I like Tim Roemer, the former Congressman from Indiana who now is President of the Center for National Policy as well as his staff -- but I have to give him some push back on his New York Times op-ed this morning.

Roemer is proposing that Dems stop getting lost in the quagmire of developing better policy proposals and trying to sell them to Americans and just make the next elections about how bad the Republicans are. He wants to take a page out of Karl Frost's 1946 Republican strategy posing the question to Americans, "Had Enough? Vote Democratic."

Roemer writes:

Sixty years later, Democrats would be smart to turn Karl Frost's slogan on Karl Rove's strategy.

"Had Enough? Vote Democratic!" is a slogan that spotlights the many mistakes in Iraq, the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina and the mangling of fiscal responsibility with "bridges to nowhere." Indeed, you can see and hear Democratic candidates rallying their voters at Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners with a passionate and rhythmic chorus:

"The administration said Iraqis would greet us with roses as liberators, yet our soldiers are attacked with homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Had Enough? Vote Democratic.

"The administration said it was prepared for a hurricane in New Orleans, yet our government's feeble response prompted Bangladesh to offer us $1 million in aid. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

"The administration said it would bring competency to our federal budget, yet our nation faces catastrophic deficits. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!"

And if you want to fire up the base, you can string together references to Jack Abramoff, Abu Ghraib and the Dubai ports deal. "Had Enough?" works well on classic campaign materials like buttons and bumper stickers while its simplicity makes it a cinch to "go viral" on the Internet.

"Had enough?" will speak to both Democrats and disillusioned Republicans. Liberals can use "Had Enough?" to reach out to voters enraged over the incompetent management of Iraq. Moderates might use "Had Enough?" to persuade swing voters on fiscal issues. And the implicit rejection of neoconservative politics will appeal to all voters who seek to spurn tainted Republican candidates.

"Had Enough?" also pre-empts Democrats' worst habits. Too often we've made campaigns complicated and policy-heavy. We love to unveil 40-page position papers and wonky diagrams. "Had Enough?" clears a broad path through such minutiae. "Public sentiment is everything," Abraham Lincoln said 150 years ago. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

Karl Frost's simple words can serve as the cavalry charge to help win the coming electoral battles — something Democrats are in an incredibly strong position to do. But make no mistake: new ideas matter. Democrats will also need the artillery of a disciplined, focused set of core proposals to complement their criticism of Republican excesses.

As we head into the midterm elections, Democrats should finally understand, as Lincoln and Frost did before, that you must win the majority before you can make public policy.

There is some logic to what Roemer proposes. There's a lot Americans are angry about.

But trying to sell the notion that no party can be as bad as what is in office now would assure that Dems stay a minority party.

What Roemer neglects is, that unlike 1946, there are more declared Independents than either Republicans or Democrats today -- and more independent-leaning and independent-minded Republicans and Democrats than the American political scene has witnessed in a century.

These Independents can't be wooed by celebrations of how bad the Bush administration has been. They want to see better ideas and proposals put on the table.

But what Roemer proposes doesn't square for declared Democrats either.

Democrats have been avoiding some of the battles they need to have inside their party to help develop a more compelling set of proposals they can stand behind -- but Dems are afraid of those debates in fear of fracturing a tired party. They have to work through some policy civil wars and then BE ABOUT SOMETHING.

Roemer wants to skip that process and be about nothing now, and something later -- after winning a "How Bad The Other Guys Are" campaign.

"Had Enough?" is not enough, and the President of the Center for National Policy is well-positioned to help get some of those ideas we need on the table.

-- Steve Clemons

Oil barons are inappropriately lining their coffers with mountains of dollars from American citizens by generating oligopolistic cartel conditions on the price of refined oil and gasoline. Yesterday, Exxon posted a first-quarter profit of $8.4 billion and is on track to outpace the most profitable year in its history.

Dems and other outraged Americans should beat on the oil and gas industry and immediately suspend all tax giveaways that we have arranged for an industry that is sucking away a greater share of the meager resources of America's struggling middle class and less well off families.

The combination of Katrina damage in the Gulf and the increased drumbeat for a hot strike against Iran have given oil firms the camouflage they need to drive prices higher in an implicitly organized cartel. The government -- even with competent investigations -- will be unable to do much in this environment.

But no one seems to be going back and pounding on Dick Cheney again to demand once more -- Supreme Court decision or not -- that he disclose what America's energy firms sought from him, what they advised him, what was bartered between his office and the energy firms in secret meetings when assembling a "national energy policy."

If there is blame to be assigned for today's situation, it rests with Cheney and the utter failure of the Bush energy policy that was crafted cooperatively with a secret oil and energy industry cabal -- whose proceedings of key meetings Cheney will not disclose.

Why are Dems not resurrecting this Cheney/Oil Industry controversy?

I will be writing more on this as I don't think that "cheap gas" should be the goal of Dems and oppose a race to the bottom with the President on figuring out all the tax suspensions and rebates that would generate only minor offsets for American consumers against the obscene profits of ravenous oil CEOs.

Even at current prices, gas in this country is cheap compared to virtually any other place in the world. The problem is that the rise in prices is lining the pockets of price-gougers rather than going into serious R&D and the establishment of credible alternatives. Our goal should not be cheap gas -- it should be a Manhattan Projet of a new and different energy future.

It's hard for Americans to hear about this sort of serious energy plan when they see their household funds seriously diminished by rapidly rising gas prices -- but that makes the Bush administration's energy sector performance doubly failed. But Dems need to go to this battle not only with criticism but with a BETTER PLAN in hand.

The only way to compel Americans to give Dems a chance at the helm again is for Bush's opposition to embarrass the failures of leadership, vision and good policy -- and to then put a better plan on the table. Right now, Dems are criticizing but not offering the key piece of how to get America's energy and environmental future on track.

Incumbent oil firms are addicted to the narcotic of irresponsibly high profits while Bush and his team, as well as much of the country, are addicted to the narcotic of highly subsidized gas -- which a massive defense budget and tens of thousands of lives are being deployed to secure.

America needs oil access, but it must move now to diminish that dependence and do so in a way that moves us into a more environmentally sound position.

However, the oil industry is in the way of progress -- and in these conditions, they are behaving like war-profiteers, benefiting inappropriately when American men and women are dying in Iraq and perhaps next in Iran in part to preserve America's stakes in strategic oil assets.

Senators and Congressmen calling hearings and launching investigations shouldn't just have weak, unfocused sessions trying to find evidence of cartel coordination behind rising gas prices, they should focus on the war, on Katrina, and on the oil industry's cynical use of these events to force Americans to sacrifice more from their pocketbooks.

It's the war, oil profits, Vice President Cheney, and that secret meeting he had with oil industry leaders. . .

-- Steve Clemons

(CIA Director Goss Swearing Oath We Think He Has Forgotten)

Dear CIA Director Goss:

You were once a member of the U.S. Congress. You represented constituents and swore an oath to defend and protect our system of government, our Constitution.

A secrecy-obsessed national security bureacracy may be a necessity on some fronts, but democracy requires that it be limited. Attempting to squelch retired CIA personnel from speaking to the public or media is absolutely outrageous and inconsistent with our form of democracy.

You are completely out of line and have forgotten what your oath to this nation was all about.

You are fast becoming a caricature of a person so obsessed with leaks that you break the system in order to save it. Your harrassment of former CIA staff is unacceptable and your attempts to stifle the civil society of this country is antithetical to what democracy is about.

Turn this harrassment policy you have launched against former staff around.

Don't become the Dr. Strangelove of national intelligence and the CIA.

Sincerely,

Steven Clemons

The Washington Note

This is what I had to send to the CIA Director this morning after reading Demetri Sevastopulo's important piece that ex-CIA agents are being harrassed and threatened by Goss for any "unauthorized" meetings with the press or media.

Sevatopulo writes:

The Central Intelligence Agency has warned former employees not to have unapproved contacts with reporters, as part of a mounting campaign by the administration to crack down on officials who leak information on national security issues.

A former official said the CIA recently warned several retired employees who have consulting contracts with the agency that they could lose their pensions by talking to reporters without permission. He added that while the threats might be legally "hollow," they were having a chilling effect on former employees.

The CIA called the allegations "rubbish". Jennifer Millerwise Dyke, spokeswoman for CIA director Porter Goss, said former employees with consulting deals could lose their contracts for violating the CIA secrecy agreement by having unauthorised conversations with reporters. But she stressed that under current law, "termination of a contract does not affect pensions".

The clampdown represents the latest move in what observers describe as the most aggressive government campaign against leaks in years. The Justice Department is investigating the disclosure to the media of secret overseas CIA prisons and a highly classified National Security Agency domestic spying programme authorised by President George W. Bush. Last week, the CIA fired Mary McCarthy, an intelligence officer, for allegedly leaking classified information and having undisclosed contacts with reporters.

Mr Goss has increased the number of "single issue" polygraphs -- lie detector tests aimed at ferreting out leaking employees. A second former official said Mr Goss was trying to "scare everybody" by using polygraphs aggressively.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former CIA general counsel, said Mr Goss was "obviously taking a much more forward-leaning stance than any of us have seen for years". But another former intelligence official said the agency was simply returning to a "more conservative regimen" to remind employees that they work for a secret organisation.

The bottom line that Porter Goss needs to know is that former agents and CIA officials go into journalism, think tanks, work on the Hill, work for corporations, or go into numerous NGOs. They are part of a vast, networked group of former CIA staffers who try to meld back into society after working "on the inside".

Certainly, some material they know is classified and should not be disclosed unless those in power are engaged in serial abuses of power -- which I think parts of this administration are, particularly when it comes to policies dealing with torture, rendition, and the secret detention and disappearing of prisoners.

But to try and shut down all "unauthorized" meetings and discussions with the media is like putting them in a silo for the rest of their lives. This is outrageous and assures that if he doesn't change course -- which I hope he does -- when Goss finally leaves the CIA, he will leave as one of the single most detested directors there.

And everything he is doing now will be reversed. This "police state" stuff has gone far too far.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: More on the CIA's "political appropriateness" squeeze by National Journal's Shane Harris.

Karl Rove is back before the Valerie Plame case grand jury this morning -- being reported everywhere.

What would a Rove indictment be worth in terms of Bush approval rating points -- now at 32%.

Lots of folks have already jumped out of the Bush Kool-Aid ring (Tony Snow actually said that he would work for Bush but wouldn't "drink the kool-aid"), so the hard core Bush advocates are getting condensed.

My bet is that if a Rove indictment comes down, we'll see Bush lose 4 points, down to 28%, all other things remaining equal.

-- Steve Clemons

ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon hopes to pull 30,000 troops out of Iraq if conditions are right on the ground.

The condition that most matters most to the White House and our President, "the decider," is the proximity to election day on November 7, 2006.

-- Steve Clemons

(European Parliament Member Cem Oezdemir)

Cem Oezdemir, a former German Bundestag Member and now a Member of the European Parliament, will be coming to Washington soon to press the matter of the CIA's kidnappings, rendition program, and secret prisons in Europe -- which may still be operating there.

A European Union report has been released that states that "European governments condoned the abduction, transport and detention of terrorist suspects by the United States on European territory."

Regrettably, the European Parliament's Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Secret Transport and Illegal Detention of Prisoners has not posted the report on its website.

(The Committee's IT guy must have the day off -- but seriously, this is a marketing mistake. . .UPDATE: here is the report in French; not translated yet.)

I am hoping to have Cem Oezdemir lead a discussion about these issues at the New America Foundation but that's not a done deal. I'll be sure to post details if he agrees to speak.

Here is what Oezdemir and fellow Green European Parliament Member Kathalijne Buitenweg had to say when the Parliament report was released today:

We welcome the strong line taken by the interim report in denouncing the violations of fundamental rights that have occurred on EU territory as a result of furtive and illegal CIA activities. It is a major shortcoming, however, that the report goes soft on Member States, which were either actively or tacitly complicit in these abuses.

It is important to openly condemn those Member States, which were unwilling or failed to exert control over the illegal activities of the CIA in their jurisdiction. It is unacceptable that certain Member States are resisting calls to investigate the legitimate allegations of illegal flights on their territory.

The refusal of some Member States to cooperate with the EP inquiry is repugnant and highlights the limits of the temporary status of the committee. If the Parliament is to ensure that the violations are properly investigated and complicit authorities are outed, the temporary committee must be transformed into a genuine Committee of Inquiry.

I'm glad that while many in America are distracted by the fact that Fox News has just merged the White House more closely into its media empire, that someone is thinking about the fact that America is running a global network of secret prisons.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: This is in from a staff member in the European Parliament who did a quick and dirty review of the European Parliament report:

Summary of the Report

Apart from the fact that it is odd to present the draft report to the press before discussing it in the committee, the report itself is very good and very strong.

In the "whereas", it refers to art 6 of the EC Treaty (fundamental rights), to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to the interdiction of torture, non-refoulement principle.

More concretely it fully supports the work of the Council of Europe and it also refers to the conclusions of the Swedish ombudsman as well as to the judicial and parliamentary inquiries in some member States.

It states that the work made so far by the temporary committee confirms the 'bien-fonde' of the decision to set it up, it asks for continuing the work.

The report states that a member state is responsible even in case of passive cooperation (see conclusion of the Venice Commission) or if it fails to prevent secret arrest and/or detention.

It asks for a better control on activities of foreign secret services in EU.

It states that the information gathered by the temporary committee is already sufficient to establish that "serious and inadmissible violation of fundamental rights" have been taken place in the EU.

The CIA is clearly responsible for abduction, detention and extraordinary rendition (in some cases of EU citizens). The behaviour of some member States is not appropriate.

It states that some EU governments were unlikely unaware of extraordinary rendition In Sweden, there are evidences that renditions were made by Swedish officials, the same in Bosnia.

The report considers that the Chicago convention has been violated: no sufficient checks and legislation in Member States to prevent such use of EU airspace and airports for illegal actions.

In conclusion, we can say that the report is very good in denouncing the facts that have been taken place in the EU territory, it provides for evidences. It states that there is clearly a violation of National, EU and international law.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Natan Sharansky must be sad that April has rolled along and Dubya has not invited him over to the Oval Office for lunch and a chat.

So, Sharansky has written as obseqious a letter to the President as one can imagine via the Wall Street Journal.

It turns out, however, that the way Sharansky describes Bush in his opener is pretty accurate:

There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world.

Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.

That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.

With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure.

Yes, the President is such a dissident that he is on the basis of principle seemingly willing to try and permanently change the system of checks and balances that has helped make this nation a great democracy.

Mr. Sharansky -- this is for you -- please note that a dissident President as you have described is not a President but presumes to be a monarch.

You are not celebrating democracy in your article -- you are calling for the type of zealotry that breeds chaos and which, if Bush were to succeed in the kind of plan you call for, would cause this nation's collapse.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Thanks to BB for the WSJ link.

(Joseph Cirincione)

Wow. I've just confirmed that nuclear non-proliferation giant Joseph Cirincione is moving out of his long-time nest at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is moving to the Center for American Progress.

Cirincione is easily the country's leading progressive voice on nuclear non-proliferation and is widely respected on defense policy issues. He was one of the key personalities in the recent film, "Why We Fight", directed by Eugene Jarecki.

(Jon Wolfsthal)

Recently, Cirincione's brilliant deputy, Jon Wolfsthal left Carnegie to become a Fellow in CSIS's International Security Program.

That leaves the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace without a leading personality -- for the moment -- in the nuclear non-proliferation field. Perhaps Jessica Mathews has someone lined up, or maybe Wolfsthal will be getting a phone call soon.

(Robert O. Boorstin)

The next big news is that it is rumored -- though confirmed by two sources to me -- that Robert "Bob" Boorstin, who is currently Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy, is joining the senior public policy staff in the corporate communications division of Google. This is a fascinating move, and Bob is a 'framing' genius -- so it will be interesting to see what he does to Google and they to him.

Losing Boorstin in the national security "re-framing" arena at this time does not thrill me as his voice is very important -- and now doubt he'll have to mute it while piling up Google options.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Senior CIA official Mary McCarthy has denied leaking information to Dana Priest about the CIA's secret Eastern European prisons. She has argued that she did not have access to intelligence about these prisons, though seems to be admitting to unauthorized discussions with journalists.

A couple of comments. First, just for the record, many CIA officials and analysts have contacts with journalists. Heck, many journalists during the Cold War were doing the bidding of the CIA. But more importantly, the CIA frequently learns as much from journalists covering a story if they develop good mutually useful communications as analysts do on their own.

Any decent analyst or official who did not have contact with journalists, academics, trade association reps, and others would be lousy at their job in my book.

I will be attending the American Political Science Association annual conference over Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia this year -- and I always meet several CIA officials trolling the conference there. Perhaps these officials have "authorization" to be doing what they are doing -- but I have had some serious discussions about terrorist-tracking with them that could not have fallen into the "authorized bin."

One other thing. I was surprised when the news of Mary McCarthy's firing happened that so many immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was Dana Priest's source on the secret CIA prisons.

I kept my powder dry on that one and did not post or link to any of these stories because they conflicted with something I had written about Priest's work and sources some time ago:

But Dana Priest has had other major scoops as well -- perhaps the greatest recent one being the revelations about secret detention centers abroad where American authorities and/or their proxies are detaining prisoners in an "off the books" manner.

Immediately, after Priest's story, Senate Republicans began attacking each other -- thinking that one or more of them had spilled classified information to Dana Priest as the revelation of such detention centers was allegedly made by Vice President Cheney at a Republican caucus meeting in the Senate. Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert actually called for an investigation of who leaked the information to Priest rather than calling for an investigation of the secret detention facilities.

TWN has spent the last several days groveling, promising baby-sitting sessions, trading information I had from some research in areas others were interested in for information on Dana Priest's work -- and it has been tough. Dana Priest is an astoundingly good investigative journalist and does not leave a large footprint.

But TWN has confirmed from multiple sources that the Senate Republican blame-fest after the Dana Priest article was even more theatrically absurd because Priest had no single source on that story. She had many, many sources in the U.S. and in Europe.

We have reached such a level of obsession with information and sources -- and have personalized and celebritized some of these sources and commentators -- that we incorrectly assume that a single person walks out with information that a reporter like Dana Priest might use. Her work deserves a Pulitzer because it is based on old-fashioned, disciplined investigative journalism that involved interviews with literally hundreds of people.

The detention center story is ripe for others to write more. There is evidence out there on these centers -- and more work can be done. But don't look for a single source; look for the dozens who will convey what has been happening and confirm.

There was no single U.S. Senator and no single CIA official who gave Priest her Pulitzer-prize winning scoop, which I thought she deserved the day the story broke.

My hunches are that her source(s), are in Europe -- not the United States. Dana Priest made two long trips through Europe and Eastern Europe these last couple of years and developed much of her material on the secret prisons there.

But fascinating that President Bush wants to polygraph for those who leaked on the CIA prisons, and those who exposed the warrantless wiretap program, but not a single member of his staff for exposing Valerie Plame Wilson's secret CIA identity.

According to some inside the intel arena, Valerie Wilson's work had a lot to do with monitoring Iran's nuclear weapons appetite and capabilities and possibly helped feed Iran nuclear technology junk that could distract and complicate Iran's weapons program efforts. If true, this is quite consistent with the Iran Chapter in Jim Risen's new book, State of War.

I'm not going to say anything more here than say that Wilson was "possibly" doing this.

But if this account of Plame-Wilson's activities is true, those who exposed Valerie Plame Wilson helped undermine American national security in much more major ways that haven't yet been disclosed.

Where are the polygraph tests for your staff, Mr. President?

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson offered another installment in his own "straight talk express" in an article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

He opens with a powerful blast that articulates what true nationalists in this country are feeling:

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great -- as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

This administration has expanded government -- creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books -- and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat.

This is important truth-telling, served straight up.

-- Steve Clemons

Another new tape.

Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda were always the ball George W. Bush, the Congress, and the Pentagon should have had their eye on.

Saddam Hussein -- though a thug who needed serious supervision -- was a contrived, self-damaging distraction for this country.

By failing to compete against bin Laden who is trying to appeal to the grievances many Muslims hold -- particularly over the Palestinian/Israeli divide -- we have allowed bin Laden to claim "legitimacy" in the eyes of many in the global audience he is performing for.

While America has focused on military means to kill bad guys and terrorists, we have neglected the fact that we, as Americans, must compete for legitimacy against him and reconnect with the aspirations of the "silent majority" in the Muslim world.

If this tape proves to be a record of bin Laden comments, it shows that he is getting bolder because the timing of current events he refers to on these tapes and their release is growing shorter.

If this tape is verified as bin Laden, the fact that another tape has appeared so close to the last is also a sign of impressive boldness on his part -- and hopefully, recklessness.

If America does, in fact, capture or kill bin Laden in the next few months, I suspect that it will produce somewhat of a surge of support for Republicans in the election.

If these tapes keep appearing, there is increasing likelihood of a bin Laden factor in November 2006.

-- Steve Clemons

Last night, in a speech before a Washington power crowd, Hu Jintao mentioned democracy nine times. Nine times -- and his security team and intelligence/police forces did nothing about it.

Jiang Lijun, however, mentions democracy in a draft, unsent email and is sentenced to four years in prison. But China's willingness to talk about the fate of its imprisoned dissidents in this internet/information age is certainly working at a faster rate -- as it was just as recent as November 2003 when Jiang was jailed.

At the rate Hu is going in building a pro-democracy drumbeat, I only hope that he somehow manages to avoid the fate of so many other of his countrymen.

On a less sarcastic note, let me discuss other parts of the dinner I attended last night, a strange, only can happen in Hollywood or D.C. kind of night.

Colin Powell was there, and I did say hello and felt I had to tell him that I was the person who had hosted his former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson's famous October 19th speech. Powell was an extraordinary gentlemen and only spoke well of Larry and what he did in the 20 seconds we had together. He even consented to my taking a picture of him with my table partner, the Deputy Director General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Policy Planning Staff. When it came to a pic with me, Powell was a gentleman about it -- but was sending signals that I ought to do my schmoozing in other corners of the room.

But I'm not going to leave Colin Powell alone yet. He was the star of the evening in that massive Marriott Wardman ballroom. Hu Jintao was there, and everyone stood for him at the beginning and stood for him when he left -- but it was Colin Powell everyone wanted to see.

But Powell's power table was not the head table of the evening that must have had fifty people at it.

Powell was at a simple table of ten, close to the fake power table where Hu Jintao sat -- but modestly located in the room, no frills -- and accessible to people like me who wanted to meet him. And despite the photo thing, he was extraordinarly gracious.

Those Powell was unintentionally overshadowing at his table were Utah Governor and Mrs. Jon Huntsman -- a great guy in my view who used to be American Ambassador to Singapore and then was Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under Robert Zoellick. General Alexander Haig was there -- and the Chinese love him; even more than Bill Clinton. Speaking of Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger was at the table as was Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill, who was kind enough (like Jon Huntsman) to say that he knew my blog. Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty and his wife were also at the table.

But again, Powell was the highlight of the evening because he handled himself so modestly. While many outside the Beltway may be unimpressed with the dinner, the attendees, and dislike Powell as someone who has not gone as far as the Brent Scowcrofts and Lawrence Wilkersons of the world to resolve some of the major questions about the Bush administration's national security and war decisions -- I have to say that it was impressive to watch Powell in action.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the next thirty days or so Colin Powell comes out with an op-ed, done in a sort of Scowcroftian way, that does not blast the Bush team for its past mistakes -- but rather gives a hard-headed roster of options and potential consequences regarding Iran. We need more voices articulating potentially effective strategies that lie between appeasement of and war with Iran. I think Powell sees such a public comment as his duty -- so be on the watch for such a piece.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was one of the opening speakers. She wore pants, which was cool -- but gave the most obsequious and sycophantic comments of the night about Hu. She mentioned that America and China were "old friends" five times. She said that the thousands of people standing outside the White House yesterday at lunch to greet Hu Jintao were evidence of the overwhelming friendship in America for China. Guess no one told her that the crowds were Falun Gong.

Others will report the micro-details of Hu's speech -- and it may already be on the web but I'm not in a place where I can check right now -- but suffice it to say that he injected all of the politically correct comments about working together on common challenges, etc., etc. etc.

What was really interesting about Hu Jintao's speech is that, unlike Jiang Zemin, a few years ago, Hu -- who speaks English -- did not break into English during any part of his speech to deliver an "unambiguous statement" about Taiwan to Americans. In Jiang's speech, he gave most of it in a high-pitched, bird-song sounding Chinese language -- then breaking into tough-sounding, gutteral, heavy-thudding English on Taiwan saying that he wanted no Americans to misunderstand the seriousness of Taiwan to the Chinese people.

In contrast, Hu Jintao spoke zero English on the stage and made Taiwan his 3rd priority out of six that he discussed. And regarding Taiwan, Hu sounded practically dovish with the exception of boiler-plate comments that China wouldn't accept a change in one-China status or any declaration of independence by Taiwan.

One interesting part of his talk was that he focused a lot on getting balanced economic growth inside China. He commented that per capita incomes in Shangai are $6200; Beijing $5000; Eastern China $1000; and China as a whole $700. This clearly worries him.

Hu also spent a lot of his 25 minute speech on the subject of democracy and human rights. And it wasn't gloss; perhaps just self-deception. One wonders if he knows what country he is President of because the China we know exists has few of the freedoms, even in aspiration, that Hu seemed to be highlighting.

Hu also said, quite forthrightly, that China was cooperating strongly with the U.S. on attempting to check the further spread of nuclear weapons and of dealing with both North Korea and Iran through diplomatic means.

As an aside, I spoke with a number of top Chinese foreign ministry officials last night -- and one of the biggies whose name I can't mention lest I get arrested in China for draft, unsent emails about Hu's speech -- said that he has no doubt that Iran's intention is to acquire a nuclear weapon -- but he thinks that a full, fuel-cycle capability modeled somewhat on Japan's system may be where carrots and sticks lead Iran to. Japan is practically an undeclared nuclear weapons state now -- meaning it has the capacity to build nuclear weapons but chooses not to. I don't want to comment on whether this view of Iran's program is a constructive view or not -- I just wanted to log it for future reference.

But what did NOT appear in Hu Jintao's speech?

First, he mentioned nothing about China's energy needs or its global energy grab. And he mentioned nothing about its undervalued currency, which is an extremely hot topic.

This tells me that China looks at Iran, North Korea, even Taiwan problems, and environmental and developing nation problems as manageable in some way -- but it has a different stance on oil and the cheap yuan.

Oil and the yuan are today's untouchable topics in China -- at least going by Hu Jintao's speech at the not-quite state dinner.

After the Washington Post blasted Hu for not taking questions during his trip (and I then blasted the Post), the US-China Business Council, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Committee on US-China Relations created a fake Q&A session.

It was hilarious. At the beginning of the evening, we were told that there were cards on our table to submit questions for Hu Jintao and that these should be handed to people who would collect them from around the room during dinner.

There were no cards. I want on a hunt for them. Table after table had no cards. No one seemed to mind. No one really wanted to ask questions. So, I ripped a page out of my pocket note book and scribbled a question for the Chinese President.

My question was:

President Hu, thank you for your fascinating speech. You mentioned democracy and the importance of supporting and spreading democracy inside China. Could you define the kind of democracy you mean?

I think it was a polite enough question -- but serious -- considering he had mentioned the word democracy NINE TIMES.

So, I went to find a staff member of one of the organizations sponsoring to get my question added to the pile. I kept finding security guards and American and Chinese Secret Service guys (and they were all guys) who looked like they wanted me to shut up and sit down with my unanswered question, but I persevered. I eventually found some organizational staffers who looked shocked that anyone had actually written a question down.

I compelled one of them to take my question and actually get it to the head table. Somehow the staffer got the courage to take my question up to the giant head table -- and rather than giving my paper and scribbles to Carla Hills who moderated the Q & A, someone gave my piece of paper to Hu himself, who just stuffed it in his pocket.

So, we didn't get a public airing of my question. What we got were two questions -- probably previously contrived -- despite Ambassador Hills saying that they had received "so many" questions from people around the room that night.

The Chinese must love us for these kinds of theatrics.

The two questions posed were:

(1) What were the key parts of Hu's plan to generate balanced economic growth in China and boost domestic consumption? (that was a sizzler -- and took Hu 15 minutes to respond); and

(2) What were the key outcomes of meetings with President Bush and how will they affect the future of US-China relations? (softer than the softest softball that Jeff Gannon might have tossed to Scott McClellan; and Hu gave a considerably shorter response than the first question)

It was a power night, room packed with everyone who was anyone except John Sweeney of the AFL/CIO and any other American labor leaders, and I worked hard to try and get a real question asked. And technically, just maybe, Hu is going to read that piece of paper with my scribbled question on it and ponder it a bit.

More later. I'm off to New York for a foreign policy conference over the weekend.

-- Steve Clemons

THE DECIDER IS DOWN TO 33% APPROVAL, and in a Fox News poll no less.

Rumsfeld is down. Condi Rice is up.

The good thing about new Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten is that I'm sure he can count.

-- Steve Clemons

The last time I invested some serious time in what was percolating in the Fitzgerald investigation of the White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA role, the best I was able to get was to confirm that Karl Rove was "enthusiastically" cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation and to confirm that Rove had helped lead Fitzgerald's team to a trove of electronic correspondence inside the VP's office.

But Jason Leopold has not allowed himself to get distracted by other items on the news front and is stalking Fitzgerald's moves. His report today is intriguing and important.

I have not tried to run the traps on this piece as it takes enormous time, which I don't have at the moment, but the fact that the grand jury is meeting now and has been meeting is quite important.

Read the Leopold piece because it seems to me, if this is all nailed down and not just one side of the battle line sending signals and negotiating terms to the other through Leopold, that Rove may be the next real big bump in this story.

-- Steve Clemons

I've not been real high on Washington Post editorials lately, but this one on Hu Jintao's visit gets half-way to some important issues.

The editorial opens:

FOR HU JINTAO, the substance of his summit meeting with President Bush today will occur before it ever begins -- with the 21-gun salute the Chinese president will receive on the White House lawn. Broadcast back to China, the reception will be offered by the communist regime as proof that Mr. Bush regards Mr. Hu as a strategic partner in managing global affairs. But there's another signal moment of the day's events, which will occur just after the Bush-Hu talks. Contrary to the standard protocol for visiting heads of state, there will be no news conference at which American and Chinese journalists can ask unscripted questions.

The White House's acquiescence to a Chinese demand that Mr. Hu not be subjected to possibly embarrassing queries about political prisoners, religious freedom or censorship of the Internet symbolizes a major element of Mr. Bush's policy -- his willingness to relegate China's worsening performance on political freedom and human rights to a back burner.

I agree with the editorialist that there should always be questions posed -- always. It's kind of ironic that when this editorial link appears on the screen, one can do a "Google Search" from the press page -- something that the Chinese cannot do unless using a filtered Google.

But a couple of points of national self-reflection.

We live in a political age now where the unscripted question asked of a president or cabinet secretary is so unique that it makes headline news in the rare moments one occurs. We live in a time when during the last campaign, Cheney and Bush would attend meetings where only card-carrying "good" Republicans were allowed in the door. We live in a time when the RNC in the last election sent out election literature asserting that Democrats would ban the bible and turn their states into bastions of homosexual sin and the media, for the most part, did little to challenge the leadership of the Republican Party for that outrage. We live in a time when we have quietly watched the largest expansion of "official secrecy" in American history -- under a secrecy-obsessed President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense -- except at the moment, of course, when the President wants to tilt an argument his way in a major paper by dumping secrets into the lap of Judith Miller-type journalists.

Hu Jintao should have been compelled to face questions, but the Washington Post's lead should have been:

Why should American reporters expect Hu Jintao to respond to questions when our own government mocks the public's right to know?"

I will be attending the Hu Jintao dinner tonight -- sponsored by the US-China Business Council, National Committee on US-China Relations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

True to the spirit of the Post editorial, the organizers -- probably at Chinese government request -- are blocking entry of any 'electronic' recording devices. So, I'll be there with pen and paper and will do my best to convey anything worth telling from the dinner.

I wonder if they'll be able to Google this TWN post from China.

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Post has run an important piece this morning on the rapidly increasing year on year costs of the Iraq War. Rather than becoming less expensive each year, American costs have increased, in constant dollars, each year.

Jonathan Weisman writes:

With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat.

The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found.

Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The invasion's "shock and awe" of high-tech laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long faded, but the costs of even those early months are just coming into view as the military confronts equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided and procurement costs it never expected.

"We did not predict early on that we would have the number of electronic jammers that we've got. We did not predict we'd have as many [heavily] armored vehicles that we have, nor did we have a good prediction about what our battle losses would be," Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Post has a graphic depicting that this war in Iraq, in dollar terms, has surpassed the U.S. Civil War, the first Gulf War, and World War I in cost. We are going to surpass the Korean War in 9 months. And we are spending at a rate far greater than we were in Vietnam, and will surpass Vietnam in about 24 months.

Without getting into the tragic human casualties in this war, on both sides, the most important net loss from this war is the puncturing of American mystique in the world.

George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and those who empowered them and/or did not do their jobs in constraining or overseeing what they did have pushed the American military to a near breaking point. Their poor planning and the mission creep they devised to turn a war against bin Laden into a war against much of the Middle East has shown the nation's limits.

Now, Iran is moving its agenda forward. Allies like Europe and Japan are not counting on us as much. The President's efforts to cut economic and trade deals in Latin America and during the APEC Leaders Conference fell with a thud. And now the Doha Development Round of trade talks is quickly dying.

It frustrates me greatly that Dems at the leadership level are not out making the case that this war and the maintenance of an occupation in Iraq are harming this nation's interests and future capabilities in profound ways. Dems have a hand in approving these budgets -- and they should begin linking defense spending to an Iraq withdrawal.

-- Steve Clemons

My email has been overflowing today with comments and reactions about what I have written and said in a number of radio interviews about Iran. The comments on TWN and emails have been very helpful.

Some commenters despair that I'm urging some caution about Sy Hersh's general conclusions -- based on the fact that James Fallows and Juan Cole are not in sync with Hersh's assertion that Bush is set on war with Iran. I'm not sure that it matters all that much -- this difference -- because it is essential that people are vigilant about inspecting and overseeing everything this White House does.

And anyone who has read this blog knows that long before most began writing about the possibility of an Iran invasion -- I was doing so. I wrote that John Bolton was installed in the UN primarily to manage an expected collision in the Security Council over Iran.

I wrote that despite America getting stuck and showing serious limits in Iraq, that some around the President would not be rational calculators of costs and opportunities and would try to push on to Iran. That's all in this blog.

My point about Hersh's excellent and provocative piece is that when one talks to many other insiders, the stories don't all sync. They just don't. One of my worries is that Bush's team is attempting to negotiate with Iran indirectly through the media -- demonstrating resolve and willingness to do the unthinkable, even unleashing tactical nukes, as a way to compel Iran to stand down. Iran won't step down in my view unless we engage in direct negotiations -- which according to a former senior national security official who worked close to Bush, "Bush is loathe to do."

Some other thoughts to keep in mind about Iran.

First of all, those intelligence-blind war planners who are advocating a hot action against Iran (particularly in the Air Force and VP Cheney's office) need to consider what will most likely be the most damaging outcome of such a bombing action: there will be a very high probability that China and Russia will exploit America's action against Iran as a way to generate a Russia-China-Middle East Oil Nation Block that is designed to constrain American power and choices.

Secondly, there are many options between war and appeasement. One of these involves a calculation of whether Iran will eventually acquire nukes if it really, really wants them. If one believes that despite the course of action Sy Hersh has written about that Iran will one day end up with nukes -- then a pissed-off, hostile-to-America, democratically legitimate, nuclear weapons nation is the worst outcome. What are some of the better outcomes?

One is to consider figuring out how much of a nuclear program in Iran we can live with -- and offer normalization of relations as one of many other integration tactics to get Iran off of a rogue track and on to a normal nation track. Japan has a nuclear power capacity that is also based on a full fuel cycle system. Perhaps we organize Iran to get that far -- and then stop. Iran could be a nuclear warhead generating nation with such capacity -- just like Japan could be today -- but perhaps that is better than a covert weapons program. My proposal may be naive but these kinds of options need to be discussed.

I have also written on TWN in the past that Ahmadinejad is not Bush; he doesn't have the kind of relatively unchecked executive power that Bush has acquired. It's dangerous to portray Iran's President as someone who has the same kinds of executive decision making authority of the U.S. President. This tendency to mirror image presidential powers here with those abroad can cause serious miscalculation. In fact, as I said on Al Franken's show today, the first thing that happens after we drop bombs on Iran is that Ahmadinejad becomes the hero of the Middle East. Any groups that might be either distancing themselves from him in Iran -- or perhaps even working to undermine him politically -- are neutralized. If we bomb Iran, we empower Ahmadinejad in a way he simply is not empowered today.

I think some in the adminstration do want some semblance of a political collision with Iran. I think that they want to wreck the United Nations in the process and to further enhance the stature of neo-Jesse Helmsianism that runs through the veins of players like Vice President Cheney, John Bolton, David Addington, and others.

I think that there is a serious chance of miscalculation that could lead to a hot conflict with Iran -- but I don't see all of the pieces that need to be in place for that sort of "conscious decision" for conflict in place. I just don't. But we could stumble into a conflict.

As one former senior level intelligence official told me recently:

We could go to war with Iran. It could happen, but the chances are still very low -- because at the end of the day, that sort of action would require incredible imprudence.

Even George Bush -- yes, even Bush -- would probably be forced to weigh the nasty forces he would unleash against America's future strategic interests with such imprudent action, and that I think -- combined with a lot of Generals who would resign and revolt -- will tip the balance against those advocating war.

Iran is pushing its nuclear agenda right now because it perceives American weakness -- and that is a huge problem. It means that Iran is pushing its agenda aggressively and the U.S. President has incentives to try and "prove" he and the country are not tied down in Iraq. That is why we need negotiations, direct negotiations.

General Wesley Clark has been calling for direct negotiations since a speech he gave last year at a conference I helped organize in September. Richard Lugar and many others have joined the chorus calling for the same.

Bush does not want to negotiate directly with Iran -- he wants the Europeans to do it. But America has to -- and every Democratic official and every moderate Republican should be pounding on the White House to get the President out of "loathe to do it" stance.

That's what the Sy Hersh article should be compelling national leaders, particularly Democrats, to do. That would be constructive and would give the Democrats some way to differentiate themselves in the White House-dominated marketplace on Iran.

-- Steve Clemons

Evelyn Iritani of the Los Angeles Times wrote an interesting piece on Rob Portman's departure as U.S. Trade Representative to serve as Joshua Bolten's successor at the Office of Management and Budget.

Susan Schwab, who is now one of three Deputy USTRs, will be succeeding Portman as America's third female U.S. Trade Representative -- following Carla Hills and Charlene Barshefsky.

But Iritani quotes President Bush, Peter Mandelson, Asst. Commerce Secretary Israel Hernandez and me on the implications for the Doha Trade Round from Portman's departure. It's an interesting contrast:

George Bush

Bush credited Portman, his trade representative for the last 11 months, with breathing new life into the so-called Doha round of international trade negotiations. He indicated that Schwab's elevation to chief trade negotiator would maintain continuity at the trade representative's office.

Steven Clemons

Steven C. Clemons, executive vice president of the New America Foundation*, said Portman's move showed that the administration was focusing on domestic budget issues and not trade.

"It signals the [Doha] round is dead," Clemons said. "No one is investing any political capital in it. . . It's just a sign that trade is not going to be a front-burner item."

Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson, chief trade negotiator for the European Union, lamented Portman's departure at a critical juncture. "We will of course manage without him," Mandelson said. "But at this stage in the round, it would have been easier to manage with him."

Israel Hernandez

By contrast, Israel Hernandez, assistant Commerce secretary for trade promotion, said the substitution of Schwab for Portman marked a "natural continuation" that "won't in any way impede our progress on trade negotiations."

This is not a big deal. The collection of contending views and how "spin" is embedded in everyone's perspective, even my own, just caught my eye.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

* note that I am now Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, not Executive Vice President which I was for the previous six years until last year.

Seymour Hersh's article on Bush's plan for war with Iran has helped confirm the worst suspicions of those on the left scared of another neocon-like and neocon-led war in the Middle East and has bolstered some on the far right who were afraid that the White House had become too weak to take on the next nation in Bush's Axis of Evil roster.

I'm not going to argue directly with what Hersh has laid out. He's a brilliant investigative reporter, and I have reported some elements of this story in the past. For one, we have known for some time of a classified Air Force bombing study that has been gathering adherents more quickly over the last six months.

Hersh states that there have been no 'formal' briefings of Democratic leaders about our potential war plans with Iran. I have heard differently -- though the level of "formality" may be debatable. I have heard that certain Democratic Congressional leaders have received a classified briefing on our military options with Iran.

But here is what concerns me.

First, it is not surprising that America would have a bunch of war plans and targeting options -- even including tactical nukes -- in the cabinet. And given the considerable rise in tensions, it would not be surprising that the U.S. was working hard to update and enhance target rosters.

But having such war plans in hand does not mean that war is likely, or a decided course by the President.

Now, in the Iraq War, it is clear that Bush had decided very early -- and before diplomacy had really moved very far -- that he was going to take Saddam Hussein out, and I fear that many neocons and operators around Cheney and Rumsfeld have been using an Iraq "re-tread" strategy with Iran. But what is strange about this build-up is that many of the voices on the inside are not as unified as they were in the Iraq case.

And other thoughtful commentators with stellar reputations disagree with Hersh's ultimate assessment.

James Fallows has told me privately that he was sure in 2002 we were going to war against Iraq and that he has no such feeling now.

Juan Cole has also counseled many on the left not to hyperventilate too much about the Hersh piece -- suggesting that what the administration is cleverly doing is building up the hype to add credibility to America's threat to Iran if it doesn't step down.

I need to reprint sections of the Jim Risen book, State of War, which outlines how America's network of human intelligence operatives and collaborators inside Iran were rolled up after an electronics mistake from CIA headquarters "outed" everyone in the network. We have been flying blind in some ways on what is going on inside Iran.

Secondly, Risen points out that in a botched counter-intelligence effort, America delivered to Iran's delegation to the IAEA in Vienna nearly perfect plans for a Russian trigger device for a nuclear warhead. We hoped to embed in the plans a few mistakes that would take Iran down a course that would waste several years and a lot of research -- but the defector we used actually told the Iranians about some of the defects in the plan.

Another thing that is inconsistent between what I learned recently in Israel and Hersh's article is that he seems to paint a picture of a completely hawkish Israel and Mossad when it comes to Iran. That is simply not the case.

There may be die-hard "invade Iran" hawks in Israel's national security circles, but they are in the minority right now. I had the same exact bias about Israel probably trying to prompt America to take action in Iran -- but had by bias corrected by working hard to have my bias confirmed and finding instead that the Israeli national security establishment was far better informed and had more confidence many other strategies short of war to deal with Iran.

I spent significant time with Mossad officials in Israel and also the equivalent of Iran-watching State Department INR types -- who work in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They simply aren't as nervous about Iran as we are -- not because they don't think that Iran won't be a threat down the road but because they know the problem is not imminent and because they seem to have confidence that Ahmadinejad is being deserted by many on the Iranian right who are embarrassed by his brand of populism.

The right strategy might be to act as if the Bush administration is getting wound up for a hot war with Iran -- and perhaps a dynamic will be triggered that helps get things on a more rational track. In other words, some irrationality could help.

I just think it's important to note that there is a split among insiders, whereas most of these same people were on the same page about Bush's plans before the Iraq invasion.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

For those who have the time and interest, I'll be speaking with Al Franken today at 2:30 pm about what's brewing with Iran.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

John Bellinger is the best that it gets in the Bush administration.

As I've written before, there is a multiple personality reality in any presidential administration, and the trick is to try and make sure that the "dominant personality" of the administration gets the nation on what is mostly a constructive, enlightened course. In my view, particularly in foreign policy, the better players were overshadowed and outmaneuvered for quite a long time by the Douglas Feiths, Scooter Libbys, Paul Wolfowitzes, John Boltons, and Richard Cheneys of the administration.

Thursday last's dinner may signal a change of course in how the Bush administration frames and approaches its engagement in global affairs.

I have thought for some time that the President's "foreign policy soul" may be out for bid again -- and the refreshing recent foreign policy footprints of Condoleezza Rice (though mostly low-hanging fruit) vs. the convulsions over whether Don Rumsfeld stays or leaves present a genuine opportunity for America to possibly get on a different track. Brewing problems with Iran make a change in course very difficult -- but I'm one who believes that if the administration is trying to put a constructive foot forward in foreign policy, the initiative -- and that is what Bellinger is launching -- should be studied and discussed.

John Bellinger, who previously served as a senior lawyer on the National Security Council staff, and I don't agree on everything and certainly have significant disagreements over what appear to me to be blurry and disengenuous definitions of torture and the application of coercive force on resistant prisoners.

However, I give John Bellinger enormous credit for fighting hard inside the administration against policies being pursued by well-known torture advocates.

I give him credit for being willing to walk into a room of top tier public policy intellectuals and journalists and have a genuinely candid discussion about the administration's views on rendition, torture, detainee legal rights, the International Criminal Court, and other hot-button legal issues.

I give John Bellinger credit for taking a constructive approach to America's legal and foreign policy challenges and not taking easy pot shots at others inside the administration who might be tugging in different directions. He is a real professional, but he's also working very hard to do the right things.

Bellinger is the anti-John Yoo, in my view (though not his). I think John Bellinger walks a hard-to-walk line in putting forward a new and "different" frame regarding America's attitude towards international law and, at the same time, carrying water for several years of war-time decisions that his bosses -- the Secretary of State and the President of the United States -- have made and been party to.

Bellinger's obsession with getting America back into serious international law discussions are a good thing, not a bad thing, for this country.

I am posting some of the highlights of a dinner discussion with John Bellinger that I helped organize last Thursday evening.

The transcript of the "on the record" portions of the talk are available here.

I can't post the off the record discussion but in the future, and without attribution, I will find a way to flesh out some of the issues and themes that were "intensely" discussed.

The "international law" stance that John Bellinger is designing is tough because I think that he wrongly thinks he needs to defend most of the administration's decisions, some of which were clear mistakes, rather than simply moving forward. Part of what John Bellinger suggests seems like public relations gloss -- or "framing" as the politically hip call it now -- over decisions that seem troublesome. But part of what Bellinger suggests is substantively new and different -- and given the repeal of much of John Yoo's work -- is extremely important in filling the void that Yoo's really troubling legal rationales once occupied.

And I'll say it anyway, framing matters. Part of what has bothered me about the first four years of the Bush administration was not only substance, but tone. Tone matters. Civility matters. Treating allies with respect matters -- and communicating serious respect for international law and treaties matters.

John Bellinger gets this. John Bolton does not.

Highlights of John Bellinger commentary on "Getting America Back into the Arena of International Law Discourse":

~~ As I think you'll recall, the Secretary had a theme that we developed during the transition period from November (2004) to January when she was confirmed that now is the time for diplomacy.

We had been in two wars in four years. The security issues facing the country had been front and center. The Defense Department actually had been in the lead in fighting the war but those wars, while ongoing, the lead was behind us, now was the time for diplomacy. And one of the key aspects that she and identified was the questions that were being asked about U.S. commitment to international law, our treaty obligations, and, really, the law in general and to commitment to the law. And this was something that was very troubling to both of us.

~~ But for me the job (as the Secretary of State's Legal Adviser, previously held by William Howard Taft IV) has changed a good deal in the last year because of this issue we identified and really it's been the need to get out and talk about the traditional U.S. commitment to our international obligations and to the rule of law. It's something that's very important to the Secretary and to me personally. And so that's really what I want to talk about tonight. Both what she's been doing and what I’ve been doing.

~~ . . .about three-quarters of the way through these questions (in the first meeting between Secretary Rice and State Department staff) about staffing and public diplomacy and things like that a person stood up and asked a very substantive question. It turned out to be a lawyer in the office that I now head up. I was a little worried when she asked this because I knew at that point that I had been designated to take over this office. And I just want to read this to you and the reason is that the Secretary's completely unscripted answer on this point shows really where she is on this issue of international law.

And the question was this -- a young woman who was in the legal adviser's office and she said -- "My question is on a slightly more serious note than the last one. My question is what is your view of the role of international law in international diplomacy." And Dr. Rice said:

International law is critical to the proper function of international diplomacy. And not only that, the United States has been the most important voice for international legal norms and international politics. We depend on a world in which there is some international legal order.

Because there are so many countries in the world that don't have our domestic order, our legal order. We depend on norms of behavior in international politics. And I want just to be very clear about this. We are a country of laws, we will be a country of laws, we respect international obligations and treaty obligations and international law and we're going to continue to make that very clear to the world.

~~ The legal issues relating to the detention of terrorists in the war on terror are some of the most complicated legal issues you can imagine and people really do not understand what is the applicable law. And since we had more or less ceded the public diplomacy front to critics, people began to just sort of assume things and make things up. And there's much that can be in fact criticized about administration policy related to detention and one can have reasonable debates about these issues.

But there are a lot of things out there that are just simply wrong. And so I have gone out to Europe to meet with people, to answer questions, to explain the legal framework that we're applying. And I'll just give you one or two examples so you get a sense of the generalities I'm talking about.

You know, every one of you all knows and probably most of you all believe that we in fact made up this term "unlawful combatants" and it fits people's theories that, of course, the Bush administration is just making up rules, throwing the established legal framework out the window and sort of made up its own terms. And it's just not true at all.

The term unlawful combatant is a term that's been around for about 40 or 50 years, clearly accepted in all of the international law textbooks. It applies to the category of people who are fighting you in a war, but are doing so in an unlawful way, i.e they're fighting your civilians rather than you or their otherwise not following the rules. And so therefore they're not entitled to the normal protections of the Geneva conventions. So they're called unlawful combatants.

~~ Similarly I've walked people through our legal theory on the Geneva conventions. And we get conflicting criticisms through Europe. Just in the last few weeks we had the U.N. (unclear) wishers come out and say "the U.S. has got it all wrong, flagrantly violating international law. The people in Guantanamo are criminals who need to be tried in the criminal system or let go."

But at the same time we are regularly getting communications from people saying, "No no! These people are people captured on the battlefield. You need to be making them prisoners of war and applying the Geneva conventions."

~~ And I think frankly that we're beginning to make a little bit of headway on this argument; that we're at a deep hole on the issue of detainees. We know that there are those concerns that are out there. I think that we're beginning to persuade some European audiences after Secretary Rice's trip in December and our talks on these issues. But these are not as easy as people would think. And that in fact that maybe the rules are not quite as clear as critics would have one believe and that we need to begin to work together. There is a desire in Europe to be with us on these issues and a desire to work together. And if we can begin to try to reach common ground on what the legal rules are that apply to people like this. So we've been doing a lot of work in the detainee area.

~~ And so there'd become a familiar mantra that all of you all can recite, particularly European colleagues, "Well the United States didn't ratify the Kyoto protocols. We unsigned the Rome statutes and we ignored the Geneva conventions. And the United States is not a believer in international law and international institutions."

The Secretary is really committed to find, to combat this perception, and both she and I have gone and talked about just the general issue of international law a good deal.

~~ The United States benefits from international law more than any country in the world on a daily basis. And we are the beneficiaries of it and we need to emphasize that and it's important for us to do.

Now words are cheap. And sometimes well it's fine for Secretary Rice to just go and talk about these issues, but you need to prove that you in fact are committed. And we in fact have followed through on a number of very, very difficult issues.

~~ Last year one of the first speeches (Secretary Rice) gave was to the American Society of International Law, the first Secretary in about 30 years to go and do it, it was an important audience for her. Just two weeks ago, she changed her entire trip plan and Anne Gearan of the Associated Press who is here with us this evening didn't get any sleep at all -- all night long -- and all the people on the press plane because she went and spoke at the centennial of the American Society of International Law about five o'clock at night before they left for her trip to London and Paris. Again, it was something that was important to her. So, we've been just emphasizing that the commitment to international law, our international law obligations, and rule of law in individual countries around the world as a general theme.

~~ Now, the last part is to emphasize our commitment to international criminal justice and accountability. Unfortunately the debate over the ICC has overshadowed the U.S. commitment and this administration's commitment to international criminal justice around the world. And people, particularly your European colleagues will confirm this, are left thinking that the United States is not a believer in international criminal justice because we have got some concerns about the ICC.

And nothing could be farther from the truth. The United States provides more financial backing for international criminal tribunals than any country in the world. We have provided half-a-billion dollars over the last 10 years to the ICCY, the ICCR, the special court for Sierra Leone, and yet all of this really just ends up being overshadowed over sort of an artificial debate over the ICC.

So, during the last year, again, what the Secretary and I have tried to emphasize is our commitment to the values of international criminal justice and accountability. And we've done that in a couple of ways. One, just simply talking more about it. Two, in cases where there actually is an ICC nexus as there has been in some cases to emphasize that actually we can work together with other countries and respect each other's mutual positions.

As Javier Solana said about a year ago, and it's a theme that I've picked up, is that there can be a modus vivendi with respect to the ICC. We need to respect each other's positions.

~~ Now we're actually in the middle right now of one of the more exciting episodes of international criminal justice. It's unfolding right now. And that is the transfer to justice of Charles Taylor, which is something the United States has worked extremely hard on behind the scenes to get done. It's one reason why it's very frustrating when we have critics suggest that: "Oh the United States is not committed to these values." No country worked harder in the world no country provides more resources no country provides more operational support to international criminal justice than the United States.

And the bringing of Charles Taylor to justice is a good example. . .This is still unfolding. We hope each time that we will be able to secure a U.N. Security Counsel resolution that will provide the guts, the legal authority to hold Charles Taylor and have Taylor moved to the Hague so he can be tried there. But we continue to work very hard on these issues and to emphasize our commitment.

I think that there is both new framing and new substance in what John Bellinger presents. His entire speech is worth reading, though I am positive that many readers here will debate Bellinger's sincerity as well as the substance of what he is proposing. That's OK.

Bellinger himself is fairly thick-skinned about this debate and knows that the administration has a tough sell in some areas given the fact that tough judgments have been made during a time of national crisis over the last several years.

The Q&A was not quite a tempest, but it wasn't calm either. It was real -- and that is good.

I hope that this material helps further civil discourse about U.S. foreign policy, Secretary Rice's views, and that the administration gathers itself together behind a genuine commitment to a new American internationalism, which rejects both pugnacious and selfish nationalism as well as isolationism, which I think may be a strong current when the true costs and consequences of Iraq are fully and consciously realized.

As I said in my introduction of John Bellinger last Thursday night, he is one of the heroes inside the Bush administration who may not see eye to eye with progressives about foreign policy but who nonetheless values deeply international institutions and international legal consensus in many key arenas.

I find that a potentially significant development.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Here is a thoughtful treatment of comments made by John Bellinger in March 2006 in London by Anthony Dworkin of the Crimes of War Project.

President Bush is rebuffing the nation in clinging to Rumsfeld.

Someone remind the President that his Secretary of Defense presided over behaviors that led to the image below, and to far worse:

The calls for Rumsfeld to depart will only intensify now. Unity among the ranks of active duty and retired generals can't be re-established under current management.

The President should give Rumsfeld a big party, a medal or two, and send him off -- with a successor who will re-establish confidence in defense decision-making.

The President should dust off his MBA work and realize that if he wants to send a signal of change, he must dump at least three of five people: his chief of staff, his vice president, his closest political advisor, his national security advisor, and his defense secretary.

So far, Andy Card is gone. To fill out the "I'm a new and different Bush" card, Bush must distance himself from some combination of Rove, Hadley, Cheney, and/or Rumsfeld.

I'm guessing that "the decider" changes his mind soon. If I'm wrong, Democrats running in 2006 are getting a huge gift.

-- Steve Clemons

Others, including House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, have said Doha was dead over and over, but today I believe it.

U.S. Trade representative and former Ohio Congressman Rob Portman will move over to take Joshua Bolten's position as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I actually like Rob Portman a lot and think that this administration is underpopulated with public servants of his capability and temperament.

However, it's also a clear sign that the U.S. has no confidence that the Doha Round of WTO negotiations are going anywhere -- and fast track authority to negotiate a trade deal is expiring soon with no deal in hand. The Doha ship just sank.

I'm the last who should be chuckling about typos in others' materials -- as I make them way too much -- but I love the Bush quote in the Washington Post report on the Portman OMB appointment:

Bush, at a morning announcement at the White House, said Portman would "have a leading roll on my economic team."

I hope that Portman does have a leading role -- and isn't just geting rolled in this new position.

-- Steve Clemons

When Henry Kissinger was making his way into China to negotiate China's coming out details, all sorts of subterfuge was deployed to disguise Kissinger's travel. The press was told that he was seriously knocked out with intestinal disorders while he was secreted out for a quick trip to Beijing.

Now, it seems, top Iran diplomats -- well, at least one, Mohammad Nahavandian -- are in Washington trying to talk to someone. Perhaps the White House is not picking up the phone, but the State Department seems to be up on some of the details.

The Financial Times had the scoop on this ten days ago, but I didn't see the AFP story until this morning.

Here is the opener:

The US State Department confirmed a senior official from arch-US nemesis Iran was in Washington but would not say how he got into the country or what he was doing here.

Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Mohammad Nahavandian was in town but added, "He's not here for meetings with US government officials to my knowledge; certainly not with members of the State Department."

McCormack said Nahavandian had not been issued a visa but was in the United States legally. He did not elaborate but said only, "There are a variety of other ways for an individual to arrive in the country."

This is hilarious, and yet disturbing.

Will someone remind our government elders that America is NOT China -- and we don't like Orwellian half-truths and big lies here.

I'm thrilled that someone in our government is apparently speaking to an Iranian diplomat -- though we have no evidence anyone is actually speaking to Nahavandian yet -- but to say that a senior Iranian official is in Washington with NO VISA but that's OK because there are lots of other ways to get into the country legally -- perpetuates the notion that a Mandarin class can be in the know while the public is lied to. (yes...I know that is reality, but I don't like it.)

Kissinger was sneaking into a Communist country where lying to the public was the norm. That is not an acceptable norm here.

If the diplomat is here talking to us about a more rational course of action between the U.S. and Iran -- and has been caught in the public spotlight -- we need a better response than "we don't know how he got here or what he's doing -- but he's here so go on with your day."

Anyway, it's very good that we are talking to someone from Iran, though we aren't sure who's talking. Geez.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Thanks to FJ for the tip.

Here is a good earlier post on this same visitor.

Congressman and Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN-9) has just appealed to Republican Congressmen to join him in calling for Colin Powell to replace Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

I like Harold Ford a lot -- but he's veering into reckless theatrics with some of his latest positions. In this case, Colin Powell is the wrong guy for this job, and to propose him in such a manner undermines Hal Ford's credibility as a national security commentator.

Powell certainly has extraordinary experience serving as both a military leader and diplomat, but his brand has been tainted by the February 2003 speech to the United Nations in which he appealed to the world to support a war against Iraq based on solid evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The confidence that many in the nation had in Powell during the run up to the 2000 elections simply isn't there today.

Powell is still a distinguished national leader who has kept his powder dry on Cheney and Rumsfeld, and the President, for far too long in my view, but he can't be rehabilitated in the eyes of Americans so quickly.

Richard Armitage -- Powell's Deputy -- would have made a better choice for Ford to talk about if he needed a person to propose.

But Powell makes no sense -- and will inevitably result in journalists tracking down General Powell to ask what he thinks of Harold Ford's proposal. This is just distracting Tennessee constituents -- and the country -- from serious potential successors to Rumsfeld, who is definitely expendable.

On another Harold Ford front, I recently saw on TPM Cafe a Harold Ford political ad calling for 100% inspections of all containers that enter the United States -- and saying that just "one WMD" could bring American civilization down.

Ford is trying to play the "fear card" with voters -- just as some Republicans have. I find this disappointing as he can appeal to his voters on so many other levels.

Ford is a very smart legislator and can do better.

Hopefully, the Congressman and his people will start reaching out to those who know the national security arena pretty well so that he starts to frame things more realistically and sensibly.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: Thanks to VS for the alert.

Dana Priest of the Washington Post for beat reporting -- mostly for her coverage of intelligence matters and for the scoop on the secret CIA detention facilities;

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times for national reporting -- and they, of course, broke the story on warrantless wiretaps. . .but read the Iran chapter in Risen's book, State of War. That chapter alone deserves its own Pulitzer; and

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times for Commentary,

Check the list here for others.

It's great that Rick Attig and Doug Bates of The Oregonian won best editorial writing -- but one must wonder how the Wasington Post's Fred Hiatt and his "A Good Leak" will fare against the New York Times' "A Bad Leak" next year.

Congrats to Dana Priest, Jim Risen, and Nick Kristof whom I have the pleasure of seeing around town.

-- Steve Clemons

Defense strategist Harlan Ullman writes a regular "Owls and Eagles" column for the Washington Times, and I frequently learn a great deal from it.

I have come by an early draft of what will appear in his column tomorrow -- titled tentatively "It is Bush's War, Not Rumsfeld's".

I won't print the whole article, but I will post some of it and add the link to the Washington Times when it is up tomorrow.

Ullman makes a compelling case that the zealotry to unseat Rumsfeld should be focused on the President and the many other institutions and players who had a hand in the reckless way this war was pursued. Ullman is interesting because he is the person credited with coining the "shock and awe" strategy for military invasions, but he has been a strong and consistent critic of the Bush White House and the Pentagon for the manner in which "shock and awe" was applied.

Just to be clear about my own views, I disagree with Harlan Ullman and think that Rumsfeld is a titan in these matters and that responsibility for many of the errors and misdeeds of this war needs to be fixed, to a significant degree, on him. One must begin somewhere, and it's not enough to argue a defense of Rumsfeld that others should be held accountable as well.

Nonetheless, Ullman makes several points that should be considered -- - particularly that that this was a Bush/Cheney war:

Last week's political sandstorm in Washington swirled around Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's future. A handful of retired general officers, though no admirals yet, called for the secretary to go on the grounds of mishandling the war in Iraq. President Bush predictably offered strong support for Mr. Rumsfeld as did a handful of other retired flag officers.

In this brouhaha, three important ingredients are so far missing in action. First is recognizing that the war in Iraq is Mr. Bush's, not Mr. Rumsfeld's. Second, accountability for the errors, misjudgments and mistakes in conducting that war and its aftermath cannot responsibly be laid at the feet of only one person. Third, we continue to ignore what lies ahead in Iraq, an ignorance that could prove fatal to the entire endeavor.

A disclosure is in order. Recall that as the summer of 2001 passed into autumn, the drumbeat for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation was building. Sometime after September 11th, in opposition to this clamor, this column called for the secretary to "press on" in his quest to transform the department of defense. He did.

Now, nearly five years later, the nation must appreciate that American policy and actions in Iraq and the Middle East have been defined, approved and authorized by the president. While Rumsfeld was a principal architect, the responsibility for the war rests above the secretary's pay grade. The buck does stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Second, a good number of other people were intimately involved in the take-off that led to the invasion of Iraq. If Rumsfeld should go, what about the vice president or the current secretary of state, national security advisor and the Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff? As key members of the team closest to the president, have they no responsibility or accountability here? And what about other members of the cabinet? If the nation is at war, why is the defense department the only agency acting that way? Why should other cabinet secretaries not be held accountable for demanding similar levels of commitment from their departments?

There is also the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. If Rumsfeld becomes the lightning rod for failed policy, surely Congress cannot be absolved of responsibility. By decisive majorities, both parties authorized the war as well the nearly half a trillion dollars of funding so far spent on Iraq. And what about holding really substantive hearings? So shouldn't the Speaker, majority and minority leaders of both houses and committee chairmen and ranking members have their feet metaphorically held closely to the accountability fires?

Ullman is absolutely correct that there is a long list of co-conspirators and collaborators who bear responsibility for America's crappy plight -- many of them Democrats in fact.

However, an important point that I think my friend Harlan Ullman glosses over is that the military is seriously fractured right now. There are few times in history where the officer corps has been so divided between what course the nation should go -- and regarding what shape the military itself is in.

I do hold Donald Rumsfeld responsible for much of our current mess, but whether others agree or not with that view, few can argue that there is a crisis in confidence in Pentagon management.

When that happens -- no matter who is right and who is wrong -- management needs to be shaken up. Confidence and stability can be re-established with a new team at the helm.

While Democrats would do better electorally with a continuation of the the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, the nation itself will suffer significantly with two and a half more years of what we are seeing unfold today.

While the buck should stop with the President, Bush and Cheney are likely to keep their positions until the end of their terms, but Rumsfeld is not only expendable -- he should be jettisoned, yesterday.

-- Steve Clemons

Just when you thought it really, really couldn't get any worse, news has hit the stands that the White House is counting artificially created golf ponds as wetlands.

Apparently, Interior Secretary Gale Norton has stated that America has stopped losing wetlands. In fact, she has argued, America's wetlands are increasing if one counts artificially created golf ponds.

Field & Stream is now going after the administration. When was the last time someone saw enviro-politics in a hunting and fishing journal.

Field & Stream's Bob Marshall writes:

The Bush Administration announced last week that the nation is no longer losing wetlands--as long as you consider golf course water hazards to be wetlands.

Really.

Thursday (March 30), Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a press conference to claim our long nightmare of wetlands loss had finally come to an end due to unprecedented gains since 1997 (click hear to read the report she cites). However, she then admitted much of that gain has been in artificially created ponds, such as golf course water hazards and farm impoundments.

The sporting community -- from Ducks Unlimited to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership -- reacted quickly, and not favorably. Researchers long ago established that natural wetlands such as marshes, swamps and prairie potholes are far more productive than even the best-designed artificial wetlands. And sharp-edged water bodies like water hazards, farm ponds, and even reservoirs offer very little for wildlife. Putting man-made ponds in the same class as natural wetlands is like ranking pen-raised quail with wild coveys.

The boldness of Norton's claim was particularly galling given the Bush Administration's record on wetlands. President Bush, like other presidents before him, promised a policy of “no net loss” of wetlands, but his administration has consistently supported rollbacks of the Clean Water Act to satisfy industry and development.

More later -- but perhaps with fisherman and hunters abandoning the White House, things might change.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Thanks to Glenn Smith for sending my way.

Retired Marine Lt. General Michael DeLong published a significant retort to the growing league of generals calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign. The piece titled "A General Misunderstanding" ran in the New York Times over the weekend as well as the International Herald Tribune today.

DeLong writes:

As the No. 2 at U.S. Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years. In light of the recent calls for his resignation by several retired generals, I would like to set the record straight on what he was really like to work with.

When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. That is not to say that he is not tough in terms of his convictions (he is) or that he will make it easy on you (he will not). If you approach him unprepared, or if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day.

Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either, and he will always force you to argue your point thoroughly. This can be tough for some people to deal with. I witnessed many heated but professional conversations between my immediate commander, General Tommy Franks, and Rumsfeld -- but the secretary always deferred to the general on war-fighting issues.

Ultimately, I believe that a tough defense secretary makes commanders tougher in their convictions. Was Donald Rumsfeld a micromanager? Yes. Did he want to be involved in all of the decisions? Yes. But Rumsfeld never told people in the field what to do. It all went through Franks.

Many progressive pundits are jumping behind General Zinni and others to try and compel Rumsfeld to resign. I have to admit that I've been hoping and writing that Rumsfeld would step down or be fired for some time.

When America is out attempting to promote the kind of democracy in which accountability of government officials and securing the rights of political minorities are vital, Rumsfeld's employment as Defense Secretary seemed to say to the world the exact opposite. He has never been held accountable for either poor decisions in this war or the moral as well as logistical collapse of America's military forces.

Despite this, there are two interesting, less obvious, dimensions in this debate that have surfaced.

First, the President is clinging tenaciously to Rumsfeld. Why? What does this mean? When Rumsfeld and his management structure have produced failure in Iraq and moral collapse evident for the entire world to see in the photos that came from Abu Ghraib, what possible benefit could there be in Bush clinging to Rumsfeld? Ironically, Rumsfeld staying where he is aggravates many around the country and helps Democrats in their 2006 election efforts. Why is the President so stuck on Rumsfeld?

I really don't know, but this really needs further exploration.

Secondly, General DeLong -- who did report directly to Rumsfeld -- in his defense of the Defense Secretary raised the question of chain of command via Tommy Franks.

A retired General whom I cannot name -- but suffice it to say it is one of the "famous" former generals who served this country well -- wrote this interesting response in an email to Michael DeLong's op-ed:

The response from LtGen DeLong underscores what is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this whole "revolt of the generals" -- the schism it reveals in the mililtary chain of command.

Not one of the six who've spoken out reported directly to Secretary Rumsfeld. General Zinni retired in 2000, a year and a half before Rumsfeld became SecDef.

LtGen Newbold was the J-3 on the Joint Staff, which by law is managed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of the Joint Staff. Riggs commanded 1st Army for the first few months of Rumsfeld's term, and thereafter was the Director of the Army's Objective Force Task Force until his retirement.

MG Eaton commanded the Military Assistance Training Team in Baghdad for a year, with at least one commander in the chain between him and Rumsfeld (Abizaid), and was in TRADOC for the rest of his overlap with Rumsfeld's tenure. And MGs Batiste and Swannack were division commanders in Iraq, with a corps commander (Sanchez, Metz, Vines, Chiarelli), the MNF-I commander (Casey), and the combatant commander (Abizaid) between them and Rumsfeld, not to mention the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Myers, Pace) who by law "serves as the spokesman for the commanders of the combatant commands, especially on the operational requirements of their commands."

Those who have come to the defense of Rumsfeld -- Pace, Myers, Franks, and now DeLong -- all sat or still sit much closer in the chain to Rumsfeld than those who have cited his leadership style, disdain for military advice, and meddling in military affairs as reasons he should be fired.

Given where each sat in the chain of command, their complaints about the Secretary of Defense amount to an indictment of every officer serving above them, and especially those now defending him. A piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate Magazine, "The Revolt Against Rumsfeld," includes the following passage:

Gen. Zinni referred to another book, a favorite of officers for nearly four decades now-Anton Myrer's 1968 novel, Once an Eagle. It's about two Army officers, friends from childhood, and their rise through the ranks -- Sam Damon, a straight-arrow field commander, and Courtney Massengale, a scheming Pentagon careerist.

Gen. Zinni said the two characters are widely seen in his profession as symbols for the two types of military officer -- and the two paths of military promotion. He stopped short of saying so explicitly, but he suggested that the Pentagon's upper ranks contain too many Courtney Massengales and not enough Sam Damons.

To have retired generals from down the chain call for the firing of the civilian at the top seems to suggest that they have lost confidence in those in between, a sentiment that has surfaced in Loop discussions on this topic, to wit:

Has anyone considered the possibility that the Joint Chiefs might be in general agreement with the SECDEF and feel there is nothing to resign over?

Forcing strategic policy changes on political leadership is, in my opinion, better left to the Chairman and Service Chiefs. There would be a horrific effect should one of these resign over policy. But isn't this exactly what our "six" are trying to do?

Uniformed officers can retire or resign in protest or whatever if they can no longer in good conscience, follow the orders of the officers and civilians appointed over them.

It saddens me to see the acrimony among the officers' corps. It clearly damages our esprit. The alternative, to sit silent while the nation goes down the wrong path, is worse.

Not only is it not wrong for a retired officer to publicly discuss the war, I think it is a moral obligation.

The Secretary ensures there is no open dialogue about important issues through those he places in key positions, especially JFCOM.

Since those who have spoken out were either never in the Rumsfeld chain like Zinni (and arguably Riggs) or several levels down the chain, what does their going public say about their confidence in the military commanders above them in the chain?

As the retired dissenters make the rounds of talk shows and submit to print interviews, I hope someone will take the trouble to figure out what each one's position was in the chain of command, then ask if they discussed their misgivings with those above them and what kind of feedback they received.

Secretaries of Defense have been fired before, but if there is a feeling among the two- and three-stars that those above them are all Courtney Massengales, we are seeing a real crisis in command.

The general purpose of the above email message from another of the nation's top retired general was to indicate some qualified support for Secretary Rumsfeld.

However, it is a thoughtful and respectful treatment of the right of retired generals to speak their mind -- but it's calling for the fuller story. What about the generals between them and the Secretary?

Did they speak out at the time? Did they challenge their superior officers and receive responses to their skepticism about decisions emanating from the SecDef's office?

No matter what one's views on whether Rumsfeld should stay in his post or be retired, this question about what happened in the chain of command is worth looking into.

-- Steve Clemons

The New York Times has run three letters today in response to Michael Lind's and my recent op-ed, "How to Lose the Brain Race."

My friend Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a new blogger at "Beat the Press", sent one of the three published responses.

Senator Dianne Feinstein had one of the others.

The Senator's response is fascinating because while she asserts that she is suggesting a "balanced" approach to immigration policy -- she simply reasserts what her two provisions do: first allows a large stream of agricultural workers and secondly, doubles the fee for foreign students applying to American universities.

Here is the bulk of Senator Feinstein's response:

Steven Clemons and Michael Lind argue that my additions to the immigration reform package "sent a message to the rest of the world: send us your brawn, not your brains."

In truth, I support a balanced policy -- including an agriculture workers program and increasing numbers of high-tech visas.

The agriculture industry cannot today hire the American workers it needs. That's why I sponsored a bipartisan amendment providing undocumented agriculture workers with an opportunity to earn a green card if they continue working in agriculture. This program would provide them an opportunity to come out of the shadows.

I also support a program to allow foreign students to work in science, technology, engineering and math. But I believe we should ensure that American students get the training they need to compete in these fields.

So I proposed increasing the cost of the visas, with the funds going for scholarships for American students.

Mr. Clemons and Mr. Lind suggest a choice must be made between agriculture workers and foreign students. They are wrong. This is not an either-or issue.

The fact is that foreign student applications to American universities are far below pre-9/11 levels. The fees involved are not the only deterrents -- but the complicated and intimidating student visa interview process for students from non-visa waivered nations is unpredictable and frequently demeaning.

Doubling these fees, which the Senator argues will help fund American scholarships, only aggravates America's image problem in the world.

I'm sure that Senator Feinstein does believe that her approach is balanced -- but it's not.

A balanced policy would involve doing much more to remove the speed bumps to smart, balanced people coming to this country and either eventually legally immigrating or going back to their own countries with some of America's DNA.

If the Senator would like to discuss what that sort of policy might entail, I would be happy to work with her -- as I think that sort of vision is far more consistent with the Senator's work in the past than this fee-doubling scheme which helps tell foreign students we don't want them.

-- Steve Clemons

I've received some flack from TWN readers about part of last night's gathering with Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State John Bellinger being on the record -- and part off.

Not to belittle those who think that everything should be on the record, let me just remind folks that in this administration, there are not many senior government officials who are willing to walk into a room with the type of people who attended yesterday evening's dinner gathering without an unscripted result.

So, some who view these matters from outside the Beltway may not like it, but in my view, folks should be satisfied that I was able to secure agreement from John Bellinger to have a significant portion of his commentary "on the record."

I give John Bellinger enormous credit for his willingness to engage in public forums of this sort.

Last night's discussion involved quite a bit of tugging back and forth over legalisms that riddle our foreign policy as well as the subjects of torture, rendition, the prosecution of global thugs who commit heinous crimes against humanity and so on. It was one of the most fascinating meetings I have moderated.

As one of the very senior journalists in the room mentioned to me on the way out, he said he could not remember a meeting where "real discussion and debate" about "real issues" between a room full of pull-no-punches writers and public intellectuals had taken place with a senior Bush administration official. While I thought that the evening was semi-stressful, my email box is full of those who saw it as refreshing and important. I suspect that some articles will appear that draw from John Bellinger's presentation.

I need to take a few days to work through my notes and a recording of the talk to provide more substantial commentary, but as a quick executive summary, John Bellinger did say that the administration had taken some legal paths that had proved to be problematic and had made some mistakes. But the full thrust of his comments went in two directions -- first, to make a conscientious, constructive commitment to getting America back into discussions regarding international law. The second part of his talk essentially provided legal rationalizations and justifications for many of the controversial positions of the Bush administration.

This latter part ignited quite a bit of feisty exchange during the dinner.

Among those who attended were Time Magazine correspondent TIMOTHY BURGER, former Congressman and Electronic Industries Alliance President (and Tom DeLay "K Street Project" Target Survivor) DAVE McCURDY, former State Department Chief of Staff and College of William and Mary Visiting Professor LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Washington Post correspondent WALTER PINCUS, New York Times Correspondent JIM RISEN, Washington Post columnist DAVID IGNATIUS, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and former National Security Council Middle East Director FLYNT LEVERETT, and Nelson Report proprietor CHRIS NELSON.

The group included New America Foundation Whitehead Senior Fellow MICHAEL LIND, New Yorker correspondent JANE MAYER, New America Foundation Fellow and CNN Terrorism Analyst PETER BERGEN, Bloomberg Broadcast Director and former CNN Washington Bureau Chief KATHRYN KROSS, C-Span Congressional Editor ROBB HARLESTON, Handelsblatt Deputy Editor in Chief MICHAEL BACKFISCH, Guardian DC Bureau Chief JULIAN BORGER, Peace & Security Initiative Director DEEPTI CHOUBEY, New America Foundation Senior Research Fellow ANATOL LIEVEN, Institute for Defense Analyses program director and former policy director at the Coalition Provisional Authority ROBERT POLK, Daily Telegraph DC Bureau Chief ALEC RUSSELL, BMW Washington Director and former Commerce Department Chief of Staff CRAIG HELSING, and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and former National Security Council staff member RICHARD FALKENRATH.

Others in the room who participated in the fascinating and sometimes tense but candid-on-all-sides discussion were Associated Press correspondent ANNE GEARAN, Newsweek correspondent EVAN THOMAS, UN Foundation senior staff JOHANNA MENDELSON FORMAN, business executive RICHARD VAGUE, Policy Review Editor and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow TOD LINDBERG, Inter-Press Service Correspondent JIM LOBE, News Hour with Jim Lehrer Senior Foreign Policy Producer MICHAEL MOSETTIG, Scowcroft Group principal and former State Department official KEVIN NEALER, Wall Street Journal correspondent JAY SOLOMON, Newsweek correspondent Michael Isikoff, newly confirmed Assistant Secretary of Energy ALEXANDER KARSNER, New America Foundation American Strategy Program Associate SAMEER LALWANI, Atlantic Monthly/National Journal correspondent PAUL STAROBIN, and yours truly -- STEVE CLEMONS of The Washington Note and New America Foundation.

I list the names of this event because I believe that serious speakers should have serious audiences. And for the many bloggers out there who wonder where the political bloggers were, I invited several -- and none of those I invited could make it.

I will post more on the Bellinger initiative later -- and will try to outline what I think is substantively important and that part which I think is more new PR than actually new.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I have been a bit crazed today assembling a dinner discussion that will take place tonight with John Bellinger, Legal Adviser to the Secretary of State.

Bellinger will be discussing with a fairly formidable group of DC public policy intellectuals, journalists, and other political hands the importance and "packaging" of getting America back into international law discourse -- even when it comes to tough subjects like rendition policy, detainee issues, and international criminal court protocols. I will be moderating the meeting.

I will have more later, and if you are a "national intelligence" junkie like me, this article profiling John Negroponte and his views which one of my dinner attendees -- Timothy Burger of Time Magazine -- just published may interest you.

Negroponte has apparently said that as long as the global war on terror continues, combat detainees will be indefinitely held in secret CIA prisons.

Part of the dinner discussion with John Bellinger will be on the record and part will be off. I will be back with much more on the meeting and the subject of tonight's meeting, which I feel is very important.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

When I moved to Washington in the fall of 1994, I got to know the then Ambassador from Turkmenistan to the United States.

Turkmenistan had been part of the former Soviet Union, and after it became its own country and set up its Embassy in Washington, few paid much attention to Turkmenistan or its Ambassador. This period preceded the so-called "new great game" for Caspian oil.

When I opened the office I was running and had an open house, the Ambassador brought a very large framed picture -- extremely nice, almost too nice. I was embarrassed because I really didn't want to accept gifts of that sort, but the Ambassador asked me to take it because he felt that I had been so decent to him.

He commented that "because we don't have nuclear weapons that we control, no one in this town pays attention to us. No one in the administration (the Clinton administration) wants to meet with me. You (Steve) have been generous with your time and interest and we want to support your efforts."

This has stuck in my mind ever since the episode in early 1995, over ten years ago.

I hope that America and Iran don't go down a road of hot conflict over Iran's nuclear ambitions, but no matter what happens -- those in the nuclear proliferation business, both pro and con, need to understand that nations that want to move up the power ladder in the world go after nukes not only because they want them for offensive purposes; not just because they want them for defense; but because they want "respect."

I have no doubt that if Turkmenistan had the ability to get nukes in early 1995, it might have -- not because it wanted to defend itself from a return of Soviet control or to control the Caspian territories it has -- but because it wanted the White House to return its phone calls.

America has helped create and instigate the appetite for nuclear weapons in nations that want to be powerful.

This is something we, as a nation, must fix.

-- Steve Clemons

(American flag flying at La Marcha in Washington, DC; photo credit: Alexander Steffler)

I'm still trying to get my head around the concept of an "Open Thread" which some who comment on this blog have encouraged me to provide on occasion. My guess is that it's just a time when folks can offer comments without design or link to whatever I may have posted on the blog.

But my style of "Open Thread" will run a bit differently. There are moments when I want to just post a couple of quick items. Folks can react or comment on whatever else they like. I am working on a couple of big stories that require quite a bit of phone time, and that makes high-quality analysis and commentary hard to do.

There's big news ahead on John Bolton -- but will save that for later.

On other fronts, this story was sweeping through the net that George Bush may be tempted by some people close to him to release Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. I called a pal in the White House who is in some of the circles where this might get discussed but who is not a total insider. My pal said this article was "delusional."

I tend to agree. I don't think Jonathan Pollard has any hope of being released in this climate.

Next on the agenda.... The Immigration Marches, or La Marcha as I've been counseled to call them. I don't have much comment on the marches themselves other than that they were impressively big and that Tucker Carlson showed up.

(photo credit: Alexander Steffler)

Don't know if this says anything of his views on immigration policy but have to admit it's impressive that Carlson is out meeting people and talking to them directly no matter what his position.

Lastly, though the words in the op-ed are the same, my New York Times piece co-written with Michael Lind ran today in the International Herald Tribune.

More musings -- and serious stuff -- later.

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Lind and I have an article in the New York Times this morning challenging Senator Dianne Feinstein's and the U.S. Congress's tilt on immigration policies, particularly her wrong-headed position in creating yet a higher hurdle than already exists for foreign students entering the United States.

I began to think about these Feinstein initiatives in a post the other day and had written in the New York Times previously that America was harming itself by seriously reducing the inflow of smart, talented people from the rest of the world to this country.

The NY Times link is here. If folks have difficulty registering to get access to the piece, notify me by email, and I'll send the text to you.

Here is the intro to the piece:

IS the United States importing too many immigrant physicists and not enough immigrant farm workers? You might think so, to judge from two provisions that Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, added to the comprehensive immigration reform package that just fell apart in the Senate. Senator Feinstein insisted that the bill call for some fees for foreign students applying to study at American colleges and universities to be doubled, and also demanded that agribusiness get the right to 1.5 million low-wage foreign guest workers over five years. Combined, the two proposals sent a message to the rest of the world: send us your brawn, not your brains.

Whether Senator Feinstein's amendments will resurface in any reconstituted legislation on immigration reform remains unclear. But her priorities reflect in many ways those of Congress as a whole. Congress seems to believe that while the United States must be protected from an invasion of educated, bright and ambitious foreign college students, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, we can never have too many low-wage fruit-pickers and dishwashers

I suspect there will be some controversy over this piece, but perhaps the sense of the position will ring true for many.

On other fronts, anyone in DC who would like to attend two fascinating sessions I am hosting and chairing today as part of the public policy series of the New America Foundation's "American Strategy Program" are welcome to notify Elizabeth Wu at wu@newamerica.net or 202-986-4901 to RSVP.

The first is with New York Times economics columnist Louis Uchitelle who will be talking about themes in his new book, The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences. Sherle Schwenninger who was founding editor of the World Policy Journal and is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and who also directs the New America Founation's Global Middle Class Program, will offer reactions. That meeting will be taking place from 12:15 p.m. til 2:00 p.m.

The second meeting today is with American Prospect co-founder and co-editor Robert Kuttner who will be addressing "U.S. Foreign Policy as Political Failure." Kuttner's talk will be a fascinating indictment of both parties -- and given his prominent role in Democratic Party intellectual circles, I think it will be quite a self-reflective commentary as well.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation who is also affiliated with the American Strategy Program which I direct, has just published a Robert Kaplan-esque treatment in the Boston Review of what he sees unfolding in Iraq.

It's a powerfully written passage that opens with a vignette of Americans killing an Iraqi man inside his home, his family outside, perhaps as part of a scheme engineered by a Shia "translator":

The Americans came for Sabah one Friday night in September. His house in Radwaniya, on the western outskirts of Baghdad, stood in a dry, yellow field surrounded by brick walls. Three cars were parked in front the day I came to visit, two weeks after Americans had shot him.

It was the month of Ramadan, and our mouths were as dry as his yard. The resistance was active in Radwaniya, and we drove through fields and dry canals to avoid any checkpoints that might reveal to locals that I was a foreigner. Journalists were targets now too.

The Americans had come maybe 20 times before to search for weapons in the house were Sabah lived with his brothers Walid and Hussein, their wives, and their six children. They knew where to look for the single Kalashnikov rifle the family was permitted to own. They had always been polite. "This day they didn't act normal," Hussein told me. "They were running from all sides of the house. They kicked open the doors. They didn't wait for us."

With Iraqi National Guardsmen standing outside, the Americans hit the brothers with their rifle butts. Five soldiers were on each man. Sabah's nose was broken; Walid lay on the floor with a rifle barrel in his mouth. The Shia translator told them to kill Walid, but they ripped the gun out of his mouth instead, tearing his cheek.

The rest of the family was ordered out. The translator asked the brothers where "the others" were and cursed them, threatening to rape their sisters.

As the terrified family waited outside on the road, they heard three shots and what sounded to them like a scuffle inside. The Iraqi National Guardsmen tried to enter the house, but the translator cursed them, too, and shouted, "Who told you to come in?" Thirty minutes later Walid was dragged into the street. The translator emerged with a picture of Sabah and asked for Sabah's wife.

"Your husband was killed by the Americans, and he deserved to die," he told her. He tore the picture before her face. Several soldiers came out of the house laughing.

Inside, the family found Sabah dead. Blood marked his shirt where three bullets had entered his chest; two came out his back and lodged in the wall behind him. American-made bullet casings were on the floor. The house had been ransacked. Sofas and beds were overturned and torn apart; tables, closets, vases with plastic flowers were broken.

Sabah's pictures had been torn up and his identification card confiscated. Elsewhere in the house one picture remained untouched -- Sabah with his three brothers and their father, smiling in happier times. When Sabah was buried the next day his body was not washed -- martyrs are buried as they died.

Hussein told me that three days before Sabah was killed, an American patrol had stopped in front of Radwaniya's shops and the Shia translator had loudly taunted the locals, cursing and threatening them for being Sunnis. Sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shia had been escalating throughout the year, and the Americans had done little to diffuse them.

Rosen also elaborates on the potential for a massive regional convulsion between Shia and Sunni Muslims:

In December 2004, Jordan's King Abdallah warned of a "Shia crescent" from Lebanon to Iraq to Iran that would destabilize the entire region. Iraq's Shias had demonstrated against Jordan in the past, condemning the country for its steady trickle of suicide bombers who crossed into Iraq to commit atrocities against Shia civilians.

In September 2005, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal warned that a civil war in Iraq would destabilize the entire region and complained that the Americans had handed Iraq over to Iran. In response, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr called the Saudi foreign minister a "Bedouin riding a camel" and described Saudi Arabia as a one-family dictatorship.

Jabr, who had commanded the Badr corps, also condemned Saudi human-rights abuses -- particularly the repression of Saudi Arabia's approximately two million Shias -- and he mocked Saudi Arabia's treatment of its women.

In Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Islam, Shias are known as rafida, which means "rejectionists." A highly pejorative term, it implies that Shias are outside Islam, and to Shias it is the equivalent of being called "nigger." This is the same word Sunni radicals in Iraq and the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, use to describe Shias. Saudi Arabia's two million Shias have been persecuted, prevented from celebrating their festivals, and occasionally threatened with extermination.

Saudi Arabia is also the main exporter of foreign fighters to the Iraqi jihad to fight both the Americans and the Shia "rafida" collaborators.

Nir Rosen's treatment of this killing of an Iraqi man inside his house -- where no guns or other terrorist materials seem to have been found -- is the type of reporting that is vital for Americans and others in the world to read. The job Americans are assigned to do in Iraq is nearly impossible to accomplish if they are unable to make sensible life and death decisions without being dependent on the biases of local "fixers" and "translators".

I am highlighting Rosen's report because I've already heard of dozens of cases from U.S. servicemen who had previously served in Iraq that the language and culture gap between American troops and the Iraqis that they are trying to "protect" and "help" forces dependencies on "gatekeepers" -- particularly English-speaking "translators" -- who are very frequently crooks charging exorbitant fees for their services, spies, thugs attached to organized crime rings, extortionists from Iraqis whom they threaten to expose to Americans, or players in the Shia-Sunni conflict who manipulate American troops to perform executions of their enemies.

This situation is terrible. Those who continue to harp on that we "must stay the course" need to think about this. What does "stay the course" mean when many of our troops are not able to conduct themselves independently of thugs who are terrorizing the very people we are trying to help.

I had not read about this case which Nir Rosen exposes, but the American military needs to find a way to investigate this story and prosecute the "translator" and other such thuggish gatekeepers. It then needs to find alternatives in how life and death killing decisions are made when such translators are involved.

I think that Rosen's depiction of the Shia-Sunni tensions that are beginning to boil regionally is accurate, but I want to add two dimensions that are missing from his piece but which are potentially important in balancing this picture.

The first is that as I and others have reported before, Saudi King Abdullah has been sending unambiguous signals that he is trying to reach out to his own domestic Shia population in positive ways -- and as part of this campaign within and beyond Saudi borders invited Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to be his personal guest during the Haj. These symbolic gestures are seen by Sunni and Shia and represent a bit of a counter-force to the negative news we hear.

Secondly, I recently had a conversation about Saudi Arabia's political stability with a senior Saudi Defense Attache based in a foreign government -- and would rather not identify the person. The Saudi General told me that one of his greatest concerns about Saudi Arabia's future was not that the Iraq War or other regional conflicts would boil over, but rather that the conflicts would be quelled, that the problems in Iraq would more or less stabilize and the fire in the heart of the insurgency would diminish.

The General's concern in that scenario is that the many Saudis that have left the country to fight in these "wars" would come home. That, he said, would create serious internal tensions and possibly create instabilities that would be "difficult to control". This was an astonishing admission from a top General but it seemed candid and honest to me.

I asked then whether it was important for Saudi Arabia's stability for it to have the ability to export these young-ish, male jihadists. The General's one word response: "Absolutely."

There are no quick fixes in the Middle East -- and every course of action for America, whether it involves staying or leaving, or engaging in so-called "strategic redeployment" has serious costs attached.

America needs a better strategic plan to address expanding arcs of instability in the world and without a more serious road map, our efforts are thinly reactive, ad hoc, and designed to go nation by nation rather than focus on regional realities -- and this only prescribes ongoing serious failure.

America has to turn this problem of strategic blindness around, and it is something Republican and Democratic partisans should resist treating as election fodder. The Republican leadership has been self-righteous and indulgent in pushing an idiotic notion of infallibility. And Democrats have failed to provide a competing vision of national security priorities and strategy to satisfy a market calling for such a plan -- recent proposals included.

America's mystique is fragile and collapsing and without some better management of American political, economic and military resources, America could, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has said on several occasions, "lose its primacy".

That could have devastating consequences for Americans and the world. That is what this gambit in Iraq may be costing, and we have to wise up to better decisions now.

-- Steve Clemons

Currently, there are a couple of U.S. government officials who have been charged, prosecuted, and/or ordered to serve prison time because they were involved in leaks of national security information.

One of these people is former Defense Department official Lawrence Franklin who pled guilty to leaking classified information to two AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Another is former State Department official Donald Keyser who was charged with taking classified information out of the State Department, something I remember that former CIA Director John Deutsch did when he was reading and processing classified information on his home computer -- and definitely on par with former National Security Advisor taking notes from classified memos -- and taking memos themselves -- from classified material holding vaults.

I'm not in a position to really know what constitutes "guilt" in these cases, and I have softened my own criticism of Franklin and AIPAC if, in fact, the U.S. President has engaged in the same behavior that his staff has.

The response that many have had to Bush's authorization of leaks that the President has the authority to declassify information does not interest me. The fact is that the President engaged in behavior that his staff are being prosecuted for -- and whether I like what Franklin was doing with AIPAC or not -- it seems clear to me that given how he saw his boss, Douglas Feith, conducting his office that Franklin would have felt that his behavior was not only appropriate but probably expected.

In the case of Donald Keyser, whom I know by reputation and from afar, he may have been sloppy with classified information -- but I know that that State Department and USTR officials, as well as Commerce Department and Treasury officials, trade information back and forth with other diplomats, public intellectuals, NGOs, journalists, and the like. Keyser is a senior guy -- and as far as I can tell was engaged in exactly the same sorts of "information exchange" activity that I have been involved with with countless of government officials throughout the administration. As Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report wrote last night -- and which I will post later, sometimes the "cops" don't understand what is normal operating procedure when it comes to the management of 'sensitive information'.

Again, I do not know the hard details of the cases against people like Keyser and Franklin, but I don't believe that either of these people were Ames-like spies. They were not self-dealers. They did not seek personal gain in doing their job and leaking information as they did.

And the President of the United States -- who has talked a vigilant and hostile line when it came to other leakers -- did exactly the same thing.

Bush's moral credibility is in doubt in the eyes of many Americans, and the latest AP/IPSOS poll shows this -- with President Bush's favorability now posting its lowest ever reading at 36%.

The night that the FBI raided Lawrence Franklin's office was August 27th, my birthday, and I recall that Josh Marshall (who was over) and I both looked at each other when we heard the news and said it must be Larry Franklin. In an email exchange later that night, CNN's David Ensor and I traded communications that it appeared Franklin was the target of the FBI investigation.

We would not have suspected Franklin, in my view, if he was not quite visibly engaged in relationship building with an oddball roster of players in the Middle East. Douglas Feith, in my view, had created a culture where this exchange of information, including quid pro quo deals, were part of the way he and his team operated. After all, Feith -- who had deep and broad relationships with the senior echelon of Israel's defense and intelligence bureaucracies -- had also housed the Iraqi National Congress in his pre-DoD legal office. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress Chief of Intelligence Aras Karim Habib was apparently a sieve of information from Feith's activities and operation to Iranian intelligence.

In fact, one interesting question that few have seriously explored is whether Iran, Israel, Turkey and Chalabi were essentially colluding via Douglas Feith's operation for some time -- both before Feith went into government and after. (I will be writing more about this in a future post.)

In the mean time, however, Bush's leak makes all other leak controversies look small. This is an administration that has actually gone back to the National archives to reclassify declassified information. This administation is obsessed with creating fortresses around secrets, and then the "top dog", as Karl Rove has called him, went and leaked highly classified material.

One of the things that really bothers me about this leak is that it's not like the President authorized the leak and then told the rest of the world that the information he and Cheney were promulgating was now officially declassified.

Let's have some honesty about this. That material has never been officially "declassified" as part of a process. The material that was leaked (i.e. "declassified" by the President) is not over at the National Security Archives at George Washington University.

This was a selective declassification if one wants to be generous, but the defense of the President's actions holds no water if the information was not more broadly promulgated than Judith Miller and the other involved journalists. In fact, did Judy Miller think that she was getting "declassified" information -- or was she trafficking in "Secret" information. I think the latter.

The President's potential defense that this was legal is irrelevant. His behavior has undermined all other leak cases and prosecutions where officials were engaged in official work but not self-dealing and engaged in corrupt acts.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I am moderating a session tomorrow from 12 noon until 2 p.m. at the new America Foundation in Washington with Daniel Levy, who is the Israeli version of a "Texas Twister" on the Israel-Palestine debate. When it comes to getting Israelis and the Palestinians talking together, Levy is omnipresent -- and is respected by personalities across both the Israeli and Palestinian political spectrum.

I have been to Israel twice and have been extremely impressed with Levy's vision of the possible there. He's really inspiring but still rooted in practical and pragmatic political realities.

Tomorrow, he will be giving a talk titled "After Both Elections: Assessing the Israel/Palestine Negotiations Dynamic and the "Gap" Between Israel and its Diaspora."

Daniel Levy was previously the lead Israeli Drafter of the Geneva Initiative and was former Advisor to the Prime Minister's Office in Israel and was a member of the official Israel negotiating team at the Oslo B and Taba Talks.

When I spent my hour with Amir Peretz last December, Daniel Levy was my facilitator, and my hunch -- completely unconfirmed -- is that if Amir Peretz does become Israel's next Minister of Defense (which looks increasingly to be the case as of the latest leaks pour out of cabinet negotiations now underway in Israel), Levy may very will be an influential voice with Defense Minister Peretz.

If you'd like to join us, zap my colleague Sameer Lalwani an email at lalwani@newamerica.net.

Daniel Levy also wrote this balanced, thoughtful critique of the Walt/Mearsheimer paper on "The Israel Lobby". Levy's piece first appeared in Haaretz and then the International Herald Tribune.

For those interested in listening to Levy's views, you can listen to him (and me) on Open Source with Christopher Lydon in a program that aired this week.

There is also a link to a video clip of Daniel Levy's presentation in the major Terrorism conference I organized last September titled "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose: Strategic Choices for the 21st Century."

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I was writing a post on Cynthia McKinney's theatrics, but the news has been gushing in that President Bush authorized the "leaking" of secret information to the media.

From my quick review, the most authoritative and I think the first writer to break the news was Joshua Gerstein at the New York Sun.

So, I scratched the McKinney post.

Suffice it to say, however, that if she was this Palestinian Minister, she might have something to complain about.

I have to dig in further to what is actually factual about the Bush leak authorization and will do that later.

What is important to recognize now, however, is that our secrecy-obsessed President got cavalier with state secrets and sent his staff to pump cherry-picked material into the nation's biggest and most respected news operations.

I have not read the statute carefully about whether the President has the automatic ability, in his person, to declassify material and authorize its release. That needs to be looked into.

In the Plame case, Bush said that he would fire anyone involved with leaking national security information. I can hear Jon Stewart asking the key question tonight, "So President Bush, do you plan to fire yourself?"

But it does demonstrate something about the culture of the White House, particularly with regard to the Valerie Plame leak.

I wonder how Russ Feingold's censure measure is going to fare now. I think things just improved for the Wisconsin Senator's initiative.

More to come.

-- Steve Clemons

For those of you on line and over at the Office of Naval Reseach, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is giving a talk tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. titled "The World in 2020."

I have someone who will be there to report back on any interesting material that gets discussed. I've written about Armitage many times in the past. I think I was the primary lead critic of his much-discussed "Armitage Report" on the US-Japan alliance written before the 2000 election.

His views on Japan and Asia Security policy differ from my own, but I very much respect the things he's done for this country, particularly things like prevening an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange for which he is not given enough credit. I wrote once that of those people who left the Bush administration and who are charging high speaking fees, Armitage may be the one on the list who most deserves his $25k.

Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report had the following interesting thoughts on Armitage as a possible successor to Donald Rumsfeld, and word is that Armitage believes that he would have a shot at that top defense spot. Sounds unlikely to me, but Armitage feels he has been exceedingly loyal to G.W. Bush, if not to other members of the Bush team.

From the Nelson Report, 30 March 2006, discussing the move of OMB Director Joshua Bolten to White House Chief of Staff:

So the question may boil down to Bolten's authority, and capacity. Observers say that the Bolten of today is just as smart as he ever was, with an additional layer of toughness. "Now he has learned that sometimes you must fire people, even your friends, if you want to succeed".

So does he have the authority to fire Rumsfeld? Inside betting is "yes"...so stay tuned.

If Rummy goes, who's next? Sources say don't be surprised if Bush goes to Capitol Hill. Some Republicans think Senate Armed Services chair John Warner might look logical, given the confidence issues within both the military and the media. And come January next year, Warned is term-limited out as chairman, so will be "available". But if Warner is deemed too old, some sources say don't forget that former Senator and Indiana governor Dan Coats was on the short list back in 2000-2001 transition.

Hummm. . .we recall reporting at that time that Coats had DOD sewed up, pending his personal interview down at the ranch in Crawford, but that Coats' performance was SO dismal the George Bush of that time. . .raw, inexperienced, and naïve on both defense and foreign policy. . .rejected Coats out of hand.

What about former Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage, we hear you ask? Certainly Armitage has been known to express serious interest. . .and perhaps even serious hopes he could be on the list. . .due to his strong personal relationship with Bush, despite his loyalty to Colin Powell.

There could hardly be a stronger choice to prove that Rumsfeld has been "fired" than Armitage, but you have to figure out how to parse Armitage's recent interviews in Australia, for example, or with The Oriental Economist, in which he had some frank and not entirely comradely things to say about the current Bush team, Secretary Condi Rice included.

I don't have any evidence that Rumsfeld is on his way out -- though I think that it would be great for the nation -- and also for a legacy-focused Bush administration -- to get rid of him now. It should have happened long ago.

Armitage would be a long shot for the SecDef job, but as Nelson said, nothing would say "you're fired" more to the world about Rumsfeld than picking Richard Armitage to run the Pentagon.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: Please note that Richard Armitage is speaking tomorrow morning, April 6. Doubly confirmed information had come my way that he was speaking today -- in part from the ONR media relations people, who were great but just made small mistake. More later, Steve Clemons

Chris Nelson, publisher of the "Nelson Report"

As I stated on Christopher Lydon's NPR show, Radio Open Source, tonight -- one of the take-aways from my recent Israel trip is that Israeli national security bureaucrats -- diplomats and generals -- have far greater confidence that there are numerous potential solutions to the growing Iran crisis short of bombing them in an invasive, hot attack.

One of the issues that came up in many of the national security related discussions I had was that Israel has maintained and cultivated a very strong human intelligence network inside Iran. The two nations were close strategic allies 25 years ago -- and continue, in many behind-the-scenes ways, to communicate and possibly even to coordinate certain actions. It doesn't mean that Israel is ready to appease Iran's regional ambitions, but it does mean that I have witnessed far more worries about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's anti-Holocaust and anti-Israel rhetoric in the U.S. than I did in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Many serious Iran watchers in Israel think that chances are relatively high that "internal developments" will emerge in Iran to constrain Ahmadinejad's "political options and political life."

Chris Nelson, who writes the must-read Nelson Report echoed somewhat this Israel diffidence about U.S. stridency towards Iran in a fascinating excerpt of today's report:

IRAN FLEXING. . .recall the 1980 Tanker Wars

SUMMARY: former UN arms controller Hans Blix is trying to infuse some adult supervision into the increasingly hot US-Iran nuclear standoff, with word that even if Iran proceeds along current lines, a workable nuclear weapon is 3 to 5 years away. . .assuming the US does not use military means to stop the program short of the risk of a successful bomb.

Keep Blix's assessment in mind, when trying to assess the current, mutual threat phase, as each side jockeys for leverage.

The Brits, for example, seem to be warning that they think President Bush IS prepared to attack Iran unilaterally, if he can't get the UN to go along. . .thus opening up so many risk scenarios it isn't clear where to begin. (More on this, below)

In the past few days, Teheran has bragged about a 220 mph torpedo, a missile that apparently Superman couldn't track, a flying-boat invisible to all but God, and no doubt other super-weapons ready and waiting to hit Gulf Oil shipping, US troops and bases, and Israel. . .not to mention Turkey, Jordan, and anyone else deemed helpful to the US in any way. (In other words, the 1980's "Tanker Wars" on steroids...back to this in a moment.)

Surely not by coincidence, the London Sunday Telegraph had a huge "leak" of a secret briefing scheduled for yesterday on what the Bush Administration is planning in the way of military action IF diplomacy fails (text presented in full, below...it is a chilling survey of the situation and perceived alternatives...).

All this comes in the context of the UN Security Council giving Iran until the end of this month to come into compliance with the IAEA. If Iran compromises, then the current crisis dies down, you should pardon the expression, until the next time. If Iran continues on its present path. . .which many analysts now predict, given the policy of China and Russia to oppose a UN sanctions regime. . .then look to May for the start of a summer of rising tensions.

If Iran won't back down, the US can be expected to seek a "coalition of the willing" to try sanctions, and appears willing to let this process play itself out over the early to mid summer, stage by stage. So what Moscow and Beijing have to decide is whether they, by blocking sanctions, inadvertently reduce US and European choices to surrender, or war.

It may be that Russia and China cannot bring themselves to believe that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, having so grossly miscalculated once, on Iraq, would do it again, on Iran. . .and so that in reality, Russia and China have the leverage of logic on their side.

The thrust of the Telegraph article is that the Brits think President Bush operates on an entirely different logic set, and that Bush is, indeed, prepared to use military means against Iran....but presumably not until bombs and missiles are the last stop before a fully realized Iranian nuclear weapon.

A hint of the sort of emotionalism the President is subject to may be seen in a full page ad in the N.Y. Times this morning (prominently paid for by The American Jewish Committee, oblivious to how it reinforces various heinous conspiracy theories) with an overlay map implying that future Iranian nuclear missiles would be able to strike deep into China, not just anywhere in Europe and the Middle East. . .and so, presumably, "proving" that an Iranian nuclear program must be stopped at all costs.

But if Blix is right about Iran. . .as he was for the past decade on Iraq. . .then the international community actually has more time to work on the Iranian crisis than much of today's rhetoric and scare stories would indicate. Unless. . .

Unless Bush decides that it's better to strike Iranian assets sooner, rather then letting Teheran build up its capacity to wreak conventional havoc across the Middle East. . .or nuclear havoc, as per the ad in today’s Times.

If one has a limited imagination, there IS a rational case for striking sooner, rather than risk being "too late", and some of our sources are willing to speculate that President Bush has been told (or WILL be told) that the US can easily sink the Iranian navy in a day or two, and also effectively counter Iranian anti-ship missiles aimed at oil tankers in the Gulf, as in the '80's.

So among the questions Bush might face, within his White House bubble, is whether the US could effectively contain Iranian missile and truck bombs against targets in Iraq, Turkey, Israel, Jordan. . .and truck and car bombs in Europe and the United States. So far, the suicide bomb has not been used here at home, in shopping centers, subway stations, sports stadiums, et al.

Is Bush capable of concluding that the US would escape such retribution in the event of any sort of attack on Iran? That's the billion....no, trillion dollar question.

In the meantime, the Telegraph "leak" seems to think that US air strikes might be supplemented by the Israeli Air Force. Our sources have consistently maintained that Israel has repeatedly warned the US that it would NOT attack Iran, due to Israel's vulnerability to missiles and terrorism. We reported at the time, two years ago, then-Prime Minister Sharon standing in the Oval Office to warn Bush precisely on this point.

One expert who watches the Israeli situation adds to the impediments, arguing that the Israeli Air Force actually lacks the "reach" due to re-fueling requirements for over-flying Iranian air space. . .presuming that the US would either tolerate a unilateral Israeli attack, or a cooperative attack, given the implications of Iranian counter-attacks within Iraq, if not elsewhere.

Concludes a friend who genuinely worries that Bush might well chose war, "I am pessimistic about our preparedness for the Iranian response and pattern of escalation that is liable to follow. The whole thing could spiral out of control very fast. It's one thing to fight Saddam. It's another thing to tangle with Iran in any kind of protracted way that is really threatening to their regime, but to suppose that our military bases, government buildings, transportation systems, churches and synagogues...et al...are immune from harm."

Nelson's stuff is sooo good and, in my view, punches all the right buttons.

Here is the link to the Sunday Telegraph story he mentions titled "Government in Secret Talks About Strike Against Iran."

But just a friendly note to all of those out there planning some hostile action against Iran -- either as a summer fiasco or just as a back-up plan -- pleae read the Iran chapter in James Risen's State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

While Risen has been winning awards and accolades for breaking the story on warrantless wiretaps, his revealing two key CIA mistakes on Iran is also incredibly important.

Risen reports that America botched the leaking of true Russian designs for a nuclear warhead trigger device that had embedded in it some flaws which America hoped might lead Iran's nuclear program down a frustrating and incorrect path. The Russian defector the U.S. used to transmit these plans to the Iranian delegation to the IAEA actually informed the Iranians that there were mistakes in the blueprints.

Secondly, in an episode that is hardly believable but still rings true, a CIA headquarters officer accidentally sent an electronic communication to ALL of our human assets in Iran, those working for the CIA and those collaborating, in a manner such that someone on the other end could discern who all the others in the network were.

Iran has subsequently "rolled up" our network and shut down America's eyes and ears inside Iran.

Add to this the Valerie Plame affair -- in which it has been reported that she too was working to gain intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. Of course, that operation has been spiked.

And does anyone remember that it was Ahmed Chalabi's team who informed Iran that the U.S. had broken its codes. It was the Iraqi National Congress's intel chief who turned out to be an Iranian spy. Chalabi's operation worked out of Douglas Feith's legal office before Feith moved into DoD. And Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress's lawyer was former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

Yes, those putting war plans together for Iran think carefully. We have botched so much already; don't repeat errors.

And in this case, TALK TO THE ISRAELIS -- the ones responsible for national security there. I found their sensibilities on Iran to be remarkably well informed, nuanced, confident, and sensible.

Nearly everyone I spoke to in Israel who ranged in political sympathies from the Likud right to Maretz left thought that the tone of the AIPAC conference had been too shrill and that Israel thought it wrong-headed and too impulsive to be engaged in saber-rattling with Iran at this stage.

In the past, I've been occasionally critical of Israeli influence over U.S. decisionmakers when I felt that American and Israeli national security interests were not as convergent in some respective case as some argued.

However, in this instance on Iran, Israel's national security thinkers and diplomats are on the side of logic -- and it is in American national interests to hear the Israeli position and consider the roots of their surprising position.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Two things. First, regarding the American Jewish Committee full-page ad yesterday in the New York Times advocating that the U.S. attack Iran. My point is that there is a serious gap -- a major gap -- between senior defense operatives, intellectuals and political personalities in Israel with the leading voices in the Jewish diaspora.

Secondly, I do not agree with Chris Nelson's line that the reason for Israel's reluctance to want to attack Iran has much to do with their geographic proximity to Iranian missiles. My point is that Israel has substantial intelligence resources inside Iran telling it that "there is time" to work on sensible solutions. They do not see Iran's nuclear program as an imminent threat. They also believe that there are trends inside Iran that may "deal with" Ahmadenijad.

I think that Israel is making a lot of sense here -- and if we are flying blind and they are not, we should learn from Israel what we can before we trip into a second major global catastrophe that may itself undermine what's left of America's position in the world.

-- Steve Clemons

Well, of course they did.

But the New York Times is the first to document the distributional impact of Bush's tax cuts in a major article appearing in tomorrow's paper.

David Cay Johnston writes that Bush's tax cuts "significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by $500,000 on average."

The New York Times' analysis of IRS data found:

"Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled to slightly more than $1 million.

These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.

Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years."

Charlie Rangel gets it and had the best quote in the Johnston piece:

Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said after seeing the new figures that "these tax cuts are beyond irresponsible" when "we're in a war, we haven't fixed Social Security or Medicare, we've got record deficits."

For a moment, let's take the President at his word on this war against terrorism. It's an expensive war, so far running a bit more than $12,000 per Iraq citizen in a country where per capita income is about $1,500.

Who is sacrificing? Not those with the financial means. That's for sure.

George Bush thought he could win the Iraq War on the cheap -- but it's costing our future.

On Monday, New York Times economics columnist Louis Uchitelle will be at the New America Foundation in a session I am chairing from noon until 2 p.m. with commentary from Sherle Schwenninger. Uchitelle will be talking about his new book, The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences.

I'm sure that this important NY Times study will be a major part of our discussion. To attend, zap me an email. Digital video will be posted the day after the event.

-- Steve Clemons

Tonight at 7 p.m., Christopher Lydon who produces a nationally-syndicated program with Boston's National Public Radio affiliate will be hosting a show titled "The Israel Lobby?" which will try to dig into some of the issues surfaced by the recent article on the Israel lobby co-authored by Harvard's Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer.

I will be on the program tonight as will Daniel Levy, policy and international director for the Geneva Initiative in Israel and author of one of the more thoughtful critiques of the Walt/Mearsheimer paper that appeared just today in the International Herald Tribune after previously appearing in Haaretz. Also on the show will be Daniel Drezner, a fellow blogger and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

The program will stream over the web and airwaves tonight starting at 7 p.m. Click here for the live web stream; here to listen at your local NPR station nationwide, and here to listen on XM Radio.

-- Steve Clemons

I've got no inside track on DeLay, but I imagine that whatever prosecutors were wringing out of his line of former top aides who are pleading guilty one after another to fraud and corruption charges had something to do with DeLay's announcement yesterday.

DeLay probably has some complicated legal wrangling of his own ahead -- but I'd like to step back from all of the excitement about his departure and try and figure out a constructive contribution that DeLay can still make to American politics.

I learned Japanese politics from a number of people, but one of my key mentors was Shin Kanemaru, one of the Tanaka faction strongmen who served as Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party, for a number of years and was one of the key "kingmakers" of Japanese prime ministers in the 1980s. Kanemaru was a master of old-style Japanese politics and fashioned Japan's ethic of political structural corruption into an art form.

Kanemaru was eventually arrested. They found $50 million in gold bars in his home closets, but believe me, that was just the tip of the iceberg. I feel very lucky to have been given a glimpse inside Kanemaru's world because I saw Japanese politics as they really were, not as the many books on Japan's political system theoretically and antiseptically proposed.

I should add that Congressman Barney Frank told me that the difference with DeLay is that he didn't "self deal." But given the dealing to his wife and close associates, I think Frank needs to reconsider.

Learning from the masters of corruption, of those who have made a mockery of governance and regulation, and thrived is important. There's the famous case of Joseph Kennedy who manipulated the pre-SEC stock market, and then later was put in charge of establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission as he was such an expert in what the manipulators did.

America has no good texts today on the realities of how American politics work. Clearly, Tom DeLay and his party have taken us in a direction that feels and smells more corrupt than ten years ago. Enron is part of this era. The secret energy policy meetings with Cheney are as well. Political donations for access. Boeing and the air tanker scandal.

But we act today like American politics is still operating in a purist way. It's kind of like free trade, University of Chicago-trained economists who beat the table in free trade vs. protectionism debates but fail to recognize that South Korea dominates the global DRAM and flat planel industries today because of policies antithetical to Chicago School neoliberalism.

To understand "how a bill becomes a law," like the old School House Rock jingle put it, one must better understand lobbyists, money, and the realities of a more structurally corrupt political system.

I'd argue that Tom DeLay is America's Shin Kanemaru -- and we should learn from him.

DeLay, as part of any rehabilitation plan or any attempt to apologize for his sins to the American public, should write a book something like Eric Redman's classic work, The Dance of Legislation.

Redman's book is a fantastic primer for any young staffer going into Congress. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) gave me the book with an inscription from him the first day I worked in his office. The book is dated today -- and Tom DeLay should write a similar treatment of American politics that ignores theory and gets to the praxis of politics.

That way, Americans and those who are trying to get their head around the context of reform have a clear picture of how ugly and distorted our political system has become.

There would be no one better than Tom DeLay to give this insider's view of America's structurally corrupt political order today.

Tom, give me a call if you are interested.

-- Steve Clemons

One probably has to be addicted to the soap opera that is Japanese politics to get the laugh I did out of the news that Japan's Liberal Democratic Party wants to drop "Liberal" from its English-language name.

Friday March 31, 10:49 AM

LDP may change English name

(Kyodo) -- The ruling Liberal Democratic Party may change its English name as the word "Liberal" does not match its policies, party officials said Friday.

At a meeting of a panel on party reform, Seiichi Ota, a House of Representatives member, proposed revising the name to "Party of Freedom Democracy."

The move reflects growing sentiment within the party that "liberal" is associated with an image of opposition parties, which are against revising the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution or favor aggressive government involvement in economic activities in the private sector, the officials said.

Japanese bureaucrats and politicians often must manage tensions that arise from the 19th century import of political institutions that didn't overlap perfectly. Some of Japan's political system was based on German models, British models, and American models -- but the notion of "liberalism", of individual liberty and minimal government, in the European sense is the one that inspired the Liberal Party that Ichiro Hatoyama merged together with the Democratic Party in 1955 to seal conservative rule for the next five decades. In Japan, like Europe, "Liberal" usually means something what most Americans used to consider "conservative."

While Seiichi Ota is getting the credit, or blame, for suggesting this exercise in political incorrectness, I am guessing that George W. Bush, who has mentioned Koizumi's name more than Tony Blair's name in state of the union remarks and other major speeches, has something to do with the change.

TWN is betting that at Camp David or the Crawford Ranch, Bush needled Koizumi for leading liberals in Japan. . .and that this has become a running joke between them. "Liberal Junichiro."

I bet Bush told him to change his party's name. . .or suffer years of ridicule.

-- Steve Clemons

Tom DeLay once joked at a DC dinner I attended that the only conservative he saw preparing to run for president was Hillary Clinton. He unveiled a bunch of political signs that said "Hillary and the Hammer in 2008." So, we should all watch out.

DeLay should never be underestimated, even after some time in political exile -- which he may be entering.

DeLay has just announced that he is withdrawing from his race to return to Congress in the next session.

I think that all arenas of public policy will improve, somewhat, with DeLay's departure from Congress.

On the other hand, the Dems lose a very good foil to run against in their 2006 campaigns.

Watch for more DeLay legal news in coming days, but this is the whopper outcome no matter what happens ahead.

-- Steve Clemons

I have not been able to confirm a key point in this methodical and carefully ordered account by Jason Leopold of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson leak that states that the government investigator "is now preparing the paperwork to present a grand jury outlining the charges against Rove in hopes of securing an indictment."

TWN has previously reported that it was able to confirm the essential elements of a story that ran on March 27th that Rove had been actively cooperating with the Fitzgerald investigation and had helped the investigation acquire many previously unaccessed email communications from the Vice President's office.

One wonders how much leverage Rove was able to get in his case with Fitzgerald through his energetic cooperation, but Leopold's sources seem to be indicating that Rove is in Fitzgerald's sights again.

If I learn more, I'll be back with it but wanted people to know that this investigation continues to perk.

-- Steve Clemons

Ever been to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland? It's a great place, founded in 1782 in part by George Washington who was on the Board of Visitors and contributed to the school's original endowment.

I've always found George Washington's role with a Maryland college one of the first cases of leading Americans getting beyond their parochial state loyalties. To my knowledge, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and others never did much outside Virginia, but Washington and his aide Alexander Hamilton did much to demonstrate concern for what would eventually become a united country.

Washington College is the venue on Wednesday for an event, "Measuring the Pulse of the Political Blogosphere," at which I'll be speaking.

Others in the program are Matt Stoller of MyDD.com, Robert George of Ragged Thots, and Paul Zummo of Confirm Them. It's a diverse group.

Matt Stoller is one of the nation's leading organizers of younger, liberal, sort-of-grungish political bloggers. Robert George was Newt Gingrich's speech writer and a brilliant guy who continues to be Republican despite kicking his party in the shins regularly on race issues. Paul Zummo has popularized judicial battles and helped to focus public frustration on Democrats who impede judicial confirmations.

The William James Forum sponsored event is open to the public and will take place at 7:30 pm in the Norman James Theatre at Washington College in Chestertown on the Eastern shore.

-- Steve Clemons

This won't read like Faulkner, but I think it's important to compare three passages written by serious analysts documenting the pathway and decision-making chronology leading up to the Iraq War.

Journalist Bob Woodward, former British Ambassador to the U.S. Christopher Meyer, and British Queen's Counsel and University of London Law Professor Philippe Sands each focus on the goings-on at the January 31, 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush.

This meeting was one of the fundamental points in the history of the Iraq War as it became known as the "second resolution" meeting -- and it occurred five days before Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 speech at the UN titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception."

What is fascinating is that it is clear that the meeting was more facade of diplomacy about a needed second UN resolution than substance. Sands makes the case that Blair and Bush had decided to pursue war no matter the consequences of diplomatic efforts underway and despite the absence of empirical evidence that Iraq had WMDs. The fact that Bush kept proposing ways to get Iraq to react in such a way to put them in material breach of U.N. resolutions implies that government lawyers believed that Iraq's previous breaches were not compelling enough to justify war.

However, read for yourself these accounts.

In the first, in my view, Bob Woodward whitewashes the meeting and displays no curiosity or interest in delving beneath the surface of what might really have been going on beyond the public statements delivered. Woodward's "Watergate era" honed sensibilities are no where in evidence in his account.

Second, Ambassador Christopher Meyer who had not been allowed to be in the meeting between Bush, Blair, and their closest aides, furthers the fiction that Blair was still pursuing a second resolution as if it mattered. What Meyer did not realize in his account in which Bush and Blair both seemed "stressed" after their meeting, is that David Manning -- the current British Ambassador to the U.S. and then close foreign policy aide to Tony Blair -- had recorded Blair's firm, unquestioned resolve to support Bush's course against Hussein.

The third is a devastating and empirically rich indictment of Bush and Blair, particularly Blair, who showed no resistance at all to Bush's intention that war be the outcome no matter what diplomatic facade had to be created to move things forward.

What follows are three selections, each recording what happened between Tony Blair and George W. Bush on 31 January 2003.

(Please note that the Philippe Sands selection is only available in the very latest 2005 edition of the UK version of his book -- which has not yet been distributed in the United States.)

Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 296-297:

On Friday, January 31, Bush was scheduled to meet again with Tony Blair at Camp David, but a mix of rain and ice kept them at the White House.

Blair told Bush that he needed to get a second U.N. resolution. He had promised that to his political party at home, and he was confident that together he and Bush could rally the U.N. and the international community.

Bush was set against a second resolution. This was a rare case in which Cheney and Powell agreed. Both were opposed. The first resolution had taken seven weeks, and this one would be much harder. Powell didn't think it was necessary. He thought a judge would rule that 1441 was enough to move without a second resolution.

There was another complication. The first resolution had passed 15 to 0 so that would be considered the norm. Of course, it was not the norm but a dramatic exception. In 1990, the U.N.'s resolution on the Gulf War had passed 12 to 2, with Yemen and Cuba voting no and China abstaining. Now if they didn't get 15 to 0 on a second resolution, it could be seen as weak.

But Blair had the winning argument. It was necessary for him politically. It was no more complicated than that, an absolute political necessity. Blair said he needed the favor. Please.

That was language Bush understood. "If that's what you need, we will go flat out to try and help you get it," he told Blair. He also didn't want to go alone, and without Britain, he would be close to going alone. The President and the administration were worried about what Steve Hadley had termed "the imperial option."

So they were back in the briar patch as far as Cheney was concerned.

"Blair's got to deal with his own Parliament, his own people, but he has to deal with the French-British relationship as well, and its context with Europe," Bush recalled later. "And so he's got a very difficult assignment. Much more difficult, by the way, than the American President in some ways. This was the period where slowly but surely the French became the issue inside Britain."

Bush called it "the famous second resolution meeting" and said Blair "absolutely" asked for help.

Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential: The Controversial Memoirs of Britain's Ambassador to the U.S. at the Time of 9/11 and the Iraq War, pp. 261-262:

Blair paid one more visit to Washington before the outbreak of war. The meeting with Bush, on 31 January 2003, took place against a deeply unpromising background.

Transatlantic relations were in a trough. Blair's famous bridge between Europe and America was sinking beneath the waves. Chirac and Schroeder remained vocal critics of the impending war. British diplomacy in Paris, Moscow and Berlin were wholly ineffectual, though through no fault of the ambassadors.

Rumsfeld enraged the French and the Germans by dividing Europe into the Old (bad) and the New (good). Paris and Berlin were all the more angry because the American policy of divide and rule in Europe worked.

Meanwhile, Blix's second report to the UN, this time favourable to the Iraqis, left the judgement on Saddam’s compliance with Resolution 1441 in a bog of uncertainty.

Blair, I judged, was going to find a pretty implacable Bush, impatient and deeply disillusioned with France and Germany. Unless we had some good ideas for sending Saddam into exile, the Prime Minister's task looked to be to try to ensure that we and the US went to war in the best possible company. That would be made much easier if Blix found the 'smoking gun' or made a sequence of fortnightly reports saying that the Iraqis were still not cooperating fully as required by Resolution 1441.

But Bush did not have the time to see if Blix would make the case. As I had always believed, exhausting the UN route was going to mean different things in Washington and in London. The timetables for war and for the inspections programme could not be made to synchronize.

Bush was undecided about the merits of going for a second Security Council Resolution to authorize war, something which had become a political imperative in London. Blair was coming to Washington looking also for delay in starting the military campaign, which had been scheduled for mid-February. On both points the President would have to be convinced.

The meeting looked more uncomfortable that it was. Blair won his delay in starting the war for the simple reason that the Americans were not ready to go until the second half of March. I had been hearing this for some time from our military staff at the embassy and from a White House source.

The latter had told me as early as October that the notion of going to war in January 2003, the original contingency timetable, was not feasible. The main obstacle had always been the Turks and their refusal to allow troops to pass through their country en route for northern Iraq. Ultimately fruitless negotiations with Turkey continued until almost the last moment. This slowed much American planning.

When, just before their press conference, President and Prime Minister came down from a tete-a-tete meeting upstairs in the White House, it looked at first as if Blair had secured Bush's solid support for a second Resolution.

We were all milling around in the State Dining Room, advisers from both sides, as Bush and Blair put the final touches to what they were going to say to the media at the usual press conference in the main lobby of the While House.

Bush had a notepad on which he had written a form of words on the second Resolution which sounded to me pretty forward-leaning. He read it out. Ari Fleischer, Bush's press secretary, said that Bush had never said this before and it would be a big story. Condi commented that she and others in the administration had already said something very similar in public.

That, said Fleischer, is not the same thing as the President saying it. There was a silence. I waited for Blair to say that he needed something as supportive as possible. He said nothing. I waited for somebody on the No. 10 team to say something. Nothing was said; I had not been in the meeting -- but I cursed myself afterwards for not piping up.

At the press conference Bush gave only perfunctory and lukewarm support for a second Resolution. It was neither his nor Blair's finest performance. The looked stressed and out of sorts. Bush immediately got irritable with his first questioner, who tried on him the kind of three-part question he does not like.

Then Blair kept giving answers that were too long as he sought to make the case against Iraq from first principles. The British press later reported that they looked to have had a row. This was exactly as Alastair Campbell predicted when he went upstairs to the private dining room to have supper with the President and First Lady.

I left Washington and retired from the Diplomatic Service a month later. The battle for a second Resolution was still being fought. The Americans had finally swung in behind us, but their diplomacy was as ineffectual as ours. We went to war without benefit of a further Resolution and in the company of a motley, ad hoc coalition of allies.

I would have liked to be in Washington a little longer for the denouement and war; but heart valve disease got in the way.

Philippe Sands Lawless World: America and the Breaking of Global Rules; UK Edition, February 2006, pp. 271-274:

What is clear is that by January 2003 there was very real concern in the British and American governments that it could prove difficult to establish that Iraq was in material breach.

In early January 2003 Mr. Straw wrote a private note to the Prime Minister, expressing the hope that the inspections by Dr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei would produce a big smoking gun that would be sufficient for them to report a breach of obligation by Iraq sufficient to trigger Operational Paragraphs 11 and 12 of 1441, a further meeting of the Security Council, and a resolution authorizing the use of force.

That did not happen.

Mr. Straw's note worried that it should not be assumed that over the next three weeks there would be sufficient non-cooperation by Hussein in respect of interviews outside Iraq to ass up to a material breach under OP4.

This indicates that in January 2003 Mr. Straw did not consider that Iraq was in material breach. His note also describes a call four days earlier in which Colin Powell had recognized the danger of proceeding without a second resolution, and told him that "if there was an insufficient case for a second resolution, there would be equally an insufficient case for the US to go unilateral".

On 31 January 2003 President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had a two-hour meeting at the White House, accompanied by six close aides and advisors. The meeting addressed a second UN Security Council resolution. It focused on the need to identify evidence of material breach by Saddam Hussein of his obligations under Security Council resolution 1441.

The matters addressed and positions taken are recorded in a note of this meeting prepared by one of the participants. The letter indicates concern about the absence of evidence and the need for further helpful reports from Blix and further inspections that turn up new WMD evidence. This letter is of considerable significance, since it reflects the state of mind of the two leaders and the fait accompli that existed even at that time.

Two aspects stand out.

First, the letter confirms that the decision to go to war had already been taken by President Bush. This was irrespective of what Hans Blix found, or whether the UN Security Council did or did not adopt a further resolution.

The letter records President Bush telling Prime Minister Blair that the US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and threaten. But the President states that if there was no resolution, military action would follow anyway.

The President also told those present that the start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March. That was when the bombing would begin.

The military timetable meant that an early second resolution was needed. And the President did not mince his words: the diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning.

What was the British Prime Minister's reaction to this?

He raised no objection. On the contrary, he said that he was 'solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam'.

As to a second Security Council resolution, Blair wanted one only because it would make it much easier politically to deal with Saddam.

All of this is consistent with the conclusion that Blair too had taken his decision by 31 January, well before he had received legal advice from the Attorney General, and even before he had asked the Attorney for the advice that eventually arrived on 7 March 2003 with its unhelpful content. There is no indication that Blair's views were any way dependent upon any legal advice he might receive, and there is no reservation of Britain's position.

Against this background, there appears to be no basis to any claim -- such as that made by former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer -- that by this date the British Prime Minister could have had any leverage over the US decision and that somehow Blair had missed an opportunity. President Bush had made clear his intentions. Blair responded by telling him that he was solidly with him.

The note of this meeting is significant for a second reason. It is clear that they had no information of their own which could give rise to an expectation of hard evidence emerging that would be sufficient to deliver the politically desirable second Security Council resolution.

They were dependent on Blix to deliver helpful reports and new WMD evidence, and to make a significant find. The Prime Minister's view was that a second Security Council resolution would provide an insurance policy against the unexpected and international cover, including with the Arabs. A further resolution was in reach, Blair hopefully suggested, but he was concerned that Blix's second and third reports would not be as helpful as his first.

How then to establish Saddam's non-cooperation with the inspectors, which President Bush described as the key to the case? The absence of hard intelligence held by the US or Britain becomes blindingly clear when the discussion turns to the possibility that the UN inspectors might not deliver the smoking gun that was being sought. Other options were considered.

President Bush told the British Prime Minister The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.

It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated.

These extraordinary suggestions indicate the paucity of available information at the end of January and the limited prospects being held out for the impact of the presentation that was to be made just a few days later by Colin Powell at the Security Council. By the end of January there was a growing sense of desperation that was almost as palpable as the absence of evidence to support the view that Saddam held any WMD.

I think Philippe Sands wins.

For those of you interested in hearing his remarks and responses to questions, you can listen to him on line in a session I moderated last Thursday.

-- Steve Clemons

Hayden Peake is curator of the Historical Intelligence Collection at the CIA, and he recently wrote this fascinating review of a compilated set of intel-related books.

I know some TWN readers are intelligence agency groupies, and I thought that this might be of interest to you.

Hopefully, I'm not breaking any laws getting this in to the public domain.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: Actually, I just found the same material on line here, so no worries that this sensitive material.

I received the email note that follows from Stephen Walt last night in response to my post yesterday about whether he was being demoted or not.

I think Walt's views and account of his situation are level-headed and make sense and coincide with Kennedy School Dean David Ellwood's account, published here on TWN yesterday.

It seems that the only "new and unusual" thing at Harvard is not Walt stepping down but rather Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz getting approval to post his attack on the Walt/Mearsheimer paper on the Kennedy School web page.

Here is Stephen Walt's useful note:

Steve:

The various reports about Harvard's response to my paper are either deeply misleading or simply false.

First, I was directly involved in the decisions to alter the disclaimer attached to my paper and to remove the logo. This was done in response to some early news stories, which falsely described it as the product of two Harvard researchers, and termed it an "official" study. It was never a case of the Kennedy School or Harvard "distancing" itself from me.

Second, my decision to step down as academic dean was made months ago. I originally began a three year term in 2002, and agreed to a one-year extension at the Dean's request last year. I made it clear then, and maintained it ever since, that I would end my service as academic dean at the end of this academic year. An announcement was sent to the faculty confirming this fact well over a month ago, and faculty were asked to propose suggestions for my successor. This step was taken long before the article was published (or before I even knew a publication date). The two events are completely unconnected.

I might add that I feel Harvard and the Kennedy School have behaved admirably in challenging circumstances. Many colleagues have been wonderfully supportive as well (whether they agree with the substance of our article or not). I believe that is true for the University of Chicago as well.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

best,

Stephen Walt

Stephen M. Walt
Academic Dean
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

So, I propose that we all get back to debating the important points that Walt and Mearsheimer make in their paper -- but not ratchet up the battle assuming that Harvard is undermining one of its professors.

Dershowitz may like to -- but Harvard thus far, no.

-- Steve Clemons