THIS MODERN WORLD

(That little riff just never gets old, does it?)

The ever-shifting rationale for the war usually goes something like this: Why can’t liberals admit that X completely and utterly justifies the cost of this war in lives and resources with absolutely no room for ambiguity?…with “X”=the latest hint of vaguely positive news, i.e., big statue pulled down, elections held without too many people being killed, etc.

Well, it looks like the American public takes a much more nuanced view of these things than the average warblugger.

Two years after President Bush led the country to war in Iraq, Americans appear to be of two minds about the situation in the Middle East: A majority say they believe the Iraqis are better off today than they were before the conflict began — but they also say the war was not worth fighting in the first place, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The January elections in Iraq have helped to shift public opinion in a positive direction about the future of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, with a clear majority of Americans (56 percent) saying they are now confident that Iraqi leaders can create a stable government — a dramatic turnaround since just before the elections.

Despite the optimism about the future, the poll suggests there has been little change in the negative public opinion about the decision to go to war. Fifty-three percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, 57 percent said they disapprove of the president’s handling of Iraq, and 70 percent said the number of U.S. casualties, including more than 1,500 deaths, is an unacceptable price.

* * *

Along with judgments about the war in Iraq, the poll found little appetite for military action against other states Bush has targeted for criticism, including Iran and North Korea. But with Iraq moving toward greater self-governance, Bush does not appear to be under great pressure to remove U.S. forces immediately — despite criticism of how he has handled the situation there.

* * *

Foreign policy experts said they found the seemingly conflicting views about the past and the future consistent with long-standing attitudes about the use of U.S. military force. For starters, Americans rank promoting democracy abroad at or near the bottom of acceptable reasons for using military force.

“People just think this is not our mission, that we should not be the democracy policemen,” said James B. Steinberg, vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. “Even though they think they [the Iraqis] are better off, they’re leery about the U.S. going out and doing these things.”

Of course, there’s still plenty here to make your head hurt:

In the new poll, 56 percent said they think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war and 6 in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al Qaeda terrorist network, which struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Also, 55 percent of Americans said the administration told people what it believed to be true, while 43 percent believe the administration deliberately misled the country.

Nonetheless:

Retrospective judgments of Bush’s decision making are far more negative that they were two years ago as events were unfolding. For the first time in a Post-ABC poll, a majority (51 percent) called the war in Iraq a mistake. On the day Baghdad fell in April 2003, just 16 percent called the war a mistake and 81 percent said it was the right thing to do.

A plurality of Americans said the war has damaged this country’s standing around the world, with 41 percent saying the U.S. position is weaker, 28 percent saying it is stronger and the rest saying it has made no difference. Two years ago, 52 percent said the war had made the U.S. position stronger, vs. 12 percent who said it was weaker.

Full story.

Isn’t that how Rush Limbaugh described Abu Ghraib?

At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.

The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy, called “closed, substantiated abuse cases” as of last September.

The new figure of 26 was provided by the Army and Navy this week after repeated inquiries. In 18 cases reviewed by the Army and Navy, investigators have now closed their inquiries and have recommended them for prosecution or referred them to other agencies for action, Army and Navy officials said. Eight cases are still under investigation but are listed by the Army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides, the officials said.

Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, officials said, showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison’s night shift.

* * *

At least eight Army soldiers have now been convicted of crimes in the deaths of prisoners in American custody, including a lieutenant who pleaded guilty at Fort Hood, Tex., this month to charges that included aggravated assault and battery, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty. A charge of involuntary manslaughter in that case was dropped.

An additional 13 Army soldiers are now being tried, according to Army officials. They include Pfc. Willie V. Brand, who is facing a hearing at Fort Bliss, Tex., next week on charges of manslaughter and maiming in the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram Control Point in Afghanistan in December 2002.

Story.

The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government’s role in producing them.

That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories — designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing — violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.

* * *

The legal counsel’s office “does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency’s role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or ‘covert,’ regardless of whether the content of the message is ‘propaganda,’ ” Bradbury wrote. “Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency.”

Story. (Washington Post — registration required.)

(A)ccording to the subscription-only Congress Daily, during a congressional hearing on child care funding in connection with the endless effort to reauthorize the 1996 welfare reform law, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said this: “The issue of child care is a Washington-based issue. It is not an issue out in the states.”

Tell it to working Americans, Senator.

(From New Donkey, via Frank Lynch.)

Zachary Roth, who reported on the “Karen Ryan” video news releases, emails to explain how it works:

Here’s what happens: a government agency (say, HHS) decides it wants to promote the Medicare drug legislation or whatever. It hires a PR company to handle all aspects of this, including making a VNR. That PR company (I think it was Ketchum, in the case of the Medicare legislation) hires another company (Karen Ryan’s company) to make the thing. Then it hires another company (often a company called Medialink) to distribute the VNR. That company distributes the VNR by paying for transmission time on various satellite news feeds, run by CNN, Fox, CBS, AP or whoever. Local stations also pay the owners of the news feeds to gain access to the stories.

So CNN, for instance, is getting paid both by the local stations who take the stories, and by the company distributing the VNR (say, Medialink). That company is getting paid by the PR company, and the Pr company is getting paid by HHS. So if you connect it all up, you could say that the government is paying the media outlets. But there are enough steps in the chain that HHS can appear to have clean hands. It’s laundering, basically.

After I exposed CNN’s role in the Karen Ryan business, they changed their procedure to ensure that they send out VNR material to local stations on a separate feed, rather than mixing it in with their legitimate CNN-produced news stories, as they had previously done. I have no idea whether they’ve kept to this.