Powerline on the Democratic "War":
Over at the Powerline Blog, Scott Johnson offers a very puzzling response to a new report in the National Journal about a CIA pre-war intelligence report on Iraq. Here's an excerpt from the National Journal story:
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.Maybe this story is a big deal; maybe it's not. It's hard to tell without knowing more details. But I found Scott's response to the report rather surprising: He sees it as evidence that the "Democrats" are waging a "war" against the Bush Administration at the expense of the national interest. He begins his post, titled "The War They Believe In", with the following paragraph:
. . .
One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime.
. . .
The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.
The only war the Democrats really have their heart in is the war to undermine the Bush administration. Any incidental damage done to the national interest in furtherance of that war appears in their eyes to be for the greater good.Now, for starters, the claim that "Democrats" believe it's "for the greater good" to cause "[a]ny incidental damage to the national interest" in an effort to hurt the Bush Administration is, well, completely absurd. But the more interesting question to me is why Scott sees the National Journal story as evidence of a Democratic "war" on the Bush administration that threatens the national interest. It's not entirely clear from the post, but the argument seems to be based on the possibility that a Democrat leaked classified information to the National Journal. To be sure, Scott doesn't seem to have any evidence that "Democrats" were the source of the story, as opposed to someone who is a "Republican" or even an "Independent." As best I can tell, Democratic involvement is supposed to be self-evident in a circular way: the Democrats are out to destroy Bush, which means that a story critical of Bush was probably the work of Democrats, which proves that the Democrats are out to destroy Bush. Am I missing something, or is that the gist of the connection?
Oh, and there's also the suggestion -- sans evidence, of course -- that Carl Levin is leaking classified documents. Nice.
Can we agree that it's time for "Blog of the Year" mantle to pass to someone else?
The only thing you are missing is the link in the chain which is "anyone critical of the President must be a liberal/Democrat." In PowerLine's world, if you criticize the President, you are a Democrat/liberal. I think they once referred to Brent Scowcroft as a liberal. Moreover, in PowerLine's world, any criticism of the Bush Administration is treason. Witness John Hinderaker's comment that "Jimmy Carter is not just misguided, he's on the other side" --- Jimmy Carter, unlike any of the PowerLine guys, served honorably in the Armed Forces (the Navy) during two wars I believe (WWII and Korea). Frankly, Orin, I'm surprised you bother to read those clowns.
VC for Blog of the Year!
If it doesn't qualify as a lie (it may or may not), it surely qualifies for highly misleading.
I think it would take exceptional loyalty to cover this sort of thing up if you had hard evidence. A Republican would do it almost as quick as a Democrat. (Well... maybe not that quick... they don't always wait for the evidence! <*end cheap shot*>
With all due respect, your linked post is extremely hollow. All you do is denigrate the National Journal article while attempting to recycle the old neocon talking points by Feith. Don't you get it that Feith's group was specifically established to counter the CIA analysis of the so-called ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam? The National Journal demonstrates what a joke the Feith group was.
The Feith group did not come up with any "evidence." All it did was unprofessional re-analysis of the same CIA data. As it turns out, of course, the CIA analysts were completely right that the info on the ties was bogus, and consequently Feith was absolutely wrong. His activities are now being investigated by both the Dod and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
What evidence do you need to see that there were no significant ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Accept the reality, there were none.
Hell Kevin Bacon probably has ties to al qaeda... can anyone do it in six steps?
Again, it was the judgment of the intelligence community that Saddam and Al Qaeda had no significant ties. Bush knew about it. Nevertheless, he pretended that the ties exist and took the nation to war based, in large part, on his misleading statements. Case closed, indeed.
of course, I am talking about significant ties; such as help by Saddam; sharing of information; providing resources, etc.
Speaking of simply "ties" is meaningless: the USA has ties to Al Qaeda since Al Qaeda operated on the US territory and some Al Qaeda members live in the USA.
It only makes sense to talk of significant ties; or better yet, collaborative relationship.
Any blogger who mindlessly supports or opposes some person or position will eventually destroy his or her own credibility. Sadly, the blogosphere sometimes rewards people who make the most virulent attacks. I guess that means that my blog will never become famous...I tend to be too even handed (except when it is early in the morning and I have not eaten yet).
Ultimately, one should use blogs as a source of information. If the information proves to be credible and authentic, then it is useful in forming your opinions REGARDLESS of the source. Granted, it is easier to use information from sources that have established a reputation for credibility. But it is also easy to destroy that credibility with just a few mistakes (e.g. CBS and the Killian memos).
To quote Gomer Pyle, "Su-prise, su-prise, su-prise!"
Anyone in the "Bush lied" crowd care to speculate?
Yours,
Wince
As I recall, Saddam Hussein was paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. In addition Iraq was harboring some notorious terrorists prior to our second invasion. Clearly, he was willing to aid and abet known terrorist organizations. The Bush administration stated that he might give WMD to some free-lance terrorists types to use against us. I don't believe the Bush administration has ever taken the position that the war against the Iraqi regime was only justified if Iraq might give WMD to Al Quaeda, but not if they might give WMD to some other terrorist group.
You want to go to war with a nuclear armed Pakistan? As opposed to getting Pakistan to switch sides via diplomacy? That's a truly bad argument. It's practically self refuting.
spencere,
Ask the soldiers. They think they are winning the war. I'm not sure about "we". I work on billing software. I'm not winning the war, but I'm not losing it, either. What are you doing to lose the war? Whatever it is, stop it!
Yours,
Wince
Or do you want to wait until they develop better nukes? Can we afford to wait for the mushroom cloud? The threat is imminent!
But wait, what was that word you used? "Diplomacy"? Only traitorous Democrats resort to such unmanliness!
Yes, Jimmy is a great patriot who revealed to us that the Revolution was unnecessary. Must have spent too much time sitting next to Michael Mooreon.
It sounds like Tenet was repeating babble obtained from al-Libi, probably under torture, which was unconfirmed and not believed by German intelligence. And which was false.
I could probably find better "evidence" of a 1930s Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to enslave Europe than of Saddam-AQ operational cooperation.
Is the foregoing post and its thread intended to represent VC's vaunted 'civility'? If so, I cannot say I think much of it.
As for the concealed premiss in Johnson's enthymeme, Mr Waas is certainly an open partisan. Although, oddly enough, his only findable campaign contribution in the past three Federal election cycles was to NCCF, his recent clips are heavily weighted towards TAPped, the Village Voice, 'Democracy Now!', TalkLeft, and other such small deer. In addition, his blog does not strike me as that of a man of the Right or of the Center - nor does his tone in writing of the dread 'neocons' who so exercise others here, above. Surely, before plunging into the fray, someone thought to Google the man for apparent bias or animus in his writings? No one? Tsk, tsk.
Rather than fuss about whether Hinderocker is a partisan hack, might it not be more productive to ask "why does this leak, coming out at this moment, seem to so disagree with the open position of the US government before Bush was inaugurated?"
It would seem the least hypothesis would be that the leak itself is the least trustworthy piece of information here.
I know that the FBI said Atta never went to Prague to meet with the Mukhabarat guy because his cell phone was used in VB,VA during the time he was purported to have been gone. Uh, huh. There was another crumb of evidence of his presence in the US related to Atta's use of his driver's license to rent a car, but that didn't pan out.
Oh, and what of Dick Clarke's speculation that if we started U-2 overflights of Afghanistan to tighten the noose following the Clinton DoJ indictment of Ossama that OBL would "boogie to Baghdad"?
The indictment has an interesting recital concerning an Iraq-AQ connection, too.
This is all quite confusing to a simple guy like me. Although, didn't Murray have a scoop or two on the Plame story last month.
The obvious flaw in this argument is that this is the same way Clinton got us into Kosovo some 10 years ago without approval from the UN. The only diference is the body count.
Are you saying the Iraq war was a Feith-based initiative?
The first allegations of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda of which I am aware were in an indictment prepared by the Clinton Justice Department. There have since been many (well documented)others. Since Bush never claimed "operational" ties, who cares what Waas says now or the clueless CIA said then about them except to perpetuate the implication that "Bush lied." (Powerline's point perhaps?)
This is all pretty useless without the man's actual statements before us.
"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." - President Bush on 9/25/2002
"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." - President Bush in 2003
"I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on February 5, 2003. (Not Bush, but a loyal member of his administration at the time.)
"We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade," Mr. Bush said on Oct. 7, 2002.
And here's a link to a BBC article that is actually entitled " In quotes: Iraq-al-Qaeda links".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3816963.stm
Remember: War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery
2 points for the attempted quotation....
The presence of Zarqawi (some say for weapons training) in Iraq before the invasion and numerous other documented contacts establish the former. The Bush administration has not said there was an operational connection.
Nothing untrue there. No one is disputing there were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda are they? I don't know for sure of course but I'll trust Hillary Clintons word:
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html
Since that was floor speech I'm sure Bill would have warned her off anything that might not have been true.
Please excuse the neocon source.....
Not if you have been watching them.
Perhaps the briefing that the President received 10 days after 9-11 was incorrect? If so, then any criticism misses the mark.
The 9-11 Commission found that there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda before 9-11, but that those links had not (yet?) ripened into an operational relationship. It was Iraq, after all, that provided safe haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who helped bomb the world trade center in 1993. It was Iraq that sent inteligence officers to the Sudan to meet with Bin Laden in the 1990s. Were they exchanging recipes?
Of course, once such connections DO ripen into an operational relationship, then it's probably too late to do anything about it, unless one assumes "real time" intelligence.
It is a reasonable argument that the Democrats are trying to hurt Bush politically. It is also a reasonable argument to suggest that some in the press are helping them do so. It is further a reasonable (if debatable) conclusion that some Democrats (but arugably not most) would be willing to absorb some hits to our national credibility (arguably a national interest) to achieve their political objectives.
Does that mean Johnson's conclusion was correct? No, as Prof. Volokh suggested, it is absurd - in my opinion because of the sweeping nature of the claim. There may be some Democrats who fit Johnson's conclusion, but they are likely a small minority.
I see this sort of thing all the time on the left and the right. It is illogical and tends to reduce the credibility of the bloggers offering up this hyperbole. Maybe Johnson should just stick to the facts - they seem powerful enough without all the spin.
I am absolutely amazed that you find this claim absurd. Correct or not, it is utterly plausible: there are simply a large number of deranged Democrats out there at the moment. They put waging war on Bush far above any other motive. To claim that such people aren't out there in substantial numbers makes me wonder who you've been talking to of late.
To change the subject to non-dumb lines - Note that the reason that there's a United States at all is that 'way back when, the Whigs thought it vital to embarrass George and the Tory PM, Lord North, even at the cost of losing a big chunk of the Americas. And, as the majority of military officers were Whigs, the outcome was inevitable. (Of course I gloss over other relevant factors, such as India.) Fortunately in the present case, most of our military officers aren't adherents of the "defeat at any cost" party, and maybe that will be enough.
I do think some of the Democrats are playing politics with the war, I am not talking about the Russ Feingolds or the Joe Liebermans or even Hillary Clinton. I mean Senators like John Kerry and Harry Reid. I thing Kerry was always against the war and his positions then, today, and tommorow will always be governed by what is best for John Kerry. I think Reid was for the war when he voted for it, would still be for the war today, but as Minority Leader he needs to score some points at the President's expense. These are my opinions without any hard evidence to back them up, but I am pretty confident I'm right.
Waas is a shameless revisionist and rocket science is obviously not Prof. Kerr's field.
There's little evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, but there's plenty that he was behind the first WTC attack.
Sure, that's an entirely fair question.
Along with the question of who, exactly, put "our national credibility on the line", who has chosen to procesute the war in such an ineffective fashion, and how, exactly, we are going to define our goals there.
You can't have it both ways. Either the executive branch can have a lot of power, or it can attempt to share the blame.
Or have the partisan republicans suddenly decided that freedom doesn't imply responsibility all of a sudden?
"Since that was floor speech I'm sure Bill would have warned her off anything that might not have been true."
Yes, so great is President Clinton's devotion to the truth, and to his wife, this must certainly be true...:-)
I don't consider the far left "liberal" in any sense. They're very similar to the people I saw running the protests in the 60's : cynical, passionate ideologues who haven't grown up enough to face reality. They're still playing games with words, with little connection to fact or logic. They view America as the great evil in the world, and they despise the military.
Powerline's taken the same attitude toward their arguments that I have - enough is enough. Enough BusHitler, plastic turkey, Bush lied, Gitmo Koran flushing, Saddam was no threat, etc.
I'm tired of hearing all the convoluted arguments repeated over and over, from MoveOn, to Kos to the far left's mouthpieces like Wass. Powerline's argument is absurd? Unfortunately, no. The far left is fixated on hurting Bush, without regard to the nation's interests since they believe America is evil anyway. It's not just a small number, the far left has become the driving force of the democratic party, setting the rhetorical agenda.
The far left has destroyed civil political discourse in the nation, and possibly in VC comments.
Sounds to me like it makes liberals very uncomfortable when they realize that people have been listening to them over the past few years, and we aren't just questioning their patriotism now, we're wondering whose side they're on.
which completely blows the Waas article out of the water. The part I found most convincing is that the 911 Comm. excised their dismmissal of the Atta-Czech link out of the final report. But Waas is still citing the preliminary report as definitive. That is either dishonest or ignorant.
www.seixon.com/blog/.../the_history_rem
David Shuster is also guilty of this, as he claims to cite the 9/11 Commission, when he is actually citing their previous staff statements and not the actual finalized 9/11 Commission Report.
In other words, they are using outdated and incorrect information, but using the name of the source as cover for their dishonesty.
That kind of intentional dishonesty or disintential lazyness is what driven me to the point of just about giving up on the MSM. I realize that it is the MSM that provides most of the source for the blogs, but when it gets to the point that you have to fact check almost any assertion, parse the article carefully for what they might have ommitted, then what's the point? The only reason I still subscribe to the local paper is I like perusing the box scores in print at my leisure. Newsweek will not be getting renewed, I can't hold my nose long enough to scan it for anything interesting.
But Orin ia right when he states that Scott Johnson provides no support for his claim that
Scott Johnson should have said that:
"The Main Stream Media believe it's for the greater good to cause any incidental damage to the national interest in an effort to hurt the Bush Administration."
And Orin should find much less to complain about in that statement.
I think Scott Johnson overshot a bit. I think SOME Democrats exhibit that behavior, but certainly not in general. I mean, Democrats like Kerry and H. Clinton are pretty much onboard with what we are doing in Iraq and all that, but they have to pretend they are still with the Left. Now when it comes to other Democrats, like Howard Dean and such, I think they fit what Scott said quite well.
And most definitely as you said, the MSM exhibit that behavior more than anything. Which is funny, since my blogger colleague here in Norway, Jan Haugland, said to me the other day that TV2 here in Norway probably thought they were claiming that the USA used chemical weapons "for the greater good". This is also I think what Michael Moore believes, and in fact, I know some Democrats personally who think this type of thing is OK. It's OK to lie, as long as you are bringing up another point by doing so.
Which pretty much boils down to many of the "fake, but accurate" stories we have had coming from the MSM over the years.
As I read Orin, his primary point is that Mr Johnson has not provided evidentiary support for his argument that Democrats are behind this leak -- as opposed to, say, a disgruntled CIA official; an annoyed Republican; et cetera. And, indeed, he hasn't.
von
I don't mind leaks that don't affect national security, and while it is not up to me to decide, this memo clearly has no affect on national security. What does affect national security is lies by the MSM, and the democrats that make it more difficult for the adminstration to win the war on terror.
The more important issue is the assertion that the dems want to hurt Bush and think any damage to the US is either worth it or inconsequential. If you believe that, you'll take various stories one way, and see dem perfidy everywhere. If not, you'll have no idea what is going on, because without that, the dems' actions have no central theme.
Try this: We pull out immediately and things go to hell as in Viet Nam after 1975. The war, having been finessed into a catastrophe, is now said to have wasted lives for nothing, notwithstanding the anti-war folks promoted the catastrophe, as in Viet Nam. But Bush and conservatives and the military are damaged and discredited.
Are the dems happy, in the aggregate? Are they sad? If the latter, do they vow to never do it again?
It ought to take about two turkey-hazed seconds to come to the conclusion that the dems would consider this a victory.
To answer your narrow point, I think you are looking at Powerline from the perspective of an eclectic group blog like VC. Powerline does not expect every posting to be self-contained. You should not hold it against them that they expect readers to be up to speed on their positions and prejudices.
On the broader point, I do not see how you or the commenters above can sincerely argue that the center of gravity in the Democrat Party leadership is not committed to destroying Bush, almost no matter what the cost to our troops in the field. These leaks and crabbed descriptions of "operational ties" are designed to communicate that our efforts in Iraq are corrupt and illegitimate. That is different from criticising the tactics or conduct of the war.
A dem gets down on his knees for his prayer before bed. Wait, that's not it.
Anyway, he's on his knees and he's praying, "Lord, let things go well in Iraq so the war on terror will be advanced, even though it will hurt my party."
Not very, probably because many Democrats don't see invading Iraq as having been vital to the "war on terror," particularly compared to the failure to capture bin Laden or destroy Al Qaeda, and in light of Iraq's becoming a new raison d'etre for terrorism.
My prayer would go more like, "Let things go well in Iraq so the people of Iraq [anyone here remember them? the folks bearing the brunt of this experiment?] will live better lives than they did under Saddam Hussein, even though it wll make Bush look justified in starting this war."
The purpose of my question is to make the point that expecting the dems to sacrifice party progress for victory is difficult. What they think of Iraq in the WOT is--and I presume most people know it--a function of the fact that it was Bush's idea.
As for Iraq creating terrorists, that view is short-sighted.
Sooner or later, sometime in the WOT, we're going to have to do something which, simultaneously, appears to you as a good idea (maybe it would be the idea of a dem president or something) and offends the more easily offended Muslims. That, too, would be a raison d'etre for terrorists. Then what?
James Lileks said this doesn't work--paraphrasing here:
Some guy in Damascus is sitting around watching TV. He doesn't let his kids watch the beheading tapes or the two-minute hates. He is thinking about going to work in the morning.
Then he finds some American has fired back at a mosque from which the Holy Warriors have ambushed them, or wrapped a terrorist in an Israeli flag, or dissed a Koran. So he says, that's it. Tomorrow I'm going to blow up a nursery school.
Nope. Even for the Middle East, we can expect that to be counterintuitive.
The terrorists are something else than ordinary Muslims driven to despair by the evil infidels. Or if they are ordinary Muslims driven to despair by the cheek of the infidels in defending themselves, we have a lot of killing to do. So we hope it's not that.
Point is, these morons exist and firing them up and bringing them to Iraq is better than letting them go around the world on a Saudi credit card, blowing up stuff that isn't guarded.
Sooner or later, they will have to be killed and the best place to do that is in Iraq.
If a dem thinks a major failure in the WOT is the failure to capture OBL, then he's thinking pre 9-11. IMO, the hope is that, if we capture him, the dems can make the case that we can stop all the other stuff.
Neither I nor a good many people trust the dems to have a single honest thought on this subject.
His political career is another matter. I recall seeing him in 1976 when he was campaigning in the Iowa caucuses. He began by saying that he was a nuclear physicist and a peanut farmer, and that he would never lie to us. I found that astonishing since his training in the US Navy made him perhaps a nuclear engineer, but not a physicist, and nearly all his income came from his warehouse, not his farming. And, of course, having just told us those "stretchers", it was dismaying to have him claim that he would never lie to us. (Even putting aside the fact that a president may need to lie from time to time for very good reasons, such as to conceal a weapons program.)
Getting back to, or at least nearer to, the subject of the post, I would say that Powerline went much too far when they said Carter was on the other side. But I do think it is not out of bounds to say that Carter has sometimes hurt the interests of the United States, notably when he was trying to undermine the first Bush's efforts to build a coalition against Saddam in 1990-1991. (Some have charged that his actions then were illegal, but I know too little about the laws on that subject to have an opinion.)
We should remember that people can lie about their motivations and there's not much anybody can do about it but to say, based on their actions, we don't believe their professed motivation.
Nevertheless, even lacking one of the above, we are free to judge the results of somebody's (Carter, Harry Reid, etc) actions and see they are injurious to the US. If we want to spend time speculating about the motivation, it shouldn't hurt, but it's irrelevant.