One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him. (link via Daily Kos)

Why is the press protecting George W. Bush?

. . . .

Why is the Democrat-loving, Republican-hating, pond scum-swilling, lower-than-the-rug-on-the-floor, biased, liberal [curl upper lip when pronouncing] press protecting George W. Bush?

You don’t believe it’s happening? Well, then, tell me about the furor over W’s speech last week to a joint meeting in Washington of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.

You didn’t hear about it?

That’s the proof.

If the press were not protecting Bush, you’d have read in your Chicago Tribune--or Washington Post or New York Times or Wall Street Journal or USA Today--that he delivered one of the most confusing, inarticulate public addresses since . . . well, some people would say since his press conference a week earlier.

As it was, those hopelessly biased reporters who cover Bush overlooked the mangled syntax, penetrated the rhetorical fog and extracted some usable lines from the dross and manufactured stories that had the president sounding, if not quite statesmanlike, then at least intelligible.

The New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller led with Bush’s response to a poll that showed the majority of Americans expect another terrorist attack in the U.S. before the November election. "Well, I understand why they think they’re going to get hit again," Bush was quoted as saying. "This is a hard country to defend."

The Washington Post focused on his remarks about Iran’s effort to acquire nukes. "The Iranians need to feel the pressure from the world that any nuclear weapons program will be uniformly condemned--it’s essential that they hear that message," the president was quoted.

Neither The Wall Street Journal nor the Tribune carried a story about the speech per se, although the Tribune carried an Associated Press story that wove one quote from the speech into a story on the unexpectedly high costs of the Iraqi excursion. "The Iraqi people are looking at Americans and saying, ‘Are we going to cut and run again?’" the quote ran. "And we're not going to cut and run if I'm in the Oval Office."

I can’t prove it, but I would bet that most of the editors and publishers went away from the speech wondering why Bush, who long ago proved that he is no extemporaneous speaker, hadn’t ordered up an address for the occasion from his stable of White House speechwriters. I heard more than one of those in attendance say the same thing: "He wasted an opportunity."

But you didn't read about any of that, because the reporters, trained to seek meaning and the meaningful in any utterance by the president, focused on what could be understood.

Bush has benefited from this journalistic professionalism throughout his presidency. . . .

. . . .

And so "nuculer" becomes "nuclear" in the newspaper. And "misfeance," unknown to any dictionary, becomes "malfeasance," because an experienced White House reporter has learned to translate Bushspeak.

Bush benefits from the reporters’ professionalism. And his cheering section jeers from the sidelines about journalistic "bias." (Thanks to Carolyn)

WASHINGTON, April 28 — American soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses in order to make them talk, according to officials and others familiar with the charges.

The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards inside the prison, but were not described in detail until some of the pictures were made public.

Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast Wednesday night by the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" and were verified by military officials.

Of the six people reported in March to be facing preliminary charges, three have been recommended for court martial trials, having completed the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, a senior Pentagon official said late Wednesday. The decision on convening courts martial is now up to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq.

The other grand jury hearings, called Article 32 proceedings under military law, have been delayed at the request of defense counsel.

The CBS News program reported that poorly trained American reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts, among other things, in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.

Charges against the soldiers included assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees, Pentagon officials have previously said.

Gary Myers, the lawyer for one of the enlisted men charged, said in an interview that the military had treated the six soldiers as scapegoats and had failed to address adequately the responsibilities of senior commanders and intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations.

Top officers at the prison, including a brigadier general, face administrative review, officials said. They are no longer stationed at the prison, Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.

Mr. Myers said the accused men, all from an Army Reserve military police unit, had been told to soften up the prisoners by more senior American interrogators, some of whom they believe were intelligence officials and outside contractors.

"This case involves a monumental failure of leadership, where lower-level enlisted people are being scapegoated," Mr. Myers said. "The real story is not in these six young enlisted people. The real story is the manner in which the intelligence community forced them into this position."

Mr. Myers represents Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick of the Army Reserve, who has been charged in the case and who was interviewed by "60 Minutes II." He complained of a lack of training and admitted that dogs had been used to intimidate prisoners.

In one photograph obtained by the program, naked Iraq prisoners are stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The program said that according to the United States Army, he had been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.

"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," states a transcript of the program's script, made available Wednesday night. "And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."

The CBS News program said the Army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another showing a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner. The program also reported that the Army's investigation of the case included a statement from an Iraqi detainee who charges that a translator hired to work at the prison raped a male juvenile prisoner.

At the Abu Ghraib prison, where the photographs were taken, American forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis since the American-led invasion of Iraq. The prison is infamous as a site where Saddam Hussein tortured prisoners while he was in power.

Billmon, Kos, and World O'Crap have more.

It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous.

The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")

Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president.

Mr. Bush's reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration's pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today's testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president's aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents.

The idea that the panel may wring from Mr. Bush some comment that may endanger national security is ridiculous. The commission, led by the respected former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has already heard, in public, from the leaders of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the secretary of defense and Mr. Bush's national security adviser. It seems highly unlikely that the president knows secrets more sensitive than they do. If he did, he would certainly be free to go off the record while discussing them.

The president's aides have also been arguing that making the event anything more than a "meeting" or informal discussion would establish a pattern that future chief executives would be forced to follow. That is true, in a way. If Mr. Bush or any of his successors have the tragic misfortune to be in command at a time when terrorists strike the country, killing thousands of innocent civilians, they should be expected to cooperate with the official investigations, and to do so in a way that puts their statements on the record and into history.

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post has more here (link via Atrios). The Road to Surfdom has a helpful summary of Bush's hostility to and non-cooperation with the 9/11 Commission (link via Political Animal).

UPDATE: Peanut at Sadly, No! shows an appalling lack of respect for Great Leader.

One year after the declared end of major combat in Iraq, Americans have new doubts about the war and doubts about what the Bush Administration has said about it.

Just 32 percent, the lowest number ever, say Iraq was a threat that required immediate military action a year ago.

Less than half, 47 percent, now say the U.S. did the right thing taking military action in Iraq, the lowest support recorded in CBS News/New York Times Polls since the war began.

There are growing concerns about the long-term impact of the war. 41 percent now think the war increased the threat of terrorism against the U.S. 71 percent say the Administration’s policies have worsened the U.S.’s image in the Arab world.

The continued intensity of the fighting in Iraq surprised many Americans, and Americans believe it also surprised the Bush Administration. 44 percent say the fighting there has been harder than they personally expected, but 67 percent say it has been harder than the Administration expected. Nearly half say the war in Iraq was a mistake -- a finding similar to the public’s assessment of the Vietnam War as measured by the Gallup Poll in 1968.

The public’s assessments of the Bush Administration’s decision-making before (and after) the war are also negative.

Seven in ten don’t believe the Administration claims that the decision to go to war was made in March 2003, and say the Bush Administration had decided to go to war earlier than that.

61 percent believe the Administration did not try hard enough to reach a diplomatic solution before going to war in Iraq -- a reversal of the public’s belief last year during the war.

For now, only 31 percent believe the Administration has a clear plan to turn over power in Iraq; 32 percent say it has a clear plan to rebuild the country.

 

The struggles in Iraq appear to have hurt assessments of the President. His overall approval rating (46 percent), his rating on handling Iraq (41 percent), and his rating on handling foreign policy (40 percent) are at the lowest points ever in this Administration. In each case, more disapprove than approve. 53 percent of voters are uneasy about Bush’s handling of international crisis, figures unmatched since before 9/11. But these declines come as Americans see economic improvement -- 55 percent now say the economy is in good shape.

Bush’s Democratic opponent, John Kerry, also has weaknesses. The President is far more likely than Kerry to be viewed as saying what he really believes. Bush holds an edge over Kerry on moral values, vision, and likeability. But voters view each candidate more negatively than positively, and when asked whom they’d support if the November election were held today (though it is still six months in the future) they divide almost evenly: Kerry 46 percent, Bush 44 percent. Should Ralph Nader join the race, it becomes Bush 43 percent, Kerry 41 percent, and Nader 5 percent.

EVALUATING THE WAR IN IRAQ: NOW VS. A YEAR AGO
As U.S. troops continue to face resistance in Iraq, fewer than half of Americans now say that military action there was the right thing to do. One year after the President declared an end to major combat, Americans cite the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship as an important success -- but they also remain doubtful that the Administration has a clear plan for bringing stability to Iraq now, and are less likely to see a connection between the U.S.' action in Iraq and success in the broader war on terror.

For the first time, fewer than half of Americans -- 47 percent -- now say that taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do. When the war began last spring, two-thirds believed it was the right thing to do, and 58 pecent still thought so as recently as last month.

Dubya despises the French.
He can't stand that Old Europe stench.
But if Karen says, "Oui"
To each Dubya plea,
He’ll forget she's a Gallic wench.

It has become impossible to have a discussion about policy in this country. Most of those arguing from the right of the political spectrum have killed all possibility of rational debate.

They have done this by making arguments based on falsehoods, fabrications, wholly incorrect "facts," and tortured conflations. When Bush advisor Karen Hughes equates women’s rights with Al Qaeda, there is no possibility for rational discussion because the premise of her initial assertion is irrational.

When Bush simply fabricates out of whole cloth evidence to support administration policies ("There are 60 stem cell lines for scientists to work with."), rational discussion is no longer possible because any ensuing debate must first refute the falsehood upon which the initial argument is based.

When administration officials and supporters can say — and truly, deeply, honestly believe — things like, "The ever-increasing numbers of U.S. casualties in Iraq proves that we’re winning," there is no hope of engaging in constructive conversation because their entire worldview is predicated on delusion and fantasy.

When the administration censors, twists, and distorts scientific research and findings, any possibility of informed debate is thrown out the window.

Rational political discourse has died in this country, killed by a combination of ideology and fantasy. People can disagree over the interpretation and implications of facts. But when one side of the discussion bases their argument on falsehoods, misconceptions, and distortions — and makes up new "facts" when the foregoing have been proven false — rational debate is not possible. (link via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

Indeed. Reading the "news" over the past couple of years, I feel like Alice in Wonderland talking to the Red Queen. You've got such weirdness as:

• right-wing columnists and Karen Hughes attacking Kerry's Rambo-like war record, although they have no problem with Dubya’s chickenhawkery (Bush’s campaign chairman Marc Racicot even claimed that Bush’s military service "compare[s] very favorably" to Kerry’s-- WHUUUH?);
• Orwellian-named Bush administration projects like the "Healthy Forests Initiative" (a plan to cut down more trees);
• a man who doesn’t read, perhaps the dumbest President ever, passing himself off as "the education President";
• Bush telling us how fiscally responsible he is, at the same time he's running half-trillion dollar a year deficits and trying to make those bigger by urging us to "make the tax cuts permanent" (and, for a time, urged going to Mars, which would have cost a trillion dollars or so);
• Cheney attacking Kerry because he voted for cuts in defense spending that Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, urged;
• Bush crowing about all the jobs his tax cuts will create, ignoring the fact that his prior predictions have never come close to panning out and that he's lost over 2 million jobs, which will make him the first President since Hoover to lose jobs in a term of office;
• a President who apparently intends to create peace through perpetual war (actual quote: "when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace");
• a President who campaigns on "personal responsibility," yet takes responsibility for nothing, and is held responsible for nothing (despite being, as Peanut at Sadly, No! puts it, a "shit Midas");
• a President who talks about promoting "democracy" around the world while he tries to create a one-party dictatorship at home;
• ditto for "a uniter, not a divider";
• a President who during the 2000 campaign urged a "humble" foreign policy "so other nations will respect us" and opposed "nation-building" and overstretching our military -- then did the exact opposite once he took office;
• a man who campaigned on the promise to "restore honor and dignity to the Presidency," yet he and the other members of his administration are pathological liars -- and the media doesn't notice;
• a President who took us to war with Iraq on the stated basis that it was awash in weapons of mass destruction, and the strongly implied basis that Saddam Hussein was (a) allied with al Qaeda and (b) behind 9/11; when all of that turned out to be false, much of the American people continued to support the war and the President who had gotten us into it, even though the reasons for waging it had evaporated;
• a media that simply acted as cheerleaders in the long run-up to war, ignoring and marginalizing those who opposed war; 
• an American people whose support for Bush seems to go up the more disastrously wrong his policy in Iraq is shown to be;
• an American public who largely reckoned Bush, as of September 10, 2001, to be a doofus, then deified him after September 11 -- a horrific disaster caused by the utter incompetence of Bush and his administration.

Everything is utterly bizarre, and the media whores resolutely pretend that the President is fully clothed instead of buck naked. It's very, very disturbing. It just makes me want to scream, cry, and wake up from this horrible nightmare. (revised)

People in black trench coats might soon be chasing blogs.

Blogs, short for Web logs, are personal online journals. Individuals post them on Web sites to report or comment on news especially, but also on their personal lives or most any subject.

Some blogs are whimsical and deal with "soft" subjects. Others, though, are cutting edge in delivering information and opinion.

As a result, some analysts say U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials might be starting to track blogs for important bits of information. This interest is a sign of how far Web media such as blogs have come in reshaping the data-collection habits of intelligence professionals and others, even with the knowledge that the accuracy of what's reported in some blogs is questionable.

Still, a panel of folks who work in the U.S. intelligence field - some of them spies or former spies - discussed this month at a conference in Washington the idea of tracking blogs.

"News and intelligence is about listening with a critical ear, and blogs are just another conversation to listen to and evaluate. They also are closer to (some situations) and may serve as early alerts," said Jock Gill, a former adviser on Internet media to President Clinton, in a later phone interview, after he spoke on the panel.

Some panel and conference participants, because of their profession, could not be identified. But another who could is Robert Steele, another blog booster. The former U.S. intelligence officer said "absolutely" that blogs are valid sources of intelligence and news, though he said authenticating the information in blogs "leaves a lot to be desired."

. . . .

The CIA and FBI haven't publicly commented about use of blogs in their work, but many D.C. observers believe both agencies monitor certain blogs.

At least one nation, China, is actively tracking blogs. It's also reportedly trying to block blogs. Several press reports earlier this year said the government shut two blogging services and banned access to all Web logs by Chinese citizens.

Many journalists write blogs and use other blogs to help find sources or verify facts and rumors. Blogs hail from just about any spot on the globe. They can provide first-hand insights into local events and thinking, even in parts of the world where there's little official information.

One example is the "Baghdad Blogger."

In March 2003, as U.S. forces stormed Iraq, one of the few sources on the Iraqi viewpoint was a blog written by a person who turned out to be 29-year-old Iraqi architect Salam Pax, though it's not certain that is his real name.

Some reporters followed his blog daily, which gave gritty insights into how the war was shaking the lives of Iraqis.

The U.S. military never publicly acknowledged Pax, but people at the conference say they believe U.S. military officers read the blog.

Some news organizations valued the blog. Britain's Guardian newspaper was so impressed that it hired Pax in May 2003 to write a biweekly column on life in Baghdad. He's still writing it.

Blogs last year also provided information during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. In China, where the SARS outbreak began, the government at first said little. But health officials and reporters were able to get a sense of what was happening through blogs, as well as from e-mail and cell phone text messages sent to people outside China. This might have spurred China's blog crackdown.

Gill says blogs are a good way to uncover news that regular media aren't covering or can't cover. "Blogs may be the best and only channel for such news stories," Gill said.

. . . .

While blog postings are voluntary and available to anyone to read, some observers say blog monitoring by governments or the media raises civil liberties and privacy issues. One such critic is James Love, director of the Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology.

"When you're conducting surveillance where you have no expectation of illegal activity, there has to be some threshold to justify such surveillance," Love said.

While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April -- doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.

Head and eyes
More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.

For months the gravest wounds have been caused by roadside bombs -- improvised explosives that negate the protection of Kevlar helmets by blowing shrapnel and dirt upward into the face. In addition, firefights with guerrillas have surged recently, causing a sharp rise in gunshot wounds to the only vital area not protected by body armor.

The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months," Poffenbarger said. "So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war."

Numbers tell part of the story. So far in April, more than 900 soldiers and Marines have been wounded in Iraq, more than twice the number wounded in October, the previous high. With the tally still climbing, this month's injuries account for about a quarter of the 3,864 U.S. servicemen and women listed as wounded in action since the March 2003 invasion.

About half the wounded troops have suffered injuries light enough that they were able to return to duty after treatment, according to the Pentagon.

The others arrive on stretchers at the hospitals operated by the 31st CSH. "These injuries," said Lt. Col. Stephen M. Smith, executive officer of the Baghdad facility, "are horrific."

By design, the Baghdad hospital sees the worst. Unlike its sister hospital on a sprawling air base located in Balad, north of the capital, the staff of 300 in Baghdad includes the only ophthalmology and neurology surgical teams in Iraq, so if a victim has damage to the head, the medevac sets out for the facility here, located in the heavily fortified coalition headquarters known as the Green Zone.

Once there, doctors scramble. A patient might remain in the combat hospital for only six hours. The goal is lightning-swift, expert treatment, followed as quickly as possible by transfer to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

While waiting for what one senior officer wearily calls "the flippin' helicopters," the Baghdad medical staff studies photos of wounds they used to see once or twice in a military campaign but now treat every day. And they struggle with the implications of a system that can move a wounded soldier from a booby-trapped roadside to an operating room in less than an hour.

"We're saving more people than should be saved, probably," Lt. Col. Robert Carroll said. "We're saving severely injured people. Legs. Eyes. Part of the brain."

Carroll, an eye surgeon from Waynesville, Mo., sat at his desk during a rare slow night last Wednesday and called up a digital photo on his laptop computer. The image was of a brain opened for surgery earlier that day, the skull neatly lifted away, most of the organ healthy and pink. But a thumb-sized section behind the ear was gray.

"See all that dark stuff? That's dead brain," he said. "That ain't gonna regenerate. And that's not uncommon. That's really not uncommon. We do craniotomies on average, lately, of one a day."

"We can save you," the surgeon said. "You might not be what you were."

Accurate statistics are not yet available on recovery from this new round of battlefield brain injuries, an obstacle that frustrates combat surgeons. But judging by medical literature and surgeons' experience with their own patients "three or four months from now 50 to 60 percent will be functional and doing things," said Maj. Richard Gullick.

"Functional," he said, means "up and around, but with pretty significant disabilities," including paralysis.

'Broken soldiers'
The remaining 40 percent to 50 percent of patients include those whom the surgeons send to Europe, and on to the United States, with no prospect of regaining consciousness. The practice, subject to review after gathering feedback from families, assumes that loved ones will find value in holding the soldier's hand before confronting the decision to remove life support.

The New York Times reported the other day on the appalling situation facing thousands of reservists, whose extended tours in Iraq are impoverishing their families. These men and women left jobs and businesses behind to answer their country's call. But as the expected six-month or twelve-month deployments have turned into 20-month or two-year stints in Iraq, the economic toll is mounting. Employers can't hold positions open that long, and for small businesspeople, it's a wipeout.

The Times profiled Jay Johnson, a member of the Tennessee National Guard, who has a small mobile catering business. He's been away in Iraq now for 18 months. The business he spent seven years building is down to one lunch truck from three. His wife and two kids are scraping by on half as much money. "If he doesn't come back soon," Mrs. Johnson said, "we're going to lose it all, and he'll have to start all over again."

So George Bush is choosing to send families of modest means who supply most of the Reserve toward bankruptcy as their reward for serving the nation. Hold that presidential choice in your mind.

Now consider new reports by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Tax Policy Center that tally who really got what from the Bush tax cuts. The contrast is shocking and shameful.

While Jay Johnson's business is evaporating because he's in Iraq, Americans who earn more than $1 million a year are getting tax cuts that average $123,600 this year. People in the middle of the income spectrum will get tax cuts of $647.

That's quite a Republican rallying cry: "$100,000 for the millionaires - six hundred bucks for the reservists!"

. . . .

The cynical icing on the cake comes when affluent Bush supporters take a sliver of their $100,000-plus annual tax cut and return it to the president's campaign as a gratuity, via the higher contribution limits of $4,000 per couple (up from $2,000) that the president signed into law.

Ka-ching!

That's the sound of the pocket change from the tax cut as it gets recycled into the president's campaign. Meanwhile, Mrs. Johnson hears the ka-ching on the checkout line and wonders if she'll have enough cash left this month to pay the bills - and when Jay is coming home. (links added)

BOISE, Idaho, April 23 — Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad.

As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist.

"Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued against the expert guidance part of the antiterrorism law this year, in a case where it was struck down by a federal judge.

Mr. Hussayen, 34, a father of three who was pursuing a doctorate in computer sciences at the University of Idaho, is charged with three counts of conspiracy to support terrorism and 11 counts of visa and immigration fraud. His trial opened on April 14 and is expected to last until June.

. . . .

Mr. Hussayen's lead lawyer, David Nevin, is best known for his defense in 1993 of Kevin Harris, who was involved in a standoff with government agents at a cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, along with Randall C. Weaver. That case, in which Mr. Weaver's wife and teenage son were shot and killed by government agents, is a cause célebre among mainly right-leaning civil libertarians.

Some of Mr. Hussayen's supporters say they see a similar kind of government abuse in his trial.

"It's an illustration of how much power the government can bring against somebody," said John Dickinson, a retired professor of computer sciences who was Mr. Hussayen's doctoral adviser at the University of Idaho. "It should scare anybody."

Mr. Dickinson said he was interviewed by the F.B.I. for several hours after Mr. Hussayen's arrest in February 2003. "They kept saying his Ph.D. program was a front and that the person I knew was only the tip of this monstrous iceberg," he said. "But I've yet to hear one thing the government has said since then that has made me question his innocence."

Justice Department officials and prosecutors refused to comment on the broader implications of the case, citing the trial. But in court documents, the government makes a case that Mr. Hussayen funneled money to Islamic charities with terrorist ties and that he posted calls for jihad by different Saudi sheiks.

In the indictment, the government charged that Mr. Hussayen provided "computer advice and assistance, communications facilities, and financial instruments and services that assisted in the creation and maintenance of Internet Web sites and other Internet medium intended to recruit and raise funds for violent jihad, particularly in Palestine and Chechnya."

And they have argued that Mr. Hussayen's technical assistance, even if he did not share the beliefs of the groups he helped, were like providing a gun to an armed robber.

Most of the facts are not in dispute. Mr. Hussayen's lawyers said that he gave money to legitimate Islamic charities and that his Web site work was protected by the First Amendment. The Web sites he maintained also posted views opposing jihad, they said.

. . . .

One of the charities that Mr. Hussayen supported, Islamic Assembly of North America, still operates out of Ann Arbor, Mich. On its Web site, the group says its mission is to promote the spread of Islam, and the group solicits money from the public. Mr. Nevin said the charity has never been classified as terrorist by the government.

But the government said the Michigan charity was one of the Web sites that "accommodated materials that advocated violence against the United States."

President Bush has promised to listen to military commanders and give the troops whatever they need to defend themselves in Iraq. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week that the "the President looks to the commanders in the theater to make the determinations of what is needed for our troops" (1). Yet the President continues to withhold funding that military officials say is desperately needed to plug shortfalls in armor and protection equipment (2). And, according to a new study, those shortfalls have meant 25% more American casualties in Iraq (3).

According to Newsweek, an unofficial study circulating through the army shows that of the 190 soldiers killed by landmines, improvised explosive devices, or rocket-propelled grenade attacks, "almost all those were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them." Additionally, "thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs."

Instead of following through on his promise to give the military the protection equipment it needs, however, President Bush has left major funding holes in the most basic areas. The situation has gotten so dire that military commanders last week desperately begged Congress to fill key shortfalls left by the President's budget. They described a $132 million shortfall for bolt-on vehicle armor, an $879 million in shortfall for combat helmets, and a $40 million shortfall for body armor. Meanwhile, according to the Chicago Tribune, the White House has "dramatically reduced the number of Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Iraq" -- even as the fighting intensified, leaving troops to "ride in lightly protected Humvees, trucks and troop carriers" that are much more vulnerable to attack (4).

SOURCE:

1. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 04/21/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=30734.

2. "War May Require More Money Soon", Washington Post, 04/21/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=30735.

3. "The Human Cost", Newsweek, May 3, 2003, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=30736.

4. "Insurgents' escalation taxing U.S. capabilities", Chicago Tribune, 04/24/2004, http://tinyurl.com/3cew8.

As I’ve said before, reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of the invasion. But if Woodward is correct, I think everyone should be very disturbed at the defects in the decision-making process that Bush used in deciding whether to invade. Bush’s process was not intended to generate discussion, gather information, or encourage dissent. He simply asked a handful of people (who were inclined to agree with him) about whether to invade, and then he simply told everyone else about his decision. That was his decision-making process.

. . . .

. . . . Regardless of what people think about the wisdom of invading, I think we can all agree that the process Bush employed to reach that decision is very troubling. It was the opposite of "information-producing." According to Woodward, Bush never even asked several important people in his cabinet (such as his Secretary of State – the only one with any combat experience in the whole cabinet) about whether he should go to war. According to the Post, the only war cabinet member whom Bush asked was Rice. He explained that he knew what everyone else thought so there was no need to ask them. NO NO NO NO!!

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it. Not by a long shot. I understand that intelligence and war plans had been trickling in for a year. But when the time came, Bush should have called everyone (not Cheney and Rice – everyone) together and said, "Ok, everyone has seen the evidence. Let’s think about the best arguments for and against invasion, in light of everything we've seen." In this hypothetical universe, Powell could have challenged Cheney’s paranoid delusions (err. .. I mean, intelligence reports), and the hawks could have challenged Powell’s reliance on diplomacy (which had its own shortcomings). Everything would have been laid out on the table and scrutinized. But that’s not how Bush did it. When the time came to make the final decision, he relied on private, Iago-like conversations with Cheney. To make a long story short, Bush made the ultimate decision to invade by relying on a handful of like-minded hawks in his cabinet. In doing so, he deprived himself of contrary views and dissenting opinions. And now we’re paying for it.

Even if a better process would not have changed the ultimate decision, I think many things would have been done differently had Bush been better informed. He apparently did not understand the full consequences of "owning" Iraq – a state with a long history of ethnic hatred and almost no democracy-supporting institutions. I imagine things would have been different if Bush had been told, "Look, there’s a decent chance that the Iraqis will resist and that we’ll have to be there for a long time with a lot of troops. You don’t want Americans doing that alone. We’ve got to build a real coalition." Or, "Mr. President, we must deal with the possibility that there are no weapons. Is America really ready to make the sort of sacrifice necessary for democracy-building?"

To me, it seems that all of our problems in Iraq have been failures of information. We were wrong about WMDs; wrong about al Qaeda; wrong about our post-war occupation planning; wrong about the effect of disbanding the army; woefully ignorant of Sistani and the Shiites; and on and on. These are ALL – everyone one of them – problems that could have been foreseen and planned for if Bush had employed a process that was more about producing information and less about affirming his divinely-inspired support for the war. For God’s sake, when you go to war, don’t rely only on those who are pushing for war. That’s the whole point of the adversarial process – interested parties don’t always share all the relevant facts (isn’t that right, Mr. Vice-President?). You need other interested parties there to challenge these views. Bush ignored the dissenting views by failing to make his decision through a process that would help him arrive at an informed decision.

And now our troops are paying the price. (link via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

One would like to think that the President of the United States put more thought into whether, and how, to launch a preemptive war than one would put into, say, what to have for dinner. But I guess if Bush did that he wouldn't be the "firm, decisive leader" some Americans so admire.

[T]he war in Iraq is unique. Rarely if ever have a foreign policy and a president's fate been so clearly linked. Former commanders in chief may have faced reverses in prosecuting the cold war — John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, for example, or Ronald Reagan at Reykjavik. And Vietnam, of course, ended the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

But these presidents did not choose or create these conflicts. In contrast, America wouldn't be in Iraq today had President Bush not chosen to put us there.

If Americans decide that Iraq is a disaster, why do they not see him as the cause of the problem? Why has support for the president bounced back (up four points in one poll) even as approval of his handling of Iraq has fallen (down three points in the same poll)?

The pattern may not hold, and voters tend to react differently to the outbreak of a crisis than to sustained bad news. Still, there is a theory that might explain these apparently contradictory poll results. In wars abroad, Americans don't want their presidents to fail.

In part that's because a failure for the president is a failure for the nation. Indeed, the logic may apply with more force in cases like Iraq, in which the president has cast the nation on what is essentially a war of choice. To admit that the president blew it is to say the same of the public that followed him into the conflict. And like its leaders, the public not only doesn't like admitting it was wrong, but it will go to great lengths to avoid doing so.

The danger for President Bush is clear: the public's patience is not unlimited, and eventual failure in Iraq will almost certainly sink his candidacy. (Sometimes the conventional wisdom is actually right.)

For John Kerry, the risks are less obvious but no less real: running a campaign that focuses the voters' gaze solely on the president's manifest failures will probably run into resistance, especially with the voters he most needs to win over, those from the ambivalent middle. Mr. Kerry is far more likely to win if he has a plan to show how he — and thus the American people — can succeed rather than simply showing how President Bush — and thus they — have failed. (link via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

The puppy was no bigger than a dollar bill, a handful of fur and floppy ears half-hidden in the grass along the road to Kirkuk, Iraq. Even in the midst of war, the American soldiers who looked into her sad hound eyes couldn't bear to leave her behind.

So began the story of Bashur, the red and white Iraqi mutt who charmed her way into the heart of an Army major a year ago and, after surviving an extermination campaign and two auto accidents, found a new life last month with the officer's father in Sleepy Hollow.

She is one of dozens of Iraqi dogs brought to the United States by smitten troops, continuing a long tradition of soldiers adopting their wartime mascots. But the journey from battlefield to bungalow can be treacherous, and not every animal gets a happy ending.

The lucky ones, like Bashur, end up with cushy lives that would be utterly alien to the feral, frequently abused dogs wandering Iraq by the thousands. The soldiers who befriend them say it's a just reward for the humanity a pet inspires amid the inhumanity of war.

"It was hugely important," said Maj. Mike Fenzel, 36, the Elk Grove Village-born paratrooper who became Bashur's guardian. "To have the first face you see as you take your gear off, this beautiful dog whose tail is wagging, I never understood the power of that kind of companionship."

Fenzel's unit, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, dropped into northern Iraq at the start of the war last year and pushed into the strategic oil city of Kirkuk. When part of the brigade paused in a green and hilly village along the way, an intelligence officer noticed something in the grass just off the road.

It was a tiny dog, apparently just a few days old. Fearing the dog would die if left behind, the officer bundled her into a Humvee and took her to Kirkuk. There, after getting some shots from an Army veterinarian--whose primary job was to monitor food safety--the puppy was turned loose on an airfield occupied by the brigade.

As many as 300 wild dogs prowled the base, a common sight in Iraq, where dogs aren't normally viewed as pets. But the puppy, named Bashur after the village where the paratroopers landed, seemed to long for domesticity.

Strong and quick, with the thick body of a St. Bernard and the narrow head of a hound, she planted herself by the field kitchen each morning, coaxing soldiers into handing over their breakfast scraps. Despite being shoved away by troops who regarded her as just another potentially diseased cur, she wouldn't be chased away.

"She just kept coming back into the building," Fenzel said. "I remember at one point working on the computer and looking down and she's between my feet. After a while, everybody just had an innate respect for this puppy's stubbornness, and before you knew it, she was the mascot for the unit."

. . . .

Officials at the Kirkuk airfield tolerated Bashur, but life there was still hazardous. Fearing that the dog population was getting out of control, the Air Force began to shoot strays. Bashur's admirers gave her a red collar with an "Airborne" patch, hoping it would spare her from the culling crew's rifles.

Vehicles on the hectic base struck Bashur twice, crushing a paw the second time. Fenzel rushed from a briefing at the news and found Bashur on the roadside, her head cradled in a soldier's lap. He picked up the dog that had grown to 60 pounds and hustled her to his room, vowing to keep her if she recovered.

With the help of the unit's medics, Fenzel helped Bashur recuperate, and they became full-time roommates. The two grew so close that Fenzel could interpret her signals: A sudden upward look meant that rockets were about to strike the airfield.

. . . .

Finally, in February, a few days before he was to join a convoy to Kuwait, Fenzel got word that the International Veterinary Hospital could help.

. . . .

After a 600-mile ride in Fenzel's Humvee, Bashur arrived at the hospital and got a government health certificate, a shipping crate the size of a Sub-Zero refrigerator and a $1,600 plane ticket to O'Hare International Airport. Fenzel said goodbye, and Bashur was on her way.

His father, John Fenzel, who runs a Chrysler dealership in Hampshire, met her at the airport March 5.

Now weighing almost 90 pounds, she comes to work with John Fenzel each day. Well-gnawed toys are scattered around the sales office, and Bashur often sprawls by the door, awaiting her next pat on the head. At home in Sleepy Hollow, she lolls in the backyard grass, pawing at bugs, seemingly amazed at this new world.

Mike Fenzel is back at the 173rd Airborne Brigade's home base in Vicenza, Italy, awaiting what seems likely to be another tour of Iraq or Afghanistan. He doesn't know when he'll see Bashur again, but keeps close tabs on her adventures.

"There were so many problems we had to solve [in Kirkuk]," he said. "To be able to come back to my room and have nothing else to think of, being able to pet a dog with very few needs, was so important. Her only need in life was just to be a friend."

PORTLAND, Ore. - The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun.

The altercation began as an attempt to remove shrubs and appliances from 71-year-old Eunice Crowder's yard, and ended with police citing her for harassment and disobeying an order.

This week, the city agreed to settle her excessive force lawsuit out of federal court, a month after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge dismissed the violations against her.

. . . .

The June 9, 2003, incident began when Ed Marihart, a city employee, showed up at Crowder's home. He served her with an administrative search warrant to remove an accumulation of trash and debris.

According to Crowder and her lawyer, the woman told him she was blind and hard of hearing, and asked him to read the entire warrant to her, but he refused. She said he placed it in her hands, walked outside and ordered others to start removing items from her yard.

. . . .

The woman followed the city employee outside. She was concerned that he and his co-workers had removed a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon with rhododendrons in it. She asked to enter a trailer, where items from her yard were being placed, to feel around for the wagon.

Marihart told her she couldn't enter the trailer and said the wagon was not inside. He then called police.

When Portland Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac arrived at the house, Crowder acknowledged she had one foot on the curb and one foot on the bumper of the trailer. She felt someone step on her foot and asked, "Who are you?"

Moments later, she felt someone strike her in the head, which dislodged her prosthetic right eye from its socket, and was knocked to the ground, she claimed in her lawsuit.

Officers said Crowder ignored their commands not to climb into the trailer and tried to bite Miller's hand.

They acknowledged she was "pushed onto the dirt next to the sidewalk," according to the city's legal brief filed in court.

While on the ground, Crowder asked the officer what he thought he was doing and kicked Miller. She said the officer kicked her back, then pepper-sprayed her in her eyes.

"While she's still on the ground, on her stomach, they tased her in the back and in the breast," her lawyer said.

Police said they pepper-sprayed Crowder after she refused to stop kicking them. They admit that Crowder's prosthetic eye fell out at some point, and that Zajac stunned Crowder with a Taser, an electric stun gun, twice in the lower back and once in the upper back after ordering her to stop fighting and resisting.

A contrary reading of these polls might suggest that the president gains as national security and war issues become more salient, even if they are becoming more salient because of what seem to be objectively bad news about his policies.

Atrios says:

This is the big challenge Kerry faces. Bad foreign policy news isn't enough - he's still going to need to upend the whole "war president tough on terra" nonsense.

People may finally be starting to come around on this. The latest Rasmussen poll (taken April 21-22) shows that when voters are asked whether they trust Bush or Kerry more on national defense/war on terror, Bush leads 49% to 40%. It's ridiculous that Bush is ahead, but that's the closest Kerry has been. Just a week ago, Bush led by 15% (53% Bush-38% Kerry).

WASHINGTON - A new poll shows that 57 percent of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaida terrorists before the war with Iraq, despite a lack of evidence of that relationship.

In addition, 45 percent of Americans have the impression that "clear evidence" was found that Iraq worked closely with Osama bin Laden's network, and a majority believe that before the war Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction (38 percent) or a major program for developing them (22 percent).

There's no known evidence to date that these statements are true.

U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified before Congress in January that no weapons were found and prewar intelligence on Iraq was "almost all wrong." CIA Director George Tenet last month rejected assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq had cooperated with al-Qaida. Despite that record, many Americans continue to believe that the threat from Iraqi weapons and its alleged links to terrorism justified the war. That conviction correlates closely with support for the war and President Bush, the poll released Thursday found.

For example, among those who say most experts agree that Iraq had banned weapons, 72 percent plan to vote for Bush. (link via Political Animal)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Sen. John Kerry each added to their presidential fundraising firsts last month: Bush in part by hitting $185 million for his campaign war chest and spending nearly one-third of it, and Kerry by raising some $55 million in one quarter.

Kerry's $54.8 million fundraising total for January through March tops the $52.9 million Bush raised during the period. It also surpasses the previous presidential quarterly record of $50 million collected, set by Bush last summer.

 

. . . . 

Bush began April with $86.6 million . . . according to a finance report filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. Kerry started April with $31 million.

"Dismal" is the term that best describes the Bush administration's record on clean air. Last summer, the administration surrendered to industry and gutted rules that would have forced old, pollution-belching, coal-fired power plants to clean up. That was a huge mistake, undercutting Justice Department lawsuits against major polluters that had been yielding significant results.

Then late last year, newly appointed EPA chief Michael Leavitt announced too-timid plans to reduce the levels of mercury those plants and others are spewing into the air. Even though the proposed limits would be the first federal controls on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, they were far less stringent than those promised by the Clinton administration in 2000.

Now the EPA's own analysis of its plan shows it could fall far short of even those reductions. "What our models now show is that we wouldn't get there as soon as we expected we would," Jeffrey Holmstead, assistant environmental protection administrator in charge of the air office, told The New York Times.

The EPA had said the plan would reduce emissions from the current 48 tons to 15 tons by 2018--about 69 percent. But the EPA's own projections show that actual emissions that year are expected to be at least 25 tons, because of the way the rules are written, according to an analysis by former EPA official Eric Schaeffer, now with the Environmental Integrity Project, a public interest advocacy group.

Moreover, the threat of mercury fallout may be even greater than previously thought. In February, the EPA doubled its estimate of the number of American children who could be at risk of brain damage and learning difficulties because of mercury exposure in the womb. The new number: more than 15 percent. That's alarming. Children of women exposed to relatively high levels of mercury during pregnancy have shown delayed onset of walking and talking, instances of cerebral palsy, and reduced neurological test scores, the EPA reported.

With those scary statistics as a backdrop, 45 senators and attorneys general from 10 states asked the EPA to scrap its proposed rules because they're not strict enough. And Leavitt seems to be wisely showing signs of an open mind. The Times reports that the administration is "rethinking" those rules and may tighten them to more quickly reduce the mercury annually spewed by coal-burning power plants, the largest single source of mercury in the U.S. That would be extremely welcome, particularly for an administration whose track record of environmental rollbacks and doubletalk is as extensive as this one's has been.

One of the rarely addressed questions by the war fans is how much is too much? Once upon a time the reason for the war was the inevitable "mushroom cloud" - and since that's sort of like the infinite cost, it would be worth almost any expense to stop it.

But, now that the justification has mostly been reduced to "Saddam was a bad guy and we're liberating the people," I'm curious if any of the war fans have a limit? Is there any cost, financial or in lives at which point they'd decide it wasn't worth it? 1,000? 10,000? 50,000 soldiers? $400 billion, $750 billion, $1 trillion?

And, what about the tradeoff? If they knew we could sacrifice X soldiers to save $Y, or vice versa, how should we balance it?

The "moral seriousness" crowd rarely has trouble making (up) these kinds of cost benefit analyses in other situations. What about Iraq?

. . . [Another] important question is whether or not this was the best use of (so far) 700 lives and $200 billion. I think the answer to that is clearly no, and I can't comprehend that there's even an argument on the other side.

At this point, also, the 700 lives and $200 billion are a "sunk cost." So, we can't get them back. Even if we conclude that the whole operation was a mistake, that doesn't necessarily mean that therefore the correct response is to bug out. The question now is - how many more lives and how much more money before you'd decide it was a bad plan.

Of course, all of this requires some general notion about what "success" is... but, we haven't really defined that either.

Recall that before the war, we were told not only that the benefits were enormous (avoiding the mushroom cloud, Iraq a beacon of democracy in the Middle East), but that the costs would be low. The war would be a cakewalk, we would be welcomed as liberators, and Iraq's oil revenues would largely pay for the rebuilding of the country. Wolfowitz said that an estimate of $95 billion for the upper range of the total cost of the war and the rebuilding was too high. Andrew Natsios of the United States Agency for International Development was emphatic that the total cost to U.S. taxpayers of rebuilding Iraq would be $1.7 billion at most. Natsios rejected much higher numbers suggested by naysayers, referring to "outlandish figures I've seen, I have to say, there's a little bit of hoopla involved in this." General Eric Shinseki was ridiculed and forced to resign when he had the temerity to suggest that several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to secure the country.

9/11 didn't change everything. What 9/11 did is prove that these people were wrong about absolutely everything. And, what Iraq has proven is they still haven't learned anything.

     Any leader whom one can imagine as President on September 11 would have declared a "war on terrorism" and would have ended the Afghan sanctuary by invading. Almost any President would have stepped up domestic security and preparedness measures. Exactly what did George Bush do after September 11 that any other President one can imagine wouldn't have done after such attacks? In the end, what was unique about George Bush's reaction to terrorism was his selection as an object lesson for potential state sponsors of terrorism, not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq. It is hard to imagine another President making that choice.

     Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device that our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country. Nothing else could have so well negated all our other positive acts and so closed Muslim eyes and ears to our subsequent call for reform in their region. It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting, "invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."

"When the fighting is over in Fallujah, I will sell everything I have, even my home," said a resistance fighter who gave his name as Abu Taif Mashhadani. He wept as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter, who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. "I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed." (link via Billmon)

Remember, we are the good guys, trying to remove the menace posed by Iraq's vast stockpiles of WMD's selflessly trying to impose our self-selected puppet government at the barrel of a gun bring freedom to Iraq's oil people. When Mashhadani and his countymen try to expel us from their country, they are terrorists. And if Mashhadani does come to this country and kill Americans, it will only be because he hates our freedom.

In light of these considerations I fear that our Iraq policy may be destined for the worst of all worlds -- slow-motion defeat. Politically speaking, cutting and running is an unattractive option. In general, the American people (like people everywhere) want to win. A president whose policy is giving up would pay a hefty price. A Kerry administration could probably pull this off nevertheless. A Bush administration, however, clearly could not because it would require the president to admit that his signature foreign policy initiative was mistaken. Worse, though a Kerry administration could pull it off, a Kerry campaign could not get elected on a cut and run platform.

The measures required to make victory likely, however, are also very unpalatable. Again, were Bush to implement them, he would lose the election. Were Kerry to advocate them, he would lose the election. [There exists a possible world in which Kerry and Bush both agree to back a plan like this, under which circumstances the third-party vote massively explodes and something weird happens. We do not live in that world.]

Matt also offers an intelligent mea culpa for his onetime support for the war, which Atrios expands upon.

Kevin Drum concludes his post "Losing the War":

The most likely endpoint is this: in the short term a UN-brokered political settlement, and in the longer term an Islamic theocracy headed in the background by Sistani, with Chalabi pulling strings at his side and Muqtada (or his clones) keeping anti-American sentiment burning in the foreground. Chalabi will sell us out in a second if he needs to, Sistani will gradually lose influence, and before long Iraq will probably bear more resemblance to Iran than to Egypt. Or perhaps the West Bank if American troops remain.

And the United States will end up in a worse position than when we started, our foreign policy in hock to the UN and a group of Islamic theocrats.

Maybe that would have happened no matter what. I don't know. But there's not much question that in this universe we ended up where we did because George Bush wasn't willing to take the political risks needed to win this war. And he still isn't.

So I'll end this post with my usual question to the hawks: why are you supporting this guy? Sure, he talks a good game, but in the real world he's betrayed everything you wanted out of simple political cowardice. Why does he retain your loyalty when he's made it so plain that he has neither a realistic plan to win the war nor the political will to see it through?

The sad part about this is that conservatives are going to call it a strong performance. We now have a President who's not much different from a Special Ed student. We clap and cheer every time he has his shoes on the right feet. (typo corrected by me)

WASHINGTON -- With fighting in Iraq now at its worst, the number of U.S. troops killed by enemy fire has reached the highest level since the Vietnam War.

The first part of April has been the bloodiest period so far for U.S. troops in Iraq. There were 87 deaths by hostile fire in the first 15 days of this month, more than in the opening two weeks of the invasion, when 82 Americans were killed in action.

. . . .

The last time U.S. troops experienced a two-week loss such as this one in Iraq was October 1971, two years before U.S. ground involvement ended in Vietnam.

From Reuters:

TULLAMORE, Ireland (Reuters) - The conflict in Iraq is "much more serious" than the war in Vietnam and any comparison between the two is misplaced, the European Union's external relations commissioner said on Saturday.

"The comparison... that Iraq could become as difficult an issue as Vietnam is misplaced, because I think it is arguably much more serious," Chris Patten told a news conference after an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Ireland.

"If things go wrong in Iraq we will be living with the consequences for a very, very long time," he added. (both via Atrios)

Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N. to pull its "chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq."

"We're betting on the U.N., who we blew off and ridiculed during the run-up to the war," Zinni said. "Now we're back with hat in hand. It would be funny if not for the lives lost." (via Sadly, No!)

Al Kamen in the Washington Post:

Bush found a way to make not one, not two, but three factual errors in a single 15-word sentence, which must be something of a world indoor record. Bush said it is still possible that inspectors will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm," he said, referring to Libya's WMD disclosures last month.

The White House, according to Reuters, said the accurate figure was 23.6 metric tons or 26 tons, not 50. The stuff was found at various locations, not at a turkey farm. And there was no mustard gas on the farm at all, but unfilled chemical munitions.

Other than that, the sentence was spot on. (via World O'Crap)

CHICAGO — Intelligence failures are to blame, so we are told, for the tragedy of 9/11 and the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq. If the Bush administration had heeded its intelligence agencies, say its opponents, it might have prevented the 9/11 attacks and avoided its mishaps in Iraq. Administration officials, meanwhile, say that their intelligence was either not accurate or not "actionable." This finger-pointing reflects misconceptions about the nature of intelligence — and suggests an intelligence failure of a different sort.

If one looks closely enough, there is generally a chance to see what lies ahead. For instance, shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, I trailed Israel's troops into the West Bank and Golan Heights and visited a Palestinian refugee camp. Ten years later I returned. By then — especially after Israel announced its plans to build settlements in the West Bank — anyone with experience in the region could foresee the dangers to come.

When I was in the Senate, I conducted a study of terrorism, which concluded in 1979 with predictions of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" in the United States and proposals for preventing them. These recommendations required no use of foreign intelligence. Similarly, the chaos in Iraq should come as no surprise to anyone with knowledge of Iraq, a quasi-state of tribes, religions, sects, ethnicities and foreign interests carved from the carcass of the Ottoman Empire.

. . . .

Foreign policy in the Bush administration reflects a lack of experience in the real world away from a Washington overrun with armchair polemicists and think-tank ideologues. Too many inhabitants of this world have no experience in the military, where one learns to expect the unexpected, or in international finance, where America's vulnerability also resides. This White House is well known for its hostility to curiosity and intellectual debate.

. . . . The United States government's reaction to the attacks of 9/11 could end up inflicting great damage on America.

The Bush administration demonstrates the point. One pre-emptive war against the dictator of a desert quasi-state crippled by international sanctions has stretched the American military thin. The United States is widely perceived to be waging war against Islam in the Middle East, a perception reinforced by the president's decision this week to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and his settlement plan.

Meanwhile, the dollar — a barometer of confidence in the American economy and polity — has sunk against other currencies. In Spain, Argentina, Germany, South Korea and Pakistan, candidates win public office by denouncing or distancing themselves from the Bush administration. This record owes nothing to failures of intelligence.

Studies have recommended reforms of the intelligence community. But reform does not change the limited nature and function of intelligence. There is no substitute for the pragmatic intelligence of policy makers acquired from history and experience in the real world — and the courage to act on it.

Before 9/11, neoconservatives like Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney inhabited a world of contending great powers in which force and technology were transcendent. Terrorists armed with box cutters — and now Iraqis resisting the occupation — have exploded their fantasy. The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission said he believes the panel will permit certain liberal political groups to continue collecting and spending large sums of unregulated money.

The commission is investigating whether the groups, including MoveOn.org, The Media Fund and America Coming Together, violate the campaign finance reform law passed by Congress in 2002.

The Media Fund and MoveOn have aired TV spots criticizing President Bush at the same time that the Bush-Cheney campaign launched its initial barrage of television ads to boost the president's re-election effort.

. . . .

Bradley Smith, the FEC chairman, said a majority of the six-member watchdog commission likely would find that any change in spending rules must come from Congress.

"I think we will get four commissioners who will say, 'Sorry, we know some people are really upset about this, but it's not illegal,' " Smith told reporters during a break in the second and final day of testimony on proposed rule changes for political groups.

If this prediction comes true, it is very good news for our side. The Rethuglicans are very afraid of 527's like MoveOn, which are spending a lot of money on anti-Bush ads. There are some pro-GOP 527's, such as the Club for Growth, which ran the anti-Dean "latte" ad in Iowa, but they haven't raised nearly as much money as the Dem 527's.

WASHINGTON, April 16 — In the fall of 2001, as memories of the Sept. 11 attacks were still fresh and American forces were still fighting in Afghanistan, President Bush secretly ordered that plans be drawn up for war against Iraq, according to a new book by Bob Woodward.

. . . .

The book also offers titillating glimpses of the struggle for power between Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, according to an article about the book on the Post's Web site. Mr. Powell thought Mr. Cheney was obsessed with Iraq and willing to embrace foggy intelligence to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The book, "Plan of Attack," is a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months, from November 2001 to March 2003, that led up to the military campaign against Iraq. The book, published by Simon & Schuster, will be available in stores next week.

. . . .

That the Bush administration was studying the possibility of war with Iraq in late 2001 was no secret at the time. Administration officials were reported in December of that year to be saying that although no decision for war had been made, serious consideration and planning were under way for driving Saddam Hussein from power.

But the book adds new insight into the planning process, and makes clear how sensitive an issue Mr. Bush believed an Iraqi war plan to be. The president told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to keep quiet about the planning to avoid "enormous international angst and domestic speculation," according to The Post's Web site.

Mr. Woodward's book offers news details about the extent to which some of Mr. Bush's closest advisers, notably Mr. Cheney, were focused on Saddam Hussein from the earliest days of the Bush presidency, even after Sept. 11, 2001, when Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that sheltered it, vaulted to the top of the agenda.

. . . .

And Gen. Tommy Franks, who as head of the Central Command was running the war in Afghanistan, is said to have unleashed a string of barracks obscenities when the Pentagon told him he had to come up with a war plan for Iraq while he was still busy in Afghanistan.

The book was fast becoming the talk of Washington today, as demonstrated at the mid-day news conference held by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

"Mr. President," the very first questioner began, "did you ask Secretary Rumsfeld to draw up war plans against Iraq in November 2001 just as the military action was getting under way in Afghanistan? Why couldn't Iraq wait?"

Mr. Bush replied that it was difficult for him to recall specific dates that far back. He then recalled conferring at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, on Sept. 15, the Saturday after the attacks.

"I sat down with my national security team to discuss the response, and the subject of Iraq came up," Mr. Bush told reporters today. "And I said as plainly as I possibly could: We'll focus on Afghanistan. That's where we'll focus."

. . . .

Mr. Woodward's book, based on three and a half hours of interviews with the president, is likely to provide ammunition for Mr. Bush's detractors. They have accused him of needlessly weakening the campaign against Al Qaeda by going after a supposed enemy, Iraq, that was not really an imminent threat. They have accused him also of relying on faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein's supposed possession of deadly weapons. And they have accused him of cynically implying a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.

. . . .

Mr. Bush is described as willing to risk his presidency on the war. When Mr. Woodward asked him how history would judge it, the president replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

In politics, it is known as the burn rate —— the speed at which a campaign spends the money it has raised. The Hardball ad watch team estimates that the Bush campaign has already spent nearly half of its pre-convention advertising budget.

With the polls showing the president even or slightly behind John Kerry, it means that the Bush campaign's huge financial advantage has now all but disappeared.

Since early March, the Bush campaign has been advertising at a rate of $9 million a week. But the campaign is now cutting that in half after seeing the president's election message pushed aside by the attention around 9/11, and by the daily attacks on American troops in Iraq.

"The bad news is overwhelming them right now, and I think they've got a predicament," says former Dean campaign manager and MSNBC analyst Joe Trippi.

The predicament gets worse when you look at where the Bush campaign started financially and where things stand today: The president raised a record $180 million, and half of that was budgeted for campaign operations, the other half for pre-convention advertising. But of the advertising budget, $90 million, the Bush campaign has already spent at least $40 million.

By comparison, John Kerry has spent about $10 million.

The huge imbalance only seems to have affected views about Kerry and taxes. Most voters think Kerry will raise taxes, but in the 18 states where the president has been attacking him, independent Democratic groups have been counterpunching with ads of their own ... and Kerry's favorability ratings remain steady.

Furthermore, a majority of battleground voters continue to say the president is taking the country in the wrong direction.

. . . .

Making matters worse for the White House, the president's advertising is now ratcheting down at the very time John Kerry's is ratcheting up. Kerry's campaign plans to double its spending on TV ads starting next week.

What all this may mean is that the election may be entering a new phase. For the first time in this campaign, both the president and his challenger will be running TV ads at about the same clip. And given that polls show the race is still even, it is the kind of advertising parity Democrats have been dreaming of.

Atrios notes that, "All these stories emphasize advertising for some reason, but the Bush campaign also has an enormous payroll."

Bush has no record he can run on, and the shit is hitting the fan in Iraq and before the 9/11 Commission (the Plame investigation and Medicare investigation may later do the same). The main thing Bush seemed to have going for him is that he was supposed to be able to spend Kerry into the ground. If he doesn't even have that, he's toast.

It is the continuance of a global trend in which elections in countries allied to the United States are being won by parties advocating loosening ties with America. Running against America -- or really against George W. Bush makes for great politics almost everywhere in the world.

We saw it in South Korea two years ago. Then later that year in Germany. Recently in Spain. And now again in Korea -- with many other examples along the way.

Each election had its own internal dynamics. But in each case opposition to the policies of the Bush administration became a salient, even defining issue.

All over the world, Dubya is a uniter, not a divider.

President Bush is scheduled to tout his tax cuts today at a Tax Day event in Iowa. He is expected to repeat his oft-heard mantra that tax cuts have helped all Americans. But according to a new poll by Money Magazine, "60% of Americans said the Bush tax cut did not personally help them" (1).

Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans say that their taxes have risen under Bush (2). And a look at the record shows exactly why that majority opinion is factually correct.

According to a non-partisan analysis, in the year 2006 88% of Americans will receive less than $100 from the president's 2003 tax cut (3). Additionally, the president has refused to extend the full child tax credit to 16 million children (4), including 250,000 children of military families (5). At the same time, the president's 2004 budget proposed an increase of almost $6 billion in new federal taxes and fees (6) while creating record-deficits that have forced states to raise taxes by $14.5 billion since 2001 (7). And to top it off, he has reduced IRS audits of large profitable corporations whose tax rates have plummeted (8), while increasing IRS audits of ordinary Americans (9).

Of course, there is a handful of people who are reaping a personal windfall from Bush's tax policy: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their top campaign donors. The president himself pocketed more than $30,000 in new tax breaks this year while the Vice President took in an extra $11,000 (10). And a new Public Campaign report shows that top Bush-Cheney contributors are raking in even more (11). For instance, Charles Cawley, CEO of credit card giant MBNA, raised more than $200,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign and was rewarded with at least $276,000 in tax breaks. Similarly, William MaGuire, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign and will get at least $329,000 in new tax breaks from President Bush.

Sources:

1. "Money poll: Tax cuts unpopular", CNN Money, 04/15/2004, http://tinyurl.com/26g2f.

2. "ASSOCIATED PRESS POLL: Most prefer balanced budget to tax cuts", Grand Forks Herald, 04/15/2004, http://tinyurl.com/29mcs.

3. "Most Taxpayers Get Little Help From Latest Bush Tax Plan", Citizens for Tax Justice, 05/30/2003, http://www.ctj.org/pdf/2003statecut.pdf.

4. "Bush Tax Plan's Child Credit Boost Leaves Behind One in Four of America's Children", Citizens for Tax Justice, 05/29/2003, http://www.ctj.org/pdf/2003statekid.pdf.

5. "Study: Military kids slighted on tax credit", USA Today, 06/04/2003, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-04-taxes-usat_x.htm.

6. "Bush's 2004 Budget Proposes More Fees", Washington Post, 04/19/2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27173-2003Feb18?language=printer.

7. State Budget & Tax Actions 2003, National Conference of State Legislatures, http://www.ncsl.org/programs/fiscal/presbta03.htm.

8. "Corporate tax burden shows sharp decline", Associated Press, 04/13/2004, http://tinyurl.com/38c6c.

9. "IRS More Likely to Audit Individuals", Los Angeles Times, 04/12/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=29015  

10. "Bushes, Cheneys Reaped Tax Benefits", Associated Press, 04/14/2004, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0414-04.htm.

11. Campaign Money Watch, 04/15/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=29017.

WASHINGTON - Uncontrolled U.S. budget deficits would pose a serious threat to global prosperity in coming years as rising interest rates depress economic growth in the United States and around the world, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.

The IMF released a new analysis that predicted if nothing is done to get control of the soaring U.S. deficits, it would shave global economic output by 4.2 percent by 2020 and reduce U.S. economic growth by 3.7 percent during the same period.

IMF economists said much of the adverse impact would occur because of increased borrowing demands in the United States to finance the budget deficit. This would drive up U.S. interest rates and interest rates in other countries as the global supply of available capital is reduced, they said.

. . . .

The IMF's forecast that the U.S. budget deficit will be a significant drag on growth reflected what will occur if there is no improvement in the deficit, which the Bush administration projects will hit $521 billion this year, a record in dollar terms, and show little improvement in coming years.

President Bush submitted a budget to Congress this year which projects that he will be able to cut the deficit in half over the next five years, reducing it to a shortfall of $237 billion in 2009.

The IMF said that if Bush is able to accomplish that such a reduction in the budget deficit, it would significantly lower, but not eliminate the adverse effects from the deficit on the U.S. and global economies.

It saw a long-run impact from such a budget reduction as reducing global economic output by 2.55 percent, compared to a reduction of 4.2 percent under the worst-case scenario in which the deficit remains at the current record levels.

Under the Bush program to reduce the deficit, U.S. economic growth will be depressed by 1.88 percent in the long-term, compared to 3.68 percent under the more adverse deficit path.

As Ezra says at Pandagon:

So not only is Bush's inability to handle money threatening the world economy but even if he can do the reduction measures he says he can but knows he can't, it's still not good enough.

We had a surplus 4 years ago. Never forget that. We had a goddamn surplus 4 years ago and he turned it into a deficit capable of threatening the global economy.

In an otherwise dry day of hearings before the 9/11 commission, one brief bit of dialogue set off a sudden flash of clarity on the basic question of how our government let disaster happen.

The revelation came this morning, when CIA Director George Tenet was on the stand. Timothy Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, asked him when he first found out about the report from the FBI's Minnesota field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, an Islamic jihadist, had been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. Tenet replied that he was briefed about the case on Aug. 23 or 24, 2001.

Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, "I was not in briefings at this time." Bush, he noted, "was on vacation." He added that he didn't see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied. By the way, for much of August, Tenet too was, as he put it, "on leave."

And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn't talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.

Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their "hair on fire," warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President's Daily Brief (by one of Tenet's underlings), warning that this attack might take place "inside the United States." For the previous few years—as Philip Zelikow, the commission's staff director, revealed this morning—the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.

And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn't with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice—as she has testified—wasn't with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.

A USA Today story, written right before Bush took off, reported that the vacation—scheduled to last from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3—would tie one of Richard Nixon's as the longest that any president had ever taken. A week before he left, Bush made a videotaped message for the Boy Scouts of America. On the tape, he said, "I'll be going to my ranch in Crawford, where I'll work and take a little time off. I think it is so important for the president to spend some time away from Washington, in the heartland of America."

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen of the Washington Post recently wrote a story recalling those halcyon days in Crawford. On Aug. 7, 2001, the day after the fateful PDB, Bush, they wrote, "was in an expansive mood … when he ran into reporters while playing golf." The president's aides emphasized that he was working, now and then, on a few issues—education, immigration, Social Security, and his impending decision on stem-cell research. On Aug. 29, less than a week after Tenet found out about Moussaoui, Bush gave a speech before the American Legion. The White House press office headlined the text of the address, "President Discusses Defense Priorities." Those priorities: boosting soldiers' pay and abandoning the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty. Nothing about terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, hijackings. Nothing that reflected the PDB or Moussaoui.

. . . .

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington. In his CIA days, Johnson wrote "about 40" PDBs. They're usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. "That's the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace," Johnson said. And the title—"Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, "I said 'Holy smoke!' This is such a dead-on 'Mr. President, you've got to do something!' " (By the way, Johnson claimed he's a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.)

Bush got back after Labor Day. That first day, Sept. 4, was when the "Principals Committee"—consisting of his Cabinet heads—met in the White House to discuss terrorism. As Dick Clarke has since complained, and Condi Rice and others have acknowledged, it was the first time Bush's principals held a meeting on the subject.

This morning, Roemer asked Tenet if he brought up the Moussaoui briefing at that meeting. No, Tenet replied. "It wasn't the appropriate place." Roemer didn't follow up and ask, "Why not? Where was the appropriate place?" Perhaps he was too stunned. He sure looked it.

. . . .

The 9/11 commission has unveiled many critical problems in the FBI and the CIA. But the most critical problem may have been that the president was off duty. (link via Atrios)

Phillip Shenon and Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, April 14 — George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency were presented in August 2001 with a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly" about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui, but did not act on the information, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Wednesday.

An interim report by the panel's staff offered a stinging assessment of the C.I.A. under Mr. Tenet's leadership[.] . . .

Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence since 1997, testified that he had no contact at all with Mr. Bush in August, the month in which the president received a C.I.A. report suggesting that terrorists of Al Qaeda were already in the United States and might be planning a domestic airplane hijacking.

The agency later telephoned reporters on Wednesday to correct Mr. Tenet's testimony, saying he met once with the president during Mr. Bush's nearly monthlong vacation that August at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and once again when Mr. Bush returned to Washington later that month.

. . . .

The panel's report on Wednesday on the C.I.A. offered the first detailed evidence about the agency's failure to follow up on the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui, a French-born Islamic extremist who was taken into custody in Minnesota in August 2001 after arousing the suspicions of his flight-school instructors. After Sept. 11, Mr. Moussaoui, an avowed Qaeda member, was tied to the terrorist cell in Germany that conducted the attacks.

C.I.A. officials have been unwilling to say what, if anything, the agency had known about Mr. Moussaoui before Sept. 11. But the commission disclosed this week that information about his arrest on Aug. 17 had been relayed within days to the highest levels of the C.I.A., including to Mr. Tenet, and the commission's report on Wednesday revealed the headline of the briefing, which was part of a larger report about intelligence developments that summer.

"In late August, the Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the D.C.I. and other top C.I.A. officials under the heading `Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly,' " the staff report said, offering no other detail on what the document contained. "The news had no evident effect on warning."

Mr. Tenet said he could not recall details about the way the agency handled the Moussaoui reports.

Throughout August, the Moussaoui case was in the control of F.B.I. agents in Minnesota, who tried to get their superiors in Washington to take an interest because of their fear that he might be a terrorist. The information was passed to the C.I.A., and eventually to Mr. Tenet, through a F.B.I.-C.I.A. counterterror center.

The staff report also disclosed that the C.I.A. for years had intelligence in its files suggesting that Al Qaeda might hijack passenger planes and try to use them as missiles, but the reports were never drawn together in a larger analysis of the threat.

During last night's prime time press conference, President Bush once again claimed that "there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings" (1). But just minutes later at the same press conference the president proved he was not telling the truth.

Specifically, Bush said the reason he supposedly requested intelligence briefings before 9/11 "had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference I was going to attend" in 2001. Bush was referring to the fact that, prior to that conference, he was warned that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill him and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the summit" meetings (2).

His statement that "the prior government" had not taken precautions against terrorists using planes as weapons is also contradicted by the facts. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that under President Clinton, "the federal government had on several earlier occasions taken elaborate, secret measures to protect special events from just such an attack" (3) after receiving intelligence warnings (4).

At the press conference, Bush also claimed to have no "inkling whatsoever" (5) about an attack before 9/11. But the Washington Post today reports that newly-declassified information shows that the president did not just receive one intelligence briefing about an imminent Al Qaeda attack, but "a stream" of repeated warnings (6). In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community titled some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real." The CIA explicitly told the Administration that upcoming attacks would "occur on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil."

Sources:

1. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference, 04/13/2004, http://tinyurl.com/2fdgr

2. "Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit", Los Angeles Times, 09/27/2001, http://tinyurl.com/3ewh7

3. Wall Street Journal, 04/01/2004.

4. "Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings", CBS News, 05/10/2002, http://tinyurl.com/zi27

5. President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference, 04/13/2004, http://tinyurl.com/2fdgr

6. "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings", Washington Post, 04/14/2004, http://tinyurl.com/26ea9

While we're on the subject of major Republican liars, it also seems that Ashcroft lied committed perjury when he testified that during the Clinton administration there was "no covert action plan to kill bin Laden" (link via Atrios) and Bill Frist lied when he claimed that Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission was inconsistent with his prior testimony before Congress (per Republican Senator Pat Roberts, no less, who said Clarke's testimony was not inconsistent).

Here are the reasons Iraq is not Vietnam: It is a desert, not a jungle. The enemy is not protected and supplied by major powers such as the Soviet Union or China, not to mention a formidable front-line state such as North Vietnam. The Iraqis are not, like the Vietnamese, a single culture fighting a long-term war of liberation from colonial masters. They are fragmented by religion and language, and they have been independent ever since the British left lo these many years ago. In almost every way but one, Iraq is not Vietnam. Here's the one: We don't know what the hell we're doing.

This is the most important finding you can take from the debacle of the past two weeks. The sudden uprising of the Shiite militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr took U.S. forces by surprise. For now, it does not matter that this uprising is containable or that Sadr may well be little more than a thug. What matters is that he was able to organize an insurrection right under our noses and put up a more than credible fight. Calling him a thug, as we are wont to do, does not change matters.

This remarkable fact, to use the current argot, is sooooooo Vietnam. Once again, we are feeling our way in the dark. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We have 77,000 Iraqi police officers on our side, supposedly with their ears to the ground. We have the supposed loyalty of all those Iraqis who tell pollsters that they are grateful for what Americans have done for their country and how much they want the United States to stay. Still, somehow, not a one of them blew the whistle when Sadr was issuing orders and patting his fighters on the back as they were heading out the door.

Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, is by all accounts an admirable and incredibly industrious man, "tasked," in Condi-speak, to do the impossible. But on the Sunday talk shows, he seemed right out of central casting, some actor playing the clueless American, down to his striped tie and button-down shirt. When asked who he was going to turn power over to on June 30, he replied, "That's a good question," but supplied no answer. He simply does not know. He does know, though, that the "majority view" among Iraqis is hardly anti-American. The polls tell him so. This is Vietnam all over again.

In the first place, minorities make revolutions, not majorities. Most people simply do as they are told. Second, polls -- even in Iowa, for crying out loud -- are notoriously unreliable. Last, Bremer and the rest of us are simply going to have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we will never know what is happening in Iraq. It's a different culture. (via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

ASHCROFT'S RECORD OF LYING TO CONGRESS ABOUT 9/11

With Attorney General John Ashcroft testifying before the 9/11 Commission today, a quick analysis of his previous statements shows he has repeatedly lied to Congress about the Bush Administration's counterterrorism record.

Specifically, when questioned by Congress in 2002 about why he tried to de-prioritize and slash funding for counterterrorism before 9/11, Ashcroft resorted to dishonest denials -- even in the face of budget documents that proved he was not telling the truth.

For instance, in testimony before the House of Representatives, Ashcroft said that before 9/11, his "number-one goal" at the Justice Department "was the prevention of terrorist acts" and that he immediately "began to shape the department and its efforts in that respect" (1). But according to the Washington Post, internal Administration documents from before 9/11 "show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did" (2). The documents "indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs."

Ashcroft tried to blame his negligence of counterterrorism on the previous Administration, telling Congress that "the five-year plan that had been put in place by my predecessor didn't mention counterterrorism" (3). But according to the New York Times, "the plan issued by Attorney General Janet Reno in 2000 said the Justice Department would have to devote more attention and resources to terrorism, citing sophisticated computer and bomb-making technology and the 'emerging threats of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons'" (4).

Ashcroft has even been dishonest about events after 9/11, telling Congress that when the Administration was writing the emergency counterterrorism funding bill after the attacks, the FBI "came to me with a $670 million request, and we counseled them to take that to $1.1 billion" (5). But according to the Washington Post, "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI." The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million" (6). Ashcroft "cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for 'collaborative capabilities.'"

Sources:

1. Attorney General John Ashcroft testimony, 02/28/2002.

2. "FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11", Washington Post, 02/22/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=28140.

3. Attorney General John Ashcroft testimony, 02/28/2002.

4. New York Times, 03/01/2002.

5. Attorney General John Ashcroft testimony, 02/28/2002.

6. "FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11", Washington Post, 02/22/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1147298&l=28140. 

Avedon Carol observes:

He didn't say "bites". I said "bites". He said "sucks", but that one never made sense to me. Don't guys actually like that? If it feels good, why use it as an insult?

By the same token, what exactly does "fuck you" mean? It makes no sense. And "get fucked" is at least grammatical, but has the same problem as "sucks." Since most people like sex, why should "get fucked" be an insult? |

I understand the political realities. Running for president is a lot like playing the stock market -- nobody's going to give you a medal for courage. But it's awfully hard to stomach that little display of cowardice when it's coupled with such shameless war whoring as this:

“Americans know that all who serve in Iraq - soldier and civilian alike - do so in an effort to build a better future for Iraqis. These horrific attacks remind us of the viciousness of the enemies of Iraq's future. United in sadness, we are also united in our resolve that these enemies will not prevail."

Now this little wad of rhetorical bullshit would not sound at all unnatural issuing from the piehole of a neocon apparatchik like Paul Wolfowitz -- or typed up in a Halliburton press release. It willfully ignores everything we've learned over the past year about the reasons we went to war in Iraq, glosses over the gross incompetence with which the war has been managed, studiously avoids any mention of the internal conflicts that are now tearing Iraq apart, and gives the administration full credit for desiring only to "build a better future" for the Iraqi people.

Am I the only one who finds this incredibly ironic? That John Kerry, who launched his political career as an angry veteran protesting a disastrous, unwinnable war, is now a presidential candidate glibly endorsing a disastrous, unwinnable war?

I wonder how a President Kerry would feel if, a couple of years from now, he were to find a new generation of war protesters lined up outside White House gates, screaming "Hey, hey, JFK, how many kids did you kill today?"

If things are not going swimmingly in Iraq, it is not the fault of domestic critics. It is the fault of the people who sent in too few troops and failed to plan for the aftermath of the war.

One should not have to have been "pro-war" to be a critic of what's going on. I'm tired of people prefacing their criticisms with phrases like "as someone who supported this war..." Well, you were wrong. Why should we listen to you now? There were plenty of reasons to be against the war, but the only one which was necessary was the fact that the people in charge were utterly incompetent - that people opposed to "nation building" had no real desire to carry it out. Once their incompetence was clear, no other reasons were necessary. Even Tom Friedman recognized this was a risky venture, but he failed to understand that you do not support risky ventures run by inept lunatics.

State police have charged a 15-year-old Latrobe girl with child pornography for taking photos of herself and posting them on the Internet.

Police said the girl, whose identity they withheld, photographed herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts. She then sent the photos to people she met in chat rooms.

A police report did not say how police learned about the girl. They found dozens of pictures of her on her computer.

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography. (via The Sideshow)

I thought child porn laws were intended to protect children, not send them to prison. If this girl had punched herself, would she have been charged with battery? If she were caught masturbating, would she have been charged with sexual abuse of a minor? Bizarre.

I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America — at a time and a place, an attack.

 

George W. Bush, Remarks to reporters, April 11, 2004 

_____________________________________________________

 

There was nothing in this memo [the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief (PDF or image)] as to time, place, how or where.

 

Condoleezza Rice, Testimony before 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004

_____________________________________________________ 

 

Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?

 

George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003

This new piece is rather minimalistic, when compared to previous things I've done- just pictures, and music- and just four lines of text. I spent a long time wondering how to approach this first anniversary of he occupation of Iraq- I could have laden it with tons of statistics and numbers- but really, the past few weeks have brought images of events that speak for themselves.

Indeed. Check it out.

"Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'"

 

"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [redacted] service."

 

"FBI information . . . indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

 

"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related, CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

A new surge of Iraqi resistance is sweeping up thousands of people, Shiite and Sunni, in a loose coalition united by overwhelming anti-Americanism. On March 31, insurgents in Falluja ambushed four civilian contractors and mutilated their bodies, and the fiery words of Moktada al-Sadr, the young radical Shiite cleric, a few days later prompted violent uprisings in four cities.

In Baghdad, Kufa, Najaf, Baquba and Falluja, interviews with Sunnis and Shiites alike show a new corps of men, and a few women, who have resolved to join the resistance. They also reveal a generation of young people inured to violence and hankering to join in the fighting.

There is no way to estimate the size of the mushrooming insurgent force, but demonstrations in several cities by armed and angry people indicate that it probably runs in the tens of thousands. Many people said they did not consider themselves full-time freedom fighters or mujahedeen; they have jobs in vegetable shops, offices, garages and schools.

But when the time comes, they say, they line up behind their leaders — with guns.

. . . .

Many Iraqis have weapons, in part because the American-led occupiers have often failed to protect them from looters and other criminals. Now, people are taking their guns into the streets.

. . . .

A whole generation of Iraqi youth is coming of age in the bitter heart of the resistance. When the four American security consultants were ambushed and killed in Falluja, it was a mob of boys that set the bodies on fire and dragged two to a bridge where they hung them over the Euphrates River.

Soran Karim, a 16-year-old with thick, man-size hands, said killing Americans was not just a good thing.

"It is the best thing," said Soran, outside a Falluja school. "They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people."

. . . .

A few days after the contractors were killed, United States marines invaded Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, in a major offensive to wipe out the insurgents behind the attack. So far, more than 300 people have been killed.

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, young men in this city were told they were the vanguard, the elite, top prospects for top jobs because of their tribal connections and Sunni alliances. Now, they are adrift, subject to the most aggressive American tactics and the full brunt of occupation.

Like the angry youth of the West Bank and Gaza, Iraqi children are increasingly surrounded by music, images, leaflets and praise for fighters. "The men of Falluja are men for hard tasks," sings Sabah al-Jenabi, a popular Iraqi performer, in a song that made the rounds even before the killing of the contractors. "They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. The men of Islam will fight the Americans like leaderless soldiers. We'll drag Bush's corpse through the dirt."

. . . .

[Abdul Razak al-Muaimy, a 32-year-old laborer] said his 10-year-old son did not take part in the violence against the contractors. But, because of all the miseries he knew Americans had brought, he would have.

"He said: 'Dad, it was exactly like what they did to us. They burned our women, they burned our children, they burned our men.' My son said this time we killed and burned four of their dead but hopefully one day we will kill and burn them all.

"Just imagine, he is only 10, and he says that."

Mr. Muaimy shook his head, more than a little sad.

"My son is just like a piece of white paper, ready for anything to be written on it. He receives everything. It stays in his memory." (link via Billmon)

What a horrific disaster this war is. Billmon even quotes three members of our hand-picked Iraq Governing Council who are highly critical of the United States.

When will Americans realize that choosing to wage aggressive war against a country that posed no threat to us does not equate to being "strong on national security," but rather the opposite? As everyone now knows, the war was founded on a falsehood -- the claim that Iraq possessed huge quantities of WMD's -- and the implication, also unfounded, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Many Muslims believe that the war is really one against Islam, a belief supported by General Boykin's notorious remarks:

During a January church speech in Daytona, Fla., Boykin recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him: "Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

The Somali was captured, and Boykin said he told the man: "Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God."

There are, conservatively, 1.1 billion Muslims in the world. If our war against Iraq provokes just 1/10 of one percent of them into becoming terrorists bent on revenge against the United States, that is 1.1 million enemies we have created. Why in hell are we doing this?

At last, a favorable surprise on jobs: estimated payroll employment rose 308,000 in March, above almost everyone's expectations. You can't blame the administration for trying to play up the good news, and for being dismayed when the sound of popping Champagne corks was drowned out by the crackle of gunfire. But has the economy, after so many false starts, finally started to deliver?

For perspective, it helps to remember what solid job growth looks like. During Bill Clinton's eight years in office, the economy added 236,000 jobs per month. But that's just an average: a graph of monthly changes looks like an electrocardiogram. There were 23 months with 300,000 or more new jobs; in March 2000, the economy added 493,000 jobs. This tells us not to make too much of one month's data; payroll numbers are, as economists say, noisy. It also tells us that by past standards, March 2004 was nothing special.

And we should be seeing something special, because our economy should be on the rebound. Bad times are usually followed by big bouncebacks; for example, last year long-suffering Argentina had the fastest growth rate in the Western Hemisphere (8.7 percent!), not because of the excellence of its economic policies, but because it was recovering from a severe slump.

America hasn't had an Argentine-level slump, but we have a lot to recover from. After three years of lousy job performance, we should be seeing very big employment gains — and even after last month's report, we're not. It would take about four years of reports as good as the one for March 2004 before jobs would be as easy to find as they were in January 2001.

Of course, we can hope that the March numbers are just the beginning of a torrent of good news. But the straws in the wind aren't wildly encouraging. Weekly first claims for unemployment insurance are down — but they're still above the 2000 average, and job growth in 2000 barely kept up with population. Average weekly hours, sometimes a clue to future hiring, fell in March — in fact, they fell so much that total hours worked declined even as the work force increased.

These indicators suggest that the odds are less than even for job growth between now and the election that will match or beat the Clinton-era average, let alone deliver the job boom we both need and have a right to expect after three bad years.

FORT CAMPELL, Ky., April 8 — The billboard across from the huge Army post here reads patriotism, pure and simple: "We Support Our Troops, Our President."

But talk to members of military families in the parking lot next door, and the emotions are a good deal more complex. Samie Drown, 28, voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and she was stoic and supportive when her husband, a member of the Army's elite 101st Airborne Division, was secretly shipped off to Iraq with less than a week's notice last year. Mrs. Drown took care of their four young children as the 101st led United States troops into Baghdad.

But now, with the occupation dragging on and casualties mounting week by week, she says she feels her views shifting. And not just about the war, but about the president who sent her husband to Iraq.

"This has completely changed my view of the administration," said Mrs. Drown, wearing an American flag T-shirt and sunglasses. "My husband is a soldier and his job is to fight for freedom. But after so many months and so many deaths, no one has shown us any weapons of mass destruction or given us an explanation.

"So a lot of military wives are now asking: `Why? Why did we go to Iraq?' The administration talked a strong story, but a lot of us are kicking our butts about how we voted last time around. Now we're leaning the other way."

She is not certain how she will vote in this year's presidential contest, though right now she says she would not vote for Mr. Bush. "I am watching very closely and waiting to see how things turn out."

As the conflict in Iraq deepens beyond some prior predictions, the military voting block could become a serious domestic casualty for the Bush administration.

Certainly there are many members of the military who still support Mr. Bush whole-heartedly. "I don't think we should have been there as long as we have, but I think President Bush did the right thing sending us over there and I will vote for him again," said Catherine Acevedo, 25, whose husband did a tour in Iraq and who is a former soldier herself.

Still, it was clear at Fort Campbell, based on more than three dozen interviews here this week, that the Republican Party will have to work harder this year to keep the votes of military families, a group who at other times could be counted as Republican stalwarts.

Polls of the military are few and tend to be unreliable since pollsters have only limited access to military bases, and many military personnel are scattered overseas. A recent Washington Post/CBS Poll found that military personnel were still 2-to-1 Republican, but a CBS News survey found that 40 to 48 percent of people from "military families" would vote for Senator John Kerry, said Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University who studies military-civilian relations.

Various studies in the past have found that overall, military personnel and their families vote at least 2-to-1 Republican; in some subsets, like elite officers, the ratio is as high as 9 to 1.

But that backbone of support can no longer be taken for granted, experts say. And the large number of military personnel in swing states like West Virginia, Florida and New Mexico means that small shifts in military voting could prove decisive in the national election.

"Iraq has put great strain on the forces and looks a good deal more ambiguous than it did a year ago, and that has spawned a lot of disgruntled comments," Professor Feaver said. "That is probably not enough to give Kerry an edge outright, but it does eat into the Republicans' natural advantage."

Professor Feaver said that discontent tended to be even greater among short-term recruits and even more among reservists, who never expected be called to war for such a long period.

"The president is on probation with military voters," he said.

. . . .

Brittany Wood, 19, whose stepfather has spent most of the past 18 months in Iraq, said she was a Bush supporter a year ago. Though she still "loves the President, since he's serving his country," she said she would vote for Mr. Kerry this fall.

"I was glad we were doing this because we need to help other countries fight for freedom, but now lots of people feel there's been a cover-up and it is a lie and we were not told the real reasons for being in Iraq," Ms. Wood said. "That is making a lot of soldiers and their families think about voting. And for the first time they're thinking about voting Democratic."

Part of the ambivalence about the war and the election is driven by the personal hardship endured by families here, as parents and spouses are far away. Ms. Wood, a university student, helps her grandmother run an on-base day care center. "Now you have kids growing up without mothers," she said.

Such feelings, many say, were greatly inflamed by the length of the conflict. They have also been exacerbated by the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq and by the rising number of deaths, particularly grisly ones, in recent weeks.

Near the base here, soldiers themselves refused to discuss the war publicly. One newly minted mortarman, who refused to give his name, said he thought the president was doing a fantastic job and that the United States would triumph since it had "the strongest Army in the world." Another soldier, a sandy-haired man in civilian clothes, said, "I just got back two weeks ago and I'm not prepared to talk about it."

Many wives said their husbands would continue to serve and to support Mr. Bush because they viewed it as their duty.

On both sides of the issue, the tension was clear, with voters chafing in response to questions about the recent deaths: "Don't ask me; it's a total mess that should have been done a long time ago," said Mike Snapp, who has many cousins in Iraq. "It hasn't accomplished anything except messing up families."

Of Mr. Bush, he said, "It will sure lose him votes around here."

After weeks of increasingly violent news from Iraq, presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts now leads the president in a two-way trial heat by seven points (50 percent to 43 percent), according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll.

Even after adding independent candidate Ralph Nader to the hypothetical race, Kerry enjoys a four-point lead (46 percent to 42 percent), with Nader drawing 4 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, just 36 percent of those polled say they are satisfied with "the way things are going in this country." More than half (59 percent) say they are dissatisfied. And while President George W. Bush’s job approval rating remains steady at 49 percent, where it has been since the end of January, the president's favorability ratings are lower than they’ve ever been. Forty-eight percent of those polled view Bush favorably, down four points over last month. Kerry’s ratings remain unchanged at 51 percent favorable.

At least half of those polled disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy (55 percent versus 41 percent approving) and Iraq (51 percent versus 44 percent). And while 59 percent approve of his handling of terrorism and homeland security, that number is down from 70 percent earlier this year.

Highly awaited testimony this week by national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice before an independent commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks has had limited impact on public opinion. Fifty-six percent of Americans said they paid at least some attention to her testimony. But a majority of those polled said the testimony either did not make a difference in their opinion of Bush’s handling of terrorism (43 percent) or couldn’t say (18 percent) what effect it had.

. . . .

Gruesome images of murdered American civilians in Iraq may be making the public increasingly queasy about military involvement there. Nearly half (46 percent, up from 39 percent in January) of Americans say they are either "not too" or "not at all" confident that the United States will ever be able to bring democracy to Iraq, and 40 percent are very concerned that Iraq will become "another Vietnam."

Americans are also increasingly concerned that by invading Iraq, the Bush administration has increased the risk that large numbers of people will be killed or injured in a future terrorist attack on the United States. Forty-two percent of those polled now share that concern, whereas just 28 percent of those polled at the end of the last year were similarly worried. Exactly half of those polled feel that the June 30th deadline for handing power over to Iraq should not be extended. Still, 57 percent remain confident that the Bush administration did the right thing in going to Iraq and 63 percent would support sending more troops if necessary.

For the NEWSWEEK poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates interviewed 1,005 adults aged 18 and older April 8 and 9 by telephone. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. (link via Atrios)

Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.

In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

. . . .

Bush's advisers expect political damage to the president, at least in the short term, given what has happened in Iraq in the past 10 days. "I think the American people know the president is resolved in this matter to complete our work," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday. "We have nothing to suggest that they don't support him on the war on terror. . . . I think you can expect polls to drop during this very difficult period."

. . . .

Administration officials said Bush will discuss Iraq in his radio address today and will reemerge Sunday, when he goes to nearby Fort Hood to meet with the families of soldiers in Iraq. He will be out in public again on Monday when he appears at a news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

But as Bush prepares to speak out, the stakes for him are considerably higher than they were only a few weeks ago, despite three hours of testimony by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice before the independent commission investigating the 2001 attacks and assurances by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military commanders that they are dealing with the uprisings in Iraq.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush is "absolutely" losing the public at a quickening pace. He said people are flooding him with pleas "to get us out of there."

"It's a disquieting feeling people have. They think the president does not have a plan, and he doesn't. . . . We are on the verge of losing control of Iraq."

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) said events in Iraq suggest that Bush and other administration officials should anticipate a new line of questioning of the assessment, at the time of the invasion, that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators and face only slight resistance. This assumption "clearly is in doubt" considering recent events, he said.

The questions have come most forcefully from Democrats but are shared by Republicans. "In both parties, members are concerned," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) "There's not abject panic, but there's deep concern, and there should be."

Measured through the first snapshots, the verdict for the administration is mixed. Rice's testimony drew positive initial reviews about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before the attacks, based on a poll for Time magazine and CNN and on another for CBS News.

But both polls showed erosion in support for Bush's Iraq policy. Only a third of those surveyed by CBS said the war has been worth the cost, down from 4 in 10 a week earlier. Just 50 percent said going to war was the right decision, the lowest figure since the initial combat ended a year ago, with 46 percent saying the United States should have stayed out. The Time-CNN poll found 44 percent saying they approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, compared with 51 percent in late March.

Bush has made his leadership in the war on terrorism the central message of his reelection campaign, but, between now and the two political conventions this summer, he must navigate through what appears to be a far more treacherous period in Iraq, with threats of continuing resistance and a June 30 handoff of power that remains problematic. He also will have to deal with the fallout over the report of the Sept. 11 commission, which is due in late July. (link via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

But don't think that Bush is just goofing off. He's hard at work on a photo op, fishing with Dad at his ranch's bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network's "Fishing with Roland Martin."

Also from the Washington Post:

This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency. (link via Talking Points Memo)

The above article was written on Friday. The Post wrote last Monday that Bush was "en route to an eight-day stay on his ranch" (link via Sadly, No!). So it sounds like he will still be there through at least tomorrow. That will make it 503 out of 1179 days in office that he's been on vacation, or 42.7%. Don't you wish you had a cushy job like that?

President Bush: steady leadership vacationing in a time of change.

Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."

Such criticism led Mark Corallo, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman at the Justice Department, to say Friday that "some people on the commission are seeking to score political points" by unfairly attacking Mr. Ashcroft's actions before Sept. 11.

Mr. Corallo is quite right. Ms. Gorelick must be aware that Ashcroft in fact took decisive action to meet the terrorist threat. A month and a half before September 11, he stopped flying on commercial planes:

(CBS) Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

"I don't do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should stay within for those purposes," Ashcroft said.

Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."

Earlier this week, the Justice Department leased a NASA-owned G-3 Gulfstream for a 6-day trip to Western states. Such aircraft cost the government more than $1,600 an hour to fly. When asked whether Ashcroft was paying for any portion of the trips devoted to personal business, a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to respond.

All other Bush Cabinet appointees, with the exception of Interior and Energy with remote sites to oversee, fly commercial airliners. Janet Reno, Ashcroft's predecessor as attorney general, also routinely flew commercial. The secretaries of State and Defense traditionally travel with extra security on military planes.

The Justice Department insists that it wasn't Ashcroft who wanted to fly leased aircraft. That idea, they said, came strictly from Ashcroft's FBI security detail. The FBI had no further comment.