Right Wing Nut House

President George Bush gave his 6th prime time speech since his presidency began in the same cocoon that he has comfortably ensconced himself since the Iraq War began.

The fact that he’s given so few speeches talking to the American people about a cause he himself has identified as vital to the War on Terror, failing spectacularly to explain as honestly and forthrightly as possible where we are, where we need to be, and where we are going in Iraq, guarantees that the American people have stopped listening to him.

In short, his credibility when talking about the war is as low as it could possibly go. It is his own fault. He can command attention whenever he desires it and the news nets must cover what he says. But over the years, his start and stop, herky jerky efforts to rally the American people to his policies has fallen far short of what was needed and necessary. Instead, he allowed his political opponents to define the war, the mission, even the president’s own motives in going to war while substituting a narrative that savaged him and people who supported him.

It would help if the President would give us the castor oil with the honey when he talks about Iraq. He never has. The Iraq he talked about in his speech does not exist. It is not a place of “freedom” or “democracy.” A legitimate argument can be made that it doesn’t even have a government. Holding elections does not define a nation as a democracy. There is no freedom without citizens being secure in their property and lives. The government in Iraq cannot guarantee either and in fact, elements of that government are consciously engaged in activities to dispossess Sunni Muslims of both.

For all the security gains in some of the Sunni provinces and all the good work being done with the tribes in enlisting them to help fight al-Qaeda, there are other areas of the country where the situation on the ground has not gotten any better and is demonstrably worse. As the Brits abandon the south, the militias are taking over and will eventually fight for control, the government in Baghdad be damned. Iran is salivating at the opportunities offered by this “civil war within a civil war” and will only gain in influence whoever comes out on top.

Our friends the Kurds, patiently waiting for the day when they can make a clean break from Iraq and declare their independence (along with fellow Kurds across the border in Iran and Turkey who are carrying out terrorist attacks against civilian targets in those countries) are experiencing hit and run attacks by Shias who seek control of the vital oil center of Kirkuk. Car bombs, suicide bombs, assassinations, and even the occasional firefight has broken out in recent months as both sides gauge the possibilities of an America that is about to pull out.

And Baghdad? No one controls Baghdad. Not the government. Not the militias. Not the criminal gangs that continue to terrorize residents almost as much as the sectarian gangs that are driving people out of their homes and the death squads who still manage a tidy body count every day despite the increased presence of American and Iraqi troops.

The Iraq I have just partially described (don’t get me started on the police, the army, the Council of Representatives, the Interior Ministry, the corruption, or that empty suit of a sectarian gangster Maliki) is Iraq as it is - a morass of security, social, political, economic, and psychic problems that no army on the planet can fix. It is also an Iraq that George Bush didn’t come close to acknowledging as existing in his speech tonight.

We are all big boys and girls. George Bush treats us like children, afraid that telling us the truth of what is going on in Iraq or at least being realistic about describing the situation will scare us or cause us to want to hide under the bed. It is depressing. The disconnect between the Iraq Bush describes and the real thing is not lost on the American people who I believe would respond much more positively to Bush if he didn’t try and sugarcoat the situation.

Even the gains in Anbar and elsewhere have been exaggerated now and war supporters have latched on to them like a dying man grasping a leaky life preserver. Contrast Petraeus’s calmly rational assessment of those gains with many on the right who believe the “Anbar Awakening” is going to sweep across the country and bring “victory.” I may be mistaken but even George Bush has stopped talking about “victory” in Iraq and has substituted the word “success.” Even that term is a stretch. When we depart, I hardly think we will be able to claim the Iraq we leave behind will be a success. It will be a mess. But I think the best we can hope for at this point is that it won’t be an unmitigated disaster. That result is worth fighting for because it is necessary to our national security that Iraq not be a failed state and Iran not be rewarded for its meddling.

I always expect too much from Bush which is why I’m always disappointed. Perhaps because in these perilous times, I think we should expect more from our presidents than the rhetoric of the stump. Bush is not a bad man nor is he stupid. He is simply inadequate.

That may be the most damning thing you can say about any president.

UPDATE

For reaction, I always check Allah first since he’s only half as cynical as I am and half again more brilliant:

Four minutes of highlights for you including the surprise announcement of the night — plans for an “enduring relationship” with Iraq, presumably on the model of South Korea, that will involve a “security engagement that extends beyond my presidency.” That’s an odd thing to announce now, when he’s trying to reap the political benefits of a (very limited) withdrawal, but there you go. It also flies in the face not only of Sadr’s nationalist rhetoric but poll after poll of Iraqi citizens who say they want the United States out (eventually). Bush wants U.S. troops there to keep Tehran on its toes, though, and also to act as a “tripwire” (again, a la South Korea) in case Iranian forces try to assert themselves inside the country. The more menacing Iran is, the more you can expect Iraqis to grudgingly accept the idea, so long as the “security” part of the enduring relationship involves a small number of troops and, in all likelihood, bases in Kurdistan.

The other scoop is that he’s asked Petraeus to give another progress report in March. The Republicans up for re-election next year will have their life vests on and will have already been seated in the lifeboats by then, so unless that report’s as rosy as the desert sun, it’s game over.

I wasn’t as surprised about the “enduring relationship” theme as I was, like Allah, disconcerted by the timing.

And I agree about the Iraqi people’s attitude toward the Iranians. Many on the left have a heart attack every time Maliki and Ahmadinejad meet, breathlessly telling us of the coming Shia convergence between the Iraqis and Iranians.

Both peoples may be Shias. But there was the little matter of the Iran-Iraq War not to mention the historical enmity between Arabs and Persians. The Iraqis don’t trust the Iranians, period.

My own pessimism about the political will necessary to sustain any kind of serious effort in Iraq matches Allah’s own. By March, there will be general agreement to draw down faster than the 5 combat brigades Petraeus has called for. By election day 2008, we’ll have less than half the troops in Iraq that we do now.

John Edwards is a very serious man.

He is very serious about his hair.

He is very serious about doing his part on global warming - adding to it by generating a carbon footprint the size of Rhode Island.

He is very serious about helping the poor - believing that by getting rich using junk science and New Age mumbo jumbo when suing doctors and then plowing his winnings into hedge funds, he can impoverish others thus adding to the poor’s numbers.

He is very serious about running for President. Just exactly who or what he wants to be President of might be a little hazy:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.

One can immediately see the problem with this birth to death, “Health Care at the Point of a Bayonet” program the former Senator and Breck Girl has come up with. It’s not the cost of the program itself that would bust the treasury. It’s creating the National Health Care Police Force to make sure his diktats about going to doctors and having your head examined on a regular basis are enforced. Perhaps this is how Silky Pony intends to fight terrorism? Send the Doctor Police overseas and force al-Qaeda recruits to see their local shrink. I’ll bet half of the jihadis are committed on the spot.

I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop in Edwards’ “Gun to Your Head” preventive health care proposal; what will be the penalties for not going to the doctor when Nanny Sam says you must? Perhaps Edwards can come up with something unique and politically viable at the same time. Instead of using animals to test new drugs and new surgical techniques, why not punish American citizens who fail to follow orders about going to the doctor by making them the guinea pigs? Better that scofflaw doctor avoiders suffer the side effects of bad drugs than poor helpless rats. This would please his PETA supporters to no end while being a big help to Big-Pharm who no doubt will embrace any program that puts so many potential customers within spitting distance of a doctor, most of whom received their medical degrees with free drug samples attached.

Althouse has this pegged correctly:

And I predict Edwards will, within a day, chide us for misunderstanding what he meant by “require” and that “require” doesn’t mean you’ll be forced, only that the big bad medical establishment will be required to provide.

Just like “misunderstanding” Jane Hamsher putting Joe Lieberman in black face. We rubes are just too unsophisticated to get all this “nuance” don’t you know?

I don’t get it. I mean, I know that Bush and the open borders crowd want to bring as many “undocumented workers” as possible “out from the shadows and into the light” so that presumably, those who were at one time considered lawbreakers would magically be forgiven their sins and morph into upstanding citizens of the republic with just a wave of government’s magic wand.

This, after all, is the position advanced by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business groups who salivate at the prospect of millions of low wage workers toiling away, allowing them to keep that balance sheet nicely in the black. It’s really not a question of the new arrivals doing the jobs that Americans won’t do. It’s a matter of the immigrants doing those jobs at wages no self respecting American would tolerate.

That’s why I’m excited about this new union they’re talking about forming. It’s called the North American Union and from what I’ve heard, it will solve our illegal immigration problem, strengthen our economy, increase our security, and generally make life in these United States a heaven on earth.

Just tell me where to sign up to join this new union. I wonder if they have health benefits? Paid vacations? Sick days? Personal days? What about pensions?

What’s that you say? I’ve got it wrong? The North American Union will do WHAT?

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

No wonder Canadian bacon has been flooding our markets recently. And have you noticed that there seem to be a lot of Canadian actors and actresses working in Hollywood? It’s an invasion I tell you!

And by the way, you do realize that Taco Bell is now the second largest fast food franchise in the world, don’t you? You know what that means? And what’s with all this Mexican beer I’ve been seeing lately? The brazenness of it all! They’re even advertising Corona on television.

If Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly say it’s true, then it must be so. And to cinch the case, the idea has been advanced by none other than the Dark Lords who work for the Council on Foreign Relations.

If we keep looking, I have no doubt we’ll find connections to the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Democratic Party, and other anti-American, anti-sovereignty groups.

“Nobody is proposing a North American Union,” countered Robert Pastor, the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as “the father of the NAU.” They cite his 2001 book, “Towards a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New,” as the basic text for the plan. They also note his co-chairmanship of a Council on Foreign Relations task force that produced a 2005 report on cooperation among the three countries.

The cur! I’ll bet he wears a lapel pin with the US, Mexican, and Canadian flags:

Wearing a lapel pin featuring the flags of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Pastor told AIM that he favors a $200-billion North American Investment Fund to pull Mexico out of poverty and a national biometric identity card for the purpose of controlling the movement of people in and out of the U.S.

So the “conspiracy” is now very much out in the open, if only the media would pay some attention to it.

Yep. Sounds like we should get ready to start saluting the flag of the North American Union rather than Old Glory. One sure sign that we’re about to lose our sovereignty is creating a fund to pull Mexico out of poverty. It’s right here in my “Conspiracies for Fun and Profit” handbook.

Perhaps we should look a little deeper into this conspiracy. Just what are our elites up to?

In March 2005, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States adopted a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), establishing ministerial-level working groups to address key security and economic issues facing North America and setting a short deadline for reporting progress back to their governments. President Bush described the significance of the SPP as putting forward a common commitment “to markets and democracy, freedom and trade, and mutual prosperity and security.” The policy framework articulated by the three leaders is a significant commitment that will benefit from broad discussion and advice. The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.

To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that “our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary.” Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America.

I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced. All this talk about enhancing security and prosperity is just a smoke screen. In order to ascertain the real intent of these people, you can’t take what everyone is saying at face value. You have to gaze beyond the words they’re saying and look into their very souls in order to glimpse the true nature of this massive conspiracy.

And that word “community” - another smokescreen to hide the real word they dare not use; UNION! Insidious, I tell you.

Just think of it. No more Fourth of July. No more George Washington. No more “Made in America.” And the prospect of being forced to watch Mexican soaps on TV is just too horrid to contemplate. All this cross border, cross cultural mixing has only one purpose; a political union with Mexico and Canada.

Would the NFL be forced to adopt Canadian football rules? Would soccer become the national past time? Would we see even more baseball games on television? These are the kind of nightmares that could become a reality if this North American Union thing actually goes through.

And of course, they would never put such a notion as a North American Union to a vote. We’re just going to wake up one morning and find out that America is no more. Those slick bastards! Lull us to sleep and then put one over on us when we aren’t paying any attention. Too clever by half. But not clever enough. Not when we have patriots like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly guarding our sovereignty. Don’t you sleep better at night knowing that those two watchdogs are on the case, protecting America from being subsumed by hordes of Mexicans and pasty faced Canadians who would invade our country and steal us blind? I sure do.

No doubt there are some of your who can’t see where there is any conspiracy to unite North American under one flag. I pray that you come to your senses soon. Before you know it, we’ll be buying our Tacos with Canadian dollars and then it will be too late.

One of the more fascinating blogosphere discussions in recent weeks is happening over on the left regarding foreign policy “experts” and their responsibility for our current situation in Iraq and elsewhere.

It started with a post by Gideon Rose over at the Economist Blog that skewered the netroots for bashing the “foreign policy community” for their perceived failures in getting us into Iraq. Rose compared the netroots attacks on these “experts” with those carried out by neo-conservatives in the late 1990’s:

The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the “foreign policy community.” The funny thing is…hell, I’ll just come out and say it: the netroots’ attitude toward professionals isn’t that different from the neocons’, both being convinced that the very concept of a foreign-policy clerisy is unjustified, anti-democratic and pernicious, and that the remedy is much tighter and more direct control by the principals over their supposed professional agents.

The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don’t deserve to be listened to in the future. (Take a look at pretty much any old Jim Hoagland column and you’ll see what I mean.) Back then, the neocons directed their fire primarily at the national security bureaucracies—freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon. Now the bloggers’ attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world.

This piece drew a response from Mathew Yglesias where he tried to change the parameters of the discussion from “expertise and professionalism” to whether many of these so-called “wise men” are in fact, experts in the first place:

And there’s the rub. Rose would, I think, like to make this a conversation about expertise and professionalism. But I’m not, and I don’t think anyone in the blogosphere is, against expertise and professionalism. The question is whether some of our country’s self-proclaimed experts — and media proclaimed experts — really deserve to be considered experts. What, for example, is the nature of Michael O’Hanlon’s expertise on the broad range of subjects (his official bio lists him as an expert on “Arms treaties; Asian security issues; Homeland security; Iraq policy; Military technology; Missile defense; North Korea policy; Peacekeeping operations; Taiwan policy, military analysis; U.S. defense strategy and budget”) upon which he comments? Obviously, it would be foolish to just let me speak ex cathedra as an “expert” on the dizzying array of subjects on which I comment, but it seems equally foolish to let O’Hanlon do so, especially since his judgment seems so poor. I made a stab at a systemic difference between think tank people and professionals in the public sector, but Rose raises some convincing points to the effect that this dichotomy isn’t as sharp as I wanted it to be. Still, we can certainly talk about specific individuals — particularly individuals who seem to be unusually prominent or influential — and whether or not they really deserve to be held in high esteem.

Kevin Drum weighs in with some considered thoughts about group think as it relates to why so many “experts” were in favor of the invasion while some in the intel community (not as many as many on the left would have us believe) opposed the Iraq adventure:

My own view is a little different, though. Sure, the war skeptics might have been afraid to go against the herd, but I think that was just an outgrowth of something more concrete: a fear of being provably wrong. After all, everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and unpredictable thug and almost everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program. (Note: Please do some research first if you want to disagree with this. The plain fact is that nearly everyone — liberal and conservative, American and European, George Bush and Al Gore — believed Saddam was developing WMDs. This unanimity started to break down when the UN inspections failed to turn up anything, but before that you could count the number of genuine WMD doubters on one hand.) This meant that war skeptics had to go way out on a limb: if they opposed the war, and it subsequently turned out that Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot. Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam’s temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals. In the end, then, they chickened out, but it had more to do with fear of being wrong than with fear of being shunned by the foreign policy community.

At any rate, it would be instructive to find out who these closet doves were and invite them to a Foreign Affairs roundtable to talk about why they knuckled under to the hawks prior to the war. To the extent they were willing to be honest, it would be a pretty interesting conversation. I won’t be holding my breath, though.

Finally, Ilan Goldenberg makes some interesting points about the difference between true “experts” and the self proclaimed variety who show up on TV constantly:

It’s not that the entire VSP community is bad. The question is how do you tell the difference between a hack and someone who is a genuine expert? This actually isn’t too hard to figure out. First, regional experts generally tend to be more well informed than functional experts because of their narrower focus. There is a long list of foreign policy experts who specialize in the Middle East (And did so before 9/11 came around). Jon Alterman, Brian Katulis, Mark Lynch, Ray Takeyh, Steven Simon, Flynt Levrett, Vali Nasr, Steven Cook, Rob Malley to name just a few. Most of these people speak Arabic or Farsi. Most have spent sigificant time in the region or spent a great deal of time studying the history of the region and the intimate details. They know much more than you, me, Matt Yglesias or Gideon Rose do about the Middle East. Not surprisingly a large majority of these regional experts were opposed to the Iraq War. The problem is no one listened. The issue became so main stream that many functional experts who knew very little about the region stepped in and start calling themselves Middle East experts and make assertions as “experts” on what the U.S. should be doing. During the Cold War everyone was a Soviet “expert.” Today everyone is a Middle East “expert”. (Ken Pollack is the clear exception to the rule. He has rigorously studied the Middle East, but was just flat out wrong about Iraq).

What fascinates me about this entire discussion is the confluence of politics and policy and how the media, academia, and political parties play a dominant role in making, shaping, and promoting our foreign policy.

A couple of caveats are in order. First, I make no claims to being an “expert” in anything save distilling and writing about the ideas and policy prescriptions of others. That’s what most of us bloggers do on a daily basis. There are probably times when my enthusiasm gets the better of me and I attempt some independent analysis - with mixed results I’m sure. The point is, I am perfectly happy to feed off the knowledge and expertise of others as long as what they are proposing or their analysis makes sense to me in the context of what I already know about the subject.

Secondly, by its very nature, blogging is hazardous to elites. Therefore, one would expect the loudest yelps of indignation about “know-nothing bloggers” to come from those whose work is constantly criticized by people not recognized as “peers” by the foreign policy establishment. And while they may have a point about some writers not having the breadth or depth of knowledge about a particular subject when compared to an “expert,” to dismiss their critiques out of hand smacks of an intellectual elitism not uncommon in academia or politics for that matter.

That said, I find fault in the general critique being advanced by these lefty bloggers about “experts” and why they perceive an institutional failure in resisting the war tocsins prior to our invasion of Iraq.

Their problem (and I agree with Rose about a similar attitude presented by the Neocons in the past) is in misunderstanding how foreign policy is made. For a good contemporary look at the sausage making, I recommend Ole Holsti’s fine group of essays on the subject. For a little more depth and historical background, one could do no better than reading Richard Russell’s excellent critique of George Keenan’s “strategic thought” and the evolution of our policy toward the Soviet Union.

Both books reveal how various “experts” impact policy making. Looking at the left’s critique of who gets to give input into the process and whose opinions receive more weight than others fails to take into account the real role of politics in this process as well as the small but significant part played by the media and public opinion in formulating, shaping, and implementing our policies.

Clearly, a distinction must be made between purely academic experts whose writings are well respected in their tiny corner of academia and their counterparts who fill the ranks of various “think tanks” (I hate that term!). A place like Brookings brings together those who shuttle between the academy and government as well as those who may have an academic background but who serve as in house experts for political campaigns or involve themselves in politics in other ways. In this respect, “think tanks” are clearinghouses for ideas and analyses that bubble up and make their way from the academy to politics.

The criticism by the leftosphere of “experts” like Michael O’Hanlon and, to a lesser extent Kenneth Pollack, the two Brookings Fellows whose Op-Ed in the New York Times was offered as “proof” by many on the right that things were going better in Iraq and that it was still “winnable,” points up this confluence between politics and policy. O’Hanlon/Pollack may have gone to Iraq to analyze the situation based on their knowledge and expertise as academic experts. But clearly, their conclusions immediately entered the realm of politics once they broadcast their findings on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. The only goal one can assume from these actions was a desire to affect the political debate in Congress.

Is this the proper role for “experts?” Clearly, some on the left question this foray into politics by the two Brookings fellows. And the belief by many that it was disingenuous of the two to claim they were “war critics” when they supported the invasion has something to do with the virulence with which they have been skewered by the left. One wonders if they had come back saying the surge was a failure and we should withdraw immediately, would the left be attacking the messengers so strenuously. Perhaps not. But it is a minor point compared to the larger issue of what is an “expert” and who do we believe when trying to form an opinion about any issue.

Goldenberg’s attempt to define a “real” expert is fine as far as it goes. He slips up a bit here:

Another of indicator of expertise is the think tank bio page. As Matt hints at, there is an inverse correlation between the number of areas of expertise listed in your bio and your actual expertise. What also matters is whether the listing of expertise makes any sense and whether the various areas are related. For example, Tony Cordesman, who quite frankly knows more than you, me, or just about anybody else about the Middle East, only lists four areas of expertise on his bio: Energy, Middle East & North Africa, Defense Policy, and Terrorism.

His point being that Michael O’Hanlon is a charlatan because he lists a dozen areas of “expertise” on his bio page at Brookings including unrelated foreign policy subjects like the Middle East and Taiwan. I agree that on the surface, it would seem to be a good yardstick to determine if someone was really an “expert” on a given subject. Does O’Hanlon know more about the Middle East than Cordesman who only lists 4 areas of expertise in his bio? Or does he know more than a scholar/professor like Juan Cole?

Even if he doesn’t, I think adding up the number of areas where a scholar like O’Hanlon claims sufficient knowledge to be considered an “expert” and trying to determine the right or wrong of it is in and of itself a foolhardy venture by definition. O’Hanlon must be judged by his peers. Given that Goldenberg rightly points out that bloggers know less about the Middle East than a Cordesman or a Cole (even though his scholarship has been questioned by his peers), it would seem that Mr. Rose is making a good point about misdirected or poorly formulated criticisms directed against experts.

This doesn’t obviate blog criticisms of O’Hanlon or any other expert. Rather, it points up the problem in determining how much weight we give to an analysis of any issue based on an expert’s opinion. Do we agree with the political implications of an analysis? Do we generally agree with the underlying assumptions in that analysis?

If we see an expert on TV all the time, are we more likely to agree with him when he publishes a paper? And finally, what role does the opinions of the political class play in all of this?

The left uses as a basic assumption in their critique of these experts that there was a “consensus” among them (even a lockstep mindset according to Drum) that the war was right, necessary, and would be a cakewalk. Only a precious few experts crying out from the wilderness were opposed to the adventure. I don’t recall it quite that way although in sheer volume, the Neocon view outshouted the more cautious analysts who urged waiting a few months. The problem there was more a tactical military problem in that delaying the invasion two or three months to give the inspectors more time would have meant our forces attacking during the summer and the additional problems of brutal heat and sun.

But how persuasive were the experts in getting the bulk of the American people to go along with the President in attacking Iraq? Not very, I daresay. If it is true that the political class was affected by “expert” opinions on whether to invade then it was equally true that politicians saw the huge numbers in support of the invasion and felt going against the grain would be political suicide. In this way, there is little doubt that public opinion, only tangentially affected by the pronouncements of experts, led the way to war.

One might more readily ask how influenced the Bush Administration was by these experts. The fact that most of the Neocons who came into power with the Administration were already in support of taking out Saddam should disabuse anyone of the idea that outside experts at think tanks or academia held much sway with that crew. If not 9/11, some other causus belli would have been used as an excuse to get rid of the tyrant.

In general then, I tend to come down on Mr. Rose’s side in this debate. The way foreign policy is made in America utilizes the strengths of academia and scholars with experience in government along with political and media elites who turn ideas into policy. The fact that there so few involved in the process may, as Mr. Rose intimates, be undemocratic. But there really isn’t much of an alternative.

UPDATE

Michael van der Galiën also weighs in:

Now, certain bloggers know a lot about certain subjects. Therefore, it would be wise to listen to them. However, bloggers too should not have the ultimate say (thank God we don’t). Some bloggers know far more than Joe Doe does, albeit less than the superexperts do, at least in theory. This means that, on the one hand people should listen to those bloggers (I will not name the ‘good’ bloggers), while on the other hand those bloggers should listen to experts in order to learn and to make up their minds. In a way, one could say, that in my world a blogger has quite some in common with a politician or a leader: in the end, bloggers (the bigger ones) are opinion makers - thus opinion leaders.

The mistake many netroot bloggers make, however, is that they do not look at experts as much as they look at John Doe: as if John Doe knows all. The result is that - although they should be able to come up with good ideas - they more often than not come up with utter nonsense. The result of that, in its turn, is that they lose credibility (resulting in articles as the one by Gideon).

I think Michael makes an excellent point. As I say above, the vast majority of Americans were not swayed by “experts” who were urging war with Saddam (or agreeing that it was necessary). It was politicians who made the case - using arguments advanced by some experts - that swayed public opinion.

UPDATE II

Daniel Drezner echoes some of my points about the establishment and the Iraq War while adding this:

The moment George W. Bush decided he wanted to oust Saddam Hussein, the debate was effectively over. Nothing the foreign policy community did or could have done affected the outcome (Pollack is a possible exception — his book The Threatening Storm did play the role of “useful cover” for many Democrats, but if it wasn’t Pollack’s book it would have been something else). The members of the “foreign policy community” were not the enablers of Iraq, because no enabling was necessary.

The good news is that conditions a-f no longer apply. So, contra the netroots, I don’t think what happened in the fall of 2002 will happen again.

And I also appreciate how he deconstructed Lambchop’s nonsense that the establishment is predisposed to war mongering.

No debate in Congress. No rules published in The Federal Register. Not a whisper of any opposition from the intelligence agencies, DHS, or any domestic law enforcement departments. They simply went ahead and did it:

The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers.

A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance.

Administration officials say the program will give domestic security and emergency preparedness agencies new capabilities in dealing with a range of threats, from illegal immigration and terrorism to hurricanes and forest fires.

I guess that part in the Constitution which says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” is just too old fashioned for some people. Not when we have all these marvelous little toys in space that can see through walls, eavesdrop on our conversations, and take pictures of our backyard barbecues.

Those of you familiar with this space know that I am far from being a civil liberties absolutist. I have recognized in the past that programs like the Terrorist Surveillance Program - if it is properly administered - is a distasteful but necessary price to pay to fight al-Qaeda and its offshoots in this country. I have supported these programs because for the most part, a citizen’s right to privacy is maintained by the fact that the overwhelming amount of information gathered in these digital dragnets is never seen by human eyes. It is digested by supercomputers, examined by algorithmic computer programs for relevancy, and then discarded back into the ether from which it came.

But this is different. This is real time imagery scanned by snoops looking for illegal activity. At the present time, they anticipate using it against (they say) drug smugglers and terrorists. But make no mistake, gentle readers. We are in true slippery slope territory here. Ed Morrissey spells out the consequences:

While some conservatives undoubtedly would argue that they see nothing wrong with giving law-enforcement agencies access to existing technology, others will rightly object on two grounds. First, the obvious application for the sneak-peek technology would be to avoid search warrants. If probable cause existed for a warrant, law enforcement wouldn’t need the satellite technology; they’d simply enter. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, and has worked well for over 200 years. Civil liberty is based in part on judicial oversight of law enforcement encroachment on private property, which the sneak-peek technology would obliterate.

Second and perhaps more importantly, American legal tradition has separated military and foreign-intel collection from domestic law enforcement, and for good reasons. The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the military (except the Coast Guard, for certain purposes) from acting in a law-enforcement role, except under emergencies specifically requiring martial law. This law keeps the federal government from usurping power from local and state authorities. Since these satellites were launched with strictly military and foreign-intel missions in mind, using them as tools for law enforcement may not entirely cross the PCA, but it gets too close for comfort.

“Some conservatives” who might support this program aren’t very conservative at all. Militarizing law enforcement, however well intentioned, smacks of fascism. Mr. Morrissey is too much the Christian gentleman to say so but I challenge any conservative to defend this anti-democratic, anti-privacy program in terms of classic conservative dogma. It cannot be done. And the reason is quite simple; conservatives invented the right to privacy.

It is a shame that the debate over privacy rights has been tied to the debate over abortion and gay rights. Prior to Roe V. Wade, Justice Harlan, a conservative through and through, foresaw a time when an implied right to privacy would have to be accepted:

Justice Harlan took a view of privacy that rested on a general and expansive reading of American traditions. He did not expect people claiming rights to point to some specific tradition or some specific body of law. He understood that the questions were more difficult than that. The right of privacy now, if anything, is more important, indeed much more important than it was when Justice Harlan wrote, “With changes in reproductive technology and end of life technologies that make these questions all the more acute.”

The question whether we will have a Justice Harlan-like approach to the right of privacy or a skeptical approach to the right of privacy that questions whether it even exists and evinces a desire to confine it as narrowly as possible, that question it seems to me is very much on the table, and will be a question that will be with us for the next generation.

The consequences of traditional conservatives allowing social conservatives to hijack the debate over privacy can now be seen in the context that this implied right to be safe and secure in our private spaces is under attack largely because the social cons have rejected the entire argument in favor of privacy in order to fight abortion, gay marriage, and other social concerns. This is more than “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” It simply cannot be defended on the basis that we can trade off one constitutional right in order to support another.

My respect for those who advocate a right to life - at least those who believe such a right exists from the moment of conception - has always been tempered by their advocacy to overturn Roe V. Wade. This is because I recognize that the privacy rights granted by Roe have now been expanded far beyond that envisioned by Justice Blackmun when he penned the decision in 1973. Roe has become a cornerstone of privacy law. Remove it, and the entire edifice of protections against unreasonable invasions of our privacy by government, our employers, our next door neighbors, or even total strangers would be affected. It is decidedly un-conservative to deny that basic fact - regardless of whether you believe abortion should be legal or gays prevented from marrying.

I have no desire to start a war with social conservatives over this issue. After all, there are some parts of the social con agenda I can support - end of life issues and their standing alone against the coarsening of our culture are two areas we can agree on. But my friends, without privacy, we have no true liberty. Destroy the right of privacy and you invite all sorts of mischief from those who would use modern technology like satellites as well as stuff you can buy at any Radio Shack to intrude in places they have no business going in a free society.

And I also want to make it clear that I do not believe in the “one more step on the road to dictatorship” meme being advanced by the left. Their paranoia regarding the Bush Administration disqualifies them from engaging in any kind of rational debate on the subject. The Bush Administration has sought from the beginning to redefine executive power more robustly than their predecessors, seeing (many believe quite rightly) that some powers of the executive had been appropriated or weakened by Congress since Watergate. The courts have always adjudicated these inter-branch arguments and I trust such will always be the case. But to posit the notion that we are slipping into some kind of anti-democratic nightmare is just plain silly.

Withdrawing this dangerous proposal will not affect our ability to fight terrorism in any significant way. I would hope Congress will take this issue in hand quickly and prevent this stupid idea from advancing very far.

I am not one to get my panties in a twist thinking that the world will come to an end if a few of my personal communications are captured in a digital dragnet by some dumb brute of a super computer and then released back into the ether without any human on planet earth laying eyes or ears on what was contained in those messages.

It bothers me that the potential for abuse is there - as it should trouble any conservative worth their salt. But to exaggerate the threat to civil liberties by positing the notion that while my Auntie Midge is giving her famous recipe for fruit cake over the phone or via email to one of my nieces that NSA spies are avidly listening in and faithfully taking notes on exactly how much rum should be added to give her delicacy its enormous heft is silly.

Actually, given the weight of the damn thing, there’s a good chance the NSA would see it as a weapon of mass destruction and “disappear” dear Auntie by renditioning her to some dark hole of a prison in eastern Europe. Not that we do that kind of thing anymore, right?

This is the essence of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” leaked by the New York Times in December of 2005. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

What good comes of insuring our survival at the expense of losing some of our liberty?

If one of our cities was destroyed by a nuclear weapon smuggled into the country by al Qaeda, I daresay the relatives of the dead would answer that question much differently than the arm chair civil libertarians who so blithely condemn the Administration’s actions in the aftermath of 9/11. There are even those who say that there is no choice to make, that our survival as a nation is not at stake at all therefore any argument that includes a loss of privacy rights as a way to head off an al Qaeda attack is setting up a straw man to justify oppression.

I don’t have much sympathy for that argument but I am troubled that our government has skirted so close to the line involving spying on innocent American citizens and may have in fact crossed it. Ultimately, it must come down to a question of responsibility. You and I are not responsible for the safety and security of the United States. The Constitution has vested that awesome responsibility in the office of the President. In the end, where you come down on this controversy depends on how much you trust the occupant of that office not to abuse his authority nor misuse the frightening power our technological prowess has bestowed upon his government to invade our most private and personal spaces.

For if in fact we are in a war for the survival of our republic – and our enemies themselves have made it abundantly clear that this is what the War on Terror is all about – we are in grave danger if we give in to the temptation to turn the issue of liberty versus security into a political club in order to beat one’s political opponent for acting dictatorially or just as bad, unpatriotically. The issue is too important for the kind of lazy generalities being tossed about regarding an absolutist position on civil liberties or aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war. In the end, we must trust each other or perish.

Those “lazy generalities” have supplanted thoughtful argument as each side in the debate has now established their own narrative about domestic spying by this Administration and will brook no change in the parameters of those narratives to reflect new information or an altered perception of the man in the White House who sits atop the national security ziggurat with the capability to do enormous violence to the very concepts of privacy and liberty.

New information such as this should give everyone pause and cause them to re-evaluate their positions:

The Bush administration’s chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush’s order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included “a number of . . . intelligence activities” and that a name routinely used by the administration — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — applied only to “one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more.”

We’ve had other aspects to the overall surveillance program released in dribs and drabs over the past 2 years. Data mining and getting the cooperation of Telecom companies to monitor the “switching stations” where a lot of overseas phone traffic is channeled are evidently two of the elements that make up the “broader operations” connected to the TSP.

What else? Just what is the NSA up to?

There is no agency of the federal government with the potential to do more mischief to our liberty and privacy than the National Security Agency. Anyone who has read William Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace - which described NSA spying on Americans in the 60’s - should think long and hard about the monumental leaps in technology since that time which allow for even more intrusive and thorough efforts to invade our “private space” than ever before.

At the same time, reforms at the NSA have made it less likely that these abuses will take place. Procedures not even thought of back in the 60’s that relate to the way data is handled are supposed to protect American citizens from the kind of snooping done by the agency in the past.

But the reforms will not stop an aggressive executive if he is hell bent on pushing the outside of the envelope of constitutionality and legality by using the capabilities of the NSA to spy on Americans. All we can do is trust that oversight by the intelligence committees in Congress will prevent the President from crossing the line.

At this point, I am unsure if that oversight has been effective. Nor am I convinced that the Administration has been forthright with the intel committees (or the so called “Group of 8″ made up the chair and vice chair of each committee plus the leaders of the House and Senate from both parties) in their description of all of the activities associated with the TSP.

I am fully cognizant of the fact that these intelligence activities represent the most closely held secrets of our government. And despite those on the left who dismiss the idea of giving the enemy an advantage by leaking the existence of these programs and their inner workings, I believe that al-Qaeda has benefited from the leaks which have revealed enough that they may be able to circumvent at least some of our efforts to keep track of them and discover their plans. (The idea that al-Qaeda already knew we’d try to keep track of them is true. What’s silly is the notion that they had much of a clue as to how we’d do it.) For this reason, the irresponsibility of the New York Times and other publications that continue to leak classified information should be condemned.

What all of this back and forth comes down to is the same thing it came down to 20 months ago when the existence of the TSP was leaked by the Times; how much do you trust the man in the White House to protect our civil liberties while carrying out domestic surveillance activities with the potential for harm?

I must admit to being a lot less sanguine today about the desire of those who wield such enormous power to view the balancing act between liberty and security with the seriousness that the rest of us do.

A faithful liberal reader of this site sent me an email asking me to do a post on the charges of perjury being leveled against the Attorney General of the United States. He was extremely worried about the implications such charges had for the country:

As a citizen, the implications of the alleged behavior terrify me. Most Conservatives I personally know don’t defend Mr. Gonzales, but they essentially get off the topic as quickly as possible.

To me, “Rightwing” always had a connotation of Rebellion against Government. If anybody was going to use a shotgun to tell a government official to get off their property, it sure as hell wasn’t a liberal. The very likely extension of the perjury (if true), would have unbelievably damning implications for the W Bush Administration — the type of implications that I would have assumed would have “Rightwing” conservatives stocking up on ammo.

Excellent insight - save the shotgun toting conservative telling the “government” to get off his land. As a metaphor for conservatives wishing to have government take a back seat in people’s lives, it’s fine. However, I’m not sure even a liberal wouldn’t stand up to the government if they felt their private property was threatened.

“Mike” is correct about the right’s relationship with Gonzalez. As with just about anything regarding the Bush Administration these days, he is very difficult to defend. And I don’t think it’s necessarily because of what he’s done as a member of the Administration. One problem is that he may be the most incoherent public official I’ve ever heard. His testimony before Congress on just about anything reveals a man who can’t seem to finish a thought before moving on to the next one. This causes all sorts of problems. It is amazing how many times he is asked to clarify or repeat something simply because it is so difficult to follow his meandering, disjointed responses.

Incoherence is not a criminal offense. Neither is incompetence. But the way the firing of 8 US Attorneys was handled does not reflect well on Gonzalez and his management style. Allowing so much leeway to subordinates in such an important matter and then not being aware of what they were doing (if you believe that) bespeaks a boss without much of a clue as to what was going on in his own office.

The fact is, the Administration has sought to politicize the Department of Justice as they have tried to stamp politics on most every other aspect of government. Of course, few President’s politicized their Justice Department more than Clinton. And given the angry, partisan mood in Congress, this may be the wave of the future for Presidents; taking what used to be a semi-independent cabinet department and turning it in to an adjunct to the White House. In fact, since the Carter Administration, DOJ has progressively become less and less independent with the Clinton Administration going over the top in making Justice just another federal agency.

Anyone remember Johnnie Chung, Charlie Trie and the slew of illegal fundraising cases that the Clinton Justice Department, according to an Inspector General’s audit did not handle correctly? Ties to Chinese intelligence, money laundering at a Buddhist Temple, Commerce Department waivers in exchange for cash - all of these cases were either not pursued or followed up. Clearly, Democrats have extremely short memories about politicizing DOJ actions in the wake of Clinton Administration’s outrageous fundraising activities.

But that’s in the past. What we have today is an Attorney General who can’t seem to explain to Congress the various intelligence activities being carried out by the NSA to catch terrorists before they can strike here in the US. Part of that is certainly the fact that much of it is classified (something the AG offered to clarify in closed session - Democrats refused, wanting their circus to be televised). But beyond that, Gonzalez can’t seem to summon the coherence to differentiate between the already acknowledged “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and “other intelligence activities” being carried out by NSA.

Here is the basis for what the Democrats are calling perjury. They point to Gonzalez testimony in May on the visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed to re-authorize the terrorist surveillance program. The story was told by James Comey who, due to Ashcroft’s illness, was Acting AG at the time. He refused to sign off on what appeared to be a routine re-authorization of the program. And other top DOJ officials and career DOJ attorneys threatened to resign if it was given the go ahead without modifying some of its technical aspects.

Ashcroft preferred allowing his deputy Comey to do his duty because he was in no shape physically (as the left likes to paint the picture, Ashcroft was being browbeaten into approving something while on his deathbed). As Comey testified, he and Ashcroft had decided the morning the AG went into the hospital not to re-authorize the program. Not being aware of this, the White House’s Andy Card and Gonzalez went to the hospital hoping the AG would over ride what they thought was Comey’s decision.

Be that as it may, Gonzalez testified in May that what was being sought from the AG was a re-authorization of the already revealed NSA program and that there was no dispute over that “program” (the word “program” is important as we shall soon see), that the dispute was over another related classified program. Gonzalez exact words:

“[t]here has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations, which I cannot get into.”

It turns out today, that the “other matters” involved in the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program related to a massive, legal, data mining operation:

A fierce dispute within the Bush administration in early 2004 over a National Security Agency warrantless surveillance program was related to concerns about the NSA’s searches of huge computer databases, the New York Times reported today.

The agency’s data mining was also linked to a dramatic chain of events in March 2004, including threats of resignation from senior Justice Department officials and an unusual nighttime visit by White House aides to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Times reported, citing current and former officials briefed on the program.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, one of the aides who went to the hospital, was questioned closely about that episode during a contentious Senate hearing on Tuesday. Gonzales characterized the internal debate as centering on “other intelligence activities” than the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, whose existence President Bush confirmed in December 2005.

Data mining is not illegal as long as the identity of the person whose records are being mined is not captured or revealed - we think. I use that caveat because no one knows exactly how the NSA data mining operation - carried out as a part of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program - actually worked. The speculation on why DOJ attorneys balked at re-authorization of the program at that time centers around the idea that although the data mining was legal, what the NSA wanted to do with the results may have crossed the line of legality.

So is the data mining operation a different “program?” If so, that would seem to put Gonzalez in the clear as far as perjury charges are concerned:

The report of a data mining component to the dispute suggests that Gonzales’s testimony could be correct. A group of Senate Democrats, including two who have been privy to classified briefings about the NSA program, called last week for a special prosecutor to consider perjury charges against Gonzales.

The report also provides further evidence that the NSA surveillance operation was far more extensive than has been acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has consistently sought to describe the program in narrow terms and to emphasize that the effort was legal.

Again, this goes back to Mr. Gonzalez incoherence in trying to differentiate between the NSA efforts at terrorist surveillance (where one party in the communication was overseas and the other here in America) and the massive collection of data which all took place in the US with the cooperation of phone giants like AT&T and Sprint. They allowed NSA to tap into their “switching stations” in order to feed the monster computers who were chewing on trillions of bits of information in order to discern patterns of communication that could have led to a terrorist cell in this country.

But if the data mining were a part of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program, how can they be two separate programs?

I think the most logical explanation is that they were separately reauthorized by DOJ, although probably at the same time. Separate paperwork could mean a separate program to many bureaucrats even though on the surface, it would appear to a lay person that both were part of the same program.

Another logical but unprovable explanation is that the technical aspects of the data mining operation were handled by a different entity than NSA. ABLE DANGER’s data mining was done in Florida out of the headquarters for Special Operations. Whether such a distinction would legally constitute a separate “program,” I haven’t a clue.

Marty Lederman has another explanation:

There was some sort of data mining program going on. Probably not of content, almost certainly not content reviewed by humans. That is to say, it involved computers searching through “meta-data” related to calls and e-mails, looking for certain patterns that might suggest connections to Al Qaeda or to suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. (I have my theories as to what the programs might have been looking for, but don’t want to get into such speculation in this forum. And in any case, my theories are probably way off.)

This data-mining indicated that it might be valuable to do more targeted searches of particular communications “pipelines” (John Yoo’s phrase), looking for more specific information. But that’s where FISA came in. In order to target a particular U.S. person, or to wiretap a particular “facility,” FISA requires that the NSA demonstrate to the FISA court probable cause to believe (i) that the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, and (ii) that each of the facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. 50 U.S.C. 1805(a)(3).

Perhaps, as John Yoo suggests in his book, FISA would have prohibited following up on the leads revealed by the data mining with more targeted wiretaps of suspicious “channels” or “pipelines,” “because we would have no specific al Qaeda suspects, and thus no probable cause.”

Besides all of this, Tom McGuire points out that it would be virtually impossible to make any perjury charges against Gonzalez stick for the simple reason that to do so would expose massive amounts of classified details about our intelligence gather efforts:

Let me ask an obvious question that seems to have eluded some of our Senators and is not broached by the Times - how in the world is a perjury prosecution going to proceed without a massive declassification of these classified and presumably ongoing programs? Will the jury and the public see what Sen. Feingold saw?

The greymail issue was reported by the Times in the context of the Libby trial, so let’s use their definition (if not their spelling):

Graymail is the practice of discouraging a prosecution from proceeding by contending that a defendant may need to disclose classified or sensitive information as part of a full defense. Such an approach can force the government to choose between dropping the prosecution or allowing the information to be disclosed at a trial.

In the Libby case the classified issues were somewhat tangential to the question of whether Libby lied about his interaction with various reporters, but in the Gonzales situation, I can’t imagine how a jury could rule on whether this reasonably be characterized as more than one program without a fair amount of information about the underlying activities.

God knows what a determined Democratic Congress would be willing to do in order to get Gonzalez. But I think McGuire has a good point; the downside in revealing classified data would probably prevent even the Democrats from trying to make the case.

Josh Marshall is unconvinced and believes there’s much more lurking beneath the surface that the White House is desperate to cover up:

As you can see, we now have the first hint of what was at the center of the Ashcroft hospital room showdown. According to the New York Times, what the White House calls the ‘terrorist surveillance [i.e., warrantless wiretap] program’ originally included some sort of largescale data mining.

I don’t doubt that this is true as far as it goes. But this must only scratch the surface because, frankly, at least as presented, this just doesn’t account for the depth of the controversy or the fact that so many law-and-order DOJ types were willing to resign over what was happening. Something’s missing.

Marshall is speculating based on his take of the Bush Administration’s past “illegal” activities (quotes are necessary because no one has proven anything the Bushies done is “illegal”). But to be honest, how such speculation can be considered valid when there is so much we don’t know about the warrantless surveillance and why those same attorneys who were willing to resign over these “other matters” relating to the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program had no problem with Ashcroft re-authorizing the program 20 times previously. Marshall is right. Something doesn’t fit. But whether it involves a “cover up” of other, more intrusive or illegal intelligence programs or a simple desire to hold close the most important secrets vital to our national security cannot be said with anything approaching certainty or even intelligently be guessed at.

Gonzalez should have been allowed to resign months ago over the US Attorney firings. Not because of anything illegal he did but because of the incompetent way it was handled. But Bush stuck with him and now must weather another storm of controversy that weakens him politically (if he could get any weaker). Some might admire the President’s steadfastness (I call it stubbornness) in standing behind his Attorney General. But there must come a point when doing so harms the office of the President as well as the country. That time has long passed. It’s time for Gonzo to go.

There are many disturbing aspects to the Bush Administration that historians will examine and perhaps, if they are charitable, chalk up to an overreaction to the 9/11 attacks or perhaps a zealotry for securing the United States from another, bigger catastrophe.

But there is one facet of the Bush Presidency that historians will universally and roundly condemn; the politicization of governance that, top to bottom, has interfered with many of the vital functions we expect the government to carry out. From the office of the Attorney General, to the Environmental Protection Agency, to NASA, to the National Park Service and more, politics has intruded into what traditionally has been non-political or apolitical functions of government. Science issues seem to be a favorite target of the Bushies for political massaging but other important government operations have also seen the heavy hand of politics interfere with public policy decisions - decisions that affect the health, safety, and security of the American people.

The latest evidence of this practice comes from former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona who testified before a Congressional Committee that the Administration fiddled with public health reports because of political considerations:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional committee today that top officials in the Bush administration repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because of political concerns. Top administration officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he gave, Dr. Carmona said. He was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings, at least one of which included Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, he said.

Just because the Surgeon General is nominally a political appointment in that the post is filled by someone nominated by the President doesn’t mean that the job itself should be politicized. And to believe that reports and studies that would have an immediate impact on the health of American citizens should be held hostage to some myopic political views promoted by the White House is outrageous.

This attitude of politicizing government functions that should be non-political is not confined to health issues. The Administration has also grossly interferred in EPA rulemaking regarding issues such as auto emissions, management of public lands, pesticide bans, and other matters that would ordinarily not be political footballs. And the Administration practice of hiring lobbyists as regulators - 100 such hirings in the last 6 years - smacks of asking the fox to watch the chickens. One such lobbyist turned regulator, Philip Cooney, routinely altered reports by Administration scientists on climate change despite the fact the gentleman had a law degree and knew little of science.

A certain amount of political oversight of federal regulatory agencies is to be expected. The Clinton Administration subjected climate change data from their own EPA to “inter agency review” which indicated a political interest in seeing that the information coming out of various studies was in tune with their message of man-made global warming. George Bush #41 did something similar with AIDS research. But no Administration in memory has politicized the functions of government to the extent that this Administration has.

Should conservatives care about this issue? Altering findings of scientific studies to bring them in line with an Administration’s political agenda is not only dishonest but makes for very inefficient government. It’s a waste of taxpayer’s money to ask a government agency to study a problem and then alter the findings to suit the politics of the moment. Besides, there are legitimate safety and health issues at stake and if the government politicizes these questions to satisfy industry supporters, it stands to reason that the American people will be put at risk for the sake of politics. No responsible conservative can possibly countenance such practices.

The US attorney firings at the Department of Justice are another example of this idea that the Administration has tried to politicize too many government functions that are best left outside the purview of politics. If one were to look at this particular issue separately, it might just be a question of a desire to put a Bush imprimatur on the offices of dozens of federal prosecutors. But when placed in the context of what else has been going on in government over the last six years, it becomes one more example of politics intruding where it has no business intruding. Not only were the firings themselves badly botched but the reasons didn’t make much sense. In fact, one could say that the only reason it was done is because it could be done. And that’s no way to run a railroad - or a government.

There’s nothing illegal in all of this. But charges of incompetence, cronyism, and just plain bad governance have dogged this Administration for several years. And the reason is that when you politicize government where it should be apolitical, the people you depend on to make the government run smoothly and efficiently become more concerned with pleasing their masters in the White House than getting the job done. This leads to inefficiency, error, and a lowering of morale in the permanent bureaucracy.

Perhaps the Bushies just can’t help themselves. If so, the damage their lack of willpower has done to the functioning of government will be difficult to repair when the next President takes office in 2008.

The release of nearly 700 pages of formerly classified documents detailing CIA lawbreaking from the 1950’s to the 1970’s will hardly surprise those who have been critics of the agency. Many of the “black bag” operations, the wiretaps, the surveillance, the unusual experiments on American citizens, have been hinted at or exposed through the years so there are no real bombshells - although I found the process of how these operations were compiled fascinating.

Evidently, former DCIA James Schlessinger ordered the review of CIA operations from the 1950’s on, regarding activities that “fell outside of the Agency’s charter” when he discovered two of the Watergate burglars had help from inside the agency to carry out some of their domestic spying on Democrats. What he discovered - the so-called “Family Jewels” - was placed in a file and the Justice Department was briefed by Schlessinger’s successor, William Colby.

Here is a summary of these illegal activities per a contemporary Justice Department memo obtained by The National Security Archive:

1. Confinement of a Russian defector that “might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws.” (A reference to James Angleton’s holding of defector Yuri Nosenko).

2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott.

3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including current Fox News anchor Britt Hume.

4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael Getler.

5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee.

6. Break-in at the office of a former defector.

7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee.

8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union.

9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China.

10. Behavior modification experiments on “unwitting” U.S. citizens. (LSD and other drug trials)

11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo (on the latter, “no active part” but a “faint connection” to the killers).

12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971.

13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S. citizens in Detroit.

14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor Marchetti.

15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement.

16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff.

17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws.

18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.

These files were slated to be released years ago - except George Tenet refused:

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA’s illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973–the so-called “family jewels.” Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called today’s release “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency.”

“This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency,” commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive’s director.

Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers–hard-target analyses of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy plane.

Those last documents will be a boon to Cold War historians. Down through the years, we’ve had leaks from those analyses but never the whole story of what the CIA knew, what they believed, and what they were telling policy makers. It should make for fascinating reading.

As for the rest, it is apparent that for 25 years or more, the CIA was an agency out of control, beyond the law, and shockingly insensitive to civil liberties.

What new?

I have rarely been surprised or horrified by what the CIA has done down through the years “in our name.” The world is a cold, brutal place and there are many times when the “ends/means argument” is not relevant. Nor is the criticism that there was “no moral difference” between what the Soviets were doing and what the CIA did valid. Of course there was a difference; they were the enemy and what the CIA did most of the time to protect the United States was its own moral justification - survival.

Clearly, this was not always the case. The Agency was a good friend in Latin America of American business interests like United Fruit Company and AT & T. Helping to overthrow governments not friendly to American corporations is a whole other story - one that needs telling. But by and large, CIA actions down through the years have been necessary. Whether we can decide if those actions were “moral” or not is a luxury granted those who can sit in judgement enjoying the benefits of freedoms protected and fought for by some of the most dedicated public servants in our nation’s history.

Domestic spying operations initiated by Nixon brought the Agency great shame, as well it should. Nixon’s paranoia about his enemies should not have led to the kinds of surveillance carried out against American citizens by the CIA. Someone, somewhere should have stood up to the President and told him that what he was suggesting was outside the Agency’s charter and illegal to boot. The fact that no one did - at least no one that we know of - should not surprise us given that list above.

If you enjoy playing “what if” with history, let’s go ahead and put Humphrey in Nixon’s shoes from 1969-72. Thousands of people in the streets calling for not only the defeat of the United States military on the field of battle but also calling for the overthrow of the US government. Clear evidence that a substantial source for funding this movement came from our bitter enemies. Certain involvement in the anti-war movement by the KGB and the GRU (Soviet Military intelligence).

What would Hubert have done? How much differently would he have reacted to this grave threat to our internal security? It certainly puts a little different light on things when you take Nixon’s name away and substitute the beloved Humphrey. Anyone who says that Humphrey would have done none of the things Nixon did or that everything he did would have been on the up and up is not being rational. Presidents do what they feel they have to do to protect the country. And Humphrey would have been no different. Not being a paranoid, I imagine a lot less of what Nixon did would have been going on. But I can imagine Humphrey feeling it necessary to open mail and perhaps utilize the CIA’s expertise in “black bag” operations.

A fascinating exercise but not really germane. For some, the revelations contained in the documents will validate a world view where the CIA was “off the reservation” and out of control. For others, the documents will be interesting historical curiosities and nothing else. But somewhere, there is the truth. And revealing that truth is always a good thing no matter where you stand.

I have an Op Ed up at the Washington Examiner about earmarks and the Duke Cunningham scandal.

A sample:

Indeed, there have been many supporters of earmarks in both parties who have basically told taxpayers with questions about specific spending requests to take a hike. Here’s what Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said of the Porkbusters citizens group that has exposed many of these spending outrages: “I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble since Katrina.” Clearly, it is a sensitive subject for both parties on Capitol Hill.

Alas, it would seem likely our lawmakers will take such advice to heart rather than resisting the urge to feather their own nests at the expense of the people who elected them.