Bivens's Outrage

Spelling it Out

By Matt Bivens

" ... when I said, 'Invading Iraq after 9/11 is like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor,' that didn't go over well and I was very quickly sidelined ..." -- Richard Clarke speaking on "Meet the Press."

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In one sense, the White House has succeeded in fending off its critics. Because the discussion has quickly centered on inside-the-Beltway politics and process: Will Condoleeza Rice testify or won't she? Will Richard Clarke's old testimony be declassified or won't it? Along the way, we've lost track of the big picture.

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March 31, 2004

CNN's Smear

By Matt Bivens

Writing in The New York Times about how hell-bent the Bush Administration is on crushing critics like former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, columnist Paul Krugman mentioned a CNN report I'd missed. And just as well I didn't see it, because I probably would have had an aneurysm.

Krugman says Blitzer told viewers his anonymous government sources were saying Clarke "wants to make a few bucks" off of his book about 9/11; and "that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

Which is funny, because sources tell me that Wolf Blitzer is still beating all seven of his wives, even the 14-year-old.

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March 30, 2004

'Fishing Rod in Hand'

By Matt Bivens

Here's a head-scratcher of a CBS News report from July 2001:

"Fishing rod in hand," the report begins, "Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet ... In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a 'threat assessment' by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term. ... Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it."

So apparently, six weeks before 9/11, the FBI was aware of a terror threat involving commercial airliners -- and in response, made sure that its boss wouldn't be on one. It's certainly possible that the threat had nothing to do with al-Qaida and was specific to Ashcroft -- and that keeping him off of commercial jets was about protecting the public, not the attorney general. It's also possible that, as Richard Clarke's testimony suggests, some in government took al-Qaida seriously and, frustrated with those at the very top who didn't, quietly took matters into their own hands. Either way, until the Justice Department is forced to cough up at least some minimal details on this one, we can only guess.

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March 29, 2004

Fourteen 9/11s

By Matt Bivens

September 11th was horrible and tragic and important, so it's fitting that we have opened a major national discussion about what went wrong.

But consider that car crashes claim some 43,000 people every year -- a death toll equal to a September 11th once every three and a half weeks. And many, many thousands of these deaths could be prevented.

So where's the major national discussion? The political leadership? Newspaper pages, television airwaves and prime retail space in book stores are all choked with talk of something that, statistically speaking, is unlikely to impact most of us: terrorism. Meanwhile, vehicle fatalities -- the most common cause of death for those aged 2 to 33, and a clear and present danger that every year claims the equivalent in American lives of an entire Vietnam War -- are too quaint and numbingly familiar for comment.

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March 26, 2004

New GOP Talking Points

By Matt Bivens

Check out the memo on environmental issues being distributed by top Congressional Republicans. It says that, yes, Republicans are going to get spanked by voters for not caring about the environment. Then, by way of advice, it suggests these talking points:

* "Global warming is not a fact;"

* "Links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy [!];"

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March 24, 2004

Gag Rules

By Matt Bivens

Note to readers: After a brief vacation, the outrages will be daily again as of Wednesday, March 24.

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"You know, I'm a minister. Why do people lie? Because they're liars." -- Al Sharpton discussing George W. Bush at a Democratic debate last month.

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March 12, 2004

The Absurdities of Gitmo

By Matt Bivens

You're kidding, right? That's it?

After holding Brits in our extralegal dungeons for two years, one day we just let 'em go?

We've still got more than 600 people imprisoned in our Halliburton-built prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where for more than two years we've been interrogating them, denying them lawyers, denying them any kind of judicial review, hinting quite bluntly that they could all remain in limbo like this forever, and trying to put a brave face on all of the suicide attempts.

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March 12, 2004

Drains & Bathtubs

By Matt Bivens

Here are some fun pictures and graphics from the website of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: This one (a PDF file) is a cross-section drawing of how, while plant operators snoozed, acid dripping over a period of years chewed through the six-inch carbon steel lid of the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor vessel. This one is a photograph of the rusty, acid-charred hole itself. And this one is from the happy ending: A shot of workers and a huge blue truck that's transporting a replacement lid for the reactor.

Taken together, they tell a neatly delineated success story: Machine breaks, problem identified, machine fixed -- nay, improved! -- machine roars to life, better than ever, everyone much wiser and more knowledgeable for the experience.

So if you want to complain, as I have in recent days, about how the Davis-Besse reactor came, thanks to outrageous negligence, within a fraction of an inch of disaster, fine. But doing so is also probably a waste of time, because the plant's operators simply counter that they're very, very sorry, and that they've spent two years and hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs and improvements, and that everyone from the NRC to the criminal justice system now has the plant and its safety culture under a microscope -- so what's the problem? Davis-Besse, like a late-night highway driver riding the adrenalin of having just narrowly missed a deer, is on full alert; so why not go hassle some other reactor?

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March 10, 2004

Indulgent Parenting

By Matt Bivens

Imagine you're the owner and operator of a machine that has the potential of destroying everything around you for a radius of several miles -- perhaps killing hundreds or thousands outright, perhaps injuring tens of thousands.

That's a pretty serious responsibility!

Now imagine you're so careless with it that you ignore obvious warning signs -- signs like acid dripping visibly onto the roof of your machine, eating a hole in its head! -- and so you bring your machine within a fraction of an inch of a horrific catastrophe that could have, economically if not physically, wiped out your entire home town.

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March 9, 2004

'Do You Know Mullah Omar?'

By Matt Bivens

This time last year, a low-level Afghan military commander -- a man who fought for two years against the Taliban and alongside US forces -- was at home with his sons.

Suddenly US forces burst in. They tied up the man and his older son, and threw his young son and his nephew to the floor. Through translators, the US soldiers accused the man of cooperating with the Taliban. But this man was a Farsi-speaker: He doesn't even speak the same language as the Pashtun-speaking Taliban.

"In front of my eyes," the man recounts, "two Americans laid down both the boys on the ground and pressed their boots into the children's backs. And they were yelling: 'Where is the ammunition? Where is the ammunition?'

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