When future historians look back at America's reaction to the attacks of 9/11 and see that our leadership decided to ignore the many, many, vulnerabilities of our homeland to devastating attacks that could easily kill millions while at the same time, going off on a foolish and counterproductive tangent to remake a nation that had nothing whatever to do with the attack, thereby ignoring a real threat and creating a new one where none existed before, I do think they will study us as an example of a government gone mad. (And I am not factoring in the pulling of agents and troops charged with tracking down the man who actually pulled off the attack in order to apply them to Iraq, which was also evidence of a dangerous and delusional obsession.) Anyway, take a look at this Times story by Eric Lipton. Here are some highlights, that follow on Jonathan Chait's thoughts to which we linked yesterday:
Undercover Congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the United States enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says.
This is the umpteenth gazillionth warning we have had that we are ignoring our vulnerabilities. (With Katrina, God weighed in too.) I write about this till I am proverbially blue in the face, most recently here. When the next preventable attack comes, no doubt those responsible for this criminal negligence will blame the liberals...
And hey, look: Michael Schwartz takes the glut of 3rd-anniversary-of-war media consensus assessments of what the Bush administration did wrong in Iraq -- not sending in enough troops, dismantling the Iraqi army -- and shows why they miss the real picture. Among the behind-the-scenes stories of Iraqi life that could be found on the political Web but rarely in the mainstream media were the draconian privatization plans the Bush administration imposed on Iraq after Baghdad fell. And yet, Schwartz argues, if you don't understand what these plans did to the daily economic lives of most Iraqis, as our regular news just about never does, there is simply no way fully to grasp the origins of the present Iraqi insurrection or the dismal failure of the Bush administration in that country.
Meanwhile, the administration has enlisted Howard Kurtz in its campaign to try to blame its failure in Iraq on the courageous journalists who are risking their lives, daily, to cover it. In his column he asks, if the media has "declared war on the war," and wonders, "well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there."
Here's some news for you, sir, from your colleagues in Iraq. Hope it doesn't upset your morning:
Every day, journalists in Iraq face a gut-wrenching decision: Do they venture out in pursuit of stories despite great danger or remain under self-imposed house arrest, working the phones and depending on Iraqi stringers to act as surrogates? A constant feeling of vulnerability heightens their angst. They know once they leave heavily guarded hotels or walled compounds they could end up in the hands of masked gunmen, pleading for their lives in a grainy video posted on the Internet. Or be within striking distance of an improvised explosive device (IED), a major killer in Iraq.
-- Here.
And here is some more:
LOGAN: "Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? ...You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.
Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.
I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country... So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?
And finally, a bit more here:
Visiting any of the news bureaus gives an immediate sense of how embattled foreign journalists now are and how difficult it has become for them to do their jobs. Everyone I spoke to complained that the deteriorating security situation has increasingly made them prisoners of their bureaus.
"We could go almost anywhere in Iraq in a regular car, unprotected," wrote the Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi this February, in a wistful front-page story for her paper about the situation she found when she first arrived in 2003. "I wore Western clothes--pants and T-shirts, skirts, sandals--walked freely around Baghdad chatting with shopkeepers and having lunch or dinner with people I met." By the spring of 2004, she writes,
the insurgency had been spreading and gaining strength faster than we had imagined possible. For the first time, I hired armed guards and began traveling in a fully armored car. Outings were measured and limited and road trips were few and far between.... As security deteriorated around the country, the areas in which we could safely operate shrank.
...
In the meantime, this is not a bad question: "Where, indeed, are the bodies?" Of course we need Tom Tomorrow to put this surrealist horror show into perspective.
Josh Bolten Quote of the Day section, (thanks to Todd Gitlin):
[From an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, 10/9/03]
1. On raising tax on the wealthiest Americans to pay to rebuild Iraq:
(Bolten) "I don't expect that. I can't imagine a situation in which the right thing to do to meet our needs in Iraq is to undermine the US economy."
2. "The purpose of the Iraq supplemental is not principally to make the Iraqi people more comfortable and make their lives better, although that is an important by-product. The purpose of the Iraq supplemental, both the security side and the reconstruction side is a national security purpose. That is to make that country secure and stable enough so that the situation there is not threatening to the United States."
3. "Bolten operates with two guiding principles: absolute loyalty to the boss and absolutely no attention to himself. Indeed, his penchant for secrecy befits the son of a career CIA officer."
4. "During the 2000 campaign, Bolten was Bush's policy director, and during the Florida recount he was a top lieutenant to James Baker."
5. "[I]t was very disappointing to me to see the New York Times's coverage of the midsession review when it was issued begin with:
New York Times: The White House projected on Friday that the budget deficit would reach $445 billion in this fiscal year. That would make it by far the largest shortfall ever in the dollar amount, though it would be well below the record for a deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product and well below the amount forecast six months ago. Joshua B. Bolten, President Bush's budget director, presented the new forecast as good news, saying "the improved budget outlook is the direct result of the strong economic growth the president's tax relief has fueled."
But Democrats said the revised forecast for the 2004 fiscal year, still almost 20 percent higher than the record $375 billion deficit in the previous year, showed just how much the government's fiscal health had deteriorated under Mr. Bush. "They're claiming improvement?" said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "That is utterly preposterous."
In the 2001 fiscal year, the last time the budget was prepared by the Clinton administration, there was a surplus of $127 billion. Soon after Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, his staff projected a 2004 surplus of $262 billion. In early February, the White House predicted that the deficit in this fiscal year would be $521 billion. The lower number announced on Friday in what is called the mid-session review resulted from larger tax receipts than had been expected. Mr. Bolten said that was a consequence of "the broad-based and sustained economic recovery."...
Note what the New York Times doesn't say. It doesn't say that "the improvement in the forecast was due to a highballed overestimate of the deficit made in the previous forecast of six months ago"; it doesn't say that "Mr. Bolten's statement made no sense because the effects of George W. Bush's tax policies on growth were already included in the forecast made six months ago and cannot be responsible for the change in the forecast"; it doesn't say that "economic growth since January 2004 has been no faster than was forecast back then, so Mr. Bolten is incorrect to say that higher tax receipts than forecast are the result of faster growth"; it doesn't say that "Mr. Bolten's spurious claims of 'improvement' were simply the latest in what budget expert Stan Collender has called 'a consistent pattern of questionable projections and forecasts.'"
What the Times article does do is to turn the story into a match of dueling quotes, of "he said--he said" with the author providing insufficient clues for a reader not intimately familiar with the budget and its forecasts to figure out who is telling the story straight and who is spouting partisan garbage.
And so game and set to Josh Bolten. Bolten has accomplished his mission: he has gotten his meme that the deficit outlook is improving because of George W. Bush's policies out into the stream of public discourse about the budget. And the New York Times has cooperated with him: it has printed Bolten's statements, and done so without surrounding them with the appropriate context to allow readers to make an informed judgment of their veracity."
Tough, hard-hitting reporting from "The Note:"
-- But [Card] will also be missed because he is without question one of the most beloved people to ever run a White House, thought of by his staff as one of the most selfless, kind-hearted and hard-working people in politics and government.
-- There is sincere hope that Josh Bolten, equally respected and admired by his colleagues, will help the team get back some of the mojo they need to turn around this ship of state.
What Bush told Card, According to Petey: "Bush to Card: shuffle along, deal with you later..."
And speaking of straight-talking "mavericks," John McCain will be speaking at Liberty University; you know, the place run by that fellow who (together with Pat Robertson) said we got what we deserved on 9/11, and distributed videos accusing President Clinton of committing murder. EJ has something to say here.
Billy Joel Quote of the Day section: "Under no circumstances would I ever have anyone fired for having breasts that were too large." -- The Piano Man hisself, responding to accusations from a dancer in a production of his hit Broadway show Movin' Out that she was fired because of her ample bosom.
Eric Alterman, Intrepid Reporter: I ran into Janeane G at a screening of the first episode of Showtime's "Huff" at the Museum of Television and Radio last night (which was oddly populated by cast-members of "The Sopranos," as well as the terrific Huff, and the terrific "Spamalot," but not the terrific "Sleeper Cell," nor the terrific "Weeds." One of those Friends guys was there too, unshaven and with a baseball hat so like, he wouldn't be recognized, right? While we're on the topic, have I mentioned how great Showtime has gotten recently? And if you get a chance, tune into Kevin Bacon's amazing and unsettling performance in "The Woodsman," which I saw on Showtime over the weekend. I think it clearly deserved the Oscar, even over Hoffman's great Capote.) But anyway, back to my reporting. Janeane says no, showing off her tattoos on last week's West Wing was not her idea, but her director's, even though it was entirely out of character. Thank God that's settled.