JustOneMinute

No Way To Treat A Lady (cont.)

A while back, Paul Krugman took a cheap shot at Simone Ledeen. Her forceful and eloquent reply appears in the NRO.

We are enthralled by her main points, but she also leaves us with a bit of a puzzle in a parenthetical aside:

Happy Anniversary to Joseph C. Wilson IV

Susan Schmidt of the WaPo (who Atrios hates) bludgeons my man Joe, who just celebrated the first anniversary of his famous "What I Didn't Find In Africa". Oh, I waited too long for this (as did the eerily prescient Pejman). And yes, there is still an investigation underway, although if I were managing the news, I would consider this to be a great time to announce that no indictments will be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, let's go through Ms. Schmidt's list while I take a tasteless, deplorable victory lap:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

We had evidence for that in October 2003, but not as fully as documented here. The WSJ had a memo describing a meeting where Ms. Plame nominated her hubby for the trip; Ms. Schmidt tells us of a follow-up memo, and an earlier trip by Joe Wilson to Niger at his wife's suggestion.

As to what the Ambassador has said publicly on this point, he has said many things. In Sept. 2003, in an interview with Josh Marshall, we noted Wilson's cutesiness - saying that his wife wasn't in the room with the people who briefed him on the trip, for example, is not a denial of her involvement. However, Ms. Schmidt busts him for what he put in his book: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

More from Ms. Schmidt:

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.

Well, we suspected that Wilson's report debunked nothing even before we read Tenet's letter on July 11, 2003.

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question.

That is the British story too, according to the FT.

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.

Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

I agree, from way back. [Jonah Goldberg picks up on this strongly.]

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. .

The "crazy report" line ties in to Howard Fineman's theory about a see-no-evil CIA failing to take this investigation seriously.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

I'm loving this, since, with props to Alex Parker, I had this last October. This is a dark, unflattering side of me, but I am loving this.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

Something like that was alluded to in Tenet's letter, and eventually Wilson 'fessed up a bit, both in an interview with Josh Marshall and in his book.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."

Howard Fineman's "see-no-evil CIA" again. Which becomes part of the rationale for the White House telling reporters that the Wilson op-ed is a phony, and that his investigation was not an appropriately serious effort.

Tim Noah at Slate had perhaps the most vigorous denunciation of Wilson when he shoved a Whopper in Wilson's chubby cheeks.

And another puzzle has been answered - at one time, Wilson wondered out loud to a reporter about who might play his wife in the movie. Although we can't answer that, we can suggest that the movie be filmed by Michael Moore.

MORE: OK, if I had any character, I would go through this early timeline to find some of my more egregious errors. AS IF! There is no way I am dredging up this bitter memory, for example.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall thinks that the great American public should be worried about the credibility of Susan Schmidt. Good luck. And Dr. M ought to read the NY Times, which excerpts the report and presents a similar conclusion to Ms. Schmidt:

19. Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, C.I.A. continued to approve the use of similar language in administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.

21. When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency analysts or officials told the National Security Council to remove the "16 words" or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting. A C.I.A. official's original testimony to the committee that he told an N.S.C. official to remove the words "Niger" and "500 tons" from the speech, is incorrect.

Hey, I'm surprised too, as I am sure the Senate staffers were, since I recall a lot of ink being splashed on this. But let's not blame Sue.

Kevin Drum is troubled, although he (correctly) points out that Wilson's credibility has no legal effect. Ahh, but from a PR perspective, if Wilson is a liar (and has lied to the WaPo and the NY Times), who will howl when charges are not filed? Let me quote Atrios here - "A source lies to you, and you find it out, you burn him. Period."

And is Wilson still an advisor to the Kerry campaign?

STILL MORE: Ari Fleischer explaining the 16 Words.

Call It A Coincidence

It's Saturday morning tin-foil hat time! The Kerry campaign has launched a values push. Noam Scheiber has his doubts, especially on abortion:

IS KERRY OVERREACHING ON VALUES?: I'm all for this latest Kerry-Edwards push on values.

...But I'm a little worried Kerry has become needlessly ambitious on the values front, wading into the weeds on divisive social issues like abortion when vague statements of principle would do.

For example, today's Washington Post reports that Kerry recently said he believes life begins at conception even though he supports a woman's right to an abortion. Now this is a position I imagine a lot of mainstream Catholics share. But it's also one that, once you've made it explicit, invites the charge that you condone something you think is murder. Why not just reprise Clinton's old "safe, legal, and rare" mantra and leave it at that?

Well, well, well. We had posted on that very point over the holiday weekend, when the Senator offered more detail on his evolving thoughts on this issue. Part of our criticism of Kerry's position (not original to us, regrettably), was that Kerry gave a speech to NARAL in January 2003 which did not sound at all like "safe, legal, and rare". The speech was sitting prettily at the Kerry website, and the link was fine.

The link was fine on July 5, that is. In what may simply be a semi-annual web-site clean-up, the Kerry website has dropped that speech, so that four days later, it's gone. But not forgotten.

Now, what, if anything, am I alleging? On the one hand, I don't normally swing a lot of traffic; on the other hand, it would not take many hits for a speech from January 2003 to go from zero to more than zero, so depending on what reports the webmaster is seeing, who knows? On the other other hand, who is kidding whom? Kerry gave the speech, and it is available elsewhere.

Still, it strikes me as an odd coincidence, and I would hate to leave all the fun to TNR.

MORE: To illustrate my point about Kerry's tone at the NARAL pep rally, contrast his remarks with those of Joe Lieberman, who said:

...And that is why we say and we mean we are not pro-abortion, we are pro-choice. [applause].

If a woman, if a woman chooses to have an abortion, we want it to be safe and we want that choice, as President Clinton reminded us, to be rare, to be the exception...

The closest Kerry comes is this:

Each of us tonight has talked about the difficulty of this decision and I heard Kate's comments earlier before we came out about the difficulty of her choice. I think anyone who has talked to or knows a woman has faced the dilemma of choice knows how difficult, how painful, how lonely, and how consequential it is. We will not go back to the days of back alleys, days in which women were shamed and put to all kinds of risks in this country. We will not put women in a place where the choice is between criminality or having a child that they don't want.

Invoking "back alleys" (abortion was legalized in New York in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, BTW) is not quite up there with "safe, legal, and rare".

It's My Party

Captain Ed follows up on Kerry's Bicoastal Bush basher, noting the broad applicabilty of free speech rights and explaining that Kerry and Edwards "laughed at the jokes before they frowned at them ".

Reps are demanding that the Kerry campaign release the tapes of the performance, basically to provide great film footage for some Bush commercials. The Kerry people, no doubt concerned about the privacy rights of publicity-shy Hollywood entertainers, are giving the timeless Cheney response.

Now, all the stories say that the entertainers bashed Bush, and they may well have gobe beyond the bounds of good taste or reason. But the real gold would be to see whether anyone said anything that can be construed as bashing the troops, the American people (something like "what idiots elected this idiot?"), or some subset thereof.

This is the sort of thing I have in mind:

The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid."

Hmm, so Hispanics are like roaches? Most folks don't remember the SAT analogy questions well enough to catch the slippage there.

The NY Times has more, and the ABC Note from Friday is thought-provoking:

And last night, after the network newscasts and right-on newspaper deadlines, KE04 did something that could fade away or could become the top political story of the day.

If a Republican presidential candidate, running against an incumbent Democrat, appeared with his newly-minted extremely conservative running mate in front of a packed house of fat cat donors in the capital of the GOP base at a fundraiser at which, say, country and western stars and conservative entertainers attacked the president in personal, mocking, and disrespectful ways, its pretty likely that the press would be in high dudgeon.

The coverage of last night's Radio City event in print has some elements of this, but not enough for the Bush campaign. And the TV coverage has largely ignored it.

Although the Kerry campaign and the DNC did not allow the event to be recorded by news organizations, the words of Chevy Chase, Whoopi Goldberg, and others are out there for all to read.

Although a Kerry spokesman has said that the Democratic ticket doesn't necessarily agree with everything that was said, does anyone believe that the President would be let off the hook that easily if the situation were reversed?

And, because I have not a clue as to whether or how their permalinks work, I am excerpting a huge chunk of the ABC NOTE coverage of the Friday, July 9 evening news. The fundraiser story did not die - all three networks noted it, although CBS stands alone in its rug-sweeping effort.

Get Over Falluja

The Brother Judd delivers a spine-stiffener to Rod Dreher of the NRO.

Moore's A Liar?

Tom Daschle says so, denying Moore's report that, after the Washington premiere of F911, "he gave me a hug and said he felt bad and that we were all gonna fight from now on. I thanked him for being a good sport."

And Kerry isn't going to see the movie (or own up to it, anyway). Where's the respect?

Bush Politicized The Intelligence (Or Not!) (cont).

Yesterday's sneak preview of the Senate Intelligence Committe report indicated that CIA analysts were not pressured by evil Dick Cheney to exaggerate the threat from Saddam. Today, we offer unequal time for a Democratic rebuttal:

Mr. Roberts said the committee had found no evidence that intelligence analysts were subjected to overt political pressure to tailor their findings — a conclusion that was not embraced totally by committee Democrats, who offered their own statements asserting that that issue had not been satisfactory resolved.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, for example, said, "In my view, this remains an open question and needs more scrutiny." And Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another Democratic committee member, said that while "nobody came before the committee and said, `Look, I had my brains beaten in to change my analysis,' " it was nevertheless true that "policymakers made it very clear what information they were looking for."

Vice Chairman Rockefeller had extended thoughts, which we excerpt in the extended section.

And, for an interesting post from the time-vault, here is an oldie that compared the June 2000 and June 2002 CIA WMD estimates for Iraq. Clinton era versus the war-fever era, if you will. The big change is in the words and emphasis devoted to Iraq's nuclear program, but the actual intel is slight (the aluminum tubes do appear).

I would say that the CIA was clearly feeling a renewed sense of urgency, which is fine as long as that is all it is.

Dan Drezner Has The Questions

It's Friday afternoon - do you really think I have answers?

Atta In Prague - Even Less Likely

In a bit of Sen. Carl Levin inspired push-back, the CIA has announced that:

George J. Tenet, the departing director of central intelligence, has told Congress that the C.I.A. is "increasingly skeptical" that a Sept. 11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, an assessment very different in tone from continuing assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that such a meeting might have taken place.

In a letter, sent to Congress on July 1, Mr. Tenet said Mr. Atta "would have been unlikely to undertake the substantial risk of contacting any Iraqi official" at such a date, when the Sept. 11 plot was well under way.

The statement, the most complete public assessment by the agency on the issue, was sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee in response to a question posed by the committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, at a hearing on March 9. It was made public by Senator Levin on Thursday, as Mr. Tenet bid farewell to his colleagues at a ceremony at the agency's headquarters. He leaves his post this weekend...

Here is Carl Levin's statement and the CIA report.

UPDATE: Steven Hayes pushes back. And I am thrilled to see him quoting John Kerry's Senate speech in October 2002.

Gay Marriage Maneuverings

The NY Times covers the Senate shenanigans on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and skewers Paul Weyrich by quoting him extensively. Unfair! Grover Norquist, in this Party for taxes and not social issues, counters Weyrich by offering a variation on Godwin's Law.

Here we go:

The president has bet the farm on Iraq," Paul Weyrich, a veteran Christian conservative organizer, warned in a recent e-mail newsletter. "Given what the continued killing has done to the president's standing in the polls this far, it is a lead-pipe cinch that as we lead up to the first days of November 2004, violence is going to be horrific."

Mr. Weyrich's solution said his solution was to "change the subject" to the Federal Marriage Amendment.

"Ninety-nine percent of the president's base will unite behind him if he pushed the amendment,'' he said. "It will cause Mr. Kerry no end of problems."

As for the gay Republicans whose votes Mr. Bush might then lose, Mr. Weyrich wrote, "Good riddance."

Groan. What base is he one, the Republican free-base? (Nooo, that would be Free Congress...) Here is Mr. Norquist, in the last paragraph:

...not all conservatives are sure that the issue is a proven winner.

"There is a group of people who don't care one way or the other but if they hear you talking too much about either side of certain issues - guns, abortion, same-sex marriage - they think you are a little obsessive," said Grover G. Norquist, a strategist close to the White House. "The first person to say 'gay' in the debate loses. Because you brought it up."

OK, fun's fun. A couple of interesting points emerge about the politics of this - John Thune is talking it up in South Dakota, where Tom Daschle has become a neo-Federalist - marriage is a states rights issue, the current law is untested, etc.

And "Other conservatives argue that, despite the likely fate of the federal amendment, the attention to the issue has jump-started efforts to put measures opposing same-sex marriage on ballots in nine states where the proposals will have the added benefit of helping motivate social conservatives to vote.

Dim And Dimmer

Captain Ed regales us with a "Dumb and Dumber" story from California - Former Los Angeles mayor and current California Education Secretary Richard Riordan insulted a schoolgirl over he name (I am not kidding, but Riordan thought he was):

The conversation, videotaped by KEYT-TV, took place Thursday at a promotional event for summer reading at Santa Barbara's central library. The unidentified girl, who appeared to be a preschooler, asked Riordan if he knew that her name meant "Egyptian goddess."
Riordan replied, "It means stupid dirty girl."

After nervous laughter in the room, the girl again told Riordan the meaning of her name.

"Hey, that's nifty," he said.

California Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally got involved:

The NAACP had decided to lead a coalition of civil-rights groups in a demonstration at the capitol, and Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally had organized the event. Yesterday, his office issued a scathing broadside at Riordan:

His office issued a statement Wednesday calling Riordan's remarks to the girl "outrageous and irresponsible," ... Dymally was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News Thursday saying the child was "a little African-American girl. Would he (Riordan) have done that to a white girl?"

Evidently, Riordan would, since the little girl was. Red faces everywhere! (NO, not Native Americans, embarrassed people). It gets better...

Now, folks who follow the California media will want to puzzle over the slacker coverage in the LA Times compared to the Sacramento Bee. Maybe it's a "state capitol" thing, but the Bee runs the inflammatory quotes from Mr. Dymally, an outraged response from the mom, and more, while The LA Times misses all the good stuff..

Fun With The Pun At The Times

Could the honeymoon with Edwards be over so soon? The headline writer at the Times has fun with a pun and Jodi Wilgoren is unexpectedly critical of John Kerry in "Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash".

A huge Bush-bash is what it was, which can not be a surprise. But here is the lead:

A star-studded salute to Senators John Kerry and John Edwards Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall slid into an unsparing skewering of the Bush administration, with actors and comedians denouncing the president as a liar, making off-color jokes about his name, and accusing him of risking soldiers' lives for political gain.

The racy Hollywood humor and harsh attacks were a sharp shift from the relentlessly positive focus on American values the new Democratic ticket has been trying to maintain this week.

A sharp shift! Off message! C'mon, there is no Kerry message with traction other than We Hate Bush (and you should too)! We are surprised by Ms. Wilgoren's surprise. After presenting some low-lights of the evening (including speculation on Jesus' position on megaton bombs), a wave of Dean nostalgia grips the Times and we get this:

After the concert, Mr. Kerry's press secretary, David Wade, said, "Obviously John Kerry and John Edwards do not agree with everything that was said tonight," adding: "Performers have a right to speak their minds even when we don't agree with everything they say. That's the freedom John Kerry put his life on the line to defend."

Apparently it wasn't obvious to Kerry, Edwards, or Ms. Wilgoren, who notes that candidates also have free speech rights:

But unlike one of Mr. Kerry's vanquished primary rivals, Howard Dean, who denounced racial humor and profanity at one of his own fundraisers in New York, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry hardly veered from their script when they mounted the stage at the end of the extravaganza, looking more subdued than they had all week.

This campaign will be a celebration of real American values," Mr. Edwards promised, saying that voters "deserve a president who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong."

Evidently, what we deserve and what is on offer may differ.

Mr. Kerry, inviting his and Mr. Edwards's adult children onstage for a sing-along of "This Land Is Your Land," told the crowd that "every single performer" on the bill had "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

Campaign aides said the performers would not allow broadcast journalists to record the concert.

The heart and soul of our country? The heart and soul of Kerry's bi-coastal support, maybe. We will put the out-takes in the extended section, and marvel, again, at the poiltical ineptitude of the Dem candidate. He'll stand up to Bush! He'll stand up for America! Just don't expect him to say "boo" to a Hollywood celebrity.

To round out the perfect evening, Captain Ed is very piercing on the subject of Kerry's time management. Quite a night for Tall John. In her one act of mercy, Ms. Wilgoren buried the same detail near the bottom:

The concert capped the second day of joint campaigning by the newly minted Democratic ticket, part of a multimedia effort that included an hourlong interview with Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, on "Larry King Live." Asked about warnings on Thursday about the possibility of a Qaeda attack this year, Mr. Kerry told Mr. King that he had not yet had time to be briefed on the subject.

Time enough for Whoopi, but not for Tom Ridge. Oh, boy. Could the press honeymoon with Edwards have ended so quickly?

UPDATE: Hmm, this is ugly - the LA Times dipped their pen in, or dropped, the same acid as Ms. Wilgoren:

An array of Hollywood royalty and music stars paid tribute Thursday night to the new Democratic presidential ticket in a $7.5-million fundraising concert dominated by harsh and occasionally off-color denunciations of the Bush administration.

...But praise for the two running mates was overshadowed by angry and mocking comments directed at President Bush. The tone was jarringly dissonant from the sunny message Kerry and Edwards have emphasized on their first few days together on the campaign trail.

...At the end of the concert, when the two candidates took the stage with their wives, neither made reference to the more inflammatory remarks. Edwards repeated the same campaign speech, and Kerry thanked the performers, saying they conveyed "the heart and soul of our country." The closest Kerry came to criticizing anyone was when he chastised Goldberg for referring to Edwards as "Kid," noting that he was a man.

Mickey Comes Out For Kerry

Mickey is breathing fire for Kerry, or at least, preparing to walk on coals - "we survived Carter and we'd survive Kerry (though it will be a long, hard slog!)."

Hey, don't think of it as helping Kerry, think of it as stopping Hillary!

As to his argument that it is time to stop the world, we want to get off - fine, if Osama got the memo. Will Kerry really "digest" the gains in Iraq, or, taking his cue from Kennedy, will he cut-and-burp?

America - Land of Geniuses!

There must be a lot of smart people around here, if Andrew Sullivan is right:

"I think it's sign of real intelligence that someone can both essentially loathe a candidate and still, for various reasons, vote for him."

Gosh, I don't think the expression "Hold your nose and vote" was coined just for Tall John, however well it suits him.

Bush Politicized The Intelligence (Or Not!)

The NY Times previews the upcoming Senate Intelligence Committe report on pre-war intelligence. Although the headline and the first few paragraphs are spent deploring the non-coverage of the White House use of the intelligence, eventually the Times gets to this:

The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.

More than 200 witnesses, any of whom would have been given a career-long shoulder ride by the Democrats simply for uttering the magic words, and no one admitted to being pressured to produce cooked intelligence? That will come as a shock to some, and we are sure the Times will want to highlight this information.

And no, we are not surprised. And if I could trust my memory, I would say that similar stories have come out from various earlier investigations.

UPDATE: It was IceCold in January when Dana Priest wrote this:

No Evidence CIA Slanted Iraq Data
Probers Say Analysts Remained Consistent

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01

Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence officials and congressional officials from both parties.

IIRC, David Kay told Congress something similar at the end of January; he certainly did with James Risen of the NY Times. An excerpt:

...Dr. Kay said he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq.

Last year, some C.I.A. analysts said they had felt pressed to find links between Iraq and Al Qaeda to suit the administration. While Dr. Kay said he has no knowledge about that issue, he did not believe that pressure was placed on analysts regarding the weapons programs.

"All the analysts I have talked to said they never felt pressured on W.M.D.," he said. "Everyone believed that they had W.M.D."

And a Dem rebuttal (is this sufficiently deeply buried?) can be found a day later in the NY Times:

Mr. Roberts said the committee had found no evidence that intelligence analysts were subjected to overt political pressure to tailor their findings — a conclusion that was not embraced totally by committee Democrats, who offered their own statements asserting that that issue had not been satisfactory resolved.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, for example, said, "In my view, this remains an open question and needs more scrutiny." And Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another Democratic committee member, said that while "nobody came before the committee and said, `Look, I had my brains beaten in to change my analysis,' " it was nevertheless true that "policymakers made it very clear what information they were looking for."

More Greasing Of Skids For Cheney

Al D'Amato and Bruce Bartlett want Dick Cheney out.

Al likes Powell or McCain; Bruce likes McCain, and so do I (in my current fantasy, anyway).

Lookin' Good In The Tin Foil Hat

John Judis and Spencer Ackerman of the New Republic are lookin' good in their tin-foil lined Yankees caps.

The latest conspiracy - Evil BushCo is pressuring Musharaff and the Pakistanis to deliver Osama during Kerry's acceptance speech, timed to coincide with the balloon drop. Their Big Finish:

Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know: This year, the president's reelection is at stake.

Is this a serious question? What has changed in Pakistan since 2002? Well, there was a time when the Pakistani ISI was in bed with the Taliban and Al Qaeda as part of Pakistani operations against India in Kashmir. However, Musharaff survived two assasination attempts by extremist groups in late 2003, and relations with India seem to have thawed a bit. Just maybe, Musharaff feels a bit more comfortable in taking on the terrorists his own intelligence agency has backed for years.

Beyond that, Pakistan did deliver Khalid Sheik Mohammed in March of 2003, so they have not been totally uncooperative before now.

MORE: When last we looked, Nek Mohammed was making a mockery of the Pakistanis. But he was killed in a missile attack on June 18, and now the government is pushing harder.

UPDATE: Wow. One of the biggest NO SALE signs I have ever seen goes up at Belgravitas. Yeah, what he said!

MUCH LATER: Waiting For The Balloon Drop (cont.)

A Sneak Peek At The Butler Report

Via Glenn, we see that the FT is standing by their earlier story.

Caveat buffs will ponder this:

...among Lord Butler's other areas of investigation was the issue of whether Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence.

That is not exactly the same as saying that the claim was accurate, or that it has subsequently been verified.

However, defenders of Bush's sixteen words may be excused for directing three of Cheney's words to Administration critics.

MORE: We note that the Daily Torygraph buried similar info in the last paragraph of a July 5 story:

On the other contentious issue, British claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium ore from Niger, Lord Butler is believed to say an MI6 report was accurate and not based on fake documents from the CIA.

FOR NOSTALGIA BUFFS: ""The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." [Bush, State of the Union, 1/28/03]

What I Didn't Find in Africa, by the incredible Joseph C. Wilson IV.

UPDATE: A bit of a filibuster from Tim Dunlop, who eventually gets to his main point - why did the Bush Administration back down from this claim? Good question, which ties in to two of mine - why should I defend the Admin more vigorously than they defend themselves, and why should I expect the media to publicize this if the Bush people don't? Well?

A partial answer - the original 16 Words were correct but Clintonian, and the Bush people saw a losing PR fight ahead. A more complete truth would have been something like, "the Brits believe it, but they can't share their intel with us and we can't verify it separately - our experts are scratching their heads, but I wanted to pass this tidbit along anyway". Probably not good enough for the SOTU.

So, is is a lie to present anything less than the full and complete truth? I doubt this new standard that our friends on the left have adopted will survive the first week of a Kerry Administration. Bush's statement was misleading; the DNC response ("Fact: Bush Administration Knew Claim Was False") is even more misleading.

UPDATE: Here is a Guardian story from the time that the first British dossier was released in Sept. 2002. The rumor then - smugglers and gangs moving uranium.

Bubbling Over For Edwards

The NY Times editors have an oddly ambivalent reaction to Edwards, which they precede with a bit of Kerry-bashing - Kerry is "an extremely well-qualified presumptive nominee running a lackluster campaign. The euphoria of so many Democrats over Mr. Edwards's addition to the ticket yesterday comes from their hope that he can juice things up."

But they are keeping their eye on Sen. Edwards as well:

It is likely that Mr. Edwards will be dispatched to critical industrial states like Ohio to talk about jobs, as he did with such force in the primary. We hope that he'll refrain from falling into protectionist rhetoric in the process. He has a habit of giving angry workers the impression that he's in favor of far more drastic action against job outsourcing than he has ever actually advocated. The public debate would be better served by more candor.

Edwards hasn't even spoken, and they are already worried about his lack of candor? Ah, well, it's only July - they'll be won over soon enough. Edwards will grow on the trail, a newly-hopeful America will respond to his freshly honed message... the Times may be full of surprises, but their coverage of Edwards will not be one of them.

Kerry Motto Lotto (cont.)

We keep hope alive in the Kerry Motto Lotto with this entry, courtesy of the devoted Theresa Heinz, who reassures us on the subject of her husband's warmth:

"He likes people, in spite of whatever people might think."

Is it too late to suggest Sally Fields as a ticket-balancer?

MORE: Too late. Hmm, but can Kerry sign him up?

Greasing The Skids

Dick Cheney's doctor is out, and can Dick himself be far behind? I know the foundation for a medical excuse when I see one!

The White House says we will find Dick Cheney on the ticket, but they said we would find WMDs in Iraq, too. My money is on "a number of well-known party members". Bold Fantasy here.

A Caption Contest

John Kerry is begging for a caption.

I'll start with "Well, other folks shovel mine..."

The Punchline Is "NATO"

Now Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post says so; earlier it was the NY Times editors.

Kerry On Abortion - A Muddle

John Kerry's approach to religious issues was criticized in Slate recently; snide commentators noted that Slate got results, since the NY Times responded with a reassuring piece on Kerry's values message. Now, however, Kerry seems to have driven his Values Tour into a ditch with his assertion that he believes life begins at conception.

So how, if he believes that, does he explain his long time support for abortion rights?

"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued in the interview. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."

Please. In addition to separation of church and state, we have the right to free speech, and the mechanism to change the laws of this country. I'll accept that a person can separate their personal views from the legislative process - for example, a politician might believe that alcohol consumption was a terrible thing, yet not advocate a return to Prohibition. However, in that scenario, it would be inconsistent for the politician to advocate legislation promoting beer sales.

Similarly with abortion - John Kerry may sincerely believe that life begins at conception, and he may suspect that abortion is murder, but still respect the right of other to make a different choice. I find that particular level of moral vagueness shocking - people who are agnostic on the question of when life begins, or are convinced it begins at a later stage of the pregnancy are not tolerating abortion as murder, as Kerry seems to be. Nor does Kerry's position sound-bite well - "I'll fight for what I believe, unless I believe it for religious reasons, in which case, I don't have a prayer".

However, the minimum requirement for someone in Kerry's position who holds Kerry's professed beliefs would be to work to reduce the incidence of abortion (and that certainly may not mean by outlawing it, as Mario Cuomo explained and Barry excerpted). And the Kerry camp nods in this direction, with Kerry spokesperson Stephanie Cutter assuring us that Kerry supports Bill Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" formulation.

To which critics have said, "Oh, really?". I don't find "safe, legal and rare" featured prominently at Kerry's website. Instead, I find this, under Women's Issues - Protect the right to choose:

John Kerry believes that women have the right to control their own bodies, their own lives, and their own destinies. He believes that the Constitution protects their right to choose and to make their own decisions in consultation with their doctor, their conscience, and their God. He will defend this right as President. He recently announced he will support only pro-choice judges to the Supreme Court. Kerry also believes that we should promote family planning and health plans should assure women contraceptive coverage.

Kerry's speech to NARAL in January 2003 does not exactly feature "safe, legal, and rare" either. For a flavor of his intro:

...that’s what this fight is all about. It’s about power. It’s about who decides. And it is beyond my comprehension how, on an issue so personal to women, that a bunch of men in the White House or Congress dare to claim rectitude and make this decision and interfere with the freedom and rights of millions of women.

Hmm, it's not about protecting the life that began at conception? Not at all? This speech is not John Kerry saying "You have the right to an abortion, and I have an obligation to protect that right, and I am determined to do so, but I also have an obligation to tell you that I think abortion is wrong". This speech is, "You go, girl!".

The speeches, the website, and the many votes against the partial birth abortion ban do not square with a fellow who is opposed to abortion but defending a woman's right to have one. And the Kerry confusion - both his spokesperson saying that the "life begins at conception" position is new to her and the Supreme Court litmus test shuffle a while ago spring to mind - leave one wondering just how talented a politician the Dems have nominated.

MORE: Polling data, and a straw in the wind when the WaPo reported on Kerry's abortion problem a month ago.

UPDATE: Captain Ed delivers the broadside, cleverly titled "Kerry Flip-Flops On Life". I'm green.

Of Course The Media Is Biased

Of course the media is biased, but this study doesn't prove it. Over at Pejmanesque I dropped a too-long comment, which I will recycle here:

The concept of the study is ingenious, but it has a fatal flaw, which, on a Sunday morning, I can only illustrate by tedious example:

The study simplifies the world by focussing on two types of (my term) "Newsmakers" (Dem and Rep Congressfolks) and one type of "Expert Authority" (think tanks). One distortion, not fatal in itself, is that the study overlooks other types of Expert Authority, such as universities and government agencies. The other problem, deadly when combined with the first, is that the study overlooks important Newsmakers, who may have a different pattern of citing Expert Authority than the Congressfolk do.

To really simplify, imagine that we look only at Ted Kennedy (for the Left, natch) and Tom DeLay. Let's suppose that Kennedy cites Harvard half the time and the Economic Policy Institute half the time in his speeches. DeLay, starting in 2001, cites Republican controlled Gov't Agencies half the time ("this Treasury Dept study shows we can afford this tax cut..."), and cites the Heritage Foundation the other half of the time.

Our hypothetical sample newspaper, "Fair and Balanced", dutifully reports each story in the format of "Kennedy said, citing X; Delay said, citing Y". For true balance, half the time they report DeLay's view first.

The result - in the course of one hundred stories Kennedy will cite the EPI fifty times, DeLay will cite the Heritage Foundation fifty times, and the newspaper will cite both institutions fifty times. After complex statistical crunching, the authors will conclude (despite having ignored all the cites of Harvard and the Gov't Agencies) that the EPI is left, the Heritage is right, and the paper is neutral. So far so good, and a clever plan it is!

Now, the problem - suppose we introduce a new Newsmaker, speaking for the White House - let's call him Bush. Bush may cite Expert Authority very differently from DeLay or Kennedy; in fact, since it is his Administration, let's assume he cites Government Agencies 100% of the time. Let's also assume Bush makes 50% of the news, to which Kennedy (the real voice of the Dem Party!) is quoted in response.

Now what happens over the course of one hundred stories at Fair and Balanced, which uses the same format described earlier? The Kennedy half of the stories results in fifty cites of the EPI; the fifty stories mentioning DeLay (as the balance to Kennedy) produce twenty-five cites of the Heritage; and the fifty stories which balance Bush with Kennedy produce zero cites for the Heritage.

Net result at Fair and Balanced - 50 EPI cites, 25 Heritage cites, and a liberal-leaning score!

That is not the answer we want for Fair and Balanced. Now, the time period for some of the papers studied is strictly within the Bush Admin (NY Times, for example), so I think the problem I am describing is fatal for those scores.

Some of the other media (CBS, IIRC) have scores based on stories that go back to the Clinton era, so the change of Admin would complicate my objection, but would tend to shift the scores to the right of the NY Times. My guess - we would need to calculate separate scores by date of Administration, and check to see if there was a big shift left when Bush took over. Such a shift, OTOH, might simply reflect an oppositional tendency in the media - they bash whoever is in the White House.

Well, I am not changing my mind about a liberal media, and I think this study is based on an ingenious idea, but I suspect that the authors may have gone a simplification too far.

MORE: My earlier post, with the germ of this objection noted there. The study itelf is here, or here.

UPDATE: Try this for a bit of symmetry - our friends on the left are able to take a couple of comments from Ari Fleischer and a videotape of a raised eyebrow to "prove" that the Bush Administration claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. OTOH, when conservatives point to numerous instances of odd reporting in the NY Times as evidence of liberal bias, it proves nothing. Where are the goalposts?

(And I am making up the bit about the eyebrow, BTW).