THE CALAMITY HOWLER #145 Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:49:03 -0500 (CDT) THE CALAMITY HOWLER April 10, 2007 Issue #145 Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage in the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler but insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to howl until their objectives had been attained. --- THE POPULIST MIND, edited by Norman Pollack EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net TO RECEIVE: Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net OVERVIEW: * 'GOOD NEWS" FOR EDWARDS ON CANCER By Jeff Zeleny * EDWARDS BETS ON UNION SUPPORT By Heidi Przybyla * THE CLINTON-OBAMA-ALINSKY MYTH By Sam Smith * STUDS TERKEL'S LASTING IMPACT ON JOURNALISM By Mark Fitzgerald * MOLLY IVINS VISITS THE POLICE BLOTTER By Editor&Publisher Staff * SUNDAY IN THE MARKET WITH MCCAIN By Frank Rich * PENTAGON REPORT DEBUNKS PREWAR IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION By Jesse Nunes 'GOOD NEWS" FOR EDWARDS ON CANCER By Jeff Zeleny New York Times April 3, 2007 CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa --- Elizabeth Edwards, who began her cancer treatments late last week, said Tuesday evening that she had received encouraging news from her physician and was determined not to let public curiosity and concern over her illness overshadow her husbands presidential campaign. I honestly believe in candor and in full disclosure, transparency and all that stuff, Mrs. Edwards, 57, said in an interview here. On the other hand, at some point, it becomes an impediment to getting the actual message across. Two weeks after announcing that her cancer had returned, John Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, and his wife made their first trip back to Iowa. They barely mentioned her illness during a public forum with nearly 1,000 voters at a Cedar Rapids high school, but Mrs. Edwards discussed her treatment regimen after the campaign event. After visiting her doctor last Friday in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Mrs. Edwards said she learned that her cancer was more likely than previously expected to be controlled by drugs that control excessive hormone levels. She said that her doctor initially believed she had a triple negative form of cancer, which would be harder to treat this way, but that additional testing revealed otherwise. It was very good news, Mrs. Edwards said, talking Tuesday about her treatment for the first time. It means that the available medicines to treat me are a larger buffet. Sitting in a home economics room here, she pointed to a dark bruise on her left hand, from her first intravenous treatment on Friday. She is taking Femara, an aromatase inhibitor, she said, and her regimen consists of a daily pill and a monthly, 15-minute IV treatment. She is also part of a medical research study. Since announcing their decision to continue with Mr. Edwardss presidential bid, she said she feared that the campaign message could be overtaken by questions of her health. So she wrote a posting on the campaign blog this week, thanking her admirers for their concern, but asking them to turn their attention to advocating for cancer research or improving health care policy. At the campaign event here, where people waved signs expressing their support for her, Mrs. Edwards did not discuss her illness. She urged Iowa voters, who open the presidential nominating season next January, to pay attention to what the candidates are saying. Ill be constantly trying to change the subject to the bigger issues, Mrs. Edwards said, a smile growing across her face. I dont just want to be the wife with cancer. EDWARDS BETS ON UNION SUPPORT By Heidi Przybyla Bloomberg April 9, 2007 For John Edwards, the road to the presidency runs through Alan Young, a teachers' union official in Des Moines, Iowa. The former North Carolina senator's strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is to knock off one of the two front-runners, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in the early primaries and make the next round a head-to-head contest. To do that, he is focusing his campaign efforts on labor. ``One thing union members know how to do is organize,'' Edwards, 53, who sought the presidential nomination in 2004 and then became the Democratic vice presidential choice, said in an interview last week. The first four contests are held in January in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. While the clout of unions in national politics has diminished in recent years, they remain a powerful force in the first two states and can deploy ``a big checkbook'' and ``lots of feet'' on behalf of candidates, said Larry Jacobs, a presidential historian at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Edwards still is way behind Clinton and Obama in both national polls and fund-raising. He has shown the greatest gains in recent weeks, however, and is competitive in the four initial contests: He was born in South Carolina and won that primary in 2004, and finished a close second in the Iowa caucuses that year. Edwards campaign manager David Bonior, a former Democratic congressman from Michigan with close ties to labor, argues these early states will provide the momentum for bigger contests later. ``The early calendar is a very good playing field for us,'' Bonior said. ``When we build on these early victories, this field changes.'' While national labor leaders have made clear they are in no hurry to make endorsements, Edwards has been courting them aggressively. ``Edwards has seen union presidents more than they've seen each other,'' said Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the nation's largest union of health-care workers. The candidate is also taking his message directly to local chapters. In the past two years, he has lent his support to at least 85 local union drives and pushed to increase the minimum wage in six states. ``How Democrats approach the labor community has changed,'' said Jenny Backus, a Democratic political consultant in Washington who worked for the 2004 ticket of Senator John Kerry and Edwards. ``You have to approach each group individually. Labor power has become decentralized.'' Edwards, the only 2008 candidate to offer a specific universal health-care plan, is critical of free trade and vows to eradicate poverty. These positions resonate with many union leaders. ``His message is making unions predisposed to him,'' said Young, who met privately with Edwards last week. On the stump, Edwards ties his emphasis on fighting inequality to his support of unions. ``The greatest anti-poverty movement in American history is the organized-labor movement,'' he said last week at a town-hall meeting in a packed high school gymnasium in Des Moines. ``I've walked picket lines all over this country standing up for health care, for working people, for pension protection.'' Edwards also has a personal connection to labor. His father worked in textile mills, and his brother is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. On April 11, Edwards will be the first presidential candidate to participate in the ``Walk a Day in My Shoes'' campaign organized by Stern's SEIU. He will accompany a nurse's aide to work in New York's Westchester County, taking his union message to Clinton's home turf. Clinton, 59, has accepted a similar challenge, though no date has been set. In November, Edwards was the only candidate to stand on the picket line at a Goodyear plant in Akron, Ohio, said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers Union. Yet many union chiefs like Gerard aren't ready to endorse him. ``If you had a discussion with our locals he'd be very, very popular with them, but we are committed to a process,'' he said. The labor leaders' biggest concern is whether Edwards can be nominated. In 2004, Democratic candidates Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean won most union endorsements, and then lost the nomination, a blow to labor's reputation for clout. This time, ``the unions are going to go with whoever they think will win,'' said Jim Davis, a presidential scholar at Washington University in St. Louis. Edwards leads in Iowa, according to a March 26 Zogby poll, and a Voter Survey Service poll a month ago found him tied for second in Nevada. Those states, the first two in the nominating process, both select their presidential-convention delegates in caucuses. In New Hampshire, site of the first primary, Edwards knocked Obama, 45, the Illinois senator, from second place and is in a statistical tie with Clinton, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. After the Des Moines meeting, Edwards said he knows he has been the focus of renewed media attention since his wife announced last month that her cancer had returned, sparking a national discussion on his decision to continue to campaign while she seeks treatment. In the interview, he said he has already recruited campaign volunteers in all 99 of Iowa's counties. Dori Rammelsberg- Dvorak, secretary of the state Democratic Party and an Edwards supporter, said he can expect next January to at least match the 32% of caucus-goers who backed him in 2004. Edwards said his recent gains in the polls are helping him among union leaders. ``When I talk to them, I talk about that,'' he said. ``It's pretty clear that we have some momentum right now.'' The primary calendar may also be an advantage, Edwards said. Several states, including California, are moving primaries up to February, which he said would increase the importance of victories in the four stage-setting early states. ``Things are very front-loaded,'' Edwards said. ``It just means the earliest caucuses and primaries are even more important.'' Bill Buck, a strategist for the Democratic Party in Nevada, expects Edwards' battle plan to be particularly effective in Iowa and in Nevada, where the bulk of the vote will come out of the union-rich Las Vegas area. ``The race has always been more wide open than the popular opinion,'' Buck said. Edwards is ``trying to use momentum from early primary and caucus states to roll into what's shaping up to be a national primary,'' said Mike Feldman, former Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff during the 2000 campaign. ``He's not going to get there with muscle. He's going to get there by being opportunistic and strategic.'' Tom Buffenbarger, head of the Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, said some labor leaders also expect Edwards to benefit from the early races. ``There's one field of thought that Obama and Hillary kind of beat each other up and the fatigue factor sets in on them, and that if Edwards plays it cool and close, he'll be the one to emerge,'' Buffenbarger said. THE CLINTON-OBAMA-ALINSKY MYTH By Sam Smith Undernews March 26, 2007 Peter Slevin of the Washington Post deserves some sort of award in media mythmaking for his piece recreating Clinton and Obama as disciples of the great activist Saul Alinsky. They have in fact followed the teachings of Alinsky about as well as George Bush has followed those of Jesus Christ. To be sure, they both went to the church and prayed. But life moves on and as Alinsky pointed out, "When the poor get power they'll be shits like everyone else." The same goes for Wellesley and Harvard Law School idealists. Clinton, in fact, put her thesis on Alinsky under lock and key once her husband began running for president, something that Slevin buried in his long encomium. And it is hard to think of anything in recent years more certain to have gotten Alinsky angry than HRC's deceitful, confusing and insurance company-pandering health plan. The Obama story is different. He actually worked for several years on Alinsky oriented projects. But that was a long time ago and to present him as a current disciple of Alinsky is just plain false. He is today your run of the mill liberal politician who doesn't want anybody mad at him and wouldn't even be a card in the race if he didn't hold the race card. I mentioned to a black friend that Obama reminded me a lot of the sort of black lawyers you meet at top Washington law firms. "Yeah," he replied, "the Negro at the front door." They are fine to handle your mergers or litigation, but if you are trying to save a country going down the tube, you're probably better off with someone who hasn't spent his whole life trying to position himself safely in a hostile white America. This is not in the slightest to his discredit personally; it's just not the job description on the table. There can be in these glass-ceiling breakers a self-protective caution that enables them to survive but also makes them less likely to break ceilings for others. I know something about Alinsky because I wouldn't being doing what I'm doing if it weren't for an Alinsky organizer who hit our Capitol Hill neighborhood in the 1960s and strongly urged me to start an activist neighborhood newspaper. For the next few years I was immersed in Alinsky style populism while many of my white friends were engaged in something far closer to the classical stereotype of the 1960s. If there is one theme that has set my subsequent journalism apart from the more typical left media it has been an Alinsky-encouraged approach rooted in community, populism, placing issues ahead of ideology and suspicion of power in all its forms. Reading Slevin's article I was tempted to assume that this was another cynical Washington Post effort to spin America's story, in this case to steal the populist thunder from John Edwards, the candidate closest to the Alinsky spirit and the man with whom Alinsky would feel most comfortable. But perhaps this is unfair, because I know how little understood the Alinsky style and values are anymore. It is not surprising that either Clinton and Obama are so removed from these; they are, in fact, typical liberals in this regard. Still you can't have it both ways and no one should think of either as practitioners in the model of a man who once said, "Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." STUDS TERKEL'S LASTING IMPACT ON JOURNALISM By Mark Fitzgerald Editor&Publisher March 29, 2007 CHICAGO, Illinois --- Chicago treasure Studs Terkel is a master of many media. His pioneering "Studs' Place" TV broadcasts combined serious talk, comedy, song and drama. He started doing radio in the Depression with the federal Works Progress Administration, and for the better part of five decades hosted a nightly nationally syndicated show, talking with the famed and the forgotten in his nasally Chicawgo voice. His books of oral histories, such as "Working" and "Hard Times," were bestsellers. But while he played a newspaper reporter in John Sayles' film about the Black Sox scandal, "Eight Men Out," newspaper was one medium that Terkel never made his own. Yet the enormous impact that Louis "Studs" Terkel has had on Chicago newspaper journalism was clear last night, March 28, at the Chicago Cultural Center, where more than 300 journalists, public relations professionals and amateurs, community activists, and assorted lefties such as former Weatherman Bernardine Dohrn gathered to honor reporting in the Studs Terkel mode. Everyone in the elegant Grand Army of the Republic hall of that old central Chicago library was also there to honor Studs. They sang "Happy Birthday" in anticipation of his turning 95 in a few weeks. With Chicago Tribune columnists Mary Schmich on piano and Eric Zorn on guitar, they sang "This Land is Your Land." Looking frail and leaning on a cane, Studs slowly made his way on stage, and then delivered some thoughts on journalism and the Internet in a firm voice with unerring pacing. "The traditional journalism of radio and television and newspapers has broadened," he declared. "It's news now from the bottom up, no longer from the top down." But the best example of that reporting last night was from the oft-criticized mainstream media. Chicago Tribune labor and workplace reporter Stephen Franklin was one of three winners of the Studs Terkel Media Award. "Tragically, I'm one of the very few people who write about work, which baffles me because as far as I know we all work," Franklin said in videotaped comments screened at the event. He could not be at the event because he is on assignment in the Middle East. Instead, the award was accepted on his behalf by Tribune photographer Abel Uribe, who worked with Franklin most recently on a serie on the increasing hours owner-operator truckers must drive these days. For the series, Franklin drove with trucker Roger Kobernick from California to Florida, while Uribe rode along on the way back to photograph Kobernick's increasingly unprofitable way of life. Franklin called Uribe towards the end of his trip, the photogrpaher recalled, to say that he was doing as well as could be expected for someone "who hadn't had a shower in three days, and was getting no sleeping in a 36-inch-wide space behind an unfamiliar guy." "From a photographer's point of view, he's a dream to work with," Uribe added. "He could sit behind his desk and do these stories with phone calls, but he insists on going out here and reporting on the real people." Mary Helt Gavin won a Terkel Media Award for her work as publisher of the Evanston Roundtable, a scrappy biweekly that reports on the close-in Chicago suburb. Gavin was introduced by last year's Terkel winner, Mary Johns, editor of the Residents' Journal, a newspaper written by and for people in public housing. "We seem to possess a kindred spirit," Johns said. "Mary has been working to bring news to people at the grassroots level, just as my paper does." Spanish-language radio station WRTO-AM, known as "La Tremenda," won the third award of the night for its community-oriented talk programming that was largely responsible for rallying some 100,000 people to an immigrants rights march in Chicago last year. The Studs Terkel Media Awards are presented by Community Media Workshop, an 18-year-old organization that provides communications training to other non-profits, and tries to diversify the sources used by Chicago news organizations. In his videotaped remarks, the Tribune's Franklin recalls a book publisher telling him that Studs had called and offered a glowing blurb for a book Franklin was completing. "To be a labor writer," Franklin said, "and have (Studs Terkel) say you are the best labor writer is like having Jackie Robinson sitting next to you in the dugout and say, 'Nice game, kid.'" MOLLY IVINS VISITS THE POLICE BLOTTER By Editor&Publisher Staff April 7, 2007 Last November 16, E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post delivered the annual Theodore H. White Lecture at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The same evening, under the auspices of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Molly Ivins was awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism, named in honor of the famed Boston Globe columnist. Now the Center has produced a booklet containing Dionne's lecture, along with the Q and A that followed. But it also holds the transcript of what turned out to be, perhaps, Molly Ivins' last public remarks away from her native Texas. She succumbed to cancer, which she had been fighting for some time, on January 31, 2007. Ivins' comments ranged far and wide, as was her wont, with many addressing the decline of newspapers and her ideas on how to combat that (halting newsroom cuts, for example). But in defending the press, she also highlighted some of its witty attributes, such as odd headlines, leads and police reports. "I swear to you," she testified, "if you put out a newspaper and all it said on its front was 'guaranteed one good laugh a day,' you would have a successful newspaper." Then she claimed that she had served for many years as "the daily chuckle editor" at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The following excerpt proves that Ivins was as funny as ever in her final days. * Now, before I depress everybody horribly, I thought I would talk about newspapers as entities that have important cultural pools, and that need to be kept intact. One is of course that newspapers keep alive the tradition of collecting news, little gems from the police blotter, and in any small town newspaper youll find the police blotter, and its really full of interesting things. Well, actually, often not very interesting things, Dog heard barking, 6:00 a.m. But there are some gems, and the newspaper people are the only people in the world who save them. There was one not long ago from Mill Valley, California: Perp arrested, charged with disturbing the peace for playing a ukelele while wearing a penguin costume. Now this is the kind of thing that should not be let go. And just to prove to you that its not some crazy out in Mill Valley, we had one the other day, a small town in South Carolina, the perp was extremely drunk. And he had decided in his drunken state that it would be fun to screw a pumpkin, and so he did. And the police came up to him and said, "sir, are you aware that youre screwing a pumpkin?" And he said, "damn, is it midnight already?" Now, the other thing that you find of course cherished in newspapers is great leads, great leads written but not printed, great leads written and printed. Ive always been terribly fond of one that appeared in The Odessa American. It was a hot summer day in Odessa, which is definitely redundant, and some local mother rear-ended a sporting goods van, and the back doors popped open on the sporting goods equipment, tennis rackets and stuff spilled all over the street. And for every reporter who has ever written a weather story, I know you will enjoy: "Golf balls the size of hail rained on the streets of Odessa on Tuesday." The most famous lead ever written and printed I believe is from Chicago, and youre going to have to help me, some of you here, it was the Leopold and Loeb case, and these two students of the University of Chicago had indulged in a thrill killing, and they had not been sentenced to death, but one was in the hoosegow and the other had promptly died. And the one who was in the hoosegow was also gay and he had approached a fellow prisoner who was not appreciative of his gesture who shanked him to death. And the lead was, Nathan Leopold, a graduate of the University of Chicago, who should have known better, ended his sentence with a proposition Tuesday. One I like that was never printed anywhere, and this often happens in sex ring storiesthey usually tend to follow a certain pattern. Sure enough, the New Jersey State Police had uncovered a sex club, a clubhouse that contained whips and boots and spurs and all kinds of interesting paraphernalia, and this was duly reported. Then, as often happens in these stories, the second day they found a small black book containing the names of those who frequented this interesting establishment, and sure as a buckeye, the names of many people who were prominent in New Jersey society and political circles appeared in this book. So the second day lead, which went out over the A wire but never appeared anywhere was: The names of the whipped cream of New Jersey society were found Thursday in a small black book. * I think one of the things you should never forget about journalism is when you have done good, when you have nailed some skunks hide to the wall, you should sit there and gloat over it a great deal. Thats a big part of the fun. And those Washington journalists who say, "well, yes, I know I caused him to resign, and I really feel bad about it" --- oh, shut up. * There are certain subjects that are guaranteed to set people off --- abortion, death penalty, they run in a subject area. I have a collection called my best hate mail, but I have to admit my all time favorite piece of mail is a fan letter and it begins: "Dear Ms. Ivins, you are the favorite writer of all us guys here on cellblock H." SUNDAY IN THE MARKET WITH MCCAIN By Frank Rich New York Times April 8, 2007 John McCain's April Fools Day stroll through Baghdads Shorja market last weekend was instantly acclaimed as a classic political pratfall. Protected by more than a hundred American soldiers, three Black Hawk helicopters, two Apache gunships and a bulletproof vest, the senator extolled the progress and good news in Iraq. Befitting this loopy brand of comedy --- reminiscent of Wedding Crashers, in which Mr. McCain gamely made a cameo appearance --- the star had a crackerjack cast of supporting buffoons: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told reporters I bought five rugs for five bucks!, and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, who likened the scene to a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime. Five rugs for five bucks: boy, weve really got that Iraq economy up and running now! No wonder the McCain show was quickly dubbed McCains Mission Accomplished and McCains Dukakis-in-the-Tank Photo Op. But at a certain point the laughter curdled. Reporters rudely pointed out there were 60-plus casualties in this market from one February attack alone and that six Americans were killed in the Baghdad environs on the day of his visit. Your heart goes out to just the typical Iraqi because they cant have that kind of entourage, said Kyra Phillips of CNN. The day after Mr. McCains stroll, The Times of London reported that 21 of the Shorja markets merchants and workers were ambushed and murdered. The political press has stepped up its sotto voce deathwatch on the McCain presidential campaign ever since, a drumbeat enhanced by last weeks announcement of Mr. McCains third-place finish in the Republican fields fund-raising sweepstakes. (He is scheduled to restate his commitment to the race on 60 Minutes tonight.) But his campaign was sagging well before he went to Baghdad. In retrospect, his disastrous trip may be less significant as yet another downturn in a faltering presidential candidacy than as a turning point in hastening the inevitable American exit from Iraq. Mr. McCain is no Michael Dukakis. Unlike the 1988 Democratic standard-bearer, who was trying to counter accusations that he was weak on national defense, the Arizona senator has more military cred than any current presidential aspirant, let alone the current president. Every American knows that Mr. McCain is a genuine hero who survived torture during more than five years of captivity at the Hanoi Hilton. Thats why when he squandered that credibility on an embarrassing propaganda stunt, he didnt hurt only himself but also inflicted collateral damage on lesser Washington mortals who still claim that the surge can bring victory in Iraq. It cant be lost on those dwindling die-hards, particularly those on the 2008 ballot, that if defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of Mr. McCains heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, they have nowhere to go but down. Theyll cut and run soon enough. For starters, just watch as Mr. McCains G.O.P. presidential rivals add more caveats to their support for the administrations Iraq policy. Already, in a Tuesday interview on Good Morning America, Mitt Romney inched toward concrete timetables and milestones for Iraq, with the nonsensical proviso they shouldnt be published for the enemy. As if to confirm were in the last throes, President Bush threw any remaining caution to the winds during his news conference in the Rose Garden that same morning. Almost everything he said was patently misleading or an outright lie, a sure sign of a leader so entombed in his bunker (he couldnt even emerge for the Washington Nationals ceremonial first pitch last week) that he feels he has nothing left to lose. Incredibly, he chided his adversaries on the Hill for going on vacation just as he was heading off for his own vacation in Crawford. Then he attacked Congress for taking 57 days to pass emergency funds for our troops even though the previous, Republican-led Congress took 119 days on the same bill in 2006. He ridiculed the House bill for pork and other spending that has nothing to do with the war, though last years war-spending bill was also larded with unrelated pork, from Congressional efforts to add agricultural subsidies to the presidents own request for money for bird-flu preparation. Mr. Bushs claim that military equipment would be shortchanged if he couldnt sign a spending bill by mid-April was contradicted by not one but two government agencies. A Government Accountability Office report faulted poor Pentagon planning for endemic existing equipment shortages in the National Guard. The Congressional Research Service found that the Pentagon could pay for the war until well into July. Since by that point well already be on the threshold of our own commanders late-summer deadline for judging the surge, whats the crisis? The president then ratcheted up his habitual exploitation of the suffering of the troops and their families --- a button he had pushed five days earlier when making his six-weeks-tardy visit to pose for photos at scandal-ridden Walter Reed. Congresss failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines, he said. And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to. His own failures had already foreordained exactly these grim results. Only the day before this news conference, the Pentagon said that the first unit tossed into the Baghdad surge would stay in Iraq a full year rather than the expected nine months, and that three other units had been ordered back there without the usual yearlong stay at home. By weeks end, we would learn the story of the suspected friendly-fire death of 18-year-old Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, just two hours after assuming his first combat post. He had been among those who had been shipped to war with a vastly stripped-down training regimen, ten days instead of four weeks, forced by the relentless need for new troops in Iraq. Meanwhile the Iraqi democracy that Mr. Zeimer died for was given yet another free pass. Mr. Bush applauded the Iraqi government for working on an oil law, though it languishes in Parliament, and for having named a commander for its Baghdad troops. Much of this was a replay of Mr. Bushs sunny Rose Garden news conference in June, only then he claimed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was taking charge of Baghdad security on his own. Now its not even clear whom the newly named Iraqi commander is commanding. The number of military operations with Iraqis in the lead is falling, not rising, according to the Pentagon. Even as the administration claims that Iraqis are leading the Baghdad crackdown, American military losses were double those of the Iraqi Army in March. Mr. Bush or anyone else who sees progress in the surge is correct only in the most literal and temporary sense. Yes, an influx of American troops is depressing some Baghdad violence. But any falloff in the capital is being offset by increased violence in the rest of the country; the civilian death toll rose 15% from February to March. Mosul, which was supposedly secured in 2003 by the current American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is now a safe haven for terrorists, according to an Iraqi government spokesman. The once-pacified Tal Afar, which Mr. Bush declared a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq in 2006, is a cauldron of bloodshed. If Baghdad isnt going to repeat Tal Afars history, we will have to send many more American troops than promised and keep them there until Mr. Maliki presides over a stable coalition government providing its own security. Hell is more likely to freeze over first. Yet if American troops dont start to leave far sooner than that by the beginning of next year, according to the retired general and sometime White House consultant Barry McCaffrey the American Army will start to unravel. The National Guard, whose own new involuntary deployments to Iraq were uncovered last week by NBC News, cant ride to the rescue indefinitely. The center will not hold, no matter what happens in the Washington standoff over war funding. Surely no one understands better than Mr. McCain that American lives are being wasted in the wars escalation. That is what he said on David Lettermans show in an unguarded moment some five weeks ago though he recanted the word wasted after taking flak the morning after. Like his Letterman gaffe, Mr. McCains ludicrous market stunt was at least in the tradition of his old brand of straight talk, in that it revealed the truth, however unintentionally. But many more have watched the constantly recycled and ridiculed spectacle of his safe walk in Baghdad than heard him on a late-night talk show. This incident has the staying power of the Howard Dean scream. Should it speed Americas disengagement from Iraq, what looks today like John McCains farcical act of political suicide may some day loom large as a patriots final act of sacrifice for his country. PENTAGON REPORT DEBUNKS PREWAR IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION By Jesse Nunes Christian Science Monitor April 6, 2007 A declassified report by the Pentagon's acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble provides new insight into the circumstances behind former Pentagon official Douglas Feith's pre-Iraq war assessment of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection an assessment that was contrary to U.S. intelligence agency findings, and helped bolster the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war. The report, which was made public in summary form in February, was released in full on Thursday by Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a statement accompanying the 121-page report, Senator Levin said: "It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith's office 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.' " The Feith office alternative intelligence assessments concluded that Iraq and al Qaeda were cooperating and had a "mature, symbiotic" relationship, a view that was not supported by the available intelligence, and was contrary to the consensus view of the Intelligence Community. These alternative assessments were used by the Administration to support its public arguments in its case for war. As the DOD IG report confirms, the Intelligence Community never found an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda; the report specifically states that," the CIA and DIA disavowed any 'mature, symbiotic' relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida." The Los Angeles Times reports that in excerpts of the report released in February, Mr. Gimble called Feith's alternative intelligence "improper," but that it wasn't illegal or unauthorized because then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assigned the work. The Times also reports that a prewar memo from Mr. Wolfowitz to Feith requesting that an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection be identified was among the newly released documents. "We don't seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Wolfowitz wrote in the January 22, 2002, memo to Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official. Using Pentagon jargon for the secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: "We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around." The Times reports that the memo "marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project" to convince White House officials of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a connection "that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since." The New York Times reports that presentation slides used during a Pentagon briefing at the White House were also released Thursday. The slides showed how Feith criticised US intelligence agencies that had found little or no Al Qaeda-Iraq link. The slide used by the Pentagon analysts to brief the White House officials states the intelligence agencies assumed "that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate, even when they have common interests," and there was "consistent underestimation of importance that would be attached by Iraq and Al Qaeda to hiding a relationship." The Pentagon, in written comments included in the report, strongly disputed that the White House briefing and the slide citing "Fundamental Problems" undercut the intelligence community. "The intelligence community was fully aware of the work under review and commented on it several times," the Pentagon said, adding that [former CIA Diector George] Tenet, at the suggestion of the defense secretary then, Donald H. Rumsfeld, "was personally briefed." The Times notes that the Pentagon analysts' appraisal of the CIA's approach was "in contrast" to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its 2004 report on prewar intelligence, which praised the CIA's approach as methodical, reasonable, and objective. On a website set up to challenge Gimble's assessment in his report, Feith argues that the key issue at hand is "whether the CIA should be protected against criticism by policy officials." Feith also challenged Gimble's characterization of his intelligence assessment as "inappropriate." The IG got this point wrong and it would be dangerous to follow his badly reasoned opinion on the issue. It would damage the quality of the government's intelligence and policy. The CIA has made important errors over the years --- think of the Iraqi WMD assessments. To guard against such errors, policy officials should be praised, not slapped, for challenging CIA products. Despite the release of Gimble's report, the Associated Press reports that Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday appeared on a conservative radio show and reiterated his stance that Al Qaeda had links to Iraq before the US invasion in 2003. "[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq." The Washington Post, however, reports that Mr. Zarqawi only publicly allied himself with Al Qaeda after the US invasion, and until then "was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts." These newletters are produced by the Calamity Howler. 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