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Josh Marshall is doing a good job of pulling together the threads that have to be considered on the "faulty intelligence/WMDs/links between Saddam and Al Qaeda" issues. (See here and scroll down).
On the one hand, as we know from Ken Pollack and others, major intelligence agencies including the CIA over-stated the threat posed by Iraq for years. This swayed the judgment of the Clinton administration as well as that of Bush II.
On the other hand, the most extreme risks, which were only in the worst-case scenarios, or at the margins, in the "official" analyses, somehow came to be front and centre in the way the Bush administration presented its message to the world.
Did someone deliberately torque or spin the analysis to make Iraq look as threatening as possible? Was the President presented only with the torqued analysis, or did he insist on adding some spin in order to make the case for going to war?
More later.
Update: Marshall on WMDs:
"... for the moment let's stipulate that the US intelligence community got some major facts wrong and that we need to find out why and make improvements.
"Having said that.... We didn't go to war because Iraq had mustard gas or nerve gas or even anthrax. The threat, as presented by the White House, went far beyond that. All WMD are not created equal. Indeed, the catch-all phrase "weapons of mass destruction" obscures much more than it clarifies. It groups together things like mustard gas, which is really a battlefield weapon, with nuclear weapons, which really are weapons of mass destruction.
"The White House was well aware of this. And for that reason it repeatedly pressed the argument that Iraq was close to creating nuclear warheads --- a point over which there was very real disagreement within the Intelligence Community."
Even if Iraq had WMDs, of course, that in itself would not (to many people) justify invasion. There had to be a link to 9/11, or international terrorism. Marshall again:
"On the question of ties to al Qaida one can't say there was a great deal of disagreement within the Intelligence Community, because the White House had real difficulty finding any intelligence professionals who believed that this was true. This, after all, is why administration officials at the Pentagon set up their own intelligence analysis shop --- because most people in the Intelligence Community didn't buy their argument about the connections between the Iraqi regime and al Qaida."
Marshall's concern is that after months when the politicals in the Bush administration criticized the CIA and other agencies for under-stating the Iraq threat, or presenting an analysis that undermined the case for invasion, or suggesting that more preparation was needed than was actually being made, now the consistent over-statement of the Iraq threat is going to be blamed on: the CIA!
If so, this will surely go down as one of the great examples of spin. Gulf War I gave us the "Iraqi soldiers slaughtering newborn babies in incubators" story--a total fabrication, probably originating with a Kuwaiti princess, but promulgated with great gusto and no research by PR firm Hill & Knowlton. I believe that is still celebrated by H&K, and probably taught in Business school, as a great example of successful PR based not on facts but on wishes. Maybe Gulf War II will be remembered for its superb and artistic political spin.
Of course, the spinners, whoever they were, may have done what they did because they honestly believed Iraq was a terrible threat, and this aspect of the official analysis had to be brought more to the forefront. The profile of Dick Cheney in Newsweek last November emphasized that he came to the White House in 2001 convinced, because of his previous government experience, that the CIA is always wrong. One can see his point. The CIA missed the end of the Cold War, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan (which still haunts the U.S.), the advent of nukes in North Korea in the 90s (so we've been told) and other big events.
At the daily intelligence briefing, they no doubt appear with reams of data, and a sophisticated analysis. How can the politicals have some kind of counter-weight to all this, some basis on which to ask truly tough questions, if they suspect (reasonably) that the "experts" are perpetually victims of group-think and the echo-chamber effect?
Unfortunately, the solution frequently is to put complete trust in a handful of shady individuals who seem to be authentic where the CIA is phony, "natives" or "emigres" where the CIA are 100% American, and determined to see quick action on a bold scale where the CIA seems to counsel patience, or small-scale, low-key operations. Trusting the emigres has a long history with the CIA itself, judging from the Bay of Pigs and other operations. It has become a key note of the neo-conservatives. I don't think Cheney and Rumsfeld are in that category, but they may have been won in that direction by the events of 9/11.
I finally read another article in the January/February Atlantic: James Fallows on "How War Planning Bit the Dust". Fallows emphasizes that a lot of planning for the post-invasion phase of U.S. occupation of Iraq was done, by many conscientious people, but it was mostly ignored by the Bush politicals. The analysis struck them as leaning too much to inaction or diplomacy, rather than invasion (here we go again). So they were (apparently) surprised: by the looting, by the destruction of infrastructure after the "end of hostilities," by the difficulties of governing.
(As a side note: Fallows confirms that the U.S. had very few Arabic-speakers available for the Iraq operation. That must have left them at the mercy of ... someone).
Fallows: "How could the Administration have thought it was safe to proceed in blithe indifference to the warnings of nearly everyone with operational experience....?" It can't have been simply politics, since political calculations about the 2004 election should have made them more sensitive, not less, to such issues, which could come back to haunt them.
Fallows points to three factors: the "panache" of Rumsfeld, which just seemed to carry a lot of people along; the tendency of Republicans to feel like an embattled minority, up against a bureaucracy which is somehow working for the "other side" (which makes them disinclined to listen to anyone outside of a small circle); and the President's tendency to stick to the big picture, and leave the details to others.
I think Fallows misses one. There are indications, including the new Frum and Perle book, that some of the Bush politicals have been talking about launching a series of wars, and taking on as many as 6 or 10 countries at once, with tough sanctions if not military measures. If the U.S. had admitted that Afghanistan and Iraq together required a full deployment of available U.S. resources, any further threats would have been fairly empty. The result was this official message: Iraq is a terrible threat, with many WMDs of all kinds and links to international terrorism; but it can be conquered, occupied, and left with a constitutional government, on the cheap.
On intelligence, it is worth noting that Pollack and Fallows agree on one detail. Rumsfeld's style was not to tell people their analysis was all wrong, do it again, or anything like that. It was more subtle: certain people were invited to key meetings; others were not. Report writers received clear hints as to which passages would be welcome, and which would not. It may not be possible to prove that Rumsfeld or Cheney told anyone to change a report to suit the Administration's political message. But even if so, that is not the end of the story.
Update: Atrios has dug up a story by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek pointing out a pattern in "faulty intelligence." During the Cold War, the CIA produced estimates of Soviet strength that were later found to be much too high. Team B was created on the political side out of a suspicion that CIA estimates were too low--and even higher estimates, even further from reality, were produced. Wolfowitz and Cheney were both involved in this project, although Wolfowitz has said he never believed the most extreme estimates of Soviet strength.
Peter Robinson has carried on an interesting exchange with some of his readers on The Corner.
It started with the suggestion that the U.S. war in Vietnam can be defended now better, perhaps, than at the time of John Kerry's testimony as a returned veteran. As with the maintenance of the Truman Doctrine during the Cold War in general, the point is that dominoes did not fall in a Communist direction, and some of them, eventually, fell in a liberal and/or democratic direction. If Hanoi had defeated South Vietnam years earlier than it did, Thailand would have been in jeapordy, and thus some of today's "Asian Tigers" might not have achieved the progress that they have.
Robinson clearly wants to make a connection to today's "war on terror." There is a large, international enemy, providing some connecting links to somewhat distinct national and local organizations. They all threaten U.S. interests and/or beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. What might appear to be an unprovoked intervention in a civil war that is none of the Americans' business is actually necessary fighting on one of many fronts in this greater ideological war. If Iraq had no WMDs, and even if the Bush administration was aware of this fact, there would still be good reason to invade.
The exchange has continued with an analogy to the British attempt to halt the Nazi conquest of Greece in World War II (1941). (See here and here). British troops were overwhelmed fairly quickly. Men and tanks had been withdrawn from North Africa, where a badly-needed victory over German forces was in sight. Instead there was another Dunkirk-style debacle in the flight from Greece, with 12,000 men and many precious tanks left behind. Some have argued, however, that the Greek campaign tied up enough German troops to delay the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This in turn meant the Germans could not accomplish their major goals in that country before winter, and to some degree this determined the outcome of World War II.
An apparently small, yet hopeless and even stupid undertaking, noble insofar insofar as it at least threw troops against a huge and hated enemy, had excellent (albeit unpredictable) long-term results.
Liddell Hart, in his history of World War II, says "Even if the Greek campaign was found to have retarded the invasion of Russia, that fact would not justify the British Government's decision, for such an object was not in their minds at the time." Liddell Hart says that what caused the postponement of German plans was not the Greek campaign, but "the unexpected coup d'etat in Yugo-Slavia that took place on March 27th..." The new government in Yugoslavia refused to enter a pact with the Axis, so Hitler decided to invade.
Why was Churchill so determined to fight back in Greece if, as Liddell Hart says, he had no thought of any German invasion of Russia, hence no thought of affecting its timing? Liddell Hart, who seems to have had a grudge against Churchill, says the great man was trying to re-start his Balkan dream dating back to World War I--an imaginative "Eastern" or "South-Central" route to attack German forces and liberate France.
(Update: Liddell Hart actually says the fear of a British intervention, very much like Churchill's World War I dream, moved Hitler to put troops just to the north of Greece; the actual British landing "may" have inspired the coup in Yugoslavia; this coup in turn caused an escalation of the German effort.)
What Churchill says in his own history is that he was trying, let us say desperately, to get the U.S. into the war. One could be snarky and say Britain was in an awkward spot. It was fighting for its very life, and its sometime great ally, the United States, was sitting the war out. Churchill thought the spectacle of British troops fighting and dying for "the cradle of democracy" would inspire American public opinion. It didn't work.
Does either the Vietnam analogy or the World War II/Greece analogy work for the invasion of Iraq? So far, it does not seem that the enemy of 9/11--either Al Qaeda, or international terrorism more broadly--was directly involved in any way with Saddam Hussein. Indeed the whole analogy to the Axis, or to international communism, seems strained. Is there one, more or less united terrorist movement beyond the one that was headquartered in Afghanistan, the remnants of which have retreated into the mountains straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan?
(Update: Bush's defenders might say the new international enemy is something a bit different. Possibly the mixture of bigotry, hatred of the West and violence that is bred among fundamentalists, particularly in Arab countries? They might say that it is important to weaken "rogue" Arab governments, which support the culture of hatred in one way or another; and that it is desirable to make them all fear ending up in a spider hole like Saddam).
Further update: I should have noted that there is indeed a multi-front war against terror, being successfully waged by the U.S., as Bill Clinton has apparently been acknowedging recently. (Link to Jay Nordlinger, NRO, via Instapundit. But this is war of intelligence and police work, more than of strictly military action; and it probably requires working closely with regimes that are not democracies, rather than being committed to regime change in the name of democracy.
If the advice of Robinson or his readers is: throw everything you've got at the enemy, on all possible fronts; even if you can't foresee the results, you're at least drawing blood somewhere--I'm not sure that is helpful as a guideline to fighting any actual war. When to fight, when to husband resources for a future fight, when to resort to diplomacy; these are the questions.
(But then, the only megapower in the world does not need to fear adverse consequences of its military interventions the way most countries have had to, most of the time.)
Rick Salutin writes in the Globe and Mail that "the Marxist tradition may not have had the answers, but it always asked better questions."
Specifically, socialists inspired by Marx always recognize that capitalism tends to produce inequality by its very workings. The real political question is whether to do something about that. Presumably he means (as Marx seems to have meant): enjoy the tremendous wealth-production of capitalism, but distribute the wealth differently than capitalism would on its own.
Salutin is concerned that Jack Layton, leader of the NDP in Canada, has slid to the right in order to get votes. The rhetoric is about spending on this or that program for the poor or cities, which just allows the right to come along and say we can't afford it, it's not fair to hard-working taxpayers, or whatever. The debate Saluin wants never gets underway.
My question: Marxism always asked "better" questions? Does Salutin mean the best questions? I suppose this is different than saying any or all of the Communist regimes in the world have meant well, they started out idealistic and then something went wrong, things would have been better with Trotsky, or whatever. But still: are questions about economic inequality the best questions?
One sign that they are not is what happened to real Communism. First you take control of all the wealth. Then you try to produce wealth in a way that imitates capitalist society. At every stage, you have to make war on your own people, who seem to have a natural desire to own something of their own, and get ahead, and create opportunities for their children. As your gargantuan plans fail, you lurch from one crisis to another. When I was an undergraduate in the 70s, the left pretty much admitted what Krushchev had said about the Soviet Union, so it could no longer be described as a paradise. Instead the focus was on countries where, because of the brutal totalitarianism, little information ever made its way to the outside world: China, Albania, maybe Cuba.
In the intervening years, more and more specific information has flowed from all of these regimes, and the same conclusion keeps emerging. If you treat the lessening of economic inequality as your only goal, or even as the main one, you have to make endless, brutal war on your own people. In other words, you simply have to treat things like privacy, property, family, religion, nationalism and other loyalties as if they don't matter at all. Even the "socially liberal" views of Communists--why not try free love, etc., since it shocks the bourgeoisie?--have to give way to a demented puritanism in order to maintain control. It's hard to believe this is a profound view of human nature, or that a theory that keeps coming back to this point is one that asks "better" questions. Of course, many leaders of actual Communist regimes must have lost faith along the way, so their claims to be trying to achieve equality were hypocritical and false, on top of everything else.
On the other hand, there is a bit of an exchange on the Corner on whether there is a way that conservatives should worry if there is too much inequality--even if the income and living standards of the poor are steadily rising. (Thanks to John Derbyshire--a one-time Brit). I guess this brings us to what in Canada we sometimes call "Red Tories." (I have friends who hate that term as inexact, and I have friends who would rather die than be Red Tory).
With George Grant, who was close to being a Canadian political philosopher, the term had a fairly exact meaning: a Tory wants to preserve British North American, non-American yet not quite British traditions; to do so against the power of the U.S. will require government intervention--socialist means will be needed to achieve Tory ends.
With Dalton Camp, it seems to have meant only: let's be open to "progressive changes," which may be articulated by social democrats. Let's be free from any ideology, since that will help us see problems and solutions clearly. Yet let's also be different from the Liberals. Less ... sleazy, somehow. By remaining a Tory, Camp was constantly forced to work with people who condemned the NDP as socialists, and Camp himself probably rejected (at least until after his heart surgery) much of the "social planning" agenda as too ideological. Yet Camp himself was not a lover of any particular traditions, political, social or otherwise. What was Tory about him?
Derbyshire says, shrewdly enough: we should prepare, politically, for the problem of the envy that the poor can feel for the rich--even if the poor are better off, in a material sense, than they used to be.
John Doyle, who writes on television in the Globe and Mail, has some wise words on Canadians:
"We have three levels of relationship with Americans: 1) We make fun of them. 2) We get furious with them. 3) We are in awe of them. Basically, we feel superior. It's not healthy. We also obsess about this relationship. It's all over the TV menu. That's even less healthy."
"You know, if you consider the entire night on Canadian television, much of it is devoted to reflecting our tangled relationship with the United States."
David Kay is not going to issue the "final report" on WMDs in Iraq that had been promised. Instead he is leaving his position, and he has offered a few less formal words to the media. (See also New York Times interview here).
Kay confirms that Iraq had no "large stockpiles" of WMDs in the last years before the U.S. invasion in 2003. He says there was no production program for such stockpiles in the 1990s. The nuclear program, while not exactly "dormant," was "rudimentary." It was "never as advanced" as the nuclear program in Iran and Libya. (We have recently been told that the Libyan program never proceeded beyond its "infancy").
"Dr. Kay said Iraq had also maintained an active ballistic missile program that was receiving significant foreign assistance until the start of the American invasion." Some of these missiles would have violated the limits place on Iraq by the UN; but they would not have been WMDs.
"Regarding biological weapons, he said there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development 'right up until the end' to improve their ability to produce ricin. 'They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization,' Dr. Kay said. 'They were maintaining an infrastructure, but they didn't have large-scale production under way.'"
More gems:
"Dr. Kay added that there was now a consensus within the United States intelligence community that mobile trailers found in Iraq and initially thought to be laboratories for biological weapons were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel. While using the trailers for such purposes seems bizarre, Dr. Kay said, 'Iraq was doing a lot of nonsensical things' under Mr. Hussein.
"The intelligence reports that Iraq was poised to use chemical weapons against invading troops were false, apparently based on faulty reports and Iraqi disinformation, Dr. Kay said.
"When American troops found that Iraqi troops had stored defensive chemical-weapons suits and antidotes, Washington assumed the Iraqi military was poised to use chemicals against American forces. But interviews with Iraqi military officers and others have shown that the Iraqis kept the gear because they feared Israel would join an American-led invasion and use chemical weapons against them."
Elsewhere Kay has been quoted as saying the evidence today is quite contrary to what was believed by Western intelligence agencies in early 2003, and what was (therefore) said by Bush administration officials. The failures of intelligence need to be investigated.
Kay admits the possibility that WMDs were moved from Iraq to Syria, but says there is no "conclusive" evidence that this occurred. He also says there may have been documents destroyed during the post-invasion looting that would have provided more information.
Very much to President Bush's credit: "Dr. Kay said he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq."
Kay now agrees that Iraqi scientists and technicians, rather than working on weapons programs, were falsely telling Saddam they were doing so. Western intelligence repeated and amplified these lies. There was also a "disinformation campaign orchestrated by Mr. Hussein," so that one unit of the Republican Guard, while having no WMDs themselves, would be convinced that other units had them.
Fred Kaplan suggests on Slate that Kay's credibility can be questioned because of the way he couched statements in his "interim" report. Hard factual statements that did not support Bush claims were surrounded, and basically hidden, by frightening-sounding obfuscation that would make people think: there must be something there that's still a secret! (The President's phrase in the SOTU--"weapons of mass destruction-related program activity" is a good sample of this genre). So any lingering comments from Kay that "there was something really scary there" can probably be discounted.
One article quotes him as saying there were scientists in Iraq who could produce WMDs if they had been asked to do so. My question: how many countries in the world would actually have no people with these skills? Secondly: if some WMDs are so easy to make, is it misleading to speak of taking out a government in order to eliminate this threat?
To sum up: No weapons. No "precursors." No "dual-use facilities." The "programs" may have been a memo saying: God (or Allah) I wish I had WMDs.
There are questions that still interest me. Did Bush differ from Clinton primarily in believing the stories told by the emigres, led by Ahmed Chalabi, which if anything were even more ridiculous than what the CIA said? (See news (via Hit and Run) on the emigres the Brits relied on for the "45 minute" claim.)
Secondly, did U.S. forces deploy and proceed in a way that indicated they knew there were no WMDs that were going to be used on them? If so, of course, what Glenn Reynolds calls the "tired 'Bush lied' meme" still has some support.
Bush had more up-to-date briefings than Clinton did. Yet Bush decided to invade. Hans Blix has said he was curious when sites that were supposed to contain weapons turned out to contain nothing. Why were U.S. officials not curious?
(See Calpundit post with comments; and Atrios. Christopher Hitchens actually suggested, in one of his shifting defences of Bush in Iraq, that U.S. forces proceeded as though they did not expect to encounter WMDs. His point was that the clear threat of U.S. invasion caused Saddam to destroy or ship out his weapons within months, not years, of the invasion. See discussion here).
This latter concern has a bearing on whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq was pre-emptive in any meaningful sense. I believe this also bears on an analysis according to Just War doctrine.
I accept the point made by Wonkette: "But, omigod, how can anything involving so much money be so boring? And confusing, too! By the looks of things, campaign donations follow the same course of the Kennedy assassination 'magic' bullet."
Nevertheless, I did my best to cover the December Supreme Court case, McConnell v. FEC, in my American Con law class last week. Hey, it's my job!
I tried to finish by giving a sense of where the new loopholes are. My guide, as is so often the case now, was Mickey Kaus, who actually says he is not too worried about the McCain-Feingold law, now upheld by the SC, because he's sure loopholes will be found and used by Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
I would only add: in the process, many lawyers will get rich.
Here's how I understand it. "Hard" money rules set up a barrier between corporations, labour unions, and individuals, on the one hand, and candidates, campaigns and parties on the other. Money can only flow from one side to the other by following rigid rules on the amount of contributions, total annual contributions, and how money is spent.
The big loophole before McCain-Feingold was "soft" money; supposedly for state and local races, but in fact federal candidates could raise it, advise donors as to whom to give it to, and direct the spending of it, all with none of the hard money rules having an effect. Clinton and Gore became leaders in raising soft money in 1996, but they weren't alone. One ludicrous detail was that soft money was supposed to be used for issue ads, not ads that endorsed a candidate. Many so-called issue ads, however, supported a candidate more subtly and hence effectively than the direct or "express advocacy" ads did.
So the new law is intended to plug these loopholes, and the SC has upheld the attempt to do so. One interesting result: even in the caucuses and primaries that are already underway: if a candidate directs or coordinates a negative ad about an opponent (regardless of where exactly the money comes from?), the sponsoring candidate must appear and say: "I approved this ad." The thinking is that they will be less willing to get really nasty if they have to take personal responsibility. Would the famous "Willie Horton" ads put on by NCPAC be outlawed? I don't think so, unless they were clearly "coordinated" with the Bush Senior campaign.
Question: in what way will people with strong views, especially those with money, be able to organize and direct the money to support candidates and campaigns of their choice? In other words, where are the loopholes?
Kaus (supplemented by other readings) suggests (see just above Wednesday, Dec. 10):
1. A group probably has to be unincorporated--not a corporation or a labour union. (If they are incorporated they are prevented from running last-minute issue ads during a campaign that criticize or praise candidates by name).
2. Unincorporated non-profit groups will probably become vehicles for independent political advertising. The court said that such groups, unlike incorporated groups such as the Sierra Club and National Rifle Association, "remain free to raise soft money to fund voter registration, [get out the vote] activities, mailings, and broadcast advertising." (Washington Post Dec. 11). Anthony Kennedy said, in dissent, that an incorporated environmental group would not be allowed to run an ad, within sixty days of an election, criticizing a specific Congressman for a vote on logging--unless the group formed a PAC (see below).
3. One example might be "527" groups or committees, named after a section in the U.S. tax code. These groups might be able to gather and spend unlimited contributions.
4. It may even be possible that "some especially pure political non-profits will still be allowed to incorporate, because the Court apparently left open a loophole created for such corporations in the MCFL case...."
5. The political parties--"particularly the Democratic National Committee, which has long relied heavily on soft money--are likely to suffer." Their ability to both raise and spend money will be constrained.
"Republicans have traditionally had far more success than Democrats in raising 'hard money'--donations of up to $2,000 for a candidate in an election and $25,000 for a party each year--and the Washington Post expects the decision to seal in place the Republican Party's fundraising advantage." (Kaus Dec. 11). I would just add: the vote for the legislation (60-40) was heavily Democrat; against was heavily Republican. So politicians don't simply vote according to their financial interests? So much for what the Court tendentiously calls "the appearance of corruption."
(President Bush has raised $200 million--apparently all "hard" money; no Democrat has raised nearly that much).
6. Independent groups such as 527s would be a wild card. The most successful groups at fund-raising, while loyal to a party, may not be exactly in sync with that party's nominee. Does this simply mean the candidate will be more free of major fund-raisers (as sponsors of the bill, the Court majority and good government types presumably want)? Or will it force the nominee to publicly state a disagreement with ads or messages that clearly come from the nominee's own party? To spend money countering this not-quite-on message? On the other hand, if the two (nominee and "independent" fund-raising group) start to make sure their messages coincide, even as to timing, is this "coordination," hence illegal? This is where the question comes up again: wouldn't they be simply exercising their First Amendment rights? (See Kaus December 25).
7. Some real-world examples. Washington Post, Dec. 14: "New pro-Democratic organizations such as America Coming Together (ACT), Voices for Working Families (VWF), America Votes and the Media Fund [run by Harold Ickes, former Clinton staffer] have stepped in this year to attempt to fill the vacuum created by the soft money ban. These groups are accepting large contributions from labor unions that the parties are prohibited from accepting. [As I understand it, labour unions are allowed to donate to Political Action Committees (PACs), which can donate to parties, subject to strict rules including disclosure of the name of every donor. There are many reasons why individuals might prefer not to be named in public, and why this requirement might appear as an unconstitutional limit on their right to be heard]. Most are explicitly opposed to President Bush." Some Republican and other groups claim these pro-Democratic groups are violating federal law and FEC regulations by funding partisan activities, not simply "political participation" activities such as voter registration.
8. Nat Hentoff has complained in the Village Voice (Jan. 15) that wealthy individuals are as free as ever to "spend any amount, at any time, from their personal funds, to advertise opposition to, or support of, any candidate in a national election--provided they do not contribute those funds directly to a political party or candidate." This is what George Soros is intending to do in order to contribute to the defeat of G.W. Bush--but he will use 527s as well.
9. The Open Society Institute (and Soros Foundations Network), funded by "George Soros and Soros family philanthropies" says on their website that they have funded organizations including "Public Campaign, Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy 21," and others. They also funded factual research to support the legal defence of the McCain-Feingold legislation. The OSI says the new law restricts the activities of large individual contributors such as Mr. Soros. "Before the new law, such donors could, and did, contribute millions of dollars to Republican and Democratic committees in support of candidates for federal office. Before the new law, such donors could, and did, contribute to organizations that ran advertisements in the weeks before the election, naming candidates for federal office and criticizing or praising them."
"Under the [new law] large contributions can no longer be made to these party comittees or to fund ads that mention candidates in the heat of an election. Nor can large donors or the groups they fund coordinate in any way with candidates or political parties. This is intended to reduce the influence of large contributors by limiting their role to efforts that focus exclusively on issues or seek to maximize voter participation in the election."
There it is again--the reference to issues, as if support for a cause is not likely to be seen--at once--as support for one candidate, and/or criticism of another. That has always been the "loophole" created by "issue" ads.
10. The New York Times, Jan. 16, has the debate expanding on two fronts. On the one hand, Republicans in Congress are threatening to investigate pro-Democrat "527" groups to see if their activities--especially spending on ads--are undermining or violating the new law. Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who is Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, has written to representatives of some groups asking that they attend a hearing. They have declined, so he is at least vaguely threatening to subpoena them and force them to appear. This article mentions the goup Voices for Working Families, and says there are very few Republican groups of this kind that are raising significant money. On a blog called Washington Dispatch (Jan. 15), Frank Salvato mentions ACT and MoveOn.org, which has been closely linked to Howard Dean.
11. The Times also mentions that the FEC has announced that it will consider new regulations "that could determine whether so-called 527 committees can continue to raise and spend millions in unlimited soft money contributions from companies, labor unions and wealthy donors."
12. Finally, the good old IRS is involved as well. NewsMax.com, Jan. 17: A new ruling has been issued: "Under the Internal Revenue Code, social welfare organizations, unions and trade associations generally are permitted to engage in advocacy or lobbying related to their exempt purposes. However, they may engage in only limited political campaign activity."
Supposedly, a communication that identifies a candidate for public office, during a campaign, and so on, is forbidden for tax-exempt organizations. (Such as 527s?) The Gun Owners of America are cited to the effect that "the new rule will have a bigger chilling effect on political speech than the McCain-Feingold law." (See on this Jacob Sollum in Hit and Run).
13. Media corporations are pretty well exempt from all restrictions on what they can say, and when. The NRA is supposedly considering purchasing a media corporation.
Update Feb. 14: More from Kaus:
Feb. 9: linking to Jake Tapper: "Jake Tapper has another pay-and-play Kerry special interest story in which there is absolutely no quid pro quo. ... Alas, it took this particular special interest more than a year after Kerry did it a favor to organize a fundraiser for him, rendering the scandal potential limited. ... But Tapper also has a very clear explanation, at the end of his piece, of why Kerry's ostentatious refusal to take PAC money is another phony bit of posturing. (Kerry accepts 'bundled' contributions from CEOs, a much more lucrative policy. There's no dollar limit to bundling--in this case, a high-tech CEO funneled Kerry more than $100,000 by gathering smaller individual donations. PAC donations, in contrast, are limited to $5,000. Who needs them?)."
Then, Feb. 11:
"Shrum v. Ickes: Their rivalry has now become a big deal. ... One of them decides what Kerry's deepest beliefs are! The other will control $100 million in independent anti-Bush advertising and is resisting Shrum's cookie-cutter Gore-rerun populism. ... Ickes has become a powerful interest that stands in Shrum's way! ... John Ellis is all over the story, and correctly asks if the NYT will report it or suppress it. ... P.S.: The job of negotiating an Ickes-Shrum truce is obviously Bill Clinton's, although it could be tricky if Clinton, as mediator, gets accused of 'coordinating' Ickes' allegedly 'independent' ad campaign with Shrum's official campaign. But presumably Clinton can,without violating campaign finance laws, at least tell Ickes to shut up.(Clinton may well already have done that.) ... P.P.S.: The New York Observer's Ben Smith started this. ... P.P.P.S.: I claim to have foreseen the Ickes vs. campaign tension--but I thought it would be between Ickes and the Dean campaign. ... The pro-McCain-Feingold implication stands, however--Kerry may not 'owe' contributors to Ickes' fund the way he 'owes' contributors to his own campaign. (Indeed, he may resent Ickes' backers if Ickes keeps sniping at his 'populist' strategy.) So even if big contributors have found a way around McCain-Feingold's soft-money restrictions, the corrupting consequences are not the same."
UPDATE Feb. 27: Kaus is still on this. (Scroll down to Thur. Feb. 19: "Psst! Isn't the celebrated, goo-goo 'Stand by Your Ad' provision of the McCain-Feingold law, the one that's had such an impact discouraging negative spots in the current campaign, transparently ... you know ... unconstitutional?") See also here. (Scroll down to Tuesday, Feb. 24, beginning, "Do not leave your dogma in the karma unattended!". Also ) Now he says his biggest concern is the "stand by your ad" provision mentioned above. A candidate has to appear and/or say: "I support this ad." The result has been a spate of bland ads; but more seriously, Kaus says the First Amendment is being violated when candidates are told something they must say in an ad.
George Will has also weighed in. As he points out, the unelected FEC now has more power than ever to say what actual candidates, winning actual votes from the sovereign people, may and may not do. In their first big decision since McConnell, the FEC has simply muddied the waters. Leaders of 527s are convinced they can do what they want; fans of McCain-Feingold are convinced the activities of 527s are properly restricted, especially insofar as they are "coordinated" with an actual campaign.
Update March 5: David Tell in the Weekly Standard tries again to explain it all. He begins by admitting that the one big FEC decision so far can be interpreted as either favouring or restricting the 527s. His own view, however, is that the new legislation will hurt the 527s--hence the Democrats, and help the Republicans, sooner rather than later. In fact he seems to predict there will be enforcement measures against some of the major anti-Bush organizations.
Discussion on Tapped (Nick Confessore) and Eschaton (Atrios): Atrios picks up on Nick Confessore's concern that Republicans have sources of soft money that have not been publicized as much as the Democratic ones.
In Canada today we don't seem to be on the same wavelength as the U.S. This is not so much because of the oft-noted items, same-sex marriage and marijuana. The Massachusetts Supreme Court has made it much more likely that same-sex marriage is coming to the U.S., just as it is to Canada; and the notorious 9th Circuit on the West Coast has ruled that it is permissible to cultivate and possess (not sell) marijuana for medical purposes. This agrees with Canada's experiment in allowing marijuana for medical reasons, and is at least a step on the way to the limited de-criminalization that the federal government of Canada is proposing.
The bigger difference, I think, is over Iraq, and bigger questions of whether there is a big world war on or not, whether to deploy force to do something about it, and indeed whether to commit significant resources to a country's armed forces. Canada seems to be saying "no" to all these things (although we do have a security act somewhat mirroring the U.S. Patriot Act, which has led to a reporter being investigated over the Arar case).
Whether to join the Iraq campaign or not was a bit of an academic question for Canada. We were already committed in Afghanistan (where we are doing our part at least until August), and that is about it; we are over-stretched. Many of the countries in the U.S. "coalition" are making a token effort, and that is the most Canada could have done as well. As far as I can tell, this is OK with voters. There is a clamour for better health care, and maybe for "help for the cities" (which is partly derived from urban planning/Smart Growth, and partly a disguised way of talking about helping the urban poor). I don't hear any clamour for more or bigger or more effective armed forces. The Liberals cancelled a contract to replace the Sea King helicopters more than 10 years ago, and they have yet to make definite decisions on how to proceed.
So I guess Canadians aren't convinced there is a true two- or more sided "war on terror." Of if they think there is one, they assume the U.S. will do what has to be done. I suspect there is widespread relief that we are not involved in Iraq, given the way it has gone.
Another difference between the countries. The President's SOTU address last week seems to confirm that in some ways Americans are back in the 60s: do a lot on national defence, because God knows we have powerful enemies; spend a lot on other things as well, including old-fashioned domestic pork-barreling; and don't worry as the deficit mounts.
Canadians still seem to favour balanced budgets, and long-term plans to eliminate debt. Tax cuts are welcome, but they shouldn't disrupt debt reduction; that became Paul Martin's mantra as Minister of Finance. Thus the idea of aid to cities is in trouble; probably too expensive. There will be more cash for health care, no doubt; I don't know if there will be new policies, re-structuring, or anything like that. McGuinty in Ontario promised a lot of spending, and pretended he thought the deficit was fairly low. As soon as a deficit of $5.6 billion was confirmed (on a total budget of around $60 billion), he started breaking spending promises. I gather this is more or less OK with the public. The Tories, on their way out, were in a bit of a G.W. Bush/drunken sailor mode; McGuinty is going to do the responsible thing.
Can McGuinty make any of the tough choices to actually eliminate the deficit? That remains to be seen.
All this is preliminary to the federal race for the leadership of the new Conservative Party. Some old-time Red Tories have already given up on the new party: Joe Clark and two other MPs (along with some Senators?) say they will sit as Independents; Scott Brison has crossed to the Liberals (as has an ex-Reform/Alliance member Keith Martin). Stephen Harper led the Alliance Party, and is identified more closely with economic issues/less government/libertarianism than with a conservative stance on social issues. Yet he seems to have more time for "dinosaurs" from his former party than for Red Tories.
The two Ontario candidates for leadership may both claim some Red Tory support. Belinda Stronach claims Mike Harris as one of her high-profile supporters, and the media is presenting this as an example of "tooth and claw" conservatism: government should help the rich help themselves, and try to avoid helping anyone else. She wants "the most competitive taxes in the world," and "less red tape". She specifically proposes a tax break on mortgage interest payments, as in the U.S. (one of the issues Ernie Eves, borrowing from the more conservative Jim Flaherty, ran on in Ontario). She wants to increase military spending, and increase transfers for health care from the federal government to the provinces. On social issues she says yes to same-sex marriage, but no to de-crim of marijuana because of issues this will raise with the U.S.
What makes me think "Red Tory" in connection with her campaign is the reference to health care and same-sex marriage, and the presence on her team of Janet Ecker, former Ontario Minister of Finance among other portfolios. Ecker has been known as closer to Ernie Eves ("not necessarily tax cuts") than to Mike Harris.
On the other hand, as I suggest above, increased military spending may be seen as an outlying policy position on the right for Canadians today.
Tony Clement now presents himself as a less ideological member of the former provincial Tory government. And here are some names from his team that belong to the old federal Red Tories: "His campaign team has been reported to include former federal Tory cabinet ministers Doug Lewis and Ron Atkey, as well as Stanley Hartt and Hugh Segal, both former chiefs of staff to prime minister Brian Mulroney."
Clement has criticized the mortage interest tax deduction plan as an attempt to bribe voters with their own money, and one reason the Tories were defeated in Ontario. He has his own tax cut scheme: make the first two or three hundred thousand dollars in earnings, for every young person, tax free.
Clement also suggests he does not favour same-sex marriage.
Here is an example of thinking outside the box. Peter Robinson on The Corner gives credit to a reader who e-mails (basically): if Kerry is nominated, there will be a debate about Vietnam, and Bush will win that debate, too.
Robinson agrees.
There is a tendency to say that Americans still just want to put Vietnam behind them. One necessary step is to give both veterans of the war, and former draft dodgers and such, leading roles in the country. All is forgiven, on all sides. But it is part of the logic of Bush's position today that the U.S. war in Vietnam should be re-considered.
As Robinson states the "Republican" position (although this is not how the partisan debate played out in the 60s):
- "our undertaking in Vietnam was born of a noble impulse, not some sort of twisted imperialist dream
- "we lost only because of a failure of national will that John Kerry, among others, helped to precipitate
- "despite its ultimate failure the war repesented a holding action that helped to make possible the rise of the 'Asian tigers,' including Thailand and Taiwan, whose example even Vietnam itself is now attempting to follow."
This is all typically shrill, us vs. them (Kerry is to be treated simply as a defeatist, a destroyer of the national will, even though he actually served in combat unlike other people we could mention?), but it raises some interesting points. Even if we grant that McNamara's approach to the war was completely wrong, and led to disaster, it doesn't follow that the war itself was necessarily a mistake. It may hold up as an example of the Truman Doctrine in action--containing communism everywhere.
If the Vietcong had won a lot earlier, would they have taken Cambodia and Laos? Would Thailand have been attacked, at least? What are the implications? Bush wants to argue (in a way): we might be wise--erring on the side of caution--if we invade countries with little in the way of a tangible reason to do so, but some hope of gaining ground in a wider ideological war, with the potential of preventing direct harm to Americans.
If the Democrats want to avoid the Vietnam part of this debate, they might nominate: Edwards/Lieberman. (Edwards was too young for Vietnam; Lieberman got a student exemption followed by a married exemption; but then he's practically a rabbi).
I have a vague idea that Robert McNamara has always been wrong about matters that were important from his point of view. At Ford in the 50s he panicked at the growth of small, cheaply made cars in Europe--and tried to get Ford to build something like a Volkswagen Beetle, such as the one he drove. As advisor to LBJ, he recommended gradual escalation in Vietnam, supposedly "calibrating" a response as needed, and measuring results by the body count. At the World Bank he was responsible for large loans to Third World countries that were later found to be unsustainable; crippling burdens were imposed on these countries in an attempt to make them pay.
So maybe in disavowing what he did in Vietnam, and in criticizing the Bush approach in Iraq, he is wrong again?
The gist of this story is that the U.S. is making some of the same crucial mistakes in Iraq that it did in Vietnam. Some of the points are a bit vague--but then, McNamara is almost 90.
It's best to know a lot about local cultures before sending in troops. Having an alliance with other major powers will help with that. Huh? Foreign leaders can be removed for human rights violations; but unilateral action should only take place when U.S. soil is under attack. The U.N. should play a big role.
Surely Bush's defenders have a point is saying the U.N. doesn't have much of a track record in going up against existing governments of sovereign states. The presumption of the U.N., as of many treaties, is that all governments are equally legitimate. Of course this isn't true. The U.N. has lots of experience at peace-keeping, but very little at war-making, or trying to cool down a truly hot situation.
McNamara has a lot of faith in the International Criminal Court. It remains to be seen whether that court can deal with a large number of individuals, from different countries, on time frames that will help those countries move forward with new regimes.
Update: This sentence by Doug Saunders of the Globe, not by McNamara, does not inspire confidence: "The Iraq action, which would have been conducted in some form or another at some point under any imaginable government, would have been far better conceived if its executors had read Mr. McNamara's works instead of the Book of Revelation."
By comparison, here is a cogent criticism of the Bush approach in Iraq: the war against terror is quite different from deciding to displace failed regimes; the latter can be managed by deterrence, and in fact can be used to weaken (probably not eradicate) international terrorists.
(Link to Hit and Run, where Jeff Taylor, in criticizing Perle and Frum, cites Jeffrey Record, a professor at the U.S. Air Force's Air War College and one time staffer to Sen. Sam Nunn).
Glenn Reynolds likes to joke that wherever there is a U.S. military base of long standing, by the logic of Bush's critics, there must be an ongoing quagmire, and a foolish decision must have been made at the beginning not to send in enough troops. Germany? Japan? Britain?
Heh, heh.
How many U.S. bases are there? Where? How big? How many people involved, and at what cost?
"It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591.5 billion to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.
"These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.
"For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years."
- Chalmers Johnson, reproduced on TomDispatch.com (Tom Englehardt), link via Hit and Run.
And to think: the Anti-Federalists, at the time of the U.S. founding, were worried about the possible existence of any, that's right, any "standing army" whatsoever.
Chalmers has written (even before 9/11) that the scale and nature of the American Empire is likely to invite certain kinds of attacks. (Oh, oh: here come root causes again--or at least, causes that are somewhere beneath the most visible blooms). Englehardt focusses on how over-stretched the U.S. military is now. Requiring people to stay, when they had been scheduled to retire? Can you say "draft"?
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