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April 24, 2004

The Worst Damn Song, Period

Everybody's talking pop music this week, as the entertainment magazine Blender released its highly presumptuous list of the 50 Worst Songs Ever, in conjunction with an upcoming VH-1 special in May. (You can find the list itself here.) Once the list rolled out, everyone started talking about it, including my friends Mitch Berg and James Lileks, in his Backfence incarnation. In fact, over at Mitch's, we're starting a rhubarb on the merits of "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band. No, seriously.

The problem with a list of 50 songs is that it will inevitably include something so stupid that it invalidates the entire exercise. It doesn't take long on this list, which mistakes mediocrity for badness. Even the #1 song on their Hit Parade, "We Built This City" by Starship, isn't bad as much as it was disappointingly commercial, from the remnants of what once was a great rock band. You don't find the first truly bad song until you get to #5, "Ice Ice Baby," by a guy who later got his ass kicked by Todd "Willis" Bridges on Celebrity Boxing. I mean, come on ... "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys? It's fluff, but it's not bad, unless you happen to be unlucky enough to have to hear them perform it live.

But Blender completely loses it when it gets to #42, where the writers and editors reveal themselves to be soulless twits who couldn't discern art from A-Ha. Stuck at #42, as if they wanted to hide it, is "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. The song, if you listen to it, warns against the mindless following of popularity and the seduction of glitz instead of listening for the truth. Here's the Blender explanation:

If Frasier Crane were a song, he would sound like this.

From the terrible opening line, in which darkness is addressed as “my old friend,” the lyrics of “The Sounds of Silence” sound like a vicious parody of a pompous and pretentious mid-’60s folk singer. But it’s no joke: While a rock band twangs aimlessly in the middle distance, Simon & Garfunkel thunder away in voices that suggest they’re scowling and wagging their fingers as they sing. The overall experience is like being lectured on the meaning of life by a jumped-up freshman.

Worst Moment “Hear my words that I might teach you”: Officially the most self-important line in rock history!

Paul Simon's lyrics always ran closer to poetry than to simplistic pop/rock riffs, and apparently the only poetry that the folks at Blender can appreciate is "There Once Was A Man From Nantucket". Feh. I can understand not liking the song, but the forty-second worst song of all time?? Puh-leaze.

Besides, the worst song of all time doesn't even appear on their list. You can argue that bad songs will always be subjective, and that's mostly true, but you still will have a hard time justifying true dreck like "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" or "Yummy Yummy Yummy". And yet there is one that transcends all of the rest, that should rest unchallenged as the all-time loser: "Never Been to Me," sung in breathless and far-too-earnest style by Charlene, one of those pop figures who insisted on going by a single name despite their well-deserved obscurity. Here's a sample of the lyrics:

Oh I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece Where I sipped champagne on a yacht I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things That a woman ain't s'posed to see I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

(this part is spoken...) Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie.
A fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be.
But you know what truth is?
It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning,
the same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love.

Complete the picture by imagining a lush strings section and a chorus of sopranos ah-ing all over the background, and you start to get the picture. This is the one record where it truly all came together in one spot ... sort of like the Waterloo of Pop. For those who have listened to this song, there is no other conclusion than this: Charlene is a minor demon from Hell who torments mankind, by causing "Never Been To Me" to reverberate in your head for days on end after exposure to it.

You tell me: what do you think are the worst songs of all time?

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:31 PM | TrackBack

NASA Panic Over Disaster Movie Gives Hollywood Too Much Credit

Tomorrow's New York Times features a story on a too-typical example of bureaucratic mountain-making from molehills, as NASA at first gagged its scientists from commenting on an upcoming movie that shows global warming causing a new Ice Age -- in five days:

In "The Day After Tomorrow," a $125 million disaster film that is to open on May 28, global warming from accumulating smokestack and tailpipe gases sets off an instant ice age.

Few climate experts think such a prospect is likely, especially in the near future. But the prospect that moviegoers will be alarmed enough to blame the Bush administration for inattention to climate change has stirred alarm at the space agency, scientists there say.

"No one from NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with" the film, said the April 1 message, which was sent by Goddard's top press officer. "Any news media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA."

The e-mail missive found its way to the Times via a very unhappy NASA scientist who resented the gag order. The political appointees running the show seem to fear the questions that may arise once The Day After Tomorrow hits a theater near you. Certainly some people still think that movies depict reality rather than fiction, but the rest of us with more than three functional brain cells will not likely leave the film asking, "What has the Bush administration done to keep massive glaciers moving across the entire continental United States in less than a week?" Lord knows, this question will be so much more important than anything about real security threats, like terrorism.

The Times relates a couple of scenes for their readers to demonstrate the seriousness of the scientific research performed for this film:

The new movie's script contains a host of politically uncomfortable situations: the president's motorcade is flash frozen; the vice president, who scoffs at warnings even as chaos erupts, resembles Dick Cheney; the humbled United States has to plead with Mexico to allow masses of American refugees fleeing the ice to cross the border.

The notion that a motorcade could be flash-frozen isn't politically uncomfortable, it's scientifically laughable. We live in Minnesota, which gets a hell of a lot colder a hell of a lot quicker than almost anywhere else, and I've never heard of a flash freeze, unless it's when Mitch Berg goes streaking in the wintertime. (Painful, yes; politically uncomfortable, no.) All that the panicky NASA functionaries have to remember are two names: Hollywood and Roland Emmerich.

Emmerich, who wrote and directed this Irwin Allen descendant, also directed Independence Day and The Patriot (the Mel Gibson historical film, not the Steven Seagal chop-socky movie). Independence Day hardly qualifies as a master of scientific knowledge. Numerous violations of the laws of physics occurs throughout the film, such as the climactic spectacular explosion in outer space -- a recurring mistake in science-fiction films -- instead of a massive and almost instantaneous implosion. Emmerich hardly stands alone in Hollywood on this point. Film after film produced in big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas routinely discard even basic science, such as the truly egregious Armageddon or the worse Volcano. Perhaps the worst example would be the hilarious horror/suspense film Hollow Man by Paul Verhoeven, where so many laws of science are violated that it begins to resemble the UN Oil-For-Food program by the time you make it to the last reel.

Emmerich, however, manages to blow historical research as well as scientific research, as the American Revolution movie The Patriot demonstrated. Emmerich treats us to a Bizarro World where blacks exist as free men in South Carolina, where the nation's most rabid slavery laws expressly forbid it; provided a happy village, assumably in SC, where whites and blacks lived and frolicked together as equals (don't we wish); and where the British commit an atrocity by burning down a church full of civilians, when nothing like that ever happened -- except in France during WWII, when the Nazis did it.

In short, Hollywood provides the negative to reality's photograph: if it's in a movie, it's almost certainly untrue, especially in large-budget films. And if it's an Emmerich film, it's likely to be cheesy as hell on top of all the mistakes (and likely to pull in big box office anyway).

So, quit panicking, you nerveless NASA nabobs, buy some popcorn, and enjoy the comedy. No one with a brain takes this effluvia seriously, and why worry about the rest?

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:42 PM | TrackBack

Northern Alliance Special Guest Today!

Today, on the Northern Alliance Radio Network show (heard on AM 1280 The Patriot in the Twin Cities, and soon on the Internet to the world!), we have a special in-studio guest for our third hour. MST3K!!The Fraters Libertas gang has lined up Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who has graciously agreed to sit in with our line-up of fanboys. Because the Captain lost the coin-flip (and allegedly too closely resembles Dr. Clayton Forrester), I'll be banished to the Green Room during the third hour. So I will be live photoblogging Mike Nelson's visit on this post -- keep checking back during the show (12-3 CT) for updates!

We will also be fortunate to have as call-in guests during the second hour Yale professor Charles Hill on John Kerry as a literary character, and Doug Tice from our local newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. If you're in the area, make sure you tune in!

2:00 -- Mike Nelson has just joined us, and we'll get some pictures in a moment. We're just settling in, and we've just heard that he's a Northen Alliance listener -- how cool is that? ....
Mike
2:08 -- Mike starts us off, talking about the Hah channel and the early days of the show ...

2:13 -- Manos, The Hands of Fate ... the legendary film that rates as the finest bad movie ever made! Now it's the target of revisionary criticism that says it's actually a GOOD movie. And I admitted that I am one of the three people that actually liked Throw Mama From The Train ...

2:25 - Saint Paul calls in to ask about the lack of promotion in the early days of MST3K, after he griped about being on hold for 20 minutes. What can we say? We're popular! ...
Mike
2:29 - A caller says he loves the show, and it takes us all a minute to figure out which show he means. (It wasn't ours -- big surprise.) ....

2:30 - We're all pleased to welcome Hugh Hewitt as a guest host for the third hour ...

2:35 - Mike issues a smack-down challenge to Al Franken, as well as Christina Aguilera and Kathryn Lampher ...

2:41 - Mike's never seen Battlefield Earth -- I'm crushed ...

Mike2:44 -- By the way, I'm actually in studio for this hour, in case you haven't caught on to that. It's a blast, and Mike is a great guest ...

2:50 - Mike hasn't moved to LA because he likes living where "the deep, dark winters dull your souls." ...

2:51 - Mike also thinks that cow-tipping is a rumor, but unfortunately the belief that pigs will devour live chickens is all too true ...

Mike2:54 - Mike is not a "show-biz guy", and his politics don't exactly match up with the Hollywood crowd. Mike's also a devout Christian, which makes him a zoo animal in some circles ... Here he is hanging out with Hugh Hewitt. Mike is pretty tall, so he had to hunch over to get in the picture...

3:00 -- A great hour with a great guest. We'll definitely get Mike back on when we have our Internet feed running so everyone gets a chance to hear it. Thanks for hanging out with us this hour!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 11:45 AM | TrackBack

Phoenix Project Finally Makes the NY Times

After weeks of allowing Thomas Lipscomb and the New York Daily Sun to stand alone, the New York Times has finally decided to consider the notion that a presidential candidate once participated in assassination debates is news. David Halbfinger reviews the Phoenix Project in the much larger context of John Kerry's anti-war protest career but winds up, much like Candy Crowley's CNN piece yesterday, drifts towards apologetics rather than reporting (via Power Line). It starts off promising, though, raising questions about the Kerry campaigns attempts to pressure witnesses to stay silent or renounce their earlier statements:

When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action.

It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years ago to re-examine their hazy memories while assuring them that Mr. Kerry was sure he had not been there.

John Musgrave, a disabled ex-marine from Baldwin City, Kan., who told The Kansas City Star that Mr. Kerry was at the meeting, said he got a call from John Hurley, the Kerry campaign's veterans coordinator.

"He said, `I'd like you to refresh your memory,' " Mr. Musgrave, 55, recounted in an interview, confirming an account he had given to The New York Sun. "He said it twice. `And call that reporter back and say you were mistaken about John Kerry being there.' "

Halbfinger moves from there to a lengthy and rather dull recitation of Kerry's path from combat veteran to radical activist to politician, a journey which really should generate more interest than Halbfinger's narrative provides. Along the way, Halbfinger tweaks the truth to provide subtle assists to Kerry:

And when Mr. Kerry appeared on "Meet the Press" last weekend, he disavowed his own remarks on the same program in April 1971, when he said he and thousands of other soldiers had committed "atrocities."

That is a categorical falsehood. The only thing Kerry disavowed was the word "atrocities", but not the allegations themselves. After Tim Russert read off a laundry list of war crimes that Kerry alleged were routine activities by American troops in Vietnam -- which he somehow gleaned by serving on a boat during two tours -- Kerry reiterated that he believed most of the stories were true, as I noted at the time:

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...

SEN. KERRY: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.

MR. RUSSERT: So you stand by that?

SEN. KERRY: A lot of those stories have been documented.

Hardly a ringing renouncement of his 1971 allegations, Kerry instead argued that his point back in 1971 was directed at the government, not the individual rapists and murderers that Americans became when they landed on the shores of Vietnam. Veterans can decide for themselves if they buy that explanation; so far, a number of them have come out publicly and said they don't.

Halbfinger continues, painting Kerry as the lone voice of reason within the VVAW and trying his best to put the best possible face on his membership in the radical group. If you don't think the VVAW was radical, this excerpt should make you reconsider:

In the year and a half that Mr. Kerry belonged to the group, it was loosely structured and had its share of revolutionaries and provocateurs — including many secretly working for law enforcement — who pushed the writings of Chairman Mao and talked of tossing grenades, though they seldom did worse than toss bags of chicken droppings at the Pentagon.

The clean-shaven, shorter-haired, neatly dressed Mr. Kerry, dozens of veterans recalled in interviews, had little patience for any of that. He was almost always the most conservative man in the room.

"He was working in the system, and he wanted to stay in the system," said Al Hubbard, now 68 and ailing, who was one of the group's leaders and said it was the first time he had spoken to a reporter in more than 30 years. "He had his own personal agenda. I think he was just kind of doing dress rehearsals for public office."

Being the most conservative man in a room full of Maoists and terrorists isn't that terrible difficult to achieve. Besides, if Kerry were really any kind of conservative at all, why would he have remained in a group of people who espoused Communism and terrorism? Nor was his dalliance with Communists limited to the group. Halbfinger reviews his aggressive and private contacts with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris, whom he now acknowledges were likely trying to exploit him to manipulate the American media.

The Phoenix Project doesn't come up again until almost the end of the article, despite having been the lede. Halbfinger questions whether Kerry actually was around for the discussion itself, but allows the Kerry campaign's attempts to claim his complete absence from the Kansas City meeting to be a memory issue, even though Halbfinger claims that Kerry and VVAW leader Al Hubbard had a "showdown" at the meeting over Hubbard's qualifications.

Halbfinger's piece provides a few more details than the excellent work of Thomas Lipscomb, but doesn't advance the story so much as it fills in some of the margins. Why didn't Halbfinger challenge Kerry more on his participation in a meeting where assassination plans were discussed, instead of allowing him off the hook by saying, "I don't recall"? Why not ask him how he came to join an extremist group populated by Maoists and grenade-tossers when he supposedly believed in democratic principles?

Halbfinger could have asked him these and other challenging questions, but chose instead to allow the Kerry campaign to spin the events through his writing. At least the Times has finally acknowledged the existence of the Phoenix Project, and perhaps others will find the courage that Halbfinger and the New York Times lacked.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has some thoughts on the reporting accuracy about John Kerry's service time. Read his entire post.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:21 AM | TrackBack

Frist and Daschle: Splitsville?

It must be a slow day at the New York Times political desk. This morning's edition features a breathless story on how Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's campaigning in South Dakota on behalf of the Republican challenger to Minority Leader Tom Daschle breaks a long-held precedent of which everyone else is unaware:

In a sharp break with political nicety and past practice, Dr. Frist, the majority leader from Tennessee, is planning to venture into the backyard of Mr. Daschle, the minority leader, in May on behalf of John Thune, a Republican hoping to unseat Mr. Daschle in what is expected to be a highly competitive race.

It is an unusual move, especially given the extent to which the leaders must consult each other in a closely divided Senate. Experts in the Senate historical office could find no recent comparable example of one leader trying so aggressively to oust the other. ... For instance, Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, was known to have a close friendship with his regular adversary, Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, when they held the leadership spots. And despite their pronounced political differences, Mr. Daschle had a relatively civil relationship with Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi when the latter was the Republican leader.

Well, pardon Frist for practicing politics, but is this really that much of a problem? The Times goes on to discuss how closely the two Senate leaders must work on legislation, but that's a function of their jobs and their motivation to get as much of their own agenda through, not one of friendship. Besides, look where Daschle's "civil relationship" with Trent Lott got Lott in the end; the Democrats couldn't wait to savage Lott over his comments at Strom Thurmond's retirement, even though when Dodd made similarly foolish remarks on behalf of Robert Byrd, the sudden quiet was deafening.

The story does provide a glimpse of the tactics Daschle plans to use to get himself re-elected ... mostly pandering, to no one's great surprise:

"I only hope that in addition to whatever politics may be a part of his agenda," Mr. Daschle told reporters on Tuesday, "when he comes to South Dakota he'll take the time to listen to South Dakotans about the drought, about country-of-origin labeling, about the No Child Left Behind Act."

He said he hoped Dr. Frist would recognize the need to keep open Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder, S.D. A campaign spokesman for Mr. Daschle pointed out that as a Senate leader, Mr. Daschle would be able to appoint members of a future base-closing commission; Mr. Thune presumably would not.

Of course, Frist and Thune could defuse the military base issue rather easily by publicly supporting keeping South Dakota bases open. If Daschle loses to Thune and the Democrats retaliate by voting to close the bases down, they can write off South Dakota for a generation. Daschle has even less standing when it comes to his role in obstructing judicial nominations, which is one of the reasons Frist felt it necessary to directly campaign against Daschle. It shouldn't surprise the New York Times that the Frist/Daschle relationship has become so politically charged in that context; it would be a big surprise and a dereliction of Frist's duty as a party leader to ignore it.

However, we can, I am sure, look forward to many more pieces from the New York Times casting Republicans as the villains during the coming election, even if they have to reach this far to do it.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:03 AM | TrackBack

April 23, 2004

Sessions: "A Problem With Confidence" in 9/11 Commission

CNN reports that Senator Jeff Sessions (R) has become the first Senator to publicly call for Jamie Gorelick to resign her seat on the 9/11 Commission due to the conflict-of-interest issues revolving around her role in barring intelligence and law-enforcement agents from sharing information:

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, called on Gorelick to resign, becoming the first senator to do so. He told CNN that such a move would help the commission salvage its credibility.

"We have a little bit of a problem now with confidence in that commission," said Sessions. "For her to continue to play a key role in it when she herself really should be one of the people being reviewed is difficult for me to swallow."

Gorelick, meanwhile, adamantly insists that she will not resign her seat, and so far has the backing of the Republican chair of the commission, Thomas Kean. However, ever since the release of her 1995 memo, it has become apparent that Gorelick's work lies at the heart of what the 9/11 Commission is supposed to investigate. If her memo doesn't demand her testimony, then I don't know what qualifies, and I would guess that the panel itself couldn't articulate it. So far, the only explanation of why she hasn't been compelled to testify is that she's on the panel -- which is why she should have already resigned.

In a biting piece of irony, the Commission spokesperson gave this response:

Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg told CNN that any member of Congress has the right to express an opinion, but "we very much hope that they would contact the commission directly and not communicate through the media."

Yes, apparently the Commissioners resent having to compete for air time.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:15 PM | TrackBack

CNN Shills For Kerry?

An interesting thing happened to CNN's analysis of John Kerry and his allegations of widespread American atrocities in Vietnam. After setting up the story as an analysis of how Kerry's words affected Vietnam veterans then and continue to do so now, the story itself is almost entirely dedicated to Kerry's apologetics and pays scant attention to any veteran reaction:

The strong, vivid words John Kerry uttered 33 years ago continue to ring through time.

Back in 1971, the square-jawed, clean-cut decorated combat veteran, with a generous mop of dark hair, told a rapt audience of senators of atrocities he said had been reported to him by his fellow soldiers in Vietnam.

Rapes. Razed villages. Ears and heads cut off. Random shootings of civilians. Bodies blown up. Wires from portable telephones taped to genitals, with the power then turned on. Food stocks poisoned. Dogs and cats shot for the fun of it.

CNN then spends 428 words discussing Kerry in the present tense (after quoting from his 1971 testimony), allowing him to explain that he was young, he wanted the war to end, and so he overdramatized his testimony in order to achieve an end. However, despite alleging that soldiers were doing all of the above actions in the normal course of their duty, Kerry insists that he wasn't blaming the troops:

"I never put the load on soldiers. I asked, 'Where's the leadership of the country?' not the soldiers," he said. "All I know is that it happened as a matter of course, and there were things that were happening over there as a matter of policy."

In contrast to this, the only reaction that CNN digs up comes from John O'Neill, who relieved Kerry after his reassignment back to the US:

"He was the father of the lie that the Vietnam veteran was a rapist, a baby killer, a drug addict and the like," said John O'Neill, who served in the same Navy patrol unit where Kerry served and who sparred with him on national TV during the tumult of 1971. "I don't think there's anybody that did that, or created that, more than Kerry."

That's all that CNN presents by way of counterpoint: 64 words against 428, or a ratio of 6.7 to 1 in Kerry's favor on an article that supposedly was about the effect he had on other veterans. Candy Crowley starts by promising a look at veteran anger, and winds up giving Kerry everything but a podium and a microphone. Perhaps another, more careful news agency will provide us with a more balanced look at the effects of Kerry's remarks on a generation of servicemen, instead of just another soapbox for Kerry.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:52 PM | TrackBack

Pat Tillman, American Patriot, KIA

I was in an office meeting most of this morning, and only got back to my desk at lunchtime. Pat Tillman, KIABy that point, I had received several e-mails from friends around the blogosphere telling me that Pat Tillman had been killed in action in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Tillman left a multimillion-dollar contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals, and all the potential endorsement contracts and all of the adulation, in order to fulfill his dream of serving his country in the Army Rangers while he was still young enough to enlist:

Tillman, who was serving with the 75th Ranger Regiment, was involved in a search-and-destroy mission in southeastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan, military officials told Fox News. The unit was acting on intelligence about possible Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters when a firefight erupted. Tillman was the only Ranger killed in his unit, although military officials said two other U.S. soldiers were injured. ...

Tillman, 27, shocked fans when he turned down a $3.6 million contract with the Cardinals to be an Army ranger.

"There is in Pat Tillman's example, in his unexpected choice of duty to his country over the riches and other comforts of celebrity, and in his humility, such an inspiration to all of us to reclaim the essential public-spiritedness of Americans that many of us, in low moments, had worried was no longer our common distinguishing trait," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement.

Senator McCain gets that exactly right. In a society sometimes dominated by loudmouthed, preening, self-involved individuals, Tillman stood out for his refusal to think only of himself. Tillman was no one's fool, either; he graduated early from Arizona State with a degree in marketing and a 3.84 GPA, and conducted himself with both intelligence and honor in his career and personal life. At one point, Tillman turned down an opportunity to make more money with another team because he felt loyalty to the Cardinals, who had given him his chance to play even though he was undersized for his position.

At the time that he joined the Army, some questioned his motivation, his intelligence, and even his sanity. Let us hope that no one debates his choice now. He wanted to give something back to his country, and unfortunately gave his life for our protection. Please say a prayer for this American patriot and the family he's left behind, and one for all those who have died in defense of our country and freedom..

UPDATE: Don't miss this Peggy Noonan article for the Wall Street Journal, written when Pat Tillman enlisted in the Army. OpinionJournal is running it again today to honor Tillman's memory:

The Abes and Gabes join a long old line of elders dressed in green, blue, gray, white, gold and black. Pat Tillman joins a similar line, of stars who decided they had work to do, and must leave their careers to do it. They include, among others, the actors Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable and Tyrone Power in World War II; sports stars Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio in the same war; and quarterback Roger Staubach in Vietnam. It is good to see their style return, and be considered noble again.

And good to see what appears to be part of, or the beginning of, a change in armed forces volunteering. In the Vietnam era of my youth it was poor and working-class boys whom I saw drafted or eagerly volunteering. Now more and more I see the sons and daughters of the privileged joining up.

That is a bigger and better story than usually makes the front page. Markets rise and fall, politicians come and go, but that we still make Tillmans is headline news.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:37 PM | TrackBack

Look For The Weasel Label

A Seattle company has surreptitiously added a message, in French, to labels on its laptop bags and backpacks apologizing for "our President" and claiming that they didn't vote for him (via Wonkette):

Bihn's sales have doubled since a French-language presidential insult mysteriously made its way onto the bilingual washing instructions for hundreds of his laptop bags and backpacks.

The labels read: "Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui."

Translated into English: "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."

It's been a while since my high-school French classes, but I don't believe that the correct French idiom for voting is 'We don't have vote for him', which is how Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui literally translates. (It's the wrong tense, for one thing.) Nor is his wiggling about the meaning of the label convincing or even plausible. Bihn says that it could have meant the president of the company, but employees don't vote for company presidents, especially in privately-held outfits like Bihn's apparently is, as he's referred to as the owner.

At any rate, whether their French is as bad as their judgment or not, this will keep me from buying any of Bihn's merchandise in the future. Quelle chutzpah! Even Wonkette, hardly a fan of Bush, seems somewhat offended by the label:

Ooo! Secret messages to the French! Maybe they'll write back. Would an apology for blowing World War II fit on a label?

I'd settle for an apology for selling us out for Saddam's oil-for-food bribes and kickbacks ... that would at least be a start. If that starts appearing on French imports, I might start buying French goods again. Maybe. I won't buy Bihn's merchandise regardless.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:46 AM | TrackBack

Annan: Shoot the Critics

Predictably, when a bureaucracy comes under criticism, the bureaucrats respond by attacking the critics rather than addressing the issues. Kofi Annan heads the world's most unaccountable bureaucracy, and so his response to damaging revelations about the multibillion-dollar Oil-For-Food scam comes as no surprise:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan accused critics of the U.N. oil-for-food program Thursday of treating allegations of corruption as fact and ignoring the program's role of providing aid to nearly every Iraqi family.

Very much like OFF program Benon Sevan's dismissal of corruption, when he said that 90% of the money went where it was intended, so why all the fuss over the remaining 10%?

The U.N. chief declared that he was "very keen" for the three-member panel led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to report "as soon as possible." And he promised that any U.N. official found guilty of accepting bribes or kickbacks would be dealt with "very severely."

Annan said he met Wednesday with Benon Sevan, who headed the oil-for-food program and has been accused of receiving kickbacks from Saddam Hussein's government, to discuss the allegations and cooperation with the investigation. ...

"Benon has stated quite clearly that he is innocent," Annan said.

Well, that's a surprise. Because as I've noted before, documents uncovered in Iraq show Sevan and hundreds of other bureaucrats from inside and outside the UN to have received millions of dollars in oil futures.

Perhaps it's important to act as if we were all judges and issue the trite disclaimer that "nothing has been proven yet" every time we speak of this issue, but regardless of whether one particular individual dipped his own hands into the trough, clearly the UN actively dismantled every safeguard and check on this program, and just as clearly the program allowed Saddam to stuff his pockets with tons of cash -- which is exactly what the UNSC sanctions were supposed to prevent. As Claudia Rosett notes in her excellent Commentary review, the OFF program strengthened Saddam immeasurably while weakening everyone else in Iraq. No serious doubt remains at the sheer magnitude of the incompetence of this program and the organization which ran it as its own private fiefdom, profiting handsomely from it (over $1.4 billion in admin fees alone).

Annan surely has the right to defend himself publicly, but every time he proclaims that OFF mostly helped Iraqi families in the face of overwhelming evidence that it didn't, he makes the UN less credible and his critics more so, especially in Iraq, where they know how little of that money they actually saw.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:59 AM | TrackBack

Gorelick: More Calls For Her Testimony

Eleven Republican Senators have now publicly called for 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick to resign her position on the panel and instead provide sworn testimony to the commission:

Eleven Senate Republicans fired off a letter Thursday to the 9/11 commission demanding that Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic member of the panel, be forced to testify. The senators want Gorelick to testify about her role in strengthening the so-called "wall" between the FBI and CIA that some say hampered government efforts to prevent terrorist attacks.

The letter, which was spearheaded by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, asserts that the commission's final report "will be incomplete without public testimony by Ms. Gorelick about her activities while serving as deputy attorney general" in the Clinton administration.

"It is imperative the committee explore with Ms. Gorelick these many initiatives and procedures pursued at her direction and any analysis leading to their formulation," the letter said.

Gorelick wrote a long and intellectually dishonest editorial in the Washington Post instead of testifying under oath and in public to the commission -- a move that brought swift condemnation when Condoleezza Rice wrote her own Post editorial instead of testifying publicly. People ignored the fact that Rice had already given four hours of private testimony and had offered to give more, while Gorelick hasn't testified at all despite her integral role in separating intelligence and law-enforcement efforts. However, Gorelick has pontificated from both the commission hearings and on television interviews about the failure of the administration to "connect the dots" -- a task she made all but impossible.

Under any definition of an "independent commission" you like, political or judicial, having material witnesses sitting on the panel passing judgment on actions in which they took part makes the commission a joke. It's indefensible and it will only have the effect of making the panel's resulting report an exercise in political posturing. Nor has the rest of the panel helped, as Jonathan Rauch points out in Reason:

A shrewder 9/11 commission would have turned its back on demands for public hearings, swearings-in, and the rest of the Watergate-style apparatus. Instead, it would have stressed:

• Discretion. Partisanship is inevitable in Washington. Instead of complaining about it, the commission should have planned for it and taken care to avoid making public comments that might fan the flames. The partisan snipers are out there, but it does no good to give them ammunition. And any administration, Republican or Democratic, will treat as a threat a commission whose members are holding forth as Sunday-morning pundits and competing for quotes in The New York Times.

• Confidentiality. This is especially important if the commission hopes to solve problems rather than point fingers. Backward-looking, punitive investigations use high-wattage publicity and legal jackhammers to penetrate stone walls and cover-ups. But a forward-looking, problem-solving investigation needs to foster a climate in which officials can be self-critical without undue fear of being prosecuted or keelhauled. Putting witnesses under oath induces them to weigh every word with lawyerly care rather than freely volunteer information. And public testimony sends everybody into blame-deflecting and political-maneuvering mode. Confidential, unsworn testimony may not explore every discrepancy or mine every document, but it elicits more self-criticism and candor.

It's probably too late to save the 9/11 Commission, given the high-wattage publicity hounds that populate it now, like Bob Kerrey and Richard Ben-Veniste and Gorelick herself. But one step in the right direction would be to acknowledge that the evidence uncovered makes Gorelick unable to continue sitting on the panel and place her on the witness list. If they're not willing to acknowledge that, then they aren't paying attention to the evidence and testimony presented -- which means that the whole exercise has only been about finger-pointing from the start.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:15 AM | TrackBack

April 22, 2004

OK, Now He's Against Gas Guzzlers

Oh, that wacky John Kerry! According to his campaign website, which copied a glowing Detroit Free Press article from February 1st, Kerry's principled stand on higher corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards has made him the "nemesis" of Michigan automakers, but damn it all, he stands firmly for the environment:

However, Kerry's efforts over the years to raise fuel-efficiency standards could cause him problems among some Michigan voters. In a state that is home to the auto manufacturers, Kerry is well known for his fight to tighten these standards on cars and light trucks enough to produce a fleet average of 36 miles per gallon by 2015. That would be a dramatic increase from the current 27.5 m.p.g. now required.

A measure that would have raised those standards to 40 m.p.g. failed last summer to pass the Senate, which instead required the Transportation Department to consider an array of issues - from job losses and highway safety to economic impact on U.S. auto manufacturers - before any change could be made in corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards.

Kerry's insistence on higher CAFE standards has made him the auto industry's "nemesis,'' according to one industry insider.

Unfortunately, the Guardian (UK) reports that Kerry stands firmly on both sides of this issue, like so many others, demonstrating that fuel efficiency requirements only apply to the lesser beings:

"I don't own an SUV,'' said Kerry, who supports increasing existing fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 in order to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies. ... Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.

"The family has it. I don't have it,'' he said.

The EPA rates the 2004 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 (gas only) at a paltry 14 MPG in the city, 18 MPG highway. The Suburban 2500 isn't rated, but since it has an 8.1L engine as opposed to the 1500's 5.3L, one could suppose that the fuel efficiency probably drops considerably from those poor standards. The 2004 Chrysler 300M does somewhat better at 18/27, but only scores a 6 on emissions ratings. They don't list a Dodge "300", but a quick browse through all of Dodge's higher-end vehicles doesn't demonstrate a green outlook at all.

All in all, Kerry has postured himself as the "fine for me but not for thee" candidate, hasn't he? Either that, or we're going to wind up in a lengthy debate as to the definition of "family". (via Hugh Hewitt)

UPDATE: Jon at QandO notes that the Chrysler 300M is made in Canada, a lovely counterpoint to his assertion that "I want cars to be made in Michigan, made in America." I suppose, but he doesn't want to buy them if they are. He also bragged about owning multiple SUVs when talking to the Detroit Free Press on a different occasion.

I guess that's ol' Honest John for you ...

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:05 PM | TrackBack

CQ: Watcher's Council Nomination

It's that time of the week again -- and the Watchers' Council has made their selections for the best posts around the blogosphere. Captain's Quarters received a nomination in the non-council category for my post on Bob Woodward's refutation of the Democrats' allegations of gasoline price-fixing conspiracies by the Bush Administration. Just to remind everyone, John Kerry has been expressing his "disgust" at this supposed secret deal that he claims Woodward described in his new book -- while Woodward denies saying anything like that.

Make sure you get a chance to read the other nominated posts. By Friday, the winners will be announced after the Council vote. Hopefully, CQ comes out with a couple of "ayes"!

UPDATE: Actually, I got 2 1/3 "ayes" and was selected the non-Council winner of this week's Watchers Council contest ... pretty cool! Patterico won the Council category with his post, Your Political Correctness or Your Life (2 votes). Again, be sure to check out all the great posts nominated this week.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:00 PM | TrackBack

Even Chirac Now Admits Iran Cheats

The New York Times reports today that Europe has slowly started to move towards the US position on Iran and its nascent nuclear program, as French president Jacques Chirac has now publicly chastised Iran's non-compliance:

In a hardening of Europe's position toward Iran's nuclear activities, President Jacques Chirac of France criticized Iran on Wednesday for failing to comply fully with international inspections of its nuclear sites, and suggested that Iran had violated the spirit of an agreement with France, Germany and Britain to curtail its nuclear programs, senior French officials said.

In a 45-minute meeting at Élysée Palace with Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi of Iran, Mr. Chirac also warned Tehran that unless it met the demands of the United Nations' weapons inspection agency before that group gathers in June for what he called a "decisive" meeting, it ran the risk that international goodwill would be eroded.

Better late than never, I suppose, but had the Europeans not clucked their tongues at us a couple of months ago when we said essentially the same thing, we may have moved further along towards a resolution. Losing time when confronting nuclear proliferation is a critical mistake, as events in North Korea proved. Inspectors have found quite a bit of evidence of Iranian opacity on the question of nuclear armament, and the discovery of military-caliber centrifuges on an Iranian Air Force base should have really been the lever with which to move the UN Security Council to take up the matter.

Those UNSC members who complained that Americans didn't operate under UN auspices in Iraq have been oddly reluctant to do the same with Iran. Chirac and the rest of Europe has been hesitant to allow the US and the UK to raise the subject in the UNSC because we finally demonstrated that UNSC resolutions carry severe consequences when ignored, instead of passing meaningless resolutions that everyone "knows" are toothless. Regardless, with Iranian instransigence unlikely to change in the near future, the time is coming for the West to demand compliance with Iran's IAEA commitments, and to take steps to make sure they know we're serious. Otherwise, the Israelis -- who figure to be #1 on the Iranian hit parade -- may soon decide to pull another Osirak-style pre-emptive strike.

At least, I hope they do.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:03 PM | TrackBack

Spirit Of America

Rather than rewrite the moving explanation of Spirit of America, I'm going to just repost it here. You can donate here. I already have!

US Marines seek to equip seven (7) television stations serving local communities within Al Anbar Province, Iraq. The Province includes the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. These stations will offer information that is more accurate and balanced than existing alternatives. The goal is to improve understanding between Americans and Iraqis, build trust and reduce tensions.

Current TV news in Iraq often carries negative, highly-biased accounts of the U.S. presence. Unanswered, its effect is to stoke resentment and encourage conflict. The Marines seek to ensure the Iraqi people have access to better, more balanced information. By equipping local television stations and providing the ability to generate news and programming, the Marines will create a viable news alternative - one owned and operated by local Iraqi citizens.

The donated equipment will be the property of the Iraqi stations. The stations can create their own news and choose their own programming with the agreement that they will prohibit airing of anti-coalition messages that incite the local population. The stations also agree to sell airtime at a fair market price so that the Marines can communicate their information efficiently and quickly when needed.

For example, images were recently broadcast of a mosque in Fallujah damaged during fighting. With these stations the Marines could have provided the full picture by airing video of combatants firing on them from the mosque grounds. These stations would have enabled Iraqis to understand the complete picture. News of reconstruction projects and humanitarian assistance that balances the news of conflict will also be provided on these stations. The stations will be free to criticize the Coalition.

The Marines say, "this was started with the idea that information is key to success. It builds greater knowledge, understanding and ultimately, trust." They add, "As Operation Iraqi Freedom carries on, this venture becomes more and more important. The lack of accurate news reports during this rebuilding phase undercuts the good work being performed throughout the majority of Iraq. Instead, news is being passed by word of mouth and becomes more and more distorted as the tales are retold. It is essential to success of the Marine Corps' mission in Iraq that the Iraqi people understand our sincerest desires to help them rebuild their country and lay the foundation for a viable and free democratic society."

Use of Donations, 100% Goes to Requests

We are a 501c3 nonprofit and your donation is tax deductible. 100% of all donations for this request, net of credit card processing fees (approx. 3%) will be used for the purchase and shipping of the television studio equipment and programming requested by the Marines including digital camcorders, personal computers, video editing software and related gear (click here for a complete list) Spirit of America does not deduct any fees for overhead or administration - those expenses are funded separately. Any funds donated in excess of those needed to buy the requested equipment will be used to support expansion of this request (i.e., buy equipment for other stations) or to directly support other requests made by Americans serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Project accounting on this request will be posted on our blog within two weeks after any substantial shipping of goods to Iraq. Click here for an example of past project accounting.

I've added Spirit of America to my blogroll -- make sure you visit often and donate when you can! Via Bill from INDC Journal, who joined via Dean Esmay. Nice work, guys.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:04 PM | TrackBack

Drudge: Kerry Flipped On Abortion ... Long Ago

The Drudge Report has published a "developing" story that John Kerry has flip-flopped on abortion during his political career -- but the effect of this flavor of waffle will be muted or nonexistent:

Kerry claimed in an interview he was "opposed to abortion."

Kerry told the LOWELL SUN in October, 1972: "I would say also that it's a tragic day in the lives of everybody when abortion is looked on as an alternative to birth control or as an alternative to having a child. I think that's wrong. It should be the very last thing if it has to be anything, and I say that not just because I'm opposed to abortion but because I think that's common sense."

Kerry declared: "I think the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide."

Drudge also reports that Kerry spoke with Sun reporter John Mullins in 1975, telling him that liberals spent too much time fighting for abortion rights, draft-dodger amnesty, and against the death penalty when they should focus on larger issues like crime and the economy. The first quote came before the Roe v Wade decision and sounds like Kerry endorsed a political resolution to abortion rather than a legal approach. The latter quote indicates almost a complete indifference to the question.

However, while Matt Drudge apparently considers this a bombshell, it likely will be little more than a firecracker in this campaign, and its effect on voters will be muted if not non-existent. Calling this a flip-flop stretches the concept just a bit; Kerry hardly endorsed a pro-life agenda in either instance. His first quote isn't too far off from Bill Clinton's expressed view that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare," although Clinton never went so far as to say they were "wrong". By 1975, he couldn't be bothered to even go that far, instead chiding liberals for allowing abortion and other controversial issues to distract them from issues that Kerry felt actually affected the majority of voters. In fact, it's the closest thing to common sense that I've yet heard from John Kerry, and had they followed his political advice, they might be in better shape today.

More importantly, a revelation that Kerry wasn't a big fan of abortion 30 years ago won't hurt him with his base, won't help him with Bush's, nor will it convince swing voters either way. Whatever Kerry said to the Lowell Sun in 1972, he's firmly supportive of abortion rights now, and he's not attempting to be nuanced about it in the least. Drudge notes that Kerry will be appearing at a abortion-rights rally tomorrow in DC. Perhaps this story may lessen enthusiasm amongst a few Kerry supporters, but I rather doubt it.

Anyone who considers abortion a key issue has already decided for whom to vote in the presidential election. The people who don't have it high up on their radar screen won't care that his position has evolved over time, which makes as much sense as any other explanation.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:34 PM | TrackBack

Don't Be Shy -- Tell Us How You Really Feel

You have to hand it to the Brits; they know how to do a newspaper war. In what must be the worst case of sour grapes on record, the owner of the Express -- who lost out on a chance to buy the Telegraph -- wound up goose-stepping, making Nazi salutes and engaging in a foul-mouthed tirade during a business meeting with Telegraph execs [I've redacted the expletives]:

Express owner Richard Desmond today launched an extraordinary tirade against Telegraph bosses at a meeting of their joint venture print works, hurling a string of abuse and goosestepping around a boardroom in mockery of a German newspaper group's bid for the paper.

In scenes that will shock the Conservative party he has just pledged to support, Mr Desmond branded the Telegraph chief executive, Jeremy Deedes, a "miserable little piece of s**t" and said Germans were "all Nazis".

Bear in mind that both papers support the Tories -- this has nothing to do with politics, but with Desmond's inability to match the German bid for the Telegraph. In fact, it sounds like Desmond has become quite unhinged, when you read the entire narrative of the meeting:

In a faux-German accent, Mr Desmond asked if the Telegraph bosses - who also included managing director Hugo Drayton and printing director Bill Ellerd-Styles - were looking forward to being run by Nazis.

"That's not very helpful," Mr Deedes said, pointing out that Axel Springer - the German newspaper group currently bidding to buy the Telegraph titles - had a commitment to the state of Israel as part of its publishing philosophy.

When Mr Desmond said: "They're all Nazis", Mr Deedes replied: "That is thoroughly offensive. Could you please sit down so we can start the meeting?"

"Don't you tell me to sit down, you miserable little piece of s**t," Mr Desmond said, before he launched what witnesses described as "a stream of foul-mouthed abuse, both personal and general".

"After three years dealing with a bunch of crooks I'm starting to enjoy this," Mr Desmond said, adding, "You sat down with that f***ing fat crook and did nothing," in an apparent reference to Lord Black. He also called the Telegraph directors "f***ing c***s" and "f***ing wankers" among other names in an expletive-ridden tirade.

Desmond then closed out the considerably-shortened meeting by goosestepping around the room and suggesting to the departing Telegraph executives that they sing "Deutschland Uber Alles", challenging them to a fistfight as they left.

And you thought that Brits were the soul of reserve.

Understandably, Telegraph management refuses to attend meetings at the printing press with which both newspapers contract for services unless other parties are present to keep order. One would conjecture that said third parties should be carrying tranquilizer darts and jackets with really, really long sleeves.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:57 PM | TrackBack

I'm With Stoopid

Normally I wouldn't post on something that the Best of the Web has already covered, mostly because I figure you'll have already seen it. However, this was just too delicious to ignore. This is the level of intelligence you see at anti-Bush protests these days:

Kerry mouthbreather

This guy can't even copy a bumper sticker without screwing up. Is this the poster boy for No Child Left Behind or what? He can't spell and doesn't know when to use an apostrophe, but he wants to call Bush an idiot. This picture should appear in Webster's Dictionary next to the definition of ironic.

I'll bet he probably bought twenty copies of the paper and gave them to all his friends anyway...

UPDATE: If you follow the link to the newspaper, you'll notice that I cropped the picture down a bit to focus on the sign in question. However, this hilarious photo essay from INDC Journal makes me wonder if the original picture hadn't been cropped down quite a bit for other reasons. (via Instapundit)

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:00 PM | TrackBack

Funny You Should Ask That

I'm speechless:

A crow sitting on a utility pole triggered the third power failure in 10 days at Los Angeles International Airport, prompting security experts to ask whether the electrical grid serving the airport area is vulnerable to sabotage.

Uh, gee ... ya think?

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:33 AM | TrackBack

Bummer Of A Birthmark, Yasser (Part II)

The Israeli get-tough policy on terrorist leadership apparently has made its point -- Yasser Arafat, at least, has learned that the Israelis mean business:

Yasser Arafat forced 20 fugitives hiding in his West Bank headquarters to leave the premises early Thursday, fearing the Israeli army would invade the complex to grab them, one of the departing fugitives said. The fugitives, all members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militant group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction, have been hiding from the army in Arafat's headquarters for months. Israel has repeatedly demanded they be kicked out.

Israel has complained about Arafat's sheltering of al-Aqsa terrorists ever since he holed up in his Ramallah compound, but had always refused to give up his protection of his organization's men. AAMB, after all, belongs to Arafat's own Fatah faction of the PLO. However, after the elimination of Sheik Yassin and Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Arafat has since learned that Israel isn't interested in debate with bomb-throwers -- and that their aim has improved greatly:

Last week, Israeli security officials summoned Ismail Jabber, commander of the Palestinian national forces, and told him if the fugitives were not forced out they would invade, and if necessary, pull them out of "Arafat's desk drawer," said a fugitive, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Five of the terrorists left voluntarily after that meeting. However, with signs abounding that the Israelis were about to invade Ramallah to finish the job, he forced the other twenty out, much to their chagrin. Apparently Arafat would rather face their anger than an Apache helicopter or a battalion of Israeli soldiers.

Who says that the new Israeli policy won't get results?

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:05 AM | TrackBack

Quagmire Alert (Again)

Do you want to talk quagmire? Then you must mean the Balkans, the real six-century quagmire, into which we injected ourselves nine years ago and have yet to bring the situation to a conclusion. In yet another indication that American and other international forces will be tied down for much longer than the government indicated when they were first deployed, the BBC reports today that the foreign minister of Serbia emphatically ruled out the possibility of independence for Kosovo, even though the ethnic Albanian majority eventually expect to rule their own nation:

The new foreign minister of Serbia and Montenegro, Vuk Draskovic, has said an independent Kosovo is "impossible". Any attempt to form such a state would go against the wishes and rights of Serbs living there and would be very dangerous, he told the BBC. Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population want independence, but the Serbs are against it. ...

"It would be very dangerous for both Serbs and Albanians, because generations of Serbs would dream after that day how to liberate Kosovo, and Serbs will become European Jews, dreaming about the liberation of Jerusalem," he said.

"If we want multicultural, multi-ethnic Kosovo, that is impossible in the case of the proclaiming of the independence of Kosovo," he added.

A month ago Albanians went on a rampage, fueled by rumors of an attack on three children that turned out to be false, and burned down irreplaceable Serb churches that had stood for centuries, killing 19 people, while the UN "peacekeepers" did little to stop any of it. The worst Kosovan violence in 5 years gave notice that the status quo would not be sufficient for keeping the majority ethnic population under control for much longer. Now the Serbian government, formed by Milosevic's opposition, rejects independence and apparently wants to return to minority rule in the province. In the meantime, no one has presented any other solutions for an end to the Kosovo standoff.

People who continually apply Vietnam analogies and words like 'quagmire' to Iraq seem strangely quiet on Kosovo, Bosnia, and the entire effort in the Balkans, probably because the UN runs the Balkans program. However, it perfectly demonstrates the UN's incompetence to handle these situations. Here we all are, five years after the UN-mandated intervention, and no solution is even on the table to resolve the crisis. We're not doing anything but treading water while the ethnic tensions continue to rise due to the stagnation of the process. No one has even postulated the philosophy of a solution, or at least none that has been adopted, other than to stick a bunch of lightly armed troops into an area to hang out and look tough.

Contrast this with Iraq, where the CPA has always intended on forming an interim government to create democratic processes to protect the rights of all ethnicities, and then to hand sovereignty to it while continuing to provide security to the country. If we hand off sovereignty on June 30 as promised, we will have managed to do so (after removing one of the bloodiest tyrants in recent memory) in just 15 months. It won't be perfect, and we'll still have to maintain a significant military presence there for quite a while, but at least we're working towards a coherent solution and consistent policy.

So when people warn about the quagmire we face, tell them that you agree; we should demand a solution to the Balkans or else the UN should transfer its mandate to a Coalition that actually functions properly.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:43 AM | TrackBack

April 21, 2004

Everything You Need To Know About UNSCAM

Claudia Rosett wrote a lengthy and detailed explanation for today's Commentary website which takes readers on a well-written tour of the disaster that the UN Oil for Food program became. Rosett, who has been tenacious in her investigative reporting on this subject for the Wall Street Journal, collects the sorry mess into a coherent and chronological narrative that lays out the scandal in devastating fashion (via Hugh Hewitt):

The tale has been all very interesting, and all very complicated. For those who look yearningly to the UN for answers to the world’s problems, it has provoked, perhaps, some introspection about the pardonable corruption that threatens even the most selfless undertakings. For those who believe the UN can do nothing right, Oil-for-Food, whatever it was about, is a delicious vindication that everyone and everything at the world organization is crooked, the institution a fiasco, and politicians who support it fit for recall at the next electoral opportunity.

The excitement may be justified, but a number of important facts and conclusions have gone missing. Oil-for-Food, run by the UN from 1996 to 2003, did, in fact, deliver some limited relief to Iraqis. It also evolved into not only the biggest but the most extravagant, hypocritical, and blatantly perverse relief program ever administered by the UN. But Oil-for-Food is not simply a saga of one UN program gone wrong. It is also the tale of a systematic failure on the part of what is grandly called the international community.

Oil-for-Food tainted almost everything it touched. It was such a kaleidoscope of corruption as to defy easy summary, let alone concentration on the main issues.

Be prepared to spend some significant time with this article. I don't think excerpting it will do it justice.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:39 PM | TrackBack

WaPo: Kerry Goes Wobbly

The Washington Post editorial board noticed a not-so-subtle shift in John Kerry's policy statements on Iraq. John Kerry has abandoned the goal of building a democracy in Iraq for mere "stability" to give expedient cover to a fast American retreat:

"WE NEED A reasonable plan and a specific timetable for self-government" in Iraq, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said in December. "That means completing the tasks of security and democracy in the country -- not cutting and running in order to claim a false success." On another occasion, he said: "It would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops."

Contrast that with what Mr. Kerry told reporters last week: "With respect to getting our troops out, the measure is the stability of Iraq. [Democracy] shouldn't be the measure of when you leave. I have always said from day one that the goal here . . . is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy."

But as the Post points out, there are several Middle East models of stability, almost all of which would perpetuate the problems that we face, in terrorism and in diplomacy, in Southwest Asia:

Mr. Kerry now argues that there is a third option. But what would that be? "I can't tell you what it's going to be," he said to reporters covering his campaign. "That stability can take several forms." True; in the Middle East, there is the stability of Islamic dictatorship, the stability of military dictatorship and the stability of monarchical dictatorship. In Lebanon, there is the stability of permanent foreign occupation and de facto ethnic partition. None is in the interest of the United States; all have helped create the extremism and terrorism against which this nation is now at war.

Winston Churchill once famously remarked, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." While I don't think Kerry expounds the opposite, his statement expresses a breathtaking disregard for the rights of a people to govern themselves, as well as the benefits of their doing so. We didn't accept a "third option" for Japan, which had never known anything close to democracy until the end of WWII, and such a defeatist attitude about democracy in the Middle East would bode ill for Kerry's foreign policy if elected president.

What we do not need now is a leader who blithely accepts the creation of another autocracy, mullahcracy, or kleptocracy in Iraq, selling out the region for the sake of stability. That is the policy under which the West has operated for decades, and look where it has led; scores of millions of Arabs living under oppressive regimes, mostly under the rule of ethnic minorities (especially Iraq and Syria), and encouraged to foment hatred against the West as a scapegoat for their misery.

For decades, we have stuck billions of dollars into the pockets of those causing the oppression and almost lunatic anger of their subjects, and told ourselves that stability was a worthwhile trade-off. September 11th should have eliminated that particular illusion for all time. "Stability" without democracy, the "stability" of totalitarianism, merely puts off the violence and allows it to fester and spread. That John Kerry fails to recognize this may be his most important disqualifying characteristic for the office he seeks.

UPDATE: Regular reader Gary Comer notes in an e-mail:

Here is a part of Kerry’s congressional testimony from 1971:

"Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist."
- John F. Kerry, Congressional Testimony, April 22, 1971.

This is one area where John Kerry seems to be consistent: his belief in some sort of equivalence of various governmental structures, whether they be totalitarian or democratic. I could be interpreting his statement incorrectly, but it suggests to me that Kerry at least at that time was hinting that these different forms of government were all equal in satisfying people’s needs.

I think Gary gets it exactly right -- another example of the moral relativism of the left. Kerry proposes to run the world's leading democracy while publicly claiming that democracy is nothing special. Is that what America wants for its president?

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 12:54 PM | TrackBack

New Blog: Friends of Saddam

If you are interested in following the burgeoning oil-for-food scam that the UN manipulated into multi-billion-dollar payoffs to Saddam Hussein and its own management, then you must add Friends of Saddam to your blogroll. Run by the Commissar but outside of his alter ego, Friends of Saddam will definitely be the central information resource for all UNSCAM developments.

His latest post reviews an article from The Scotsman (UK), which details the efforts of Claude Hankes-Drielsma, the British investigator leading the corruption probe at the moment:

Mr Hankes-Drielsma, an adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) who is overseeing an investigation by the forensic accountants KPMG, said: "From the evidence I have so far, the report will produce some of the most disturbing information that you have ever seen.

"There is no question that where the evidence is beyond doubt, the US will take action to put people who defrauded the system to court, and for the courts to apply appropriate justice. That may be criminal courts as well as civil ones."

In a scathing interview, he said the extent of the corruption, and the UN’s failure to tackle it, made the organisation unfit for any major role in the interim Iraqi government that will take power on 30 June.

Read the whole article, and keep checking back at Friends of Saddam.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:43 AM | TrackBack

New Blog: JAG Wire

Based on encouragement from Lord High Commissioner Hugh Hewitt, "Whiskey", an active-duty attorney for the Judge Advocate Generals Corps in the Air Force, has begun her own blog, JAG Wire. I heard about it from ol' whats-his-name at Power Line. It's a nicely designed Typepad site, and based on one whole day of blogging, looks to be well-written and insightful as well. (She's got the late-night blogging ritual down pat, so far.) Her first substantive post debunks the current meme on the need for a draft:

So let me get this straight . . . we are going to stop offering incentives to volunteer and instead draft spoiled rich kids just to make sure all “classes” are represented? It’s like some kind of twisted affirmative action program. And why does any of this matter when so many so-called “upper class” gentlemen (Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, I could go on . . . ) dodged the draft anyway?

Whiskey notes that Chuck Hagel has been hanging out with Charles Rangel too much lately in the same fever swamps. For those of you who think that bipartisanship is an end in itself, this post should easily disabuse you of that notion. Check out JAG Wire when you get the chance.

UPDATE: Whiskey e-mails me to inform me that I initially had her gender incorrect. D'oh! I've updated the pronouns accordingly. This reminds me of my dating days when -- well, never mind, that's a story for another time ...

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:40 AM | TrackBack

ABC: Oil-For-Food Corruption at Highest Levels

ABC News continues its excellent series on the United Nations Oil-For-Food program, which descended into a massive scam that netted Saddam Hussein -- supposedly the target of the sanctions that prompted the program -- more than $10 billion, and apparently lined the pockets of many others at the UN (via Instapundit):

At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS. One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

This story has bounced around for a while since January, when ABC produced a list of people, some of whom ran the program and some of whom actively blocked UN enforcement of resolutions against Iraq. What ABC has now is independent evidence of the money trail, and it leads directly to the UN:

Investigators say the smoking gun is a letter to former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed, obtained by ABCNEWS and not yet in the hands of the United Nations. In the letter, dated Aug, 10, 1998, an Iraqi oil executive mentions a request by a Panama-based company, African Middle East Petroleum Co., to buy Iraqi oil — along with a suggestion that Sevan had a role in the deal. "Mr. Muwafaq Ayoub of the Iraqi mission in New York informed us by telephone that the abovementioned company is the company that Mr. Sevan cited to you during his last trip to Baghdad," the executive wrote in Arabic.

A handwritten note indicated that permission for the oil purchase was granted by "the Vice President of the Republic" on Aug. 15, 1998.

The second page of the letter contains a table entitled "Quantity of Oil Allocated and Given to Mr. Benon Sevan." The table lists a total of 7.3 million barrels of oil as the "quantity executed" — an amount that, if true, would have generated an illegal profit of as much as $3.5 million.

"Somebody who is running the Oil-for-Food program for the United Nations should not be receiving any benefit of any kind from a rogue dictator who was perpetuating terror in his country," said Hankes-Drielsma.

Read the whole thing. This story will explode in the next few weeks, and the UN involvement in Iraq along with it. Those arguing for the UN's moral imprimatur on any new Iraqi government are only pressing for continued corruption in an area that can't afford it any longer.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:23 AM | TrackBack

London Telegraph: Americans More Phlegmatic Than Media Suggest

The London Telegraph has reviewed the results of two polls, one by CNN/USA Today and the other by Gallup/ABC/Washington Post, and reports that American determination regarding Iraq has been underestimated, as has support for George Bush:

In a boost for President George W Bush, opinion polls yesterday showed that the American public strongly backs a continued presence in Iraq, even though they believe the effort there is in trouble. Though 59 per cent of Americans believe the US is "bogged down", two thirds said troops should remain until order is restored, even if that means more casualties. ...

The polls refute the belief that ordinary Americans have no stomach for casualties or are oblivious to the problems facing coalition forces.

Although our national media continues to operate from hysteria mode, making numerous Tet analogies every time someone shoots a gun off in the Sunni triangle, Americans as a whole understand the nature of the Iraq operation and its fit into the greater context of the war on terror. This understanding, thankfully, transcends partisan boundaries as well, since two-thirds of respondents support the continued presence of American troops in Iraq even though casualties continue to occur. 57 percent believe, as Bush has asserted, that the war has increased the long-term security of the US.

John Kerry's only hope, in the face of these numbers, is hopelessness. Expect him to sell it in spades during the coming months.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:08 AM | TrackBack

John O'Neill: Kerry No War Hero to Veterans

John O'Neill, who took over John Kerry's command of the swift boat he commanded in Vietnam after Kerry's return home, spoke out on television for the first time in over 30 years on CNN yesterday:

"I saw some war heroes ... John Kerry is not a war hero," said John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who joined the Navy's Coastal Division 11 two months after the future senator left Vietnam. "He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11." ...

In an interview Tuesday on CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports," O'Neill said allegations about atrocities made by Kerry after his return render him "unfit" to be president.

"His allegations that people committed war crimes in that unit, and throughout Vietnam, were lies. He knew they were lies when he said them, and they were very damaging lies," said O'Neill, adding that other former sailors from the same unit also plan to come forward to take on Kerry, whose Vietnam service has figured prominently in his campaign for the White House.

O'Neill squared off against Kerry in 1971 on the Dick Cavett Show to debate Kerry's contention of widespread atrocities committed by US military personnel during the war, asking Kerry -- a Naval officer -- why he never reported any atrocities, as is required. On Sunday's Meet the Press appearance, Kerry admitted to Russert only that he had chosen his words poorly, specifically the use of the word "atrocities", but that he had told the truth about Vietnam and American soldiers and sailors. While Kerry plays word games, however, O'Neill makes it clear that the meaning of Kerry's infamous Vietnam Veterans Against the War campaign against the US military had little to do with the vocabulary used:

Asked whether Kerry's expressions of regret were sufficient, O'Neill pointed to the fact that Kerry on Sunday characterized his 1971 charges as "a little bit excessive."

"It's really not a matter of forgiveness. It's a matter of fitness to be the commander-in-chief of all U.S. forces," he told Blitzer. "The damaging lies that he told about war criminals have haunted people's entire lives. So it's just a little bit late, in the course of a presidential campaign, to say it's a bit excessive."

Tim Russert during the MTP interview replayed a clip from Kerry's 1971 MTP interview, and reviewed the list of specific charges that Kerry leveled during his VVAW days. Kerry refused to disavow any of his charges, and insisted instead that what he said back then was the truth, despite the later revelations of the fraudulence of the so-called "Winter Soldier" reports:

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...

SEN. KERRY: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.

MR. RUSSERT: So you stand by that?

SEN. KERRY: A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been.

Kerry may face a brewing storm over his inability to disavow his past testimony. O'Neill, who went gladly into obscurity after his 1971 tangle with Kerry, made it clear that he will be sticking around during the campaign this time, and he'll be bringing his own "band of brothers" to back him up -- the same people with whom Kerry served and then stabbed in the back once home. O'Neill lays a large part of the returning veterans' hostile reception on Kerry and his peers who made them appear to be baby-killing maniacs:

O'Neill said Tuesday that he and the others who served with Kerry -- who "would much rather have nothing to do with this" -- feel they have "no choice" but to come forward, which he said would dispel the notion that Vietnam veterans as a group are supportive of Kerry's candidacy.

"We were there, we know the truth, and we know that this guy's unfit to be commander-in-chief," said O'Neill, who took over command of Kerry's boat after he left. "I think you'll find that people are very, very angry at John Kerry. They remember his career in Vietnam as a short, controversial one, and they believe that only Hollywood could turn this guy into a war hero."

Kerry, who attempts to both run on and away from his war and anti-war record, may find his own "band of brothers" dwarfed by the Vietnam veterans who still deeply resent his blanket and inaccurate accusations that made their lives so difficult in the 1970s and perhaps ever since. Be prepared to see the Kerry campaign begin some character attacks on O'Neill and anyone else who joins in. It wouldn't be the first time that Kerry built his political career by the character assassination of this generation of American servicemen.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:43 AM | TrackBack

April 20, 2004

Caption Contest #7 Winners!

The judge has spoken -- and the judge in this case is none other than Jon from QandO, a fantastic blog that should be on your daily-read list (after Captain's Quarters, of course!). Today, together with Jon's partner McQ, they've posted a review of the Arab press reaction to the Madrid bombings, the real status of the deficit, and especially the new effort to bring Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the big screen.

In short, QandO is like Alice's Restaurant -- you can find anything you want.

Jon was kind enough to provide this picture for our Caption Contest ...

... and now he's selected this week's winners! Here they are:

Captain's Award (Sailor Moon) -- Spd Rdr:

Now pay attention, children. This is a voting booth. VO-ting boooo-the. On election day, you little guys go to the table marked "DEM" and the nice lady will let you go into the booth. Pull the "blue" lever. Got that? Pull the the BLUE lever.
Don't touch the red lever or your mommy will die.

You Have The Conn #1 (Peter Rabbit) -- CCWBass (2 submissions):

But then Fiver, displaying a remarkable sense of nuance, asked, "How do you ask a rabbit to be the last rabbit to die for this warren?" [bonus points for Watership Down reference!]

Why, just the other day, as I anticipated yet another photo-op here amongst my urban constituency, I felt the need to become more in touch with my voting block so I popped my favorite Kid N' Play shizznit into the CD player and was stunned, stunned I tell you, at the intensity and the anger and the powerful social commentary of this important social poetry. Word, children. Word, indeed.

You Have The Conn #2 (Tickle Me Elmo) -- RWN:

(boy in right foreground) "Cut the crap, John, show us the center-fold like uncle Bill did for his class!"

You Have The Conn #3 (Barney) -- Chris B:

Shooting began today for the pilot episode of CBS' new series, "Ms. King & The Scarecrow". Senators Clinton and Kerry play two 'retropsychics' with complete clairvoyance in hindsight. While using their powers to fight a vast right-wing conspiracy, their professional respect ignites into passionate ambition. CBS says regular production of the series will begin in early November when the cast is free of 'outstanding obligations'.

Report To The Nurse's Office (Pee Wee Herman) -- JBlake:

Hillary: Don't look at me! I saw you tilt!
J F'ing K: ...and this boys and girls is a freedom fighter on his way to see 72 vir.... er...nevermind....

I have to say that picking winners gets tougher every darned week -- and this week, there were a ton that I thought were terrific. (Now you know why I like guest judges!) Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage Jon's intellect and my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

Next contest will be on Friday, with guest judge Gerbera Tetra!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 11:19 PM | TrackBack

California May Regulate Porn Shoots

In a move that underscores the nanny state and the hypocrisy of big-government California, lawmakers are now proposing to require the use of condoms in all productions of pornography:

Health officials in California have said the recent infection of two porn actors with the HIV virus means they may force performers to wear condoms. Los Angeles County officials said they believed existing regulations gave them the authority to require condom use.

And the state Division of Occupational Health and Safety is also planning to carry out inspections of productions next week, the LA Times reported.

First, let me state that I have no dog in the fight regarding pornography per se; it's rather silly stuff and a complete waste of time, but as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and no one gets physically injured, I don't see any reason to ban it. My opinion on this is not some sort of Trojan horse, pun intended, but merely a observation about the inanity of this proposal.

All that said, California is one of 49 states that bans prostitution. Prostitution is defined in the California Penal Code as sexual conduct for money or other consideration, with exceptions for stage performances, plays, or other entertainment open to the public. This means that you can be arrested for paying for sex in your car, but not if you get paid for sex on stage, or on film in this case. (Prospective johns should take note and hie thee to stages.) This hypocrisy keeps the multibillion-dollar porn business firmly situated in sunny California instead of being raided out of every jurisdiction. Having sex for money as public entertainment, as opposed to personal enjoyment, is a First Amendment issue to Californians.

Now, instead, the state proposes to require the use of condoms as a Cal-OSHA safety issue. How exactly does the state plan to enforce this proposition? I imagine that inspections will become a popular duty amongst Cal-OSHA agents. One supposes that not only will they have to check for their use, but also their proper fit and adjustment. But what happens when the industry claims that unprotected sex also constitutes speech, or argues that the law invades the privacy of its actors? Doesn't the choice of sexual accoutrements fall squarely into the legal precedent of "consenting adults" as stated in the Supreme Court's Lawrence decision?

The entire notion of making pornography safer for its actors by creating Cal-OSHA requirements is laughable on its face, almost a parody in and of itself. It speaks volumes about the cluelessness of the California bureaucracy that they would even suggest it. California eschewed moral principles to cash in on pornography a long time ago. This faux concern about the health of the people involved -- a transparent political effort to show some action in the face of the HIV threat -- is far too little and way too late.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:28 PM | TrackBack

The CPA Memo: We Need To Take Forceful Action

The Village Voice published an article earlier today based on an e-mail from the Coalition Provisional Authority which was forwarded to them. The memo, which dates back to March, foresaw civil war if the CPA and the US did not start exerting its authority in Iraq, and specifically mentions a renegade cleric named Moqtada al-Sadr. The Voice, typically, takes the small mention of civil war and explodes it into the entire point of the memo. The subhead of the article, in fact, reads "A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq".

However, in reading the actual memo, the author points not to an inevitable civil war but instead to the numerous opportunities surrounding the CPA to improve its performance and its position with the Iraqis, the vast majority of which want to see the US succeed. The anonymous writer leads his missive with unabashed support for the US effort in Iraq and its continuance:

I want to emphasize: As great as the problems we face, and the criticisms back home, and mindful of the sacrifice that almost 600 Americans have made, what we have accomplished in Iraq is worth it. While Iraqis joke, “Americans go home — and take us with you.” The gratitude which they express is sincere and unsolicited, and not limited to a single political class.

However, in the next breath, he underscores what he sees as the primary obstacle in stabilizing Iraq:

The political bickering back in the United States has worried Iraqis, who fear that a Kerry victory will mean an American withdrawal, short-term civil war, and long-term empowerment of the most radical elements of society throughout the Islamic world.

The Voice never mentions this as the trigger for a civil war, even though they describe numerous other "triggers" instead. It becomes very apparent that the writer's concern about mission failure has nothing to do with being a bull in a china shop, or breaking stuff in a Pottery Barn, as Bob Woodward described the analogy; his primary concern is that we will do a half-assed job by being too timid about enforcing security and pushing for true democratic reform. As an example of this issue, he specifically mentions the British laissez-faire approach in the south where they have faced little armed opposition, but only because the British are too busy looking the other way:

We have made the most progress in Baghdad; the south may be calm, but it seems the calm before the storm. Iranian money is pouring in. British policy is to not rock the boat, and so they do nothing that may result in confrontation. This is a mistake. We are faced with an Iranian challenge. Whether Iranian activities are sanctioned or not by the Iranian actors with which the State Department likes to do business should be moot, since those Iranians who offer engagement lack the power to deliver on their promises. In Bosnia and Afghanistan, we were likewise challenged by the Iranians. In both cases, the Iranians promised their intentions were benign. In Bosnia, we rolled up the Qods Force anyway, and Bosnia has remained pro-Western in its orientation. In Afghanistan, we wrung our hands and did little, worried that the Iranians might respond to confrontation as if we did anything to enforce our word. This projected weakness.

The author recommends, instead of conducting sensitivity seminars, forceful action to stem the Iranian influence in the south and better security in Baghdad and other areas that had not yet become compliant with the central authority:

Then again, as I wrote in a memo earlier this week to some of you, the interim constitution is just an exercise in Governing Council and CPA masturbation if not enforced. The fact that we do nothing to roll up Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi which is running around Najaf, arresting and torturing people, and trying Iraqis before their own kangaroo courts signals to Iraqis that we lack seriousness. It also telegraphs weakness not only to Muqtada al-Sadr, but also to others who realize they cannot win legitimacy through the ballot box, and therefore will seek to grab it through violence. Yes, we would have violence for two or three days after arresting Muqtada (whom, after all, has had murder charges leveled against him by an Iraqi prosecutor), but that would subside. Since so many of us have gone through it, allow me a metaphor to the small pox vaccine: Getting the vaccine results in a pustule which is unpleasant, but the vaccine also prevents the potential of thousands of other pustules. Arresting Muqtada would signal [al-Sadr's] weakness, and would make other populist leaders think twice.

And as for the other popular notion on the Left -- turning Iraq over to the United Nations -- the writer clearly predicts a catastrophe if that policy is adopted:

It would be a very grave mistake to transfer authority to the United Nations. Kofi Annan once said that “Saddam Hussein is a man I can do business with.” Not only can we expect such a tape to be aired often on Iraqi television, but also we can expect further revelations that Kofi Annan was speaking literally and, not just figuratively. ... Already, the audit has uncovered serious wrongdoing in banks, and discrepancies of billions of dollars. Anger is rising at just how little Iraq got for its money under UN auspices, when the UN oversaw contracts that inflated prices and delivered substandard if not useless goods. While the Western press has focused on officials like Benon Sevan who, according to documents, received discounted oil, the real scandal appears to be in some of the trading companies which would convert such oil shares to cash. For example, Sevan cashed his oil share with a Panamanian trading company, which, it turns out, was controlled by Boutros-Boutros Ghali.

The Village Voice cherry-picked a bit to write its analysis, but give them credit for releasing a near-complete text of the memo for everyone to analyze on their own. In truth, people use bits and pieces of this memo to support a number of political stances. However, when one reads the memo in its entirety, the inescapable conclusion is not that the writer has given up on American efforts in Iraq, but that only American efforts will solve the problems. One can only assume that the writer would be applauding the current efforts in Najaf and Fallujah to finally assert CPA authority and to demonstrate the overwhelming force at their disposal, so that the small bands of insurgents cannot force the general population to cower. We need to step in, clean up the corruption, expand our presence in Iraq much wider than the Green Zone, eliminate the Iranian-influenced radical militias, and get control of the borders.

Read the entire memo.

UPDATE: Orson Scott Card's opinion piece from April 11th makes a good point:

And Iraq always required exactly the solution that we have been imposing for the past year. This is why President Bush's father did not take out Saddam when he had the chance back in 1991: without Saddam's repressive regime, every would-be dictator in Iraq would have made his play for the top spot then, just as they're doing now.

So we couldn't get rid of Saddam until we had the national will to stick with the job until a strong government with popular support could fill the power vacuum.

It is not a "failure" of our policy that Iraq is suffering from attempted rebellions -- the best hope for Iraq's future is for these warlords to make their play while our troops are still there to slap them down and clean them out.

Yup, and better there and now than later and here. (Hat tip: Mal.)

UPDATE: Welcome to Instapundit readers!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:10 PM | TrackBack

Captain's Caption Contest #7!

What time is it, everyone? It's Caption Contest time!

This week's entry comes from Jon at QandO, who will be guest-judging this week's contest. Q and O are two letters of the alphabet, of course, and perhaps that's what John Kerry is debating with this group of constituents. But note where Kerry is, and who gets the chair behind him:

I'm sure you can come up with an appropriate caption for such a charming depiction of the political diversity of our education system! Simply submit it as a comment (no e-mails, please) on this post. Comments will remain open until Tuesday at 6 PM CT, when Jon and I will select the most notable, the most intelligent, and the most humorous of all the captions!

Bribes don't hurt, either. I didn't get to be Captain by working hard, dammit!

BUMP 4/17 -- Great entries are already rolling in. Can you say "recount," children? I knew you could! ...

BUMP 4/19 ...

BUMP 4/20: Only a few hours left to go! ...

COMMENTS CLOSED: Thanks for all the great entries! Jon from QandO will start picking out his favorites, and we should have the winners later tonight or tomorrow morning...

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:00 PM | TrackBack

Thanks For The Help

Iraqi insurgents attempted a prison break in Baghdad today, shelling a compound where American forces hold several thousand Iraqis suspected of being part of Saddam's Ba'ath regime and/or the post-liberation insurgency. Unfortunately, the Gang That Can't Shell Straight wound up causing over a hundred casualties -- entirely in the inmate population:

Guerrillas fired a barrage of mortar rounds at Baghdad's largest prison Tuesday, killing 22 prisoners in an attack a U.S. general said may have been an attempt to spark an uprising against their American guards. ... Ninety-two prisoners were wounded in the mortar attack on the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, 25 of them seriously, said Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a U.S. military spokeswoman.

"This isn't the first time that we have seen this kind of attack. We don't know if they are trying to inspire an uprising or a prison break," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told The Associated Press.

All of the casualties were security detainees, meaning they were suspected of involvement in the anti-U.S. insurgency or of being part of Saddam's ousted regime. The prison houses some 5,000 security prisoners.

The insurgents seem to have poor intelligence, poor targeting skills, or both. The incident demonstrates the amateurish nature of the insurgency. That doesn't mean amateurs can't be deadly; 22 dead Iraqi prisoners attest to their danger, as well as the dozens of American soldiers who have died in the various eruptions of violence this month. In some ways, amateurs can be deadlier than professionals, because professionals know when and how to attack and how to cover themselves. They don't kill off large numbers of their own people while inflicting no casualties on their targets, and they don't get a whole lot of people around them killed in the return fire.

Besides, the deadliest encounters have been ambushes, where the American forces have taken most of their casualties. When our troops have fought heads-up, on either a defensive or offensive posture, the combat capability of the insurgents has been exposed as woefully inadequate, even for the unit sizes they present. As John Burns noted after he was briefly held by al-Sadr's militia:

Some of the militiamen were in their 50's and 60's, but most were young, some no more than 12 or 13. Weapons training among them appeared virtually nonexistent; Kalashnikovs with loaded magazines and safety catches off were nonchalantly waved in the air. ... One man of about 25 thrust a long-bladed knife into an imaginary belly, telling his companions, "This is what I will do to the American infidels when they enter here."

As I noted at the time, that sounds like a great plan, if he lives long enough to actually get that close to one. "Bringing a knife to a gunfight" is an old proverb describing a pseudo-fatal cluelessness. In this case, with this description of what appears to be no more than a casually organized mob, the pseudo- part of that description may not apply.

What this tells us is that we face a disorganized and unprofessional group of fanatics who substitute religious fervor for military tactics and strategy. Marines in Fallujah noted that their offensive maneuvers against their entrenched defense amount to little more than suicide missions. Marines have faced these tactics before, in the Pacific Theater of WWII, and in that case they faced a disciplined, professional army -- and the result was still mass slaughter every time the "banzai charges" occurred.

There is no reason to suspect that the results would be any different now than in the island battles against the Japanese, except that the casualties will be radically lower as they face a poorly-led and badly-constituted militia instead of the crack troops of the Japanese Imperial Army. The only way the Marines in lose this matchup is if the American will to win dissipates. If the Iraqi militias get a hint that we will pull out or walk away from Iraq, it will only encourage the worst elements in the country to rise up and push us out.

Instead of hysterical analogies to Tet, Americans need to keep some historical perspective on the mission and the objectives, and let the best military force in history do the job of which they are more than capable.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:06 PM | TrackBack

Italy: 1000s of Automatic Weapons Bound for US

Italy announced that they have seized a ship with thousands of Kalishnikov rifles, apparently illegal, bound for the US -- raising the question of their intended use:

Police in southern Italy say they have seized a large illegal arms shipment from Romania destined for the US. Customs officers in the port of Gioia Tauro, in Calabria, discovered 7,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles after noting irregularities in the documentation.

The cargo, estimated to be worth some 6m euros (£3.9m, $7.15m), was declared as arms for civilian, not military, use.

Italian authorities stopped the shipment when they discovered "discrepancies" between the goods and the customs declaration by the shipper. The cargo included such accessories as reloading devices and bayonets. While the so-called assault rifles are legal for collectors, 7,000 of them seem to be a bit much for that market niche, and the Italians became very suspicious of their intended use. The receiver is an American company that will likely be answering some tough questions today from the FBI.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:26 AM | TrackBack

US to Consider Lowering Airport Security?

US airport security, after having been tightened up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, may be loosened up again in order to allow airport retail businesses to recapture their lost revenue streams:

Pittsburgh International could become the nation's first major airport allowed to abandon the federal government's post-Sept. 11 rule that lets only ticketed passengers proceed past security checkpoints to the gate. If successful, the test might become a model for other airports.

Pittsburgh is a candidate for the experiment for two reasons: It has a centralized security checkpoint, in one terminal, and it has a 100-store shopping mall that has suffered a drop in business because it can be reached only by ticketed passengers.

If successful, I would imagine that Minneapolis-St. Paul airport might be next in line, as our airport has a similar configuration and a substantial retail presence. However, I can't think of a dumber security initiative in a time of war. Non-passengers would have to endure the same security checks as ticketed passengers, making for even longer lines at security checkpoints. Does it make sense to overload security personnel with additional work when they're supposed to focus on real security threats?

And note who they'll be searching, and why. The long wait to get through security will be extended, God knows how long, so that sheeple who aren't even flying can buy overpriced merchandise at the airport instead of going to their local mall, where the prices are better. I don't buy anything except newspapers and magazines at the airport for that reason; the prices are ridiculous. Now travelers will be forced to stand in long lines, tapping their toes impatiently and wondering if they'll make it to the gate, so that fools can pay 20% over retail for clothing or electronics.

Let's hope that this experiment flops quickly, or else we will all need to start planning two-hour early arrivals at our local airports in order to make sure we don't get stuck behind the world's dumbest shoppers.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:19 AM | TrackBack

Woodward Says No Secret Oil Deal, Suggests Kerry Learn to Read

After skimming Bob Woodward's new book, "Path to War," Democrats led by John Kerry have charged that the Bush administration concocted a secret deal with the Saudi royal family to lower oil prices prior to the election. Kerry ranted about the subject repeatedly over the past couple of days. But the White House, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, and even Bob Woodward himself say that his book never made that claim:

The charge that Saudi Arabia made a secret pact with President Bush to lower gasoline prices in time to help him in the November presidential election was denied Monday by the White House, the Saudi ambassador to the United States -- and even by journalist Bob Woodward, who raised the specter of such a quid pro quo in a book released Monday.

"I don't say there's a secret deal or any collaboration on this," Woodward told CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday. "What I say in the book is that the Saudis ... hoped to keep oil prices low during the period before the election, because of its impact on the economy. That's what I say."

As Bandar noted, Saudi Arabia doesn't "live on the moon"; when the world economy slows down, it affects his country as well. With oil prices shooting up -- a not-uncommon affect during a war, when countries start hoarding as a hedge against potential shortages -- inflation becomes a real possibility. Nor is that the only self-interest involved. Once prices rise to a high enough level, it becomes economically and politically more viable for countries like the US to start drilling and pumping its own oil from their own reserves. An expanded drilling effort by the United States would not only severely curb demand for their own product, lowering their profit potential long-term, it would also reduce any political influence Saudi Arabia has on the US, and with the American military presence surrounding their country, now is not a particularly good time to lose traction in Washington.

Bandar, CNN reports, said pretty much the same thing at the beginning of the month after he met with Condoleezza Rice regarding OPEC's proposed production cuts. Besides, as Bandar also notes, this is not the first time that an American government has urged them to pick up production in order to lower costs:

"We hoped that the oil prices will stay low, because that's good for America's economy, but more important, it's good for our economy and the international economy," he said. "This is nothing unusual. President Clinton asked us to keep the prices down in the year 2000. In fact, I can go back to 1979, President Carter asked us to keep the prices down to avoid the malaise."

"So yes, it's in our interests and in America's interests to keep the prices down. But that was not a deal."

So Clinton made "secret" arrangements to assist American consumers in an election year too! Damn him for that inexpensive gasoline I bought on the way to vote for George Bush! Even Carter tried to make "secret" pre-election deals, but typically he forgot that 1979 wasn't an election year. And also typically, he failed miserably; in 1979 I wound up enduring two-hour gasoline lines, and I could only buy gasoline on even-numbered days because the last number of my license plate ended in an even number, thanks to California gas rationing.

What Kerry and other leading Democrats -- who sent an asinine letter to the White House demanding information on his conspiracy to commit economic diplomacy -- wanted to do is to set up a catch-22 for the election. Under this conspiracy theory, Bush could be blamed for higher gas prices and for lower gas prices. Either way, he would be attacked, the former showing his ineptitude and the latter his conspiratorial bent.

Unfortunately, Bob Woodward didn't want to play along, although he may wind up being somewhat irrelevant as the Kerry campaign will flog this for the legions of the brain-dead who believe that Bush conspires with the Sauds on everything he does. Everyone else will recognize this as nutcase politics, the kind of demagoguery that you'd expect to hear from back-woods, tax-resistor militia rather than a credible major-party candidate.

UPDATE: From reader Charles Allen, here's an example of the Kerry two-step on gasoline prices, from March 30th:

The presumptive Democratic nominee complained that Bush has not taken steps to drive prices down... "This administration has done nothing with OPEC to reduce the gas prices," Kerry said during a rally at the University of California, San Diego.

And yesterday ...

Courting the Jewish vote in Florida, the state at the center of the disputed 2000 election, the presumptive Democratic nominee cited a report that President Bush and his senior advisers made "a secret White House deal" with the Saudis to deliver lower gas prices. "Last night ... it was reported that in the Oval Office discussion around whether to invade Iraq that the president, the vice president (Dick Cheney), the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld) made a deal with Saudi Arabia that would deliver lower gas prices..."

You see? As always, Kerry twists things any way he can, inventing conspiracies when his allegations of ineptitude don't pan out. He's the perfect candidate for the International ANSWER paranoid nutcases.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:41 AM | TrackBack

April 19, 2004

Kerry Flip-Flops Again, Readies His Petard

John Kerry, who yesterday told Tim Russert that his military records would be open for the press to review, apparently changed his mind in the proceeding 24 hours:

The day after John Kerry said he would make all his military records available for inspection at his campaign headquarters, a spokesman said the senator would not release any new documents, leaving undisclosed many of Kerry's evaluations by his Navy commanding officers, some medical records, and possibly other material.

This is what John Kerry said during his interview with Russert on yesterday's Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: The Boston Globe reports that your commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibberd has suggested that you perhaps didn't earn your first Purple Heart and question whether you should have left Vietnam after six months. In order to deal with those kinds of issues, when I asked President Bush about his service in the Texas Guard, he agreed to release all his military records, health records, everything. Would you agree to release all your military records?

SEN. KERRY: I have. I've shown them--they're available to you to come and look at. I think that's a very unfair characterization by that person. I mean, politics is politics. The medical records show that I had shrapnel removed from my arm. We were in combat. We were in a very, very--probably one of the most frightening--if you ask anybody who was with me, the two guys who were with me, was probably the most frightening night that they had that they were in Vietnam and we're...

MR. RUSSERT: But you'll make all your records public.

SEN. KERRY: They are. People can come and see them at headquarters and take a look at them. I'm not going to--but I'll tell you this. I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of what we did. I know what happened. And the Navy 35 years ago made a decision and it's the Navy's decision and I think it was the right decision.

But now, the Kerry campaign sings a different tune. When a reporter showed up to review the records, apparently believing that Kerry meant what he said, Kerry's campaign manager refused to allow any access to them. The campaign spokesman, Michael Meehan, later said that no records other than those released to the Boston Globe -- not the comprehensive records Kerry told Russert he'd release -- would be made available to anyone.

This flip-flop is particularly egregious, since Kerry and his cronies hounded George Bush for weeks, insisting that he release his complete military records to prove he wasn't a deserter -- a charge for which none of them ever produced a single bit of evidence. Bush has released all of his records to the press after making the same promise to Russert on the same television show. Kerry, however, reneged with as little thought as he seems to give all of his policy shifts; he says what he thinks people want to hear but has no real attachment to his words.

This flip-flop did not escape the notice of the White House:

Bush this year released 300 pages of documents after media outlets raised new questions about the extent of his National Guard service. It was on "Meet the Press" that he agreed to do so.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Monday: "The president made a pledge before the American people, and he made his complete file available to the media and the public. ... The president lived up to his commitment he made to the public, and we should expect the same from his opponent."

Nothing about John Kerry's track record gives us any hope that he will live up to any of his commitments. However, a reversal on such a straightforward statement gives rise to some wonder about what he's afraid of making public. His refusal will only increase the curiosity about the files, and if there's something in them he doesn't want released, then he should have thought about that when his campaign and his party hounded his opponent with innuendo and slander into releasing his.

Shakespeare had Hamlet devise a plan to hoist Rosencrantz and Guildenstern upon their own petard; Kerry may be about to to the same thing to himself.

UPDATE: The Boston Globe reports on this story today as well.

UPDATE II: Big Trunk at Power Line (and yes, it's really Big Trunk) notes that Kerry is misunderstood: he's a political comedian! I'd just say he's a joke.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 11:32 PM | TrackBack

Gallup Poll: Bush Leads By 6

While it's still a bit too early to take polling numbers seriously, the new CNN/Gallup poll is remarkable given the attacks that the Bush administration has endured over the past few weeks:

President Bush's lead over Democrat John Kerry has widened a bit in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll despite two weeks that have been dominated by a deteriorating security situation in Iraq and criticism of his administration's handling of the terrorism threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The survey, taken Friday through Sunday, showed Bush leading Kerry 51% to 46% among likely voters, slightly wider than the 3-point lead he held in early April. The shifts were within the margin of error of +/ 4 percentage points in the sample of likely voters.

The president's job approval rating was steady at 52%.

The pollsters attribute the lack of movement to a polarized electorate, but you may just as well say it's a disgusted electorate. With the President's approval rating holding steady, voters want a reason to change horses in the midstream of a war, and instead of reasoned discourse, all they get from the opposition is Bush hatred and a candidate who can't give a straight answer on almost any issue.

This is what John Kerry and the Democrats have so far failed to understand. It's not enough to sell yourself as the anti-Bush; you already have the 40% of the electorate that will decide their vote on that basis. Kerry has to give people a reason to vote for him, not just against George Bush. Until he does, he'll continue to lag behind Bush all the way to November.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 6:14 PM | TrackBack

Air America: Even the LA Times Hates It

During the past couple of weeks, I've spent quite a few keystrokes on the relative merits of the new liberal radio network, Air America. The Northern Alliance gang has had a lot of fun on air and off poking fun at their line-up and their management difficulties, including their loss of air time in Los Angeles and Chicago. (They may be the first radio network that's received air time from a federal judge.)

However, one thing I haven't done is to actually listen to Air America, mostly because the entire notion of listening to Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo repels me, but also because I'd rather listen to Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and Michael Medved. Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw spent Good Friday listening to all 17 hours of Air America, and despite his expressed predilection for the liberal viewpoint, he finds it severely wanting and more than just a little boring:

So at 6 a.m. on Good Friday — the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, the day after Condoleezza Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks — I tuned in to 1580, turned on my computer to take notes and sat with both until 11 p.m.

It may have been the most boring day of my life.

My fellow liberals have long argued that they haven't been able to match the conservative success on talk radio because the medium is ideally suited to conservatives. According to this self-serving argument, conservatives are more willing than liberals to engage in nasty name-calling and to see everything in black and white, while liberals — concerned with nuance and complexity — are inevitably reasonable, willing to consider both sides of an issue. But President W's policies — especially in Iraq — have now so enraged liberals that they are willing to play dirty too. Hence, Air America.

Not.

Shaw eviscerates the entire line-up of Air America for being pretentious, boring, and oddly self-contained. For instance, he notes that even while AA hosts engage in completely unfunny joking, their co-hosts stand ready to supply unconvincing laugh tracks:

All Maron's comments drew hoots of supportive laughter from co-hosts Sue Ellicott and Mark Riley. In fact, I think what ultimately annoyed — and disappointed me — the most about Air America was all the false, aren't-we-funny, aren't-we-smart laughter that virtually all the hosts gave each other. Four of Air America's six weekday programs have co-hosts — and two have three co-hosts apiece, liberal collectives that stand in stark contrast to the individual, every-man-for-himself approach of the conservatives. Maybe that's one reason they don't work as well as, say, Limbaugh's solo effort.

Even the professional comedians came up short -- er, no pun intended, Al:

Al Franken, a "Saturday Night Live" veteran, is certainly funny. And he's the host of Air America's 9 a.m.-to-noon program, a head-on competitor to Limbaugh. Franken's show is called "The O'Franken Factor" — a deliberate jab at Bill O'Reilly, the popular Fox commentator of"O'Reilly Factor" fame. Comic actress Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes, a talk-show host from south Florida, are also professionally funny. Garofalo co-hosts Air America's 8-to-11 p.m. "The Majority Report," and Rhodes hosts the network's drive-time show, from 3 to 7 p.m.

But I laugh easily, and I didn't get a single laugh from Franken, Garofalo or Rhodes — or from any of the other Air America hosts I listened to.

Shaw notes that only 19% of the public identifies themselves as "liberal" these days, and the primary purpose of Air America is (or should be) to convince moderates to support liberal positions on issues of the day. However, in its own arrogance -- and note that a liberal critic points this out -- Air America goes out of its way to antagonize that segment of the market. For instance, in a country where 64% attend worship services at least once a month, Air America spent Good Friday -- Good Friday -- poking fun at religion in general and Christians in particular:

Two of the hosts gratuitously announced that they're Jewish, and one — Marc Maron of the network's "Morning Sedition" program — went on to make fun of Easter and Christmas rituals. Then, in a segment he called "morning devotional," Maron began his prayer for divine guidance on behalf of President Bush by saying, "Dear Lord, what the hell is going on up there?"

Another host — I think it was Rachel Maddow on "Unfiltered," though I couldn't always distinguish her voice from that of co-host Lizz Winstead — called Easter "an odd celebration" and said that a taxi driver had told her that "someone in a Jesus suit" would carry a cross along 42nd Street in New York in a reenactment of the events of Good Friday, "but in this case, he'll stop to buy a fake Louis Vuitton bag."

Huh?

Shaw's column is a riot, certainly funnier than anything he describes on Air America, and you should definitely read the whole thing. His only drawback is his expectation to find Franken and Garofalo humorous, when most people know that they stopped being funny years ago when their tired schticks wore out.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 1:01 PM | TrackBack

Al-Sadr: Muchas Gracias, Amigos

As promised, Spain's new Prime Minister Jose Zapatero has pulled out the Spanish contingent of soldiers from Iraq, resulting in high praise from a likely source:

Radical Islamic cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has welcomed Spain's decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq "in the shortest time possible," as U.S. officials braced for more possible pullouts. According to a spokesman in the Iraqi city of Najaf, the Shiite cleric praised Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's decision Sunday to pull Spain's 1,400-plus troops from Iraq.

Al-Sadr also is asking that people from all coalition countries put pressure on their governments to follow Spain and recall their forces, spokesman Fuad al-Turfi said.

Why is Moqtada smiling? Because the Spanish troops belong to a Polish-led multinational force based in the Najaf area -- coincidentally, just where al-Sadr has been hiding out from Coalition forces looking to capture him and stamp out his insurgency. Spain's retreat represents the closest thing al-Sadr, and al-Qaeda, have had since the war on terror began.

Meanwhile, the new Spanish government insists it is not "washing its hands" of the situation in Iraq, even though they are leaving as fast as they possibly can, and despite an initial promise by Zapatero to allow the US and Britain to put together a UN resolution that might satisfy the concerns of the Spanish Socialists. However, Zapatero's rival in the last election has a much clearer picture of the message that Zapatero's retreat sends the world:

Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's hand-picked candidate who lost to Zapatero in the election, said the decision made Spain "much more vulnerable and weak in the face of terrorism in the face of terrorism." Zapatero has "thrown in the towel" rather than try to exhaust all possibilities of getting a new U.N. resolution to meet his demands, AP quoted Rajoy as saying.

Thrown in the towel, one supposes, after Zapatero used it to wash his hands. Hope the Spanish are happy with their new attitude towards terrorists and gangsters. I know Moqtada al-Sadr is.

Addendum: The Guardian (UK) weighs in with an opinion piece that has to be read to be believed. David Mathieson writes:

Before the slurs began to take root, Zapatero needed to show not only that he is tranquilo but also that he has cojones. ... With opinion polls consistently registering around 80% opposition to Spain's involvement in Iraq, there is no doubt that many of those who voted for the Socialist party a month ago will be delighted with the decision.

What massive cojones it takes to cut and run even prior to the date one promised ahead of time, and to stand up to the 20% of your electorate that disagrees with you! Yes, Zapatero is certainly a man of political courage!

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:45 AM | TrackBack

Mother of Drunk Driver Sues Everyone In Sight

I have decided that I have no more sympathy left for people who take personal tragedies in their lives and attempt to cash in on them in every single way they can. Today's case in point is the Nevada mother of a 19-year-old drunk driver who got himself killed by wrapping his car around a light pole at 90 MPH. Jodie Pisco retaliate by filing lawsuits against everyone except the light pole:

Jodie Pisco, of Reno, contends Coors has failed in its duty to protect the country's youth from drinking. Her son, Ryan, was killed in 2002 after he drank Coors at a party and drove his girlfriend's car into a light pole at 90 mph, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Washoe County District Court, seeks unspecified damages. It accused Coors of "glorifying a culture of youth, sex and glamour while hiding the dangers of alcohol abuse and addiction."

Not only is Pisco suing Coors, she's also suing the girlfriend whose car her son used to drive drunk. She's also suing the girlfriend's mother, for buying her daughter the car. Yes, I'm sure that her mother should have forseen that in buying a car for her daughter, some uncouth drunken lout would take off and run it into something a bit too solid for survival.

While you're filing lawsuits, Mrs. Pisco, why not sue his third-grade teacher for not telling him about the affects of alcohol on judgment and motor control? Why not sue the city for putting a light pole where your son could drive into it? In fact, why not just sue all car manufacturers for building vehicles that can go faster than 20 MPH?

Normally, I would have a lot of sympathy for the mother of a dead 19-year-old, which is the same age as my son, but my sympathy stops when the lawsuits are filed, especially when it's an obvious attempt to get at someone's "deep pockets". Ryan Pisco caused his own death by drinking too much and deciding to get behing the wheel. A man of his age should know better than to do that, and quite frankly, it's fortunate that he only got himself killed that night. It wasn't up to Coors to teach your son responsibility, Mrs. Pisco, and certainly not up to his girlfriend or her mother. That was your job. Sue yourself.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:56 AM | TrackBack

Washington Times: Gorelick Not Playing By the Rules

In today's Washington Times, Charles Hurt notes that 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick has not played by the rules set forth in her defense by both herself and commission chair Thomas Kean -- that she must recuse herself when discussion of events arises that personally involves her (via Drudge):

Former acting FBI Director Thomas J. Pickard told the September 11 commission in a private interview earlier this year that he was surprised that Jamie S. Gorelick is serving on the panel because she had played a key role in setting the very counterterrorism policies being investigated.

According to a summary of that interview obtained by The Washington Times, Mr. Pickard said Ms. Gorelick — who was No. 2 in the Clinton Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno — resisted efforts by the FBI to expand the counterterrorism effort beyond simple law enforcement tactics and agencies. ...

But in that open, televised testimony, he never mentioned Ms. Gorelick, her role in confining the counterterrorism effort, or his concerns about Ms. Gorelick's service on the commission. Nor did Ms. Gorelick recuse herself from Mr. Pickard's testimony or refrain from questioning him, as she did when Miss Reno and former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh testified.

According to the commission guidelines on recusals: "Commissioners and staff will recuse themselves from investigating work they performed in prior government service." The rules also state: "Where a commissioner or staff member has a close personal relationship with an individual, or either supervised or was supervised by an individual, the commissioner or staff member should not play a primary role in the Commission interview of that person."

In her own editorial in yesterday's Washington Post arguing that she had no need to resign her commission membership, Gorelick flatly stated that she had abided by the recusal rule during all of her work on the panel. If what Hurt reports is correct, the panel has only enforced that rule while performing in public. Not only that, but Gorelick continues to spin her role in separating the intelligence and law-enforcement functions at the DoJ:

In that column — as well as during her TV appearances last week — she also defended her role in fighting terrorism at the Justice Department, distancing herself from the "wall" separating law enforcement fighting terrorism and intelligence services that gather counterterrorism information.

She didn't raise the wall, Ms. Gorelick said, and her memo was simply intended to define the boundaries between law enforcement and intelligence services so that cases against terrorists would not be thrown out of court because law enforcement had overstepped its bounds. "Look: In my view, if we could have lowered that wall sooner, we should have," she told Mr. Matthews.

But that was not what she was saying around the time she wrote her memo. Ms. Gorelick appeared in October 1995 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she testified that many people wondered why the government doesn't merge law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies.

"I mean, they have a lot of resources. You have a lot of resources, you have all got the same enemies, why don't you just merge to achieve greater efficiency?" she said to the assembled senators, including Sen. Bob Kerrey, Nebraska Democrat, who has since left the Senate and now sits with Ms. Gorelick on the 9/11 commission.

"I think on both sides of the river, if you will, we think this would be a serious mistake," she said. "There are ample reasons, both in history and in constitutional principles, to maintain a clear demarcation between the missions of the two communities." Even in her 1995 memo, she noted that the separation procedures outlined "go beyond what is legally required."

Gorelick's efforts in creating a PR spin on her involvement in a key issue of pre-9/11 intelligence failures only emphasizes the need to get her as a sworn witness in front of this commission instead of one of the people judging the events. She already has demonstrated that she has territory to protect and will misrepresent it publicly in order to do so. How can anyone trust the product of a process in which she takes part after this? The longer Gorelick stays on this commission -- the longer the other commissioners abide her membership -- the lower their credibility drops.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 5:35 AM | TrackBack

April 18, 2004

Another Grandstand Tour?

Jesse Jackson wants to insert himself into the hostage strategy currently being employed by the desperate Islamofascists operating in Iraq, continuing his self-aggrandizing world tour and threatening to legitimize the al-Sadr and Fallujah terrorists:

American civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that he has "had prayer" with the wife of Thomas Hamill, an American contractor abducted in Iraq, and promised his family he would try to win his freedom. ...

"If I knew who was holding them, I would appeal to them directly," Jackson said. "We've already begun to make some back-channel contacts to them."

He said he was willing to travel to Iraq to negotiate for the hostages, but only "if I know with whom to talk and know where to go."

Jackson, whose political influence has waned severely over the past few years thanks to personal difficulties, obviously wants to put himself back into the media limelight. However, if the Bush administration is serious about fighting a war, they should make every effort to keep Jesse under wraps. The last thing we need is a media circus making these hostage-taking idiots stars on the evening news. The last three presidents couldn't bring themselves to bar Jesse from his free-lance diplomacy, but we weren't at war, either. Any effort on his part to insinuate himself into Iraq should be met with a Logan Act investigation.

And if Jimmy Carter has any designs on starting his own diplomacy, they should do the same thing.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 8:47 PM | TrackBack

Kerry Twists on Meet the Press

John Kerry, appearing on Meet the Press today, was forced to answer questions about an appearance he made over thirty years ago on the same show, as Tim Russert played a much-requested clip from April 18, 1971:

MR. RUSSERT: Before we take a break, I want to talk about Vietnam. You are a decorated war hero of Vietnam, prominently used in your advertising. You first appeared on MEET THE PRESS back in 1971, your first appearance. I want to roll what you told the country then and come back and talk about it:

(Videotape, MEET THE PRESS, April 18, 1971):

MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: You committed atrocities.

SEN. KERRY: Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me. You know, I thought a lot, for a long time, about that period of time, the things we said, and I think the word is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word. I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in your life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive.

MR. RUSSERT: You used the word "war criminals."

SEN. KERRY: Well, let me just finish. Let me must finish. It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier--I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...

SEN. KERRY: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.

MR. RUSSERT: So you stand by that?

SEN. KERRY: A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been. And, you know, when you're angry about something and you're young, you know, you're perfectly capable of not--I mean, if I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently. Needless to say, I'm proud that I stood up. I don't want anybody to think twice about it. I'm proud that I took the position that I took to oppose it. I think we saved lives, and I'm proud that I stood up at a time when it was important to stand up, but I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times.

Reading this make me think that Kerry is trying out a new dance, the Kerry Twist. Note that the first thing Kerry does after listening to the clip is to make a joke about his hair. Ha ha, it was so long ago, who knows where the time went? And then Kerry goes into a series of non-apologies:

It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive.

I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers...

I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them.

I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times.

Not once does John Kerry say, I was wrong. I listened to people who had bad information and I repeated it without checking it out for myself. I said things I shouldn't have said. To this day, he continues to insist that atrocities were the order of the day instead of the exception, even though that has only been true in Hollywood movies.

As the blog Advisory Opinion notes -- shameful.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 7:50 PM | TrackBack

Gorelick Swings, and Misses

Beleaguered 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick, whose memo strengthening the so-called "wall" between intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement efforts caused a sensation in the commission hearings last week, writes a defense in today's Washington Post that mostly misses the mark:

The commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a critical dual mission to fulfill -- to help our nation understand how the worst assault on our homeland since Pearl Harbor could have occurred and to outline reforms to prevent new acts of terrorism. Under the leadership of former governor Tom Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the commission has acted with professionalism and skill. Its hearings and the reports it has released have been highly informative, if often disturbing. Sept. 11 united this country in shock and grief; the lessons from it must be learned in a spirit of unity, not of partisan rancor.

First off, this lead paragraph contains assertions that simply aren't true. The decision to hold public hearings has been revealed to be a disaster, instantly causing great deal of partisanship on the part of several commission members, notably Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey, of late, not to mention Gorelick herself. The tone and wording of the questioning, especially to current members of the Administration, has been accusatory and overly dramatic, while former employees of the government (who are busy selling books) received deferential treatment.

Further, the constant parade of commission members to talk shows and their discussion of their pre-conceived beliefs have demonstrated that, at the very least, their minds were made up before the public testimony ever began. To decribe their conduct as "professional" is ludicrous. What we have witnessed on television is the OJ trial of 9/11, where the commissioners play to the television cameras during the day and again during the evening, while doing their best to generate attention by indulging in character assassination either by implication or explicitly, such as questioning John Ashcroft's attention span. The tipping point came last week, when just prior to his questioning of Condoleezza Rice, Kerrey indulged in a one-minute rant against the Bush administration's current Iraq policy, which has no relation to the commission's mandate.

Gorelick then goes into a lengthy explanation of the wall, built over two decades of court and political decisions by the DoJ, of which Gorelick was neither the alpha nor the omega. She points out, rightly, that Ashcroft deputy Larry Thompson reaffirmed the Gorelick interpretation in an August 6, 2001 memo to the DoJ. Later, Gorelick acknowledges that the USA Patriot Act eliminated the policy and court decisions that buttressed the wall, allowing investigators of all stripes to share information.

What Gorelick does not mention is that her memo specifically stated that DoJ policy during the Clinton administration was designed to go beyond what the law required. She also fails to mention that the FISA Court Review determined that Gorelick's interpretation was not required by law or practice. She then makes an odd contradiction, having argued that Thompson endorsed her memo:

My memo directed agents on both sides to share information -- and, in particular, directed one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations -- to ensure the flow of information "over the wall." We set up special procedures because of the extraordinary circumstances and the necessity to prevent a court from throwing out any conviction in those cases. Had my memo been in place in August 2001 -- when, as Ashcroft said, FBI officials rejected a criminal warrant of Moussaoui because they feared "breaching the wall" -- it would have allowed those agents to obtain a criminal warrant without fear of jeopardizing an intelligence investigation.

Well, which is it? She just insisted that Thompson kept her memo in place two paragraphs earlier. Besides, the Moussaoui connection was the last new information to come to the attention of investigators; individual agents had come across small pieces of this conspiracy for over a year before Thompson re-endorsed the Gorelick policy.

The truth is that successive administrations did not realize that terrorism was an existential threat; they assumed terrorist efforts would mostly focus overseas, and the level of attack would be mostly car-bombs, and hijackings intended for extortion. In so believing, each administration was more concerned about creating the appearance of protecting civil liberties by putting roadblocks in the way of intelligence efforts designed to uproot foreign terrorist conspiracies hatching inside the US, even though FISA didn't require it. The Clinton DoJ, via Gorelick, went the furthest by explicitly telling its agents that their standard went beyond what the law required. Under those circumstances, and with the leftists in the US already shrieking that the incoming Bush administration would be the greatest threat to civil liberties since J. Edgar Hoover, the Bush administration failed to take the proper steps to return to the standard required by law instead of politics.

All Gorelick's whitewash in the Washington Post proves is that she should be testifying to this commission instead of passing judgement with it. The fact that she can't even tell the entire truth in her editorial leads me to believe that her testimony would be even less impressive than her performance, thus far, as a commissioner.

Note: Make sure you read Rocket Man's excellent take on this editorial at Power Line, and also Hugh Hewitt, who was inspired to respond on his day off.

UPDATE: Er, that was The Big Trunk's post over at Power Line, as Trunk himself notes in the comments. Ooops! (Perhaps I should put my glasses on when I blog, eh, Trunk?)

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 10:42 AM | TrackBack

The Season's Still Young, But ...

We're just two weeks into the 2004 season, but the Los Angeles Dodgers seem to be firing on all cylinders -- an unusual occurrence for a team known for starting slow. Pitching, defense, and even timely hitting have come together, the latter of which has always been an issue despite having one of the league's highest payrolls:

The Dodgers have won four in a row after an 8-3 loss at San Diego on Tuesday, good for a 4-1 start on a nine-game, 10-day trip against the National League West. They're feeling good at 8-3, and even Bonds' towering solo homer on a 95-mph fastball from reliever Darren Dreifort in the eighth couldn't dampen their mood.

"It's just momentum," Bradley said. "Momentum can switch at any time, but we've got it right now."

Most fascinating is the performance over the past two seasons of closer Eric Gagne, a failed starter at the major-league level for the two seasons prior to that. Gagne now has a record string of 66 consecutive saves going back to 2002. Last night he notched his third save in as many days, although he had to struggle to get it:

Gagne struggled with his command in his third appearance in as many days, a day after Bonds smashed a two-run homer against him — on a 100-mph fastball — in the Dodgers' 3-2 series-opening victory.

Pedro Feliz led off the ninth and connected for an opposite-field homer, a rarity for a right-handed batter at SBC Park, and the crowd stood and cheered as the Giants had runners on first and second on a walk, a sacrifice bunt and another walk.

But Gagne showed the mettle that helped him win last season's National League Cy Young Award, recording his fourth save when shortstop Cesar Izturis fielded Grissom's slow bouncer up the middle, stepped on second and threw to first to end the game and give the Dodgers victories in the first two games of a three-game series.

The Dodgers have won each series they've played so far this year, including two against the San Diego Padres, whose general manager (Kevin Tower) claimed that the Blue's struggles with mediocrity revealed a character flaw in the team. By the time the season is over, Tower will probably regret that remark more than any other he's made so far this year. It's early yet, but the Dodgers are winning on the road and at home and with complete efforts from all phases of their game. Hope springs eternal in the Dodger fan's breast -- perhaps this may be the year that we win a playoff game ...

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:40 AM | TrackBack

Hamas Cancels Its Inaugural Ball

After seeing its founder killed by Israel and his replacement likewise killed less than a month later, Hamas has decided that discretion may be the better part of terrorism:

Hamas secretly appointed a new Gaza Strip chief early Sunday, but refused to reveal his identity after Israel assassinated two Hamas leaders in less than a month.

Unfortunately, not all of the Hamas leadership has read the memo on secrecy quite yet:

"Hamas will move ahead and will continue the resistance march," said local Hamas leader Ahmad Sahar, a friend of Rantisi's. ... "Yesterday they said that they killed Rantisi to weaken Hamas. They are dreaming. Every time a martyr falls, Hamas is strengthened," Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, told more than 70,000 mourners gathered at the city's largest mosque for the funeral.

Sounds like the Israelis have two more names that they can add to the probable nominees for the top spot. Especially humorous is Haniyeh's contention that killing its leadership strengthens Hamas. If it did, Hamas would have loudly proclaimed the name of its new leader today from its newspapers in Gaza and the West Bank. If martyring Rantisi and Yassin makes Hamas stronger, then the Rantisis and Yassins would be carrying the suicide belts into Israel, not developmentally-disabled teenagers.

No, I think that Hamas understands perfectly that killing off its leadership not only severely degrades its planning and support capability, but it also discourages people from moving up into the organization. In that sense, Hamas and Israel see eye to eye. Expect further communiqués from Hamas to all use noms de guerre from this point forward.

UPDATE: Someone can't keep a secret: The AP reports further that Mahmoud Zahar, Rantisi's second in command, has been chosen as the Hamas Leader of the Month, as announced by Israel Army Radio. The Israeli Army promises fireworks for the celebration.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 9:00 AM | TrackBack


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