Blogging: a search for truth
Along with HVTs (high value targets) like Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall, I incurred the wrath of Smash for noting how Thursday's announcement of the arrest of Al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani seemed to bear out a widely circulated prediction of such a development leading up to or during the Democratic National Convention.

But it's all good. Smash (a.k.a. "Indepundit") got a link to his yeoman effort from Glenn Reynolds -- meaning an "Instalanche" for him... and beaucoup hits for me! Yay! Still, I'm hurt that Smash misrepresented me: "THOMAS NEPHEW sees a "transparent, manipulative gimmick." What I actually said was "I imagine there are some Republicans who hope this isn't the transparent, manipulative gimmick it seems to be."* You see, I was trying to reach out to my Republican brothers, trusting they were as appalled by the prospect as I was. And this is the thanks I get.

Anyway, Reynoldsian/Smashoid commentary makes much of the fact that Ghailani is merely number 20-something on the terrorist most-wanted list, and consider the case closed. In a particularly sharp insight, Greg Djerijian triumphantly points out that the New Republic article predicted arrests between July 26 and 28 -- when it was actually on July 29! Gotcha!

Returning to the "not Osama" retort: even at #22, Ghailani is firmly in "deck of cards" territory. As a matter of speculation, let's say the Pakistanis just couldn't deliver #1, 2, or 3; instead, like a retriever returning with a rotting muskrat instead of a duck, they dumped #22 at Bush's feet instead. To a police official in Islamabad, that might very well look like "mission accomplished," to coin a phrase, whether or not the relatively low value and late hour might turn a coup into a debacle for those peerless -- utterly peerless! -- planners in Washington.

That's simply to say, the facts -- Al Qaeda arrest news coinciding with the convention -- still fit the general Judis/Ackerman/Ansari New Republic assertion that the Bush administration asked for some Al Qaeda arrest news coinciding with the convention. Right? And -- while it's not proven -- that would be a sleazy, manipulative gimmick that would make a campaign toy out of the war on terror, right? Shall we extend the prediction, and look for more arrest announcements in, say, the 6-day period centered around the next presidential debate? Yes, let's.

Sure, coincidences happen, and yes, it's possible this was one. But it's a doozy. In fairness, we're all a little out of practice dealing with actual facts that seem to confirm our suspicions, so Smash et al's reactions are understandable.

To conclude with an actual news item, the Washington Post reports that

Pakistani officials have rejected allegations that they delayed the announcement for four days to obtain maximum publicity. Hayat said the delay was a result of "double checks and even triple checks in such cases."
(via Kevin Drum)

Well. I suppose that settles it.


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* Assuming I've guessed party affiliations/likely votes correctly, that would actually be most of them so far -- judging by the effort they put into deriding the possibility that Judis et al got it right. But credit for the most direct statement to that effect goes to Jan Haugland: "Now, I agree that it would be grossly unethical to do such a thing." Bravo! On the other hand, Haugland ("Secular Blasphemy") sees suspicions as an example of the "Texas sharpshooter fallacy" -- apparently ignoring the fact that the New Republic article drew its bulls-eye around the end of July -- OK, July 26 to 28 -- well before the event, not after. That's why Tom Maguire was on the edge of his seat ready to yell "yippee" if there was no arrest.

UPDATE, 8/2: Back to the drawing board: Mr. Haugland is Norwegian. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:10:00 PM -- |    

 
My future's so bright I gotta wear shades
The New York Time's Anne Eisenberg reports, in Fleeting Experience, Mirrored in Your Eyes:

...two Columbia University scientists have come up with a computer-based way to extract detailed information from the fleeting images of the world mirrored on the curved surface of the eye. [...]

The system can automatically recover wide-angle views of what people are looking at, including panoramic details to the left, right and even slightly behind them. It can also calculate where people are gazing - for instance, at a single smiling face in a crowd. [...]

The system may be a boon to marketers who use cameras to track what people are looking at in a room or in a store. [...]

Great!
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 AM -- |    

 
Rove Be Praised
Newsflash: SPIEGEL is reporting that Pakistani security forces have captured a high-ranking Al Qaeda member involved in the embassy bombings of 1998:

The man was captured a few days ago, [minister Faisal Saleh Hayat] told US TV network CNN. Further details of the capture are not known yet.

Who says Bush has no foreign allies?!

Funny, I thought I'd already read about this .... oh yeah. Good if they've really caught someone. I imagine there are some Republicans who hope this isn't the transparent, manipulative gimmick it seems to be.

 
MORE: The man is a Tanzanian national by the name of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani; he was captured last Sunday.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:55:00 PM -- |    

 
Don't misunderestimate him
Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, writing for the American Prospect, does a great job of introducing me to John Kerry all over again. From The Kerry I Know*:

...This is a contemplative, serious person -- well-grounded in progressive principles -- who has the good habit of getting interested in new ideas that survive scrutiny. His work habits reveal an iron butt for grunt work, as well as considerable experience in working across party lines. A non-Bush president will have to repair considerable damage abroad and at home, complex tasks that will resist grand fixes and reward the patience and tough negotiating that are Kerry attributes. But a non-Bush president will also have to think and act big and new, and the work Kerry has already done on a range of issues should inspire confidence. [...]

Oliphant writes that Kerry's positions on issues like health, energy, and foreign policy are those of a pragmatic, not an ideological progressive.  Pragmatism can often seem like flip-flopping, but -- independents and moderate Republicans, take note -- it's more an indication that Kerry will be willing to do what it takes to get good policy passed, instead of trying to bully "perfect" (which often turns out to be perfectly wrong-headed) policy.  If you read the piece, I'll guarantee you'll be impressed.  Oliphant concludes:

John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive with the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very long journey, I really like this guy. As one of his top campaign officials, himself a convert since the primaries ended, told me recently, this is pure Merle Haggard. It’s not love, but it’s not bad.

Re the big-to-biggest issue -- Iraq -- Oliphant wrote in a column on Tuesday that Kerry intends to "leverage" Europe and other allies' concerns about a vacuum in Iraq to gain cooperation with a controlled pullout:

The assumption is that for all their anti-American and anti-Bush rhetoric, Europe and Iraq's neighbors fear the violent vacuum that would follow a precipitate US pullout from Iraq.  [...]

When he called from Ohio over the weekend, Kerry was happy to reinforce the point, arguing that President Bush has barely scratched the surface of international cooperation on this and many other foreign policy issues.  "I have said from almost the beginning of this campaign that I will make sure the leaders of other nations understand clearly that a new day is coming and that there isn't a challenge we face in the world that can't be responded to more effectively by more inclusive, stronger alliances. I really intend to accomplish this."

Another Kerry foreign policy confidant, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, was more blunt, addressing those nations that are sick of Bush's go-it-alone-ism and pine for a new, inclusive, diplomatically activist US leader."Be careful what you wish for," Biden said, "because you are going to get it. Be prepared for multiple challenges for your involvement. It may make you nostalgic for the sidelines."

That sounds like a game of "chicken" about the future of Iraq, but that may be what it takes to negotiate with Europe and other (potential) allies about the future of that country.  (It also fits with the attitude of the Ivo Daalder item I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  In retrospect, I overlooked another significant fact about Daalder's op-ed: it was co-authored by Euro-skeptic Robert Kagan, not exactly a shrinking violet of American foreign policy thinking.)  

While I've questioned in the past how far those countries are willing and able to go with either the war on terror or the war in Iraq, it seems to me they're much more likely to try with Kerry than with Bush -- given that Bush only grudgingly asks them for help when he does at all.  Ways they may be able to help -- beyond the military assistance that is likely to remain disappointing -- are increased financial aid for Iraq, carrots-and-sticks for neighbor countries like Syria, Iran, and Turkey, and/or increased aid and involvement in Afghanistan (remember Afghanistan?)  It will be a case of "put up or shut up" all around.



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* Via Mark Kleiman.

UPDATE, 7/29: Former Senate staffer Mark Schmitt ("The Decembrist") has a similar reaction to Oliphant's "The Kerry I Know" piece. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 PM -- |    

 
Powerful shockwaves of destructive gay energy
From the Fafblog mock interview with Dr. James Dobson, of Focus on the Family,* about the Marriage Protection Act (passed today in the House):

FB: But how did all of this happen Dr. James Dobson?
JD: Well, it's all very simple. The legality of gay marriage sent out powerful shockwaves of destructive gay energy throughout hetereosexuality. Without an amendment to the constitution specifically barring homosexuals from obtaining marriage rights, this destructive Gay Force rampaged throughout the Traditional Family Nexus, corrupting it and turning thousands of upright, decent, missionary-position-loving straight couples into deranged, out-of-control mutant gay perverts.
FB: This is horrible! What in your scientific opinion as a doctor can we do to stop this?
JD: Well, humanity's only hope at this point lies in the Marriage Protection Act, which would strip federal courts of the ability to review the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. That way if the draconian anti-gay laws we need turn out to be unconstitutional, we'll never know, because the courts won't be able to stop them.
FB: Wow! Yknow when you think about it you could probably pass all kindsa crazy jurisdiction-stripping laws an it'd be almost as good as havin an amendment, only much easier!
JD: Really? I hadn't thought of that.
(link to Washington Post article from original)

For a more conventional discussion of the Marriage Protection Act, see the Kuro5hin.org article U.S. Congress attempts to nullify doctrine of judicial review, by "mcc."  As that article points out, the act is, strictly speaking, an amendment of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that purports to forbid federal courts from ruling on the constitutionality of that law.  As Fafblog points out, that's a promising new way to undermine the Constitution.

Norms matter; the powerful shockwaves here are made of destructive Constitution-bending energy.  You'd think the Senate would have better things to do than spend any more time on this than it takes to vote it down, but you never know; here's one place you can get your Senator's phone and web site information.


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* Dobson seems more prominently associated with this organization than with the Family Research Council, with which Fafblog identifies him.  However, he's a founder of both organizations, and apparently serves on both boards of directors.

UPDATE, 7/29: Brett Marston weighs in with a completely different point of view -- "Jurisdiction Stripping?  Fine by me" -- on that aspect of the issue:

Jurisdiction-stripping bills should be celebrated as an attempt by members of Congress to engage in substantive constitutional lawmaking. Jurisdiction-stripping is an attempt by Congress to claim more authority over certain areas of legislation. It shouldn’t trouble Congress all that much whether or not the professional legal culture produces more and better arguments that say that such actions are unconstitutional.

Unlike me, Professor Marston is actually highly qualified to discuss this issue.  His post also links to a number of other very pertinent discussions, including opposing viewpoints.  Check it out.  For my part, I'd prefer to think there's a deep Constitutional trench between Dobson and me on this issue.  But if I'm mistaken in that,  I'm willing to have Democrats add "judicial review" to "constitutional conservatism," "balanced budgets," and "alliance building" as part of what the true party of the left and center stands for.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:40:00 PM -- |    

 
Operation Detainee Whitewash
Like so many of us over the last few days, I've been looking through last Friday's very well-timed release of the Army's "Detainee Operations Inspection" report.  From the foreword:

Based on this inspection:
-- the overwhelming majority of our leaders and Soldiers understand the requirement to treat detainees humanely and are doing so.
-- we were unable to identify system failures that resulted in incidents of abuse.  These incidents of abuse resulted from the failure of individuals to follow known standards of discipline and Army Values and, in some cases, the failure of a few leaders to enforce those standards of discipline.
-- the current operational environment demands that we adapt; our Soldiers are adapting; so we must also adapt our doctrine, organization, and training.
(emphasis added)

Initial media and human rights organization reaction have been scathing: both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran weekend op-eds characterizing the report as a "whitewash." The Times:

...Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.
The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no "systemic" problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners - 50,000 of them in all - with no training.

As Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First, told the New York Times on Friday:

There is a serious gap between the facts presented in this report and the conclusions of its authors... It's hard to see how you can document 94 cases of abuse or other violations and not recognize that there is a systemic problem here.

After scanning the report several times, it seems to me even documenting the cases would have been a start.  Those 94 incidents judged to be abuse (out of 125 potential cases known to the Army inspectors) are not actually listed, let alone documented in the report.  The closest thing to detailed accounting I saw was that a few cases are described cursorily, to furnish examples of good and bad behavior and leadership.

My interest in the report was to see whether some of the most heinous alleged abuses I'm aware of -- the rape of a boy while filmed or photographed by American military personnel, the abuse of children to pressure their parents -- were investigated or even considered at all.  They may have been, but it's impossible to tell.

During the Senate hearing where the report was presented, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) queried* Army Inspector General Mikolashek:

General Abizaid told us a month ago, 'There are so many things out there that aren't right, in the way that we operate for this war, this is a doctrinal problem.' Just wondering how that statement of his, squares with your testimony here.

When Mikolashek responded that "we found no direct relation of [doctrinal problems] to each of the cases that we reviewed," Levin reminded him of a February report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC):

Several military officers confirmed to the ICRC that it was part of the military's intelligence process to hold a person deprived of his liberty naked in a completely dark and empty cell fro a prolonged period, to use inhumane and degrading treatment, and then they said these methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way. (Senator Levin's emphasis)**

As the Post editorial points out, this is also to say nothing of the failure to investigate Rumsfeld's own admission that he authorized concealing detainees from ICRC personnel -- no systemic effects of that, no sirree.  That's basically the beginnings of "disappearances" by the American executive branch.  (Why is he still in office?)

The brief flurry of Senatorial activity last Friday can't conceal that congressional inquiries are bogging down. The House Armed Services Committee isn't even worth mentioning. But Senator John Warner (R-VA), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who appeared to take the Abu Ghraib scandals to heart, now wants to wait until fall for criminal prosecutions of the "bad apples" to run their course.


If only they knew...
There was welcome news yesterday from a rarely heard direction.  A recent opinion survey by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that Americans strongly disapprove of the abuse of Iraqi and even of Al Qaeda prisoners -- and that the Bush administration is benefitting from misperceptions that it hasn't ordered the methods most Americans disapprove of:

For the Bush administration, the political damage from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal appears to have been mitigated by a number of misperceptions. Many Americans are unaware that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld approved some of the controversial interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib. Only 35% were aware that he had approved of making detainees go naked, 45% that he approved of using threatening dogs and 55% that he had approved of hooding and stress positions.

Those who were aware that Rumsfeld had approved these interrogation techniques were much more likely to say that the President’s handling of the detainee issue diminished their likelihood to vote for the President. Among those who knew that Rumsfeld had approved all of these measures, 59% said they were less likely to vote for the President while just 9% said they were more likely to vote for him. Conversely, among those who believed that Rumsfeld had not approved any of these techniques, only 25% said they were less likely to vote for the President while 36% said they more likely to vote for him.

Among those who knew that Rumsfeld had approved of these measures, 60% favored his removal. Among those who thought that he had not approved any of them, just 26% favored his removal.

(Via Brett Marston)



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* NPR story "Army Inspector's Abuse Report Met by Criticism," reported by Jackie Northam.  The NPR clip also comes in Windows Media format.
** I'd love to have access to that ICRC report, but even Senator Levin barely got a look at it. The New York Times editorial notes: The Pentagon finally brought those documents to the Senate in the last two weeks, in a way that ensured they would be of minimal use. The voluminous reports were shown briefly to senators and a few members of the Armed Services Committee staff after the senators' personal aides were ushered out. Then the reports were hauled back to the Pentagon.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |    

 
The democratic case against the Democratic convention
This really is outrageous. The city of Boston is hiding Democratic convention protesters from view in what sounds like a hazardous construction site:

No amount of hyperbole can accurately describe how disastrous the interior actually is. It’s like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie – a futuristic, industrial detention area from a Mad Max film. You are surrounded on all sides by concrete blocks and steel fencing, with razor wire lining the perimeter. Then, there is a giant black net over the entire space.

That’s not even the worst part. 80% of the space is actually beneath a construction site. You heard me, most of the zone is actually under a partially constructed building, broken up by gates, iron girders and wooden rafters, in the darkness. (via Southknoxbubba)

This isn't just happening at the Democratic convention, of course, although it's disappointing all the same; the city of New York is putting up similar roadblocks to protest at the Republican national convention, and last November we saw the notorious Miami FTAA protest crackdown (paid for in part with Afghanistan war funds!) ... aha. Via commenter Jeanne at Southknoxbubba, I learn that the Boston officials planning for the convention met with John Timoney, the Miami police chief who presided over that police riot.

I hope all those bloggers there make an issue of it, and that maybe Kerry or Edwards show a little gumption and head on over to the so-called "Free Speech Zone" to talk with the protesters. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:45:00 PM -- |    

 
The democratic case against Republican rule
Jonathan Chait has written an important article documenting another one of the most important reasons -- perhaps the most important one -- for opposing Bush this November. In Power from the People, Chait writes:

Bush and his allies have been described as partisan or bare-knuckled, but the problem is more fundamental than that. They have routinely violated norms of political conduct, smothered information necessary for informed public debate, and illegitimately exploited government power to perpetuate their rule. These habits are not just mean and nasty. They're undemocratic. [...]

The proper indictment of the Bush administration is ... not that he's abandoning American democracy, but that he's weakening it.

Chait assembles a list of examples (a number of which have been mentioned on this site): the case of suppressing the true cost of the Medicare bill; using public money to trumpet Bush's role in tax cuts or the Medicare bill; how Congressional debate is squelched* under DeLay and rendered moot by House-Senate conference committee end-runs; the Texas redistricting saga and the attendant abuses of power via DeLay pressure on the FAA and AMICC. He might have mentioned others like the RAGA fundraising scam or the Westar payments for a "seat at the table" for the Bush energy bill.

Chait is willing to put some of the blame on the very constitutional structure of the nation: the disproportionate impact of small states on the electoral process, the winner-take-all structure of American elections.  While I happen to consider the electoral college a justifiable concept per se**, Chait is persuasive that right now it's part of a kind of 'perfect storm' against American democracy, arguing that given the pro small state (i.e. Western state) bias, the Presidency and the Senate are inherently anti-majoritarian -- and that the House is paradoxically more so by dint of ever more sophisticated, computer-assisted gerrymandering of state congressional districts.  Individually, any one of these vulnerabilities might be acceptable.  But together, in the hands of a disciplined, radical faction, the upshot is ominous:

At the beginning of 2001, the conventional wisdom held that Republicans would court a backlash if they exceeded their limited mandate. The common metaphor is a pendulum that, if tilted off center, inevitably swings back. The more apt (and less comforting) metaphor, however, may be a feedback loop. Facing a lack of public support, Bush and his allies circumscribe normal democratic procedures to enact their agenda. The Republican Congress, in turn, spares Bush from paying a price for his anti-democratic endeavors, and this protection only encourages further abuses by the White House.

The results over the last few years have been plain:

Bush is the first president since James Garfield not to veto a single bill. Whereas the Democratic Congress held hearings about Whitewater, it's simply impossible to imagine today's GOP Congress investigating Bush's past business dealings. Even Republicans confess that their party has essentially abandoned its duty to oversee the executive branch. "Our party controls the levers of government," GOP Representative Ray LaHood told Congressional Quarterly. "We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."

(There's a statement that's nearly as shameless in its own way as a grinning thumbs-up in front of naked prisoners.)  Chait continues:

And so, where the Republicans have broken rules--say, using the Treasury department to disseminate political advertising, or employing conference committees to write laws from scratch--the enforcement mechanisms are essentially controlled by the perpetrators themselves. If Republicans stand together, there will be no investigations. (Or, at least, no serious investigations.) If there are no investigations, there is no process for the media to cover. If there's no media coverage, there's no public outrage to constrain the GOP. After the GAO ruled that the administration broke the law with its Medicare videos, Democrats in Congress demanded that the money spent on the ads be refunded. But Republicans simply ignored them, and the story disappeared.

In a civics class discussion, one might look to the news media on the one hand and an alert citizenry on the other as a last line of defense against undemocratic developments like these.  But as Bob Somerby documents over and over again on his web site, The Daily Howler, the American news media essentially aspire to become part of the political and economic class they purport to "cover." Instead of doing their jobs as their supposed clients -- their readers, viewers, or listeners -- understand it, by reporting the news with energy and without favor, celebrity journalists all too often register their fealty to their betters and eachother with pat, consensus story lines about the issues of the hour.

Meanwhile, the American people are now in some part more concerned with outside threats to their safety than with internal threats to their political system and liberties.  The definitive abuse of this concern was in the ever shifting set of reasons advanced for attacking Iraq -- some of which, for the record, I agreed with, and some of which I did not. As Chait put it,

During the run-up to the war, a large majority of Americans implicated Iraq in the September 11 attacks. Even if you supported the Iraq war (as I did), this fact must be considered a serious problem for American democracy. Bush did not obtain, or even seek, the rational, informed consent of the public.

The emphasis on security -- any security, lots of it, as quick as possible -- can lead to a "he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" principle, applied to domestic politics instead of foreign affairs, or it can help lead supporters to develop a nearly cultlike devotion to their supposed protectors (despite derelictions of duty from Tora Bora to looted uranium in Iraq to Abu Ghraib). 

Such developments may be understandable, if not admirable, in the wake of 9/11 and the consensus that more attacks like it are inevitable.  But in the long run, if the country is to function, its citizens need a ship of state with a rudder that isn't stuck on a starboard course.


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* See particularly the Michael Crowley article "Oppressed Minority" in the linked post.
**Without the electoral college, presidential campaigns could completely ignore "flyover" America in favor of the coastal megalopolises. With it, they're forced (or tempted, depending how you look at it) to fight for combinations of relatively cheap, small state wins. However, I think the electoral college is badly designed -- I think states should get electoral votes in direct proportion to their populations, rather than the "representatives plus Senators" formula agreed to in an exhausted compromise over two hundred years ago.

EDIT, 7/26: Last sentence changed from "But in the long run, if the country is to function, they also rely on a self-correcting ship of state -- one that may now have its rudder stuck on a starboard course." posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:07:00 PM -- |