This product contains 5% journalism

Media criticism is something I want to do more of. And now that I'm taking a journalism class, I can use my blog posts to double as homework in a stunning violation of ethics.

Our media is often guilty of pure stenography. Rather than providing readers with relevant facts or background information our "journalists" perform jobs that will soon be relegated to robots, writing as though they were transcribing videotape. And when then do stray from a rote just-the-immediate-facts approach it is more often to inject inanity and personal bias than to inform the reader.

The McClatchy take on Bush's UN address: "Bush astounds activists, supports human rights"

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the president called for renewed efforts to enforce the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a striking point of emphasis for a leader who's widely accused of violating human rights in waging war against terrorism.

Now the New York Times coverage of the same: "Bush, at U.N., Announces Stricter Burmese Sanctions"

Mr. Bush referred repeatedly to the declaration, citing its first article, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” as well as the 23rd, 25th and 26th articles, which call for access to employment, health care and education.

The declaration, a nonbinding resolution that was negotiated in 1948, calls on countries to protect a wide array of rights, including freedom of speech, assembly and religion, while prohibiting slavery, torture and arbitrary detention.

McClatchy chose to compare what Bush said to his previous actions, while the NYT played the part of credulous observer bereft of independent thought. Perhaps that is merely a difference in journalistic styles, or then again, perhaps not:

He said that there were no homosexuals in Iran — not one — and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired those and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University yesterday, providing some ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power.

These are the first two paragraphs of the Times' coverage of Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University. Here the Times abandons the blank recitation approach, instead injecting the opinions of the piece writer. Later Ahmadinejad is accused of a "dodge" (rather than a "response") and his visit to New York is described as "dramatic theater".

Let's directly compare the Time's coverage of Bush and Ahmadinejad speaking to the UN:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, said Tuesday that he considered the dispute over his country’s nuclear program “closed” and that Iran would disregard the resolutions of the Security Council, which he said was dominated by “arrogant powers.”

In a rambling and defiant 40-minute speech to the opening session of the General Assembly, he said Iran would from now on consider the nuclear issue not a “political” one for the Security Council, but a “technical” one to be decided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

Once again the Time's piece contains an immediate value judgement by the author, that his speech was "rambling" and "defiant." Note that Bush's speech was not described as "poorly enunciated" or "hypocritical."

These small darts of negative opinion are featured prominently in the Time's coverage of Ahmadinejad, immediately biasing the reader. Thank God the NYT has the "courage" to attack a man widely portrayed as the next Hitler while refusing to issue any judgements about our own country and President.

Had the Times described Bush's speech to the UN as "rambling", "nonsensical", "hypocritical" or "in willful disregard to his own conduct and policies" they would be taken to task, hoisted up as examples as what is wrong with our media. But describing Ahmadinejad as "rambling", "bewildering", "defiant" (as opposed to, say, "brave") and claiming that his remarks provided "ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak"? That of course is perfectly acceptable because it exactly parrots the views of Washington insiders and our administration.

Surely Steven Lee Myers, who wrote covering Bush's speech to the UN, is aware of our own human-rights violations. When he wrote that Bush cited the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" it must have occurred to him that the US may itself be violating it. (We violate numerous articles) He cannot be unaware that, as he reports of Bush's complaints with arbitrary detention, that arbitrary detention is a US policy Bush champions.

Journalists who cover specific topics for a living have a much broader understanding of them than casual readers and have a responsibility to convey that knowledge through their writing. Refusing to provide context or address obvious questions is an abdication of that responsibility. Reporting what people say while ignoring their actions, actions the journalists themselves are well-aware of, is a service only to those who speak loudest and most often.

According to the NYT that Bush spoke in favor of human rights is news; that he didn't mean it, which is not merely a matter of opinion but is evidenced by his own words and actions, is not.

Here is how the Time's reported Ahmadinejad's complaints against the US:

Without mentioning the United States by name, Mr. Ahmadinejad used his speech to carry out a full-scale assault on the country as power-mad and godless. He said its leaders “openly abandon morality” and act with “lewdness, selfishness, enmity and imposition in place of justice, love, affection and honesty.”

“Certain powers,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to Washington, were “setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations, intercepting private mail.”

Note again the immediately biasing language, that Ahmadinejad launched a "full scale assault" (a word conveying violence) on the US, calling us "power-mad and godless" -- which is not an actual quote from Ahmadinejad. Let's re-write the above in a way that is unbiased, factually accurate and informative:

Without mentioning the United States by name, Mr. Ahmadinejad used his speech to carry out an accurate attack on the US' numerous human-rights abuses.

“Certain powers,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to Washington, were “setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations, intercepting private mail.”

Ahmadinejad said the US runs secret prisons and abducts people, but he didn't merely say it -- the NYT has confirmed it with its own investigations. The original NYT version gives the reader no way to evaluate the veracity of the statements when the NYT knows full well that the statements are accurate.

Read more!

Hypothetical questions

What would you do if Tim Russert asked you some incredibly stupid questions? (Purely as a hypothetical, of course.)

Hypothetical questions make sense when the scenarios posed are realistic. In the Democratic debate tonight Russert posed the following:

Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is.

How do we "know" beyond all doubt that the person is a terrorist? How do we "know" a bomb is about to go off? How do we "know" that they know -- and that they will tell us accurately?

We "knew" that Khalid El-Masri was a terrorist -- until it turned out he had the bad fortune to possess a suspicious-sounding name. (For which he was kidnapped, tortured, then finally released without charge or apology) We "knew" that Jose Padilla was a dirty bomber and we tortured him to find out the nefarious details of his plot -- only to discover that he was not a dirty bomber at all.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. -- Dick Cheney August 26, 2002

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. -- Colin Powell February 5, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. -- George Bush March 18, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. --Gen. Tommy Franks March 22, 2003

We know where they [WMDs] are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. --Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

That's a lot of "we know" and "no doubt" claims that turned out to be totally false.

If I know that torturing a suspected terrorist will reveal the details of an imminent bomb threat then instead of torturing I'll just use my Lasso of Truth to find out the details then race to the scene in my Invisible Jet.

The rest of you should consider the fact that if you can be wrong about who is a terrorist or where bombs are then...you can be wrong about who is a terrorist or where bombs are. The premise of the question is invalid; our government has proven that what it claims to "know" is only marginally related to actual truth.

Read more!

What is your favorite Bible verse?

Posed by Russert in the Democratic debate.

Here's mine: no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.

Whatever I was originally going to write about tonight, I can't even remember it. What an outrageously inappropriate question to ask. The questions assumes that all the candidates are religious, that questions on religion are appropriate, and that the Christian religion is the only religion worth asking about. It enforces the expectation that anyone even running for office is Christian.

It doesn't matter if all the candidates actually are Christian, the entire premise of the question is inane. It would be one thing to ask "all of you have professed to being Christians -- how do you view other religions such as Islam and how will you deal with the leaders of Islamic nations?" At least that has some political point and is not a question solely for the benefit of the Christians in the audience.

The question he posed is simultaneously a softball of no value and an incredible insult to what public office is supposed to be about. If the candidates want to bring up religious beliefs on their own that is one thing, but for a moderator to pose that as if it is a very important and relevant question is crazy.

Why not just turn around and spit on every Jew, Muslim and atheist in the audience? Especially when we are currently saddled with a delusional true-believer who can justify torture, detainment and war with God's will.

Now Chris Matthews is on TV saying that it is "interesting" that some candidates could not quote exact verses. "Interesting" how exactly Chris? Are they somehow defective, lesser candidates because they don't attend weekly Bible study?

The arrogance of that question is astounding. Again, it assumes that the candidates should know the Bible well enough to quote it, as if there is something wrong with them if they can't. Asking questions aimed at testing which candidates are most devoted to Christianity is entirely counter to the no-religious-test spirit of the Constitution.

Hitler on the Brain

Regular updates begin again. Huzzah!

Kids: What's wrong with this picture?

Analogies: they aren't for the painfully stupid. Hitler was directly responsible for the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad was...related to 9/11 in what way exactly? First it was Osama Bin-Laden, then Saddam Hussein, and now most recently Ahmadinejad (who was not even President of Iran at the time) who was somehow intimately involved with the 9/11 attacks in the eyes of conservatives. Reality for them is an inconvenience. Ahmadinejad is Hitler, just as Saddam was, just as whoever is next on the list will be.

According to Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, Ahmadinejad "exhibit[s] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Those signs apparently include not being in charge of Iran's armed forces, not having the ability to declare war, and not even being the most powerful man in his own government. There is nothing dictatorial about Ahmadinejad, and it factually accurate to say that President Bush is much closer to being a dictator than Ahmadinejad is.

Conservatives love their Hitler comparisons. Every Big Bad is Hitler and every liberal is Chamberlain. Yet in US politics conservatives play the role of Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who issuedthe Reichstag Fire Decree:

Ordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat

Auf Grund des Artikels 48 Abs. 2 der Reichsverfassung wird zur Abwehr kommunistischer staatsgefährdender Gewaltakte folgendes verordnet:

§ 1. Die Artikel 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 der Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs werden bis auf weiteres außer Kraft gesetzt. Es sind daher Beschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit, des Rechts der freien Meinungsäußerung, einschließlich der Pressefreiheit, des Vereins- und Versammlungsrechts, Eingriffe in das Brief-, Post-, Telegraphen- und Fernsprechgeheimnis, Anordnungen von Haussuchungen und von Beschlagnahmen sowie Beschränkungen des Eigentums auch außerhalb der sonst hierfür bestimmten gesetzlichen Grenzen zulässig.

Loko familiar? Conservative policies read so much better in the original German, but for those of you not German-inclined a translation:

Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State

On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:

§ 1. Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Look familiar now? I handily bolded the parts currently applicable in the US -- nearly all of it.

The incontrovertible fact is that the Reichstag Fire Decree is remarkably similar to current US policies in both motivation and substance. Ahmadinejad-to-Hitler analogies are nonsensical past anything beyond "they are both bad people" -- but it's easy to draw direct, accurate comparisons between pre-WW2 German policy and our own. Our Big Bad is terrorism, not communism, but the rest remains largely the same.

I'll belabor the point a little and make those comparisons explicit:

1. rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus] - I've covered this here. Habeas Corpus, despite being ensured in the Constitution, is a right we no longer enjoy.
2. the freedom to organize and assemble - The continuing expansion of the oxymoronic "free speech zones" are an illustration of this, as is the Presidential Advance Manual that instructs event organizers on a variety of ways to suppress the right to assemble.
3. the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches - The PATRIOT and Protect America Act (The FISA "fixes") largely obliterate these, another example of rights specifically granted in the Constitution but no longer functional.
4. orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property - According to a recent executive order various members of the executive branch can freeze the assets of those who may be planning to impede progress in Iraq, directly or indirectly.

That executive order is a good primer on how our government works. Unlike the Germans we don't explicitly suspend articles in our Constitution -- instead we ignore them:

For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Translation: pesky Constitutional rights are getting in the way of my ability to (supposedly) fight the Big Bad, so I'll ignore them. In the US these days Constitutional rights, like the rest of our laws, are mere guidelines to be discarded as needed.

Addendum:
Hitler comparisons tend to lose meaning when they are employed on a constant basis without any rationale other than "ooh scary!"

Updates begin again on Monday

The trip that would not end is finally ending. While I've been occupied a lot has happened; a lot of what any reasonable person has grown to expect. The "Petraeus Report" said and meant nothing. Mike McConnell fibbed to Congress in support of warrantless wiretapping. Democrats did their best to play wallflowers. The Bush Administration abuses powers it doesn't have -- the Democrats don't bother to use powers (like the fillibuster) they do have.

About the lack of updates

As mentioned earlier I'm travelling for work. Regular updates will resume when I get back, hopefully in a week or so.

Quick update

Apologies if this is poorly written, typing on a laptop keyboard is hard.

By way of Raw Story:

Sometime over the weekend, White House computer technicians removed from government Web sites any references to the Office of Administration or its previous compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests.

Luckily, thanks to amazing computer technology we can compare the before and after. The "after" has a familiar disclaimer at the top about a lack of independence and the Office of Administration has shifted into the list of offices that do not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

This raises a couple of obvious questions: If the Office of Administration used to respond to FOIA requests and now does not, does that mean that the office itself has somehow changed? Did it used to have more independence than it does now? (Answers: no and no) What prevents other offices from becoming immune to FOIA requests at the whim of the President? (Answer: nothing)

The Bush presidency clearly believes that no executive offices possess independence. The same argument that applies to the Justice Department and the Office of Administration applies equally well to every member of the executive branch.

"Restoring" habeas corpus

Restoring habeas corpus is a popular topic among civil libertarians. The conventional wisdom is that the Military Commissions Act suspended the right of habeas corpus for those designated "enemy combatants." The reality is that the right to habeas corpus still exists; it is outside of the power of Congress, the President or the Court to suspend it. (Except in cases of rebellion or invasion)

Chris Dodd gets it. On his site www.restore-habeas.org he has proposes the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007." It sounds silly -- the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land;, no law passed by Congress can contravene. His title exactly captures the absurdity at the heart of habeas corpus debates: you have the right to habeas corpus, a right that derives directly from the Constitution. "Restoring habeas corpus" makes exactly as much sense as "following the Constitution."

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states the following: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Any law or executive order that suspends habeas corpus (outside of rebellion or invasion) is meaningless, as meaningless as a law declaring the President the King of America. (Which is also expressly forbidden in Article I, Section 9.) The power of any branch of government to suspend habeas corpus outside narrowly defined lines is imagined.

Your rights still exist, but two branches of government have chosen to ignore them. (And the third, the Court, cannot involve itself at will) If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it it still makes a sound -- those are the laws of physics. If the Constitution grants you a right you have it no matter what Congress and the President pretend -- those are the laws of the United States.

The discussion of restoration is evidence of how sadly broken our government is, a government that refuses to follow the Constitution itself. The executive branch refuses to enforce the law and Congress provides cover by passing new "laws" that are patently illegal and meaningless. The debate on the right to habeas corpus is merely a debate on whether or not we should follow the Constitution; the answer in government is a resounding "no."

Addendum:
From a Washington Post article "New Book Details Cheney Lawyer's Efforts to Expand Executive Power":

David S. Addington, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, viewed both U.S. lawmakers and overseas allies with "hostility" and repeatedly opposed efforts by other administration lawyers to soften counterterrorism policies or seek outside support, according to Jack L. Goldsmith, who frequently clashed with Addington while serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004.

"We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said at one point, according to Goldsmith.

The quote above perfectly illustrates the primary theme of the Bush Presidency: expansion of executive power without regard for the law. What matters is not if something is legal or proper, but only if it can be gotten away with.

Update schedule

I'll be out of town on business for a couple of weeks. Depending on how busy I am the posting schedule may dramatically change in one direction or the other.

Amnesty for law breakers.

Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms

The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House's controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
[...]
Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11.

The only purpose of this proposed legislation is amnesty for lawbreakers; if the presidential orders were legal the defendants will be found not guilty. We don't need immunity for people who didn't rob banks or didn't steal cars or didn't commit murder. Those people are already immune from guilty verdicts by virtue of not having committed an offense. The only possible parsing of the proposed legislation is that the telecom companies in question are guilty -- otherwise immunity is extraneous.

If the presidential orders were legal the telecoms and the Bush Administration should argue that in court -- something they have steadfastly refused to do by hiding behind states secrets privileges to avoid trial altogether. By now this should be a familiar tactic: make "legal" arguments everywhere but in a court of law, the one place where legal arguments are officially judged on their merits.

Bush Administration backers claim that the telecoms were simply following orders -- but following orders is not an excuse for illegal behavior. Neither is ignorance of the law, which is not a defense for average citizens let alone for corporations that employ armies of lawyers. If you take the Bush Administration claims at face value, that the telecoms are blameless because they merely followed orders, then the blame shifts (more) onto those issuing the orders. Yet the Bush Administration claims that those issuing the orders are guiltless as well.

Warrantless spying on US citizens is clearly illegal under the law, something Qwest lawyers understood:

Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said yesterday.

In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters. [em. added]

Qwest did not break the law; other telecoms such as AT&T potentially did. The courts should determine guilt -- that is the purpose of the court system. Instead we are asked to accept the fact that while law-breaking occurred nobody is guilty. Not the people who issued illegal orders and not the people who followed them. Somehow, though we know exactly what transpired and who the participants were, the lawbreaking in un-attributable to anyone.

The subtext of the Bush Administration argument is a simple one: the law doesn't matter. Laws are merely inconveniences that get in the way of fighting evil and should be discarded at will. We may have issued illegal orders and AT&T may have followed them but we did it to protect you, or so we claim, so you should be grateful.

If the government can be trusted to work in the best interests of the people at all times then why bother having laws restricting government power in the first place? Of course we all know the answer: power corrupts. The Bush Administration is tacitly arguing that we should throw out this knowledge, the knowledge of our own history, and simply trust the government with unlimited power to use as it sees fit.

The meaning of "progress"

The Washington Post reports that a leaked GAO draft indicates that only 3 of the 18 Iraq benchmarks have been met. Strange considering that just a few weeks ago the White House reported that "satisfactory progress" had been made on 8. You might think that "satisfactory" should be read as "will reach stated goal by time specified" -- but you'd be wrong. Like most claims of the progress in Iraq, the progress reported by the White House was not progress at all.

In his withering report "Benchmarks In Iraq: The True Status", issued soon after the White House progress claims, Anthony Cordesman wrote:

It is clear, however, that the Iraqi government has not really met the Bush administration’s benchmarks in any major area. Seen from a more nuanced perspective, actual progress as has been more limited and had often had tenuous meaning unless it can eventually be shown that a faltering legislative start will be put into practice over the months and years to come in ways that Iraq’s major factions will accept.

We've been hearing about progress in Iraq for years. Here's a good one from 2003: "WMD hunters tout progress in Iraq". Here's one about the incredible progress we made in Mosul in 2005 -- and then again in 2007.

Iraq's northern city Mosul, in Ninewa province, is a sprawling tangle of historic neighborhoods that straddle the Tigris river. With a mixed population of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minority groups, Iraq's third largest city is typical of many Iraqi towns that have see-sawed between periods of violence and relative calm since the U.S.-led invasion.

Is riding on a see-saw progress? It is if you describe it as "going up. Now going up again. And again, going up..."

Progress in Iraq comes in many forms:

1. Purely anecdotal progress that is not in any way measurable.
2. "Localized progress" that is not reflective of any larger trends.
3. Progress that occurs immediately following a regression. One step back, one step forward again.
4. Progress that is offset by equal regression in some other area.

At any given time in Iraq there is progress happening somewhere. Journalists go on a military-guided tour of Iraq and report that some dangerous areas are safer; progress even though formerly safer areas are more dangerous. A drop in civilian casualties is evidence of progress even as military casualties rise -- or vice-versa. Military security increases while the political situation regresses due to those security measures -- that's progress as well.

The 18 benchmarks represent an objective way of measuring total progress by defining in advance what progress looks like. Instead of retroactively picking out fleeting examples -- yesterday a swimming pool cleaned, the day before a number of insurgents killed -- the benchmarks establish goals and measures in advance. The President said in January:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

Many of these benchmarks are easy to measure. De-Baathification laws have not been passed. Oil-sharing legislation has not been passed. The Bush Administration has touted as good news that Iraqi leaders have pledged to pass these laws -- just as they have pledged in the past without result. (It should be noted that merely passing the legislation is meaningless if it can't be enforced by a government with no power outside of Baghdad.)

Predictably the Administration is distancing itself from the benchmarks and embracing empty claims of "progress" and cherry-picked examples. Tony Snow at a press briefing:

Again, I would -- if you take a look at what Congress has mandated for this report, it says, have you met these? Have you met them in full? Well, the answer is, you're going to find in a lot of cases, of course they haven't met them. Now, the real question is, do you have progress in the right direction?
[...]
The real question that people have is, what's going on Iraq? Are we making progress? Militarily, is the surge having an impact? The answer is yes. There's no question about it. What you've had is the number of ethnic and religious sectarian killings down by 75 percent. You have a doubling of weapons cache seizures. You have a reduction in bombing violence, in bombing killings of U.S. and coalition forces. There have been a number of -- you have kills and captures way up when it comes to those who have been fighting against the government.

Weapons cache seizures. Bombing violence. Kills and captures. These are the progress metrics of today. When weapons cache seizures decline that metric will be replaced with a more convenient one. Perhaps tomorrow seizures will be down but electricity availability will be up, and that will be touted as the latest evidence of progress.

For years we've let the Bush Administration get away with refusing to define the exact end goal or what the path to it looks like. Without an ideal path, let alone a realistic one, progress is impossible to measure. If you don't know where you're going or how your getting there "are we getting closer?" is a meaningless question.

The President said "I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended." Nothing could be further from the truth. Our commitment is by definition open-ended: no endpoint has ever been articulated. Under the Bush Administration we're staying as long as it takes -- whatever "it" is, something that has never been elucidated.

Measurable benchmarks only matter when a failure to meet them is actionable, and this Congress does not have the political will to take action. There will be some debate over how many are met, but the reality is that meeting all eighteen or none makes no difference; the report itself is busy work, as is the much-heralded "Petraeus report." Nobody familiar with Bush or Congress can expect these reports to alter our policies in the slightest, regardless of content. There is no benchmark or Petraeus report even conceivable that would lend Congress the political fortitude to press action through legislation. Bush claims that our commitment to Iraq is not open-ended when clearly it is. In the same way, for all their protestations, the Congress' commitment to Bush's war is equally open-ended. The reports of progress and the promise of tomorrow will continue, as they have continuously since the invasion began.

More brutality in Iraq redux

Here is a video of the Daily Show interview described in this previous post.

Once again the sentiments expressed here, by a real expert, almost entirely contradict the sentiments of the right-wing punditocracy's self-declared experts. For them "winning hearts and minds" is an empty slogan that shouldn't obstruct a good boot to the throat. One example:

Less than two weeks after chickenhawk Dennis Miller complained on Hannity & Colmes that what’s wrong in Iraq is we’re not brutal enough to the insurgents, armchair warrior Michael Reagan, substituting for Sean Hannity, announced last night (12/20/06) that the US is too worried about “upsetting people” and should take “the gloves off of our military, let them go in and win the war the way they need to win the war.” Reagan didn’t explain what that meant or how it should be done but it’s likely he didn’t know, himself. He never served in the military. Those who have, like General John P. Abizaid and Colin Powell, advocate no such thing.

Worrying about "upsetting people" is precisely our new counter-insurgency strategy, the strategy we are being told is working.

Alberto Gonzales did a great job

From a WSJ.com Feature Article defending Gonzales (all emphasis added):

With so little time left in his term, Mr. Bush needs above all an AG willing to explain and defend his policies on the vital and related areas of Presidential power and the war on terror. Mr. Gonzales was mostly a stalwart on the latter, going back to his years as White House Counsel. More recently, he has argued inside the Administration for the usefulness of Guantanamo against those at State and Defense who want to close it for reasons of public diplomacy. Mr. Gonzales understands that these detainees have to be kept somewhere, and that the criminal justice system is not up to the job of trying them.

His successor should be someone willing to engage critics on the Gitmo battle, as well as on fights over military tribunals and wiretaps of foreign terrorists. He should also be someone who understands that even a weakened President needs to act as if he's strong. That is, even a "lame duck" President still retains his powers under the Constitution and will be more effective if he's willing to use them.

Remarkable in the above is how little it has to do with the duties of the Attorney General. The text above and the piece as a whole betrays just how political the Bush Administration appointments are -- job qualifications and performance are literally not considerations. Conspicuously missing is any mention of giving sound legal advice and acting in accordance with the law other than the vague reference to the "powers under the Constitution", a Bush Administration favorite justification for any and all executive actions including those expressly illegal and unconstitutional.

It sadly does not go without saying that the role of the Attorney General is not to defend the President and his policies. It certainly isn't to claim that US laws, FISA and criminal justice-related, are "not up to the job" and should therefore be violated.

Gonzales wrote blank checks to the administration that he knew were invalid; most of his "legal" arguments were presented in briefs and press releases but tellingly not in court. The legal theories he used to justify administration actions were pure public relations fodder. He argued that the right to Habeas Corpus did not exist, but not in a legal setting, backing away from a definitive showdown in court that would have almost certainly ruled against that position. He argued that the President had the right to violate FISA laws, but when push came to shove (read: a Democratic Congress was elected) the TSP program was altered and submitted to the FISA court.

As a long-time Bush defender he had what appeared to be a sharp conflict of interest but there was no conflict -- his interest was solely in hunting everywhere for ways to justify Bush policies, including in John Ashcroft's hospital bed. In the minds of many Bush supporters that is the goal of the Attorney General, and more generally of all appointees to all positions. The distinction between political and non-political appointees is meaningless to them. All appointees are merely "emanations of a president's will" with "no substantial authority independent of President Bush."

The WSJ claims that he was "dragged through the mud for political reasons" and that he was not a "hyper-partisan political actor." Odd given that their qualifications for a good Attorney General and their praise for Gonzales are all overtly political in nature. Alberto Gonzales did a great job -- at defending the President. That isn't the job he was supposed to do, but that's the job the WSJ opinion page wanted him to do, and they are hardly alone on that. Just as Libby did a heckuva job by covering for the exposure of a CIA operative and front organization, as Michael Brown did heading FEMA while ignoring Katrina problems. The question is not "did he do a good job" but "what job did he even do?"

That some people think the Attorney General should operate as a political flack is hardly surprising. What is surprising is how openly they trumpet these views, views that are antithetical to a working government with functional checks and balances. The state of our discourse is such that writing about how "the rule of law must yield to the need for [ill-defined] energy" is perfectly acceptable. Condoning the torture of children by crushing their testicles is morally and legally valid. The window of discussion is moved only when such opinions are made public and eventually normalized. Outing a CIA operative is merely political gamesmanship; an Attorney General that subverts the law is not only proper but necessary in the battle against evil. Regardless of the merit of these positions their constant crowing deafens us to serious abuses.

That Gonzales eventually resigned is no great win for the rule of law. What happens next is critical - we will get someone who does a great job, or someone who does a great job at the job? The job defined not by the WSJ opinion writers but by the official role of the Attorney General to work in service of law and office.

Charles Krauthammer in his own words

I'm going to present these nearly commentary-free. They stand by themselves, but I'll add some thoughts at the end. These are all taken from the Townhall.com archives. All emphasis is added. I've focused on the Iraq War - his opinions on pardons, baseball, Israel, etc are equally inane.

"No to nation building" in 2001

Because the American military is the world's premier fighting force, and ought to husband its resources for just that. Anybody can peacekeep; no one can do what we did in Afghanistan. Many nations can do police work; only we can drop thousand-pound bombs with the precision of a medieval archer. Peacekeeping is a job for others.
[...]
It is common sense. Americans make lousy peacekeepers--not because they are not great soldiers, but precisely because they are.
No to American peacekeepers. We fight the wars. Our friends should patrol the peace.

"Perspective on the duration of war" in 2003

With American troops at the gates of Baghdad, the plan is looking pretty good now.
[...]
The fact that but a single element was miscalibrated (without significant damage to the overall campaign) is, on the contrary, testimony to a plan of remarkable prescience.

Even more impressive was the speed of the military's adaptation to the new circumstances.

"The critics are wrong again" in 2003

Before the Iraq war even began, the critics were predicting that Iraq was going to be the Bay of Pigs (plus ``Desert One, Beirut and Somalia,'' said the ever-hyperbolic Chris Matthews). A week into the war, we were told Iraq was Vietnam. Now after the war, they're telling us that Iraq is Iran--that Iraq's Shiite majority will turn it into another intolerant Islamic republic.

The critics were wrong every time. They are wrong again.

"Rebuilding Iraq" in 2003

In Iraq, it was Saddam who turned the place to rubble. By any historic standard, the amount of destruction caused by the coalition was small. Most of the damage was inflicted upon the symbols, barracks, ministries and communication organs of the Baathist regime. The infrastructure--roads, bridges, dams, sewage systems, schools, mosques and hospitals--was barely touched.

And as for the people, one of the more unnoticed facts of this war was the absence of refugees--the Iraqi people's silent homage to their trust in the stated allied purpose of coming to liberate and not destroy.

"Chasing after Saddam's weapons" in 2003

The inability to find the weapons is indeed troubling, but only because it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that our inability to thus far find the WMDs proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply false.

"Everyone's an expert" in 2003

On the reconstruction of Iraq, everybody is a genius. Every pundit, every ex-official and, of course, every Democrat knows exactly how it should have been done.
[...]
Losing the peace? No matter what anyone says now, that question will only be answered at the endpoint. If in a year or two we are able to leave behind a stable, friendly government, we will have succeeded. If not, we will have failed. And all the geniuses will be vindicated.

There are an estimated 2 million refugees from Iraq and another 2 million internally displaced people -- out of a total population of about 25 million. Households lack electricity and water; years into the occupation infrastructure is still a disaster and a humanitarian crisis is at hand. A "year or two" has long since passed without meaningful political progress. Saddam did not have WMDs. Our war strategy was not one of "remarkable prescience" and Bush is now invoking Vietnam comparisons himself. Americans are being used a peacekeepers; according to Krauthammer the war ended in 2003. The Iraqi government is openly flirting with Iran.

This genius is vindicated. The critics were right; Krauthammer and his serious expert friends were wrong, as usual.

"Serious voices" call for regime change -- again

From a recent Charles Krauthammer op-ed:

We should have given up on Nouri al-Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

The brazenness of the "serious voices" of Iraqi "experts" is truly astonishing. After years of crowing about establishing democracy in Iraq as a starting point for broad transformation in the Middle East those same voices are now explicitly calling for regime change again -- the regime in question this time a democratically elected one. Neoconservative pundits have never been able to describe how we could achieve the dual goals of democracy in Iraq and a working pro-US Iraqi government; and now that those goals conflict they are happy to cast off the former entirely.

These "serious voices" are not only undermining the Maliki government, they are undermining Iraqi governance as a whole. They quite clearly believe that the US is ultimately calling the shots, and that the democracy in Iraq is only something we'll put up with when the "right" person who suits are interests is elected. When former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who was voted out of office, wanted his job back he hired well-connected Washington lobbyists to influence US policy rather than campaigning in Iraq itself. He too evidently believes the US is the ultimate decision maker.

One thing the pro-war crowd could never be accused of is consistency of argument; the only consistent viewpoint is that more force is always the solution. Anything else is merely extraneous detail. It is impossible to overstate how often war proponents used democracy in Iraq as a primary justification for war, increasingly the primary justification. Yet now they openly grumble that democracy may be too ambitious; that those pesky Iraqis elected the wrong people and more US meddling is called for.

Like O'Hanlon, Krauthammer consistently plays a game defined to exclude any genuinely opposing viewpoints from the conversation entirely. The central premises are unquestionable; the only debate allowed exists at the margins. Despite the fact that Krauthammer and others like him have been wrong about virtually everything they are still the serious experts -- or so they protest repeatedly.

But the serious voices will prevail. When the Democratic presidential front-runner concedes that the surge "is working" (albeit very late) against the insurgency, and when Petraeus himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevitable a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms of the Iraq debate become narrow and the policy question simple: What do we do right now -- continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdrawal?

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.
[...]
Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally trying to change the central government is the most rational choice because the only available alternative is defeat -- a defeat that is not at all inevitable and that would be both catastrophic and self-inflicted.

Krauthammer and O'Hanlon clearly read the same playbook. That the surge is working is unquestionable fact -- despite the fact that the surge strategy is to empower local governments and militias at the expense of the central government and official Iraqi forces, something O'Hanlon freely admits to. It's dreadfully unserious to point out that the surge, rather than creating space for political considerations, is making them impossible and meaningless. Similarly staying the course is the only "rational" choice; just as invading Iraq was the only rational choice at that time, according to these terribly serious experts.

From a Krauthammer Foreign Policy Research Institute speech:

That’s why the entire enterprise of changing the culture of the Arab world was undertaken. It was, as I and others had said at the time, a radical idea, an arrogant idea, a risky idea. But it was also the only idea of any coherence and consistency that anyone has advanced on how to change the underlying conditions that had led to 9/11 and ultimately to prevent the kind of conditions that would lead to a second 9/11.

When Ron Paul points to blowback from our own policies as a root cause of animosity towards the US that is unserious and not an "idea of any coherence and consistency." Killing fewer Arabs and meddling less in Arab affairs is likewise off the table, along with diplomacy of any kind. The only serious option, according to Krauthammer, is to wield American power like a hammer.

At every step along the way it is the unserious voices that have proven correct on Iraq. Time after time Krauthammer and his friends are wrong, while the people unworthy of consideration are correct.

We Americans, looking at a situation like the one that has unraveled in Iraq, immediately want to blame ourselves.
[...]
Nonetheless, the root problem is not the United States and not the tactical errors that we have made in Iraq. The root problem is the Iraqis and their own political culture.
[...]
I think that has a lot to do with Iraqi history.
[...]
But the problem, I believe, is Iraq’s particular culture and history. This after all is a country that was raped and ruined for thirty years by a uniquely sadistic and cruel and atomizing totalitarianism. What was left in its wake was a social and political desert, a dearth of the kind of trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance. All that was left to the individual in Iraq was to attach himself to a mosque or clan or militia. That’s why at this earliest stage of democratic development Iraqi national consciousness is as yet too weak and the culture of compromise too underdeveloped to produce effective government enjoying broad allegiance.

Plenty of unserious voices warned of exactly these problems well in advance; their concerns about the history and people of Iraq were ignored. The only rational choice was to invade Iraq -- who could have predicted that our efforts there would go disastrously? Who could have predicted that Shia and Sunni's violence was not "pop sociology" but a likely scenario? Who could have possibly known about the culture and history of Iraq in advance, by say reading a book or using Google? Not our serious experts.

Now these serious voices, having told us for years that democracy in Iraq would transform the Middle East, are coming to realize what the unserious non-experts warned us of: that democracy is not a panacea and that a democratic government may be ineffective and reject the US for Iran; that the country could splinter along tribal lines; that the entire enterprise of reshaping Iraq in our image was pure folly to begin with. Yet even now they are the voices we should be listening to. They told us to invade Iraq and install democracy, now they argue that we should bring down that same democratically elected government. It doesn't have to make sense -- they are the experts, and we should listen to them unquestioningly.