Month: February 2007

“Suck It Up!”

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post, another story about veterans’ care: “Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the … Read more

Your First House: Open Thread

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by hilzoy Via Matt Yglesias, the inimitable Kriston, on a review of what sounds like a truly dreadful book: “So this metaphor from Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, excerpted in the WaPo review mentioned below, comes unhinged: “Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn’t … Read more

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming…

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post: “Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to medical information needed to treat severely injured troops arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan. The VA physicians handle troops with serious brain injuries and other major health problems. … Read more

“On That Side Halves”

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by hilzoy Inside Iraq is a blog written by McClatchy’s Iraqi staffers. It’s really worth reading, if you can bear it. Today brings this. The women of the family have gone to collect a body at the morgue; it’s safer for them, since they are less likely to be mistaken for terrorists. “When we got … Read more

Procedure Ain’t Enough

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by publius Perhaps stung by the Iraq criticisms, Hillary Clinton has demanded that Bush come to Congress before taking any action against Iran. I don’t disagree with that position, but it’s woefully insufficient. Look, we’ve seen this play before. Democrats who opposed the Iraq war in 2002 but wouldn’t say so tried a procedural gambit … Read more

Repeal the Military Commissions Act

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by Katherine I don’t usually go in for online petitions, particularly those sponsored by presidential campaigns, but I make an exception for this one: http://www.restore-habeas.org/ The presidential candidate is Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who along with Senators Feingold, Leahy, and Menendez is sponsoring a bill to amend or repeal the worst provisions of the … Read more

Read It And Weep

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by hilzoy From the NYT: “When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power. A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in … Read more

Preventive War

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by Katherine

The single question I’d most like to ask the various democratic presidential candidates (and potential candidates) is their position is on the Bush doctrine of "preventive war"–the idea that it’s justified  for the United States to invade another country in "self defense" in the absence of an imminent threat.  Does anyone know if any of them, and particular Hilary, Obama, or Edwards has taken a position on this?

Here are some relevant quotations from former presidents and candidates:

Al Gore, September 2002:

President Bush now asserts that we will take pre-emptive action even if we
take the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert the same
right then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear – any
nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent
threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against
another nation. An unspoken part of this new doctrine appears to be that we
claim this right for ourselves – and only for ourselves….

What this doctrine does is to destroy the goal of a world in which states
consider themselves subject to law, particularly in the matter of standards for
the use of violence against each other. That concept would be displaced by the
notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United
States.

(continued)

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When Keeping It Credible Goes Wrong

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by publius

I’ve enjoyed the back and forth on the Iran litmus test. I think Hilzoy and Von have covered a lot of good ground, but I want to add a couple of important points.

First, everyone should be using the word “Publosonian,” as Von did. If you’re not, start. Do it now. Publosonian.

Second, and somewhat more importantly, a common assumption in the Iran debate shared across the political spectrum is that our ongoing threat of military force against Iran is necessary to keep the country honest. This assumption is essentially the “credible threat” theory that plays such a prominent role in game theory. Von expresses it well:

The possibility of attack is significant. It creates a bit of doubt — we don’t think they’ll attack, we don’t think they possibly can attack, but what if they do? Anyone who has been involved in negotiations (or litigation, for that matter) knows the value of doubt. Doubt of radical action is a sure way to keep folks honest and on point.

This is an example of an idea that is generally accurate in most situations, but inaccurate as applied to Iran. In fact, I would even argue that continuing to “credibly threaten” Iran militarily is the source of — not the solution to — many of our current problems. Frankly, the credible threat of military force is creating the conditions under which military force will become more likely.

I can’t take credit for this idea – I heard it at a policy lunch a few weeks ago. The speaker there noted several specific ways in which our ongoing military threat against Iran is actually undermining our interests, and I tend to agree to them.

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An Historic Agreement?

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by Charles From today’s Washington Post: In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its main nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs. North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable … Read more

The Invisible Man

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by hilzoy

Of all the things people have said recently on the subject of Barack Obama’s negritude, the stupidest comes from a predictable source: CNN’s Beck, on his radio show:

“BECK: Yeah, I — you know, I was driving in today, and I was seeing — because I saw this piece with him on 60 Minutes — and I thought to myself, he is — he’s very white in many ways.

GIORDANO: Uh-huh.

BECK: And I thought to myself: Gee, can I even say that? Can I even say that without somebody else starting a campaign saying, “What does he mean, ‘He’s very white?’ ” He is. He’s very white.”

[Ed.: No, Beck, you can’t say that. The problem is not that the PC thought police disapprove; it’s that it’s just plain stupid. Also, we know what ‘white’ means in this context. It means ‘articulate.’ Just don’t go there.]

Beck goes on, now talking to his baffled producer:

“BECK: He is — he’s very — he is — he’s colorless. He is colorless.

STU: So he’s clear?

BECK: When he says — yes. When he said, you don’t notice his color, as a white guy — and I don’t know if African-Americans feel the same way — but for whites, I think he’s colorless. You don’t notice that he is black. So he might as well be white, you know what I mean? You see him — listen to me, listen to me.

STU: I’m trying.

BECK: You see him colorless —

STU: Yeah.

BECK: — OK, until he starts talking about race issues and he says things, like on this 60 Minutes piece last night, he said, “When I hail a cab.” And I thought, “What?” And then all of a sudden, I noticed his color.”

Ah. Colorless. Back in the day, a friend of mine and I used to refer to ourselves as pigmentationally challenged, but apparently we’ve got nothing on Barack Obama: he literally has no color at all. That explains why he always wears a hat and dark glasses, and has those bandages on his face:
Invis2

The wonderful thing about Obama’s having no color is that it prevents people like Beck from being able to tell that he’s black — until he mentions hailing a cab, at which point his actual features briefly become visible, before fading away again.

This explains a lot.

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Pretty Party

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by von InstaPundit: This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering … Read more

The Long View

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by von Hilzoy, below, responds to my post criticizing Publius’s litmus test for Iraq: Any Democrat who supports military action against Iran gets a primary challenger. Any presidential candidate who supports military action against Iran loses primary support. Period. No exceptions.  I called this litmus test "profoundly unwise."  Hilzoy partially disagrees.  In hopes of finding … Read more

Supporting Our Troops

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by hilzoy Two items. First (h/t Atrios): “Iraq War veteran Christopher Carbone said he wouldn’t mind a decrease in his medical benefits if it meant that additional federal dollars would be used for armored Humvees on the battlefield. But Carbone, a survivor of an improvised explosive device attack in Iraq in October 2005, couldn’t help … Read more

Iran And Litmus Tests

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by hilzoy About Iran: three main points, two of which involve disagreeing with von. That’s unfortunate, since I prefer agreeing with him, but them’s the breaks. First, von wrotes in a comment that “Iran also lacks the capability to inflict significant harm on our assets in theater”, and uses this as (part of?) an argument … Read more

Profoundly Unwise

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by von Publius makes the following comment regarding possible military action against Iran: I could go on, but that’s not the point today. Instead, I’d like to see the netsroots — and then the bigger Democratic interest groups (particularly unions) — lay down the following challenge to wobbly-kneed elected Democrats: Any Democrat who supports military … Read more

It’s Time for a Litmus Test on Iran

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by publius Don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little freaked out by the big Iran PR push we’ve been seeing (the one enabled by the NYT and the Post). There’s a lot here that doesn’t make sense, and I think the pro-war elements within the administration are taking advantage of people’s confusion about … Read more

Random Nothing Blah Blah Blah

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by hilzoy

Sorry to have vanished: I was up in Boston, celebrating my brother-in-law’s 50th birthday, and wondering what on earth I did to deserve not just a wonderful family, but uniformly wonderful in-laws as well. A complete mystery. Much merriment, many toasts and speeches, and a lot of catching up with old friends — I even ran into someone whom I turned out to have met in my first ever Presidential campaign, when I was 16.

Meanwhile, poor Mr. Nils has some sort of hurt on his tail. I took him to the vet, who not only prescribed antibiotics and something I am supposed to apply to the affected area to induce healing, but also gave him one of those recovery collars that makes him look as though he’s wearing a sort of fiber satellite dish around his neck. Theoretically, this horrid indignity prevents him from licking his tail, pulling out more of its hair, etc., but I have my doubts about its effectiveness.

Poor Mr. Nils. He is not a happy cat right now. He’ll be even less happy in a few minutes, when I throw an antibiotic down his throat. Luckily, he doesn’t know that yet.

Still, his tail is a lot better than it was. Poor Mr. Nils.

— I think there’s something about flying that just sucks a person’s brains out, leaving her a mindless zombie for 24 hours or so. People who actually manage to work on planes never cease to amaze me; I’ve never been able to do anything more taxing than sudoku on them. In any case, since I am, in fact, a mindless zombie, consider this an open thread.

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Undercarriage? Cheeseburger???!!

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by hilzoy Via Feministing, a sign that some people need to get a life: “The marquis for Atlantic Theaters advertises a number of plays including, the Masquerade Ball, Band Jam, and now The Hoohaa Monologues. (…) “We got a complaint about this play The Vagina Monologues,” said Bryce Pfanenstiel, of the Atlantic Theater. The Hoohah … Read more

Double Standards

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by hilzoy In comments on an earlier thread, OCSteve asked about the difference in some people’s responses to what Amanda Marcotte’s posts about religion on the one hand, and the Danish cartoons of Muhammed on the other. I started to write a reply, but I decided to make it into its own post, both because … Read more

The M & M Show

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by publius

A big news story is often significant not for its facts, but for the deeper sociological forces and fault lines lurking beneath the surface. Rodney King is the classic example. This story exploded not simply because the police severely beat King, but because it raised larger, more fundamental questions about race and class and criminal justice in the early 1990s.

Something similar is happening with the Marcotte/McEwan controversy, which (as Memeorandum illustrates) has simply exploded across the blogosphere. The reason, I think, is that the story not only hits bloggers in a personal and even threatening way, it also strikes at a very deep political nerve for liberals still recovering from the Clinton Wars and Swift Boats.

Anyway, I’ll get to all this, but there’s a lot of other interesting stuff to chew on here. So rather than trying to fit everything into an overarching narrative, here are some scattered observations:

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Choices

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by Andrew "For a warrior there is no other end to the journey." — Alyt Neroon, Babylon 5 Geez, I’m sick for a few days and I miss a thread where I’m actually a featured player. I’m going to lose my egotist’s society membership card if I’m not careful. Fortunately, I’m firmly of the belief … Read more

Excitable Chris Bowers

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by publius The Edwards/M&M controversy is extremely interesting on a number of different levels. I hope to write more tonight, but I do think the question is a bit more complex than Chris Bowers is making it out to be: The Edwards camp faces a series of simple choices right now: Are you with the … Read more

Zimbabwe: Freefall

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by hilzoy That’s the term the International Herald Tribune uses to describe Zimbabwe’s economy, in an article many of whose points seemed somehow familiar. However, today’s truly scary story about Zimbabwe comes from South Africa’s Mail and Guardian. It’s called Prices in Zimbabwe quadruple in one week: “Zimbabwe has witnessed a spate of unprecedented price … Read more

By Rudy’s Fruits, Ye Shall Know Him

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by publius In case you didn’t see it, Rudy went on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday to show that he’s, as Holly Hunter might say, bona fide. Hannity pressed him though on abortion: HANNITY: Where does Rudy Giuliani stand on abortion? And do you think Roe v. Wade is a good law, a bad law? GIULIANI: … Read more

Filibuster!

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by hilzoy It seems like only yesterday that Republicans in the Senate were lecturing everyone on the evils of filibusters, and saying plaintively that all they really wanted was an up or down vote. Well, that was then, and this is now: “A long-awaited Senate showdown on the war in Iraq was shut down before … Read more

What Part Of “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” Don’t They Understand?

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by hilzoy

From today’s NYT:

“The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.”

(For those of you who like looking the laws up for yourselves as much as I do: the VAWA reauthorization is here (pdf); check out sec. 1003 (p. 126.) The statute it amends is here.)

There are a lot of problems with this. Let’s get the simplest one out of the way first: it will cost a lot of money, and put a huge strain on the FBI, which might have more important things to worry about. From the NYT:

“Many groups warned that the measure would compound already severe backlogs in the F.B.I.’s DNA processing. Mr. Fram of the F.B.I. said there had been an enormous increase in the samples coming to the databank since it started to operate in 1998, but no new resources for the bureau’s laboratory. Currently about 150,000 DNA samples from convicted criminals are waiting to be processed and loaded into the national database, Mr. Fram said.

He said the laboratory had added robot technology to speed the processing. But in the “worst case scenario,” where the laboratory receives one million new samples a year, Mr. Fram said, “there is going to be a bottleneck.””

That could, of course, be solved by providing more funding. Other problems, which I’ll discuss below the fold, are more interesting and less tractable.

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Or Maybe ….

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by von Cliff May: Until a few days ago, Charles "Cully" Stimson, a former JAG officer and prosecutor, served as assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. I met him recently when I visited the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the most dangerous of America’s enemy combatants are held. Many of those who … Read more

Noooo!!

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by hilzoy Whooping Cranes are some of the most beautiful birds on earth: In 1941, there were only 21 wild Whooping Cranes in existence. Now there are nearly 400. There are two main flocks: a migratory flock that winters in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, and a nonmigratory flock in Florida. Recently, scientists have … Read more

Those Who Ignore The Past

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by publius

I spent a lot of the week on the Amtrak east coast line, so I picked up John Gaddis’ The Cold War:  A New History at one of the stations.  For those of you who, like me, know less about the Cold War than they should, it’s a good quick summary.  The book teeters on the edge of becoming a morality play at times, and I half-expected the world to break out in chants of "Rocky! Rocky!" by the end.  But as an intro, it’s a good place to start.

What really stood out as a reader in 2007 is the contrast the book provides between the Cold War and our new whatever-we-call-it-now war.  And the contrast shows just how dangerous it would have been if the Bush-Cheney-Kristol n’er-do-rights (and their working assumptions) had been in charge from 1946-1964.  Specifically, in a number of ways, the choices America made in the Cold War (and the consequences of those choices) discredits practically the entire Bush/Cheney approach to foreign policy.

Before I get into specific examples, what really stands out about the immediate aftermath of World War II is how fluid history became during this brief window of time.  The years 1946-1950 in particular was one of those rare historical periods in which the world was basically born anew.  Everything was in flux and therefore the choices made in that period had a disproportionate and lasting effect upon the shape of the world to come — just like the strikes to glowing-hot metal forever shape the sword as the metal cools.  For that reason, it was particularly important to have people making correct choices in this critical, formative period.  And for the most part, with notable exceptions, we did.  The world didn’t blow itself up after all.

Although it’s not on the scale of the postwar era, Bush did for good or bad create a new Middle East.  And like postwar Europe, Iraq and the larger Middle East are going to be forever shaped by the choices of the actors currently in charge.  Indeed, many of these irreversible choices have already been made, mostly for the worst.  Unfortunately, the world-historical importance of the moment is matched only by the utter incompetence of the people currently making decisions.  And with war with Iran looming and the brilliant new plan to align the Middle East along sectarian lines, the real question is whether the Bush administration will run out of time before or after it has to chance to engulf the entire region in war.

To get a sense of how different the current Deciders are from the Cold War Deciders, consider the following examples:

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Task Force 16

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by Katherine

A week ago the Washington Post reported that the Bush administration had authorized the military to "kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program." Excerpts:

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority….

In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred to Guard members as "terrorists." Such a formal designation could turn Iran’s military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

I found this worrisome, for obvious reasons. Today, via Spencer Ackerman, I saw an article that made me worry even more. It was actually published two weeks ago, in U.S. News and World Report:

The U.S. military has launched a special operations task force to break up Iranian influence in Iraq, according to U.S. News sources. The special operations mission, known as Task Force 16, was created late last year to target Iranians trafficking arms and training Shiite militia forces. The operation is modeled on Task Force 15, a clandestine cadre of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives with a mission to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives and Baathist insurgents in Iraq.

Task Force 15 killed al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, last June.

I don’t recognize Task Force 15’s unit #, but I recognize the description of "a clandestine cadre of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force soldiers, and CIA operatives with a mission to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives and Baathist insurgents in Iraq," including Zarqawi.  It used to be called Task Force 145, Task Force 6-26, Task Force 121, and Task Force 20. The number keeps changing, but if you follow the news about human rights abuses in Iraq, closely, it comes up again and again and again and again.

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Justice Prevails

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by hilzoy AP: “A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said. Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles “Cully” Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and … Read more

Iraq: National Intelligence Estimate

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by hilzoy It’s here (pdf), and as Spencer Ackerman says, it’s grim. Spencer adds: “. If past NIEs are any prologue, what remains classified is much, much grimmer than what we see here. More likely than not, this is the most optimistic presentation of the NIE possible.” He would know more about that than I … Read more

Obama

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by hilzoy Various Obama-related notes. First, there’s his Iraq bill. (The text hasn’t been posted, but you can read a pretty specific account of its provisions here. Obama’s floor statement is here.) It caps troops in Iraq at their Jan. 10 levels, requires the redeployment of combat troops out of Iraq starting on May 1 … Read more