Yes folks, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald's interview with Scott Horton on various topics comes this bombshell. The one person pushing for the selection of Sarah Palin throughout the summer was William Kristol of the New York Times.
It certainly sheds some light as to the spat going on between Kristol and the McCain campaign over the past few days. With McCain's poll numbers tanking, and now in free fall, ever since the selection of Mrs. Mooseburger, the finger pointing has begun in earnest.
The interview is here: http://www.salon.com/...
Glenn Greenwald's intro regarding Scott Horton:
My guest today is Scott Horton, who is an international human rights lawyer in New York, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, and a contributor to Harper's. And Scott has a couple of pieces in The Daily Beast, the new online publication from Tina Brown and others that are very interesting, and we're going to discuss today. Scott, welcome; thanks for joining me.
More below the fold.
The interview touched on various topics such as torture at Guantanamo Bay and the explicit endorsement by the White House for those practices. Here was one choice quote from the interview:
Scott Horton: Absolutely correct. And let's put it in little bit more context. Part of the push-back that came, both from the military and the intelligence officers, was them saying, we don't want to get scapegoated in this. We know what's going to happen, a new administration's going to come in to Washington, and they're going to do things differently; you're not to scapegoat us for this. If you want this done, you're going to formally approve it. So there was very serious, adamant insistence that this was going to be approved at the highest level of the administration, and indeed it was.
In fact, John Bellinger, the lawyer for Condoleezza Rice, submitted a statement to Senator Levin just 10 days ago now, in which he confirmed the ABC News report, whereby we know, in a handful of cases in which the most extreme techniques were used, there was a proposal written up; it was approved all the way up the hierarchy at the CIA, then it went to the White House and the National Security Council, and there was a principals' meeting - the principals' committee is all the members of the National Security Council save the president - there was a principals' meeting, at which actual torture techniques being applied to actual individual prisoners were discussed and approved, and this is, one of these sessions, John Ashcroft was reported to have said, in classic words of understatement, history will not look kindly on this.
But where things were brought into focus for the moment of today was this choice exchange between Greenwald and Horton:
GG: Now let me shift gears for a minute and talk to you about the piece that you wrote about Sarah Palin, and how she was discovered as a viable vice-presidential pick and who it was who led the way in terms of identifying her and then advocating for her selection. You talk about the role that Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard played in that. Describe what it is you learned, and what you think the significance of that is.
SH: I'd say, of course the McCain campaign isn't doing too well right now, and one of the consequences of that is we've got a lot of finger-pointing going on within the camp, and I'd say there's a pretty broad agreement amongst a number of the senior-most advisors to McCain that the Palin pick is worse than disappointing. It's a total disaster, as one describes to me. And there is a sort of blame game going on there.
Now, one of them described to me quite recently in some detail, who it was who introduced and pushed the Palin nomination, and he says it really boils down - there were a number of people behind the nomination, but there's one person who was essentially the person who introduced her as a candidate and pushed her consistently and firmly all through the summer primary she was elected - and that person is Bill Kristol. And the interesting thing is of course, if we look across the whole horizon of conservative columnists, prominent conservative columnists, pretty much all of them are expressing reservations or concerns or they're outright opposing Palin as a pick, with one really striking exception, and that's Bill Kristol. And Bill Kristol, in none of his columns has acknowledged that he in a sense is the author of Sarah Palin. He discovered her, he promoted her, and he pushed her through to the vice-presidential nomination.
Folks, Sarah Palin was effectively picked by a two-bit so-called journalistic hack. And the McCain campaign is surprised by the torrent of scandals ranging from Troopergate to AIP to the Bridge to Nowhere? Seriously?
But that's not even the worst of it. Continuing further we get more eye-openers with respect to the true intentions of the die-hards on the right:
GG: Right. What's interesting about that is, Andrew Sullivan had some speculation - and it was only speculation, but I think it makes sense - that really what the neo-con wing of the Republican Party actually is interested in most is finding a new face for their agenda. George Bush became that for a while, that they may not have thought that was the case in the beginning, it turned out that was the case, and they see Palin as a potentially very valuable asset in their political world view, and even if they are writing off 2008 election, that they're looking to her as the one they want to build up into 2012.
So when the neo-cons found George W. Bush to be a complete and utter failure, they pinned their hopes on another vacuous, unaccomplished, and unethical politician who "speaks plainly", and loves government abuse of power and secrecy.
But folks, it gets OH SO MUCH BETTER.
SH: Well, I can tell you what I'm told was advanced as reasons for her: that she had very close ties to the religious right, so she would mobilize and motivate them. That she was essentially a blank book - she really didn't have attitudes about much of anything, so she was someone they could take and they could furnish the copy for, they could provide the content, but then a third and major point they made was, well, look, she's from a little tiny town in Alaska in the middle of absolutely nowhere, nobody knows anything about her, and people are unlikely to discover a lot about her because of this remoteness aspect, and that's a big plus. I think that last point really turns out to be a fatal miscalculation, because of course you have had taken some time to dig in and get information, but what's come out has been devastating.
So seriously people, just how dumb was the McCain campaign to fall in with the Kristol crowd and accept this malarkey hook line and sinker? Seriously, how much better would their campaign be doing had they selected an economic "expert" like Mitt Romney? Or a "bi-partisan" like Joe Lieberman?
The conservative wing of the party would've been pissed, but they probably would've fallen in line. And all those independents going 2-1 for Obama during the debates, and showing up in the state and national polling would've been much closer.
Instead, we got a true continuation of the last 8 years. The republicans listen to the neo-conservatives and instead of making the wise and measured decision, they make the rash, "Mission Accomplished"/"What a great convention speech!", decision.
And just like the first foray of the neo-conservatives, this bookend failure has left the republican party in shambles and pointing fingers at one another.
I think it's safe to say today that the republicans have only one thing left now, so eloquently quoted in Blue Orb's diary from a RedState commenter:
Thanks Brad, you have completed my withdrawal from Redstate. This obviously isn't the place for me if they are going to allow defeatists on the front page 19 days before the election.
As for me, I'm commiting to continuing my support of McCain Palin. I'm changing my tactics and altering how I spend my money, but I'm not about to give up.
Lastly, I have commited to spending an hour in prayer each day for this election. I suggest others do the same. We had divine intervention in 2000, we can have it again.
In other words,
**UPDATE**
This courtesy of Olds88. Thank you!
Here's the timeline:
JUNE, 2007: Weekly Standard cruises to Alaska, Kristol and the Neocon gang meet Palin in Juneau.
JULY 7, 2007: Fred Barnes writes grooming article on Palin in Weekly Standard.
JUNE 30, 2008: Bill Kristol "predicts" Sarah Palin.
Kristol's influence isn't derived from the Weekly Standard, it's from being the mouthpiece for the Neocons. That's who forced Palin on McCain.