Right Wing Nut House

Quick! For God’s Sake! Someone check and see if employees for the voting machine manufacturer Diebold have been ANYWHERE NEAR ITALY IN THE PAST 6 MONTHS!

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi overtook former European Commission President Romano Prodi in Italian elections and now leads in voting for both houses of parliament, projected results showed. The final outcome is too close to call.

Berlusconi had a narrow advantage of 0.3 percentage point in voting for the Chamber of Deputies that would give him 340 seats in the 630-seat house, projections based on a partial count of votes showed. Berlusconi’s coalition also held a narrow majority in the Senate.

Initial exit polls showed Prodi winning the Chamber and a 20-seat majority in the Senate. Italians voted using a new proportional voting system similar to the one that produced 52 governments in 48 years until it was abandoned in 1994.

Official counting of the votes continues. With a third of the votes for the Chamber counted, that tally gives Prodi a lead over Berlusconi with 52 percent to 47 percent.

Oh! The humanity of it! Don’t these Repuglithicans have any shame at all? It’s all an eerie episode of deja vu - the first blush of victory for the moonbats in Italy as exit polls show a sweeping victory for the left:

Bad news for Berlusconi: according to the first exit poll, Prodi’s center-left leads 54 - 49 percent over Berlusconi’s center-right at the Chamber of Representatives. At the Senate, the situation is the same. But, consider that this is the first of many exit polls. Much can change.

As we all know, EXIT POLLS ARE NEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER, WRONG!! Which means, there’s only one possible explanation in all the universe for this…this…this…perfidious turn of events.

Gotta be Diebold.

How low can ChimpyMcBushyhitler sink? And has anyone seen Karl Rove lately? This has got Rove’s pawprints all over it. It’s a Rovian operation, top to bottom I say!

I demand a recount…at least one. And by all that is good and holy, we will keep counting and recounting until by God the results come out the true way, the correct way, the way ordained by the Great God Gaia.

If I were those Italian commies, I’d start warming up the lawyers in the bullpen, getting ‘em ready to jump into court the minute the vote is official. It worked like a charm for our Democratic party here. Of course, they didn’t win. But by saying the election was stolen, no one will ever be able to say it was your loony ideas, crappy candidates, piss poor planning, and stupid strategy that was responsible for your loss.

And at the very least, it will make you feel better, right?

UPDATE

For a little more serious take on the Italian elections, see Chad Evan’s excellent stuff at In the Bullpen.

Also, PJ Media will be updating results all night as they come in courtesy of Stefania Lapenna.

UPDATE II

It appears that Italy will have a split government with the PM slot going to Prodi by virtue of a razor thin win in the lower house.

Actually, what my lefty trolls seem not to understand (no surprise - I wrote this piece in English, not moonbatese) is I wasn’t necessarily cheering on Berlusconi as much as I was pointing to exit polls that showed Prodi’s center-left coalition winning by at least 7 points. Obviously, this didn’t happen which gives the lie to liberal cants after the 2004 election that the contest simply MUST have been fixed because of the skewed exit polls.

And for the commenter who mentioned the Washington State governors race, almost to a blog, conservatives in the sphere urged the Republican to concede after the first re-count. This despite the laughably fallacious move by King County Dems to count 2500 votes that they suddently “found” 2 days after the election.

There’s the difference. After the 2004 election, liberal blogs like Kos and Americablog were not only calling for a recount in Ohio despite a margin of victory by Bush that was twice what state law called for, but also that Diebold hacked voting machines and gave votes to Bush that were actually cast for Kerry.

Sore losing has become a staple of the Democrats in national elections. I wonder what margin of victory in 2008, if any, will be enough to prevent Dems from screaming “cheater” like 5 year old little girls?

Just clicked on the old sitemeter and found this:

Total: 678,806

Average Per Day 2,534

Average Visit Length 2:05

Last Hour 165

Today 1,133

This Week 17,736

PAGE VIEWS

Total 1,000,020

Average Per Day 3,963

Average Per Visit 1.6

Last Hour 269

Today 1,597

This Week 27,740

THAT’S ONE MILLION PAGE VIEWS FOR THE HOUSE!

I can remember back when my old Blogspot site was getting 25 visitors a day and I wondered if anyone would ever read anything that I was writing.

Back then, I’m glad they didn’t. Some of that early stuff was pretty horrible. Writing, it turns out, is much more like playing a musical instrument than you might think - constant practice makes you better. Or at least, more readable.

Many thanks to all my regular readers and I sincerely hope anyone who visits this site leaves with a little different perspective on the issues of the day.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Did the lead editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post that defended the President’s authorizing the declassification of a secret NIE report on Iraq WMD misstate the facts surrounding the Administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence?

The entire left wing of the blogosphere believes so. Jay Rosen believes so. Even Tom McGuire, still doggedly carrying his lantern in daylight looking for one honest man in the Fitzgerald prosecution, believes so.

Certainly the figure at the center of the firestorms believes so. Three years ago, Joe Wilson was a nobody, an ex-Ambassador just trying to start a new business venture using his extensive contacts in Africa in order to facilitate the usual introductions and business deals, oiling the machinery of international trade as only someone with Mr. Wilson’s credentials is able to do. Then a request from the CIA; we understand from talking to your wife that you’re planning a trip to Africa. As long as you’re going to be there to establish your business contacts, why not visit some old friends in Niger and look into this cockamamie story about Saddam trying to purchase yellowcake uranium in order to reconstitute his nuclear program?

Wilson denies to this day that his wife had anything to do with his being selected by the CIA for this routine assignment, despite sworn testimony and memos to the contrary. At best, he may be engaging in a little wishful thinking, ashamed in a macho sort of way that his wife was assisting him in furthering his career.

At worst, he’s a baldfaced liar.

Regardless of who pushed his name forward or even what he discovered while in Niger (which to this day is a matter of fierce dispute), it is the aftermath of Wilson’s trip that has brought us to where we are today. And the fact is that Wilson, the lefty blogs, and especially Jay Rosen have missed the biggest story of the young century in their efforts to uncover the minutia, the nuggets of selected, disjointed information that writers have leapt upon like ravenous beasts, devouring, regurgitating as “proof” of their conspiracy theories, the evil machinations of evil men who “fabricated” intelligence on our way to war.

Perhaps the biggest purveyor of these fact flakes that make up the rickety structure of conspiracy is Murray Waas, writing for the National Journal among other publications. Jay Rosen, a godfather of New Media journalism, calls Waas “our Bob Woodward” as if one more self-important, insufferably arrogant practitioner of “gotchya” journalism was necessary in Washington. Waas has become a hero to left for his uncanny ability to leap to the most outrageous conclusions when uncovering the tiniest of “facts” regarding everything from the Fitzgerald investigation to the latest illegal leak from the intelligence community. Waas has built a house of cards about White House conspiracies based on the careful accumulation of “evidence” which may or may not indicate a pattern of deceit depending just how much one wishes to see when looking into the shadows and fog surrounding most of his information.

But in concentrating on the mote in the other fellow’s eye, Waas has missed the knife sticking out of the back of the Bush Administration; a knife planted by a group of leakers - organized or not - at the CIA who, unelected though they were, took it upon themselves to first try and prevent the execution of United States policy they were sworn to carry out and failing that, trying to destroy in the most blatantly partisan manner an Administration with which they had a policy disagreement.

How can anyone possibly understand the motivations, the actions, or the thinking in the White House during this crucial time without taking into account the war being conducted against them by the CIA?

In truth, those predisposed to believe the worst about Bush chalk up all the maneuvering on the part of the White House to “covering up” their supposed misrepresentations and exaggerations of pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the war. But what if there is a different explanation? What if prior to the invasion, the Bush Administration was roiled in a policy dispute between elements at the CIA and national security hawks in the White House and Department of Defense? What if this policy dispute got so contentious that the White House lost faith in what the intelligence community was telling it about Iraq? And what if following the revelations about Saddam’s lack of WMD, elements at the CIA worked to exact revenge on the Administration by illegally leaking cherry-picked analyses at odds with what the Administration had been telling the American people?

This is the “big story” not being reported by the press, the blogs, or even Jay Rosen’s golden boy Murray Waas. It is a familiar story in Washington, a mix of arcanity and idiocy, of the high affairs of state with the lowliest of backstabbing bureaucracies. And it is a story that while not absolving the Bush Administration of some of its actions, certainly gives background and context that is so sorely lacking in this obsession with minutia that passes for serious analysis in both the new and old media.

Prior to the Iraq War, there were two schools of thought about Saddam; a realpolitik view which held that Saddam was a monster but was a useful counterweight to Islamic radicalism opposed by what has become known as the neo-conservative view that Saddam was a sponsor of terror and that regime change could transform the Middle East. The “we can use Saddam” clique at the CIA had opposed the toppling of the monster since the 1991 Gulf War when a similar debate roiled the Administration of George H.W. Bush. Amazingly, the players back then were some of the same names that are at odds today.

Howard Fineman of Newsweek lays out some of this history:

The “we-can-use Saddam” faction held the upper hand right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait a decade ago. Until then, the administration of Bush One (with its close CIA ties) had been hoping to talk sense with Saddam. Indeed, the last American to speak to Saddam before the war was none other than Joe Wilson, who was the State Department charge’ d’affaires in Baghdad. Fluent in French, with years of experience in Africa, he remained behind in Iraq after the United States withdrew its ambassador, and won high marks for bravery and steadfastness, supervising the protection of Americans there at the start of the first Gulf War. But, as a diplomat, he didn’t want the Americans to “march all the way to Baghdad.” Cheney, always a careful bureaucrat, publicly supported the decision. Wilson was for repelling a tyrant who grabbed land, but not for regime change by force.

That history is one reason why, in the eyes of the anti-Saddam crowd, Wilson was a bad choice to investigate the question of whether Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa.

(emphasis mine)

Do you think it would have been helpful if in all the millions of words written about the Wilson/Plame affair, a few paragraphs had been devoted to this singular, important fact? Does this color Mr. Wilson’s motivations in any way? At the very least, the consumer of news should be given the opportunity to assess this information for themselves and make their own judgment about whether there was any ax to grind on Mr. Wilson’s or Mr. Cheney’s part when push came to shove over Wilson’s self-aggrandizing editorial in the New York Times.

Then there was the anger and resentment at the CIA over the Bush Administration’s efforts to make the agency more accountable for the pre-war intelligence it was sending its way. In the best of times, the process of gathering, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence is fraught with uncertainty. But these were not the best of times. The realpolitik clique at the CIA was suspected - rightly or wrongly - of doing a little intelligence twisting of its own especially with regard to Saddam’s links to al Qaeda. A secret group at the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans was set up specifically to examine (or re-examine) Iraq intelligence relating to its WMD programs and possible links to terror groups. The reason for the formation of this group according to the CIA was to shape and manipulate intelligence to give the Administration a false justification for going to war against Saddam.

Is that the real story? Or had the Administration become so frustrated and distrustful of the Iraq group at CIA who was feeding policymakers intelligence reports at odds with what they were hearing elsewhere? The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq which, it was revealed this past weekend, was declassified by the President and disseminated to reporters in the aftermath of the war indicated that Saddam did indeed have weapons of mass destruction, may have been trying to re-initialize his nuclear program, had possible links to al Qaeda, and was a threat to his neighbors.

Other documents recently translated from the millions of captured archives of the Saddam regime are beginning to paint a picture also at odds with the CIA assessment that Iraq had no ties to al Qaeda. This is a developing story and certainly bears watching - not that this information is being reported on or given much shrift by many in the media.

This was after all, not some arcane debate over trifles. What the Administration was dealing with in the aftermath of 9/11 was nothing less than the safety and security of the United States. The Office of Special Plans may have been bitterly opposed by the CIA, seeing as they apparently did an intrusion on their bureaucratic turf. But the elected leaders of the country, charged with defending the United States against threats (not to mention radically altering policy to include preventive war as a measure to insure that defense) at the very least thought itself in a bind on Iraq largely because they believed the CIA was not doing its job.

Right or wrong, isn’t this part of the story too? When talking about “twisting” and even “fabricating” intelligence (a term that is used willy nilly by Bush critics despite the fact that there is not one shred of proof that any such thing occurred), don’t you think it important to give that story a little context by informing people about the extraordinary level of mistrust and resentment between both the White House and the CIA? One can argue who was at fault. But when the big picture is being subsumed by trivial revelations about the tiniest of details regarding what the White House was doing with Iraq War intel, a distorted view of what really happened is bound to emerge.

And this is especially true when, during the months leading up to the 2004 election, we witnessed what can only be termed an attempted coup by the very same faction at the CIA who had been fighting the Administration in the lead up to the war. This partisan campaign by unelected bureaucrats to defeat a sitting president was called “unprecedented” and characterized as having a “viciousness and vindictiveness” not witnessed on the Washington scene in many years. The Daily Telegraph commented on the CIA campaign to unseat the President in October of 2004:

A powerful “old guard” faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such “viciousness and vindictiveness” in a battle between the White House and the agency

The Wall Street Journal went even further, publishing this editorial following the confirmation of new DCIA Porter Goss:

Congratulations to Porter Goss for being confirmed last week as the new Director of Central Intelligence. We hope he appreciates that he now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the CIA is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush Administration.

We wish we were exaggerating. It’s become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush Administration look bad.

Their latest improvised explosive political device blew up yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, in a story proclaiming that the agency had warned back in January 2003 of a possible insurgency in Iraq. This highly selective leak (more on that below) was conveniently timed for two days before the first Presidential debate.

The leaks were condemned by one of the most brilliant men ever to serve the United States in any capacity, Admiral Bobby Inman, who worked in the intelligence community for more than 30 years:

I was utterly appalled during the 2004 election cycle at the number of clearly politically motivated leaks from intelligence organizations — mostly if not all from CIA — that appeared to me to be the most crass thing I had ever seen to influence the outcome of an election. I never saw it quite as harsh as it was. And clearing books to be published anonymously — there was no precedent for it. I started getting telephone calls from CIA retirees when Bush appointed Negroponte, talking about how vindictive the administration was in trying to punish CIA, and I was again sort of dismayed by the effort to play politics including with information that was classified. What is the impact on younger workers who see the higher-ups engaged in this kind of leaking?

Inman is speaking about the book Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer (published under the author’s nom de plum “Anonymous” when it came out weeks before the election) that skewered the Administration over everything from the war against Bin Laden to Iraq.

This, of course, is the context of the entire Wilson/Plame affair. And the question arises what should the White House have done? Clearly, the effort to counteract Wilson’s charges had both political and policy overtones. But Wilson had been shopping his “story” for months prior to the publication of his Niger adventure in the Times. What appeared to be more of the same effort to “get” the President by the CIA couldn’t go unanswered. Scooter Libby is paying for the White House trying to do something about the leaking and sniping done by the Administration’s partisan opponents and others may as well. But to posit the notion that the Wilson/Plame imbroglio took place in a vacuum and was a matter of sheer “revenge” is lunacy. The facts do not support such a claim. But you’d never know it because of the curious reluctance on the part of both the mainstream press and the New Media to face up to the consequences of CIA perfidy in the lead up to the election.

I honestly don’t know how much of the millions of words written about pre-war intelligence are true and how much is fantasy, a construct of thousands of unrelated parts that are shaped and shaded to fit into a conspiracy of monstrous proportions. But by failing to illuminate this story by placing all the revelations in the context of the continuing war by the CIA against the Bush Administration, an enormous disservice is done to the American people. Because in the end, in order to find the truth of the matter, you have to understand the motivating factors of both sides. And the way writers are approaching the story now, that just isn’t happening.

Put yourself in Iran’s place.

Every day, you read how nutty George Bush is, how he’s now got a “messianic complex,” how he believes the end times are here and the rapture at hand, and what a bloodthirsty war monger the President of the United States truly is.

Then Sy Hersh delivers a bombshell of a report saying that this crazy crusader is actually thinking of detonating a nuclear device on your sovereign territory. You put two and two together and come up with…a little bluff of your own:

Iran on Sunday brushed aside what it called a U.S. “psychological war” against its nuclear program after a published report described Pentagon planning for possible military strikes against Iranian atomic facilities. A report by influential investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, citing unnamed current and former officials, said Washington has stepped up plans for possible attacks on Iranian facilities to curb its atomic work.

The article said the United States was considering using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran.

“This is a psychological war launched by Americans because they feel angry and desperate regarding Iran’s nuclear dossier,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.

“We will stand by our right to nuclear technology. It is our red line. We are ready to deal with any possible scenario. Iran is not afraid of threatening language,” he added.

That last bit is a little bluff of their own. If we decided to strike - conventional or nuclear - there isn’t much the Iranians could do to stop us and they know it. So the “scenario” involving severe degradation of their nuclear program is one that they are not only unprepared for but fear the most. And as far as them not being afraid of threatening language, I daresay the lights were burning late in the Defense Ministry last night in Tehran.

Some Middle Eastern analysts see a little triangular diplomacy among China, Russia, and the US as a way to stop the Iranian nuke program. Their reasoning goes thusly:

As much as China and Russia engage in the diplomatic maneuvers to pressure Iran, they are not expected to toe the U.S. party line. Their own respective great power agendas play a silent, but potent role in their maneuvers involving Iran. Russia is getting increasingly frustrated about the U.S. “crowding” the immediate neighborhood. Russian President Vladimir Putin bristled at the criticism that the recent elections in Belarus were rigged, simply because they did not bring about the breakup of ties between Russia and what the Western media derisively depict as “the last dictatorship in Europe.” Russia also remains on the defensive about the proposition from the West that it is backing away from democracy. U.S.-Russian competition in Central Asia has become rather nasty.

China is equally annoyed at the Bush administration’s intermittent depiction of it as competitor or even as a “potential adversary.” Beijing was displeased by reports that the recently signed U.S.-India nuclear deal was also aimed at “containing” China.

In view of these conflicting agendas, both Russia and China envision their ties with the U.S. as becoming increasingly competitive. Consequently, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program emerges as an issue where the two countries have ample maneuvering space to extract a “grand bargain” with Washington regarding issues that are of great strategic significance to each of them.

China especially might see pulling American chestnuts out of the fire as just the leverage it needs to get concessions on regional issues, perhaps even on Taiwan if we get worried enough about Iranian nukes. And Putin, lowering the iron fist ever so slowly on his people, could see helping to get an agreement on Iranian nukes as a way to get those pesky American human rights and democracy advocates off of his back.

All of this depends, of course, on America not taking pre-emptive and early action against the Iranian nuclear sites. While the temptation to do so might be great, whatever we give up with regards to Russia and China may look like a great deal if we can avoid the consequences of bombing Iran. In that respect, diplomacy still looks like the best bet - especially since we have at least 3 years and perhaps as long as 5 before Iran presents us with their little nuclear fait accompli.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and their flighty, on-again-off-again chief Mohamed ElBaradei will be paying a visit to the Iranians this week to try and get inspections going again. What good they can do at this point may be ephemeral in that the Iranians have been able to conceal most of their program from the prying eyes of the IAEA, probably developing a so-called “two track” program that includes a civilian component that is relatively open and a military one that is clandestine.

As long as we can keep the Iranians guessing about our response, the more cautious and off balance they will be. That can only bode well for any negotiations that are sure to be initiated after the UN meets at the end of this month to once again discuss sanctions against Iran.

As much as I’ve ragged on them in the past, there’s a soft spot in my heart for the Washington Post.

As a national newspaper (much moreso than the New York Times - especially lately) the Post provides unparalleled coverage of international events. Their foreign correspondents are without peer in distilling news from abroad into readable, timely articles that give both context and information with a minimum of bias.

With several pronounced exceptions on the Iraq War that I’ve pointed out, their coverage has been a cut above that of most papers in the War on Terror. I’ve taken issue mostly with their stable of liberal columnists and their national security coverage which is dependent on unsourced leaks from disgruntled intelligence agency personnel and one reporter - Walter Pincus - who may be in league with Ray McGovern’s moonbat crew; the Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity (VIPS). In addition, their political coverage has been lacking a certain perspective on the national agenda, as well as supplying a healthy bias against Republicans, which has made the paper quite the shallow read when it comes to domestic issues. (Occasionally, they run a nice think piece in the Sunday edition but day-to-day coverage is lacking).

Their editorial page is, for the most part, reasonable although here again their bias in favor of the Democratic party is pretty obvious. But Washington is a “company town” and that “company” is the permanent, unelected government of bureaucrats who scurry hither and thither, gossiping and chatting the day away, passing information on to Post reporters who gleefully report the foibles and fables of the elite. For whatever reasons, people who are Republicans in Washington end up on “K” Street while people who end up in the agencies tending to the welfare state are Democrats. There are a lot more of the latter than the former to be sure. Washington is the most Democratic city in the country, even moreso than Chicago. It is simply the nature of the beast that they would reflect the bias of the vast majority of their readers.

During the 1980’s when I lived in the Washington area, I looked forward every Sunday to getting a copy of the Washington Post and spending the entire morning poring over the sections, gleaning information from a variety of sources while taking great pleasure in some fine writing and penetrating analysis. I understand the Sunday edition has shrunk considerably over the years which saddens me but, given the state of the newspaper business, I’m hardly surprised by it. It just seems a shame that a resource so valuable should lose some of its luster due to a falloff in readers.

Why the sudden love note about the Post? I read this editorial this morning and remembered why the Post is still a fairly honest voice in our national debate. We might not like some of the news they write but that’s not their fault; events can be unwelcome and they are, after all, just the messengers.

I’m glad to see the Post out front of the pack in their web coverage as it appears most of their features are also published on their webpage. And while their initial experiment in blogging may have been a total disaster, word is out that they are looking to hire both a liberal and conservative blogger - which should make for some interesting back and forth between the two if nothing else.

Yes, I spend a lot of time and effort criticizing the Post and other print media. But that’s only because I love the tradition that newspapers represent. They offer a thoughtful take on the world around us that television news cannot match. And they are vital to the national debate in that they offer editorial space to all sides of an issue, allowing one’s thinking to churn, to ripen, and finally crystallize into an intelligent, intellectually defensible position. Television news cannot do that for you. Only a newspaper can.

It’s Sunday. And I miss my Washington Post today…

If you plan on perusing lefty websites today, I highly recommend you put on a hazmat suit and take along a Geiger counter. Also, please make sure you’re wearing a good pair of cowboy boots because not only is it getting thicker and deeper than usual in moonbat land, but many of the denizens of the fever swamps have detonated their own weapon of mass stupidity regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons by the United States to destroy the underground infrastructure of Iran’s nuclear program.

I personally think military action to take out Iranian nukes is self-defeating. But don’t tell the Iranians that. In fact, the more uncertain President Ahmadinejad is about our intentions, the better.

This little stratagem about keeping the Iranians guessing about our intentions seems to be lost on our rabid dog left wing who have swallowed what is almost certainly a deliberately planned leak on our military options against the mullahs and regurgitated the most hysterical nonsense this side of the Scooter Libby story:

John Aravosis: “Bush is out of control.”

Kevin Drum: “It may or may not be a bluff, but the PR campaign for an air strike against Iran is clearly moving into high gear.”

The Mahablog: “Our President, George W. Bush, has a messiah complex…”

HuffPo: “Imagine the unimaginable: George Bush becoming the first president to use nuclear weapons on another state since Harry Truman, and get this, without even declaring war.”

May we have a little sanity please? Dan Reihl:

To not plan for a possible military option as regards Iran’s nuclear program would be foolish. Emphasis my own, of course one plans for many contingencies. Said planning is as much a part of the diplomatic dialog as anything else and Think Progress and the AP are basically carrying the White House’s water by spreading the report. Too bad they can’t do it less sensationally.

Mr. Reihl tries valiantly to correct the record on what exactly Sy Hersh said in his anonymously sourced article but I fear he is getting the same result as whippoorwill singing in a whirlwind:

We don’t need mushroom clouded brains thinking about and discussing options for Iran just now. We need reasoned debate on a topic which poses a serious risk to world peace. An oil-rich country with no current need for nuclear energy appears determined to develop a nuclear capability, after having declared their desire to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

No reasonable nation has gone on record as suggesting stopping them is a bad thing, most find it necessary. Planning for that is the prudent step. Characterizing it as demon, warmongering Bush taking up nuclear arms to confront Iran is not only silly, it’s harmful and misleading for the necessary discussion at hand.

Actually, Think Progress has a good round-up of a series of leaks in the past couple of weeks all designed to make the Iranian leadership very, very uncomfortable. Despite their bluster about nothing being able to stop their efforts to develop their “peaceful” use of nuclear energy, the fact is they are scared witless about an American strike. They realize that the military would insist on not only taking out their nuclear infrastructure but also their air defense system and probably their naval capabilities as well. Saddam never did fully rebuild his air defense system following the punishment it took during the Gulf War in 1991. And the Iranians need their navy in order to project the kind of regional hegemony to which they aspire.

One thing for sure; these leaks are putting enormous pressure on the domestic political situation in Iran which now pits the radicals who have pretty much taken over all top government positions against the not-so-radicals who used to run things and are mightily upset that Ahamdinejad has blown their nuclear cover and bollixed things up on the international stage so that Iran is once again a pariah nation:

Many Iranians are critical of Ahmadinejad’s forays into international affairs and his diplomatic blundering. The most intense and meaningful criticism has come from relatively centrist figures who represent an older generation of politicians - former Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, for example. They have spoken out against the undoing of their work, particularly the painstaking restoration of Iran’s relations with the international community.

[...]

The international isolation Iran is facing due to its intransigence has contributed to the growth of fissures within Iran’s body politic. In an effort to end public debate on this subject and criticism of the executive, Rafsanjani announced at a March 8 meeting of the Assembly of Experts - a popularly elected body of 86 clerics tasked with supervising the supreme leader - that it was time for national unity in the face of “enemy” plots. Divisive comments, he said, undermined national unity.

The next day, Ahmadinejad accused unnamed Iranians of being agents of an enemy trying to divide the country. These efforts, he continued, were connected with the desire to undermine Iran’s nuclear pursuits. And on March 10, Friday prayer leader Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami’s sermon in Tehran, which was broadcast across the country by state radio, shed light on the political coloring of the call for unity. Khatami (no relation to the former president) noted that the current nuclear policy was not Ahmadinejad’s alone and had been shaped years earlier. “The decision was first taken during the previous government’s term of office. The current government is implementing the same decision now.” As for domestic critics, he said, “When the time comes, the great Iranian nation will give a harsh response to the insiders who move in the same direction as the enemies, just as it has given decisive responses to foreigners.”

And into this charged up atmosphere comes the anti-Bush forces screaming, in effect, that it is unfair not to tell Iran that we have no intention of using nuclear weapons or initiate a military strike of any sort. The left calls this “confidence building” - which is a pretty good descriptive except the only people’s confidence such a tactic builds is our own domestic moonbats whose opinion and confidence in their own superior moral certitude is affirmed. Meanwhile, our enemies snicker behind their hands and keep building their nuclear capability.

This past week has seen the Jack-in-the-Box left in all of it’s glorious moonbattery jumping up and down over a story that not only has been reported before but which promises to actually vindicate Bush in his denial that he ever told anyone to leak Valerie Plame’s name.

Given what’s at stake in Iran, I would hope that whatever the Administration decides to do about it, most of us from both the right and left would be supportive. I honestly don’t think the military option is in play in any serious way. Only if we discovered that Iran was closer to building a bomb than we thought or if they gave reliable indications that they were planning on using such a weapon against Israel or the United States would we go with a military option.

And there is absolutely zero chance - zero, zip, nada - of the US using nuclear weapons on Iran. Even with nukes that will detonate below the surface, there is going to be massive radioactive fallout drifting toward Russia - something I’m sure would cause President Putin to cancel his membership in the Official US Fan Club.

But for the loony left, it’s just one more way to bash Bush. So let them have their fun. It’s actually playing into the Administration’s strategy to give the Iranians pause and make them realize we can cause serious damage to both their military infrastructure and political unity.

From our friends at the Times of London, a possible answer to a mystery and the total destruction of some pretty loony conspiracy theories; the riddle of who forged the so-called Niger Uranium Documents may have been solved:

TWO employees of the Niger embassy in Rome were responsible for the forgery of a notorious set of documents used to help justify the Iraq war, an official investigation has allegedly found.

According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country.

The documents, which emerged in 2002, were used in a US State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s weapons programme to build the case for war. They were denounced as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shortly before the 2003 invasion.

Is that the end of the story? Hardly. Because what this investigation also confirmed - and buttressed by the the British Butler Commission as well as our own Senate Select Committee Investigation - was that another document that was not a forgery was used as a basis for the claim that Saddam was trying to purchase uranium from Niger:

Some time in 2002, however, they obtained another apparently incriminating document, the source said. This was a letter purporting to be from al-Zahawie relating to a visit to Niger in 1999 to discuss the possible supply of uranium. This did not constitute evidence that Niger had agreed to supply yellowcake but it did indicate Saddam was trying to obtain it.

The letter, deemed “credible” by the Butler inquiry into Iraq intelligence, appears to be the evidence that led to Bush’s claim in January 2003 that the British had “learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.

(emphasis mine)

It turns out that the French had a paid agent who was trying to bilk French intelligence into buying a forged document about an actual uranium sale to Saddam from Niger. This was after the agent had established his bona fides by handing over an authentic document about a visit to Niger by the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican (a man obviously with a lot of time on his hands).

The French, smelling a rat, spotted the forgery immediately and refused to pay. It was later in 2002 that the French obtained another authentic document this time detailing the meeting in 1999 between the same Iraqi Ambassador and a former Niger Prime Minster where unspecified trade topics were discussed. Since Niger’s exports are extremely limited - cowpeas, livestock, and onions as well as uranium - it doesn’t take an expert to guess what commodity was under discussion.

Just for fun, let’s look at those dreaded 16 words one more time from the SOTU in 2003:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

For the mentally challenged among you, let me sum up: 1) a document is passed to the British government from the French authenticating claims that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger, 2) This is exactly what Bush said. 3) Joe Wilson is a scurvy liar.

Does this really matter?

Of course not - not in any way that counts. I suppose for the record, historians will have a good laugh at the lefties who twisted their panties into knots screaming that Bush lied about Saddam and Niger uranium. But in the current political climate where the impeachment drums are starting to beat louder and louder the closer we get to November, this will be lost in the shuffle and the lie will continue to be told. Or, as is the case when one of their strawmen is knocked down, the left will pretend they never mentioned it and move on to the next meme.

In trying to decide how to respond to this thoughtful, yet seriously flawed article by David Neiwert, I had my pick of several different threads where the author, in an effort to ferret out what he considers to be “racism” and “hate” on right wing blogs, actually reveals some profound truths about the left and their total cluelessness regarding what constitutes legitimate debate in a free society about race and public policy.

Neiwert’s thesis - that right wing “movement” bloggers are “transmitting” the very same themes and ideas that fascists and racists espouse only dressed up in mainstream intellectual couture - is an old one, as ancient as similar lines of attack followed by the left against William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and the bête noire of liberals Ronald Reagan. The assault is based on false assumptions, setting up straw men, towering intellectual conceits, and a moral absolutism with respect to one’s own privileged frame of reference regarding issues of race, class, and politics.

It should be noted that Mr. Neiwert has done more than most to expose the dark underbelly of the extreme right, writing extensively on the Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist movements in the Northwest. His book, Death on the Fourth of July was well received and praised for its penetrating look at hate groups and hate crimes.

That said, Mr. Neiwert should be ashamed of himself. By trying to connect right wing bloggers and the positions they advocate on the issues, however tangentially, to the haters, the Hitler lovers, the cross burners, and the racial purists, he demonstrates an arrogance commonplace on the left where it has become de rigueur to simply mouth the words “racist” and “fascist” in order to cut off debate on the issues and destroy any moral authority to which their opponents might aspire.

Mr. Neiwert sets up his hit piece by recalling his visits to a Neo-Nazi compound before it was shut down by Southern Poverty Law Center, a truly unsung organization, having done more to eliminate race and ethnic hate groups through the creative use of lawsuits than even the government. After this promising beginning, Neiwert descends rapidly into madness:

The compound represented an era when white supremacists were relegated to the fringes of American society. And while their tireless efforts to promote racial hatred were now muted, their simultaneous efforts to gain mainstream acceptance — particularly by disguising themselves and muting their core beliefs — had obviously begun to take root.

What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about “reverse discrimination,” calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.

How many straw men can one writer set up in a paragraph or two?

First of all, it might be helpful to give Mr. Neiwert a little history lesson. “Bashing welfare recipients” (welfare reform) “attacking” affirmative action and complaining about (quotes please) “reverse discrimination” - as if such a thing didn’t exist - calling for the “elimination” (?) of immigrants (immigration reform) are in fact, conservative issues. The only problem with Mr. Neiwert’s notions of insidious issue creep by racists and fascists into the mainstream of conservatism is that he is blaming the responsible right for the fact that the racists adopted these issues, mixed them into an unrecognizable porridge of nauseating half truths and bowdlerized slogans, and spewed the result onto the internet and elsewhere trying to appear reasonable.

In short, while trying to connect Neo-Nazis to conservatives, Mr. Neiwert makes a classic, some would say stupid mistake; he puts the cart before the horse. It was not conservatives who adopted these issues from the extremists; it was the other way around.

I would suggest to Mr. Neiwert that his next article deal with the adoption by the Communist Party USA of many liberal issues such as racial justice, anti-war agitation, universal health care, and reigning in corporate power. Or better yet, he might want to take on Osama Bin Laden and that worthy’s peculiar habit of regurgitating liberal talking points about America, the war, and western civilization every time he makes a videotape.

It should make for some interesting reading. Especially the part where I’m sure Mr. Neiwert will point out that communists don’t “hate” anyone nor, for that matter, does Osama desire anything more than America leave his poor, benighted beheading jihadis alone. Yet Communists have proved themselves over the years to be inveterate haters of everything that we Americans - even patriotic liberals like Mr. Neiwert - love about this country; freedom and liberty for the individual. Any bets on what would happen if the CPUSA actually managed to seize power here? There hasn’t been a communist revolution yet that didn’t prominently feature gulags and “re-education camps” in their takeover brochures. Osama, of course, has his own axes to grind - literally.

Not content with straining every effort to connect conservative bloggers to hate groups, Neiwert then sets up the most extraordinary canard I’ve ever seen on a lefty website: that, in fact, this “transmission” of hate issues into the conservative mainstream has already happened and that righty bloggers have in fact become closet racists only awaiting the right moment for their bigotry to show itself in all its glory:

The main mechanism for converting mainstream conservatives into right-wing extremists and white nationalists is a process I call transmission: extremist ideas and principles are repackaged for mainstream consumption, stripped of overt racism and hatefulness and presented as ordinary politics. As these ideas advance, they create an open environment for the gradual adoption of the core of bigotry that animates them.

This strategy was first enunciated by Patrick Buchanan back in 1989, in a nationally syndicated column that expressed a level of kinship with David Duke, who at that point was building momentum in a bid to win the Louisiana governorship. Buchanan thought the GOP overreacted to Duke and his Nazi “costume” by denouncing him; he urged:

Take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks.

It was a simple formula: Look at the issues that attract white supremacist votes, strip out the racism (or anything inimical to good public relations for the GOP) and present them to the public as fresh, “cutting edge” ideas. In the process, you’ll attract a lot of middle-class white voters who harbor unspoken racial resentments.

Put aside the personal affront to the integrity and intent of conservatives. This is just plain ignorance. Conservatives didn’t need David Duke or any other extremist to come out against reverse discrimination. The Bakhe case was decided in 1979 - 10 years before Pat Buchanan wrote his political analysis regarding the efficacy of Duke’s “issues.” Again Mr. Neiwert is ascribing views held by extremists as being adopted by conservatives instead of the other way around. By trying to make conservatives responsible for how extremists attach themselves to their issues while at the same time smearing the entire conservative movement, Neiwert reveals himself to be little more than a petty partisan hack, an ideologue who can’t tell the difference (or deliberately obfuscates it) between legitimate arguments about public policy and the coarse, bastardization of conservative issues by the haters.

It is monstrous calumny to accuse conservatives thusly. Especially dressing his screed up, as Mr. Neiwert does in this piece, as some kind of psychological analysis of the motivations and deeply held beliefs of conservative bloggers. At bottom, the way conservatives are attacked in this piece says more about the arrogant, smug, self-righteous, self congratulatory left than it does about the people it seeks to deliberately defame.

What are we really discussing here? Nothing less than the ability to debate public policy issues without one side having recourse to use blood libel terms like “racist” in order to delegitimatize the thoughts, words, and deeds of one’s opponent. This is the reason “race” as a matter of public policy cannot be discussed rationally. The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable - an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. Hence, one cannot discuss reforming affirmative action because to do so is, by definition, racist.

Neither is it possible to discuss immigration reform as evidenced by Mr. Neiwert’s loony contention that conservatives have adopted the extremists viewpoint of “eliminating immigrants” - one would assume both legal and illegal - which is a laughable corruption of the conservative’s belief that the laws of the land currently on the books should be enforced and that in a just society, one group should not be treated differently by the law than another. Ergo, what should be a necessary and vital debate on the nature of law and society not to mention the very real and vital issues of securing our borders, allowing for orderly immigration to the United States, and dealing with the problem of illegal immigrants already here, instead degenerates into more name calling and a ghastly oversimplification and distortion of the conservative position - par for the course when the left feels it is losing an argument with the American people.

Neiwert then takes on conservative bloggers in a specific and, from my point of view, dubious way by positing that 1) Glenn Reynolds is a “right wing blogger”, 2) that commenters at right wing websites don’t speak for the proprietor of that blog (unless they really do), and 3) that David Neiwert is a mind reader of such stupendous gifts that he should be classified as a secret weapon by the Pentagon, so incisive and penetrating his analysis of people’s thoughts and motivations.

After taking blogger Michelle Malkin and Reynolds to the woodshed for their ideas on Mexican irredentism - a notion currently being mainstreamed itself by leaders of the current round of immigration protests - Neiwert reveals that attacking the reconquista issue is in and of itself, racist:

Malkin, in truth, was simply following in the footsteps of the most prominent right-wing blogger, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, who for several months in 2004 was likewise promoting the “reconquista” notion while arguing, groundlessly, that the student organization MEChA was a pack of “fascist hatemongers” comparable to the Klan.

But in Malkin’s case, the thread from far-right extremism to mainstream consumption is especially pronounced, since she herself has a considerable history of dalliances and associations with extremists and far-right organizations, most notably VDare, the SPLC-designated hate group that publishes not just Malkin’s work but that of Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor.

Malkin, of course, has never explained her association with VDare, just as Reynolds never recanted his groundless smearing of MEChA. Similarly, they never confront the effects of their reliance on old appeals from the far right, because that would undermine the whole enterprise.

Malkin is perfectly capable of defending herself although I will point out that her articles in VDare appear courtesy of Creative Syndicate which gives her about as much “connection” to VDare as any writer would have to a site that publishes their articles through an agreement with a third party. I suppose Mr. Neiwert could have missed that very salient point in his haste to smear Mrs. Malkin. As an aside, it might be interesting to see what websites some of Mr. Neiwert’s articles have turned up on. He may not like the results of such a search.

But calling Reynolds a “right wing blogger” is a surprise - especially, I’m sure, to Glenn who has made it clear on almost a daily basis that he is not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination. His dissatisfaction with conservatism is well known by most of us on the right which means either Niewert can’t read or he simply chooses to ignore the facts.

That said, calling MEChA “fascist hatemongers” may be a touch hyperbolic but I’ll let the reader decide. Neiwert links to an article that points out MEChA’s founding document never mentions “reconquista” which is true. But the “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” mentioned in the linked article does contain some interesting ideas regarding “reclaiming the land” of their forefathers and a despicably racist statement for its motto:

The Plan Espiritual appears to translate the foregoing principles into a militant plan of action. The Plan offers an ahistorical counterrevolutionary version of Manifest Destiny for Chicanos:

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano, Mexican, Latino, Indigenous inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our sangre [blood] is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

It explicitly states that Aztlan does not belong “to the foreign Europeans” and declares MEChA’s refusal to “recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze continent.” And then, following these remarks, the Plan goes further still, uttering those infamous words:

. . . . [W]e declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.

The translation of that last little ditty is “On behalf of the Race, everything. Outside the Race, nothing.”

But hey! Don’t call them hatemongers!

Here’s where Neiwert employs his mind reading powers to their fullest extent:

Rather, they trot them out for consumption and play coy about any of the deeper implications of what they’re saying. Then, they leave it up to their readers to complete the connection.

Thus, the editors at sites like Little Green Footballs, Free Republic, or RedState provide few substantive instances of outright racism — but plenty of examples of repackaged extremism. Their commenters, however, are another story altogether; as we’ve seen, their audiences are all too glad to revel in the underlying bigotry.

The end result is a poisonous environment in which not merely the ideas, but the endemic attitudes and worldview, of the racist right receive not just fresh clothes but a whole new generation of adherents. This is why, for instance, so much naked eliminationism aimed not just at illegal immigrants and Muslims but, generically, “treasonous” American liberals has become inextricably interwoven with right-wing rhetoric in recent years.

First of all, may I propose a truce? We on the right will stop holding liberals responsible for what unhinged lefty commenters say on their sites if liberals stop the same practice regarding idiots who comment on right wing blogs. The notion that our commenters (I’m stifling a laugh here) “complete the connection” to our racist views is absurd. I had to reread that part to make sure that a grown up had actually written something so dramatically out of kilter with reality. For once again, Mr. Neiwert takes the legitimate policy positions taken by responsible conservatives and tries to destroy them by linking the ideas behind them with the mindless gibberings of the haters. Doesn’t he get tired of pulling both the horse and the cart?

When political writers like Neiwert try to play amateur psychologist by pretending to examine the innermost feelings of people for which they feel nothing but contempt and hate, the result is predictable; a slanderous, disjointed, and in the end, disquieting example of what passes for rational thought on the left. Neiwert’s piece is symptomatic of the level that civil discourse in this country has descended. And it speaks volumes to why this sad state of affairs will not be turned around anytime soon.

UPDATE

I experienced a full blown mandible gravity event when I read this bit of idiocy from David Anderson of ISOU:

The Firedoglake post makes some great points about racism in the conservative blogsphere. I find it interesting that one of the most vile racist [sic] is Michelle Malkin, who in a White Supremist [sic] Society would be at best a concubine for some Brownshirt. Perhaps Michelle has not payed [sic] much attention to her own image in the mirror lately, but HELLO, Michelle… You are a BROWN PERSON. If your Utopia ever came to pass, you might… as a reward for being a collaborator, get to work as a maid in Anne Coulter’s house, but having kissed Anne’s rear end so much, LaShawn barber [sic] would probably beat you to that job.

Thus speaketh the mainstream left.

Looks like Republicans in the Senate got the message on immigration: No amnesty, dramatically tighten border control, and get serious about illegal immigrants already here. By voting en bloc to open up the bill to the amendment process, Senate Republicans have probably scuttled the process entirely:

The Senate sidetracked sweeping immigration legislation Friday, leaving in doubt prospects for passing a bill offering the hope of citizenship to millions of men, women and children living in the United States illegally.

A carefully crafted compromise that supporters had claimed could win an overwhelming majority received only 38 of the 60 votes necessary to protect it from weakening amendments by opponents.

Republicans were united in the 38-60 parliamentary vote but Democrats, who have insisted on no amendments, lost six votes from their members.

Earlier Friday, President Bush prodded lawmakers to keeping trying to reach an agreement, but both sides said the odds were increasing that a breakthrough would not occur until Congress returns from a two-week recess.

We can add a charge of incompetence to the growing list of sins committed by the Republican Senate. To even offer a bill that contained “guest worker” provisions smacks of stupidity given the backlash by their conservative base on the issue over the last few weeks. Frist and Co. should have also known the Democrats were not going to let them off the hook by allowing this “compromise” to pass with amendments (such as removing or severely modifying the amnesty program). Once again, Frist has bungled.

And this guy wants to be President?

Brietbart seemed to be asking the same question:

Frist, R-Tenn., a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sought to establish more conservative credentials when he initially backed a bill limited to border security. At the same time, he has repeatedly called for a comprehensive bill _ adopting Bush’s rhetoric _ and involved himself in the fitful negotiations over the past several days.

Some leadership.

The bill itself is an incoherent mish-mash that little resembles what the House of Representatives passed. The “guest worker” program is ludicrous:

Illegal immigrants here more than five years could work for six years and apply for legal permanent residency without having to leave the country. Those here two years to five years would have to go to border entry points sometime in next three years, but could immediately return as temporary workers. Those here less than two years would have to leave and wait in line for visas to return.

Simply handing illegals a permanent resident card who’ve managed to evade capture for more than 5 years by hiding in enclaves where they remain undocumented and unassimilated will only encourage others to try and emulate them. After all, the immigration issue comes up in Congress every decade or so. Might was well amble across the border and wait for the next opportunity for politicians and businessmen to come up with one more plan that they won’t call amnesty but will for all intents and purposes be exactly that.

It gets loonier. All we ask of immigration scofflaws who’ve been here between 2-5 years is to show up at a border crossing and get a “temporary” workers’ permit.

That permit will be about as “temporary” as the insanity that seems to infect our lawmakers when they try and deal with immigration issues.

Let’s hope that Senate Republicans come to their senses and deal with illegal immigration as it should be dealt with; as a matter of national security and as an issue of fairness to the tens of thousands of legal immigrants who play by the rules only to see their honesty rewarded by being slapped in the face by their elected representatives.

UPDATE

In “The Definition of Amnesty” Michelle Malkin nails it:

Guess what? None –not one—of those amnesties was associated with a decline in illegal immigration. On the contrary, the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. has tripled since President Reagan signed the first amnesty in 1986. The total effect of the amnesties was even larger because relatives later joined amnesty recipients, and this number was multiplied by an unknown number of children born to amnesty recipients who then acquired automatic US citizenship.

And as I’ve noted before, there is no such thing as a “temporary” amnesty.

This entire debate is eerily reminiscent of campaign finance reform. Every time we muck with federal election laws governing political contributions, bigger and better loopholes are discovered by the army of lawyers who cater to the campaign contribution industry. It’s ridiculous.

UPDATE II: VINDICATION!

Slightly off topic, here’s Mickey Kaus on Mexican irridentism quoting a prominent Mexican-American author who is seeking to mainstream the idea of reconquista.

I got a chuckle out of both Taylor Marsh and C-Span host Steve Scully during my appearance last Sunday when I brought up the resistance to assimilation by some Mexican illegals and how that has led to a growing movement to “give back” portions of US territory to Mexico. I said at the time this was nothing to laugh at. The quotes from this author prove me correct.

A reoccurring theme that I’ve written about on this site has been the war by national security apparatchiks in the CIA, the State Department, and even in the Department of Defense against the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. Powerline, among others, has covered this subject in great detail - a subject largely ignored by the mainstream press. This is unfortunate because most of the Administration’s actions in the Plame Affair need to be understood in this context if one is interested in getting to the heart of the motivations behind what was going on.

This is not to say that the “outing” of Valerie Plame was in any way a justifiable act. Even if, as some claim, it was common knowledge that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, naming CIA employees in print is unconscionable. This has been a favorite gambit of the left for more than 30 years, done to undermine the agency’s effectiveness and can simply never be countenanced.

But the question unanswered by the President’s critics is how do you pushback against unelected bureaucrats who are not only undermining policy, but also attacking the credibility of the Chief Executive of the United States of America? Do you sit in the Oval Office and simply take it? Do you allow these partisans who used selective leaking of classified information in order to deliberately try and defeat a political rival at the polls, to operate with impunity while American men and women are fighting and dying overseas?

The arrogance and hubris exhibited by the leaking clique in the CIA and State Department - unelected, unaccountable, unhinged - demonstrates the dysfunctionality of those vital departments. This incompetence and bureaucratic game playing led directly to the tragedy of 9/11 and will, if not stopped, be the death of many more of us.

Scooter Libby evidently felt he had permission to leak parts of the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that showed the consensus of the government - not the selected, cherry-picked leaks of opposing viewpoints that came out later during the Presidential campaign - was that:

* Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

* We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.

* Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.

* Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons grade fissile material.

This was not “twisted” intelligence. It was not invented out of whole cloth. This was the best guess of our intelligence professionals gleaned from hundreds of discussions, thousands of pages of documents, and discussion and debate at the highest levels of our intelligence apparatus. It was then presented to the President and it was up to him - the elected leader of the government - to act on it or not.

The President chose to act. And when some of that NIE turned out to be wrong or overblown, the leakers, the bureaucratic ass coverers, the partisans, and the ideologues crawled from underneath the rock they were hiding and unleashed a blizzard involving the most brazenly criminal and incontrovertibly illegal dissemination of classified material in memory. Not since Nixon had to deal with our SALT fallback negotiating position showing up on the front page of the New York Times has a President had to scramble to stem the flow of damaging leaks.

This is the context in which Joe Wilson wrote his little editorial heard ’round the world - a screed that his since been shot so full of holes that swiss cheese is whole by comparison. Wilson was lying. The Vice President did not send him to Niger. His junket was not an exercise in fact finding. If it was, one must ask why Wilson’s “report” was never disseminated to the White House. And of course, Wilson mis-characterized his own findings when he said that there was no evidence that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa. Two separate inquiries - one in the Senate and one British - concluded that in fact Saddam was seeking to buy yellowcake uranium to augment the 500 tons he already possessed and had in storage at the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear facility.

We know all of this. The fact that it has to be repeated time and time again says more about how the media and the left continue to flog the dead horse of pre-war intelligence than it does about the White House pushback against the leakers. By dressing the same pig up in different couture, the President’s critics seek to raise long dead charges under different auspices in order to damage his credibility further and undermine support for the Iraq War with the American people.

Even the New York Times recognizes there’s nothing new to the Scooter Libby “revelations” except to grouse that their own publishing of classified information is not getting a pass:

The testimony by the former official, I. Lewis Libby Jr., cited in a court filing by the government made late Wednesday, provides an indication that Mr. Bush, who has long criticized leaks of secret information as a threat to national security, may have played a direct role in authorizing disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq.

The disclosure occurred at a moment when the White House was trying to defend itself against accusations that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.

The president has the authority to declassify information, and Mr. Libby indicated in his testimony that he believed Mr. Bush’s instructions — which prosecutors said Mr. Libby regarded as “unique in his recollection” — gave him legal cover to talk with a reporter about the intelligence.

The fact that the President “has the authority to declassify information” seems to have escaped the notice of people like Andrew Sullivan, David Corn,, and Christy Hardin Smith among others. The Washington Post is even more definitive in its judgement on the legality of the issue:

Legal experts say that President Bush had the unquestionable authority to approve the disclosure of secret CIA information to reporters, but they add that the leak was highly unusual and amounted to using sensitive intelligence data for political gain.

“It is a question of whether the classified National Intelligence Estimate was used for domestic political purposes,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a Washington lawyer who formerly served as general counsel for the CIA.

Indeed, a tough case to make either way regarding “domestic political purposes.” Was there an element of politics involved in the leak? I don’t doubt it. But - and this is something the President’s critics never, ever give him credit for - was there also an effort to pushback against those who sought to undermine Bush’s credibility?

The answer to that question is clearly yes. And I think the overwhelming evidence points to this being the major reason for the Plame Affair, this particular NIE leak, and other actions taken by the Administration to defend their good name. To not acknowledge these facts - as the left and media never do - is to beggar belief. Bush’s critics would have him sitting in the oval office emasculated, his credibility in tatters, while his enemies flitted from reporter to reporter leaking a steady stream of classified information with the President’s men constrained from responding because in order to do so, they must leak back. Meanwhile, our men and women are fighting in Iraq and watching as their Commander in Chief twists slowly in the wind, hung by a cabal of shameless, partisan, witchhunters who worked against the interests of the United States as determined by her elected leaders.

A totally unsatisfactory state of affairs but one not of the President’s making. I’ve had major differences with the President on Iraq. But this partisan effort to alter the historical record on pre-war intelligence time and time again for political purposes sticks in my craw. This is one issue on which I will continue to defend the President’s actions until the record is set straight.

UPDATE

With all my growling about motivations for the leaks, I never addressed the fact that this story has absolutely nothing to do with the Plame Affair except in a tangential way. Tom McGuire quoting from the Times article I linked above:

More air is let out of the balloon in paragraph six:

That is not just Libby asserting that the President was uninvolved in Libby’s leaks of the Plame info; it is Fitzgerald saying so too.

This hasn’t stopped some of the most amatuer, one dimensional, analysis I’ve ever seen on the web taking place at some of the top lefty websites:

Firedoglake: CONSPIRACY!! CONSPIRACY!!

Huffpo: NEENER! NEENER! NEENER!

War and Piece: HYPOCRITE! HYPOCRITE!

Austin Bay is a little more nuanced in his analysis. But then, a three toed sloth would be more nuanced in their analysis of this issue than anyone I’ve seen so far on the left:

Presidents and vice-presidents can declassify information based on their own good (or bad) judgment. That is a privilege and responsibility of the office. Their authority is near-absolute.Disseminating unclassified information isn’t a crime — no matter the technique used. The information can be disseminated at a press conference, in a press release, in a speech, or — yes– via leak. (UPDATE: Background links I should have included in the original post– though the president’s power in the sphere is common knowledge. The president is at the top of the Classification Authority hierarchy– he holds the ultimate clasification/declassification power. The vice-president is granted authority from the president. See this link to the relevant executive order regarding the vie-president. And I just found this article by Byron York which details the estension of presidential powers to the vice-president. York’s article emphasizes the formal codification of the vice-president’s classification powers, which is a change from past administrations.)

Reporters thrive on “leaks” because a leak usually means “scoop.” A leak can also mean “spin” but that’s an understood aspect of Washington’s political carnival. However, leaking properly declassified material isn’t a crime. Leaking classified material is illegal– and so is publishing classified material in a press release.