Needlenose

How do you know when a Republican is lying?
His lips are moving!

In yet another “rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it” episode brought to us by Republicans, Der Gropenführer has reversed his “no new taxes” mantra and has all but conceded that he can only meet California’s budget shortfalls by raising tax revenues. I guess he discovered that Sacramento doesn’t have a special effects department. Either that or he figures he can rely on the natural stupidity of the American wrong-wing, lie to them upfront to get the office, then go about the normal business of the Greedy Old Pig party; robbing from the public and giving to the rich.

Baghdad bureau chief John Burns in the New York Times: reported by Kuwaiti newspapers on Saturday, according to a Reuters reportI mentioned in a comment on fubar’s post about Fallujah earlier today that rejection of the U.S. occupation was taking a less violent (but no less potent) form among the Shiites loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Here’s Anthony Shadid in the Washington Post Monday morning, explaining what I mean:

. . . .the vast network of Shiite Muslim mosques, religious centers, foundations and community organizations that make Sistani Iraq’s most influential figure has led a campaign to amend the constitution or discard it. Posters have gone up at universities in Baghdad and elsewhere, leaflets have circulated among prayer-goers and Sistani’s cadres — from young clerics to devoted laymen — have gathered tens of thousands of signatures on the petitions. Demonstrations are next, they warn.

. . . For the past week, they have gone to universities, to Shiite community centers known as husseiniyas, to mosques and door to door with the petitions, which describe the constitution as illegitimate and list objections that run from the document’s liberal definition of citizenship to the power of an unelected government to make lasting decisions.

Shadid goes on to describe the activities of a Sistani loyalist in Baghdad who has organized the collection of 90,000 petition signatures, which he has “scanned onto a computer disc and sent to Sistani’s office in Najaf” on nearly a daily basis:

The poster the sheik read from has gone up in many parts of Baghdad. It bears a picture of Sistani, with flowing beard and turban, reading from a book. In large type, it asks, “What do you know about the Iraqi State Law for the Transitional Phase?” It was published by the Najaf-based Murtada Foundation which, like Awadi’s Ghadir Foundation, is among the handful of institutions that are nominally independent but under the loose supervision of the offices of Sistani and other senior ayatollahs.

The literature is ubiquitous — in husseiniyas and mosques, on the walls of universities and in markets. Qureishi, the sheik, had foot-high stacks of the group’s leaflets and interviews, piled next to blank petitions. At a mosque in a nearby neighborhood, banners along the walls copied the slogans: “Any law not ratified by a nationally elected group will not be legitimate.”

Although Juan Cole has argued that Sistani wants to avoid the chaos of mass demonstrations, it’s hard to imagine that this Shiite version of the “Perfect Storm” is simply about “the holding of cultural and intellectual meetings to prepare the street for the coming phase.” I think Sistani would just like to keep this “educational” campaign as far under the radar as possible so as not to spook the Americans into doing anything rash before June 30. When the Governing Council takes charge, though, I suspect the ayatollah will have some surprises waiting for them.

Meanwhile, Anne Barnard in the Boston Globe wrote an article Monday with a darker view of the petition drive:

The petition, which is giving many Iraqis their first news of the interim constitution, is worded to play to many Iraqis’ deepest fears. It describes the law as “a tragedy” that paves the way for the United States to dominate Iraq’s future, encourages immoral behavior, and opens the door for Jews to take power.

The petition is being passed around Baghdad neighborhoods and colleges by men who say they will deliver the signatures to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a spiritual leader to millions of Shi’ite Muslims. Some Baghdad residents say they signed the petition for fear that they would otherwise be branded as collaborators.

. . . It is unclear whether the 73-year-old cleric, who does not speak to reporters, is personally responsible for the Baghdad petition, which is more inflammatory in tone than many of his official statements. But by invoking his name, the people behind the petition — who say they belong to various Shi’ite foundations and charities — tap into the reverence for a man whose word is law to many Shi’ites.

A resident of the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora said a man collecting signatures there was the son of the Ba’ath Party member who kept an eye on the neighborhood under Saddam Hussein. Now the same man says he represents the Hawza, Iraq’s network of Shi’ite religious schools. The resident, a Christian who asked not to be named, said he signed the petition out of fear.

So did another woman, also a Christian, who lives in the central neighborhood of Karada. “They said that my signature on this paper would prove my Iraqi nationality,” she said. “For my family, I signed it.”

This is an example of how even the seemingly moderate Sistani may in fact be paving the way to an Islamic theocracy. As things develop, we’ll be keeping an eye on what “the coming phase” really means to Sistani and his clerical allies.

From today’s Whitehouse Press briefing…

What’s the fastest way to get tossed out of the Whitehouse Press Room? Try asking Whitehouse Press Secretary Scott McClellan a question like this:

Q Just one thing. You just said, we would not be in this situation [high gas prices] if Senate Democrats had not blocked the energy policy in May, 2001. Prove that.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Senate Democrats are the ones that had been holding up, through their procedural moves, holding up the Senate moving forward. The House moved forward, and they moved forward quickly –

Too bad they don’t tell us the name of the reporter asking the question, but something tells me it might be this one.

The dragging of a corpse through the streets of Al-Fallujah (shown in this gruesome AP video) brings up another symbolic reference point (added to those mentioned in a previous post). It harkens back to the 1993 Black Hawk Down episode in Mogadishu where the bodies of the dead U.S. Marines were dragged behind cars through the streets of the Somalian capital. That incident and the videotape broadcast of it worldwide is widely credited to have induced the U.S. forces to withdraw from Somalia.

That particular withdrawal–and the one ten years earlier from Beirut–have been cited by Bin-Laden as demonstrating the weakness of the U.S. willpower. The Al-Fallujah dragging incident (added to the the hangings of corpses and cemetery references) make it even more obvious that the murders of the four contractors in Iraq were premeditated moves by those steeped in the history of warfare against large superpowers.

To us, they are inhumane acts of brutality. To the instigators, there is propaganda value far beyond the mere act. The exact propaganda value of these murders (now symbolically linked to both Afghanistan and Somalia in the manner they were carried out) will become even more obvious when the Bremer regime attempts to politically withdraw from Iraq in July. Withdrawal — even one previously announced — following an act of violence, puts us on parallel tracks with past scenes of ignominous exit such as that of the British from Afghanistan in 1842, the U.S. from Lebanon in 1983, the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989, and the U.S. from Somalia in 1993.

Sadly, any act of withdrawal retreat from here on out is going to be forever tainted by images of charred corpses dangling over the Euphrates river.

It was so much fun the first time around, the Bushites have decided to play another round of “Who wants to take the blame for be in charge of our policy in Iraq?” — specifically, who’s going to be the unlucky ambassador in Baghdad once the U.S. hands over sovereignty in three months.

Spencer Ackerman of Iraq’d has such a joyfully nasty, yet brief post about the job’s true requirements that I’m just going to steal it entirely:

Are you an experienced diplomat eager to please policymakers who hold an abiding and implacable hatred for the entire U.S. foreign service?

Are you a man of clear principles who will betray every last one of them when Karl Rove reads you the latest numbers from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia?

Are you able to manage a tumultuous relationship with a charlatan angling to attain high political office even as he’s more loathed by his countrymen than one of the 20th century’s most bloodthirsty dictators? (Are you able to ensure that a new anti-corruption commission will neglect his shady business dealings and hoarding of intelligence documents from the former regime’s secret police and terror squads?)

Are you equipped to argue that the balkanization of a multiethnic and multiconfessional nation is just part of the “bumpy” road to democracy?

Are you neglectful of actual power centers in a foreign country to the point where you needlessly and counterproductively antagonize them–all because they don’t project the sort of image that plays well in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia?

Are you prepared to tut-tut an entrenched and murderous frenzy that shows no signs of abating as the work of a small corps of “dead-enders” that just “doesn’t get it”?

Have we got a job for you!

Be sure to visit Iraq’d for the links Ackerman includes to back up each part of that job description.

He neglects, however, to mention the free one-way helicopter ride on the ambassador’s last day of duty . . .

The image is striking. Young men dancing victoriously around the burning shell of cars they had set ablaze moments ago. The accompanying NYTimes.com article describes the scene:

An enraged mob attacked a group of foreign contractors here today, shooting four people to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge.

A taxi-driver is quoted:

“Viva mujahadeen!” shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. “Long live the resistance!”

A closer look at the image shows a pair of hands holding aloft a pre-printed sign that reads: “Al-Fallujah: the American Cemetery.”

The loaded term Mujahedeen, committing acts of desecration like hanging corpses from bridges, and references to cemeteries for visiting soldiers are striking symbols from Afghan and Muslim history, recounted in the stories of Sir Richard Burton as well as tales of resistance to the Russian invasion (notably =http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/080213775XThe Hidden War[/url]) mixed in with a dose of 20th Century globalism (“Viva!”).

In the 1980′s, it was a steady diet of precisely these types of symbols and the mythology surrounding them that drew legions of young Muslim fighters to Afghanistan, to join the Afghani resistance and fight the aggressors. Among them were people like Osama Bin-Laden and Aiman Al-Zawahiri. After the Russian retreat, the native fighters went on to fight a bloody civil war split into the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. The foreign fighters, as we all know by now, went on to form Al-Qaeda.

What we have in Fallujah, it appears, is the beginning of the public myth-making process — of struggle against the ferengi and of a wild intermingling of ancient symbols (hanging of enemies’ corpses and soldiers’ cemeteries). Whether this ends up where Afghanistan went remains to be seen. The chess pieces are arrayed in the same pattern as those in the 1980′s in Afghanistan. The role of the puppet leader installed by the ‘liberating power’ played by Mohammad Najibullah in Kabul is about to be played by one Ahmad Chalabi (Najibullah, in case you were wondering, was dragged by the Taliban out of the UN compound and hung from a traffic light post in the streets of Kabul).

At least one side is operating off the same winning playbook that allowed them to humiliate a mighty superpower, engage in a bloody civil war that allowed a small (Pashtun) minority to grab the reigns of power, and take over an impoverished country through religious fundamentalism. None of this is news to Needlenose readers. What is new is the overt convergence of ancient myths and deliberate acts of symbolic barabarism–something that has great meaning to the target audience steeped and schooled in the broader symbols. What is old is how the hapless powers-that-be fail to see and understand, and are slow to act to divert the outcome of the playbook.

A hapless U.S. Marine Corps Captain on the scene was quoted as saying that Al-Fallujah was becoming “an area of greater concern.”

My post earlier this evening about Ahmed Chalabi was spurred in part by Joshua Marshall’s commentary on a speculative UPI article (by the less-than-reliable Arnaud de Borchgrave) which foresees him being named prime minister of the forthcoming “interim” government:

Check, please! But if all
you’ve got is cash, I’ll take
that, too…

Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon’s heartthrob and the State Department’s and CIA’s heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries, such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime minister.

Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons — several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam Hussein’s secret security apparatus. . . . Potentially embarrassing for prominent U.S. citizens, Chalabi’s aides hint his treasure trove of Mukhabarat documents includes names of American “agents of influence” on Saddam’s payroll, as well as a number of Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV news reporters who were working for Iraqi intelligence.

Those of us who are familiar with Chalabi’s habit of being in the vicinity of manufactured evidence can imagine all too easily what mischief he might create with some, shall we say, creative additions to interpretations of those documents. But Nicolas Pelham of Britain’s Financial Times has the scoop on what else Chalabi is up to beneath the mainstream media radar in Iraq:

Saddam Hussein’s playboy son, Uday, had many playgrounds, but Baghdad’s boat club tucked amid the bulrushes of the Tigris was his favourite and for the women he accosted the most fearful.

The militia of Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent member of the interim Governing Council, now guards his pleasure-dome, one of many of Baghdad’s landmarks graffitied with the initials of his party, INC, the Iraqi National Congress.

. . . A minute further along this leafy road of Baghdad’s Jadariya suburb, many of Mr Chalabi’s fellow Governing Council members now occupy the homes of Mr Hussein’s closest aides.

The occupying authorities had intended to resolve property claims through arbitration. Last January Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American administrator, ordered the Governing Council to establish the Iraq Property Claims Commission, and three months later coalition officials say the commission is two weeks away from starting to process claims. But Hisham Shibli, Iraq’s justice minister, says that though commissions will be independent, they will not tackle expropriation by senior officials.

In late February, the Council’s de-Ba’athification Committee, which Mr Chalabi heads, ordered the confiscation of all property belonging to the senior 1,500 cadres of the former Ba’athist regimes and their relatives. The inventory is still under preparation.

I guess when Chalabi told gullible American officials that he wanted “to take Iraq away from Saddam Hussein,” they didn’t know how literally he meant that . . .

For the past week, the Bush Whitehouse has repeatedly stressed that even the idea of Condi Rice testifying before the 9/11 commission was unthinkable. So today, the not only did it become thinkable, it went all the way to a fait accompli. Not any sort of testifying either: under oath and in public.

What she has to say is not what I suspect will be interesting (although the degree to which she contradicts Richard Clarke most definitely will) but what is done with the testimony afterward, how and to what degree it is fact-checked against previous utterances by George, Dick, Donald, Colin, Ari, and Scotty will be truly interesting. The fact that POTUS and VPOTUS also get to go up and answer the full commission (including the feisty Bob Kerrey) but alas, not under oath, is also a solid departure with what we have been told is unthinkable. So a big score for the good guys.

However, the Whitehouse attached a few interesting conditions to all this appearing before the commission. One was that it wouldn’t set precedent and cancel out executive privilege (which it won’t because executive privilege is, well, a privilege reserved to the executive branch which means pretty much what the President wishes). So whatever subsequent presidents want to do is their own damn business and no snotty nosed Congress, no matter how hostile, is going to compel a president to give it up just because Condi showed up at the hearing. Congress will do what it always does. Go in front of CSPAN cameras and attend talk shows and throw temper tantrums until everyone gets fed up and the Whitehouse political office decides it’s getting too loud out there and agrees to just shut them the hell up.

The more suspicious interesting Whitehouse condition, however, was that by agreeing to toss Condi out to the wolves, the Commission would agree not to ask any other Whitehouse staffer to testify. Now why would they do that? Is this another manifestation of pre-emptive defense by the guys who invented it?

Unless there was somebody else there, somebody with more information than dear Condi–perhaps someone whose name rhymes with ‘Farl Stove’–who may also be compelled to testify as to what was really going on in the Whitehouse before, during, and after 9/11.

The commission’s chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, said he had no problem with the White House’s condition that no other members of its staff be called to testify in public.

“This is not something we planned to do anyway,” he said.

But it’s funny how the Whitehouse insisted on a bulletproof guarantee anyway. You never know what might show if you put ol’ Farl under a big-ass public magnifying glass.

I wrote back early February:

. . . if he wants to regain any credibility with Sistani, U.S. colonial ruler Jerry Bremer probably needs to do two things immediately: (1) begin the process of a census and other preparations for elections, and (2) execute Ahmed Chalabi and hang his corpse from a lamppost for public viewing.

Over the weekend, Kevin Drum (the once and future Calpundit, in his current home at the Washington Monthly), wrote:

Ahmed Chalabi deserves to be strung up by his thumbs and left for the vultures to feast on.

And just last night, Joshua Marshall wrote:

With all the multiple and mushrooming investigations of Chalabi and possible wrongdoing he may have committed, rather than continue to give him taxpayer dollars, perhaps we might better spend our time considering how to take him into custody while we’re still the sovereign authority in Iraq and have it within our power.

As usual, Needlenose was well ahead of the curve (while Josh is obviously a bit “squishy” on Chalabi and needs to catch up). Still, it’s nice to be in such distinguished company.

Washington Post article in early March:

While Americans, by 57 percent to 41 percent, would prefer a new direction over Bush’s leadership, that does not necessarily mean they will remove him from office in November. In May1988, a similar number favored a new direction, but then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was elevated to president. In March, 1992, 66 percent favored a new direction and he ultimately lost the election. At a similar point in 2000, the country was evenly split.

From Brownstein in LAT: Polls show the younger Bush in a better political position at this point than his father in 1992 or Carter in 1980. By late March of those years, approval ratings for the latter two had slid to around 40%. Ford’s approval rating hovered just below 50% en route to a narrow loss to Carter.A week and a half ago, I wrote a couple of quick posts reminding readers that despite Dubya’s ongoing barrage of bogus negative ads against John Kerry — and whatever short-term damage those ads might do to Kerry in the polls — ultimately the election would turn on Americans’ perception the president, not his challenger

An analysis by Ronald Brownstein last week in the Los Angeles Times explains the details of what I meant:

. . . Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton defeated incumbents despite polls late in the campaign showing that voters had significant doubts about their readiness for the presidency. For Bush, that history suggests that raising his approval rating — now right around 50% in most surveys — could be the key to four more years.

In every reelection attempt by a president since the Gallup Organization Inc. developed modern polling techniques, the incumbent’s job approval rating — a crystallization of Americans’ attitudes about the country’s direction — has been perhaps the single most important variable in the outcome.

Since the mid-1950s, every incumbent with an approval rating comfortably above 50% in the election year has easily won a second term: Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Richard M. Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 and Clinton in 1996.

Those races also showed remarkable stability, with the incumbent moving out to a lead early in Gallup polls and generally maintaining it.

More volatility was evident in the reelection campaigns of Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992, all of whom lost. Approval ratings for each fell below 50% in the months before the elections. And polling found voters ricocheting between their qualms about the challenger and dissatisfaction with the incumbent.

A similar roller-coaster pattern may emerge in this year’s race, with recent polls showing voters alternately tilting toward Bush or Kerry.

“The first question people ask is: ‘Are we happy with this guy in office?’” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent polling organization. “The second question is: ‘Is the other guy acceptable?’ The two questions feed off each other. A very bad president will make people want to take a chance on the challenger.”

The full article is well worth reading, as it looks briefly at each of the recent presidential campaigns and how losing incumbents tried to raise doubts about their opponent — with some success in the short run, but not when the final votes were tallied in November.

I’ll take a swing at doing some historical comparisons of my own in the next day or two. But in the meantime, don’t get too hung up on day-to-day polling numbers. As you can see from the quoted paragraphs above, Bush is locked into the losing pattern, not the winning one. Which doesn’t mean the election is over — for reasons that, as I said, I’ll go into soon — but it does mean the basic landscape is in favor of Kerry, no matter what the polls or pundits say.