Quote/Unquote 2005 Nov.

George Bush may be the feistiest president since Teddy Roosevelt. Dubya looks like the kind of guy who'd get in your face real fast if he weren't wound so tight behind that presidential reserve. So why, until this week, has he allowed himself to get beaten to a pulp on the Iraq war?

One of the great mysteries of public life has been the absence of an organized Bush effort to defend the war. ...

I don't think the Bushies are numb to seeing their public standing dissed and downgraded. I think they've concluded this is a game that's rigged against them, something over which they have little control. Other presidencies--Nixon, Johnson--obsessed over their bad press. LBJ by legend watched the evening news about Vietnam simultaneously on three TVs, a ticket to neurosis and night sweats. In contrast, the Bush media model has been to ignore the polls, skip the spin and govern for results.

In 1915, Woodrow Wilson turned a blind eye to the Armenian genocide. In the 1940's, Franklin Roosevelt refused to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. In 1994, Bill Clinton turned away from the slaughter in Rwanda. And in 2005, President Bush is acquiescing in the first genocide of the 21st century, in Darfur.

The Neocons are going to jail or given sinecures, and their star is falling faster than the Chicxulub meteor that killed off the dinosaurs.

We can't leave. We can't stay. We can't fail.

WEEK of November 21, 2005

In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held" cabal" -- as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it -- wields control.

I do believe that if the Americans aren't very careful about how they do it, when they withdraw there will be a civil war and possibly a regional war. What Lebanon should have taught us is that when sectarian conflicts develop into guerrilla war, and when the central government and its army are for any reason paralyzed, a conventional war can easily ensue. As for a statute of limitations on"you broke it, you own it," whatever it is it is surely longer than 2 years.

Think of a fast-moving highly contagious disease that wipes out 5% of the world population (50 million people). Half a million of them in the U.S. ...bodies pile up in the streets. There aren't enough morticians to bury the dead. Nor are there enough doctors and nurses to tend to the sick. The churches close, the schools shut. Telecommunications and transportation grind to a halt. The public succumbs to hysteria and panic. Police protection fails. Order decays. Productivity dives. Sounds like a scene from a science fiction film, doesn't it? But what if I told you, it already happened? What if I told you it was the pandemic flu that swept across America and around the globe in 1918? Or if I told you that this glimpse into the past might be a preview to our future. An avian flu pandemic is no longer a question of if, but a question of when.

Polls are, it might be said, what's left of American democracy. Privately run, often for profit or advantage, they nonetheless are as close as we come these days -- actual elections being what they are -- to the expression of democratic opinion, serially, week after week. Everyone who matters in and out of Washington and in the media reads them as if life itself were at stake.

WEEK of November 14, 2005

Bush's approval ratings are in free-fall! He is down to a 34 percent approval rating. Only Nixon in the last days of Watergate was doing worse. Seriously, I am worried about these numbers. At some point, the executive will stop being able to govern. Bush has been a disastrous president, but a country without any executive at all can be in real trouble (ask the Iraqis). It raises the question of whether the Dems can pull off a miracle and take the House of Representatives in 2006 (not at all likely, but not impossible), and whether if that happened there would be an impeachment.

What did Bob Woodward know, and when did he know it?

The old Clintonism: One Clinton succeeds in making both sides think he agrees with them. The new Clintonism: One Clinton pitches to one side while the other assuages the other side. Example: Hillary carefully maintains her appeal to pro-war voters while her husband denounces the war that she voted for as a"a big mistake." ... A two-person straddle was needed because Hillary isn't gifted enough a talker to practice the old single-player Clintonism by herself. [Didn't they use this technique before--Bill said he was for"ending welfare as we know it" while liberals were allowed to hope that Marian Wright Edelman's friend Hillary would stop him?--ed True. But you didn't have Bill saying we should reform welfare while Hillary was out in public saying that would be a"big mistake." ... Prediction: The new trick won't work. Hillary will come under added pressure because of her husband's remarks

The hell with the past--I'd like to put the future behind us.

I was wrong. Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told - and what many of us believed and argued - was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda. It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake."

WEEK of November 7, 2005

This is not war. Contrary to what those individuals in France who have an intellectual investment in the discourse of war would like to persuade us (roughly: the far right, the far left, the Islamic fundamentalists), this is not, thank heaven, a matter of an Intifada wearing French colors. But it is a process that's surely unprecedented. It is a group reaching its melting point in almost a Sartrean sense. And it's a group reaching its melting point in a new way, with cell phones, instant text messaging, mobile units, groups rushing in all directions with an anger that, when it's done targeting the neighborhood school and gym, when it's burned down or tried to burn down the last building that stands for France and its government, will start attacking neighbors, friends, their own selves; it's their own father's car that the vandals will, finally, search out and torch. Then it will be over.

If any of the Bush-Blair war team had troubled to read Naples '44, Norman Lewis's engaging diary of the American-led Allied invasion and occupation of Italy, they would have known what to expect: bombing and shelling of civilians, brutal treatment of suspects, ignorance of local culture and customs, complete loss of public services, looting, bombing atrocities, separatist movements, banditry and suspicion of imposed democracy. We need more historians in government, and fewer lawyers.

Last week, the conservative movement had its Rosa Parks moment -- we refused to give up our seat on the bus even for a Republican president. Regarding that event, liberals, mainstream mediacrities as well as conservative movementistas all shared a common impression: Something important happened last week for conservatism -- and thus for the broader political scene. The successful opposition to Miss Miers was not a triumph for just some faction of the conservative movement. If it used to be said that the Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer, then it also could be said that the conservative opposition to Miers was the entire conservative movement on the hunt -- at full regimental strength.

If medals are being given out, perhaps this is what should never be forgotten. It was the" crazies" in the streets. It was kids in weird clothes with strange hair. It was a man holding a puppet and a woman with a homemade sign. They knew then what it took the majority of Americans years to figure out. That the war would be a disaster and that, in any case, it was wrong. Those people, braving a bitterly cold day in New York City in February 2003, had better intel, more foresight, and better judgment than the military, the intelligence agencies, and especially the President and Vice President of the United States and all their advisors.

WEEK of October 31, 2005

What Mr. Reid's pose is"really all about" is the emergence of the Clare Boothe Luce Democrats. We're referring to the 20th-century playwright, and wife of Time magazine founder Henry Luce, who was most famous for declaring that Franklin D. Roosevelt had"lied us into war" with the Nazis and Tojo. So intense was the hatred of FDR among some Republicans that they held fast to this slander for years, with many taking their paranoia to their graves.

Seymour Hersh:

One of the things that's overwhelming to me is the notion that everybody believed before March of '03 that Saddam had weapons. This is just urban myth. The fact of the matter is that, in talking to people who worked on the UNSCOM and also in the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were pretty much clear by '97 that there was very little likelihood that Saddam had weapons. And there were many people in our State Department, in the Department of Energy, in the CIA who didn't believe there were weapons. And I think history is going to judge the mass hysteria we had about Saddam and weapons.And one of the questions that keeps on coming up now is why didn't Saddam tell us. Did he tell us?

Scott Ritter:

Well, of course he told us. Look, let's be honest, the Iraqis were obligated in 1991 to submit a full declaration listing the totality of their holdings in WMD, and they didn't do this. They lied. They failed to declare a nuclear weapons program, they failed to declare a biological weapons programs, and they under-declared their chemical and ballistic missile capabilities. Saddam Hussein intended to retain a strategic deterrent capability, not only to take care of Iran but also to focus on Israel. What he didn't count on was the tenacity of the inspectors. And very rapidly, by June 1991, we had compelled him into acknowledging that he had a nuclear weapons programs, and we pushed him so hard that by the summer of 1991, in the same way that a drug dealer who has police knocking at his door, flushes drugs down a toilet to get rid of his stash so he could tell the cops,"I don't have any drugs," the Iraqis, not wanting to admit that they lied, flushed their stash down the toilet.

They blew up all their weapons and buried them in the desert, and then tried to maintain the fiction that they had told the truth. And by 1992 they were compelled again, because of the tenacity of the inspectors, to come clean. People ask why didn't Saddam Hussein admit being disarmed? In 1992 they submitted a declaration that said everything's been destroyed, we have nothing left. In 1995 they turned over the totality of their document cache. Again, not willingly, it took years of inspections to pressure them, but the bottom line is by 1995 there were no more weapons in Iraq, there were no more documents in Iraq, there was no more production capability in Iraq because we were monitoring the totality of Iraq's industrial infrastructure with the most technologically advanced, the most intrusive arms control regime in the history of arms control.

And furthermore, the CIA knew this, the British intelligence knew this, Israeli intelligence knew this, German intelligence, the whole world knew this. They weren't going to say that Iraq was disarmed because nobody could say that, but they definitely knew that the Iraqi capability regarding WMD had been reduced to as near to zero as you could bring it, and that Iraq represented a threat to no one when it came to weapons of mass destruction.

I grew up with Walter Cronkite. Fortunately, he had a really big house so he didn't notice. ...Presidential elections. He was there. The Battle of Gettysburg. He was there. And he's the reason why I went into journalism.

One of the strangest and most wonderful things about Iraq, to Western eyes, is that the ancient past is so interwoven with the present. It's not just the Babylonian ruins poking up among the housing projects. I have spoken to weeping pilgrims who seemed to make no distinction between the killing of the Shiite martyr Hussein in A.D. 680 and of friends and relatives who died last week. Politicians routinely impugn their rivals as Iranian stooges by calling them Safawees, as if the Safavid empire of Persia (1502-1736) still existed. Insurgents toting AK-47's openly say they want to bring the country back to the early seventh century.

If Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's newest choice to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, is confirmed, he will become the fifth Roman Catholic on the court. A Catholic majority on the nine-member court would be a significant historical shift. Until 1988, there had been no more than two Catholic justices at once. And for most of the court's history, there was typically only a single Catholic.

Civilians have moved to center stage in wars since the beginning of the 20th century. A 2001 study on civilians in war by the International Committee of the Red Cross showed a shift in a stark statistic: In World War I, 9 soldiers were killed for every civilian, while in today's wars 10 civilians die for every soldier.

If Mr. Cheney can't address the questions about his conduct, if he can't be forthcoming about the activities in his office that gave rise to the investigation, then he should resign. And if he won't resign, Mr. Bush should demand his resignation.

The simplest proof of the myriad American errors is that, starting around May 2004, Washington began reversing course wholesale. Troop withdrawals were postponed. The decision to hold caucuses and delay elections was shelved. The American-appointed Governing Council was abolished. The hated United Nations was asked to come in and create and bless a new body. In recent months, the reversal is wholesale. The United States has been bribing tribal sheiks, urging the Iraqi government to end de-Baathification and make a concerted effort to bring the Sunnis back into the political process.

WEEK of October 24, 2005

It takes an Aussie newspaper to put the headline so bluntly. As the milestone of 2,000 US military deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war passed on Tuesday," Iraq requires more sacrifice: Bush." Now Bush is menacing us with Usamah Bin Laden taking over Iraq. Note that this scenario would have been utterly laughable in 2002. That is, anyone who heard that Bush thought Usamah Bin Ladin could overthrow Saddam and take over Iraq would have just fallen down laughing. Saddam would have had all the al-Qaeda people just taken out and shot. Twice. It was risible. Now, Bush has screwed up things so royally that he can even say this with a straight face. (It still is fairly ridiculous, since 80 percent of Iraqi is Shiites and Kurds who would kill Usamah on sight, and few Iraqi Sunni Arabs would want a fugitive Saudi terrorist as their leader). It is George W. Bush's fault if this outcome is at all plausible. His policies have reduced Iraq to violent chaos, and he is the one who let Usamah escape at Tora Bora. And then he made the US military lie about it during the presidential campaign! Impeachment is too good for this kind of dishonesty and incompetence. Actually I have to just stop writing about this now before my blood pressure goes into the 200s. Usamah in Iraq, indeed.

It should be noted that all modern presidents face a slew of issues, and none of them have felt in control of events but have instead felt controlled by them. JFK in one week faced the Soviets, civil rights, the Berlin Wall, the southern Democratic mandarins of the U.S. Senate. He had to face Cuba, only 90 miles away, importing Russian missiles. But the difference now, 45 years later, is that there are a million little Cubas, a new Cuba every week. It's all so much more so. And all increasingly crucial. And it will be for the next president, too.

Probably the single greatest problem between blacks and whites in America is that we are forever witness to each other's great shames.

The principle of the rule of law--equality under the law and a clear standard for perjury and obstruction of justice--was the overriding issue in this impeachment.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on Meet the Press Oct. 23, 2005:

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.

I’ve always thought of George W. Bush as the Lou Reed of Presidents. Well, maybe that isn’t quite true, though it would be if you substituted “never” for “always.” But it is true that when I heard about President Bush’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Lou Reed is who I thought of.

After his days in the Velvet Underground, Reed made a series of solo records that attracted a small but fanatical group of fans. Then in 1975 he released Metal Machine Music, an hour-long double album of nothing but unlistenable distortion and feedback—no lyrics, no melodies, just electronic noise. When his fans got over their shock at seeing their beloved proto-punk rocker, whose songs usually dealt with death and heroin addiction and sadomasochism, all of a sudden turning weird, their reaction to the record was just like the reaction of today’s Republicans to Harriet Miers: A few pretended to like it, some loyally tried to defend it, and others said that we’d all appreciate it a lot more in 10 or 20 years. But most Reed fans thought, and said, that it was terrible—which it was.

If America's support is supposed to be a kiss of death, it is amazing how many Arab and Muslim leaders and liberals come to Washington, lips parted. Our true partners will always be those who are attracted to the benefits our power can confer. They will be our natural allies in this contest, and most of them will not be Islamists.

They will not all be democrats either. Should we flay ourselves? There are those who criticize America for its inconsistency: that it preaches democracy, but supports dictators. But there is another kind of inconsistency that leaves Middle Easterners even more baffled: it is when America punishes friends and rewards enemies. This seems to be the policy advocated by those who would engage and even coddle the Islamists. But I ask you this: which inconsistency is more likely to leave you without friends and allies–and without much democracy either? To me, the answer is obvious.