Debate #2: First impressions

I didn't stay up to post on the debate last night, and I haven't read any MSM commentary (yet), so here are my unvarnished impressions on the candidates' style and demeanor:

Senator Kerry: The gloss noticeabley faded throughout the evening. He started out smooth, with controlled facial expressions and managed to look pensive. He seemed to nod a little during the president’s answers on national security, may have just been my TV screen.

By the end of the debate, the smoothness became so false that Kerry resembled a cardboard cut-out, and he has no humor. None. Not even a hint.

At several points, I noticed the Bush smirk on Kerry’s face. This must be a bug in the Kerry Version 20.1 wherein the candidate randomly displays the demeanor of the president. Someone alert Terry McAuliffe!

The worst part of the debate was when Kerry looked into the camera and made a promise not to increase taxes on those earning less than $200,000 and to raise the roof on all the “rich people.” That was creepy. He looked like Frankenstein. Even the questioner seemed frightened by the experience.

President Bush: Seemed a little too angry with the audience at first, kinda like the questions enraged him. Karl Rove should have checked the height of the stools, as the president seemed to have trouble hanging on to his seat. Again, this might have been my TV screen or my contact prescription, but I thought Bush was having trouble keeping that one foot on the ground. (I’m only a little over 5’ myself, so I understand.)

The rage actually worked in Bush’s favor as the debate on foreign policy wore on, I started to enjoy it. I liked the part where Bush yelled at Charlie Gibson to go to his room while the grownup answered the question. I’ve felt like throttling Gipson on several occasions myself!

The anger worked and it mellowed appropriately during the domestic policy section. As the debate wore on, the president became increasingly engaging and humorous. “I own a timber company?” Bush developed a camaraderie with the crowd and Kerry became an outsider. Instead of tiring, the president remained on fire all night long.

Conclusion: Bush was the clear winner on style and demeanor.

CQ will post on the substantive aspects of the debate throughout the holiday weekend, so check back for updates!

Almost too accuarate to be true

I realize I’m the last in the blogosphere to weigh in on the Halperin memo bombshell. I saw this last night but too wrapped up in the debate to consider Matt Drudge’s report. Here’s the alleged memo in full:

Halperin Memo Dated Friday October 8, 2004

It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns - and our responsibilities become quite grave

I do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today - nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion.

The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.

Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.

We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that.

I'm sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.

It's up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.

I believe the sentiment expressed in this memo accurately reflects the bias so evident in ABC reporting. But I am surprised to an acknowledgement in written form, so I need to know more. Where did the memo come from? A Kinko’s in Abilene, Texas? An ABC newsroom? Did Halperin accidentally put Matt Drudge in the “To” block of his email?

Since all other products coming out of ABC are filled with blantant bias, this seems too accurate to be genuine. Will update this post as the story develops.

Good News for the Coalition

Australian PM John Howard scored a victory over Labor Party leader Mark Latham, ensuring that the coalition built by President Bush will remain intact. Latham ran on a Kerryesque platform, arguing the Iraq invasion was a distraction from the international fight against terrorism and promising to bring the troops home before Christmas.

According to NRO’s John Sullivan, the election outcome would send a powerful message to the Islamic terrorists:

A defeat for Howard on Saturday would be interpreted in most of the world as a defeat for the U.S. and a repudiation of Australia's involvement in Iraq. It would reinforce the impact of the Spanish election: Two leaders who backed Bush would have lost power. Above all, it would embolden the Islamist terrorists to think that their enemies were falling like ninepins and their cause succeeding — which in turn would strengthen their appeal in the Islamic world.

Certainly, the Australians sent a decisive signal to the murderous thugs plotting against democracy. But the US election will be more than a signal to AQ and its like, it will be a decisive proclamation: either “we will continue to hunt and kill you wherever you may hide” or “we’re just gonna to wait for a global test on what to do with you, raising taxes is far more important.”

Hat tip: Powerline.

The Do-It-Yourself Kerry Stump Speech

Okay, one last thing and then I really have to hit the road. Today's funniest site is Mr. Sun, who has a roll-your-own John Kerry stump speech that will have you in stitches. He also wrote a similarly funny one for George Bush. Check them both out.

Because if we've lost our sense of humor, then the Kerrys will have certainly won ...

Kerry Calls Military Leadership Cowards, Lies About Shinseki Again

Hugh Hewitt is holding a virtual symposium on John Kerry's impromptu press conference yesterday, which Hugh has transcribed on his site. The entries have already begun arriving, and I thought I would toss my two cents in before the big trip to Notre Dame.

Right from the outset, with the bald and obvious lie about General Eric Shinseki being fired and the Bush administration having a "chilling" effect on career line officers, Kerry reveals his lack of insight into the military and his propensity to believe (or at least spread) the wildest conspiracy theories. We've seen this before, with his insistence that Republicans are conspiring to steal votes from millions of black people, or that they did that in 2000.

However, since Kerry is running to become Commander in Chief, this lie is especially egregious. Does he truly believe that career general officers in the US Armed Forces are so craven that they would gladly trade the lives of their men in order to suck up to the President? If he really believes that, you can bet that the first action he will take will be to purge the highest levels of command in order to correct this defect, which will set back our efforts to fight Islamofascists for years. And if he doesn't believe it, which is more likely, then deliberately lying about Shinseki and our military leadership for political gain is breathtakingly stupid and cowardly, and should present the electorate with a disqualification on this alone.

Here's what Kerry said:

Q. "If you are elected, given Paul Bremer's remarks, and deteriorating conditions as you have judged them, would you be prepared to commit more troops."

A. "I will do what the generals believe we need to do without having any chilling effect, as the president put in place by firing General Shinseki, and I'll have to wait until January 20th.

As Hugh notes from an RNC press release, that allegation is completely false. And if you don't like the source, you can check here at CNN for a confirmation from Jamie McIntyre, their senior Pentagon correspondent:

MCINTYRE: Now, Secretary Rumsfeld is fond of saying that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts. And the fact that the Army chief of staff was not fired or forced to retire early is just that, Judy. It is a fact.

It's also a fact that Kerry wants to continue spreading lie after lie in order to get elected, and that would be bad enough if he had just stopped there. However, in the very next breath, Kerry announced that he would return to the pre-9/11 strategy of running from any difficult military position just as soon as he came into office, quite literally:

I don't know what I am going to find on January 20th, the way the president is going. If the president just does more of the same every day, and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking.

We notoriously bugged out of Lebanon, a rare foreign-policy mistake by Ronald Reagan that convinced the region that America had no stomach for military action. This impression, which only got reinforced under the Clinton Administration's "law enforcement" strategy to repeated and escalating provocations in the 1990s, directly led to the 9/11 attacks and Saddam's calculations in bribing the permanent UNSC members (see below). "Being handed Lebanon" communicates a hopeless situation where withdrawal becomes the only solution -- which would result in a disastrous collapse of our tactical and military credibility in the region and around the world.

In fact, it is the clearest communication yet from Kerry that he intends on surrendering, and quickly, once in office.

I'm out of time. Be sure to read through the other symposium entries, and read the rest of the press conference. John Kerry exposed himself as not just an empty suit, but a moral coward in his remarks yesterday.

Scotsman: Saddam Crazy Like A Fox

The Scotsman today publishes an analysis of Saddam Hussein's use of the Oil-For-Food program and the UN system to bolster his security and his ability to re-arm his military in the face of so-called "global" sanctions. Far from keeping Saddam in his box, as critics of the war claim, the Duelfer report from the Iraq Survey Group shows how the same nations from whom Kerry craves approval happily supported Saddam's regime:

SADDAM Hussein believed that the United Nations system was so corrupt that it would protect his dictatorship from American aggression and allow him to complete quickly his quest for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Detail from the full Iraq Survey Group report - compiled from scores of former Iraqi officials and captured intelligence documents - shows that Saddam was intending to resume his WMD programme as soon as UN sanctions were dropped.

His officials believed they could make WMD within two years - but the only flaw in their strategy was to think that Tony Blair and President George Bush would not invade Iraq without explicit UN permission.

In fact, former foreign minister and Saddam confidante Tariq Aziz asserted to Duelfer's group that the Iraqis could have built a nuclear weapon withing two years of the collapse of the sanctions regime. Dr. Mahdi Obeidi had the relevant research and prototype parts buried in his yard for that purpose, as Obeidi reveals in his book, The Bomb In My Garden. Other estimates in the ISG's report and Duelfer's testimony to Congress is that chemical WMD production could have started immediately and weapons like nerve gas could have been produced in months, mustard gas even sooner than that.

But the UN and all that diplomacy Kerry proclaimed yesterday would have stopped Saddam, right? Not quite. Saddam quickly analyzed the situation after the defection of his son-in-law in 1995 (which he would avenge shortly afterwards) and decided to burrow into the global community to destroy its will to oppose him. He selected the three countries besides the US and UK with veto power on the UN Security Council to ensnare them with boundless oil profits to ensure that they supported his regime:

Given that only 15 of Iraq’s 73 proven oilfields were being developed, Saddam’s officials started to offer lucrative deals to Russian and French oil companies, while personally targeting politicians considered corrupt.

Jacques Chirac, the president of France, was top of the list. Some 11 million oil-for-food vouchers were allocated to a businessmen named Patrick Maugein, who was "considered a conduit to Chirac", according to the report. It also claims that Saddam’s officials paid the equivalent of £600,000 to the ruling French Socialist Party - and that Baghdad’s then ambassador to Paris handed the money to Pierre Joxe, the then French defence minister.

Russia, another of the five countries with the power to veto war under the UN system, was heavily courted. Saddam’s officials dealt directly with the oil companies, who he deduced were quickly assuming political power.

"Iraqi attempts to use oil gifts to influence Russian policy-makers were on a lavish and almost indiscriminate scale," it says. He targeted a "new oligarch class" and also bribed Lukoil, the oil giant, with oil-for-food vouchers worth $10 million.

Peter Rodinov, Russia’s energy minister, went to Baghdad in 1997 to discuss a $12 billion oil deal. Two years later, Russian experts travelled to Iraq to provide advice on missile-guidance systems.

Oddly, Saddam apparently never connected with Putin or any of his close political associates, but he guessed correctly at the time that the Russian oil barons would wield considerable influence. Those missile-guidance systems, by the way, made perfect sense for a country that was subject to hostile overflights on a daily basis -- as the US and UK enforced the no-fly zone designed to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shi'a in the south. They also violated the sanctions that supposedly kept Saddam in his box. Nor were they the only weapons assistance Saddam got from a UNSC permanent member:

China, which also holds a UN veto, featured heavily in Iraqi contracts. Its companies supplied rocket guidance electronics to Iraq, "disguised as children’s computer software".

That's quite an effective cover story for a nation whose children were starving to death, while Saddam converted the oil profits from UNSCAM to these weapons systems.

And what did Saddam think about the risks of such brinksmanship?

Saddam argued that WMD was the cornerstone of his national security policy - shoring up his own authority among would-be insurgents - and dissuading Iran from making common cause with the Shiites in southern Iraq. Primarily, he "believed that possession and willingness to use WMD contributed substantially to deterring the United States from going to Baghdad" after the first Gulf War.

It was for this reason that Saddam considered it so important to have the world believe that he still owned the weapons, even if he did not. The ISG report says this was kept a secret from his own army. ...

Saddam, the report says, considered that the Desert Fox bombings of February 1998 would be the "worst he could expect from Western military pressure", because the UN system would stop the US carrying out any other action.

Of course that's what Saddam believed, because firing a few missiles at aspirin factories and an odd assortment of camels' butts had been the sum-total of our response to direct attacks, let alone Saddam's continual violation of the terms of the cease-fire and even attacks on our aircraft in the no-fly zone. America had never shown the will to break free of the shackles imposed by the corrupt permanent members of the UN Security Council until 2003, and it wasn't just Saddam who thought he could defy the US with impunity as a result. Other people, like Osama bin Laden, had reached the same conclusion in the 1990s and had begun to attack American interests around the globe, culminating in the 9/11 attacks.

Read the entire analysis. Unfortunately, the American media has focused so closely on the no-WMD angle that they have completely ignored the rest of the Duelfer report. Once again, they have abdicated their responsibility to report the news to their cross-Atlantic brethren.

Driving Miss First Mate

The First Mate and I will be off this weekend to South Bend, IN, to see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame take on the Stanford Cardinal at Knute's house. (The tickets are a Christmas gift from Vayapaso -- my mom.) It's our first trip ever to the hallowed stomping grounds of the Gipper, and I'll be taking along the digital camera while I'm there. I'll put up a couple of the best shots, and since this is October, I'm betting that the scenery will be gorgeous if the weather holds up.

We'll be driving down to South Bend, a trip that Mapquest says will take a shade under eight hours if we can avoid gridlock in Chicago. Once we get there, we'll meet my godfather, Uncle Emilio, for a late dinner on Friday. (He lives in Southern California. We live in Minnesota. So it's only natural that we planned to meet in a state neither of us have ever gone.) I may not even see the second presidential debate, let alone blog it. I'm bringing the laptop in case I can steal access from somewhere, but I'm not promising anything.

In the meantime, Whiskey will be handling the blogging, and based on what she's already done tonight I can tell she'll keep things lively here at CQ. We are lucky to have her on board! Hopefully I can at least read her work and keep up to date with your comments, even if I'm off-air myself for 48 hours or so.

Before I leave tomorrow, I'll post the Caption Contest. Don't forget to listen in on the Northern Alliance Radio Network broadcast from noon - 3 PM CT Saturday, either. We'll be live-blogging the third presidential debate from the downtown Hilton on Wednesday, October 13th, along with a hundred or so of our closest friends, so make sure you check out all the NARN blogs during that time.

Go Irish! Have a great weekend!

A Familiar Name Among The Bribed

Fox News's article on the ISG report ties more names to the widescale corruption at the UN which enabled Saddam to subvert the international sanctions John Kerry claims had him "trapped". Billions of dollars made their way illegally into Saddam's coffers, and some familiar names benefitted from the kickbacks:

Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take. A report detailing alleged illicit U.N. Oil-for-Food deals with the former Iraq government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein as an international gangster -- not a nuclear terrorist. ...

The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, who was charged to investigate the extent of Iraq's weapons programs, relies on internal Iraqi documents and extensive interviews with members of the former regime now imprisoned in Iraq.

Although Saddam opposed the program at first, he quickly realized it could be exploited and did so with mendacious verve until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, former Iraqi officials report.

Saddam was able to "subvert" the $60 billion U.N. Oil-for-Food program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997-2003, Duelfer's report says.

In addition to Oil-for-Food schemes, Iraq brought in over $8 billion in illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt through smuggling or illegal pumping through pipelines during the full period that sanctions were in place from 1991-2003, the report says.

Syria, it should be noted, sat on the UN Security Council and had responsibility to enforce its sanctions on Saddam. Instead, as the LA Times detailed in December 2003, Bashir Assad deliberately undermined the sanctions regime in order to both enrich himself and curry favor with his Ba'ath colleague and sometime rival. Egypt gets $2B a year from the US to maintain its alliance with us and Israel, but decided to moonlight for spare change. Jordan and especially Turkey are supposedly our allies, Turkey being an example of an Islamic democracy that we would like to duplicate. Perhaps they prefer the French, who also made a lot of money stabbing us in the back.

Fox notes some individuals who made out pretty well by selling out - Benon Sevan, for one, who ran the Oil-For-Food program and has recently taken to saying that enforcement of the rules wasn't his job. The oil vouchers he received from Saddam could have brought him an extra $2M. A Russian colonel got between $15-$20M, although she intended to disperse it among colleagues, and it's always good to see people sharing their good fortune.

One name leaps out from the crowd, however. People may recall the pardon scandals at the end of the Clinton presidency in January 2001, just as Clinton prepared to leave office. One pardon in particular raised eyebrows across the political spectrum, and that same name has mysteriously reappeared in the UNSCAM fallout:

In what the report calls, "an open secret," the Iraqi government demanded illicit surcharges of 25-to-30 cents on all barrels of oil bought, which buyers had to secretly pay before the deals were sealed. They complied because the Iraqis were selling slightly below market prices.

One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore run by one-time fugitive American financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid over $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax-evasion was pardoned by President Clinton in his last days in office.

The report says that the company denies any inappropriate deals.

At the time of the pardon, many people puzzled over why Bill Clinton would pardon a man who fled the country and whose status as a fugitive had been under negotiation with the FBI just prior to Clinton's action. Instead of cutting a deal with Rich to get him back to the US to face charges, Clinton pulled the rug out from under the FBI. Without the leverage of the charges, Rich had no further motivation to cooperate with the DoJ on any outstanding investigations.

At the time, the presumption was that Rich's wife had donated enough money to buy the pardon. Now, however, the question may be whether Clinton knew about the corruption and feared that an aggressive Bush administration policy would uncover Rich's participation in undermining Iraqi sanctions while Rich raised funds for both his presidential library and Hillary's election. Or maybe the issue runs even deeper than that? (hat tip: G Gotway)

Osama Been Forgotten . . . or Obliterated?

I expect many of our readers have read at least part of Deterrence 1 and 2 at Eject!Eject!Eject! Bill Whittle's argument that the stick is far more reliable than the carrot is airtight. Since I’ve been a realist since my college days, I found much to agree with while reading these posts, but the section that really made me think was Bill’s conclusion that OBL is dead. Some highlights:

Osama made endless videotapes. Lecturing, preaching, instructing, firing an AK-47: all the things that make young jihadis feel funny in the pants. After 9/11, he wowed ‘em in several tapes gloating and laughing over the attack and its aftermath. He was reliably heard on the radio during the final phase of Tora Bora, then…nothing.

Maybe he escaped. It’s possible.

Then came the videotape condemning the Israeli incursion into Ramallah and Jenin…only it didn’t. The US corporate scandals? Silence. Anniversary of Holy Tuesday? Cue the tumbleweeds.

The freaking invasion of a Muslim country by the Great Satan, and this new Caliph, the Leader of the Oppressed, cannot bring himself to shoot a crummy VHS in front of a white wall condemning this outrage? This glory-seeking egomaniac, the New Saladin riding the White Horse across the desert, who practically put out a 10 DVD commemorative set every time the US so much as hiccupped, is now suddenly silent, and has been for three years?

You may call that a Terror Mastermind. I call it a greasy wet spot on the wall of a cave in Afghanistan.

The man is dead. Dead, or just possibly captured. The likelihood of him having been killed at Tora Bora by US “outsourcing” was rising with his deafening silence concerning each American counterstroke and became 100% when nothing was heard from the late Osama after the US invasion of Iraq.

Like many, if not most, Americans all I really wanted for Christmas in December 2001 was the evidence that OBL had been annihilated by US forces. Three years later, I’m still waiting. If Bill is right and OBL is dead, why haven’t we heard? Bill has a compelling response:

Does President Bush know what became of him? I would say, very likely. We know what did not become of him: he didn’t become a Martyr. He did not become the symbol of Glorious Death resisting the Great Satan. He did not become a Symbol or a Cause or an Example to Them All.

He became, if you will pardon the expression, AWOL. Bugged out. Handed in his walking papers. Fizzle…poof. Gone.

Brilliant.

Unfortunately, I do not have fake (but accurate!) documents to back this claim up. I just have common sense, a psychological history, and the ability to see Naked Emperors. The man is dead – just possibly captured; he has been for years.

Now, do I fault President Bush for not announcing this? I do not. For the President to not disclose something so beneficial to himself, politically, must mean that there is a reason of great magnitude behind the official silence. Are we, the American People, entitled to know what this secret is?

We are not.

Consider the following: OBL is dead, President Bush knows, and the reason for secrecy has passed. Can the administration now shout “mission accomplished” from the rooftops? Not if he wants to win the election. Right away, Kerry & Company would screech that the president kept the truth from the American people in order to garner momentum before the election. The NYT and its ilk would proclaim “Bush Lied, BUSH LIED” every day until November 2. Those that believe the war is just a law enforcement effort would conclude the task was done and we could go back to arguing over which taxes to raise to fund what government program.

The entire reason for reelecting President Bush would seem to evaporate at the moment when we need his resolve most. Let’s face it, we all want OBL dead or alive (preferably dead) but he is not the greatest threat to our safety; if alive, he is just an old man in a cave. He will die but the Islamo-fascists will live on, preparing to kill us in exotic vacation spots, on our public transportation systems, and among our school systems. Even if OBL is, as Bill imagines, in “several thousand crispy pieces” we cannot switch to auto-pilot. Like Bill, I’d rather wait and hear about OBL’s last day sometime in the far future while sitting on a couch (or in front of my laptop) in pajamas, knowing that we fought the terrorists and won.

A massacre in the making?

According to an unsettling report by ABC News, elementary and high schools in six states have been warned to increase security based on information discovered by the US military in Baghdad. Brian Ross reports:

A man described as an Iraqi insurgent involved in anti-coalition activities had downloaded school floor plans and safety and security information about elementary and high schools in the six states, according to officials.

School officials in Fort Myers, Fla.; Salem, Ore.; Gray, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; two towns in New Jersey; and two towns in California have been told to increase security in light of the discovery.

Officials in the New Jersey towns, Franklinville and Rumson, were notified by counterterrorism officials last month that their schools had been possibly singled out.

The report does not indicate that an attack was in the works and does not disclose the nationality of the "insurgent" in possession of the plans.

I can think of no innocent explanations why a terrorist in Iraq would have floor plans of US schools, but I can imagine many horrifying possibilities.

Edwards fails Constitutional test

Although many MSM pundits have declared John Edwards the winner of the domestic portion of last night's debate, both observers and VP Cheney missed a major blunder, especially considering that Edwards is an attorney. During his discussion of the gay marriage question, Edwards repeatedly stated, "No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage." Edwards went on to criticize for "using the Constitution as a political tool."

I'd like to direct the trial attorney's attention to Article IV of the US Constitution, Section 1, also known as the Full Faith and Credit Clause. States are compelled by law to recognize marriages performed in other states. If any state performs a marriage between homosexuals, then all other states in the union will be bound to recognize it, regardless of that state's law.

Apparently Edwards didn't just miss Senate sessions, he missed a lot of law school classes as well.

CORRECTION AND UPDATE: In my haste to complete yesterday’s post, I attacked Edwards’ statements on Full Faith and Credit (FF&C) grounds. After further reflection, and upon reading the comments provided by our readers, I would like to make a correction and share additional thoughts. Historically, courts have not been willing to force a state to recognize a marriage made in another state when that marriage violates the state’s public policy. Should a gay couple be married in State A and move to state B, they could argue that their marriage is entitled to FF&C, but this does not mean their case will necessarily be victorious should State B have a public policy against gay marriage.

However, because the Supreme Court has been quite active in making its own “public policy” these days, I believe that the married couple has a far more promising argument in the equal-protection and due-process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Law students and attorneys alike will recall Loving v. Virginia, where the Supreme Court found a state’s anti-miscegenation law to be unconstitutional. In his opinion, Chief Justice Warren found "the Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination." He also declared marriage to be "basic civil rights of man." While it is my opinion that race and sexuality are not comparable categories, I do not trust the activist court to make that distinction.

That being said, Edwards' original comment was "No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage." That comment is wrong. States have been required to recognize marriages made in other states every day for the last 200 years. They just have not been forced to recognize all of them.

France: No Convictions Without Confessions

The French have responded to the CIA's release of the long list of officials bribed by Saddam Hussein through the UN Oil-For-Food program -- and it's a non-denial denial:

France dismissed accusations made in an official US report that French businessmen and politicians received bribes from Saddam Hussein order to influence government policy on Iraq, with the foreign ministry describing them as "unverified." ...

"It is important that we check very closely the truth behind these claims, because as far as we understand it the accusations ... are unverified either with the persons concerned or the authorities of the countries concerned," ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said.

In other words, France will not accept the results of the report if it is not accompanied by either (a) an individual admission of guilt, and/or (b) an admission of guilt by the country -- France! That's a nice example of circular logic. By that reasoning, we should never convict anyone without their confession first. It explains why the French felt it necessary to hide the murderer Ira Einhorn for so long. "Zut alors," they exclaimed, "he says he did not verify the charges!"

Notice, however, that the French never claimed that the charges were erroneous or incorrect -- merely that they were not verified by the people who profited from the graft. More on the non-response response from our allies, the French:

The French Socialist party meanwhile refused to respond to the accusation made in the report that it was given one million dollars by Iraq in 1988. A spokesman said the party could not react to allegations of which it was only partially informed. ...

"Maybe there are some people who could have been corrupted -- it is possible -- but the French position was not based on such arguments. France thought that what the US said about WMD was wrong and that we had to respect international procedures at the UN," said deputy Daniel Garrigue, president of the National Assembly's Iraq study group.

Garrigue wants to assure that despite taking money on the sly from a dictator in order to undermine the sanctions regime France claimed kept Saddam in his box, it was only their scruples that were corrupt and not their judgement. Anyone who buys that argument must either be French or a Democrat.

Florida Pulls Into Bush Column

Two polls released in the last 24 hours show Florida swinging solidly behind George Bush, dashing hopes among John Kerry supporters of creating yet another race-based smear of Republicans in the Sunshine State. The Mason-Dixon poll conducted Oct 4-5, after the first Bush-Kerry debate, shows Bush up, 48-44. However, when you look at the polling sample, you see some interesting data:

Men 307 (49%)...Whites 491 (79%)...Democrats 279 (45%) Women 318 (51%)...Blacks 65 (10%)...Republicans 258 (41%) ..................Hispanic 65 (10%)..Independents 88 (14%)

Forgive any formatting issues (it's hard to emulate tables), but you can see that the M-D poll give a four-point sampling edge to Democrats. On the other hand, it looks like both blacks and Hispanics may be underrepresented, and with its large Cuban community, the Hispanic vote has traditionally supported the GOP.

Quinnipiac also reported results for Florida today, showing Bush up by 7 in the Sunshine State:

President George W. Bush leads Democratic challenger John Kerry 51 - 44 percent among Florida likely voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Independent candidate Ralph Nader received less than 1 percent in this tally, which includes undecided voters leaning toward a candidate.

Among registered voters, President Bush gets 46 percent to Sen. Kerry's 42 percent, with 1 percent for Nader, compared to a 49 - 41 percent Bush lead among registered voters in a September 23 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN uh-pe-ack) University.

Among Bush supporters, 78 percent say they are voting mainly for the President. Kerry supporters split with 48 percent voting mainly for the Democrat and 47 percent voting mainly against Bush.

"President Bush enjoys a 7-point lead among likely voters in Florida because he is viewed as a strong leader and more capable of handling terrorism and the war in Iraq. Sen. Kerry has gained some ground on Bush in the areas of leadership and his vision of what he would do as President," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

No one doubts that Florida represented the Holy Grail for Democrats in this election. It has become their mythology that the previous election was stolen from them there, despite a number of independent recounts which clearly show Bush won, including one conducted by the national media. They hoped to win Florida not only for its big chunk of electoral votes but also to drive home that stolen-election myth.

Instead, the Democrats nominated a candidate who even after the debate can't generate more enthusiasm for his candidacy among his supporters than against George Bush. Not only does that explain Bush's seven-point lead, but it also portends a smaller turnout on Election Day that may widen the moderate gap into a rout.

Nor is that the only gap. Despite a narrow plurality of voters saying they believe the war in Iraq was a mistake, Bush holds a twelve-point lead over Kerry in fighting terrorism and a ten-point gap in leadership. Kerry's favorability numbers improved to 36%, and still trails Bush's by eight points.

The Democrats may need to go myth-shopping after November...

When Government Runs Health Care, They Tell You When Your Child Should Die

The Manchester Guardian reports on a family's struggle against Britain's National Health Service to keep their daughter alive. The NHS has decided that Charlotte Wyatt, an eleven-month-old preemie, will never be able to recover from the complications of her birth and want to force a do-not-resuscitate order onto her parents:

The parents of baby Charlotte Wyatt are expected to hear this afternoon whether a high court judge has supported their case for their daughter's right to life.

Darren and Debbie Wyatt from Portsmouth tried to convince Mr Justice Hedley that their 11-month-old child has a right to life. They argued their daughter should be provided with every aspect of medical care available.

Charlotte was born three months premature, weighing only 1lb and measuring five inches. She has already stopped breathing three times due to serious heart and lung problems; she is fed through a tube because she cannot suck from a bottle and she needs a constant supply of oxygen.

Portsmouth hospitals NHS trust argues that resuscitating Charlotte again would lead to further damage to her lungs and cause her further suffering. It has asked the court for an order allowing its doctors not to ventilate her again if she has life-threatening breathing difficulties.

In the government-run health system that the British have used for decades, the choice between life and death doesn't belong to the patient or their family -- it lies with the government. In the case of the Wyatts, the government has decided that it has wasted enough resources on Charlotte and now wants to cut its losses. The only options the Wyatts have to save their daughter is to either sue the NHS to keep it from abandoning Charlotte, or to pay 100% of all medical costs out-of-pocket at the private treatment centers that wealthy British citizens can access.

Just as in the case of viable kidneys being thrown away for the lack of transplant surgeons, the British experience with government-run health care reveals the strange and Orwellian experiences with single-payor systems that a vocal contingent here in America want to impose. A "health" care system that tells young parents that it refuses to keep their daughter alive because it's just too costly to do so, or one that routinely fails to perform transplants because the monopoly doesn't incentivize surgeons to learn the procedure, is not a system that maintains the health of its patients. It's a system that unnecessarily nationalizes a large segment of the economy and ensures that only the most mediocre care will be given to anyone not rich enough to buy better care outright, and completely out of pocket.

In the US, important medical decisions are left to the patients and to their families. We should make sure it stays that way.

UPDATE: The judge has ruled that the NHS can let the baby die:

Doctors caring for a critically-ill premature baby, Charlotte Wyatt, were given permission by a British judge to allow her to die if her condition seriously deteriorates and her breathing stops.

High Court Justice Sir Mark Hedley rendered his decision after parents Darren and Debbie Wyatt, who are expecting their third child, urged him not to give up on their 11-month-old daughter.

I appreciate all of the comments that you have posted, a thoughtful and interesting commentary. Here's where I think those that say this case is not the one to indict single-payor systems are wrong. It is one thing to have a hospital say they will refuse to resuscitate the Wyatt's daughter, or for a private insurance company to refuse to pay for futher treatment. It is another issue entirely when the government forces the Wyatts to pay for the NHS and then usurps the decision for her medical care from the parents, without any realistic option of going anywhere else. Their money has already gone to the NHS.

Let me put it another way. Charlotte Wyatt is a severely ill infant, but she is alive and her quality-of-life decisions belong with her family, not a government functionary. Under a market-based system, the government would never be in a situation to decree that her life wasn't worth the effort to save it; that decision would be made between her doctors and her family, along with whatever private insurance they had. If the Wyatts and their doctors disagreed, they would be free to get medical care elsewhere; the same is true for insurance. That isn't the case in Britain, where all of it is run by the government.

In essence, Britain has a system where the government, not the patients or their families or caregivers, become the arbiters of whose life is worth saving and whose have no worth. And the only time that will be noticed is when the government decrees that the Charlotte Wyatts are to be abandoned regardless of the wishes of their families. Such a utilitarian view of the value of life recalls the slippery slopes that ultimately led to the horrors of the Nazi euthanasia programs and the death camps, the Soviet gulags, and trafficking in slavery that continues to this day.

Surprise!, Saddam Said

The Los Angeles Times takes an interesting look at one aspect of the Duelfer report that paints Saddam Hussein in a different and far more Machiavellian light than first thought. Once Operation Iraqi Freedom was complete and the WMD had not been found, analysts presumed that military and scientific leadership had fooled Saddam into thinking Iraq had WMD to protect themselves from Saddam's wrath, or that Saddam had gone mad and refused to accept the weapons no longer existed. However, that's exactly the opposite of what the Iraq Survey Group found:

Shortly before the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq last year, Saddam Hussein gathered his top generals together to share what came to them as astonishing news: The weapons that the United States was launching a war to remove did not exist.

"There was plenty of surprise when Saddam said, 'Sorry guys, we don't have any' " weapons of mass destruction to use against the invading forces, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. ...

many in the U.S. intelligence community had believed that Hussein's sycophantic generals kept him in the dark about the state of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs — that is, that the dictator was misled by associates who told him what he wanted to hear.

Far from being misinformed, the report says, Hussein was micromanaging Iraq's weapons policy himself and kept even his most loyal aides from gaining a clear picture of what was going on — and, more important, not going on — with the program.

"Saddam's centrality to the regime's political structure meant that he was the hub of Iraqi WMD policy and intent," the report concluded.

His paranoia and his fascination with science and technology "meant that control of WMD development and its deployment was never far from his touch," it said.

So why did he continue the pretense of fighting the UN, bribing the French, German, Chinese, and Russians, and blocking weapons inspectors? Because he never expected the US to forcibly disarm him, instead believing that the US would eventually lose interest. The article makes clear that Saddam felt his worst security problem was the neighboring mullahcracy in Iran, and that the only way to stand them off from an invasion would be to threaten them with the WMD that had accounted for tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

But the situation had more complexities than the Times report demonstrates. First, the Duelfer report makes clear that Saddam intended to start production of WMD as soon as the sanctions were lifted; he wasn't going to be long satisfied with an empty bluff, especially since he was convinced it was the only way to maintain the Iranian stalemate. The experiences of Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who hid the research and prototypes for the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program in his yard until after the American invasion certainly prove that.

Second, Saddam made tons of money in the Oil-For-Food corruption -- billions of dollars, mostly untraceable at the time and even now mysterious and difficult to find. The UN's corruption allowed Saddam to solidify power in Iraq and make himself the sole conduit of necessary materials, as well as the sole arbiter of who received the goods once purchased. He and his sons set up a perfect mob-style patronage system that ensured loyalty for his allies and starvation for his enemies, turning themselves from a totalitarian Stalinist state to an Arab version of the Sopranos run amuck.

As long as the money flowed and European and UN officials could be bought, Saddam felt safe with his bluff, convinced that neither Iran nor the US could remove him from power until sanctions were lifted. Once that occurred -- and that was coming soon, pressed by his client states of France, Germany, and Russia -- he would be free to use the Obeidis he had hidden away, as the Duelfer report notes, in order to quickly rebuild his WMD arsenal. And thanks to UNSCAM, he could use the fortune he had amassed to fund the programs without generating any notice at all.

In the end, his machinations backfired on Saddam. However, it doesn't change his nature as a dangerous and genocidal dictator; in fact, it underscores the threat that Hussein represented to the security of the region and to the US if he had been unleashed once again.

UPDATE: Thanks to my friend Bill from INDC Journal for the link and hearty recommendation. He owes me a cookie, by the way ...

Are Portland Liberals Racists?

At the end of a Washington Post puff piece on teenage Democrat volunteers in Oregon, Evelyn Nieves writes in an unsupported and frankly weird allegation that seems to contradict almost everything she had previously written. Nieves reports on grass-roots efforts to get out the vote called "vote-mobbing", which just means that volunteers approach shoppers at malls and try to engage them in marketing questions designed to drive voters to the Democrats and possibly expand the volunteer ranks. In Portland, as Nieves writes, this is hardly difficult:

There's no question that Portland is Democratic territory. It put presidential candidate Al Gore over the top in Oregon in 2000, beating Bush by more than 100,000 votes in a state that Bush lost by half of 1 percent of the vote. Portland is full of tie-dyed, punked-out lefties, aging hippies and run-of-the-mill liberals, and they all seemed to converge Sunday afternoon at a peace rally in the northwest neighborhood that features the famous Powell's City of Books store.

ACT was helping the Young Voters Project vote mob at the rally. But asking people wearing "Dubya the Warmonger" buttons if they were registered to vote was like asking the people in the Portland marathon if they exercised. Asking them who they planned to vote for was like asking delegates to a Christian Coalition convention who they're supporting. Two of the volunteers, Ed and Roberta Schwarz, new to vote mobbing, found themselves getting kidded a lot.

"I'm voting for 'W,' of course," a young woman carrying a billboard with statistics on the number of dead and injured in Iraq told Roberta Schwarz.

So we're not talking about missionaries amongst the heathen, here. In fact, earlier in the article the two teenagers complained that everyone they approached was already registered (presumably Democrats) and that a good number of them had already signed volunteer pledge forms. But then Nieves finishes with a discordant statement from two of the young women that she fails utterly to explain:

The Oakland students, who were spending the weekend camping out at a Presbyterian Church, planned to join other volunteers with the Young Voter Project on Sunday night in calling people who aren't on the voter rolls despite having registered. They felt good about being in a state where the presidential campaign was alive and kicking.

"I'm not feeling as discouraged as I was yesterday," Floyd-Mayo said. "Yesterday, we experienced a lot of racism."

Floyd-Mayo and Simms are African American.

Racism? In Democratic Nirvana? This was Sunday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, the place where Nieves just assured us that Birkenstocks and tie-dyes represent business casual. They had been in Portland since Friday evening, having ridden a bus for several hours from Oakland to get there. So what happened on Saturday deep in the Democratic stronghold that exposed the two to "a lot of racism"?

Nieves never explains it. She leaves the reader to imagine hordes of Republicans in starched dress shirts -- whom she just wrote do not exist in Portland -- swarming all over Floyd-Mayo and Simms to insult and intimidat them. However, it seems more likely that the Birkenstock-wearing contingent had all of the opportunity to mistreat the two young women, considering Bush supporters are, according to Nieves, non-existent in the Portland area.

Even more likely, the two teenagers have learned the Democratic impulse to cry "racism" without any support whatsoever in order to intimidate people and shut down debate. Nieves obviously knows how to do that with her reporting. It looks like the Democratic training process in Oregon has produced their usual results.

Media Differences In Terrorist Reporting

The Canadian Press reported this evening on a bit of internecine Islamofascist infighting, which killed as many as 37 radicals as they gathered for a conference in Pakistan.

34 killed in explosions at gathering of Islamic radicals in Pakistan - Two bombs exploded at a gathering of Islamic radicals in the central Pakistan city of Multan early Thursday, killing at least 34 people and injuring dozens, police said.

Other media outlets weighed in on this story, but their reporting told different stories. Here's AFP (France) on the explosions:

At least 33 killed, 70 wounded in Pakistan bombings - At least 33 people were killed and dozens others wounded when two bombs ripped through a congregation of Sunni Muslims in Pakistan's central city of Multan, police said.

AFP doesn't bother to mention the fact that the crowd were radical militants or to report on the feud between the Sunni and Shi'a that is probably the motivation behind the attack. The Canadian Press article had all that, and earlier. The AP picks up on that, even if the headline writer gives no hint of it:

At Least 33 Dead in Pakistan Blast - Two bombs exploded at a gathering of Islamic radicals in central Pakistan before dawn Thursday, killing at least 33 people and injuring dozens in what appeared to be the latest in a string of sectarian attacks, police said.

The blasts came as about 3,000 people in Multan were marking the anniversary of the death of Maulana Azam Tariq, the leader of outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba group. He was murdered last year in an attack blamed on Shiite Muslim militants. His group has been accused of killing hundreds of minority Shiite Muslims in recent years.

The headline writer at Reuters, however, takes the cake. He turns the gathering of radicals into a revival meeting:

Suicide Car Bomb Kills 37 at Pakistan Religious Rally - A suicide car bomb exploded in central Pakistan, killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 50 at a rally for an assassinated militant religious leader early on Thursday, police said. ... Tariq's militant Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions) group was one of seven Islamic militant groups outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf -- five of them in a crackdown on religious violence -- in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Pakistan has been racked by sectarian violence in recent years, the most recent when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a mosque of the minority Shi'ite Muslim sect in the eastern city of Sialkot on Oct. 2, killing 30 people.

Hundreds of people had been attending the rally for Tariq.

Now if they would only keep targeting each other instead of the rest of the world.

Duelfer Report: Saddam Bribed Jacques Chirac To Veto War

In yet another revelation that the French conspired to undermine US and global security, the Duelfer report from the Iraq Survey Group provides evidence that Saddam Hussein had bribed the French to not just sit out the war but to actively undermine any attempts to enforce the UNSC resolutions against Iraq:

SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.

Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war.

The Scotsman also reports what the American media is blaring to the exclusion of everything else in the ISG final report: Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD. Most mainstream outlets are playing down the finding that Saddam fully intended on restarting his WMD programs as soon as sanctions were removed, making the entire exercise a waste of time:

Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions - which stopped him acquiring weapons - were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.

To keep America at bay, he focusing on Russia, France and China - three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.

Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign.

The list of the bribed, if not coerced, is long and distinguished. ABC News published an early list of the major players, but the CIA has added a few eye-opening names:

Among the alleged recipients of oil vouchers were Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party, the Russian presidential office, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Ukraine Community Party, the Ukraine Socialist Party, the son of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and the Peoples Liberation Front of Palestine. There are also many others.

The only U.N. official on the list is Benon Sevan, the head of the humanitarian program for Iraq, who has been accused previously of receiving an oil voucher and has denied it several times. He is list as a Mr. Sifan, a U.N. official.

As I wrote earlier today, the evidence clearly shows that the UN has become hopelessly corrupt and the "global community" consists of a pack of bribed sell-outs who chose to feed their avarice rather than stand up to a madman. Had we allowed them to continue their efforts, sanctions would have been dropped and Saddam would be ramping up his WMD programs as I write this. Putting our national security in their hands is not just poor judgement, it's a recipe for suicide.

Democratic, Union Thugs Attack Bush/Cheney HQ in Minnesota

While Al Gore wails about "digital brownshirts" who dare to write criticisms of the entrenched Left, the real variety of brownshirts have attacked Republican campaign offices across this country, shooting, stealing, and intimidating political volunteers in what certainly appears to be a coordinated effort to scare Republicans into silence. Michelle Malkin has compiled a list of attacks on GOP offices, including these:

* Orlando, FL - 2 GOP volunteers injured by AFL-CIO protestors storming the building

* Knoxville, TN - Gunmen shoot the windows out of Republican campaign office

* Gainesville, FL - Democratic activist punches GOP volunteer in the face

* Columbus, OH - A wounded soldier is assaulted by anti-war demonstrators

The Democrats not only seem to be losing their minds, they appear to be doing it on purpose. The latest example occured in St. Paul yesterday, in an office where I've done some volunteer service, when AFL-CIO goons barged into Republican HQ and commandeered the lobby and the building's intercom system to disrupt the work of Bush/Cheney volunteers:

Of the more than 300 workers bused in by Minnesota labor unions for the outdoor rally, about a dozen protesters pressed forward into the campaign headquarters' lobby. The protesters were trying to deliver plastic bins filled with postcards but found their way into the headquarters itself blocked by an eight-foot-long Bush/Cheney placard that had been upended against an interior door. ...

A Bush volunteer attempted first to shut the door against the protesters, then to push out several, including Jon Youngdahl of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, who struggled to yell through his bullhorn while the volunteer kept searching for a mute button on it. Others blasted airhorns in the lobby while one man pushed repeatedly on the campaign's intercom to yell his protest. ...

The noontime protest happened to come on the first day of ticket distribution for Saturday's presidential visit, and according to Bush/Cheney campaign spokesman Peter Hong, several dozen volunteers and ticketholders were trapped inside.

None of the protesters made it inside the offices, Hong said, but "obviously some of our people were concerned, especially those who came to pick up tickets who had children here with them."

Hong said the protest "reflects the frustration the Kerry people are feeling. If they could sell John Kerry, they'd be out doorknocking and phonebanking, not disrupting the proceedings of a rival campaign office."

Over in Milwaukee, we also have this incident:

More than 50 demonstrators supporting Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry stormed a Republican campaign office in West Allis at mid-day today, trespassing, creating a disturbance through the use of a bullhorn in the office and then refusing to leave when asked.

The Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) condemned the action by Kerry supporters, and asked the Kerry campaign and the Democrat Party of Wisconsin to do the same.

“Do John Kerry and Wisconsin Democrats really believe this is conduct becoming of a presidential candidate and his campaign?” RPW Chairman Rick Graber asked. “It is unfortunate that Team Kerry feels the need to engage in such childish and obnoxious behavior. ...

Graber called the latest incident part of a disturbing trend of criminal conduct by anti-Bush forces in Wisconsin, pointing to an incident in Madison last week in which Bush-Cheney yard signs were stolen from the yards of three homes. The vandals then used chemicals to burn swastikas into the lawns of the homes, which were within a two-block radius of one another.

While I'm certain that a couple of local hacks will eventually use this occasion to wax poetic about the long and glorious history of organized labor in this area, the truth is that the AFL-CIO and the Democrats have started a deliberate campaign of intimidation to keep Republicans from volunteering for this campaign. It's ugly, and the people who do such things are ugly and should be called out as such. If this represents the face of the Democrats, then their earlier accusations that Bush is the new Hitler can only be called a classic case of Freudian projection.

My colleague, Mitch Berg, has this to say:

This is going to get much worse before it gets better.

I'll tell you why.

They say the worst wars are about religion, and they're right; the Hundred Years War, the Troubles, the Crusades, the Holocaust, and our current war all involve either one religion trying to stamp out another, a non-religious body trying to stamp out an ethic/religious group, a religious sect trying to destroy a secular one, or some combination of the above.

And to so much of the left, politics is religion - the core of the person's intellectual and moral being. To a person for whom the political is the personal, it's a short jump to seeing politics as the adjunct, or even replacement for, the spiritual.

I'm not sure I give them that much credit. The unions have been gasping for air for a couple of decades, their credibility shot as they continue their path to anachronistic oblivion. Instead of adjusting to meet new challenges and offer true partnerships with management, they instead have decided to go back to the thug tactics they employed in the nadir of their moral authority, cracking heads and daring people to stand up to them. This is nothing more or less than a crude grasp for the power they see slipping away when legitimate choice has been provided to people.

I'd say that after the wave of political violence they've initiated, they've proven themselves to be dangerous organizations. Maybe it's time to push through a federal right-to-work act that abolishes closed shops and mandatory dues throughout the US. At the very least, the Department of Justice should be investigating these related assaults as a possible conspiracy involving the AFL-CIO's leadership as well as some Democratic committees, and start some RICO prosecutions.

If we are to remain a free people, we cannot allow political violence to go unanswered by the rule of law. That, finally, is one parallel to Germany in 1932 that actually applies.

Hillary Under FBI Investigation (Update)

The Washington Post reports that Senator Hillary Clinton is under investigation by the FBI for campaign irregularities involving fundraising for her 2000 Senate bid and her husband's use of the Presidential pardon. If you didn't see it in the paper, it's buried at A11 of the Post:

The Justice Department is trying to secure the cooperation of an indicted businessman as it pursues Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign for possible fundraising violations, according to interviews and documents.

The FBI told a U.S. magistrate in Los Angeles two years ago that it has evidence Clinton's campaign deliberately understated its fundraising costs so it would have more money to spend on elections. Prosecutors contend that businessman Peter Paul made donations because he wanted a pardon from President Bill Clinton. ...

Paul is a three-time convicted felon who hosted a Hollywood fundraising event for Mrs. Clinton in 2000. He alleges he underwrote most of the costs for the event.

Publicly, Paul claims that nothing untoward occurred, and Paul never did receive a pardon from Bill Clinton. However, his lawyers have spent the last couple of years negotiating with the Justice Department for his testimony, which makes it look like the DoJ has some evidence supporting this allegation which ties Paul to what amounts to money-laundering. The DoJ has tried three times this year to get an interview with Paul, to no avail, at least for now.

Even if nothing else pans out from this negotiation, New York voters may be curious why the Clintons turned to a thrice-convicted felon to do their fundraising, especially in Hollywood. It's not as if Hollywood has a dearth of celebrities willing to raise money for Democrats.

UPDATE: The New York Daily News has more on this story, via The Note:

FBI documents allege that dot-com entrepreneur Peter Paul - an ex-partner of "Spider-Man" creator Stan Lee - illegally pumped $366,000 of his own cash into a Hollywood bash for Clinton in 2000, but falsely claimed it was company money.

Federal prosecutors hope Paul, a three-time felon facing stock fraud charges in New York, will squawk under oath about his claim that Clinton's campaign reported the party cost only $523,000, when the true bill was double that. Understating the cost would have left the campaign more cash to spend on the election, FBI papers obtained by The Associated Press said.

One year ago, Peter Paul returned from a Brazilian exile according to Insight Magazine, ready to spill the beans about Senator Clinton's campaign finances:

Peter F. Paul, the flamboyant Hollywood entrepreneur who says Hillary Rodham Clinton has hidden almost $2 million of in-kind contributions he made to her campaign in 2000, is back from Brazil and promising to raise a ruckus about the New York senator as he fights bizarre securities and bank-fraud charges on which he's been indicted. Aaron Tonken, a political operative in Hollywood and a former protege of Paul under indictment for a variety of alleged sharp deals with the rich and famous, also is promising to tell everything he knows about behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Clinton and many others.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the IRS have embarked on extensive civil and criminal probes involving a cast of Damon Runyon characters and securities, tax and bank frauds that appear to center on a now-bankrupt company called Stan Lee Media Inc. (SLM). That company is in turn at the epicenter of charges brought against Stephen and Jonathan Gordon, Paul and at least two stockbrokers/advisers and alleged mob figures who helped to perpetrate government-alleged frauds that were used to finance political fund raising for Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Hat tip to an anonymous CQ reader who has had connections to Stan Lee Media, and who wished to emphasize that the issues do not involve the Spiderman creator himself. More as my research continues ...

UPDATE II: Via Free Republic, a perhaps-unrelated item from August involving another Hollywood producer who raised funds for both Clintons, and who went to jail for five years on fraud charges:

A HOLLYWOOD fundraiser who organised events featuring such celebrities as former US president Bill Clinton was today jailed for more than five years for fraud.

Aaron Tonken, 38, was sentenced to 63 months behind bars after admitting fraudulently diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars destined for charity galas and using the cash to pay off his own credit card bills. ...

Mr Rubin [Tonken's attorney] also said it was unclear if celebrities, some of whom reportedly took large cash payments and gifts from Tonken in exchange for appearing at events, could be guilty of wrongdoing.

During his time as a top fundraiser, Tonken helped arrange events for Mr Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in August 2000.

Tonken struck a secret plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in today's sentencing by US District Judge Dale Fischer in Los Angeles.

I wonder what that secret plea deal could have entailed -- and if it could be related to the same investigation that has the FBI interested in Peter Paul?

UN Prepares To Cut And Run Again

The organization whose approval John Kerry requires for global action in defense of our national security has been urged to run away yet again from Iraq due to the danger of confronting terrorists, the AP has just reported:

Two organizations representing more than 60,000 United Nations staff members urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday to pull all U.N. staff out of Iraq because of the "unprecedented" risk to their safety and security.

In a joint letter to Annan, the staff organizations cited a dramatic escalation in attacks in Iraq and said the United Nations regrettably "has become a direct target, one that is particularly prone to attacks by ruthless extremist terrorist factions."

"Just one staff member is one staff member too many in Iraq," they said. "We ... appeal to your good judgment to ensure that no further staff members be sent to Iraq and that those already deployed be instructed to leave as soon as possible."

Annan pulled all U.N. international staff out of Iraq a year ago, following two bombings at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and a spate of attacks on humanitarian workers. The first bombing, on Aug. 22, 2003, killed the top U.N. envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others.

In August, the secretary-general allowed a small U.N. contingent to return to Baghdad and imposed a ceiling of 35 international staffers, but he has been under pressure to increase the number to help Iraq prepare for elections in January.

In fact, that number came under ridicule from John Edwards last night, who claimed that Cleveland needed more than 35 staffers to ensure fair elections, let alone a vast country like Iraq. He's right, of course, but what's his solution? Turning the entire country over to the pusillanimous posturers at Turtle Bay, who bugged out in 2003 because they were stupid enough to hire their former IIS minders as their security contingent instead of relying on American forces. Their mission chief paid for that mistake with his life and the lives of 22 others.

Kofi Annan has yet to respond, but the letter from the worker's unions have this to say about their commitment to a better world for the Iraqi people:

"While we understand that the people of Iraq deserve the support and assistance of the international community, we cannot condone the deployment of U.N. staff to Iraq in view of the unprecedented high level of risk to the safety and security of staff," the letter signed by the two presidents said.

In other words, we'd love to see Iraq as a safe and peaceful country, but we're not going to do any heavy lifting to make it happen. We'd love Iraqis to be free, but only if someone else makes all the bad people go away.

This has been the consistent result of UN leadership over the past decade and more. Under the auspices of the UN, Saddam was allowed to defy resolution after resolution and repeatedly violate the terms of the Safwan cease-fire without any consequences. Indeed, the UN even created a vast program designed to feed his people and allowed the recalcitrant tyrant to steal $10 billion from it without challenge. In Srebrenica, Kosovo, Rwanda, and other places under the UN's so-called protection, as soon as hostilities broke out, blue-helmeted "peacekeepers" ran to the nearest barracks to wait out the violence.

The UN has built a consistent track record of cowardice and corruption. John Kerry feels that such an organization should have the final say on the legitimacy of American security policy. If he believes that the UN will protect Americans any better than they have protected Rwandans, Bosnians, or the Iraqi people, then he is so seriously deluded that his very nomination calls into question the legitimacy of the Democratic Party.

Sadr City Gets The Message

A few days after the lightning-quick recapture and liberation of Samarra from terrorist thugs, the residents of Sadr City have suddenly launched a cease-fire negotiation with the Iraqi government. Reports conflict about whether an agreement has actually been reached, but the Iraqi PM left no doubt as to who initiated the talks:

The Iraqi government and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr were nearing agreement on a formula to end weeks of clashes between U.S. forces and the radical cleric's militia in the Sadr City district of the capital, representatives of both sides said Wednesday. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told reporters there was no cease-fire between the two sides but that a committee was being formed to discuss what he termed an "initiative" by the "people of Sadr City" to end the conflict.

"There is a committee being formed to discuss the details and the timing," Allawi said. "Once the committee will convene, then everything would end."

Earlier Wednesday, Kareem al-Bakhatti, a pro-al-Sadr tribal elder who has been trying to bring the two sides together, said an agreement had been reached and would be formally announced in city mosques. Under the plan, militia fighters loyal to the influential cleric would turn in their weapons in exchange for cash payments and immunity from prosecution for most of his followers, al-Bakhatti said. Iraqi police would take over security responsibilities in Sadr City and American forces would only enter the district with the approval of Iraqi authorities, he said.

However, Ali Smeiem, chief negotiator for al-Sadr's camp, insisted Wednesday that there was no agreement but that negotiations were in the "final stages" and a deal could be announced within the next two to three days.

I think that the Sadr City residents and the Mahdi Army remnants among them never thought that Allawi and the US could build a credible Iraqi security force that would actually fight for the interim government and the establishment of a democratic government. Sadr knew from Najaf that small contingents could be drawn from the population to screen mosques, but Samarra showed everyone the growing power and confidence of the US-trained Iraqi troops. And everyone in Sadr City knew that their number would either be up next, or shortly after Fallujah.

The capitulation of Sadr City would provide another tremendous boost for the US and the Allawi government. Not only would it help the Coalition secure Baghdad and eliminate some, if not most, of the terrorist attacks in the high-profile city, it would allow the US and Iraqi forces to focus on Fallujah immediately. Fallujah presents a more straightforward strategic target than Sadr City, which integrates tightly into Baghdad and would have presented more difficulties in securing communications.

Hey, I'm Funny And Dumb, Too!

I get a lot of spam on my blog account, most of which I simply delete because it's not worth the trouble to complain or unsubscribe (of which I'm suspicious, anyway). However, when someone is clueless enough to send out self-promotional material that contains a two-megabyte graphic announcement via my e-mail -- especially when I'm paying for bandwidth -- I find it not only incredibly annoying but awfully self-defeating as well, especially on the second message. When the spammer represents himself as a veteran expert in public relations, communications, and e-zines, the cluelessness almost approaches satire.

So in an attempt to keep this consultant from sending me any more huge graphic attachments as well as possibly giving him a clue about Internet etiquette, I send the following message:

A veteran PR firm would know better than to send a 2MB file on e-mail, especially a self-promoting one, twice. Please don't send this again.

This was the response I got this morning:

Funniest (and dumbest) response of the day…thanks Cap’n….don’t worry you won’t get another one…

Perhaps the clients of this veteran public-relations "expert" value the same service from their PR efforts: blunderingly send unwanted and time-consuming messages, and then follow up on complaints by insulting members of the media, new or old. On the other hand, what do I know? I'm the "dumbest" person who responded. Chances are, I'll also be the smartest.

At least he thinks I'm funny ... hope he keeps laughing.

Kerry Acknowledges That France And Germany Won't Send Troops

In another John Kerry flip-flop, the Democratic nominee admitted that his ballyhooed plan for Iraq for getting a "true coalition" to send troops as replacements for Americans has no chance of succeeding (via Right On Red):

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry conceded yesterday that he probably will not be able to convince France and Germany to contribute troops to Iraq if he is elected president.

The Massachusetts senator has made broadening the coalition trying to stabilize Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign, but at a town hall meeting yesterday, he said he knows other countries won't trade their soldiers' lives for those of U.S. troops.

"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said.

Asked about that statement later, Mr. Kerry said, "When I was referring to that, I was really talking about Germany and France and some of the countries that had been most restrained."

"Other countries are obviously more willing to accept responsibilities," he added, as he took questions from reporters in a school yard in Tipton, Iowa.

Well, what other countries? Other countries that have listened to Kerry deride allies like Poland and Australia as "coerced and bribed"? Kerry's entire argument has been that his superior diplomatic skills -- such as those that allowed him to denigrate Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi's credibility and his campaign to call him a puppet -- in order to convince major partners to join the US in Iraq. The two countries he's named on the campaign trail have been France and Germany. So now he admits that they aren't going to go for his diplomacy any more than Bush's ... and that leaves the Kerry plan looking like the Bush plan, only without Poland, Australia, and Iraq:

But criticism of the coalition by Mr. Kerry has led to ruffled feathers abroad.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, the leader of one of the countries already contributing troops, sharply criticized Mr. Kerry for his frequent comments that no country besides the United States and Britain is contributing troops in a substantial way.

"It is sad that a senator with 20 years of experience underestimates Polish sacrifice, this is sad," Mr. Kwasniewski said in an interview with Poland's TVN television, saying it was "immoral" to ignore the contributions of Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria and others.

It's even more sad that such a senator who considers himself a foreign-affairs and diplomacy expert could insult so many nations who willingly came to the US's side, while sucking up to the three or four nations that undermined US and UN policy in Iraq for over a decade before strong-arming Eastern Europeans to keep them from supporting us in the UN. When it comes to actually having a plan for postwar Iraq, it's sadly apparent that Senator No and Senator Gone plan on cribbing the Bush plan, sticking their names at the top, and hope no one notices.

VP Debate: The Aftermath

Vice President Dick Cheney trounced Senator John Edwards in the debate last night, a verdict delivered almost unanimously by the mainstream-media pundits as well as an ABC poll of questionably methodology taken in its aftermath:

Dick Cheney prevailed in the vice presidential debate with help from a more Republican audience — and more support from his ticket's side than John Edwards got from his. Among registered voters who watched the debate, 43 percent said Cheney won, 35 percent called Edwards the winner and 19 percent called it a tie. One factor is that more Republicans tuned in — 38 percent of viewers were Republicans, 31 percent Democrats, the rest independents.

One explanation for the oversample is that Republicans may have been more likely to tune in, especially after Bush's struggles last Thursday. At least this poll attempted a scientific method; CBS used only 178 so-called "undecided" voters found, ironically, by Knowledge Networks. (If they had knowledge, why are they still undecided?) CBS claims that Edwards won, 41-28, a result that will cause gales of laughter at other networks, especially the CBS claim that a tiny, artificial group of people selected for their supposed indifference to political choice is "scientifically representative".

More telling are the reactions of the MSM to the Edwards debacle. Fox News's panel, as would be expected, had Cheney the winner by 3-1, with two of the three qualifying their answer by saying they thought Edwards did well in domestic issues but that foreign policy would carry the day in this debate. MS-NBC's panel, headed by Chris Matthews -- no friend to the GOP or Dick Cheney -- scored it a shutout:

Chris Matthews:

I think the analogy would be a water pistol against a machine gun. Every once in a while, Edwards would take a squirt at the vice president, and then the vice president would just turn the Howitzer on the guy.

It was all the points about attendance record— that's tremendous amount of homework the Republican candidate for V.P. did here. I don't think the well-rehearsed and well-briefed senator from North Carolina was ready for the assault. ...

Jon Meacham, Newsweek Managing Editor

"Will the liberal press admit that Cheney" won? That's a very good question. I think that the vice president did very, very well. He turned in a strong and serene performance, compared to Edwards, who I think seemed like Kerry-lite.

Edwards seemed to have series of talking points he wanted to get in. A lot of them direct echoes of Kerry, but he did not offer them with the same authority. I think John Edwards was busy delivering a stump speech all night, while Dick Cheney showed up as the trial lawyer. ...

Andrea Mitchell

I think Dick Cheney did awfully well at, first of all, putting John Edwards in his place, saying that I have been presiding over the Senate and I didn't meet you until tonight. Talking about his not having been on the job was pretty devastating. ...

Joe Scarborough

I tell you, tonight, no doubt about it. Edwards got obliterated by Dick Cheney. This is the most surprising part:This debate actually turned in Cheney's direction when they started talking about domestic issues. I thought Cheney handled the foreign policy issues very well. But when they talked about taxes, there you had John Edwards saying, "Well, we support middle-class taxes." Dick Cheney says, "Yes, you didn't even vote for them this week. You weren't there." ...

I think the “SNL” shot, the “Saturday Night Live” shot this weekend is actually going to be the reactions, the facial reactions that John Edwards has every time he's zinged. There is no doubt about it. He was in over his head tonight.

When John Edwards can't get any love from Chris Matthews and the Hardball lineup -- you know he's crashed and burned.

UN Inspectors Took Massive UNSCAM Bribes

The Wall Street Journal reports (through the London Telegraph) that Iraqi oil officials have accused a UN inspector responsible for enforcing the UN Oil-For-Food program of taking over £60,000 in bribes, equivalent to around $100K:

Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday.

An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Saybolt was one of two Western companies hired by the UN to provide inspectors to help monitor the oil-for-food programme. A second company, Cotecna Inspection Services of Switzerland, has come under fire from Congressional Republicans, after it emerged that it employed Kojo Annan, the son of the UN secretary-general, as a consultant, after being awarded an oil-for-food contract. A UN review of Mr Annan's employment found no conflict of interest.

Saybolt, for its part, claims that no bribes had been received by any of its employees. Saybolt managing director Peter Boks gave the Congressional commitee hearing the testimony a "vast quantity" of correspondence demonstrating that they had complained often to the UN about Iraqi non-compliance. Obviously, the question that follows is what the UN did in response to these documented allegations. The equally apparent answer is that they did nothing, and the American government's representative at the committee shows why:

The United States government representative at the hearing, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, said that "voluminous oil-for-food documents are now being safeguarded" in Baghdad and the US embassy was working to gain access to them.

Mr Kennedy, of the American mission to the United Nations, directly blamed the "self-serving national economic objectives of certain key member states" on the Security Council for inhibiting British and American efforts to clamp down on oil-for-food corruption. The statement appeared to be aimed at France and Russia, which sought to have sanctions against Saddam lifted.

One hundred billion dollars is known to have officially passed through the OFF program. According to the WSJ and the Telegraph, the GAO has determined that Saddam charged a flat 10% kickback tax on all transactions. The example given is of a hypothetical $10M baby-milk contract; $9M in baby milk would be delivered with $1M in cash, while the books would show that the contract had been fulfilled. Under this scheme, Saddam pocketed 10% of all contracts, since he had a monopoly on trade as tight as any monarch or potentate in world history, amounting to a personal windfall of $10 billion dollars. Not even the bribes came out of this; the bribes were mostly paid through oil options, a pre-sale structure.

John Kerry and John Edwards continue to claim that Saddam was "trapped" by global sanctions. Having the UN stuff $10B into his pockets only trapped Saddam by the weight of the windfall they threw at him. The nations that Kerry/Edwards presume held Saddam fast had no intention of doing so and actively assisted in his corrupt schemes to avoid the sanctions. The organization from which Kerry insists we derive legitimacy for any action not only turned a blind eye towards this but participated in the corruption at the highest levels of the OFF program, at least (Kofi Annan managed to get a job for his son at another watchdog contractor, too); Benon Savan, the program director, tooks millions in Iraqi money for himself.

Is the "global test" a backwards ethics examination? If you fail, you pass?

Vice-Presidential Debate Tonight

I will be live-blogging tonight's VP debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. I'd caution my friends on the starboard side of the blogosphere from getting too cocky about the event tonight; John Edwards' success as a plaintiff's attorney shows that he can think on his feet, and his popularity on the stump demonstrates his ability to project a warm and engaging persona. The latter talent will come in especially handy against Cheney, who is undoubtably better at grasping details and strategies but can come across as cold and rather cynical.

I'll be using this post for the live blog, so link back here if you want. Keep checking back during the debate for updates, and I may also update the post with breaking news items regarding the debate during the day.

UPDATE: Starting the debate at 8:01 ...

8:03 - First question to Cheney refers to statements by Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer earlier this week (today?). Cheney gave a measured and detailed response, and Edwards calls him a liar in response directly to him ... Cheney has details, Edwards continues to talk to Cheney while Cheney talks to Gwen Ifill ...

8:08 - Edwards says that he and Kerry would have "confronted" Saddam Hussein but never answered Ifill's question as to whether Saddam would still be in power today. He changed the subject to Afghanistan in one hell of a hurry ... Cheney's response is that Edwards and Kerry have a limited view and have no plan to confront states that sponsor terror. He called out Kerry's 30-year track record on defense ...

8:14 - Cheney noted Edwards' Chicken Little statements from early 2002 -- that's pretty effective...

8:14 - Edwards answers the "global test" with the same slogans that they've been using on the stump. He's stumbling, talking about opium production. Well, I'd rather that they grow poppies than al-Qaeda terrorists!

8:15 - Cheney talks about the power of freedom and the vote, and Edwards tried to interrupt him. Edwards invokes Iran -- which he wants to give nuclear fuel!!!!

8:17 - Gwen Ifill wants to shore up the "global test" but challenges Edwards, who's stumbling again. Uh, he's not doing too well ...

8:18 - She's letting Edwards talk for quite a while here. So far, though, he's giving the high points from their stump speeches, while Cheney gives thoughtful and measured replies that show he's actually thinking. He just shredding Edwards on the numbers as well as Kerry and Edwards' reversals on the funding bill ...

8:21 - Edwards is getting creamed here. He is out of his league ...

8:22 - Cheney emphasizes that he's not challenging Kerry's patriotism, just his record. He has for the second time reminded voters that Kerry voted against Desert Storm, which had the vast coalition that Kerry said he wanted. He involed Howard Dean for their reversal...

8:25 - Edwardss and Kerry voted against the $87 billion for the troops because of Halliburton? You have to be kidding me!

8:26 - The weapons inspectors had 12 years to find out what Saddam had or didn't have, but Edwards thinks a couple of more months would have made a difference?

8:27 - Ifill is doing a better job than Jim Lehrer on asking tough questions. She just asked Edwards if their rhetoric is "naive" ...

8:28 - They have a plan -- Kedwards will take Iraqi security forces out of Iraq to train them.

8:29 - Cheney again shreds Edwards on inconsistencies. Now he's talking about Allawi and how Kerry demeaned him by challenging his credibility. Edwards twice now has completely and explicitly discounted Iraqi casualties, and now they're both getting testy ...

8:33 - Now Edwards returns to the Saddam-9/11 connection that he says Cheney says, even though Cheney said nothing about it. "Shock and awe"? Edwards is changing the subject again, claiming that Bush wasn't aggressive on forming study commissions ...

8:35 - Cheney is giving a lesson on Zarqawi, which many Americans may be hearing for the first time.

8:37 - Halliburton makes its second appearance, in a tangent to a statement Cheney made in 1999. He's tying in the new approach to Iraq to the success in Libya -- the new credibility of dealing with Saddam by deposing him ...

8:39 - Edwards wants to know how many of the 60 countries that have AQ members ... now he's making Halliburton into a mini-Enron. Cheney's response was necessarily weak, and Edwards scores a little bit with this one. See factcheck.org for more details on Halliburton ...

8:40 - Ifill says the Administration has been absent from the peacemaking process in the Middle East -- what a softball! Edwards strongly endorses Israel's right to self-defense and talks about the Sbarro pizzeria bombing. Edwards just admitted that Arafat is no partner for peace ...

8:44 - Cheney comes back on the attack, calling Edwards "Senator Gone". Cheney notes that the suicide bombers that Edwards decries were being paid by Saddam Hussein.

8:46 - Moving to domestic affairs. Cheney talks about reducing litigation cost and reducing tax burdens to create jobs. He talks about how the Administration pushed education reform and accountability ...

8:49 - Edwards starts off by claiming Cheney didn't talk about jobs -- which kind of shows a bit of either cluelessness, ADD, or churlishness ... "We have a plan" again ... Edwards says that "millions" have fallen into poverty during the past four years ...

8:52 - Ifill asks Edwards how they can cut the deficit and not raise taxes with their program, and Edwards says they'll pay for their programs by rolling back tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 a year. He's confusing tax cuts with tax credits in his explanation ...

8:55 - Cheney points out that small businesses pay income taxes on the 1040 rather than on corporate tax plans, which makes the $200,000 income level a huge danger to small businesses ... Edwards says that the're for middle-class tax cuts, and Cheney noted that neither Democrat were around to cast a vote for the one just passed by Congress ...

8:58 - Gay marriage - well, the same rhetoric on both sides. Edwards says that they support partnership benefits for gay couples but that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The amendment is not to "ban gay marriage", it's to keep states from being forced to recognize gay marriages through the interstate compact ...

9:02 - Litigation: Is John Edwards part of the problem? Cheney doesn't take the bait. He talks about the effect of the overall system and how frivolous litigation keeps doctors from taking on high-risk patients ...

9:04 - Edwards admits that we have too many lawsuits, but says that independent boards should determine which are frivolous and enforce a three-strikes rule for attorneys ...

9:05 - Ifill asks Edwards if he feels personally attacked -- why didn't she ask that about Halliburton before she directed that question to Cheney?

9:07 - Both candidates have settled down somewhat, and it's clear that the testiest issue was the war on terror ...

9:08 - Cheney gives a Minnesota reference! Tort overhead costs a manufacturing plant 200 jobs; good reference. Now he demonstrated that Edwards avoided $600,000 in taxes by using a loophole that Kerry supported for trial attorneys. Edwards gets to mention Halliburton ...

9:12 - AIDS. Cheney talks about the $15B the Administration allocated to fighting the disease worldwide. Edwards says it needs to be doubled. Has he proposed that in the Senate? Now Edwards has changed the subject to health insurance? Man, you'd think AIDS would be a natural subject for the Democrats -- why is Edwards avoiding it?

9:14 - Now Pennywit's pitting me against TalkLeft! Welcome aboard, PW!

9:15 - Senator Edwards, you have the least amount of experience than anyone in modern politics to be nominated for VP? Edwards: "Long resume doesn't equal good judgement." Cheney: I was asked aboard for my long experience, not to carry my home state, and I have no further political aspirations. I'm someone who can take over. Edwards: The most important thing is I got to know Kerry better?? He's selling Kerry's experience -- not his!!!!

9:18 - Cheney: George Bush has already been a commander-in-chief and a good one ...

9:20 - Personal story of Cheney humanizes him somewhat more -- "I've been laid off, I've been hospitalized without medical insurance." Edwards tears off paper while Cheney's talking. Edwards says we need to be "offensive" when conducting the war on terror ... nice syntax! He can't go 20 seconds without saying Kerry's name?

9:22 - Flip-flopping - what's wrong with it? Edwards says they've been completely consistent on Iraq. He says the Administration didn't put $2T of surplus to protect Soc Sec, but Edwards fails to remember that 9/11 cost us a bit of that ...

9:26 - Education - Edwards: "We have a clear plan". Cheney: "NCLB - they voted for it, now they're against it." Patriot Act as well.

9:28 - Bitterness in politics; Cheney says he remembers when it was different. He sounds like an honest analyst, talking about the way that shifting power over a narrow gap has heightened partisan bickering. Edwards wants to talk about health care instead!

9:33 - Closing statements, Edwards first. Dad learned math on TV, trying to get a better job at the mill. The bright light of America is flickering today?? We're dying? That's the message he wants to send? Sorry, but that pessimistic image is a dead fish on the table ...

9:36 - Cheney next. He starts off with policy statements and moves to 9/11 and making decisions. He talks about the need to elect a commander-in-chief, where Edwards only talked about the war to note the empty chair at the dinner table. Bad, bad, bad mistake on Edwards' part. They're running away from the war.

Summary: I think that the first half of the debate had the most resonance, and I think Cheney tromped on Edwards all night long, but especially during the first half. Edwards spoke well but only in slogans. Cheney came across as knowledgeable and thoughtful, almost as an independent analyst. Edwards couldn't break out of his stump speeches. There was no indication of independent thought. Almost anyone familiar with the Kerry/Edwards website could have sat in for John Edwards in this debate.

I saw little of the Edwards charm, and instead saw much more of the plaintiff's attorney making opening arguments and accusations. If he connects on a personal level on the stump -- and I've seen that on TV before -- he sure didn't do it tonight. The only times I saw a hint of it was when he complimented Cheney on his love of family and the very beginning of his closing statement when he talked about his dad. Then he buried it by claiming that America is a flickering light in danger of going out.

He got buried. It may make little difference in the end, as VP debates are usually meaningless, but Edwards got buried. Cheney had a much greater command of the facts, had more gravitas, and sounded much more serious about his analysis than Edwards did. And Cheney's shredding of Edwards' atrocious Senate attendance record -- "the first time I met you was on stage tonight" -- will definitely resonate with an electorate that expects its elected officials to show up to work.

UPDATE: Mary Beth Cahill (Kerry's campaign manager) says Cheney was grumpy and mean. She also says that she never met Cheney until tonight, either -- but she wasn't elected to the Senate, and she didn't miss most of her committee meetings and a good chunk of Senate business. If that's the best spin the Democrats can put on this debate, they know they got smoked.

Besides, if they can't handle Dick Cheney's grumpiness, how can we expect them to stand up to the French, let alone the terrorists?

Another Victory For The US-Iraqi Alliance

The anti-insurgency effort appears to be gaining momentum:

More than 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an operation in the southern approaches to Baghdad on Tuesday, seizing a suspected insurgent training camp and capturing more than 160 alleged rebels, the U.S. military command said.

The force also took control of a bridge across the Euphrates River believed to be a favored corridor for insurgents moving into and out of key cities, including Baghdad and the Sunni rebel stronghold of Fallujah, a command release said.

The operation involved the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit as well as U.S. and Iraqi army troops and members of the Iraqi National Guard.

The release did not report any casualties taken or inflicted.

Other than the AP's insistence on calling the terrorist bands "rebels", the announcement gives more evidence that the Iraqi security forces have begun to have an impact on the situation on the ground. At the very least, they have trained well enough that American forces can concentrate on conduction anti-terrorist operations with Iraqis in support, instead of focusing on their training. It also shows Iraqis that they can beat the terrorists, with our support, which should boost morale among their corps.

Victory brings momentum, and with momentum comes the confidence to achieve more victories. More importantly, the Iraqi people will begin to have confidence in both our ability to stabilize the Sunni Triangle and their own forces' ability to enforce the peace afterwards.

Dodgers In Playoffs: Triple Play Of Good News

The sports wires carry a three-bagger of good news for the Los Angeles Dodgers on the eve of their first playoff game in years. The first comes from the Dodgers' front office itself, announcing that outfielder Milton Bradley will be allowed to play after serving a team-enforced suspension after Bradley threw a bottle into the stands:

Bradley will return from his five-game suspension Tuesday against the Cardinals in Game 1 of the NLDS, the Dodgers' official site reports. ...

"We as an organization and he as an individual recognize the fact that he made a mistake. He paid for it," manager Jim Tracy said. "He served his sentence, and we're going to move forward."

This comes as no surprise; the Dodgers got into the playoffs on Bradley's bat and his fire. Hopefully they can get him to channel that in more productive ways during the playoffs.

The other two items relate to two other superstars. Eric Gagne, baseball's best closer over the past two seasons, received a cortisone shot for his throwing shoulder and should be ready to play. He's had five days rest and Tracy reports that he's throwing at 97-98 MPH. Gagne has provided the Dodgers with the consistency at the closer position that allowed them to win a league-leading 53 come-from-behind games this season.

Shawn Green also will play against the Cardinals. He's been nursing a sore ankle, which may affect his power and especially his running. However, since he's now a first baseman instead of the right fielder, he should be able to play through it. Like the Rotowire says, at this time of the year, either you go home or you play. Green's playing.

Right now, the Dodgers are down 1-0 in the top of the 3rd.

Kerry's Incoherence On Stem Cells Continues

Dragging out Michael J. Fox and a father with insulin syringes, John Kerry again misrepresented the current policy on stem-cell research in a stump appearance yesterday:

John F. Kerry charged Monday that President Bush has "turned his back on science" in limiting embryonic stem cell research financed by the federal government.

The Kerry campaign rolled out a television ad on the subject, saying that "millions of lives" are at stake, as the Democratic presidential nominee was joined by actor and activist Michael J. Fox at a town-hall-style meeting here.

"It's time to lift the political barriers blocking the stem cell research that could treat or cure diseases like Parkinson's," the ad says. "I believe that science can bring hope to our families."

Let's review this one more time:

1. There is no ban on stem-cell research of any kind.
2. There is no ban on embryonic stem-cell research of any kind. Anyone can do all the embryonic stem-cell research they want.
3. Federal funding is available on a limited basis for embryonic stem-cell research.

The Kerry campaign continues to either implicitly or explicitly accuse the Bush administration of benightedly banning medical research, when it simply is untrue. If embryonic stem-cell research was economically promising, then pharmaceuticals and other for-profit ventures would be jumping into the market. The truth is that adult stem-cell research has proven more valuable and that is where the private funding has gone, including for diabetes research and product development. Actual therapies for diabetes are being tested using HSC (adult stem cells), despite the melodramatic syringe-bearing father of the child. The First Mate uses just as many syringes and has since early childhood, so I think we have some perspective on the situation.

Research on hESC (embryonic) continues at a number of facilities, with state, federal, and private funding, but despite the pluripotential nature of the cells, no therapies have yet been derived from hESC.

Ironically, the Kerry campaign accuses Bush of being a stooge to pharmaceutical companies at the same time Kerry proposes to fund their research:

The Democratic National Committee also focused on health concerns in an ad released Monday, charging that Bush "stood with the big drug companies -- signing their Medicare law."

Kerry, however, wants to subsidize hESC research that the pharmaceuticals don't even want to do. Who profits from the therapies and the drugs that develop from medical research? Pharmaceuticals. Why do they invest money in some research and not others? Because they find some avenues of research more profitable and more likely to result in therapies than others. But Kerry wants to artificially push research into areas where the experts -- those with their money on the line -- believe the effort to be wasted. And what does that do? It makes prescription drugs take longer to get to market, delays therapies due to lost time, and jacks up the price of the drugs we wind up buying.

The Post at least acknowledges that they have mischaracterized the debate in the past, although they do it by describing the Bush campaign's insistence on reporting accurately as accusations. Too bad the Kerry campaign can't tell the truth, too.

SCOTUS Rejects Catholic Charities Appeal

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal by Catholic Charities of a California law that requires them to supply contraception for its employees as part of its health insurance plan, the Los Angeles Times reports today:

The contraception case asked the justices to reconsider what laws violate the "free exercise of religion" protected by the 1st Amendment. The lawyers for the Roman Catholic bishop of Sacramento faced an uphill fight because of a 1990 ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia. In that ruling, he said state laws could not be challenged on freedom of religion grounds if they applied equally to everyone and did not target a religion for unfair treatment.

The California Legislature passed a women's rights measure that required employers to pay for "approved prescription contraceptive methods" as part of their health insurance plans. While the law excluded churches from the mandatory coverage, it did not exclude all groups affiliated with a religion.

The state mandate was challenged by Catholic Charities of Sacramento, a nonprofit corporation sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. Three-fourths of its employees are not Catholics. In March, the state Supreme Court upheld the law on a 6-1 vote, citing Scalia's opinion. In their appeal, Catholic Charities' lawyers said the contraceptive rule amounted to "an unprecedented intrusion upon the religious freedom." But the justices rejected the appeal in Catholic Charities vs. California.

I originally wrote about this in March, when Catholic Charities lost their appeal at the California Supreme Court. The law made no exemption for religious institutions, and Catholic Charities is a part of the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches against contraception as a sin in all but the most extreme cases. They are an non-profit organization that does not discriminate in their hiring practices and do tremendous outreach to the community all over the world -- both of which counted against them when their case was reviewed by California's high court:

The Supreme Court ruled that the charity is not a religious employer because it offers such secular services as counseling, low-income housing and immigration services to the public without directly preaching about Catholic values.

The court also noted that the charity employs workers of differing religions.

In California's backwards world, which the Supreme Court just endorsed, hiring in a non-discriminatory manner and serving the entire community without proselytizing requires Catholics to give up their right to religious freedom. And make no mistake -- that's exactly what just happened. Whether you agree with the Roman Catholic position or not, they believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and that contraception even within marriage outside of a few extreme circumstances represents an erosion of a sacrament from God. Forcing them to supply contraception when it goes against Catholic doctrine requires them literally to be anathematic towards themselves.

What will the organization do in response? According to the various court decisions, here are their options:

* Terminate all non-Catholic employees
* Refuse to offer any health insurance to its employees
* Stop performing community outreach
* Close its doors

The Scalia test in this instance doesn't protect the rights of non-profit religious organizations. You can say that a state law requiring everyone to wear a cross applies equally to everyone and doesn't target any one religion for unfair treatment, and that still represents an offense to non-Christians. Requiring everyone to support contraception just because the law applies equally is no different.

The rationale behind these decisions appear to be the 14th Amendment, which insists on equal application of the law, but the 14th Amendment did not revoke the First Amendment. These decisions infringe on the right of Catholics to determine their conduct and their religious expression, regardless of what the dominant culture thinks of it. It implies that religious organizations must apply for recognition of their status. Moreover, this precedent will eventually allow the state to demand other actions of religious organizations, such as recognition of gay marriage and equal-access policies for hiring of priests, that directly contradict what the churches teach, for right or wrong.

The California legislature should refine their law in order to allow Catholic Charities to continue to operate within their conscience, serve their communities, and still provide basic health care to their employees. The perversion of regulation that occurred here will only result in a reduction of good works for all, no matter which option the Catholic Charities selects.

UPDATE: Mona is correct in the comments; the Roman Catholic Church considers artificial birth control a "grave" sin under all circumstances:

Ignoring the mountain of evidence, some maintain that the Church considers the use of contraception a matter for each married couple to decide according to their "individual conscience." Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The Church has always maintained the historic Christian teaching that deliberate acts of artificial birth control are always gravely sinful, which means that it is mortally sinful if done with full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). This teaching is definitive and irreformable. It cannot be changed and has been proclaimed by the Church infallibly.

There is no way to deny the fact that the Church’s ordinary magisterium (cf. Vatican II’s document Lumen Gentium 25) has always and everywhere condemned artificial contraception. The matter has already been infallibly decided. The so-called "individual conscience" argument amounts to "individual disobedience."

I shall commence putting that in my pipe and smoking it. I had not realized its complete status. For those who want to know more about Catholic doctrine and teaching, Catholic Answers is an excellent resource, especially when you want to find answers to a specific issue quickly.

To answer another issue raised in the comments -- and by the way, the discussion occurring there is a great example of why I enable comments on this site -- the issue is not the free exercise of choice for CC's employees. CC does not require its non-Catholic employees to swear off birth control (or even its Catholic employees). As pointed out by others, the issue is government forcing Catholic Charities to pay for birth control for others.

Plus A Bit Of Extra Room For That Free Nuclear "Fuel" At The Top

The Iranians announced that they could hit targets all over Southwest Asia and even southern Europe with their new Shahab-3 rocket, the AP reports:

Iran can launch a missile as far as 2,000 km (1,250 miles), a senior official was quoted as saying Tuesday, substantially increasing the announced range of the Islamic state's military capabilities.

Such a missile would be capable of hitting Israel or parts of southeastern Europe. Iran says its missiles are for purely defensive purposes and would be used to counter a possible Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities.

"Now we have the power to launch a missile with a 2,000 km range," IRNA quoted influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying. "Iran is determined to improve its military capabilities."

The only way Iran could consider the Shahab-3 a defensive weapon is if they think the combat front exists at the borders of the old Ottoman Empire, or in Tel Aviv. Both are the intended targets of the Shahab-3 and the Iranian mullahcracy. Despite their insistence that they have no desire for nuclear weapons or other WMD, the truth is that they now have a payload system for delivering them that far exceeds the capacity of the Hussein regime at its peak, with its creaky Soviet-era Scud missiles.

What does the US plan to do about this? The Bush administration keeps pressing the EU-3 to force the IAEA to the UN Security Council so that deadlines for compliance on nuclear proliferation can be set. John Kerry wants to give the mullahs nuclear material in exchange for a promise not to stick it in the Shahab-3s -- or to give it to Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad -- and then sit back and see how they handle it.

Which option makes you feel safer at night?

Caption Contest Winners!

All of the entries are in and Thief has judged them all -- and believe me, it wasn't easy! He had a heck of a time picking out the best captions for this exciting action photograph, which captures the essence of the John Kerry magic. You can feel the charisma jumping right off the screen, can't you?

Not only has Thief supplied the winners, he's also given CQ a series of icons to go along with them. Great work, Thief! And here are the winners:

Captain’s Award (Weapon of Mass Distraction): capitano:

McCurry -- "What's the consensus?"
#1 --"Draw"
#2 -- "Draw"
#3 -- "Huh? Oh, uh, half caf/half decaf, single sweetener, skim foam, with a dash of cinnamon. ... and a bearclaw."

You Have The Conn #1 (What’s That Buzzing Sound?) radio:

Fox News is now using new ultra-high speed (450 frames/per/second equivalent) digital cameras which permit us for the first time to capture Sen. Kerry in mid flip-flop.

You Have The Conn #2 (Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign): ccwbass:

1st staffer: "How now . . ."
2nd staffer: " . . . brown cow."
3rd staffer: "What's the good word?"
4thstaffer: "Just kill me now."
John Kerry: "Burma Shave!"

You Have The Conn #3 (Full-Scale Meltdown): RBMN:

This wax museum sucks!

Report To Sick Bay (Caveat DUmptor): Cybrludite:

Young Guy: I wonder if I should try & meet that teenaged girl I was chatting up in the DU Forums last night?

Old Guy: Man, that was fun pretending to be a teenaged girl in the DU Forums last night. I bet that guy I was chatting with was "making himself go blind"! I wonder who he was?

Special Award for Best Literary Reference: (James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”): The Yell:

Senator Mitty strode into the press room. The reporters moved to stand against the walls, skeptical frowns on their faces. Their fingers on the keyboards went pocketa pocketa pocketa.
"We're in a tight jam, Walter," whispered the campaign spokesman.
"We've been there before," said Mitty. He moved to the podium, gave a quick grin, and began to speak with clarity and conviction. As he...GOOD LORD I'M NOT DAYDREAMING! Uh...um...presidential...presidential...summit! Yeah! Summit talks!”

Special Award for Uber-Geekiness: (Live Long & Prosper): Bear: Kerry's four Romulan handlers, disguised as disinterested campaign workers, monitor the first public demonstration of his personal deflector shield. No longer can he be tarred with epithets like "flip-flopper", "ultra-liberal" or "traitorous aider and abetter of the enemy." Unfortunately, the shield magnifies a distinct lack of focus in his principles.

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 Thief's intellect and/or my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies. Don't forget to visit Thief's Den, either!

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!

So Much For The Debate Bounce

I hope the Democrats enjoyed the weekend, because the debate bounce turned out to be a figment of Newsweek's imagination. The new Washington Post-ABC poll taken for the three days after the debate shows that Bush maintained his five point lead over Kerry, despite their usual underreport on Bush's support:

President Bush continues to lead rival Sen. John F. Kerry among likely voters despite surging enthusiasm for Kerry among Democrats and new doubts about whether the president has a clear plan to deal with terrorism and the situation in Iraq, according to the Washington Post tracking poll.

In the aftermath of last week's presidential debate, Bush currently leads Kerry 51 percent to 46 percent among those most likely to vote, according to polling conducted Friday through Sunday. Independent candidate Ralph Nader claims 1 percent of the hypothetical vote. ...

Half of Kerry's voters now say they are "very enthusiastic" about their candidate, up eight points since before the debate. At the same time, the share of Bush voters who were similarly excited about their candidate dropped by eight points to 57 percent, narrowing the enthusiasm gap from 23 to 7 points in a few short days. Democrats, men, 40 to 49-year-olds and better educated Kerry supporters led the increase in the intensity of enthusiasm for him, the survey found.

Bush is still seen as the one with the clearest plan for dealing with Iraq and terrorism, although Kerry clearly made inroads on both issues during his first debate.

According to the survey, barely half -- 51 percent -- of all voters said Bush has a "clear plan" for handling the situation in Iraq, down from 55 percent before the debate. The proportion who doubted that Bush has a plan grew by 6 points to 48 percent.

At the same time, 42 percent said Kerry has a plan for Iraq -- a 5-point increase -- while the proportion who said he does not fell by four points to 52 percent.

So on the "clear plan" internal, Bush still leads Kerry by nine points, and on enthusiasm by 7 points. The enthusiasm gap will likely expand after these results get wide dissemination as Kerry's supporters realize that Kerry didn't move the needle at all. Bush's support will rally on the same news.

Pew shows the same gap between Kerry in their latest polling:

By two-to-one, voters who watched the first presidential debate believe that John Kerry prevailed. But the widely viewed Sept. 30 showdown did not result in a sea change in opinions of the candidates. As a consequence, George W. Bush continues to have a much stronger personal image than his Democratic challenger, while voters express more confidence in Kerry on key domestic issues like the economy and health care.

The latest national poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Oct. 1-3 among 1,002 registered voters, finds Bush maintaining a 48%-41% lead over Kerry among all voters. However, the internals of the poll suggest that Bush's margin slipped somewhat over the course of the weekend, as a growing number of voters came to see Kerry as the debate winner.

When the sample is narrowed to likely voters, Bush holds a modest 49%-44% edge in voting intentions.

The Pew internals for Bush still look strong, although Kerry rallied a bit from the catastrophic levels from before the debate. He actually dropped a point on his overall favorability after the debate, while Bush gained 7 and Cheney gained 4.

I think we just saw the high-water mark of Kerry's home stretch. If that performance couldn't move the needle, Kerry has nothing left.

Polygamy Rights Under Lawrence?

For those who argued that the Supreme Court decision striking down the stupid sodomy laws with Lawrence v. Texas would not lead to challenges for gay marriage and polygamy, Jonathan Turley's column today defending polygamist Tom Green should disabuse us of that illusion:

Tom Green is an American polygamist. This month, he will appeal his conviction in Utah for that offense to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that could redefine the limits of marriage, privacy and religious freedom.

If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law.

For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law.

Turley launches into a defense of libertarianism regarding polygamy that at once decries the religious objections to it and then offers religious solutions to such sticky issues as property rights on dissolution. It's a rambling, sometimes self-contradictory amicus brief encouraging the Supreme Court to nullify 200 years of legal thought in America on marriage, much the same as challenges for gay marriage have done. And they all can be traced back to the foolhardy decision by the present Supreme Court to elevate personal choice between consenting adults to the same level as protection against unreasonable search and seizure, an equation never dreamed of by the founders.

I'll lay my cards on the table. I don't see anything particularly wrong with gay marriage, as long as a majority of voters approve it. I also think that the Texas sodomy laws were about as stupid as you could have found in any penal code. [Insert Beavis laugh at "penal code".] However, the Court used a sledgehammer when a flyswatter would have prevailed, and the consequences of their decision has led -- logically -- to the appeal of all anti-polygamy statutes. If in fact the Court applies the same thinking to polygamy as it did to the sodomy statutes, then they have no choice but to free Green and declare all anti-polygamy statutes null and void.

Perhaps that is the Libertarian stance. Maybe that's for the public good, although I highly doubt it. But the court once again has set itself in a position where its own precedent requires it to legislate, a usurpation of their Constitutional authority just as much as Lawrence was.

Not everything that transpires between consenting adults is legal or should be legal, let alone given Constitutional protection. But that's where the SCOTUS has left us. They should take the opportunity to reverse their precedent and acknowledge the error they made in Lawrence, before Constitutionally guaranteed prostitution and adult incest come next.

Polls For Sale -- Not Cheap?

The blog Political Musings notes an interesting sidebar to the Newsweek poll that showed some sample-juggling by their experts. CBS News reported in its Marketwatch feature section that the two presidential campaigns revved up their ad buys last week -- including an interesting purchase by the Kerry campaign that only gets mentioned at the end:

The biggest online advertising buys for Bush were at these sites: KPTV Oregons12.tv.com, Parents.com, KNVA-TV.com, El Nuevo Herald.com and KPHO CBS 5 News.com.

The biggest online ad buys for Kerry were at these sites: SFGate.com, Newsweek.com, Village Voice.com, Reuters.com and L.A. Weekly Media.com.[emph mine -- CE]

Combined with the odd shift in sampling seen between their two most recent polls, the ad buy looks a bit suspicious ...

CNS News: Documents Link Saddam To AQ, WMD, Other Terrorists

In a blockbuster article if their sources pan out, CNS News reported today that it has documents from the Saddam regime which not only document active operational links to al-Qaeda and other terrorists as late as 2000 but also contain directives to use WMD stocks to attack Americans:

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. ...

Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's most wanted terrorists. Zarqawi is believed responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of several American civilians in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings in Iraq Sept. 30. Al-Zawahiri is the top lieutenant of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the U.S., and is believed to be the voice on an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, calling for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere.

CNS News details their acquisition and authentication of the documents in question in a much more open and thorough fashion than anything at CBS News regarding the Killian memos. They received the memos from a non-political appointee in US intelligence and vetted them through a former UNSCOM inspector, retired CIA counterterrorism official Bruce Tefft, and Laurie Mylroie, who advised Bill Clinton on national security for his 1992 election. The documents were translated by two people working independently of each other.

If the translations and the authentications hold up, this is a blockbuster find.

So far, CNS has not provided PDF files of the original documents, but have posted translations of a few. This translation shows a purchase order for 5 kgms mustard gas, showing delivered, and dated August 21, 2000. The supplier was "Saddam's company", which CNS says is a reference to Saddam's General Establishment network, which produced a number of military items for the Saddam regime. This invoice shows that 3 ampules of "malignant pustule" (anthrax) was delivered on Se. 6th, 2000.

Other memos show Saddam's outreach to al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. This memo, dated Jan 18th, 1993, tells the Ba'ath party leadership that "it’s decided that the party should move to hunt the Americans who are on Arabian land, especially in Somalia, by using Arabian elements, or Asian (Muslims) or friends." Another memo outlines contacts with Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose own terrorist network was absorbed into al-Qaeda when he became one of Osama bin Laden's top deputies:

he same 11-page memo refers to the "re-opening of the relationship" with Al-Jehad al-Islamy, which is described as "the most violent in Egypt," responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The documents go on to describe a Dec. 14, 1990 meeting between Iraqi intelligence officials and a representative of Al-Jehad al-Islamy, that ended in an agreement "to move against [the] Egyptian regime by doing martyr operations on conditions that we should secure the finance, training and equipments."

Al-Zawahiri was one of the leaders of Jehad al-Islamy, which is also known as the Egyptian Islamic Group, and participated in the assassination of Sadat, Tefft said. "Iraq's contact with the Egyptian Islamic Group is another operational contact between Iraq and al Qaeda," he added.

Read the entire article. CNS News believes that the US government is unaware of the existence of these documents until now. If they can be authenticated, the new documents will change the entire tenor of the debate.

Do Kerry's Backers Account For His Iran Policy?

John Kerry and John Edwards Iran policy proposal has raised eyebrows around the world, offering to give the Iranian hardliners nuclear fuel in exchange for a promise to drop their enrichment program. Now WorldNet Daily reports that three top financial backers of the Kerry/Edwards ticket may account for the unusual notion of giving fissile materials to the largest backers of Islamofascist terror groups:

Sen. John Kerry's call for providing Iran with the nuclear fuel it seeks, even while the regime is believed to be only months away from developing nuclear weapons, is being linked to his campaign contributions from backers of the mullah government in Tehran.

During last Thursday's nationally televised debate between the Democratic presidential candidate and President Bush, Kerry insisted as president he would provide Tehran with the nuclear fuel it wants for a pledge to use it for peaceful purposes only. ...

Among Kerry's top fund-raisers are three Iranian-Americans who have been pushing for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Most prominent among them is Hassan Nemazee, 54, an investment banker based in New York. ... Nemazee was a major Clinton donor, giving $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the 1996 election cycle and attending at least one of the famous White House fund-raising coffees.

In 2001, at the invitation of Mobil Oil Chairman Lucio Noto, whom he counts as a "personal friend," Nemazee joined the board of the American-Iranian Council, a U.S. lobbying group that consistently has supported lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran and accommodating the Tehran regime.

The Kerry camp has identified Nemazee as having raised more than $100,000 for the senator's campaign, WND reported last spring.

Nemazee isn't the only five- to six-figure donor to the Kerry campaign connected to efforts aimed at lifting the economic sanctions against the Iranian mullahcracy. Faraj Aalaei has raised between $50,000 to $100,000 for the Kerry campaign while his new wife, Susan Akbarpour, has raised a similar amount. Akbarpour came to the US from Iran on a tourist visa but has since launched a newspaper, magazine, and a trade association that also lobbies for normalized relations with the Iranian government.

Akbarpour, it should be noted, sought asylum from the Iranians last year when she emigrated, according to author Kenneth Timmerman, who has written on this subject before.

The article also outlines other positions that Kerry has taken for normalization with the current Iranian regime rather than support the nascent democratization efforts within Iran. It appears that the Kerry campaign's commitment to fighting terrorism and its sponsors takes a back seat to pandering to its financial supporters -- as does American national security.

UPDATE: Here's another look at Nemazee, from Front Page, via Jihad Watch:

Frivolous lawsuits have long been used as weapons of the powerful against the weak; a particularly egregious example is now playing out in Texas, courtesy of one of John Kerry’s most controversial supporters: the Iranian Hassan Nemazee. Nemazee is pursuing a ten-million-dollar damage claim against the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) and its coordinator, Aryo B. Pirouznia. A Nemazee victory in this suit would almost certainly muzzle or destroy altogether the SMCCDI, one of the most energetic and courageous opponents of Iran’s entrenched but uneasy mullahocracy. But now that Nemazee’s lawsuit has been filed, it has become increasingly clear that it could embarrass the entire Democratic Party — and severely damage the already flagging candidacy of John Kerry.

Nemazee is an influential figure with many friends in high places in groups such as the American-Iranian Council (AIC), the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and the Iranian-American Bar Association (IABA). Nemazee’s name is also well known in Democratic Party circles. He was a prominent contributor to Bob Torricelli’s New Jersey Senate campaign. The multimillionaire entrepreneur also contributed $50,000 to his friend Al Gore’s Recount Fund (and $250,000 to the Gore campaign), $60,000 to Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund, and over $150,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Clinton attempted to reward him by naming him U.S. Ambassador to Argentina — but the Senate declined to confirm him after Forbes magazine published, in May 1999, an extremely damaging expose of his shady financial dealings.

Undaunted, Nemazee continued efforts to establish fruitful contacts between Iranian groups advocating normalization of relations with Iran and high-level members of the Democratic Party. He joined the Board of Directors of the AIC, an organization whose president, Hooshang Amirahmadi, is identified on the SMCCDI website as a “well known lobbyist for the Iranian Mullahocracy.” Nemazee was involved in a March 2002 fundraiser for Senate Foreign Affairs Committee heavyweight Joe Biden (D-DE). This event was hosted by Sadegh Namazikhah, another AIC member whom Aryo Pirouznia charges with trying to improve public perception of “one of the most despotic regimes in the world.”

And now we have John Kerry offering nuclear fuel to the same Iranians that finance Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Let me repeat this: John Kerry wants to give nuclear fuel to the people behind two of the worst Islamofascist terror organizations in the world. Now we know why.

UPDATE: Here's more on Akbarpour from Kenneth Timmerman's Insight article last March:

"I am an actor in U.S. politics," Akbarpour boasted to Insight in an interview. "I am a fund-raiser for all candidates who listen to us and our concerns."

The two candidates Akbarpour said she would "never help" are President George W. Bush and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), because both have taken a no-nonsense approach to the Iranian regime. Federal Election Commission records show that Akbarpour contributed $1,000 to the Kerry committee in June 2002 and another $2,000 in June 2003.

Akbarpour tells Insight she is not a U.S. citizen. "I came here in 1997 as a tourist and changed my status several times. At one point, I had an H-1 visa. Then I got married last year and got my green card." Under federal election laws, permanent residents are allowed to make political campaign contributions. But her June 2002 contribution to the Kerry campaign appears to have been made before she acquired status as a permanent resident.

One immigration lawyer Insight consulted in Los Angeles doubted that Akbarpour could have obtained an H-1 visa, which is reserved for foreign workers sponsored by U.S. companies that need their specialized skills. "At the time, the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] was applying a very strict interpretation of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act and was not allowing any hiring of Iranian nationals. And you couldn't convert from a tourist visa to an H-1 visa, especially if the tourist visa had already expired."

Because the United States has no embassy in Tehran, Iranians seeking to visit the United States must travel to Turkey or the United Arab Emirates to apply for a tourist or student visa, then wait several months while a background check is performed.

That experience still rankles Akbarpour, who has put loosening visa requirements for Iranians on the top of her political agenda, along with lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran and getting the U.S. government to open a dialogue with the regime in Tehran. Just by coincidence, those are the top three priorities of the Tehran regime, as well.

It's not as if the information on Kerry's Iranian backers has been a secret; it's just that the media hasn't looked very hard at it. One would think the loopy idea of shipping nuclear fuel to a country we know supports the terrorists we're fighting would get them to ask these questions...

UPDATE: More Nemazee from Front Page, last January:

A third cash-and-Kerryer, who during this same period gave Kerry more than $180,000, is Hassan Nemazee. This Iranian-American investor raised a cool $250,000 for Al Gore in November 1995, and he and his family slushed another $150,000 to Democrats during the mid-1990s. Six Nemazee family members and friends (including the caretaker of his 12-acre Katonah, N.Y., estate) donated a total of $60,000 – the maximum legally allowed -- to Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund.

In the closing days of 1998 Clinton named Nemazee his Ambassador-designate to Argentina. Hillary Clinton embraced the Muslim moneyman at a January 1999 White House celebration of the Islamic holiday Eid. The Senate, however, refused to confirm the controversial nominee after a Forbes Magazine investigation exposed Nemazee’s questionable business dealings. “He was,” said a bitter former business partner, “the Iranian equivalent of J.R. Ewing.”

The Forbes magazine investigation also documented how, in order to get his hands on public-employee pension fund monies allocated for minority managers, the U.S.-born Nemazee had falsely claimed to be a Hispanic of Venezuelan background and, on another occasion, an Asian-Indian.

But Nemazee’s cynical lust for money can be frightening as well as laughable. He is a founding board member of the Iranian American Political Action Committee [IAPAC], which seeks to create friendly and lucrative business relationships with the medieval theocratic dictatorship now ruling Iran. Iran is, of course, an “Axis of Evil” nation that seeks to acquire nuclear weapons and is on our State Department’s official list of nations that support terrorism. Nemazee seeks to enrich himself by further enriching the power-mad Mullahs ruling Iran.

Here's the Forbes article. Nemazee appears to be quite the character -- of the sort that one discovers regularly around Democrats, as the Front Page article details.

UPDATE: Fixed Forbes link; should work properly now.

The Blogiversary

Yesterday was the one-year blogiversary for Captain's Quarters, a milestone which I intended to mark last night after attending a Patriot Forum here in town with Hugh Hewitt, Jason Lewis, and the entire Northern Alliance gang. Instead, I did what I usually do -- blog on a breaking news item, and then fell asleep before I could do anything else.

In the one year since I started CQ, I have made more friends and enjoyed more new experiences than I ever imagined this would create. Friends like Hugh, Scott and John from Power Line, the entire gang at Fraters Libertas, King from SCSU Scholars, Mitch Berg, David and Margaret from the Taxpayers League, and many others I don't have time this morning to name have helped push CQ to unplanned success. Some of the highlights from the past year:

* Adding my partner, Whiskey
* Joining the NARN
* 29 weeks of the Captain's Caption Contest
* Attending the Republican National Convention
* Publishing my first paid articles in the New York Post and NY Sun
* Receiving over two million unique visits
* Every single Instapundit link I ever got

And many, many more highlights which, again, time does not permit me to get into this morning. In celebration, I'd ask that you drop me a comment or two about your favorite CQ moments, which I'll use later this week to write a more extensive post. I'd also ask you to visit three of the first blogs to link to me last year: Twilight Cafe, QandO, and the Politburo Diktat. Their early encouragement kept me going, and it was and is much appreciated.

Most of all, thank all of you who visit CQ regularly and who comment, agree, disagree, and keep coming back. This one's for you.

More Wild Conspiracy Theories From John Kerry

John Kerry did the worst kind of pandering last night at the East Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Cleveland. Kerry told the predominantly black church that the GOP is actively suppressing the black vote in battleground states, a claim which he repeatedly makes and for which he gives absolutely no evidence:

"In battleground states across the country, we're hearing stories of how people are trying to make it harder to file for additional time, or how they're making it harder to even register," Kerry told an enthusiastic congregation at East Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

"We're not going to let that happen because the memories of 2000 are too strong. We're not going to allow 1 million African Americans to be disenfranchised."

At a stop in Ohio earlier Sunday, Kerry told a voter concerned about ballots cast by military personnel overseas that Democrats are aware of voting problems and are concerned.

It's hard to know where to begin with this nonsense. In the last point, the party that sued Florida in an effort to throw out military ballots was the Democrats, not the Republicans, in 2000. It was Al Gore who attempted to disenfranchise men and women serving overseas, not George Bush. To assign that crap to Republicans -- especially when the GOP can count on overwhelming support from military personnel, by all polling -- insults the intelligence of everyone subjected to it. The East Mt. Zion Baptists should be offended by Kerry's assumption of their stupidity.

Even more concerning is Kerry's spouting of ridiculous and debunked Oliver Stone-worthy conspiracy theories that needlessly undermine confidence in the elections. What does it say about Kerry's ability to lead a democracy that he has to torpedo the institutions that he needs for legitimacy once elected? What does it say about his leadership style that he assigns the crudest conspiracy theories to his political opponents? It reminds one of the worst days of the Nixon White House and the infamous enemies lists, and Kerry hasn't even been elected yet.

The GOP offered a solution to ensure the appearance of fairness, and Kerry responded with more race-baiting:

"Like so much of his campaign, John Kerry's false charges of voter intimidation are baseless," said [GOP] spokesman Steve Schmidt. He said Democrats rejected a GOP offer to put a lawyer from each party in every voting district across the nation on Election Day.

Kerry said he has his own team of lawyers "of all color and all mix" examining possible voting problems to try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election disputes. He also has said he has thousands of lawyers around the country prepared to monitor the polls on Nov. 2.

Kerry talks a lot about George Bush being a divisive politician, but Kerry may be the most paranoid racebaiter since ... well, since Al Gore.

UPDATE for Truck: I've covered the Florida issue last month in this post. The main thrust is here:

The Civil Rights Commission reported that African-American voters in Florida were more likely to have spoiled ballots or be denied a vote than other voters, but never quantified the number of voters. It claimed that 14.4% of African-American voters could not successfully vote in the 2000 general election. The total number of African-Americans in Florida for 2000 was 2.3 million. If half were adults, that would make a potential electorate of 1.15 million. Registration rates for African-Americans in 2000 were about 75%, one of the highest rates for all ethnic groups. Voter turnout for this group in 2000 was 61% of this 75%, or about 526,000 votes. If 14.4% of these voters were unsuccessful, that represents just under 76,000 votes -- nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but a far, far cry from one million votes.

But let's take a look at where these voters were disenfranchised, according to the USCCR. As the nation painfully learned in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle in Florida, the counties control the ballot preparation and voting procedures in the Sunshine State. In the executive summary of the report, the commission specifically mentions Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties -- all controlled by the same party: Democrats. In fact, 24 of the 25 counties that had the highest ballot-spoilage rates were run by Democrats, not Republicans.

The only state-level function specifically pointed out by the commission was the felon purge list, which has only been confirmed to have kept three eligible voters from casting ballots on Election Day in 2000.

The links are in the original post, and the facts demonstrate that Republicans did nothing to "suppress" the black vote in 2000. It's a lie, a well-debunked smear, and the fact that Kerry continues his trade in such wild conspiracy theories should disqualify him for command with rational voters.

Iran to Kerry: Thanks but no thanks

According to the Times of India, Iran has rejected Kerry's offer of nuclear fuel in return for it's promise to be good and not make bombs:

Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said it would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear programme in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad.

"We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others," Asefi told a weekly news conference.

Of course, the nuclear fuel was only Kerry's first offer. An astute reporter should ask whether he would be willing to lift the sanctions on Iran as part of his intended negotiations. (Yes, Mr. Kerry, there are already sanctions against Iran.)

Kerry Abandons Virginia

In a jarring contrast to the triumphalism projected by Democrats after the debate last Thursday, the John Kerry campaign has abandoned Virginia to George Bush and will transfer the personnel to other states:

Sen. John F. Kerry's top campaign officials in Virginia have been reassigned to work in other states, effectively conceding the commonwealth to President Bush even as the Democratic presidential nomineerides a wave of momentum nationally from his performance in last week's debate.

Susan Swecker, the Kerry campaign's state director, and Jonathan Beeton, its press secretary, were scheduled to leave Virginia on Sunday night, Beeton said. Eighteen other campaign staff workers were sent to help elsewhere, leaving about 10 paid staffers in Virginia.

Some of the Virginia staff will wind up here in Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa, where Kerry is in danger of losing ground that Al Gore barely retained in 2000. Losing just one of the states would create an almost-insurmountable barrier to election, but all three would drive a stake through the heart of his campaign. No one doubts Kerry's need for more focus in the Upper Midwest, but after the supposed rebound he got from the debate, the retreat from the South surprises me.

After all, his selection of John Edwards as a running mate was intended to make Kerry politically viable below the Mason-Dixon line. One would expect that to be difficult in solid Bush country like Georgia and Alabama, but a lot of DC bureaucrats and policy wonks make their homes in Virginia. It's clear that Kerry thought he had a shot at carrying the state for Democrats for the first time since LBJ, but the summer's collapse apparently doomed his chances in Virginia.

The move calls into question the entire idea of Kerry momentum, especially so soon after his debate performance. It reveals a lot more caution about their momentum than their rhetoric does.

Summit Time

If like me, you're getting tired of all the hyper spin and pseudo-surge news which has followed Thursday's debate, check out the latest by Mark Steyn, my all-time favorite writer (except for my parter Ed, of course). Steyn acknowledges Bush's weaknesses then humorously fisks Kerry's unoriginal policy prescription:

Oh, and he'll call a summit. ''I have a plan to have a summit. . . . I'm going to hold that summit ... we can be successful in Iraq with a summit . . . the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together ...'' Summit old, summit new, summit borrowed, summit blue, he's got summit for everyone. Summit-chanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. But, in John Kerry's world, there are no strangers, just EU deputy defense ministers who haven't yet contributed 10,000 troops because they haven't been invited to a summit. And once John Kerry holds that summit all our troubles are over. Summit time and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin' ... No, hang on, your wife is rich and your manicure's good-lookin' ...

They Swear, It's A Relaxation Device

An Australian who redefined the notion of a quick airpport layover managed to shut down an airport when their mechanical paramour decided it still had a bit more life left after being thoughtlessly tossed aside:

Hundreds of airline passengers suffered disruption to their travel plans when a major regional airport was shut down for an hour after a humming and vibrating adult sex toy was mistaken for a bomb.

The vibrator was discovered at 9:15 am (2315 GMT Sunday) by a security officer who checked out a suspicious package inside a rubbish bin at the terminal cafeteria of Mackay Airport in the northeastern state of Queensland, a police spokeswoman said.

The terminal was evacuated immediately while passengers who had just arrived from a flight, check-in staff, cafeteria employees and hire car personnel were all forced to leave.

Of course, the first question one asks is why anyone would throw away a working, er, adult novelty device at the airport rather than at home. Wouldn't it seem an unusual place to break out Mr. Happy? The Australian security forces must have gotten quite the laugh when they discovered the grave threat recovered from the garbage. I daresay the passengers in the terminals and the airlines whose flights were delayed weren't chuckling too much about it.

In the future, people, let's remember to remove the batteries first ...

Truthsquadding At The Washintgton Post On North Korea

The Washington Post editorial board does a little "truthsquadding" this morning in a staff editorial on North Korea. In the first presidential debate, John Kerry asserted that George Bush's Korean policy had resulted in the nuclear weapons Kim Jung-Il claims he now has, an unsupportable accusation, as the Post notes:

Some truth-squadding is needed here: While the CIA concluded that North Korea may have built one or two nuclear weapons before Mr. Bush took office, and while U.S. intelligence agencies believe the fuel rods have been reprocessed into plutonium, there is no certainty that North Korea has built more nuclear weapons. To say so is to make the same sort of reach that Mr. Kerry faults Mr. Bush for making in his statements about Iraq's nuclear program.

In other words, since the CIA concluded that the North Koreans had one or two nuclear weapons already as Bush took office, and since their prevention had been the entire point of the Agreed Framework, further negotiation along those lines were rather pointless. The Bush administration correctly dropped that pretense and used another tack to control North Korean ambitions: the six-nation multilateral talks.

Kerry derided Bush's reliance on the six-nation effort and claimed that direct negotiations with Kim would resolve the problem. However, the Post disagrees:

As soon as the United States agrees to bilateral talks, the North Korean regime will refuse further sessions of the "six party" negotiations that have been underway, relieving China, South Korea, Japan and Russia of responsibility for pressuring Pyongyang and leaving the United States to make a deal alone. Lacking the tools of China -- which controls North Korea's energy supplies and could cause its regime to collapse simply by loosening border controls -- the United States would once again face the choice of offering distasteful bribes to a murderous dictatorship or threatening an almost unthinkable war.

Kerry proposes to trade away all of the leverage we have on Kim, mostly from China after painstaking diplomacy allowed us to have that on our side. China themselves announced the night of the debate that the only solution would be the current model for negotiations. North Korea wants bilateral talks because it fears China, and not because it wants to make a deal with the US.

The change Kerry offers is sheer folly, and especially odd considering his insistence that George Bush is a dangerous unilateralist. The difference here is that George Bush tried several times to get France, Russia, and China to work with him on Iraq and to finally enforce the sixteen separate resolutions for disarming Iraq and complying with the terms of the 1991 cease-fire, and they refused, having been (as we know now) deeply involved in kickback schemes from the Oil-For-Food program. Kerry would have us throw away the assistance we already get from Russia and China to return to the Agreed Framework that allowed North Korea to build the weapons we wanted to prevent in the first place.

It's hard work to get that clueless, but Kerry manages to do it. Kudos to the Post for seeing through the smokescreen.

Moqtada Al-Sadr, The John Kerry Of Iraq

If one figure in Iraq could be said to be comical, even in a dark way, it would have to be the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Caught between the idiocy of his generalship and the poor fighting quality of his militias, he has at least three times decimated his Mahdi Army supporters by initiating hostilities against the US forces in Iraq. In Najaf, he almost completely wiped them out, only surviving thanks to a belated rescue by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who wanted to save the Imam Ali mosque there from destruction.

Now, for at least the third time as well, Sadr has decided to create a political party instead of an army, only this time it looks like he means it. Not because he doesn't want to fight, but mostly because he's realized that he's incapable of it:

The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to enter Iraq's nascent democratic process, telling Iraqi leaders that he is planning to disband his militia and possibly field candidates for office.

After weeks of watching his militia wither before American military attacks, Mr. Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq's major political parties and religious groups to discuss the possibility of involving himself in the campaign for nationwide elections, according to a senior aide to Mr. Sadr and several Iraqi leaders who have met with him.

According to those Iraqis, Mr. Sadr says he intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and endorse the holding of elections. While Mr. Sadr has made promises to end his armed resistance before, some Iraqi officials believe that he may be serious this time, especially given the toll of attacks on his forces.

Don't get me wrong -- having Sadr convert his efforts to politics will be a major victory for the US on a number of levels, as even the New York Times' Dexter Filkins suggests. First, it removes a potential security problem for Iraqi and US forces in Iraq, especially in the Shi'ite areas that should be more sympathetic towards American forces. Second, it endorses the US/UK strategy for bringing peace through democracy. Third, it marginalizes any other insurgent movements as Sadr incorporates his efforts into the existing political system.

However, Sadr seems to be like one of those carnival games you see at the fair -- he marches in one direction until you plunk him with a rifle, then he reverses and goes until you plunk him again. He vacillates more on the future of Iraq than John Kerry does, although to be fair, that may be a bit of an exaggeration on Sadr's behalf. All of the about-faces Sadr has made cannot give his fellow Mahdis much confidence in either his political or military leadership, especially after he gave up the Imam Ali shrine. Other Shi'ite leaders note this as well:

For their part, the Shiite party leaders say they welcome Mr. Sadr's entry into the political fray but say he overestimates his popularity.

"He has no support," said Adil Abdul Madhi, the finance minister and a Sciri leader. "You will see that when his hold is broken in these neighborhoods, he will have no support."

Also, the Mahdis have yet to turn over the remnants of their heavy weapons as negotiated by the Iraqis and Sistani after the debacle of Najaf. Until that happens, the political tranformation is just a theoretical possibility and nothing more. Based on his past track record rather than his rational options, I'd guess that Sadr has one more really stupid flip-flop left in him.

Captain's Caption Contest #29: The Enthusiasm Gap

It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! Much has been made about the enthusiasm gap this week, in which 65% of Bush supporters say they enthusiastically back the President, while only 42% of Kerry voters enthusiastically back the Senator. Long-time CQ reader Thief noticed evidence of this enthusiasm gap even within John Kerry's staff:

Thief will be guest-judging this week's entries, so make them good! As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be scanned at the Abilene Kinko's, faxed to CBS News, and used to slander David Strom.) The contest will remain open until 8 PM CT Sunday, October 3rd, at which point the comments will be closed and Thief will pick the winners.

Let the games begin!

BUMP 10-3: Only a few hours left! ...

Democratic Strategists Hiding Teresa Until Election?

The London Telegraph, reporting out of Miami, says that Democratic strategists have ordered Teresa Heinz Kerry to take a lower profile and only appear at small gatherings of the true believers until the election:

Democratic election advisers have ordered Teresa Heinz Kerry to adopt a lower profile in the final stages of the campaign by her husband, Senator John Kerry, for the White House because they fear that she may be alienating voters.

Mrs Heinz Kerry, who as the heiress to the Heinz fortune is one of the world's richest women, has been told to keep out of the spotlight because her outspoken and unpredictable manner is regarded as an electoral liability. ...

Mr Kerry drafted veterans of the Clinton White House, including the former press secretary Joe Lockhart, into his team last month to reinvigorate his campaign. They warned that his wife appeared to be costing him votes and have instructed Mrs Heinz Kerry - who was born in Africa to Portuguese parents - to confine herself to mostly low-key events with only small numbers of voters.

"Teresa simply does not come across well to the general public," said a female Democrat strategist. "Part of that is a suspicion of her foreign roots, I'm afraid. But it's also her manner that puts people off and that has been very frustrating. So now her job is to speak to specific and carefully-chosen groups rather than general campaigning."

I guess that Teresa didn't tell Joe Lockhart to "shove it" or call him a "scumbag" when he made that suggestion. As Philip Sherwell notes, apart from her silent appearance at the debate, she has only spoken to small groups of people in little-covered engagements while John Kerry heads to larger campaign rallies. Instead of introducing her husband after an opening speech -- which is how the events were structured earlier in the campaign -- Teresa now sticks to the small, humanitarian photo-ops that are likely to attract little attention and less controversy:

Between meeting a group of Cuban pensioners and victims of the recent hurricanes in Palm Beach, she spent an hour at a community centre in Miami's Little Haiti district, a rundown quarter of dollar stores and car repair yards.

Elegantly dressed in a brown trouser suit and pink pinstripe blouse, Mrs Heinz Kerry switched seamlessly between English and French as she asked people about the devastating impact of Hurricane Jeanne on Haiti. Neither she nor the immigrants from the Caribbean's poorest country seemed to find the encounter incongruous, and the audience was clearly delighted to receive such a prestigious visitor.

National media has been kept apart from Teresa, as only local reporters have been given access for interviews. No one wonders why, either.

France, Russia, China Cheated Oil-For-Food: London Times

As further evidence rolls in about European complicity in the record-breaking corruption at Turtle Bay within the UN Oil-For-Food program, the notion of French cooperation against anything involving Saddam Hussein increasingly looks like utopian fantasy rather than rational options (via Instapundit):

A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations’ oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it. The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.

A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.

The report was drawn up on behalf of the interim Iraqi government in preparation for a possible legal action against those who may have illicitly profited under Saddam. The Iraqis hired the London-based accountants KPMG and lawyers Freshfields to advise on future action.

It details a catalogue of alleged bribery and corruption perpetrated by Saddam under the UN programme, revealing how the regime lined its pockets and those of influential politicians, journalists and UN officials.

The UNSC was fatally compromised on Iraq due to the millions of dollars flowing to three nations with veto power on the council: France, Russia, and China. Nor was that an accident, according to the Times of London. Saddam specifically made sure that the oil and cash flowed to those veto-holding nations that could possibly remain in his corner, assuming (correctly) that the US and UK would always oppose his ambitions regardless of oil flow.

As Glenn says, readers in the blogosphere will hardly find this surprising. The list of beneficiaries from Saddam's kickbacks already demonstrated last winter that the French and Russians, at least, had healthy economic incentives to prop Saddam's regime up as long as the OFF program allowed him complete economic control over Iraq. They allowed Saddam to pocket billions of dollars during those years as his people starved, and these same nations turned around and blamed the US and the UK for the poverty and misery the sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people. It's hard to measure the cynicism involved in that; it's simply breathtaking.

The American media has not paid much attention to this, and one can see why. If the American people ever realized the extent to which the UNSC sold out to Saddam, the UN would be finished as a political force within the United States and the globalists within the political establishment here would be completely discredited, including John Kerry. Those who search for legitimacy among such thieves and backstabbers are doomed to bitter failure, and those who believe they see it are blind.

Dodgers Slam Giants To Win The West

As any Dodger fan will tell you, the final weekend of a pennant race in Los Angeles evokes thrills and chills -- thrills for the possibility of the Boys in Blue getting a playoff slot, and chills because inevitably we have to go through the hated San Francisco Giants to get there. When only one of the two rivals have a shot at the playoffs, the other always relishes the opportunity to send them home for an early vacation. But when they're fighting each other for that spot, the tension can be unbearable.

This weekend, the Dodgers needed only to win one game against the Giants to clinch the division, and they lost the first one on Friday. I was prepared to write a celebratory post on Friday night -- stayed up late to do it -- but unfortunately, the Giants hung tough. Yesterday's game looked like it would bring the same news, but the Dodgers showed their mettle unlike anything we've seen since Game 1 of the 1988 World Series:

Down by three runs entering the ninth inning, the Dodgers had already scored three times and there was still only one out. With the Giant defense playing in, all that was needed was a fly ball or a deep grounder to get the winning run home.

"I wanted to enjoy the atmosphere," said the 39-year-old Finley, a 16-year veteran. "I knew I would get it done."

Did he ever. Finley got his fly ball on the second pitch from Franklin, a fastball that cleared the wall in right field at the 375-foot sign, a grand slam to give the Dodgers a 7-3 victory, a franchise-record 53 comeback victories and, most important, the championship of the National League West Division for the first time in nine years.

Unfortunately, being so far away from LA, I don't get the TV coverage of the team that I used to get when I lived there. I haven't been to Dodger Stadium, which is truly one of the most beautiful ballparks in the country, since 1997. But I think I'm correct when I tell you that the 2004 Dodgers have more heart and more desire than any team since that last championship. Coming back from three runs down in the bottom of the ninth to win the division is legendary, and Steve Finley may wind up being this season's Kirk Gibson.

Congratulations to the Dodgers. Now I'll get to watch a few games on TV. Let's go all the way!

Addendum: Not to sell the Angels short, either, because they won their division yesterday, too -- the first time both teams have qualified for the playoffs in the same year, and they did it on the same day. I like the Minnesota Twins, but I've spent my share of time at the Big A/Edison Field, too. A Freeway Series between the Dodgers and Angels would be a blast.

Obeidi, Part III

Frequent CQ contributor Bandit points me to this Los Angeles Times article on Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, about whom I have written two posts. Obeidi ran the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program during the run-up to the first Gulf War, and afterwards managed to hide the core of his research -- and a prototype centrifuge for enriching uranium -- from UN weapons inspectors until the American invasion in early 2003.

The Times gives a more personal view of Obeidi than the Scotsman article did and touches less on Saddam's desire to keep the nuclear-weapon development option open for his post-sanctions ambitions. Bob Drogin does report that Obeidi had more help than he first let on, and that more of his colleagues have evaded accounting than first thought:

But it is far less clear what happened to most of the 500 other scientists U.S. officials considered to be at the core of Hussein's programs to build missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

U.S. officials have intercepted offers from Iran in recent months to hire several former Iraqi nuclear and missile scientists. None are known to have gone to Tehran, which Washington believes is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

But U.S. officials are also concerned about the danger that remains inside Iraq. "The immediate fear is the proximity of these scientists to the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq," a U.S. official who travels frequently to Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "That has become a compelling issue for us."

Two of the missing scientists were Obeidi's primary assistants, which would certainly be cause for alarm. Drogin also reports that some of the Iraqi nuclear and WMD scientists have gone to work for "other Arab nations," which given the options in that area, doesn't exactly give me peace of mind, either. And again, Drogin and Obeidi emphasize that Hussein actively took steps to prepare for a revitalization of his WMD programs after the end of international sanctions, even if Saddam increasingly appeared insane:

Duelfer also has told colleagues that evidence indicated that Hussein intended to mobilize his scientists to resume production of illicit arms if Iraq ever were free of U.N. inspections, trade sanctions and other international oversight. He found evidence of small clandestine laboratories, procurement of banned materials overseas, and work on illegal missiles and drones. ...

Obeidi, who met Hussein three times, said there was "no question" that the former Iraqi president wanted to revive his illicit weapons programs, but added that it wasn't clear whether the dictator knew his regime had no active programs to build them. Obeidi said Hussein was a "lunatic" whose grip on reality was increasingly unstable in the years before the war.

Obeidi's assurance that Saddam was a hallucinatory lunatic who had no clue that his WMD programs had halted offer no assurances to anyone. First, Obeidi himself along with the IIS ensured that enough of their previous work remained hidden under his lotus tree that would allow them a huge head start on rebuilding the nuclear program. Secondly, with France, Germany, Russia, and several members of Congress pushing the US to conclude sanctions with Iraq, we would have been trusting a lunatic to act rationally with these capabilities.

How can anyone stand in front of the world and say that Saddam was insane -- but that he offered no danger to the US and the West? At least Obeidi doesn't claim that; he's made it clear that deposing Saddam was the only way to keep him from developing and using WMD. He also tells Drogin who the first target would have been:

By the time the Persian Gulf War began in January 1991, he had built a prototype centrifuge system capable of turning Iraq's small stockpile of enriched uranium into weapons-grade fuel for a crude atomic bomb. Obeidi suspects that Hussein would have used it against Israel.

"We were so close to getting a bomb," Obeidi said. "We were so close to getting tens or hundreds of bombs. To us, the sky was the limit.... Looking back, the world was lucky."

In order to escape the invasion, Obeidi turned to David Albright, who had been with the IAEA. Albright used his connections with the US government to get the CIA to spirit Obeidi and his family out of Iraq, along with the nuclear research and the prototype centrifuge buried in his yard. And Albright notes that the Iraqi program could have easily built a bomb with the materials it had in 1991, but just hadn't realized it.

Once again, Obeidi shows us that further delay and further inspections meant little to the Hussein regime. Saddam planned for the eventual collapse of the sanctions and a return to normal trade so that he could once again build his doomsday weapons in the dark. And once built, those weapons could have been used anywhere by anyone Saddam wished, including people like Abu Nidal and Abu Masab al-Zarqawi and others like them Saddam hid in Iraq.

One Down

US and Iraqi forces completed their liberation of Samarra from the control of terrorist forces, having seized all government and Muslim facilities and have embarked on door-to-door searches for weapons and stragglers, the AP reports:

Iraqi security forces patrolled the streets, and U.S. troops went door to door searching for weapons and fighters Sunday after the military claimed success in wresting control of Samarra from Sunni insurgents in fierce fighting. ...

U.S. commanders have praised the performance of Iraqi security forces in the offensive in Samarra, 60 miles northwest of Baghdad, calling the assault a successful first step in a major push to wrest key areas from insurgents before January elections.

As the gunfire subsided, Samarra residents emerged from their homes on Sunday to survey the damage and bury the dead. At the main hospital, bodies in black plastic bags were loaded on a truck to be taken to the cemetery.

The military says 125 rebels have been killed and 88 captured since the operation started early Friday.

Iraq's Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib remarked that the Samarra operation shows that the Iraqis have demonstrated their ability to move from defensive missions to offensive. It also shows that Iraqi forces have the will to fight against Iraqi terrorists as well as foreigners who have come into Iraq to derail their move towards free elections in January. Many people have questioned whether the new Iraqi security forces could follow an order to attack; that question has been answered.

While some residents of Samarra complained bitterly about the military operation and collateral casualties, others acknowledged the relief from the oppression of the Islamofascist rule under which they lived. The next order of business for the interim government and the US in Samarra will be to ensure the swift restoral of services to its residents, including electricity, sewage, and civilian law enforcement. Water supplies have been restored already, and the faster everything else comes back on line, the more secure the victory will be.

Next up will either be Fallujah or Sadr City in Baghdad, and I'd lay bets on Fallujah. First, Fallujah can be isolated, where Sadr City is pretty tightly integrated into Baghdad and presents more of a military challenge. And make no mistake -- the US and the Iraqis no longer see any diplomatic solutions to the so-called insurgency. Peace accords in all three areas held for little time and no gain, and with elections around the corner, no one wants to see terrorists controlling any territory.

The coalition has sent the message in Samarra that sieges are no longer in the strategic playbook, either. US forces continued softening up Fallujah by air in preparation for a Samarra-style full incursion, and last night hit a major weapons depot, causing 45 minutes of secondary explosions. Since these forces use precision weapons, such a bulls-eye shows an increased intelligence capability in Fallujah since the April siege. The population of Fallujah may or may not be sympathetic as a whole to the Ba'athist remnants and Islamofascist lunatics holding the city in their grip, but obviously some people would be very happy to see them gone -- and the Iraqis and Americans have found them useful for their operations.