Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 220

Updates: Evidence on Syria Far From 'Slam Dunk'

Thursday Updates:   Surprisingly tough AP report today, based on intel sources, that evidence re: chem attack far from a "slam dunk," huge gaps in evidence and even:  "The complicated intelligence picture raises questions about the White House's full-steam-ahead approach to the Aug. 21 attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, with worries that the attack could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later."  And: "The uncertainty calls into question the statements by Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden."

UN finishing probe in Syria and, surprise (to some), promises some sort of report Saturday.  Turns out, as we warned, the pundits and official and unofficial U.S. sources were wrong (and probably knew it) this week--evidence of attack was NOT that degraded and it is NOT taking weeks for some kind of testing and assessment. 

UPDATE  NYT tonight with a kind of shocker--after much fulminating and bloviating, it now appears the big White House intel report slamming Assad tomorrow may be very limited, and suddenly they are trying to lower expectations.   Paper notes Colin Powell's UN presentation on Iraq as bad role model.

Earlier: As usual, the great Amy Davidson at The New Yorker nails it.   UPDATE  John Cassidy, another New Yorker "old reliable," adds his warnings there.  James Fallows joins in here.

As of Wednesday afternoon, eighty-eight members of Congress had signed a letter put together by Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican with a lot of service members in his district, asking Obama to reconvene them and get authorization for any attack. Most of those who signed on were Republicans, but not all of them. Obama could do so if he wanted to. John Boehner could also bring back the House, and Harry Reid the Senate; it would be a mistake not to.

What is the disadvantage of going to Congress? That they are loud and annoying and someone will try to introduce a resolution tying action in Syria to Obamacare? If the Administration can’t stand up to Ted Cruz, it can hardly hope to frighten Bashar al-Assad. And if going to Congress now feels time-consuming, how does it compare to the hours, days, weeks, and sanity expended on the Benghazi hearings?

Obama Must Go to Congress

UPDATE  NYT tonight with a kind of shocker--after much fulminating and bloviating, it now appears the big White House intel report slamming Assad tomorrow may be very limited, and suddenly they are trying to lower expectations.   Paper notes Colin Powell's UN presentation on Iraq as bad role model.

Earlier: As usual, the great Amy Davidson at The New Yorker nails it.   UPDATE  John Cassily, another New Yorker "old reliable," adds his warnings there.  James Fallows joins in here.

As of Wednesday afternoon, eighty-eight members of Congress had signed a letter put together by Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican with a lot of service members in his district, asking Obama to reconvene them and get authorization for any attack. Most of those who signed on were Republicans, but not all of them. Obama could do so if he wanted to. John Boehner could also bring back the House, and Harry Reid the Senate; it would be a mistake not to.

What is the disadvantage of going to Congress? That they are loud and annoying and someone will try to introduce a resolution tying action in Syria to Obamacare? If the Administration can’t stand up to Ted Cruz, it can hardly hope to frighten Bashar al-Assad. And if going to Congress now feels time-consuming, how does it compare to the hours, days, weeks, and sanity expended on the Benghazi hearings?

Brit Debate Causes Delay in Attack on Syria?

The Guardian with, perhaps, some welcome news, as they report that MP protests in London have yet to be quelled and likely (they say) put off any U.S. assault on Syria until about Tuesday.   Of course, who cares about U.S. Congress.

British prime minister David Cameron conceded that MPs would be given a second vote to approve military action to defuse a parliamentary revolt, ahead of a Commons debate on Syria on Thursday. UK sources insisted that the US, which had planned to launch the strikes by the weekend, had delayed, handing Cameron a lifeline, and revived a back-up plan to delay the strikes until Tuesday when Barack Obama is due to set out for the G20 summit in Russia.

In an effort to build support for punitive strikes, the US and UK will on Thursday publish a joint summary of the intelligence which they say points towards the Assad regime's responsibility for the poison gas attack of 21 August in Ghouta, eastern Damascus, that killed over 1,000 people.

In a reflection of the different political pressures pulling the transatlantic allies in different directions, Downing Street undertook to return to the security council in a renewed effort to secure a UN mandate for military action after Russia blocked a British resolution at an informal meeting in New York. But the US state department meanwhile insisted it saw "no avenue forward" at the UN for finding an international consensus for armed action, because of Russian support for Bashar al-Assad's regime.

U.S.: "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Inspections"

Video of four UN vehicles arriving today in Damascus suburb to further probe chemical attack evidence--a probe which U.S. says is needless and should end now.

He Meant, 'Shoot, What a Great Black Man'

A town official in Maine, and candidate for another office, posted on his Facebook page endorsing move to impeach the president, adding a photo and, apparently, the heading, "Shoot the N-word."  Now been visited by the Secret Service.  Love his defense:

"I think it's a lot of hogwash," he said. "I did not threaten the president. ... I might have used the wrong words. ... I didn't say I was going to do it."

"What I really meant to say is, 'When are we going to get rid of this (expletive),'" Marsters added. "I should have said, 'I hope the bastard dies.'"

Career Killer

No, we're not talking Miley here, but the only music video that is said to have killed a career instantly.  Yes, it's this "classic" from Billy Squier, who sucked anyway, story all about it here.

Reich Makes Right

Facebook post by Robert Reich raising alarm--or at least asking for debate--on Syria, and domestic fallout.

We're about to go into Syria. I can't tell you at this point how, but the U.S. is readying an offensive. We're rounding up allies, as we did before we went into Iraq. The White House is preparing the American people, as another White House did before Iraq. But doesn't this at least deserve a real debate? The silence in America is deafening. Didn't we learn anything from Iraq? Or, for that matter, from Vietnam?

I'm as appalled as anyone by the Syrian regime and its use of chemical weapons on its own people. But what exactly do we expect to achieve by entering this fray? And at what cost -- to us, to the Syrian people, to the tinderbox of the Middle East?

Normally I don't venture into foreign policy, but foreign and domestic policy aren't easily separated. At a time when almost one in four American children is in poverty, when the middle class is struggling to make ends meet, when inequality is widening, and we're dis-investing in infrastructure and education, can we really afford what this initiative could easily mushroom into? We have seen the power of the military-industrial-congressional complex to get its way, to get the dollars it wants, and to sway public opinion in the direction that will be most profitable to it. At the very least, we deserve a full and frank discussion of what the Obama Administration is about to get us into.

Another Famous Day in August 28 History: The Chicago 'Police Riot'

Fifty years ago today,  Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the turning point March on Washington.  But, in my life, today also marks another important and influential day:  45 years ago tonight the infamous "police riot" near the Democratic Convention in Chicago took place.  I was too young for the King march--but old enough to journey to Chicago for that brutal week in 1968.  Here's a piece I wrote not long along ago about how I witnessed that at close hand.
 ***
Forty-five years ago my trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention would culminate in the crushing of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam crusade inside the convention hall and the cracking of peacenik skulls by Mayor Richard Daley's police in the streets. Together, this doomed Hubert Humphrey to defeat in November at the hands of Richard Nixon.

I'd been a political-campaign junkie all my life. At the age of 8, I paraded in front of my boyhood home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., waving an "I Like Ike" sign. In 1968 I got to cover my first presidential campaign when one of Sen. McCarthy's nephews came to town, before the state primary, and I interviewed him for the Niagara Falls Gazette, where I worked as a summer reporter during college. I had been chair of the McCarthy campaign at my college. So much for non-biased reporting!

My mentor at the Gazette was a young, irreverent City Hall reporter named John Hanchette. He went on to an illustrious career at other papers, and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for Gannett News Service. Hanchette was in Chicago that week to cover party politics as a Gazette reporter and contributor to the Gannett News Service (GNS). I was to hang out with the young McCarthyites and the anti-war protesters. To get to Chicago I took my first ride on a jetliner.

To make a long story short: On the climactic night of Aug. 28, 1968, Hanchette and I ended up just floors apart in the same building: the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was in McCarthy headquarters and Hanchette was in one of Gannett's makeshift newsrooms.  Just after the peace plank to the DNC platform was defeated,  TV coverage switched to shocking scenes of young folks getting beaten with nightsticks on the streets of Chicago, but we didn't know where.  Then we smelled tear gas and someone  the curtains along a wall of windows and we looked out  to see police savagely attacking protesters with nightsticks at the intersection directly below.

Soon I headed for the streets. By that time, the peak violence had passed, but cops were still pushing reporters and other innocent bystanders through plate glass windows at the front of the hotel. I held back in the lobby, where someone had set off a stink bomb. Some Democrats started returning from the convention hall -- after giving Humphrey the nomination even though McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy won most of the primaries -- as protesters inside the Hilton chanted, "You killed the party! You killed the party!"  And: "You killed the country." And, of course, "Dump the Hump!"

Finally, I screwed up my courage and crossed to Grant Park where the angry protest crowd gathered. And there I stayed all night, as the crowd and chants of "pig" directed at the cops increased. Many in the crowd wore bandages of had fresh blood on their faces. Phil Ochs (later a friend)  arrived and sang, along with other notables, including some of the peacenik delegates. Cops lined the park -- backed up by jeeps with machines guns pointed at us.  Yes, that happened.

When I returned to Niagara Falls that Friday, I wrote a column for that Sunday's paper. I described the eerie feeling of sitting in Grant Park, and thousands around me yelling at the soldiers and the media, "The whole world is watching!" -- and knowing that, for once, it was true.

More than 35 years later, after I had written two books on other infamous political campaigns, I returned to Chicago for a staged performance of a musical based on one of them. As I got out of a cab to make my way to the theater, I had an eerie feeling and, sure enough, looking up the street I noticed Grant Park a block away -- and the very intersection in front of the Hilton where skulls were cracked that night in 1968.

P.S. Norman Mailer's terrific book, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is still in print.

All He Had to Do Was 'Dream'

Op-ed at NYT by author of book on MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech 50 years ago--explaining how the "dream" thing was "improvised," with a little help from....Mahalia Jackson.   He had only five minutes for the speech and decided to cut a few things at the end and add that little thing.  As we know, the Wash Post didn't even mention it.

'So Wrong' Again?

New relevance, perhaps, for my book on how Bush--and the media--got us into Iraq (for years), "So Wrong for So Long."