Rove and Espionage

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman is happy to point out that Rove may have met the statutory requirements for espionage:

But Rove’s conduct certainly meets the far less demanding elements of the Espionage Act: (1) possession of (2) information (3) relating to the national defense (4) which the person possessing it has reason to know could be used to damage the United States or aid a foreign nation and (5) wilful communication of that information to (6) a person not entitled to receive it.

Under the Espionage Act, the person doing the communicating need not actually know that revelation could be damaging; he needs only "reason to know." Classification is generally reason to know, and a security-clearance holder is responsible for knowing what information is classified.

Nor is it necessary that the discloser intend public distribution; if Rove told Cooper—which he did—and Cooper didn’t have a security clearance—which he didn’t—the crime would have been complete.

And to be a crime the disclosure need not be intended to damage the national security; it is only the act of communication itself that must be wilful.

It’s also a crime to "cause" such information to be communicated, for example by asking someone else to do so.

I haven’t checked him on this, but it is interesting to consider.

Plamegate Roundup

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

From The Left Coaster, a link-o-riffic round-up of the talking points lies of the waterboys and Rove apologists:

A number of rebuttals have been provided around the liberal blogosphere to the fakery from the GOP and their media arms about the Valerie Plame expose. Here’s a roundup.

TALKING POINT: Valerie Plame (Joseph Wilson’s wife) was not covert.
FACT: She was.

TALKING POINT: Karl Rove did not leak Valerie Plame’s name.
FACT: Please. Her name was not the secret, her identity was (which is the issue here) and he leaked that. (also see here and here). And keep in mind that Novak has admitted that he was given the name by his source.

TALKING POINT: Karl Rove was "not the leaker".
FACT: Rove’s attorney’s statement and Cooper’s email shows this claim is false. Rove did leak Plame’s identity. (Whether or not this is found to be prosecutable is another matter).
P.S. It’s not like this is the first time Rove has been in the spotlight for leaking secrets.

TALKING POINT: Karl Rove has never lied about his role in this matter.
FACT: Yes, he has.

TALKING POINT: The White House has never lied or misled people about its role in this matter.
FACT: False.

TALKING POINT: Karl Rove never knew that Valerie Plame was covert.
FACT: Really? Then why not state this on the record, something Rove’s attorney refuses to do.

TALKING POINT: Matt Cooper of Time magazine "burned" Rove.
FACT: Rove’s lawyer, who made the above fake claim, himself has been expounding again and again about how Rove gave complete waivers to all his journalist contacts to testify.

TALKING POINT: Bob Novak used the word "operative" by accident and his sources did not say she was one.
FACT: This is false, after-the-fact spin from Novak.

TALKING POINT: Rove "was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story" based on Joe Wilson’s "false premise" (that DCI Tenet or VP Cheney authorized his trip)
FACT: False. Moreover, Joe Wilson did not make such a claim before Rove exposed Valerie Plame’s identity.

TALKING POINT: The Senate Intelligence Committee said that Valerie Plame was the one who set up Joe Wilson’s trip.
FACT: False and false. (Also see here). (In fact, there is no consensus view that Valerie Plame even suggested that Wilson be sent on the trip.)

TALKING POINT: The White House/GOP cannot comment on questions regarding Rove or his role because of the ongoing investigation.
FACT: False. A completely bogus claim considering that they are talking behind the scenes or issuing false/misleading press releases (also see here and here) spreading fakery about Wilson. (Not to mntion, they felt free to comment self-servingly about the whole matter until the Rove story broke.)

TALKING POINT: Karl Rove is not a target of Fitzgerald’s investigation.
FACT: He is a subject of the investigation.

TALKING POINT: The Butler Report etc. vindicated Bush’s "uranium in Africa" State of the Union claim
FACT: False. The Butler Report was intended to exonerate Tony Blair and George Bush to prevent them from facing criminal charges. For obvious reasons, it excluded reams of information about Bush’s claim that showed that the White House lied through it’s teeth in defending Bush’s claim. (Indeed, as the link shows, people from the NSA, CIA etc. themselves stated that the SOTU claim did not have a sound backing.)

TALKING POINT: This is all just a partisan attack by Democrats (or Joseph Wilson)
FACT: False. The GOP leadership has a habit of minimizing numerous acts of treason from individuals inside the Bush administration over the last several years, by smearing truth-tellers. This is just the latest episode among many. In private, even Republicans admit that this kind of nonsense would have resulted in Congressional hearings "in a second", if the President had been a Democrat. Not to mention the hypocrisy of Rove himself.

TALKING POINT: Even if Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, it’s no big deal and deserves a medal.
FACT: The GOP’s Ed Gillespie and George Bush disagreed (with an emphasis on ‘d’). In fact, if it’s so not a big deal, why all this intrigue about what the White House can or cannot comment on? Just tell the truth then rather than hiding behind reporters and smears of people who had nothing to do with the expose. (As for medals, it probably deserves a medal in prison, to define the "role model" for fellow prisoners at Gitmo – while eating rice pilaf in the process).

TALKING POINT: There was no legal crime committed with the Plame expose.
FACT: False and false. So much for offering "a stiff dose of truth" instead of "more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials".

TALKING POINT: Joseph Wilson supported John Kerry.
FACT: So? He also supported Republicans in the past (before they turned on him and his wife, treasonously) and was recognized by George Bush Sr. for his bravery against Saddam Hussein in Iraq – where he was ambassador before Gulf War I.

TALKING POINT: President Bush is committed to upholding the honor and dignity of his office.
FACT: For the umpteenth time, false, false and false.

128,000

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

That’s the number of Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion liberation clusterfuck that started in March 2003.  That is one out of every 200 Iraqis.  And 55% percent of them are women and children.  So says an Iraqi humanitarian organization, according to the Washington Times.

Have a nice day.

Fox News Hates America

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

And Oliver Willis has the video to prove it:

FOX News anchor John Gibson just said onair that he thought Karl Rove deserves a medal if he outed Valerie Plame. Let me repeat: John Gibson, anchor at the FOX News Channel, says he believes that we ought to expose our covert government agents and harm national security… as long as it benefits Republicans.

These people are sick, and a danger to America.

Flypaper Schmypaper!

Ken AshfordIraq, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

The flypaper theory, which was false and stupid before last week, is now (in light of the London attacks) demonstrably false and stupid.  But that doesn’t stop administration officials from making bone-headed and offensive arguments like this:

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, said that the war in Iraq attracts terrorists “where we have a fighting military and a coalition that can take them on and not have the sort of civilian casualties that you saw in London."

[Source – emphasis added]

Really?!?  What about this:

BAGHDAD, July 13—A suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military patrol Wednesday morning in east Baghdad, killing at least 26 people, including many children . . .

This is one of the almost-daily reports coming out of Iraq which, contrary to Ms. Townsend’s statements, DO in fact show “the sort of civilian casualties that you saw in London”.  But clearly, in the eyes of the Bush supporters, the Iraqi civilians (including children) don’t count.  I mean, it’s not like they are, you know, REAL people.

Billmon says more:

It seems there is no pile of dead Iraqi civilians high enough to slow down the propaganda bulldozer. Reason and logic aren’t having much of any effect, either. Via Kevin Drum, I came across this argument from Wretchard, the allegedly Harvard-educated wing nut at The Belmont Club:

It is widely accepted that thousands of Al Qaeda fighters, the cream of their rancid crop, is fighting to expel the American infidel from the Land Between the Rivers. A moment’s reflection will show that if they are there they cannot be elsewhere—in London, Paris, Rome or Boston—sowing bombs on buses and trains.

If that’s what they teach you Harvard, then all I can say is thank God for community colleges. I don’t know how you would even begin to de-program someone capable of believing, with fanatical certainty, two completely contradictory statements: i.e., that because there are terrorists in Iraq, they can’t be in London blowing up the subways—even though they’re in London, blowing up the subways.

Try to imagine the reasoning process needed to take the same set of facts we’re all working from, and wind up with that conclusion:

1.) Our flypaper strategy says it’s better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than have them attacking us in the streets of London.

2.) The terrorists are attacking us in the streets of London.

3.) Our flypaper strategy is working!

Why is it so hard for the conservative mind to grasp such simple realities? The terrorists are in Iraq, and they’re also in London. They’re blowing up American soldiers (and Iraqi civilians), assassinating diplomats and generally committing murder and mayhem in one place, and they’re “sowing bombs on buses and trains” in another place. They can actually do both! At the same time!

Moral Clarity vs Factual Clarity

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Iraq, Right Wing Punditry/Idiocy, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Matt Yglesius says what I have been thinking for a long time.  The reason why the right is inept at fighting the war on terror is because they simply have no interest in accurately surmising the driving force behind our enemies.  Instead, the right just wants to paint the bad guys with broad brushes, and ignore the nuances of their motivations.

But I’ll let Matt explain:

FACTUAL CLARITY. Marshall Wittmann Christopher Hitchens‘ insights into the mind of Al-Qaeda:

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are. The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won’t abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor’s liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a license to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

Grasping this, says the Moose, will give us the "moral clarity" we need, a phrase I thought nobody used unironically anymore. The question raised by the Hitchens thesis, as is usually raised by like nostrums, is "is any of this true?" Is there any reason to think this is accurate? What’s Hitchens’ source for this? Certainly in the weeks after September 11 when all political and social commentators were called upon to say things about terrorism, Al-Qaeda, and America whether or not they knew anything about it, this is what most people came up with. Since that time, some of us have started to wonder about the accuracy of all this and tried to learn the truth. University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, for example, has studied a database of suicide bombings around the world over 20 years and concluded that the actual terrorist rank-and-file—as opposed to crackpot ideologists—is overwhelmingly motivated by foreign occupation of what they see as their homeland rather than the sort of grandiose dystopian visions Hitchens cites.

This is important stuff. Moral clarity, after all, is pretty easy to come by. Murdering people in the London Underground: bad. Kidnapping diplomats in Iraq: bad. Beheading people: bad. It’s all very bad and we’re all very morally clear about it. Factual clarity—actually understanding what’s going on and why—is pretty hard. But by the same token, it’s much more important. The habit of just making things up and repeating clichés has become pretty entrenched in this country and it hasn’t served us very well. Faced with bad people who want to do bad things, you need to actually understand who they are, what they’re doing, and what could stop them, not just rail away in ignorance. [emphasis Ken’s]

— Matthew Yglesius

Sun Tsu understood the importance of getting into your opponents’ head if you wish to prevail in war.  The current administration supporters apparently do not, because facts impede the propaganda.  Or maybe the enemy is just smarter than them.

In The Mind Of A Killer/Molester/Kidnapper

Ken AshfordCrimeLeave a Comment

Joseph Duncan allegedly kidnapped two children in mid-May—8 year old Dylan Groene and his 9 year old sister, Shasta.  He did this after murdering the kids’ older sibling, mother, and mother’s boyfriend.  And it appears that Duncan later killed Dylan.

Fortunately, Duncan was apprehended this past weekend, and Shasta was rescued.

Duncan left behind an eerie blog called “Blogging the Fifth Nail”, including this, one of his last entries before embarked on his murder/kidnapping spree, in which he discusses his “Happy Joe” persona:

To be more specific, I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die. As for the “Happy Joe” (Jet), well he was just a dream. The bogeyman was alive and happy long before Happy Joe.
I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that’s here nor there), even if I’m the only one who knows, so now what? Well that was when the “Happy Joe” dream started. I met a bunch of really great people, the kind of people I didn’t even know existed, but here they were, bunches of them, my neighbors, my landlords, my professors, my coworkers, and they were all good people, who were willing to give me a chance despite my past. They were willing to accept me and be my friend, something that was new for me, having been betrayed by many “friends” and even my own family.
So, I tried to make it work. But the problem was those demons. The ones who “got even” for me.

The blog goes back to January 2004, and makes for interesting—if not uncomfortable—reading.  You can almost watch the derangement slowly sinking in.

Friday Random Ten

Ken AshfordPersonalLeave a Comment

  1. "Sargeant Rock Is Going To Help Me" – XTC
  2. "Summer Breeze" – Seals & Crofts
  3. "Running Up That Hill" – Kate Bush
  4. "Taxi (Live)" – Harry Chapin
  5. "Grovel, Grovel" – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
  6. "How Do You Do" -Mouth & Macneal
  7. "Angel" – Massive Attack
  8. "Gymnopedie No. 1" – Erik Satie (from the film "Diva")
  9. "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes" – Paul Simon
  10. "Sheba" – Mike Oldfield

Failure IS An Option

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Let’s get serious.  Bush screwed up by getting us into Iraq in the first place, and screwed it up once we were there.  He had no plan yada yada yada.

But let’s put down the anti-Bush signs and flags and ribbons and ask some simple questions with respect to Iraq:  NOW what?  How do we “win”?

I’m struggling with this, and I found this post by Billmon to be very persuasive.  He starts out by suggesting—and this is hard to swallow—that we may have already lost.

The silver lining, if one can be had, is that Iraq doesn’t HAVE to be the central front on the war on terrorism.  In fact, it clearly wasn’t before we got there.  So the grand strategy is to find a way to get out of Iraq in such a way where we can save face, and turn our attention to the global war on terrorism.  But how do we actually do that?  Just pack up and leave en masse?

I won’t detail the entire Billmon post.  As the saying goes, read the whole thing.  And pay close attention to this paper by Dan Byman, which discusses “Five Bad Options For Iraq”.

Operation Yellow Elephant Update

Ken AshfordIraq, RepublicansLeave a Comment

Sticker_3Max Blumenthal talks to College Republicans, and asks them why they aren’t enlisting.  The responses are what you would expect: “a nagging football injury”, “my ex-hippy parents don’t want me to”, etc.

Then there is Cory Bray, a senior at at U.Penn’s Wharton School of Business.  From the bar at a college Republican party, Bray brayed:

"The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line"

Nice observation, Cory.  I also note that anti-abortion people aren’t having abortions.  But your keen insight begs an obvious question: Why aren’t you, who support the war, putting your ass on the line?  Care to respond, Cory?

"[B]ecause I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country, and I wasn’t going to pass that up."

I see.  So people who OPPOSE the war should be fighting it, so that people like you who SUPPORT the war can go to B-school.  Makes sense.

But Cory went on:

"We’re the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit."

Mmmmmm.  What “shit” does Cory do?  Googling him gives us some insight.  For one thing, he sells Bush T-shirts in bulk, and creates disturbing (and lame) “Use Kerry For A Baseball” internet games.

And while I’m sure that programming silly computer games and being a pro-Bush junior capitalist is important, it pales in comparison to those who actually—really actually—do shit.

Terrorists Heart Bush

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Iraq, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Remember that ridiculous meme during the past election that the terrorists were rooting for John Kerry to win?  Apparently, just the opposite:

Two French journalists who were held hostage in Iraq told a British documentary program that their captors believed George W. Bush’s re-election as US president would help radicalize Iraqis.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in August and released after four months, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Panorama” program that they were allowed to interview the leader of an Islamic militant cell within the group that seized them.

“We felt we were on planet bin Laden,” Malbrunot said on the program, which airs Wednesday night.

The cell leader trained with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told them the insurgents supported a Bush presidency because they believed it meant that “there will be confrontation, occupation and radicalization of the Iraqi people,” Malbrunot said.

And they were right.  Thank you, red states.

Bush’s Speech

Ken AshfordBush & Co., History, IraqLeave a Comment

From the speech:

And the larger purpose of our involvement has always been to help the nations of The Middle East become independent and stand alone, self-sustaining, as members of a great world community – at peace with themselves, and at peace with all others.

With such an Iraq, our country-and the world will be far more secure than it is tonight.

I believe that a peaceful Middle East is far nearer to reality because of what America has done in Iraq. l believe that the men who endure the dangers of battle fighting there for us tonight – are helping the entire world avoid far greater conflicts, far wider wars, far more destruction, than this one. The peace that will bring them home someday will come.

No.  I’ve lied.  The words are from LBJ’s Vietnam Renunciation Speech on March 31, 1968—the word “Asia” has been replaced with “Middle East”, and “Vietnam” with “Iraq”.  Essentially, last night Bush gave us the same rhetoric as Johnson did 37 years ago, and we know how Vietnam turned out.

We’re fighting Vietnam all over again.  Replace the word “communism” with “terrorism” and change some geographical names, and the mission, rhetorically speaking, is essentially the same.  It should be noted that Vietnam actually DID fall to communism, but the dominoes did not continue to fall as the gloom-and-doomers predicted.  Too bad Bush was too busy partying and drinking during that time in America’s history—he might have learned something the first time around.

[Hat tip: Cynical-C Blog]

Actually, many have already noted the similarities in tone and rhetoric between Bush’s speech last night, and Nixon’s "Silent Majority" speech, i.e.,:

I can order an immediate, precipitate withdrawal of all Americans from Vietnam without regard to the effects of that action.

. . . Or we can persist in our search for a just peace through a negotiated settlement if possible, or through continued implementation of our plan for Vietnamization if necessary–a plan in which we will withdraw all of our forces from Vietnam on a schedule in accordance with our program, as the South Vietnamese become strong enough to defend their own freedom. I have chosen this second course. It is not the easy way. It is the right way.

It is a plan which will end the war and serve the cause of peace–not just in Vietnam but in the Pacific and in the world.

MORE THOUGHTS:  It struck me as odd that Bush cited bin Laden favorably in support of his stay-the-course-in-Iraq policy:

Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: “This Third World War … is raging” in Iraq. “The whole world is watching this war.” He says it will end in “victory and glory or misery and humiliation.”

So, according to bin Laden, Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. And therefore we must operate under the same reasoning? Unfortunately, Bush thinks so.  But is there any chance that bin Laden doesn’t really think that and/or was just merely being somewhat hyperbolic?