And Now the Press Begins Picking Apart Obama: No longer the shiny new object

Contains updated material:

As the iconic California pol, Willie Brown, wrote a couple of days ago: "The democrats are in trouble. Period."

His column was entitled "Palin floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee."

"Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense." He added that dems don't win elections while on the defensive. Since the brilliant pick of Palin, the dems have been on the defensive. Completely and totally. And totally screwing it up.

The media is bored with Obama.

Here's another reason why Obama is failing to connect as an online reader posted on the washington post politics chat with Dan Balz this week with regard to the race for the White House:

"New York: Dan, as someone who intends to vote for Obama, I'm constantly puzzled at how he seems flummoxed when answering questions he should clearly expect to be asked: about NAFTA, when life begins, and most recently the surge. He seems to be thinking out loud, as though he hasn't thought it through ahead of time. Maybe the campaigns folks just don't consider these burning issues? But it seems to me it goes to character and trust, which may matter more than issues. What's going on here?

Dan Balz: That's an interesting point. ...... Does his style of answering questions make him look less decisive than he really is?"

Duh. Yeah. Looks and sounds unsure, defensive, whiny, complaining (or as Cohen wrote today -- detached, disconnected, dispassionate, disinterested and thus reinforces the NOT READY meme.)

Mostly I keep hearing " those mean republicans aren't playing fair!!! boo hoo hoo! wah wah wah."

Every clip I have seen of Obama recently he sounds like a defensive distant clueless ineffectual John Kerry in 04 -- (sighing Gore in 2000, Dudley Dukakis in 88, Carter in 80) -- he's taken to whining and complaining about the unfair mean old republikkkans. Boo Hoo Hoo some more.

Total losing / loser tactics.

Plus Obama looks like he is sleep walking through this. As if all he needed to do was win the primary and the anointment would be complete. give me a break.

Tom Friedman puts it this way:

...[H]ere’s what I’ve been feeling for a while: Whoever slipped that Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee needs to be found and arrested by the Democrats because Obama has gone from cool to cold.  ...

I don’t know how long or high the “Sarah Palin bounce” will go, but I would take her very seriously as a politician. She may not know nuclear deterrence theory, but she can deliver a line. 

Sarah Palin is ... is connecting at a gut level. So does McCain — and, therefore, they don’t need to give their constituents many details.

This race has a long way to go. It is still Obama’s election to lose. But Obama got where he is today by defining himself as the agent of change and by defining change as the issue in this election. McCain, with Palin’s help, has once again not only made Obama’s experience an issue, but has now moved in on Obama’s strength and tried to define the G.O.P. ticket as the party of “change.”

How, you ask, can two people running with the exact same policies as the party that has been in power for eight years, claim to be the agents of “change?” That’s politics. There’s no shame. But what this has done is to make the word “change” as a campaign slogan meaningless. Obama will need to find another way to connect his ideas — clearly, crisply and passionately.

Because, while the pollsters tell us it is still really close, my own totally unscientific, seat of the pants poll tells me this: When you say Obama’s name today and ask people for their first impression — a quick, flash, gut, first impression — no single word or phrase or policy comes to mind. His opponents will fill that vacuum if he doesn’t. They already are.

Surprise. It's Not Over! Obama only won the primary, not the election (barely) and The democraps are not winning the national election anymore —again. If Obama does lose, there are some party heads that should roll: start with Dean, Pelosi, Reid.

Sarah Palin didn't have to prove she was "of the people."
She really is the people.

P.S. It's not Hillary Clinton's responsibility to win independents, other Hillary supporters, and white working class voters for Obama. That's his responsibility. And he's blowing it.

Hillary is doing the smart thing by NOT joining the hysterical hatefest against the talented and energetic Palin. After all, she knows exactly what being on the target end of that hatefest is like.

The media is bored with Obama. They need their "newness" fix. Obama's no longer the shiny new object that captured the A.D.H.D. stenographers' pool 20 months ago (yes, that's sarcasm, not intended for most of the print-only press). The "shiney new object" honor, especially as regards the cable news tweeties and their ilk, now goes to Sarah Palin (once they get past their snobbish boorish behavior; they'll likely never get over their sexism, however).

Here's more keen insight from Willie Brown (and bad news for the dems/Obama):

As for Palin herself, she is going to be very, very effective on the campaign trail, especially if McCain's people can figure out how to gently keep her from getting into confrontations with the press.

If she can answer questions like she handled herself at the convention, Palin will turn out to be the most interesting person in all of politics, and the press will treat her like they treated Obama when he was first discovered.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

And as was easily predictable, Obama's adoring media is now turning the corner, turning on him, and will join together to throw him under the bus soon. Then wash their hands with a "Tsk tsk." Totally predictable.

Once again: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Updates: several columns on this very topic beginning to pop up:
And another blogger, Leah McElrath Renna, at the Huffington Post is in full-blown panic mode:

Most of us are out here watching, listening to and reading media that shows a campaign continually in responsive mode and not in charge of the message..."

Actually, I'd use the word "reactive" instead of "responsive."

Chris Cillizza's The Fix on WashingtonPost.com: Obama on Losing End of Personality Contest

WP's right-leaning Richard Cohen: Too Cool to Fight? Obama's moral commitment is being tested, and he doesn't seem to care.

Tom Friedman's NYT column is here.

Be sure to read those columns!

•••••••••••••••••••••••

Upon re-reading it, I think the full text of Willie Brown's thoughts are worth posting en toto:

The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.

Period.

Palin's speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don't do well on defense.

Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don't want to be seen as defending the status quo.

From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions.

Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense.

I actually went back and watched Palin's speech a second time. I didn't go to sleep until 1:30 a.m. I had to make sure I got the lines right.

Her timing was exquisite. She didn't linger with applause, but instead launched into line after line of attack, slipping the knives in with every smile and joke.

And she delivered it like she was just BS-ing on the street with the meter maid.

She didn't have to prove she was "of the people." She really is the people.

There is one thing she should have done: announced when her 17-year-old daughter and the teenage father of the girl's unborn child are getting married and invited all of us to the wedding. It should be like Sunday at church.

As for Palin herself, she is going to be very, very effective on the campaign trail, especially if McCain's people can figure out how to gently keep her from getting into confrontations with the press.

If she can answer questions like she handled herself at the convention, Palin will turn out to be the most interesting person in all of politics, and the press will treat her like they treated Obama when he was first discovered.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

Here's the transcript from the Washington Post Dan Balz chat. Here's the complete Willie Brown column in the San Francisco Chronicle; it includes a few thoughts on John and Cindy McCain, too.

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Urban Myth: Alaska Jet Not Sold on eBay as Palin, McCain Claim

SARAH PALIN'S Alaska Jet

Plane Not Sold on eBay

Updated 7:10 p.m.

By Anne E. Kornblut

One of the compelling anecdotes about Sarah Palin is that she auctioned off the Alaska governor's jet on eBay after taking office -- a swift move made by a reformer hoping to clean up the excesses of her predecessor.

But in fact, the jet did not sell on eBay. It was sold to a businessman from Valdez named Larry Reynolds, who paid $2.1 million for the jet, shy of the original $2.7 million purchase price, according to contemporaneous news reports, including a story in the New York Times.

Dan Spencer, the director of administrative services for Alaska's Public Safety Department, said that the Republican speaker of the Alaska House, John L. Harris, brokered the deal. Reynolds made campaign contributions to both Palin and Harris in 2006 and 2007.

What happened? It appears that, as promised during her bid for governor in 2006, Palin did try to sell the plane on eBay but that doing so was not as easy as it might have sounded. After putting it up to auction, there was one serious bid, in December 2006, and it fell through. Still, the Westwind II was sold about eight months later, achieving Palin's goal of ridding the state of a luxury item.

But that hasn't stopped Palin, or John McCain, from implying -- and, on Friday, claiming outright -- that Palin did sell the jet on the Internet.

"You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay -- and made a profit!" McCain declared in Wisconsin at a campaign stop on Friday. It could not be immediately determined what that profit was.

The video tribute to Palin that aired at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night made the same claim. "She signed sweeping ethics reform legislation, auctioned the governor's jet on eBay," the narrator said, citing it in a list of Palin's achievements.

Palin has been more cautious in her comments. Rather than claiming she sold it on eBay, she gave in her convention remarks a description that was true but, nonetheless, still left the impression she had sold the jet online. "That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay," Palin said.

"She put the plane on eBay," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain's campaign. "It didn't meet the minimum threshold the state desired so they used a broker.

Here is link to the Washington Post story.


And this is from the NY Daily News:

Story that Sarah Palin sold Alaska state jet on eBay is a campaign-trail tall tale

BY CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, September 5th 2008, 12:05 PM

The folksy tale of how Gov. Sarah Palin saved Alaska millions by unloading the state jet on eBay is fast becoming a campaign fish-that-got-away tale.

Sen. John McCain not only repeated that story on the stump Friday to tout his Republican running mate, but added, "She made a profit, too."

The truth is that Palin couldn't find a buyer last year when she tried to peddle to plane on eBay - and lost the state money when she did sell it.

Palin's predecessor, Frank Murkowski, originally bought the 20-year-old Westwing II for the state of Alaska for $2.7 million. She listed it on eBay for $2.5 million.

When no offers came in, Palin hired a jet broker - Turbo North Aviation in Anchorage - which sold the jet for $2.1 million to an Alaska businessman.

"We handled the sale for the state of Alaska," jet broker Rob Heckmann told the Daily News. "The eBay thing didn't work out for them."

Twenty months ago, when Palin was running for governor, she pounded Murkowski relentlessly about the jet and called it an extravagance, even though he shared it with the state's Public Safety Department.

Heckmann said Palin isn't the first politician who has tried to sell a state plane on eBay.

Link to NY Daily News story.


So much for 'straight talk' and 'reform'. McBush the third is about doing business as usual the republican way: enrich the rich and powerful. To hell with the rest of us. That's why John McSame / McCain has at least 60 lobbyists on his campaign staff in key positions. No telling how many more in lower level posistions.

Bottom line so far: It was listed, but not sold on ebay apparently. A clever deceit indeed.

Watch what they DO, not what they SAY.

McCain-Palin: The Reform Ticket of Bush-Cheney-Rove Style Change

The Washington Post's Tom Toles editorial cartoon says it all about what a 'reformer' McCain will be:

Sense & Sensibilities

Hope for What? Change to do What?
“Talk Is Cheap. Mistakes Are Expensive”

People who are being “swept along by the eloquence of Barack Obama's speeches“ forget that at one time, George W. Bush was seen as “charming“ and “inspirational“ ...


The beneficiary of this she’s-a-victim-so-we-must-expel-her logic is Barack Obama who doesn’t have to work hard at all. The media are doing it for him

E.J. Dionne asks: Who can beat John McCain? Polls today are a snapshot. Polls change, people change their minds. What the polls say today cannot be counted on tomorrow, or next month, or next fall. The polls had written off John McCain just a few weeks ago.

A Party Divided by Sensibility

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008; Page A19

It's come down to this: Who can beat John McCain?

Winning that argument could allow Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to reach beyond their respective demographic comfort zones. Only if one of them can build a clear majority will the party be saved from a descent into the mire of rules fights and backroom dealing. It will also take leadership to protect the Democratic village from chaos and recriminations.

For the moment, the world is moving Obama's way: He swept four states last weekend and is favored in today's primaries in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Polling suggests that Obama can draw independents whom Clinton can't reach and can mobilize new and younger voters in a way Clinton never will.

Obama drove that perception by offering a brief against the politics of Clintonism: She “starts off with 47 percent of the country against her,“ he said in Alexandria on Sunday.

Meanwhile, as Professor Stanley Fish points out in his NYTimes column entitled "A Calumny* a Day To Keep Hillary Away", “Electability (a concept invoked often) is a code word that masks the fact that the result of such reasoning is to cede the political power to the ranters.“ One respondent to his earlier column on Hillary Hate wrote: “When Obama calls Hillary divisive he, of course, is pandering to these crazies...” Fish writes that “The beneficiary of this she’s-a-victim-so-we-must-expel-her logic is Barack Obama, and some respondents suspected him of fostering the divisiveness he rails against. Actually, Obama doesn’t have to work hard at all. The media ... are doing it for him. ... With unpaid employees on both sides of the media aisle, Obama doesn’t have to do anything but be his usual inspirational self. Unencumbered by the record of achievements and missteps that comes along with political longevity, he can present a clean slate to the electorate. Nothing hazarded equals nothing to be criticized for.”

“...There is another world in Democratic politics, a practical, mostly middle-aged and middle-class world that is immune to fervor and electricity. It is made up of people with long memories who are skeptical of fads and like their candidates tough, detail-oriented and -- to use a word Obama regularly mocks -- seasoned.”

...It's hard to imagine that she can “break out of the politics of the past 15 years.” The alternative: the antidepressant right there on the shelf in front of them. Its brand is Obama.

Yet there is another world in Democratic politics, a practical, mostly middle-aged and middle-class world that is immune to fervor and electricity. It is made up of people with long memories who are skeptical of fads and like their candidates tough, detail-oriented and -- to use a word Obama regularly mocks -- seasoned.

If Obama is passion, Clinton is bread and butter. If she needs more flourishes, he could afford to traffic a bit more in the staples.

These are the Hillary people, and they gathered in Manassas last weekend in significant numbers at the Grace E. Metz Middle School, cozy schools being a preferred venue for a Clinton campaign aware that mammoth rallies are normally beyond its reach.

She does not lack for loyalists. Paulie Abeles of Derwood, Md., held aloft a hand-printed sign that did not mince words: “Talk Is Cheap. Mistakes Are Expensive.”

Abeles explained that people who are being “swept along by the eloquence of Barack Obama's speeches” forget that at one time, George W. Bush was seen as “charming” and “inspirational.” And electability was on her mind. If President Bush raised the terror alert level four days before the election (“I happen to be very cynical,” she averred), the Democrats would want their most experienced candidate confronting McCain.

Clinton spoke directly to her audience's skepticism of good talkers -- ironic in light of her husband's oratorical gifts. “You're so specific,” she quoted people as telling her. “Why don't you just come and . . . give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and get everybody all whooped up?” The crowd actually whooped at that. But eloquence, she said, is not the point, since the election “is not about me, it's about us.”

If Obama is passion, Clinton is bread and butter. If she needs more flourishes, he could afford to traffic a bit more in the staples.

Her speech is a well-crafted recitation of how government could ease the lives of those without health insurance, students burdened by college loans, homeowners facing foreclosure, veterans who have been abandoned, the working poor who deserve a hand up.

As she speaks, Doug Hattaway, one of her aides, notes that her practical litany is precisely what appeals to working-class and middle-class voters who respond to “tangible issues.” They also rebel against the idea that they are not part of the cool, privileged masses for Obama. One of the signs at the Manassas rally defiantly touted “Well Educated High Earners for Hillary.” This is a party divided not by ideology but by sensibility.

Meanwhile that old CIA-Agent-outing traitor, Bob Novak worries for the dems about racism and "The Bradley Effect" when he's never shown that concern regarding his own Greedy Old Party of Rich Racist White Men. He also conveniently fails to mention the overwhelming numbers and percentages of white voters Obama has decisively won in those (mostly white) states in which he was the primary or caucus winner. As Dionne gets right, it's much more about sensibility, history, and the life experiences of voters, not racism. If anything is hard at work overtly and covertly, it's sexism and misogyny**.

* calumny | cal•um•ny |ˈkaləmnē

noun ( pl. -nies)

the making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone's reputation; slander.

• a false and slanderous statement.


**misogyny | mi•sog•y•ny | məˈsäjənē|

noun

the hatred of women

Dionne's complete column here; Fish's is here.

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Thomas Ricks: Consistently Intelligent Discussions on the War Over the Iraq War

In a democracy, politics should inform and shape the approach to war -- especially the decision to go to war.

Today's online live chat with Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, The War Over the War, included some especially thoughtful questions and informative responses, including these clips:

• The argument I heard yesterday from the former regime elements and dead-enders at the American Enterprise Institute was that the benchmarks laid down by President Bush in January when he announced the new U.S. approach are irrelevant. But, I thought, the benchmarks were the selling point for the new approach. It is as if a salesman sold you a car by telling you it would get 150 miles to the gallon and also go 150 mph--but that you need to wait six or nine months for that to start happening. When you wait that amount of time, find it doesn't happen, and go back and tell him, he says, "Well, you really don't need to go that fast, do you? And also you might start getting that mileage next year--you just need to show more patience."
  
  

  The bottom line is that security is apparently improving in parts of Baghdad, but that more U.S. troops are getting killed, and that the strategic purpose of the troop increase was to create a breathing space in which Iraqi leaders could find their way to political reconciliation--and there is little if any sign of that goal being realized.
  
  

• ..."tactics" and "strategies" are not the same thing ... [what's the difference?] "Tactics are what you do at the moment, or day to day, to achieve a larger goal. Strategy is about determining what that larger goal is, and what resources and means you will use to achieve it.
  
  
  

  Essentially, as TE Lawrence said, tactics are the steps on the stairway; strategy is the stairway itself.

  
  
  

  Keep in mind also this rule: Good strategy will fix bad (or inappropriate) tactics. But good tactics can't fix a bad strategy--which is where we were in Iraq for a few years after 2003."

  
  
  
• The right [question] may be, is the United States making more friends than enemies?
  
  
• Iraq may have solved more problems for al Qaeda than it created.
  
  
• This year I find myself thinking, Here we go again.
  
  
• ...it would be very difficult to maintain current U.S. troop levels beyond March 2008. So one way or another we are going to watch [the Iraqis] sort it out.
  
  
• it is almost certainly true that we will start to draw down troops next year. But a drawdown ain't the same as a withdrawal.
  
  

  I think the distinction between "politics" and fighting a war is a false one. In a democracy, politics should inform and shape the approach to war -- and especially the decision to go to war. As Clemenceau (I think) said, war is too important to be left to the generals.
  
  

• One of the many ironies here is that it probably would be easier for the US govt to deal with Iran if we didn't have troops in Iraq.
  
  
• I am always struck that American society doesn't seem much aware of the war as it goes about its daily business.
  
  
• ...no one in Iraq really seems to share our goals.
  
  
• The support for the war is gone and it is not coming back -- regardless if we have the best strategy and supporting tactics in place. The American public is fed-up with this mess and it is simply too late to recover. ... [Yet, that] doesn't mean the war is over.

FRANK RICH: Operation Freedom From Iraqis

Operation Freedom From Iraqis
by FRANK RICH
NY Times, Sunday, May 27, 2007

WHEN all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America’s sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East. From “Stuff happens!” on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war’s dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming “aliens” from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what’s happening in the country he gave “God’s gift of freedom.”

It’s easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq’s mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it’s part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.

In reality, more than 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who also, in Senator Kennedy’s phrase, have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years. How we feel about these Iraqis was made naked by one of the administration’s most fervent hawks, the former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, speaking to The Times Magazine this month. He claimed that the Iraqi refugee problem had “absolutely nothing to do” with Saddam’s overthrow: “Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Actually, we haven’t fulfilled the obligation of giving them functioning institutions and security. One of the many reasons we didn’t was that L. Paul Bremer’s provisional authority staffed the Green Zone with unqualified but well-connected Republican hacks who, in some cases, were hired after they expressed their opposition to Roe v. Wade. The administration is nothing if not consistent in its employment practices. The assistant secretary in charge of refugees at the State Department now, Ellen Sauerbrey, is a twice-defeated Republican candidate for governor of Maryland with no experience in humanitarian crises but a hefty résumé in anti-abortion politics. She is to Iraqis seeking rescue what Brownie was to Katrina victims stranded in the Superdome.

Ms. Sauerbrey’s official line on Iraqi refugees, delivered to Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” in March, is that most of them “really want to go home.” The administration excuse for keeping Iraqis out of America is national security: we have to vet every prospective immigrant for terrorist ties. But many of those with the most urgent cases for resettlement here were vetted already, when the American government and its various Halliburton subsidiaries asked them to risk their lives by hiring them in the first place. For those whose loyalties can no longer be vouched for, there is the contrasting lesson of Vietnam. Julia Taft, the official in charge of refugees in the Ford administration, reminded Mr. Pelley that 131,000 Vietnamese were resettled in America within eight months of the fall of Saigon, despite loud, Dobbs-like opposition at the time. In the past seven months, the total number of Iraqis admitted to America was 69.

The diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began during the Vietnam War, told me that security worries then were addressed by a vetting process carried out in safe, preliminary asylum camps for refugees set up beyond Vietnam’s borders in Asia. But as Mr. Holbrooke also points out in the current Foreign Affairs magazine, the real forerunner to American treatment of Iraqi refugees isn’t that war in any case, but World War II. That’s when an anti-Semitic assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, tirelessly obstructed the visa process to prevent Jews from obtaining sanctuary in America, not even filling the available slots under existing quotas. As many as 75,000 such refugees were turned away before the Germans cut off exit visas to Jews in late 1941, according to Howard Sachar’s “History of the Jews in America.”

Like the Jews, Iraqis are useful scapegoats. This month Mr. Bremer declared that the real culprits for his disastrous 2003 decision to cleanse Iraq of Baathist officials were unnamed Iraqi politicians who “broadened the decree’s impact far beyond our original design.” The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is chastising the Iraqis for being unable “to do anything they promised.”

The new White House policy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has joked, is “blame and run.” It started to take shape just before the midterm elections last fall, when Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memo (propitiously leaked after his defenestration) suggesting that the Iraqis might “have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.” By January, Mr. Bush was saying that “the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude” and wondering aloud “whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.” In February, one of the war’s leading neocon cheerleaders among the Beltway punditocracy lowered the boom. “Iraq is their country,” Charles Krauthammer wrote. “We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.” Bill O’Reilly and others now echo this cry.

The message is clear enough: These ungrateful losers deserve everything that’s coming to them. The Iraqis hear us and are returning the compliment. Whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is mocking American demands for timelines and benchmarks, or the Iraqi Parliament is setting its own timeline for American withdrawal even while flaunting its vacation schedule, Iraq’s nominal government is saying it’s fed up. The American-Iraqi shotgun marriage of convenience, midwifed by disastrous Bush foreign policy, has disintegrated into the marriage from hell.

While the world waits for the White House and Congress to negotiate the separation agreement, the damage to the innocent family members caught in the cross-fire is only getting worse. Despite Mr. Bush’s May 10 claim that “the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially” since the surge began, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the number of such murders is going up. For the Americans, the cost is no less dear. Casualty figures confirm that the past six months have been the deadliest yet for our troops.

While it seems but a dim memory now, once upon a time some Iraqis did greet the Americans as liberators. Today, in fact, it is just such Iraqis — not the local Iraqi insurgents the president conflates with Osama bin Laden’s Qaeda in Pakistan — who do want to follow us home. That we are slamming the door in their faces tells you all you need to know about the real morality beneath all the professed good intentions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the war’s godfathers saw themselves as ridding the world of another Hitler, their legacy includes a humanitarian catastrophe that will need its own Raoul Wallenbergs and Oskar Schindlers if lives are to be saved.

Why Democrats are raising a stink finally about something that matters

White House & Justice Department Indecisive: Reasons for / Genesis of Prosecutor Dismissals Keep Shifting

Accounts of Prosecutors' Dismissals Keep Shifting
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post

More than two weeks after a New Mexico U.S. attorney alleged he was fired for not prosecuting Democrats, the White House and the Justice Department are still struggling to explain the roles of President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other key officials in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year.

Yesterday, the White House retreated from its four-day-old claim that former counsel Harriet E. Miers started the process two years ago by proposing the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys.

"It has been described as her idea . . . but I don't want to vouch for origination," press secretary Tony Snow said. "At this juncture, people have hazy memories."

In addition, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned as Gonzales's chief of staff Monday, disputed the reasons given for his departure in a statement issued through his attorney last night.

"The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing the subject for several years was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the department, including others who were involved in preparing the department's testimony to Congress," according to the statement by Sampson's lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson.

Snow's comments mark the latest revision of the administration's account of the firings, which has shifted repeatedly over the past week as new e-mails and other evidence have come to light in response to congressional demands for information. The precise roles of Gonzales, presidential adviser Karl Rove and the president himself remain unclear, even as calls for Gonzales's resignation continue to mount.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) yesterday became the third GOP lawmaker to call for Gonzales's ouster, saying that "it would benefit this administration if the attorney general was replaced with someone with a more professional focus rather than personal loyalty" to Bush.

The White House rebuffed demands yesterday from the House and Senate Judiciary committees for more information on the firings, saying the administration needs more time before turning over additional documents or deciding whether to allow key White House officials to testify. The Justice Department announced that it will provide new documents to the committees Monday.

The developments capped a tumultuous and difficult week for Gonzales and White House officials, who have attempted to play down the importance of more than 140 pages of documents and e-mails released so far that show the White House was closely involved in an effort to remove a group of federal prosecutors based, in part, on their loyalty to Bush. Officials had previously described the dismissals as "performance related" and handled within the Justice Department.

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired Dec. 7, and another was let go months earlier, with little explanation from Justice Department officials, who later told Congress that the dismissals were related to the attorneys' performance in office. Several former prosecutors have since alleged intimidation, including improper telephone calls from GOP lawmakers or their aides, and have alleged threats of retaliation by a Justice Department official.

While the firings themselves initially prompted questions from Congress, a major issue for lawmakers has since become whether they were misled in testimony by Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, and subsequently in public explanations by Justice and the White House.

Administration officials have acknowledged in recent days that, in Gonzales's words, "mistakes were made," but have defended the dismissals as justified by the prosecutors' performance and management issues. They have denied partisan motives in any of the firings.

The e-mails released this week show that the Justice Department had advocated ousting up to 20 percent of the U.S. attorneys in early 2005 and that Gonzales had discussed the idea of the firings even before he became attorney general. Rove also expressed an interest in the status of the effort in January 2005.

One January 2006 memo written by Sampson attributed the initial idea to Miers. "Harriet, you have asked whether President Bush should remove and replace U.S. attorneys . . . " he wrote.

Many of the documents released over the past week were sent or received by Sampson, whose resignation, Gonzales and other Justice officials said, was prompted by his failure to tell others in the department about his contacts with the White House, leading to testimony by McNulty and others that may have been misleading.

Sampson disputed that version of events in his statement last night, saying he "felt he had let the attorney general down in failing to . . . organize a more effective political response to the unfounded accusations of impropriety in the replacement process."

Sampson's statement also suggested that his contacts with the White House were well known within Justice. If the contacts were not brought to the attention of McNulty and others, the statement said, it was "because no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time."

The Justice Department had no immediate comment last night.

The department announced earlier that Sampson would be replaced by Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, who previously served in similar roles for former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Snow and other administration officials previously said that Miers first suggested firing all U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections, citing e-mails from Sampson and Rove's recollection of events.

Officials have said that Gonzales and Rove opposed that idea and that Justice embarked on a more limited effort that led to the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Snow was asked yesterday whether Bush might have suggested the firings.

"Anything's possible . . . but I don't think so," he said, adding that Bush "certainly has no recollection of any such thing. . . . I want you to be clear here: Don't be dropping it at the president's door."

Democrats pounced on the latest shift in events.

"The story keeps changing, which neither does them or the public any good," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "They ought to gather all the facts and tell the public the truth."

Democrats also criticized the White House for saying it needed more time to turn over records and decide whether senior aides, including Rove, should be allowed to submit to interviews with congressional investigators.

"The White House is playing a dangerous game of chicken," said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee leading an investigation into the firings.

Washington Post staff writers Michael Abramowitz and Jerry Markon and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

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From the LA Times

Why Democrats are raising a stink
Congressional investigations into the firing of U.S. attorneys are about checks and balances, not politics, says Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

By Dianne Feinstein

DIANNE FEINSTEIN is California's senior U.S. senator.
March 17, 2007

A FIRESTORM has been ignited over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, with new revelations about the Bush administration's abuses exposed on a daily basis. We now know that this isn't about some partisan "conspiracy theory" concocted by administration critics, as a Times editorial claimed on Jan. 26.

The record shows that this was a premeditated plan to remove U.S. attorneys and replace them indefinitely with others — who might not be qualified — without Senate confirmation. The means to accomplish this was a provision slipped into the 2006 reauthorization of the Patriot Act with no notice. The end result is a clear abuse of power that reaches into the highest offices of the Department of Justice and the White House, touching Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and presidential advisor Karl Rove.

The way to curb this abuse is to return to our nation's basic principle that checks and balances on power are necessary and desirable.

That's why I have proposed legislation to restore the process that was in place before 2006, which would require Senate approval of every U.S. attorney. This legislation would allow the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days when vacancies occur. If, after that time, the president has not sent a nominee to the Senate and had that nominee confirmed, the authority to appoint an interim U.S. attorney would fall to a local district court. This was the process put in place under the Reagan administration.

This legislation was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month with bipartisan support and will be debated in the Senate next week. Times editorials have called this legislation "misguided," but had it been in place, it would have prevented the abuses.

Let's review the facts:

• In early 2005, Miers, then the White House counsel, and Rove asked about the desirability of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys . They were told by Gonzales' staff that this would result in an unacceptable shock to the system.

• Nonetheless, top officials at the White House and the Justice Department hatched a plan to remove a smaller number of U.S. attorneys. One of the keys in the evaluation was whether the prosecutor showed loyalty to the administration.

• Gonzales' chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, advocated using the new Patriot Act powers and argued that the legislation would allow the Justice Department to bypass the checks inherent in the Senate confirmation process. He wrote that by avoiding the Senate, "we can give far less deference to home-state senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it far faster and more efficiently, at less political cost to the White House."

• In June 2006, the first firing that we know of occurred, though it received little national notice. H.E. "Bud" Cummins III of Arkansas was forced to resign and was replaced with Timothy Griffin, special assistant to Rove.

• Finally, on Dec. 7, 2006, seven other U.S. attorneys were forced to resign by January. Five were involved in ongoing corruption probes. These prosecutors had received strong performance reviews by independent evaluators and some were originally judged — by the Justice Department's own subjective standards — to be among the top prosecutors who were loyal to the president and the attorney general.

Making a bad situation worse, the attorney general's justification for the firings has shifted over time.

At first, Gonzales flatly denied charges of wrongdoing when asked by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons," he said. It was later revealed that Cummins' removal was political.

Later, the administration's justification became "performance-related" issues, and finally, a "loss of confidence" in these U.S. attorneys.

It is absolutely critical for Congress to restore the approval process in place before 2006. This is the only way to ensure that another administration doesn't travel down the same path.

We also must determine the role played by key White House officials and Gonzales, who has "taken responsibility" for the matter but also said that he did not know what was going on. Five out of eight of the fired U.S. attorneys were involved in investigations into public corruption. What signal does it send to other U.S. attorneys about investigating matters of corruption involving public officials, particularly if those officials are of your own party? It creates a chilling effect.

I recognize that U.S. attorneys are political appointments, but their appointments should require Senate confirmation. And once these prosecutors take the oath of office, they are responsible to the people of the United States — not just the president — and they must be independent and objective.

Bears Repeating: Shrub & Dickhead Using Smiling Soldiers as their (faux patriotic) Backdrops

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Don’t Ask, Don’t Know, Don’t Help

I haven’t kept count, but it seems to me that the number of times I’ve seen President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney give speeches about the Iraq war using smiling soldiers as their backdrops have been, well, countless. You’d think that an administration that has been so quick to exploit soldiers as props — whether it was to declare “Mission Accomplished” on an naval vessel or to silence critics by saying their words might endanger soldiers in battle — would have been equally quick to spare no expense in caring for those injured in the fight.

The squalid living conditions and red tape that have been inflicted on some recovering Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed hospital and elsewhere — which have been spotlighted by The Washington Post — are shocking in their detail, but not surprising. They are one more manifestation — like insufficient troops, postwar planning and armor — of a war that was really important to get right but really hard, which the Bush team thought was really important and would be really easy.

Mr. Bush summoned the country to D-Day and prepared the Army, the military health system, military industries and the American people for the invasion of Grenada.

From the start, the Bush team has tried to keep the Iraq war “off the books” both financially and emotionally. As Larry Diamond of Stanford’s Hoover Institution said to me: “America is not at war. The U.S. Army is at war.” The rest of us are just watching, or just ignoring, while the whole fight is carried on by 150,000 soldiers and their families.

In an interview last Jan. 16, Jim Lehrer asked President Bush why, if the war on terrorism was so overwhelmingly important, he had never asked more Americans “to sacrifice something.” Mr. Bush gave the most unbelievable answer: “Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”

Sacrifice peace of mind watching TV? What kind of crazy thing is that to say? Leadership is about enabling and inspiring people to contribute in time of war so the enemy has to fight all of us — not insulating the public so the enemy has to fight only a few of us.

If you want to compare President Bush in this regard with Presidents Roosevelt or Wilson, pick up a copy of Robert Hormats’s soon-to-be-published book: “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars.”

“In every major war that we have fought, with the exception of Vietnam, there was an effort prior to the war or just after the inception to re-evaluate tax and spending policies and to shift resources from less vital national pursuits to the strategic objective of fighting and winning the war,” said Mr. Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International). He quotes Roosevelt’s 1942 State of the Union address, when F.D.R. looked Americans in the eye and said: “War costs money. ... That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other nonessentials. In a word, it means an ‘all-out’ war by individual effort and family effort in a united country.”

Ever heard Mr. Bush talk that way? After Pearl Harbor, Mr. Hormats noted, Roosevelt vowed to mobilize U.S. industry to produce enough weapons so we would have a “crushing superiority” in arms over our enemies. Four years after the start of the Iraq war, this administration has still not equipped all our soldiers with the armor they need.

As retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton pointed out, last year, because of spending in Iraq, the Army had a $530 million budget shortfall for posts, so facilities got squeezed. If Americans had been asked to pay a small tax to fill that gap, they would have overwhelmingly checked that box. They would have also paid a “Patriot Tax” of 50 cents a gallon to raise the money and diminish our dependence on oil. But no one asked them to do anything other than “sacrifice peace of mind.”

If you want to help and don’t want to wait for the White House bugle, here are some places to start:

• (1) Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes (www.saluteheroes.org),
• (2) the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (www.fallenheroesfund.org),
• (3) the Fisher Houses (www.fisherhouse.org) and (4) the Walter Reed Society (www.walterreedsociety.org). And
• (4) one I know personally from my hometown, Minnesotans’ Military Appreciation Fund (www.thankmntroops.org).

We can get just about everything wrong in Iraq, and pretty much have, but we’ve got to take first-class care of those who’ve carried the burden of this war. It’s that simple.