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Saturday, July 16, 2005Hooray for Homeland Security!Immigration Sting Puts 2 U.S. Agencies at Odds Just when you were losing your faith in the TSA and FBI, along comes our immigration department to make us feel safe again. The barbarians may be at the gate, but thank God for a Homeland Security department that keeps them at bay. And their latest clever ploy against the invading marauders... it makes you proud to be an American. So, why, then, are two U.S. agencies at odds? Our friends at Homeland Security just nailed a bunch of illegals - at a phony OSHA conference. OSHA is upset, saying people won't want to work with them to maintain worker safety if there's no way of knowing whether their seminars are for real or staged for the benefit of other agencies with other agendas. I think OSHA's being awfully picky. I mean, I know I'll sleep better at night knowing that the kind of illegal immigrant who complies with government orders to show up at government sponsored seminars are on the next bus out. This fills me with almost as much confidence as I gained when raids in Michigan shut down a dozen Chinese restaurants a month ago, protecting us from the prospect of having our tables bussed or won-ton soup stirred by the unclean. I'll concede that all illegals are illegals and that none of them should be here without following proper immigration procedures. What disturbs is our government's priorities: Our Homeland Security agencies seem to place an awfully high priority on rounding up those who are easy to find and lack any clout once their caught. Forgive me if I'm indelicate on this point, but I'm not interested in how effective our government is at making sure those lucrative jobs in Chinese restaurants are saved for Americans. I'm much more concerned about Muslim extremists who may have the financial backing to get their paperwork filed correctly but are up to no good after the initial exit interview. I'm even concerned about the South American who heads up a gang to push drugs or steal cars. But a guy who comes to an OSHA seminar? Tell him he if he wants to stay, we're bumping him to the next tax bracket. At a time when fruit loops are raising money for terrorists from the Muslim community and maybe at this very moment some guy dreaming of being the next Mohammed Atta is leasing a Chevy with funds from dubious Middle East sources, I don't feel the "We'll get 'em with OSHA" approach to Homeland Security is getting us our tax dollars' worth. Let's hope this is the last gasp of the old INS as it persisted into the Ridge era and not typical of what the vaunted Chertoff is to bring. 
posted by gbarto at 5:08 PM Friday, July 15, 2005Asks the mighty Kaufiles (on July 14 at around 4pm):Isn't this an obvious point that hasn't been made about Joseph Wilson and the Rove/Plame controversy: If you accept an assignment to investigate possible WMD-related activity in Niger on behalf of the CIA, and your wife works at the CIA, shouldn't you think before you make your CIA mission the subject of a high-profile New York Times op-ed piece that there might be the eensiest weensiest chance that in the course of the ensuing controversy your wife's CIA connection might come out in public?Of course the point has been made out on the tail end of the blogosphere. Glad the news has reached the head. The TurkeyBlog, for example, wrote way back on the 12th: Who's responsible for leaking Plame's identity? Rove - and Wilson and PlameWe mention this not for the sake of small blogger triumphalism (well, maybe), but because there are probably lots of folks who had this thought and even tossed it up on a weblog. With any luck, the tendency for thoughts on small weblogs showing up on bigger sites and in more powerful venues means this blogosphere thingy is poised to seriously change the culture, not just because blogs keep the pressure on but because they keep ideas out there that other people latch onto, even unconsciously. Eventually, the ideas get to someone with a serious platform, at which point it can be fun to think, "Hey, that's what I said all along," the way one might fancy being, say, the real if unremarked inventor of the pet rock or television remote. (By the way, I'm certain this second point has been made better elsewhere before.)
posted by gbarto at 2:55 AM Thursday, July 14, 2005Hope everyone had a Happy Bastille Day.
posted by gbarto at 11:21 PM Wednesday, July 13, 2005Two good posts from Cicero on the Rove matter, this one on the true gravity of Rove's offense (not much, says he), this one on Bill Kristol as privileged journalist first, supposed conservative second.And here's a very nice post on the espousing of animal protections, if not rights, and why man, if allowed to make use of animals, ought to do so humanely. Particularly interesting: My own view, reader, is that only beings who can have and observe duties can have rights. Animals that cannot do the former cannot have the latter.Where does this put guide dogs? Or the dog that always watches the kids and then one day goes into a burning building to make sure they get out? I don't know if they're performing duties, but they seem to be demonstrating a sense of duty. Less clear is what kind of rights might come with the type of duties they perform.
posted by gbarto at 3:51 PM This is, as a glance at the left bar reveals, a blog that does not disdain Deepak Chopra. I did not agree with everything in Peace is the Way, but I found it worth reading. That said, this enterprise is a right-wing blog whose fondness for the idea of a world with no war does not dampen its support for the current war. Saying we need to go quietly as lambs to the slaughter so that peace will in the end triumph almost makes sense if you contort the metaphysics sufficiently, but living near a major metropolitan area, I know some of the mewling little fellers. I might even become one. This leaves me with a distinctly jaundiced view about inaction as a way to action (though it does beat the efforts of the TSA). And so, I found this HuffPo post about Chopra and the knowing way to reject war just dandy. For the thousands upon thousands who read the TurkeyBlog but not Instapundit, be sure to have a look at this bit you might otherwise have missed.
posted by gbarto at 3:19 PM Scenes from an earlier time... Joe Wilson was not the man he once had been, and he was feeling it. Sure, he retained a handsome air and his graying temples made him appear oddly distinguished. But something was missing. He needed adventure. He needed excitement. He only wished he knew where to find these. He heard the thud of the front door slamming and ran down the steps. There was his lovely wife, Valerie. She looked distressed. "Honey, what's wrong?" "You won't believe the mess at work." Joe braced himself. These discussions always lasted forever and never got anywhere. And by the time they were over, it was too late for dinner. He braced himself for another night of tater tots at 1 a.m. Valerie went on, "I keep trying to tell them there's nothing to Saddam. Me and Bill and Todd - you remember Todd - were discussing it again today." Joe did remember Todd. Todd was a hero. Todd was brilliant. Todd was insightful. All fine and dandy, but had he ever been an ambassador? No he hadn't! "Is there anything I can do, dear?" Joe hated saying this. He heard his masculine fix-the-problem psychology thick in his voice. But the words had come and he readied himself for the lecture about just listening and not trying to solve everything. Ever since she'd gone to that seminar... She looked at him thoughtfully. "Actually, honey, I think there is. Todd had an idea..." Joe winced, but hoped that his chance to play the hero was coming. "Honey, we were thinking, since you've been an amabassador over there and everything, maybe you could go and prove there's no uranium in Africa..." "Umm, but there are large quantities in Chad and..." "Hush, honey, I mean no Saddam uranium." "Oh." The task wouldn't be easy, of course, but Joe knew he could do it. He wondered how long it would take to not find Saddam uranium in Africa. Then he wondered aloud, "Who gives a rat's ass what a former ambassador from a former administration thinks?" "Honey, they're all over the cable news! Haven't you seen? Honestly, if you'd ever change from the wrestling channel..." "But, how would I justify it." "Dear, you'd be on a CIA fact-finding mission." "Tenet agreed to this." "Heavens no, but I'm in the CIA and Bill's in the CIA and Todd..." "Enough about Todd! I've got to go find no Saddam uranium in Africa." "Oh Joe, I always knew you had it in you!" The couple moved upstairs, and soon passions were in full flame, their love renewed, their hopes for their shared life reinvigorated. "Say it for me again, Joe!" "There's no Saddam uranium in Africa!" "Oh, Joe! I love it when you talk that way..." There are those who put their faith in following protocols and respect for the lines of authority. Those who think that undermining an entire government from behind the scenes is, well, wrong. But to see the love, to see the passion that animated Joe and Valerie that night, you'd know that sometimes commissioning a government operation on your own and publishing the ostensible discoveries of a secret organization in the New York Times is the highest form of truth: the truth of the love and shared respect of a man and a woman, married, with backgrounds in civil service. [Apologies to those who may have told this story before. I have not read such accounts, but am sure they have been written. For the love and devotion of Joe and Valerie, like that of Tristan and Yseult, and Lancelot and Guinevere, so fires the human imagination that it must call forth many tellings.]
posted by gbarto at 1:03 PM Does Rove know who Miller's source is? Junkyard Blog (via Instapundit) has an excellent write-up on the Rove-Plame bit. But I read things a little differently. Says JYB: It seems to me, though, that if all journalists do this and you want to get your message out, you develop a strategy to deal with the situation, not give up a pipeline to what is still a moderately significant news outlet. And a news outlet that did not in fact out Rove. Rove outed himself in telling Cooper not to go to jail for him. Why? I don't think this is a Rovian distraction or a brilliant plot per se. I think this is just another example of giving the MSM at large the rope to hang itself. Rove tried to warn Cooper away from Wilson and Cooper misread it. Not a surprise. Reporters, sensing a scoop, often are not very bright about what they're doing. But Rove, unlike the rest of us, knows exactly what he told Cooper and in exactly what context. If he told Cooper not to go to jail, it means one of two things: 1) Cooper's been a good contact who has done nice things with Rove's planted nuggets and Rove wants him on good terms with the administration (unlikely) or 2) in retrospect, Cooper's revelations are not going to look like much of a bombshell. Rove is a smart guy. You may doubt that, but the Plame/Wilson "no uranium in Africa" bit was supposed to make the Bush administration buckle on the Iraq issue. Somehow, in spite of this, we've had an intervening war and election, Bush and Rove are still in the White House and Joe Wilson is in the discount bin. I don't know if Rove knows who Miller's source is. If he doesn't, though, he'd like to. What's happened with him and Cooper, for all the buzz, will ultimately fizz for one of two reasons: 1) Miller's source and what he/she told her will make the Cooper/Rove revelation seem tame or 2) the MSM will slowly back away as their friends at the NYT continue to protect a source who apparently does have something to hide, not just a political stake in staying out of the fray. Of course I could be wrong. But when it comes to the Bush team, this President and his inner circle have a way of coming out on top that suggests it is highly unwise to misunderestimate their judgment about how best to play these things.
posted by gbarto at 12:25 PM Tuesday, July 12, 2005Who's responsible for leaking Plame's identity? Rove - and Wilson and PlameI'm not sure where the Plame/Rove thing will go, but here's my uninformed, er, carefully considered opinion: 1. Knowingly leaking the identity of a covert agent is a no-no, first because it can get our people killed, second because that knowledge can discourage agents from signing up or sticking out their necks for us. 2. Unknowingly revealing information that can reveal the identity of a covert agent is a no-no for the same reason given in number one, but is understandable and not illegal if I understand things correctly. 3. Abusing one's protection as a covert agent to subvert the policy of the United States government is a no-no. I believe it's called sedition or treason depending on how you go about it. Joe Wilson wrote a NYT op-ed in which he said that the CIA had sent him to Nigeria to follow up a "Saddam's buying uranium" story. Once Joe Wilson wrote his op-ed, he invited the question, Who in the CIA sent him? Joe Wilson did not go out of his way to say that a) the DCIA was not the authorizer of the trip, b) the authorizer of the trip was on a distinctly different wavelength than the DCIA and c) the DCIA didn't agree with his conclusions. Indeed, the impression was left that the CIA, from the Director down, had sat on something crucial for the sake of the administration. Within the CIA, disagreements have been known to exist. Some thought the Soviets were going to overrun us while others (a very few) saw the Soviet Union crumbling. Just because someone in the CIA thinks something doesn't make it so. And just because there's disagreement doesn't mean there's a great plot to hide the truth. Had Joe Wilson started his op-ed, "An associate at the CIA who was dubious of Director Tenet's conclusions sent me to Nigeria to investigate and I think she was right to be skeptical," I would be fine with this. But that would have undermined old truth-telling Joe's aura by showing he was in the middle of a dispute within the agency, rather than descending Moses-like to reveal what the administration had known but kept from us. Reporters are supposed to be taught to follow the money, to see who benefits from surprising turns in stories, etc. The French advise in every scandal: Cherchez la femme. La femme, however, was Wilson's wife, and she used her authority to lay the groundwork for undermining her boss' conclusions about a highly sensitive matter. What is scary in this case is that we are faced with two horrors: Because of the way Valerie Plame exercised her authority and her husband invoked it as representative of the CIA's evidence about Saddam, our choices were to a) eventually out a covert agent in figuring out what was going on or b) allow a civil servant to use federal powers to challenge the approach of our elected leaders in a forum where they couldn't respond. Karl Rove is probably in the wrong. But he was put in a box. If the American people have a right to know that some in the CIA were highly skeptical on the WMD issue, they also have a right to know how reliable the skeptics are. If you tell me that the director sent you to Nigeria but you bailed when you discovered the awful truth he was hiding, I'm impressed. If you tell me your wife thought her boss was off-base and when you checked it out you agreed, I'm a little less wowed. Karl Rove should face serious questions about potentially leaking Valerie Plame's identity. Joe Wilson should face serious questions about publishing the findings of a highly sensitive mission in the New York Times. Valerie Plame should face really serious questions about a) assigning sensitive missions to the sort of people who write New York Times op-eds about them and b) working outside of CIA channels to affect CIA and/or national security policy when she couldn't sell her view to her bosses. If Martha Stewart sent her boyfriend to investigate whether her special placemats were made with child labor and he said no, we wouldn't be bowled over and gnash our teeth and rend our garments in shame for falsely suspecting it was so. Likewise, there need be no cloth torn over the fact that a guy whose wife was upset with things at work looked into the matter and agreed with her. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame abused the power and the prestige their government stations conferred upon them to attack the highest ranks of government while maintaining silence about who exactly they were and on what authority they spoke and acted. To me, the solution to this is obvious, though outside the bounds of our jurisprudence: Ask Plame what punishment Rove should receive for pointing the way to her identity. At the close of the hearing, Rove would receive this sentence. So would Wilson and Plame.
posted by gbarto at 11:39 PM |
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