Last spring, I was chatting with a top Barack Obama strategist. The junior senator from Illinois running for the Democratic presidential nomination had been on quite the streak: record fundraising, crowds of thousands. But he trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls and, perhaps more important, he had not signaled how he could surpass her. When would he take Clinton on? I asked the Obama-ite. I wasn't inquiring when he would start hurling mudballs at her, but when he would explicitly argue that he was better than her and start saying things (about policy, about politics, about life) that she could--or would--not. It's coming, the Obama aide said, it's coming; we hear you, and it's coming.

Summer arrived and departed, and it didn't come. A series of Democratic presidential debates transpired and one-third of the fall passed, and it didn't come. But now the time has...well, come. Last week, Obama told two New York Times reporters he would start confronting Clinton more forcefully and more directly. He made this declaration when the Iowa caucus--moved up to January 3--was a mere ten weeks in the future.

Too late? Perhaps. Obama's people have argued for months that there was sufficient time. But in that period, Clinton became a better candidate and solidified her lead in the national polls and in surveys of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire. The timing matter aside, Obama's new initiative against HRC was curious for what he chose as his opening salvo: Social Security.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign released a television ad that focused on Social Security. In it, he tells a group of Iowans, "I don't want to just put my finger out to the wind and see what the polls say. I want to bring the country together to solve a problem." This was an attack on Clinton, whom Obama has accused of "ducking the issue" of Social Security by not saying what she would do as president to preserve and protect the retirement program. Her approach, Obama charged at one campaign event, is to "hedge, dodge and spin, but at all costs, don't answer." Indeed, Clinton has not detailed what she would do about Social Security, vowing that she would convene a bipartisan commission before making any decisions. Though Obama does not refer to Clinton by name in his ad, he essentially calls her out for not having the guts to deal forthrightly with what he depicts as a looming Social Security crisis.

There are two problems here--one political, the other policy. First, the political: will Democratic voters believe there is such a difference on Social Security between Obama and Clinton that they will choose him over her? They certainly do not see Hillary Clinton as a rabid privatizer who ought to be feared. And what Obama proposes for Social Security--protect benefits, prevent privatization, remove the cap on Social Security taxes for the wealthy--is a mainstream Democratic position. It's John Edwards' position. With his ad, Obama was attacking Clinton not for having a lousy position but for not having proposed a Social Security plan. While this could win him a few Clinton-leaners, it's not a definitional blow.

As for policy, by assailing Clinton in this fashion, Obama was, in a way, aiding Republicans and conservatives who have hyped the problems with Social Security to pave the way for privatization. I'll let Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal outfit that led the successful opposition to George W. Bush's partial privatization of Social Security, explain. He tells me:

Obama and his advisers have chosen to attack Hillary on Social Security from the right and the left at same time. He makes a big issue of the looming retirement of the baby boom in the same way right wingers do. And then he makes a big deal about how he won't solve the problem in a conservative way. It might work in a general election, but it doesn't impress Democratic voters in primaries. He might consider attacking on issues that the primary voters care about -- like the war or energy policy.

Hickey is right. Democratic voters do not seem to be clamoring for Social Security change (even if some changes are needed to deal with projected shortfalls in the coming decades).

During Tuesday night's face-off of the Democratic presidential candidates, Obama's assault on Clinton's Social Security stance (or lack thereof) was a matter of debate. At the start of the night, Obama challenged HRC's credibility, accusing her of flip-flopping on Nafta, the use of torture, and the Iraq war. He did not mention Social Security. But when he was later asked about his recent Social Security poke at Clinton, he said that Hillary Clinton has not been truthful or clear about her Social Security position. (He was referring to published reports saying she had privately voiced support for raising the cap on Social Security taxes paid by the wealthy.) Clinton, ready with a reply, countered that there are no real policy distinctions between her and her chief Democratic rivals on this front. This was no knockout punch for Obama, for he was slamming her for basically agreeing with him (and with Edwards) while declining to say so in public.

At the Philadelphia debate, John Edwards landed better punches on Clinton, saying that she was a candidate of "double-talk" and incapable of taking on and fixing the broken and corrupt system of Washington. Several times when Obama jabbed at her, he seemed tentative and even stammered.

Back to Social Security: many Democrats believe Bush tried to create a phony Social Security crisis to serve ideological and corporate interests. They are probably not yearning for a candidate who will talk tough about Social Security. Obama needs to move on. And, once again, he needs to do better in the next debate.

BTW, Jonathan Stein, my colleague at Mother Jones recently took a look at what Obama has to do to distinguish himself from Clinton. After last night's debate, that need remains.

FYI. This week, I officially began as head of Mother Jones's new seven-person Washington bureau. As my first official act, I ordered a teamwork-building exercise, instructing the staff to form pairs and assemble bookshelves, with no one allowed to use his or her dominant hand. The team that completed the task first won a poster proclaiming there's no "I" in "Team." Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I've been dealing with logistics (new computer, new phone, moving 20 years of files) but will soon be producing articles as I did at The Nation. In the meantime, I will be contributing postings to our group blog, MoJo Blog. Please check it out.

Send tips, leads, praise, and (if you must) complaints to dcorn@cq.com.

Here's some good news for Dick Cheney. Pollster John Zogby reports:

A majority of likely voters--52%--would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows....

Democrats (63%) are most likely to believe a U.S. military strike against Iran could take place in the relatively near future, but independents (51%) and Republicans (44%) are less likely to agree. Republicans, however, are much more likely to be supportive of a strike (71%), than Democrats (41%) or independents (44%). Younger likely voters are more likely than those who are older to say a strike is likely to happen before the election and women (58%) are more likely than men (48%) to say the same--but there is little difference in support for a U.S. strike against Iran among these groups.

It's interesting that more Dems than Republicans suspect George W. Bush and Cheney are about to bomb Iran. Obviously, they're thinking wag-the-dog.

My hunch is that Cheney and the Cheney-bots in the administration want to take care of Iran--so to speak--before January 20, 2009. And I doubt that polling means much to the veep and his henchmen and henchwomen. Cheney probably cares little about public opinion and likely believes he will be judged favorably by historians down the road. (Otherwise, how can he get up in the mornings?) But if Bush et. al. are contemplating a strike against Iran, polls such as these certainly don't make the decision any tougher.

There was also good news in the poll for Hillary Clinton:

When asked which presidential candidate would be best equipped to deal with Iran--regardless of whether or not they expected the U.S. to attack Iran --21% would most like to see New York U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the country, while 15% would prefer former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and 14% would want Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain in charge. Another 10% said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would be best equipped to deal with Iran, while Republican Fred Thompson (5%), Democrat John Edwards (4%) and Republican Mitt Romney (3%) were less likely to be viewed as the best leaders to help the U.S. deal with Iran....

Clinton leads strongly among Democrats on the issue, with 35% saying she is best equipped to deal with Iran, while 17% would prefer Obama and 7% view John Edwards as the best choice. Giuliani is the top choice of Republicans (28%), followed by McCain (21%) and Fred Thompson (9%). One in five independents chose Clinton (21%) over McCain (16%) and Giuliani (11%).

Clinton better able to handle Iran than Giuliani? Now, that's reassuring for the Clinton campaign and discouraging for the Obama campaign. If this poll is a reliable indicator, it seems that Clinton is projecting strength as a candidate. That's indeed what the first serious female presidential candidate must do. Judging from this poll, much of the public might be happy to see Cheney (and Bush) hit Iran--and then want to see Clinton come in to clean up the mess. Talk about a new take on the cliche that the Republicans are the Daddy Party and the Democrats are the Mommy Party.

John Edwards is giving what his campaign bills as a "major thematic speech" at noon today in New Hampshire. Judging from the excerpts the campaign has passed out in advance, the address will be nothing he hasn't said before. Edwards will bash the Washington political system for being ridden with institutional corruption and perverted by campaign donations from corporate interests. Edwards certainly has a (fundamental) point. But will such a critique help him beat Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama, who makes a similar case)? Here are some excerpts of the excerpts:

It's time to tell the truth. And, the truth is the system in Washington is corrupt. It is rigged by the powerful special interests to benefit they very few at the expense of the many. And, as a result, the American people have lost faith in our broken system in Washington, and believe it no longer works for ordinary Americans. They're right.

Being called president while powerful interests really run things is not the same as being free to lead this nation as president of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people....

It is not an accident that the government of the United States cannot function on behalf of its people--because it is no longer our people's government and we the people know it.

This corruption did not begin yesterday -- and it did not even begin with George Bush--it has been building for decades--until it now threatens literally the life of our democracy....

The long slow slide of our democracy into the corporate abyss continues unabated regardless of party, regardless of the best interests of America. We have a duty -- a duty to end this.

I believe you cannot be for change and take money from the lobbyists who prevent change. You cannot take on the entrenched interests in Washington if you choose to defend the broken system. It will not work. And I believe that, if Americans have a choice, any candidate who takes their money--Democrat or Republican--will lose this election.

Edwards is obviously talking about Clinton, whose campaign is fueled by lobbyist money and is run by political strategists who also work for corporate clients. (See Mark Penn.) But the question is whether Edwards' attack on the system can serve (in political terms) as an effective attack on Hillary Clinton. There are indeed progressive Democratic voters who see HRC as an establishment-friendly Democrat and harbor suspicions of her. But that meme hasn't yet--as far as I can discern--come to infect the Democratic body politic. It is, I'm afraid to say, a boutique critique of Clinton.

So my hunch is that Edwards will have to be more explicit in tying Clinton to the sleaze of Washington to have any chance with this line of attack. Ditto for Obama. (And I'll get to his new anti-Hillary initiative soon.) So when the full text of Edwards speech is publicly available, here's what to look for: a direct slam on Clinton. If it's not there, Edwards might be spinning his wheels.

MORE ON THOMSPON'S DISTORTED VIEW OF 20-SOMETHINGS IN IRAQ. As I noted several weeks ago, Thompson has a stump speech line about Iraq that is...well, pretty dumb. He likes to say

Every day, our troops in Iraq demonstrate a heroic resolve to win. I wish Democrats in Washington would dedicate as much time and energy to winning as they do on how to surrender the fight. The average 20 year-old serving in Iraq apparently knows more about national security than many of the 20 year-political veterans serving in Congress.

So what does Thompson think when he reads pieces like the The Washington Post front-pager on Saturday that notes that the experience of soldiers in Iraq

has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from [his] battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- [Sgt. Victor] Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

The article focused on Alarcon's battalion's efforts in Sadiyah, a neighborhood in Baghdad and noted he mission there has been a flop:

American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces could stop it happening.

The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.

"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.

That sure doesn't sound like the progress George W. Bush and David Petraeus hail. According to the Post, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. George Glaze, says that

his soldiers are playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government steps in.

"They're either going to turn the lights on or we're all going to realize they've moved the switch," he said.

"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."

And the piece ends:

The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."

So it seems to me that Thompson ought to get his backside over to Iraq and spend two weeks with the 20-something soldiers of 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, before he says anything else about this war.

Is Fred Thompson a serious fellow? A few months ago, as I've previously noted, he joined the ranks of global warming deniers. On Wednesday, while campaigning, he described the conflict in Iraq in rather simplistic terms. Discussing why it was necessary for the United States to remain in Iraq, he referred to the Iraqi insurgency as "a bunch of kids with improvised explosive devices." And he noted that if the United States couldn't defeat such an enemy, it would look weak.

Is that what Iraq is about? The mighty American military versus kids with IEDs? Such a view leaves out all the sectarian and geopolitical rivalries and complexities driving the conflict. Thompson fans like to say that he has a bit of Reagan in him when it comes to details--meaning, he's a big picture guy who can articulate larger themes without getting bogged down in policy wonkery. But at least Ronald Reagan read Reader's Digest. Thompson just seems to pop off. For instance, he talks about reforming Social Security without knowing the specifics of the last policy debate on Social Security.

Given the demands that will be placed on the next president (thanks to the actions of this president), a candidate who can tell you what he thinks about policy matters (in folksy fashion, of course) without being able to talk about the details might not be the appropriate fella for the job.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY? Last night, Elvis Costello played at the birthday-bash-fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, and one number he chose to feature was "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding?" This for a woman who voted to give George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq on his own say-so, and who then stuck by the war...until she saw that her potential competitors in the Democratic presidential contest could run as antiwar candidates against her. She then slowly changed her position, from resisting timetables for disengagement to vowing to the end the war ASAP. In the strategic play of the campaign, she managed to make sure there was little daylight between her and Barack Obama or John Edwards on the number-one issue of the election. What's so funny about that? Not much.


WATCHING THE WATCHDOG. In her take on BloggingHeads.tv hitting it big with The New York Times, Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar writes of the PinkerCorn diavlog featured by the Times,

Fun fact: Today's vid is billed as "A Discussion of Baseball, Politics and God" which Corn launches by inveighing against sportswriters who invoke God to explain the outcome of athletic events--which is ironic, because I, too, have mocked a sportswriter in print for so wondering "how else to explain" the White Sox victory two years ago. Where is the irony, you ask? In the sportswriter: It was Tyler Kepner...of the New York Times! What a coincidence! God must totally have made it happen.

A correction, if I may. I never inveighed against sportswriters for citing divine intervention. I inveighed against the general manager of the Colorado Rockies for telling USA Today--in all seriousness--that God had a hand in the Rockies' success on the playing field. I thought I was clear on that point.

Meanwhile, in our continuing God Is Great feature, let us note that last night the Red Sox beat the God-is-on-our-side Rockies, 2 to 1, and took a 2 to 0 lead in the World Series. I know, I know--this is all a setup for the coming Rockies' resurrection. God likes a good show.

I've asked a few times in recent weeks, Is Fred Thompson chicken? He seems to have a penchant for softball interviews with conservative talk-show hosts. Well, this just in from his campaign:

Fred Thompson will discuss immigration on The Laura Ingraham Show this morning, Thursday, October 25th.

Bill Bennett, Sean Hannity (with no Alan Colmes), Laura Ingraham--Thompson is obviously not afraid to tangle with the hard-hitting media.

I forgot to mention that in the latest PinkerCorn diavlog mentioned below, Pinkerton suggested--in all seriousness--posting a police officer in front of every mosque in the United States. To do what? To keep an eye on them, Pinkerton replied. A police state for Christendom? Well, kind of.

You can see it for yourself here, at 12:40 or so.

The Pinkerton & Corn Show on Bloggingheads.tv is back--and it's gone big time. BHTV has cut a deal with The New York Times to feature segments of BHTV conversations regularly, and first at the plate is the PinkerCorn pairing. Watch it here. The Times' editors chose a slice of our most recent taping during which we considered this critical question: is God backing the Colorado Rockies in the World Series? Several of the Rockies wear their Christianity on their baseball gloves and have suggested that their impressive success on the field is payback for their faith. We teed off on a remark that the team's general manager, Dan O'Dowd, made to USA Today: 

In the good ol' days--that is, before the age of the Internet, daily blogging and 24-second-long news cycles--you could chew on a news event for a few days and then comment upon it. Such punditing no longer seems to be in fashion. Still, I've been pondering since last Thursday a remark George W. Bush made at a press conference that morning:

So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.

The remark got some attention--mostly for Bush's reference to World War III. Appearing on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show the following day, Tony Blankley, the conservative columnist who until recently ran the editorial page of The Washington Times, noted that it was inadvisable for a president ever to refer to a possible Third World War.

But what struck me was how Bush appeared to lower the bar for an attack on Iran. He asserted that Iran had to be prevented from obtaining the knowledge needed to build nuclear weapons--not the capacity to produce such weapons. Yet that knowledge is already freely available and presumably already in the hands of scientists and engineers in Iran--as well as in most countries of the world. Remember that in 1979, The Progressive magazine published the design for a hydrogen bomb. So if Bush wants to make knowledge the standard for blasting Iran, Iran is toast.

Of course, Bush probably did not mean what he said, and he has no intention of attacking Iran if he can prove that a yellowing copy of The Progressive is in a government filing cabinet somewhere. But, in a way, this makes his statement worse. It shows how sloppy Bush can be. And if he wants to convince the world he is a serious and somber-minded leader--particularly when it comes to matters of war--this is not the way to do so.

Careless rhetoric can be read as an indicator of careless thinking or careless policy. Bush has already persuaded much of the globe that he is not to be trusted, that he prefers war to diplomacy, that he does not understand (or care about) the complexities of the world. Saying that he is willing to attack Iran if it has the "knowledge" to build nuclear weapons (and he said it twice at the press conference) was an act of profound neglect. It showed the U.S. commander in chief is willing to rattle a saber without paying mindful attention to the facts. Bush is lucky the U.S. media quickly moved on. Imagine if a remark such as this one was truly allowed to sink in.

Here's my last "Capital Games" column for www.thenation.com....

Four and a half years ago, after reading the Robert Novak column that outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative specializing in counter-proliferation work, I wrote an article in this space noting that this particular leak from Bush administration officials might have been a violation of a federal law prohibiting government officials from disclosing information about clandestine intelligence officers and (perhaps worse) might have harmed national security by exposing anti-WMD operations. That piece was the first to identify the leak as a possible White House crime and the first to characterize the leak as evidence that within the Bush administration political expedience trumped national security.

The column drew about 100,000 visitors to this website in a day or so. And--fairly or not--it's been cited by some as the event that triggered the Plame hullabaloo. I doubt that the column prompted the investigation eventually conducted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, for I assume that had my column not appeared the CIA still would have asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak as a possible crime. But now that Fitzgerald's investigation is long done, the Scooter Libby spin-off is over (thanks to George W. Bush's total commutation of Libby's sentence), and Valerie Wilson has finally published her account, it seems a good time to say, I was right. And to add, where's the apology?

From the start, neocons and conservative backers of the war dismissed the Plame leak and subsequent scandal as a big nothing. Some even claimed that somehow former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and I had cooked up the episode to ensnare the White House. (Oh, to be so devilishly clever--and to be so competent.) But these attempts to belittle the affair (and to belittle Valerie Wilson) were based on nothing but baseless spin. As was--no coincidence--the Iraq war. In fact, the Wilson imbroglio was something of a proxy war for the debate over the war itself. In the summer of 2003, when the Plame affair broke, those in and out of government who had misled the nation into the war saw the need to spin their way out of the Wilson controversy in order to protect the false sales pitch they had used to win public support for the invasion of Iraq.

First they attacked Joe Wilson when he disclosed that he had gone to Niger in February 2002 for the CIA and had reported back that the allegation Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there was highly dubious. Then when Valerie Wilson's CIA identity was exposed during the get-Wilson campaign, they pooh-poohed the leak. They subsequently spent years doing so. Here's a brief list of Plame attacks I've published before:

* On September 29, 2003, former Republican Party spokesman Clifford May wrote that the July 14, 2003 Robert Novak column that disclosed Valerie Wilson's CIA connection "wasn't news to me. I had been told that--but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

* On September 30, 2003, National Review writer Jonah Goldberg huffed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."

* On October 1, 2003, Novak wrote, "How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA....[A]n unofficial source at the agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations."

* On July 17, 2005, Republican Representative Roy Blunt, then the House majority leader, said on Face the Nation, "This was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA, and she went to that office every day."

* On February 18, 2007, as the Libby trial was under way, Republican lawyer/operative Victoria Toensing asserted in The Washington Post, "Plame was not covert."

* In his recently published memoirs, Novak wrote of Valerie Wilson, "She was not involved in clandestine activities. Instead, each day she went to CIA headquarters in Langley where she worked on arms proliferation."

A year ago, in our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Michael Isikoff and I disclosed for the first time that Valerie Wilson was operations chief at the Joint Task Force on Iraq of the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA's clandestine operations directorate. She was no paper-pusher or analyst, as Novak and others had said. She was in charge of covert operations on a critical front. (Isikoff and I detailed some of her work in the book.) As part of her job, she traveled overseas under cover. CBS News recently reported that it had confirmed she had also worked on operations designed to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons. Ironic? Ask Dick Cheney.

And Valerie Wilson was not known about Washington as a spy. Though Cliff May has made this argument, in the years since the Novak column appeared, no one in Washington has come forward to say, "Oh yes, I knew about her before Novak outed her." In fact, Valerie Wilson was a mid-level, career CIA officer--there must be hundreds, if not thousands--and such people are (to be frank) not usually on the radar screen of Washington insiders. They are not known regulars on the D.C. cocktail circuit, such as it is. Ask Sally Quinn.

For her part, Valerie Wilson, who left the CIA at the end of 2005, has only recently been able to challenge the purposefully misleading descriptions of her CIA tenure. Appearing before the House government oversight and reform committee in March, she testified the she was a "covert officer" who had helped to "manage and run operations." She said that prior to the Iraq invasion she had "raced to discover intelligence" on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions," she said under oath, "to find vital intelligence." She noted that she could "count on one hand" the number of people outside the CIA who knew of her spy work.

On Sunday, as she launched her new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, she appeared on 60 Minutes and repeated her case. Though the CIA has absurdly prevented her from acknowledging that she worked for the agency prior to 2002--she started there in 1985--Wilson told Katie Couric, "Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys basically did not get nuclear weapons." After her name appeared in the Novak column, she said, "I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, 'Did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Well, who did she see?'...It puts in danger, if not shuts down, the operations that I had worked on."

What damage was actually done by the leak remains a secret. On 60 Minutes, Valerie Wilson said a damage assessment was conducted by the CIA but that she never saw it. She added, "I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask them how they're doing, although I would have liked to have." That damage report has not been leaked. Nor has it been a subject of congressional interest--as far as one can publicly tell. in 2003, the Democrats in Congress who cared about the Plame leak were obsessed with calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor. That fixation proved to be a mistake. A special prosecutor could only focus on criminal matters and could only disclose information necessary for a prosecution--rules that Patrick Fitzgerald would stick by. The Democrats never pushed for a congressional investigation that could have examined (and perhaps made public, even if in a limited fashion) key issues in the case, such as the consequences of the leak. Valerie Wilson said to Couric that the damage was "serious." The public ought to know if this is so. (When I once asked Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, if he had any intention of probing the Plame leak, he said he no interest in doing so.)

In trying to spin their way out of the CIA leak mess, the neocon gang made much of the fact (again, first revealed by Isikoff and me) that Richard Armitage, who was the No. 2 at the State Department and a neocon-hating Iraq war skeptic, was the administration official who initially told Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. But the Plamegate deniers often ignore the inconvenient truth that White House aide Karl Rove--during the White House campaign to undermine Joe Wilson--confirmed this classified information for Novak and also passed the same leak to Matt Cooper, then of Time. (It was only because Cooper's editors at the newsmagazine did not care about Wilson's wife that Novak published the leak first.) Libby and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also shared information about Wilson's wife and her CIA connection with reporters. This was all part of the White House effort to tarnish Wilson by making it seem as if his trip to Niger had been nothing but a nepotistic junket. And as testimony and documents presented at the Libby trial showed, Vice President Cheney had been driving the pushback effort and had early on learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA employment and then conveyed that information to Libby.

Yes, this was a case of putting politics (getting Joe Wilson) ahead of national security concerns (such as protecting the identity and operations of a CIA officer working the WMD beat).

It is true that at the end of the day, no one was charged with a crime for leaking information on Valerie Wilson. Patrick Fitzgerald decided that he could not prove in court--as he would have to under the law--that the leakers knew that Valerie Wilson was a covert officer. But Fitzgerald did pursue Libby and Rove for possibly lying to FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the leak. He nabbed Libby but, after much consideration, opted not to indict Rove.

Still, Rove was caught in a lie. Toward the start of the Plame affair, the White House declared that Rove was not involved in the leak, and Bush indicated that anyone who had leaked classified information would be dismissed. But the White House statement regarding Rove was false (probably because Rove had misled White House press secretary Scott McClellan). Bush's promise was false, too, for Rove remained Bush's master strategist even after Isikoff published an email showing that Rove had leaked classified information about Valerie Wilson to Cooper.

The bottom line: this episode demonstrated that the Bush White House was not honest (the vice president's chief of staff was even convicted of lying to law enforcement officials), that top Bush officials had risked national security for partisan gain, and that White House champions outside the government would eagerly hurl false accusations to defend the administration.

So is anyone apologizing? For ruining Valerie Wilson's career? For perhaps endangering operations and agents? For lying about the leak? For misleading the public about Rove's role? For placing spin above the truth? Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons. But no one else involved has. And no one--not Bush, not Cheney, not their aides, not their neocon confederates--has admitted any wrongdoing in this saga.

It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to.

During the second day of his confirmation hearings, Michael Mukasey, George W. Bush's pick to be attorney general, defended some of Bush administration's more controversial moves, such as using so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects (a.k.a. torture) and eavesdropping without a warrant. Regarding the controversial warrantless eavesdropping program, Mukasey said on Thursday that Bush might have acted within his constitutional powers when he authorized warrantless surveillance even though federal law required a warrant. In making this argument, Mukasey testified,

The president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law. The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution.

Can you understand this? It's hard to follow, but it seems that Mukasey is back to the ol' Nixon standard that Gonzales was pushing for Bush: if the president does it, it's legal.

For another sharp look at some of what Mukasey said, check out my friend Marty Lederman's observations. He whacks Mukasey for being unable--or is that unwilling?--to say that waterboarding is torture. As Lederman notes,

But really,did we have reason to expect any better -- to think that Judge Mukasey would opine that his new boss has been violating the law?

Perhaps the bottom line is that anyone willing to be Bush's A.G. is suspect.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY? On Wednesday night, I was a candidate in the Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest, held at the Improv comedy club. I didn't win, but today's Reliable Source column in The Washington Posthas a write-up on the show--which was a benefit for music education programs--and I'm featured in it:

What's there to laugh about in Washington? Seems everyone was trying to figure it out Wednesday night.

At the Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest, the first to raise the obvious question was contestant David Corn. "Washington must be in hard times if I'm a celebrity," the Mother Jones editor riffed during his stand-up routine. "What, was Harriet Miers busy?" Time.com pundit Ana Marie Cox wondered why Rick Santorum wasn't competing in the charity fundraiser. "Then I realized by 'funniest' they didn't mean unintentionally funny. And by 'celebrity,' they didn't mean anything at all." Cox took third place, while Sen. Arlen Specter won second for deftly deadpanning every terrible joke you've ever heard. ( Please, no, not the paraplegic-rings-the-doorbell one!) As it turned out, the Funniest Celebrity in Washington...was neither: Joseph Randazzo, assistant editor of the Onion. Who lives in N.Y.C. Funny, though. (Full disclosure: We helped judge.)

One of my gags from the night:

In recent days, Laura Bush has been a forceful advocate for human rights in Burma. In fact, she has vowed that Burma will soon be a functioning democracy.

In related news, millions of Iraqis...have moved to Burma.

Ba-da-boom. You had to be there.

Oh, family values....

Today Rudy Giuliani's campaign sent out a press release proudly declaring that Jeb Bush Jr.--son of the former Florida governor, nephew of the current president of the United States--has become chairman of Florida Young Professionals for Rudy. Here's how the announcement describes the younger Jeb Bush:

Bush grew up in South Florida and currently resides in Miami, where he works in the commercial real estate industry with Fairchild Partners. Bush is a 2005 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He is involved in a variety of civic organizations including St. Jude's Hospital and After School All Stars. Bush worked on his father's 2002 gubernatorial reelection campaign.

Here's what I wrote about Jebby Bush two years ago in a piece on the Bush dynasty:

John Ellis Bush, aka Jebby, age 21. This past weekend, he was arrested by Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas. He was stopped when the agents suspected he was drunk. He then, it seems, did not cooperate with these public servants, for he was arrested on two charges: public intoxication and resisting arrest. In the scuffle, Jebby received a chin injury and was treated at a hospital. He was released on a $2,500 bond. (Question: given George W. Bush's DWI charge and Barbara's and Jenna's underage imbibing issues, is getting into legal trouble over alcohol considered a family rite of passage?)

This was not Jebby's first encounter with the police. Five years ago--a month before the 2000 election--he was caught by security guards while in the act with a 17-year-old female in a Jeep Cherokee parked in a Tallahassee mall. Both were naked from the waist down, except Jebby was wearing his socks. The security guards called in the cops. A police officer arrived on the scene and investigated a possible crime of "sexual misconduct." In the subsequent police report, the officer wrote, "I became aware of the political ties" of the suspect. He then "contacted the watch commander...to inform him of the incident." After one of the security guards talked to Jebby's father--who happened to be the governor of the state--this guard told the on-the-scene cop that he believed that his own supervisor would "pull" the preliminary report. The cop replied that he would still have to complete an incident report. And a report was written. Nothing happened after that. The incident did not become public until two days before the presidential election, when this police report was leaked to the local media and a London newspaper. (Only the London paper went with the story.) According to Artie Brown, one of the two security guards who nabbed Jebby that night, the young Bush spoke to his father after being caught and then remarked, "My dad will fix it."

It's reassuring that a young man with such respect for the law is joining the campaign of Giuliani, who as NYC mayor adopted a zero tolerance approach toward such law-and-order matters as public drinking and disorderly conduct. You can see a copy of that police report here. And for a photograph of Jeb Bush Jr. showing his concern for the future of America, click here.

I used to have a poster that was put out decades ago by the British Labour Party that proclaimed, "Workers, Vote Your Interests." That's basic politics. And I'm surprised that wealthy Americans--at least of the GOP stripe--are not following that golden rule. A Washington Post front-page article today notes that many big-money Republican funders have so far sat out the 2008 race, in that they have not opened their wallets to any of the Republican presidential wannabes. Don't they know that if Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat wins the White House, their taxes are likely to go up (at least to those terribly repressive rates of the Reagan era)? Aren't they moved by the dire warnings of all the leading Republican contenders who decry the big-spending and tax-raising ways of the Democrats? Don't they realize--as Rudy, Mitt, Fred, John and the others predict--that the economy will crash and burn if a Democrat manages to make it to the White House?

Apparently not. Now, it's certainly possible that once the race is clear--when the Dems have picked their man or woman and the Republicans have picked their fiscal fearmonger--Republican fat cats will come late to the party and shower the GOP nominee with dino-dollars. But it's interesting that the scare tactics being used by the Republican contenders have not yet motivated the financial heart of the party. While the Democratic presidential aspirants have drawn $223 million in contributions, the poor GOPers have taken in but a measly $150 million. The gap of $73 million is, of course, not insignificant. But given historical trends, one could expect the Republicans in a race with no incumbent on either side to draw 50 to 100 percent more than the Democrats, not one-third less.

From the Post piece:

"The Republican brand is not selling very well," said Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, Bush Cabinet member and 2004 Ranger. "There are a lot of frustrated people. They are not seeing anybody who has sent them over the top."

Alvin R. "Pete" Carpenter, a former chief executive of CSX Transportation and a Bush Pioneer in 2000, said it was a combination of the Iraq war and the free spending of Republicans when they controlled Congress that slowly drained his enthusiasm for the party. Carpenter, 65, said he has been a lifelong Republican and was a "Goldwater kid." But this year he sent a contribution to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"I have opted out for all the well-documented reasons that disaffected Republicans use," Carpenter said. "I'm not sure which primary I'll vote in. At the moment I will say I'm keeping my powder dry. It's the first time I'm really a bit confused about what I should be doing, or where the country should be headed."

Poor guy. It's so confusing.

For years--decades, actually--the Republicans have used the tax club to whack Democrats. But it's pretty clear these days that--despite what McRomsoniani says--the Democrats are not looking to add to the tax burdens of most Americans and that the rich in America (who are doing better than ever) do not need relief and can perhaps even afford to pay more of the nation's bill. (After all, aren't we at war and facing other fundamental challenges?) Still, the GOP contestants--in the debates and on the stump--keep deploying the same-old/same-old tax issue in their tired-sounding attempts to bash the Dems. (At one recent debate, Giuliani accused Hillary Clinton of purposefully wanting to limit the nation's economic growth.) But if the traditional GOP funders aren't buying this junk, who will?

Man of War
Man of Peace

That picture is from today's ceremony in the Capitol where George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal....By the way, the Dalai Lama had this to say about the Iraq war a week before Bush launched it:

The Iraq issue is becoming very critical now....Unfortunately, although we are in the 21st century, we still have not been able to get rid of the habit of our older generations. I am talking about the belief or confidence that we can solve our problems with arms. It is because of this notion that the world continues to be dogged by all kinds of problems.

But what can we do? What can we do when big powers have already made up their minds? All we can do is to pray for a gradual end to the tradition of wars. Of course, the militaristic tradition may not end easily. But, let us think of this. If there were bloodshed, people in positions of power, or those who are responsible, will find safe places; they will escape the consequent hardship. They will find safety for themselves, one way or the other. But what about the poor people, the defenseless people, the children, the old and infirm. They are the ones who will have to bear the brunt of devastation....Therefore, the real losers will be the poor and defenseless, ones who are completely innocent, and those who lead a hand-to-mouth existence.

Today, as the Dalai Lama called for peace, urged action to stop global warming, and graciously thanked Bush and members of Congress for supporting Tibet, he said nothing about powerful leaders who unleash war upon others and escape its direct consequences. I wonder whom he had in mind.

If you missed yesterday's Washington Post, you missed a fine example of a super-soft-ball interview. The op-ed page published excerpts of a Q&A Lally Weymouth conducted with Clarence Thomas. There was not one tough question posed to the Supreme Court justice now engaged in a massive PR blitz to sell his new book. In that book, Thomas bashes Anita Hill and calls her a liar. He does not address the evidence and testimony (from others) that supported her claims about his improper conduct. Two weeks ago, Ruth Marcus, a Post editorial writer, penned an op-ed laying out much of this evidence.

But in her published interview with Thomas, Weymouth does not ask him about this evidence and testimony. She just lets him play the victim one more time:

Along the road from Pin Point, Ga., to the Supreme Court, why did you not give up during difficult times?

I wanted to give up a hundred times. The thing that was so hurtful to me was after the end of that long journey to be beaten like that.

You mean at the hearings?

Yes, throughout the hearings, the summer, everything....I asked my wife, "Why? I just disagree with them. I don't even know if I disagree with them on specific issues." [But] I cannot carry around bitterness and at the same time carry around a positive message for young kids and for people who still need help. My goal is I will never treat anybody the way I was treated in this city. I also will never do my job as poorly as people did their jobs when I was at their mercy.

The op-ed page of the Post is indeed supposed to give voice to a diversity of views. Still, this interview was striking in its obsequiousness. But Weymouth, a onetime leftist who turned rightward years ago, is a regular contributor to the Post op-ed page. For some reason, she's allowed to use the Post as a platform. By the way, she was born Elizabeth Morris Graham and is the only daughter of Philip Graham and Katharine Graham, the late (and great) publisher of The Washington Post. Her brother is Donald Graham, the CEO of the Post.

BABY POLITICS. Tired of the usual cheap-shot political discourse that's more concerned with scoring points than debating policy? Yeah, I know you are. So take a look at my pal Reid Cramer's piece on the so-called baby bonds. A few weeks back, Hillary Clinton referred positively to the idea of awarding a chunk of money to each newborn American--funds that could later be used for education, home-buying or retirement. She mentioned a figure of $5000, though a similar proposal in Congress only called for $500. She probably slipped up on the number, since she had previously called for a $500 endowment. But her campaign, true to form, would not admit she had made a mistake.

Of course, Clinton was immediately pummeled by her foes on the right for championing a big-spending social program. Rudy Giuliani, in particular, pounced on her. Clinton turned tail and threw the baby bonds into the bathwater. So much for informed discussion about social policy. Defending baby bonds, Cramer, research director at the New America Foundation, writes,

Access to even a modest pool of assets can provide an essential element of economic security, helping people weather income shocks and take advantage of strategic opportunities.

Much of this simply can't be achieved through social insurance that is geared toward specific risks like unemployment or very low pay, or specific services such as health care. Assets provide the flexibility families need to navigate a volatile economy.

And there are a number of benefits to starting this savings process at birth. Not only do you get to maximize the advantage of compound interest, but these accounts can become a teaching tool to deliver the fundamentals of financial education - a primary skill for navigating our 21st-century economy.

This is actually the approach that they are using in the United Kingdom, which is already implementing a similar accounts-at-birth proposal with support from both the Labor and Tory parties.

If we engage in a dialogue that goes beyond headlines, the merits of baby bonds could garner support from progressives and social conservatives alike. That's because, at its core, this policy is about ownership and opportunity, offering a little something for everyone.

Gee, social policy that combines the values of progressives and social conservatives? We don't want any of that. Instead, we get mud balls and calculating and self-serving politicians. The babies of America ought to be really angry.

I'm on the run today. But (just about) everything you need to know about the Blackwater problem in Iraq can be found in these two first-person accounts.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Robert Bateman a U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq, recounts an encounter with a Blackwater convoy, during which Blackwater guards fired their guns and drove Iraqi cars onto the sidewalk. He recalls,

It enraged me...and Blackwater is, at least nominally, on our side.

But imagining that incident from an Iraqi perspective made it clear to me that though Blackwater USA draws its paycheck from Uncle Sam, it's not working in Uncle Sam's best interests. If I was this angry, I can only imagine the reactions of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who encounter Blackwater personnel on a regular basis.

Iraq operates on the basis of an honor culture. Honor is, arguably, more important than Islam. Being dishonored, in word or deed, or even by implication, is enough to set the average Iraqi man to plotting his revenge. This is a culture in which political assassinations (usually based on honor issues) are not an abstraction but an everyday occurrence. Every time one of those Blackwater convoys drives an Iraqi civilian off the road because the most important thing in the world is the protection of their "principal," they make a new enemy for the United States. Every time they ram another car to clear the way (and, yes, I've seen them do that), so that they could maintain their own speed and thereby minimize their exposure to "improvised explosive devices," they make another enemy. Every time they kill innocent civilians, or wound them, they make whole families of new enemies.

Talking to CBS News, Adam Hobson, a former political aide at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, discussed the tragedy that occurred on May 12, when a Blackwater guard protecting him shot at two men in a cab. One of the men was killed. After Blackwater and the State Department investigated and found the guard had not followed appropriate procedures, he was sent home. There was no other punishment. Here's a piece of the CBS interview with Hobson:

CBS: How did having this aggressive security detail affect your work in Iraq?

Hobson: Every time we went out there was a huge cost--just in alienating people. Even if no shots were fired, we were driving down the wrong side of the road; we were stopping traffic. People don't like that. That's why we never made the decision to go out lightly.

CBS: Does your conscience ever trouble you now about that day when the man died?

Hobson: Yes. I think about it every day. That's when I really understood. I went to a meeting and somebody died because of it. It made meetings in the future a lot less important. In fact, I never left the [Embassy] compound again.

Blackwater is really a metaphor (or fall guy) for the bigger mess in Iraq--a war that a former commander calls a "nightmare." For years, U.S. policy and actions have alienated the Iraqi population (and, not coincidentally, much of the rest of the world). Ignorance and arrogance--did someone say hubris?--has been animating the Bush administration's approach to Iraq from before the invasion until now. Though Blackwater deserves investigation and punishment, it is a convenient heavy. It's only the muscle for a crew that doesn't know what it's doing.

There will be no posts today. Relax....But congratulations to Al Gore, who has demonstrated that not winning the White House can be a good career move. Can you imagine George W. Bush losing in 2000 and going on to do public interest work that wins him a Nobel prize? That's a rhetorical question.

From Associated Press:

In an interview that aired Wednesday on BBC, Carter ripped Vice President Dick Cheney as "a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military."

Carter went on to say Cheney has been "a disaster for our country. I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush."

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell declined to speak to Carter's allegations.

"We're not going to engage in this kind of rhetoric," she said.

Not this kind of rhetoric. But what about other forms of rhetoric? Let's go to the archives. Remember the following warm and fuzzy exchange?

Bush spotted New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, who has been with the paper since 1977, serving as national political correspondent during the 1980 presidential race, as polling editor from 1983 to 1990 and as political editor during the successful presidential campaign of Bush's father in 1988.

"There's Adam Clymer -- major league asshole -- from the New York Times," Bush said.

"Yeah, big time," returned Cheney.

And then there was this magic moment:

Cheney, who as president of the Senate was present for the picture day, turned to [Democratic Senator Patrick] Leahy and scolded the senator over his recent criticism of the vice president for Halliburton's alleged war profiteering.

Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton, and Democrats have suggested that while serving in the Bush administration he helped win lucrative contracts for his former firm, including a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq....

In response to Cheney, Leahy reminded Cheney that the vice president had once accused him of being a bad Catholic, to which Cheney replied either "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself."

Leahy was referring to charges leveled by some conservatives during the confirmation battle of Bush judicial nominee William Pryor last August. Some supporters of Pryor, who is Catholic, claimed Senate Democrats were "anti-Catholic" for opposing the Alabama attorney general's nomination to the federal bench.

Leahy would not comment on the specifics of the story Thursday, but did confirm that Cheney used profanity.

Former angry young men and new wavers are stunned. From the Daily News:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton's campaign hopes supporters gift-wrap a $1 million present for her 60th birthday bash with Elvis Costello.

Organizers actually could do even better.

If they sell out the 2,900-seat Beacon Theatre booked for the Oct. 25 birthday hoedown, the former First Lady could walk off with more than $2 million in campaign cash.

Camp Clinton is still looking to add a supporting act to juice up Costello's solo jam session.
Plans for her actual birthday on Oct. 26 remain a surprise, with the campaign saying plans for the big day are still up in the air.

In the last week, HRC has snagged, along with Costello, the Goo Goo Dolls and George McGovern. So she's covering the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein, after watching yesterday's Republican presidential debate, slams the GOPers for crass and fact-free pandering on taxes. His piece starts:

To hear it from the Republican presidential hopefuls, the only way for the party to win back the trust of voters on economic issues is to start telling the truth.

Well, fellas, what are you waiting for?

Instead, for two hours yesterday, the nine white men who would be president were each peddling the Big Lie that the only way to ensure economic growth is by cutting all the taxes ever created -- and when you're finished with that, cutting them some more.

It was like stepping into a time travel machine (one that goes backward not forward) to hear the Republicans go on and on about the need to cut taxes. To listen to them, one could assume that if America cut all taxes, it would become a real economic powerhouse. They kept repeating the mantra that the economy only grows when taxes are cut (note: they never distinguish between different sort of taxes). But in the 1990s, Clinton raised taxes (slightly) on the well-to-do, and the economy boomed. Sure, the bubble eventually burst. But that usually happens after an expansion. The Bush gang would sure be delighted to have such a bubble these days.

Meanwhile, yesterday on NPR, Matthew Slaughter, who was a member of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2005 to 2007, said, "The reality is the majority of Americans haven't had strong, sustained income growth in recent years." He was trying to explain why most Americans are suspicious of free trade. But one could also ask, does this mean the Bush tax cuts have not been a good deal for a majority of Americans? Bush keeps talking about how swell the economy is, but even one of his own advisers acknowledges the gains have not been shared by most.

WHAT? NO RUDY? This press release just in:

The Ohio Christian Alliance, in conjunction with www.newstalkcolumbus.com and the Christian Alliance chapters of Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania will host a Presidential Candidate Forum web broadcast over the Internet at www.newstalkcolumbus.com on Thursday, October 11, from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. EST. Presidential candidates participating in this forum are Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, former Ambassador Alan Keyes, and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson. All Presidential candidates were invited to participate.

These Christian conservatives are not getting a lot of love from the GOP field. I wonder if they will ask Fred Thompson why he does not regularly attend church.

BACK TO THE FUTURE Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian-American outfit in the United States, writes,

According to Likud Leader Benyamin Netanyahu, it is 1938 and Iran is Germany. And of course, Ahmadinejad is Hitler, he goes on to imply. Bibi's analogy is very powerful and effective--yet false and tremendously dangerous. As I explain on the blog of Tony Karon (Time Magazine), not only is the analogy aimed at preventing diplomacy and making war with Iran inevitable, the ever so opportunistic Netanyahu played a remarkably different role only ten years ago when he ordered Israel to tone down its rhetoric on Iran and sought to quietly open up to Tehran....

PS. This episode in Israeli-Iranian relations is explained in even greater detail in "Treacherous Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.".

That new book was written by Parsi, who, as a representative of Iranian-Americans, has opposed a U.S. attack on Iran.

BLOGGING HEADS ON THE MARCH. The latest edition of the Pinkerton & Corn show on BloggingHeads.tv is now up. Check out Jim Pinkerton's attack on the neocons of The Washington Post op-ed page and his nostalgic remembrances of Sputnik. (Pinkerton also disavows any family connection to the Pinkertons of union-busting fame.) We also discuss my new belief that Iowa is all-important for Barack Obama. (While it may be possible for Hillary Clinton to lose there and go on to win the nomination, Obama will have to beat Clinton there to have a chance.) We also discuss what it will take for reality on the ground in Iraq to have any impact on policy and politics in Washington. And I explain my decision to leave The Nation for Mother Jones. It's Must-Click TV.

A few days ago, The Washington Post front-paged a piece by White House correspondent Peter Baker who checked on all those Bush aides who have fled the mother ship in recent months. It seems that some are having bad dreams (about Iraq), some have found they've lost friends (who no longer respect them due to their W. affiliation), and some are depressed because they no longer receive a torrent of important email. How sad. None admit that the Bush gang screwed up by invading Iraq and then mismanaging the war.

Karl Rove, for one, told Baker he felt guilty about "deserting" Bush "in a time of war." (Yes, Rove gave such good advice about Iraq up to his departure. What will Bush do with him gone?) But as for the CIA leak case,

Rove adamantly denies doing anything wrong, but the investigation, which hung over him for years before special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald decided against seeking an indictment, gave more grist to enemies who see a ruthless, Machiavellian player willing to destroy his critics. Rove sees it the other way around; he sees a hunt for a crime that did not exist.

The investigation, Rove said, was his lowest moment at Bush's side. "It was really hard for me," he said. "I'm not bitter about it. But I'll tell you, my wife is bitter about all the people who carry those little badges that say, 'Press.' "

It's the denial of reality that has gotten Bush, Rove and the rest of the pack into so much trouble. And this is yet one more example. Rove says he did nothing wrong. The record is clear. He told one reporter (Matt Cooper) that former Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and he confirmed this fact for another journalist (Bob Novak). In doing so, he passed classified information (for Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was classified) to two members of the press, as part of a White House campaign to discredit an administration critic. As it turned out, Fitzgerald did not charge Rove with a crime. But that does not mean Rove did nothing improper. Not all wrongdoing in Washington is felonious.

And after the leak story broke, the White House asserted that Rove was not involved in the leak. That was untrue. Yet Rove stood by and allowed this false statement to stand, (He probably had caused the statement to be made in the first place.) This, too, was wrong--even if not illegal. If White House aides could be arrested for peddling lies and false statements, 1600 Pennsylvania would be a very lonely place.

Leaking classified information and lying about it--most people would consider such acts to be wrong. But not Rove. He leaves the White House with his moral compass as unintact as it has ever been.

NO ONE HOME AT THE PALACE? At last week's congressional hearing featuring former Iraqi Judge Radhi al-Radhi, Ambassador Larry Butler, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, testified that the Department of State has "devoted considerable effort and resources" to anticorruption efforts in Iraq. His testimony was not credible--after Radhi claimed the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was corrupt to the core and after Representative Henry Waxman, the chair of the House government oversight and reform committee, released a report showing that the State Department anticorruption efforts have been lackadaisical at best. But Butler did say something that intrigued me. While praising the endeavors of the staff of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, he noted that the embassy has an annual turnover rate of 100 percent.

That means that few embassy officers are staying longer than a year and that there is practically no institutional memory within the embassy. So while the Bush administration is building a massive embassy compound in Baghdad that is likely to cost at least three quarters of a billion dollars, it is unable to fill the building with sufficient human capital. Talk about a hollow shell.

I watched most of the GOP presidential debate this afternoon, expecting to write about it. But it was a bit on the, eh, dull side. Predictable questions; predictable answers--and plenty of attacks on Hillary Clinton. Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed Hillary wants to place a "lid" on economic growth. Where'd he get that fun fact? He didn't say. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee blasted the disparity between CEO compensation and worker pay. (Is he in the right party?) Two amusing moments.

* In decrying current economic policy, Representative Ron Paul, a libertarian, declared that the U.S. currency is "nonfunctioning." Maybe he needs a new ATM card.

* When Chris Matthews, the main emcee, asked what each candidate would do to restore Americans' confidence in the economy, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said he would be "confident" when talking about the economy. The future looks great, he added. Later he was asked to name the "greatest threat" to the American economy. "A sense of optimism," he said. "America has to be optimistic." Senator Sam Brownback, counseling optimism, noted that while the United States makes up 5 percent of the globe's population, it accounts for 20 percent of the global economy and one-third of the world's military spending. "This place rocks!" he exclaimed. Imagine how happy he'd be if the U.S. were responsible for even more of the planet's arms trade.

None of the GOPers stood out in the debate, and that made it easier for former Senator Fred Thompson, the latest entrant, to do just fine. The bottom line: the first Thompson-included face-off did not change the dynamic of the up-for-grabs Republican race.

From today's front page of The Washington Post:

BAGHDAD -- For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

"I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric and parliament member, said any future reconciliation would emerge naturally from an efficient, fair government, not through short-term political engineering among Sunnis and Shiites.

"Reconciliation should be a result and not a goal by itself," he said. "You should create the atmosphere for correct relationships, and not wave slogans that 'I want to reconcile with you.' "

The acrimony among politicians has strained the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki close to the breaking point. Nearly half of the cabinet ministers have left their posts. The Shiite alliance in parliament, which once controlled 130 of the 275 seats, is disintegrating with the defection of two important parties.

Legislation to manage the oil sector, the country's most valuable natural resource, and to bring former Baath Party members back into the government have not made it through the divided parliament. The U.S. military's latest hope for grass-roots reconciliation, the recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police force, was denounced last week in stark terms by Iraq's leading coalition of Shiite lawmakers.

"There has been no significant progress for months," said Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents and the most influential Sunni politician in the country. "There is a shortage of goodwill from those parties who are now in the driver's seat of the country."

From George W. Bush's January 10 speech announcing the so-called surge:

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this....

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace -- and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

How can the White House reconcile Bush's rhetoric and rationale with Iraq's reality? Short answer: it cannot. How can it proceed? Only with denial and delusion.

Two days after former Iraqi Judge Radhi al-Radhi testified in Congress about the rampant corruption within the Iraqi government, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struck back. On Saturday, Maliki, who weeks ago forced out Radhi as Iraq's anticorruption chief, announced his government will prosecute Radhi for smuggling documents, for libeling Maliki, and for engaging in corruption himself.

This is not a new strategy for Maliki. A year ago, the Iraq government accused Radhi and the Commission on Public Integrity that he ran of corruption, but the charges went nowhere. (According to a now-confidential U.S. embassy draft report, Radhi's CPI passed an audit with flying colors.) And Radhi's work and integrity has been endorsed by a number of U.S. officials who worked with him, including Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. By the way, there is documentary evidence showing that Maliki's office has blocked dozens of Radhi's prosecution cases. (Apparently, Maliki is upset that Radhi has copies of these documents and shared them with U.S. congressional investigators.) As for the charge of personal corruption, Radhi shows no signs of having run off with any money. After being stranded in the United States by the Maliki government--which removed him from his post while he was in Washington at the invitation of the Justice Department for a training session--Radhi had to leave his hotel because he could not afford the bill. Friends of his in the United States are now trying to figure out how to raise money for him.

The question is, why is Maliki pursuing Radhi with such vengeance? Yes, Radhi has declared that Maliki's government is so corrupt it ought to be abolished and has accused Maliki of personally stopping corruption investigations targeting his associates and family. And Radhi's appearance on Capitol Hill last week did generate several news stories inconvenient for the Maliki government. But Radhi and his comments have not gotten as much attention as they deserve. From a political perspective, it might have been better for Maliki to ignore Radhi and hope the former judge (who was twice tortured during the days of Saddam Hussein) would slip off into obscurity. Instead, Maliki is pursuing Radhi, and this pursuit will raise Radhi's profile. (I see a 60 Minutes segment in all this.)

Radhi appears to have really gotten to Maliki. More important, Radhi's claims and evidence warrant more notice. As the below item shows, Iraq's government is unable--and seemingly unwilling--to achieve political reconciliation. If it is also as corrupt and dysfunctional as Radhi says--and the available evidence supports him--then there is no reason for the Bush administration to be supporting the Maliki government and asking American soldiers to die for it. With his anti-Radih crusade, Maliki is digging a deeper hole.

Here's my report on Judge Radhi's appearance on Capitol Hill, from my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

On Thursday, former Judge Radhi al-Radhi, Iraq's top anticorruption official until he was recently forced out by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, appeared before the House government oversight committee and described what had become of people who had worked for him at the Commission on Public Integrity as they investigated crime and fraud within the Iraqi government:

Thirty-one employees have been killed as well as at least twelve family members. In a number of cases, my staff and their relatives have been kidnapped or detained and tortured prior to being killed. Many of these people were gunned down at close range. This includes my staff member Mohammed Abd Salif, who was gunned down with his seven-month pregnant wife. In one case of targeted death and torture, the security chief on my staff was threatened with death many times. His father was recently kidnapped and killed because of his son's work at CPI. His body hung on a meat hook. One of my staff members who performed clerical duties was protected by my security staff, but his 80-year-old father was kidnapped because his son worked at CPI. When his dead body was found, a power drill had been used to drill his body with holes. Waleed Kashmoula was the head of CPI's Mosul branch. In March 2005, a suicide bomber met with Waleed in his office...and then set off his vest [bomb], killing Waleed....My family's home has b