A Clinton Rescue?

You won't read this in American newspapers, but the London Telegraph reports that the John Kerry presidential campaign has decided that they need Bill Clinton to energize the lackluster candidate that John Kerry has proved to be:

Top advisers to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, have asked Bill Clinton to play a starring role in the final months of the Massachusetts senator's campaign. ...

"There has been talk about the danger of Bill Clinton overshadowing John," said a senior Democrat last week, "but the decision has been taken to accept him as being centre stage and hope that some of the magic rubs off".

After spending the past few months worrying that the release of Clinton's memoirs, due in mid-June, would drown out the struggling Kerry campaign as Clinton attracted all of the limelight, the Democrats now appear to hope that Kerry gets buried. As has been remarked by various pundits, it seems that the more people get to know Kerry, the better they like Bush. Even Kerry campaign workers note the problem:

"I've never heard him tell a joke," said one campaign worker at a Kerry fund-raising party last week. "I've never seen him look as if he was genuinely enjoying himself. He just needs to come across as more human. If Clinton can help with that, then we sure need that help."

He needs something, as polling indicates. Bush has weathered two terrible months on Iraq, primarily in the violent insurgencies and the Abu Ghraib scandal. However, Kerry has not taken advantage of the bad news in any meaningful form. Although Bush's approval ratings have dropped, Kerry's numbers haven't risen. Clearly, Democrats are worried about Kerry's prospects, especially if the transfer of Iraqi sovereignty goes well and the economy continues to perform as strongly as it does.

Engaging Clinton has its dangers as well as its benefits. Clinton can work a crowd like no one else in American politics today, and his ability to communicate intellectually and emotionally recalls the best of Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy. However, it's precisely these abilities which will inevitably lead voters to compare the sparkling Clinton to the dry and starchy Kerry and find the latter wanting. It also runs the risk of rubbing not just the glamour of Clinton but also the stench of his scandals onto Kerry, not just Lewinsky and impeachment but also the pardon party and missing furniture that erupted at the end of his presidency. And don't think the Republicans will miss a chance to remind people, either.

If nothing else, Clinton's involvement will put an end to the rumors of a Torricelli option at the convention, where Kerry bails in order to give Hillary an opportunity to play the white knight. That alone may be worth something, at least in the morale department.

UPDATE: For Adaplant, take a look at my new post on CBS' polling. I didn't even bother with the Zogby poll, as Marc from Cranial Cavity nailed it. If you want to build a poll every bit as reliable as Zogby's, simply put up a website, set up a free registration at Pollhost.com, and start counting the numbers. That's essentially what Zogby did.

Kerry: Democracy Not Important

In words that echo his 1971 Senate testimony on the Vietnam war, John Kerry told the Washington Post that establishing democracy would not be a priority of a Kerry administration, preferring to work on more pressing issues other than liberty and freedom:

Sen. John F. Kerry indicated that as president he would play down the promotion of democracy as a leading goal in dealing with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Russia, instead focusing on other objectives that he said are more central to the United States' security. ...

In many ways, Kerry laid out a foreign-policy agenda that appeared less idealistic about U.S. aims than President Bush or even fellow Democrat former president Bill Clinton. While Kerry said it was important to sell democracy and "market it" around the world, he demurred when questioned about a number of important countries that suppress human rights and freedoms. He said securing all nuclear materials in Russia, integrating China in the world economy, achieving greater controls over Pakistan's nuclear weapons or winning greater cooperation on terrorist financing in Saudi Arabia trumped human rights concerns in those nations.

Unfortunately, John Kerry demonstrates almost every day that he just doesn't understand the critical issue of Islamofascist terrorism. Fanatics grow in the dark, as we continue to learn, as the various thugocracies, kleptocracies, and mullahcracies in the area oppress their citizens and feed them a steady diet of anti-American and anti-Semitic rationalizations. Not only will America make no progress on human-rights abuses until the regimes change, but the region will continue to produce terrorists until representative governments replace the dictatorships, so that free discourse and self-determination provide safety valves for anger and voting can replace the gun and the vest-bomb.

Kerry engages in moral relativism, a long-standing habit that has cropped up in his public life again and again. Kerry said much the same thing last month, as the Post's editorial noted in a scolding editorial:

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

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

Trading liberty for stability is the philosophy that brought us the modern Middle East. It's a short-sighted strategy that the British and French employed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when they propped up strongmen like the House of Saud in order to play power politics in the region. Only in Turkey, which fought for its independence under the legendary Kemal Ataturk, actually realized a self-determinative and free government, and that mostly at the opposition of the West.

John Kerry often expresses a disdain for democracy in the name of expediency and moral relativism. During his 1971 Senate testimony, Kerry made the following declaration:

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

Continuing his campaign of snide remarks, Kerry also said this about the 2000 election:

"The last time I looked, except for Florida, an election is an election," Kerry said.

So did we, Senator, until Al Gore unleashed his lawyers on Florida to overturn it.

Hayes: Saddam, Al-Qaeda Links Verified By Clinton Administration, NPR, ABC, et al

Stephen Hayes, a contributor to the Weekly Standard, will release a new book this week titled The Connection, describing in great detail the ties between al-Qaeda and the deposed Iraqi strongman. The Weekly Standard features an excerpt from the Hayes book in its latest online edition which discusses the curious and massive case of amnesia that the media suffers on the question of these ties:

"THE PRESIDENT CONVINCED THE COUNTRY with a mixture of documents that turned out to be forged and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda," claimed former Vice President Al Gore last Wednesday.

"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever," declared Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in an interview on March 21, 2004.

The editor of the Los Angeles Times labeled as "myth" the claim that links between Iraq and al Qaeda had been proved. A recent dispatch from Reuters simply asserted, "There is no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda." 60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl was equally certain: "There was no connection."

And on it goes. This conventional wisdom--that our two most determined enemies were not in league, now or ever--is comforting. It is also wrong.

Hayes points out that while the media says this now about Saddam-AQ ties, when it bothers to discuss them at all, as late as 1999 the national news media filled volumes with reports on these ties. In his excerpt, Hayes lists a few reports from mainstream news media:

Newsweek magazine ran an article in its January 11, 1999, issue headed "Saddam + Bin Laden?" "Here's what is known so far," it read:

Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas--assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer.

Four days later, on January 15, 1999, ABC News reported that three intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had offered asylum to bin Laden:

Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. . . . ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.

NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report:

Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. . . . Some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning additional attacks on American targets.

Saddam-AQ reports were not limited to just the news media. The Clinton administration's anti-terror chief Richard Clarke, who testified earlier this year that any notion of tying Iraq to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were patently false, sung a much different tune when speaking to the Washington Post in 1999. Five months earlier, Clinton had ordered missile strikes on Baghdad as retaliation for the expulsion of UNSCOM weapons inspectors from Iraq, as well as a strike on a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan (an al-Qaeda power base at that time) that the US suspected of producing chemical-weapons precursors -- nerve gas -- for Iraq. In fact, that factory had major ties to al-Qaeda, as Clarke argued:

[T]he same Richard Clarke who would one day claim that there was "absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever," told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was "sure" that Iraq was behind the production of the chemical weapons precursor at the al Shifa plant. "Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at al Shifa or what happened to it," wrote Post reporter Vernon Loeb, in an article published January 23, 1999. "But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the National Islamic Front in Sudan."

Nor was the ever-flexible Clarke the only Clinton administration official who linked Saddam to al-Qaeda. In the wake of the Sudan missile strike, reporters on the ground found only aspirin bottles, and the ground sample that initiated the strike turned out to be taken some distance away from the plant itself. As Hayes recalls, the Clinton administration made a concerted effort to justify its action in light of the lack of clear evidence of WMD:

The Clinton administration sought to dispel doubts about the targeting and, on August 24, 1998, made available a "senior intelligence official" to brief reporters on background. The briefer cited "strong ties between the plant and Iraq" as one of the justifications for attacking it. The next day, undersecretary of state for political affairs Thomas Pickering briefed reporters at the National Press Club. Pickering explained that the intelligence community had been monitoring the plant for "at least two years," and that the evidence was "quite clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq." In all, at least six top Clinton administration officials have defended on the record the strikes in Sudan by citing a link to Iraq.

Yet again in 1998, the Clinton administration made its case that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had worked together to coordinate activities and to share expertise on WMD, as well as develop targets for attacks. In its indictment of Osama bin Laden prior to the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya that killed over 250 people, most of them ironically Muslims but twelve Americans as well, the Clinton indictment read:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

So what happened to all of this evidence, and more importantly, what changed to convince the media that none of this is applicable now? The most obvious change occurred in January 2001, when the White House switched to Republican control. While Bill Clinton has publically said that George Bush operated from the same intelligence analysis as he had and that they drew fundamentally the same conclusions, others from his adminstration have worked to give the impression that they never believed in such a connection. Richard Clarke merely provides the clearest example.

During 1998 and 1999, Newsweek, NPR, and the rest of the mainstream media didn't question how a secular regime like Saddam's and the religious fanaticim of bin Laden could coordinate when reporting their ties as fact. However, now the entire media establishment treat such reports as flights of fancy and proof of conservative chumpery. Either they allowed themselves to be duped earlier by the Clinton administration or they're balking now in order to make Bush look bad. I'll leave it to you to determine which you think is the case.

Resplendent Mango: Give War A Chance

I've seen this math before, but it bears repeating again. Katie at the Resplendent Mango offers up an accounting lesson to the folks at Win Without War:

If there was one thing I could drill into the heads of the loony leftists (pointy things not withstanding) it would be the fact that we are not necessarily at peace just because we're not at war. Nor is that faux-peace necessarily better than war. By some estimates, 11,000 Iraqis have died from unnatural causes in the past 14 months. As opposed to approximately 36,000 a year under Saddam. Now, I understand that the Left believes that the US is evil as a matter of faith, but I fail to understand how 25,000 people not dying in the past year, people that would have either starved, or been raped and killed, or dismembered, or buried in mass graves, or some combination thereof, is a bad thing.

Be sure to read the rest of Katie's point.

UPDATE: For reader Miles Davis, who asked about the 36,000 per year figure that Katie used -- according to the BBC in 1999, she's incorrect. In fact, the BBC reported that continuing sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children in ten years alone, or 50,000 per year just in children -- while his Oil-For-Food program, which was supposed to take care of those children, instead lined the pockets of Saddam and a large number of UN and Western diplomats and politicians. Bear in mind that this number does not include the deaths that Saddam caused directly, which include the 300,000 in mass graves that were filled with Shi'a who attempted to overthrown him in 1991.

Before you place the blame for sanctions on the West, bear in mind that the sanction regime was demanded by the UN as an alternative to physically removing Saddam from power and to pressure him to reform and fulfill his obligations under the cease-fire agreements and UNSC resolutions. It was part of the "containment" strategy that Al Gore railed on about earlier this week. He failed to do any of that; Saddam and only Saddam was responsible for the continuation of sanctions.

Has Iran Declared War On The US?

According to translations of Iranian speeches and documents provided by MEMRI, the Iranians have announced to their Revolutionary Guard that they intend to attack and destroy "Anglo-Saxon civilization":

A source close to [Revolutionary Guards] intelligence confirmed that P.R. has been appointed secretary-general of a new office that has begun registering the names of suicide volunteers to be sent to Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon.

[The newspaper reported that it had obtained] a tape with a speech by H.A., a [Revolutionary] Guards intelligence theoretician, who teaches at the Revolutionary Guards' Al-Hussein University. [In the tape, H.A.] spoke of Tehran's secret strategy aimed at taking over the Arab and Muslim countries by means of helping revolutionary forces and organizations. H.A. is regarded as one of the advisors of a branch in the organization, and has published a number of works on exporting the [Islamic] revolution and the method of the struggle against the world arrogance [i.e., the U.S.]. ...

(President Muhammad) Khatami speaks of the dialogue between civilizations, and I have grave doubts about this. It is a dubious idea. We do not want to take over the British Embassy, since they (the British) have already cleared the embassy of documents; we must take over Britain [itself].' ...

'Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader ['Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations. Our motto during the war (in Iraq) was: Karbala, we are coming, Jerusalem, we are coming. And because of Khatami's policies and dialogue between the civilizations, we have been compelled to freeze our plan to liberate the Islamic cities. And now we are [again] about to carry out the program.' In his speech, he added: 'The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.'

On one hand, you have to think that the Iranians can't really be this stupid. Sure, they have missiles; so do we, and in much greater numbers. While they see America fighting divisively over the war in Iraq, an attack on US assets would not only galvanize American unity, it would likely mean the end of all restraint from the UN or any other international body. The British and the Americans may be too indulgent in self-flagellation now, but that's a luxury we drop under attack, as we proved -- for too short a period of time -- after 9/11. Unlike that attack, however, an attack from a sovereign state would allow us to focus quite clearly on an enemy, and I suspect military enlistment rates would shoot into the stratosphere.

On the other hand, perhaps the Iranians are that stupid. After all, they managed to mangle themselves in the teeth of Saddam's army, the most powerful in that region at the time, for eight years before they finally figured out that they were outclassed. They lost hundreds of thousands of Iranians in that futile war. Since they see a conflict with the US and Britain in religious terms (whereas we mostly see it in strategic terms), their belief in Islam trumps any tactical considerations, which also is reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq war.

In this case, they plan on using missiles, but not necessarily in a ballistic sense. They claimed to have "spied" on 29 sensitive sites in the US and "the West"; one could anticipate that rather than make a completely overt move by launching an ICBM to hit the sites (and possibly be intercepted), their covert agents might use missile warheads delivered personally against these installations. Such a move would allow those few who belong to the America-Last crowd (such as ANSWER and MoveOn) to argue that the ambiguity of the source does not allow us to respond against Iran.

However, if the Iranians are clinging to that thin reed, it only emphasizes their disconnect from reality. Iranians are not the only ones with intelligence agents, and the majority of their citizenry have had enough of the anti-American talk from the mullahs. An attack on the US could well provoke a reaction from their own citizenry that would result in the mullahs swinging from the nearest tree, or worse.

I hope it doesn't come to that. However, the Defense Department had better start preparing for the next phase of the war on Islamofascist terror -- the one we knew we would eventually face. Under the circumstances of the past two months, the only question may be whether we allow them to strike first.

Clayton Cramer has more thoughts on this subject, including reliability of the reports.

Slaves, Revisited

One last point regarding Reggie Rivers' screed yesterday: the NFL seems to produce slavery analogies on a regular basis. After reading his column, it reminded me of another, more famous NFL star who claimed to be the victim of slavery:

The way Warren Sapp apparently sees it, his human rights have been violated. ... If you missed it, his comments followed a spat involving LaVar Arrington of the Washington Redskins. Arrington threatened retaliation if Sapp ran or jumped through the Redskins' pregame warmup line at FedEx Field, as he has done in the past.

The NFL responded by warning that a 15-yard penalty would be assessed on the opening kickoff if a player disrupted warmups - and that anyone involved in fighting would face ejection.

Sapp told Jay Glazer of cbs.sportsline before Sunday's game: "(Arrington) got what he wanted. He snitched, and the slave master came down. Stop a man from doing what he's been doing for nine years, and now there's a rule against me? . . . It's a slave system. Make no mistake about it. Slave master says you can't do it, then don't do it. They'll make an example out of you."

Human rights organizations aren't rushing to investigate.

You might think the notion of Warren Sapp selling himself as a victim is ludicrous -- and you'd be right. Sapp has a habit of drawing attention to himself and then acts wounded when consequences follow. He skips through the opposing team's warmups like Little Red Riding Hood and then refuses to take the responsibility for the reaction. Similarly, after he celebrated the concussion he caused a Green Bay player on a vicious but legal hit by dancing all over the field like an idiot, he became irate when the Packers head coach told him off, threatening to beat the older (and unpadded) man. What Sapp refers to as "slavery," the rest of us understand as "following the rules," and I suspect that Rivers has the same philosophy as Sapp, based on his column.

Perhaps both Rivers and Sapp should learn something about real slavery:

When Siri was 13 years old, her parents sold her to a broker for about $2000. The broker, a woman from a nearby village, approached Siri’s parents and promised “good work” in the city for Siri and her sisters. Siri’s parents may have known that Siri was headed to a life of forced prostitution, since other girls from their rural village had been taken away in the same manner and returned years later, kicked out of the brothel only when they were dying of AIDS. Siri’s parents were poor rice farmers in the north of Thailand, where the selling of a daughter is seen as difficult, but in some cases a socially acceptable way for a family to save itself from financial hardship. Siri believed she was contributing to the good of the family, and went with the broker.

After the broker sold Siri to a brothel for $4000, Siri was told she must re-pay four times her original purchase price to gain her freedom, and additionally she would have to pay room rent, food and medicine costs. The method by which Siri was supposed to re-pay this “debt” was to sleep with 10 to 15 men per night.

During her first night at the brothel, Siri realized what she was going to be forced to do. Horrified and injured, she ran away at her first opportunity. However, she was on the street with no money, and she was quickly caught by the slaveholder, dragged back, beaten and raped. That night she was forced to take on a continuous string of clients until morning. The beatings and the work continued night after night until her will was completely broken.

Enough of NFL stars tossing slavery accusations around to excuse their behavior or their ill-informed opinions. Contracts are not slavery, the NFL is not a plantation (or worse), and consequences are not abuse. The marketing of victimhood by these supposedly manly celebrities is not only ludicrous, it's laughable, and makes them look ridiculous.

Slaves? I Think Not

The First Mate and I had dinner last night with a couple who are good friends of ours from a non-profit for which we all volunteer. As usual when we get together, the conversation flowed over many topics for several hours, which is why you didn't see me post at all last night. We talked about everything except politics until the end of the evening when our friends were ready to leave. We usually skip politics because our friends are fairly liberal and they know that Marcia and I are fairly conservative.

On the way out, however, "Sally" asked me how long I thought we would be in Iraq, to which I replied, "Well, we're still in the Balkans, and I think we'll be out of Iraq before we leave there." This prompted a brief but spirited conversation, at the end of which she claimed that the Bush administration, specifically Rumsfeld, wanted to restart the draft, and that she wanted to leave the country (Sally has young sons, one of which is in high school now). When I told her that it was the Democrats that wanted to start the draft and that the Republicans opposed it, she scoffed, until I told her specifically that Charles Rangel and Fritz Hollings proposed it and that all the co-signers were, in fact, Democrats. Sally still didn't believe me, and I wound up discussing re-enlistment rates and our friend who's in Iraq now and what the men and women who are actually there have said about the mission.

I doubt I changed Sally's mind about anything, but I know she left with my words on her mind. The entire conversation got me thinking about Reggie Rivers' op-ed piece in yesterday's Denver Post on how he feels that the military practices slavery, not because Sally agreed with that position (I highly doubt she would) but because it indicates, like Sally's incorrect assumption about Bush and Rumsfeld, an ignorance of current reality and history that will prove dangerous in the long run.

Rivers, a former football player for the Denver Broncos, wrote yesterday that soldiers in Iraq are nothing more than slaves, unable to leave once inducted into the military, and that the government exploits them no differently than any antebellum plantation owner in the South did with their slaves:

Our military is one of the last bastions of slavery in the United States. At the moment, our slaves are stuck in a combat zone, getting killed and maimed, and there's nothing they can do about it except hunker down and pray.

Yes, our slaves signed up of their own free will, but most of them were as misled about their job as the rest of us were about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And I don't think "slave" is too strong a word to describe someone who is not permitted to quit his job no matter how dangerous it becomes or how much he hates it. For most of us, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed that we have the right to withhold our labor. It doesn't protect soldiers.

Our armed forces recruiters are quite adept at making military service appear beneficial (it mostly is) and safe (it's not). The threat of war is minimized, because few rational people actually want to fight.

You might pass this off as the ravings of a deluded mind, but unfortunately Rivers represents a point of view that has a significant following. This opinion was much more prevalent, of course, during the Vietnam War, but the circumstances were different -- a large part of the military had not joined of their own free will but had been involuntarily inducted as part of the draft. Today, however, despite the efforts of Rangel and Hollings, the US armed forces consist entirely of volunteer forces, a fact that Rivers dismisses as irrelevant due to the evil machinations of "recruiters", a malevolent force that somehow convinces young people that armed forces don't see combat.

There are so many things wrong with Rivers' statement that it's hard to know where to start, but first and foremost, Rivers argues that enlistees aren't responsible for their choices. The volunteers somehow are dupes who don't know any better. In other words, they're idiots who need Rivers' protection. According to the NFL veteran, once they find out what combat means, they want to leave -- but the military won't let them just quit, and so they're slaves. Of course, they signed a contract explaining that giving two weeks' notice isn't an option, but in Rivers' world of professional athletics, a contract means little and loyalty even less.

The test of Rivers' hypothesis is in re-enlistment rates. If what he says is true, then the military must have tremendous problems getting combat-exposed troops to sign up for another tour. What about that?

There were no signs of the shrapnel wounds from a roadside bomb in Iraq as Staff Sgt. William Pinkley raised his right hand and swore once more to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Despite his wounds - and despite the rising death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq - he and other soldiers are signing up for another tour of duty, re-enlisting at rates that exceed the retention goals set by the Pentagon. ...

As of March 31 - halfway through the Army’s fiscal year - 28,406 soldiers had re-enlisted, topping the six-month goal of 28,377. The Army’s goal is to re-enlist 56,100 soldiers by the end of September. ... The Marines, which along with the Army has borne the brunt of combat in Iraq, said it already has fulfilled 90 percent of its retention goal for the fiscal year for getting Marines to re-up after their initial commitments. The Air Force and the Navy said they, too, are exceeding goals for getting airmen and sailors to re-enlist.

It seems that the "slaves" just might be, instead, intelligent, brave, and honorable young men and women who want to serve their country, who understand that being handed a rifle and being trained to use it means that they run the risk of going into combat. Rivers' hyperbole insults the men and women who serve this country, but it's not the only insult they've borne during this conflict. Rangel and Hollings have given their share of insult as well, claiming in slightly less inflammatory rhetoric the same concept as Rivers -- that these soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen are little but mindless naifs manipulated into dying for the rich:

Rangel said many people had joined the National Guard for economic incentives, or to feel patriotic and march in Memorial Day parades, or to respond to floods or other emergencies but not to spend a year in Iraq. ... “My staff is researching now the number of people killed in action and wounded in action and where did they come from,” said Rangel. “It’s a profile of who are the National Guard people and what are their backgrounds and how fragile are their economic backgrounds.

“Are they people who thought they’d be spending a year in the combat area where they are fish in a barrel and there is no game plan at all?,” he asked rhetorically.

Rivers can be excused for his opinion, but Rangel and Hollings cannot. Neither of them mentioned a draft when we started sending troops to the Balkans, where a significant contingent of American soldiers remain. Neither of them talked about a draft in the days following 9/11. Neither of them talked about a draft during Afghanistan. But because they oppose the war in Iraq, now they want to institute a draft that the Defense Department does not want -- precisely because they don't want "slaves" in combat! Why? Because Rangel and Hollings want to cripple American will to fight by presenting us with another domestic debacle, radicalizing the youth of the country and bringing us the 1960s all over again. They're gambling that the country would blame the Republicans, who would have to administer this disaster, rather than the Democrats who pushed it into law.

Which, ironically, brings me back to Reggie Rivers and Sally again. Naiveté does exist, and I'm certain that some enlist in the armed forces with stars in their eyes, just as I see people like Sally who only hear part of the news and automatically assume that Republicans want to take her son away, or Rivers who thinks that contractual agreements were nullified by the 13th Amendment. The true danger to America isn't so much external as internal; the danger is willful ignorance, the kind that allowed us to believe that terrorists wouldn't attack America even as they did so again and again. It's the kind that believes Saddam didn't have WMD even after he slaughtered Kurds with nerve gas and chemical-weapons shells were discovered, or didn't have ties to terrorism even after the discovery of Salman Pak or the sponsorship of Abu al-Zarqawi (and Abu Nidal, or a host of others). It's the kind who sees our heroic and courageous young men and women in the armed services as nothing more than stupid victims, and the kind that thinks the solution to war is to create another generation of radicals.

Taking a break

I have the entire weekend off, so I'm headed to the beach for a much-needed break! I'll be back to blogging Monday night (Monday morning for all of you in the states).

[Note: Whiskey's taking a break, but I'll continue posting throughout the weekend. -- Captain Ed]

From KIA To Murdered: One Casualty's Story Changes

The AP and the Washington Post report on a change made in the status of an American casualty of the initial invasion, a soldier in the same unit as Jessica Lynch and who had been listed as killed in action. The Pentagon changed the status of Sgt. Donald Walters based on new evidence from an Iraqi civilian and the tenacity of Walters' parents, fighting to find out the truth:

A soldier in the same ambush as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch was not killed in action but captured by Iraqi fighters and then executed, officials said. The family of Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem -- who had pressed officials for an investigation of their son's death -- learned the new information from the Oregon National Guard. Guard officials released the details to the public Thursday, more than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush. ...

"He was executed -- shot twice in the back," Guard spokesman Maj. Arnold Strong said in a telephone interview Thursday. "An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six Fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital."

At the time of Lynch's rescue, stories abounded as to how Lynch kept firing her weapons until her ammunition ran out in a courageous effort to protect the rest of her unit. Later, after Lynch's rescue, this tale generated a lot of skepticism, in part based on her interviews after her release. Now it appears that the stories were true but attributed to the wrong soldier. Walters, finding himself separated from his unit at the start of the battle, ran down the road to engage the ambushers -- the last his unit saw of him. As the Army reported in a document now being made public as a result of the efforts of Walters' family:

The latest investigation found that in the chaotic opening moments of the ambush, Walters was separated from his unit. Other Americans last saw him running alone down a road, Arlene Walters said.

Empty gun magazines were found near where Walters was captured, suggesting he fired until ammunition ran out. Before his capture, he was shot in the leg and stabbed three times in the abdomen with a bayonet, Strong cited the report as saying.

It was not clear whether Walters would have died from the bayonet wounds had he not been shot in captivity, Strong said.

The Fedayeen not only shot him in the leg, but after his ammunition ran out they bayoneted him three times in the stomach, evacuated him to a hospital, and then decided to shoot him in the back once there. This should remind people that the Fedayeen do not play by the rules, operating out of uniform and executing captured soldiers. Will we hear anything about their "abuses" in the media? Unlikely.

For those who do hear about this, it shows that the Saddam remnants in Iraq comprise the most inhumane and cowardly members of his former regime, traits learned from their former commander, Saddam's son Uday. As long as they continue to operate out of uniform, no Geneva Convention considerations should be provided to them once captured, unless we use the Convention as justification to conduct the battlefield executions allowed for spies.

New Iraqi PM Selected Unanimously

The BBC reports that the Iraqi Governing Council has unanimously approved a leading Shi'ite exile during the Hussein regime to lead the new, liberated Iraq after the transfer of sovereignty:

Former exile Iyad Allawi has been chosen to head an interim Iraqi government after sovereignty is handed back on 30 June. Mr Allawi - a Shia Muslim - was endorsed unanimously by the Governing Council, member Mahmoud Othman said.

An aide to Mr Allawi said his nomination had been approved by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi - who is charged with putting together a new government. He will lead the administration until direct elections scheduled for 2005.

The unanimity displayed by the council gives the hope of a smooth and politically viable transfer to civilian authority. Mr. Allawi's Shi'a background will allay fears of continued Sunni domination, especially after the dissatisfying resolution of the crisis in Fallujah, at least from the Shi'ite perspective. While I would have preferred to see a Kurd in this leadership post to keep the Kurds from pushing for either autonomy or outright independence, it appears Allawi has at least nominal Kurdish support, as well as broad-based secular support amongst all factions, as reported by the Washington Post. The Post also notes that Allawi had been a rival to Ahmed Chalabi, who's mysteriously been dropped from the list of American favorites:

Allawi heads the Iraqi National Accord, an exile group supported for years by the CIA. The INA was a rival to the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, who was the Pentagon's favorite exile.

Allawi had more involvement on the ground against Saddam Hussein, as the Post also notes. He led the CIA-backd, mid-90s coup conspiracy against Hussein that the IIS eventually penetrated, killing most of those involved. Allawi himself had been the target of an assassination attempt. His anti-Ba'athist credentials, in other words, are impeccable. Hopefully, the same will be said for his skills in translating his broad-based coalition into a viable democratic government.

Right Wing News: CQ 'Website Of The Day'

John Hawkins' excellent web site, Right Wing News, is a must-read for conservatives and libertarians on the internet. John has great links, terrific posts, and uses a lot of humor to score points off the left. I discovered this morning that John has made Captain's Quarters the RWN Website of the Day! Thanks, John, and I hope that all your readers enjoy their visit today. If you like what you see, be sure to blogroll or bookmark CQ and come back often!

Kerry: Looking Backwards On Security

John Kerry talks about strengthening security and fighting terrorists, saying earlier this week that those who plan to attack us should understand that he would hunt them down and kill them, if he became president. However, The New York Times reports today that the foreign policy/national security team he has assembled for his campaign represents a flashback to eight years of the so-called "law-enforcement approach" that culminated in the 9/11 attack:

Seated in leather swivel chairs in the glass-walled conference room at Senator John Kerry's Washington campaign headquarters two Fridays ago was a veritable reunion of President Bill Clinton's national security team: Madeleine K. Albright, Samuel R. Berger, William J. Perry and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili. Richard C. Holbrooke joined his former colleagues via conference call from Tokyo. ...

Besides the Clintonites and Mr. Biden, those in the loop or on its fringe include former Senator Gary Hart, who ran for president largely on a foreign policy platform in 1984 and 1988; Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations; and James P. Rubin, Ms. Albright's former aide, who just moved from London to join Mr. Kerry's staff and is traveling with him this week.

These deans of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have been corralled into a coordinated chorus of television appearances in recent days to speak in Mr. Kerry's stead about President Bush's prosecution of the war in Iraq.

The Times focuses on the involvement of Senator Joe Biden, a crank of the first order who uses his glasses to make him look professorial while on television, and uses the speeches of British politicians to make him sound intelligent. Biden's involvement indicates that Kerry would be likely to tap the Delaware senator for an important post, probably Secretary of Defense. John McCain has been mentioned (and mentioned and mentioned and mentioned) for this post in a Kerry administration, but I don't see John McCain mentioned as a member of this brain trust. All indications are that Kerry will bring in the crew from the last administration for his national-security team.

What does that mean for American foreign policy? Take a look back over the past decade, where the US sent a consistent message of cluelessness and lack of resolve. First and foremost, our response to numerous terrorist provocations showed that we refused to take them seriously, starting with the initial World Trade Center attack in 1993. A string of terrorist attacks on US assets followed during the Clinton administration -- Khobar Towers, which killed 19; the African embassy bombings, which killed over 200 people, mostly native Muslims; and finally the October 2000 USS Cole attack, which killed 17 sailors and to which this team never bothered to respond. (Laughably, the 9/11 Commission blamed the Bush administration for this lack of response, even though it took office more than three months after the attack.)

The cumulative response for these declarations of war were a series of arrests and four missile strikes, two in Afghanistan and two in North Africa to take out a pharmaceutical factory that supposedly produced chemical-weapons precursors. No strategic plan was ever implemented to kill those who had declared war on the US; the only plan was a tepid tit-for-tat response to individual attacks.

Nor did the Clinton team impress anyone with its foreign policy achievements. While the twelve-year Iraq quagmire started with the first President Bush's refusal to march on Baghdad while the road was open, the Clinton team ignored provocation after provocation, again demonstrating a lack of American will. Iraq regularly fixed targeting radar on our fighters enforcing the no-fly zone and on several occasions fired missiles at them, which not only violated the cease-fire agreements but on its own constituted an act of war. Saddam sent a team of Iraqis to assassinate former President Bush during Clinton's first term by Clinton's own admission, another act of war, and what response did we give? We dropped a few bombs on Baghdad, which did nothing to free the Iraqi people from Saddam's grip and only demonstrated (again) that we had no stomach to respond to acts of war. Clinton pushed for, and got, a Congressional act that made regime change our national policy, and promptly did nothing about it. The only other action he ever took against Iraq was another few nights of bombing suspected WMD sites in Baghdad when Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors in 1998, again a violation of the cease-fire agreement as well as a dozen UNSC resolutions.

What did this team actually do? They allowed Jimmy Carter to eat their lunch on North Korea, for one, which gave Kim Jong-Il enough time to actually develop a handful of nukes when they could have stopped him in 1994. The Clinton team also managed to involve us in the centuries-old civil war in the Balkans by dropping bombs on Yugoslavia, despite the lack of any American interest in the conflict, and without the UN approval that they scream about regarding Iraq. They talk about the supposed "quagmire" of Iraq while ignoring the upcoming ten-year anniversary of our continued involvement in the Balkans, where we remain to this day without any idea how to remove ourselves, and where people continue to kill each other over ethnic and religious differences.

Of course, Slobodan Milosevic engaged in genocidal "ethnic cleansing" -- but so did the Rwandans, and we didn't lift a finger to stop that, and a whole lot more Rwandans were being slaughtered than Bosnians or Kosovars. For that matter, so did Saddam Hussein. He put at least 300,000 Iraqis, mostly Shi'a, in mass graves, used chemical weapons to kill and terrify the Kurds, and drained the marshes of the Euphrates in order to wipe out the Marsh Arabs. Why didn't these people deserve protection like the Europeans in the Balkans? Don't "brown" people deserve protection from genocide, as long as that's the excuse we're using in the Balkans?

Kerry promises a forward-looking foreign policy, but he's signed up with the people who demonstrate nothing except the fecklessness of the past. This is one reunion show that we don't need in prime time.

Another Roll Of The Dice, In Najaf This Time

The CPA and the Bush administration rolled the dice again today, reaching a negotiated settlement with radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Under the agreement, the Americans and al-Sadr's al-Mahdi army will both pull back from Najaf as well as Kufa and allow Iraqi civilian authority to once again take control of the cities:

American forces and guerrillas loyal to the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr agreed today to pull back from the holy Shiite city of Najaf, in a deal that signaled the end of a seven-week-old stand-off that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead.

The agreement, hammered out between Mr. Sadr and Iraqi leaders and approved by the Americans, calls for the Mahdi Army, whose fighters have held the city since April 5, to put away their guns and go home, and for the American forces to pull most of their forces out of the city. Under the agreement, the Americans can maintain a handful of posts inside the city and may still run patrols through the city center.

The deal also applies to the nearby city of Kufa, the site of Mr. Sadr's mosque.

What did the CPA trade for peace? The warrant on al-Sadr. The CPA agreed to spike al-Sadr's arrest warrant and allow the Iraqis to deal with the murder of a rival, more moderate cleric in Baghdad shortly after its fall. The agreement also allows the Shi'a to guard their holy shrines but maintains a mostly-disarmed al-Mahdi army as a potential problem, but one for the Iraqis to handle after the transfer of sovereignty.

Is this a smart trade? Possibly. Unlike Fallujah, where the insurgents were mostly of the Sunni minority, the Shi'a comprise the most significant factional block, especially important in an Iraq with a representative government. While al-Sadr never sparked Shi'a loyalty -- his followers were small in number and not particularly bright -- his close proximity to the holy shrines made a lot of Shi'a in Iraq and elsewhere extremely nervous. And like it or not, these are the people with whom we must build relationships if we want to succeed in Iraq for the long term.

The agreement appears to me to be designed to save as much face on both sides as possible, and as the NY Times article indicates, has the fingerprints of Shi'ite imam al-Sistani all over it. Al-Sistani is hardly an ally of al-Sadr; in fact, the two are bitter rivals for Shi'a supremacy, and in that internecine political battle, al-Sistani provides the best hope for a reasonable relationship. In fact, he gave the CPA considerable political support in just keeping quiet about the effort to stamp out al-Sadr and his militia, even when the fighting began to drift near the shrines. However, al-Sistani threatened to pull his support if the Americans weren't willing to compromise in order to end the fighting, and at this delicate stage, losing al-Sistani would be a mistake.

Also consider that in five weeks, the Iraqis have to be responsible for their own security, and even the Governing Council had been objecting to the continuing mission to kill or capture al-Sadr. At best, we had a month to go before the mission would be shut down by a sovereign Iraqi government and their security forces, which we have to support politically. In order to beat the deadline, it looks like we would have had to force our way into the mosques, and that would have changed the political landscape in a way that would make Abu Ghraib look like a Sunday picnic.

In this agreement, we defuse the immediate problem and reintroduce civilian authority to both cities, negating the "justice" system that started the problem in March. We wind up supporting the secular government and force the radical Islamists to retreat from their holiest towns; even though al-Sadr remains free, that result will not impress the faithful of his congregations. It also bolsters al-Sistani politically, and while we may later regret that, at this point he's the better choice. It's nowhere near as satisfying as seeing al-Sadr get perp-walked into American military custody, but that's the nature of compromise.

In my opinion, we just improved the likelihood of a reasonable transition to Iraqi sovereignty by half. Let's hope this gamble pays off.

UPDATE: This Washington Post story has more detail.

Hey, Juice, It's All Going To Fred Anyway

Apparently upset that he no longer gets wall-to-wall TV coverage, O.J. Simpson has his lawyer shopping him around for TV and print interviews for the upcoming 10th anniversary of his wife's brutal murder (via The Corner):

"It will be expensive," [Star Magazine] quotes [attorney Yale]Galanter. "TV rights are going for $100,000. For print rights, between $20,000 and $25,000."

Nothing if not classy, Galanter adds that O.J. might even be willing to do a photo shoot at the Brentwood crime scene and at Nicole's grave site - if the price is right.

"It would have to be a multimillion-type deal," Galanter says. A grave site photo would be "worth $500,000 ... Our preference is a standard interview ... but it's just money."

Simpson, of course, has a $33 million judgement against him from Fred Goldman, the father of the other victim of the slaying that mesmerized a nation and made Geraldo Rivera relevant again. O.J. lost the civil suit filed by the families of the victims after the jury allowed Johnny Cochran to talk them into a stupor. Not that he found it all that difficult, either, as books by Vincent Bugliosi (who prosecuted Charles Manson and his "Family") and Daniel Petrocelli, Goldman's lawyer, make clear. The prosecution, while well-intentioned, stumbled through this case from beginning to end, and they weren't helped by the hopelessly camera-drunk Judge Lance Ito.

Now Simpson looks to generate some cash with which to pay off that judgement, although I suspect he intends to hold onto as much as he can, by cashing in on the corpses of his victims, and on national TV and media if he can do it. I doubt he'll find many takers, though. The last time the Juice(r) sold an interview, it was with media behemoth BET. In a polarized society, one thing most of us finally agree on is that Simpson killed those two people and played the system to get off, and most people are profoundly uninterested in paying Simpson to hear more BS about his innocence. Besides, he's supposed to get back to his unending search for the "real killers", isn't he?

As an Angeleno, I'm amazed that ten years has gone by; the murder occurred shortly after the First Mate and I were married. If you didn't live in LA during the Simpson soap opera, you have no idea how insane life became during the trial. Not only did it seem that Simpson was the only thing on TV, it was the only thing we talked about for over a year. When Marcia Clark changed her haircut, it not only made for front-page news, people wrote editorials about it. In one way, I'm glad that blogging was non-existent back then or I may have gone completely insane. For an area that had just been torn apart by the King riots, the trials did little to soften the divide between the black and white communities, and because Ron Goldman and his family were Jewish, we experienced more anti-Semitic rhetoric in Los Angeles than I had ever heard, before or since cumulatively.

I don't need to see Simpson again. The memories stay with me, and they're far from pleasant.

Did Any Drive Home Afterwards?

The Democrats in the Minnesota State Legislature had quite a time in the closing hours of its last session, when they fired Cherie Pierson Yecke just to show their solidarity. Apparently, the DFL fortified themselves with more than just a healthy dose of partisanship, as local station KMSP found out when a news crew looked behind the scenes in the session's final hours:

Late at night, in the closing days of the legislative session, lobbyists, state workers and even some lawmakers gathered in offices at the State Capitol to drink beer, wine and liquor, KMSP-TV reported Wednesday night. The station showed trash cans full of beer, wine and liquor bottles and suggested that at least some the alcohol of might have been provided by lobbyists. Lobbyists are not allowed to give gifts to legislators. ...

KMSP said state policy forbids state workers from drinking on the job, even during rest breaks and overtime work.

Getting wasted on the taxpayer's time -- that's the new DFL motto in Minnesota. KMSP found a number of lobbyists in DFL offices while the Senate debated issues like the new lowered threshold for drunk driving. While the Senate made driving drunk easier to prove, they failed to pass any laws making legislating drunk illegal. On the other hand, it explains why almost nothing of consequence passed during the Lost Weekend of the Minnesota Legislature -- not a new bonding bill, not any steps to close the small $160 million gap in the state deficit, not even any headway on combating sexual predators.

But our esteemed Senators had plenty of time to party on, dude. In fact, the party starts at the top and works its way down:

The station said it also saw lobbyists, state workers and lawmakers drinking in the office of Senate President James Metzen, DFL-South St. Paul. KMSP said it never saw Metzen drinking, and that he did not respond to requests for comment, but Rep. Scott Wasiluk, DFL-Maplewood, came over to his office while the House was in a late-night session.

"I came to raid your whisky,'' Wasiluk said.

"That's what it's there for,'' Metzen replied.

The station showed Wasiluk back on the House floor for a vote on a health care issue, looking sleepy. It also showed him at another point misunderstanding what was taking place on the floor as he monitored the session on TV from Metzen's office. Sleep expert Dr. Mark Mahowald said the combination of sleep deprivation and alcohol hurts decision-making ability.

What would we do without sleep experts? Perhaps next session, the good doctor could testify to that, along with the breaking news that drinking too much causes hangovers and that we should all take a shot whenever anyone says, "Hi, Bob!"

So what do our honorable representatives have to say for themselves? It's all KMSP's fault for catching them:

The station taped someone carrying a cooler into the office of Senate Majority Whip Linda Higgins. The Minneapolis DFLer was on the Senate floor at the time, in the final hours before adjournment, but several people were in her office drinking. KMSP said most of them were lobbyists. One lobbyist was sitting behind her desk, drinking a beer.

Higgins issued a written statement to KMSP saying it was unfortunate that its news team was "failing to focus on the dedication of members and staff who work round the clock ... to pass important legislation.''

I'd say that the members and staff passed a lot that evening, but I'd hardly call it legislation. (Legislation in Minnesota usually resembles the product of another bodily function, as demonstrated by the drunken firing of Yecke.) Speaking of legislation, though, Rep. Wasiluk suggests a bill for the next session:

Wasiluk issued a statement to the station saying: "I sincerely apologize for my recent behavior. If the public feels additional laws should be passed to improve public confidence in the work of legislators, I would vote for it.''

Unfortunately, Minnesota already has laws against drinking on the job, as well as accepting gifts from lobbyists. Perhaps no one thought to make sure that the law covered both situations occuring simultaneously, but I'd guess that the Attorney General can work around that difficult situation, if he chooses. However, since our Attorney General happens to be the uberpartisan hack Mike Hatch (DFL, natch), I'd say that Norm, Cliff, and the rest of the gang from Cheers probably won't get too much flack from the law.

The guys at Fraters Libertas, no strangers to the drink themselves, have a few pointed things to say about our Leshisslayyshure. The Elder gives it to them straight up:

I've been to enough conventions and election night affairs to know that most of the best political conversations and insights are shared over a cocktail. It's all part of the game.

But not while you're debating the pressing the issues of the day, discussing compromises, and casting votes. One of the yahoo legislators in this case was actually kicking back and drinking while voting was being conducted on the floor. As a representative you have a responsibility to your constitutes to perform your duties to the best of your abilities. You cannot allow your faculties and judgment to be impaired by alcohol .

The other disturbing aspect of this story was the fact that most of the drinking taking place in the legislative offices was being done by lobbyists. I usually tend to dismiss the claims that lobbyists run the government and they're ruining democracy, blah, blah, blah, but the idea of a pack of cackling lobbyists sitting around and pounding wine coolers in the office of the Senate Majority Whip while she's on the floor gives one pause. That's just a little bit too cozy for my comfort.

Saint Paul, on the other hand, is reminded of a Seinfeld episode called The Red Dot, in which George is caught by his employer having sex with the cleaning woman in the office. The Saint has the transcript of the scene, but sets it up with this observation:

Actually it might not be such a bad idea to outlaw legislating while drunk. It seems only fair since the government has already outlawed the citizens from voting while drunk. Seems to me if we can't ease the pain of Minnesota government by drinking ourselves numb, they shouldn't be able to either.

Getting back to Wasiluk's laughable reaction to the allegations, the parallels are striking with the Seinfeld episode where George gets confronted by his boss about having sex with the cleaning room at his office. (Yes, there is a direct reference to all significant human endeavors in either the Simpsons or Seinfeld). ... Lord knows the DFL won't take any substantive remedial action on Wasiluk. But here's hoping the folks in his district in Maplewood have the same good sense as George's boss, who responded to ridiculous excuses in the only appropriate manner:

Boss: You're fired.

Now the DFL wants Governor Tim Pawlenty to call a special session in order to pass a bonding bill, which would allow them to add pork to the booze. Pawlenty should instead close down Animal House/Senate and consider some way to put Otter, Bluto, and the rest of the Senate boozehounds on double-secret probation. While he's at it, he should check into a special prosecutor to look into all that free booze -- and anything else -- supplied by the lobbyists to the DFL.

UPDATE: Senate DFL leader Dean Johnson says this about a special session:

He continued to emphasize that any special session must be limited in its agenda and be only a few days long. "We're not interested in spending our entire summer and fall here in St. Paul," Johnson said.

No kidding. The detox expenses from a summer-long binge would be enormous.

The Nader Effect

As the LA Times reports in its analysis today, John Kerry's campaign strategy on Iraq has come under fire from both sides, as George Bush continues to push for greater international involvement in Iraqi reconstruction and Nader stumps for withdrawal, an option increasingly popular with Kerry's base:

From one side, Kerry confronts calls from growing numbers of Democrats to establish a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. That idea will receive a major boost today when Win Without War, a coalition of 42 liberal groups, launches a campaign urging the U.S. to set a date for ending its military presence in Iraq.

From the other direction, Bush has come much closer to Kerry's view that the U.S. should rely more on the United Nations to oversee the transition from occupation to a sovereign Iraqi government, thus blurring the contrast between the two men.

In the long run, these shifts in Democratic attitudes and Bush's strategy may pressure Kerry to break more sharply from the administration on Iraq, a step he has firmly resisted.

The Times reports that 53% of Democrats now favor the cut-and-run strategy, even if it means civil war in Iraq. Of course, Nader pushes this option as his policy, intending on draining Kerry from the left (and possibly picking off a few America-First Republicans from Bush if he can). Kerry's strategy for Iraq has never been clear, which is another problem for his campaign. All he's done over the past several months is complain about "fraudulent coalitions" while Italian and Polish troops die alongside Americans and Brits, while offering no specific changes in Bush's approach other than to "formally rejoin the community of nations". Now all of that, er, nuance comes back to bite Kerry as Bush arranges for more UN involvement, such as the Brahimi mission to certify Iraq's sovereignty and establish a basis for representative government.

The Times echoes my long-established argument that Kerry's lack of convictions will inevitably rebound against him, especially in a three-way race. While Dean imploded spectacularly in the winter, Democrats saw Kerry as the electable candidate, a seasoned pol with glittering medals who could challenge Bush on foreign policy. Kerry encouraged this by adjusting his rhetoric to match that of the firebrand Dean on the war, leading his constituency to believe that Kerry had decided to bail out of Iraq. Lo and behold, however, the country as a whole did not like the notion of running away, perhaps unhappy with the news coming from Iraq but unwilling to surrender the entire nation to the fanatics. Kerry has since tried moving back to the center but is now caught between the pull of the leftists and the determination of the centrists.

Now he faces two options, neither of which look particularly attractive. On one hand, he could change his position and start calling for unilateral withdrawal from Iraq and hope to push Nader out of the race. Besides being catastrophic policy for the US, though, it opens Kerry to charges of flip-flopping yet again on this issue and demonstrates a lack of will that may unnerve the centrists and independents in November. On the other hand, he could stand pat and watch as Nader continues to drain his base from the Bush-hating left, if not of tremendous amounts of votes, certainly of funding and enthusiasm, a quality he hardly inspires anyway. Perhaps he could fire up enthusiasm on economic policy, a la Clinton, but that's unlikely in the midst of an economic expansion.

If nothing else, Kerry is a political tactician -- after all, he's drafted behind Ted Kennedy most of his career, using the senior Massachussetts Senator to draw fire while he votes to Kennedy's left. I predict Kerry will announce at the convention that he now favors withdrawal in order to garner a Nader endorsement for the general election, and gamble that the transfer of power produces an increase in violence that will overcome the disgust of retreat that centrists and independents will surely feel.

NYT: Abu Ghraib MPs Chronic Discipline Problems

I have repeatedly asserted that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses resulted from a lack of discipline in the unit and the command, not from some sort of insidious conspiracy to humiliate Iraqis. Now the New York Times reports this morning that three of the seven soldiers involved in the abuse scandal had long histories of poor discipline, including Spec. Charles Graner, considered to be the ringleader:

In the six months leading up to the investigation of prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, three of the seven soldiers now charged with abuse repeatedly committed infractions and disobeyed orders but received only the mildest of punishments.

Their violations of military rules included entering buildings they had been ordered to avoid, continuing improper sexual relations with one another and being aggressive with detainees, according to records obtained by The New York Times. ... Among [Taguba's] concerns were flippant comments in logbooks, lack of standards for uniforms and soldiers who wrote poems and other sayings on their headgear. General Taguba also raised concerns about officers and senior noncommissioned officers who had been disciplined for drinking, taking nude pictures of soldiers without their knowledge and fraternizing with junior soldiers.

Graner refused a direct order seven times in one incident, and inviting his sergeant when he finally complied to "kiss his ass". Sgt. Javal Davis built a reputation for abusive behavior but his command failed to confront him, and as the Times reports, the warden, Captain Donald Reese, finally removed him from the prison but never initiated disciplinary action. Pvt. Lynndie England, who has made a name for herself as the Jessica Cutler of the Army Reserves, received three reprimands in four months and finally a demotion two months after that for refusing to stop having sexual relations with Graner:

She was instructed to sleep in her own bed and to address officers properly and was told that she could not be in Specialist Graner's building except "through the day and to watch movies." She was ordered into corrective training for 10 days. Private England refused to sign a counseling form.

In November she was reported missing for two days. She was found in Specialist Graner's cot. Again she was counseled for refusing direct orders and was told to sleep in her own bed. Captain Reese then ordered her, on Jan. 1, to forfeit $357 of her pay.

The next morning, Specialist Graner was seen leaving her room in Building 100. Sgt. First Class Larry Bennett told him to leave the area. Specialist Graner, he said, refused several times.

"He advised, `I should escort him, since I wasn't doing anything,' " Sergeant Bennett wrote. "I then advised him this was an order to leave the building. He finally left the building, and on the way out he told me, `You can kiss my [behind].' "

Nor was the lack of discipline and oversight confined to the overnight shift at Abu Ghraib. When General Geoffrey Miller toured Iraq in order to provide some consultancy on interrogations and intelligence work based on his command in Guantanamo, officers noticed that even at the Abu Ghraib commander's office, discipline was notably lacking:

Walking through Camp Cropper, a detention center, with Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the brigade's commander, General Miller encountered two military police soldiers sitting at their desks with their feet up, not so much as budging as the two-star general walked by. "It was shocking," said the officer.

People laugh at military discipline, or worse, consider it some sort of fascistic spectacle which undermines democracy. Abu Ghraib, hopefully, will put that fantasy to rest. The military (regardless of nationality) controls great force and when applied in battle condition can hold the power of life and death, not only against the enemy but with anyone in its vicinity and with each other. In order to effectively control that power so that it is used properly and as intended by political and military command, military units must remained highly disciplined and trained to respond without hesitation.

When a "Casual Fridays" mentality is allowed to seep into fighting units, you inevitably see breakdowns such as this, with usually disastrous results. (See France, 1939-40, for one example of what happens when discipline breaks down.) Military command must, as Job 1, maintain proper discipline in order to keep people from perverting their authority into disgusting spectacles like we have seen at Abu Ghraib. Without a doubt, this embarrassment started with a lackadaisacal approach to order which seems to have started at the command level of Abu Ghraib, where offences were lightly punished, if at all, and the crispness of military decorum was discarded in favor of putting one's feet up and taking it easy.

The solution is to replace officers in Iraq with those who will instill proper discipline into their units to prevent soldiers from going out of control, for their own good as well as ours. We should also explore the possibility of replacing reservists with career units in Iraq for sensitive assignments like high-value prison duty to ensure that orders are properly executed.

Telegraph: Abu Hamza To Be Extradited To US

The London Telegraph reports this morning that Abu Hamza, a radical muslim cleric linked to Britons held in Guantanamo, has been arrested in a dawn raid and will soon be extradited to the US:

Police were acting on an extradition warrant issued by the US government: it is thought the US authorities plan to charge him with terror-related offences. ... According to The Sun, the preacher faces deportation to the US on terror charges. The newspaper also claimed that sources in Washington revealed that the extradition process has been under way in secret for weeks.

While this article does not detail the charges pending against Hamza, an earlier Telegraph article from February reported that the US wanted Hamza in relation to al-Qaeda recruitment activity in Oregon:

The American authorities are understood to be close to presenting a formal request for Hamza's extradition to face accusations contained in US court papers that he conspired to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and recruited young men to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A new Anglo-American extradition treaty, which removes the requirement for the US to produce prima facie evidence of an offence, came into force on Jan 1.

US officials hope they can use the new treaty to extradite Hamza without the long delays that continue to hamper other requests - including three suspected al-Qa'eda members who have been in jail here [in the UK] since 1998 while they contest US extradition warrants.

Apparently, the new treaty worked, and Hamza will return to the US soon to face federal terrorism charges. I presume that the US will use the civil courts rather than a military tribunal since Hamza was not captured on the battlefield or in action while conducting terrorist activity, but the news reports do not address that. Either way, we can expect that Hamza's arrival will be met with the usual protests from the usual people regarding Hamza's loss of civil liberties, complete with Amnesty International hyperbole as we saw yesterday, claiming that America's war on terror has been the worst thing that ever happened to human rights -- a viewpoint that would only have a glimmer of hope of being true if one managed to sleep through the entire 20th century.

WSJ: Another Saddam-AQ Link Discovered

Two days after ABC News reported, deep into a story on Abu al-Zarqawi, that the al-Qaeda operative and beheader of Nick Berg had received support, shelter, and arms from Saddam Hussein at least as far back as "late 2002", the Wall Street Journal discovers another link to Islamofascists and Saddam Hussein. In this case, the terrorist in question has long been suspected of having involvement in 9/11 and now appears to be a commander in the Saddam Fedayeen:

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.

As their lead editorial on OpinionJournal.com states, Shakir is well known not only to the US, but became a global celebrity of sorts early on in the war on terror. Shakir attended the infamous summit meeting in Malaysia in January 2001, where the attendees included the operational commander of 9/11 (Ramzi bin al-Shibh), a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant who ran the USS Cole operation, and two of the 9/11 "pilots" who took Flight 77 into the side of the Pentagon. After 9/11, Shakir resurfaced in Qatar the week after 9/11 with phone numbers to various terrorist groups involved in 9/11, WTC I, and other information.

At that point, the Qatarians arrested him, and then almost as quickly released him to Jordan, where he was arrested again. For some reason, Amnesty International made a huge public stink about his being held without charges, and the Iraq government -- Saddam's government -- pressured Jordan to release Shakir. The CIA failed to understand Shakir's significance at the time and made no protest, so Jordan released Shakir, who promptly flew to Baghdad. Up to now, he has not resurfaced.

Now Shakir shows up on three Saddam Fedayeen rosters with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, a command rank that indicates significant involvement with Saddam's regime. His presence in Iraq, 18 months prior to the Anglo-American-led invasion, demonstrates Saddam's interaction and support for Islamofascist terrorists, and probably more than that. After all, in the wake of 9/11, with everyone looking for an Iraqi connection, it was hardly a propitious time to publicly take in an AQ terrorist just for the sheer thrill of it. If Saddam wanted him back that badly, it had to be for more reason than to trade American epithets and play a little backgammon in the palace.

UPDATE: Our Northern Alliance colleague, Hindrocket, also provides analysis on this article at Power Line:

Iraq was, to a degree that is still unknown, involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. It now appears that Saddam had a hand in the 2001 attack as well. The only doubt at this point would appear to be the possibility that the "Ahmed Hikmat Shakir" who was an officer in the Fedayeen might be a different person with the same name as the al Qaeda operative who helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks. If I were a member of the administration, I would devote a great deal of effort to investigating Col. Shakir, and tracking him down if he is still alive.

Just as long as we don't offend the sensitive natures at Amnesty International in doing so, I suppose.

Gore Goes Mad

John Podhoretz thinks Al Gore is bonkers. In today's New York Post he describes Gore's speech as a public mental meltdown:

"I mean that based on his behavior, conduct, mien and tone over the past two days, there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely."

From the ill-conceived Faustian reference to the "American Gulag" analogy, Gore's speech was a barely-coherent mass of bitterness.

Mr. Podhoretz concludes:

"Gore's speech is the single craziest political performance of my lifetime, and I use the word "craziest" advisedly. The speech, at 6,600 words, was twice as long as Bush's address to the nation on Monday night. The indiscipline shown by the sheer endlessness of Gore's address is a reflection of the psychic morass in which he has become mired."

Let's all take a collective sigh of relief that Mr. Gore was not our commander in chief on 11 September 2001.

Have you seen these people?

According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Al Qaeda is close to launching a major attack, these seven individuals may be involved. The AP reports that a steady stream of "disturbing" intelligence indicates terrorists already are already in the United States and ready to execute the plan, though Mr. Ashcroft acknowledged there is no information indicating when, where or how an attack might happen.

In today's news conference, Mr. Ashcroft declared, "We do believe that al-Qaida plans to attack the United States, and that is a result of intelligence that is corroborated at a variety of levels."

The AP reports:

"Six of the al-Qaida operatives, including two Canadian citizens, whose photos and backgrounds were highlighted Wednesday have been the subject of FBI pursuit for months. The seventh, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, 25, is a U.S. citizen who grew up on a California goat farm and converted to Islam as a teenager. He was described by Mueller as having attended al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and served as an al-Qaida translator. "

"Each of the suspects, Ashcroft said, presents 'a clear and present danger' to the United States because of their language skills, familiarity with U.S. culture and ability to travel under multiple aliases and use forged documents."

Of course, the AP notes the obligatory of Democrat complaints: if this is such a big deal, why haven't they raised the threat level, and the Bush administration is "needlessly scaring people."

"Needlessly scaring people"! They are doing their job, warning people about the danger before it is too late to stop it. Awareness, even some fear, will keep us alert and watchful.

Kerry's response was typically nonresponsive. According to AP, he "questioned the Bush administration's commitment to providing the resources necessary to protect the country, citing gaps in chemical and nuclear plant safety and inadequate protection for U.S. ports."

I love the way the AP skips critical information to save room to quote the virulently anti-Bush crowd.

The abyss gazes into Gore

I caught part of Al Gore’s speech this morning, and I was (predictably) horrified. Hindrocket beat me to the punch on this one, and you can read his rebuttal here. He concluded, “There is simply too much falsehood and confusion in Gore's speech for any one person to deconstruct. We should perhaps divide his tirade by paragraphs and parcel out to websites in the blogosphere--the Northern Alliance, for example, with help from others, since the job is so vast--the task of refuting Gore's misrepresentations and libels, one by one.”

OK, I’ll take a few paragraphs, starting with this one:

“But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, ‘the current OSD (Office of the Secretary
of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice.’”

First of all, the “OSD” is not President Bush. Any criticism of an “office” is not a criticism of President Bush, and a personal attack on the commander in chief is punishable under the UCMJ. But the next part is really hilarious:

“Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.”

Um, let’s try 4 years ago. Several senior officers were reprimanded and/or forced into early retirement because of remarks (all true) about the commander in chief. That president was Bill Clinton. You’d think Mr. Gore would remember him!

Here’s another memorable part. According to Mr. Gore:

“The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities [he probably means Abu Ghraib though somewhat incoherent during this part] are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily
responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America. Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention.”

I want to focus on that last sentence. Mr. Gore is telling us that President Bush and his administration have decided not to follow the Geneva Convention when dealing with the terrorists in Abu Ghraib.

Well, good on them! The Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists and the so-called “insurgents.” The Geneva Convention protections only apply to prisoners of war (POWs). In order to receive POW status, a combatant has to fulfill 4 requirements:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

The “insurgents” and terrorists in Iraq might be commanded by someone, somewhere, but they certainly don’t fulfill the other requirements. They sure don’t wear a uniform or other symbol. Don’t carry arms openly most of the time (in fact, they prefer road-side bombs). And no one can argue that they are following the law of war, especially when fighting from inside a mosque or cowering behind women and children. The “war” with Iraq, such as it was, has been over for a long time. We aren’t fighting a state’s army, we are fighting Islamic fundamentalists from all over the globe, and when we catch them, we do not consider them POWs.

I suggest that Mr. Gore and the other critics who like to cry about the Geneva Convention actually sit down and read it by clicking here.

All of this has been absurd, but the most telling part, however, was this:

“And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of
the Marine Corps, said ‘I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure.
We are looking into the abyss.’ When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss," then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.”

An apt quote. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Mr. Gore is so power-hungry and hate-filled, that he’s lost all perspective on events in Iraq and the US. He, and many others of his party, desire personal political power over the safety and integrity of our country. There is no rational reason for giving such a vitriolic speech during a time of war. Mr. Gore is looking into an abyss of America-hatred, and obviously, the abyss has been looking back.

Peace Comes To Sudan?

The longest current war may be coming to a close. The London Telegraph reports that the Bush and Blair administrations scored a foreign-policy victory by pushing the warring factions to the bargaining table in the Sudan, resulting in a tentative peace agreement:

A peace deal to end Africa's longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives. ... The conclusion of the fraught negotiations - in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States - hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country. ...

A transitional government headed by President Omar alBashir will take charge later this year. His fiercest enemy, John Garang, commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, will become vice-president.

North and south will split oil revenues equally and both sides will be represented in parliament, the civil service and the judiciary. After six years southerners will vote in a referendum offering them the option of independence.

The Sudan has fought a civil war since their independence from Britain in 1956, and as the Telegraph points out, has remained so economically disadvantaged that not one inch of tarmac nor one watt of electricity exists in the southern, non-Muslim rebel areas of the country. The Sudan has oil reserves which could transform the nation into economic viability if their politics could ever get straightened out.

So now we have the Anglo-American alliance liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, convincing Libya to cough up its WMD programs, engaging North Korea in the multi-lateral talks that were supposedly out of reach, and now they've helped end a 50-year war that kept millions in poverty and violence. What exactly do the Democrats have to say about George Bush's foreign policy?

Well, If It's Not Too Much Trouble

John Kerry has deigned to accept the nomination for the Democratic presidential ticket at the nominating convention, apparently deciding that playing games with both his hometown power base and the $15 million in federal funding would be too stupid, even for his campaign:

Bowing to pressure, John Kerry decided Wednesday to accept the nomination at the Democratic presidential convention in July, scuttling a plan to delay the formality so he could narrow President Bush's public money advantage. ... The statement ended four days of controversy over an idea that was supposed to remain a secret for several more weeks.

This ends yet another tone-deaf episode for John Kerry and his campaign staff, who demonstrated that they have no talent for national politics, and possibly even state and local politics are beyond them. Not only is this illustrated by the entire foolish notion of delaying the acceptance of the nomination, but also in the way this idea was fumbled throughout its blessedly short life. The Post reports that the proposal leaked far earlier than anyone anticipated, while Kerry considered its benefits and drawbacks, leaving the campaign completely unprepared to deal with the damage:

Several Kerry advisers had wanted him to forgo the nomination at the Democratic convention in late July and wait five weeks until Bush accepts the Republican nod. That would give both candidates the same time to spend $75 million in public money set aside for the general election. But the plan leaked weeks before Kerry had intended, causing an uproar in his home town of Boston -- site of the July 26-29 convention -- and among Democrats who feared that voters would view the tactic as too political.

Kerry had planned to wait several weeks before deciding what to do, but word of his deliberations leaked last week, forcing his hand.

Rather than respond to the leak with a prompt yes-or-no decision, Kerry stayed true to form and vacillated for several days, refusing to make a decision while Boston stewed and the FEC talked about legal action. Even up to yesterday, Kerry refused to make a decision but engaged in laughable rationalizations for a possible delay, citing Woodrow Wilson (1912) and Harry Truman (1948) as examples:

"Once again, the Republicans don't know history, and they don't know facts," he said. "The truth is that it used to be that the convention, after nomination, traveled to the home or the state of the nominee to inform them they've been nominated. Woodrow Wilson was at his house in Princeton, N.J.; Harry Truman was in Independence," Mo., he said. "They're trying to make an issue out of something that they're surprised by, because . . . they're very upset someone might have a way of neutralizing their advantage."

Of course, now that we've invented television and the internet, having a candidate live a thousand miles from the convention no longer presents a problem like that faced by Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps someone should inform Kerry about the marvelous changes in communication technology we enojy since 1948. On the other hand, someone should also tell the senator from Massachussetts that Boston is where he lives. How is that analogous to Truman's nomination?

Besides, the issue that Kerry needs to overcome by delaying the nomination is entirely self-inflicted. His party pushed for campaign-finance reform, and his party selected their July convention date in order to take advantage of it when they thought they'd be running out of cash at mid-summer. Now that the circumstances have changed, the Kerry campaign can't take responsibility for their own choices and instead flirts with breaking rules in order to nullify rules that they created!

Now we'll get a ration of Kerry acting magnanimous the next few days while reminding us that Bush and the Republicans have an "unfair" advantage, while they try to kick sand over this debacle. Just remember that the Democrats, and the Kerry campaign in particular, handed the Republicans this advantage through their incompetence and their Machiavellian scheming.

Reuters, critics recommend decreased vigilence

The quack reporters at Reuters and their useful idiots would like us to believe the new terror threats are politically motivated.

"A vague new U.S. warning that al Qaeda may be planning a massive attack smacks of political back-covering and campaigning, not just a call for heightened vigilance, analysts and former government officials say."

"Stung by accusations that the Bush administration ignored key intelligence in the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials may now be issuing warnings to prove to Americans they are on the ball this time, say terrorism analysts on both sides of the political fence."

"Apparently there were warnings over 9/11 and nothing came out to the public before that, and they've paid a dear price for that," said Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They need to alert the public that there could be something coming down the pike, in which case, don't say we didn't tell you," he said.

And there's more:

"One former national security official in the Bush administration told Reuters: "This is more butt-covering than anything else."

So someone who was either fired or quit their job wants to tell us what the President and his advisers are really doing. That's persuasive.

This should all just be a matter of common sense. We have huge events coming up this summer: the party conventions, Olympic Games, and the G8 summit. Three of those will be held in the U.S. Al Qaeda demonstrated both willingness and capability to violently insert itself into a state's political process in March (Spain).

The 2004 election will set the course for the War Against Democracy. If President Bush loses, Kerry will submit to the terrorists and cease any offensive measures. Al Qaeda knows that more rides on this election than any other event for the next 4 years!

Officials also complain that there are no specific guidelines for what the public should do. Look, if they knew what the threat was, law enforcement/military would take care of it. When you don't know, the only thing you can do is to urge increased vigilience and awareness. Those tactics work; if you know something bad is going to happen, you might find that 20 year-old Muslim guy in the trench coat with wires hanging out just a little more suspicious than you would otherwise and perhaps alert the police. If we are led to believe things are just fine, we will follow our natural impulse to hurry to work and just forget about him.

Finally, there is a lot of nonsense buried at the end of this article.

"One prominent terrorism expert, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, said Bush may also be trying to staunch increasing criticism of the Iraq campaign by underlining the link in the public's mind between Iraq and security at home. 'The president is running as a war president, so the timing is interesting,' he said, pointing to a speech by Bush on Monday that made frequent references to terrorist threats."

"'I wonder if there's not a connection to the president's speech when he mentioned terrorism 18 times in the context of Iraq. Isn't this a very convenient way of linking back to the United States that Iraq is part of the broader war on terrorism?' he said."

President Bush is a war president. Whoever is elected in November will also be a war president, though Kerry, if elected, will not want to admit it. The war is against the US, and we will remain at war whether or not we fight back.

Malkin: DC's Double-Ws Libertines, Not Liberated

I've mostly avoided the entire Washingtoniette fracas that erupted on Wonkette's blog because I don't normally comment on sex blogs (and don't make a habit of reading them, either). Regardless of whether the interpersonal relations are located in the halls of power in Washington DC or in the cornfields of Nebraska, does it really shock us in this age that people get promiscuous, both in their sexual habits and their inability to remain discreet about it? I blog on politics for the most part, but blogs exist to talk about whatever interests the writer. For Jessica Cutler, what interested her was her numerous and concurrent sexual flings with co-workers, including the cash "gifts" received for a few of these encounters.

However, Michelle Malkin -- a real journalist, as opposed to Cutler -- wrote a terrific piece for today's Townhall edition, explaining why this episode in the blogosphere damages the credibility of women in the workplace, especially in the political world of DC:

Meet the new Monica Lewinsky. Jessica Cutler, a 24-year-old mailroom clerk and phone receptionist, worked for Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, until last Friday -- when he fired her for using Senate computers to post to an Internet Web log that chronicled her trysts with six different men in Washington. Cutler's partners reportedly included government officials who gave her money for her sexual services.

Diary excerpt: "I just took a long lunch with F and made a quick $400. When I returned to the office, I heard that my boss was asking about my whereabouts. Loser." In another entry, Cutler explains: "F(equals)Married man who pays me for sex. Chief of Staff at one of the gov agencies, appointed by Bush."

Cutler, who aspired to be a journalist, spouted: "I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: How can anybody live on $25K/year??" When I was 24 and making less than that, I did it by eating Spaghetti-O's, Ramen noodles and Swanson pot pies for dinner; driving a Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning; and sleeping on a $30 futon. I did it the way most parents teach their daughters to succeed: through hard work, thrift, faith and perseverance.

This bimblog eruption occurs at a difficult time for women in another male-dominated arena -- the military. The photographed and videotaped sexual exploits of Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib have touched off a debate about the feasibility of putting women into combat support areas, especially in reserve units where discipline may not be as good as regular military units. Now we find out that Cutler supplemented her income by prostituting herself out to co-workers, not only disrupting workplaces with her antics but also making a mockery of the super-legalized "safe working environments" that we in the private sector must maintain.

Malkin talks about Cutler and Ana Marie "Wonkette" Cox as the female version of Beavis and Butthead illustrating the "narcissism, moral bankruptcy and self-congratulatory media-political incest" that people detest about DC. She resents, and rightly so, all of the prime-time play that the pair have received just for the one whoring herself out to co-workers and the other incessantly promoting it -- and acting surprised when Cutler got fired for it. Malkin also notes that the press, which spills tons of ink and fires off infinite electrons ridiculing family values, trips all over themselves to sell those who would sell themselves:

Follow-up dispatches appeared in Roll Call, the New York Post, the London Independent, United Press International and the Associated Press, whose wire reports on Cutler were reprinted everywhere from the Akron Beacon Journal to the Houston Chronicle to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ... The Washington Post's legitimization of this shallow "story" illustrates something else: the mainstream media's perverted moral values. The paper's recent profiles and features of social conservatives drip with condescension and ridicule. Religious activists are portrayed as intolerant homophobes; Republicans as gun-toting rubes; abstinence promoters as freaks.

But give The Washington Post two vain, young, trash-mouthed skanks who couldn't care less about what their parents think of their sex-drenched infamy, and the newspaper can't wait to help make them full-fledged members of the media elite.

Malkin is not the only one sick to death over the glamorization of trash. Bloggers have also made their displeasure known over the attention that Cutler and Cox received. Bill at INDC Journal, who lives in the middle of this Beltway sensation, has blogged extensively on just how sick of the entire meme he's become:

... this post is not sour grapes that stem from traffic envy or misdirected sexual desire for the W's, it's my aversion to shameful whoring and manipulation, in both the literal and media incarnations. When prostitution becomes cool/celebrated/admirable, what the hell is left in the taboo column? I guess that I'm more of a social conservative than I realize ... or I just can't stand such obvious cheap and easy media manipulation; mostly because it's so blatant. This from a guy whose bread and butter are moonbat jokes. Go figure.

For balance, the Commissar from Politburo Diktat takes the long view, even dropping out of character a little to explain how the ultimate female capitalist, so to speak, has made the blogosphere a bit bigger, and advises Bill and perhaps myself to live with it:

In the Blogosphere (VRWC bloggers, take note), she has accomplished the same feat. (I'll digress briefly to note that Ana Marie Cox is a self-proclaimed, albeit tongue-in-cheek "big fat Commie pinko." Despite her claim to ridicule whomever needs ridiculing, on any side, her views show through.) So far, the Left side of the blogosphere has been limited to those Krugman-on-steroids, relentless & humorless Bush-haters, modern Savonarolas, sufferers from & purveyors of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), like dKos, Atrios, Max Sawicky, and the rest. The VRWC has had a monopoly on entertaining, irreverent bloggers: Lileks, Scrappleface, Misha, Allah, Iowahawk, and Wizbang, to name a few.

Like her or not, comrades, Wonkette has pushed her way into the A-List. 140,000 hits daily for the past week. That may not be sustained, but it's no one-day Instalanche. Maybe she backed her way into it, ass-first, if you like, but that is the "world as we find it." Sorry, Comrade Bill, but we too, must "take it."

The blogosphere is bigger than it was a week ago, thanks to two Washington chick bloggers who "take it."

Just to underscore the point, the Commissar provides pictures of the two Ws in suggestive, pseudolesbian poses as well as a screenshot of their appearance on Fox News.

I agree with the Commissar -- it's a big blogosphere, and it's not just the VWRC that can have fun with it. I still think it's a shame, as Malkin says, that so much attention is wasted on two young women who have done little except to prove that the world's oldest profession has remained profitable.

Caption Contest #11 Winners!

Better late than never, I always say! I've reviewed all the entries for the latest Captain's Caption Contest, and I have to tell you that it was a most difficult task. Too many of these entries were laugh-out-loud funny, and I know that I'll be leaving off some favorites. Woe to the Captain! When asked for comment, John Kerry indicated how much sympathy he has for my plight:

Yeah, well ... A few themes developed in the submissions, and I've tried to get a representative of each one in the winner's circle (so to speak). So without further ado --

Captain's Award (Hip, Self-Referential/Suck-Up Category) -- Xrlq:

And to think, Captain Ed was this close to finally running one measly caption contest that wasn't about me...

You Have The Conn #1 (Vatican Ragging) - Jim S:

... and then I told the Bishop, "You'll have to pry this Communion wafer out of my cold dead thumb and forefinger!"

You Have The Conn #2 (Nursery Whines) - Dario:

Theeee itsy bitsy democraticpresidentialnomineeeee went up in the polls; Down came the repulicanattackmachiiiiiine and attackedmypatriotism; Out came the liberal mediaaaa, and dried up all the rightwingvastconspiraciesagainst meeeeee; And the itsy bitsy democraticpresidentialnomineeeee climbed up the didimentioniwasinvietnaaaaaaaaaam?

You Have The Conn #3 (Darth Nader?) - Chris B:

You have failed me for the last time, Admiral... [Star Wars I, or IV: A New Hope if you were born after 1980]

Special Award (Rudder Envy) - JBlake:

No no, Wonkette! I'm talking girth! [honoring the many, er, manhood entries]

Report To Sick Bay (Really On The Double) -- a tie!:

Stephen Macklin: "Did you see that photo of Alexandra at Cannes? Didn't you just want to reach out and ... Shit is this thing on?"

SC-Lefty: This is how I tune in Tokyo and she loves it.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Remember, here at CQ, everyone's a winner -- just some of us have higher winning percentages than others. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage my intellect and/or parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

Send me a photograph or an e-mail with a link to a great picture you think should be the subject of our next Caption Contest, and let me know if you'd like to be the guest judge! I'll have another picture for Friday -- so be sure to come back then for the next contest.

ABC News: Saddam, Al-Qaeda Linked Through Al-Zarqawi

ABC News posted a story to its website yesterday on the hunt for Ayman al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader whose attacks in Istanbul and the beheading of Nicholas Berg have catapulted him to the forefront of the war on terror. According to their final section of the story, titled "Training Under Bin Laden," ABC reports (hat tips RantingProfs, Blogosapien):

During the 1990s, Zarqawi trained under bin Laden in Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban, he fled to northwestern Iraq and worked with poisons for use in potential attacks, officials say.

During the summer of 2002, he underwent nasal surgery at a Baghdad hospital, officials say. They mistakenly originally thought, however, that Zarqawi had his leg amputated due to an injury.

In late 2002, officials say, Zarqawi began establishing sleeper cells in Baghdad and acquiring weapons from Iraqi intelligence officials.

Late 2002? That preceded the American effort to get UNSC Resolution 1441 passed, as well as our presentations to the Council demonstrating Iraqi links to al-Qaeda. Certainly, Saddam's willingness to allow Zarqawi to live in Baghdad demonstrates his affinity for promoting terrorism (just as his hosting of Abu Nidal and payment to families of suicide bombers). Surely Saddam would not have countenanced Zarqawi's establishment of sleeper cells and the transfer of weapons by the IIS to his groups without ensuring that he and Zarqawi were working together. In light of the discovery of the binary sarin shell, one has to wonder what other weapons Saddam may have transferred to al-Zarqawi. How about all those chemical weapons Zarqawi tried to use in Jordan, for example?

The only conclusion? Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were active allies and Hussein provided material support for AQ's terrorism. That certainly supports the argument for war in Iraq and underscores the Bush contention this week that Iraq is the central front in the war on Islamofascist terror. However, don't expect the media to pursue ABC's lead on this story. As Cori Dauber puts it:

So, to review: the latest intelligence says that Zarqawi got ready for this period with help from Saddam's people -- before -- the war. And ABC suddenly became a lot less skeptical of that claim today, either because it helped them get where they wanted to go, or because they have some reason to find this intell pretty damn good. But if it's the latter, they sure as hell weren't going to trumpet the fact that a key administration argument before the war is starting to look pretty good right now.

It also seems that the rest of the media doesn't care to trumpet it, either. Any idea why?

UPDATE: A well-respected blogger, one of my favorites, asks me why this is relevant given that we had committed to a "disarm or else" policy by late 2002 in the form of UNSC Resolution 1441. Good point, of course (I won't name the blogger as the question came by e-mail), but here's my answer: This revelation shows that 1441 itself was pointless, even if you hold that Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda began at this point. All 1441 did was tip off Saddam that the jig was up and that we were going to get serious about enforcement of the cease-fire and the disarmament resolutions. It also shows that al-Qaeda involvement in Iraq didn't come about because of the American invasion of Iraq but predated it, with Saddam's blessing.

Actually, the French tried to warn us in January 2003 that the proposed 18th UNSC resolution was a bad idea, politically as well as strategically, but the British insisted on trying to get it for domestic political reasons, according to a Vanity Fair article in May (as reported by the Guardian in March, which I blogged at the time). Realistically, Bush needed to go back to the UN for our own domestic politics too, although he certainly doesn't get credit for it now.

Going To The Dogs

According to a Washington Post article today, military intelligence specialist Col. Thomas Pappas claims that the idea of using dogs during interrogations in Abu Ghraib came from the commanding general of the detention facility at Guantánamo. However, buried below the jump is an admission by Pappas that he disobeyed orders in unmuzzling the dogs:

A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.

According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. militarydetention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

When reading this, keep two things in mind. First, Gen. Miller was not in Pappas' chain of command -- Miller went to Iraq as an advisor to the Sanchez operation and did not give any orders. He left recommendations based on his experiences at Guantánamo and expected Sanchez' command to parse them and integrate what applied to the Iraq program:

Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.

But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.

"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Even had Miller told Pappas that using unmuzzled dogs brought great results and in fact was the best procedure for interrogations since the invention of good cop/bad cop, Miller didn't have the authority to either order or pressure Pappas to use it. Pappas' chain of command ran through Sanchez's office, which he knew had to approve any unusual interrogation methods. Pappas even speaks of his frustration with Sanchez's limitations:

Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one dog handler and telling him "they could be used in interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.

That memo included the use of dogs among techniques that did not require special approval. The policy was changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez's approval on a case-by-case basis for certain techniques, including having "military working dogs" present during interrogations. That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to during the interview as its "fine print" -- that detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no formal system in place to do that -- no formal procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted. Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the dogs be muzzled. "It's not very intimidating if they are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned down.

Apparently, Pappas wants us to believe that he felt justified in using unmuzzled dogs in accordance with the recommendations of someone outside of his chain of command but didn't feel compelled to follow a direct order from his commanding officer. Pappas also tries to convince us that a trained military interrogator had no idea what constitutes violations of the Geneva Convention, an argument you may be able to make with reservist MPs but not with the active-duty intelligence specialists. Pappas' statement serves no one but his own interests, and even suspended Gen. Janis Karpinski notes that the MI command ran its own operation at Abu Ghraib without much consideration for establish command -- to her own detriment.

As I have written before, the Abu Ghraib abuses seem more clearly to be the result of a discipline breakdown, with the addition of manipulation by Pappas and his team. Blaming Miller for his own failures when Miller had no authority to direct his actions does not lend Pappas any credibility, even if the Post thinks that it does.

John Kerry, The Lonely Guy

Another Democrat makes it clear that no one from his party is as qualified to be Vice President as a Republican by again suggesting John McCain as Kerry's running mate. Only this time, the Democrat making the suggestion is presumed VP short-list candidate Dick Gephardt:

Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the Missouri Democrat who has often been mentioned as a running mate for Senator John Kerry, is talking kindly about another choice: Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Asked after a speech in California on Monday what he thought of Mr. McCain's potential for the Democratic presidential ticket, Mr. Gephardt described him as a "very attractive figure in American politics" who "would be accepted by the Democratic Party," according to CNN.

Mr. McCain is "someone a lot of Democrats could get interested in," Mr. Gephardt said at the Leon Panetta Center in Monterrey.

Gephardt's comments come just days after Ralph Nader revealed his new hobby as political advisor to his opponents by suggesting that Kerry drop the whole McCain idea and focus on either John Edwards or Gephardt himself as the VP candidate. Of the two, Gephardt made the better choice; he's well-respected, has union support, and can probably carry his home state. Most importantly, Gephardt wouldn't overshadow his running mate, although the ticket would look like two flavors of bland.

Instead, Gephardt makes it look like he'd rather sing paeans to Republicans -- pro-life, pro-war Republicans -- than ride the ticket with Kerry. He joins Hillary Clinton, Bob Kerrey, and a host of other Democrats who have urged Kerry to continue sweet-talking McCain. A little of this reminds people that McCain doesn't get along well with George Bush (although McCain denies this), but all of this carrying on about an opposition politician really begins to beg the question: why are there no good choices in their own party?

Kerry has to wonder what his potential VP choices think of his candidacy. He's fast becoming the Maytag Repairman of presidential hopefuls; no one wants to call him. Kerry may wind up having to draft one of the big names despite their public campaigning for McCain, or reach down to the second tier of regional functionaries for a running mate, a move that won't help him move the polls. It almost appears as if the Democrats don't want Kerry to win, or at least don't want to be attached to him when he tanks.

They're everywhere!

The AP reports Al Qaeda's ranks have multiplied, with 18,000 terrorists now operating in 60 countries. The International Institute of Strategic Studies has concluded:

"Al-Qaida is probably working on plans for major attacks on the United States and Europe, and it may be seeking weapons of mass destruction in its desire to inflict as many casualties as possible . . . "

I think we well aware of those facts.

Some of the report's other findings are questionable, to say the least. The ISS stated that the wars in Afganistan and Iraq have "benefitted" Al Qaeda by dispersing its members to other countries. For me, it's hard to see how removing two state sponsors could have "benefitted" our enemy.

The report also found that our efforts to defeat al-Qaida "might accelerate only if there are political developments that now seem elusive, such as the democratization of Iraq and the resolution of conflict in Israel."

The democratization of Iraq is certainly not elusive, but it will take time. Much like Rome, a Democratic Baghdad won't be built in a day and so forth. The only "resolution" of the conflict in Israel that will satisfy the Islamic fundamentalists will be the murder of every Jew in the Middle East. Then, the terrorists can focus their efforts on killing Jews in Europe and America and we'll finally get the much-wanted "peace in the Middle East."

The AP further reports:

"It could take up to 500,000 U.S. and allied troops to effectively police Iraq and restore political stability, IISS researcher Christopher Langton told the news conference. Such a figure appeared impossible to meet, given political disquiet in the United States and Britain and the unwillingness of other nations to send troops, he said."

Maybe our friends like South Korea, Japan, and Italy will help us! Oh, that's right, they already have troops there. Next time, I suggest the ISS actually conduct research before they issue a report.

AP: Terrorists Planning Summer Surprise

The AP reports that US intelligence has "highly credible" information that al-Qaeda terrorists plan on staging a large attack or series of attacks in America this summer:

U.S. officials have obtained new intelligence deemed highly credible indicating al-Qaida or other terrorists are in the United States and preparing to launch a major attack this summer, The Associated Press has learned. The intelligence does not include a time, place or method of attack but is among the most disturbing received by the government since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a senior federal counterterrorism official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Tuesday.

Of most concern, the official said, is that terrorists may possess and use a chemical, biological or radiological weapon that could cause much more damage and casualties than a conventional bomb.

"There is clearly a steady drumbeat of information that they are going to attack and hit us hard," said the official, who described the intelligence as highly credible.

The article goes on to note several possible venues for the attacks, such as the nominating conventions in Boston and New York. However, the conventions have prepared for the possibility of attacks and designed security in conjunction with the Secret Service, the FBI, and probably every other government agency with initials. The FBI thinks that the terrorists may go after softer targets this time, more difficult to defend and with a higher number of civilians around. One possible type of target mentioned is a shopping mall -- and the largest in the country sits within a 15-minute drive of my house.

Be prepared for an orange-alert summer. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for suspicious individuals, and make sure you keep the FBI tip site or the phone number for the closest office handy if you spot people appearing to "case" a site.

UPDATE: More from the Washington Post this morning:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III intend to hold a joint news conference this afternoon to discuss the threat and to ask Americans to watch for several suspected al Qaeda operatives who may be in the country, officials said.

The concerns are driven by intelligence deemed credible that was obtained about a month ago indicating an attack may be planned between now and Labor Day. That information dovetails with other intelligence "chatter" suggesting that al Qaeda operatives are pleased with the change in government resulting from the March 11 terrorist bombings in Spain and may want to affect elections in the United States and other countries.

"They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process," said one federal official with access to counterterrorism intelligence.

Spain's election hinged on several issues, notably the short-term opinion that the Aznar government tried to deflect blame towards the Basque separatist group ETA initially, but as we all predicted, the terrorists saw the election results as a vindication of their bombing. The Spanish electorate has condemned the Western nations to more of the same tactic. Remember to thank them when the attack comes.

Captain's Caption Contest #11!

It's Friday, and that means it must be time for another Captain's Caption Contest! Yes, we all know how close the last contest was -- Dr. Kate and Farmer Joe nearly wrecked the Urban Farmhouse deciding which of your entries captioned the Kerry table-tennis extravaganza. Even John Kerry himself knows how close the last one turned out:

I can't wait to see what you make out of this one! The contest stays open until 9 PM CT on Tuesday, May 25th (late closing time for some personal business, so take advantage!), at which time our guest judge will decide which of your entries wins out. Enter as often as you like, no purchase necessary, winner need not be present to win, bribes freely accepted ... you know the drill. Make sure you put your entry into the comments section -- e-mail will be shredded, set on fire, and force-fed to Michael Moore.

Have fun and let the captioning commence!

BUMP 5/22: We're off to a raging start so far -- very creative, people! Here's another great contest at The Daily Pundit for a new campaign slogan for the Kerry campaign or the Democrats, now that Kerry's staff has broached the idea of delaying the acceptance of the nomination until late August. Check it out -- Bill's offering a free Blog Ad for the winner! ...

BUMP 5/23 ...

BUMP 5/24: About 24 hours left on this contest! The Northern Alliance will be subbing for Hugh Hewitt tomorrow night, so I'll close out the comments late and post the results on Wednesday ...

COMMENTS CLOSED: I'll be reviewing the comments and posting the winners tomorrow! ...

Northern Alliance Radio On The Air For Hugh Hewitt!

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will fill in for Hugh Hewitt on his radio show tonight -- meaning we get to go national again! Almost everyone from NARN will be in studio for tonight's show, and we'll rotate through in order to get as many people on the air as possible. I'll be on in the first hour, when we have Kathryn Jean Lopez from NRO and Frank Gaffney scheduled as guests. If you don't get Hugh's show in your market, get the Internet feed from KTKZ in Sacramento!

If you want some background on Hugh, however, check out the Elder's comprehensive biography of the Lord High Commissioner of the Blogosphere. I didn't realize Hugh fought in the Battle of the Big Birds ...

UPDATE: As always, guest-hosting Hugh's show was a complete blast! Kathryn Jean Lopez and Frank Gaffney are regular Tuesday guests on the show, and they were characteristically terrific. K-Lo even gave us a big plug on The Corner at NRO, and Frank gave us the lowdown on the Ahmed Chalabi story. If you didn't catch the show, make sure you go to Hugh's site and check out the replay.

Big thank yous to Hugh and Generalissimo Duane, who not only makes it easy for us to step in, but makes us sound smarter than we are and keeps us laughing the entire time. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did!

UPDATE: Note to self -- never refer to UN peacekeepers as "blue-helmeted soldiers" while speaking in relation to the UN Sex-For-Food Program, at least not around The Elder.

The Libertarian Threat?

CBS News makes quite a splash today with an analysis of the presidential election and the impact that the Libertarian Party will have on conservative voters this fall. Despite a decades-long history of utter futility and the consistent selection of obscure candidates, suddenly CBS thinks that a Libertarian challenge to Bush's war and budget policies could spell the difference between his re-election and his defeat:

With conservatives upset over the ballooning size of the federal government under a Republican White House and Congress – and a portion of the political right having opposed the war in Iraq from the start or else dismayed at how it's being handled – the Libertarian nominee, who will be on the ballot in 49 states, may do for Democrats in 2004 what Nader did for Republicans in 2000.

It is a hypothesis not yet made in the mainstream media. But interviews with third-party experts and activists across the country, as well as recent political patterns, illustrate that there could be a conservative rear-guard political attack against President Bush.

If the hypothesis has not yet been floated in the mainstream media, it's because the hypothesis is silly on its face. CBS compares the Libertarian challenge to Ralph Nader's outsider campaign (so outside he dumped the Greens this time around), but the comparison is invalid. First, Nader has a built-in national following that none of the Libertarians have, and a solid name-recognition factor. Second, Nader's approach appeals to a distinct minority of the Democratic party, while Libertarian philosophy is all over the place:

Libertarians are essentially fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They are against the war in Iraq, as well as deficits and big-government bills like the recent Medicare legislation. They are against any form of gun control. But they also support gay rights, abortion rights and less stringent drug laws.

CBS undersells the actual Libertarian positions. The Libertarian platform routinely includes complete decriminalization of drug use as well as prostitution, unfettered abortion rights, and strict Constitutionalism, the latter point being nearly the only intersection with mainstream Republicanism. Big-L Libertarians not only would like to dismantle most of the federal government but also much of state and local government as well. These Libertarians aren't "conservatives" in any sense; they exist on another pole on the political spectrum altogether.

Don't get me wrong -- I often refer to myself as a quasi-libertarian in political philosophy, and the guys at QandO recently had a great post on Neolibertarianism that comes as close to a coherent libertarian philosophy as anything I've seen. I believe that the government which governs least governs best -- within the parameters of reality. The Libertarian Party, unfortunately, takes a great idea and pounds it into irrationality.

Could the Libertarian Party ever mount an effective challenge to the Republicans on a national basis? I doubt it, in its present configuration. The Greens have a better chance at sucking up the Democrats' oxygen in the short run, even without Ralph Nader. Until the Libertarians get a nationally-recognized leader to lead the ticket and capture at least a portion of the conservative imagination and modify their platform considerably, they won't make a dent. And if they did all of that, wouldn't they wind up resembling either of the two major parties anyway?

Addendum: Note that CBS News uses Grover Norquist as a source on this analysis. Norquist, you may remember, was taken to task by Frank Gaffney for allowing radical Islamists to infiltrate his organization. If Norquist is agitating for the anti-war Libertarians, CBS should have included a little context for this. In fact, it was my post this very article on Norquist which started my association with Hugh Hewitt and the Northern Alliance gang.

Speaking of which, I need to thank Hugh for referring to Captain's Quarters as a "must read" for the blogosphere, as well as his kind words regarding the First Mate in his last show before his vacation. Hugh's keen intellect and sharp wit are admirable, but his graciousness and thoughtfulness even more so.

UPDATE: Dr. Kate from Urban Farmhouse gives a great response from the rational Libertarian front, after kindly linking to this post:

I don't belong to the Massachusetts Libertarian Party organization because I refuse to sign the new member pledge:

I certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.

That reduces a constellation of worthy goals to a single-issue peacenik agenda.

You see, the Farmhouse - as l/Libertarian as we are - are two rock solid votes for Bush, come November. We're not the only ones. In fact, all the registered Libs I know are planning to vote for Bush. In Massachusetts, that's saying something, because a vote for anyone but the Democratic nominee is generally a symbolic vote only, which is how the Libs and the Greens manage to be registered parties here. I fall more into Roger Simon's camp, as much as a libertarian can stand to fall into anyone's camp: "I'm putting some of my stuff on hold for a few years."

I hadn't heard about the pledge before, and I think it's perfectly idiotic. Even the Democrats and Republicans don't require or request that members pledge to specific policy stances. Yet another reason the Libertarian candidate won't provide much of an impact -- again.

Day After Tomorrow: "Lies Cloaked As Science"

USA Today published an op-ed piece by Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute (via Drudge), that reviews the science in the upcoming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow and finds it ridiculous and impossible:

Global warming causes the Gulf Stream to shut down. This current normally brings tropical warmth northward and makes Europe much more comfortable than it should be at its northerly latitude. The heat stays stuck in the tropics, the polar regions get colder, and the atmosphere suddenly flips over in a "superstorm." The frigid stratosphere trades places with our habitable troposphere, and in a matter of days, an ice age ensues. Temperatures drop 100 degrees an hour in Canada. Hurricanes ravage Belfast. Folks in Japan are clobbered by bowling-ball-size hailstones. If we had only listened to concerned scientists and stopped global warming when we could.

Each one of these phenomena is physically impossible.

The Day After Tomorrow is yet another in a series of scare films that Hollywood regularly regurgitates in an effort to be hip and aligned with leftist political and environmental causes. Powder, for instance, opposed deer hunting; Michaels himself mentions The Day After, which this film obviously wants to evoke by its title, which supported the nuclear-freeze movement. The China Syndrome shut down nuclear power plant construction for a generation and has contributed, ironically, to the growth of so-called "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere when nuclear power could be providing massive electricity now generated by fossil fuels. But just as Hollywood routinely botches history both to score political points and sometimes for no reason whatsoever, TDAT uses ridiculously tortured science to promote a climate theory that is at best controversial, and at worst nothing more than another anti-industrial, anti-capitalist movement dressed up as research.

For instance, Michaels points out the following:

Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knows more about ocean currents than most anyone. He thinks the nonsense in The Day After Tomorrow detracts from the seriousness of the global-warming issue. So he recently wrote in the prestigious science journal Nature that the scenario depicted in the movie requires one to "turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth's rotation, or both."

The stratosphere will become the troposphere when all three laws of thermodynamics are repealed. Hailstones can't reach bowling-ball size because their growth is limited by gravity. Hurricanes can't hit Belfast because the intervening island of Ireland would destroy them.

So where does the movie derive its scientific logic? From the book on which it's based, The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Michaels also notes that Streiber's previous work was Communion, in which he stated that aliens told him of the impending apocalypse.

So who else have aliens told of this apocalypse? Perhaps Michaels' description of the film's willing spokespeople will explain American politics over the past few years:

Will Godsick and Gordon get their way? They're sure being aided and abetted by MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group and billionaire George Soros' policy toy. They've got Al Gore front and center, plumping the film. They've got their Web site using the movie to drum up support for legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, which only failed by 12 votes last fall. There's a huge drought out West, which a New York Times editorial blamed on global warming. The issue is hot enough to influence votes out there.

Gore and Soros, communicating with aliens? Yes, leftist politics make a lot more sense in this context. With any luck, their alien friends will beam them up sometime after this movie disappears -- which shouldn't take long at all.

Nader, with Tinfoil Hat

Ralph Nader made a campaign detour through Tinfoil Hatville on his way to Manhattan, calling for President Bush's impeachment -- five months before the general election -- and saying that the terrorist threat to the US has been exaggerated mere blocks away from Ground Zero:

Ralph Nader, the independent candidate for president, condemned President George W. Bush yesterday as a "messianic militarist" who should be impeached for pushing the nation into a war in Iraq "based on false pretenses."

Mr. Bush's actions "rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors," Mr. Nader said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan. He said Mr. Bush had exceeded his authority in the face of widespread opposition at home and abroad. "The founding fathers did not want the declaration of war put in the hands of one man," he said, contending that United States foreign policy goals are being hindered because the president tends to "talk like an out-of-control West Texas sheriff."

He should take another meeting with his newest best buddy and consultancy client, John Kerry. Kerry can remind Nader that Bush got Congressional approval for the military action in Iraq, although perhaps Kerry doesn't talk about it all that much any more, especially in light of his "aye" vote on the resolution. Nader, apparently unmindful of the local geography and recent history of Manhattan, also insisted that Bush exaggerates the terrorist threat, although when pressed back away somewhat:

Mr. Nader also accused President Bush of exaggerating the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"To say that President Bush has exaggerated the threat of Al Qaeda is to trip into a political hornets' nest," he said. But he said it was time to raise "the impertinent question" about whether the threat had been "exaggerated for a purpose."

Mr. Nader said he believed such a deception had taken place, and had been intended in part to draw popular support for more militaristic policies and to generate military contracts for companies with close ties to the Bush administration.

It seems to me that we just had televised hearings excoriating both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the latter to a lesser degree to be sure, for underestimating the terrorist threat prior to 9/11. So which is it? Did he underestimate the threat before the massive attack on American soil, but now somehow "exaggerates" the threat in its aftermath? I understand that Nader doesn't represent Democrats, but he does represent a faction of the Left -- and the Left's incoherence on terrorism becomes more and more clear as time goes on. Bush's opposition seems to be split between those who are convinced he didn't do enough to stop terrorism and those who think he's doing far too much.

When asked what he would do to stabilize the region if US troops were removed unilaterally, Nader "declined to provide more detail." The silence on this topic is deafening. The cut-and-run crowd have no idea what their demands would do to the region; under the current conditions, a sudden removal of the only forces able to enforce civil law in Iraq would condemn that area to a Beirut of huge proportion and unimaginable consequences. Nader reveals himself to be nothing but a sloganeer, unwilling and/or unable to postulate any comprehensive strategy or even to demonstrate strategic thinking. I don't consider Nader to be a threat to win the election -- I'd have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to believe that -- but Nader will wind up pulling Kerry to the left in order to keep that part of the electorate in the Democrat column, and his agitation makes it too easy for defeatism to become mainstream. The administration needs to rebut this surrender mentality with more vigor than it has if it expects to keep the debate focused on victory instead of ignominious "exit strategies".

UN Implements Sex-For-Food Program In The Congo

The London Independent reports this morning that the UN, which has been so critical of the abuses by American troops at Abu Ghraib, faces its own scandal. In a hideous twist, UN "peacekeeping" troops stationed in the Congo and supposedly assisting refugees of the war there have forced women, many barely teenagers and some already rape victims, to prostitute themselves for food:

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

Testimony from girls and aid workers in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Bunia, in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.

The UN's troops prey specifically on women who have been rape victims, as their society routinely shuns such victims as shameful and "dirtied," as one such victim called herself. The Independent identified over 30 girls and women who regularly slip through the convenient holes in the wire fence between the refugee camp and where the soldiers bivouac, as one said, sometimes once a night, sometimes more, in order to secure food for themselves and their children.

What of the management at the camp? The UN contracts with Atlas to manage the camp, but they have been useless in stopping the Sex-For-Food Program as administered by the blue-helmeted soldiers. The Independent interviewed one Atlas worker who they wouldn't identify, who told them that Atlas was well aware of the rapes and prostitution at the camp but declined to do anything about it:

One worker, employed by Atlas, the aid group that manages the camp, confirmed that staff were aware of the trade in sex but were too frightened to tackle it.

He said: "There is nothing to stop them and the girls need food. It is best to keep quiet, though. I am frightened that if I say something I may lose my job and I have children of my own to feed."

If nothing else exemplifies the UN's track record in peacekeeping, that statement perfectly captures its essence. The people who manage the program won't stop atrocities -- the UN defines systematic rape as an atrocity, specifically in reference to the Congo -- because they're bureaucrats who prefer to keep their jobs. The head of the UN in Bunia, Dominique McAdams, claims not to have seen any evidence of sexual violence in the camp even though the Independent (which hardly is anti-UN) rather easily found dozens of girls and women who spoke about the abuses. Apparently she never bothered to ask the workers at Atlas for their testimony.

So we have an international armed force in a foreign country supposedly there to protect the native population, which is instead abusing the civilians under their protection. We have contractors on site that have full knowledge of the atrocities but who conspire to keep quiet. We have a command structure that has allowed this to happen, through a lack of oversight or worse, and who have not bothered to investigate very thoroughly. All of this sounds very familiar, but at least in the case of Abu Ghraib, the command structure made an effort to arrest and try those responsible for the abuses they committed.

When does the international media start accusing the UN executive of deliberately causing the rape and prostitution of Congolese women? When does the New York Times call for Kofi Annan's resignation? More importantly, when will we finally get the recognition that the UN as an organization is no better, and in most cases orders of magnitude worse, than a coalition of free nations when it comes to peacekeeping and military action?

Don't hold your breath. (via Memeorandum)

UPDATE: Michael Moynihan (via Instapundit) agrees:

Pre-pubescent teenagers having sex for ransomed fruit is not prostitution, it is a sex crime.

The UN, paragons of virtue that they are, are on the case: “Dominique McAdams, the head of the UN in Bunia, said she believed that there was sexual violence in the camp, but said she had yet to see any evidence.” (emphasis added)

Will the European press—in another fit of humanitarian pique—put the Congo story on A1, above-the-fold and demand Ms. McAdams resignation? Will the American press?

I suspect Moynihan, like myself, will maintain normal breathing while we await the answers.

Nuts Look For Their Own Shell in South Carolina

Sooner or later, it is said, everyone gets embarrassed by their friends or family. While it seems like it happens more frequently to our colleagues on the rational Left, we have our own lunatic fringe on the right, and when they get out of the box they can be just as, ah ... entertaining as anything the Left can provide. Today's lesson in right-wing/Christian idiocy comes to us from WorldNet Daily, via Memeorandum, in which a Texas group of Christians propose mass Christian migration to South Carolina and a subsequent secession as a cure for all evil in America:

Calling the approval of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts "the straw that broke the camel's back," a group of Christian activists is in the beginning stages of an effort to have one state secede from the United States to become its own sovereign nation.

"Our Christian republic has declined into a pagan democracy," says Cory Burnell, president of ChristianExodus.org, a non-profit corporation based in Tyler, Texas. "There are some issues people just can't take anymore, and [same-sex marriage] might finally wake up the complacent Christians."

The alternative to living amongst the heathens in a democracy, according to Burnell, is to go off somewhere and create a theologically-based republic where Christianity -- as viewed by Burnell and his associates -- dictates the law. Of course, Burnell and his friends can't just go discover some new territory and establish a Massachussetts colony someplace else, nor do they want to explore abroad to establish their City On The Hill. Instead, the group has decided to use South Carolina, the flashpoint of the Confederacy, as a gathering space for all true Christians and then negotiate a secession from the US:

Burnell, a math teacher and cell-phone dealer, stresses he's not looking for bloody battles that took place in the American Revolution and the Civil War, but is rather seeking a "political divorce."

"It's got to be different today," he says. "It has to be peaceful, brokered." But he admits if the federal government decides to use military force to stop the effort, "Then it can't happen."

I guess that the math teacher can count, as in how many troops he will have in South Carolina as opposed to the rest of the country. This demonstrates, though, the powerlessness that people who perceive themselves as minorities in a diverse democracy experience when they don't get their way, as well as demonstrating exactly how immature some people are about it. They talk about all of the evil that has befallen the country and how they fear that Christianity will soon be banned as "hate speech", while proposing to turn South Carolina into the Christian version of Iran, complete with (one presumes) a perpetual mullahcracy to approve any legislation that the sheeple might be foolish enough to propose.

Way to think things through, Cory. Wake us when the Inquisition starts.

In fact, I don't know which is sillier: Burnell's proposal or the coverage given it. On the other hand, silliness has been in such short supply lately, and Lord knows we could use a laugh, even if it's at the expense of the few of our fellow Christians on the fringe.

Don't be so proud to be an American

According to the London Sunday Telegraph:

"American athletes have been warned not to wave the U.S. flag during their medal celebrations at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens, for fear of provoking crowd hostility and harming the country's already-battered public image. ... U.S. Olympic officials have ordered their 550-strong team to exercise restraint and avoid any jingoistic behavior."

Internet difficulties prevented me from posting on this subject last week, but James Lilek’s provides a terrific response to this nonsense in his Dallas Morning News op-ed:

“Please. You'd think President Bush had announced that our Olympians have a God-given right not only to grab the flag but to use the pole to knock the losers senseless.”

“Apparently if an athlete grabs an American flag and runs around the stadium, it will enflame the European Street. And the Arab Street, the Asian Street, the African Street, the Central and South American Streets, the Canadian Rue, and various other roads and alleys from assorted islands and subcontinents. The world simply is not able to take the sight of an American waving a flag in victory.”

Mr. Lileks correctly points out that the Olympics have always been the stage for political maneuvering, especially for Russia, who drugged its athletes just to make sure they beat the Americans.

Of course, only the Americans are barred from patriotic displays. Mr. Lileks notes:

“Sudan, which is ethnically cleansing its Christian blacks, could hoist its flag. China, whose treatment of Tibet birthed a million indignant bumper stickers, can run around with the flag held high. Russia can flatten Grozny, and its athletes can be assured of huzzahs and applause.”

His conclusion?

“It's not that these governments are better than the United States. What counts is that they are not the United States. In the opening stanzas of the 21st century, that is sufficient to give them a pass.”

It’s time to stop apologizing for being Americans. The idea that we should be ashamed to wave our flag and chant “USA USA” when our athletes are victorious is absurd.

Ralph Nader, Political Advisor to Democrats

John Kerry has been given plenty of advice on selecting his candidate for Vice President; pundits and politicos alike have weighed in on the matter. Some even have suggested picking a Republican, apparently convinced that there are no qualified Democrats. (I've suggested that they need to address the same problem at the top of the ticket.) The AP reports today that one more politico has met with Kerry and extended his advice -- only the man in question intends on running against John Kerry in the general election:

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said he had advised John Kerry to choose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards or Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt as his running mate on the Democratic ticket. ...

"They're very careful," Nader said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "They're not going to cause him any embarrassment. And they do bring an additional voter support for him."

The advice is savvy enough, but why is Nader being so helpful to Kerry? Nader told "This Week" that he specifically advised Kerry directly; Nader wasn't engaging in idle speculation or analysis. Nader also told ABC that he (Nader) rejects the notion of using McCain or Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to build a so-called "unity ticket," mostly because Nader thinks neither would agree to it. Besides, Nader doesn't like their political views, a problem that pro-McCain Democrats have completely ignored in their do-anything frenzy to win at all costs. Nader even rejected Democratic Senator Evan Bayh for being too moderate, which caused Bayh to respond, "I'm happy he's not registered to vote in Indiana."

The Kerry campaign truly erred in allowing Kerry to attend the Leftist Summit with Nader last week. Not only did the meeting end without Nader's withdrawal from the race, now Nader embarrasses Kerry by going on national TV, telling everyone that he has to advise Kerry on how to pick a VP. The fact that Nader sounds a lot more coherent on this issue than other Democrats, such as Bob Kerrey and Hillary Clinton, who have pushed for a Kerry-McCain ticket, calls into question which leftist campaign is more removed from reality. Small wonder that the Kerry campaign flounders while Bush faces the worst re-election year for an incumbent since 1980.

Can you imagine how Nader will react if Kerry actually chooses one of the two men Nader suggested, either of which are likely on Kerry's short list anyway? Does the Nader endorsement effectively kill their chances? Either way, Nader's done a fine job of making Kerry look like an aimless tool and possibly just sabotaged two VP candidates who could have re-energized Kerry's campaign. Does anyone at the DNC know how to run for President?

Bostonians Not Pleased With The Empty-Convention Tactic

John Kerry may be on the road today for his presidential campaign, and as far as some Bostonians are concerned, he should stay there. Beantowners aren't pleased at all to have spent a fortune on a nominating convention that won't nominate anyone, and both Boston dailies blast Kerry this morning. First, we have Adrian Walker in the Globe offering to write Kerry's non-speech for his non-nomination:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, delegates. Thank you, you suckers from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and FOX, for attending our nominating -- pardon me, our four-day "unity conference." ... I'd like to say a few words about my good friend Tom Menino, the mayor of this great city. Mayor, all Democrats owe you a debt of gratitude for your tireless efforts in shaking down everyone in town to raise money for this fabulous shindig. People will say it was all for nothing, that nothing is really taking place here, and frankly, they're right.

Walker doesn't mince too many words in this column, and its only major failing may be that it sounds a little too much like something Kerry would actually say. Read the parts about "unity" and "taking a major step" and tell me that doesn't sound as vague as "involving the UN" and "we'll pay for health care through growth". Walker injects snide humor at Ted Kennedy's expense as well, predicting that the more conservative Massachussetts Senator will enjoy the pep rally from his Hyannis manor -- a piece of advice Democrats would do well to heed.

At the Herald, however, they take the more direct approach. In a staff editorial, the Herald yesterday blistered Kerry for suggesting that he won't accept a nomination at the convention, in language that makes clear the Herald's disgust:

This is beyond tacky, beyond crass and ultimately beyond pointless. That Sen. John Kerry and his advisers would even think about tinkering with the nomination process that the Democratic National Convention was designed to be - all in the name of the Almighty Campaign Buck - is so hideously cynical we can't imagine what they are thinking. ... hundreds of thousands of area commuters are already major-league grumpy about being asked to put their lives and their jobs on hold for a week so this Kerry nomination hoe-down can occupy the city of Boston, and you have a real fine start to the general election season.

Although the Herald doesn't mention it, Kerry's earlier assertion that he would not allow his presidency to become beholden to lobbyists certainly looks off-key while he figures out any loophole possible for chasing that Almighty Campaign Buck, too. The Herald mentions that the Federal Election Commission already questions the legality of a nominating convention without a nomination, especially in light of the $15 million in federal funding that the Democrats received to stage the four day pep rally. They advise Kerry to "pop this trial balloon," but the wonder is that after several days of this bad publicity in his own hometown and the center of his political support, the campaign still insists that the option remains on the table. Talk about tone-deaf!

Republicans, as the Herald also reports, threaten a different response. Normally each party refrains from serious campaign events during the other's nominating conventions, both out of respect for the process and as a reciprocal courtesy. On the other hand, if the Democrats insist on playing games with their convention, the Republicans plan on reacting to their disrespect for the process with some of their own:

President Bush's campaign yesterday threatened to hold four days of campaign rallies to yank the media spotlight from Boston's Democratic National Convention if Sen. John F. Kerry delays accepting his party's nomination. ... If Kerry opts for delay, the Bush campaign would seek to blunt media coverage of the July 26-29 Boston convention by demanding TV networks abide by federal laws requiring equal time for both parties, a Republican source said.

"It would be our expectation that our rallies receive the same coverage as the Democratic convention,'' a GOP official said. ``What happens if Kerry has 15,000 people in Boston for a speech and we have a Bush rally in Minnesota with 25,000 people?''

The Herald piece notes the support for Kerry's Machiavellian twist to the nomination process has within the Democratic Party, and how their leaders have adopted an ends-justifying-the-means approach:

"It's a brilliant strategy,'' said U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D- Somerville). "There's only one goal now: Beat George Bush, whatever it takes. ... Politics is a bloodless battle, it is not a genteel sport,'' Capuano said. "Those who play by genteel rules, generally don't win. The average guy in the street could not care less what Kerry is doing . . . it will be a coronation without the crown going on his head.''

How about it, Average Guy In The Street? Do you feel like voting for a candidate who routinely breaks rules whenever it suits him? Bear in mind that the Democrats deliberately chose an early date for their convention because they feared running out of money by the time the summer rolled around. Now, the party of campaign-finance reform demonstrates yet again that they write rules specifically for them to break. OpinionJournal.com points this out in a staff editorial titled "Potemkin Convention" today:

This Kerry trial balloon exposes campaign-finance limits as a monumental farce. The Kerry camp is considering this maneuver so it can keep raising and spending money as long as possible without having to abide by spending limits that kick in once a party formally nominates its candidate.

Of course, the late July date was the Democratic Party's own choice--and it was selected precisely so it would let the nominee accept matching federal campaign funds a month earlier than President Bush, who will be nominated in late August. The assumption had been that the Democratic candidate would have run out of cash by this summer, but Mr. Kerry has been raising more money than he expected. In other words, Mr. Kerry embraced the rules when they helped him but now wants to ignore them when they don't.

When does the electorate finally realize that John Kerry is all hat and no cattle when it comes to his supposed integrity? Do we really want a rehash of all the worst aspects of the Clinton Presidency -- the parsing of words to rationalize behavior, the twisting of regulations and laws to justify unethical practices, and the lip-service treatment for all sides of a debate just to get elected? John Kerry stands for nothing except John Kerry, a character flaw well documented throughout 33 years of politics. The only people who support a man who stands for nothing are those that fall for anything.

Err America Ratings Explained

As you know, I've had a fair bit of fun poking the Air America bear from time to time, as the entire notion of launching a liberal radio network to combat the supposedly oppressive conservative media bias seems like such an idiotic notion that its cluelessness alone deserves a crushing defeat. At the outset, though, we all assumed that Err America (as I like to call it) would survive at least through the November election as it allowed people like George Soros to sink tons of money into broadcasting anti-Republican statements while avoiding the McCain-Feingold limitations on political advertising.

Sooner than anyone imagined, however, we have seen major players at the netlet bail out, including its major (public) investor and most of its executives. Leather Penguin added to the fun by giving us a peek at Err America's ratings in New York City -- where we discovered that they hadn't moved the needle a bit from WLIB's prior programming. Jon at QandO warns us to be careful in interpreting these numbers, throwing a bit of cold water on the schadenFranken that we'd all been feeling:

[A] few points:

1: Technically, these are not what is commonly called "Arbitrons". They are "Arbitrends" - i.e., monthly trend updates. Arbitron compiles the latest (unweighted) monthly diary results and shows each Arbitron subscriber the 3-month trend.

It's hard to judge the trend, though, based on the numbers LeatherPenguin presents. We really have no idea what the latest month looked like, or what the dropped month looked like. For example, they may be trending up sharply, but if they dropped a very good month, it would show little/no change. ...

3: Even so, this Arbitrend does not represent an Air America trend. Bear in mind, they didn't launch until March 31st. The Arbitrend in question is February/March/April - only the last month (which we cannot see) consists of Air America programming.

Jon has more analysis, which you should read in its entirety, even if it is a major buzz-kill, dude.

Addendum: Make sure you follow the link on Leather Penguin's post to the Al Franken forum -- Randi Rhodes, the only professional radio host they have, apparently announced her resignation on Friday. The debate starts off with speculation about it being a joke, but then rapidly segues into a discussion about behind-the-scenes bickering about the various personalities at Err America (like Franken) that you don't want to miss. Skip the second page of the forum, though, as it's consumed by trolls.

Detroit News: 9/11 Families Ungrateful, Rude

Nolan Finley, the opinion editor of the Detroit News, has also lost all patience with the 9/11 victims' families that have chosen to politicize themselves and promote themselves at every opportunity. In a signed editorial yesterday, Finley scolds those who acted so rudely during former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's testimony last week:

America adopted the families of the September 11 terrorism victims, showered them with support and sympathy, and lifted them up as a living emblem of the national wound suffered.

But now, some of the family members are wearing thin.

Some groups have morphed into quasi-political organizations, using their mourner status to gain a platform for pushing their views on everything from immigration laws to the Patriot Act to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Others express their grief in the form of endless protest, rallying against the design of the September 11 memorial, carping about the inadequacy of the family compensation fund and demanding scapegoats at the highest level of government for the deaths of their loved ones.

The groups Finley describes represents a slight percentage of all the people who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC. However, they act as though they not only represent every single victim, but that they represent America as a whole. Or, perhaps as an even better way to explain it, they act as if their grief gives them a higher priority in judging the investigation into the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 and the American response to terrorism in general.

This, of course, is ludicrous. For one thing, the attacks did not target those families specifically but New York and DC as a whole, and by projection the entire US. That these families lost loved ones was, in the terrorist calculation, simply coincidence. For another, the idea behind these foreign-policy initiatives and the investigations isn't -- or shouldn't be -- as some sort of revenge for 9/11 but to prevent another 9/11, or worse. In that cause, all of us have an equal investment. The 9/11 families are no experts nor are they superprivileged citizens.

And in the manner of their political efforts, they have proved themselves to be partisan, irresponsible, and just plain rude, as Finley notes:

A group calling itself September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows exploits its victim status to attack the Bush administration on issues ranging far afield from the terrorist attacks. They are leftists and peaceniks in mourner’s clothing. But they’re presented simply as September 11 families, allowing their rantings and ramblings to go out unfiltered. ...

Giuliani suffered as much as anyone on September 11. He was devastated by what happened to his city and his citizens. The strength and grace he displayed helped rally the nation. Yet on Wednesday, family members treated him like he was one of the terrorist hijackers, greeting him with derogatory signs and angry shouts. Giuliani endured the assault calmly, excusing the extreme rudeness as a byproduct of grief. Of course — the families are off-limits to criticism.

But grief doesn’t explain the increasingly inappropriate behavior of some September 11 family members. Greed might. Nearly as soon as the federal government established the $6 billion compensation fund — an average $1.3 million per victim — some survivors began squabbling over its size, who would be eligible and how much they’d get.

The emergence of the political 9/11 families demonstrates the recent American fixation on victimhood, where our heroes only come as a result of damaged lives. This trend portends danger for our country, as victims only remain thus when they do nothing as a result of the victimizing event. For instance, one of the major memes of the left is that America wasted the vast reserves of "goodwill" after the 9/11 attacks by responding militarily. In fact, the attacks allowed the left to wallow in the victimhood that they worship. The 9/11 families wish to continue to trade on victim-fascination as a sort of Narcissan pool in which we could die, staring into that image while we are attacked from without and within by Islamofascist terror.

Enough of the obsession with these families. We didn't obsess over Pearl Harbor's victims, and we managed to win that war. If we want to win this one, we'd better stop hoping to recapture our victimized image for the satisfaction of leftists abroad and start focusing on killing as many of the Islamofascists that we can find. Let the uberpolitical 9/11 families exercise the franchise, just like any other American, but otherwise their message has exceeded its expiration date.

The Kerry Fire Drill Strategy

The Washington Post reviews the latest weather-vaning going on at the John Kerry campaign in an article humorously titled "Kerry Broadens Scope of His Pitch." Instead, Jim VanderHei and Dan Balz document the essence of the Kerry campaign as it has bounced between constituencies like a pinball at the arcade, promising centrism to one audience while defending leftist policies to another, and all the while with Democrats excusing his shiftiness as necessary to win the White House regardless of his misrepresentations.

For example, Kerry's allies have not only pressured John McCain to accept the VP role but also Chuck Hagel, another Republican, despite significant policy differences. The Post never mentions anything about Kerry's outreach to Democrats, leaving the impression that Kerry's handlers believe that only a bipartisan ticket will win in November. In other policy venues, Kerry continues to play both sides of the fence, with increasing shamelessness:

Despite the unity among Democrats, Kerry is working feverishly to placate liberals who might feel slighted by his new approach. At a recent private meeting, the Massachusetts senator assured gay rights activists that his public silence on the gay marriage debate does not reflect his strong, personal commitment to their issues, participants said.

Kerry advisers said a strong public defense of gay marriage could undermine the candidate's appeal in culturally conservative states, so he rarely raises it on the hustings. Last week, after speaking in Topeka, Kan., at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, he was asked why he did not mention gay marriage, since that day also marked the first day his home state was allowing such unions. He brushed aside the questions without answering.

He even played the same game with Ralph Nader, which may explain why Kerry's tete-a-tete with the independent candidate didn't convince Nader to go home:

While Kerry often portrays himself as a Bill Clinton Democrat in public, he seemed to distance himself from the former centrist president during a private meeting last week with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who is challenging the presumptive Democratic nominee from the left flank and who complained that the party has sold out to corporate interests.

" 'Don't judge me by the people who preceded me,' " Kerry told Nader, according to a Kerry aide who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. " 'You may have had a disagreement with Bill Clinton, or Al Gore, or the Democratic leadership in Congress . . . but that's not me. I have fought with you, I have been with you on a range of issues.' "

Earlier this year, Kerry told audiences that on economic policy, he would follow in Clinton's tradition: "If you liked what Bill Clinton gave you in eight years, you'll love what John Kerry will give you in the first four."

So far, his allies won't hold him accountable, not even in the rabid abortion-rights community:

What is more remarkable to many Democrats is how Kerry is catching little flak from the party's base even when he strays from liberal orthodoxy. Abortion rights groups, for example, defended Kerry this past week when he told the Associated Press he would consider nominating antiabortion judges. Even so, Kerry sent a clear message to the base hours later when he issued a statement saying he would never appoint an abortion rights opponent to the Supreme Court.

In other words, what we have here is a candidate who will say anything to get elected. He's not broadening "the scope of his pitch"; he's running a cockeyed fire drill, going in every direction at once in order to tell people what he thinks they want to hear. His claim of the natural heir to the Clinton legacy is much more true than Democrats would like us to know. On the other hand, the core Dems don't really care -- all they care about is beating Bush, not outlining any core principles or policies. Everything, apparently, is negotiable, according to one of the most liberal members of Congress:

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a liberal who supported former Vermont governor Howard Dean for the nomination, said most Democrats are turning a blind eye to the candidate's centrist positions, such as an across-the-board tax cut for U.S. corporations. He called the plan little more than "campaign rhetoric."

"That's not going to get me upset," he said. "The basic thing here is you won't see people getting bent out of shape about anything going on in the moment."

The only thing that could turn liberal Democrats against Kerry would be a dramatic turn for the worse for Kerry in polls, several Democrats said.

If Kerry thinks this approach will help change his flip-flop image, he's more deluded than I suspected. You couldn't draw a better caricature of an unprincipled politician doing anything to get elected if you tried, and the fact that VanderHei and Balz wrote this as an optimistic look at the Kerry campaign makes it even worse.

WaPo Uses More Hearsay, Pentagon Issues Denial

In its continuing coverage of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, the Washington Post reports today on statements made by defense counsel that Gen. Ricardo Sanchez may have been present for some of the abuse, and that Gen. Janis Karpinski seems to have switched from defense to offense as a result:

The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. Shuck is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of the 372nd Military Police Company. During an April 2 hearing that was open to the public, Shuck said the company commander, Capt. Donald J. Reese, was prepared to testify in exchange for immunity. The military prosecutor questioned Shuck about what Reese would say under oath.

"Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?" asked Capt. John McCabe, the military prosecutor.

"That's what he told me," Shuck said. "I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I'm not going to risk my career."

Shuck also said a sergeant at the prison, First Sgt. Brian G. Lipinski, was prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do." Earlier this month, Lipinski declined to comment on the case. ... At the April hearing, Shuck also said Reese would testify that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who supervised the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure." The hearing was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad. The Post obtained a copy of the audiotape this past week, and it was transcribed yesterday.

While I respect Shuck's status as an officer of the court and believe he's representing the testimony truthfully, the testimony itself seems rather weak. He says that Capt. Reese will testify that Sanchez was present for "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," which means that Sanchez may only have witnessed rather routine questioning. It's important to remember that words have meaning, and the "and/or" is an important qualifier. Not only that, but the request for immunity seems pretty strange for someone who hasn't even been charged yet. Why does he need immunity if the commanding officer ordered or condoned the interrogation?

Karpinski, meanwhile, had some pointed words to add about Sanchez:

Sanchez visited the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade's operation, which encompassed Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib, at least three times in October, according to Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. That month, the serious abuses documented in published photographs -- naked detainees shackled together, a guard posing with a prisoner on a dog leash -- began.

In an interview yesterday, Karpinski said the number of visits by a commanding general struck her as "unusual," especially because Sanchez had not visited several of the 15 other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq. ... The general, a reservist from South Carolina, said she was not present during Sanchez's visits because her brigade had surrendered authority over that part of the prison to intelligence officers. She said she was alerted as a courtesy while the three-star general was planning to travel to the prison. Karpinski added that Sanchez might have visited without her knowledge after the intelligence officers were given formal authority over the entire prison on Nov. 19.

"He has divisions all over Iraq, and he has time to visit Abu Ghraib three times in a month?" Karpinski asked yesterday. "Why was he going out there so often? Did he know that something was going on?"

The Pentagon denies that Sanchez was aware of abuses until after the ICRC report in January:

"There was a news report published May 23, 2004, which suggests that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq was aware of, and in some instances, present at Abu Ghraib while detainee abuse was occurring," the U.S. military said in a statement. "This report is false."

Sanchez stands by his testimony before Congressional committees that he was unaware of the abuses until he ordered an investigation into the allegations in January, according to the statement.

I find Karpinski's comments odd. Sanchez must be able to account for all official visits, and apparently none of them match up to the dates that coincide with the abuses. However, if Karpinski argues that he made unknown, unofficial visits, then whatever documentation he produces on his schedule will be questioned. It seems as though Karpinski's saying that she has no evidence that he witnessed anything but still accuses him anyway -- and hasn't she maintained that she knew nothing about these abuses while she was much closer to the operation?

I'm very skeptical that the Post's article contains anything new that moves the story forward, especially since the transcript that the Post quotes comes from a hearing that took place a month ago.

People of mass destruction

Last week the F.B.I. warned law enforcement offices around America to be on the lookout for suicide bombers. They urged police to be on the lookout for individuals wearing bulky over garments in the heat of summer, especially those with wires hanging out. Is it really only a matter of time before our local papers are dominated by stories of buses being blown apart and people killed by "homicide bombers" while on a dinner date?

In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman coins a useful phrase to describe the men and women capable of such horrific acts: "P.M.D.'s" or "people of mass destruction." Regarding the situation in Iraq, he notes:

"My rough estimate is that there have been 50 to 75 suicide bomb attacks in Iraq in the last year. So the first question I have is this: Where are all these suicide bombers coming from? How do you just get these people off the shelf?"

Friedman distinguishes the P.M.D's in Iraq from those deployed by Hamas:

"At least Hamas has a stated political goal of ridding Palestine of all Jews and setting up an Islamic state there. It even offers social services. The people running the suicide operations in Iraq, whether they are working independently or are just one organization, don't even claim credit, let alone make any demands. They just want to ensure that America fails to produce anything decent in Iraq and they are ready to sacrifice all Iraqis for that end."

Of course, this is a NYT article, so Friedman makes sure to get in some digs on the Bush administration. He incorrectly states that no WMDs have been found in Iraq. Um, Mr. Friedman, do you even read your own paper? Then he goes on to claim this is all because we never had enough troops in Iraq, didn't train the Iraqi police in time, yada, yada.

However much one may or may not agree with where Mr. Friedman lays the blame, you can't find fault with his conclusion:

"We must shut this play down before it comes to a theater near us."

John Kerry, Wiseguy

Drudge has a report this morning that John Kerry remarked to a group of reporters about George Bush taking a tumble off of his bike on Friday at his Crawford ranch. According to Drudge:

Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record... Developing...

Hmmm. Well, in case anyone has forgotten, the paragon of athletic accomplishment has two tumbles to his credit -- one on his own bicycle earlier this month, and one off his snowboard in Idaho. (Actually, make that last one six falls.) Regarding the Idaho incident, Kerry handled that with as much grace as he apparently shows for Bush's tumble. As I blogged at the time:

As Senator John Kerry carved his Burton snowboard down a green rated Upper College run, another skier interrupted his stride, colliding with the presumptive Democratic nominee at 9,010 feet.

The slope-cade of two Ski Patrollers, several Secret Service agents, two journalists, one camera and one Kerry aide suddenly came to a halt. The Massachusetts Senator lay on the ground, removed his Smith sunglasses, and surveyed the damage.

Assured that the ABC News camera accompanying the entourage had not captured Kerry's fall, the Senator glared at your sloping Noter and assured, "I don't fall down. That son of a bitch ran into me."

I don't fall down. That son of a bitch ran into me. A common proverb instructs that one can get the best measure of a man by how he treats those whose stations are below his. In one response, Kerry confirms his character as a patrician, full-of-himself snob who can never admit to one misstep, instead blaming those around him for any errors he commits.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Why does anyone like this man? Does anyone like this man?