Go here and scroll down to the last few comments. The world is a better place with people like Joseph here.

60 Minutes will be delving into bush’s “service” in the Texas ANG tomorrow night, and rumor has it that it will be pretty ruthless. If you want to prep for the show, you may want to turn to this precious post. (And you thought the “Christmas in Cambodia” non-story was a scandal? Ha.)

Drew, one of America’s smartest moderates, writes an eye-opening review of the 911 Commission report — and opens our eyes to just how uncooperative the bush administration was with the effort to find out exactly what happened that day and what lessons could be drawn from it.

In fact, the commission gives a devastating picture of the chaos within the Bush administration on the morning of the attacks, when the President famously remained in the Florida classroom for some five to seven minutes (according to the report) after learning of the second attack on the World Trade Center. But this is just one of several examples that morning of questionable judgment on the part of the President, as well as of the officials traveling with him, including his chief of staff, Andrew Card, and his political mentor, Karl Rove. Bush told the commission that he attributed the first crash, which he learned of before he entered the school classroom, to “pilot error,” but this seems strange, since it is unlikely that a pilot would accidentally stray into a very tall, prominent building in a highly controlled air space on a clear autumn day. Subtly but damningly, the report makes it clear that after Bush left the classroom, “the focus was on the President’s statement to the nation”—his “message”—rather than on taking charge of the nation’s response to the attacks.

The President didn’t convene a meeting of his National Security Council until after all of the planes had crashed. And though the chain of command for military actions runs from the president to the secretary of defense, Bush didn’t call Rumsfeld for nearly an hour after the second tower was hit, though more than a half-hour lapsed between the crash into the second tower in New York and the attack on the Pentagon. Morever, despite the established chain of command, Bush in that call didn’t discuss with Rumsfeld the authorization to shoot down planes. Astonishingly, according to information the commission received between the writing of the staff reports and the final report, the secretary of defense, upon learning of the two attacks in New York, simply returned to the work he had already been doing in his Pentagon office.

The White House, I was told, pressed for two things about these hours to be included in the final report. First, it wanted the commission to publish Bush’s statement, as it did, that he remained in the classroom because he “felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening”—though the fact that a calamity had taken place wasn’t exactly a secret. Second, the White House wanted the report to include Libby’s description of Cheney’s very quick decision—”in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing”—that United Flight 93, which was believed to be headed toward Washington, should be shot down. Some commissioners found this description hardly flattering, but at the Republicans’ insistence it remained in the final report.

The White House was apparently so upset by the staff report’s account of Cheney’s deciding on his own to give the order to shoot down the planes that it overlooked the statement in another staff report, presented at the same time, that though there had been “contacts” between Iraq and al-Qaeda—involving al-Qaeda representatives seeking help from Iraq but not receiving it—”they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.”

Once it received prominent attention in the press, this clear contradiction of one of the administration’s principal arguments for going to war— which had been repeated only two days earlier by Cheney—could not be left unchallenged by the White House. Bush said that the staff report validated his claims of “ties” between Saddam and al-Qaeda. In a television interview the day after the staff report was published, Cheney attacked the press for reporting accurately what the commission had said. (One commissioner, Jim Thompson, made similar comments on Bill O’Reilly’s show.)

In the final report, the commission said there had been no “collaborative operational relationship.” One commissioner told me the word “operational” was added for clarity; another said that it was intended to underscore the fact that Bush’s and Cheney’s assertions were wrong. In announcing on August 2 his proposals for acting on the commission’s recommendations, Bush, ignoring the language of the report, repeated his vague claim that Saddam Hussein “had terrorist ties.

There’s a lot more in this rich, thorough review from an old-time Washington insider. Why did bush fight this commission at every step of the way? What was he so terrified of? One day this whole bizarre story will be taken apart like an onion, and what we’ll find will be pretty ugly. Drew has started the process, and it smells already.

Link via Atrios.

Everyone following the melodrama will want to check out this perspective by the conservative thinktank’s China hand John J Tkacik Jr. Not surprisingly, he sees China’s “peaceful rise” threatened by Jiang’s strong stance on Taiwan — and he is confident Jiang has the upper hand here.

For Jiang, Taiwan a big exception to ‘peaceful rise’

The Central Party School commentary concludes that it is fortunate “Americans regard getting involved in wars … especially getting involved in foreign wars that are unjust, all as something that [should] be done very carefully”, because this is a “basic restraint on the American government’s decisions to go to war”. For the Jiang faction, Taiwan is a very big exception to “peaceful rise”. Americans see democratic Taiwan as a part of communist China in the same way that Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation, and hence understand China’s legitimate (indeed “sacred”) right to invade it, the commentary argued. The American people will oppose their government’s efforts to engage in such an “unjust” war against China, it said. This truly is a dangerous assumption.

Japan, it seems, is another big exception to the “peaceful rise” concept. At the end of June, Georgetown University Professor Robert Sutter wrote that “Chinese officials and specialists also admit that Japan poses a special problem for China’s peaceful and moderate approach to Asia”. [17] And given China’s renewed historical claims on the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo, it doesn’t seem that “peaceful rise” is necessarily a key component of Beijing’s relations with Seoul. [18]

Despite the harsh and persistent propaganda attacks on the United States and its support for Taiwan, some Western reporters persist in the fiction that Jiang emphasizes “the relatively cordial relationship he built with the United States in the late 1990s”, as opposed to President Hu’s supposed Europhilia. [19] Quite the opposite is true. As the Central Party School article shows, in inner councils Jiang’s attacks on the US are a staple of his new “army first” policy that sets military modernization as the key to a paramount task of “unifying the motherland”.

If anything, Jiang argues that his hardline stance on Taiwan has intimidated Washington, and hence that his US policy has been successful. At the highest levels of China’s leadership, Jiang has won the debate over China’s “peaceful rise”, and it is an ominous sign for the United States and its democratic friends and allies in East Asia.

As always with the Heritage Foundation, you have to remember its loyalties and its origins. But it’s an interesting take.

Via Josh Marshall.
——————————————————————————————-

You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.

Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.

Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.

Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.”)

I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.

Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.

Stalin was famous for “vanishing” purged comrades (i.e., people he murdered) out of official photographs — and I don’t even think they had Photoshop back then. Now it seems someone’s doing the same to Jiang Zemin, and I doubt he’ll be happy about it.

The original image, published in the state-run Oriental Outlook magazine in the last week of August, shows Hu shaking hands with Deng in 1992 while Jiang stands behind them, as if giving introductions. But in the other two photos, which appeared in Shanghai’s Wen Hui Bao newspaper on Aug. 13 and in a set of pictures celebrating Deng’s centenary, Jiang has vanished. At least one of the doctored photos was released by the Xinhua news agency—which implies either official complicity or a massive goof. Either way, “it can only be embarrassing for Jiang,” says an editor from a Party-run newspaper, because “someone very publicly wants him to disappear.”

I wouldn’t mind him disappearing, either.

Update: Much more on this, plus the before and after photos, here.

Unfortunately, this story got drowned out by last week’s convention noise. It is supremely important, as it goes right to the heart of our leaders’ claims we are winning our “war on terror.”

“Today’s convictions send a clear message: The Department of Justice will work diligently to detect, disrupt and dismantle the activities of terrorist cells in the United States and abroad.”

SO SAID ATTORNEY General John D. Ashcroft on June 3, 2003, the day Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi were convicted in Detroit in the first major terrorism prosecution to follow the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Barely a year later, the department’s work on the case looks far from diligent, and it is by no means clear that the government disrupted a terrorist cell. The lead prosecutor is facing a criminal investigation, and the evidence he presented in court has been so discredited that the Justice Department asked the court last week to overturn the convictions and dismiss the terrorism charges. U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen agreed that the government had “materially misled the Court, the jury and the defense [about] critical evidence that provided important foundations for the prosecution’s case.” Mr. Ashcroft, so quick to crow about a victory in court, now owes a candid, public explanation of what has happened.

Don’t hold your breath. Ashcroft’s initial quote got reams of publicity, but the collapse of the case amid unprecedented bungling has been largely overshadowed by important stuff, like Zell Miller’s ravings.

I’d find a new livelihood, fast.

China is stepping up its hard line against internet pornography by threatening life imprisonment for anyoner caught peddling porn.

Ne’er-do-wells involved in the production and distribution of online adult content – including “phone sex” – faces a range of punishments including compulsory surveillance and imprisonment. Those behind sites that generate more than 250,000 hits will be treated as “very severe” and could face life imprisonment.

The rules, drawn up by China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate, come into effect today. The new regime applies to both profit-making and non-profit-making operations that deal in sex, official news agency Xinhua reports.

A legal official quoted by the agency said the new rules “aim to maintain the normal order of the public network and communications and the legal rights and interests of the public”.

In recent months China has closed hundreds of sites in a massive crackdown on internet pornography. Officials are concerned about the rampant increase in online porn, claiming that that it “severely damaged social style, polluted the social environment, and harmed the physical and psychological health of the young people”.

Even phone sex?? Now that’s going too far….

Jonathan Watts, China correspondent for the UK Guardian, offers an interesting first-person look into the hazards of reporting in China — and how China broke its vow to reporters there within 24 hours of wining its bid for the 2008 Olympics.

It felt as though China had broken its Olympic promises on day one. In securing the bid for Beijing to host the 2008 games, the city’s representatives pledged that the world media would enjoy full freedom to report all aspects of China.

Yet less than 24 hours after the Olympic flag was handed to Beijing’s mayor last Sunday, there I was – the Guardian’s China correspondent – detained and harassed for covering a peaceful demonstration that challenged the government’s position on Tibet.

My press pass was confiscated, and I was led away for questioning, accused of conducting an “illegal interview”. My colleague – Sami Sillanpaa, a Finnish journalist – had the memory card of his camera seized, erased and made permanently unusable.

Our interrogator told me he was in charge of foreign media and had the power to decide whether our visas would be renewed. He then accused us of “serious offences”. The implication was clear: “Do as I say or you could be kicked out of the country.” There was no physical abuse, but it was intimidation, pure and simple.

Watts looks at China’s history of harrassing reporters, and predicts if the CCP doesn’t live up to its pledge, the image they hope to display to the world in 2008 will be seriously marred.

He concludes, “…[W]ith the global spotlight now on China, such clumsy harassment ought to be made a thing of the past. Privately, government officials admit more transparency and greater press freedom are desirable. ‘Just give us time,’ they say. With four years until the Olympics, the countdown has started.”

Just give us time. Their favorite refrain.

There’s a quiet storm brewing, and like Hurricane Frances, it’s taking its time and gathering strength. At the eye of the storm is the question of whether bush paid to provide an abortion for his girlfriend in 1971. (Abortions were illegal at the time.)

Several of the big to-the-left bloggers are picking up on it, and moderate-left voice of reason Mark Kleiman today offers a reasoned and sensible argument for pursuing this if the story is true.

Mr. Bush has said that he thinks abortion is murder. Is an accessory to murder really fit to be President, no matter how much he now regrets it? Moreover, he thinks that it should be illegal. The fact that, when it was illegal, he helped arrange one is certainly relevant to his character.

I should have added what it should be unnecessary to add: that raising this issue, however ethically troubling if the story is true, would be flat-out wrong if it were false. (The same goes for the drinking question.) Telling inconvenient truths is one thing; telling lies is another. There’s no need for the opponents of President Bush (who doesn’t think America can win the war on terror) to descend to the level of his allies.

My correspondent also notes that, if the story breaks, Kerry should denounce it. Of course he should. He should say, “If this account is false, it’s despicable, just like the false charges Mr. Bush’s allies have been making about my war record. Even if it’s true, the issue in this campaign isn’t Mr. Bush’s private conduct thirty years ago, it’s the mess he’s made over the past four years.”

Another gathering storm is bush’s coke-snorting days. (I love the line by DC satirist Mark Russell, “He was born with a silver spoon in his nose.”) Since it’s now okay to go after crap from 30+ years ago, this is definitely fair game. After all, people have been sent to jail for decades for committing this crime, for which bush pushed for higher jail terms in Texas. Why should the Boy Emperor be allowed to just shrug and say, “Well, I was a bum back then?”

Tragically, all of this takes us away from the issues that really matter to Americans, the economy and Iraq. This kind of stuff is a waste of everyone’s time. But is there a choice? Kerry is being personally assaulted on all fronts for issues more than 30 years old, most of them false and with no relevance to the voters today. We can take the high road and stick to the relevant issues and lose, or fight back with everything we’ve got — if it’s true (a major distinction between us and them). Evidence of bush’s irresponsibility, immaturity and deceitfulness is low-hanging friuit, there for the picking. Lying isn’t necessary.

Then there’s the awol story, given a new lease on life by the GOP focusing on what Kerry was doing 30 years ago. Surely we wouldn’t want any double standards, would we? No, this has to be reopened and gone over with the an electron microscope, like Kerry’s medals. It’s only fair, right? Ben Barnes will be on 60 Minutes next week I think, explaining how he got shrub into the ANG.

Update: Just as a humorous aside, here’s what Secretary of State Colin Powell has to say about draft-dodgers who hid out in the Guard like shrub:

In Secretary of State Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey,
he says, “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and
well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National
Guard units… Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class
discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all
Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.”