Alternate Reality (no longer updated)

Brokaw Credits Hubris For Anti-GOP Wave--Well, Sort of

2006-11-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

In discussing the election results with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball last night, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw referred to Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Here's what Brokaw, who previously blurbed our book, said on the show:

Chris, one of the things I think that's happened with Republicans, especially with conservatives around the country, is that the president did not acknowledge that things were not going well until the last month or so, when he said they're not going as well as I would like them to. They kept insisting things were going well when there was a marked deterioration in the original strategy, and what was going on, and then had you October, with more Americans killed than ever before. Republicans come, to a large degree, from the corporate, from the business world and when things don't go well, they know that they have to change. And there was no indication of change going on in this administration.

And then in the closing days of the campaign, the president gave Don Rumsfeld a no-cut contract, said he's here until the very end. Some of the most pointed criticism of the president on the war came from George Will and from Pat Buchanan. And then there were a whole series of books and they were called "Fiasco" and "State of Denial" and "Hubris." And they were detailed accounts of all that had gone wrong before. So, you know, there was the reality on the one side and then what the president was trying to persuade the country, on the other side, was that I've got a plan, stay with me here. And finally people said, look, I've heard the sky is falling too long. I'm going to make my own judgment about this.

It's good to be on the side of reality--especially when you write nonfiction books.

Posted by David Corn at November 8, 2006 03:05 PM

Rumsfeld Out; Pelosi's To-Do List

2006-11-08T14:31:00.000-05:00

Donald Rumsfeld is out. Why did he leave? Days ago, the president told reporters that he would retain Rummy through the end of his presidency. That implied that Bush wanted Rumsfeld in the job no matter what happened on Election Day and that he believed Rumsfeld was essential to protecting this nation's security. So is this a political decision? After all, how could this administration play politics with such an important position? It wouldn't do such a thing, would it?

Asked at a press conference about the contradiction between his statement of support for Rumsfeld last week and today's announcement, Bush tried to explain it away by noting that Rumsfeld's departure was not finalized until yesterday. That would mean that he told those reporters he was keeping Rumsfeld at the Pentagon for another two years at a time when Rumsfeld's exit was already in the works.

Bush was also asked if Rumsfeld's replacement by former Robert Gates, who was CIA chief for Bush's father, would lead to a "new direction." He said, "I am committed to victory." Pressed on the "new direction" point, he said that Gates would bring in a "fresh perspective." Let's see if (a) he does and (b) that "perspective" changes anything at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the meantime, yet more election analysis from yours truly, courtesy of www.tompaine.com:

Democratic To-Do List
David Corn
November 08, 2006
www.tompaine.com

"I hope they don't get it."

A veteran Democratic strategist, standing outside the Democrats' victory party in a Capitol Hill hotel ballroom, was talking about the Democrats and the Senate. The best outcome, he said, was for the Democrats to win back the House--which by this point on Election Night they had--and become the insurgents of Washington, challenging the discredited and sclerotic Republicans of the White House and Senate. With the House in hand, the Democrats would be able to pass popular pieces of legislation--say, raising the minimum wage--and mount whatever investigations they desire. The bills would then be killed by either GOPers in the Senate or the lame duck in the White House. The Democrats would have no true responsibility for governing--that is, for cleaning up George W. Bush's mess in Iraq and elsewhere. But if they were to end up controlling both chambers of Congress, they would become fifty-fifty partners in the government--become the target of a president who would use Democratic control of Congress as an excuse for his own failures and endlessly blame the Democrats for the nation's woes. "One-third is ideal," this strategist remarked. Moments later, the wife of another prominent Democratic strategist told me her husband also wasn't wishing for success in the Senate.

Well, these Democrats may have to settle for both houses of Congress. As I write on the morning after, the Democrats are leading in the not-yet-settled Senate races of Montana and Virginia. If these numbers hold--and it seems that there will be a recount in the James Webb versus George Allen race in Virginia--the Democrats will indeed have the obligation to run the legislative branch. And they will have a rather narrow window in which they can attempt to re-brand themselves as the responsible party of Washington.

Democrats know that this election was more about Bush than them. They won mostly because they were not the other guy. Americans didn't flock to the polls because they yearned to see Representative Nancy Pelosi as House speaker or Senator Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. They wanted Bush out of the White House. But since he was not on the ballot, voters went with the next best thing: booting his comrades out of Congress. So the Democrats--even though they did campaign on a platform promoting various legislative initiatives--take office without a full mandate. But with this win comes the chance to persuade the American public that Democrats do stand for something, do share the values of many Americans and can get the job done. Yet the Democrats will have the political equivalent of ten minutes to prove this.

That's not an impossible task, but there are obvious obstacles. Foremost is the conservative, pro-Republican media attack machine. By the time you read this, the right-wing media will probably be intensifying its campaign to demonize Pelosi and the other Democrats who will assume leadership positions or committee chairmanships. Remember, when Newt Gingrich and his allies took power in the House in the so-called Republican revolution of 1994, the conservative media infrastructure was not nearly as large and as integrated with the GOP as it is today. Now, Mission One for this system is to discredit Pelosi and her fellow Democrats. So expect a ceaseless the-end-is-near attack from this gang.

The other obvious obstacle is Iraq. In their victory speeches on election night, Pelosi, Reid, Representative Rahm Emanuel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, each said the election signaled that the American people crave a course correction in Iraq. Yet the Democrats offer no clear alternative path. Though most tend to favor phased disengagement, they do not agree on how to do this. There will be great pressure on the Democrats to solve the problem Bush created in Iraq--even when there are no good or easy solutions. A failure to craft a coherent and convincing alternative for Iraq could quickly hobble the newly empowered Democrats.

The good news is this: In the House, they can start approving legislation immediately and can initiate investigations. Pelosi has already promised that within the first hundred hours, her Democrats will approve bills that raise the minimum wage, increase funding for homeland security, lower interest rates on student loans and permit the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices. If she pulls this off--with or without a Democratic Senate (where opposition party members can easily block legislation)--she will be able to demonstrate to the public that the Democrats are serious and worth supporting.

She will also have to make certain that the Democrats proceed with the appropriate inquiries. The goal is to hold the Bush administration accountable without appearing vindictive. (See Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay for a lesson in how not to do this.) My hunch is that many Americans--especially those outside the party faithful whom the Democrats will want to keep on their side for 2008--will prefer to see Democrats producing legislative accomplishments rather than acrimonious investigations. But there are plenty of probes that can proceed. Representative Henry Waxman, the new chairman of the government reform committee, should investigate thoroughly the failed reconstruction in Iraq. An estimated $45 billion of the $80 billion spent on Iraq reconstruction has gone down the drain of fraud and waste. What taxpayer would not like to see this fully investigated?

Pelosi and the Democrats--including those in the Senate, if they gain control there--ought to pick their investigations carefully and strategically. (Yes, this means staying away from any talk of impeachment.) But a prudent approach will hardly limit the opportunities. Take global warming. An investigation of how the Bush administration has suppressed scientific data showing the problem of global warming, coupled with hearings on the administrations refusal to do anything significant to redress this threat, could play well.

Let's face it: Pelosi and Reid are not the best media representatives for the Democrats. Democratic representatives and senators routinely hail each for effectively leading their party caucuses, even as they acknowledge these leaders' limitations as the party's spokespeople. And Pelosi is going to have to continue to keep her party together and disciplined on strategy and tactics--traditionally not an easy task for Democrats. (To take advantage of this moment, liberal and conservative Democrats are going to have to play nice with each other.) Pelosi and Reid get credit for the wins on election night, but neither of them is going to sell the Democratic Party using charisma and charm. They can only do so with substance. And many American voters will not grant them much more than a first impression. The Democrats have a shot at winning over the public. But there's a lot they're going to have to get exactly right.

Posted by David Corn at November 8, 2006 01:11 PM

Payback

2006-11-08T01:33:00.000-05:00

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Payback's a bitch.

There is no way to spin the election results. They were a repudiation of George W. Bush, his party, his agenda, and his war. The commander in chief argues that he is fighting a war in Iraq that is essential to the survival of the United States. The electorate sent a message: we don't buy it. Political genius Karl Rove and GOP chieftain Ken Mehlman, with their scare tactics (defeatist Democrats will surrender to the terrorists; Nancy Pelosi will destroy the nation) and below-the-belt ads, were not able to defy popular sentiment. Comeuppance was the order of the day. Because of Bush, R became a scarlet letter. In Rhode Island, incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate who voted against the war in 2002 and against Bush in 2004, enjoyed a 66 percent approval rating; still. voters sent him packing. Children, pay attention. If you're a president who misleads the nation into war and then mismanages that war, you might sneak past a reelection but then bring ruin upon your party. The Bush-wreaked reality trumped the Rove-designed rhetoric--finally. The voters chose not to stay his course. The market worked.

The Democrats won control of the House and came close with the Senate. As of 1:00 AM, in Virginia, Reaganite-turned-Democrat Jim Webb was barely ahead of Senator George "Macaca" Allen--though a recount seemed likely. In Missouri, the Senate race was a virtual tie. If the Democrats should win in each, the Senate would be theirs. However, Tennessee--where Democrats were trying to elect Representative Harold Ford Jr., an African-American--was a bridge too far. But even without the Senate, the Democrats will now be able to counter Bush and advance a platform of their own.

At a victory party at a Capitol Hill hotel--attended by thousands of Democrats, many wearing a badge proclaiming, "A New Direction for America"--a senior House Democratic staffer said, "The word has come on down from on high: no gloating. Those of us who were around in 1994 remember Republicans telling us that we were no longer needed and could get lost--literally. We've been told not to handle this differently." But it's certainly true that the House Democrats have assumed power in a slightly less triumphant manner than did the GOP in the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994. Though Democrats did have an agenda for the campaign, they know that the election was a referendum on Bush and the rubber-stamp Republicans, not their pet legislative ideas. As Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee proclaimed, "the message of this election came down to one word: change." That is, boot Bush's compatriots out of office. To do this, voters had to go Democratic.

The voters have "reluctantly given us the keys," said Terry McAuliffe, a former head of the Democratic Party. And, he added, the Democrats will have to prove themselves--quickly. How to do so? By briskly passing legislation on popular issues--boosting the minimum wage, increasing homeland security funding, lowering interest rates on college loans, empowering the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical comapnies to achieve lower drug prices for Medicare. Even if such legislation dies in a Republican-controlled Senate or is vetoed by Bush, the Democrats can shape the the coming presidential election. (Another major win in a night of wins for the Democrats was the election of Representative Ted Strickland as governor of Ohio. "You can't win the presidency without Ohio," McAuliffe noted. And with a Democrat running the state, the Ds will have an advantage there in 2008.)

As for the Republicans, this election will unleash the furies within that party. In sorting out this defeat, GOPers will find themselves confronting their internal conflicts. Social conservatives will square off against economics-first libertarians. The party could split along other line--between those who stick with Bush and those who want to cut and run from the abaltross-in-chief. It could all get quite acrimonious, especially with 2008 politics influencing the blame-game. Republicans could end up looking like Democrats.

But the bottom-line is clear: the Bush presidency is over. At least, as Bush and Dick Cheney have envisioned it. They can no longer act imperiously. They have lost the public. And there is now an opposition that can check and investigate their actions abroad and at home. But the Democrats still have to complete the sale. At the victory bash, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi declared, "We need a new direction in Iraq." She didn't say what it would be. The Democratic victory--as sweet as it is for the Democrats--is very much an unfinished work.

Posted by David Corn at November 8, 2006 12:51 AM

Voting

2006-11-07T14:31:00.000-05:00

I voted. There were no problems. During the primary elections a few months ago, Montgomery County in Maryland experienced a small disaster with electronic voting machines, primarily because election workers were not adequately trained in how to operate teh devices and election cards were not distributed to the polls. That did not happen today. But there were two moments that caused me to wonder about the security of the voting process.

First, when I approached the desk to receive a voting card, I was asked my name, address and date of birth. The women on the other side did not request any identification--nothing with or without a photo. Anyone who cared to impersonate me--and who knew my address and birthday--could have done so. This was unsettling. After all, when I retrieve packages from the Post Office, I have to show identification. I realize that conservatives have long complained that no-ID voting creates the opportunity for voter fraud. That's undeniable, though it would take an extensive and well-coordinated campaign to engage in fraud-by-impersonation on a significant scale. And Democrats have a point when they contend that voting should be as easy as possible. Nevertheless, it's tough to argue that citizens should not have to show any form of identification to gain access to the ballot box.

Second, after selecting my choices on an electronic touch-screen machine, I pressed the "Cast Ballot" button on the screen, and I received a message: Your vote has been cast. It probably was. But how could I know for sure? I received no receipt. All that happened was some digitalized 1s and 0s were shuffled around inside the machine and zapped to another machine, courtesy of proprietary software not open to public inspection. I have not concluded--as have others--that electronic voting machines are routinely rigged (by Republicans) to change results. But I have for years believed that since they can be rigged--and the evidence is compelling on this front--people are right to fret about the integrity of the voting system.

Sure, all systems are vulnerable to underhanded chicanery. Old-fashioned ballot boxes can be stuffed. But the goal should be to minimize the ability of any would-be tamperers to engage in dirty-trickery that can affect a decisive number of votes, and electronic voting does not pass this test--not yet. When we used to write X's on paper ballots or pull levers on voting machines, voters still had to have faith that all the votes would be counted honestly. Given that it would take a concerted effort of a number of people to falsify the results with those vote-counting methods, it was not hard to have a decent level of confidence in the voting process in most localities. But when we press a finger against the "Cast Ballot" image on a screen, we require a higher degree of faith that the counting system is working as it should and that it has not been tainted by a tiny group of persons. Presumably, a modest programming alteration in some cases could lead to phony results. As I walked away from the machine, I worried about my vote--more than a citizen should have to.

Posted by David Corn at November 7, 2006 11:47 AM

Election Day

2006-11-07T01:54:00.000-05:00

Vote.

More, later. (I'm hoping the lines are not too long and the electronic voting machines--and the election workers in charge of them--are not wigging out.)

Posted by David Corn at November 7, 2006 12:31 AM

Do Bush and Cheney Want To Lose?

2006-11-06T11:35:00.000-05:00

From my "Capitol Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Is it possible the White House doesn't want Republicans to win the congressional elections on Tuesday? I know this sounds crazy. But consider the evidence.

1. Last week, George W. Bush vowed to retain Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense until the end of his presidency. (He said the same about Dick Cheney.) The debacle in Iraq is responsible for Bush's political decline and the GOP's poor electoral prospects. And Rumsfeld is the poster boy for that debacle. (Days ago, the Army Times called for his resignation.) Bush had no obligation to say whether Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon for another two years. He went out of his way in the homestretch of an election to tether himself to the fellow who symbolizes the mess in Iraq. Why do that--unless he has a political death wish?

2. On Friday, Dick Cheney said that the administration would indeed stay with its current course in Iraq and move "full speed ahead." He said, "We've got the basic strategy right." He added, "It may not be popular with the public--it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right." Perhaps. But the previous week, his boss held a press conference and tried to convey the impression (though false) that the administration was going to rejigger its Iraq policy by introducing and aiming for "benchmarks." Bush's benchmark comments were not sufficient to win the confidence of the electorate. Days later, a New York Times/CBS News poll noted that only 29 percent of Americans approve of how Bush is handling the war in Iraq. So if 71 percent do not have faith in the White House's Iraq policy, why would Cheney make a point of declaring--defiantly--that he and Bush are committed to racing down that unpopular road? It was as if he were shooting the bird at the American public.

3. Speaking of which, on the weekend before the election, Cheney's office had an announcement: Cheney would spend Election Day on his first hunting trip since he shot a friend while trying to kill quail on a private ranch last February. Was this the right time for the White House to remind voters of Cheney's hapless moment? Couldn't Cheney wait until after the election before picking up a gun again? Why won't he be in a toss-up state stumping for a Republican candidate on Election Day? Or knocking on doors? And why does he get the day off? Election Day is not a federal holiday.

All of the above is quite puzzling behavior for a president and vice president facing the possibility their agenda, their war, and their party are about to be soundly refuted by American voters. Do they already know all is lost? On Sunday, I spoke with a former senior Bush administration official who has publicly predicted the Republicans will retain a one- or two-seat majority in the House and keep control of the Senate. But his manner indicated he didn't believe it. "This is what I have to say," he told me. "This is my public position." I asked what his private view was. He rolled his eyes.

Of course, the Republican Party is doing all its can to beat back what appears to be an anti-GOP wave--and that includes airing far-below-the-belt negative ads. Bush and Cheney have been campaigning in conservative areas--in spots where they won't do harm to Republicans. (On Monday, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Florida elected not to campaign with Bush in the Sunshine State.) And GOPers are talking up the vaunted get-out-the-vote machine created by Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman that is now in motion. So it is bizarre that in the closing days of this critical election Bush and Cheney would so dramatically remind voters of what they don't like about the Bush-Cheney administration. If these episodes are not indicators of a secret desire to lose, they are additional signs that Bush and Cheney are woefully out of sync with the public. This prompts a question: if the electorate does rise up against Bush, his party and their war, will Bush and Cheney be able to process that? If not, the republic may be in for a rather bumpy ride.

Posted by David Corn at November 6, 2006 11:32 AM

Perle's Non-Mea Culpa: A Video Comentary

2006-11-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

Being a neoconservative seems to mean never having to say you're sorry. A new Vanity Fair article quotes several leading neocons who were cheerleaders for the Iraq war but who are now blaming George W. Bush, not themselves, for the debacle there. Below is a video commentary from me about this:

Click HERE

To see that column on my pre-invasion conversation with Perle (which I mention in the clip), click here.

By the way, after comments were suspended on this site due to a hack-attack, a loyal reader created a mirror site that reposts what appears on davidcorn.com and allows comments. You can join in the conversation here. And once this video commentary is up there, please let me know what you think. But be gentle.

Posted by David Corn at November 4, 2006 10:37 PM

Let the Blame Game Begin!

2006-11-03T22:38:00.000-05:00

Another blog posting of mine on The Guardian's Comment Is Free group-blog....

In the final days of the congressional elections campaign, as the Democratic and Republican parties throw tens of millions of dollars into advertising in key House and Senate races, it's not too early to kick off the blame-game.With the pre-tally predictions favoring the Democrats, it's natural that the Republicans would start to worry about recriminations first. Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader, has been assailing Christian conservatives for forcing his party to neglect its small-government agenda in favor of divisive social matters, such as gay marriage and abortion. He has singled out James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, and has called such "self-appointed Christian leaders" as Dobson "thugs" and "bullies." (Dobson is also in the news of late for supporting Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, who was accused by a male prostitute of being one of his clients.)

At the same time, Armey has also pointed a finger at George W. Bush for mounting a war of "questionable necessity" that has alienated voters from the president's party. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker who had to resign in part because of an extramarital affair, accused the Republicans he left behind in Congress of having "drifted away from reform and changed back to a standard political party"--meaning one marked by incompetence and corruption.

On this blog, Quin Hillyer, an editor of the conservative American Spectator, essentially accused Karl Rove of botching the mission. His argument is that the Republicans should have attacked the Democrats more vigorously. The sexually and racially charged ads deployed by the Republicans were apparently not enough. Nor were the repeated claims from Bush, Dick Cheney and other Republicans that Democrats are cut-and-runners who would undermine the country's national security (when they're not busy responding to invitations to gay weddings).

For years now, Bush has been trying to blur the national security issue and convince Americans the war in Iraq (which is not popular) is part of the war on terror (which is popular). He began the campaign season doing just that, making speeches on this point and pushing legislation regarding the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

But he hit two snags. First, the legislation was opposed by leading (pro-war) Republicans: senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham. Bush lost his clean shot at the Democrats, who also opposed the measure.

Second, the war has become increasingly more ugly. This trumps all. The Republicans in Congress have hung themselves by following Bush like lapdogs. They have held few hearings about Iraq policy or the fraud and waste in the Iraq reconstruction program. They have tied themselves to Bush's mast and yielded control over their own fate. Attacking Democrats for disagreeing over the rules regarding the questioning of terrorist suspects could not distract voters from the war.

Hillyer also says the GOP should have made a fuss over Democratic attempts to block conservative judicial nominees. Yet only die-hard Republican voters care about that. And Republicans have them already. (If not, then all is indeed lost for Rove.) He also argues that the Republicans ought to have boasted more about the economy.

Yet despite the boosts in conventional economic indicators, a large majority of the public still feels the country is heading in the wrong direction. That could be because of Iraq. It also could be due to the fact that the growing economy has not yielded much of an increase in wage levels. (Corporate profits are far head of wage increases.) And at the same time, the traditional economic markers do not capture the growing sense of insecurity among American workers. Unemployment may be low, but these days many workers realize that their jobs (and/or benefits) could disappear in a flash. Bush and his party have nothing to say about this widespread and fundamental unease.

No doubt, the Republicans could have played their cards in a better fashion (and we don't know yet that they haven't). But even in politics, reality can shove aside rhetoric. And this election season, Bush could no longer keep the war-and his mismanagement of it-off center stage. If the Republicans do end up losing the House or the Senate, there will be an orgy of finger-pointing (or firebombing) within GOP circles that could well inflame already-present conflicts, such as the tension between libertarian conservatives, who want to minimize government, and social conservatives, who want to legislate morality.
On the Democratic side, there's no reason yet to form firing squads. But should the Democrats not win back at least the House of Representatives, there will be plenty of D-on-D violence. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, will have a lot of explaining to do-to no avail. So will Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House. And the Democrats will look more hapless than they have ever been. Whatever happens on Tuesday will be a prelude to much political intrigue and change in Washington.

Posted by David Corn at November 3, 2006 05:55 PM

What a Pretty Picture; New Bloggingheads.tv Episode

2006-11-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

From Reuters:

A senior U.S. general compared Iraq on Thursday to a "work of art" in progress, saying it was too soon to judge the outcome and playing down violence and friction with Iraqi leaders as "speed bumps" on the road.

"A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Major General William Caldwell, chief military spokesman, told his weekly Baghdad news briefing.

"The final test of our efforts will not be the isolated incidents reported daily but the country that the Iraqis build."

Now, flashback to the posting on this site from two days. I published an email from a source who works in the US embassy on communications matters. He wrote:

So far, the book by the former Washington Post Iraq reporter, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, seems the most accurate picture of what is happening here. He writes about everyone coming to Iraq with good intentions and then being trapped in a surreal cocoon and becoming part of the problem. I spend every day trying to make sure I avoid that bubble syndrome, but I fear it is already happening. We are speaking to an audience [in Iraq] we do not understand. All the communications trickery and flack magic in the world cannot fix that.

So I'm thinking, what will Iraqis think when they hear the senior US general in Iraq comparing the horrific chaos there to a "work of art" in progress? On the gaffe-meter, shouldn't this remark rate higher than John Kerry's botched joke?

COMING SOON. Or maybe it's up by the time you read this--another edition of Bloggingheads.tv featuring me and former White House aide (for Bush the First) Jim Pinkerton. We disagree on the meta-significance of the Kerry remark. Pinkerton claims it reveals the limousine-liberal bias of a guy who married an heiress. I note Kerry is a guy who chose to serve in a combat hot-zone and he merely screwed up an anti-Bush gag. We make no predictions about the elections, but concur that they're all about Iraq--and that ain't good for Bush. Pinkerton celebrates the Wall and missile defense. I get practical: do they work? (How many billions of dollars have been thrown down the rathole for missile defense in the past 23 years?) We both hail NASA's decision to fix the Hubble telescope. It's one giant leap for scientists--and a worthy diversion from NASA's fixation on manned and womanned space travel. Hey, anyone remember Bush's grand announcement in the 2004 State of the Union Speech about his humans-to-Mars initiative? He certainly hasn't talked much about that since then. He must have really meant it, right? Check out our chat when it's up.

Posted by David Corn at November 3, 2006 10:02 AM

Is John Kerry the Problem...or the Iraq War?

2006-11-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

Below is a posting of mine from The Guardian's Comment Is Free group-blog....

During the 2004 presidential race, George W. Bush had a problem. If voters viewed the election as a match-up between Bush and the Iraq war, things looked bad for the Republicans. The war wasn't going well; Bush had hyped the threat from Iraq; there were no signs of final victory, the public was justifiably unenthused by the ongoing military action.

But the Republicans won that election because the face-off was not Bush versus his unpopular war but Bush versus Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. It was far easier for the Bush campaign and its allies to pummel Kerry than to defend the no-end-in-sight war. And now the Bush White House - facing what may be a political tidal wave that washes Republicans out of control of at least one house of Congress - has reprised that act, with the media providing much-needed assistance.

As the final week of the campaign began, the Bush White House and Republican spinners were not focusing on Iraq, gay marriage or illegal immigrants. They were zeroing in on a muffed joke that Kerry had made during a campaign rally on Monday. The Massachusetts Democrat had told students that if "you study hard, do your homework and make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." "He meant to say, according to his prepared text, that if you don't work hard in school, "you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.")

The Republicans had a field day with Kerry's quip -- even if there was some truth to his actual remark. After all, US troops are "stuck" in Iraq, and many young Americans join the military because they do not have the career opportunities that would come with a better education. Still, Republicans in search of an issue attacked Kerry, claiming he had suggested US soldiers were dumb, and they demanded an apology, which Kerry, who is not up for reelection this year, eventually provided (after canceling several campaign appearances with Democratic congressional candidates).

What was absurd about this chapter was that Kerry's comment drew more media attention than a New York Times story that disclosed an October 18 classified briefing of the US Central Command reporting that Iraq was edging toward "chaos."

A week after that briefing, Bush had declared publicly that the United States was "winning" in Iraq. This revelation -- and the contradiction between Bush's rosy statement and Central Command's pessimistic view -- should have been driving the news. Yet Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, spent far more time at the White House daily briefing, assailing Kerry than responding to questions about the bad-news briefing.

And when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared at a Wednesday campaign rally for Senator Conrad Burns -- an endangered Montana Republican linked to convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- he did not feel compelled to address the Times story. Instead, Cheney's brief remarks about the Iraq war focused mainly on Kerry's comment. He used Kerry's misdelivered joke to attack all Democrats for wanting to leave Iraq "before the job is done" and thus validating the "al Qaeda strategy."

For two days, the Kerry matter dominated cable news coverage of the elections. On Thursday, it was the lead story in The Washington Post. That edition of the Post had nothing on the front page about what was happening with the actual war in Iraq.Republicans have little to say about Bush's policy in Iraq, for there is little to the policy. Bush's attempt last week to assuage public concern by announcing there will be "benchmarks" in Iraq fell flat, for the White House could not define the benchmarks and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki immediately dismissed the notion of creating hard-and-fast markers. Days later, Maliki even assailed US military efforts to set up security checkpoints in a Shiite stronghold in Baghdad. So when it comes to Iraq, Republican candidates are left mainly with rhetoric, certainly not results.

Meanwhile, Republicans are buckling under the weight of serial scandals -- beyond the congressional page affair. A Republican congressman running for governor in Nevada (Jim Gibbons) was accused by a cocktail waitress of assaulting her. A Republican congressman running for reelection in upstate New York (John Sweeney) has had to answer questions about a leaked police report alleging he beat up his wife. (He claims the report is a fake.) A Republican congresswoman running for reelection in Wyoming (Barbara Cubin) told an opponent with multiple sclerosis who is in a wheelchair that she wanted to slap him. And campaign aides to Republican Senator George Allen - who has imperiled his own election by using a racist term and engaging in other bone-headed moves -- tackled and punched a blogger who had asked Allen an indelicate question about his first marriage. (The divorce records are sealed.)

Generalizing about congressional elections is a risky enterprise. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that with the war in Iraq and these less weighty episodes, the wheels have popped off the Republican bandwagon. It may be that Karl Rove and other Republican strategists are able to beat back the tide-just barely. But it's unlikely that the GOP attacks on Kerry will make the difference. If anything, this assault only filled up time for a few days and allowed Republicans to feel like they were back in the good ol' days of 2004. But nostalgia, they should keep in mind, is usually a short-lived phenomenon.

Posted by David Corn at November 2, 2006 11:04 AM

Winning in Iraq?/No GOP Civil War Yet?

2006-11-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today, Tony Snow said at the daily White House press briefing that his boss was right last week to say that the United States is "winning" the war in Iraq. Is that so? A few days ago, I sent an email to an acquaintance working within the US embassy on communications matter and asked for his/her thoughts on recent developments. The reply:

So far, the book by the former Washington Post Iraq reporter, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, seems the most accurate picture of what is happening here. He writes about everyone coming to Iraq with good intentions and then being trapped in a surreal cocoon and becoming part of the problem. I spend every day trying to make sure I avoid that bubble syndrome, but I fear it is already happening. We are speaking to an audience [in Iraq] we do not understand. All the communications trickery and flack magic in the world cannot fix that.

Does the White House understand that?

FANNING FLAMES. I spoke to Mike Rogers, who runs BlogActive.com. In mid-October, Rogers outed Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, as gay. (Craig's office said the allegation was "absolutely ridiculous.") Rogers tells me he has been busy since then calling social conservatives--such as leaders of mega-churches--to tell them about Craig and other leading Washington Republicans who are thought to be gay. "I'm trying to reach out across aisle," Rogers says, "and build coalitions with huge right-wing mega-churches across the country and call out the guys who covered up the Foley scandal. I'm telling these conservatives about the men who are living what the conservatives call the 'homosexual lifestyle' but who are asking the religious conservatives to follow them into the polling booth." In short, he's trying to provoke a clash between the social cons who oppose gay rights (and who, in some cases, demonize gays) and a Republican Party that is a home to in-the-closet gay legislators and staffers.

To prove his point, Rogers, a gay activist, has been playing for the social conservatives what he says is an audiotape of a man who claims to have firsthand knowledge of Craig's sexual orientation. Rogers will not make this tape--or the name of the man--public. But he is doing all he can to convince religious right supporters of Craig and the Republican Party that they are being led by hypocrites. Is Rogers trying to exploit the antigay bigotry of Christian conservatives to undermine the GOP? And does this sort of pot-stirring play to (and thus reinforce) the biases of the antigay right? Rogers says no: "People have a right to their private lives; it's the hypocrisy they don't have a right to."

A gay-hunt within the Republican Party certainly would not help the GOP. And some non-Republican gay politicos, in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, have been trying to foster such an internal squabble, just when the GOP has been trying to mobilize its base for the coming congressional elections. (As I've previously reported, these people circulated a list of gay staffers on Capitol Hill.) With only days left until Election Day, it does seem the GOP has avoided a nasty public fight on this front (and also avoided more disclosures about other Republican legislators and pages). But this internal conflict--or contradiction--is not going away. Rogers says he's working on other GOP outings for the future.

Posted by David Corn at November 1, 2006 12:51 PM

Who's Losing What?

2006-10-31T12:14:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-10-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-10-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-27T14:57:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-10-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

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‚Äô 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‚Äôs 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, ‚Äú"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‚Äîdespite 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'

2006-10-24T23:10:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-10-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-23T17:34:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-22T15:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-19T14:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-18T10:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-17T18:09:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-10-14T16:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

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 ‚ÄúGee, that was interesting.‚Äù 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

2006-10-12T19:34:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-11T18:55:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

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

Baker on Cheney: AEI Gave Cheney the Kool-Aid

2006-10-10T13:28:00.000-05:00

Another green room tale:

This past Sunday, former Secretary of State James Baker was a guest on ABC News' This Week, and I had the chance to chat with him about his new project: chairing a bipartisan commission investigating what to do in Iraq. (The other cochairman is former Representative Lee Hamilton, a Democrat.) Baker noted that no one should expect his outfit--which will produce a report after the elections--to come up with a "magic bullet." There are no "easy solutions," he said. He noted that the administration had "to admit that big mistakes were made." But he said his commission would not delve into George W. Bush's blunders (that's my word) and instead would "start with the situation we have today." He said the commission and its staff had already spoken to hundreds of people--including "people even the US does not talk to." I gather that was a reference to Iranian and Syrian diplomats or officials.

So will the commission produce a watered-down document with merely general ideas about what needs to be done? Baker said that the group could end up with a report that says "here are the four things you should do." Or, it could list various alternatives and the likely consequences of each. In any event, he said, he wants the commission to produce a consensus set of recommendations. If there are dissenting views, he remarked, the commission's report will have less impact. He hardly seemed upbeat, though, about coming up with a good way out. And he added, "if you can't pacify Baghdad, it's lost."

We also chatted about my new book, Woodward's and Fiasco. He noted that he had raised reservations about the Iraq war the summer before the invasion (which he had) and that in his 1995 book, The Politics of Diplomacy, he had explained why he, the first President Bush, and others in their administration had decided at the end of the first Persian Gulf War not to pursue Saddam Hussein's troops into Baghdad: it would have been a disaster. Postwar Iraq, they figured, would have posed innumerable (and perhaps insoluble) challenges and would have been marked by violent sectarian conflict. I don't have that book in my office, so I can't check. But I'll take Baker at his word on this. After all, it was no radical proposition in 1991 or 2003 that post-Saddam Iraq would be one helluva mess, if not a quagmire. And, Baker added, Dick Cheney agreed--at least back then. "Cheney was with us," Baker said. "Then he went to AEI and they gave him the truth serum." Or some other type of serum?

It will be interesting to see how the realists of the Baker-Hamilton commission interact with the non-reality-based, neoconnish war cheerleaders of the Bush administration. Might there end up being a fight for Bush's heart, brain or whatever between the Baker gang and the Cheney hold-outs? It's hard to believe, but Bush family politics and psychology might still drive US policy in Iraq.

As he was leaving the television studio, I said to Baker, "I truly wish you well and good luck." I never thought I'd say such kind words to the fellow who engineered Bush's manipulative win in Florida in 2000. But bad wars make for strange bedfellows.

Posted by David Corn at October 10, 2006 02:07 PM

The Drip, Drip, Drip of The Foley-Hastert Scandal

2006-10-09T13:49:00.000-05:00

This was first posted in my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

I appeared on ABC News This Week yesterday, as a member of its roundtable. (You can get a podcast of the show here.) Prior to that segment, Representative Adam Putnam of Florida, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, debated Representative Rahm Emanuel, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on the Foley-Hastert affair. Representative Tom Reynolds, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was originally scheduled to be in the GOP slot. Though Reynolds has been incriminated in the Mark Foley scandal and is now in danger of losing his seat in upstate New York, he had surprisingly accepted ABC News' invitation to appear on the show and be questioned by George Stephanopoulos. Common sense finally prevailed, and Reynolds pulled out. As Putnam recounted in the green room before the show, Putnam had been in Florida hunting doves when the call came from Reynolds' NRCC with an order for Putnam: you have to go on the Sunday talk show. Putnam saluted and flew back to Washington.

On the show, Putnam, naturally, defended House Speaker Denny Hastert. It was a hard case to argue, but he did the best he could in the face of Emanuel's assault. That's what you're expected to do when you're a junior (though ambitious) member of your party's leadership. But it may not be cost-free--and Putnam seems to know that. After he was done and about to leave the studio, I remarked to him, "You're betting nothing else is going to come out on this." He nodded but rolled his eyes, adding, "In Washington, that's a dangerous bet."

Indeed it is. The news the next day (via The Washington Post) was that Representative Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican who is openly gay, confronted Foley in 2000 after a former page complained to Kolbe that Foley had sent him sexually explicit Internet messages. The newspaper noted it was not clear whether Kolbe did anything beyond talk to Foley. But this development means that the Foley problem was known within GOP circles for six years. Hastert, though, has claimed he knew nothing about Foley's conduct until the day the story broke--even though statements from GOP legislators and staffers suggest his office was informed of the Foley problem years earlier.

Putnam's bet doesn't look so hot right now.

The Kolbe revelation might prompt Republicans to revive their criticism of the so-called Velvet Mafia: that small group of gay Republicans. As I've written about earlier (see here), at the start of the scandal, some within the House Republican caucus were griping that the party had been done in by GOP gays on Capitol Hill who had supposedly covered for Foley for years. (At the same time, social conservative allies of the party publicly blamed the gay rights agenda for somehow leading to Foley's page-pursuing troubles.)

Responding to the effort to scapegoat the GOP's Lavender Bund, gay Hill GOPers told reporters they had years ago warned Hastert's office about Foley. These gay Republicans were essentially declaring: we ratted out one of our own, so don't blame us for Hastert having not done anything. As this intra-Republican sniping between gays and heteros transpired, gay politicos outside Republican circles began circulating what they called The List--a roster of two dozen or so gay senior Republican staffers in the House and Senate. With a possible shoot-out about to ensue within the Republican caucus, these gay politicos--who have long been upset with gays who serve a Republican party that opposes gay rights and embraces outfits that demonize gays and lesbians--were hoping to pour gasoline on the fire. They passed the list to social conservative groups outside the Republican party with a message: maybe this is why your political agenda is not racing through this GOP-controlled Congress. Their goal is obvious--to set off a civil war within the Republican party.

The Kolbe news is all the more intriguing because of these behind-the-scenes scuffles. Will Republicans and social conservatives who were looking to blame gay Republicans for the Foley scandal now revive their efforts to dump the blame on Velvet mafioso within their midst? They can argue that Kolbe, one of them, did not do enough in 2000 after he learned of the Foley problem. But can Kolbe really be made the fall guy? Any GOPer who tries to adopt such a strategy will encounter problems. Kolbe is already retiring at the end of this year. That means he cannot resign in disgrace and provide the Republicans cover. Moreover, Hastert has yet to explain away the claims of congressional aides that his office was informed about Foley's sexual interest in pages several years ago. So even if Kolbe did not share the bad news with Hastert's office; others say they did. What's undeniable is that Hastert did not take the appropriate steps. (There is also an allegation that a drunken Foley tried to gain entrance to the page's residence in 2002 or 2003.)

Back to Representative Putnam, the NRCC's loyal foot solider. Drip, drip, drip. This story is hardly over. He may want to rethink that bet.

NO RESPECT: Here's a sentence that must have been cut from The New York Times' article on The List:
The existence and dissemination of The List was first reported by David Corn of The Nation magazine.

Instead the paper only reported:

[A] group of gay activists, angered by what they see as hypocrisy by gay Republicans, have begun circulating a document known as The List, a roster of gay Congressional staff members and their Republican bosses.

News that's fit to print--days after it has broken elsewhere.

Posted by David Corn at October 9, 2006 02:24 PM

Just in case the thread gets slow for Dial-ups

2006-10-09T11:35:00.000-05:00

From a List to a GOP Civil War?

2006-10-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

Copies of The List (see below) have been sent by gay politicos to a variety of social conservative groups that look to the Republican Party to make their religious right dreams come true. The recipients include the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance for Marriage, Concerned Women of America, the Eagle Forum, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Officials at most of these groups have had something to say about homosexuality and gay rights in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal.

What's the point? The senders--gay people of a Democratic bent--seem to be hoping to set off a civil war within the GOP, to turn the anti-gay social cons against the GOP's Velvet Mafia. These Washington gays have been seething for years about gay Republican staffers who serve a party that opposes gay rights and that welcomes the support of people who demonize or dehumanize gays and lesbians. "Maybe now the social conservatives will realize one reason why their agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill," says a gay politico. Another says, "The inherent inconsistency of a coalition that shelters both gay loathing 'Christian' conservatives and conservative gays will soon suffer its final rupture."

Will it? We shall see, as the Foley scandal continues to unfold, and The List continues to circulate.

Posted by David Corn at October 6, 2006 08:39 AM

Yet More on The List

2006-10-05T11:35:00.000-05:00

Something interesting has been brought to my attention. The Blogactive site has posted a version of The List--or a list. It contains the names of members of Congress, Bush aides, celebrities and others in addition to Capitol Hill staffers. It claims that Kirk Fordham, Mark Foley's previous chief of staff, is gay. I certainly don't know whether that's true or not. But assume for a moment it is. Fordham yesterday told various reporters that he had warned Speaker Denny Hastert's office about his boss sometime in the 2002 to 2004 period. What's intriguing about this is that after House Republicans had started suggesting that the gay GOP staffers--sometimes called by Washington wags the Velvet Mafia or the Lavender Bund--were somehow to blame for the party's Foley-oriented woes, a staffer who might be a member of this under-fire group fired back, essentially saying, Hey, we warned Hastert about Foley years ago, and he did nothing. So there!

I'm just speculating here--and know nothing about Fordham's particulars. In any event--for whatever the reason--Fordham has made life rougher for Hastert and the leaders. Meanwhile, a source writes:

The fact that some of the GOP gay guys are worried about a right-wing backlash against them is very telling. Their existence in all of these Hill offices would certainly explain (to the right-wingers) the total lack of legislative progress on most of the Christian/social conservative issues. I'd be pissed if I had a social conservative agenda that hadn't been addressed and suddenly it became clear, like now, who might have been subtly blocking it.

That's another dimension that had not occurred to me--and another reason to wonder how messy this might get.

Posted by David Corn at October 5, 2006 12:27 PM

The List Stirs Things Up?

2006-10-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

A source sent me the following note:

Your blog [about The List] caused quite a stir, David -- a lobbyist...had a couple of terrified calls from gay GOP Hill staffers wondering if they were on the list you mentioned...and whether there was going to be a right-wing lynch mob coming for them.

Well,I've been sent an updated version of The List. I'm not leading any lynch mob (obviously). But I, too, am waiting to see what's going to happen within the Republican caucus. (See the item below this one.) As I said, things may get ugly.

Posted by David Corn at October 5, 2006 11:10 AM

Hastert Unhinged? (And More on The List)

2006-10-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

I've received several requests for The List (see below), but I haven't passed it on. And a few emails have come in with the same sort of query: is So-and-So who works for Senator So-and-So on the list? I haven't answered such questions. But a reporter told me that The List is in other hands. He was told by an official at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobby, that it had a copy. The HRC official refused to talk about it, though. What's intriguing is that there is a Republican strategy to find scapegoats--other than House Speaker Denny Hastert, of course--and the two leading candidates seem to be Democrats (for somehow making this scandal a scandal) and gay Republicans (for presumably protecting the page-pursuing Mark Foley). From what I can tell, some of these gay GOPers are fighting back. I cannot say too much about this without disclosing more than I should about certain individuals. But there does seem to be a conflict brewing within Republican circles between straight cons and gay GOPers. I'm wondering how nasty this will become and if it will become public. Should that occur, things could get rather ugly.

Meanwhile, Hastert is increasing the odds that this sordid affair will continue on. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune he defiantly proclaimed he's not going anywhere. His resignation, he said, "is exactly what our opponents would like to have happen--that I'd fold my tent and others would fold our tent and they would sweep the House." Yes, his position is that he should base his decision not on what's right, but what's politically beneficial. And in classic caught-in-the-act fashion, he blamed others: "When the [GOP] base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros." He claimed that political operatives aligned with Bill Clinton knew about the Foley business and perhaps orchestrated the disclosure in the weeks before the congressional elections. But, as the newspaper noted, "he offered no hard proof."

This is a sign that Hastert is becoming unhinged. He's lashing out at his political enemies (real and imagined) and not accepting full responsibility for his own screw-ups. He's going to have a hard time convincing the public that the real villian in the page scandal is George Soros and unnamed operatives (who, if they did anything, disclosed accurate information about GOP malfeasance and nonfeasance.) After all, Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, now says he gave Hastert's office a warning about Foley's conduct sometime between 2002 and 2004.

Last night a person who covers Capitol Hill told me that Hastert would be out within a week. But Hastert is indicating he's digging his nails into the Speaker's desk. That's good news for Democrats and bad news for GOPers. There's blood in the water. And Hastert is signaling he'd rather bleed further than leave. This won't be pretty.

By the way, sorry if you had trouble with this site yesterday. Matt Drudge linked to the entry about The List and that overloaded our server, forcing a hour-long shutdown. But my web wizards quickly bought more server space and got the site back up. It's great to get all that traffic. But it's going to cost me. And the comments section is still down. I've been overwhelmed with other matters, and we're probably going to have to come up with a new system to prevent hackers from shutting down the site again. Thanks for sticking with us.

Posted by David Corn at October 5, 2006 10:38 AM

"The List" (of Gay GOP Aides on the Hill); Hubris on Bloggingheads.tv

2006-10-04T13:22:00.000-05:00

There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.

On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.

I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it. For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.

What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices? After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors. That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation.

Let's be clear about one thing: the Mark Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Some family value conservatives are suggesting it is. But anytime a gay Republican is outed by events, a dicey issue is raised: what about those GOPers who are gay and who serve a party that is anti-gay? Are they hypocrites, opportunists, or just confused individuals? Is it possible to support a party because you adhere to most of its tenets--even if that party refuses to recognize you as a full citizen? The men on The List might want to think hard about these questions--as they probably already have--for if I have a copy of The List, there's a good chance it will be appearing soon on a website near everyone.

******

BLOGHEADS: Yes, its time for you to check out another edition of Bloggingheads.tv about Hubris: The Inside Story, of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. This time, there's no argument. There's only me and quirky conservative Jim Pinkerton discussing the contents of the book. We mostly ignore the leak controversy--which sparked an ugly Bloggingheads face-off between Byron York and me two weeks ago--and concentrate on the many other intriguing portions of the book. Pinkerton, who worked in the White House for President George H.W. Bush, offers his own views on what drove W. to invade Iraq--a decision he is not a fan of. Click here to go right to it.

Posted by David Corn at October 4, 2006 11:42 AM

Slate cartoon

2006-10-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

Woodward and the CIA/Plame Leak Case

2006-10-03T13:08:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting scene from Bob Woodward's new book. It's the summer of 2004 and George Tenet has resigned as CIA chief:

[White House chief of staff] Andy Card called [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage to see if he was interested in taking over the CIA.

No, Armitage replied emphatically.

"Can I ask the reason? We're disappointed."

Armitage replied that he could give the reason but he would prefer not to because it might hurt Cards feelings.

Card knew the problem for Armitage was Cheney and Rumsfeld. He nonetheless asked Powell if there was a way to persuade Armitage.
"You can ask him again," Powell replied, "but he doesn't fool around." An Armitage no is a no. "My personal view is he won't do it."

What's missing from Woodward's account? One significant fact disclosed by Hubris: the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (which I wrote with Michael Isikoff): that Armitage had leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA identity to conservative columnist Robert Novak and had been under investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. At the time he was offered the CIA job, Armitage, who had cooperated with the investigation, might have no longer been a primary target of Fitzgerald (though he would later be reinvestigated by Fitzgerald for having failed to disclose to the special prosecutor that he had also discussed Valerie Wilson's CIA employment with Woodward weeks before mentioning it to Novak), but his role in the leak was still a big secret.

He knew he had leaked classified information that had led to the outing of a CIA officer. Could he accept the CIA position and go through the confirmation process, knowing that at any moment the news could emerge that he had blown the cover of an undercover CIA employee? (And what if a senator asked him about the leak at the confirmation hearing?) There was no way he could place himself in such a possibly perilous position. It was dicey enough for him to remain at the State Department, realizing the Plame time bomb could detonate any time. And Woodward reports that months later--after the 2004 presidential election--the White House considered naming Armitage to the new position of national director of intelligence. Armitage was not interested. Woodward notes this was because, as Armitage told National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, "I just don't know how I can work in an administration that lets Secretary Powell walk and keeps Mr. Rumsfeld." But once again, he could not have accepted this position for the same reasons.

While writing the book, Woodward knew that Armitage had disclosed information to him about Valerie Wilson's CIA connection and, as we report in Hubris, Woodward had suspected his source had been Novak's source. And over a month before his book was published, a Newsweek article based on Hubris disclosed that Armitage had been the source for both Novak and Woodward.

This brief section of State of Denial--a book that does contain important (and sometimes entertaining) disclosures--illustrates a side-problem of Woodward's methodology. He gets close to his high-level sources, almost becoming a player in the narrative he is chronicling. Consequently, he becomes entangled in the story and cannot disclose to the reader all he knows. Woodward came under criticism last year when the news broke that he, too, had been leaked information about Valerie Wilson but had not told his editors (or readers) about this. What compounded his problem was that Woodward had gone on television and radio shows to dismiss the leak investigation and criticize Fitzgerald, without revealing that he had had a personal stake in the matter because a source of his had been a target.

No doubt, Armitage, who was damn fed-up with the White House and the Pentagon, didn't want these jobs. In Hubris, he's quoted referring to the armchair warriors of the White House and the Defense Department as "a bunch of jerks." Woodward's depiction of these episodes places Armitage squarely in a place of principle. Regardless of his feelings toward the White House and the Pentagon leadership, Armitage couldn't accept either post because of his central role in the Plame scandal. Woodward had reason to know that, but he didn't report it.

Woodward's book has little in it about the Plame affair--just a few short mentions. That was his choice. But he does provide an interesting nugget related to the case. He reports that after 2005, Cheney no longer had a visible role in the management of Iraq. Once Scooter Libby was indicted in the leak case in October 2005 and resigned, Woodward writes,

Cheney was lost without Libby, many of the vice president's close associates felt. Libby had done so much of the preparation for the vice president's meetings and events, and so much of the hard work. He had been almost part of Cheney's brain.

So one consequence of the leak case, according to Woodward's account, was that it took Cheney out of the game. Readers of Woodward's book can decide whether that was a positive or negative development.

Posted by David Corn at October 3, 2006 11:55 AM

Reading Woodward; Investigating Foley's Protectors; Squirming Specter

2006-10-02T23:58:00.000-05:00

I've been busy reading the entire Woodward book today (and, boy, are my arms tired). Look for my reflections later. In the meantime, a few other observations:

Is the Republican leadership no better than the Catholic Church when it comes to policing its own ranks? The Mark Folly scandal deserves two investigations. One ought to be criminal. Did disgraced Representative Mark Foley break the law in any of his interactions with congressional pages? The Justice Department and the FBI should examine this. But an entirely separate inquiry should focus on another critical matter: did House GOP leaders--including Speaker Denny Hastert--not take sufficient action in response to early warnings about Foley? An outside investigator--perhaps a former prosecutor--should be brought in by the House to do this. (It's beyond the abilities of the House ethics committee and perhaps not even within its purview.) Such an investigation ought to have a tight deadline. It's not inconceivable that an investigator could interview the main players and have a preliminary report out before the elections. (That's how a journalist would conduct an investigation.) Democrats should push hard for this sort of inquiry--and make the Republicans say no and squirm.

Another squirming Republican? A few days ago, Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chair of the judiciary committee, voted for the detainee bill even though he had earlier said it was "patently unconstitutional on it s face" due to its denial of habeas corpus right to detainees accused of being unlawful combatants. What did he say after voting for it: that "the court will clean it up" by striking out the unconstitutional provisions. So he'll leave the heavy lifting to the judiciary. But what about the oath he took when he entered the Senate? Didn't it say something about protecting the Constitution? Oh well, never mind.

Posted by David Corn at October 2, 2006 07:21 PM

The Hackers Lose; HUBRIS on Charlie Rose; and a Woodward Tease

2006-10-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

The hackers have failed. A few days ago one or more miscreant tried to shut down this site by bombarding it with hundreds of thousands of comments (which caused us to suspend down the comments section). But the site survived the attack, and traffic has exploded, due to links to the waterboarding photos below. Dozens of sites linked to the images, and close to 100,000 people have come to this site to see what waterboarding actually looks like. That's rather gratifying.

Here's another Internet spot you might want to visit. Michael Isikoff and I were on The Charlie Rose Show last night discussing our new book, HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR. You can watch it here. We appear in the second segment of the show.

Another programming note: later today I expect to post an item about a revelation in Bob Woodward's new book. . Check back soon.

Posted by David Corn at September 30, 2006 11:10 AM

Respect and Reality

2006-09-29T20:36:00.000-05:00

I see the Republicans of the United States Senate (and a few Democratic senators) weren't moved by the photos below to reconsider voting for legislation that would permit the United States to use evidence obtained by waterboarding in military tribunals for suspected terrorists. The bill they passed last night also grants the president tremendous authority in defining a suspect as an unlawful enemy combatant and then allows him to detain that person for, well, forever. Even if that person is an American citizen. The Washington Post summed up this historic turn for the worse with an accurate but ho-hum headline on the front-page aout the approved legislation: "Many Traditional U.S. RIghts Absent." So much for tradition.

I'm in Princeton today for a small gabfest of foreign policy thinkers to discuss whether liberals and progresives can join together beneath the banner of "progressive realism"--a foreign policy notion that falls between harsh realism (think Kissinger) and messianic neoconservatism (think Iraq). It's practical internationalism--without unnecessary invasions.As Robert Wright, an organizer of this get-together, wrote in The New York Times in July,

Is progressive realism salable? The administration's post-9/11 message may be more viscerally appealing: Rid the world of evil, and do so with bravado and intimidating strength. But his approach has gotten some negative feedback from the real world, and there is a growing desire for America to regain the respect President Bush has squandered. Maybe Americans are ready to meet reality on its own terms.

I don't know about that. But certainly congressional Republicans are still not feeling the desire to regain respect. That's one reality to contend with.

Posted by David Corn at September 29, 2006 11:38 AM