September 26, 2006

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Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur –  Tuesday, September 26, 2006

1. Negroponte Says U.S. Not at Higher Risk - Associated Press
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said Monday the jihad in Iraq is shaping a new generation of terrorist operatives, but rejected assertions, stemming from a leaked intelligence estimate, that the United States is at a greater risk of attack than it was in 2001.

2. GOP's uptick just in time for Election Day - Washington Times
There has been a palpable shift in the mood in Washington in recent weeks. No longer are insiders in both parties sharing predictions of a Democratic rout of Republicans.

3. More Leaks, Please - Washington Post Op-ed
Based on the press coverage alone, the National Intelligence Estimate's judgment seems both impressionistic and imprecise. On such an important topic, it would be nice to have answers to a few questions, as opposed to journalists' characterizations of anonymous comments by government officials.

4. Fox in the Henhouse - Slate.com
Bill Clinton wasn't sandbagged, because he is a smart politician. He just spent several weeks fighting ABC over its interpretation of his administration's hunt for Bin Laden. He knew the question was coming and he took advantage of it. Forty-three days before the election, he has provided a moment to rally party activists and attack the GOP at the heart of its perceived strength on handling terrorism.

5. Professor Says Senator Used Racial Slur - Associated Press
A noted political scientist joined one of Sen. George Allen's former college football teammates in claiming the senator used a racial slur to refer to blacks in the early 1970s, a claim Allen dismisses as "ludicrously false."

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1. Negroponte Says U.S. Not at Higher Risk - Associated Press

By KATHERINE SHRADER
ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) -

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said Monday the jihad in Iraq is shaping a new generation of terrorist operatives, but rejected assertions, stemming from a leaked intelligence estimate, that the United States is at a greater risk of attack than it was in 2001.

"We are certainly more vigilant. We are better prepared," Negroponte said. "We are safer."

Negroponte's words came at a dinner at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center after the weekend disclosure of a high-level National Intelligence Estimate. The document gave new fervor to an election-year debate about how the Iraq war has affected national security threats.

The report, Negroponte said, broadly addressed the global terrorist threat, not just the impact of Iraq.

He told the audience that radicalism is being fueled by entrenched grievances in the Arab world, the slow pace of social and political reforms there and anti-U.S. sentiment.

In addition, he said, "The Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the Bush administration Monday to declassify the intelligence assessment.

Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the American people should be able to see a public version of the report and draw their own conclusions about its contents. So far, he said, the public discussion has given the "false impression" that the National Intelligence Estimate focuses exclusively on Iraq and terrorism.

"That is not true," Roberts said, noting that the committee has had the report since April. "This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality."

In a letter to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat, said declassifying the report's conclusions would provide a complete picture of the report and "contribute greatly to the public debate" on counterterrorism policies.

Negroponte said he would consider the proposal in the next several days, given the interest in the document.

The report distills the thinking of senior U.S. intelligence analysts working throughout the nation's 16 spy agencies. Its conclusions are considered to be the voice of the U.S. intelligence community.

The New York Times first reported Saturday that the highly classified assessment finds that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has helped fuel a new generation of extremists and that the overall terror threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - a conclusion at odds with President Bush's assertions that the nation is safer.

But Bush administration officials including Negroponte are contesting the media accounts, saying they describe only a portion of the conclusions and therefore distort the analysts' findings on trends in global terrorism.

As the November election approaches, the report has touched off an intense political debate about the impact of Iraq on U.S. security and the Bush administration's ability to go after terrorists.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Osama bin Laden and other Sept. 11 planners have not yet been brought to justice and Bush should read the intelligence carefully "before giving another misleading speech about progress in the war on terrorism." She and 10 other Democratic leaders asked House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to hold hearings on the document's findings.

At a speech in April, believed to draw from the intelligence assessment, Negroponte's deputy at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden, said the centrality of the fight in Iraq and the diffusion of radical Islamic groups reinforce each other.

"We must understand the deep underlying realities there, and more importantly how it is routinely portrayed in Islamic media, continues to cultivate supporters for the global jihadist movement," he said.

Hayden said the threat from "self-radicalized" cells that are not necessarily tied to al-Qaida or some other central organization will also grow in importance. "The homeland will not be immune to such cells, but the threat will be especially acute abroad," he said.
 
 
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-cong/2006/sep/26/092600775.html
 

2. GOP's uptick just in time for Election Day - Washington Times

By Ralph Z. Hallow
Published September 26, 2006

There has been a palpable shift in the mood in Washington in recent weeks. No longer are insiders in both parties sharing predictions of a Democratic rout of Republicans.

Some on both sides had expected an election debacle for the Republicans, driven by the Iraq war, high gas prices and the perception that a Republican-led Washington can neither shoot nor spend straight.

Now those perceptions have changed.

A 58 percent majority of Democratic insiders polled by National Journal, as well as an overwhelming 94 percent of Republican insiders, say the Republican National Committee is doing a better job for November than the Democratic National Committee.

Three weeks past the traditional Labor Day kickoff of campaign season, many Republicans are expressing greater optimism for their party's prospects on Election Day, now just six weeks away.

"This is not an election like 1994 and 1974, when we know the outcome is going to be a massive tsunami for one of the two parties," Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman says. "If the election were today, we would lose some seats, but keep our majorities."

It's the job of Mr. Mehlman and of his Democratic National Committee counterpart, Chairman Howard Dean, to wave pompoms for their respective teams, but there was no press corps eye-rolling over Mr. Mehlman's hopeful statements at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters.

John Zogby, whose polling until recently forecast a Republican debacle, now says a big reason for the mood shift is that President Bush is regaining crucial support among his party's voter base by emphasizing national security -- his strongest suit -- as often as possible.

In a mid-August Zogby poll, only 62 percent of likely Republican voters gave Mr. Bush an "excellent" or "good job" rating. But by mid-September, Mr. Bush's approval rating among Republicans had reached 76 percent.

"You have to turn out your base for congressional elections, and if the president has 62 percent approval among Republicans, you have a third who don't approve and a lot of people who might stay home," says longtime Republican strategist Charles Black. "When the president has 76 percent Republican approval, it makes it a lot easier."

Bolstered by such developments, Republicans are facing November more confidently -- if still cautiously, as with Sen. John McCain's response yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation" when asked if he thought the Republicans would maintain control of Congress on Election Day.

"Yes, I do," the Arizona Republican answered, "but I think it's going to be very, very tough ... the off-year of the second term of any president is always a tough election. And of course, Iraq is a very controversial issue with Americans. And there's uncertainty about our future because of globalization. We understand all that, but we also think we have a record we can stand on."

A popular president makes elections a bit easier for his party's candidates, and Mr. Bush's popularity, though still low, has been rising for three months. The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll has his job approval at 44 percent and disapproval at 51 percent -- a deficit of 7 percentage points, but a huge improvement over his numbers in June, when Gallup found 36 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval, a negative 21-point spread.

The president's improved standing has been reflected in voters' views of the congressional elections. The latest USA Today/Gallup poll has Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress splitting the national vote on the so-called "generic ballot" question, 48 percent to 48 percent. The same poll in June had Democrats leading 51 percent to 39 percent.

Mr. Zogby allows that "things could happen, but right now, I think Republicans hold their majority in both houses." He said he doesn't think anger against Mr. Bush is sufficient to turn Congress over to the Democrats.

"The president is slowly but steadily regenerating support among his own base," he says. "I saw him do it before, going from 78 percent Republican approval before the 2004 GOP convention to 91 percent before Election Day."

Comparing the 2006 midterm elections to previous major shifts, Mr. Mehlman says he sees none of the signs that preceded those landslides. In 1974, following the Watergate scandal, there was a surge in the Democratic primary-voter turnout and a decline in Republican voter turnout. The reverse was true before the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress.

So far this year, there has been no indication of a Democratic surge. In 36 of 39 primaries, the Democratic turnout has been lower than the average of the past 20 years. Only Connecticut, North Dakota and Vermont had higher-than-average Democratic turnouts this year.

Republicans are doing a better job than Democrats of communicating with their core voters, says Mr. Zogby.

"I think Republicans are talking in an effective way to their base, which is particularly concerned about terrorism," says Mr. Zogby. "But Democrats, whose base wants to hear how we get out of Iraq, simply dance around the answer. Democrats are acting like John Kerry in 2004, trying to appeal to swing voters in yet another election in which there are no swing voters."

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060926-123133-6670r_page2.htm

3. More Leaks, Please - Washington Post Op-ed

Questioning the Iraq Intelligence Report

By Robert Kagan
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; A21

It's too bad we won't get to see the full National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism" selectively leaked to The Post and the New York Times last week. The Times headline read "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat." But there were no quotations from the NIE itself, so all we have are journalists' characterizations of anonymous comments by government officials, whose motives and reliability we can't judge, about intelligence assessments whose logic and argument, as well as factual basis, we have no way of knowing or gauging. Based on the press coverage alone, the NIE's judgment seems both impressionistic and imprecise. On such an important topic, it would be nice to have answers to a few questions.

For instance, what specifically does it mean to say that the Iraq war has worsened the "terrorism threat"? Presumably, the NIE's authors would admit that this is speculation rather than a statement of fact, since the facts suggest otherwise. Before the Iraq war, the United States suffered a series of terrorist attacks: the bombing and destruction of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since the Iraq war started, there have not been any successful terrorist attacks against the United States. That doesn't mean the threat has diminished because of the Iraq war, but it does place the burden of proof on those who argue that it has increased.

Probably what the NIE's authors mean is not that the Iraq war has increased the actual threat. According to the Times, the report is agnostic on whether another terrorist attack is more or less likely. Rather, its authors claim that the war has increased the number of potential terrorists. Unfortunately, neither The Post nor the Times provides any figures to support this. Does the NIE? Or are its authors simply assuming that because Muslims have been angered by the war, some percentage of them must be joining the ranks of terrorists?

As a poor substitute for actual figures, The Post notes that, according to the NIE, members of terrorist cells post messages on their Web sites depicting the Iraq war as "a Western attempt to conquer Islam." No doubt they do. But to move from that observation to the conclusion that the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat requires answering a few additional questions: How many new terrorists are there? How many of the new terrorists became terrorists because they read the messages on the Web sites? And of those, how many were motivated by the Iraq war as opposed to, say, the war in Afghanistan, or the Danish cartoons, or the Israel-Palestine conflict, or their dislike for the Saudi royal family or Hosni Mubarak, or, more recently, the comments of the pope? Perhaps our intelligence agencies have discovered a way to examine, measure and then rank the motives that drive people to become terrorists, though I tend to doubt it. But any serious and useful assessment of the effect of the Iraq war would, at a minimum, try to isolate the effect of the war from everything else that is and has been going on to stir Muslim anger. Did the NIE attempt to make that calculation?

Such an assessment would also require some estimate of what the terrorist threat would look like today if the war had not happened. For instance, did the authors of the NIE calculate the effect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the recruitment of terrorists or the effect of the bombings in Madrid and London? It is certainly possible that these events produced an increase in would-be terrorists by showing the possibility of sensational success. So if there is an overall increase, how much of it was the result of Iraq or the Danish cartoons or other perceived Western offenses against Islam, and how much of it is a continuing response to al-Qaeda's own terrorist successes before, on and after Sept. 11?

Finally, a serious evaluation of the effect of the Iraq war would have to address the Bush administration's argument that it is better to fight terrorist recruits in Iraq than in the United States. This may or may not be true, although again the administration would seem to have the stronger claim at the moment. But a serious study would have to measure the numbers of terrorists engaged in Iraq, and the numbers who may have been killed in Iraq, against any increase in the numbers of active terrorists outside Iraq as a result of the war. Did the NIE make such a calculation?

There is, in addition to all this, a question of context. What should we do if we believe certain actions might inspire some people to become potential terrorists? Should we always refrain from taking those actions, or are there cases in which we may want to act anyway? We have pretty good reason to believe, for instance, that the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the war, was a big factor in the evolution of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We are pretty sure that American support of the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviet occupation forces in the late 1970s and early '80s also contributed to the growth of Islamic terrorism.

Knowing this, would we now say that we made a mistake in each of those cases? Would an NIE argue that we would be safer today if we had not helped drive the Soviets from Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein from Kuwait? The argument in both cases would be at least as sound as the argument about the most recent Iraq war.

In fact, the question of what actions make us safer cannot be answered simply by counting the number of new terrorist recruits those actions may inspire, even if we could make such a count with any confidence. I would worry about an American foreign policy driven only by fear of how our actions might inspire anger, radicalism and violence in others. As in the past, that should be only one calculation in our judgment of what does and does not make us, and the world, safer.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His book "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy, will be published next month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500912.html

4. Fox in the Henhouse - Slate.com
 

Clinton's strategic TV blowup.
By John Dickerson

Bill Clinton has provided us with this week's partisan sorting mechanism. If you are a right-winger, you see his outburst over charges that he didn't do enough to kill Osama Bin Laden as an overheated act of public ass-covering. You're also likely to react to his criticisms about the Bush administration by rushing to the inevitable safe ground: sex jokes. A Fox News anchor helpfully pointed out that he hadn't seen Clinton that angry since he denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. For the left-wingers, the video showed Chris Wallace to be a partisan Fox News hack who wanted to sandbag Clinton. Wallace's questions were within the bounds of the interview's ground rules and were fair enough (though he weaseled by saying it was viewers who wanted him to ask Clinton about Bin Laden).

Bill Clinton wasn't sandbagged, because he is a smart politician. He just spent several weeks fighting ABC over its interpretation of his administration's hunt for Bin Laden. He knew the question was coming and he took advantage of it. Forty-three days before the election, he has provided a moment to rally party activists and attack the GOP at the heart of its perceived strength on handling terrorism.

Democrats should rejoice that Wallace was as tough as he was. If he had been supine, fearful of another 3,000-word report from Media Matters, the party and Clinton would have been denied an opportunity. And Clinton would have been disappointed, at least judging from his spokesperson's remarks afterward: "We're fully aware of Fox News' and Chris Wallace's agenda, and President Clinton came in prepared to respond to any attack on his record. When Wallace questioned his record on terrorism, he responded forcefully, as any Democrat would or should." In other words, he went in loaded for bear and blasted like Cheney as soon as he spotted one.

Did Clinton come across a little unhinged? Sure, but that's an advantage in a midterm election where party passion matters. Liberal activists want to see their Washington representatives fight back the way Clinton did. This was a rallying cry and a signal to other members of the party to do the same. Clinton can go to individual districts to campaign for competitive candidates, or he can sell the same message wholesale by banging the table in a single performance on Fox.

Clinton didn't just get the blood pumping among liberal activists. He made a policy critique aimed at the GOP election strategy designed to promote Republicans as the only party competent enough to handle terrorist threats. Each day people are discussing Clinton's performance or Wallace's questioning they will also be discussing which president did more to try to kill Bin Laden. Articles will revisit Bush's Aug. 8, 2001, briefing in which he was told al-Qaida planned to use planes as weapons, and producers will reinterview Richard Clarke, who says Bush dropped the ball. (Clarke's book, which is highly critical of the Bush team's pre-9/11 terror efforts, is in the top 10 on Amazon.)

The former president is also offering his wife the kind of help candidates don't usually get until they bring on their vice president. Bill can attack the right and mend fences with liberal activists, which benefits Hillary but also allows her the distance to stay above the fray.

If Bill Clinton becomes a hero of the liberal activists and liberal bloggers, it will be an extraordinary turnaround. Left-leaning bloggers who play a role in their party's politics usually savage him for triangulating and deal-making as president. Activists conjure him along with the DLC when describing policies that they consider too moderate, corporate, or otherwise insufficiently progressive. They have transferred onto his wife their suspicions about his willingness to deal away principle.

But Clinton's push-back against ABC over its 9/11 dramatization, which included unflattering fictional scenes about his administration, started his latest comeback. He even hosted a lunch with bloggers to plot strategy. The Fox interview is his second performance that not only attacks left-wing bogeymen but seeks to set the record straight against what liberals see as a tide of propaganda from the right and amnesia from the mainstream media. His attack on the "right wing" was an echo of his wife's famous complaint about the "vast right wing conspiracy" she claimed was out to get her husband during his tenure. Back then, Hillary drew attention to herself to help her husband's cause. Now, by defending himself, Bill Clinton helps hers.
 

5. Professor Says Senator Used Racial Slur - Associated Press

Sep 26, 3:35 AM (ET)

By BOB LEWIS

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A noted political scientist joined one of Sen. George Allen's former college football teammates in claiming the senator used a racial slur to refer to blacks in the early 1970s, a claim Allen dismisses as "ludicrously false."

Larry J. Sabato, one of Virginia's most-quoted political science professors and a classmate of Allen's in the early 1970s, said in a televised interview Monday that Allen used the epithet.

Sabato's assertion came on the heels of accusations by Dr. Ken Shelton, a radiologist who was a tight end and wide receiver for the University of Virginia in the early 1970s when Allen was quarterback. He said Allen not only used the n-word frequently but also once stuffed a severed deer head into a black family's mailbox.

Allen's campaign released statements from four other ex-teammates defending the senator and rejecting Shelton's claims.

Christopher J. LaCivita, an Allen strategist, said Allen and Sabato were not friends nor did they associate with each other in college.

"Larry is obviously relying on words he heard from someone else," he said. "We believe it's completely inaccurate."

Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, would not tell The Associated Press how he knew Allen used the n-word. He told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that he did not know whether it was true that Allen used the word frequently while in college.

"I'm simply going to stay with what I know is the case and the fact is he did use the n-word, whether he's denying it or not," Sabato said.

Allen, a Republican, has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008. Questions about racial insensitivity have dogged him during his re-election bid against Democrat Jim Webb.

Allen's use of the word "macaca" in referring to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent in August prompted an outcry. The word denotes a genus of monkeys and, in some cultures, is considered an ethnic slur. But the senator insisted he did not know that and had simply made up the word.

Allen vehemently denied that he used the n-word.

"The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false," Allen said during an interview with AP reporters and editors. "I don't remember ever using that word and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary."

Shelton said Allen used the n-word only around white teammates.

Shelton said the incident with the deer head occurred during their college days when he, Allen and another teammate who has since died were hunting on a farm the third man's family owned near Bumpass, Va., 40 miles east of the university.

Shelton said Allen asked the other teammate where black families lived in the area, then stuffed a deer's head into the mailbox of one of the homes.

"George insisted on taking the severed head, and I was a little shocked by that," he told the AP. "This was just after the movie 'The Godfather' came out with the severed horse's head in the bed."

Shelton said he came forward because of Allen's presidential prospects and the "macaca" incident.

"When I saw the look in his eye in that camera and using the word 'macaca,' it just brought back the bullying way I knew from George back then," he said.

Shelton described himself as an independent who has supported Democratic and Republican candidates. He said he regretted that he had not spoken against Allen in the early 1980s, when he first entered politics. Shelton said he began writing down his recollections as Allen's career "ascended to heights I never could have imagined."

Other former teammates rushed to the senator's defense.

Charlie Hale, a college roommate of Shelton's and an Allen campaign volunteer, said that he had hunted often with Allen, and "there was not even a rumor on the team" about the alleged deer incident.

Doug Jones, another Allen campaign volunteer who said he had roomed with Shelton, also dismissed the allegations. "I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word, nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner," he said.

Another former teammate, Gerard R. Mullins, said he recalled nothing racist about Allen.

"George had a strong personality, and I guess that's why he was a quarterback," Mullins, who is not close to Allen, said in a telephone interview.

Allen was sometimes confrontational with teammates, he said.

"He would kind of pick on everyone a little just to get a reaction," said Mullins. "From a football standpoint, if you were black or white it didn't matter. If you dropped a pass, he'd have something to say to you."

Shelton's claims came a week after a debate in which Allen bristled at questions about his Jewish ancestry. Allen later acknowledged publicly for the first time that his grandfather, a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, was Jewish, and on Monday he said both his maternal grandparents were Jews.

Explaining his initial reaction, Allen has said his mother swore him to secrecy when she told him about his ancestry last month.

Allen's father, the late George H. Allen, was a legendary football coach with the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins. Allen transferred from the University of California, Los Angeles, to Virginia when his father took the Redskins job.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060926/D8KCDGG00.html