[Mb-civic] This Week's Posts: Iraq, Clinton, Russert and Plamegate

[Arianna Huffington]

This week on the Huffington Post I looked at the military's outrageous treatment of an Iraqi CBS cameraman, Bill Clinton's reach for the muddled middle, Tim Russert's ongoing refusal to ask the challenging questions, and John Bolton's connection to Plamegate. For the latest news and opinion -- including updates on Hurricane Rita -- go to huffingtonpost.com.

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Kafka Does Iraq: The Disturbing Case of Abdul Amir Younes Hussein
Posted September 23, 2005 at 5:18 p.m. EDT

The disturbing case of Abdul Amir Younes Hussein, the CBS cameraman who has been detained by U.S. forces in Iraq for over five months without a shred of evidence being publicly presented against him, has taken yet another bizarre turn.

As reported by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal last week, Hussein is a 25-year-old freelancer who has found himself trapped in a nightmare of secrecy, suspicion, and legal uncertainty since being wounded by U.S. forces while filming the aftermath of a car bombing in Mosul on April 5th.

At first the military expressed regret for Hussein's minor injuries. But three days later they arrested him, claiming he had been "engaged in anti-coalition activity." Thus began his Kafka-esque legal odyssey, which has seen the reportedly timid reporter shuttled from prison to prison (including Abu Ghraib), while the military has changed its story multiple times, refused to release any evidence against him, refused to let Hussein be visited by friends or relatives, and rebuffed the efforts of CBS to have his case adjudicated in a conclusive manner. 

"We're not insisting that Abdul Amir is innocent," CBS President Andrew Heyward told me. "We're just asking for due process and some answers, which so far the military has refused to provide. What are the specific charges against him? What is the evidence against him? Why can't we see it? Instead, we've seen shifting explanations and seemingly arbitrary rulings."

The latest twist in the case came earlier this week. Back in July -- already three months after his arrest -- Hussein was scheduled to have his case heard by the Combined Review and Release Board, a panel made up of American military officials and Iraqi government officials. In preparation for the hearing, CBS News submitted evidence it had gathered supporting Hussein's innocence. But the hearing was abruptly cancelled and his case turned over to Iraqi criminal authorities. They in turn reviewed the case and, in late August, declined to prosecute him. 

Once again we see that Iraqi authorities are sovereign only as long as they agree with the Americans actually in charge. This time they didn't agree, so instead of releasing him, the military kept him in jail claiming it had access to classified information the Iraqi authorities didn't. Another hearing with the CRRB was set for September 22. But on September 12, CBS News was informed that the hearing had already been held -- without Hussein, his lawyer, or anyone from CBS News in attendance. Then, on Tuesday, came word that the CRRB had decided to keep Hussein in jail, with no review of his case for another six months.

It's an outrage. And not just for Abdul Hussein. Cases like his can't help but have a chilling effect on news coverage of Iraq. With Western reporters holed up away from the action, news organizations are relying on Iraqi personnel to get the story. 

At such a crucial time in the war, we need the most accurate accounting of what is actually happening on the ground as is possible -- and anything that closes down that flow of information (like the prolonged detention of those trying to report from the front) needs to be fought tooth and nail.

The American people deserve the truth. About the war and about Abdul Amir Younes Hussein.

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/kafka-does-iraq-the-dist_b_7796.html>

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Plamegate: The John Bolton Connection
Posted September 20, 2005 at 8:54 p.m. EDT

I'm now hearing that the investigation may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John Bolton.

According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column.

After delving into Fleitz, I can safely report that he is, at a minimum, a very interesting character. He is a career CIA agent who Bolton handpicked to join him at Foggy Bottom, having gotten to know him during the administration of the first President Bush. While working as Bolton's top aide, Fleitz also continued his work in the CIA's WINPAC division, the group responsible for some of the worst prewar intelligence on Iraq (they were, among other things, big fans of Curveball and had "high confidence" in the presence of WMD in Iraq).

"I perform liaison function for the [CIA] and Mr. Bolton," Fleitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 2005. What he would have said if he'd been given truth serum is: "I've kept my CIA portfolio, which made it easier to become an intel-gathering machine for Bolton, who in turn was Cheney's spear-carrier in the State Department -- working tirelessly to undermine Powell and Armitage while, at the same time, feeding the intel to Miller and the New York Times."

Over the years, Fleitz earned a reputation as Bolton's chief enforcer, a swashbuckler willing to go the extra mile to make the intel fit the desired policy -- even if it meant knocking a few heads. And his dual role (serving what he called his "two bosses") put him in the position to pick up -- and deliver to Bolton -- all kinds of information... including, perhaps, the spousal standing of a certain CIA analyst named Valerie. Even though Plame was in operations and Fleitz was in WINPAC, he obviously was in a position to know.

So when Joe Wilson started making a stink about faulty intel, you can bet that those whose raison d'etre had been spreading faulty intel would move mountains to discredit him. This is a key point because, in the end, Plamegate isn't about the outing of Valerie Plame or the sliming of Joe Wilson. It's about Iraq and the White House's attempt to slam the door on questions about the corrupted intelligence that was used to lead us into a disastrous war. Intel that Fleitz and Bolton played a key role in shaping.

So what does this all mean to the ongoing Plamegate investigation? Well, another source close to Bolton recently described his management style to me as "Very hands on. Nothing goes by him. His staff does what he wants. He's not the kind of guy to have his staffers freelancing." So, if Fleitz was a key source of the Plame info and Bolton is not the kind of guy to have his staffers freelancing. does this mean Bolton was being less than forthcoming when he told people around him that the first time he ever heard Valerie Plame's name was when he read it in the newspaper? Or was he merely sharing talking points with Tim Russert?

So could Ambassador Bolton actually be a target of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation? When considering this question, it's important to keep in mind that he's never been subpoenaed or questioned by the Plamegate grand jury -- and, as a lawyer who does work for the New York Times put it: "The target of a grand jury investigation would not ordinarily be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury."
 
So here is what we know: We know that Fleitz was the connection to the CIA, and that Bolton was close to Scooter Libby (and the rest of the neocons, of course) and Judy Miller (for whom he was an important source, although the last time she quoted him by name was in 1999 when he was at the American Enterprise Institute). And here is what we don't know: we don't know the pathway through which Plame's identity got into Novak's column. Did Miller learn about Plame from her old chum Bolton? Did she pass that info on to Libby? Or had Bolton already told Libby? And Rove? Or was it all just passed around and around in a cozy game of neocon phone tag? It makes one wonder more than ever before what Bolton and Miller talked about when he visited her in jail.

Meanwhile the New York Times continues to churn out ever more desperate and illogical "free Judy" editorials. Monday's was a particularly shameful attempt to link the jailing of Miller (who could go free the second she agrees to stop covering for her administration pals -- or her own rear end) to that of Chinese journalist Zhao Yan (who isn't even sure why he's been in jail for the last year, or whether he'll ever be freed or tortured or executed). The Times' pallid disclaimer, "We are not suggesting that the American justice system can be compared to China's," is an additional disgrace, since the entire editorial is based on doing just that. C'mon, guys, if you are going to use specious reasoning, at least don't compound it by being disingenuous too.

Here's a suggestion: before you write another overwrought Judy editorial, how about writing one explaining what happened to the in-house Times investigation into Miller's connection to Plamegate (which sources tell me has been stopped). Or one reporting the fact that Judy is negotiating with Fitzgerald and may be facing criminal contempt charges.

These are stories that deserve some space, don't you think? At least as much as last week's surprisingly upbeat story on John Bolton.

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/plamegate-the-john-bolto_b_7648.html>

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Bill Clinton's Muddled Attempt to Own the Middle
Posted September 19, 2005 at 5:47 p.m. EDT

Since leaving office, Bill Clinton has tried out a variety of positions: Elder Statesman, Prolix Memoirist, King of the Public Speakers, Hospital Bed Campaign Advisor, First Husband-in-Waiting, Disaster Fundraiser, Global Visionary. 

But judging from his latest TV appearances, he seems to have landed on a brand new incarnation: Equivocator-in-Chief.

Forget all the nonsense you might have heard about the former president taking on the current one (Drudge linked to a story calling it "a withering attack" and right-wing blogs followed suit) -- in truth, he consistently played both sides of the fence.

On a variety of key issues -- especially Iraq and Katrina -- instead of offering clarity and leadership, he offered a steady stream of have-it-both-ways, "on the one hand... and on the other" reasoning.

Let's start with the Katrina relief effort. After spending the early days of the catastrophe providing cover for Bush (including making the ludicrous claims that the flooding of New Orleans could not have been foreseen, and that we could not make any judgments on the response without being there), he belatedly decided to cast a discerning eye on the administration's woeful handling of the disaster. "You can't have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people up," he told George Stephanopoulos. True, but not exactly "withering." 

And he took a page out of the GOP playbook by spreading the blame around, pointing the finger for the lack of an effective evacuation plan squarely where it belongs: uh, everywhere. "Maybe the mayor, maybe the governor," he said when asked who was responsible. And maybe the dog catcher too. 

Of course, this is the same guy who 13 days earlier had adopted the administration's talking points and counseled against playing the blame game, saying "I don't think we should do it now." 

This too-little-too-late criticism smacks of the worst kind of bandwagon hopping -- and a transparent attempt to placate Democratic anger at his shilling for Bush. Not exactly leadership in action. 

The Equivocator-in-Chief was equally all over the map when it came to Iraq.

"I think it's been a net negative," he replied when Tim Russert asked if the war has hurt the U.S. image abroad. "On the other hand, Saddam is gone and 58 percent of those people voted. That's an even higher percentage of people than voted in America in 2004... So there's still a chance this will work. And if it does, there's still a chance it will be a net plus for the Middle East."

For those of you keeping score, that's one point for Iraq being a net negative, and one point for it being a net positive. I forget, does a tie go to the runner? Or is it like kissing your sister?

On This Week, Clinton told George Stephanopoulos that he disagreed with the sequence of events that led to the war, saying that the Bush administration "decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction," which "undermined the support we might have had."

That isn't what Clinton was saying at the time. But leaving that aside, this is hardly the stuff of a "withering attack" on the Bush administration's utterly failed policies on Iraq. Instead, it's all rear-view mirror course correcting... fine tuning what we couldda, shouldda, mighta done differently back in 2003.

What about now, Mr. Clinton? How about telling us what we should be doing differently now? 

But that kind of forward-thinking leadership was nowhere to be found. 

Indeed, when asked directly by Stephanopoulos, "What do we do right now? What should the new strategy be?", Clinton's IQ took a sudden, precipitous drop. "Well," he replied, "I don't know, because I'm not president." As if only the president can articulate a strategy on Iraq. Memo to Bill: after years of rightly earning the rep as the smartest guy in the room, this clueless routine doesn't really play.

And when he wasn't trying to pass himself off as the Global Village Idiot, the former president was parroting the Bush party line on Iraq, arguing that setting a timetable for withdrawal would embolden the insurgency, and offering a hearty defense of Bush's "strategy for success in Iraq" (i.e. "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down"). Clinton termed this "the correct strategy" -- although, just a few moments earlier he had said, "If we do [have a strategy for victory], it's not working right now." Dizzy yet?

The only thing Clinton said that differed from the White House's current stay-the-course mantra was his suggestion that "we may not have, in the short run, enough troops" to hold off the insurgents until Iraqi forces can take over for themselves. So that's going to be the big difference between the administration and the loyal opposition in 2006 and 2008 -- how many more troops each party is willing to throw at the problem?

Please, say it isn't so! For some new talking points, Bill Clinton and Democratic leaders should pick up the new issue of Time, and read the words of a retired senior military official: "We have failed the Iraqi people, and we have failed our troops."

Now that's withering.

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bill-clintons-muddled-at_b_7586.html>

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Russert Watch: "I Think There's Something Happening Here"
Posted September 18, 2005 at 8:15 p.m. EDT

"I think there's something happening here."

That was Gwen Ifill on Meet the Press's roundtable, responding to Byron York's comment regarding Bill Clinton's views on Iraq in the previous segment: "I will align National Review with Bill Clinton on this," York said.

So the something that was happening on Meet the Press was the news that Bill Clinton and National Review are now aligned on Iraq.

As was expected, Tim's reaction to "something happening" on his show was to completely ignore it. Though it's unclear whether he ignored it because the years of reaching toward conventional wisdom -- like sunflowers reaching toward the sun -- have left him incapable of noticing anything else, or because he actually doesn't know what to do when someone makes a real point.

In any case, Russert's answer was a complete non sequitur: "The cost of the war is considerable. The cost of Katrina is considerable. Byron, the National Review's view of record deficits -- I mean, we are looking at no end in sight."

He completely missed the point during the roundtable. And he completely missed it during his interview with Clinton. The point is that contrary to Drudge's misleading headline ("Clinton Turns on Bush"), Clinton refuses to directly challenge the president on the disaster that the war in Iraq has become. Through all his equivocating answers, there wasn't a single mention of the president or of anyone else in the administration responsible for this war and how it's been prosecuted.

In fact, to hear Russert and Clinton talk about the war in Iraq, you'd think it was just as much an act of God as Hurricane Katrina. Leaving aside his few mitigating hemming and hawing words, what the former president is effectively saying is what Bush's apologists are saying -- in fact, what National Review's Byron York actually said on the show: "I think there is still the possibility for good things happening." Wow, pretty stirring, huh? It must be nice for the hundreds of thousands whose loved ones are over there risking their lives that some people think there's still a possibility for good things.

So the news to emerge from today's Meet the Press is that our goal in Iraq is now "the possibility of good things."

Another opportunity that Russert missed to actually probe and ask at least one challenging question of the former president came during the discussion of global warming. Clinton appeared to be giving credit to everyone for their stand on global warming -- from British Petroleum's John Browne and GE's Jeffrey Immelt to Republicans in the Senate.

Missing from the list of those who Clinton believes deserve "a lot of credit" were the people who were right all along. Like, you know, his Vice President, who did more than any politician alive to put this issue on the map and continues to crisscross the country speaking about it.

On an on it went. Ending, of course, with the inevitable horse-race question about whether Hillary Clinton is running for president -- a question which by now must be mandated by law. We all know she's running. Tim knows. Bill knows. Hillary knows. But still the question must apparently be asked. We won't give you Bill's answer, because (a) you won't learn anything from it and (b) that's not the point of the question.

Let me close with a moment of vintage Tim -- a perfect example of what Kausfiles called Russert's "borderline-hysterical banality."

It came during the roundtable, in a question to Judy Woodruff: "If, in fact, however, a constitution is adopted and democracy begins to emerge from Iraq, is there an opportunity for good news to come from Iraq...?"

Well, yes, and if a bunch of elves come in the middle of the night and rebuild New Orleans with solid gold, there would be an opportunity for good news to come from New Orleans.

To Judy Woodruff's credit, she prefaced her answer with: "Tim, I think that's an enormous 'if.'" And an enormous waste of network real estate.

Of course, if Tim could actually transcend years of calcified conventional wisdom, if he could actually hold his guests accountable, if he could remember how to ask probing follow-through questions, then, yes, MTP would be a decent show.

But, to quote Judy, that's an enormous if.

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/russert-watch-i-think-t_b_7537.html>

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