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Bill Bennett on Morning Joe:
“The problem now, is ironically for all those people who thought George W. Bush is hurting us in the wider world, American credibility is down since the ascendancy of Barack Obama.”
“The President [Obama] gives speeches overseas, but very little respect. George Bush, a lot of people did not like him, but they knew he meant what he said and he was probably going to follow up with it.”
As published for The New York Times on March 10, 2010:
“Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.”
As published for the Washington Post on March 5th, 2010:
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) has warned that he and other pro-life Democrats are ready to kill health-care legislation unless the pro-abortion provisions enacted by the Senate are removed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must win their votes to pass her bill. To do so she will have to promise two things: first, to fix the provisions they oppose in a reconciliation bill; and second to get an iron-clad commitment from Senate Democrats they will vote to sustain whatever deal she makes.
The problem for Stupak and his allies is that such a guarantee is not enough to ensure their position prevails — because Senate Republicans are gearing up to use something called the “Byrd rule” to blow up any deal Pelosi cuts to pass health care in the House. And in the end, that would be just fine with Pelosi. She wins either way. Here is how:
In order to get a reconciliation bill with the fixes they demand to the Senate floor, Stupak and his pro-life colleagues must first vote to pass the original Senate health care bill — including the abortion language they oppose. Only after this bill is passed in the House can the chamber then take up a reconciliation bill and send it to the Senate for its approval.
That’s where the “Byrd rule” comes in. Designed to protect the rights of the minority, the Byrd rule allows any Senator to raise a point of order demanding that “extraneous” (non-budgetary) provisions be removed. According to former Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove, “If a ‘Byrd Rule’ point of order against a provision is sustained, the provision is stricken from the bill….Appealing the rule of the chair requires 3/5 vote of duly elected and sworn Senators (60 votes).” (This process is known colloquially in the Senate as a “Byrd bath” and the dropped provisions are known as “Byrd droppings.”)
Republicans intend to raise points of order against the reconciliation package. They believe it is virtually certain that the Senate parliamentarian would find any abortion deal Pelosi makes with pro-life House Democrats to be “extraneous” (there is no reasonable way to argue the provision is primarily budgetary). So any abortion deal with Stupak and his allies would be struck from the bill.
That might only be the beginning of the bill’s unraveling. To pass health care, Pelosi will have to cut all sorts of deals in a reconciliation bill to bring along conservative “blue dog” Democrats. Using the Byrd rule, Republicans will proceed to pick apart every element of these deals Pelosi makes, piece by piece. It is unclear which provisions would survive scrutiny under the Byrd rule. But each time a point of order is sustained, it requires 60 votes to overturn that ruling — which means Senate Republicans have the votes necessary block key elements of the reconciliation package.
If this happens, the amended reconciliation bill would go back to the House , where Stupak and others would then likely oppose it. Reconciliation would be dead.
That would be fine — except for one small problem: Stupak and his allies will have already voted to pass the original Senate bill, which Pelosi could send to the president at any time for his signature. And that would suit President Obama and Speaker Pelosi just fine. Indeed, it might be their preferred outcome. Once the Senate bill is approved, the president and Democratic Congressional leaders have little incentive to pass a reconciliation bill. Think about it: Does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid really care if Senate Republicans stop the House from amending the Senate’s already approved health care bill? He probably hopes they succeed. And if the reconciliation deal is killed in the Senate, Pelosi who would be able to tell Stupak that his complaint is not with her, but with the Senate Republicans. She would send the Senate bill to the president and he would sign it into law.
The bottom line: Stupak and the blue dog Democrats in the House have no leverage if they go along with Pelosi in a reconciliation strategy. The only way they can ensure that the abortion language and other provisions they oppose are eliminated is to reject reconciliation entirely — and demand that the House and Senate start over with clean legislation.
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Newsweek’s Jon Meacham on Morning Joe:
“Our reporting has shown..That in fact there is a level of stability…We did fight a war in Iraq, which virtually has not been discussed, and what General Petraeus did and what President Bush came to, does seem to have worked..What the reporting shows is that enough people got tired of an insurgency in which there was no way out, even for the insurgency”
“Iraqi democracy will succeed,” President George W. Bush declared in November 2003, “and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation.” The audience at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington answered with hearty applause. Bush went on: “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”
Read the full Newsweek article here
Pete Wehner’s responses for The Corner on nationalreview.com:
Re: Mission Accomplished
It’s a long story and I’ll have more to say about it tomorrow. But for now, do consider this quote:
And yet it has to be said and it should be understood — now, almost seven hellish years later — that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.
First Joe Biden declares Iraq to be one of the great successes of the Obama administration; now Newsweek is publishing pieces on the “rebirth” of that nation. While things can still unwind and no success can be considered final just yet, it is still quite an extraordinary moment — and a deeply heartening one. And one that didn’t happen by accident.
More on Newsweek‘s Cover Story about Iraq
Following up on my post from yesterday, I wanted to return to the Newsweek coverstory on Iraq, which declared that “something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.”
Here are some further thoughts on the story and what it tells.
1. The progress in Iraq has been truly remarkable, especially when one considers where things were at the end of 2006. Iraq was caught in a death spiral. The odds were stacked against us. And most people in Iraq and America — including almost all of the political class and virtually the entire foreign policy establishment — had given up on the possibility of success. The main question for them was the terms of our retreat and de facto surrender.
2. In Iraq we have seen the rebirth of a nation. The “emergence of politics” in Iraq — including the willingness of its political leadership to engage in compromise; the Iraqis’ passion for democratic processes and willingness to set aside sectarianism; a free press; and the respect and legitimacy the Iraqi military has gained among its people — is unprecedented in the Arab world. But the successes there remain fragile and can still be undone. Iraq has proven to be treacherous terrain for foreign powers.
3. With the passage of time, President Bush’s decision to champion a new counterinsurgency strategy, including sending 30,000 additional troops to Iraq when most Americans were bone-weary of the war, will be seen as one of the most impressive and important acts of political courage in our lifetime. And those who fiercely opposed the so-called surge were not only wrong in their judgment; in some instances their actions were shameful. (I have in mind those who insisted the surge was failing long after it was clear it was succeeding. For a recapitulation of the words and actions of the critics of the surge, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, go here and here).
As published for SAIS Reports February – March 2010 issue:
On February 1, SAIS scholar and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. published On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. The book, released by Business Plus, is Paulson’s much-awaited account of how he confronted the worst financial crisis in the United States—and the world—in eight decades.
A little over a year ago, Paulson, who served as Treasury secretary from July 2006 to January 2009, came to SAIS as a distinguished visiting scholar and a fellow at the Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism. While at the school, he has addressed students and faculty during lunch discussions, a SAIS Finance Club meeting and several classroom sessions. He also looked to SAIS to serve as an ideal “home base” for collecting his thoughts and performing the research needed to undertake his ambitious book project. Paulson is donating the proceeds from On the Brink to the nonprofit Homeownership Preservation Foundation, which helps families avoid foreclosure.
SAIS Reports interviewed Paulson about his motivation for writing the book, reflections on the current state of the U.S. financial system and world economy, and perspective on a SAIS education.
Having already accomplished so much in your career, why did you feel compelled to write this book at this time?
The financial crisis in 2008 was the greatest economic challenge our nation has faced since the Great Depression. It is vital that we learn the lessons of that experience, and quickly, so we can fix our system and make sure the American people never suffer an event like that again. The extraordinary pace of events during the crisis didn’t leave the time or newspaper space to report it fully. I hope this book provides insights into the gaps in our regulatory system and the other factors that allowed this crisis to build up, and the lack of authorities the government had to deal with the crisis once it exploded. And since I didn’t take notes, I needed to write this book while my memory— and that of those who worked with me at Treasury and who helped me write this book—was still fresh.
Why did you choose SAIS as your “home base” for writing the book?
Dean Jessica Einhorn is a strong leader whom I very much admire, and I am grateful that she invited me to come to SAIS. The quality of faculty and students here is very special, not only in terms of their knowledge but also in their intellectual curiosity and their public policy interest. That makes SAIS an energizing place to work.
Now that you have had a year to refl ect on your time at Treasury and your handling of the financial crisis, is there anything you would have done differently?
As I write in the book, I wish I had better communicated to the American people what devastation our economy and their individual financial security would have suffered if the financial system had collapsed. We never made clear enough that TARP [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] and the other things we did weren’t to save the banks, they were to save our economy from another Great Depression.
But looking back, I think all our major decisions were right. We acted quickly, we adapted our strategy as the crisis adapted, and we found innovative ways to combine the limited tools the Federal Reserve System, the Treasury and the FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] had to increase their impact. And it worked— we stopped the downward spiral of large financial institution failures and prevented a complete collapse of our financial system and great economic hardship for the American people.
What do you think are the top challenges related to the state of today’s world economy and financial markets facing your successor at Treasury—and SAIS graduate—Timothy Geithner?
Some of the lessons from the crisis are clear and can be addressed: We need to overhaul our financial regulatory system to eliminate gaps, we need tough comprehensive regulation of the largest and most complex financial institutions, and we need a global accord to require banks to hold more capital and liquidity. We also need robust wind-down powers so a financial institution can be liquidated without damaging the U.S. economy—so no financial institution is too big to fail.
Other issues are more difficult to tackle—for example, we know imbalances in the global economy created pools of liquidity and fed the excesses in the financial system. Addressing global imbalances means confronting our own fiscal problems so that we as a nation save more and borrow less, and then working with China to persuade them it is in their interest to boost domestic consumption and reduce excessive saving.
While at Treasury, you were a major proponent of overhauling the U.S. financial regulatory system. How would you assess the regulatory reform efforts now under way?
On the one hand, I’m disappointed that a full year after the height of the crisis, we still haven’t fixed any of the regulatory gaps in our system. On the other hand, I’m realistic. I know it is hard, and that it is important to take the time to do it right. I believe we need a system that regulates by objective, not by business form. Today, for example, we have different regulatory bodies for thrifts and for national banks, even when they offer the same product or service. That leads to duplication and regulatory arbitrage. Instead, we need to make a single regulator accountable for a single regulatory objective—one to monitor systemic risk, one to monitor the safety and soundness of FDIC-insured institutions, and one to protect investors and consumers. That simplicity will bring accountability, and it will encompass all forms of financial service providers so that innovations in business models are not a means to avoid regulation.
Based on your observations, how do you think the SAIS degree prepares graduates to take on the types of critical issues you faced while in leadership positions on Wall Street and in government?
Learning how to think on your feet, how to express yourself orally and in writing, and how to work and interact with others is the best preparation for a career in business or in government service. And I have witnessed firsthand the special chemistry in a SAIS classroom that helps train the thinkers and leaders our world needs.
While an undergraduate English major at Dartmouth College, did you ever imagine being the author of a potential best-seller? Was this background helpful when writing your book?
Actually, writing this book was humbling. I had always prided myself on being a good writer. I found out how hard it is to write a book. I have newfound respect for journalists and authors who have the dedication and the ability to condense a broad range of facts and experiences into a narrative that is both engaging and educational.
What is next for you?
My wife, Wendy, and I have always been involved in conservation efforts; throughout my life, I have been a fan of wild, beautiful places. Before I was Treasury secretary, I was chairman of The Nature Conservancy and The Peregrine Foundation, and I found that work incredibly rewarding. Now that this book is complete, we will take some time to figure out how we can best use our time and efforts to advance conservation. ?
On February 16, SAIS is hosting the Washington launch event for On the Brink. A Webcast of Paulson’s book discussion will be available at www.sais-jhu.edu.
JHU SAIS to Host Washington, D.C., Launch of Hank Paulson’s New Book on Global Financial Crisis
The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) will host the Washington, D.C., book launch of On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson Jr. on Tuesday, February 16 at 5:30 p.m.
This event will feature a discussion with Paulson, former U.S. Treasury secretary and currently SAIS distinguished visiting scholar and Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism fellow, and Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, about Paulson’s new book published February 1 by Business Plus.
On the Brink is Paulson’s much-awaited account of how he tackled the most serious financial crisis confronting the United States—and the world—since the Great Depression. Paulson puts the reader in the room for all of the intense moments he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with all of the notable players. He is donating the proceeds from the book to the nonprofit Homeownership Preservation Fund, which helps families avoid foreclosure.
Admittance to the lecture is by invitation only. However, the event is open to the media for coverage.
SAIS also will host a live Webcast of the event here.
The event will be held in the Kenney Auditorium of the school’s Nitze Building, located at 1740 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., in Washington, D.C.
Members of the media who want to cover this event should contact Felisa Neuringer Klubes in the SAIS Communications Office at
202.663.5626 or fklubes@jhu.edu.
Click here for the press release
As Published for PolitiFact.com on February 12th, 2010:
As the debate rages over whether Guantanamo detainees ought to be tried in federal court, a lot of numbers are flying around that may appear confusing or conflicting.
Often, the numbers are attached to one of two positions: You’ve got the Obama administration arguing that many of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ought to be tried in federal courts on American soil; while Republicans generally argue that the detainees ought to be treated as enemy combatants and tried in military courts in Guantanamo.
The debate has put one statistic front and center: Just how many terrorists have been tried and successfully convicted in federal courts in recent years? It’s a more difficult number to track than you might think.
Consider these citations:
• “We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing so for years. There are more than 300 convicted international and domestic terrorists currently in Bureau of Prisons custody including those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the attacks on embassies in Africa.” –Attorney General Eric Holder before a Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 18, 2009.
• “Since the Sept. 11 attacks, and as of Aug. 31, 2006, 288 defendants have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in terrorism or terrorism-related cases arising from investigations conducted primarily after Sept. 11, 2001.” — a September 2006 Justice Department “Terror Fact Sheet.”
• “Since 9/11, more than two dozen terrorists and supporters have been convicted in the United States of terrorism-related crimes.” — “Fact Sheet” issued by President George W. Bush on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, Sept. 10, 2008.
And then this from President Barack Obama in a Feb. 7, 2010, pre-Super Bowl interview with Katie Couric, who asked if he had ruled out trying confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in New York City.
“I have not ruled it out, but I think it’s important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved,” Obama said. “I mean, if you’ve got a city that is saying no, and a police department that’s saying no, and a mayor that’s saying no, that makes it difficult. But I think that the most important thing for the public to understand is we’re not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11.
“They prosecuted the 190 folks in these Article III (federal) courts,” Obama said. “Got convictions. And those folks are in maximum security prisons right now.”
So 300, “two dozen,” 190. How many Islamic-extremist terrorists have been convicted in federal courts?
“Everyone is cherry-picking their numbers,” said Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University’s Center on Law and Security, which has compiled a comprehensive study of terrorism-related cases.
It depends, for example, if you are talking about domestic and international terrorists; whether terrorism-related cases should include only charges of terrorism or also terrorism-related crimes that might include financing a terrorist organization or immigration fraud; or whether you’re talking only about Islamic jihadist terrorists. In other words, there are a lot of ways to slice the numbers.
For the purposes of this fact-check, we are specifically looking at Obama’s statement. And while there are several organizations that track terrorism cases, administration officials said Obama got his 190 figure from a report by Human Rights First, a nonpartisan international human rights organization based in New York and Washington, D.C. The report, issued in July 2009, analyzes “criminal cases arising from terrorism that is associated —organizationally, financially, or ideologically — with self-described ‘jihadist’ or Islamic-extremist groups like al-Qaida” and concludes that 195 people who fit that description have been convicted in federal courts since 9/11.
The report concludes that “federal courts, while not perfect, are a fit and flexible resource that should be used along with other government resources — including military force, intelligence gathering, diplomatic efforts and cultural and economic initiatives — as an important part of a multipronged counter-terrorism strategy.”
That figure of 195 jihadist terrorism convictions has been vociferously challenged as overinflated — particularly when compared to Guantanamo detainees — by Dana M. Perino, a former press secretary to President George W. Bush, and Bill Burck, a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to President Bush. It has also been picked apart in a series of stories from Andrew McCarthy of National Review.
The Human Rights First report explains that it includes “prosecutions that seek criminal sanctions for acts of terrorism, attempts or conspiracies to commit terrorism, or providing aid and support to those engaged in terrorism. We have also sought to identify and include prosecutions intended to disrupt and deter terrorism through other means, for example, through charges under ‘alternative’ statutes such as false statements, financial fraud and immigration fraud.”
Those kinds of parameters, McCarthy notes, take in a lot of cases that aren’t international terrorists, but often are would-be terrorists who have, for example, been convicted of relatively minor offenses such as immigration fraud or giving false information to federal authorities, or who have helped to finance a terrorist organization. Those may be important prosecutions in combating terrorism, but they aren’t on the order of Guantanamo detainees.
Human Rights First isn’t the only group tracking terrorism cases.
New York University’s Center on Law and Security has been tracking such cases for years and throws a wide net. In its “Terrorist Trial Report Card: September 11, 2001-September 11, 2009,” it finds that the Department of Justice has indicted 828 defendants on terrorism-related charges. Of the 593 that have been resolved, 523 were convicted on some charge either at trial or by plea.
Terrorism-related can be a broad definition, though, and can include immigration violations, giving false statements and other relatively minor charges. And so the report breaks out cases in which defendants are charged under core terrorism or national security statutes. Those are bona fide, serious charges. Now you’re talking about 174 people convicted under those statutes; plus another 24 charged with those statutes, but convicted on lesser crimes. That also gets to the president’s figure.
But it’s misleading for Obama to cite that 190 number as if the cases are equivalent to those faced by Guantanamo detainees, said Greenberg, editor of the report. For one, most of those cases do not involve people affiliated with a radical Islamist organization, but rather with such groups as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a group of Marxist guerillas.
There are probably less than a dozen cases against people in the Islamic jihadist framework who have been convicted in federal court of serious terrorism-related crimes comparable to many of the Guantanamo detainees, Greenberg said.
Nonetheless, there are some, she said, including Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”; Bryant Neal Vinas, an American convicted of supporting al-Qaida plots in Afghanistan and the United States; Mohammed Jabarah, a Canadian who was active in al-Qaida and convicted of terrorism-related offenses; Shahawar Matin Siraj, a Pakistani-American who plotted to bomb Herald Square in New York; and Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American convicted of terrorist-related offenses in New York, and who testified in 2006 against a group of men accused of plotting bomb attacks in London.
These cases, although far fewer than those cited by Obama, provide powerful evidence that federal courts can appropriately handle many cases involving Guantanamo detainees, Greenberg said.
“The trend lines demonstrate convincingly that federal courts are capable of trying alleged terrorists and securing high rates of conviction,” Greenberg wrote in the report. “… Federal prosecution has demonstrably become a powerful tool in many hundreds of cases, not only for incapacitating terrorists but also for intelligence gathering. Much of the government’s knowledge of terrorist groups has come from testimony and evidence produced in grand jury investigations, including information provided by cooperators, and in the resulting trials.”
In summary, Obama cited a legitimate figure for terrorism-related convictions in federal court. And we note that Bush administration officials cited even bigger numbers in some of their reports at the time. But when Obama cites this number in the same breath as Guantanamo detainees, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. We agree with Greenberg that only a fraction of those 190 cases cited by Obama could rightly be equated to the Guantanamo detainees. And while even that much smaller number might provide a powerful argument for Obama, that’s not the number he used. And so we rate his statement Barely True.
Read the post here
