Who's Losing What?

George W. Bush is on the campaign trail, claiming that Democrats, if they triumph in the congressional elections, will forfeit the war in Iraq to "the terrorists." Such an assault might be effective--if American voters didn't already believe that Bush has been losing the war. The trendlines are moving in the wrong direction: more deaths (of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians), more attacks, more chaos within the Iraqi government. As Bush thumps his chest and says his "goal is to win," the reality there undercuts his rhetoric. Ponder the front-page of Tuesday's Washington Post. The top-of-the-page article reports that the Iraqi police are thoroughly infiltrated by the militias they are supposed to control. "How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don't even trust them not to kill our own men," asked Captain Alexander Shaw, who works for a Washington-based military unit that oversees the training of police in Baghdad. Good question. Can Bush provide an answer?

And look at foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid's recent piece in the Post. Under the headline, "This is Baghdad. What could be worse?" he writes of a recent trip to Baghdad:

It had been almost a year since I was in the Iraqi capital, where I worked as a reporter in the days of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and the occupation, guerrilla war and religious resurgence that followed. On my return, it was difficult to grasp how atomized and violent the 1,250-year-old city has become. Even on the worst days, I had always found Baghdad's most redeeming quality to be its resilience, a tenacious refusal among people I met over three years to surrender to the chaos unleashed when the Americans arrived. That resilience is gone, overwhelmed by civil war, anarchy or whatever term could possibly fit. Baghdad now is convulsed by hatred, paralyzed by suspicion; fear has forced many to leave. Carnage its rhythm and despair its mantra, the capital, it seems, no longer embraces life.

"A city of ghosts," a friend told me, her tone almost funereal.

What's the plan for de-ghosting Baghdad, Mr. President?

Recently, a former CIA officer who had worked on the Iraq invasion (and who heartily supported it) sent me this note after traveling in Iraq:

It is like a Mad Max movie now, just teetering on complete chaos in Baghdad, with the Maliki government on the ropes. It is hard to believe we have reached this point. Yet no one in our government is accountable or responsible for this policy failure? We sail along blissfully ignorant, chanting the refrain to stay the course, as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. I have some understanding now of what Lincoln must have been seeing and thinking when he said, "I fear for the republic."

I couldn't tell whether he was referring to their government or ours.

Posted by David Corn at October 31, 2006 11:19 AM

Does Dick Armey Believe the GOP Deserves To Lose?

I posted this in my "Capitol Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Last week, I noted that when I was interviewing former House Republican majority leader Dick Armey for PajamasMedia.com, the retired congressman told me that his Republican pals in Congress might deserve to lose the coming elections for having made the wrong call on Iraq. I did not quote Armey directly on this point; I paraphrased our conversation. And Armey's office complained to Pajamas about my posting, saying that Armey had expressed no such sentiment. I have reviewed the audio of the entire interview--a video excerpt of which can be viewed here--and below is what he said. You can decide if my "might deserve to lose" formulation fits Armey's remarks.

Armey noted that "the war in Iraq is the 800-pound gorilla in the room." He remarked that the war was of "questionable necessity" and "questionable execution." He added, "As long as Democrats can keep the discussion on Iraq, our party loses ground. That's why you see Republicans, particularly in Senate campaigns, expressing some different points of view....The war in Iraq, is, I think, the big, big issue of the election." I reminded Armey that he is quoted in the book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, saying he deeply regretted his vote to give President George W. Bush the authority to launch the war on Iraq. I asked:

Do you still regret that vote today and if so, if people like you, if Republicans voted the wrong way, is it not, according to the rules of the marketplace, a good thing to sort of pay a price now, at least in political terms. Should people hold your party to account for making the wrong vote?

Here's how Armey replied:

I think it was the wrong vote. I felt it at the time....And yes, if you make a bad vote, in the final analysis, you need to expect to live with it. And to some extent that is happening now--with current officeholders. You might say, "Well, Armey, he dodged the bullet because he made his bad vote and then retired by the time the country woke up to it." But right now I don't think very many people seeking office are going to be running around to very many constituents and saying, "You better reelect me because I voted to get us into Iraq."

Armey went on to say

I'm not clear why we got in here [in Iraq] in the first place. We're mired down here. It doesn't seem to me we're making any progress. I wonder if they're doing it right and how in the heck are we ever going to get out of it. And then you take a look at that and say, who's to blame? Well, there's only one guy to blame, and that's your commander in chief...I don't know how you get out of [Iraq]. Sooner or later, there's going to have to be a decision to get out, probably with some disregard for the consequences.

This is how I read Armey's remarks: (a) he believes invading Iraq was misguided and that Republican members of Congress should not have voted to hand Bush the authority to launch that war; (b) legislators sometimes have to pay for a "bad vote." Does that mean he wants the Republicans to be voted out of office? Clearly, not. He hopes that his party--despite this grave mistake--keeps its stranglehold on Congress. And he's certainly not calling for Bush to resign. But, at the same time, he recognizes that the Republican party's unabashed and across-the-board support of the Iraq war is indeed legitimate cause for voters to boot it out of power.

Armey's great passions in life are free-market economics and country and western music. He cannot deny the workings of the political marketplace: you screw up, you ought to be voted out of office. Does that mean he believes the Republicans "might deserve" to lose?

For Hubris, Armey recalled for us a moment in December 2002--two months after he had voted to give Bush the authority to attack Iraq. He was driving along a stretch of Texas highway when a country song came on about a fellow who looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. The line hit him hard. Against his better instincts, he had voted for the war, though he had serious doubts about the intelligence on Iraq's WMD that had been presented to him personally by Vice President Dick Cheney. Listening to this song, Armey thought that he had become that stranger. He had been untrue to himself. And he was thankful that he was about to retire from the House.

Now it seems that he will have no beef with those voters who on Election Day punish his Republican colleagues for having committed the same mistake he did. Armey might even be able to suggest an appropriate song for his party-mates that day: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

Posted by David Corn at October 30, 2006 01:18 PM

An Expanded Edition of Hubris?

From CNN:


Democrats will aggressively investigate pre-Iraq war intelligence failures if they win back the Senate, a Democratic leader said Friday.

While releasing a report on U.S. contracting problems with the Iraq war -- which he called "the most significant waste, fraud and abuse in the history of the country," Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan said Democrats will hold "aggressive oversight hearings" on pre-war intelligence, contracting, and a other issues related to the war.

"There's no question that we will finally understand what happened," with intelligence failures, the North Dakota Senator said.

Asked about Republican concerns that Democrats want to get back at Republicans -- possibly even impeach President Bush -- Dorgan said, "it's not retribution," but an attempt to make up for Republicans who "abdicated oversight" of the war because they have "one party control and no one wants to embarrass anyone."

Perhaps this will produce more material for the paperback edition.

Posted by David Corn at October 27, 2006 04:04 PM

Dirty GOP

A week and a half to the elections. Expect plenty of foul play: dirty ads, push polls, false charges, etc. And it may sound unduly partisan to say so, but most of this can be expected to come from the Republicans. Take a look at the front-page article in today's Washington Post headlined "The Year of Playing Dirtier." It notes,

On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.

At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.

"When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive to go to the extremes."

But this is no bipartisan effort. All of the examples of dirty politics the article cites are Republican attacks on Democrats. As the Post reports,

The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.

And some of the examples are pretty ugly. Check out the article to see.

Now, let's think back to the days of the 2000 campaign. A presidential candidate vowed that he would change the tone in Washington. That man was George W. Bush. He obviously didn't mean it. As the titular head of the GOP, Bush could say something about the current Republican assault. But he doesn't seem to care if his party veers further into the gutter. No doubt, it will get worse in the days ahead.

Gotta run. More later.

Posted by David Corn at October 27, 2006 03:51 PM

Winning But Getting Worse?

Here's a posting I contributed to the "Comment Is Free" group blog run by the Guardian newspaper....

On Wednesday, President George W Bush said, "Absolutely, we're winning" the war in Iraq. But he also remarked, "I'm not satisfied" with the situation in Iraq. He further noted, "Last spring, I thought for a period of time we'd be able to reduce our troop presence [in Iraq] early next year." Then he acknowledged that was now not going to happen. To sum up his position: the United States is succeeding in Iraq but conditions there have gotten worse. This is what an election can do to a politician: make him talk nonsense.

With congressional elections less than two weeks away and the predictions dire for Republicans, Bush is in a bind. The only national news of the moment - besides the fuss over Madonna's adoption of an African boy - concerns the Iraq war and the congressional page scandal. Neither of these two stories helps the president's party. There's not much Bush can say about the sordid page affair, as prominent house republicans - including House Speaker Denny Hastert - appear before the house ethics committee to offer private testimony about who knew what when. Iraq is another matter. That's the president's pet project - and it's the number-one drag on his party. Charlie Cook, a veteran and non-partisan analyst who tracks congressional races, estimates that the war is responsible for about 70 percent of the public's anti-Republican mood. Each day's news stories make it seem that Iraq is closer to civil war. So the White House has to try to do something-anything-to stop the bleeding from this political wound.

Yet on Iraq Bush is burdened with two conflicting aims. Because he has for years issued unduly optimistic pronouncements about developments in Iraq, in this election season he has had to confront the charge that he's detached from reality. His recent decision to drop the "stay the course" phrase from his rhetoric was an acknowledgement that he had come to be seen as inflexible and out of touch. At the same time, however, Bush has to defend his Iraq enterprise and convince an increasingly sceptical public that it has not been one gigantic blunder. What a fix to be in. Bush has to demonstrate he does recognize Iraq is a mess, but he also must be a cheerleader for that mess.

It's tough to do both at once. The White House, though, has obviously calculated that attempting the impossible (even if that means suffering the darts of pesky columnists) is better than staying mum. Karl Rove and other Republican strategists apparently were worried that public support for Bush and the war could in the next two weeks slip further than it has and further imperil Republicans in the elections. So they had Bush present conflicting messages in the hope that some undecided voters (as well as true-blue Republican supporters whom the party needs to keep enthusiastic) would hear what they want to hear from the president.

Still, the meta-dynamics of the congressional race are out of the hands of Rove and the Republicans. They cannot turn around the public attitudes about Bush and his war. Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, said on Tuesday that Republican candidates should not focus on Iraq. (In an email sent out this week, Frist claimed that Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who would become House Speaker should her party gain 15 or more seats, would "compromise 100% of our National Security.") Regarding the war, Bush at best can tread water and endeavour to prevent further slippage on this front. But his Wednesday statements are not likely to help much.

How the Republicans handle the on-the-ground mechanics in the key House and Senate races will have a greater impact on the overall outcome of the elections. The National Republican Congressional Campaign has identified 33 House races (out of 435 contests) to target. Twenty-nine of those involve a Republican incumbent. Party officials will dump money and below-the-belt negative ads into these races, praying this will be enough to protect their majority in the House. At this late stage, what Bush has to say counts for little. With the war, he's already made his point.

Posted by David Corn at October 26, 2006 12:49 PM

A Real October Surprise

Below is my "Loyal Opposition" column from TomPaine.com....

A Real October Surprise
By David Corn
October 25, 2006

My fellow Americans,

As you might have heard, my White House reached an important decision this week. From now on, neither I nor any member of my administration will use the phrase "stay the course" when referring to United States actions in Iraq. Our repeated use of that term had allowed our opponents to charge that this administration is inflexible and stubborn, and not interested in pursuing new options and strategies in Iraq.

At first, administration officials and I were reluctant to renounce our vow to "stay the course." But then I realized that our hesitancy only proved the point. And as I thought about this change in message, it occurred to me that not only was such a change warranted, it ought to pave the way for other necessary changes. After all, the course we're on is obviously not working as I had expected and hoped. We invaded Iraq over three-and-a-half years ago, yet the violence there--now spreading through horrific sectarian conflict--has intensified. Heck, let's be honest and call it a burgeoning civil war. American citizens of this nation are right to feel discouraged, disappointed and frustrated. And the people of Iraq are right to be angry.

So I intend to do more than expunge those three words from the lexicon of this administration; I intend to forge a new course.

Before we move ahead, though, we must come to terms with what has brought us to this difficult point.

We can only succeed in Iraq and in the greater struggle against al-Qaida--note that I am also no longer using the vague and meaningless phrase "war on terror"--if we have a sound policy based on competence and credibility. Until now, the actions of this administration have caused Americans and people in other nations to doubt the United States on both counts. That must be changed. So let me state clearly: The war in Iraq was a mistake. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The prewar intelligence was not conclusive, and I and other administration officials were wrong to state there was "no doubt" about it. We were wrong to declare that Iraq was a "gathering threat." In fact, as we now know, there was nothing gathering about it.

Certainly, Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant, presented a problem. But he was not the "immediate" and "direct" danger my administration said he was. Officials of this administration--myself included--epeatedly suggested that his brutal regime was in league with the mass-murdering evildoers of 9/11. That, too, was not the case.

By making these assertions and then repeatedly stating in the post-invasion period that progress was under way (an unduly optimistic assessment), this administration undercut its own credibility. But even if we started this war in error and committed subsequent missteps, none of that can be undone. We are where we are today. And if we are to lead the rest of the world in seeking solutions to the problems in Iraq and elsewhere, we must regain our credibility. That can only come with a frank admission that what we previously said and did was false and misguided.

Then there is the matter of competence. The United States is fortunate--blessed--to be the most powerful and influential nation in the world. This creates obligations--which we, as Americans, accept--and expectations as well. Millions of Iraqis are entitled to expect that the United States, after vanquishing the armies of Saddam Hussein, would be prepared to confront the ensuing and obvious challenges of securing, rebuilding and revitalizing Iraq, as Iraq attempts to transform itself into a functioning and stable democracy.

Sadly, the United States was not ready to take on these tasks and, worse, we made fundamental miscalculations--dissolving the Iraqi army, mounting a de-Baathification program that went too far and deploying an insufficient number of American troops following the initial military action--that shaped the landscape to our disadvantage, and, I am sad to say, to the disadvantage of the Iraqi people, who have suffered more than was necessary.

To move ahead, we must show the world--particularly our friends and allies in Iraq--that we believe in accountability and responsibility and, more important, that we can learn from our mistakes. So today I am announcing that I have requested and received the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Of course, he alone is not to blame for our problems in Iraq. As commander in chief, I do assume full responsibility. But America is not a parliamentarian-style democracy. When policies fail, governments do not fall. Still, clearly a new team is needed.

I will be announcing Secretary Rumsfeld's replacement shortly, as well as other dramatic changes in the composition of my administration. And, while Dick Cheney will remain as vice president, I do expect his office to have less influence in the crafting of foreign policy. I've instructed my aides to revive the traditional working relationships between the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council. My goals are two-fold: to ensure we have a strong, competent and well-coordinated national security team and to enhance global confidence in the United States’ ability to handle the challenges in Iraq and other parts of the world.

With bolstered credibility and competent leadership, this administration can start to take the steps necessary for resolving the mess in Iraq. We are now in the middle of an election season and both parties are fighting vigorously for control of Congress. I will not wait for election results to begin a bipartisan process of evaluating policy alternatives. Nor will I wait for the recommendations of the Iraq study group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. With U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians tragically dying at accelerating rates, every single day counts. Every hour counts. Starting tomorrow, I will be calling groups of Democrats and Republicans to the White House for extensive and meaningful consultations. I want to see what ideas others have. I want everyone to be part of this process: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jack Murtha, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich.

It was my administration that took us into Iraq, but what we face now is a problem for all Americans. To deal with it, I will also ask Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Al Gore to join us. And let me take a moment to note that I do realize that had it not been for those mis-designed butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County, Al Gore would likely be president today and we would not be stuck in Iraq.

I will extend the discussion--and the search for alternatives--beyond Washington. If we are to reach any resolution in Iraq, we need to better involve our allies, other powers and Iraq’s neighbors. And this does mean talking to all of its neighbors, including Iran and Syria, despite our well-founded differences. I have asked my father for advice on this, and he has volunteered to serve as my emissary to the nations of the region. He knows the Middle East and its leaders well. When I asked him to take on this assignment, he said, "Son, better late than never." I could not agree more. And I can now say without equivocation, “"Dad, you were right not to take the war to Baghdad in 1991."

Staying the course is now history. I will not merely tweak the rhetoric; I will rethink our policies and chart a new path ahead. And we must face facts: Total victory may not be possible. We might have to settle for less—despite the loss of nearly 3,000 brave U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) Iraqi civilians.

After being in charge of this war for more than three years, I've learned Iraq is not black and white. There are no easy solutions. Indeed, there may be no good solutions at all. We might have to settle for a muddle. But with the two years I have left as your president, I will do all I can to make sure it is the best muddle possible. As I do so, I ask Americans for their forgiveness, forbearance and support. God bless America and God help us.

Posted by David Corn at October 25, 2006 02:02 PM

Gone Debatin'

I'll be traveling most of the day on Wednesday. If no post appears, check back soon.

Posted by David Corn at October 24, 2006 10:49 PM

How Big Will the Anti-GOP Wave Be?

I posted this in my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

This morning at a briefing on the congressional elections, an event that featured former Representatives Dick Armey, Jennifer Dunn, and Dick Gephardt and that was sponsored by a Washington law firm, political analyst Charlie Cook--an independent handicapper trusted by Ds and Rs--offered good news for the Democrats. He compared 2006 to 1994, the year when Republicans shockingly seized control of both houses of Congress, netting a whopping 52 House seats. Cook noted that in October 1994, 39 percent of Americans said they believed the country was heading in the right direction and 48 percent thought it was on the wrong track. Now the right direction/wrong track numbers are far more negative: 26 percent to 61 percent. In October 1994, President Bill Clinton's approval rating was 48 percent. These days, President George W. Bush is about 38 percent. The approval rating for Congress in 1994 was 24 percent (with 67 percent disapproving). Today, it's lower: 16 percent (with 75 percent giving Congress a thumb's down). In 1994, Republicans had a 6 point lead in polls asking respondents to say whether they preferred a GOP or Democratic candidate. Now the Democrats have a 15 point edge. But when asked if their own member of Congress deserved reelection, 49 percent in 1994 said no; now only 45 percent say no. (In both years, 39 percent said boot the bum out.)

The bottom-line: out of five key indicators of the national politicalmood, four are significantly worse for the Republicans in 2006 compared to the Democrats in 1994. As Cook put it, the 2006 political wave (at this moment) is bigger than that of 1994. But that does not mean the Dems are going to win as many seats as the GOPers did twelve years ago. Gephardt cautioned that congressional districts are far more gerrymandered these days than they were in 1994 (which means fewer are in play) and that Republicans have had a year to prepare for this election and build a wall to hold back the coming storm. In 1994, he said, the Democrats were taken by complete surprise. And Dunn--perhaps trying to convince herself--maintained that her party had plenty of money to dump into the limited number of House contests up for grab and would be able to prevent the Democrats from picking up more than a dozen House seats. The Democrats need 15 seats to obtain control of the House.

Still, Cook, who attributes 70 percent of the electorate's sour mood to Bush's war in Iraq, was predicting a Democratic gain in the House of at least 20 seats and perhaps 35. As for the Senate, Cook described it as a toss-up, with control of that body resting on what will happen in Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, and New Jersey. The Democrats, according to Cook, probably will need three of these four races to win the Senate. He warned that there is a fair bit of "volatility" within the electorate and that it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen by adding up outcomes in individual House races. In 1994, he recalled, he and other trackers foresaw a GOP gain of 20 to 30 House seats--but nothing like what happened. "When there is a wave," Cook said, "they always go bigger than you expect."

Democrats, who have not done much to shape the current political dynamic, can hope so. For nail-biters, the immediate questions are obvious. Can Bush and Karl Rove do anything in the last two weeks of the campaign to change the weather? There's not much time left for an October Surprise. Can they pull off a November Surprise? If not and the forecast doesn't shift, can the Republicans construct fortifications to beat back the wave in just enough spots to keep their majority afloat in Congress? Cook thinks not. I'm not going to be as gutsy and make any predictions except this: Rove is either about to meet his Waterloo or to confirm his reputation as an odds-defying political genius.

******

It's always gratifying to know you got something right. At this pre-election briefing, I conducted interviews with top-dog Washingtonians (former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Armey and Dunn) for the Pajamas Media website, and I had the chance to talk to Armey about Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, the book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff. In the book, we chronicle how Armey first objected to the idea of going to war in Iraq, questioning the necessity of such an action and telling President Bush an invasion would lead to a quagmire. But after Dick Cheney pressured Armey, the Texan relented and voted in October 2002 to give President Bush the authority to launch a war against Iraq. In the book, we quote Armey saying he regretted that vote. So this morning I asked Armey if we portrayed his story accurately. Yes, he said: "I still think it's one of the worst votes I made." The Republican Party, he added, might deserve to lose the coming elections for having made the wrong call on Iraq.

Posted by David Corn at October 24, 2006 12:11 PM

Buy These Books

Sharp-eyed readers of this blog by now might have picked up on the subtle hints that I have a new book out and that I am hoping that every visitor to this site buys at least three copies. This has been a tough season for authors. The publishing industry has released a flood of books this fall. That means more competition for precious media bookings, for the small number of slots on the bestseller lists, and, most important, for the attention of potential customers and readers. Even books that don't compete directly with serious works--say, former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's screw-and-tell memoirs--suck up available space on media outlets and at the front tables in the chain bookstores.

Hubris has been doing well in this difficult environment, hitting the bestseller lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. It was No. 1 for a while on Amazon.com. But there are plenty of other good books out now that you should be purchasing--and several are written by friends of mine. So instead of plugging my own, let me flack their works. So buy these books:



* All Governments Lie by Myra MacPherson. When I was in college, I couldn't decide whom I wanted to be when I grew up: Jack Kerouac or I.F. Stone. I did end up writing a novel (see below). But more important, I now hold a post--Washington editor of The Nation--that once belonged to Izzy Stone, one of the best independent American journalist of the latter half of the 20th Century. Izzy, some like to say, was a blogger before blogs. For years, he opted out of organized media and sent out (that is, sold) a weekly newsletter to tens of thousands of subscribers. He showed what one smart fellow could do on his own when it came to digging out truths and presenting analyses missed by the rest of the media. He remains an inspiration (despite the right's never-ending attempts to smear him as a Soviet agent). MacPherson, who once was a reporter for The Washington Post, chronicles his life and casts Stone as a model (and lesson) for the journalists of today.



* Heist by Peter Stone. Speaking of Izzy Stone, one of the better muckrakers in Washington these days is his nephew, Peter Stone, a reporter at National Journal. Because the NJ is a fancy, high-priced magazine originally designed to serve those willing to pay top-dollar for quality journalism explaining the workings of Washington (say, lobbyists and libraries), many Americans are unfamiliar with its work. Stone has been writing about the sleazy world of Washington lobbydom for years. Consequently, he was well-positioned to cover the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff and his Republican buddies. If you want to know how lobbying (for Indian gaming and other matters) really works, turn to Stone.

* Blood Brothers by Michael Weisskopf. On the night of December 10, 2003, Weisskopf, a correspondent for Time was riding with a US military convoy in northwestern Baghdad. He was there to contribute to his magazine's cover story declaring the US soldier in Iraq the Person of the Year. But he became part of the story. An RPG landed in his vehicle. Not realizing what the object was but working on pure instinct, he grabbed for it, intending to hurl it far from the truck. He immediately felt the red-hot object burning through the flesh of his right hand. Before he could react, the device exploded. Weisskopf and the soldiers riding with him survived--most likely because his hand muffled the blast. But that hand was gone. When Weisskopf came to moments after the blast, the end of his arm looked like a decapitated chicken. He worried he was going to die. He didn't. Instead, he ended up in Ward 57 at Walter Reed Medical Center, a wing reserved for Iraqi war amputees. This book recounts the painful rehabilitation and reentry into normal life of Weisskopf and other Ward 57 patients. It's a close-up and personal look at one cost of the war--a cost that doesn't get much attention. Credit to Weisskopf for not obsessing with his own tale and focusing on that of the soldiers that drew him to Iraq and his new life.

* Mad Dogs by James Grady. Over the past fifteen years, I've had the immense pleasure of being a pal of the fellow who wrote Six Days of the Condor (which became the film Three Days of the Condor). It is in large part because of Grady that I also have had something of a career as a fiction writer. (See Deep Background, my 1999 novel). In Grady's latest thriller, five former CIA operatives who each went psycho due to a mission gone bad (one nearly infiltrated a pre-9/11 meeting of al Qaeda terrorists that included two of the hijackers-to-be) bust out of the high-security mental hospital set up by the agency to house its basket-cases. Their self-assigned mission: to find out why their shrink was brutally murdered within their ward. The book is a fast-paced road-trip of covert-op crazies trying to come to terms with their personal histories and the internal bureaucratic intrigue of the post-9/11 intelligence establishment. If real-life intelligence screw-ups are not thrilling enough for you, try this smart action novel of espionage and angst.

*Not Enough Indians by Harry Shearer. Shearer would make the original Renaissance Man look like a slouch. He does umpteen voices on The Simpsons (including Mr. Burns), produces a weekly radio show of political satire (Le Show), writes the "Eat the Press" column at HuffingtonPost.com, and regularly appears in Christopher Guest's films (The Mighty Wind). He is also renowned for his membership in a band called Spinal Tap. Clearly, this fellow has too much time on his hands. To fill up those lonely downtime moments, he wrote his first novel. It's--no surprise--a comedy. The book tells the story of a down-on-its-luck town in upstate New York that fails to entice a Walmart and then goes "tribal"--that is, it petitions the federal government to certify itself as an Indian tribe in order to win the right to open a casino. Soon the town is home to the biggest "gaming" (as the industry calls it) operation in America. And hijinks ensue. Shearer's writing is reminiscent of Garrison Keillor's accounts of his fictitious Lake Wobegone but--again, this is no surprise--with much more of an edge.

Posted by David Corn at October 23, 2006 12:06 PM

HUBRIS on C-SPAN

On Saturday, C-SPAN's BookTV broadcast a talk that Michael Isikoff and I gave last week at Politics & Prose, a bookstore in Washington, about our new best-selling HUBRIS: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. At the end of the broadcast, C-SPAN advised any viewer looking for more info on the book to visit this website. So if you took that advice, this is what you can do. Click here for a posting about recent reviews of the book. You also can click here to see the press release that lists some juicy tidbits from the book. Or you can, of course, click here to buy the book at Amazon.com. Believe me, we appreciate every sale.

Posted by David Corn at October 21, 2006 09:04 PM

Conservative Realism or Disingenuous Callousness?; Corn vs. Greenberg Day 4

Here's my latest "Capitol Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Last week, The Nation and The National Interest held a public discussion to explore whether these days foreign policy realists of the right could make common cause with foreign policy idealists of the left. (The event was titled, "Beyond Neocons and Neolibs: Can Realism Bridge Left and Right" and can be viewed here.) After all, both groups share an opposition to the messianic crusaderism and bullying interventionism of the neocons that has yielded the Iraq war. Speaking for the left were Kai Bird, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Sherle Schwenninger, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute and a regular contributor to The Nation. The hardheaded crowd was represented by Dov Zakheim, an undersecretary of defense from 2001 to 2004 and now a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton (who supported the invasion of Iraq), and Dmitri Simes, a former Nixon adviser and now publisher of The National Interest

The presentation showed there was not a lot of territory to share. In his opening remarks, Bird noted that Henry Kissinger had been wrong about everything, and he referred to Vietnam and the US support of the military junta that in 1973 overthrew Salvador Allende, a democratically elected socialist, in Chile. Invoking Kissinger as the embodiment of all that has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy for decades was a deep insult to the conservative realists. Kissinger is the honorary chairman of The National Interest. Bird's salvo prompted Zakheim to defend Kissinger, particularly on Chile. (Nixon and Kissinger, via the CIA, had backed efforts to topple Allende.) "Chile," Zakheim said, "doesn't look to me like a failure....Quite a success. It wasn't doing that well in the 1970s." Simes then chimed in: "I'm not appalled by what Kissinger and Nixon have done in Chile. I'm not aware of them ever endorsing torture."

There's realism; then there's callousness. More than 3,000 Chileans were killed by the junta that was encouraged and then supported by Nixon and Kissinger; millions of Chileans lost all their political rights for years, as well. That's hardly "quite a success." And Simes is wrong to suggest that Kissinger was unaware of the abuses of the Chilean regime. The coup occurred on September 11, 1973. A quick search at the website of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit outfit, produced a November 16, 1973 cable from Jack Kubisch, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, to Secretary of State Kissinger that noted that the Chilean junta had carried out "summary, on-the-spot executions." The cable also reported that military and police units had engaged in the "rather frequent use of random violence" in the post-coup days.

Weeks earlier, at an October 1 meeting Kubisch told Kissinger about a Newsweek story that maintained that over 2700 Chileans had been killed by the junta and added that the government had only acknowledged 284 deaths. Kissinger noted that the Nixon administration did not "want to get into the position of explaining horror....[W]e should not knock down stories that later prove to be true, nor should we be in the position of defending what they're doing in Santiago. But I think we should understand our policy--that however unpleasant they act, the government is better for us than Allende was."

Here were some early indications for Kissinger of the brutality of the Chilean junta. He obviously cared little about what was happening to Chileans apprehended by the junta. And he tacitly went along with the regime's violent means. Two years later, he showed his scorn for human rights concerns when he met with the Chilean foreign minister. At the start of that meeting, according to a State Department memo, Kissinger pooh-poohed the human rights issue. He told the Chilean, "Well, I read the briefing papers for this meeting and it was nothing but human rights. The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there were not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State." Kissinger added that it was a "total injustice" to fixate on Chile's human rights record.

In August 1976, according to another State Department document, Kissinger was briefed on Operation Condor, a secret project concocted by the Chilean junta and other military dictatorships in South America to conduct "murder operations" against opponents of those regimes. By the way, two months later, Kissinger met with the foreign minister of the military regime of Argentina, which at that time was conducting a dirty war that would come to "disappear" at least 10,000 people (and maybe over 30,000), and Kissinger took a rather casual attitude toward the abuses in that country. As a State Department memo recounted, Kissinger told the Argentine,

Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better‚ The human rights problem is growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help."

In other words, get your abuses over with quickly, while I look away. Unfortunately, the fascistic and anti-Semitic Argentine military regime would continue to disappear and torture its citizens for another seven years.

I'm all for reaching across the ideological divide, seeking common ground, making alliances. And Simes--unlike Zakheim--advocated working together whenever possible. Referring to the current course in US foreign policy, he noted, "This republic is facing a mortal damage," and the Bush administration is "pursuing policies that make us more vulnerable."

But foreign policy intellectuals should not forget about the past as they move ahead. I appreciate the fact that realists fancy being hardheaded. Simes noted that he was aghast at the corruption and state violence he saw when he recently visited Russia. But he added that since the United States needs Russian assistance in dealing with Iran and North Korea a realistic approach has prevented him from insisting that Washington pressure Moscow too forcefully on issues of corruption and political rights.

Such calculations--whether correct or not in the particulars--are understandable. They have a logic to them (whether you agree or not with that logic). But, please, let's be realistic about past decisions and calculations. It's not realism to sugarcoat history and to deny responsibility for actions taken. Those who distort the past cannot be expected to save American foreign policy from those who distort the present.

CORN VS. GREENBERG RE WOODWARD. Day 4. He gets the last word in out face-off on The New Republic site. You can see it here. I'll read it, too. Afterward, I'll post some final thoughts on this site.

CORN AND ISIKOFF ON C-SPAN. We'll be on C-SPAN's Book TV discussing Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, on October 21 at 8:00 pm, Eastern time.


Posted by David Corn at October 20, 2006 10:44 AM

Webb and the Post; New Page Scandal(s) Rumor; Corn vs. Greenberg, Day 3

It was no surprise that The Washington Post endorsed Reaganite-turned-Democrat James Webb for Senate in Virginia over Republican incumbent George Allen. Macaca. The n-word. Jewish "aspersions." Allen has made a mess of his reelection bid and displayed his inner-boob. But this line caught my eye:

[Webb] -- former Navy secretary, former assistant defense secretary, former Marine Corps officer and former Republican -- is admirably independent-minded. He was prescient in warning, back in 2002, that the war in Iraq risked stranding the United States in a long-term occupation without an exit strategy.

What's odd with this picture? The paper's editorial board was a leading advocate of the war before the invasion and has continued to insist the invasion was the right call. Now, the paper's editorialists hail a candidate for having issued warnings the paper itself ignored. If only the Post had been as prescient.

RUMOR ALERT. Former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl has told the House ethics committee about two Republican House members who had sex with congressional pages, and neither man is page-chaser Mark Foley. That's the rumor circulating in Washington. One of these Republicans supposedly had sex with a male page; one with a female page. The names of the implicated Republicans are on the rumor-mill, but I'm not going to disclose these identities. I assume if there's truth to this, the allegation will become public. (But then I assumed someone would post The List.) In any event, what impact would such a revelation have on the coming elections? Are Republicans bracing for this bombshell? Perhaps they're preparing to blame Democratic operatives.

CORN VS. GREENBERG RE WOODWARD. Day 3. I know many of you have been waiting to see how I answered Greenberg's pressing question: What would you prefer to give up--Woodward or a whole gang of pundits and commentators (Dowd, Matthews, Moyers and others). Well, the wait is over. My reply is posted on The New Republic site today. Tomorrow, Greenberg gets the final word in our exchange. Here is my last shot:

Bob Woodward's State of Denialby David Greenberg & David Corn

Dear David G.,

Civil and enlightening, of course. Let me start with your entertaining but false choice: Dowd, Will, Matthews, Moyers, Brooks, Russert, Limbaugh, and Air America--or Woodward. Hmmmm. But that's apples and aardvarks. I'm hardly suggesting that Woodward should hang up his notebook and become a pundit (though he does do his share of punditing at times). Nor do I wish to see commentary supplant reporting. After all, the new book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story, of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, is in-depth narrative reporting about the intrigue and fights that occurred at the CIA, White House, State Department, Pentagon, and Congress concerning the Bush administration's sales campaign for the war. And, as I noted before, it covers plenty of important ground Woodward did not examine in his books. But I might prefer to see Chris Matthews challenging an administration's argument for war in real-time than Bob Woodward collecting string behind the scenes (even rather interesting string) and missing the story--in this case, that the White House misrepresented the intelligence to win public support for a war.

The issue is not these op-ed and cable news commentators versus Woodward; it's Woodward versus Woodward. A reporter who uses his unparalleled access to chronicle the inner workings of the palace versus a reporter who exposes government malfeasance or nonfeasance. Before you protest, I'm not saying that this is an absolute, black-and-white dichotomy and that Woodward only takes self-serving dictation from top-dog players and reveals no wrongdoing. But Woodward certainly used to do more of the latter than the former. And, in the George W. Bush years--prior to State of Denial--Woodward got the balance wrong. (THE NEW REPUBLIC'S Jason Zengerle explains this well in his recent GQ article on Woodward.)

You write, "[T]he beef is that Woodward's reportorial skills aren't matched by an equal analytical prowess--or even by an inclination to interpret his material. As a result, it's alleged, he's too credulous toward his sources' accounts or too immersed in the weeds to see the big picture." Yes, his critics have accused him of such. But my beef is not that he doesn't analyze data; it's that, when it counted most, he skated past the big picture by not reporting on it--for whatever the reason. In an interview with Zengerle, Woodward said, "I think the most important story of the Bush administration is the decision to go to war in Iraq. That's what he's going to be remembered for, and, I think, trying to find out how that happened--and why--is worthy." Woodward was not wrong to focus on the Bush administration's decision-making process (such that it was), but his fixation on the internal deliberations of the Bush clan apparently caused him to overlook what was happening elsewhere in the U.S. government (such as the disputes over intelligence in the various intelligence agencies) and to lose sight of an equally (if not more) significant plot line: Bush was not being honest with the public about his case for war.

As Hubris illustrates, the selling of the war was the original sin of the Iraq war. The sales campaign created false public fears and expectations and led administration officials to neglect (in a reckless fashion) planning for the post-invasion period, which quickly became a debacle. Woodward was part of that first failure. In my opening salvo of this exchange, I cited his pre-invasion comments on CNN. While he did (as you note) first refer to what administration officials were thinking, he clearly went on to endorse the administration's case for war by proclaiming, "The intelligence shows...there are massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction hidden, buried, unaccounted for." He was not merely reporting that this was Bush's claim; he was putting the Bob Woodward stamp of approval on the administration's key assertion that the intelligence was solid. With other reporters (though not many) at that time digging deeper and uncovering evidence the White House was misrepresenting the case against Iraq, why wasn't Woodward doing the same? Why did Plan of Attack sidestep this crucial matter? Why does State of Denial, which revisits the pre-invasion period, not cover this?

Here is another tough question, David: Why is it only now that Woodward is reporting that Bush denies reality? This has been evident for years. Yet it was not part of Plan of Attack, which came out in the middle of the 2004 election campaign. I'm not expecting Woodward to be omniscient (even if his books have such a tone) and to know everything before every other reporter (even if he has better high-level access than any other journalist in town). But, before and after the invasion, there were reporters breaking stories on the administration's faulty, flimsy and fraudulent case for war. Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay, and John Walcott at Knight Ridder come to mind. And Woodward only had to read his own paper to see something was amiss. On March 18, 2003, in a story headlined "BUSH CLINGS TO DUBIOUS ALLEGATIONS ABOUT IRAQ," Post reporters Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank wrote,

As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged -- and in some cases disproved -- by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports.

Woodward didn't employ his talents and superb connections to chase this story--either for his newspaper (which buried the Pincus/Milbank article on page A13) or for Plan of Attack. As you say, that book did break some important news--the early planning of the Iraq invasion, the shifting of hundreds of millions of dollars--but not the most important tale: What went wrong as Bush decided to go to war.

I certainly don't want to ship Woodward off to a home for retired shoe-leather journalists. But it seems clear that he mis-deployed himself during Bush's first term and that State of Denial is an attempt to right his course. Plugging his new book on "60 Minutes," Woodward summed up the volume this way: "It is the oldest story in the coverage of government: the failure to tell the truth." Can you--or he--argue that Bush began to fail to tell the truth only after Woodward published Plan of Attack? If not, why did Woodward's pre-Denial reporting not tackle that subject dead-on?

I admire your loyalty to your former colleague. I am trying to present a balanced criticism of his recent work, acknowledging his successes while pointing out his failings. Judging from your first reply, I assume you believe that not since the days of Nixon has there been an administration so deserving of fierce and vigorous investigative reporting that challenges its assertions and vets its actions. Woodward was well-positioned to take on those tasks. But he opted for a different form of interaction with this administration. Exploiting the relationship he forged with the Bush crowd, Woodward has produced some good journalism, but not the journalism that was most needed.


Thanks for engaging,

David C.


Posted by David Corn at October 19, 2006 03:29 PM

GOP Fear-mongering; Corn v. Greenberg, Day 2; The Republican Civil War

Do Republicans want to win the congressional election if they have to resort to reckless fear-mongering? Apparently, the answer is yes. A Republican National Committee email went out on Tuesday with this headline "Democrats Would Let Terrorists Free." What's the RNC's proof that Democrats would actually set terrorists loose? It's that some Democrats voted against the White House-backed military tribunal bill. But disagreeing with some of provisions of that legislation is hardly the same thing as handing terrorists get-out-of-jail cards. That email declared, "House Democrats Said They Did Not Believe in Interrogating Terrorists." Really? Was there any Democratic ninny who expressed such a view?

Here's the evidence the RNC provided: Representative Solomon Ortiz, a Texas Democrat, said of the military tribunal bill, "Why are we rushing into this?...We should not be in a hurry." There's often a certain poetic license in political hit jobs. But this attack goes beyond the usual truth-stretching boundaries into a realm of bizarro fiction--or, one might say--lying.

CORN V. GREENBERG RE WOODWARD: Day 2. David Greenberg responds to my critique of Bob Woodward (see below) today at The New Republic's site. If you read my opening shot, please read his. Greenberg closes his reply with this parry:

Let me pose a question. If you had to terminate at a stroke the journalistic careers of, say, (a) Maureen Dowd, George Will, Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers, David Brooks, Tim Russert, Rush Limbaugh, and everyone on Air America; or (b) Bob Woodward, which would you choose? If we chose to retire the passel of pundits, I don't think our public discourse would be much the poorer. If we chose to retire Woodward, I think we would be vastly worse off.

My answer to that will be out tomorrow.

CIVIL WAR YET? Not in Iraq, but within the GOP. As regular readers know, I've been reporting that some non-Republican gay politicos have been using the Mark Foley scandal to try to set off a cat-fight within the Republican PArty between social cons and gay Republicans. These politicos are peeved at gay Republicans who serve a party that opposes gay rights and that welcomes (and needs) the support of religious right outfits that demonize gays and lesbians. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Some conservative Christians, who are pivotal to the GOP's get-out-the-vote effort, are charging that gay Republican staffers in Congress may have thwarted their legislative agenda. There are even calls for what some have dubbed a "pink purge" of high-ranking gay Republicans on Capitol Hill -- and in the administration.

The long simmering tension between gays and the religious right within the GOP has erupted into open conflict at a sensitive time, just weeks before a midterm election that may cost Republicans control of Congress.
"The big tent strategy could ultimately spell doom for the Republican Party," said Tom McClusky, chief lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a Christian organization that champions marriage. "All a big tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns."

Now the GOP is facing a hard choice -- risk losing the social conservatives who are legendary for turning out the vote, or risk alienating the moderate voters who are critical to this year's midterm outcome....

The tension between gays and evangelicals in the GOP re-emerged in recent weeks during the page scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. The scandal drew scrutiny to the presence -- and behavior -- of gays in the Republican party, including Foley and several House staff members.
One evangelical leader, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, said in a television interview last week there should be an investigation into whether gay congressional staffers were responsible for covering up Foley's habits of picking up men at parties and sending salacious messages to male pages.

Perkins also has questioned whether gay Republican staffers on Capitol Hill have torpedoed their priority issues, such as a Federal Marriage Amendment that would prohibit civil unions for gays. "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?" he asked in an e-mail to supporters....

This week a list of allegedly gay Republican staffers has been circulated to several Christian and family values groups, presumably to encourage an outing and purge....[F]or gay Republican staffers on Capitol Hill, it feels as if the noose is tightening. Fearful of having their names on such a list and losing their jobs after the election, they are trying to keep a low profile.
There's no outright fight yet, but the provocateurs do seem to be moving things along.

Posted by David Corn at October 18, 2006 09:56 AM

On Woodward: Corn vs. Greenberg

With the media world ga-ga over Bob Woodward and his new book--at least before the Foley scandal hit--The New Republic asked me to participate in an exchange with historian David Greenberg, a Woodwward champion. Given that I have my own book to promote--and that I've already offered critiques of Woodward--how could I resist? So today the battle begins. I go first, Greenberg replies tomorrow, and then we each get another turn on the following days. Here is my opening shot:
Bob Woodward's State of Denialby David Greenberg & David Corn
[Editor's Note: Today, TNR Online introduces day one of a four-part debate between journalist David Corn and historian David Greenberg about Bob Woodward's book State of Denial. The debate begins with Corn's critique of Woodward; it continues tomorrow with Greenberg's rejoinder. ]

Tuesday, October 17

Dear David G.,

I'm glad to be discussing Bob Woodward and his work with you. For me, his latest effort raises issues about his methodology and his position as the nation's number-one journalist. Let me get right into it:

On March 6, 2003, as President Bush was close to invading Iraq, Bob Woodward, the nation's most famous investigative reporter, appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" and backed the administration's case for war. "They're saying weapons inspection is not working," Woodward said. "That there may be some visible successes and missiles destroyed here and so forth, a few things found. The intelligence shows ... there are massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction hidden, buried, unaccounted for."

Woodward, like many (but not all) in the press corps, missed perhaps the most important Washington story since Watergate: that the Bush administration was taking the nation to war on the basis of faulty, flimsy, and even fraudulent intelligence. The new book I co-wrote with Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, chronicles the battles that occurred within the CIA, White House, State Department, Pentagon, and Congress regarding the prewar intelligence and its use in Bush's sales campaign. This is what Woodward did not catch when it was happening, and his new 560-page book, State of Denial, does not directly address the original sin of the Bush-in-Iraq debacle.

Plan of Attack, the book Woodward published in April 2004 about the run-up to the Iraq war, also largely neglected the administration's pre-invasion public distortions. In that volume--in a section covering less than two pages--Woodward reported he had come across several sources before the invasion who had said the intelligence was not as conclusive as the administration was claiming. But Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, did not jump on this critical subject at the time for the newspaper. And, in Plan of Attack--written in the months after the invasion--he did not thoroughly dissect how Bush and his aides had deployed and exaggerated lousy intelligence to make the case for war (even though indications of this had already emerged).

With all his much-acclaimed insider access--which does allow him to break important stories--Woodward had tunneled past the real gold. Why? By focusing on what was transpiring at the highest levels of the palace, he had zeroed in on what was important to his high-placed sources. But that's not always the most significant story. The news often occurs outside the president's court. For example, because Bush and his aides ignored the hotly contested dispute between the CIA and Energy Department before the war over whether aluminum tubes obtained by Iraq were evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program (as the administration claimed), this key fight did not register on Woodward's radar. And, in Plan of Attack, he did not cover this important fight, which concerned the only hard piece of evidence in the Bush administration's WMD case for war. (The Post had briefly mentioned this dispute in September 2002). Nor does he do so in State of Denial, which replows some of the territory of his previous Bush-at-war books.

As I wrote months ago, Woodward failed to nab another major story for Plan of Attack because his sources had described to him a January 2003 meeting between Bush and Tony Blair but had left out a significant part of the tale: that the two leaders had discussed cooking up a provocation to trigger a war with Iraq. The fact that Bush had considered staging a stunt to start a war only emerged this past year with the disclosure of portions of a British government memo. Thus, Woodward's account of this particular meeting--in which Bush came across positively--was slanted, because Woodward had not been told the full truth by his high-level informants. And State of Denial does not include the subsequent revelations about this meeting.

State of Denial has little in it about the Niger uranium controversy and the Valerie Plame leak case--which ended up ensnaring Woodward. It may have been a justifiable editorial decision for him to sidestep these matters (even though the Niger affair did lead to open warfare between the CIA and the White House). But Woodward's entanglement with a source involved in this episode appears to have caused him to misguide the reader. In the book, he reports that, in the summer of 2004, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was asked if he would succeed George Tenet as CIA chief. Woodward notes that Armitage turned it down because he could not stomach working with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In this telling, Armitage (an important Woodward source) comes across as a fellow rejecting a prestigious job out of principle. But there was more to it than that.

Armitage (as Hubris disclosed) had been under investigation for having leaked classified information on undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Woodward knew that Armitage had leaked the same information to him, and he "had long suspected" (as he said in an interview for our book) that his source--meaning Armitage--had been Novak's. So Woodward must have realized when writing State of Denial that Armitage could not have accepted the CIA job and gone through the confirmation process. At any moment the news could have emerged that the man nominated to be the CIA chief had blown the cover of an undercover CIA employee. But Woodward--apparently to protect a source--tells his reader none of this. Consequently, he paints a not-entirely-true picture. On "60 Minutes," Woodward recently described the anecdotes in State of Denial as "not just kind of right, but literally right." Not so in this case.

With State of Denial, Woodward has come late to the party (as I've already commented). He now maintains--as he did on "Meet the Press" last week--that the Bush administration has "not been telling the truth" about Iraq. But that was true before the invasion (when Woodward was reporting for the Post) and after the invasion (when he produced Plan of Attack). Only now does the Bush administration's competence and credibility (or lack thereof) grab Woodward as a plot line. His previous work on Bush was imbued with no such skepticism. He now even propounds different conclusions based on the same research. In Plan of Attack, he included a long portion of a December 2003 interview he conducted with Bush during which the president insisted, "We have found weapons programs that could be reconstituted." That statement was not true, but Woodward did not make much of this misleading remark. Woodward concludes State of Denial with the same interview excerpts. Yet, in the new book he highlights Bush's comments as evidence of the president's "habit of denial." Why point out Bush's denial of reality in September 2006, but not in April 2004? Does this have something to do with Bush's--and the war's--dwindling popularity?

Better tardy than not at all, one might say. And there's something to that. Woodward still discloses secret documents showing that the administration has misled the public, and he serves up impressive reporting, even as critics suggest he hypes his material.
State of Denial presents two core truths: (1) Rumsfeld has abysmally managed the war, including the post-invasion planning; and (2) the president and his aides have not leveled with the American public about "what Iraq had become." But note Woodward's implied demarcation between Bush's pre-invasion misrepresentations (which he, in a way, endorsed) and Bush's post-invasion untruths (which Woodward now reveals to great effect). For all the book's disclosures, Woodward--who deserves to be judged by a high standard--has partly failed by taking so long to apply his considerable reporting skills, his insider's access, and brand-name cachet to documenting these now self-evident propositions.

Best,
David C.

Posted by David Corn at October 17, 2006 10:41 AM

HUBRIS: The Reviews Are In

HUBRIS: The Reviews Are In

Yesterday, both The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post Book World weighed in on Hubris: The Inside Story, of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War--and did so in positive fashion. Here are some excerpts.

The Post review by Martin Kettle, a former U.S. bureau chief of the Guardian newspaper (and a fellow I don't know), wrote:

There have been many books about the Iraq war, and there will be many others before we are through. This one, however, pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft that led so many people to persuade themselves that the evidence pointed to an active Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction and that it was in the interests of the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

This is seemingly an eternal theme. The deeper we are drawn into Isikoff and Corn's account, the more we enter March of Folly territory. When the late Barbara W. Tuchman published her masterly 1984 account of the ruinous policies that governments have pursued through the ages, she ranged across a canvas stretching from the Trojan war to Vietnam.

To qualify as folly, Tuchman wrote, a policy must meet three criteria: It must have been seen at the time as counterproductive; a feasible alternative course of action must have been available; and the policy must have been that of a group of people, not merely a single tyrant or ruler. If ever a policy qualifies on all counts, it was the U.S.-imposed regime change in Iraq. Isikoff and Corn are reporters (for Newsweek and the Nation, respectively), not historians, but they still compel the reader to confront a further, essential dimension of folly's march.

In each case -- the Niger uranium papers, the mobile labs, the aluminum tubes, the Atta-Iraq link -- there were people up and down the policy chain, including some at the very top, who either knew at the time or should have known that the claims were false or unreliable.

Many critics of the Iraq War have highlighted the ideological drive behind the invasion. Fewer have grappled with the more complex question of why it was impossible for skeptics, doubters and more scrupulous analysts to stop it. Isikoff and Corn enable us to understand better how this devastating policy tragedy played out. But as Coleridge once observed, the light of experience is but a lantern on the stern, illuminating only the waters through which we have passed. Sadly, Isikoff and Corn can't tell the next generation how to avoid such tragedies.

Sorry, we couldn't tell folks how to do so. But being compared to Tuchman's March of Folly is quite an honor.

In The New York Times, Jacob Heilbrunn, who is writing a book on the neocons and whom I also don't know, noted,

In "Hubris," Michael Isikoff and David Corn chronicle the Bush administration's delusional march to war. Though there has been a deluge of works denouncing the follies of the military and the administration, Isikoff and Corn cover somewhat different terrain. They offer the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations, aimed at convincing Congress and the public that Iraq posed a dire threat...The authors, who have interviewed key politicians and government officials, supply a lot of new information. They show that in many ways the administration became the dupe of its own propaganda.

Heilbrunn says "the book makes for fascinating reading." But he slaps us for an "obsessive focus on Judith Miller and The New York Times, as well as on the story of Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby." But more than one friend has quipped that being criticized in the Times for criticizing the Times is not all that bad. In any event, check out the full reviews yourself and--if you haven't already--please buy the book and enjoy what I hear is a "fascinating read" of "shocking clarity."

Posted by David Corn at October 16, 2006 11:08 AM

Trouble posting?

Maybe this thread will work?

The Gay-Straight GOP Civil War; Who's in Charge of Afghanistan?; How a Bush Overreaction to N. Korea Could End the World

You might recall that a few days ago, I noted that non-Republican gay politicos had sent The List (of GOP gay staffers on Capitol Hill) to a host of social conservative outfits. Their aim was to set off a civil war within the Republican Party. That is, to get the religious right wing of the party in a cat-fight with the (mostly) closeted Republican gays. Reading a story in Thursday's USA Today, I was intrigued by this paragraph:

"Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members or staffers?" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote in an e-mail message to the organization's activists this week. In an interview, Perkins says that while he has not drawn any conclusions, "these are questions that need to be resolved.".

Perkins was sent The List. And that's exactly the conclusion the senders wanted him to ponder. They must be pleased. A civil war may be closer. Plus, I am told that a public outing of gay Republicans is in the works.

WHO'S IN CHARGE OF AFGHANISTAN? NOBODY: That is, who's in charge of Afghanistan policy-making within the Bush administration? The answer is, no one of clout. That's the conclusion of a piece in the latest issue of The Nation--an article that happens to have been written by me. It starts:

Several months ago a leading American expert on Afghanistan was meeting with Meghan O'Sullivan, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush White House. The topic at hand was the attitude of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, toward the revived Taliban insurgents operating out of Pakistani territory. Musharraf's government seemed (as it does now) to be willfully ignoring the Taliban, or perhaps even providing them with safe harbor and assistance. Why would Musharraf do either?

The expert explained that many factors shape the difficult Pakistani-Afghan relationship. He pointed to the decades-long conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan and mentioned the Durand Line, the supposed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 1,600-mile-long line, imposed on Afghanistan by the British in 1893, divides Pashtun and Baluch regions and separates Afghanistan from territory it has claimed as its own. Afghanistan has never officially recognized the Durand Line, which has been a great source of strife between the two countries.

By referring to the Durand Line, the expert was noting that US efforts in the region are complicated by pre-9/11 history. O'Sullivan, according to this expert (who wishes not to be named), didn't know what the Durand Line was. The expert was stunned. O'Sullivan is the most senior Bush Administration official handling Afghanistan policy. If she wasn't familiar with this basic point, US policy-making on Afghanistan was in trouble.

The article notes:

George Bush has no senior-level official responsible for policies and actions in Afghanistan. "The situation is worsening," notes former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. "We have to have someone in government responsible for the whole picture--military, economic assistance and political. There's a nexus between each. But there's not one person in the government designated to be in charge of that nexus. It could be the ambassador. It could be someone else--if they have resources and clout and accountability. But this Administration has not been keen on accountability."

Armitage also has a few choice words regarding a comment Bush made when he brought Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Musharraf to Washington for a dinner together. With the two bickering in dueling CNN interviews over the Taliban matter, Bush remarked, "It will be interesting for me to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are." Referring to that comment, Armitage exclaimed, "I didn't believe it. This is not a high school football game."

For the whole piece, click here.

NO BIG DEAL: Here's an interesting quote from a 2003 Business Week interview with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell:

Q: And if the North Koreans test nuclear arms?

A: If they test we'll take note of their test. The only reason they are testing is to scare the international community. The President has already accepted the possibility that they might test. And we will say “Gee, that was interesting.” The 50-year history of dealing with this regime is that they are marvelous in terms of threats, in terms of rhetoric and actions. Well they might take an action, but this time they would be sticking their finger not just in the eye of the United States, but I think Kim Jong Il will have to think twice about whether he would do such a thing in light of Chinese involvement.

COULD BE A BIG DEAL: I asked former weapons inspector David Kay what would be a smart and not-so-obvious talking point regarding North Korea's apparent nuclear weapons test. He wrote back (with permission to quote):

1. The Bush Admin's policy of maximizing the pain/punishment of the DPRK [North Korea] is the policy most likely to: A. lead to the collapse of NK; B. result in the use of a nuke against ROK [South Korea] and Japan as NK collapses; C. result in the transfer of a weapon/nuke materials to UBL [Usama bin Laden] as all control of NK's WMD disappears in the chaos of collapse.

2. If we have this much trouble determining if NK really conducted a nuke test how much trouble would we have identifying who really set off a nuke in an American city.


Good points. Damn scary points. But good ones.


Posted by David Corn at October 13, 2006 10:41 AM

Just One Question (of Many) for the Foley Investigators

In November 2003, House Republican leaders were having a tough time getting their own caucus members to vote for White House-backed legislation that would add a prescription drug benefit (as spotty as it was) to Medicare. The vote was going to be close and then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay went into full arm-twisting mode. DeLay told one hesitant GOPer, Representative Nick Smith of Michigan, that he would support Smith's son's congressional candidacy if Smith voted for the bill. Of course, this was a threat; DeLay would oppose Smith's son if Smith didn't back the bill. For this exertion of political muscle--or some might call it blackmailing--DeLay was later rebuked by the House ethics committee.

Which brings me to Mark Foley, the now page-less and disgraced former Republican congressman. In late July 2005, the House passed another controversial bill narrowly, CAFTA, by a 217 to 215 vote. Foley cast one of the deciding votes in favor of the trade pact. He had long been opposed to the trade accord, for he represented a district that was home to the sugar industry and the sugar barons of Florida feared CAFTA would lead to a rise in cheap imported sugar in the United States. According to Trade Observatory,

Hours before the House vote, President Bush called Foley, a Bush family friend since the early 1980s, and asked for his support.

Foley told him he was leaning against the bill because his district encompassed the third largest sugar-producing area in the nation. The sugar industry was dead set against the pact.

"I know this is hard for you, but if this is easy work, everyone would want to do it," the president told Foley. Bush did not pressure Foley or offer any incentives, according to the lawmaker.

Foley did vote for the bill. And he was indeed pressured. As The New York Times reported:

"It was difficult, a gut-wrenching night," Mr. Foley said....Republican leaders had already made it clear that they would punish the sugar industry in the next farm bill if they managed to defeat the trade pact.

"If the administration thinks that sugar brought about the demise of this, there would have been hell to pay in the farm bill," Mr. Foley said. "This was somewhat of a vote for the survival of my constituents."

So the Republican leaders were not above threatening to harm the most important industry in Foley's district to get him to support CAFTA. The obvious question is this: did they threaten anything else? According to some congressional aides, the House leadership had already been warned about Foley's sexual interest in male pages. Was this information turned into political ammo?

Yes, I am doing nothing but speculating here. But Roll Call is reporting today that the House ethics committee has begun asking leading House Republicans to testify about the Foley matter. As the ethics committee members question legislators and staffers about what they knew when, they also ought to ask if knowledge about Foley's conduct was ever put to political use. I am not saying it was. But I am saying it's one question--among many--that any thorough investigation would cover.

Posted by David Corn at October 12, 2006 02:24 PM

Bush on HUBRIS--Well, Almost

For some reason, I just don't think George W. Bush is going to read Hubris: The Inside Story, of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Here's an exchange from today's press conference:

Q: Mr. President. You spoke of the troubles in Iraq. And as you know, we have Woodward and we have a shelf full of books about Iraq, and many of them claim that administration policies contributed to the difficulties there. So I'm wondering, is there anything you wish you would have done differently with regard to Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: Speaking about books, somebody ought to add up the number of pages that have been written about my administration. There's a lot of books out there -- a lot. I don't know if I've set the record, or not, but I guess it means that I've made some hard decisions and will continue to make hard decisions.

And...this is the -- this is about the fifth time I've been asked this type of question. And as you know, there are some things that I wish had happened differently -- Abu Ghraib. I believe that really hurt us. It hurt us internationally. It kind of eased us off the moral high ground. In other words, we weren't a country that was capable of, on the one hand, promoting democracy, and then treating people decently. Now the world has seen that we've held those to account who are -- who did this.

You know, there's just a lot of look-backs. Presidents don't get to look back, but I will tell you, the decision to remove Saddam was the right decision. And I would look forward to the debate where people debate whether or not Saddam should still be in power....So when it comes to that decision, which is a decision to cause a lot of people to write books, it's the right decision.

Bush was wrong. Far more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than George W. Bush. (Sorry, Mr. President.) And note how he ducked the question--for the fifth or whatever time. He offered not one example of any action he would now--with hindsight--have done differently. Instead, he said that he wishes that "some things...had happened differently"--as if these "things" had not been his fault or that of anyone in his administration. Who doesn't wish that the abuse at Abu Ghraib hadn't occurred?

Presidents don't get to look back, Bush said. But that's not quite true. There are no do-overs, but presidents certainly can review past actions and decisions to figure out what to do better next time. Perhaps if Bush read Hubris or any of the other books, he might realize this.

Posted by David Corn at October 11, 2006 07:47 PM

What Bush Tolerates? And How Republicans Can Win

Lancet today published a study (pdf) that concludes that there have been 654,965 "excess deaths" in Iraq since the US invasion in March 2003. At a White House press conference, President Bush pooh-poohed the report. He said,

"I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do -- I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."

The Iraqis are tolerating this sectarian violence, which is killing thousands of Iraqis a month? Where does Bush get this stuff? Is he trying to look out of touch with reality for strategic reasons? In any event, at this press conference, Bush wouldn't even stand by the figure of 30,000 civilian deaths he cited last December. Here's a suggestion: if Bush is going to dismiss the Lancet study, he should order the Pentagon to keep track of civilian deaths (which it doesn't) and to conduct its own investigation of civilian casualties in Iraq. Then he might have some standing in any debate over the Lancet figures. Until then, he can...well, tolerate other sources of information.

******

HAPPY DAYS?: Here's my latest "Loyal Opposition" column at www.TomPaine.com. And please remember to check out that site regularly....


Democrats Haven't Won Yet

David Corn
October 11, 2006

David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the co-author along with Michael Isikoff of HUBRIS: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Read his blog at DavidCorn.com.


Nancy Pelosi measuring the curtains in the Speaker’s office. Ranking Democrats on House committees rushing out to buy gavels. Democratic staffers drafting subpoenas.

Those are the images running through Democrats’ minds as they read the polls from recent days. Public approval of Congress has fallen to the lowest point in over 10 years: 32 percent in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. That poll noted that registered voters favor Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans 54 to 41 percent. A USA Today/Gallup poll gave the Dems an even wider margin: 59 to 36 percent. On every key issue, the polls show Democrats have an edge over Republicans. Asked which party can be trusted to handle terrorism—the Bush administration’s signature issue—the Democrats were ahead in the Post/ABC poll by 6 points. (This comes after the White House spent weeks in September trying to depict the Democrats as wimps on terrorism.) And when a New York Times/CBS News poll asked which party comes "closer to sharing your moral values," the Ds beat the Rs 47 to 38 percent.

George W. Bush’s approval rating has dropped in all the surveys. The Times/CBS poll placed him as low as 34 percent. In the Post poll, 63 percent said his war in Iraq had not been worth fighting—a new record. And the numbers related to the Mark Foley scandal offer no good news either. In the Times/CBS poll, 79 percent said House Republican leaders cared more about their own political standing than the safety of congressional pages. Almost half said House Speaker Dennis Hastert should resign. A CNN poll found that 79 percent believed Republican top-dogs in Congress handled the Foley matter "inappropriately." Slightly more than half said Republican leaders were involved in a "deliberate cover-up."

Political handicapping has followed the numbers. Veteran House-watcher Charlie Cook has upped the number of toss-up seats from 18 to 25. A few of the new at-risk seats are directly linked to the Foley scandal. For instance, Rep. Tom Reynolds, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee and who has been implicated in the Foley affair, has suffered a free-fall in the polls for his race in upstate New York. And Foley’s seat is probably lost to the GOP. (To vote for Foley’s Republican replacement, a resident of that Florida district will have to pull the lever next to Foley’s name, which could not be removed from the ballot.)

This is more than enough to make a Democrat giddy. Still, Pelosi ought not to order those new curtains yet.

The national political weather is clearly awful for Republicans. The unending war, Hurricane Katrina, Foley—all that trumps falling gas prices and a rising Dow. A storm is heading toward Congress on Election Day. And were the United States a European-style democracy—where voters tend to pick party representatives rather than individual candidates—the Republicans would expect to lose scores of House seats. But congressional districts have been so thoroughly gerrymandered to protect incumbents that only 40 to 50 House seats are considered to be in play. That means that the current political tides will likely affect merely 10 percent of the entire body.

So White House chief strategist Karl Rove, Republican Party chair Kenneth Mehlman and their partners-in-politicking need to fret just about a small number of House races. Do the math: If 50 House races are competitive and the Democrats need a 15-seat gain to take the House, Republicans could thwart the Dems by holding on to 18 or so of these races.

Consequently, Democrats ought to keep in mind another image: At an undisclosed location ("Sorry, Mr. Vice President, we need this for something more important."), a war room is set up, divided into two dozen cubicles. The operatives working in each square are focused on one of these do-or-die races. The Republican Party has given them unlimited resources. They have been instructed to do whatever it takes: negative advertising, rumor campaigns, dirty tricks. Gentlemen and ladies, they have been told, the civilized (that is, Republican) world depends upon you. Do not permit the (Democratic) hordes to breach your gate.

And in the cubicles, computers of massive power hum quietly. Data is being analyzed. The Republican Party is looking for its most sympathetic voters. Block by block. Household by household. It’s called "micro-targeting." This practice goes far beyond identifying folks who have registered for a party and getting them to the polls. What political micro-targeting entails is searching through massive amounts of consumer data on individuals and finding correlations that indicate who is likely to vote one way or another. Who in the 23rd District prefers bourbon to gin? Bourbon drinkers tend to vote Republicans; gin fanciers lean Democrat. Now which bourbon drinkers in that district subscribe to Field & Stream rather than The New Yorker. And so on. The Republicans have been wise to this game for several years, with the Democrats playing catch-up.

With powerful databases in hand, the Republican National Congressional Committee can tailor messages to the individual. It can send one potential Republican voter a mailing that highlights the Republican plan to build a fence at the border to keep out all those scary illegal immigrants. And it can send a mailing that hails Bush’s attempt to concoct a comprehensive immigration reform package to another voter in the same district. (It can do likewise with get-out-the-vote phone calls and door-to-door campaigns.) Not only can there be different messages for each district—remember, whatever it takes—there can be different messages within the district. All according to the data. The point is to assemble winning majorities voter by voter in those hold-back-the-tide districts.

In Washington, the focus is often on the national political narrative. And the Bush White House has naturally been scheming to shape this narrative to its advantage, realizing that doing so would provide general assistance to GOP candidates across the country. Step One was picking a fight with the Democrats on the terrorist detention legislation. The White House eventually got a bill it liked but not the battle it wanted, because Republicans—Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner—led the opposition (before folding). Whatever Rove had planned for Step Two was blown aside by the Foley scandal. No doubt, he has other ideas on how the GOPers can get their national mojo back. But the game is now on the ground, outside of Washington—and in those cubicles.

Predictions are pointless. However, it does seem that even the Senate has become within reach of the Democrats. Yet if there are more page scandal revelations, more bad news out of Iraq and more Republicans slippage in the polls, Rove and the Republicans might just be able to stem a tsunami by sticking the right fingers in the right holes. If that happens, it will be quite a feat—and another sign the American political order is susceptible to the wily manipulations of well-financed and willing-to-do-anything politicos.

Posted by David Corn at October 11, 2006 02:04 PM