No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

What motivates Conservatives?

Several researchers have arrived at an explanation of the underlying motivations for taking conservative attitutdes.
press release

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression

Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

Uncertainty avoidance

Need for cognitive closure

Terror management

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

The avoidance of uncertainty, for example, as well as the striving for certainty, are particularly tied to one key dimension of conservative thought - the resistance to change or hanging onto the status quo, they said.

The terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.

Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).


We can expect conservatives to reject this since they don't like scientists to begin with.

prior post

posted by Richard at 10:40 AM

 

The Bush administration doesn't like scientists

Washington Monthly
I had wondered why so many of the decisions made by George Bush seemed to be simply scientifically illiterate. This article give a reason.

Here is an excerpt:

Evan Snyder, director of the stem-cell program at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, "I don't think science entered into Bush's decision at all."

The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk." Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.

In this regard, the White House is not necessarily wrong. Most scientists today do lean Democratic, just as most of the uniformed military votes Republican--much to the annoyance of Democrats. And like the latter cultural divide, the former can cause the country real problems. The mutual incomprehension and distrust between the Pentagon and the Clinton White House, especially in its early years, led to such debacles as Somalia and the clash over allowing gays to serve openly in the military. The Bush administration's dismissiveness toward scientists could also have serious consequences, from delaying vital new medical therapies to eroding America's general lead in science. The Clinton administration quickly felt the sting of the military's hostility and worked to repair the relationship. It's not clear, however, that the Bush administration cares to reach out to scientists--or even knows it has a problem.

Karl Rove is, of course, a college dropout. Bush was a legacy who drifted through what little education he did get. These are people for whom everything that they need to know is found in political propaganda and religion.
posted by Richard at 7:54 PM

 

The Financial Times is less charitable about what the long-delayed Congressional report on what the US government knew before 9/11 than is the American Media

Financial Times

Investigation undermines Bush's claims

By Edward Alden and Marianne Brun-Rovet
Published: July 24 2003 20:52 | Last Updated: July 24 2003 20:52

For the past 18 months the administration of President George W. Bush has clung firmly to the argument that whatever the failings of intelligence, the September 11 2001 attacks could not have been prevented.

The release�on Thursday�of the declassified final report of the congressional investigation will make that argument much harder to sustain and could ignite fresh controversy for an administration already under scrutiny for manipulating intelligence information before the war on Iraq.

The report does not contain any wholly new revelations about the missed opportunities to unravel the plot of the 19 hijackers. But the detailed narrative of just how much the US knew of their movements before the attacks is more than enough to belie the assertion made to the investigators last year by Robert Mueller, Federal Bureau of Investigation director, that "as far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathisers in the US".

The congressional report makes it clear that was not the case, as Mr Mueller acknowledged a few months later. The report points out that five of the hijackers had met a total of 14 people who had come to the FBI's attention as part of counter-terrorism investigations. Four of those 14 were under FBI investigation when the hijackers were in the US.

The six hijackers who led the attacks were not isolated but maintained a number of contacts in the US.

The report reveals that an informant for the FBI had maintained close contacts with two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, when they were living in San Diego. But the San Diego FBI was unaware that the Central Intelligence Agency had identified the two men as al-Qaeda operatives, so never acted on the information.

The FBI had also opened in 1998 a counter-terrorism investigation of Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who co-signed the lease on an apartment in San Diego rented by the two hijackers, paid the first month's rent and organised a party to welcome them into the community.

Mr Bayoumi became the subject of attention late last year after it was revealed that the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US, had indirectly deposited tens of thousands of dollars to an account held by Mr Bayoumi's wife. The Saudis have said they had no knowledge that the money, which was part of the government's large charitable contributions, had ended up in her accounts.

The report says that although Mr Bayoumi was a student, he "had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia", and at one time made a $400,000 (?348,000, �249,000) donation to a Kurdish mosque in San Diego. "One of the FBI's best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that Mr Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power."

The most controversial element of the report will be what it does not contain. At the insistence of the Bush administration, 28 pages discussing evidence of foreign government support for the hijackers was deleted from the declassified version.

"The Bush administration has done everything they can do to make sure that's not the focus," said William Wechsler, a former White House official who co-authored a recent Council on Foreign Relations report critical of the Saudi failure to cut off financing for terrorist groups.

"They want to talk about tactical breakdown but they don't want to talk about the elephant in the room."

US officials note that Saudi co-operation in counter-terrorism investigations has improved markedly, particularly following the al-Qaeda attack in Riyadh in May that left more than 30 people dead.

But the investigation showed that even well after the September 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia continued to block US efforts in such areas as shutting down financing for terrorism. "There is an almost intuitive sense that things are not being volunteered," David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's general counsel, told the inquiry last July.

While the congressional investigation was a bipartisan undertaking, its conclusions are likely to fuel a partisan battle over whether the Bush administration has responded fully to the lessons of September 11. Democrats have homed in on intelligence failures, both in the war on terrorism and prior to the war on Iraq, as the vulnerable spot for an administration that has been widely trusted by Americans on national security since the attacks.

The report challenges whether the administration has yet made sufficient efforts to improve intelligence-gathering and sharing. It details case after case where the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency did not pass to other agencies crucial details of their counter-terrorist investigations.

On foreign support for terrorists, the report says "only recently", and in part due to the pressure from the congressional inquiry, had the agencies tried to determine the extent of the problem.

"This gap in US intelligence coverage is unacceptable, given the magnitude and immediacy of the potential risk to US national security," the report says.

Democratic hopefuls for the next presidential election, including Senator Bob Graham, the former intelligence committee chairman, are already seizing on the problems identified by the inquiry.

A report card released Wednesday by the Democratic Progressive Policy Institute gave the Bush administration a "D" for its efforts to protect the US against further terrorist attacks.

The study charged that, in particular, the administration had failed to implement the core recommendation of the committees' investigation that intelligence-sharing be overhauled.

We really need to get the FBI out of the Intelligence business. They simply can't do the job, and never have been able to.


posted by Richard at 12:50 PM

 

Who is attacking US Troops in Iraq?

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian has a view of who is attacking US troops and why that is very different from that we get from the Bush administration or the American Media. What he says makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately.

Here is one excerpt:

Before the war critics argued that invading Iraq would encourage fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world. This seems to be happening, as al-Qaida elements and other antiwestern groups see the American presence in Iraq as a new source of easy targets.

If he is closer to right than the bush administration, then the problems in Iraq will be getting larger, not smaller. Considering the track record of accurate predictions by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz ....

The Bush people like clarity and simplicity. The story they want us to buy is a simple "Us versus Them" story, with us as the good guys and "them" as the bad guys. Iraq is in the middle east, however. There aren't two clear groups. There are all kinds of groups with all kinds of goal, motives, and methods. Some are with us, some are against us, some don't care either way - and the mix will be different by sundown. It doesn't make the kind of story the Neocons will be able to sell to the media and the American people, even if they are able to step out from behind their ideologies long enough to get a grip on it themselves.

Anyone who makes a long-term prediction regarding what is going to happen in Iraq will be wrong.
posted by Richard at 12:25 PM

 

How Bad are things really going with the War on Terror and the Bush Administration?

Seymour Hersh was interviewed and had some extremely interesting things to say.

First - the US really screwed up big time when we attacked the convoy 40 miles inside of Syria back on the night of June 18th and 19th. Syria has been sharing Intelligence with the US, especially about terrorists, the Muslim Brotherhood (which is almost the same as Al Quada now) and Saudi Arabia. To top it off, all we got was a bunch of low-level smugglers who had nothing to do with the war in Iraq.

The statements by Bush threatening the Syrians have not helped, nor have the similar statements by Rumsfeld.

Second - the Bush administration is so set on the Iraq war that it is ignoring the war on terrorism and putting terrorism on the back burner.

Third - the Bush administration says that most of Iraq is pacified, that the only remaining problem is some Ba'athist dead-enders. The Kurds and Shiites are quite calm. True, but only at the moment. We are at this time doing the Shiites work for them by getting rid of the Ba'athists. As soon as they are gone, then the Shiites will move to take over Iraq, and we will by lucky to get a moderate as opposed to radical Shiite state there.

He has more to say, too. I don't always agree with Hersh, but I have found that he is an excellent and very knowledgeable reporter and he should always be listened to.
posted by Richard at 10:57 AM

 

Bad News for Bush

I have been asking when the media would wake up to how it is failing to do its job. Well, Gene Lyons offers a positive note for the country. Not good for Bush, but quite positive for the US.

The bad news for President Junior is that the intelligence agencies are fighting a bureaucratic rearguard action, the press has rediscovered its mission and Americans are awakening from a fearinduced post-9/11 trance to suspect that they were duped into an unnecessary war for dishonest reasons. A recent Harris poll shows 51 percent now "have doubts" that Bush is "a leader you can trust." Once lost, that trust is extremely hard to recover.

Read his article. He says a lot of what I have been trying to say, but he says it better.



posted by Richard at 10:17 AM

 

If Bush had sold cigarettes, would he decide to study lung cancer for two years more?

The Department of Commerce has just announced a two-year program to study Global warming.

Working within the core constructs, the plan outlines five overarching scientific goals aimed at addressing key questions and uncertainties.

They include:

Extend knowledge of the Earth’s past and present climate and environment, including its natural variability, and improve understanding of the causes of observed changes

Improve understanding of the forces bringing about changes in the Earth’s climate and related systems

Reduce uncertainty in projections of how the Earth’s climate and environmental systems may change in the future

Understand the sensitivity and adaptability of different natural and managed systems to climate and associated global changes

Explore the uses and identify the limits of evolving knowledge to manage risks and opportunities related to climate variability and change

You will notice that they do not intend to do anything radical - like actually take any actions that might reduce Global Warming.

This is probably a Public Relations gimmick to take off some of the heat after the White House (without any scientific assistance) removed the global warming portions of the report recently issued by the environmental protection agency before they would permit the report to be issued.
posted by Richard at 11:46 AM

 

Joel Achenbach - This is not yet a scandal

In his Washington Post editorial today, Joel Achenbach says the 16 words in the State of the Union does not yet make it to scandal status.

But if you put it together with the fact that the report released today shows that Intelligence had absolutely no evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaida, when Bush said for a year prior to the war that there was such evidence, then it seems to me to be a lot closer to a true scandal.
posted by Richard at 8:38 AM

 

New War - White House vs. CIA

Have you wondered why the ordinarily so adroit white House has seemed so flat-footed when trying to handle the African yellow-cake uranium flap? Here is an exerpt of one view from todays' Washington Post .


For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.

What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."

White House allies outside the government have expressed surprise at the administration's repeated missteps over the past two weeks, using phrases such as "stumbled," "caught flat-footed" and "can't get their story straight." Said one senior administration official, "These stories get legs when they're mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled."

Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he has been equally surprised by the way this White House has dealt with the controversy. "Their every move has resulted in people being more interested in the story rather than less interested," he said.

Mary Matalin, a former Bush White House adviser, said, "It's impossible to have a consistent message when the facts keep changing. We forsook consistency for honesty, in an effort to be as forthcoming as possible in putting out new facts as they became available."

A senior White House official said there are mitigating circumstances, beginning with the fact that the president was traveling in Africa when the controversy took root, while Tenet was also traveling. The unstable environment in postwar Iraq and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found provided a foundation for more questions over Bush's State of the Union claims. "And you learn it's difficult to control unnamed sources on both sides, including in the White House," he added.

Mary Matalin is, of course, a superb Spin Miester. She will always say what sounds positive rather then what is most explanatory, although if both are the same she will certainly use it. I do suspect the fact that Bush was in Africa when this blew up really is a part of it. Considering how adroitly the leaks have been coming out against the white House, I suspect that the leakers may have waited until bush was out of the Country.

Then, there is the fact that the White House has often gotten past political rough patches by covering up bad news with good news - but August is coming up, normally the most dead time in the news year. They may find that tactic very difficult to apply this year. So this may well continue.

And as it continues, the digging at the African uranium story is also likely to bring to light other things where the White House has been, shall we say, less than candid with the public.

We'll see.
posted by Richard at 8:15 AM

 

No Connection between Iraq and Al Qaida

Josh Marshall just posted this excerpt from an interview with ex-Senator Max Clelland about the investigation of what the Federal Government knew and did prior to 9/11. The report was completed in December 2002 but the release was held up by the Bush people until July 24th.

Do you think that Americans would have supported the invasion of Iraq as readily if this report had been released as scheduled?

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Clelland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Clelland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."
...

"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Clelland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."
...

Although the committee completed its work at the end of last year, publication of the report has been delayed by interminable wrangles between the committees and the administration over which parts of it could be declassified.

Clelland accused the administration of deliberately delaying the report's release to avoid having its case for war undercut.

"The reason this report was delayed for so long -- deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created -- is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over ... before (it) came out," he said.

"Had this report come out in January like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration."
...

[A government official who's read the report] went on to suggest that the conclusions drawn from the information about [a key piece of alleged evidence for a Iraq-al Qaida connection] was indicative of a wider-ranging problem with the administration's attitude to intelligence on the alleged Iraq al-Qaida link.

"They take a fact that you could draw several different conclusions from, and in every case they draw the conclusion that supports the policy, without any particular evidence that would meet the normal bar that analytic tradecraft would require for you to make that conclusion," he concluded.

Next question - why hasn't the media been all over this since January? They have known that the report was due out and being delayed.
posted by Richard at 6:46 PM

 

Iraq - Is the past prologue?

July 20, 2003
Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then.
By JOHN KIFNER


The public, the distinguished military analyst wrote from Baghdad, had been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor."

"They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."

He added: "We are today not far from a disaster."

Sound familiar?

That was T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — writing in The Sunday Times of London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British occupation of what was then called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell who, more than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too.

During the First World War, Lawrence had been present at the birth of modern Arab nationalism and fought alongside its guerrillas to victory against the Ottoman Empire, only to see the same guerrilla tactics turned against the British in a rebellion in Iraq.

It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset.

It has not been going well, especially in Sunni-controlled central Iraq. Rather than being hailed as liberators, the American troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" there that is increasingly organized, their new regional commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said last week. A Pentagon-approved independent body of experts criticized the lack of postwar planning. Soldiers of the Army's Third Infantry Division, have been told they are not going home as planned. The cost, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now says, is running about $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice earlier estimates, and tens of thousands of troops may have to remain for years to come.

At the same time, the rationale for war is increasingly questioned. Terror weapons have not yet been found in Iraq, nor have links to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration is scrambling to explain how allegations based on forged documents purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger found their way into the State of the Union address. All this has not helped build global support: last week, India rejected an American request to send some 17,000 peacekeeping troops.

Meanwhile, clashes and increasingly sophisticated ambushes have been running at a rate of a dozen a day; by week's end, at least 33 American soldiers had been killed in hostilities since May 1, the date when President Bush declared that major combat was over.

Ominously, Iraqi crowds have emerged to dance and cheer around burned-out American Humvees.

Many American officers had sensed trouble ahead. As their armor clanked north to Baghdad, officers in the First Marine Division said over and over that the war was no problem; the difficulties would come with the rebuilding of Iraq. Indeed, in the face of American might and technology, the enemy, for the most part, simply did not show up for the big battles.

The British had a tougher time of it in World War I; they lost thousands of troops — most of them Indian — in a five-month Turkish siege of Kut. But they regrouped and captured Baghdad on March 11, 1917. Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude greeted the populace with a speech that could have been written today: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

Well, not quite, General.

When World War I began in 1914, most Arab lands were under the decaying Ottoman Empire, whose ruler, the caliph, was also Islam's supreme authority. The Ottomans were Germany's allies, and Britain saw a chance to seize the Middle East; its interests were to command the trade routes to India and, as it would develop, to control the emerging resource of oil. Lord Kitchener, the war minister, wanted to set up his own caliph — an Arab — as Britain's ally among the Muslims. Attention focused on Hussein ibn Ali, who as sherif of Mecca was the guardian of Islam's holiest sites.

Enter the Arab Bureau, a special intelligence unit set up in Cairo. It had little expertise, and its early efforts to inspire an Arab revolt failed. Then Lawrence, a young captain at the time, volunteered to take a look on his vacation time. He recruited Hussein's second son, Feisal, as the charismatic leader of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt. His raiders crossed the desert to capture the port of Aqaba from the rear, repeatedly blew up the Turks' railroad tracks and harassed their troops, and finally entered Damascus in triumph (although this had to be staged because the Australian cavalry got there first).

The British had promised Feisal that he would be king of the Arabs in Damascus and he arrived at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as the chief Arab spokesman. But Britain and France had secretly agreed to divide up the Middle East, and Feisal's reign in Damascus lasted just months — until the French came over the mountains from Lebanon.

Meanwhile, things were not going well for the British in Mesopotamia. Bell was arbitrarily drawing lines on the map to make a new country out of three former Ottoman provinces — Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center and Basra in the south. The districts were composed, respectively, of Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, all of whom hated each other — and the British even more. For one thing, the British were more efficient than the Turks in collecting taxes.

By 1920, the country was in full rebellion, from Shiite tribesmen in the south to Kurds in the north. There were some 425 deaths on the British side and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 among the Iraqis.

Hoping to restore order, the British, at the urging of Bell and Lawrence, switched Feisal's franchise to Iraq in 1921, although he had never set foot there. In a rigged plebiscite, the new king got 96 per cent of the votes. King Feisal and his strongman prime minister, Nuri as-Said, managed to solidify Sunni minority control over the rest of the country. But there was frequent turmoil.

IN response, the British turned to technology, with their air force commander, Arthur (Bomber) Harris, boasting that his biplanes had taught Iraqis that "within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded." Winston Churchill, who, as colonial secretary, presided over the creation of Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine, called Iraq an "ungrateful volcano."

Still, it took 35 years for the disaster that Lawrence predicted to become total. Iraq gained independence in 1931, but the British-sponsored monarchy hung on and guarded British interests until 1958, when the royal family was murdered and dragged through the streets. That ushered in a period of successive military and Baath Party coups, all brutal, and by 1979 Saddam Hussein had assumed total control.

Like the Arab Bureau, neoconservative policy makers in the Defense Department, who have long been the most prominent advocates of removing Mr. Hussein, have a vision of the Middle East and a candidate. The vision is of a democratic Iraq that would be an example of change to other, undemocratic, Arab nations — the kind of change they believe would remake the region and make easier an Arab-Israeli peace.

They have promoted as a leader Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite from a wealthy family that had been close to the old monarchy, even though some Middle East specialists in the State Department distrust him and consider him ineffectual. As the head of the Iraqi National Council, Mr. Chalabi recently returned to Iraq after living in exile for decades. The American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, with Mr. Chalabi among them.

One other thing about Colonel Lawrence. While some of his exploits are doubtless exaggerated, his guerrilla tactics are still much studied. He came to realize that when a small band faced more powerful conventional forces, its strength lay in avoiding direct battles and instead conducting stealthy raids. His own guerrilla force, he wrote in his memoir, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," had "a sophisticated alien enemy, disposed as an army of occupation in an area greater than could be dominated effectively from fortified posts. It had a friendly population, in which some 2 in the 100 were active, and the rest quietly sympathetic to the point of not betraying the movements of the minority."

That larger army could be demoralized and worn down, its patrols and sentries made nervous and drawn, waiting for the next attack and never sure from where it would come. It is a feeling the weary soldiers of the Third Infantry Division are coming to know well.


posted by Richard at 9:40 AM