Last night on AC 360, Paul Begala, someone who genuinely irritates me for numerous reasons (is there anyone on television who comes across as more oozingly sanctimonious?), was “debating” Ari Fleischer, someone who I think is one of the most loathesome lowlifes of the entire Bush administration. I put debating in air quotes because it is hard to have a debate with Ari Fleischer, because literally everything that comes out of his mouth is a verifiable lie. At any rate, Begala really nailed Fleischer to the wall in this segment, and if you can watch the video, I would recommend it:
COOPER: Ari, you said it’s basically opening up a Pandora’s box for the president, leaving — leaving the door open to a possible prosecution.
How is that opening a Pandora’s box?
ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER GEORGE W. BUSH WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, number one, we didn’t release any Clinton memos. Clinton didn’t release any previous President Bush top-secret memos.
The problem that I have with all of this is, now that the White House is doing this to its predecessor, what will future White Houses do, depending on how the world turns under Barack Obama? Something will go wrong during Barack Obama’s presidency. Do you really want to be in a position where whoever follows him says, it was your fault; you must have done something; there’s this top-secret memo we will find somewhere that makes you look or sound culpable?
COOPER: Paul, is this a slippery slope, a Pandora’s box?
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first up, the president was compelled to release them by a lawsuit, a lawsuit that his lawyers, the Justice Department and the White House counsel, decided they could not successfully defend.
We have a Freedom of Information Act. I know it’s — it’s an adjustment, but we now have a White House that lives under the rule of law and obeys the laws. So, he released them because he was compelled to release them.
This is very different from the Bush administration, which selectively leaked national security information, top-secret information, in order to build what I think the record shows was a dishonest case for war, or, in the case of Valerie Wilson, to destroy the career of a covert CIA agent.
That’s the politicization of intelligence information and — and top-secret information. This was the president obeying the law.
I have to say I am really surprised there has not been more pushback from Democrats pointing out that Obama didn’t just “choose” to release these memos, but in fact was compelled to release them and even fought releasing them.
You really need to read the whole transcript to see how sleazy Flesicher is, but the video was better.
JL
John, Something tells me that by the end of the day, the only thing that will help soothe the nerves will be a bottle of wine and pics of Tunch.
Cat Lady
Ari Fleischer is a talking turd. I wouldn’t watch him if you harshly interrogated me.
Democrats don’t do coordinated pushback, alas.
And by the way, when is the WaPo and the Times going to use the “t” word?
wilfred
I think you mean pushback from Republicans, John.
gnomedad
So by “doing the right thing“, you meant Obama obeyed the law. Interesting how the bar on “doing the right thing” has been lowered.
Xanthippas
Okay, did Fleischer really say that someone could be prosecuted for releasing those memos, as Cooper implies? So, since obviously Obama is to blame for the memos being released, Obama could be prosecuted for their release??
Also, if the “slippery slope” that we’re heading for is setting the precedent that Presidents will always release secret memos detailing the illegal acts of the prior administration, then I’ll see you guys at the bottom of that slope.
John Cole
@wilfred: No. The Republican narrative is that he chose to release them, and so far in the media, that is the dominant narrative in the domestic media. The Democrats need to push back and make it clear that Obama was compelled to release them.
JK
John,
I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Begala. He’s one Democratic pundit whose analysis I look forward to hearing. I can think of any number of other pundits who are unbearably sanctimonious.
It won’t happen of course, but I’d give anything in the world to see the reactions of Gingrich, Cheney, Hannity, Limbuagh, Beck, O’Reilly if, by some jaw dropping miracle, US forces actually managed to capture Bin Laden and Zawahiri.
MattF
Recalls Mary McCarthy’s famous line about Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie—including ‘and’ and ‘the’“.
wilfred
@John Cole:
Here I was thinking that Obama did the right thing on his own volition and (grudgingly) giving him a bit more respect for it. I am not following this closely enough to realize he was compelled.
But wouldn’t it be smarter for Republicans to pursue ‘the he was forced to’ meme, emphasising sameness, ‘you’re just as bad’, etc.?
Joshua James
I agree with you in part about Paul, but there certainly is someone more oozingly sanctimonious … much, much more …
For more, see Carlson, Tucker.
NutellaonToast
Lemme guess, there were documents released by Clinton and Bush that were created under Bush and Reagan, respectively.
Also, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc didn’t torture people so there’s that. Next he’s going to attack Truman for letting us in on the interment of the Japanese, right? I mean, that was obviously blaming what went wrong on the previous administration. If our enemies know that they will have their expats detained during a time of war, that ties our hands about detaining expats during a time of war and then the TERRORISTS WIN!!!
Comrade Jake
@gnomedad:
Lowered? W put the bar six feet under. Obama’s had to dig it up to get it to where it currently sits.
Greenwald is making the point that the media’s current take is that Obama has “left the door open” to prosecution, when it’s not his call to make. We’ve wandered a long ways away from the notion of the DOJ being independent of the WH.
NutellaonToast
@JK:
Why, that would be a vindication of conservatism, torture, Bush, etc…
DUH!
RememberNovember
WTF was Whitewater and the Starr report then? Impeachment over a BJ…Flesicher is a douche without water. Iran Contra hearings? History studied much Ari?
gnomedad
It sure is. Now that Obama has obeyed this law, who knows what laws he’ll obey? The Decider knew how to draw a line in the sand, by God!
Ken
I didn’t think Ari Fleischer could get any slimier, but I was wrong. If you listen only to his part of the interview, you would walk away thinking that the people who need to be prosecuted for this are Bill Clinton, Democrat [sic] congressmen, and George Tenet.
Begala makes a good point when he tells Ari “The problem is you want to make this about politics”. Because that is exactly the thing I find most despicable about the current republican Party and conservative movement – their willingness to take something as utterly reprehensible, something as absolutely monstrous as the United States TORTURING prisoners, and try and use it to smear their political opponents, while doing everything in their power to protect their guy.
If there aren’t prosecutions over this – and I mean SERIOUS prosecutions of the actual scumbags responsible, regardless of their former positions in the fourth branch of government – I will finally lose my last shred of faith in this country.
joe from Lowell
The hell they do. The Democrats need to push back and make it clear that torture is wrong, illegal, and evil, and that they will hold people accountable for breaking the law.
cleek
oh John… when will you ever learn ?
lethargytartare
@NutellaonToast:
I suspect there are some people in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other locales that might dispute this…
The Grand Panjandrum
Brit Hume. William Kristol. Charles Krauthammer. GEORGE WILL.
Gus
Exactly. The economy would be Obama’s fault, but the capture of bin Laden would be to Bush’s credit. And 9/11 was Clinton’s fault.
baldheadeddork
Begala’s got n-o-thing on Evan Bayh.
(I was going to say you should be glad Bayh isn’t one of your senators, then I remembered that you’ve got Rockefeller.)
jill
Ari Fleischer looks scared to death on AC 360 last night. I’m surprised he made it through the show.
I like Paul Begala now, but he said some stupid shit during the primaries. I guess we all did though.
My Prius rolls on dubs
That would be because nearly all Democratic lawmakers are still cowering because of the fearsome dick slapping they received from the Bush Administration over many years. They have turned into the equivalent of Maverick after Goose’s death, can’t take a shot even when you have them locked in your sights.
eyepaddle
@wilfred
I can see your point of view on this, but I think the Republicans won’t want to imply that they were bad–which they would have to if that made Obama “just as bad.”
However, since they have never given a damn about honesty or consistency, look to them to switch to the “just as bad” meme if this stuff ever goes to court.
Paddy
We’ve got the Begala/Fleischer video here.
Darius
I agree 100%. The issue of whether Obama chose or was forced to release these memos is tangential at best.
NutellaonToast
@lethargytartare: Fair enough. They didn’t “illegally” torture people, mayhaps?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Obama was compelled to release the memos, but he got credit — even from Greenwald — for releasing them with so little information redacted. So he did more than the legal minimum.
edmund dantes
Democratic leaders have to be careful. Several of them were briefed in on the programs. My bet is Pelosi and Reid were a lot closer to the truth of what was going on as minority leaders at the time.
My second bet was they were intentionally kept close enough so that if they balked and tried to talk about classified information, they’d get hammered during the National Security orgy the US was in at the time. If they didn’t balk, they could never really go after the crimes because their silence upped their complicity. My third bet is they wouldn’t have had the cojones to do anything about it anyways so the second bet really wasn’t necessary.
brent
Easily the best part of that segment was when Begala pointed out that we actually executed Japanese soldiers for using the same waterboarding techniques that Fleischer is now defending and Fleischer’s response was about 5 sec of stunned silence.
joes527
@Comrade Jake:
This is exactly why all the pearl clutching over him “giving blanket immunity” has been so stupid.
It has never been his call. The words he spoke when he released the memos were soothing over a rough spot, and never carried any force at all.
And if you think he didn’t know this when he made the statement then I’ll go find a bridge to sell to you.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “So, he released them because he was compelled to release them.”
John, you should learn to not take these people at their word. They assume the electorate is stupid. There are many exceptions to FOIA. One type of ‘protected’ information is information which was:
“…specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy…”
Begala is the one lying. He is lying on behalf of the Obama Administration. Other exceptions to FOIA are the health of financial institutions and the status of oil field reserves.
Obama’s Orszag also told us that the taxpayer could assume all of Fannie-Freddie’s risk without any likely cost. Maybe $25 billion through the end of 2010, Orszag told us, before he was appointed by the Obama Administration.
geg6
Ari Fleisher is a lying bastard, no matter what is coming out of his mouth.
However, this is just too fracking easy. I point anyone with a working memory to some recent events in American history where memos from previous administrations were released by current administrations due to ongoing legal cases against said members of the previous administration. Two easy ones just off the top of my head would be Watergate and Iran Contra.
Xanthippas
We didn’t torture them. We just TRAINED the guys who tortured them.
NutellaonToast
I second the moment at the end where Ari gets stunned is the most amazing thing ever. Then Ari says “Oh, so you’re judge Jury and executioner.”
I wish Begala would’ve said in response “No, the people who tried and killed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding were judge, jury, and executioner.”
JK
OT
John,
Will you be contacting any scalpers to score tickets to see the Conversation of the Century – George W. Bush meets Bill Clinton?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090420.wibbitson21/BNStory/International/home
Just think of the stories you could tell your grandchildren about personally witnessing this meeting of the minds.
Rick Taylor
I’m not convinced that’s a better narrative for Democrats. If it wasn’t his choice, it could be portrayed as week.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
There are a few tickets left for the Clinton-Bush Toronto Gaborama. Scum of the earth: $189. VIP: $495.
NonyNony
Well yeah, that’s true. To a point. But he could have gotten away with releasing a heavily redacted set of memos that would have been ultimately meaningless except as a token gesture to comply with the letter of the law as per the lawsuit.
Instead he and his folks chose (over Leon Panetta’s very loud objections) to release the memos mostly unredacted. So in that sense, there was a choice made. It was, of course, the right choice to make given the message that releasing heavily redacted token memos would have sent to the country and to the world. But he could, like the Bush administration, have made the wrong choice instead and he didn’t so he gets credit for it.
BTW – I don’t see why there should be any “push back” on this at all – Obama and his people did the right thing. There was no need to keep these things confidential except to protect a group of goons from embarrassment and possibly legal action. If anything, the GOP narrative choice strikes me as horribly tin-eared, since people are looking back in a kind of horror at the last 8 years already, and only the True Believers (shrinking in size every day) are still clinging to the idea that Bush and Co. were doing what they could to “keep us safe” – the rest of the country is slowly waking up to the fact that we’ve been governed by sadists for the last 8 years and it’s not a gentle awakening.
John PM
@geg6: #34
Isn’t it interesting how both of those investigations involved Republican administrations, and now we have the potential for a third major investigation of a Republican administration. I cannot seem to recall Nixon releasing any documents from the Johnson administration, or Reagan the Carter administration. I will say it again – The Republican Party has been a criminal enterprise for the last 40 years. It is time to go after them like the DOJ finally went after the mob. Patrick Fitzgerald is doing it here in Chicago with the mob, so he may be the person most qualified to do the same thing to the Republicans.
Mike in NC
Never forget he was one of the creators of “Freedom’s Watch”, which basically called any dissent over the Iraq War an act of treason.
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
Again, BOB, may I point out that you have no idea what you are talking about.
There was a court case. The government lost. FOIA and the court ruling required release of the memos. End of story.
Gawd. I hate idiots.
Ash Can
@JK:
I dunno about the Conversation of the Century, but I’d shell out some serious scratch to see the Follow-Up Fistfight in the Parking Lot.
MNPundit
Since about 2002 I began to refer to him as “That Walking Pestilence Ari Fleischer” whenever I spoke about him. Similar to the manner in which I always say “that Bitch Fiorina” when talking about Carly Fiorina because I hate her for what she did to HP.
John S.
Three minor observations:
1) I don’t believe that Peter Orszag is Obama’s man-servant.
2) Peter Orszag is the BOB equivalent of Paul L’s Mike Nifong obsession.
3) BOB is still a blithering idiot.
Brick Oven Bill
Watergate and Iran Contra were not cases of one party prosecuting another, smartie-pants. These were cases of Republicans policing themselves. This is quite different than banana-republic style political prosecutions.
Enjoy the shadows dancing on the wall geg6. You see, Obama did not want to selectively leak only the memos that would make the previous Administration look bad. This is why they released information that was:
“…specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy…”
Those are some real sharp lawyers over there at Justice.
El Cid
That is a miraculously weird and apparently incomprehensible statement, and that anyone on Earth could understand even a portion of it is a tribute to the loyalty of said blog’s readership.
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: Iran-Contra was a case of Democrats yielding to Republicans’ desire to avoid any real investigations and focus on a tiny set of agreed-upon charges. The Iran-Contra investigation was the cover-up.
The bipartisan agreement, for example, to repress the final report of the committee on how the Reagan administration systematically operated a domestic propaganda operation to justify their indirect wars of terrorism and mass murder against Central American civilians.
After all, who wants to hear controversial, partisan information that a modern U.S. administration was conducted illegal and immoral domestic propaganda operations to justify murderous terror wars?
Xecky Gilchrist
@NutellaonToast: They didn’t “illegally” torture people, mayhaps?
I’d rather say it that they didn’t try make torture legal just so they could torture people – they just went ahead and did it.
They didn’t try to institutionalize it.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think Paul Begala is pretty cool, even when he was shilling for HRC in the primary. Yer just a hater, John.
JK
@El Cid: Former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman commenting on the Republican report on the Iran-contra affair: “They separated the wheat from the chaff and left in the chaff.”
Source: The Iconoclast Of Capitol Hill, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,971053-1,00.html
The minority report’s chief author was a former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael J. Malbin, who was chosen by Mr. Dick Cheney as a member of the committee’s minority staff. Another member of the minority’s legal staff was David S. Addington.
Source: Mr. Cheney’s Minority Report, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/opinion/09wilentz.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=86171d53d27fc518&ex=1341633600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Rainy
I would really like somebody to throw up in these guy’s faces that we tortured the children of terrorists. I wonder how they would justify this kind of stuff then.
If they read the memos they would see that Bush officials authorized CIA agents to torture children. Why wouldn’t we investigate? This is serious stuff.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sometimes I really like Begala. Other times he drives me insane.
And yes. I am a hater.
spot check billy
Watergate and Iran Contra were not cases of one party prosecuting another, smartie-pants. These were cases of Republicans policing themselves.
How so? In both cases the original investigations (in the case of the latter, what passed for an investigation) were spearheaded by committees of a Democratic controlled Senate and the prosecutions were conducted by independent counsels under consistent partisan attack by the GOP leaders of the time. Of course in the case of Watergate, Gerald Ford wasn’t shameless enough to issue blanket pardons as GWH Bush did for Iran-Contra after he lost his reelection bid, but that doesn’t really qualify as “self-policing”.
GOP self-delusion really does know no bounds.
NutellaonToast
@geg6: Except Obama didn’t lose. He decided to stop fighting. God, I hate the uninformed.
John S.
LOL
TenguPhule
And in both cases, the criminals walked.
Hmmmm.
SGEW
Actually, the tribute is that I didn’t even pause when I read that sentence, just nodded and thought “good point,” and when you pointed out that it was weird and incomprehensible I thought “what are they talking about?” before realizing that it would be totally obscure to virtually everyone on earth besides regular BJ readers.
I think I need to read the blogs less, and get out more.
Shawn in ShowMe
That’s because you’re a liberal. Cole is a Republican refugee who reluctantly wandered into our camp. Our diet isn’t always going to be pleasing to his palate.
MNPundit
@Shawn in ShowMe: Paul Begala is no prize either, but compared to McAuliffe or Carville he’s awesome.
passerby
@Comrade Jake:
Yes, we have wandered a long way from idea of the separation of powers mandated in the constitution. And I didn’t realize that Obama was “compelled” to release these memos. I’d like to understand that point better. Was it the FOIA doing the compelling or some national security body that determined whether or not we could read these memos?
The media give us a distorted view of the story and the whole “left the door open” narrative speaks to the political aspects of this issue in which the media are central players.
Right now they are repeating the narrative that by “reversing his position” on whether to prosecute or not, Obama is caving in to the demands of congressional democrats and/or leftist blogs. Why does it not occur to them that he’s operating within his own administration?
The media, arrrgh.
Just Some Fuckhead
WTF is up with you haters? Paul Begala is polite, informed and quick witted. Carville is none of that but he has his own charms. I’m proud to have them on my side.
McAuliffe, ugh.
Miriam
I read the whole transcript and I thought Begala did a good job. And Cooper did a good job of keeping the ‘debate’ on task.
passerby
@jill:
Wished I could’ve seen that. I looked for a video but couldn’t find one. Newt Gingrich has also been coming across with a pervading air of doubt and uncertainty. I think these guys are beginning to realize that the jig is up–no one’s buying the lies and bullshit they’re peddling. It’s become a hard sell for them.
Same here. I couldn’t stand his Hillary hype but I think he made a gracious transition toward supporting the Obama Presidency.
tammanycall
Haters, all of ya. Begala & Carville are teh awesome.
AhabTRuler
There are two Begala’s: The passionate, informed and charming liberal and the Democratic Hitman who would give his own mother a Colombian necktie for a handful of votes and an endorsement.
Never forget that Begala was a willing (even enthusiastic) participant in that wretched monstrosity Crossfire, and everyone who touched that show is, in my mind, tainted (OK, Frank Zappa managed to look good on Crossfire, but that was a looooong time ago).
And Carville is fucking hilarious, and he is beginning to look like a walking mummy.
Edit:
And I’ll counter with Tucker Carlson & Bob Novak. The equivalency isn’t heartening, and yet everybody involved acceded to it.
I do like the earnest Begala, tho.
omen
rent our brand is crisis to see what kind of politics carville preaches when he was hired to be an advisor for an election in bolivia. it ain’t pretty.
omen
here are some reviews that give a flavor of the documentary:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492714/usercomments
bartkid
>is there anyone on television who comes across as more oozingly sanctimonious?
You’re confusing oozingly sanctimonious with being paired off with the @[email protected] likes of Tucker and Ari all the time.
JK
@AhabTRuler: Zappa ALWAYS LOOKED GOOD on tv. He was witty, informative, and always stimulating. He left this world much too soon.
Thank you Frank for writing one of the great rock masterpieces of all-time – Joe’s Garage
“It wasn’t very large
There was just enough room to cram the drums
In the corner over by the dodge
It was a fifty-four
With a mashed up door
And a cheesy little amp
With a sign on the front said fender champ
And a second hand guitar
It was a stratocaster with a whammy bar
We could jam in joe’s garage
His mama was screamin’
His dad was mad
We was playin’ the same old song
In the afternoon ’n’ sometimes we would
Play it all night long
It was all we knew, ’n’ easy too
So we wouldn’t get it wrong…”
Paul Begala – 2 thumbs way up
James Carville – 2 thumbs way up
Tucker Carlson – 2 thumbs all the way down to Hades
Robert Novak – 2 thumbs all the way down to Hades
Jrod
Sooo…. if an administration breaks the law they should only be prosecuted if the next administration is of the same party?
Bush broke the law. Period. If you don’t like that, too fucking bad, you WATB. Blame Bush.