Imagine No John Kerry, It's What They'd Like To Do

John Tierney reports in tomorrow's New York Times, while waxing lyrical, that political scientists have confirmed that the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by front-loading their primaries to coalesce support early in the race behind one candidate. An experiment shows that their process selected the wrong one:

IMAGINE there's no Iowa. No New Hampshire, too. Imagine the Democratic Party, instead of relying on a few unrepresentative voters to quickly anoint John Kerry, had allowed people across America to vet the candidates and contemplate the issues.

Then Mr. Kerry might well not be the nominee, and the Democrats would stand a better chance of reaching the White House, at least according to the results of a novel experiment during the primary season.

The experiment involved allowing a group of 700 people to take a longer time to get to know all of the candidates, meet to discuss their relative strengths and weaknesses, and make a stronger and more informed decision on the selection of the nominee. The result? John Edwards wins the nomination, which would have been one of two candidates that could have seriously threatened Bush in November (Lieberman being the other as a hawk on the war).

Tierney uses the John Lennon reference at the end as well, in describing the motivation behind the experiment:

"What would happen if people across the country were really engaged and informed and had a chance to think about the issues?" [James Fishkin asked.]

You may call him a dreamer. But there must be at least one former presidential candidate who shares his sentiments.

Not to mention many Democrats these days.

Are The Vultures Circling?

While George Bush has taken a pounding for the past several months from an extended Democratic primary run-up, the fallout of overblown insurgencies in Iraq, and the release of two tattletale books from former advisors, the Kerry campaign has managed to move backwards in its battle against the President. In fact, the Kerry campaign has been so inept that even Democrats are willing to go on record to discuss their concerns, as the New York Times reports in tomorrow's paper:

"George Bush has had three of the worst months of his presidency, but they are stuck and they've got to move past this moment," said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

While Ms. Brazile said she thought Mr. Kerry had the time, the political skill and the money to defeat what many Democrats described as a highly vulnerable president, she said, "This is a very crucial moment in the campaign." ...

Last week, after completing the most in-depth poll of his campaign, Mr. Kerry unveiled yet another theme for his candidacy: "Together, we can build a stronger America." It was, by the count of one aide, the sixth message Mr. Kerry has rolled out since he announced his candidacy nearly 18 months ago.

"We need to be honest with ourselves: Our candidate is not one who's good with a 30-second sound bite," said Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee, co-chairman of Mr. Kerry's campaign. "He is very thoughtful and it takes him a while to say things."

Of course, the problem with Kerry is that he takes a while to say nothing, and that's what he's said more often than not. While he and his surrogates have attacked Bush on Iraq, as an example, the only response Kerry has to questions about what he would do differently is that he would exert "personal diplomacy" to convince France, Russia, and China to join us in Iraq and would "formally" rejoin the community of nations, as he put it, without explaining what specific policies he would put into place to do any of the above. What does Kerry propose to trade for French and Russian military participation in Iraq? He doesn't say. What specifically does it mean to rejoin the community of nations? He doesn't say.

Nagourney documents the frustration Democrats have at the continuing failure of the Kerry campaign to develop a consistent theme for his candidacy. In the primaries, he notes, all Kerry had to do was to remind Democrats of his Vietnam experience to argue that he had the resume to beat Bush. But Nagourney isn't entirely accurate here. Kerry also stole Dean's message halfway through the primary run-up when it became apparent that Dean had started to run away with the race. Kerry, who had a moderate-to-hawkish record on Iraq II, voting for military action, suddenly pulled a 180 and claimed his vote only signified the threat of military force, putting him in the ridiculous position of insisting that he voted to bluff Saddam. On the $87 billion supplemental spending bill that he told ABC he would support in the end regardless of the funding as leaving the troops without funding would be "irresponsible", he reversed himself and voted against it when Congress voted down an amendment to raise taxes to do it.

The Democrats who spoke on the record did so with caution, expressing confidence that Kerry was just getting his "sea legs" and would begin stretching out a lead over George Bush. However, a behind-the-scenes look at a recent strategy meeting makes one wonder about the Kerry team's ability to build a national campaign at all:

The growing pains reflect in part an organization that, aside from the two senior media consultants — Bob Shrum and Mike Donilon — has little experience in running presidential campaigns. Mr. Kerry's campaign has been hindered, some aides said, by a turnover in staff members and internal bickering, albeit nowhere near the level that occurred in the campaign last fall.

At a recent meeting of senior staff members, Democrats said, Mr. Kerry's aides became entangled in a lengthy debate over what might seem to be a less than urgent issue: whether they should send a Democratic operative to Bush rallies dressed as Pinocchio, a chicken or a mule, to illustrate various lines of attacks Democrats want to use against Mr. Bush. (They say they want to portray him as a liar, a draft avoider and stubborn.)

The fact that the Democrats are talking like this to the New York Times, and that the Times prints it, communictates more than just a sense of frustration among the Left. They intend on sending a message to Kerry that their patience has run out and that they don't intend on waiting forever for him to get his act in gear. Nor does it appear that Kerry is capable of turning things around; he's been the front-runner for two months now, eight long weeks where, tired or fresh, he's consistently tripped over himself.

Their grand strategy of getting a candidate out early from the primaries has backfired immensely, and they now are stuck with a nominee who can't campaign effectively nor make personal connections with voters, and whose only message so far is the leftover Bush-bashing from last year. They're telling Kerry that they won't wait two more months for him to get his act together.

UPDATE: My Northern Alliance colleague Hindrocket at Power Line notes this same article, with the following observation: "The Democrats are always complaining about the Republican "attack machine," and they fall over one another, as in this Times article, to call Kerry "thoughtful" and "nuanced." Maybe the Democrats should consider the possibility that the reason why Kerry's campaign hasn't gotten off the ground is that he really doesn't have anything to say, beyond slandering President Bush."

On the plus side, it's hard to go off-message when you don't have one ...

Religion of Peace, Part 37b

The governor of Nigerian province Zamfara State has implemented Shari'a law, and in the continuing rollout of the strict Islamic practice, has ordered all churches to be demolished in accordance with the Qu'ran:

Speaking at the launch in Gusau, the state capital, Governor Sani disclosed that time was ripe for full implementation of the programme as enshrined in the Holy Quran.

He added that his government would soon embark on demolition of all places of worship of unbelievers in the state, in line with Islamic injunction to fight them wherever they are found.

With respect to being a religion of peace, it would appear that Islam offers only the peace of dhimmitude for those who don't convert. As Islamofascism spreads, this is the attitude towards human rights and freedom we can expect to encounter. (via The Corner)

Shhh! I'm Channeling My Inner GOODLE

At the end of yesterday's Bleat, James Lileks posted a link to a site he'd found when he misspelled Google during a search. I decided to follow his link, wherever his link may take me, and I wound up at the L & J Corporation, apparently based in South Korea. James' link allowed me the choice between a Korean-language site or an English-language site ... and I'm sure you can guess which one I chose.

However, once I began reading the page, I was less certain that I had chosen wisely. Being a student of a foreign language (Irish, because it is so applicable in the Upper Midwest of the US!), I understand that translating text on a word-for-word basis without accounting for idioms and contextual shifts generate results that can be unintelligible, annoying, and/or hilarious. You tell me which you think apply:

We produce and dispose of inner GOODLE. We realized Korean traditional heating system Ondol into the product inner GOODLE by succeeding merits and supplementing problems within its system. To realize the system we introduced a revolutionary fabricated construction system.

If they both produce and dispose inner GOODLE, how do they make money? If they're supplementing problems in the systems, though, I can see why they need to dispose of the product at the end.

Although it is regarded as the best heating system which has excellent functions and needful merits in it, panel heating system with Ondol has not been sufficiently studied in comparison with research accomplishment in other systems. There needed to develop a new construction method to modernize and to introduce dry process in construction Ondol.

I'm still not certain what L & J actually manufactures, but the person who wrote the text for the website has to be the same one who wrote the user's manual for my digital camera. Check out the entire site for a laugh, before L & J finds someone who knows how to write in English.

We're From Eyewitness News, and Your Son's Dead. How Do You Feel About It?

Romanesko passes along a story regarding a Chicago ABC affiliate who not only could not get a news story correct, but then in its rush to get a hot story on the air, informed a mother her son was dead after asking for an interview. The problem, besides the soulless, heartless TV news crew? They had the wrong family:

After she had arrived, the crew returned to her front door.

According to [Doris] Glenn, one staffer asked her for an interview, but she was reluctant.

"I said, 'What is this about?' and (the staffer) said she just wanted to interview me," said Glenn. "I said I wouldn't do an interview unless I first knew what it was about.

"And then she said, 'I'm sorry to inform you that your son is deceased,' " Glenn said.

The crew showed up at Glenn's house earlier in the day without explaining why, and Glenn assumed that her son, who competes in track at high school, must have done exceptionally well that day. After the staffer told Glenn her son had died, Glenn declined the interview and called the school, determining that he was taking state achievement tests. The deceased man was a college student in Florida who had come from Chicago.

In other words, Doris Glenn out-researched the so-called professionals at WLS-TV.

But beyond the incompetence, the sheer heartlessness of asking Doris Glenn for an interview when she obviously hadn't been told of her son's death, if it really had been her son, is unbelievable. When were they planning on letting her know her son had died -- while she was on camera? "This is Lucrezia Borgia from Eyewitless News, and I'm here with Doris Glenn, who has no clue that her son was killed earlier today. Tell me, Doris, how does that news make you feel?"

And people wonder why the news media's reputation hovers around the same approval ratings as personal-injury lawyers and used-car salemen.

Northern Alliance Radio Debates Bad Music

It's Saturday and time for another installment of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, from noon to 3 pm CT. In the third hour today, we will be debating which pop songs represent the worst of pop music, an argument that started with Blender Magazine's 50 Worst Songs of All Time (complete list here). Blender, however, demonstrated its complete ineptitude by including such songs as "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel and "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg. Even if you don't particularly like those songs, you can't argue that they're the 42nd and 30th worst songs of all time!

Here's my list of songs which I will be taking to the AM 1280 The Patriot studio in a few minutes, in no particular order except at #1, which is the worst song of all time, bar none:

1. I've Never Been To Me - Charlene
2. 99 Luftballoons - Nena
3. The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
4. Chick a Boom (Don't Ya Jes' Love It)
5. Me & You & A Dog Named Boo - Lobo
6. Mickey - Toni Basil
7. Bonnie and Clyde - Georgie Fame & The Flames
8. Billy Don't Be A Hero - Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods
9. Don't Give Up On Us Baaaaaay-Beh - David Soul

I've also thrown in "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band, as JB Doubtless and I will defend the savage attacks on this sparkling example of four-part harmony from the rest of the Alliance. "Midnight At The Oasis" may also make an appearance, although I suspect I may find myself alone in Maria Muldaur's defense on that one.

Later on today, I'll blog on why I think "Billy Don't Be A Hero" is John Kerry's campaign theme song ...

Iraqi Official Claims List of Bribes in Baghdad

A member of the Iraqi Governing Council claimed yesterday that the IGC has a list of people who were bribed by Saddam Hussein's regime in a development that threatens to expand the corruption scandal past the United Nations and the Oil-For-Food Program (via Friends of Saddam):

An Iraqi official said today there was a list of cash bribes made by Saddam Hussein's government to journalists, politicians and groups in connection with the US$67 billion ($108.92 billion) UN-run oil-for-food programme.

Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said Iraqi officials combing Saddam's files had not decided whether to release the list as part of a burgeoning scandal over the defunct programme.

"We have a list of cash paid to journalists, personalities, groups and parties," Talabani told a news conference after conferring with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over an Iraqi interim government.

Reuters, through The New Zealand News, reports that this list contains different names than the previously-disclosed list of 270 people and organizations that received options on oil sales. The list purportedly contains at least one "senior UN official," and the inclusion of journalists presents the interesting possibility of explaining some of the relentless and biased media approach to the liberation of Iraq.

At the moment, Talabani is reluctant to release the list to any of the several investigations under way, and for good reason: some of these efforts represent a vehicle to protect the guilty rather than expose them. My suggestion would be to make the list public as quickly as possible so that those who would shield people from embarassment don't have the opportunity to bury it. Hopefully, Paul Volcker will come to that conclusion when he has access to Talabani's data.

Kerry Foreign Policy: A Distinction Without A Difference

John Kerry continued his attempt to differentiate himself from George Bush on Iraq policy yesterday in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, following Dick Cheney's widely-criticized political speech last week at the same venue. The Los Angeles Times reports that Kerry continues to expound on "international cooperation" without explaining how that differs from what the US is doing now:

Sen. John F. Kerry challenged President Bush on Friday to engage in personal diplomacy to try to repair relationships with other influential nations and gain their support for an international mission in Iraq.

During a 30-minute address at Westminster College here, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee pledged to support his rival's policy in Iraq if Bush pursued that effort. ... He urged the president to form a political coalition with the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and other nations to endorse the effort to stabilize Iraq and back the plan for an interim Iraqi government proposed by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

In other words, Kerry wants a new United Nations Security Council resolution, but he now takes care not to mention the UN. After all, a "political coalition" between the US, UK, France, Russia, and China comprises all of the veto-holding members of the UNSC. Kerry's campaign must realize now that the electorate won't buy any more rhetoric about coughing up control to the war on terror to the UN or even the UNSC, given the elaborate scam into which the UN Oil-For-Food program dissolved. And the primary beneficiaries of the OFF Program happened to be French, Russian, and Chinese to a smaller extent.

On the question of international participation, though, the Coalition comprises more than 30 nations already, although not the three that Kerry likes best:

The Bush campaign dismissed the speech as a rehash of steps the administration was already taking, arguing that many U.N. and NATO members were already involved in the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.

"Sen. Kerry has constantly disparaged the coalition of over 30 nations that are making the contribution and sharing the sacrifice in Iraq," said Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt. "The president is constantly in communication with those nations, so Kerry's criticism has no basis in fact."

Kerry says, repeatedly, that he will use "personal diplomacy" in order to bring the Recalcitrant Three into a new, broader coalition that will "end the sense of American occupation" in Iraq. However, he does not address exactly what he will give up in order to buy their participation; France and Russia in particular are not suddenly going to send troops to Iraq just because Kerry has a lucky face. Both countries made billions off of Saddam's monopoly grip on oil production in Iraq before the war, both legitimately and illegitimately. The Iraqis have not shown an inclination to do preferential business with Saddam's enablers of their oppression, post-liberation. Since their commercial interests in Iraq have been seriously curtailed, they don't have much to gain by risking the ire of the electorate that they have deliberately kept against Iraq's liberation, to the extent in France that people were openly rooting for Saddam to win.

Kerry's proposal, such as it is, means one of two things. Either Kerry intends on forcing the new Iraqi government to honor contractual agreements that existed under the Saddam regime with France and Russia, thus undermining their sovereignty while forcing them to do business with the same people who cheerfully called for their continuing oppression, or he simply wants meaningless statements of support in order to claim France, Russia, and China for partners in Iraq. Either way, will this change the number of American troops in Iraq? No, since none of these countries will send significant numbers of troops either way. What it will do will be to remove Anglo-American control on the effort and instead turn Iraq into the Balkans all over again, where we have been for nine years with no end in sight.

Kerry may have dialed down the political rhetoric at Westminster, but he continues to keep substance even lower. Twenty years ago, Walter Mondale tormented Gary Hart (and everyone else) by asking him, "Where's the beef?" every time the Senator tried to get by on mere platitudes. It seems that question has only become more applicable to this Democratic campaign.

Becoming What You Oppose

The new nation of Macedonia, eager to prove its anti-terror chops on the world stage, made much of stopping a terrorist cell in its capitol city of Skopje, killing seven Pakistanis identified as terrorists conspiring to attack embassies and diplomats throughout the country. However, prompted by US intelligence agencies that remained skeptical of the plot, Macedonian authorities have discovered that several police officers and a businessman smuggled the Pakistanis into Macedonia to act as clay pigeons:

Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, authorities said Friday. Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told reporters that six people, including three former police commanders, two special police officers and a businessman, have been charged by police with murder. ...

She described a meticulous plan to promote Macedonia as a player in the fight against global terrorism that involved smuggling the Pakistanis into Macedonia from Bulgaria, housing them, and then coldly gunning them down.

The killings, she added, were part of an attempt to "present themselves as participants in the war against terrorism and demonstrate Macedonia's commitment to the war on terror."

The Macedonian legislature promptly revoked the immunity that one of the conspirators enjoyed as a recently-elected representative in order to allow for his prosecution, and authorities say that more arrests may be forthcoming. He still claims that the Pakistanis were terrorists, but forensic evidence collected by the Macedonians show that the shooting was a set-up job, and that the Pakistanis were nothing more than targets for Macedonian murderers. Ironically, the killings prompted al-Qaeda to target the Macedonian consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, where they bombed the building after slitting the throats of three people inside, with a warning about "infidels".

In their depravity and greed for Western anti-terror recognition -- and undoubtedly the funding that would follow -- these Macedonians became what they purported to fight against: terrorists. They lured seven men into an ambush, and they did it not for Allah nor self-determination but to make themselves look good. It's hard to imagine any more complete picture of humans without souls than the men at the center of this conspiracy.

Did Chris Matthews Equate Bush and Cheney to the Menendez Brothers?

I received an e-mail from reader Vayapaso who regularly watches the Imus show on MS-NBC. Today's guest was Chris Matthews, who infuriated Vayapaso by equating George Bush and Dick Cheney with the notorious parricidal killers, Lyle and Eric Menendez. Here's an excerpt from her e-mail to Matthews, which she copied to me as well:

Dear Mr. Mathews:

I rarely ever write to people in your industry but you said something this morning on the Imus show that shocked and amazed me; so much so, I had to write you. It was when you compared the President and Vice President to the Menendez Brothers. I realize that your philosophy differs from this administration but there should be a line that you should not cross over and I believe that you crossed that line.

I have watched you for the seven years you have had Hardball and felt that even though you are clearly a "liberal," most times you seem to be fair in your analysis. You do not have to agree with the policies of the current administration, and when you don't you should put forward your views but when you start to compare the people who are trying to do the best for the country (I hope you agree that while the methods are not what you want to see, you agree with the sincerity of their efforts), you start to compare those people with the despicable people who kill their own parents, then I say again, you crossed that line. I am sure that you will get pats on your back from people who agree with your philosophy and validate your comparison, but there are many people out here in American feel shocked and sickened by your discussion this morning with Imus.

To say, "I will not watch your show again" probably does not mean much to you, one viewer, "so what," but I hope there are a lot of people who was as outraged as I was and will not take you seriously again.

I can personally vouch for Vayapaso's credibility. When I see a transcript on line, I will link back to it. Matthews' remaining credibility in commentating during this election has to be seriously damaged as a result.

UPDATE: Imus has it on his page now, at the link above:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews comments on the decision that the President and Vice President had to be together when meeting with the 9/11 commission. Chris Matthews: "I hate to say this because these are all good Americans but it reminds me a little bit of the Menendez brothers, just a little bit. Two guys who are connecting there phones so they can get the story straight. I mean it's all about getting this story straight isn't it?"

I'm sure he hates to say that Bush and Cheney are the equivalent of a couple of ambush murderers ... that's why he said it on national TV.

It's Not Just Bombs and Bullets

The New York Times shines a light on a little-mentioned facet of the Bush adminsitration's approach to combating terrorism. While wars and captures understandably occupy the headlines, the strategy also works towards building stronger relationships with Muslims in areas where we can provide humanitarian assistance:

From remote Siyu, investigators say, the bombing of a Mombasa hotel that catered to Israeli tourists, and the simultaneous failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli-chartered airliner, were planned in 2002. The well is one of many public works projects being undertaken by the American military throughout the Horn of Africa aimed at changing the locals' view of a country many of them had learned to hate.

"The war on terrorism is not necessarily a shooting war," said Maj. W. Brice Finney, commander of theArmy's 412th Civil Affairs Battalion. Still, these are good deeds with a strategic edge. The main purpose is to monitor the vast coastline for terrorists fleeing Afghanistan and other spots across the Gulf of Aden. All of which explains why the military is paying close attention to Siyu.

Complaints from the hard left of the military response to terrorism leave the impression that the military strategy has been the only response the Bush administration has provided. The policy of assigning uniformed American troops to East African areas for humanitarian assistance allows unpressured interaction to grow between American troops and Muslim civilians, who normally may never have had the opportunity to meet Americans before having fanatics describe us with horns growing out of our heads.

The White House has good reason to keep this program low-profile; if al-Qaeda or its associates find out how well it works, the troops could be targeted for terrorist attacks, or worse, the civilian population could be attacked as retribution for cooperating with the Americans. Some local clerics have already voiced their disapproval, asking Muslims to cease cooperating with American efforts to make civic improvements. So far, their congregations have ignored them:

People here have become used to the sight of soldiers in their midst. Most welcome the American help with open arms, putting their political and religious beliefs to the side.

"We need all the help we can get," said Bunu Mwengyealy, headmaster of Pate Primary School, across the island from Siyu. A storm wiped out one classroom last year, so Mr. Mwengyealy and others were thrilled when American soldiers arrived recently to assess the campus.

Muslim leaders say their followers have been ignoring their warnings about accepting the American largess. The people are poor and ideology takes a distant second to making ends meet.

"When I tell people, 'Don't let the Americans help you,' they ask me, 'What is the alternative?' " Sheik Abdulkadir said, shaking his head in frustration.

Bush demonstrates more subtlety than his critics allow -- another "misunderestimation" that will cost them in November if the shrill Bush-hatred campaign continues.

And Now, Today on Dr. Howard, People Who Shout "YEEARGH!"

Matt Drudge reports on the nadir of Howard Dean's trajectory in what was supposed to be his triumphant march to the Democratic nomination. Instead, Dr. Dean may trade in politics to signify the end of his career as surely as a previous generation's Vegas shows marked the end of theirs:

While everything's still in the early talking stages, the former Democratic presidential candidate is mulling the idea of hosting his own syndicated gabfest. He's hooked up with ex-Big Ticket TV topper Larry Lyttle ("Judge Judy") and longtime political consultant Gerald Rafshoon, who would likely serve as exec producers of a pilot for any such project. ...

"The last thing we're going to talk about is politics," Lyttle said. "We'd talk about a myriad of other things instead of politics. He'd look at things like, What happens if you lose a sibling? What about when you're victimized by not having health care?" Lyttle said, arguing that Dean has the perfect persona for the small screen [emph mine]."

I'd make a joke about that, but I'm already in trouble with Bill at the great blog INDC Journal, so I'd better leave it alone. In terms of the "perfect persona", though, did anyone come away from the early primary season with an impression of Dean as a warm, approachable person, the kind of guy you'd welcome into your living room on a daily basis? To me, he alternated between cold calculation and angry passion, not a terribly winning combination for television unless you want to be the next Morton Downey.

I doubt we'll actually see this project come to air, but if we do, perhaps we could suggest his first topic: "Men Who Torpedo Their Own Success With Subconscious Sabotage -- on the next Dr. Dean Show!!"

Teamsters Anti-Corruption Team Resigns, Blames Hoffa

In a move that threatens to delay the end of federal control of the largest American union, 20 investigators and lawyers assigned to fight corruption in the Teamsters followed the example of their leader, Edwin H. Stier, and walked off the job. The New York Times reports that union president James Hoffa, Jr frustrated investigators who got too close to high-ranking members of the union:

The former prosecutor, Edwin H. Stier, sent a sharply worded letter that accused James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters president, of blocking a broad investigation into possible union corruption in Chicago and of dragging his feet in a case of alleged embezzlement by a Teamsters leader in Houston.

"In spite of our efforts to convince General President Jim Hoffa to remain committed to fighting corruption," Mr. Stier wrote, "I have concluded that he has backed away from the Teamsters' anticorruption plan in the face of pressure from self-interested individuals."

In the 1980s, the government finally took over the International Brotherhood of Teamsters after decades of organized crime and petty corruptions had turned the union into a sewer of crime. Ever since, the union has chafed under the scrutiny of the feds and came up with its own, supposedly independent task force as a means of demonstrating their ability to police themselves and eliminate the federal mandate for control. No one took them terribly seriously, and these resignations only underscore the superficial nature of the Teamsters' efforts to eliminate corruption within their ranks:

Mr. Stier accused Mr. Hoffa of delays in moving against Chuck Crawley, the former president of a Houston Teamsters local, who has been accused by the review board of receiving more than $20,000 in kickbacks. Mr. Crawley, who denies any wrongdoing and has not been formally charged, is accused of telling a vendor to inflate the price of a phone system for a new union building and then to kick back the money to him.

Mr. Stier also asserted that Mr. Hoffa and several people around him were trying to shut down a wide-ranging investigation into charges that various Teamster members and officials in Chicago were associates of organized crime, and that some Teamster officials had participated in a deal in which a mob-run company was allowed to use nonunion workers to replace union workers in construction and convention jobs.

"These people didn't want to be investigated, and it eventually got to a point where the situation got to be intolerable," Mr. Stier said. "Hoffa's office was responding to these guys in Chicago, and interfering with our ability to investigate."

It sounds like Stier's next stop should be the FBI to determine why Hoffa and his senior leadership were so determined to keep Stier's team from investigating the Chicago officers.

Kerry's Diversity Problems Grow: NYT

In a sign that John Kerry may be experiencing some real damage from his monochromatic senior campaign staff, the New York Times covers criticism from minority groups on the Kerry campaign's lack of diversity in much greater detail than CNN's article from yesterday. The normally supportive Jodi Wilgoren writes in today's Times that not only is the protest more widespread than CNN reported, but more passionate as well:

For weeks, Senator John Kerry savored a Democratic Party that was unified in rallying behind his presidential candidacy. But in recent days, influential black and Hispanic political leaders whom the campaign had counted on for support have been openly complaining that Mr. Kerry's organization lacks diversity and is failing to appeal directly to minority voters.

Even as Mr. Kerry spoke here on Thursday to the National Conference of Black Mayors — an appearance his community outreach team viewed as critical to building a network of minority support — two influential Latino leaders circulated harsh letters expressing concern about the campaign's dealings with minorities.

And in interviews over the last week, more than a dozen minority elected officials and political strategists voiced concerns about what they said was the dearth of representation in Mr. Kerry's inner circle and worried that he was taking black and Hispanic votes for granted.

Of course, the Democrats have taken black votes for granted for decades, and while the Hispanic vote has proved easier to capture in recent elections, the party's approach to them has been much the same. Until the Bush presidency, these groups felt that their best chance at participating in high-level politics lay with the Democrats. However, in striking contrast to the "dearth of representation" they experience with Kerry, a quick look at Bush's cabinet and senior staff reveals that this administration has created the most de facto diverse American leadership ever, without making a show of it, and repeatedly showing Bush's personal ease with reaching out to anyone.

While I hardly expect the long-term, self-appointed spokespeople for minority groups to publicly shift positions -- people like Jesse Jackson (Jr or Sr) have too much at stake personally to ever attack Kerry -- the rank and file may look at this disparity between Kerry's rhetoric and his practice and determine that the Democrats have produced a particularly transparent brand of racial hypocrite. It threatens to expose the tired policies of handouts and patronizing set-asides as the only inclusion that Democrats offer, while Republicans offer true leadership positions as well as innovative solutions to real problems in their community, such as school vouchers to bypass the failed, hidebound school systems that keep their children from succeeding.

Some quotes from Wilgoren, which indicate much more disenchantment with Kerry than CNN previously noted:

"The reality is that we're entering May and the Kerry campaign has no message out there to the Hispanic community nor has there been any inkling of any reach-out effort in any state to the Hispanic electorate, at least with any perceivable sustainable strategy in mind," Alvaro Cifuentes, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Hispanic Caucus, said in an e-mail message to party leaders provided by a recipient who insisted on anonymity. "It is no secret that the word of mouth in the Beltway and beyond is not that he does not get it, it is that he does not care."

Separately, in a letter addressed to Mr. Kerry, Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza, denounced the "remarkable and unacceptable absence of Latinos in your campaign."

"Relegating all of your minority staff to the important but limited role of outreach only reinforces perceptions that your campaign views Hispanics as a voting constituency to be mobilized, but not as experts to be consulted in shaping policy," wrote Mr. Yzaguirre, whose group is among the oldest, largest and most influential representing Hispanics. ...

Andi Pringle, who worked for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns and was a deputy campaign manager for Howard Dean, said that in addition to staffing, she wondered where minorities fit into Mr. Kerry's schedule, message and field efforts.

"All I've seen is on occasion there are a couple of Sundays where he's gone to church," said Ms. Pringle, who has a direct-mail firm.

Dean took a full blast from Al Sharpton just before the Iowa causcuses on minority representation in his Vermont administrations, even though Vermont's African-American community comprised less than 1% of its population. Massachussetts's population is 7% African-American and 5% Hispanic, and yet not only does Kerry not have any campaign leaders from this community, Al Sharpton has remained mostly silent, except to ridicule the notion of criticism:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of Mr. Kerry's two black primary opponents, said he had been welcomed with two one-on-one meetings and the candidate's personal cellphone number. He and some others attributed the complaints to old rivalries stemming as far back as Mr. Jackson's 1988 campaign against former Gov. Michael Dukakis, whose Massachusetts-based inner circle overlaps somewhat with Mr. Kerry's.

"I don't know whether the criticism is based on people wanting to see the inner circle diversified or whether it's a job application through the media," Mr. Sharpton said.

In other words, Al got his, and the rest of you can pound sand. No wonder Democrats feel as though they can take these communities for granted when their so-called leaders are so obviously out for only themselves. Perhaps it's time for leadership changes within the minority communities themselves.

Watchers Council Announces Winners and Open Seat

The Watchers Council has spoken again this week, and the winners are King of Fools in the Council category for his post on creating terrorists, and Kim du Toit in the non-Council category for his weekly rant on Dubya the "dummy". My post on Kerry's prime-time paranoid waffling about WMD got an honorable mention ... and one-third of a vote. Lo, have the mighty fallen! It's an honor just to be nominated, of course.

The Watcher also announced that the Council has an open seat due to the resignation of the Hawken Blog, who has an acute case of life and needs to reduce his blog load. I'd volunteer, but with the workload I already have, it's just not possible. Be sure to read the rules and let the Watcher know if you'd like to join up. It looks like tremendous fun!

Coincidence?

The BBC reports that US analysis shows international terror attacks declined last year and the number of civilian deaths at a 30-year low:

US government figures suggest that terrorist attacks have fallen to the lowest level for more than 30 years. The annual report records a slight fall in the number of international attacks last year and a dramatic decrease in the number of victims.

The report says that less than half the number of people lost their lives in such attacks last year compared with the year before.

Attacks in Iraq have not been counted as terrorist attacks, primarily due to the targeting of military assets rather than civilians. Cofer Black, the State Department spokesman, credited improved international cooperation against terrorism, especially crediting Saudi Arabia. Malaysia also received praise for its cooperation, as CNN reports, and progress noted in both Libya and the Sudan. The State Department reports that Iraq has become the central theater in the war on terror:

It said former regime elements conducting attacks against coalition forces have "increasingly allied themselves tactically and operationally with foreign fighters and Islamic extremists, including some linked to Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

Black said while al-Zarqawi operates as an "independent actor," without orders from al Qaeda leadership, the United States considers him to be "sympathetic to al Qaeda" and part of the threat represented by that network.

Given the public nature of the Bush administration's attack on terrorist networks and their support, had the US effort not been effective, terrorists would have escalated their attacks in response to our actions. However, it appears that the broad, strategic approach to the war on terror is paying off. The Afghanistan and Iraq phases have overthrown regimes that supported terrorism, and the intelligence gathered during both phases has identified more terrorist cells and plots. Rather than destroying our ability to coordinate with other nations on intelligence and disarmament, international cooperation has improved -- while Libya has renounced terror and WMD and Iran at least allows IAEA inspections, for now.

Neither CNN nor the BBC bother to connect the dots, nor I suspect will we see much of the US media try, either. However, the undeniable progress of the Bush policy on terror will be hard to ignore for long.

UPDATE: McQ at QandO notices the same thing:

All of this is found in the 181-page Patterns of Global Terrorism Report produced by the State Department which Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst for the Rand Corp. says is considered the "gold standard" for measuring terrorism.

Some facts from the report:

— There were 190 acts of international terrorism last year, compared with 198 in 2002 and 346 in 2001. It was the lowest figure in 34 years.

— In those attacks last year, 307 people were killed, compared with 725 in 2002; 1,593 people were wounded, compared with 2,013 in 2002.

— Thirty-five Americans died in 15 international terrorist attacks. The deadliest was a May 12 attack by suicide bombers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed nine U.S. citizens and 26 people overall.

— Anti-U.S. attacks increased slightly to 82 from 77 in 2002. But they have declined sharply since the 219 attacks in 2001.

Looks like progress to me.

Sinclair Group: Koppel's Plan "Political Statement", Pre-Empts Nightline

Bloomberg reports that the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 62 ABC affiliates, will preempt the Nightline broadcast when Ted Koppel spends the hour reading off the names of American servicemen killed in Iraq:

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. ordered its ABC affiliates to preempt tomorrow's broadcast of "Nightline,'' which will air the names and photos of U.S. military personnel who have died in combat in Iraq, saying the move is politically motivated.

"Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq,'' the company said in a faxed statement. Sinclair, which owns 62 U.S. television stations, said ABC is disguising political statements as news content.

Many readers may not recall this, but during the Teheran hostage crisis, Dan Rather traveled to the Iranian capitol in order to televise interviews with the American captives for a special titled (as I recall) "Christmas With The Hostages". I remember watching it and considering it an egregious exploitation of the situation, as Rather's questioning centered not just on the hostages' fears but also asking them how they were being treated and whether they thought their captors had legitimate gripes -- as if they could answer him honestly under those circumstances. I was also struck at that time by how little criticism Rather received for his embarassingly naive, at best, performance.

When I heard about Koppel's plan to read the names of those KIA in Iraq and display their photos, I was torn on how to react. On one hand, I believe that the current administration has been terribly remiss in not sharing the bravery and accomplishments of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines during this war, regardless of whether they died in battle. Giving public recognition to those who gave their last full measure to protect us and make a safer world would be a good way to start. However, Koppel's outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq, and the interesting omission of those who died in Afghanistan, makes the entire enterprise look suspiciously like an anti-war protest, no matter how ABC News denies it. Plus, as Hugh Hewitt noted, the fact that Koppel planned this during "sweeps week" confirms its exploitative nature instead of any honorable motivation.

Ted Koppel protests this interpretation, of course, in an interview with Al Tompkins, telling him:

You start to wonder after a while. I've been doing "Nightline" for over 24 years, I've been at ABC for 41 years, if that's really the impression I've left with people then I have failed in such a colossal way that I can't even begin to consider the consequences of it.

But quite apart from that, it seems to me absolutely silly that anyone would suggest that we were doing this for ratings. In point of fact, we were sitting around unaware that it was sweeps [emph mine], that's how dumb we are at "Nightline."

As Michele Catalano says at her mega-blog A Small Victory when producer Leroy Sievers trotted out the same line:

Show me an exec that doesn't know when sweeps starts and I'll show you an exec getting a pink slip.

Who believes for a moment that a broadcast professional, anchoring a show that had been rumored to be expendable because of declining ratings if David Letterman was available, doesn't know when the sweeps period comes around? Puh-leeze.

Good for the Sinclair Broadcast Group for holding ABC News to a standard to which it should be holding itself instead. (via Drudge)

UPDATE: Brent Bozell noted in 1997 10 examples of Koppel's bias, which makes his "failure" complete, incontemplatable or not. (via The Corner)

Kerry's Diversity Problem, Part II

CNN's Inside Politics continues its look at the Kerry campaign's diversity problems, which I described on the air on the Northern Alliance Radio Network as The Incredible Whiteness of Being. Since Carlos Watson's original piece appeared on CNN talking about the fact that almost all of his campaign's decision-making positions have been filled with Caucasians, representatives from traditionally Democratic minority groups have begun to make their displeasure known. Typically, the same people who would scream bloody murder if Bush's campaign or his cabinet had a similar composition are now busy making excuses for Kerry:

Some black officials and independent analysts expressed concerned about the campaign's lack of racial diversity. Campaign officials and the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus said the criticism was unfounded.

"I am concerned about diversity, but more importantly I am concerned about the experience in that diversity -- senior policy people who know people from one end of the country to the other," said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois, a caucus member.

If the Kerry campaign was a corporate boardroom instead of a Democratic presidential campaign, Rep. Jackson's father would be suing it and demanding not only an explicit plan to fill key roles with people of color but also extorting money to fund his own political organizations. The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus seems similarly disinterested in Kerry's monochromatic management staff:

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, the black caucus chairman, said he was satisfied with the access minorities had to Kerry, noting that he and fellow Democratic Reps. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Harold Ford of Tennessee are among House members asked to play key roles in the campaign.

"I believe the door is open and we are present and accounted for," he said. "I really believe in my heart that those trying to judge Kerry early in campaign are a bit premature in regards to diversity."

Not everyone declared themselves satisfied with Kerry's effort:

Added Ron Walters, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson Sr. and runs the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland: "There is a sense that Kerry's people don't get it."

As always, the issue is the double standard that applies between the two political parties. George Bush, who has appointed a cabinet and selected campaign support staff that demonstrates a much larger commitment to real diversity -- and who has remained low-key about doing so -- gets labeled as a racist on a regular basis, while the Democratic nominee assumes that minorities will vote for him even though he gives them no voice in his inner circle. Two cheers to CNN for sticking with this story, even if they quote only one critical comment, and a fairly mild one at that.

Whiskey

I've received e-mail regarding the sudden disappearance of JAG Wire, a fresh new blog by Whiskey, an active-duty officer serving overseas for her country. I can tell you that Whiskey herself is just fine and that she will soon be back to blogging, although under different circumstances, probably in a week or so. I will post an announcement as soon as she's okayed it.

Stay tuned!

Al Franken: Neanderthal Man

The London Telegraph has uncovered new evidence as to why Al Franken is such an unpleasant little man:

Evidence that the life of Neanderthal man was short and probably nasty, is published today.

Short ... nasty ... Al! The Telegraph includes some convincing visual evidence as well:

Of course, the good news is that the Neanderthals eventually went away, which may be happening soon with Al, if Err America keeps going the way it has been ....

Insurgency Led By Saddam Remnants: Pentagon

The New York Times confirms that Pentagon analysts have concluded that the apparatus of the Saddam Hussein regime has financed, advised, and even led the insurgencies inside Iraq. In fact, intelligence shows that the insurgencies are the result of pre-war planning, as many had suspected:

A Pentagon intelligence report has concluded that many bombings against Americans and their allies in Iraq, and the more sophisticated of the guerrilla attacks in Falluja, are organized and often carried out by members of Saddam Hussein's secret service, who planned for the insurgency even before the fall of Baghdad.

The report states that Iraqi officers of the "Special Operations and Antiterrorism Branch," known within Mr. Hussein's government as M-14, are responsible for planning roadway improvised explosive devices and some of the larger car bombs that have killed Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners. The attacks have sown chaos and fear across Iraq.

In addition, suicide bombers have worn explosives-laden vests made before the war under the direction of of M-14 officers, according to the report, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report also cites evidence that one such suicide attack last April, which killed three Americans, was carried out by a pregnant woman who was an M-14 colonel.

This report should end the silly representation by some in this country that the insurgency demonstrates some sort of grassroots groundswell of Iraqi opinion against the US. Iraqis dislike the idea and experience of occupation, but they know better than we do that for us to evacuate Iraq entirely would leave them at the mercy of the same regime we deposed. They are not fools, but they worry that we are.

The report details how the M-14 structured cells to operate independently in case their leadership was killed or captured, and it also reports on the tactics of terror and intimidation employed by the Ba'athists which have kept Iraqi civilians from cooperating fully with the CPA and the provisional Iraqi government. Until the CPA takes decisive action against the Ba'athist remnants -- and the report makes clear that insurgents in Fallujah and nearby Ramadi are led by this group -- we will not have accomplished our overall goal of freeing Iraq from Saddam's grip, either personally or by proxy.

On the positive side, they cannot defeat us militarily; they are far too weak for that, which is why they've adopted the Hamas/Islamic Jihad/al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade tactics described in the article. Their only hope is in outlasting us, by demonstrating a stronger political will than the CPA. Their very existence demonstrates Ba'athist futility, otherwise, these same units would have stood and fought as the Coalition rolled across Baghdad. As I posted earlier, we cannot allow Saddam's remnants to chase us out of Iraq by nitpicking us into losing our political will, the only possible strategy in which they could win. The resultant loss of prestige would guarantee high-yield terrorist action against the US for decades to come.

Fallujah As Microcosm of the War on Terror

For 24 days, the US Marine Corps has surrounded Fallujah, the center of a nagging insurgency that made headlines when their successful ambush of four contractors turned into a macabre party, with people literally tearing the bodies to pieces in front of reporters and photographers. However, the US has been reluctant to move past siege status for a number of reasons, as this Los Angeles Times article states:

The plans have been laid, the troops are positioned, and all is ready for a massive Marine assault on Fallouja — and with it the long-dreaded prospect of major urban warfare in Iraq.

"We got the last unit in place today. We're tightening the noose," Col. John Toolan declared with grim satisfaction, standing on the roof of the Marine command post at the edge of the volatile Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday as occasional hostile rounds zinged overhead and American tanks rumbled toward their positions on the dusty plain. ...

Since April 5, days after four American civilian contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated in Fallouja, Marines have encircled the city. And despite an 18-day cease-fire, skirmishes have erupted daily, with Marines calling in airstrikes Wednesday for the second consecutive day. It is the sense of Fallouja's importance to larger U.S. interests in Iraq and beyond, Pentagon and Bush administration officials said, that has caused delays in a planned full-scale assault — which at one point was set to begin Sunday.

By delaying the attack, U.S. planners have hoped to show the Iraqi population, the Muslim world and the American public that Washington has done everything possible to avoid a bloody assault on the city.

While understandable, the reluctance of the CPA and Washington to speedily reduce the Fallujah base for the insurgency not only sends the wrong message to Iraqis and the Middle East at large, but it also provides a microcosm of the type of thinking that has guided American anti-terrorism efforts for decades. In holding off for so long on using our vastly superior firepower, strategy, and tactical positions, the message that we have sent is not one of benificent arbiters of peace -- it is a message of weakness. To hold up for a few days to evacuate those noncombatants who would leave sends the former message. To wait for more than three weeks while negotiations drag on with the insurgents themselves demonstrates that we lack the political will to do what's necessary to win. It's not Mogadishu, but it still shows that insurgents and terrorists can simply outlast the US by hiding in civilian areas, taking potshots at our forces interspersed with bouts of fruitless "negotiations".

For twenty-seven years, going back to Teheran, we have delivered the same message. No one doubts (any more) that we have an overwhelming military advantage in the Middle East and anywhere else, both in personnel and in technology; the three-week fall of Saddam demonstrated that beyond doubt. What we lack is both political will to win a war, and the political will to recognize that we're in a war. Negotiation with terrorists brought us to 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and instead of learning the lessons of the past quarter-century, we seem to be repeating them in Fallujah. This vacillation only communicates a sense of weakness, negating our tactical and strategic superiority, as political weakness always does (see: France, 1939-40).

It's doubly frustrating because Fallujah does not have the tactical disadvantages we face in Najaf, with the Shi'a shrines complicating our ability to attack al-Sadr's militia. Fallujah, in fact, holds the center of the Ba'athist reaction to the Coalition's regime change, and as such makes the case much stronger for direct military action. Instead of acting under a war-time paradigm, the CPA has turned the Marines into a SWAT team with better weaponry, which is a strategy for failure. We cannot be the new police force in Iraq; we must see the war to its conclusion first.

Time to quit fooling around and parleying with terrorists and unreconstructed Ba'athists, and fight the battle of Fallujah from the offense rather than the defense that the past 24 days have brought. The sooner we demonstrate our will to use all of the resources available to us to crush those who would take up arms against us, the sooner other pesky militias and insurgents will recognize that their battle has already been lost. Further delay only gives them hope of outlasting us.

Kofi Annan Endorses Unilateral Action By Anglo-American Alliance

Under pressure from the revelation of what may be the largest corruption case in history, Kofi Annan attempted to strike back at critics of the UN and the Oil-For-Food program, asserting that member nations never alerted Annan to the smuggling and the kickbacks that stuffed Saddam's pockets:

Annan pointed out that all members of the U.N. Security Council were on the committee overseeing the program, yet none had come forward and said "we had a role." Instead, Annan said, all accusations of wrongdoing were being leveled at the U.N. Secretariat which he heads.

"Be that as it may, these allegations are doing damage, and we need to face them sternly and do whatever we can to correct them," he said. "And we are beginning to put out quite a lot of information which I hope will correct some of the misinformation that has been put out."

Annan wants to play a little misdirection with the facts. The UN specifically was put in charge of this program and was supposed to be administering the contracts and the shipments, guaranteeing that the money stayed within the program and that the proceeds went to aid Iraqi citizens, not Saddam's regime. If it had trouble fulfilling that mission, the UN Secretariat should have informed the Security Council, at which time the UNSC could have decided on a course of corrective action. In fact, as the excellent blog Friends of Saddam notes in several posts, the UN OFF relaxed its oversight over time, allowing a much wider range of goods to be purchased and eliminating most rudimentary accounting controls.

But Kofi's blameshifting is not the real story here. When responding to the allegations of smuggling, Annan said:

On the $5.7 billion that the GAO estimates Saddam pocketed through smuggling, Annan said "there was no way the U.N. could have stopped it" but he suggested the United States and Britain could have.

"We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling," he said. "There was a maritime task force that was supposed to do that. They (the Iraqis) were driving the trucks through northern Iraq to Turkey. The U.S. and the British had planes in the air. We were not there. Why is this all being dumped on the U.N.?"

Annan's remarks boggle the mind. He literally endorsed the entire idea of unilateral action by the Anglo-American alliance to enforce UNSC restrictions that the UN was clearly unable to maintain. In fact, what he says here is that the OFF corruption can be blamed on the US and the UK failing to act, even without specific UN approval, when Saddam clearly was in violation of UNSC resolutions well before 2002.

Annan, simply put, just agreed with everything George Bush has said in his justifications for military action in Iraq. Saddam clearly was in violation of Resolution 1441 -- even Hans Blix acknowledged that -- so Anglo-American military action, in Annan's view, was justified. Saddam, in fact, violated every single one of the UNSC resolutions related to disarmament, human rights, and reparations after the Gulf War, especially in continuing to oppress Iraqi citizens -- and so Anglo-American military action to rectify the situation was necessary, as the UN was unable to act on its own to stop it.

In fact, since the first whiffs of the OFF debacle only started coming out publicly in the run-up to the war, and since continuation of sanctions would have continued the smuggling and kickbacks by Saddam and his henchmen, Annan has now legitimized the Coalition action to remove the tyrranical regime and put an end to the OFF program.

Alert John Kerry -- even the UN Secretary General has conceded the worthlessness of the UN in enforcing world order, and has endorsed the Anglo-American initiative to reintroduce accountability to international relations.

Patriot Forum Tonight

Well, we're trying this again ... the First Mate and I will be at the Patriot Forum (sponsored by our radio station, AM 1280 The Patriot) in Bloomington, MN to see Michael Medved! The Northern Alliance will be represented by Mitch Berg, The Elder, Saint Paul, and myself, and perhaps a few others as we provide "security" for the event. (Translation: we stand at the door and tell everyone to wait until the dining room is open.)

I'm taking my camera and hope to post a few pictures when I get back. In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who's helped Captain's Quarters get past the 200,000 visitor mark, as of yesterday. Thank you and keep coming back!

UPDATE: No pictures (sorry), but Michael Medved was fabulous! Both The Patriot and Michael himself went way out of their way to mention the Northern Alliance, and we got a nice round of applause from the great crowd at the Sheraton. Michael spoke brilliantly and took a number of questions, and afterwards graciously stood for an hour while people filed past to shake his hand and greet him. He even gave me a hint on solving the mystery of the one fake film in his book from the 70s, The Golden Turkey Awards, one of the funniest looks at the movies ever put to print.

If you ever have a chance to hear him speak, take it. In fact, you can hear him speak on the Salem Radio Network every afternoon. If you're not listening yet, you should be.

Whither the Hero?

Reader Limpet6 e-mailed me a link to a fine article, originally from the Naval Institute, on the attention paid to victims at the expense of heroes in the war on terror. Captain Roger Lee Crossland, a SEAL reserve officer, notes that in previous conflicts Americans knew the heores of the age as household names:

In earlier times, the American public could recite names such as Boatswain’s Mate Reuben James, Lieutenant William Cushing, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, Sergeant Alvin York, Mess Attendant Dorie Miller, and Sergeant Audie Murphy as easily as they could their own home addresses. The individual heroes of the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, generally are unknown. Deluged by lengthy, detailed stories of the extreme efforts taken by terrorists, we have heard little of the extreme efforts taken by members of the U.S. armed forces.

In his article, Captain Crossland places the blame for this point at the feet of the Pentagon and the current administration, which seems fair enough. One of my ongoing gripes about the White House approach to the war is the lack of continued and consistent communication about the purpose and the progress of our efforts. But it's not just the White House, or at least the problem doesn't exist in a vacuum. Thirty years of popular-culture indoctrination of the idea that nothing is worth fighting for has eliminated the idea of violence as anything except evil, which Crossland also discusses:

Battlefield heroes do not make the front pages anymore. Perhaps there is some policy that fears the glorification of violence; violence is never productive, therefore, no violence should be glorified. Well, wars are violent. Individual and self-defense are violent. War heroes are violent. Bravery in battle frequently requires violent acts.

Violence is not inherently bad. Heroes in war must be prepared to be violent.

To some extent, heroes have reflected the times in which they rose to notice. Sergeant Alvin York, for instance, was a pacifist who struggled with the entire notion of military service, but once in battle proved a fearsome soldier whose sharpshooting and bravery inspired millions. York's experience mirrored that of the US World War I: reluctant warriors, deadly once roused. Audie Murphy was a small, scrappy, poor kid who was rejected for service in the Marines because of his size, but once on the battlefield in Europe as a GI, quickly demonstrated his bravery and his resourcefulness. Again, in some ways this reflected the American experience at the time, as a primarily agricultural and poorly-equipped nation developed almost overnight into a great military power.

Now, as Crossland notes, our heroes also reflect the times in which they are celebrated. Unfortunately, in this case, the household-name hero for the war on terror is Jessica Lynch, a terribly brave woman who sacrificed almost everything except her life during her service in Iraq. However, Lynch isn't celebrated for her choice to enter the Army and put her life on the line for her country; she's celebrated for being the war's most pre-eminent victim, in a nation that has made victimhood the highest state of being:

We help our enemies by default, by allowing lesser images to be presented as substitutes. Everyone knows the name Jessica Lynch. She wore her country’s uniform, went willingly to her duty in Iraq, and suffered grievous injuries, but does she qualify to be known first among those who served in this war? We have brushed aside battlefield resolution and action—which should be foremost—and allowed the image of victimization and suffering to take its place.

For some today, the only image they know is of U.S. servicemen and women as victims. That is not right. It cannot continue. Worse still, we risk having our children’s perception become that signing up to serve is signing up to become a victim.

I suspect -- and I think that Crossland would agree -- that the name Pat Tillman will only have limited exposure as a national hero, probably consigned to subcultural hero status among conservatives, even though he arguably was more of a victim than Lynch. After all, both volunteered for service, and both were attacked, and Tillman died as a result, unlike Lynch. However, because Tillman was engaged in an offensive tactical mission when he died, as opposed to Lynch's support role, an undercurrent of thought resolves that Tillman should have expected it. Some people say out loud that Tillman got what he deserved.

Neither Crossland or I wish to take anything away from Lynch. Rather, Crossland argues that we are the problem, in our pusillanimity in not facing up to the fact that war means violence, and in this case, it means taking the violence to the terrorists instead of them taking the violence to us -- here. We wish instead to continue to cluck our tongues at any hint of enthusiasm for the mission from our troops and instead focus all of our approbation on those who allow us to feel we're "supporting the troops" while hypocritically not endorsing the actions that these volunteers take in engaging and destroying the enemy that causes the victimhood they celebrate.

Read all of Captain Crossland's excellent article. When you're done, consider writing your Congressman with his suggestion that the Pentagon start putting the stories of the heroes out for all of us to see. Feel free to copy any or all of my post in doing so, if you like.

Democratic Dirty-Tricks Campaign To Target NY Convention

The New York Times runs a story today on a campaign by anti-Bush protestors to infiltrate the Republican Convention in New York by signing up as volunteers, and then doing their best to disrupt the event -- a clear sign of both desperation and of a lack of respect for the political process:

"Really?" said Kevin Sheekey, president of the New York City Host Committee, when told that protesters were talking about flooding the ranks of volunteers to disrupt convention operations.

The city is obligated to find a total of 8,000 New Yorkers to volunteer to help things run smoothly, and would-be protesters are hoping that by signing up, they can work from the inside during the convention, scheduled Aug. 30 through Sept. 2.

For some reason, the Times headlines this article "G.O.P. Protesters Plan to Infiltrate Convention as Volunteers," leaving the impression that the protestors are Republicans. However, even though the Times notes that a similar effort supposedly targets the Boston Democratic convention, those volunteer slots have already been filled, while more than three-quarters of the New York positions remain open. Filling those positions with Democratic or Green Trojan horses not only creates a potentially large security problem within the convention itself, it also creates a way for disaffected little twerps to keep people who really would like to volunteer out of the convention, as well as irresponsibly and illegally block Republicans from exercising their freedom to pursue their politics.

Imagine, if you will, if little Republican twerps had infiltrated the 2000 Democratic convention and turned it into a mess, refusing to perform the necessary tasks they were assigned in good faith and shouting anti-Democratic slogans from all over the floor. Even a fraction of 8,000 people makes for a very large and difficult-to-subdue group, especially in a crowded convention. They would have been compared to Nazi brownshirts, and while the analogy would have been overwrought, it would have some truth in it.

And Al Gore would be President.

If they manage to pull this off, they may not understand the impact it will have on the center. Such a left-inspired debacle would wind up making the Paul Wellstone memorial look like a bipartisan tea party. They'll be big heroes to the Deaniac/Naderite crowd, but the stench of hypocrisy may plow under Democratic hopes all the way down the ticket in November. It will expose the hard left as not a democratic force in politics but a neo-Stalinist polemic, which tolerates no dissent and sabotages any exercise of democracy and free speech which does not serve its own purposes, and any politician who trucks with that lot will pay the price.

Be Careful What You Wish For

George Bush must be pleased to see the results from Pennsylvania's primary election last night, which saw the candidate he personally endorsed, incumbent moderate Arlen Specter, narrowly edge out conservative challenger and current Congressman Pat Toomey by two points, which amounted to less than 17,000 votes. Bush went to Pennsylvania to campaign for Specter's re-election and threw the weight of the state and national GOP behind Specter's run. After all, Specter represents so many of the things that Bush wants:

He supports abortion rights, voted against limiting medical malpractice awards and successfully pushed for a reduction in the size of Bush's tax cut package back in 2001, though he voted for the tax cuts in the end. ... He has also questioned provisions in the Patriot Act, which Bush has been pushing to renew.

Well, then, Toomey represented a real threat to Bush's legislative initiatives after re-election ... right?

A spending hawk in the House, he has drawn the ire of even some of his fellow Republicans by challenging increased federal spending, including a 2002 farm bill that he likened to "Soviet-style agricultural policy."

He proposed making Bush's tax cuts even larger, and, like the president, supports restrictions on abortion and medical malpractice awards.

Hmm. Well, Bush got the "electable" man he wanted, opting to play it safe rather than support the candidate who supported him, since you can hardly call Arlen Specter loyal to the Bush agenda. The political calculation necessitated by the wafer-thin Republican majority in the Senate may be understandable, but it disappoints nonetheless. The Republicans are certain to significantly increase that majority with the five open and formerly Democratic seats in the South, and Bush could have taken a chance on supporting Toomey in the primary, at least.

It's a rare instance of caution from a politician who has built his career on taking risks, such as his full-court press in 2002, which paid off amazingly well. While I hope that the White House does get what it wants from the election, I suspect that they will live to regret their support of the ever-difficult Specter.

More Problems at Err America

The gang at Air America just can't catch a break. First they lose access to the radio signal in the #2 and #3 markets, having to ask a judge to force the radio station to air their program -- and that only lasts until Friday. Now comes word that one of their founders has packed it up, decided that he doesn't care for the daily grind, and another executive has been "replaced" ... at least according to the FrankenNet spinners:

In the latest development in what has become a chaotic inaugural month, Air America Radio is losing two of its top executives, including the network's co-founder.

Mark Walsh, the former AOL executive and Democratic National Committee operative who announced the network's launch to much fanfare five months ago, said Monday that he has stepped down as chief executive officer.

Separately, the network confirmed that Dave Logan, Air America's vice president for operations and programming, has been replaced.

Walsh may not be leaving permanently; he's agreed to stay on as a "senior advisor", which sounds a lot like they won't see too much of him but they'll still see his money. Walsh helped found the fledgeling radio network by infusing a lot of cash, both from himself and his donors, as Err America bought its way on the air. (Don't get me wrong -- if I could find a paranoid billionaire who thought the best way around campaign-finance laws was to buy me radio stations like they were toys, you'd bet I'd take him up on it.) Walsh seems to have tired of the venture rather quickly, as have media critics, even liberal ones such as David Shaw.

Logan, however, apparently got walked out of the office, at least according to a staffer. His duties, which included programming and operations, have been reassigned to on-air talent Lizz Winstead and chief counsel David Goodfriend. When you have to have your lawyer run operations and your on-air host run programming, that indicates that George Soros may not be cutting checks to the organization any more. Perhaps he finally listened to the shows, or maybe he's lost interest. We'll know for sure when Err America assigns Chuck D to Sales and has Al Franken running security.

Spinning, however, goes on as usual. Despite the apparent firing of Logan, Err America chairman Evan Cohen denied that anything at all was amiss in liberal paradise:

Chairman Evan Cohen characterized the management departures as the normal growing pains of a start-up. "Businesses have an evolutionary process," he said. "If you're looking for `Shake-up at Air America Radio,' that's a creation in your own mind."

One thing that I do have to admit is that the changes seem to have resulted in an immediate improvement in their programming:

In Chicago, the network pulled its morning shows off the air Monday, replacing them with music and a periodic promotional message telling listeners how to hear the network over satellite radio and the Internet. Cohen said he wanted to inform listeners where to find Air America in case a new station isn't lined up by Friday.

Unfortunately, the improvement was short-lived; they went back to regular programming in the afternoon. (via Leather Penguin)

Caption Contest #7 Winners!

The judge has stepped out of the shadows to shine a light on the winners of this week's Caption Contest! For those of you who have forgotten, here's the picture:

Gerbera Tetra has selected his favorite entries for this week's contest:

Captain's Award (The Limited Salute) -- Todd Robins:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of American, unless of course this offends someone in which case I will simply deny it later. And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under no ridiculous illusions of a higher moral power, with liberty and justice for any protected minority group.

You Have The Conn #1 (You SOB Award) -- Scotty:

In a move defending his ethnically challenged cabinet, Senator Kerry hires his own shadow to be his general secretary of urban music appreciation. When told that a dark shadow of a white man doesn't count as much as having an actual African-American on his cabinet, the senator decried the comment as an attack on the patriotism of the shadow because the shadow was being cast upon a flag, and ordered his secret service agent to go all "bunny-hill" on the accuser.

You Have The Conn #2 (Super Hero Award) -- Kimmber:

In an effort to clarify his flip-flop voting record, John Kerry introduced the Alter-Ego-Representative, Nuance Kerry. "When I vote for it, he flips against it. We watch out for each other that way."

You Have The Conn #3 (Your Blood, His Guts Award) -- Chris B:

(for Best Invocation of George C. Scott)

"Now some of you Dems, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. The Republicans are the enemy. Wade into them. Lie about their war record, lie about their voting record. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was our legislative agenda, you'll know what to do. Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything, we'll let the UN do that. We are equivocating constantly, and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the election. We're going to hold onto Bush by the ass, and we're going to kick him in the nose. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time, and we're going to go through him like crap through a Clinton. Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, What did you do in the great 2004 election? You won't have to say, Well, I voted for Dean. Alright now, you secret service agents, you know how I feel. I will be proud to shove you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That's all."

Report to Sick Bay (On The Double) -- SC Lefty:

You're right, I don't know where this finger has been.

I'd like to thank Gerbera Tetra for guest-judging this week's contest, and don't forget to drop by his blog. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage GT's intellect and my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

I've already got a couple of pictures to choose from for next Friday's contest, but don't hesitate to drop me a line if you want to guest judge a weekly contest, along with a picture you'd like to see run. I have a blast with these contests, and I hope the guest judges do as well.

JFK on WMD: WTF?

John Kerry can't decide what he believes about the Iraqi WMD issue, on today's Hardball with Chris Matthews. First he says he agrees with Matthews that WMD didn't exist at the time of the invasion and leverages that into a tirade against the Bush administration's honesty -- but then he executes a curious, partial reversal, as Hugh Hewitt noted on his show tonight:

Key portion of the Hardball exchange this evening:

Matthews: "If there was an exaggeration of WMD, exaggeration of the danger, exaggeration implicitly of the connection to al Qaeda and 9/11, what's the motive for this, what's the 'why?' Why did Bush and Cheney and the ideolouges around take us to war? Why do you think they did it?"

Kerry: "It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and --we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, two months from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery, so the fact is that as you peel it away I think it comes down to this larger ideological and neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect to Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could, and because they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with."

Kerry extends his fatuousness into yet another area this week. No one has ever said that WMD would be limited to artillery -- one of the reasons that the UN limited Iraqi missile ranges (which, as Kenneth Timmerman noted, they routinely violated) was to ensure that Saddam couldn't drop chemical weapons onto Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile delivery system. Another reason was to keep WMD from terrorists, who have very little use for artillery-delivered WMD, but could make good use of the chemicals and biological agents in other ways. When did the threshold for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons become artillery-based deployment?

But more than that, Kerry argues for both positions in the same breath. If WMDs aren't found, then the whole thing was just a big neo-con conspiracy, a sentiment that one usually has to travel to Jakarta or Tehran to hear. If they are found, then ... what? Bush told the truth and your paranoia has been revealed? If he finds WMD but not in the quantities found, is it still a neo-con conspiracy? How much WMD does Kerry consider to be a problem? Kerry doesn't answer those questions, mostly because Matthews didn't bother to ask them, turning "Hardball" into television's most ironic show title. (If you listened to the replay, you could practically hear the smooch from Matthews' lips on Kerry's backside. It was that bad.)

So now on one hand, Kerry claims Bush lied as part of a vast neo-con conspiracy to turn the Middle East democratic -- oh, the horror! -- while saying at the same time that WMD may still be found. Either he lied or he didn't, Senator. If he lied, then you're saying that the WMD never existed and he knew it, despite the testimony of everyone involved and even Bill Clinton that the intelligence all said that it existed. Somehow George Bush saw through the intelligence reports from all Western nations claiming that Iraq had WMD and refused to account for them, and decided to go to war anyway even though in the end he knew that we'd find nothing and he'd pay a political price for it.

Or we may still find WMD, in which case Kerry turns into Emily Litella and says, "Never mind!"

Riiiiiiiiiight .....

More Good Economic News

Consumer confidence and home sales continue to rise as more people find jobs, contributing to an undeniably growing economy:

Home sales rose a strong 5.7% in March, according to the National Association of Realtors, and a second report said consumer confidence rose in April, driven primarily by increased faith in an employment recovery. The reports are more good news for an economy showing increasing signs of strength.

The Conference Board, a private research firm, said its index of consumer confidence rose to 92.9 in April from a revised 88.5 in March. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the index to slip to 88.0.

"The job market, which has a major impact on confidence, appears to be gaining strength," said Lynn Franco, director of research at the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center. "The percentage of consumers claiming jobs are hard to get is now at its lowest level since November 2002, and more consumers expect this trend to continue."

It just keeps rolling ... it just keeps rolling along ...

Captain's Caption Contest #7!

It's Friday -- time for a new Captain's Caption Contest! We have an intriguing selection by this week's guest judge, Gerbera Tetra, the place for bad commentary, bad ideas, bad motives and bad jokes. GT wants to challenge us all with this eerie image:

You know what to do -- post your best caption lines in the comments section of this post (no e-mails, please), enter as often as you like, no purchase necessary, winner need not be present when selected, blah blah blah. We'll keep the contest open until Tuesday 4/27 6 PM CT, when GT will select the winners.

Just remember -- if you want to win, don't hide your light under a bushel ... step out of the shadows and give it your best shot!

BUMP 4/24: We already have a ton of great entries, but keep it up -- very impressive so far ...

BUMP 4/25: I slept in today (in Irish, you sleep out, not in -- trivia points!), so I've lost some blogging time. I'll post more after the honey-do list for today is complete, but in the meantime keep posting your excellent captions! ...

BUMP 4/26: Apparently, today will be a light-blogging day as well, but be sure to get your entries in ahead of the Tuesday 6 PM CT deadline ...

COMMENTS CLOSED 4/27: Thanks for a whole boatload of great entries! The judge is putting them under a harsh light as we speak ...

I'm "Dark, Mysterious, and Introspective"

Yeah, well, it's going around, so I thought I'd take the Hugh Hewitt challenge and find out which Bob Dylan song I am. Now I have the results, and I still don't know what this means:

I think I need to consult with Big Trunk at Power Line to find out why ...

WMD Not Missing At All

Ever since the David Kay interim report was released in December stating Kay's pessimism about ever finding actual weapons and chemical/biological agents, conventional wisdom has held that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction -- and in fact that our intelligence and that of most of the world was so faulty that we all missed Saddam's disarmament after the first Gulf War. Little attention has been given to the rest of Kay's report, which clearly laid out that Saddam had been in material violation of UNSC Resolution 1441 and the other sixteen which preceded it by hiding and maintaining the activities and systems which could quickly reconstitute WMD programs as soon as the heat was off.

Now Kenneth Timmerman has provided a second look at the WMD question, informing us that WMD has indeed been found in Iraq -- even though our national media apparently prefers to stick with the established story line instead of actually reporting the news (via Power Line):

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors. ... In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].

So not only has the ISG discovered the banned materials as well as the programs, Congress has heard this in testimony just four weeks ago -- and yet have you read anything about this in the media? With the UN Oil-for-Food scam in the headlines, you would think that journalists would start drawing lines between the OFF funding and Saddam's established and nascent weapons programs. And there's more:

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.

At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

However, as Timmerman himself notes, the new information doesn't fit within the established story line; to acknowedge this new reality, they will have to explain why they got it wrong before, and so far they don't seem inclined to do that. Read the entire article and judge for yourself.

FactCheck.Org Missing Expertise on Defense Matters (plus "Captain Ed" Defined)

FactCheck.Org, run by the Annenberg Foundation, normally does a pretty good job of providing a balanced look at the controversies of the day and applies logic and facts instead of volume and hyperbole. However, in the case of FactCheck's defense of Kerry's own defense record, they made a monumental goof that deserves a solid response:

It is true that when Kerry first ran for the Senate in 1984 he did call specifically for canceling the AH-64 Apache helicopter. What the ad lacks is the historic context: the Cold War was ending and the Apache was designed principally as a weapon to be used against Soviet tanks. And in fact, even Richard Cheney himself, who is now Vice President but who then was Secretary of Defense, also proposed canceling the Apache helicopter program five years after Kerry did.

The short answer to this is that there was a huge difference between 1985 and 1990, but fortunately I received an e-mail from a reader who spent a lot of time both in the military and in the defense industry who can give the more detailed response. Duane from MnKurmudge & DCKid is a long-time CQ reader whose 19 years in the latter outstrips my 3+, but I can vouch for his accuracy in his vehement response below:

The comparison with Cheney is almost worse, and reveals these people as having rotten egg on their collective face.

It is because of two things: first, in 1990 the Cold War was effectively ended and Cheney was presiding over the drawdown and decommissioning of significant pieces of the force structure. Back in 1985 there was no such prospect on the horizon; we were still preparing militarily for an apparently viable USSR, and Kerry proposed shutting down the most important Army combat aviation asset right in the middle of the Cold War- if that doesn't reveal his flawed and anti-military view, I don't know what else would show it better, other than marching through Lafayette Park with his old V-VAW "Band of Brothers" (the real B-O-B shouldbe insulted by the terminology when associated with the Senator) and urging that all weapons be beaten into love jewelry (we don't do plowshares any more).

Second, this example shows that the writers have no idea how the DoD appropriates funds and runs their programs, and has no interest in finding out before waxing eloquent and self-righteous on the subject.

There is a huge difference between cancelling a program in FY90 (which would be Aug 89) and FY85 when Kerry wanted to kill the Apache. By FY90, the Army had built at least 50 to 100 more Apaches (at an assumed, for lack of budget history specifics, production rate of 1 or 2 per month) than they had in 1985, so the likely revised procurement objective would be about complete at that point. Generally, the argument would be over whether to keep a warm line at a minimum sustaining rate or let the line go down and just provide spare parts.

Make sure you read his entire, detailed rebuttal to FactCheck's sloppy analysis.

One last item: Duane made a reference to me being "a military guy," and my nickname certainly could give that impression. My original Typepad blog had an explanation of the origins of "Captain Ed", but here it is again so I don't mislead people by mistake ... It's a nickname bestowed on me by a former girlfriend during a time in my life when I was a huge Star Trek fan, and had named my first car the Carship Enterprise, and had bought a license-plate frame with that on it. For a birthday gift, she got me a set of personalized license plates that read CPTN ED to fit within it.

Well, I thought that was pretty cool. In fact, I liked it so much that I transferred those plates to every new car I bought until I moved to Minnesota, when I finally decided enough was enough. The old plates, which outlasted my Star Trek passion by several years and the girlfriend by even more, are in my office at home. By that time, I had used the nickname on the Internet for years on e-mail, newsgroups, listservs, and blog comments. When I set up my own blog, it seemed natural to call it "Captain's Quarters".

So keep in mind -- the Captain has more in common with Daryl Dragon, the Captain from Captain & Tenille, than he does with the brave men and women serving now or in the past in our nation's military; it's just a nickname. However, that analogy doesn't sound too terrific in a week where we're all debating the worst hit songs ever ...

Making Market Sense of Wages and Prices As A System

When I want to read sensible explanations of a market economy, I turn to many sources, but one blogger in particular: Jon Henke at QandO. Jon posted a long essay today explaining why free-market mechanics work, using Wal-Mart as an example. One money graf -- quite literally -- is the most concise argument I've yet read regarding the pointlessness of artificial minimum-wage increases:

We're a wage-earning society, but not we are not exclusively a wage-earning society. We are also a price-paying society, and if we pay attention to the income end of that fiscal balancing act, at the expense of our spending power, then we are simply engaging in a modern sort of mercantilism, wherein we think the consumer is wealthier if he has more money....even if that means he can't buy as much.

Jon explains in detail why Wal-Mart is not the devil and why its continued success isn't guaranteed:

But that's the beauty of a free market. We simply don't know how to allocate our resources - for one thing, because the proper allocation of resources changes from day to day - but a properly functioning price mechanism allows us to distribute those resources based on what value we place on them. Will Wal-Mart be around and on top forever? Of course not.

I'd remind you of who Wal-Mart replaced on the Dow Jones Industrial Average: Woolworth. A company that achieved market dominance by "undercutting the prices of local merchants". Of course, they were criticized for driving local merchants out of business at the time. And then, in 1997, they closed the remainder of their stores. Why? "Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the big discount stores and the expansion of grocery stores to carry most of the items five-and-ten-cent stores carried as factors in the stores' lack of success in the late 20th century."

Short version: Wal-Mart, Target, grocery stores and others had found a better business model. Woolworth was a dinosaur.

Read the whole post, and if you haven't already added QandO to your blogroll or bookmarks, be sure to do so.

UPDATE: I don't normally update a post with a comment, but this one made me laugh out loud and also emphasizes the point. From Farmer Joe of the fine new blog Urban Farmhouse: Whenever somebody says to me "I don't believe in the market", I always say that's like not believing in gravity. You're free not to believe in it, but that doesn't mean it's not going to affect you.

AP: Massive Reductions In US Positions on SK DMZ?

The AP reports that the US will reduce its military presence in South Korea, including dramatic cuts in forces along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea, in a policy shift from the decades-long "tripwire" strategy that kept the million-man northern PRK army from invading the south:

The United States will pull nearly all its troops from their last front-line positions along the tense frontier with communist North Korea by October as part of a force reshuffle on the divided Korean peninsula, the United Nations Command said Tuesday. Duties along the heavily fortified buffer, called the Demilitarized Zone, will be handed over to South Korea, which has 600,000 troops staring off against North Korea's 1.1-million member military, the world's fifth largest.

While the US's popularity in South Korea has waned over the past couple of decades, they never really wanted to see us leave their defenses. The AP does not include any reaction from Seoul, either official or unofficial. The US plans on handing back half of its bases in the Republic, some of them on land considered to have prime real-estate potential, which may offset the economic damage done by the base closings.

North Korea reacted counter-intuitively:

On Sunday, North Korea condemned a reduction of U.S. forces along the DMZ as preparation for a pre-emptive attack against the communist country. The North sometimes argues that a pullout signals an attack, because it would reduce the risk of immediate U.S. casualties along the border fighting zone.

It may be the only country to consider a stand-down of forces as a prelude to attack, but then again, in the paranoia of Kim Jong-Il, any change could be a prelude to attack. The AP explains it as part of Donald Rumsfeld's campaign to create a lighter, nimbler armed forces that leverages its technological advantages to deter attack rather than large numbers of standing troops. In that regard, it certainly means less casualties at least on defense, and for that we can do nothing but applaud Rumsfeld as long as the mission isn't compromised.

However, it looks more like the reduction also reflects changing priorities at the Pentagon and changing politics on the ground. The South Koreans have not been terribly helpful during the nuclear non-proliferation effort aimed at disarming North Korea of its nuclear weapons. Force reduction may possibly reflect some disenchantment between the US and its South Korean ally, or more likely it is simply a way in which to allow the South Koreans to take more control over their own security situation, which should be the ultimate goal in our Korean policy anyway. In the meantime, we could use the troops pinned down in the DMZ in other theaters, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, since our erstwhile NATO allies haven't been particularly eager to assist in either effort, despite official UN blessing on the latter.

Expect to see more realignments in the near future to meet new global realities, especially in Europe, where we're still defending against a non-existent Soviet menace.

Washington Post: Congress Fumbled on Intelligence

While the 9/11 Commission has publicly played a game of Pin The Blame On The Elephant, Dana Priest at the Washington Post puts together a devastating look at Congress' role in ignoring security threats and undermining the systems designed to detect them and protect the US:

In the fall of 2002, as Congress debated waging war in Iraq, copies of a 92-page assessment of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction sat in two vaults on Capitol Hill, each protected by armed security guards and available to any member who showed up in person, without staff.

But only a few ever did. No more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page National Intelligence Estimate executive summary, according to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material. ...

Committee members acknowledge in hindsight that they presided over damaging cuts in the CIA's operational budget over the past decade. They knew the details: that the intelligence community's budget had been cut every year between 1990 and 1996, and that it remained flat from 1996 to 2000. They knew the agency had been forced to cut 25 percent of its personnel and closed some stations overseas.

Priest describes more than just benign neglect; in the wake of several terrorist attacks during the 1990s, one would have expected the Congressional committees with intelligence oversight, at least, to take an interest in intelligence matters. Instead, most members seem disinterested in immersing themselves in the technical aspects of the work, especially since it provides no opportunities for public hearings -- which means no publicity. Staffers cannot access the sensitive material for security reasons, so the normal process of summarizing can't be applied; the members have to do the work themselves. And as a result, it simply doesn't get done.

Priest notes various incidents and the excuses given by committee members for sloughing it off:

• Although many have criticized the president for appearing inattentive to reports on al Qaeda before Sept. 11, the Senate intelligence committee, which is given classified daily reports on terrorism and other intelligence, held only one closed-door hearing devoted to al Qaeda and bin Laden in the months before the attacks, according to congressional and administration officials. Some staff members recalled holding a second meeting; others did not.

• Forty-six senators -- none of them members of the intelligence committee -- demanded that the CIA declassify a section of the House-Senate Sept. 11 report that dealt with Saudi Arabia, saying it was crucial to the public's understanding of the terror plot. But most of the 46 senators, including the campaign's leader, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), never read the 28 pages they insisted be released. "I intentionally didn't read it because this administration plays hardball on things like this," said Schumer, who said he talked to senators who had read the 28 pages and told him it contained no real secrets. "Had I read the report and been critical, they would have accused me of leaking it the way they've done with other senators."

• The House intelligence committee believed the voluminous House-Senate report was so important that it temporarily changed its rules to allow all members of the House to read the classified report. "There weren't a lot of takers on the 9/11 report," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the committee's vice chairman. Partly, she said, this was because members' personal staffs were not given access, leaving the hard work to members themselves. "Some didn't want to do the homework," she said.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said some members with packed daily schedules are deterred simply by the prospect of trekking across Capitol grounds to the secure Hart Senate Office Building room where the Senate's classified material is kept.

I recall the controversy over the Saudi Arabia report, when Democrats insisted that the redacted version might contain embarassing revelations about Bush's connections to the Saudis. Now we find out that after publicly demanding access to the raw report -- and getting it -- most of them never bothered to look at it. Schumer, who sucked up most of the TV face time on this issue, uses the lame excuse that he was afraid of being accused of leaking the data. Rarely, if ever, will one see a more blatant example of empty (and empty-headed) partisan politics.

Instead of invoking Richard Clarke to accuse the Bush administration of a lack of attention to al-Qaeda, Congress needs to look at their own performance, when they couldn't even be bothered to look at the data while stripping the CIA of its resources. Even if you believe the worst of the Clarke accusations, the Bush administration was Patton-like on terrorism and security compared to the pathetic performance of Charles Schumer and the rest of Congress, especially the intelligence oversight committees. Read the entire article and make notes for the elections in November.

Power Line Debunks D-Bunker - Again

My colleague Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson at Power Line provided a terrific look at the Orwellian nature of the Kerry campaign by posting two screenshots of Kerry's "D-Bunker" section of his website. The first screenshot showed the D-Bunker entry on the medal-tossing exploits of the presidential candidate before his ABC appearance, while the second showed an unannounced modification by Kerry's campaign. The difference? The updated D-Bunker entry had this phrase removed:

John Kerry is proud of the work he did to end the Vietnam War, and he has been consistent about the facts and the symbolism of the medal-returning ceremony.

This morning, Big Trunk notes that the changes go even further back than that, and directs readers to two blogs that captured what we think are the originals. Don't miss it!

NY Times Spreads Gossip, Tweaks Bush

Normally, newspapers print gossip -- unsubstantiated rumors that tend towards the salacious or damaging -- in specialty columns, such as the New York Post's Page 6 or the syndicated Liz Smith column. However, if the unsubstantiated and unsourced rumor involves high-ranking members of the Bush administration and can be used to tweak the president, the New York Times feels free to run gossip as a "news" story, as it does today regarding the latest (ho hum) Colin Powell rumor:

Forget the official pronouncements that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is staying put at the State Department.

The buzz in the capital is at least a couple of steps beyond that, as people in business and finance circles here are speculating that he could become the next president of the World Bank, the largest and most influential development agency in the world.

The whispers only grew louder the other night after Mr. Powell dined with James D. Wolfensohn, the current bank head, at his home in the Kalorama section of Washington.

Ooh -- Powell attended a private dinner! Wow, that never happens. Elizabeth Becker notes that Wolfensohn said that Powell came as a friend and not in any official or business capacity. Wolfensohn also dismissed out of hand the idea that Powell would want to take over his job in a subsequent Bush administration, even if the president wanted to replace him. Wolfensohn hasn't even given any indication he wants out.

At least she quotes Wolfensohn by name. He's only one of two sources to be identified in the rest of the article; the other, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, refused to comment. In the middle of the article, Becker gets to the point:

The speculation about Mr. Powell increased after the publication of Bob Woodward's book, "Plan of Attack.'' Mr. Woodward's portrait of the secretary of state as dissenting from the hawks in the Bush war cabinet seemed to confirm what many believed inevitable, that Mr. Powell will not remain as secretary in a second Bush administration.

Ah, yes, the oft-reported, oft-denied "Powell was betrayed" scenario that Powell himself has repeatedly and forcefully denied. Not only does Becker manage to maneuver that into her gossip column (titled "Psst! Is Powell Bound for the World Bank?" in a rare example of truth in headlining) but she even includes this picture of a poor African family with the caption, "The agenda of the World Bank is to help the world's poor, like this family in Soweto, South Africa." Why this picture?

To those pressing for Mr. Powell to make the move, what better position than as spokesman for the world's poor? He served as chairman of America's Promise, a charity aimed at helping children at risk.

While his policy speeches are replete with praise for the Iraq war and Mr. Bush's more muscular initiatives, Mr. Powell never fails to list as major accomplishments the administration's contributions to the fight against AIDS and world poverty - all items on the bank's agenda.

Well, sure, but they're also items on the Bush Administration's foreign-policy objectives, too, and Powell is the head of the State Department that is tasked with implementing them. Remember the $15 billion earmarked for AIDS?

Powell may well be a great candidate for the World Bank top spot. Heck, I'd pick him to run almost any organization; he has been tremendously successful no matter where he's gone. But this isn't a story, it's wishful thinking. The position isn't open, Powell has never said he'd leave his current position, and Bush hasn't been re-elected yet. No one has gone on record -- or even off-record -- saying he wants to take the job or that Bush wants to offer it to him. Becker relies on Powell's attendance at a private dinner and some unnamed functionary telling her, "Wouldn't that be great?"

Becker must have felt left out of the Bush-bashing lately and decided to get in a mild shot by proxy. If this is what passes for journalism at the Gray Lady these days, then Howell Raines clearly was not the only problem on the editorial board.

Adventures in Headlining

The Sacramento Bee analyzed a Los Angeles Times poll (always a dangerous task) on gay marriage in a state with the nation's strongest gay movement. The results of the poll showed that less than a third of Californians supported legalizing same-sex marriage. However, the Sacramento Bee headlined the story thusly:

Poll: Nearly one of three Californians favor gay marriage

Wow -- nearly a third support gay marriage! That's about the same percentage that supported Cruz Bustamante in the recall election. I'm talking about the actual vote, not the LA Times' polling, which had both of them ahead until the final weekend before the vote -- labeling the race as "too close to call" just before Californians rejected Gray Davis by 10 points and Bustamante 48%-30%. "Nearly a third of all Californians" didn't help them much in the end.

Talk about viewing the glass half-full! Who knew that the Sacramento Bee hired such optimists as headline writers? (via The Corner)

A Whiff of Desperation at the Gray Lady

John Kerry's fumble on his medal-tossing incident has produced an aroma of desperation from the New York Times this morning, where an article titled "1971 Tape Adds to Debate Over Kerry's Medal Protest" broadens out inexplicably to cover a range of what reporters Jim Rutenberg and James Dao must feel are Kerry-friendly topics. First, Rutenberg and Dao hedge on calling Kerry a liar, even though their own reporting makes it clear that Kerry lied about the medals:

The Kerry campaign Web site says it is "right-wing fiction" that he "threw away his medals during a Vietnam War protest." Rather, the Web site says, "John Kerry threw away his ribbons and the medals of two veterans who could not attend the event."

But the issue is not so cut and dried. A television interview Mr. Kerry gave in November 1971 shows that Mr. Kerry himself fed the confusion from early on. ... When the interviewer asked, "How many did you give back, John?" he answered, "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine."

When the interviewer pointed out that Mr. Kerry had won the Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts, Mr. Kerry added, "Well, and above that, I gave back my others."

Actually, the issue is cut and dried; Kerry flat-out lied about this incident being the product of a right-wing smear campaign, as he puts it on his website, and he may or may not have lied in 1971 about the medals being his. After Rutenberg and Dao nicely confirm Kerry's attempt to falsely generate paranoia about Vast Right-Wing Conspiracies, a la Hillary Clinton, they note that Kerry lied about it as late as last Friday (as did the original ABC News report that Drudge broke) in an interview with the Los Angeles Times:

In The Los Angeles Times article, Mr. Kerry was quoted as saying that he never meant to imply that the two medals he had discarded belonged to him. He said they belonged to two men who could not attend the ceremony.

"I never ever implied that I did it," Mr. Kerry is quoted as saying[.]

You can't even argue that Kerry either lied then or lied now, because it's patently obvious he's lying now about the issue being generated by a right-wing cabal. Kerry tossed someone's medals over the White House fence, and in 1971 explicitly stated that they were his own. To blame the "confusion" over their ownership on the Republicans is like, oh, I don't know ... calling your Secret Service protector an SOB and blaming him for knocking you down while snowboarding?

Rutenberg and Dao then inexplicably shift the article to Kerry's attacks on the Bush administration's policies on photographing returning caskets of American servicemen, as if this were just a political diary. Instead, it reads as an attempt to polish Kerry's image a bit by tarnishing Bush. Rutenberg and Dao reviewed the 1971 interview by Kerry that has been stored in the National Archives ever since Nixon demanded a copy of it. What else was said during the interview? Apparently Rutenberg and Dao don't want us to know, which is why they finish their article with a completely unrelated issue.

Do you get the feeling that the folks at the New York Times see this election slipping away from them?

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I listened to a small bit of Kerry's interview on ABC this morning, and I detected more than a whiff of desperation in his attitude too. Even Charlie Gibson wasn't buying Kerry's explanation, and if Kerry loses ABC, things are definitely going downhill. More on that in this CNS News piece. Here's the description, with a startling observation by Gibson:

In a somewhat heated interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, Kerry insisted, "I stood up in front of my nation and took the ribbons off my chest" -- in front of TV cameras, he noted -- and then threw those ribbons over a fence.

"I never asserted otherwise," Kerry said on Monday -- moments after ABC played part of the 1971 intervew in which Kerry indicated he threw his medals over a fence. ...

"Good Morning America" anchor Charlie Gibson said he was there 33 years ago when Kerry threw medals over the fence. "I saw you throw medals over the fence, and we didn't find out until later (interrupted) that those were someone else's medals," Gibson said.

Kerry, not listening to the end of Gibson's statement, said, "Charlie, Charlie, you're wrong. That is not what happened. I threw my ribbons across. And all you have to do..." [Gibson tried to clarify that Kerry threw someone else's medals over the fence, but Kerry would not give him an opportunity.]

Kerry eventually clarified that he did throw two medals (not his) over the fence at the request of two veterans.

But he claimed in 1971 to have thrown his own medals over the fence. How many times will this story change? Look, the issue isn't whether he protested the war; we know he did, and you can decide whether that's germane 33 years later. But what this issue is about is Kerry's honesty -- he's lying about the medals now, and he likely lied about them in 1971 in order to make himself more credible to the radical-left crowd he represented back then. And instead of simply saying something along the lines of, "I must have been mistaken," he blames Republicans for catching him in a lie. It's the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy all over again.

I crossposted this at Oh, That Liberal Media.

UPDATE II: Here's the full transcript, courtesy Instapundit.

UPDATE III: Here's what you missed at the end of the interview, but which ABC apparently ran on later broadcasts:

"God, they're doing the work of the Republican National Committee!"

-- Sen John Kerry, ripping off the microphone after his interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America, after being grilled about his shifting 'Medal Throwing' stories

As I commented on Silent Running's blog, Kerry seems to have switch his campaign motto from "Bring It On!" to "Make It Stop!"

Brownstein: Kerry Not Nuanced Enough

In today's Los Angeles Times, political reporter and Kerry supporter Ron Brownstein makes an unusual case that John Kerry eschewed nuance just when he needed it the most, as the late Randy Van Warmer once sang. Brownstein takes Kerry to task on the one issue where Kerry communicated a clear policy position, scolding him for being a bit too much like President Bush:

Bush's meeting with Sharon seemed precisely the sort of unilateral, headstrong gesture that Kerry has in mind when he accuses Bush of pursuing the most arrogant and ideological foreign policy in U.S. history.

So jaws dropped across Washington when Kerry responded with just one word after host Tim Russert asked him on "Meet the Press" whether he supported Bush's promises to Sharon.

"Yes," Kerry said.

"Completely?" Russert followed.

"Yes," Kerry said again.

Not much ambiguity there. Kerry probably hasn't answered an important question in so few words since his wedding day.

After acknowledging that this position allows Kerry to demonstrate some independence from world opinion, Brownstein then notes that Bush's policy statement does not differ at all substantively from what Clinton offered the Israelis during his efforts at negotiating a settlement between them and the Palestinians. The only difference, according to Brownstein, is that Clinton offered the solution in the context of the negotiations, rather than unilaterally, and he expresses his disappointment that Kerry didn't offer that as a criticism:

The troubling aspect of Kerry's response was that he failed to recognize — or at least acknowledge — that critical point. Perhaps Kerry feared a backlash from Jewish donors and voters if he complained about freezing out the Palestinians. Perhaps he saw no advantage in opening any daylight with the president over Israel.

But Kerry routinely insists that in America's dealings with the world, how and why matter as much as what and when. Every day he tells audiences that Bush weakens America's standing abroad by listening too little. How much credibility does Kerry have to make that case when he suggests he is just as willing to act without consultation if he considered it worthwhile, or politically expedient?

First off, any argument based on defending Kerry's credibility is doomed to failure, if not outright satire, as ABC News appears shortly to reinforce today. But even given that, Brownstein, like too many of his colleagues in the media, refuse to acknowledge that negotiation with Arafat has been proven pointless over and over again. Arafat at the PLO continue to use terrorism regardless of what they're offered, as long as Israel exists. Bush, post-9/11, sees that offering excuses for terrorists only results in more terrorism, and while he's offered to negotiate with a freely elected Palestinian Authority, he's refused to speak with Arafat on anything. It's taken the US a long time to learn this lesson about Arafat, even after Arafat murdered American diplomats, but at least we've made it clear now.

John Kerry's clear and unnuanced statement resulted, I'm sure, from a political calculation that he needed to demonstrate clarity and conciseness somewhere, and that this question provided an easy target. Until the Palestinians get rid of Arafat and elect non-terrorists to lead them, unilateral moves are all Israel and the US can provide. Brownstein only reveals his own cluelessness when he questions Kerry and Bush on this policy.

Drudge: Kerry Lied, Again

John Kerry told the Los Angeles Times on Friday that he had never even implied that he threw his own medals over the fence at the White House to protest the Vietnam War. However, Matt Drudge reports that ABC has video from 1971 that will prove Kerry lied:

In an interview published Friday in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry claimed he "never ever implied" that he threw his own medals during a Hill protest in 1971 to appear as an antiwar hero.

But a new shock video shows John Kerry -- in his own voice -- saying he did!

ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA is set to rock the political world Monday morning with an airing of Kerry's specific 1971 boast, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

The video was made by a local news station in 1971.

Can this man ever tell a straight story, for Pete's sake? On his website, he even refers to the story as "right-wing fiction." If ABC delivers as promised, what lame explanation follows next? He used the wrong word again?

UPDATE: Via Instapundit, ABC News confirms:

But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said "they decided to give them back to their country."

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. "Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others," he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry's most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. "I never ever implied that I did it, " Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.

Honestly -- and I use that word specifically -- how can anyone believe a word this man says? This goes way beyond "nuance"; this approaches pathological lying. Hugh Hewitt has referred to the Torricelli option recently in regards to the Democratic nomination, implying that Kerry wouldn't survive to the July convention and that Hillary may be drafted to run instead. Even up until this weekend, I scoffed at the idea. However, Mitch and I debated it on the Northern Alliance radio show yesterday, and with this new revelation, it looks like more than just a possibility.

Why I Hate The Radical Left

Via Power Line, Portland IndyMedia provides a great example of the moral decay evident amongst the anarcho-socialist leftists (not the mainstream left -- there is a huge difference between the two). The headline on IndyMedia's post about the death of Pat Tillman?

Dumb Jock Killed in Afghanistan

Here's a few of the sentiments you can find among the International ANSWER crowd:

maybe he should have intervened when the CIA was training, funding and equiping bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the 80s. that might have actually accomplished something. ...

"Cottled [sic] sports star allows nationalism to foster jingoistic irresponsibility resulting in his death", or how about "Citizen of empire allows ignorance to cause him to die for imperialism", or maybe "Capitalist chooses to kill innocents instead of cashing check" ...

Tillman chose to go to Afghanistan. He's partially reponsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of Afghan civilians. No need to feel sorry for him, other than feeling bad that he was brainwashed into serving as a grunt. ...

Tillman made a choice and got what he deserved, nothing more. ...

US soldiers in Afghanistan are war criminals who have repeatedly targeted civilians, as well as killed unarmed prisoners of war in cold blood. Karma sure is a bitch, isn't it Tillman? ...

Remember this when you see people at ANSWER and MoveOn rallies claiming to "support the troops". That's just for the cameras. When they're back home, this is what they think of "the troops".

Time for a shower.

Friends of Saddam: What's New?

Stephen at Friends of Saddam, your one-stop clearingblog for all things Oil-For-Food scandal-related, has created a new Excel file listing the 270 recipients of Saddam's kickbacks. It makes for a handy guide, sortable by country, name, or amount received. A second tab breaks everything out by country. If you need data for a post on UNSCAM, this Excel file certainly provides the detail you need.

Today, FoS also notes that Swiss criminal-law professor Mark Pieth has been selected as one of the independent experts to probe the OFF program. Pieth is an expert on money-laundering, a skill that will definitely figure into the probe, as a whole lot of money went a whole lot of places it shouldn't.

Don't forget to blogroll Friends of Saddam and check back frequently for updates. If you use a news aggregator like I do, use their XML feed to get up-to-the-hour notices of new posts.

California Health Department Asleep At The Switch

My hometown newspaper, the Orange County Register in California, has uncovered an embarassing scandal that will surely result in a few heads rolling in California. Health Services apparently knew for years that candy manufactured in Mexico and primarily marketed at Latino children had high enough levels of lead to cause poisoning, but did nothing about it:

The poison arrives in an ice cream truck, "Happy Birthday to You" crackling from a single speaker wired to the roof. ... The ice cream man rests his elbows on the counter. Lopez's daughter Diana, a pigtailed 2-year-old, scans the bright pictures of treats. She doesn't want Drumsticks, Fudgsicles or Bomb Pops. Diana wants Mexican candy.

Lopez has no idea that some of the imported candy on this truck is so laced with lead it can cause memory loss, behavioral problems and kidney damage if her daughter eats it regularly. The California Department of Health Services has documented more than 1,500 tests of Mexican candy since 1993 - and one in four of those results has come up high for lead.

But the state has withheld this information from parents like Lopez, children like Diana and vendors like the ice cream man.

The Register spent the past two years investigating these tests and the lack of response from state health officials, which if these allegations are proven true, should result in criminal penalties. The state itself predicts that as much as 15% of the children suffering from lead poisoning in California have been exposed through Mexican candy, a product that is most heavily marketed to Latino children -- although it is also often sold in the major supermarkets all throughout California. The paper did its own testing of candy bought at different markets, and determined that 32% of the brands had high-lead content in their candy, and some of those brands have yet to be tested by health officials.

How does the state respond when presented with a case of lead-poisoned candy? According to the Register, not very energetically, and in some cases, by stonewalling:

The state lead-prevention branch is ill-equipped to deal with nontraditional lead sources such as candy, e-mails and memos between health officials show. Local health workers are discouraged from sending candy for testing after it is confiscated from homes of lead-poisoned children. Other health workers are stonewalled.

In one 1994 case involving a Santa Ana child, an Orange County health worker noted the problem in dealing with a counterpart in Sacramento: "She said that she discourages our focus on the candies and that if we have the state lab test candy, it will delay the testing of soil and paint, which she considers more important," Dianne Martinez wrote in her notes. ...

In July 2002, Sigrid Anderson, a Fresno County health worker, sent a fax to the state with a picture of Chaca Chaca, a candy named for the sound a train makes.

Anderson's fax contained one simple question: "Is this candy hot?"

The answer should have been yes. State tests had shown the candy to be high in lead eight times since 1998. But Anderson didn't hear that answer - even after the candy registered high nine more times in the next few months in state and federal tests. A state toxicologist told regulators in a June 2003 e-mail that Chaca Chaca proves to be "nearly always positive from virtually every source we test."

Nine more months passed before the state took action.

The state even keeps the manufacturers in the dark about test results. The Register reports that one company, Dulces Vero, had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get the FDA to release its test results. Nearly every company contacted by the newspaper expressed surprise when told of the Register's own testing and their review of state and federal tests.

Why hasn't California acted more strenuously to block the importation of lead-laced candy, especially when it has been known for decades that children are the most susceptible to lead poisoning? Why hasn't the FDA stepped in to do the same? Why hasn't anyone been contacting the manufacturers to alert them to all of the failed tests that have been conducted? Joe Courtney, one of the state officials responsible for the prevention of lead poisoning, provides this stunning explanation:

Courtney is one of three top health officials who said he wouldn't allow his children or grandchildren to eat certain Mexican candies that have never been the subject of health advisories. Still, Courtney says, he can't just publicly condemn them.

"We can't tell people not to eat them. It would seem culturally insensitive [emph mine]," Courtney said. "We are still working on how to give out a message that is helpful and yet not overly broad and also not so vague."

Once again, our government puts cultural sensitivity ahead of public safety. First, our airport screeners cannot profile for passengers of Arab descent and have been restricted to only performing spot checks on no more than two passengers of Arab descent per flight. Now we cannot eliminate poisoned candy because of its manufacture in Mexico and its marketing at the Latino community. Courtney and the state of California feel that displaying cultural sensitivity is more worthy than the lives and health of Latino children, the most egregious example of twisted priorities I have ever seen.

Today's article is only the first in a series of six, but the article to which I've linked will have links to all six. Make sure you read this entire article and all of the updates from the Orange County Register.

Britain to Reject EU Sovereignty?

Earlier this month, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the question of ratifying the proposed EU constitution, which would transfer limited sovereignty to the massive political organization, would be put directly to the voters through a referendum. Blair warned that a rejection of the referendum would isolate Britain from the Continent. According to polls, however, his argument has not made much of an impact:

A majority of Britons would vote "no" in a referendum on a European Union constitution, seen as a political gamble for pro-European Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to polls published Sunday. An ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper found that the proposed EU constitution would be rejected by 68 percent of voters. Only 21 percent would back the treaty, it said. ...

A second ICM poll, for the News of the World newspaper, reported that 55 percent of respondents would vote "no" on the constitution, while 25 percent would say "yes." The News of the World poll also found that 51 percent of people wanted to remain in the EU, while 36 percent would vote to quit the European body.

From a quick reading of these numbers, it appears that Blair hasn't even captured the Labor vote, let alone made inroads into opposition parties. The second poll indicates that only the barest majority desires staying in an EU under current, less centralized conditions, when it resembles nothing much more than a trade federation. Significantly more people want to leave the EU altogether (36%) than to ratify the proposed constitution (21%).

These numbers indicate that Blair has either not done a very good job of communicating the benefits of tying Britain to Europe -- a Europe dominated by the Franco-German marriage -- or has seriously miscalculated British desire for integration, or a little of both. At least in foreign policy, Britain has always operated from a distance, historically selecting the second-largest power in Europe as an ally to keep the largest power from running amuck. With Europe integrating, that policy no longer applies, but the British may still see themselves as very much a separate entity from the continentals.

Economically, too, Britain has moved in a completely different direction than that of the French and Germans who comprise the heart of the EU. The two central countries both embraced socialism and have paid a steep price for their choices. France, for one, has yet to meet the debt obligations of the EU under its current rules, let alone under a new constitution. Britain, on the other hand, steered away from centralized economies and nationalized industry under Lady Thatcher's government, and even a Labourite like Blair has been loathe to go back to the days of Heath. Faced with a European yoke, the British may wonder whether they're being asked to pull the Franco-German economies so that their citizens can continue to enjoy 32-hour work weeks, fat pensions, and long summer vacations, as well as the double-digit unemployment their economies are marching towards.

Blair has scheduled the referendum after the next general elections, which at first appears to be a manner of dodging the political fallout from a rejection, but does have the virtue of separating it from partisan politics. That means he has about 15 months in which to turn the British public 180 degrees. If he is successful, Britain will find itself boxed in regarding its economic and foreign policies like it hasn't been since the Armada. If he fails, he loses his job and Labour likely loses Parliament to a re-energized Tory party led by Michael Howard.

Any bets? It looks bleak, but it's hard to pick against Blair.

Addendum: The PR campaign has just begun, of course. The BBC reports that Chris Patten, the former Tory minister who represents Britain at the EU, warns that a rejection of the referendum will push Britain out of the EU altogether, even though a rejection will kill the constitution anyway (it requires unanimous adoption to pass):

Mr Patten told the Observer newspaper that Britain had to make its mind up whether it wants to make a success of Europe or not.

He said: "That's why I think that, if we ever get to this referendum, it's really going to be about whether we want to stay in. What's the point of being inside and endlessly, truculently making trouble? Is that really pursuing the national interest?"

The Beeb also reports that Blair expressed regret to his advisors for approving the referendum at all, which Michael Howard pushed him to do, admitting that the effort has "backfired" on him. We'll see; 15 months is a long way off.