The Next Hurrah

The Real State Of Denial

by DemFromCT

It isn't just Bob Woodward's book regarding how George Bush lied (no avoiding the word, journalists), and continues to lie, to the American people (and maybe to himself). it's the GOP Congress, now recessed, and claiming to be on top of things. Uh-huh. let's see how it's playing.

Just hours before Congress closed down for the midterm elections on Saturday, Republican leaders threw together a ceremony to celebrate the passage of what they hoped to promote as their singular legislative accomplishment — a bill to bring terrorism suspects to trial. But after House and Senate leaders formally signed the measure for the cameras, the only questions they faced from assembled reporters pertained to Representative Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who had just resigned after accusations that he sent sexually explicit Internet messages to teenage pages. “None of us are very happy about it,” Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said before abruptly calling a halt to the questions, and the ceremony. No doubt.

You especially, Dennis. You were in leadership, and apparently leadership has been enabling Foley for some time.

The highly publicized case of Mr. Foley, who served in the House leadership as a deputy whip, threatened to build into an institutional scandal as House leaders acknowledged that they had known about the messages for nearly a year, but had relied on Mr. Foley’s word that nothing inappropriate had occurred.

Now, as the Times articles notes, there's more.

Republicans were unable to win final approval of a bill to regulate domestic wiretapping, which Democrats feared would become a political weapon more potent than the bill governing terrorism suspects. The disclosure of a National Intelligence Estimate saying the war in Iraq was fueling terrorism called attention to the issue Democrats most want to campaign on — discontent with the administration’s handling of the war. A new book by Bob Woodward did the same, claiming that the administration had ignored high-level warnings that it would need more troops. And Republicans wrapped up the way they started the year, with new revelations about Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist whose guilty plea on Jan. 3 roiled the party and set off the events that led to the resignation of Representative Tom DeLay, a powerful party force. “It was not a graceful exit,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, as events swirled on Friday.

Not a graceful exit? Let's be clear here. As rotten a week as the GOP had, the big story is that GOP leadership in the House did nothing about a pedophile for nearly a year. That's a huge state of denial, and an unforgiveable breach of the obligations of leadership. Mark Foley isn't the only resignation that's called for. Hastert, Boehner, and anyone else involved is going to have their head on the chopping block as well. See emptywheel's active post below for comments on the Foley situation.

But acting as if this Congress did anything useful for the country this week is even more denial. The torture bill was meant by the GOP as a weapon to hit Democrats with and nothing more (and that plan was shot by internal GOP bickering). Instead, they given the SCOTUS a hot potato and the country a black eye. It's good the week is over so that they can't do any more damage to the USA than they already have.

Foley Preying on Parents' Inability to Monitor Internet Use

by emptywheel

As you've probably already heard, the Republican leadership of Congress was informed about Foley's behavior ... and they did nothing about it. Worse, they kept him on as Chair of the Committee that develops legislation to prevent the sexual predation of children.

But I'd like to point out a detail that so far hasn't been covered. ABC posted one complete IM chat between the page and Foley. And as graphic as the chat is (discretion advised, seriously), the most shocking part of the chat for me was the way Foley played on the boy's mother's inability to monitor his actions online.

Maf54 (8:10:40 PM): take [his penis] out

Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:54 PM): brb...my mom is yelling

Maf54 (8:11:06 PM): ok

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:02 PM): back

Maf54 (8:14:37 PM): cool hope se didnt see any thing

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:54 PM): no no

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:59 PM): she is computer dumb though

Xxxxxxxxx (8:15:01 PM): it makes me so mad

Maf54 (8:15:04 PM): good

Maf54 (8:15:08 PM): haha

Maf54 (8:15:11 PM): why

Xxxxxxxxx (8:15:23 PM): cause she cant do anything

Maf54 (8:15:31 PM): oh well

Xxxxxxxxx (8:15:41 PM): she couldnt figure out how to download a file from an email and open it

Maf54 (8:15:53 PM): haha

Xxxxxxxxx (8:16:14 PM): and she only does it like a million times a day

Xxxxxxxxx (8:16:16 PM): oh well

Xxxxxxxxx (8:16:18 PM): whatever

Xxxxxxxxx (8:16:53 PM): well i better go finish my hw...i just found out from a friend that i have to finish reading and notating a book for AP english

This is Foley knowing precisely how cyber-predation occurs, either because he has done it so often, or he has learned how to do it through his work on the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

War, Casualties And Public Opinion: Interview With William A. Boettcher III and Michael D. Cobb

by DemFromCT

We've been writing over the last few weeks about the effects of Bush's popularity on the midterms, and the effects of Iraq, Katrina and the war on terror on Bush's popularity. One recurring theme about Iraq is the concept, supported by Gens. Abizaid and Pace, and (early war supporter) Ken Pollack, is that we have to consider the term "civil war" as part of the Iraq narrative.

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.

However, discussion of what to do next in Iraq and how to discuss new approaches and directions, an approach favored by Democrats, is being delayed by resistance from the Bush White House, who prefer to stay the course and not have Administration policy questioned. This facet of political reality was addressed in a fascinating op-ed written a few weeks ago in North Carolina's News & Observer.

The Bush administration's justification for continued operations in Iraq -- that it has become the central front in the global war on terrorism -- leaves almost no rhetorical space for an effective counterargument (the opposition party has been labeled the "Defeatocrats" and is said to be working on behalf of "al-Qaeda types"). As long as the enterprise in Iraq is deemed central to American national security, the only alternative to continued military operations is to "let the terrorists win."

William A. Boettcher is an associate professor and Michael D. Cobb is an assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at N.C. State University, and have a major interest in public opinion and public perception.

The authors predicted the Rumsfeld defense of Bush policy in this paragraph:

Attempts to reframe the American involvement in Iraq will inevitably generate an aggressive rhetorical response. Accusations of abandoning the Iraqi people, surrendering to the terrorists and enabling a humanitarian catastrophe will be leveled from critics on the left and the right. A successful reframing of the Iraq war must be combined with a disengagement strategy that addresses these concerns, but realistically acknowledges that public support for the war is waning and the Bush administration does not appear inclined to commit the resources needed to turn things around.

Note that a survey recently done by the professors on the American public's perception of Iraq, the costs of war, and the likelihood of future support is expected to be released next week (and we will cover it here). I had the opportunity to discuss this with Professors Boettcher and Cobb. What follows comes from that discussion and subsequent emails.

Professors Boettcher and Cobb:

In an editorial we wrote several weeks ago in the Raleigh, NC News and Observer, we partially explained our belief that perceptions about the mission objectives in Iraq are fluid, and opponents of the war can make more persuasive withdrawal arguments by framing the goal of staying in Iraq as preventing a civil war.  We said this because past experience shows that Americans’ casualty tolerance for largely humanitarian missions is substantially lower than for restraining a threatening adversary.  DemFromCT read our editorial; we talked, and he was kind enough to give us the opportunity to answer some of his questions about casualties and framing effects on public opinion about Iraq.

Conventional wisdom holds that Americans get ‘weak in the knees’ and withdraw their support for military interventions as soon as casualties occur; or, at least as casualties increase, so too does American opposition to war.  We think that the core of this argument is wrong for several reasons, but neither are we persuaded by recent research suggesting that Americans are tolerant of substantial casualties so long as they believe in the prospects for success.

GOP Foxes Guarding the Under-Aged Hen-House

by emptywheel

As DemFromCT reported, Mark Foley resigned today, after a 16-year old page revealed sexually explicit emails the Congressman sent to him.

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

The chariman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, exploiting children? Sounds like a remarkable, rare scandal, doesn't it? Only it's at least the third in what appears to be a pattern for the "Values Voter" Party--two other officials charged with protecting this country from sexual predators were, themselves, sexual predators.

The Next Open Thread: FL's Mark Foley Resigns

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

The full details will be included in a report tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.

Another Republican values candidate. This one was chair of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus.  hat tip, David in NYC.

Politics And Elections: All Outrage Is Local

by DemFromCT

Here is a radical thought: the politics of torture (which I am posting on) are different than the practice of torture (which I oppose), and to talk about the one in cold-blooded terms is not to endorse the other in any way. Once the torture bill was passed by the Senate, and actually even before it was passed, the GOP and Bush began using it as a blunt instrument to swing at Democrats, just like everyone knew they would.

Interestingly, that doesn't mean they'll hit their intended target. To illustrate how split the Republican party remains on this:

And even some Republicans who said voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the habeas corpus provision, ultimately sending the legislation right back to Congress.

    "We should have done it right, because we're going to have to do it again," said Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, who had voted to strike the habeas corpus provision, yet supported the bill.

Talk to GOP supporters off the record and they'll tell you the same. Lieberman voted for the bill. Snowe didn't vote. Chafee voted against it. But the run-up with the "rebel" Senators has muddled much of the "Dems are for coddling terrorists" message with voters, regardless of what the WH wants to think and wants you to believe.

Those voters, btw, consistently reject torture as a tool of the government. 56% opposit torture in all cases (scroll down to CBS/NY Times poll). But illustrating that all politics are local,

But it is a mistake to assume that anger and anxiety look and sound the same in these coveted [Ohio River] precincts as they do in Washington.

The debates over Iraq and President Bush shadow virtually every competitive race, but they do not dominate the conversation -- which suits many Democrats just fine. This month's intense debate over policy toward terrorism detainees, meanwhile, carried hardly any echo at all.

Karl Rove's Shit Storm

by emptywheel

We now know something we've long suspected. Briber extraordinaire, Jack Abramoff, spent a fair amount of time with Karl Rove.

The report finds 450 contacts with White House officials, including nine with the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

(And this doesn't include the times Rove met Abramoff on a street somewhere, as James Moore has reported Rove did.)

I'd like to connect that news with another of yesterday's big stories, the news that the Police Academy Parsons built in Iraq has shit raining from the ceiling.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

They're related, you see, because Parsons also had extraordinary access to Karl Rove.

Osama (R-Pakistani Border) Wins

By Meteor Blades

It is said that Osama bin Laden was surprised but gleeful upon learning that his hand-picked hijackers had done more than expected and toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center. But the devastation of that attack five years ago caused minuscule damage compared with the dirty bomb that the Senate and House have exploded in our midst this week. The rule of law is contaminated. In the clash of civilizations, civilization took another hit.

If al Qaeda held five seats in the U.S. Senate, does anyone doubt that there would be five more ayes today to approve the Dungeons and Rendition Act? It wasn’t, however, al Qaeda that voted for torture and against habeas corpus. This was the act of men and women who swore an oath to the Constitution they have now chosen to eviscerate. Not all at once, mind you, rather death by a thousand cuts.

About an hour ago, I got off the phone with my stepson. He confirmed for me what my wife and I have known was coming for months. He has chosen after five years in America to move to England. His mother, who didn’t see or talk to him or his sister for 15 years because their father had kidnapped them to Libya, is obviously much saddened by this decision. That sadness pales beside her rage.

When he told me he had been watching C-Span yesterday and today, I knew I was fighting a losing battle because he hadn't even waited for the final vote. Still, I tried my best to persuade him to, at least, delay his decision, remain in school the rest of the term. We can change things, I said. We can turn this around. I concede that I wasn’t all that convincing even to myself.

Bob Woodward: Bush Misleads On Iraq

by DemFromCT

Now here's a show you don't want to miss, and thanks to readers who pointed to it. Mr. Washington spills the beans:

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year.

In Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissenger is among those advising Mr. Bush.

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward.

Good old Henry the K, the last person standing still fighting Vietnam. The picture certainly is more complete with him around. I feel soo much better now.

Congress Set To Authorize "Disappearing" People

By Mimikatz

By now the Senate may have passed the detainee bill.  Most of the focus of the bill has been on interrogation techniques, but the really insidious thing is that Congress is poised to give the President to power to "disappear" people, the hallmark of the most heinous regimes of the recent past.  We have now come full circle, because the first post I ever wrote for The Next Hurrah, a little over a year ago,  was on  bearing witness and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. 

How is this so?  As both the NY Times and Glenn Greenwald point out, the ability of the President to define anyone, including US citizens who have not left US soil, as "enemy combatants" on the basis that they had somehow supported terrorists, even if they had not in any way participated in hostilities against the US, coupled with the abolition of habeas corpus for those so detained, creates this result.  Throwing someone in a dungeon with no opportunity for judicial review and no way for anyone to find out what has happened is precisely what is meant by "disappearing" people. 

Greenwald explains:

As Ackerman put it: "The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights." Similarly, Lederman explains: "this [subsection (ii) of the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant'] means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all."

This last point means that even if there were a habeas corpus right inserted back into the legislation (which is unlikely at this point anyway), it wouldn't matter much, if at all, because the law would authorize your detention simply based on the DoD's decree that you are an enemy combatant, regardless of whether it was accurate. This is basically the legalization of the Jose Padilla treatment -- empowering the President to throw people into black holes with little or no recourse, based solely on his say-so.

This is a terrible, terrible, and unnecesssary precedent.  We didn't need to do this in the Cold War even though the Soviets had the power to annihilate us.  We didn't need to do this in WWII, even though we faced massed armies in the millions on the battlefield, plus navies and bombers.  We need to do this now, when we face a small but determined group of extreme fanatics, only because we are led by power-hungry, delusional people who see this as a way to maintain their hold on power.  But so-called "leaders" who would stampede Congress into passing such an abomination in order to gain an advantage in the mid-term elections surely would not stop at using these measures against their enemies if they faced even greater threats to their powers.  It will start small, against the powerless.  But these provisions will be used, make no mistake about it.  People will disappear in the United States of America, and some of them will be US citizens.  We all need to be extremely vigilant from now on.  One day we too may be called on to bear witness on behalf of the disappeared.