Post Politics Hour

Don't want to miss out on the latest buzz in politics? Start each day at wonk central: The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Washington Post national political reporter and Washington Sketch columnist Dana Milbank was online Friday, March 24, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest in political news.

Today's Washington Sketch: Happy Doomsday to You!, (Post, March 24, 2006)

The transcript follows.

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Dana Milbank: Good morning, campers. The big news of the week, as usual, is to be found in the Reliable Source this morning, where the lovely Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts report both on Vice President Cheney's insatiable thirst (he requires in his hotel room 4-5 bottles of water, another two for his wife, four cans of Diet Sprite, a pot of coffee, a bucket of ice and directions to the ice machine) and yesterday's auction of the ill-gotten goods of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The "French Provincial armoire" --I'm thinking this is the famous commode -- went for $7,100. This seems scandalously cheap to me, and I think somebody at the IRS needs to be held to account for holding the auction in California and not in Washington, where many of us would have paid a premium for the kitsch value of the Dukestir's possessions.

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Norfolk, Va.: This is perhaps only tangentially political in nature, but where is washingtonpost.com headed now regarding Ben Domenech's blog? The paper today referred to his plagiarism at William & Mary, while Salon.com makes reference not only to those episodes, but alleged plagiarism in pieces Domenech wrote for the National Review and the New York Press. Domenech was reviled by many for his Ann Coulterish political posturing. The Post defended having those positions voiced. How far will he be defended while the plagiarism cloud hangs over his head and sullies the reputation of The Post?

Dana Milbank: OK, so it looks like 99 percent of the queries this morning are about this "Red America" blog and one Ben Domenech. If you somehow arrived at this chat without stumbling over the brouhaha, here's Howie Kurtz's story from this morning:

Some Readers See Red Over Post.com's New Blogger, (Post, March 24, 2006)

So let's establish a couple of things for this inevitable discussion:

1. washingtonpost.com (where you are now) is under different management from the Washington Post (where I work). They run our articles, but they have their own staff and they do their own thing. So I have about as much say over who they hire as I do over who Stanley Kaplan hires.

2. I must say I'm underwhelmed by the hysteria over having a conservative voice on the website. Unlike the paper, which has limited column inches, the website has unlimited room, and if people don't like what somebody is writing, they don't have to read it.

3. What I don't understand (although I haven't inquired) is why the website couldn't recruit somebody with more stature to do the job. This city is crawling with good conservative journalists with lots of heft. Domenech may be a smart fellow, but he's 24 years old and tells Kurtz "I'm not a journalist." I think that makes him the only "blogger" on the site who's not a journalist.

So there you have it. Please send me some questions about Stanley Kaplan's hiring practices.

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Cache Valley, Utah: Hello Dana -

I love your work and your chats here at washingtonpost.com are laugh-out-loud funny and very informative. My question is: did you know that one of your fellow reporters, Tom Edsall, called you all sorts of rude names - he had the audacity to call you rabid - during his chat here earlier this week? What's up with that? Is he just jealous or what? You want for us to take him out back to the wood shed? Just say the word...or maybe we could make him pretend to be Jim Brady and deal with the new brouhaha over that plagiarizing Domenech blogger-type person recently hired by Herr Brady. Anyway, you're great and Edsall is a back-stabbing coward and should apologize immediately.

Dana Milbank: Edsall is an acquired taste. He was, I believe, attempting to be funny, although with Edsall you can never be sure. That said, I am rabid.

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Dallas, Tex.: Good morning, Dana. Do you think VP Cheney's "insatiable thirst" for knowledge is being quenched by requiring that fair and balanced channel to be playing on the hotel's television?

Dana Milbank: That's actually just the start of it. Traveling with Cheney a couple of years back, I was amused to find Fox News playing in my own hotel room when I entered (but no Diet Sprite or Calistoga). It was also on in the press filing center, and it's standard viewing on the presidential/vice presidential aircraft.

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Boston, Mass.: I have to agree with your assessment that Domenech lacks stature. Of course, I'd consider a serial plagiarist who can't even spellcheck his work for The Post lacking a little more than "stature".

Dana Milbank: Now, now, Edsall has his problems, but there's no need to call him a serial plagiarist who can't even spellcheck.

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Bethesda, Md.: After reading your column today I feel like Sponge Brain Bird Pants with a touch of drug resistant TB. Now that I can't eat or go out in public/nature, my life will be the Post Blogs, dry packaged foods, and bottled water. Yesterday, I was all interested in having the "W" Bush Presidential Library locate in New Orleans rather than Texas with his dad's. Now, since we all can't go out anymore, I suggest the Library be put online and we can save the construction money to continue our President's efforts to "liberate" and "democratize" the people of Iraq. Good idea or am I just flu-ish?

Dana Milbank: Sounds to me as if you ought to check your temperature.

Though I can't say I entirely understand your question, it is an excuse to put in a link to my Washington Sketch from today, which is about things that are about to kill us: bird flu, mad cow disease and global warming. As you know, "hits" are very important in web world, so please click on this article frequently even if you have read it already. Also let's see if we can get it on the "most emailed" list. E-mail it as often as you can to edsallt@washpost.com. 

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washingtonpost.com: Happy Doomsday to You!, (Post, March 24, 2006)

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Washington, D.C.: If I take a Kaplan test and the SAT scores my test wrong who do I complain to at The Post?

Dana Milbank: We have set up a special email account for all complaints and comments related to test scores and Stanley Kaplan: edsallt@washpost.com

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Springfield, Mass.: For the uninformed who is Stanley Kaplan? (maybe clueless also)

I always look forward to your Live Online

Thanks.

Dana Milbank: He is a blogger on our website.

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Trenton, N.J.: It's not unusual for a president in trouble to blame the press. So far Bush has blamed the media for the war in Iraq going badly and for the slow response to Katrina, what's next?

Dana Milbank: Interesting footnote on that issue. Let's see what the Bush State Department had to say on March 8 about the situation in Iraq:

U.S. State Department on human rights practices in Iraq 

Bombings, executions, killings, kidnappings, shootings, and intimidation were a daily occurrence throughout all regions and sectors of society. An illustrative list of these attacks, even a highly selective one, could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence.

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Ann Arbor, Mich.: Yesterday we learned that Barbara Bush's large donation to Katrina recovery was actually earmarked to go into Neil Bush's mediocre software business. Couple that with her comments in Houston that the Katrina evacuees living in the Astrodome were actually doing quite well compared to their normal life, and you have a picture of a pretty nasty lady. I don't understand why she continues to have a reputation of a sweet and stately old lady associated with the Red Cross and helping people. Have you met her? What's her story?

Dana Milbank: Al Kamen did a nice writeup of this this morning:

Mired in Diplo-Gobbledygook, (Post, March 24, 2006)

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Anonymous: Dana,

You have got to be the worst at these political chats. You never discuss politics. All jokes and other BS. Any chance we can get someone who does their job to take your place in the future?

Dana Milbank: Yes, David Broder will be with you at 12:30. In the meantime please send all complaints to an email address I have created specifically for this purpose, edsallt@washpost.com.

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Dallas, Tex.: Dana,

Thanks for hosting such a great discussion.

I have a question for the press in general.

When Bush or any other politician says something so blatantly dishonest as his recent statements about never saying Iraq and Sept. 11 are related, why doesn't the press call him on it? After all you have access to the transcripts which show this was his resounding cry prior to the war.

Dana Milbank: Thank you for the second opinion about the quality of this webchat. I suspect the press has grown weary of doing these set-the-record-straight on Iraq and Sept. 11. Here's one I did a few years ago:

September 6, 2003 Saturday

Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds

Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, Washington Post Staff Writers

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

The main reason for the endurance of the apparently groundless belief, experts in public opinion say, is a deep and enduring distrust of Hussein that makes him a likely suspect in anything related to Middle East violence. "It's very easy to picture Saddam as a demon," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and an expert on public opinion and war. "You get a general fuzz going around: People know they don't like al Qaeda, they are horrified by September 11th, they know this guy is a bad guy, and it's not hard to put those things together."

Although that belief came without prompting from Washington, Democrats and some independent experts say Bush exploited the apparent misconception by implying a link between Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the months before the war with Iraq. "The notion was reinforced by these hints, the discussions that they had about possible links with al Qaeda terrorists," said Andrew Kohut, a pollster who leads the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

The poll's findings are significant because they help to explain why the public continues to support operations in Iraq despite the setbacks and bloodshed there. Americans have more tolerance for war when it is provoked by an attack, particularly one by an all-purpose villain such as Hussein. "That's why attitudes about the decision to go to war are holding up," Kohut said.

Bush's opponents say he encouraged this misconception by linking al Qaeda to Hussein in almost every speech on Iraq. Indeed, administration officials began to hint about a Sept. 11-Hussein link soon after the attacks. In late 2001, Vice President Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney was referring to a meeting that Czech officials said took place in Prague in April 2000. That allegation was the most direct connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. But this summer's congressional report on the attacks states, "The CIA has been unable to establish that [Atta] left the United States or entered Europe in April under his true name or any known alias."

Bush, in his speeches, did not say directly that Hussein was culpable in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he frequently juxtaposed Iraq and al Qaeda in ways that hinted at a link. In a March speech about Iraq's "weapons of terror," Bush said: "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."

Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions."

Moments later, Bush added: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."

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Washington, D.C.: Re: "You have got to be the worst at these political chats. You never discuss politics. All jokes and other BS"

Come on.. it's Friday, no one properly works on Friday. We all crave entertainment, jokes and BS... or something

Dana Milbank: Can't help you with the entertainment and jokes but I've got another 12 minutes of BS to go.

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Dazed, Confused, and Plagiarizing: Do Washington Post and Post.com employees share the same office complex? Which employees are given better bagels?

Dana Milbank: Excellent question. The post.com people work in Arlington. The ink-stained wretches are on 15th Street. They get bagels and massages. We have Edsall.

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Washington, D.C.: Dick Cheney drinks Diet Sprite? Ick. That document would have been much more entertaining if it had exposed his request for a carton of smokes and a fifth of Jack in his room. Oh well. A girl can dream!

Dana Milbank: I would have expected some Red Bull, given his recent speeches. But he's clearly on a no-caffeine diet. The coffee has to be decaf, too.

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Re: Bad News: Good morning.

Great article today. Makes me laugh at myself since I've already "stocked up" and have provisions stored away in my house....just in case!

My question is about this media only shows the bad news story that is going around. First, can't the media just stop with this story? Second, what do people really expect? The percentage of bad news stories vs. good news on Iraq is probably the same ratio as Katrina, Sept. 11, Tsunami, etc. Lastly, what would family members be saying, if the media decided to stop covering the war or only show pieces on the purple inked fingers?

Dana Milbank: Glad you've stocked up. I'm taking the family to Costco tomorrow for some pre-apocalypse purchases of canned goods.

The bad-news gripe is quite an old one. I did a story a decade ago for the Wall Street Journal about a good news publication called "Hope." It folded. Fact is, people don't want to read stories about how many planes landed safely yesterday.

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Boston, Mass.: My child applied to teach Kaplan's SAT prep course a few years ago. Despite her 1600 score they didn't hire her. Despite that credential they expected her to demonstrate "teaching ability" and "personality". Maybe she can blog for post.com.

Dana Milbank: As a representative of Kaplan, I am very sorry about your daughter's experience. If she is interested in blogging, please have her contact our blogger liaison at edsallt@washpost.com.

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