Our Dying Economy

Banks are slashing jobs. I guess giving all that free money to “job creators” didn’t work out the way it was supposed to.

If Dodd-Frank could do what it was supposed to, the Feds would be busy resolving Bank of America right now–before the many suits, objections to settlements, and put-back claims put it out of business w/the FDIC stuck holding the depositer’s bag.

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Chief International Advisor, Nathan Sheets, has done the bureaucratic equivalent of jumping off a sinking ship: leaving, with apparently no notice, the day before the FOMC meets, in the middle of a massive international crisis. He’s cashing out his vacation days so as to give a month’s notice without actually have to stick around.

Justice and Injustice

The Merit System Protection Board has upheld a decision by TSA to fire an air marshall who whistleblew that the government was cutting back air marshall coverage. This is another one of those cases where the government is punishing someone for leaking information that was not even classified (properly).

Our Dying Empire

A McClatchy report notes that the 30 Americans lost over the weekend were fighting in an area where locals, because they’re sick of our night raids, now sympathize with the Taliban. The same article notes that more than 50% of our night raids hit the right target–which is another way of saying almost 50% don’t hit the right target. Also, it seems we have lost track of the guy we thought was mediating peace talks with the Taliban, which is supposed to be the whole point of these attacks against the Taliban. Remind me again how this is helping us beat the fewer than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan?

An Egyptian court fined Hosni Mubarak and two others for shutting down the InterToobz in a bid to stop protests earlier this year. They responded by saying that others–including the current head of the Army Council, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, that is running the country right now and longtime US ally Omar Suleiman–were involved in the decision. The judge wants to see the meeting notes to prove that. Those details may be very interesting, not least given the Egyptian military’s close ties to the US.

Carol Rosenberg reports that over half the detainees at Gitmo are choosing not to observe the Ramadan fast this year. The story also notes that we very thoughtfully switch to nighttime feeding schedule for those we force feed to prevent hunger strikes. I’m not sure we can make any conclusions about why prisoners are doing what they’re doing given that we talk about religiously observant forced feeding.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is back–with the scoop that the Osama bin Laden raid was sourced not to any detainee intelligence, but to a walk-in looking for the $25 million reward. (h/t CTuttle) Apparently, they were going to use a cover story of a drone strike, but the downed chopper made that impossible. I find the timing of this scoop–along with that of the of the New Yorker puff piece–interesting.

Particularly in light of the Administration’s recent rollout of its Transnational Criminal Organization program, the NYT’s article on our escalating war in Mexico raises several concerns. As I laid out, that program basically applies a number of GWOT tools–such as freezing of funds–to the fight against completely arbitrarily designated TCOs.

The NYT article shows how a terrorist approach has already been applied against Mexico’s drug cartels.

In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries work side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of American contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit.

Officials on both sides of the border say the new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil, and to prevent advanced American surveillance technology from falling under the control of Mexican security agencies with long histories of corruption.

Let’s unpack this language: The US is operating on Mexican soil at least partly to prevent “advanced American surveillance technology” from falling into corrupt Mexican security agency hands. Any bets on what that advanced technology is, particularly given that we could presumably wiretap extensively from the comfort of our own Folsom Street room or similar? How about drones?

The U.S. government has begun deploying drones into Mexico after Mexican officials requested U.S. aircraft to help them fight drug-trafficking organizations.

Although U.S. agencies remained tight-lipped Wednesday on flying drones over Mexico, the chief of the Mexican National Security Council, Alejandro Poiré, admitted that his government asked for this type of support to gather intelligence.

Poiré in a statement said the Mexican government defines the operations, most of which take place in border areas.

“When these operations take place, they are authorized and supervised by national agencies, including the Mexican Air Force,” Poiré said Wednesday.

Furthermore, Poiré said, the governments were not breaking any national sovereignty laws because they were simply assisting in gathering intelligence. The drones are for surveillance only and are not armed.

So, particularly given Benjamin Wittes’ and my earlier agreement that one of the risks of drones is that some entity–a terrorist organization or a drug cartel–would gain control of one or more of them, reflect on the apparent fact that we’re deploying to Mexico, in part, to make sure that Mexico’s corrupt security agencies don’t have control of the drones we’ve got flying over Mexico.

This feels a lot like Pakistan already: the unreliable partner, the transparent fictions to make it appear as if a military invasion is not a military invasion.

Now add in the mercenar–um, I mean, the “team of American contractors.” A way to put boots on the ground while still pretending we’re not putting boots on the ground (don’t want to get into another one of those spats about what constitutes hostilities, you know).

“The government has argued that the number of deaths in Mexico is proof positive that the strategy is working and that the cartels are being weakened,” said Nik Steinberg, a specialist on Mexico at Human Rights Watch. “But the data is indisputable — the violence is increasing, human rights abuses have skyrocketed and accountability both for officials who commit abuses and alleged criminals is at rock bottom.”

Of course, our past use of mercenaries have shown they are susceptible to the same kind of corruption that we point to, in Mexico, as the reason why we need to station our own people there to keep (presumably) drones safe.

Now compare this report on Mexico from the NYT,

“The government has argued that the number of deaths in Mexico is proof positive that the strategy is working and that the cartels are being weakened,” said Nik Steinberg, a specialist on Mexico at Human Rights Watch. “But the data is indisputable — the violence is increasing, human rights abuses have skyrocketed and accountability both for officials who commit abuses and alleged criminals is at rock bottom.”

With this must-read story about how our night raids in Afghanistan–that get their target over 50% of the time (presumably meaning they hit the wrong target almost as often)–have led locals in the area where the 30 Americans got shot down over the weekend to sympathize with the Taliban.

“There are night raids every day or every other day,” said a second doctor who asked not to be identified because he feared for his safety. He said he lives about 100 yards from the parched riverbed where the U.S. Chinook helicopter crashed.

“The Americans are committing barbaric acts in the area and this is the reason that the Taliban have influence,” he said.

We’ve been using the tactics we appear to be rolling out now in Mexico for a decade already in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And while we’re down to just 50 or so members of al Qaeda, we seem to be destabilizing two already dicey countries.

And that’s the thing–and the reason I keep saying that using drones and mercs maybe isn’t the way to fight these transnational threats.

We’re arguing that the Mexican government is not strong enough right now to fly its own drones, much less defeat the cartels (even putting aside questions of the market we refuse to address here in the US). Yet to combat that, we’re chipping away at Mexican sovereignty.

Why, if these transnational threats are so dangerous to nation-states, do we keep using transnational forces to combat them?

I used to have a bit of a party trick last year before I moved out of SE Michigan. At some opportune time, I’d surprise folks by telling them the UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was in a prison just 20 miles from where we were in Ann Arbor, one you’d pass on the way down to Ohio.

Every time I did this, people were surprised to learn he was at that prison.

I raise this because of one of four developments (reported by Josh Gerstein) in the Abdulmutallab case that might make the trial something beyond the routine trial in October I had been expecting. These are:

• Abdulmutallab is asking to have the trial moved out of Michigan
• Abdulmutallab is asking to have statements he made while under sedation suppressed
• Abdulmutallab is asking to have statements he made while at the Milan Correctional Facility suppressed
• The government is asking for a protective order to withhold information from Abdulmutallab that appears to include exculpatory information

Now, from the standpoint of the defense, I think the request for a change of venue is a big mistake (remember Abdulmutallab is defending himself, although he is being assisted by a lawyer who seems to have been very involved in these filings). Given that this is a counterterrorism case, I presume it would only be moved to NY, DC, or VA. I suspect the jury pool would be demographically better for Abdulmutallab in MI than (at least) in VA. And, as my little party trick suggests, even people from among the jury pool who are exposed to counterterrorism issues on a regular basis (because they hear me talk about torture and wiretapping and such things) had pretty much forgotten Abdulmutallab was there just months after the attack. Finally, while I don’t know the entire manifest of the plane that Abdulmutallab allegedly attacked, Detroit is a hub, which means a lot of the passengers on the plane presumably connected on to somewhere else.

More importantly, if Judge Nancy Edmunds does consent to Abdulmutallab’s request, it will likely reignite the debate about what kind of trials alleged terrorists should have, and where. I assume at least some Republicans would use the event of a venue move to argue Abdulmutallab should be tried in Gitmo.

Particularly given the other filings in the case.

As a reminder, Abdulmutallab was detained in Detroit and taken to University of Michigan hospital for treatment. Throughout this period, Abdulmutallab was talking–under a public safety exception, the government has said. Then, 10 hours later, he was read his Miranda rights, and he stopped talking until such time as–weeks later–his family convinced him to talk.

But according to Abdulmutallab, in addition to the Miranda issue during the early period when he was talking (which I don’t expect to get much traction because it seems to fall squarely under a public safety exception), for part of it he was also under sedation, and hospital staff told federal agents he was not fit to be interrogated.

That hospital staff advised federal agents that the Defendant was in no position to conduct a legal interview because he had just been administered 300 mg of fentanyl. [sic–as Jim points out this seems to be the wrong dose]

That hospital staff were direct and clear when advising federal agents that the Defendant would not be able to conduct a legal interview for four to six hours.

In addition to challenging the admission of these statements (note, I think Abdulmutallab did speak to agents even before this), he is also trying to suppress statements made while at the prison they held him. He claims statements he made there–he seems to claim, all of them, which I find dubious–were made in the course of discussions about a plea agreement.

Defendant ABDULMUTALLAB met with government agents on numerous occasions at the Milan Correctional Facility. The government intended to obtain incriminating statements from Defendant regarding the alleged incident on December 25, 2009. In addition, the government engaged in plea negotiations with the Defendant during the meetings.
Before the meetings began, the government agents verbally agreed that they would not use any statements Defendant made, against him. Defendant relied on the government’s representation – as officers of the court – and made incriminating statements. See United States v. Dudden, 65 F.3d 1461, 1467 (9th Cir. 1995) (the government can grant the defendant varying degrees of immunity in an informal agreement). Allowing the government to use these statements at trial will violate the government’s agreement with Defendant.

Now, as I said, I find this much more dubious. There were several stages of interrogation at Milan (pronounced “My-lan,” btw). And I don’t believe all of these would have been in the context of plea negotiations.

Finally, there’s the government’s motion requesting a protective order,

…precluding discovery of certain classified information and precluding the defendant from inquiring of certain subjects during the cross-examination of government witnesses, because cross-examination of these subjects may result in the disclosure of classified information. The classified information the government seeks to protect is either not exculpatory, is privileged, or otherwise not discoverable.

Now part of this seems to stem from the fact that Abdulmutallab is defending himself (and so would get access to all this material himself–with many of the other alleged terrorists in civilian proceedings, their lawyers get such information, but they are forbidden from disclosing the information to their client). But note that last compound statement: this is information that is either not exculpatory or is privileged or is “otherwise not discoverable.”

This filing seems to suggest that some of this information is exculpatory, but is privileged (If it were really “otherwise not discoverable,” then why would it be included in this filing?). And they don’t even bother to say what kind of privilege. Is this a back-door state secrets declaration? The part of the filing that discusses this information is entirely classified.

And think of what kind of information this might possibly be. Just guessing here, but I think it might include,

• Details about interrogation methods used with Abdulmutallab
• Details about any pressure they used to convinced Abdulmutallab’s family to help get him to cooperate (remember Abdulmutallab’s father is a prominent Nigerian banker)
• Information about Anwar al-Awlaki, including (potentially) information that shows AQAP didn’t consider Abdulmutallab a serious member; note this might include SIGINT
• Information about how the government had information about Abdulmutallab, but didn’t act on it

I have no idea which of these they’re trying to hide, or even if I’ve thought of everything. But given how some of these issues–interrogation techniques, pressure on the family–go to behaviors that might otherwise be illegal, but seem to be increasingly used with alleged terrorists tried in civilian courts (both, I believe, were factors in Faisal Shahzad’s treatment), I find it interesting that the government refuses to share it with Abdulmutallab.

What I find interesting about all this, taken together, is what it suggests about our treatment of counterterrorism. This should be an open-and-shut case. There are tens of witnesses that saw Abdulmutallab try to blow up a plane, and at least some of his own statements must be admissible. But because of the way we’ve treated it, it seems to have introduced issues entirely of the government’s own making that will make it harder to try in civilian court. The government seems to be unable or unwilling to cleanly bracket off intelligence gathering. And–if the suggestion they’re hiding exonerating evidence under some kind of privilege is right–they continue to be unwilling to give alleged terrorists access to the exonerating information learned in intelligence collection, either.

I don’t think this makes the case for military commissions, which after all are mostly an attempt to pretend such actions don’t affect the legitimacy of the trial. But they seem to have unnecessarily introduced all the challenges they complain about when they try to justify military commissions.

When I saw Obama’s pivot to creating Korean jobs on Tuesday, I actually thought he had mangled his script.

And I want Congress to pass a set of trade deals — deals we’ve already negotiated — that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs and would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America, products that are stamped with the words “Made in America.”

As I noted, Obama adopted the phrase used to refer to those who had lost jobs in past trade deals, “displaced workers,” to refer to those who would get jobs out of these new ones.

And his suggestion that letting JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs use trade deals to extend their financial gimmickry to South Korea and incorporate Panama’s secrecy regime into the US orbit constituted products stamped “Made in America”? That’s a cynical appeal to the nearly-unanimous call for the opposite: a move away from such financialized madness to actual manufacture.

But he didn’t mangle the script. That is the script. Obama said precisely the same thing in his weekly address yesterday:

It’s time Congress finally passed a set of trade deals that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs, and that would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America – products stamped with three words: Made in America.

Shorter Obama: “Displaced workers … Made in America.”

Update: Here’s how the Administration uses the term “displaced” when it’s not trying to propagandize (this is from a statement Austan Goolsbee made on Friday).

Bipartisan action is needed to help the private sector and the economy grow – such as measures to extend both the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, as well as passing the pending free trade agreements with re-employment assistance for displaced workers, the patent reform bill, and a bipartisan infrastructure bill to help put Americans back to work. [my emphasis]

Goolsbee has used the same formula before, as in this statement on July 29. That is, elsewhere, the Administration admits that these deals will “displace workers,” not directly benefit those who have already been displaced by trade deals.

Update: And Obama admits that the trade deals create displaced workers in this press conference on July 15.

I’ve got three trade deals sitting ready to go.  And these are all trade deals that the Republicans told me were their top priorities.  They said this would be one of the best job creators that we could have.  And yet it’s still being held up because some folks don’t want to provide trade adjustment assistance to people who may be displaced as a consequence of trade.  Surely we can come up with a compromise to solve those problems. [my emphasis]

And Jay Carney on July 8:

Q    Speaker Boehner today rejected the idea of tying Trade Adjustment Authority to the free trade agreements.  He says four separate bills.  Do you want it attached because you feel it can’t pass on its own?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, the agreement that was presented was worked out in a bipartisan way.  Trade Adjustment Authority has been supported by members of both parties for years.  And we believe it is very important to provide that kind of assistance to workers who have been displaced by free trade agreements.  And that has been a notion supported, again, by members of both parties for a long time. [my emphasis]

 

I write about our dying empire just about every day in my links posts. But given the debt limit debate and Friday’s S&P downgrade, I wanted to look at four pieces that examine where we are more closely (note, all of these are well worth reading in full–do click through to read them).

There are two issues to grapple with: first, with the undeniable evidence that our government has become a clusterfuck, we have become incapable of taking obvious steps–like taking the profit motive out of our health care system or taxing the wealthy that just got a giant government bailout–that we need for the well-being of the country. At this level, S&P’s downgrade makes sense.

But then there’s the question of why we let a thoroughly discredited entity like the S&P be the one to dictate whether we merit our world leadership position or not. That’s not just a question of letting one of the agencies that created the bubble retain any position of authority in the world afterwards (though, again, the fact we left the rating agencies in place after the crash is another sign our governance has failed), but also why a nation-state would let a corrupted entity like S&P do so in the first place.

Therein lies the paradox here: the downgrade is at once a real measure of the collapse of our governance, one of the best symptoms of it, and a key piece of evidence of why our governance is failing. So what’s going on?

This column at Spiegel Online looks on this as a problem of culture. It argues the US has left “the West.”

America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.

The country’s social disintegration is breathtaking. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described the phenomenon. The richest 1 percent of Americans claim one-quarter of the country’s total income for themselves — 25 years ago that figure was 12 percent. It also possesses 40 percent of total wealth, up from 33 percent 25 years ago. Stiglitz claims that in many countries in the so-called Third World, the income gap between the poor and rich has been reduced. In the United States, it has grown.

Economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, has written that America’s path is leading it down the road to “banana-republic status.” The social cynicism and societal indifference once associated primarily with the Third World has now become an American hallmark. This accelerates social decay because the greater the disparity grows, the less likely the rich will be willing to contribute to the common good. When a company like Apple, which with €76 billion in the bank has greater reserves at its disposal than the government in Washington, a European can only shake his head over the Republican resistance to tax increases. We see it as self-destructive.

The same applies to America’s broken political culture. The name “United States” seems increasingly less appropriate. Something has become routine in American political culture that has been absent in Germany since Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Bloc (in the 1960s and ’70s): hate. At the same time, reason has been replaced by delusion. The notion of tax cuts has taken on a cult-like status, and the limited role of the state a leading ideology.

Now, it is true that America’s political culture has been hijacked, and that those who have hijacked it used hatred as a way to convince others to act against self-interest. But that’s what (perhaps) distinguishes us from Europe; that’s what explains why we, a country with our own currency, can be in as dire a situation as Europe with its common currency. Moreover, I’m skeptical whether, mere weeks after the terrorist attack in Norway, Europe should really be lecturing the US about hate.

Craig Murray looks elsewhere–at the military we feed at the expense of feeding our own people. He takes some impolite but understandable pleasure out of the way events will soon mark an end to the US empire.

That China now views the risks to world trade from the US’ indebtedness, to outweigh the potential loss in value of its own dollar reserves, is the tipping point that spells the inevitable beginning of the end of the US empire.

The reserve currency system has since 1795 allowed empires to be built on the economic output of weaker powers. If you achieve sufficient economic power and control of resources that yours is the currency everyone holds, you can print as much of it for yourself as you like and the devaluation effects are spread around not just your economy, but everyone else who holds your deposits. Being the reserve currency is a license to print money. Both the British and the Americans used this position to build military forces which could dominate both formal and informal empires. Both eventually experienced overreach, with military expenditure pushing deficit finance to the point of implosion. Then you lose reserve currency status.

It happened to the British and now it is happening to the Americans.

The colossal 4.7% a year of its wealth the US throws away on defence and security expenditure (broadly defined) – more than double the European average – is a huge factor in US indebtedness. There is an extraordinary failure to mention this in the mainstream media.

And he’s right. It’s not so much that China has made a gamble that it can financially afford to ease off the dollar. Rather, China (and Russia, which of course is in nowhere near as strong a position as China) have gambled that this is the moment to press for power, to challenge US hegemony in the world.

But to replace it with what?

To answer that question, I think you have to look at what it means that the S&P, not China itself, is driving this moment. In a piece that also links to a bunch of other worthwhile posts, zunguzungu notes the following on what S&P’s downgrade says about power.

But even to ask that question —  it seems to me — is to invest with legitimacy and explanatory power an underlying premise that I do not accept: that a “Nationally recognized statistical rating organization” having such profound power over our government’s economic policy has or could have anything to do with “deserve,” or that there could be a “right” or “wrong” way for them to use their power. I don’t concern myself with that question, because it would be like a death-penalty abolitionist trying to answer whether a murderer deserved to get the chair: whether or not a particular person committed murder is something completely different than whether a murderer deserves to be executed. An opinion on the facts do not dictate a judgement of the moral imperative, nor should they be confused with each other.

After all, it’s obviously the case that our current government is dysfunctional and useless, divided as it is between those who want to destroy government’s social use and those who will not stand up for it. But as Kathy Gill observes, McGraw-Hill owns S&P, and this is who owns McGraw-Hill:

And whether or not McGraw-Hill itself has particular ties with the Bush family — or has a particular interest in driving the politics in this direction — are important questions that I can’t answer, and only point us towards a simpler way of addressing the problem: Standard and Poor’s is a self-interested corporate entity and it is acting in accordance with what it perceives its self-interest to be, in precisely the way that self-interested corporate entities will consistently do. To ask whether a privately owned corporate entity is passing the correct judgment on our political process is to obscure that underlying, anti-democratic fact. They have the power to do so because they’ve been given it: a “Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization” must be “nationally recognized” for its ratings to have the force that it has, and the way the system of financial regulation is constituted is what defines that force. If you’re so inclined, you could even argue that this is all a good thing. God speed to you. As for me, to the secular theology of a “just market,” I am somewhere between a practical agnostic and an angry atheist. The finance market is certainly real and powerful, but the only important question is whether we think the self interest of these kinds of entities is the same as that of the American people, how we will regulate their ability to make decisions, and whether we will continue to cede them the power that they presently have and are using to impose their will on the US’s political economy.

While I definitely think Jane and Scarecrow and Stoller are right that the S&P is doing something here other than just weighing the governance of the US, I think the implications of the fact they are succeeding are more important. MacroBusiness goes further. It argues that this is about whether our world will be governed by states, or by corporations. (h/t Yves)

The idiotic ideological battle in Washington over the debt ceiling was yet more evidence of the failure of governance in Western economies, which is the real crisis. Then, after the stock market carnage of last week, the attention was focussed, reasonably enough, on government’s MANAGEMENT skills — how good they are at being efficient bureaucrats pulling levers in the financial system and in keeping debt levels under control.

But this crisis goes much deeper than that. In a sense the Tea Partiers are right. This is a POLITICAL battle over the state’s right to be a state.

That was the lesson from last week’s debacle in the US Congress. It was argued that if no deal could be struck, then the ratings agencies will reduce the US government’s AAA rating. This then happened, with Standard & Poor’s downgrading America’s debt to AA+.

Who exactly are these ratings agencies? Oh, those corrupted, easily deluded companies who are to sane analysis what a croupier at a roulette table is to an insurance policy. They showed in the lead up to the GFC that they go to the highest bidder and that they have little or no credibility. Suddenly these private companies have authority over the US government?

[snip]

They are nevertheless a symptom of a much deeper, long term issue — the replacement of the nation state with the market state, as historian and professor of law Phillip Bobbitt describes it. The issue is not about big government or small government, although they are certainly issues in a country that is rapidly losing its middle class. The problem is whither government itself? So successful has been the attack of the libertarian market worshippers, there is no government worthy of the name in the Western post-industrial financial system.

Mind you, I think we’re headed where Bobbitt deluded himself we would not go: to corporations governing, not just “market-states.” One of the major flaws in Bobbitt’s work was an unwillingness to consider the possibility the state would fall.

It looks, increasingly, like it might. Not only have ratings agencies and those that back them coerced an increasing number of advanced democracies to renege on the promises that lie at the heart of the democratic nation-states, but in the US especially, the ideology behind this process has made common sense, necessary decisions politically impossible.

It’s unclear where this is going to end (in a sense, I’m more interested in the contest between China’s corporate-driven governance and advancing power versus the banksters than I am in China versus the US).

But I am amused by the spectacle that has resulted. In response to the panic of a fascist-friendly mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, the G7 is holding desperate talks this weekend to try to stave off the assault of the debt-rating agencies on their countries. In addition to Berlusconi, those desperate talks will feature a pack of neoliberals–Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, and Merkel–frantic to somehow put the genie they embraced back in the bottle.

Yes, recent events probably represent the beginning of the end of the American empire. But that empire represented more than just US affluence and power. It also represented a version of “the West” that has gotten out of control, that has burst free of the nation-states that first harnessed it.

There are early reports out that the Taliban shot down a NATO helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade. Hamid Karzai has said the casualties include 31 Americans and 7 Afghans. And while President Obama has not put a number on the deaths, he has put out a statement mourning the loss.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of the Americans who were lost earlier today in Afghanistan. Their deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our military and their families, including all who have served in Afghanistan. We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values that they embodied.  We also mourn the Afghans who died alongside our troops in pursuit of a more peaceful and hopeful future for their country. At this difficult hour, all Americans are united in support of our men and women in uniform who serve so that we can live in freedom and security.

So it seems America has suffered around 31 deaths in one incident, in a war ostensibly being fought to destroy al Qaeda.

Yet David Petraeus has said there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan, and fewer than 10-20 al Qaeda leaders remain alive anywhere.

In this one incident, we lost roughly as many Americans as remaining members of our purported enemies exist.

That’s not the way to win the war on terror.

Update: Yochi Dreazen’s thoughts on significance of this incident.

Update: Reports now say that at least 20 of the men killed in the crash were SEAL Team 6, the same unit (though not necessarily the same men) that killed OBL.

Hello mothers, hello others; welcome to The Wheel, brothers. So, we are kind of in the ether, the no mans land, the void and vacuum between the end of basketball and the start of football again.

Yeah, yeah, that little soccer interlude was somethin, there is the comforting coo of baseball (well, unless you are a Dodger fan) and the big NFL lockout surrounding the draft was spectacularific and all that jazz.

But, other than the F1 Grand Prix Circus, ain’t none of it means jack shit without the sugar plum Pro Football Fairy dancing in the graspable future. And, now, we have it.

We did a fair amount of jabbering about the initial free agent signings last weekend and, yes, somehow stodgy old Bill Belichick and the Pats seem to have scooped the tabloid news. Go figure. Well, except, of course, the Iggles. Andy Reid, apparently freed up from worrying about his errant sons, has gone all ape shit. You know they still have the juju in them to sign Favre or Terrell Owens.

I don’t have a ton to throw out, other than to open the floor up for discussion. Well, okay, maybe one thing. Friday night, I watched something on ESPN called “Year Of The Quarterback”. They had a proposed new rating system to take the place of the admittedly complex and somewhat screwbally NFL Quarterback Ratings Formula. Which always struck me as somewhat suspect when Chad Pennington could rate above Brett Favre. Of course, now that Pennington is again gone to injury, Favre may be the only hope for The Fish.

I think Miss Marcy may wander in and add some material to this post, and heck I might add some later too; but I do not have a ton else to add right now.

The music this weekend is courtesy of Miss Stevie Nicks. The first video you may think was a Fleetwood Mac song (as it was indeed one of their most famous hits). But, huh uh mofos, Rhiannon was very much a Buckingham Nicks song before both of them joined up with Fleetwood Mac. As is Cathouse Blues, the second video. Stevie was, and still very much is, from Phoenix. She went to Arcadia High School (as did wonder Woman Lynda Carter and some dude named Steven Spielberg) where my daughter is about to start her junior year. If you find fault with all this local nostalgia, blame Jason Leopold, who started it by buying up some some Japanese masters of early albums by yet another very local in proximity artist named Alice.

WhaddaYaGonnaDo?? Rip this joint, that’s what!

[Errata – As Rosalind points out, Nicks’ Arcadia may actually be Arcadia High in California, although there are people around here who have said it is the Arcadia here. Stevie was born here though and her dad lived right here in Paradis Valley until he died a few years ago. Lots of Arcadia Highs out there, maybe she went to all of them!]

Last week, when analysts were contemplating a debt downgrade, they put a price tag on it: $100 billion.

A downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit rating is a bigger risk than a default and could over time add up to 0.7 percentage point to bond yields, members of a U.S. securities industry group said on Tuesday.

“That’s on the order of $100 billion over time that we will add to our funding costs,” said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at JPMorgan Chase. He was speaking on a conference call organized by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, also known as SIFMA.

Over time, he said Treasury yields could rise 60 to 70 basis points on a credit downgrade — “a huge number because we’re talking a permanent increase in borrowing costs.”

That would make it more costly for consumers and business to borrow money and could land the economy back in recession.

That’s a big number though.

A better way of thinking of it is how much every American will have to pay. That $100 billion among 310 million Americans works out to be $322 for every man, woman, and child to pay for the TeaBagger’s little temper tantrum.

To put that in perspective, that’s more than the 2008 Bush tax rebate gave to taxpayers (rebate checks started at $300/person).

So the TeaBaggers are now taking away whatever benefit we got from Bush’s last tax cut.

Banana Republic of America

The S&P is reportedly about to downgrade America’s credit. So the wingnut hostage-taking will end up costing us about $100B. [Update: While we are so badly governed we no doubt deserve to be downgraded, it appears we’re sufficiently powerful enough to bully the S&P still. S&P is now claiming they made errors in analysis and it’s looking like the TeaParty Tax downgrade is off.] Oops, wrong again. S&P pulled the trigger.

The wingnuts who shut down MN’s government last month were responsible for laying off 23,000 people. Meanwhile, Congressman John Mica, who was responsible for laying off 74,000 FAA workers, “didn’t know it would cause this much consternation. … People don’t have to get so personal,” he said with a sigh. “A lot of people hate me now and think I’m the worst thing in the world for what I did.

Apparently, TeaParty Nation head Judson Phillips thinks government spending creates jobs, but thinks it should only be spent on war toys, not highways.

Adventures in corporatist denial: Here’s ALEC claiming recent reporting about their corporate-funded hijacking of state governments are nothing to worry about. And here’s the Center for Competitive Politics assuring us we need not worry about a corporation forming and dissolving for the sole purpose of donating $1 million to Mitt Romney’s Presidential SuperPAC. Meanwhile, two ThinkProgress journalists were violently kicked out of the NOLA Marriott where ALEC is meeting.

The Chamber of Commerce is attempting to prevent the NLRB from ruling against employers that fire employees for talking about work conditions on social media.

While George W Bush was dodging the draft in 1972, Rick Perry was getting a “C” in “Animal Breeding”–a course within his major of Animal Sciences–at Texas A&M. But don’t worry. If he becomes President, I’m sure Vice President Rick Santorum can handle that aspect of the country.

I’ve long questioned the assertions that giving 1.3 billion Chinese (or even just the 300 million Chinese considered middle class) our American lifestyle was possible. Here’s one reason why: you can never create enough parking spots to affordably match our levels of car ownership. Meanwhile, Moisés Naím has a thoughtful post seeing the source in contemporary turmoil both in the declining middle class in developed countries and increasingly demanding middle class in developing nations.

The city of Central Falls, RI, has just become the municipal equivalent of Ireland. It just declared bankruptcy, but because of a new state law, bondholders will get paid before pension holders.

Justice and Injustice

Five NOLA cops were found guilty today of trying to cover up their role in shooting people on Danzinger Bridge in the aftermath of Katrina.

More people are using smartphones to collect evidence of what assholes their bosses are being.

The FBI is finally getting around to investigating News Corp’s hacking of Floorgraphics, which Chris Christie refused to investigate.

Surveillance Nation

A security consultant hacked the cell phone of MO’s Attorney General Chris Koster–it took him less than a minute–to show how easy it is to conduct Murdoch-style scams. Meanwhile, AT&T just committed to making sure its users have passwords to protect against this kind of hacking.

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador who (as he reminds) was fired for whistleblowing about the British policy of cooperation with torture, asks whether Sir Peter Gibson, who heads the whitewash torture investigation, ever saw the documents the Guardian posted yesterday revealing an official policy of cooperating with torture.

German cops say full body scanners don’t work.

Fareed Zakaria calls our defense establishment, “the world’s largest socialist economy.” To some degree, he’s calling on DOD to cut pensions the same way other industries have (which I’m not cazy about). But he’s also calling out DOD for being too big to fail.

DOJ has written the 9th Circuit to remind it not to tell any secrets when it hears Jewel v. National Security Agency later this month.

The first time I read Nicholas Schmidle’s breathtaking account of Osama bin Laden’s killing, I gave up when I got to this passage:

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told me that the President’s advisers began an “interrogation of the data, to see if, by that interrogation, you’re going to disprove the theory that bin Laden was there.” The C.I.A. intensified its intelligence-collection efforts, and, according to a recent report in the Guardian, a physician working for the agency conducted an immunization drive in Abbottabad, in the hope of acquiring DNA samples from bin Laden’s children. (No one in the compound ultimately received any immunizations.)

The article, which alternated between incredibly detailed accounts of the SEALs’ actions with more generalized depictions of Obama’s leadership, seemed designed to puff up the operation anyway. And while I’m not at all qualified to fact check the military details of it, the fact that Schmidle cited the Guardian–and not any of his own sources–for the most criticized aspect of the raid tells you a lot about the agenda of his sources. Furthermore, the fact that the Guardian provided slightly different details about the outcome of the immunization operation than Schmidle …

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

… may indicate yet another level of manipulation on this detail of the raid.

Since that first reading, a number of people who are qualified to fact check the military details have suggested it was a nice propaganda piece. But they all remained mum about how they could tell.

Which is why I found this article, which describes Schmidle’s efforts to avoid questions about his sourcing, instructive. Among other things, it explains that Schmidle has made linguistic mistakes when covering Pakistan in the past, and suggests he might have limited linguistic understanding here, too.

He even describes how the translator Ahmed hollered in Pashto at the locals that a security operation was ongoing to allay their suspicions about the nature of the cacophony in the cantonment town. (This detail caught my eye as the majority of persons in Abbottabad, where the raid took place, speak Hindko rather than Pashto.)

While this piece doesn’t tell us what details are false, it emphasizes that Schmidle did not source the article where it appears to be sourced, to the SEALs who took part in the operation.

Now, I’m not surprised folks within the Obama Administration are leaking such heroic versions of the OBL raid. But in the context of the Administration’s war on leaks, it deserves more discussion. For example, I find it telling that a “counterterrorism official” repeatedly refutes the events presented from the perspective of the SEALs that–we know–Schmidle isn’t reporting directly.

After blasting through the gate with C-4 charges, three SEALs marched up the stairs. Midway up, they saw bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, craning his neck around the corner. He then appeared at the top of the staircase with an AK-47. Khalid, who wore a white T-shirt with an overstretched neckline and had short hair and a clipped beard, fired down at the Americans. (The counterterrorism official claims that Khalid was unarmed, though still a threat worth taking seriously. “You have an adult male, late at night, in the dark, coming down the stairs at you in an Al Qaeda house—your assumption is that you’re encountering a hostile.”)

[snip]

Three SEALs shuttled past Khalid’s body and blew open another metal cage, which obstructed the staircase leading to the third floor. Bounding up the unlit stairs, they scanned the railed landing. On the top stair, the lead SEAL swivelled right; with his night-vision goggles, he discerned that a tall, rangy man with a fist-length beard was peeking out from behind a bedroom door, ten feet away. The SEAL instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft. (The counterterrorism official asserts that the SEAL first saw bin Laden on the landing, and fired but missed.)

These are, after all, some of the details that raise legal questions about the raid (and which John Brennan botched in the days immediately following the raid). And by presenting this story falsely as if Schmidle spoke directly to the SEALs, it allows whatever Administration official who gave it to him the ability to both admit that SEALs fired at unarmed men while providing a Hollywood version that glosses over that part. From a narrative perspective, it’s worthy of a popular novelist.

Finally, though, the whole thing raises questions about who leaked this, presumably with Obama’s explicit or implicit permission.

Here’s a list of the named sources Schmidle relies on, in rough order of appearance:

Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani Army

John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the C.I.A.

General James Cartwright

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser

Cartwright

Brennan

Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser

And here’s a list of the anonymous sources:

Senior defense and Administration officials

special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid

A senior counterterrorism official

a senior Defense Department official

a Pakistani senior military official

a senior adviser to the President

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the counterterrorism official

The counterterrorism official

the special-operations officer

A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience

the special-operations officer

The senior adviser to the President

the senior Defense Department official

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

The senior adviser to the President

In other words, this story relies almost entirely on four sources: the special-operations officer, the senior counterterrorism official, the senior Defense Department official, and the senior adviser to the President. And among the named sources in the article are Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, General James Cartwright, and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. (Former helicopter pilot and assistant commander of JSOC, Brigadier General Marshall Webb, figures prominently in the narrative, though is not quoted by name.)

And Brennan and Rhodes were reported by Schmidle to be present at some of the key low attendance events described here, such as the meeting at which Obama announced his decision to go with a SEALs operation, and the meeting at which the SEALs briefed Obama after the mission. Which is all the more telling, given that Schmidle attributed his story’s sourcing to the SEALs recollections.

…some of their recollections—on which this account is based—may be imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.

In other words, it seems likely that Brennan and Rhodes serve as both anonymous and named sources for this story.

John Brennan had a direct role in Jeffrey Sterling’s battles with the CIA. Sterling is now being tried for allegedly leaking information equivalent to the information included in this story. Mind you, if Brennan leaked these details, he no doubt did so under the Insta-Declassification schtick that Scooter Libby used when he leaked Valerie Plame’s identity and the contents of the Iraq NIE. If the President okays leaks, they’re legal in this day and age; otherwise, they deserve the harshest punishment.

Still, this story is so thinly-veiled an Administration puff piece, it ought to attract as much attention for the sheer hypocrisy about secrecy it demonstrates as it will for the heroism such hypocrisy attempts to portray.

Update: Here’s the reason I focused on Webb (shown typing on his computer above) as the “special-forces official.”

Brigadier General Marshall Webb, an assistant commander of JSOC, took a seat at the end of a lacquered table in a small adjoining office and turned on his laptop. He opened multiple chat windows that kept him, and the White House, connected with the other command teams. The office where Webb sat had the only video feed in the White House showing real-time footage of the target, which was being shot by an unarmed RQ 170 drone flying more than fifteen thousand feet above Abbottabad. The JSOC planners, determined to keep the operation as secret as possible, had decided against using additional fighters or bombers. “It just wasn’t worth it,” the special-operations officer told me. The SEALs were on their own.

Obama returned to the White House at two o’clock, after playing nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base. The Black Hawks departed from Jalalabad thirty minutes later. Just before four o’clock, Panetta announced to the group in the Situation Room that the helicopters were approaching Abbottabad. Obama stood up. “I need to watch this,” he said, stepping across the hall into the small office and taking a seat alongside Webb. Vice-President Joseph Biden, Secretary Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed him, as did anyone else who could fit into the office. On the office’s modestly sized LCD screen, helo one—grainy and black-and-white—appeared above the compound, then promptly ran into trouble. [my emphasis]

First, this passage describes Webb alone in the office that ultimately filled up. Sure, others must have known he was there, alone in the office, but it is a detail that no other people were present for.

More tellingly, why include the detail that Obama took a seat alongside Webb? It’s a detail that Schmidle could get from the photo–so it’s not a question of how Schmidle learned the detail. Rather, it’s a question of who would care (and who would orient the President’s actions from Webb’s perspective, rather than orienting Obama’s position in the room generally). In a way, it feels like one of those renaissance paintings that includes an image of the patron in the corner of the frame, just to make sure the viewer knows who sponsored the whole thing.