Money Talks
I’m republishing the excellent chart on the Abramoff graft flow from the Washington Post. Click on the image to get a zoom, detalied view.
Republicans will shrug all this off with a selective-vision excuse of "a few bad apples." Democrats will say this is all about a GOP Culture of Corruption.
But who will tell the truth? Cancer may be worse than leprosy and Republicans may be mired deeper in Abramoff’s muck than Democrats. But both parties are awash in the corruptive flow of Big Money. Take a gander. And hold your nose.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm
There is no question that both parties are awash in the corruption of Big Money (which is why you should think twice before lampooning grassroots conduits for small Democratic donors to increase their influence via the internet), but to understand this we’ll really have to see who is charged with criminal acts and who isn’t. Just because Abramoff made a donation to a Democrat – or a particular Republican, for that matter – doesn’t mean it’s a violation of campaign laws, or at least knowingly so on the pols end. What’s being investigated, and apparently what Abramoff will be copping to are things that go beyond the standard “culture of campaign finance” that is almost inherently corrupt on it’s own terms, although not necessarily illegal, and the setting up of completely illegal slush funds like the “Family Network” townhouse deal, where some obvious overreaching was going on (with DeLay at the center of it). I would be shocked if a slimeball like Abramoff was so stupid that he didn’t spread some significant campaign funds around and being at least a bit bi-partisan in the process with at least a pro forma legal cover in order to create space for the ultra-sleaze and outright criminal stuff. I think, based on the record and his response, that Byron Dorgan, for one, isn’t going to be found to have violated any laws and that the tribal donations were consistent with a well-established voting record . If you’re looking for saints, keep out of Washington DC, but don’t assume that every donation from one of Abramoff’s clients to a Democrat was on par with the behind-the-scenes slush funds that Abramoff used to grease the GOP machinery. Wait for the indictments to tell us who broke the law and who is guilty of “business as usual” in a city that runs on campaign fund contributions, PACs, etc. There are two issues here, both legitimate, but let’s not jump to fuzzy conclusions or engage in false “moral equivelancy” between campaign contributions by legal PACs that hired Abramoff as a lobbyist and some of the slush funds and attempts to cover money trails that appear to be the substance of this indictment and the probable indictments to follow.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:09 pm
I saw the chart and let me say that it may a triffle misleading. It lists contributions from Abramoff, his lobbying firms and the indian clients of his firm. That is not the same thing. I have little doubt that indian tribes sent money to Dems. But Casino Jack? Typical misleading BS from a media that wants to suggest it is “bipartisan” when it isnt. See John Aravosis at AMERICABLOG or Dighby at HULLABALOO for more on this. But if Dems are involved so be it. They should go down too. I don’t defend sleeze but this is a GOP problem and they should not be allowed to get away with the “Dems do it too” excuse.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:13 pm
One clue to how the illegal stuff will shake out and who Abramoff’s most favored friends were is that he lent his skybox to both Democrats and Republicans (Republicans 99% of the time, Dems 1% of the time.) Anecdotal but, as I said, a clue to cozy…
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:15 pm
“Just because Abramoff made a donation to a Democrat – or a particular Republican, for that matter – doesn’t mean it’s a violation of campaign laws”
That, as rlc helps unpack, should have been “Just because an Abramoff client made a donation….”
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:17 pm
RLC and others: The Indian Tribes were “directed” to contribute by Abramoff. Dont play possum here. Abramoff’s operation was fundamentally a Republican machine that favored and serviced fellow Republicans. But Democrats sucked from the same tit. Let’s not avoid reality.
There is nothing deceitful about the Washington Post report. Discomfort is not the same as deceit.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Let me add, before Marc accuses me of being a Democratic shill, that – from my admittedly partisan perch – if Democrats engaged in illegal hanky panky with the likes of Abramoff it’s even more important to me that they get nailed than GOPers. I want to see the party begin to take the “money corrupts” issue seriously and don’t want anyone who resides in the “graft” wing to get a pass. If they let themselves keep sinking into the mire so deep they can’t make at least a modicum of integrity an issue, it will be a worse political disaster than any other single question facing the party. The GOPers are beyond redemption and I don’t expect anything of them. They will certainly be the primary focus of these indictments, but any Dems who also stoop that low mightily deserve whatever happens to them and good riddance.
Just read your comment Marc, and neither I nor RLC are denying that there’s a problem – but how, for example, would Byron Dorgan know whether or not a tribe PAC was “directed” to donate. Everything I know about Dorgan, watching him over years, tells me that he’s one of the more honest pols in DC. He was asking some of the toughest questions in the investigation of some of these matters – so if he’s implicated in illegal Abramoff donations, he’s also one of the stupidest crooks on the planet. And I think you know he’s not… There’s a split here between donations that were made through legal channels that are questionable and the stuff like “Family Network” that’s nothing more than an illegal slush fund.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Reg.. no, I dont expect that Dorgan would necessarily know who directed a tribe to donate to him. That’s the problem isnt it? That Senators are on the legal take from wealthy tribes (of all sorts) while the rest of sit back and watch. There are LEVELS of corruption here. Some of it is legal; some of it isn’t. I think it tells us a lot that Abramoff could do both. In the end there isnt much difference between the two.
Which brings us back to the, um, bottom line. Wring all the partisan advantage you will out of this… but we as a society reap no real benefit unless we reform the system.
Dorgan didnt take the kickbacks from Jack’s dirtier operations.But he had no problem sticking his snout into the larger trough. No sympathy from me.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
I happened upon the Senate investigative hearing into Abramoff and his scams a month or so ago. From what I saw–admittedly just a snapshot–Abramoff was the fixer-designate for the Republican right in all its manifestations. When I was watching, the panel was questioning a massively arrogant young woman who worked for some organization that reported to Abramoff, but was targeted to “liaise” with Norton and her even-more-antienvironmental assistants in the EPA. It was my sense that it was not going to be a bipartisan scandal, but rather one that goes to the heart of the right-revolution in Washington.
If some Dems go down for good reason, fine.
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
” Senators are on the legal take”
I’m agreed with you 100% on the larger question – and, unfortunately, it’s obviously a tougher issue to tackle than the stuff where a line has overtly been crossed in a rather grand fashion like Abramoff or that other guy who just went down. (As for Dorgan, I don’t think he’ll need your sympathy because I don’t think he’s going to be accused of any crime.)
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Well now we all know that Democrats and Republicans are just a bunch of whores—and I can’t wait until Abramoff takes out is little black “Heidi Fleiss Book†and squeals the details. If I was him, I would get someone to taste my food before I ate another meal—it could be his last supper.
Have any of you guys read about the Sun Cruz Boats in Florida—now that’s an interesting story. There was a mob-like hit to obtain those boats—they were used for money laundering. There was so much dough being made without any regulations on those boats that we can’t even imagine the full extent of who was being bribed and for what purpose.
“Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland-style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis was killed on a Fort Lauderdale street on Feb. 6, 2001. Two of the three men charged had been hired as consultants by Adam Kidan, one of Abramoff’s partners in the SunCruz Casinos venture.
Boulis, millionaire founder of the Miami Subs sandwich chain, sold SunCruz to Abramoff and Kidan in September 2000, at a time when Abramoff was one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy in connection with a $60 million loan they obtained to purchase the casino company.â€
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Look, I have no problem sacrificing dems committing the exact same crimes, but a few versus a large majority is not an equivalence. I just had the misfortune to work for Gale Norton who is a polluter lawyer running Interior. These are the interests she serves. They squandered the Indian land energy incomes over several years.
This is a Republican machine business like it or not. The same things were said of Ken Lay but we could easily see where the big dough went and why. Let’s not get into more faux fairness. The shills strive for that even when under indictment.
January 3rd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Marc -
I get the sense that you’d be disappointed if the Dems turned out to be clean (or substantially clean) in this case, that you’re invested in the idea that they’re all whores.
January 3rd, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Marc–
I’m noticing two interesting push-backs happening right now around the Abramoff news. One is from the Republican spin machine, saying that “everybody does it” and “what’s being called bribery is hardly illegal in Washington.” The former is the more dangerous claim (the latter is hilarious), for they are trying to dispel public anger by suggesting that what they’ve been up to for the last few years of one-party domination of DC was business as usual.
At the same time, Dems caught in the backwash of having received Indian tribal money are arguing that they were just serving their constituents. Now, while it’s true that some Dems indeed come from states with large Native populations, taking money from the gaming interests is hardly the same thing as doing right for the poor on those reservations.
You’ve educated me in the past on the extent that Indian gaming money has come to stand out in Democratic party fundraising balances…Now would be a good time to reinforce that point. Is Indian gaming money progressive?
Micah
January 3rd, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Yeah, having not followed this much, that’s my question too. What’s up with this Indian gaming money? Were they trying to get something? Were they just being used? Is there a good go-to article to explain it all?
January 3rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Unfortunetly, as horrible as this is, the public will not be outraged.
The corporitization of American culture is so intense. This is just “business” for most people. So expect no net change in our sick culture.
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I think the public is getting outraged. In fact, the conservative world is getting outraged. I think it’s a sign of a seismic shift in politics that some on the left don’t notice, since they keep assuming the right is the right of their own caricatures.
Check out Instapundit for what I’m talking about. Part of what’s going on I think is that conservatism is starting to take on the characteristics of people like me who have semi-gravitated toward it.
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Not to praise myself too much, of course. I said people “like” me, not me. I’m a total slug myself.
January 3rd, 2006 at 11:53 pm
I bet 20 times more people read horiscopes online than stories like the NSA jazz or the current scandal. Sorry Paul, the online community is not capable of leading to any real change. Maybe postings on blogs, but the public is to lazy and cynical to do anything real.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:28 am
“Part of what’s going on I think is that conservatism is starting to take on the characteristics of people like me who have semi-gravitated toward it.”
Every generation of former liberals who gravitate toward the right have told themselves this story – “I didn’t leave my party…my party left me.” From occasional readings of Roger Simon, I’d have to say that this is as delusional and self-serving as ever, to say the least. Not that there haven’t been some shifts in the Democratic party over the years, but as many of them have been to the right as to the left. (It would be tough for a “liberal” Dem to run on Richard Nixon’s economic assumptions in many states, for example – they’d be considered too far left.) If anything – counter-intutiive as it might seem – the “mainstream” conservative movement has become even more in the thrall of wingnuts, rather than less as disillusioned Dems have inserted themselves. Barry Goldwater’s latter-day views on the influence of the religious right are one case in point (he loathed them) and the increasingly brazen ideological hypocrisy of “Big Government” conservatism is another. Just consider yourselves the children of Richard Perle, Irving Kristol, Peggy Noonan, Bill Bennet, Normon Podhoretz, Charlton Heston and – father of them all – The Gipper. And get over it. You won’t see better than that – perhaps worse. (Intellectually, I have to say that I’d take Irving Kristol’s coherence over Ann Althouse’s hilariously narcissistic musings any day of the week.)
I checked Instapundit on Abramoff and all I found was a blip of a comment with a link to Michelle “Jail-The-Japs” Malkin. If that’s supposed to support your point, I’m more than a bit mystified. Don’t flatter yourself that the right will be any more or less corrupt or nuanced – any more than liberalism will be any more or less corruptible or muddled – because you’re shifting sides. I appreciate your qualification of this comment, but putting one’s own political trajectory – or that of people you admire – at the center of your thinking about what’s going to drive practical politics (as opposed to meta-trends of the economy, dominant aspects of the culture – which usually amount to it’s degradatioin – and the ever-present movement of large amounts of cash) is – whatever your stripes – generally a subjective error that will lead to even greater disappointment – or cynicism – down the road.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:32 am
Digging into the writings of Kevin Phillips – one of the smartest political commentators around and a guy who’s trajectory has been, tentatively and with eyes wide open, in the opposite direction – might be a good reality check – and dare I say far more enlightening as regards “seismic shifts” than the disposable blog-blather of a Glenn Reynolds or whoever.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Also – for anyone who thinks the prospects of “clean conservatism” are bright, even fairly honest GOP commentators like David Brooks have acknowledged that the Republican establishment has managed to surpass mightily in ten years or less the level of corruption that grew from forty or more years of Democratic dominance. This isn’t going to change under the influence of self-conscious “nuevo-cons”. Frankly, the liberal bloggers like Kos who focus on energizing, bundling and channeling the smaller, grass-roots monetary donations to targeted grass-roots candidates as a counter to the sleaze-merchants of K street’s routinely corrupting of their party are more to the point than anyone who thinks that some “cultural trend” or “new blood” is going to magically transform the impact of raw cash from dubious sources on the political vehicle of their choice.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:37 am
When I mentioned Instapundit, admittedly vaguely, I didn’t really mean specifically on Abramoff, although I believe he does mention it. I was talking more about the “anti-pork” movement he and some other right-side bloggers are trying to push.
Of course ten times more people read horoscopes or lap up porn than engage in meaty politics. That’s life. It doesn’t mean things are hopeless. Personally, i think the blog world is fantastic because it basially has created a public space where none existed only five years ago.
As to whether the blog world can actually have an impact on policy – I don’t see the basis for complete hopelessness there, either.
The scnadal-type sins purported or otherwise of the current Republican leadership are I think not relevant to the hopeful trend I’m theorizing. And it is only a theory, understand.
Incidentally, yesterday I noticed some poor sap conservative making the point that it’s hopeless to bring up any of his favorite or semi-favorite sites and sources because you guys will simply dismiss them out of hand as without merit and steeped in dishonesty. I would simply underline that point.
Whatever your opinion about Malkin, the reality in the blog world is that every conservative site I go to in the last few days is saying “let the chips fall where they may here; an honest conservative has to be enraged.”
January 4th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Paul from Mpls -
I’ve been through a few conversion experiences in my lifetime (which may be a good bit longer than yours). Remember that what seems like world-historical truth one night, might look different in the morning or a couple of years down the road.
You shouldn’t assume that non-conservatives are simply ignorant of conservative ideas, or unwilling to really hear them. Many of us have considered these ideas with an open mind and even some appreciation, learned from them, and still, on balance, rejected them.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:34 am
I doubt you’re much older than me.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Younger than springtime I’m not. The way you talked about your shift in political views made it sound like you were in your 20′s or 30′s. You seemed unchastened by the grinding accumulation of past error. If I’m wrong about this, I stand corrected, but a little surprised.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:05 am
I think my writing comes across unchastened just because I write quick.
Here in MN, though, I am surrounded by liberals who constantly demonstrate an unbelievable unawareness of “the other side,” as I say. And a total faith that conservatism has nothing to offer. It’s that that I’m reacting to constantly.
In general, I do believe liberals tend to be unaware of how the basic tenets of microeconomics might apply to policy; and that ignorance overlaps with an unawareness of the potential moral failings inherent to liberalism, which I see as too willing to facilitate the “victim stance” – and I see the victim stance as being behind many if not most if not all of the 20th century’s most egregious crimes. Hitler came from it. al Qaeda comes from it.
On the other hand, and the Abramoff stuff amplifies this, conservative politicians – being tied in with the business world more inherently – do have a history of corruption that makes it understandable that instinctive liberals see their theories as simply a smokescreen.
I guess what I’m hopeful for is that the blog world, reducing invisibility, can take care of some inherent problems we’ve had in society that stemmed from invisibility.
From my perspective, and I’m sure this will make reg and others react, I see it as having revealed what I see as the obvious liberal bias especially in the print media resulting from the liberal leanings of almost all print media journalists. (Just to defend that view, I have always believed there was a liberal media bias, even when I was a died-in-the-wool Chomskyite. To me it’s always been ridiculous to deny it; although of course there are also examples of corporate power having another kind of impact, I think day in and day out, it’s the poitical leanings of the reporters and editors that hold sway, because it’s though their minds that the news is filtered. I see them as zebra mussels, and very efficient.)
(When the left complains about a conservative bias, it seems to me what they’re usually referring to is not springing into left-leaning reporting quickly enough, or not being far left enough from a certain perspective.)
So with the culture of money in DC, which admittedly does hold more Republicans in its sway, I don’t see why it’s inherently ridiculous that the visibility of constant supervision by bloggers won’t have an impact.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Also, by the way, what’s always driven me is an instinctive love of this country and its people. On the general topic of US shortcomings and crimes, i have believed for quite some time that it’s imperative, while working to correct things, to keep in mind the context and complexities facing a super-power of our magnitude. To realize that in judging us, in deciding how depraved we are, it’s not necessarily wise to compare to a standard of perfection that can never be reached, given that all situations demand terrible compromise.
Some left-side condemnation, in short, seems to boil down to condemning us simply for being a super-power.
A specific: I believe that as a people, we should sometimes stand back and take some pride in the fact that having lived with hundreds of years of slavery, and then taken the bull by the horns and changed that, we have also in fits and starts made it one of our major national preoccupations to figure out how the former slave and slave-owning races can get along. When you look at the horrific racial and ethnic strife almost everywhere else, it’s an unbeleivable achievement. It’s far from perfect, but we keep working at it.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:04 am
I could never stomach Noam Chomsky and have studied economics. I am however put off by strict libertarian market worship (which animates much of the American right), primarily because it offends my religious beliefs, but also for pragmatic reasons. I believe in the continual need to balance the claims of liberty and equality and agree with Isaiah Berlin that one always comes at the expense of the other (thus the need for constant adjustment to policy). The right often scoffs (to put it mildly) at any concern for equality or for national communal obligation. It tends to agree with Margaret Thatcher that there is no society, only indivisuals. A coherent and, in some ways, noble politics can be built on this notion. I just don’t happen to subscribe to it, finding it ultimately pagan. The left has its own flaws and sometimes touts a brand of libertarianism (bordering on libertinism) which also leaves me cold, but on the whole, for moral and practical reasons, I find the left preferrable. I read an interview with Norman Mailer a while ago in the “American Conservative” in which he describes himself as a ‘left conservative”; I liked the way it sounded.
By the way, I agree that victimization and grievance-mongering do drive much of politic “discourse” and always have. But the left has abolutely no monoploy here. Just witness the war on Christmas, or George Wallace’s campaigns. Or even the ascent of Richard Nixon.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:33 am
I’m still in instinctive left leaner in many ways. My objections are to the way left politics has gone recently, and how I see it as becoming to some extent the political arm of the campus left, which I do believe is alarmingly stupid, because of its isolation. Since the 50′s, social-analysis academia has been all about perfecting a critique of society, and there exists almost no parallel response of how thngs go right, or at least okay, which is what reality is all about. (Traditional college-level business and economics classes teach mechanics, by and large, and don’t get into a thoughtful rendering of how their ideas play out beneficially. They just take it as a given.)
George Jones and Tammy Wynette: Life can be rough, sometimes it’s kind, a real good life is hard to find. That’s a good summary of the basic principle I think a lot of current left critiquers forget about reality. The presence of problems, even horrible problems, does not translate automatically into a picture of wholesale failure of our system.
Like you, I can’t stomach Chomsky. I think it’s easy to just kind of ignore or forget the extent to which he and his cohort are heroes in academia, and in a large part of the activist left. Since I consider Chomsky, and Ward Churchill, to be really quite seriously dark in their worldviews and even in their intent, it puts me off from the political side that glorifies them.
January 4th, 2006 at 11:55 am
“it puts me off from the political side that glorifies them.”
You’re dealing with as distorted a political view as you were when you were a “Chomskyite”. Yuck…
You haven’t rejected any liberalism recoginizable to me. You need new friends. To flee from that psuedo-intellectual crap to the ramblings of Roger Simon is sure path to staying stupid.
Check out TPMCafe, Washington Monthyly, American Prospect and, dare I say it (because a lot of their worldview makes me crazy) New Republic before you leap into the nether world of liberatarian bullshit like “City Journal”. They have none of the characteristics you complain about on the liberal side (again a conflation of liberalism with Churchill and others who detest liberalism is muddled thinking if not sleigh of hand. As for, “the campus left”, why on gods good earth would anyone give a shit at this juncture.) Of course, if you are still prone to “true believer” status, I’m sure there’s an ideology out there waiting to suck you up. Go for it. But don’t lecture anybody on their biases or what they don’t know about economics.
As an aside, if you want to read a smart critique of a lot of hyper-leftist bullshit in academia, check out Todd Gitlin’s “Intellectuals and The Flag”. But his solution to the problem of irrelevant academic psuedo-leftism isn’t the “conservative victimology” agenda of a crank like David Horowitz but a call for people who consider themselves “left” to return to the standards of critical analysis represented by C. Wright Mills, David Reisman and Irving Howe.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I actually do read most of those things you cite; I subscibe to TNR, and actually see a mix there: some rational, but a surprising amount of what strikes me as somewhat dishonest sometimes.
I probably overstated my Chomsky-ite status; when I went to public affairs grad school years ago there was one very cool prof who was into his theories; this was in the days before his pernicious post-9-11 effect had been born, of course.
But I was a community organizer, and I was into systemic critique and in fact still am: in spite of my “conservative” leanings or sympathies, I have also never lost a core suspicion that at some point we’re going to have to get past “economic growth” as the guiding philosophy of life, growth at all costs that is. It’s just depressing, for one thing; and I think we don’t quite understand what it does to our souls, this constant drive to efficiency and ever-more-precisely-defined products.
I think you dismiss City Journal (and Roger Simon) too much, but that will probably remain a disagreement.
Your take on academia being irrelevant (I think that’s what you’re saying) used to be my take, too. I now think it’s easy to miss the ways it has an effect on society – like, through its teaching of teachers, as just one example.
Todd Gitlin’s call for academics to reform themselves seems noble, but a feather in the wind.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
“through its teaching of teachers”
For what it’s worth I have total contempt for a lot of the theorizing that’s come out of academic education departments. But my son is a teacher and did the necessary work to get a credential and was unscathed. I don’t think the problem with the schools is primarily because of education programs being lousy, but an incredibly complex mix of problems that show themselves most starkly in the public education system, but which it has virtually no control over and ultimately little impact on, unfortunately. I’m very conservative when it comes to education issues in some ways, but I still think Jonathan Kozol is more of a “realist” in assessing how tough and complex the problems are than, say, the Thernstroms or this trendish kid, John McWhorter.
I have the benefit of no higher education whatsoever, so I’ve never been impressed by the academic left. Todd Gitlin may be a feather in the wind, but he’s closer to authentic liberalism than the people you critique. I don’t think he’s noble – he’s merely a pragmatist with some values he’s not willing to compromise to glib ideologists of either side. Ward Churchill is about as isolated and irrelevant as you can find incidentally, and Chomsky sells a lot of books but beyond the campuses – where, frankly, I would expect kids to toy with the kind of meta-critiques and slap-dash ideology he trades in – he’s got zero influence on American politics. Not true of the really nutty and toxic cranks of the right…do I even have to name them ????? You haven’t brought up Michael Moore, but one of the best critiques I’ve ever read of Moore was in American Prospect.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Incidentally, City Journal demands attention on the level of serious discourse and argument (although it’s libertarian ideological underpinnings tell me more than I often need to know), but I’ve started to check out Roger Simon for the hell of it and I can’t remember running into a flabbier, more self-congratulatory “thinker”. He typefies what is most pathetic about the blogosphere – slapdash and shallow. Hollywood…whaddaya gonna get ??? (His diss of his old high-school chum Robert Kuttner recently was particularly foolish and shallow, especially since right-wing “tough guy” Victor Davis Hanson had written a column making precisely the same point about the Bush Administration and offering the same advice that Simon glibly dismissed Kuttner for writing. Just a really silly man, if you ask me. But what can you expect from some clown who used to travel to China wearing a Mao cap. The more things change….)
Also, I’ve never seen such a prime example of the narcissism and isolation of professional academics as Ann Althouse’s ruminations. She apparently thinks that even the doodles she makes on cocktail napkins are of interest to others. What a wanker. Again, one of the worst examples of masturbatory blogging run amok.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Roger has gotten a more slapdash as the Pajamas media thing has taken his attention and concern. But I basically remain in agreement with his basic perspective on where evil actually lies in the world these days.
Ann is not everyone’s taste, but I think when she applies herself to legal questions, she can be good. And the duscussion board is lively and civil at times.
By the way, what should we do about Iran?
January 4th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
“where evil actually lies in the world ”
I don’t dismiss theology, especially since Reinhold Niebuhr is one of my favorite political thinkers, but it’s important to seperate it from strategic analyis. He was good at that…
Iran…I’m not sure exactly – not an expert – but I know that Michael Ledeen is as looneytoons as they come. Curtis Lemay didn’t turn out to be the guy who won the Cold War (nor Reagan for that matter) so people who think along those lines aren’t likley to offer realistic solutions to relatively small potatoes like Iran if they proved irrational when it came to Stalinism. Long term economic issues are more likely to bend these states than invasions and bombing. If anyone had predicted the trajectory of China and Russia twenty-five years ago, they would have been considered nuts. Reagan had a more fantastic view of the Soviets than most, it turned out. Gorbachev was an absolute impossibility in Reagan’s version of the Evil Empire. Iran is peanuts compared to those guys. Get a grip…
January 4th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
“those guys” meaning Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia…
January 4th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
I don’t thnk Iran is peanuts, because it seems to me quite possible that it is currently run by madmen who will use a nuke on Israel as soon as they can, with a warning to Europe not to interfere at the same time. (That’s in reference to their recent attempts to get a rocket capable of reaching Europe.)
I agree Iran does not have the ability destroy all of us like the USSR did, but I believe Iran (not to mention suicidal terrorists) is far more likely to actually use what they get than the USSR ever was. Or, more than China ever was.
Even the local super-liberal Star Tribune opined that “Iran must not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon,” which is W’s line too, and their reasoning is the same.
What’s wrong with their/my thinking? I would love to be convincingly reassured I’m wrong, beyond being told to get a grip.
January 4th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Iran will nuke Israel ? Really ? So they are crazier and more “evil” than Stalin or Mao ? I think you’re a fantasist…also, Iran’s clerics are no friend of bin Laden…and as bad as Iran is, there’s a more vital civil society and more open internal contradictory tendencies there than in the Soviet Union during the fifties. It’s an abominable regime but you really need to remind yourself of what China was like under Mao before you make those kinds of “analytical”.
As I said…Curtis LeMay….I can’t convince you to abandon what you want to believe…nor can I convince Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle and David Frum that they are intellectually and morally irrelevant. I can live with this. But their crackpot “realism” holds no attraction…
Actually, I think the Iran thing will be mostly resolved diplomatically, but the genie IS out of the bottle and if we can live with Pakistan and India having nukes all these years, we’ll probably be able to live with Israel and Iran having them if we have to.
January 4th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
You talk about this as though Israel wasn’t a nuclear power…aside from being the guys with the greatest interest and the least to lose from bombing suspected Iranian facilities. If they can’t do it, what are we supposed to do. Invade ?? Invasion would be the response of a madman for sure, if you’re looking for madmen.
What the hell do you propose ? (I’m not going to continue this, because I have too much shit to do, but at least be minimally fair if you want to ask me what I think should be done about one of the most difficult problems on the planet.)
January 4th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
“is far more likely to actually use what they get than the USSR ever was. Or, more than China ever was.”
One quick note…read the writings of Mao during the Sino-Soviet split and, yes, the urgings of Castro and Che during the Cuban missle crisis – then come back and tell me you still believe that rather remarkable statement.
January 4th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I was honestly just asking. I have absolutely no idea what to do. Invasion would be insane. Israel is a nuclear power, but my impression is it woudn’t be impossible to take it out with a couple of strikes. Of course, maybe Iran would hold back because of potential retaliation from us.
January 4th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
I agree with the Cuban missile crisis, but that was an isolated flash point, I think, and I still dount the Soviets were all that close to doing it. In general, we could live with the situation during the Cold War because we had confidence that the Soviets were not suicidal. It really was the case that the trigger for an exchange would have been stupid paranoia, rather than an aggressive attack. That’s why Dr. Strangelove works – it was faithful to reality.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
GRAFT=GOP=DEMS=IRAQ=CUBA=ISRAEL=NUKES=IRAN?
Sorry, I got a little lost along the way here.
Back to Abramoff – they are all corrupt, people, at some level or another. you can’t trust ‘em. want term limits? vote against the incumbant in ’06. don’t go squishy on me! they are all corrupt!
January 4th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Abramoff ? Who’s Abramoff ????
January 4th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Tucker Carlson may be a silly little wanker, but he’s got this right…
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10693414/
January 4th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Speaking of “nukes” and Iran, I think that this recent post by ex-NSA man Wayne Madsen needs to be distributed far and wide.
* * * * * *
Wayne Madsen Report
January 2, 2006 — Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation. Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs, a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant in Lashkar Abad, and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak.
Other first targets would be Shahab-I, II, and III missile launch sites, air bases (including the large Mehrabad air base/international airport near Tehran), naval installations on the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, command, control, communications and intelligence facilities. Secondary targets would include civilian airports, radio and TV installations, telecommunications centers, government buildings, conventional power plants, highways and bridges, and rail lines. Oil installations and commercial port facilities would likely be relatively untouched by U.S. forces in order to preserve them for U.S. oil and business interests.
There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army’s aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.
In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.
There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.
From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.
On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Erdogan listened to Goss’s and Rice’s pleas for Turkish logistical, political, and intelligence help for an attack on Iran and Turkish Army Chief Yasar Buyukanit heard much the same from Pentagon officials during his recent trip to Washington, the word is that Putin now has enough clout in Ankara to scuttle any use of Turkey by the U.S. for an attack on Iran. [Mueller delivered Ankara intelligence "proof" of Iranian backing for Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in Turkey. Intelligence agencies and business intelligence units around the world are now discounting any intelligence coming from the Bush administration as neocon propaganda invented by think tanks and discredited intelligence agencies in Washington, Tel Aviv-Herzliya, and Jerusalem].
U.S. political and military officials have also approached Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Oman, and Azerbaijan seeking their support for a U.S. attack on Iran. In a replay of the phony pre-war intelligence on Iraq, Washington is trying to convince various countries that a link exists between Iran and “Al Qaeda.”
Polish intelligence sources report that Poland’s Defense Minister Radek Sikorski assured Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of Poland’s support for any U.S. strike against Iran. Sikorski is a former American Enterprise Institute colleague of such neo-cons as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney, the so-called “Second Lady” of the United States. Sikorski and Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller assured Rumsfeld and Rice, respectively, that Poland would stand by the United States during the split in NATO that will occur as a result of the American strike. Polish intelligence sources, who are unhappy with the arrangement of the new right-wing government in Warsaw with the Bush administration, leaked the information about the recent U.S. demarche to NATO in Brussels about preparation for the attack.
Similar intelligence “leaks” about the U.S. attack plans were also leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
European intelligence sources also report that the recent decision by Putin and Russia’s state-owned Gazprom natural gas company to cut supplies of natural gas to Ukraine was a clear warning by Putin to nations like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Moldova, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and Germany that it would do the same if they support the U.S. attack on Iran. Gazprom natural gas is supplied, via pipelines in Ukraine, from Russia and Turkmenistan to countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The Bush administration charged Russia with using gas supplies as a “political tool.”
Putin has additional leverage on Western Europe since former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted an appointment to the board of a joint Russian-German North European Gas Pipeline Consortium that is controlled by Gazprom. The pipeline will bring Russian gas to Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, and Britain, giving Putin additional leverage over Washington in Europe.
Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma’s (Myanmar’s) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days’ notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
In neighboring West Bengal, the leftist government and its national leftist allies around the country are planning massive demonstrations during Bush’s upcoming trip to India. They are protesting the war in Iraq as well as the threats against Iran.
Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country.
The Bush administration aborted last minute plans to attack Iranian nuclear and political installations prior to the 2004 presidential election. On October 9, Rumsfeld met with defense minister colleagues on the now decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf to seek support for the attack. That meeting has been confirmed by the Danish Defense Minister who was in attendance, however, the topic of the meeting was not discussed. According to U.S. naval personnel on board the Kennedy, a special “war room” was set up to coordinate the attack. Britain, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan did not attend the meeting because of their opposition to the attack plans.
Intelligence and military officials around the world are also bracing for the results of a U.S. attack on Iran. This includes the distinct possibility of a major Shia retaliatory attack in Iraq, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Afghanistan against U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic targets in the region. Radioactive fallout from a conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iran will result in major problems with Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Japan, and other downwind countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, possibly including the fall of the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan and replacement by a radical Islamist regime having possession of nuclear weapons. That would provoke a military response from nuclear power India.
In a counter-attack, Iran would immediately launch its Shahab I and II missiles at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad, the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the US Navy base in Bahrain, Camp Doha base in Kuwait, Al Seeb airbase in Oman, Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Iran would also launch its long-range Shahab III missiles on the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Eilat, and the Israeli nuclear complex at Dimona. Iranian missiles would also be launched at US naval ships in the Persian Gulf and oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The virtual end of NATO as a viable defense organization may also result from an attack that will drive a final wedge between Washington and Europe. And China may elect to respond financially and militarily against the United States since Iran is China’s second largest source of imported Middle East oil after Saudi Arabia and plans to use an Iranian terminal for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan. [China now imports 60 percent of its oil needs, and Iran represents 17 percent of those imports].
Russia recently participated in, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a three-way military exercise (code named “Indira 2005″) between Russia, China, and India to prepare for any new U.S. power projections in Asia, including an attack on Iran, a prospective SCO member. Last August, Russia and China held their first-ever joint land-sea-air military exercises.
Iran also held a large military exercise in early December in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. An Iranian C-130 carrying Iranian journalists from Mehrabad airport to Bandar Abbas to cover the exercise crashed into a Tehran apartment building on December 6, killing at least 116 people, including 68 journalists.
Within the U.S. military and across the globe, there is heightened tension about the intentions of the neocon Bush administration and its allies in Israel.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
David Brooks:
I don’t know what’s more pathetic, Jack Abramoff’s sleaze or Republican paralysis in the face of it. Abramoff walks out of a D.C. courthouse in his pseudo-Hasidic homburg, and all that leading Republicans can do is promise to return his money and remind everyone that some Democrats are involved in the scandal, too.
That’s a great G.O.P. talking point: some Democrats are so sleazy, they get involved with the likes of us.
(snip)
Republicans need to steal David Obey and Barney Frank’s lobbying-reform ideas. For some insane reason, having to do with their own special interests, Democrats have been slow to trumpet the ideas coming from their own party. Republicans have a chance to hijack them before the country notices.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Speaking of “nukes” and Iran, this recent post by ex-NSA man Wayne Madsen needs to be read and distributed as widely as possible.
* * * * * *
January 2, 2006 — Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation. Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs, a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant in Lashkar Abad, and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak.
Other first targets would be Shahab-I, II, and III missile launch sites, air bases (including the large Mehrabad air base/international airport near Tehran), naval installations on the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, command, control, communications and intelligence facilities. Secondary targets would include civilian airports, radio and TV installations, telecommunications centers, government buildings, conventional power plants, highways and bridges, and rail lines. Oil installations and commercial port facilities would likely be relatively untouched by U.S. forces in order to preserve them for U.S. oil and business interests.
There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army’s aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.
In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.
There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.
From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.
On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Erdogan listened to Goss’s and Rice’s pleas for Turkish logistical, political, and intelligence help for an attack on Iran and Turkish Army Chief Yasar Buyukanit heard much the same from Pentagon officials during his recent trip to Washington, the word is that Putin now has enough clout in Ankara to scuttle any use of Turkey by the U.S. for an attack on Iran. [Mueller delivered Ankara intelligence "proof" of Iranian backing for Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in Turkey. Intelligence agencies and business intelligence units around the world are now discounting any intelligence coming from the Bush administration as neocon propaganda invented by think tanks and discredited intelligence agencies in Washington, Tel Aviv-Herzliya, and Jerusalem].
U.S. political and military officials have also approached Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Oman, and Azerbaijan seeking their support for a U.S. attack on Iran. In a replay of the phony pre-war intelligence on Iraq, Washington is trying to convince various countries that a link exists between Iran and “Al Qaeda.”
Polish intelligence sources report that Poland’s Defense Minister Radek Sikorski assured Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of Poland’s support for any U.S. strike against Iran. Sikorski is a former American Enterprise Institute colleague of such neo-cons as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney, the so-called “Second Lady” of the United States. Sikorski and Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller assured Rumsfeld and Rice, respectively, that Poland would stand by the United States during the split in NATO that will occur as a result of the American strike. Polish intelligence sources, who are unhappy with the arrangement of the new right-wing government in Warsaw with the Bush administration, leaked the information about the recent U.S. demarche to NATO in Brussels about preparation for the attack.
Similar intelligence “leaks” about the U.S. attack plans were also leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
European intelligence sources also report that the recent decision by Putin and Russia’s state-owned Gazprom natural gas company to cut supplies of natural gas to Ukraine was a clear warning by Putin to nations like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Moldova, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and Germany that it would do the same if they support the U.S. attack on Iran. Gazprom natural gas is supplied, via pipelines in Ukraine, from Russia and Turkmenistan to countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The Bush administration charged Russia with using gas supplies as a “political tool.”
Putin has additional leverage on Western Europe since former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted an appointment to the board of a joint Russian-German North European Gas Pipeline Consortium that is controlled by Gazprom. The pipeline will bring Russian gas to Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, and Britain, giving Putin additional leverage over Washington in Europe.
Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma’s (Myanmar’s) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days’ notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
In neighboring West Bengal, the leftist government and its national leftist allies around the country are planning massive demonstrations during Bush’s upcoming trip to India. They are protesting the war in Iraq as well as the threats against Iran.
Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country.
The Bush administration aborted last minute plans to attack Iranian nuclear and political installations prior to the 2004 presidential election. On October 9, Rumsfeld met with defense minister colleagues on the now decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf to seek support for the attack. That meeting has been confirmed by the Danish Defense Minister who was in attendance, however, the topic of the meeting was not discussed. According to U.S. naval personnel on board the Kennedy, a special “war room” was set up to coordinate the attack. Britain, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan did not attend the meeting because of their opposition to the attack plans.
Intelligence and military officials around the world are also bracing for the results of a U.S. attack on Iran. This includes the distinct possibility of a major Shia retaliatory attack in Iraq, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Afghanistan against U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic targets in the region. Radioactive fallout from a conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iran will result in major problems with Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Japan, and other downwind countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, possibly including the fall of the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan and replacement by a radical Islamist regime having possession of nuclear weapons. That would provoke a military response from nuclear power India.
In a counter-attack, Iran would immediately launch its Shahab I and II missiles at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad, the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the US Navy base in Bahrain, Camp Doha base in Kuwait, Al Seeb airbase in Oman, Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Iran would also launch its long-range Shahab III missiles on the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Eilat, and the Israeli nuclear complex at Dimona. Iranian missiles would also be launched at US naval ships in the Persian Gulf and oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The virtual end of NATO as a viable defense organization may also result from an attack that will drive a final wedge between Washington and Europe. And China may elect to respond financially and militarily against the United States since Iran is China’s second largest source of imported Middle East oil after Saudi Arabia and plans to use an Iranian terminal for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan. [China now imports 60 percent of its oil needs, and Iran represents 17 percent of those imports].
Russia recently participated in, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a three-way military exercise (code named “Indira 2005″) between Russia, China, and India to prepare for any new U.S. power projections in Asia, including an attack on Iran, a prospective SCO member. Last August, Russia and China held their first-ever joint land-sea-air military exercises.
Iran also held a large military exercise in early December in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. An Iranian C-130 carrying Iranian journalists from Mehrabad airport to Bandar Abbas to cover the exercise crashed into a Tehran apartment building on December 6, killing at least 116 people, including 68 journalists.
Within the U.S. military and across the globe, there is heightened tension about the intentions of the neocon Bush administration and its allies in Israel.
January 4th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Apologies for the double post.
Generally, when I get a “your post is awaiting approval” message that it means it’s not going to be posted.
I went ahead and reposted deleting all but two links within the text (that seems to be the cutoff before a post ends up in “moderation” limbo), but lo and behold the original post has now also found its way here.
January 4th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
reg -
Good quotes from Tucker Carlson and David Brooks. Wonder if these guys will be dutifully spouting the Democratic sleaze quivalency meme within a week or two. It’s hard to stand outside your tribe for any length of time. Is Carlson only now, due to the Abramoff connection, getting wise to the spookiness of Norquist ?
January 4th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
I’m betting against that kind of attack on Iran, by the way.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:13 am
Then there’s the WSJ…
http://www.slate.com/id/2133757/
January 5th, 2006 at 4:47 am
Matt Yglesias makes an important point:
DeLay has, for years, been the leading figure in the House Republican caucus. To the extent that he’s corrupted, all his henchmen are corrupt too, even if they weren’t so clever as to personally pocket any cash. The point, after all, of the Russia/IMF bribes wasn’t to get DeLay to vote for the appropriation; it was to get DeLay to get the Republicans to vote for it. DeLay’s great strength as a congressional leader has been the discipline with which he’s led his troops. He said “jump” and they asked “how high?” As a consequence, all the troops are tarnished by their leader’s sins.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:07 am
“I see it as having revealed what I see as the obvious liberal bias especially in the print media resulting from the liberal leanings of almost all print media journalists.”
As soon as I hear this: The Great Explainer I know all thought has ceased. It’s ridiculous on its face. Usually it means someone has no knowledge of newspapers and the sections contained therein. Bias sure, but not liberal.
January 5th, 2006 at 7:45 am
I just read the rest of the Brooks piece and was reminded of a piece he wrote a few months ago, just as Delay was beginning to teeter. It was a paean (peen?) to the real Hammer, a thoughtful, sensitive and misunderstood fellow, whose nickname was laughably inappropriate. I tip my cap to Brooks for what he wrote today, but wonder how he missed Dalay’s less sensitive side till now. Maybe it was the bug spray fumes.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Mark –
I don’t know how to read your second sentence, exactly – am I the Great Explainer, meant sarcastically?
But anyway, what’s ridiculous on its face is the idea that I have no knowledge of newspapers and the sections contained therein. It’s like saying I have no knowledge of the shoes I’m wearing.
To expand a bit on how I see it working:
The most obvious home of liberal bias is in the opinion pages of most major city newspapers, such as the Star-Tribune, where dishonesty abounds. They could be universally liberal and I wouldn’t talk about bias as long as they were honest, but they’re not. It’s possible the Sat-Trib is a particularly egregious example, but it works at two levels or even three there:
Their own editorials are nearly always devoid of an honestly and forthright awareness of the actual arguments on the other side. Some people say, well that’s what opinion piece do, but that’s not true. The best (read: honest) opinion pieces deal with the best arguments opposing their own, rather than ignore them and pretend they don’t exist, allowing them to sermonize.
Jim Boyd, the man who evidently writes most of the Strib’s opinion pieces on Iraq, is a man who lives to sermonize.
Second, the Star-Trib filters the guest opinion pieces in a similar fashion. A reader of the Star-Trib opinion pages – and there are a lot of educated thoughtful liberals in Minnesota and the states to the south and west who depend almost entirely on the Star-Trib as their gatekeeper to the world of opinion, simply because they’re busy and because they agree with it – could easily to this day remain unaware of the best arguments for the war in Iraq, or of the fact that there is somewhat of a deep split in the left (not an equal split, I’m not saying that) on the question.
Finally, in the case of the Star-Trib specifically and this may or may not be common, the letters editor is a dishonest partisan weasel. It affects his letters selection in the most amazing ways. (He lets though left-leaning lies/non-facts on a regular basis, for example, when the paper has a policy to not do that.)
As for the reporting side, even at at the Strib it’s far less of a problem. There are several major writers there who are throughly honest: Eric Black, who writes on major national policy issues, is a prime example.
But it’s not a non-issue.
Most of the writers share the worldviews of the editorial writers, extrapolating from polls, and filter their stories in small ways every day accordingly – in many cases, I think, without even being aware they’re doing it.
When I was a community organizer, and a total local young left-sort in St. Paul in the “community development” context, we could always assume totally favorable coverage of whatever it was we were doing. Fawning stories, describing us as adorable people doing the Lord’s work.
I knew at the time the story wasn’t that simple, I knew there were people disagreeing with what we were up to. I knew it was highly questionable, most importantly, whether what we were doing was actually doing any good, intentions aside. I didn’t care, I liked it.
That to me is a good example of subtle bias. It would have been possible to treat us as grown-up actors in a political scene, but we were always good guys.
That varies from city to city, and has even changed now in the Twin Cities as the local development scene has matured and the controversies have become more obvious. But it was the opening assumption of news coverage.
Since a reporter is always on deadline, and is always looking for the angle, he’ll go to the easy story most of the time unless pushed, and in cases where the liberal-conservative angle exists as a potential aspect, he’ll tend to come down on the liberal side.
Today in the Strib there’s another little example on a trivial level. (I’d give the link to the story but it doesn’t seem to be working.)
Last night, the US Women’s Hockey Team – made up of a great many Minnesotans and also women from other states, but Minnesota-dominated, and almost undoubtedly the best women’s hockey team in the world – played the Warroad, MN boys high school team and lost, 2-1.
Warroad is a hockey mecca, home of the Christian brothers and all, but it’s not the best hockey team in the state. The article 100% took the tack of “oh wasn’t this a charming event, and how good for hockey, smiles all around.’ Which is part of the story, the liberal part, the generous we can all win part. But there was not a hint of the idea that this might say something kind of embarrassing about the state of women’s hockey. And I’m sure there were people available to say something like that.
I think one way they got around the idea was by covering it as a news story, not as a sports story. If they go on to lose to the next high school team they’ve scheduled – Thief River Falls? – I woulld bet that some columnist in the sports section will raise the issue, and humorously.
But what I’m talking about are the opening assumptions of 80%-90% of reporters, as revealed in surveys of political leanings. To me, there’s very small basis for assuming that print journalists manage to keep those leanings out of all the small choices they make every day. If you start to look for them, they’re quite common.
Controversial statment: the intense focus on the actual existence of WMDs as the only possible justification for the war is an example of liberal media bias. It may not seem that way to you, because you probably agree with it.
Here’s a thorough analysis of the 2005 NY Times from this perspective by a guy who may set your teeth on edge from time to time:
http://patterico.com/2005/12/31/4057/pattericos-los-angeles-dog-trainer-year-in-review-2005/
To reiterate and conclude: it’s the agenda-setting, opinion-leading function of major city print media I’m talking about. The most immediate impact of the emergence of the right-leaning blog world was the instant existence of an alternative source of editorializing, in many cases by people who are just as intelligent, knowledgeable and talented writer-wise as the editorialists granted the only pulpit in the old days, and it drives them crazy.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
No Jay Rosen calls liberal media bias that. You buy into it at your own peril. Patterico? Please. He’s the champion of this myth in LA.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Look Paul that’s the reason we were given for having to go in right then lest “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud” pay us a visit. What you are saying is an ad hoc fallacy and policy. They move the goal posts in progress. That’s an example of a conservative bias not the other way around. You may not see it though becaue of your bias against the evidence. Tough. Facts are stubborn things.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
“The most obvious home of liberal bias is in the opinion pages of most major city newspapers, such as the Star-Tribune, where dishonesty abounds.”
A liberal op-ed page does not equal dishonest. Opinions are liberal or centrist and conservative. This has nothing to do with the reporting. And if it does it’s a scandal but leans toward conservative as with Ms. Miller not the other direction. There are opinions and not all are created equal. It’s in the reasoning used. I find conserative opinions fail the logic test.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Paul -
I agree with those who say that the current media is generally left of center on social issues and moderate to conservative on economic issues, reflecting the consensus of the educated upper middle class from which they issue nowadays. In times past, they may have been more liberal across the board; they made less and came from more varied backgrounds.
I seem to sense more of a pack mentality in recent decades, maybe the result of media expansion. The jackal-like behavior can cut left or right, depending on where the scent of blood comes from.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Did I say liberal equals dishonest? No. I’m saying that liberal opinions in many papers are dishonestly argued. As I said – it’s not the liberalness, it’s the dishonesty. Marc Cooper is liberal, generally, and argues honestly. David Corn frequently does too. Robert Scheer does not, as I’ve said to Marc C directly.
As for the WMD thing, although I disagree with your assessment of how that image was used, I was writing carefully to remove what I’m saying from the case W made.
Admittedly, in large part W has only himself to blame for the focus on WMDs, but as I said in an earlier string, for me and for a lot of people who think like me the basic issue was the dilemma the situation posed, based on the nearly-universally-agreed-upon premise that Hussein was our implacable, unpredictable, genocidally-oriented enemy who needed to go. And it doesn’t matter whether you agree with that or not for you to be able to see the point I’m making:
That perspective I describe is not at all uncommon and is one of the basic reasons people still resist the left-side definition of the war as unjustified and evil. It involves a perception that the actual existence of WMDs is not the be-all and end-all argument for whether the war was justified, especially since we never could have known the actual situation without the war.
So, to the extent that the media keeps focuing on the existence of WMDs as if is all that matters, that’s liberal media bias in action. From this perspective, the Judith Miller controversy takes place entirely within a context of disagreement within the liberal print media.
Let me say gently that there is a tendency by some left-leaners (if that’s what you are) to dismiss sources you don’t like out of hand. it makes things easy for you, but for someone like me it leads me to take you less seriously, as if you just can’t handle going there. The Patterico analysis is quite extensive, although covers a lot of territory with brief stops at a lot of examples. There are probaly counter-arguments to some of what he points out, and I can even imagine some myself. But not in all cases. And as an afficonado of the philosophically-related Star-Trib, it’s quite easy for me to see what he means.
But really, the basic point is this: all polls reveal that print media types are overwhelmingly liberal in their atititudes. There’s no logical reason to belive that wouodn;t affect their work, and I see examplles of it every day.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Interesting points evets, but I gotta go.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
“I’m saying that liberal opinions in many papers are dishonestly argued.”
And I’m saying in no uncertain terms they are not and you haven’t provided an adequate example of this accusation. Hussein was not genocidal for himself and tribe. Your case is the clasic straw man but good enough for those who “think like you” as you put it. It fails the scratch test.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
I don’t understand your sentence that begins with “Hussein.”
January 6th, 2006 at 6:03 am
Well that was a bit hasty on my part. You gave the impression that an ongoing genocidal maniac was about done exterminating other ethnicities, which is far from reality, and we were next. It’s ludicrous on its face as was the evidence to go after Hussein in this urgent manner. Hussein is a buffoon. Anyone could see that, the last time he ran like a scalded cat, and the same this time. A genocide means no one is left standing but the victor. Didn’t and wouldn’t have happened. Ad populum puffery.
January 6th, 2006 at 9:30 am
All I meant was this: by genocidally-oriented, he’s proven himself capable of it. From that perspective, I don’t think it matters how long ago it was, although I’d also say that what he did to the marsh Arabs during the 90′s comes close to qualifying.
My argument is not based on urgency; it’s based on inevitability, and the premise that in the wake of 9-11, when you look at the statements of all major politicians in this country, our body politic had easily and automatically accepted a couple things.
One, that we could no longer fuck around with this weird middle ground with him that was in fact killing a lot of Iraqis, all aside from who was to blame for that, and was becoming more and more a cause celebre in the Muslim world in general and one more motivator for the al Qaeda types specifically.
And that further, and this is a longer discussion – it was and would have remained the basic consensus that we needed to figure out a way to remove the Hussein & Sons regime.
You may disagree with that premise – that is, either with the idea that we should have continued to make it our goal, or with the idea that it was and would have remained national bi-partisan consensus – but I don’t think it can be called a ridiculous idea on either score.
So any discussion of alternatives to the war, from my point of view, skirts intellectual dishonesty if if doesn’t at least acknowledge that context, and then let itself really explore what that would mean for Hussein’s motivations (and explore what would have been happening to the supposed box we had him in as the international inspections-sanctions regime began to wither as time passed).
Again: I’m not even sure i think this perspective was sufficent to start the war. But I think it’s itellectually dishonest to dismiss it as absurd or to pretend it doesn’t exist, which is essentially what the Star-Trib among others does.
(Intermission)
I just did a search – Sandy Berger Iraq – and came up with this review of Clinton-era policy toward Iraq, including myriad quotes about his intentions, his perniciousness, his hunger for weapons, his relations with terrorists, the long-term but unavoidable nature of the threat, and so on –
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513656/posts
It’s on Free Republic, forgive me, but it’s mostly a review with quotes.
What I’m saying is that this attitude toward Iraq would have been exactly our policy had we not done the war, only even more urgent, post 9-11. it would have been so because of our massive and well-justified distrust of him and his history; and it would have been because we would never have known what the hell was really up with his weapons.
And in totally, 100% condemning the war as people do, they tend not to deal honestly and forthrightly wiht this reality and its implications, in my view. That’s okay for an average person, I guess, although it’s tiring; but it’s not okay for a responsible editorial writer. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.
A detail of how this context affects the discussion: The anti-war side frequently maintains that Hussein would only consider giving weapons to terrorists (and if you can, leave aside for the moment the apparent fact he didn’t have the weapons; i’m isolating the Hussein-terrirst issue here) if he felt his survival was threatened. To me, it’s clear that after 9-11, we had permanently entered a context where he was going to feel his survival was threatened – by us. And that affects how I look at his tenuous but undeniable relations wiht terrorists of all sorts.
It may have been you on another string who said my worldview boiled down to “removing regimes we don’t like.” I think that’s kind of a trivialzing and frankly dumb way of characterizing what this postion is all about.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Obviously Clinton bombed him so that’s hardly an endorsement long term. The case was presented falsely and no urgency had a factual basis. Nor was it inevitable. Out of context old quotes from freepers hardly qualify as a source. Talk about misleading an dishonest. There it is. I don’t think the star-trib is dismissing it completely, it’s just in the context at the time it’s not a valid reason to sail in and take over the place. You’ll pay for though so enjoy.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:05 am
No it wasn’t me but it conjurs up quite a long list of them at an even higher cost if that’s the policy you’ll always recommend. There are always repercussions and trade-offs in game theory.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:13 am
The case was presented to some extent falsely, i’ve acknoweldged that. The challenge to the anti-war left is to separate their rage at W from a reality-based analysis of the dilemma Iraq presented.
As I feared, you’ve resorted to the tried and true method of sneering at a source. (Actually, there’s two methods there – sneering, and sneering at a source.) It’s pretty clear you didn’t read the piece; it provides a lot of context.
What’s also pretty clear is you’d rather hang on to your rage than actually respond to an argument – with, say, a reasoned analysis of what would have happened once we’d backed away from the war; or a reasoned non-sneering analysis of why our policy toward Iraq would not have been as I conjecture, or of why the implications I talk about are off-base.
“I’ll” pay for though? That’s both hateful and stupid. Nice one.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:18 am
The discussion is Iraq. It’s not the policy I’d always recommend, and there’s almost no basis for thinking that, especially since as I’ve tried to make clear, it’s not even the policy I ended up recommending in this case.
All this is is about is trying to get the sides talking to each other again; and necessary to that is getting the anti-war left to quit insisting that a grotesque caricature of the justifications for the war are all that’s worth talking about. To tell you the truth, sometimes it seems they don’t want to do that simply because it’s not as much fun.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I mean seriously, I don’t want to act like a jerk here. At all. But this is not just my view; and it’s not something I’ve cobbled together in despserate defense of a policy I blindly supported. It’s basically a quick summary of the entire other half of the respectable political spectrum on this question.
I understand how angry it’s possible to be at W and all; but it’s my view that while W may be impeachable, so is the hard-core anti-war left, were such a thing possible. For me, neither of those two were serious about the situation, or sufficiently so. W was not sufficiently serious about the downside of doing this, especially without the UN; but he was constantly faced with a war opposition dominated by a hard-core anti-war group insufficiently serious about the actual dilemma.
For the two sides to begin talking to each other again, it’s not gonna be based on the pro-war or semi-pro-war or confusedly non-anti-war group acceding that the war was totally evil, as some people seem to want to have happen. They/we have too much solid basis for disagreeing with that.
January 6th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Mark –
I go to your blog, and realize you and I would agree on most environmental issues. Keep up the good work.
And then I read your views on, say, right-wing bloggers, and the results of the last election, which I would describe as demonizing and reflective of an attitude that is partially responsible for destroying political discourse.
You seem to believe that almost anyone who views things or writes things differently from you is either essentially murderous or a simple-minded tool/attack dog of the evil men who run everything.
Condescension personified:
“Poppies…Poppies…Sink deeper…just a little deeper. Sleep…sleep. There’s a good child.”
It makes me sad. It seems beneath the intelligence I see in other writings of yours. You also seem very wedded to the perspective, so we probably won’t get anywhere.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Pay for “it” taxwise. I find their views illogical, as a scientist, on all issues. In opinion writing that’s my opinion. Many agree with me. Convincing wingnuts is a hopeless cause. They’re on the poppies as described. Don’t pin the tail on me. Turn around.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
So, no actual argument? Insults? I guess we’re done.
January 6th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Oh wait – you meant turn around and pin the tail on them other guys, not on myself. I see. Still, I can’t see why you don’t have the energy to ponder the way I think about these things. But, so be it. That’s fine.
January 6th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
It’s unclear where you stand. Some arguments are clear and need no dilution. Iraq the good news? Where is it and how does it stack up to the bad? That’s the argument. No insult.
January 7th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
On another thread I pointed out that the the Dems had introduced a congressional lobbyinbg reform plan. I’m still waiting to see the GOP’s plan. And Marc’s trashing of indian tribes, while maybe deserved, is irrelevant. Ever hear of the “K Street Project” Marc? Lobbying is part of the first Ammendment. That “peacefully assemble to redress grievences” stuff. And Congressional Delegations are supposed to represent the interests of their districts – Indians, Wheat Farmers, Auto Makers Etc. But6 Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff and xompany saw a way to use the lobbying process to create a permanant GOP majority by creating a Congressional Extortion machine. I think they crossed the line into illegality but in any case there is a “Culture of Corruption” in Washington and it has a Republican face. And this is not bipartisan and you know it. You didn’t like “They all do it” over Monica (although Larry Flynt showed how bipartisan sex was in DC) so why go for it now?
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:14 am
Just love your blog!
February 1st, 2006 at 9:51 am
I am impressed with this page…setup really nice. Doesn’t take forever to load pics, like mine… Very impressive.. http://diazepam.gottaoh.com
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:51 am
Just checking to see if any relation are out here
http://vintage-barbie.olddj.com
March 8th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
7xQSSZ60fR YVj12RbNqz81 fOK8BqLO0iv
May 21st, 2006 at 10:22 am
citicard…
described epistle scallops temper bandaging remark?credit cards http://www.1click-credit-card.com/ …
May 23rd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
credit checks…
commuting combers arrogates Rockford confuses monarch handgun?credit report http://www.bulk-credit-report.com/ …
July 17th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
prostate massage sexual…
I would love to hear more about this ……
July 25th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Ein Schloss, Ein poker Wurst, Ein Kopf !qm
July 30th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
diazepam online diazepam online
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:55 pm
sports picks sports picks
sports picks free sports picks free
September 12th, 2006 at 6:17 am
free football picks bb free football picks bb http://free-football-picks.blogspot.combb
September 24th, 2006 at 6:21 am
chennai city…
Can u provide more information about this ?…
November 19th, 2006 at 9:08 am
cheap 3mp camera
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:41 am
mufhsla
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 am
Can I reply in this conversation?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
art gallery museum…
Of art gallery museum and more…
May 9th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Arab Group…
I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….
May 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
zubabkzhl
August 30th, 2007 at 3:26 am
interesting blog…
I just recently came across your site, and I have to say I am thrilled I found it. IÂ’ve been journaling since I learned to write—which means my first journal entry read something like, “Today nap time came early,” and I love finding new blogs to fo…
February 28th, 2010 at 12:36 am
I just can’t believe it how many people post spam on sites especially blogs just for the sake of some link juice. I need to stay alert 24/24 even with fancy pluggins like spam killer… I dont want to imagine what would happen to my sites if I didn’t had this kind of protection.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Your site looks great and reads even better! You share some great opinions and insight here. Always looking for motivating blogs to keep mine going!