The depressing message

No matter how bad things get, just remember, things could be worse.

In the spirit of that cheery thought, let us recall that all of the earnest efforts being made in Washington, to get the U.S. out of Iraq, real soon now, are premised, as they must be, Constitutionally, on a withdrawal managed in its details by the same hopelessly incompetent President, who "planned" and "managed" the Occupation and Reconstruction.

Fred Kaplan at Slate:

A precipitous and total U.S. withdrawal from Iraq probably would have 'serious consequences.' Iraq could erupt into sheer chaos. (If you think the country's already as bad off as it can be, think back on Lebanon during the civil war or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.) This chaos could impel neighboring countries to intervene, either to contain the violence or to fight alongside their respective sectarian allies.

However, this warning is beside the point. Few Democrats, much less Republicans, want a rapid and total pullout, for precisely these reasons. The defecting Republicans are telling Bush—either directly or through his aides, who have been scrambling to Capitol Hill this past week—that the only way the congressional leaders might vote for a total pullout is if the White House forces them to do so. If Bush fails to present an alternative strategy—if the only choice Bush gives them is "Stay the course" or "Cut off all the funding"—the weary legislators might well call his bluff.

Like the moth to the flame, so our President is drawn to catastrophe.

Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner - New York Times

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times "Public Editor" -- ombudsman by another name -- spanked the paper, today, for its increasingly sycophantic Iraq War coverage. Many others have noticed that the Times has started parroting uncritically the Administration line on Iraq, a redux of its shameful efforts before the Iraq War in 2003, involving at least one of the same stenographic reporters, Michael Gordon.

Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon.com, was less restrained, and named the incompetent Michael Gordon by name:

"The Times -- typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting 'reporting' of Michael Gordon, though not only -- makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan -- that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: 'Al Qaeda.'
What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development -- not only from our military, but also from our 'journalists' -- is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use."

Greg Mitchell, writing for Editor & Publisher, is even more pointed than Mr. Greenwald:

"As if he hadn’t done enough damage already, helping to promote the American invasion of Iraq with deeply flawed articles in The New York Times, Michael R. Gordon is now writing scare stories that offer ammunition for the growing chorus of neo-cons calling for a U.S. strike against Iran – his most recent effort appearing just this morning.

What’s most lamentable is that editors at The New York Times, who should have learned their lessons four years ago, are once again serving as enablers."

Mr. Hoyt, a veteran of the former Knight-Ridder Washington bureau, where he was part of one of the few important teams in journalism, which acquitted itself honorably in the run-up to the Iraq War, may have been brought in as Public Editor with the hope that he would make the very criticism he made in the paper today. Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner - New York Times

Mr. Hoyt tactfully avoids mentioning Michael R. Gordon by name, and gives space to quotations from N.Y. Times editors apologizing for their lapses and vaguely promising to do better. But, Mr. Holt concludes with a critical point:

"I’d have been happier still if The Times had helped its readers by doing a deeper job of reporting on the administration’s drive to make Al Qaeda the singular enemy in Iraq."

The difference between stenography and journalism is right there. The difference between sociopathic insiderism and professional integrity is right there.

When the Administration is pushing a particular story-line, the "news" is not the Administration story-line, the "news" is that the Administration is pushing this story-line. To treat it otherwise, is to join the conspiracy to hide the organized campaign to channel propaganda through the news Media.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Republican pundits are able to gaze out at a landscape studded with Republican stupidity, incompetence, corruption and obstructionism, and then blame Democrats for everything. It is quite a performance, featuring high-minded calls for ending the decisive partisanship, which any objective observer would attribute to the unprincipled Republican expedience.

Lance Mannion explains why the right-wing pundits, like David Ignatius of the Washington Post or David Broder of the New York Times appear to be so irrationally determined to believe the best of the leaders of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration, when those people are, in fact, among the absolute worst political leaders imaginable.

I think that they're being told lots and lots of scary stories off the record.

I'm thinking that at parties, or after press conferences, or while waiting in the green room before a Sunday morning bobblehead fest or while in the lines waiting to get into the best restaurants at lunch someone pulls them aside, saying, "A word in your shell-like?"

Maybe they get phone calls.

This someone is not the usual suspect. This someone is a someone they trust. Someone who seems sane, who seems to know what they're talking about, who is on the inside but not "one of them," not an obvious party hack or true believer. This someone may wear a uniform but more likely it's a someone who is known to have the ears of trustworthy men and women who do wear uniforms.

This someone pulls a David Ignatius aside and says, "This is on the hush-hush, the QT, deep background."

And then the someone tells a scary story about what the terrorists almost did yesterday.

The story is vague, sketchy, but it has the ring of truth and it contains at least one detail that makes the journalist's skin crawl.

And then the someone adds that he or see could say more . . .

But the someone must be quiet. Walls have ears. The people would panic if they knew. The someone melts away into the air, leaving shaking in his socks the journalist who goes home to have nightmares all night and then gets up in the morning and, unable to tell us the horrorible things he knows, writes instead a column in which he tells us to just shut up and let the big strong daddies in the Republican Party handle everything for us.

Memo to David Brooks

In the Left Blogosphere, the absurd analyses offered by the pundits of the corporate, right-wing media are fact-checked and challenged. Larry Johnson, acting as a good neighbor, sees to it that David Brooks sees David Corn eviscerate his lying ass.

Letter to a Neighbor | TPMCafe: "A Memo for David Brooks"

Unfortunately, this doesn't happen much in the Media most people read or view.

At most, about 5 million Americans are exposed in some degree to the views, which circulate in the Left Blogosphere. Ninety-five percent of Americans are exposed to David Brooks or worse, without ever seeing this factually-challenged right-wing propaganda challenged or refuted.

The furious outrage of the politically aware has been channelled, bottled up and isolated, marginalized.

Teach the controversy

The Republican talking point or meme, which says that Libby deserves leniency, because, although lying to investigators and a grand jury was bad, there was "no underlying crime" -- really disclosing Plame's identify as a CIA operative was no big deal -- is getting wide play in the mainstream media. There are several variations on this Republican thesis. There's "everybody was doing it" -- Armitage was the source for Novak's story (tellingly, Rove's name usually goes tactfully unmentioned, though Rove was the second source). And, there's Plame was not "really" covert, though the CIA and prosecutor Fitzgerald both asserted that she was.

As I noted in previous posts, on NPR and the PBS NewsHour, this meme has gone unrefuted and largely unchallenged. Do I really need to document how it is fared on CNN and elsewhere?

Meanwhile, in the blogosphere, where logical analysis and a memory for events stretching back through the dark ages of political history even a year or two ago is still possible, this meme is being challenged.

Steve commenting on the Matthew Yglesias blog:

"Why didn't Fitzgerald go after Armitage? Did he, in the end, conclude that leaking Plame's name was not a crime?
I don't understand how anyone who has been following the story could still not understand the answer to this question. I blame the right-wing efforts to obfuscate the issue with as much noise as possible.
The answer is that the reason why Armitage, Libby, and the other leakers weren't prosecuted under the IIPA is that the IIPA requires proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the leaker had actual knowledge that the CIA agent's employment was classified at the time of the leak.
To prove that, you need to be able to prove how the person found out about the fact of CIA employment. In the case of Armitage, it was clear that he didn't know; he found out from a document that said nothing about Plame's covert status. In the case of Libby, it was less clear what he knew, but Fitzgerald nonetheless concluded that he couldn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
The real issue is what Cheney knew and when he knew it. Libby's lies were intentionally designed to keep Fitzgerald from getting a closer look at Cheney and determining what role Cheney had in the leak campaign and whether he knew Plame was covert. That's why the obstruction was a big deal. That's why no one was charged; the IIPA requires that you prove knowledge and Fitzgerald couldn't."

What do you suppose it would take for such a point to be be part of the discussion on, say, CNN or CBS, in the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post?

A revolution?

Teach the controversy, mainstream media, teach the controversy.

Compare and Contrast

Here's an instructive case, for those interested in how the corporate plutocracy has reduced American opinion journalism to a ruin.

Dan Froomkin, who writes a popular blog for the WashingtonPost.com, provides a high standard for acute observation and logical analysis. Don't look for his column in the print edition; his views will never find print, and if his was not the most popular thing on the WaPo website, he would have been fired yesterday. As it is, I don't think his long-term employment is at all assured. Anyway, he writes succinctly and clearly about the Libby commutation. Here's a taste:

"If you take the White House's position at face value, then Bush felt that the sentence -- which followed federal sentencing guidelines for perjury and obstruction of justice -- was unjust. In that case, why isn't he doing anything about those guidelines?
Another possibility is that Bush felt there were circumstances the judge did not take into consideration. What could those circumstances be? Is Bush saying that, yes, Libby lied, but he should be cut some slack because he did so for noble reasons? If so, what might those reasons be?
There is, of course, a third possibility: That the commutation and all the expressions of concern are just a delaying tactic, and that Bush intends to pardon Libby at the end of his term if Libby's appeal fails. That theory was bolstered by Bush's assertion on Tuesday that he wouldn't rule out a pardon in the long run. If Bush 'respects' the jury verdict today, why raise the possibility that he won't 18 months from now?"

Michael Kinsley is widely admired for his logical powers. Having been fired from his position as the L.A. Times editorial page editor for being too liberal, he is now a columnist for Time Magazine, which, of course, employs no liberals. Kinsley, who still likes to eat and needs health insurance, has adapted to the journalistic ecology. His op-ed in the N.Y. Times:

"So as much as I dislike the war in Iraq, as much as I dislike President Bush, as much as I expect that I would dislike Mr. Libby if I ever met him, I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. In fact, if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, “Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously.” I bet that today, commuted sentence and all, Mr. Libby wishes they had done just that. So as much as I dislike the war in Iraq, as much as I dislike President Bush, as much as I expect that I would dislike Mr. Libby if I ever met him, I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. In fact, if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, “Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously.” I bet that today, commuted sentence and all, Mr. Libby wishes they had done just that. "

Did you get that logic? Believe me, reading the whole column scarcely makes his argument any clearer. Apparently, Kinsley feels that, since so many journalists regard anonymous leaks to the Media, regardless of their content, as a sacred rite, Libby can scarcely be blamed (by the Media?) for lying to protect this sacred rite of journalism and "the dark art of politics" (as the faux liberal WaPo columnist, Richard Cohen, put it, arguing for commutation even before Bush made it so).

The op-ed pages of our leading newspapers, and whatever time on cable news can be spared from the coverage of Paris Hilton, are filled with logically challenged analysis, designed to make what Bush has done seem normal. The kind of straight-forward analysis, demonstrated by Froomkin, is rare to the point of extinction outside the blogosphere (where Froomkin's work lives exclusively).

Factual reporting and moderated discussion from the corporate right-wing Media is no better. The Daily Howler takes up the case Rebecca Roberts, brain-dead child of Cokie Roberts, hosting a discussion of the Libby commutation on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation. Just as on PBS's NewsHour, the false right-wing claim that Plame was not, in fact, covert and that Libby's disclosure of her status as a CIA employee was not prohibited by law, went unchallenged by the clueless hostess.

With the nation's public discourse in such carefully chosen, incompetent hands, no one should wonder about how the country should be run into a ditch, and no political storm ensue.

The careers of Rebecca Roberts (NPR) and Michael Kinsley (Time Magazine), Richard Cohen (Washington Post) and many others depend on this kind of incompetence, artfully rendered. Not to please an audience, but to please a corporate employer, who will not tolerate competence, let alone liberalism. This is as true of Public Broadcasting, which is now as dependent on funding from corporate advertisers as its for-profit "competitors". And, it is as true of CBS and NBC, and the New York Times, as it is Fox News and the Washington Times.

Consider this precis summarizing the "career" of John Solomon, who went from winning a prize for slandering Democrats for the Associated Press, to a full-time gig at the Washington Post, slandering Democrats.

"A year ago, John Solomon wrote a series of odd and misleading articles attacking Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), accusing him of ethical lapses. The closer one looked at the criticisms, the weaker the charges looked. Months later, Reid was cleared of any wrongdoing, while Solomon was inexplicably rewarded — in December he joined the Washington Post’s national desk, heading up some sort of investigative “team,” ostensibly focusing on the intersection of money and politics.Since then, Solomon has run an odd front-page piece on John Edwards selling his house, a bizarre front-page expose on Hillary Clinton’s charitable donations, and a sloppy piece on a Nancy Pelosi earmark for a San Francisco waterfront redevelopment project.Yesterday, however, Solomon out did himself — he devoted nearly 1,300 words to the “controversy” surrounding John Edwards’ haircut."

The American news Media is part of the disease afflicting American politics.

What real outrage looks like

(You should go view or read the whole thing, of course.)

Keith Olbermann:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.