Just a few possibilities that will work no matter who gets the nod....

Q. So what do you make of this announcement?

A. Well, the question of the hour is whether this latest move from the Bush administration will be enough to take the spotlight off of the growing scandals surrounding Karl Rove and other top advisors.  It may do that for a little while, but this scandal is just too big, it's got too much momentum.  It's not going away.

Q. Well, that might not be such a bad move on the Administration's part?

A. That's true.  I've hardly heard a word all day about Karl Rove.

more below the fold

Just a few things I hope our Congresspeople will bear in mind:

Americans like their leaders plain-spoken and charismatic.  Kerry was neither.  

This isn't just a matter of appearances.   Being right on the issues doesn't help you if the public doesn't know you're right on the issues.  

Think force, clarity, and backbone.  

Say what you mean, and mean what you say.  Learn to be clear, and you will have a lot more impact, and the other side will find it much harder to twist your words.  (Yes, they'll still try, but please, let's not make it easier for them.)  

Whatever your message is, boil it down.  Make it pithy, short, and memorable.

Remember this bit from John Ashcroft the other day?

[The administration] has operated with respect to all of the laws enacted by the Congress, all of the treaties embraced by the president and the Congress together, and the Constitution of the United States, and no direction or order has been given to violate any of those laws.

Those words came back to me when I was at the gym this afternoon, and I happened to catch a bit of Bush's press conference from Sea Island (transcript here).   This question from a BBC reporter caught my attention:

Q: Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law.

So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?

After some quick Googling and a few visits to the usual Internet suspects, I was actually surprised that I couldn't find a Drinking Game especially designed for Bush's speech tonight.  If there's one out there (or more than one), post the links.  If not -- or, hell, even if there are -- let's make our own up...

There are plenty of useful precedents.  Wonkette posted a memorable one for the April Press Conference.  Uggabugga, after the same conference, posted a chart full of good material for yet another one. Will Durst published this one, for the State of the Union Address.  Even Craig's List got in the game.

So here's my challenge:  I've put a short draft together in the the extended comments, just to kick things off.   Just add your own comments, pick your favorites from the resulting thread, and voila: a drinking game.

A couple of weeks ago on hardball, Bill Maher said that, with $180 Million to spend, George Bush "could convince Americans to drink paint."

That may not be much of an exaggeration.

In this morning's NY Times, Adam Clymer has the rundown on a revealing new poll.  The upshot: people do believe political ads, even when they're demonstrably misleading, much more often then even they themselves are willing to admit.

This is really an update, from yesterday's diary post, on the matter of the Wisonsin newspaper that was soliciting pro-Bush letters -- in effect advertising their eagerness to put their editorial thumb on the scales of "balance."   My hope was that a few Kos readers would come through with more letters -- and they did.

I also mentioned that I had alerted the good General to the situation -- and, sure enough, he's come through with a stellar missive:

Dear Editor,

I support George W. Bush's visionary plan to turn the Middle East into one large terrorist incubator. His daily efforts to fuel that region's hatred of Americans has been wildly successful. Thanks to the President's bold leadership, there are now more American-hating terrorists on the loose than at any other time in our history.

Eventually, every single resident of the Middle East who could possibly become a terrorist, will be one. Then, it's just a matter of time until we round them all up and end the threat of terrorism once and for all.

JC Christian, patriot

Via Media Matters, we learn of this little head-spinner.  

The editors of a Wisconsin paper, shortly after describing its letters section as a useful way "to take the political and social temperature" of its readership, offer the following lament:

We've been getting more letters critical of President Bush than those that support him. We're not sure why, nor do we want to guess. But in today's increasingly polarized political environment, we would prefer our offering to put forward a better sense of balance.

"Bewildered" doesn't even begin to describe my reaction. You're not sure why?  And you don't even want to guess?  And you're the editor of a goddamned newspaper?  Has it occurred to you that the "balance" might be shifting? Sheesh.  

How could we have missed it?  Rummy's save-his-own-ass strategy is now official.  From CNN:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will tell congressional committees Friday that he plans to form an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled investigations into allegations of abuses of Iraqi prisoners, a senior administration official said.

The article does not explain, of course, how exactly such panel will be "independent" if he forms it.  

No doubt they'll get right on it, and report back to us in -- gee, I dunno -- maybe December.

What do we suppose the odds are that this strategy will fly?

Help me out on this folks.  Just over a month ago, I wrote a brief post on the string of successors to Richard Clarke's anti-terrorism post, figuring that maybe we should keep an eye on these folks.   Today, there's more - but first some background.

So far, one of Clarke's successors quit in frustration to become a consultant and NBC military analyst (Gen. Wayne Downing), another quit in frustration to become John Kerry's Foreign Policy Advisor (Rand Beers); then the next was promoted (or kicked upstairs) to the post of Homeland Security Advisor (John Gordon), followed by the latest to hold the post, Fran Townsend.  I joked at the time that, given the track record of her predecessors, Ms. Townsend "might well be in line for a promotion."

Well, apparently she was.  Today, deeply buried in an AP article that reads like a puff piece from the subject's own publicist, we learn that --  sure enough -- Fran Townsend  has a new job:

On Friday, she was promoted to homeland security adviser at the White House, responsible for coordinating strategies for protecting Americans. She will hold onto her anti-terrorism duties until a replacement is named.

It's become a staple of the left - from the busy bees at the Center for American Progress, to the "D-Bunker" on John Kerry's site, to watchdog sites like Factcheck.org, to answer Bush claims with some sort of fast-response "Claim v. Fact."  While this is without question a welcome development, it is not nearly enough.   There are more tools in the arsenal of persuasion than fact and argument, and we would do well to attend to them and use them as effectively as the Bush team does.  

Luke Francl got me going yesterday with this post on the latest Bush ad - which provides a fine illustration of how the Bush team operates - and how ineffective mere debunking is.  First, here's Luke:

FactCheck's exasperation gets to the heart of my frustration with these "spin-busting" services. To a fault, they assume that getting the "facts" out there will coerce the politicians to change their ways. In the case of the Bush administration, this is clearly futile. The Bush administration's selective use of "facts" has practically turned truth into a Democratic monopoly.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons why the Administration continues to lie - but that is, to some degree beside the point.  As Sidney Blumenthal notes, it has a serious stake in maintaining the lie - precisely because beliefs that are demonstrably wrong (such as the belief that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11) are reliably correlated with a tendency to vote for the Bushies.

The problem with the fact check folks, and debunking in general, is that what they do is far too limited.  It is generally a mistake to respond to a Bush "message" as if it were merely an argument.  There is too much going on, in too many dimensions, to leave much chance that a literal response -- confined to the narrow planes of fact & logic -- will either be sufficient or very effective.

The great Bush media skill is in managing "impressions" - which may or may not be explicitly stated, which may or may not have any logical underpinnings, and which may or may not have any evidence to support them.    The idea, very simply, is that you walk away with pretty much the same message - regardless of the level of attention you pay to it.  It is for this reason, for example, that the Bush team conceived of the very clever stratagem of using those "keyword" backdrops: the effect is to make it virtually impossible to photograph Bush without creating, in the process, and image that advances his message.  This is also why they continue with oblique references to WMD, why they repeat certain well-tested catch phrases, and why - for much of his intended audience - it may not matter that they often do so incoherently.  

An ad like Bush's most recent one, "Weapons," therefore, needs to be approached on several levels.   Don't just look at what it says, in other words - look at what it implies, and look at how it reinforces those implications with images and music.  

Removed of it's context, this is the "explicit" text of the ad:

As our troops defend America in the War on Terror, they must have what it takes to win.

Yet, John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the War on Terror: Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Patriot Missiles, B-2 Stealth Bombers, F-18 Fighter Jets and more.

Predictably, the ad is chock full of distortions, as factheck.org quite capably points out.  But there's more.

First, notice the "must have" formation.   While you could read this as merely a statement of principle - and an inarguable one at that - you could also read this as an acknowledgement of the fact that our troops, currently, do not have "what it takes" to win.   This, of course, is borne out by the context and timing of the ad - since news reports, such as this one in Newsweek, are doing a fine job of documenting just how under-prepared our troops are, and just how deadly the consequences have been.

The impression that the ad wants to leave, without ever explicitly stating it, is that John Kerry vote's - rather than Bush team's haste, arrogance and poor planning -have led us to this sad state of affairs.    

Clearly the Bush campaign wants us to believe that "no" votes against large appropriations bills, even "no" votes against appropriations that passed anyway, somehow caused these weapons to magically disappear.    Lest there be any doubt that this is precisely the impression they want us to have, helpful computer graphics actually do make the weapons magically disappear - as we zoom in, over ominous chimes, on a worried soldier out on the battlefield.

Overall, it's a piece of masterful misdirection.  That soldier probably wouldn't have been there in the first place had Bush not been so eager to put him there - and it is the Bush team's reluctance to send adequate numbers of troops, and their wholly unrealistic expectations about the duration and complexity of the war, that have led to this point.  And the fact remains that, even having won all of the appropriations he has asked for thus far, our soldiers still lack adequate body armor, and those armored vehicles are in too many cases still sitting back home, or not even manufactured yet.   Never mind the fact that this is Bush's war.  Let's dump the danger on Kerry.

The one really truthful element in the entire piece is that "implied" message - underscored with sound & image - that our troops are indeed under-equipped and vulnerable.   They are.  But this is truth used in the only way that the Bush team knows how - in service of a Big Lie.  This result is powerful, and insidiously effective, advertising that - to borrow a phrase from Mark Crispin Miller - "we misunderestimate at our peril."

We are wrong if we assume that - by "disproving" some core claim in the Bush ads, the whole message will tumble down, like a house of cards.   In this brave new world of message management, the rules of logic don't really apply.  You can refute - indeed, demolish - a whole serious of foundation premises, and the structure of distortion built upon them will all too often still stand.

Fact checking this stuff is a good start, but we'll have to do much, much more.

[this entry cross-posted here]

Please don't ask how it occurred to me to check this particular news source - but somehow I couldn't help wondering how, or even if, some of the week's more challenging news stories have fared in the ever-scintillating pages of My Weekly Reader.  

Suffice it to say that it was an intructional exercise.  For those who, like myself, found it difficult to channel their impressions of Tuesday night's press conference into a form more literate than, say, smashing the television set - My Weekly Reader's tidy recitation of assertions, neatly expunged of context, ambiguity, or question, is singularly impressive.

Here, in its entirety, is their report:

April 15, 2004
Bush: Work in Iraq Not Over

President George W. Bush vowed to "finish the work" in Iraq on Tuesday night, saying "we must not waver" despite recent weeks of increased bloodshed there. Bush addressed the nation in a televised speech. He said that a free Iraq is essential to winning the broader war on terrorism.

Bush talked about ongoing uprisings in Iraq. He said that the majority of Iraqis are happy that U.S. troops are stationed there to protect them. He said leftover members of Saddam Hussein's regime, terrorist groups, and radical religious leaders are behind the recent violence.

The president said the U.S.-led coalition will hand over rule to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, despite the uprisings. After the handover, U.S. soldiers will remain in Iraq "to protect [the interim] government from external aggression and internal subversion," Bush said.

There are currently 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Bush said that he will send more soldiers and more equipment if commanding Gen. John Abizaid asks for them.

One wonders what sort of classroom exercises this stuff will inspire.  Class, did any of you actually hear what the President said on Tuesday?  Do you think that the author of this article did?  Is the author indicating, by placing the term "finish the work" in quotes, that the President was speaking ironically? Does anyone find it odd that the article omits any mention of the fact that the President "spoke" at a press conference?  Or do you suppose it was just easier to ignore the fact that there were questions, than to report the fact that none of them were actually answered?   Can you explain to me, class, the difference between an assertion and a fact?  Which term best describes the statements attributed to the President?  

There's a really important quiz coming up in November, kids, and you may need to help some of your parents study a bit more....

This exchange with Senator Joe Biden, from yesterday's Face the Nation, deserves wider notice (emphasis added):

SCHIEFFER: Well, the--turning it over to NATO--and--and many people have said that--but, Senator Biden, let me ask you this question: Do you think that NATO forces will be willing to come into Iraq? Have you talked to any foreign leaders, for example, who are members of NATO, who said, `If you'll give us a chance, we'll send some troops in there'?

Sen. BIDEN: Absolutely I have. I've spoke tone the president of France. I'm spoken to the permanent representatives in Brussels. I've spoken to the secretaries of defense in Great Britain. I've spoken to a number of European leaders. Now what's happening though is the
window's closing very rapidly. It's like that old bad joke I've told you before, Bob, about the center fielder who makes four errors in the first inning. The coach calls him out, puts in Pat. Pat's first play makes an error. He comes out, calls timeout and says `Pat, what's the matter with you?' And he says, `George has screwed up center field so bad no one can play it.' They're beginning to think we're screwing up center field so bad no one can play it. So that's why the president...

Sen. ROBERTS: You could have used a different name.

Sen. BIDEN: Well, no, but I think it's appropriate. I really do. Look, I promise you, the meetings I've had with these heads of states and the leaders of these European countries are saying we are willing to come in. Now let me make it clear. They're only willing to come in if they have genuine political input in what Iraq is going to look like, not--not under some super embassy ambassador or under Mr. Bremer. They have an equal input in what the country's going to look like.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let--let me just ask you, because I'm intrigued by you said you talked to the president of--of France. The president of France told you he would be able to send troops? He wanted to sent troops? How many troops did he want to send...

Sen. BIDEN: He--he--he--he--he...

SCHIEFFER: ...and under what circumstances?

Sen. BIDEN: He said two things. One, if there is a--a reso--he--he said it didn't even have to be the Security Council. He said it could be the permanent five members of the United Nations, if they had a say in the political outcome and a representative on the ground taking the place of Bremer on Ju--on July 1, he would vote for NATO being able to come in. And then if that occurred, he would gradually induce--in--in--put in French forces. There is no question there's only going to be able to be somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 NATO forces at the front end of this operation. But when I spoke to General Jones, our supreme allied commander, that amount of force would allow NATO to take over the responsibility of guarding the borders, NATO take over the north, and/or take over the Polish division in the south, freeing up roughly 20,000 American forces in there. But the most important part of this, Bob, is once the American people know we're not alone, once NATO says they're in the deal even if it's with 2,000 troops, it means every major power in Europe has a stake in the outcome. Right now the American people know there's only one nation that has a stake in the outcome, and that's the United States.

Earlier this week, Josh Marshall referred to "logic puzzles," here:

All we seem to be hearing are hollow assertions of a vacant will.

From the White House's advocates we hear logic puzzles about appeasement in which the fall-out from the president's screw ups become the prime argument for continuing to support them

This turn of phrase again came to mind, when I ran across this description, in Worse than Watergate, of what John Dean calls an "absurd game."  Follow along with me, and you'll see why:

When it came to the war against Iraq, Congress was deceived, just as the American people were, only what happened with Congress deserves a very close look because it reveals that Congress did not give the administration a blank check authorization.  In fact, Bush deliberately violated the very authorization that he sought from Congress, which was not merely a serious breach of faith with a trusting Congress but a statutory and constitutional crime.

As Dean notes:

On October 10, Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution authorizing a war with Iraq.  But there was a kicker in the authorization: Congress conditioned its grant of authority on a formal determination by the president that there continued to be a threat that could not be dealt with through diplomacy and that his actions were consistent with the war against those involved in 9/11 - a detail unreported in the news media.
....

In short, Congress insisted that there be evidence of the two points that were the centerpiece of Bush's argument for war.

To elucidate precisely how the game was played, Dean notes that the joint resolution contained some twenty-three "Whereas" clauses, and then carefully explains what these clauses are - and aren't:

...these seemingly declaratory statements have no real meaning, so they are not debated - and are seldom discussed - by Congress.  They are part of the joint resolution, which when approved by both the House and Senate and signed by the president, becomes law.  But that does not make the whereas clauses either fact or findings of fact by Congress.  Legal scholars call these clauses "precatory" - words of entreaty, desire, wish - and here, hope, with no other meaning.  Understanding the nature of these clauses is necessary to appreciate the absurd game Bush played with Congress.

So what do you think happened?

You guessed it:  

On March 18, 2003, Bush sent his formal "determination" to Congress....His letter merely tracked the exact language of the statute, making that language his determination.  Accompanying this letter was the "Report in Connection with Presidential Determination under Public Law 107-243."  It is an extraordinary document.  It's content can be accurately analogized to male bovine droppings; H.L. Mencken might have described it (to paraphrase him) as "the topmost pinnacle of slosh,
for it is rumble and bumble, it is flap and doodle, it is balder and dash."  For certain, it is not material befitting a "determination" by the commander in chief to undertake the grave responsibility of expending the nation's blood and treasure in an act of war.  It is closer to blatant fraud than to a fulfillment of the president's constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the law.

This might be funny if the consequences weren't so deadly.  At this point, however, I have only one request: after 630+ soldiers killed, after 18,000+ "medical evacuees," after $160 Billion dollars spent on this misadventure, can we please, please, stop referring to the authorization as a "blank check."  It wasn't.   It was, and remains, a brazen and lethal fraud.

(cross-posted here)

Watching Larry King last night (transcript), Karen Hughes had my head spinning.  I'll quote just one sample here.  Note the artful tense change (italics added):

HUGHES: Well, again, al Qaeda, there are forces -- there are terror forces in Iraq. There was information, materials, plans, program activities to develop weapons of mass destruction, and a brutal dictator who also hated America and who we thought would stop at nothing in order to help America's enemies.  

Sheesh.   So let me get this straight.  Because the terrorists who weren't  there before are  there now, it was right all along to invade, on the basis of "program activities?"  

I'm just not sure what makes me sicker: listening to Karen peddle this crap, or watching Larry King sit idly by, letting it all pass virtually unchallenged.

(more here)

In the news reports of Senator Bill Frist's attacks on Richard Clarke - at least those that I've seen so far - one detail seems to be seriously under-reported, and another, overlooked altogether.  A little background first, from this article in yesterday's Washington Post:

The Senate's top Republican called yesterday for declassifying Richard A. Clarke's testimony before a House-Senate intelligence panel two years ago to determine whether he lied, as partisan exchanges intensified over allegations leveled this week by the Bush administration's former counterterrorism chief.

Now here's the accusation, from Frist's speech on Friday:

Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath. In July 2002, in front of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on the September 11 attacks, Mr. Clarke testified under oath that the Administration actively sought to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.

Mr. President, it is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media. But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress it is a far more serious matter. As I mentioned, the intelligence committee is seeking to have Mr. Clarke's previous testimony declassified so as to permit an examination of Mr. Clarke's two different accounts. Loyalty to any Administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied before Congress.

Note the emphatic, declarative sentence: "Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath."  Good work, Dr. Frist: Give 'em the soundbite first, short and unequivocal, and then slip in a couple of 'ifs,' later on, to leave room for backpedalling.

Now here's that under-reported little detail, from the Daily News (tip of the hat to Billmon), from an account of Frist's later remarks to reporters:

He said he personally didn't know whether there were any discrepancies between Clarke's two appearances.

Huh?  

So if I understand you correctly, Dr. Frist, you are making accusations on the floor of the Senate, and yet you personally have no idea whether they're true.  But then, silly me, how could you know?  I had almost forgotten, because these reports failed to mention, one little fact: you're not even on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

(Note: this diary entry is a cross-post from the original entry in my blog here.)