NRO Newsletters . . . Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty
September 20, 2012
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| Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! |
| 1. The Slow and Credulous Inspector General's Report on Fast and Furious Over at the Guardian, I wrote: The initial headlines screamed the IG report exonerated Holder. That's one interpretation, although the portrait the report paints of Holder's management is deeply disturbing. Time and again, information and warnings about the operation's enormous risks flow from Arizona to Washington . . . and suddenly, mysteriously stop just short of Holder. The Inspector General's report concludes that they can find no evidence Holder knew about Fast & Furious until well after Terry's death, but . . . well, the circumstances of Holder being so out of the loop, so in the dark about a major operation certainly appears unusual -- perhaps to the point of straining credulity. The report states: "We found it troubling that a case of this magnitude and that affected Mexico so significantly was not directly briefed to the Attorney General. We would usually expect such information to come to the Attorney General through the Office of the Deputy Attorney General . . . [Holder] was not told in December 2010 about the connection between the firearms found at the scene of the shooting and Operation Fast and Furious. Both Acting Deputy Attorney General Grindler and Counsel to the Attorney General and Deputy Chief of Staff Wilkinson were aware of this significant and troubling information by December 17, 2010, but did not believe the information was sufficiently important to alert the Attorney General about it or to make any further inquiry regarding this development." Not "sufficiently important"? Baffling. Maddening. Some might even say, 'implausible.' Time and again, everyone under Holder seems to do everything possible to make sure he isn't informed about an operation that, in the words of the IG report, failed "to adequately consider the risk to public safety in the United States and Mexico." In fact, information about the program went all the way to Holder's office . . . but somehow the memos, e-mails, and other communication never got to the man himself. It's as if he wasn't there. If you want to interpret that as a subtle "empty chair" allusion, feel free. "As we describe below, we identified information regarding Operation Fast and Furious that reached the Office of the Attorney General in 2010 but not Attorney General Holder himself." Well. If you're wondering if this is covered by some sort of obscure procedure or rules, it isn't: "[Holder] should have been informed by no later than December 17, 2010, that two firearms recovered at the Terry murder scene were linked to an ATF firearms trafficking investigation.... We found that although [Holder's then deputy-chief-of-staff Monty] Wilkinson forwarded to Holder during the afternoon of December 15 three emails from the U.S. Attorney's Office providing further details about the shooting and law enforcement efforts to find and arrest the suspects, he did not notify the Attorney General of the revelation that two weapons found at the murder scene were linked to a suspect in an ATF firearms trafficking investigation. A suspicious mind could look at this strange pattern of underling after deputy after staffer not mentioning critical information, and information getting all the way to Holder's office but not seen by the man himself, and conclude Holder's staffers were keeping him in the dark to preserve his "plausible deniability." Or perhaps someone just wasn't honest with the inspector general. We now know that the best that can be said about Holder is that he was oblivious to a major, exceptionally dangerous operation going on within his organization. The most generous interpretation is that he staffed his office with professionals with epically egregious judgment in deciding what the nation's top law-enforcement officer needs to know. For what it's worth, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa wants to see a lot of heads roll, and argues that Holder doesn't have any excuses, either: "The Inspector General's report confirms findings by Congress' investigation of a near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious. Contrary to the denials of the Attorney General and his political defenders in Congress, the investigation found that information in wiretap applications approved by senior Justice Department officials in Washington did contain red flags showing reckless tactics and faults Attorney General Eric Holder's inner circle for their conduct. "Former Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer who heads the Criminal Division, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, and Holder's own Deputy Chief of Staff Monty Wilkinson are all singled out for criticism in the report. It's time for President Obama to step in and provide accountability for officials at both the Department of Justice and ATF who failed to do their jobs. Attorney General Holder has clearly known about these unacceptable failures yet has failed to take appropriate action for over a year and a half." |
2. Al-Qaeda Affiliate's Fingerprints on Benghazi Consulate Attack?
I love it when we get the truth. I hate it when we get it several days after the United States ambassador to the United Nations goes on national television and tells us things that . . . certainly appear to mislead us. The Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was in fact "a terrorist attack" and the U.S. government has indications that members of al Qaeda were directly involved, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday morning. "I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in response to questioning from Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) about the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. As for who was responsible, Olsen said it appears there were attackers from a number of different militant groups that operate in and around Benghazi, and said there are already signs of al Qaeda involvement. "We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaeda or al Qaeda's affiliates; in particular, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb," he said. The U.S. government just isn't sure yet whether the terrorist attack was pre-planned or whether it was an example of terrorists taking advantage of protests against an anti-Islam film, Olsen said. For the record, here's what Rice said Sunday -- if it's not a lie, it certainly leaves a different impression than Olsen's assessment: But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous -- not a premeditated -- response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to -- or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in -- in the wake of the revolution in Libya are -- are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there. |
3. The Bad News: We're at the Mercy of Events. The Good News: We're at the Mercy of Events
Yesterday morning a theory popped into my head, continuing to ponder the quite modest shifts in the tracking polls this presidential election we've seen so far. Mitt Romney announces his running mate would be Paul Ryan, and gets a pretty small bump -- he shaves about a 1.7 points off of Obama's lead in the RealClearPolitics average. The GOP convention generates another pretty modest bounce for Romney -- perhaps because of the distraction of the Hurricane, or perhaps because the convention's message just didn't break through, polls show Romney tied or barely ahead at best. Then the Democrats hold their convention and enjoy a solid bump -- from a tie to 3.6 percentage points in the RCP average. The week's news coverage trumpets the Democrats' message, and it works. Then in the polls finishing the week of 9/11, we're watching our embassies and consulates burn and the black flag of Islamism fly over U.S. territory, and suddenly Obama's not looking so hot in the tracking numbers: Up by one in Gallup, up by one in the AP, up by two in USA Today, and down by one in Rasmussen. So some of this might be the natural deflation of a convention bounce, but if any news event was assisting or accelerating that deflation, it was the sense of chaos and danger to Americans overseas, no? The theory is that Romney's numbers drop because of messages, while Obama's numbers drop because of events. This is pretty unnerving if you're pulling for Romney or even on his campaign, because it suggests that Republican messaging just can't move the numbers, at least not in any significant way. Perhaps the folks who the Romney campaign wants to reach just aren't paying attention -- they don't watch the news, they don't surf news sites or political blogs, they tune out the television commercials or speed through them on their DVRs. But when something happens -- not something they perceive as "politics" but something they perceive as "events" -- the sort of thing where their slightly more-informed friends might say, "Hey, did you see these bastards murdered the American ambassador in Libya? They've got pictures of his body on the Internet!" it breaks through the fog. And they get a sense something's wrong, and they feel just a little less confident about the president. Credit the Left; they have a fantastically seductive message -- "Hey, come on and enjoy this free stuff that we can get other people to vote for! Government programs can be effective problem-solvers! We can placate the murderous maniacs in the Middle East by speaking more respectfully to them, and avoid all of this horrible war stuff!" and it always beats our message. "You have to earn your own success. government programs usually create their own problems, and may not be all that effective at dealing with the problems they intend to solve. Preserving peace means preparing for war, and sometimes even that's not enough." The only thing we have going for us, really, is that their ideas don't work and they can only cover this up for so long. After a while, people notice. Somebody once said, "Mankind will learn at the altar of experience . . . and at no other." |
4. Addendum
Mother Jones editors finally released and posted the part of the Romney donor video they withheld, which can be seen here. (If you don't understand that, click here.) A classic of the genre, found here. |
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