Employment Relation

Despite Condoleezza Rice's claims to the contrary, the new Robert Woodward book "State of Denial" details a Bush White House that, in 2001, did not take Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda seriously.

The 537-page book describes tensions among senior officials from the very beginning of the administration. Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.

On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously.

The main content of the book, however, focuses on the confusion and dissention within the Bush Administration regarding Iraq -- whether to attack, how to wage the war, how to characterize the resistance, how to win the war.

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

The question is when this president is going to accept responsibility for getting us into this war -- and responsibility for getting us out. "Stay the course" until he can pass off the problem to the next president is not a winning strategy.

This just happened a couple of hours ago.

Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned from Congress on Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former male page.

"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.

The two-sentence statement did not refer to the e-mails and gave no reason for Foley's decision to abruptly abandon a flourishing career in Congress.

This comes on the heels of his staffers' efforts to blame Democrats for the story getting out, which doesn't really make Foley look that good, either.

Foley's aides initially blamed Democratic rival Tim Mahoney and Democrats with attempting to smear the congressman before the election....

..."They've been shopping this around to reporters for weeks now. They want a headline and that's it. It's a political smear campaign of the worst kind," Kello said.

Is the scandal about how the story got out, or what the story is?

For the record, Democrat Tim Mahoney's campaign says that Foley should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

The campaign for Mahoney, who trails Foley in the polls, said it didn't release the e-mails and wouldn't make them part of the campaign. In a statement released by Mahoney spokesman Jessica Santillo, the campaign referred to the boy as an "alleged victim."

"The seriousness of these allegations goes far beyond the tit for tat of a political campaign," Santillo said. "This is a matter for the appropriate authorities to investigate. I believe Mr. Foley deserves the benefit of the doubt until these allegations are proven true or false."

The sudden resignation surprised me, and it seems to indicate that maybe there's something to those allegations. The emails themselves do seem to be pretty creepy, and I can't say I'd want my son receiving such attention from any middle-aged man, let alone a powerful Republican politician in Washington.

The real news is that Republican endorsement of torture is now official. But despite events of global import, Republicans still love a sex scandal. Maybe here's one of their own:

"Sick sick sick sick sick":

A 16-year-old male former congressional page concerned about the appropriateness of an e-mail exchange with a congressman alerted Capitol Hill staffers to the communication.

Congressman Mark Foley's office says the e-mails were entirely appropriate and that their release is part of a smear campaign by his opponent.

In the series of e-mails, obtained by ABC News, from Rep. Foley (R-FL) to the former page, Foley asks the young man how old he is, what he wants for his birthday and requests a photo of him.

John at Americablog notes that Foley's home page is all about protecting children from predators.

Up for even more creepy? Foley's congressional home page is all about child sex offenders. Why, because Foley is the Co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. Yes, this is the guy the Republicans put in charge of taking care of child sex offenders. Seriously, this is sick.

John has some scans of the emails themselves.

Meanwhile, Foley's office is playing "blame the victim":

Elizabeth Nicolson, Foley's Chief of Staff, said they believe the e-mail exchange began when the page asked Foley for a recommendation and that the subsequent exchange was totally innocent. She said Foley's office believes the e-mails were released by the opposition as part of an "ugly smear campaign."

Before you get too dizzy from your spin job, Elizabeth Nicolson, let's remember that it's the page himself who's creeped out. Is this all his fault? Is that the policy advocated in all these child protection policies Mark Foley advocates? Blame the victim?

Now, this is about when the right-wing sycophants will attack the page for wearing a sweater, right? Oh wait, the page is a guy. That won't work. Well, they'll figure an angle to blame Bill Clinton, just you wait and see.

(If this were a Democratic congressman, imagine the howls you'd be hearing from the entire wingnut dittosphere.)

TBogg notes:

And it's a shame because, despite Foley's role helping George Bush steal the Florida election, he's fairly moderate as far as Republicans go. And it's not like he hasn't been under the sexuality microscope before. If this blows up...and it probably will (Republicans will run away from him like he's a Army recruiter), his replacement will likely be another Republican loon of the type we have come to expect from Florida.

GOP pundits have misremembered and misread history in hopes that the same forces that destroyed the Democratic Party in 1968 don't repeat themselves, this time with the Republicans getting swept aside. Maybe Ramesh Ponnuru was not yet born; maybe David Brooks was too young to remember it well; maybe George Will's memory has failed him, but in 1968 the Democrats were destroyed because they were PRO-war, not anti-war.

In recent news panels, Ponnuru, Brooks, and Will, have each said that in 1968 the anti-War faction of the Democrats lead the Party to defeat, yet in 1968 the Democratic standard bearer, Hubert Humphrey dared not cross his boss, Lyndon Johnson, and take a strong anti-War stance. Thus, it was Richard Nixon who claimed to have a "secret plan" to end the war, who left the albatross of Vietnam hang around the neck of the Democrats.

Orson Wells in his "The Begetting of the President," a sort of biblical take-off on the politics of the time, reads the story from "The Book of Hubert" (Job) and it is sad and ironic and it hit the point, smack on. Hubert dared not speak against LBJ, or "charge foolishly." His loyalty was being tested and hence the standard bearer could not speak of the mistake of Vietnam in the way he needed to and early enough.

The real tragedy for this nation was the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy won the 1968 California primary and on the night of his victory he said, "now it's on to Chicago and let's win there," (at the Democratic National Convention). Moments later he was shot through the head by an assassin.

Of course these things can never be proven, but had Kennedy lived to go to the Democratic Convention, he may well have won there and taken the election. Kennedy may well have been able to end the War sooner than Nixon and with less cost.

As it was, the anti-War Democrats did not lose because their policy was wrong. They lost because their standard bearer was murdered. Robert F. Kennedy would have had no problem at all saying Johnson's Policy had failed.

Today the pundits of the GOP are misremembering the lessons of 1968. In fact, we see a similar foolishness with Lieberman who unlike Humphrey is not beholding to the President, does not charge "foolishly" and in being pro-war has painted himself into a bit of a political corner.

The lesson of 1968 is not that the anti-War wing causes Democrats to lose elections. In my view it is that rhetoric about the war being right and let's not talk against the war is a way to lose.

The GOP is following in the footsteps of LBJ and the 1968 rout.

November draws near and time will tell.

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

We have news from South Dakota.

South Dakotans Launch Major Grassroots Effort to Repeal Over-reaching State Abortion Ban

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 24, 2006

SIOUX FALLS, SD -- Today the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a new coalition of community leaders from across the state, announced the launch of a major grassroots mobilization to refer the state abortion ban to the November ballot. The referral will allow South Dakotans to vote to overturn the nation's most extreme abortion law which was signed by Governor Mike Rounds on March 6. With Governor Round's signature, this law clearly endangers the health of women in South Dakota and violates the right of women and families to make private, personal health care decisions.

::::more below the fold::::also posted at Our Word::::