NOW on to the BUMPING UP of Larry Johnson’s EXCEPTIONAL essay that sensible people everywhere should read. We realize that the KoolAid dipsomaniacs are unable to see, let alone comprehend, but we’ll persist.

By LARRY JOHNSON, originally published on November 11, 2008:

If you enjoyed the George W. Bush era, you are gonna love the Barack Obama regime, because Obama is relying on some of the same folks who helped create the mayhem and failures in the CIA. That’s right, boys and girls. Take a look at today’s Wall Street Journal:

President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party. . . .

The intelligence-transition team is led by former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan and former CIA intelligence-analysis director Jami Miscik, say officials close to the matter. Mr. Brennan is viewed as a potential candidate for a top intelligence post. Ms. Miscik left amid a slew of departures from the CIA under then-Director Porter Goss.

Advisers caution that few decisions will be made until the team gets a better picture of how the Bush administration actually goes about gathering intelligence, including covert programs, and there could be a greater shift after a full review.

The Obama team plans to review secret and public executive orders and recent Justice Department guidelines that eased restrictions on domestic intelligence collection. “They’ll be looking at existing executive orders, then making sure from Jan. 20 on there’s going to be appropriate executive-branch oversight of intelligence functions,” Mr. Brennan said in an interview shortly before Election Day.

Putting John Brennan in charge of this effort is mind numbing. Brennan was one of the George Tenet toadies who defended the former CIA Director when I, along with a group of other retired CIA officers, demanded that Tenet donate part of the proceeds of his book to the families of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq and to return his medal of freedom.

Brennan was part of the group of the insiders who saw no problem with George Tenet helping cook the intelligence and mislead the American people about the threat in Iraq. Here’s what Tim Shorrock wrote about that dust up:

Tenet’s ties with contractors were underscored last week in a dispute between two groups of former CIA officials over Tenet’s legacy. On April 28, six former intelligence officers wrote to Tenet, saying he shared culpability with President Bush and Vice President Cheney for “the debacle in Iraq,” and suggesting he donate half the royalties from his book to Iraq war veterans and their families. All of the signatories had severed their ties to U.S. intelligence, although three of them, Phil Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Vince Cannistraro, work as consultants for news organizations, corporations and government agencies outside of intelligence.

A few days later, six recently retired officers responded. They called the first letter a “bitter, inaccurate and misleading attack” on Tenet and pointed out that it was drafted by officers who “had not served in the Agency for years.” Tenet, his supporters said, “literally led the nation’s counterterrorism fight.” And three of its six signatories were directly involved in that fight — as contractors. They included John Brennan of the Analysis Corp.; Cofer Black, Tenet’s former counterterrorism director and vice chairman of Blackwater, the private military contractor; and Robert Richer, the former deputy director of the CIA’s clandestine services. Richer recently left Blackwater to become the CEO of Total Intelligence, a new company formed with Black and other ex-CIA officials to provide intelligence services to corporations and government agencies.

In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 Brennan was in charge of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (which was replaced subsequently by the National Counter Terrorism Center) and failed to give the U.S. State Department the correct statistics on the number of terrorist attacks in 2003. He forgot to count an entire month’s data. I discovered the error and alerted folks at State Department.

Professors Alan Krueger and David Laitin independently discovered the discrepancies and published an op-ed in the Washington Post. Here’s a link for a comprehensive article discussing that intelligence failure.

So you think I am being too hard on Brennan? Sure, anyone can make a mistake. However, he was back in the news in 2005. I learned in March of that year that the State Department was not going publish the CIA stats on terrorism because the number of attacks had dramatically increased and the Bush Administration thought that made it look like they were losing the war on terror. John Brennan was part of that effort to keep the truth from the American public. Here’s the piece I wrote to help draw attention to this issue back in 2005:

The numbers are in and the news is not good for U.S. efforts to contain and reduce the threat of international terrorism. 2004 marked the highest number of significant incidents of terrorism since the intelligence community started keeping statistics in 1968. (An incident is counted as significant if an attack results in the death, injury or kidnapping of one or more persons or property damage in excess of $10,000). Attacks jumped from 175 in 2003 to 651 in 2004. This surpasses the previous high of 273 significant attacks in 1985.

The bad news kept on coming. One thousand nine hundred and seven (1907) people died in international terrorist attacks last year. This marks the second highest death toll since 1968; falling short of the infamous record of 2001.

Unfortunately, former 9-11 Commission Staff Director, Phil Zelikow, and chief of the National Counter Terrorism Center, John Brennan, tried with some success to confuse the press and suggest that the numbers do not matter. In a deft display of obfuscation and spin Messrs. Zelikow and Brennan made several points. It started with Zelikow’s claim that:

The compilation of data about terrorist attacks is not a required part of the report, but traditionally had been provided by the State Department, going back to the years in which the State Department was basically the public voice of the U.S. Government on international terrorism, generally. . . . But what’s important for our purposes is what the law said the NCTC should do. It said the NCTC was the primary organization for analysis and integration of — and I’m quoting from the law now — “All intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States Government pertaining to terrorism or counterterrorism.” The law further stated that the NCTC would be the United States Government’s “shared knowledge bank on known and suspected terrorists and international terror groups, as well as their goals, strategies, capabilities, and networks of contact and support.” (Phil Zelikow)

State Department’s role as the lead for coordinating international terrorism was established by a National Security Decision Directive signed by President Reagan in early 1986. This was in response to an interagency fight that broke out during an effort to apprehend the terrorists responsible for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. While flying over Italy in late 1985 in pursuit of Abu Abbas, a State Department official and a CIA officer argued heatedly over who was in charge of the mission. Recognizing the need for a clear chain of command the Department of State was put in charge of coordinating the efforts of CIA, DOD, and FBI efforts to track and deal with terrorism. The first man put in charge of this effort was L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer.

Mr. Zelikow is misleading the media by asserting that the State Department “traditionally compiled the data”. That is simply not true. The State Department never was in charge of collecting or compiling the statistics. It simply coordinated the process of assembling the data in order to provide the Congress and the American people with a comprehensive view of international terrorist activity. Since 1986 the Counter Terrorism Center at the CIA had the task of compiling the data and writing the narrative analysis. Don’t take my word for it, just ask the former Chiefs of the Counter Terrorism Center starting with Dewey Claridge and ending with Cofer Black.

By splitting the statistics on terrorism from the country reports, Zelikow is creating the kind of stovepiping of information which the 9-11 Commission claimed helped undermine US efforts to detect and defeat Al Qaeda’s effort to launch their suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There is nothing in the new law requiring this move.

John Brennan, the head of the National Counter Terrorism Center, made the unbelievable admission that when the CIA shifted responsibility for counting terrorist incidents to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) in the fall of 2003 only three part time people were assigned to the task. Brennan said:

To ensure a more comprehensive accounting of terrorist incidents, we in the NCTC significantly increased the level of effort from three part-time individuals to 10 full-time analysts, and we took a number of other steps to improve quality control and database management. This increased level of effort allowed a much deeper review of far more information and, along with Iraq, are the primary reasons for the significant growth in a number of terrorist incidents being reported.

The American people are asked to believe that nobody at TTIC understood in the aftermath of 2001 that we needed to keep a comprehensive count of terrorist events. Implicit in this criticism is a smear on the good work done previously at the Counter Terrorism Center. CTC did not consider counting terrorism events an afterthought. They used a sound methodology of monitoring news media reports, FBIS reports, and cables from US Embassies and Defense Attaches to identify possible acts of international terrorism. An act of violence did not necessarily mean that terrorism was involved. Instead expert analysts from CTC and State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) would meet periodically to review and decide what incidents represented acts of international terrorism.

This process broke down when the responsibility for doing this was shifted from CTC and put under Mr. Brennan’s stewardship at the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in late 2003. Mr. Brennan in fact shares much of the responsibility for the debacle with the statistics that were misreported in the report issued in April 2004. He did not ensure that his part time employees could count.

With the beefed up work force at NCTC we now know that 10 analysts were involved in counting 651 significant international terrorist attacks in 2004. Geez, I guess that means it took each analyst one year to keep track of 65 attacks.

Brennan asks the media and the American people to believe that the rise in attacks is simply the result of better counting by more people. Not true. An independent data source from RAND-MIPT shows a similar dramatic rise in attacks and deaths. This is not an artifice of methodology. Something bad is going on out there.

Two countries account for a major portion of the increased terrorist activity—the Kashmir region of India and Iraq. With respect to Kashmir, it is important to note that since 1998 this area has consistently appeared in the appendix in Patterns of Global Terrorism that described significant incidents. I have used this data in briefing for foreign governments during that period to point out that not only was India being repeatedly attacked by Islamic jihadists (who were funded and trained by Pakistan), but that the people of Kashmir repeatedly suffered one of the highest death tolls of any country in the world from terrorist attacks. The sad fact is that media, and to a lesser extent the U.S. Government, tended to ignore these attacks.

It is worth recalling that the cruise missiles fired by President Clinton in August of 1998 in retaliation for the Al Qaeda bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania struck a camp in Afghanistan and killed members of one of the groups that carried out attacks in the Kashmir as well as two Pakistani intelligence officers. In the war against Islamic extremists Kashmir matters.

Brennan’s response on Iraq is more puzzling:

QUESTION: Do you regard the Iraq numbers that you just gave us — for which, thank you — as comparable? And the reason I ask is that I’ve got to figure that if there’s one piece of real estate that the U.S. intelligence community has devoted enormous resources to in the last two years, it’s got to be — two-and-a-half years — it’s Iraq. Therefore, do you think those figures are comparable, ‘03 to ‘02?
MR. BRENNAN: In terms of what the term you’re using — “comparable” — to sort of denote here, I’m not certain. The rigor that we applied worldwide for the 2004 data also applied to Iraq. So it was Iraq, Kashmir, and others. So that number, I think, is the result of exhaustive search and research on that. Also, as I pointed out, the number of civilians that have come not just from the United States, but also from other countries — the number of individuals who, in fact, are in different places in Iraq that have been involved in some of the attacks that have taken place there, I think that is the reason why, in fact, we’re seeing an increase in that number.

Although Brennan is not certain about the comparability of the numbers we do not have to rely on him. Data maintained by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is reported on at least a weekly basis to the Secretary of Defense, shows clear unambiguous data that the level of terrorist activity in Iraq mushroomed in 2004. In fact, the highest level of attacks ever recorded in Iraq occurred in December 2004.

Iraq is relevant to the threat of international terrorism principally because it is serving as a drawing card for jihadists throughout the Islamic world. I have had recent discussions with senior government officials representing three countries in the Persian Gulf. To a man they were alarmed by the images coming out of Iraq showing US soldiers abusing muslim women and the shooting of unarmed insurgents. The perception of the United States as an invader is inciting terrorism in the region, not quelling it. Several commented on the perceived parallel of the U.S. presence in Iraq as comparable to what the Soviets did in Afghanistan during the 1980s. They worry that we are sowing the seeds of future jihadist terrorism.

The real news from the press conference of Messrs. Zelikow and Brennan is that they have not finished counting the incidents from last year and that the numbers are likely to go up when revised statistics are issued in June. Moreover, both conceded that events in Russia and Philippines, where several hundred were killed, were excluded from the data.

I welcome Mr. Brennan’s commitment to look at the methodology and recommend corrections. The failure to count attacks inside Russia by Chechen separatists, for example, needs to be re-examined. While ten years ago there was no evidence that the Chechen were receiving outside assistance, that is not the case today. In fact Chechen fighters in the battle of Anaconda in Afghanistan in March 2002 killed American soldiers. The Chechen movement has clear economic and military ties to international jihadists. In future reports it would be entirely appropriate to classify as international attacks something carried out by any group with established ties to groups outside of their country.

There is no single statistic that can tell us what is happening in the war on terrorism. Reporting multiple attacks does not necessarily mean that casualties will follow. As Brennan and Zelikow correctly note most of the casualties were caused by a relatively small number of attacks. But, those attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists that have clear ties with Al Qaeda.

In light of this it is breathtaking that someone with Zelikow’s intellect can argue that numbers don’t matter. The following exchange occurred during the Wednesday afternoon press conference:

QUESTION: Um, 651 attacks in 2004, compared to 175 attacks in your report in 2003. That’s a sharp increase in terrorist attacks. What does that tell us about the war on terrorism — the global war on terrorism and the cooperation? . . . .
MR. ZELIKOW: I mean, the short answer is it doesn’t tell us anything about the war on terror. The statistics are simply not valid for any inference about the progress, either good or bad, of American policy. I think that’s the honest answer. If you just look at what the statistics are and what kind of inferences can legitimately be drawn from them, I can’t come up with a defensible inference.

Here’s the bottom line. Numbers do matter. If more people are being killed in Iraq and India then we need to ensure that US policy for combating terrorism is focused on those areas. To pretend that the threat of terrorism is as great in Brazil as in Iraq is delusional. And to pretend that objective facts say nothing about the reality of terrorism perhaps shows us why the US effort to deal with Islamic extremists is going in the wrong direction.

Friends in the intelligence community tell me that Zelikow, when confronted with the higher numbers, tried to have those numbers suppressed. Once word of this leaked out Zelikow shifted gears to damage control and constructed the artificial and misleading explanation that NCTC is now doing something new that was never done before. Oh yeah, and it is mandated by law.

Sadly this simply shows how uninformed Zelikow is about the history of counter terrorism policies and procedures during the last 25 years, notwithstanding his post as staff director of the 9-11 Commission. Maybe this explains why the Commission had such difficulty identifying who failed in their duty to prevent those terrible attacks in September 2001. Phil Zelikow by his own admission has trouble making sense of numbers.

So you thought Barack Obama would bring change to the abuses at CIA? Think again. He’s relying on folks who helped debase and embarrass the CIA. That’s not change I want to believe in.

Egland had this to say:

Last weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about the need for an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism.

In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone”, and that America should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnershipto dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide.

Eglin outlines a problem with Obama’s speeches, we already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union.

Obama only needed to hold one meeting, yet he hasn’t. Senator Obama said this during a debate hosted by MSNBC with Tim Russert and Brian Williams. Here is Russert’s question and Obama’s answer:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, I want you to respond to not holding oversight for your subcommittee. But also, do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven’t had oversight hearings on Afghanistan.

Eglin has more on the partnership, one that was so urgently needed, post 9/11. Here are his thoughts on that:

The urgency of this partnership became clear after investigators discovered that a cell in Hamburg, Germany, had helped in Al Qaeda’s attacks against America on Sept. 11, 2001. After bombings in Madrid and London, the partnership expanded.

Since then the number of attacks and plots aimed at our European allies has dropped. And here in the United States, of course, Al Qaeda has been unable to attack since 9/11.

The major continues by discussing the challenges the intelligence community and others had in finding the source of the “new” bombs. He says the following on those challenges:

One challenge we had was to find where the research and testing of new bombs was taking place. Eventually, American intelligence and European law enforcement officials discovered together that much of the work was being done outside Iraq with the results transmitted via the Internet.

Acting on this information, the police in France arrested electrical engineering students at a French university who had been recruited by their local mosque leaders. After these arrests, American tactical countermeasures and improvements in technology became more effective and the number of casualties from certain types of explosives declined.

Such close collaboration between the United States and France against terrorist cells in Iraq may surprise those accustomed to digesting easy sound bites of “cowboy diplomacy” and “unilateralism.” But the partnership is real, and not just with France.

The partnership does indeed include other countries in the European Union (EU). One of these other countrie is Germany. Eglin said this about Germany and its efforts to combat terrorism. Here are his words:

The Germans contribute as well. I also worked on counterterrorism operations in southern Europe to stop a plot against American interests there. Thanks to German intelligence and law enforcement officials, a planned attack modeled on the 1983 truck bombing against U.S. marines in Lebanon - but several times larger - never happened.

Major Eglin tells us about diplomatic efforts at the highest levels:

Such tactical success is only possible after effective diplomatic engagement at the highest levels. Agreements between the United States and Europe, like the Declaration on Combating Terrorism and the Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, have helped enormously. And for years, NATO, the Group of 8 industrialized nations, and other multilateral organizations have contributed as well.

The major has this to say about testimony that was given prior to Obama entering the US Senate:

In 2004, J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, testified about the success of these partnerships before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs.

He has this criticism to offer about Obama. His criticism once again points out either, 1) his inexperience or 2) his lack of interest and inability to educate himself on his job as a senator. Eglin said this:

Had Obama, who now heads that subcommittee, read the transcripts from the meeting, which took place before he came to office, or had he held a similar hearing, he might have known that the partnerships he called for last week already exist.

The major says it best about Obama’s credibility as a potential commander-in-chief. He says this:

After years of investment and sacrifice, Americans and Europeans deserve accurate information about our efforts to defeat international terrorism, especially from a prospective commander in chief.

And another voice speaks out questioning Obama’s “qualification” to be our next president.

Rebecca Traister this week writing in Salon thinks she knows how 18 million people think:

The attack of the PUMAs, or a dozen reasons why Clinton voters are still too angry to come home.

If you’re a dedicated Democrat — or perhaps even one of those fed-up Republicans we’ve heard about — there’s a good chance you’re pretty stoked right about now. After a grueling but thrilling primary contest, we at last have decided on a history-making, barrier-breaking Democratic presidential candidate. You’re excited! You’re inspired! You’re ready to hit rural Ohio with enough campaign literature to choke a wavering independent!

But why do you keep hearing all these stories about grumpy old ladies still hung up on Hillary Clinton, the ones who’re threatening to make a scene at the Democratic convention in Denver, or vote for John McCain in November?

To be fair, it’s not just women. There are plenty of Clinton supporters of every demographic description who are still ticked. But yes, it’s true that the Clinton base skewed female, and that women over 30 are the most vocal of the malcontents. Some of them are calling themselves “PUMAs” (as in “Party Unity My Ass”), an acronym that makes them sound, appropriately enough, like cougars in a very bad mood. Who are these women, and why are they such buzzkills?

A buzzkill? A buzzkill would be a disasterous Presidency from a dangerously inexperienced 46-year-old Senator who misspeaks on issues ranging from the status of Jerusalem to meeting global dictators and sponsors of global terrorism without preconditions and has no core convictions and for whom everything is a matter of political expediency. That’s a buzzkill. And PUMA, at least for me, stands for People United Means Action.

Remember that classic of pop-psychological cheese, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus”? This offensive but rhetorically useful book (yes, I’m invoking it; address your letters of complaint to rtraister@salon.com) states that often, in conflict, women simply want to be heard. They want to air their grievances and let their opponents know where they’re coming from. Now the Democratic Party is moving forward, as it must, but it is doing so without giving the Clinton women a real hearing — without letting them vent their anger. It is the social equivalent of talking over them, waving off their complaints, assuming they’ll come around. This is a mistake. This is only making things worse (even if, as Walter Shapiro notes, history says they will come around, no matter how many PUMA T-shirts and Web sites like this one may be sprouting now).

In the spirit of this kind of communication and rapprochement, I figured it might be a valuable exercise to examine the different flavors of anger that your Clinton-supporting peers may be experiencing right now. Here are a dozen reasons why some Clinton supporters are mad and are not yet ready — even as their candidate joins him on the hustings — to put on Barack Obama buttons.

History says will we come around? Obama says we will come around. Howard Dean says we will come around. Claire McCaskill says we will come around. Donna Brazile says we will come around. And some of us keeping on telling you that we won’t so can please drop this. But obviously, she is not so it’s time for the media to tell me how I think or how I feel.

This list is not comprehensive. It is based on interviews with women at Clinton’s June 3 nonconcession speech and her June 7 concession speech, and on comments I heard from some attendees at an EMILY’s List conference a week after Clinton bowed out. It undoubtedly misrepresents the feelings of any number of Hillary heads. This is merely an attempt to give space to, describe and otherwise make a record of the grievances of a number of deeply committed political people who have just had their hearts broken. So without further ado: an incomplete taxonomy of post-primary rage.

1. They are angry because their candidate lost a close contest.

This is just simple human math, and it happens after every primary showdown. Remember that it took some Deaniacs months to come around to John Kerry in 2004. It’s just that most years, the contests haven’t also been identity-politics duels between two underrepresented social groups vying for a chance at a political position that has always been denied them.

Another difference is just how close and engrossing this race became. It’s hard to lose, especially when the finishes were often photo-worthy, when the possibility of upset lurked around every corner. And for those Obama supporters who say “Come on, it was over for months; it was an irresponsible fiction that Hillary ever had a chance,” it may be useful to imagine how it might have felt to have had the candidates’ situations fully reversed: Clinton winning more pledged delegates, many of them coming from caucus states and red states, Obama nipping at her heels in the popular vote and winning big states and purple states and two states whose votes weren’t fully counted, Florida and Michigan. Imagine how maddening it would be to believe your candidate was the better bet in the general election but was denied the nomination by quirks of the process. You’d be pissed, right? Furious! It would be 2000 and our flawed electoral system all over again. So that’s a start at imagining how an angry Clinton supporter feels — except that you probably never saw Clinton as the underdog, so there’s not the equivalent feeling of electric, explosive grass-roots momentum having been quashed. But remember that from her supporters’ perspective, she spent all of primary season post-Iowa as the underdog, so they probably feel a lot more like this than you can imagine.

Not in my case. Nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and everything to do with Barack Obama. I’ll take Joe Biden or John Edwards. I will never vote for Barack Obama. Repeat after me, everything to do with Barack Obama and who he is.

2. They are angry because their historic opportunity is over.

Getting excited about changing history felt awesome. I can’t emphasize it enough: This had never happened before. And it was fun. Exhilarating. Hopeful. Changing. All of that. When Michelle Obama guest-hosted “The View” last week, Whoopi Goldberg told her how wonderful it was to see her face on the news all the time, because we don’t often see black women like her portrayed in the media. But we had also never before seen pantsuits on the stump, had never seen a female candidate’s face behind a debate podium, had never heard a woman’s high-pitched forced laughter when she answered interview questions on TV. These were all novelties, and also how progress happens. Before our eyes. Now that part is over. And that makes people sad.

I know not a single Clinton supporter who is sad. Over what? Determined is more like it.

3. They are angry about rumors that Obama may choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

This is a tricky one. Maybe some Clinton supporters remain so besotted by the idea of their woman as the history maker that they won’t be satisfied unless Clinton or someone from her direct bloodline is the first female to breach the executive branch of government.

In reality, however, it’s more that the other female politicians whose names are being bandied about (cough, Kathleen Sebelius, cough) seem like pallid substitutes, and the only reason Team Obama would even pick one is to placate stubborn Clinton supporters. It wouldn’t placate them.

But this is one of the facets of post-Clinton anger that puts Obama in a hell of a bind. Because the truth is that many of Clinton’s most devoted supporters overcame their own ambivalence about her because they believed it was so important to establish a precedent, to break the glass ceiling and put a woman in a job that has never been filled by a woman before. A female vice president, especially a Democratic one, is not nothing. And everyone who watched the glee with which Clinton’s failed bid was met should know that. But it’s true that if Obama goes with a woman, and decides (as seems certain) not to tap Clinton herself, he must pick someone who has something more going for her than a pair of mams. He needs someone who generates heat of her own, who can energize a crowd, who can do something for him besides providing him with a gender credential. Who is that?

It has NOTHING to do with Hillary Rodham Clinton. He can have her as his Vice Presidential nominee and I still won’t vote for him. I vote my values and I don’t share his values. And I don’t know anyone who is pushing Chelsea to run for President. Bloodlines? Are you serious?

4. They are angry that we started to talk about sexism only once Clinton stopped being a threat.

Yes, it’s great that we are finally having panels and conferences and news stories about the way in which Clinton’s candidacy was met with an enormous amount of gendered antipathy from the media. (And for any of you sitting at your computers yammering about how the coverage of Clinton had nothing to do with her sex, allow me to be frank: can it.) Those discussions shouldn’t stop. But it is painfully obvious that this was a conversation that could only be had once Clinton stopped threatening Obama’s prospects, or men generally. This is really depressing.

What’s depressing is that you get paid to write this.

5. They are angry at the media’s repeated denial of sexism, and they are angry at Keith Olbermann.

The first should be quite obvious. In a New York Times story last week, members of the media heartily denied that there was any sexism in the way that Clinton was discussed. This in the face of zillions of examples of gender-fueled language both explicit (comparisons of Clinton to a nagging spouse, to an ex-wife outside of probate court, to Lorena Bobbitt, to a sexless monster, to Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction”) and only slightly more subtle (the unabashed determination on the part of print and broadcast media to put her campaign down as early as possible, and the hyperactive joy they betrayed whenever that wish appeared to be coming true). To deny that this happened is foolish, and it doesn’t make any of the eagle-eyed women who spotted Tucker Carlson crossing his legs in emasculated fear any less angry.

As for Olbermann, outrage at him has supplanted displeasure with Chris Matthews, perhaps because Matthews has been publicly excoriated for his bias, while Olbermann is still held up by many as a talking-head hero of the left. Of course, those surprised by Olbermann’s clear distaste for Hillary Clinton, or the venom he directed at that nutsy Katie Couric, who meekly ventured that maybe there had been some media sexism during the race, obviously missed the time he once wondered on air if anyone had ever ejaculated on Paris Hilton’s face. Olbermann’s simultaneous tenacity on the side of good, coupled with his utter disinterest in gender equity, makes him emblematic of the unpleasant position in which Hillary-supporting feminists find themselves — members of a progressive party that doesn’t seem particularly interested in their progress.

Now you’re on to something. After four strikes, you actually hit one.

6. They are mad at Howard Dean.

Not simply for allowing the massive befouling of the Democratic process that was Michigan and Florida but for addressing issues of sexism only once Clinton was out of the race. Seriously, the anger at Dean may be some of the most unexpected and intense. At the recent EMILY’s List conference, during a panel on gender and the election, Dean’s name was the only one that got booed.

Now you are on a roll. I know many who feel this way. I am more angry at the Democratic Party as a whole but Howard Dean makes a good proxy on this score.

7. They are mad at Barack Obama.

This is a tough one, because it’s vital to remember that many people who loved and supported Hillary Clinton for president also loved Barack Obama. They regretted having to choose between the two in the primaries and are now eagerly supporting Obama, even as they nurse their disappointment over Clinton’s loss. But for some, there is lingering sting — about the paucity of women in Obama’s top advisory team during the campaign, about the way they feel the Obama campaign stained Clinton’s supporters — and Clinton and her husband too — as racists, about the patronizing “You’re likable enough” comment during a January debate. Perhaps the worst slight, in their eyes, came after Obama had secured the nomination. When he should have been smoothing ruffled feathers, he instead decided to hire Patti Solis Doyle, longtime Hillaryland denizen from whom the senator is now reportedly estranged, as the chief of staff for the yet-unnamed vice-presidential candidate. The move was either monumentally clueless or a petty “fuck you,” not simply to Clinton herself but to the huge number of people still rooting for him to put Clinton on the ticket. (By the way, a personal note to these people: It’s not going to happen. We need to stop talking about it. Hoping for it is only going to leave you angrier in the end.)

I am not mad at Barack Obama. I wish him a long and healthy life out of politics. That many Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton will vote for Senator Obama in the general election I do not doubt. But I think it fair to say that at least 25% won’t and that’s best case scenario. The worst case scenario is 40%. If he doesn’t win 85% of the Clinton base, he loses.

8. They are mad at Bill Clinton. Um, obviously.

This just boggles the mind. Why?

9. They are mad at Mark Penn.

And that’s for being a complete blockhead who mangled an epochal bid for the Oval Office. In a year in which it was obvious to anyone with eyes, ears or a nose that the country was dying for “change,” Penn made the keen decision to sell Clinton — a history-making candidate — as an establishment player. But the hard truth is that anyone who wouldn’t fire this guy the morning after Iowa probably didn’t deserve to win. Clinton didn’t boot him till April.

I personally don’t care for Mark Penn but I also don’t cry over spilled milk. What’s done is done. What matters is the country and preventing a disaster of untold proportions. I loved the Democratic Party, I love the United States more.

10. They are mad at Hillary Clinton for conceding and not taking their fight on to Denver.

No one I know is either mad or disappointed. We understand what happened. We know that she was giving her marching orders. No one I know blames her for conceding. She has conceded, we haven’t.

11. They are mad that everyone believes them to be old, white and racist. They are mad at the people they thought were supposed to be progressives for treating them badly.

They are mad at their party and its leaders because they feel this race has opened up a door, allowing people to rag on white women — as irrelevant and buffoonish, as ambitious and preening, as old school and boring and nagging and hectoring — in a way that demonstrates that women have a questionable place in liberalism and progressivism. Since when is the party supposedly interested in social justice not interested in the advancement of women to the highest office?

It was, in fact, remarkable, the success with which hoary stereotypes about second-wave feminism got so enthusiastically embraced 30 years past their sell-by date. Who knew how eager the American public — and more critically, the American left — was to wholeheartedly embrace the image of Hillary supporters as sexless, humorless, bitter, hysterical old crones. It was simply acceptable — in a way that was a brisk eye-opener for a lot of young women, even those who didn’t support Clinton — to talk derisively about Clinton and her supporters as whiny, cackling, emasculating witches.

Of course, the ease with which these kinds of stereotypes were bandied about suggests that it is women — about to take your jobs and your college acceptance letters and your seat in the Oval Office and probably your penis! — who are the most threatening to the established white male power structure. But it seems that that was rather cold comfort when Clinton women were being steadily assailed with images of themselves as unappealing, pruney old harpies who did all their political thinking with their ovaries.

I know as men as as I do women who feel like I do. This has nothing to do with gender or race and everything to do with the kind of person that Barack Obama is. He offends our values.

12. And finally, they are angry because they feel they are held hostage by the party by their reproductive organs.

As many people have already observed: What are they going to do, vote for John McCain? No. The truth is, they’re really not. Not if they care about their freedoms to control their own reproductive lives. And they are acutely aware that party leaders know this and that, thus, despite all this anger, Democratic women remain a sure thing.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin described how Clinton voters felt alienated from Olbermann’s anti-Clinton coverage: “He turned out to be a jerk and difficult and brutal. And that is how the Hillary viewers see him. It’s true. But I do think they’re going to come back. There’s nowhere else to go.”

Exactly. These angry people have nowhere else to go. So the safe expectation is that they will fall in line without much kicking and screaming. And that, ultimately, is why many of them are kicking and screaming. Yes, they’re going to vote for Obama. Of course they’ll vote for him. The truth is, they’ll probably love voting for him. But after what they feel has been done to them — the way in which they were written off, marginalized and resented, their hopes mocked and their history-making ambitions dismissed as retrograde identity politicking — damned if they’re going to be nice girls about it.

Trust me on this one, we have plenty of options. Some will vote for McCain, others will stay home, others will vote for a third party, others will write-in Hillary Clinton I will likely vote in blank. And I have to ask, did you actually interview you anyone for this story? It sure doesn’t sound like it.

From my blog, By The Fault.

Upon being discharged from the Navy, John F. Kennedy worked briefly for the Hearst newspapers covering the newly formed United Nations. He wrote to a friend from San Francisco:

When I think of all those gallant acts that I have seen…it would be a very easy thing to feel disappointed…You have seen battlefields where sacrifice was the order of the day and to compare that sacrifice to the timidity and selfishness of the nations gathered at San Francisco must inevitably be disillusioning.

As a young man, Kennedy understood the realities of realpolitik, the idea that nations work primarily for their own self-interests. To use the parlance of today, Obama’s notion of meeting with your enemies without preconditions is so breathtakingly naive and dangerous that it raises serious concerns about his judgment.

In the May 22nd, op-ed piece from the NYT:

In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency’s — indeed one of the cold war’s — most consequential: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

On the same day but in a different article, the Times points out that Obama is currently traveling through Florida, where he knows he has problems, and the people interviewed for their piece told the Times:

…they had reservations about Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate with Iran — whose nuclear ambitions and Holocaust-denying president trigger even starker fears among Jews than intifada uprisings and suicide bombings.

When JFK attempted direct talks in Vienna with Khrushchev, without any preconditions, we all held our breath. Kennedy initially believed he could reason with Khrushchev, while the Soviet leader wanted to debate the merits of communism over capitalism, and insisted that he would sign an agreement with East Germany which in effect would block American access to Berlin.

Khrushchev threatened Kennedy:

If the US wants war, that’s its problem. It’s up to the US to decide whether there will be war or peace. The decision to sign a peace treaty is firm and irrevocable, and the Soviet Union will sign it in December if the US refuses an interim agreement.

To which Kennedy replied:

“Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be a war. It will be a cold, long winter.”

But Obama seems to have forgotten what he may have learned in history class: the negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev failed miserably, creating the untenable threat of nuclear war. The Op-ed points to this:

Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy’s legacy: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev.”

Iran is perhaps a more perplexing threat than the USSR was when a naïve Kennedy entered into failed negotiations. According to Alan Derschowitz, Israelis fear Iran “could be the first suicide nation, a nation that would destroy itself to destroy the Jewish nation.”

The building of the Berlin Wall not only signified the failure of those negotiations, it also meant we lived in constant fear of attack. In fact, Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev only heightened the tension between the USSR and the US, and created the reputation worldwide that the US was putting her allies in danger. We lived on the razor’s edge during that time, aware that Khrushchev found Kennedy “too intelligent and too weak.”

It was after the meeting between the two that Khrushchev decided to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.

As Thrall and Wilkens make clear in their Op-Ed:

But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

Khrushchev famously shouted, “We will bury you.” Later, he said, “I once got in trouble for saying, ‘We will bury you.’ Of course, we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.” Words have consequences.

In the same vein but towards Israel, Ahmadinejad said:

Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world

In order to assure the Jewish community that he will defend Israel, Obama is now portraying himself as a quasi Jew. According to Kantor in the Times piece:

Now the half-Kenyan-by-way-of-Hawaii candidate, who only recently completed a beer-and-bowling tour to impress blue-collar Midwesterners, has committed more fully to showing off his inner Jew. He recently made a surprise speech at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and, in the interview with Mr. Goldberg, he told stories about a long-lost Jewish summer camp counselor who taught him about Israel and recalled reading Leon Uris and Philip Roth, arguably opposite poles of American-Jewish fiction.

However, according to Florida Rabbi Ruvi New: “It’s all going to boil down to a few old Jews in Century Village,” he added, referring to a nearby retirement community.

If the Rabbi is correct, then Obama’s plans for direct negotiations with Ahmadinejad may cost him the older Jews in Florida. “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel,” says Ms. Weitz, 83.

More importantly, however, is what it may cost the world. We know that Obama is no JFK. And we know that JFK’s failed negotiations with the Soviet Union put the US, and the world, in danger of nuclear war. Dershowitz may be correct about Iran as the first suicide nation. But he may be wrong that they would destroy only Israel.

If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate.

Hillary Clinton has the experience and wisdom that prevents her from promising to negotiate with terrorists or with rogue nations without preconditions. Obama’s bravado and lack of experience could bring our allies into imminent danger.

Kennedy’s greatest triumph–after learning a bitter lesson in Vienna–was the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (LNTBT). It was achieved by the United States first unilaterally ending its own tests and then having the seasoned diplomat and Soviet hand, Averell Harriman, negotiate with the Soviets, an obviously more effective approach than immediate, direct talks at the highest levels. As Kennedy said at American University when announcing the LNTBT:

Let us re-examine our attitude toward the Cold War, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had history of the last eighteen years been different.

Here’s expressing my deepest gratitude for your Larry’s and your support for National Security Drone. I have striven to produce the strip once a week or so, but now I must move over to a monthly production schedule.

I have a great excuse: two book projects! I am in the process of laying out a book of the strips you have read here, which should be available by late summer or early fall. Will pass along details as they develop.

Am also working on the National Security Drone graphic novel–a long narrative comic. Look for the occasional excerpt or vignette right here.

Thanks again,

Your Frank

Powell’s UN Fiasco: Fresh and Festering

By Ray McGovern

Yesterday was a difficult day for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. It was hard to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first corporate memorandum, a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2002 UN address, when we could not escape the reality that this speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and brought unprecedented shame on our country. We found no solace in the realization that those who saw our analysis should have seen disaster coming.

A handful of former CIA intelligence officers joined me in forming the VIPS movement in Jan. 2002, after we concluded that our profession had been corrupted to “justify” what was, pure and simple, a war of aggression. Little did we know at the time that a month later Colin Powell, with then-CIA Director George Tenet plumped down conspicuously behind him, would provide the world with a textbook example of careerism and cowardice in cooking intelligence to the recipe of his master.

Powell’s Prior Practice

It was hardly Powell’s first display of such behavior.

Those able to look past the medals and ribbons have been able to trace a pattern of malleability back to Powell’s early days as a young Army officer in Vietnam, and then in the 1980s as an Iran-Contra accomplice together with his boss Casper Weinberger, then secretary of defense. Weinberger was indicted for perjury but escaped trial when pardoned by George H. W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992. [See Chapter 8 of Robert Parry’s new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, for more on Powell’s proclivity to pander.]

A year before his UN speech Powell winked at the introduction of torture into the Army’s repertoire, rather than confront President George W. Bush personally on the pressure that Vice President Dick Cheney was exerting to conjure up legal wiggle-room for torture. Instead, Powell merely asked State Department lawyers to engage White House lawyers Alberto Gonzales and Cheney-favorite David Addington, in what Powell knew would be—absent his personal involvement— a quixotic effort.

Powell’s lawyers put in writing his concern that making an end-run around the Geneva protections for prisoners of war “could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.” Well, he got that right.

But when Gonzales and Addington simply declared parts of Geneva “quaint” and “obsolete,” Powell caved, acquiescing in the corruption of the Army to which he owed so much. We know the next chapters of that story—Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Powell’s instincts were right, but he lacked the strength of his convictions. It turns out that this key instance of abject obeisance—important as it was in its own right—was just practice for the super bowl at the UN.

VIPS’ Maiden Effort

When those of us in our fledgling VIPS movement learned that Powell would address the UN on Feb. 5, 2003, we decided to do a same-day analytic assessment—the kind we used to do when someone like Khrushchev, or Gorbachev, or Gromyko, or Mao Tse-dung, or Castro gave a major address. We were well accustomed to the imperative to beat the media with our commentary. Coordinating our Powell draft via email, at 5:15 p.m. we issued VIPS’ first Memorandum for the President: “Subject: Today’s Speech by Secretary Powell at the UN.”

Our understanding at that time was far from perfect. It was not yet completely clear to us, for example, that Saddam Hussein had for the most part been abiding by, rather than flouting, UN resolutions. We stressed, though, that the key question was whether any of this justified war:

“This is the question the world is asking. Secretary Powell’s presentation does not come close to answering it.”

We warned the president of the “politicization of intelligence” and the deep analytical flaws that inevitably follow, for example:

“Intelligence community analysts are finding it hard to make themselves heard above the drumbeat for war…”

“Your Pentagon advisers draw a connection between war with Iraq and terrorism, but for the wrong reasons. The connection takes on much more reality in a post-US invasion scenario. (bold in original) Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future. Far from eliminating the threat it would enhance it exponentially.”

Dissociating VIPS from Powell’s bravado claim that the evidence he presented was “irrefutable,” we noted that no one has a corner on the truth and ended our memo for President Bush with this observation:

“…after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Senator Clinton Knew

Five years later, we take no pleasure at having been right; we take considerable pain at having been ignored. The impending debacle was a no-brainer, and serious specialists like former UN inspector Scott Ritter, to his credit, were shouting it from the rooftops.

What follows is more than a mere footnote. It is not widely known that our Feb. 5, 2003 memorandum analyzing Powell’s speech was shared with the junior senator from New York. Thus, she still had plenty of time to raise her voice before the Bush administration launched the fateful attack on Iraq on March 19.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A former Army officer and veteran of 27 years in the analytic ranks of CIA, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. VIPS’ issuances are listed below; complete texts of all 16 can be found at afterdowningstreet.org/vips.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Issuances

1 Memorandum for the President, February 5, 2003

 “Secretary Powell’s Presentation to the UN Today”

2 Memorandum for Confused Americans, March 12, 2003

 “Cooking Intelligence for War”

3 Memorandum for the President, March 18, 2003

 “Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem”

4 Memorandum, March 26, 2003

 “Arafat Interviewed by the Christisons on Current Impasse”

5 Memorandum, April 24, 2003

 “The Stakes in the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction”

6 Memorandum for the President, May 1, 2003

 “Intelligence Fiasco”

7 Letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, May 19, 2003

 “On UN Inspectors and Weapons of Mass Destruction”

8 Memorandum for the President, July 14, 2003

 “Intelligence Unglued”

9 Memorandum for Colleagues in Intelligence, August 22, 2003

  “Now It’s Your Turn”

10 Memorandum for Colleagues in Intelligence, October 13, 2003

 “One Person Can Make a Difference”

11 Memorandum for the President, January 13, 2004

 “Your State-of-the-Union Address”

12 Memorandum for the President, August 24, 2005

 “Recommendation: Try A Circle of ‘Wise Women’”

13 Memorandum for Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader

 “Denouement on Iraq: First Stop the Bleeding, March 14, 2007

14 Memorandum, March 29, 2007

 “Brinkmanship Unwise in Uncharted Waters”

15 Memorandum, June 17, 2007

 “Countering Terrorism—How Not to Do It”

16 Memorandum, July 27, 2007

 “Dangers of a Cornered George Bush”

——————————————————

An earlier version of this article appeared yesterday at Consortiumnews.com.

It hit me that Obama has drunk the Bush/Cheney/Neo-con “Kool-Aid” exaggerating the threat of Iran — like he bought GOP talking points on Social Security — and hasn’t thought out real global concerns. Partly, it’s that he hasn’t traveled much; Steve Clemons is still trying to get an accurate statement from Obama on his travel history. Nor has he done the hard work: He hasn’t held a single hearing as chair of the Foreign Relations’ subcommittee on European Affairs (which includes NATO and therefore Afghanistan, which Obama loves to bring up as neglected due to Iraq, but which he hasn’t done any “executive decision making” about — more on NATO/Afghanistan below the fold).

Dr. Reza Aslan, in a WaPo op-ed today, hits Obama’s weakness head-on. Obama’s besotted fans, like “conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan” (it’s so odd that there are so many conservative fans of Obama) who “imagine” that “it is Obama’s face — just his face — that ‘proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can’.” Democratic voters had better sober up. It’s “naive, well-meaning, amateurish.” Dr. Aslan, author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, continues:

[It is that Obama fans are] convinced that everyone understands the goodness of U.S. intentions — that worries me again these days. That’s because a curious and dangerous consensus seems to be forming among the chattering classes, on both the left and the right, that what the United States needs in these troubling times is not knowledge and experience but a “fresh face” with an “intuitive sense of the world,” and that the mere act of electing Obama will put us on the path to winning the so-called war on terror.

Here’s how Dr. Aslan begins today’s op-ed. It is a statement of warning:

Every time I hear about how Sen. Barack Obama is going to “re-brand” America’s image in the Middle East, I can’t help but think about Jimmy Carter’s toast.

When the idealistic Democrat came to Iran in 1977 to ring in the new year with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country’s much-despised despot, throngs of young, hopeful Iranians lined the streets to welcome the new American president. After eight years of the Nixon and Ford administrations’ blind support for the shah’s brutal regime, Iranians thrilled to Carter’s promise to re-brand America’s image abroad by focusing on human rights. That call even let many moderate, middle-class Iranians dare to hope that they might ward off the popular revolution everyone knew was coming. But at that historic New Year’s dinner, Carter surprised everyone. In a shocking display of ignorance about the precarious political situation in Iran, he toasted the shah for transforming the country into “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” With those words, Carter unwittingly lit the match of revolution.

It’s just this sort of blunder — naive, well-meaning, amateurish, convinced that everyone understands the goodness of U.S. intentions — that worries me again these days. …

Dr. Aslan addresses the rapturous endorsement of the Boston Globe, and Obama’s failure to do the hard work required to give him necessary experience:

In their glowing endorsement of Obama, the editors of the Boston Globe noted that “the first American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must.”

True enough. But such “intricate realities” are not best dealt with through “an intuitive grasp of global politics” — Obama’s chief asset, according to the Globe — but through an intimate knowledge of those realities and of the nuanced responses necessary to address them.

Obama may possess all the intuition of a fortuneteller. But as chair of a Senate subcommittee on Europe, he has never made an official trip to Western Europe (except a one-day stopover in London in August 2005) or held a single policy hearing. He’s never faced off with foreign leaders and has no idea what a delicate sparring match diplomacy in the Middle East can be. And at a time in which the United States has gone from sole superpower to global pariah in a mere seven years, these things matter.

The main issue in U.S. foreign policy that the next president will face is repairing our image in the world. But in foreign policy, unlike advertising, image is created through action, not branding. Which is why one cannot help but sense a touch of shirking (not to mention a lack of short-term memory) in all this talk about “intuitive experience” and “re-branding images,” particularly when it comes from those who began the “New American Century” as ardent supporters of Bush’s wars and his self-advertised “gut” instincts.

[T]hese things matter. Indeed they do.

Besides his diligent but frustrating effort to nail down Obama and his campaign staff on the true story of Obama’s travel history, policy expert Steve Clemons is also concerned about Obama’s work ethic in the U.S. Senate — emphasizing that Obama’s subcommittee is very important to Afghanistan:

I tried to deal with the question of how to measure “executive decision making capacity” when looking at legislators last week — and was pretty surprised that Senator Obama did not call a single issue-oriented hearing in his role as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Europe Chairman.

Had Obama held such hearings — or even if he was planning them now for January — he might have highlighted Europe’s remarkable success in scoring the only tangible success with Iran on its nuclear program in September 2003.

Obama might also have focused his attention on Afghanistan — which Axelrod says we’ve all been distracted from — because Obama’s committee has jurisdiction over the foreign relations dimensions of NATO which is deeply embedded in the Afghanistan problem — which of course, is the Pakistan problem.

Indeed. In Deed: Obama’s failure to become active, to even hold a single hearing, to pay attention to Afghanistan or to NATO, has had its impact, in ways we’ll sadly never know about, on the current crisis in Pakistan.

A “face” is nice. A smart man, as Obama is, is also a great thing. But give me the worker. Give me the woman who has traveled the world (83+ countries, several many, many times) and gone to countless remote villages, empowering women through microeconomic grants and more. Give me the one who really gets it done.

It wasn’t that Sen. Clinton was prescient in responding “Pakistan” to the CBS Evening News question in early December. She knew. She knows. She’s done the work. She knows the world, and its complex and rapidly changing issues.

CHECK THIS OUT: There’s Steve Clemons, a studious, cerebral expert on international and domestic policy, who I’ve never seen write like this:

Did Biden, Dodd and Edwards Kill Bhutto Too?

What the hell is Obama chief political strategist David Axelrod doing?

Nearly all of the major papers and a good slug of blogs have been stunned by his comment that Hillary Clinton bore some responsibility for Benazir Bhutto’s demise. When Obama has to backpedal for his team, something is up. …

CHECK THIS OUT: “Obama Stammers, ‘No, I, I, I, I, I…’ Sticking Up for Axelrod” from Taylor Marsh: “Obama came apart when Wolf Blitzer asked him a simple question about Axelrod” … “Lynn Sweet of the Sun Times nails the quote and the context, but also nails Obama …” (See all below the fold.)

CHECK THIS OUT: In early December, CBS Evening News asked each candidate, “Which country scares you the most?”

Sen. Hillary Clinton: Pakistan (see the Dec. 12 CBS video)
Sen. Barack Obama: Iran (see the Dec. 12 CBS video)

CHECK THIS OUT: The contrast, from Sen. Clinton today on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN Situation Room:

CHECK THIS OUT: “For me, someone who has been studying the region for years, the obvious is that you can’t know the dynamics without traveling to Pakistan and the surrounding countries. Being an armchair analyst is not only difficult but often gets you into trouble, no matter how dedicated a researcher you are. …”

That’s from Taylor Marsh’s new post, “It’s Al Qaeda… Not so Fast,” which also features the key video above, a preview of the long interview that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer conducted with Sen. Clinton today. (Blitzer is also hosting Sen. Chris Dodd.)

:::::::

CHECK THIS OUT: Here’s the Chicago Sun-Times’s Lynn Sweet story — “Obama says, “No, I, I, I, I,” — via Taylor Marsh:

Blitzer asked, “Your chief political strategist, David Axelrod, causing some commotion out there today with his comments about Hillary Clinton, and blaming her—at least some are interpreting it this way—blaming her in part for a series of events that resulted in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination today. Let me read to you what he said.”

Obama replied—and I think I nailed the quote here—“No, I, I, I, I, I have to, I heard, I heard, I don’t need it, I don’t need to hear what you read because I was, I overheard it when he said it, and this is one of those situations where Washington is putting a spin on it. It makes no sense whatsoever.”

(Might you wonder what “I overheard it” means? One should not read this literally. Obama was not standing near Axelrod when he was talking to reporters after the speech. A bunch of reporters were interviewingAxelrod near the press risers at the back of the hall.)

Blitzer continued, “Tell us what he meant. Tell us what he meant.”

Obama said, “He was—he was—he was asked very specifically about the argument that the Clinton folks were making that somehow this was going to change the dynamic of politics in Iowa.

(At this point it was the reporter making the argument–asking if the assassination would bring the campaigns more to foreign policy and “that’s been more Hillary Clinton’s sort of strength, is that is that…that’s what the Clinton campaign will say, that this plays right into her strength.”)

Obama: “Now, first of all, that shouldn’t have been the question.”

(Disputing a question is a technique Obama has used in the presidential debates when confronted with being asked something he did not want to specifically have to respond to.)