Eric Umansky

(Andy) Card Shuffling Problems

From Time:

"The problem is that the President doesn't want to make changes," says a White House adviser who is not looking for a West Wing job, "but he's lost some of his confidence in the three people he listens to the most." Those three are his Vice President, Dick Cheney, whose top aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, has been charged with brazenly obstructing the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame; Bush senior adviser Karl Rove, who while not indicted has still emerged as a player in the scandal; and chief of staff Andrew Card, who gets some of the blame for bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina and even more for the botched Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers.

Farther down in the Time piece:

As for a shift in the lineup, Card could be named Treasury Secretary by the beginning of the year.

Right, because once you lose some confidence in someone, the natural thing to do is appoint that guy to one of--at least historically--the most powerful and sensitive positions in Washington. Oh, and bonus points for when the guy isn't qualified for the job.      

P.S. The "White House adviser" cited above by Time also had this to say, "All relationships with the President, except for his relationship with Laura, have been damaged recently. The funny thing is everybody's failing now, in which case perhaps it's time to look at George Bush's relationship with George Bush."   Wonder how close that "adviser" is to the White House... I hope they don't start a leak investigation to find out.

President Bush Fibs About 10 'Plots'

And the biggest play that gets is on A6--three weeks later:

A White House list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States has confused counterterrorism experts and officials, who say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off.

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed. Others noted that the nation's color-coded threat index was not raised from yellow, or "elevated" risk of attack, to orange, or "high" risk, for most of the time covered by the incidents on the list....

"We don't know how they came to the conclusions they came to," said one counterterrorism official, who spoke anonymously for fear of angering the White House. "It's safe to say that most of the [intelligence] community doesn't think it's worth very much."

Looks like the CIA v. White House war continues!  Anyway, it's instructive to look at how the major papers covered the president's  speech.  The Post simply, and mindlessly (Miller-like) parroted Bush's assertion: "BUSH SAYS 10 PLOTZ BY AL QAEDA WERE FOILED."

The other major papers  did  question  the president's contentions. The Los Angeles Times in particular did a good job, noting citing "senior law enforcement officials" who "said authorities have not disrupted any operational terrorist plot within the United States." So the paper did the digging, but as is so often the case with the papers, it didn't feel comfortable putting that non-official storyline in the headline.

It's not about adhering to objectivity; it's about deference.   After all , "PRESIDENT ASSERTS 10 'PLOTS' BY AL QAEDA FOILED, INTEL ANALYSTS SKEPTICAL" would have been  an  'objective,' and informative, headline. But instead of that we got,  "BUSH LIKENS WAR ON TERROR TO COLD WAR; Iraq is a staging ground for militants who seek a 'radical Islamic empire,' he warns, and says 10 Al Qaeda plots have been foiled since 9/11."

So today's lesson: The papers are willing to counter the official narrative. It's just they're trigger-shy about making the questioning itself the main story, even if the facts support such an interpretation. So what happens, as in the case of the LAT, is that the official narrative gets the headline--and with it  the  80 percent of readers who just glance at the paper get misled. 

Lame Duck Watch

I'd argue it arrived a few months ago--but whatever--it can't be in too much doubt now. From the WP:

The resistance suggests that Bush's second term could turn out far rockier and more contentious than his first. One indicator many Republicans are watching to gauge whether Bush is becoming a liability for the party is in Pennsylvania, where Rick Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, is trailing state treasurer Bob Casey Jr. by double digits.

"My caucus would do anything for Senator Santorum," Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) said of his colleague. Chafee, who himself faces a tough reelection battle next year, predicted Republicans will increasingly be faced with the choice of propping up Bush or protecting their own. "I think they're going to collide," Chafee said of the two options.

Asked whether Bush's problems were a factor in his slump, Santorum responded, "That may be."

The White House's Silence on Uzbekistan

David Corn wonders why the White House hasn't spoken up about the latest from Uzbekistan, where hundreds of protestors were massacred in May. Corn links to this from the Independent:

Uzbek authorities have jailed hundreds of people and forced them to confess to links to radical Islamists to justify the army crackdown on peaceful demonstrators last May that left 500 people dead, The Independent has learnt.

Human Rights Watch reports that witnesses of the massacre in the eastern city of Andizhan and relatives of the victims, have been rounded up and jailed for between 10 to 15 days on fabricated charges. "They are severely beaten and tortured until they sign statements confessing to being members of radical Islamic groups," a researcher for the group who has just visited the central Asian region said.

                                                

We've already lost future rights to the  airbase there.  But I understand. Sticking to a real policy  of "speading freedom and liberty" vs.  possibly a few extra months at a base. Must be a hard call.

This is disgusting (and near-sighted)

From (deep inside) Tuesday's Washington Post:

U.S. Opposed Calls at NATO for Probe of Uzbek Killings
Officials Feared Losing Air Base Access
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Glenn Kessler

Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

British and other European officials had pushed to include language calling for an independent investigation in a communique issued by defense ministers of NATO countries and Russia after a daylong meeting in Brussels on Thursday. But the joint communique merely stated that "issues of security and stability in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan," had been discussed.

The outcome obscured an internal U.S. dispute over whether NATO ministers should raise the May 13 shootings in Andijan at the risk of provoking Uzbekistan to cut off U.S. access to a military air base on its territory.

The communique's wording was worked out after what several knowledgeable sources called a vigorous debate in Brussels between U.S. defense officials, who emphasized the importance of the base, and others, including State Department representatives at NATO headquarters, who favored language calling for a transparent, independent and international probe into the killings of Uzbekistan civilians by police and soldiers.