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Talking Points Memo: Josh Marshall: ‘The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.’

Last night Josh Marshall recorded his thoughts on Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist’s accusations against Richard Clarke on the Senate floor, whereon Frist accused Clarke, as Josh puts it, “of being a perjuror and a profiteer on the blood of 9/11.”

I’ve watched these proceedings rather closely, and while my political savvy is almost infinitesimal next to Josh’s, I fancy I do know how to read body language somewhat, and based on what I’ve seen Sen. Frist’s accusations don’t seem likely.

I had already read that some Republicans are attempting to declassify Clarke’s July 2002 testimony in an attempt to discredit Clarke’s present testimony, and noted Sen. Frist’s participation. Sen. Frist is, of course, a Tennessee senator and therefore mine. As I think he’s making a serious mistake (and putting Tennessee’s honor in further jeopardy) I felt impelled to write him today via Congress.org:

After sending this message I read Josh’s observation earlier yesterday that

What this is about isn’t Condi Rice or Richard Clarke or even George W. Bush. It’s about what happened — finding out what happened.

One side wants to find out; the other doesn’t. This whole story turns on that simple fact. Why else try to destroy Clarke unless what he has to say is profoundly damaging? Liars are usually easily discredited; it’s the truth-tellers who need to be destroyed.

Josh concludes, as has Bob Graham, former Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and Co-Chair of the Joint Committee before whom Clarke’s July 2002 testimony was given,

Why guess? Let’s find out. Release all his testimony. All of it.

I find myself persuaded that’s a good idea, and hence would alter my next-to-last paragraph to Sen. Frist if I hadn’t already sent it.

2004-03-28 update: Clarke himself recommends releasing his earlier testimony, along with all his email and memos. I’m not sure the Republican smear machine knows how to attack people who have, apparently, nothing to hide.

Is it too much to ask that government leaders display some character, openness, and restraint? Richard Clarke showed me this week what that looks like. While I have no preexisting reason to support him one way or the other, or even to agree with his hawkish views, I’m thankful to him for reminding me that character in government is still possible, even unto apologizing for the government’s mistakes and asking forgiveness.

And I will never be satisfied with anything less. I think the time of accepting lowered expectations is drawing to a close. We can do so much better than this.

a few hours later …

Whereas I was thinking Sen. Frist’s mistake lay in smearing a decent man, risking national security, and risking his own legacy, Stirling sees his mistake more expansively: that Frist has accidentally opened the floodgates of scandal in the direction of deluging Bush’s Isengard (okay, Stirling says “floodgates,” I picture LotR):

When Senator Bill Frist called for declassification of Clarke’s earlier testimony, [alleging], or at least implying, that perjury could be in the offing — he opened the floodgates. …

By trying to attack Clarke for having been a loyal soldier of the Executive earlier — [Frist] tells every functionary in that Executive Branch that they are marked for destruction — personal political destruction — should they waver. And that their previous service would be used against them. Anything you say in support of Bush can, and will, be used against you by Bush.

Wow, fascinating analysis.

2004-04-02 update: Yes, I’m veiling what I really think about Sen. Frist in a thick bubblewrap of Southern politeness, but John Nichols isn’t. John kicks ass and takes names in yesterday’s Frists of Fury.

TPM: Josh interviews George Soros: ‘This administration’s ideology of power and dominance doesn’t work and is profoundly un-American.’

A fascinating tidbit from Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, as he discusses the Reagan years and specifically, the relationship between Reagan’s actions and 9/11 —

The Christian Coalition and other rightwing religious groups supporting Reagan even had a “biblical checklist” by which they wanted all senators and congressmen to be judged. And one of the items in the “biblical checklist” was “support for the Afghan ‘freedom fighters’” [that is, the “Gulbuddin Hikmatyars and Usama Bin Ladens”]. The rightwing Christians were saying in the 1980s that if you didn’t support al-Qaeda and its Mujahidin allies, you didn’t deserve to be in Congress!

1st thought: And have we grown in wisdom and discernment since then?
2nd thought: Apparently not.
3rd thought: Dogmatic certainty ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Josh Marshall at TPM recommends Juan’s site as “one of the few places online — in English at least — where you can find good sustained reporting on these nitty-gritty details of what’s going on over in Iraq. Invaluable.”

And of course Josh creates invaluable reporting of his own. At The Hill Josh writes:

In recent months, Democrats have criticized President Bush for claiming that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to the United States. Ted Kennedy said it. Wes Clark said it. And plenty of others have, too.

But now Republicans say it’s a bum rap. A chorus of conservative columnists and talk-show hosts claims that nobody in the administration ever said any such thing.

“No member of the administration,” conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, “used the term ‘imminent threat’ to describe Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. No one.”

Really, how dumb is it to say something like this when Google’s memory is wide, deep, and instantly accessible? And indeed Josh proceeds to mine this digital deposit to deftly demolish this wacky, “no one ever said that” assertion.

Weirdly though, such assertions often work, in part I think because people like me respond with our mouths open in disbelief that any self-respecting person could utter easily-disprovable nonsense like this.

Which I guess makes me like a bullsht detector with an almost-dead battery — I detect the bullsht, but don’t have enough juice to sound the piercing beep.

Note to myself: Re-read Atrios’ principles of wingnut argument until Dumbstruck Response is eliminated and action ensues. We’ve got a country to reclaim, and a sh*tload of intellectual laziness and dishonor to work off.

2003-11-06 update: I see that Ben at SpinSanity attempts further precision concerning who said what about “imminent threat,” but he’s not as convincing as he usually is.

As a practical matter, splitting hairs whether and how often Mr. Bush said the word “imminent” followed by the word “threat” concerning Iraq is about as meaningful as debating whether and how often he explicitly connected the events of 9/11 with Saddam Hussein. Both false assertions were implied with sledgehammer subtlety and numbing frequency — and thus led to present consequences too real and too pressing for us to waste time engaging in technical difficulties, for which see —

Steven at Ethel the Blog, following Atrios’ lead, seeks to assemble the definitive Wingnut Debate Dictionary. Pretty darned funny. I see in these definitions that almost all of us stumble into bits of wingnuttery occasionally, but some of us seem to be stuck there.