“I have the sense that [Hillary Clinton's] one of the more competent members of the current administration, and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be President.”

But it is surprising that Cheney would say this:

“I disagree with [Obama] on a great many issues,” he said. “I think he has not been very effective, frankly, especially in the economic arena.”

“In spite of a lot of bold talk, we haven’t seen the kind of action that’s required to get the economy moving again and restore growth and hope and prosperity.”

That seems like an implicit acknowledgement (!) from the Vice President of the Bush Administration that they screwed up things pretty bad. But shouldn’t that mean he has no credibility to talk about this topic?

You can’t fool all the people all of the time
But if you fool the right ones, then the rest will fall behind
Tell me who’s got control of your mind? your world view?
Is it the news or the movie you’re taking your girl to?

Dead Prez — “Propoganda”

If you watched the National Geographic George W. Bush 9/11 Interview and were wondering why they billed it as an “interview,” you’re not alone. As interesting as it was to see and hear the former President describe his personal experience during September 11, 2001, I could not help but feel as if it were produced more in the fashion of a reality television inspired confessional monologue than an interview. Maybe it was because nothing too critical was asked of Bush, or maybe perhaps it was because the interviewers were not as impartial as they outwardly appear.

One of the more shocking facts that I learned during the News of the World scandal earlier this summer was that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation holds 75% ownership of the National Geographic Channel. It was horrific when I first heard it because I felt as if I had been duped. Wasn’t the National Geographic Channel supposed to be reputable? It carried the yellow square box logo of the non-profit National Geographic Society.  I learned the hard truth: the same people who run Fox News and the News of the World run Nat Geo.

So is this propaganda? I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but knowing the favoritism that News Corp has historically had towards the Bush Administration and the Republican Party, it’s difficult to imagine that nothing is going on here. Out of all of the media requests (there must be hundreds) that were asked of George W. Bush for a 10^th anniversary interview, it went to News Corp’s seemingly respectable holding.

This post was edited 10:24 a.m.

Two and a half weeks ago, Mission Essential Personnel, LLC, (MEP) proudly put out this press release:

Mission Essential Personnel, LLC, (MEP) is pleased to announce it has been included again on Inc. magazine’s prestigious Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest growing companies based on percentage revenue growth. MEP ranks #162 overall this year, after having hit #52 last year. The company’s revenue has grown from $43 million in 2007 to more than $375 million in 2009.

“It’s great for MEP to be recognized for its continued strong growth,” said MEP CEO Chris Taylor. “Inc.’s recognition highlights our company’s tremendous success expanding its current business while beginning to branch into new areas of work. Our great personnel in the U.S. and across the world deserve credit for their unwavering commitment to our customers and their mission.”

Depends on the definition of “unwavering commitment to our customers”.

According to a whistleblower, that phenomenal growth rate — which represents a trebling of revenues each year — was achieved by the most callous kind of fraud. The kind that costs lives.

More than one quarter of the translators working alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan failed language proficiency exams but were sent onto the battlefield anyway, according to a former employee of the company that holds contracts worth up to $1.4 billion to supply interpreters to the U.S. Army.

“I determined that someone — and I didn’t know [who] at that time — was changing the grades from blanks or zeros to passing grades,” said Paul Funk, who used to oversee the screening of Afghan linguists for the Columbus, Ohio-based contractor, Mission Essential Personnel. “Many who failed were marked as being passed.”

After being asked about the allegations, U.S. Army officials confirmed to ABC News they are investigating the company.

Funk outlined his claims in a whistleblower lawsuit unsealed earlier this year against Mission Essential Personnel, saying the company turned a blind eye to cheating on language exams taken over the phone and hired applicants even though they failed to meet the language standards set by the Army and spelled out in the company’s contract. He alleges that 28 percent of the linguists hired between November 2007 and June 2008 failed to meet the government’s language requirements. The company has contested those claims in court, and this week rejected them as false in an interview with ABC News.

Civilian translators have for nearly a decade been playing a crucial if unsung role in the Afghanistan war, embedding with troops as they have moved through the countryside, helping soldiers gather information from local villagers, and attempting to spread the message of security, moderation and peace that undergirds the U.S. presence there. Some Afghan veterans have rated the value of a skilled interpreter as equal to that of a working weapon or sturdy body armor.

But a former top screener of translators heading to Afghanistan tells ABC News in an exclusive interview that will air tonight on World News with Diane Sawyer and Nightline that he believes many of the translators currently in the field cannot perform their function.

“There are many cases where soldiers have gone out into the field and have spoken to elders [who] handed messages to the interpreter that a possible ambush three miles up the road would occur. The interpreter cannot read the message and they are attacked,” Funk said. “We’re talking about soldiers lives here.”

As Blue Girl points out, the Defense Languages Institute exists to train military personnel as linguists. But the Bush-Rumsfeld war philosophy was always: why go to war with the army you can have, if you can go to war instead with contractors who you can pay really big bucks to royally bugger up things instead?

MEP dismisses Funk’s allegations with an impressive amount of outrage. But ABC News‘s investigation supports Funk’s allegations. For example, there is this casual circumstantial evidence:

In a hearing before a congressional committee in July, CEO Chris Taylor testified that within a year of accepting the Afghan contract, his company “was able to achieve a 97 percent fill rate of the government’s requirement for linguists. Previous contractors never exceeded 43 percent.”

How Mission Essential Personnel was able to find hundreds of willing and translators (sic) from among a tiny pool of qualified Americans — which Peltier put at roughly 3,800 — was initially something of a mystery to Funk. He said the company struggled to find American citizens who spoke the Afghan languages Dari and Pashto. Ultimately, Funk alleged in his lawsuit that the company resorted to fudging their proficiency test results in order to hit staffing targets that entitled them to more money from the Army.

There are the ridiculously poor quality control practices MEP followed (unconscionably poor quality control, if you consider the stakes involved):

Funk told ABC News he wrote emails to the then-CEO of Mission Essential describing how job candidates would cheat on oral exams conducted over the phone.

“I told him that it was corrupt. Stand-ins were taking the test. That’s comparable to, if you’re a lawyer, that’s comparable to taking the bar exam over the phone. You need to be face-to-face with that individual. You need to identify them. You need to know who they are and they had stand-ins on the phone taking the test,” Funk said. “They had stand-ins on the phone taking the test because there is no way that these people could possibly pass if they can’t even get through an interview.”

One of the company’s translators working in Afghanistan now confirmed the practice in an interview with ABC News, saying he personally had taken the exam for others who could not have passed it themselves. The employee, who described the practice on the condition he not be identified, called a follow-up written exam “bull.”

ABC News also reports that “American war veterans confirmed… that many of the interpreters are simply unable to perform the delicate work of interpreting conversations between Americans and Afghans.”

There is also the first-person testimony of soldiers who were in a position to judge the language skills of contracted interpreters:

Genevieve Chase served as a Pashto-language-trained US Army Sergeant in Afghanistan in 2006 in Bagram and Lashkargah, Helmand Province. She told ABC News it was not unusual to encounter interpreters who were unable to speak Pashto, or had limited English. At times, she said she believes the failure to communicate has put soldiers lives at risk.

“Somewhere along the line somebody is doing something they’re not supposed to be doing,” Chase said. “It is not difficult to pick out somebody who can’t speak Pashto. In fact, for me it was rather simple to isolate those people.”

Chase said Army units quickly identified interpreters who could not do their jobs. She recalled odd exchanges where Afghan elders would speak at great length and the interpreter would turn to the American soldiers and translate, “He said, ‘Okay.’”

A new national poll released Sunday indicates that eight in 10 Americans say that the economy is in poor shape, and the number that says conditions are very poor is on the upswing after steady declines through the spring.

And according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, more people blame the Republicans over the Democrats for the country’s economic problems.
[...]
Forty-four percent of people questioned describe economic conditions as very poor, up seven points from July.

The poll indicates that roughly half the country says that conditions have not improved in the past two years. The other half says that the economy has gotten better, but many of them expect things will get worse in the near future.
[...]
According to the survey, more Americans hold the Republicans responsible than the Democrats, with 44 percent blaming the GOP and 35 percent picking the Democrats.

“And when George W. Bush‘s name is added to the mix, the number who blame the Republicans rises to 53 percent, with just a third saying that Barack Obama and his party are at fault. That indicates why the Democrats are likely to mention Bush’s name every chance they get between now and election day,” (CNN Polling Director Keating Holland) said.

And then there’s this Washington Post-ABC News poll last night:

On the economy, 43 percent of voters side with Republicans when it comes to dealing with financial problems, while 39 percent favor Democrats. (Fifteen percent say they trust neither party more.) Although not a significant lead for Republicans, this marks the first time they have had any numerical edge on the economy dating to 2002. In recent years, Democrats have typically held double-digit advantages on the issue.

It’s not just a case of different polls coming up with different results. A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released this morning found essentially the same results as the Washington Post-ABC News poll:

Republicans have a slight edge over Democrats on the economy, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday indicates that 46 percent of Americans say that Republicans in Congress would do a better job dealing with the economy, with 43 percent saying that Congressional Democrats would do a better job on the top issue on the minds of Americans. The GOP’s three point advantage is within the poll’s sampling error.

The Republicans’ 3-point edge is a big shift from last year, when the Democrats held a 52 to 39 percent advantage. The GOP leads 51 percent to 32 percent on the economy among Independents, and they have a 9-point advantage on the issue among voters 65 and older.

According to the poll, Republicans have a slight 3-point edge over the Democrats on taxes and a 6-point advantage on tacking the federal budget deficit.

So a few days ago, Americans were pondering the shape of the economy and what got us into this whole damn mess, and what they came up with was something along the lines of:
These guys put us into a car, and drove us into a ditch, and then just walked away, refusing to lift one damn finger to help us get out of the ditch. These same guys want to persuade us to get back into the same car with them, so that the same drivers, in the same impaired state, can drive us down the same damn road again. Meanwhile, the car is still in the ditch.

And now, just a few days later, they want to ask these same guys to go get their tow-truck, and pull us out of the ditch? So that we can get back in the car with them? (Because, hey, who needs to pass Go, who needs to collect $200? “Go to ditch! Go DIRECTLY to ditch!” is just fine.)

And the people going: “One more time, baby! Come on, let’s go, you can do it!” are not standing on the sidelines, either. Those voices are coming from inside the car.

No wonder the rest of the world just doesn’t understand American politics.

Unfortunately, over the last decade, we’ve not done what’s necessary to shore up the foundations of our own prosperity. We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that these statements apply equally to the first two years of the Obama administration.

If it hurts the economy to finance these huge war expenditures by borrowing, then why has Obama made exactly zero efforts to do anything about it? I don’t see how it’s a defense to say “But Bush started it!” Maybe, but Obama cheerfully continued it. As if there was no choice but to do so. And, of course, the whole point of that quote from his speech is that there was always a choice. There was a choice for Bush. And there was a choice for Obama. And Obama made the same choice as Bush. Even though he’s been criticizing Bush’s choice for the last three years.

I really think that Obama should have proposed a “Bush’s Wars” tax increase early in 2009. Perhaps a temporary increase, to be phased out as the wars wound down.

Clearly, the wars needed to be paid for. And there was no reason for Obama to take the political heat for this necessity. But it really shouldn’t have been too difficult — even for the hapless Democrats — to hang this fairly and squarely around Bush’s neck.

I’m not saying the Republicans — together with the elements of the Democratic Party who have proven time and again that they are easily intimidated by Republican rhetoric — would have actually allowed the tax increase to go through. But doesn’t Obama’s consistent rhetoric on the irresponsibility of funding these two wars by borrowing require that he should at least have tried?

And wouldn’t he have won politically even by losing?

President Obama‘s Oval Office address was impressive and perplexing. Politically, I liked the clever pivot to the domestic economy, but he left me utterly confused about the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we to continue to spend trillions supposedly building “democracy” in those nations or not? He still has not defined what success means. If we’re just getting the hell out of those countries, then say say so and do so. But as always, Obama seems to be trying to split the difference between the irreconcilable. That is perhaps his greatest strength — or weakness.

It might be a strength if he had actually managed to get anywhere trying to do this. (Not just a strength, actually, but a miracle.) But, of course, he hasn’t. Because that’s what the word “irreconcilable” means, after all.

15. Do you think that a Muslim should be allowed to …

Run for President of the United States?
Yes: 61%
No: 32%
No answer/Don’t know: 7%

Serve on the U.S. Supreme Court?
Yes: 65%
No: 28%
No answer/Don’t know: 7%

Almost one-third of the country would bar Muslims from running for President? More than one-fourth would bar them from serving on the Supreme Court? Holy fucking wow!

The person having the last laugh would have to be George W. Bush. When he embraced torture by other names, and started to trample on some of our more cherished American values, there was a loud outcry from liberals that we, as a country, are better than this. But Bush apparently knew all along who we really are. Or who we were in the process of turning into (with a little bit of help from professional conservative hatemongers.)

The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the “key plot facilitators” in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
[...]
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only existing recordings made within the clandestine prison system and could offer a revealing glimpse into a four-year global odyssey that ranged from Pakistan to Romania to Guantanamo Bay.

The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions in 2002 at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the videos remain a closely guarded secret.

How closely guarded? The tapes were discovered in 2007, and we’re only just hearing about them:

When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staff member discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.

How inconvenient is it that the Binalshibh tapes exist?

Apparently the tapes do not show harsh treatment — unlike videos the agency destroyed of the questioning of other suspected terrorists.

Imagine that! The only tapes known to have survived do not show harsh treatment.

Note that we’re implicitly being asked to believe that, for some reason known only to the CIA — and, maybe, to God, though that’s doubtful — the CIA made interrogation tapes only of these three detainees. There were the tapes of Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri that were oh so regrettably destroyed. And there are the tapes of Binalshibh that we have just learned about. And the CIA never made tapes of any other detainees.

Because, like, what was the point? After taping three detainees, they had a top-secret eyes-only meeting, and they decided: “Been there. Done that. Enough.” Of course, they took a vote. The outcome? “The eyes have it.” And that was that. Henceforth, all interrogations were eyes-only.

The AP story has one statement that baffled me:

With military trial commissions on hold while the Obama administration figures out what to do with a number of terror suspects, Binalshibh has never had a hearing on whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.

I could have sworn that a military commission trial started just the other day. Last week, wasn’t it? Here’s Dahlia Lithwick from last Friday (a really eloquent piece; well worth your while reading the whole thing):

But instead of subjecting the so-called “worst of the worst” to a military tribunal, this past week the Obama administration fired up the tribunal system to try Omar Khadr, a child soldier. Khadr’s defense counsel, Jon Jackson, collapsed Thursday while questioning a witness and was airlifted back to the United States for treatment. There will be at least a 30-day delay in the proceedings. Maybe we can use this small break to look again at what Guantanamo has become and to acknowledge that Omar Khadr represents everything we shouldn’t be trying before a secretive military commission.

But just because the AP was totally wrong about military commission trials being on hold doesn’t mean the rest of their story isn’t 100% accurate.

The part about the CIA’s lies — first brazen, then tortured — certainly rings true:

The CIA first publicly hinted at the existence of the tapes in 2007 in a letter to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia. The government twice denied having such tapes, recanting once they were discovered. …

At the time, the CIA played down the significance of the videos, saying they were not taken as part of the agency’s detention program and did not show CIA interrogations.

But that case can be made only because of the unusual nature of the Moroccan prison, which was largely financed by the CIA but run by Moroccans, the former officials said. The CIA could move detainees in and out, and oversee the interrogations, but officially Morocco had control.

Let’s hope that the Ramzi Binalshibh tapes don’t become too controversial. Because what the CIA found yesterday can just as easily go missing again tomorrow. The CIA already knows there aren’t any real consequences for such shenanigans. Not beyond having to listen to Congressional fulminations, and having to keep a straight face while pretending to be extremely redfaced.

“I think he will replace Jimmy Carter as the worst president of modern times,” said Gingrich.

Gingrich apparently doesn’t feel very much need to stay on top of the news, not even political news. When it comes to the the worst president of modern times, Gingrich obviously managed to miss this very widely reported recent development:

However, President George W. Bush did not fare well… He dropped 16 places to 39th, making him the worst president since Warren Harding died in office in 1923, and one of the bottom five of all time, according to the experts …

It is, of course, totally incomprehensible that anyone in the political business could have missed the results of that Siena Research Institute poll. But Gingrich must have missed it, because one can scarcely credit the notion that Newt Gingrich might be uttering deliberate falsehoods for political purposes.

The Siena Research Institute has been conducting its poll of presidential scholars since 1982. In all that time, I’m pretty sure, no recent president has dropped 16 places from one poll to the next.

I’m so impressed by that unprecedented performance that I’m willing to bet Bush has a lock on the title of the worst president of modern times for the foreseeable future.

Except for one caveat. I don’t see Gingrich ever becoming president. But if he does, I’m not sure I could continue to back Bush over Gingrich.

The study didn’t make much of a splash at the time, but it has suddenly hit the liberal blog circuit this week.

The contrast between how waterboarding was covered before the Bush administration embraced it as official policy, and after, is not at all unexpected, but pretty stark, nevertheless (pdf):

From the early 1930’s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

In a statement to Michael Calderone of Yahoo! News, The New York Times was moved to defend its waterboarding coverage practices thusly:

A spokesman told Yahoo! News that the paper “has written so much about the waterboarding issue that we believe the Kennedy School study is misleading.”

However, the Times acknowledged that political circumstances did play a role in the paper’s usage calls. “As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture,” a Times spokesman said in a statement. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves. Thus we describe the practice vividly, and we point out that it is denounced by international covenants and in American tradition as a form of torture.”

The Times spokesman added that outside of the news pages, editorials and columnists “regard waterboarding as torture and believe that it fits all of the moral and legal definitions of torture.” He continued: “So that’s what we call it, which is appropriate for the opinion pages.”

Perhaps in gratitude for that fine statement, Michael Calderone was inspired to whitewash the NYT‘s whitewashing of torture with this fine piece of journalistic commentary:

Clearly, the Times doesn’t want to be perceived as putting its thumb on the scale on either side in the torture debate. That’s understandable, given traditional journalistic values aiming for neutrality and balance. But by not calling waterboarding torture — even though it is, and the paper itself defined it that way in the past — the Times created a factual contradiction between its newer work and its own archives.

So, all the NYT guilty of is “a factual contradiction between its newer work and its own archives”, which may be mildly deplorable but is perfectly understandable, especially since it was clearly motivated by the lofty and high-minded desire not “to be perceived as putting its thumb on the scale on either side in the torture debate”?

That’s called taking the NYT‘s minima culpa, and becoming its water-carrying poster child.

Someone not inclined to curry favor with the NYT might say that “by not calling waterboarding torture, even though it is”, the NYT very clearly did, to its everlasting shame, put its big fat thumb on the scale in the torture debate. On the side of whitewashing the practice thereof by the President of these here United States.

But, of course, saying stuff like that doesn’t do a whole lot for your future job prospects at the NYT.

And who can blame someone who is currently employed by Yahoo! News for nursing dreams of perhaps moving to the NYT one day?

(Michael Calderone’s byline describes him as “the media reporter for Yahoo! News“. But there is, of course, an inherent conflict of interest when a reporter who wants to remain in the reporting business covers a story like this one.)