Back to basics

Although the Whittington family surely feels otherwise, there are more important issues to be discussed or hammered than Cheney's hunting mishap. I don't mind the piling on for the administration's secrecy and lack of accountability, for its incompetence, for the real country club nature of the administration while representing itself as good-old-boys, and for constantly proclaiming itself above the law. These are crucial matters for the country and the world, and the Whittington shooting is a symbol of all of this. But its substance is less important than how these characteristics play out on more significant policy issues. For the left, there's very little that can be used from the hunting fiasco as a fulcrum against the administration except, perhaps, its ability to capture Americans' imagination. Use that. But then return to where the incompetence, lack of accountability, and so on have serious long-term geopolitical and domestic effects. These people are a real disaster.

Here's Robert Scheer in the SF Gate on Rice:

...Confronted by ABC's George Stephanopoulos with the news that fiery Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi militia has twice engaged in fierce armed conflict with U.S. troops since the 2003 invasion, was the kingmaker in the selection of Iraq's next prime minister, Rice replied sanguinely, "Iraq is a complex place, there's a lot of voices."

But as Stephanopoulos pointed out, the voice in question has been raised to offer military support to Rice's nemeses, Syria and Iran. In Syria, al-Sadr pledged to fight in "the defense against our common enemies" -- the United States, Britain and Israel. Visiting Tehran, he offered the support of Iraqi fighters in the event of an attack by the United States over the issue of Iran's nuclear program, stating unequivocally, "If neighboring Islamic countries, including Iran, become the targets of attacks, we will support them."

There is no way to soft-pedal it: The astounding rise of an anti-American firebrand like al-Sadr is an indicator of how wide and complete a political defeat pro-Western forces have suffered in Iraq. Written off by most Western observers as nothing more than a rabble-rousing irritant in the first months of the U.S. occupation, al-Sadr has more than survived his confrontation with the world's only superpower: His faction was the big winner in the recent elections, now entrenched as the largest single force in the dominant Shiite coalition. So it is that the political support of a young radical, who not so long ago was considered a wanted outlaw by the occupiers, has now determined the selection of Iraq's new leader...

...Last June, when Stephanopoulos asked Rice if she agreed with Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that the insurgency is in its "last throes," Rice replied in the affirmative citing the "elections again in December that will bring about a permanent government." Unstoppable in her myopic optimism, she now blithely ignores the results of that election and predicts "an Iraq that is a tolerant Iraq, an Iraq that will fight terrorism." In your dreams, Condi.

And here's the real symbol:

An Australian television network broadcast photographs and video clips Wednesday that it said were previously unpublished images of the abuse of Iraqis held in U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

The images were taken at Abu Ghraib at about the same time as previously published photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse, the Special Broadcasting Service's "Dateline" program reported.

UPDATE (Feb. 17th):

Here's Peter Levine on this:

If this is true (and impossible to change), then public officials are publicly accountable for their private behavior, just because it can affect the administration, the party, the institution, and even the nation that they serve. Then I think the following logic holds: Dick Cheney can affect public trust by how he acts in private. A proportion of the public strongly distrusts him. Therefore, he'd better try to increase their trust by going straight to the national press corps as soon as he has a problem and tearfully confessing his deepest thoughts on evening TV. It isn't dignified, but it's the way things work in a celebrity culture with low levels of serious civic engagement.