Prairie Weather

Before Bush and Rove

...Friends of the president from Texas were "shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated, 'I am the president!' He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of 'our country's destiny.'"

Contrast that quote from Think Progress via Tim Grieve at Salon with this passage from Scott Horton today, a paean to a George Will column.

Today in the Washington Post, Will offers one of his best columns in recent memory. Go pull it out. He writes:

Conservatism embraces President Kennedy’s exhortation to “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” and adds: You serve your country by embracing a spacious and expanding sphere of life for which your country is not responsible...

This gave me pause – and that ever-so-conservative sense of loss. Yes, George Will, this is what American conservatism used to be. And your quotation of Kennedy reminds us of the proximity to our traditional American liberalism. Two philosophies, both borne of the spirit of Edmund Burke. And then that sense of loss. That was before George Bush and Karl Rove arrived on the scene. Will things ever be the same again?

Plame takes CIA to court, and other stories

Federal court in New York.

Libby's judge rules Libby support letters be made public.  Libby's lawyer, who had solicited letters of support, opposed releasing the letters.  He figured bloggers and the media would "discuss, even mock" the letters.

The anonymous Republican senator blocking the open government measure turns out to be Jon Kyl.  He's afraid for the Justice Department...

"There’s also his relationship with other organizations and other countries. It’s complicated and it’s murky."

Marianne Pearl is talking about Omar Sheikh, the man convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl.  In an interview with Foreign Policy about her reaction to the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt film based on her book,  Pearl has this to say:

Foreign Policy: It was revealed earlier this year that [9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to murdering your husband. In fact, it was first revealed in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography.

MP: I’ve always known that. I’ve never had any doubt about that, and I didn’t find that out that moment. It’s something some people knew for a long time. I wrote a statement [when the confession was revealed], but in terms of the investigation, it’s not something new. Honestly, it was an opportunistic time to reveal it. I didn’t see the point in quoting him. What’s the point? We don’t do that with other terrorists. I felt like it wasn’t right.

FP: Omar Sheikh, a British-born terrorist, has been sentenced to death for the murder of your husband in Pakistan. How do you think Mohammed’s confession affects that case and his sentence?

MP: Everything affects that case. He’s been up for appeal some ridiculous number, like 40 times now, and it’s been rejected. Of course, if you reveal something like [Mohammed’s confession], it might endanger a sentence when someone is on appeal. Nothing is done by chance. I think that people who make that kind of decision know this, or you would hope so. But the difficulty is very clear. It would be very difficult to just hang Sheikh, and everyone knows that.

FP: Is that because of Sheikh’s alleged ties to ISI [the Pakistani intelligence agency]?

MP: It’s a complicated thing, and I don’t know if I can talk about them publicly right now. Everything is related. Of course, there’s his relationship with the ISI, but there’s also his relationship with other organizations and other countries. It’s complicated and it’s murky.

Something this blogger keeps coming back to -- speaking of "complicated and murky" -- is the US relationship with Pakistan -- our intelligence agencies' relationship with ISI, Pakistani intelligence. 

"Other organizations and other countries"?   Given the murk and complications generated by the Bush administration, it may take years to untangle just how complicit we have been in everything from 9/11 to Pearl's brutal murder and any number of atrocities which have been neatly filed away in the "terrorists" file. 

Sooner or later we may well be saying "We have seen the terrorists, and they are us."

Please, god, I know you don't exist, but would you get me the new Miuro?

A Japanese robot twists and rolls to music from an iPod in an intricate dance based on complex mathematics, a technology developers say will enable robots to move about spontaneously instead of following preprogrammed motions.

Tokyo-based venture ZMP Inc.'s 14-inch long Miuro robot -- which looks like a white ball wedged between two halves of an egg -- wheels about in time with music from the iPod player that locks into the machine.

At a demonstration in Tokyo on Thursday, the 11-pound Miuro pivoted about on a stage in time to beats of a pop music track played through its speakers. The dance wasn't preprogrammed, but generated by the robot itself....

Unlike older Miuros, which hit stores last August, the prototype is fitted with software based on what scientists call chaotic itinerancy...  Other improvements will let users set the Miuro like an alarm clock so it wheels into the bedroom and blasts music at a certain time.

Okay.  We should worry about robots capable of spontaneous movement.  For example, I don't want a robot deciding when I'm supposed to get up in the a.m.  I do not want a chaotic itinerant in my bedroom.  But it would be nice to have a critter in the house that'll break into a little dance now and then. 

I don't know how we're going to explain it in terms of evolution, though...

Putin and Poppy

Although the president's aides do not expect to resolve the stickiest issues dividing the two sides during the visit to the Bush family retreat on the rocky Maine coast July 1-2, they hope the relaxed setting will restore U.S.-Russian relations to a more constructive footing. In more than six years as president, Bush has never asked any foreign leader to join him at his parents' seaside home until now, and aides hope Putin will be impressed with the show of intimacy.

So!  Russian president Vladimir Putin will be spending a July weekend at Kennebunkport.

Michael A. McFaul, a scholar at Stanford University, said U.S.-Russian relations have reached the lowest point in 20 years. Administration officials "are apoplectic" and "it feels to them like a crisis," McFaul said. A year ago, administration officials disagreed about how to interpret Russia; today, the debate is over. But McFaul added: "Nobody has a good idea of what is to be done."

It's almost unheard of -- Junior inviting Putin to join him during a stay at his parents' place in Kennebunkport.

What the Washington Post doesn't say, but what occurs to a lot of us is that our president will be getting some help.  Bush, who has joined with Putin in an effort to destroy all vestiges of a decent relationship between the US and Russia, may not intend to look deep into Putin's soul this time.  Instead, he may be treating Putin to some face time with a seasoned internationalist, George H.W. Bush. 

It won't be the first time the former president moves to save America from his son.  The Iraq Study Group, a Bush Sr. administration group, is beginning to affect Bush Jr.'s Iraq policy.

The terrorism excuse

The current challenge is not a struggle against a totalitarian foe.

It is not, as Bush has said, "the ideological struggle of our time."

It is not an ideological war.

It is not a battle against an enemy called "Islamofascism" -- a confected category that conflates Bush's idea of war not only with the Cold War but also with World War II.

Most important, it is not a struggle for national survival against an existential threat. Jihadism and its use of terror are, of course, a dangerous threat, but they do not, and cannot, destroy the United States as the Soviet Union could do.

I live on a narrow, winding rural road 10 miles from our county seat.  The county was experiencing a rash of mailbox vandalism some time back (kids, shotguns), so I signed up for a post office box.  The time to pay the annual renewal has come and the PO is suddenly demanding two forms of ID and a signed form fully filled out with all personal particulars in addition to a fat check.  The  people at the PO are apologetic.  It's a small town. We all know each other.  The demand for personal information is irritating.

Last week I went to a meeting at a Democratic Congressman's office.  Some people -- "experts" and interested parties involved in the meeting were not introduced.  Names and titles were important -- we all wanted to know who we were dealing with.  (The unknowns appeared to be representatives of the Department of  Homeland Security and contractors doing business with that agency.) 

Courtesy is what keeps me from naming the Democratic member of Congress who appears to be assisting the administration by hiding something.  For now, anyway, while there's still a chance that the information will finally be given.

The Congressman's staff are eager to collect my personal information.  When I called the representative's office, I'm asked (not kidding) for my birthdate and other personal particulars.  I'm asked why I'm asking for the information.  But they do not provide it.

(All of this is minor compared to what some go through if they want to fly or, heaven forbid, apply for flying lessons.)

America is no longer just a scary country from the point of view of, say, Europeans or Middle Easterners.  It has become scary to all of us.  It may be a low-grade scariness of the kind I'm experiencing, coming from the realization that the government is demanding much more information from us than it used to and -- even worse -- it is withholding public information from us at an increasing rate.  But it's not the grinding anxiety of an American family with, say, an Egyptian or Lebanese or Jordanian name.

As Sidney Blumenthal, quoted above, writes today, we are faced with "the distortion, corruption and subversion of American law and the U.S. legal system, from the abrogation of the Geneva Convention against torture to the suspension of habeas corpus. The corruption is an aspect of a general hostility to and undermining of not only the law but also our senior military, our intelligence community, the Foreign Service, and international institutions including the United Nations and the World Bank." 

Out here where I am, only the mildest tremors of the "national security" earthquake are being felt.   But we're feeling undermined, too.  The tremors of that quake are being felt in familiar situations like a Congressman's local office, and at our friendly post office.  I'm not feeling reassured about my security, are you?