Glenn Greenwald, Tucker, Jonah, Elizabeth and Jillian, Salon.com, 29 June 2007.

Greenwald observes additional instances of Authoritarian Follower behaviour in the American media. In order to understand how the Bush administration has been allowed to continue its series of reckless constitution breaking activities over the last 6 years you must learn more about the psychology of Authoritarianism. Read:

Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians, 2007.

Bob Woodward.
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.

Whereas Thomas Ricks' Fiasco gives a picture of the Iraq quagmire via the failures of the military leadership and their interactions with the civilian leadership, Woodward focuses on the senior political and civilian leadership in Washington. Together these two books give insightful views on the multifaceted Iraq quagmire from different angles. In addition to Woodward's main focus on Iraq-related decision making, his book documents the more general problem of Execute Branch dysfunction. That is, neither the individuals involved (i.e., Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc.) nor the organizational structures (i.e., Departments of Defense and State, National Security Council, etc., "the interagency") of the Executive Branch are capable of managing the challenges of the Iraq undertaking. Danner's review explains this well:

Woodward tends to blame "the broken policy process" on the relative strength of personalities gathered around the cabinet table: the power and ruthlessness of Rumsfeld, the legendary "bureaucratic infighter"; the weakness of Rice, the very function and purpose of whose job, to let the President both benefit from and control the bureaucracy, was in effect eviscerated. Suskind [ The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 ] , more convincingly, argues that Bush and Cheney constructed precisely the government they wanted: centralized, highly secretive, its clean, direct lines of decision unencumbered by information or consultation. "There was never any policy process to break, by Condi or anyone else," Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, remarks to Suskind. "There was never one from the start. Bush didn't want one, for whatever reason." (Danner, NYRB.)

Some book reviews:

• Michiko Kakutani, A Portrait of the President as the Victim of His Own Certitude, The New York Times, 30 September 2006.


• Mark Danner, Iraq: The War of the Imagination, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 20, 21 December 2006.


• Angelo M. Codevilla, Strategically Challenged, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006. (The reviewer, a professor of International Relations, has some insightful comments.)


• Jonathan Karl, So This Is Journalism? Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration, The Wall Street Journal, 11 October 2006. (This reviewer is suprisingly idiotic.)


• David Corn, Woodward, Revised, The Nation, 23 October 2006 (web post date 09 October 2006).

Other Links:

• Bob Woodward, Wikipedia.


• Bob Woodward, his official website.


• National Security Act of 1947, Wikipedia.
  This Act established the current national security bureaucracy (National Security Council, etc.) which Rumsfeld subverted.


• "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead" - Unclassified Key Judgments, Iraq National Intelligence Estimate, National Intelligence Council, 02 February 2007.


• "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" - Declassified Key Judgments, National Intelligence Estimate, April 2006.


• Jonathan Chait, Rummyache; The SecDef cult; A tour through the hilarious bygone world of Rumsfeld worship, The New Republic, 23 October 2006 (web post date 17 October 2006).


• Jack Beatty, Cheney Lives!, Atlantic Unbound, The Atlantic Online, 21 February 2007.


• Peter Baker, Mission Ongoing; The Image Bush Just Can't Escape, The Washington Post, 04 May 2007. (Article refers to Woodward, State of Denial, pages 186-187.)


• For a military critique of the Bush administration I strongly recommend the comments of John Batiste interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! 25 May 2007 (MP3 file here).
  A transcript of the entire interview is here.


• A Timeline of the Iraq War, ThinkProgress.org.
  Covers the period from 2003 through the present.

"Verschärfte Vernehmung"

"Enhanced Interrogation" was recognized as a war crime when practiced by Germans in the 1930s and 1940s; now it's official U.S. government policy.

Andrew Sullivan, "Verschärfte Vernehmung", The Daily Dish, The Atlantic Online, 29 May 2007.

Glenn Greenwald, Al-Qaida does it, too, Unclaimed Territory, Salon.com, 01 June 2007.

Robert Hormats was the "guest-bloger" this week at Table for One, TPMCafe:

• The power of the purse and the future of America's security, 21 May 2007.


• The cost of the Iraq war, 22 May 2007.


• Responding to your feedback, 24 May 2007.

Hormats is the author of The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars, Times Books, 2007.

Thomas E. Ricks.
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.
New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.

You must read this book if you want to begin to understand how the United States failed so badly in Iraq. American political leaders and other high U.S. government officials have put out so much disinformation that the American public is badly misinformed about what happened and why. People lobbying for continuing the American war in Iraq should speak honestly about what that requires in order to have any success: an additional several hundred thousand soldiers well trained in counterinsurgency warfare techniques who would stay continuously on the ground for many years. But the United States obviously has no interest in fielding such an army, nor even the ability, given the current state of war mobilization, and certainly not for a poorly understood country on the other side of the world. The failures of the political and senior military leadership have been staggering, probably the worst in American history. And that is surely one reason why the American people have been deliberately misled about this war, and unfortunately the mass media has tended to accomodate rather than expose the politicians' misdeeds. See also the comments at Amazon.com.

If you don't have the time or inclination to read this book, at the very least I recommend you watch the film Why We Fight (2005); perhaps also Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006).

About Thomas E. Ricks:

• Thomas E. Ricks, Wikipedia.


• PBS - Frontline - The Invasion of Iraq - Interview: Thomas E. Ricks


• Links to some of Ricks' articles

Book reviews:

• Michiko Kakutani, From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong, The New York Times, 25 July 2006.


• Daniel Byman, The March of Folly, The Washington Post, 30 July 2006. [Looks like you have to pay to see the whole article.]


• Jacob Heilbrunn, Eyes Wide Shut, The New York Times, 13 August 2006.


• Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006.
  (A strangely flat review.)


• Peter W. Galbraith, Mindless in Iraq, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 13, 10 August 2006.
  Discusses several books on the United States' Iraq quagmire, but not Ricks'. Galbraith is the author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

Other Links:

• PBS - Frontline - The Invasion of Iraq - Chronology, only covers the period 6 March 2003 - 1 May 2003.


• Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline (8/1/90 - 6/21/03), very well done. Check it out!


• Juan Cole, Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness; The cronyism that may cost him his World Bank job is also what caused the Iraq debacle, Salon.com, 14 May 2007.
  Understanding the Neoconservative cabal, its policies and how it operated, is crucial to understanding how the United States blundered so badly in Iraq. But by singling out the Neocons I do not mean to deny or preclude the additional responsibility of the wider Republican Party and particularly George Bush and his inner circle for the Iraq disaster, which is also just one of the many crimes of George Bush's administration.


• Also essential to understanding the Iraq fiasco is some aquaintance with Arab / Middle Eastern / Islamic culture and history, something obviously absent from the American political debate, particularly among the right-wingers. On reflection I realized that within the policymaking and journalistic classes there must be some knowledge of that history and culture (perhaps I give them too much credit); rather, it has been in the public debate, in what the politicians say to the less educated and less informed public, in what the propagandists say to the ignorant masses - there is were we have seen an absence of honest discussion that takes into account the differences in culture and national interests between American society and the various Middle Eastern societies. What does that imply about how the United States reaches a consensus on momentous undertakings?
  
  Juan Cole offers a list of Suggested Books about the Middle East at his excellent website Informed Comment which he updates daily with Iraq and Middle East related news. Juan Cole fills in the shamefully large gaps in the American media's coverage.


• Iraq Resolution / Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, Wikipedia.


• Public Law No: 107-243, To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.


• Greg Jaffe, Battling On; At Lonely Iraq Outpost, GIs Stay as Hope Fades; U.S. Soldiers Persevere Despite Snipers, Ambush; Fighting for Each Other, The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2007.
  The article observes the effects of '... the new U.S. "surge strategy," which some U.S. officers in Iraq say does little more than chase insurgents from one part of the country to another.'


• Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, A failure in generalship, Armed Forces Journal, May 2007.
  Reviews and comments on Yingling's essay:
  Thomas E. Ricks, Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures', The Washington Post, 27 April 2007.
  Fred Kaplan, How our generals got so mediocre, Slate.com, 16 May 2007.


• War on Terrorism, Wikipedia.


• Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence (1995), Policy Subcommittee of the Strategic Advisory Group, United States Strategic Command, Department of Defense.


• Goodbye Houston: An Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton, CorpWatch, May 2007.


• Gareth Stansfield, Accepting Realities in Iraq, Chatham House, 17 May 2007.


• Iraq Study Group Report:
  Wikipedia
  Iraq Study Group webpage
  Report download webpage

More links on the warrantless domestic spying authorized by George Bush and enabled by Alberto Gonzales (and many other "loyal Bushies").

• ‘When The President Does It, That Means That It Is Not Illegal’ - Richard Nixon, 19 May 1977.
  (This appears to be the guiding principle of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, etc.)


• James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, New York Times, 16 December 2005.
  (The article that began the public exposure of the NSA domestic spying program.)


• The Republicans' Constitutional Crisis, Perrspectives Blog, 20 February 2006.


• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Wikipedia.


• NSA warrantless surveillance controversy, Wikipedia.
  Many references in this very useful Wikipedia article.


• Beth Nolan, et al., On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 2, 9 February 2006.


• Glenn Greenwald, NSA legal arguments, 19 February 2006.


• Glenn Greenwald, PBS's "Frontline: Spying on the Home Front", 14 May 2007.


• The Document Library: NSA Domestic Surveillance Scandal, Perrspectives.
  Very thorough list of links.


• Spying at Home, The Washington Post.
  A collection of links to some/many of the paper's articles on this subject. Perhaps outdated or not kept up-to-date, but still useful.


• Eugene Robinson, Gonzales's Signature Moment, The Washington Post, 19 May 2007.


• Scott Horton, No Comment blog, Harper's Magazine.
  Horton follows the various Department of Justice / Bush administration scandals and the Republican Party's creeping fascism.

Beyond the recently revealed grotesque politicization of the Department of Justice, we are now beginning to see that George Bush clearly authorized blatantly unlawful and unconstitutional warrentless domestic wiretaps and that those wiretaps targeted many people for many years. How much longer will we tolerate this criminal behavior?

• Glenn Greenwald, More fallout from the Comey revelations, 18 May 2007.


• Glenn Greenwald, What will be done about James Comey's revelations?, 17 May 2007.


• Glenn Greenwald, Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal, 16 May 2007.


• Glenn Greenwald, Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony, 15 May 2007.


• Editorial, Caller ID; It's not whether the president called. It's what he did., The Washington Post, 18 May 2007.


• Editorial, The Gonzales Coverup; Congress must find out what the administration was doing that its own lawyers wouldn't approve., The Washington Post, 17 May 2007.


• Marty Lederman, What Was "The Program" Before Goldsmith and Comey?, Balkinization, 17 May 2007.


• Marty Lederman, Putting the Pieces Together, Balkinization, 17 May 2007.
  Warrentless domestic wiretaps and the politicization of the Department of Justice are not unrelated.


• Marty Lederman, Can You Even Imagine How Bad it Must Have Been?, Balkinization, 16 May 2007.


• Police Surveillance and the 2004 Republican National Convention, The New York Times.
  Lists organizations spied upon by NYC Police in preparation for 2004 Republican Party convention. Justified as potential domestic terrorist threats, which they obviously were not.


• Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, 5/15/07, Senate Judiciary Committee, testimony transcript, ThinkProgress.org.


• PBS Frontline: spying on the home front, 15 May 2007.
  You can watch the video online.


• Information Awareness Office, Wikipedia.


• Total/Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA): Is It Truly Dead?; EFF: It's Too Early to Tell, Electronic Frontier Foundation.


• "Terrorism" (Total) Information Awareness (TIA), Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Noam Chomsky.
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition.
New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.
(This book appears in the publisher's Open Media Pamphlets series.)

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.

If you have never encountered Chomsky before, this very short book is a good introduction. It covers many of the same themes as the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), which I recommend. In addition to Chomsky's interpretation of the media, this book includes a brief analysis of the 1990-1991 Gulf War and his analysis of America's "war on terror" as of January 2002. For Chomsky's full analysis of the media etc. one should turn to Herman & Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988).

At the very least, I believe one must seek to understand and resist the inundation of propaganda we experience in the United States. Resistance to propaganda seems to me a fundamental responsibility of the rational, skeptical citizen. This small book and the Manufacturing Consent film are useful tools in that resistance.

I provided some Links to information about Chomsky in an earlier entry (here).

A few weeks ago (here) I provided a link to this essay (which I find commendable):

Naomi Wolf, Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, The Guardian, 24 April 2007.

Now The Guardian has published a follow-up debate between Naomi Wolf and Alan Wolfe:

Is America on the road to fascism?

Naomi Wolf v Alan Wolfe, round one, 12 May 2007.

Naomi Wolf v Alan Wolfe, round two, 13 May 2007.

Some recent articles on the politics of global warming
(published before the most recent IPCC Summary for Policymakers on the Mitigation of Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf):

• James Wolcott, Rush to Judgment, Vanity Fair, May 2007.
  "Attacking environmentalists as hippie-dip "wackos" who care more about spotted owls than people and use polar bears for propaganda, Rush Limbaugh has blinded millions of Americans to the climate crisis."
  
  This is one of many articles, etc. in Vanity Fair's Green Issue.


• George Monbiot, Giving Up On Two Degrees, 1 May 2007.
  
  As published in The Guardian the article has a more alarmist title:
  The rich world's policy on greenhouse gas now seems clear: millions will die.
  "Our governments have set the wrong targets to tackle climate change using outdated science, and they know it."
  
  BTW, I love Monbiot's blog motto:
  Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it.
  Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.


• Paul Hawken, A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop, AlterNet.org, 1 May 2007.
  
  originally published as:
  
  To Remake the World: Something Earth-changing is afoot among civil society, Orion, May/June 2007.