The tone of the Iraq war debate got more strident today with Democratic presidential candidates competing to be more anti-war than the next and Republicans delivering bi-partisan blasts.

While stumping for Democrats in California yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama reiterated his opposition to the war and gave a thinly-veiled rebuke to President Bush's calls to continue fighting with a new strategy. "There are no good options in Iraq at this point," Obama said. "There are only bad options or worse options. But the worst option is to continue to put our young men and women in the midst of what is essentially a sectarian civil war in which they cannot succeed."

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Biden didn't just criticize the commander-in-chief strategies as ineffective, but said they are "emboldening the enemy." This came after Biden accused Bush himself of saying war critics embolden the enemy. (Taking the cake was Rep. Dennis Kucinich who claimed the U.S. is "on its way toward being a fascist kind of government.")

On the GOP side, Rep. Duncan Hunter characterized Congress' war debate as equivalent to pulling "the rug out from under the soldiers ... by condemning this mission," Hunter said. "I thought it was a disservice to our soldiers."

Sen. John McCain continued to campaign as a critical hawk by blasting Donald Rumsfeld's conduct of the war, claiming he predicted the bloodshed in Iraq and the need for more soldiers and a new strategy more than three years ago. McCain said, "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement -- that's the kindest word I can give you -- of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. ... I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." McCain's comments were met by applause.

The best of the rest of today's news can be found here.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:39 AM | Email Author | Permalink

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran a piece by John Hopkins professor and New Republic contributing editor David Bell. It has generated a fair amount of controversy these past few days:

Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy.

Last night's roundtable on Brit Hume's Special Report discussed the article. Here are a few excerpts:

HUME: This is from two days ago, on Sunday, when one, David Bell, a history professor from Johns Hopkins University wrote a piece, basically asking the question: was 9/11 really was that bad? Meaning, yes it was a terribly hideous terrorist attack, an atrocity, to be sure, but did it really and does any likely future attack from the same type of people really threaten the existence of the United States? Is it indeed an existential threat? He argues that judged in historical terms against past wars and past threats it doesn't measure up. It's a serious argument.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: David Bell acknowledges that these people are hate filled fanatic to would like nothing better than to destroy our country, but he says that they lack the capacity. Well one, if they got a hold of Iraq or Saudi Arabia they would have oil wealth and they could buy any weapon that they chose. Secondly, if they -- Pakistan is about one bullet away from supplying as Islamic fundamentalists with a fully blown nuclear arsenal, Pakistan has, and Iran is working on that.

HUME: You say "one bullet away," you mean the murder of...

KONDRACKE: Murder of Musharraf, yeah.

Who delivered Pakistan into the hands of extremists, who would...

KONDRACKE: Could -- he could, and then we have an existential threat and our allies...

HUME: But the argument is made -- that argument suggests that they could become an existential threat, but they're not now.

KONDRACKE: Well, but you want to fight threats in advance, you know, you don't want to wait until they develop.

LIASSON: I think what he's suggesting is that there might have been different ways to fight this threat than -- it's implied in his article that there might have been different ways...

HUME: But the core of the argument is we may be overreacting to the threat because it's not as serious as we've made it out to be...

LIASSON: I think that's the rhetoric -- some of the rhetoric -- to say it's an existential conflict, maybe the American people aren't buying that form the distraction, maybe that's one of the...

HUME: I know, but I'm talking about what he's saying. I mean, we can speculate all we want about what the American people may think about this. That argument has gone largely unchallenged, by the way, I mean, you don't here anybody saying...

LIASSON: No, but when he lays out the proportion of people killed versus the proportion of people killed in conflicts that were existential, he makes a valid point.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: That's irrelevant, though. I mean, one nuclear weapon and you kill a lot more people than were killed in all those wars.

Look, this is an example of the polio fallacy. And that is that people don't get the vaccine anymore because, or a lot of people don't, because they say "well gee, nobody gets polio anymore. What do I need it for?" Well here we haven't had another serious terrorist attack, so people start saying, "well gee, maybe the threat's not that great. We don't have to do all these things like the Patriot Act and have eavesdropping and so on through wiretapping and things like that." I think this is an example of that.

But, both Mort and Mara are correct. There -- I mean, weapons of mass destruction, they exist, they're easily accessible. Saddam Hussein -- one reason we attacked Iraq and opposed him was because he had -- had them and might give them to terrorists.

LIASSON: Or so we thought.

BARNES: And he did...

HUME: Well we had had them.

BARNES: We know he had them, he used them in the past. So, I don't think it's been an overreaction. It's been a successful reaction and that's why people start to think, well maybe the threat's not that great.

The full transcript can be found here.

Posted by John McIntyre at 11:17 AM | Email Author | Permalink

From the Daily Telegraph:

Eight people were arrested in dawn raids across Birmingham this morning by police investigating an alleged kidnap plot.

The Home Office said the raids were part of a "major" nationwide operation, and security sources said an imminent terror attack had been thwarted.

The alleged plotters were planning to kidnap a member of the public in an "Iraq-style" abduction, according to security sources. The attack, said to be in the later stages of planning, would have mirrored the kidnappings of British hostages Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan by Iraqi insurgents, the sources said.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 05:06 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Interesting story in today's Seattle Times. Ahmed Ressam, aka "The Millennium Bomber", has written the judge in his case recanting part of his confession that implicated his friend Hassan Zemiri in the plot.

Ressam told authorities that Zemiri gave him $3,500 cash and a video recorder to help him "look like a tourist." Ressam testified that while he didn't provide exact details of the terrorist plot to his friend, Zemiri was aware that Ressam intended to pull off some sort of terrorist "job" in America.

Zemiri and his wife fled to Afghanistan in May 2001 after word came out that Ressam was cooperating with authorities. He was picked up a few months later near the caves of Tora Bora by U.S. forces and has spent the last five years at Guantanamo Bay.

Ressam now claims that his initial account about Zemiri was distorted by the trauma of his conviction. "When I dealt with the Prosecutor at the beginning," Ressam wrote the judge, "I was in shock and had a severe psychological disorder as I (sic) result of the court results, I was not sure about m (sic) statements."

Ressam goes on to clarify his statement on Zemiri:

Mr. Hassan Zamiry is innocent and has no relation or connection to the operation I was about to carry out. He also did not know anything about it and he did not assist me in anything. It is true that I have borrowed some money and a camera from him, but this was only a personal loan between me and him. It has nothing to do with my case "or support as the Prosecutor has alleged."

Sympathy for jihadists isn't a crime, but providing material support to them is, and this case illustrates what a murky mess it is to sort out the threat posed by radical Islamic terrorists and those abet them. Certainly, we have an obligation to try and find that line through a legal process that is just and fair, but the stakes are high and the consequences of allowing someone like Zemiri to go free based on the word of a convicted terrorist like Ressam could be potentially disastrous.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

"These are really hard problems, and it's nobody's fault that we're not getting them all resolved. One of the biggest problems of all, and there is fault here - I blame the president, I blame leaders like myself, I blame opposition to the president, which likes to muddy the waters - I think there has been a failure to honestly convey to the American people the true, big picture.

If you view Iraq as a stand-alone problem, we should not be there today. I think it's wrong to view it that way. You have to view it as part of an overall war . . .

I don't think we will ever make wise decisions about any of these things, including the Iran piece of it, or Afghanistan, unless there is a better understanding of a real challenge the West generally faces from radical Islam, from the terrorists who are spawned by radical Islam, and the other circumstances that arise in other countries around the world." - Senator Jon Kyl in an interview with the Arizona Republic editorial board.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Charles Krauthammer on Rumsfeld's legacy from last night roundtable on Special Report with Brit Hume:

The person who had the stature and experience to go after the entrenched bureaucracy of the military and to want to change it to be more light and adaptable, and that is a process that will be remembered as a very big positive.

Secondly, he's the man who gave us these amazingly swift victories to defeat and destroy enemy regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq with an economy and a swiftness nobody would ever have expected.

Remember also, we've gone five years without a terrorist attack. And all of this is his legacy. Of course, obviously, is the stalemate in Iraq, the decisions that were made early on, that were hard decisions, some of them in retrospect were not right. But Iraq is still in play and those who say his legacy is written on Iraq, I think are wrong. I think we're going to see how it turns out.

Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times.

James Baker ran after W. with a butterfly net for a while, but it is now clear that the inmates are still running the asylum.

The Defiant Ones came striding from the Pentagon yesterday, the troika of wayward warriors marching abreast in their dark suits and power ties. W., Rummy and Dick Cheney were so full of quick-draw confidence that they might have been sauntering down the main drag of Deadwood.

Far from being run out of town, the defense czar who rivals Robert McNamara for deadly incompetence..... the septuagenarian who arrogantly dismissed initial advice to send more troops to secure Iraq.

Just imagine the send-off a defense secretary would have gotten who hadn't sabotaged the Army, Iraq, global security, our chance to get Osama, our moral credibility, the deficit and American military confidence.

Let's just say I suspect the history books 50 years from now will find Krauthammer closer to the truth.

Posted by John McIntyre at 05:08 PM | Email Author | Permalink

A couple of emails in response to my post on Only the Poor and Depressed Join the Military?

Good article. Campos gives me a pain. I went through the weekly Camp Lejeune paper which listed all the Marines who have so far died in Iraq. 47% were from the 13 states, including Indian territory, of the 1861-1865 Confederacy. I guess the Left has a problem processing facts....... (I.E. "......the kids from the projects in Rangel's Brooklyn congressional district and from depressed farming towns in North Dakota, and from East Los Angeles barrios -....... do the fighting and the dying.")

**********

The sad thing is that so many on the right actually got their knickers into such a twist over a total non-event as Kerry's so called oh so awful remarks daring to insult the intelligence of those in the military in the first place....but the reality of the reality is how accurate his remarks were. I'm sure you wouldn't report it, but ABC recently went undercover to capture the, shall we say, less than straight forward techniques used to lure recruits into the armed forces. The results were shocking in two different ways.

The techniques themselves were infuriating...deceptions, false claims, and out and out lies were told to many of these prospective enlistees....kind of sounds like the same things used on the American public to get us into Iraq in the first place, but I digress. However, in addition to the deceit, what was truly shocking is that their lies actually worked. What do I mean? Well, some of these recruiters told these young men and women that in fact the "war in Iraq was over," or that "we are bringing our troops home from Iraq even as we speak," and so on. Now, I don't know about you, but I find it stunning that not only would they go out on a limb and tell such bold faced lies, but that their audience is that stupid to actually believe that the war was in fact over............it's as if a big chunk of those most likely to enlist don't ever pick up a newspaper, turn on the news, or basically have a freaking clue as to what is what...and the recruiters knew this, and didn't hesitate to lie to them about the war being over. If they were all indeed "educated" these kids would have told the recruiters to go to hell....instead, they listened, and signed up! It might have come out of his mouth in a less than pretty way, but of course Kerry was accurate in what he was saying, and this ABC undercover report is a shocking testament to how uneducated many who sign up really are....it's just not politically correct to say so.

Posted by John McIntyre at 05:37 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Following up on the post from VDH's essay, this exchange between David Letterman and Bill O'Reilly a couple of weeks ago sums up the growing feelings of many Americans attitude toward Iraq.

O'Reilly: But they (the public) don't want to hear about the bad world that we live in. It's an evil world that we live in. Let me ask you something. And this is a serious question. Do you want the United Sates to win in Iraq?

Letterman: Well, you know in the beginning, here is my position in the beginning and I, I think I - I sort of felt the way everybody did, we felt like we wanted to do something, because something terrible had been done to us. We did not understand exactly why, all we knew was something terrible, something heinous; something obscene had been done to us. So while it didn't necessarily make sense to go into Iraq as it did perhaps to go into Afghanistan, I like most everybody else felt like yes, we needed to do something. And as the weeks turned into months, years and one death became a dozen deaths and hundred deaths and a thousand deaths - then we began to realize you know what? Maybe we're causing more trouble over there than the whole effort has been worth....What I would like would be uh, for uh, uh Americans to stop dying. And for there to be stability in that part of the world. Now if that means an American victory, ok. But I'm not sure that you can have stability in that part of the world with or without an American presence now, uh, so I would do whatever it would take to stop Americans dying.

The good-hearted, but utterly naïve sentiment of "I would do whatever it would take to stop Americans dying" in Iraq, will continue to chip away at the public's resolve in the coming weeks and months. And absent a credible plan for victory in Iraq - which right now we do not have - the window for the U.S. to prevent a major loss in this battle of the much longer war is rapidly closing.

Posted by John McIntyre at 06:37 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Victor Davis Hanson has written a tremendous essay for RealClearPolitics today. Here are a few excerpts:

Intelligence sources announce that Iran is seeking to replace al Qaeda as the foremost anti-Western global terrorist organization. Not to be outdone, Al Qaeda is said to be desperately seeking a nuclear device. This is precisely at the time President Ahmadinejad announces the next step of uranium enrichment and more promises to end Israel.

International inspectors report that traces of plutonium are found in Iranian nuclear waste sites. The results of a terrorist with a plutonium-laced suicide belt in the New York Stock Exchange, the Mall of America, the Louvre, the Vatican, or the Harvard Library are like a water spill into a computer hard drive--the tiny drop unseen to the naked eye as it shuts down a way of life.

There is wealth aplenty pouring into Iran and Iraq through oil that is sold at a high price in a world market whose sanctity is ultimate protected by the United States. So the poverty there of radical Islam is not material, but one of the soul......They obviously want Western technology--whether the Internet or the plastic munition--but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave....Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor.

Next, examine the Western political response to all this Middle Eastern madness. The recent November election made it clear that the American public is tired of Iraq, tired of the televised bombings, tired of the Middle East and just wants to be left alone, to go home or to "redeploy."

A once stalwart Tony Blair now praises Iran and welcomes back terrorist-sponsoring Teheran and Damascus for negotiations..... It is understandable to want to talk with the Iranians and avoid unnecessary confrontation, but only on the understanding that the theocracy there is trying to destroy Israel and kill Americans working to protect democracy in Iraq. Thinking Syria or Iran could tolerate a constitutional republic in Iraq on its borders is like imagining that Hitler could have lived with a democratic Poland or Czechoslovakia next door or the old Soviet Union would have tolerated a free Ukraine.

Americans in their televised wrangling seem traumatized over Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, and wiretaps. For many George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are far greater threats than Osama bin Laden. Indeed, without a care for the thousands tortured by Saddam or dismembered by the terrorists, American leftists now seek to indict (in Germany of all places!) the former Secretary of Defense on charges such as subjecting detainees to "religious humiliation." Religious humiliation? Is war now to be played out on Court TV or ape the hurt feelings of Sunday morning television?

In short, while the Islamists get bolder and crazier, we become more timid and all too rational, quibbling over this terrorist's affinities and that militia's particular grievances--in hopes of cutting some magical deal with an imaginary moderate imam or nonexistent reasonable militia chief or Middle East dictator.

Well beyond us now is any overarching Churchillian vision of our enemies. We lack the practical understanding of an FDR that all of these Islamists loathe us far more than they despise each other. Their infighting, after all, is like the transitory bickering of thieves over the division of loot that always pales before their shared hatred of the targeted bank owner.

So we are at a crossroads of all places in Iraq. The war there has metamorphosized from a successful effort to remove a mass-murdering dictator into the frontlines of the entire struggle between Islamic radicalism and Western liberality. If we withdraw before the elected government stabilizes, the consequences won't just be the loss of the perceptions of power, but perhaps the loss of real power. What follows won't be the impression that we are weak, but the fact that we are--as we convince ourselves we cannot win against such horrific enemies, and so should never again try.

Hanson is first and foremost a historian and he understands the long scope of this fight. The 24/7, cell-phone, Internet, cable/satellite, instant-gratification world we live in today however, has little patience for the hard slog in Iraq. Make no mistake about it we are approaching an important crossroads in not just the front in Iraq but the entire War on Islamic Fascism.

I fear only another attack will jolt the American public and the free world to the real stakes in this War against the Islamicists.

Posted by John McIntyre at 06:31 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday, along with four other journalists, I lunched with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We had a wide-ranging discussion on North Korea, Iraq, and the reports that there was a coming change in administration policy toward Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld said that the President had asked him to stay out of politics in this election, and he was determined to do just that. Several of us tried to nudge or kid him into it, and the most we could get was a "nice try" or two.

Rumsfeld explained that the conference the president held last weekend with him and our top generals didn't signal a major shift on Iraq. This conference wasn't something out of the ordinary and in the two or three others held before the president had used this session to talk through ideas with his top advisors. As to the idea that the Congressionally-created Baker-Hamilton "Iraq Study Group" might recommend major policy shifts, Rumsfeld demurred. He said that outside groups such as that one can often be helpful by bringing new viewpoints to the analysis. The Baker group - which interfaces mostly with National Security Advisor Steven Hadley -- has met with Rumsfeld at the White House and will be coming to the Pentagon for more discussions in mid-November.

I asked if the Baker group was trying to answer the right questions. Are we talking about Iraq without talking about a regional solution? Rumsfeld said he wasn't familiar with the mandate Congress had given the Baker group. When I pressed him that too many people want to talk about Iraq without placing it in context he said, "I think it's awfully hard - I know some people would like to do it - but it's awfully hard to look at Iraq and not look at it in the context of the world we live in, and the area that it is in, and the activities of Iran and Syria and the broader question of the Shia-Sunni interaction that's taking place." The problems of the Middle East are, inferentially, regional and cannot be solved within the borders of any single nation.

Asked if he was planning to resign after the elections, Rumsfeld said that if he were, he'd have spoken to the president about it and that no such discussion had taken place.

We talked about North Korea and the ability of the world to achieve its nuclear disarmament. Mr. Rumsfeld said that the problem had been the lack of cohesion among the international community and that the president's approach intended to create that cohesion and thus the leverage to accomplish the necessary solution. Rumsfeld was quick to explain that the problem of nuclear North Korea was much different than the problem posed by Iran. He gave us copies of what is now his favorite picture. It's a night time satellite photo of the Korean peninsula taken (apparently repeatedly or in some time-lapse format) from February 1 - March 31, 2006. It shows nearly half of South Korea bathed in artificial light, and all of North Korea - except the capital, Pyongyang - utterly dark. "If you think of North Korea, it is very different from Iran. There's people who are starving. They have people who are going in the military who are under five feet and less than one hundred pounds. There's a lack of nutrition in the country." The sort of deterrence that worked before may work against North Korea, though Rumsfeld said the principal danger from North Korea is proliferation: "He'll sell anything."

Much of the discussion centered around the ability of America to fight a long war. Both Rumsfeld and Pace used the example of the Cold War to illustrate their conviction that America does and will continue to have the ability to stay in the war against terrorists until it's done. Rumsfeld elaborated.

He said that Americans were raised - "socialized" was the word he used - to believe that our military can win any war by going out and defeating a nation or an army. But times have changed. He said of Iraq, "There's no way the military can lose. There's also no way the military can win all alone. That isn't the nature of it...There's no major army, navy, air force to go and attack and destroy." In wars like this, there will be no "clean wins."

How long will it take? How will the American people support a war such as this? Rumsfeld said, "We have to be smart enough and wise enough as we were in the Cold War to recognize the danger, and to recognize that it takes perseverance."

Gen. Pace added, "We're back to the common understanding of the threat. The American people are willing to withstand a long-term challenge as exemplified by the Cold War and the Soviet Union...The good news is that since 9-11 we haven't been attacked here at home. What that means is that some Americans don't yet grasp fully the very real nature of this threat to the survival of the nation."

Posted by Jed Babbin at 02:35 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Just to be clear, this is not a staffer from Congressman John Conyers' office heading in to work:

(Photo credit: Betty Udesen, Seattle Times)

It is, in fact, one of the protesters who marched in my former home town of Seattle yesterday in what was termed a "National Day of Mass Resistance." Watch this multimedia slide show from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer a more full experience of what the rally was like, including audio of the protesters chanting "Number One Terrorist? U.S., U.S."

The protest was organized by a group called The World Can't Wait, which lists the convicted terrorist sympathizer Lynne Stewart and America-hating icon Gore Vidal among those on its advisory board. The group's official "call to drive out the Bush regime" offers a list of grievances against the current administration before concluding:

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

These folks should think twice about uttering any phrase that contains the word "balance" in it. Just a thought.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:55 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I understand Bill Clinton's desire to attempt to influence history's judgment of his administration's efforts to reign in Al Qaeda and get Bin Laden, both for the sake of his personal legacy and his wife's campaign to be president. However, I question the wisdom of the Clinton's very aggressive moves over the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11" and the recent blowup with Chris Wallace on FOX News. Yesterday's FOX News Sunday is a perfect example of why I don't think Bill Clinton really wants the facts to be exposed over who did more, or what administration did what, to get Bin Laden prior to 9/11.

WALLACE: But, Mr. Scheuer, I can see you beginning to shake your head. I mean, whether or not they had certifiable proof about the Cole, they certainly knew that Al Qaida had been involved in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. In your opinion, as somebody who was up close and personal, why didn't the Clinton administration go after Al Qaida after the USS Cole?

SCHEUER: Mr. Wallace, my opinion is not all that important. I went to a little Jesuit school in Buffalo called Canicius, and the priests taught us never to lie, but if you had to lie, never lie about facts. Mr. Richard Clarke, Mr. Sandy Berger, President Clinton are lying about the opportunities they had to kill Osama bin Laden. That's the plain truth, the exact truth.

Men and women at the CIA risked their lives to provide occasions to kill a man we knew had declared war and had attacked America four or five times before 1998. We had plans that had been approved by the Joint Operations Command at Fort Bragg. We had opportunities, many opportunities to kill him.

But that's the president's decision. That's absolutely the case. It's not a simple, dumb bureaucrat like me; that's not my decision. It's his. But for him to get on the television and say to the American people he did all he could is a flat lie, sir.

WALLACE: Mr. Benjamin?

BENJAMIN: Well, I simply disagree. The plans that Mike is referring to about being approved were actually disapproved by his own chain of command. The CIA did not have confidence in the operation that was drawn up, and we couldn't go forward with it.

After the attack on the East Africa embassies, the covert operations were restarted, and again the same assets that were being involved earlier proved to be feckless and didn't deliver the goods.

SCHEUER: ... saying this, that what Mr. Benjamin, who I have a great deal of respect for, but what I say doesn't matter. What matters is the documents that back up what I have to say or what Mr. Benjamin has to say.

The 9/11 Commission ignored those documents, didn't publish them to the American people, let no one involved with the effort to get bin Laden testify to the American people.

This is not a question of interpretation or judgment. This is a question of fact. And the documents will show the president had the opportunity.

It seems to me Bill Clinton would have been better off just accepting the politically correct conclusions of the 9/11 Commission, ignoring ABC's "The Path to 9/11," and letting the public continue take the politically benign view that his administration, the administration of President Bush, and indeed the entire government didn't do enough to accurately assess and deal with the threat posed from Al Qaeda and bin Laden prior to 9/11.

Correcting real inaccuracies in the "The Path to 9/11" is one thing, but in the Wallace interview Clinton was brazenly trying to rewrite history by suggesting "I got closer to killing him than anybody" and implying he was on the cusp of invading Afghanistan "I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan." Clinton's ability to massage the truth may have clouded his brilliant political judgment as there is just too much public evidence on the record disputing the story Clinton is trying to tell. Looking toward the '08 campaign from the Clintons' perspective, it doesn't make any sense to dredge up which administration might have been more at fault pre-9/11. The Clintons would be better off focusing on what they perceive as the Bush administration's mistakes post-9/11 and how to best fight the war moving forward.

Posted by John McIntyre at 07:26 AM | Email Author | Permalink

"But there has never been any doubt that [Bill] Clinton was more serious about combating terrorism than his successor, George W. Bush." - John Nichols, writing in The Nation.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:24 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The compromise on terrorist interrogation and military commissions reached yesterday is a good one, but it sets up a House-Senate conference battle in which too much is at risk. Sen. Frist may put it up for Senate floor debate today.

In short, the compromise:

· Precludes a private right of action (i.e., the ability of a person to enforce in court) in either habeas corpus litigation or a civil case, the "rights" granted under the Geneva Conventions; · Specifies the war crimes that will comprise violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and says no foreign or international law can be used by US courts to further define those crimes; · Gives the president further authority to promulgate higher standards of conduct for terrorist interrogators; · Defines, reasonably well, the "cruel or inhuman treatment" vague terms used in the McCain amendment of 2005 and Common Article 3; · Restores the definitions for "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" in the pre-McCain Amendment Title 18 Section 2340, US Code; BUT · Retains the McCain amendment definitions as well.

The interpretation of law requires that the general language in the McCain amendment will yield to the specific language in Section 2340. Unless.

Unless the House-Senate conference mucks it up again. So far, this is a near-total win for the White House. But the fight is a long way from ending. McCain obviously will try again in conference. If he wins there, all gained so far will be lost.

Posted by Jed Babbin at 09:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The NYT lapses into self-parody in this morning's Pope appeasement editorial.

I look forward to the Times editorial directing Muslim clerics to apologize to Christians for their insensitivity in, say, burning down churches in the West Bank.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:54 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Since the president sent the detainee interrogation - military commissions legislation to the Hill last week, there's been much debate over its scope and propriety. The McCain-Graham-Warner bill, passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) yesterday, declines to clarify the crimes for which US soldiers and CIA interrogators can be held liable for war crimes under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told the SASC, before it passed the bill, that if the bill were enacted in that form, the CIA would have to cease operating its secret interrogation/prison facilities.

Here's a memo Gen. Hayden sent to all CIA employees yesterday before the SASC acted:

Last week the President publicly confirmed a CIA detention and interrogation program that has been instrumental in defending the homeland, attacking Al Qa'ida and saving thousands of American and Allied lives. Unclassified background on the program and some of the individuals now being brought to justice because of it are available on the DNI's web site.

Since the President's speech, there has been a lot of commentary on Capitol Hill and in the press on the way ahead for these and any future detainees. A lot of the discussion has to do with how military commissions will be conducted--rules of evidence, how classified information could be presented to the court, how to view the whole question of coercion. These are obviously important issues but, at their heart, they are issues for the Department of Defense (which will conduct the commissions) and the Department of Justice (which crafted the language in the Administration's bill). Far more central to us at CIA is the discussion of what is commonly known as "Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions.

In his speech the President talked about "an alternative set of procedures" used by the CIA in interrogating key Al Qa'ida detainees. The Justice department has ruled that these procedures have been consistent with our obligations under the Constitution, US law and our international treaty obligations (e.g., the Convention Against Torture).In June, however, the Supreme Court in the Hamdan decision for the first time in US law extended the protection of Geneva's Common Article 3 to what everyone agrees are the "unlawful enemy combatants" of Al Qa'ida.

Clearly, for us to continue the program that the President described, we now need to ensure that it is consistent with the provisions of Common Article 3. Our problem is that Common Article 3 was crafted to be intentionally general and vague; it forbids "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." These terms have never been further defined in US law. Indeed, when the Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, it determined that the words "inhuman" and "degrading" were so vague that using them in a criminal statute would violate U.S. Constitutional due process standards. The Senate therefore provided a definition for those terms as a condition of ratifying the Convention, and later used that same definition for the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

I have made several trips to Capitol Hill in the last few days. In each instance I have asked the Congress for clarity. We need their help in defining the Nation's (and CIA's) responsibility under Common Article 3. I did not ask them to redefine Common Article 3. I did not ask them to create a CIA "carve out." I did not ask them to back away from our Nation's commitment to Geneva. I am simply asking Congress to help define our responsibilities so that we and the Department of Justice can judge the appropriateness of any procedures we would propose to use. The Bill submitted by the Administration does this by declaring that US responsibilities under Common Article 3 are met by compliance with the Detainee Treatment Act (including Senator McCain's Amendment) passed last December. Other language is certainly possible but we must have a definition that is not subject to multiple interpretations.

I have met with the full Senate and House Intelligence Committees and outlined in detail the past and present of the CIA detention and interrogation program. I have also promised them that, once we have achieved sufficient clarity in law with regard to Common Article 3, I would come back to discuss with them in detail the way ahead.

I know that these are not simple issues and honest people can and will disagree. And these are also--given the complexity of the issues, the current "energy" in the political process, and the sometimes sporadic nature of the press coverage--very confusing issues, as well. I just wanted to give you some clarity on how we view what has been going on and what we have been saying. At the end of the day, the Director--any Director--of CIA must be confident that what he has asked an Agency officer to do under this program is lawful. That's the story here.

Why would McCain, a former POW, Graham, a JAG lawyer, and Warner, himself a veteran of combat, be willing to leave our people at risk of prosecution under unclear laws?

Posted by Jed Babbin at 09:56 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I have been a critic of President Bush's attitude surrounding executive power in the context of the war on terror. His position seems essentially to be that since it is a war without borders and with few other limits either he can do almost anything he wants which he claims to be part of fighting that war. I strongly disagree with that type of argument and have some sympathy with arguments that his attempt to expand the power of the President eats away at the separation of powers which is fundamental to our Republic.

However, this does not mean Bush is always wrong on legal issues surrounding the war. Thursday provided a case in point as Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Republicans John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, passed a bill out of the Committee which directly contradicts Bush's position on treatment and trial of terrorist captives.

The Bill would effectively give terrorist captives protection under the Geneva Conventions; allow them to see classified evidence against them, and "bar statements obtained through torture or inhumane treatment."
The only part of that I agree with is barring statements obtained through torture. As part of the discussion surrounding this issue, the President wanted to clarify "the terms ``cruel, inhumane and degrading'' in describing treatment barred by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Bush seeks to define the treaty as barring ``severe physical or mental pain'' and ``severe physical abuse.''"

Bush's position here is exactly right. The terrorists are not entitled to Geneva Convention protections. To the degree that we must do something because of the incorrect Supreme Court ruling on the issue, we should do the minimum possible to comply. And, as Condi Rice said, where such treaty requirements are vague, we have a right to interpret them in any reasonable way we see fit. Indeed, we should interpret them in the way least generous to those whose motive is to destroy us.

The disappointing (and apparently disappointed) Colin Powell weighed in with a letter to John McCain saying that "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism". Powell, along with McCain and friends miss the point: The ultimate "moral basis" of our fight against terrorism, in fact the moral basis for the very existence of government, is the protection of our citizens' lives.

The people (and I use that term loosely) whom we are discussing here would never offer such niceties as Geneva Convention protections to Americans they capture; we have seen enough beheadings to understand that...unless you are McCain, Warner, Graham, Susan Collins, or a Democrat.

The idea that our "reinterpreting" the Conventions in this area would leave our soldiers vulnerable to poor treatment later is a red herring.

But even if it were true, it's hard to care. What good is language that protects soldiers of a country which no longer exists? Yes, that is a bit of hyperbole, but you get my point: Government does many things, most of which it has no authority to do. What it does have authority and true responsibility for is to defend us. Giving terrorists the rights of Americans is the last thing in the world we need to do.

These Senators and Colin Powell have turned the thing on its head. Here are the right answers:

1) Bush's position on these issues does not weaken our "moral authority".

2) If someone thinks it does, I say "who cares?" Protect my life first and deal with your genteel qualms after we're safe. (I am a strong civil libertarian, but Bush's position on these issues does not threaten the liberties of Americans; I am not shy to oppose him where it does.)

3) And most importantly, the Committee's actions demonstrate clear weakness to an enemy who understands nothing but brute force.

On a domestic note, this action gives Republican voters one more reason to stay at home in November. Strength against terrorists is one of the only areas in which the public still has more confidence in Republicans than in Democrats. The actions of these four Armed Services Committee Republicans are an attack on their own Party and American citizens everywhere.

Posted by Ross Kaminsky at 08:03 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It's always interesting to try to parse the difference between whom the Right and the Left think America is actually at war with.

In that vein today at TAPPED, Ezra Klein -- one of the more reasonable folks over there -- offers what I think is a very unreasonable attack on how the Right sees the War on Terror. Or, as Ezra puts it: "THE WAR ON TERROR/ISLAM/RADICAL ISLAM/BROWN PEOPLE."

Ezra concludes that, "the Islamic world is right. In the minds of those behind this campaign, this is indeed a war against Islam. The enemy is religious, his skin is brown, his God is Allah." Why? Because conservative commentators by-and-large think the term "War on Terror" is a cop-out from naming our real enemy, radical Islam.

Who does Ezra think we're at war with? "Most liberals I know think we're literally at war with al-Qaeda, its operational affiliates, and its imitators," he says. Under this rationale, I suppose, the Afghanistan campaign makes sense; but Iraq only makes sense if we're at war with "Islam" and "brown people."

Where this goes wrong is that we could wipe Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and its imitators off the face of the earth tomorrow, and we'd still be contending with radical Islam as well as state sponsors of terror such as Iran and Syria. The liberals, after all, are the ones (not entirely incorrectly, I might add) saying that we need to deal with "root causes," such as poverty and oppression and hatred of America abroad.

So, no, it's not as if Al Qaeda & Co. are just a "state" we could defeat. There's an ideology and a religious movement ultimately behind those targeting America.

So, the rationale for Iraq? No, it wasn't because we felt like bombing some brown people who worship Allah. It was because of the WMD question. It was to intimidate Iran and Syria (oops...). And it was because a group of conservatives and Democrats -- mostly neocons -- believed (rightly or wrongly) that introducing democracy into the Arab world was the best way to begin a transformation of the region that would leave it more stable and more peaceful.

(Again, oops ... at least in the short term. In the long term, the question is still open.)

So, trying to treat the War on Terror as somehow racist, or as a "crusade" by another name, as Ezra does, is extremely unhelpful. Americans have no lust for a conquest of the Middle East. They'd be perfectly happy with a policy of benign neglect, if not for the planes flying into buildings.

The people who flew those planes were part of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda is just one symptom of the disease: radical Islam. You don't treat the sympton. You treat the disease.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:36 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I'm not thrilled with the title the editors put on Janet Albrechtsen's piece in today's Australian, but the column itself is on the mark:

THERE is no polite way of saying this. Useful idiots have their place. They stir us out of our complacency lest we fall back into a lazy September 10 way of thinking.

With impeccable timing, just days before the fifth anniversary of September 11, The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey bemoaned the Howard Government's terrorism laws and its recent commentary for unfairly targeting Muslims.

As evidence, he filled his papier-mache style Saturday column by quoting, among others, the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network. The network complained that "all people arrested under the legislation have been Muslim, and all of the 17 proscribed terrorist organisations are linked to Muslim organisations".

Like a joke without a punchline, that argument falls rather flat. Just how flat was neatly showcased later on Saturday evening as I settled into a seat at my local cinema. The previews included the Australian Government's new advertising campaign to stamp out domestic violence. In the short, powerful ad, five men admit to shoving, slapping or abusing women.

Their behaviour towards women is comprehensively denounced as unacceptable and illegal.

Did the ad target men? Undoubtedly. Did that make it unfair? No. Domestic violence is overwhelmingly a crime committed by men against women. But just because every person in the ad is a man, do we conclude that all men are women-bashers? Of course not.

That same logic applies to terrorism laws. Terrorism against Westerners is overwhelmingly a crime committed by Muslims but no one imagines that laws aimed at catching Muslim jihadists mean all Muslims are terrorists. [snip]

However, September 10 people stubbornly adhere to a genre of multiculturalism that prohibits judgments about, or criticisms of, minorities or their culture. Hence, commentary by the Prime Minister and others that is critical of some within those minority cultures is deemed racist. In a nutshell, no pointing the finger at the unequal treatment of women by some Muslims even if that means putting up with the odd honour killing. Similarly, terrorism laws that in terms apply to all of us equally but in practice fall disproportionately on Muslims, are deemed discriminatory.

This mushy thinking is driven by the notion that being a member of a minority culture in a Western country is prima facie evidence of victimhood. And victims need to be protected from bullies banging on about protecting Western lives and values. That mentality has only encouraged Muslims to keep waving the victim card. It lets them off the hook. Instead, they should be confronting what London's former police chief John Stevens has called the "undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem".

Even though I've quoted liberally from the piece, there's more worth reading.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:12 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Matt Lauer vs. George W. Bush on torture, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11:

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:02 AM | Email Author | Permalink

This story struck me as a sobering reminder of just how deeply perverse and pathological Islamic fascists are. A jihadi terrorist killed the governor of an Afghan province with a suicide bomb on Sunday, and then another one suicide bombed the funeral service on Monday killing 7 - including two children - and wounding forty.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 05:45 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Buckingham Palace band, playing the American national anthem after 9/11:

(via Sullivan)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:42 PM | Email Author | Permalink