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Bolt off

What is one to do when a noisy, ungainly part doesn't fit well into the political engine? Why just bolt it on.

Ultimately, the recess appointment of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN won't matter much, if at all. At least, it won't matter from an operational point of view. About the only effect it will have is to demonstrate just how little Congress and the opinions of the opposition are regarded by the White House. But that is a well-established fact at this point anyway. Democrats and even some Republicans like Senator Voinovich (R-OH) have expressed their usual outrage and/or disappointment in Bush's decision. All we can say here is, well, aren't you used to disappointment yet?

But again, Bolton will have little effect upon the UN despite all the howling about the golden shower of "reform" the White House claims Bolton will spray all over the international body. John Bolton is well known to delegates at the UN but it is not the kind of experience that will have endeared him to the body of diplomats.

Back in 2002, John Bolton led the ouster of then head of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Jose Bustani. Suspicion is now cast upon this move and Bolton's actions are thought to be the result of the undersecretary of state fretting that actual chemical weaopons inspections in Iraq would reveal the truth: there were no chemical weapons. Chemical weapons stocks in Iraq were one of Bush's biggest claims in his SotU speech, where he claimed that Iraq had a treasure trove of deadly toxins like vx nerve agent, sarin, mustard gas. Given the recent revelations about Bolton's behaviour, the Bustani affair is nothing surprising, although this level of meddling and abuse appears to exceed previous reports of Bolton's misemployment within the State Department. In fact, in 2003, a UN tribunal issued a rebuke of Bolton's conduct, calling it "unlawful" and that the allegations the US delegation -- led by Bolton -- brought against Bustani were "extremely vague." Three years ago and just after his ouster, Bustani said this about Bolton,

And when dealing with people like Bolton, there is no room for dialogue. You just have to go. I was being expected to take orders from the US delegation, and to customize the implementation of the convention to the US demands. I was expected to consult Washington on every single issue, which I refused to do.

Ahh, so that's what they mean by "reform." Given that the UN felt it necessary to rebuke Bolton for his part in this particular action, we feel fairly confident that UN will choose to deal with Bolton as they see fit. And this fitness will likely follow along the lines of a complete freeze out. Even some on the right don't think Bolton will be able to do much but that will not be simply due to institutional inertia. We expect that there will be those in the UN who will seek to actively bury Bolton under mounds of "diplomacy" and render him far less effective than either he or the White House thinks possible. This recess appointment is really more about Bush getting his way rather than any substantive reason and, once again, such action serves up the inner spoiled child residing not too deeply within this president.

As could have been expected, delegates from the UN appeared unfazed by the announcement as Brazil's U.N. ambassador, Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, said, "let's not prejudge his behavior." This is classic diplo-speak because they don't need to. They already have an excellent example of Bolton's behaviour in the Bustani case. Kofi Annan said it best, "we will work with him as a representative of the president and government," which was then immediately followed by,

It is all right for one ambassador to come and push (his agenda) but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced, or the vast majority of them, for action to take place.

Take that any way you want, but to our ears, it doesn't sound too promising for Mr. Bolton "agenda."

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The Idiot

Imagine, if you will, gentle readers, a scenario: you are a "journalist" with gobs of "integrity" and 48 years in "the business." Though it is entirely unclear just what this "business" is that engages you, one thing is certain: your business is not journalism. Despite your history of being used by political operatives as a leaker of sensitive information, stories currently abound that you have been used, yet again, in a smear campaign. You are outraged by these scandalous lies, as you call them.

Imagine further that a CIA spokesman had approached you and requested -- numerous times -- that you not expose the identity of a CIA operative indirectly involved in a story about an intelligence investigation surrounding an alleged attempt by Iraq to secure Niger yellow cake uranium. You, White House stooge that you are, planned to write about this, with thoughts of sugar plums dropping from the hand of Karl Rove and into your gaping mouth. Imagine further that a CIA spokesman, upon hearing of a potential story, had said this you:

her name should not be revealed

and that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties."

So, what do you write? Why this, of course:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA (Harlow) says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

Initially, there is outrage that you have exposed a CIA agent's identity but, of course, no one knew at the time who passed this information to you nor that the CIA had contacted you directly and warned you away from doing this very thing. It causes the CIA to request the Justice Department to investigate the leak and then things calm down for quite awhile. Whew! Dodged that one, you think happily.

Except that the man in charge of the DoJ investigation turns out to be a little more -- actually a lot more -- serious than anyone had imagined, least of all you. He appears to be dogged in his search for the leaker and how you had come to know and why you had published sensitive information and revealed the identity of a CIA operative.

In this scenario, you find that you need to defend your actions. What do you do? Why claim ignorance and stupidity, of course, something you fall back on regularly and something that is, quite honestly, entirely believable. As rumours fly, you can't contain yourself any longer and, against the advice of your lawyers, you write a column explaining that you did nothing wrong because the CIA spokesman never told you that exposing the identity of a CIA agent could cause serious harm to anyone:

I have previously said that I never would have written those sentences if Harlow, then-CIA Director George Tenet or anybody else from the Agency had told me that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger herself or anybody.

Ah, ha! Ha, ha, ha! Vindicated! Exonerated! Not implicated! you say to yourself. Your reasoning seems flawless. Despite a CIA representative expressly telling you not to identify a company agent and that such exposure would cause "difficulties," you are too stupid and clueless to understand what that might actually mean in the world of spying. To you "difficulties" do not translate to "endanger" even though most people would immediately see that, in the upper levels of government and especially the CIA, the two words would be synonymous. But not you. And that, essentially, is your defense in the matter.

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Eating Their Own

There is a rather large spectrum of things that are going badly for the Bush administration right now and the entire White House/Republican package appears to be rotting in some hot sun. The CIA leak investigation, as the Plame/Rove affair is now being referred, has the White House and some House Republicans frantic. Various red herring defenses are being tossed out like so much chum. This is serving to keep the chattering classes occupied, though nothing of their arguments will matter. The DoJ investigation will continue and all reports indicate that Fitzgerald is, if nothing else, tenacious. He will pay scant attention to the external yammering about who did what and when things were known or not and why it is all either nothing or very serious. But the fact remains that Fitzgerald is conducting an investigaton the likes of which this White House has not dealt with before and their actions are beginning to reek of desperation.

After catching the waft of White House bacon sizzling on the prosecutorial griddle, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Ks), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, decided to take matters into his own hands and recently announced that he will conduct an investigation of Fitzgerald's investigation. Now if readers might sense that such action would interfere with an "ongoing investigation," something Scott McClellan adamantly refused to do, well they would be correct. Interference is indeed the desired effect. Staff at the BHC had some discussion with unnamed sources in the Justice Department who said that such congressional maneuvering is not at all unusual; members of Congress toss out these road blocks routinely when they themselves are targets of investigations. What is unusual about Roberts' threatened probe is that Fitzgerald's investigation has nothing to do with Congress. This is a DoJ investigation of White House leaks of classified, national security information. But that won't stop GOP meddlers from trying to get in the way of a special prosecutor doing his job and targeting White House apparatchiks. This is a distinctly different stance than the one they took when Clinton was up to his armpits in Ken Starr subpoenas. But Roberts' threat was merely a hint of more desperate measures, albeit a telling one. Worse things are afoot.

First up: a few old guard senate Republicans (McCain, Graham and Warner) seem to be taking a principled stand and have been trying to install amendments in the current defense spending bill that would explicitly bar the US military from "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any detainees held by US forces. While most Americans would have believed that this country already has laws that are supposed to prevent such things, the White House has always stood by the belief that "enemy combatants" deserve every unholy tribulation that can be delivered upon their wretched souls. The anti-torture amendments have irked the White House and caused Bush to threaten a veto of the entire bill should these amendments pass. As damage control, Senate leader Bill Frist tabled that bill in favour of passing NRA-backed legislation that would limit liability of gun manufacturers. Such a bill could hardly be seen as a pressing need and serves only to buffer Republicans from what might become a cage fight. With so many other things unravelling around them, an intra-party squabble about torture is surely not anything the GOP needs to deal with right now.

Meanwhile and with the senate in a roil over the conscientious temerity of a few rogue Republican senators, Frist is now supporting the extended stem cell research funding bill, much to the chagrin of both the White House and its pro-life supporters and this is also being met with the threat of presidential veto. Red staters now call Frist a traitor but that seems a tad harsh. Frist is really just being the weasel he's always been. Red staters never seem to remember that Frist and most of the rest of the swamp rats on Capitol Hill are politicians first and traitors only when they need to be.

But if there is any one issue that is causing a stirring in the ranks it is the murderous mess of Iraq. Even the White House is finally beginning to notice that things may already be too far gone there. Shortly after Rumsfeld had intoned with dreaded gravitas that the damnable insurgency might grind on for a decade or more and less than a month after George Bush told Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari that he would not entertain a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, Jaafari spun around and called for a "speedy withdrawal" of US troops, one that would see a reduction in force by about half within a year. Zoweee! Now, that's some quick progress! Jaafari claimed that the Iraqi people have a "great desire" to see US forces leave. Iraqi public opinion now apparently matters a great deal to George Bush and the Pentagon, whose generals seem more than thrilled with the idea of finally extracting the troops from the hellish meat grinder that is Iraq today.

So why the sudden shift? Well, for one, the Pentagon is probably well aware that, given their poor recruitment numbers over the last couple of years, the prospect of being in Iraq for several more may be unteneable. Iraq has not been a public relations boon for the DoD. Both the bungling of the war itself and the treatment many soldiers have experienced at the bureaucratic hands of the department have had a chilling effect upon potential recruits and their parents. The Pentagon has probably recognised that, because the Bush administration has so utterly damaged the trust Americans might have had in this country going to war, it will take years, if not decades, to rebuild troop strength of the armed forces.

Suddenly, the man with no timetable now has one. And that is perhaps because even the White House has recognised that Iraq is a loosing, if not already lost battle. With Tehran making some very friendly overtures to Baghdad, the Iraqi government appears now to be more aligned with the Imams of Tehran than with Washington. Of course, critics of Bush's unilateral democratisation exercise knew all along that this would be the likely outcome of Jaafari becoming prime minister. Jaafari had spent many years in exile in Iran, hobnobbing with the powers there. Recent news that Iran is wheeling and dealing , Texas style, with Baghdad and promising to pay for new pipelines, crude oil processing, port access, financial aid cannot be viewed by Washington in any but the most pessimistic of terms. Iranian largesse appears hard to contain. Not only is Iran making these big promises to Iraq, Tehran is also involving itself in pipeline agreements with the Ukraine and Pakistan. Indeed, Iran appears to be beating the White House on the board of central Asia right now and they are doing so not with the barrel of a gun but with the tip of a ceremonial pen.

With Iraq heading in completely the wrong direction and going further that way everyday, Bush's poll numbers at their nadir, congressional Republicans rebelling against neo-con and fundamentalist agenda and White House mendacity finally on the verge of suffering a criminal indictment hit, the support troops appear to be in disarray. Much to our amusement, we have been watching the right wing talking heads chewing each other up. Recently, Michael "get AIDS and die" Savage has turned unpleasantly awry and is now taking shots at, of all people, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity! Indeed, Savage has re-branded Rush and Sean as Hush Bimbo and Sean Vanity. Anyone who supports Bush is now a Bushbot. Says Savage of Hush:

There is no college in Rush. There is no college in Hannity. He's a high school dropout. It's like listening to an uneducated, unthinking man on the radio.

Naturally, Bushbots went on the attack and are now calling Savage a bigot and racist. The best part of it all and for what is quite possibly the first time ever, these people are finally speaking the truth!

The White House, the GOP machine and all its sundry sycophants are roiling in turmoil right now. But it should not be left unsaid that the Democrats have had practically nothing to do with this. That in itself is not surprising as the Dems have had little to do with much of anything lately. They really are a party of non-entities, at least the ones in Washington. What is the shining light of the national Democratic party concerning herself with right now? A moral crusade against a video game. If Americans pay no attention to the band of idiots that now comprise the national Democratic Party -- even as the GOP unravels itself -- they should not be surprised. We certainly won't be.

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The Irony Coast

It should strike anyone as amusing when a military coup takes place and spokesmen for the junta say things like,

The armed forces and security forces have unanimously decided to put an end to the totalitarian practices of the deposed regime

These were the words of a group of Mauritanian army officers who lead a bloodless coup of that country while the now ousted leader, President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, was out of the country for Saudi King Fahd's funeral. But the irony deepens when we learn that the US, which backed the former president, condemned the coup and claimed that

the days of authoritarianism and military rule must end across the continent.

Note the qualification, "across the continent." That qualification is significant because otherwise, it would make the US look rather hypocritical considering that US forces had extracted democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and installed their own military junta in that country. So while military rule is bad for Africa, it appears to be a perfectly acceptable form of government in the western hemisphere -- but only as long as the US is in control.

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Copy Cat

If this description of a new online map service sounds familiar, well it is probably because readers may already be acquainted with the Google map service:

[an] online feature that combines street maps with photographs taken from airplanes and satellites.

But this is not a description of Google's service. It is a description of a "new" online map service from Microsoft Corp. Is this company completely unable to produce any original ideas? Please just stick to your .Net crap and stop emulating everything others do first because we know you're going to fuck it up. Somehow.

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Summertime

... and the living is easy.

Well, folks, it's that time of year again: August. And that means some down home ranch time for George Bush. A month of it:

Yeah, I started a war and fine American men and women are dying every day. But, hey, I'm a war president. That's what I do. But it's hard work and I need this break to recharge my ... my ... my batteries.

It also should not surprise that, on Bush's first days on vacation in Crawford, what do we see in the headlines?

Al Qaeda Threatens More Attacks in U.S., Britain*

The difference now is that it is not Richard Clarke or the FBI saying this but Al Qaeda itself. Will he listen this time or simply hit the links and say, "bring 'em on"?


*Note: this was the original WaPo headline but then was changed sometime later. Perhaps its similarity with a certain presidential daily brief title was a bit too uncomfortable for editors there.

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"Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly."
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX) on U.S. interventions in Kosovo, 1999.