If you haven’t been keeping up to date on this stuff, as Salon’s Farhad Manjoo has, you will find his interview today with voting-machine whistle-blower Bev Harris a must-read.
It seems that the people who built Diebold’s electronic voting systems just didn’t think security was critical, nor did they think maintaining the integrity of auditing was a big deal. Well, gee, they’re just elections, right? They’re not, like, something important.
My review of the new Paul Krugman collection is up today.
This end-of-summer pause, as the headlines fly about the latest bombing attack in Iraq, is an appropriate occasion to revisit my “Eve of Destruction” post, which occasioned so much comment back in March. In particular, I look back at my summary of Thomas Powers’ prescient prediction of the likely course of events following from a U.S. invasion of Iraq: “…a swift U.S. victory in a month or so. Then a couple months of calm. Then, a gradual awareness: That this project of installing a client government in Iraq, even in the sunniest of outcomes, must last a generation or more. That hundreds of thousands of American troops have now become sitting-duck targets for suicidal terrorists who will have no need to hijack a plane to access their foes.”
So here we are. The daily death of American soldiers has now become so commonplace it does not merit much coverage. The postwar period has now cost more lives than the active war. I trust that the reader who mocked my use of the phrase “sitting ducks” is now reconsidering his tone; what other phrase makes sense? Iraqi democracy does not seem in the offing in the short or medium term. We are incapable of protecting moderate Iraqis from extremists; we are incapable of protecting our own troops from random assault. Major bombings, like that of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad or today’s atrocity at the Najaf mosque, are on the rise.
Is it more money that we need? Since the Bush administration has made cutting taxes its top priority, it refuses even to admit that any Iraq-related expenses should be included in its budget forecasts. Is it more troops that we need?
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld insist that that’s not the problem. We should just sit tight and let them handle it. They Have A Plan. I guess they’re just not sharing it with us. Or with our allies. Or with the Iraqis.
There’s a limited set of possibilities here: Either the government has no strategy at all; or it has one that is not working; or it has one that is so devious or immoral or inexplicable that it cannot reveal it to its own citizens.
There is a monstrous credibility gap here — yes, the phrase is from the Vietnam era, the last time the U.S. government undertook to justify a chronically deteriorating military situation by making increasingly incredible statements. It took years for the press and the public to cotton to the credibility gap then; this time around, we ought to be a little more savvy.
We’re still waiting for that Great Golden Recovery in the Sky that the Republicans have promised ever since they passed their first tax cut in 2001. Taxes were cut but the economy kept tanking, so they decided to cut taxes again: They’re thinking, “Hey, if it didn’t work once, maybe it will work the second time around. And if it doesn’t, well, in the meantime at least our campaign contributors have a lot more money in their pockets to give us!”
So the tea leaves keep circling in the bottom of the glass, and the prognosticators keep seeing those signs of a turnaround, and in the meantime, George Bush has earned the distinction of having the worst record on jobs of any president since Herbert Hoover. That should give the Democrats some sort of ammunition, if they can un-dampen their powder.
For a look at how the Republicans plan to position the president’s defense, consider this paragraph from today’s Wall Street Journal (the piece is by Greg Hitt):
| Even if the administration’s expectations don’t hold, the prresident’s political allies suggest that voters — mindful of the challenges he has faced while in office — will give him credit for trying to fix the economy. “He might have an uncertain economy, but nobody’s going to be able to legitimately lower the boom on him for lack of attention on the issue,” said Rich Bond, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. |
The context here seems to be political analysts’ view that Bush the elder lost the 1992 election because voters felt that he’d “lost touch” with their economic troubles and hadn’t “paid attention” to their hardships. That may be. But this “pay attention” theory really underestimates the average voter’s expectations.
“Paying attention” to a recession and unemployment doesn’t get you many points if you’re president of the United States. It sort of comes with the job, like the Oval Office. It’s a prerequisite, not extra credit. The credit comes not with giving “attention” to the economy but with making good choices that help the economy recover and people find jobs. Bush supporters like to say that he inherited a downturn — during the 2000 election cycle they took great pains to say that the recession had already begun during Clinton’s term — and they’re right. But if we consider this downturn to have begun in 2000 that means the Bush folks have had nearly three years to turn things around, and they haven’t.
If things do improve between now and Election Day, Bush may be able to rest easier, but if they don’t, or don’t much, I don’t think the public will give him a B for trying. I think they will be mad, and rightly so. “Paying attention” doesn’t help if the things you do after you’ve paid attention make matters worse, not better.
We too are now “Fair and Balanced.”
Excerpts from the Fox/Franken suit are on Salon here. And Tom Tomorrow linked to this incredible Bill O’Reilly transcript which really must represent a high-water mark of pot-kettle-black-ness:
| The main point here is that trying to hurt a business or a person because you disagree with what they say is simply unacceptable in America. And that message has been sent by FOX. There’s a principle in play. Vigorous debate is embraced by us, but smear campaigns will be confronted. It is simply a joke for The New York Times to editorialize that fabricated personal attacks are acceptable under the banner of satire. |
So, fabricated personal attacks, I guess, are acceptable to O’Reilly under the banner of “fair & balanced.” But Fox owns that banner, and no one else can use it. And as for the banner of satire — one that has long had its own special niche under First Amendment law for the obvious reason that it is one of the most effective ways to “speak truth to power” — well, O’Reilly obviously lacks a sense of humor, so I suppose he wouldn’t miss it if it got furled up and sent off to Guantanamo to grow mold.
The news that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA) — the agency whose predecessors were responsible for the primordial development of the Internet — has planned to open an anonymous global futures market or gambling parlor in which participants can bet on future terrorist acts has elicited understandable perplexity and consternation. Sen. Byron Dorgan tells the New York Times he has had trouble persuading people it’s not a hoax.
But the project does not seem quite so outlandish if you are versed in the latest trendy theories of the market and emergent behavior. The Web is full of these operations, play markets in celebrity and reputation, most of them relatively frivolous or fun, like blogshares or the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Why not harness the collective wisdom of the market to save terror victims’ lives? Why not let the invisible hand stop the terrorist’s hand?
Here’s why.
Markets depend on good information. The DARPA plan is based on the theory that an open market will draw out the best information from multiple sources. That’s fine if, in fact, the incentive of making money in the market is strong enough to overcome other motivations of participants. If you were a terrorist planning an attack, would you try to make a little money on the side by using your insider knowledge to place a winning bet? Or would you allocate a little extra money in your operating budget to placing decoy bets to delude those who you knew were turning to the U.S. military-funded terror market for intelligence? Or would you simply stay away, distrusting the market’s anonymity mechanism on the assumption that its American designers will have built in some sort of back door? It’s nearly impossible to imagine any set of circumstances in which this market would provide untainted information.
Which leads us to the other problem, which just exploded in the face of the Bush administration: How could the folks at DARPA not understand that they had created an unbelievable PR gaffe? What tone-deaf idiot there couldn’t see that the relatives of victims of terror attacks or the families of soldiers risking their lives ostensibly to fight terrorism might find it a wee bit disturbing that the government was funding an operation which, if it worked properly, would allow terrorists to profit from their knowledge of their plans?
Here it is useful to remember that today’s version of DARPA is the same outfit that brought us the infamous Total Information Awareness program. And all these brilliant efforts have been spearheaded by Admiral John Poindexter— who apparently learned nothing from his years fending off conspiracy charges relating to his last bout of foreign policy innovation in the Iran-contra scandal.
If there were a futures market in Poindexter’s career it would just have cratered.
POSTCRIPT Apparently this project has already met a swift end. Think of it as a sort of anaerobic-bacteria idea — hatched in the darkness of an agency, unable to survive once exposed to the oxygen of public awareness.
John Dean: “It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein’s weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony…
So egregious and serious are Bush’s misrepresentations that they appear to be a deliberate effort to mislead Congress and the public. So arrogant and secretive is the Bush White House that only a special prosecutor can effectively answer and address these troubling matters.”
Dave Weinberger: Why we know that’s really Howard Dean writing over on Lessig’s blog.
Dave Cullen takes apart the new “Million for Marriage” campaign and taps into his own anger: “If I can’t marry a woman I don’t see why I can’t be allowed to marry at all.”
Tim Bray sees a new browser war on the horizon.
The Preacher gets spooked by a catalog of mass-produced church paraphernalia, has a dialogue with the devil, and sets off to sort out his soul with Hugh Elliott.
Mark Hoback is holding a “Google Cutups” contest.
So now when a reporter does something the White House doesn’t like — such as accurately report the dissatisfaction of American troops in Iraq who feel they have been misled by secretary of defense Rumsfeld — we can expect the Bush team to start leaking ostensible dirt about the reporter to the likes of Matt Drudge. Only the best the clowns now running the White House press office could come up with about ABC reporter Jeffrey Kofman is that he is (a) gay and (b) Canadian.
Shock! Horror! Surely we cannot trust the news as reported by these limpwristed Canucks! Surely if those servicemen had only known that they were dealing with a perfidious Molson-swiller of suspect sexual leanings, they would never have talked to him!
It’s getting positively Nixonian out there.
Pay no attention to that president behind the curtain, says Weinberger
Meanwhile, speaking of Nixonian, Caspar Weinberger showed up on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page today, arguing that the Niger yellowcake scandal is no big deal. After recycling the “British have learned” literalist defense one more time, he goes on to say, “The real unanswered questions are these: Did anyone seriously believe we went to war because we had a British report that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger?”
Well, no, Cap. A lot of us didn’t believe that at the time: We believed that the President and Dick Cheney had already made up their minds to launch a war for a bunch of other reasons. But it was the president who got up in front of the nation and told us all that the Niger connection was one of the key pieces of evidence driving us to invade Iraq.
So I guess what you’re saying, Mr. former Secretary of Defense and former chief of Bechtel, is that we were right to distrust the president, we should never have taken the president seriously, and those who did so are fools worthy only of contempt. Thanks for clearing that up.
Today’s news about the ballooning federal deficit should come as no surprise to anyone. If you cut taxes and increase spending, what else could possibly happen? The brazenness of the Bush administration’s number-fudging has been obvious ever since it took power: today the pattern of outrageously lowballing the deficit figures continues, as the Bush budget office refuses to consider future costs of operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan in its forecasts, ostensibly because “it’s impossible to know.” (C’mon, guys, you can take a guess! Any guess is likely to be closer to the truth than “zero.”)
Between the deficit forecast, the continuing doubletalk on WMD and the worsening situation on the ground in Iraq, shouldn’t Bush and his team begin to be held accountable for their deceptions? You’d think so. Those of us who were appalled at the partisan exploitation of Bill Clinton’s stupid but fundamentally insignificant lies about his sex life keep wondering why lies about war and peace and the future of the economy don’t seem to generate much outrage.
I’m beginning to think that it is the very significance of Bush’s lies — the fact that he is lying about things that are genuinely important, that are matters of state, that involve our livelihoods and our servicepeople’s lives — that protects him. There is no taint of tawdriness to Bush’s lies, the way there were to Clinton’s, with their prurient scent, or to Nixon’s, with their late-night skulduggery. Bush’s lies — like those of his predecessor Ronald Reagan — live in the rarefied realm of macroeconomics and global strategy rather than in the gutter of personal misbehavior, and that seems to place them in a kind of realpolitik “get out of jail free” zone. Whatever forbearance Bush fails to earn on these grounds, he wins — again, as Reagan did — on the basis of our assumption of his incompetence, his out-of-the-loopiness. (Is there any other way to explain the way Bush has gotten away with claiming, absurdly, contrary to all fact, that Saddam Hussein didn’t allow the arms inspectors back in?)
If things keep getting worse, though — if the economy continues to refuse to budge on the basis of Bush’s half-baked economic plan, if the soldiers continue to be picked off one by one in Iraq, if it finally dawns on the American public that this administration is driving the nation into a ditch — maybe the public will come to its senses. We can certainly hope.
It’s time to play “connect the story” — the game where we show the relationship between seemingly disconnected news stories — again, as we recently did regarding the California energy and budget crises.
There isn’t much more to say about the flap over President Bush’s State of the Union use of fraudulent evidence regarding Iraq’s nuclear program. We know that an administration desperate to make a case for war seized upon material that it had been repeatedly warned was suspect or (as is actually the case) outright forged and presented it to the American public. That impeachment hearings aren’t already being held is just another sign of the deep dysfunctionality of our political system — in which partisan operatives in Congress can drum up an impeachment vote when a president lies about his sex life, but when a president lies about the gravest matters of war and peace, it’s not even considered worth an investigation.
What is interesting here is that this story is playing out at precisely the same time the nation may be slowly coming to the belated realization that things really aren’t going so well in the president’s open-ended, no-clearly-defined-goals “war on terrorism.” Our principal foe, Osama bin Laden, remains on the loose, and his organization continues to operate in a region sandwiched between one nation that we conquered and one that is nominally our ally. His principal ally, Mullah Omar, is also on the loose. The leader of the other nation we’ve recently invaded, Saddam Hussein, is also on the loose. Is there a pattern here? Why can’t we find these guys?
This is, of course, an intelligence failure — and that’s where these two stories intersect. At the very same time that the Bush administration was corrupting our intelligence agencies by demanding that they produce the evidence for an already decided-upon war, it needed to rely upon them to locate its foes. I’m not an intelligence insider and I don’t know whether U.S. intelligence’s failure to locate Osama et al. is a function of incompetence, demoralization, structural weakness (reliance on technical means rather than people who speak the language, for example) or other factors.
But it’s obvious that the bogus Iraq/Niger nuclear connection story is a sign of just how derailed, corrupted and ineffectual the U.S.intelligence effort has become. If you’re busy squabbling over whether to offer fabricated evidence for a trumped-up war, you have that much less time to do your real job.
