The Commentariat -- May 4
Off Times Square is open for comments on Dowd's & Friedman's columns. I've posted my comments. -- CW
... Maureen Dowd concentrates on "the president’s studied cool and unreadable mien" under pressure, but ends by saying we must do something about Pakistan, where elements of the leadership almost certainly were complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden. Yeah? What? ...
... Tom Friedman, in a fairly coherent essay, attempts to show why Osama bin Laden intially succeeded but ultimately failed to capture the hearts & minds of the Arab world. ...
... Obama Ruins Republican Attack Line. New York Times Editors: "... just as releasing a birth certificate marginalized one falsehood, Mr. Obama’s risky and audacious decision to attack the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan has demolished the notion that he cannot make tough decisions or cares primarily about the nation’s image abroad." Read the whole editorial. It's a good summary of various attempts to diminish Obama, all centered on the "he's not one of us" theme. ...
... Last week in a post titled "Liberalism's Bumper Sticker Problem," Jonathan Chait of The New Republic highlighted a segment of Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article (which I've previously linked & is here) on President Obama's foreign policy in which Lizza cited Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes saying, "If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it’s ‘Wind down these two wars, reëstablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.’ ” Chait remarked, "I'm not sure Rhodes understands what bumper stickers look like," & posted the graphic to the left. ...
... Now, Joshua Green of The Atlantic remarks that "... what's most relevant here is ... that Obama now has a simple rejoinder to the crude attacks on his foreign policy."
We never had direct evidence that he in fact had ever been there or was located there. The reality was that we could have gone in there and not found bin Laden at all. -- Leon Panetta, CIA Director ...
... Greg Miller & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "... additional details surfaced Tuesday that depict a mission launched amid far greater political and operational uncertainty than had been revealed." ...
... Jim Lehrer of PBS "News Hour" interviews Leon Panetta:, Unlike some of the interviews of Panetta on the major networks, this one is truly riveting:
... Dana Bash of CNN: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told House members Tuesday that any way you look at it, Pakistan's role in Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was troubling. According to two sources in a closed door briefing, Panetta told lawmakers 'either they were involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be.'" ...
... Massimo Calabresi of Time: "... CIA chief Leon Panetta tells Time that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets."
Jonathan Allen of Politico: "Osama bin Laden had cash totaling 500 Euros and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed — sure signs that he was prepared to flee his compound at a moment’s notice — top U.S. intelligence officials told members of Congress at a classified briefing in the Capitol Tuesday. A White House spokesman said he would not comment on the matter."
... Steven Myers & Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "Tensions between the American and Pakistani governments intensified sharply on Tuesday as senior Obama administration officials demanded answers to how managed to hide in , and the Pakistani government issued a defiant statement calling the raid that killed the leader 'an unauthorized unilateral action.'” ...
... AND Karen DeYoung & Karin Bruillard of the Washington Post: "Obama administration officials here and in Islamabad demanded Tuesday that Pakistan quickly provide answers to specific questions about Osama bin Laden and his years-long residence in a bustling Pakistani city surrounded by military installations. In addition to detailed information about the bin Laden compound — who owned and built the structure and its security system — Pakistani officials were asked in meetings with U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic interlocutors to provide names of witnesses who can testify about visitors to the compound." ...
... Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "Pakistani Ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani said that his government will conduct a series of internal investigations to find out how bin Laden could have been living deep less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad, and to determine if any Pakistani government personnel were helping him. He also said that the investigations will be conducted solely by Pakistan, without direct U.S. involvement.... Haqqani said, 'We totally reject there was complicity as a policy decision. The only other two explanations are incompetence and overconfidence of our security services.' ... Various Pakistani officials' conflicting statements about what they knew, and when, are complicating Pakistan's diplomatic response to the bin Laden embarrassment."
Following up on Ezra Klein's post, an abbreviated version of which I linked the other day, Stephen Gandel of Time provides a few widely-divergent estimates on what Osama bin Laden cost the U.S.
Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "The torture crowd has been hard at work the past 24 hours, doing its best to push the idea that it was the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohommed that led to the courier who eventually led U.S. intelligence to Osama bin Laden." Mainstream media outlets have accepted this as a given. Both Marcy Wheeler & New York Times reporters have debunked this myth. (CW: and, I would add, so has Jane Mayer of the New Yorker -- see yesterday's Commentariat.) But, citing a Newsmax "exclusive" (yes, Newsmax!), McCarter notes that the architect of torture -- former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself -- says,
It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding. ...
... AND Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' like .... But a closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out." ...
... Massimo Calabresi: Jose Rodriguez, "a former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, who was investigated last year by the Justice Department for the destruction of videos showing senior al-Qaeda officials being interrogated, says that the harsh questioning of terrorism suspects produced the information that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s death." The White House disagrees.
"Don't Release the Photos." Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker: "Did we learn nothing from the past decade about the overwhelming power of crude images of violence to define and polarize our historical moment? The Abu Ghraib photographs ... should have taught us that a photograph of the violence you inflict is always, in very large measure, a self-portrait. In getting rid of bin Laden, Obama has made the greatest step yet toward being able to put that era behind us. Do we want a photo of bin Laden’s bullet-punctured skull to eclipse this moment?" ...
AND ... Politically Incorrect. Neely Tucker of the Washington Post: American Indians object to the code name "Geronimo" which was used to identify the bin Laden operation & perhaps bin Laden himself.
Dana Milbank: "President Obama, in the afterglow of his Osama bin Laden triumph, pleaded with congressional leaders at a dinner Monday night to preserve the warm courage of national unity.... Thirteen hours later, Republicans answered Obama’s plea for bonhomie — with broadsides.... House GOP leaders decided against a resolution congratulating the U.S. military...."
... The "Pax Bin Ladenis" Lasted 13 Hours. A New Kind of Republican Fundraiser. New York Times Editors: Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee are preparing to vote for a bill to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They know the bill will not become law, but they are using the vote as a ploy "to rake in Wall Street donations." The Obama Administration has been ignoring the passage of such House bills. But ... "Unless the administration offers a quick, full-throated defense, the agency may never fulfill its promise. And the process by which Congress is bought and sold — and consumers and taxpayers are hung out to dry — will be, once again, on full display."
Paul Krugman begins a post on "the falling dollar phobia" like so: "I continue to be amazed by the way Very Serious People find ways to worry about everything except devastating unemployment."
Right Wing World *
Ezra Klein: "As a participant in the great health-care wars of 2010, it’s been — I don’t know: Amusing? Depressing? Annoying? Vindicating? — to watch Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget run over every principle or concern that Republicans considered so life-or-death a mere 400 days ago." Klein provides a partial list of the GOP's 180-degree about-face. (This post is a couple of weeks old, but nothing has changed.)
* Where facts never intrude.
News Ledes
Here's Jay Carney, citing President Obama's explanation to CBS News' Steve Kroft, as to why the government will not release photos of the deceased Osama bin Laden. Clip:
... A link to a brief clip to the President speaking to Kroft is here.
NBC News: "Four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, including the al-Qaida leader himself, were unarmed and never fired a shot, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday — an account that differs markedly from the Obama administration's original claims that the Navy SEALs came under heavy small-arms fire in a prolonged firefight." ...
... Reuters: "Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons. The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths." The photos are here. CW: They come with a warning, which I heeded. ...
... New York Times: "... new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden. Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding. After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again."
Washington Post: "Senior Republicans conceded Wednesday that a deal is unlikely on a contentious plan to overhaul Medicare and offered to open budget talks with the White House by focusing on areas where both parties can agree, such as cutting farm subsidies."
Charles, Prince of Wales, & President Obama in the Oval Office. AP photo. Of course, this picture is totally phony. Charles never got near the White House & Obama was out for a round of golf. But, hey, those expert Photoshoppers that Obama put out of work today had to do something. The "AP" in AP photo? That stands for Aaadvanced Photoshop. I'm really sick of conspiracy theories. -- CWPresident Obama met with Charles, Prince of Wales, this afternoon. AP Update: "Prince Charles met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday to commend the work that first lady Michelle Obama has done to combat childhood obesity and hunger in the U.S."
McClatchy News: "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz took the helm of the national Democratic party Wednesday, pledging to 'work every single day' to re-elect President Barack Obama and Democrats up and down the ballot."
President Obama welcomed the Wounded Warrior Project's Soldiers' Ride this afternoon.
In his press briefing, Jay Carney says the President will not release photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse. Here's the AP story. The Washington Post story is here. The CBS News story is here. Update: you can watch a brief clip of the interview here.
New York Times: Prince Charles spoke at Georgetown University this morning about the importance of sustainable agriculture.
New York Times: the U.S.'s finding Osama bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan's military community gives India new reason to distrust Pakistan.
Washington Post: "The Obama administration is beginning another effort to change the nation’s immigration laws, despite little enthusiasm from Republicans in Congress. President Obama met for more than an hour Tuesday with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, his third session on the issue at the White House in the past three weeks. White House aides promised a renewed push to try to persuade Congress and the American public to back Obama’s proposals, which would combine stronger enforcement of current immigration laws with the creation of a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants."
New York Times: "The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the projected in a report released Tuesday. Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people." CW: And Pope Benedict is telling the faithful using contraception is a sin. So did Near-Saint John Paul II in another of his very saintly dogmas.
New York Times: " invited former President to join him at ground zero in New York City on Thursday to mark the killing of , but Mr. Bush declined, a spokesman for the former president confirmed on Tuesday."
CNN: "Residents of the LeDroit Park, a low income area of Washington gathered at the neighborhood farm on Tuesday to meet with ... the Prince of Wales. Prince Charles arrived in the U.S. Tuesday afternoon for a three-day visit that includes stops at the Supreme Court, Georgetown University and the White House."
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