Perhaps there's still a chance. Asking your Senator to vote against cloture is a little different than asking him or her to vote against the bill.

http://www.truthout.org/article/senator-feingold-will-filibuster-fisa

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Special_Forces_counter-insurgency_manual_FM_31-20-3

In the interest of preserving information, I wanted to post the following article on the subject of smears against Obama.

He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.

By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream -- used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.

What floods into one's inbox these days bears little or no relation to Obama's record. "Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came from the Jewish community in Chicago," he has said. Obama ran for the Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged "clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." He has occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with Iran and Syria, but Obama's foreign policy record is well within the Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama -- or of Obama by the pro-Israel establishment -- seems to be enough. "When one charge is disproved, another is leveled," says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.

It's nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, "The New Right-Wing Smear Machine," November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in Tel Aviv who didn't receive a return address. "No one knows if it's the Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent," says Congressman Steve Cohen, a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in Memphis. Likely it's a combination of the three.

We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim," blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006, "hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.

The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama's religious beliefs. "Is Obama a Muslim?" the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to Christianity and now calls himself a "missionary to Capitol Hill," asked in a recent videoblog. "He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful Muslim." Schenck's videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire and Cross Action News, a self-described "Drudge Report for Christians." Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also "not a 'Bible Christian'" and did not practice a "confident faith." A separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama was "Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet." And a top figure in the group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a "spiritual guide" to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama" before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8 percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a Christian.)

The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama's actual faith, Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama's Chicago church a "black supremacist" and "separatist" institution. Rush found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling Obama a racist: "Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama's churchB-L-A-C-K!!!" Like the Muslim claim, it was a lie. But screeds about Obama's faith soon gave way to wide-ranging attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East and his associations in Chicago.

At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook, Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery, Lasky didn't hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in 2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.

A lengthy article from January 16, "Barack Obama and Israel," put Lasky on the map. "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates," Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky laughably warped what it meant to be "pro-Israel," criticizing Obama for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter administrations. By Lasky's criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and more than a few Republicans, would be considered "anti-Israel." "Lasky's piece is filled with half-truths, omission of 'inconvenient facts,' innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt by distant association," wrote Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- its propagandistic nature, Lasky's column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column, printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at synagogues -- even liberal ones -- and a useful ally for members of the Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he's been interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York Times, which have labeled Lasky a "critic" of Obama without explaining his neoconservative sympathies. "I wonder how a tendentiously argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know better," blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish News.

Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical headline: "Sleaze Charge: 'I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'"). Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his articles -- when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally called Hillary Clinton the "jihadist choice for president," but when Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his so-called "terrorist connections."

Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama's links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of left-wing activism). Klein's story goes something like this: Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi's wife, which supposedly rejects Israel's existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO's Beirut press office and is a supporter "for Palestinian terror." (In fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama's past statements, at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not a contradiction in terms.)

Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein's stories gained an audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria Sliwa sent Klein's articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP included his claims in a press release titled "Anti-Semites for Obama" and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that "terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election." As evidence, Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank's Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be an "important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and the conservatives." In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably closely.

Despite Klein's questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations, mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to an e-mail of Batchelor's obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says that information about Obama and Khalidi came via "oppo research."

Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner, Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the election calendar -- hardly a coincidence.

Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union, have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel -- including Jewish hate groups -- who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel. (Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway.")

Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to debunk them. "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" asked an editorial in the Forward. "Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes." After Obama criticized "a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel," Rosner of Ha'aretz accused Obama of "meddling in Israel's internal politics." The Washington Post noted Obama's "denials" of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.

Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a "race problem." Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler. "Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our 'smear' camping [sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them," right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.

The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. "If Moses was the Democratic nominee, he'd still be the victim of this hate mail," says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival campaigns lending a helping hand.

article by Ari Berman

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

In the wake of Cheney's visit, the Saudis have announced through their tightly controlled media that they are preparing to deal with "any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards" arising from an attack on Iran.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_richard__080328_saudi_newspaper_3a__pr.htm

Firstly, let me preface my following comments by admitting that I'm not an expert on nuclear technical issues. Despite that limitation, I'm usually quite good at comprehending scientific issues.

The main point I see as relevant here is this -- fallout from attacks on Iran's enrichment facilities would be a moderate to minor health concern. The amount of radioactive material that would be released is very small, and it's highly doubtful that it would travel a great distance. Therefore, the Saudis would not need to be overly concerned with the health hazards stemming from a bombing of Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.

However, a tactical nuclear strike on Iran would present a serious health hazard for Saudi Arabia.

It's hard to evaluate whether these reports are saber rattling or genuine threats to attack Iran, and both appear to be true. Most analysts see Cheney as genuinely desiring war with Iran, but there's also a saber rattling element, too. A better question might be what saber rattling actually accomplishes, since there isn't a clearly defined objective that's achieved by this action -- although gratuitous threatening is consistent with the neocon philosophy.

I won't attempt to recap all of Cheney's attempts to foment war with Iran, but they are numerous. One pertinent one here is his tasking of STRATCOM to draw up contingency plans in 2005 for a tactical nuclear attack on Iran, which, quite remarkably, wasn't based on hostile actions from Iran.

     "-The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites." -- American Conservative

     "-..the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States." -- ibid.

Although it would be easy to regard contingency planning as an innocuous event, please note that this is contingency planning for an unprovoked nuclear strike on Iran. And that distinction wasn't lost on the military officers doing the planning, as shown in the following:

     "-Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections." -- ibid.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_08_01/article3.html

I think the best way to view this latest news is as a 'stepping stone approach' to fomenting war. Even though the news appears to be aimed at a foreign audience, one of the objectives behind its dissemination is to condition the American audience to the idea of an Iranian threat. As such, this technique parallels the method that was used to inculcate Americans to the idea of an Iraqi threat before the war.

Another obvious objective would be to embellish the idea of an Iranian threat to the Saudi people. Much like in the US, vilification of foreign threats serves the interests of the Saud monarchy, a la Diversionary theory.

A final objective should also be noted -- the overlap between the Israeli Likud party and the neocons means that much of the far right foreign policy we've come to associate with the Cheney cabal is also the policy of the Likud-niks. US foreign policy is usually a proxy for Likud foreign policy.

Here are two readings on the uses of propaganda to foment war.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=9910

http://www.bigeye.com/warstate.htm

The following article was originally posted in January of 2007 on another forum. I wanted to repost it here because it covers aspects of US foreign policy that are unknown to most Americans.

The title of this diary post, Blowback, was chosen because the term blowback was used in a CIA memo discussing the possibility that the overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh in Operation Ajax might come back to haunt the US someday. Indeed it did.

Mossadegh's mistake was that he tried to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. His counterpart in Iraq, Qassim, made the same mistake in Iraq, in addition to being too friendly with the Soviets during the Cold War.

Another motivation for reposting this at this time is because the "chickens come home to roost" argument reemerged in the words of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. His words seem far less controversial once one learns the history of American involvement in the affairs of other countries. The Iran and Iran stories are only a small part of this history.

[Note: I've changed the spelling of "Qassim" in quoted passages to arrive at a common spelling]

    Saddam Hussein: "Thanks for the Memories"

It's difficult to find serious discussion on the topic of Saddam Hussein that isn't influenced by the administration's PR campaign to justify the war in Iraq. There is a seemingly endless supply of commentators willing to echo condemnations of Hussein's despotism, which, although based in truth, also fails to appreciate that he was brought into power to serve US interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_hussein

 "-In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim." -- (from Wikipedia)

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/10/205859.shtml

 "-Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

 "-According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim."

Installing despots, especially during the cold war, was and still is a favorite technique for promoting US interests. Typically, fear of communism or Soviet influence is the proffered justification, as it was in the case of Iraq, but this excuse also provides cover for promoting the interests of big business rather than the interests of the citizens of the US, which this euphemistic trope of "promoting US interests" implies.

 "-Concerned about Qassim's growing ties to Communists, the CIA gave assistance to the Ba'ath Party and other regime opponents." - (Wikipedia)

Although Qassim's regime was considered as a positive development by Washington because he was seen as a counterweight to Egypt's Nassar, he eventually outlived his usefulness.

http://readthese.blogspot.com/2003_12_15_readthese_archive.html

 "-From 1958 to 1960, despite Qassim's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt" - (Roger Morris OpED)

Qassim's buying of arms from the Soviets, appointment of communists in his own government, and threats to nationalize the Iraqi oil industry, led to CIA efforts to depose him and the cultivation of Saddam as an asset by the CIA.

The 1963 coup that overthrew Qassim, led by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, also accomplished other goals for the CIA.

 "-Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures."

It wasn't long after the 1963 coup that yet another coup, in 1968, which again was with the aid of the CIA, put Saddam near the leadership of Iraq.

 "-In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers -- including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time -- speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists."

It's helpful to understand the history of Iraq. The partitioning of former Ottoman territories by Britain and France, after the loss by the Central powers in World War I, led to the first Faisal.

 "-The British saw in Faisal a leader who possessed sufficient nationalist and Islamic credentials to have broad appeal, but who also was vulnerable enough to remain dependent on their support."

 "-[Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1922] The twenty-year treaty, which was ratified in October 1922, stated that the king would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with Britain, and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in eighteen departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses." - (Wikipdia)

Needless to say, British military bases were part of the deal. The Hashemite dynasty that ended in 1958 led to Qassim, whose withdrawal from the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact led to the CIA's use of Saddam Hussein as an asset.

Saddam's botched 1959 assassination attempt on Qassim led to his later exile in Egypt, were he was supported and trained by CIA. In 1963, the Ba'athists were finally successful in assassinating Qassim.

Saddam formally became the head of Iraq around the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the US once again used him to pursue its interests, by equipping him with chemical weapons and providing him with intelligence in his later war with Iran. Curiously, his gassing of the Kurds, which was condemned by the US in the later 2003 war, merely reprised Winston Churchill's gassing of the Kurds earlier in the century.

 "-Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used 'against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment'. He dismissed objections as 'unreasonable'. 'I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _' In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job." - (Jonathan Glancey)

http://tinyurl.com/2ubjc5

For many years, Saddam had been useful to western interests. Considering this, and his close connections to the CIA, it's hard not wonder why in his meeting with Ambassador April Glaspie she appeared to indicate the US had no interest in the dispute.

 "-'But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late '60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi [Chadli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League ] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.'-" - [transcript of Glaspie's conversation with Saddam]

Did Saddam misread the US position as tacit support? Was the US position tacit support, just as it had been for his war with Iran? Or, as many have wondered, had Saddam finally become a liability, and, as with previous depots supported by western powers, a liability that was going to be dispensed with in the usual fashion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie

I think everyone should read these:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/3/14/19013/6047

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman

I caught David Gergen on one of the political shows, and his comment that HRC had always opposed NAFTA surprised me, especially considering how many times she's supported it publicly. During the Ohio debate, Tim Russert played several video clips in which she stated her support for NAFTA, one as recent as 2004, and she's never given public indication of opposing NAFTA until now.

On another show just the other day, Lawrence O'Donnell, who was chief of staff of the relevant Senate committee during the 90s, contradicted Gergen:

  "-O`DONNELL:  You`re right, Dan.  By the way, I was working with Hillary Clinton at the time in the Senate when she was trying to pass her health care plan.  And her only problem with NAFTA was she wanted it to go after the health care plan because if that`s come through the same committee that I was running and so, her problem was just sequential.  She`s never been against NAFTA until this campaign."

I find both Gergen and O'Donnell credible, which makes reconciling their accounts somewhat difficult. One thing is clear, Clinton has never publicly opposed NAFTA until recently. Her recently rediscovered opposition thus looks less principled than expedient.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23394339/

Is al-Queda in Iraq?

Today's controversy between the McCain and Obama camps came over the subject of al-Queda in Iraq.

What's less controversial is the hypothetical construction of the line of questioning posed by Tim Russert. The question related to how Obama might handle a situation as Commander in Chief in which --

  ".. if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?" - from WaPo transcript of the Democratic Presidential debate

Obama's answer in the conditional paralleled Russert's question:

  "-Now, I always reserve the right for the president -- as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad." - ibid.

McCain understood Obama's answer, since he indicated that he understood it by prefacing his later comment (below) by restating the "if we left Iraq" conditional nature of the question.

  "-I have some news, Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It's called `Al Qaeda in Iraq.' My friends, if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base. They'd be taking a country and I'm not going to allow that to happen." - Sen. John McCain

It was bad enough when Bush intentionally conflated Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden to justify the war in Iraq. McCain's conflation of Osama bin Laden's al-Queda with Tawid, the organization formerly led by Zarqawi which was later renamed al-Queda in Iraq, further exploits the public's confusion. Obama's rebuttal -- that al Queda wasn't in Iraq when the war started -- helps, but it hardly begins to dispel the many layers of disinformation enveloping this issue.

Perhaps it's fitting in a war against a 'military tactic' that we don't know who our enemy is, but there's something extremely galling about a Presidential candidate who advertises himself as knowledgeable on defense issues and then parades his ignorance, although I hardly presume it 'honest' ignorance.

But even the idea of a war is wrong, since it's less a war than an occupation. And moreover, it's not we who are defending ourselves, since we attacked them. Wars can be won, an armistice signed; but occupations can can only conclude when the occupying power decides to leave. And this is what McCain and his ilk have deemed defeat. I could dive deeper into this Orwellian abyss, but I'll save that for another day.

In another interesting discovery, I ran across article by Michelle Maiese about "entrapment" the other day. Entrapment is the term Kenneth Boulding gave to the problem I would call 'sunk costs.' Once a country heads down the path to war, there can sometimes be a single-minded determination to continue no matter what the cost. Another psychological dynamic apparent in this mass delusion is cognitive dissonance. Despite the evidence against the war, there are some people who still cling to the notion that we had a just cause. I'm reminded of a speech by Al Haig, in which he insisted that he 'knew' there were weapons of mass destruction.

I'll end this post here, and I will return to this subject later. The link below is on entrapment.

http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/sacrifice_trap

I don't approve of the following group -- Citizens United Not Timid, but I can understand why they formed.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802200009

Despite John McCain's recent charges, it seems that his campaign retracted the offer to accept public financing. I doubt it comes as a surprise to anyone that he and his campaign managed to occupy both sides of the issue.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802170003

"-Mr. McCain's advisers said that the candidate, despite his signature legislative efforts to restrict the money spent on political campaigns, would not accept public financing and spending limits for this year's general campaign."  -- originally from the N.Y.Times

What's interesting about the McCain campaign's position on the issue is the fact that public financing was viewed as an alternative of last resort, in case there were financial difficulties -- hardly the principled stance that's it's being portrayed as now.

It's also interesting that Obama's offer fell short of acceptance. He promised to "aggressively pursue" the public financing route.

I recently commented on the many sources of variability in the polls. After taking a little closer look at the polls used in Texas, I find it's hardly a surprise that they are predicting divergent outcomes.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/why_so_much_volatility_in_texa.php

There's something about the arguments I've been hearing that doesn't sit well with me. Can you guess what it is?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8551.html

"-Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries." -- Mark Penn

POLITICAL DIARY #5 -- a prediction?

This is a story that we'll have to wait on. It's being reported that some of the Clinton big money contributers have set up 'independent' committees to attack Senator Barack Obama.

If this is true -- and it's only an unverified report at this point -- these committees could violate election law.

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/02/13/will-clinton-money-bosses-break-campaign-finance-laws/

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/02/13/whered-they-get-the-money/

ELECTABILITY

The following article isn't on the general idea of electability, but rather it's on what Mark Penn thinks passes an argument for Clinton's electability.

http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/02/clintons_electability.html

As I've said recently, arguments that offend my intelligence aren't helping the process.