned that they could tried for war crimes themselves based on actions the Administration was taking, and might have to take in the future, to combat the terrorist threat.

Holy crap, this is dynamite! It blows a whole in Rumsfeld's argument that the Abu Ghraib atrocities were committed by a few individuals without sanction by the Pentagon or White House officials. And the really sad part is that the White House counsel concluded that even if the Geneva Convention was determined not to apply, America would still meet "its committment to treat the detainees humanely" consistent with "miniumum standards of treatment recognized by the nations of the world." Parading captives naked, hooded and with attack dogs nearby is hardly the stuff of "humane treatment," it seems to me.

We've got yet another new scandal, folks. If Clinton could be impeached for lying about a blow job, the same conclusion certainly would hold for Bush and an interrogation policy knowingly in violation of the Geneva Convention. Whether that will happen depends on politics, but it just might.

 Posted by glenn at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

Prisoner Abuse

For all its pissing and moaning over the Geneva Convention when it suited U.S. purposes, it turns out that the Bush Administration has been covering up atrocities like torture, electrocution and sexual abuse inflicted on Iraqi prisoners of war. Headlines like these and and photos like these are filling the Arab media. This is a very bad thing and a very bad time in the world today to be an American.

 Posted by glenn at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

Imminence Defined

Imminence is everything in American politics. President Bush dismissed the August 2001 PDB from his ranch in Crawford, Texas today because "[t]here was nothing there that said, you know, 'There's an imminent attack.'" [CNN.com]. Likewise, six weeks ago CIA director George Tenet defended his agency against charges that its intelligence on Iraqi WMDs was faulty by saying that the CIA never concluded the threat from Saddam Hussein was "imminent."

Of course, most people assume that imminent, as used in these quotes, means "immediate." But the dictionary says that the word has a secondary meaning, namely "full of danger; threatening; menacing; perilous." Both Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein surely meet that definition. So any way one cuts it, the sad fact is that politicians are playing word games with the security of America.

Nothing new there, unfortunately.

 Posted by glenn at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)

The Fact Sheet

It's interesting that after refusing for two years to release the PDB from August 2001 warning that Osama bin Laden was "determined to attack in the U.S.," the White House yesterday made the document public along with a "fact sheet" -- "a written rebuttal twice as long as the document itself." It's clear, as President Bush and Condi Rice insist, that the brieifing memo does not present a "specific threat" about flying aircraft into the World Trade Center. But it does provide a serious warning that Al Qaeda was already operating in the United States and in Summer 2001 was engaged in suspicious activities suggesting preparations for highjackings.

What I don't understand, frankly, is why the Administration so often takes radical, unsupportable positions from which it is forced to backslide so quickly. Just last Thursday Rice said the PDB was "historical" only. That's simply not true. Now the Republic members of the 9/11 Commission are forced to argue that the PDB was not a "smoking gun" for the Al Qaeda attacks. That's also correct, but it's a far cry different from the spin of just days ago.

This is the kind of disinformation that led to the infamous "credibility gap" which doomed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in 1968. How could we have come from "mission accomplished" to the quagmire of Falujah in just one year? If you talk straight to the American people they will understand and support their government. If you dissemble, they will make you pay the consequences. The Bushies need to decide if they will trust their own citizenry with the truth.

 Posted by glenn at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

The Real Political Risk

Well, Condi got rave reviews in the press, which reflects the fact that television is a medium in which how you look is more important than what you say. But the real political risk of the 9/11 Commission was unrecognized, and is far greater than the "rebut Dick Clarke" objective Rice appears to have achieved.

As Spencer Ackerman writes for the New Republic:

You can see this in arch-Republican Fred Fielding's observation to Rice that he did not see that the so-called "strutural" reforms the Bush Administration has accomplished to date -- principally the Department of Homeland Security -- are anywhere near enough. So even if the 9/11 Commission does not concude that Bush was asleep at the switch, he's got a lot of exposure here.

 Posted by glenn at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

Battle Stations

Another observation about Condoleezza Rice's performance today. All the media outlets quoted her scripted line that Al Qaeda was at war with America before 9/11, but "we were not at war with them." No one seems to have noticed that, in defending President Bush's refusal to hold what Dick Clarke called a "principals" meeting (Cabinet secretaries and department heads) on terrorism, Rice contradicted herself, saying "the president of the United States had us at battle stations" prior to 9/11.

(Check out the full transcript yourself and see.)

If we weren't at war, something everyone knows is true, how could the White House have been at "battle stations" in Summer 2001? You can't have it both ways, Condi. Either there was no "actionable intelligence" of "specific threats" -- thus justifing no increased security steps -- or the country was on high alert and sent to battle stations. But if the latter is true, it means the "threat spike" in May-July was serious and specific enough to act. Problem is, nothing was done. As one 9/11 Commission member pointed out today, the White House issued such a vague "alert" that the heads of FAA, Transportation and the FBI didn't even know about it before the World Trade Centers went down!!

 Posted by glenn at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.

That's the title of a provocative memo to President Bush from the CIA on August 6, 2001. National Security Advisor Condi Rice testified today that this "PDB" (President's Daily Briefing) "was not a "specific threat" to the United States, but rather an historical document only.

I don't believe that. If there was nothing embarassing about this document, the Bush Administration would not be opposed to declassifying it so the public can know what the president knew. Let's see. Numerous young, well-funded arabs taking flight training for commercial airliners; "sleeper" Al Qaeda cells operating in the United States; a "huge spike" in intelligence "chatter" in Summer 2001 indicating that something "extraordinary" was being planned by bin Laden; and the well-known "millennium plot," folied at the last minute, to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

This was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination and commitment. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich -- really strange bedfellows -- collectively warned in early 2001 that "a direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely." No one in the White House cared. Yes, Al Qaeda was innovative in its use of commercial aircraft as missiles. But we pay these folks in government to think big thoughts, and all they could imagine was star wars, nuclear proliferation and assaults on U.S. embassies -- all stuff based on past patterns.

Rice's rationale for not acting before 9/11 is that the president was "tired of swatting flies." But as former Sen. Bob Kerrey asked, what flies had he swatted before 9/11? "We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?" Clinton at least tried to kill bin Laden with cruise missiles. Bush had done nothing, not a single swat.

 Posted by glenn at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

Dissent and Regime Change

A top U.S. general in Iraq vowed on Wednesday to "destroy" a Shiite militia led by wanted radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that has launched a wave of attacks against coalition forces in southern cities. "We will attack to destroy the al-Mahdi Army," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters. "Those attacks will be deliberate, precise and they will be successful." [USAToday.com].

This could be a very serious escalation of the occupation resistance and a terrible long-term blunder. How is it possible to foster democracy in Iraq if the U.S. "destroys" dissenters, especially those who oppose the occupation itself? This is the kind of stuff that gives guerrillas the political advantage. And since insurgents don't need to defeat the occupiers in order to win, how America responds to al-Sadr may well dictate whether we get out of Iraq as scheduled on June 30 and whether the whole thing turns into the sort of quagmire that some have predicted.

Now Rush Limbaugh replies that

Calling an indigenous resistance to foreign occupation -- which is what al-Sadr, a leading Shia cleric, represents -- "terrorists of the world" is precisely the problem. We're lumping all Muslims together and fomenting the very sort of hatred that began so long ago with America's installation by coup d'etat, and long support for, the brutal dictatorship of the Shah of Iran. That blunder, termed by Business Week "regime change that backfired," launched the Iranian revolution of 1979, defeated Jimmy Carter and undermined American international prestige for a decade or more. We're still suffering the consequences.

George Will actually got it right.

So America is the new Napoleonic empire? That's not what I want our country to be, and certainly not how Jefferson, Wilson, Roosevelt (T.R. or Franklin) or even Ronald Reagan believed the U.S. should lead the world.

 Posted by glenn at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

Screw Pravda

Pravda.ru, the old Soviet mouthpiece, is running an online story titled Exposing Bush the Liar, the Mass Murderer, the War Criminal. There, Timothy Barncoft-Hinchey (a Brit) writes that in Iraq, George Bush "hijacked [his] country, democracy and the world on a murderous ecstasy of assassination and destruction, just because of corporate greed."

What a fertile imagination. While it is true that the Bush Administration has given many Iraqi reconstruction contracts to supportive companies like Haliburton, there's no evidence at all that America started the War in Iraq as a commercial enterprise. Indeed, note that the old Islamist complaint that the West really wants to nationalize arabic oil wealth has proven totally false! And as far as a "mass murderer," come on, whatever the level of civilian casualties, not even the Iraqis are saying that the U.S. has intentionally targeted large civilian populations or committed genocide.

The American political right labels Democrats all the time as soft on defense and not willing to "stand up for America." Well, on these scurrilous Pravda charges, all Americans should agree that we all hang together. The United States may sometimes do bad things internationally, but it does not and has not engaged in anything like the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein launched against his own people. Pravda's complaints sound like Adolph Hitler charging that America ran the concentration camps. Something only psychopaths could seriously believe.

 Posted by glenn at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Oddly Inept

The Bush Administration's handling of the bipartisan Commission investigating the 9/11 tragedy grows worse -- and more strangely self-destructive -- with each passing day. Following its earlier attempts to withhold documents from the panel and then to deny its members vital testimony, it has now been reported that President Bush's staff has been withholding thousands of pages of Clinton Administration papers as well.

Why the Bush team would care about protecting Bill Clinton's views on terrorism is mysterious. Unless, of course, the Bushies were indeed asleep at the switch during the first nine months of 2001. After all, Donald Rumsfeld was actually on Capitol Hill on Sept. 9, threatening a veto of a $600 million diversion from star wars to counter-terrorism.

This latest distressing episode followed the White House's pattern of resisting the Commission in private and then, once the dispute becomes public, as with National Security Advisor Condi Rice, reluctantly giving up. At a time when the American people desperately need reassurance that the government was functional (at the very least), Bush clenched his jaw, threw Rice to the lions and walked away without taking responsibility.

As Bill Press observed yesterday, this is "one of the biggest screw-ups in White House history."

It's bizzare almost beyond belief.

 Posted by glenn at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

Who's Ridiculous?

After failing miserably in last week's stand-off against al Qaeda's number 2 commander Ayman al-Zawahri, Pakistan called a tape recording released yesterday by the former Egytpian doctor (calling for overthrow of the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf) "absolutely ridiculous." [Reuters.com].

Hello? Musharraf ain't got crap except for nuclear bombs -- which he's afraid to use against India, let alone crafty and resourceful guerrillas hiding in mountain tunnels -- and these bin Laden folks have shown a masterful ability to play on public sentiments in the Muslim world. What's is ridiculous is that even now, a good 2 1/2 years after 9/11, neither the U.S. nor its purported allies can lay a feather on al Qaeda's leadership. President Bush promised the nation in September 2001 that he would "root out" the terrorists, but so far all we've got is a bunch of journeyman teenagers in Guantanamo and a 20th highjacker the federal government is afraid to put on trial because he wants to introduce testimony from the few real terrorists in U.S. custody. Someone needs to do a root canal on al Qaeda.

 Posted by glenn at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

Bush's Blind-Spot on Terror

Dick Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and anti-terrorism czar under both Presidents Clinton and Bush, says in a new book that "Dubya" was obsessed by Saddam Hussein and wanted to respond to 9/11 by going after the Iraqi dictator. Former Terrorism Official Criticizes White House on 9/11 [newyorktimes.com]. This has unleashed a furious counter-attack by the Bushies, led by Condi Rice's fawming op-ed in today's Washington Post, in which -- as a lead-in to some vicious personal attacks on Clarke during the network morning shows -- she pretends that the Bush Administration "quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network. The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.'"

This revisionist history from the White House is amazing. We now have two insiders who revealed (consistent with what we know) that Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz always pressed for action against Saddam, arguing -- contrary to the evidence -- that Iraq was a "state sponsor" of al Quaeda, and that the President from the start wanted to take up where his father had failed. How else to explain why a war started ostensibly to "disarm" Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, has found none.

Yes, toppling Saddam was a good thing, because he was a bad man. But it was not and is not a substitute for going after terrorists. Had the Bush Administration devoted as much attention and planning to the 2001 Tora Bora bombing campaign in Afganistan, we might have gotten Osama bin Laden and made a real contribution to the War on Terrorism. Whatever else the Iraq occupation represents, we now know it is NOT helping to reduce the risk of terrorism, and if anything works the other way.

 Posted by glenn at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

Osama bin Laden's Brains

News reports today indicate that Ayman al-Zawahri, second-in-command to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and often called bin Laden's "brains," has been surrounded by Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan, 2 1/2 years after the September 11 attacks made him one of the most wanted men in the world. CNN said that the al Qaeda official -- dubbed a "a high-value target" by the government of Pakistan -- was protected by about 200 well-trained and well-armed fighters.

Al-Zawahri was a signatory, along with bin Laden, to a 1998 declaration of jihad, or holy war, "against the Jews and Crusaders" that heralded the September 11 attacks.

Well, if that's true, then maybe the global war on terror has finally reached a "tipping point." If you cut off it's brain, an organization, like any animal, wil die. The world would manifestly be better off with all of these fanatics dead.

 Posted by glenn at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

We Found Osama

I really love this editorial cartoon by the great Pat Oliphant, courtesy of uComics. (Click for larger view...)

 Posted by glenn at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

War As a Political Product

In a major speech today, Sen. Ted Kennedy said the Iraq war was a ''political product'' marketed by the Bush administration to win elections. ''The war has made America more hated in the world,'' Kennedy said. ''And it has made our people more vulnerable to attacks both here and overseas.''

I don't think any reasonable person would argue with this. It is also the case, however, that Saddam was a tyrant and deserved to be deposed. But as I have commented previously, without a clear and present danger -- the immediate threat posed by WMDs and bio-terror weapons that Pres. Bush assured America and the world Saddam possessed and was ready to use -- then the only reason to go to war was to protect the human rights of Iraqis. I personally don't think the war can be justified on that basis alone and am convinced that the electorate would opposed the war if it were presented in that correct fashion.

 Posted by glenn at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

A Trial For Osama

Conservatives have had a great time the past month lambasting Howard Dean for suggesting that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be put on trial and that his guilt should not be presumed. Well, just so happens that President Bush himself said the same thing -- about the tyrant Saddam Hussein -- in a December 15 news conference:

So, where is the conservative anger when their own man makes the same "slip"? And why has the media not picked up on this, despite the Republican insistence that the media are a bunch of flaming, Democratic-leftie liberals?

 Posted by glenn at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

Making Good On Past Mistakes

The courts in America have a long history of making really stupid decisions, out of deference to current passions and to the Executive Branch, that only decades later are recognized to be unsupportable. In the 19th century the Supreme Court held that black slaves were property -- the 1857 Dred Scott decision. The Civil War and the 13th Amendment overturned Dred Scott. Later (in 1897 in Plessy v. Ferguson) it ruled that "separate but equal" was adequate for public education, upholding Jim Crow laws in the South, something that stained this country until the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. And in its most infamous moment, the Korematsu opinion, the Court held that Japanese-American citizens could be interned in California concentration camps, and their property taken away, without any reasonable cause or suspicion, merely because of their race, due to the "exigencies" of World War II.

Well the courts attoned for these sins a little yesterday. In New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that holding U.S. citizens indefinitely without charges, on grounds that they have aided terrorists and are therefore "enemy combatants," is beyond the President's power. Their faces may be brown and heads covered with kaffiyeh, but the message is clear. Unlike WWII, the courts in today's war on terror are not going to sit idly by while the mob mentality infecting America's political response to terrorism runs roughshod over our constitutional rights and civil liberties. I say, thank God for that Constitution and the federal courts.

 Posted by glenn at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

Now They're Targeting Muslims

Yesterday's Al Queda bombings in Saudi Arabia signal a "new tactic," according to CNN. Sure do. Osama bin Laden is now going after Muslims instead of Americans and other Westerners. It's about time. It also signals that these fanatics don't care who they kill or why anyone should die in their obsession with Islamic purity. I'm all for tolerance, but there's no way to tolerate this kind of inhumane obliviousness to the value of human life. Let them all blow each other up!

 Posted by glenn at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

The Long Hard Slog in Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld's October 22 memo -- promptly leaked and then defamed by conservatives -- signals a change in view that may be very significant. The memo pointedly calls the prognosis for the War in Iraq a "long, hard slog" and asks whether "we are winning or losing the global 'war on terror.'" As some have observed, it is very much like Robert McNamara's concern in 1967 that the US could not win in Vietnam. Yet McNamara said nothing at the time (the war lasted 8 more years and cost tens of thousands more lives) and only in 1995 admitted that his public certitude was a veneer, that architects of the war policy "were wrong, terribly wrong."

The Bush administration's glittering message of a few months ago "increasingly looks like a dark swamp." And they've got Donald Rumsfeld's clarity and brevity of expression -- coming from what was formerly the Iraq War's biggest champion -- to thank.

 Posted by glenn at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

Misplaced Felonies

The 20-year old college student who planted box cutters in several airlines -- and emailed the federal government to warn of TSA's lack of preparedness -- has been charged with a felony. The federal prosecutor says it was a ''very serious and foolish action.'' But what is serious is that TSA hasn't made an inch of real progress in securing American airspace since 9-11 and that the authorities had Nate Heatwole's email for six weeks and did nothing about it. As Neal Cavuto observes for FoxNews:

Seems that the old political game of blame-shifting continues. Nothing new in Washington, despite the high-profile Bush Administration "War on Terrorism." Nate, you are a scapegoat!

 Posted by glenn at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

Pillow Bombs

The "War on Terror" has already disrupted life for years, but now MSNBC reports that Al Qaeda is fashioning pillows and stuffed animals into explosives to use on airplanes. So now teenagers bringing pillows and toddlers clutching teddy bears are all going to have the stuffing beat out of them -- or at least their plush carry-ons -- literally by TSA when boarding airlines. This stuff is just out of control.

 Posted by glenn at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

Republicans Nix Homeland Security Funding

Hard to believe that the Republicans oppose increasing funding for domestic homeland security, when everyone knows that states, first responders (i.e., police, fire, medical and public health authorities) and federal agencies are all struggling mightily with massive new security responsibilities. Senate Rejects Bid to Boost Homeland Security Funding [washingtonpost.com] A recent Council of Foreign Relations task force report warned in graphic language that local responders remain "dangerously unprepared" for a catastrophic attack.

The CFR report concludes that funding for emergency responders ma