Month: January 2008

Richardson: Let’s Set Up Some ‘Technocrats’

Apparently undeterred by criticism from his own party in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Bill Richardson continues his quest to demonstrate that a great resume does not make a great Presidential candidate. He pens an essay for the Boston Globe demanding that the US should suspend all aid to Pakistan until Pervez Musharraf steps down — in favor of “technocrats”:

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF of Pakistan must go. Rather than waging the “unstinted” war against Al Qaeda that he promised, he has become a source of instability that terrorists are exploiting. Pakistan urgently needs a new government, and the United States should suspend all nonterrorism-related military aid until Musharraf steps aside.
Some in Washington say we should stick with the dictator, because they fear chaos might follow his departure. But the risk of chaos is far greater if Musharraf remains. Only a new government, with broader support than Musharraf has, can restore order to Pakistan and reengage an effective fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. ….
Who should replace Musharraf? A temporary government of technocrats, supported externally by a coalition of the main democratic parties, would give Pakistan its best shot at ending the current disorder and holding free and fair elections. The Pakistani Army would continue, as it always has, to strictly safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. There is a precedent: Pakistan had a technocratic government briefly after General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq died suddenly in the 1980s. With Musharraf gone, the citizens of Pakistan would once again be able to elect their own government. Most important for US national security, they would know that America stood with them, and not with the dictator, in their moment of national crisis.

Richardson wants to impose American will on a country that has made it clear they reject that imposition. Musharraf took power in 1999 because the government of Nawaz Sharif was incompetent and corrupt, just as the government run by Benazir Bhutto was. Those two represented the “main democratic parties” on which Richardson wants to rely now. The third party supports Musharraf, and probably wouldn’t agree to his removal from power in favor of “technocrats” or anyone else.
In truth, Pakistan is a mess. The corruption spreads across the entire body politic there, and no one is clean. Bhutto and Musharraf at least had the virtue of opposing radical Islamist terrorism; Sharif has negotiated with these elements to build his power base. The rest of the parties drift even further in that direction. While Richardson is technically correct in stating that the radical Islamists only ever got 12% in national elections, that’s at least in part because they don’t usually participate in them — and they would provide the same destabilizing elements in a technocracy as they do in the current dictatorship.
The Army keeps the nuclear weapons safe, but only because Musharraf and his selected power structure has the power to do so. The military and the intel services have a serious infiltration problem, and Musharraf has been able to maintain power over those factions. If Musharraf got deposed, the Army would either have to replace him or risk having its command structure overthrown in a mutiny. And if the Army did take over, how would that be an improvement over Musharraf?
Without a doubt, Pakistan remains a serious problem. We will only make it worse if we try a Jimmy Carter-like removal of support for Musharraf and allow the radical Islamist elements to seize power in a coup. Even Chris Dodd realizes the lunacy of the Richardson plan.

Jumping The Gun?

Ron Paul’s supporters are seeing red after Fox News decided to exclude their candidate from the next presidential debate. ABC also plans to whittle down the participants in the next debate but will wait for the Iowa caucus to make clear who should get the invitations. The exclusion comes after Paul raised $19 million in the fourth quarter, the second-best GOP total for the year:

ABC and Fox News Channel are narrowing the field of presidential candidates invited to debates this weekend just before the New Hampshire primary, in Fox’s case infuriating supporters of Republican Ron Paul.
The roster of participants for ABC’s back-to-back, prime-time Republican and Democratic debates Saturday in New Hampshire will be determined after results of Thursday’s Iowa caucus become clear.
Fox, meanwhile, has invited five GOP candidates to a forum with Chris Wallace scheduled for its mobile studio in New Hampshire on Sunday. Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson received invites, leaving Paul and Duncan Hunter on the sidelines.

Most of us have made no secret of our wish to see the number of candidates narrowed for these debates, and for good reason. The current roster of seven or eight on a stage makes for nothing but the exchange of substance-less soundbites, and provide no insight into the true character and nature of the candidates. Given the game-show, gotcha quality of these gladiatorial events, one has to question why any of the contenders would want to participate.
However, since we’ve muddled through this long, it makes little sense to start excluding candidates just before the first meaningful vote gets taken. Raising $19 million in a quarter shows at least some level of significant support, even if limited to the the fringes of the GOP and Libertarian parties. Also, if Fox wants to rely on polling, Paul does at least as well as Thompson in Iowa and perhaps better at the moment in New Hampshire. Why not just wait for the results from Iowa to make that determination for both parties, as ABC plans to do?
I’d much prefer a smaller field for the debate, but at this point, an exclusion gives nothing more than another excuse for conspiracy-mongering among Paul’s supporters. It’s hard to imagine a better one, given the fund-raising success Paul has had in the last few weeks. If Fox and the rest of the broadcasters give it a few more days, they’ll likely have all the data they need to whittle the debates down to three candidates each.
UPDATE: James Joyner agrees.
UPDATE II and BUMP: I’m pushing this to the top, just below the AOL Hot Seat question on which it’s based. A big welcome to all AOL readers — and please click on the Home link in the header and check out all of the commentary here at Captain’s Quarters.

CapQ Caption Contest! (Bumped: Photo Crank Added)

We haven’t had a caption contest for quite some time here, and what better day to do it than the first working day of the political year? With the Iowa caucuses around the corner and a full year of campaigning both behind us and ahead of us, we need a few laughs. Here’s a picture of Hillary Clinton on the Iowa stump, apparently signaling … something:

So what was Hillary signaling? Give us your best caption ideas in the comments section only. Anyone sending e-mailed captions will have to draw flowcharts of Hillary’s position on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. I’ll try to pick the winner during my more-or-less live coverage of the Iowa caucuses tomorrow evening. If any blogger wishes to serve as judge for the contest, I’ll be sure to give the requisite pluggage.
Have fun, and remember — Hillary’s keeping an eye on you!
UPDATE & BUMP: Lots of great captions in the comments, but also in the new Photo Crank option I added late yesterday. This makes a pretty good way to do caption contests; people can make them directly onto the picture, and everyone can vote on the submissions. Check it out and let me know what you think. You just need to click on the blue bar at the bottom of the photo to add your own caption or vote on others.

Zelikow: This Is Not 20 Questions

Yesterday, Michael Mukasey appointed a prosecutor to begin a criminal investigation into the destruction of tapes by the CIA depicting, among other actions, interrogations of al-Qaeda terrorists using waterboarding. The destruction of the tapes came two years after a commission appointed by Congress and the President requested all relevant materials to the CIA’s efforts before and after 9/11 to counter the threat from al-Qaeda. Not only did the CIA fail to provide the tapes, they never even told the 9/11 Commission they existed. In fact, the CIA told the commission — as well as the federal court trying Zacarias Moussaoui — that no such recordings ever existed, either through omission (with the Hamilton/Kean panel) or commission (the Moussaoui trial).
Some have questioned whether the former, at least, amounts to criminal obstruction. Former Bush administration official and 9/11 Commission staffer Philip Zelikow writes to my friends at Power Line to clarify this point:

I have been careful not to accuse anyone of committing crimes. But it is important to understand that, under the applicable federal law, this is not a parlor game of “twenty questions.” Under the applicable federal criminal law, our written and very detailed requests established certain issues as being material to our investigation. Officials were obliged by law to provide any responsive information in their possession (or withhold with a claim of privilege) and they were obligated not to conceal, knowingly, any fact related to such material issues. In addition to the various discussions at staff levels, Lee Hamilton pointedly reminded DCI Tenet and his chief aides of the breadth of their obligation at a meeting, one occasioned by these very issues, on December 23, 2003.

Zelikow has this correct. Once a duly appointed commission or a court requested these kinds of materials, the CIA had a positive duty to either provide them or explain why they couldn’t. Lying about it in either case constitutes obstruction, and destroying the tapes later also qualifies as obstruction as well. Zelikow and the court were not obligated to cast their requests in the form of a Sanskrit heroic poem or dance on the heads of pins until they reached the magical word combination of “Open, Sesame”. They made clear the nature of the material they requested, and the CIA had an obligation to answer honestly.
Quite frankly, this is so fundamental to the rule of law that it shouldn’t even be open for debate. Federal agencies of all kinds have to comply with Congress, the executive, and the judiciary; the destruction of these tapes (and the previous lies about their existence) defied all three. Unless we like the notion of bureaucracies operating with impunity, with no oversight whatsoever, and able to impose their will without restriction, then we have to object to the CIA’s actions in this regard and conduct a real and credible investigation to determine whether obstruction occurred, by whom and ordered by whom.
Mukasey has done the right thing. John Durham is a good choice to conduct a credible, thorough, and fearless probe into what looks strongly like significant wrongdoing and determine its potential criminality. Conservatives — who mistrust government power and the powerful bureaucracies it spawns — should be the front row of the cheering section.

Khameini: Goodbye Doesn’t Mean Forever

The man with the real power in Iran hinted that he would like improved Iranian-American relations in the future, although not at the moment. Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the man in charge of Iran’s Guardian Council and the true national leader of Iran’s mullahcracy, also insisted that Iran needs to generate 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity within the next 20 years so it can continue to sell its oil and gas reserves for income:

Iran’s supreme leader said on Thursday restoring ties with the United States now would harm the Islamic state, but he did not rule it out in the future.
“Not having relations with America is one of our main policies but we have never said this relationship should be cut forever,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech in the central province of Yazd, state television reported.
“Certainly, the day when having relations with America is useful for the nation I will be the first one to approve this relationship.”

Reuters plays its usual game with history as background for its readers. See if you can Spot The Missing Part in its recounting of how Iranian-American ties got severed:

The United States cut ties with Tehran shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The two countries are at odds over Tehran’s atomic ambitions and also disagree over who is to blame for the violence in Iraq.

Gee, I wonder what they may have missed. Could it be that the ties got severed because Iran invaded our embassy and kept dozens of American diplomatic personnel hostage for 444 days? Apparently, that little factoid didn’t make the Reuters editorial cut.
Iran apparently has had second thoughts about the American as Great Satan policy they’ve pursued publicly for almost 30 years. Their subjects simply are not buying it any longer. Anti-Americanism doesn’t sell with the younger generation no matter how many times Khameini and his minions mention Mossadegh. These Iranians have no personal memory of pre-revolution Iran and the Shah, but they can see how the West lives and know the difference.
They can’t just use the US as a theoretical scapegoat for all that ails Iran, either. Part of that change comes from the proximity of American troops to the Iranian border in Iraq. The Iranians have to deal with the Americans now as more than just a bogeyman, especially since the Iraqis now running the country have allied themselves with us despite Iran’s best efforts to break those ties. Funding and arming insurgents and fomenting a sectarian war didn’t work, and now Khameini and the rest of the mullahs have to deal with the reality of a long-term American engagement on their doorstep.
Khameini may be responding to a series of signals from Washington looking for a diplomatic opening. We have seen this dance before, during the reign of Mohammed Khatami as Khameini’s puppet. Once again, the Iranians have played coy, rejecting the flirtation provided by the Bush administration, although not directly and certainly not completely. Khameini has signaled that he no longer wants to talk about the US as a Great Satan but as a potential partner sometime.
Khameini wants to solidify his country’s nuclear program, and he’s trying to hold off global sanctions long enough to split the Western coalition. A few winks and a diplomatic come-on costs him nothing, and it could be enough to have at least Russia take the bait.

Fred Says Relax, He Won’t Do It

The Politico predicts that Fred will drop out of the race if he doesn’t come up with a strong showing in Iowa this evening. Fred replies that it’s just a nasty rumor to discredit him in upcoming states:

Several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign said they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus.
Thompson’s campaign, which last spring and summer was generating fevered anticipation in the media and with some Republican activists, has never ignited nationally, and there are no signs of a late spark happening here in Iowa, where even a third-place finish is far from assured.
This reality—combined with a fundraising drought—left well-connected friends and advisers of Thompson Wednesday evening predicting that he will pull the plug on hype and hope before the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary.

Fred replied:

“That is absolutely made up out of whole cloth,” said the former U.S. Senator from Tennessee.
Thompson said a rival campaign was likely the source of that rumor. “Can you imagine such a thing in politics?” he asked.

Two items have sparked these rumors. First, the surprise announcement that Thompson needed a blogburst to run ads in Iowa exposed the campaign’s bare warchest. They need a strong finish in Iowa to convince donors to keep the flow of money up to a high enough level to buy ad time in South Carolina, where Fred has more strength. Second, Fred Thompson himself oddly raised expectations by saying he needed a second-place finish in tonight’s caucuses, a scenario that seems rather fantastic. A strong third would help, but not if the candidate himself believes he needs to place second or first.
However, the rumors are most likely false. In this primary race, almost everyone should be able to make it to February 5th, when 23 states will go all at once. Why drop out within just a few weeks of the Super Tuesday primaries, where a couple of states could keep the candidacy viable? No one candidate has enough draft to force anyone else out.
In this case, Fred has a shot at South Carolina, at least for a second-place finish. He could also do well in Florida, although that seems less likely at the moment. He has no reason to bail out of the race before then, and the next week will be the Super Tuesday primaries. Unless he really runs completely out of cash, he has no compelling reason to withdraw.
So the story probably reflects nothing but rumor and speculation, although it’s hard to understand why competing campaigns would bother with directing any of it towards Thompson. At least for now, he isn’t anyone’s bete noir. It looks more like the uncontrollable urge to commit punditry on the eve of the first real test of the candidates. (via Rick Moran)

Who Lost Fallujah?

According to the Washington Times, the military reviewed the loss of Fallujah to Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists in 2004 to determine how the US lost control of the city. The Marine Corps should have beaten the terrorists in a straight up fight, but the Pentagon believes that the enemy had a lot of help from a surprising source — surprising for everyone except those who watched it happen in real time:

“The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion — coalition victory,” read the assessment, prepared by analysts at the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
“But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle. … The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations,” concluded the assessment. …
The authors said the press was “crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations,” from the Iraqi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which resulted in a “unilateral cease-fire” by U.S. forces on April 9, after just five days of combat operations.
During the negotiations that followed, top Bush administration officials demanded a solution that would not require the Marines to retake the town, according to the assessment.

What happened? During the initial effort to retake Fallujah in April 2004 — following the brutal murders of four Blackwater contractors — Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya began broadcasting propaganda that Western media immediately repeated. The two Arab news services showed video of babies in hospitals and claimed the Marines had wounded these and killed more. Both channels made explicit comparisons to the Palestinians, and the American and European press ate it up.
The propaganda efforts worked. The Marines withdrew and the terrorists made Fallujah the center of their oppression over the people of western Iraq. It took months for the US to mount another offensive, this time with media embeds to counter the propaganda that the Western press seemed eager to indulge. In November 2004, the US finally cleared Fallujah, but not before losing a lot of credibility with the Iraqis who felt abandoned to the terrorists.
This is just a repeat of the Peter Arnett story. In the first Gulf War, Arnett famously repeated without any hint of skepticism the notion that the US bombed a baby-milk factory instead of a weapons factory. Years later, Eason Jordan would admit that CNN cooked its reporting to curry favor with Saddam Hussein, and would occasionally just read copy into the camera provided by the Saddam regime as though it was CNN’s own. Rather than treat the Al-Jazeera propaganda with any skepticism at all, the Western media instead regurgitated it while insisting that American military sources could not be trusted to provide honest accounting of the fight.
We saw this at the time, and tried to point out the contradictions. It cost the lives of American Marines and soldiers, and it cost many more Iraqi lives. The media lost Fallujah, and had it not been for the determination of the Bush administration, they would have lost the entirety of Iraq to al-Qaeda terrorists as well.

The Final Polling In Iowa: Clinton Fades

The final polling before the Iowa caucuses has come from a joint Reuters/Zogby/C-SPAN survey, and the news for Hillary looks bad. She now comes in third behind the inexperienced duo of Barack Obama and John Edwards. This continues a slow fade for Hillary that had its start in a botched November debate answer:
Democrat Barack Obama surged to a four-point lead over John Edwards in Iowa, with Hillary Clinton fading to third just hours before the first presidential nominating contest, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday.

Obama and Edwards gained ground overnight in the tracking poll, and Clinton fell four points to third place — a finish that, if it held, would deal a dramatic setback to the one-time Democratic front-runner.
Obama was at 31 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers, Edwards at 27 percent and Clinton 24 percent. No other Democrat was in double digits.
In the Republican race, Mike Huckabee expanded his lead to six points, 31 to 25 percent, over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the one-time leader in Iowa who has attacked Huckabee for his record as Arkansas governor.
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson is in third place in the Republican race at 11 percent and Arizona Sen. John McCain slipped two points to 10 percent. Texas Rep. Ron Paul also registered 10 percent.

The poll uses a good sampling size; over 900 likely caucus-goers for each party, surveyed by normal telephone questioning rather than on-line surveys. The margin of error does not account for the gap between Hillary and Obama any longer, and now the gap between Edwards and Hillary almost exceeds it as well. The fade looks real, and in the first test among the Democratic frontrunners, she could lose her greatest asset — her air of inevitability.
Only eight weeks ago, Hillary appeared untouchable. She had just finished pushing her money totals past Obama in an impressive third quarter of fundraising, and the Clinton political machine had proven itself highly competent in ground-game organization. Unfortunately, Hillary proved that all of the organization in the world won’t help a bad candidate. She fumbled twice within two minutes on the Spitzer plan to issue drivers licenses in New York to illegal immigrants, and then fumbled it twice in the days following the debate. Clearly rattled, the campaign then went on a bizarre attack on Obama that included criticizing him for his kindergarten essays.
Hillary proved unable to pull herself out of the corkscrew spiral. She cackled during a question directed at Obama in the last Iowa debate in a scene that only needed flying monkeys to complete her transformation. This week, she attempted to sell a story about flying into a sniper zone, but forgot to mention that she brought Sheryl Crow, Sinbad, and her own 15-year-old daughter along for the trip, making her recollection look like a serious prevarication.
It’s a wonder she’s only seven points behind. She should be seventeen points behind in Iowa.
On the Republican side, the race looks rather steady. Huckabee still leads Romney by six, and Fred Thompson has a shot at a third-place finish after some heavy-duty retail politicking in the last three weeks. McCain may still win that spot even without seriously campaigning there, and Ron Paul looks poised to surprise as well.
Here are my predictions about tonight’s results. For the Democrats, I think this poll has it correct, and it finishes Obama-Edwards-Clinton. The Republicans wind up with Huckabee beating Romney by three points, and John McCain finishes third, followed by Thompson and then Paul.
I will be blogging tonight — so we’ll soon see how close I come.

Groundswell Needed For EO

Sources on the Hill tell some of us that a critical point has been reached at the White House on whether to issue an Executive Order that would prevent federal agencies from spending funds on 90% of the earmarks in the Omnibus Spending Bill. According to the whispers, the earmarkers on Capitol Hill have begun to lean heavily on the White House to let the matter drop and to keep the earmark funding in place. Every day brings a fresh round of calls from the same lawmakers who porked up the overdue spending bill, “airdropping” almost all of them (against the new rules in Congress) to keep the porkers from accountability.
If CapQ readers want George Bush to issue the Executive Order and hold Congress responsible for violating its own rules while pursuing personal political benefits, they need to let the White House know now how they feel. The EO advocates need to remind Bush that only through dramatic action can the GOP reclaim any momentum on fiscal responsibility. A rescission package would only play into the hands of the same people who larded up the spending bill while delivering it three months late.
You can make a difference. Call 202-456-1111 and politely explain why the President should issue the EO, or e-mail the staff at comments@whitehouse.gov.

A Fred Surge?

Some CapQ readers have pointed to the latest numbers from Zogby in Iowa as a harbinger of a Fred Thompson surprise for tomorrow’s caucuses. In their daily tracking poll, conducted by traditional telephone surveys rather than on-line polls, Zogby shows a significant bump in support over the last three days — enough to tie Fred with John McCain for third place:

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, gained a bit on Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. Huckabee cumulative three-day tracking total equaled 28% support among likely Republican caucus–goers, while Romney moved up from 25% to 26% support. Arizona Sen. John McCain remained in third place at 12%, tied with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who has seen a late-breaking surge. Among Democrats, 5% were yet undecided just three days ahead of the caucuses. Among Republicans, 6% were yet unsure.
Huckabee’s support spans all age groups, but he is particularly strong among voters under age 30.

Anything’s possible. The Des Moines Register poll released yesterday showed a hint of the same trend, putting Thompson at 9%. Thompson has campaigned hard in December, doing the kind of retail politicking he should have begun in September or before, and it could pay off — especially with conservatives still feeling at loose ends with the current front-runners.
However, this seems like a thin reed of hope. Zogby has a reputation more for outliers than for accuracy. Even if Zogby has this right, it still only puts Thompson third in a state where he has focused, and where Rudy Giuliani barely campaigned at all. A third place helps John McCain because he already has strength in New Hampshire and Michigan, while Fred only has any demonstrable strength in South Carolina.
David Limbaugh spoke for most Fredheads on Monday when he tapped his watch, figuratively speaking:

That leaves us with Fred. I must confess that Fred is the only one I don’t have major reservations about — apart from his electability. Yes, I worry that he supported McCain-Feingold and that he might not be a strong supply-sider. But on most issues, he seems reliably conservative and appears to have a solid and strong character. I do believe that with Fred, we know what we are getting.
I find his lack of “fire in the belly” refreshing. He strikes me as one of the few presidential candidates since Ronald Reagan whose primary motivation is not personal aggrandizement but rather serving and leading the nation in very troubled and dangerous times. I see him as almost being drafted into this project, and his refusal to drool publicly over the prospect of becoming the most powerful man in the world is positively delightful.
That said, he needs to make a more convincing case to the voters, which will require a greater display of enthusiasm that he views these as both perilous and promising times and that he is the best man, overall, to navigate the ship of state through these times.
So, Fred, please, as distasteful as it may be to you, it’s time to step up and prove you want it. Time is short.

I like the philosophical, thoughtful approach that Thompson brought to this campaign. More than anyone else in this race, even than Barack Obama, he held out the tantalizing possibility that the presidential campaign could consist of more than zingers and cute jingles. He exuded gravitas, and his unpolished demeanor seemed a refreshing change, as did his obvious distaste for the sillier aspects of campaign protocol.
Unfortunately, along with that came a lack of apparent energy from the campaign itself. Fred didn’t get out and talk with people until December. We heard that Thompson had busied himself with fundraising and teambuilding. We don’t know the fundraising totals for the Thompson campaign yet, but we do know that they ran out of money in Iowa, so he couldn’t have been all that successful in that arena, either. They got in late, and just seemed lost.
And the biggest shame of that is that Thompson could still be the unity candidate. Given his track record on federalism, Thompson offered the complete conservative package — smaller government, lower taxes and spending, pro-life, hard as nails on terrorism and only slightly less so on immigration, and the ability to charge life into the Reagan alliance that supports these ideals. He has been remarkably consistent, and the only real detriment would be his lack of executive experience and his inability to put together a real campaign.
Iowa voters may give him an extension on the latter. If he comes in third, he needs to hit the ground running in South Carolina and Michigan — and show us something more than what we’ve seen the last four months.