Where's the Outrage?

I grew up in Dallas. I remember in the middle 1980s when the Dallas Mavericks had an outstanding basketball team. Rolando Blackman, Sam Perkins, Mark Aquirre. These guys looked outstanding on paper. They simply could not beat the Los Angeles Lakers led by Magic Johnson. Then the Dallas Mavericks went through more disappointment and heartache through the 1990s. The Dallas Mavericks slowly developed one of the most potent offenses in the history the NBA led by Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. These guys ran up and down the court and outscored just about anyone. Then, year after year, they collapsed in the playoffs. Then came 2006. This was the year that the Dallas Mavericks exorcised their demons and got to the NBA finals. They led those finals two games-zero against the Miami Heat. Dwayne Wade single-handedly destroyed the Dallas Mavericks, game after game. The team was reorganized. Steve Nash, a crowd favorite, got shipped off to Phoenix. For reasons that remain unclear, as well as aging, Jason Kidd was brought back to Dallas.

Since 2006, I have not taken the Mavericks seriously. Dirk Nowitzki is the reason why. He is a great outside shooter. He is average to mediocre on defense but hits the boards extremely well. In games that matter, the playoffs, with five minutes to go, the game slows down. You are forced to run a set offense. Defense tightens. Your superstar must get the ball. That superstar must have a shot that he can make 80-90% of the time or get fouled or dish the ball to someone who can either make a layup or drain a three-pointer. Unfortunately, Dirk relies on a 15-foot fadeaway jumper which he can make approximate 55% of the time. He does not get fouled because he is fading away. This brings me to Friday night, when for some reason, with less than five minutes to go, Dirk Nowitzki became aggressive. It is something I haven’t seen before. He drove the lane and made a running left-handed baby hook over two defenders. Nowitzki drives and dishes, not once but twice. He does this on two successive series. The Dallas Mavericks didn’t choke, but drained three-pointers. Dirk does not turn the ball over in the clutch. He does not allow the ball to clang off his foot and roll out of bounds. Right before our eyes, Dirk Nowitzki has turned into a superstar.

Phil Jackson is a basketball genius. He recognized, several years ago, that Kobe Bryant was beginning to wear down. He needed to find another superstar and then transition Kobe Bryant into a supporting role. The Los Angeles Lakers went out and got Pau Gasol. Last year, Gasol played like a superstar. This year, in the playoffs, not so much. So, Phil Jackson is left with a dilemma. What do you do when your superstar player is playing like a benchwarmer? All you can do is try to motivate your player. You can hope that the rest of the players on the team can carry your superstar. I’m not sure that Kobe Bryant can carry the team, night after night like he did four or five years ago. The Lakers need one or two other players to step up. These players need to step up big.

Finally, I have all of the stats that the basketball analysts were throwing around. There’s one that they didn’t even mention: rebounds. With Lamarr Odom, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol (6’10″, 7 feet tall and 7 feet tall, respectively) how did the Lakers not win the rebound battle? The Dallas Mavericks out-rebounded the Los Angeles Lakers. This is simply a lack of hustle.

Tomorrow is game four in Dallas. Will the Dallas Mavericks began an epic collapse? Will the Los Angeles Lakers be swept? I look forward to this one.

Tags: Sports by ecthompson md
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Simply a great tune. Sit back and listen.

Artist: Tower of Power with Carlos Santana
Tune: What is hip?

Tags: Music by ecthompson md
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Slowly but surely, the economy is heading in the right direction. If the economy were a patient, the patient would still be in the ICU on multiple antibiotics. Though still on a ventilator, the patient looks better and is heading in the right direction. An infusion of 244,000 new jobss is part of the prescription for getting the patient back on his/her feet. Over the last three months, private sector jobs have grown by over 700,000. This is all good news. Yet, as I have said over the previous months, it is not time to do the happy dance. It is time to give our patient an infusion of more jobs (stimulus), which will really jumpstart the economy. This is what is desperately needed. Unfortunately, the political atmosphere in Washington will not get this done. No meaningful legislation will come out of the House over the next 18 months.

We still have 14 million Americans who are unemployed. 14 million Americans! At our current rate of job growth we can get our unemployment level back to prerecession levels by the year 2016. Who can wait that long?

If you look at the numbers more critically and break down unemployment by groups, certain groups are clearly hurting more than others. The unemployment rate among our youth (16-24) is a whopping 17.6%. For those youth with only a high school education the unemployment rate averaged 21.8% last year. The unemployment rate among African-Americans is 16.1% and among Hispanics is 11.8%. The unemployment rate among men is 9.4% and among women 8.4%.

Wages are stagnant. Hourly wages rose a paltry three cents in April. With 14 million Americans unemployed, currently the economic pressure is not there for employers to raise wages. (Great article by Rick Newman about why wages are stuck in neutral.)

So, we need more jobs. We need better paying jobs.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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• Isn’t calling for a sitting president to be tortured (water boarded) a treasonable offense? I might have to look that up. It’s clearly un-American.
• President Obama honored those who died at Ground Zero.  “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”
• Corporations continue to pay some of the lowest taxes they’ve seen in over 50 years.

• As a government, our lack of revenue is the problem. The middle class is ponying up their share. It is corporations and the top 1% who are taking home more and paying less.
• Pakistan plays the Sergeant Schultz card. (See the video below.) They knew nothing about Bin Laden chillin’ in their country.

• The Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Representative Dave Camp announced today that repeal of the healthcare law is “dead.”
• Republicans continue to get blow back from Americans in their own districts about their attempts to dismantle healthcare reform.
• Pakistan has released photos from inside bin Laden’s compound.
• Remember Monica Goodling? She was a central figure in the US attorney scandal. She received an official reprimand from the Virginia bar.

Tags: Bin Laden, Economy, Healthcare, Pakistan, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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The world is an extremely complex place, filled with lots of nuance. Neither the right nor the left really has the correct narrative. One side wants to give President Barack Obama all the credit for tracking down Osama bin Laden. The other side wants to give President Bush all the credit. Neither narrative is true. One side wants to tell us that torture was completely vindicated by the death of Osama bin Laden. The other side wants us to know that torture had nothing whatsoever to do with the intelligence that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. In reality, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. There is probably some shred of truth that some information came from torture or “enhanced interrogation techniques.” On the other hand, it is not clear if we’ve could’ve gotten that information in other ways. The same thing holds true for President Bush and President Obama. It is probably true that the changes that took place in the intelligence community laid the groundwork for the cooperation that we saw between special forces, the military, the FBI and the CIA. It is also true that President Barack Obama chose a team that can work together and get the job done. He was the one that authorized the team to go and get Osama bin Laden. He decided not to use predator drone strikes or a B-52 bombing raid. (I do not understand a spontaneous party outside of the former president’s house at one in the morning.)

While I believe in the rule of law, I also understand that Osama bin Laden is/was a killer. I understand that he murdered thousands of Americans and Muslims. I understand that, like Bonnie and Clyde or Pablo Escobar, he was not going to be taken quietly. He was not going to recite his own Miranda rights. I am completely comfortable with the president’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden. I also endorse the scrutiny and the questions about the legality of the president’s actions. I think this is a healthy debate. In the end, it doesn’t matter what other people decide. I know that if I were president, I would’ve authorized a strike on Osama bin Laden. Any president who wants to protect the American people would’ve made that decision. I understand. I think the American people understand. Now, let the lawyers figure it out.

Marcy Wheeler has a wonderful post on the trail of evidence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden:

The AP has confirmed that intelligence leading to the courier that in turn led to Osama bin Laden came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and–as I surmised earlier–Abu Faraj al-Libi while in CIA custody. But partly because of the language AP uses to describe this–and partly because the wingnuts love torture–many are drawing the wrong conclusion about it. Here’s what the AP says:

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

Note what AP says: KSM provided the courier’s nom de guerre. The CIA got similar information from al-Libi. And they were tortured. The AP does not say torture led to this information.

Here’s what a senior administration official said last night about when they got the intelligence on the courier.

Detainees gave us his nom de guerre or his nickname and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11th, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al Qaeda who was captured in 2005.

Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with and protecting bin Laden. But for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.

Four years ago, we uncovered his identity, and for operational reasons, I can’t go into details about his name or how we identified him, but about two years ago, after months of persistent effort, we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. [my emphasis]

In other words, while the CIA may have learned the courier’s nickname earlier, they didn’t learn his true name until “four years ago”–so late 2006 at the earliest. And they didn’t learn where the courier operated until around 2009. (more…)

Tags: 9-11, Bin Laden, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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As one conservative put it, “How did we find the Couriers? That info was gotten at Guantanamo Bay. Info that never would have been obtained had the detainees been treated as US criminals. This, in my view, vindicates the decision to sequester the detainees at Gitmo and ALL of their interrogation methods. It worked.” While there are many accounts of exactly what happened, some conservatives are focusing on the online magazine Slate. White House reporter John Dickerson wrote, “detainees being held at Guantánamo provided some of the strongest information about those who were trusted by bin Laden. They identified a courier and his brother who lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan, an affluent suburb where a lot of retired Pakistani military officers live.”

This single report goes much further than any other report with regards to the role of Guantánamo detainees in the assassination of Osama bin Laden. In a separate report by the Associated Press, they specifically point the finger at Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. I have a problem with this. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in 2003. According to reports, it was 2005 before the CIA began to get information about a courier that was working for Osama bin Laden. The dates don’t seem to match. Did the CIA sit on information for two years? Separate reports state that the CIA was given a pseudonym for the courier. The CIA needed to do more leg work in order to find out the courier’s real name and where the courier was located. Again, this doesn’t quite add up. If, for example, I tell you that Popeye the Sailor is a close confidant of Osama bin Laden I’m not sure that’s going to help you much. On the other hand, if I can give you a courier’s real name and where he actually lives in Pakistan, that would probably be helpful.

On the Last Word last night, Michael Isikoff, veteran reporter from Newsweek, mentions there are clearly some questions about whether these enhanced interrogations (torture) really gleaned valuable information. Watch the video:

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Marcy has more:

In other words, while the CIA may have learned the courier’s nickname earlier, they didn’t learn his true name until “four years ago”–so late 2006 at the earliest. And they didn’t learn where the courier operated until around 2009.

From these dates we can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

With al-Libi, the connection between whatever torture he experienced and this intelligence is less clear (since he was first detained in 2005), but even with al-Libi, it appears clear he either never revealed the courier’s real name or only did so after he had been in custody for a year, and almost certainly until after he arrived in Gitmo.

Update: Putting the AP’s reporting here together with the DAB, it seems like al-Libi did give up the name, perhaps earlier than reported. Still no waterboarding.

Either these men didn’t know the true name of their protégé and assistant (which is highly unlikely), or they managed to withhold that information even under torture.

In fact, two people who normally would be crowing about the success of torture are not now doing it. Donald Rumsfeld suggests the discovery of OBL came from intelligence gained at Gitmo (therefore, not in Poland or Romania). And while Cheney assumes enhanced interrogation, aka torture, led to OBL, he admits he doesn’t know where the intelligence came from. That he was ordering up propaganda reports along the way to justify his torture program, yet can’t claim definitively that the intelligence came from it, is a pretty good tell that he can’t say it did.

If KSM and al-Libi revealed details about the courier (and al-Libi’s Gitmo file suggests he did; KSM’s, which is dated two years earlier, does not), they shielded the most important information about him for years.

Donald Rumsfeld, who I think is trying to stay out of jail, said,“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

One thing is clear. We need more information before declaring that Guantánamo Bay, enhanced interrogations, torture, forced renditions, black sites or any of that other Bush administration quasilegal stuff was effective, needed or proven. We need more data.

Tags: Bin Laden, National Intelligence, Obama administration, Pakistan, Torture by ecthompson md
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The Nation’s Greg Mitchell reminds us that May first is the anniversary of George Bush landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Remember how the media and the GOP swooned over the swaggering George W. Bush? Now, in retrospect, what exactly did president George W. Bush accomplish? More from Greg Mitchell:

May 1 marks the eighth anniversary of Mission Accomplished Day, or as it might better be known, Mission Accomplished (Not) Day. Coming on a weekend, there werre even fewer mentions of this in the national media than last year, and Keith Olbermann is not on the air to update the once-normal close to his telecast when he marked exactly how many days since Bush declared victory (you do the math).

In my favorite antiwar song of this war, “Shock and Awe,” Neil Young moaned: “Back in the days of Mission Accomplished/ our chief was landing on the deck/ The sun was setting/ behind a golden photo op.” But as Neil added elsewhere: “History is a cruel judge of overconfidence.”

Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the media coverage of the event. Even today, eight years later, the often “overconfident” reporting from Baghdad and Kabul sometimes takes your breath away. At least two US soldiers have been killed in Iraq this week so far, and over 45,000 or our troops remain there today. (For a full accounting of costs of all sorts, go here.) So let’s return to the days of Mission Accomplished…

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq—with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.” (more…)

Tags: Bush Administration, Iraq by ecthompson md
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This is a transcript of Barack Obama’s speech. The video of the President’s speech is here.

East Room

11:35 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot. [Read more →]

Tags: Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Bush Administration, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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Awaiting President Obama’s announcement. This is what we know…or think we know. It has been nine years since 9/11. It has been eight years since George W. Bush declared Mission Accomplished.

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I have called for the death of Osama Bin Laden for years. We took the fight to Bin Laden. We focused. We got the resources necessary and accomplished the task. This is how America works. I can’t let this topic go without mentioning how Bush failed. There are going to be many bloggers who are going to rub Bush’s face in his failure. I will say that we had the tools to get Bin Laden when Bush was in the White House. I will not say any more on this at this time.

Information on the city that Bin Laden was found in – Abbottabad.

From President Bush:

Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.

From LAT:

A CIA-led operation has killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and recovered his body after a tortuous decadelong hunt for the elusive militant leader who commanded the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. government officials said Sunday night.

CIA Director Leon Panetta called key members of Congress late Sunday to describe the killing of the Al Qaeda leader, and President Obama is expected to make the announcement on national TV.

From WaPo:

Al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden is dead and the United States has his body, a person familiar with the developments says.

President Barack Obama is expected to make that announcement from the White House late Sunday night.

From MSNBC:

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is dead and the U.S. has his body, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

U.S. President Barack Obama was to make the announcement shortly that after searching in vain for bin Laden since he disappeared in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Saudi-born extremist is dead, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Details of the death were sparse. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said bin Laden was killed in a ground operation in Pakistan, not by a Predator drone. The official said it happened last week.

CNN and Reuters reported that the al-Qaida leader was killed in a mansion outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

It is a major accomplishment for Obama and his national security team, having fulfilled the goal once voiced by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, to bring to justice the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

From Yglesias:

I’ve seen this Mark Twain line dug up by a number of people: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

Seems about right.

Finally, I must wonder how we did this. How did we kill Osama bin Laden? Yes we’ve all heard about the intelligence tip. We’ve heard about the compound. We’ve heard about the helicopter and how one of them crashed. We’ve heard about the firefight. But what was different? What did we do different this time that we didn’t do last year or five years ago or even 10 years ago? I really can’t count President Clinton’s effort to kill Osama bin Laden. Yes, President Clinton understood the risk that Osama bin Laden posed but he did not go after Osama bin Laden with the full force of our military. He couldn’t. He was politically hamstrung. You can make other excuses for President Clinton but this is the reality. Monica Lewinsky and Newt Gingrich made it impossible for him to fully go after Osama bin Laden. President Bush, on the other hand, told us that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” President Bush told us that he was throwing the full resources of the American government behind getting this terrorist. Yet, we came up empty. Why? Was the difference truly the president’s resolve and focus? Did the CIA make the difference? Was Leon Panetta a better manager of the CIA than George tenet? Did he make the difference? In the coming weeks and months we will hear more details about how this was actually accomplished. We hear a lot about the military personnel that were involved. We will hear more about the presidential decisions and Barack Obama’s role in directing the CIA and the military. In my mind, the bottom line is that in spite of all of the criticism that President Barack Obama has had to endure, he has risen to the task and gotten the job done. Whether it was turning the economy around or passing health-care legislation or winding down the Iraq war, Barack Obama has figured out a way to get the task accomplished.

Tags: Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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• I love it when a Republican whines about having trouble making ends meet when he is worth over $31 million. It makes me tear up.
• Texas GOP representative Blake Farenthold somehow figures out how to equate unemployed Americans to alcoholics and drug addicts. Completely and totally despicable.
• Former Massachusetts Governor  and presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney has a real problem with healthcare. On one hand, he wants to promote the “great things” that he did in Massachusetts with his healthcare plan; on the other hand, our national healthcare law is really based on what he did in Massachusetts. Basically, he would have to go against conventional GOP wisdom and state that the healthcare law really isn’t that bad an idea. No Republican candidate for president is going to say that.
• Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels continues the GOP attack on Planned Parenthood.
• According to the Gallup poll, the popularity of the tea party movement continues to plummet.

tea party opinion

• Muammar Qaddafi’s son died in NATO airstrikes.
• First-quarter profits for BP were only $5.5 billion. Now, this is not $5.5 billion in total income. This is $5.5 billion in profits. This is just one year after the biggest oil disaster in our history. What is more egregious is that BP’s oil profits are just over half of what Exxon Mobil ($10.7 Billion) made in the first quarter of this year. In my opinion, oil prices are being manipulated and all companies are profiting while Americans are hurting.

• Obama is increasing aid to the storm ravaged South.
• The death toll from Wednesday’s tornadoes has now climbed to 337. This is the second deadliest day, secondary to storms, since an outbreak in 1925. According to the Weather Channel, from April 25 – 27th there over 250 reported tornado outbreaks throughout the South and Midwest. The devastation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has been well-documented. What we haven’t talked much about is climate change secondary to man’s burning of fossil fuels. For some reason, this has been absent from the discussion of these major tornado outbreaks. The whole theory of climate change is based on heating of the atmosphere because of trapped carbon gases. This heating of the atmosphere increases water vapor in the air. Relatively cold air from Canada collides with the warm air coming up from a gulf and this gives you the energy that creates severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. The temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are near record highs. Warmer air from the Gulf of Mexico equals more energy for thunderstorms. While no single weather event should be blamed on climate change, there is clearly a trend for bigger, better and more severe storms, tornadoes and flooding. This is costing us more and more money. WE need to act on climate change secondary to man’s burning of fossil fuels. We need to act NOW.

Tags: Environment, Foreign Affairs by ecthompson md
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