{ed's note there was a
pretty good diary on this but it seems that only a few of you saw it}
When will the evil Geniuses at the WH learn not to skip IT training classes?
Thanks to a bit of actual reporting by the NYTimes; a nasty security hole in Adobe Acrobat has revealed a much worse glitch in our National security:
namely that our "Comprehensive Strategy for Victory in Iraq" was basically slapped together by a professional poll-watcher working for Bushco.
Although White House officials said many federal departments had contributed to the ...35-page National Security Council document titled, "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq....it strongly reflected a new voice in the administration: Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who joined the N.S.C. staff as a special adviser in June
Actually, Dr. Peter "Johnny" Feaver basically wrote the whole damn thing and we have the Doc codes to prove it:
The role of Dr. Feaver in preparing the strategy document came to light through a quirk of technology. In a portion of the document usually hidden from public view but accessible with a few keystrokes, the plan posted on the White House Web site showed the document's originator, or "author" in the software's designation, to be "feaver-p."
So who the hell is Dr. Feaver and why the hell is he in Charge of our Iraqi Strategy?
Well, basically, He's poltical animal; a professional poll-watcher for the president:
Despite the president's oft-stated aversion to polls, Dr. Feaver was recruited after he and Duke colleagues presented the administration with an analysis of polls about the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004.
In other words what the president means when he says "I don't follow polls" is " What? are you kidding me? all them numbers and graphs and such? No I got a man I hired to do all that for me
In the grand tradition of our current cronocracy, Dr. Feaver, now apparently our Iraqi War Czar, has expertly done the Sycophant Shuffle to land his current Job:
You Just Jump on the Left:
He worked on military issues on President Clinton's National Security Council staff in 1993 and 1994, but he has written critically of Mr. Clinton and other Democrats
Then Suck up to the Right:
Last year in an op-ed article in The Washington Post, noting Mr. Bush's determination to invade Iraq in 2003 in the face of doubts, Dr. Feaver wrote, "Determined commanders in chief have the mind-set and the resolve to act in spite of the political climate and military resistance."
(let's do the Iraq War again!)
But what really clinched him the job was his "kill all you want they'll make more" analysis of the Public opinion polls about the war:
Dr. Feaver was recruited after he and Duke colleagues presented the administration with an analysis of polls about the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004. They concluded that Americans would support a war with mounting casualties on one condition: that they believed it would ultimately succeed.
So, if you are the president, after receiving this news, do you :
A) Convene a top to bottom strategic review of your war efforts in Iraq, seeking feedback from commanders in the fields, expert military strategists and the Pentagon to ensure you are on the right track for ultimate victory; or
B) Deliver a fake "Major Address on the War" on a stage with Quasi-Facist Set Dressing in front of a crowd of uniformed soldiers legally required to cheer for you and then release a propaganda document disguised as a strategic plan whose every third word is "Victory"?
If you have any question which road this White House took, let me be the first to congratulate you on your recent recovery from a five year coma:
That finding, ....was clearly behind the victory theme in the speech and the plan,
in which the word appears six times in the table of contents alone,
"This is not really a strategy document from the Pentagon about fighting the insurgency," said Christopher F. Gelpi, Dr. Feaver's colleague at Duke and co-author of the research on American tolerance for casualties... The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion."
Now to be perfectly fair, the MS word bug only reveals that the Document was originally created by Dr. Feaver, not necessarily that he wrote every word,
According ... Adobe Systems, which makes the Acrobat software used to prepare the document, that entry indicated that Dr. Feaver created the original document that, with additions and editing, was posted on the Web. There is no way to know from the text how much he wrote.
However friends and colleagues say it's got his fingerprints all over it:
John Mueller, of Ohio State University, ... described... the victory plan ....as "very Feaverish, or Feaveresque" -
However this uncertainty is the straw the WH is desperately clutching at to avoid looking like complete buffoons. Now that this has come to light, WH spokespeople Are trying desperately to spin this as a team effort:
Frederick Jones, an N.S.C. spokesman, said the document "reflects the broad interagency effort under way in Iraq" and "incorporates all aspects of American power," including political and economic as well as military efforts. He said major contributions to the plan came from the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Homeland Security, as well as the director of National Intelligence.
Which is a bit strange since a top military commander in Iraq stated he hadn't even
seen a copy of the plan until it was made public Wednesday, much less been asked for input or comment on the plan:
In a news briefing from Iraq on Friday, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top American military official in charge of training Iraqi troops, surprised some reporters by saying he first saw "Our Strategy for Victory in Iraq" when it was released to the public on Wednesday.
But even if this were true, it woulf not explain A) what a professional poll-reader is doing on the NSC or B) Why he, of all people would be the one to write the first draft of a strategic plan for military victory in Iraq
Oops.
Playing politcs with the president's highest duties and most solemn responsibilities is probably the greatest of the manifold Sins of this current adminstration. You want to be shocked and outraged by the latest incidence but all you can seem to muster is another depressed "I told you so" to the non believers. And before we could even begin to digest this outrage another one is boilingup now in the form of The newly released E-mails from Gov Blanco to the WH
where we see the very same incredibly depressing pattern of Politics before lives:
White House senior adviser Karl Rove wanted it conveyed that he understood that Blanco was requesting that President Bush federalize the evacuation of New Orleans. . . .
"Thus began what one aide called a 'full-court press' to compel the first-term governor to yield control of her state National Guard -- a legal, political and personal campaign by White House staff that failed three days later when Blanco rejected the administration's terms, 10 minutes before Bush was to announce them in a Rose Garden news conference, the governor's aides said. . . .
"A Blanco aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the people around Bush were trying to maneuver the governor into an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive.
Look, I've always know Karl Rove is a political animal first and a human being second, and its been pretty clear to me that HE rather than the W is really calling the shots at the WH. But I think in my heart of hearts ie also assumed I was exaggerating just a little bit. I thought that even in the corrupt cesspool that is our current WH there must be some residual sense of honor and responsibility. Not any more, these two most recent revelations rub my nose in the cold hard fact that there is nothing they will not subvert to their political interests.
It's an awful cliché, and I apologize but every day I feel a little more likes Joe Welch all those years ago, shaking my head and wondering:"Have you no sense of decency, sirs , at long last? Have you left no sense of decency"?