Abramoff's Media Pal

Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger also sees a town gone mad:

"What we have here is the dawn of the new Yosemite Sam school of national politics. Put any news event in front of our politicians now--Hurricane Katrina, Terri Schiavo, Dick Cheney's quail or this week the ports--and like Bugs Bunny's hair-triggered nemesis they'll start spraying the landscape with wild remarks and opinions decoupled from what is knowable about these events. Wait to learn the facts--as almost alone, Sen. John McCain, suggested? Why bother?

"Yes, there are matters of substance in the ports decision about which serious people could disagree, but there's not much chance of that now, not after the politicos have poisoned the well."

But to Salon's Joe Conason , this is an oily deal influenced by the personal fortunes of the Bush family:

"Bush's passionate defense of the United Arab Emirates and the ports deal inevitably raises questions -- not only about the due diligence of his administration in this instance but about his and his family's long-standing ties to the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, and specifically to the UAE's rulers. His insinuation that skepticism is equivalent to bigotry cannot deflect such concerns, which first arose in the months after the 9/11 attacks...

"Consider the Carlyle Group, the huge, politically wired private equity firm that has employed both the president and his father -- and from which the members of the Bush family and their closest associates, such as former Secretary of State James Baker III, have profited handsomely in recent years. With its sole Middle East office headquartered in Dubai, Carlyle has managed to attract substantial funding from the UAE government, which controls most of the tiny nation's oil wealth and channels that money into foreign investments. . . .

"The ports controversy could cause similar problems for Neil Mallon Bush, the president's most troublesome brother, who has become a familiar face in Dubai and Abu Dhabi."

This debate is getting really heated, as we see in this post from Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House:

"The backlash against the incompetent and cavalier manner in which the Bush Administration has handled the DPW port sale imbroglio has spawned its very own hysterical opposition -- much of it from those who should know better. And I can assure these holier than thou hysterics that the way to make friends and influence people is not by calling them bigots or questioning their patriotism.

"I don't like waking up in the morning and discovering that I'm an 'Islamaphobe' or 'Un-American' for calling the Administration a bunch of rabbit heads for the way they've managed the unveiling of this idiocy. To tell you the truth, I resent it. It bespeaks a certain kind of intellectual laziness when the best one can do to counter an argument is to indulge in an orgy of name calling and finger pointing."

At New Donkey, Ed Kilgore sees an opening for the Dems:

"It's important right now that we move as quickly as possible from that hook to the underlying vulnerability of our ports to the most critical threat post by terrorists: a nuclear 9/11. Even, and perhaps especially, from a political point of view, showing that the president who proclaims himself the living embodiment of the War on Terror can't be bothered to budget the money necessary to secure our ports is a lot more powerful an argument than highlighting his soft spot for big corporate contracts."

Democrats are looking good in the governors' races--both the New York Times and Washington Post agree, so it must be true.

NYT : "At a time when considerable political attention is focused on the Democrats' uphill struggle to recapture Congress, leaders of both parties say Democrats appear to be in a much stronger position on another pivotal battlefield this November, the contests for governors."

WP : "Republicans face a potential upheaval in the states this November, with Democrats positioned to capture a majority of the governorships for the first time since 1990 and seize an early advantage in the 2008 presidential contest."

The New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan journeyed to Baghdad to write "The Case for Staying in Iraq":

"With U.S. reconstruction aid running out, Iraq's infrastructure, never fully restored to begin with, decays by the hour. Iraq's political arena, from which the Americans had no choice but to withdraw, has dissolved into something unrecognizable, carved up for sectarian advantage and without a center to keep its parts from spinning away. In both cases, the United States may have given all it reasonably could be expected to give.

"But, when it comes to America's withdrawal from Iraq's security arena, a process that accelerates with each passing week, the only explanation can be that the White House, for all of its high-minded rhetoric about standing with Iraq, has decided not to. The insurgency continues to rage. Iraq's security forces still cannot operate on their own. And, as what was once a largely one-sided Sunni campaign of terrorism rapidly approaches something like parity (with the Shia taking up arms in their own defense), the likelihood of a civil war has surged. So, too, contrary to the delusions of war supporters and critics alike, has the importance of the Americans...

"Whether you measure Iraq's well-being through its infrastructure, politics, security, or even geography, one thing is clear: Where the Americans do not operate, very little else does. The level of corruption that pervades Iraq's ministerial orbit, for instance, would have made South Vietnam's kleptocrats blush."

Kevin Drum is appalled by the latest Gitmo revelations:

" Knight Ridder reports on the latest disclosures about interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay during the 2002-2004 period when Major General Geoffrey Miller was in charge of the prison there:

" Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday .

"Honestly, when I read this stuff I don't know whether to be more disgusted by the moral obtuseness it displays or by its sheer stupidity."

It does sound like a sad parody of interrogation.