Captain's Quarters -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not any," Mr. Sorrell replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what the AP reported:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "Able Danger, The Lawsuit" »

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

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

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

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

Mr Singh declared: “History was made today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clarification: Katrina-Video story

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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

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

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

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

This pattern looks all too familiar.

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

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

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

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

Good point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamas won the recent Palestinian election fair and square. American officials, who say they are so forcefully committed to the cause of expanding democracy in the Middle East, should not even entertain the idea of doing anything to try to somehow undermine the r