MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: April 8, 2007

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April 14, 2007

New Email Released Shows Sampson's a Fibber

On March 29, Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to AG Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. Sampson's testimony incriminated Gonzales, who had claimed he was not involved in the firing process. Sampson finally spoke -- it had been the most awaited testimony during the case that has preoccupied Washington for months. Well, now it looks like Sampson lied under oath. The former aide, as Michael Scherer reported in Salon, had trouble answering many questions that day; he tallied 127 "I don't remembers" uttered by Sampson throughout the hearing. Perhaps Sampson should have said "I don't remember" to this inquiry put forth by committee member Charles Schumer:

Schumer: Did you or did you not have in mind specific replacements for the dismissed U.S. Attorneys before they were asked to resign on December 7th, 2006.

Sampson: I personally did not. On December 7th, I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign.

A January 6, 2006 email just released to the House Judiciary Committee shows that Sampson had named replacement recs for each USA on the list of to-be-fireds. Oops. This news comes during the heating up of the email controversy over the administration using RNC emails to avoid communicating through their own email system. The White House now claims to have lost 5 million of these emails, many of which relate to the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys. It's a pretty tangled mess -- Karl Rove is back on the hot seat (I guess he's never really off) and Plamegate is back in the news.

But the new email released revealing Sampson's fibbing does more than just point to the fact that a former justice official lied under oath and reveal a concerted effort by the administration and the DOJ to conceal their communication, it shows that many of the potential replacements named were Bushies; that the mass purge of USAs in December was indeed a way to make room for "partisan loyalists" (an accusation the DOJ has denied). This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee authorized subpoenas for all DOJ and White House documents relating to the firings that they say they will issue if Gonzales is not forthcoming in his testimony this Tuesday. Senate Dems say that the documents released thus far have been incomplete. I'm banking on there being more juicy bits of information buried in the DOJ and WH's trails of paper and electronic mail. Stay tuned.

Today is National Day of Climate Action

Many of you likely know that today is the National Day of Climate Action. There are lots and lots of cool events around the country, which you can search by zip code at the Step It Up 2007 website. Got some free time on a spring Saturday? Try saving the planet for a little bit.

Another Haditha?

A new report from Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission says that a U.S. Marine unit used excessive force when escaping a suicide attempt last month. Twelve Afghani civilians were killed and 35 were injured by the Marines, who apparently did not distinguish between civilians and insurgents when responding to an attempt on their own lives. From the Times:

Following the March 4 attack in Nangahar province, when an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines, the unit shot at vehicles and pedestrians in six different locations while driving along a 10-mile stretch of road, according to a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.

And this isn't a toothless non-prof spouting off, either. This could result in actual prosecution.

A U.S. military commander also determined that Marines used excessive force, and he referred the case for possible criminal inquiry.

As if the United States needs any more bad press in the Arab world...

April 13, 2007

Could Those Lost E-mails Cause Fitzgerald to Re-open Leak Case?

Whoopsie! We lost 5 million e-mails! Thus spoke the White House, as Dan blogged earlier today. And a particularly huge number seem to belong to a certain Mr. Rove. All of these e-mails were exchanged during the period of time U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald investigated in connection with the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. Fitzgerald had been led to believe that he had a full accounting of official communications during the period in question. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington—a watchdog group that is also representing Joe and Valerie Wilson in their civil suit against administration officials—is now calling on Fitzgerald to re-open his investigation, given that the source of the leak may well have covered his electronic tracks. This is getting fun, isn't it?

Paul Wolfowitz: Anatomy of a Scandal

Part of the Bush administration's M.O. is promoting those who screw things up, as long as the ideology of their screw-ups is sufficiently conservative. Case in point: Paul Wolfowitz, one of the major architects of the Iraq War, who went on to become president of the World Bank. Did you think he would lose his ideological zealotry? No, dear reader. Despite his claims to the contrary yesterday on NPR, Wolfowitz, through a managing director he hired himself, pushed the World Bank to purge any references to family planning—which has long been part of the World Bank's standard development plan—in its strategy documents.

Wolfowitz is also in hot water at the bank because he promoted his "companion" into a State Department position that paid almost $200,000—some $60,000 more than she had earned previously. Wolfowitz is divorced. How, you might wonder, could anybody date this guy?

That is a question I cannot answer. But I can tell you that the woman who does so is an Arab feminist who shares Wolfowitz's passion for bringing democracy to the Middle East—by hook or by crook, apparently, since she was part of the reason he was so hell-bent on invading Iraq. Possible translation: Wolfie led the United States into war with Iraq to butter up his girlfriend.

He has apologized for his role in landing her the plum job, but claims he didn't understand the ethics rules fully. That seems to be a chronic problem.

Updated to reflect that Wolfowitz and the woman in question, Shaha Riza, are still together, and that Riza's new salary constituted a hefty raise.

Carbon Confusion

Two steps taken this week to combat global warming are not all that: One, the EPA relaxed pollution standards for corn milling plants that make ethanol fuel. Two, Australian states vowed to set up a carbon trading market. Why do I doubt them? Keep reading on The Blue Marble.

The Last, Last Hope?

Yesterday, Slate analyzed the administration's most recent (and secret) search for an Iraq war savior. The new savior is a czar who would "oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies." Um, I'd say it's highly unlikely that the administration is truly willing to relinquish absolute control over these two wars and, apparently, so do the three retired four-star generals who declined the offer to be czar. Slate writes:

Generals do not become generals by being demure. If some retired generals out there had a great idea about how to solve the mess in Iraq, and if the president offered them the authority to do what they wanted to do, few of them would hesitate to step up and take charge.

The point: a.) nobody has a clue how to solve this mess (it's way too late for a Hail Mary) and b.) no one will be given the authority to do so even if they could. I'm having deja-vu. It seems like just yesterday, David Petraeus, the most revered general in the United States Army, was being touted as Iraq's savior, the last hope. So, is the new czar going to be the last, last hope? Will there be a last, last, last hope?

Slate points out another problem -- Dick Cheney. Cheney still has too much influence and the generals don't want to be "outflanked" by him. And considering, earlier this month, the VP asserted the Al Qaeda/Saddam link, I think we want to keep his influence to a minimum. He stretches the truth sometimes.

RE: Those Missing White House Emails

Subpoenas have been authorized, the press is swarming, the Bush administration's flacks are taking a pounding — I think it's safe to say that the White House email controversy has officially blossomed into a full-blown scandal. This week the White House acknowledged that it may have "lost" an unspecified number of emails that were sent by staffers who used non-governmental, RNC-issued email addresses in what seemed at times a conscious effort to prevent their correspondence from becoming public record. "We screwed up, and we're trying to fix it," White House spokesperson Dana Perino told the press yesterday. She noted that only "a small slice" of the president's staff — among them Karl Rove and his deputies — used email addresses, along with BlackBerrys and laptops, supplied by the RNC. However, no mention has been made — and it's possible that in the end there may be no way of knowing — of just how many administration officials were circumventing the White House servers by using conventional Web mail services, such as Yahoo! or Gmail. This also appears to have been a fairly common practice among staffers who, as one administration official told U.S. News & World Report in 2004, "don't want my email made public."

As the White House comes under increasing scrutiny, the picture just keeps getting bleaker. We learned yesterday, for instance, that until August 2004 the RNC had a policy of deleting emails on its servers that were more than 30 days old. After "legal inquires," presumably those of CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the committee began saving the correspondence of White House officials. So, since Karl Rove is said to use his RNC address 95 percent of the time, and is a well known email fanatic, the RNC should have quite a hefty record of his communications, right? Strangely, the RNC doesn't have records of a single Rove email until 2005, which, as the committee's counsel Rob Kelner told members of Henry Waxman's Government Reform Committee, may have been because Rove was deleting them himself. This, it seems, is what led the RNC to remove Rove's ability to delete his messages and place an automatic archiving function solely on his account. Today, Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin explained that his client didn't intentionally purge his emails — rather, in the course of routine housekeeping, he would delete emails to keep his inbox in order. "His understanding starting very, very early in the administration was that those e-mails were being archived," Luskin said.

Beyond Rove's missing emails, and others the White House believes may have been lost due to the RNC's email purging policy, it seems there is another trove of emails that are unaccounted for — millions of them, actually. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported yesterday that, according to two sources, "in addition to the so-called political emails sent through private accounts, there are over five million emails sent on White House servers over a two-year period that are also missing." In 2005, according to CREW, the White House Office of Administration discovered a problem with its archiving system and, after looking further into the issue, realized "there were hundreds of days in which emails were missing for one or more of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] components subject to the PRA [Presidential Records Act]." Though a plan was drawn up to recover the missing emails, CREW says, no action was ever taken to retrieve the lost messages.

In its report, CREW also raises two issues that I brought up in my original story on the controversy. The first is the Hatch Act "excuse," as CREW puts it. The White House has maintained (and the press hasn't challenged) that administration officials with political duties were using a separate, RNC-administered email system in order to avoid breaching Hatch, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity on the job. This certainly seems like a reasonable explanation, unless you actually read the law. It states clearly that Senate-confirmed presidential appointees and staffers whose salaries are paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President (read: White House officials) are allowed to engage in political activity that is otherwise prohibited to other federal employees — for instance, they are allowed to talk strategy with the RNC anytime, anywhere — as long as the associated costs are not picked up by taxpayers. While in the Clinton White House separate computer terminals were apparently set aside for staffers with political duties, the use of partisan email addresses is a new and highly unusual wrinkle. As Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy told me a couple weeks back, "It shows how closely intertwined the White House is with its partisan allies. The fact that the White House and the RNC are working hand in hand and White House officials are using RNC emails is itself remarkable."

The other question I raised has to do with an intriguing line in a January 2006 letter from Patrick Fitzgerald to Scooter Libby's defense team that's buried deep in the USA v. Libby docket. In it, Fitzgerald informs Libby's lawyers that the prosecution had "learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Karl Rove's lawyer told the AP today that Fitzgerald had access to emails from Rove's various accounts. He also noted that, in addition to the White House, the prosecutor subpoenaed records from the RNC and the president's reelection campaign. "There's never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record," Luskin said.

Considering that we now know that millions of White House emails are potentially MIA, all of them drafted during a time period that would have been relevant to Fitzgerald's investigation, if that hasn't been suggested before it certainly will be now.

FCC Levies Largest Collective Fine in History of U.S. Broadcasting

"Payola" is the term for a practice in which radio broadcasters accept gifts and money from recording companies in exchange for playing music those companies select. Payola is fairly common, and actually legal if, when they play a track, radio broadcasters disclose who paid them to play it. (The FCC's rules on payola are easy to find, and quite clear.) Of course, you never hear a radio DJ saying, "We've been paid $3,000 to play this next J. Lo. track, so enjoy!"

The FCC is sending a message to change all that. Clear Channel Communications, CBS Radio, Entercom Communications, and Citadel Broadcasting have been fined a collective $12.5 million and will now be required to track every gift they receive worth more than $25. The fine is the largest in the history of American broadcasting.

My favorite part of the ruling, though, is this:

On top of the fines, the radio companies voluntarily agreed to launch a new program for independent artists... This local artist showcase commits the industry to 4,200 hours of airplay across the four companies between 6 a.m. and midnight.

In a previous payola investigation, Sony BMG Music Entertainment -- which includes Arista Records, Columbia Records, and Sony Music -- had to pay $10 million after then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer went after it.

Mia Farrow Calls Beijing 2008 the "Genocide Olympics"

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Mia Farrow's targeted pressure to curb the Darfur genocide "could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not," writes Helene Cooper in the New York Times.

For two years, China has used its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council to protect the Sudanese government from UN sanctions. More than half of Sudan's oil exports go to China, and Beijing is the Sudan's leading arms supplier. But Mia Farrow last month started a campaign to spur Beijing into humanitarian cooperation. She called on Steven Spielberg to use his position as an artistic adviser to the Games to pressure China. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, she warned, Spielberg could "go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games." Four days later, Spielberg sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. Days later, China dispatched a high-ranking official to Sudan.

The turnaround is "as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not," writes Helene Cooper. China has still not agreed to sanctions. But it's been less than two weeks since Farrow's op-ed. And according to J. Stephen Morrison, a Sudan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China values its image more than this oil from Sudan. "Their equity is to be seen as an ethical, rising global power," Morrison says, "not to get in bed with every sleazy government that comes up with a little oil." And the Olympics have been a major source of national pride. The night Beijing won the bid to host the Games, I joined about 200,000 revellers celebrating in Tiananmen Square, dancing and singing; it was the biggest gathering there since 1989.

SC House Hell-Bent on Violating Women's Rights to Promote Fetus'

Update in the controversy surrounding a new South Carolina abortion bill: The state senate has removed the provision that would force a woman to view her ultrasound before going through with an abortion.

The state's only female senator, Linda Short (D-Chester), says the revised bill will likely pass the Senate. Some members of the House are gearing up for a fight despite being warned by the Attorney General that making a woman look at something she doesn’t want to is against the law. Read more about the drama here.

—Nicole McClelland

FDA Sued For Politicizing Women's Health

The famed Family Research Council ("defending family, faith and freedom") is accusing the FDA of "politicizing women's health." Because before Plan B came around a woman's body was her own business? Right. The scoop, over at TBM.

Hunger Strike Begins for Stanford Students

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, students at Stanford University are holding a hunger strike until their administration agrees to pay all university workers a living wage. The students will be filing regular dispatches of their progress, with photography, for Mother Jones.

Check out their first report, and learn more about why they are fasting, at this page. Check that link in the coming days for more on the students' fight.

April 12, 2007

Imus Loses His Bully Pulpit

CBS dropped Don Imus' morning shock-jock radio program, Imus in the Morning. Read more on The Riff.

The Most Boring YouTube Video Ever

Wow. I've seen YouTube videos that are ridiculous, provocative, nonsensical, funny and utterly meaningless, but Mitt Romney's latest entry definitely earns the least-interesting award.

His snooze-fest video is part of YouTube's "You Choose '08" initiative that lets candidates showcase their campaigns through videos.

Actually, it's nice to get a glimpse of a 2008 presidential candidate speaking candidly, alone, without annoying banners, campaign posters, megaphones or loud crowds, so props to YouTube's News and Politics site.

If YouTube videos are too literal for you, try investigating virtual communities like Second Life, where Barack Obama has set up shop and posted a national webcast of his "living room conversation" with supporters.

The argument here is that campaigning with web tools like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Second Life open up the door for a new sense of "intimacy" with candidates, but I'm not so sure I'm buying it. Romney's video put me to sleep. Obama's virtual self doesn't even look anything like him. At this point I'm not really feeling more connected to candidates through web campaigns, I'm feeling bored.

--Gary Moskowitz

Rove and Co. Broke Federal Law With Email Scam

Our friends at CREW are back in the news. They've put out a report saying "the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over FIVE MILLION emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005." The White House was apparently given a plan to recover those emails, but has chosen to do nothing. I'm going to go ahead and guess that the plan to uncover those emails will never be undertaken unless done so with the power of a federal subpoena, because those emails were meant to be lost.

But guess what? Turns out, this is all illegal! Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post asked a White House spokesman to read aloud the White House's policy on email retention, and this is what he said:

"Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff... The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

Federal law? Holy cow! Deleting your emails is a federal offense, and the official email system is designed so emails will never be "accidentally" deleted. These guys are totally on the hook, right? Wait, there's more?

"Personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

So using email addresses belonging to the RNC and laptops and Blackberries on loan from the same is a violation of policy?

Bring in Patrick Fitzgerald now! Everyone is going to prison!

Stanford Students Hold Hunger Strike for a Living Wage

If you are a regular reader of Mother Jones you know that we love activism from the college kids. We've done thirteen annual campus activism roundups, the most recent of which can be found here.

Well, we're in for a doozy. Four Stanford students are beginning a hunger strike tonight in an effort to win a living wage for Stanford's workers.

This is well-tread ground. Living wages for kitchen staff, maintenance workers, groundskeepers, and construction workers is often a contentious issue on college campuses, with students and workers fighting for a livable wage and administrators resisting, then frequently adopting more economically just policies in fits and starts.

That's certainly the case at Stanford. In the winter and spring of 2003, workers and students rallied for a living wage and President John L. Hennessy appeared to cave by agreeing to a living wage with certain restrictions. In time it became clear that those restrictions excluded enough Stanford workers to render the policy meaningless, and in May 2003 students fasted for a week until Hennessy agreed to appoint a commission to examine the issue.

In June 2004, the commission recommended striking down five of Hennessy's seven restrictions and said, "If Stanford University operates a "living wage" policy, it should not attach so many conditions to its applicability that it has the effect of excusing many Contracted workers from that policy. A "living wage" policy that appends a string of conditions creates inequities among similar workers and risks giving the unfortunate impression that Stanford’s employment policies do not really mean what they are proclaimed to be." Hennessy agreed to consider and possibly adopt the commission's recommendations.

Almost three years later nothing has happened and student activists say they are back at "square one." Thus, another fast. Their demand: "That the living wage be expanded to apply to all campus workers regardless of the dollar value of employee contract; duration of employment; amount of hours worked per week; union membership status; and worksite location." You can learn more about the group holding the hunger strike, and its demands, at this website.

The students can thank Stanford for wireless internet at least, and while they are occupying a public space on Stanford's campus and refusing to imbibe, they will be filing regular dispatches for Mother Jones. Think of it as activism in action. Check the Mother Jones homepage over the next few days for regular updates.

About Your Commute...

If it makes you unhappy and it's destroying the planet, isn't it time to stop? Learn more on The Blue Marble.

Bomb Kills 2 Iraqi Lawmakers

The lawmakers were having their midday meal in a restaurant in the Green Zone after concluding the day's parliamentary session. Both were Sunni. According to the U.S. military, 8 people died in the attack and 23 were injured.

A separate attack blew up a 70-year-old bridge across the Tigris River as commuters were driving across. At least 10 people died.

Again, I say the surge is not working.

Hear from the Soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan Tonight

We've covered the perspective of the everyday soldier a fair amount here at Mother Jones. Our 2004 feature "Breaking Ranks" told the story of GIs who refused to fight in Iraq -- and were bravely speaking out when the majority of the country was still in favor of the war. The story came out well before such dissent from soldiers was common, or commonly reported. At that time we also listed the veterans groups that were rallying against the war; the organizations on that list have since grown and gained strength.

And we stayed on the story. We covered military families speaking out against the war, we photographed the rehabilitation of soldiers who came back wounded, and covered the films and books that gave the folks at home the perspective of those in battle.

Anthony Swofford has been a big part of that. The Gulf War veteran and author wrote the text of our photo essay "Coming Home: Seven Families Lay Their Fallen Soldiers to Rest" and we interviewed him when his book Jarhead was made into a feature film.

Swofford's at it again. In "Voices From The Front: Iraq and Afghanistan," Swofford will be moderating a discussion with soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan and the filmmakers, photographers, and journalists who have worked on those wars. The writing and photography of former soldiers is the focus of the evening. (Examples below.)

The event is tonight at 7 pm at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City. You'll find it at 126 Crosby Street, one block east of Broadway between Houston and Prince. Check it out if you can.

Obama (Kind of) Wins MoveOn Poll Following Iraq Town Hall

The results are in from the MoveOn virtual town hall on Iraq that I live blogged on Tuesday. (See parts one, two, three, and four.)

MoveOn polled its members after the town hall to see whose position on Iraq they preferred, and the results are in. Barack Obama, whose comments are found in part four, has won. As Ben Smith at The Politico mentions, the news comes as a bit of a surprise because Obama has not courted the netroots nearly as much as John Edwards has. To Edwards credit, he did come in a close second. Here are the numbers.

Obama 27.87%
Edwards 24.84
Kucinich 17.18
Richardson 12.26
Clinton 10.70
Biden 6.19
Dodd 1.05

To address Ben Smith's concerns, I would say that the MoveOn members are not necessarily the avid members of the blogosphere that are generally termed the "netroots." They are folks who participate in local events organized online, and they receive a flood of emails from the MoveOn folks, but I'm not sure that level of internet engagement means that they are on par with the bloggers and blog readers that Edwards has been courting. Admittedly, there is some overlap. I would wager that a lot of Daily Kos writers and readers are MoveOn members, but a lot of TAPPED writers and readers aren't.

But the numbers from the poll are tricky. MoveOn members could vote in the poll if they attended one of the house parties where people gathered to watch/listen to the town hall online (there was audio but no video; the technology can definitely improve), but they could also vote if they listened to the town hall online from their homes, or if they listened to the town hall on Air America, or if they did not listen at all.

The only way to guarantee that you are polling people who actually saw/heard the town hall is if you poll people who attended a house party. If you do that, the numbers change dramatically.

Edwards 24.56%
Richardson 20.93
Obama 18.61
Kucinich 15.61
Biden 10.27
Clinton 7.22
Dodd 3.65

It would appear that MoveOn members just like Obama, and even if they didn't catch the town hall, they voted for him to win this thing. Those who did hear the town hall thought Obama was third best, behind Edwards and Richardson, two candidates who spoke with the most passion and advocated the boldest moves for an exit from Iraq.

One last note. I neglected to mention in my live blog that MoveOn actually invited five Republican candidates who, from what I understand, all declined to participate.

April 11, 2007

MSNBC Drops Imus, Charges Against Duke LAX Players Dropped

And somewhere in these two stories (here and here) is a perfect snapshot of race relations in America.

Wish I knew what it was. After all, Imus had pulled this kind of crap before (see Ifill, Gwen.) And the Duke situation is so muddy...for one thing, the state attorney general who just cleared the guys is up for reelection. Not so different from DA Nifong, who may pushed for prosecution as a way to further his own ambitions. Having changed her story many times, the accuser certainly doesn't seem credible at this point (legally anyway), but then there remains the email of one of the LAX players saying that he wanted to kill strippers and rip off their skin. And the insults. Testimony of other witnesses about abusive behavior, etc.

Words are not deeds, of course. But whatever happened that night, it is hardly something for anyone to celebrate.

Anyone Up For an NCLB Rewrite?

With No Child Left Behind up for a re-hash this year, dissident voices are gaining traction and even supporters are acknowledging that its language needs some tweaking.

The nonprofit Educator Roundtable, a division of the Vermont Society for the Study of Education, has collected nearly 30,000 signatures for a petition asking to completely dismantle NCLB. One blogger is inviting educators to picket the annual national school board conference on Saturday in San Francisco. An Education Week blogger was dumbfounded that only 20 states have tried to roll back all or parts of the law.

California Congressman George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee who helped author NCLB, told Tavis Smiley that after five years, the law is only in its "infancy" in terms of meeting the needs of poor and minority students.

According to reports, there have been successes. Total federal funding for No Child Left Behind rose 34% between 2001 and 2006. Funding for schools serving low-income students rose 45%. States and school districts also allegedly have unprecedented flexibility in how they use federal funds, in exchange for greater accountability for results.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has a plan. She says we've learned some things "organically" over the years, and that now is the time for a growth model that charts progress over time with annual assessment systems. She also says it's time to turn attention to high schools, which are becoming increasingly "critical."

At this point what isn't critical when it comes to education reform?

—Gary Moskowitz

Najaf Estimates Split along Liberal/Conservative Reliable/Unreliable Divide

Jonathan blogged on Monday about the disturbingly wide range of estimates of the number of Iraqis who attended an anti-American rally in Najaf that day. Dutiful wonks at ThinkProgress, to the rescue! ThinkProgress points out that credible sources like The New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, AP, and the Wall Street Journal all put attendance in the "tens of thousands" (which, at least according to strict Mother Jones rules, means at least 20,000). Mother Jones also reports, in our Iraq 101 package, that Muqtada al-Sadr, who called for the rally, has "tens of thousands" of followers. The military, however, put attendance at 5,000-7,000, and conservative bloggers jumped on that figure.

ThinkProgress claims that a photo used to support lower estimates is, in fact, cropped. Check it out: It sure looks cropped.

ThinkProgress then shows another photo, of a side road not included in the allegedly cropped photo.

Problem is, neither of these photos have credible sources. The conservative blog Gateway Pundit, in a post including the photo in question, claims ThinkProgress's photo was taken before its photo, and therefore may well show some of the same people, not additional attendees as it claims. I'm gonna say touché on that one, but ThinkProgress has a solid record—and when you pair it with The New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, AP, and the Wall Street Journal and, ahem, Mother Jones, its reliability veritably trounces Gateway Pundit's. One caveat: It does seem a little bit odd that all the sources have used precisely the same wording in providing their estimates—but this is Iraq, and it's not like the Park Service is out there counting.

As for why Mother Jones believes papers of record and not the military, see below.

Will Cancer Kill Candidate Thompson?

Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee Senator, announced earlier today that he had lymphoma. Thompson claimed that the lymphoma, a form of cancer, was slow growing and probably wouldn't affect either his life span or his quality of life. The fact that Thompson allowed his doctor to speak about his condition makes it pretty clear that the announcement was a final trial balloon before formally announcing a bid for the White House.

It's a cancerous year on the campaign trail, to be sure. Have Americans moved beyond their ban on sick presidents (or presidents with sick wives)? Wait and see—Fred Thompson is.

Rudy Pulls a George Bush Sr. Moment on Price of Bread, Milk

It's no wonder that a guy who makes millions on shady law firm consultations and high-flying speaking engagements is a little out of touch with the common man. Asked by a reporter in Alabama about the prices of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, Rudy Giuliani answered:

"A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30."

Reality?

A check of the Web site for D'Agostino supermarket on Manhattan's Upper East Side showed a gallon of milk priced at $4.19 and a loaf of white bread at $2.99 to $3.39. In Montgomery, Ala., a gallon of milk goes for about $3.39 and bread is about $2.

Two observations: (1) This is a classic "gotcha!" question that reporters love, and every presidential candidate should be given a commodities rundown with their morning briefing ("Mrs. Clinton, bags of potatoes are down 30 cents, closing yesterday at $3.49."). You have to believe Mitt Romney's and John Edwards' people are scrambling to get this sort of information to their candidates this very second, because reporters are probably salivating about the idea of catching a second candidate looking silly today.

And (2) I'm not sure I would know the exact price of those things. In my mind, living in New York, the answer is "Too much." I remember seeing a gallon of orange juice at almost $10, and I stopped caring completely. "Just take all my money," I say to the checkout counter lady. "I don't care how much anything costs anymore. You win."

Of course, this all recalls a classic George Bush Sr. moment:

His difficulty with grocery items recalled another Republican's supermarket run-in. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush expressed amazement at a high-tech supermarket scanner, prompting critics to argue that he was out of touch with average Americans. The White House cried foul, pointing out that during a grocers' convention Bush had been impressed by a special scanner that could read torn labels.

Via Kos.

George W. Bush: Soft on Crime

Excellent article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today about the dwindling efficacy of the FBI. The Bush Administration restructured the FBI after 9/11 to focus on national security, but did not eliminate any of the FBI's traditional responsibilities. And to handle all the extra work, the FBI was given no additional money. ("Do more with less," it was told.) The result? You guessed it. Lower prosecution rates. Says one retired FBI official, "we realized we were going to have to pull out of some areas -- bank fraud, investment fraud, ID theft -- cases that protect the financial infrastructure of the country."

The White House and the Justice Department have failed to replace at least 2,400 agents transferred to counterterrorism squads... Two successive attorneys general have rejected the FBI's pleas for reinforcements behind closed doors.

As the quote from the retired official would indicate, it appears the lack of manpower has mainly hit the FBI's ability to prosecute white collar crime. The P-I's findings:

Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 -- a 34 percent drop.

White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases -- a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000.

The paper looks at specific cases of Native Americans and elderly residents in the Seattle area who were fleeced by sophisticated financial scams -- the sort of thing that has been traditionally part of the FBI's jurisdiction. In the cases examined by the P-I, none of the victims got the help they requested from Bush's FBI.

It's a long, long article. If you're interested, you can read the whole thing here. Also, I can tell you what the FBI was busy doing from 9/11 until the invasion of Iraq: partnering with the Department of Justice to scare the bejeezus out of Americans with show trial terror prosecutions and conveniently timed terror alerts, all of which are documented in the "DoJ/FBI" section of the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline.

April 10, 2007

Imus Doesn't Deserve a Face-to-Face With the "Rough Girls From Rutgers"

The Rutgers women's basketball team just played in the biggest game there is. They made it to the national championship game in the Big Dance. Did you hear about their upset win over #1 Duke in the Sweet 16 last month? You probably hadn't even heard of the team at all last week when Don Imus went and called them "nappy headed hos."

Which is too bad. They deserve to be lauded as student athletes, but instead they are, unwittingly, part of the Imus Show. And the most recent turn? They've gone and agreed to meet with Imus, to "reserve judgment" on whether he should be fired untill they hear his side of the story. His side? He's an ignorant shock jock who doesn't deserve their energy and attention. He's not going to give "ho a whole new definition," as one player wondered.

What he is going to do is continue to apologize, backpeddle, and do whatever he can to save his job. The sad fact remains that Imus has gotten more attention in these past few days than the Rutgers women have gotten all season. Which in the end reinforces his behavior. The more outrageous he is, the more play he gets on the national stage.

At least now though, people are interested in women's basketball, or at least the players, the "rough girls," involved. The Scarlet Knights, it seems, have more backers now than ever before.

Live Blogging the Iraq Town Hall, Part 4

Obama: First question, "What is the best and fastest way to get out of Iraq?" Obama's response, and this is the first sentence out of his mouth, "As you know, I opposed this war from the start." Says there is no military solution to the war; there is nothing American troops can do to win this thing.

Touts his "very specific" plan that forces the Sunnis and Shiites to find a political reconciliation. Also, redeployment of American troops should begin in May 2007 and end in March 2008. (Non-combat troops can remain.)

Says if Bush vetoes the recent war funding bill passed by the Democratic Congress (the one that includes a timetable for withdrawal), the Democrats should re-confront the president, multiple times if necessary. This echoes statements made by other candidates earlier.

Open dialogue with Syria and Iran, says BHO. Invokes the fact that Reagan called the Soviet Union "the evil empire" and yet met with them, because "power without diplomacy is a prescription for disaster."

Observation: Despite his reputation, Obama is less fiery and probably less eloquent than Edwards today. Edwards really was a rhetorical rock star.

Good night everybody! MoveOn will have town halls on health care and global warming in the near future.

Live Blogging the Iraq Town Hall, Part 3

People are using the intermission to (1) push the Draft Al Gore movement, (2) pimp filibusterforpeace.org, and (3) call for impeachment. Gotta love MoveOn!

Next up, Hillary Clinton: Asked, "What is the best and fastest way to get out of Iraq?" Clinton responds by touting the legislation she has introduced that (1) guarantees funding, training, equipment for the troops, (2) stops escalation, (3) insists on "real benchmarks" for the Iraqi government, and (4) convene international conference to forge a stable future for Iraq.

Says she will end war if elected. "It is time once and for all to end our involvement in Iraq." That statement is followed immediately with a feisty question about Clinton's recent statement that she supports a continued American presence in Iraq. What would the American troops be there for? What would they be doing? And how many of troops are we talking about exactly? This multipart question gets the first round of applause of the night from the crowd.

Clinton responds that we would have a limited presence for a short period of time. No permanent occupation, no permanent bases. Just some troops to train Iraqi security forces, protect the Kurds, and determine what the American interests in the region are (and protect them afterward). The crowd here doesn't like it. Someone shouts, "Shouldn't take more than 50 to 80 years!"

Clinton has strong rhetoric about bringing the troops home, but people here don't seem to think she has the ideas to back it up.

Chris Dodd (senator from Connecticut): "I believe we should begin redeploying our troops this evening." Finish the redeployment by March 2008. We need a surge in diplomacy, and we need to tie this whole fiasco to a new energy policy.

Energy independence for America is a huge focus in Dodd's answers.

Dodd says we need to rebuild our relationships around the world so America can be a force for good across the world. Believes, obviously, in the power of the United States.

Obama's our last candidate.

Live Blogging the Iraq Town Hall, Part 2

Kucinich (Rep. from Ohio): We can only engage the world community on Iraq after we announce our intention to leave. Touts his history as an early and loud opponent of the war.

Kucinich does have thoughts on the "Then what?" question (see Biden below). He talks about how to rehabilitate Iraq even though he emphasizes repeatedly the need to end the war and bring the troops home immediately. Primarily, he says, we should not partition Iraq the way Biden suggests. We should instead reach out to the players in the region and convince them that America is changing, that America is no longer the big bully that shoved them and the United Nations around for so long. This was "an illegal invasion, an illegal war, and an illegal occupation," and we need to end the war-mongering culture of America, the culture that allows for the idea of a war of preemption, looks the other way when the United States chooses not to participate in international bodies like the International Criminal Court, and fosters the largest military in the history of the world.

Says he's the only candidate who has consistently voted against funding the war.

Bill Richardson (Gov of New Mexico): "If I were president today, I would withdraw American troops by the end of this calendar year, and leave no residual force whatsoever." Rely on strong diplomatic moves to keep things together in the void created by the departing American troops. One diplomatic move: bring the three sects in Iraq together to hammer out the future form of the Iraqi government. Second diplomatic move: convene all major players in the region and urge them to invest in their neighborhood. The full force of our withdrawal, coupled with the full force of American diplomacy, will (hopefully) stave off a regional conflagration.

Observation: Richardson has ideas that are as bold as Edwards' and Kucinich's, though Edwards is a lot more eloquent in presenting them.

Richardson's focuses (foci?): ending the war immediately, and using diplomacy to deal with whatever fallout results.

Intermission! Back in ten minutes.

Live Blogging the MoveOn Town Hall with All Democratic Presidential Candidates

As mentioned earlier, MoveOn is hosting a virtual town hall tonight asking all Democratic candidates for president their opinions on Iraq. Well, I'm attending one at the Harvard Hillel; here are my thoughts.

Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn, kicks us off by saying this is the first virtual town hall ever held on this scale. Tonight's focus: Iraq. Two more town halls, health care and global warming, coming later. 600,000 votes were cast by MoveOn members to determine which questions get asked tonight; questions were pre-submitted by MoveOn members. We'll have 10 minutes with each candidate.

First up, John Edwards. Edwards begins: "I was wrong and I take responsibility for that." To paraphrase: We don't need more debate, nonbinding resolutions, abstract goals. Congress should use funding authority to immediately start bringing troops home. "This is not the time for political calculation; it is a time for political courage." Incredibly strong rhetoric from Edwards with incredibly strong recommendations/ideas for ending the war; willing to cut funding for troops, if it means forcing Bush to bring troops home.

Next, Joe Biden. "There is not military solution in Iraq." Need for a political solution. Says that his opponents have offered plans for cutting troops and/or funding, but don't have a political solution that answers the question of "Then what?" We leave Iraq and get our troops home. Fine. No more Americans are dying. Fine. But then what?

Biden has a plan, the only plan put forward by a Democrat running for president. Basically, we decentralize Iraq in order to stabilize it, breaking it up into loosely federated pieces. Limited central government exists to care for borders, army, distribution of oil revenues, and foreign policy. Oil policy should share oil revenues with Sunnis, especially, in an effort to get them to back off the insurgency. Essentially, under Biden's plan, oil money holds the country together.

Bush Doles Out EVEN More B.S. On the Border

Yesterday, Cameron wrote about Bush's trip to Yuma, Arizona to gain support for his immigration bill. Bush heralded tighter border security put forth last year and how it has lead to decreased apprehensions. Border Patrol reports the apprehensions in the Yuma Sector have fallen by 68 percent. "It's amazing progress that's been made," Bush said. As Cameron noted, this is fairly amusing, since last year, Bush was touting more apprehensions as a sign of success. But, more importantly, it is also sort of bogus reasoning. Yes, it appears that increased surveillance and more boots on the ground has lead to a decrease in crossers in this specific area of Arizona and California, but as history has shown us, this is simply how it works. You tighten restrictions in one area, apprehensions are sure to go down. Immigrants will just cross elsewhere. As I reported in September of last year, immigrant experts call this the "balloon effect," meaning if you build a wall or increase manpower in one section, border crossers will just move down the line. It is not an absolute sign of success, by any means. And, aside from fencing off the entire border and manning every inch of it, this ebb and flow will always occur. As for the lull in increases elsewhere (apprehensions along the entire Mexico border are down 30 percent)? Experts say "immigrant smugglers [are seeking] out new crossing routes."

To give Bush a little credit, he does need to work hard to gain the acceptance of hard line and skeptical GOPers (although it does seem like he has done enough catering to them) if he has any hope of passing comprehensive reform. Nancy Pelosi has said she will not even consider voting on a bill unless the president has 70 Republican votes. But, nonetheless, a few words of advice to Bush: a.) be consistent and b.) get your facts straight.

The White House Email Controversy Heats Up

The hidden scandal in the administration’s already scandalous purge of eight U.S. Attorneys is the discovery that White House officials have been regularly communicating using nongovernmental email addresses, some of them administered by the Republican National Committee. As we reported a couple weeks ago, this seems a blatant attempt to prevent emails from being archived by the White House computer system and potentially flouts the Presidential Records Act, a law enacted after Watergate to ensure that the papers of presidents and their advisor's are adequately preserved (and eventually made available to the public).

Now that congressional investigators are turning up the heat on the White House to explain this practice and Henry Waxman has asked the RNC to preserve White House communications archived on its servers, the email controversy is "creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House," the Los Angeles Times reports. The paper explains that this "back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes."

Perhaps, but that's just one part of the story. There's evidence to suggest that White House officials aren't simply concerned with separating their political and policy duties. As U.S. News & World Report noted in a brief item in 2004, White House staffers have turned to Web-based email accounts specifically to keep their emails from entering the public record. "I don't want my E-mail made public," one White House "insider" told the magazine.

Not only did White House officials think better of using their official emails, they also instructed the lobbyists who did business with them to avoid the White House system. "...It is better to not put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.," one lobbyist to wrote to Jack Abramoff in August 2003 after Abramoff accidentally pinged former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston on her White House address. "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc [Republican National Committee] pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system," Abramoff replied.

The White House is trying to play down the controversy, spinning the use of outside email addresses as an honest effort to avoid breaching the Hatch Act, which prohibits most federal employees from engaging in political activity on the job. But here’s the thing: Staffers whose salaries are paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President are exempt from certain strictures of that law and are allowed to conduct political business. That is, under most circumstances, White House officials would have no need to use alternate email addresses when talking politics.

Overshadowed by the U.S. Attorney firings, the email controversy has received scant media attention. But it’s the email scandal, with its potential to pull back the curtain on the White House’s political operation and possibly unveil other scandals, that really has the GOP’s teeth chattering. According to the Times:

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

One “GOP activist,” in what seems a vast understatement, told the paper, "There is concern about what may be in these e-mails.”

Terror Watch List Claims Another Victim

A leading constitutional scholar finds himself on the terrorist watch list for giving an anti-Bush lecture. Read the prof's background and full letter here. Watch the offending lecture here. Read a possible debunk, with some interesting stuff in the comments section, here. But first take a gander at the cliff noted version below.

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said."

"After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical."

Emphasis mine. Looks like I'm probably on a list somewhere. Are you?

Pelosi's Syria Trip -- in Video Blog Form!

I'm linking to this for a couple reasons: (1) it's a very good rundown of the dust up surrounding Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria, and (2) it's a great example of how video blogging can be done well. Kudos, Josh!

See Hillary, John, and BHO Tonight

Interested in finally seeing what all the fuss is about with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and the rest of the Democratic field? Live in one of the roughly 45 states that never see a presidential candidate in the primaries?

Today's your lucky day: MoveOn.org is hosting a virtual townhall, in which people gather in homes and community centers around the country to get online and watch the Democratic candidates joust and spout. You can find one near you here. Hooray for the internet!

April 9, 2007

Liberalism Is In

Americans have grown more concerned about the gap between rich and poor. Support for the social safety net has grown too, while our military appetite has shrunk, according to a recent Pew survey of public opinion.

More Americans agree with the assessment that "today it's really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer." Today, 73% feel that way, up from 65% five years ago.

It follows that more of us believe the government should take care of people who can't take care of themselves. Fifty-four percent of Americans say the government should help more needy people, even if it adds to the national debt, compared to just 41 percent in 1994.

Just five years ago, 43 percent of of us identified as Republicans, and same for Democrats. Now 35 percent identify as Republicans, and half the country as Democrats.

Also, racism and homophobia are both down. More than 83 percent agree that "it's all right for blacks and whites to date," up six percentage points since 2003 and 13 points from 10 years ago. The number of people who believe that school boards should have the right to fire gay teachers is at 28 percent, down from 51 percent in 1987.

The MoJo summary of all of the above: Americans are getting in touch with reality.

But the sad part may be that "the public is losing confidence in itself." The percent agreeing that Americans "can always find a way to solve our problems" has dropped 16 points in five years. Americans feel more and more estranged from their government. Barely a third would agree that "most elected officials care what people like me think," a 10-point drop since 2002. Saddest of all, young people, who have the rosiest view of government, are the least interested in voting or other political participation.

Bush Doles out More B.S. on the Border

Maybe President Bush genuinely wants to solve the United States' immigration woes, or maybe he's grasping for another hot-button (hate) issue to drum up conservative support. Today, he proposed immigration reforms in Yuma, Arizona, which were a far cry more punitive than those he advocated last year. A 3-year work visa would cost an immigrant $3,500—a sum beyond the imaginings of most rural Mexicans looking for grunt work in the United States. To get a green card, workers would have to return to their home countries, apply for reentry, and pay a $10,000 fine. The proposal brought 10,000 Latinos to the streets of Los Angeles.

Just two weeks ago, I blogged about a Los Angeles Times article that suggested that last year's immigration legislation (sans the fence that, thankfully, has not materialized) has brought illegal border crossings down. The article took the number of illegals caught to be representative of the total number. Bush today made the same point: Fewer caught crossers is good news. But, as Think Progress points out, a year and a half ago, Bush pointed to increased apprehensions as a positive indicator of Border Patrol's performance. As with drugs, the government can manipulate "apprehension" statistics however it wants. (In my previous blog post, I cited Charles Bowden's assertion in "Exodus" that "On the line, all numbers are fictions. The exportation of human beings by Mexico now reaches, officially, a half million souls a year. Or double that. Or triple that.")

If illegal immigration is indeed waning on its own, why are we talking about it now? Wouldn't the war on terror—which we're losing—be a better policy to rehash? But here I seem to have answered my own question: Yes, it would. Bush tactic: Distract; dissemble; drum up hate for some other group. If illegal immigration isn't waning—which seems far more likely—doesn't that beg the question, again, of why we're not addressing its causes like the European Union does?

Gingrich Joins GOP Attack on Gonzales

Newt Gingrich, who would like to be the GOP presidential candidate, is is now calling for Attorney General Gonzales to quit before things get any worse. "This is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess that I can remember in the years I've been active in public life," Gingrich said of the US attorney firing scandal. "The buck has to stop somewhere, and I'm assuming it's the attorney general and his immediate team." If he stays, said the former Speaker, there will be endless hearings.

Other Republicans who want Gonzales out include Senators John Sununu of New Hampshire and Gordon Smith of Oregon, along with Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher of California, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Lee Terry of Nebraska.

Wildly Different Estimates on Najaf Rally

I blogged earlier about the thousands of Moqtada al-Sadr followers who protested the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in Najaf today.

Well, it appears there is a major dispute over how many "thousands" were actually there. According to this CNN article, the U.S. military's estimate is "5,000 to 7,000." According to this Reuters article that I cited earlier, it is "tens of thousands." And according to this Agence France-Presse article and this BBC article the number of participants is in the "hundreds of thousands." If that's true, did the military really think they were going to fool anybody with that "5,000 to 7,000" nonsense?

Hoo-boy. Who to believe? We'll keep digging...

Stunning New Book from Iraqi Government Insider Illustrates Blunders, Ignorance

An Iraqi official who has served as Iraq's trade, defense, and finance minister at various times since 2003 has written a book about his country's four years under the American occupation ("The Occupation of Iraq," published by Yale University Press). According to the AP, it is a detached and nonpartisan look at the United States' and Iraqi government's failings.

Ali Allawi, cousin to former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, was educated in the United States and Britain and demonstrates no preference for the Sunni or Shiite sects within Iraqi society and its badly divided government (he belongs to a secularist political party). He slams a lot of people, but most of all the Americans.

Snippets of Allawi's book, from the AP:

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order."

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders.

The lies that led to war and the missteps after the invasion that led to failure are all documented in the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline.

On U.S. reconstruction failures — in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors — Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of 'success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."

There have been a lot of great books about the Iraq War, from Ron Suskind to Thomas Ricks to Michael Gordon to Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Now it looks like there is an Iraqi equivalent.

A Peaceful (!!) Rally in Iraq. Bad News for American Troops

Tens of thousands of people marched in Najaf today to protest the continued American occupation, exactly four years after the fall of Baghdad. (No protests were allowed in Baghdad because the U.S. military shut down the streets.) The protest was anti-American all the way, with chants of "Leave, leave occupier!" and "No, no, to the occupation." The event was organized (or called for, anyway) by Moqtada al-Sadr, and one of his key deputies spoke, saying, "We demand the exit of the occupier and withdrawal of the last American soldier and we also reject the existence of any kind of military bases."

In my mind the most important thing here, after the fact that there is yet more evidence that the Iraqis want nothing to do with us, is the fact that it was a peaceful event. It's safe to say that the majority of the participants were Shiites because al-Sadr is a radical Shiite cleric and major Shiite political player. But the Sunnis stayed away from what was essentially a massive target practice opportunity. Possible reasons: (1) al-Sadr cut some kind of deal, (2) the one thing that brings Iraqis together is hating Americans, or (3) both.

Couple this new sense of cooperation with the face that al-Sadr, who is possibly the most powerful man in Iraq, has called on Iraqis to cease attacking one another to instead focus on killing Americans, and we've got an even more hostile environment in which American forces must operate. Who thought that was even possible?

Update: The number of attendees is in dispute, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to "hundreds of thousands."

A Los Angeles Neighborhood Disturbance... With Strange Origins?

A thirty-foot pole with a robotic arm on top sits on a street corner in the town of San Pedro, outside Los Angeles. As pedestrians walk by, a giant eye at the end of the arm tracks them with a stream of light.

People are concerned. Is there a camera involved? Is this the newest form of public surveillance in an era of already-compromised civil liberties? Or is it a simple prank?

Actually, it's a public art piece. And it's name? Mojo.

Read more about how Mother Jones is driving the Orwellian future here. (PS - Can we sue for copyright infringement?)

April 14, 2007

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