Kevin Drum pointed me to this item I’d missed in the LA Times: Study: Adept liars’ brains are built differently.

People who habitually lie and cheat — pathological liars — appear to have much more white matter, which speeds communication between neurons, in the prefrontal cortex than normal people, the researchers found. They also have fewer actual neurons.

The differences affect a portion of the brain, located just behind the forehead, that enables people to feel remorse, learn moral behavior and plan complex strategies.

The surplus of connections between neurons might enable these people to be more adept at the complex neural networking that underlies deceit.

Lying is hard work and these brains may be better equipped to handle it, the researchers said.

“Lying is cognitively complex,” said USC psychologist Adrian Raine, the senior scientist on the research project. “It is not easy to lie. It is certainly more difficult than telling the truth. Some people have a biological advantage in lying. It gives them a slight edge.”

The researchers recruited 108 volunteers, then sorted them into groups based on psychological tests designed to determine how often they lied. The volunteers were then scanned using magnetic structural imaging to obtain detailed anatomical images of their brain tissue.

The group of compulsive liars had 25.7% more white matter in the prefrontal cortex and 14.2% less gray matter than the normal control group.

You know what’s hard about being ignorant? The gaps in my knowledge don’t stand out like big white areas on the map. The brain, in its wonderful way, just closes up those empty spaces, making them disappear.

It’s like what happens to the area in your visual field obscured by your blind spot. You can verify that it’s there by covering one eye and moving a card with a pair of dots around until one of the dots disappears. But unless you make the effort to expose it, you’re not aware that you’re missing anything.

So with Iraq. We’re all ignorant to a greater or lesser degree about what’s going on there. But we’re not really aware of the extent of our own ignorance (though we of course have a crystal clear notion of the other guy’s ignorance; that stands out in flashing neon).

So let’s see if we can fill in some of that terra incognita. But first, consider the following quotation from Gen. George W. Casey, Jr.’s testimony before Congress on Friday, as noted by Kevin Drum:

Asked whether the insurgency has worsened, Casey said it has not expanded geographically or numerically, “to the extent we can know that.” But he noted that current “levels of violence are above norms,” exceeding 500 attacks a week. “I’ll tell you that levels of violence are a lagging indicator of success,” he added.

For some reason that strikes me funny. I realize it’s a deadly serious subject (more literally so than usual), but still, there’s something about the old military man, conditioned to deliver information accurately and succinctly, who I’m guessing has now been ordered to lie by his civilian overseers. And like Hal in 2001 (at least as revealed in 2010), he ends up exhibiting some pretty wacky behavior in his effort to reconcile the conflicting requirements.

Asked if the insurgency has worsened, and faced with the clear fact that it has, he does his best to find a way to put a positive spin on it. But unlike someone like Rumsfeld, who would simply set sail on the sea of falsehood and lie, saying something like, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Of course not. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Casey feels compelled to keep one foot on the shore, so to speak.

Okay; maybe it’s not so funny.

Anyway, here’s some of the actually informative stuff I’ve been reading about Iraq lately:

• The view from Iraq - an on-the-ground report from Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), whose district I mostly grew up in, and for whom I have voted in the past, though I haven’t been her constituent for a number of years.
• What’s wrong with cutting and running? - from retired Gen. William E. Odom, head of the NSA during the Reagan administration.
• Can the US military presence avert civil war? - by Jim Lobe. Lobe is what our conservative friends would refer to as a “liberal.” You have been warned.
• Why immediate withdrawal makes sense - by Michael Schwartz. Schwartz, likewise liberal, is a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

  Fill in those blind spots, people!

So, Bush is nothing if not consistent. With a crucial, high-profile position to fill, one that could have a profound impact on the nation’s future, he disdains actually sifting through the country’s best and brightest. Instead, he chooses a personal friend, someone who combines absolute loyalty to himself with a notable lack of relevant qualifications.

I’m referring, of course, to Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

More on Miers:

• Wikipedia entry
• transcript of Bush announcement

From the latter:

Once again, we consulted with Democrats and Republicans in the United States Senate. We received good advice from more than 80 senators. And once again, one person stood out as exceptionally well suited to sit on the Highest Court of our nation.

I wonder how many of those senators included Miers in their list of suggested appointees. From the New York Times article I linked to above:

Mr. Bush said this morning that the White House had consulted 80 senators to seek names in the selection process. But last week, Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is on the judiciary panel, said that it was “consultation in name only” and that Ms. Miers called him to ask for suggestions in a conversation that lasted less than five minutes.

“There is no back and forth,” he said. “It’s just, ‘Give us some names.’ I said to her, ‘Look, I’d like to know who the president is considering.’ And she didn’t say anything.”

Heh. So, Miers came back to Bush after calling the senators, and gave him the list of suggestions, and he just glanced at for a second, then said, “Aw, heck, Harriet. Why don’t you do it?”

A few more fun quotes:

From a New York Times’ profile of Miers, written a few years back by Elisabth Bumiller (A woman of low profile in a job high-powered):

In 2001, Mr. Bush brought Ms. Miers to Washington with him as his staff secretary, a little known but powerful job in which she handled much of the paper flow to the president. Ms. Miers is a regular guest at Camp David and is often the only woman who accompanies Mr. Bush and male staff members in long brush-cutting and cedar-clearing sessions at the president’s ranch.

And this, from Joshua Micah Marshall (As with Justice Roberts…), quoting Matt Yglesias quoting David Frum:

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

Whoa. In the Bush scheme of things, that’s the most unimpeachable qualification there is.

Finally, let’s read from her acceptance speech at the announcement of her nomination. I’m getting a real Sally Field vibe from this part:

And now I want to pause and thank all of those whose love and friendship and support have brought me to this moment. No one reaches a point in time such as this without tremendous sacrifice, help and encouragement of family and friends and colleagues.

I’m immensely grateful to the support and love that I feel for my brothers Harris, Robert, and Jeb, and their families, and the love and support that I knew from my father and my sister, Kitty — and the love and support I feel from her family.

I have a special note this morning for my mom: Thank you for your faith, your strength, your courage, your love and beauty of spirit.

Boy, this is fun. I’m not sure when the last time was that I was able to enjoy mocking a lame Bush appointment at the same time I was able to enjoy Bush being roasted for same by his right-wing base.

On a more abstract level, it’s also interesting to me to see how much the most frenetic part of the modern media universe (meaning weblogs, mainly) truly abhors a vacuum, and rushes to fill it.

Items helping to fill the former Miers-information vacuum today:

• Just deleted from David Frum’s blog - Ben Wikler of the Al Franken Show weblog notices that former White House speechwriter and good conservative David Frum posted the following about Miers, then quickly edited his posting to remove it. Oops! Too late!

She rose to her present position by her absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States.

• All I need is you: The psychology of George and Harriet - Nice discussion from the Bag of this image of Harriet Miers touring the Crawford ranch with the Brush-Clearer-in-Chief.
• Why Miers? - Kevin Drum has some interesting speculation. Short version: Bush picked her because he’s a wimp. (Or, as the Bag would put it, because he’s “a weak man consumed with power” who “has no choice but to constantly remind others what a man he is,” and hence surrounds himself with two kinds of people: those he depends on “to quietly tell him what to do,” and those he depends on “to make believe he knows.”)
• Bush bashing - a round-up by Kevin Drum (again! again with the Kevin Drum!) of conservatives’ angst over their betrayal.
• Harriet Miers’s Blog!!! - heh. This was fun.

Here’s a scary, but fun, story from 90% True: I am a terrorist. Careful with that “send” button, people.

Like many people, I was impressed by Steven J. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s book Freakonomics. By taking a non-ideological, fact-based approach to some burning questions of the day, Levitt is able to make some very interesting discoveries.

The lead story in the book is based on a paper of Levitt’s that shows a strong correlation between legalized abortion and a falling crime rate 15 years later. I encourage you to get the book, but in the meantime, the abortion part of it is well-summarized by sci-fi author, neo-fascist, and amusing semi-wingnut Orson Scott Card: Freakonomics or you have to find the facts before you can face them.

(Side note: Janus/Onan brought this fun Kuro5hin item about Card to my attention: Orson Scott Card has always been an asshat. Makes the interesting case that Card did not actually write, or at least did not write all of, Ender’s Game.)

You’ve probably heard about how former education czar, moral virtues expert, and gambling addict Bill Bennett recently filed the serial numbers off Levitt’s argument and mentioned it in passing in a slightly less-pleasant form, in which he pointed out that you could lower the crime rate in the country by aborting all the black babies. Rogers Cadenhead summarizes some of the aftermath at Workbench: Bill Bennett’s reproducible error. As with the Broussard fact-checking I helped along, it’s an interesting example of how stuff in the real media can resonate with a particular crowd in the blogosphere, then echo back, amplified, into the mainstream consciousness.

Finally, no excursion into wingnuttery would be complete without an Ann Coulter moment. Two of them, in this case.

First, Aaron/Hiro pointed out the other day that with the exception of its occasional gratuitous liberal-bashing, this item by Coulter, in which she attacks Harriet Miers as a legal lightweight (let’s not forget, Coulter owns the category of women using a sketchy background as a legal scholar as a springboard to greatness), is actually more or less sane: This is what ‘advice and consent’ means.

Second, restoring my faith in her essential inability to make a coherent, honest argument twice in a row, Coulter has attacked the aforementioned Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame, as debunked at MediaMatters: Coulter falsely accused Freakonomics co-author of defending Roe v. Wade, claimed that Lott debunked his original study on abortion and crime.

A couple of fun items about news photos being used in misleading ways.

First up, from Chronwatch’s John Armor: The Face of a Democrat, and a Liar.

Second, from Zombietime.com, which is basically a conservative version of BAGnewsNotes (and about which the Bag actually has some nice things to say): Anatomy of a photograph.

Yet another fantastic speech from Al Gore: Gore on the threat to democracy. He basically makes the case that the rise of television has destroyed the public debate that previously took place via the printing press, and looks to the Internet as the last, best hope of democracy in America.

Interesting concept: A potential president who can actually reason on a high level. We should give that a try sometime.

I’m not sure why, but I really love it when a high-profile media story is revealed to have a big component of myth. I only wish all the people who swallowed the original version got a chance to see the true one, and to process the resulting cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, the latest example to cross my radar, from Rogers Cadenhead: Everyone who uses must converge.

Remember Ashley Smith? She was kidnapped by a nasty hoodlum, but she prayed with him, and he saw the light, and turned himself in. Well, it turns out that along with praying with him, she also shared her crystal meth with him. Funny, I don’t recall that detail being in the uplifting version of the story featured in our pastor’s sermon that Sunday.

This post from Rogers Cadenhead at Workbench is actually a fairly interesting write-up of recent developments in the Harriet Miers nomination, but I’m linking to it for a different reason: I love the following quote. Anyway, from Harriet Miers, Bush’s stealth bomb:

The president’s so stubborn that were he captain of the Titanic, he would have run the ship into a second iceberg to prove he meant to hit the first one.

I know one of jbc’s favoite themes is “Pictures Can / Can’t Lie.” So I couldn’t resist posting these spoof trailers from the folks at PS260 (A video marketing production company)…

• The Shining - A touching family comedy about a young boy looking for a father figure, and a struggling novelist looking for meaning in his life.
• West Side Story - A Suspense film like no other: In the summer of 1961, 14 square blocks of Manhattan were quarantined due to an outbreak of unknown origin. This is the story of those few survivors who managed to escape from The Infected.
• Titanic - Horror on the high seas knows no limits.
• Cabin Fever - A tale of love and loss as a terminally ill girl takes her four best friends on one last summer trip to to say goodbye.

I’m sure most of us in the Bush-hater community remember the interview that Irish reporter Carole Coleman did with Bush last year. Well, now she’s publishing a book, and an excerpt from it gives more details about the circumstances surrounding the interview: Ireland: I wanted to slap him.

I find myself forgetting how petty the current occupants of the White House are, how much their sense of their mission is limited to “maintaining the illusion that George Bush is qualified to be president,” and then I read something like this.

Via telegraph.co.uk, via BoingBoing: Unicef bombs the Smurfs in fund-raising campaign for ex-child soldiers.

Belgian television viewers were given a preview of the 25-second film earlier this week, when it was shown on the main evening news. The reactions ranged from approval to shock and, in the case of small children who saw the episode by accident, wailing terror.

Dick Cheney likes to point out that he has “gotten rid of all my financial interests” in Halliburton. Damn. Where can I get some of those nonexistent financial interests? As summarized by the Carpetbagger Report (Cheney’s lucrative Halliburton ties), a report from the office of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) points out the following:

Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton stock options have increased in value 3,281 percent in one year. The stock options, which were worth $241,498 one year ago are now valued at $8,165,489.07.

Update: Per Craig’s helpful update in the comments, FactCheck.org has a nice page dating to the last presidential campaign that gives a truer version of what’s really going on: Kerry ad falsely accuses Cheney on Halliburton.

The gist of this seems to be that Cheney made a binding legal agreement when he became Veep that hires a law firm to exercise his Halliburton (among others) stock options when the time seems right to maximize the resulting profits, deduct fees for the attorneys and taxes owed, and then donate whatever is left over according to the following (as quoted from the Factcheck.org piece):

The agreement specifies that 40% will go to the University of Wyoming (Cheney’s home state), 40% will go to George Washington University’s medical faculty to be used for tax-exempt charitable purposes, and 20% will go to Capital Partners for Education, a charity that provides financial aid for low-income students in Washington, DC to attend private and religious schools.

Most of the griping by Sen. Lautenberg over the years apparently has been about how this arrangement (along with other aspects of Cheney’s financial dealings with Halliburton, like the payment of deferred compensation from when he was the company’s CEO), constitutes a continuing “financial interest” that must be disclosed in official government reporting — but Cheney apparently is doing that.

The PDF of Cheney’s Halliburton-options agreement refers to Schedule A, which is where the options in question are supposed to be listed, but Schedule A is not actually included in the PDF. Instead there’s a placeholder-type page that describes the options generally, and refers one to Cheney’s annual financial disclosure statements, which it says includes the specifics. So I guess it’s conceivable that Cheney might be sneakily concealing some of the options for himself, or something, while claiming to have assigned them all to charity, but if that were the case I’m reasonably certain that people like Sen. Lautenberg would be screaming about it. Since they’re not, I think it’s pretty clear that he’s not doing that, and that the charitable assignment of the options is what it purports to be.

So, my bad. And thanks to Craig for setting me straight. Cheney’s profit from the Halliburton options is not in the form of direct compensation, as I (and the piece I linked to) implied. Instead, he gets to make an $8 million donation to his alma mater, a med school, and a scholarship fund, and (maybe) take a nice tax break for the charitable donation (though Craig says he’s seen something about Cheney having chosen not to take the tax break). I’d be interested in hearing more on that point if anyone has details; given that Cheney is currently estimated to be worth between $30 million and $100 million, largely due to his compensation while at Halliburton, I could see where some tax breaks would be very helpful.

Headline updated.

Count me among those sighing loudly at the NY Times’ decision to put their most-interesting content behind a for-pay barrier. I’d be willing to bet they’ve just turned away a large amount of mindshare (and traffic) in return for a relative pittance in online subscriptions.

Anyway, there’s plenty of free and accessible content to go around. But once in a while I really, really want to link to a NYT columnist. Never fear; the net interprets (certain flavors of) capitalism as damage and routes around it. So with Frank Rich’s recent column, “The Faith-Based President Defrocked,” which does a good job of discussing how the Miers nomination is serving as a wake-up call for those on the right who previously believed that Bush really is one of them. Currently available in reposted form from:

• Cyphering: Georgie’s Wild About Harriet.
• Nevada Thunder: The Faith-Based President Defrocked.
• Armwood Editorial and Opinion Blog: The Faith-Based President Defrocked - New York Times.
• Communications and Entertainment Law Blog (heh): The Faith-Based President Defrocked - New York Times.

I could go on (and will, if the Times IP goons actually manage to get to all of those). Or they could come after me, which would be kind of fun; I haven’t had a C&D letter in practically forever.

This is pretty fun. Warning: Makes no sense without audio. And with audio, pretty much not safe for work, or for children who don’t know the seven words you’re not allowed to say on (American broadcast) television. Anyway, as hosted at big-boys.com: Language barrier.

As long as I’m posting not-safe-for-whatever links, here’s a fairly low-key pr0n site that delivers exactly what it says it does: Girls & Corpses.

Hurray for truth in advertising!

I liked this one. From Think Progress: Bush’s circular logic on Miers.

…the National Law Journal recognized that Miers benefited from her connections to Bush. Now, Bush uses that designation to argue that she is qualified apart from her relationship with him. It’s the beauty of circular reasoning.

I do sometimes wonder if Bush is aware that he’s full of shit, or if his view of reality is just so skewed that he actually believes that anything he himself says must definitionally be true. I incline toward the latter explanation; my suspicion is that he really doesn’t care whether he’s full of shit or not, because for reasons relating to the emotional damage he suffered during childhood, caring would be too painful.

A photographic record of the time during which I suspect that pattern was established, from the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M:

I wanted to mention the SFGate article by Robert Collier on Pat Tillman that came out a few weeks ago (Family demands the truth: New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat Tillman’s death), and this followup article in the Nation by Dave Zirin is a good opportunity to do so: Pat Tillman, our hero.

Plus, the latter comes with a gratuitous Ann Coulter-bashing.

There’s certainly a lot of “chatter” on the Bush-hater weblogs about what Patrick Fitzgerald might or might not be getting ready to hand down in the way of indictments. Some of that speculation apparently centers on the activities of the “White House Iraq Group,” or WHIG, a team including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that was set up in August 2002 to run the PR campaign that (as the Downing Street Memos told us, after the fact) was under way at that time as part of fixing the intelligence around the administration’s Iraq-invasion policy.

Joshua Micah Marshall has some interesting commentary about this: There are certainly a lot of hints…

If Karl Rove goes down in this investigation it’ll be a disaster for the president, both in terms of the damage occasioned by such a high-level White House indictment and, frankly, because he needs the guy like most of us need legs.

But this WHIG thing is a whole ‘nother level of hurt.

This group was the organizational team, the core group behind all the shameless crap that went down in the lead up to the Iraq war — the lies about the cooked up Niger story, everything. If Fitzgerald has lassoed this operation into a criminal conspiracy, the veil of protective secrecy in which the whole operation is still shrouded will be pulled back. Depositions and sworn statements in on-going investigations have a way of doing that. Ask Bill Clinton. Every key person in the White House will be touched by it. And all sorts of ugly tales could spill out.

As I said back in July (Corn, Marshall on Rove/Plame. And I see an elephant.), if Fitzgerald goes for it, the truth will be out there. The reality, I am convinced, is that there was a criminal conspiracy to out Plame, followed by a criminal conspiracy to cover up the outing. But in exposing those relatively limited crimes, Fitzgerald would also be highlighting the Bush administration’s much larger crime of fudging the case for war.

And note the results of this poll: Americans favor Bush’s impeachment if he lied about Iraq.

If Fitzgerald brings indictments, Bush’s lies on Iraq are going to be front-page news for months on end. We’re going to get all kinds of detail on just how those lies were sold to the public. It won’t be the president’s hand-picked commission on Iraqi intelligence, or the kid-gloves inquiry by Pat Roberts’ Senate intelligence committee, with the most-embarrassing-to-Bush parts of the investigation deferred to a hypothetical “phase 2.” It will be an aggressive federal prosecutor making the strongest case he can, working in the high-intensity spotlight of a Watergate-level criminal investigation.

What will Congress do in such a situation? Remember, this stuff will be on television. If the public reacts with the same sort of outrage with which they reacted to Bush’s strumming while New Orleans drowned, there is going to be incredible pressure on Congress to do something. Would a Republican Congress actually impeach Cheney? Would it impeach Bush?

I can’t believe it would. But in the aftermath, would there be a backlash from voters? A year ago I would have said yes, of course. But my faith in the American electorate was shaken by the 2004 presidential election.

My sense is that this stuff is already being fought tooth and nail by the Bush people, just out of sight. They are preparing whatever they can for the PR campaign, and I don’t doubt for a second that if cornered, they’re going to go nucular. If this really does go down, it’s going to get really, really ugly. Rove will have no choice but to try to engineer the Swift-boating of Fitzgerald. And I just don’t see how he could pull that off.

But then, he’s surprised me in that area before.

I thought this item from Slate was fairly thought-provoking: Condi, Hillary, and … Angelina?

Jonathan Schwarz of A Tiny Revolution obsesses in depth over the question of what we can and can’t believe about Colin Powell — specifically, about the UN presentation on Iraqi WMD Powell delivered in February, 2003: Wait, I’ve Changed My Mind And Decided Colin Powell Is The Most Honest Man On Earth.

Warning: When I say “obsesses in depth” I mean it.

Interesting discussion by Dan Froomkin of the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that showed Bush receiving only 2% (!) support from blacks: A polling free-fall among blacks:

This latest poll included 807 people nationwide, and only 89 blacks. As a result, there is a considerable margin or error — and the findings should not be considered definitive until or unless they are validated by other polls.

David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tracks African American public opinion, told me this morning that it’s clear that Bush’s job approval among blacks “has taken a hit from both the ongoing things in Iraq and what happened with Katrina.”

But down to 2 percent? “I doubt that it’s actually 2,” he said.

“But would I be surprised if it’s 10 or 12? No.” And 10, he said, is typically “about as low as you can go” when it comes to approval ratings.

The WaPo’s Dana Milbank has a column that was like catnip to a cat for a Bush-watcher like me: For president under duress, body language speaks volumes. It looks at how Bush behaved during the interview he and Laura did with Matt Lauer the other day in connection with the “hammers like a girl” photo op.

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was “trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression,” Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer — along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.

I didn’t actually see the interview on the Today show. I’d be curious what people who did think about Milbank’s characterization. Did Bush seem visibly uncomfortable? Did we get a lot of those yeah-he’s-wired pauses?

I’m beginning to think it must be me: I’ve been going through the Washington Post this morning, and finding item after item that crosses my threshhold of post-to-lies-a-bility. Maybe it’s my continuing sense of injury over the NY Times’ TimesSelect changes.

Anyway, here’s the latest example of my newfound WaPo-love. From Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker: Scandals take toll on Bush’s 2nd term.

“The Rove thing has gotten to be enormously distracting,” said one outside adviser to the White House. “Knowing the way the White House works, being under subpoena like this, your mind is not on your work, it’s on that.”

“It looks like a perfect storm,” said Joseph E. diGenova, a Republican and former independent counsel, who noted that so many investigations can weigh on an administration. “People have no idea what happens when an investigation gets underway. It’s debilitating. It’s not just distracting. It’s debilitating. It’s like getting punched in the stomach.”

Besides talking about Rove and Plamegate, it also talks about the Abramoff, Frist, and Delay scandals.

I failed to link to it when it came out, but this editorial from the Washington Post (again with the WaPo fixation!) was important, I think: End the abuse.

Let’s be clear: Mr. Bush is proposing to use the first veto of his presidency on a defense bill needed to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan so that he can preserve the prerogative to subject detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In effect, he threatens to declare to the world his administration’s moral bankruptcy.

Now, that’s my kind of clarity.

Bob Herbert, writing behind the NY Times’ for-pay barrier, continued the discussion in his column last Monday, which I can now link to thanks to its having been liberated by the good little pirates at truthout.org: Who isn’t against torture?

Senator McCain met last week with Capt. Ian Fishback, a West Point graduate who was one of three former members of the 82nd Airborne Division to come forward with allegations, first publicly disclosed in a report by Human Rights Watch, that members of their battalion had routinely beaten and otherwise abused prisoners in Iraq. In a letter that he sent to the senator before the meeting, Captain Fishback wrote:

“Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as al-Qaida’s, we should not be concerned. When did al-Qaida become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

Senator McCain and Captain Fishback get it. Some people still don’t.

Mark Kleiman has some interesting analysis of what is (and isn’t) knowable at this point about what Patrick Fitzgerald is planning to do: Conspiracy and the White House Iraq Group.

I’ve been guessing for months that at the end of the day Fitzgerald will charge Rove and Libby with violating 18 U.S.C. 793(d), a section of the Espionage Act…

I also expect that Fitzgerald will charge other officials with conspiring with the primary defendants to violate that law. Those other people, including members of the White House Iraq group, could either be indicted for conspiracy (i.e., conspiracy to break that particular law) or named as unindicted co-conspirators, which would make their actions admissible evidence against those who were indicted as members of the conspiracy. In addition, I expect ancillary charges of false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice relating to attempts to frustrate the investigation, and perhaps of conspiracy to commit some of those ancillary offenses.

In my optimistic moments, I have allowed myself to imagine that Dick Cheney might be named as an unindicted co-conspirator. I have largely managed to repress the thought that Cheney might be indicted, or that George W. Bush might also be named as a co-conspirator. (No matter what the evidence shows, I strongly doubt that Fitzgerald would want to face the constitutional and politcal sh*t-storm that would be provoked if he indicted a sitting President.)

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post (no! not the Washington Post!), Richard Cohen has ruffled many Bush-hater feathers by arguing that the Plame inquiry is just politics-as-usual, and Fitzgerald should just pack up and go home: Let this leak go. There have been many good reactions to Cohen’s piece; Casey Morris of democracycellproject had this one, for example: Dear Richard Cohen.

So, Bush did a “question and answer” session via video with some troops in Iraq (physically much safer than trying to sneak him in for a turkey dinner, I guess, what with all the progress we’ve been making over there), and it emerged afterward that the questions were carefully scripted in advance. Which wouldn’t be anything worth noting, except for the way Scott McClellan denied the charge to reporters.

Q: How can you tell when Scott McClellan is lying?

A: His lips move.

Anyway, Kevin Drum has the links and relevant quotations: Photo-op hell. But really, for the full effect, you need the video from MSNBC’s Countdown program, which has been helpfully liberated by Norm of Onegoodmove: A train wreck. Be sure to watch all the way to the end of clip #3, when Keith Olbermann and Dana Milbank are talking about the recent poll showing Bush with 2% approval among blacks, with a “3% margin of error,” and they chuckle to each other about the possibility that Bush’s real approval rating among blacks is -1%.

Update: See also Today from Holden’s obsession with the gaggle, and the Crooks & Liars video showing Scottie getting into it with Helen Thomas: Scottie’s heated press conference.

Thomas’s “how many have we killed?” question was heart-breaking for me. Queue up the Aaron Broussard waterworks.

Hm. My fixation on Plamegate and Bush’s resulting facial tics has definitely left my coverage severely imbalanced. How else to explain my having missed this story? Model Tyra Banks gets nasty rumor off chest on TV.

[Plastic surgeon Garth] Fischer said, “I’ve performed approximately 8,000 breast implant surgeries, I’ve examined you, I’ve reviewed your sonogram… and Tyra Banks has natural breasts.”

Late again; sorry. Here are the updated graphs of US war deaths in Iraq for September. Deaths were down, with a total of 49 US fatalities. As always, I’m comparing the military casualties to those from the Vietnam war at a similar point in each war’s political lifetime (which many have charged is inherently misleading; see disclaimer below).

The data come from the advanced search tool at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, and from Lunaville’s page on Iraq coalition casualties. The figures are for the number of US dead per month, without regard to whether the deaths were combat-related.

The first graph shows the first 31 months of each war. (Click on any image for a larger version.)

Next, the same chart, with the Vietnam numbers extended out to cover the first four years of the war:

Finally, the chart that gives the US death toll for the entire Vietnam war:

Disclaimer: I’m aware that we have more troops in-theater in Iraq than we had during the corresponding parts of the Vietnam War graph. Vietnam didn’t get numbers of US troops comparable to the number currently in Iraq until some three and a half years after the starting point of the Vietnam graphs above. The starting point for the Vietnam graphs is the death that was identified (years later) by Lyndon Johnson as being the first of the war.

These graphs do not address the relative lethality of the two conflicts on a per-soldier basis. I was just curious how the “death profile” of the two wars compared, and how those deaths played out in terms of their political impact inside the US. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

Here’s an interesting write-up from Richard W. Stevenson of the New York Times: Jitters at the White House over the leak inquiry.

Lawyers for most of the officials who have testified before the grand jury have by and large chosen not to share information with one another, leaving colleagues largely in the dark about what others are telling Mr. Fitzgerald.

There is a presumption inside the White House that anyone who was indicted would resign or go on leave to fight the charges, though it is unclear what planning has taken place for that possibility.

The prospect of a White House without Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush’s longtime strategist, has some allies of the president in a near panic, fearful that without him the administration would lose the one person capable of enforcing discipline across a party that has become increasingly fractious and that is almost at war with itself over the president’s nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court.

Via TomDispatch comes a powerful piece by Nick Turse, chronicling 40-some-odd people who have been fired, forcibly retired, or who have resigned as a result of their unwillingness to go along with the fiction that Emperor Bush’s clothes look really, really nice: The fallen legion: Casualties of the Bush administration.

I was already familiar with most of these individuals’ stories, and have posted about pretty much all the high-profile ones before, but seeing them gathered together in one place and reading them in one sitting brought home to me just how proud I am of these people. In their willingness to stand up for what’s right, even at personal cost, they’ve shown themselves to be true patriots, and in telling their stories Turse is giving us a modern Profiles in Courage.

The piece closes with an appeal for people to send in other names for inclusion in the list. Here’s what I sent:

Thank you for the excellent summary of these many great Americans who have taken principled stands in response to the venality that pervades the Bush administration. The one thing I think strikes a slightly off note is the sense I get that they are being portrayed as victims, or “casualties,” of the Bush team. While they certainly are that, for myself I prefer to believe that in sacrificing their own immediate career interests they actually were helping their country, and on a deeper level were helping themselves to live truer, more fulfilling, and ultimately better lives. To me that makes them heroes rather than victims, and I look forward to the day when they will be recognized more widely for their courage to do what their conscience told them was right.

Although their story is a little different than the cited ones, Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson probably deserve a place on the wall. They’ve certainly suffered as the price of doing the right thing for their country. I look forward to the day when they, too, will be acknowledged as heroes.

A story that unfortunately lacks that hope for a happy ending is that of Marlene Braun, whose suicide was covered in the LA Times earlier this year. See the following:

A conservationist’s suicide: National monument official was distraught at shift she said favored grazing over grasslands

BLM suicide ripples across West

In a reckoning of the costs of the Bush administration’s style of governing, I think Ms. Braun belongs in there somewhere.

Thank you again.

John Callender
jbc@west.net
http://www.lies.com/

Craig helpfully provided the following link in the comments to my earlier item on Bush’s scripted Q&A session with the troops in Iraq. It’s a brief account of the event from Sgt Ron Long, one of the participants: Speaking with President Bush.

Coming from the media’s perspective, Dan Froomkin’s Washington Post weblog links to lots of interesting detail: Caught on tape.

For the record, I don’t consider it at all surprising that either the military generally or Sgt Long in particular is gung-ho about Bush’s leadership and the mission in Iraq. That is, after all, one of the direct aims of military recruitment and training: to produce a fighting force willing to enthusiastically carry out the orders of its leadership, even when those orders include things like dying.

Besides all the intense, sustained conditioning that military members are exposed to to help them perform such actions, there’s also the influence of basic human nature, which causes us to avoid cognitive dissonance. We tend to justify to ourselves those things we have chosen to do, especially things that involve extreme sacrifice, rather than face the possibility that we might have been wrong.

It really isn’t a soldier’s job to question the larger justifiication of Bush’s military policies. In fact, it is pretty much the soldier’s job not to question those policies.

Yes, I know there are limits to how far a soldier is supposed to go; and things like setting dogs on prisoners or breaking their legs during beatings certainly rises to that level in theory, if not always in practice.

But the thing that the media coverage is focusing on here isn’t really whether the soldiers were sincere or not (though Scott McClellan did try to take that tack for a while during his press briefing). That’s a strawman.

What the media is focusing on is the way the wheels came off this particular piece of attempted image-crafting. Because the feed included the 45-minute prep session that preceded the actual Q&A, we could see how the president’s specific questions, and the soldiers’ specific responses, were carefully rehearsed and tweaked. This is important, because it completely changes the meaning of the event.

Unlike the Internet, which is an incredible tool for drilling down into as much detail on a topic as one could possibly want, making it very difficult to use top-down control to promote a particular false-to-fact perception, TV is all about doing just that. TV is the ultimate technology for using top-of-the-pyramid manipulation to send carefully crafted images that resonate in a particular emotional way and create a perception in viewers that they would not have experienced if they saw more of what was actually going on.

The Bush team is famous for crafting effective TV visuals, and the degree of preparation they engage in is legendary. That’s why it was so surprising to see them screw this up so badly. The main message of this event was supposed to be: Look at how well things are going in Iraq. Look how much the troops support the president. Look at how Bush is working to stay in touch with the reality of what’s happening on the ground. But the story that actually ended up being told was: Look how carefully the people on the ground were rehearsed to make sure viewers (and Bush) were not exposed to uncomfortable realities. And when McClellan tried to deny that that had happened, it was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

I realize that this was no different than dozens or hundreds of other photo ops. The only thing that was different in this case was how we saw Professor Marvel frantically working levers behind the curtain, rather than seeing only the Great and Powerful Oz we were supposed to see. But what’s different is interesting, especially when it reveals an underlying truth. So the media led with that. That’s their job, just like it’s Sgt. Ron Long’s job to think that what they are doing in this case is reprehensible.

I don’t think Long is insincere when he says that. I don’t think he’s insincere when he says that he supports Bush, and that things are going great in Iraq.

I just think he’s wrong.

As more detail emerges about Judy Miller’s Plamegate role, it’s increasingly clear (well, it was clear already, but now it’s highlighted, underlined, and bolded) that she’s got no business calling herself a reporter, and would more-accurately be described as an administration mole. So, thanks Times; thanks Judy.

Kevin Drum: Miller’s memory.

Miller’s excuse for her forgetfulness is that “It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses.” But it’s not a matter of Miller not remembering a trivial detail two years after the fact. It’s a question of whether she remembered it a week after the fact.

Answer: of course she did. And if she remembered it then, she certainly remembers it now. She just doesn’t want to say so.

Josh Marshall: Quite a lot is contained…

The only editorial accountability imposed on Miller was that she not write on Iraq or unconventional weapons. And yet, Keller concedes, she seemed to self-assign her way back into the same territory. I don’t know what examples Keller has in mind. But a good place to start is Miller’s inexplicable coverage of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal as recently as this past summer.

Not only is the whole Oil-for-Food story by definition about Iraq, it is also far more deeply tied to the weapons back story than it appears to on the surface. One need only note that the purported documents which gave birth to the most inflammatory charges were ‘discovered’ by Ahmed Chalabi.

So it seems that Miller was literally out of (editorial) control at the Times not only after the WMD stories but after they were discredited as well.

And more Josh Marshall: I’ve been out for most of the day…

…But in this case it certainly seems as though the tacit bargain between Miller and Libby was that Libby would provide Miller with information in exchange for her assistance in deceiving her readers. And that violates the rule or principle that amounts to the Occam’s Razor of journalistic ethics — fundamental honesty with your readers.

See also Mark A. R. Kleiman’s The spike.

I want to resist the “Oh my _God_; look at what they’re doing now!” reaction. But still: AlterNet: Wal-Mart Coverage: Civics Student… or Enemy of America?

Check out some of the crazy-ass helmet-cam footage of bike messengers racing through busy urban streets: Lucas Brunelle videos. Because I don’t think the guy’s going to live long, and once he dies the site’s probably going to go away.

Don’t miss this great footage from the Today show, as hosted by Crooks & Liars: Today Show boat photo op. In the East Coast feed, reporter Michelle Kosinksi was doing her remote about flooding in Wayne, N.J., from a boat. And in the middle of her segment, two guys walk through the foreground, making it obvious that the water was only ankle-deep.

Heh.

They re-did it for the West Coast feed, shooting her standing in the water instead. Shades of that wide-angle image from the Katrina aftermath, where we could see that the reporters standing in the water as they did their bit were just standing a little ways into the water, with the camera crew on dry land, framing the shot to avoid revealing that the reporter had chosen to stand there.

I enjoyed this article by Scott Lieber from the Daily Orange, the school paper of Syracuse University: Comedy Centrist: John Stewart calls them as he sees them, whether you like it or not.

Good stuff. You go, Jon.

Oh, and Scott Lieber, there’s no “h” in “Jon.” One of those mundane details we need to obsess about. Hm. Except the article has it correct. So maybe it was your headline writer (your editor, maybe?) who screwed up?

Anyway, it’s a good article. And yes, I am a poopy-head.

Cementing their position atop my newly reshuffled ranking of mainstream media sources, the Washington Post ran a lead editorial on Sunday that says what needs to be said about the Bush administration’s too-cute attitude toward torture: A future investigation.

Thanks to Holden of First Draft for pointing out the editorial in The WaPo does shrill.