Blogometer Extra

BLOGGERS VS. BELTWAY: Joe Vs. The Blogcano

  Ambassador Joe Wilson, he of yellowcake and Plamegate (in)famy, took on yet another challenging assignment and comported himself admirably: Firedoglake, in a triumphant exclusive, hosted a live chat with Wilson on Monday.  The Ambassador was peppered with questions of all types, fortunately sans too much fluff and obvious lead-ins.

  Christy Hardin Smith wrote a preface to the chat, profiling Wilson's accomplishments and his place in recent history.  She adds:

It is this background that Amb. Wilson brings to the table for today's discussion — a long history of serving this nation in the field as a diplomat in the center of any number of ethnic, regional and substantial conflicts across the continent of Africa and within Iraq itself, and as an advisor to both military and Presidential national security considerations and to Congressional offices charged with providing sorely needed oversight. ...

  [W]e felt that it was high time some serious discussion took place publicly about the potential for increasing chaos, the problems inherent in the current situtation and in any of the possible solutions that have been discussed thus far in the public arena.  And Amb. Joseph Wilson joins us today in the comments to do just that.  I look forward to some good debate, some in-depth questions and a lot of frank discussion.

  With that, the gates were opened and inquisitive minds fired away.  Some of the highlights of the Q&A:

Wilson, responding to a comment by Dennis Ross of Jim Lehrer's News Hour re: "fixing" Iraq: "The utility of engaging Iraq’s neighbors and indeed all the backers of the various insurgent groups is to bring additional pressure to bear on the insurgents to channel their differences into political negotiations and to provide guarantors to any compromises that they might be called upon to make.  As Dennis well knows, one of the roles of the US over the years has been to be the guarantor that any compromises made in the Arab Israeli peace process would not be the beginning of the end for the state of Israel."

Bustednuckles(Phil): "Can you name one diplomat ... who would have more experience and aplomb who could possibly have any impact reguarding talks in Iraq?"  Wilson: "I have a lot of respect for Jim Baker.  He is tough enough, experienced enough and savvy enough to pull a rabbit out of the hat if there is one in there.  The problem is we are so far down the road on the way to chaos that there may not be any way to stop this until all sides are exhausted.  The question is not whether the situation has become a civil war but rather whether it has degenerated from a civil war to out and out anarchy and a failed state.

Suzanne: "Do you see any way out [of Iraq]?"  Wilson: "It is tough but I think that we should reshape the debate domestically from the terms currently in use (stay the course, cut and run; strategic redeployment, timetables, and withdrawal) to one in which we consider what it is we are asking our troops to do at this stage of the occupation and whether what they are doing is in our strategic of operational interest.  If not they shouldn’t be doing it. ... [W]e should not put Americans unneccessarily in harm’s way, we should not use American firepower to unneccessarily kill Iraqis, we should call on the President to actually take the advice his military commanders have been giving him that he needs to find a political solution and we should reinvigorate the middle east peace process from which we have been AWOL for six years."

TheOtherWA: "Who would you like to see as Ambassador to the UN now that Bolton is leaving?  And who would you like to see as Ambassador to Iraq, since it’s rumored Kahlilzad may be leaving?"  Wilson: "I think Jim Leach or Bob Kimmitt would be good choices for the UN.  Ryan Crocker is who I hear is in line for Baghdad.  He is a career diplomat and one of the best I know.  He has been intimately involved in things Iraqi for a good part of his career, including in the first gulf war and as the director of the State Dept. effort to put together a post-war plan in the runup to the 2nd gulf war.  It is an almost unbelievably tough job.  I have great respect for the efforts of Khalilzad, despite my distaste for his brand of neoconservatism when he was promoting policies."

Twobits: "Could you please comment on the likelihood of the Iraq war escalating to a point that armed conflict begins among the regional powers for either self-preservation or the oil wealth of Iraq?"  Wilson: "There are already the beginnings of proxy wars with the external support of the various insurgencies.  Right now I think the battles are on behalf of tribal constituencies and for their respective political powers.  At some point they may shift to the picking over of the carcass that once was Iraq, but not yet.

johnSwifty: "Was [Vice President Dick] Cheney operating in full knowledge of you and your wife’s situation?"  Wilson: "I have no idea if it dawned on Cheney that I was the Joe Wilson who was in Iraq in the first Gulf War.  He is a busy man and there are a lot of Joe Wilsons.  What they did to Valerie was unconscionable and really stupid.  They took a four-day story — their lie in the State of the Union — and turned it into a four-year nightmare for everybody concerned."

watertiger: "What impact do you think the [Stephen] Hadley memo has on 'incentivizing' the Iraqi government to shore up its army so that we can 'stand down?'  It seems to me that at the press conference in Amman, al-Maliki was merely summoning up what some of us impolitely refer to as an 'F.U.' (Friedman Unit), a six-month time period which the talking heads like to fall back on when they don’t know how much time extrication will really take."  Wilson: "I think Maliki is woefully weak.  The history of Iraq has always been in the absence of strong central power, it tends to spin out of control.  Maliki does not have the power he needs to successfully govern.  Too many factions, too much dispersal of authority, too many militias and competing political goals."

neokneme: "Americans of all stripes feel badly about the carnage we’ve brought to the Middle East.  One common denominator is energy and not just oil. ... Is it too radical to suppose that the problems facing us can be addressed by reducing our own demand for what isn’t really ours anyway?"  Wilson: "We should have embarked on a Manhattan-style project on 9/12 to wean ourselves from foreign energy dependence.  Instead the President urged us to go shopping.  But it is not too late.  There is still in our system a lot of ingenuity.  It will take a Teddy Roosevelt to ensure that that ingenuity is not strangled at birth by entrenched interests."

watertiger: "I’m curious as to how much of Bush’s 'We won’t leave until the mission is accomplished' talk is simply bravado?"  Wilson: "I think the administration is in a tough spot right now, with no good options, and a president who still seems to believe that he can pull this off.  I take no satisfaction in watching this unfold, and I regret profoundly the carnage inflicted on Iraq and on our troops.  The neocons should be rooted out of adult foreign policy discussions and marginalized on the fringes where they belong.  Their infiltration of the op/ed pages (Krauthammer, Boot, Frum, Gigot, TNR) and of policy circles has been disastrous.  I wrote in my book that they are like a parasite loyal only unto themselves that found the Republican Party a willing host and now have fully infected it."

  Read the entire chat with many more frank, illuminating comments by Wilson at Firedoglake.

LANSCAPE '08: Anatomy Of A MyDDer

  ManfromMiddletown has an excellent, informative, (hopefully) ongoing series at MyDD that dissects state-by-state results of the 2006 midterm elections that handed the reins of Congressional power to the Democrats.

  As of 11/30, the Man has covered nine states, as well as New England, breaking each state's vote down by county, district and party and contrasting 2004 results with this year's.  Where merited, in-depth analysis and interesting revelations are presented from, as might be expected, a lefty point of view.  Which means lots of raised eyebrows along with cheery news, even in areas where Dems came up short.

  Take Wisconsin, for example.  MyDD notes:

The most impressive vote gain was in the WI-08 as was mentioned above.  In the WI-02, there was a 0.4% shift towards the Republican, while Democrats made an 8.4% gain in the WI-02, yielding a much larger Democratic margin of victory than in 2004.  In the Milwaukee suburbs, Democrats made 4.8% and 4% gains in the WI-01 and WI-05 respectively.  However, the Republican margin of victory in these districts was over 25% in 2006.

  In Ohio, the Man detects something amiss:

If Ohio's House delegation were apportioned by proportional representation, Democrats would control 9 of Ohio's 18 House seats.  Dependent on the outcome of recounts in the OH-15 and OH-02, this may still come to pass.  I'd like to point out something I found highly disturbing when researching this diary.  On the election results page of the Ohio Secretary of State page, provisional ballot totals and percentages of provisional counted as valid are given for 2004, while the 2006 results give an aggregate figure for provisionals and absentee ballots.

  I find this highly suspicous, and this technicality has the stink of bullsh*t upon it, because it could serve to obscure the true quantity of provisionals ballots in the two contested districts.  And this could serve to obscure evidence of voter suppression in the application of Ohio's new voter ID law.  The Secretary of State's office needs to release disaggregated figures listing the number of provisional ballots seperate from absentee ballots.

  MyDD is putting a lot of work into the series, and it's definitely worth following, should they choose to continue it.