One of my favorite Republicans is Kevin Phillips. For years, he’s turned against much of the GOP message and leaders and continues to do so in a book review in The Washington Post. He reviews both Howard Dean’s You Have the Power and Graydon Carter’s What We’ve Lost.

Kerry still gets slammed for his vote for and then against the appropriations for the Iraq war. The GOP spin the vote as against arming our soldiers. Even reporters who know his thinking behind the vote choose to ignore it and blame the candidate for waffling. Yet he has information, as Phillips points out, that could and should be used against Bush to demonstrate he’s been no friend to the soldier.

Additional shabby details show how the Bush administration sought to charge some returning troops a first-ever $250 fee to enroll in the Veterans Administration medical plan; to block expanded health care for returning reservists and National Guard members; to restrict officials of the Disabled American Veterans organization from visiting soldiers in the hospital; and to cut the extra $250 per month received by the families of combat soldiers to $100, calling the larger outlay “wasteful and unnecessary.” Besides the more than 1,000 military U.S. dead, the White House is also trying to avoid discussing the nearly 7,000 wounded, quite a few of whom have lost single or multiple limbs in attacks and explosions. Many families even face awful decisions about turning off life-support systems. The entertainer Cher, talking on C-SPAN, described a visit to Washington’s Walter Reed Hospital: “I wonder why Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president — why aren’t they taking pictures with all these guys? . . . Talking about the dead and the wounded, that’s two different things. But these wounded are so devastatingly wounded. . . . It’s unbelievable.”

Still, some of Phillips’s most stinging rebukes are directed toward the Democratic Party.: “…the phrase ‘top-flight Washington Democratic strategist’ was on its way to becoming a new oxymoron.”

The essence of Dean’s analysis is simple. His presidential campaign broke through suddenly in 2003, he writes, because so many voters had become so hungry for straight talk. The gutlessness of congressional Democrats, who provided critical votes for Bush’s programs, had worn down and disillusioned the party’s rank and file. “The Democratic Party has for some time failed to live up to its mission of being a party for ordinary people,” Dean writes. “The fatal combination of Republican cravenness and Democratic cowardice wasn’t having an awful effect solely on the U.S. economy. . . . Politics as usual was smothering the American will to believe.”

…As a longtime Bush critic with Republican antecedents, I believe that Dean is basically correct in his perceptions and in his conclusion that “when you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values — so you keep losing.” The big questions for the next six weeks are whether the Democrats have the will and smarts to change — and if so, whether they also have enough time.

That’s the story I keep hearing in gatherings of Democrats. We’ll do anything to beat Bush, but Kerry doesn’t inspire us. In fact, the challenge for liberal activists will be even greater with a Kerry win. Democratic leaders will say a Kerry win proves their cautious approach. Dental exams of gift horses are always problematic.

For the most part, the media is free. But independent?

Consider the frightening loss of diversity in media voices:

• Less than 20 percent of our newspapers are independent and locally owned.

• In just the past decade, the 10 largest owners of local television stations have tripled the number of stations they own.
• About one-third of the population now listens to radio stations owned by a single company.

Bad things happen when media conglomerates swallow up independent voices: Quality is diminished, local news and investigative journalism disappear, differing points of view vanish, community service becomes an afterthought, and jobs are eliminated. All are sacrificed in an incessant drive for ever-higher profits.

John Kerry is handed another tool with which to pummel GWB. Can he do it?

In July, a classified National Intelligence Estimate delivered to GWB said the prospects in Iraq range from bad to catastrophic. (Perhaps that’s what the president meant when he said it was a “catastrophic success.”) The estimate makes clear that even under the best of circumstances, American troops will be in Iraq and under threats of attacks for a long time.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

“There’s a significant amount of pessimism,” said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments – concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts’ conclusions – included in the document.

The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.

Of course, the White House has ignored the assessment and implies its intelligence community is out of touch.

“You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can’t be done,” Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. “And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future.”

Wonder if Kerry will characterize McClellan’s comments as evidence that this administration is out of touch with reality. It continues to raise a legitimate question about whether this administration is lying or so anesthetized by the neo-cons that it is incapable of making rational decisions.

Here’s a thoughtful piece by M.J. Rosenberg at the Israel Policy Forum. (Thanks to Eric Alterman for alerting us to it.) This idea should be Kerry’s answer to what he would do about the Iraq War. Bring about a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis and the U.S. will go a long way to proving to Iraqis that we are on their side, that we want for them what we want for the Palestinians.

[Former Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin knew that Israel’s survival was not threatened by its immediate neighbors. The peace treaty signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin was holding and the Israeli-Egyptian border was calm. Even without a peace treaty, Jordan and Israel had peaceful relations. His emissaries to Damascus told him that a deal with Syria was within reach. As for the Palestinians, they had no significant military capacity.

Accordingly, Rabin’s primary concern was over Israel’s increasing vulnerability to nuclear, biological, or chemical attack from Iran or Iraq or Islamic militants. It wasn’t the immediate circle of nations surrounding Israel that worried Rabin. It was the secondary circle — and heavily armed killers both in the region and outside.

Achieving peace with the Palestinians was part of Rabin’s strategy for neutralizing those threats. Once Israelis and Palestinians were at peace the extremists would lose their pretext for holy war against Israel; the fanatics would not be able to credibly exploit Palestinian grievances to rally support and enlist more terrorists. The central (although not sole) grievance of the Islamic world would dry up.

Those of us in the pro-Israel community may not like to admit it but the Palestinian issue remains, after 56 years, the only grievance against the West that all Islamic radicals share. Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs ruling Iran did not agree on much. But they agreed on Palestine. And, whether or not one believes Al Qaeda and the former Iraqi regime were in cahoots, one thing is certain: they both used the Palestinians as a justification of terror and hate. Osama Bin Laden has cited the Palestinian issue as a pretext since his career in terror began.

The press, led by The Washington Post reporter married to a GOP operative — Howard Kurtz, continue to focus on the authenticity of the documents used in the CBS story about Bush’s National Guard shenanigans instead of the charges that with increasing veracity seem to be true.

Even the Dallas Morning News, a Bush loving newspaper, leads its story about the Guard secretary who poses as a document expert in a way that confirms the charges.

The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard officer who supposedly wrote memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake but that they reflect documents that once existed (emphasis added).

And Nick Kristoff relates a Harvard professor’s recollection of a conversation he had with the preppy Bush.

One fall day in 1973, when Mr. Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Mr. Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.

“He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list,” recalls Professor Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Professor Tsurumi says he next asked Mr. Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. “He said he’d gotten an early honorable discharge,” Professor Tsurumi recalls. “I said, ‘How did you manage that?’ “

“He said, oh, his daddy had a good friend,” Mr. Tsurumi said. “Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it.”

There’s more good stuff in the column. It’s worth a read.

There’s also this:

Does any of this matter? What troubles me is less Mr. Bush’s advantage three decades ago and more his denial today. Mr. Bush’s own route to avoid the draft underscores the disparities in America, yet his policies seem based on a kind of social Darwinism in which the successful make their own opportunities. His tax cuts and entire outlook seem rooted in ideas not of noblesse oblige, but of noblesse entitlement

Yes, but there’s something else that troubles me. It seems awhile back the GOP was saying it wasn’t that a certain president had sex with an intern, but that he lied about it, and as Josh Marshall points out Bush (surprise!) is less than honest.

We’re never going to stop the rich getting special favors, especially when it comes to fighting wars. But Bush lied about it. And that’s what concerns the GOP. Right?

While overall, the “Analysis” piece cited below has merit, it’s interesting to note the different take on Colin Powell’s response to Putin’s grab for power. The reporters Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright state, “While Bush administration officials, such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, quickly raised questions yesterday about whether Putin’s action will strangle democracy in Russia…,” the Post’s editorial says,

THE BOLDNESS of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Russian democracy in the past few days ought to have been galvanizing to a U.S. president who has made the defense of freedom the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. Instead, the abrupt announcement by the Russian president that he intended to combat terrorism by abolishing elections for governors, and eliminating local elections for individual members of parliament, has been greeted with confused, contradictory and timid murmurings from the State Department and the White House. Distressed Russian politicians described Mr. Putin’s act as “a constitutional coup d’état” and “a step toward dictatorship.” Yet not until yesterday did Secretary of State Colin L. Powell speak out, and then only to understate the obvious (emphasis added): Russia, he observed, “is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms.”

Which is it: quick or a day late and a dollar short?

The characterization is an example of editorializing in articles. The characterization of Powell’s response is editorializing, whether it’s in an editorial or an article. And I’m not sure you can avoid it, but please members of the press, don’t deny it.

The Washington Post is to be commended for another in a series of “Analysis” pieces, this one about Bush’s agenda for democracy.

Bush wants to portray the Iraqi war as one that’s designed to spread democracy, but in fact, he turns his back on democracy when it suits him.

While Bush administration officials, such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, quickly raised questions yesterday about whether Putin’s action will strangle democracy in Russia, outside experts said the administration’s gentle handling of Putin stands in stark contrast to the president’s repeated pledges to promote democracy and freedom around the world.

“Russia is one of the leading examples of how the war on terrorism has put the U.S. in a contradictory position in the world,” said Thomas Carothers, senior associate and head of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “On the one hand, the U.S. is pulling back from democracy with needed security allies who are less than democratic, while simultaneously calling for the U.S. to push for democratic transformations in other parts of the world.”

Rhetorically, Bush has made the promotion of democracy, especially in the Middle East, a central theme of his administration. “This young century will be liberty’s century,” Bush said last month at the Republican National Convention. “By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world.”

Last year, in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush criticized past administrations for turning a blind eye to autocratic governments in the Middle East. “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,” Bush said.

But, with only tentative and belated exceptions, mostly involving Powell, the Bush administration has remained largely silent as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has slowly dismantled democratic institutions, including taking over or closing all independent national television channels, establishing dominance of both houses of parliament, reasserting control over the country’s huge energy industry and jailing or driving into exile business tycoons who have defied him.

Kerry hasn’t made spreading democracy a central theme of his campaign, and yesterday he criticized Bush’s looking away from Putin’s increasing consolidating of power.

The Post’s piece uses the GOP’s own words against the Bush blind eye.

Bush came into office deeply critical of President Bill Clinton’s reliance on his relationship with Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. “With weak and wavering policies toward Russia, the administration has diverted its gaze from corruption at the top of the Russian government, the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya, and the export of dangerous Russian technologies to Iran and elsewhere,” the GOP party platform declared in 2000.

There are, of course, more examples that Kerry could point to of the disconnect between Bush’s rhetoric about spreading democracy and his actions – or lack of them: Sudan , Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Egypt, etc. Let’s hope his ever increasing circle of handlers can figure out how to play this – and for more than 24 hours. That seems to be the greatest liability of the Kerry communications efforts. They harp on a different message every day, with no consistency and hence no sticking power. Even Kerry’s shorter statements seems to wander all over the place.

Update: Kevin Drum cites the Kagan op-ed piece this morning.

Click on photo for larger image.

”This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up” against Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

Would that be this war that we’re winning?

Paramedics and residents picked up body parts scattered across the street and put them into boxes. Anguished men lifted charred bodies and lay them gently on stretchers.