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TALKING POINTS

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GOOD NEWS

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) instructs his staff to abide by strict new ethics rules, even though they have not yet been passed by the full Senate.

TALKING POINTS K Street Corruption

STATE WATCH MAINE: Trading cars for rides -- seniors cash in.

MARYLAND: Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich's (R) statements on stem cell research show a governor "more committed to capitalizing off of a political issue than providing hope to millions in his state."

ILLINOIS: Illinois's latest step in the battle against meth.

BLOG WATCH THINK PROGRESS: Martin Luther King Jr., anti-war activist.

CARPETBAGGER REPORT: Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) forced out of committee chairmanship due to Abramoff links, thus contributing to the decay of good governance.

C&L: Video highlights of Al Gore's fiery speech yesterday.

DAILY GRILL "It's very, very important that the president has the agility and the speed to gather up electronic surveillance of individuals that may be in contact with the enemy."
-- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, attempting to justify Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, 1/16/06

VERSUS

"FISA law does include emergency provisions that allow warrantless eavesdropping for up to 72 hours if the attorney general certifies there is no other way to get the information."
-- Washington Post, 12/22/05

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by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin


January 17, 2006 Speaking Softly, Carrying No Sticks Talking Points Tank Go Beyond The Headlines For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org. Sign up | Contact us | Permalinks/Archive | Mobile | RSS | Print
IRAN
Speaking Softly, Carrying No Sticks

As debate over Iran's nuclear program swells, one could be forgiven for mistaking the events of 2006 for those of another mid-term election year, 2002. President Bush said then, "I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace. .... The threat comes from Iraq. ... It is seeking nuclear weapons." Now, President Bush says, "Iran, armed with a nuclear weapon, poses a grave threat to the security of the world." Now, as then, disenchanted exiles with suspect pasts and annotated satellite images are trotted out, while commentators on the right suggest that the time for negotiations is already over, that war may be just around the corner. And if the point hasn't been driven home yet, Fox News will happily spell it out: an on-screen graphic reads, "Iran Situation Similar to Iraq in 2002 & 2003." There are some key differences, however. Few dispute that a nuclear-armed Iran is real threat. In fact, the world seems to be slowly uniting around the idea that "Iran must completely suspend its nuclear program." Yet, even after declaring it part of an "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush refused to seriously engage Iran, while conducting a war in Iraq that has weakened our ability to confront the threat, in essence leaving the Bush administration speaking softly and carrying no sticks.

BUSH MIDDLE EAST POLICY HAS WEAKENED OUR HAND: In November 2004, Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, argued that "we no longer have the luxury of treating Middle East policy as a series of unrelated events running on separate calendars. ... Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran and terrorism are parts of a whole and can only be satisfactorily engaged as such." The Bush administration has ignored this reality, to the detriment of our national security. By invading Iraq without enough troops and without a plan for stabilizing the country, the administration allowed an historic expansion of Iranian influence westward into Iraq, even as the country's new leadership under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drifted further towards radicalism and rabid anti-Semitism. Iran's closest friends in Iraq ran the transitional government, and Iran praised Iraq's latest constitution. The Bush administration substituted a policy of dual containment (of Iran and Iraq) for something more dangerous: a single-minded focus on Iraq that has hampered our efforts to fight global terrorism and strengthened Iran's influence.

BUSH OPPOSITION TO NEGOTIATIONS HAS WEAKENED OUR HAND: Though President Bush has insisted for months that he seeks a diplomatic solution to the Iran impasse, his actions do not bear this out. The Bush administration has dismissed three separate invitations in the past several years to open back-channel communications aimed at resolving the range of issues with Iran. It refused to participate directly in the talks involving Britain, France, and Germany, despite warnings from European diplomats and the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) that the talks were likely to fail without U.S. involvement. Even now, efforts by Secretary of State Rice to engage Iran are being undermined by hardliners like Vice President Cheney. Rather than sit passively on the sidelines, the United States must become an active player. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) stated last November, "The United States is capable of engaging Iran in direct dialogue without sacrificing any of its interests or objectives."

NO GOOD MILITARY OPTIONS: In 2004, the Atlantic Monthly organized an Iran "war game" involving a group of U.S. foreign policy experts and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner, a simulations expert from the U.S. Army's National War College. "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Gardiner said of the exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work." Numerous experts and analysts agree there is no good military solution to the Iran nuclear issue, including former Bush State Department policy director Richard Haass, National Defense University professor Richard Russell, and noted Iran expert Ray Takeyh. Likewise, Mohamed ElBaradei, the U.N.'s chief nuclear watchdog (whose track record on Iraq was far better than the Bush administration's), said last month, "I don't believe there is a military solution to the issue" at this time. Notwithstanding, the leaders in Tehran must also understand that any attempt to use or transfer nuclear weapons or their key components would result in decisive military action. The fact that President Bush has overextended our troops in Iraq severely restricts U.S. options on this front.

IRANIAN DEFECTOR GROUP TAKES A PAGE OUT OF CHALABI'S PLAYBOOK: Just as the Chalabi-led Iraqi National Congress was a prime instigator for action against Iraq prior to the war, so too are there Iranian defector groups now seeking to convince the West to support its own agenda. The National Council of Resistance of Iran is one such group; this weekend, they called for "immediate" referral of Iran to the UN Security Council "so that sanctions can be placed on the 'brutal' regime." Taking a lesson from Chalabi, whose defectors provided false evidence of Iraq's supposed pre-war WMD, a spokesman for the exile group "provided names of companies and individuals involved in [the production of a nuclear bomb] but no proof."

RIGHT WING SINGS THE SAME OLD SONG: Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and an early advocate of a war against Iraq, now likens the pre-war threat of Iraq to the current threat of Iran. "An unrepentant rogue state with a history of sponsoring terrorists seeks to develop weapons of mass destruction. ... Eventually the reality of the threat, the obduracy of the rogue state regime in power, becomes too obvious to be ignored. This is not a history lesson about Iraq. These are today's headlines about Iran." Says Kristol predictably: "[T]he only way diplomatic, political, and economic pressure has a chance to work over the next months is if the military option--or various military options--are kept on the table." Similarly, right-wing defense analyst Frank Gaffney, who was an outspoken voice for regime change in Iraq, now looks disdainfully on the "rhetorical hand-wringing and diplomatic maneuvering" against Iran and is again urging a regime change. Writing in the Washington Times, Gaffney states that should force be necessary, "it must be used not only to target the regime's covert nuclear sites but also the means used by the Iranian government to repress and control its people (e.g., the security services, religious police, intelligence and communication systems). In so doing, we should make clear our solidarity with the people of Iran and that our fight is with their despotic and malevolent mullahs."


INTELLIGENCE
Talking Points Tank

"On this particular Martin Luther King Day," former Vice President Al Gore said yesterday, "it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped - one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period." Gore used a large portion of his speech to the American Constitution Society and Liberty Coalition to criticize President Bush's eavesdropping program. "[T]he American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power," Gore said. Since the New York Times broke the story about the program, the administration has tried to win the public to their side by saying the wiretapping had "saved thousands of lives" and was "very limited in nature." They have also argued that the Authorization for Use of Force after 9/11 "gave the president the right to conduct the domestic surveillance." None of the administration's argument are supported by the facts.

TALKING POINT #1 - NSA EAVESDROPPING KEY TO THWARTING TERRORIST ATTACKS: "This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists," Bush said in December. "It is critical to saving American lives." Vice President Cheney claimed wiretapping Americans had "saved thousands of lives." "It is, I'm convinced, one of the reasons we haven't been attacked in the past four years," he added. But a report in today's New York Times debunks the administration's claim that the program is vital to America's national security. In fact, the flood of "unfiltered information" from the NSA program "was swamping [FBI] investigators" in the months after 9/11. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," a former F.B.I. official said. "The information was so thin," one prosecutor said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up." Additionally, "some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy."

TALKING POINT #2 - A PROGRAM "VERY LIMITED IN NATURE": "The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people," Bush has said. "[O]bviously I had to make the difficult decision between balancing civil liberties and, on a limited basis -- and I mean limited basis -- try to find out the intention of the enemy." "It is very limited in nature," Scott McClellan claimed. The truth is that after 9/11, the "stream" of information from the NSA to the FBI "soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month." Investigators were overwhelmed by the amount of information pouring into their offices. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration," said one former FBI official. Today's revelations support a previous New York Times report that found the "volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged." NSA whistleblower Russell Tice recently told ABC News "the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions."

TALKING POINT #3 - 9/11 AUTHORIZATION ALLOWED PRESIDENT TO LISTEN IN ON AMERICANS: Gonzales has argued that along with the President's role as Commander-in-Chief under Article 2 of the Constitution, the "authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization...to engage in this kind of signals intelligence." Few dispassionate legal observers agree with this creative argument. As Gore pointed out yesterday, members of both parties "made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically." Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) said yesterday that his initial thoughts are that Bush "didn't have the authority under the resolution authorizing the use of force." Added Specter: "The President has to follow the Constitution." In addition, the Administration’s legal arguments have been comprehensively refuted, in a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, by a distinguished group of former government officials, by a former General Counsel of the CIA, and by a former Department of Defense official.

TALKING POINT #4 - BLAME CLINTON: Gonzales is continuing the right-wing misinformation campaign about President Clinton's alleged use of warrantless searches. Some on the right have claimed Clinton "bypassed FISA by extending warrantless searches to include physical searches." Yet even the National Review's Byron York said, "Some people, for example, have said that Bill Clinton signed an executive order authorizing such surveillance; he did not." While reflexively attacking the messenger, Gonzales pushed this false assertion about Clinton as "inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying." "We used the law," Clinton said, contrasting his administration with Bush's. "We either went there (to the FISA court) and asked for the approval or, if there was an emergency and we had to do it beforehand, then we filed within three days afterward and gave them a chance to second guess it, because I thought it was a good — I think in the country you always have to try to balance these things out, so that's what we did."



Under the Radar
IRAQ -- U.S. GOVERNMENT FAILING TO RECOVER WASTED FUNDS IN IRAQ: From the beginning of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, accounting and contracting practices have been criticized. In 2005, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found "significant deficiencies in contract administration" in the way the U.S. awarded Iraqi oil money administered by the United Nations. L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Coalition Provisional Authority, wrote that "Western-style budgeting and accounting standards" should not apply "in the midst of war." The Justice Department has failed to take any action to recover misspent funds, even though its civil division "has the authority to sue contractors that defraud the government, and to seek treble damages." Additionally, the Department hasn't "joined any suits filed by private-sector whistle-blowers who claim they know of fraud or abuse, although lawyers familiar with such suits estimate that at least two dozen are pending."

MILITARY -- SOLDIERS PENALIZED FOR PURCHASING THEIR OWN BODY ARMOR: Not only has the government not provided body armor to protect U.S. troops, it has also prevented soldiers from protecting themselves. Two soldiers "reported that their commander told them if they were wearing [non-government-issued body armor] and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action." But the Interceptor armor provided by the government may not be the safest. Critics have suggested the armor is defective. "As good as Interceptor armor is, numerous experts concluded, it is far less capable than another product sold on the open market." While the government has banned soldiers from wearing the Pinnacle Dragon Body Armor, nine U.S. generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly currently using the armor because they want to "evaluate" the body armor in a combat environment.

HEALTH CARE -- STATES STEP IN TO PICK UP FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S SLACK ON MEDICARE: Medicare chief administrator Mark McClellan promised a "seamless transition" to the new prescription drug benefit program for seniors, but the reality, according to the Miami Herald, has been an "unmitigated disaster." The White House has now stepped in to fix its flawed program, which took effect on Jan. 1, instructing "insurers that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was previously taking, and it said that poor people must not be charged more than $5 for a covered drug." Both Republicans and Democrats have criticized the White House's administration of the program. Several states have declared public health emergencies and approximately 20 states have stepped in to pay for prescriptions that should have been -- but weren't -- covered by the federal government's new plan. "In California, officials estimate that 200,000 of the state's 1.1 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries had trouble getting their medications."

HERGER'S LOBBYIST-FUNDED HOLIDAYS: The Record Searchlight reports, "Rep. Wally Herger's (R-CA) political action committee has received tens of thousands of dollars from companies whose lobbyists have ties to a group that sent him on trips to Italy and Scotland." Herger and his wife enjoyed a "$9,050 trip to Italy for nine days in 2000" and "a $12,286 excursion to Scotland for 16 days in 2001." House Ethics committee rules "prohibit lawmakers from receiving money or favors, including trips, directly from lobbying groups or from corporate interests." Herger says the junkets were "designed to encourage trade and were part of his official duties as a member of the House Committee of Ways and Means and Subcommittee on Trade."

CULTURE -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!: The "first great American" celebrates his 300th birthday today. Benjamin Franklin -- founder of America's first library, fire department, electricity, and Poor Richard's Almanack, among other accomplishments -- "signed every document central to America's founding" and "was a true egalitarian." Franklin's last public act was to petition Congress against slavery, reminding lawmakers that liberty should extend "without distinction of color to all descriptions of people." He "was not only the prince of self-invention, but the king of second acts." Unlike today's lawmakers who head in droves to K Street for lucrative lobbying careers, after his retirement, Franklin "completed his experiments in electricity, served as representative of the colonies in England, returned to Philadelphia to help draft the Declaration of Independence, served as minister of the new nation in France, invented the lightning rod and bifocals, charted the Gulf Stream, and helped write the U.S. Constitution."