Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Why the U.S. Is Not Winning the War on Terror

Tom Ricks wrote that he saw extraordinary failures at five levels: Bush and company, intelligence, military, congress, and press. Ricks's Fiasco covers the military angle. More people should read Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which covers the intelligence angle.

Here we have a short passage quoted by Educated Guesswork:

Educated Guesswork: Running out of maneuvering room: From The One Percent Doctrine:

KSM's two children, a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, were also in US custody, picked up when the Karachi safe house had been raided the previous September. From Langley, a message was passed to the interrogators at a secret detention center in Thailand, where KSM was being held: do whatever's necessary.

According to several former CIA officials interrogators told KSM his children would be hurt if he didn't cooperate. The response, said, one CIA manager with knowledge of the incident: "He basically said, so, fine, they'll join Allah in a better place."

The traditional models of debriefing, used by both FBI and CIA, involved the building of a relationship, no matter how long and arduous a process. It's the need for some human contact, some basic comfort, rather than simply the bottomless human fear, which ultimately triumphs. The captive's previous life starts to fade and is slowly replaced by one constructed, often ingeniously, by his captors. This method the FBI still recommends.

That's the gamble. Once you do something as horrific as threaten someone's children, and it doesn't work--there's nowhere else to go.

Still needed are good books covering the congressional angle--why have the committee chairs of the Senate been so weak?--the press angle--why haven't they resigned, donated all their goods to the poor, and taken up a life of anonymous service to others?--and the riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an engima of colossal stupidity that is Bush and his administration.

Mankiw and Swagel Reflect on the Politics and Economics of Offshore Outsourcing

Well worth reading. Greg Mankiw and Phil Swagel reflect on their unfair trashing by the Washington media machine in February 2004:

The Politics and Economics of Offshore Outsourcing. N. Gregory Mankiw, Phillip Swagel. NBER Working Paper No. 12398. Issued in July 2006. NBER Program(s): EFG ITI POL

Abstract: This paper reviews the political uproar over offshore outsourcing connected with the release of the Economic Report of the President (ERP) in February 2004, examines the differing ways in which economists and non-economists talk about offshore outsourcing, and assesses the empirical evidence on the importance of offshore outsourcing in accounting for the weak labor market from 2001 to 2004. Even with important gaps in the data, the empirical literature is able to conclude that offshore outsourcing is unlikely to have accounted for a meaningful part of the job losses in the recent downturn or contributed much to the slow labor market rebound. The empirical evidence to date, while still tentative, actually suggests that increased employment in the overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals is associated with more employment in the U.S. parent rather than less.

Mankiw and Swagel write:

Outsourcing was the topic of two questions at the press conference. It is useful to reproduce the complete answers to these questions to illustrate just how far out of context the subsequent public discussion was to take the comments made at the press conference. The response to the first question on outsourcing was:

I think outsourcing is a growing phenomenon, but it's something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run. Economists have talked for years about trade, free international trade, being a positive for economies around the world, both at home and abroad. This is something that is universally believed by economists. The President believes this. He talks about opening up markets abroad for American products being one of his most important economic priorities. And we saw discussions this weekend of the Australia agreement. So it's a very important priority.

When we talk about outsourcing, outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. We're very used to goods being produced abroad and being shipped here on ships or planes. What we're not used to is services being produced abroad and being sent here over the Internet or telephone wires.

But does it matter from an economic standpoint whether values of items produced abroad come on planes and ships or over fiber optic cables? Well, no, the economics is basically the same. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing. That doesn't mean there's not dislocations; trade always means there's dislocations. And we need to help workers find jobs and make sure to create jobs here. But we shouldn't retreat from the basic principles of free trade. Outsourcing is the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith.

Notice that the order of response was to first note the gains from trade, and only second to refer to the dislocation to affected workers; later we will discuss how, from a communications standpoint, this was a tactical error....

It was not at all clear following the press conference that a political firestorm was in the making. Indeed, reporters from the Financial Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal complained at the end of the press conference that there had not been any news. A reporter from the Washington Post suggested after the event that the answer on outsourcing might be controversial, but more because of the inherently contentious nature of the topic.... [T]he reporters who missed the story at first were among the best in the Washington press corps in terms of their economic knowledge. The FT and Wall Street Journal reporters had the backgrounds one would expect of economics writers for those publications, while the reporter for USA Today was a 1995 graduate of Harvard who had majored in economics and written on the subject for the FT before moving to the mass-circulation USA Today. For these reporters (as for ourselves), a focus on the economic substance meant overlooking the newsworthy point that a White House adviser was talking straightforwardly about the subject of outsourcing in the first place during an election year....

The controversy arose instead from coverage of the press conference in the Los Angeles Times. Above a nuanced discussion of the costs and benefits of outsourcing, the LA Times ran the incendiary (and inaccurate) headline “Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas.” In contrast, the Post headline above a similar story was “Bush Report Offers Positive Outlook on Jobs.”

It took less than a day for the words “Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas” to be picked up by opponents of the President. However, it took more than half a day for this to happen, so that the issue of outsourcing figured little at the Congressional hearing on the ERP on February 10—-the day of the inflammatory LA Times headline.... This changed within the same day’s news cycle.... The next day, February 11, a story on the ERP in the Washington Post was headlined “Bush, Adviser Assailed for Stance on 'Offshoring' Jobs”... and quoted Senator Kerry decrying the White House desire to “export more of our jobs overseas,” as well as Republican Congressman Donald Manzullo from Illinois calling for the resignation of the CEA chairman. White House aides responsible for Congressional liaison warned of fury on the part of Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and other industrial states....

An interesting note is that after the first day’s stories on the ERP and the press conference, subsequent press coverage focused largely on the political response rather than the substance of what was actually written and said. Indeed, reporters writing the stories universally acknowledged in private that the CEA Report was both correct and unremarkable on the substance. What was remarkable was the reaction, and as journalists they were obligated to cover the political reaction and fallout. The coverage reflected the unfortunate reality of the modern craft of journalism. In general, the coverage did not seem to us to reflect malice, bias, or sloppiness on the part of the journalists involved.... Matters of substance were left to editorial writers...

Well, it depends on what the meaning of "bias" and "malice" are.

Journalists may have been "obligated to cover the political reaction and fallout," but they were also obligated--an obligation they failed to perform--to inform their readers. If it was indeed the case, as Mankiw and Swagel say (and I believe them) that the "reporters writing the stories universally acknowledged in private that the CEA Report was both correct and unremarkable on the substance," then the reporters had an obligation to inform their readers of that fact--a obligation they did not meet, yet easily could have met. Had they met the obligation, they would have better informed their readers. They would also have annoyed a few members of congress by making them look ill-informed.

A reporter who successfully covered both the political reaction and the economics was the excellent Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal, who wrote on February 12, 2004:

"Some Democratic Economists Echo Mankiw on Outsourcing," By BOB DAVIS February 12, 2004: WASHINGTON -- White House chief economist Gregory Mankiw set off a political firestorm this week when he said that outsourcing U.S. jobs helps the economy. But some prominent Democratic economists make the same argument.

At a Monday news conference, Mr. Mankiw said that sending U.S. service jobs abroad "is probably a plus for the economy in the long run." That is because foreign workers can do the jobs more cheaply, reducing costs for U.S. consumers and companies. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," he added.

Since then, his remarks have brought sharp rebukes from lawmakers, including some Republicans. "Incredible indifference," said Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. "What planet do they live on?" Even Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois said Mr. Mankiw's "theory fails a basic test of real economics."

The White House has offered Mr. Mankiw only tepid support. Calls for his resignation were "kind of laughable," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, because the economic team is "doing a great job."

Even among Democratic economists, though, Mr. Mankiw's remarks were mainstream. "Basically I agree with Greg's thrust," said Janet Yellen, who was President Clinton's chief economist. "In the long run, outsourcing is another form of trade that benefits the U.S. economy by giving us cheaper ways to do things."

But Ms. Yellen added that many moderately paid U.S. workers are suffering because of outsourcing, especially call-center workers whose jobs have been shipped to India and elsewhere.

The controversy surrounding Mr. Mankiw's remarks spotlights the political potency of the jobs issue this year. Since Mr. Bush has taken office, the U.S. has lost more than two million jobs -- a statistic that has become a major point of attack for Democrats who cite outsourcing as one cause. In recent months, the economy has sharply rebounded, but job growth remains weak .

Mr. Mankiw, who is chairman of the White House's council of economic advisers, may have been trying to put the outsourcing issue in perspective, and speaking more as an economist than a politician. But to some critics he sounded cavalier -- for instance, in suggesting that high-paying jobs in radiology might be better done abroad than in the U.S.

Said Laura Tyson, dean of the London Business School and another of Mr. Clinton's former chief economists: "The traditional economic response does sound hard-hearted and can be criticized for not taking nearly as seriously the dislocation as one should."

A chastened Mr. Mankiw said Wednesday, "I wish I had been more clear at the press conference; any loss of jobs is regrettable. If I suggested otherwise, I failed to communicate."

Though Mr. Mankiw also trumpeted the administration's job-retraining initiatives, the message was obscured by his outsourcing remarks.

"On efficiency grounds, he [Mr. Mankiw] is right," said former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, meaning that the economy becomes more efficient when costs are reduced through trade. But Mr. Reich, who advises Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. John Kerry, said the administration hadn't made "a serious attempt to deal with the profound structural problems of an economy in transition as it affects middle-class jobs."

Monday, Mr. Kerry joined in the Mankiw bashing, saying the administration wants "to export more of our jobs overseas." But Brad DeLong, a former Clinton treasury economist, cautioned that Mr. Kerry ought to be careful with his word because the outsourcing trend is bound to continue. "Linking outsourcing to aggregate employment decline is a bit of demagoguery that will bite him in the butt next February if he becomes president," Mr. DeLong said.

Blackwater Security

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Robert Kagan/Joe Lieberman Edition)

The Washington Post continues to give air to the vastly overrated Robert Kagan, who calls Joe Lieberman "the last honest man":

The Last Honest Man: If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war.... Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn't recant. He didn't say he was wrong. He didn't turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn't claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn't try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn't claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn't go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted "public intellectuals."

These have been the chosen tactics of self-preservation ever since events in Iraq started to go badly and the war became unpopular. Prominent intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, have turned on their friends and allies in an effort to avoid opprobrium for a war they publicly supported. Journalists have turned on their fellow journalists in an effort to make them scapegoats for the whole profession. Politicians have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain away their support for the war or, better still, to blame someone else for persuading them to support it...

Guess Kagan didn't get the memo.

Joe Lieberman is no longer the old Joe Lieberman who attacked Jack Murtha, saying: "We undermine the President's credibility at our nation's peril."

Today we have a new Joe Lieberman, who has no problems undermining George W. Bush's credibility: "I supported our war in Iraq but I have always questioned the way it was being executed. This administration took far too many shortcuts. We continue to suffer the consequences, as do the Iraqi people."

As the LA Times Waters the Astroturf...

Ellen Barry of the Los Angeles Times writes:

Lieberman's Rival Lamont Widens Lead in Latest Poll - Los Angeles Times: Lamont also met Richard Goodstein, a friend and supporter of Lieberman's who had waited in the diner for the chance to confront him. As Lamont greeted supporters, Goodstein loudly accused him of unfairly smearing Lieberman.

"I take this all very personally -- A, because of my affection for Lieberman; and B, because of my commitment to the prospects of Democrats nationally," said Goodstein, 57, a lawyer.

"I think Ned Lamont has the potential to do grievous harm to the Democrats."

She does not tell us that Richard Goostein is a Washington-based lobbyist for DCI...

OIRA

I had always thought that the benefit-cost ratio from flame-retardant pajamas was high. The fact that Susan Dudley sees this as an example of government overreach.... As someone who believes in getting the benefit-cost analysis right, I find this... disturbing.

Joshua Micah Marshall writes:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: July 30, 2006 - August 05, 2006 Archives: White House nominates Susan Dudley to be OMB regulation czar. Last year she came out against fire-retardant kids pajamas. Bemoaning the dire burden of regulations last year on Jim Glassman's astroturf site TCSDaily.com, she wrote...

We also pay the price as consumers. From the moment we wake up in the morning -- flushing the toilet twice, courtesy of the Department of Energy's appliance standards -- to the time we put our children in their Consumer Product Safety Commission-approved pajamas, regulations not only increase the cost of goods and services we buy, but also the choices we can make.

The heavy hand of government stomping down on kid frying. Enough to make you a Hayek disciple after all.

As an expectant father I certainly hope that the government will stay out of our decisions about whether to put our child to bed in flammable pajamas.

And Vineyard Views reports:

Vineyard Views: The Fox and the Chicken Coop: This week Bush... nominated Susan Dudley to be the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.... [S]he... feels that fatigue in truck drivers who do not rest has not been systematically proven to contribute to highway deaths.... She does not feel that we are entitled to information about the effect of some chemicals, "Even if we determine that information on the release of certain chemicals has a net social value, we cannot assume that more frequently reported information, or information on a broader range of chemicals would be more valuable"...

This kind of stuff--in a manner analogous to the b.s. perpetrated by Dan Quayle's "Council on Competitiveness" in the Bush I administration--degrades the power of the analytical tools we have to make government be the right size and do the right things. It makes it harder for people like me to argue that OIRA has an important role to play.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Dean Baker Thinks About the Job Numbers

He is somewhat worried. The BLS establishment survey has to guess at the number of jobs created in new businesses that aren't yet in its sample, and that makes it likely to miss economic turning points:

Beat the Press: Dean Baker's commentary on economic reporting: Job Numbers for Nerds (and Good Reporters)

As has been widely reported, the July job numbers came in somewhat weaker than expected, with job growth of just 113,000.... However, the actual picture may be somewhat worse.... [T]he Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) may be imputing too many jobs into the survey for new firms that are not included in their sample.

The... BLS knows that there are firms that cannot be counted in its establishment survey.... BLS must therefore impute some number of jobs for these new firms.... The problem is that the imputation will miss turning points.... In 2001, the imputation led to an overstatement of more than 400,000 jobs, an effect noted by astute observers at the time.

Is the imputation overstating job growth now?... We won’t know... until BLS releases it benchmark revisions next fall...

On Vox: "The Odds of Economic Meltdown," in *Salon*, August 3, 2006

View Brad DeLong’s Blog

The Odds of Economic Meltdown: With interest rates and oil prices rising and consumers spending beyond their means, we may be headed for recession -- and worse.

» Read more on Vox

Lieberman Astroturf Edition!

Joe Lieberman cannot find any supporters to heckle Ned Lamont in Connecticut. So he has taken to airlifting lobbyists in from Washington DC:

CT-SEN: Richard Goodstein: "Email Me The Last Good Story You Wrote About Joe Lieberman" | TPMCafe: By Greg Sargent: D.C. lobbyist Richard Goodstein... confirmed that he is indeed the guy on the front-page of today's Record-Journal who appeared to be heckling Lamont in a diner.... [O]ne of the stories of the day in Connecticut is how supporters of Joe Lieberman ambushed Ned Lamont in a Connecticut diner.... Richard Goodstein shouted at Lamont: "Are you a Bill Clinton Democrat, or an Al Sharpton Democrat?"...

Election Central just reached out to the office of registered-D.C.-lobbyist Richard Goodstein, got his cell number, and reached him. When I asked him if he was a Lieberman supporter and was the man in the pic on the front of the Herald-Record, he confirmed that, yes, he was a Lieberman backer and that he was the same man as pictured on the paper's front page. Then the conversation went south. When I asked him if I could confirm that he'd said what the paper said he had, Goodstein asked me why I wanted to do that and whether I worked for the paper. I said I didn't and noted that I wanted to get confirmation of his quotes straight from him. After a hurried back-and-forth, Goodstein said: "Do me a favor: Email me the last good story you wrote about Joe Lieberman." When I asked why that was relevant, Goodstein said: "Bye. Bye." End of conversation.

Well, at least now we know for certain who the mystery man in the diner was, and that he's the same Richard Goodstein as the D.C. lobbyist Richard Goodstein. But I didn't get to ask him about the nature of the Lieberman supporters' surprise of Lamont or about the nature of Goodstein's relationship to the campaign. I've got a call into the Lieberman campaign about this. Hopefully we'll have more soon.

Pathetic. And funny.

Hoisted from Comments: PrahaPartizan on Tom Ricks's "Fiasco"

The Partisan writes, at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/08/if_you_dont_hav.html#comment-20679825:

I've been reading through "Fiasco" and I would caution anyone reading it that they will find it slow going. No, it's not because the writing is difficult or the concepts hard to seize. The reading is slow because you will find yourself picking it up off the floor after you've pitched it yet again against the wall while cursing at the individuals involved.

Everything that most of the liberal blogosphere predicted from 2002 come to life before your eyes in the book. Ultimately, the frustration peaks and - wham - there goes the book against the wall again.

Just make sure you get yourself a rubber room before you read it. That's for yourself and the nutjobs who got us there.

The Principle of Hereditary Succession

Tom Worstall points us to the intelligent and incisive Natalie Solent, who notes that "people's democracy" is truly dead when it devolves into hereditary succession:

Natalie Solent: Communism is dead! I knew I'd find some good news if I looked hard enough. There had been a few indications before now that communism might be dead, but now I now for sure. It appears that Fidel Castro handed over Cuba to his brother while he had an op. Back when Communism was alive, they may have been gut-churningly evil mass-murdering scum, but they respected the forms. A society in which anyone could say, "Here y'are, bro, take the whole country" was exactly what they were there to extirpate. The French Revolution finally died when Napoleon took to handing out the crowns of Europe to his relatives.

Very true. Now what's the name of that president of ours again?

Disappointing but Not Terrible

A disappointing but not terrible jobs report for July. The BLS reports:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 113,000 in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job gains occurred in several service-providing industries, including professional and business services, health care, and food services. Employment also rose in mining. Average hourly earnings rose by 7 cents, or 0.4 percent, in July.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

ExxonMobil Rolls Out the Astroturf...

Astroturf!

Washington Wire: Who Is Behind the Al Gore Spoof?: Everyone knows Al Gore stars in the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But who created "Al Gore's Penguin Army," a two-minute video now playing on YouTube.com? In the video, Gore appears as a sinister figure who blames the Mideast crisis and starlet Lindsay Lohan's shrinking waist size on global warming. (See the video.)

The video's maker is listed as "Toutsmith," a 29-year-old who identifies himself as being from Beverly Hills in an Internet profile. In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn't answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith's Yahoo account indicate it didn%u2019t come from an amateur working out of his basement.

Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. Read the full article. --Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey.

If You Don't Have Time to Read "Fiasco," at Least Listen to Tom Ricks on KQED

Let me urge everybody who isn't going to read Tom Ricks's Fiasco to at least listen to Ricks explain his themes and judgments on Michael Krasny's "Forum" program on San Francisco's KQED. The first 40 minutes of the show are extraordinarily good radio. And Ricks is--for all my complaints about how I wish he had told America more of this stuff and less "he said, she said" two years ago when it would have mattered more--an extraordinarily incisive and keen-witted analyst of America's armed forces and of the Pentagon.

Ricks's opening:

I don't think you get a mess this big from the mistakes of two or three people. Absolutely. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made serious mistakes, both during the run-up to the war, and during the occupation. But to get a mess this big you really need a systemic breakdown is the argument at the beginning of the book. I look to five basic groups: the Bush Administration, the CIA and the intelligence community, the media, the military which I think is an area that really needs to be looked at more, and finally Congress which is in this case the dog that didn't bark. The other institutions were basically sins of commission. Congress's sins were essentially sins of omission, a lack of oversight, a lack of accountability.

So kind of ineptly and in my own way I stepped up to the plate and tried to get answers to the questions that I wished Congress had been asking and getting answers to. Why has the occupation gone the way it has? Was it inevitable? Are resources being spent well or are they being squandered? I don't have the power of subpoena. I don't have massive resources. More important, I don't have the power of the purse string. But I went at it and asked a lot of these questions and looked at a lot of documents and tried to answer as best as possible and say here's what happened here's how it happened here's why it happened. But I'll never do as good a job as the Congress could do. It's just that I did what I could do.

It's especially worrisome to me because when you don't look at the military errors then things go wrong. Troops die unnecessarily. Iraqis die unnecessarily. And we don't win. One of the reasons I gave this book its provocative title, "Fiasco," was to put up a blinking red light and say "Hey, let's pay attention here. This could have been done better."... There's a big difference between the troops and the generals, and one way to support the troops is to question and to criticize the generals. Yet in this war not a single general has been relieved....

Franks's war plan was a war plan that looked more like a plan for a coup d'etat in a banana republic, where you zip to the capital and decapitate the regime and you leave. The original war plan called for us to be down to 30,000 troops by August 2003. In fact, here we are three years later August 2006 and we're at 127,000 troops and growing. So, the assumptions on which Franks based his war plan were incorrect, and he didn't have Plan B. He spent 80% or 90% of his energies looking at how to get to Baghdad and very little of his energy at what to do once he got there. And that was the hard problem. There was no question that we were going to get to Baghdad pretty fast, but there was very little serious thought, planning, for OK what to do once you get there. And what if your assumptions are wrong. What if you are not greeted as liberators. And that fecklessness in the plan, I think, gave the insurgency valuable time in which to coalesce and grow and plan their attack....

There's not a lot of self-examination among many generals.... There's a lot of hubris.... So there was not an inclination to really critically and soberly look at the situation and look at their own actions and think about whether some of those actions were counterproductive. A good example is in the fall of 2003, when the insurgency started to rise and we started to crack down on them, they conducted big coordinate-sweep operations. In certain areas all military-age males were scarfed up, frequently humiliated in the course of the arrest, sandbags placed over their head, shipped off to Abu Ghraib or other prisons like that, kept there for ninety days, maybe eventually released. During those ninety days they might have been abused by yahoos from Abu Ghraib who were running the prison. And they were also held cheek-by-jowl with hard-core Al Qaeda types. And this might be Ahmej Achmed the farmer. Well when Ahmej Achmed went in, he was one guy, and when he came out he probably was a little less pro-American than when he went in. So that kind of big coordinate-sweep operation, I think, was unproductive...

Here is Forum:

KQED | Programs A-Z: Forum: Home: KQED's live call-in program presents wide-ranging discussions of local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews. http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2006/08/2006-08-03b-forum.mp3

Here's a partial transcript of what Ricks said:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/08/tom_ricks_on_mi.html

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Tom Ricks on Michael Krasny's Forum Show at KQED

Paul Brown alerts us to today's KQED Forum:

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Thomas E. Ricks (2006), "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq": On today's KQED Forum Program, Ricks was confronted by the kind of arguments we're discussing here. His response was that, Hey! He was only a reporter. But revealingly, he said that when he heard someone in power say something he knew to be ridiculous his instinct was not to write a piece with the lede "Rumsfeld (for example) said 'X' today, which is completely ridiculous because Y and Z.". Instead he wanted only to get Rumsfeld's ridiculousness "on the record".

In other words, Ricks knew what Rumsfeld said was ridiculous, and he knew that anyone 'in the know' would realize just how ridiculous it was. Taking up Brad's theme about the ongoing quality decline of print media and it's economic implications for big media firms, the number of people 'in the know' (who can benefit from knowing Rumsfeld is being ridiculous) is tiny. The rest of us benefit little from the unadorned quote. So we get less and less value from these well paid, ink-stained wretches.

And eventually, Thomas Ricks loses his office, and his press pass, and gets a blog.


Here's what that particular exchange was, from the mp3:

Michael Krasny: "Here's an email saying: 'Brad DeLong complains that your reporting during the war did not say that administration officials were saying things that we're not true--let's not say they lied, in particular with respect to Mr. Wolfowitz's testimony before Congress. How do you justify this?"

Tom Ricks: "I'm a reporter. One of the parts of the job of being a reporter is to accurately report what people say. It doesn't mean that I agree with it. One of the things in fact you do as a reporter is that sometimes somebody will say something and you say, 'I can't believe he said that. I'm going to write a story about that to get it on the record in the paper'."


Here are the links to Michael Krasny KQED Forum 10 AM August 3, 2006:

KQED | Programs A-Z: Forum: Home: KQED's live call-in program presents wide-ranging discussions of local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews. http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2006/08/2006-08-03b-forum.mp3

And here is a partial transcript--what Tom Ricks said during the program:

I don't think you get a mess this big from the mistakes of two or three people. Absolutely. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made serious mistakes, both during the run-up to the war, and during the occupation. But to get a mess this big you really need a systemic breakdown is the argument at the beginning of the book. I look to five basic groups: the Bush Administration, the CIA and the intelligence community, the media, the military which I think is an area that really needs to be looked at more, and finally Congress which is in this case the dog that didn't bark. The other institutions were basically sins of commission. Congress's sins were essentially sins of omission, a lack of oversight, a lack of accountability...

So kind of ineptly and in my own way I stepped up to the plate and tried to get answers to the questions that I wished Congress had been asking and getting answers to. Why has the occupation gone the way it has? Was it inevitable? Are resources being spent well or are they being squandered? I don't have the power of subpoena. I don't have massive resources. More important, I don't have the power of the purse string. But I went at it and asked a lot of these questions and looked at a lot of documents and tried to answer as best as possible and say here's what happened here's how it happened here's why it happened. But I'll never do as good a job as the Congress could do. It's just that I did what I could do...

It's especially worrisome to me because when you don't look at the military errors then things go wrong. Troops die unnecessarily. Iraqis die unnecessarily. And we don't win. One of the reasons I gave this book its provocative title, "Fiasco," was to put up a blinking red light and say "Hey, let's pay attention here. This could have been done better." Congress doesn't do this for I think two reasons: The Republicans don't want to embarrass the administration, and the Democrats really don't know how to ask the questions. I think they've confused supporting the troops with supporting the generals. There's a big difference between the troops and the generals, and one way to support the troops is to question and to criticize the generals. Yet in this war not a single general has been relieved. Compare that to World War II, where at the beginning of World War II George Marshall who was the army chief of staff relieved over one hundred senior officers. Lincoln during the Civil War ran through generals looking for someone who could fight and win the war for him. But we have a military that really doesn't want to look at its own leadership lapses, and a Congress that isn't forcing the military to do that. And I think it's unfair to the troops...

The more I looked at Franks, the less impressed I was. I came away thinking after doing these interviews--and I want to emphasize that this is not a book of my opinions; I do not believe I appear in the book. It's a book of the best judgments I could find, inside and outside the U.S. military. But the judgment on Franks is harsh in the book: that he helped write what may be the worst war plan in American history. That his war plan helped create the insurgency. And that he then walked away and retired. And the image that comes to my mind is as if General Eisenhower in July 1944, a month after D-Day, had retired and turned to General Bradley and said, "Good luck on the way to Berlin. I'm off to play golf"...

Well, the President, rightly or wrongly, had instructed Franks to go to Iraq, and invade it, with the purpose of transforming Iraq and transforming the region. This was this transformational vision that the Bush Administration had after 9/11 of what they wanted to do in Iraq. Remember, they were going to "drain the swamp" of the Middle East, and it began there. Franks's war plan was a war plan that looked more like a plan for a coup d'etat in a banana republic, where you zip to the capital and decapitate the regime and you leave. The original war plan called for us to be down to 30,000 troops by August 2003. In fact, here we are three years later August 2006 and we're at 127,000 troops and growing. So, the assumptions on which Franks based his war plan were incorrect, and he didn't have Plan B. He spent 80% or 90% of his energies looking at how to get to Baghdad and very little of his energy at what to do once he got there. And that was the hard problem. There was no question that we were going to get to Baghdad pretty fast, but there was very little serious thought, planning, for OK what to do once you get there. And what if your assumptions are wrong. What if you are not greeted as liberators. And that fecklessness in the plan, I think, gave the insurgency valuable time in which to coalesce and grow and plan their attack...

One very senior U.S. military intelligence officer looked at me during the interview and said, "Tom, what's the difference between Tommy Franks and the Iranian government?" I said "I dunno." He said "The Iranians had a plan for Phase IV." And I said, "What do you mean by that?" He said, "They were on our heels as we came across southern Iraq they were right behind us. They knew what they wanted to do and they came in fast." Whereas we didn't really have a plan for what we'd do once we got there. Franks sometimes reminds me of a taxi driver who drives extremely fast and gets you to the wrong address, and when you complain says, "Well at least I got you here fast."

There are huge similarities here to Vietnam or Halberstam's book. In some ways I think this could be worse than the Vietnam War. At the end of the Vietnam War we could walk away and pretty much wash our hands. It didn't have much effect on us. It was pretty bad if you were a Vietnamese ally of the United States or a Cambodian who suffered a holocaust, but for an American we could walk away. I don't think we can walk away from Iraq. As for the Best and the Brightest, yes the generals tend to agree with that phrase--we are the best and the brightest. There's not a lot of self-examination among many generals. There are some who stand out as exceptions. But broadly the attitude was "We're the best in the world." There's a lot of hubris. "We're winners, how can we possibly be doing things wrong here?" So there was not an inclination to really critically and soberly look at the situation and look at their own actions and think about whether some of those actions were counterproductive. A good example is in the fall of 2003, when the insurgency started to rise and we started to crack down on them, they conducted big coordinate-sweep operations. In certain areas all military-age males were scarfed up, frequently humiliated in the course of the arrest, sandbags placed over their head, shipped off to Abu Ghraib or other prisons like that, kept there for ninety days, maybe eventually released. During those ninety days they might have been abused by yahoos from Abu Ghraib who were running the prison. And they were also held cheek-by-jowl with hard-core Al Qaeda types. And this might be Ahmej Achmed the farmer. Well when Ahmej Achmed went in, he was one guy, and when he came out he probably was a little less pro-American than when he went in. So that kind of big coordinate-sweep operation, I think, was unproductive...

Very much. And the other thing I think that the generals were very slow to focus on was how ill-prepared U.S. troops were. I don't mean just equipment. I mean conceptually. What do you do? An example is the first armored division in Baghdad in the summer of 2003. A pretty good unit by the way. Pretty well led. They had some soldiers who were supposed to stop looters. They decided that the best way to deter looters was to make them cry. Now you will find this nowhere in any army manual or doctrine or any counterinsurgency tactics--to make them cry. But they decided that's what they would do. So one day they caught a father and his two teenage sons looting. And they asked the father, "Which of your sons do you want us to shoot?" A chilling thing to say. And the father says, "No, please shoot me instead." They said, "No, you don't get to make that choice." They took one of the sons around to the other side of the truck and they fired a weapon past his head. And then they cried and they turned them loose...

They might have deterred those looters but that's no way to win a war. Fundamentally, the U.S. military did not understand that the people were not the playing field on which you play the enemy. The people were the prize. You need to win the people over. Instead, again and again U.S. policies and U.S. tactics alienated the broad middle...

And that's not taking care of the troops. This takes me back to the issue of Congress. This isn't a matter of just not informing the American people. It's a matter of not waging war effectively. When the military won't ask the tough questions, then the Congress should. And the Congress has not been...

Bremer flew into Baghdad in the spring of 2003 determined to show there was a new sheriff in town. He was going to be bold and striking. One of the things he was going to do was put a ban on anyone who'd been a fairly senior member of the Baathist Party. And he showed this draft order to the CIA station chief, who read it, and looked it over, and said, "You know, will you give me an hour to kind of redraft this?" Bremer said no. And he was asked again. Bremer said no. Finally the CIA station chief said, "You can issue this order as you have written it, but by nightfall you will have driven 50,000 people underground, and in six months you are going to regret it." It was one of those policies along with dissolving the Iraqi military and the interior police that took care of one of the basic problems for anyone trying to establish an insurgency: recruiting. DeBaathification--which is very different but deNazification was in postwar Germany, which was done in a much more studied way beginning at the grass roots level--this was top-down, centralized deBaathification issued from the top. And that gave the insurgency a lot of leaders. Its cadre of leaders. And then the next order which dissolved the military solved the other problem of recruiting: here's tens of thousands of angry well-armed men...

The military called the CPA--the civilian occupation authority--"Can't Provide Anything." We would be with officers who were working at these dusty patrol bases way out in the desert or in the jungly areas between the rivers, and there eyes would get big when they went to the Green Zone. Some would call it "Oz." The Green Zone was the U.S. civilian headquarters in downtown Baghdad which became increasingly isolated as the insurgency began and as its front door was bombed. It became harder for them to get out. But it really had very little to do with what was happening in the rest of Iraq because it became so isolated. And officers in the military would say that these guys are totally at cross-purposes with us. We're trying to bring stability, and they keep on issuing orders that are destabilizing, because the Green Zone--the civilian authority--were the home of a lot of ideologues: people who would say "We have to make this country not only a democracy but a free-market. One of Bremer's initiatives, by the way, was a flat tax. One of the things that a lot of American conservatives had wanted...

I don't want to be too negative. There are commanders who get it. Especially guys who have some of their own education--not just the army. One example is Major General Dave Petraeus, has a Ph.D. in international affairs in Princeton, and had studied Vietnam, and operated very well with his 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq. Another example, also a well educated man, Col. H.R. McMaster, in command of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, also wrote the book "Dereliction of Duty" about Vietnam. There were a few, though. Also, their example tended to be neglected. I was embedded with H.R. McMaster's armored cavalry regiment early this year up in Tel Afar up in northwestern Iraq. It is worth looking at because it is the road not taken. McMaster took the 3rd ACR which is a unit that had a mediocre first tour in Iraq. One Iraqi general who turned himself in to them was beaten to death in interrogation. There was an officer in the unit who carried a baseball bat that he called his Iraqi beater. McMaster took over that unit and looked every soldier in the eye and said every time you disrespect an Iraqi you are working for the enemy. That's counterinsurgency doctrine phrased in a way that any 21 year old soldier can understand, grasp in that form. McMaster went out to Iraq and one of the first things he did was start a program called "Ask the Customer." Who was the customer? Detainees. It's a very different way of looking at detainees. And all detainees in his unit were asked, upon release, "How were you treated?" And the soldiers knew that they would be asked. And they had not one case of abuse in the 3rd ACR's second tour in Iraq...

The 4th ID stood out especially. The 4th Infantry Division was in the northern part of the Sunni triangle. Tikrit. I was up there in the summer of '03 briefly, and I was also across the river with one of their brigades across the Tigris in July of 2003. An interesting unit because the guy who commanded them, Odierno, is going back later this year as the number two commander in Iraq in charge of day-to-day operations. And there is a general view among many of his peers that his unit was unnecessarily aggressive and abusive and helped fuel the insurgency through their actions...

I think it's an honorable position to talk about leaving as soon as possible. But if we are going to talk about that we should talk about the consequences of doing so. Would there be a civil war? Would there be a bloodbath across the country?...

I think civil war has already happened in that we have a low-level civil war going on there right now. Every day scores of people are being killed in some sort of civil war by violence. I think our unspoken mission there right now is to keep a lid on that civil war, keep it from intensifying. A full-blown civil war, I think, would be far bloodier and far uglier than what we have there now. And look, it is possible for Iraq to get worse. Every time I've been there, and I've been there five times over the past three years, I've been stunned at how bad it is. And every time I've gone back it's been much worse the next time. So it can get much worse. We may look back on this and say: man that was just act III of a five-act tragedy. You know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were still alive back then. It could get very tough over there if we do have a full-blown civil war. I think, first of all, this country would be blamed by many people around the world. Second, it could easily pull over the borders and pull in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and even Turkey, our NATO ally. If the Kurds made a bid for independence the Turks would invade. Then we'd have a NATO country involved. It could get extremely messy extremely quickly...

In my personal opinion yes, we need to stay in as an occupying force, if we can, that's probably the best-case scenario. What strategists told us is that we need to radically change our posture. The current force is not sustainable either here or in Iraq. But what you could do is probably cut your force structure by about two-thirds, get down to about 50,000 troops. And take the 1.5 billion dollars a week that we are spending there now, and dedicate it much more to the training advisory program. Make those Iraqis who are allied with us look like winners. And put the best and brightest of our current force, our future generals, to be their advisors, rather than use ???? for advisors...

This was supposed to be the year of the [troop] cuts. Everybody in the army was saying we'd be down to 100,000 troops by the end of this year. But we're more than halfway through this year and the troop numbers are increasing. It's been bouncing between 127 and 138 for months now. The army has long wanted and planned to cut, but that never seems to happen...

I worry that if we keep messing this up as badly as we have, eventually Iraqis will get sick of it. It's a terrible thing to live in Baghdad day by day. It's just terrifying. I was out in a part of the city. It's a myth that reporters live in the Green Zone, by the way. We had a house in the Red Zone, where I stayed. And one day I was sitting there writing a story. And my bureau chief, a very tough woman "I've been sitting here writing my story, and I've heard two explosions and a couple of hundred rounds of fire." And she said, "Yes. Quiet day." The U.S. military tends not to see that. I later looked at the classified database. They said, "That area's secure, sir." I said, "What do you mean? I've heard lots of stuff out there." They said, "It's secure. It's really green." What I realized is that what the U.S. military looks at is two things. Any threat to American troops, and any killing of Iraqis. What does that leave out? Probably half of what goes on. Rapes. Robberies. Maiming and intimidation. The pervasive sense of no security. So they really don't have an accurate picture of what's happening outside of the Green Zone. Iraqis will sicken of that, I think eventually, and say: "Look. Let's just get somebody to hold this country together, a new Saddam"...

A young, vigorous Saddam who harnesses that oil money, buys a couple of nukes, and decides to knock Tel Aviv, New York, and Washington off in an hour...

One of the limiting factors on the troop numbers in Iraq is the lack of troop numbers on the shelf. As one Pentagon official said to me recently, "We're out of Schlitz." This is a problem not only for Iraq but for the rest of the world. Any adversary elsewhere--North Korea, for example--the Americans are tied down in Iraq, and now is time to act...

You put your figure on the problem. The problem was that the Congress had no incentive. The Republicans didn't want to cross the president of their own party. And the Democrats didn't seem to know how to do it...

There's a narrowness in the way the country went to war, a narrowing out of support that was really striking. The Bush administration--I noticed this pattern in reporting out how we went to war. People inside the government who had information were skeptical and expressed doubts were not invited back to the next meeting. That extended even to Congress. Representative Ike Skelton. A conservative Missouri Democrat. A natural ally of the administration. He sent a letter to President Bush expressing very insightful doubts and concerns about the occupation of Iraq. The response he got from the White House was, "Mr. Congressman, we don't need your vote." Contrast that with FDR, who at the outset of WWII brought in a Republican, Henry Stimson, as his Secretary of War. Usually when you go to war you try to bring the nation together. Instead, this war has been prosecuted in a very partisan manner in which loyal dissent, honest dissent and criticism have been slapped down as unpatriotic...

Lincoln's greatness, I think, was his ability to even humiliate himself to do the right thing. He brought in Stanton, a guy who had humiliated him as a lawyer, kicked him off major cases, because he thought he would be the best man for the job...

One of the things future historians will look back on is the reliance on private-sector contractors who are essentially mercenaries. I think it had a polluting effect on the battlefield. They are well-armed. They are inclined to shoot. They are not subject to military discipline or the chain of command. It's not clear what law they're subject to. And their mission is not to help the U.S. win but to do whatever job they've been assigned. So, for example, if you're a bodyguard for a VIP, your job is to keep that guy alive. You might do that by shooting Iraqis or driving on Baghdad sidewalks--which they do frequently. That will antagonize Iraqis. I remember one colonel saying: We have 100 missions out there in Baghdad every day. If every mission alienates 100 people, that's 10,000 people a day alienated simply through our VIP bodyguard service...

There was a lot of worrying among smart officers in Iraq that we really had six months to get it right, that after that we would have lost the prospect of winning the Iraqis over to us. These are the guys who are arguing, "Let's get out of here. This isn't going to work. We're in a hole, and we're responding by digging harder." I want to emphasize what has really surprised me. As of today I have not had a single negative email response from a single U.S. soldier, and I have had many positive ones. And my favorite is one from a battalion commander who says, "I'm glad finally somebody is saying publicly what we all have been saying privately for the past two years"...

That's step 2 in creating an insurgency. We've talked about step 1: recruiting. Step 2 is arming. One of the classic problems for an insurgency is getting weapons and you have to smuggle them in and you can follow the smuggling networks and find the leadership. No, we didn't want the Iraqi insurgents to have that problem. We didn't have enough soldiers to guard these huge weapons dumps. And we had dissolved the Iraqi military. We left those dumps totally unguarded. Anybody who wanted some weapons could just walk down and get them. We didn't even blow up the dumps because our military had been told they had WMDs. I asked one commander why he didn't blow up the dumps as he passed them. He said, "Sir, we thought there could be chemicals in there, I didn't want to be the guy who sets off the plume of chemical weapons that kills 10,000 Iraqis." So the false information about WMDs was one of the factors that helped create the insurgency. This is how mistakes can bite you again and again and again if you don't admit them...

That's step 3. Financing. One of the classic things they say in counterinsurgency doctrine is close the borders. We didn't have enough troops to close the borders. We didn't seal the borders. And so people could go back and forth. Syria. Baathist leaders. Keep a villa there. Keep your gold there. And you have your financing when you need it...

There was overhead satellite imagery that showed a lot of trucks going up to Syria. And there are still some true believers--flat earthers--who believe that was WMDs being trucked up there. I think the evidence is no. It was valuables, cash, and documents that became an essential part of the insurgency.

Michael Krasny: "An email saying: 'Brad DeLong complains that your reporting during the war did not say that administration officials were saying things that we're not true--let's not say they lied, in particular with respect to Mr. Wolfowitz's testimony before Congress. How do you justify this?" Ricks: "I'm a reporter. One of the parts of the job of being a reporter is to accurately report what people say. It doesn't mean that I agree with it. One of the things in fact you do as a reporter is that sometimes somebody will say something and you say, 'I can't believe he said that. I'm going to write a story about that to get it on the record in the paper'."

There was a small group of people--most notably Wolfowitz--who had long wanted an invasion of Iraq. I think they had despaired of getting a U.S. invasion of Iraq and thought you'd have to do it with Iraqi exiles, perhaps with U.S. airpower. I do think that changed with 9/11. The Bush administration privately realized that it had really been taken by surprise and ignored important information and been taken with its pants down decided that we're not going to be taken by surprise again. But even that doesn't explain Iraq. If you are really focused on the war on terror, why not do what the number 2 man in the U.S. army Kean wanted to do at the time. Put two divisions on the Afghan-Pakistan border and catch Osama bin Laden. I think they talked themselves into it. People say Bush lied. I think it's scarier than that. I think they deceived themselves...

There was no new evidence on WMDs, after Desert Fox in 1998. Yet, despite that lack of new evidence, the Bush administration persuaded itself that Iraq was a threat. What we know now is that there was no threat. Not only was Saddam Hussein not a clear and present danger, he wasn't even the biggest threat in the neighborhood. Iran was a bigger threat, and remains a bigger threat...

There's a lot of talk [about invading Iran]. I don't think it's going to happen. I've been surprised by this administration before. Samuel Goldwyn said never make predictions, especially about the future...

I don't think Iraqi factions want to talk to each other. They want to kill each other. They are killing each other on a daily basis. And--it's not an easy situation. I don't consider myself a supporter of the occupation. I'm just trying to point out that the alternatives aren't real appetizing...

I don't think there was a serious discussion of the consequences of dissolving the Iraqi army. I know a lot of people in the U.S. military opposed it and thought something very different was going to happen. I've seen the official planning. The planning was to retain the Iraqi army and use it for reconstruction. Another hidden problem that I hadn't really focused on until recently was we had been leafleting the Iraqi army from the air for years--telling them not to fight us, that we would take care of them, and once we were into Baghdad we said "Get lost"...

They were about draining the swamp, fundamentally...

You point to the circular problem. You can never have a military solution. It's a political problem. But the military needs to keep alive your politicians. Right now it's an extremely dangerous thing to be an Iraqi politician, whether you are Sunni or Shiite somebody is out to kill you. So you do need to keep them alive. You need to keep the government up and running. It's not clear to me how far the writ of the Iraqi government extends beyond the walls of the Green Zone...

It's something that always worried me stopping at checkpoints in Iraq. You see these guys in uniform. Are they criminals in uniform? Are they militia? Are they corrupt guys who are simply going to whack me? I remember mentioning this once to an American general. He looked at me in shock and said, "You stop at checkpoints?" I said, "Yes, I'm a civilian. I don't have a helicopter to fly over them." This is the key question about the training effort: Are we training Iraqis to support the government, or are we training them to fight in a civil war?...

There is a fundamentally irreconcilable division here between the two sides. Shiites look at Iraq and say "We're a majority. We should be running it." The Sunnis look at the country and say "We're a majority in this region, and if you try to run things we have the power in this region." From such irreconcilable differences democratic politics are rarely born...

It's very difficult to be in the minority [in Congress], especially if you look at today's Democrats, who aren't used to being in the minority and who act as if it is all a bad dream that is going to go away soon. They haven't learned how to be in the minority. It's especially difficult when you don't have the executive branch on your side. The Republicans used to be in the minority in Congress but had the executive. They really are wandering in the wilderness. That said, it is possible to be far more effective. You can conduct independent inquiries. You can put out reports. You can independently gather information. That's essentially what I did with this book. I got 37,000 pages of documents and I read them. I looked at the patterns that emerged. And they were surprising to me, a lot of them. I've covered the military for a long time. You don't cover the military as long as I have--seventeen years--unless you like being around the military. But I went in and was really shocked by some of the things that I found, like the pervasiveness of abuse in 2003 and 2004. And I tried to ask questions about it and figure out what happened. And--you can have a congressional staffer do that, probably far more effectively, because the Pentagon really didn't want to talk to me for my book. But they have to give Congress some information...

I do think the American people need to look in the mirror and say, "How did we get to this situation?" There's a song from a new album by Josh Ritter, young good singer, that I listened to a lot. The refrain to it is, "What is it that we've done?" It's about Iraq. What have we done here? I think we are still grappling with that. You don't see people marching in the streets. But I do think that there is a broad frustration and anxiety with what we are doing out there that runs much broader and deeper than during the Vietnam War when you had a vocal minority but still majority support for the war until very late in the war...

About diplomacy and trying to shoot your way out of problems. One thing that strikes me about Iraq is the opportunity cost. We're spending $1.5 billion a week there. $250 million a day. Think if you took one week of spending in Iraq and you spent it instead on schools in Pakistan that taught tolerance and democracy in a Pakistani context to help educate these kids...

Franks was really proposed by Anthony Zinni, his predecessor at Central Command, surprisingly because Zinni is a very bright man and a good strategist, and I don't think Franks has shown either of those qualities, particularly. Sanchez was an even stranger pick. Here he was, the most junior lieutenant general in the army, who had never commanded anything bigger than a division--say 15,000--and suddenly he's commanding 150,000 people. He's not given enough staff. He's put into a terrible position, and this is a genuinely stirring story about a guy who rose from deep poverty along the Rio Grande valley to become a senior general. But I think nonetheless that he was not equipped for the job...

It's something I've heard a lot in Baghdad: that it was a mistake to go to elections so quickly. As Yeats said, "the center cannot hold, and the worst are full of passion and intensity and the best lack all conviction." The glue of democracy is the middle class: doctors, lawyers, journalists, and so on. They are fleeing Iraq right now. So what you have is a democracy of the hard men, a democracy coming out of the barrel of a gun...

As If... the Keys of the Keyboard Were Being Depressed by an INVISIBLE HAND...

The Economist looks in the window and says "Hi!":

Economists' blogs | The invisible hand on the keyboard | Economist.com: Aug 3rd 2006: From The Economist print edition: Why do economists spend valuable time blogging?

What Mr Hayek could not have known about knowledge was that 70 years later weblogs, or blogs, would be pooling it into a vast, virtual conversation. That economists are typing as prolifically as anyone speaks both to the value of the medium and to the worth they put on their time.

Like millions of others, economists from circles of academia and public policy spend hours each day writing for nothing. The concept seems at odds with the notion of economists as intellectual instruments trained in the maximisation of utility or profit. Yet the demand is there: some of their blogs get thousands of visitors daily, often from people at influential institutions like the IMF and the Federal Reserve. One of the most active "econobloggers" is Brad DeLong, of the University of California, Berkeley, whose site, http://delong.typepad.com... holds forth on a spread of topics from the Treasury to Trotsky.

So why do it? "It's a place in the intellectual influence game," Mr DeLong replies (by e-mail, naturally). For prominent economists, that place can come with a price. Time spent on the internet could otherwise be spent on traditional publishing or collecting consulting fees.... Gary Becker, a Nobel-prize winning economist, and Richard Posner, a federal circuit judge and law professor, began a joint blog in 2004. The pair, colleagues at the University of Chicago, believed that their site, >http://becker-posner-blog.com>, would permit "instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers." The practice began as an educational tool for Greg Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard and a former chairman of George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. His site, http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com, started as a group e-mail sent to students, with commentary on articles and new ideas. But the market for his musings grew beyond the classroom, and a blog was the solution. "It's a natural extension of my day job--to engage in intellectual discourse about economics," Mr Mankiw says....

Top universities once benefited from having clusters of star professors. The study showed that during the 1970s, an economics professor from a random university, outside the top 25 programmes, would double his research productivity by moving to Harvard. The strong relationship between individual output and that of one's colleagues weakened in the 1980s, and vanished by the end of the 1990s.... That anyone with an internet connection can sit in on a virtual lecture from Mr DeLong means that his ideas move freely beyond the boundaries of Berkeley, creating a welfare gain for professors and the public.

Universities can also benefit in this part of the equation. Although communications technology may have made a dent in the productivity edge of elite schools, productivity is hardly the only measure of success for a university. Prominent professors with popular blogs are good publicity, and distance in academia is not dead: the best students will still seek proximity to the best minds. When a top university hires academics, it enhances the reputations of the professors, too. That is likely to make their blogs more popular.

Self-interest lives on, as well. Not all economics bloggers toil entirely for nothing. Mr Mankiw frequently plugs his textbook. Brad Setser, of Roubini Global Economics, an economic-analysis website, is paid to spend two to three hours or so each day blogging as a part of his job. His blog, http://rgemonitor.com/blog/setser, often concentrates on macroeconomic topics, notably China. Each week, 3,000 people read it--more than bought his last book. "I certainly have not found a comparable way to get my ideas out. It allows me to have a voice I would not otherwise get," Mr Setser says. Blogs have enabled economists to turn their microphones into megaphones. In this model, the value of influence is priceless...

The Value of the Dollar Should Be Set by Market Forces, and a Weak Dollar Is Not in America's Interest

I think that Treasury Secretary Paulson's all-purpose dollar statement is just fine. Greg Mankiw worries that it might say too much:

Washington Wire: Can You Translate That Into Chinese?: Noting new Treasury Secretary Paulson's attempt to devise a standing statement on the U.S. dollar, former Bush economics adviser Greg Mankiw says the press corps' attempts to get Treasury secretaries to say something newsworthy about the currency is "one of the more bizarre rituals in Washington."

The Treasury Secretary's goal is to say something that makes him look smart and authoritative without actually saying anything substantive which might cause market volatility," Mankiw, now back at Harvard, writes on his blog.

Mankiw's suggestion: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"

Thomas Jefferson: American Sphinx

Andrew Olmsted is right to highly recommend the Jefferson biography American Sphinx:

Andrew Olmsted dot com: American Sphinx: Thomas Jefferson is probably the most popular of the founding fathers. Washington did not leave a great legacy of documents behind him. Adams was viewed as a poor President. Jefferson wrote some of the best-known words in American history and his administration presided over the largest expansion of the republic in its history.

American Sphinx is not a biography of Jefferson. Instead Ellis has attempted to delve into Jefferson's character by focusing on five shorter periods in Jefferson's life. While readers looking for a more detailed review of Jefferson's life may be disappointed, Ellis's study of Jefferson offers a fascinating look into a man whose life is often obscured by the legend that has formed in the years since 1776. While some of the areas Ellis chooses to focus on are obvious and well-known, such as the events surrounding the Declaration of Independence and the first term of his presidency, others are less traveled ground such as his time in Paris and his short-lived first retirement in the 1790s. The combination of the two makes for fascinating reading, particularly as Ellis has a gift for highlighting facts that, while they may be well known to historians, they can still surprise casual students of history.

Ellis's writing style is tailored to read almost in the style of well-written fiction, drawing the reader in and making the book difficult to put down, an all-too-rare trait in nonfiction. It helps that Jefferson led a fascinating life, of course, and that Ellis is focused closely on some of the more interesting aspects of that life. A poor writer, however, can ruin the most interesting of topics, so Ellis deserves credit for writing that is good enough to be almost invisible, letting the reader enjoy the subject without trying to impress with unnecessary verbiage.... [I]f you are already familiar with Jefferson and are looking for something more in-depth, American Sphinx is a fine choice...

However, I still prefer: E.M. Halliday (2001), Understanding Thomas Jefferson (New York: HarperCollins: 0060197935)

Hoisted from Comments: Dan Tompkins Defends Thomas E. Ricks

He writes:

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Thomas E. Ricks (2006), "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq": I like Brad's work, but I'm disturbed by his comments (and Billmon's) on Ricks. Brad referred to the first half of 2004, so I pulled up all the Ricks pieces from that period and re-read them. Working backward from June 30 to April 1, I've got 20 stories that provide information and perspectives that the administration would not have wanted to hear, about resistance, torture, leadership and other topics. About five more stories would possibly be called "neutral."

I stopped counting at that point, but did note that Ricks' January stories included the need to change tactics and other problems.

On 12/29/03 it was reported that the Pentagon was already unhappy with Ricks: "When George Bush's Pentagon doesn't like what a reporter writes, it attempts a preemptive strike.

"In the case of Tom Ricks, military reporter for the Washington Post, the Pentagon took the attack right to the heart of the enemy. Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita first sent a letter of complaint to the Post; then he met with the paper's top editors to press his points.

"Ricks is one of the most senior defense reporters in the country. He covered military affairs for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years and has been doing the same for the Post since 1999. He's written two books about the military, one about the Marines and a novel about the US intervention in Afghanistan, published four months before the United States sent in troops."

http://www.washingtonian.com/buzz/2003/031229.html

The evidence seems to be he was doing a pretty good job.

Dan Tompkins

Dan looks at the gap between what the White House wanted printed and what Ricks wrote in 2004, and concludes that Ricks "was doing a pretty good job." I look at the gap between what Ricks writes in Fiasco and what Ricks wrote in 2004, and conclude that White House pressure did a pretty good job of neutering Ricks: that he (and his bosses) knuckled under substantially.

The harder question and the better defense--but not one that any defender of Ricks has advanced publicly--is "If he'd written what he knew was going on, they'd have pulled his press pass. Ricks can't function without his press pass."

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

What Should Happen When Fidel Castro Dies?

What should happen when Fidel Castro dies?

How about having Kofi Annan call upon King Juan Carlos to go to Havana and, with the help of the social-democratic government of Spain, preside over elections for a constituent assembly, ratification of the new Cuban constitution, and the first round of real elections?

Thomas E. Ricks (2006), "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq"

I have been unable to write my review of Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks (2006), Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin). The book is indeed very good: well-written, incisive, thoughtful, focusing on key moments and decisions while providing a remarkably good overview of the big picture.

But I find I cannot write a review of it.

So here is (the bulk of) Michiko Kakutani's review:

Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks - The New York Times - New York Times: From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong. By MICHIKO KAKUTANI The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: “Fiasco.” That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes.... [H]e serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive.... “Fiasco” is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States came to go to war in Iraq, how a bungled occupation fed a ballooning insurgency and how these events will affect the future of the American military. Though other books have depicted aspects of the Iraq war in more intimate and harrowing detail, though other books have broken more news about aspects of the war, this volume gives the reader a lucid, tough-minded overview of this tragic enterprise that stands apart from earlier assessments in terms of simple coherence and scope.

“President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.... The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information — about weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda’s terrorism — and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.”...

An after-action review from the Third Infantry Division underscores the Pentagon’s paucity of postwar planning, stating that “there was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational.” And an end-of-tour report by a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office’s work as “pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck.”...

“Fiasco” does not possess the dramatic combat details of “Cobra II”... but... it goes on to chronicle America’s flailing efforts to contain a metastasizing insurgency over the next three years.

Mr. Ricks argues that the invasion of Iraq “was based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history.”... The result of going in with too few troops and no larger strategic plan, he says, was “that the U.S. effort resembled a banana republic coup d’état more than a full-scale war plan.”... This was partly a byproduct of the Pollyannaish optimism of hawks like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.... Mr. Rumsfeld’s stubborn reluctance to acknowledging a growing insurgency and his resistance to making adjustments, Mr. Ricks says, contributed further to the military’s problems on the ground....

Among the crucial post-invasion missteps made by the Bush administration, he suggests, were the decision, after the fall of Baghdad, not to send two additional divisions of troops immediately, which might have helped keep the lid on the insurgency, and the orders issued by the head of the American occupation, L. Paul Bremer III, disbanding the old Iraqi army....

Not only had the war “stressed the U.S. Army to the breaking point,” a study published by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute declared, but it had also turned out to be “an unnecessary preventive war of choice” that “created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland” against further attacks from Al Qaeda. The war “was not integral” to the global war on terrorism, the report concluded, but was a costly “detour from it.”

I have been unable to write a review because I keep flipping back and forth between the book Fiasco and the clips--the articles that Tom Ricks wrote for the Washington Post. The book tells a particular story--here are selected paragraph topic sentences and phrases from Tom Ricks's Fiasco, chapter 15, "The Surprise," on spring 2004:

[I]t was clear that the U.S. effort, both in pacification and reconstruction, was faltering. But it wouldn't be until spring [2004] that it would become clear just how troubled it was...
U.S. forces learned but then went home, while the enemy learned and... fought better the next time...
Nor had many commanders grasped the nature of the war...
As... more than one hundred thousand troops departed, there was a worrisome falloff in the quality of the intelligence gathered.... "We changed out every unit in that country, so you had the natural dip in situational awareness"...
[T]he inaccurate U.S. assessment of the situation wasn't attributable solely to the [troop] rotation. The 82nd Airborne had been operating in Al Anbar province for six months when its commander declared the insurgency all but dead there...
[T]he CPS and the U.S. military were too busy fighting each other to notice the gathering storm...
"We wondered why"... [General] Sanchez wasn't simply replaced...
"By early '04, the president was quite aware of Bremer's flaws," said a former administration official. "But he couldn't let him go in an election year"...
The Green Zone had security, it had services, it had the things Iraqis wanted. "A lot of people had no electricity but could look across the river and see the CPA all lit up at night. And that was the way we communicated"...
By early 2004, "we began to smell like losers" in Iraq... "because we can't deliver on personal security for Iraqis. There were robberies, kidnappings, carjackings. At that point, the military brass and the CPA were still pretty clueless"...
"When Bremer would walk in... I'd just look at him like he was a piece of shit, and that's how I felt about him"...
"The development of the security forces... is a failure that is difficult to comprehend. Ten months into the operation there is not a single properly trained and equipped Iraqi security officer in the entire al Anbar province"...
The training program had been handled in a way that, like so manyother early policy decisions in Iraq, ignored the lessons of history...
"[T]he SecDef told us, 'These precious Special Forces have been busy... don't need to be wasting time training Iraqis."... It was a decision that would come back to haunt Bremer... when it became clear that Iraqi forces lacked leaders... whom they were willing to follow into battle"...
Marine Col. T.X. Hammes.... The numbers being released by the Bush administration, he wrote in his diary that winter, were a "fantasy"...

But go back to clips, and you discover that Tom Ricks was writing "he said, she said" articles in the first six months of 2004. Witness this one, with none of the context necessary to show his readers that Wolfowitz is a fool living in an ideological fantasy land:

Wolfowitz Says Iraq Stay Could Last Years. The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.. Author: Thomas E. Ricks. Date: Jun 23, 2004. Start Page: A.16. Section: A SECTION. Document Types: News. Text Word Count: 628

The U.S. military could remain in Iraq for years, but with the passage of time it should be able to step back into more of a supporting role for Iraqi security forces, the Pentagon's number two official said yesterday in a hearing notable for sharp partisan exchanges.

"I think it's entirely possible" that U.S. troops could be stationed in Iraq for years, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee. But, he added, as the Iraqi army and new national guard develop, "we will be able to let them be in the front lines and us be in a supporting position."

Wolfowitz said it is possible that U.S. troops could be used to enforce Iraqi martial law after the partial transfer of power a week from now. Ayad Alawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, has said martial law is possible to crack down on insurgents.

Helping impose martial law, Wolfowitz said, "might actually be something that we might mutually agree was necessary to bring order in a particularly difficult place."

But much of the hearing was devoted to a series of unusually pointed discussions between Wolfowitz and Rep. Ike Skelton, a centrist Missourian who is the committee's senior Democrat.

Skelton told Wolfowitz he senses two Iraqs: "One is the optimistic Iraq that you describe, and the other Iraq is the one that I see every morning, with the violence, the deaths of soldiers and Marines." He added, with some emotion: "I must tell you, it breaks my heart a little bit more every day."

Skelton also was dismissive of White House comments about "staying the course" in Iraq. "I don't think anyone here questions your resolve or questions the resolve of the president to succeed in Iraq," he said. "But there's a difference between the resolve on the one hand and competence on the other." He said he now fears that the United States is descending into "a security quagmire" in Iraq.

The two men went back and forth several times.

"From your description, Mr. Secretary, I don't see an end in sight," Skelton said. "We're stuck."

"We're not stuck, Mr. Skelton," Wolfowitz replied. He said that the U.S. strategy in Iraq clearly is to develop Iraqi forces that can take over security from U.S. and allied troops.

At another point, Skelton said he did not see a plan to bring about success in Iraq. He added, "We broke it -- we must do our best to fix it."

Wolfowitz shot back, "We didn't break Iraq. Saddam Hussein broke Iraq." The Pentagon official, just back from a four-day visit to Iraq, said, "It is going to be a big job to repair it, but I feel much more confident than before this trip, after spending many hours with the new prime minister and members of his government, that there is an Iraqi team ready to take charge on July 1st and committed to fixing that damage."

As the hearing went on, Wolfowitz sought to temper his initial presentation. "Maybe it's optimistic compared to the total gloom and doom that one otherwise hears, but I in no way mean to minimize the security problem," he said. "I agree with you, it is the obstacle to all the other progress that has been made." He said he is worried especially about the next six months, as insurgents seek to derail the Iraqi elections being planned for January 2005.

Wolfowitz also said the media are part of the problem in Iraq. "Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors," he said.

Reporters in Iraq recently have restricted their movements, sometimes at the recommendation of U.S. officials, because of widespread violence.

Tom Ricks could have done any of a huge number of things to tell the Washington Post's readers that Wolfowitz was--as Ricks knew he was--either lying through his teeth or the most deluded man north of the Picketwire. A brief mention of at least one of the many episodes from Wolfowitz's history--"Team B" in the late 1970s, the strange "Wolfowitz Memorandum" of 1992, Wolfowitz's advocacy in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that the U.S. strike Iraq first, Wolfowitz's role in pushing the idea that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11, Wolfowitz's role in pushing the idea that Saddam Hussein was a near-imminent threat to the United States, Wolfowitz's role in pushing the number of troops in the invasion of Iraq far below what the military planners desired, Wolfowitz's role in pushing the idea that allies who could provide lots of Arabic-speaking military police were not needed--would have made a much better, a much fairer, a much more accurate story.

Why, Tom, why? Why in the name of the Holy One couldn't you have told us what you knew was going on back in 2003 or 2004? What did you think you were doing? Why keep your real views of Wolfowitz and Bremer and Odierno and company secret, so that they show up two and a half years late and many, many brave men and women's lives short?


In this context, I think, we should note that twelve days before his "he said, she said" Wolfowitz vs. Skelton piece, on June 11, 2004, Ricks wrote a very different kind of story for the Washington Post:

washingtonpost.com: Sacrifice In the In-Box: By Thomas E. Ricks. Friday, June 11, 2004; Page A25.

The death notices from Iraq come across my computer screen by e-mail and always follow the same format. Each states the name of the dead soldier and his or her rank, age and hometown, as in: "Pfc. Melissa J. Hobart, 22, of Ladson, S.C." It also identifies the unit, and so tells you whether this was an active-duty soldier or a part-time reservist or a National Guard member.

As a military reporter for The Post, I get copies of all of them. On good days there are none, or one. On some bad days, such as this past Monday, there are several.

If the soldier was in the Army, there also is usually a sentence giving a bare-bones account of the means of death -- mortar attack, roadside bomb, small-arms fire or vehicle accident account for most. June 2: "Capt. Robert C. Scheetz Jr., 31, of Dothan, Ala., died May 30 in Musayyib, Iraq, when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device" -- the U.S. military term for a roadside bomb, frequently made with an old artillery shell and a remote detonator. The Marine Corps notices are shorter, because they don't disclose the cause of death, on the grounds that -- as those news releases sometimes state -- such information could aid the foe in Iraq.

In other conflicts I've covered -- Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti -- the death notices were fewer or came in bursts and stopped after a few weeks or months. Now the notices have gone on for more than a year, providing a continual but uneven drumbeat.

There have been lots lately. I read them all. Even on the busiest of days, when I am on deadline writing an article, I pause when an e-mail pops up on my screen with the subject line "DoD Identifies Army Casualty."

I do this partly for my job, tracking the casualties to maintain a sense of where the fighting is hot. I also look to see if the person was from Virginia, Maryland or the District, so I can let The Post's Metro section know if it needs to do a story.

But I read them as much for personal reasons. In 15 years of covering the military, I've interviewed thousands of soldiers. So, with that feeling of being suspended at the top of a roller coaster just before it plummets, I look to see if I knew the soldier or his unit, especially from my time knocking around Iraq with the 1st Armored Division, the 1st Infantry Division and other outfits.

I keep my fingers crossed: So far, no one I've interviewed during several "embedded" reporting trips has appeared in the KIA notices. But there frequently are losses from brigades and battalions I've spent time with in Baghdad, Baqubah and Baiji and outside Najaf.

I also do it because I feel I owe it to each soldier to pause and read this short notice of his or her passing. It isn't much to ask.

So often the notices are about young men from small American towns I've never heard of dying in small Iraqi towns I've never heard of. May 26: "Pfc. Owen D. Witt, 20, of Sand Springs, Mont., died May 24 in Ad Dawr, Iraq, when his armored high-mobility-multipurpose-wheeled vehicle rolled over." Where is Sand Springs, Mont., I wondered. I couldn't find it in a road atlas.

Sometimes the names just strike me. "Lance Cpl. Elias Torrez III, 21, of Veribest, Texas." I think of a father and grandfather bearing the same name, and the grim news they've just received.

"Spc. Beau R. Beaulieu, 20, of Lisbon, Maine, died May 24 in Taji, Iraq, during a mortar attack on Camp Cooke." I would have liked to have met him, I thought.

Together, the notices amount to a mosaic of sacrifice, showing what parts of America have sons and daughters dying in Iraq. May 21: "Sergeant First Class Troy L. Miranda, 44, of DeQueen, Ark." They remind me that what goes on in Iraq isn't just a matter of President Bush's political future, or the billion dollars being spent there every week by the U.S. military, or the role of the United States in the world. It also is about the nearly unbearable price paid almost every day by some American family.

They aren't all from small towns, of course. There are Hispanics from big cities -- "Lance Cpl. Benjamin R. Gonzalez, 23, of Los Angeles, Calif., died May 29 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq." There have been more of these since the Marines went back into Iraq this spring -- the Corps seems to attract a lot of Hispanics from the coasts and from the Southwest, such as "Staff Sgt. Jorge A. Molina-Bautista, 37, of Rialto, Calif." and "1st Lt. Oscar Jimenez, 34, of San Diego, Calif."

Also, with more front-line units from the National Guard serving in Iraq, there lately have been more aging sergeants, fathers and grandfathers, such as "Command Sgt. Maj. Edward C. Barnhill, 50, of Shreveport, La."; "Sgt. Frank T. Carvill, 51, of Carlstadt, N.J."; and "Staff Sgt. William D. Chaney, 59, of Schaumburg, Ill."

The Guard units, based as they are in communities, also bring painful clusters of casualties. This was the notice that appeared on my screen at 6:12 p.m. Monday:

"Assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, headquartered in Cottage Grove, Ore.:

1st Lt. Erik S. McCrae, 25, of Portland, Ore.

Sgt. Justin L. Eyerly, 23, of Salem, Ore.

Spc. Justin W. Linden, 22, of Portland, Ore."

They are all losses, but the youngest ones haunt me most -- those Justins, Dustins, Brandons, Shawns, Kyles, Corys and Codys barely out of their teens, or sometimes still in them.

"Pfc. Cody S. Calavan, 19, of Lake Stevens, Wash., died May 29 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq." He was younger than my own son, I think -- born when Ronald Reagan was president, and probably still in kindergarten during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And now he is dead somewhere in western Iraq.

I hope history finds their sacrifices worth it.

Why, Tom, why? Why in the name of the Holy One couldn't you have told us what you knew was going on back in 2003 or 2004? What did you think you were doing? Why keep your real views of Wolfowitz and Bremer and Odierno and company secret, so that they show up two and a half years late and many, many brave men and women's lives short?

Bruce Bartlett vs. the Bush Smear Machine

The smear machine takes aim at Bruce Bartlett. Not a single substantive word contradicting Bartlett's lament at the hideous waste of opportunity that is the apparent collapse of Doha and free trade.

What is the charge? Read:

Digital Rules By Rich Karlgaard: Did Bush Blow Free Trade? And will the global economy suffer catastrophic consequences as a result? Bruce Bartlett thinks so.... Should we believe him.... A once-fine thinker who has gone off the rails.... Bartlett now occupies an intellectual celebrity's position--the Reagan supporter turned Bush scold--this position guarantees a spot on The New York Times editorial page just about anytime Bartlett wants it.

Bartlett may be correct in saying Bush blew Doha and put global free trade in jeopardy. But remember that Bartlett has books to sell and speeches to give and NYT columns to write--all with the purpose of bashing Bush...

So we see: Not a single criticism of Bartlett's arguments, only an accusation that Bartlett is mercenary.

At least they aren't calling him shrill...

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Daniel Gross says that those of us who were heartened by new Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's speech yesterday have drunk the koolaid and set the bar way too low:

Daniel Gross: July 30, 2006 - August 05, 2006 Archives: HANK AT BAT: So Henry Paulson gave his first major speech as Treasury Secretary yesterday. It was generally hailed as a bracingly realistic and honest presentation of the challenges facing the U.S. economy. Writing in the New York Times, Steven Weisman led with the apparently astonishing news that the Treasury Secretary recognizes that median wages haven't been rising....

Of course, praising the Treasury Secretary for noticing that wages haven't grown is a little like praising the Energy Secretary for noting that oil prices have risen. It's only noteworthy because Paulson's predecessor and his colleagues in the White House generally refused to notice the facts nestled in the data published by the government. I suppose this is progress...