Star Tribune Still Angry About 2000

In a typical editorial, this one "signed" by Commentary editor Eric Ringham, the Minneapolis Star Tribune castigates the Green Party and Ralph Nader for getting George Bush elected in 2000:

Look at what's happened since your champion confused and divided the left in 2000. Nader, the nominal head of your party, dismissed any suggestion that he was splitting the liberal vote, sneering that the difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore was the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Later on, when the difference between Dum and Dee in deaths and deficits became all too plain, Nader and friends started arguing that if Al Gore couldn't put up a better fight, it wasn't Ralph Nader's fault. Well, no -- it wasn't Nader's fault that the race was close. It was just Nader's fault that Bush won.

Without Nader, Gore would have won Florida, recount or no recount. He would have won New Hampshire. He would have carried the election.

This is ludicrous. First, there was a lot of evidence that votes Nader received would have gone to neither Gore nor Bush in 2000. Even without that, Gore could have won the election outright if he had just carried his home state, but Tennessee rejected him for Bush. No candidate has ever become President after losing his home state, although Gore came closer than any other candidate before him.

Not to be melodramatic about it, but Nader's got blood on his hands.

Well, God, Eric, let's not get melodramatic! I won't go into detail about justification for the Iraq phase of the war on Islamofascism, but Eric's Commentary section was very supportive of war in Iraq when Gore's former boss waged it, half-assed as it turned out. Eric's department was also very supportive of Clinton's attacks on Serbia on behalf of Bosnians and Kosovars (rightly so) even though no American interests were directly threatened. The only difference between these events and present time is that Eric's party is out of power.

And now it's Nader's fault that Bush is President, and Eric argues that Nader has become the epitome of the tragic hero -- because:

We veterans of Arthur Ballet's introductory theater class at the University of Minnesota learned well the characteristics of tragedy: The protagonist, suffering from some tragic flaw, blindly pursues his own course, unwittingly causing the deaths of multitudes. ... Ralph Nader is the classic tragic hero, recast for the modern stage. He is born not of a royal line, but with a brilliant intellect. In his youth he defeated not a menacing Sphinx, but General Motors. And he has unconsciously permitted not the Plague of Thebes, but the invasion of Iraq. Plus a plague of deficits.

Yeah. Pardon those of us who never took Professor Ballet's Introduction to Theater class -- apparently a substitute for both Philosophy and Classic Lit at the University of Minnesota -- but tragic heroes achieve great power and the power is what destroys them through their tragic flaw in character. All Nader did was to run for President as the representative of a small, minority party that the Strib, under other circumstances, would have endorsed. Rather than a MacBeth or King Lear, Nader much more resembles a Don Quixote who never even seriously threatened a weather vane, let alone a windmill.

Al Gore is the true tragic hero and the author of his own defeat. Born into power and raised to be President, he entered the 2000 campaign as an unusually active Vice President to an administration that could reasonably claim eight years of peace and prosperity, although both were shown to be illusions after the election. Running against a relatively inexperienced politician who had much less public-speaking talent than Gore, the VP managed to lose what should have been a gimme election, through character flaws that became obvious during the campaign, including shocking hubris towards his opponent during the debates that Gore should have also won without breaking a sweat.

Even more to the point, perhaps the Strib's Commentary editor has better topics on which to write than a three-years-dead election and a minor candidate that should never have had any affect on it. Ringham's editorial demonstrates the extent to which the Star Tribune is more interested in licking its partisan wounds and focusing on imagined Deus ex Machina interventions for the failures of its political standardbearers than in facing the present and future -- and the facts -- to determine the best course for this nation and the Strib's community.

Vermont Yankee Reactor Safety Ignored by Dean

In Power Line's words, this will hurt Dean, but I don't think it will be as bad as some would think. I originally saw this story this afternoon but didn't give it a good read. Fortunately, Hindrocket takes a close look at the story, as reported by the AP based on documents from an undisclosed source. Dean was warned repeatedly over more than ten years that security for Vermont's nuclear reactor was substandard, and in fact was rated the worst in the nation:

During Dean's final year in office in 2002, an audit concluded that despite a decade of repeated warnings of poor safety at Vermont Yankee, Dean's administration was poorly prepared for a nuclear disaster.

"The lack of funding and overarching coordination at the state level directly impacts the ability of the state, local and power plant planners to be adequately prepared for a real emergency at Vermont Yankee," state Auditor Elizabeth M. Ready wrote in a study issued five months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security was so lax at Vermont Yankee that in August 2001, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staged a drill in which three mock terrorists gained access to the plant. The agency gave Vermont Yankee the worst security rating among the nation's 103 reactors.

Compare this against Dean's rhetoric on Bush's security performance after 9/11:

The documents contrast with Dean's position as a presidential candidate who has portrayed himself as more concerned about nuclear security than Bush.

"Our most important challenge will be to address the most dangerous threat of all: catastrophic terrorism using weapons of mass destruction," Dean said in his speech in Los Angeles last month. "Here, where the stakes are highest, the current administration has, remarkably, done the least."

Hindrocket's analysis is terrific, as always, noting that with Von Hoffman-like timing, New York Times magazine quotes Dean in a story published today as saying, ''The line of attack is not Iraq, though there'll be some of that. The line of attack will be more, 'What have you done to make us feel safer?' I'm going to outflank him to the right on homeland security, on weapons of mass destruction and on the Saudis. Our model is to get around the president's right, as John Kennedy did to Nixon.'' Dean's decade-long track record of ignoring security threats hardly positions him to the right of anyone except perhaps International ANSWER. Hindrocket concludes with the interesting proposition that oppo agents within other Democratic campaigns released this to the AP as a last-ditch effort to derail Dean's nomination ... or at least, one would think this is last-ditch, unless they have something else for him.

However, I don't think that this is the Big One that others perceive it to be, although I think this story provided by The Friendly Ghost may be much more damaging. According to the AP, as reprinted in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, Dean took a lot of campaign donations from energy providers, including the ones involved at running Vermont Yankee, who later sold the facility with its known security issues unaddressed:

After it became clear in the late 1990s that selling Vermont Yankee was a top goal of the utilities, the administration failed to heed warnings for more than two years that the money the nuclear plant was paying for emergency planning was much less than was needed. An administration official said there was concern about interfering with the sale.

Why? Maybe this explains it:

Nearly a fifth of the roughly $111,000 collected in its first months by Dean’s presidential political action committee, the Fund for a Healthy America, came from people with ties to Vermont’s electric utilities, according to a recent Federal Elections Commission filing.

Here's why I think that Dean will still be able to skate by this for the nomination; he will argue, with some justification, that nuclear-plant security should have been the purview of the federal government, even pre-9/11, but especially afterwards. This view will likely be acceptable to his base, but he is getting pushed farther away from centrist voters that won't hurt him before June, but whose absence will kill him and other Democrats in November. You can bet that Karl Rove will be all over Dean's financial statements and will be demanding to know what exactly Dean delivered for all of that cash, while I think even the Democrats will quail at going that far to trip Dean up. Selling out environmentalists to power companies will demotivate Dean's base and may drive them either to vote Green -- whoever that candidate will be -- or not vote at all. The latter option will absolutely cripple Democratic efforts to hold seats in both houses of Congress.

There is one thing for certain; Dean has compiled a record which thoroughly belies the populist truth-bearing outsider image he has carefully crafted for this campaign. He's too far ahead to be stopped prior to the nomination now, I believe, but by the time the dust settles in November, he may have a difficult time capturing any electoral votes at all.

Note: Blogs for Bush notes that the Dean campaign has published a statement on the issue which addresses almost none of the concerns raised by the AP or the Times Argus.

Blog Madness: A New Tournament for the Blogosphere

It seems that the blogosphere loves contests and awards only slightly less than Hollywood, and Pete and Manny have come up with a fun new contest for fans of such things called Blog Madness. They're serious about it, too -- they've even got a specific domain name for it! The idea is to select one post from 2003 that you feel best represents your blog and register it for the contest. Pete and Manny intend to use a bracket system, just like the NCAA basketball tournament, with voting to determine the winners at each stage.

My entry for the contest is my "epic" poem, The Midnight Blog-Court, which I wrote in November. We'll see how far it goes in the tournament, but I think it was written in the same spirit as the contest itself -- fun, not taking things too seriously, and all about the blogging. If you want to get into the contest, visit the site soon (before January 21) and select your best from 2003, but if you're shy, don't miss out on the voting! (via California Yankee)

Secret Case Before the Supreme Court?

The California Yankee notified me of a notable development: the US Supreme Court has agreed to consider an appeal of a case that, up to now, doesn't appear to exist. California Yankee provides plenty of background on the case, discussing what is known and what isn't, and why this case involving a Muslim illegally in the US should cause us concern. Take a look at this; it certainly looks like a problem to me.

New York Times: Missing The Point

The New York Times ran an article today on the temperament of Democratic front-runner Howard Dean, who has caused his supporters -- and his Democratic opponents as well -- some concern with his quick temper and his manner of speaking without considering the consequences. Predictably, the Times spins this as honesty given a bit too much free reign:

Friends and former employees of Dr. Dean say his temper can indeed flare, although of greater concern to campaign aides is the occasional crisis created by his speaking too quickly on the issues. Even that, he and his top aides say, is not as detrimental as his opponents might hope: as long as he talks straight and from the heart, he said in an interview in Iowa not long ago, voters will overlook a little roughness around the edges.

"What people are responding to is that I believe in what I'm doing and it's not calculated," he said. "That's a quality you can't fake. People can tell the difference."

But this pat explanation flies in the face of the facts. Howard Dean, more than any other Democratic candidate, changes positions in order to pander to whatever audience he thinks is listening. It's his compulsive need to be all things to all people that continues to demonstrate itself through his extemporaneous statements and outbursts, not his supposed consistency and honesty. Besides the starting point of Dean's Top 10 Flip-Flops, we've had in the past month:

* Dean castigating Dick Cheney for keeping energy-policy deliberations confidential when he did the same thing during his administration of Vermont

* Dean reversing course on tort reform

* Dean accusing the Bush administration of corporate welfare and enabling American corporations to avoid taxes by locating themselves offshore, when he aggressively created tax shelters for these same corporations in Vermont, allowing them to bypass the federal tax penalties intended to discourage flight in the first place

The silliest and biggest political gaffe in dishonesty came about through a series of reversals. First, Dean appeared on CNBC's Hardball and stated that he didn't care where Osama bin Laden was tried, in the US or at the Hague, as long as he was "brought to justice". Of course, the Hague has no death penalty nor even a life-without-parole option. Last week, he told people that he would withhold judgment on Osama's guilt until his trial was over. In the same day, apparently after his campaign informed him that he was having a Dukakis moment, he abruptly changed his tune, proclaiming that "Osama bin Laden has admitted that he is responsible for killing 3,000 Americans as well as scores of men, women and children around the world. This is the exactly the kind of case that the death penalty is meant for." Of course, this means that Howard Dean has suddenly discovered a desire to have Osama tried in the US, even though he has never repudiated nor explained his statements on his Hardball interview.

What the Times article, and others like it in the past weeks, demonstrate is that there are two issues with Howard Dean: a lack of executive temperament as well as a stubborn streak of dishonesty, the latter of which he hopes to cover by judiciously employing the former. I don't think that the temper is a contrivance, either, at least not entirely. For instance, one of the examples of Dean's temper given in the article involves Little League-type games:

["]In the heat of sports events with his kids, for instance, I can remember him yelling, red-faced, his neck muscles bulging," if, as a spectator, he saw dishonesty among his children's opponents or poor calls by referees.

Quite frankly, parents like this ruin kid's sports, and anyone who's had the displeasure of being around a parent like this at a game knows exactly what I mean. It used to be a stereotype of frustrated athlete-fathers surrounding children's sporting events that got the Left's knickers in a twist, demanding competition-free play at younger levels. Does a man who has such a twisted sense of perspective really have the qualifications to be president? Top that off with his record of dishonesty and position-shifting, and the picture I get disturbs me greatly. Unfortunately, the Times seems more intent on the continued propogation of the Dean myth of the plain-speaking Everyman, and in doing so are sealing the doom of the Democrats for this election cycle.

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush misses the point a bit, too, although they have some good perspective in their post.

PoliBlog's Toast-O-Meter

Steven at Poliblog has a funny and informative running series on the presidential election called the Toast-O-Meter, designed to predict which candidate is fresh bread goodness, and which are toast in the primaries. Check out the Toast-O-Meter and the plethora of links PoliBlog provides. Obviously, Dean's listed as the freshest bread in the bakery, while candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun, uh, crumble under the analysis. Steven's added Veep Toast as well, although I disagree with him on his assessment of John Edwards, both as a candidate in general and on his Veep potential. (However, the Quayle analogy crossed my mind as well.)

I've also added PoliBlog to the blogroll, if for no other reason than to keep it one step ahead of Kicking Ass. Check it out!

Not Everyone Agrees With Me

What a shocker that headline is, eh? Jon at QandO wrote an excellent response on his blog to my analysis of the Republican ticket in 2004 and its impact on long-term strategy. He likes my analysis but disagrees with my conclusion that Condoleezza Rice will make the best VP candidate for Bush in 2004:

Here's where we'll part ways. I'd agree that it would be a strategic benefit in '08 to have a VP who can run for office. But I suspect it might be a strategic blunder to switch horses in mid-stream during the '04 election. One doesn't do that without drawing a great deal of negative attention...not the sort of thing that Presidential candidates like to do. More importantly, it just doesn't seem like Bush's style. He's a loyal and "stick to the plan" sort of fellow. I just don't see him abandoning a team member in a perceived strategic move. I could be wrong, but it just doesn't seem par for the Bush course.

Jon also feels that a strictly foreign-policy approach may not be a winner in 2008. He could very well be right, although he (unlike me) includes the disclaimer that he could very well be wrong. I'll have to remember to do that in the future. Make sure you read Jon's entire post, and while you're there, check out his entire blog, especially everything he writes on economics.

Look For The Union Parable

Los Angeles has been struggling through a weeks-long grocery strike and lockout, which was in full swing when I visited family at Thanksgiving. I've avoided writing on the subject of the strike because it only affects the people of Southern California and I'm too far away to know all of the issues involved, most of which appears to be centered around management's refusal to keep paying 100% of the union's medical insurance.

Apparently, union tracts being handed out to shoppers defying the picket lines -- when strikers aren't screaming harassment at shoppers, that is -- features a parable about a man and a goat. (No, I'm not making this up, and get your mind out of the gutter.) The parable tells the cautionary tale of "a man who is granted his wish for a goat and another man who is jealous and is granted his wish to kill the goat. The moral, we are told, is that we should all work for free health care rather than object to grocery workers getting their care free." In today's LA Times, Eric Hainline tells another parable, one that is a bit more applicable to the situation:

Once upon a time, a miller went into the forest and labored all day and all night to fell a tree and cut the wood and load his wagon and haul the lumber into town to sell. With the money he earned he purchased a goat, which he took back to his mill, and there he rested.

When he awoke he went to the barn for milk and discovered a hose attached to one of the teats on the goat. He followed the hose as it traveled out the barn and across his field and into the house of his neighbor, a laborer who sometimes worked for the miller carrying grain. The miller was angered that the laborer had helped himself to the milk, and he cut the hose.

When the laborer discovered that the hose had been cut and that he would receive no free milk, he howled in displeasure. He went into town and declared that he would not labor for anyone unless his free milk was restored. And he stood at the gate of the mill and hurled insults and cabbages at anyone who brought their grain to the miller for grinding.

Read the whole thing. I've often read the Little Red Hen recast as an anti-union analogy, but this definitely is more appropriate to the LA strike.

Electric Venom: Snark Abounds

Venomous Kate dropped me a note letting me know that she's back from her injury-induced hiatus and has a fresh Snark Hunt for the readers of Electric Venom. Not only that, but this week's snark includes an entry from CQ, the "epic" poem, The Midnight Blog-Court. She notes, with a hiss, that I didn't mention her in it. At the time, I thought I was doing her a favor ...

Make sure you drop by Electric Venom to check out the snark, and all of the other great stuff that Kate posts!

Big Trunk on the Radio

Scott Johnson, the Big Trunk of Power Line is appearing on the radio locally in Minneapolis tonight on a fascinating topic, that of the requirement of continuing legal education for lawyers in bias sensitivity, and one lawyer, Elliot Rothenberg, who is risking his license to challenge this requirement. Minnesota lawyers, like many other professions, are required to take coursework on a regular basis in order to keep up to date in changes and advancements. However, the "elimination of bias" requirement has nothing to do with the practice of law, as the qualifying classes themselves demonstrate:

• A 'rally for credit' for attorney Lynne Stewart, who is under federal indictment on charges of supporting terrorist activities.

• At least 20 courses beginning in April 2002 with titles like 'Understanding Islam,' which Rothenberg says promotes one religion.

• A course opposing military action against terrorists.

• A course condemning capital punishment as a 'challenge to justice.'

• A theatrical performance on race relations by the Mixed Blood Theatre Company called "Presumed Guilty,' which Rothenberg says does not 'even purport to engage in legal education.'

• Another theatrical performance entitled 'Impeach Justice Douglas,' which Rothenberg claims criticized the Vietnam War and the convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for spying.

So far, this is an interesting discussion. I was the first caller, tossing a question to Scott about the possibility of legislative and/or executive action to squash this political correctness run amuck, and Scott gave a very good answer, a bit more optimistic than the one given by the host, who is also an attorney. Scott is doing a great job on this show. If you're not able to catch this, you should definitely read Scott's posts on this topic at Power Line. Start with the link above and follow his links to the posts. If you're from Minnesota, you should be talking with your representatives about this monumental waste of time and resources that our legal system could use in much more productive ways.

Blog Maintenance

A bit of minor blog construction going on ...

First, I'm adding a great blog that I've previously just accessed through other blogrolls. (The Captain is a lazy guy.) Evangelical Outpost, one of the new outstanding blogs, regularly writes with authority and conviction on matters of religion, politics, culture, blogging ... in fact, on almost any topic imaginable. Hugh Hewitt recommends EO as daily reading -- and what better recommendation could there be? And thanks, JP, for the kind words about this blog.

Thanks to the Northern Alliance bloggers, I've added two neighbors to the Northern Fleet: Jay Reding and Spitbull. I've mentioned them earlier, but I just wanted to mention them once again and recommend you give them a read.

Finally, I'd like to thank a couple of Northern Alliance bloggers for adding CQ to their rolls. Mitch Berg added me a few days back and I haven't had the chance to mention his kindness (as well as his advice!). I was stunned, however, when I realized yesterday that the guys at Power Line added me to their very exclusive blogroll. No blog has influenced me more than Power Line, and no bloggers are just plain nicer guys than the three gentlemen who comprise Power Line. I'm gratified and humbled, guys, and thanks a million!

The Race Education of a White Guy

Howard Dean inserted his foot yet again, this time on the subject of race, and Mickey Kaus is all over it:

"Dealing with race is about educating white folks." Howard Dean seems to have said this. That'll bring in those Southern pickup guys! They love being singled out for 'education'! ... Is there really nothing in "dealing with race" that involves changing African-American attitudes along with white attitudes? Dean's comment would be more depressing if weren't also the sort of cluelessly pre-Clinton utterance that virtually guarantees he will never be president.

It's the sort of mindless pandering that has become emblematic of the Dean campaign. He wants to bolster his standing among African-Americans, but in his greed, he steps on his tongue again. Dean wants to return to the demonization that has characterized race politics for decades, something that Clinton tried to change.

The problem with race relations and civil rights is a lack of definition of its goals. During its Golden Age, the civil-rights movement had a clear and definable mission: the ending of state-sanctioned (and imposed) segregation, equal voting rights, and equal access to government, including education. All of these goals have been accomplished, and for the past three decades, it has drifted from the notion of equal access to equal results in the absence of a hard, attainable goal. However, guaranteeing equal results removes us from a market economy to a socialist, government-controlled entitlement economy similar to what the French and Germans have -- and they are slowly drowning as their demographics destroy the Ponzi schemes their entitlement programs became. In that case, the only equality we'll achieve is the equality of starvation.

No one is doubting that disparity exists, and it exists along racial lines to some extent, but mostly it exists along class lines. This continues not because of a lack of access to the government-run education system, but because of a lack of options to it. In order for economically disadvantaged people to truly be able to compete in the marketplace, they need to have a good education, one that allows them access to the better universities and the networking that builds the careers of its graduates. Civil-rights efforts in education have been focused on the college and university levels, but the true issue is in the performance of inner-city primary and secondary schools. Unfortunately, these schools "educate" a high proportion of minority children, and the dual problems of poor performance and denial of school choice doom these children to a poor education and an inability to compete at the college and career levels. Consider this article in today's Los Angeles Times:

Orthodox civil rights groups are also largely silent on what may be the most important civil rights issue of our time: the perplexing and shocking racial learning gap between white and Asian students at one end of the learning spectrum and black and Latino students at the other. By the 12th grade, on average, black and Latino students are four years behind their white and Asian counterparts.

The data suggest that poverty, racism, class size and spending are not major factors. Instead, it is the inability to hold teachers accountable, powerful teacher unions that have lost focus, school cultures based in failure and a dominant culture in many black and Latino homes and communities that, in part, leads to kids watching too much television, having little exposure to books, facing peer pressure that ridicules academic excellence and having insufficient parental involvement in their educational lives.

Instead of locking children into this vicious cycle, we should be freeing the parents to select schools that actually work by providing a voucher system. Freed from an educational monopoly, parents will be able to send their children to private schools -- an option chosen by many, if not most, parents of higher economic strata -- and receive a better education, stronger involvement in curricula, and allow children of all races and economic classes to intermix and develop networks of friendships that will not only result in better career-building but will also finally remove the barriers between the races and classes within a single generation. It will also be done in a free-market manner instead of top-down, bureaucratic edicts.

Democrats, while pandering to African-Americans, do not like this solution. They prefer to force African-Americans and the poor to utilize only the government educational monopoly even while the schools continue to fail to provide an education or even physical safety for its students. Why? At least in part, they want to enforce the notion that government is the sole guarantor of necessary services, but also because one of their major sources of funding is unions, and no union is as politically supportive of Democrats as the National Education Association. The end result is a succeeding procession of victimized generations, angry at the lack of access that their substandard education provided and looking for someone to blame. These naturally become Democratic voters, who continue the sad cycle for the next generation.

Education, the first line of battle in the civil-rights movement, should become the final battle in order to truly break this inevitable process and build an organic foundation for true equality. Government can be part of the solution by providing school vouchers in economically distressed areas, and in districts where primary and secondary schools are demonstrably failing. President Bush, in his second term, has the ability to make more progress in true civil rights than anyone since the 1960s, and in the process expose Howard Dean and the rest of the left as panderers and pretenders.

Damned If You Do ...

It didn't take long for Iranian expressions of gratitude for the 150,000 pounds of relief materials given by the US to quake victims in Bam to turn into this:

Hardliners in Iran's government criticized U.S. relief efforts after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 30,000 people and flattened the ancient city of Bam, accusing Washington of trying to meddle in Tehran's affairs. ... Khatami has thanked Washington for its support but hardline clerics within the government expressed suspicion about the motives behind U.S. aid:

State radio, a mouthpiece for Iran's clerics, on Friday charged that Bush had "once again demonstrated that America's interfering and hostile policy against Iran has not altered at all."

And if we hadn't sent aid, we'd be vilified as demons who won't share our wealth to save unfortunate victims of disasters. The issue? President Bush reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring Iranian nuclear programs be brought under control and not used for military weaponry and for freedom for the Iranian people. He also insisted, although not as a condition of the aid, that Iran turn over al-Qaeda operatives known to be sheltered by the Iranian mullahs that run the country. This should not even be negotiable; the Bush Doctrine is clear that those governments that shelter terrorists are in opposition to the US.

While Bush is taking a cautious and (mostly) conciliatory tone, the response has been less than helpful:

"One should therefore not trust the expression of opinion, speeches and other optimistic signals that are sent by the American foreign policy authorities toward Iran from time to time," the radio said.

Instead of sending "meager aid" to help quake victims, Washington should unfreeze billions of dollars of Iranian assets, the radio commentary said.

Those billions need to stay frozen until Iran coughs up its al-Qaeda "guests" and complies with its treaty requirements. Until then, the mullahs can make all the statements it wants, and we'll keep making ours, too. We'll see who lasts longer.

Visit North Korea -- See Our Lovely Bombs

North Korea has invited the US to inspect its nuclear facilities prior to the next round of nonproliferation negotiations:

North Korea has agreed to allow a U.S. delegation to visit its main nuclear complex next week, the first such inspection since the isolated communist country expelled United Nations monitors more than a year ago.

The visit appeared to be an effort by North Korea to prove that it has built a nuclear bomb - or capable of doing so - and strengthen its negotiating position ahead of planned talks with the United States and four other nations on ending the nuclear standoff.

Pyonyang could also be signaling its willingness to allow more extensive inspections in the future - if Washington meets its demands for humanitarian aid and a promise not to attack the North.

While the notion that Pyongyang can prove it has a bomb sounds unsettling, it would merely confirm what the US has been saying all along -- that previous treaties had no deterrent effect on North Korea, and the only way to rein them back in is to do so with a multilateral approach. While the Bush administration routinely gets criticized for its supposed unilateral, go-it-alone approach -- despite building large coalitions of nations for action in both Afghanistan and Iraq -- the left has also been attacking Bush for rejecting North Korea's insistence on bilateral negotiation, at least until recently, and now even North Korea has backed down:

In its New Year's Day message, North Korea reconfirmed that it wants to resolve the dispute peacefully, through six-nation talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

In negotiating parlance, what has happened with Libya and North Korea is known as moving the game. It underscores the need to negotiate from strength, not from a policy of retreat and appeasement. The North Koreans have been using the former strategy since the early 1990s, and now they have finally recognized that the US is not afraid to do the same -- and that they have no hope of winning when we play for keeps. "Come see our bombs" is their last play, after which they will negotiate for whatever economic concessions they can get from the six-nation talks, understanding that true verification will be required. It's either the end of their nuclear program or the end of their iron grip on power, and it may well be both.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Anything But

Quite frankly, Twin Cities residents take a perverse pride in the editorial idiocy of our leading newspaper, the Star Tribune. My neighborhood bloggers all have recurring examples of the foolishness that the Strib regularly publishes in its news and op-ed sections, and at least for my part, I'm happy to remain well-informed and reasonably rational in spite of the Strib. So when another major city lays claim to the Strib's championship of lunacy, we all feel a bit resentful.

Yesterday, unfortunately, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tried to make its name ironic by publishing this tinfoil-hat editorial by Edward Wenk, Jr., described in the brief bio as "the first science adviser to Congress," as well as having accomplished the unusual hat trick of serving on the policy staffs for Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. These days, Wenk works as a crank, if his article gives a reliable indication:

The shock and awe of 9/11 has not faded. Americans remain in jeopardy of terrorists willing to die simply to lull and frighten innocent civilians. Taking precautions to preserve our security is essential, but in that process, have we self-inflicted a second class of danger that threatens our cherished freedom, justice and democracy, a condition grim enough to deserve code red?

Consider the USA Patriot Act titled "Uniting and strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Funds to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." Noble as that objective is, the act's provisions are scary. Government can now collect data on library withdrawals, charge card records, medical and financial histories. Surveillance can be ratcheted to monitor your e-mail, wiretap you under a generic warrant, search your home without a warrant and label you a "terrorist" if you are among activists exercising rights to dissent. In a swoon of hysteria, Congress passed this statute in 45 days with only two hours of hearings

Swooning with hysteria himself, Wenk apparently hasn't bothered to actually read and understand the Patriot Act. Even the Star Tribune has managed to keep its head on this issue, publishing an op-ed piece in November by David Reinhard:

"The tide of criticism" against the Patriot Act "is both misinformed and overblown," and the Justice Department has "done a pretty good job in terms of implementing." Those aren't Attorney General John Ashcroft's words. They're the words of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the act.

"I've tried to see what has happened in the complaints that have come in, and I've received to date 21,434 complaints about the Patriot Act ... . I have never had a single [verified] abuse of the Patriot Act reported to me." Nor are these Ashcroft's words. They're Sen. Dianne Feinstein's.

Wenk's arguments are non-specific and insubstantial, relying on generalizations that turn out to be wildly inaccurate. For instance, the charge that warrantless searches are authorized are bunk. All searches require a federal judge to authorize a warrant, but the search can be done before the target is notified of the warrant. Such delayed-warrant searches were already legal for child-pornography and organized-crime investigations; all the Patriot Act did was extend their use for terrorism investigations as well. The rest of the objections that Wenk makes to the first Patriot act are similarly hysterical and false, as a small bit of investigation proves.

Next, Wenk attacks the one-time proposal known as Patriot Act II in the same screechy and sloganeering manner as the first subject. Unfortunately for Wenk, no one's notified him that this proposal was withdrawn (thus negating most of the purpose of his screed), but even if it were still alive, his objections have been also thoroughly debunked, here by the Volokh Conspiracy, a group of libertarian lawyers whose expertise on this subject would appear to greatly outstrip mine and Wenk's.

After the embarrassment of issuing bumper-sticker arguments against a law that doesn't exist, Wenk goes on to demand that we "connect the dots" to a random series of generalized paranoid fantasies that Wenk claims show a plan to enslave America. For instance:

The Electoral College created by the Constitution has proven obsolete. It led to George W. Bush's presidency even though Al Gore had a popular majority of 540,000. The election turned on electoral votes in Florida where three counties were in dispute. Voting machines left hanging chads and butterfly ballots that warranted a recount. ... The U.S. Supreme Court abruptly stopped proceedings that would likely have shown Gore the victor. Citizens didn't elect Bush; the Supreme Court appointed him illegally.

The Electoral College hasn't proven obsolete at all; in fact, it's proven quite useful in keeping a handful of large states from skewing elections and forcing candidates to campaign in every state. Voting machines didn't leave chads hanging, voters did, and butterfly ballots have been in use for decades before 2000. Every election in which I voted in California -- sixteen years of them -- used butterfly, punch-card balloting. Every recount in Florida, including the comprehensive one done by a media consortium that included the Miami Herald and Washington Post, showed that Bush won even when counting the so-called "undervotes". All the Supreme Court did was put an end to the foolishness that the Florida Supreme Court began when it overrode the Legislature.

The military-industrial-congressional complex controls half the national budget and subverts priorities preferred by the electorate.

You would think that a man who helped develop policy for three Presidents would know that Congress controls all of the "national budget". It's written in the Constitution that Wenk proposes to defend from "military-industrial-congressional complex". Furthermore, Congress stands for election every two years, and if it subverts the will of the electorate, it won't do it for very long. Wenk's problem is that Congress doesn't follow the priorities Wenk prefers.

The White House lacks tolerance for healthy dissent. The most influential advisers have the same biases as the president, nurturing error, blunder and folly.

Wait -- do you mean to tell us that the President selects advisers that agree with his policy goals? I've never heard such a thing! Unbelievable! Presidents should hire only allow advisers that disagree with them and block their policies from being implemented. That would eliminate error, blunder, and folly! And from this, we are suppoed to conclude that our democracy is endangered as never before?

This ridiculous essay, full of hysterics, generalizations, and obvious errors, does nothing but demean the Post-Intelligencer and its readership. While I think the Strib publishes wildly inaccurate editorial pieces, I don't think I've ever seen anything approaching the sheer stupidity and irrationality demonstrated by Wenks and the P-I in this piece. Sadly, we Minnesotans must cede our bragging rights to the people of Seattle. Someone needs to check the café lattés being delivered to the P-I, and soon.

UPDATE: Welcome to Best of the Web readers! I hope you enjoy your visit and bookmark or blogroll Captain's Quarters for regular reading.

International Flight Cancellations Due to Intelligence

The US, in cancelling at least one of the several international flights grounded during the holiday, acted on specific intelligence and not just names from passenger manifests, national security sources told the AP:

U.S. authorities were acting on intelligence information — and not just suspicious passenger names — when they boarded a British Airways jet on New Year's Eve at nearby Dulles International Airport, a national security official said Thursday. Meanwhile, the security concerns affected the same British Airways scheduled flight again on Thursday, when the airline canceled one of its three daily flights from Heathrow Airport to Washington.

Thursday's decision was based on security advice from the British government, a spokesman for the airline said.

I think terrorist groups were either trying very hard to make a statement over the holidays, or they were engaging in a counter-intelligence mission to uncover spies and moles within their organizations. Regardless of which was true, American security agencies appear to be responding tremendously well to the information they're receiving. For the most part, they are getting cooperation from international carriers and foreign governments, although this setback is mildly disappointing:

Armed air marshals will not be on New Zealand flights in the near future, say aviation security bosses.

Claims that the United States Government had ordered foreign airlines travelling to the US to put on-board marshals in place had been grossly over-exaggerated, said New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority.

From our perspective, the message from Homeland Security was quite clear; all airlines traveling into or through American airspace must be prepared to supply air marshals when requested for specific flights, or be prepared for denial of access to the US. The New Zealand Herald even covered this statement on the same day as NZCAA denied it meant what it said.

Congratulations to our security forces these holidays; thanks to them, we've been free of terrorist attacks during a high-profile period of time. The Bush administration has delivered well on its promise to secure our nation from the murderers and fanatics that want to kill us, and while there is always room for improvement, I am grateful for their hard work.

Patterico: LA Times Roll of Shame

Man ... I spend yesterday and today watching the granddaughter, and when I come back, one of my blogfriends writes a killer article taking it to the Los Angeles Times. Patterico spent a lot of time and effort researching the foibles of the West Coast's leading newspaper (which he calls the Dog Trainer), and the result is a long list of embarrasments, mistakes, and flat-out lies that you would imagine should qualify John Carroll, the editor-in-chief, for a spot on Monday's unemployment line. Take the time to read through the entire post, and if you haven't already done so, add Patterico to your blogroll.

Great start to the new year! (New resolution: go through my blogroll more often ...)

Mitch Berg's 2003 Wrapup

No, thank Goodness, Mitch doesn't go the Bill McAuliffe route and wax poetic in his EOY post, but instead Mitch focuses on what didn't happen, contrary to all predictions from the left:

The Battle of Baghdad didn't turn into Stalingrad.

Lack of UN support didn't render the liberation untenable.

Hussein didn't nuke or gas Israel when he was up against the wall (hee hee. Remember when that was the left's big bleat?)

Tens of thousands of Iraqis did not die.

Mitch also was kind enough to add me to his blogroll and he recommends to the Northen Alliance that we look at Jay Reding. Jay posted a thoughtul piece yesterday as to why he thinks Dean is unstoppable, despite his tendency to be his own worst enemy:

My guess that Dean has the nomination is based on my own experiences as a political footsoldier. As a former Republican campaign strategist told me, "a campaign is only as good as the quality and number of its activists". Say what you will about Dean, he has the best ground game of anyone, and he's been building that base for months - long before any of the other candidates.

Read the whole thing. I'm taking Mitch's advice and adding Jay to the Northern Fleet.

The Question of the Bottom of the Ticket

Due to my exchange with Eric at Nuts and Dolts regarding the 2004 election, I've been reconsidering the issue of the Republican ticket in 2004. After reading Peter Schramm's post on No Left Turns (via Powerline), I've decided that this issue is much more critical than it looked earlier.

First, Schramm is correct in asserting that Dean is remaking the Democratic Party into a radical-left political organization. As Hugh Hewitt predicted in his NRO column and blog today, Dean has energized this subset of the left so much that disengaging them by trying to drag them to the center probably isn't an option, and probably isn't where he wants to go anyway. Schramm predicts that if Dean can coast to the nomination, he will stay left and bring on another McGovern-style catastrophe. Hillary will stand on the sidelines and allow the debacle to unfold, establishing herself as a Churchill-in-the-wilderness figure that can then re-establish the Democrats as a centrist party for 2006 (her Senate re-election bid) and 2008, when she runs for President.

All of this will be good news for Bush and the Republicans in 2004, and the national election should not only safely return Bush to the White House, but will also produce significant gains in both houses of Congress as centrist Democrats either defect or stay home on Election Day. Bush will gather a powerful mandate and his legislative program will have at least two years, relatively unopposed, to establish itself. Even the mid-terms will probably be favorable or at least neutral to Bush while the Clintons and the DLC remnants re-establish their primacy in the Democratic Party.

This, however, will not be good news for the Republicans in 2008. A crushing Dean defeat gives Hillary the full four years to take over the party, initially in the guise of her Senate re-election campaign. Her husband will be recommissioned to raise funds, along with Terry McAuliffe and James Carville and possibly John Edwards. While the rabid right thinks that Hillary is too hated to be successful in a presidential election, Hillary and Bill give the party two important qualities that it lacks at the moment: glamour and credibility. They've won before, they've governed before, and they've delivered when asked. The leftists will be discredited as the driving force in the Democratic party, but the Clintons will skillfully harness them with the centrists to build a formidable coalition in 2008.

Put that against a Republican party that has been without credible opposition for at least one election cycle, and I will guarantee you a party that will overreach in its legislative program (as would the Democrats under the same conditions). Legislative overreach will alienate the independents and centrists that Bush will claim in 2004. Without credible opposition, Republicans will completely own the results of their extended rule, and there will be vulnerabilities as well as victories.

Now, under these conditions, who will run for President for the Republicans in 2008? I suggested that Bush would like to see Jeb run, but as more than one person has pointed out, that would be the third different Bush running in six elections, and the typical American revulsion at monarchy will make that a difficult sell, even to Republicans. Dick Cheney, while a fine and hardworking public servant, is not electable. He's spent most of the past term keeping an extremely low profile, even for a VP, so he excites no one as a Presidential candidate. He's too identified with the hard right of the party, and his past health issues effectively disqualify him for the Presidency, at least to the electorate.

That means that the VP slot must be opened up to someone who can reasonably compete in 2008 for the Presidency, since it allows the candidate four years to be seen in a quasi-executive role. (Of course, the VP will need to be allowed a lot more visibility than in this past term.) And because of the glamour and prestige of the Clintons, especially Hillary, it needs to be a candidate who can compete in this arena. It needs to be someone who can give credibility to the Republican Party with centrists and significant demographic segments of the population. Most of all, to be credible, the VP must be elected with Bush and not anointed later in the term. The 2004 election campaign will give the candidate the opportunity to demonstrate campaigning abilities and full potential to retain the Republican gains made in 2004.

Condoleezza Rice fills all of the qualifications. As a Vice Presidential candidate, she can actively campaign in a manner from which her role as NSA chief necessarily restrains her. She is unquestionably smart, attractive, skillful in debate, and possesses an excellent temperament, from all indications. She has the trust of Bush and his team and will provide the continuity desired in case she needs to ascend to the Presidency during Bush's term. Her candidacy in 2004 and 2008 would undoubtedly be historical and bold, out-glamourizing even the Clintons. The only element lacking from Rice's portfolio is a proven ability to campaign and to weather the kind of bruising that elections bring.

All that is needed is farsightedness on the part of Bush and the Republican team. They will feel a strong desire not to rejigger a winning formula in Bush-Cheney. But if Dean is already taking the Democrats over the cliff for 2004, Bush and Rove need to strategize against their real opponent in governing during the second term and in securing their post-office legacy.

Poetry Corner with Mr. Know-It-All

After the guys at Fraters Libertas got a chance to look at my post on the nauseatingly bad rap-poem the Strib published today, they assigned me the task of reviewing Bill McAuliffe's year-end poetry in 2000 and 2002. Up until that point, I had no idea that this was a running feature of the Star Tribune.

My first impression is that what McAuliffe writes is only poetry in the sense that it rhymes. In fact, I can't spot a whole lot of metric or structural difference between any of the three, including this year's entry; it's almost as if McAuliffe has a MS Word Poetry Template into which he stuffs whatever comes into his head. For instance, these couplets don't show a lot of coherence or any sense of meter:

Enter the Wild -- they're among hockey's best --

with jerseys so cool they're also best-dressed.

Will St. Paul be home to the next Stanley Cup?

Will some empty taxi please pick Lucy up?

The last stanzas aren't even formatted properly, as if the newspaper belatedly discovered just how bad it was and rushed to get it finished. And for some reason, the 2002 entry is described as a "waltz", as if set to music, the first time I've ever seen poetry described as such. The meter is even worse in the 2000 edition than in 2002 or 2003. I won't bother excerpting it.

However, in my opinion, these previous efforts were simply wastes of time. What sets McAuliffe's 2003 effort apart is described perfectly by Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas:

In what I presume is a light hearted attempt to summarize 2003, fussy, middle-aged white guy Bill McAulife tries to channel Tupac Shakur. (And if McAulife isn’t a fussy, middle-aged white guy, my apologies for stereotyping. In my defense I was profiling based on the fact he raps like a fussy, middle-aged white guy).

By attempting to be hip(-hop) and by cutting his own audio track of the rap song, McAuliffe descends from mere bad writing to monumentally bad taste, and his newspaper should make a New Year's resolution to shut down the annual poetry cheese. Word.

Power Line Deconstructs Dionne

Yesterday I read this column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post regarding the odd phenomenon of Bush hatred, which I have addressed earlier in my blog. The Post published it as a companion piece to another, more thoughtful column from Robert Samuelson (which demonstrates the Post's long-standing effort to be editorially fair, something we should all applaud). Unlike Samuelson, who sees the same irrationality of the fringe behind both Bush hatred and Clinton hatred, Dionne argued that Bush hatred is rational and legitimately springs from Bush's refusal to be "bipartisan":

It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to being so divisive. There was hardly a soul this side of Noam Chomsky who didn't support Bush for some time after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and didn't support the war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Even Democrats who never conceded that Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election wanted to give Bush a chance to lead the country out of crisis.

So what went wrong? Unrequited bipartisanship. Implicitly, the Democrats expected that the new situation would produce a new Bush, less partisan and less ideological. For a few months after the attacks, that was the Bush who showed up to work every day. He and the Democrats did a lot of business together, and the country seemed happy.

While I had intended to write on this topic yesterday, Power Line beat me to it, asking for an answer as to why someone so benighted is still afforded column space in a major broadsheet. On the issue of bipartisanship, Deacon notes:

What about Dionne's claim that Bush responded with "unrequited partisanship" and "bold conservative policies?" Dionne cites two such policies -- tax cuts and the war with Iraq. Tax cuts may seem "bold" to Dionne, but they are a staple of Republican economic policy and something that candidate Bush had promised. Of course, Bush could have backed away from his promise, as his father did. But, as in the case of his father, that would have been less a gesture of bipartisanship than an act of political suicide. To Dionne and the Democrats for whom he speaks, the two things are same.

Not to mention the fact that the tax cuts are working to revive the economy. GDP grew at an annualized rate of 8.2% in the last quarter, the best growth seen in 20 years, and inflation is under control. Jobless claims are down to the level that Bush inherited on Inauguration Day. Those are the reasons Bush was elected in the first place, and Dionne's complaint is that he didn't cave in to the party which has made itself a minority by failing to listen to the electorate, which is tired of ever-increasing taxes being used to redistribute wealth. If anything, the 2002 elections should have reinforced this principle, since the Democrats and Republicans both made them into a referendum on Bush's policies.

Dionne's claim that the Democrats offered true bipartisanship is laughable, as Deacon again points out:

The overall Democratic response to 9/11 was as partisan as it could have been given the political dynamics of the time. They seized upon the need for immigration reform to promote actions that had nothing to do with keeping terrorists out, and everything to do with promoting their long-term immigration agenda. They seized upon the need for improved security to push for a huge new bureaucracy and then resisted attempts to allow the president to efficiently manage that bureaucracy, thereby placing their pro-union agenda ahead of the national security. Nor was Dionne's alleged one-way era of good feeling accompanied by any cessation of Democratc hostilities against Bush's judicial nominees, including those endorsed by Dionne's own liberal newspaper.

Further, on the subject of Iraq, the Democrats blatantly changed positions on American policy established under the Clinton administration, which insisted that not only did Iraq indisputably possess WMDs, but that Saddam Hussein was a clear threat to the US and that "regime change" was the explicit policy of the US regarding Iraq. This policy, enacted in 1998, had clear bipartisan support and a number of speeches given by Democrats with names like Daschle, Kennedy, Kerry, and a host of others spoke out for action which would result in Saddam's removal, with or without the UN's involvement, including a Democratic governor named Howard Dean. Only in 2002 did that rhetoric turn completely around into Bush's "unilateralism" and "cowboy" approach to foreign policy.

Read Deacon's entire post at Power Line. Dionne writes well but has become so estranged from reality that he may be entering Ted Rall territory soon, and the Post needs to decide whether they will subsidize the journey.

UPDATE: aS Deacon notes, Hugh Hewitt was first to address this story, writing this yesterday morning:

Jeesh. Do you suppose Dionne actually believes this stuff or just feels that he has to feed his increasingly out-of-touch audience? Skip over Hillary on the floor of the Senate holding up the New York Post with "Bush Knew" as its headline, or Patrick Leahy's and Chuck Schumer's hostage-taking smear machine at Judiciary, or any of a hundred other examples of bitter partisanship on the left that began when Al Gore withdrew his concession and continued unbroken from November 2000 until today. Dionne is free to ignore the obvious as long as he wants to. His self-delusion, if genuine, doesn't change a thing. Dionne can prattle on about tax cuts for the rich until a 45 state landslide fueled by a booming economy rolls home next November.

Read Hugh's post too, if you haven't already. It's highly entertaining as well as enlightening.

Where's the Beef?

The Washington Post issued a smackdown to a couple of Presidential candidates this morning with an editorial chastising them for grandstanding on "mad cow disease", or BSE:

Democratic front-runner Howard Dean announced that the discovery of an infected cow in Washington state "raises serious concerns about the ability of this administration to protect the safety of our nation's food supply." Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) helpfully urged President Bush "for once not to listen to the demands of corporate America and act on behalf of the health and economic needs of all Americans." All of this may be good politics for candidates who have to campaign in farm states such as Iowa. The trouble is that, at least at this stage, there is no particular reason to think that the regulatory systems designed to prevent an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in this country didn't function as intended. So far, anyway, the United States has seen exactly one infected cow. That case was detected because of routine testing of high-risk cattle ... In other words, a system designed to prevent the spread of the disease and identify cattle carrying it may well have done just that.

I haven't posted on this topic, mostly because it doesn't particularly interest me, and also out of a belief that the media would lose interest in a single case rather than turn it into the next Alar scare. It didn't occur to me that supposedly responsible politicians would latch onto it in order to start a consumer panic that could damage our economy and unnecessarily frighten the electorate. I guess I gave Howard Dean and John Kerry a little too much credit.

I traveled to Ireland in the summer of 2001 when foot-and-mouth disease was being detected all over the British Isles, and there is no doubt that it was an economic disaster. Sheep and cattle were slaughtered en masse in order to stop the spread of the disease, and disinfectant stations were set up at all farms and public attractions, as the virus that causes F&M can stick to soles of shoes and survive for a few days. The Irish Republic had mostly been spared except for a single case near the border with Northern Ireland. (Flocks migrate back and forth across the poorly-delineated hilly border country of Antrim.) However, its proximity to Northern Ireland and the UK (where the disease raged) severely impacted the export of beef and mutton and resulted in large subsidies to farmers until the disease was stamped out. When returning to the US, we had to again be disinfected when we came through Customs, a quick and almost effortless process.

No one is doubting that a string of BSE cases can be similarly economically devastating, but what we have here is a single case, from an animal that was born prior to feed controls enacted in 1997, and already known to be high-risk and tested as a result. The FDA is enacting more stringent controls regarding "downer" cattle, but so far it appears that the system put in place by the Bush administration worked as intended. Blaming Bush for an appearance of BSE in a cow that was exported to the US and detected by the apparatus his administration put in place makes little sense. Making sense is what Presidential candidates should be doing, and the Dean and Kerry campaigns have been failures at this task, among others.

UPDATE: I have edited this post after an alert reader, John, reminded me that what I experienced in Ireland was a foot-and-mouth outbreak and not BSE. BSE was an issue at the same time but was not the cause of all the measures being taken at the time I was in Ireland. He is correct, and while his feedback remains in the comments section, most people read these from the main page.

LA Times: Part 2 of Iraq's Violations of Arms Embargo

The Los Angeles Times concludes its two-part series on documents discovered in Baghdad which clearly delineate how the international community assisted Saddam Hussein in avoiding the effects of the UN-imposed arms embargo. Today's installment focuses on Polish arms dealers and how they evaded their own government to sell military hardware to Iraq, via (as in yesterday's article) Syria:

Desperate for missile technology in the summer of 2001, Iraq's arms brokers and spies homed in on the military scrap yards of this former Soviet Bloc nation. They operated out of this town, scavenging and assembling decades-old parts that were shipped to Syria, then trucked across deserts and mountains toward Baghdad.

Documents were forged and lies were told in an elaborate network built to evade United Nations sanctions. The shipment of up to 380 missile engines from Poland was critical to Saddam Hussein's covert program to extend the range of his new Al Samoud 2 missile beyond the limit of 150 kilometers — 93 miles — imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Such capabilities would have threatened regional stability by enabling Iraq to target Israel, Kuwait and Iran.

Unlike yesterday's installment, in this part the Times makes it clear that all military sales to Iraq were illegal, and evidence of them clearly showed Iraq in material breach of UN resolutions, including 1441:

In his dramatic U.N. speech Feb. 5, less than two months before the March 20 invasion, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell highlighted Iraq's procurement of the Volga/SA-2 engines as one reason for war. "Their import was illegal," Powell said of the engines, adding that the U.N. arms embargo prohibited "all military shipments to Iraq."

Read the entire article, which delves into the dark world of arms procurement and shady dealings under the auspices of countries that insisted Saddam was being kept isolated and disarmed by inspection regimes. Madeline Albright, for example, declared recently that Saddam was not a threat because of the international arms embargo and the policy of containment that Bush dumped in favor of direct war.

After reading these two articles based on documents recovered from just one office in Baghdad, it should be clear to those who can read that the "containment" and the arms embargo was a dangerous sham, and even that was about to collapse under the weight of French and Russian demands to end sanctions against Saddam's Iraq. Nothing could better point out the folly of leaving American security in the hands of such incompetents again.

Brazilian Judge: Fingerprinting = Genocide

A Brazilian judge, angry at the new US policy of photographing and fingerprinting incoming immigrants and visitors with visas, retaliated yesterday by requiring US visitors to Brazil to be photographed and fingerprinted as well. It's the kind of tit-for-tat petty revenge that often occurs in diplmatic relations, although rarely does the judiciary figure into it. However, the judge's comments were shocking:

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.

Photographing and fingerprinting are "worthy" of gassing millions of people to death? "Worthy" of cruel and medical experiments on helpless prisoners, including and especially children? I guess the Brazilians should know, seeing as they harbored the Nazis for decades after the end of World War II, especially the Angel of Death himself, "Doctor" Josef Mengele. Put up against that, I guess I could see how the learned jurist could overlook the fact that guests to our country murdered 3,000 of our citizens on our soil a couple of years back in an act that goes a lot further to being "worthy" of Nazi atrocities by Brazilian residents than mere fingerprinting and photography.

I guess this incident proves that stupid Nazi analogies aren't limited to the radical leftists in this country, but one would think that government officials from Nazi-sheltering countries might be a little hesitant to toss those stones. In the case of the ridiculous Judge de Silva, one would be wrong.

UPDATE: Welcome to Best of the Web readers! Have a look around, and I hope you bookmark or blogroll Captain's Quarters!

The Embarrassment of Minnesota

No, I am not referring to the Minnesota Vikings. The title belongs to the state's "leading" broadsheet, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which constantly goes out of its way to demonstrate its parochialism and its condescending foolishness. Tomorrow's education in Strib madness comes from this article -- if you can call it that -- from Bill McAuliffe, a "rap" retrospective of 2003. In this case, "rap" replaces the more accurate "atrociously bad poetry", as even a quick read demonstrates:

Prince Roger Nelson's in the Rock Hall of Fame.

Purple is his color and music's his game.

And the orchestra's one hundred, it's a real grand dame.

With a brand new conductor, Osmo Vanska by name!

Jesse Ventura got his portrait on the wall.

Got a chokehold on "The Thinker" and he's lookin' real bald.

He's smoking a stogie, lookin' like he's got it all.

So why'd they have to put him in the downstairs hall?

I'm no great poet, but this is a featured article in a newspaper that pretends to take itself seriously (and when I say featured, I mean it is given a prominent ten-line display box on the Strib's main web page, with bold oversized headline). It's awful; it's not even a passable rip-off of rap, which I don't prefer but can be written well by people who know what they're doing. This reads more like a "rap" in a movie that gets performed by the clueless idiot who wants to fake people into thinking he's cool. In other words, it's an embarrassment, and any editorial staff that decides this rises to the level of a featured article either admits that they have nothing of substance to offer their readers, or holds their readers and community in such contempt that they don't care what dreck they serve up.

And if you think the written version is horrid, you should listen to the audio version that the 'newspaper' provides. It's the kind of rap you imagine your grandfather trying at the local karaoke bar; it's absent of any insight, and is so monotone and dispassionate that you could swear the singer performed it while sleepwalking. Un-freakin'-believable -- you have to experience it to comprehend its worthlessness. The Strib manages to "rap" up 2003 by proving beyond any doubt that they are the laughingstock of journalism.

So Long, Wilson, We'll Miss You

Fans of "Home Improvement" never saw his face, but no one can deny that Earl Hindman, the actor that played Wilson on Tim Allen's hit television show for nine seasons, provided a large measure of the show's heart and soul. Unfortunately for all of us, Earl Hindman has passed away at the too-young age of 61, of lung cancer.

CNN provides a brief obituary for Hindman but neglects his role in Silverado, Lawrence Kasdan's Western from the 80s, which features Hindman in a small supporting role. Fans of the movie may remember that he played the brother-in-law of Scott Glenn's and Kevin Costner's characters and his face was fully visible during his fine performance.

My wife and I, big fans of Home Improvement, send out our prayers to Earl Hindman's family, and our gratitude for the wonderful entertainment he helped provide our family.

Hugh Hewitt's Predictions for 2004

National Review Online asked several of its contributors for their predictions of 2004, and the Commish, Hugh Hewitt, has a few provocative choices. There are a couple I disagree with:

* Evan Bayh as Dean's VP candidate: I can't see Bayh jumping onto a rolling train wreck, even for the sake of the party. Edwards has less to lose and more to gain, and a stronger connection to the South. That change gives Bush Indiana and Maryland, loses him at least South Carolina, but overall makes no difference in Bush's landslide victory.

* I don't think Cheney stays on the ticket in 2004. I think Bush thanks Cheney for his service, but Cheney bows out due to "health issues", and Bush picks either Rudy Giuliani or possibly Condoleeza Rice or Olympia Snowe to round out the ticket. Bush likes bold, historical moves, and any of these three could help him expand his appeal and his base, marginalizing Dean even further.

* Power Line as the must-read blog of 2004? Of course! It's my must-read blog in 2003. I need to spend more time at the Evangelical Outpost, but I think he's right about that, too, from the multiple blogs that routinely reference it. (I'm angling for a prediction for 2005, naturally ...)

One last note: I enthusiastically agree with the Big Trunk's description of Hugh Hewitt as a magnanimous, gifted man "who seeks to use his success to benefit others." I'd use the same description for the guys at Power Line, who have been tremendously encouraging and helpful during my brief (three-month) blogging career.

UPDATE: Eric at Nuts and Dolts disagrees with my VP prediction, but only in timing. He feels that Cheney will ride out the election but will resign in the coming term -- an interesting and bold conjecture! Eric and I agree that the VP position will be the most effective launching pad for the Republican nominee in 2008, and Cheney simply won't be electable. However, I think that selecting a VP mid-term will expose the nominee to an unmerciful grilling in the Senate, which will have to confirm Bush's selection. The potential for embarrassing attacks and disclosures through that process may be too risky for a second term and will negate any political momentum the VP has in the next election.

However, if Bush wants Jeb to run in 2008, then he'll keep Cheney on to reduce competition for the primaries.

UPDATE 2: The guys at Fraters Libertas want Hugh to remember a blog he didn't mention -- and it's not even FL, for Pete's sake. It's Spitbull, which I'm blogrolling a bit belatedly. I note that they didn't seem to concerned with the omission of a certain jack-booted bard ...

Democrats Unimpressed with Dean's Complaints

Howard Dean's complaints about the tenor of the campaign over the past month fell on mostly deaf ears this wek, the LA Times reports:

Democratic Party National Chairman Terry McAuliffe has no plans to play referee to what has become a vitriolic presidential primary, saying through a spokeswoman Monday that voters would decide whether the negative campaigning was good politics.

A number of other Presidential hopefuls had some pointed barbs for Dean after his suggestion that McAuliffe force them to tone down their attacks. For instance, Joe Lieberman pointed out that if Dean was quailing at this primary campaign, then perhaps he's not ready for the championship round next fall. "If Howard Dean can't stand the heat in the Democratic kitchen, he's going to melt in a minute once the Republicans start going after him."

John Kerry pointed out yet another Dean hypocrisy, which seem to appear on an almost daily basis. "He was the first candidate to attack in this campaign and the first to run negative ads, and he has been attacking Democrats and their accomplishments during the Clinton years from day one of this race."

Gephardt gets even closer to the truth, plainly saying that the Dean campaign is complaining because their candidate is screwing up. "Howard Dean has spent the last year criticizing me and other candidates at every opportunity. Now as he makes a series of embarrassing gaffes that underscore the fact that he is not equipped to challenge George Bush, he suddenly wants to change the rules."

But Joe Lockhart, the indefatigable mouthpiece of the Clinton administration, probably says it best: "When he's attacked, he says it's time to take his marbles and go home. What does he think will happen if he gets the nomination? Does he think the Bush people will say, 'Let's have polite debate'? Who's he going to call then — his mother?"

The verdict: Howard Dean is a Jesse Ventura politician, for all the wrong reasons. He dishes it out but can't take it. You can come up with several names for people like this, including crybaby and wimp, and worse. But you can't escape the conclusion that Dean has puffed himself up way beyond his political and possibly emotional capabilities, and while he can probably coast to the Democratic nomination now, he'll get crushed like a bug once Karl Rove has a shot at him. Even the leading Democrats don't respect him any more.

LA Times: Syria Undermined Iraq Sanctions, Armed Saddam

The Los Angeles Times translated reams of documents seized after the fall of Saddam Hussein and reports that Syria ran extensive smuggling operations on behalf of the Iraqi dictator's regime, designed to undermine UN sanctions:

A Syrian trading company with close ties to the ruling regime smuggled weapons and military hardware to Saddam Hussein between 2000 and 2003, helping Syria become the main channel for illicit arms transfers to Iraq despite a stringent U.N. embargo, documents recovered in Iraq show.

The private company, called SES International Corp., is headed by a cousin of Syria's autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, and is controlled by other members of Assad's Baath Party and Alawite clan. Syria's government assisted SES in importing at least one shipment destined for Iraq's military, the Iraqi documents indicate, and Western intelligence reports allege that senior Syrian officials were involved in other illicit transfers.

Iraqi records show that SES signed more than 50 contracts to supply tens of millions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment to Iraq's military shortly before the U.S.-led invasion in March. They reveal Iraq's increasingly desperate search in at least a dozen countries for ballistic missiles, antiaircraft missiles, artillery, spare parts for MIG fighter jets and battle tanks, gunpowder, radar systems, nerve agent antidotes [emphasis mine] and more.

Nerve agent antidotes would have been very expensive, and would not have been bought unless Iraq was sure that they were needed on the battlefield. Why would they have thought that? Surely they know that the US could not possibly have used nerve agents in battle without our coalition abandoning us -- and rightly so. The purchase makes sense only if the Iraqis planned on using nerve agents against US troops. After all, the money spent on antidotes could have gone for more of the materiel they bought, which included:

* 380 SAM engines from Poland
* 20 T-72 tank barrels, and contracted for 175 of them
* 1,000 Russian heavy machine guns
* 20 million rounds of ammunition
* Tank engines
* Missile fuel pumps

In short, the UN arms embargo on Iraq was a miserable failure, helped in no small part by Syria, a member of the UN Security Council and the Middle East representative on the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee. Syria, as the article makes clear, accomplished the rearming of Iraq through extensive machinations at the highest levels of its government and profited handsomely from its actions. It evaded detection by a massively ineffective UN inspection process, if not completely incompetent. As a prime example, read the following narrative on the documents on which the Times based this article:

When they returned to Iraq in late November 2002 after four years' absence, U.N. weapons inspectors thus focused on smuggling in their search for evidence of proscribed missiles and chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. "We went one by one to every single [military] company we knew of in Iraq," said a senior U.N. inspector, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Al Bashair was target No. 1 on that list."

On March 2, 30 inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency arrived without notice to check reports that Al Bashair had put public tenders out on the Internet to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The CIA had insisted the tubes could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

IAEA experts, customs experts, computer specialists and others locked the doors, unplugged phones and grilled Munir, the company's director, in his office. Before leaving, they copied 4,000 documents and downloaded data from office computers. They found no signs of nuclear-related procurement. Five days later, a team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the chief U.N. weapons hunting group, launched another surprise raid to check intelligence that Al Bashair had helped Hussein acquire mobile biological laboratories to churn out germ weapons. Again, they found no evidence.

The war began less than two weeks later. Days after U.S. troops entered Baghdad in April, Christoph Reuter, an investigative reporter for the German newsmagazine Stern, removed selected files from the abandoned Al Bashair office. He later provided the records and cooperated with The Times, which had the documents translated from Arabic and verified their contents with interviews in more than a dozen countries.

Note that the Times is careful to inject the issues of nuclear and biological weapon searches, in order to protect the UN inspection process, but the inspectors were supposed to be looking for all violations of UN resolutions. Iraq was not supposed to be purchasing any of these items, and Syria was not supposed to be shipping them across the border. Why didn't the inspectors find these documents? Because the inspections process was useless, and this episode proves it. Plus, these were the records that Al Bashair left behind; who knows what they destroyed or carted off as Baghdad fell? I would guess that the officials, using what little time they thought they had, would take care to make sure that records of the most egregious violations never fell into Coalition hands, as they would be useful evidence for later war-crimes trials.

As more captured Iraqi files are translated, we will find more evidence that the UN inspection process was a complete failure in terms of enforcing UN resolutions and ensuring global security. Even those who are supposed to be acting on behalf of global security, the UNSC, aided and abetted Saddam's scams for rearmament. Working through international bodies is a necessary step in protecting our national interests, but this article ought to remove any illusions that organizations that put dictatorships in positions of power will protect the interests of Western democracies. Bush was correct to proceed after the UN refused to enforce its own resolutions to build a coalition of Western powers to remove Saddam and put an end to a twelve-year chapter of impotence. (via a tip from Instapundit)

UPDATE: Power Line notices the reference to nerve agent antidotes, too.

UPDATE 2: The Times has published the second part of this article, and I've blogged it here.

Society of the Master of the Horse

It took some time, some detective work, and a lot of patience, but I have defied the predictions of the gang over at Fraters Libertas and fulfilled Hugh Hewitt's final task for my entry into the Society of the Master of the Horse. As you may recall, I had to pass three arduous tasks:

1. Write a post that denounced the guys at Fraters Libertas in a particularly shameful way.
2. Create an epic poem that mentioned at least ten blogs ... and also denounced Fraters Libertas and James Lileks.
3. Lastly, get a picture of me giving James Lileks a Hummel.

The third task has taken me almost four weeks to strategize. After all, James Lileks is a world-renowned figure, a man who would not be surprised easily, especially after being tipped off to my plans. However, I finally managed to catch up with James at an event I knew he couldn't miss, a moment he would never pass up ... the Annual Twin Cities PETA Barbecue and Chili Cookoff:

Please note that James and I demonstrate, in this photo, that Minnesotans are actually among the best-dressed urbanites in the nation, and that plaid is only de rigeur with Cheeseheads. He looks a bit surprised in this photo, but that's because I told him that Joaquin Phoenix had stolen the short ribs off of his plate while we were posing for the photo.

Brainstorming is Back!

Just got a ping from DC over at Brainstorming, which means she is back on line and blogging away. In fact, she tells us that she misses us, which means she didn't improve her taste any on her sabbatical. Anyway, check out the new layout at Brainstorming (of which I am a tad bit jealous!) and her new tag line from Einstein. Mostly, read through her posts; DC always is a great read.

And for the record, we missed you too. Welcome back!

It's Hard to be Humble

Howard Dean warns that he discovered "legions" of new voters who will not vote at all if he isn't the Democratic nominee for President in 2004:

Howard Dean said Sunday that the hundreds of thousands of people drawn to politics by his campaign may stay home if he doesn’t win the Democratic presidential nomination, dooming the Democratic Party in the fall campaign against President Bush.

“If I don’t win the nomination, where do you think those million and a half people, half a million on the Internet, where do you think they’re going to go?” he said during a meeting with reporters. “I don’t know where they’re going to go. They’re certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician.”

Words fail me at this pronouncement. While every campaign finds a handful of voters who have never voted before or who have never crossed party lines before, Dean claims that he has the unswerving loyalty of enough people to beat George Bush, and that these people are so loyal that they'll just stay home on Election Day if Dean isn't on the ballot. So they must be terribly involved voters if they don't care about any other issues on the ballot and don't bother to learn about any other candidate. Sounds exactly like the kind of people that I would imagine voting for Howard Dean.

To note this, here's my suggestion for a new Howard Dean campaign anthem:

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble
when you're perfect in every way,
I can't wait to look in a mirror
I get better lookin' each day.
To know me is to love me,
I must be a hell of a man --
Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble,
But I'm doing the best that I can.

I'm So ... Embarrassed

Power Line turned out to be Saddam Hussein. Mitch Berg turned out to be John Kennedy.

And I turned out to be ...

What Famous Leader Are You?

AAAAAAUGH! The horror! The horror!

(But, hey Hindrocket, at least Mitch and I get the girls ...)

Speaking of the Vikings ...

... will likely get you assaulted today in Minnesota, after watching the 'Queens blow a 6-0 record into a 9-7 finish, complete with four losses to teams that wound up with 4-12 records, including the Cardinals yesterday. Water cooler talk mostly centers on coach Mike Tice's future with the Vikings (consensus: not coming back) and the stadium initiative, which seems a lot more remote than it did on Saturday.

I was prepared to discuss how frustrating this season was, and how bitterly disappointing it was yesterday to watch the Vikings fail to cover the end zone properly on the last play when that was the only part of the field in question -- next time, get behind the receivers! -- but then I found out that the guys at Fraters Libertas have it covered here. And here. And here, and here, and here and here.

We take our football seriously up here in Minnesota, even if our team doesn't. I can't wait to hear what Hugh Hewitt will be saying on tonight's show ... or maybe I can.

Minneapolis: The Naked City

Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night shall keep a naked Minnesota burglar from making his rounds ...

A naked man got stuck in the chimney of a bookstore early Christmas morning. Don't worry, it wasn't Santa Claus.

The 34-year-old man was treated Thursday for bruises and abrasions at Hennepin County Medical Center after being found naked and lodged in the furnace flue at Uncle Hugo's Bookstore. He was expected to be charged with attempted burglary on Friday.

His excuse? He left his keys in the store and just wanted to go back and get them, even though the store had been closed on Christmas Day. The police said he was probably drunk. Gee -- ya think?

Saddam Talking?

A report from two Arab newspapers states that Saddam Hussein has acknowledged siphoning billions of dollars to a network of personal bank accounts and is telling American interrogators the names of his collaborators:

Saddam Hussein has acknowledged depositing billions of dollars abroad before his ouster and has given interrogators the names of people who know where the money is, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council said in remarks published Monday. The U.S.-appointed council estimates that the Iraqi dictator seized $40 billion while in power and is now searching for that amount deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries, Iyad Allawi told the London-based Arab newspapers Al-Hayat and Asharq al-Awsat.

Other members of the IGC dispute the report:

In Baghdad, Ahmed al-Bayak, anouther member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said he was informed by council members that Saddam had started to talk about names of people inside Iraq who were carrying out attacks against U.S. forces. "But nothing about funds," said al-Bayak.

While we hope that Saddam coughs up as much information as possible, if he hasn't given any names yet on his financial collaborators, they've probably already covered their tracks as much as possible over the past two weeks since Saddam's capture. However, it's not easy to conceal the movement of billions of dollars, especially if people know to look for it, which means that the funds will be hard to convert into fuel for terrorists, at least for a while. It certainly seems that Saddam was much more connected to terrorists than previously thought, and the oil-for-food program needs a thorough investigation to see who else funnelled money out of it and where it is now.

UPDATE: Power Line has picked up this story and accents the focus on Saddam's possible connections with terrorist groups, both pre-war and later.

Another Moment of Hypocrisy from Dean

Howard Dean has excoriated the Bush administration, and specifically Dick Cheney, for keeping secret its deliberations while developing its energy policy. This meme has been beaten to death over the past couple of years. Ultimately, what's important is the policy itself, and that's not secret at all. However, the advice given to the executive is just that -- advice -- and there is no need to disclose the internal debate that helped develop the policy. In fact, that is the essence of executive privelege, the entire reason for its existence.

How nice, then, to discover that Howard Dean agrees -- at least when he's the executive:

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, who has criticized the Bush administration for refusing to release the deliberations of its energy policy task force, as governor of Vermont convened a similar panel that met in secret and angered state lawmakers. ... In 1999, he offered the same argument the administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret.

"The governor needs to receive advice from time to time in closed session. As every person in government knows, sometimes you get more open discussion when it's not public," Dean was quoted as saying.

Yes, Governor, and the same thing is true for Presidents as well. Unless there is evidence of wrongdoing -- and that is not the same as not liking the policy -- then policy deliberations do not need to be disclosed. Since Howard Dean has been one of the most secretive Vermont governors in recent history, sealing his records for much longer than any of his predecessors, Dean makes an unlikely scold on the issue of openness. However, Dean manages to surpass his hypocrisy with his gall on a regular basis.

Your Lips Say No ...

Senator John Edwards of South Carolina insists that he is not interested in the lower half of the Democratic ticket in 2004:

Asked if he would agree to run in the second slot with one of eight candidates to be the Democrats' presidential nominee, Edwards said: "I'm absolutely not interested in being vice president. No, the answer to that question is no."

Uh-huh. Let me explain two things to you that make this statement an absolute farce:

1. John Edwards won't be in elective office after 2004, only having served one term in the Senate.
2. John Edwards is from the South.

It's hardly a secret that Democrats are stumbling badly in the South as the electorate there seems to have finally recognized that the socialist, isolationist leftists have grabbed control of the party. A Northerner will take the top spot, and it's likely to be Howard Dean or possibly John Kerry, a Northeasterner, culturally opposite of the South anyway. In order for the Democrats to have a prayer of capturing an Electoral College win south of the Mason-Dixon line next year, there has to be a credible Southerner on the ticket, and so far Edwards is the one who most fits the bill.

John Edwards wants to remain a player in the party, and since he's not running for electoral office this year, he'll be sitting out politics for the next two years if he loses the nomination. Any other Southerner would have to risk their office in order to run on the bottom half of a doomed ticket, and the Democrats can't afford to drop further back in either the House or the Senate (with one possible exception: Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, who has a new Democratic governor to name her replacement, but who also barely won her last election). If he wants chits from the party that he can call in later, he'll need to suck it up and pay some dues in 2004. Expect the ticket to read "Dean-Edwards" in 2004.

Rushing Towards Disaster?

The insurgency in Iraq and global pressure to end the civil occupation are forcing the Coalition to abandon key goals in order to meet a summer deadline to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqis, according to the Washington Post:

The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated. Plans to privatize state-owned businesses -- a key part of a larger Bush administration goal to replace the socialist economy of deposed president Saddam Hussein with a free-market system -- have been dropped over the past few months. So too has a demand that Iraqis write a constitution before a transfer of sovereignty.

With the administration's plans tempered by time and threat, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty to a provisional government.

Plans often change during and after battles, and a number of these goals could have been categorized as "blue sky" even before the Iraq war began. Some, such as privatization of industry, sound less negotiable. Privatization is necessary to ensure private property rights, which is a cornerstone of a free society and helps to establish a firm basis for pluralism. However, reality intrudes on this goal, as the article explains well. Privatization at this stage would necessarily result in layoffs, and the last thing that the Coalition needs is more unemployed Iraqi males for potential recruits into the insurgency.

The only issue that should have been demanded by the US as a condition of the end of occupation is the enactment of a constitution, but even that may have been pointless. Had the US refused to end occupation until it was drafted, most of the country probably would have felt free to disregard it as a duress-produced document. The Afghanis seem to be working towards their constitution on their own through the loya jirga process. Undoubtedly this has encouraged the Coalition that the Iraqis may be able to handle it on their own as well, with guidance from the US rather than civil occupation.

The summer deadline seemed like a rushed, politically expedient time frame for the Bush administration, and may still be that, but it is also apparent that without a fixed and quick timetable, we would not get much cooperation from either the Iraqis or other nations on issues like debt relief. In the end, it is most important that we retain a large measure of influence with the new Iraqi government after the end of the occupation, and extending our occupation surely would be counterproductive to that. Unlike the occupation of Germany and Japan, we are still in the middle of a war in the area, and we need to demonstrate that we do not come to conquer but to liberate. Ending the occupation on our own terms and with the support of the majority of the Iraqi people helps to underscore that.

Danish, Anyone?

The Danes, descendants of the mighty Vikings, are trying to conquer the world again ... only in a slightly different manner than their first-millenium strategy:

Danes are spreading their genes around the world faster than ever aided by exports from local firm Cryos International, the world's biggest sperm bank. Each year Danish men donate sperm that contributes to around 1,000 pregnancies, and with increasing demand from Americans, Cryos has opened its first New York office -- on Broadway. ... Cryos, which has currently accepts only Danish donators, exports to 40 countries.

Well, it's certainly one way to achieve world domination with as little exertion as possible. Don't need those uncomfortable long boats, either.