Bush jumped the shark?

WIth the revelation that Bush lied in his State of the Union address, and the fact that the public isn't buying his rationalizations this time, I wonder if this will be seen as the "jump the shark" date for his Administration?



If you're unaware of the facts of the case, here is the requisite background material.



White House 'lied about Saddam threat' (Guardian UK)

A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The claims came as the Bush administration was fighting to shore up its credibility among a series of anonymous government leaks over its distortion of US intelligence to manufacture a case against Saddam.



This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.



Mr Thielmannn said yesterday: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq."



He conceded that part of the problem lay with US intelligence, but added: "Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided."



As Democrats demanded a congressional enquiry, the administration sharply changed tack. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 "in a dramatic new light" after September 11.

A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document � now known to be a crude forgery � that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.



What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax.



Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said Sunday on "Meet the Press."

White House Backs Off Claim on Iraqi Buy:

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House.

Bush Skirts Queries on Iraq Nuclear Allegation

PRETORIA, South Africa, July 9 -- President Bush today brushed aside questions about the accuracy of his claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa, declaring that there was "no doubt" his decision to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein from power was correct.



The president avoided answering questions directly about whether he regretted including the claim and whether he still believed the charge -- that Iraq had sought a form of uranium from Niger -- to be true despite White House aides' acknowledgments this week that the allegation was baseless and should not have been in the speech.



Bush dismissed the matter as "attempts to rewrite history."

I find that last quote hilarious, and classic Bush political jujitsu. Do wrong, then blame those who decry you. History is still being written, Mr. President.



UPDATE: CBS News reports that Bush knew the Niger claim was false, the CIA briefed the White House.

Earlier, in a rare press conference aboard Air Force One, the president's national security adviser said the CIA had vetted the speech.



If CIA Director George Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence in the president's speech, "he did not make them known" to Mr. Bush or his staff, said Condoleezza Rice.

...

But CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that before the State of the Union speech was delivered, CIA officials warned members of the president's National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.



According to sources, White House officials responded that a September dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has�sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."



As long as the statement was attributed to British intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate.

in other words, the White House argues that "factually accurate" depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

methinks they doth protest too much

Demosthenes does what he does best - dissect the coordinated spin-response of the conservative blogsphere. Check out his post for the specifics. Here's hus summary, which is spot-on:

It goes to show one thing, though. It looks like this story does have legs, otherwise there wouldn't be so many desperate and transparent attempts to dismiss its importance and distract from its shocking nature. After all, nobody advocating the target of a story says "nobody cares" unless they're blowing smoke and covering asses. If nobody really cared, Bush's defenders wouldn't need to discuss it.

yanking Bush's chain

The conservatives remind Bush, none too gently, whose lapdog he is:

The news this summer has been rather bleak for conservatives. The Supreme Court first decided to write 'diversity' into the Constitution. A few days later, it issued a ruling on sodomy laws that called into question its willingness to tolerate any state laws based on traditional understandings of sexual morality.

...

And while the Court issued its edicts and the rest of the world adjusted, a huge prescription-drug bill made its way through Congress. That bill will add at least $400 billion to federal spending over the next ten years, and it comes on top of already gargantuan spending increases over the last five years.

...

We have never been under any illusions about the extent of Bush's conservatism. He did not run in 2000 as a small-government conservative, or as someone who relished ideological combat on such issues as racial preferences and immigration. We supported him nonetheless in the hope that he would strengthen our defense posture, appoint originalist judges, liberalize trade, reduce tax rates, reform entitlements, take modest steps toward school choice. Progress on these fronts would be worth backsliding elsewhere. We have been largely impressed with Bush's record on national security, on judicial appointments (although the big test of a Supreme Court vacancy will apparently not occur during this term), and on taxes. On the other issues he has so far been unable to deliver.

. . .

Bush ought to bear down on spending; we suggest that an assault on corporate welfare, followed by a reform of the appropriations process, would be a fine start. Republicans need a strategy for dealing with the judicial usurpation of politics that goes beyond trying to make good appointments to the bench -- a strategy that now has a two-generation track record of nearly unrelieved failure. On gay marriage, a constitutional amendment appears to be necessary to forestall the mischief of state and federal courts. . . .



This is not a bad time for conservatives to declare their independence from the GOP establishment.

This is the kind of re-calibration that should make libertarians like Suman, already uneasy about the conservative strings tying Bush, more amenable to Howard Dean. I hope. Because we need libertarians n board, as well as Greens, if we are going to reclaim the country from the domestic agenda of the Right.



I know there will be areas of disagreement. The real question is, will disagreement drive debate about improving policy under a Dean Administration? i think the answer is yes. With Bush, its ideology, not debate, that drives policy. Thats the foundation stone of my support for Dean over Bush.



And let Iraq burn - if it means America stays free.

the fourth Republic

Billmon has a lengthy response to Nicholas Confessore's landmark piece in the Washington Monthly about the GOP dominance of K-street lobbying. What struck me the most, however, was where he parts ways with Confessore's thesis and introduces the idea that the United States has had three distinguishable forms of its history, and that we may now be entering the fourth. Intriguingly, each of these phases has lasted precisely 72 years:

As Confessore notes, the next election just might determine whether the Republicans can carry their one-party project through to an enduring hegemony:

If the GOP can prevail at the polls in the short term, its nascent political machine could usher in a new era of one-party government in Washington. As Republicans control more and more K Street jobs, they will reap more and more K Street money, which will help them win larger and larger majorities on the Hill. The larger the Republican majority, the less reason K Street has to hire Democratic lobbyists or contribute to the campaigns of Democratic politicians, slowly starving them of the means by which to challenge GOP rule.

If that's true, then the United States may be approaching the end of the third great cycle of its political history. This thought is especially (if morbidly) fascinating to me, because it would mean all three of these cycles have been of almost precisely the same length. Consider:

• From the ratification of the Constitution (1789) to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861): 72 years.



• From the outbreak of the Civil War (1861) to Roosevelt's First Hundred Days (1933): 72 years.



• From the Hundred Days (1933) to the next presidential inauguration (2005): 72 years.

What's so special about these 72-year cycles? Each constitutes a clear and distinct epoch of American constitutional history -- amounting almost to a series of separate "Republics" on the French model. The first two of these epochs ended in a major constitutional overhaul, either through amendment or a radical reinterpretation of the existing text by the Supreme Court:

• First Republic: A loose federation of sovereign states, led by a weak central government controlled by a quasi-aristocracy of Southern planters and Northern lawyers, it died in the Civil War. The post-war constitutional amendments (13 through 15) were the death certificate.



• Second Republic: A unitary state, dedicated to the laissez faire principles of 19th century economic liberalism. It died of the Great Depression. The New Deal legislation, combined with the Supreme Court's new and expansive reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause, was the obituary.



• Third Republic: Our existing, though dying, incarnation of American democracy, which combines the unitary institutions of the Second Republic with a watered-down version of European Social Democracy. It's been fading since the 1970s, and looks increasingly vulnerable to a GOP-led overthrow.

What might a Fourth Republic look like? The creation of an LDP-style political machine can't really be considered a constitutional revolution on par with the Civil War or the New Deal -- although it might, in time, pave the way for such a thing, once the Democrats have declined beyond the point of no return. Just imagine Tom Delay and John Ashcroft with the power to amend the U.S. Constitution.



Canada is starting to sound pretty good, isn't it?



There was a time when I would have said that any GOP hegemony would prove fleeting -- in part because of the demographic changes coming down the pike. (If my post so far has had the emotional effect of a visit with the dementors, then by all means go and read The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. It's as good as chocolate.)



But my biggest and strongest argument against one-party rule would have been that Americans are just too cantankerous and contrary-minded to accept it for long. However, looking at how passive, malleable and disinterested the voters seem to have become, I do have to wonder: Is this national submissiveness entirely due to the creation of a war mentality since 9/11? Or, are Americans on their way to becoming like the Japanese -- perpetually disgusted by their one-party oligarchy, but unwilling to do anything so radical as vote them out of office?



I don't know. But to our triumphant conservative opponents, I'd offer one word of warning: Every political cycle since the ratification of the Constitution has ended with a major expansion of federal power and influence. Given the trends in Washington, I wouldn't be surprised if this one does, too -- albeit with a corporate twist. You may get your hegemony, but you also may not like what you get.

thoughts on Iraq's future

I haven't been blogging much about Bush's imperialist adventurism foreign policy, because the news from Iraq is just too disturbing. The rise of Iran-backed Shi'a fundamentalists. Cancelled local Iraqi elections. Sunni guerilla warfare. Deaths of American soldiers on a daily basis. Rumsfeld's cheery assessments. The growing frustration of the soldiers in the field (and their families at home).



And of course the omnipresent worry about whether there were any WMD to begin with (probably not), where they went if they did (too scary to contemplate), and whether or not the President can be held accountable (probability: negligible).



I have deep pessimism about Iraq. It's clear that Bush does not and never had the ability, let alone the will, to commit to nation-building - we've known that since his debates with Gore in 2000. It's also disturbingly clear that the military Clinton built is overtaxed far worse under Bush than it ever was under Clinton's tenure.



My worst fear is the following scenario, which I reluctantly conclude is also the most likely:

1. Guerilla warfare from sunnis remains constant
2. Shi'a join in armed resistance because they see:
   1. the US canceling local elections, denying them self-rule
   2. the religious Iran-backed mullahs speaking of freedom to worship Islam
   3. growing conservative-media-fueled American public sentiment that they are ungrateful wretched wogs
   and then draw the obvious conclusion that the US is trying to stifle Islam, specifically Shi'a Islam, and wants to install a puppet government, not one that respects Islam and its tradition. The constant aggravation of Ahmad Chalabi serves as final proof.
3. The US is forced out of Iraq within 15 years^[1], after an increasingly Palestinian-Israeli conflict type of hostility becomes ingrained among the populace
4. A radical Islamic government takes power in Iraq, gaining popular support by invoking both Islam and liberation language, with the US cast as oppressor in both roles (see Point 2 above):
   1. purges of Sunni and former Baathists
   2. cooperation between Persian Iran and Arab Iraq, with Iran the true master (analogous to the controlling role that Pakistan played in Afghanistan, but with religion, not tribe, as the glue)
5. The reform movement in Iran is suppressed as well with Iran's new strength
6. Iran completes its nuclear weapons.

Ultimately the long term outcome is that Iran and Iraq will converge on the same repressive rule that dominates Iran today.



Is there any cause for optimism? Iran's youth is growing up. There will be a civil war in Iran within the next 30 years. And that conflict will spill over into Iraq. The conflict may well even bring Saudi Arabia in, given that the Sunni Wahabi radicals will see the strong Shi'a as a severe threat.



I think that freedom must come from within. America was not handed its freedom 227 years ago yesterday from France. We fought with our own sons and paid with our own blood. Iran may well achieve liberty on its own, but Iraq is much further behind. If Iran and Iraq do converge, then eventually Iran's instability of its disaffected youth will also infect Iraq (a good thing). And I think that there will be freedom for the next generation.



But our invasion of Iraq will have delayed it by as much as two decades - and has the potential to cause much suffering on a regional scale. Our hands are stained with blood.



The scenario above is at least as likely, if not more so, than the wild rosy fantasies of the neocons (now proven grossly unwarranted) upon which the Bush Administration crafts its foreign policy. But when the lives of foreign subjects (and I mean that word literally) is at stake, not your own citizens, experimentation by imperial powers is nothing new.



History is the greatest unlearned lesson.



^[1] That may be too generous an estimate. President Bush can not order the withdrawal of forces from Iraq during his Presidency, because doing so would be an admission of error - and would surely lead to either his defeat in re-election 2004 or the defeat of a Republican successor in 2008. If the economy improves, then Bush's re-election is virtually guaranteed, and assume that a Republican will succeed him for two full terms as well (roughly the same length of time as the boom following a recession. That means that there might be a Republican president until at least 2016. The situation in Iraq however will worsen independently of the American economy, so there will indeed be a larger and larger disconnect between domestic rhetoric and news from the field. If Bush's Republican successor is indeed politically deaf, s/he might well see keeping troops in Iraq as necessary to political success (which the altered reality of the conservative base will surely insist on). If there are still troops in Iraq by 2016, a Democrat will win that election and pull them out. So the worst case scenario is sometime after 2016. Of course, it could all change much sooner than that.

The Guardian: US Edition

via Kos, I read with delight that there will soon be an American edition of the UK Guardian! I think it will nicely complement the Washington Monthly as a bulwark of hard-hitting, in depth, insightful analysis and stimulus for true and honest debate. Taken together, these two magazines will be the intellectual foundation for the liberal dialouge of the emerging democratic majority.

integrity

Guess who wrote this, as part of a critique of Ann Coulter's absurdist new book Teason (which explicitly conflates and condemns all liberals and Democrats as traitors to America) :

When somebody as smart and as gutsy as Ann Coulter equivocates over so direct a question � Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? -- you know (and they know) � that something is very wrong with the position they are defending. Equally disturbing was Coulter�s use of the phrase, �functionally treasonable� � as in �[the Democratic Party] has become functionally treasonable.� This is a problematic phrase on several counts. In the first place, �treasonable� is not a word but seems to suggest �capable of treason,� which is different from being actually treasonous. The distinction is important.



But �functionally treasonable� is also disturbingly reminiscent of the old Stalinist term �objectively fascist.� This was how people who swore their loyalty to the cause were condemned (often to death) if they deviated from the party line. Stalinists defined all dissent as �objectively� treacherous. This is not a path that conservatives should follow. When intent and individuality are separated from actions in a political context, we are entering a totalitarian realm where Ann Coulter does not really want to be.



Why is she equivocating about Jack Kennedy anway? Kennedy was not only not a traitor, he was not even a weak anti-Communist, as she claims. He was arguably stronger than Eisenhower or Nixon in prosecuting the Cold War. His politics were that of Ronald Reagan. He was a militant anti-Communist and a military hawk, authorizing the largest defense buildup in peacetime history. What can she mean when she says that Kennedy was �surrounded by bad policymakers� � i.e., policymakers who were presumably liberals and therefore harmed the country and its national security? Kennedy was surrounded by Republican policymakers. His secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury � the three key foreign policy posts � were all Republicans. He launched his administration by declaring that America would pay any price to defend the cause of freedom. He tried to overthrow Castro by force. It�s true that he bungled the invasion but Dwight Eisenhower failed the Hungarians in 1956, while Nixon and Kissinger betrayed the Vietnamese in the infamous truce of 1973. In 1961, Kennedy stood the Russians down in Berlin � risking nuclear war to do so � and a year later he again risked nuclear war to force the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He put 16,000 troops into Vietnam rather than write that country off to the Communists. Why is Ann equivocating on the question of his loyalty and commitment to the anti-Communist cause?

The author is David Horowitz, writing in FrontPage Magazine, which lies between Michael Savage and National Review on the axis of far-right militant conservatism. I found his critique of Coulter's book to be rigorous and authoritive. I find this piece to be a mark of integrity. Horowitz has views and opinions that I personally find outrageous - but they are views, not coldly calculating triangulations of poitical expediency. As a result, his critique (which starts out with an expression of admiration for Coulter as a brilliant satiricist, a perspective of her that I had honestly not considered before and which dramatically affects my evaluation of some of her writings) is all the more definitive on the matter.



What may be disingenious, or (to be charitable) perhaps simply naieve on his part, is the last question (underlined above). I think the answer is obvious, and I'll let another extremely conservative columnist, Tom Bevan in RealCLearPolitics.com, answer:

The entire cable talk show industry formula is out of whack. You can't go around the country searching out the most outrageously loud and obnoxious people, put them on air and order them to generate instant ratings by being loud and obnoxious, and then fire them when they end up being loud and obnoxious.

...

But it's the same pattern with Coulter: conservative "bomb thrower" taps into huge, right-leaning media market and experiences phenomenal success. Bomb thrower gets bolder, Makes bigger, more elaborate bombs and throws them harder than ever at other side. Bombs explode in face.

Bevan's final sentence is one that I absolutely agree with, and which gain strikes me as a mark of integrity: "We need to see and hear less from the Michael Savages and Michael Moores of the world and more from people who are interested in serious, thoughtful debate." Unfortunately, the current "media environment" which he holds to blame for this is almost entirely the result of the conservative dominance of media. And that is why these critiques, coming from within conservatism itself, are so essential, and deserve recognition.



UPDATE: another voice of integrity speaks:

Just because I don't hate Muslims as you do doesn't mean I'm a dupe for Islamism. Just because I'm concerned about the progress of the Iraq war doesn't mean I'm a defeatist. Just because I don't adore President Bush doesn't mean I'm a leftist. Learn to accept nuance. Learn to tolerate gradations of belief.



And above all, learn that this is a site for discussion. If you want to be led by the nose and have the latest half-baked essay thrust at you as epic lit, this ain't the place. I'm not that guy. I don't believe that all creeds are created equal. I do believe in an objective moral code. I do believe in the ultimate victory of the right. I do believe in God, America, and the Dallas Cowboys. That's why I'm not afraid to open the doors to all comers and let them have it out. It's not "moral equivalence." It's confidence. If you can't take it, then I'm sorry you're on my side.

People like Tacitus make heated disagreement fun again.



regular readers will be reminded that I also put John Derbyshire in the same category as these. I've been getting some extremely hyperactive email from avrious super-liberal groups after my newfoundfame in Salon and I think that mentioning my admiration for the Derb - a man of integrity, compassion, and morality - will hopefully insulate me from the onslaught.