hilzoy

Stating The Obvious

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by hilzoy Beneath the headline “Panel: Bush Was Unready for Postwar Iraq”, the AP delivers this startling news: “An independent panel headed by two former U.S. national security advisers said Wednesday that chaos in Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning.” Gee: ya think?

The JAG Memos

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by hilzoy As Bob McManus noted in comments elsewhere, Marty Lederman at Balkinization has two really good posts today. (Actually, anyone who is interested in torture and our treatment of detainees should just bookmark Balkinization and read it daily.) The first is a discussion of a series of extraordinary memos written by the JAG offices … Read more

Novak

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by hilzoy Ever since the Plame scandal began, I have refused to watch any TV show on which Robert Novak appears, on the grounds that outing a CIA agent is one of those things that ought to make normal, decent people shun someone, and since I’m unlikely to have the opportunity to administer the Cut … Read more

Scenic Niger Needs Help

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by hilzoy Somehow, when I was researching my post on Niger, I checked out the general poverty statistics but missed the full magnitude of the catastrophe that’s unfolding there. According to Oxfam: “More than three million people, including almost a million children, will face starvation if the world continues to ignore the worsening food crisis … Read more

Long Hot Summer

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by hilzoy It’s miserable where I live, in Maryland. It’s almost 100 degrees during the day, and at 9:30 this evening, as I was heading home from Home Depot, the temperature was still nearly 90. The humidity is dreadful: when I was a kid, I used to think that ‘80% humidity’ meant that the atmosphere … Read more

Rove And Plame 4: Damage

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by hilzoy

Over the weekend, as I was eating lunch, I flipped on C-SPAN and, as luck would have it, the Democrats’ hearing on the damage done by the exposure of Valerie Plame was just getting started. I’d urge you all to watch it (it’s currently second on the list of “recent programs”; you can skip the opening statements by the various Congresspeople at the beginning). While Democrats held the hearing, the witnesses — a group of ex-intelligence officers — were not from any particular side of the political spectrum; the two whose political affiliations were mentioned were a registered Republican and an ex-President of the Michigan Young Republicans. They were there because they were outraged by the exposure of a CIA agent, by the lack of any serious response to it on the part of the White House, and by what they see as either ignorant or dishonest commentary about its implications.

This is one of the things (by no means the most important one) that has dismayed me about this whole episode: the willingness of all sorts of people who have no particular expertise in intelligence or clandestine operations to blithely assert that Valerie Plame was not undercover, that outing her did no damage, that this is no big deal. One might think that the possibility that an undercover agent’s identity had been disclosed would be serious enough that people would wait before announcing that it didn’t matter. And one might think that since the CIA filed a criminal referral about Plame’s outing, a prosecutor investigating the matter found enough evidence of a crime to mount a serious investigation, and the judges who have reviewed his evidence in camera think he’s after something quite serious, those who are inclined to think that this is no big deal might wonder whether Patrick Fitzgerald might know something they don’t. I mean, should we really have to be reminded that outing CIA officers is a big deal, or that random bloggers and journalists might not always be able to figure out someone’s undercover status based on their extensive reading of Tom Clancy novels and a few GOP talking points? Apparently, we do.

So here is Patrick Lang, ex-director of the Defense Department’s Human Intelligence, to give us the reminder none of us should need.

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Unbelievable

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post: “The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new … Read more

The News Is Full Of Portents

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by hilzoy As I said yesterday, in my one brief note, I am back from vacation. Due in part to an annoying series of flight delays, I wasn’t good for very much yesterday, which is why it was so delightful to find that Amazon.com had kindly left a copy of the new Harry Potter book … Read more

Come To Scenic Niger!

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by hilzoy

Having made my views on the Plame/Rove matter as clear as I can for the moment, and not feeling particularly inclined to let myself get distracted by the various charges and counter-charges against Joe Wilson, I thought I might mention instead one aspect of the whole thing that has always struck me as really funny, namely, this:

“On July 12, two days before Novak’s column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador’s CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.”

A boondoggle. To Niger. If you know anything about Niger, these words alone should have sent you into gales of laughter. — Don’t get me wrong: I would love to go to Niger. If anyone is in the business of setting up trips to Niger, please consider me. But I’m odd. It’s not just that I love to travel, and I’m generally up for anything. It’s not even that I’m a birder, though that helps: there are not many places on earth so godforsaken that they don’t have interesting birds. The important thing about me, in this context, is that I decided long ago that caring about comfort interfered with too many interesting things, and so I just wasn’t going to do it. (Although, as time goes on, even I am beginning to draw the line at hotels with wall-to-wall carpeting that has been left to fester and rot for over, oh, forty years or so.) If I cared about comfort, I would not want to go to Niger. It’s that simple.

Getting there is no fun. Travelocity tells me that to fly from JFK to Niamey takes over 38 hours (via London and Paris), but, oddly, only a little over 20 coming back (via Ouagadougou, Casablanca, and Paris). I once took a 38 hour trip (Maputo to LA), and it was not a pleasant experience. The trip to Niamey I looked up costs $4655, but I think that in Wilson’s case, the CIA sprang for that.

What do you find when you arrive? Sand, mostly. About 80% of Niger is the Sahara desert. If you google-image Niger, you will find a lot of photos of SUVs up to their axles in sand in the middle of a trackless waste, with titles like “and this is our off-road vehicle, stuck in the sand!” It’s normally bone-dry, and getting worse because of desertification, about which the Lonely Planet Guide writes: “The ratio of desert to semi-desert is ever increasing, and there is a danger that the country may, one day, disappear under a blanket of sand.” These days they are having not only a drought but a plague of locusts. I don’t know whether Niger was having a drought when Joe Wilson went there, although, as a friend of mine asked me over dinner, in the Sahara, how could you tell?

Even without drought and locusts, Niger is desperately poor. According to the World Bank (Table 1.1), Niger’s GDP was $200/year in 2003; alarmingly, there were ten countries that were even worse off. On the Human Development Index (pdf), which measures quality of life more generally, it’s second to last, just ahead of Sierra Leone.

Second to last in the world. Think about it. According to the World Bank, life expectancy is 46.4 years (and that’s without a serious AIDS problem); more than one in seven infants die; more than one in four children die by five; and the adult literacy rate is around 18%. That’s not just poor; that’s a disaster.

Beyond the fold, I will post pictures, so that you can see where Jetsetting Joe Wilson got to go for free. (DaveC: this warning is for you.)

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Minor Factual Point (Also Contains Open Thread)

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by hilzoy I was reading the Volokh Conspiracy when I saw this: “As the Washington Post reported: “According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.” So Wilson had found evidence that tended to confirm the substance of the sentence in Bush’s … Read more

Rove And Plame 3: Spin On, Republicans; Spin On!

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by hilzoy

After being caught a bit off guard on Monday, Republicans spent yesterday and (so far) today mounting their response to Karl Rove’s outing of Valerie Plame. As I noted earlier, there are some situations that it’s really hard to spin, and this is plainly one of them. I mean: how exactly do you explain the fact that one of the President’s senior advisors outed an undercover CIA agent to discredit her husband, and that the President was so unconcerned about this that he has, to date, done nothing in response? (Though yesterday we learned, via poor Scott McClellan, that the President still has confidence in Rove. I guess outing CIA operatives just isn’t that big a deal to him. And today he said this: “”I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports.” Newsflash, Mr. President: unlike most of the rest of us, you don’t have to rely on the media. You could just say: Karl, would you step into my office for a moment?, and decide for yourself.)

Still, I give the GOP an A for effort. Here are some of their talking points:

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The British Seem To Have Cracked The Case

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by hilzoy From the Times of London: “Police have identified three of four bombers who killed at least 52 people during the London rush hour on Thursday after the men were caught on CCTV and personal documents were found at scenes of the explosions. Strong forensic evidence suggests that at least one of the bombers … Read more

A Campaign We Can All Support

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by hilzoy Are you as tired of the endless TV coverage of Missing White Women as I am? Annoyed when in a world full of actual news, CNN (or whichever network you watch) decides that it must — must, I tell you — not only cover some completely trivial motion filed in the latest case … Read more

Scott McClellan Sacrifices His Few Remaining Shreds Of Dignity For Unworthy Boss

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by hilzoy

Today, the White House press corps finally deigned to notice the fact that Karl Rove has been named as one of the people who outed Valerie Plame. The White House hasn’t put up a transcript of the relevant press briefing yet, but ThinkProgress has one here, and Crooks and Liars has video. I’d feel sorry for Scott McClellan if I weren’t so puzzled by the question: how does he look himself in the mirror, knowing that saying these ridiculous things is his life’s work?

“QUESTION: Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in a leak of the name of a CIA operative?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked related to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

QUESTION: I actually wasn’t talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak to the press about information. I just wanted to know: Is that still his position?

MCCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that’s why I said that our policy continues to be that we’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium. The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium. And so that’s why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation — or questions related to it.

QUESTION: Scott, if I could point out: Contradictory to that statement, on September 29th of 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one to have said that if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired. And then, on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation, when the president made his comments that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved, so why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you’ve suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, We’re not going to comment on an ongoing investigation?

MCCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.
And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. And that’s something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow. And that’s why we’re continuing to follow that approach and that policy. Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And, at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.”

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Rove And Plame, Take 2

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by hilzoy

Newsweek reports (h/t rilkefan):

“It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. “Subject: Rove/P&C,” (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …” Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, “please don’t source this to rove or even WH [White House]” and suggested another reporter check with the CIA. (…)

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson’s criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time’s editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine’s corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA”—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” Wilson’s wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger … “

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame’s name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. “Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper,” Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was “absolutely no inconsistency” between Cooper’s e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. “A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false,” the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson’s trip to Africa.”

We may not know who that ‘source close to Rove’ is, but we do learn that one of the people who has been talking to Newsweek is Rove’s lawyer:

“Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper’s lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.”

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Where Is ‘Home’?

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by hilzoy At TPMCafe, Todd Gitlin noticed something bizarre about the President’s weekly radio address yesterday. It is, as you’d expect, largely about the terrorist attacks in London, and says, among other things: “In this dark hour, the people of Great Britain can know that the American people stand with them.” As we do, and … Read more

Is This Really Necessary?

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by hilzoy From the Chicago Tribune, via Freiheit und Wissen, comes news of a new line of greeting cards designed especially for adulterers. “One morning at breakfast, Cathy Gallagher told her husband she wanted to start a line of greeting cards for adulterers. There was a pregnant pause. And then he said, “I think it’s … Read more

Genetics And Responsibility

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by hilzoy

The New York Times published a truly dumb article yesterday; and since it’s in my field, I thought I’d write about it. First, an excerpt:

“Although packaged with the glint of modernity, this theory actually draws from something old and wintry – the harsh remedies proposed by John Calvin, predestination’s No. 1 guy. According to Calvin, our fate is determined at first creation. Similar to this, the articles of gene-ism would have us believe that our medical fate is sealed by the genes we receive at conception. Seem a bit grim?

Maybe not. Our unquestioning acceptance of the gene as prime mover has certain distinct – and ultramodern – advantages. Consider: you are no longer responsible for anything. Sound familiar? Once it was the devil. Now it is the gene that made you do it. You are officially off the hook. It isn’t your fault at all. It’s your faulty genes.

It gets even better. Not only is it not your fault, but you actually are a victim, a victim of your own toxic gene pool.

In the Age of Genetics, you no longer have to try to cut out smoking or think twice about gobbling that candy bar in your desk drawer. And forget jogging on a cold morning.

The die was cast long ago, from the moment the parental sperm and egg first integrated their spiraling nucleotides. The resulting package of chromosomes has programmed every step of your life. So sit back, relax and leave the driving to someone else.

But one problem remains: this new world order is at sharp odds with an older theism, that blame can and must be assigned in every human transaction. We have built a vast judicial-industrial complex that offers lawsuits for every need, satisfying varied urges like the wish for fairness or revenge, for getting rich quick or simply getting your due.

This all-blame all-the-time approach applies to much more than determining culpability should a neighbor trip on your lawn and break an arm. It also says that people are responsible for their own health – and illness. It is your fault if you develop cancer or a heart attack because you didn’t eat, think or breathe right. You have allowed the corrosive effect of unresolved anger or stress or poor self-esteem to undermine your health. So if you are sick or miserable or both, it’s your own darned fault.

No wonder we fled.”

It’s amazing: an article that is wrong in almost every particular. Where to begin?

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Celestial Drops

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by hilzoy

Via Crooks and Liars, a truly amazing story:

“Four years ago, as the state labored to eradicate citrus canker by destroying trees, officials rejected other disease-fighting techniques, saying unproven methods would waste precious time and resources. But for more than six months, the state, at the behest of then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, did pursue one alternative method — a very alternative method. Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test “Celestial Drops,” promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its “improved fractal design,” “infinite levels of order” and “high energy and low entropy.” But the cure proved useless against canker. That’s because it was water — possibly, mystically blessed water.” “

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Bad News

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by hilzoy A few days ago, I noticed this story: “BRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq – while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to “civil war” in Afghanistan. Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on … Read more

In Which I Am Helpful, And Propose An Idea

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by hilzoy

As I noted in a comment on Charles’ thread, Democrats have offered a number of good ideas about Iraq, starting with the best one of all: don’t do it. None of them have been listened to, and by now, there are very few good options left. However, in a spirit of helpful opposition, I will offer one, which I don’t think has been fully explored. I should say at the outset that I do not particularly like this idea, and that its necessity seems to me to be yet another good reason for not going to war in the first place. However, we have gone to war, and I want us to succeed.

It has been obvious from the outset that if we are to succeed in Iraq, we need to close the borders. We do not need foreign fighters, foreign money, or foreign materiel coming into the country. One part of closing the borders is providing enough troops to cover them, not just in an occasional, whack-a-mole way, but consistently. (And one reason to do provide enough troops is that it would have made other steps less important. Enough troops might, perhaps, have made other steps unnecessary. But that’s moot now.) Of course, we did not send enough troops; and there seems to be little prospect of our being able to send them now, with our army already stretched to the breaking point and recruiting a serious problem. But another part, not that I particularly like saying this, is securing the cooperation of Iraq’s neighbors. I hope Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are already on board; if not, we should get them on board. I also imagine that Turkey has sealed off the northern border; in any case, though, Sunni Arabs moving through Kurdistan is probably the least our worries. That leaves Iran and Syria. And our dealings with Iran and Syria, on this front, have been inexplicable to me.

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Getting To Yes

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by hilzoy

When Republicans, Charles included,* complain about Democrats’ having no ideas, it is often hard for me to know exactly what they mean. Luckily for me, I don’t have to decide, since it seems to me that on all the remotely plausible interpretations of the claim that Democrats have no ideas, that claim is simply false; while on one interpretation that isn’t plausible, but that sometimes seems to be what Republicans who say this actually mean, it is true but completely predictable. So I’ll just run through them in order.

(Note: none of this will be particularly new to those of you who do, well, read progressive blogs. Lots of people have made lots of good points. Think of me as collecting them in an easy, hopefully readable form, for the delectation of others.)

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Moral Values

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by hilzoy Via Freiheit Und Wissen, here’s part of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s speech on the occasion of the Spanish vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. It was just too good not to post. “We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known … Read more

Rove And Plame

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by hilzoy

Last night, word began to circulate around the blogs that Lawrence O’Donnell , an MSNBC political analyst, had identified Karl Rove as the person who leaked Valerie Plame’s name. Today, O’Donnell confirmed that he said this:

“I revealed in yesterday’s taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine’s emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source. I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury. (…)

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an ‘It’s Rove!’ story and will probably break it tomorrow.”

And now the Newsweek story is out:

“The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper’s sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.

The controversy began three days before the Time piece appeared, when columnist Robert Novak, writing about Wilson’s trip, reported that Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, who was identified by name as a CIA operative. The leak to Novak, apparently intended to discredit Wilson’s mission, caused a furor when it turned out that Plame was an undercover agent. It is a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA official. A special prosecutor was appointed and began subpoenaing reporters to find the source of the leak.

Novak appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor, and other journalists who reported on the Plame story have talked to prosecutors with the permission of their sources. Cooper agreed to discuss his contact with Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, after Libby gave him permission to do so. But Cooper drew the line when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked about other sources.

Initially, Fitzgerald’s focus was on Novak’s sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak’s column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove “never knowingly disclosed classified information” and that “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.” Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury “two or three times” and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. “He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else,” Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing “concern” in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak’s column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson’s wife was “fair game.” But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was “totally ridiculous.” On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and “those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.” “

TalkLeft has a summary of earlier reporting on the Plame investigation.

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TypePad Says…

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“MAINTENANCE UPDATE: Some published weblogs may currently be experiencing issues with layout and design. We know about the problem and are working hard to resolve it. Over the weekend we will be automatically republishing weblogs on TypePad in order to address this problem.” Right. (IE is the only browser I have — and I have … Read more

It Couldn’t Happen To A Nicer Guy, Part 2

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by hilzoy Roll call, via, ThinkProgress, via TPM: “Federal agents on Friday searched the offices of a defense contractor tied to Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) as well as the boat Cunningham lived on for more than a year, the latest sign of a growing investigation into the relationship between Cunningham and Mitchell Wade, founder of … Read more

SCOTUS Open Thread

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CNN: “Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the high court and the key swing vote in some of the nation’s highest-profile cases, announced her resignation Friday.” Any thoughts?

Hagel: Even More Powerful Than We Thought

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by hilzoy Earlier in the week, we learned that Senator Chuck Hagel, along with his trusty sidekick Ted Kennedy, was placing our success in Iraq at risk by expressing concern about how it was going. I was impressed: what an estimated 16,000 insurgents cannot accomplish with suicide bombs and IEDs, Senator Hagel can do simply … Read more

“Oh, It’s Just Them Killing Each Other.”

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Via TAPPED, I found a very interesting article from Sunday’s Mercury News. It’s by Larry Diamond, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution who served as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Diamond gives us his take on how we ended up in the situation we’re in in Iraq, from the perspective of someone who was involved in the decision-making. He notes the positive developments of that time: the interim constitution, the handover of sovereignty, and so forth. But he also notes the missteps:

“The coalition government relied heavily on a revolving door of diplomats and other personnel who would leave just as they had begun to develop local knowledge and ties, and on a large cadre of eager young neophytes whose brashness often gave offense in a very age- and status-conscious society. One young political appointee (a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate) argued that Iraq should not enshrine judicial review in its constitution because it might lead to the legalization of abortion. A much more senior Iraqi interlocutor (a widely experienced Iraqi-American lawyer) became so exasperated with the young man’s audacity that he finally challenged him:

“You must have thoroughly studied the history of the British occupation of Iraq.”

“Yes, I did,” the young American replied proudly.

“I thought so,” said the Iraqi, “because you seem determined to repeat every one of their mistakes.” “

Let’s stop right there. There are, in the United States, a lot of people who have real experience trying to reconstruct states, advising them on constitutions, and the like. We seem to have reached out to a few of them — Diamond, for instance. But we could have reached out to a lot more; after all, it’s not as though reconstituting a country after decades of brutal dictatorship is the kind of simple task that anyone could do. But no: we actually employed and sent to Iraq a 24 year old whose idea of good advice was to say that Iraq should not have judicial review because it might lead to the legalization of abortion? And did we really allow such a person to negotiate in our name with senior Iraqis? What on earth could we possibly have been thinking?

I mean: judicial review is one of the single most important institutions a country can have if it wants to avoid tyranny. It does many, many things that matter a lot more to the future of Iraq than its possible future effects on abortion law. Things like, oh, allowing unconstitutional usurpations of power to be struck down as unlawful. Only someone who was both a complete idiot and a neocon fantasist bent on importing American political issues into the completely different world of Iraq would advise Iraqis not to have judicial review on the grounds that it might lead to the legalization of abortion. And if that struck him as a good idea, who knows what else he might have recommended? Why not advise them not to protect freedom of assembly on the grounds that it might interfere with some future President’s ability to bar people who disagree with him from his rallies, or to allow searches without a warrant on the grounds that that would make it so much easier for some future Iraqi administration to pass the PATRIOT act, or to allow future Presidents the power to declare war at will so that they would never have to ask Congress for permission to invade Iraq? — Um, something’s wrong with that last one…

But wait: there’s more…

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My Irony Meter Exploded Again…

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And I had just replaced it after the last time… Via Randy Paul at Beautiful Horizons comes this White House Press Release: “President’s Statement on United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture On United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide … Read more

Failure Is Always An Option

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by hilzoy Billmon has a very interesting post on Iraq called ‘Failure Is An Option’. He makes a lot of points, some of which I disagree with, but all of which are worth reading. But the point made in his title is a really important one that I’ve been thinking of writing about for a … Read more

Establishing My Religion

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by hilzoy

I have been reading the oddest thing: Scalia’s dissent in McCreary County v. ACLU (pdf). It’s very peculiar in its own right, and even more peculiar as an illustration of originalist legal theories in action. McCreary County is one of the Ten Commandments cases that were handed down on Monday; it concerns a copy of the Ten Commandments displayed in a courthouse. The majority said that the display of the Ten Commandments in this case was unconstitutional. Scalia disagrees on various grounds; the one that interests me is his claim that putting up the Ten Commandments in a courthouse does not favor one religion over another (pp. 53-55).

I could understand (though I would not agree with) an originalist who said: look, what ‘establish’ means, in the establishment clause, is: to make some religion the official religion of the government. Via the fourteenth amendment, this extends to other units of government, like counties. But putting up a display in a courthouse is not an establishment of religion in this sense. So even if McCreary County had chosen to display the Catholic catechism, the Augsburg Confession, or the Qur’an, that would have been fine. Scalia does say that “governmental invocation of God is not an establishment.” But for some reason he does not conclude that it is acceptable for a public building to display the text of some specific religion; only for such a building to display texts common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. (Why? I don’t know about you, but I think the answer has to involve a penumbra or an emanation.)

I could also understand an originalist who tried to argue that displaying the Ten Commandments did not count as establishing a religion unless the display somehow indicated which of the several religions that take the Ten Commandments to be sacred it favored. But while that argument would be understandable, it would also be stupid and unworkable, not least because it would require a clear account of what counts as ‘one religion’. (Is establishing Christianity OK so long as the government does not choose between Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy? Is establishing Pentacostalism OK so long as one does not specify which of the roughly 11,000 Pentacostal denominations now in existence one prefers? And so on.)

But Scalia does not rely explicitly on the claim that the Ten Commandments are not the province of any one religion either. Instead, he argues that because the Ten Commandments are viewed as sacred by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and because these three religions are the most popular monotheistic religions in the country, it is acceptable to display the Ten Commandments in a public building. And what I cannot understand is how on earth he manages to get this out of the text of the establishment clause in a way that even pretends to be consistent with his general views on legal interpretation.

(Note: I am not a lawyer, of course, but I am about to pretend. Be warned. It may not be pretty. Also: I started thinking about this because I was appalled by the idea that you could ‘establish’ anything on which Christianity, Judaism. and Islam all agreed; but as I thought more I ended up being more interested in the question: how did a smart guy like Scalia convince himself that what he says has anything at all to do with originalism?)

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Ceci N’Est Pas Un Post

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by hilzoy I was writing a long post on a Wall Street Journal OpEd that said that critics of the war were doing Zarqawi’s dirty work for him, but I’ve decided to bag it. If people are inclined to believe that any problems we might be having in Iraq are the fault not of the … Read more