When You Were Here Before...Couldn't Look You in the Eye

Now a full-term pregnancy removed from the most recent exercise in choice between white and eggshell (and I don't mean race), it's safe to reflect the 2008 torrent of change that swept all good coffee-drinking, Idol-watching, Tweet-overloading Americans into a New Age of togetherness and prosperity. No?

One of the most striking differences between the current regime of corporate-imperial bedfellows and the previous one is nuance. So dedicated is Obama to the delicate art of subtlety, that one might miss all the overwhelming change taking place beneath our noses. But since Obama presented his campaign as a 180 from the Bush presidency, it's only fair that we struggle to find some evidence of this in practice.

In Iraq, a promise to extricate American forces from Iraq became removing them from Baghdad intermittently, forming a menacing ring around the city with the understanding that they could rush back in anytime necessary. The declaration of necessity of course being at the discretion of the Americans. Problem solved. Clashing warlords, honor killings, ethnic cleansing and the myriad other realities that make Iraq the most dangerous country in the world are not addressed.

Having played his card in Iraq, Obama was able to ensure smooth functioning of the military-industrial machine by funneling more money into an even more depressing and hopeless situation in Afghanistan. Former member of Afghan parliament, Malalai Joya:

You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.

For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the "democracy" backed by Nato troops.

In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office. Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election. Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, "the same donkey with a new saddle".

Again we see an American foreign policy that pays no attention to the reality of the situation. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, Americans are not fighting a foreign army susceptible to surrender and treaty. It's fighting an amorphous collection of warlords, the supply of which is endless, while the misery of Afghan life continues unabated by the well-oiled machinations of the very democracy we purport to defend.

And then there's Blackwater. (Yes, their PR flack has renamed the company Xe, but as Tyler Durden said, "Sticking feathers in your ass does not make you a chicken.") For all the platitudes we heap on the American armed forces, little has been made of the truth that in Iraq, the ratio of US forces and private security forces (a euphemism for mercenaries) has run about 1:1, and is likely to rise as US force levels are drawn down.

One of the recurring themes in American foreign policy is the fantasy that the foreign populations directly affected by the many proxies the US uses to fight its wars, overt and secret, are as ignorant of the effect as the ever-distracted American population is. Chileans were never in doubt as to the backing of Pinochet. Nicaraguans knew who was backing the Contras. And Iraqis know from whence came Blackwater.

In many ways, Blackwater is the face of American foreign policy in Iraq, which makes it all the more sad that Americans know so little about their representatives. In March, 2008, I discussed the granting of immunity to Blackwater agents who shot indiscriminately into a crowd of innocent Iraqis. This, of course, left no doubt in the minds of Iraqis as to where they stood in the benevolent American enterprise.

In that same essay, I noted that Obama refused to rule out the use of such extrajudicial bands of marauding crusaders. Huzzah, he followed through on something! Name change or no, the song remains the same:

The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”:

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”

Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that “Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq.” He states that he personally witnessed weapons being “pulled out” from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that “Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince’s private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines,” adding that Prince “generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade.”

Doe #2 states: “Using his various companies, [Prince] procured and distributed various weapons, including unlawful weapons such as sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers, through unlawful channels of distribution.” Blackwater “was not abiding by the terms of the contract with the State Department and was deceiving the State Department,” according to Doe #1.

This is the face of American foreign policy in Iraq. That Obama is considered to be at the left fringe of American politics in that area is startling, and says a lot less about him than it does us.

And then there's Somalia:

For as the history of American foreign policy in the last 60 years has clearly shown us, there has never been an internal conflict in any country of the world that was not actually, deep down, a direct threat to all the sweet American babies sleeping in their cribs.

The interim Somali president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed -- an Islamist who only a few years ago was considered by Washington as, well, an evil maniac in league with al Qaeda -- agreed with [Hillary] Clinton, saying that al-Shabab aims to "make Somalia a ground to destabilize the whole world." This would be the same al-Shabab that Ahmed has spent most of his presidency trying to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with. (Where's that scorecard again?)

As usual, the AP story buries some of the most blazing, salient facts way down in the uncritical regurgitation of official rhetoric. But credit where it's due, the story does finally note that the new American assistance is not confined to stuff that can kill more Somalis; it also includes - wait for it again -- U.S. military "advisors" to help "train" the forces of the ever-collapsing transitional government.

Clinton also shook a sword at neighboring Eritrea, accusing it of supporting al-Shabab and "interfering" in Somalia's internal affairs. This, while she was announcing the delivery of 80 tons of American weapons to be poured into Somalia's internal affairs.

Critics on the American Right often use the term "moral relativism" as an epithet. The meaning of the term, that standards of right and wrong should not be influenced by time or culture, seems innocuous until you consider that they mean precisely the opposite of its intended application. Rather than extolling a universal standard of right and wrong, they imply that such standards can only be extrapolated from a situation based upon the actors. America, right. Everyone else, wrong.

Of course, that the Obama administration is carrying the Bush administration's water on this one is not at all surprising to those of us that paid attention to the words of his campaign rather than the ease with which he delivered them.

Many more examples to follow.

Related:

Contracting Obama March 3, 2008
Afghanistan: Right War or No, It's Still War July 21, 2008
Fumbling in the Dark August 2, 2008

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West Virginia Primary: Stop Equivocating

That Hillary Clinton blew Barack Obama out of the water in West Virginia Tuesday was not the least bit surprising. That pundits have spend so much time and effort circumnavigating the obvious reason has been.

Everyone knows the reason.



The three interviews with voters from the above clip:

I guess because he's another race. I'm sort of scared of the other race, because we have so much conflict with 'em.

He's a Muslim, and that has a lot to do with it. [Really, all of the Reverend Wright air time and people still think he's a Muslim?]

I don't like the Hussein thing. I've had enough of Hussein.

The cultural make-up of West Virginia isn't a secret, and there's no reason every single pundit on television has to pretend it is. The state is 95% white, and only 15% have a bachelor's degree. Only three-fourths have graduated high school. ["White persons not Hispanic: 94%, US Average: 66%"]

And while we're at it, stop using the term "working-class." What is that phrase a euphemism for, because it certainly isn't meant to be taken literally. Even college grads have to work for a living, so quit suggesting that anyone who's read a book in the last year is an effete intellectual who doesn't work hard. The only thing I can gather from the context of the coverage is that "working-class" is synonymous with "uneducated whites." Enough already. You know one person who is most decidedly not working class? Hillary Clinton.

So, maybe "working class" actually means, "those people working in factories that we remember exist about every four years for a couple months before returning to one of our six houses."

If Hillary had a monolithic white vote--other than in West Virginia--she would have won already. How exactly is Obama supposed to "court White voters," anyway? Reinstate Jim Crow?

Tuesday's primary meant precisely nothing. The writing was on the wall well before the vote. To pretend otherwise is to be dishonest.

Appended 5/15, 1530:

If labor unions fit the bill as working class, then here's some of those backing Obama:

the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters; UNITE HERE; Transport Workers Union; UFCW; SEIU; International Brotherhood of Boilermakers; Teamsters; and Utility Workers [as of February 25th, via Obama's homepage]

A more up-to-date list.

Just today, the Obama campaign announced the backing of superdelegate and Communications Workers of America President, Larry Cohen, and gained the endorsement of the United Steelworkers.

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Hillary Competing With McCain to See Who Can Get Caught in Reversals More Often

(Hat tip: Parisgnome)

Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have been tripping over themselves in using John McCain's '100 years' comment against him. As I said before, to do so requires a very loose relationship with literacy.

McCain's backtracking is well-evidenced, and now it seems Clinton is not simply content to narrow the gap between them by adopting his proposals or threatening to 'obliterate' Iran. (Yes, Hillary, people that aren't Ahmadinejad live there, too. About 66 million of them.) No, she is also striving to pass him in the number of times someone can find contradictions in the public record.

Parisgnome at Daily Kos dug up this gem from a 2005 visit to Face the Nation on CBS:

SCHIEFFER: Well, what do you mean `long time'? Do you mean years?

[...]

Sen. CLINTON: Senator McCain made the point earlier today, which I agree with, and that is, it's not so much a question of time when it comes to American military presence for the average American; I include myself in this.

But it is a question of casualties. We don't want to see our young men and women dying and suffering these grievous injuries that so many of them have.

We've been in South Korea for 50-plus years. We've been in Europe for 50-plus. We're still in Okinawa with respect to protection there coming out of World War II. You know, we have been in places for very long periods of time.

[...]

But so is our understanding that if we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can't afford to do that.

Barack Obama's greatest weapon against Clinton has been her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War (easy for him since he wasn't there, of course.) In response, her campaign has held that it was a vote based on faulty intelligence and she shouldn't be held accountable, but as her visit with Bob Schieffer illustrates, she held McCain's outlook on the occupation well past when the intelligence aspect's ship had sailed.

The question, then, is which version is more true to her core beliefs. I tend to side with the 2005 incarnation, as I have always held that on foreign policy--obviously not domestic social issues--Clinton is right-leaning. The conservative outcry against her husband's interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti and Iraq (and her subsequent adoption of his Presidency as her own) can't be forgotten. I don't know that Clinton could be painted as a dove (relative to center, not Lieberman and McCain), no matter how hard Sean Hannity might try. Her plan for withdrawal now--a duplicate of Obama's 16-month plan--is merely borne of the realization that no Democrat was going to win that party's nomination calling for sustaining the occupation.

Sam Stein asked for a response from the campaign, and Phil Singer responded: "As both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have noted, the situation in Iraq has dramatically deteriorated since 2005 and now we are in the midst of sectarian violence."

This response is ludicrous in that it suggests that the insurgency began after her appearance, which is outright false. Consider the lead-in to her Face the Nation appearance:

SCHIEFFER: And we start this morning with Kimberly Dozier, who is in Baghdad, where there were some awful bombings yesterday, but today fairly quiet. What's the latest, Kimberly?

KIMBERLY DOZIER reporting: Fairly quiet, but people are still holding funerals from yesterday's attacks and Friday's. Almost 100 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in a series of suicide bombings targeting Shiite worshipers marking the annual holiday of Ashura. That is to mark the prophet Muhammad's grandson's death. Now there were worse attacks last year; almost 200 people died. This year there was greater security, but suicide bombers still managed to mingle in with the crowd and, as the religious leaders have been saying here, tried to make the attacks that would turn Shiites against Sunnis. Religious leaders are trying to keep that from happening. Bob.

SCHIEFFER: So Baghdad is still a very dangerous place.

[...]

Senator Clinton, it seems there's still more violence going on in Iraq. How do you sum up the situation now?

CLINTON: [...] The violence that preceded the election was about 50 to 60 incidents a day. Leading up to the election, it rose all the way to 300, and now it has subsided again to, unfortunately, about 50 or 60 a day.

Clearly, there is no way that her campaign can make the case that violence wasn't an issue at the time of her appearance. Their response can only be based on the presumption that no one would review the historical record, which is consistent with their campaign tactics thus far.

I already thought the '100 years' attacks of McCain were loosely based on what he said, but now it is even more clear that for Hillary to use the attack against him is the height of revisionism and hypocrisy.

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Taking a Holiday from Reality

In what is becoming a theme--with the space between the right and Hillary Clinton becoming ever narrower (rhetorically at least)--the gas-tax holiday first proposed by John McCain has been co-opted by Clinton in recent weeks and become a sudden cause celebre. That her outright pilfering of McCain's proposal in full view has propelled her to a point where she's adopting Bushian rhetoric like "you're either with us or against us," while McCain has been virtually ignored on the point is but one more indication that McCain is running a campaign free of any scrutiny. Or seemingly anyone paying him any mind at all.

The American political arena has a long history of seeking out reactionary solutions that fail to address the root causes, but few so-called solutions rise (or sink) to the level of ineptitude and ineffectiveness the gas-tax holiday promises.

By nearly all accounts, the proposal would save American drivers about $25-$30 between Memorial Day and Labor Day, while driving up the demand for oil, most likely raising prices. So, essentially, what Clinton is frothing at the mouth about, complete with her Bushian rhetoric, is a plea to save the status quo.

To Barack Obama's credit, he has avoided taking the easy stance and remained true to his belief that a tax holiday is a superficial and ineffective solution that would do nothing to lower prices long term. All of which is true, but that hasn't stopped Clinton from painting Obama as enemy of the people.

The mechanism behind gas prices is well beyond the scope of this post, but it's a complex combination of supply (encompassing production and reserves), demand and speculation. The Clinton and McCain proposal does nothing to address in even a superficial manner any of those in a positive way.

ANWR

Meanwhile, the Republicans are using the leverage created by high oil prices to renew their call for drilling in ANWR. Leaving the debate over wether to drill or not aside for the moment and dealing only with its tangible effect, Reuters had an interesting assessment of just what the ANWR reserve would mean to domestic oil prices.

The Energy Information Administration, which is the Energy Department's independent analytical arm, estimated that if Congress had cleared Bush's ANWR drilling plan the oil would have been available to refiners in 2011, but only at a small volume of 40,000 barrels a day -- a drop in the bucket compared with the 20.6 million barrels the U.S. consumes daily.

At peak production, ANWR could have potentially added 780,000 barrels a day to U.S. crude oil output by 2020, according to the EIA.

The extra supplies would have cut dependence on foreign oil, but only slightly. With ANWR crude, imports would have met 60 percent of U.S. oil demand in 2020, down from 62 percent without the refuge's supplies.

A two-percent decline in imported oil is unlikely to have that significant an impact on the American consumer, and certainly wouldn't relieve us from Middle East affairs. And those numbers are of course contingent on the ANWR drilling producing output, which of course does not happen immediately, as new drilling often has a lead time of 10 years or so.

Gerald Kepes, head of the upstream oil and gas practice at the PFC Energy consulting group, said if the Interior Department had begun leasing tracts in ANWR in 2003 the first oil would had probably been flowing in 2012.

"This all assumes that there would be no environmental challenges," said Kepes, as lawsuits to block drilling could take years to resolve. "Really, 2015 is more [sic]likely."

So, the debate over drilling in ANWR is immaterial to the current prices, as the United States would still be more than 5 years out from seeing any production from the Wildlife Reserve. One can debate whether it should continue from here, for sure, but to hold the 2002 vote up as cog in the prices today is disingenuous at best.

Of course, increased American production doesn't take place in a vacuum.

Opening ANWR could have made current prices worse because Saudi Arabia may have delayed increasing its oil production capacity, making world supplies tighter and prices higher.

"Since there is a worldwide market for oil, increases in production in one place (like ANWR) could be offset by decreases in production someplace else to keep the prices high," CAP's Weiss said.

Whatever the impact on any one variable in oil prices, be it new drilling or some superficial, 3-month tax break, analysis of its impact must include all of the other variables. American production doesn't happen in a vacuum, and OPEC is not going to shrug its shoulders and not control its own production capacity.

OPEC exists for the express purpose of controlling output of oil to control price. It's by definition a cartel, and that's its raison d'etre. None of these proposals addresses the sagging value of the dollar or the influence of speculators on the price of oil. Speculators play no small role, and have played an even greater role since enactment of the 'Enron loophole' gave them nearly free reign to do as they pleased.

So perhaps when Bush talks about a "magic wand," he would be better served to focus on real solutions. Attributing gas prices to magic diverts attention from reality-based root causes, many of which, such as the 'Enron loophole,' his administration is responsible for.

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I Stand Corrected

Apparently, there are still at least a couple of journalists or pundits out there who understand the concept of delegates and their central role in the nominating process.

Given 24 hours to continuously banter for 6 weeks about a single Democratic Primary vote in Pennsylvania would allow for at least a minimal amount of time to devote to the actual process. Alas, it hasn't. What, with constantly searching for the next non-controversy to stoke continuously until, Presto!, you can say people care. No, actually looking at the process itself requires a small bit of research, and who wants to waste time with that when there's endless repetition of things other people say for you to drone on about.

Thankfully, Greg Giroux and Jonathan Allen at CQPolitics have taken the time so the talking heads won't have to.

That answer will be mainly determined not by the sum of the votes Clinton and Obama win in Pennsylvania, but rather by the state’s parts. Pennsylvania will send 187 Democratic delegates to the party’s national convention in Denver this August, and most of them — 103 to be exact — will be allocated according to the votes the candidates receive in each of the state’s 19 congressional districts.

And a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.

These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.

Of the state’s remaining 84 slots, only 55 pledged delegates will be distributed based on the statewide popular vote, with the state’s remaining 29 seats going to unpledged “superdelegates.”

As is made clear by the authors' breakdowns between the 19 congressional districts, the margin of victory is only important in a PR sense, and bears little effect of the outcome in terms of delegates. For the 103 delegates divvied up by district voting, the margin of victory needed to obtain more than a single delegate more than the opponent is essentially prohibitive. Giroux and Allen speaking of 4-delegate districts, of which there are 5: "So if Clinton defeats Obama 60 percent to 40 percent, the district delegates would split 2-2; if Obama defeats Clinton 60 percent to 40 percent, a 2-2 split would also ensue." Likewise, in a 5-delegate district, 70 percent of the vote would be needed to have a split other than 3-2.

Giroux and Allen continue in a detailed, district-by-district analysis and prediction (they arrive at Clinton 53, Obama 50). But the main point here is that even if they're off slightly--even completely inverse in most districts--the results won't change much unless one candidate absolutely trounces the other, which is implausible.

Even the 55 delegate divided by state-wide vote won't lend Clinton that large a margin. A 55-45 split for Clinton would yield her 30 delegates to Obama's 25. Even a highly-unlikely 60-40 divide would grant a 33-22 mix.

Given that a 20-point margin of victory is highly improbable, a best case scenario for Hillary would have her walking away from Pennsylvania with around a net gain of 10, perhaps 15, delegates. Not nearly enough to cover a margin of over 100.

Assuming Clinton wins Pennsylvania (a safe assumption at this point), the fact remains that nothing will change other than feeding fundraising and continued campaigning. A victory in the popular vote may help morale, but it is clearly not going to gloss over the fact that she is all-but mathematically eliminated from the race and has been for several months.

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The Wheels Come Off on the Tarmac

It didn't take long, but the Bosnia story has completely gotten away from the Clinton campaign. The other day I said that she "forgets other people were there." Well, maybe Sinbad didn't think to record the whole thing, but CBS news did.



As with nearly all of her campaign's backtracking, the spin on this story certainly doesn't fail to dig a deeper hole. First, the campaign claimed that although there may not have been actual fire at the airport, there were certainly warnings and that she was entering a potentially "hostile area." Again, this tends to be the case with areas that have recently ceased to be an official war zone.

But the campaign misses the point. If all she had meant to say was that she had made trips to areas around the globe ravaged by war, she would have been correct, and her rebuttal in this instance would make sense.

But that isn't the case. She felt compelled to make it seem like she'd seen action, as if dodging bullets was somehow a major Presidential criteria for a large portion of the population.

In truth, she's told the story several times. As with John McCain repeatedly 'misspeaking,' the excuse only works if you flub once. She told the story in a slightly-less-embellished fashion before. That prompted Sinbad's comments, and it was after she was refuted that she retold the story in its current--recently-deceased, rather-- incarnation. The exaggerated re-telling came on St. Patrick's Day in a prepared speech. When you screw up on the fly, it's 'misspeaking.' But when you misrepresent the truth in a prepared statement, some may venture to call it 'lying.'

What's even more amusing to me is that even in a faux-apologetic state, Clinton found a way to insert even more bullshit, saying, "I was also told the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and I can‘t rush by her. I‘ve got to go at least greet her." (Referring to the girl she meets on the tarmac, as seen in the above video.)

There you have it. She was going to worry about her own head, but being the superior citizen and lover of children that she is, she couldn't resist stopping to listen to a poem from a child that somehow made it onto the front lines of a war zone.

She can't resist the urge when caught in a blatant lie to try and construe herself as the sympathetic character in the story.

What really gets me is that somebody as politically shrewd a Clinton is by nearly all accounts could simply bank on no one having footage of the ceremony. Did she really think it wasn't going to end up on You Tube? How is that possible?

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Answering The Fact-Checking Phone

The campaign narratives are well-known by now. Barack Obama is the fresh face full of hope and ideas but short on substance. Hillary Clinton is the experienced candidate with the will, determination, and worldliness to get the job done. The media has been complicit in promoting the Clinton campaign's theme, but don't seem too interested in vetting her claims, merely distributing them as given.

But how much of her claims hold water? She claims her eight years as First Lady as part of her years of experience, but you'd better ask which parts of those she wants you to ignore before advancing any storyline on anything President Clinton pushed through. She claims foreign policy experience on par with that of John McCain, but again you should really check with her before talking to anyone who was there.

NAFTA then and now:

On the domestic front, her recent staunch opposition to NAFTA helped garner primary victories in Ohio and Texas. But in claiming Bill's presidency as her own, she must also lay claim to one of his more successful endeavors (in terms of the legislative process), the passage of NAFTA in 1993. Flying in the face of her claims to the contrary, her recently-released schedules indicate several meetings in which she participated to drum up support for the now-disavowed trade agreement. Two people who were at a November 10, 1993 meeting of the sort have very different impressions of the event than the Clinton campaign has tried to disseminate:

Laura Jones, Executive Director of US Assoc. of Imp. of Textiles & Apparel:

That's ludicrous [to say Clinton wasn't advocating NAFTA.] There was no question that everyone who spoke including the First Lady was for NAFTA, it was a rally on behalf of NAFTA to help it get passed. It's unquestionable. And there are many people out there who were there who remember the incident who work in this industry.

Julia Hughes, VP of the same organization:

This is such a non issue to us, because obviously it was a pro-NAFTA group and a pro-NAFTA event. It was a 100 percent pro-NAFTA event. No one suggested any inklings of doubt since part of the agenda was to promote enthusiasm for passage of NAFTA.

[Clinton] was the highlight of the event. She was absolutely the capper to the event. It was a positive rally. I assure you if there had even been a hint of waffling from her -- because we were in the last days before NAFTA passed and it was a pretty hectic time -- we would have freaked out.

After testing the waters with several rebuttals, most of which crumbled atop the shaky foundation of untruths, Hillary's campaign seems to have settled on the line that she was opposed to passing NAFTA before health-care reform. Well, that's probably true, but that doesn't speak to opposition to the substance of the NAFTA agreement in the slightest. If people were concerned about the timing, they'd have a point.

Like most her campaign, her domestic trade policy is predicated on acceptance of history about 15 months long. That it's possible to examine the events of a decade ago seems to chafe her to an enormous degree.

Sniper fire in Bosnia:

In March of 1996, Hillary embarked on a European trip, stopping off to rally the troops in Bosnia with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow. Her retelling of the event:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

Unfortunately for her, she forgets other people were there. Sinbad, for one, doesn't recall ducking sniper fire. I've never been in a situation like that, but I imagine I'd remember it if I had.

Among the kinks in Clinton's story are the fact that the Dayton Peace Accords ending the war were signed in November of the previous year. She says that it was too dangerous for President Clinton to go, but he had indeed gone to Bosnia in January of that year, allowing for even less time after the official cessation of hostilities. (You may note that the President is standing on the tarmac in that picture. He doesn't seem to be ducking sniper fire, either.)

In its defense, the campaign offers contemporary newspaper articles declaring, "the first lady is...traveling to a potential combat zone." Um, yeah, but 'potential' combat zone is different than ducking 'real' sniper fire. What's their point, exactly? Again, we must ignore the pesky fact that Bill was there two and a half months earlier. And if she was taking her 16-year-old daughter into an active combat zone, perhaps DHS should have been contacted. I'll settle for 'okay, we embellished a bit.'

Even if we allowed the juxtaposition of facts as to the urgency of danger, the point of the trip was basically a USO, troop morale operation. Bob Hope for President.

Opening borders retroactively:

Ever the master of international diplomacy, Hillary has also given herself credit-during a debate in January and subsequently-for getting Macedonia to open its borders to Albanian refugees from Kosovo. Again, those meddlesome news archives pin the date of reopening at May 13, 1999. Clinton's visit to 'negotiate?:' May 14.

That's correct. She's so good at negotiations that she can force countries to reverse time and reopen borders retroactively. Now that's a talent Obama can't get his paws on.

Ending 30 years of fighting with support:

Perhaps more nefarious than her imaginative, if not substantial, tales of Bosnia, is Hillary's claim to have been a major player in ending the fighting in Northern Ireland. Nearly everyone there agrees that she played a role in the peace agreement. Nearly all of those people describe that role as peripheral.

David Trimble, Nobel Prize winner for his part in the Good Friday Accords:

I don't know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around. I don't want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.

Conall McDevitt, chief negotiator:

She was certainly investing some time, no doubt about it. Whether she was involved on the issue side I think probably not.

George Mitchell, another major player, has said things along the same lines. So, the consensus is pretty clear. Hillary played an role greater than your typical First Lady, but was not a significant force behind the diplomacy central to the agreement.

No one disputes that Hillary's interest in politics and diplomacy is greater than most First Ladys, but that isn't her claim. Her claim is that she played a significant role in getting the deal signed, which is a claim that seems at odds with pretty much everyone involved. If 'supporting' peace is a qualification for President, the majority of the country could sign up.

There are two themes at work here. First, HRC loves to claim time spent as First Lady as equivalent to governing experience (at the same time ignoring Obama's actual governing experience in the Illinois Senate) but isn't so fond of having to take credit for the parts of those years which contradict her current stance. Moral: The past is present if it contributes to her current campaign narrative. The past is the past (or non-existent) whenever a conflict occurs.

Second, tea parties with the wives of foreign dignitaries is Clintonese for 'personally negotiating peace agreements and influencing foreign affairs.' No one doubts she took an active role, but having an interest in and being a major player in foreign affairs are not equivalent.

Regardless of interpretations of participation, the Clinton campaign is more than happy to play a game of 'hide the facts.' Buried in almost all of its rebuttals is a tacit admission of misrepresentation.

When questioned about the sniper fire, they claim Bosnia as 'potential' war zone. Potential, as defined, is antithetical to 'active,' thereby taking the rug out from under the claim in the process of trying to support it. At one point, a campaign staffer was even reduced to asking, "Has Barack Obama even been to Bosnia?" If that's not an admission of defeat, I don't know what is.

When confronted with a shifting timeline in Macedonia, they claim that she was influential in allowing more Albanians to cross the border, using the simple fact that publicity of the opening led to greater crossings two days after than the day of the reopening.

Overall, Hillary's claim of experience is central to her campaign, but it is infinitely reliant upon ignorance of the past and obfuscation of the facts. Her folly, though, is in believing that fudging through these claims is to her benefit. Obama is running on the fresh ideas platform with glaring success, and she's chosen to oppose that with a murky, ever-changing tale of politics-as-usual.

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While You Were Out, March 19

The government makes its case for less oversight:

One of the more overarching themes to the Bush administration is its absolute opposition to any oversight, congressional or otherwise. Whether it's opposing the establishment of a commission to examine the wiretapping policy and activities, refusing to appear when subpoenaed, or just outright gutting other agencies, the administration is demonstrably opposed to anyone paying attention to what they're doing.

Yet, time and again they demonstrate with equal veracity that oversight is sorely needed, if not because of illegality then for the shear incompetence.

Enter this report from Monday, providing us with yet more proof that silly balance-of-power thing in the Constitution might have been a good idea after all.

The government's terror watchlist includes inaccurate and outdated information, increasing the risk that innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists while terrorists are overlooked, a government audit reported Monday.

[...]

Although agents describe the watchlist as invaluable in helping them detect terrorists, high-profile blunders have underscored its flaws, such as when agents repeatedly blocked Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., from boarding a plane because his name was similar to that of a terror suspect.

[...]

[JDIG Glenn] Fine's audit is his second in less than a week to find fault with the FBI's handling of national security matters.

On Thursday, the inspector general found that the FBI had abused privacy laws when seeking records without court approval. However, Fine noted that the FBI had improved its processing of so-called "national security letters" after his office had issued an earlier critical report.

I'll assume that detaining Senator Kennedy was just a coincidence. But, really, forgetting the illegal activities of the national security process, these agencies have proven time and again that their incompetence, here stretching over the course of six years, presents more of an imminent threat.


Those meddling Clintons are at it again:

Continuing on her theme of "caucuses don't really count," Hillary Clinton has asked the Texas Democratic Party to verify every signature (that's 1 million of them) of the people who voted in the Texas caucuses. One wonders why she didn't request the same of the primary voters. The Party declined her request.


Ron Paul hasn't left yet:

From the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch:

On Saturday, [Missouri Rep. Party Chmn. Jon] Bennett learned why [an abnormal influx of inquiries about the caucuses were coming in.] Dozens of avid supporters of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who is running a renegade quest for the presidential nomination, staged a political guerrilla attack. At that caucus at St. Peters City Hall — as well as others across the state — party regulars like Bennett were overwhelmed.

Caucuses in Missouri, held only in presidential election years, are typically low-key affairs attended mainly by party diehards. But this year, the pro-Paul activists commandeered gatherings in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Springfield. Paul supporters also controlled caucuses in at least a half dozen rural counties.

The result: Paul's supporters predict they have snagged roughly a third of the 2,137 state Republican delegates. Those delegates will determine the state GOP platform this spring and help select the presidential delegates to the national Republican presidential convention in Minneapolis in September.

This, of course, makes the people who didn't show up angry, and the Party will be examining the names to make sure there weren't any of those dirty Libertarian interlopers. Assuming there were (which wouldn't be a surprise), the take-over still illustrates that those who don't participate still feel they are owed inaction by everyone else.

They fling 'activist' around like it's a dirty word, but apathy is the enemy of democracy. (No, I don't support Ron Paul, but I refuse to degrade people who participate or favor those who don't.)

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Shorts: Campaign Roundup

Michigan and Florida revisited:

Florida has already thrown in the towel on a re-vote, and the latest out of Michigan has the Democratic leaders in that state proposing a likely-untenable do-over scheduled for June 3. Among the many issues surrounding these two states which continue to exasperate:

• The Michigan plan calls for the DNC to pay for the new primary, something Howard Dean has repeatedly stated will not happen. If the two states exhibited folly in ignoring the DNC's warnings before, they have raised the bar beyond reach in continuing to do so now. To go on so unbudgingly requires either an enormous set of something or a complete lack of rational thought. I'm banking on the latter.



• Several weeks into this conversation, there are still pundits and candidates who call the March 4 elections fair. Again, they ignore the obvious. The DNC stripped the delegates before the primaries were held, nobody campaigned in those states, and Obama wasn't on the ballot in Michigan. To suggest that Obama should have kept his name on the ballot carries the same weight as suggesting he put it on a Canadian ballot. As far as he and everyone else-including the voters-knew, the Michigan ballot counted for just as much. Clinton seems to be chastising Barack for lacking the foresight to see an attempted mid-stream rule change in the future. (Although, considering the opponent, maybe he should have.)

On delegate counts; and ignoring them:

March 4 signaled a turning point in the Democratic race. Not because Clinton put together an impressive set of wins and closed the gap between her and Obama, but because that was the day the pundits forgot about the delegate count.

By all accounts, Hillary netted less than ten delegates on Super-de-duper Tuesday-bowl-mania, but somebody forgot to alert cable news. Obama has more than made up that ground by winning Wyoming and Mississippi as well as gaining some of Edwards' Iowa delegates. Obama's increased his lead since March 3.

Yet, if the actual state of the race hasn't changed, the narrative sure has. But given that the delegates are awarded proportionally and that Clinton would have to win every remaining state by preposterous margins, it's glaringly obvious that she can't catch Obama short of a riot-inciting convention battle.

Will someone please alert the MSM to pay attention to how the delegates are counted and divided up. It's kind of important to your narrative, even if it doesn't sell as well as a soap opera.

Eliot Spitzer redux:

As expected, opinion as to the significance of private affairs on public office is trending on party lines. Clinching the achievement of farce, David Vitter goes as far as to say that he and Spitzer do not share similar tales.

"I have made a very serious mistake a long time ago and I have to live with that every day," Vitter said, according to Jordan's account. "That's not a flippant statement. I need to spend my whole life making up for that." According to Jordan, Vitter turned "a bit defiant" and added: "Anybody who looks at the two cases will see there is an enormous difference between the two of them. The people that are trying to draw comparisons to the two cases are people who've never agreed with me on important issues like immigration and other things."

What, exactly, the differences are, no one knows. Well, besides the fact that Spitzer resigned and Vitter still serves, even having the cajones to add an abstinence-only clause into an African AIDS relief package. For those scoring at home, that's David Vitter: 2, logic: 0.

On the coverage: Please, no more pontificating on what drives a man to cheat. Ask a 15-year-old and move on with it. Coming to the right conclusion doesn't require a committee.

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Florida and Michigan Inanity

If there's one thing the March 4th primaries made clear, it's that nothing has been cleared up in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. While the vote counting is still incomplete, most counts have Hillary Clinton chipping away at Barack Obama's delegate lead by single digits. Not nearly the sweeping momentum change she and the media would have you believe. Although she clearly demonstrated through the popular vote that her campaign is still viable, she is on record as saying the only thing that matters are delegates, not popular vote. Having used this line of reasoning to belittle Obama's recent run of 11 straight victories, it's more than a tad disingenuous to cozy up to the popular vote at this stage in declaring her own comeback.

A more blatant blow to the face of logic, though, is Clinton's insistence that the delegates from Florida and Michigan be seated at the Democratic convention August 25-28 in Denver. As has been well-documented, those two states were stripped of their delegates after moving their primaries ahead of the traditional first-run states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Problem is, in staking out this position, Clinton expects whoever will listen to ignore some very cogent pieces of information. First, the delegates were stripped last year, well before the heart of the campaign season. The two states were given an opportunity by the Rules committee of the DNC to rescind their decisions and chose not to. That is, the legislature of the states were told that failing to comply would render the voters of their respective states voiceless at the convention and chose not to. If the voters are angry, as Clinton proposes, they need look no further than their own legislatures.

Second, Obama (as well as others) removed his name from the Michigan ballot. While all candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida or Michigan, Clinton refused to remove her name from the Michigan ballot, edging out 'uncommitted' by 15 points.

In order to suggest that the voters are being disenfranchised by not having their delegates seated, she has to presuppose that the current results are the complete will of the voters. That seems rather dubious considering Michigan voters weren't even given the chance to vote for Obama and certainly voter turnout was tempered in both states by the evident futility rendered by the early dates. Short of holding new contests, there is no possibility a seating of the current delegates in any way reflects the true will of the people.

While Clinton's faux populism is quaintly charming, it's a false argument. Suggesting that voters are disenfranchised by not seating delegates is to ignore that the contests were not an accurate test to begin with, especially with Obama not even on the ballot in Michigan.

In combination with some of her previous inflammatory suggestions regarding caucasses and which states are important and which aren't, this stance illustrates not a forthright desire to have every vote count, but rather a specious attempt to treat logic and reason as malleable instruments to suit her particular circumstances.

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Contracting Obama

For years, Blackwater USA, a private security company based in North Carolina, has been the target of wide-ranging criticism and a source of contention surrounding the flailing US effort to stabilize Iraq. The September 2007 killing of 17 civilians in al Nisour square in Baghdad is but one of the more recent and well-publicized incidents, but there have been plenty of others. These include standoffs with Iraqi police and shootings of Interior Ministry employees.

Yet, for all of their stirring things up, Blackwater remains completely unimpeded by any law or the slightest regulation. In fact there are no official statistics on the number of contractors currently in Iraq, what companies are there, or even what the use of the contractors is costing the government. Deaths of these contractors are not included in the official war casualty statistics, either.

While members of the US military are bound by US law (as well as International law depending on the administration at the time), private contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy are not. Amidst the furor surrounding Nisour, when the Iraqi government threatened to ban Blackwater permanently, the State Department even saw fit to grant immunity to guards involved in the shootings, though its authority to do so was dubious at best.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.

The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.

-The New York Times

Enter Barack Obama. Fanfare, celestial choirs and all. For all of his emphasis on his opposition to the war and promise of a quick withdrawal, there has been very little discussion in the primaries about the specifics of one of the most prominent planks in his platform. (Scrutiny of policy has been lacking in general, really.) That is, until Jeremy Scahill released this article and subsequently discussed it on DemocracyNow! last week.

Obama, it seems, will more than likely keep a contingent force of private contractors in Iraq to protect US diplomats and the new embassy, which is expected to sustain upwards of 1500 personnel and be the largest embassy in history. As Scahill indicates, Obama's promise to quickly bring US military personnel home from Iraq or transfer them to Afghanistan does not eradicate the need to protect the diplomats and other personnel left behind in the Green Zone, and the void will almost certainly be filled with Blackwater and other private contractors employed by the State Department.

(Note: In Scahill's analysis, Clinton would have a similar policy, but she has since come out and said she would ban the use of contractors, most likely in reaction to the article in question. Also, Obama has staked out a foreign policy position he proposes is a large diversion from Clinton's, making his use of contractors more of a focal point.)

From Scahill's conversation with Amy Goodman, as he discusses Clinton's and Obama's policies:

And both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a three-pronged approach to what they see as a longer-term presence in Iraq. They say that US personnel are going to remain in the country to protect diplomats and other US officials in the country...Number two is that they want to keep trainers in place that will train the Iraqi military. At present, there’s 10,000 to 20,000 US trainers, all of whom will require security, so that’s a substantial force. And then the third is that they’re saying that they want to keep a force in place to, quote, “strike at al-Qaeda,” in the words of Barack Obama’s Iraq plan.

When the Institute for Policy Studies did an analysis of what this would mean, they said it’s 20,000 to 60,000 troops, not including contractors. And right now we have a one-to-one ratio with contractors and troops in the country. 20,000 to 60,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq, this is something that over the course of ten years the Congressional Budget Office says could cost half-a-trillion dollars. This doesn’t include the fact that you have to have troops bringing supplies in and out of Iraq. It doesn’t include the troops that Obama and Clinton are going to keep in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere. I mean, this is actually a pretty sustained indefinite occupation that’s going to be on the table if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are in office and take power.

Is Barack, then, taking a private stance which differs from his public canon? While it seems that way on the surface, there is an important facet to the situation which Scahill explored. One senior advisor told him that while he "can't rule out, [sic] won't rule out, private security contractors," he "will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law." Accountability is the crux, then.

On this point, Obama far exceeds Hillary. In February 2007, Obama introduced legislation that would hold private security contractors accountable under US law as Defense Department contractors are. That legislation has yet to pass, and most likely never will, as it is vehemently opposed by President Bush. In September 2007, he attached much of the same to a Defense Department Authorization bill accepted by the Senate that called for a reporting of statistics regarding contractors within a period of 90 days.

In all likelihood, this legislation will not be in effect in January of 2009, leaving Obama in a situation where he may have to eat his words on this issue. Given the choice between no contractors in Iraq or unaccountable contractors in Iraq, it seems that given the logistics spelled out by Scahill, he would have to choose the latter. In doing so, he would swiftly create a perception of violating one of his major campaign promises and likely fuel critics of his foreign policy inexperience. Although, one must figure that given the lack of attention paid to this topic thus far he may escape any flare up as most people will be concerned only with bringing the American military home.

It should be noted that after Scahill's article was published in The Nation, Clinton came out in favor of a ban on the use of private contractors overseas. This baldly-transparent parry is not nearly enough to gloss over the fact that while Obama has fought for accountability-however unsuccessfully-for over a year, Hillary has waited until a few days before what may be the deciding round of primaries before offering us a bit of rhetorical legislation. That disparity cannot be ignored.

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