Challenging The Gitmo Study

Earlier today I posted about the release of documentation of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and a study performed by one of the attorneys representing two of the accused terrorists. Mark and Joshua Denbeaux had a group of Seton Hall law students review more than 5,000 pages of material about the 517 detainees left at Gitmo and provided an analysis which I noted in the post. That analysis raised questions about the necessity of detaining some of these individuals.

In a quick review, I read through about a dozen Summaries of Evidence. In each one, the government presented at least an argument for some act of hostile intent as shown by the presence of Paragraph 3b. According to the study, I should have noticed at least a few without such allegations. That's not a large enough sample with which to draw a conclusion, but it will take weeks at this rate to review them all. I also found that Paragraph 3c has some pretty relevant data on the status of the detainee and often makes a better case for detention than 3b. For instance, the SOE for one detainee where 3b only indicated that the detainee stayed at a guest house -- a key gripe in the Denbeaux study -- notes in 3c that the detainee admitted going to Afghanistan to receive training in order to fight in Chechnya.

In order for a study to have credibility, the results have to be replicable. That means that another group would have to spend the time to review and tally the same data that the Denbeauxs analyzed and determine if their numbers add up the same. Unfortunately, that sounds a little ambitious for one blogger. However, my good friend King Banaian at SCSU Scholars suggested to me that a blogswarm review -- such as the one that Hugh Hewitt ran for the review of the John Roberts documentation -- would work quickly through the stack of paperwork presented by the DoD.

What I propose is to have bloggers volunteer to review the data in the PDF files at the DoD link. We need to tally the SOEs to see how many include allegations of hostile acts, the type of affiliation for each detainee, and whether the SOE included mitigating information (found in Paragraph 4). Rather than look just for 3b, we need to review all of Paragraph 3 for the complete context of the threat presented by each detainee, at least according to the SOE.

If you are interested in participating, send me an e-mail with the subject "Gitmo project". I have four large PDFs that need reviewing and tallying. I would also like to have the 53 sets of CSRT documentation reviewed for any interesting tidbits that either support or oppose detention of the detainees involved. I will have a small Excel file for the calculations involved that I will send to each volunteer, or a format for a text file for anyone who doesn't have Excel.

I will list the bloggers and their links who volunteer for this project on this post. Let's see what we can find out in our own review and determine whether that matches up with the Denbeaux study.

UPDATE: A big thanks to Glenn for linking back to this post. I have a number of volunteers already, but we can use more to go through the CSRT sets. I'm putting together the instructions for the project to those who have volunteered so far. I will have multiple passes through the SOEs to ensure we get an accurate review.

UPDATE II: We have a number of volunteers now, and the effort should get well under way today. There are three types of files at DefenseLink -- ARB Transcripts, ARB Factors (which have the SOEs), and the CSRTs. In order to ensure that we mitigate any bias, the SOEs will be reviewed by three bloggers each and their results averaged.

Remember, we're not here to prove a study wrong -- we're here to see if the numbers are replicable and all of the information got included in the original study.

The CQ Blogswarm Study Group consists of these volunteers:

ARB Factors, Vol 1: Shawn Beilfuss, Bob L, Laura Curtis (Dummocrats and Gitmo Cookbook)

ARB Factors, Vol 2: Jon from Canada, Dixie68, Slightly Loony at JamulBlog

ARB Factors, Vol 3: Thomas Morrissey (no relation!), Rodney Graves, Freeper Bad Company

ARB Transcripts #1: Russ Emerson
ARB Transcripts #2: Jason
ARB Transcripts #3: Gary Gross
ARB Transcripts #4: CQ reader Ed

CSRTs --

Set 1: Jay
Set 2: CQ reader BD
Set 3: Arthur Kimes
Set 4: Christian Johnson
Set 5: Kaitian
Set 6: Anonymous2
Set 7: KGS59
Set 8: Duke DeLand
Set 9: Stephen St. Onge
Set 10: Texas Cowgirl
Set 11: David Chapelle (MD NG Ret.)
Set 12: Yetanotherjohn
Set 13: GM Roper
Set 14: Antarctic Lemur
Set 15: Robert Byers
Set 16: Anonymous1
Set 17: Richard Campbell
Set 18: Weight of Glory
Set 19: Mary Beth Buckner
Set 20: Ric James
Set 21: Streiff
Set 22: David Zincavage
Set 23: Greg McComas
Set 24: Pete Peterson
Set 25: Nathan Bradford
Set 26: Suitably Flip
Set 27: St. Wendeler
Set 28: Dafydd ab Hugh
Set 29: Thomas Morrissey
Set 30: Levi from Queens
Set 31: Mick Stockinger
Set 32: Gina Cobb
Set 33: Matt Adinaro
Set 34: Allen Thorpe
Set 35: Rodney Graves
Set 36: Rick Calvert
Set 37: David Zincavage
Set 38: Pierre LeGrand
Set 39: Suitably Flip
Set 40: David Zincavage
Set 41: Kane Rogers
Set 42: Crusader Rabbit
Set 43: Fred Fry
Set 44: Commander Salamander
Set 45: Katie Carroll
Set 46:
Set 47: Rodney Graves
Set 48: Thomas Morrissey & Rodney Graves
Set 49: Thomas Morrissey
Set 50: Thomas Morrissey
Set 51: Chuck Allen
Set 52: Chuck Allen
Set 53: Chuck Allen
Set 54: Streiff

Glass Houses Who Need Stones Are The Luckiest Glass Houses

When one uses a blog to scold people for a lack of education, it's best to ensure that the post has been thoroughly checked for spelling and grammar. This lesson apparently escaped Barbra Streisand, along with most of the English classes she attended, according to Beautiful Atrocities:

"Over the last 5 years, Bush's leadership has resembled that of a dictatorship. The arrogance of this C student [Bush has Harvard MBA, Streisand has high-school education] who maligns his opponents’ crediblity [sic] by calling them flip floppers, is the biggest flip flopper himself! When debating Al Gore during the 2000 presidential elections, Bush spoke against nation building, yet went into Irag [sic] a year later [sic] to national build [sic]…"

Here's a sample of this same rant by the critic of Bush's intellect:

The party that holds the majority in both the House and the Senate controls the entire congressional agenda. Everything from what bills are considered, to how long committees debate them, to whether bills get reported out onto the floor, and finally whether a vote gets scheduled, is all determined by the leadership of both the House and the Senate. In the past, there have been instances when members of congress, in their oversight of the President, were courageous enough, regardless of their party affiliation, to step up to their constitutional obligation to be a check and balance on the White House. In the 1970’s, during the Nixon Adminstration, serious political curruption arose and the Republican leadership stepped up and took responsibilty by holding hearings and subpoening administration officials. Eventually, the President was forced to resign rather than face impeachment preceedings that likely would have been successful. It is clear that today's Republican Congressional leaders are not prepared to hold this President accountable. Therefore, it’s critical that people elect members of the Democratic party to the House and Senate so that a new leadership can take control. Only if this occurs,[comma fault] can we even begin to imagine a time when there will be a myriad of investigations so desperatly needed on so many issues…let alone the ultimate investigation which would involve the conduct of the President of the United States and the determination of whether his actions warrented impeachment proceedings.

Streisand should either avoid criticizing anyone on the basis of their education, or she should hire an editor with a passing familiarity with the English language.

(via Michelle Malkin)

Iraq: No Timetable

The president of Iraq stated that American forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to ensure stability, undercutting arguments that the Iraqis want the Americans out:

President Jalal Talabani on Saturday underscored the need for a unity government in Iraq after a spasm of sectarian killing and said he had been assured U.S. forces would remain in the country as long as needed — "no matter what the period."

His comments came after a bomb exploded at a minibus terminal during morning rush hour in a southeastern Baghdad suburb, killing seven people and wounding 25, one of a string of explosions in the capital and elsewhere. ...

Talabani spoke to reporters after meeting with Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command.

The terrorists in Iraq want to drive the US out of Iraq in order to destabilize the new Iraqi security forces and initiate a dissolution of the civilian authority, including the presidency of Talabani. This strategy represents the last chance that the terrorists have of succeeding in Iraq, having failed to stop the last three elections and the creation of a constitutional government. The Zarqawi lunatics see their opportunity rapidly dissipating in Iraq and have exploithed the traditional Sunni-Shi'ite tension to touch off a civil war.

The problem is that the Iraqis didn't bite after the destruction of the Askariya mosque. The violence that resulted from that attack limited itself to the radicals on both sides and quickly settled down, and even the damage reported from the reprisals turned out to be somewhat exaggerated. The prospects for civil war certainly still exist, but having suffered through the first shock of the Askariya attack and remained united, Iraq may have inoculated itself somewhat t further provocations.

Talabani understands that the US has to show leadership on this issue. If we are seen to be retreating after the terrorist attacks, Iraqi confidence in the new government will collapse and people will start cutting deals with those who promise to wield the most power in the aftermath. We cannot abandon Talabani and the Iraqis to that fate.

Do The Gitmo Detainees Have A Case?

The Pentagon released its documentation on the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after a lengthy court battle to keep the information classified. The DoD released transcripts of the tribunals for each of the detainees rather than a list of those held at the prison:

After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon released documents on Friday that have the names of detainees at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay.

The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of having links to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the names would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and their families. The release resulted from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at Guantánamo Bay, but no complete list was given, and it was not immediately clear how many names the documents contained. In most of the transcripts, the person speaking is identified only as "detainee." Names appear only when court officials or detainees refer to people by name.

Those transcripts have also been released to the public on the DoD website. This is a massive download of data, much of it filled with correspondence between various parties regarding the detention of the prisoners rather than the reasons for which they were detained. The sheer volume of data appears daunting, and it will take me a rather long time to sift through it.

One group, however, claims to have already done so prior to this latest release (the documentation had previously been released with the detainee names redacted). Professor Bainbridge notes that the Social Science Research Network has published a study by two attorneys, Mark Denbeaux and Joshua Denbeaux, which dissects the government stipulations in the tribunal record for each detainee in order to determine the evidence for detaining each individual. The professor notes their conclusions:

1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed "fighters for;" 30% considered "members of;" a large majority - 60% - are detained merely because they are "associated with" a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners, a nexus to any terrorist group is not identified by the Government.

4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.

5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.

These conclusions seem rather startling, and for the most part they support them in the text of the report (available for download from SSRN). The conclusions do not tell the entire story of the report, however. For instance, the statement that only 8% of the detainees are "al-Qaeda fighters" does express the data within their study, but fighters only comprise part of the threat that the terrorists wield against the US. "Members" and especially leadership are at least as important, if not more so. Only 18% have no affiliation with either the Taliban or AQ, but it does call into question why those 18% still remain at Guantanamo.

The Denbeauxs also raise interesting questions about the thresholds for membership and affiliation. Starting on page nine, the study notes:

The definition of “fighters for” would seem to be obvious, while definitions of “members of” and “associated with” are less clear and could justify a very broad level of attenuation. According to the Government’s expert on al Qaeda membership, Evan Kohlman, simply being told that one had been selected as a member would qualify one as a member:

Al-Qaeda leaders could dispatch one of their own — someone who is not top tier…to recruit someone and to tell them, I have been given a mandate to do this on behalf of senior al-Qaeda leaders… even though perhaps this
individual has never sworn an official oath and this person has never been to an al-Quaeda training camp, nor have they actually met, say, Osama bin Ladin.12

This expansive definition of membership in al Qaeda could thus be applied to anyone who the Government believed ever spoke to an al Qaeda member. Even under this broad framework, the Government concluded that a full 60% of the detainees do not have even that minimum level of contact with an al Qaeda member.

Another finding of interest is that only 45% of the detainees committed a hostile act against the US or its affiliates, at least according to the tribunal records. The Denbeauxs note that hostile acts get listed in Paragraph 3b of the Summary of Evidence for each detainee. Of the records reviewed, the average number of subparagraphs to 3b is two, meaning that the Gitmo detainees have an average of two distinct hostile acts associated with their detention. However, since 55% do not have a 3b, the Denbeauxs surmise that over half of the Gitmo detainees have no record of such an act.

It's important to remember that the nature of this war doesn't allow for clear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, thanks to the nature of the terrorist groups attacking us. The fact that civilians get swept up into the net can be blamed directly on AQ, the Taliban, and others who hide themselves within civilian populations. That is why the Geneva Convention does not provide prisoner-of-war rights to such groups.

However, that also means that we need to be very careful about those who do get caught in that net, and make sure that we detain the truly dangerous. In the absence of a counterargument from the DoD, the study does cast doubt on the assertions that everyone at Gitmo presents a clear and present danger to the US and its allies. I hope that, after the release of this material, Defense will shortly address these issues and give a clearer understanding of why some of these detainees must be held.

UPDATE: CQ reader Ed (not me) makes a good point that I didn't include; Mark Denbeaux represents two of the Gitmo detainees. I'd encourage people to download and read the report from SSRN for themselves. When last I checked, only 36 people had done so.

Eight For The Duke

A federal judge in San Diego gave Randy "Duke" Cunningham eight years in prison for bribery, tax evasion, and mail and wire fraud for his corruption as a Republican Congressman and influential member of House committees on defense. Cunningham pleaded guilty and hoped to avoid the ten-year maximum allowed under his plea deal:

U.S. District Judge Larry Allan Burns in San Diego spared the disgraced Republican lawmaker the 10-year maximum sentence sought by prosecutors, the maximum available under a court-approved plea agreement, but ordered the longest term ever given to a congressman.

Cunningham, who was taken into custody immediately, also was ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution. ...

In November, Cunningham admitted to federal charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and income-tax evasion, acknowledging he underreported his income in 2004. He resigned from Congress after his guilty plea, and in a tearful statement to reporters at the time, said he planned to make amends for his actions, saying he had known "great joy and great sorrow" in his life, and that he now knows "great shame."

Federal prosecutors said Cunningham "demanded and received" bribes from defense contractor Mitchell Wade, founder of MZM Inc., in exchange for official favors. They said Wade also let Cunningham live rent-free on his yacht, the Duke Stir, at the Capital Yacht Club, and that MZM Inc. donated generously to Cunningham's campaigns.

Wade isn't off the hook yet, either. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery and faces a possible 11-year sentence.

This scandal painted the GOP into a tight corner, along with the Tom DeLay indictment and lesser controversies, and will undoubtedly be an issue in the midterm elections. Republicans will not have much of a response, other than to say that Cunningham's actions were his own, and he's paying for them now after having been caught. The impulse will be to point at William Jefferson, the New Orleans Democrat who not only has been the subject of a federal corruption investigation but also misappropriated emergency-relief resources in the middle of Hurricane Katrina to pack up his belongings and move them out of the city. The Democrats will counter with Jack Abramoff, the Republicans will note the connections between Abramoff and Harry Reid ... and so on.

The truth is that power corrupts in the absence of well-managed rules and regulations, and due to the separation of powers, the responsibility for watching Congress falls mostly to Congress itself. This body has done a poor job over the last several decades in fulfilling those responsibilities. The Republicans for the past decade have kneecapped the committees on ethics, at least in part because the Democrats in charge before that abused the ethics committees as partisan attack vehicles. Under these conditions, corruption like that exemplified by the Duke flourishes, and it seems that neither party wants to put aside momentary partisan advantage to stop it.

Maybe voters should insist on making that the issue of the midterm elections.

The Gray Lady Gets It (Mostly) Right

As much as we use the editorial board at the New York Times as a punching bag on this blog, and deservedly so, we have to note when the get the big issues right -- and today is that day. The Times makes an excellent argument today on aid to the Palestinians that could have been written here, with one minor exception:

America cannot bankroll a Hamas government that preaches and practices terrorism, denies that Israel has any right to exist, and refuses to abide by peace agreements signed by previous Palestinian governments. That should be blindingly obvious. America is engaged in a global armed struggle against terrorism. It is firmly allied with Israel and is committed to Israel's survival.

Hamas won the recent Palestinian election fair and square. American officials, who say they are so forcefully committed to the cause of expanding democracy in the Middle East, should not even entertain the idea of doing anything to try to somehow undermine the results and install a different government. But that does not mean continuing to provide the subsidies that help pay for the Palestinian police, civil servants and other employees.

The Palestinian Authority is having a genuine financial crisis, but it is not America's responsibility. Continuing United States subsidies while Hamas is in power will not move the region one step closer to a fair and sustainable peace.

Of course, this is completely correct. The extension of aid to the Palestinians after their selection of a terrorist group as their government would be seen as a capitulation to Hamas and to terrorism in general. Such an action would underscore the supposed inevitability of radical Islam taking over Southwest Asia, and in fact would grant sustenance to the enemy of our greatest ally in the region.

The Times, however, does not go far enough. The editorial argues that the funds should instead be redirected towards NGOs that would somehow bypass the PA and get American money into the hands of the people ... the very same people that elected Hamas to power in a free and fair election, as the Times admits. This makes the situation different than in Saddam's Iraq, where a dictator forced himself on a prostrate people and we wanted to do our best to assist them. No one forced Hamas on the Palestinians; indeed, they seemed delighted to elect the terrorists into power, as they have every time Hamas has fielded candidates.

Why should people who support terrorism, in free and fair elections, see one dime of American money? These are the people responsible for handing the PA to the terrorists. They should understand not just on a diplomatic level but also on a personal level that their choice has consequences. Let Hamas feed and shelter them -- that's what Palestinian apologists claimed as the primary reason for their popularity. They chose Hamas over the goodwill of the world; let's take them at their word.

The editorial also goes astray when arguing for the continuation of tax transfers:

Washington should continue to press Israel to resume turning over to the Palestinian Authority the Palestinian tax and customs funds that Israel collects on the authority's behalf. This is not aid, but the Palestinians' own money.

Fine. But first, Israel should deduct the cost associated with the intifadas and suicide bombings, starting with Oslo, and apply it to repairing the damage and building the wall to separate Israel from the Palestinians. Then the monies should be held in escrow for the victims and their families of these terrorist attacks so that the Palestinians can compensate them for their suffering and medical expenses. Israel can also deduct the cost of providing security along the border due to the continuing efforts of Palestinians to attack Israeli citizens. Whatever's left over after that, the PA can keep.

Or, if that doesn't work, try this scenario: Israel will transfer the entire tax money for every month without an attack by Palestinians against Israel, by anyone -- Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, or the Ramadi Rotary Club. In any month with an attack against Israel, the tax monies revert back to Israel. Permanently. Let the Palestinians know that the Triangle Offense will have its consequences, too.

The Times unfortunately waters down its strong stand with these attempts to appease a people bent on a war of annihilation -- indeed, who voted overwhelmingly for one. However, it is surprising and refreshing to see them take the correct stand against terror and the people who vote for it.

Great Moments In Advertising

As I drove the First Mate home from her dialysis session on Wednesday evening, I almost drove off the road when I passed a billboard along the highway outside of the office. It was so peculiar that I took my camera along today when I picked her up and took a picture of the advertisement:

What the hell is "Mr. Happy Crack"? What advertising genius thought that sounded like a good name for a corporate mascot? I read the sign to the FM, who needed a good laugh. We speculated on all of the products or services that might best be represented by a Mr. Happy Crack mascot, and no profession we could imagine would need or want to put up a billboard avertisement.

I'm sure the company itself is a fine establishment with an excellent staff and great customer service ... but I find it hard to believe that they can utter the company motto ("A dry crack is a Happy Crack!") with a straight face.

UPDATE: I'm informed by CQ reader Leo T that Mr. Happy Crack is already something of a cultural phenomenon. I guess this is what I get for watching the news instead of Jay Leno.

AP Plays Emily Litella

The AP started a firestorm with its report that transcripts from emergency meetings somehow proved George Bush lied when he said that no one imagined the levees around Lake Pontchartrain would be breached in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After its report got picked up by every news source in the US, and after the discovery that these transcripts and videos never contained any warnings about breaches, the AP has finally decided to actually read the transcript and watch its video:

Clarification: Katrina-Video story

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

So on a Friday night, the AP finally decides to issue this half-hearted retraction -- after its clients have run what turned out to be an entirely false story for most of the week. The AP has, over time, drifted from its initial mission to report news and instead has embraced partisan cheapshotting. Any editor who actually reviewed the video or read the transcripts would have immediately realized that no one talked about levee breaches at all. This vaunted system of editors and fact-checking at Exempt Media outlets failed yet again, and yet again the hack job that emerged was intended to damage George Bush.

This pattern looks all too familiar.

UPDATE: I got this from a media source who noted it hadn't been released through AP's web service as yet. Keemo points us to Drudge, who also posted it.

UPDATE II: CQ reader and frequent source River Rat notes that the AP still engages in some dishonest vocabulary in its clarification:

They are replacing the verb "breach" with the verb "overrun" which means: 1 a (1) : to defeat utterly and occupy the positions of : OVERWHELM, OVERPOWER, CRUSH (2) : to invade and occupy or ravage b obsolete : to run over destructively or harmfully : run down c : to spread or swarm over The word used in all of the briefings was "overtop" or "top" as a diminutive form thereof. Overtop means. 1 : to rise above the top of : exceed in height : tower above

Definitions are Merriam Webster Unabridged. They are still using misleading language and really should be renamed, Agitprop Pravda.

Good point.

If They Can't Make It There ...

Air America Radio has struggled since its inception on almost all fronts -- financial, creative, and access. In its early days, AAR found itself shut out of the lucrative Los Angeles and Chicago markets for a period of time due to financial shenanigans that resulted in a $1.5 million lawsuit for unpaid leased air time. Now it looks like AAR has failed to maintain itself in the #1 radio market, New York City, where its political orientation should have created its best success. Brian Maloney has the details:

While Air America Radio's loss of two affiliates in Phoenix and Missoula, Montana is generating news this week, the company itself probably hasn't been able to give either city a second thought.

Why? In a development sure to rip the heart right out of the liberal radio network's already ailing body, it appears extremely likely their leased New York City flagship station WLIB-AM will soon abandon Air America programming.

Even worse, litigation looks probable over the station's lease.

While the network's last day on WLIB isn't known for certain, an internal source providing backing documentation points to the end of March. At this time, Air America parent Piquant LLC has no firm back-up plan for where in the nation's largest radio market its programming will now air.

Some inside the firm are already referring to WLIB in the past tense.

Without WLIB, Air America faces an immediate, crushing blow. Worth perhaps 100 small markets combined, an on-air presence in New York City is absolutely vital to the company's survival. If an immediate and suitable replacement isn't found, the consequences would be dire.

Maloney quotes an inside source that has provided him with accurate information in the past, and says that the AAR partner in New York has suddenly decided to part ways with Piquant Media. Maloney speculates that AAR may have returned to its track record of missing payments for leased air time. Read all of his post for the details.

Brault Capitulates

Yesterday, key Adscam figure Jean Brault pleaded guilty to almost all of the charges filed against him but curiously chose to fight the conspiracy charge that remained. This curious legal strategy intrigued the Canadian press, who discovered that he did not get a deal from prosecutors in exchange for the plea:

Jean Brault, an advertising executive who founded Groupaction Marketing, has pleaded guilty to five of six fraud-related charges against him in the sponsorship scandal.

Brault is one of three high level executives who face charges in the scandal.

Brault pleaded not guilty to the remaining charge of conspiracy and will go to trial on that charge at a later date.

Brault did not seek a plea bargain, said his lawyer, Jacques Dagenais.

"There was no bargain,'' Dagenais told the Canadian Press after the court appearance. "As you can see the charges are all there.''

This seems rather strange. Why plead guilty to all of the other charges without any agreement on sentencing while planning on fighting the one charge left standing? Why not just fight them all?

No matter how strange that legal strategy may seem, it still doesn't get worse than that chosen by Chuck Guité. The other co-defendant in the indictment told the court yesterday that he planned to represent himself. Guité explained that he cannot afford an attorney for his defense. After all of the information that the Gomery report has found, Guité probably can't afford not to have an attorney.

On the other hand, given the light sentence that Paul Coffin got -- two years in the community and a commitment to speak out on ethics -- perhaps neither of them particularly worry about the adverse consequences of their decisions. Canadian courts do not seem to take corruption very seriously.

Other Than That, He Seemed All Right

CNN published an interview with the managers of a flight school here in Eagan, MN -- CQ's home port -- that tipped the FBI to Zacarias Moussaoui and his bizarre behavior. Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims describe Moussaoui's behavior in terms that hardly paints the al-Qaeda operative as a James Bond type:

He spoke fluent Arabic but rusty English. He had plenty of cash, but didn't seem like the playboy type. He said he wanted to learn to fly a jumbo jet simply to impress his pals.

But when al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui asked a flight instructor how to turn off the oxygen and transponder on a jet, two managers at the flight school had a hunch something was up.

That hunch may be the reason that Moussaoui -- the only person indicted in the U.S. in connection with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- is awaiting a death penalty trial next week.

The managers -- Hugh Sims, 65, and Tim Nelson, 45 -- said they saw red flags before Moussaoui even showed up at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, 29 days before the attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and left a smoldering hole in the Pentagon.

Red flags? Moussaoui acted more like Inspector Clouseau on an undercover operation. He set himself up as a British businessman when he first contacted the flight school, but his e-mail messages were filled with grammatical errors. When Syrian flight students came in contact with Moussaoui, he spoke with them in fluent and obviously native Arabic -- hardly a smart idea for someone traveling with a French passport and a cover as a Brit. (The Syrians told Sims and Nelson that Arabic was definitely Moussaoui's first language.) He paid in cash and attempted to pass himself off as a rich dilettante, but showed up to the school in cheap clothing. Finally, before Moussaoui had spent much time training on the simulator, he started asking about the procedures for cutting off the oxygen to the passenger cabin and disabling the transponder system.

These red flags bothered both managers enough to the point where they made separate calls to the FBI on the same day, at the time unbeknownst to one another. The next day, the FBI arrested Moussaoui, but thanks to the FISA laws and the reluctance to challenge the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence work, the FBI didn't impound and inspect Moussaoui's computer until after 9/11.

In the end, one has to wonder how Moussaoui managed to keep from getting caught as long as he did. Had we understood the kind of threat we faced prior to 9/11, his capture could have -- and should have -- rolled up the entire AQ operation. On one hand, it's comforting to know that this represented the best personnel AQ could muster even before we started fighting back. On the other hand, it's dispiriting to know that we had this strong of an indication of trouble and we had handicapped ourselves to the point where we could not connect the rest of the dots.

Live Chat With CQ

Given that I'm feeling under the weather today and am trying to recover from a nasty cold, I though this might be a good day to try a live chat for CQ readers. I'll be discussing any topic that interests those who join the session, which will run from 1 - 2 pm Eastern time. I'll be hosting this chat on AOL Instant Messenger, so if you want to join, either leave your screen name in the comments of this post or send it to me in an e-mail with the subject "CQ Chat" (so I can find it easily). I'll invite you to the chat as soon as I start setting up the chat.

If I can figure out how to do it, I'll post the session as an update to this post.

UPDATE: The chat room title is "CQ Chat", but I think I still need to invite people to it. If you are interested, be sure to post your AIM screen name in the comments or on e-mail.

UPDATE II: Well, that didn't work. I had trouble with my end of the chat, and it wound up being a frustrating experience for the one hardy soul who tried to make it work. When we do this again, I'll give a lot more warning and make sure everything's working properly.

Kurtz On Katrina

Howard Kurtz reviews the raging storm over the media coverage on Katrina and the supposedly new revelations that Bush was somehow warned about levee breaches without the word "breach" ever being mentioned. He also notes that the "newly uncovered" video footage actually had been in the possession of all the networks for months:

Since the AP released the videotaped Katrina meetings, liberals have been ripping the president for claiming he didn't know the extent of the devastation in those crucial early hours.

This is in no way a defense of the absolutely awful administration response to the hurricane, but the tape doesn't quite show Bush being told the levees were breached or were about to be breached. A government official named Max Mayfield says there is great concern "whether the levees will be topped or not," which is still a huge deal, but not a full-scale breach.

In fact, we've already had transcripts of the meeting, so all this did was provide television with some much-needed pictures. (In fact, all the networks had the FEMA video in their archives but didn't realize the news value.)

NBC's Lisa Myers yesterday obtained a videotape of another meeting in which Brownie--who's been blaming just about everything on the White House and Chertoff--said Bush was "really engaged" and "asking a lot of good questions." On that tape, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blano reports that the New Orleans levees had not been breached.

Kurtz stops short of actually concluding that this is a non-story, declining to give an opinion on the matter despite being a media critic. However, he does point out the essential problems in this story and provides links to various voices in the media and blogosphere, including CQ. He includes in these links, but not in his preface, the fact that Governor Kathleen Blanco told Bush on the 29th -- in response to his direct question -- that the levees had not been breached. The AP now has the videotape of that sequence, something they left out of their initial reporting. I noted this yesterday when I compared the AP report to that of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Rather than being distant and uninterested, Brown says that the president had been very engaged, calling him twice on the morning of the 29th before the meeting started at noon for updates -- and it was Bush who brought up levee breaches first, responding to media reports, and he got bad information from Blanco herself.

For anyone interested in media critique, Howard Kurtz is always a must-read; his column provides an invaluable look at what the media considers the hot controversy of the moment, and he is one of the few establishment media critics to engage the blogosphere.

Visiting TortureWorld

Michael Totten has returned from a trip to Iraq, where he toured one of Saddam's torture facilities -- this one apparently specifically designed for Kurdish victims. He posts several pictures (work safe) and writes eloquently about his experiences:

Suleimaniya is the most liberal city in Iraqi Kurdistan, partly because of its long-standing and deep ties to nearby Iran, one of the most culturally liberal countries in the Middle East. The Iraqi Kurds I met who have been to Iran wanted me to know – and they want you to know, as well – that the distance between the Iranian people and their hideous regime is galactic. I heard the same refrain over and over again: "Persians are just like us." In other words, they are liberal, secular, pro-Western, and fed up with tyrants. "Iranians love America," the Kurds told me. "They have nothing to do with Ahmadinejad."

All the way back in 1973 Moula Mustafa Barzani, the famous and beloved leader of the anti-Baathist Kurdish resistance, said he wanted Iraqi Kurdistan to become the 51st American state. Nowhere did Barzani's fierce campaign resonate more deeply than it did in Suleimaniya. Suli isn't only the cultural capital of the region – its New York, if you will. It also is the capital of Kurdish nationalism. Saddam Hussein called it "The Head of the Snake."

He answered with genocide. No one in Iraq experienced the full wrath of Saddam's Black Arabism more than the Kurds. If the Kurds refused to morph themselves into loyal little Baathists, he would erase them from the face of the earth.

And as Michael's pitcures testify, he did exactly that. Read the entire essay.

Just How Long Is This Eleventh Hour Anyway?

The BBC reports the failure of "eleventh-hour" negotiations between Iran and the EU to stop nuclear-weapons development in the Islamic Republic, a tiresome description made possible by the inertia in the international community that has delayed any meaningful action against the mullahcracy:

Last-minute talks between Iran and EU nations over Tehran's nuclear programme have broken up without agreement.

The discussions were called by Iran in a last-ditch bid to avoid possible UN action over its nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, will decide on Monday if action is needed. ...

At Friday's talks, officials from the UK, France and Germany - the so-called EU3 - said they were there to listen to Iran, but they presented no new plans of their own.

A letter from the EU3 to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned Iran earlier this week that any progress would be dependent on Iran stepping up co-operation with UN inspectors.

After the meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said talks "were carried out in a constructive atmosphere but finally we were unable to reach agreement."

The EU and Russia have entered frantic negotiations to stop Iranian development of nuclear material since the IAEA voted to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, but have shown no results. Iran has issued conflicting statements about the Russian proposal to enrich the uranium they supposedly need for energy generation; they swing between expressing an interest in the compromise and dismissing it altogether. The end result is more delays and more obfuscation on the part of the Iranians.

Time is running out. The UNSC should take this matter in hand as soon as possible and impose some kind of sanctions on Iran, a plan that will hurt the mullahcracy more than just a revenue pinch. The UNSC should vote to fund democratic reform in Iran, the one strategy that would really result in disarmament in Teheran. Show support for reformers, fund their organizations, use UN resources to bolster their lines of communication, and make clear to the Supreme Governing Council that their pursuit of nuclear weapons will end with them lined up against the wall in the coming revolution.

Of course, with Russia and China wielding veto power, it will never happen; any such action will wind up a dead letter in Turtle Bay. When that happens, the US and as many partners as it can find should take that action themselves. Not only will it accelerate the liberation of Iran from its theocratic fringe, but it will once again show that the UN is nothing more than an incompetent, impotent haven for despots and kleptocrats rather than an organization that represents the people of the world.

And then we can start talking abour the UN's eleventh hour and pray that it doesn't become as interminable as Iran's nuclear showdown.

...And Generalissimo Franco Valiantly Remains Dead

Russia incurred the criticism of the West by inviting Hamas to the Kremlin, arguing that engagement with the terrorist group would alllow them to moderate their stance towards Israel. Hamas, in turn, used its diplomatic opening today to announce that it will never recognize Israel's existence:

Hamas' political leader, on a groundbreaking visit to Russia, rejected on Friday any discussion about the militant group's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, dealing a setback to Moscow's efforts to persuade it to soften its stance.

"The issue of recognition (of Israel) is a decided issue," said Hamas' exiled political leader, Khaled Mashaal, upon arrival in Moscow for talks with Russian officials. "We don't intend to recognize Israel." ...

After arriving in Moscow, Mashaal accused Israel of blocking the Mideast peace process and said Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian lands will top the agenda in the Moscow talks.

"No conditions will be put forward during our visit to Moscow," Mashaal said. "We will listen to Russia's position and clarify ours."

I'd say that Mashaal's position hardly requires clarification, but apparently in Moscow it does. Despite having campaigned for the destruction of Israel for the entirety of its 19-year history and the litany of statements from Hamas that it will not change that goal, Vladimir Putin invited the terrorists to Russia anyway. That seems a rather strange action to take, with Putin defending the Caucasus against Islamists similar to Hamas. One has to wonder how the planned tour of the Kremlin will be received by Russian commanders in Chechnya and other restive territories on the southern border.

Putin will live to regret giving Islamofascist terrorists this kind of credibility, but he won't be the only one. It turns out that South Africa has also invited Hamas for a state visit. That is a disappointing but not terribly surprising development. All this does is to legitimize terrorism rather than force the Palestinians to take responsibility for producing true negotiators for peace. Russia and South Africa have endorsed a long and bloody war with their diplomatic recognition of Hamas.

I wonder why the UN has not balked at this. When was the last time that member states offered diplomatic access to officials of a group that explicitly calls for the annihilation of another member state? Why bother to join the UN if it doesn't offer any diplomatic defense for its members, especially one that the organization played such a role in founding? Need I wonder at all?

Domestic Terrorists Find Out Times Have Changed

Six animal-rights activists that ran a front group for pipe-bombers discovered that the nation has lost patience with violent protests, and now face as much as 23 years behind bars for their connections to vandalism, bombings, and death threats against medical researchers. The verdict is the first conviction under a law passed fourteen years ago to stop attacks on research facilities and their staffs:

An animal rights group and six of its members were convicted of terrorism and Internet stalking yesterday by a federal jury that found them guilty of using their Web site to incite attacks on those who did business with or worked for a British company that runs an animal testing laboratory in New Jersey.

The case was the first test of the Animal Enterprise Terror Act, enacted in 1992 to curb the most aggressive tactics used by activists. The verdict, which came after 14 hours of deliberation, was called an insidious threat to free speech by some activists, but was cheered by research scientists, some of whom are lobbying Congress to tighten restrictions on protesters.

During the three-week trial, defense lawyers acknowledged that a Web site run by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty posted home addresses and other personal information about animal researchers and others. But the activists said they were simply trying to shame their targets into dissociating themselves from the company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, and they disavowed any involvement with the vandalism, death threats, computer hacking and pipe bombs against those on the Web site.

Although federal prosecutors presented no evidence that the defendants directly participated in the vandalism and violence, they showed jurors that members of the group made speeches and Web postings from 2000 to 2004 that celebrated the violence and repeatedly used the word "we" to claim credit for it.

Prosecutors also produced telephone records indicating that the president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Kevin Kjonaas, called a man charged with bombing a California biotech lab shortly after the explosion.

Jurors were also shown a videotape of SHAC's director, Lauren Gazzola, at a protest in Boston, making reference to the previous acts of violence and warning a target, "The police can't protect you!"

Supporters of SHAC claimed that the law and the verdict amounted to an infringement on free speech, but the First Amendment has never been held to protect death threats and admissions of complicity in crimes. The leaders of front groups such as SHAC have routinely acted as political mouthpieces for terrorists, and this verdict now shows that a price will come from voluntarily acting as accessories to their crimes.

Anyone who bombs, vandalizes, or issues death threats to achieve what they cannot win through the legislative process is a terrorist, regardless of the cause. It does not matter whether that cause is abortion, the environment, animal research, or eliminating the designated hitter rule. Ends do not justify means, and living in a democracy means accepting the legitimacy of a loss in the democratic process. For years, people who acted violently in support of political issues found too much sympathy from their peers. Those days appear over, and not a moment too soon.

Advocacy groups that front for people like the Animal Liberation Front should take a lesson from this prosecution. Especially after 9/11, distinctions between the terrorists and those that enable and protect them have been eliminated. Apologists for bombthrowers only damage the credibility of their cause, and in cases like SHAC, their own liberty as well.

The Message Behind The India Deal

George Bush won an important diplomatic victory, one he has long sought, in bringing India into close ties with the United States. He and Indian PM Manmohan Singh signed a deal to support nuclear energy initiatives in the world's largest democracy despite earlier sanctions arising from India's nuclear testing eight years ago, prompting Singh to declare the US-Indian relationship healthier than ever before:

The agreement between the world’s oldest and largest democracies allows India to buy nuclear technology and fuel from the US to power its fast-growing economy.

It marks a major shift in American policy towards India, which Washington punished with sanctions after it conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998.

“Things change,” Mr Bush said as he announced the deal with Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India.“It’s in our interests that India have a civilian nuclear industry to help take the pressure off of the global demand for energy.”

Mr Singh declared: “History was made today.

“Our discussions today make me confident that there are no limits to Indo-US partnerships.”

In an even more surprising development, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei endorsed the deal despite India's refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Some have speculated that Bush might have trouble getting this new treaty ratified because of the NPT issue, but ElBaradei told the press that the new program aimed at strengthening India's civilian nuclear-energy program will assist in containing proliferation. Any potential opposition in the Senate will find themselves undercut by that statement -- and the natural alliance that should exist between the two democracies will find too much sympathy for opposition on any other grounds.

This deal sends a strong message of solidarity to the Indians, who for too long got forgotten by the US after successive governments decided to play footsie with the Soviet Union and the Non-Aligned Movement rather than ally India with the democracies of the West. However, that's not the only message this deal sends, and at least one of the other recipients listened closely.

Bush has long desired to build stronger ties with India as a counterweight to China. This move isn't a shot in the dark, either. The US policy under George Bush in central and southern Asia pushes democracy as a bulwark against increasing Russian autocracy and Chinese expansionism. The effort lines up nicely with the US push in the 'stans to expand American influence through the support of free and open political structures. Having India as an ally helps build credibility and underscores Bush's commitment to freedom.

Bush also sent a message to China about both North Korea and Iran by dismissing India's status as a nuclear power. The Chinese have not proven very helpful in resolving either conflict, allowing Kim Jong-Il to dither on disarmament and quietly obstructing a clear and timely resolution to the Iranian showdown. China has made clear that it will not support even economic sanctions against the mullahcracy, making the UNSC referral somewhat of a moot point.

In shrugging at India's nuclear weapons and concluding this far-reaching agreement despite India's status on the NPT, Bush has dropped the other shoe on both China and Russia. Russia has been playing at Great Game efforts of late, especially on Iran. Now Bush has answered both China and Russia with an influential and public counterweight to Russia's designs on influence in Asia and China's attempt at political and economic hegemony.

India also gains by landing the US as an ally against both nations and regaining Western focus. No doubt Delhi has paid attention to the rise of radical Islam in the region, being surrounded by the phenomenon and having their own internal issues with restive Muslims. They need friends in the West more than ever now, and the predominantly Hindu nation understands the consequences of falling victim to dhimmitude.

This may well wind up being the most significant diplomatic victory of the Bush administration, for economics, globalization, and geopolitics. Hopefully the Senate will not attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when the time comes to ratify the deal.

Able Danger, The Lawsuit

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court.

I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit. However, the extent of obstructionism should raise some eyebrows in Congress, who may wonder why the DIA will not allow these witnesses to share the fruits of the Able Danger effort with their committees, even in closed session:

25. In September 2005, both Shaffer and Smith were scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss their involvement with ABLE DANGER. Shaffer submitted proposed testimony to the DoD for classification review, but the DoD has never responded. In any event, the defendants claimed all information concerning ABLE DANGER was classified and refused to consent to allow the 8 testimony. Their undersigned counsel, Mark S. Zaid, testified in their place on September 21, 2005.

26. Just days before Shaffer was to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the DIA revoked his security clearance amidst allegations of criminal conduct and unfavorable credibility determinations. The DIA specifically asserted that Shaffer had lied during appeal proceedings. Upon information and belief, the revocation of Shaffer’s security clearance, particularly the speed at which it occurred, was, in part or in whole, in retaliation for Shaffer’s public and/or private comments concerning ABLE DANGER. Additionally, as part of Shaffer’s security clearance adjudication process, the undersigned counsel was provided access to classified information.

27. By letter dated February 2, 2006, the plaintiffs renewed their request to share relevant classified information with their counsel, particularly in order to appear in a closed, classified House of Representative’s hearing.

28. By letter dated February 14, 2006, defendant Peirce responded on behalf of all defendants denying the undersigned counsel’s request for access to classified information. Upon information and belief, defendant Berry participated in drafting and formulating the defendants’ response. Peirce, as DIA General Counsel, does not possess the authorization or qualifications to render clearance determinations under the circumstances.

Why has the DoD assigned questions of classification to its counsel rather than the top brass? Peirce apparently addressed the security issue directly rather than simply passing along a finding by those in Defense tasked with reviewing the use of classified material. Under the circumstances, this looks a bit suspicious, especially since so much of AD has already been discussed in public, thanks to the 9/11 Commission's bout of obtuseness that kept it from their review of the terror attacks and the US defense posture at the time.

Congress should ask these same questions of the DIA and DoD. Their commission report has lost credibility thanks to the effort of some at the Pentagon to keep the defunct program under wraps. One would hope that they would find some interest in getting to the real truth about pre-9/11 knowledge of AQ and the obstacles that the AD team faced.

FACTS 12. The plaintiffs performed certain duties in association with a Department of Defense program code named ABLE DANGER which included both classified and unclassified components.

13. ABLE DANGER was a United States Special Operations Command military intelligence program under the command of the U.S. Special Operations Command (“SOCOM”). It was created as a result of a directive from the Joint Chiefs’ of Staff in early October 1999 by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hugh Shelton, to develop an Information Operations Campaign Plan against transnational terrorism, specifically al-Qaeda.

14. Upon information and belief, ABLE DANGER identified the September 11, 2001 attack leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the 9/11 plot’s 19 hijackers, as possible members of an al Qaeda cell linked to the 1993 World Trade Center Attacks or its participants. This information was contained, among other locations, on a chart prepared by Smith and turned over to Shaffer for use by ABLE DANGER. Although no specific criminal or terrorist activity was detected, these individuals were viewed as having associational links with known terrorists. No copies of the chart have been located.

15. ABLE DANGER used all information legally collected under the rule of law. All publicly obtained information was approved after a legal review of SOCOM lawyers. However, the information was ordered destroyed and this was accomplished by the Spring of 2001, after ABLE DANGER had been officially and formally shut down for unknown reasons. Additionally, upon information and belief, in or around Spring 2004, the DIA improperly destroyed ABLE DANGER and other files that Shaffer had maintained in his DIA work space.

16. If the primary assertion of the ABLE DANGER members is true, the early identification of the four hijackers by ABLE DANGER contradicts the official conclusion of the 9/11 Commission that American intelligence agencies had not identified Atta as a potential terrorist prior to the 9/11 attack.

17. Thus it is no surprise that former members of the 9/11 Commission, most notably former Senator Slade Gorton, who has appeared on numerous television programs on this matter, have publicly challenged these assertions and, at times, implicitly or explicitly called those who have claimed to the identification of Atta pre-9/11 as liars. Two other 9/11 Commission members, Timothy J. Roemer and John F. Lehman, both have claimed not to have received any information on Able Danger. Lee H. Hamilton, former Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission, and Al Felzenberg, a former spokesman for the 9/11 6 Commission, both denied that the 9/11 Commission had any information on the identification of Mohammed Atta prior to the attacks.

18. However, Shaffer asserts that in October 2003, in Bagram, Afghanistan, he told Philip D. Zelikow, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, and three other 9/11 Commission staff members, that ABLE DANGER had identified 9/11 hijackers, “to include Atta”. Although Zelikow told Shaffer that what he had said was “very important” and provided Shaffer his business card and asked him to call the Commission upon Shaffer’s return to the United States, when Shaffer did so in January 2004, his attempts to establish recontact with the Commission were rebuffed. Instead Shaffer was told that the Commission had all the information it needed concerning ABLE DANGER from the Pentagon.

19 In July 2004, Navy Captain Scott Phillpott independently met with 9/11 Commission staff and also informed them that ABLE DANGER had identified several 9/11 hijackers pre-9/11.

20. Not one mention of ABLE DANGER can be found in the 9/11 Commission’s final report.

21. On August 12, 2005, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, former Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission, issued a statement in response to media inquiries about the Commission’s investigation of ABLE DANGER. They now stated the Commission had been aware of the Able Danger program, and requested and obtained information about it from the DoD, but none of the information provided had indicated the program had identified Atta or other 9/11 hijackers. They also confirmed that Captain Phillpott had provided them information that Atta had been identified prior to the attacks but that it was just days before the Commission’s report was scheduled to be released. However, at one point ABLE DANGER was described by a former 9/11 Commission senior staffer as “historically insignificant.”

22. Since in or around Spring/Summer 2005, Shaffer has provided briefings on ABLE DANGER and/or the retaliation he has suffered from the DIA to several Congressional committees and their staff.

23. By letter dated August 30, 2005, the plaintiffs’ counsel requested that the defendants officially permit their access to relevant classified information concerning ABLE DANGER in order to represent Shaffer, particularly in relation to the need to handle classified congressional and DoD inquiries. This request was reiterated by letter dated August 31, 2005, due to a formal invitation for Shaffer to testify before the United States Senate.

24. By letter dated September 16, 2005, defendant Peirce responded on behalf of all defendants denying the undersigned counsel’s request for access to classified information. Upon information and belief, defendant Berry participated in drafting and formulating the defendants’ response. Peirce, as General Counsel, does not possess the authorization or qualifications to render clearance determinations under the circumstances.

25. In September 2005, both Shaffer and Smith were scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss their involvement with ABLE DANGER. Shaffer submitted proposed testimony to the DoD for classification review, but the DoD has never responded. In any event, the defendants claimed all information concerning ABLE DANGER was classified and refused to consent to allow the 8 testimony. Their undersigned counsel, Mark S. Zaid, testified in their place on September 21, 2005.

26. Just days before Shaffer was to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the DIA revoked his security clearance amidst allegations of criminal conduct and unfavorable credibility determinations. The DIA specifically asserted that Shaffer had lied during appeal proceedings. Upon information and belief, the revocation of Shaffer’s security clearance, particularly the speed at which it occurred, was, in part or in whole, in retaliation for Shaffer’s public and/or private comments concerning ABLE DANGER. Additionally, as part of Shaffer’s security clearance adjudication process, the undersigned counsel was provided access to classified information.

27. By letter dated February 2, 2006, the plaintiffs renewed their request to share relevant classified information with their counsel, particularly in order to appear in a closed, classified House of Representative’s hearing.

28. By letter dated February 14, 2006, defendant Peirce responded on behalf of all defendants denying the undersigned counsel’s request for access to classified information. Upon information and belief, defendant Berry participated in drafting and formulating the defendants’ response. Peirce, as DIA General Counsel, does not possess the authorization or qualifications to render clearance determinations under the circumstances.

29. On February 15, 2006, Shaffer and Smith testified before two Subcommittees of the House Armed Services regarding ABLE DANGER and related programs. Shaffer desired to be represented by counsel in the closed session, which was allegedly to include classified testimony. He publicly commented during his open session testimony (and 9 reiterated during the closed session) that he was not going to be permitted counsel in the closed session and that this fact placed him in potential legal jeopardy. Defendants refused to permit undersigned counsel access to classified information so as to permit them to attend the closed, classified portion of the hearing and have therefore deprived Shaffer of his right to assistance of counsel during said hearings. Although the Subcommittees did not issue subpoenas, it was made clear that were Shaffer or Smith to decline to appear voluntarily they would be compelled to do so.

30. At the last minute Smith was not permitted to testify during the closed, classified session on February 15, 2006, so his access to counsel was no longer an issue. However, he will likely be called as a witness in classified sessions (and at one point in or around Spring 2000, unknown federal agents appeared at his workplace and confiscated materials claiming they were now classified) in the future so the dispute remains live.

31. Upon information and belief, additional Congressional hearings are to be held including by, but not limited to, the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. If Shaffer or Smith decline to appear voluntarily they would be compelled to do so by virtue of a subpoena.

32. In addition to congressional meetings, the DoD Office of Inspector General is currently conducting an investigation into ABLE DANGER in general and specifically allegations of the DIA’s retaliation against Shaffer. Both Shaffer and Smith have been interviewed. The undersigned counsel was forbidden to be present during Shaffer’s classified interview notwithstanding Shaffer’s desire to be represented by legal counsel.

33. Shaffer and Smith’s appearances before congressional committees and Government investigators are under oath or are subject to criminal penalty pursuant to statute if false or inconsistent statements are made. Both Shaffer and Smith’s credibility has been called into question and, based on the official views of the defendants and other current or former Government representatives, the claims they continue to make are nothing less than intentionally false. Therefore, the plaintiffs could potentially face prosecution should their answers be held to be either false or inconsistent thereby requiring representation throughout every aspect of these matters.

FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION (FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO COUNSEL)

34. The plaintiffs repeat and reallege the allegations contained in paragraphs 12 through 33 above, inclusive.

35. The defendants have denied the plaintiffs’ access to counsel where classified information is concerned. Based on the defendants’ position neither plaintiff is permitted to share classified information with counsel, nor have counsel present to represent and protect their interests during classified discussions. Should the plaintiffs share classified information with counsel they would be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.

36. The plaintiffs have determined that their counsel has the requisite need-to-know relevant classified information pertaining to ABLE DANGER that is essential to the protection of their legal rights.

37. The defendants’ denial of classified access to plaintiffs’ counsel constitutes an effective denial of counsel and implicates and violates the plaintiffs’ protected rights under the First Amendment.

38. The plaintiffs’ counsel both have a need-to-know relevant classified information pertaining to ABLE DANGER and have been in the past, and would be now, favorably adjudicated as eligible to receive the specific relevant classified information.

39. The plaintiffs are continually requested to participate in classified discussions with members of Congress and/or their staff, as well as cooperate in official government investigations, and they prefer/need to do so with counsel in order to properly and effectively ensure protection of their legal interests.

SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION (VIOLATION OF INTERNAL REGULATIONS)
40. The plaintiffs repeat and reallege the allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 33 above, inclusive.

41. The defendants have denied the plaintiffs’ access to counsel where classified information is concerned. Based on the defendants’ position neither plaintiff is permitted to share classified information with counsel, nor have counsel present to represent and protect their interests during classified discussions. Should the plaintiffs share classified information with counsel they would be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.

42. The plaintiffs have determined that their counsel has the requisite need-to-know relevant classified information pertaining to ABLE DANGER that is essential to the protection of their legal rights.

43. The defendants’ denial of classified access to plaintiffs’ counsel constitutes an effective denial of counsel and was in violation or inconsistent with their existing regulations.

44. The plaintiffs’ counsel both have a need-to-know relevant classified information pertaining to ABLE DANGER and have been in the past, and would be now, favorably adjudicated as eligible to receive the specific relevant classified information.

45. The plaintiffs are continually requested to participate in classified discussions with members of Congress and/or their staff, as well as cooperate in official government 12 investigations, and they prefer/need to do so with counsel in order to properly and effectively ensure protection of their legal interests.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs seek judgment against Defendants. (1) Issue a permanent injunction to block the defendants from restraining the plaintiffs’ disclosure to their counsel of relevant classified information concerning ABLE DANGER; (2) Declare that the plaintiffs possess a First Amendment right to communicate with their counsel to include discussions involving classified information; (3) Declare that the defendants violated the Administrative Procedure Act and their internal regulations governing the granting of access to counsel to classified information; (4) Declare that the plaintiffs possess the ability to reach need-to-know decisions regarding the disclosure of relevant classified information; (5) Declare that the plaintiffs’ counsel possess a need-to-know relevant classified information concerning ABLE DANGER; (6) Require, if necessary, the defendants to conduct expedited background investigations of the plaintiffs’ counsel to determine eligibility of access to certain levels of classified information; (7) Award the plaintiffs the costs of the action and reasonable attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act or any other applicable law; and (8) grant such other relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

Katrina Tape Transcripts Show Media Hack Job

For those who want to see the transcripts themselves of the video conferences, the New York Times has them for the August 28th and August 29th briefings. The transcript for the 29th makes one garbled mention of the levees around New Orleans (page 6). After making the point that the storm surge would cause the greatest devastation in the Gulfport area of Mississippi, going as high as 21 feet, Max Mayfield then turns to New Orleans:

MAX MAYFIELD: ... The rest of the track we have 10 to 15 feet, in a few areas up to 16 feet. At least glimpsed it out, and Louisiana can talk a little bit more about this than I can, but it looks like the Federal levies [sic] around the City of New Orleans will not have been (incomprehensible) any breaches to.

That certainly doesn't sound like a warning -- and this was on the day the levees broke. That transcript clearly shows that the conference considered the storm surge and precipitation runoff to be the major threats of flooding in New Orleans. The possibility of breaches, even on the 29th, had been discounted.

The transcript from the August 28th meeting talked more about levees, but in the same vein, and this time no one mentions the word "breach". Starting on page 5, Max Mayfield again talks about the dangers of Lake Pontchartrain, but only in the context of the winds created a surge that could overtop the levees:

One of the valleys here in Lake Pontchartrain, we've got on our forecast track, if it maintains its intensity: about 12 1/2 feet of storm surge in the lake. The big question is going to be: will that top some of the levies? And the currrent track and the forecast we have now suggests there will be minimal flooding in the city of New Orleans itself, but we're -- we've always said that the storm surge model is only accurate within 20 percent.

If that track were to deviate just a little bit to the west, it would -- it makes all the difference in the world. I do expect that there will be some of the levies over top even out here in the western portions where the airport is. We've got valleys that can't overtop some of the levies.

The problem we're going to have here -- remember, the winds go counterclockwise around the center of the hurricane. So if the really strong winds clip Lake Pontchartrain, that's going to pile some of that water from Lake Pontchartrain over on the south side of the lake. I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levies will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very grave concern.

Again, the entire briefing that related to levees only focused on the effects of the wind on Lake Pontchartrain and its effect in pushing water over the top of the levees. Mayfield never even addressed the possibility of breaches in the levee walls. And in fact, the storm track shifted eastward in the final hours before Katrina hit, which eliminated much of the predicate for even the worries Mayfield expresses in this transcript.

The media got it wrong yet again on Katrina. The notion that the experts warned of levee breaches is nothing more than a hack job initiated by the AP and continued by the rest of the Exempt Media even after the source material has proven it false.

Europe Puts On Its Blinders

In a spectacularly misguided effort, the European Union has released a report scolding members for allowing the CIA and other American agencies to operate unfettered on the Continent in its search for Islamofascist terrorists, failing to mention at all the fact that so many can be found there:

Europe has become "a happy hunting ground" for foreign intelligence agents looking to kidnap terrorist suspects, the leader of the continent's top human rights group said Wednesday, urging European governments to crack down on operatives working for the CIA and other spy services.

Terry Davis, chairman of the Council of Europe, also criticized several European countries for not being more forthcoming about whether they have helped the CIA carry out extralegal counterterrorism operations on their soil. These include the secret detention and abduction of suspected members of al-Qaeda.

"I strongly support cooperation between Europe and the United States of America on all issues and especially the fight against terrorism," Davis said at a news conference at the council's headquarters in Strasbourg, France.

"But I also insist that European governments should have sufficient confidence to participate in such cooperation as equal partners."

According to Davis, the pressing problem for the EU is not the fact that their countries have been infiltrated by terrorism to such an extent that they present a "happy hunting ground", it's that they haven't forced the CIA to get a hunting permit. They complain that the CIA does not operate under European sensibilities for legality and human rights. However, Davis doesn't understand that the CIA isn't a law-enforcement agency but an intelligence and espionage organization; by definition, that means that their agents operate outside the law and in a covert manner. Not only that, but somehow Davis manages to avoid drawing the line between the amount of terrorists found in their countries and those same legal and human-rights standards that keep Europe from doing much about it.

Europe plays the same game that the American Left does at home -- draw no distinction between the terrorists and the people trying to catch them and keep civilians safe. This effort treats terrorists as if they were the equivalent of the American intelligence forces that wish to capture them, almost as if the EU looks at them as the successor to the KGB. Terrorists are not spies or moles, at least not primarily; they are mass murderers, intending on killing large amounts of civilians if not stopped. The CIA and the intelligence agencies with whom they work have to disrupt those plans and grab the perpetrators before they can attack in order to achieve success. That's why this is a war and not a law-enforcement action.

In fact, the report itself states that it has no real factual basis on which to make these claims:

The report contends that the CIA has unfettered ability to mount covert counterterrorism operations in Europe with little regard to European legal and human rights standards. But the council said it was unable to collect any fresh evidence or obtain independent confirmation of several alleged CIA plots to apprehend or detain suspects on the continent.

So in the end, all the Davis report does is regurgitate the rumors and anonymously-sourced news reports to condemn the CIA and the nations that understand the threat of terrorism. If we wanted that, we could have just bought the New York Times for a buck.

Katrina Tape Half-Story

Most news agencies have reported on the AP's tape of a meeting involving President Bush, Michael Brown, and a number of other FEMA officials and local and state politicians during Hurricane Katrina. In the tape, most of the reports claim, Bush specifically heard warnings about levees being breached. However, that's not what the tape shows, at least the portion aired by the AP and NBC on their broadcast last night (available at MS-NBC at the above link). What is does show is an expert saying to the group, "At this point, we don't know whether the levees will be overtopped or not."

As Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards points out, breaching and overtopping are two very different events. Neither are particularly desirable, of course, but overtopping would result in the release of excess water from Lake Pontchatrain, while the breaches released an exponentially larger volume, resulting in far more devastation. No one in this clip mentions the word "breach" at all, and the breathless reporting at the AP winds up being highly misleading. It's used to indict the president, who later said that no one imagined that the levees would be breached -- and if this clip is as good as the media has, then apparently the president is right.

Here's what the AP reported:

Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly floodwaters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility — and Bush was worried too.

In fact, however, Bush only started asking about breaches after the media reports of them starting airing, as Brown noted, and what the AP does not say is what he got for a response. For that part of the story, one has to turn to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which tells its readers the rest of the story:

Transcripts of calls from the days before the storm and the days afterward have surfaced as part of House and Senate investigations into the slow government response to Katrina. But the transcript for the Aug. 29 conference call, initiated about six hours after the storm hit, had been missing. An official with the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the call had been recorded by one of the participants and only recently came to light.

During the call, which began at noon, then-FEMA Director Michael Brown says that he had already spoken to President Bush twice that day.

"He remains very, very interested in this situation," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches. He's asking about hospitals. He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask."

Later in the call, White House aide Joe Hagin asks specifically about the condition of the levees. Gov. Kathleen Blanco tells him that no failures were confirmed -- yet.

"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees," Blanco said. "I think we have not breached the levee. We have not breached the levee at this point in time. That could change, but in some places we have floodwaters coming in New Orleans East and the line at St. Bernard Parish where we have waters that are 8- to 10-feet deep, and we have people swimming in there, that's got a considerable amount of water."

In fact, the record shows that the White House had been fully engaged in the disaster and had repeatedly asked for updates. Brown himself notes (and NBC did report this) that Bush had personally called him twice that day, and it was still only noon. The White House also followed the media reports closely, demanding to know whether the reported breaches had actually occurred. (The fact that the media could not be trusted to get the story straight was later proven when the hysterical reporting about cannibalism, murders, and toxic flood waters all turned out to be false.) What answer did the White House get? The local and state authorities told them that nothing had happened, and that the flooding so far had come from the storm itself and not the lake.

As usual, the news media misreports the Katrina information to sensationalize it, and the skewed story is the one that makes the morning paper. File this one in the same drawer as the mass murders at the Superdome and the Cannibals of St. Bernard Parish, and marvel at the fact that even six months later, the media doesn't take the time to get its fact straight about Katrina.

UPDATE: Power Line has more deconstruction of the AP report, including factual errors on when the National Guard arrived and more.

Asleep On The Job

Apparently, the duties of oral arguments at the Supreme Court no longer engages Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The controversy over Texas redistricting apparently didn't generate enough interest to keep her attention (h/t J. Crater):

The Supreme Court had put the Texas cases on the fast track, scheduling an unusually long two-hour afternoon session.

The subject matter was extremely technical, and near the end of the argument Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed in her chair. Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who flank the 72-year-old, looked at her but did not give her a nudge.

The court has struggled in the past to define how much politics is acceptable when states draw new boundaries to reflect population shifts.

I know the idea of a two-hour meeting might seem long to AP reporters and some jurists, but in the real world, we have business meetings that go on all day. Most of us manage to stay awake, and we're not tasked with creating legal precedents that will define the structure of our democracy. (Usually, we're tasked with cutting costs while maximizing profit ... and we still manage to stay awake.)

Keeping awake for two hours of discussion should be a minimal expectation not only of the American public, but for both parties bringing the case to the Court. How can either party feel satisfied that the court has a clear understanding of their position when one of its members slept through their explanations?

Had this happened with Justice Scalia or Justice Thomas, it would have been front page news at the New York Times tomorrow. The AP manages to bury it around paragraph 16. The AP wouldn't have softened the blow with the silly disclaimer about the subject being "extremely technical" with one of the conservatives, either; these are lawyers and judges, and "technical" comes with the job. If Justice Ginsburg can't make it through two hours of argument, she should consider joining Justice O'Connor in retirement.

UPDATE: The Washington Post doesn't bother to report it at all. Neither did the New York Times.

UPDATE II: Actually, as CQ reader Hoystory notes, the Post does report this, although in a Dana Milbank column and not in its news report on the court. He estimates that Ginsburg's nap lasted fifteen minutes.

Talk About Triangulation

The Democrats have seized the center stage for opposing the Dubai ports deal, claiming that the questionable decision to approve the transfer of port operations to state-owned Dubai Ports World shows that the Bush administration puts profits ahead of national security. Hillary Clinton in particular has assailed the decision and promised to push legislation to block the deal. Perhaps sje should consult with the man who helped the UAE firm defend the deal ... former President and current husband, Bill Clinton:

Bill Clinton, former US president, advised top officials from Dubai two weeks ago on how to address growing US concerns over the acquisition of five US container terminals by DP World. ...

It came even as his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, was leading efforts to derail the deal.

Mr Clinton, who this week called the United Arab Emirates a “good ally to America”, advised Dubai’s leaders to propose a 45-day delay to allow for an intensive investigation of the acquisition, according to his spokesman. ...

Mr Clinton’s contact with Dubai on the issue underscores the relationship he has developed with the United Arab Emirates since leaving office. In 2002, he was paid $300,000 (€252,000) to address a summit in Dubai.

While Bill provided tactical advice to Dubai's leadership to help complete the deal, Hillary has actively campaigned to do the exact opposite. Here is the statement on Hillary's Senate web site outlining her stance on the DP World deal:

We thank you for joining the call of lawmakers who are gravely concerned about the Dubai Ports World deal. As you know, unless Congress acts, operations at six major U.S. ports, and other U.S. port facilities, will be turned over to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, on March 2. This sale will create an unacceptable risk to the security of our ports. We therefore request that emergency legislation we are introducing to ban foreign governments from controlling operations at our ports be slated for immediate consideration when the Senate convenes on February 27. ...

This issue transcends philosophical posturing and partisan bickering – it is about our nation’s security.

What are we to conclude from Bill Clinton's intervention with the emirates? If we are to believe that Hillary is sincere, then we should conclude that Bill Clinton has no clue how to secure the nation; after all, he's provided material support to the emirs in attempting to gain control of the ports. While Hillary and her party excoriated George Bush for accepting the unanimous CFIUS approval of the deal -- the result of a process that Congress approved years ago and has never challenged before -- the previous Democratic president helped engineer the UAE response intended to gain final approval of the transfer.

Democrats wonder why the American electorate doesn't trust them with national security. Talking out of both sides of their mouths and stoking fears just to score a few political points are chief among the reasons for the well-earned distrust. (Hat tip: CQ reader Keemo)

Sooner Suicide Later Turns Out To Be Botched Attack

Mark Tapscott has stayed on the story of Joel Hinrichs, the Oklahoma University student who blew himself up outside the football stadium, long after the FBI dismissed it as a suicide brought on by depression. His vigilance has paid off, as it now appears that the FBI jumped to an erroneous conclusion and that Hinrichs meant to kill a lot more people than just himself:

The FBI reported in November that 0.4 pound of TATP was found inside Hinrichs' apartment. TATP is the most unstable explosive known and is "the explosive of choice" in the Middle East, Mauldin said. "It is so volatile, even a small amount on the tip of a finger will explode if it comes within 8 inches of a match," Mauldin said.

Investigators also found a quantity of acetone and hydrogen, components necessary for manufacturing TATP, inside the student's apartment. ...

Officers also removed "a lot" of military rounds, many of them live, and pieces of metal from the student's apartment, Mauldin said.

Metal fragments often are added to explosives to make them more deadly, he said.

The explosives Hinrichs had outside the stadium were pure, with no fragmentation added, Mauldin said.

However, he said, the student kept careful notes of experimentation with explosives in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 1 blast.

Color me silly if you will, but if all Hinrichs wanted was to commit suicide spectacularly, why was he experimenting with fragmentation? He had created far more TATP than needed to kill himself. Fragmentation and shrapnel would make no difference in his own death; that kind of addition speaks volumes about an intent to kill and maim a large number of people. Also, the FBI found more TATP left behind in his apartment, some of it fashioned into a pill-bottle bomb. If he wanted to kill himself, why would he have fashioned more than one device?

I respect the FBI, but this story doesn't add up.

Mark notes that the FBI continues to dismiss any other explanation than suicide. Keep checking in with Mark and with Michelle Malkin, both of whom remained skeptical about the official explanations and maintained visibility on this story.

False Notes On Civil War Fears

The New York Times issues a warning about an impending civil war in Iraq that sounds a couple of false notes. Its editorial this morning attempts a historical review of the Iraqis that misses a couple of germane points while it scolds the administration indirectly for causing the problem by toppling Saddam Hussein:

Iraq has moved perilously close to civil war. Everyone who knows anything about the tortured history of that country, cobbled together from disparate parts by British colonial officials less than a century ago, has always dreaded such an outcome.

Fear of civil war stayed the hand of the first President George Bush, when he turned back American troops and left Saddam Hussein in power. It generated much of the opposition to the current President Bush's invasion in 2003. Yet many critics of the invasion, including this page, believed that the dangers from civil war were so dire that American troops, once in, were obliged to remain as long as there was a conceivable route to a just peace.

The only alternative to civil war is, and has always been, a national unity government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Unless these mutually suspicious groups can work together, the United States will be faced with the impossible task of trying to create a stable democracy that Iraqis have refused to create for themselves.

The reason that the Bush 41 administration left Saddam in power was because the UN refused to endorse a march on Baghdad in 1991, when the road was open and the Republican Guard had largely been routed. Perhaps Bush 41 had little enthusiasm for rebuilding Iraq to the extent required by a full-scale invasion, but the UN would not allow it in any case. Bush 41 either had to turn his back on the coalition he created for the liberation of Kuwait or bow to its demands. He chose the latter. As history showed in the twelve years of chronic violations of the cease-fire and the UN resolutions demanding accountability for his weapons programs, as well as the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who opposed him in 1991 after the war, that was a bad and costly decision.

What I find so fascinating about the liberal hysteria over the civil war is that they argued specifically to start one instead of invading Iraq in 2003. Let's take a look at the history that the Times forgets. In 1998, Congress and Bill Clinton created a foreign policy explicitly stating that the US goal in Iraq was regime change -- that American policy would be created to remove Saddam Hussein from power. At the time that this policy was formulated and made explicit, lawmakers from both parties made a lot of speeches about how dangerous Saddam was to our interests in particular and the world in general. No one labored under the notion that Saddam had been rendered harmless by UN sanctions, already in full application for over five years at that point.

When George Bush (43) decided to press for military action to remove Saddam from power, he cited this official policy as one of the justifications when he went to Congress in October 2002 for authorization. All of a sudden, people started talking about how sanctions had kept Saddam "in his box" despite plenty of evidence that various countries had routinely violated those sanctions. They also claimed that the entire purpose of the policy was for the US to foment a domestic uprising against the Saddam regime, not for America to take any overt action to end his genocidal rule.

In other words, they wanted Bush to start a civil war in Iraq. And not just a gang war that involved a few sectarian militias taking potshots against each other as we see now, but a full-fledged civil war that involved an unarmed and oppressed people taking on the region's fourth-largest army and a dictator who had used chemical warfare against his own people in the past.

What exactly did they think would be the result of that uprising? Did they imagine that it had any chance of getting off the ground at all, given the betrayal they experienced in 1991 when the West failed to come to their aid when the Shi'a in the south rebelled against Saddam? And even if it did, did the Left not understand that the entire nation would have not come together as a people but would have dissolved into sectarian and ethnic tribalism, having no unifying structures or voluntary processes -- like those provided by open elections and a national assembly?

I agree that civil war in Iraq remains a dangerous potential outcome. Had we left it to the Left in 2002, however, that is exactly what we would have today by their own design. I find their belated concern over the consequences of civil war somewhat disingenuous now.

Supreme Court Not Sympathetic To Campaign Finance Limits

Yesterday, Vermont had to defend campaign-finance limits that have been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, where the state found a rather cold reception. Chief Justice John Roberts had Vermont's attorney general, William Sorrell on the defensive and sounding somewhat evasive as Roberts wondered why Vermont's electorate just doesn't throw corrupt people out of office:

The chief justice challenged the attorney general's assertion that money was a corrupting influence on Vermont's political system, the state's main rationale for its law. "How many prosecutions for political corruption have you brought?" he asked the state official.

"Not any," Mr. Sorrell replied.

"Do you think corruption in Vermont is a serious problem?"

"It is," the attorney general replied, noting that polls showed that most state residents thought corporations and wealthy individuals exerted an undue influence in the state.

The chief justice persisted. "Would you describe your state as clean or corrupt?" he asked.

"We have got a problem in Vermont," Mr. Sorrell repeated.

The chief justice pressed further. If voters think "someone has been bought," he said, "I assume they act accordingly" at the next election and throw the incumbent out.

He also challenged a line from the attorney general's 50-page brief, an assertion that donations from special-interest groups "often determine what positions candidates and officials take on issues." Could the attorney general provide an example of such an issue, Chief Justice Roberts asked. Mr. Sorrell could not, eventually conceding that "influence" would have been a better word than "determine."

In this report by the New York Times, the court seems rather antagonistic to both the spending limits imposed by Vermont on its candidates for office and of the contribution limits as well. In fact, this entire conversation shows the silliness of the contribution limit effort. The Attorney General had to stand in front of the Supreme Court and describe his state as corrupt, and yet his office has not prosecuted one person for political corruption. That is nothing less than either a blatant admission of incompetence or the natural result of a witch hunt gone awry.

This folly of imposing artificial limits and designations on campaign contributions does nothing to address corruption, and only makes lawyers rich as they become indispensable in navigating these Byzantine regulations for political candidates. Rather than create an open political process, the rules tend to drive efforts underground, and in Vermont's case protect incumbents and keep challengers from the opportunity to change government.

The only real solution to electoral corruption is immediate reporting and an end to limits on contributions. That would force everyone into the sunlight and allow voters to support whomever they see fit. It also allows the voters to know who gave what to whom and to make up their own minds about undue influence. The way Vermont limits contributions and spending, all it does is institutionalize any potential existing corruption by putting more hurdles in front of the challengers that could remedy it.

Perhaps Vermont voters might want to start cleaning up their state government by replacing the Attorney General who sees corruption all around him and yet, by his own admission, has done nothing to stop it.

And I Thought Little League Was Bad

As anyone who has spent time with youth sports programs knows, some parents push their children into competitive sports as a means of living vicariously through them. These parents will berate their children, insult other parents and league officials, and become very demanding and very tiresome. They don't usually turn deadly, as one French father did in ensuring that his children won their tennis matches:

For former military officer Christophe Fauviau, tennis was more than just a game, especially when his two children were on court. Even if they were competing in a minor tournament it was not enough for them to take part - they had to win.

Today Colonel Fauviau will appear before a judge accused of going to extraordinary lengths to make sure they did - by poisoning their rivals with sedatives. It was a tactic that went horribly wrong when one young player into whose water bottle Col Fauviau allegedly slipped a sleep-inducing antidepressant died after losing control of his car as he drove home from a match. ...

Police began investigating after a young player spotted Col Fauviau allegedly tampering with his drink bottle shortly before he was due to face Maxime in the semifinal of a tournament in a local village. The player decided not to drink the water and, after losing the match, handed it to detectives for analysis.

The following day Maxime's opponent in the final fell ill after the match and was kept in hospital for several days. Tests on his water bottle revealed traces of Temesta, an antidepressant that causes extreme drowsiness.

Before detectives had completed their inquiries, Alexandre Lagardère, 25, a primary school teacher, pulled out of a match with Maxime on July 3 2003 after the first set complaining that he felt too exhausted to continue. Maxime went on to win the first prize in what was supposedly an unimportant friendly tournament. While he was driving home, Mr Lagardère's car left the road and he was killed. A postmortem examination revealed traces of Temesta.

Col. Fauviau may not have intended to kill his son's rival, but spiking someone's drink shows a reckless disregard for their safety that in the US could result in a second-degree murder charge. It's not the same level of intent as the Texas cheerleader mom who attempted to hire a hit man to kill the mother of her daughter's rival, but it's the same illness driving both.

Most people enter their children into these programs for exercise, socialization, and a bit of healthy competition. Extracurricular sports programs teach teamwork, instill discipline, and when the pressure to win comes from the athlete instead of overzealous parents and coaches, for a bit of fun. Unfortunately, some people put their own needs for glory ahead of the mental and physical health of their children -- and in a few extreme cases, ahead of the lives of their opponents.

Bush Visits Afghanistan

George Bush made a surprise stop on his tour of South Asia today as he flew into Kabul to meet with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, as well as the American troops stationed in the newly-liberated country:

US President George W. Bush arrived in Afghanistan for his first visit since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in 2001.

Bush made the surprise stopover, landing at the US military base at Bagram north of Kabul, as he headed to India to begin a maiden trip to South Asia.

He flew by heavily armed helicopter to the capital where he was given a red-carpet welcome by an honour guard before talks with President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace.

Bush apparently wanted to be present at the opening of the new US embassy in Kabul, taking place today, in addition to paying his first state visit to the nation. The stopover on the way to India had been kept under wraps; the press on Air Force One only found out about it when an announcement was made in the air. Dick Cheney had been in Kabul for the inauguration of its parliament in December.

Once at the presidential palace, Bush reiterated his confidence that Osama bin Laden would be captured:

Asked about the search for bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, and of the president's call for getting him "dead or alive," Bush said the search for bin Laden and his associates continues.

"It's not a matter of if they're captured and brought to justice, it's when they're brought to justice," Bush said.

He noted that the Pakistanis have committed to the mission, and according to news reports, they have initiated a new round of attacks in the Waziristan region against al-Qaeda positions. Pakistani officials claim that 36 AQ operatives were killed in a raid on a training camp, including a commander in the Chechen Islamist insurgency:

Pakistani security forces struck a militant training camp Wednesday in a tribal region near the Afghan border, killing three dozen fighters, including a Chechen commander linked to al-Qaida, an army official said.

The Chechen — identified only by his code name, Imam — died when a helicopter fired on his vehicle during the raid in the North Waziristan region, the army official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. ...

The militants were attacked after conducting a raid inside Afghanistan and re-entering the Pakistani tribal region, where their camp was located.

My guess is that the last raid by American Predator drones taught Pervez Musharraf a lesson about these raiding parties and Pakistani inertia in general. He seems to have learned the limits of American patience regarding Taliban remnants and AQ operations hiding on the Pakistani side of the border, and has taken action accordingly. Hopefully he will continue to press the attack. After all, these Islamists may enjoy popularity with a good portion of Pakistanis, but it isn't the portion that would support him regardless of his relationship with the US.

Got Milk?

Mexico appears to have flouted NAFTA rules by applying a protectionist tariff to American milk in response to a slump in the market for Jalisco dairymen:

Mexico today announced a 30 percent import tariff on U-S milk. Mexico seeks to help protect some local producers who reportedly face surpluses in the domestic market.

The Mexican Economy Department suggested the measure could be temporary, but said it will also limit milk import quotas for the private sector.

Several dairy organizations in the western state of Jalisco have been having problems since the beginning of the year selling their production.

I support NAFTA, but the American government had better find out why Mexico has cut our dairies out of the market as it tries to subsidize their own farmers. This is exactly the kind of measure that NAFTA was supposed to prevent. The entire point for the US was to gain access to open markets for its goods, while Mexico gained benefit from manufacturing jobs created by the elimination of tariffs on their goods coming back across the border. If Mexico feels free to impose tariffs on anything at its whim, then what good is NAFTA?

The Bush administration needs to address this quickly. After pushing CAFTA through a reluctant Congress earlier, Republicans need to make sure that they demonstrate that the US will not take kindly to being abused by our trading partners. (Hat tip: CQ reader Space Needle Boy)

Bush Likes Blogs

Matt Drudge reported earlier today that the White House has carefully noted the rise of the political blogosphere, as reported by Bill Sammon in his new book Strategery. According to Drudge, Sammon quotes the president as "fascinated" by the rise of the new media and its challenge to the Exempt Media:

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

Daniel Glover at Beltway Blogroll notes that at least in the section quoted by Drudge, Bush never actually speaks specifically about blogs. Karl Rove, however, points directly at the Ra^thergate fiasco at CBS as the seminal event for political blogs as major influences on public opinion:

Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.

“The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the 'blogosphere',” he said in his West Wing office.

“Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,” he added.

Glover has a source that informs him that the President does have an active interest in the blogosphere and is pursuing greater knowledge. Meanwhile, CQ readers know that Karl Rove not only has a keen eye for the blogosphere but also checks in at CQ on a regular basis. I think most of the starboard side of the blogosphere will be buying Sammon's book to see if any blogs get a mention.

No Wonder They're So Bummed Out

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff notes an essay by Phillip Longman in the magazine Foreign Policy that predicts a conservative evolution in the West, thanks to birth rates that decline more the farther one moves to the left of the political spectrum. Longman forecasts that if the population in the West declines dramatically, the remainder will adopt an old-fashioned cultural model of patriarchy as conservatives reproduce at higher rates:

With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women, no matter how estranged, will always breed enough children to grow the population—at least until plague or starvation sets in. It is an assumption that not only conforms to our long experience of a world growing ever more crowded, but which also enjoys the endorsement of such influential thinkers as Thomas Malthus and his many modern acolytes.

Yet, for more than a generation now, well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations around the world have been producing too few children to avoid population decline. That is true even though dramatic improvements in infant and child mortality mean that far fewer children are needed today (only about 2.1 per woman in modern societies) to avoid population loss. Birthrates are falling far below replacement levels in one country after the next—from China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, to Canada, the Caribbean, all of Europe, Russia, and even parts of the Middle East. ...

Declining birthrates also change national temperament. In the United States, for example, the percentage of women born in the late 1930s who remained childless was near 10 percent. By comparison, nearly 20 percent of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having had children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of their parents.

This matches to the theory espoused by James Taranto at OpinionJournal about the political effect of abortion. In short, he postulates that the mothers who abort their children will trend significantly towards the left politically, and they will leave a shrinking legacy on which to pass their political views. The same effect occurs, Longman argues, by the willful or circumstantial refusal to procreate that apparently occurs more frequently with liberals. Longman also notes that in the US, the states that supported George Bush have a 12% higher fertility rate than those that supported John Kerry.

The article is fascinating, but it does also recall an earlier survey that showed conservatives as happier than liberals. Pew Research reported that 45% of all Republicans described themselves as happy, while only 30% of Democrats did so, and that these results have been consistent since 1972. Is it possible that the reason why conservatives are happier is because they're procreating more than liberals? If so, it would be a rather delicious irony.

Homeward Bound -- First Mate Update

The hospital finally released the First Mate earlier today after dialyzing her this morning. She's feeling pretty good, and the change of scenery has done wonders for her spirits. Right now we're watching a History Channel presentation on the Titanic and an updated theory of the collision that sank her (I TiVo'd it this weekend for the FM). She starts her regimen of dialysis tomorrow and will go three times a week. She's not exactly looking forward to this, but she's happy to be feeling better.

She and I thank all of you for your prayers and kind thoughts; I received supportive messages from everyone across the entire spectrum. The readers at CQ make this the special place that it is, and I'm humbled by your kindness and your thoughtful and earnest debate.

The New Totalitarian Threat

Agora translates a self-titled "Manifesto" against the latest in a series of global threats to freedom and liberty: radical Islamism. The manifesto has twelve signatories, including such leading lights (and targets for Islamists) as Salman Rushdie, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, and more. The declaration deserves the widest possible publication:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Salman Rushdie knows firsthand what Islamism has done to free expression. His inclusion in this effort by Charlie Hebdo in France shows a unity that others in the media would do well to emulate.

UPDATE: Jyllands-Posten reprinted this, but it originated with the French weekly Charlie Hebdo. I've made the correction, and also corrected the blog attribution to respect the anonymity of the blogger ... for obvious reasons.

Exempt Media Math

Apparently the Washington Post and CBS have their difficulties with mathematics these days. Earlier today, the Post reported that the death toll in Iraq from reprisals following the destruction of the Askariya shrine in Samarra had topped 1,300. Later today, most news organizations agree with Iraqi and American officials that the Post's numbers were greatly exaggerated, as Editor and Publisher reports:

Sectarian violence that followed last week's bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis in the past few days, many times the figure previously reported by the U.S. media and the military, The Washington Post reported early Tuesday.

Later, however, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called such high death totals "inaccurate and exaggerated," without mentioning the Post.

In comparison, The New York Times reported Monday that the recent violence "brought the country to the brink of civil war and left at least 200 dead." Others had produced similar figures.

On Tuesday, the Times increased that number to "379 dead and 458 wounded, the nation's Council of Ministers said today. At least 246 people in Baghdad alone were killed, the top two city morgue officials said." ...

The Associated Press carried this on Tuesday: "The Post cited figures from the Baghdad central morgue, but an official there told The Associated Press that as of Sunday night they had received only 249 bodies tied to the violence. The Post figure appeared high based on police and hospital reports from the major population centers at the time of the attacks."

The Los Angeles Times, after noting the different figures today, added another, from Haidar Safar, a Ministry of Health official in charge of compiling data from hospitals and morgues across the country. He said 519 Iraqis have died from violence across the country since the blast occurred.

A Knight Ridder report from Baghdad late Tuesday stated that an American military official in Baghdad said U.S.-led coalition forces had been able to confirm only 220 such deaths since last Wednesday’s bombing.

No one argues that any of these numbers represent good news, but the report of 1300 deaths (which I used in a previous post) makes all of these counts pale in comparison. The methodology used by the Post appears somewhat suspect; their reporters counted dead bodies in a Baghdad morgue and assumed all of the deaths that appeared violent came from sectarian vendettas following the bombing. However, the morgue itself says that it has seen nowhere near the number of bodies claimed by the Post.

How many people have died in the violence this week? Too many, of course, and until today's 68 bombing deaths, it had appeared that the violence had burned itself out. The cycle of retribution has limited itself to Baghdad, where the most radical of both sects concentrate in a relatively small area. It looks as though the Post simply got their astronomical number wrong, which detracts from the reporting and undermines its credibility. They need to demand better methodology from their reporters and, frankly, better editing in their offices.

The Post isn't alone today, either. CBS released a poll showing the George Bush has tanked in public opinion, dropping to a miniscule 34% coming into the midterm primary season. This would worry most politicians, but the CBS poll has a major sampling problem, as reported at The Corner and just about everywhere else in the blogosphere.

First, the poll samples adults in general, not voters or likely voters. That's not fatal, but it does tend to skew the data and make it less reliable as a predictor of voter action. However, what makes it completely unacceptable is the wide disparity between Republicans and Democrats in the sample. Even when weighted by CBS to correct for a 13-point Democratic advantage in the sample, the gap remains at nine points, and Republicans still wind up with less representation than independents. That nine-point gap skews the end results and makes this poll representative of ... New York, Massachussetts, and California, but not the rest of the nation.

In contrast, the more reliable tracking poll at Rasmussen shows that Bush's numbers have held steady at the mediocre level of the mid-40s. Today's result shows a 43% approval rating, down six points from its two-week peak. That seems a bit more realistic than CBS' numbers.

CBS has an explanation of its polling process at its blog, Public Eye, and the Anchoress has a long list of blog links debating the topic. Vaughn Ververs writes a calm and rational defense of the methodology, but in the end cannot explain two aspects of their sampling -- the huge disparity in the raw numbers between Republicans and everyone else, and the weighting that winds up with almost the same disparity as before.

If this is the best math that the Exempt Media can muster, our educational system needs a lot more focus on basics.

Catholics For Sin! (Updated And Bumped)

EJ Dionne kicks on the Wayback Machine to pick up an argument started during John Kerry's presidential run, pushed up to today thanks to Catholics in Congress trying to emulate Kerry. A coalition of 55 Catholic representatives, all Democrats, plan to issue a paper this week explaining why the politics of abortion should be irrelevant to their standing in the Church. Dionne praises this as a strengthening of the underlying secular nature of our government. He starts off, as did Kerry, by quoting John Kennedy:

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he said some things about Catholic bishops that might, in today's climate, be condemned as insolence toward church authority.

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act," Kennedy told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960. "I do not speak for my church on public matters -- and the church does not speak for me."

After reviewing the statement's preamble, signed by pro-choice and pro-life Democrats alike, Dionne argues that this resolves a dilemma faced by Catholic voters who would gladly vote as liberals if it weren't for their local priests:

For Catholics with moderate or liberal leanings, the argument from some bishops that they could vote only for staunch foes of abortion posed a wretched dilemma. It seemed to demand that such voters cast their ballots for conservative or right-wing candidates with whom they might disagree on every other question -- social justice, war and peace, or the death penalty. All are areas where liberals are often closer to the church's view. "Our faith does and should affect how we deal with issues," DeLauro said. "But we're rebelling against the idea of a one-issue church."

The problems with this argument multiply with every pass through the text. Dionne is, as always, earnest about his subject, but he and the signatories of this statement are flat wrong. And while Dionne is earnest, these politicians who run as Catholics in order to garner votes show a hypocrisy that, unfortunately, surprises no one.

Let's start by deconstructing the argument that Dionne makes in the above paragraph. One can argue what policies best serve social justice; Democrats believe that government programs do this, and in some cases they may be right, while the GOP argues that providing a better economy and less intrusiveness does this, and in some cases they may be right. Neither party runs on the notion of "social injustice", and I credit both with honest but differing philosophies on how to create the greatest possible public good.

On war and the death penalty, Dionne argues this as if the Catholic Church bans both -- but in fact it doesn't at all. The Church argues against the death penalty as a practice, but its catechism allows it (para 2267). It also allows for just war, a concept conceived and formed by Saint Thomas Aquinas. In fact, it almost argues it as an imperative under the conditions set forth in the catechism in paragraph 2309, among others.

On abortion, however, the Catholic Church has been crystal clear and absolute for 2,000 years, as paragraph 2270 states (emphasis mine):

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. ... Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,"77 "by the very commission of the offense,"78 and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.79 The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

This "formal cooperation" goes to the heart of being a pro-choice Catholic in office. Merely proclaiming to be pro-choice does not put a Catholic in opposition to the catechism, although it's hardly recommended. Actively voting to legalize abortion or voting against legislation such as the partial-birth abortion ban does put one in opposition to 2270. As the text itself notes, the Church considers that a "grave offense", one that unless repented and forgiven in confession, mandates the withholding of the Eucharist. That is de facto excommunication, as the bishops noted.

There aren't many "grave offenses" in the catechism outside of the Big Ten, and the Church considers this part of the "Thou shalt not murder" commandment. It is, in point of fact, a basic tenet of the faith.

Signing this document attempts to tell the Church that the faith must change one of its basic tenets in order to serve the political careers of a handful of people that already do not accept its teachings. The Church will not and should not become a smorgasbord of philosophy, allowing its members to dictate which parts of the catechism it accepts and which it discards. Any organized religion stands for truth in its own way, and this is part of the basic Catholic truth that members must accept to be Catholic.

And here's the real point -- Catholicism is not mandatory.

Members of a faith join or remain because they believe in the truth of the teachings and tenets of the sect. If they disagree with the basic tenets, they should leave and find a sect in which they do believe. The Catholic Church may not have the right to tell people how to vote -- but they certainly have the right to tell people about the truth as they see it and to bar those who openly disagree with their teachings. There exists no right to access to the Eucharist except as the Church defines it. And those who commit grave offenses in the eyes of the Church have put themselves in a position of being denied access to communion.

The bishops have been forced into the position of threatening excommunication expressly because of stunts like this new statement. Their job is to make clear what the Church teaches, and since the politicians involved have made their alignment with Catholicism part of their political campaigns, the bishops have to draw a line and protect the catechism by pointing out the hypocrisy involved -- and holding those who defy it accountable.

If these people want to be pro-choice and vote for abortion, that's their right. It's also the right of the Church to apply the consequences of those decisions.

UPDATE: Esmense claims that the Church was silent on abortion until the 17th century, but this is absolutely incorrect. Catholic writers have opined on this topic, and consistently argued in opposition, since the early days of the Christian church:

The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion, like all sins, is forgivable; and forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.

The Didache

"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).

The Letter of Barnabas

"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).

The Apocalypse of Peter

"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).

Athenagoras

"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers?
. . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).

Tertullian

"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).

There are plenty of other references as well. As I wrote earlier, this teaching goes back to the origin of Christianity. This also demonstrates that abortion has been a longstanding human controversy and not just something that popped up lately.

Did The Germans Aid The War Effort?

The Guardian (UK) reports that a classified US military report states categorically that German intelligence provided the Coalition with vital information on Saddam Hussein's plans for the defense of Baghdad. This has long been rumored to be true, and the additional evidence has the Germans backpedaling at home:

Germany's government faced renewed pressure to order an inquiry yesterday after fresh evidence emerged that Germany supplied military intelligence to the United States in the run-up to the Iraq war.

A classified US military study states categorically that the Germans provided details about Saddam Hussein's plans for the defence of Baghdad. Since the spy issue first arose last month, the Berlin government has been repeatedly forced on the defensive. It issued a denial yesterday.

A copy of the US study was obtained by Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent of the New York Times, who has co-written Cobra 11: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, to be published by Pantheon in America and Atlantic Books in Britain next month. A New York Times report yesterday was based on the book.

The study, which reconstructs Saddam's military strategy, was prepared in 2005 by the US Joint Forces Command. It says that two German agents based in Baghdad gained access a month before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to a sketch, covered in clear plastic, showing the proposed defensive lines for Baghdad, and that a German intelligence officer based in Qatar handed it to US intelligence. The sketch is identified as a plan presented at a meeting of Saddam and his senior commanders in December 2002.

If one recalls, the question of liberating Baghdad weighed heavily on the minds of military planners. America anticipated a block-by-block battle, putting the millions of Baghdadis at risk while potentially costing thousands of American lives. This was one of the points on which critics of the invasion predicted a disaster for the operation. Some publicly predicted that Baghdad would never fall to invading forces and that even if it did, it would resemble Berlin in May 1945 once the battle ended.

If the Germans assisted us in the effort to spare all of that, then their role in the war should be re-evaluated by Americans. However, the Germans apparently would prefer not to have their role re-evaluated at all, as their own people are furious with this alleged breach of their proclaimed neutrality. They question the honesty of former administration officials such as Joschka Fischer, who publicly stated that they would not provide any such assistance to the US and in fact had not done so. Fortunately for Angela Merkel, the new Chancellor, none of these allegations reflect on her new government, and she may be tempted to order an inquiry into the effort for political purposes.

One hopes that the furor will die down quickly. If the report turns out to be true, German intelligence saved the lives of both Iraqis and Americans in Baghdad, and helped to keep the city from the extensive damage that an all-out defense may have caused. If true, we should all be grateful for that outcome.

Saddam Signed The Death Orders

Prosecutors in the trial of Saddam Hussein managed to move their case along in today's session, now that new court management has dealt with the disruptive tactics by the defense. Not that this shocks anyone, but the prosecution proved that Saddam himself ordered the deaths of 148 citizens of Dujail without trial as retribution for the assassination attempt on his life:

Prosecutors at Saddam Hussein's trial presented a document Tuesday they said was signed by the former leader approving the executions of more than 140 Shiites in southern Iraq after an assassination attempt in the 1980s. ...

The document was among several presented by chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi concerning the killings of Shiites from the town of Dujail in 1982.

A memo from the Revolutionary Court, dated June 14, 1984, announced that 148 suspects had been sentenced to death by hanging and listed their names. The prosecutor said the signature on the memo was that of the court's head, Awad al-Bandar, one of Saddam's co-defendants.

A document dated two days later was a presidential order approving all 148 death sentences. The paper was signed by Saddam, al-Moussawi said, displaying the document with the signature on a screen in the court room.

None of these people ever stood trial; none had the opportunity to challenge Saddam's death order. He simply wanted them dead and signed the order that gave him what he wanted. One hundred forty-eight men and women went to their deaths to slake Saddam's thirst for revenge. And this is just one incident from over twenty years ago.

Now that the former judge has been retired in favor of one that has much less patience with disruptions, the trial may actually prove beneficial to the Iraqis. Until now, Saddam has had free reign of the press, overshadowing the evidence and testimony provided at this trial, undoubtedly part of his strategy. Hermann Goering tried a similar tactic at Nuremberg, using his swagger and a surprising intellect to confound and frustrate the tribunal ... for a while. Georing eventually found himself drowned in a flood of meticulous Nazi paperwork and the witnesses that even the murderously efficient Gestapo could not entirely eliminate.

The Goering option now being closed, Saddam will have little influence over the course of this trial. His hunger strike failed when he got hungry, and his defense team returned when they discovered that the Iraqis would proceed without them. All that will be left will be Saddam's monstrous record of barbarity, and that will remind Iraqis what they can expect in return for an abandonment of democracy.

Iran Still Deceives: IAEA

The IAEA report on Iran states that the mullahcracy remains as deceptive as ever about its nuclear program despite the years of negotiations to resolve differences over its intent. They have stonewalled inspectors while ramping up development of its program, a finding that should get the attention of the UNSC next month:

Iran has accelerated its nuclear fuel enrichment activities and rejected demands of international inspectors to explain evidence that had raised suspicions of a nuclear weapons program, according to a report by a United Nations agency. That could make it easier for the United States and its European partners to seek punitive action in the Security Council. ...

The report laid out a long list of fresh examples in which it said Iran had stonewalled the agency, responding with incomplete and ambiguous answers and refusing repeated requests to turn over documents and information.

It called it "regrettable and a matter of concern" that Iran has not been more forthcoming after three years of intensive agency verification. ... The documents make reference to a secretive entity in Iran called the Green Salt Project, and seem to suggest that the project established "administrative interconnections" between Iran's uranium processing, high explosives and missile warhead design. If accurate, the documents would be the first to tie what Iran says is its purely civilian nuclear program to military activities.

Iran has responded to this by claiming that Western intelligence, especially from the US, consists of forged documents. The mullahs had previously pledged to release more information on Green Salt for months, but now claim the entire project never existed.

The IAEA under Mohammed ElBaradei has tried to appease the Iranians as much as possible in this report. It draws no conclusions, irritating the Western nations, but instead sticks to the component findings and leaves all conclusions to the reader. They seem inescapable; the Iranians have not only restarted the centrifuge process, but also have announced plans to expand the number from the 20 at present to 3,000 by the end of the year, and eventually 50,000. The fuel it has produced shows evidence that their purification process is aimed at weapons-grade production by the unusually small amounts of plutonium-240 it contains (a pollutant for weapons).

This appears to remove all doubt that Iran intends on producing a nuclear device for its Shahab-3 missile platform.

Interestingly but unsurprisingly, ElBaradei apparently has accepted defeat on Iranian nuclearization, according to the Times. He has told IAEA member states that Iran will not accept a freeze and that the IAEA doesn't have many options to force them to do so, which the Times says "enraged" the US. It should shock no one. As Saddam proved, international organizations have little influence over the actions of dictators. Iran has seen what effect the UN and its subsidiary agencies had on Saddam for over a dozen years -- they issued proclamations and resolutions and did nothing to enforce them when Saddam committed violation after violation.

The Iranians don't need a dozen years. They may only need a dozen months. They know that time is on their side, and the reluctance of the UN and in the international community to take any real action will give them that window.

Exit The Bagman

Iraqi security forces have captured a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Syrian financier that provided a significant portion of the money for the foreign insurgency:

Iraqi security forces announced on Monday the capture of a senior al-Qaida in Iraq figure, and the U.S. ambassador said the risk of civil war from last week's sectarian violence was over.

Violence throughout Iraq killed 36 people Monday, as fierce fighting broke out between Iraqi commandos and insurgents southeast of the capital. But sectarian clashes have declined sharply since the bloodletting that followed the destruction of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, and Baghdad residents returned to their jobs after three days of a government-imposed curfew. ...

The captured al-Qaida figure was identified as Abou al-Farouq, a Syrian who financed and coordinated groups working for Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, according to an Interior Ministry officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.

Acting on a tip from residents, members of the Interior Ministry's Wolf Brigade captured al-Farouq with five other followers of al-Zarqawi near Bakr, about 100 miles west of Baghdad, the ministry officer said.

The Defense Ministry said Iraqi security forces have killed 35 insurgents and arrested 487 in raids across the country since the bombing last Wednesday of the Samarra shrine.

The violence has decreased markedly but an estimated 1300 Iraqis died in the week following the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra. The attack by AQ forces at first threatened to send the country into a spiral of sectarian violence ultimately culminating in a civil war, but several developments have appeared to make that threat more remote. Sunni political groups have pledged to return to the bargaining table for establishing the first regular constitutional government in Iraq, and the government has pledged to rebuild the Askariya shrine -- a pledge that the US has also offered to fund.

Now the security forces have received significant cooperation in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi. Tipsters informed their national forces to the presence of al-Farouq and his fellow AQ terrorists, preferring democracy to rule by terrorists. This bombing has apparently forced the Iraqis to see the fork in the road quite clearly: either they can pursue old sectarian hatreds and collapse into annihilation, or they can come together to defeat the foreign terrorists who want to exploit those hatreds for their own purposes. It looks like the Iraqis have made their choice.

Health News You Can Use

With all of the health scares that get hysterical coverage in the media these days, I thought I would point out a little good news, especially for us middle-aged guys. It turns out that chocolate is health food now:

Leave it to the Dutch to help demonstrate the health benefits of chocolate. A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its luscious chocolate, indicated those who ate the equivalent of one-third of a chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death.

The researchers say, however, it's too early to conclude it was chocolate that led to better health. The men who ate more cocoa products could have shared other qualities that made them healthier. Experts also point out that eating too much chocolate can make you fat a risk for both heart disease and high blood pressure.

"It's way too early to make recommendations about whether people should eat more cocoa or chocolate," said Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, who co-authored the study.

Still, the Dutch study, supported by grants from the Netherlands Prevention Foundation, appears to be the largest so far to document a health effect for cocoa beans. And it confirms findings of smaller, shorter-term studies that also linked chocolate with lower blood pressure.

Come to think of it, I'm feeling a bit stressed out. I think I'll find myself about a pound of Godiva.

Oh Lord, It's Hard To Be Humble

Hillary Clinton has a rather large ego, although that's hardly news to anyone paying attention to politics for the last fourteen years. She makes the mistake of assuming that people think about her as often as she thinks about herself -- and so now says she's convinced that Karl Rove is obsessed with her:

Reacting to a new book quoting Karl Rove as saying she will be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that President Bush's chief political strategist "spends a lot of time obsessing about me."

The former first lady also said she believed Rove, national GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman and other Republicans are using her to divert attention from Republican problems as the 2006 congressional elections approach.

"Karl Rove is a brilliant strategist. So, if I were thinking about this," she told WROW-AM radio in Albany, "I'd say, why are they spending so much time talking about me?"

Why would Karl Rove give Hillary any consideration? Well, let's see ... she's a Senator, she's running for re-election, her husband still has a grip on fundraising for the opposing party, and poll after poll shows her leading the pack for thr 2008 Democratic nomination. Under the circumstances, it would be rather silly for any political analyst not to strategize around the likelihood of her run for the ticket. Given Rove's track record of political skill, it would also be rather unlikely.

But then again, the Clintons always seem just a little paranoid, especially Hillary. Let's not forget the infamous Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy she hatched up to take the blame for allegations of infidelity and perjury -- allegations later proven correct when a particular blue dress later proved her wrong and her husband something of a cad. She still seems more than a little touchy and paranoid now, talking about "obsession" instead of just smart planning. One wonders if the junior Senator from New York really has the correct temperament for her current office, let alone a higher one.

Beware The Ides Of Marching

Freedom of speech and assembly are the closest we come to unfettered rights in the United States; we do not tolerate limits on either unless necessary for keeping the peace. However, one of the limitations accepted by almost everyone is a ban on overthrowing the elected government through force, both in action and in rhetoric. The rally being organized by the group United For Peace And Justice appears to approach that limitation, if it doesn't actually cross it entirely:

U.N. SOS - We need your help to end the reign of international criminals.

It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation and theft of land is illegal. Murder of journalists is criminal. Remove the traitors who have stolen the U.S. budget and used it to commit international crimes against humanity.

If we were being bombed and our journalists were being murdered here in the U.S. by a foreign country's military, we would hope that the people of that country would stop what they are doing and go to their president's office and demand that it was stopped. If we were the ones burying thousands and thousands of our family members and watching the destruction of the homes, schools, churches and offices that we had worked for decades to build, we would hope that someone, somewhere would care enough to do something for us. We must stop the criminals in our government NOW. There is no meeting with Congress that is going to change what they are doing. We must put the power of the people into action and stay there until they leave!

Inviting everyone to the White House for a protest rally to show that we do not accept the criminal government, illegal wars and the permanent occupation planned for Iraq and Afghanistan. For Nat Turner, For Martin and Coretta, For all the Torture and Assassination in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and many others - We will not allow the Slave Holders that Still Prevail in this Country to Rule us any longer. Imprisonment and torture based on race, religion, resources or region is no different than the slavery we sought to abolish years ago. The Administration is Criminal and if they will not step down, we must storm in, show them how many of us do not accept a criminal government. How can we stand by and watch them kill our brothers, sisters, journalists and friends for their dollars?

We are calling on all citizens and governments in every country to stand with us. We are calling on all Member Nations of the U.N.; All Representatives and Justices in the World Court and International Criminal Courts; All Human Rights Advocates; All Soldiers and CIA agents and government officials who have been blackmailed or are in fear of the dictators to join us in ending this reign of corporate terror in our government. The World Criminal Courts need to incarcerate Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for admitted crimes and known crimes of international scope. The Political Cooperative will put a new, temporary government in place that is comprised of people from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and all the organizations that have finally made us aware of the truth of the savage practices and illegal policies of our government in assassinating our own officials as well as people throughout the world who oppose their criminal activity. We need all of you to save U.S. victims and global victims from their ongoing criminal activity. We are calling on the military, police, citizens and religious organizations to stand with us and help us to bring democracy back to the United States and by doing so, free the world from the wrath, occupation, theft, torture, blackmail and assassination by the Criminals in the United States Government. What they have done all over the world is much worse than what Saddam Hussein has done, so why are they not in jail too? They have admitted to international and national crimes, so why have they not been taken to Court too?

It doesn't take much to put up a website, of course, and this looks like the work of a nutcase in search of company in the asylum. However, given the political climate these days, I have no doubt that a number of people will actually appear on March 15th to "storm" the White House. It boasts a long list of member groups, and a number of those groups are listed on their steering committee roster. These are the groups that apparently are endorsing a call to overthrow the elected government of the United States:

* CODEPINK
* The Communist Party (no surprise there!)
* National Hip Hop Political Caucus
* Iraq Veterans Against The War
* September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows
* Teen Peace Project
* Not In Our Name
* Military Families Speak Out
* US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation
* National Network On Cuba (again, no surprise)
* DC Anti-War Network

From now on, when people from these groups organize and demonstrate, we know what they support: an armed coup d'etat and the end of democracy in America. They want the UN to topple our government and to replace it with, one assumes, the rule of Kofi Annan and the rest of the world.

My prediction: members of every one of these groups will attend the March 15th rally, but it will only attract less than 5,000 people. It should make for a great photo-op for DC bloggers. Wish I could join the spectators ... (via Michelle Malkin)

Kissinger On Hamas

Henry Kissinger writes a lengthy op-ed today in the Washington Post about the effect that Hamas' election to power has had on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (Has Henry ever been accused of brevity?) He demonstrates his brilliance once again here, arguing that Hamas needs an Ariel Sharon, a man who will publicly break with long-held policies in order to grab a chance for peace, before Hamas can expect anyone to take them seriously:

The emergence of Hamas as the dominant faction in Palestine should not be treated as a radical departure. Hamas represents the mind-set that prevented the full recognition of Israel's legitimacy by the PLO for all these decades, kept Yasser Arafat from accepting partition of Palestine at Camp David in 2000, produced two intifadas and consistently supported terrorism. Far too much of the debate within the Palestinian camp has been over whether Israel should be destroyed immediately by permanent confrontation or in stages in which occasional negotiations serve as periodic armistices. The reaction of the PLO's Fatah to the Hamas electoral victory has been an attempt to outflank Hamas on the radical side. Only a small number of moderates have accepted genuine and permanent coexistence. ...

The advent of Hamas brings us to a point where the peace process must be brought into some conformity with conditions on the ground. The old game plan that Palestinian elections would produce a moderate secular partner cannot be implemented with Hamas in the near future. What would be needed from Hamas is an evolution comparable to Sharon's.

Read the whole essay. It points out yet again the folly of taking the Palestinians seriously as partners for peace, given their expressed desire to destroy Israel. Only until Hamas and the Palestinians accept the permanent status of Israel will they bring anything to the table. Until then, the two parties have no commonality of purpose and therefore no basis on which to negotiate.

Red Cross Donations Go To Celebrity Parties

The Red Cross has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on promotion of its executives in the media and on celebrity parties instead of assistance to disaster victims, the Washington Post reports today:

The American Red Cross paid consultants more than $500,000 in the past three years to pitch its name in Hollywood, recruit stars for its "Celebrity Cabinet" and brand its chief executive as the face of the Red Cross -- just a year before ousting her, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

In a $127,000 contract, a Houston corporate image company agreed to create a plan to make Red Cross chief executive Marsha J. Evans the face of the organization as part of a "senior leadership branding project" that ran from October 2003 to November 2004. At the same time, Evans was laying off workers at the Red Cross's blood-services operations and at its Washington headquarters, as well as eliminating merit pay and limiting travel in a bid to cut millions from the national headquarters' budget. ...

Also in 2003 and 2004, the Red Cross paid a Beverly Hills, Calif., firm $113,900 to promote its name to writers and producers for television and film to get the charity included in story lines.

Red Cross spokeswoman Carrie Martin said the contract has resulted in such successes as Red Cross first-aid kits included in the MTV reality show "The Real World" and Red Cross emergency vehicles used in an episode of the TV drama "The West Wing."

Martin said the contracts were a defensive move as well, "to make sure that the Red Cross name and symbol is used appropriately."

When people donate to the Red Cross, as I have in the past, they expect their money to go to disaster relief or to supporting blood drives, not to get their executives high-paying speaking gigs or to allow them to rub elbows with Hollywood celebrities. This amounts to an abuse and deception on the part of the Red Cross, gaining donations -- especially in the wake of 9/11 and recently with Hurricane Katrina -- by using the pain and suffering of victims in order to support a glamorous work environment. As Harvard lecturer Peter Dobkin Hall notes, the Red Cross doesn't need to spend money to raise awareness of the organization, as people "throw money" at them whenever disaster strikes.

This reminds me of the United Way scandal a few years ago, when it turned out that hundreds of thousands of dollars went to executive perks instead of their member charities. I stopped giving to United Way after that scandal and its ongoing hostility towards the Boy Scouts. The Red Cross does do good work, but this kind of abuse cannot stand without serious consequences. Perhaps the time has come to reconsider donations to the Red Cross as well, at least until they stop spending money on self-indulgent activities such as those described above and fire everyone responsible for these abuses of trust.

Look Who's Coming To Dinner

The AP notes that Saddam Hussein has ended his hunger strike, and in fact only participated in it for eleven days. The reason he started eating again? He discovered that starvation is bad for his health. No, I'm not kidding:

Toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has ended on health grounds a hunger strike he began earlier this month to protest against the conduct of his trial, his chief lawyer said on Monday.

"The president maintained his hunger strike for 11 days but was forced to end it for health reasons," Khalil Dulaimi, who met Saddam for seven hours in Baghdad on Sunday, told Reuters.

Saddam, on trial since last October for crimes against humanity, threw already chaotic proceedings into more turmoil on February 14 by saying he and seven co-accused had been staging a hunger strike for the past three days.

What exactly did Saddam think would happen when he stopped eating -- that he would get healthier? Getting sick and dying is the point of a hunger strike, after all; it's an attempt to embarrass one's jailers into concessions. He didn't start eating because he got sick -- he started eating because he belatedly realized that no one gives a flying you-know-what if he dies in prison for any reason. In fact, many who have seen his corruption of the Oil-For-Food program, intended on feeding starving Iraqis, would have considered it poetic justice.

It's just another cowardly capitulation for the self-styled Second Saladin. After declaring that he would die in defense of his regime, and after watching his sons take him at his word, he meekly surrended in his spider hole. Now after boldly proclaiming that he would starve himself, he has gone back to eating his Cheetohs. It's hard to believe that this man found anyone to follow him at all.

The Difficult Natural Ally

George Bush travels to India this week to meet with the leaders of the world's largest democracy, trying to strengthen ties that seem strangely and unnaturally weak. After all, the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy should have much in common and be natural allies -- but historically, India has remained distant and almost hostile to the US:

PRESIDENT BUSH arrives in Delhi for his first state visit this week, hoping to cement an increasingly close relationship between the United States and India that has the potential to alter the strategic balance in the world for the rest of the century.

During the Cold War India was the only major democracy in the world that did not side with America in the struggle against communism. But in the past decade, driven by India’s rapid economic growth, a shift in American priorities in Asia and, latterly, the demands of the war on terrorism, the interests of the two countries have converged sharply.

With US global hegemony increasingly challenged by the rise of China, India — with a population of more than a billion — is seen by many in Washington as a natural and vital strategic ally. Mr Bush arrives in India on Wednesday and will spend three days there before visiting Pakistan, also for the first time, where he will hold equally critical discussions with General Pervez Musharraf, the President.

India's flirtation with the Soviet Union created a huge gap between the two democracies and allowed the relationship to remain sour for decades. Nor does it appear to have taught Delhi a lesson, as the Washington Post notes in an editorial today on the Bush trip:

This week President Bush pays a call; the week after, India's president for the first time will visit neighboring Burma -- one of Asia's two (with North Korea) most brutal dictatorships. While Burma's army rapes and pillages and forces children and others into service, India sells weapons and seeks ever-closer military-to-military ties. This puts the Indians out of step with the United States, Europe and increasingly even Southeast Asia, which is beginning to recognize that its policy of "engagement" with Burma's dictators has borne no fruit.

India's motive here is easy to discern: It's competing with China for close ties with Burma and access to its natural gas and other resources. That's understandable, but India will never beat China's dictators at their own game.

India has always danced with dictators in the region, but in Burma they're activley making it worse. India has traditionally chosen very strange allies for a country that takes pride in its freedom, choosing to align itself with the worst oppressors and with tyranny rather than liberation. Given their history with the British, one may understand their general reluctance to trust the West -- but that's no excuse for actively supporting oppression, and its relationship with Burma hardly hinges on Eastern solidarity.

We need to be closer to India and to forge truly and mutually beneficial ties with the world's largest democracy. Hopefully, those ties will force India to review its poor history of playing footsie with oppressors while turning its back on democracy and allow it to change its diplomatic direction.

Taking A Stand For Private Property Rights

Fox reports that a North Carolina retail and commercial bank has taken an unprecedented stand on behalf of private property rights, potentially opening a new front against eminent domain after the Kelo decision. BB&T has announced that it will refuse to underwrite any development involving the transfer of private property through eminent domain to commercial developers:

Banks give away millions of dollars in charitable donations and loan guarantees to the underserved each year, but BB&T may have just become the first bank in recent memory to withhold money from developers who don't line up with the bank's view of eminent domain law.

The North Carolina-based bank, which employs more than 28,000 people in 1,400 branches in 11 states, announced last month that it would no longer approve loans for developers who want to pursue commercial enterprises on land seized by the government using the power of eminent domain, or taking private property for public use.

The announcement was a reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last June in Kelo v. City of New London. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Connecticut town's right to take land for private development if its use was deemed in the public interest.

In a Jan. 25 release, BB&T executives stated their disapproval of the court's ruling.

"One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own," said BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison, a noted libertarian. "As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won't help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership."

The National League of Cities doesn't care much for the decision. Their spokesman called it a "rush to judgment without reflection or public discussion or debate". That hardly seems fair considering the amount of controversy and comment the Supreme Court decision generated. The NLC wants to ensure the political viability of eminent domain in order to keep its options open for urban-renewal projects, so their opposition to the BB&T decision isn't terribly surprising, even if it is poorly rationalized.

The truth is that the NLC keeps demonstrating its lack of reliance on normal market forces and instead wants to garner near-imperial powers for their members. BB&T has made a decision as an independent company as to where they wish to invest their money. They did so in order to protect the principle of private property, both their own and that of their customers. Good for them for standing up to those who believe that property exists only to derive the best possible tax income for their city and county budgets.

St. Paul Mayor Defies Own Public Smoking Stance

The new mayor of St. Paul campaigned in part on his support of tough new bans on smoking in public places, especially bars and restaurants, beating the more moderate Randy Kelly in his bid for re-election. However, it appears that Mayor Chris Coleman has one standard for the residents of St. Paul and another for himself, as local columnist Joe Soucheray reported today:

The new mayor, Chris Coleman, who couldn't wait to sign legislation that prohibits smoking in bars and restaurants, was puffing away on a big cigar the other night at Stogies on Grand. A guy I know was in there. He told me that Coleman was chomping on a cigar along with former police chief Bill Finney.

They have a back room at Stogies with a big flat-screen TV. It is a popular place to smoke a cigar, and usually they have sports on the TV or maybe the stock ticker running so that the guys back there can pretend to follow their investments. It is almost as Republican an activity as quail hunting, smoking a cigar and following the stock ticker. ...

Coleman had a pretty thin platform. A lot of guys are probably shaking their heads that they didn't run against Randy Kelly, who was defeated because he hugged George W. Bush. Maybe that's what Finney and Coleman were talking about, Finney telling Coleman, "Why, I could have kicked your …''

Coleman rode in on a big anti-tobacco white horse and made a bold promise of how he shared Thune's belief that it was up to politicians to safeguard the health of citizens.

Now, I realize that the mayor has every right in the world to enjoy a fine cigar. And a cigar store is not exactly a bar or restaurant. But you would think, just for the sake of appearances, politics being all about appearances these days, that he might have let the ink dry on his legislation to put bars and restaurants out of business before he lit one up.

One might expect the new mayor to set a better example. The new law did not forbid cigar clubs from allowing patrons to light up, but the campaign to ban it almost everywhere else made it clear that the St. Paul power structure considered tobacco an evil to be opposed. They heralded the ban as an important step in safeguarding the health of citizens in the marketplace. Coleman enthusiastically supported this effort to remove choice from the patrons of restaurants and bars and to impose the role of nanny on the owners of these establishments.

When one makes an argument that second-hand smoke is so dangerous that even separate facilities in businesses aren't enough to safeguard the health of St. Paul citizens, those politicians should not be lighting up anywhere outside their own home. Coleman refused to respond to Soucheray's questions on Friday. Perhaps business owners will be asking more questions on Monday -- at least those whose businesses didn't die as a result of the ban.

DP World Makes Concessions, Pledges Cooperation

George Bush has avoided a difficult confrontation with Congress over the sale of port management to Dubai Ports World as the state-owned UAE company volunteered significant concessions to ease concern over the sale. Not only has DP World requested another investigation of its own operations and the sale, it also has offered to restructure its company to please its new American customer:

The Bush administration said Sunday it will accept an extraordinary offer by a United Arab Emirates-based company to submit to a second — and broader — U.S. review of potential security risks in its deal to take over significant operations at six leading American ports. The plan averts an impending political showdown.

The Treasury Department said in a statement it will promptly begin the review once the company formally files a request for one. It said the same government panel that earlier investigated the deal but found no reason for national security concerns will reconsider it. ...

The announcement means the White House likely won't face a revolt by fellow Republicans when lawmakers return Monday from a weeklong break. A united Republican Party can assert that its leaders — both in Congress and at the White House — have taken additional steps to protect national security.

Under the terms of DPW's offer, the company would wait to take over operations at the American ports now operated by P&O, the company it bought earlier this month. During this period, the company will place a London-based manager in charge of the operations, a person with British citizenship, and leave all the current structures in America alone. After the completion of the deal, DP World also pledged to transform the American operations into a subsidiary that would have American executives at the helm in order to make the operations more palatable for the United States.

This represents the closest to victory that the anti-DPW forces could desire, under the circumstances. It would place Americans in between UAE and the ports as an important buffer. The formation of the subsidiary within the US would make its operations more transparent to law enforcement. In fact, it would be closer to American management of the ports than most others have now.

If the new investigation turns up no significant hurdles, this story will pass into oblivion soon enough. However, these concessions represent a real victory for common sense and stronger security and accountability. It still leaves the question about the lack of foresight by the White House and the Treasury Department about how this deal would look to Congress and the public at large, and why they could not think to require these concessions in the first place.

First Mate Update

A quick note before I run off to the hospital for the day ... The FM is doing well this weekend. Her anemia has improved with four transfusions of blood, but the numbers still seem to drift downward. We think this is a side effect of an immunosuppression drug called Campath (sp?), administered monthly until about six weeks ago when they stopped it.

She should be coming home on Monday if all stays well. The hospital needs to set up a regular dialysis regimen for her before she's released. She'll have to be dialyzed three times a week until another donor can be found, which won't happen until the polyoma virus gets cleared from her system.

However, she's feeling much better, and last night we even had dinner and a movie. I brought "Hitch" on DVD (they have a player in her room), and we both had a blast. Today I'm surprising her with "Bewitched", which she has wanted to see since it came out last summer. She sends her greetings to all of you and her thanks for your prayers and kind thoughts.

The Religion Of Pieces

Europe, and especially France, is sitting on a time bomb with its growing and insulated Muslim population. We may have already seen the first signs of explosion with the murder of Theo Van Gogh, but his death is not an isolated incident. Mark Steyn notes that anti-Semitic violence is growing, while the news media of Europe remains mostly silent about it:

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

Read the entire essay; Steyn is, as always, priceless. He connects the dots between Danish cartoons and the silence of the Euromedia over these new, aggressive moves by Islamists within their midst. The Islamists got the press on the defensive, demanding "respect" for their radical notions, and now they have them silenced so that the world will only belatedly discover their terrorist kidnappings and murders. The Euro-Islamists intend on cleansing the continent of Jews, picking up where Hitler left off -- and like the early days of the Nazis, the media either doesn't care enough or is too intimidated to report it.

The West cannot negotiate with Radical Islam, either for "respect" or for peaceful co-existence. They do not want our respect -- they want our submission. And the price for our survival, on their terms, is the Jews.

Well, Let's Not Have That

The Palestinians might hate Jews, but they have a firm grasp on the concept of chutzpah. The Washington Post notes that the Palestinian Authority has now decided that American aid is an entitlement despite the rise of Islamist terrorists to power in the territories, and they warn of a "backlash" if that money doesn't show up on time and in full:

A senior U.S. diplomat told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday that the Bush administration would provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians even after the radical Islamic group Hamas forms a cabinet in the coming weeks. ...

But Palestinian officials who met with Welch, the most senior U.S. official to visit the West Bank since Hamas's victory in parliamentary elections last month, said the pledge did not guarantee the continuation of U.S. development funds. The United States provided more than $400 million in development aid to the Palestinian territories last year, all of it channeled through nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies rather than the governing Palestinian Authority.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator and a legislator from Abbas's defeated Fatah movement, said Welch did not define what he meant by humanitarian assistance nor specify what funding would be maintained.

"They can continue doing this in exactly the same way," Erekat said. "But we did not get a commitment from them to do so. We urged them to continue sending money through these same channels for projects like schools, water infrastructure and other projects. Otherwise there will be a huge backlash."

Oh, a backlash? Perhaps they will elect terrorists to government -- er, wait, they've already done that. Maybe they'll start bombing Israeli citizens -- never mind, they're still doing that. They might start cheering when terrorists attack us -- oh, never mind, they've covered that as well.

If the Palestinians want our money, then perhaps they should have considered that when the elected Hamas to power. In fact, they should consider that when they strap bombs to their teenagers and young adults and send them into Israeli pizzerias and buses. It's disappointing that the US will not treat those elections as an informed choice by the Palestinians to support terrorism, even though a separate poll from last week clearly shows that the majority of Palestinians support terrorist attacks against Israel:

Perhaps We Could Harness Teddy's Hot Air Instead

It looks like the windmills proposed for Nantucket Sound have run into a hurricane of regulation, thanks to the efforts of Ted Kennedy and his pals in the (exclusive) neighborhood. Apparently, clean energy only takes priority when it only inconveniences the hoi polloi:

A proposal before Congress that would limit the construction of wind turbines near shipping lanes could effectively doom plans to build the country's first offshore wind farm near Massachusetts, the project's supporters say.

Officials at Cape Wind Associates LLC say that the rule, being considered as an amendment to a bill in a House-Senate conference committee, would rule out so many crucial sections of Nantucket Sound that there would not be enough space for their 130-windmill complex.

"This is a dire moment for us," said Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind spokesman. He said the rule "would be totally fatal" for the project.

Congressional opponents claim that the massive turbines would present navigational hazards due to interference with radar systems, based on British research. However, the Army Corps of Engineers has already researched the issue and three years ago determined that no safety issue exists. In effect, Congress is implying that the Army either did incompetent research or is lying. If that is the case, why is Congress not demanding an explanation from the ACE?

They know that the issue has never been navigational safety; the issue has always been that the rich and famous who live and/or play on Martha's Vineyard and the surrounding areas don't want the turbines to block their spectacular views of the coast and ocean. They don't want to have grubby windmills in sight that replace all of the electricity that they eat up on their vacations. They don't want to sacrifice anything for clean energy, but they want the rest of the country to pay through the nose for it.

At some point, American politicians need to grow up. In order to maintain our economy and our innovation, we need a hell of a lot of energy. Either it will come from fossil fuels, or it will come from places like Cape Wind and the San Onofre nuclear faciliity. If it's oil, then either we will continue to make sheikhs rich or we have to start drilling it ourselves from our own reserves and start refining it more effectively. Those are the only two choices for oil. If we want clean and renewable sources of energy on the massive scale required, then we need to build Cape Wind projects where the wind is, or start building nuclear plants right now.

So what will it be, Teddy? Make the sheikhs richer, drill our own oil, start building nukes, or get used to seeing windmills on the horizon? Make a choice, for crying out loud, but stop crying out loud until you do.