Why Didn't You Tell Them That The Other Two Times?

Here's a great story about a conversation Bush had with Speaker Pelosi (I really like writing that) about Iraq:

In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered
the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of
21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for
U.S. forces in Iraq."

PELOSI: He's tried this two times — it's failed twice. I asked him at the
White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to
work?'

Pelosi then said that Bush's response was, "Because I told them it had to." Pelosi's response to that?

PELOSI: Why didn't you tell them that the other two times?

- posted by Joshua @ 4:50 PM (0) comments

 
"If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."

There's been a lot of press about Senator Jim Webb's fantastic response to the SOTU, and if you haven't seen it, here's where you can watch it. I thought Webb's speech was fantastic -- a simple, straight-forward, yet hard-hitting, explanation of the Democrat's position on Iraq and the economy and where Bush has gone so tragically wrong. Although his discussion of Iraq was fanatastic, I also liked his point that Bush has mentioned energy independence in every one of his SOTU addresses, yet nothing was ever done about it by Bush or the Republican Congress.

A couple of Webb's statements stood out for me:

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged
war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war
began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away
from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq
would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner
of the world.

There you go. Doesn't get any more straight-forward than that. Webb then had a very moving section about a picture that he showed to the camera:

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for
more than 50 years. This is my father, when he was a young Air Force captain,
flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from
Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy, I used
to take the picture to bed with me every night, because for more than three
years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas
or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of
the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my
father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps,
serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine
helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry
Marine in Iraq.

And then Webb connects it with what has happened in Iraq and in Washington:

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve
and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On
the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life
and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they
would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives
against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into
harm's way.

We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us -
sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the
threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in
defending it.

And then the final point, summing up the party's position on Iraq better than almost anyone else has done:

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings
from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff
of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose
jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in
national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the
predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering.Financially.The
damage to our reputation around the world.The lost opportunities to defeat the
forces of international terrorism.And especially the precious blood of our
citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being
fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one
step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous
withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift
toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off
the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our
combat forces to leave Iraq.

And Webb closed the speech this way:

Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the
situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th
century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The
so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the
national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening
revolt.

Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow
Republicans that they must set themselves "as resolutely against improper
corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the
other." And he did something about it.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be
President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had
fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the General who had
commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became
President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world.

Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both
areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the
way.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek had similar praise for Webb's speech here. It's hard to disagree with his main point:

Something unprecedented happened tonight, beyond the doorkeeper announcing,
"Madame Speaker." For the first time ever, the response to the State of the
Union Message overshadowed the president's big speech. Virginia Sen. James Webb,
in office only three weeks, managed to convey a muscular liberalism—with
personal touches—that left President Bush's ordinary address in the
dust.

I really like this Jim Webb fella.
- posted by Joshua @ 8:00 PM (0) comments

 
Not Exactly the News That The White House and Cheney Wanted on the Same Day as the SOTU

Michael Isikoff has a good run-down of Day 1 of the Libby Trial. And makes a good point about Libby's "I wasn't going to be the fall-guy for Karl Rove" defense: that it may seriously hurt his chances for a pardon, unless Dick Cheney truly is running the country.

Some people I've talked to thought that Libby's Rove strategy was a shrewd one from a jury perspective, as it puts him on the side from people, like Rove, who are presumably unpopular with a DC jury. However, I see two flaws with this strategy, if that's what it is. First, it aligns Libby with Cheney, who is even more unpopular than Bush. Second, it hurts his chances for a pardon, which many people viewed as the likely outcome in this case, no matter how politically reprehensible that course might be.

It's become clear, however, that not only did Scott McClellan lie to the press corps about the role of Libby and Rove in this matter (whether McClellan did so knowingly is another question), but so did Bush and Cheney back in the fall of 2003, when they both clearly knew about the involvement of their top aides, Rove and Libby, in the Valerie Plame/Joseph Wilson issue. Indeed, Cheney DIRECTED Libby to take the steps that he took with reporters.

Also, if you're interested in some serious inside baseball, the campaign docs that Rudy Giulani's campaign lost are now available online if you want to take a look here.
- posted by Joshua @ 9:28 AM (0) comments

 
Libby Trial Information

I highly recommend the blog Firedoglake, which has been following the Plame/Fitzgerald investigation from the beginning, for information about the Libby trial. They will be blogging daily on the trial goings-on.

Today, they've got summaries of the opening statements. Here's an interesting snippet from a summary of the opening statement by Theodore Wells, Libby's lawyer:

Fitz said Libby may have had a motive to lie, because Scottie said you'd
lose your job if you leaked.

Mr. Libby was not concerned about losing his job. He was concerned
about being set up. He was concerned about being the scapegoat.

Mr. Libby said to the VP, "I think the WH, people are trying to set me up,
people want me to be the scapegoat. people in the WH want me to protect Karl
Rove."

Cheney made notes of what Libby said. Notes show Libby telling VP that he
was not involved in leak. [oops, Wells, accidentally said, "not involved in leak
to Karl Rove.]

Cheney's note: "Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice
the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the
incompetence of others."

The person who was to be protected was Karl Rove. Karl Rove was President
Bush's right hand person. Karl Rove was the person most responsible for making
sure Bush stayed in office. He had to be protected. The person who was to be
sacrificed....

So Mr. Libby because of the incompetence of th CIA had to go into the meat
grinder.

"They're trying to set me up, they want me to be the sacrificial
lamb."

I demand I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.

Cheney forces the WH to say to the press the same things they had said
about Karl Rove.

But unlike Karl Rove, Libby had not been pushing this story.

Mr. Libby was just a staffer, an important staffer, but Karl Rove was the
lifeblood of the Republican party.

So, Libby is going to argue that the White House was circling wagons around Rove to protect him, and he feared that he was going to get thrown to the wolves. Hmm. Rove is apparently on Libby's witness list. That could be interesting.
- posted by Joshua @ 12:43 PM (0) comments

 
Doubting Thomas

Back in 1991, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas faced a difficult burden for confirmation. He had to go up against a Democratic-Senate majority, but his entire career up to that point had been defined by taking extreme conservative positions in an effort to distinguish himself as a leading black conservative for just this opportunity.

But the same positions that perfectly situated Thomas to be nominated for the Supreme Court also posed the potential to derail his nomination before the Democratic-controlled Senate. Thomas, or those advising him on his confirmation, apparently decided that there was only one path for confirmation: lie about his beliefs.

Over and over again during his confirmation hearings, Thomas walked away from his prior right-wing positions on a litany of issues. The impression he left with the Senate was that his ideological views were by no means settled and he hadn't made up his mind on a lot of critical issues. He conveyed a sense that he was not an extremist and was open to all points of view as he decided what path to take in his legal jurisprudence and analysis.

And he almost certainly was lying. Repeatedly. Under oath. (And this doesn't even evaluate whether he was truthful about Anita Hill or when he said he had never discussed Roe v. Wade with anyone when it was issued in 1973... when he was in law school!)

Indeed, one powerful example of this is to compare his open-minded statements about Roe during his confirmation hearings with the extreme position he took during his first term on the Court in Casey. Interestingly, Thomas went from an undecided moderate to a extreme right-winger in a matter of months, an amazing transformation!

Now, a new book by ABC News legal analyst Jan Crawford Greenburg provides additional evidence of Thomas' perjury. In this WSJ op-ed that is based on her book, Greenburg tries to argue that, rather than Thomas being a follower of Scalia, in many ways Scalia was following Thomas and the more extreme positions that Thomas chose to take. Ignoring or overlooking the perjury implications of these extreme positions by Thomas, Greenburg cites examples from Thomas' first term on the court:

Immediately upon his arrival at the court, Justice Thomas was savaged by
court-watchers as Antonin Scalia's dutiful apprentice, blindly following his
mentor's lead. It's a grossly inaccurate portrayal, imbued with politically
incorrect innuendo, as documents and notes from Justice Thomas's very first days
on the court conclusively show. Far from being a Scalia lackey, the rookie
jurist made clear to the other justices that he was willing to be the solo
dissenter, sending a strong signal that he would not moderate his opinions for
the sake of comity. By his second week on the bench, he was staking out bold
positions in the private conferences where justices vote on cases. If either
justice changed his mind to side with the other that year, it was Justice Scalia
joining Justice Thomas, not the other way around.

"By his second week on the bench"? Greenburg makes this same point later in the piece as well:

But the forcefulness and clarity of Justice Thomas's views, coupled with
wrongheaded depictions of him doing Justice Scalia's bidding, created an
internal dynamic that caused the court to make an unexpected turn in his first
year.

Just nine months earlier, Thomas had repeatedly told the Judiciary Committee that he hadn't formed any firm views on a number of critical legal issues. Those statements were almost certainly lies. Yet it allowed him to garner the votes of several Democrats willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Immediately upon his 52-48 confirmation, Thomas suddenly veered violently to the right, all pretense of objectivity and fair-mindedness were gone, as he mapped out a path, Greenburg claims, even to the right of Scalia.

The reward for Thomas' perjury: a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
- posted by Joshua @ 6:54 PM (0) comments

 
You May Want to Sit Back and Bring Some Popcorn For This One

The Libby trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday and it may be live up to the billing in one respect: Vice-President Cheney's appearance as a witness for Libby. The prospect of Fitzgerald cross-examining Cheney has been making Fitzmas fans salivate for weeks. After all, Fitzgerald is the guy who absolutely obliterated Libby's memory "expert" on cross several months back -- he ever got her to say that she never remembered meeting him before.

But the Cheney appearance should live up to expectations. Anyone who thought that Fitzgerald might pull his punches with the sitting Vice-President should mull over this tidbit from voir dire:

Late yesterday, Patrick Fitzgerald asked a juror who expressed admiration for
the office of the vice president whether that potential juror would have any
problems if counsel (Fitzgerald) conducted an aggressive cross examination of
the vice president.

And Fitzgerald may have reason to do just that, judging by these voir questions from Libby's team:

A Libby lawyer, for the second time in this process, asked a potential juror how
they will view Vice President Cheney if his testimony is “contradicted” by
another witness.

Hmm. Sounds to me like Fitzgerald might have some more work cut out for him once this trial is over. Cheney does not have the best record of telling the truth in these kinds of settings -- remember he and Bush appeared together before the 9/11 Commission, NOT under oath, and the Commission raised serious questions about Cheney's veracity concerning whether Bush had ever given the order to shoot down airplanes, or if Cheney had just done that himself. And remember Cheney wasn't under oath during his previous interview with Fitzgerald's investigators in this case. So it should be interesting...
- posted by Joshua @ 9:15 PM (0) comments