Thursday, July 17, 2008
Iran: Diplomacy over War: More Loosening Steps- clearly a different atmospheric. Some are skeptical, and the British press has been more optimistic than elsewhere. But a pre-embassy being staffed… that’s a notable step, beyond the limited function that the U.S. representative to talks was to assume.
The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.
The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section -- a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. . . .
The creation of a US interest section would see diplomats stationed in Tehran for the first time since the hostage crisis that began when hundreds of students, as part of the Iranian revolution that led to fall of the Shah, stormed the US embassy in 1979 and held the occupants until 1981." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/usa.iran
After years of escalating tensions and bloodshed, the talk in the Middle East is suddenly about talking. The shift is still relatively subtle, but hints of a new approach in the waning months of the Bush administration are fueling hopes of at least short-term stability for the first time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Much is happening, adding up not to any great diplomatic breakthrough, but to a distinct change in direction. Syria is being welcomed out of isolation by Europe and is holding indirect talks with Israel. Lebanon has formed a new government. Israel has cut deals with Hamas (a cease-fire) and Hezbollah (a prisoner exchange).
On Wednesday, the United States agreed to send a high-ranking diplomat to attend talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and was considering establishing a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis.
“The overall picture is moving in the direction of cooling the political atmosphere,” said Muhammad al-Rumaihi, a former government adviser in Kuwait and the editor of Awan, an independent daily newspaper there. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Condi’s Victory?
Condoleezza Rice was George Bush's handmaiden for the war in Iraq but she is now emerging as the best hope for avoiding a military conflict between the United States and Iran.
The Secretary of State, who is one of the few people with the President's ear, has shown the door to Vice-President Dick Cheney's cabal of war-hungry advisers. Ms Rice was able to declare yesterday that the administration's decision to break with past policy proves that there is international unity in opposing Iran's nuclear programme. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/condis-coup-how-the-neocons-lost-the-argument-over-iran-870861.html
Torture: Terror and the VP We've been so reluctant to confirm that Cheney has run the show- from the outset. Jane Mayer’s piece adds another voice to the consensus.
The big argument being made by the vice president, his lawyer, David Addington, and the Justice Department was that the commander-and-chief needed almost unfettered powers to win the war on terror. And yet when you really examine the record, it's frequently not the president who's making many of these calls; it's the vice president," she said.
The president, it's funny, I asked a lot of questions about him when I was doing interviews, and he keeps disappearing from the frame of the picture. He is described as distracted by one of the people who briefed him. Colin Powell tells a friend who I interviewed he sees the president not as being stupid but as being too easily manipulated by Cheney, who knew how to push him around." http://www.propublica.org/article/talking-with-jane-mayer-715/
Feith before Congress: Still another appearance by an Administration official...and barely a glove landed.
Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that he was an ardent proponent of the Geneva Conventions, even though he approved of interrogation policies that no international lawyer has ever argued complies with Geneva protections. These 'enhanced interrogation techniques' included 20-hour questioning sessions; the physical contortion regimen known as 'stress positions'; the use of dogs for interrogations; removing a detainee's clothing, and exploiting detainees' fears. He claimed that official administration policy was that detainees should never be tortured. . . .
The panel chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), expressed skepticism that acts like stripping a detainee's clothing off could ever fail to qualify as inhumane. 'I imagine one could apply these things in an inhumane fashion,' Feith replied. 'Removal of clothing" is different from "naked." . . . It could be done in a humane way.”
Feith conceded that detainees in U.S. custody had been tortured and, in some cases, murdered, but denied that there was any connection between that behavior and official policy. “Some people do bad things,” he said. http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/former-defense
Dahlia Lithwick comments:
Feith makes short work of the committee with the standard-issue Bush administration ploy of blaming others. He is quick to say it was 'lawyers in charge' who ultimately opposed applying Common Article 3 at Gitmo. He goes to great lengths to emphasize that the request for harsher interrogation techniques came up from the U.S. Southern Command and not from the top down. He testifies that he relied on Jim Haynes--Rumsfeld's general counsel--for legal conclusions because he was just a 'policy official.' http://www.slate.com/id/2195383/
Impeachment (sort of) A hearing to lay out the misdeeds:
Rep. Dennis Kucinich's single impeachment article will get a committee hearing -- but not on removing President Bush from office.
The House on Tuesday voted 238-180 to send his article of impeachment -- for Bush's reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq -- to the Judiciary Committee, which buried Kucinich's previous effort.
This time, the panel will open hearings. But House Democratic leaders emphatically said the proceedings will not be about Bush's impeachment, a first step in the Constitution's process of a removing a president from office.
Instead, the panel will conduct an election-year review -- possibly televised -- of anything Democrats consider to be Bush's abuse of power. Kucinich, D-Ohio, is likely to testify. But so will several scholars and administration critics, Democrats said. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iE21FOVAfMfEbAE5LDwiYm8fGh4QD91UJD6O1
Economy: Will anyone- including Obama- declare this to be ‘the failure of Reaganonomics? Bush gets some blame, speculators get a share, but mainstream folk avoid broaching that this almost thirty year exaltation of finance, the free market, deregulation, privatization?
Merrill Lynch reported a $4.65 billion loss during its second quarter yesterday, surpassing the expectations of the most pessimistic analysts and underscoring the continued toll of the subprime mortgage meltdown even as economists and policymakers turn their attention to other economic threats such as inflation.
It is the fourth consecutive quarter in the red for Merrill, the nation's third-largest investment bank, and the firm has now piled up $19 billion in losses over the past year because of the credit crisis and its exposure to the troubled mortgage industry.
Merrill's losses continue despite upbeat comments earlier this year by chief executive John Thain, who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal in January as saying that the credit crisis was "for the most part behind us." In April, after Merrill reported a $2 billion loss in the first quarter, Thain maintained that optimism, saying the firm had sufficient capital for "the foreseeable future" and would not have to raise more money from the equity markets. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071700083_pf.html
CAMPAIGN: Obama’s still raising the big bucks, heading overseas accompanied by network anchors and much other media; McCain whines: it is hard, as Clinton found out last winter, to no longer be ‘teacher’s’ pet, though they continue to protect him by not reporting on the his changed positions (taxes, immigration, Afghanistan, torture, etc.) or innumerable flubs (below)
The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.
But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.
"It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered," said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. "That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week." http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/17/america/17anchors.php
Social Security and McCain: The media avoid: Realizing that their advantage with the press still hasn’t adequately paid off, the McCain campaign is complaining more about unequal treatment. Yet, the candidate’s ongoing flubs, demonstrations of ignorance, misplaced humor all get short shrift. I thought his trashing of Social Security was especially over the top, surpassing Bush for political stupidity. McCain appears to believe that the very design of Social Security is the problem. Absolutely stunning. As I’ve noted, the Obama campaign should run his ‘Social Security is a disgrace’ comment on a loop, especially in Florida, until November 4.
Yet, the media have all but ignored it, favoring instead the Jesse Jackson neutering comment.
Eric Boehlert:
By contrast, McCain said at a campaign appearance in Denver on July 7 that the Social Security system as structured in America, in which younger people pay taxes to support the benefits of retirees, is an "absolute disgrace" -- but his proclamation was mostly passed over as being irrelevant. The disconnect between the coverage was astounding. As of Sunday morning, only 17 major metropolitan newspapers in America had reported on McCain's "disgraceful" remark, in a total of 20 articles and columns, according to search of Nexis.
By contrast, more than 50 major U.S. dailies published a total of 126 articles and columns about the Jackson story. Several influential newspapers went back to the story ad nauseam. Combined, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Times published 39 different articles and columns that referenced the Jackson-Obama controversy.
By contrast, the combined number of stories and columns those three newspapers published that made reference to the McCain "disgrace" controversy? One.
On television, the disparity was even more striking. Again, as ofhttp://mediamatters.org/columns/200807150002
Humor:
Jay Leno: Reflecting a current media frame…
"The latest polls show Barack Obama and John McCain are dead even. Dead even. See, what happened was, Obama moved to the right and McCain moved to the left and they became the same person." http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/11b30d9dc98c6127
Stephen Colbert:
“For far too long the president has been forced to do a terrible job of pretending to care what people think of him. But not anymore, folks," These last 180 days this dog is going to go out barking. It is going to be so sweet when he pops by the World Court in the Hague and screams: 'Adios, from waterboard central! Then he can drop by the stock exchange, ring the bell, and scream: 'Goodbye from the world's weakest currency!' And then he can head over to Iraq, and as he's leaving, shout, 'I break it, you bought it! And, finally he can swing by the Lower 9th ward in New Orleans…oh, am I kdding? He’ll never go there again…" http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=176342
-R
