The codes used by the president to launch a nuclear strike were mislaid for months during the Clinton administration, the former highest-ranking US officer has said.

Ex-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen Hugh Shelton made the claim in a new book.

The codes are usually held by an aide who remains close to the president.

Gen Shelton said there was an incident where an aide said the codes had been lost.

They were immediately replaced, but an internal inquiry was conducted.

Gen Shelton said the incident had taken place “around the year 2000″.

Under the procedures, an official was sent every month to check the codes, and that they were replaced every four months with new codes.

According to Gen Shelton’s book, Without Hesitation, an official had gone to check one month and been told by the aide that the codes were on the president’s person but that he was in an important meeting and could not be disturbed.

A different official went to do the same check a month later and was told a similar story. When it came time to change the codes, an aide admitted they had been missing for months.

Gen Shelton said it was apparent that the president had not had the codes and that he had been unaware that an aide had lost them.

The general described the episode as a “comedy of errors”.

The story is a little short on details. And Ret. Air Force Lt. Col Robert Patterson told a rather similar story in his own book seven years ago, similar but differing in key details:

Shelton claims the story has never been released before, but Ret. Air Force Lt. Col Robert Patterson told a very similar account in his own book, published seven years ago.

Patterson was one of the men who carried the football (note: that’s the briefcase, kept by an aide always near the president, that contains instructions for launching a nuclear attack), and he says it was literally the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that he made a routine request of the president to present the card so that he could swap it out for an updated version.

“He thought he just placed them upstairs,” Patterson recalled. “We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them.”

In Patterson’s telling of the story, the President lost the biscuit (the card with the nuclear codes) in 1998, but according to Shelton, the card went missing in 2000.

Lt. Col Robert Patterson was much closer to the action. He not only places the incident in 1998, but also blames the president for misplacing the codes (and not telling anyone till he was asked). So, given that it is extremely unlikely that the codes were misplaced twice — and if they were, surely the good general would have said so — the veracity of Gen. Shelton’s account is certainly in question. But my point is not to quibble about that.

By both accounts, it was a very big deal when the biscuit was lost. Not because there was any real risk of the codes being misused. The codes are no good without the nuclear briefcase, and the military officers who carry (and guard) the briefcase aren’t going to let anyone other than the president access the briefcase.

It was a very big deal because until the codes were replaced — more than two months by Shelton’s account, and some unspecified shorter period by Patterson’s — if the President needed to launch nuclear missiles for whatever reason, he would have been unable to. Temporarily, we simply did not have nuclear weapons capability.

What baffles me is that we do not seem to have any double redundancy built into the system. Nothing that covers the contingency that the codes get misplaced. It’s not like this possibility has never occurred to anyone either. According to ABC News, the codes were at least rumored to have been misplaced once before:

If the facts seem murky, that’s not unusual when national security matters are involved. Consider the old story that Jimmy Carter left his biscuit in a suit that got sent to the dry cleaners. Today, no one will confirm the story, but no one will deny it either.

Even if the story is untrue, just the fact that the possibility was recognized surely means that someone should have woken up and realized that double redundancy was called for?

Gen. Shelton called his incident a comedy of errors. Actually, it was a lot more than that. It’s unfathomable that the Pentagon officer who’s charged with making “an in-person verification” that the codes were safe was satisfied, two months in a row, with taking someone else’s word for it. Procedures have now been changed to make it clear that’s never supposed to happen again:

Shelton says the president was given new codes within minutes when the previous codes could not be found, and the procedures have since been changed, so that the Pentagon aide who carries out the monthly check is required to wait at the White House until he or she can visually confirm the codes are in the possession of the president or an aide who is with him.

But the fact remains that, till very recently, at least, we safeguarded our nuclear missile launch capability like a bunch of clowns.

And I have it on very good authority that we have the finest military in the world.

The first step in his plan to start making “ridiculous” money out on the lecture circuit (by doing what he does worst) is going to be a March 17 engagement in Calgary, Canada. When that engagement was announced last month, Bush’s new hometown newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, wrote:

The event is likely to be one of a number of events featuring Bush in the coming months, both domestically and abroad, say those close to the former president.

But we now learn that Bush’s first domestic speechification is not going to occur till June 17:

Former President George W. Bush will give his first post-presidency U.S. speech in Erie, Pa., on June 17 to the Manufacturer & Business Association, which serves companies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.

It can’t be ridiculously high fees slowing down demand for Bush-speak, either. He’s charging $150,000 a speech (plus first-class airfare or private jet transport for four; is that his security detail, or just his colossal ego?).

That’s what Bill Clinton was charging four years ago:

Clinton’s speaking tour in 2005 included 43 speeches in 14 countries. He began in February and averaged about four speeches a month, usually charging about $150,000 per event. On occasion, the price was much steeper.

So why isn’t the Republican Benevolent Association rallying around Bush, like it’s supposed to do, with lucrative speaking engagements? Everyone who might have planned to throw $150,000 his way can’t be so badly clobbered by the Bush economy, can they?

And it is, to be fair to all the Americans who aren’t as hard-core Democrats as we, it’s a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress.

Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades actually were implemented. And look what happened.

They took us from record surpluses to an exploding debt; from over 22 million new jobs to just 5 million; from increasing working families’ incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year; from almost 8 million Americans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 million driven into poverty; and millions more losing their health insurance.

Now, in spite of all this evidence, their candidate is actually promising more of the same.

Think about it: more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that will swell the deficit, increase inequality, and weaken the economy; more Band-Aids for health care that will enrich insurance companies, impoverish families, and increase the number of uninsured; more going it alone in the world, instead of building the shared responsibilities and shared opportunities necessary to advance our security and restore our influence.

They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more.

This is why Obama hasn’t closed the deal, and I bet it’s a huge part of why the Clintons are pissed at him: He never points out why Democrats are better than Republicans. He always talks about working and compromising with them. This is all so fucking simple.

Is Bill Clinton still fuming over the outcome of the primary contests?

Although he has yet to pick up the phone when Barack Obama calls, a close associate said Sunday that the former President is ready to make nice this week.

“This man doesn’t stay mad,” said former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, although there are a few anger issues hanging around. For Clinton, it’s not all about him, definitely not, McAuliffe said on CNN‘s “Late Edition.”

“Is he somewhat angry, as I am, and others, at some of the treatment Hillary Clinton received from the press? Sure. But, you know, that’s life,” McAuliffe said.

He’s angry at some of the treatment Hillary received from the press, and so he doesn’t pick up the phone when Barack Obama calls?

Makes perfect three-year-old sense.

After the debate opportunity that ABC News comprehensively butchered on Wednesday night, the consensus of people without an axe to grind has overwhelmingly been that ABC News set a new low that night which may well stand for all time.

Putting it in a nutshell, ABC News spent way too much time on stupid “gotcha” questions about controversies that had already been pretty fully aired, and very little time by comparison on any substantive issues.

Apparently, no one put it in a nutshell for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After Barack Obama criticized the moderators for not asking a single substantive question for the first half of the debate, Bill Clinton accused Obama yesterday of “whining.” And he went on to castigate Obama in pejorative schoolyard language: “If you don’t want to play, keep your uniform off.”

(Bill Clinton came out of his presidency with a certain amount of stature and goodwill—among Democrats, at least. That stature grew over the last few years, as his presidency came to look even more impressive by comparison to Bush’s pathetic and ignominious performance. But since Hillary Clinton started to fall behind in the campaign, Bill has continued to act and speak in ways that have diminished his stature. It’s already got to the point that we’re hardly surprised any more when he says stupid, dishonest, mean-spirited stuff.)

Hillary Clinton rushed in to out-Bill Bill today:

“I know he spent all day yesterday complaining about the hard questions he was asked,” Clinton said. “Being asked tough questions in a debate is nothing like the pressures you face inside the White House.”

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of Labor and a friend of both the Clintons for forty years, who endorsed Obama today — and presumably enshrined himself forever in the Clintons Hall of Wrath (remember Bill “Judas” Richardson?) — got it exactly right, I think:

We have three terrible traditions that we’ve developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn’t possibly believe and doesn’t possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I’ve seen growing in Hillary’s campaign. … It’s old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It’s just so deeply cynical.

Is it that hard for this lady to differentiate between a complaint about hard questions and a complaint about inane questions? If yes, that speaks to judgment. If no, that speaks to dishonesty. Either way, do we really need or want four more years of poor judgment and/or dishonesty? Do we really want a President who will run the government like Hillary Clinton has been running this campaign? Could we possibly be that masochistic as a nation?

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, at a campaign stop for his wife in Pennsylvania over the weekend, said, “Corn is the single most inefficient way to produce ethanol because it uses a lot of energy and because it drives up the price of food.”

That certainly accords with the conventional wisdom, that Obama is more acceptable to Clinton supporters than Clinton is to Obama supporters. But a Pew poll addresses this question, and produces surprising answers:
— More Democratic voters defect to McCain if Obama is the nominee than if Clinton is the nominee: “in an Obama-McCain matchup, 14% of Democratic voters say they would support McCain, compared with 8% who would do so if Clinton is the nominee”.
— More Clinton supporters would switch to McCain if Obama is the nominee than Obama supporters would if Clinton is the nominee: “A quarter of Democrats (25%) who back Clinton for the nomination say they would favor McCain in a general election test against Obama. The “defection” rate among Obama’s supporters if Clinton wins the nomination is far lower; just 10% say they would vote for McCain in November…”

And then, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll has some numbers on the subject of whether Clinton should quit the race that I found really surprising too:

… Democrats by a very wide 67-29 percent say Clinton should stay in the race even if she loses either Texas or Ohio.

That’s a lot more lopsided than I would ever have guessed. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see only about 60% of Democrats saying that she should stay in even if she won both Texas and Ohio.

But here’s the one that really blew me away:

But if she were to lose both, far fewer say they’d want her to continue – 45 percent, with 51 percent saying otherwise.

Trust ABC News not to see that the important thing about that response is not that 45% is far fewer than 67%, but that almost 50% of Democrats would like her to battle on even if she loses both Texas and Ohio. I would submit that’s mindboggling.

And there’s also this:

… nearly half of Obama’s supporters say that a Clinton loss in either Ohio or Texas should not be enough to force her out of the race

Once again, Obama supporters displaying surprising support for Clinton.

Very interesting, all of this!

First, he totally distorted some remarks by Bill Clinton about combating global warming.

Tapper’s take:

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

What Bill Clinton actually said:

And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

Anyone whose IQ exceeds their age can see that that’s almost the exact opposite of what Tapper says he said. Clinton wasn’t advocating that we should slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions; he was explaining why we can’t afford to. Here’s how ridiculous Tapper’s take is: right-wing blogs are ridiculing it. For instance, the National Review’s Iain Murray wrote:

The ABC] video is actually (and again, I can’t believe I’m saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton. The biter bit, you may say, but I don’t believe this sort of manipulation by the media is in any way helpful. The clip is out of context…. That’s not good journalism in any sense.

It’s bad enough that Tapper got it all twisted around to begin with. He then effortlessly managed to make it worse. Instead of apologizing and letting it go at that, Tapper decided to defend his absurd post.

First, he stuck this headline on his in-defense-of-myself post: “Being Accused of “Parsing” By the Clinton Campaign”. (So he hasn’t even noticed that there’s been flak from everyone and her sister, including from the right? And this guy is a journalist? Somebody pays him to stick his head in the sand, and go on spouting sh*t?)

And then this is the entirety of his self-absorbed self-defense (note: there’s a later update, “noting” what Iain Murray said,* and “responding” to it):

Wow, I hardly know how to take this.

This morning, trying to understand what former President Bill Clinton was driving at when he made a statement about effort to combat global warming, I posted a quote of his, put it in context, provided video links, and asked what he meant.

The Clinton campaign did not provide for me, as requested, an explanation of what he meant. (Dude, when you have to ask people to explain to you the meaning of statements that are perfectly clear to everyone else, you are totally in the wrong business. There’s a good reason why our ex-resident-troll JimC is not a journalist.)

Instead, the response from the Clinton campaign is to post an item on its “fact” hub and accuse me of “parsing.”

I will plead guilty to “parsing” — the dictionary definition of the word — “To examine closely or subject to detailed analysis, especially by breaking up into components” or “To make sense of; comprehend.”

But I suspect the Clinton campaign thinks of the word “parsing” in its more colloquial sense — as in “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

I guess I should defer to their expertise.

Apologies for taking a confusing public comment from a former president about a major world issue and trying to make sense of it.

Wow, I hardly know how to take that either! Is it possible that I have it wrong, and it’s this Tapper turd who pays ABC News (for allowing him to go on sullying their reputation)?

As his ABC News blog proudly proclaims,”Jake Tapper is ABC News‘ Senior National Correspondent based in the network’s Washington bureau.” Senior National Correspondent.

Let me return to the statement I started with: “The pathetic performance of ABC News’ Jake Tapper yesterday seems to capture perfectly how fully effed up our media has become.” What that statement reflects, more than anything else, is my firm belief that there will be no consequences whatsoever to Tapper for this whole shameful exhibition. (I’ll be delighted to eat my words if I prove to be wrong. And just to avoid any Tapper-like 180-degree misinterpretations, let me be perfectly clear — a promotion will not qualify as “consequences”. I do mean negative consequences.)

* For reasons that we are entirely unable to figure out, Tapper doesn’t quote what we quoted above. He quotes this instead:

…while Tapper isn’t entirely accurate in characterizing what Bill said, he’s pretty accurate in summarizing the effects of the policies he recommends. Bill Clinton’s economic stimulus plan is to slow down our economy.

I guess he’s not really responding to Murray’s criticism, is he? No, that would be too much like journalistic integrity. One might be forgiven for not even realizing that Murray criticized Tapper.

I want to join Sen. Clinton and President Clinton in congratulating Sen. Obama.

Now the three of us move on to February 5th where millions of Americans will cast their vote and help shape the future of this party and help shape the future of America.

He didn’t just sneak in President Clinton, these were practically his opening words (right after “Thank you all very much.”) Or, actually, not his words at all. Edwards was performing to Obama’s script.

On January 16, at the Henderson Convention Center in Nevada, Obama went:

I respect that Sen. Clinton and President Clinton tried to get health care fixed in 1993.

On January 21, on Good Morning America, it was:

We’ve got a formidable opponent – actually two formidable opponents at this point, between Sen. Clinton and President Clinton.

On January 22, during a media conference call before a speech in Greenville, South Carolina:

I think its very clear that Sen. Clinton and President Clinton have been spending the last month attacking me in ways that are not accurate.

On January 23, in an interview:

We’ve taken a lot of incoming over the last month from both Sen. Clinton and President Clinton and their camp. I know that’s certainly typical of Washington politics, and I think part of their strategy has been to drag us into the muck.

Repeat anything enough times, and it certainly gets noticed:

Obama often mentions “Sen. Clinton and President Clinton” in the same breath and in a pejorative way suggesting they are running as a tandem team against him.

Pretty widely, actually. And now Edwards wants to stand up and be noticed too. As being with Obama on this one. Hmmmm!

I’m worried because there’s only one scenario under which I see one of the Republican candidates-from-hell sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2009. And that scenario is that Obama wins the Democratic nomination, and then in November 2008 too many Americans vote the racism that I very much fear still bubbles just under the skin in large swathes of the country, the racism that these voters will never admit to a pollster in any way, shape or form.

If someone could design a reliable survey to get deviously at racism that might exist but would never be admitted directly or be tricked out even by simple indirect questions, I would very much like to see the results. And if they showed that I am totally off the mark in my fears, I would certainly stop worrying about Obama winning the nomination, and sit back and say: “Let the best person win”. But until someone can convince me that my fears are unfounded, I’m going to be worrying my head off at what I consider the very real prospect of the presidency staying in Republican hands. Even more dangerous hands than those of George Bush. How cruel would it be of the political gods if this is what they have decided will be the last component of Bush’s worst-of-all-time-so-far legacy? That he so polluted our body politic that he left the country only with Republican choices who were so much worse even than himself.

For the record, TNR’s Noam Scheiber sees two paths to an Obama nomination. One, Obama wins Iowa convincingly (by five points or more), in which case Edwards is done, and Obama consolidates the anti-Clinton votes and goes on to beat Clinton. Two, the Iowa caucus results in an inconclusive muddle:

An inconclusive muddle actually benefits Obama. The reason is that a muddle kills Edwards, who needs the kind of fundraising and free-media boomlet that only a clean victory can provide. And without Edwards in the race, Obama consolidates the anti-Hillary vote, which nudges him over the top in what’s now a dead-even race in New Hampshire, makes things look pretty good for him in South Carolina (where he’s been closing but still has to convince some African-Americans he can win), and generally gives him the upper hand for the nomination.

According to Scheiber’s analysis, if I don’t want to see an Obama nomination, I need to hope for “Hillary wins by more than a point or two, in which case the race is basically over”, or “Edwards wins convincingly and Obama is third, in which case Obama is probably done and Hillary and Edwards duke it out”.

For the next few days, all the goddesses and saints who listen to me on a regular basis are going to be at the receiving end of a lot of beseeching on behalf of the second scenario, and failing that, the first.