Well, He Beat Me At Texas Hold'Em

Mitch Berg points with pride to his high score on a grammar and language skills test on OKCupid, so I figured I'd check it out for myself. You can see the results below:

You realize that this is my revenge for Mitch humiliating me in Texas Hold 'Em ...

Get This Lunatic A Blogger Account!

The Washington Post reports that al-Qaeda's executive officer spends his time tapping out e-mail screeds to current and former associates and using the Internet to broadcast his interpretations of Islam and global politics to the Ummah, exhorting them to remain true to the Islamist cause and scolding them when they step out of line. In fact, the description of Ayman al-Zawahiri by Craig Whitlock sounds uncomfortably familiar to bloggers:

In January 2003, one of the two most wanted men in the world couldn't contain his frustration. From a hiding place probably somewhere in South Asia, he tapped out two lengthy e-mails to a fellow Egyptian who'd been criticizing him in public.

"I beg you, don't stop the Muslim souls who trust your opinions from joining the jihad against the Americans," wrote Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda. He fired off the message even though it risked exposing him.

"Let's put it this way: Tensions had been building up between us for a long time," explained the e-mail's recipient, Montasser el-Zayat, a Cairo lawyer who shared a prison cell with Zawahiri in the 1980s and provided this account. "He always thinks he is right, even if he is alone."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Zawahiri has broadcast his views to the world relentlessly. Despite a $25 million price on his head, he has published memoirs, given interviews and recorded a dozen speeches that find their way to the Internet and television. Video of a speech was posted Thursday on a Web site.

Zawahiri's visibility, eclipsing Osama bin Laden's, reminds al-Qaeda's enemies that the network is capable of more attacks. But a closer look at his speeches and writings, and interviews with several longtime associates in radical Islamic circles, suggests another motive: fear of losing his ideological grip over a revolutionary movement he has nurtured for 40 years.

The success of the Sept. 11 hijackings temporarily united al-Qaeda's feuding factions under the leadership of bin Laden and Zawahiri. But now long-standing ideological and tactical disputes have resurfaced, according to analysts and former Zawahiri associates.

The pattern reveals that Zawahiri lives in fear -- fear of losing control of his network, fear of having his organization stray from the strict ideological lines he has set out. Zawahiri has indeed lost operational control over the al-Qaeda of September 10, 2001; in many ways, that network no longer exists, having been damaged by the sustained US offensive on their finances and leadership and dissipated by the physical isolation of Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri himself.

The main organization has not had a successful major operation since Bali. The Madrid bombings in 2003 turned out to be a franchise operation, as did the London Tube bombings in 2005. Even the Bali bombings in 2002 and again last year seem to be closer to the franchise model. The ejection of the Taliban and AQ from Afghanistan has apparently shut down AQ's ability to coordinate, and the momentum shifted to the distributed network of cells and smaller organizations.

The most successful of these is Zarqawi's Iraq network, but that has presented Zawahiri with a unique problem; Zarqawi has the most credibility within the AQ network due to his continual attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. Zawahiri understands that the physical and operational isolation that has descended on him and bin Laden could render them irrelevant to the struggle. This drives Zawahiri to broadcast his missives on a regular basis; without any operational control or capability, the only way he can remain relevant is to regularly produce his rantings and to proclaim brotherhood with commanders in the field like Zarqawi.

Zawahiri also tries to maintain control through public scolding of those who deviate from his narrow vision. Besides the example provided above, Zawahiri took the time to publicly criticize what is considered the grandfather of Islamist organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood. They took part in the Egyptian presidential election, which Zawahiri considered an apostasy, and publicly told them so. When Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority, Zawahiri warned them explicitly against working inside of the democratic system and encouraged them to impose sharia instead. It's a measure of Zawahiri's relevance that both organizations largely ignored his advice and publicly distanced themselves from his offered alliance.

Early in the life of this blog, I wrote that the key to winning the war on terror would be to isolate Islamists from their money and their leadership, and that radicals without financing gradually decline to rock-throwers -- and that can be controlled through simple police work. In Zawahiri's case, it looks like we've reduced him to an extremist blogger.

The Fever Swamps, Exposed

Today's Washington Post reports on our more extreme left-wing counterparts of the blogosphere and the measured tones of debate they promote. The David Finkel piece focuses on Maryscott O'Connor, whose life provides an example of the balance and stability so evident in the fever swamps:

In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.

Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?

This reads like a parody of bloggers and blogging rather than a day-in-the-life feature article. In Finkel's quotations from O'Connor's and other left-wing blogs, he has to block out 18 expletives. Every single quote drips with hatred and venom, and none of it rises above ad-hominem vitriol. In the entire article, Finkel produces not a single measured argument against policy, but instead exposes the personal nature of their loathing.

If I were a liberal blogger, I would cringe with embarrassment after reading this article. Finkel doesn't report on the respectable blogs on the center-left like Jeralynn Merritt at TalkLeft, Ezra Klein, and even John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, who takes strident positions but provides actual argument to support them. The bloggers that Finkel highlights do not appear removed at all from Democratic Underground and Indymedia nutcases. The Post leaves the definite impression that Jeralynn, Ezra, and John are the exceptions to the rule on the Left.

The right-wing has its fever swamp, but they generally don't dominate the upper echelons of the conservative blogosphere as it appears the fever swamp of the Left does with the liberal blogosphere. I don't know anyone among conservative bloggers who wake up foaming at the mouth and retire at night barking at the moon in the manner ascribed to O'Connor. Most of us blog to improve our lives and the nation instead of indiscriminately venting spleen.

Free Speech And Employment

I met Bill Hobbs during Justice Sunday II last year and was impressed by his thoughtfulness and dedication to blogging and to his beliefs in faith and country. Those beliefs will hopefully allow Bill to weather his storm, in which he has resigned from his job as a result of a cartoon he posted on his blog. Bill posted a stick figure planting a bomb with the caption, "Mohammed Blows", as a response to the Prophet Cartoon riots and the Iranian Holocaust-cartoon contest. When a politically-connected local reporter wrote a scathing column regarding Bill's cartoon and his support for the Republican Party candidate for governor, Jim Bryson, and his employment at Belmont University. Faster than one can say dhimmitude, Hobbs has been cut off from the Bryson campaign and his job at Belmont.

I can understand why Bryson distanced himself, at least in terms of politics. Why, though, did Belmont feel the need to do so? Hobbs hadn't posted or linked this cartoon to the university, nor did he post it there. He wrote that on his own blog as a private citizen and political activist. Does supporting free speech in Denmark automatically make one ineligible for it at Belmont?

UPDATE: A clarification from Bill Hobbs came by e-mail while I was out doing some Easter shopping this afternoon:

Ed,

I'd like to correct one misimpression people have re the whole cartoon flap.

My blogging has never been "connected" to state Sen. Jim Bryson or his gubernatorial campaign in any way. I recently set up a group blog, with more than a dozen bloggers, called "Bryson for Governor," at http://brysonforgovernor.blogspot.com, but neither the senator nor his campaign had any role in its planning or creation or subsequently.

None.

Thus, the Bryson campaign has not had to "distance" itself from me or that project. The distance is already there. It's an independent blog.

The Democratic sleaze merchant who smeared me over the forgotten and never-publicized cartoon (a cartoon I shouldn't have drawn and have apologized for) lied when he said the cartoon was linked to the pro-Bryson blog, and lied when he implied the blog was created at the behest of or in cooperation/conjunction with the campaign.

Bill

Bill, I'm not sure you needed to apologize for anything. I'm glad to publish this clarification.

Why Work For The Saudis At All?

Fawaz Turki had worked for the Saudi-based Arab News for almost a decade as an opinion journalist, but when those opinions clashed with management, he found himself unceremoniously shown the door last month. Turki takes to the pages of the Washington Post to decry the intolerance and rigidity of Arabic dialogue and its reluctance to engage in open, honest debate on the issues confronting Arab society:

I was unceremoniously fired this month by my Saudi newspaper, a leading English-language daily called Arab News.

It didn't matter that I had been the senior columnist on the op-ed page for nine years or that my work was quoted widely in the European and American media, including this paper. What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government.

The other two? Bringing up Islam as an issue and criticizing, by name, political leaders in the Arab or Islamic world for their brazen excesses, dismal failures and blatant abuses.

Never mind that a newspaper cheapens and debases the idea of the journalistic enterprise when it enjoins its commentators against being critical of the government that it is supposed to be a watchdog over. Never mind the absurdity of preventing your contributors from touching on the issue of Islam, a social ideology whose embrace by jihadists is the top news story in the world today. And never mind that Arab society -- a society that remains broken in body and spirit more than a half-century after independence -- needs very much to engage in serious self-assessment and to promote an open debate in the media among intellectuals, academics, political analysts and others about why Arabs have failed all these years to meet the challenges of modernity.

Turki vents his frustration at the kleptocrats and petty dictators that run the fragmented Arab nation since gaining their independence a half-century ago. Some of his invective gets personal, although Turki doesn't name names in this piece. He describes illiterate imams and intellectually vapid bureaucrats colorfully, and accurately describes the crisis in Arab dialogue. His termination at Arab News does represent the worst of the Arabic impulse to silence internal criticism and focus on external conspiracy theories.

All of which begs the question: why did Turki sign up with Arab News in the first place? If Turki had this much concern over free speech and intelligent, self-reflective criticism, his partnership with one of the most repressive and conservative Arab regimes makes little sense at all. Arab News has long been a mouthpiece for the Saud family and its interests, and anyone who reads it understands that. It's not without value; it gives a temperature of the Arab fever swamps when needed, and occasionally has something interesting and provocative to say. Usually it's just a collection of anti-Semitic ramblings and Islamic triumphalism.

It's difficult to imagine that Turki could have been unaware of this when he took the job. Nor could he reasonably think that he could change the Saud family by toiling away for them at Arab News. The fact that he got fired for not playing by the Saudi rules should not have come as a surprise to Turki. In fact, if he truly cared about the free-speech issues he raises in this article, he would never have gone to work there in the first place.

This sounds like sour grapes to me. Turki apparently thought that he had built a high enough profile to protect him from political attacks like the one that got him fired. If he truly had the courage of the convictions he espouses here, he would have quit long ago and either started his own newspaper or signed onto a dissident publication to provoke the dialogue he argues (correctly) the Arab nation so sorely needs.

Who Leaked The Report First?

Murray Waas wrote a rather sensational story for the National Journal yesterday about the Scooter Libby case in which he alleges that Dick Cheney told Libby to leak a classified report to the press. Again, as with so much in this case, the truth of the matter depends on reading the full context of the situation, and Waas fails to provide it. Fortunately, Steve Spruiell at NRO's Media Blog stayed on top of it. Waas reports on the pedigree of the "leak" without noting that the same information had already been leaked and misrepresented on several occasions by its author:

Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.

The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.

We can stop there for the moment, because Waas gets the story wrong in both paragraphs. Once again, we need to remind people that Dick Cheney has presidential authority to declassify material for release. Why would Cheney have done so in this case? Because Joe Wilson had already leaked this same report to both Nick Kristof at the New York Times and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post, and then had written about the briefing under his own name earlier that month in the New York Times. If that briefing was "highly classified", then Wilson should be prosecuted for leaking it; he has no declassification authority. And at that point, the classification had been rendered moot.

More importantly, Wilson deliberately misrepresented the findings, and Waas does the same in the second paragraph. Wilson had been sent to Niger to find out whether Saddam had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, as he had in the early 1980s. Any attempt at buying uranium would indicate that Saddam wanted to continue his efforts to build nuclear weapons, since the IAEA had sealed off all of Saddam's existing yellowcake. Wilson reported through his leaks and in his own op-ed that Saddam had not purchased uranium, and implied that the intelligence that pointed to Niger was false. However, his own report once declassified showed that Saddam had indeed tried to feel out Niger on a secret deal which the Nigerien prime minister was convinced related to uranium sales. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported this:

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

Wilson's report strengthened the case that Saddam wanted to pursue clandestine nuclear development, and Wilson deliberately misrepresented his findings to score political points. Cheney authorized the release of the report in order to answer the charges that the administration had deliberately lied about Saddam's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. It was, in fact, a reasonable declassification in the face of the repeated leaks and misrepresentations that Wilson provided long before Libby spoke to any reporter on the subject.

Let's move on to the next two paragraphs of Waas' report:

The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.

The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.

Of course, the debriefing report didn't mention Plame's involvement in Wilson's mission, but neither did Wilson. In fact, he repeatedly lied about his strange selection for this mission, claiming that his wife had nothing to do with the assignment -- an odd claim, when one considers that Wilson has no particular background for this assignment and Plame worked in the non-proliferation mission at the CIA, which would have had a focus on uranium producers. The SSCI also addressed this in their report:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."

The SSCI determined that, contrary to Wilson's claims of being selected by the VP's office and his wife's non-involvement, Plame actively sought to have her husband assigned the mission and took concrete steps towards getting it for him. The memo she drafted to upper management shows that her efforts were not limited to simply tossing his name into a hat. It doesn't take much to figure that Plame and Wilson had an axe to grind about this mission, and his continual misrepresentations about both the circumstances and the findings of the mission add to this conclusion.

Faced with these factually deficient attacks in the media on the intelligence, and with the "classified" nature of the Niger mission already repeatedly blown by Wilson, Cheney decides to formally declassify the report and give the true context of the intel to the press. In the course of that action, since the press had consistently reported that Wilson was assigned at the "behest" of the VP, the explanation of how Wilson got the assignment would have been critical to explaining why the actual report differed from Wilson's characterization of it. And explaining how Wilson got that assignment required noting that his spouse got it for him.

Wilson is ultimately responsible for outing his wife, and he's also the leaker in this case. He released everything about that briefing report except the truth of it, which was that Saddam had indeed tried to purchase uranium from Niger and that Plame actively campaigned to send Wilson to check it out. On both points, Wilson has consistently lied to everyone -- except the SSCI, where he had to testify under oath and couldn't risk perjuring himself. Wilson has no more credibility on this subject, and if Patrick Fitzgerald and Murray Waas want to pursue leakers, then they should start looking at the one who started this entire chain of events.

I have a primer on Joe Wilson posted here.

Unions Balk At Kennedy's Amnesty Plan

The Democrats may have angered a key component of their political base with their abject pandering to the immigration protests the past few weeks. The head of the largest union has blasted Ted Kennedy for pushing his guest-worker/amnesty plan as an attack on the living standard for American workers:

Labor unions, which are among the Democratic Party's most loyal supporters, are deeply at odds with the party's push for a guest-worker program, and many Capitol Hill aides say erosion of labor's support undermined the Senate immigration-reform bill last week.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says guest-worker programs supported by top Democrats such as Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein are a "bad idea and harm all workers."

"They cast workers into a perennial second-class status and unfairly put their fates into their employers' hands," said Mr. Sweeney, whose organization represents 13 million workers in 54 unions.

This has split the labor political monolith. The SEIU, which represents most government workers, actively campaigned in the midst of the protests, attempting to expand its base among the demonstrators. The LIUNA joined the SEIU in supporting the guest-worker program. This split looks similar to the problems that the AFL-CIO experienced last year when a number of its component unions left the umbrella organization and formed their own partnership; the political direction of labor continues to fragment.

This does not bode well for Democrats coming into what looks to be a tight midterm election. The activist part of the Democratic Party has fully embraced amnesty and even open-border rhetoric that will continue to worry the unions, who have a tough enough time organizing and maintaining wage growth for its members. Without the ability to increase compensation during contract negotiations, the workers will increasingly reject organization. After all, why pay union dues if they can't put more cash in the workers' pockets?

How will the Democrats react to this mixed message from Big Labor? They risk losing significant support no matter which direction they choose. However, this may work to push Democrats much closer to the moderate Republican position of strong border security first and a more forgiving guest-worker program for those already in the US. That approach would probably mollify the AFL-CIO, as long as concrete steps are taken to block new cross-border traffic. SEIU and LIUNA may not like the idea of a fence at the border, but if some sort of normalization comes for the 12 million illegals as a result, they may live with it.

The Democrats cannot afford to ignore the AFL-CIO in an election year. It may be the only opportunity to get the Democrats in a rational frame of mind on border security, and hopefully the GOP can press that advantage when Congress returns from its recess.

Retired Generals Defend Rumsfeld

And now, at least one media outlet brings us the other side of the Rumsfeld debate. The Washington Times reports on three now-retired generals who worked closely with Donald Rumsfeld during the war on terror and who support his continued tenure as Secretary of Defense:

"I think what we see happening with retired general officers is bad for the military, bad for civil-military relations and bad for the country," retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Mr. Bush, said in an interview with The Washington Times. He said he would elaborate his views in an op-ed essay.

"I'm hurt," said retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael P. DeLong, who was deputy commander of U.S. Central Command during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and briefed Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

"When we have an administration that is currently at war, with a secretary of defense that has the confidence of the president and basically has done well -- no matter what grade you put on there, he has done well -- to call for his resignation right now is not good for the country," he said. ...

Retired Gen. John Keane, former Army vice chief of staff under Mr. Rumsfeld, said the secretary involved himself in war planning "just like other strong secretaries of defense."

"Generals bring forward their campaign plans, and the civilian leaders apply their judgments," he said. "As a result of that, those plans are changed. The secretary has done the same thing as pertains to our plans for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. In my view, this is healthy and in my view this collaboration-making is healthy and it serves the nation well."

This is an impressive cadre of voices speaking on Rumsfeld's behalf, and if they continue to express their support for the SecDef, it may help re-sell Congress and the American electorate on Rumsfeld and his leadership. I look forward to reading the op-ed essay promised by General Myers on this point. I hope more of Rumsfeld's former senior officers speak out, and hopefully more media outlets report on it. I notice the Washington Post failed to report it, but interestingly, the New York Times did, although they missed Gen. DeLong:

Mr. Bush's statement was followed hours later by supportive comments from Gen. Richard B. Myers, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the retired commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both appeared on cable news programs, and General Myers pointedly criticized former colleagues for publicly questioning civilian leadership.

I've received some excellent comments on my previous post regarding Rumsfeld, most of which disagreed with me, and that's OK -- in fact, it's encouraging. I think Rumsfeld has done an excellent job as SecDef and would prefer he continue until 2009. If more retired generals speak out in support of Rumsfeld, then I think that his political liability ebbs and Rumsfeld strengthens the continued political efforts in the war on terror.

But make no mistake: the political temperament here is a critical factor in winning this war, and the Bush administration has to find a way to rebuild political support for it. That's not just important for winning elections, it's important for keeping large numbers of Americans alive. That takes priority over the unfairness of the politics surrounding Rumsfeld. If Bush cannot re-energize the electorate on fighting terrorism, then we will face a strong possibility that voters in 2008 will put an isolationist in office and take us right back to the 1990s in dealing with terrorists.

I for one do not want that. I want this nation focused and as unified as we can get these days on fighting the forward strategy on the war on terror, rather than return to the law-enforcement model that got us 9/11. I'd much prefer we can do that with Rumsfeld on board, but if fresh leadership at the DoD is what's needed to restore confidence with the American public in the war effort, then the Bush administration should consider it.

Ignatius Makes A Case

I have struggled the past couple of days about what I think regarding the full-court press by former generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. When Rumsfeld took the job as Defense Secretary prior to the war on terror, I fully expected that some generals would retire and fire broadsides at him for his plans to overhaul the DoD. Rumsfeld is a radical innovator, and the changes he proposed to transform the American military from a Cold War barrier to a nimble and flexible rapid-response force in the new global environment was bound to make old-school brass very uncomfortable.

The generals that now speak out against Rumsfeld are from that part of the military most likely to have objected to his reforms. Also, the criticisms they have levelled at the SecDef have more to do with the policy of the administration than with Rumsfeld's performance in carrying them out, although not exclusively so. I do not think that their rise to command rank during the Clinton administration -- if in fact that is true in all six cases -- has anything to do with their antagonism for Rumsfeld, but rather their lengthy service in the Cold War mindset. Partisan politics do not appear (to me) to be at the heart of their objections, but rather a personal dislike for Rumsfeld and a disagreement about the best structure for the US armed forces. (I'd also add that this does not make their motives suspect in the least; I believe their criticism is based on what they truly believe is in the best interest of the country. It doesn't make them right, however.)

One argument made by Rumsfeld's supporters is that changing the leadership at the DoD would be foolish during war. Ironically, I think this is actually one of the weakest arguments that have been offered for retaining Rumsfeld. First, this war on terror is almost certain to outlast the Bush administration. In 2009, no matter what happens or who gets elected, Rumsfeld will leave and another SecDef will follow him at the Pentagon. A change at that level seems less worrisome than a change in overall war policy, and that gets set by the President.

And that leads me to David Ignatius' column from this morning, which has been on my mind all day long. Ignatius has supported Rumsfeld and his reform efforts at the DoD, but Ignatius makes a pretty good case that Rumsfeld's continued presence endangers not just those reforms but also the critical political support for the war on terror:

The retired generals who are speaking out against Rumsfeld in interviews and op-ed pieces express the views of hundreds of other officers on active duty. When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low.

But that isn't the reason he should be replaced. Military officers often dislike the civilians they work for, but in our system strong civilian control is essential. On some of the issues over which he has tangled with the military brass, Rumsfeld has been right. The Pentagon is a hidebound place, and it has needed the "transformation" ethic Rumsfeld brought to his job. I'm dubious about the Pentagon conventional wisdom that we needed 500,000 American troops in Iraq. More troops were necessary, but they should have been Iraqi troops from an army that wasn't disbanded.

Rumsfeld should resign because the Bush administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force, reduced to squabbling with the secretary of state about whether "tactical errors" were made in the war's conduct.

The Bush administration has rightly been insisting that the Iraqis put unity first and that in forming a permanent government they remove ineffectual and divisive leaders and replace them with people who can pull the country together. The administration should heed its own advice.

Like it or not, fair or not, Rumsfeld has become a political liability for his efforts to both carry out unpopular reforms and execute a war with ebbing political support. Rumsfeld has a flinty, no-nonsense attitude that draws hosannas from conservatives but clearly has severely rubbed some in Congress and the Pentagon the wrong way. He has become the bearer of the political burden of the war and the focal point for those who see the need for change.

Under normal circumstances, Bush could ignore the catcalls from politicians as so much partisan sniping. Condoleezza Rice has received much of the same kind of treatment from Democrats on the Hill. However, Rice does not have former subordinates appearing on national TV talking about her management style, or former fellow Cabinet members telling the press about her manipulations of the debate.

But most of all, Bush has approval ratings for both himself and the war effort sliding down into the low 30s. With thin support such as that, the White House will find nothing but tough sledding on the Hill regarding any new foreign-policy initiatives, especially regarding Iran. Congress will not take him seriously because the voters do not support Bush the way that they did in 2001 and 2003.

And the war on terror is too important to allow that condition to continue.

Ignatius argues that Bush needs to make a dramatic change in order to bring Congress back in line on the war and to reassure the electorate that fresh eyes will review the military plan for it. This administration takes great delight in saying that it does not govern by polling, but the truth is that all of Congress and one-third of the Senate stands for re-election in November, and you can be assured that they are reviewing the polls right now. What they see is an electorate that wants change, and they will react accordingly.

Ignatius may well be right, and I think that conservatives may get too stubborn to see the political issue clearly. I admire Rumsfeld greatly, and wish that the situation did not bring us to this question. But if replacing Rumsfeld with another SecDef with a better relationship with Congress and higher credibility with voters can assure our full and unified commitment to the war on terror, then bringing in John McCain or Joe Lieberman may be the best move for the war. The only way we can lose this war is to lose it here at home, and that means we have to remain focused on that which brings us closer to consensus without sacrificing the goals we have established.

ADDENDUM: I agree that replacing Rumsfeld would be seen as a tactical loss in domestic politics, which is why I'm so resistant to it, along with losing Rumsfeld's innovative vision. However, that tactical loss would last a short time, while the change could bring longer-lasting political strength, depending on who replaces him. If the Bush administration can increase support for the war through other means, then I'd favor that approach. I think Ignatius makes a good point about the potential here for significant improvement.

The Russian Betrayal Series (Collect Them All!)

Russia has once again undercut the alliance against Islamofascist terror. After meeting with Hamas while the West tried to isolate the terrorists, Russia has now announced that it will supply the funding that the US and EU cut off to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel and abide by existing agreements:

Russia has said it will grant the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority urgent financial aid, in opposition to the policy of the EU and the US.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the pledge to authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a telephone call, Moscow said.

The US and EU cut off aid after Hamas took power on 30 March because the militant group refused to renounce violence or recognise Israel. ...

A Russian foreign ministry statement said: "Mahmoud Abbas stated his high appreciation of Russia's intent, confirmed by Sergei Lavrov, to grant the Palestinian Authority an urgent financial aid in the nearest future."

So once again, our friends the Russians undercut our efforts to thwart terrorism, this time once again with the Palestinians. Just when the pressure had begun to have an effect, with Hamas making noises about recognizing Israel, Russia lets them off the hook. No Arab country had stepped up to fund Hamas' government, of course, which had proven how much value they place in their Palestinian "brothers". Never mind now; Moscow just let every last one of them off the hook.

I wonder how much help they'll be with Iran?

Zarqawi Retreating?

General John Vines, the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, told a policy conference that al-Qaeda terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has conceded defeat in Iraq and has begun pulling out, thwarted in his attempt to bring down the elected Iraqi government by his own heavy-handed tactics. Vines told the group assembled at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that the bloodthirsty and indiscriminate tactics and targeting of AQ's terror network in Iraq has galvanized Iraqi opinion against Islamofascism and has isolated the foreign network under Zarqawi's command:

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday.

The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps.

"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ...

Gen. Vines said the foreign terrorists had made a strategic mistake when they tried to intimidate and deny Iraqis a way to vote.

"I believe Zarqawi discredited himself with the Iraqi people because of his willingness to slaughter Iraqi people," he said.

This would be great news if we see it confirmed in the next few weeks. Zarqawi and his minions bet the house on either intimidating the Iraqis into rejecting the elections or provoking the country into a three-sector civil war between the Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurds. Neither occurred, although the country has seen plenty of sectarian street-fighting and tensions remain high. The seating of the permanent National Assembly marks a clear demarcation of history in the region, when an Arabic country embraced multi-party democracy and rejected the rule of the bullet or the strongman -- and they did it while lunatics like Zarqawi and his foreigners killed Iraqis by the dozen and score.

We have already seen some evidence of this climbdown. Deaths of American troops in Iraq have dropped considerably over the past months. Deaths for civilians, however, have risen. Whether that relates to AQ or to the sectarian conflicts between the militias cannot easily be seen. However, General Vines has been on the ground in that theater and has a vital perspective, in which he obviously believes progress has been made and that AQ in particular has decided that further effort in Iraq is no longer worth the risk.

If true, it will demonstrate that the US has the will and the strength to face down terrorists. We will have gone some distance in reversing the damage done in retreats from Somalia, Beirut, and Teheran over the past three decades as well as our unwillingness to engage terrorists after attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers blast, the demolition of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the USS Cole. We should all hope that General Vines' analysis proves correct in the coming weeks.

Now This Looks Like Civil War

The evacuation of Israel from Gaza has left behind a vacuum which both Fatah and Hamas have tried to fill ahead of the other. Now Joshua Mitnick reports that both have started setting up rival military bases in the first stage of what looks like an impending civil war in the Palestinian territories:

Militant squatters loyal to rivals Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are turning open lots in the Gaza Strip into ad hoc military bases, a development that some fear will lead to open warfare between rival Palestinian factions.

Leaders at the camps say they are acting in the name of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, but the growing presence of what are essentially guerrilla training camps comes at a time of growing instability in Gaza.

"Everyone is showing their strength under the umbrella of the resistance," said Tawfik Abu Khoussa, a former spokesman of the Palestinian Interior Ministry. "If there is a little problem between the factions, maybe they will start a civil war."

This shows again the brilliance of Ariel Sharon in pulling out of Gaza. He allowed the Palestinians to create a laboratory to demonstrate their inability to rule while freeing Israel of a drain on its blood and treasure, a drain that would never have wound up in their possession anyway. He removed the Israelis living in the isolated settlements and left the Palestinians to their own devices.

And look how the Palestinians have reacted. They have destroyed much of the economic development that the settlers established as well as the agricultural projects funded by the West to help the Palestinians become more self-sufficient. Instead of creating a civil authority, the two terrorist groups that pass for political parties have turned Gaza into a series of armed camps, ready to break out into open warfare at any moment. Sharon knew that Fatah and Hamas could not possibly govern but only impose petty fiefdoms based on proximity to their arms. Now the world knows it, too.

Gaza is about to erupt into a major civil war unlike anything seen in Iraq, despite the media portrayals to the contrary. Both sides are well-organized, well-armed, and will fight each other openly in the streets before long. They both hold land and seek to gain the rest. In this case, unlike other civil wars past and present, both sides deserve to lose -- but in the end, the biggest losers will once again be the Palestinians themselves. Perhaps they will learn not to endorse terrorists as governors after the war ends.

Shiites Agree To Attend Assembly Session

A political crisis in Iraq has been averted, with Shi'ites reversing their earlier position and now agreeing to attend the National Assembly when it meets on Monday. The largest faction in the Iraqi parliament had previously insisted that until key ministerial positions had been filled, the session should not open and they would refuse to participate:

Leaders of Iraq's Shiite political alliance said Friday that they will attend next week's parliament session even if they haven't reached agreement on nominations for the top posts in the next government.

Members of the alliance will meet this weekend to discuss the posts — including the position of prime minister, which has been the core of the long-standing stalemate, said Sabah al-Saedi, a Shiite politician. He said alliance members would attend the parliament session, scheduled for Monday.

"We will meet Saturday and Sunday to discuss the matters of the prime minister nomination and the distribution of key posts," said al-Saedi, whose small Fadhila party is part of the alliance. "We are going to attend Monday, regardless of what happens at the internal meetings."

Ridha Jawad Taqi, a leading figure of the biggest Shiite party, also said the alliance planned to attend Monday's meeting.

A Shiite lawmaker had said a day earlier that members of the alliance were reluctant to attend the session until a deal had been struck on the premiership and other top government positions that require parliamentary approval.

Someone must have reminded the Shiiites that they have the most to gain through the democratic institutions of Iraq, and have the most to lose if they fail. After being repressed in Iraq for decades, the majority Shi'a finally have the ability to have real power, but only as long as they act within the framework of the elected government. They have overreacted to the refusal of the Kurds and Sunni to support their favorite candidate for Prime Minister, current PM Ibrahim al-Jafaari, and wanted to force the minority factions to retreat on the issue. Instead, they made themselves look like obstructionists and had they proceeded, would have given the Sunni a great excuse to pull out of the political process altogether.

At some point, the Shi'ite alliance will have to set al-Jafaari aside and come up with a compromise candidate. Neither the Kurds nor the Sunni have insisted on a non-Shi'ite PM, but they have made it clear that al-Jafaari will not get their support under any circumstances. The Shi'ites need to come to grips with the understanding that they cannot dictate the flow of Iraqi politics, no more than the Sunni can after the fall of Saddam. I predict that they will again reach an eleventh-hour compromise with another PM at the helm.

Dionne On The Judas Gospel

The Washington Post's EJ Dionne writes about the discovery of the apocryphal Gospel of Judas, a writing known and rejected by Christians since the early days of the Church, but which has achieved new notoriety lately through its textual release after years of study. Dionne addresses the silliness that has accompanied the National Geographic release:

The buzz surrounding the Gospel of Judas is that it will threaten the faith. Much the same has been said of "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, but the Judas Gospel has the additional benefit of being a genuine historical document. It is the product of the Gnostic wing of early Christianity, eventually condemned as heretical, that claims salvation not by faith or works but by special knowledge. ...

Judging by the Gospel of Judas, the "knowledge" claim of the book's author or authors is to a rather bizarre cosmology. The detailed description of a divine realm of assorted angels and an emphasis on the stars -- "Stop struggling with me," the Jesus of the story says. "Each of you has his own star." -- reads like a rejected screenplay for a Spielberg movie.

Gnosticism has always been a seductive force, and not just in Christianity. For some reason, a large percentage of people want to believe that real truth can never be easily understood. Humans appear to have a deep-seated need to be part of a secret, inner circle that can unlock hidden truths -- or at least to believe in hidden truths. Gnosticism could be accurately described as Christianity's first conspiracy theory, except that it undersells the strength of the movement and how difficult it was for the early Church to stamp it out.

The Gospel of Judas and the actual assertions on which the fictional DaVinci Code are based represent the eternal attraction of Gnosticism. We cannot believe that God loved us so that He gave us His only son as the perfect sacrifice for all time, and all we have to do to partake in that sacrifice is to believe in Him. (I often think that Jesus understood this so well that he spoke in parables just to address this human need for deconstruction, along with the other eternal human need to have everything explained in small words.) Because this sacrifice is so unbelievable, a lot of people are unable to take it at face value, and that's when people start thinking about conspiracies, secret knowledge, and so on.

The problem with Gnosticism is that it denies the universality of the sacrifice. Christians believe that Jesus died for all our sins to set mankind free. If that is true, then Gnosticism directly contradicts it. Rather than having Jesus be the universal sacrifice, Gnosticism would have people believe that the salvation offered by Jesus was intended from the beginning for only a select few, only those in on the Double Plus Secret Plan, if you will. Under this system of belief, the only people who can achieve salvation are those who can successfully decode secret messages in the Gospels and recognize the secret nature of God. It casts Heaven as a convention for conspiracy nuts.

It's no small wonder, then, that the Gospel of Judas portrays a Jesus that doesn't sound terribly concerned about humanity but emphasizes astrology -- another form of study that attracts the same kind of attention from the same kind of people. It's also fitting that this gets attributed to Judas, the apostle who apparently believed that Jesus would command an army to overthrow the Romans, a man who looked for the secret code in the teachings of Jesus rather than the overt message He preached. This Gospel only threatens the faith of those who still are tempted to do the same, in the same manner that the Da Vinci Code threatens the faith -- which is to say not at all.

For those of you who wonder why I read Dionne, this column is an excellent example of his insightful writing and point of view. I may not agree with EJ often, but he always has something interesting and provocative to say.

UPDATE: Thank you for all of the excellent comments in this thread and to those who e-mailed their thoughts on this subject. For more on this topic, I'd recommend this post at Stingray.

Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

After having doors slammed in their face and their cash flow cut off, Hamas has decided to recognize Israel under its 1967 border:

According to a Thursday report on Al-Jazeera, the Hamas government will recognize Israel if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders.

Hamas officials close to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh expect Haniyeh to announce the change in the organization's platform in the next few days, Army Radio reported.

This would appear to vindicate the hard line approach taken by the US and surprisingly echoed by the EU. Hamas had threatened to get its cash needs fulfilled by other countries in the region, especially Iran, after having the West wash its hands of the Palestinians when they elected Hamas into power. It now looks as though Hamas had its bluff called and perhaps once again proved the historical disregard that Arab nations have always had for the Palestinians.

Of course, Hamas might offer sweet words to the world but say something else entirely at home. That was Yasser Arafat's modus operandi for years. The precondition of returning to the 1967 border also may be a dodge, as Israel is unlikely to do so unless the Palestinians start abiding by their previous commitments. However, having al-Jazeera report this development throughout the Islamic world will force Hamas to acknowledge its recognition offer to its own people as well as signal that the West has won this round of diplomacy. Whether Hamas actually takes the action it proposes and starts honoring other commitments will remain an open question.

UPDATE: How bad has the financial crunch been for Hamas? They're trying to get Arabs to send them donations to pay their salaries:

IN DESPERATION at a mounting financial crisis, the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) yesterday launched a fundraising drive aimed at ordinary Arabs.

In advertisements on Arabic satellite TV stations and on internet sites, the PA said that giving money to it meant "supporting the steadfastness of your Palestinian brothers" and would "thwart the Zionist plans aimed at forcing them to relinquish their legitimate national rights". It also gives account numbers at the Arab Bank and Egyptian International Bank in Cairo.

The Palestinians have finally learned that the "steadfastness" of their Arab brothers is nothing more than a fantasy woven by the kleptocracies in the region to inflame anti-Semitic rage among their oppressed subjects. In a clever move, Hamas has decided to play into that fantasy by targeting this fundraiser to the subjects themselves, rather than struggling in vain to get any significant cash from the kleptocrats.

I suppose if this doesn't work, a telethon will come next.

Michael Yon Dissents, And A Door Slams

Michael Yon has resumed his intrepid travels through Iraq to bring us some of the best reporting available from the front lines, relating the interaction of American troops with the Iraqi people and their engagement against the insurgents. Michael will also be giving us his perspectives on what he thinks of the situation, and given his embedding and his track record, his voice has great credibility. That credibility has gained him a following not just in the blogosphere but also among audiences of radio and television shows.

Unfortunately, for at least one radio host, Michael only serves as a conduit for the host's own perspective, and according to Michael has angrily discarded him as soon as his evaluation differed from that of the host:

Of course! Ye’ old censorship. Every country practices censorship, in one form or the other. Just this week, Thailand is having a Texas-cage match over censorship, accuracy in reporting, and alleged slanderous swipes at the King. Last week, in America, a radio producer for a large syndicated program in the United States called me requesting that I go on the show, a show that has hosted me many times and where I’ve been referred to as, “Our man in Iraq.” But when I said Iraq is in a civil war, that same producer slammed down the phone and, in so doing, demonstrated how much he reveres truth.

The many faces of suppression are interesting. The first time I said something the producer did not agree with, he slammed down the phone. That’s why I do not accept advertisement. That same syndication had regarded my opinion highly when I was saying what they wanted to hear. They were not happy per se for truth. The truth was that we were making much progress in Iraq, and that is what they wanted to hear. But I knew the honeymoon would end the day the truth was at variance to their narrowly defined message. When the receiver slammed into the phone, the producer revealed himself naked; he was not supporting the troops, nor the Iraqis, but the President.

Again, just as with South Park and Comedy Central, this isn't censorship; the government has not restrained Michael from expressing his opinions. Radio hosts have every right to decide what guests and callers they want to invite onto their show, just as the stations themselves have the right to decide which hosts they will broadcast.

Outside of that, it shows a disappointing immaturity on the part of the radio host. It's one thing to disagree with Michael about his analysis of the situation; as Michael himself would certainly tell us, he's not infallible. However, if a show has spent its time promoting Michael as an expert on the ground -- "our man in Iraq" -- then the show loses credibility for treating him so shabbily for disagreeing with the host on his perspective. It's intellectually dishonest, and a credible host would have honored his invitation and debated the point with Michael. Otherwise, all we will get from that host is a series of yes-men, a failing of many radio shows where the host has difficulty handling honest debate.

I don't agree with Michael on this point, but I think that Michael has a unique perspective and makes his case rationally. Michael had too much class to name the producer and the show, but perhaps we can challenge those hosts who promoted Michael's earlier appearances to arrange new appearances immediately with him in order to "out" the one who can't deal with a rational difference in opinion.

Three Letters For Parker And Stone

Earlier, the Media Blog at NRO confirmed that Comedy Central refused to show an image of Mohammed in the two-part episode of South Park that finished with last night's installment. The AP report at the Washington Post provides more detail on the decision made by the Viacom unit to restrain Trey Parker and Matt Stone from using Mohammed to make its point about intimidation and free speech:

Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Muhammad, according to a person close to the show who didn't want to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The network's decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said.

Comedy Central said in a statement issued Thursday: "In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision." Its executives would not comment further.

With this knowledge, the extent of the satire in the two-part episode becomes clear. Although the pair used Family Guy and Fox as a foil for the plot, it appears that Parker and Stone intended it as a sly shot at Comedy Central management. Unfortunately, those executives did not possess as much testicular fortitude as the fictional Fox executive in the episode.

Those who decry this as censorship are mistaken. In this case, Comedy Central owns the "printing press" and therefore have every right to decide what material they will publish. It calls their judgment and courage into question, and certainly their consistency -- they didn't have a problem depicting Jesus in any number of South Park episodes -- but in the end, the decision is theirs to make. Censorship requires government action, and none came into Viacom's decision. The problem is better cast as corporate cowardice, the extent of which appears to be growing by the week at what used to be as cutting edge a channel as possible for free cable TV.

My advice to Parker and Stone comes down to three letters: H. B. O.

The only way to really guarantee their own freedom of expression is through self-publication, of course, but the Internet would not likely produce enough revenue to keep the show going. As long as the need for significant revenue exists, either Parker and Stone will have to buy their own cable channel or partner with one that has a proven track record of courage in publishing.

HBO has that and a reputation for excellence in broadcasting as well. Their best series, The Sopranos, is coming to an end early next year, but they have had several other highly-acclaimed original series, such as Deadwood, Carnivale, Oz, Six Feet Under, and others. It would be difficult to find a topic or a taboo that at least one of these shows did not challenge, and do it well. With the nearing retirement of The Sopranos, HBO could use some buzz for its original-series offerings. Big Love may eventually fill that role, but South Park could start right at the top.

Comedy Central has proven itself too timid to allow Parker and Stone do satirize equally. CC apparently has no problem poking fun at Christians and Jews, probably because Christians and Jews don't try to kill people for insulting them. Scientologists and radical Muslims, however, have proven that they can frighten Viacom into submission. Under those circumstances, everything published by Comedy Central becomes suspect. Parker and Stone should call Time Warner and start discussing the Sunday night time slot that Tony Soprano will soon leave vacant.

Hot Sex Tips From Michael Douglas

How does a older man keep a vivacious young woman like Catherine Zeta-Jones satisfied, anyway? Michael Douglas apparently told Jay Leno his secret:

Michael Douglas has explained how he keeps wife Catherine Zeta-Jones interested in the bedroom. His Oscar-winning other half has no need to lay back and think of Wales to conjure up images of her native home.

Her 61-year-old husband told chat show host Jay Leno that he impersonates the earthy Welsh accent of Richard Burton.

Damn! Who knew all that was needed was to act drunk and chew the scenery? I'll have to find my copy of Exorcist II: The Heretic before the weekend...

What Richard Burton line of dialogue would most likely do the trick? Post it in the comments section!

Arizona Votes For Immigration Enforcement

The Arizona state legislature voted to enact a bill that would require its law-enforcement agencies to arrest illegal immigrants for violating state laws against criminal trespass, a measure that would trump resistance to cooperating with federal agencies in rounding up illegal immigrants. The bill now goes to Democratic governor Janet Napolitano, who has made veto noises on this issue:

Two days after a big immigration march in Phoenix, the Arizona Legislature on Wednesday approved legislation to make illegal immigrants subject to the state's criminal trespassing law.

The Senate approved the bill on a 17-12 vote and the House followed with a 33-27 vote, with both Republican-led chambers voting nearly along party lines.

Supporters of the bill contend it would provide "a second line of defense" behind the border patrol by enabling state and local law enforcement officers to arrest illegal immigrants. ...

The bill was sent to Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano. She declined to say Wednesday what she'll do with it, but her office later released letters from 12 law enforcement groups and officials, including sheriffs in three border counties, urging her to veto the bill.

The bill "represents an enormous unfunded obligation for state, county and local law enforcement," Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada wrote.

The Arizona GOP has drawn a line in the sand. In order to avoid the criticism that they wanted to force state police to enforce federal law, the legislature made clear that the police should be enforcing state law to detain illegal immigrants. That paints Napolitano into a corner, and puts the Democrats on the defensive in a state that gives overwhelming support for border security. No longer can Napolitano make a case for federalism through vetoing tough border control legislation; this time she will either have to support the enforcement of state law or specifically cast herself and the Democrats as opposed to enforcing the law regarding illegal immigrants.

Expect Napolitano to veto the legislation. The GOP will not have the votes required to overturn the veto, but the positions will finally be made clear, and Arizona voters will know where Napolitano truly stands on border enforcement. Proposition 200, which required proof of citizenship for voting and applying for public benefits, passed 56-44 in 2004, demonstrating that Arizona wants better control over the border and illegal immigration. Napolitano's veto will put her on the wrong side of that divide just in time for her re-election campaign. She leads in early polling, but that may well come to an end with this decision.

Don't You Forget About Me

North Korea reacted predictably to the attention Iran has received over the past few days by issuing threats of its own, apparently somewhat jealous of losing the world's focus:

North Korea said on Thursday it might boost its nuclear deterrent if six-country talks on ending its atomic programs remained deadlocked, but said it would return if Washington met a demand to unfreeze it assets.

Pyongyang's top envoy to the stalled negotiations told a news conference in Tokyo the United States must lift what the North considers to be financial sanctions against it. ...

In an official media report on Thursday, North Korea reiterated it has been building a nuclear deterrent to counter what it views as Washington's hostile policy toward it.

Washington has clamped down on a Macau-based bank it suspects of assisting Pyongyang in illicit financial activities, including money laundering.

"Hey, look at me! Over here!" That's the message from Pyongyang, irritated at having its shell game interrupted and stalled while the Bush administration presses forward against Iran. North Korea has $20 million in the bank that has had its assets frozen, and they need the money desperately for a number of reasons. Primarily, they need to buy food, but that's probably not what Pyongyang intended with this cash; more likely it would have gone towards weapons, given the clandestine nature of the transactions.

The US has decided to strangle North Korea into cooperation. Kim Jong-Il is discovering something about his nuclear deterrent -- it only works to prevent military attack. Once developed, it loses its value as a bargaining chip. Pyongyang has threatened to build more nukes in response, but that is an ineffective threat for two reasons. First, no one is entirely sure that the North Koreans have the capacity to add to their nuclear arsenal, and second, even if they did, it wouldn't make much difference. The key had been to stop them before they made the first nuke. Now that they've managed to acquire them, that phase of the conflict has ended, and the US and its allies will simply confront North Korea in other ways, including financially.

We can wait longer than Pyongyang can afford to starve. It seems that they're unwilling to starve for attention, anyway.

UN And EU Continue Dithering

In the wake of the announcements from Iran of its success in uranium enrichment and its plan to immediately expand its cascade to 3,000 centrifuges, one might expect the United Nations Security Council to speak out strongly against Iran's intransigence and defiance of its unanimous resolution. One might also expect Europe to react to the humiliation Iran delivered to its diplomatic corps, which had worked for years to reach a negotiated solution on non-proliferation with the mullahcracy.

Well, if one expected those actions, one would have to live with disappointment:

Leading countries on the U.N. Security Council expressed dismay Wednesday over Tehran's announcement that it had produced enriched uranium, although there was little sign of consensus among them on how to respond. ...

Russia and China, also key members of the council, struck a more equivocal tone, raising concerns about Iran's actions but also warning against any precipitous international action. Both say they are reluctant to back economic sanctions, one possible tool in attempting to force Iranian compliance. ...

Leading European governments, which have been most active in negotiations with Iran, were restrained in their response but were clearly perturbed by Tehran's announcement.

They are examining the possibility of imposing economic sanctions on their own if the Security Council cannot agree on strong action.

Such sanctions would be a hard sell domestically in Europe because a number of countries have lucrative trade deals with Iran and have invested heavily in the country.

In other words, the Iranian announcement disturbed the international community, but not to the point where they feel it necessary to actually take any action outside of clucking their tongues and wagging their fingers at the Iranians. the Europeans may feel compelled to deny Iranians the opportunity to purchase some luxury items, the Los Angeles Times reports, and may restrict travel for officials of the Teheran regime. Even the Europeans admit that this lame response will have absolutely no effect on the Iranians, and so predictably that's as far as they're willing to go.

In the meantime, the Iranians continue to issue more provocations. Today they claimed during a visit by the IAEA's Mohammed ElBaradei that their nuclear drive is "unstoppable". While the New York Times continues to insist that the Iranians are a decade away from developing a nuclear weapon, others note that estimate is based on the 164-centrifuge cascade. The Iranian plan for immediate expansion to 3,000 centrifuges cuts the enrichment cycle for weapons-grade fissile material to nine months, and no one thinks it will take more than one or two years to build that cascade.

Once again, the UNSC has shown itself as a haven for appeasers and enablers. Even when Iran admits to enriching uranium and announces plans to do so on an "industrial" scale -- even when it throws a party with big banners in English to celebrate its defiance -- the collective will of the UNSC and Europe amounts to cutting off Iran from its supplies of Rolls Royces and caviar. They will not risk their commercial interests to restrain the Iranians either economically or diplomatically.

Does any of this sound familiar?

In the meantime, the Democrats continue to cast their foreign-policy platform around strengthening international institutions as a means of securing the US. It sounds great in theory, but in practice for at least since the end of the Cold War, these international institutions have proven themselves more likely to protect nothing more than the tributes paid to them by the same people who threaten our security, and member states more interested in using these institutions to block any effort to address proliferants and genocidal maniacs. The UN has shown no interest in solving any problem, preferring to stick its collective head in the sand until either the problem drops off the radar screen or someone resolves it for them.

We can no longer put our trust and our security in the UN, if indeed we ever could. It remains nothing more than a debating society, perhaps a useful one, but it will never act in defense of freedom or security. We need to focus on managing our own multilateral alliances outside of Turtle Bay, and that need has never been more pressing than with the situation in Iran.

Assumptions At ICE May Prove Hazardous To Our Health

The DHS agency in charge of immigration enforcement makes a strange assumption in a case that sounds like a big problem in the war on terror. After shutting down a conspiracy that smuggled dozens of people from India and Pakistan into the US, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that none had any connection to terrorism. Read the AP's description of this smuggling ring and decide for yourselves:

U.S. and Canadian authorities announced Wednesday that they have broken up a human smuggling ring suspected of illegally shepherding dozens of Indian and Pakistani nationals into Washington state from British Columbia.

To date, a federal grand jury in Seattle has indicted 14 U.S. and Canadian men for their roles in the alleged scheme. Twelve had been arrested as of Wednesday.

Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, said investigators on both sides of the border have worked closely for more than a year, apprehending roughly 50 people who had paid as much as $35,000 apiece to be smuggled into the United States.

Mr. Winchell said none of those smuggled or involved in the operation were suspected of terrorist activity.

If none of these illegal immigrants had terrorism in mind, then why pay $35K to get smuggled across the border? These are obviously not poor Mexican and Central American migrant workers looking for a better life, and $35,000 can hire a pretty good immigration attorney. Having that kind of cash indicates that either the potential immigrant is a skilled worker of some kind -- or somebody has fronted him or her with a large amount of cash. If the person has that kind of skills and resources on their own, why are they so desperate to escape from Canada that they would pay $35K to get muled across the 49th Parallel?

Most of all, why did all of these "dozens" of smuggled immigrants come from Pakistan and India, areas where radical Muslims are very active? And do we really know that ICE caught all of them?

It seems that the ICE has made a very large assumption that doesn't appear to fit the facts as reported. It sounds more like an agency that wants to placate us with false assurances of security. They did a good job in stopping this ring from allowing cash-rich Pakistanis and Indians from infiltrating their way into the US, but either they are hopelessly naive about the illegals' intent or there's more to this story than they want to tell us. Either way, it demonstrates yet again that we have to focus on border security immediately.

Getting A Head Start On Amnesty

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Just as with the amnesty program that Simpson-Mazzoli gave us in 1986, the Senate's plan to track guest workers into American citizenship has had an effect on illegal immigration, but not the one the Senate intended. MS-NBC reports that border crossings have jumped in the past few days as people attempt to get into the country in time to take advantage of this latest flavor of amnesty:

At a shelter overflowing with migrants airing their blistered feet, Francisco Ramirez nursed muscles sore from trekking through the Arizona desert — a trip that failed when his wife did not have the strength to go on.

He said the couple would rest for a few days, then try again, a plan echoed by dozens reclining on rickety bunk beds and carpets tossed on the floor after risking violent bandits and the harsh desert in unsuccessful attempts to get into the United States.

The shelter’s manager, Francisco Loureiro, said he has not seen such a rush of migrants since 1986, when the United States allowed 2.6 million illegal residents to get American citizenship. ...

Maria Valencia, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the rise in detentions did not necessarily mean more people were crossing. She attributed at least some of the additional arrests to an increase in the number of Border Patrol agents. ...

But Loureiro, who has managed the shelter for 24 years, said the debate in Congress has triggered a surge in migrants. In March, 2,000 migrants stayed at the shelter — 500 more than last year.

This illustrates perfectly why immigration reform cannot take place without first securing the border, a fatal flaw in the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. That plan also gave a track for citizenship to the three million illegals living in the US at the time, and Congress promised to pass stricter border control later. We naturalized the three million immigrants, and twenty years later we have 400% more illegals than we did in 1986, by a conservative estimate. Now we've only started debating a similar plan, and the wave of illegals has started up again.

Without credible border enforcement, any plan for dealing rationally with the millions of illegals already in the country is doomed, and this report shows why border enforcement must come first. If common sense didn't already dictate that in a time of war against an enemy who has openly threatened to infiltrate into our country in order to stage massive asymmetrical attacks, then this report shows the practical reason for it. We cannot rationally develop a strategy to humanely and effectively deal with the illegals we have while thousands more pour across an open border every day. And until we have a credible barrier on that border, they will continue to cross in ever-increasing numbers to take advantage of whatever amnesty we might offer.

The Senate needs to return with border security foremost on their mind. On this point the two chambers of Congress can agree quickly and get a fast start on implementation while debating the status of the millions already in the US. Congress and the President will find that we can live with a fairly wide range of possibilities on normalization as long as we're assured that the border has been secured and that we will not have to face an even greater problem twenty years from now.

Where In The World Is The AP's Bilal Hussein?

Bilal Hussein has worked for the Associated Press during most of the Iraq War, bringing pictures of insurgents that call into question his access to their plans, among other issues. Michelle Malkin reports that the AP's lensman has been caught with a weapons cache and has been detained by the US military. She has links to the complete back story; be sure to review it carefully and thoroughly.

I think the AP may have some explaining to do.

South Park Part II: Bart Simpson, George Bush, And Osama

The final episode of the Cartoon Wars satire aired tonight, and it started off by faking the audience briefly into thinking that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had satirized Comedy Channel by announcing that Part II had been pre-empted by a Terrence & Phillip episode. When the flatulent duo encountered a censored Mohammed on horseback, we knew that the game was most certainly on.

This was a worthy follow-up to last week's hilarious and provocative episode. South Park brought in Bart Simpson as a foil for both Kyle and Cartman and continued using George Bush to score points on the media. Check out the show's dead-on rendition of a White House press conference, complete with the gaggle accusing Bush of sneaking a previously unknown right to free speech on them.

Does Cartman succeed in stopping Family Guy from airing its Mohammed episode? You can bet that in the end, Kyle will argue for freedom and common sense, but the results will surprise you. And wait until you see what Osama and Ayman have in mind for retaliation against the US if Fox actually airs the image of Mohammed.

You may, however, have trouble seeing it through the tears your laughter will bring.

Addendum: Watch the first segment of Mind of Mencia afterwards. He does a brilliant riff on immigration and the protests from the past few weeks.

UPDATE: I'm not sure that new viewers of the show will get the censorship gag. Comedy Central pulled the "Trapped In The Closet" episode after Isaac Hayes quit the show, and rumor has it that Viacom star Tom Cruise pressured the company to force it out of the rotation. South Park has depicted Mohammed in the past, as I noted last week. The black slides were all about spanking CC, not caving to Islamists. The two-episode set targeted wimpy broadcast executives and hypersensitive viewers as well as the Islamofascist lunatics. The Anchoress gets it.

UPDATE II: Comedy Central confirmed with NRO's Steven Spruiell that they indeed censored the South Park episode to block the depiction of Mohammed. I'm flabbergasted; I cannot comprehend how they could do that while still leaving the "Super Best Friends" episode in the rotation and a depiction of Mohammed in the opening credits. After their cave-in on "Trapped In The Closet", I suppose I should not have been so surprised, but I really am. And very disappointed. On the plus side, we finally got Michelle to watch the show ...

The 54,000-Centrifuge Question

When will Iran have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon? Some experts have said that Iran is a decade or more away from a viable nuclear device, and with only a 164-centrifuge cascade available, that might appear reasonable. However, Iran announced yesterday that it would soon expand its cascade to 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz facility, and today said that it would expand its program to 54,000 centrifuges:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran for the first time had succeeded on a small scale in enriching uranium, a key step in generating fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment activity because of suspicions the program's aim is to make weapons.

Iran's small-scale enrichment used 164 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas to increase its proportion of the isotope needed for the nuclear fission at the heart of a nuclear reactor or a bomb.

Saeedi said Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its facility in the central town of Natanz by late 2006, then expand to 54,000 centrifuges, though he did not say when.

With a 54,000-centrifuge cascade, Iran could produce enough fissile material to fuel hundreds of nuclear weapons as well as run a massive nuclear power plant. How soon could that material show up? As soon as a fortnight, according to Bloomberg, which quotes US sources alarmed at the planned expansion of the Iranian cascade:

Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said.

``Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow. ``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days.''

In fact, Iran will move forward to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

It took Iran several years to develop its 164-centrifuge cascade, and with the attention of the world now firmly fixed on Teheran and Natanz, the secrecy that allowed the mullahcracy to progress this far no longer applies. Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle, and their ability to produce centrifuges is no longer dependent on outside resources. Unless we interrupt their manufacturing capability, they will be able to produce centrifuges at whatever rate their resources allow. Ten years is a ludicrous estimate under these circumstances.

So how long before Iran can produce enough highly-enriched uranium? Even with the 3,000-centrifuge cascade the Iranians plan to implement immediately, they could produce enough fissile material within 271 days of its completion. We have only months before Teheran can put a nuke on top of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile and threaten the entire Middle East and most of Europe. If the Iranians develop their 54,000-unit cascade, they could produce two nukes every month, making them capable of developing an inventory of nuclear weapons that will quickly escape accounting -- and enough excess capacity to supply its proxies with smaller, portable devices that could cross borders and strike anywhere around the world.

Months, not years. If the 54,000-centrifuge cascade becomes reality, it will be days instead of months.

Did Carroll Get Ransomed?

ABC News will air an interview with Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood, a crony of Saddam Hussein and a supporter of the native insurgency in Iraq, who claims to have disbursed a ransom paid for the release of reporter Jill Carroll from terrorists:

The man behind Jill Carroll's release tells ABC News in an exclusive interview that kidnapping the American journalist was a mistake. Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood reveals what it took to free her — and why he supports the insurgency.

Al-Gaood was one of three people specifically thanked by Carroll's family after her release. He was once one of Saddam Hussein's closest business associates, and now says he is a proud leader of the Iraqi insurgency.

"They are defending their country," he said in an interview at his summer house outside Amman, Jordan. "They are an honest resistance. And sometimes they do mistakes."

The "mistake", as al-Gaood puts it, was kidnapping Carroll at all. According to the interview, the kidnappers wanted eight million dollars for Carroll's release, but that did not meet with al-Gaood's approval. Instead, he claims to have received a lesser but very significant amount and to have distributed it to "widows and orphans" connected with the native insurgency. ABC's report gives no indication who paid this ransom, although it includes an official denial from the Christian Science Monitor about paying anything for her release.

If this is true, it once again will encourage kidnappers in Iraq to capture Westerners for extortion -- if not actions from our government, then for cash from the organizations that sponsor reporters like Carroll. It further endangers journalists, aid workers, and rebuilding specialists. The US should determine exactly what happened to free Carroll and wo got the money, if any.

The Minority Report (Updated and Bumped)

The Washington Post runs a deceptive and dishonest report about the evaluation of the Iraqi trailers that had been identified as biological weapons labs prior to the invasion in March 2003. Their front-page story announces breathlessly that the Bush administration ignored the findings of a team of experts who concluded that the trailers could not have acted as portable bioweapons platforms prior to a Bush announcement of exactly the opposite -- but below the fold, they tell a different story.

Let's take a look at the lead first:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Sounds damning, and if that was the only report on the trailers, it certainly would be. What the Post neglects to mention in its sensationalist zeal is that this was one of several teams that investigated the trailers, and the totality of their evaluations came to a different conclusion that that of the leakers who supplied this story. Skip down to the 12th paragraph, which is when Joby Warrick finally gets around to providing the context:

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The Pentagon didn't send one team of experts to review the trailers; they sent three, presumably to get a diverse analysis of the evidence, especially since the pre-war intel on WMD had come up remarkably short. That sounds like a prudent strategy to me, having competing teams research the same equipment and evidence to develop independent analyses to present to the Pentagon. They did so, and two of the three teams provided conclusions that fit the pre-war intel, while one did not.

So where's the issue? It turns out that the minority report was the correct analysis after all, of course, but at the time Bush spoke it was just that -- a minority report. To put it in advertising terms, two out of three inspectors agreed that the trailers were part of Saddam's WMD effort. The Pentagon relied on that majority opinion, as did the administration, and no one can argue that doing so constituted either an intent to deceive or even an unreasonable decision at the time.

No one can argue that, of course, but the Post and the media in general. Instead of simply reporting that the Pentagon didn't have consensus on this issue and that the minority report wound up being the most accurate, Joby Warrick turns the story into a Geraldo Rivera my-life-is-actually-in-danger type of journalism that substitutes cheap sensationalism for accuracy. Prior to informing the readers of the existence of two separate analyses that contradicted the report supplied by the leakers, Warrick enthralls us with a paragraph stating how none of the leakers will identify themselves for fear of retribution and a colorful epithet that the leakers considered the trailers "sand toilet[s]".

I don't know how to break this to Warrick, but all leakers want anonymity to avoid retribution. That's not news, unless you're on your first assignment for a newspaper. And correct me if I'm wrong, but colorful epithets about chemical labs on trailers don't have greater news value than the information that your sources were outnumbered in their analysis (and your big scoop) 2-1.

This is a rather pathetic and transparent example of how the news media stages information so as to be most damaging to an administration they don't like. The downplaying of the full context of this story shows that Warrick and his editors want sensationalism and hyperbole over facts and real reporting. This could have been a story about how even a creative strategy as that used by the Pentagon to review these trailers still wound up producing the wrong analysis. In trying to paint it as an example of administration dishonesty, the Post instead reveals its own.

The Confederate Yankee agrees and has more on this subject.

UPDATE and BUMP: It turns out that Warrick didn't even do much original reporting on this story. The essentials had been reported contemporaneously in the New York Times, as Seixon notes. And guess who reported it on June 7, 2003? Judy Miller -- the same reporter vilified by the left as an administration stooge during the Plame affair -- wrote this:

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process."

But what else did she report?

In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

Even at the time, the third group did not unanimously conclude that the trailers could not have served as platforms for biological or chemical weapons. Nor did they think that the trailers were well suited to produce hydrogen, as Warrick claims they concluded. The minority report turned out to be a minority report of a minority report.

How can we conclude this? The DIA published their own report in conjunction with the CIA, as Power Line reported today, which concluded that the trailers were indeed part of the WMD program of Iraq -- on the day before President Bush delivered the same message in his speech:

Examination of the trailers reveals that all of the equipment is permanently installed and interconnected, creating an ingeniously simple, self-contained bioprocessing system. Although the equipment on the trailer found in April 2003 was partially damaged by looters, it includes a fermentor capable of producing biological agents and support equipment such as water supply tanks, an air compressor, a water chiller, and a system for collecting exhaust gases. ...

Analysis of the trailers reveals that they probably are second- or possibly third-generation designs of the plants described by the source. The newer version includes system improvements, such as cooling units, apparently engineered to solve production problems described by the source that were encountered with the older design.

The DIA, the agency Warrick says sent the third group of analysts who unanimously rejected the military's analysis, endorsed that analysis even after getting the report from the third group. The Pentagon stood behind their original analysis, possibly because the third group did not achieve unanimity.

Warrick's reporting falls apart more the further one looks into it. And so much for that "dissent" within the intelligence community; the CIA and DIA published that opinion jointly.

UPDATE II: Warrick responds with another article on the controversy, but still has a problem with accuracy:

The White House sought to further rebut the Post article with a series of "Setting the Record Straight" statements e-mailed to reporters. In the statements, the White House does not deny the existence of the technical team's report but portrays it as a preliminary finding, contrasting that report with a public white paper put out by the CIA on May 28, 2003. The CIA paper described the trailers as the "strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

The White House provided a "link" to a CIA Web site where the white paper is still posted, nearly 18 months after its conclusions were refuted by the Iraq Survey Group.

The Post fails to provide the "link", possibly because it was issued not by the CIA alone but jointly with the DIA, the same organization that sent the third team for its review. The DIA had received the third team's report and very apparently did not agree with its split decision, since it issued this report with the CIA the day before Bush spoke. George Tenet still believed the report to be accurate the next year. Warrick doesn't mention any of this in his follow-up, nor does he mention even once that the New York Times had already reported on this same issue in June 2003.

Howard Kurtz notes the controversy but doesn't comment directly on it, and kindly links back to me. He does have a funny take on Boogate, so be sure to read the article.

Did Ahmadinejad Strengthen The Hawks?

The Guardian reacted with trepidation at the news of Iranian enrichment of uranium, not for its implications in the Middle East as much as for its political implications in the US. The leftist British daily predicts that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumphalism will bolster the hawks in American politics who favor a military solution, if for no other reason than to underscore Iran's need to end their nuclear program before our bombs fall:

The Security Council had been waiting for a UN report at the end of the month on Iran's nuclear intentions, before deciding on further measures. But after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumphal announcement yesterday - accompanied by chants of "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and "Death to Counter-Revolutionaries" - some UN members were drawing their own conclusions.

Not for the first time, US diplomats found themselves grateful that President Ahmadinejad had made the work of persuading other UN members of Tehran's intentions so much easier. "I can't imagine anyone would be pleased by such a blatant disregard of what the council has asked for," the official said.

However, the findings of the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are not a foregone conclusion. The speed with which Iran has moved has surprised some experts, and it is possible that the Iranian leader was grandstanding for political reasons. Whatever the reality at the enrichment facility in Natanz, though, the Iranian leadership has shown it is in no mood to comply.

The Guardian's analysis mostly comes in its headline, "Tehran's triumphalism plays into hands of US hawks". The report itself carries little evidence for this assertion, although it's fair to say that it may well be self-evident. After more than two years, the diplomatic option has achieved nothing, not even a slowdown of Iran's march to nuclearization. Iran has made a series of commitments, promises, and proposals that they contradict just as breezily as they make them. Even the Russians have been taken aback by Teheran, issuing a rather surprising diplomatic scolding last night:

Russia's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday criticized Iran after its president said Tehran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, Russian news agencies reported.

"We believe that this step is wrong. It runs counter to decisions of the IAEA (the U.N. nuclear watchdog) and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass.

A second Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei Krivtsov, echoed the criticism, but said Russia was still hopeful that a visit to Iran by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Wednesday could help resolve the standoff.

"We hope that Iran will use the visit ... to agree on specific moves to resolve the situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear program," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.

Mohammed ElBaradei visit gives Ahmadinejad the opportunity to present the IAEA chief with a fait accompli, an insult that will test the resolve of the IAEA chief. Iran obviously intended on humiliating him; will ElBaradei finally draw a line in the sand and call Iran's hand?

Probably not, if history is any guide. The IAEA spends most of its time avoiding confrontation, and any expectation of a different outcome will be sorely disappointed. The IAEA reflects its parent organization, the UNSC, as an arbiter of the status quo. It is not equipped or designed to enforce regulations but instead relies on the UN to do so. It also has a political stake in the process, as the member nations elect the chief -- and ElBaradei understands that most nations did not elect him to give the UNSC a casus belli.

In this respect, the Guardian is correct. The announcement does boost the standing of hawks on Iran, but only because it exposes the diplomatic effort as shabby and ineffective against a tyranny determined to arm itself regardless of the consequences. As long as Russia and China refuse to give way, Europe will not act against Iran. That truth has eaten away any credibility the EU-3 may have had during the negotiations. Iran always knew it was bargaining with paper tigers, and like Hitler did seventy years ago, Teheran played cat and mouse with Europe while building its arsenal.

The time has come for the hawks to come to the fore on Iran. If Russia and China do not want that, then they had better use their influence to halt Iranian intransigence now.

A Moment With The Author Of Orange

Anne Applebaum has a remarkable interview with Viktor Yushchenko, the man who lead Ukraine to independence from Moscow and away from corrupt clan rule a little over a year ago. Now, facing the reality of ruling over a former Soviet republic where many still prefer closer ties to Moscow, Applebaum gets to the essence of Yushchenko's conundrum:

In any country, poor relations with a larger neighbor could damage a president's political career. But for Yushchenko they pose a particularly difficult problem. Far from omnipotent, he is surrounded by corrupt officials, many of whom are easily won over by a Kremlin awash in oil money, most of whom are still loyal to the previous, pro-Russian, post-communist regime. As president in a parliamentary system, his powers are limited in any case, but in Ukraine, where secret information his police officers intercept is more likely to be sent to Moscow than given to him, they are almost nonexistent.

This might be true even if the Russian government were deeply committed to keeping Yushchenko in power: But Russian authorities have never tried very hard to hide their disapproval of Yushchenko, who was declared winner of the election only after mass demonstrations -- the Orange Revolution -- of a kind the Russians themselves fear.

Applebaum lends her considerable talents to a bleak but not hopeless portrait of the quiet democrat in transition, trying to undo the corruption that goes back generations and that holds Ukraine back from its full potential. Read the whole thing.

The Corporate Hillary

Hillary Clinton may want to run for president as a banner-carrier of populist fervor -- can Democrats run as anything else these days? -- but her corporate ties may trip her campaign before it even gets running. The New York Times reports today on her cozy relationship with Corning, a major employer in New York and one of her biggest contributors. It turns out that the benefits have flowed bidirectionally between Hillary and Corning:

In April 2003, a month after Corning's political action committee gave $10,000 to her re-election campaign, Mrs. Clinton announced legislation that would provide hundreds of millions in federal aid to reduce diesel pollution, using, among other things, technology pioneered by Corning. It was one of several Congressional initiatives Mrs. Clinton has pushed that benefit the company.

And in April 2004, Mrs. Clinton began a push to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning fiber optics products, inviting the Chinese ambassador to her office and personally asking President Bush for help in the matter. One month after the beginning of that ultimately successful effort, Corning's chairman, James Houghton, held a fund-raiser at his home that collected tens of thousands of dollars for her re-election campaign.

It is part of a senator's job description to help a major employer in his or her home state, and it is not unusual for that employer to encourage that help or to reciprocate with campaign contributions.

As an aside, I love how Mike McIntire and Raymond Hernandez throw that last sentence in their report. I suppose when Jack Abramoff does this on behalf of native Americans, it shows how the dirty lobbyists have corrupted the American political process. However, when Corning cuts out the middleman and shoves money into Hillary's coffers just before and after she initiates official actions on their behalf, suddenly that's just how the game is played! Had this story been about a GOP Senator and involved any lobbyist for Corning, those two paragraphs would have been the lead on a front-page political scandal story. And perhaps they still should be.

Putting that aside for the moment, the revelation of Hillary's shilling for corporate America will not go down well with the MoveOn/International ANSWER crowd that appears to run her political party these days. It's bad enough that Hillary used to sit on Walmart's board of directors and took lots of political donations from the Waltons on Bill's behalf during that period. This already has stuck in the craw of union organizers, and the Wal-Mart baggage became so heavy that Hillary has recently taken to scolding her former bestest buddies in public.

Now she has helped grease the skids for Corning with the same Chinese whose cheap labor threatens the American labor market and applies downward pressure on wages. (It also reminds one of her association with Wal-Mart and their extensive business dealings with Chinese manufacturers.) Corning sent $46,000 to Hillary's re-election campaign in the spring of 2004 after her intercession with the Chinese ambassador in attempting to reverse their tariffs on Corning. Her constituents may wonder how Hillary has so much clout with China, but veteran Clinton watchers already know the answer to that question.

This kind of corporate flacking might make sense for someone who believes in free-market solutions. However, as HillaryCare readily proved, that doesn't describe the junior Senator from New York at all. She has until recently often argued for greater regulation and expansion of government at the expense of free trade. That reached its apex in the health-care reform that she and her husband tried to implement in the first two years of his presidency. Her single-payor system attempted to essentially nationalize health care and put the government in charge of its rationing, along the same lines as Canada and the UK.

It seems as though Hillary's Corning ties will create hard questions about her run from both the right and the left. The latter will reject her association with corporate America, while the former will want to know exactly why Corning sent all that money in close connection with legislative activities on their behalf. The Hillary/Corning relationship has something unethical to offer all sides.

UPDATE: Read Jon Henke's take on this story -- it's a worthwhile reminder that the process is the problem.

Fizzlemas Strikes Again!

Those waiting for the Fitzmas That Never Came must suffer from terrible disappointment, and this week they have yet more reason to be morose. Patrick Fitzgerald delighted them with an extraordinary court filing that accused Scooter Libby of misrepresenting the National Intelligence Estimate and the uranium-procurement story as a consensus analysis by American intelligence. It turns out that St. Fitz did some misrepresentation of his own:

The federal prosecutor overseeing the indictment of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, yesterday corrected an assertion in an earlier court filing that Libby had misrepresented the significance placed by the CIA on allegations that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger.

Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a term of art indicating there was consensus within the intelligence community on that issue. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments and was listed further back in the 96-page, classified document.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, Fitzgerald wrote yesterday that he wanted to "correct" the sentence that dealt with the issue in a filing he submitted last Wednesday. That sentence said Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE "and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Ah, well. Fitzgerald giveth, and Fitzgerald taketh away.

One would expect an attorney to write a little more concisely and accurately than did Fitzgerald in his original brief, and this hasty correction calls into question the performance of this prosecutorial team once again. Tasked with determining whether a crime had been committed in the release of Valerie Plame's identity, Fitzgerald wound up never addressing it at all. Instead, the only crime he discovered was one supposedly committed by Libby in the course of the investigation itself, and now even Fitzgerald can't get his story straight on Libby's testimony and his alleged actions regarding his conversations with Miller.

After creating a firestorm of controversy, Fitzgerald now wants to pull a lame Emily Litella routine. Perhaps this sort of correction happens frequently, but I don't recall it in any high profile investigation in the past. It appears that Fitzgerald wanted to make a public splash with his original filing and quickly discovered that he had miscalculated both the NIE and the declassification process while misrepresenting Libby's supposed misrepresentation.

What a waste of time. If the prosecutor can't get this basic part of the case correct, why should we trust him to do any better with the rest of it?

Saudis Run To Russians To Protect Teheran

Khaleej Times reports that the Saudis sent Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador in Washington, to Moscow on a mission to enlist Russian opposition to any American action against the Iranian mullahcracy. Prince Bandar asked the Russians to block any further UNSC action that might give the US a basis for military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites (via Memeorandum):

Saudi Arabia, fearing that US military action against Iran would wreak further havoc in the region, has asked Russia to block any bid by Washington to secure UN cover for an attack, a Russian diplomat said on Tuesday.

During a visit to Moscow last week, the head of the Saudi National Security Council “urged Russia to strive to prevent the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution which the United States could use as justification to launch a military assault to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the diplomat told AFP in Riyadh on condition of anonymity.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former longtime ambassador to the United States who is often tasked with delicate missions, met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on April 4.

This report came out today but the meeting took place a week ago, before Iran's celebrations over its supposedly initial uranium enrichment. One wonders whether the Saudis might be a little less sanguine about the Iranians after today, but they more likely will fear American retribution. That seems closer than ever, now that the Iranians have defied the West on the initial enrichment and their pledge to expand it on a scale that could easily produce weapons-grade material.

The Saudi entreaty to Moscow may prove worrisome. Putin could use Saudi assistance in stemming the Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus, but his real game is to amplify Russian influence in the Persian Gulf. The Russians have been handed one setback after another since their silly alliance with Saddam Hussein in 1991 did nothing to stop the Iraqi dictator's humiliation at the hands of the UN coalition that ejected him from Kuwait. With the Saudis playing the Russian card, it sets Putin up as the primary counterweight to the US in the region, nominated for that position by the wealthiest petrocracy in the Middle East.

Perhaps this will finally put to rest the canard that the Saudis own George Bush. Obviously they do not; they're not sending Bandar to DC to change the direction of US policy on Iran. The Saudis cannot afford to play that game to its conclusion, however. It needs American protection in the Gulf to ensure that its oil exports safely transit the ocean to their clients, and the Russians simply can't offer the same protection. The Saudis had better be careful not to disrupt their American relationship by crying to Moscow and arranging to thwart efforts to enforce the NPT.

Movement On Immigration In The House

The AP reports that House Republicans are considering modifications in their immigration-reform bill that will make it easier for the Senate to absorb it into whatever version they can pass. The changes involve the two most controversial parts of the House effort, making "illegal presence" a felony and broadening the notion of accessory to potentially include religious outreach and charity workers:

Following huge nationwide protests, Republicans on Tuesday moved to possibly change two key provisions in a get-tough immigration bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

One would turn millions of illegal immigrants into felons and the other has raised concerns that people who provide them humanitarian relief would be punished. Top Republicans insisted that neither is their intent.

Their verbal commitments to revisit those provisions came a day after hundreds of thousands of people held demonstrations nationwide, provoked by the bill that would also erect a fence along much of the U.S.-Mexican border.

At some point, all sides will have to agree to modify their approach enough to get an effective solution to two separate but linked problems: a porous border that represents an unacceptable risk to national security while we are at war with Islamist terrorists, and how to reasonably deal with the estimated 12 million illegals already in the country. The House legislation dealt with the first problem but essentially ignored the second, while the Senate bill focused on the second but offered nothing new for the first. The best we can expect when both chambers return from their recess is that the two bills can be merged in committee in a manner that will satisfy the most pressing of the issues for both sides without necessarily delighting anyone.

To that end, these prospective changes make sense. The two issues pointed out by Republican sources for the AP created the most controversy and arguably make the overall solution more difficult to achieve. No one has a good explanation why illegal presence needs to be a felony other than as a complete disqualifier for future consideration for residency, which can also be accomplished through other less heavy-handed means. While many demand tight border security as a prerequisite to any other solutions, changing the level of offense to a felony has not been a high-profile demand, and we can live without it as long as the government enforces the new policy with more energy than it has our existing laws.

Exempting charitable organizations from prosecution also makes sense. The legal concept of accessory assumes that the person enabled a breach of law through some sort of positive action, not through simply offering humanitarian assistance. We don't charge soup kitchen workers with crimes for feeding bank robbers, for instance; we don't expect these volunteers to perform a background check. Neither does the House legislation, for that matter, but the language in the bill allows for a broader interpretation than desirable. It can certainly be modified to keep the bill's reach from enabling overzealous prosecution.

Assuming that the House can address this bill in the manner described above, it will provide a much less controversial border-security plan and one that can serve as a bridge between the two chambers. No one who takes national security seriously can object to securing the southern border as the basis of an effective immigration-reform plan that does more than just punt the problem for another generation, as Simpson-Mazzoli did in 1986. With a credibly-secured border in place, the extremes on both sides should be able to come closer to the center for a solution to the existing 12 million illegals already inside the US. Absent that minimum, no guest-worker or graduated amnesty program will ever work anyway, as illegals will continue to choose the path of least resistance and least cost to American dollars -- and that path is 700 miles wide across the Rio Grande.

Iran Throws A Party

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threw a party in Teheran today, complete with tribal dancers, musicians, and party streamers to announce that Iranian researchers had succeeded in enriching uranium -- the first step towards nuclear energy and nuclear weapons:

Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium to new levels, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday, proclaiming a technical breakthrough that advances both the country's nuclear program and the international controversy surrounding it.

"I'm announcing officially that Iran has now joined the countries that have nuclear technology," Ahmadinejad said in a carefully staged presentation televised live across Iran. "This is a very historic moment, and it's because of the Iranian people and their belief. And this is the start of the progress of this country."

Standing before a sweeping backdrop featuring doves around an Iranian flag, Ahmadinejad said the country was moving toward enriching uranium on an industrial scale to supply nuclear fuel for power plants, not the weapons that the Bush administration and other governments say are Tehran's real goal.

The Iranians announced their defiance of the UN Security Council, which demanded a halt to all enrichment activities within 30 days of the delivery of the resolution to Iranian diplomats at Turtle Bay. Two weeks later, Ahmadinejad televised his triumphal announcement, thumbing his nose at the UN and at the EU-3, the trio of nations that insisted it could negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program.

Experts tried to soothe Western worries about a nuclear-armed mullahcracy, assuring reporters that the 164-centrifuge cascade used by the Iranians was insufficient to develop weapons-grade fissile material. In answer to that, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh announced that the nation would roll out a 3,000-centrifuge system within the next year. In a system that large, it would take about a year to develop enough material to make a weapon, meaning that we can expect Iran to go nuclear in the spring of 2008 -- assuming that Ahmadinejad is telling the truth now.

The national holiday apparently created by Iran in celebration sends a different message to its subjects, which have mixed feelings about the development of nuclear energy. Some Iranians have openly criticized the manner in which Teheran has pursued nuclear energy, finding the confrontational attitude unhelpful and unnecessarily provocative. Ahmadinejad wants to cast a rejoiceful mood to overwhelm the internal criticism through the staged buoyancy we saw today.

The celebration may have intended to intimidate the locals, but Ahmadinejad aimed the main message abroad. Pictures at the Washington Post and USA Today shows signs in clear English that read, "Nuclear energy is our indisputable right". The Iranian president also warned hostile nations not to "cause an everlasting hatred" by sanctioning Iran for its defiance of the UN and IAEA. He struck a more diplomatic tone today than yesterday, when he crowed that the UNSC couldn't "do a damned thing" about Iranian nuclear development and that the IAEA were a bunch of liars for alleging that Iran had cheated on the NPT. Today he said that he would now honor the NPT and work with the IAEA.

Does this sound familiar? For students of the second World War, it certainly will. Adolf Hitler made a career of breaking treaties and immediately offering to work within them once again, all the while advancing his military position against that of the Western alliance. He started from a position that could kindly be described as prostrate when he came to office in 1932 and immediately began working on building his arsenal in secret. As Hugh Hewitt notes, the first major test of Hitler's program came when he defied the Versailles Treaty and reoccupied the Rhineland. He had two divisions, a ridiculously small force that could easily have been routed by Britain and France without even much of strain. Instead of confronting Hitler, they meekly shrugged at his defiance, rationalizing it (as the British put it) as simply walking into his own back yard. Hitler won that test of wills and knew the true measure of his foes. He would not miscalculate their will until at least his attack on Poland, and even then he correctly guessed that neither country would actually open a new front in the West until well after he had digested Poland. In fact, they would wait until Hitler attacked them almost a year later.

This is no different; only the stakes have changed. If we allow Ahmadinejad to celebrate this defiance without fixing consequences to his actions, then we will have re-enacted the capitulation of 1936 seventy years later. It will also render the NPT moot and once again show the UN as nothing more than the League of Nations with a better flag and tonier address. The UNSC must take action against Iran's flagrant violation of both the NPT and its unanimous resolution of last month. Failure to do so will cement its reputation as an anachronistic relic of the Cold War.

If Russia and China will not allow any sanctions against Iran, then we need to make it clear that the Western nations no longer feel bound by the strictures of the UN and will instead act on our own to develop bilateral and multilateral agreements for diplomatic efforts in the future. This may actually motivate both countries to join against the Iranian mullahcracy, as they see the UN as a handy brake on American influence and power. Once freed of the bonds of Turtle Bay, they understand that we will act with much more aggressiveness to stop potential threats before they develop, endangering their strategies of diplomatic obstructionism.

We had better draw the line now. If we wait much longer, we may soon confront the reality of Iranian nuclear weapons instead of the potential, with all of the implications for terrorism that implies.

The Week Award Announcement

The Week Magazine has posted its awards issue on line. This is the digital version of the handout we received at the awards dinner, a wonderful memento from the evening. The blogger award announcement can be found here. I especially liked the artist's rendition of yours truly, but the one on the cover with Nick Kristof, Mike Luckovich, and me panning for gold is even better.

Thanks again to the entire CQ community; you made this possible, and words cannot express my appreciation.

Addendum: Well, they could have drawn me with more hair, I suppose ...

Speaking Of Security ...

... perhaps someone might want to keep the plans for Air Force One off the Internet.

Palis To UNSC: They Keep Hitting Us Back

The Palestinians have appealed to the UN Security Council to stop Israel's efforts to target the leadership of terrorist organizations that conduct attacks on Israel. They want the UNSC to restrain Israel while they do nothing to restrain the terrorists operating in their territory:

The Palestinians called on the U.N. Security Council Monday to take urgent action to stop what it called an escalating military campaign by Israeli forces that has led to a dramatic increase in Palestinian casualties in recent days.

The Palestinian U.N. observor, Riyad Mansour, said in a letter to the council that at least 17 Palestinians have been killed since Friday and scores more wounded in a barrage of military attacks and "extrajudicial executions."

Mansour told reporters that Arab nations would meet to decide what action its members want the Security Council to take. The options range from holding an open meeting on the latest upsurge in violence, to adopting a council statement or a resolution.

"The bottom line (is) the Security Council has to take steps and measures in order to bring pressure on
Israel to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people," Mansour told reporters after delivering the letter to the current council president, China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya.

The report notes the ongoing missile attacks from Palestinian territory into Israeli population centers, most of which are ineffective and pointless but none of which the Palestinians have attempted to restrain. When asked, the Hamas leadership insists that the Palestinians retain the right to fight against occupation. If that's the case, then the Israelis have the right to fight back.

If the Palestinians want the Israelis to stop targeting Palestinian terrorists, then the Hamas-led government has two choices. Either they act to disarm all of the militias and secure the territories themselves, or they resign and get a government willing to do that. It won't happen, of course; the Palestinians want to use the UN as a handcuff on the IDF so that the Palestinians can go on attacking Israel without fear of consequences. If that sounds ridiculous and unrealistic, one only has to remember how the world has coddled the Palestinian terrorists for the last fifteen years to see why they feel entitled to this protection now.

The UNSC should reject this appeal as one would reject a child's complaint that a sibling keeps hitting back.

A Quarter Of Syrian Wives Get No Quarter

A United Nations study reveals that 25% of all married Syrian women have been beaten by their husbands, the New York Times reports this morning:

Syria's first comprehensive field study of violence against women has concluded that nearly one married woman in four surveyed had been beaten. The study was released last week as part of a report on Syria by the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

The findings have been published in local news media, helping to draw attention to topics, like domestic abuse and honor killings, that have long been considered taboo in this conservative society.

The study was carried out under the supervision of the quasi-governmental General Union of Women, which oversees the welfare of Syria's women. The study included nearly 1,900 families, selected as a random sample, including a broad range of income levels and all regions. The men and women in each family were questioned separately.

Syria is one of the more secular of the Arab nations, and Syrian women do have more latitude than their sisters did in Afghanistan under the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia now. However, the chattel culture remains strong throughout Arabic nations, and this demonstrates one of the predictable results. I'm surprised it wasn't higher, and it's possible that the nature of the study led to underrepresentation.

Making Excuses For McKinney

In the contretemps over the (latest) Cynthia McKinney incident, one could see a predictable dynamic play out. First would come the denunciations of the Congresswoman for attacking a police officer doing his duty at a security checkpoint. Next would come McKinney's claim to have been victimized by official racism. After that, people would chide McKinney for making race an issue ... and then would come the meme that McKinney's race-card exploitation has a point. Ruth Marcus carries the ball for the unconscious-guilt lobby in today's Washington Post:

Even before the latest altercation, McKinney was known -- accurately -- as a hotheaded conspiracy theorist inclined to play the race card at the drop of a congressional ID pin. The details of McKinney's run-in with an officer who stopped her as she walked around a security checkpoint aren't yet known, but it's already obvious that McKinney needs to read "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Congressional Edition," with a focus on: Let's use our words. Or, we don't hit. Especially not with our cellphones. Especially not police officers.

McKinney's response, flinging accusations of "racial profiling" and "inappropriate touching," with its smarmy sexual overtones, was as outrageous as it was predictable. She was, her lawyer said, yet another "victim of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin." Please, this is not Rodney King Goes to Washington.

And yet, race and, to a lesser extent, gender are unavoidably entwined with the incident. Few of us consider ourselves racist or sexist, but few, if any, of us are immune from seeing things through the prism of race and sex. If McKinney looked like Congressman Bob Forehead -- tall white man with dark suit and helmet hair -- would the officer have been more likely to wave her through -- and less likely to forcibly stop her? Would he have been more likely to recognize her in the first place? To suggest that his reaction might well have been different is not to accuse him of bad motives but to recognize the deeply embedded role that race and gender play in perception and judgment.

Did you get that? Marcus manages to touch all the bases here. McKinney's an idiot, this isn't Rodney King Redux, but Capitol Hill police (as well as you and I) are all racists at heart. Why? Marcus sets up an absurd hypothetical and then challenges us to say we would have stopped a "tall white man ... with helmet hair" for running a security checkpoint without properly identifying himself.

"Tall"? Now we're introducing heightism as well as racism?

Marcus wants to build an excuse for McKinney and tries to find it in some inherent, unconscious racism that purportedly exists in all of us. That's just another version of the same tired, liberal excuse for crime that lays blame on the society rather than the perpetrator. It's absurd, it's meaningless, and all it does is absolve people of any responsibility for their own actions. In Marcus' world, McKinney cannot shoulder any blame because as a short African-American woman, the deck is stacked against her. She's incapable of avoiding harrassment.

Actually, I tend to agree with that last statement, but not for the reasons Marcus espouses. McKinney gets harrassed because McKinney is an idiot and an egotist, none of which has to do with her race, her gender, or her height. McKinney has plenty of control over her idiocy and egocentrism but chooses not to address them. Therefore, it's hardly surprising that she feels as though she can breeze through security checkpoints -- everyone should recognize her, after all! -- or concoct a deep conspiracy against short black women within the ranks of the Capitol Hill police when she gets momentarily detained to identify herself properly. The fact that she was dumb enough to take a swing at a cop should have given everyone a clue about McKinney's intellectual capacity.

In the meantime, Marcus should consider the impact of her admitted latent racism on her column this morning. What exactly is it about a security checkpoint that she feels people of color cannot handle? I'm sure that the thousands of non-white people who manage to make it through security checkpoints every day -- as well as those who staff them -- would love to know the answer to that question.

Connecticutting Their Nose

Joe Lieberman once represented the Democratic Party on a national ticket that came within an ace of winning the White House. He donated a million dollars back to the Connecticut Democratic Party in the same year when he won re-election to the Senate while just missing as Vice-President. He has, for the most part, voted with his caucus, usually deviating only when the nutcases and die-hard obstructionists take over. What does Lieberman get in return? The brother of the national chairman campaigning for a primary rival:

At the Connecticut Democratic Party's annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey fund-raising dinner last month, James H. Dean was among the guests invited to sit at the table of Ned Lamont, a Greenwich cable television executive who is planning a primary challenge to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman over the senator's support for the war in Iraq. ...

Mr. Dean lives in Fairfield, near Greenwich, and he has known Mr. Lamont for years. But what makes his support for Mr. Lamont notable are his deeper, familial ties: He is the brother of Howard Dean, now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

While Howard Dean campaigns to win control of Congress for the Democrats this fall, his younger brother is now chairman of Democracy for America, the liberal grass-roots political action committee that Howard Dean created out of his 2004 presidential campaign.

Now, James Dean is roiling Connecticut's Democratic establishment by working to deny the party's nomination to Mr. Lieberman, a three-term incumbent and the party's 2000 vice-presidential candidate.

While the RNC refuses to assist Stephen Laffey against Lincoln Chaffee, a member of the Republican caucus far less loyal than Lieberman is to the Democrats, the one-time VP nominee finds his own party targeting him for one reason only -- his support of the war in Iraq. The Democrats intend to send a message to anyone who dares to step outside the pacifism-at-all-costs tradition of the party since Henry Jackson left Congress. Make no mistake about this; James Dean works for his brother, owes his position in DoA to Howard, and would not be campaigning in Connecticut unless Howard wanted it so. Dean the Younger claims that Howard will "stay out" of the primaries, but Howard has that luxury as long as Dean the Younger keeps acting as his proxy.

There is nothing wrong with a primary challenge, and if the party wants to support a challenger against an incumbent in the primaries, that's their right. This arrangement tries to hide that support, however, and the hypocrisy fairly rolls off the New York Times report. The Democrats try to pretend that James Dean is some sort of loose cannon, completely unaffiliated with his brother, in order to hide the shunning that the national party has given Lieberman. It's transparent, and pretending any different assumes that the rest of the world is blind.

That's why Lieberman didn't dismiss the notion of an independent run this weekend. He knows very well that the national party has abandoned him and will only reluctantly support him in the fall if he wins the primary. He just sent a reply to the message that James Dean's efforts sent to Lieberman -- that disloyalty works both ways. After carrying water for Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry, Lieberman's loyalty to the party has apparently and understandably reached its limit with the Deans.

Thanks, Mr. Barone

Laurie Mylroie notes that Michael Barone had some very kind remarks about me and CQ yesterday and pointed his US News & World Report back to my two posts on the Iraqi Air Force memo and the implications of its timing. As Mr. Barone states, we still don't know whether Iraq had any connection to the 9/11 attacks, but the memo and the surrounding context of the 9/11 plot suggests that some may exist:

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters makes his living as manager of a call center. But he also blogs brilliantly and thoroughly. Those who insist that there could never have been a collaboration between the Saddam Hussein regime and al Qaeda on 9/11 need to read Ed's following blog entry, in full. It doesn't prove the case, or claim to, but it makes very interesting reading.

I am always amazed at those who claim, with absolute certitude, that we know that Saddam's regime had nothing to do with 9/11. We don't know that. We don't know either, with any certainty, that Saddam did collaborate on 9/11, but we know that he had motive and opportunity, and we know (read Ed's post) that there is some evidence of collaboration. Not conclusive, but evidence. Read.

For anyone coming to CQ for the first time through Barone's Blog, welcome.

Do Muslims Turn The Other Cheek?

The Anchoress wondered if Islam has a tradition similar to Christianity that encourages its followers to ignore insults and pray for the insulter instead of lashing out in revenge. In order to answer that question, she engaged in a conversation with Ali at Unwilling Self Negation, a self-described moderate Muslim. The result deserves a read from everyone, and kudos to both for talking with each other rather than at each other.

Jumping To Conclusions Is Not Good Exercise, Even For The Media

Last week, I wrote about bloggers jumping to conclusions. This week, we have an example of what happens when the media jumps to conclusions. When allegations of gang rape and assault got leveled at the Duke University lacrosse team, the assumption in the media was that some of the men on the team were guilty of the charges. Now, however, DNA evidence shows that the semen found in and on the woman at the center of the allegations does not match anyone on the team:

DNA testing failed to connect any members of the Duke University lacrosse team to the alleged rape of a stripper, attorneys for the athletes said Monday.

Citing DNA test results delivered by the state crime lab to police and prosecutors a few hours earlier, the attorneys said the test results prove their clients did not sexually assault and beat a stripper hired to perform at a March 13 team party. ...

The alleged victim, a 27-year-old student at a nearby college, told police she and another woman were hired to dance at the party. The woman told police that three men at the party dragged her into a bathroom, choked her, raped her and sodomized her.

Authorities ordered 46 of the 47 players on Duke's lacrosse team to submit DNA samples to investigators. Because the woman said her attackers were white, the team's sole black player was not tested.

District Attorney Mike Nifong stopped speaking with reporters last week after initially talking openly about the case, including stating publicly that he was confident a crime occurred. He went on to say he would have other evidence to make his case should the DNA analysis prove inconclusive or fail to match a member of the team.

The DA has now learned a valuable lesson about jumping to conclusions as well. It's best to allow investigators to actually investigate charges before proclaiming the accused guilty and building up a story about racism and classism at Duke and the neighboring Durham area. In order to charge people with a crime, we expect that the government will have evidence that a crime has been committed and that the accused committed it.

On the other hand, this does not necessarily close the case, either. If the woman was indeed raped, and the medical examination appeared to support a conclusion of some sort of assault, then police still have some checking to do. They collected semen from the woman, and that had to come from someone. If it wasn't the men at the party, then the woman making the allegations needs to answer more questions about anyone else with whom she may have had sexual intercourse. It also could have come from another attendee at the party, one that the team may not have revealed.

Too many people jumped to the conclusion that the Duke players were innocent. Let's not jump to the conclusion that the woman lied about the assault. The police and prosecutors need to stop posing for the media and focus on finding the truth -- and the media needs to quit sensationalizing this story until the story becomes much more clear.

NOTE: The best coverage of this incident in the blogs has been Jeralynn's at TalkLeft. LaShawn Barber mentions the T-word in her reaction to the news ... Tawana. Mary Katherine notes that the local papers are claiming some photos show bruising and scraping on the woman before her arrival at the Duke party.

UPDATE: Commenters are noting that semen wasn't found on the woman, but that they swabbed several areas of her body looking for trace evidence of any assault. The lack of semen could have been explained by the use of condoms, and the investigators also wanted to see if they could find traces of latex. The news release did not report whether they succeeded in that part of the labwork.

Tolerating Intolerance

The Los Angeles Times reports on a movement to end so-called speech codes at public schools, universities, and in the workplace that infringe on unpopular speech, especially that which argues against multiculturalism. In what some call a civil-rights movement for Christians, a number of groups have filed suit across the country to protect their right to speak out for their beliefs, even when others find those beliefs offensive:

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."

Some of this is overblown. No one has started to round up Christians, after all, and we enjoy a good deal of political clout. I agree that Christians face a struggle in modern society to maintain the message of Christ in a world of consumerism and secularism, but that has been the history of Christianity since Judas sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Christians have had it much tougher than here in America, and still do in many places outside of it.

The travails of Christianity aside, these speech codes really do constitute a threat against the ideal of free speech. As I have written many times, the proper remedy for bad speech is more speech, not prior restraint. While private schools have the right to regulate debate, the use of speech codes at public institutions, especially universities, creates a precedent for state infringement on speech in all areas. If we cannot trust university students to handle offensive speech, can we trust any adult to do so? When do we draw the lines, and who gets to draw them?

The use of such restrictions lead to all sorts of mischief, and we are already seeing the results of our capitulation of freedom to achieve the illusion of comity. Our political process has been restricted to restrain the offensive nature of political campaigning by people who feel passionately about controversial issues. Our media refuses to fully cover stories regarding terrorism in order to avoid offending Muslims. We spend so much time worrying about being offended that we forget that the very concept of republican freedom was an offense against the Crown that meant death for anyone who espoused it.

It's a damned good thing that our forefathers didn't worry as much about speech offending people. In fact, that is the reason for the First Amendment -- to guarantee that people can speak their minds about the issues of the day without fear of government intervention. If it hadn't been for the First Amendment, the same groups asking for speech codes now would never have progressed as far as they did. Not that long ago, some people felt offended by speeches and demonstrations against Jim Crow, against the Klan, against many things we see now as injustices, thanks to the people who used speech instead of violence.

Perhaps the administrators of these institutions should consider that when they pass these silly rules. Our legislators should have considered it before passing the BCRA. These restrictions insult the memories of those who fought to keep speech and this nation free. They may not care for Christians speaking their minds on political issues, but they will certainly regret setting the precedent when someone else's hands rest on the levers of power.

Kingston Conference Call

Due to a mild back injury, I'm home officing today, and so I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call with Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) on a range of topics, including immigration, earmark reform (porkbusting), Iran, Iraq, energy independence, and more. What follows below are the rough notes on the call, which I found fascinating and enlightening. Pay special attention to what Rep. Kingston has to say about enthusiasm for earmark reform; apparently some politicians pay lip service rather than push for real reform. (What a shock!) Also, the Congressman makes a very important point about applying earmark reform to all committees within the House and not just Appropriations.

Here are my notes. The first few paragraphs cover Kingston's opening statement, and the rest come from the questions asked of the gaggle:

Represents five military installations, ~25,000 in Iraq.

Making economic and military progress – have 241,000 soldiers trained, no critical point defined. President Bush insists that final call remains with commanders in Iraq. Iraqi Army soldiers unrealistic about advancement, require multiple cycles of training. Congress will want a definition of the number of trained soldiers for a threshold. It will be a political issue in the fall. Stalemate in Iraq politics will disillusion public and Congress.

Iran – concerned about Venezuela’s diplomatic engagement with Teheran. No support for military solutions in Congress just yet. They will remain open to military solutions only to support diplomatic efforts (talk tough). Chavez has spent $2B on diplomatic initiatives, more than what US spends on drug interdiction in SA. Oil money keeps him afloat, which is why energy independence is so important.

Wish to reduce oil imports by 2.5M bbls by 2025. Move to ethanol, biomass, and other fuels. White House supports HR 4409, but no big push from Bush on it. Brazil – 40% of cars run on ethanol, US only 3%, even though Brazil buys American cars.

Immigration – House has made great strides compared to the senate. Caught 115,000 illegals last year but the BP can only do catch-and-release. Won’t handcuff illegals due to diplomatic considerations. Fence blocks American users of the Rio Grande, so some sort of accommodation will have to be worked out. House will push a guest-worker program rather than an amnesty-type road to citizenship plan as in the senate. Business needs guest workers, America needs security.

Economy is excellent, but we need to extend the tax cuts.

My question: how do we make sure a guest-worker program doesn't create a French situation of a large immigrant population that won't assimilate and has no process to do so? Immigration reform needs to pursue the House model. System that gives 3 mos to register their workers, can re-admit under the guest worker program. Everyone would get on track; employers with non-compliance would be subject to large fines. Have a dual-track program for the possibility of citizenship, but those would have to go home and re-enter.

How do we make sure they go home first? Need a worker-ID system. Would have to enter this program in order to work.

Protests – they serve to bring out the hardliners, not the moderates. Constituents wonder how people breaking the law by being here can march to demand more rights and privileges.

Birthright citizenship – only 36 nations still have it, and the House wants to look at amending the Constitution to correct that.

On reform: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fence will not solve everything. A reform which takes care of half the program still improves the situation.

Earmarks: What needs to happen in order to advance reform? Not as much real support outside of the chatter in DC. There probably isn’t a consensus in the House or Senate to reform earmarks. Appropriations isn’t the only place where earmarks occur (ie Transportation). The leadership position is to get some reform on earmarks, at least in the House. Why not Ways and Means for reform as well?

Republican revolution: are the ideals of the ’94 revolution gone with Tom DeLay? Kingston: “a lot of ember there”. Boehner was one of the originals. Tax simplification probably can’t be done this year, but other goals still remain. The line-item veto, deficit reduction, and earmark reform are doable. When was the last time a political party stood up for Social Security reform.

E-mail regarding budgeting for emergencies – Kingston supports it “in principle”, but the money always goes elsewhere once collected. Getting leery of emergency funding; war is a great example of this – why is still considered “emergency funding”?

Deterrent value of the Minutemen – will Congress get more supportive of this program? Need more of their stories told in order to gain appreciation.

Do we really need to import workers? Don’t we really import families? How many workers do we need, and why are we importing the families? Need to have it strictly contractual to maintain control over a guest-worker program. 24% of agricultural workers are illegals (check tape for other industries). The migrants are willing to work longer and harder, business owners say. Businesses cannot compete without low-wage unskilled workers.

But why import the families? Registration system will eliminate some of that. Rest will be taken care of when we eliminate birthright citizenship.

I'll list other posts as they come up -- if other participants can e-mail me their links, I'll add them in here. Rep. Kingston has it on his blog here.

Tim Chapman from Town Hall
Mary Katherine Ham from Hugh Hewitt

EU: Kill The Irish Wake

The European Union's regulative nature may wind up killing off the Irish wake, thanks to a new rule that proposes to ban formaldehyde as an embalming agent. The restrictions on embalming will force caskets to remain closed as the bodies will decompose too much to allow for extended viewing of corpses, the centerpiece of the traditional Irish celebration of the deceased's life:

The Irish custom that sees corpses kept in an open coffin so the deceased can be viewed during the wake has been endangered by an edict issued by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner.

He wants chemicals used by embalmers to preserve the cadaver withdrawn under a new biocides directive.

Such a move would see the end of the age-old ritual of "laying out" the body while games are played and food and drink are consumed to the accompaniment of dancing and fiddle music. ...

The directive, which would come into effect in September, aims to withdraw embalming ingredients such as formaldehyde, which are capable of destroying living organisms.

Excuse me, but isn't the entire purpose of embalming to destroy living organisms? The preservative nature of embalming relies on the destruction of the bacteria that create decomposition, and formaldehyde does that effectively. Formaldehyde is also used to preserve lab specimens for research and the development of medicines and therapies. Does the EU propose to end formaldehyde for these purposes as well?

Most striking is the nature of the regulation -- an "edict" from a bureaucrat. The EU apparently does not have much concern about regulation through its legislature. That isn't such a stretch from the American agency model, but in this case it seems almost dictatorial. At least one member state will have an issue with this, and one suspects that other predominantly Catholic countries may have the same reservations as Ireland; the rosary is a tradition in most Catholic cultures, and it also involves extended viewing of the deceased. Will the EP take this matter into consideration or allow one bureaucrat to dictate funeral policy to an entire continent?

Taliban Reveals Islamofascist Strategy

The Taliban once again confirmed what little military strategy that Islamofascist terrorists can muster when faced with professional troops in the field in an interview with the Canadian Press wire service. Their spokesman informed reporters from Canada that the terrorists only needed to kill enough Canadians to make the nation weary enough of war to withdraw:

As MPs gather in Ottawa to discuss Canada's more combative role in southern Afghanistan, a senior Taliban official and coalition commanders painted two disparate images Sunday of where the war is headed.

In a weekend interview with The Canadian Press, insurgent spokesman Qari Yuosaf Ahmedi said the Taliban are convinced the resolve of the Canadian people is weak.

As suicide attacks and roadside blasts increase, the public will quickly grow weary, he said.

“We think that when we kill enough Canadians they will quit war and return home,” Mr. Ahmedi said in an interview, conducted through a translator, over a satellite telephone.

Sound familiar? It's what Islamofascists thought about Americans after Somalia, Beirut, and Viet Nam, which is why they didn't worry about provoking us in a series of terrorist attacks throughout the 90s and into 2001, culiminating with the 9/11 attacks. Four and a half years later, they've started to learn differently about American resolve, even though some politicians continually talk about precipitous withdrawal.

That same problem exists in Canada, and the Taliban points to the Commons debate on the deployment as a sign that their strategy could work. Democracies need to debate these policies, of course, but the trick is to do so responsibly. That requires the knowledge that the enemy is listening to everything being said and to cast the rhetoric with that knowledge in mind. Foolish talk about abrupt withdrawal in the face of terrorism only amplifies the terrorist impulse, as anything that succeeds will be repeated until it no longer works. It's a lesson that America has been slow to learn, even after the past fifteen years.

It will be hard to ignore the explicit endorsement of this strategy by the Taliban. They know that the only way they can win is to force the Western coalition to surrender through a breakdown of our will, because they can never defeat our forces in the field.

France Does What Comes Naturally

The French government has capitulated on their proposal to allow greater flexibility to employers in hiring and terminating younger workers in order to allow for more risk-taking, after protests and riots staged by the people the new policy would have helped most. Ten weeks of sit-ins, burning cars, and talk of ending the Fifth Republic has forced Jacques Chirac to withdraw the policy altogether:

French President Jacques Chirac announced that his government was abandoning a youth jobs plan that has sparked million-strong protests and replacing it with new measures to help young people into work.

"The president of the republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the law on equal opportunities with measures in favour of the professional insertion of young people in difficulty," the presidency said in a statement on Monday.

The text said that Chirac's decision was taken "based on a proposal from the prime minister, after hearing the leaders and heads of the parliamentary groups of the parliamentary majority".

The announcement followed a high-level meeting with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin -- who fathered the contested First Employment Contract (CPE) -- and leaders of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Unions and student groups, which had threatened more protests unless the measure was withdrawn by the end of this week, were to meet later Monday to decide what further action to take.

This will probably spell the end of De Villepin's political ambitions. He designed the new policy to reduce unemployment among workers under 26, which now tops 22 percent, a major component of the national unemployment rate of over 10%. The strain of carrying that many younger citizens on the government dole keeps France from realizing any economic potential while creating a culture of entitlement that the nation will not be able to maintain. The reaction to De Villepin's sensible first steps to solving these chronic problems show just how badly the French have declined.

Chirac may salvage some political juice from this mess, but the center-right coalition has its days numbered. The people do not want market-based reforms, even in such a mild form as the CPE. The unions and the students in the street will not risk another attempt to hold them accountable for their job performance but instead will demand even greater job protections. That will benefit the Socialists in the next election, who will give the French what they demand, and that will only deliver even more economic misery. In the meantime, the French will keep insisting that the "Anglo-Saxon" model of market economics does not fit their lifestyles, allowing their historical mistrust of l'Angleterre to cloud their economic policies.

France will not fight. It is an old story, and history repeats itself yet again.

Saddam Targeted American Assets For Terrorism: Case Closed (Bumped)

A few days ago, I posted a translation of a document culled from the captured Iraqi documents that the US found during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This particular memo, dated March 17, 2001, comes from a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and requests a list of volunteers from all units under his command for suicide attackers. The memo explicitly explains the targets for these terrorist attacks, as the original translation from Joseph Shahda shows:

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

When I posted this document, readers of this blog questioned the accuracy of the translation. People know that Joseph translated this for Free Republic, a strongly pro-war website, and that it was distributed by Laurie Mylroie, another pro-war commentator. Skeptics felt that this pedigree lent itself to a possibly warped interpretation of the memo. While the accuracy of the translation remained in question, the actual text -- which showed an active Iraqi terror program aimed at Americans -- would not get the attention it deserved.

In order to solve this problem, I decided to hire two Arabic translators on my own.

I found a translation service, Language 123, that employs a number of translators who work as free agents. The first translator, Nabil Bouitieh, works in the UK as a full-time translator for several government services. He has language certificates from Karl Marx University in Dresden, the German Cultural Center in Damascus, a degree in translation from Polytechnic of Central London, and a Masters of Diplomatic Studies from the Diplomatic Academy of London. Separately, I also hired Hamania H, who works from Damascus. She earned several degrees in language at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, including masters in translation, foreign languages, and bachelors in both areas and in law as well.

Neither of them knew that I had asked the other to translate the document. I split out page 6 from the original PDF and sent it to both along with payment. They both returned their translations today, and their results make it clear that Joseph Shahda had it right all along. First, we have Nabil Bouitieh:

Top secret memoranda sent to Al-Kadisseiya Military branch No.2205 dated 04/03/2001 and to the Headquarters of Zee karr military branch No. 246 dated: 08/03/2001 that we were informed by another memo from Ali Unit military branch No. 154 dated: 10/03/2001. We urge you to inform the above mentioned unit of the names of people wishing to volunteer for suicide action to liberate Palestine and strike American interests according to the following below for your information and to let us know.

Now here's the translation of the same passage from Hamania H:

A confidential letter of Qadisya Military Branch, that holds the number 2205 dated on 4/3/2001, notified upon a confidential letter issued by Thi Kar military command, that holds the number 246 dated on 8/3/2001 and notified to us upon a confidential letter issued by Ali squad military command, that holds the number 154 dated on 20/03/2001. Kindly provide the aforementioned squad with the names of persons desiring to volunteer in the suicidal act in order to liberate Palestine and to strike the American interests in accordance with the following details. You are informed and we therefore expect you to notify us.

You will note that all three translations of this document -- performed by three different people working independently of each other -- all translate this section almost identically. All three explicitly show that the Iraqi military had ordered a call for volunteers to carry out suicide attacks on American interests, six months before 9/11 and two years almost to the day prior to our invasion.

This confirms that Saddam Hussein and his regime had every intention of attacking the US, either here or abroad or both, using members of their own military for terrorist attacks. That puts an end to all of the arguments about whether we should have attacked Iraq, we now know that Saddam and his military planned to attack us. This one document demonstrates that had we not acted to topple Saddam Hussein, he would have acted to kill Americans around the world.

UPDATE: Why "case closed"? Because this shows that Saddam had recruited suicide bombers to attack American interests -- showing that destroying Saddam's regime is an integral part of the war on terror, not a distraction.

What else could this memo mean? I look at the timing of this recruitment drive in this post.

BUMP 4/10/06: To top. Interesting that no one in the media, or really all that much in the blogosphere, seems to be picking this one up ....

Joe Going Solo?

A local blogger has a political scoop this weekend involving Joe Lieberman. The ConnecticutBLOG reports that Senator Lieberman just upped the ante on Democrats hoping to replace him in the primary with a more leftist candidate:

Joe Lalli: Ned Lamont has already stated that he would support you if you won the Democratic nomination and Zell Miller once stated that he would always be a member of the Democratic party. Can you make similar promises?

LIEBERMAN: Will I always be a member of the Democratic party? I hope there's not a primary. I'm confident if there is one, I'll win it, but I'm not gonna rule out any other option for now because I feel so strongly that I can do better for the State of Connecticut for the next six years in the United States Senate that I want to give all the voters a chance to make that decision on Election day in November. I want to do it as a Democrat. If I didn't want to do it as a Democrat, I would choose to run in some other party, trust me. But I want to do it as a Democrat because I believe in the Democratic party, so really the choice is up to my fellow Democrats...

The Democrats should not find themselves terribly surprised by this revelation. The blogger-base has heaped derision on Lieberman almost since his primary efforts in 2004 to win the presidential nomination. The lone member of the Democrat's Scoop Jackson wing in the Senate didn't promise enough radicalism for the Hollywood leftists and Daily Kos crowd, and they have targeted Lieberman for a primary defeat for almost two years.

CTBlogger expresses his shock that Lieberman isn't more loyal to the Democrats, but all that's happening is that Lieberman is reflecting the loyalty shown him. It's a shot across the bow of the party activists working to undermine him. If Lieberman does decide to run as an independent, he will split the party vote and may wind up helping the GOP capture a seat they had not considered. They might even run a serious candidate in the general election under the circumstances.

The Rhode Island situation with Linc Chaffee has some similarities, but the difference is that Lieberman votes much more often in concert with his caucus than Chaffee does with the GOP. If Chaffee ran as an independent, it would not hurt the GOP nearly as much since Chaffee's vote hardly ever goes to support key party goals. Chaffee couldn't even bring himself to vote for George Bush in the last election, opting to write in Bush 41's name instead. Connecticut Democrats have much more to lose with Lieberman, even if they themselves don't realize it.

The Hollywood And Hillary Rift

It appears that one of Bill Clinton's power bases has soured on Hillary and her bid to win back the White House. The Observer (UK) reports that the glitterati in Hollywood have turned their backs on the putative Democratic front-runner, considering her too unreliable as a liberal to support:

With its liberal politics and radical attitudes, Hollywood should be one place in America where Hillary Clinton can count on fervent and loyal support.

But as the former First Lady gears up for a run at the White House her nascent campaign has hit an unexpected roadblock. A lengthening list of top Hollywood celebrities have publicly criticised her ambitions. From George Clooney to Sharon Stone to Susan Sarandon, the Beverly Hills set has turned on Clinton.

Nor are they alone. Vast swaths of American liberals have begun to snipe at their former heroine, attacking her for supporting the war in Iraq and decrying her recent shifts to the right as she positions herself for a presidential campaign. For a woman long derided by conservative critics as a 'feminazi' the irony of the onslaughts from the left must be painful.

Celebrities have queued up to attack her. Kathleen Turner said she 'had her doubts' about Clinton's potential bid. Stone said it was 'too soon' for Clinton to run. Clooney criticised the entire Democrat leadership, including Clinton, for lacking the backbone to speak against the Iraq war. Sarandon, one of the most politically active of the Hollywood elite, was forthright: 'I find Hillary Clinton to be a great disappointment. She's lost her progressive following because of her caution and centrist approach.'

In a way, Hillary has the same problem as John McCain, but for different reasons. McCain has played footsie with the media as a "maverick" and a moderating (supposed) influence on the GOP's right wing. Now he wants to grab the nomination by moving back to the base. Hillary, on the other hand, won her Senate seat as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and wants to win the nomination as a pro-war centrist.

Both politicians have now discovered that shifting positions has become much more difficult in the Internet age, where every speech and every vote can be recalled for comparison. Harry Reid discovered as much this week when his opposition to illegal immigration in 1993 came back to haunt him thirteen years later. For Hillary and McCain, the time frames are much more compressed than that, and thus less explicable.

Hillary bet that her support of the war would win her some credibility in a general election, and that the thought of returning the Clintons to the White House would be enough to sail through the primaries. If she thinks that, she will find herself very much mistaken. It has been only five years since the Clintons left under a cloud of scandal, and their manner of leaving -- by granting pardons to people such as Marc Rich, who wound up spending his new-found freedom helping to put bribes into the pockets of Saddam Hussein -- left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. The Democrats love Bill's fundraising abilities, but they know that Bill's final days will once again become an issue in any general election involving Hillary.

In order to get through the primaries, then, HIllary will need all the help she can get, including Hollywood. It looks as though her prospects are grim, however, and I suspect they are tooling up for a Russ Feingold campaign. He represents the kind of left-wing purity they most admire, especially his effort to censure or impeach George Bush. The Hollywood elite may wind up skewing the primaries to push an even more radical agenda than what John Kerry presented in 2004. They can make it very difficult for Hillary to get the liftoff she needs to win in the primaries at all, and for that matter, the same will be true for Mark Warner or any other moderate Democrat.

With Hollywood's help, we may find the primary race to come down to Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich. As delighted as Tinseltown will be with that result, it won't compare to the joy it will bring to the GOP.

A Little Honesty From The Media

The Washington Post editorial board injects a little honesty from the media in the so-called leak kerfuffle today, in contrast to its peers in journalism. The unsigned editorial accepts that the administration not only has the right to declassify the kind of information it did, but was right to have it published:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

After beating up on Dick Cheney for a paragraph for choosing to have Scooter Libby send the information through quiet channels, the Post reminds its readers why Bush found it necessary to declassify the material at all:

Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge. In last week's court filings, he stated that Mr. Bush did not authorize the leak of Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Libby's motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney.

The entire reason the NIE had to be released was to answer the lies that the Post acknowledges Wilson told, including through one of its own reporters, Walter Pincus. They could also have explicitly acknowledged that their own reporters created the necessity for the NIE release, but at least they do not engage in the hypocritical screeching coming from other media outlets over the release. The media, especially the Post and the New York Times, fueled the controversy over the Niger claim by poorly vetting the Wilson leaks and the Wilson editorial.

Rather than getting steamed about Libby using a process that every journalist presses their sources to use, they should -- as the Post does -- express gratitude that the administration released the intelligence estimates that led to their decision to go to war. And instead of continuing to prop Joe Wilson up as a hero or victim, it's high time that the media do what the Post did and expose him for the manipulating schemer that he and his wife proved to be in this instance.

McCain Shifting Gears

John McCain still garners the most media attention of all prospective Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008. His long-cultivated relationship with the media and his reputation as a "maverick" has provided endless fascination and a large boost to his prospects for capturing the ticket. However, now that he has to come to terms with his party, McCain now risks the very assets that propelled him to the top of the media dance card. The New York Times profiles McCain in transition in its Sunday edition:

Senator John McCain began his week by embracing the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the conservative religious leader he once denounced as polarizing. He ended it by joining Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal Massachusetts icon, in a fight for an immigration bill opposed by many conservatives.

Mr. McCain has long sought to present himself as a singular sort of American politician — straight-talking, iconoclastic and hard to quantify. But as he began a campaign-style trip here that will take him through Florida, Ohio and Iowa, he faced an extraordinarily complex political challenge as he sought to reconcile his appeals to an unusually diverse audience and cement his early standing in the emerging Republican presidential field.

Mr. McCain's alliance with Mr. Kennedy comes as he has embarked on a campaign to repair strains with conservatives and a once-wary Bush White House. He is portraying himself as a lifelong conservative and a steadfast supporter of President Bush, once a political rival, courting his senior staff members and fund-raisers.

He has endorsed Bush tax cuts he once criticized as fiscally ruinous, and he agreed to appear at a commencement at Liberty University, headed by Mr. Falwell, whom Mr. McCain once called an agent of "intolerance."

But a strategy designed to muscle him through the 2008 Republican primaries — should he ultimately run, which aides says is likely but not definite — risks diluting the independent image that has been central to his political appeal. Already, Mr. McCain is facing stiff questions from supporters and critics about how far he will go to win support from conservative leaders who have long been wary of him.

McCain's problem is that he continues to try the same pattern he has since losing the primary in 2000 -- zig-zag through political positions in order to please the most people. What the Senator seems to have forgotten is that one cannot ever please everybody. Reaching out to Jerry Falwell demonstrates this problem; the move looks transparently political and self-serving to those who like Falwell, especially after McCain's earlier harsh remarks, and it alienates moderates who never liked Falwell from the beginning. It also shows a little tone-deafness, because while Falwell has some influence, it has ebbed dramatically since the 1980s.

The Times relates an incident on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where the host asked McCain if he was going into "crazy-base world" -- to which McCain said, "I'm afraid so." Hardly a ringing endorsement of the people McCain supposedly wants to embrace, and presumably expects to embrace him back.

George Will also writes about the McCain transformation in one of his better columns of late. Will chides the media for not recognizing McCain as a conservative all along, although to be fair most conservatives would have made the same mistake:

First Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, now John McCain and the media. Even torrid relationships are perishable. It was only a matter of time before the media turned on their pin-up, and that time has arrived. A rivulet, soon to be a river, of journalism is reporting -- as a mystery deciphered, even a scandal unearthed -- that McCain, who occupies the Senate seat once held by Barry Goldwater, is a conservative Republican.

He has been unmasked as a "pro-life, pro-family, fiscal conservative." Those words are his, and they are a reasonably accurate description of the man who voted against the prescription drug entitlement and the most recent transportation bill because of their costs.

Will reminds us that McCain caused this confusion himself, especially in his zeal to drive money out of politics. (I wrote extensively on the strange nature of McCain's Reform Institute, given this public position.) Not only did McCain push through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which restricts political speech based on proximity to the election, but he explicitly voted to amend the Constitution in 2000 to restrict political speech. Fritz Hollings proposed the amendment because he saw the Constitutional conflict in McCain's attempt to limit speech, even though the Supreme Court could not. The amendment failed, but the BCRA became law.

Now McCain wants to repair his relationship with conservatives, but he appears to want to do so through superficial efforts like the Liberty University appearance that brought him a truce with Falwell. More substantially, he has also endorsed making the Bush tax cuts permanent, which in a sane world should be a slam dunk after three years of excellent economic growth. However, McCain still pulls the rug out from under conservatives, especially in the immigration compromise that collapsed this week. He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to promote an amnesty bill that completely ignored border security as an answer to the supposedly draconian House proposal that would have established some American credibillity on the Rio Grande. He then tried, at least at first, to keep Republican Senators from amending the bill in order to correct the deficiencies.

That's not the actions of a man who wants to represent the conservative base. That's the actions of a man who will do anything to get himself elected. It follows on his betrayal of the GOP base on judicial nominations and the restriction of political speech to supposedly clean up politics, an effort that has only led to even more corruption and even more restrictions on speech. Bloggers had to beg for the "privilege" of expressing their political opinions thanks to the BCRA and the continued effort by BCRA authors to press the FEC to regulate the Internet. None of these are conservative values, and the last isn't even a liberal value.

All of them remain very popular among the media, however, and they guaranteed McCain some serious coverage as the reasonable Republican. Now he risks losing that for his superficial outreach to past-prime conservative icons instead of actual support for the most important of conservative concerns. He'll have to do much better if he expects to convince anyone.

Iraqi Liberation Day

Today is the third anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and in honor of the efforts of our troops, Captain's Quarters has an interview with Merrilee Carlson. Merrilee is a Gold Star mother from Minnesota who has led the effort to support the troops through Minnesota Families United, a chapter of the national support group. Merrilee wrote a guest post for CQ on Friday, and that evening I interviewed her about a range of subjects on the war and the support coming from the home front.

The interview is available for download here. It's about twenty-five minutes and will download slowly. Later I will post the transcript, but for now I'd like Merrilee to speak with her own voice. Don't forget to sign their letter when you visit their website.

'The Iraqi Regime Has Transported The Chemical And Biological Weapons'

CQ reader Sapper sends along a new document from the captured files of the Saddam Hussein regime, one that had just been released on Friday, that has notations indicating where WMD stockpiles might be found. The information on the memo has not been translated but the notations themselves sound breathtaking:

Please see Iraqi map to locate Al-Rasheed area

on this page important information that the Iraqi regime has Transported the chemical and biological weapons to al-Rashad area, and pronounced a Military Prohibited area

this area is completely covered with trees & bushes

Has anyone at CENTCOM followed up on this memo, or have they even seen it in the deluge of material from which this came? Someone looked at this at some point, but not long enough to provide a translation, unlike some of the other documents from the release. It certainly looks important enough to pursue in greater detail.

In case the DoD website gets slow, I've also uploaded the document to my server here.

Air Leaks Out Of Leak Story

After forty-eight hours of hyperbole and hypocrisy surrounding allegations that George Bush "leaked" portions of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003, the AP now reports that Bush never asked anyone to divulge the information via a private conversation and never had Scooter Libby in mind as a conduit. Instead, the President declassified the information and delegated the release to Dick Cheney:

President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.

Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House. The vice president chose Libby and communicated the president's wishes to his then-top aide, the lawyer said.

This answers a few questions and brings up another, more interesting possibility. First, however, this would substantiate what everyone around the White House has been saying: that the President declassified the information prior to its release, regardess of the distribution channel. It takes the decision to pass it along privately out of Bush's hands and into Cheney's, which makes sense if Libby was the conduit. Had Bush been the one to release the information, he probably wouldn't have done it through Libby but perhaps Andrew Card or Karl Rove ... who probably would not have done it so clumsily. It also makes sense given the context of the debate that month, especially after the slow drip-drip-drip of Wilson's own leaks, culminating in the op-ed under his own name that contained Wilson's prevarications. Bush wanted the relevant portions of the NIE released to answer the media's demands to know the basis for his decision to attack Iraq.

However, this counterargument is in itself intriguing. It hardly appears that the wagons are getting circled at the White House as far as Dick Cheney is concerned. It didn't take long for sources within the administration to get this story out and point the finger right back to Dick Cheney. As long as Bush declassified the information, nothing Cheney did under these circumstances was illegal ... but the White House does not seem to care about throwing Cheney under a bus to absorb the embarrassment this has created. (It's also important to remember that Cheney also has authority to declassify information on his own.)

Does this mean anything? We know that Cheney and his office have created a few PR problems of late for the administration. This may be a signal from the President's team that patience with the VP's staff has come to an end, if not the VP himself. It certainly doesn't show unity between the two to have this kind of finger-pointing coming so soon after this story broke.

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard reminds the forgetful about the lost credibility of Joe Wilson and the reason why the press wanted the NIE released in the first place. They rely on the SSCI and Butler reports from 2004, which (among other canards posed in the comments sections) contradicts the urban legends that Cheney sent Wilson to Niger and that Wilson found no evidence that Iraq sought Niger's uranium.

The Timing Of The Iraqi Air Force Memo

Now that we have established the translation of the memo from the Iraqi Air Force general to all units requesting volunteers for suicide missions against American "interests", the timing of the memo appears to fit into a disturbing sequence in the months prior to 9/11. This memo is dated March 17, 2001, less than six months prior to the coordinated al-Qaeda attack on the US, at a time when the AQ plotters and pilots appeared to be in close proximity to Iraqi intelligence agents in Europe.

In a series of posts I wrote last year, I pointed out activity in Germany by the Iraqi Intelligence Service that the 9/11 Commission missed. Specifically, the Germans arrested two IIS agents in late February for their operation of an espionage ring in their country. Their intelligence estimate in 2002 would later claim that Iraq had reached out to extremists Islamist groups to coordinate attacks on American interests. In the winter of 2001, however, those agents had operated in Germany at the same time as Mohammed Atta met Ramzi Binalshibh in Berlin, the same time that German counterintelligence picked up the trail of the Iraqi spies. Ziad Jarrah, another of the 9/11 pilots, traveled through Germany at least twice during the same time frame. Pilot Marwan al-Shehhi disappeared in Casablanca and told people he was in Hamburg, which may or may not have been a dodge. The only pilot not in Germany during this time was Hani Hanjour, who plowed his plane into the Pentagon.

As I asked in my Weekly Standard column last year, why would the main terror cell risk traveling abroad eight months before the attack, when they had taken pains to establish themselves in the US the year before? Can we just chalk up the Iraqi espionage ring to sheer coincidence?

The Germans arrested the IIS agents in late February, and were reported (briefly) by European media outlets on March 1st. According to the IAF memo, the Iraqis began planning for top-secret suicide missions starting March 4th, issuing a series of memos over the next six days that would prompt the IAF general to start asking for suicide-mission volunteers -- among an Iraqi air force that had largely been grounded since 1991.

What kind of suicide missions could grounded pilots perform?

Less than three weeks after the IAF started its recruitment drive, the Czech intelligence service reported that Mohammed Atta landed in Prague and talked to a known IIS operative. While the 9/11 Commission rejected this as unproven, the Czechs have never withdrawn their insistence that the meeting took place. Once again, let's review why the 9/11 Commission reached their conclusion:

The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment.On April 6, 9, 10, and 11,Atta�s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida.We cannot confirm that he placed those calls. But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period. Czech officials have reviewed their flight and border records as well for any indication that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001, including records of anyone crossing the border who even looked Arab.They have also reviewed pictures from the area near the Iraqi embassy and have not discovered photos of anyone who looked like Atta. No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001. ...

These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip). The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports.

KSM and Binalshibh both deny that an Atta-Ani meeting occurred. There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training,and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States.

The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.

The Commission primarily relied on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for this rejection. However, as I pointed out then, the Commission also acknowledged that KSM had lied about other operational aspects of the 9/11 plot in what seemed to them to be a campaign of misinformation. Further, had Iraq wanted to meet Atta, they hardly would have had him travel under his own name to the Czech Republic; they would be careful to keep themselves disconnected from the 9/11 plot as much as possible.

Originally I wrote that Atta may have desired Iraqi support for getting the muscle hijackers into the US and traveled to Prague to secure that assistance. However, this recruitment memo offers another tantalizing possibility. The one 9/11 pilot who had not traveled outside the US the previous January was Hani Hanjour, who had just begun his flight training, which reportedly had not gone well. (See pages 226-227 of the 9/11 Commission report.) Hanjour had been assigned the most difficult of the 9/11 targets -- the Pentagon. That flight required taking the plane over the Beltway and into an incredibly low but stable approach to maximize the damage done to the building. This took more skill than merely flying a plane into the Twin Towers, and the late start on training could not have helped in Hanjour's preparations. Unlike Atta and Shehhi, the report never mentions Hanjour getting any training in a large-craft simulator.

The trip to Germany in January by the other pilots may have been an attempt to gather better-trained pilots for the attack -- and remember that the original plan was to have two waves of attacks, at least according to KSM, the second of which got cancelled due to increased security after 9/11. The late start for Hanjour would have endangered their mission. We know that the Iraqis started recruiting from their Air Force, and that those pilots had nothing to fly at the time. The trip to Prague may have been to find out if the Iraqis had anyone who could assist Hanjour in the difficult task ahead of him, or to plan the second wave of attacks using skilled pilots rather than the amateurs from the Hamburg cell.

The revelation of this memo and its timing suggest that the book has not yet closed on the 9/11 attacks, terrorist threats against the United States, or the threat posed to our interests by Saddam Hussein. These documents will provide a great deal of clarification to all these issues in the coming weeks.