Sgt. Hatley doth protest too much

Guest post by Nell of A Lovely Promise

Remember the right-wing screechfest last summer when soldier Scott Beauchamp wrote a pseudonymous article for The New Republic in which he related incidents of casual brutality by members of his unit, such as running over dogs with a Bradley and disrespecting Iraqi remains? The Army brass, some members of his unit, and eventually TNR hung him out to dry.

Now it turns out that at the very time some of Beauchamp's company members, including one Sgt. John Hatley, were denouncing his account as fabrication, at least seven of them were aware that Hatley and two others under his command had murdered four handcuffed Iraqi prisoners and dumped their bodies in a canal in southwest Baghdad a few months before.

But hey, they'd never kill any dogs, man.

Spencer Ackerman recently released a backgrounder/update he wrote last year on Beauchamp. He notes at his blog that the Army began an investigation into the murders of the prisoners this past January, though they wouldn't confirm at the time that the unit in question was Beauchamp's.

—Nell Lancaster

The Grinch Who Couldn't Quite Bring Himself To Steal Christmas

Despite my grousing about all the problems with Barack Obama, Joe Biden, the Democrats, the universe, etc., it's still incredible to see a major party nominate someone who's African American. (At least by America's psycho identity standards.)

I did think I'd live to see this, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it had taken forty more years. And I never imagined the first black candidate would be mildly liberal; I'd always assumed they'd be like Alan Keyes.

Good job, America!

—Jonathan Schwarz

BREAKING: New Biden Plagiarism Scandal!!! MUST CREDIT TINY REVOLUTION!!!

Accusations that Joe Biden was guilty of plagiarism during his 1988 presidential campaign seem to be mostly bogus.

However, I've uncovered recent, genuine plagiarism by Biden, during his 2007 Meet the Press appearance to announce his 2008 run for president.

What did his plagiarize? All of Dick Cheney's most egregious lies about Iraq and WMD:

MR. RUSSERT: I want to go back to 2002, because it’s important as to what people were saying then and what the American people were hearing. Here’s Joe Biden about Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security.”

“We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

“He must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.” You were emphatic about that.

SEN. BIDEN: That’s right, and I was correct about that. He must be, in fact—and remember the weapons we were talking about. I also said on your show, that’s part of what I said, but not all of what I meant. What I also said on your show at the time was that I did not think he had weaponized his material, but he did have. When, when the inspectors left after Saddam kicked them out, there was a cataloguing at the United Nations saying he had X tons of, X amount of, and they listed the various materials he had. The big issue, remember, on this show we talked about, was whether he had weaponized them. Remember you asked me about those flights that were taking place in southern Iraq, where—were they spraying anthrax? And, you know, what would happen? And, you know, so on and so forth. And I pointed out to you that they had not developed that capacity at all. But he did have these stockpiles everywhere.

MR. RUSSERT: Where are they?

SEN. BIDEN: Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued—they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued. They looked at them and catalogued. What he did with them, who knows? The real mystery is, if he, if he didn’t have any of them left, why didn’t he say so? Well, a lot of people say if he had said that, he would’ve, you know, emboldened Iran and so on and so forth...

Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don’t. The international community says “We’re going to enforce the sanctions we placed” or not...

So I did not believe he had weaponized his materials. But he did have material that, in fact, could theoretically be weaponized. And to let it sit there at the time, I wanted the inspectors back in to force him that position of having to give it up.

So many lies. Just keeping track of them is exhausting.

1. "When the inspectors left after Saddam kicked them out..."

The UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn at the direct request of the US so that the US could bomb Iraq in Operation Desert Fox.

2. "[T]here was a cataloguing at the United Nations saying he had X tons of, X amount of, and they listed the various materials he had...he did have these stockpiles everywhere."

The UN never said Iraq still possessed WMD. Biden is talking about documents prepared by the UN about the theoretical maximum amount of biological and chemical weapons Iraq could have produced before the Gulf War in 1991.

For instance, Iraq only admitted in 1995 that they had an offensive biological weapons program. Iraq also claimed they'd destroyed all the relevant material in 1991, and provided some though not conclusive evidence for this. The UN discovered that they'd imported a certain amount of growth media, and calculated how much anthrax they could have produced if all of the growth media had been used for anthrax at maximum efficiency.

Of course, humans never do anything at maximum efficiency. And there was evidence Iraq indeed had everything destroyed in 1991, and no evidence it hadn't. And even if Iraq hadn't destroyed it, it would have remained dangerous for only a few years after 1991, so there would have been no reason whatsoever for Iraq to keep it.

Again: the UN never said what Biden claims it did.

3. "[E]veryone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them."

"Everyone in the world" thought Iraq had WMD in the same sense "everyone in the world" thought Joe Biden should run for president in 2008—ie, everyone Joe Biden spoke to. The rest of humanity, no.

Just for instance, the head of the CIA's WMD section privately believed that Iraq had "not much, if anything."

And here's a story from October, 2002:

With a tense Mr Blair alongside him at his dacha near Moscow, the Russian president took the unusual step of citing this week's sceptical CIA report on the Iraqi military threat to assert: "Fears are one thing, hard facts are another"...

After confirming his foreign ministry's assessment that No 10's Iraqi dossier "could be seen as a propagandistic step" to sway public opinion, he made it plain.

"Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress."...

"There may be a difference of perspective about weapons of mass destruction, there is one certain way to find out and that is to let the inspectors back in to do their job. That is the key point on which we are both agreed," Mr Blair said.

So Blair explicitly stated Russia didn't agree with the US and UK claims, but everyone agreed the inspectors should return. Later this morphed into "everyone in the world" believing Iraq had WMD.

There's a lot more to say about this tiny subject; if fact, you could write a long article about it. Perhaps one day I will, if someone's ever willing to pay me.

And just to repeat myself: "The weapons inspectors" never said "he had them."

4. "What he did with them, who knows?"

"What he did with them" is explained in excruciating detail in a 1000-page long CIA report. "What he did with them" turned out to be exactly what Iraq had been claiming since 1995.

The CIA report, which is available to anyone with an internet connection, came out three years before Joe Biden said this on TV. The US government spent $1 billion on it.

5. " [I]f he, if he didn’t have any of them left, why didn’t he say so?"

Iraq screamed at the top of its lungs for twelve years that it didn't have "any of them left." Iraqi officials said it on American TV over and over again throughout the nineties and in many reports submitted to the UN. They said it again in the 10,000-page report Iraq submitted in December, 2002 to the UN. Saddam Hussein said Iraq had nothing in an interview on 60 Minutes in February, 2003, and then again in Arabic on Iraqi national TV.

In fairness to Biden, however, the Iraqi government did refuse to send someone to the moon to say it there.

6. "Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don’t. The international community says 'We’re going to enforce the sanctions we placed' or not."

The core of the Iraq-WMD issue was that the US had announced, over and over and over again, that the "rules of the road" didn't mean anything. According to the relevant UN resolutions, the sanctions imposed before the Gulf War in 1991 would remain in place until Iraq had disarmed. However, the George H.W. administration (including Robert Gates, then national security advisor) immediately announced the US would never allow the sanctions to be lifted as long as Saddam was in power. The Clinton administration repeatedly said the same thing.

This caused problems from the Gulf War onward, because our policy was directly at odds with international law, and guaranteed Iraq would have no incentive to cooperative with inspections.

7. "But he did have material that, in fact, could theoretically be weaponized."

He did not have material that, in fact, could theoretically be weaponized.

IN CONCLUSION: These are not the type of higher quality lies I've long hoped an Obama presidency would give America.

ALSO: Tim Russert was the greatest journalist who's ever lived.

—Jonathan Schwarz

"Crossroads"

By: Bernard Chazelle

A blues gem from the master, Robert Johnson. It worked wonders for Cream, better than for Johnson, and, truth be told, Clapton's hard rock cover has always appealed to me. But it doesn't even begin to approach the complexity of Robert Johnson's original, which mixes at least 3 time signatures: 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4: amateur guitarists out there, good luck trying to pull off these polyrhythms!

I once read in a Very Serious Newspaper that Johnson was "a fine blues musician who had trouble counting to 12." No doubt, that same critic wrote somewhere else that Guernica was proof positive that Picasso was a fine painter who had trouble drawing horses.

I won't go over the story behind Crossroads, which most of you probably know. I only want to draw your attention to one line, which is often misunderstood.

I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above "Have mercy, save poor Bob, if you please."

You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy, Willie Brown.
You can run, tell my friend-boy, Willie Brown.
Lord, that I'm standin' at the crossroad, babe,
I believe I'm sinking down.

Johnson lived in Mississippi, which had curfews for blacks in so-called "sundown towns." Anyone with the wrong skin color caught outside after dark would be jailed, maybe lynched.

Those damn Southerners! A good thing Northerners taught them how to behave:

The incidence of sundown communities in the South, Loewen reports, was actually far lower than it was in a Midwestern state such as Illinois, in which roughly 70 percent of towns were sundown towns in 1970.

Today we don't call them "sundown towns." We call them exurbs.

— Bernard Chazelle

Joe Biden, Savage Mule

Laura Rozen interviews a former Biden staffer about Biden's worldview:

FORMER BIDEN STAFFER: Joe Biden firmly fits into the liberal interventionist school of thought that dominated the Democratic Party during the latter half of the 1990s through 2003. At his core, he is a man comfortable with the use of American military power...he is not afraid to advocate for military power where appropriate, as he did correctly in the Balkans, to his regret in Iraq in 2002, and today when it comes to Darfur...

Biden unequivocally believes America is a force for good in the world. In this respect, his view dovetails with those liberal interventionists like Paul Berman and George Packer. He carries this belief to the core of his heart.

Here's Biden back in April, chairing a hearing at which Nir Rosen was a witness:

BIDEN: Based on what you've said, there's really no hope, is there? We should really get the hell out of there right now, right? There's nothing to do.

ROSEN: As a journalist, I'm uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power. I don't think we're there for the interests of the Iraqi people. I don't that's ever been a motivation. However, I have mixed emotions on that issue. Many of my Sunni friends, beginning about a year ago, many of them who are opposed to the Americans, who supported attacking American troops in Iraq, began to grow really nervous at the idea of the Americans leaving Iraq because they knew they would be massacred. It could be Rwanda the day the Americans leave. The creation of these Sunni militias, the Awakening groups, militates against that kind of a massacre of civilians occurring because now there are actually Sunni safe zones...But I do believe that if Americans were to withdraw you'd seen an increase in violence at least temporarily, until some sort of equilibrium is reached—

BIDEN: But the good news is we wouldn't be imperialist anymore in Iraq, from your perspective.

ROSEN: (smiling widely) Only elsewhere in the region.

BIDEN: Only elsewhere in the region. I'm sure glad we invited you, I tell you. [Bloviates for ninety seconds, then turns to other witnesses.] Gentlemen, to the non-imperialist side of the witness stand...

Now seems like a good time to buy Savage Mules.

—Jonathan Schwarz

The Felonious American Dream

McCain defends himself:

I am grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful life. I spent some years without a kitchen table, without a chair, and I know what it's like to be blessed by the opportunities of this great nation. Cindy's father, who barely finished high school, went off and distinguished himself in World War II in a B-17 and came back with practically nothing and realized the American dream, and I am proud and grateful for that, and I think he is a role model to many young Americans who serve in the military and come back and succeed.

I didn't realize the American Dream included being a mobbed-up convicted felon.

But seriously, usually it's the Democrats who are mobbed-up. Most Republicans have the money to engage in organized crime so high level that it's called "foreign policy."

—Jonathan Schwarz

It's All Wrong, But It's All Right

By: Bernard Chazelle

Like Jonathan, I am having trouble containing my excitement about Joe Biden. I heard on NPR that, unlike Obama, Biden knows where the bathrooms are in the White House.

That's very exciting news. But... how would NPR know? Did Neal Conan or Robert Siegel actually ask Biden to count, locate, and describe the White House urinals? Did they ask him whether he made use of the facilities and, if so, why? If the president calls you into his office to share with you his latest plan to carpet-bomb a poor Muslim country, do you go "Hold that B-52 thought just a sec, Mr President, where's the restroom?" Wouldn't that say something significant about your ability to lead? If you can't plan ahead to use the bathroom before meeting the president, why should I believe you can plan the reconstruction of a nation after you've annihilated it? I read that Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he had a bad case of hemorrhoids (think about it: if not for hemorrhoids, you'd all be speaking French.) A politician's intimate knowledge of White House plumbing should be cause for worry not reassurance. Trust NPR to miss that.

If you think my fears are ill-founded, check this out.

Six months before the invasion of Iraq, four US senators asked the CIA to produce a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's WMDs. Ten days after the report came out, Biden joined the majority of the Senate in authorizing war.

Biden read the report and saw immediately that the White House was peddling major-league crapola.

I did read it, and that's why I took issue from the very beginning, as you'll recall, from the very beginning, saying that what they were saying was not accurate.

Biden smelled a rat. So what did he do? Did he rush to inform his lazy colleagues who couldn't be bothered to read the NIE? No, that would be illogical. You see, when you catch a president in a lie, you draw the obvious conclusion:

[Y]ou have to accept the assertions Presidents make. I make the assumption, when the National security Adviser tells me something, when the President tells me something, when the secretary of Defense tell s me something, when the secretary of State tells me something, they're telling the truth... It shouldn't be a moral obligation that we have to doublecheck them.

Not a moral obligation, indeed -- a constitutional one.

— Bernard Chazelle

Trying To Think Of Something To Say

I'm a bad political bloggger, because I truly don't care about politics. All I care about is these cretins not killing me and everyone I know. It's like curling: I don't care about that either, but if all the world's curling teams were armed with nuclear weapons, I'd probably start a blogg about curling.

So, Joe Biden. Eh.

Pretty good by DC standards on Iran—ie, not completely insane.

Owned by the credit card companies, hence their loyal factotum on the hideous bankruptcy bill. Okay on economic issues otherwise.

Truly hideous in the march to war with Iraq. Here's his speech explaining why he was voting for the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force:

I do not believe this is a rush to war. I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur...

[Saddam Hussein] possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons....For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering those weapons...

The terms of surrender dictated by the United Nations require him to declare and destroy his weapons of mass destruction programs. He has not done so. ...

President Bush did not lash out precipitously after 9/11. He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation...

I am absolutely confident the President will not take us to war alone. I am absolutely confident we will enhance his ability to get the world to be with us by us voting for this resolution...

Maybe there's something else to say, but thinking about Joe Biden makes me too sleepy to figure out what it might be.

BUT: If nothing else, I'm grateful I'm not writing for late night TV right now. Those poor souls have to spend the next two months (at the very least) sitting around and trying to come up with something funny about Joe Biden that everyone in America can understand.

Let's see...

He, uh, plagiarized his hair transplants from Kenny Rogers?

I don't know, I got nothing.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Glenn Greenwald Interviews Dennis Perrin

Glenn Greenwald just posted an intervew with Dennis. They spoke mostly about Dennis's new book Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War.

I agree with Dennis about the Democrats. But I'm also sure that if the Green Party ever reached a comparable level of power, they'd act in exactly the same way, and then he'd have to write a book called Savage Trees.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Global Warming: Why We're Not 100% Doomed

Check out the National Clean Energy Summit, which was just held in Las Vegas. It was hosted by Harry Reid, with the opening speech by Bill Clinton.

It's things like this that make me believe human civilization will likely—despite current appearances—manage to mitigate global warming and survive. That's because this kind of event demonstrates climate change is one of the few political issues in which the Sane Billionaires are on the progressive side.

Almost all political conflict, especially in the US, boils down to a fight between the Sane Billionaires and the Insane Billionaires. It generally follows this template:

INSANE BILLIONAIRES: Let's kill everyone and take their money!

SANE BILLIONAIRES: I like the way you think. I really do. But if we keep everyone alive, and working for us, we'll make even more money, in the long term.

INSANE BILLIONAIRES: You communist!!!

So from a progressive perspective, you always have to hope the Sane Billionaires win. Still, there's generally a huge chasm between what the Sane Billionaires want and what progressives want.

This is not the case with global warming. Take Thomas Friedman, who is a pure distillation of Sane Billionarism. (And he is literally a billionaire by marriage.) On trade, foreign policy, etc., Friedman—unlike, say, Dick Cheney—doesn't want to kill everyone on earth. He's intelligent enough to understand blood is a big expense. However, he wants to keep us all working to make even more money for him and his fellow billionaires, and is certainly willing to kill anyone who gets out of line. There's a gigantic chasm between this and anything that could be termed progressive.

But with global warming, Friedman is to a large degree on the progressive side. He's like Marriner Eccles, an industrialist who later became Chairman of the Federal Reserve under FDR. Eccles said this about the Great Depression:

"It became apparent to me, as a capitalist, that if I lent myself to this sort of action [by his fellow businessmen] and resisted any change designed to benefit all the people, I could be consumed by the poisons of social lag I had helped to create."

What does this have to do with the National Clean Energy Summit? Well, many of the attendees were from the Sane Billionaire class: T. Boone Pickens, Robert Rubin, a Google representative, and Michael Bloomberg. (Actually, Rubin may only be a Sane Semi-Billionaire.)

This doesn't mean progressives will win on global warming. It's a gigantic challenge in any case. And dealing with it might require so much change that some of the Sane Billionaires will flip back to the other side. But as with people like Eccles, the threat of the Sane Billionaires' own personal destruction combined with huge social movements can push the SBs to places you might not expect. (Note that this conference got these SBs to the same location as the Vice President of United Steelworkers.)

Thus, we have more wind at our backs than it first appears. No one can know whether this will be enough, even with a huge social movement. And it certainly won't be enough without a huge social movement. But we're not necessarily doomed.

MORE GOOD NEWS: Giant evil utility Xcel is shutting down two coal plants in Colorado and replacing their output with newly-built solar and wind power.

—Jonathan Schwarz