Big news at White House Talk, in which my brother writes:
I’ve been wrestling with how to break this to my regular readers, but … my wife and I are expecting our first child within the next several weeks, and I will be taking a few weeks off when that happens.
(And yes, I had heard of this before I read it online.)
My brother doesn’t just have fans, he has breathless excited fans who are just really really excited about their brush with greatness. See Meet the columnist, or how I (almost) fixed Dan Froomkin’s laptop yesterday.
And why not? If you haven’t read the latest White House Briefing, you really should: it has dynamite stuff about how Lawrence Wilkerson — kinda Powell’s Cheney — says that there’s a trail of memos that ties prisoner abuse right back to the Vice President’s office.
Yes, that’s the same Veep who spent today lobbying the Senate in a failed attempt to lessen its support for legislation blocking torture abusive treatment by the CIA.
My brother the columnist has great readers. Or at least one great reader:
White House Briefing | News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration: White House Briefing reader J. Harley McIlrath of Grinnell, Iowa, e-mailed me yesterday some insightful questions about just one sentence of Bush’s speech.
In fact, his questions about that one sentence alone were more penetrating and important than any of the coverage I read of Bush’s whole speech this morning.
The sentence from Bush: “The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission.”
McIlrath wrote:
“1. Who are ‘the terrorists?’ He’s talking about Iraq. Are ‘the insurgents’ also ‘the terrorists?’ Has Bush ever defined just who ‘the terrorists’ are?
“2. What would constitute a ‘win’ for the terrorists? What do they want? Do we know? Has Bush ever asked himself what ‘the terrorists’ want and whether or not it’s reasonable? Tactics aside, what do they want? Don’t tell me ‘they hate freedom.’
“3. What constitutes ‘losing our nerve?’ Is it losing one’s nerve to pull resources back from an ineffectual approach and apply them to an approach that is more promising? How many times in WWII did we pull resources off one front to reinforce another?
“4. What is ‘the mission.’ Can we abandon a ‘mission’ that has never been defined? To quote George Harrison: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
“Imagine if the press corps took this one short sentence and forced Bush to define his terms.”
NiemanWatchdog.org — Dan Froomkin, Deputy Editor — has two new items that dare ask if the media is being too gullible when it comes to the Bush administration line on the war in Iraq.
Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency, writes:
If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.
Odom argues that we already have civil war, loss of U.S. credibility and lack of support for the troops. He concludes:
The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq.
Norman Solomon, media critic and author of the new book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” asks whether the administration's sudden talk of partial withdrawals has any credibility or whether it's just a feint aimed at the 2006 elections.
Like, you have to ask? Or worse, you need a foundation to get reporters to ask?
It's surely a measure of the alternate reality we inhabit — or that the US is finally being punished for the sins of the early colonists against Native Americans — that the first appearance of questions like these in a outer-circle-of-the-mainstream site like NiemanWatchdog.org is a sign of progress. In any healthy democracy we'd all have been talking about whether and how to pull out of Iraq since the last Democratic convention. And no one would believe anything the administration says about foreign policy (or the environment).
For the record, though, I do believe Bush sometimes. For example, when he talks about wanting creationism (AKA “intelligent design”) to be taught in public schools.
I break my vacation silence (soon to be enforced by a lack of web access when I decamp to a different hotel, in Chania) to cheer my brother's brilliant idea on how reporters could advance the ball in the Plamegate inquiry, offered in his web column, Getting Worried at the White House:
But here's what that makes me think: if reporters want to help get New York Times reporter Judith Miller out of jail, let's contact every conceivable person who might have been her source, and ask them (or their lawyers): if for some reason Judy Miller were in jail thinking that she's protecting you, would that be a mistake? Would you tell that to her lawyer?
Let's start with Rove, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams, Cheney national security adviser John Hannah, counselor Dan Bartlett, press secretary Scott McClellan, former press secretary Ari Fleischer — and every other person's name who has ever even remotely been attached to this story in the past.
What have we got to lose? Is anyone with me, or shall I get going myself.
I think Dan is going to be quite busy…
My brother offers what is in effect a scorecard for Bush's speech this evening.
White House Briefing: Beware the cut-and-run straw man tonight, when President Bush delivers a prime-time speech about Iraq with troops from the nation's largest army base as his backdrop.
To the extent that Bush acknowledges the growing public opposition to his leadership of the war at all tonight, it may well be to disparage those who would “cut and run” rather than “stay the course.”
…
According to the latest polls, Americans are not saying that U.S. troops should leave instantly. They're saying they feel the country is bogged down in a war that was a mistake in the first place, they're saying they feel misled by the president and have lost confidence in him, and they're saying they want to know the way out.
They're not saying abandon the troops; they're saying support the troops. They're not saying dishonor the dead, they're saying stop the dying. They're not saying let the terrorists win; they're saying they don't think that victory in Iraq will have a major impact on terrorism elsewhere.
…
[Press Secretary Scott] McClellan said Bush will not announce any change in course, but he did offer that the president would “talk in a very specific way about the way forward.”
Or, if you ask me, it could just be a media event, devoid of substance…
Of course, even if Bush does not engage the growing unease about the war and just rephrases his previous assertions, he will still come out ahead if the press coverage highlights the new sound bites — rather than explaining that he failed to address the mounting concerns of the American public.
Incidentally, tomorrow at 1pm you can chat with Dan about how it all went as he'll be Live Online at the Washington Post site. His chats are fun to watch.
Jotwell Blenderlaw