What bilateral talks?

Not quite the dodge I had anticipated, but a dodge nonetheless. Is the U.S. engaging in bilateral negotiations with North Korea, despite it's earlier pledge not to? Of course not!

From the July 29th White House press briefing:

Q Scott, the U.S. has now had three lengthy bilateral meetings in China with the North Koreans. Are you now having direct talks with the North Koreans?

MR. McCLELLAN: I wouldn't say "now." Let me back up and remind you that we have met with the North Korean delegation and other delegations within the context of the six-party talks. It is something we have done in each of the round of talks. So I would disagree with you saying "now." North Korea's nuclear weapons program is a concern of all nations in the region. That is why the President pursued a multilateral diplomatic approach. And in terms of the bilateral discussions that are going on, those are discussions that relate to the modalities of the talks, and it's a way for us, also, to understand North Korea's position and for us to explain our views, as well. But we have had, previously, bilateral discussions with other delegations within the context of the six-party talks --

Q Oh, come on.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and this is happening within the context of the six-party talks.

What I think it's important to keep in mind, and this might be what Helen is grumbling about, is that -- (laughter.)

Q You have rejected time and time again.

MR. McCLELLAN: We have -- we have no intention of negotiating any bilateral agreement with North Korea. That approach was tried and it failed. North Korea, I will remind you, violated the '94 agreed framework.

Q What do you see in this joint statement that the two sides, or the six sides are working on?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think I'll let the Assistant Secretary Chris Hill talk about it. We want to see progress made toward the goal of a denuclearized peninsula. He's been talking about it. This is something that is going to be a deliberative, methodical process. It's going to take time, as Chris Hill said earlier today. There's a lot of work to do. But we are committed to making progress, and we think the other parties are committed to making progress in this round of talks. And we'll just have to see as the talks continue. But they continue at this point.

Q Since the first time, now, you've had three separate meetings where the North Koreans and Americans have met together alone, in private.

MR. McCLELLAN: We've had meetings with all the delegations.

Q It's the first -- pardon?

MR. McCLELLAN: We've had meetings with all of the delegations.

Q I know, but this is not -- it's not comparable. North Korea is the issue, and we have met privately with them. But we've always said we weren't going to. Why do you keep rejecting the whole idea that there's a possibility for rapprochement? There are negotiations going on, obviously. We have heard their side now, and we are telling them what we think, and so forth.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the place to negotiate is in the context of the six-party talks and with all parties at the table. All parties that are involved in this share the concern. All of us want to see a nuclear-free peninsula, and that's why the President --

Q I'm asking you a specific question. The two sides are getting together privately. Why don't you admit that?

MR. McCLELLAN: I just said it.

Q No, you only say it within -- you're so afraid --

MR. McCLELLAN: Did I not just say that? I think I did.

Q There's always a -- you're afraid to say there's been a change --

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, David. Have a question?

Q -- that's what you're afraid to say.

MR. McCLELLAN: There has been change. We're pursuing this in a multilateral format with all six parties in it, but not in terms of negotiations.

Q They just go together -- (laughter.)

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get the last word in here. Go ahead, David.

Say It Ain't So

If what Arriana Huffington suggests in the post cited in Rob's post turns out to be true, this is bad news for those of us who would like to see the Bush administration tarnished by the Rove-Plame scandal. If Arriana's right, the conservative echo chamber will be able to chose from one of two tactics:

1. It can try to distract from any accusations of wrongdoing by the Bush administration by blathering on about yet another offense of the mainstream media. I.e. Not only did Dan Rather rely on forged memos and Mike Isikoff trust unreliable sources, but Judy Miller outted a CIA agent. How can we trust these people? We can't. But there's always Brit Hume.

2. It could argue that even Judy Miller, a star reporter for that liberal Media paragon, The New York Times, felt that the whistle needed to be blown on Jospeh Wilson. Karl Rove was brave enough to blow it.

Of course, the only thing precluding the use of both tactics simultaneously is a commitment to intellectual honesty, by which I mean there is nothing precluding the use of both tactics simultaneously.

I Blog, You Decide

A cynical ploy to look moderate, or an act of conscience? From the NYT:

In a break with President Bush, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, has decided to support a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, a move that could push it closer to passage and force a confrontation with the White House, which is threatening to veto the measure.

Reformatting Terrorist Hard Drives http://www.juancole.com/

Juan Cole, a blogger and history professor at the University of Michigan, has a very good post on how terrorists come to be (and I don't say that only because he uses a computer analogy.) The gist:

You have to think about terrorists as units of hardware, on which software has been installed....The terrorists don't have a social background in common...The terrorists don't have an ethnicity in common...What then do they have in common? They got the software installed in their minds. Why? Because they met the installer, and were susceptible to his worldview. That's all they have in common.

Rick-on-John Action

I think this is a spot-on take on John Stewart in general and, specifically, his interview with Rick Santorum. The gist:

Undeniably, Stewart can rescue a lot with his tremendously quick wit. When Santorum gave a high-minded assessment of the purpose of marriage, Stewart responded, "I completely agree, though I always thought the purpose of marriage was the bachelor party." When Santorum warned of the "messages hitting young people today," Stewart came back with "Are you suggesting that talking lizards shouldn't be selling beer?" But it's a shame that such agility accompanies spineless questioning; it could equally well provide comic relief during a tough interview. Moreover, swift quipping and swift reasoning are two different things. Stewart has the ability to do the former, but not the latter. (He's still lucky--most of us have neither.) One imagines that with more preparation he could get better at anticipating the sort of fudging his political interviewees might try to pull. Instead, Stewart appears to be winging it. Perhaps the best summation of the interview with Santorum was given by Stewart himself: "I do think that these kinds of conversations are illuminating, for myself, and really only for me." It was a funny, self-deprecating quip. Unfortunately, it was also true.

Although, I must say, I was kind of touched that Stewart spent nearly the entire first segment of the interview defending the moral integrity of gay people.

Twofer Tuesday

Two sensible foreign policy shifts in one day? From the NYT:

The bilateral meeting held on the opening day of the six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis came as Mr. Hill sent several signals that the United States would take a more flexible, possibly softer negotiating line. In a statement during the opening session of the talks, he stated that America recognized the sovereignty of the North Korean government as "a matter of fact" and offered assurances that the United States did not plan to launch a military attack against the Stalinist regime.

It will be interesting to see the spin on this clear change in strategy.

Bush Administration Denies Smart Shift In Policy

From todays NYT:

The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

...

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."

This could signal a startlingly reasonable shift in policy, but apparently not:

Lawrence Di Rita, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the shift in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach."

Here's hoping Di Rita is just spinning to maintain the administration's obsessively protected image of resolve.

Best. Simile. Ever.

From Jon Chait's May 6 L.A. Times column:

Neither "Now" nor the [Wall Street Journal] editorial page are balanced, in the same sense that neither Margaret Thatcher nor Paris Hilton are virgins.

Balance Via Omission

I was struck by this sentence in a few paragraphs down in a Friday NYT article describing the efforts of Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby to prepare "the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier."

[The response] did not mention Mr. Wilson or his wife, and Mr. Libby made it clear that Vice President Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson to Africa, a notion some said Mr. Wilson had suggested in his article.

We are left to wonder what Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed actually suggested about the Vice President's role in sending Wilson to Africa and if whatever was suggested was true. This is reckless ambiguity. The Op-Ed is publicly available. To wit, it appeared in the same newspaper as this article. And there's a Senate Intelligence Committee report that could be used to verify whatever Wilson might have suggested.

In fact, it appears that Wilson gave a very accurate description of the origins of his trip. Here's the relevant passage from the Op-Ed:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

This is what the Senate Intelligence Committe report concluded:

Officials from the CIA's DO Counterproliferation Division told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President's Office and the Department of State and Defence on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon who had a posting early in his career in Niger.

Why is it important that the author point out the accuracy of Joe Wilson's article? Because this has been a key angle in the efforts to smear him. Indeed, Joe Wilson's top Inaccuracy/Mistatement according to the RNC:

1. Wilson Insisted That The Vice President’s Office Sent Him To Niger

I understand that I'm picking on one sentence from a fairly long article, but I think it's symptomatic of a larger problem: The media often chooses an empty notion of balance in place of truth. That "some said" something should not be enough to state it without qualification.