Frightening report from NPR's website:

A scary anecdote from Iran. A trusted colleague - who is married to an Iranian-American and would thus prefer to stay anonymous - has told me of a very disturbing episode that happened to her friend, another Iranian-American, as she was flying to Iran last week. On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely - they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

Social networking can empower political opposition and dissidents. But it can also help security forces track them. During the red scare witch hunts in the United States, suspected communists were asked to name the names of friends and relatives in the party. These days, the authorities could just check out your Facebook or MySpace pages.

Speaking of excessive security activity, I was on NPR's Diane Rehm Show this morning to discuss the recent news reports about a possible torture probe at the Justice Department, the CIA withholding information from Congress regarding a super-secret assassination program that targeted al Qaeda leaders, and Dick Cheney's role in all of this.

One point I hammered: the House and Senate intelligence committees can and should investigate why the CIA did not brief Congress about this assassination program, focusing on the reports that Cheney ordered the spies not to tell the nation's elected representatives about this operation (which may not have become operational). Cheney's been mum about this. (What, no big speech at AEI?) But the public has a right to know if the vice president blocked an intelligence agency from meeting its obligations to inform Congress about its actions. Such an investigation could be conducted quickly and without blowing details of the program at issue. All you have to do is examine any emails or memos related to this and call in a few intelligence officials, a couple ofaides in Cheney's office, and Cheney himself, and ask them what happened. What are they going to do? Take the Fifth? That would be within their rights, but it would speak volumes about their fidelity to republican-style government. 

Did Michael Jackson kill the Iranian revolution?

I don't mean that exactly. But the story of the Iranian crisis was subsumed by the mega-media coverage of the pop singer's tragic end. Iran now appears as barely a blip on our collective RSS feed. We've gone from the whole world is watching to much of the world has moved on.

A few data points. First, in recent days there have been few questions at the White House press briefings on Iran. On Wednesday, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett asked press secretary Robert Gibbs what the president thought about the Iranian police's conclusion that the Neda killing was staged y the opposition. Gibbs met that softball with the obvious swing: "shocking." I followed up with what I considered a more substantial query on Iran, asking Gibbs about Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement of that day. Mousavi had called for continuing protests, had declared the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "illegitimate," and had called for the release of detained opposition supporters. Did the president have any reaction, I asked, and has he called for the release of people who have been detained in Iran?

Gibbs said he was unaware if the White House had prepared any comment regarding Mousavi's statement, and he fell back on the usual talking points:

Obviously, David, you've heard the President speak on a number of occasions that the President strongly believes in the right for people to gather in protest without fear or harm or violence.  Obviously there are still a lot of questions that surround the most recent election.  And I think I'll leave it at that.

I've said for weeks that Obama, by and large, has struck the right tone in his remarks about events in Iran. But this response seemed a bit thin. Was it an indication that day to day events in Iran were not looming large within an already quite busy  White House?

On the other side of aisle, let's check in with John McCain's twitter feed, which is followed by over 915,000 people. When I looked at it on Thursday morning, I saw that McCain, who had been calling for more forceful US response on Iran, has not twittered on the subject for a week. But he has twittered about his various media appearances in Arizona during the past week. In twitter-terms, he has left the barricades.

I'll spare you the obvious chest-beating about the ADD of the American public and media. And, of course, the tyrants of Tehran have suppressed media reporting within Iran. No video or pictures--the story fades.

Many analysts who know Iran better than I do have been saying for weeks that given the weak leadership and poor organization of the anti-government movement, the opposition in Iran is in for a long slog. (The Islamic revolution of 1979 took two years to achieve victory.) So don't expect results in the flash of a tweet. Still, the autocrats of Tehran must be saying, "Thank you, Michael Jackson." (Ditto for Governor Mark Sanford.) Today, Americans know far more about the moondancer's will and Neverland  than what's happening--or not--in Iran. And, alas, they care more about it, too.
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To see a music video of a song by an Iranian pop singer who's been arrested for supporting the opposition, click here.
 
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For anyone who has been enthused or engaged by the opposition movement that emerged after the Iran elections, it's been frustrating trying to figure out what's going on in Iran--with that opposition and with the government. One Tehran filmmaker sent me an email on Sunday expressing his/her own frustration when it comes to understanding the recent moves of the various players.

One of the more interesting--though hardly uplifting-- interpretations of recent events in Iran comes from Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, and author Reza Aslan. In Foreign Policy, they write:

Iran's popular uprising, which began after the June 12 election, may be heading for a premature ending. In many ways, the Ahmadinejad government has succeeded in transforming what was a mass movement into dispersed pockets of unrest. Whatever is now left of this mass movement is now leaderless, unorganized -- and under the risk of being hijacked by groups outside Iran in pursuit of their own political agendas.

The pair explain:

Although successful at first, the discipline [of the opposition movement] has clearly broken down. This should be no surprise -- the movement is by now in effect leaderless. A source close to Mousavi says that the first and second circle of people around Mousavi have all been arrested or put under house arrest. Mousavi himself has limited ability to communicate with his team and his followers. The lack of leadership is visible on the streets, where demonstrators exhibit unparalleled will and courage, but lack direction and guidance.

Indeed, the lack of organization and execution is perhaps the most convincing evidence that the anti-Ahmadinejad movement is completely homegrown and void of any attempt to emulate the velvet revolutions of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. What is driving people to the streets is their sense of frustration and anger -- not a well-devised plan and training in clever nonviolent resistance techniques.

The leadership vacuum does not bode well for the movement's prospects of success, particularly when it comes to attracting those Iranian swing-voters to its side once more. And this creates openings for external meddling -- just not the kind you think.

The two are worried that outside groups--exile outfits or neocons--will try to fill this vacuum or attempt to influence the opposition, if only by tossing around rhetoric that will make it easier for the autocrats to depict the opposition as being whipped up by Iran's external enemies. If the opposition is going to keep going, they contend, it's going to have to continue to win over so-called "swing voters" in Iran. How an unorganized opposition manages to do that they don't say. But it seems to me that a regrouping is necessary and perhaps a long-term strategy has to be developed. Whether anyone is doing that is unknown--thanks to the (so far successful) crackdown of the tyrants of Tehran.

Dana Milbank spanks President Obama and HuffPo's Nico Pitney for conspiring to provide the president a chance to answer a question from an Iranian at Tuesday's press conference. Milbank often is spot-on in his depictions of Washington's follies and foibles, but he may have misguided his outrage on this one.

Milbank accurately notes that the White House gave Pitney a strong indication that he would be called on at the press conference. That does sound as if the White House was planting a question. And here's how Milbank describes what happened:

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show."

A bad message to Iran? Oh my. But White House aides, having noticed that Pitney has been live-blogging the Iranian crisis, had asked him if he would solicit a question from Iranians for Obama. This was not exactly the same thing as arranging for a specific question--or even a sympathetic one. Obama didn't know what Pitney would ask, and Ptiney's query, as it turned out, was a tough one. Obama didn't really answer it:

PITNEY: We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance -- a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so ultimately the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear: Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

Obama dodged. He did not state under what conditions he would accept an Ahmadinejad victory, and he did not say whether engaging with Ahmadinejad at some point would be a betrayal of the Iranian opposition. I bet that Iranian was disappointed--if he was able to learn of Obama's response.

Granted, there was something artificial about all this. The White House spurred Pitney to ask a specific sort of question and essentially told him he'd be called on. But, then, there is something artificial about the entire enterprise of presidential press conferences.

Before a press conference begins, the White House decides on the dozen or so reporters the president will call on. The rest of us need not be there at all. And while the White House does not tell journalists they are on this golden list, it's fair to assume that the wire service reporters and the major television network correspondents will be chosen. So about half of the reporters on the list, more or less, have advance notice every time the president holds a news conference. And this list isn't very long, given that Obama usually uses a question as an opportunity to recite, at length, his talking points (as eloquent as they are) on the matter at hand.

At presidential press conferences, there ought to be more spontaneity, more to and fro, and, more important, more questions from a wider range of questioners. (Spin a wheel?) That's the issue, not Nico-gate.
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By the way, I'm filling in for blogger Kevin Drum for a few days. Feel free to check out my postings on Jake Tapper and Mick Jagger and climate change.

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I'm sitting in the White House press briefing room awaiting a presidential press conference, which has been moved from the Rose Garden to this room. (Why? Too much humidity for the president?) And I'm thinking of a question, just in case.....Will you fight for a public health option by mobilizing your millions of supporters? Will you oppose a cap-and-trade bill that contains a big giveaway to polluters? Are you satisfied with the intelligence you've received on Iran? Have you consulted with any outside-the-government experts on Iran? If so, who? Are you going to be more transparent than the Bush administration and release the White House visitors logs? Forget about smoking, have you been drinking?

It's been a busy day or two for me. I've been blogging and Twittering much about Iran, and a Twitterer in Iran informs me that this blog and the Mother Jones website have been blocked in Iran by the autocrats of Tehran. It's an honor.

And last night, I trekked through woods, brambles, and poison ivy to reach the site of the tragic DC metro crash, which was just a mile or so from my house. I'm obsessive about finding alternative routes to avoid traffic. Thus, I was familiar with side streets that allowed one to get close to the site. Then I had to bushwhack my way to the tracks. I followed a culvert next to the railroad fence for about a quarter of a mile and found a small opening. I crawled through and walked along the gravel, right up to the crash. I snapped several iPhone photos before a cop approached and ordered me to leave. "It's a crime scene," he shouted, and he threatened to confiscate my phone. I quickly scurried up a steep hill next to the New Hampshire Avenue bridge--took a few more photos--and emerged in a cordoned-off area. I was surrounded by police officers and rescue workers. I didn't say anything, kept my head down, and quickly walked off. Here are the pics., several of which were featured on Good Morning America this AM. (A producer found them on Twitter and asked me for permission to use them.) And for a good sum-up of questions raised by the crash, check out JIm Ridgeway's take here.

Now back to pondering queries worthy of a president, just in case.

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It's not that often a Washington commentator gets to talk politics and revolution in Iran on television with a famous movie mogul. I was on Hardball with Mike Medavoy, who helped make the Silence of the Lambs, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Network, Annie Hall, and many other movies and who recently wrote a book on how Hollywood can help promote abroad the positive aspects of American culture. We didn't get to discuss films. But I pointed out that John McCain could not now get away with joking about bombing Iran and poked Dick Cheney for being one of the demagogic politicians misinforming the American public about what will happen to Gitmore detainees once that detention camp is closed.

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Jim Pinkerton and I were together again for another Bloggingheads.tv diavlog. We mainly agreed on Iran, with Jim sort of concurring with my assessment that John McCain is "bonkers" for pushing Barack Obama to embrace the Iranian opposition. Nothing would hurt the opposition movement's credibility within Iran--where it counts most--than a big wet-kiss from Washington. We then moved on to health care, with Jim suggesting both Ds and Rs are wrong to preach austerity to the American public when it comes to health care dollars. Perhaps, but I challenged his solution: freeing the health care industry from government regs so it can produce the sort of products and services that can be exported abroad a la McDonald's. Finally, our big topic: whether the remaking of the cheesy 1984 anti-commie movie Red Dawn--high school kids in Colorado beat back Russian and Chinese invaders--is of any cultural significance. Jim: yes and hooray! Me: no and yawn.

Also, at Thursday's White House press briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs about an earlier McCain tweet, in which the senator again urged Obama to declare an explicit alliance with the Iranian opposition. Here's the exchange:

Q: Thanks, Robert. A question about Iran again. Earlier today, a few hours ago, John McCain, on his Twitter feed, said -- and it's short, as it has to be -- "Mass peaceful demonstrations in Iran today; let's support them and stand up for democracy and freedom!"

MR. GIBBS: Was it that vociferous or are you --

Q : "The President and his administration should do the same." Do you think that it is helpful, or not helpful, for members of Congress to be making declarations like this, and putting pressure on the White House to do and say more?

MR. GIBBS: Again, I'm not going to get involved into commenting on the motivations that other members may have. I know some people agree with what Senator McCain said; some people agree with what other Republicans have said that's very much like the President's position. The President strongly believes that we should and have spoken out to ensure that demonstrators have the universal right and principle to demonstrate without fear of harm. But at the same time, we have to respect their sovereignty.

Gibbs did not use the opportunity to call McCain "bonkers" or anything else. But with a crunch time coming in Iran, we can expect McCain and other Rs to turn up the rhetoric and try to intensify the pressure on Obama. That might be good politics for them, but it's not likely to help the Iranian opposition.

President Barack Obama continues to walk a fine line on Iran. At Wednesday's press briefing, Robert Gibbs noted that Obama shares the "international concern" regarding Iran's flawed--or stolen--presidential election, but that it's up to Iranians to choose their own leaders. That is, he's not going to denounce Ahmadinejad or support Mousvai--and make it easier for the autocrats of Tehran to brand Mousavi a puppet of the Great Satan. Meanwhile, this gripping, historic moment continues.

I'm fortunate to be part of a listserv for experts around the world on the Middle East and Near East. Some are in Iran. Many have contacts--including friends and family--within Iraq. These listserv participants have been providing a good flow of news and views on what's transpiring in Iran. On Wednesday night, one member in Iran provided this "Tehran Update":

DEMONSTARTIONS INSPIRING. The discipline and self-control of demonstrators over the last several days, even after fatal violence on June 15th, was inspiring to watch and to be in! When an AN supporter appeared, they were confronted not with boos or hisses, but with a silent sea of hands in the air with the v for victory sign. I was proud to be there. One of the reformist clerics just before his arrest said "I have only just now realized how far behind our supporters we actually are." Of course the pro-electoral recount side are outflanked organizationally: without an organization or means of communication or accessible leaders it's not clear how much further the demonstrations can go. No objectives can be discussed or developed, and no planning can be coordinated. One cannot even tell if communications - such as the printed flyers yesterday, apparently from Mousavi, telling people NOT to demonstrate - are genuine or not. But then consider what is being achieved despite all these disadvantages! And it has become clear that this election struggle can have very wide implications for the entire political system.

RIOTS. Last night (night of June 17th) there was pitched battle in Gandhi street between ordinary youth on the one hand coming off the peaceful demonstration around Vanak Square and Basiji's on motorcycles on the other. The latter were smashing car windows and attacking people. It was good thing I was wearing sneakers! I was able to drive home after midnight when things had calmed down. There was an ambulance near Vanak Sq. apparently loading three people with gunshot wounds. There were hundreds of riot police sitting and standing in Vanak Sq. The pattern seems to be attack the stragglers on their way home late at night when its dark.

WHAT'S AT STAKE BEYOND THE ELECTION. One thing at least is about who will count as persons deserving respect in the nation. AN's victory speech was full of ominous - and historically all too familiar - references to his opponents as trash, flotsam and jetsam (Khas o Khashak) and dirt, who have to "submit" to the undifferentiated undivided will of the "nation." Interestingly the state TV yesterday has begun a more subtle and effective
strategy of inclusion: reminding everyone that all candidates were regime-approved and so are part of the family, and drawing a line between all candidates on the one hand and the forces of disorder on the other. This reflects a slight but significant distinction between AN and the Leader as well as the up till now latent struggle between them. AN wavers continuously on whether the "nation" is equivalent to the entire population (70 million), all those eligible to vote (46 million), all those that did vote (40 million), or only those that voted for him (24 million). He clearly leans to the last definition. The Leader, for obvious reasons, is wary of permitting the boundary of "we" to be drawn minimally exclusively around AN's supporters. But he is perhaps caught between the two. In sum, a big part of what is driving people is the outrage of being so openly insulted and dismissed, whatever the election results. Even by AN's official count, his opponents are still fourteen million people.

COMMUNICATION BLACKOUT INCREASING. As of this morning, all TV signals in my neighborhood are blocked. Some e-m gets through if one is using Outlook but not via a web-based e-m. No web site page is opening, although different parts of the city experience different degrees of access. So no access here to twitter. I am told the jamming of satellite signals use especially strong beams able to "jam" all satellite signals. I don't know the technology and I am worried about and its affect on us especially small children. We live right next to a communications ministry tower so apparently get the full blast. Mobile communications switched off throughout the day - when there is a demonstration beginning, and turned back on about an hour ago about midnight here. So no texting. Last night on Iranian state TV in an interview with the Guardian Council representative viewers where asked via ticker on the bottom of the screen to send in comments by text message. Someone called and said, "no text service is possible". The message was removed.

Elsewhere I've written about Tehran's war on satellite dishes.

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Days ago, new Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu told The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that if the United States doesn't stop Iran from going nuclear, he will. (See here and here.) Right after that, General David Petraeus told the Senate armed services committee that "the Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military action to derail or delay it."

So it seems that as President Barack Obama contends with a variety of financial crises (bad economy, bad banks, bad automakers, etc.) and wars in Iraq (contracting) and Afghanistan (expanding), and North Korea (with its me-want-attention missile launch), he's also going to have to deal with pressure from Israel and its hawkish allies in the United States to move on Iran.

The first signal from the Obama administration, though, is encouraging for those who do not believe now is a convenient time for another war--especially one that could shut down the flow of oil to a global economy already in much trouble. On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden was interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and this exchange ensued:

In a front-pager on Sunday, The New York Times took on the question, is John McCain a warmonger? The paper did not put it in such an indelicate manner. But that was (and is) essentially the issue at hand. The story reminded readers of McCain's bellicose rhetoric after 9/11. In October 2001, he appeared on David Letterman's show and said that Iraq might behind the anthrax attacks. He also claimed that Mohamed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met with Iraqi intelligence--even though the evidence at the time was unclear. (The entire charge was eventually debunked by U.S. intelligence.) And on an aircraft carrier in January 2002, he yelled to sailors, "Next up, Baghdad!"

None of this trip down memory lane was surprising, given that McCain months ago was joking about bombing Iran. McCain is a guy who despite his own military service and POW experience has been too eager in recent years to play the war card. Not only was he among those who made false claims about Iraq to win popular support for a U.S. invasion of that country; he seemed eager for the war. The Obama campaign might consider reminding voters of his excessive enthusiasm for military confrontation with Iraq and Iran.

But that's not why I'm writing this posting. What stood out in this article was McCain's response to a query posed to him by the Times. Asked about his support for the war in Iraq, McCain replied via email:

Given Mr. Hussein's history of pursuing illegal weapons and his avowed hostility to the United States, "his regime posed a threat we had to take seriously." The attacks were still a reminder, Mr. McCain added, of the importance of international action "to prevent outlaw states -- like Iran today -- from developing weapons of mass destruction."

Okay, when will the war backers stop spinning? As it turned out, Saddam posed no immediate treat to the United States. He was, of course, a problem--but not a threat. And the war did not prevent his outlaw state from developing nuclear weapons because Iraq was not developing nuclear weapons at the time. Saddam's nuclear program was kaput. In fact, the international inspections program that was ended by the U.S. invasion was itself effectively preventing Saddam from developing nuclear weapons and other WMDs.

McCain would not admit that he had gotten Iraq wrong. He said that his pre-invasion remarks about Iraq's WMDs were misleading because of "Iraq's opacity under Saddam." But that's a convenient CYA excuse. The weapons inspectors had gotten it right at the time and were saying there was no evidence of major WMDs in Iraq. McCain, like others legislators (Republicans and Democrats), simply chose not to believe them.

On this crucial issue, there's no straight talk from McCain. Then again, there cannot be. For any admission of error might make it harder for him to rush into the next war.

I'm still on vacation. Posting will suffer for a few more days.

Will John McCain soon move to an all-Iran-all-the-time campaign?

Consider this: as I've noted previously, Iraq may be fizzling out as a campaign issue for McCain. One of his strongest arguments against Barack Obama is national security. And he has used Iraq as a battering ram, claiming that Obama is a defeatist who would let the terrorists win in Iraq. Though the war is quite unpopular, McCain and his strategists apparently believe that voters don't want to lose the war and that voters can be frightened into supporting the candidate who promises triumphant victory not tail-between-the-legs extrication. At least, McCain can tout his Iraq stance as evidence that he is tough enough to take on the evildoers and protect the homeland. George W. Bush sort of pulled this off in 2004. Much of the public by then had turned against the war, but Bush and Karl Rove pointed to the war as proof that Bush was willing to everything necessary to defend the United States. The argument was something like this: Bush is so committed to protecting the United States he'll even invade the wrong country. And it worked.

Can McCain's variant--championing an unpopular war to display cajones--succeed? His problem is that the Iraqis may not cooperate. The other day Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki said that there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. And the negotiations between Baghdad and the Bush administration over the agreement governing U.S. forces in Iraq has bogged down because of the Iraqi demand for a timetable and for stripping immunity from U.S. troops and contractors. A source who recently spoke to the Iraqi foreign minister tells me that the foreign minister was insistent that this agreement contain some sort of timetable.

So if the Iraqis end up endorsing a timetable or asking the U.S. to leave, McCain won't be able to use Iraq as an issue. (And, of course, if the ground reality in Iraq becomes worse, McCain's case will also be weakened.) So what's a hawk to do? Thankfully for McCain, there's Iran. He can bang that drum from now until Election Day. Hype the threat. Promise clear and decisive action--and confrontation, if need be. A warrior candidate needs a war (or near-war). Expect more Iran-slamming from the fellow who has had lots of trouble telling apart Sunni from Shia.

BTW, yesterday I linked to a Reuters article quoting military analysts who said there was no reason to go ballistic over Iran's recent missile tests. It's a point that was lost in all the tough talk that politicians dished out yesterday. So here are some excerpts from that article:

Iran showed footage of missiles on Wednesday it warns could reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East, but military analysts said the damage they could wreak was limited and not enough to deter any would-be attacker....

"This is the Iranians saying: 'We can match you if it comes to that'," said Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank in London. But, he added, the "possession of some rockets" was not going to stop Israel from going ahead if it felt it must bomb Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear arms.

Defence analyst Paul Beaver said Iran's missile programme was fairly advanced but that it still needed to get accuracy and guidance systems right for long distances. "They are some way away yet from threatening Israel or U.S. bases," he said.....

Iran may fire the missiles if it were attacked but its "real strength lies elsewhere," Pieter Wezeman, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Analysts say Iran could employ unconventional or "asymmetric" methods to strike back, for example against U.S. forces in Iraq and by disrupting crude supplies vital for the world economy with hit-and-run attacks against oil tankers.

The U.S. political discourse over Iran would be improved by the addition of such cool-headed appraisals. But that would not be in the interest of McCain and the Republicans.

The John McCain campaign would rather you think of McCain as a POW than a longtime Republican senator. In a radio ad McCain is running in South Florida, the narrator says, "As someone who has survived the harsh conditions of the Vietnamese prisons, John McCain knows that freedom in Cuba won't be achieved with concessions to dictatorships." That's a pretty dumb formulation. First, the decades-old anti-Cuba embargo that McCain (and Barack Obama) supports has done nothing to achieve freedom in Cuba. One can even argue it has helped the repressive, thuggish regime of the Castro brothers continue its dictatorial ways. (Embargo fans appear to take the position that failure is an option.) Second, McCain's stint as a POW is not relevant to this policy debate. If McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton has convinced him that you shouldn't talk with tyrants, then why does he not call for ending all dialogue and trade with China? When it comes to freedom, the capitalist communists of Beijing are just as nasty as (if not more so) the socialist communists of Havana. But expect more of this: "As someone who has survived the harsh conditions of Vietnamese prisons, John McCain knows that American corporations ought to be taxed at lower rates."

Throughout his political career, McCain has not explicitly exploited his POW status as much as other politicians might have. He didn't really have to, given that his tale was so well known. But these days being a Bush-supporting Republican senator isn't much of a political calling card. So for McCain, it will be back to the future--again and again and again.

ISRAEL AND IRAN: CAN THEY PLAY NICE? Triti Parsi has a good piece summarizing the current state of play on Iran and noting what could go right in Iranian-Israeli relations (if there is the will):

Iran and Israel are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship that neither party can escape on its own. Here's how to break up their fight.

Last week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group--held its annual policy conference in Washington, and it went as you might expect. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain roused the faithful with a call to tighten the noose on Iran and mocked those who favor a more diplomatic approach. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that negotiating with Iranian leaders would be pointless "while they continue to inch closer to a nuclear weapon under the cover of talk." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for "all possible means" to be used to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. A few days later, Israel's Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an attack on Iran is "unavoidable" as long as Tehran "continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons."

As if to underscore these arguments, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad obligingly played the role of villain, predicting ominously from Tehran that Israel will "soon disappear off the geographical scene." Against this backdrop, it's safe to say that few at AIPAC were convinced by newly minted Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's call for direct U.S. talks with Iran (though the Illinois senator did win many new friends at the conference this year). In fact, AIPAC and Israeli leaders fear that any bargain between Washington and Tehran would come at their expense and have heightened their rhetoric accordingly.

It doesn't have to be this way. Although Iran and Israel will not be signing any mutual defense pacts anytime soon, the two countries aren't destined to be implacable foes. If anything, Israel could be a prime beneficiary of a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

It might sound inconceivable that Iran, whose leaders since 1979 have used the most venomous rhetoric against the "little Satan," would ever moderate its stance toward Israel. Yet a careful review of the past three decades shows that Iran's hostile rhetoric is more a product of opportunism than fanaticism. Iran and Israel have even been willing to work together quietly at times, despite their conflicting ideologies.

The reason is simple: When forced to choose, Tehran invariably chooses its geostrategic interests over its ideological impulses. In no other area is the decisiveness of the strategic dimension of Iran's foreign policy clearer than when it comes to Israel. When these two pillars of Iranian foreign policy have clashed, as they did in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran's geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed. Tehran quietly sought Israel's aid, and the Jewish state made many efforts to place Iran and the United States back on speaking terms....

Parsi makes a good argument that war is not inevitable. Not between Iran and Israel. And, perhaps then, not between the United States and Iran. Read the rest here.

Tonight is the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner--an annual formal affair that is the cousin to the White House correspondents' dinner. And this reminds me of one of my (own) favorite columns, which came about four years ago when I attended the dinner and watched in amazement as George W. Bush made jokes about the missing WMDs in Iraq (that is, joked about the purported reason for which he had sent Americans to war and, for some, to death). But what was most amazing was that everyone around me was laughing at Bush's routine. And laughing. And laughing. Never in my two decades of working in Washington have I felt more alienated--and, perhaps, more angry. Of the thousands of people in the room--which included hundreds of working journalists--I was, I believe, the only one to immediately write a piece questioning Bush (and his audience). That episode remains one of the more telling and revealing moments of modern-day Washington. (Talk about elitism.) And I believe it should not be forgotten. So I've posted that column below.

And on the subject of misplaced humor, I recently suggested on NPR's Diane Rehm Show that in a decent world John McCain would have been disqualified for running for president when he answered a question on the campaign trail about Iran by jokingly singing, "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" (to the tune of the old hit "Barbara Ann") My point: anyone who would make light of launching a war--and killing people with bombs--should not be given the power to do so. As I made these comments, Tony Blankley, a PR man and columnist for The Washington Times leaned toward the microphone. Do you want to defend McCain's joke? I asked. Yes, he said, insisting that we had to allow for humor in politics.

Humor in politics? That's the job of Jon Stewart. Or Stephen Colbert. (Or me--to a much, much, much lesser extent when I do standup, once every year or two.) But laughing at a president or a presidential wannabe about wars they start or can start? That's truly amusing ourselves (and others) to death--to reference the late Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. I hope this time around--at the Radio and TV dinner--Bush sticks to less deadly fare when he tries to win giggles from the well-fed journalists and broadcasters in the room.
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MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
March 25, 2004

Only in Washington.

Last night I was at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. It's a formal-and-fun affair where thousands of media folks assemble at the Hilton for a fancy dinner and fab pre- and post-parties. I'm not going to denigrate such soirees. I enjoy them. While bookers and producers jiggled and jostled on the dance floor and media and political celebs dissected the news du jour (this time it was Richard Clarke's dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission), I was able to chat with former weapons hunter David Kay and learn about some troubling developments in the intelligence community (more on that down the road). And there was free sushi.

But an awful you're-all-alone moment came during George W. Bush's comments that followed the sit-down dinner. The current president is often the honored guest at this annual affair, and the audience toasts him in what is supposed to be a sign of communal and nonpartisan spirit. And the tradition is that the president has to be funny; he has to provide us with an amusing speech that pokes fun at himself and his political foes. After all, political journalists love to see politicians engage in self-deprecating humor. Bill Clinton was quite good at these performances. Bush seems to enjoy them less. Rather than do straight standup, he sometimes relies on a humorous slide show, and that was how he chose to entertain the media throng this time.

It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it. Instead, I took a long drink of the lovely white wine that had come with our dinner. It's not as if I was in the middle of a talk-show debate and had to respond. This was certainly one of those occasions in which you either get it or don't. And I wasn't getting it. Or maybe my neighbor wasn't.

At the end of the slide show, Bush displayed two pictures of himself with troops and noted these were his favorites. The final photograph was a shot of special forces soldiers--with their faces blurred to protect their identities--who were posing in Afghanistan where they had buried a piece of 9/11 debris in a spot that had once been an al Qaeda camp. Bush spoke about the prayer the commander had said during the burial ceremony and noted he had this photograph hanging in his private study.

So what's wrong with this picture? Bush was somber about the sacrifice being made by U.S. troops overseas. But he obviously considered it fine to make fun of the reason he cited for sending Americans to war and to death. What an act of audacious spin. One poll recently showed that most Americans believe he either lied about Iraq's WMDs or deliberately exaggerated the case to justify the war. And it is undeniable that in seeking public support for the war he made many false assertions that went beyond quoting intelligence that turned out to be wrong. (I've written about this in many other places. If you still don't believe Bush mugged the truth, check out this short guide.) As the crowd was digesting the delicious surf-and-turf meal, Bush was transforming serious scandal into rim-shot comedy.

Few seemed to mind. His WMD gags did not prompt a how-can-you silence from the gathering. At the after-parties, I heard no complaints. Was I being too sensitive? I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that claimed their loved ones. Bush told the nation that lives had to be sacrificed because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used (by terrorists) against the United States. That was not true. (And as Kay pointed out, the evidence so far shows these weapons were not there in the first place, not that they were hidden, destroyed or spirited away.) But rather than acknowledge he misinformed the public, Bush jokes about the absence of such weapons.

Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands? Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light." Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia--during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The problem is, those embassies--they all look alike."

Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation--he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's capital.

That new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran--the one that says Iran halted work on a nuclear weapons program since 2003--will really put a damper on Iran war fever. Just ask neocon legend Norman Podhoretz, who has been the lead advocate for bombing Tehran right away. He writes that the NIE:

has just dealt a serious blow to the argument some of us have been making that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons and that neither diplomacy nor sanctions can prevent it from succeeding.

Yep, it sure is gonna be hard for the hawks to whip up support at home and abroad for blasting Iran after the U.S. intelligence community has concluded the reason for such a blasting does not exist.

But what about the really important question: what does this mean for Hillary Clinton? My hunch: it helps. Until now, the only pressing foreign policy matter on which the leading Democratic presidential candidates disagreed was the recent legislation that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist outfit. Clinton voted for it; Barack Obama, who missed the vote, and John Edwards, who no longer gets to vote in the Senate, have slammed her for that, claiming that a vote the measure was the equivalent of giving the Bush administration a greenlight for attacking in Iran. That is a somewhat dramatic reading of the legislation. But the measure did call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a "proliferator" of weapons of mass destruction--which certainly could be a cause for military action against Iran.

At a debate on Tuesday held by NPR in Iowa, Steve Inskeep asked Clinton about that part of the measure:

Senator Clinton, as some of your opponents have noted, in September you voted on a resolution involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which, among other things, called them proliferators of mass destruction. In view of this latest intelligence estimate, which says Iran's nuclear program was stopped in 2003, do you believe that's still true?

She ducked the question. Inskeep asked again. She ducked once more. She looked (or sounded, that is) dodgy.

But while the NIE pulls the (Persian?) rug out from under anyone who voted for that bill and those who have been walking on the hawkish side, it also does something else. As Pod the Elder noted, it takes the steam out of the Iran controversy. And that helps Clinton. With a military attack on Iran less likely now, Obama's and Edwards' criticism of HRC's vote will have less sting. They can argue her vote was wrong and that it shows she's not willing to stand up to Bush and the hawks. At the debate, Senator Joe Biden made a strong argument that Clinton's vote for this measure was damn foolish. Yet after the release of this NIE, it now seems that stopping a war with Iran is not going to be on the top of the to-do list of the next Democratic nominee. So a vulnerability that Clinton had, due to a true policy difference, will likely fade. Her campaign ought to send a thank-you card to the administration for releasing a declassified version of the report.

A NEW NEOCON CONSPIRACY. The neocons tend to be great fans of conspiracies. Before the Iraq war, some embraced the nutty idea that Saddam Hussein was the hidden hand behind al Qaeda. And some have claimed that the intelligence community actively sought to bring down the Bush administration. Picking up on that theme, Podhoretz suspects that the NIE was a dirty trick mounted by the spooks against the White House. He writes:

I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about "a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program"--especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE's own euphemistic formulation, "with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways."

Want to know how crazy this is? Pop quiz: how many intelligence agencies are there in the intelligence community? Sixteen. The NIE was produced by the National Intelligence Council, which includes analysts from these agencies. Rigging a high-profile, long-in-the-making NIE would entail the cooperation of many different bureaucracies. Only someone unfamiliar with the workings of government in general (and the intelligence establishment, in particular) could believe such a conspiracy is possible. Perhaps the NIC got it wrong. It's certainly capable of that. But it's hardly capable of pulling off a disinformation operation of this magnitude. Podhoretz's paranoid imagination far surpasses the abilities of intellcrats.

ON BOB GATES' NIGHT TABLE. Defense Secretary Bob Gates has been telling friends and colleagues to read Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by my pal Mark Perry, a longtime author and military historian. Why is this interesting? Perry's book, which shows how Marshall and Ike worked together to win the war and then win the peace, notes that the pair lived by three rules:

1. Never go to war unless it is absolutely necessary.

2. Never go to war alone.

3. Never go to war for too long.

Seems that Gates has learned the lessons of Iraq. It's a positive sign that Perry's book is flying off the shelves of the Pentagon book shop.