In Other Words, I'm An Idiot...

This totally clears everything up.

Lynn Sweet:

An item I posted July 25 about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) canceling a visit to a U.S. military base in Germany has now become grist for the Republicans to attack Obama.

Some points:

*Contrary to what the Republican National Committee stated in one of their missives, Obama senior strategist David Axelrod never said that the Pentagon told the campaign Obama should not come to the base. The GOP, citing my blog post, wrote in one of their releases, "Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod Said The Pentagon Told The Campaign That Barack Obama "Should Not Come."

*The headline on my original post were my words--not Axelrod's. That headline "Pentagon tells Obama not to visit U.S. troops at German base because it would be too political" was my take.

I revised the headline a few hours later because it was wrong. The Pentagon never told Obama not to come. The issue was whether Obama campaign military advisor Scott Gration, a retired Air Force General, could accompany Obama. I also rewrote a paragraph to eliminate an Axelrod quote that I misunderstood.

The new headline on my post read "Pentagon tells Obama aide a visit to U.S. base in Germany would be seen as political." I thought that new headline and revised paragraph solved the problem; usually there is just one URL for a blog post. But due to a server glitch at the Sun-Times, both the original and updated versions existed on the Internet. The Republicans have been linking to the original post and not the updated version.

Do you think we could get that "glitch" cleared up sometime soon? A whole lot of time and effort have been spent trying to debunk and defend and demystify--how about, next time, we say what really happened and not play around with headlines, okay?

Those mistakes touched off a firestorm that was utilized, via Drudge and a host of right-wing outlets, to launch a massive attack on the integrity of Senator Barack Obama. All because of a glitch, a quote that was misunderstood, and a headline that was wrong.

Thanks for clarifying all of this FOUR FUCKING DAYS LATER and for, you know, FEEDING THE RIGHT WING HATE MACHINE everything they needed.

--WS

He Doesn't Recall?

So where are these photos? Why doesn't someone find out why the President can't recall?

Convicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff influenced White House actions while his firm wooed administration officials over expensive meals and plied them with sports tickets, according to a House of Representatives committee report released Monday.

Abramoff, who's cooperating with federal prosecutors after pleading guilty in an expanding corruption investigation, previously had reported that his firm had more than 400 contacts with White House officials.

After receiving new White House documents and speaking with witnesses, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Monday that staffers had verified 80 of the contacts Abramoff reported and uncovered 70 others despite White House assertions that Abramoff had overblown his administration connections. The report also detailed unreleased photos of Abramoff meeting with President Bush on six occasions. Bush has said he doesn't remember Abramoff.

"The new documents and testimony show that Mr. Abramoff had personal contact with President Bush, that high-level White House officials held Mr. Abramoff and his associates in high regard and solicited recommendations from Mr. Abramoff on policy matters," the committee said.

The committee, however, added that it had "obtained no evidence" that Abramoff lobbied the president directly.

Administration officials have denied repeatedly that Abramoff held any sway over the administration. They asserted that Abramoff's claims of contact, as reported in billing records to Indian tribe clients, demonstrated his propensity for exaggeration.

On Monday, White House spokesman Tony Fratto called the report "warmed-up leftovers" and questioned the news media's interest in it.

Am I alone in wondering how it is that such a thing is possible? I was alive during the 1990s, and if the shoe were on the other foot, the outcry over those photos and the indignation over such a ridiculous "can't remember" denial would be everywhere. As in, on TV, in the newspapers, why, even in them there magazines they used to have. There would be a special counsel appointed by 4 PM in order to get to the bottom of where those photos exist and what the chain of custody of them is in terms of the White House Office of the Special Photographer and all that. There would be teams of FBI agents poring over the South Lawn by dinner time.

Granted, there really wasn't much of an Internet back then, but come on. If this was 1995, we'd hear screaming and chest beating from conservatives to see those photos and to "hear the oval office tapes" of any and all conversations between Abramoff and the President.

Even if there really weren't any...

--WS

Guiliani Lies About Who Cut the Size of the Military

This is why I don't blog. I have read three stories tonight. And all three of them have made me so mad, I want to throw something.

Republican frontrunner Rudy Guiliani is a serial liar. Do we need to say more?

Giuliani faults the other Clinton
By JONATHAN ROOS [Des Moines] REGISTER STAFF WRITER
November 9, 2007

Ames, Ia. -Republican Rudy Giuliani, campaigning in Iowa the same day that Bill Clinton was in the Hawkeye State, charged Thursday that the former president had weakened the American military and intelligence services through spending cuts during his administration.

"Our military is too small to deal with the Islamic terrorism threats, but it really is too small to deter would-be aggressors to even think of challenging us. And that's due to Bill Clinton," Giuliani told students and others in the audience of about 350 at Iowa State University's Memorial Union.

"Bill Clinton cut our military and our intelligence budget by such a huge amount that we've never made up the difference," said the former New York mayor, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.Giuliani said in response to a question about relations with China that the United States needs a bigger military, including at least 10 more combat brigades and a 300-ship Navy.
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I know, I know. My sides are hurting from the extreme discomfort of hearing those outrageous lies. There are people eating that stuff up. There are people who are, no doubt, in complete agreement with Guiliani.

Well, let's debunk this bullshit.

The following is the record of Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, prior to the Clinton Administration, and all of these items come from defenselink.mil:

...Early in 1991 the secretary unveiled a plan to reduce military strength by the mid-1990s to 1.6 million, compared to 2.2 million when he entered office. In his budget proposal for FY 1993, his last one, Cheney asked for termination of the B-2 program at 20 aircraft, cancellation of the Midgetman, and limitations on advanced cruise missile purchases to those already authorized. When introducing this budget, Cheney complained that Congress had directed Defense to buy weapons it did not want, including the V-22, M-1 tanks, and F-14 and F-16 aircraft, and required it to maintain some unneeded reserve forces. His plan outlined about $50 billion less in budget authority over the next 5 years than the Bush administration had proposed in 1991. Sen. Sam Nunn of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the 5-year cuts ought to be $85 billion, and Rep. Les Aspin of the House Armed Services Committee put the figure at $91 billion.

Over Cheney's four years as secretary of defense, encompassing budgets for fiscal years 1990-93, DoD's total obligational authority in current dollars declined from $291.3 billion to $269.9 billion. Except for FY 1991, when the TOA budget increased by 1.7 percent, the Cheney budgets showed negative real growth: -2.9 percent in 1990, -9.8 percent in 1992, and -8.1 percent in 1993. During this same period total military personnel declined by 19.4 percent, from 2.202 million in FY 1989 to 1.776 million in FY 1993. The Army took the largest cut, from 770,000 to 572,000-25.8 percent of its strength. The Air Force declined by 22.3 percent, the Navy by 14 percent, and the Marines by 9.7 percent.

And everyone agreed--the end of the Cold War brought a "peace dividend." Remember those days? You can trace a straight line from the decisions made during the first Bush administration to the size and capability of our military today. Who started the ball rolling, as far as "reducing" the size of our military?

Here's what defenselink.mil has to say about the three SecDefs under Clinton, one of whom (Cohen) was a Republican. Let's start with Les Aspin--who was a disasterous choice:

Development of the Defense budget for FY 1994, beginning on 1 October 1993, remained Aspin's biggest task. The budget process proved more complicated than usual, owing to Clinton's campaign pledge to reduce DoD funding and to a "bottom-up review" of the military structure ordered by Aspin shortly after he took office. The end of the Cold War and the consequent opportunity to cut military costs clearly called for the kind of reevaluation of ends and means that the bottom-up review might contribute. A Pentagon steering group chaired by Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology) John M. Deutch and including representatives from various OSD offices, the Joint Staff, and the services conducted the review.

Because of the growing threat of regional conflicts, Aspin wanted to have a strong capability to carry out limited military operations, including peacekeeping, and to maintain "a strong peacetime presence of U.S. forces around the world." The bottom-up review report, which Aspin released in September 1993, took into account strategy formulation, force structure, weapon systems modernization, and Defense infrastructure. The report projected a reduced force structure still capable of fighting and winning two simultaneous major regional conflicts. Forces would include 10 active Army divisions; 11 carrier battle groups, 45 to 55 attack submarines, and about 345 ships; 5 active Marine brigades; and 13 active and 7 reserve Air Force fighter wings. The report also called for additional prepositioned equipment and airlift/sealift capacity, improved anti-armor and precision-guided munitions, and enhanced Army National Guard combat brigade readiness.

William Perry:

As always with secretaries of defense, the formulation of the Defense budget and shepherding it through Congress was one of Perry's most important duties. The problem of how to deal with a large projected Defense budget shortfall for the period 1995-2000, an issue that weakened Aspin and contributed to his resignation, per-sisted when Perry took office. Immediately on presenting his 1995 budget request, which he termed "a post-Cold War budget," Perry stated that Defense required a few more years of downsizing and that its infrastructure needed streamlining as well. The proposal, he said, maintained a ready-to-fight force, redirected a modernization program (including a strong research and development program), initiated a program to do business differently (acquisition reform), and reinvested defense dollars in the economy.

Perry asked for $252.2 billion for FY 1995, including funds for numerous weapon systems, such as a new aircraft carrier, three Aegis cruisers, and six C-17 cargo aircraft. The budget projected a further cut of 85,500 in active duty military personnel, leaving a force of 1.52 million. Ultimately Congress provided $253.9 billion TOA, about $2 billion more than in FY 1994, but actually a 1.2 percent cut in real growth.

And Cohen:

When he presented the FY 1998 budget, Cohen noted that he would involve himself with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which would focus on the challenges to U.S. security and the nation's military needs over the next decade or more. When the QDR became public in May 1997, it did not fundamentally alter the budget, structure, and doctrine of the military. Some defense experts thought it gave insufficient attention to new forms of warfare, such as terrorist attacks, electronic sabotage, and the use of chemical and biological agents. In commenting on the QDR, Cohen stated that the Pentagon would retain the two regional wars scenario adopted after the end of the Cold War. He decided to scale back purchases of jet fighters, including the Air Force's F-22 and the Navy's F/A-18E/F, as well as Navy surface ships. The review included cutting another 61,700 active duty service members--15,000 in the Army, 26,900 in the Air Force, 18,000 in the Navy, and 1,800 in the Marine Corps, as well as 54,000 reserve forces, mainly in the Army National Guard, and some 80,000 civilians department-wide. Cohen also decided to recommend two more rounds of base closings in 1999 and 2001. The Pentagon hoped to save $15 billion annually over the next few years to make possible the purchase of new equipment and weapon systems without a substantial budget increase above the current level of $250 billion.

Those criticisms of Cohen look about right--we should have been more focused on terrorism in the 1990s. But who took over in 2001 and basically ignored the warnings of people like Richard Clarke? Who didn't do anything to respond to the bombing of the USS Cole when we found out who was responsible for that bombing in 2001?

Today, we still have ten active Army divisions. We reduced our Army to ten on a gradual basis--starting with the direction set by the first Bush administration after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We had ten when Clinton left office. We had ten when we went to war in Iraq in 2003. So for Guiliani to say that our military is too small because of something Clinton did all by himself is ludicrous. Bear in mind--after the 1994 mid-term elections, each and every Defense bill had to pass a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. You know--the people who were thrown out of office for incompetence in 2006? The Duke Cunningham crowd? And there's no mistaking what the agreed-upon direction was--the downsizing of our military in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

We saw reductions in the size of our military because of the direction this country took after the Cold War. Secretary of Defense Cheney cut more people from our military, by my count, than Aspin, Perry and Cohen combined. They all cut people because that was the strategic vision as agreed upon by Republicans and Democrats throughout the 1990s. Sometimes it makes my head want to explode--nothing happens without compromise and nothing gets done without both parties finding common ground. But why does Guiliani get away with criticizing what Clinton supposedly did when each and every defense appropriation bill was gone over with a fine-toothed comb by every Republican in the House and Senate, who were all desperate to find some way to embarrass or criticizen Clinton?

Today's military is the size that it is because of a trend in American policymaking that structured our military based on the post-Cold War realities, and not so much on what would happen if someone's crazy kid started wars all over the place and had about as much success as a drunken frat boy trying to get laid in a convent.

Will our media reveal Guiliani to be the serial liar and exaggerator that he is?

I kinda doubt it.

Cranking Up the Mighty Wurlitzer

As they always do when they have no facts or precedent to make their case, the right-wing noise machine has been cranking non-stop in an effort to smear Nancy Pelosi and her trip to the Middle East.

None of the sources criticizing Pelosi has mentioned the five Republican congressmen who were in the Middle East this week and who also met with the Syrian president.

To hear them tell it, Ms. Pelosi is setting up a shadow presidency and only wants to embarrass the idiot in the oval. The ABC website actually implied criminality might be charged.

Please.

I would like to refer those screaming the loudest to 1997, when two different Speakers of the House truly did usurp presidential authority:

From Digby:

In 1997, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) led a delegation to Colombia at a time when U.S. officials were trying to attach human rights conditions to U.S. security assistance programs. Hastert specifically encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass” President Clinton and “communicate directly with Congress.”

…a congressional delegation led by Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) which met with Colombian military officials, promising to “remove conditions on assistance” and complaining about “leftist-dominated” U.S. congresses of years past that “used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries.” Hastert said he would to correct this situation and expedite aid to countries allied in the war on drugs and also encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with Congress.”

Subsequently, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette sent a cable complaining that Hastert’s actions had undermined his leverage with the Colombian military leadership.

In other instances, Hastert actually guided congressional staff to unilaterally reach deals with Colombian officials:

House Foreign Affairs Committee staff, at the direction of the Hastert group, would fly to Colombia, meet with the nation’s anti-narcotics police and negotiate the levels and terms of assistance, the scope of the program and the kinds of equipment that would be needed. Rarely were the U.S. diplomatic personnel in our embassy in Bogata consulted about the “U.S.” position in these negotiations, and in a number of instances they were excluded from or not even made aware of the meetings.

And from Glenn Greenwald:

This is, of course, totally different than the right-wing outrage scandal de jour:

New York Times, March 31, 1997 -- reporting on a trip to China by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one week after Vice President Al Gore's trip:

Speaking with startling bluntness on an issue so delicate that diplomats have tiptoed around it for years, Newt Gingrich said today that he had warned China's top leaders that the United States would intervene militarily if Taiwan was attacked.

As he left for Tokyo after a three-day trip to China, Mr. Gingrich said he had made it absolutely clear how the United States would respond if such a military conflict arose.

Referring to his meetings with China's leaders, Mr. Gingrich said: ''I said firmly, 'We want you to understand, we will defend Taiwan. Period.'"

He also said, ''I think that they are more aware now that we would defend Taiwan if it were militarily attacked.''

Mr. Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, delivered his message, among the most forceful ever given about Taiwan by a visiting United States official, to Wang Daohan, China's chief representative in talks with Taiwan. Mr. Gingrich said he had given the same message to President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng in Beijing last week.

Chinese leaders offered no public response to Mr. Gingrich today. But on Friday, Mr. Jiang urged him to treat the Taiwan issue with care. . . .

Asked about Mr. Gingrich's statements, a Clinton Administration official in Washington said Mr. Gingrich had received briefings about American policy toward China, but that Mr. Gingrich ''was speaking for himself'' in his conversations with Chinese leaders.

The White House issued a statement saying that the policy of the United States was to ''meet its obligation under the Taiwan Relations Act, including the maintenance of an adequate self-defense for Taiwan,'' and that the Administration would maintain its ''one-China policy, the fundamental bedrock of which is that both parties peacefully address the Taiwan issue. . . ."

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Gingrich said he had spoken with Mr. Clinton, and with Mr. Gore on several occasions, to make sure that their messages to Beijing dovetailed. At the time, he did not mention his message on Taiwan.

Several days later, Gingrich's remarks in China led to this -- New York Times, April 4, 1997:

China admonished the United States today to speak with one voice on foreign policy and accused Newt Gingrich of making ''improper'' statements on Washington's commitment to defend Taiwan from any military attack by the mainland.

The criticism was made by the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Shen Guofang, who earlier this week had expressed basic satisfaction with remarks made by Mr. Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, during a three-day visit to China.

The visit followed Vice President Al Gore's first trip to Beijing. Both men spoke on issues of contention between Washington and Beijing, but Mr. Gingrich's remarks were noteworthy for their directness and for exceeding the normal State Department formulations on American commitments to Taiwan.

China's decision to criticize Mr. Gingrich came after he traveled to Taiwan on Wednesday and met with President Lee Teng-hui.

Back then, the media treated Gingrich like he was the American Prime Minister, and his right-wing supporters had no problem with the House Speaker travelling and expressing his own foreign policy views which deviated from the Clinton administration's.

Desperate, ain’t they?

Meanwhile, I just love this bit from a Saudi paper:

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminds us of the ambitious office worker surrounded by dunderheads who can't or won't get the job done. So she rolls up her sleeves and says for all the world to hear: 'Well, it looks like I'll have to do it myself.'

This is, of course, a non-issue. Just like the military jet was a non issue. I’m not a hyper-sensitive feminist, seeing misogyny in every shadow, but there just might be an element of that in this instance.

It’s a faux scandal because they have nothing real to object to. So they crank up the slime machine and slander the most competent politician working today because she is speaking truth to power, and it is scaring power shitless.

Good for her. I just think it's terribly sad that Speaker Pelosi had to give up her time off with her large Catholic family to do the job that Condi-the-incompetent has failed miserably at lo these many months.