How Lame?

Gulliver entwined or the king of beasts being snapped at from behind by hyenas? Take your pick of these or any other images you can conjure of the powerful being harassed by the weak. Poor George, the lamest of the lame ducks since Herby Hoover, can’t catch a break. His war is increasingly viewed by his (former) supporters as having the aspect and smell of leprosy. In a front page story in today’s Washington Post, the (formerly) faithful now point to (his) incompetence for the ever more obvious failure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901787.html?referrer=emailarticle

The president broke ranks with Tom Jefferson yesterday and vetoed his first bill. Seventy percent of the American people see stem cell research as worthy with great potential to heal the sick and to make the lame walk. But George with his usual ability to redefine inflexibility cannot break with his hard core supporters and is abandoned by many of his (formerly) most ardent Hill admirers. If stem cell research ever does find the cures for some of the horrible afflictions that torment humanity, will those who oppose it on moral grounds refuse treatment based on its immoral genesis? Just a question.

Our lion roared at Syria and Iran and their lackeys snapped at his rump. His most personal frustrations were caught on tape in St. Petersburg when he bellowed his sad lament to the soon to be former Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

And of course, the drive by media – defined thus by my pal el Rushbo – never forgets anything and has everything the high and mighty have ever uttered in secure tape files in nuclear bomb shelters. Today’s turd is about Katrina, you remember her: the bitch of the bayou, when George was doing his darndest to appear sympathetic to the down and out he said some things that would lead one to believe that he gave a crap about the poor. With the passage of time, however, George kind of forgot these remarks. But no, the drive byes never forget anything and poor Uncurious George gets slammed for not giving a rat’s patooty about the down and out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901735.html?referrer=emailarticle

Sad, this lame duck business!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Anxious in Annandale

The only thing I’m sure of this morning is that Congress is composed of idiots and charlatans who can’t be trusted. Last week’s Washington Post Magazine article that asked if the Israeli lobby was too powerful was simply prologue to the dance by members of both parties that no matter what Israel is doing today is fine with them. Were I an Israeli, I’d be damned worried by that vote of confidence. Clearly, both parties are courting American Jewish votes and campaign contributions and not worrying whether that might be good for America, Israel, the war of terror, or anything else.

If you agree with the Israeli response to the Hamas/Hezbollah attacks, killings and kidnappings, there are about a gazillion media articles in favor. If you think Israel has overreacted there are an equal number of pieces supporting this position. I have no idea why – perhaps its one of my Alfred E. Newman “What me worry?” moments – but I think this horrible situation between the Israelis and Hamas and Hezbollah is going to end without turning into WWIII. But there are even columns in major outlets by writers I greatly respect who are fearful that this could be a pivotal moment in world history much like Sarajevo in 1914.

But there is joy in Mudville; the mighty neocons have struck out. Those idealistic movers and shakers who browbeat poor George W. Bush to the point that he lost focus on the war on terror in Afghanistan and decided that delivering democracy to Iraq was more important than applying the coup de grace to the Taliban and the tattered shreds of al Qaeda that were holed up on the border with Pakistan no longer have the President’s ear.

Today’s Post has a front page story on how unhappy the neocons are and how they’re saying George has lost his nerve. Sadly, George has shown them the door several years too late. Because of them we’re almost 3,000 deaths, 20,000 wounded, and committed for up to $2 trillion wasted in a war that never should have been fought in Iraq and which says nothing about the tens of thousands of poor Iraqis dead and wounded that we were attempting to help.

The neocons are trying to turn the tables on the President and blame him because we didn’t send enough troops to do the job in Iraq. But that doesn’t wash and it’s becoming clearer by the day that sending twice as many soldiers and marines would have merely postponed the bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. But read the article and their lamentations for yourselves:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801373.html?referrer=emailarticle

Lost in the explosions, real and polemic, is a column by Richard Cohen – I’m sure there are many others of this kind but they’re also buried in the back pages of papers – that attempts to put Israel’s plight in historical perspective. As many of you know, I admire Richard and have extolled his virtues many times in previous postings and this is one of his most thoughtful offerings. But let me digress, in the Post Magazine article on the Israeli lobby that I linked last week, one of the questions raised was whether speaking out constructively against any Israeli policy could result in anything much beyond the questioner’s being labeled anti-Semitic? I don’t really know the answer to that, but I feel confident that only a prominent American Jew like Richard could have written a column such as the one I’m linking and not suffered an immediate attack by the lobby and its supporters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701154.html?referrer=emailarticle

There’s not much dispute that the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah were encouraged and supplied by Iran and Syria. America is in this mess to its eyeballs, and our unwise Iraq War has damaged us and is hurting Israel. The only thing good that I see coming out of it is the loss of prestige by the neocons within the administration and in the public mind. Israel and the U.S. will ultimately get out of these corners but with plenty of wounds to lick. The Post article labels the neocons `conservative,’ but the real conservatives of the Republican Party are finally asserting themselves and there’s hope rising even as the bombs rain down on the innocent everywhere in the Middle East.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The Israeli Lobby

Does the Israeli lobby wield too much power? That’s the question posed by a Washington Post Sunday Magazine article (July 16, 2006) that I cannot link for you but recommend that you read by going to the paper’s website when it is posted. The article that was clearly in development for a long time and appeared at a particularly dynamic time since Israel is engaged in ferocious military actions in Gaza and Lebanon even as this is being written.

There can be no doubt that these actions were provoked by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon when militants of both groups crossed into Israel, attacked outposts, killed and wounded the guards, and kidnapped soldiers from both outposts. It is the avowed policy of Israel to do all that is necessary to safely retrieve its kidnapped troops; a policy that I support without reservation.

The entire world is focused on these actions as the combatants on both sides utilize extraordinary means to make their points and as other powers are fingered for egging them on in a larger war for regional control. Iran and Syria stand accused of siccing Hamas and Hezbollah onto the Israelis to back door the U.S. which has had them both under great pressure, and the United States, in turn, stands accused of not restraining the response by Israel, its alleged dog in the fight.

All of this plays out as the parties behind the combatants are accused of using this series of events to provide leverage in both the Iraq War and the larger war on terror. World petroleum and stock markets shudder as buyers question the ability of Middle East suppliers of the world’s great commodity, oil, to guarantee deliveries. Spectators in the Arab and larger Muslim world and greater powers, including some members of the European Union, Russia, and China shed crocodile tears as the world’s remaining super power gets further bogged down in the region.

This brings us back to the article in the Post Magazine which attempts to lay out a balanced picture for readers to make up their own minds. It also points out how difficult it is for anyone to criticize the lobby or Israel without becoming labeled an anti-Semite.

Frankly, I think the lobby is too powerful. Until these attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, I have been under the impression that many Israelis – in and out of government - have been far more forward looking in dealing with the settlements than have those leading the American lobbying effort. Being an inveterate reader of letters to the editors of major newspapers, I believe also that many American Jews – but certainly don’t mean to quantify them or try to determine polling numbers – have come to embrace the recent withdrawal from Gaza and the movement in the West Bank as being in the best interests of Israel, but the current situation may well set this policy back, at least in the short term.

The Sharon settlement policy has caused problems for Israel with its Evangelical Christian supporters, and this to me is one of the great problems for the Israeli lobby. Both the settlers and their supporters in the Christian right do not approach this issue in the manner of the governments of Israel and the U.S. and causes these governments great problems. The governments see the settlements problem in terms of their geo-political interests while the settlers and their American Christian supporters see it in Biblical terms and these views presently conflict.

I’ve been of the opinion that the Israeli lobby is too powerful because its American Christian backers push it well past what the government of Israel finds useful. If that’s anti-Semitic, I’m sorry.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Webb for Senate - II

Yesterday’s posting on Jim Webb’s candidacy for the U.S. senate from Virginia included a link to a Washington Post story that described his opponent’s major thrust in attempting to hold off the Democrat. Basically, the Republican intends to pooh-pooh Jim Webb’s initial opposition to the Iraq War as a mere “I told you so,” that will turn off conservative Virginians, particularly its many military residents. Here’s that link again:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/login&destination=logout&nextstep=confirm

I think Webb should hammer his initial and continued opposition to the war and to demonstrate how Bush’s folly has damaged our military. This fiasco has wounded our military forces more than any other segment of our society. Today, I’m posting a news article from the New York Times that has to make all thoughtful military folks consider the adverse impacts of the war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/us/14private.html?ex=1153540800&en=b19eb45a4c0bee62&ei=5070&emc=eta1

In listening to el Rushbo when running my errands, I find that he occasionally has military officers with hard right wing leanings rant about how they should be given license to really run amok in Iraq. But most of the uniformed people I’ve known over the years have been very even handed in their politics and most realize the down side of what is happening to our forces.

Today’s posting makes mincemeat of the Pentagon’s propaganda on how well recruiting is going. Obviously, age, intellect, physical and moral standards have been compromised in order to hit the numbers. I do not for an instant believe that the standards have been lowered to the point that the subject of the article, the soldier alleged to have raped and murdered a young Iraqi woman and to have killed her family, is anything but an isolated case, but clearly the officers and non-coms have their hands full in dealing with the less qualified people now coming into the force.

I’m convinced that military residents of Virginia will embrace Jim Webb’s candidacy and compare him favorably with the chicken hawks who so aggressively rush our troops into harm’s way but who were themselves too tied up with important things to serve. Webb is a true American hero who put his life on the line in Vietnam. President Bush and many others in the lead in Iraq understand military service from a merely theoretical position. But they’re always ready to stand by as those who really fought are slimed and Swift Boated.

Had Enough? Vote Democrat!

Blog on!

Wild Bill.

Webb for Senate

While it is still not clear how George Bush’s Congressional apologists for the Iraq War will defend their seats in November, two trial balloons have been loosed. The first, prominently represented by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, is to spit into the wind and continue the mindless chant that it was a great idea when we attacked and remains one now. And the second, championed by Virginia Senator George Allen in his constantly tightening race with Democrat James Webb, is to pooh-pooh Webb’s pre-war warnings against attacking Iraq as placing him in an “I-told-you-so-caucus” that will turn off The Old Dominion’s middle of the road and conservative voters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101555_2.html?referrer=emailarticle

Republicans in anything resembling contested seats will obviously see Lieberman’s growing difficulties with the head on attack and are likely to opt for the Allen approach. The question is will the sloughing off of this national tragedy have traction with voters already not committed? Clearly, Bush’s base, of which no one is baser than Allen who is regularly and correctly labeled a Bush lap dog, will buy the proposition but how will it play with independents and moderates who along with liberals are now firmly in the camp of those who see the war as a horrible blunder and an endless quagmire?

Webb – and the other Democrats (except Lieberman) – should counterattack opponents who propose to cavalierly toss off the endless war as something that we must just slog on with despite limitless casualties and wasted treasure. Allen offers no way out of Iraq; only Jim Webb and the Democrats can find an honorable way out in some reasonable time frame.

Allen and other defenders of the war must be challenged when they claim the Democrats are divided and have no plan on how to end the war with the administration’s policy of standing down only when the Iraqis a ready no matter how long it takes. Clearly that day is far off and may well be receding further into the distant future with each passing day. Not only that, but office holders who persist in calamitous policies must see that failure to change course in the face of overwhelming evidence of error must end in defeat and banishment from Congress.

We must have Congressional oversight of this administration and divided government in 2008.

Had enough? Vote Democrat! Virginians – vote for Jim Webb!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

IRAQ REVISITED

President George W. Bush took us to war with Iraq more than three years ago. The Saddam regime has been gone for all but a few weeks of that period yet we are unable to see an end to our participation. What are we to make of these years and our predicament?

The most obvious is that the rationales for the preventive attack on Iraq were wrong. It is clear to all but the lunatic fringe that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Saddam’s arsenal, and no policy cooperation connection has been proven between the government of Iraq and al Qaeda. Nor is it believed, except by the aforesaid morons, that despite Saddam’s constant hullabaloney toward Israel and his occasional call for the restoration of the Caliphate of all Arabs under his well tattered banner that any of this science fiction had any real basis.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, DOD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the neocons who persistently pushed the president’s buttons, and the claque of Senators – Warner, McCain, Lieberman, and Bayh - who can all proudly claim credit for leading us to Baghdad were wrong on all counts.

Far less important in hindsight as far as I’m concerned, we did not enter the fray with enough troops to occupy Iraq when the Saddam government fell. That this was called to the attention of the policy makers by the Army Chief of Staff is merely a sad footnote. Had we sent the number recommended, we’d still be in the extraordinarily difficult position of trying dismount from this terrible tiger, a mere postponement of the day of reckoning when old tribal and religious enemies could settle ancient scores.

For months now extending into years, the Republicans who cheered madly as the president prepared for the conflict and baited their weakling brethren across the aisle as wimps and flip-floppers now call to the attention of American voters that the negativist Democrats are badly split on how to get us out of Iraq, offer nothing but negativity on the war, and want to cut and run – a breach of trust with those who have fought and died.

That leaves the Grand Old Party as the happy warriors going about the business of securing the battered nation while the Dems wring their hands. The president has never said how the Shock and Awe disposal of Saddam in weeks would translate into getting American military men and women out of harm’s way. The only pledge is that when the Iraqi government can defend itself, we’ll stand down. Frankly, the news – obviously cooked by the mainstream media – leads ignorant Americans to believe that things aren’t going well in Baghdad when indeed everything is perfectly swell. Those pictures of people getting blown up each day are simply for consumption by the media.

When the President labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the Axis of Evil, it became incumbent upon him and America to deal with that axis. It is quite clear from books by Bob Woodward, Ron Suskind, and others and from Congressional testimony from people like Richard Clark that we would take action against the member least likely to be able to respond effectively; so long, Saddam.

Saddam’s fall would clearly demonstrate to the Mullahs and the mad midget of Pyongyang that we weren’t kidding and that they better start talking or the same fate might be in the cards for them. I guess we showed them. Iran is working feverishly to attain nuclear weapons and Kim is believed to already have them. These nations are far more dangerous than they were three years ago, and we’re badly bogged down in a terrible quagmire.

All the fancy dancing to change the rationales for toppling Saddam – democracy for all Muslim nation’s governed by tyrants is a little ragged these days – which seem to be settling on his being a really bad guy who was really, really cruel to his own people can’t paper over what we’ve done to our military. All of the lost and broken lives and hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain with no end in sight and now our difficulty in funding weapons programs that we need against far more important long range competitors such as China leave us in far greater difficulties than when we attacked Iraq.

What we’ve done to our armed forces and to ourselves says nothing about the people we’ve rescued. While life under Saddam was clearly awful, I can’t for the life of me say that the human cost to Iraqis since our attack has been anything but terrible as well. America and Iraq are now in a terrible embrace with no clear way to break free.

In recent months it has become apparent that the fully justifiable war against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has take a turn for the worse. The government on Kabul has less control over the outlying provinces than it had – with us as its surrogate – when the slide became noticeable. When we turned our focus from this war that we should have been fighting to take on a nation that was – while loudly rattling its rusty sabers – little threat to us or our allies.

Most Americans have turned against the Iraq War not because they don’t have staying power but because they’ve come to understand that it was the wrong war whose basis was phony, a classic fool’s errand.

Yes, the Democrats are divided – unlike the lemmings on their right. Yes, the Democrats are unhappy – unlike their deliriously smitten Republican friends. Well damn it, anyone who isn’t gravely concerned should be locked up in the booby hatch. It’s too bad this Happy Warrior B.S. seems to be selling among the yahoos. If we don’t get at least one House of Congress intent on providing oversight to this administration, we’ll remain in serious trouble

I don’t fault those who supported the Iraq War when the spoon feeding of faulty intelligence could not be challenged. But now there is no doubt, we were misled into this mess. It’s George Bush’s war and he’s unlikely to ever say he was wrong. But people like Joe Lieberman should be ashamed of themselves; all of the reasons he gave for encouraging the President to attack Saddam were wrong. The Democrats in Connecticut have figured him out, and he’s willing to bring the house down rather than admit error.

Had enough? Vote Democrat – except for Joe!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Score One for the Good Guys

I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from readers concerning the break up of the recent terrorist plots in Miami and New York. Folks have been concerned that the actions by the FBI, police and prosecutors prior to the alleged culprits showing that they were true threats somehow undermined the seriousness of the plots. Initially, I had some of the same questions about breaking up conspiracies before they showed any real danger to the Sears Tower and to the tunnels under the Hudson.

Yesterday, I listened to Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff babble on about it saying that it is sometimes only a short time between planning and execution. Frankly, that wasn’t too convincing either.

But in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that there might well be another even more important reason for jumping on these conspiracies very early rather than waiting until the terrorists actually planted their bombs. If potential terrorists – international or domestic – come to understand that the government has sophisticated means of learning about and listening in on their conspiracies and planning they’re much less likely to begin their murderous conniving.

Seeding paranoia in the minds of potentially bad people isn’t the worst thing in the world when you’re dealing with potential killers preparing to take their initial steps toward terrorist conspiracies. While the government isn’t likely to announce this as a salutary benefit from the breakup of those two groups of bumbling plotters, it is just that. While this may do little good in dealing with hard core enemies of the U.S. and the West, it doesn’t hurt to scare the stupid wannabes – who can be mortally dangerous.

Score one for the good guys of the Department of Justice, FBI, local and state police, and Homeland Security Department. Their lot hasn’t been pleasant, so let’s put these cases on the positive side of the ledger. I feel a little safer and hope you do too.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

JOE MUST GO

On October 2, 2002, Senator Joe Lieberman (D. Conn.) was the co-sponsor of Joint Senate Resolution #46, Use of U.S. Armed Forces Against Iraq, along with Senators Warner, McCain and Bayh. Senator Lieberman’s speech in support of the resolution indicated no doubt that Iraq was a threat to the region, that he was intent on making Iraq the dominant Arab power, and that he was developing WMD and the means to deliver them against U.S. interests and his neighboring states.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Letters,%20reports%20and%20statements/senate-liebermanwarnermccainbayh-100202.htm

This hawkish stance predates the March 2003 attack on Iraq which the senator continues to support to this day. While Joe Lieberman was not alone in believing that Iraq was a threat to American interests and its neighbors, he has never backed down from the benefits of and the need for war against Iraq despite the fact that the WMD were never found and almost certainly did not exist at the time of the resolution or the attack.

The senator continues to say that the overthrow of Saddam was a good thing and worth going to war for. Since the basis for his original position was the danger posed by Saddam against his neighbors based on his weapons capability and since that balloon has been punctured, he is left with the argument that Saddam was a very bad person who did horrible things to his internal enemies; no one has disputed this but it was not the basis of the threat against our interests or Iraq’s neighbors.

Since Iraq clearly did not pose the threat that was the basis for the attack, Joe Lieberman and George Bush are stuck with bringing democracy to Iraq and overthrowing a very bad tyrant who threatened no one but his own internal enemies. For this and not the attacks against New York and Washington we have lost more than 2,500 lives, 20,000 wounded – many severely, and $4 billion every week of the year with no end in sight. And, of course, Iraq has become the center of the war on terror.

It is one thing for Senator Lieberman to oppose pulling out of Iraq saying that in his view it would be bad for the U.S. and its interests, but he cannot bring himself to say that going in was based on erroneous intelligence and that he was wrong. He has accused his primary opponent of not understanding the geo-political situation. As all his support for the attack was based on his estimates of Iraqi power that has turned out to be completely wrong, he should be more specific about what his opponent doesn’t get.

Iraq has proven to be one of the worst American geo-political blunders of all time. Joe Lieberman was one of the principal instigators of this blunder. The people of Connecticut have seen through the calamity and are calling him on it. Their fear is that through his political trickery going against Joe will be hurtful to their goal of electing a Congress that will provide real oversight to an administration that has lost its way and has no idea how to get us out this mess. Joe Lieberman is out for no one but himself at this point.

Please forward my two postings on Senator Lieberman to any Connecticut voters you may know. Thanks!

Joe must go!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

We Feel Good

In the Washington Post on July 4, 2006, columnist Abigail Trafford waxed eloquently about the tragedy of suicide, particularly among older men among whom it is becoming quite common. Basically, Trafford linked most such suicides to depression, mental illness and the impact of ageism. I’ll link this posting with her column so that you may make your own judgments about these views.

Today at lunch, three of my friends and I discussed the subject and came to a rather different conclusion from Trafford. All of us are in our early to mid-seventies and all suffer from a smorgasbord of the maladies associated with aging, including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and mild to serious vision and hearing impairments, among other things. We are retired federal managers who worked together and have been friends for more than a third of a century. The event that inspired the column and the luncheon topic was the highly publicized apparent suicide of a prominent Maryland publisher who was reportedly depressed because of heart disease. The columnist found that this duality matched her profile of the suicide prone quite well.

At least three of us indicated that we had contemplated suicide as a possible end to our lives many times since middle age. The discussion quickly cut to the heart of the matter: talk is cheap and such thoughts are purely hypothetical until acted upon – and none of us has attempted it. We discussed the Maryland case as well as the death of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak who committed suicide at the height of his corporate power. In both of these cases, the perpetrator/victims were men of wealth who did not match the profiles of those at our table.

Trying not to be snappy, the consensus at the light hearted luncheon discussion was that ending one’s own life might well be based on far different circumstances from those who were the prime subjects of the article. Economics did not come into play in the column, but we felt that this was a very important element in the decision. Sticking strictly with the older men subset of suicides, we thought that poor men had less of a financial stake in the decision. A poor older fellow intent on going on living despite a determination that his quality of life was poor could do so much longer than subjects of middle or higher income and resources but who were still not wealthy. The death of the former was considered to have less economic impact on his survivors than the latter who would have to use resources initially intended for his survivors to continue on.

Leaving money behind – no pun intended – the question arises: is it normal to feel the loss of quality of life without being depressed? Speaking for myself and – I’m guessing for my companions – we have all lost some physical abilities, but this, in itself, has not caused us great difficulties or undue depression. Since all of us had worked in highly charged atmospheres using our mental faculties and long experience in complex bureaucratic situations, it is the loss of mental acuity that we fear most.

It was at this juncture that we agreed that if we sensed significant drop in our intellectual abilities that there would be in a very real sense a loss of our personhood. With no great sense of depression would it not be reasonable to attempt to end it all before a total loss of ourselves and our esteem set in? Obviously, we, like most, wish to cling a little longer and at some point, the danger would be that we would no longer have the physical, mental or emotional capacity to commit suicide.

Before we skipped to lighter topics such as world peace, we toasted our health, such as it is, and the very high quality of each of our lives. While the statistics used by Trafford are very interesting, we felt strongly that her conclusions were far from the mark when it came to men like ourselves.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/03/AR2006070300764.html

World peace is good and worthy of serious contemplation, and we drank to it.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Joe Lieberman for Senate

Should Joe Lieberman be turned out of the United States Senate?

Democrats in Connecticut must choose whether to keep Lieberman who has been acceptable to them for eighteen years or to elect his primary opponent based on his position on a single issue, the Iraq War. This is the nature of republican form of government. We elect people to represent us, to study the issues and to make decisions based on balancing the short term desires of the voters and the long term needs of the constituents and the nation.

Democratic voters in Connecticut are incensed by Lieberman’s stand on the war. It was one thing to be in favor of the conflict based on the yarns that the Bush administration wove into a fabric alleging that Saddam posed a security threat to the U.S. But the lame defenses of the attack put up by the President after his WMD rationale tripped over itself have completely turned off Nutmeg voters – and the vast majority of other Americans. But Joe hops from clambake to clambake happily spouting that getting rid of Saddam was a great thing despite the facts about WMD and the unmade connection between al Qaeda and Saddam’s government and his seemingly obliviousness to the great cost in blood and treasure and the bogging down of our military even as the world grows evermore dangerous.

Suffice it to say, Joe’s apologies for the Bush war are convincing almost none of the Democratic faithful in his state. He still appears to be in the lead in the primary, but that is clearly based on the balancing that the voters in a republic are forced to stagger under. Almost no Democrats facing the choice agree with the baloney Joe is spewing on the war, and seeing the he’s in trouble in, the Senator is preparing to run in the general election as an Independent and has signaled his intent to vote in the Senate Democratic Caucus if he’s returned to office.

Obviously, we expect our representatives to use their independent judgment in voting on issues and only when they fail us too many times or too badly should we turn them out. That is exactly the equation the Democrats in Connecticut are figuring, and the decision of each voter hinges on the answer to: does the Senator’s unrelenting support of the President on the Iraq War when balanced against the possibility, however remote, that their decision could sustain the Republican majority in the Senate that is viewed by these same voters as damaging to the national interest warrant the defeat of Joe Lieberman?

Each voter must balance eighteen years of relative happiness with one grave failure. To me this is a watershed decision. Lieberman’s unrepentant stance in favor of the Bush administration’s policy on the war on terror, highlighted by the attack on Iraq, is so great that were I a voter in this primary, I’d turn him out in a heartbeat. If we don’t show our politicians that they are being judged and that we’re willing to send them packing in a case of grievous departure from our wishes then we have in effect created a permanent class of office holders.

Thumbs Down! Off with his head!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Energy Independence

Yesterday, this posting was begun in anger, and I’m glad that I didn’t place it before you without sleeping on it.

In listening to President Bush and Republican presidents since Richard Nixon you could easily surmise that America doesn’t have a real energy crisis and that all we have to do is apply the principals of supply side economics to our fuel needs. We can simply produce our way to energy independence. Oh, sure, we might have to make some minor adjustments at the fringes but nothing really hurtful to our life style.

For openers, presidents of both parties from Nixon to the incumbent pooh-pooh naysayers and pessimists who they charge with being wrong on energy and all other spheres and have no future in America. Looking back at the darkest moments in living memory, politicos remember the ostrich approach championed by presidents from Harding to Hoover whose `chicken in every pot’ held sway until the whole house nearly collapsed. The Democrats had no chance until Franklin Roosevelt came forward and promised to do something – anything. Damned if he didn’t, and the right has been railing about the high taxes on the rich ever since.

Democrats, on the other hand, have led on the energy crunch using the Chicken Little approach of pointing out that the sky is falling. Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election almost as much for his views on energy and the negativity permeating America as for his appearance of helplessness in the face of Iran’s kidnapping of the American Embassy personnel in Tehran. In government things sometimes have to get worse before they get better. Clearly Carter was too far out in front of his countrymen on energy. Democrats have sought conservation through regulation, and they ought to look at their position in the electoral process before reaffirming their usual direction.

Since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, it’s been government by musical chairs in dealing with the long term crises. Presidents and Congress approach the energy crisis as they did hurricanes: develop disaster plans, file reports, issue press releases, create agencies, and hope the damn thing holds off until they’re in Hawaii happily collecting their annuities. Sadly, along came Katrina and, like Hoover, the incumbent – Bush – had no one but Brownie to blame.

Similarly, Bush was the odd man out on gasoline prices. Being an expert on deflection, he had to turn the fan on the Saudis, Chinese, and even his pals in big oil when the excrement started to fly. Instead of recognizing that it might actually be time to level with the public and begin an adult approach to energy a full generation after Carter tried, Bush opened the classic Republican playbook and offered us supply side energy policy.

Energy is much like Katrina: pols make plans for energy independence, fund lots of pork on alternative sources, pay for some exotic R&D, give tax breaks for technologies that might be viable in twenty years and pray that their pensions kick in before reality of the situation becomes obvious. Oh, and most important, they make fun of serious scientists and intellectually bent members of their own class who say we’re in trouble. Cassandras like Al Gore, James Hansen, and lots of environmentalists are negativists who see nothing but bad things. Ronald Reagan wiped the floor with Jimmy Carter by pointing out that America remains the city on the hill with no need for gloom and doom. America is the land of opportunity, and we’ll be damned if we’ll change our ways in the face of temporary bad news.

Hovering, however, is that a major goal of al Qaeda is to kick us – America and our Western allies - out of Muslim lands and to overthrow the governments of some of the richest oil states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and now Iraq which are perceived to be propped up by us simply to get at their oil without so much as a by your leave for the poor citizens. For sixty years we’ve built our society on cheap oil, and we’ve approached the Middle East commodity owners with the single minded idea of keeping the supply flowing. We’ve ridden this tiger for so long we don’t have a clue on how to dismount and neither political party has uttered a word on how to deal with this problem. Don’t expect one before November.

Every Republican policy statement is based on supply. We’ll increase the use of ethanol, drill offshore on the continental shelf, open up the Arctic wildlife refuge, build more nuclear plants, fund clean coal technologies, encourage alternate forms of energy such as wind and solar; the list goes on and on. Frankly, some of these approaches do make sense given the pains we’re beginning to suffer and that will increase exponentially in the years ahead. But we can’t just go cold turkey on Middle Eastern oil. We will have to increase supply and disappoint some liberals, but we’re going to have to come to grips with a future with expensive – very expensive - energy.

But today’s approach is all happiness and there will be little pain in the future. There will be no increase in the federal gasoline tax. Conservation will be mandated by the market, but that is mentioned only in passing, if at all. But the market will weigh most heavily on the poor and middle classes. Filling up Jaguars or BMWs at $5.00 a gallon will never be a problem for the well to do but that price will drown the exurban poor driving ten year old Chevys thirty miles to low wage jobs.

We’ve built the society on cheap energy: huge houses, gas guzzling SUVs, and roads to the horizon. The cars will be dealt with over a decade or so as we trade for smaller more efficient vehicles, but the last to get the appropriate vehicles will be those most in need. The McMansions will be with us for several generations and as their values go down the nature of their residents will change. Oil and gas will continue to be the energy sources of need, if not choice.

How are we to deal with these painful adjustments? The supply siders are wrong, and the liberals are too draconian, and we must find a middle way. We must do what is reasonable to ease the economy and our people through what is bound to be a very agonizing process of conservation. We’ve got to be realistic on domestic oil. Can we pass up the chance to provide up to six percent of the daily petroleum needs of the country at a price that is likely to dampen the world cost and be developed with very reasonable safety risks by passing up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? Many say yes; I say no – we must proceed. The same goes for the continental shelf. It’s easy for environmentalists to say no, but they condemn the poor and middle classes to ever greater pain in the market.

On the other hand, no matter how much bunkum is spread about clean coal, it’s filthy stuff. Even the low sulfur coal of the Powder River basin will spew thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New nuclear plants will almost certainly have to be built to provide the electric power for our ever more conservation conscious society.

The article that prompted this gusher of words about oil was in yesterday’s Washington Post. Two energy scientists exploded the myth of ethanol. Sad to say, all of the alternatives to oil have plenty of minuses. I’m linking the op-ed article. It makes all the sense in the world and destroys the dreams of farmers and politicians for a painless yet profitable transition from Middle Eastern oil.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001480.html?referrer=emailarticle

None of this makes for joyful reading, but we are in the beginning stages of our recovery from the addiction to oil. As we move into the new era, the withdrawal symptoms will lessen, so don’t fret. Remember, even if we can’t make cost effective energy from crops, beer, wine and spirits come from our green friends, and it’s four o’clock somewhere.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The War on Drugs

Mom always said that running rum, home brewing beer, and making bathtub gin were acts of mercy and certainly not sins. The four adult males in our extended family household during Prohibition subscribed to that tenet but were avid consumers rather than producers. While I broke the law by imbibing slightly below the legal age, I made up for my crime by continuing the practice of moderate consumption into my dotage.

I took up dragging on coffin nails at the tender age of twelve but cannot certify that I was anywhere near the youngest on my block to be avidly supporting North Carolina tobacco farmers. Thankfully, when the Surgeon General of the United States finally made the pronouncement that smoking was mortally dangerous, I quit. Smoking was not considered addictive in those days, merely a difficult to break `bad habit.’ Amen! I was never so sick or depressed in my life and for five years I had withdrawal symptoms whenever I saw anyone puffing.

My first novel, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick, devotes a number of chapters to the characters doing their damnedest to meet the heartfelt needs of our Irish American brethren. I was from a culture that did not agree with Prohibition and believed that it did more damage to society than any the so-called moral improvement that was the basis for its installation. Obviously, over time the American people came to believe that too and rose to rid the nation of the pox placed upon it by the goody-goodies among us.

This preface is not designed to demonstrate that I favor scofflaws who use illicit drugs; rather, it’s an effort to show the folly of prohibiting the use of substances that are not perceived by the users as dangerous and which are viewed as a corruption of governmental powers by over-jealous do-gooders.

When Prohibition was repealed the initial incidence of alcoholism rose. Certainly the number of people killed by drunk drivers rose during my long lifetime of driving – even though it is equally obvious that there were more sheer numbers of cars and drinkers. Today, alcohol continues to play a significant role in the number of highway deaths. But even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) – which I happily support – would never call for a return to Prohibition. Yet through the action of MADD, groups that had previously supported the notion of outlawing demon rum, and a clear thinking and brave health care community, the statistical incidence of drunk driving and resulting roadway deaths has been significantly reduced through education, medical treatment of alcoholics, and aggressive enforcement of laws against DUI and public drunkenness, and we now find ourselves in an era of much more responsible drinking – and driving.

Similarly, in the years since the Surgeon General first cited the dangers of smoking right up until the twenty-ninth report from the current office holder concerning second hand smoke issued this week, through education and social disapproval the per capita use of tobacco products has gone down significantly. It is clear that the approach made by society and its representatives in dealing with a product that is far more dangerous than some of the drugs currently prohibited is a much more sensible approach than the multi-billion dollar war on drugs that was declared in the seventies by President Richard Nixon and which continues in fully fury to this day with little impact on the enemy.

The roles of government toward drugs should be as an honest evaluator of the dangers of the substances, an educator on the dangers of the drugs, a regulator of the market, the greatest funder of research and medical treatment of addicts, the leading institution of social disapproval, and the enforcer of laws and regulations put in place against bad behavior of users. There are many private institutions ready to support these governmental roles with political and social pressure, independent research and educational programs that dovetail with the public efforts.

Our successes with alcohol and tobacco are prima-facie evidence that alternatives to prohibition exist. Our experience with Prohibition in the third and fourth decades of the last century during which the rule of law was undermined and the growth an underworld that still plagues us was encouraged should have shown us another way.

But we did not go in a different direction; we spent billions for little gain. Governments of many poor nations were undermined and a new and even more dynamic underworld was developed. And still we fell further behind in the war.

The following are links to two articles that sparked this posting. While from the liberal press, they clearly support libertarian notions on individual behavior and undermine the value of the War on Drugs.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/06/27/the_wrong_way_to_fight_the_war_on_drugs/?p1=email_to_a_friend

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/health/27cnd-smoke.html?ex=1152072000&en=fb78e953d875908f&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Is it four o’clock yet?

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The One Percent Doctrine - Part 3

This is the final chapter of my serial comments on Ron Suskind’s book, The One Percent Doctrine, and it is the most frightening. You may recall last week’s review of James David Barber’s The Presidential Character and John Dean’s reference to it in which he placed George W. Bush in Barber’s Active/Negative category along with Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Dean’s own employer, Richard Nixon. Based on the assertions made by Dean and my own reading of the Barber book, I agreed with the designation.

To digress for a moment to the Iraq War, Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine gave the administration the cover needed to launch an attack that all of the key players had dreamed of for years. The war on terror and the doctrine also provided the President, Vice President, and Rumsfeld with a rationale for recovering power in relation to the Congress and the courts. Cheney and Rumsfeld, veterans of the Nixon White House, wanted to take full advantage of the new wartime environment to reassert lost executive power, and Bush, a less than happy observer of his father’s presidency, was quick to sign on.

The Suskind book is a work of journalism rather than history and, therefore, does not have a bibliography, but after reading all of his references to President Bush there can be no doubt that the author is very familiar with Barber’s work and that he carefully assessed it and – without directly stating it - came to the independent conclusion that John Dean’s placement of the President in the Active/Negative category was correct. Suskind assesses Bush as a feeling rather than analytic president and describes events from his formative years that demonstrate that he is a risk taker. He points out that Bush saw early on that Iraq would provide the opportunity for a `game changer,’ and he was more than ready to move on linking Iraq to the war on terror. In a key section of the book (pps. 211 – 216) Suskind’s analysis of Bush’s faith based character is subject to an almost Barber like examination and places him where Dean has spotted him.

Cheney comes off as the true heavy in this book, but the fault is as much the President’s. Bush operates from faith and his gut and demands action, leaving the required careful presidential analysis to the V.P. by default. It is a very sad thing to read how the President can barely read the complex reports prepared for him by the CIA and other agencies, and it becomes obvious that we should be wishing Cheney good health during the remainder of the term.

In reading Suskind’s book, I became far more empathetic to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. They became aware early on after 9/11 that the nation is vulnerable to more attacks by al Qaeda and copy cat wannabes of all kinds. They come across as true patriots absolutely intent on defending us, but, sadly, like all of us, they are prisoners of their own character flaws and experience. Instead of merely doing their damnedest to defend the nation, they seized on 9/11 as an opportunity to rectify every single problem that they saw as coming from a diminished presidency dating from the power shift that emanated from Watergate.

There are so many problems that grow from this flawed analysis that a complete recitation would be a waste of your time. Suffice it to say they have a president far from stupid but one unable to do the personal analysis that goes with the job; they used flawed reasoning on their own doctrine to rectify a burr under America’s saddle in the person of Saddam and the government of Iraq; they used the doctrine to undermine their intelligence agencies and the flow of presidential decision making information; and they used the war on terror to rectify what they saw as a terrible imbalance between the branches of government.

I could go on, but it would be more of the same. Three chapters of a review are more than sufficient for you to determine if you wish to read the book.

From my perspective, it is an extremely sad and frightening book and I cannot praise it highly enough.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The One Percent Doctrine - Continued

Today’s episode in my serial review of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Solution goes to the destruction of the intelligence programs of the United States as we have known them for two-thirds of a century. The Central Intelligence Agency has classically provided honest analysis and coordinated the intelligence delivered to the President and other key players. The Director gave his best estimate of what any given situation was with caveats representing any dissent from within the agency or among the other intelligence agencies.

Let me begin by saying that for failing to spot or stop the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, scapegoats – if nothing more – from the FBI, CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and perhaps others should have been offered up for public satisfaction and entertainment within months of the tragedy. It never happened.

Suskind makes it clear, that in the aftermath of the attacks those making the calls on how things ran in this administration, the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, and the small cadre of Bush intimates in the White House inner circle had more important things to do than watch George Tenet publicly fall on his sword for the benefit of those assembled in the national TV coliseum. They were going to transform the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA into a mechanism for supporting administration foreign and war policy.

The President and even more Cheney and Rumsfeld had a low opinion of the CIA and the FBI before the attacks. The Cheney/Rumsfeld axis had been watching the CIA fail to predict major events for almost four decades. The break up of the Soviet empire and the fall of the communist regime in Moscow as well as this extraordinary failure in New York and Washington had filled them with contempt for the agency. The honest broker role of the CIA and carefully nuanced reporting was viewed by the players as little more than the CIA covering its collective ass when things went wrong – which they often did. Their view of a clumsy FBI was not much better.

Even more galling to Cheney and Rummy, in the days immediately after the al Qaeda attacks, the President turned to the CIA which he perceived to be quicker and lighter on its feet than the ponderous Defense Department to deliver the first blows against the terrorists in Afghanistan. This enraged Rumsfeld and he complained bitterly to his staff that every glory assignment for the CIA was a direct slap at DOD. Suskind details the bureaucratic wars between the CIA and the FBI and especially between the DOD and the CIA for the heart and mind of George W. Bush. It was never pretty but ever petty.

As a veteran with experience in winning and losing in this kind – but of nowhere near the import - of bruising infighting inside and among agencies for decades, it was obvious that Suskind’s sources at CIA and elsewhere were spilling their guts and were very angry with what happened to them – the losers. Either this book is fiction of the finest quality or we have some mighty disgruntled intelligence and law enforcement officers on duty and recently retired. Suskind offers up word for word conversations from some of the most closely guarded telephones and closely held meetings in the world.

It’s clear that that the suspected but loudly denied war between the White house and the CIA is very real. The White House no longer wanted carefully nuanced and ass covering `possibly’, `likely’ and `at some time in the future` baloney; they wanted confirmation that what they were doing was in accord with the intelligence – what I would term, `If it doesn’t fit, make it fit.’ The intelligence community would now be a rubber stamp for an administration that was desperate to deter the next attack.

But soon George Tenet departed as head of Central Intelligence and Porter Goss came onboard to reform it; i.e., turn it into a cheerleader for the White House. The book closes prior to Goss leaving an agency in disarray after the most contentious and unsuccessful year and a half tenure in the history of the agency.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice comes across in the book as a person quick to blame the intelligence community – or any other handy body - for her own failure to assure that George Bush was up to speed on the issue at hand – a difficult task since the President is neither a reader nor analytical. But that’s the topic of tomorrow’s installment.

Are you scared yet? You should be but it’s four o’clock; bottoms up!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The One Percent Doctrine

Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, has to be the most frightening book since Americans had the bejesus scared out them when the Soviets got the A-bomb. It is the most amazing nonfiction work about the inner workings of the United States Government that I have ever read and has the ring of truth. If only half of the assertions are correct Americans have every right to chew their nails.

Ron Suskind’s ability as a story teller is unquestioned and his narrative forces page turning at a rate equal to a beach novel. He is fine writer and analyst and his sources appear impeccable.

I’ll hit a few of the highlights, but you must read this book yourselves. Right now! The title comes from a proposition articulated by Vice President Dick Cheney that given the nature of the world we face low-probability, high-impact threats must be addressed as if they are certain to happen. Thus, the long shot possibility of an al Qaeda nuclear device being detonated in an American city must dealt with as if terrorists are in the process of securing the device and arranging its transport at this very minute. If a foreign government could be considering providing such a device to a terrorist organization, all of the resources of the U.S. must directed to stopping the transfer.

It is common knowledge that the Iraq regime was targeted to be dealt with by the Bush administration prior to 9/11, and the One Percent Doctrine dovetailed perfectly with this preconceived notion and it became inevitable that we would make war on Saddam. While there is nothing new on the targeting of Iraq, that a rational was now available to national leaders for planning and preparing for the attack fit perfectly with the intent of those at the wheel.

But two things were wrong with the doctrine and the target: Iraq, the pre-selected target for demonstrating American capability and will, was no longer in the business of developing WMD, neither was it the most dangerous state on the planet for providing al Qaeda or other terror groups with WMD technology or devices. Other states or private entities, including some in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and even Switzerland were far more likely to be of assistance to the terrorists.

The bottom line, while the concept of `One Percent’ was draining on government human, technical, and financial resources by itself, the added overlay of having applied it dishonestly by targeting Iraq for political reasons prior to 9/11 and then proceeding without adequate intelligence was a formula for unmitigated disaster.

A supposition that derives from Iraq and the panicked response to the post 9/11 world by the American government in order to take the fight to al Qaeda instead of letting them bring it home to us again shook me to the core. Perhaps al Qaeda doesn’t want to attack the U.S. at this time. According to Suskind, one of the thoughts circulating in Washington is that the terrorists may happy to bomb our allies rather than us in hopes of separating those fighting beside us thus leaving us to fight alone in the heart of the Muslim world. Thus the attacks on Madrid and London instead of New York may be even more ominous than we thought.

Obviously, Osama bin Laden and his principal aids are brilliant tacticians and we are becoming aware that they are adept strategic thinkers as well. While they did not attack us on 9/11 to prompt the attack on Iraq, it is possible that they are happy with us stuck in the sand with fewer coalition partners each month. They are fully aware of the negative perception of the war on the American public and know that this is causing a political strain on the party in power as well as on the nation and its economy. If we pull out, they are likely to believe that we’ll be far more reluctant to enter the fray again. My thoughts raced to the Russian strategy toward Napoleon and to the Minute Men of New England during the Revolution. Scary!

This book is so full of brilliant insights and bons mots, some of which are being widely circulated by the media, that it will take several postings to do it justice. I’ll close this one since it is already too long.

What else will Ron Suskind reveal to the readers of this blog? Tune in tomorrow!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The More things Change...

I just finished James David Barber’s The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House. It was an extraordinary read at many levels and I’m indebted to Allan Patterson for bugging me on it. He sent along a couple of articles by John Dean who used the book as the basis for comparing George W. Bush to Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and to his old boss, Richard Nixon and for finding a match.

Professor Barber died a few years back and cannot comment on the Dean proposition, but I think that the comparison fits very well, not that it makes much difference. I purchased the 1982 edition of the book which I believe was the last issued. The book was written, edited and expanded a number of times over a quarter of century. The first edition ended with the presidency of Richard Nixon and the ’82 version is extended into the term of George H. W. Bush – Bush 41.

Barber’s thesis is that by examining the formative period in a life one can predict the type of president the young person will make. This makes for great reading but as you can imagine is extremely subjective. The intention of the work is to warn the voters and party leaders not to select the worst kinds of presidents based on the categorizations by Barber.

Frankly, I loved going over the early lives of the presidents of the twentieth century. I’ve read rather extensively about Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon so I wasn’t surprised at how Barber put them on his couch. Reading about such lesser lights as Taft, Harding, and Coolidge who didn’t hit the author’s `A’ list of presidents was great fun, especially since I’m a fan – albeit a very unfanatic – of Silent Cal. Others like Ike and the first Bush were very well written up even if they didn’t particularly turn me on.

That Barber admires President Ford made me happy and put me in the professor’s corner; ditto for Harry Truman. Unfortunately, while Barber liked Jimmy Carter on a personal level, it colored his analysis and he had to do a lot of dancing to understand the flaw in his thesis when Smiley let us a down. His views on Bush 41 are also badly shaped by being too close in time to when he wrote about him. This, of course, shows the flaw in the thesis that by careful research one can predict how a presidential candidate is likely to perform if he (or she) is elected.

Obviously, every effort is made by the campaigns to hide, cover, obfuscate, and otherwise flimflam us about the candidate’s early life. The facts are often tossed out but with sufficient spin to set our heads and judgment reeling. All in all, I enjoyed and admired Barber’s efforts at selling his thesis. Unfortunately, I didn’t buy it as a great predictor of future performance.

But I bought hook line and sinker the notion that presidents can be categorized pretty much as Barber indicates. I won’t waste your time with all the good guys or even the mediocre performers. But there is no doubt that his categorization of `Active – Negative’ presidents is worthy of a moment. Wilson, Hoover, Johnson, and Nixon are placed in this category. Each of these presidents is charged by Barber – and history – with pressing to “persevere in a disastrous policy.” (p.80) Wilson was unable to make even minor compromises on his League of Nations goal. Hoover could not find any way to be flexible in the face of economic calamity. Johnson ploughed forward disastrously in Vietnam. And Nixon was unable deal with the petty crime of Watergate and was consumed by it.

John Dean sees the `stay the course’ Iraq policy of the present President Bush as a perfect match with the `Active - Negatives’ of Barber, and so do I.

At the basic level the book is a brilliant examination of what made great, mediocre, and failed presidencies. I’m certain that other historians could do the same biographical research and find differences, but the thesis really held for me. Unfortunately, as I said earlier it doesn’t seem to have much future value due to the packaging of candidates and all of the bunkum – positive and negative – being thrown at us.

But the reading was extremely valuable to me at another level. This book was extremely popular when it first came out and at each subsequent rewrite. In 1982, Barber made observations that are even more relevant for today. Barber’s review and analysis of the Constitutional issues relating to the Gulf War in 1991 are eye opening and remain relevant after almost a quarter of a century. While I remember supporting the forced removal of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, I had completely forgotten the byplay that went as the build up to the intervention took place.

The situation is shockingly similar to that which occurred as the nation readied to attack Iraq again in 2003. This posting is already well over my self imposed word limit, but I cannot end it without a vignette concerning the squabbling between the Congress and the White House that shows that some things never change and that the leopard cannot change its spots. “When Senator Edward Kennedy asked Bush’s Defense Secretary Dick Cheney whether Bush needed the approval of Congress to go to war, his answer was, “I do not believe the President requires any additional authorization from Congress before committing U.S. forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf.”” (Page 478)

There’s more gold in many old books than we think.

Vote and work for divided government! It really is important.

Blog On!

Wild Bill

Oversight

No matter how well conceived and operated, governments are never able to satisfy all people and the disaffected can never be won over completely. Terrorism is the strategy of choice for non-governmental entities and individuals without allies who rage against governments.


Most citizens cannot comprehend the likes of Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, or the alleged terrorists arrested today in Miami, but we can understand anger at governmental regulation and law. Obviously, a number of the Right to Life movement members were ready to harm, even murder, people willing to perform abortions and still more of them were willing to coerce those seeking the procedure. On the left, during the Cold war there were American communists and Stalinists ready to undermine the American government by stealing military secrets and delivering them to operatives sworn to harm us.

The anger that impelled Eric Rudolph to set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympic Games is beyond my understanding. Just what had the governments of the United States done to develop such rage?

Clearly, the acts of terror perpetrated in New York, Arlington, Madrid, London, and elsewhere demonstrate that there are substantial numbers of disaffected people willing to make war on governments from outside of the framework of legitimacy. And many of these people are not from Islamic countries; indeed, many of the terrorists are home grown in the Western countries and some of them are at least nominally Christian.

The attack in Oklahoma City seems to have brought many – but nowhere near all - domestic whackos to their senses, and the militia movement that had been growing in the months prior to the attack proceeded to shrink precipitously as a result. But terrorists like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, can never be won over to something akin to American Civilization due to their mental state.

It is obvious, however, that even discounting the mentally ill, governments can never be universally loved; indeed they are not instituted for anything like that purpose. Trying to be as objective as possible, the United States and many of its Western allies have developed liberal and flexible systems designed as much as possible to let their citizens live and let live and to permit the pursuit of happiness, but some do not find the pursuit enough and get angry when things don’t go their way. President Garfield was shot by a fellow who didn’t get a job that he had been seeking, and we all know that you can’t hire everybody.

If the charges in the indictments handed down today in Miami are proven, it will demonstrate a danger to our system that is very difficult squelch – the copy catting of al Qaeda successes. A disaffected group of individuals coming together can magnify their problems and injuries and become a mad mob intent on destroying whatever institutions they perceive to have wronged them or their kind.

It is at moments like these when I become empathetic to President Bush and his underlings who are doing their level best to protect us from all manner of individuals and groups who want to harm us. But I’m also a civil libertarian who deplores the loss of individual freedom.

And naturally, it is clear that in his zeal to defend the nation, the president overcooked the intelligence on Iraq and made the greatest blunder of modern times by listening to Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neocon friends and attacking Iraq fully expecting to be absolved by uncovering great stocks of weapons of mass destruction. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…

Our system of government and our personal freedoms are and will always be in danger, and the President must do all that is possible to defend our government and our persons and property from those who would harm them. But he must not become a tyrant in the process. The argument today centers not on what is being done but rather on the oversight of the executive by the Congress and the lack of restraints being imposed by the courts.

I’m not as paranoid as many of my friends about what the administration is doing in this area but want the checks and balances of the branches of government to be fully operative. I’m disappointed in the Republican majority in both houses for permitting the president to accrue more power than is warranted without proper oversight by the Congress and the courts.

Unless and until the other branches of government aggressively defend the roles assigned them under the Constitution, there will be great unhappiness with the Bush administration, indeed with the presidency itself. If the president has accrued too much power, it is because the other branches have failed in the performance of their duties.

We must have divided government if we are to check the executive in these perilous times.

Had enough? Vote Democratic!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Cut and Run

Since the United States is divided on the issue, it was inevitable that politics would be played even with the life and death situation in Iraq. Obviously, the Democrats are taking advantage of the situation the Republicans have created for themselves and the rest of us and are pushing for various forms of withdrawal from the fray. But the Republican counter attack boggles the mind; at least through the November election their mantra will be to stay the course and to call the Democrats weak on national security. In GOP parlance, the Democrats are advocating `cutting and running.’

Sadly, all thinking people realize that ultimately we will pull out of Iraq and that all casualties taken in the name of staying the course simply in hopes of retaining majorities in both houses of Congress are based on a completely cynical view of the world and are the ultimate in `dirty tricks.’ Deaths and wounds resulting from this naked political sliming will be on the heads of the cynics. Clearly, the administration is readying to draw down our forces as soon as the commanders in the field can say with straight faces that the Iraqis security forces are ready to defend the new government and the nation from enemies inside and out of the country and that the forces are under the control of the government.

No matter when this certification of readiness is rendered by our commanders, our withdrawal will be a leap of faith that the Iraqi leaders will work together to stabilize the country. To postpone the day of reckoning until after the election for partisan gain is nothing more than an effort to stir the few remaining faithful who buy into the ever rolling reasons for this fools’ errand. This ever shrinking pool of lame brained loyalists is being manipulated for one last time in hopes of maintaining control of the Hill and policy direction in the country. Naturally, if this unbelievable strategy were to work, it would be abandoned in the months following without a much as a single look backward.

`Cut and Run’ is not strategy unique to Democrats. To his credit, Gerald Ford ultimately got us out of Vietnam after Lyndon Johnson and, to a lesser degree, Richard Nixon stood obdurately in the way of withdrawal until long after the nation lost faith in that misbegotten venture. Ronald Reagan quickly withdrew our forces from Somalia when a murderous blast demonstrated to the president that our involvement was an error. Dwight Eisenhower cut and ran in Korea after the voters soured on that far more valiant effort. And the nation went on after each of these strategic withdrawals.

We must no be fooled by this cynical manipulation by Karl Rove and Republican political strategists. The president and his key advisors know full well that we must cut and run after a modest demonstration of support for the Iraqi government, and they have been preparing for this exit for many months. The Republicans must be punished at the polls for this great debacle. That they would attempt to go the well of ignorance still again speaks volumes about the patriotism. They must be turned out in November and in 2008.

Had enough? Vote Democratic!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

John F. Kennedy

I haven’t thought about John F. Kennedy as a person for many years. The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and the civil rights confrontations are easily handled as my old friends parry and thrust at our frequent lunches, but I don’t recall JFK, the living, breathing, and dying person ever having been discussed.

Al Patterson, one of our old pals from Washington State, emailed a couple of articles written by the almost infamous John Dean in which Dean compares President Bush with former presidents and places him squarely in the category of Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and his own employer, Richard Nixon. This categorization stems from a book, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, by James David Barber, the late presidential scholar at Duke University.

Silly me; the topic was fascinating and I felt compelled to read the original book and make up my own mind. On line, I found a used copy of the 1982 edition – the last I believe – and began. I haven’t quite finished but thus far have found it highly entertaining and extraordinarily interesting for reasons that I’ll explain in a later posting.

But in reading the section on JFK all of the old emotions of the period flooded back. Those us who were young when Camelot was in full flower in Washington cannot help but be nostalgic for those heady days. The glamour of the Kennedys was vicariously ours, and we idealized them so. When it all came crashing down it on that day in Dallas it was as if a beloved relative had been taken from us and all of our illusions had been shattered.

Being Irish and from the Boston area, I felt a link to JFK even though we were separated by miles, money, and class and the fact that we had never actually met. My own personal stories about Kennedy are typical of those with my background. I happened to be in New Haven on the day in 1960 when he received an honorary doctorate from Yale and made one of his thousands of witty bons mots: something along the lines of, “Today, I have the best of all worlds – a Yale degree and a Harvard education.”

When I was married in 1962, I was in the process of negotiating an internship in Washington, a huge step for a boy from Brockton, MA. Never anything but a wise guy, including at the wedding reception itself, I was rendered speechless when a young stranger approached and asked “You’re going down to Washington to help Kennedy run the government?” I quickly tried to be humble and indicated that it would be just a training position. He persisted and thanked me for my service. That a person could believe so sincerely in the new young president was a great eye opener.

New to Washington in December of 1962, I was walking from my office on Vermont Avenue past the White House and entering onto the Ellipse to catch my bus on Constitution Avenue when a limousine pulled up beside me and the president popped right out in front of me. He strode up to me and smiled broadly as he moved to light the National Christmas Tree. I was stunned and could barely nod and smile in return.

Those stories and other of similar worth aren’t much, but whenever I read of President Kennedy as a living being, those memories and all of the idealism of that time return to me. Then I remember William Manchester’s book, Death of a President, that was a gift to me and which I read once and threw away after weeping over so many of its pages.

I never knew Jack Kennedy but somehow I feel connected to him. It was great to be alive, young, and a part, albeit very small, of his team.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Don't Let The Door Close

Newspapers across the country and the world are laden with the obvious, America’s approach to the Muslim world, especially those lands dominated by Arabs, has been an abysmal failure. By not at least evaluating the basic complaints of the Muslims of the Middle East to determine what if anything might be done to ease the situation; by losing our focus in Afghanistan in making war on al Qaeda, destroying the Taliban, and in turning our attention away from the government in Kabul; and by failing to demonstrate leadership in pushing towards peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, we have effectively undermined our foreign relations everywhere.

While there can be no doubt that support of tyrannical regimes squatting on huge oil reserves has permitted the flow of petroleum products into the U.S. for the past half a century, but at what cost?

The Saudi royals, our great friends, support the teaching of hatred of the West and Israel; our installation and support of the Shah continues to poison our relations with Iran; and, of course, our on again off again relations with Saddam led ultimately to the greatest foreign policy blunder in all of our history.

As we drift, the initiative in Afghanistan appears to be swinging back to the Taliban. Our espousal of democracy in the Palestinian region led to the freely elected leadership of Hamas. Our reaction led to the withholding American aid and to not pushing the Israelis to return earned monies to the Palestinians and this has created the worst crisis in that area since the beginning of the Iraq War. And of course our unwarranted preemption in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there has led to the destruction of the Bush presidency and the weakening of the nation.

Even as we encouraged the Israelis in their self interest withdrawal from Gaza, we support them in long term expansion on the West Bank. While we pride ourselves in having negotiated with Israel to return some huge percentage of the occupied territory to the Palestinians, we support them in proposing to maintain huge settlements in conquered land. And we wonder how Arafat and now Hamas could refuse such a generous offer? International law and the U.N., which we support by daily invective and with an ambassador who is an avowed enemy of the institution and not confirmed by the Senate, consider the occupation of these territories to be illegal. One must ask how Palestinian leaders could be expected to negotiate away this acreage and still maintain the support of their citizens.

We are morally bound to support Israel to the extent of the territories in its hands prior to the attacks by the Arab states. Any more than that and we condemn Israelis and Palestinians to endless warfare, deprivation, and suffering. Many Israelis know this and with leadership from the U.S. appear ready to step back from the long ago heady days of conquest and optimism. But President Bush must lead toward a goal of dismantlement of even the closest in settlements. Perhaps with American leadership in that direction partial Israeli control of Jerusalem would be possible; trying to achieve goals more aggressive than this will lead only to endless fighting.

Since 1967, we have supported the Israelis in a policy that even they are beginning to perceive as far too grand. But even as such aggressive fighters as Ariel Sharon see the long term folly of the old ways, America does little to ease the path.

Our problems across the Muslim world are great. It’s time to act, Mr. President.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Neatness Counts

An article in this morning’s Washington Post shows in how much danger the American public really is from an attack by terrorists. Unfortunately it is an indictment of bureaucrats everywhere and of political leaders, including the Mayor of Washington, DC, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and, most importantly, the President of The United States.

The Department of Homeland Security has taken the time to explain in exquisite detail to the governments of the communities making up the Washington DC Metropolitan Area and the media just how the grant application for anti-terrorist grant money for the region came up short and why the area lost funding in the recent grant cycle. Well there; now we here in Washington know why we won’t be getting the money. I guess that we're expected to feel good about that.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901769.html

Unfortunately, the beautiful and clear explanation misses the entire point. The paper work of the local governments wasn’t as good or thorough as those from other jurisdictions, so the department had no choice but to send funds to Omaha (and a lot of other places) and had to penalize the National Capital Area. Pretty much the same situation obtained with New York. Neatness counts and we and they flunked. Too many erasures? Guess so. Case closed!

The only thing that seems to have been missed is that the terrorists really don’t much care about the grant making process or misspelled words in applications; they simply want to blow up the trophies of American civilization – like Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Unfortunately, the paper work of at least two of these icons of America failed to fill out the paper work as well as some lower ranking target cities, so DHS had no choice but to direct the money elsewhere. See?

If this were highway grant money it would be one thing, but we’re in a war – ask the Decider – and our main targets are being unduly exposed to attack because of bad paper work. If anyone reading this knows Mike Chertoff or the Decider, could you please assure that they understand that their employees are risking the symbols of the nation and millions of its citizens unduly because some other bureaucrats didn’t write good grant applications.

Is it four o’clock yet? I’m on Team Bud and need to practice.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Life for the Death Tax

Because most media outlets, thousands of bloggers and millions of ordinary citizens would not permit the Senate to operate in the dark, the complete abolition of the estate tax failed. Hurrah! Your grandchildren thank you.

Perhaps now the Congress will consider this tax in its proper perspective. Certainly there is need for a tax that protects the vast majority of estates from taxation. As it stands now fewer than 10,000 estates each year are taxed. That seems reasonable since a tax of 46% of the amount over $4 million will leave few heirs without latte or cause the sale of very few family farms. If I recall correctly, something in the neighborhood of $7 million would be a proper indexation of the original estate tax of $1 million. That should probably be the ultimate target for reform legislation.

We’re all better off with the stance taken yesterday.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

The End of al-Zarqawi

That Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed this week is indeed good news for the Iraqi, United States and the other coalition governments. Obviously, this will not end the insurgency but destroying its leader who exhibited total disregard for innocent lives is a blow to it and to al Qaeda itself.

There can be no doubt that this will demoralize some of Zarqawi’s followers while energizing others. The American and Iraqi force that conducted the successful raid can feel justifiably proud. While we may never know the truth about how the terrorist’s location was ferreted out, under the best condition he may well have been fingered by Sunnis sick of the constant fighting. While this does not guarantee a peaceful solution among the major factions in the civil unrest – or war – it eliminates once source of its obvious fomentation.

This changes little in the short run and does not mean that going into Iraq was worth the casualties or the treasure, but it is an event that has heartened President Bush and – as it should - all Americans. Zarqawi was clearly a brilliant and ruthless enemy of all civilized people. He will not be missed.

Good hunting to all involved!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Stuff Happens

Oh Canada! Since the Canadians failed to support us in our fool’s errand in Iraq, many Americans have gone out their way to intensify jokes about the rubes to our north. But those of us who fear a terrorist attack on the U.S. might well pay attention to what the say, “Eh?” folks have discovered in plain sight. Home grown terrorists are a real possibility and they understand symbolism. The alleged plot uncovered in Ontario called for blowing up the Parliament Building and for the assassination of the Prime Minister. Trying to learn from this, would it be way off base to surmise that Washington, New York, and Los Angels might rank higher in terrorist minds than Fairbanks, Alaska?

Do you have a job with a company or a government? Are you retired and living on somewhat of a fixed income? Do you own a small business that has almost no chance of being worth more than $5million? Absent winning the lottery, are your chances of leaving an estate worth in excess of $5 million almost zilch? If you answer in the affirmative to the substance of these questions, the Republican president and the Republican Congress have surprise gift in store for you: a bill for $600 million over the next ten years that you or your children will have to pay if these lawmakers have their way in repealing the estate tax, the death tax as they call it. By the by, a goodly number of those supporting the measure have conflicts of interest in casting their votes on this as they will be saving their poor little old kin folks from having to pay taxes on their own estates.

As they did during early years of The Great Depression, Republicans are doing their damnedest to assure that moneyed interests are defended in these uncertain times at the expense of the middle classes. During the horrible Hoover years, while small farmers went bankrupt and millions of unemployed went hungry, it was the president’s program to lend money to still solvent farmers to feed their cattle, but there could be no dole for those agrarians too broke to borrow or for the urban workers without food on their tables. The Republican president and his Republican leaders in Congress went out of their ways to assure that cattle but not men, women, or children might eat.

Today the richest of the farmers are getting huge subsidies as are the large oil companies. Top corporate executives are getting huge compensation packages while middle class wages are stagnant. Please write your member of Congress and your Senator to assure that the estates of these plutocrats are passed without taxation to the next generation. They need your help if they are to continue living the lives that some of you may have fantasized.

The only thing that supports my optimism in life is the belief that no matter how clever, greedy, and craven those in charge may be, it’s shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. Of course, there’ll be some wild living in the interim.

As my mother always told me, “Billy, no matter how badly you may want to think about people, always remember that they’re the same the world over.” It took me seven decades to realize how right she was and, more importantly, how sad it is.

Well, it’s four o’clock somewhere in the world. Cheers!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Remember Where You Came From

Alright already, I’m on the bandwagon being driven with the ruthless intent of running over the bureaucrats at The Department of Homeland Security who have cut the grants to defend against terrorism for New York and Washington.

Unfortunately, the proud employee who runs the program simply does not understand terrorists. Tracy Henke is proud of her small town roots – to the point of having a sign on her desk, “Remember where you came from.” Now isn’t that precious? A woman from Moscow Mills, MO, a hamlet not too far from St. Louis is proud of and will never forget her roots. Obviously a Cardinals and Budweiser fan, she shipped a keg of Homeland Security dough to St. Louis to protect the stadium, local breweries, and, of course, the Arch.

In today’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank carves up the plucky representative of the Show Me state along with her supporting cast of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and President George W. Bush, the Decider himself. It would appear that if an al Qaeda attack appears imminent, the cry to all key national security and homeland defenders will be, “Meet me in St. Louis!” From there the motorcade will proceed to Moscow Mills where the national response will be formulated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060101722.html?referrer=emailarticle

The New York Times in an editorial on the subject stole some of my thunder. Henke, Chertoff, and Bush don’t seem to get it. Regardless of whether New York and Washington do not seem to have any more vulnerable targets than other cities of similar population densities, they are icons of American life and are the targets of greatest value to terrorists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/opinion/02fri1.html

As we all know, on the world hit parade of hate, the United States, the Great Satan, is number one. The Islamic terrorists see Washington as the source of our military and political power and the city where we plan our global hegemony; New York is the center of our world financial and intellectual hubris; and Los Angeles (which – in fairness - got a substantial homeland grant increase) is the center of moral corruption and cultural decadence by which we ruin the world of innocents.

At this point it is not unfair to point out the obvious fact that New York and Washington were the prime targets of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, that the World Trade center was attacked earlier, and that Los Angeles International Airport, LAX, was the target of a major disrupted plot.

While it is obvious that if the iconic cities are hardened and protected to the point that our enemies feel that they cannot succeed in attacking them, they will seek lesser priority targets. There can be no doubt that the American reaction to an attack on Milwaukee, Gillette, WY, or the outlet mall in Freeport, ME would create as much rage and determination as an attack on the White House or Disneyland, but there is not enough money on the planet to protect every possible target and choices must be made. The Times and the Post clearly make the case that despite Ms. Henke’s bold words on the legitimacy of the grant making process the dough is being disbursed as pork. Of this there is no doubt in my mind. So while we all hope and pray that another attack never happens, should one occur against New York or Washington, blood will be on the hands of those who disbursed this bacon.

I’m pleased that Ms. Henke remembers where she’s from. I’m from Brockton, MA and would be shattered if anything horrific occurred there. But Ms. Henke must also understand where she is living in one of the terrorists’ bulls eyes, the nation’s capital. Oh, by the way, I’m here with her and I’m an awful scaredy cat. More money for Washington and New York now!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

Gamers

In eighteenth century England, the theory went something along the lines that the `inferior classes’ should be encouraged to breed like rabbits to increase the supply of workers, the competition for jobs, and to keep costs down. It seemed to work like a charm except for the problem of the inferiors occasionally getting out of hand and rioting and pillaging when they understood the exploitation they were suffering.

The gentlemanly class finally discovered a way to lubricate this system to both minimize the anger of their inferiors and to cut down on the damage when the workers got out of hand: gin. Gin became the cheapest way to keep up the breeding and to ease the fight in their inferiors when they got angry. Mothers’ Ruin, the appellation tagged on gin, was magic; it seemed to serve everyone with what they needed to get through the day, to breed the next generation of producers, to anesthetize them to their daily pain, and to carry them off to a better place before there were substantial societal costs.

In 1700, the annual gin consumption in England and Wales was about one and a quarter million gallons. By 1735 that figure had risen to 6.4 million gallons, and in 1751, when the conscience of the nation forced passage of legislation to curb the exploitation of the workers, something over 7 million gallons of gin were gargled and swallowed by the inferiors, a significant portion of this consumption was in the working class neighborhoods of London.

Some thirty or forty years ago, I became enamored with the novels of Kurt Vonnegut who was one of the first serious writers to consider the impacts of computers on the production process and what that might lead to in the greater society. While I haven’t gone back to reread these books, my impression was that of a world of a modern gin epidemic. Naturally, being young and an anti-Luddite, I wrote Kurt off as simply a brilliant eccentric.

But in our time, there is a phenomenon that bears a surprising similarity to the gin epidemic: video gaming, both home and internet. Last week, the Washington Post ran an article on the subject, and it had for me all of the earmarks of the gin epidemic. World wide gaming is apparently centered in South Korea but many of the symptoms have spread to Japan and the United States. Clearly the games are becoming a mass opiate and boys and young men are the target audience.

Anecdotal lamentations of parents, teachers, and college professors have reached the noise level of jet engines without ear protection, but the Post article shows that the problem is real and spreading more rapidly than the bird flu. This is a problem to be watched. The linked article hit me like an historical abstract straight out of eighteenth century London, but I leave that for your judgment.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601960.html?referrer=emailarticle

Blog on!

Wild Bill