TomPaine.com has a fine rundown of the positions of this administration by version number, a la software.

KOMPRESSOR FOR PRESIDENT

Some of you have asked for a brief rundown of the political sites I read (and cite) here at Heathen. In no particular order, the usual suspects include:

• Talking Points Memo, by Josh Marshall
• Slacktivist, whose current post comparing Bush and Blair is well worth reading
• Lawrence Lessig, on issues of copyright and law
• The Agonist, who publishes far faster than we can possibly keep up with
• Eschaton, by the pseudonymous Atrios
• Billmon’s Whisky Bar
• Groklaw, covering SCO v. IBM & related issues

There are, of course, countless other sources worthe perusing, typically written by thoughtful people and usually devoid of the kind of rancor and shouting that typifies broadcast media. Read on.

Must be that pesky “oath” thing.

Condi Rice is wasting no time in attempting to spin-doctor and rebut Richard Clarke’s testimony, but she’s not doing a very good job of it. In refusing to testify to the Commission proper, she asserts at least two very odd things.

First, there’s the whole issue of refusing to testify under oath, but having no compunctions about saying whatever she wants while in the safety of her own office (and without threat of perjury indictments). There’s definitely something screwy about that.

Second, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, the historical precedent for aides refusing to testify isn’t as clearly on her side as she appears to think; there’s even precedent for people in precisely her position testifying under oath before such commissions (Brzezinski in 1980; Berger in 1997). Of course, Marshall’s source — the Congressional Research Service — also lists five examples when presidential aides refused to testify; anybody want to bet which administration employed four of those five?

Is that really a parallel this administration wants to encourage?

Fred Kaplan at Slate shows us how we can tell that Dick Clarke Is Telling The Truth.

Atrios quotes an excerpt from a statement by Tom Daschle. Read it.

Bush is awful busy wrapping himself in the “leadership” he showed following 9/11, and doing his level best to make it look like his administration was caught flat-footed by the ineptness of the Clinton folks.

Trouble is, it’s just not true:

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council [under Clinton]. He has since left. Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Richard Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Clarke is at the center of what has since become a burning controversy: What happened on August 6, 2001? It was on this day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. According to reports, the briefing stated bluntly that Osama bin Laden intended to attack America soon, and contained the word “hijacking.” Bush responded to the warning by heading to Texas for a month-long vacation. It is this briefing that the Bush administration has refused to divulge to the committee investigating the attacks. There was not a single Republican member of Congress who ever raised a single question or put a query to the Clinton National Security Council about its efforts against terrorism before the attacks. When the Clinton team left office, their National Security group conducted three extensive briefings of the incoming Bush people. The attitude of the Bush people was, essentially, dismissive, that it was a “Clinton thing.” Condoleezza Rice has admitted that the massive file on al Qaeda and bin Laden left for her by outgoing National Security Advisor Sandy Berger went completely unread until the attacks had taken place. This happened despite the fact that Berger told her during one such briefing, “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”

Now, I’d like to see the source for the August 6 anecdote, but the balance — that the outgoing terrorism czar warned Bush’s people in January, and that warning went unheeded — isn’t even contested by Bush’s own administration. THAT is what Kerry should be saying to Rove’s ads about Bush’s 9/11 “leadership.”

(Via Tbogg.)

Many sources point us to this piece by Timothy Noah at Slate discussing the ongoing pattern of dogma over empiricism promulgated by this administration. If you think facts have a place in policymaking, you disagree with the folks in charge.

Fortunately, at least where “facts” and “Iraq” intersect, someone’s been keeping track of what they said.

MoveOn has a great little clip of Rummy lying his ass off, and then getting called on it.

According to newly-appointed Special Counsel Scott Bloch, gays and lesbians can now be fired from Federal jobs for their orientation.

This story — that a senior expert on Medicare was told he’d be fired if he released his cost estimates for the drug plan to Congress — is all over the Net, but as usual our friends over at Slacktivist have it well in hand.

That the religious right holds terrible sway over the GOP isn’t news. The extent of this influence, though, is pretty damn scary, so before you consider voting for one of these people, make sure you understand what they actually support, and what they think of notions like Constitutional privacy.

Anti-gay bigots love to quote Paul Cameron, a rather odd bird who nevertheless has some impressive hard-right credentials, not the least of which may be his expulsion from the American Psychological Association. Of course, he’s also infamous for this:

“Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system,” says Cameron. “If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm.” So powerful is the allure of gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves that gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. “I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers,” says Cameron. “People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical,” he adds, sounding evangelical himself. “It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything.” He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. “Martial sex tends toward the boring end,” he points out. “Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does” So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality would be come the dominant form of sexual behavior. Quote from Tbogg via Atrios

Er, right. That’s the ticket. Can you say “closet case?”

So, Bush is likely to endorse and fight for an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment, according to some sources, which will turn the issue into a political football this summer. This made us wonder: since the Constitution is, more or less, a document that reigns in the State, its primary mission is the preservation of personal liberty and the limitation of State power. How many amendments, then, explicitly limit what citizens can and cannot do? Let’s review. Follow along in your own copies, which I’m sure you keep handy, though surely you know the first ten by heart, right?

1. Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition the state for redress of grievances.
2. The right to keep & bear arms; a well-regulated militia (otherwise known as “the only Amendment the ACLU seems to overlook”).
3. A real hot-button issue in the 21st century: soldiers cannot be quartered in private homes. Thank God for that; we have NO ROOM.
4. You know when cops come in and take your shit for no good reason? Yeah, man, that totally sucks. Also, it’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL under Amendment IV. Rock on.
5. A great omnibus amendment, this one guarantees the grand jury process, outlaws double jeopardy, ensures we’re free from self incrimination (remember Ollie North?), guaruntees due process, and enshrines private property.
6. More judicial goodness: here we get the right to a speedy & public trial by an impartial jury in criminal matters.
7. Yet MORE judicial rights: this one says we can have a jury trial on common law issues, too. Ask a lawyer what that means.
8. The last of the first ten’s judicial amendments, VIII frees us from excessive bail (ask Jeff Skilling) as well as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
9. The last two from the Bill of Rights ensure that this list of rights isn’t viewed as exclusive; IX says “we know we listed a bunch of rights, but we didn’t list all of ’em, and the exclusion of something here doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
10. “…and the same goes for the rights of states.”
11. Now out of the Bill of Rights, we get into some administrative work. XI contains the rules for suing states. Basically, you can only do it in state court, and the state has to let you sue. Remember this one; it’s important later.
12. A bunch of stuff about presidential elections. It’s long. It’s boring. But you probably ought to read it on the grounds that, you know, it’s the basis for our government. (Offer not valid in Canada.)
13. “Slavery is evil. No more of that.”
14. Lots of the later amendments are about states. According to Senior NoGators Legal Analyst Triple-F, XIV says “We really mean Amendment V, and the states have to play by those rules, too.” It also contains a bunch of other bits more or less unrelated the the primary focus of the amendment. Call it housekeeping.
15. “Everybody who has a penis may now vote.” Exercising this right for people with darker skin took a while to become (a) commonplace and (b) safe.
16. Goddamn income tax.
17. Senatorial succession, more or less.
18. Prohibition and the establishment of organized crime. Just kidding; it’s really just prohibition. Remember this one, too.
19. “Did we say ‘with a penis’ back in XV? We meant ‘everybody, period.’ Our bad, really. Honest mistake. Can we have sex again now?”
20. Dates of terms of congressional sessions and presidential terms, plus a bit about how to handle things if the President-elect dies between election and taking office.
21. “Say, baby, how about a drink after you vote?” Prohibition repealed. (Organized crime stayed.) Once again, remember this one, too.
22. Fuck FDR.
23. DC can have representatives, but no more than the smallest state, and they can’t vote.
24. “We meant what we said about voting before. No more turning away voters for not paying taxes, poll or otherwise. Confederacy, this means YOU.”
25. This is the one that has always weirded me out. It wasn’t until 1965 that presidential succession as we know it — i.e., beyond the VP — was proposed, and it wasn’t ratified until 1967. Wacky.
26. If you can go to Vietnam and die, you ought to get to vote, too. Voting age is lowered to 18.
27. “You know when Congress used to pass laws giving itself pay raises that take place immediately? That’s creepy. From now on, they can’t take effect until after the next election.”

Even a cursory review of our pithy amendment summary shows that the Amendments, on the whole, deal with either protecting rights, or with the mechanics of our government (which can be seen as protecting said, and therefore our rights inasmuch as our State does such). Only twice have we adopted amendments that can be construed to limit liberty:

• Amendment XI, concerning lawsuits against states; and
• Amendment XVIII, when for some wacked-out reason we thought prohibition would be a good idea.

N.B. that within a few years, we also repealed this bad idea with Amendment XXI.

The same absurd we-must-control-everyone puritanism that brought about XVIII is at work again today in the hew and cry for an amendment “protecting” marriage. No one can yet explain to me why this is a good idea — i.e., why the State should care whom we marry, when, for what reason, etc. “Protecting marriage” is code for “we hate gays,” since no one seems all that upset about 48-hour Vegas couplings, or the fact that Liza Minelli married a wax statue. They don’t care about the sanctity of marriage; they just want to make sure we don’t extend legal recognition to homosexual unions.

The trouble is: no one has yet articulated a good reason why we shouldn’t. Marriage, in its best state, is about stability, support, and family (and I don’t mean “kids” necessarily). Because marriage is state-sponsored, it’s the easiest and best avenue for default inheritance, insurance, next-of-kin designation, powers of attorney, and a wealth of other societal logistics. To deny committed couples the right to marry because they’re the same gender denys them these functions of society, and to what end? My relationship with Erin isn’t harmed by the middle-aged gay men next door; my married friends would be similarly undamaged were those neighbors able to make their long-term union legal.

When I look a this list of Amendments, mostly I feel pride — especially with the Bill of Rights, and then again with XIII, XV, XIX, and XXIV. I feel ashamed of us only once, at XVIII, and that shame is only temporary; we knew we’d screwed up, and we fixed it. We were foolish; we backtracked; and we moved on. This proposed marriage amendment would restore a far more bitter taste in my mouth; we’d be enshrining in our Constitution a fundamentally bigoted position, and breaking with tradition in a terrifying way. Twenty-four amendments codify and protect liberty, and all but one apply equally to all members of our republic — and even the outlier there was eventually superceded by a later act. Do we really need to keep gays out of wedding chapels this badly? Why?

Today, Slacktivist makes an interesting point, which I’ll summarize here.

Some opponents of same-sex marriage contend that the problem is “activist” judges, and that we need a Constitutional amendment to ban such unions. Furthermore, people like San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom have “no respect for the law” because they’re allowing gay marriages.

This begs a question: are same-sex weddings Constitutional under the current law? If not, we don’t need the amendment (but please show me where it is). If they ARE Constitutional, though, these judges are just doing their jobs — and Newsome & co. can only be said to be honoring the highest law of the land.

So, which is it?

Rep. Henry Waxman has created a site collecting the anti-science agenda of the Bush Administration. It makes for interesting reading.

We know we keep bringing this up, but today there’s even more coverage. Salon has a piece on the ongoing efforts of this administration to push abstinence-only sex education across the board (and even to export said as a condition of US aid) despite the fact that similar programs pursued in Texas have produced one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country.

Knowledge is power. Not telling kids about condoms and birth control as a matter of policy is utterly insane, even without AIDS in the picture. The scare tactics are tantamount to the don’t-touch-it-or-you’ll-go-blind warnings of years ago, and are obviously no more effective.

There’s a deeply scary bill being circulated on the Hill called the Contitution Restoration Act of 2004. Sponsored by Zell Miller, Richard Shelby, and others, the bill would attempt sweeping changes of our government by limiting the ability of the courts to review some acts of Congress, and in particular enjoining said courts from reviewing anything having to do with Church-State issues.

The Right’s agenda here is achingly clear. Ashcroft-ism will be the rule, not the exception. Huge elements of the party will not be satisfied until we’re essentially a theocracy. There’s more discussion here.

Once again, Slacktivist totally nails it, this time in discussing the bizarro world of the Bush Administration’s policies on drug prices.

This link may rot, but if it does I’ll host the piece here. It’s a long profile of Attorney General John Ashcroft, and frankly, it’s scary as hell. Getting rid of Ashcroft is reason enough to vote someone else into 1600 Pennsylvania in November; he’s done more — and more lasting — damage our Republic than any terrorist boogeyman.

Pickering didn’t trouble me so much, aside from the whole recess-appointment we-don’t-care-if-you-don’t-like-it bullshit. This, however, pisses me off. Pryor is a scary freak committed to eradicating Roe and perhaps Griswold. Watch this weasel.

Traditionally, the GOP has been the party of the military. Democrats, by conventional wisdom, are “soft on defense” and not to be trusted defending our nation. Republicans like to spend money on defense, and lots of it.

Unfortunately, it’s become clear that the Right — or at least the Right’s leaders — isn’t nearly so supportive of our men and women in uniform as they have us believe. Our top Republican officials, all Vietnam-era men, either didn’t serve at all (Cheney had “other priorities;” Tom Delay would’ve served, but too many minorities were taking up all the spots) or served with dubious loyalty and commitment. As for the size and expense of the military, Donald Rumsfeld has been working for three years to reduce the size of the force to sub-Clintonian levels, which is hardly a major heading on any set of Republican talking points. Add to this the constant cuts in military support and benefits, and you get a picture that’s not terribly supportive.

It gets worse. During the midterm elections, the GOP ran ads in Georgia comparing then-Senator Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, thereby managing to smear the decorated (Silver Star) triple-amputee Vietnam vet out of office. Now that Cleland is on the talk circuit demanding additional documentation of Bush’s dubious National Guard record, the smear campaign is rolling again. Republican mouthpiece Ann Coulter insists Cleland is a fraud in yet another burst of screed. Fortunately, she’s full of shit, as per usual, but the attacks persist, substantive or not.

How is it these people are our “defense-friendly” party again? How is it this behavior is consistent with the “character” the GOP tells us it has, and that Democrats lack? It’s time to take a hard look at these people, at what they’ve done, and what they will do if they get another term in control.

The Feds are spying on peaceful dissent groups, even in some cases trying to incite them toward violent behavior. Salon’s coverage continues in this first installment of two-part story. The scariest quote is from California anti-terrorism official Mike Van Winkle: “You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.”

Think about that. Cops always want more power. Period. Their job is to catch bad guys, and they see anything that gets in their way as bad. Their job is not to defend our liberties; the Judicial branch is our real watchdog. Allowing cops to make policy on issues like this is a recipe for disaster.

Our immigration authorities can’t keep hijackers out of the country that meet established profiles for bad-guy-ness, but they have no trouble keeping Grammy-nominated artists away on account of where they’re from. Lovely.

Forbes is running an article on Bush’s proposed budget, noting which programs he wants gutted (social ones for domestic problems) to pay for the war and his tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Keep paying attention; even if you’re a Republican, what Bush is doing to our fiscal health is hard to reconcile or support.

Read <a href=http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/01/a_patriot_there.html”>this post about what Brad DeLong thinks of current economic policy.

How is that the Democrats became the fiscally conservative ones?

Security expert Bruce Schneier — author of the excellent Beyond Fear, which everyone ought to read — discusses the increased police powers and governmental surveillance since 9/11, a trend that continues more or less unabated. An excerpt:

We need to weigh each security countermeasure. Is the additional security against the risks worth the costs? Are there smarter things we can be spending our money on? How does the risk of terrorism compare with the risks in other aspects of our lives: automobile accidents, domestic violence, industrial pollution, and so on? Are there costs that are just too expensive for us to bear? Rarely do we discuss how little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of everyone doesn’t really prevent terrorism. Unfortunately, it’s rare to hear this level of informed debate. Few people remind us how minor the terrorist threat really is. Rarely do we discuss how little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of everyone doesn’t really prevent terrorism. And where’s the debate about what’s more important: the freedoms and liberties that have made America great or some temporary security? Instead, the Department of Justice, fueled by a strong police mentality inside the administration, is directing our nation’s political changes in response to Sept. 11. And it’s making trade-offs from its own subjective perspective–trade-offs that benefit it even if they are to the detriment of others.

Agree or not, it’s definitely worth thought. This administration is making these tradeoffs with no regard for long-term repercussions, and that’s scary as hell. This week, Bush threatened to veto a bipartisan bill that would scale back the powers granted under the USA PATRIOT Act. They’re not interested in giving back powers; governments never are, and ours is no exception. Or, at least, this Adminstration isn’t.

Dio For America.

Teresa Nielsen-Hayden points out something disturbing about Joe Lieberman.

The Administration’s approach to soaring STD rates in American teens is — you guessed it — funding more abstinance-only programs. These programs, of course, generally prohibit discussing alternatives to chastity and are viewed by the scientific community as incomplete (at best) and dangerous (at worst). There are even studies that suggest that these abstinence-only programs result in increases in pregnancy and STD rates. Don’t miss the point here: the programs advocated by this administration prohibit complete discussion of sexually transmitted diseases. They represent less education, not more, and as such are MORE dangerous and LESS effective at reducing risk for teens.

Not that this bothers Bush & co., of course; the point here is to keep the Religious Right happy, and those folks won’t tolerate any program that doesn’t push total abstinence. Pay attention: the ongoing push for abstinence-only programs trades actual education — and the benefits associated therewith — for political support.

Ben & Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen narrates this Flash short about where our Federal budget dollars go, and then invites you to register with TrueMajority.org. It’s worth your time.

More specifically, 1988’s Dennis Miller reads the riot act to the right-wing sycophant 2003 version. Read it and weep, babe.

It looks like the bigots at the American Family Association no longer have quite the faith in online polling that they once did, as their favored position got whipped in their own poll on the subject.

Frankly, their naivete is sorts of charming. I mean, it’s like they’ve never heard of Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf or something.

Or it would be charming, if those Tupelo goons weren’t barking mad.

Political appointees in the Justice Department are refusing to release an internal memo dealing with the GOP’s Texas redistricting efforts.

The Democrats’ lead attorney, J. Gerald Hebert of Alexandria, responded with an appeal to the Justice Department yesterday, alleging that career attorneys had recommended an objection to the redistricting plan, but were overruled by political appointees. Democrats argue that the Texas map violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it eliminates two districts in which minorities make up a majority of the voters. “Clearly the Department of Justice is stonewalling this request to avoid the embarrassment that will surely ensue when the memorandum is made public,” Hebert wrote in his appeal, which was filed with the department’s Office of Information and Privacy. Washington Post

The Boston Globe is reporting that GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have been infiltrating their Democratic rivals’ computer files for a year (at least).

Just imagine the field day the GOP would have with this if the situation were reversed.

Marshall’s coup of an interview is here. Read it even if you think Bush is on the right track. Seriously.

So far, I’ve been silent on the recess appointment of my cousin Charles Pickering (his father and my great-grandmother were siblings) to the 5th Circuit. I’ve said before he was getting a bad rap, and that Bush’s other right-winger judicial nominees (some openly hostile to the idea of Constitutional Privacy altogether, which is to say hostile to not just Roe but also Griswold) were a much greater cause for concern. Judge Pickering is a Republican, of course, but we can hardly expect progressive judicial nominations from a neocon-dominated administration. I do believe he is a fair jurist, and that he’s been treated very poorly by the political process — though I understand why, too; it’s a bed the GOP made for eight years.

In any case, I think, perhaps, I can say all I need to say on the subject of the recess appointment with this quote:

“Any appointment of a federal judge during a recess should be opposed.” Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) opposing the appointment of an African American judge, December 2000

I agree, Trent. It does seems wrong, doesn’t it?

It’s well documented at this point that CBS has refused to carry an anti-Bush ad by the progressive group MoveOn.org during the Super Bowl on the grounds that they don’t run “issue ads.”

Er, right. Of course, they do plan to run one of those hamhanded, ridiculous, Office of National Drug Control Policy ads, which I’m pretty sure counts as an “issue ad.”

Lessig points out why we ought to be concerned about this.

In the current New Yorker, George Bush is quoted as saying “No President has ever done more for human rights than I have.” Billmon points out why this might be just a bit off base.

They’re challenging a WHO report on reducing obesity on the grounds that reducing fats and sugars in favor of more fruits and vegetables is “faulty science.” It couldn’t have anything to do with the beef industry or the sugar lobby, could it?

Josh Marshall points out today that it took Justice 74 days after Novak outed Valerie Plame’s name to start an investigation into who leaked the name of a secret CIA operative, but only ONE day for them to draw knives on Paul O’Neill for allegedly taking secret Treasury documents with him. Of course, their real grievance is that he’s criticizing the adminstration, but that’s not illegal.

Yet.

An Army War College report presents a scathing critique of the scope of the “Global War On Terrorism” and the distraction of the Iraqi invasion.

It seems certain that we’ll see a news item noting that its author has been dismissed within a fortnight.

In the last week or so, some interesting bits have come to light regarding Saddam, Iraq, and the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction — those selfsame weapons that Tony Blair said could be launched with 45 minutes’ notice.

First, an exhaustive report appeared in the Washington Post firmly establishing that any WMD arsenal in Iraq was on paper only. Previous announcements by Bush that we had located “mobile weapons labs” have been termed “premature,” “embarrassing,” and “a fiasco” by David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group. Those trailers, it seems, were actually used for the production of helium for use in weather balloons (which the Iraqis used as artillary spotters).

Now, this week, we get former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s statement that Bush had planned to oust Saddam long before 9/11, and that the terror attacks and claims of WMD were simply means to that end. According to O’Neill, the administration’s position was “find me a way to do this.” Oddly, this story isn’t getting much play, which is bewildering to me and to the proprietor over at Whiskey Bar, who says:

Personally, I think it’s kind of a big deal when a president deliberately sets the wheels in motion to invade another country, before the events later used to justify the war have even taken place. To me that seems like a story worth pursuing.

So: No weapons exist, or are likely to be found; and a former cabinet official has publically stated that the search for such weapons was at best a pretext for a preimptive war in the works since Bush took office, long before the 9/11 attacks.

Make of this what you will.

American Conservative Magazine is running an excellent article the Bush Administration’s use of bogus “protest zoning,” arrest, and intimidation to stifle protest and dissent at Presidential appearances, presumably to keep the protesters out of campaign photos and footage.

Read it, and remember that this is a perspective from the Right. Salon.com covered this back in October.

The National Park service has caved to right-wingers who have been complaining for years that the video at the Lincoln Memorial included footage from gay-rights and pro-choice rallies held there. Said footage has been removed, and replaced with shots of Promise Keeper rallies and pro-Gulf War demonstrations held elsewhere.

Sigh.

Robert Cringely has another great piece on the problems of electronic voting — which are really those of expecting technology to just fix the problem instead of realizing how it introduces a whole new set of issues.

Don’t miss his description of how simply, efficiently, reliably, and cheaply Canada handles voting.

The headline in the Houston Chronicle this morning trumpet’s President Bush’s promise that Saddam Hussein will receive a fair trial.

I find this interesting, since this administration has been fairly aggressive about its right to deny precisely that to US citizens it deems “enemy combatants;” I wonder why Saddam rates better treatment than our own people?

First, I read this morning that they’re doing a bit of backpedaling on the “no French, Russian, German, or Canadian companies” edict — not a reversal, but definitely a softening of the position.

Second, Mike’s blog points us to this Fanatical Apathy post on the subject, which is perhaps the best rant I’ve read in weeks.

Billmon provides some commentary on a Guardian story that asks that very question. It’s all well worth your time.

Wolfowitz, et. al., have announced that due to vital security interests, the next round of reconstruction contracts for Iraq will go only to US companies and companies based in countries that supported the war.

Considering how clear it is that we cannot run or reconstruct Iraq on our own, and that we need international support — real support, not a smattering of Italian troops — this strikes me as a really, really bad call. It’s obviously vindictive, and the stated reason is blatently disingenuous. Neither of these paints us in a very flattering light.

Of course, there’s plenty of commentary. Talking Point Memo includes a bit of the actual document involved, which is interesting. The New York Times coverage will of course expire eventually, but it’s there nevertheless.