July 18, 2003 PERMALINK
Will They Plant The WMD?
Or, Why Havenât They Already?
(posted July 18 12:30 AM ET)
Yesterdayâs Wall Street Journal reported:
·the normally sure-footed White House communications operation is divided·
·Some senior aides are lobbying for a frank session with reporters to explain how the dubious charge got in the speech.
Others recommend that, after suffering a string of contradictory statements by senior advisers by senior advisers and even Mr. Bush himself, the best course is to stop talking and ride out the storm.
(Aaah, the warm fuzzies you get when ãhonor and dignityä return to a White House.)
Based on the Bush-Blair news conference ö where Dubyaâs stammering and Blairâs elegance both underscored their evasiveness ö donât hold your breath for that ãfrank session.ä
But while some will focus on Bushâs blatant dodge when asked if heâd take ãpersonal responsibilityä for the 16 words, a more direct (albeit stammering) comment of his is also worth noting:
·we will bring the weapons and, of course -- we will bring the information forward on the weapons when they find them.
And that will end up -- end all this speculation.
I understand there has been a lot of speculation over in Great Britain, we've got a little bit of it here, about whether or not the -- whether or not the actions were based upon valid information.
We can debate that all day long, until the truth shows up. And that's what's going to happen.
Is that certainty based on foolish, blind pride, or is something up his sleeve?
A few days after the Saddam statue came down in April, LiberalOasis said:
·if this whole disarmament thing was a ruse·the Bushies need only to worry about the politics.
And the politics can be taken care of by exaggerating the importance of what [few] weapons are found, or by planting the weapons themselves in case none are found.
(Yes, discussing the planting of evidence is arguing conspiracy. And conspiracy arguments are weak.
But Bush is so far out on a limb here, there is just no way he would ever face the public and admit the US couldnât find any weapons.)
Well, LO shouldnât have been so quick to jump to conspiracy.
Obviously, a backup plan to plant evidence wasnât in the works at the onset. Otherwise, the Bushies wouldnât be in this mess.
Which is a healthy reminder that conspiracies arenât always so simple to execute.
But LO was right about one thing. Thereâs still no away theyâll ever admit failure.
Bush sounds quite confident that ãthe information·on the weaponsä will be found.
Does that mean a belated Operation Plant The Goods in the works?
Probably not.
But (another) Operation Exaggerate The Evidence probably is.
The man in charge of the WMD team is David Kay, a former UN inspector who was a talking head vociferously backing the Administration during the warâs run-up.
Not exactly an objective analyst.
And heâs already predicting, that in about six months, he will produce the proof. Sort of.
From Reuters:
David Kay, a former U.N. chief nuclear weapons inspector, said on "NBC Nightly News" that U.S. forces had collected a massive amount of documents that when completely analyzed would prove ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction·
·"You cannot believe how many cases we have of documents and equipment stored in private residences," Kay said in an interview in Baghdad·
· "We're finding progress reports, Kay said. "They actually went to Saddam and said we have made this progress. There are records, audiotapes of those interviews which give us that."
Of course, ãdocuments and equipmentä are not the weapons themselves.
If Kay is on the level, he will presents elements of an alleged program, not exactly weapons cocked at our collective head.
Still, Kay canât be assumed to be on the level.
And weâve already seen how documents, photos and recordings can be used to distort, with Colin Powellâs (Niger-less) UN presentation back in February.
So we can assume there will be a day when the Bushies will proclaim they have the goods.
Though that day looks to be in January â04 at the earliest. (Not that they canât leak stuff before then.)
Senate Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts has said the public hearings on IntelliGate should happen in September, so the story will keep drip-drip-ing for some time.
The question for the Bushies is: can all the potential damage done to Bush over the next several months be wiped away once Kayâs done?
The bet here is that the damage is already done, that the weasel responses to date have already sullied Bush ãplain-spokenä rep.
And that will only be furthered as the story lingers into the fall.
Nevertheless, Dems, particularly those taking the lead on criticizing Bush, need to be prepared for the big ãwe told you soä pushback.
And they need to have someone knowledgeable at the ready (paging Scott Ritter) to thoroughly scrutinize Kayâs eventual report and flag any possible distortions.
Thankfully, that should be relatively easier to do, now that reporters have gotten the message that the Bush word is not necessarily bond.
July 17, 2003 PERMALINK
Deficit Death Blow
(posted July 16 8:15 PM ET)
Last month, when the Congressional Budget Office said this year's deficit would be more than $400B, the White House line was that it was
"modest and manageable."
Now that the White House numbers show a deficit of $455B -- not counting the estimated $4B a month for future costs in Iraq -- the party line subtly changed.
It's no longer "modest," just "manageable."
The line was a joke before and it's a bigger joke now.
As always, the Bushies rest on the fact that Reagan's deficits were so bad, relative to the economy, they can say Bush's aren't the worst.
Still, that doesn't disguise that this deficit is still awful, and that there is no plan to correct it in the long-term, just projections hinged on wishful thinking.
But what are the political ramifications? Do giant deficits kill presidents?
Carter cut the deficit relative to the economy and lost. Reagan's deficits skyrocketed in his first term and he won.
Bush I's deficits were nasty, though not as bad as Reagan's. Nevertheless, Ross Perot softened him up good over it.
The difference is the economy itself.
Carter drowned in "stagflation." Reagan suffered a recession in the middle of first term, but GDP growth was on the upswing in time before the '84 election.
Whereas Poppy's GDP spike came before the '92 election, yet too late for the effects to be felt by the population.
And since Poppy's economy was a bad one, the deficit served as a powerful symbol of government mismanagement and ineffectiveness -- a simple way to communicate that he wasn't doing his job.
Dubya risks the same fate.
Poppy couldn't get the annual GDP growth rate over 3% in any quarter from mid-1990 (when the technical recession of negative growth began), all the way through 1991. That's the rough benchmark where real job creation kicks in.
1991's growth was in positive turf, but still anemic, below 3%.
1992 it crossed the 3% line, but too late. People didn't feel the ripple effects yet. Just quoting the stats wasn't good enough.
Now, Dubya's own projections predict a mere 2.3% GDP growth for this year.
They predict it will get over the 3% next year, but that would be too late for them as well.
Bush needs the big growth immediately, if not yesterday, so the job creation will happen in time.
And so, with the effects of the bad economy persisting, the mounting deficit will be nothing less than a sledgehammer for Dems to use to smash this presidency.
No fancy-schmancy finesse. No cutesy wordplay. Just good old-fashioned lying.
Well, points for truth. These statements sure do continue to come up.
But the kid has a lot of heart. Before you know it, youâll forget all about Ari.
Until Ariâs (shudder) book tour.
July 15, 2003 PERMALINK
Why It Sticks
(posted July 15 12:30 AM ET)
On the second day after Dubya and Ari ãmoved onä from IntelliGate, both offered up new explanations ö ones that were beautifully shredded in todayâs W. Post.
Since itâs impolite for that stately newspaper to use the word ãlie,ä various forms of the word ãcontradictä needed to be used several times.
Meanwhile, a Senate Republican, Chuck Hagel, sought to distance himself from the White House, on CNNâs Newsnight:
Many people have had their -- and still do -- arms wrapped around this. The Vice President and his office. Secretary Rumsfeld. Secretary Powell. Dr. Rice.
To say that the CIA Director was the one who alone signed off on, and had the influence on, putting those 16 words in the Presidentâs State of the Union message is just not quite accurate here. Now câmon...
·Some quick answer like, ãWell we just shouldnât have had 16 words in the Presidentâs speech" -- we need to go a little deeper and wider than that.
And NY Timesâ Nicholas Kristof publicized the call from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity for Cheney to resign.
The Bushies collective head must be spinning: why canât we BS our way out of this one?
Itâs in large part their own fault.
It had been easy for Dubya to change the subject or brush off allegations because he put us on a months-long run-up to war.
That further cowed the media and made criticism tantamount to treason.
But the Bushies got greedy.
They couldnât help spiking the ball, and cutting that campaign footage with Dubya on the aircraft carrier under the ãMission Accomplishedä banner.
They were careful in their words, deeming it the ãBattle of Iraq,ä a mere chapter in the larger terror war (does anyone, will anyone, ever call it that?) and noted that only ãmajor combatä was over.
But they should know more than anyone that visuals are more powerful than words. And the visual said: war is over.
They thought they were sealing the deal for â04.
But thereâs no new exciting war around the corner. Just the messy denouement of this one.
And without a pending war, and no ãwartime presidency,ä they lost their main tool to fend off attacks.
They have become mere mortals. And thatâs a major reason why this story isnât fading away.
July 14, 2003 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted July 14 12:15 AM ET)
The president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well.
-- Ari Fleischer, 7/12/03
We begin with a controversy here in the United States that's simply not going away.
-- Wolf Blitzer, CNNâs Late Edition, 7/13/03
On June 8, LiberalOasis said the tag team of Condi Rice and Colin Powell ãutterly failed in squelching the issueä of suspect intelligence.
Consider that Strike One.
Strike Two was yesterday, as Don Rumsfeld and Condi Riceâs scripted protestations continued the contradictory, defensive posture thatâs eroding Dubyaâs poll numbers.
Hereâs Condi, summing up the main talking points on CBSâ Face The Nation:
·knowing what we know now, we would not have put it in the president's speech·because we don't believe that it rises to the quality of intelligence reporting that we use in presidential speeches.
It's not that it's inaccurate. It's not that it's wrong.
The British stand by it. We have no reason to believe that they are wrong about that.
Huh? The statement is based on intelligence of suspect quality, but you have no reason to believe itâs wrong?
How much are they paying the flack that wrote that?
By refusing to fully cop to the ãmistake,ä and by not dealing with the evidence that calls the uranium charge into question, they have failed again to kill the story.
Condi, who blew it last June on NBCâs Meet The Press and ABCâs This Week, was sent to handle the arguably gentler questioners on CBS and FOX and CNN. Rummy took NBC and ABC.
But any such strategy was moot. All five interviewers, including Fox News Sundayâs Tony Snow, displayed more aggressiveness than usually found when Bushies are in the chair.
Granted, all could have drawn more blood considering the pathetic responses tbat were served up.
For example, no one noted that the British government has just as much self-interest as the Bushies to claim their intelligence was good, as just as little evidence to prove it.
As the BBC reported last week:
Mr Blair told a committee of MPs on Tuesday that the evidence about the Niger link "did not come from these so-called forged documents. They came from separate intelligence."·
·The Foreign Affairs committee asked what this other intelligence was but has not been told.
Nevertheless, no interviewer seemed all that satisfied with the Administration line.
Even Snow, the former Bush I speechwriter, ended his interview with a condescending, ãOK, I'm going to let you off the hook on this one.ä
In fact, later on FNS, Fred Barnes, who was straining to defend the Bushies earlier the week, threw up his hands and called the Administrationâs performance, ãpolitical bungling.ä
So Ari, think the country has moved on now?
Whose Heads Will Roll?
There are three high-level heads that could potentially roll, in order of probability: CIA Director George Tenet, Condi, VP Dick Cheney.
The Bushies probably hope Tenetâs scalp will end the whole thing.
Not likely. Too many people are openly asking who in the White House was pushing the CIA to approve the line.
A Tenet resignation doesnât answer that. That question points to Condi or Cheney.
While Maureen Dowd wasnât the first to note that, she has put the notion in wide circulation in her Sunday column.
So on CNNâs Late Edition, Condi tried to knock that down:
WOLF BLITZER: But 11 months earlier, you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Niger, to find out whether it was true.
He came back, reported to the CIA, reported to the State Department, it wasn't true, it was bogus. The whole issue was bogus.
And supposedly, you never got word of his report.
RICE: Well, first of all, I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger.
And if you look at Director Tenet's statement, it says that counterproliferation experts on their own initiative sent Joe Wilson, so I don't know...
BLITZER: Who sent him?· Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.
RICE: No, this is simply not true, and this is something that's been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out.
The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger. The vice president did not know.
I don't think he knew who Joe Wilson was, and he certainly didn't know that he was going.
Sounds like a blanket denial. But since word parsing is back in vogue, letâs look at this closely.
Condi doesnât say that Cheney was unaware of any Niger inquiry, just that he didnât ask for Joe Wilson, specifically, to go check it out.
That kind of response brings us back to the notion of knowing and not knowing simultaneously, discussed here last month.
Cheney can know, and even direct whatâs happening, but be protected enough from the details to make it hard to pin anything on him.
But if news reports, based on anonymous intelligence sources, are true that say Wilsonâs report was cabled via the CIA to Cheneyâs office and elsewhere, than what Condi said would be a flat lie.
Also, someone appears to be talking to Talking Points Memo, challenging how Condi and others are characterizing the substance of Wilsonâs report.
Will one of these unnamed sources go public? That could lead to a Condi, or even a Cheney, resignation.
About That War·
What will probably be lost in the IntelliGate fallout was George Stephanopoulosâ notable exchange with Rumsfeld about the Phantom WMD.
First, Rummy belatedly walked back his earlier ãwe know where they areä statement from back in March:
I probably should have said ãwe know where they were,ä instead of ãwe know where they are.ä
Of course, this was done with the classic Rummy nonchalant, devilish grin, trying to make a blatant lie come across as an innocuous ãoops!ä
Which would be easier to get away with if so much else wasnât going so wrong.
Then, Stephanopoulos brought up a point that hasnât received much attention:
STEPHANOPOULOS: ·couldnât the war then·have provoked your worst fear, that these weapons would be moved and get in the hands of terrorists?
RUMSFELD: It could have. And it still could. Which is the reason you need to find them·
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that show a failure then of the Defense Department·to secure those sites?
RUMSFELD: No. I mean, how can you secure·sites in a country the size of California, that has open borders, porous borders·
·Itâs not possible to secure every single site.
What one has to do is to go in and win the war. Throw out the regime.
And then, as rapidly as possible, shift that fighting force into a presence force and try to provide security in the country.
The logic here is simply bizarre, and should call into question the entire pre-emption argument.
If the whole point of the war is to remove the WMD, but the realities of war make it difficult to get the WMD, then why go to war in the first place?
Apparently, using Rummy logic, it would only make sense if the WMD were in a really tiny island nation. (Watch out Barbados.)
Stephanopoulos wasnât done. He dared to challenge the whole premise of war.
He threw out this quote from the current New Republic cover story:
ãThe Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had indeed eliminated Saddamâs illicit weapons by the mid-90âs·
Ultimately, the scientists and others say, Saddam may have feared that admitting his WMD were gone would have shown a weakness that could have threatened his hold on power.ä
George continued:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that what the scientists are telling the US teams?
RUMSFELD: I donât know. Iâm sure there are·a lot of interrogations. I donât doubt for a minute that some people are saying that.
Others have done what Iâve said, taken you to a backyard under a rosebush and said, I was told not to destroy it. I was told to bury it·
·Maybe theyâre both true·thereâd be some people who believe that they were told that they were going to destroy them, and others who were told, bury this·
STEPHANOPOULOS: ·Is it plausible that perhaps Saddam Hussein, by the time the war began, really didnât have an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction?
RUMSFELD: I think it's unlikely·
·It seems to me that he could have had billions and billions of dollars of revenues from his oil lifting, if he had wanted to do what other countries did·and say, "Come in here, inspect."
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, it could be for the reason those scientists said·
·But you say, in the end, it's unlikely that he didn't have an arsenal but not impossible?
RUMSFELD: You know·until we've done this job and talked to enough people and been through it, we won't know precisely what we'll find.
Stephanopoulos attacks the entire premise of the war. And Rumsfeld -- perhaps caught a little off-guard, perhaps simply out of gas -- effectively shrugs.
Stunningly pathetic.
