March 20, 2006

3/20: The Third Degree

Friday was a busy day, but the weekend was actually rather slow. The top story this morning is the 3-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion, and a few of the other blog swarms we're covering are Iraq-based as well. Meanwhile, bloggers debate the GOP and Dems' competing strategies -- or lack of them -- for the midterms, conservative bloggers tear into AP's coverage of Pres. Bush, and Arianna Huffington comes to a blogospheric epiphany.

IRAQ I: Are We There Yet?

AP's Nedra Pickler points out that Bush's 3/19 speech marking the anniversary didn't mention the "the daily violence that rages" in Iraq, nor did he use the word "war." Liberal Taylor Marsh: "The president is so weak he thinks by changing the subject and leaving out one word his problems and ours will all go away." Centrist Joe Gandelman: "Did they think that no one would notice? Just what do they think Americans think is going on over there?" Conservative Dan Riehl: "Heavens!! Not only that, but the wire story goes on tell us that Bush didn't walk everyone through every last car bombing, or mosque attack which has taken place. But then, why should he have?" Cheat Seeking Missiles writes, "Is AP saying that the President copped out and tried to pretend that there wasn't a war going on? If it was a long, detailed speech without the word 'war' in it, AP might have a point," but the speech was only 252 words long.

Conservative Gateway Pundit assembles a timeline of the war, including off-base predictions by Dems and foreign leaders, along with the "reality." Liberal Think Progress posts a timeline of the war, one that's certainly less positive, but is sans commentary.

Antiwar protests got relatively little attention; none from the left that we could find, and just a few on the right noting their small size with some approval. USS Neverdock: "Well, at least a few in the media are reporting" on the "disastrous" antiwar protests; MSNBC describes them as "micro-protests." More: "Of course, major MSM don't want to report on the Left's failure to attract people to their cause. Seems like people have wised up to the fact that these protests are organized by Communists." Dumbshit of the Week: "Too bad, so sad. Earned media is so hard to get these days, huh?"

Reason posted short Q&A's with libertarian-minded writers and leaders, asking for their takes on the war. At Crooked Timber, Belle Waring singles out Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, Christopher Hitchens and Wired founder Louis Rosetto, all of whom continue to support the war. Borrowing from Atrios, she asks readers to vote for the biggest "wanker." Steve Gilliard: "These people want to relive World War II and that is fantasy. ... I swear to God, I'd like to teach these people real history, so they can stop with this Islamofascism bullshit."

More takes on the war from around the blogosphere:

• War supporter Gregory Djerejian, who has become increasingly critical of the U.S. handling of the war, writes: "By the way, it's no secret that U.S. commanders in Iraq are under tremendous pressure to keep U.S. casualties down. Our force posture in country has become more and more conservative of late, and, yes, this has helped save coalition lives. But let's not kid ourselves about the result."
• TBogg: "I won't live to see the United States finish cleaning up the mess that they have made of the world."
• Conservative TigerHawk: "Jack Murtha's absurd ranting on "Meet the Press" this morning is symptomatic of the problem -- one can think of all sorts of criticisms of the war in Iraq, but when the most prominent public critics incessantly analogize to a flawed conception of the alleged lessons of Vietnam it is almost impossible to promote a dispassionate discussion of the state of play and the best policy for the future."
• Liberal Rob Schumacher: "Where does it stop? How many dead before the mistake of this war is acknowledged? And before the mistake of leadership, the lack of leadership, is recognized and corrected?"
• Libertarian radio talker Neal Boortz: "No, Iraq is not in the grips of a civil war. In fact, the majority of the country is at peace. And yes, the country is vastly better off than they were under Saddam Hussein. ... Right now is a critical time in Iraq, as a new government is formed. Things could have been done differently and better after the invasion. ... I believe, though, that America is safer because George Bush invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein."
• The Left Coaster quotes Bush's 3/18 letter to Speaker Denny Hastert on the war: "The fact that this letter was riddled with lies has never been in much dispute in the center-left blogosphere. But you would hardly know about this certification from listening to our Democratic leaders these last three years, as they have never brought this falsehood out in the open and shown it to the American people for the impeachable offense that it is."
• Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy: "According to the website ICasualties.org, which tracks U.S. military deaths in Iraq, the total U.S. military deaths in Iraq since March 20, 2003 is 2,317 lives, one more than the worst month in Vietnam."
• GOP Bloggers: "America spent many years pursuing a strategy of "stability" that only offered superficial and illusory, not to mention imperfect, quiet while a violent undercurrent of Islamic radicalism grew. That 'status quo' strategy had five decades to prove itself and was clearly a failure, but the Scowcroftian realpolitik adherents still have the nerve to declare the Bush Doctrine as dead after only three years."
• Billmon: "After three-and-a-half years and three elections, this is what "democracy" has achieved in Iraq: a chronic case of deja vu. And, of course, approximately 100,000 to 150,000 casualties. And the death squads. Shouldn't forget about them. I just wonder: Does Zalmay Khalilzad wake up every morning, like the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day, wondering why he's been condemned to live the same day over and over again?"
• Instapundit: "I think that attitudes on the war have more to do with attitudes on Bush than with realities on the ground, among a lot of people on both left and right. As Bush's popularity has sunk -- largely for non-war reasons -- it has pushed the war's popularity down, too."

IRAQ II: Rumsfeld's War

On 3/19, Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld had an op-ed in the Washington Post, and it got a lot of attention from both sides.

Sister Toldjah, quoting Rumsfeld's closing bit about how his points are "well worth remembering on this anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom": "Amen. Many thanks to our fine men and women serving, who have served, and/or who will be serving again." Conservative Tom Maguire takes some issue with the op-ed: "The 'tough love' timetable strategy -- announce a withdrawal plan and challenge the Iraqis to form a government and train the heck out of their security forces -- looks like a proposition that will become increasingly popular in the US. ... I have no problem with [Rumsfeld's] re-statement of the urgency of the mission, but 'retreat now' is not exactly what is meant by 'set a concrete timetable.'"

AMERICAblog advises, "Given Rummy's failed leadership, it's hard to take his nasty op-ed seriously anyway. But it's even worse after reading the op-ed" by ret. Army Gen. Paul Eaton in the New York Times, "who castigates Rumsfeld." At his Bull Moose Blog, Marshall Wittmann also recommends the Eaton op-ed, which ends by calling on Rumsfeld to "step down": "Firing Rumsfeld, of course, will by no means guarantee that Iraq will improve. That is not the point. It is imperative that President Bush take concrete steps to demonstrate to the American people that there is a genuine change in course and that from now on he will require accountability. Republican leaders must go to the President and demand this change."

CNN.com later ran a report quoting Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski from "Late Edition" as disagreeing with Rumsfeld's WWII analogy. Elephants in Academia points out that CNN truncated Kissinger's quote, excising his elaboration upon Rumsfeld's point: "This is hardly a condemnation of what Mr. Rumsfeld said -- it is a sophisticated and nuanced interpretation of his op-ed and, more to the point, an expression of agreement." Solomonia: "It's an analogy. It either works for you or it doesn't. For me it does." Wizbang's Kim Priestap agrees with Rumsfeld's analogy, in another way, recalling an old Saturday Evening Post article calling German rebuilding a failure in '46: "The 1946 perspective of post war Germany was that it was going so miserably that even American military in Germany were complaining, yet decades later, the rebuilding of Europe in general and Germany in particular is seen as one of the greatest achievements in American history."

IRAQ III: Getting Swarmer ...

Op. Swarmer took a good deal of criticism, particularly with the Time article explaining how it "fizzled." At Back to Iraq, ex-AP reporter Christopher Albritton writes, "'Operation Swarmer' is really a media show. It was designed to show off the new Iraqi Army - although there was no enemy for them to fight. Every American official I've heard has emphasized the role of the Iraqi forces just days before the third anniversary of the start of the war. That said, one Iraqi role the military will start highlighting in the next few days, I imagine, is that of Iraqi intelligence."

On the left, there is little surprise -- Daily Kos' Georgia10: "Today, we learn that eight civilians, including a child, were killed in clashes between U.S. troops and gunmen in Duluiyah, part of the area targeted in the air assault campaign. It's unclear what exactly is transpiring; there is a media blackout. However, what little information is trickling out from the operation reveals the true cost of this PR campaign." David Anderson, at In Search of Utopia: "I don't blame 'em though. I mean with Bush getting his ass handed to him on the issue of Iraq, and the fact that after three years we still don't have a plan. ... Not to mention the hundreds of Iraqis that have died in the last couple of weeks..."

Meanwhile, some conservatives are arguing that it was the media who mischaracterized the point of Swarmer -- Captain's Quarters: "Sometimes the press demonstrates such incompetence as to be actually dangerous. The coverage of the latest effort in Samarra in clearing out the terrorists is just the latest example. ... Since its beginning, however, the press has both hyped the operation and attempted to tear it down as a publicity stunt by the White House. Described as the biggest air assault in three years, the press completely misunderstood this as the biggest air strike since the beginning of the war." Dafydd Ab Hugh explains: "Time complains that planes and helicopters didn't come screaming in like a World War II strafing run. But this operation was never supposed to be an airstrike; it was an air assault," and yet Time itself "already knew that we weren't planning a huge, Clintonian barrage of missiles," and in the article noted that air assault "is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area."

MIDTERMS: Unification Theories

Washington Post reports on the GOP's inability to come up with a unified message for the midterms. ConservativeBetsy Newmark: "I suspect that this will become yet another election when people are more likely to vote against the other party than for their own party. ... That is why the Feingold censure resolution was such a gift to the Republicans, because it was a reminder to disgruntled Republican voters of what they would face if the Democrats took control of Congress." Outside the Beltway: "Parties in power tend not to have a lot of new ideas beyond 'stay the course.' They have either done, failed at, or abandoned the policies that carried them to power. The Democrats' failure to assemble a unified message is more of a head scratcher." At MyDD, Jonathan Singer argues, "the inability to create a cohesive strategy is not a strategy. If the Republicans can't come up with a positive agenda, they are not devilishly smart for localizing the election -- they just can't come up with a positive agenda." Liberal Prairie Weather notes that the story suggests "dangerous incompetence" as the Dems' best theme against the GOP, adding, "The right wing has been successful in the past when it groups concepts together: Kerry's "flip-flopping" became linked to "cowardice" in Vietnam. ... Most Republicans are uneasy about their recent alliance with religious extremists. When the incompetence and extremism are linked in their minds to those extremists, it's a short step to separating the Republican Party from evangelicals. ... All we need to do is group the words and concepts which so aptly describe the Republican Party's performance in Congress and the White House during the past five to fifteen years."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reports that DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel plans to portray GOPers as the "rubber stamp congress," similar to how GOPers portrayed Dems in '94 as the "do-nothing congress." Kevin Drum adds: "That all sounds good, but I still think we need a stronger focus on Iraq (i.e., withdrawal from) and national security (i.e., what we'd do if we're not up for invading Iran). I hope we're not planning to ignore that stuff again, like we did in our famously winning efforts of 2002 and 2004." Alter writes, "In 1994, the big issue powering the Gingrich Revolution was widespread dislike of Clinton." California Conservative disagrees: "That played a part in the revolution but it was hardly the thing. More than anything else, 1994's revolution was spurred by Newt's vision, something that the Democrats sorely lacked."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: I'm Loven It

The Pickler story above was not the only AP report on Bush to draw conservatives' ire -- previously, AP's Jennifer Loven wrote an article titled "Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches." Loven quotes Bush as saying, "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," and "There are some really decent people who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people," and adding: "Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions." Conservatives disagree vehemently -- Power Line: "Apparently Ms. Loven hasn't been reading the prominent Democrats and influential columnists who have said repeatedly that "the war is lost." And maybe she hasn't read John Murtha's resolution, with its recitations of purported failure in Iraq and its demand that the war be 'hereby terminated.'" The Unalienable Right: "Of course, many people believe the U.S. ought to implement a nationalized, single-payer health care system ... The Clinton Administration actually tried to implement it." Brainster's Blog: "Note that there is no effort to provide balance in the article; nobody is cited who mentions that the Democrats do the same thing frequently. Nobody notes John Kerry's straw-man arguments."

Dinocrat's Jack Risko analyzes the New York Times' acquisition of About.com 1 year hence, amidst news that Moody's may downgrade the Times company's rating: "Not only have the Times' editorial and news policies come under criticism, not only have the sufficiency and clarity of its SEC disclosures been criticized, but now the Times' business judgment in keeping the corporation on a sound financial footing has been questioned." Thomas Lifson: "The Times is already cutting back in the newsrooms of its papers. Newspapers and television stations (the biggest assets of the NYTCo) are not pulling down top dollars any more, so selling these are not attractive options for generating cash. Keep an eye on that dividend." Roger L. Simon writes, the NYT's "decline is not really a decline -- the newspaper was always as it is, more or less -- but rather a symptom of changing times and access. The Times is no longer able to function ex cathedra as it was during the era of Walter Duranty ... Jayson Blair, whose fairy tales were far less significant than Duranty's, was discovered relatively quickly ... History has been replayed as farce."

TORTURE: Sponsored By Mazda?

New York Times reports on a secret U.S. interrogation squad at Camp Nama in Iraq called Task Force 6-26, where there were "no rules" on detainee treatment, and a sign read "No Blood, No Foul."

Obsidian Wings' Hilzoy notes that 6-26 was formerly known as 121, "which also seems to have had chronic problems with prisoner abuse," and tracks down an '03 Washington Post story about it. Body and Soul: "Consider: American soldiers treated prisoners so viciously that even the CIA blanched, and prohibited its officers from taking part in interrogations at the prison. A knee-jerk response awaits: How bad does abuse have to be before the CIA would object?" Andrew Sullivan compares this to the official line on Abu Ghraib: "The troops doing the abuse and torturing were not reservists on the night shift. They were an elite group either doing what their civilian masters wanted; or beyond their civilian masters' control. Fire Rumsfeld."

Disturbing the Comfortable: "We know that right after 9/11, there were some instances of physical abuse happening to people arrested here in the States. We know that Gitmo has documented physical abuse of prisoners. We know the Secret Police have been tapping phones and putting people under surveillance and even arresting them without bothering about legal baggage. So when does this stuff begin here? Or has it?"

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: The Whipping Post

On 3/16 we covered the dispute between actor George Clooney and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington about whether she had permission to run interview answers as a blog post. Aside from that, a number of bloggers objected simply to the fact that Huffington had committed a deception that rendered all HuffPo contributions suspect, and even devalued other bloggers' work. This a.m., the New York Times has a story about the dustup.

A prominent critic was Jeff Jarvis, who called her the "unrepentent Dr. Frankenstein of celebrity blog posts": "I believe this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of the medium: Blogs are people and the blogosphere is a conversation. If you're not really writing your blog, if you're having or allowing someone to do it for you, then you're gaming me, lying to me, insulting me." By 3/18, Huffington changed her mind: "I now realize that I made a big mistake in posting a blog without clearly identifying that the material in it didn't originate as a blog post but was pieced together from previous interviews." Huffington promised to acknowledge source material if there is any, to not coach contributors, adding: "When I read something or hear something in an interview or have something said to me in person that I think is really important and should have as wide an audience as possible, I will put it in my own blog, becoming Boswell to all the Dr. Johnsons out there just as I did once with Arthur Schlesinger." She concludes: "We've been doing this for ten months, and the learning curve has been enormous. Consider this a major lesson learned. I get it and have taken it to heart."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Coming Hurricanosphere?

Confederate Yankee writes, "By now, the importance of the information provided by bloggers before, during, and after a major disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake or a tsunami is well-established," and in "up-coming hurricane seasons selected bloggers will have even more front-line access." He links to the O.E.S. Project Web Log, which notes that bloggers were recently admitted entry to the former USNS San Diego to cover Hurricane Beryl. CY asks: "Who among us wouldn't like to see someone like hurricane blogger Brendan Loy on board these ships, blogging in real-time as events unfold, or crisp, riveting post-landfall reporting from someone like Michael Yon?" At

LEST WE FORGET: Still Not Clear On The "Web" Concept ... And What Is This "Log" You Speak Of?

It would appear that our prediction from the 1st paragraph of the Blogometer's '05 year-in-review edition has not yet come to pass. Then again, we're not doing so hot in our NCAA brackets, either. Perhaps we've been wasting too much time with this.

NOTES AND ERRATA: Think You Can Do This Job?

Job Opening: The Hotline is seeking a staff writer to take over The Blogometer. Applicants must consider themselves regular consumers of political blogs (min. 2 years reading them, also must be a fan of blogs), be familiar with nationally read blogs from across the spectrum; know how to use blog search engines/aggregators (such as Technorati and Memeorandum); be able to quickly analyze and synthesize developments in the news as well as summarize ongoing blog activity with brevity, clarity and accuracy. Excellent writing and time-management skills are also a must. As with every Hotline position, we don't expect our writers to not have an opinion, we just expect them to keep it out of their work. Interested applicants should send their resumes to jvu@theatlantic.com.

Posted by at March 20, 2006 01:00 PM