“The congressional watchdog remains fast asleep, and we intend to wake him up.” As Catkiller Frist and the GOP threaten to go nuclear on the filibuster tip, Senate Dems announce they’ll be holding oversight hearings into matters such as “defense contract abuses” over the coming year. Well, at the very least, this news from our side of the aisle sounds more promising than Harry Reid’s recent thumbs up for Scalia.
Tag: War in Iraq
Friendly Fire.
Speaking to the Associated Press yesterday, fair-weather maverick John McCain gives Donald Rumsfeld a vote of “no confidence.” As usual, this seems like the type of key reservation McCain should have expressed before last month’s election.
Their lyin’ eyes.
Ooh, Porter Goss must be furious. The CIA station chief in Baghdad “has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon.” According to the classifed cable obtained by the NYT, “the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.“
Elsewhere, Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) said upon his return from Iraq, “We really need cold, hard facts and honesty. The situation is tough over there…If with 100,000-plus troops over there, we can’t control that 10-mile road [between Baghdad and GWB Airport], it shows what’s happening politically. The people are not as friendly as they were a year ago towards Americans.” Hmm…you’d think a GOP Senator like Chafee, to say nothing of our nation’s intelligence agency, would know better than to aid the terrorists by airing the real facts about what’s going on over there. Can’t they smell the victory?
Those Pesky Facts.
By way of Looka and The Nation, 100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration. If you know any undecideds out there, this might be a good one to share.
The Deception-Based Community.
A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland finally figures out the crux of Dubya’s support: the misinformed. “75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission.” And that’s just the beginning, folks.
More Friendly Fire.
Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor and consigliere to Bush I, decries Dubya’s diplomacy in the Financial Times, calling Iraq a “failed venture” and questioning this administration’s penchant for unilateralism.
Fox News One Further.
So apparently the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a right-wing-flunky television conglomerate who previously refused to air a Nightline on fallen soldiers in Iraq, will show an anti-Kerry hatchet-job on its swing state affiliates in the next two weeks. Well, I must say, that’s quite an end-run around the equal time rule, if not a blatant misuse of the public airwaves. Perhaps the FCC can extricate themselves from their shock over Janet Jackson’s breast long enough to look into this.
Round 3: Kerry!
An hour after tonight’s town hall debate in St. Louis, the immediate spin seems to be that it was a draw, mainly because Dubya didn’t scowl and sputter to the extent he did last time around. (The “soft bigotry of low expectations” strikes again.) But it must be a Two Americas thing, ’cause that’s not the debate I saw…most of the time I was waiting for Rove and Cheney to run on stage, hold a light to Dubya’s eyes, and squirt some water in his mouth. As before, John Kerry radiated calm, determination, and a quick, roving intelligence. In a word, leadership. Dubya, on the other hand, was once again all hat and no cattle, trying to shirk, smirk, weasel, bluster, and lie his way through the proceedings. “Flip-flopper,” “global test,” tax-and-spend, etc…Dubya sought to evade every single question about his dismal record with a insult or a threat, even going so far as to throw around “Liberal” desperately, a word still verboten since his Daddy ran it through the mud in ’88.
Kerry’s been surging since last Thursday, and I expect it’ll continue after tonight. But I confess, I really can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could have watched tonight’s event and think Bush would be the better choice between these two men. With the possible exception of the canned Red Sox quip, there wasn’t a moment when Kerry didn’t seem presidential and didn’t hold the upper hand. And, as for Dubya…based on tonight, I wouldn’t trust this guy to run the local chapter of the Elks, much less the Oval Office. No mistakes made at all, Mr. President? Who wants a President so blatantly unreflective about life-and-death decisions? I mean, he could have at least tried to look one up on the Internets. Would forgetting about your timber company count as a mistake?
That being said, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that, when considering the inevitable Supreme Court appointments over the next four years, Dubya has at least promised not to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford. Phew! Say what you will about Dubya’s godawful judicial nominees, at least we know they’ll hold up the Thirteenth Amendment. (Civil rights and civil liberties, of course, are another matter…) Update: Ok, now I get it. It was a coded pro-life message to the right-wing fundies. (Via Blivet.) Update 2: Tim Noah talks more about Dred.
Found Wanting.
“The global test is the measurement of the president’s assertions against the real world, the world you and I can see. This is the test Bush has failed.” Will Saletan dispels the “global test” canard that the GOP has been latching on to since last Thursday.
Operation Iraqi Falsehood.
Yesterday, Paul Bremer — Dubya’s former chief man in Iraq — admitted in remarks intended for a private audience that many more troops were needed on the ground after Saddam’s fall to stave off looting and lawlessness. Today, a report by Charles Duelfer — the chief weapons inspector in Iraq (after the departed David Kay, who’s already quit the WMD party line) — concludes “that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” How many more “failures of judgment” in Iraq, to put it charitably, do we need to see from these jokers?