John Kerry is going to lose this election and he’s going to lose handily. He can claim the moral high ground on a number of issues – service in Vietnam, years as a public servant, being honest about controversial issues like gay marriage. George W. Bush has proven himself to be less than a man, unseemly, disingenuous, dishonest, and an impediment to the positive growth of the United States. Shame on you Mr. Bush and shame on the mainstream media for being asleep at the wheel.

But shame on the Kerry people. Did you not learn anything from the last election? The gloves should have come off much earlier. Now it’s too late. George Bush is going to take a bounce out of the Republican Convention, sleep through three debates, and cruise to victory in November. All of this while the death toll in Iraq approaches 1,000; school children are being blown apart in Afghanistan; poverty is on the rise in the U.S.; thousands are dying in Sudan; North Korea and Iran are staking their respective claims to join the nuclear club; the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead; al-Qaida continues to target us; Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri are still free men; oil prices are at an historic high; and most of the rest of the world has an incredibly low opinion of the United States.

Yet the best you could do last week in the midst of the ugly Swift Boat smear campaign was pop up on the Daily Show (although kudos)? If that’s the best you can do with the record of this administration, well I’m sorry, you brought defeat on yourself.

This article so far is the best I've read about the inanity and shoddy cable news coverage masquerading as journalism on the Kerry-Vietnam Swift Boat matter.

Over the last few weeks, 24-hour news networks have done little to find out what John Kerry did in Vietnam, but they have provided a different kind of public service: their examination of his war record in Vietnam illustrates once again just how perfunctory and confusing cable news coverage can be. Facts, half-truths and passionately tendentious opinions get tumbled together on screen like laundry in an industrial dryer - without the softeners of fact-checking or reflection.

...

[A]ir-kiss coverage is typical of cable news, where the premium is on speed and spirited banter rather than painstaking accuracy. But it has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee - they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

Fox commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are famous for their informal, intemperate manner of speech. But the debate on programs like "Crossfire," on CNN, is often as heated - and as full of hot air. On an Aug. 12 edition about the Swift boat debate, a program regular, Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, called Mr. O'Neill and his fellow anti-Kerry veterans "the real patriots to rise to the surface this election year."

James Carville, Mr. Novak's liberal counterpart, challenged Mr. O'Neill's co-author, Jerome Corsi, charging that Mr. Corsi's blog is "scabrous." When Mr. O'Neill tried to change the subject, Mr. Carville shrieked at him.

At best, cable news programs swing into action when a crisis or major news development occurs, marshaling their resources to give viewers instant, live access. At their worst, they amplify the loudest voices and blur complexities. People can blame the confusion of combat for some of the discrepancies over Mr. Kerry's war record, but cable has done little to clear the air.

Iran to Israel: Don't even think about a pre-emptive attack.

"If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about the Dimona nuclear center, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons," said the commander, Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr.

That's not an idle threat. Iran may not have an operational nuclear weapon yet, but it has missiles that can strike inside Israel.

"[I]f he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on.'"

John Kerry

Mike Shuster is doing a great six-part series called “The Middle East and the West” on NPR’s All Things Considered. Check it out.

Last night on Aaron Brown there was an interesting segment on some of the critical foreign policy issues facing this country and the presidential candidates. It was interesting because they are issues I mention here and it’s unusual for television media to talk about them much at all let alone together in one segment.

Aaron Brown: Now at this point even a cynic might suggest that when it comes to troops and bases and foreign policy politics cannot and should not trump all.

Jeff Greenfield is no cynic but he is our senior analyst.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUSH: The plan I'm announcing today over the next ten years we will bring home about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel.

GREENFIELD (voice-over): Here's the least surprising fallout from the president's announcement on troop redeployment. All of the military, defense and foreign policy experts supporting Bush praised it. All of those supporting John Kerry denounced it and this debate will join the now familiar front and center argument about Iraq [a pretty bold statement which Greenfield backs up with zero evidence].

(on camera): But here's a news flash. Events around the world do not always fit neatly into the contours of an American presidential campaign and, while there seems little room to talk about such matters and the nightly battle to dominate the headlines, they are matters that could well prove a major headache for the next president whoever that may be. For instance...

(voice-over): Iran clearly has nuclear weapons ambitions. If it gets them, will that trigger a regional race for nuclear arms say by Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Would Israel take out an Iranian facility, as it did with Iraq in 1981? Can the United States negotiate with Iran, or, can it, should it encourage regime change given widespread discontent in Iran with its rulers?

North Korea is apparently well on its way to joining the nuclear club if it hasn't already done so. It is also an impoverished nation where starvation is a reality [Greenfield had no problem making a bold unsubstantiated statement at the opening, but apparently he does have trouble going along with “every” analyst’s assessment that North Korea has been a member of the nuclear club for many years]. Will its desperate need for cash prod it to sell its nuclear know-how to other states or to stateless groups like al Qaeda?

Can the United States negotiate a way out? And, given the north's ability to strike South Korea almost instantly with long range artillery does the U.S. have a military option if diplomacy fails?

The 55-year-old tension between China and Taiwan shows signs of worsening. The Communist mainland seems to be demanding that Taiwan accept the idea of reunification. Taiwan's leaders in turn have flirted with the idea of independence.

Recent United States policy has been to promise to defend Taiwan against the Chinese attack but also to oppose independence. Will the increasing economic engagement between the U.S. and China help cool tensions? If not, what does America do? Since September 11th, Pakistan's President Musharraf has stood with Washington in going after al Qaeda in Afghanistan and throughout the region but al Qaeda has backers in Pakistan's intelligence and military and Musharraf himself has escaped two assassination attempts in the last year. How should the U.S. respond if Pakistan, a nuclear power already, were to fall under the leadership of Muslim extremists?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: And these examples really scratch the surface of the dilemmas beyond our borders. For instance, if we want to lessen the poverty that helps breed extremism, opening our borders to third world imports might help but that could mean angering domestic political interests. Is that the sort of thing you can expect to hear the candidates talk about or the media to cover carefully? Aaron, don't hold your breath.

BROWN: OK. I won't hold my breath but I'll ask a couple of questions.

GREENFIELD: Fair enough.

BROWN: Start with why? Is it as simple as saying that these are very complicated problems that don't offer us easy solutions and certainly don't fit on bumper stickers?

GREENFIELD: That is a large part of it. It almost is that simple and I think it's a vicious cycle. If any of the candidates try to talk about it, I don't think the media would cover it very carefully or they'd try to find the most simplistic way to explain it and the candidate might find himself or herself getting in trouble.

…

BROWN: Let me ask the last question. Let's assume here that the candidates will not willingly bring this stuff up because for all the reasons you said it's complicated. Is it then our job to create the agenda?

GREENFIELD: I think it is our job to tell Americans what is at stake. I don't -- I hate -- always hate the phrase create the agenda because it implies a kind of power we probably shouldn't have but the responsibility to talk about things that this country may face in the next five or ten years, I think that's always the journalists' responsibility whether, if I may put it this way, whether people want to hear about it or not. It may not be as exciting as Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant or the gloved one but it just may have a lot more to do with how we live in the next decade.

I credit Greenfield, whose “analysis” is usually transparently partisan, for bringing these issues up. Curiously though it is just a teaser and there likely will be no follow-up stories to actually explore these issues. The last four paragraphs are classic media silliness though. Greenfield with the complicity of Aaron Brown slips into the tired tactic of the third person game (I love how it’s always “we” when journalists talk about the U.S., but it becomes the media when referring to their profession). “The media” suddenly becomes an entity of which they are not a part. The media is not the entity that ridicules the likes of Howard Dean and John Kerry when they try to talk about issues that are complicated and not conducive to soundbite answers. It’s the candidate who gets himself into trouble. It’s not the media who allows falsities from the White House to go unchallenged. It’s the candidate’s fault. And talking about those important issues, like nuclear proliferation, well that would be “setting the agenda.” Something the media certainly can’t do.

But of course that’s the media – an organization over which Brown and Greenfield as journalists have no control.

I slip in probably too much that George W. Bush is too chickenshit or too stupid or both to hold regular, unscripted press conferences and that fact that the media doesn't hammer him on this at every opportunity is disgraceful. A dead president who didn't complete his first term still leads Bush in solo news conferences (and tellingingly will probably win the race even if Bush is reelected). But Helen Thomas puts it even more elegantly than I could

Q: Why do Bush's press conferences sound so scripted?

Thomas: Bush has a seating chart and he knows who he is going to call on. He picks the people. He's been told to not call on me because I am going to ask a very tough question, such as, Why are we there? Why are we killing people in their own country? How can we? On what basis? I mean, if you want to go after terrorists, good. But Iraq had nothing to do with it.

Q: This President has not had many press conferences. Do you think the Bush Administration values the opportunity to talk with the press?

Thomas: Hell, no. He's forced to. It's absolutely necessary because we are there in their face. But he doesn't hold enough news conferences. It's far short of anybody else. And when he appears with a head of state and they try to act like it's a news conference, it's not. He says, "I'll take two questions here and two questions on that side," and there's no follow-up. He gets mad if it is a two-part question. I mean, c'mon. The President of the United States should be able to answer any question, or at least dance around one. At some time--early and often--he should submit to questioning and be held accountable, because if you don't have that then you only have one side of the story. The Presidential news conference is the only forum in our society, the only institution, where a President can be questioned. If a leader is not questioned, he can rule by edict or executive order. He can be a king or a dictator. Who's to challenge him? We're there to pull his chain and to ask the questions that should be asked every day, for every move.

Efraim Halevy used to be head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. He thinks the idea of an American intelligence czar is a bad one

Now there is a recommendation to appoint an intelligence “tsar” in the United States. In my humble opinion no greater mistake could be made so far as the intelligence community is concerned. If the new tsar is to assume command responsibility for the intelligence community, then he will be de facto director of the CIA and the other intelligence agencies in the country. He, and he alone, will be responsible for the content and standard of the evaluation. The professional director of the CIA will be responsible to the tsar, and the president of the United States will be functioning through a “proxy” on matters of war and peace. In intelligence, there can be no sharing in responsibility; it is, and will always remain, indivisible.

This is from his very interesting opinion piece in the Economist. He makes some interesting comparisons to Israel’s failure to predict the Egyptian/Syrian attack that started the 1973 war

Yet Israel's most costly and fateful failure was its mistaken estimate of Egyptian and Syrian intentions, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, when the two armies unexpectedly attacked Israel in a bid to regain the territories lost in the 1967 war. At the time, Israel had it all: superior intelligence coverage, excellent human resources with good access, high-level and discreet dialogue with more than one Arab or Muslim leader, and an intelligence-evaluation arm that had provided an early warning several months before the war, thus preventing it from breaking out at that time. But despite all of the above, we got it all wrong. The abundance of information led us to intelligence “hubris”: we trusted our superior analytical prowess rather than ominous indicators on the ground.

He makes a compelling and reasonable case on the intelligence czar. But what does that have to do with anything when it comes to politics in the U.S.? I think he underestimates how politics can influence intelligence, at least with the current administration. We still can’t get the story straight on whether Dick Cheney’s people were leaning on analysts at the CIA. And there is still no outcry over Dubya asking about invading Iraq on September 12. So intelligence czar or not, the issue seems to be ensuring that whomever is at the top is a straight-shooter (no slam dunks). Ultimately though, as we’ve seen, an administration can shape, mold, exaggerate, ignore, and lie about intelligence to suit its needs. Dick Cheney is still going on about the Iraq-al-Qaida link. Would an intelligence czar be able to mitigate that? It’s a good read; check it out.

It seems that the media consensus is that George W. has been somewhat successful in putting John Kerry on the defensive about Iraq. First by continuing to hammer him over his vote on the $87 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan and most recently for Kerry’s statement that he would vote again knowing what he knows now to give Bush the authority to go to war. Of course many media outlets are complicit in the administration’s tactics by failing to report that Bush himself threatened to veto the $87 billion package if it didn’t conform to his desires. Similarly, many media sources don’t report that the Bush people are distorting Kerry’s words when then say that Kerry would have voted to go to war if he had to do it again (ignoring that Kerry said he’d give Bush the authority and he’d do it differently).

This is going to continue. I have a simple solution for the Kerry people, provided they are even concerned about this. It’s time for Kerry to deliver a major foreign policy speech. Perhaps at the Council on Foreign Relations or at a major university since school will soon be in session. It should be laden with quotable soundbites. But it should succinctly answer all of the points that the Bush people have distorted and question whether the president actually understands the legislative process (“…it’s as if this president doesn’t understand the legislative process.”). And it should pose clearly some difficult questions for Dubya:

1. Why don’t you talk about Osama Bin Laden any more? Isn’t he the one who attacked us?
2. Is Richard Clarke lying? Were you asking about Iraq on September 12?
3. Why hasn’t the U.S. put more troops into Afghanistan? Why is the security situation so bad there? (Bush's stock answer is that "we're registering millions of people to vote.") Repeat the question very slowly for him.
4. What are you going to do about _________ 's (fill in either Iran or North Korea) nuclear ambitions beyond your stock answer of “working with our allies and the IAEA?”
5. How long are you going do nothing about Sudan while thousands die? I know, we're working with our allies.

You get the idea. But in a longer non-stump speech, perhaps some of the reportage would at least force the media to report on Bush distortions, even if they are not debunking them themselves.


Update: The headline says it all: 21 Killed in Afghanistan Attacks Directed at Provincial Governor. Mr. President?

As a rule I don't like to link to other blogs or put the standard list of a hundred other weblogs in a column here. But Bob Sommerby's Daily Howler is consistently brilliant at skewering a lazy and dishonest media with detailed examples. Today's post on the Bush administration's efforts to portray John Kerry's "nuance" on policy issues a negative is priceless. Check it out.

If John Kerry needs some more talking points on what to do with the sorry state of affairs in Iraq, he should take a look at the Op-Chart that appeared in the NYT today. One glaring omission from the chart: Iraqi civilians killed. Read the intro to the chart here.

Bill Clinton on the Daily Show tonight

"If you're a Democrat, you win when people think"

I'll post a link to the interview when it becomes available.


Update: See the video here.

Counting down the days while the Bush administration does nothing about Sudan. No one so far has noted the hypocrisy the administration created for itself by dismissing the yet-to-be-found WMD in Iraq. "Saddam was a bad man." That's all that matters, remember. He gassed his own people. Well Khartoum is killing its own people. Where's the outrage?

George W. Bush hysterically branded Iran, Iraq, and North Korea and Axis of Evil in 2002. Two years later, where do we stand? One country invaded and in a mess with no weapons of mass destruction found and no links to transnational terrorists despite continuing White House assertions. But what about the other two axes? Read the NYT front page piece today. Here’s gem from it

Mr. Bush has said little recently about the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, in sharp contrast to his regular recitations about the danger posed by Iraq in the period before the war last year. When he and his aides do speak about the problem in public, they still refer to progress, but mostly progress in getting other countries to put pressure on Iran and North Korea.

Okay Mr. President, what are going to do now?

“It’s very frustrating,” said one former official who left the Bush administration recently and believes that the administration has failed to draw clear “red lines” beyond which North Korea would not be allowed to expand its arsenal. The official noted that Mr. Bush and his aides had been talking as if North Korea and Iran would follow the model of Libya, which disarmed earlier this year in an effort to re-integrate its economy with the West. But, the official argued, Iran does not need to do that because it has robust trade with Europe, and North Korea still receives considerable aid from China.

Uh oh. This is a situation that requires nuance, a deft touch, creative diplomacy, and bold action. In other words, this administration will not be able to do anything on either front. (Attention Kerry people).

On vacation until Monday. And this time "vacation" is not a euphemism for slackery, er, other projects.