I share Josh Marshall’s take on the issue of administration stonewalling on calls for an independent investigaiton of claims of intelligence failures in the pre-invasion assessment of the Iraqi threat. While most commentators are content to explain administration resistance to an investigation in terms of a wish to get the issue off the minds of the voters sooner (for example, Daniel Schorr’s commentary this morning on NPR; do you share my sense that his acumen is fading?), it is more likely that inquiries would go beyond what intelligence was provided to examine how it was consumed by the White House, which is where I think the real intelligence failures and abuses lie. Testimony by representatives of the intelligence community to an independent inquiry board would reveal the profound and unprecedented breakdown in relations between their establishment and the administration, much along the lines that Seymour Hersh described several months ago in his important New Yorkerpiece on the uraniumgate scandal. Recall that Hersh suggested that the offices of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense have virtually built their own parallel intelligence infrastructures because of the recalcitrance of the CIA to feed them exactly the interpretations their selection biases required.

And lest you point out that Kay said the misinformation was the CIA’s problem, Marshall concludes as I have that Kay was in no position to know whether the CIA was pressured to reach erroneous conclusions or its analysis distorted by the very selective attention of administration ideologues. ” ‘Tis a poor workman who blames his tools…”

Similarly, does administration stonewalling on the 9/11 commission suggest that the truth of what was known of the impending threat is more complicated than intelligence failure at Foggy Bottom?

I have been troubled by the transparency of the administration and its apologists falling back increasingly on the ‘humanitarian’ justifications for the invasion of Iraq as the justification of averting an imminent threat has evaporated. Here, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, which has the credibility of having documented and remonstrated about Saddam Hussein’s abuses for decades, writes in the Human Rights Watch World Report 2004 that the humanitarian argument does not bear up under examination. The human rights emergency in Iraq was no more dire than in many other parts of the world where we do not choose to intervenq; “the Iraq war was not mainly about saving the Iraqi people from mass slaughter, and …no such slaughter was then ongoing or imminent”. Why have standards? A lesser emergency is still an emergency, right? Roth points out that the capacity for military intervention is finite, and if it is used in lesser emergencies (even in cases, unlike Iraq, where the moral urgency is unambiguous) the capacity to face greater atrocities may be lacking. Undermining the international legal order by violating another soverign country’s borders, especially without the support fo the world community, further impairs international protection of human rights. In short, the intervention fails Human Rights Watch’s standards for a humanitarian response — it was not a last resort, was not intended or structured to be for the benefit of the Iraqi people, departed in multiple respects from interventions acknowledged by the world community as legitimately humanitarian, had no endorsement by multilateral aothorities, and was not structured effectively to prevent doing more harm than good. I share Roth’s concern that there be an international multilateral consensus on criteria (hopefully, similar to those he outlines in this manifesto) for humanitarian interventions, preferably with the force of treaty law. It is unlikey the U.S. under its present administration would be a party to such an accord, given our repeated insistence that we will brook no interference in our right to defend ourselves and the unreasoned fluidity among the various pretexts offered for our unilateral adventurism abroad. But it would make the US’s renegade status more unambiguous and serve as a legitimate basis for international penalties for our arrogance and defiance.

Despite the Hutton Report’s bringing down the leadership of the BBC and supposedly exonerating the Blair government of having distorted the evidence for invading Iraq, reports suggest that the British public retain more confidence in the BBC than in Her Majesty’s government. Here is Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke‘s take on it. Meanwhile, despair in the newsroom has turned to anger. A ‘bring back Dyke’ ad appeared today in the Daily Telegraph, funded and signed by hundreds of BBC staffers and stating, in part,

Greg Dyke stood for brave, independent and rigorous BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for the truth. We are resolute that the BBC should not step back from its determination to investigate the facts in pursuit of the truth. Through his passion and integrity, Greg Dyke inspired us to make programmes of the highest quality and creativity. We are dismayed by Greg’s departure, but we are determined to maintain his achievements and his vision for an independent organisation that serves the public above all else.

—Guardian.UK [with links at the bottom to dozens of articles they have run on aspects of the crisis].

I can’t tell you how often I am hearing critics ridicule the Democrats for wanting to elect someone ‘electable.’ Now it is David Brooks. It is fashionable for them to call this focus on “electability” postmodern too, “an election about itself, with voters voting on the basis of who could win votes later on. It’s the tautology, stupid.” Well, Brooks, the contempt of the contemptible is a compliment, IMHO. First of all, it is a well-known longstanding and, yes, perhaps pitiful, voting phenomenon that the electorate is pulled toward joining the winning team; nothing new there. But, in the current race, it is ludicrous to talk about the Democratic voters’ focus on electability without acknowledging how desperate they are at this juncture to find someone who can beat Bush (beat Bush again, that is). It is no accident that it is Republican handmaidens who lampoon the phenomenon now. You did not hear them derogating the intelligence of the electorate in 2000. Ridiculing “electability” is a testimony to the pundit’s lack of intelligence, not that of the electorate. But if you think this is ridiculous, you can bet this is just a preview of the battle for the hearts and, especially, the minds, of the voters you’ll see this fall in the general election campaign, as it will be scripted by Republican strategists. Of course, the President himself won’t use the ‘s-word’ for fear of alienating voters, but his machine will get its mouthpieces in the conservative press to insinuate how stupid those who do not back administration policy are. Conservatives like Kevin Phillips are turning against the Bush dynasty because of the extent to which it represents an elitist patrician sentiment very different from the Republican populism that propelled REagan, for better or worse, into captivating the nation int he ’80’s. Let us hope the populace sees the contempt in which Bush’s organization holds them.

Another problem with the arguments of Brooks and those of his ilk about the folly of going for an electable Democrat is that this is not necessarily what the Democrats are doing. The primary campaign is not yet over and conclusions about Kerry’s victory are greatly exaggerated, it appears to me. While many are whitewashing his flaws in flush of bandwagon effect, it is not lost on other Democrats what a mistake going with Kerry would be. (Jack Beatty: “Listening to him, I saw a long line of Democratic bores—Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bradley, Gore—who lost because people could not bear listening to them. John Kerry belongs in their dreary company. I fear he could talk his way out of victory…” —The Atlantic)

Seeking intelligent life among the newsreaders, television producers and yoghurt advertisers who label things as ‘science’ : “…(H)ow… are we to save the world from scenes like the one I witnessed on TV the other night? A BBC science correspondent was reporting on the breakdown of communications with the Martian rover, which he described as ‘either a hardware problem or a software problem’. ‘Could you put that into terms that laymen like me would understand?’ asked the newsreader. I assume the look on the reporter’s face was meant to reflect sympathy rather than disgust, but what could he say to that? ‘Basically it’s fucked, mate.’ Who on earth would be interested in the fate of a planetary probe and yet not be able to cope with the idea that it’s either a hardware or a software problem? The world’s gone mad.” —Guardian.UK

“When 50 million red-blooded American men sit down to watch the Superbowl, they’ll see more than the Patriots and the Panthers facing off. This year’s game is also a showdown for dominance in the billion dollar battle among companies selling erectile dysfunction drugs.

But some are asking if these drugs are solely a cure for dysfunction, and whether they might not also be a new cause of sexual insecurity for couples.” NPR’s The Connection; listen to the show.