Duh!

U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future. A National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq. By By DOUGLAS JEHL. [The New York Times > Home Page]

11:33:13 PM    

I gather Conservatives are diospleased with more than just Ashcroft.  Did you see Buchanan on  The Daily Show Tuesday Night?

 

Ashcroft on the way out?. The President is "very disappointed." WH Counsel thinks he's "a boob." VWRC pow-wow next month to find a replacement. [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

11:31:34 PM    

Brilliant analysis of the situation in Russia.....

That little coup in Russia. Back in 2001, you'll recall -- months before 9/11 -- President Bush "looked into the eyes" of Russian president Vladimir Putin and told us that this was a man he could trust. Bush and Putin, the word was, had bonded -- as Bush always seems to -- through their mutual belief in a "Higher Power."

Well, now we know all about the kind of higher power Putin aspires to. In a story that should, perhaps, receive at least three percent of the attention the U.S. media have devoted to the grievances of Swift Boat Veterans and the peculiarities of IBM office machines circa 1972, The Russian leader has scuttled the flimsy remnants of democracy in his country, concentrating power in his hands and returning Russia to the kind of one-party rule it had for decades under the Communists -- this time with no lip service paid to Marxist theory. (In fact, a day after consolidating his power, Putin announced the formation of a humongous new Russian energy consortium open to Western investment. How convenient that he previously used the powers of his state to jail the head of Yukos, a competitor to the new energy firm, who'd begun to be active in the political opposition.) The rhetorical dressing today may be different from that in the days of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, but the brutal dynamics are familiar: Russia's brief trajectory from glasnost to perestroika to democracy has now boomeranged straight back to dictatorship.

The Bush administration, for its part, is shockingly mum in the face of this globally significant event (Colin Powell has "concerns"), but that shouldn't be a surprise. Putin may be an anti-democratic thug, but dammit, he's our thug -- a staunch ally in the War on Terror. And while Putin's putsch is a lot more aggressive than the PATRIOT Act, Russia's leader is cribbing from the same playbook Bush and Cheney used in the wake of 9/11: A terrorist disaster provides awfully good cover to roll out long-stewing policies (an invasion of Iraq for Bush, a suppression of democracy for Putin) that would be unpalatable except in a climate of fear and anger.

In this context, it hardly seems to matter that the awful terrorist acts confronting Putin's Russia stem mostly from Chechen separatists and ethnic conflicts between Ingush and Ossetians (let's hear Bush pronounce those names during the upcoming debates). So what if Russia's "war on terror" is an entirely different conflict from the United States' "war on terror"? Let's roll these conflicts up, unite our enemies and delude ourselves that Russia's decade-long war with Chechen guerrillas is morally aligned with the U.S.'s struggle against the perpetrators of 9/11. Since democracies like France, Germany and Spain can't be lined up to support Bush's ill-considered policies, then, hey, we'll have to take a strongman.

As a dictator sitting on a vast reserve of oil and decaying stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Vladimir Putin is looking more and more like a certain other Bush administration nemesis now awaiting trial in Baghdad. This time, though, it's okay: remember, we can trust Putin -- about as much as we can trust Bush.

POSTSCRIPT: President Bush has now weighed in. He is "worried," says the AP, that Putin's moves "could undermine democracy." This is like saying Bush's tax cuts "could undermine the budget surplus." The rhetorical device of transforming a fait accompli into a vague possibility may be expedient, but it's a pretty transparent dodge, and it effectively gives Putin a green light. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

11:25:18 PM    

Brilliant.  I still can't understand why half the country believes him to be Rambo.  I think people who are afraid of the complexity of the future seek the cimplicty of the past - as does Osama Bin Laden and his followers....

Kerry on Bush. The gloves come off. [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

11:23:21 PM    

Slate's Cliff Notes on Kitty's The Family

Burning Bushes
A reader's guide to Kitty Kelley's The Family.
By Bryan Curtis
Updated Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004, at 4:01 PM PT

Want the best (if somewhat dubious) dish from The Family, Kitty Kelley's new treatise on the Bush clan? Follow Slate's reading guide straight to the good parts.

Academic Honors

Page 252: George H.W. Bush comes to the rescue when his sons run afoul of Andover honor codes. Jeb violates the school's alcohol ban, but he's allowed to finish his degree after his father intervenes. Years later, Kelley writes, school officials catch W.'s younger brother Marvin with drugs, but dad talks them out of expulsion and secures for his son an "honorary transfer" to another school.

Page 253: At Andover, George W. Bush writes a morose essay about his sister's death. Searching for a synonym for "tears," he consults a thesaurus and writes, "And the lacerates ran down my cheeks." A teacher labels the paper "disgraceful."

Page 251: The family patriarch, Prescott Bush, questions W.'s seriousness about attending Yale, the Bush clan alma mater. "It's the difference between ham and eggs," he says. "The chicken is involved. The pig is committed."

Page 261-68: George W. at Yale. A witness remembers a "roaring drunk" Bush doing the Alligator at a fraternity kegger. A frat brother says Bush "wasn't an ass man." Another friend concurs: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't even relate to women unless he was loaded. … There were just too many stories of him turning up dead drunk on dates." W. lovingly tends to his frat brothers but derides other Yalies as "liberal pussies."

Page 271: Joke excised from Bush's 2001 Yale commencement speech: "It's great to return to New Haven. My car was followed all the way from the airport by a long line of police cars with slowly rotating lights. It was just like being an undergraduate again."

Page 309: At Harvard Business School, which W. attends from 1973 to 1975, a professor screens The Grapes of Wrath. Bush asks him, "Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?" W.'s take on the film: "Look. People are poor because they are lazy."

Sex and Drugs

Page 49: Prescott Bush frequently shows up drunk at the lavish Hartford Club and never tips the bellboys. "Finally we figured out how to exact revenge," says one bellboy. "Whenever he came in drunk and wanted to go upstairs, we'd take him in the elevator and stop about three inches from his floor. He'd step out and fall flat on his face."

Page 79: In a letter to his mother during World War II, H.W. fulminates against the casual sex he sees at a Naval Air Station: "These girls are not prostitutes, but just girls without any morals at all."

Page 209: In the early 1960s, H.W. has an affair with an Italian woman named Rosemarie and "promise[s] to get a divorce and marry her." Bush ends the affair in 1964; the woman asks the attorney if she can sue Bush for breaking their engagement.

Page 327-30; 341-42; 353: Now ambassador to China, H.W. has a relationship with his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald. Around the same time, Barbara disappears from Peking for three months. "Everyone knew that [Fitzgerald] was George's mistress," says a source.

Page 375-76: James Baker refuses to run Bush's 1980 presidential campaign if Fitzgerald is around; Bush concedes but pays her a salary. After becoming vice president, Bush gets into a traffic accident while riding with his "girlfriend"; he calls Secretary of State Alexander Haig to help him shoo away the Washington, D.C., police. Fitzgerald isn't Bush's only dalliance: A divorcee from North Dakota moves to Washington to be with the veep. Kelley says Nancy Reagan, who reviles the Bushes, delights in the gossip.

Page 266: George W. and cocaine. One anonymous Yalie claims he sold coke to Bush; another classmate says he and Bush snorted the drug together. Sharon Bush, W.'s ex-sister-in-law, tells Kelley that Bush has used cocaine at Camp David "not once, but many times." (Sharon has since denied telling Kelley this.)

Page 304: While working on a 1972 Alabama Senate campaign, Bush, witnesses say, "liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine."

Page 575: A friend says Laura Bush was the "go-to girl for dime bags" at Southern Methodist University.

Ibid.: George and Laura visit Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax and his girlfriend Jane Clark in the Caribbean and attended pot parties.

Team Sports

Page 257: At Andover, W. proves a poor athlete. He rides the bench in basketball until a starter falls ill, and he is given the chance to enter the lineup. Bush smacks an opponent's face with the ball and winds up back on the bench.

Ibid.: Bush elects not to tell his friends back in Texas—where all-male Andover is derided as "Bend Over"—that he has become the school's head cheerleader.

Page 258-59: Under the moniker "Tweeds Bush," W. presides as unofficial chairman of Andover's stickball league. He manufactures a series of bogus membership cards that double as fake IDs in Boston bars.

Ibid.: W. introduces the school to the sport of pig ball, which involves throwing a football high in the air and then throttling a random player. As one ex-student puts it, "[T]o me he is the epitome of pig ball."

Page 276: George H.W. challenges Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin to a series of squash games. When Coffin takes four in a row, Bush refuses to quit until he wins. "That time I kicked a little ass and it felt good," Coffin gloats.

Matriarchs

Page 50: George H.W.'s mother, Dotty, forces her son to play sports right-handed, even though he's a natural southpaw.

Page 72-73: Barbara Bush's nickname explained: During World War II gasoline rationing, the Bushes navigate Kennebunkport, Maine, in a horse-drawn carriage. Prescott Bush Jr. notices that the family's horse, Barsil, looks a bit like George's then-girlfriend. He gives them both the nickname "Bar."

Page 191: At Yale, George H.W. asks Bar find a job to pay for her smoking habit.

Page 437: On a 1986 trip to Israel, Barbara visits the Holocaust Museum. "She had worn a blue flowered cotton housedress and open-toed sandals," says the wife of the U.S. consul general. "I couldn't believe it. Here she was the wife of the Vice President of the United States, for God's sakes, and she looked like she was going to a Sears Roebuck picnic."

Page 467: An associate on Barbara: "She can make a clean kill from a thousand yards away. … [W]hen she delivers the life-taking blow, she does it with a thin-lipped smile. … Have you ever seen an asp smile?"

Page 534: After Bush loses the 1992 election, Barbara holds a White House rummage sale and hawks her lightly used ball gowns to staffers.

Page 381-82: Sharon Bush on Barbara: "She can be a tyrant. That's why her boys called her 'The Nutcracker.' "

Page 577; 618: On party invitations, Laura Bush insists on being listed as "Mrs. Laura Bush," not the traditional "Mrs. George W. Bush." An intimate describes her as a "very nice woman who's got a lot of problems and smokes constantly."

Black Sheep

Page 183: Prescott Bush's eldest son, Prescott Jr.—known to the family as "P2"—sabotages his 1982 Senate campaign when he tells a women's club, "I'm sure there are people in Greenwich who are glad [the immigrants] are here, because they wouldn't have someone to help in the house without them."

Page 337-39: Prescott Bush III—"P3"—abandons his wife shortly after their wedding and, according to various accounts, is diagnosed with schizophrenia and moves in with members of the Weather Underground.

Page 186: H.W.'s brother Jonathan, an aspiring actor, announces plans for an off-Broadway minstrel show that Variety says includes "some Negro talent along with the blackface components." The production is quickly scuttled, and Bush settles for a part in Oklahoma! before giving up show business.

Page 491-92: Barbara Bush is upset that her daughter Doro, a divorcee, is getting nowhere with Rep. David Deier after a year of dating. "Never laid a hand on her," Bar says.

Compassionate Conservatism

Page 227: George H.W., who runs hard against civil rights legislation in his 1964 Senate campaign, makes amends by sponsoring a black softball team in Houston called the "George Bush All-Stars." As he puts it, "Organized athletics is a wonderful answer to juvenile delinquency."

Page 247: H.W. campaigns hard to be Nixon's running mate in 1968. Nixon goes with Spiro Agnew, a Greek-American, whom Bush derides as "Zorba, the Veep."

Page 252: George W. hangs a Confederate flag in his dorm room at Andover.

Page 268: W. on Yale's decision to admit women: "That's when Yale really started going downhill."

Page 427: In Midland, W. and his lawyer, Robert Whitt, try to hire the same housekeeper, an illegal alien named Consuela. When Whitt wins, Bush calls his wife and cusses her out.

Page 481: Miss USA visits the Oval Office in 1989 and affirms her commitment to world peace. After she leaves, H.W. tells reporters, "Did ya hear that, fellas? It's all about brains now. I liked it better when it was just bikinis."

Page 591: When Jeb's son Johnny is caught half-naked with a girl in a mall parking lot in 2000, George W. jokes, "It could have been worse. The girl could've been a boy." He adds, "We've might've picked up some gay votes with that one, huh?"

Power Plays

Page 279: George H.W. makes a secret trip to Lyndon Johnson's ranch to ask the ex-president if he should give up his House seat for a 1970 Senate run. Johnson says the "difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." Bush runs and gets clobbered.

Page 350: As CIA director, H.W. despises Henry Kissinger and instructs his staff to refer to him as "Mister," not "Doctor." "The fucker doesn't perform surgery or make house calls, does he?" Bush says.

Page 454: After a testy interview with Dan Rather in 1988, H.W. remarks, "That guy makes Lesley Stahl look like a pussy."

Page 504: H.W. tells a congressman that he wants Ronald Reagan to go down in history as "the man who preceded George Bush."

Page 598: George W. to McCain during the nasty 2000 South Carolina primary: "John, we've got to start running a better campaign." McCain: "Don't give me that shit. And take your hands off me."

Secrets of the Bushies

Page 22: W. isn't the first Bush with a dubious war record. Prescott writes a gag letter to an Ohio newspaper detailing his mock-heroics in World War I, which the newspaper takes as fact and prints in full on the front page. His mother later apologizes and the paper retracts the story.

Page 95: George H.W. weeps during Skull and Bones initiation when describing his World War II heroics.

Page 213; 347: H.W. as Oliver Stone—hours after the Kennedy assassination, Bush phones the FBI and tells them about a 24-year-old Bircher who he says plotted to kill the president. The man is later cleared. As CIA director, for reasons no one quite understands, Bush demands to see many of the agency's assassination files.

Page 567: A witness recalls that during a CNN interview-turned-family-dinner "the elder Bush was drooling over Paula Zahn's legs, and younger Bush was yammering to get to the dinner table."

Page 578: A retired National Guard officer says he overheard a conversation between a Bush staffer and a guardsman about tidying up W.'s service record.

Page 604: During the 2000 recount controversy, W.'s sister Doro shrouds herself in a scarf and dark glasses and joins GOP protesters outside the Naval Observatory.

Page 566: The Bush family exchanges gleeful e-mails during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. George H.W. sends his sons a missive about Peyronie's disease—an unwelcome curvature of the penis—with the addendum: "And, of course, [Clinton's] Johnson curves to the left."

Page 618: A friend says that during their famous Crawford summit, Bush treated Russia's Vladimir Putin as if he were an unreformed Communist apparatchik: "I told Putin that in this country we own our own homes and because we own them we take great pride in them. … I don't think the son of a bitch knew what the hell I was talking about."

Bryan Curtis is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at curtis@slate.com .


6:13:01 PM    

Of course, the Right wing neo-fascists think the UN is illegal, so this won't go very far.....

Iraq war illegal, says Annan. UN chief Kofi Annan tells the BBC the Iraq war was illegal and warns elections are at threat from ongoing violence. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

5:54:26 PM    

http://www.salon.com

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Kristen Breitweiser listens as she and five families of 9/11 victims hold a news conference Tuesday in Washington to endorse Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race.

"President Bush thwarted our attempts at every turn"
The widows known as the "Jersey Girls" changed history by demanding an independent 9/11 investigation. Now they want to change who's president -- though some voted for Bush four years ago.

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By Mary Jacoby

Sept. 15, 2004  |  WASHINGTON -- Over the last three years, the group of 9/11 widows turned activists dubbed the "Jersey Girls" have become a fixture on the Washington political scene. Some of them are Republicans, others Democrats or independents. But they are all determined to hold official Washington accountable for the attacks that killed their husbands and nearly 3,000 others. They have held news conferences, lobbied members of Congress, pored over documents, and forced the White House to accept an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Along the way, the women have learned about coverups, obfuscation, political cowardice, deceptions and the dangers of eschewing international alliances for a go-it-alone foreign policy.

And their conclusion: For the sake of the country's future, John Kerry must replace George W. Bush.

Gathering at the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday, the widows announced their endorsement of the Massachusetts Democrat for president, a move made "in good conscience and from our hearts," as former Bush supporter Kristen Breitweiser told the news cameras. "In the three years since 9/11, I could never have imagined I would be here today, disappointed in the person I voted for, for president," she said. Added fellow Jersey Girl Patty Casazza: "It was President Bush who thwarted our attempts at every turn."

The widows said they endorsed Kerry because three years of studying the facts has convinced them he will do a better job than Bush at protecting the nation. "This was not an easy decision to make. We agonized over this," said Monica Gabrielle of West Haven, Conn., an honorary Jersey Girl. "We have always been very careful about not being partisan. We have always attempted to uncover the truth. We have always looked for the greater good." Still, the women said they expect to be trashed as partisan hacks.

"We were joking amongst ourselves yesterday that we should come down here geared up in football pads and helmets, because we were anticipating personal attacks," Breitweiser said. "Some other 9/11 family members have supported President Bush, and I think we have always been respectful of anyone's points of view. And I hope that going forward, the debate and dialogue will be about the issues and it will be respectful and lively. But most important, respectful."

The endorsement was a sword clanging against Bush's political armor. Polls show that voters rate Bush high on his handling of 9/11 and its aftermath, and Republicans have been quick to exploit that approval with television ads and their recent convention, held in Manhattan around the theme of Bush's leadership against terrorism. Meantime, the families of 9/11 victims are split on whom to support for president, with many for Bush.

The Jersey Girls' political foil is Deena Burnett, widow of Thomas Burnett, one of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Burnett, who lives in Arkansas, spoke to the Republican National Convention two weeks ago, giving an emotional account of her last conversations with her husband from the plane. "The heroes of 9/11 weren't created that day," Burnett told the convention. "Their actions were the result of virtues practiced over a lifetime." Delegates wiped away tears.

Watching the convention on television, Breitweiser felt not teary-eyed, she said, but frightened. She found the speakers angry and bellicose, and she worried that the Bush administration seemed to revel in war. "I am scared [by] the mentality that my daughter, who is 5 years old, is being handed a tomorrow that will be a war for a lifetime. My husband was killed on 9/11. I do not want to lose my daughter 18 years from now when she's walking or living in a large city, and it's payback for our actions in Iraq," Breitweiser said. Later she told me in an interview that she voted for Bush in 2000 because, well, she's a Republican. "I'm not a Democrat!" she said, when I asked if her endorsement of Kerry meant that she had switched parties.

On Tuesday I was unable to reach Deena Burnett, whose name is not listed in the phone directory, for comment about the Jersey Girls' endorsement of Kerry. But a telephone interview I conducted with her two years ago was revealing for her lack of knowledge about the origins and funding sources of al-Qaida. Burnett is a lead plaintiff in a massive lawsuit against wealthy members of the Saudi royal family and Saudi establishment filed by South Carolina trial lawyer Ron Motley, who is trying to prove that the 9/11 attacks were financed out of the kingdom. Interestingly, many people who share those suspicions about the Saudi role in 9/11 also tend to question the Bush family's close ties to the House of Saud, but not Burnett. When I spoke with her for the profile, I expected to talk with her about the substance of the case. Instead, she directed me back to the lawyers, pleading ignorance of such details as which Saudi prince made which overtures to the Taliban. She clearly wasn't a document hound.

The Jersey Girls are. They have read seemingly every scrap of information about 9/11 and al-Qaida, from news articles to affidavits to footnotes in obscure government reports. And their command of the facts is what has made them so effective. On Sept. 18, 2002, when much of the public was still sympathetic to the Bush administration position that the attacks could not have been foreseen or prevented, Breitweiser gave a statement before the joint House-Senate investigation into intelligence lapses; it may have changed the course of history.

In a concise, straightforward manner, she laid out the facts far more effectively than had any senator or representative on the panel. She asked how, for example, the CIA could fail to locate hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, who had entered the United States despite being on a terrorist watch list, when one was listed in the San Diego phone book and both roomed with an undercover FBI informant. The day after her presentation, the White House -- once firmly against an independent commission -- reversed itself and endorsed the idea. And it was the 9/11 commission that would later find no operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, one of the key reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq.

On Tuesday, the widows cited the invasion of Iraq as one of their top reasons for supporting Kerry. "Unfortunately, before the work in Afghanistan was complete ... this administration moved our most precious resources, America's sons and daughters, into Iraq, without the support of our allies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that is what we learned from the 9/11 commission's final report," said Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, N.J. "Sept. 11 was an enormous intelligence failure, and yet nothing was done to fix our intelligence after 9/11, and that same intelligence apparatus took us into Iraq. So it's doubly frustrating to learn that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11." Van Auken said she is also worried that with military forces stretched thin, her 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter could be called up in a draft.

The women said they approached Kerry about the endorsement, not the other way around. Their requests to meet with Bush were rejected. Breitweiser and Gabrielle plan to campaign actively. In Breitweiser's case, it will be difficult, because she hasn't traveled in an airplane since her husband died. "I have serious anxiety about getting on a plane," she said. "But that's how committed I feel."

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About the writer Mary Jacoby is Salon's Washington correspondent. Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor Related stories The Journal vs. the widows Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz isn't the only one writing critically about the "Jersey Girls." Geraldine Sealey 05/13/04 The widows are watching Four outspoken World Trade Center widows claim the 9/11 commission director's ties to the White House undermine the commission's credibility. By Joe Conason 04/02/04 President Bush: Don't use my husband as your mascot A 9/11 widow's open letter to Bush about his new ad campaign. By A.R. Torres 03/05/04

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