Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s the Cable has two recent stories doubting the ability of the President to get a new START deal through the Senate. The Rogin stories points to the real political fight that confronts a new START treaty – something that I pointed to before and something that the White House and treaty advocates have been slow to realize. In that sense, Rogin’s articles should serve as a real wake-up call, especially his latest piece on START that points out the potential process problems that could delay START in the Senate.

Rogin presents these process challenges as purely technical procedural problems inherent in Senate protocol that seem to guarantee that START ratification will be drawn out for months upon months.

The huge demand for time it would take for the Senate to scrutinize and then ratify the agreement makes a ratification on the U.S. side unlikely in 2010.

Now there maybe some technical aspects of the Senate ratification process that take up some time. But these are challenges that a functioning legislative body should be able to handle. After all, this is one of the top foreign policy priorities of the White House and it is not as if this is an entirely new treaty, as the basic tenets of any new START treaty will not differ dramatically from the previous START treaty that has enjoyed nearly two decades of bipartisan support. With a functioning Senate, this treaty gets done, and relatively rapidly. Of course, we know that the Senate is not really functioning all that well right now. But that is not a technical process issue, as Rogin presents. That is a political issue.

Rogin’s piece in fact just tips the hand of those seeking to defeat START. Opponents will seek to make the START process dysfunctional. Rogin revealed as much when he speculated that, “It’s not clear whether leading GOP senators like Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ, will complicate the timeline further by moving to stall the new treaty or jam it up altogether.” In other words, the same obstruction techniques and complaints that have been used over health care – the endless filibusters, the claims the bill is too long, that things are moving too fast, that more time is needed, or the latest talking point, that the Administration should just start over – will allow be used against a new START treaty.

These process complaints may be used to try to mask opposition. For instance, Kyl may now try to avoid outwardly opposing START, using instead Senate processes to covertly gum up ratification. Kyl knows that delaying START by even a year would be a significant setback to the entire arms-control agenda. Delaying may not ultimately defeat START, but it would effectively kill all the momentum behind Obama’s global zero vision, something that Kyl is very much opposed to.

Fortunately, Rogin’s other claim that the treaty maybe “dead on arrival,” with Democratic Senators shirking from the fight, does not appear accurate. Rogin quoted Carl Levin, saying ratifying the treaty is “going to be hard.” Indeed, it will be and if the White House and pro-treaty Senators don’t tool up it certainly will be dead on arrival. But fortunately there are significant signs of life. Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) this week gave a powerful floor speech in support of START, the Vice President has preempted conservative claims on a deteriorating nuclear stockpile, and other Senators like Dick Durbin (D-IL), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and notably Richard Lugar (R-IN) all look like key advocates in for ratification.

Make no mistake, ratifying START will take considerable effort on behalf of the White House, pro-treaty Senators, and the advocacy community. But the notion that ratification is just doomed is the sort of nonsense that Senators like Jon Kyl want everyone to believe.

Earlier this week, the anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), endorsed senatorial candidate and former U.S. representative, J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ). While Hayworth proudly touts ALIPAC’s endorsement on his website, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign claims that it’s nothing to be proud of. James King of the Phoenix News Times reports:

“J.D. Hayworth’s lavish praise for the social theories of noted anti-Semite and xenophobe Henry Ford sparked a major controversy during his losing 2006 campaign, causing many Arizonans to question Mr. Hayworth’s judgment. It is astounding that Mr. Hayworth would today accept the endorsement of a group that the Anti-Defamation League reports is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. Mr. Hayworth should immediately disavow this group’s support,” says Brian Rogers, the McCain campaign’s Communications Director…

Rogers claims some of the country’s most notorious hate-mongers support the group, including members of the National Socialist Movement and David Duke, a former “Grand Wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and one-time presidential candidate from Louisiana.

ALIPAC was quick to jump on Rogers and dismiss his comments as “offensive false information.” However, Rogers was simply citing public facts. The Center for New Community has extensively documented ALIPAC’s nativist ties, describing the group as being “characterized by hysterical fear-mongering and xenophobic, anti-Latino conspiracy theories.” The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that ALIPAC “is supported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, recently designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, and allied with various Minuteman factions.” ADL accuses ALIPAC of promoting “virulent anti- Hispanic and anti-immigrant rhetoric” and “adopting the tactics and rhetoric of racist groups and moving it into the mainstream.” Members of Hayworth’s own Party have pointed out that his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy platform cost him his House seat in 2006.

While the McCain campaign is wise to highlight Hayworth’s nativist ties, McCain has allowed himself to be intimidated by Hayworth’s hard line immigration views and has moved his own platform further to the right.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is one of Congress’ biggest Israel hawks, opposing “any attempt to pressure Israel” and worrying that President Obama doesn’t have “the right stuff to bomb Iran.” But in a recent interview with the Jewish Ledger, Lieberman offered a harmful understanding about the situation in the Middle East, rejecting the fact that the expansion of Israeli settlements is impairing the peace process:

Q: There’s been a great deal of pressure on Israel to stop building in the “settlements.” Some in the Administration and in Congress believe it is a major impediment to peace. Do you agree?

A: No, I really don’t think that the “community building,” as it is now called, is the obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Respectfully, I think the President made a mistake when, earlier in the year, as an attempt to try to engage the Arab world, he specifically called on Israel to freeze the settlements, because that had not been a specific request of the Palestinians themselves, and it led others in the Middle East to think that they could continue to pressure us. … We can’t – and in my opinion, we shouldn’t – push both peoples to do something that they don’t want to do.

The Israeli government may call it “community building,” but the U.S. government and the international community refer to it as “settlement expansion.” Settlements are one of the chief Palestinian grievances, so regardless of how Lieberman feels about them, claiming that settlements are not a major “obstacle” to peace is naive or willfully ignorant. By opposing a settlement freeze, Lieberman is disagreeing not only with Obama, but with every U.S. administration since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

The settlements stoke extremism and violence on both sides of the conflict, making reconciliation more difficult. As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes, “by entrenching Israel within the Palestinian territories, the settlements also make a two-state solution — which both Presidents Bush and Obama have recognized as a central U.S. national security interest — far more difficult to achieve.”

Under the 2003 road map, Israel is obligated to freeze settlements, including “natural growth.” After resisting calls from the Obama administration to honor its commitments, the Israeli government announced a partial freeze late last year. But thanks to plenty of loopholes in the pronouncement, 10,000 new homes could be built this year.

By whitewashing the settlement issue, Lieberman — like Sarah Palin — endangers the Middle East peace process by attempting to push U.S. foreign policy in the wrong direction.

Maybe we should show former Bush administration speechwriter/current torture advocate Marc Thiessen a little sympathy. The last few weeks have been extraordinarily unkind to his various shifting arguments about how President Obama is making America less safe.

In late January, Thiessen went on CNN and insisted that, not only is waterboarding “not torture,” but it doesn’t involve any “extreme pain” — clumsily contradicting his other claims that jihadist prisoners require extreme pain in order to fulfill their obligation to Allah, after which they can tell interrogators about all of their jihadist plans.

Then John Kiriakou, a key CIA source for claims that waterboarding got good intelligence out of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, retracted his previous claims, admitting that he “wasn’t there when the interrogation took place” and had only “relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.” Kiriakou said that the fact that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month “rais[ed] questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.” It also raises questions about whether Thiessen himself was being played by CIA sources seeking to create the false impression that torture works.

Then Thiessen’s argument that, by relinquishing “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Obama administration was leaving our defenders without tools to defend us was refuted by the revelation that the failed Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, had been giving up intelligence, and that this had been facilitated through the cooperation of Abdulmuttalab’s family, who had been flown in from Nigeria. According to a federal official, “the intelligence gained has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community,” and “the best way to get him to talk was working with his family.” Another official said that the family was willing to help “because they had complete trust in the US system of justice and believed that Umar Farouq would be treated fairly and appropriately.”

As it’s highly unlikely that the family would have cooperated if they suspected that Umar Farouk was in any danger of being tortured, this offered a clear example of how President Obama’s bringing U.S. counter-terrorism practices back within the rule of law is making Americans safer.

Then Thiessen’s claim that the Obama administration had irresponsibly bungled the interrogation of Abdulmuttalab and squandered precious intelligence by allowing him to receive medical treatment was tripped up by the fact — recounted in Thiessen’s own book! — that the questioning of Zubaydah (which Thiessen hails as a triumph of Bush administration intelligence-gathering) had been delayed so that he could receive medical treatment.

Then Thiessen published an article arguing that the Obama administration was killing too many terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan without capturing and interrogating them. Days later, top Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid.

Then Spencer Ackerman found this story, in the memoir of one of Thiessen’s former White House colleagues, of Thiessen pressuring a CIA analyst into giving him conclusions he wanted:

When Marc was writing remarks on the war in Iraq, he tried to browbeat a CIA analyst who was unwilling to state unequivocally that America was winning in the war on terror. “The president wants to say we’re winning!” Marc thundered. Just what we needed — another accusation that the Bush White House wanted to politicize intelligence.

…Which, to say the least, raises questions about the manner in which Thiessen conducted the CIA “interviews” upon which he bases his book’s claim that torture works.

Today in National Review, Thiessen claims triumphantly that “Declassified Documents This Week Confirm Library Tower Plot.” As Timothy Noah noted, the Library Tower plot was, for a time, a favorite talking point of the Bush administration, offered as evidence of their having successfully stopped another terrorist attack by waterboarding Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Unfortunately, it was subsequently revealed that the Library Tower plot was actually broken up before Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was captured.

What’s got Thiessen so excited now? Declassified testimony from former CIA chief Michael Hayden:

HAYDEN: In the early planning stage of the attacks of 11 September, al-Qa’ida leaders considered an ambitious plot that called for striking both coasts of the United States with as many as ten planes in one operation. Usama bin Laden (UBL) reportedly scaled back that plan to the US East Coast only — saving the West Coast for a follow-on attack — and UBL specifically mentioned California as a target to be attacked in the weeks following 11 September, according to detainee reporting. Operatives assigned to this plot were detained in 2002 and 2003, including KSM. Evidence suggests — as I noted earlier — that Hambali was considering pursuing this plot, and his efforts were disrupted by his detention [REDACTED] and his cell of operatives.

“Evidence suggests” that “Hambali was considering pursuing this plot.” That’s it. That’s the extent of “the plot to destroy the Library Tower.” That’s the thin reed upon which Thiessen hangs his argument that torture averted a second 9/11. As former staff director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council Roger Cressey told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, the Library Tower plot belongs in the “What if?” category — along with “What If Superman Had Worked For The Nazis?”

So yes, perhaps a little sympathy for Thiessen. He may once have had a shot at a straight-cable-movie deal for his book. After the last few weeks, it’s looking more like it’ll be available exclusively on Hannity.com, which he’ll be able to hawk from his new perch as a Washington Post columnist.

Frank Gaffney, a protégé of Richard Perle and an influential figure in right wing national security circles, has firmly entered the world of right wing tin-foil hat paranoia.

Media Matters documents the development of a new right wing conspiracy theory, claiming that the Obama administration manipulated the redesign of the Missile Defense Agency to look like his campaign logo. This theory then evolved to claims that the new logo incorporates the Islamic crescent as well:

This nutty conspiracy theory was escalated by Frank Gaffney, who sees it as explaining Obama’s rationale behind his cuts to missile defense. How so? Well because he is a secret Muslim of course, which since all Muslims are out to destroy America, means Obama is out to do the same:

A just-unveiled symbolic action suggests, however, that something even more nefarious is afoot… Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah… the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo… Watch this space as we identify and consider various, ominous and far more clear-cut acts of submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team.

So according to Gaffney, Obama hates missile defense so much that he wants to change the Missile Defense Agency’s logo to reflect his campaign symbol, as well as his secret Muslim identity? While this makes no sense, as Brendan Nyhan explains this is part of a strategy to spread fear-mongering “smears against Obama’s loyalty and false claims about Obama’s religion. As laughable as ‘Logo-gate’ may be, the underlying strategy is deeply disturbing.” As Matt Duss has noted:

Gaffney’s own past work strongly argues against taking him seriously as an analyst. As someone willing to cast deeply irresponsible and transparently bigoted accusations against the president, however, he should be taken very seriously.

Yet Gaffney is a prominent member of the right wing security establishment. He writes a regular column for the Washington Times, is a frequent commentator on cable television, and runs his own right-wing defense organization. Just this past October, at Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy “Keeper of the Flame” annual award dinner, Vice President Cheney was the featured speaker and recipient of the reward. Other guest speakers included Sen. Jon Kyl and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

By spreading this crazy paranoid conspiracy, Gaffney not only is defaming the President, he is also defaming the people who work and lead the Missile Defense Agency. The idea that the President would pay attention to an agency logo redesign or that the design in anyway reflected some secret Muslim agenda, as Richard Lehner of the Missile Defense Agency noted, “is ridiculous.” Lehner told Fox that “it isn’t a new logo to replace the official logo. It’s a logo developed for recruiting materials and for our public Web site. Also, it was used prior to the 2008 election and it has no link to any political campaign.”

Additionally, the one to approve the new logo is likely the head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. General Patrick O’Reilly, someone the right wing must now presumably believe is complicit with Obama’s secret plan to further the United States’ “submission to Islam.”