Morning Must Reads — Past is Present on Afghanistan

In moves that will help reunite the political Left, further inflame the Right, and seed deeper doubts about the Obama administration in the center, Attorney General Eric Holder will release a mountain of details from an investigation into CIA treatment of terror detainees and open the door to criminal prosecutions of U.S. agents.

Writer David Johnston says that today Holder will make public the recommendation from his staff that cases pitched by the Bush Justice Department should be reopened. This is likely the final step before Holder taps a special prosecutor to seek out American war crimes.
Most of the coverage to this point has focused on the distracting and divisive nature of Holders’ moves for the rest of the Obama administration’s agenda – that president was looking forward and not back.

But the other problem is that as Obama expands the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Holders’ moves may make the practical application of American force more difficult. The military and CIA still rely on contactors and still use overseas detention facilities. The black-budget prisons may be closed and harsh interrogations may have been ended, but escalating an asymmetrical war while you simultaneously prosecute your own fighters may prove a tricky task for the Obama administration.

At least Holder waited for the president to leave town for a week.

“Mr. Holder was said to have reacted with disgust earlier this year when he first read accounts of abusive treatment of detainees in a classified version of the inspector general’s report and other materials.

In examples that have just come to light, the C.I.A. report describes how C.I.A. officers carried out mock executions and threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and a power drill. It is a violation of the federal torture statute to threaten a prisoner with imminent death.

Mr. Holder, who questioned the thoroughness of previous inquiries by the Justice Department, is expected to announce within days his decision on whether to appoint a prosecutor to conduct a new investigation; in legal circles, it is believed to be highly likely that he will go forward with a fresh criminal inquiry.”

Los Angeles Times – More troops needed in Afghanistan, allies tell U.S. envoy
 

Writers Paul Richter and Julian Barnes suggest that the troop request from the military for the expanded effort if Afghanistan and Pakistan may be even bigger previously expected as commanders say they need more troops to support operations in the Afghan south and many more troops to take the fight east to the Pakistani border.

Sending an occupying force large enough to take and hold the mountainous region while maintaining troop strength in the rest of the region would be a huge undertaking, requiring perhaps another 30,000 troops and the effective cooperation of the Pakistani military.

Afghan election results will be out this week and few expect a satisfying outcome. Allegations of voter fraud against the Karzai government mount, making a runoff vote between President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah the best likely outcome. Whatever the conclusion, the vote means that the Obama administration is scheduled to share the military assessment of the situation.

“NATO has warned U.S. officials that the insurgent threat has expanded in other areas of the country as well.

Officers in the north have told U.S. officials that militants have aggressively expanded their reach in the Kunduz region, where they are attacking NATO supply lines.

James L. Jones, Obama’s national security advisor, has cautioned military commanders that it might be difficult to win administration approval of a larger troop deployment.

Several prominent Republican leaders, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, believe the United States needs more troops in both the south and the east. But there are also signs that Republican support too is softening in Congress, lawmakers say.”
 

Wall Street Journal — Health-Bill’s Pace Prompts Calls for Delay
 

Sen. Chuck Schumer and other Democrats are trying to psyche themselves up for trying to pass major health legislation on a 50-vote parliamentary stunt, arguing that voters won’t punish the party for doing something so big with every Republican and perhaps 10 Democrats in the Senate opposing it.

But for Schumer the argument is that if Democrats are willing to do it, they won’t have to do it – they can scare everyone back to the negotiating table.

It’s this sort of brinksmanship that has a growing number of Democrats and moderate Republicans calling for a do-over.

Over the weekend, Sen. Joe Lieberman joined the chorus. But so did an Obama defender and friend, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. Similarly, good government types in the House from both parties have been saying that dropping the current bills and starting over is the only way to re-inspire confidence in the process.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who continues to look terrible in home-state polls for 2010, is unlikely to want to follow Schumer’s more belligerent strategy. That may be part of Schumer’s plan. If Reid is seen as blocking the way forward on health care, it could make Schumer the logical choice for majority leader after 2010.

“Other Democrats suggested that would be a bad idea. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. [Arlen] Specter said the 51-vote approach was ‘not desirable. As a very last, last, last resort, if you can’t get anything else, I would consider it.’

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota agreed. ‘When you examine the way reconciliation works, it was designed solely for deficit reduction,’ he said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ adding that the reconciliation rules would prevent substantive legislation. ‘What you are left with as the parliamentarian has told us would be Swiss cheese for legislation,’ he said.

Republicans were uniform in their opposition to using reconciliation. “We need to work together,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Reconciliation wasn’t designed to deal with an issue that is one-sixth of the American economy, he said on ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘The fact of the matter is if they use that, that will be an abuse of the process.’”

Washington Post — Heather Podesta, The Insider’s Insider
 

To get a taste of how the Obama world runs, read the gushing prose of writer Manuel Roig-Franzia as he takes a spin through the life of Heather Podesta, whose beauty, ability, work ethic, and secretly down-to-earth nature he cannot seem to praise enough.

The piece is shocking both for its sycophancy and the fact that Podesta didn’t have the sense to refuse to be profiled for a style piece. Someone making as much money pedaling influence in Obama’s Washington at a time when liberals are starting to suspect the President is selling them out ought not be jet setting for a style piece that raves about her house in Venice, her crib in Kalorama, her wine cellar, her art, her Dolce and Gabbana shoes, and her air-kiss ins with all of the power players. But Podesta seems to love the attention.

Charlie Black, she is not.

“Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name — she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider’s insider who was Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and Obama’s transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million.

Few Washington lobbyists do “The Ask” with more whimsy than Heather Podesta, a leggy 39-year-old with striking streaks of silver in her black hair, a flirty style and a lawyer’s eye for detail. In a sea of Washington gray, Podesta has a penchant for flamboyantly patterned dresses — a Brazilian number featuring the image of a cassette tape one recent afternoon. She once read one of those networking manuals and she took its advice to heart: Wear interesting clothing or jewelry to spark conversations; no matter where you are, pretend you’re the hostess.”

New York Times — Obama’s Team Is Lacking Most of Its Top Players
 

Writer Peter Baker looks at the ongoing struggle for the Obama administration to fill key posts. The problems seem to include insufficient applicants willing to endure the beefed-up vetting process installed after the Turbo Tax debacle and finding ideologically suitable appointees for jobs in the military, financial regulation, etc.

But I wonder if a shift away from traditional centers of power in favor of czars and other cross-jurisdictional authorities hasn’t lessened the focus on Senate-approved appointees.

Baker points out, though, that with Bush holdovers and bureaucratic functionaries still in key slots, Obama has struggled to execute fine-grain policy changes.

“Measuring the progress in appointments depends on what positions are counted and who is doing the counting. The White House Transition Project counts 543 policymaking jobs requiring Senate confirmation in four top executive ranks. As of last week, Mr. Obama had announced his selections for 319 of those positions, and the Senate had confirmed 236, or 43 percent of the top echelon of government. Other scholars have slightly different but similar tallies.”

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