McClellan Dregs: Scotty's On The Soros Payroll

Scott McClellan is making his media rounds today, trying desperately to turn his one-day media spotlight stretch into two. And what a day it was -- over 1 million Google hits for "McClellan what happened" (that's the name of his book, in case you somehow missed it), and no fewer than 640 hits on Nexis. Super.

One of the more interesting hits was this, from NewsBusters:

Peter Osnos, who wrote Wednesday that he “worked very closely” with Scott McClellan on McClellan's new book published by PublicAffairs which Osnos founded, is a liberal whose publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and the publisher of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. PublicAffairs has a roster of authors who are nearly all liberals and/or liberal-leaning mainstream media figures, including six books by far-left bank-roller George Soros. On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Ari Fleischer related that “Scott told me that his editor did 'tweak,' in Scott's word, a lot of the writing, especially in the last few months.” In an “Eat the Press” blog entry Wednesday, Rachel Sklar asked Osnos: “Did you work directly on the book with McClellan? (Who was his editor?)” Osnos replied: “The editor was Lisa Kaufman and yes, I worked very closely with them.”

Osnos' Public Affairs publishing is part of The Perseus Group; Little Green Footballs adds that there are several companies with this curious coincidence: they have both "Soros" and "Perseus" in them, like Perseus-Soros Management LLC. (Perseus was the son of Zeus and was the lucky guy who got the task of killing Medusa, which he accomplished neatly.)

McClellan is either a smart guy who knows exactly who he's working with, which means he completely and knowingly sold out his boss and the war against Islamist terror, aligning with the hard-core lefties; or, he's an incredibly stupid guy who has no idea who he's working with and therefore can't be trusted in anything he deduces.

I'm afraid it's the former. And worse, I'm afraid he'll do OK with it all. The media blitz has no legs, but now he has signaled to academia and the media that he's safe to book. The protracted and lucrative campus tour will be starting shortly, and soon to follow will be his gig as a commentator on NBC.

A good attack on McClellan from White House counselor Dan Bartlett can be found here. I particularly like how it points out that during the run-up to the war McClellan was a schlep, the deputy press secretary for domestic affairs, without access to anything remotely "inside" regarding the planning for the Iraq war he now terms as "rushed."

But good as Bartlett's attack is, it will make no difference. McClellan has the Soros seal of approval now, so even though the media storm will not last through the week, his new career as a Bush-whacker will feather his nest ... but it won't salve his conscience. If he has one.

Dem Primaries Sinking Anti-McCain Efforts

Besides bruising the reputations of the Dem contenders, the long, bitter primary season has George Soros steaming with frustration. What could be better?

As the Dems remain focused on the primaries, they are keeping their contributions directed at their candidate, not the GOP candidate, so Soros' McCain-bashing Campaign to Swiftboat Defend America and its ally in smears the Fund for America are both hurting for dough, says Politico.

Democratic talk of an early, hard-hitting campaign to "define" and tar Arizona Sen. John McCain appears to have fizzled for lack of money, leading to a quiet round of finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and donors as McCain assembles a campaign and a public image relatively unmolested.

Despite the millions of dollars pooling around Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, anti-McCain funds have fallen far short of the hopes set in November, when a key organizer, Tom Matzzie, reportedly told The Washington Post that the "Fund for America" would raise more than $100 million to support the activities of a range of allied groups.

Matzie, who helped run MoveOn.org, was involved in the formation of both groups, and Clinton chief-of-staff [read: bag man or hit man] John Podesta now runs the Campaign to Defend America. The Podesta-Clinton connection is part of the fundraising problem:

The operative noted that the group that attacked President Bush in independent television advertisements in 2004 was run by Harold Ickes, now an aide to Hillary Clinton.

"A lot of the big Media Fund people were Hillary people, and [California billionaire Steve] ["Bing Laden"] Bing's just not going to write a check unless she's the nominee," the operative said.

Interesting. Let's make sure we all understand this Dem-think: McCain is a huge threat to all that's decent in America -- but only if he's running against Clinton. Gee, doesn't that seem to challenge the veracity of the underfunded campaigns? As if such campaigns run on veracity, anyway.

The Campaign to Defend America is covering its butt through a spokeswoman who'd deterring questions on fundraising with this disingenuous statement:

"We're not focused on the 2008 election."

It's true the Campaign began its existence with anti-war campaigning, but really, what's the difference between that and anti-McCain campaigning? Besides, check out this write-up of the group from the Center for Investigative Reporting:

A political organization financed by film producer Steve Bing has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to a liberal group running attack ads against Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

American Family Voices Voters’ Alliance gave $300,000 to the Campaign to Defend America last November, according to government filings. The Campaign to Defend America aired ads last month calling McCain the “McSame” as President Bush.

As previously reported by CIR and NPR, the Campaign to Defend America ads were financed with $1 million from the Fund for America, a group led and funded by top Democrat donors and operatives. (emphasis added)

These groups will get their funding, eventually. But it will be late, and probably not enough to fund the initial, hopeful budgets, especially if the Bing-ilk grumble through this election with an "America deserves McCain, the idiots" attitude. Given their immaturity, that's a possibility that shouldn't be summarily dismissed.

Bush Wields A Necessary Veto

As President Bush vetoes legislation that would ban waterboarding and other "harsh" interrogation techniques -- a veto Congress will have trouble overturning, news reports reveal that the usual suspects are lined up against him:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Bush often warns against ignoring the advice of U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq. Yet the president has rejected the Army Field Manual, which recognizes that harsh interrogation tactics elicit unreliable information, said Reid, D-Nev.

"Democrats will continue working to reverse the damage President Bush has caused to our standing in the world," Reid said.

Just like al-Qaida is working to damage our standing in the world?

And we can always count on Human Rights Watch for a lucid view of world events and foreign affairs:

Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch [oxymoron, anyone?], said Bush "will go down in history as the torture president" for defying Congress and allowing the CIA to use interrogation techniques "that any reasonable observer would call torture." [There they go, calling me unreasonable again!]

"The Bush administration continues to insist that CIA and other nonmilitary interrogators are not bound by the military rules and has reportedly given CIA interrogators the green light to use a range of so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, and exposure to extreme cold," Daskal said. [The horror of it all!] "Although waterboarding is not currently approved for use by the CIA, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to take it off the table for the future."

The Dems and Soros-funded Human Rights Watch would restrict all interrogations to those allowed in the Army Field Manual -- but what does that mean?

It’s easy to find what interrogation techniques are banned by in the new Army Field Manual. Obviously, it bans all the stuff we all used to think of as torture: anything that could cause death or physical injury. Think Jack Bauer.

Then, “based on lessons learned since the United States began taking prisoners in the war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, (AP, via NPR), the manual banned a bunch of other stuff: forced nakedness, hooding, sexual humiliation, threatening them with dogs, mock executions. Think Abu Ghraib.

Also included in this bunch of banned stuff attributed to the war on terror, according to the AP report: being beaten, shocking prisoners with electricity, burning them, causing other pain, and waterboarding. With the exception of waterboarding – which reportedly has been very limited in its use and very successful in its results – I know of no reports of American forces using any of the other techniques during the war on terror. AP didn't bother to attribute its charge -- so did they just make it up?

Who knows?

So what are the 16 interrogation techniques the Army Field Manual allows? That, my friends, is much harder to find out by reading the general media. My browser has been whirring, and it appears the MSM are much more interested in what's not allowed instead of what is allowed.

Three techniques were added “in response to the war on terror,” and are not unlike what you might experience if you were being interrogated by your local cops:

• Playing good cop/bad cop
• The American interrogator not identifying himself as such
• Separating those being interrogated, so they can’t collaborate on stories. POWs can’t be separated, but enemy combatants can be.

And all the old allowed techniques? Hard to find in the MSM, so let's turn to the Army Manual's section FM2.22.2, Human Intelligence Collection Operations, 384 pages of detailed, comprehensive instructions. The US Army is the best, longest-writing Army in the world!

The section on the human intelligence collection process begins with six pages on screening potential HUMINT sources, then goes into 14 pages on planning and preparing for an interrogation. There then are multiple-page sections on approaching the HUMINT and building rapport -- which does not include the MCs "softening them up," which is not allowed.

While Saddam's guys were innovating with electric chords and raping wives in front of husbands and kids, our guys are reading on "incentive approach" and even "emotional love" approach:

Love in its many forms (friendship, comradeship, patriotism, love of family) is a dominant emotion for most people. The HUMINT collector focuses on the anxiety felt by the source about the circumstances in which he finds himself, his isolation from those he loves, and his feelings of helplessness. The HUMINT collector directs the love the source feels toward the appropriate object: family, homeland, or comrades. If the HUMINT collector can show the source what the source himself can do to alter or improve his situation or the situation of the object of his emotion, the approach has a chance of success.

Attila the Hun this ain't ... although there are sections on emotional fear and emotional hate. Before Human Rights Watch gets all a-tizzy, let's repeat: emotional fear, emotional hate. In short, all of the 16 techniques detailed in the Army Field Manual are verbal techniques, and we all know that sticks and stone can break bones, but words will never hurt us.

Can we conceive of no situation where the nature of the detainee and the timeframe we're working in would require something far short of Jack Bauer but more than Maybury PD?

For our safety's sake, for the sake of the reputation of our country, and out of respect for the intelligence personnel tasked with working with foreign agents, we need more than the law Bush is vetoing. We need clear instructions for the use of limited, enhanced techniques -- and the Dems should be as interested in defining them and their use as anyone else.

Harry Reid image: Hidden Dragon Politics

Quote Of The Day: Relativism Gone Wild Edition

"If trials are held in Guantanamo by flawed military commissions, the system will be on trial as much as the men being accused of horrific crimes."
-- Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch (source)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his band of brothers buggers plotted the deaths of 2,973 Americans, none of whom were engaged in any kind of warfare with Mohammed's country or religion. He has, to our knowledge, never expressed one word of regret, other than a regret that he didn't kill more of us.

The Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, whose agenda is in significant part to embarrass America, will not rest until it has tried every trick to shift the focus from the ruthless Islamist terrorists to the American process for dealing with these dangerous, unrepentant men.

We will not be fooled, Daskal! Try as you will, you'll not convince us that Mohammed and his co-conspirators deserve anything more than prisoners of war deserve. They don't even deserve that, as they fight for no nation and wear no uniform.

Our system is not on trial, except by those who want to destroy our system, those who take their money and their cues from Soros, the world's premier America-hater and noted contributor to the Democratic party.

George Soros' World Bank Conquest

George Soros must be giddy in anticipation; his conquest of the World Bank is nearly complete, it is almost his.

All he has to do is see to the removal of Paul Wolfowitz, a man whose beliefs are the opposite of his, and install the man who he's lent one of his homes to, a man who believes, like Soros, in world government with plenty of opportunity for anti-Americanism and corruption.

The Wolfowitz part is going well. There's a 600-page "indictment," complete with its own violation of World Bank rules, since it only gives Wolfowitz 72 hours to respond instead of the five business days allowed. That was a bit of a defeat for Soros; he was going for a 48 hour response window.

Should it prove persuasive, it should be easy to get Soros' man in at the helm of the World Bank. Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan's former cover-up man, is waiting in the wings, pulling strings, calling favors and twisting arms. The WSJ opinion page summarizes Brown nicely:

The bank presidency would be a neat coup for Sir Mark, and not just because the post has heretofore gone to an American. He also stands for everything Mr. Wolfowitz opposes, beginning with the issue of corruption. Consider Mr. Malloch Brown's defense of the U.N.'s procurement practices.

"Not a penny was lost from the organization," he insisted last year, following an audit of the U.N.'s peacekeeping procurement by its Office of Internal Oversight Services. In fact, the office found that $7 million had been lost from overpayment; $50 million worth of contracts showed indications of bid rigging; $61 million had bypassed U.N. rules; $82 million had been lost to mismanagement; and $110 million had "insufficient" justification. That's $310 million out of a budget of $1.6 billion, and who knows what the auditors missed.

Mr. Malloch Brown also made curious use of English by insisting that Paul Volcker's investigation into Oil for Food had "fully exonerated" Mr. Annan. In fact, Mr. Volcker's report made an "adverse finding" against the then-Secretary-General. Among other details, the final report noted that Mr. Annan was "aware of [Saddam's] kickback scheme at least as early as February 2001," yet never reported it to the U.N. Security Council, much less the public, a clear breach of his fiduciary responsibilities as the U.N.'s chief administrative officer. Mr. Malloch Brown described the idea that Mr. Annan might resign as "inappropriate political assassination" -- a standard he apparently doesn't apply to political enemies like Mr. Wolfowitz.

In this odd couple, Soros is the loudmouth and Brown the subdued, but you can be sure their views are not far apart. Brown was a moving force behind the farcical reform of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council which, WSJ reminds us, so far has done nothing but castigate Israel. And he's at his best when he's lecturing America about the way it ought to behave.

I wasn't following this affair closely, naively thinking that if Wolfowitz is just another guy who thinks he's above the rules, then I wasn't going to burn electrons defending him. But there's more at stake here than whether he idiotically gave his squeeze a job.

He was trying to turn a powerful organization in a new direction and the forces of evil now see their opportunity to grab it back and use it for their gain. The fact that they're using corruption -- a tool they wield exceptionally well themselves -- as their mark on Wolfowitz makes the play all the more interesting and repulsive.

WSJ concludes:

If the Bush Administration now abandons Mr. Wolfowitz as he faces a decision from the bank's board of governors, it will not only betray a friend but hand the biggest victory yet to its audacious enemies in the George Soros axis.