Whoops

There were warnings; I did not heed them.
I will be replacing the links piecemeal. Since I appear to no longer have any record of them, they could well change.

Whoops.

This is why you let all the pictures out

otherwise they will leak out one by one. First of all, it's a matter of controlling access. There are literally hundreds of incriminating photos, and they were circulated amongst the military, along with standard travelogue shots (a total of 1,800 photos, apparently). Are you telling me NOBODY has a disc of some of these, or even some stored on their camera somewhere? Imagine a family getting their son's personal effects back, and stuff like this is on his digital camera.

In this case, it's not what the picture shows--although what it shows is damning enough, a visual linkage between the abuses and the intelligence personnel, and thus back to Washington--it's that it's another picture to talk about. Tomorrow there will be another one. Or a week from now. And another one. People will release them to save themselves, to target others, as evidence in cases, for the voyeur value (you know Lynnie England is about to become an internet legend ala Paris Hilton, only skankier)--whatever. Bury the press in them, and each individual one will carry far less weight. If you don't want them to discover anything, bury them in discovery.

For the Pentagon/White House to hold back on publishing these, they should be damn sure they won't come out anyway...and I think that's faint hope. The first rule of scandals is always Put It Behind You. This is only going to draw it out. The media LOVES dribs and drabs reporting. Give them something once per news cycle, and they are thrilled with you. Stuff like the document dump Bush did on Friday with the Guard stuff...nobody knew what to do with that (would have required sitting and reading it and translating it out of militaryspeak), so the story largely disppeared.

Everyone in Congress and of course in the Executive branch seems to think it's best if the pictures are not released. Congress seems to indicate they imagine them to be instigating to enemies; the White House uses a ridiculous excuse, citing legal protections for the hooded, naked men in the photos. Whether it sounds like it would be best if no one saw them, tough luck--they'll be seen. And they are going to dog the process the rest of the way if it happens in stages.

Whoahio

It appears that Kerry's bus trip through the Rust Belt was more effective than George Bush's. (Apparently Kerry at least got out of his more than once). A seven point margin is well outside error, and with Nader's support so low, much of the undecided vote would presume to fall Kerry's way as well. Ohio is crucial to both sides, and were Kerry's lead to hold there, he would be likely to have the inside track to the election.

Bush's national approval numbers are starting to dip into the mid 40s; that is borderline panic mode. If they drop below 40, someone's getting fired or bumped off.

But they're very imposing-looking

I didn't know concerned scientists had formed a union, but they have, and they are not kind to the idea that SDI's deployment this fall will do any protecting. Bush has been pushing hard on this one since his term began, and we recall that it was the focus of Rice's 9/11 speech that was not delivered. These are the predicted results:

A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled "Technical Realities."

Not sure why they needed the other 75 pages if they were going to be so Tagubian in their basic assessment. But since they're union guys, they probably got paid by the page.

The government had something or other to say about this, but who listens?

Karpinski speaks

and--imagine this--she reveals that command was taken from her and her questions and protestations were rebuffed from above. High above, as both General Sanchez and the now-prominent General Miller took the time to dispute her account before Army investigators. They don't deny the meetings; they don't really deny that she complained and that pretty much nothing was done, and they don't appear to deny the results either--but they do deny saying certain things that make them look bad. As I noted in the Taguba piece below, Gen. Taguba explicitly agrees with Karpinski on this; command was taken from her and the resulting confusion in communications was the direct cause of many of the abuses documented. Jeez, even Assistant Deputy Under Sub Trainee Secretary Cambone's official excuse for the phrase "Gitmoization" reeked of hapless recharacterization:

Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone said yesterday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the concept has been misunderstood, and that all the Pentagon had in mind was "a cooperative attitude, team-building, call it what you will, between" intelligence interrogators and military police to produce more and better information.

Ah, team building! So General Miller went halfway around the world at the insistence of the very top Pentagon brass, in order to put up those framed pictures that have one-word inspirational work messages, and organize retreats where the MPs would fall backwards and trust the intel guys would catch them. And anyway, if the goal was to get the MPs more involved in helping to "produce better information," then according to Taguba, General Miller brought with him a plan that violated Army codes. MPs don't do intelligence; their sole job is to hold and protect detainees in that situation.

Now of course, the lower commanders and grunts (and their laywers) are obviously working to shift as much of the blame as possible away from their clients' actions, and pass the buck up the chain. So you have to take what they say at less than face value. On the other hand, the things being said by the underlings are entirely consistent with each other and with the reports by Taguba and the ICRC. If you think that Sanchez, Miller, apparently our own little eugenics professor General Boykin, and ultimately Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld had no idea that interrogations were stepped up at Abu Ghraib in November, and that MPs would help get the prisoners ready for the CIA to work on...wow. Not knowing about any of that--well, that wouldn't be doing a super job, would it?

American Hero

Amidst the craven banality of dissemblage, there appeared a crisp light cutting through the rhetorical fog, breaking apart the wisps of information vapor and replacing it with bold, bright strokes of military bearing and flourish:

Army regulation 190-8, which is a multiservice regulation, establishes the policy in executive agency for detention operations. And there enumerates in paragraph 1-5 the general policy and the treatment of not just [prisoners of war] but civilian internees, retained personnel and other detainees. . . . We also used the M.P.s' doctrine on detention operations, which is Field Manual 3-19.40. And we further referred to . . . Field Manual 3452.

OK, just kidding. That's the encyclopedic side of Tony Taguba, laying out perhaps by memory the applicable regulations from three different manuals. Here's the strong stuff:

Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments.

He keeps up that parsimonious directness in Congressional hearings, and he's going to inspire some mancrushes. I know I have one.

The art of the one liner

Josh Marshall: "When President Bush says Don Rumsfeld is doing a "superb job" you really have to shudder to think what we'd have in store for us if the guy came off his winning streak."

Some electoral handicapping

I'm stoked to have another "voice" tracking the Electoral College polling, and I've added him to the newly created "Electoral" link section, to break it off from the news sites. What's useful to know already is that the guy tracking it is an avowed Bush supporter, but based on how he draws the map I think he's being as generous as possible to Kerry. He currently forecasts Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania as slight Kerry lean states, which is why he rips Bush by about 4 percent and 80 electorals in this model. To say with those three states that they lean Kerry--there's more lean on one of John Goodman's thighs. But I think he's right, and they do lean slightly his way. And I like the way he uses state re-elect numbers when he can; they make good leading indicators for the horse race.

Polling Report has been quiet for too long, but they promise an update in the next week or so. He's currently 3 months out of date, so we'll see big changes on that one.

Finally, Zogby has made his election call (with the handy out of "unless Kerry totally blows it")--Kerry rather comfortably. Zogby doesn't even address the Nader vote being noise if he can't get on any ballots. But he hits on the undecideds, and the terrible peripheral numbers Bush is showing right now. He is getting firm negatives on the economy and Iraq, treading water in the 50s on terrorism, his re-elect number goes as low as 43 (with "someone else" votes over 50%). And as Scott McClellan has unfortunately said in better times, the incumbent's final number is usually roughly equivalent to his job rating. Forty-six percent.

George Will, in rare political form

Obviously I'm taking a special shine to this piece because of its unalloyed criticism of the Defense Department since 9/11, but rarely when not writing about baseball is Will this smoothly eloquent. It's as if breaking the painful truths--helpfully titled "No Flinching From the Facts"--almost literally takes the wind out of the bag and allows him to be less thesaurus-consultingly puffed up.

Set the stage: Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have all but kicked Rumsfeld to the curb, and that was before the Abu Ghraib story hit. Bill Safire is sticking with Don [subs. required], John Podhoretz plays it safe and limits his apocalyptic vision by merely calling Abu Ghraib "Kerry's worst nightmare," and so everyone is lounging around the club or the editor's office, waiting to get George's column. And here's what they're reading:

Donald Rumsfeld is clearly shattered by the corruption he tardily comprehended. Testifying to Congress last week, he seemed saturated with a sadness that bespeaks his deep decency and his horror at the vast injury done to the nation by elements of the department he administers. He knows that he failed the president. And he knows that his extraordinary record of government service -- few public careers, including presidential ones, can match Rumsfeld's -- has been tarnished.

George is eulogizing here, but it's awfully left handed of him to tout the extraordinary service...now tarnished. But he's just getting started:

When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. Leave aside the question of who or what failed before Sept. 11, 2001. But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable.

Notice now he is no longer really talking about Rumsfeld. At best, he is sparing George Bush from direct criticism, other than the fact that he is holding his failing underlings, entirely unaccountable. At worst, Bush is the target of Will's main theme: the honor of being at the top of the command chain, and also the responsibility to make sure the chain reaches up to you--with you to the fault if it does not.

And then he gets florid and scratches his classical education hindparts, closing out thusly:

[Rumsfeld] knows his Macbeth and will recognize the framing of the second question: Were he to resign, would discerning people say that nothing in his public life became him like the leaving of it?

This nation has always needed an ethic about the resignation of public officials. Such an ethic cannot be codified. It must grow in controlling power from precedent to precedent, as an unwritten common law, distilled from the behavior of uncommonly honorable men and women who understand the stakes. A nation, especially one doing the business of empire, needs high officials to be highly attentive to what is done in their departments -- attentive far down the chain of command, as though their very jobs depended on it.

Finally, the second axiom. It is from Charles de Gaulle: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Yes, I watch it

The finale may have been the best part of the whole season. And while I'm glad that Rob didn't win, I think it's just jealousy: my catch phrase of the season was "Ambuh is slammin'."

On the edge

When CBS uses this headline, explicitly speaking they're talking about Iraq. But I think there's a lot more on the edge than Iraq, and one of them is Donald Rumsfeld's job, and by extension George Bush's. So some of the things being said by people who really should be on their side are really quite surprising. Here's one, from a critic of not the war but the peace for some time now, Chuck Hagel:

I think it's still in question whether Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, General [Richard] Myers, [the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,] can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military of the American people to lead this country.

That is not a comment you make lightly on a national press show. That makes it stand out a lot more particularly for its courage, but no less telling are the words of the anonymous general who spoke out in a manner echoing editorials of the Army Times: "Accountability here is essential - even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war."

Senator McCain chooses not to go that far, but he certainly isn't foolish enough to endorse Rumsfeld at this moment, choosing rather to hedge his bets. Unlike:

President Bush has supported Rumsfeld, saying last week, "He'll stay in my Cabinet." Mr. Bush ordered his press staff to squelch chatter about Rumsfeld getting fired, Newsweek reports. But the president and Rumsfeld are "not buddies," a senior administration official tells Newsweek, and if Rumsfeld hurts the president’s re-election chances, those orders could change. [emphasis mine]

This is a man being trumpeted as meaning what he says, and being reliable that way? He'll stay in my Cabinet until there might not be one? How much more clearly can Bush admit that he'll try to ride this one out until it starts to stain him, then he'll let Don go? With Cheney's comments, how hard will he be pushing to keep him, and--tin foil, please--how much influence will he have in the decision?

Heady times, indeed. On the edge seems to be an apt description for Year Four of Bush 43, and those of us who live in it.