Dafydd: Why Do the Bombings Continue?

Actually, the answer is absurdly simple. There are many, many, many Sunnis in Iraq who are not themselves terrorists; but they know who the terrorists are, where they can be found, and they know that they are plotting to murder dozens of children, women, and other innocents. But because the victims are largely Shia, these Sunni simply do not care enough to become "rats" or "tattletales;" thus the bombings continue.

This probably describes a minority of Sunni, but it must be a sizeable minority, and sufficiently clustered together that there are "safe zones" known to the terrorists where they can plan, plot, and produce their deadly product. That is why the Iraqi forces cannot round them all up: a core group of several thousand are being shielded and supported by a group of cheerleaders for al-Qaeda among the Sunni in Iraq.

There might be a smaller group of Shia in Iraq who are also allowing al-Qaeda to operate freely; but they would have to be in the remote frontier areas, perhaps close to the Iranian border. The deadliest group is the one in the Sunni Triangle.

(By the way, please notice that I am boycotting apostrophes as parts of names. I refuse to jump through that hoop any longer. This is a transliteration anyway. I don't know if there are apostrophes in Arabic, but if they want them, they can keep them. In English, it's UnAmerican. No, it's worse than that... it must be French. In any event, out they go! I'll keep them for contractions and possessives, as God intended; but until the president becomes Ge'orge B'ush and we all go down to the Ga'alleri'ya, I eschew them for all other purposes.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, "Sunni Triangle."

Maybe it's due to fear: the Sunni who know where the terrorists are also know what they're capable of doing if doublecrossed. Or mayhap it's because of pent-up rage among some Sunni because they are no longer the masters. I'm sure a great many of these people are literally so low on the social-evolutionary scale that they believe only members of their own tribe are "people," and members of other tribes are subhumans who can be killed without moral guilt. This is the essence of tribalism, and it exists in every country; but moreso in tribal countries, of course -- hence the name.

But for whatever reason, logically, in order for such a widespread campaign of arbitrary bombings, mostly among the Shia, to continue (such as the one today at a gas station that slew more than fifty innocents), there must be a large number of terrorists; and such a large number cannot operate invisibly. They are known; they are observed. And they are allowed to continue.

The terrorists desperately want a civil war. And eventually, light will dawn on the Sunni: they will finally realize that if the terrorists are successful in provoking such a civil war, the Sunni will be annihilated. They will be slaughtered like goats before a feast, because they are vastly outnumbered... and because after decades of fear, terror, and oppression, the Shia are extraordinarily hungry men.

This is really not very complicated stuff. I'm articulating it here, but I know I'm preaching to the choir: everyone here knows this as well as I. At the moment, Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the Shiite members of the government are managing to hold the Shia back from a mass wave of revenge and slaughter. But with sufficient pounding, and with an odious enough indifference by the aforementioned minority of Sunni who know, the dam will burst -- and then, the deluge.

That would be terrible, especially for the Sunni. It would be moderately bad for us; but the country of Iraq, and its nascent democracy, would survive... because the Shia have already caught the democracy bug from the Kurds and from us, and they will rebuild a republic from the ashes of the empire that the Baathists built. But it would take a long time, and there would be a lot of dead to bury and revenge-ridden Iraqis to eliminate.

So really, the only question is one of perception: how bright are the Sunni of Iraq? Typically, a civil war does not spring forth fully grown. There is a continuum of rationality among any group of people, and like most things in a statistical world, it tends to fall into a bell curve. At the fringes, there is a small percent of Shia that are irrational enough to retaliate against the Sunni by bombing their mosques and murdering their children. But a "small percent" of millions of people is thousands of people, and that is a lot of potential Shiite suicide bombers.

If this goes on, what will happen is that Ayatollah Sistani and Ibrahim Jaafari will gradually begin to lose control of these fringes. Sunni will begin to die in significant numbers of suicide and other attacks carried out, not by Zarqawi's al-Qaeda, but by enraged Shia... perhaps relatives or lovers of those killed in an al-Qaeda attack. This is Zarqawi's plan, of course, and he would cheer, expecting to see a full-scale civil war that somehow, magically, will result in Iraq coming under the control of Zarqawi, or at least once again under the rule of the Baath Party, with whom Zarqawi can deal.

But it doesn't have to happen that way. When the Sunni suddenly wake up to the reality that it is they who are getting killed -- their children, their women, their innocents -- when their markets and mosques are being bombed, when their leaders are being ambushed with IEDs, when they start being driven out of mixed neighborhoods by irate Shia... that is their last chance at reclaiming rationality.

The Sunni can at that point realize that their only hope of avoiding a civil war that would obliterate them is to begin, en masse, dropping a dinar on the vast number of Sunni terrorists among them. They can tell Coalition members; they can tell Iraqi police and soldiers. Makes no difference.

But we will know that the Sunni have finally turned the corner when we begin reading about sudden sweeps that net thousands of suspects; when there is a sudden mass exodus across the Syrian border (outward bound); and when the bombers suddenly fall silent.

If that happens, then the Sunni component of Iraq will be saved. If it never does... well, c'est la guerre.

More Democratic Fantasyland On 9/11

Cynthia McKinney has returned to her old tricks in Congress. Working through her new organization, 9/11 Citizens Watch, she plans on hosting a full-day "Congressional" briefing for Representatives and their staffs on the supposed lack of progress in investigating the 9/11 attacks. Much like the John Conyers "impeachment" panel based on the Downing Street Memos, McKinney and a couple of cohorts plan on offering their wild conspiracy theories in the guise of a sober, official hearing:

On July 22, 2005, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) will host a full-day briefing, co-sponsored by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), and other sponsors, for Members of Congress and their staffs in the Caucus Room, Cannon House Office Building, Room 345, Independence Ave. & First Street SE, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. One year after the release of the 9/11 Commission Final Report many questions about what transpired on September 11, 2001 and who should be held accountable still remain unanswered. Serious flaws and omissions in the Report have been addressed by whistleblowers and academics. Well known researchers and authors have put the events of that day into historical perspective, and have suggested possible alternatives to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission regarding intelligence reform, domestic and foreign policy. The hard evidence has yet to be properly evaluated, and points to the need for full transparency, release of information, and continued probative investigations to have an effective, democratic response to the crisis that confronts all of us.

It's quite a stretch to claim that the "hard evidence has yet to be properly evaluated"; the evidence at hand has been pored over thoroughly by experts, the media, and pundits. However, it's vague enough that McKinney can present an elastic definition of what qualifies as "properly". She gets a bit more specific after that:

Family members of the victims of 9/11 will present a “Report Card” to address their still unanswered questions about the events of 9/11 and the lack of accountability for the security and intelligence failures that may have allowed these events to happen. Other experts will speak to the flaws in the 9/11 Commission’s process, including conflicts of interest, lack of transparency, investigative rigor and public input, and the many whistleblowers ignored by the Commission.

I have criticized the 9/11 Commission's composition too, mainly in their inclusion of Jamie Gorelick when she should have instead been questioned on her role in keeping intelligence and law-enforcement operations from sharing information. That alone could have helped the government connect the dots, although it's still questionable whether enough intelligence had actually been received to piece together that particular attack ahead of time. I don't recall that the Commission ignored many whistleblowers, though. In fact, I thought they had a lot of people testifying in public who had little to add in that venue except political grandstanding, especially Richard Clarke.

In the next paragraph, McKinney gets closer to the point (emphases mine):

One panel of experts will explore the omissions and errors in the Commission’s Final Report, including the timeline of NORAD/FAA and P-56 defense responses that day, the suspects and plot, the background of Al Qaeda and bin Laden, the involvement of other countries, the obstruction of investigations by the FBI and CIA, and foreknowledge and forewarnings prior to the attacks. Another panel will place 9/11 into historical perspective and look at the flawed assumptions that misled the Commission’s work, including the politics of illegal drugs, oil investments, covert operations and terrorism, as well as past covert operations like Contragate and the rise of the neo-conservatives and their agenda.

Ah, now we get it. McKinney has returned to her nutty conspiracy theories that got her booted from Congress for one term. In 2002, she floated the notion that 9/11 was a conspiracy to benefit corporations close to the GOP, since the attacks resulted in increased defense spending. Now she apparently intends on expanding her paranoid vision to include oil cartels, the Colombian drug trade, and the Nicaraguan freedom fighters.

If anyone can figure out a coherent rationale for 9/11 that encompasses all of those elements, please be sure to forward it to McKinney's psychiatrist.

The last topic reveals much about McKinney. The "rise of the neo-conservatives" sounds ominous, and in McKinney's world, that has stood for a Jewish cabal that secretly controls the American government. McKinney's father, Georgia politician Bill McKinney, has had plenty to say about the Jews while working on his daughter's campaigns:

That is McKinney's explanation for her 2002 primary defeat, and she is sticking to it. But there are other explanations. Her father, Georgia state legislator Billy McKinney, shared his version with an Atlanta television reporter on August 19, 2002, the night before she lost. The reporter had asked Billy McKinney about his daughter's use of a years-old, moth-balled endorsement from former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young. Such endorsements were worthless, the elder McKinney replied, because "Jews have bought everybody. Jews." In case the reporter didn't understand, he spelled the word: "J-E-W-S."

Just as at Conyers' impeachment hearings, expect this debate to draw out the anti-Semitic lunatics with their flyers charging that the Bush administration serves only Ariel Sharon's interests. Her investigation into neocons will attract them like flies. And like Conyers' gathering, it will provide moments of both political hilarity and sheer embarrassment for the Democrats. (h/t: Pirates Cove)

Northern Alliance Radio Today

I'll be rejoining the Northern Alliance Radio Network today after a two-week hiatus in Washington DC. We start off our first hour at noon CDT at AM 1280 The Patriot, where CQ readers outside of the Twin Cities can listen on the Internet stream, talking about the week in review. In the second hour, Bernard Goldberg joins us to discuss his book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37. I interviewed Mr. Goldberg for the book's release -- in fact, I got the first post-release interview -- and I know you'll enjoy the conversation. Speaking of conversation, you're invited to join in by calling 651-289-4488!

SDA Nails CBC Investigation Into Grewal 'Donations'

Kate at Small Dead Animals finds a major problem with the CBC's reporting on donations made to Gurmant Grewal's political campaign. She has a copy of a letter from the Conservative Party to Terry Milewski at CBC that outlines the problems with the CBC report -- before the CBC went to air with it:

As backgrounder on this complainant, it is a well-known fact that he is a very good friend of Ujjal Dosanjh. So good a friend is he of Mr. Dosanjh that just after the Taping Incident became public, and Mr., Dosanjh's central and principle role in that event became known to the public, Mr. Mann telephoned Mr. Grewal and voiced extreme displeasure with Mr. Grewal's actions. And then just a few short weeks later, up pops a complaint relayed to you regarding two cheques. Mann has provided you with two items, one for $1800. and another for $600. In the matter of the item for $600., our research shows that this item followed the same pattern as Mr. Dhahan's above. Namely, it was used to help pay for the December 2003 dinner, this cheque cleared in nearly identical fashion to that of Mr. Dhahan's, and all of the above questions must be asked of Mr. Mann.

Regarding the cheque in the amount of $1800. our research shows that this cheque was made payable to the Nina Grewal Campaign. This item represents the approximate cash value of the telephone call centre system Mr. Mann supplied to be used by both the Gurmant and Nina Grewal campaigns in June 2004. The reverse of that cheque clearly shows it was properly endorsed by the Registered Agent for Nina Grewal, and deposited to the EDA account. The lack of receipt on this account appears to be a simple clerical error related to the change in volunteer Registered Agents for the Fleetwood-Port Kells campaign. The new Registered Agent assumed his predecessor had issued all official receipts up to the time of the changeover. Our investigation indicates that all of the paperwork and reports are correct, and an official receipt will be issued to Mr. Mann forthwith. (On a perhaps embarrassing note, this sort of thing does happen from time to time, given the large number of items processed by volunteers during a campaign, but we do try to do our best)

This brings us to the Imperial Plumbing cheque in the amount of $1000. Here we must admit we are a bit stumped, not the least due to the fact that the copy of the cheque you forwarded to us doesn't appear to have been endorsed by anyone on the reverse, and the cheque seems to have been cleared at the Khalsa Credit Union the same day it was drawn. Equally baffling is the fact the item was processed at a branch of that credit union about 20 miles from where the cheque was prepared. We are even more baffled by this one, when we examine the date the transaction(s) occurred. Our research indicates that on that date, Mr. Grewal was in Ottawa, and either in his office, or in the House of Commons ("Hansard" can actually verify this).

This would place Mr. Grewal at a considerable, and verifiable distance from where this cheque was issued, which would have made it remarkably difficult for him to have cashed this cheque made payable to him personally.

Kate has much more on this issue. It looks, especially in regard to the latter check, that someone may be attempting to post checks purposefully to falsely incriminate Grewal, or at least to discredit him. Keep up to date with Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Europe Undermining African Debt Relief?

Normally the United States gets cast in the role of bad guy for insisting on economic and political reform as the basis for aid, especially to Africa. However, the Guardian (UK) reports that a group of smaller European nations has attempted to "undermine" the G8 agreement at Gleneagles pushed by the Live-8 movement by tying debt relief to verifiable reform:

A group of small EU countries are seeking to water down some of the key proposals agreed last week by G8 leaders in Gleneagles, leaked documents have revealed.

The documents, which were obtained by the Jubilee Debt Campaign group, showed that Belgium was leading an initiative that would make it more difficult for 18 of the world's poorest countries to be granted 100% debt relief. ...

Under the deal brokered by Tony Blair at last week's G8 summit 18 of the world's poorest countries on the HIPC list - highly indebted poor countries - which have met debt relief criteria in the past will have 100% of their debt cancelled. Debts to the World Bank and the African Development Bank will be funded by the G8 countries, while debts to the International Monetary Fund will be met from "existing IMF resources".

But Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg are arguing that the IMF should still exercise strict controls over the 18 countries by being given the right to approve key economic policies.

The proposal was made by Willy Kiekens, the Belgian representative on the IMF's executive board, at a meeting on June 22 after G8 finance ministers had approved the 100% debt cancellation deal.

Calling for debt relief to be phased in over time, Mr Kiekens said it would enable the fund "to continue having active policy dialogues with poor countries, monitor their policies closely and provide financial support in a phased manner and on condition of the implementation of adequate policies".

The US may find itself surprised to be surpassed in fiscal conservatism by Luxembourg, Austria, and Belgium. What Kiekens proposes actually matches the general rhetoric of the Live-8 organizers, who pointedly insisted that aid would require the establishment of political reforms. Kiekens and the European countries involved simply propose extending this sensible prerequisite to debt relief as well as explicit aid payments.

Politically, however, this would prove difficult. For one thing, the G8 conference has already committed to the debt relief, and reversing that decision in any way risks losing all the political capital acquired from this agreement. Amending the agreement would require at least another summit to table proposals on the various thresholds for cooperation and debt-relief scales based on specific milestones -- the exact kind of details that will have to come later when discussing aid, of course, but that the G8 avoided in Gleneagles on debt relief. The Kiekens group should have spoken at Gleneagles or even before, with specific recommendations ready for review at the top-level meeting.

Still, the Kiekens effort makes financial and strategic sense and should have been considered at Gleneagles. One wouldn't get that same level of sense from Kiekens' critics, who predictably reacted with wild emotion and little logic to the rational counterproposal of the three-nation group:

Stephen Rand, co-chair of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: "These proposals are in direct contradiction of what millions of campaigners and more importantly people who were poor were told by the G8. The response of the African delegates at the IMF [who placed their concerns on the record at the meeting] will be amplified around the world by the outrage, anger and disgust at the west that this betrayal will prompt if the G8 let it happen."

Martin Powell, of the World Development Movement, said: "The G8 controls the IMF, and nothing can pass there without their support. If this proposal goes ahead the G8 will be responsible for the greatest political betrayal in the history of their meetings. The one redeeming feature of an otherwise woefully inadequate debt deal will have been lost."

The greatest political betrayal? Please. The proposal does not attempt to eliminate African debt relief. It only asks for verifiable reform as a prerequisite. I don't know if it's practical at this stage to adopt such measures, but it hardly qualifies as "the greatest political betrayal" for those nations being asked to foot the bill for debt cancellation to consider some preconditions for spending the billions of dollars necessary to implement it. It's this kind of hysteria that inevitably attaches itself to these aid movements that cause rational people to roll their eyes and to disassociate themselves from their causes, no matter how just they may be.

Tinkering with the debt-relief pact now probably would not do much good and would likely delay reform and constructive aid. However, the irrationality of the African aid movements may do even more damage to their cause in the long run. Hysteria and hyperbole do not make for strong credibility.

Abbas No Match For Hamas In Gaza

As could have been predicted by almost anyone watching events in the Palestinian territories, Hamas proved itself the stronger faction in an internecine confrontation yesterday that wound up drawing an Israeli response. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, under pressure to curb violence and disarm terrorists, finally authorized his security group to use force against Hamas in Gaza to keep them from firing rockets at Israelis. The patronage-riddled Fatah police fared badly against the more popular Hamas terrorists:

Palestinian police and Hamas gunmen fought running battles, killing at least two civilian bystanders, after Mr Abbas sought to exert his authority on the militants who threaten to wreck the planned Israeli withdrawal from settlements in Gaza next month. ...

The crisis in Gaza began late on Thursday when Hamas attacked Jewish targets. A volley of four rockets was launched towards the village of Netiv Ha'asara, which lies just inside Israel, killing a 22-year-old woman.

The Israeli air force launched the first retaliatory strikes within hours but the violence worsened when forces loyal to Mr Abbas tried to disarm the militants.

Police attempted to stop a car carrying six Hamas operatives as they were preparing a fresh rocket attack. The police are believed to have opened fire, injuring the six men, prompting an immediate and overwhelming response from other Hamas gunmen.

Hundreds of civilians came out to watch the clashes, in which Hamas used mortars, and two young men were killed when they were hit in the crossfire.

Hamas defiantly continued firing salvoes of rockets at Jewish property yesterday, prompting the Israeli air force to respond with a series of retaliatory strikes by helicopter gun-ships.

In one strike on Gaza City, a van carrying a group of Hamas militants and a cache of homemade rockets was destroyed. The explosion scattered debris for hundreds of yards.

Israel has already agreed to pull out of Gaza, but has repeatedly warned Abbas that they will not leave "under fire". If Abbas cannot make the attacks stop, the Israelis will not leave. They will also ensure, as they did yesterday, that someone effectively stops the attacks, and if Abbas can't do it, then the IDF will.

Abbas has proven over and over again that he has failed in the role for which the West has cast him as the Palestinian peace partner. He came to power during a Hamas boycott that severely depressed voter participation throughout the Palestinian territories; the only way that Fatah could get the turnout above 30% was to extend the polling hours and eliminate most of the identification processes. That allowed Fatah activists to vote several times, pushing the supposed turnout to a respectable level.

Since then, each election has shown Hamas and its nihilistic program of terrorism and all-out war with Israel as most popular with the Palestinians. The so-called moderates of Fatah have little mandate, therefore, for peace. Their security forces consist mainly of former terrorists and no-shows, patronage positions instead of professional law enforcement personnel. It all amounts to gang warfare in the territories, and up to now, it looks like Hamas has the more powerful and most popular gang.

This isn't a road map to peace or a plan to build a state. What we have is a clear path to a civil war that may already be in progress. Israel's pullout will remove the one common enemy in Gaza that has kept the gangs from attacking each other before now, and what the IDF leaves behind will quickly turn to rubble. Unfortunately, it might take that kind of civil war to convince the Palestinian people that terrorism doesn't do anything but bring destruction and chaos on those who use it.

Why Can't The Gray Lady Read?

The New York Times reports on a memo that Colin Powell reportedly carried aboard Air Force One on a trip to Africa the week before Robert Novak named Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. The importance of this memo revolves around the people who accompanied the President and Powell on the Africa trip and the fact that it describes the circumstances of Joe Wilson's hiring for the mission to Niger. However, the report by Richard Stevenson makes several factual errors that even a quick perusal of the Intelligence Committee report would correct.

The first error committed by Stevenson is one of omission. The Times has been beating a supposed Karl Rove connection to death over the past few weeks. However, if one looks at the contact dates for the two conversations Rove had with reporters -- July 9 for Novak, July 11 for Matt Cooper -- obviously Rove didn't go to Africa and didn't have access to the memo. After all, both reporters called Rove, not the other way around, and both started their conversations on different topics that hardly would have been so pressing that they would have been redirected by satellite to AF1.

So if the memo does hold any key to the leak, Rove can't be the leaker.

The other errors misrepresent what happened in Niger and how the CIA selected Joe Wilson as its investigator. Stevenson writes this about the Niger information:

On Thursday, a person who has been officially briefed on the matter said that Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had spoken about Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak before Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003, identifying the C.I.A. officer by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Rove, the person said, told Mr. Novak he had heard much the same information, making him one of two sources Mr. Novak cited for his information.

But the person said Mr. Rove first heard from Mr. Novak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife and her precise role in the C.I.A.'s decision to send her husband to Africa to investigate a report, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear material there.

Had Stevenson actually read the SSIC report, he would know that the report in fact was substantiated by Wilson's investigation. Iraq had on at least one occasion in the three years prior to Wilson's trip attempted to open secret trade negotiations with Niger:

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

Given that Niger exports a total of four commodities, that assumption of Iraqi interest in uranium ore should have appeared rather solid. No one goes into secret talks to discuss the purchase of livestock, cowpeas, or onions, the only other Nigerien exports. This demonstrated that Saddam still planned on pursuing WMD and had actively searched for new resources for a nuclear-weapons program. Stevenson got this exactly wrong.

The other major factual error comes in Stevenson's description of the role of Valerie Plame in Wilson's selection. He underplays Plame's efforts to get her husband involved in the Niger mission:

The notes, which did not identify Ms. Wilson or her husband by name, said the meeting was "apparently convened by" the wife of a former ambassador "who had the idea to dispatch" him to Niger because of his contacts in the region. Mr. Wilson had been ambassador to Gabon.

The Intelligence Committee report said the former ambassador's wife had a different account of her role, saying she introduced him and left after about three minutes.

Talk about cherry-picking! Yes, the above does describe what Plame did, but it leaves out a few other items. Again, had Stevenson bothered to read the relevant portions of the SSIC report, he would have found that Plame was much more enthusiastic about hiring hubby Joe:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Plame didn't just make an off-hand suggestion and then play hostess once. She repeatedly suggested Wilson for the job, wrote a memorandum requesting him for the mission, and then delivered the assignment to Wilson herself.

All this begs the question: why was Plame so set on using her husband for the job? Wilson told the SSIC that she had characterized the initial report of Iraq-Niger contacts as "crazy". After Wilson returned, he reported that the Iraqis had indeed tried to start trade talks in secret with Niger, and that the Nigerian PM believed that to be an effort to get yellowcake uranium. However, after the invasion of Iraq, Wilson started leaking a warped version to journalists such as Walter Pincus, also described in the SSIC report and determined to be false.

It looks like Plame wanted a specific result from the Niger investigation, and she selected the man who she felt would guarantee it.

Finally, Stevenson holds off until the last paragraph a little fact that tends to undermine the entire notion of this AF1 memo sourcing Novak's column:

The information in the State Department memorandum generally tracked the information Mr. Novak laid out for Mr. Rove in their conversation, according to the account of their exchange provided by the person briefed on what Mr. Rove has told investigators.

But it appears to differ in at least one way, raising questions about whether it was the original source of the material that ultimately made its way to Mr. Novak. In his July 14, 2003, column, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson as Valerie Plame. The State Department memorandum referred to her as Valerie Wilson, according to the government official who reread it on Friday.

Given that her identity as Valerie Plame caused the entire brouhaha -- after all, Wilson was known to be married -- it seems unlikely that Novak got his information directly or indirectly from this memo. Why didn't Stevenson put that in the lead of the article? It seems somewhat more important than a ten-paragraph recap of the history of the leak.

Given the Times' deep involvement in this case, I'd say that these mistakes are either grossly inexcusable or deliberate attempts to warp the record -- perhaps both.

A Note About E-Mails

I get a lot of e-mail based on the work done here at CQ. Unfortunately, I also get lots of spam, and so I have had to set a spam filter on my e-mail account that takes some of the pressure off. I also have had to get a lot more selective about how to filter it. In order to make sure that your e-mail gets through, I thought I would let readers know how I'm approaching this issue.

* Anything that doesn't include my e-mail address in the To: field will likely wind up in the spam bucket. Broadcast e-mails, except from services to which I've specifically subscribed, clog up my inbox and usually have a sales pitch involving former Nigerian princes and people who feel happy to be leaving me money in their will.

* Except for known sources, e-mails with nothing but a URL will get ignored. If you have an interesting link, please take a couple of sentences to explain what it is.

* Large attachments to unsolicited e-mails will be stripped off. That's not just a personal preference, it's a safety issue for the computer.

* Broadcast e-mails that claim to have information that will "knock them [the larger bloggers] off their dead asses and spill their coffee lattes" will not only be ignored, but the sender's e-mail will get added to my spam filter. I don't know what universe a handful of e-mailers live in, but in the real world, insulting people doesn't get you links back from them or your e-mail read. [Yes, I really did receive that today, as did a number of other bloggers, I suspect.]

* I don't enable read-receipts. Send your e-mail, but don't demand that I send something back unless we're transacting money.

Other than the above, I read all my e-mail and consider it one of the perks of having a blog. Thank you!

Dafydd: WHO are YOU?

According to this, I'm Jean-Luc Picard.

Hindrocket over at Power Line is Yoda, as is Hugh Hewitt; and Lileks is Duke Paul Atreides from the Frank Herbert novel Dune.

I'm not sure what any of this means; but there's a free meal in here somewhere, and I'm going to find it.

UPDATE: I'm married to Yoda. Hm... maybe that should be "Yodette."

Dafydd: Who's Your Daddy?

As the Captain reported below, a power-mad three-judge panel of the D.C. circuit has made a dreadful ruling.

What the hell you been smoking, ab Hugh? The Hamdan ruling was incredibly good! We need those military tribunals to --

Not THAT ruling, you nitwit! I'm talking about the ruling that upheld Judge Kollar-Kotelly's ruling that the FEC had to start regulating blogs and other internet "communication" under the McCain-Feingold "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," treating them not like the sainted "exempt media" (the MSM), but rather as if blogs were the equivalent of political ads... forbidding us from blogging about candidates within sixty days of an election, for example, without having our posts being assigned a dollar value and counted as "contributions" to a campaign. This would presumably mean that if I posted about the 2006 race and urged Santorum to be reelected, and if my insights were deemed to be so brilliant as to be worth more than $2000, then I could be arrested or at least fined for making illegal campaign contributions.

That is the ruling I'm discussing now.

Oh, you mean the Shays-Meehan ruling.... Never mind!

All this was covered by the Captain; but I think it important to make it brutally clear who is looking out for us, and contrariwise, who is looking to screw us.

Let's start with the latter; and let's begin with today's ruling and work backwards.

The D.C. Circus decision was not unanimous; it was 2-1. According to AP, the two judges voting in the majority to uphold Kollar-Kotelly (and force the FEC to regulate blogs) were Judge David Tatel and Judge Harry Edwards.

Here is a resource you should bookmark: Judges of the United States Courts. You can look up any federal judge, including some retired judges, and find out his background, who appointed him to the bench, and when he was confirmed.

David Tatel graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1966. From 1969 to 1970, he was executive director of the Chicago Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. From 1972 to 1974, he was merely a director of the same group. Finally, he was Director of the Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under Jimmy Carter, from 1977-1979. In between these, he was in private practice in Chicago until his appointment to the bench.

Tatel was nomianted to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (he was never a judge before that) by William Jefferson Clinton in 1994 and confirmed by the Democratic-controlled senate that same year.

Judge Harry Edwards graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1965. After some private practice, also in Chicago -- I wonder if he knew David Tatel? -- he was a law professor at U of M Law School for five years, then at Harvard for two, then back at UM for three more. During this time, he also served as a "labor arbitrator;" and as chairman of the board for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation -- which us lowly mortals would probably better recognize as Amtrak. "A for-profit company that has never been profitable, Amtrak is almost wholly owned by the US Department of Transportation and receives large subsidies from the federal government," according to Hoovers business researchers.

Edwards was nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals -- also after never having been a judge before, unless you count his stint as an arbitrator -- by James Earl Carter in 1979 and was confirmed by the Democratic-controlled senate in 1980.

I think it fair to say that both Judge Tatel and Judge Edwards are Democrats and leftists who have spent their careers on the Carter side of the fence.

But what about the dissenter, Karen Henderson? The lone voice to vote against this regulation? She held that the congressmen who filed the original lawsuit to force regulation did not have "legal standing" to do so.

Karen LeCraft Henderson graduated from University of North Carolina School of Law in 1969. She was South Carolina's assistant state attorney general from 1973 to 1978, after which she was elevated to senior assistant state attorney general, director of the Special Litigation Section, from 1978 to 1982. That year, she rose to deputy state attorney general, director of the Criminal Division, from 1982-1983.

In other words, she was basically a prosecutor statewide for a decade. After private practice in South Carolina, she was first elevated to the U. S. District Court for the District of South Carolina by Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1986, and confirmed by the Republican-controlled senate that same year. In 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush nominated her to the D.C. Circuit Court, to which she was confirmed (to be fair, here) by the Democratic-controlled senate a month and a half later. Henderson was a protégée of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), according to liberal columnist Al Hunt writing for the Wall Street Journal.

I think it fair to conclude that Judge Henderson is a Republican and probably fairly conservative.

But wait... what about the original judge who decided the lawsuit by finding that blogs and other internet communications needed to be regulated by the FEC?

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was appointed to the D.C. District Court by Bill Clinton in 1997, and (to be fair) confirmed by the Republican-controlled senate that same year. Again, Clinton was not particularly known for nominating Republicans to the bench, so I will conclude that Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a liberal Democrat.

How about the original lawsuit itself? It was filed by the two House sponsors of the BCRA: Rep. Martin Meehan (D-MA) and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT). As we can see, one is a Democrat, the other a Republican.

But what are their actual political leanings? After all, not every Democrat is liberal and not every Republican is conservative. A good way to judge is by looking at the ratings given a politician by Project Vote Smart of Americans For Democratic Action, a very, very, very liberal group.

Rep. Martin Meehan has a 100% rating from the ADA, meaning he voted with the ADA on every vote that they considered... the same as Teddy Kennedy and Barney Frank.

But what about the Republican, Christopher Shays? Connecticut has five representatives, two Dems and three Repubs. Of the three Republican members of the CT delegation, Chris Shays is by far the most liberal, with a solid 70% rating from the ADA; the other two Republicans, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson, have 55% and 45% respectively.

In fact, it eventuates that Chris Shays is the single most liberal Republican in either body of the United States Congress.

No other Republican in the House of Representatives even comes close; none rises above 55%. The only Republican in either body who comes close to Shay's liberal rating on the ADA list is a senator: Olympia Snowe of Maine; but even she has only a 65% rating. The supposedly liberal Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) has but a measley 55%.

I think it quite fair to conclude that the most liberal Republican member of Congress, with a 70% approval rating from the Americans for Democratic Action, is a liberal.

So we have a lawsuit to regulate the internet brought by a Democratic representative who is as liberal as it's possible to be, and by a Republican representative who is the most liberal Republican in either body of the Congress, decided by a liberal Democratic judge, and now affirmed by two liberal Democratic appellate-court judges (with a conservative Republican dissenting).

So now we know who is trying to screw us. But what about who is trying to save us?

The other important D.C. Circuit decision announced today, allowing military tribunals for terrorists at Gitmo to proceed, was unanimous: Judge Arthur Raymond Randolph was appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990; Judge Stephen Fain Williams was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986; and Judge John G. Roberts, jr was appointed by W in 2003.

I hope that answers the question of "who's your daddy."

A Primer On The Credibility Of Joseph Wilson

After all of the hysteria coming from the Left about Karl Rove and his alleged leak of Valerie Plame's status as a covert agent -- for which her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, demanded Rove's firing -- perhaps we need to revisit the Wilsons and their involvement in the Niger investigation.

In his New York Times opinion piece published on July 6, 2003, Wilson claimed that the CIA asked him the previous year to investigate claims that the Iraqis tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. This is the conclusion he said he reached (emphases mine throughout post):

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.

He then claimed to have been shocked to find his report misrepresented:

In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.

Note the differences between the two points in contention. Wilson originally reported that no sale had been completed, which appears accurate. However, he then slyly and subtly changes the argument to claim that his report showed that no attempt had even been made by the Iraqis to trade for yellowcake -- which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found out was false:

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

The intelligence report also said that Nicter's former Minister for Energy and Mines (REDACTED), Mai Manga, stated that there were no sales outside of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) channels since the mid-1980s. He knew of no contracts signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of uranium. He said that an Iranian delegation was interested in purchasing 400 tons of yellowcake from Niger in 1998, but said that no contract was ever signed with Iran. Mai Manga also described how the French mining consortium controls Nigerien uranium mining and keeps the uranium very tightly controlled from the time it is mined until the time it is loaded onto ships in Benin for transport overseas. Mai Manga believed it would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange a special shipment of uranium to a pariah state given these controls.

This information came to the CIA from Wilson himself and wound up being reported to Vice President Dick Cheney. While Niger didn't actually complete the sale to Iraq, this demonstrated that Saddam Hussein attempted at least once, as did Iraq, to transact business with Niger for yellowcake uranium in defiance of the sanctions. Yellowcake could only have interested Saddam for weapons development. This evidence showed that Saddam had continued to violate the sanctions regime and still intended on developing WMD. Moreover, the US (and the British, who had similar intelligence) could not know whether Saddam had successfully transacted for the uranium elsewhere. Wilson did prove that they certainly wanted to buy it, probably with the vast sums of cash the Oil-For-Food program generated for Saddam.

In other words, Wilson misrepresented his report in his New York Times article. Nor would this be the last of Wilson's unethical actions, or even the first.

Prior to the publication of this piece under his own name, Wilson -- who once demanded to see Karl Rove frog-marched for allegedly leaking his wife's status -- leaked the then-classified intelligence to the Washington Post. The Post ran an article critical of Bush's use of the Niger report on June 12, 2003, for which Wilson admitted he supplied the data. The SSIC found that his input to the Post was inaccurate, at the least:

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

The worst came after the revelation that his wife worked at the agency and reportedly got the CIA to pick Wilson for the Niger investigation. Wilson has repeatedly denied this, claiming that he had no idea how the agency selected him, but that his wife had nothing to do with the assignment. The SSIC also found that this was less than truthful -- and that she had already reached a conclusion about the reports before Wilson even left:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Plame didn't just suggest Wilson in an off-hand manner; she presented him both in debates and in memoranda as her choice for the mission. She then contacted him and made the arrangements to bring him into the CIA. She also characterized the report on which his mission was based as "crazy". Does that sound like something Wilson was likely to have forgotten or not known?

Now think about the Walter Pincus article for which Wilson provided his slanted and untruthful information. Wouldn't Pincus wanted to have known how Wilson got this assignment? I would presume that Pincus would have at least asked Wilson to explain it. Did he tell Pincus the truth, or lie to him as he did afterwards with the public? If he told Pincus the truth, could Pincus have been the source for Novak?

It would appear that the ambassador has a serious problem about jumping to conclusions, and cherry-picking his facts in order to support those conclusions. That's the most charitable conclusion that the SSIC report can produce. Otherwise, it looks more like Wilson has repeatedly lied and deceived the press and the American public about his report to the CIA, and has done so for highly partisan purposes. That anyone could take him seriously as a source only shows the desperation of the Left in finding some way to discredit the Bush administration.

UPDATE: Corrected to note Iran's effort to get yellowcake; I had it as Iraq twice. (h/t: Joe Z.)

Spaniards With Convictions Fight Terrorists

After the Madrid bombings last year, the Spanish electorate voted out the Jose Aznar government and elected Jose Zapatero, who ran on a platform of withdrawal from Iraq. Zapatero took a lot of criticism, even from the troops he recalled from their posts, for flinching in the face of terror and holding up the nation to ridicule. Fortunately for Zapatero, some Spaniards have demonstrated that they have the convictions to fight terrorists where they find them:

Inmates on Friday beat up a suspected al-Qaida cell leader jailed on charges he helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, breaking his jaw, nose and a tooth and injuring one of his eyes, Spanish officials said.

Imad Yarkas, 42, a Syrian-born Spaniard, was set upon by other prisoners in the dining hall of a prison in the eastern city of Castellon, said officials at the Interior Ministry department that oversees Spain's prisons. Spanish government press officials did not give their names.

An investigation has been opened because Yarkas, who is being held in solitary confinement, normally takes his meals alone, after other inmates have left the mess hall.

One official said some inmates apparently finished breakfast later than usual, and Yarkas began eating before they had left. Some began yelling at him, and when officers started to remove Yarkas from the room for his own safety another group of inmates pounced and punched the alleged al-Qaida member, the official said.

Of course, while we hardly condone inmate violence, I find it rather difficult to generate any sympathy for Yarkas. In fact, the level of protection afforded Yarkas seems a bit disturbing to me. Not only do the Spaniards bug out of Iraq and offer appeasement, but they go out of their way to give the terrorists extra protection while in prison. The terrorists believe themselves to be superior to Westerners; let them espouse that to their fellow detainees, if the Spaniards want to treat them like crime suspects instead of enemy agents.

Another point this demonstrates is the folly of imprisoning Islamofascist terrorists in civilian facilities. Other inmates do not have to follow Army regulations in how they treat each other, after all. Had Yarkas found himself in San Quentin, his experience in Spain would have felt like a fraternity hazing, comparatively speaking. Trying to fit wartime enemies into civilian prison systems will result in building separate facilities, no matter what happens or who gets put in charge.

Maybe someone should ask Yarkas whether he wants to return to Castellon or spend his time at Gitmo. I'd bet the food is better at Camp Delta, too.

Military Tribunals Upheld

A federal appeals court has overturned an earlier ruling that attempted to give Gitmo detainees access to American courts for determination of status. In a sweeping victory for the Bush administration, the appeals court also ruled that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Salim Ahmed Hamdan or any al-Qaeda or terrorist detainees, making the military tribunals legal and appropriate:

A federal appeals court put the Bush administration's military commissions for terrorist suspects back on track Friday, saying a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison who once was Osama bin-Laden's driver can stand trial.

A three-judge panel ruled 3-0 against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose case was halted by a federal judge on grounds that commission procedures were unlawful.

"Congress authorized the military commission that will try Hamdan," said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention do not apply to al-Qaida and its members, so Hamdan does not have a right to enforce its provisions in court, the appeals judges said.

The earlier ruling would have taken jurisdiction for determining detainee status from the Defense Department to American civilian courts, creating a logistical and legal mess. Soldiers who captured these non-uniformed terrorists could have been forced to appear in court to testify to the circumstances of each capture. Every case would have involved lawyers, the media, and the laborious civil law process. Even with just 500 prisoners, determining whether the military could retain their jurisdiction could have taken years -- while the intelligence that could save American lives got withheld behind a Miranda warning.

After explaining why the Geneva Convention is not a judicially enforceable treaty at length in section III of the opinion, the court reminds the parties why it doesn't apply anyway:

Even if the 1949 Geneva Convention could be enforced in court, this would not assist Hamdan. He contends that a military commission trial would violate his rights under Article 102, which provides that a “prisoner of war can be validly sentenced only if the sentence has been pronounced by the same courts according to the same procedure as in the case of members of the armed forces of the Detaining Power.” One problem for Hamdan is that he does not fit the Article 4 definition of a “prisoner of war” entitled to the protection of the Convention. He does not purport to be a member of a group who displayed “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance” and who conducted “their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.” ...

Another problem for Hamdan is that the 1949 Convention does not apply to al Qaeda and its members. The Convention appears to contemplate only two types of armed conflicts. The first is an international conflict. Under Common Article 2, the provisions of the Convention apply to “all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.” Needless to say, al Qaeda is not a state and it was not a “High Contracting Party.” There is an exception, set forth in the last paragraph of Common Article 2, when one of the “Powers” in a conflict is not a signatory but the other is. Then the signatory nation is bound to adhere to the Convention so long as the opposing Power “accepts and applies the provisions thereof.” Even if al Qaeda could be considered
a Power, which we doubt, no one claims that al Qaeda has accepted and applied the provisions of the Convention.

As far as the argument that Hamdan's capture in Afghanistan, a signatory to the Geneva Convention, makes him eligible under the civil-war exemption to the uniform requirement, the court takes an even dimmer view of the lower-level ruling:

Afghanistan is a “High Contracting Party.” Hamdan was captured during hostilities there. But is the war against terrorism in general and the war against al Qaeda in particular, an “armed conflict not of an international character”? ...

President Bush determined, in a memorandum to the Vice President and
others on February 7, 2002, that it did not fit that description because the conflict was “international in scope.” The district court disagreed with the President’s view of Common Article 3, apparently because the court thought we were not engaged in a separate conflict with al Qaeda, distinct from the conflict with the Taliban. We have difficulty understanding the court’s rationale. Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, but the conflict with al Qaeda arose before then, in other regions, including this country on September 11, 2001. Under the Constitution, the President “has a degree of independent authority to act” in foreign affairs, Am. Ins. Ass’n v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396, 414 (2003), and, for this reason and others, his construction and application of treaty provisions is entitled to
“great weight.”

It looks like some common sense has returned to the Geneva Convention debate. The lack of a uniform, the absence of al-Qaeda acceptance of the Convention, and the clear international character of the conflict all point to not only a lack of standing for POW status, but good reason to deny it. The entire point of these Geneva provisions is to protect civilian populations by giving a clear distinction between them and the combatants. Obviously, wearing a uniform puts combatants at higher risk, but nations agreed to do that in order to keep civilians from getting unnecessarily harmed. AQ intends on inflicting as much harm on civilians as possible while hiding among them for unfair advantage -- which disqualifies them from the GC's protections. We must not allow them to acquire those protections if we want to discourage others from violating these tenets of conflict.

In a rational political environment, this ruling would receive bipartisan accolades. Look instead for carping and sniping from the Democrats in the days ahead as they continue to demand civilian court treatment for the terrorists at Gitmo. (via Power Line and Michelle Malkin)

Federal Appeals Court Confirms Kollar-Kotelly

An appellate court has upheld the decision by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly forcing the FEC to regulate Internet speech as part of the BCRA:

An appeals court agreed Friday that federal election regulators wrongly opened several loopholes in the new campaign finance law meant to take big contributions out of elections.

The federal appeals court in Washington affirmed U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's 2004 ruling striking down several FEC regulations interpreting the 2002 campaign finance law and ordering the commission to write tougher rules.

The lower court judge struck down 15 commission regulations. The FEC asked the appeals court to overrule her on five of them, but lost its bid Friday in a 2-1 ruling.

We find yet another judge who cannot determine the meaning of "Congress shall pass no law ..." To be fair, this appeal was not on the BCRA itself but on Kollar-Kotelly's ruling on a lawsuit brought by Congressmen Shays and Meehan that complained the FEC had improperly enforced it. Still, one would hope that at some point a judge would look at the underlying rot at the core of the BCRA and stand up for free political speech.

Oddly, Yahoo News attached a photo of John McCain to this story giving a thumbs-up, while the caption reads, "Republican Senator John McCain, seen here 22 June 2005, voted against the legislation and said..." It gives the impression that McCain voted agains the BCRA. Readers have to click on the link to discover that the rest of the caption refers to a spending bill. I wonder what Yahoo's editors were thinking.

No Delay For Iraqi Constitution

Reuters reports this morning that despite initial widespread skepticism about the timeline for the Iraqi constitution, it will now arrive on time. The delivery of the draft by August 15th sets up the scheduled October referendum and the new general election at the end of the year:

In a month, Iraq should have a constitution, meeting a deadline set as part of a U.S.-backed timetable for its transition from occupation to independence.

Three months ago, after it had taken 12 weeks just to form a government, many doubted the Aug. 15 target for the draft constitution could be met; long, bitter wrangling had dented hopes raised by an election held, on schedule, on Jan. 30.

Now, few doubt that some form of draft constitution will appear more or less on time -- even though the parliamentary committee working on it has not, as it once suggested, unveiled a preliminary text by July 15. ...

"I don't think anyone seriously doubts there will be a constitution more or less on time," said one senior diplomat in Baghdad. "I'm impressed by how hard everyone's working on it."

When did this happen? Just last month, Senator Carl Levin insisted that the only way to get a constitution out of the Iraqis was to issue ultimatums about abandoning them to their terrorist enemies unless deadlines were met. Now it appears that the Iraqis had the entire process under control and issuing such threats were not just unnecessary, but would have been counterproductive. It certainly would have given the impression that the Americans had suddenly gone hysterical and panicky over a problem that didn't actually exist.

The arrival of a larger Sunni contingent has helped focus the negotiating committee on core issues rather than trying to resolve all competing claims in one document. That has allowed the group to reach agreements on fundamental principles of governing Iraq, and allow other issues to either find resolution in the National Assembly or in further amendments to the Constitution later. That sounds like the right approach; they will avoid creating the monstrous EU pact that failed so miserably to garner endorsements this year. In fact, if the referendum approves this new draft in October, the Iraqis will have had more success in defining their government than Europe will have experienced in years.

Reuters being Reuters, their report includes lots of caveats about how no one knows if this success will lower the violence, about how Europeans still express skepticism about the Iraqi government, and so on. Ignore it. Reuters may throw own as much black crepe as possible, but this news shows real progress and the success of the Iraqi democrats who are building a historical form of self-government from the ashes of their tyrannical past.

Catching The Chemist

Egyptian authorities arrested the chemist sought by British investigators after last week's bombings in London:

Egyptian police on Friday arrested an Egyptian biochemist sought in the probe into the London bombings, an Egyptian government official said. Metropolitan Police in London said a man has been arrested in Cairo, but they would not confirm his name or characterize him as a suspect.

Magdy el-Nashar was arrested in Cairo early Friday, the Egyptian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because an official announcement of the information had not yet been made.

That happened pretty quickly. Apparently Nashar made a mistake thinking that he could find shelter in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood and its al-Qaeda allies must not have as much popularity as they once did in the North African nation -- but we hear that's going around these days.

Novak Told Rove About Plame

The New York Times now has a source within the grand jury proceedings in the Robert Fitzgerald investigation into the alleged leak of Valerie Plame's status as a CIA operative. The new article for tomorrow's edition by David Johnston and Richard Stevenson reveals that Karl Rove spoke with Robert Novak before he released his column -- but that Novak told Rove about Plame, including her name, and not the other way around:

Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

In fact, despite the characterization of Rove as a partisan attack dog looking for revenge, it turns out that Novak called Rove. Just like the earlier revelation about Rove's conversation with Cooper, Novak called Rove and started out by asking Rove about a completely different subject. He wanted a comment about the promotion of a Janet Reno aide to a key counterterrorism job at the White House, and only filled Rove in on Plame after getting Rove's reaction to his initial query.

That flies in the face of any notion that Rove set out to damage Wilson or Plame. Unless Rove wanted to set records for the laziest but most efficient character assassination in political history, waiting around for two different journalists to call him on unrelated matters and hoping that they mentioned Wilson doesn't sound like a very effective way to wreak revenge on a political opponent.

However, the ability of the New York Times to publish this story tonight demonstrates the irony of their stance on the entire Rive story. In order to get this information, the Times has to have a source either on the grand jury or in the office of the Special Prosecutor. Either way, this leak violates the law; grand jury testimony in special investigations are supposed to remain secret. Given that the Gray Lady has led the charge against Rove and his supposedly illegal leak, doesn't this seem a wee bit ... hypocritical?

BUMP TO TOP: It seems this will still be the story of the week, despite the collapse of all credibility for allegations that Rove leaked the story to Novak and Cooper for revenge. I'll let it ride near the top today.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz sums this up nicely (via Michelle Malkin):

This surely qualifies as one of the "hey, big whoop" stories of all time. And I am not saying this because I am some partisan gunslinger. Simple fairness says that an official called by a journalist who volunteers a piece of gossip and then responds, "I heard that too," is not retailing a piece of incendiary information intended to destroy lives and place CIA assets in harm's way.

And I'm going to be blunt here. Anybody who says different has an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, or much of anything else besides doing damage to the Bush administration and character-assassinating Karl Rove.

I think it may even be more than that, at least on the media's part, and specific to the New York Times. They know who Judith Miller's source is, and they're trying their best to keep it quiet. One wonders why they're carrying so much water for a story they never broke. Could it have something to do with their publication of Joseph Wilson's original op-ed article that started the whole mess?

The Only Tactic They Know

Democrats in the Senate twice threatened more executive-nomination obstructionism if the White House refuses to meet their demands, this time on lower-level appointees. Both Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama separately told nominees to two EPA positions that they will block their confirmation unless mollified by the Bush administration on policy:

Two Democratic senators suggested Thursday they may block one or more of President Bush's nominees to key Environmental Protection Agency posts unless they get answers they want from the agency.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said he wanted to know when the EPA would issue regulations for lead paint exposure from house remodeling. ...

Obama told reporters after the hearing that he wanted a definite date from EPA officials about when they would issue the regulations, which by law were supposed to have come out in 1996. If that's not forthcoming, he said, he would use "whatever mechanisms I have available to get their attention."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., indicated she might block one of the nominees unless she gets details on an EPA list of 103 Superfund sites where the agency has suggested human exposure is possible. She said she wants the sites listed in order of health hazard, along with details on cleanup costs and how many children live nearby.

I'm reminded of the proverb that instructs us that when the only tool we own is a hammer, eventually everything begins to look like a nail. In our history, political parties have shown periods where they practice a glum kind of implosion, sitting on their hands and allowing little progress to be made. Their opposition usually calls them "Do-Nothings" in response. In the last two sessions of Congress, however, the Democrats have gone from glum and passive to virulent and obstructionist. Every issue now requires an investigation, and it seems every nominee now generates a food fight.

Did the Democrats learn nothing from their electoral debacle in 2004? Their caucus leader lost his seat thanks to these obstructionist tactics last cycle, but the Democrats under Harry Reid appear even more determined to toss their sabots into the machinery of government. They have abandoned any pretense at moderation and embraced the James Carville tactics of total political warfare on all fronts.

It almost reminds me of the notorious, and ultimately disastrous, banzai charges against the US Marines in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Instead of tactical retreats, the Japanese Army would send hundreds of its men screaming in a blind charge against entrenched Marine defenses, confident that the Japanese martial spirit and loud screaming would demoralize the Americans into retreats and routs. No one could doubt individual Japanese bravery in these suicide charges, but the Marines proved the Japanese officers' judgment to be almost criminally stupid. It took the Japanese three years to realize that such tactics only bled them that much faster and that the Americans wouldn't be intimidated. Some of them never learned it, in fact.

It's been three years for the Democrats. So far, their leadership still hasn't learned the lesson of the futility of obstructionism. Their next lesson might come in 2006. So far, it looks like Harry Reid only knows one tactic, only has one tool in his bag, and he will keep flailing away at imaginary nails while his caucus continues to get decimated.

'Arabic Assassin' Rapper Worked In Airport Security

The AP reports that a Muslim baggage screener for the Transportation Security Agency moonlighted as a rapper, calling himself the 'Arabic Assassin' and writing lyrics about killing people and blowing up buildings. The TSA fired Bassam Khalaf despite his assertion that he only used that identity as a publicity generator:

When Bassam Khalaf raps, he's the Arabic Assassin. His unreleased CD, "Terror Alert," includes rhymes about flying a plane into a building and descriptions of himself as a "crazy, suicidal Arabic ... equipped with bombs."

Until last week, Khalaf also worked as a baggage screener at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. ...

Khalaf, 21, was hired on Jan. 16 and fired July 7, according to a TSA termination letter that cited his "authorship of songs which applaud the efforts of the terrorists on September 11th, encourage and warn of future acts of terrorism by you, discuss at length and in grave and alarming detail various criminal acts you intend to commit, state your belief that the U.S. government should be overthrown, and finally warn that others will die on September 11, 2005."

Khalaf, who was born in Houston and is of Palestinian descent, said working as a baggage screener was the best paying job he's ever had. He said he hoped to use any extra money he earned to produce his CD.

So Khalaf will put the money he received from the US government into his new music project -- which celebrates the enemies of the US and calls for the destruction of American cities and the deaths of American citizens. This project is called "Terror Alert" and has a picture of an urban skyline as its cover. But don't worry, Khalaf says, because it's really all just a put-on to make himself famous.

What a fatuous fathead. (via Jihad Watch)

Senatorial Slapfight

The self-proclaimed world's greatest deliberative body and the chamber supposedly intended on being a "cooling saucer" for the passions of the day descended into the political equivalent of a playground slapfight yesterday. The pushing and shoving arose from the rapidly disintegrating effort to pin blame on Karl Rove for outing Valerie Plame as Senate Democrats attempted to strip him of his security clearances:

The partisan fight over Karl Rove exploded onto the Senate floor yesterday, with Democrats trying to strip him of his security clearance and Republicans retaliating by trying to strip the chamber's two top Democrats of theirs.

The moves, which came as amendments to a spending bill, both failed, but not before each side blamed the other for "juvenile" behavior and for poisoning a well of good feelings they said had existed in the past few weeks. ...

Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, along with Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and three other top Democrats, called for the end of security clearance for anyone "who discloses, or has disclosed, classified information, including the identity of a covert agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, to a person not authorized to receive such information." ...

Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, called Democrats' amendment "purely a political amendment" and then submitted his own.

It would have stripped clearance from federal officeholders who make "reference to a classified Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the floor of the United States Senate, or any federal officeholder that makes a statement based on a FBI agent's comments which is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations thereby putting our servicemen and women at risk."

The former is a reference to Mr. Reid, who mentioned the FBI file of one of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, and the latter is a reference to Mr. Durbin, whose comparison of U.S. interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay to Nazi and Soviet regimes was cited in Middle Eastern press, including Al Jazeera.

At least 20 Republicans had the good sense to oppose the latter measure. The Democrats' amendment failed on a strictly partisan vote. The competing measures not only make the entire chamber look like a gaggle of childish and petulant fools, but it belies the entire idea that "comity" will return to this body under current leadership, especially that of the Democrats.

None of Reid's caucus can apparently wait for the results of an independent investigation, one on which they themselves insisted, to determine whether a crime had been committed at all, and if so who did it. This is yet another example of Harry Reid going off half-cocked. He allowed Barbara Boxer to file a challenge to Ohio's electors, the first time Congress has debated a state's Electoral College status in over a hundred years, and eventually his own party's study proved that no fraud ever occurred there. As facts come out, as quickly as just hours after this little exercise, showing that Rove didn't conduct the smear campaign of which Democrats accuse him, he again winds up looking like the Napoleon of partisan sniping -- a strutting little tyrant who inevitably gets torpedoed by his outsize ego.

Dafydd: Associated Press Chooses Up

And so it begins -- the canonization of the London bombers.

Whenever I become convinced that the MSM cannot sink lower into their miasmic bolgia, they invariably find a way to tumble to a deeper circle of Hell. Now the "useful idiot" Scheherezade Faramarzi (if that is her name) profiles the four slayers of the innocent in London. Through her thousand and one tales of passion, spirituality, and beauty, we discover they were all fine, upstanding citizens who were driven into the frenzy of madness by the evil Bush and his wicked incursion into innocent Iraq.

She starts with a bang, making certain that even the most casual reader will understand that IT'S ALL GEORGE BUSH'S FAULT:

London Bombers Were Angered by War in Iraq
by Scheherezade Faramarzi
AP
July 15, 2005

LEEDS, England (AP) - Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old son of a Pakistani-born affluent businessman, turned to Islam, the religion of his birth, a few years ago. The transformation was gradual, but then his relentless reading of the Quran and daily prayers became almost an obsession, his friends told The Associated Press. He became withdrawn and increasingly angry over the war in Iraq, according to those who knew him best.

The U.S.-led war was what likely drove him to blow himself up on a subway train last week, said his friends.

Of course. And what is Scheherezade's source for this so convenient Grand Unified Theory of Inevitable Terrorism? A couple of spiritual Pakistani "friends" of one of the bombers, Asif Iqbal and Adnan Samir:

"He was a Muslim and he had to fight for Islam. This is called jihad," or holy war, said Asif Iqbal, 20, who said he was Tanweer's childhood friend.

Another friend, Adnan Samir, 21, nodded in agreement.

"They're crying over 50 people while 100 people are dying every day in Iraq and Palestine," said Iqbal. "If they are indeed the ones who did it, it's because they believed it was right. They're in Heaven.

"Have you ever been inspired in life?" he asked.

Oh God, yes! I have always wanted to fight for a brutal, butchering ghoul who raped the dying bodies of women he had slain, whose monstrous Minotaur sons had become spiritual eaters of the dead. A man so marinated in the blood of innocents that his very eyes burned red with the molten sin of the Pit. A man who exhaled the smell of death and rot, a worm-eaten corpse of a man still shuffling forward like an animate zombie. A man found cowering in a grave, which he had made his home.

Yes, I am inspired! For I worship Death the Maiden, and I drink the spinal fluid of the living. God is great! And Saddam Hussein is His prophet.

Am I alone here? WHO -- THE -- HELL -- CARES what twisted rationalization these corrupted, soulless piles of ambulatory necrosis give for flaying the innocent living in the name of their dark Eldrich gods?

For the love of God, sequester Iqbal and Samir instanter, for they surely are the next to strap the C5 to their spindly bodies and rend the virgins they would never be allowed to embrace in life.

But the horror continues:

"He was a nice lad. I don't know how many times he served me fish and chips," said Peter Douchworth, 58, a Beeston resident for over 30 years. "He went out of his way to help."

For God's sake. Tanweer's father owned a God damned fish and chips stand. Tanweer went "out of his way" to serve a God damned order of fish to a God damned customer who ordered the God damned thing. Who is he now, Mother Friggin' Teresa?

Oh, but Tanweer was a fine, strapping youth -- until the malevolent Dr. Bush worked his wicked way with that poor Islamic hero, Saddam Hussein.

A devoted athlete, Tanweer studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University and planned to get involved in sports professionally. He showed up twice a week for pickup soccer games, said a teammate who gave his name only as Saj....

Where would Tanweer and his co-activists meet or plan their attacks?

"How do football fans get together and talk about football? It's the same thing," said Iqbal.

But wait! There are more halos for Scheherezade to distribute like so many Frisbees.

Tanweer's friend, Hasib Hussain, is another of the bombers identified by police. At 18, the handsome, 6-foot-tall soccer player was the youngest of the bombers. He was also the youngest of four children, two sisters and a brother. Like Tanweer, his family came from Pakistan.

Hussain, suspected of carrying out the suicide attack that claimed 13 lives on a double-decker bus, was known for his sense of humor and style. He sometime [sic] wore blue contact lenses and long hair parted in the middle.

Slew thirteen "lives!" "Sense of humor!" Jolly good joke, that! Always quick with his wit, that Mr. Hussain.

Not like the beastly Bush, who goes about invading countries for no reason whatsoever, kidnapping pious pilgrims like our second martyr's namesake.

Ah, but our heroine of the Thousand Nights and a Night has but begun:

"He was a good lad . . . a good-looking man. He had a good personality," the friend ["identified only by the initial G"] said.

Some people said Hussain became more religious two years ago but never abandoned his boyhood friends for radicals.

The sickness has spread deep into the body of Islam in London. Prognosis uncertain. Radical surgery only hope. Box-cutters, please.

Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, born in Pakistan and another of the suicide bombers, is known in his neighborhood as an exemplary community worker.

A father of an 8-month-old baby girl, Khan was a popular former teacher of children with learning disabilities.

And what do his former students think about a man who is so kind to those with disabilities -- going out and blowing the freaking arms and legs off of various children, mothers, and old folks who made the dreadful mistake of riding public transportation on the day of Khan's elevation into Heaven? Oh, those he taught to value life certainly understand the enormity of how he ended his own accursed existence in order to murder others in the name of God:

Former students at the Hillside Primary School said Khan left for Pakistan last December to look after his ailing father. It was not clear when he returned to Britain.

"I liked him. He was nice," said Billy Sandersen, 13. He and other former pupils said they were shocked when they saw his picture in the papers as one of the suspects.

However, they said they still liked him.

"Just a little bit, but not for what he's done - killing innocent people," Sandersen said.

"I still like him," said Sean Woodham, 13, another former pupil, "because he always helped me with my homework."

Her mission accomplished, the selfless daughter of the Grand Vizier leaves us with the same wisdom with which she began the piece, making certain that we all know the real villain in this little kafuffle in London:

Maroof Latif, an unemployed Beeston resident, said he knew Khan since he was a child and believes if he took part in the terrorist bombings of the subways it was because of his anger over the war in Iraq and the U.S.-British occupation.

London bombers falling down, falling down, falling down
London bombers falling down,
My brave laddies!

Another must speak for me, for all I can think is black and red: would that this whole lot had but a single throat, so I could cut it. I yield the balance of my time, first to Mr. Herbert George Wells in his last work, Mind At the End of Its Tether, and last to Mr. William Butler Yeats:

This world is at the end of its tether. The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded. He [Wells] is telling you the conclusions to which reality has driven his own mind....

That book, '42 to '44 [A Contemporary Memoir upon Human Behaviour During the Crisis of the World Revolution], now seems to him merely incidental matter. It is like the remembered shouts of angry people in a train that has passed and gone for ever. His renascent intelligence finds now that we are confronted with strange convincing realities so overwhelming that, were he indeed one of those logical consistent creatures we incline to claim we are, he would think day and night in a passion of concentration, dismay and mental struggle upon the ultimate disaster that confronts our species.

W.B. Yeats, "the Second Coming," 1919:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

May Scheherezade Faramarzi, our virginal Virgil guiding us on this reportorial tour of her inner Inferno, find the peace she has earned... and may she rest in it forever.

London Bombers Were The B-Team

According to ABC News, British intelligence thought they had stopped the coordinated attack on the London subway and bus system when they first discovered the plot -- when Pakistani officials arrested al-Qaeda computer expert Naeem Noor Khan a year ago this week. His laptop contained a remarkably similar plan for the attack, and the British arrested a "senior" AQ operative at the time:

Officials tell ABC News the London bombers have been connected to an al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al Qaeda leader, contained plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system, as well as on financial buildings in both New York and Washington.

"There's absolutely no doubt he was part of an al Qaeda operation aimed at not only the United States but Great Britain," explained Alexis Debat, a former official in the French Defense Ministry who is now a senior terrorism consultant for ABC News.

At the time, authorities thought they had foiled the London subway plot by arresting more than a dozen young Britons of Pakistani descent last August in Luton, a city known for its ties to terrorism.

"For some time, the locus of terrorism in Britain has been around the Luton area and in some of the northern cities," said Michael Clark, professor of defense at King's College in London.

Security officials tell ABC News they have discovered links between the eldest of the London bombers, Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, and the original group in Luton. Officials also believe it was not a coincidence the subway bombers all met at the Luton train station last week.

"It is very likely this group was activated last year after the other group was arrested," Debat said.

The terrorists don't like to abandon plans once they've been developed, it seems. In this case, investigators suspect that AQ leadership activated a new cell to carry out the plan. In order to get the plans and the coordination transferred, it used one of its operatives that escaped the dragnet touched off by Khan's capture to train and guide the suicide bombers. Mohammed Sadique Khan had ties to the former group, they have found, which puts his involvement in this operation past the threshold of coincidence.

This raises an important question. The Khan capture didn't just involve plans for an attack on British transportation systems. Khan also had detailed information on American financial institutions, which led to a security alert at the time in Washington DC and New York. AQ waited until the heat died down from Khan's arrest and then executed the British attack anyway. What would keep them from trying the same strategy here in the US?

ABC identified two men who may disappeared from the UK and now are at the center of a frantic manhunt. American investigators may have just as much interest in talking with these two ringleaders as our British friends. If they have spare cells for backup crews in London, they could very well have them here, too. (via Josh's Blog)

The Latest Gitmo Stupidity: Islamists May Mistreat US Soldiers

Sometimes I wish I could buy some people a clue in the same manner as Wheel of Fortune contestants can purchase vowels from Vanna White. The latest meme coming from Senate Democrats regarding Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay -- now that their characterizations of torture chambers worthy of Josef Mengele have been debunked -- holds that our failure to give full POW status to terrorists at Gitmo will lead our enemy to abuse captured US soldiers.

Quit laughing. I'm serious:

The U.S. Congress should pass legislation defining the legal status of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to avoid more damage to the United States' image abroad and reprisals against U.S. soldiers, senators said on Thursday. ...

Senators said harsh interrogation practices and the refusal to grant prisoner of war status to detainees could backfire when U.S. soldiers are captured.

"Our troops are looking at us to see whether we're going to adopt a standard that if they were captured would be acceptable," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat.

Perhaps the Senators have focused too closely on Karl Rove the past few days, and simply don't recall the lovely treatment afforded Eugene Armstrong. Or Paul Johnson. Or Nick Berg. Or the four American contractors who not only got killed, but burned, dismembered, and hung from bridges in Fallujah.

Does anyone in the United States Senate really expect us to believe that any of these men would have met any other fate if we had classified Gitmo prisoners as POWs? Either the Democratic caucus has gone insane or they think we have. Expecting mercy from people who hide among the civilians they butcher, and rationalizing their bloodlust as a normal reaction to the legal status of captured terrorists, have to rank among the most clueless notions of the war up to now.

Osama Fades As Democracy Gains

An opinion poll in six Muslim countries shows surprising results for attitudes about Islamists and Western-style democracy. Support for Osama bin Laden has fallen to half of what it had been in previous surveys, while support for democratization and freedom has grown enormously:

Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some key Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released today.

In a striking finding, predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle East and Asian countries are also as alarmed as Western nations about Islamic extremism, which is now seen as a threat in their own nations too, the poll found. ...

Compared with previous surveys, the new poll also found growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims surveyed now say democracy can work in their countries and is not just a political system for the West. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco and the highest score at 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey, where significant numbers were unsure.

"They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party to participate in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center and director of the project. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world."

This demonstrates that Bush's policies of attacking terrorists where they have hidden themselves and demanding the liberalization of the Arabic world has had a huge, positive impact. Despite the carping of how Iraq has created terrorists in Muslim nations, the unmasking of Islamofascism as a bloodthirsty movement perfectly happy with killing fellow Muslims by the hundreds to make its point has destroyed its credibility. In contrast, the success of the Iraqi elections, followed by the popular democratic uprising against Syria in Lebanon and the demand for free election in Egypt, has shown Arabs and Muslims that democracy and pluralism works.

Democratization brings hope and a measure of control over one's life, two qualities that have long been absent from the tyrannies and kleptocracies of the Middle East. Until Iraq and Afghanistan showed it could work for Arabs as well as Europeans, the subjects of these autocracies had neither nor any glimmer of possibility of achieving them. Now that they see their cousins able to govern themselves through free elections and hold their leaders accountable for their actions, they understand the futility of suicide attacks and terrorism. Just like anyone else, they will choose freedom and hope over oppression and death.

This is how we will win the war on Islamofascist terror -- not by winning big battles, although that necessarily has to happen to set the stage for these successes. We will win the war by discrediting the enemy among their own people, who will one day utterly reject their nihilistic ideologies. That day, apparently, is almost here.

Dafydd: Cold Water On Hot Blood

A new paradigm is sweeping the blogosphere -- well, that portion of it that I view in between my frequent naps, experiments in animal husbandry, and trips to the taxidermist. The global war on terrorism, or GWOT, is really not a war at all but more akin to a "blood feud." The idea has been discussed by Hugh Hewitt, both online and on the air; by Wretchard (Richard Fernandez) at The Belmont Club; at Free Republic; NoLeftTurns; a Canadian blog called ThePolitic; and many other sites.

I think the originator of this new simile is one Lee Harris. Writing in Tech Central Station on July 8th, "War in Pieces: The Blood Feud," Harris opined:

After the London bombing, I feel more than ever that the war model is deeply flawed, and that a truer picture of the present conflict may be gained by studying another, culturally distinct form of violent conflict, namely the blood feud.

The problem with this simile (which has become an endlessly extending metaphor) is that it both directly contradicts his earlier, far more convincing insight that saw the terrorist acts in a very different way and also contradicts the actual pattern of jihadist attacks we see on the ground. I much prefer his earlier paradigm, which fits the current pattern far better than this new one does (I fear Harris suffers from the need writers all feel to constantly reinvent ourselves). Alas, it hasn’t gotten nearly as much blogplay as the blood-feud article.

Let me explain why I think his first idea was more powerful, why the blood feud is not really a good explanation for the death obsession of jihad -- and then offer what I think is a better metaphor that can actually lead to a real plan for the philosophical war that parallels the military one.

This is long; continue reading at your own risk. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

Harris's early musings appeared in the somewhat more prestigious Stanford University magazine Policy Review, in August of 2002. In "Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology," Harris penned a far more robust analysis of the mass psychology of jihadism.

He first discussed the case of a university friend of his in the mid-1960s who planned to attend a particularly unpleasant and violent anti-Vietnam-War protest. Harris, who shared his friend's politics back then, tried to argue him out of it; he pointed out that the protest would not only not gain the anti-war cause any converts, it was more than likely to drive potential allies away, to infuriate the people, and to be all in all massively counterproductive to the political goals of the protesters.

But his friend said that would not matter... for his real purpose in attending was that the protest would be "good for his soul." (All emphasis below is added by me.)

[W]hat it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy....

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology — by which I mean, political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy.

He lists several "fantasy ideologies" from earlier eras -- the French Revolution, Mussolini's Fascism, and Hitler's Naziism -- each of which self-consciously evoked great historical empires. Harris argues that the backward look is essential to the fantasy ideology:

This theme of reviving ancient glory is an important key to understanding fantasy ideologies, for it suggests that fantasy ideologies tend to be the domain of those groups that history has passed by or rejected — groups that feel that they are under attack from forces which, while more powerful perhaps than they are, are nonetheless inferior in terms of true virtue.

So what is the backward look that underpins the "fantasy ideology" of jihadism? Professor Bernard Lewis provides the missing clue here. In his seminal work What Went Wrong?, Lewis ably chronicles the angst and befuddlement that Arabs feel at the loss of Arab Moslem preeminence in world civilization.

At one time, during the Dark Ages, Islam, and particularly Arab and Turkish Islam, were the apex of human civilization. Although what they had came mostly from Western sources (Greece and Rome, primarily), at least the Middle East still had it, while Europe had lost virtually everything refined and byzantine. Europeans were reduced to living in mud and wattle huts, while the East languored in pleasure domes and palaces, swimming in clear water above intricate geometrical mosaics.

Militant Islamism provides a backward look to this Islamic golden age, when "God's in His heaven— / All's right with the world!" (to wrench Browning utterly out of all context). The terrible theater of blood that began, for the West, in the 1979 Iranian revolution seems deliberately designed to enchant that epoch back into existence... just as Mussolini conjured Italy into a conquering empire by invading Ethiopia in 1935. Harris uses that absurdist invasion to illustrate the true horror of a fantasy-ideology war:

Any attempt to see this adventure in Clausewitzian terms is doomed to fail: There was no political or economic advantage whatsoever to be gained from the invasion of Ethiopia....

Why invade, then? The answer is quite simple. Ethiopia was a prop — a prop in the fantasy pageant of the new Italian Empire — that and nothing else. And the war waged in order to win Ethiopia as a colony was not a war in the Clausewitzian sense — that is to say, it was not an instrument of political policy designed to induce concessions from Ethiopia, or to get Ethiopia to alter its policies, or even to get Ethiopia to surrender. Ethiopia had to be conquered not because it was worth conquering, but because the fascist fantasy ideology required Italy to conquer something — and Ethiopia fit the bill. The conquest was not the means to an end, as in Clausewitzian war; it was an end in itself. Or, more correctly, its true purpose was to bolster the fascist collective fantasy that insisted on casting the Italians as a conquering race, the heirs of Imperial Rome.

Harris's insight into the theater of the "fantasy ideology" perfectly describes what we can see of the jihadists' attacks: they fit no pattern of rational warfare, but are rather a series of ritualized rains of destruction upon targets deemed symbols of "wickedness"... that is, symbols of Islam's loss of cultural dominance over the world. (I'm only discussing here the grand theatrical attacks or series of attacks, not ordinary acts of terrorism, such as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.)

* The forces of jihad struck Iran -- Persia -- which had become modernist and more secular under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

* They struck repeatedly at the Jews in Israel who were threatening to revive the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, but under Jewish control (a double-whammy to militant Islamists!)

* The forces of Persia (still leading the attack) struck the Great Satan in Beirut, driving us from the field -- which served to convince great masses of Moslems that Allah had lifted his hand in support of these holy warriors.

* They struck us again in 2001, according to Osama bin Laden (Sunni Wahhabism now seizing the lead from Shi'ite Persians) to punish us for defiling the land of Mecca with our "crusader" boots.

* Then they struck various Moslem nations (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia) that were also venturing into modernity, thus becoming apostate.

* And they struck at the symbol of the greatest reach of the ummah, the Realm of the Faithful, and consequently the greatest pain for many militant Islamists when they contemplate its loss: Spain. The jihadists still call Spain al-Andalus, the name used while Spain was controlled by Moslem "Moors" for seven hundred and eighty-one years, until King Ferdinand finally expelled the last of them in 1492 -- not coincidentally the same year he and Queen Isabella finally agreed to finance Christopher Columbus's expedition to sail west to find the East Indies.

Each of these grand targets was chosen for its symbolic value to Moslems around the world, making them believe that the ummah was just about to be restored with Allah's direct divine help. So long as there was little response from the West but surprise and shock, it would seem like an unbroken line of great "victories" for the jihad.

But Harris's theory of the fantasy ideology could not explain why this particular fantasy seemed to be about blood, death, and destruction alone. After all, other fantasy ideologies were about conquest and military victory, not simple butchery, including the three Harris mentions in his Policy Review article: the French revolution, Italian Fascism, and Naziism. All three had their massacres, especially the last; but in addition to the destruction, there was a sense of the modern in the attempted construction of something that would take the place of that which was torn apart: liberty, equality, and fraternity, perhaps, or the Aryan ubermensch who would be "beyond good and evil." Other fantasy ideologies, such as the Soviet Union, also thought they were creating as well as destroying... creating the New Soviet Man and the "dictatorship of the proletariat." None claimed destruction for its own sake. Shouldn't the jihad be trying more actively to restore the glory of ancient Islam?

I think that is just what Harris is trying to explain, this difference from all previous fantasy ideologies, when he develops his metaphor of the world-wide blood feud.

In the blood feud, unlike war, you have no interest in bringing your enemy to his knees. You are not looking for your enemy to surrender to you; you are simply interested in killing some of his people in revenge for past injuries, real or imaginary -- nor does it matter in the least whether the people you kill today were the ones guilty of the past injuries that you claim to be avenging. In a blood feud, every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge. What is important is that some of their guys must be killed -- not necessarily anyone of any standing in their community. Just kill someone on the other side, and you have done what the logic of the blood feud commands you to do.

In the blood feud there is no concept of decisive victory because there is no desire to end the blood feud. Rather the blood feud functions as a permanent "ethical" institution -- it is the way of life for those who participate in it; it is how they keep score and how they maintain their own rights and privileges. You don't feud to win, you feud to keep your enemy from winning -- and that is why the anthropologist of the Bedouin feud, Emrys Peters, has written the disturbing words: The feud is eternal.

Clearly, this is an attempt to explain the mindless, senseless murders, mostly of the "faithful" who were perhaps not quite faithful enough, uncoupled from any serious attempt to create or even conquer. But the problem with Harris's "blood feud" analogy is that it necessarily provokes the reader into visualizing a "tit for tat" scenario -- a cycle of violence, if we must -- that is neither in synch with the concept of a "fantasy ideology" nor even descriptive of the reality we see.

Why would a millennarian, militant religious fantasy ideology await a blow before striking a counterblow? The whole point of the fantasy ideology is that it does not concern itself with the outside reality. Rather, everything outside itself, including its enemies, is merely a "prop" in its global Grand Guignol Theatre.

Nor do we see any such tit-for-tat in the actual operations of jihadist terrorism, outside of Israel. While it may be true that in a blood feud, "every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge," Harris must also admit that there is little feeling of tribal solidarity within Islam. Do Indonesian Moslems think they are the same "tribe" as Iranians, Turks, Saudis, or British jihadis like failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid?

In fact, Islam is highly factionalized, from the macro (Shi'a vs. Sunni) to the micro (the tribes in the Sunni Triangle vs. the tribes on the Iraq/Syrian border); and if the West strikes a blow in Baghdad, it's a bit thick to point to an attack months later in Spain or London, carried out by people with no significant contact with jihadis in Iraq, and call it a "counterblow."

I think Harris hit it out of the park the first time: he is correct that this is not a war in the Clausewitzian sense, not a struggle between nations trying to advance political ends by military means. But neither are the terrorists engaged in a simple "blood feud" with the West. To the extent jihadis use that language, they are simply reading their lines in the passion play. We must look elsewhere to understand why this fantasy ideology, apart from all the others, concerns itself only with chaos and destruction, rather than creation and construction -- evil though that construction typically is.

Here is where I have my own ideas. I have long thought that the central organizing principle behind militant Islamism, or jihadism if you prefer, is the death cult. There have been death cults in the past. The most extreme was probably the Aztecs, and estimates of the number of human sacrifices they performed annually range from the tens of thousands up to 250,000. Although various researchers offer "explanations" of the staggering number of human sacrifices more prosaic than religious worship, it's hard to argue that religion was not at least one of the top motivating factors.

Human sacrifice is typically justified by the belief that there is some sort of energy or force found within life, strongest in human beings; sacrificing the man, woman, or child releases this energy somehow, allowing the gods to feed on death, their natural food. Blood and souls for Huitzilopochtli!

I think it quite possible that the leaders of the jihadis are actually death cultists; perhaps they believe that their bizarre version of Allah grew weak from hunger, and that is "what went wrong," to respond to Lewis. In this scenario, by sacrificing mass numbers of people, the militant Islamist leaders believe they feed Allah, and he grows strong. Perhaps he will then respond by reaching forth his hand to crush the infidels, restore the Caliphate, and expand the ummah to blanket the world. Alternatively, perhaps the leaders believe that Allah is angry that they have not been killing infidels and apostates, as he ordered them to do... and if they kill enough, Allah will be mollified and again lead them to supernatural victory.

In either case, I highly doubt the rank and file believe this or that they even wonder why they are asked to kill and kill and kill for no apparent reason; being told by a trusted cleric to do so is probably all they need. It is the leaders of the worldwide jihad that I am trying to understand... because you cannot defeat what you do not comprehend.

But even if the leaders do not literally believe that they are releasing life-energy for their demonic version of Allah, their actions are functionally identical to death cultists. There certainly is more of a match both with what we see on the ground and with Harris's insightful metaphor of the fantasy ideology than we find with his recent blood-feud hypothesis.

A fantasy ideology coupled with a millennarian death-cult fantasy would actually explain both the theater and the obsession with destruction over creation. It also points the way to two natural points of attack by the West.

First, Harris notes that some fantasy ideologies arise from Democracies, such as Naziism, which arose from the Weimar Republic. But he wrongly concludes that establishing democracy is therefore ineffectual at fighting against the fantasy ideology:

[T]o hope that democratic reform would discourage radical Islam ignores the fact that previous fantasy ideologies have historically arisen in a democratic context; as the student of European fascism, Ernst Nolte, has observed, parliamentary democracy was an essential precondition for the rise of both Mussolini and Hitler.

But here, Harris misses the point. Naziism did not arise from democracy, it arose from the collapse of democracy due to economic catastrophe. The collapse of the Weimar Republic had a negative transformative effect on German society, tilting it away from the intolerable reality and towards the grandiose fantasy ideology of Naziism.

Might not the establishment of a new democracy have a mirror transformative effect, from the fantasy of jihadism to the reality of modernity? It certainly seems to be working that way in Iraq and Afghanistan and to some extent in Lebanon. The establishment of democracy where it never existed before allows people to take control of their lives and environment, converting an otherwise intolerable reality -- which could lead a people into fantasy as an escape -- into a manageable and indeed exciting and dramatic reality, where they will feel less need to escape into dreams of empires past.

Second, although Harris primarily considers evil fantasy ideologies, the theory itself seems relatively open to good and positive fantasy ideologies. The precursor to the fantasy ideology is William James's philosophy of "the will to believe," where humans believe in something against all evidence to the contrary; and Harris recognizes that this can be good as well as evil:

Yet the fact that such beliefs cannot be justified by science does not mean that they may not be useful or beneficial to the individual or to the society that holds them. For James, this meant primarily the religious beliefs of individuals: Did a man’s religious beliefs improve the quality of his personal life? For Pareto, however, the same argument was extended to all beliefs: religious, cultural, and political.

He also accepts that such transformative beliefs or "myths" can be deliberately manufactured (or "artificially inseminated"), an idea he attributes to socialist/syndicalist Georges Sorel. But why shouldn't Moslem clerics who oppose jihadism deliberately construct a new "myth" of restoring the greatness of Islam of the past by re-constructing it in the modern world -- rather than by tearing down all of modernity itself, flinging the world back into the Dark Ages, when the ummah was comparatively better off than Christendom?

Why not construct a competing fantasy ideology to combat the evil jihadist fantasy ideology?

Combining Western military power with the transformative democratization of Islam and with a new and powerful myth of rebuilding greatness within, not instead of, modernity could be exactly the key we seek to eradicate the disease of jihadism once and for all time.

US Captures Terrorist Executioner Of Egyptian Diplomat

US forces in Iraq announced today that they captured the al-Qaeda leader in charge of the operation that kidnapped and later executed a diplomatic envoy from Egypt last month. American military forces found Abu Seba in Ramadi last Saturday as part of an ongoing mission to disrupt Zarqawi's terrorist network:

The U.S. military on Thursday announced the capture of two key members of Iraq's most-feared terror group, including one suspected in the kidnap-slaying of an Egyptian envoy and attacks on senior diplomats from Pakistan and Bahrain.

Khamis Farhan Khalaf Abd al-Fahdawi, known as Abu Seba, was arrested last Saturday following operations in the Ramadi area west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.

He was accused of involvement in the abduction and killing of Egypt's top envoy in Iraq and attacks on Pakistani and Bahraini diplomats earlier this month.

"Seba served as a senior lieutenant of al-Qaida in Iraq, and is suspected in attacks against diplomats of Bahrain, Pakistan and the recent murder of Egyptian envoy, Ihab Salah al Din Ahmad al-Sherif," the U.S. statement said. "Al-Qaida ordered the attacks against Arab diplomats in an effort to reduce support for the government of Iraq according to a military spokesman."

This statement follows the earlier announcement of the capture of Abu Abdul Aziz, who led Zarqawi's Baghdad forces in their bombing campaign and destabilization efforts. Zarqawi went out of his way to minimize the impact of Aziz's capture, an odd but entertaining twist on this latest news. He insists that Aziz was nothing more than a brigade commander -- which still sounds like an intelligence coup to me, especially since the Americans claim he's cooperating.

More and more of the higher-ranking individuals have been captured. Either our intelligence is improving or the rapid replacement of these terrorist leaders is throwing less talented lunatics into leadership roles. Either sounds like pretty good news.

Did Abortion Waiting Period Save 2,000 Babies In 2004?

The AP reports that abortions dropped by 30% in Minnesota in 2004, a year after passage of the Women's Right to Know Act. The new law requires abortion providers to give information about medical risks, potential fetal pain, and assistance options to women seeking abortions, and imposes a 24-hour waiting period. In its first year of application, abortions dropped to their lowest level in 30 years:

The number of abortions in Minnesota dropped to a 30-year low in the first full year after the state passed a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions. ...

The number of abortions in 2004 dipped to 13,788, the lowest level since 1975, the first year the state Health Department started tallying the numbers. The department has been reporting annual abortion figures to the Legislature for the past five years.

The number of abortions in the state has been falling since it peaked in 1980 at more than 19,000 -- a curve that mimics a national trend. And the drop transcends shifting demographics: Minnesota's rate of abortions among women in their childbearing years (classified as ages 15 through 44) also has been on the decline.

This year, the Health Department reported on the actual numbers of women who applied for abortions (15,859) and the number that eventually received the procedure (13,788). The new law appears to explain the difference of 2,071 women who did not abort their children. Abortion-rights activists dispute that informed consent has anything to do with the gap, but while correlation does not necessarily prove causation, the size of the difference certainly suggests some impact from the new law.

Either way, the data shows that more than 2,000 babies made it into the world that, had the waiting period not existed, would have never been born at all. Even those who argue for abortion rights under the "safe but rare" slogan should cheer that result.

Le Tipping Point?

According to the Guardian (UK), the French may soon reach a level of political dissatisfaction that will threaten to not only topple Jacques Chirac but the entire economic structure of Europe's most socialized democracy. Kim Willsher reports from Paris that a movement has started to form in fits and starts that may soon generate into a revolutionary effort:

Today should be Jacques Chirac's big moment. As the standard bearer of France's republican tradition he oversees an impressive parade on Bastille Day. Horseguards, soldiers, pilots, police officers and firemen will march down the Champs Elysées accompanied by as much hardware - tanks, rocket launchers and fighter jets - as France's military might can muster.

But, even in his Bastille Day best, Mr Chirac cannot ignore the fact that France is deeply fed up, and with him above all. ...

That France is not in the mood to party is clear. But this is more than a nation in economic and political depression. It is a crisis that some analysts believe could turn violent.

Commentators evoke May 1968, when students rioted through the streets of Paris setting up barricades and tearing up paving stones to hurl at the police. Everyone got angry, went on strike and then went back to work or study. It did not change much, but it remains a seminal moment of that generation.

Many believe France has another crisis coming. For 30 years the country ignored warnings that its system needed an overhaul, that it could not sustain its massive public expenditure, enormous bureaucracy, expensive public services, high taxes and crippling social charges. Paradoxically, French people often say they want changes, and then bring the streets to a standstill when their politicians try to introduce them. Instead of pressing ahead with difficult reforms, ministers have all too often taken the soft option of retreating.

Ironically, this last dynamic describes almost exactly the effort that Chirac poured into the defeated EU constitution. To many of us, the pact represented everything that we see wrong with European politics: bloated, reliant on unaccountable bureaucracies, and heavily biased towards government prerogatives than guaranteeing individual freedoms. However, for the French, it would have forced some critically-needed market-based reforms in order to integrate France into the overall EU economy.

Typically, the French rejected this approach, claiming that the pact benefitted the British at their expense. They refused to see that other nations in the EU, especially in the East that recently has had so much negative experience with socialism, refuses to follow France into economic ruin. More to the point, they refuse to fund France's avoidance of economic responsibility.

This seems to have finally dawned on France's electorate. They see that their socialist structure has failed and that Europe is prepared to leave them behind; the rescue on which they counted will not be forthcoming. Yet they're still not ready to abandon the free ride they have enjoyed for the last several decades, funded in large part by the influx of Muslim immigrants that have also helped destabilize French society. They want a magic wand to solve their problems painlessly, but if Willsher is correct, that avoidance almost guarantees an explosive denouement that may take years to correct.

Prayers Needed For Fellow Blogger

Kevin McCullogh, Salem Radio Network talk-show host and all-around great guy, has often written movingly about the struggle his mother-in-law has waged against cancer. It appears, sadly, that she will shortly pass on. Kevin writes about that in his post from last night titled, "The phone call you're never quite ready for...":

The phone call that we knew since Feburary of this year - might come - finally has. Early tomorrow The Lovely Bride boards a plane headed for California to say goodbye. There is little that can be said at this time. This part of life is hard, and not without considerable pain - regardless of the amount of suffering someone has been through. I watched my Mom be bed-ridden for weeks and elude death multiple times in the final months... yet in that moment... nothing quite prepares you for it. ...

Mom is a hero by every measure. She has battled cancer for a decade. The family was told 10 years ago that she would not survive, and yet - she has seen both of her children graduate from high school and college. She has witnessed her daughter's marriage and been a supportive encourager to our young life together.

After sickness came she began to speak openly about a newness to the relationship she had with God. And up till this last season she was actively involved in teaching and discipling younger women at her church in how to be more Godly wives, better moms, and woman of steadfast character. She has wondered publicly if her life has amounted to much. But these doubts rest only in her mind.

If you had a chance to hear from the lips of the women who have taken her classes. The difference she has made in families and the lives of the women she has taught has been profound. When we were last with her in May of this year, she was talking AGAIN of starting up a bible study - in her home - to continue to bring encouragement to her own heart as well as other women.

Please add Kevin's family and his mother-in-law to your prayers and thoughts today.

The Breakfast Club Wants A Sequel

The members of the Senate's Gang of 14 that held off the GOP push for the elimination of filibusters on judicial nominations have scheduled a breakfast meeting to further discuss the ramifications of their agreement, the New York Times reports. Sheryl Stolberg reports that the Gang wants to remain unified to ensure a smooth process on the upcoming confirmation fight, but that appears easier said than done:

With the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - and renewed speculation that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has thyroid cancer and was in the hospital Wednesday with a fever, could retire - the members of the Gang of 14 are trying to chart a course that would keep them unified in the event of a divisive Supreme Court confirmation fight.

On Thursday, they are planning to meet for breakfast to do just that. If the gang sticks together, it could become a powerful force - so powerful that some of its members, including Mr. Warner, have insisted that the group steer clear of issues beyond the judiciary, for fear of becoming a kind of shadow leadership.

But the gang, which Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, likens to "emergency standby equipment in the Senate," faces pitfalls that could cause it to splinter. Its members are under intense scrutiny both in the Capitol and at home, where some, particularly Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mike DeWine of Ohio, are suffering political repercussions for crossing conservatives to join.

The two halves of the Gang met separately earlier this week to plan their strategies, and both face tremendous political pressure to splinter away. The GOP members face the most extraordinary pressure, having given away a winning option for the promise of "comity" that the Democrats immediately ignored with the confirmation filibuster of John Bolton. Despite their denials, the Seven GOP Dwarves had argued that a compromise on the judiciary would relieve overall tension in the Senate and allow for easier and more friendly cross-aisle relations. Having Bolton shut down twice exposed that notion as a farce, and a successful filibuster will end some Senate careers.

Two Republicans seem especially vulnerable. Mike DeWine of Ohio saw his son lose badly in his primary fight, which until DeWine pere jumped ship on the Byrd option, looked well within his grasp. (Pat DeWine wound up finishing fourth, far out of contention.) Lindsay Graham learned that playing puppy-dog to John McCain does not sit well with South Carolina Republicans, who elected him to help guarantee judicial confirmations, not throw candidates like Henry Saad under the bus.

What this shows is that the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Gang did nothing but kick the can down the road. Democratic Party leaders have continued to ratchet up the rhetoric and their demands, with Schumer claiming that the President owes them a list of people for the minority party to vet. Even McCain had to speak out after that, scolding Democrats for ignoring the elections that put them clearly in the minority. In the end, we will face the same fight, only months later and probably with the same harried vote-counting that preceded the MOU. The only gain made was to the egos of 14 Senators who got the best press coverage of their lives. And that, sadly, was probably all that mattered to them in the first place.

Sunnis Campaign For Democracy, Participation

After seeing themselves politically marginalized for boycotting what turned out to be hugely popular elections, Iraq's Sunni leaders have now begun to urge their communities to take part in the electoral process:

In mosques, conferences and on the street, some Sunni Arab leaders are rallying members of their once dominant community to join forces and participate in upcoming elections in a bid to find their place in the new Iraq. ...

"Boycotting the last elections ... deprived the people of opportunities," said Sheik Adul Jabbar Qadri, preacher at the Fattah mosque in the largely Sunni town of Beiji. "Now everyone feels this was a mistake and that all Iraqis should participate."

Qadri has been using his weekly Friday sermons to encourage Sunnis to cast ballots. "We also urged them to put their differences aside and to keep away from violence," he said.

Qadri said a recent meeting in Beiji brought together tribal sheiks, clerics and local dignitaries to support calls for contesting the votes.

Laith al-Sumaidei, who owns a media production company in Beiji, said his firm was designing posters to encourage a Sunni turnout. One of them shows Iraqis from different ethnic and religious groups, holding ballots that read: "Yes to freedom" and "Yes to democracy."

The Sunnis continue to discover that their Kurdish and Shi'ite countrymen have almost fully embraced democracy as the shared future of Iraq, and that the so-called insurgency has not dented their enthusiasm for self-rule. Their ability to carve out even a representative role for the minority Sunnis, who once dominated Iraq under Saddam, was severely hampered by their ill-chosen strategy of instransigence in January. Not only did they wind up with an abnormally small contingent in the Assembly to look after their interests, but they made themselves into an easy scapegoat for all that remains wrong in Iraqi life, including what many saw as a tacit (and not-so-tacit) endorsement of terrorist attacks that mostly kill Iraqis these days.

They managed to get better representation for themselves than they deserved at the constitutional convention, mostly because Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has enough political skills to understand that the Sunnis have to take some ownership of its final outcome. That requires the Sunnis to start supporting democracy as the future for Iraqi political expression. This shows them taking the first steps towards a broad-based endorsement of freedom and self-government.

This will severely undermine the terrorists who have kept the Sunnis believing that they could once again achieve supremacy through bombs and bullets in Iraq. Most of Iraq has turned against the foreigners of the Zarqawi/al-Qaeda network. If the Sunnis pack it in, the country will demand an end to the insurgency, and Zarqawi's lunatics will shortly run out of places to hide.

CQ On ... CBS?

After checking my referrer logs this morning, I noticed that a few visitors had begun to arrive from cbsnews.com. I found this rather odd (pun intended), as I hadn't written anything about CBS in ages. I followed the link -- and found out that CBS picked up my Daily Standard article on Hillary Clinton and her Mad Magazine moments in Aspen.

Interestingly, the site notes that the piece ran on CBS with permission from Nation Review Online. Of course, it originally ran in the Daily Standard and, as far as I know, never appeared at NRO. So far, I'm scratching my head on this one.

However, I'm pleased that CBS saw fit to reprint the article, and I hope that new readers from that site take a look around CQ and decide to stick around.

Santorum Shoots His Mouth Off ... Again

I like Rick Santorum. I really do. Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania Senator has a habit of talking without thinking about the consequences of his rhetoric. Earlier this year, he broke Godwin's Law and used Hitler for an analogy in reference to the Democrats and the judicial-nomination filibusters -- an analogy that actually made logical sense but was politically foolish. In his latest faux pas, he doesn't even have logic on his side:

What drew the concentrated ire of the Bay State's congressional delegation was Santorum's decision this week to repeat his three-year-old comment that liberalism was at the root of the scandal over child sex abuse in the church.

"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote in a July 12, 2002 article for the Web site Catholic Online. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

Since Santorum wrote those words, the scandal has spread from Boston to almost every diocese in the country, has forced three bishops to declare bankruptcy and has cost the church close to $1 billion. In a study for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported last year that 4,392 priests had been accused since 1950 of abusing more than 10,600 children.

Asked by the Boston Globe this week whether he stood by his remark, Santorum said he did. "I was just saying that there's an attitude that is very open to sexual freedom that is more predominant" in Boston, the Globe quoted him as saying Tuesday.

As a Catholic and a conservative, nothing would please me more than if we could blame the sexual-abuse scandals of the Church on a permissive society. Unfortunately, it simply isn't true. Pedophilia has nothing to do with liberal sexual mores. The sexual abuse of children involves illnesses without cures, and the scandals have to do with a church hierarchy that refused to recognize that and keep sick priests away from vulnerable boys and girls.

Normally I would rather eat raw squid with mushrooms and beets than agree with Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Neither of these men conducted themselves with much honor during their political careers. Both owe so many apologies to so many people that hearing them call for someone else to apologize almost makes me spit out my beverage over my laptop screen.

In this case, however, they're right.

As the Post notes, Boston's diocese did not have the worst track record in the US, although it probably got the most press. Plenty of sexual abuse occurred in other areas of the country, even those more conservative than in wild and wooly Boston. The problem for Beantown wasn't a liberal attitude towards sex; it was the leadership of the diocese that apparently turned a blind eye towards the problem. It also wasn't a strictly Catholic problem either, as people discovered other clergy had abused children in the past and present.

It is unfair in the extreme of Santorum to blame the scandals on the community of Boston, a community that indeed was victimized by the pedophiliacs and those who hid their crimes. Santorum's remarks attempt to turn the blame away from the criminals and onto the victims. Those remarks were wrong three years ago, and he should have known better than to repeat them now. His spokesman, Robert Traynham, should also have known better than to keep digging the hole by blaming Harvard University for the sins of the Catholic priests and other clergy.

Bottom line: Conservatives don't blame society for the actions of individuals. Crimes are the responsibility of the criminals themselves.

Senator Santorum owes Boston and Massachusetts an apology.

UPDATE: ScottM asks a couple of good questions in the comments:

But you can't possibly believe that people's choices are not influenced by what society tells them about right and wrong. Morality is largely learned.

Is the rise in other crimes, unwed pregnancy, divorce, STDs, and all the other lovely panoply of modern life also in no way traceable to the breakdown of societal morality? Does society get a special pass on child abuse alone?

The rise in crimes as a societal issue came from a number of public policy decisions, including lenient sentencing, ignorance of recidivism (i.e., when we started locking up repeaters, crime went down), and a lack of resources for enforcement that still exists today. Look at what happened in New York when Rudy Giuliani decided to start enforcing all the laws, even the so-called nuisance laws. Crime dropped across the board. Does that mean crime needs a societal approach? Yes, but it doesn't mean New York encouraged people to commit crimes, which is what Santorum implied in his arguments about sexual abuse in Boston.

Also, no one knows how far back this abuse goes. Some of the victims have come out from as far back as thirty years ago. We know about more cases now, but that doesn't mean, unfortunately, that this indicates an increase from ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years ago.

As far as unwed motherhood, STDs, and divorce, none of these are crimes and involve personal choices made by the people involved. Do they indicate a lowering of moral values in society? Sure. But that doesn't make me responsible for someone getting a divorce, unless it's the First Mate. Moral choices are individual choices. Blaming these on Boston or Massachusetts (or San Francisco, or New York) makes no sense whatsoever. Where public policy impacts these choices, we need to work to make sure that it supports the most constructive and morally strong position possible, but in the end, the criminal remains responsible for his/her crimes, and not the community they victimize.

UPDATE: Here's the relevant passage from Senator Santorum's column, the part that he reconfirmed in his remarks to the Globe recently:

It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

Two points in this paragraph make him ripe for criticism. The first, that Santorum find it "startling" that the media and academia criticize the sexual abuse of children, is simply ludicrous. I have my share of skepticism for both institutions, but when did either of these groups enthusiastically support such behavior? Never. Perhaps a few fringe types in both might support NAMBLA and other perverse pedophilia interest groups, but abusing children still remains one of the most widely accepted taboos in our culture across the entire political spectrum. And only those extremists would consider such abuse as an "alternate lifestyle". The second, of course, is singling out Boston and political liberalism as the reasons for the abuse.

Power Line, Hard Starboard, and several readers in the comments think I'm being too harsh on Santorum, while Michelle Malkin, PoliPundit, John Cole, and other commenters agree with me. I will say this: had Santorum exercised some discretion and removed that paragraph from his column, I would have had no problem with the rest of his essay, which I think makes many good points. Let's just make sure we stop making excuses for pedophiliacs and the people who harbor them.

Minneapolis Airport Terminal Evacuated On Possible Bomb Threat

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Minneapolis-St. Paul airport has evacuated its Humphrey terminal, where most charter flights embark and disembark, after an unattended package got the attention of a bomb-sniffing dog:

The Humphrey Terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was evacuated this evening after bomb-sniffing dogs smelled something suspicious in an unattended bag.

Passengers and employees were sent to a parking garage across the street. The Bloomington bomb squad was on the scene.

The Lindbergh Terminal was not affected by the evacuation.

No more details are available at the moment. Keep checking back. (h/t: Hugh Hewitt)

UPDATE: The story has been updated. Now it appears that two dogs sniffed something suspicious in two vending machines. The machines were separated within the terminal, one being roughly in the center and the other located at the south end. Air traffic continues to get processed at the larger Lindbergh terminal, but Humphrey has been shut down until further notice.

UPDATE II: The airport spokesman says he thinks this is a false positive. KSTP has the updated report:

The Humphrey Terminal at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport has been evacuated. Two bomb-sniffing dogs apparently sat down next to two different vending machines in different parts of the building. ... Sitting down indicates a threat, according to officials. The dogs were on a routines patrol of the airport. ...

[MAC spokesman Pat] Hogan said he believes this is a false positive, however, the Bloomington bomb squad is on the scene working with the airport police K-9 unit.

It seems like an odd coincidence that two dogs spotted two different machines, however. KARE-11 reports that one of the machines was a Wells Fargo ATM and the other a food vending machine.

UPDATE III: The machines have been removed by forklift for further testing, and the terminal will apparently re-open, if it hasn't already.

The Mad World Of CQ!

I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Daily Standard as a regular contributor to their pages. My first column, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Left", reviews Hillary Clinton's Aspen speech in which she compared George Bush to Alfred E. Neuman. I posted briefly on this earlier this week, and my new column takes a closer look at the factual misrepresentations that Hillary made, and the lack of accountability given to them by the media:

HILLARY CLINTON made headlines earlier this week when she compared President George W. Bush to Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, freckle-faced mascot whose signature statement is "What, me worry?" As political put-downs go, this hardly ranks as the most egregious, even in the modern era of politics. Fellow Democratic Senator Harry Reid called Bush both a liar and a loser earlier this year, and later only grudgingly offered to retract the latter. The American left, exemplified by MoveOn.org, has compared Bush to Adolf Hitler--unfavorably. Howard Dean has spent his entire term as Democratic party chairman issuing insults to and about Republicans, explicitly declaring that they have never done an honest day's work in their lives and that the GOP is entirely comprised of unfriendly white Christians. Even as an insult to Bush's physical looks, Sen. Clinton's comparison pales to the usual references to chimpanzees that the Left has beaten to death.

Still, the Mad magazine comparison is significant and revealing. I grew up reading Mad, with its iconoclastic attitude and broad-based satirical outlook. The magazine existed in part to challenge authority and to skewer the self-righteous. Year ago, "authority" meant the establishment, mostly conservative, and the magazine's barbs were aimed more at stodgy Republicans than free-wheeling liberals and Democrats. But Mad also regularly scored points against the excesses of the counterculture, too.

Big thanks to King Banaian, the Official Economist of the Northern Alliance. He confirmed my original analysis when I simply couldn't believe that anyone could spout this big of a whopper and not get called on it. (Oh, yeah -- and thanks to my Aunt Judy, who bought me a Mad Magazine subscription when I was nine years old, over the mild objections of my mother. Told you it wouldn't warp my mind.)

Speaking

This gives me an opportunity to also announce that Premiere Speakers has now added me to their roster of national lecturers. This is a stellar organization representing many fine speakers -- take a look around the website to see the others, like Zell Miller, Sean Hannity, and many fine public figures. We are still finalizing promotional materials, but other than the headshot, I believe they're ready to start booking appearances. If you would like to have me speak at a function, please be sure to contact Premiere! (If you would like to see my appearance at the Heritage Foundation, you can see it through a Real Player stream here.)

UPDATE and BUMP TO TOP: Thanks for all the support -- it's much appreciated.

The Priorities Of The National Education Association

The NEA published its agenda for its July 7th Assembly, listing all the new action items under consideration and the action taken on each. How long does one have to read down the list before the NEA actually addresses an issue having directly to do with educating students? The first item? Third? Fifth?

How about ... fifteenth?

Here's what comes ahead of education at the National Education Association:

1. [Defeated, no description]
2. Fighting Wal-Mart
3. Investigating the positions of financial firms regarding Social Security privatization
4. Adding "multiethnic" and "other" as options on ethnicity questions
5. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the NEA and ATA
6. Forming coalitions to "protect" Social Security
7. Explaining the difference between two different pension plans
8. Requesting an article for their newsletter on "health problems from exposure to fragrance chemicals".
9. Getting outside funding to allow 25 more people to attent the EPA Tools for Schools Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Symposium
10. Creating a workgroup on health care
11. Sponsoring "political training" for Congressional candidates friendly to NEA priorities (see above!)
12. [Defeated, no description]
13. Opposing "billionaire Eli Broad and any other entities to remove elected school boards from cities"
14. Repealing the Social Security offset and explaining the differences between states' approach to Social Security for teachers who move

Five of the top 20 have to do with Social Security politics. Only two items in the top 30 have anything directly to do with educating children. As Michelle Malkin points out, however, they made room during their efforts to demand a withdrawal from Iraq (number 61), oppose CAFTA, (number 63), and support the boycott of Gallo Wines (number 47).

If I wanted to parody the NEA, I couldn't draft a better list than this. Anyone arguing that this special-interest group has the welfare of children as its first priority should read this list carefully and often.

Only Three Violations Of Rules At Gitmo

An independent investigation into the detention facility at Gunatanamo Bay housing terrorists captured by the US only turned up three violations of Army regulations and the Geneva Conventions, the AP reports today. None of these involved torture of any kind, although one investigator found that the totality of techniques used on one prisoner qualified as "abusive":

The chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, described the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

It was learned later that he had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 but was turned away by an immigration agent at the Orlando, Fla., airport. Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was in the airport at the same time, officials have said.

Schmidt said that to get him to talk, interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra, forced him to wear a thong on his head, told him he was homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator, Schmidt added, and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women and forced him onto a leash, to act like a dog.

Still, he said, "No torture occurred."

Al-Qahtani was provided food, water and medical care, he said. Together these techniques are degrading and abusive, he said. FBI agents raised their concerns about the techniques to Miller, and he should have monitored them, but he apparently took no action, Schmidt said.

As the data from this Senate hearing gets disseminated, watch to see where the overall violations get reported. In this article by the AP's John Lumpkin and Lolita Baldor, the fact that investigators could only find three violations out of thousands of interrogations performed at Gitmo gets held until the eleventh paragraph, about halfway through the report. Instead of putting this information into its proper context, Lumpkin and Baldor instead offer up some of the more sensational interrogation techniques used by Gitmo intelligence operatives:

Interrogators subjected a suspected terrorist to abusive and degrading treatment, forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog, military investigators reported Wednesday, saying that justified their call for disciplinary action.

Yes, the lead for this story is that we made an Islamist wear a bra, dance with another man, and act like a dog. That's the level of "abuse" that has captured the imagination of Dick Durbin and the rest of the Left that equates Camp X-Ray with Dachau. When trying to get information about future attacks and terrorist networks that could save American lives -- and British lives, and French lives, etc -- these tactics seem rather mundane and unobjectionable, except to those who want each one of the detainees to be treated like an American criminal suspect instead of an enemy during wartime.

Let's remind people what the Islamists have in mind for those whom they oppose:

Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants to the Netherlands, is accused of shooting and stabbing Mr van Gogh to death in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam last November, before nearly decapitating him and impaling his corpse with a knife, which secured a five-page note declaring a holy war.

That's just if they encounter people on a face-to-face basis. Otherwise, they would much prefer to blow up subways, trains, and buses as they did in London last week, killing dozens and perhaps more than that. In Madrid, in Morocco, and in Turkey, they killed hundreds in similar fashion. The man at the center of this investigation, Mohamed al-Qahtani, only missed out on his chance to board Flight 93 and perhaps help the terrorists succeed in attacking the Capitol or the White House because of a sharp-eyed immigration agent in 2001.

We lost 3,000 of our fellow citizens in that attack, and these Islamofacist lunatics would like nothing better than to add thousands more to that number. Making him dance a jig in a bra with another man while barking like a dog in order to prevent that sounds like a damned good trade to me.

The Laffer Curve Strikes Again

It seems that every twenty years or so, politicians have to get a reminder on economics regarding the relationship between effective tax cuts and tax revenues. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both cut marginal tax rates and wound up sparking economic growth that generated billions of extra revenue. Within hours of hearing the leading Democratic presidential candidate excoriate President Bush for following their lead, the White House now shows that the budget deficit has dropped significantly and more tax has come into federal coffers than expected:

For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

Where did all this extra revenue come from? Did it come out of the pocketbooks of the working man? No -- the largest gains in tax revenue came from corporate profits. Even for the gains made in receipts from individual taxpayers, the increases mostly were delivered from investment gains and business earnings. Little of it came from income withholding.

This data demonstrates that far from the hysterical Democratic rhetoric screeched through the media for the past five years, the Bush tax cuts wound up getting more money from the rich, not the middle class or the poor, despite targeting capital gains and marginal tax rates. Why? The lower tax thresholds allowed more people to keep their money, resulting in broader spending -- which creates demand for more manufacturing and services -- or in this case, broader capital investments, which also creates jobs.

We've seen this dynamic before. In the 1980s, when Reagan proposed the same kind of plan, Bush's father called it "voodoo economics", an embarrassing appellation that eventually softened to Reaganomics. That transition occurred when it became clear it worked. Putting money back into the markets where it creates goods and services, and jobs, almost always results in better and more reliable tax revenue. Democrats (and some Republicans) found themselves on the wrong side of history then, and when Bush 41 forgot that lesson in 1990, he paid for it with a recession and an early exit from the White House.

Bush has more to learn about economics, however. He needs to address the second part of the strategy, which is to reduce overall spending for the federal government, at least for those departments not related to the war effort. But this result proves once again Bush's wisdom in going back to Reaganomics to allow the market to use money in the most efficient manner. This way, everyone wins.

US Aid Brings Democracy ... Now

The head of the agency responsible for distributing American development funds to international groups says that the money now goes to building democracy, even in Arab nations that previously vetoed such use of the funds. Andrew Natsios told reporters that previous to this year, the State Department prohibited USAID from supporting groups that established governments vetoed, especially nascent democracy activists:

America's top aid official said on Wednesday Washington's new support for pro-democracy groups in the Arab world was bearing fruit, even in Egypt, once given a free hand to vet such funding by its U.S. ally.

Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told Reuters during a visit to Amman that USAID had previously granted the Egyptian government the right to block money for any civil society group it disliked.

"They didn't like democracy funding and they didn't approve it. They believed in tight control over civil society," he said, adding that such funding was no longer subject to Cairo's nod.

Natsios acknowledged that U.S. policy had in the past soft-pedaled concern for democracy in some Arab countries.

"We did not have a robust democracy program until recently in Egypt because from the foreign policy point of view we were told by the State Department that's not what our focus should be. It is now and so there is a shift going on."

All that began to change a couple of years ago, Natsios said, but the real change came this year. Natsios attributes that change to the surprising success of the Iraqi elections, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and similar democracy movements in Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon, and even the first steps towards liberalization shown by the Egyptian government of late. Instead of sending aid to only government-approved groups, which tended to make the governments happy as we funded their efforts to secure power, now the State Department tells Natsios that the kleptocracies have no veto power over American aid and to put it where it will have the best effect.

Can anyone else think why this change may have occurred? Perhaps a change of personnel at State from a practitioner of realpolitik to a staunch proponent of democratization? It appears to me that we are seeing Condoleezza Rice's fingerprints here.

Bolton Now Will Accept A Recess Appointment

Remember John Bolton? His nomination to the UN Ambassador's post had Washington and political circles in a tizzy until Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the Supreme Court. Despite his initial reluctance to do so, Bolton apparently has indicated that he will accept a recess appointment from George Bush rather than attempt to push his way through a recalcitrant Senate once again:

With neither the White House nor Senate Democrats showing any sign of yielding in their long-running dispute over documents related to Bolton's State Department work, speculation is rife that Bolton is prepared to accept a recess appointment good through the end of 2006, despite warnings from some GOP senators that it would weaken his influence and effectiveness. ...

"He'll take the recess" appointment, said the administration source, who is familiar with Bolton's thinking. "The president has made his selection, and the president is asking the Senate to confirm the selection, and if the Senate refuses to do that, then most assuredly [Bush] will make a recess appointment."

This agreement would appear to clear the decks for the upcoming SCOTUS confirmation fight, allowing both parties to focus on the nominee Bush selects for O'Connor's seat. Both sides will likely breathe a sigh of relief at having this cup pass from their lips rather than fight a third floor battle over cloture.

This didn't keep Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer from publicizing even more silly and inconsequential back-stage gossip about Bolton. At the end of their Washington Post report, the two dedicate several paragraphs to the efforts of Bolton to acquire the office space he feels necessary to hit the ground running as UN ambassador. The Post's reporters manage to find two petty Washington bureaucrats who don't care for Bolton's requisition of space because they feel it "inappropriate" prior to his Senate confirmation.

How long before we see George Voinovich crying over that slight, too?

Unprecedented Consultation Not Enough; Schumer Wants A 'Summit'

Senate Democrats, relying on a single instance where Bill Clinton asked Judiciary Committee chair Orrin Hatch his opinion on a potential nominee, have demanded that President Bush "consult" with them before selecting a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Bush has now contacted 60 senators to get their input on the nomination, far exceeding what Clinton or any other President has done in the past -- and yet the Democrats still complain that it's not enough:

White House officials and Senate Republicans have already declared that the outreach to lawmakers about the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is unprecedented, with more than 60 senators contacted or consulted about the choice. "He has gone way beyond what any president has ever done," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

But Democrats are trying to establish their own standard for the consultation, with demands likely to increase. Unless Bush shares the names of potential nominees, they say, the process will have been a charade that could affect the confirmation battle. "There has to be more consultation," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said after the meeting. "This was only a first step."

It's only a first step towards building an excuse for another filibuster. The Democrats want to hold a veto over a list of candidates supplied by Bush in order to get the nominee they want, or more accurately, to block those they don't. The pouty reactions from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer illustrate this:

"He didn't give us any names," Mr. Reid told reporters after the meeting. ...

[A]nother Judiciary member, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, took to the Senate floor yesterday to criticize the White House effort.

"For consultation to work, and we all want it to work, the president should suggest some names and get the opinion of those of us in the Senate," he said. The senator also suggested the president convene a summit at Camp David or "a dinner at the White House" to privately discuss the nomination.

A summit? Perhaps Schumer has listened to the Cold War rhetoric emanating from the Left too long, but Presidents do not hold summits with partisan hacks over executive nominations. The very use of the term, popularized by the press for meetings between American presidents and Communist heads of state, serves as an ironic and revealing look into the mind of Schumer and his political allies. They don't see themselves as a loyal opposition or an opposition of any sort. They see themselves as the mortal enemies of the administration and want to do everything possible to obstruct its exercise of Constitutional duty.

Even John McCain appears to have had enough with Democratic intransigence, although a healthy dose of survival instinct may have been in play with these remarks:

This point was endorsed by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican who helped broker a pact with Senate Democrats to move forward on several stalled lower-court judicial nominees.

"During the campaign, President Bush said he will appoint judges who will strictly interpret the Constitution," the senator said in Dallas. "Thinking anything else is either amnesia or ignorance. ... Whomever he nominates deserves an up or down vote and no filibuster," Mr. McCain said. "And an up or down vote is what we will have."

McCain understands that a filibuster after his highly-publicized Gang of 14 hijacking of the Senate will doom his political career. He argued that the MOU cleared the way for Bush to get confirmation votes on his nominees. With Bush going out of his way to consult a wide selection of Senators on the SCOTUS opening, McCain knows that the quid pro quo will be an up-or-down vote. If McCain doesn't deliver that, then the MOU wasted an opportunity to return the Senate to over 200 years of tradition -- and since McCain couldn't wait to jump in front of the cameras to claim credit for the MOU, his career will sink right along with the Gang of 14 he corralled for it.

Knowing this, McCain will have no choice but to get back on the reservation and demand that the Senate block any attempt at filibustering, no matter who gets nominated to O'Connor's seat. He cannot tolerate demands for "summits" as a new requirement for the President to get a vote for his nominee. And as McCain goes, so go the rest of the GOP's Seven Dwarves on this issue. That means the Byrd option will come back into play if the Democrats attempt to push this to a filibuster -- and the Democrats will lose that as their last piece of leverage.

Consultation time should be over. The pieces are in place. Bush needs only to submit the nomination of a clear conservative to SCOTUS; the field is clear for victory.

'I Can't Feel For You Because You're An Unbeliever'

A Muslim terrorist on trial for the brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands gave the world a glimpse of the reasons that Islamists have gone to war against the West for more than a decade. Mohammed Bouyeri, who almost decapitated Van Gogh before using his body as a pincushion to display Bouyeri's manifesto, told the victim's mother that killing her son meant nothing to him because Van Gogh wasn't a Muslim:

Turning his chair towards Anneke van Gogh as she watched from the public gallery, Mohammed Bouyeri said: “I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer.”

The Islamic radical admitted killing Mr van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker, saying that he had been driven by his religious beliefs and would do the same again.

Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants to the Netherlands, is accused of shooting and stabbing Mr van Gogh to death in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam last November, before nearly decapitating him and impaling his corpse with a knife, which secured a five-page note declaring a holy war.

After initially insisting on remaining silent, the terrorist decided to use the trial as a stage for his Islamist beliefs. Grasing the Qu'ran in one hand and dressed in traditional robes, Bouyeri proclaimed that he had killed Van Gogh strictly for existing. In fact, he made sure that the Dutch court understood that he wanted to do more killing, and if released would commit more crimes:

Hamas: Israel's Days Are Numbered, Agreement Or No

For those who keep insisting that the Palestinians only want to live in peace and only resort to violence because of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the popular Hamas "Party" would like clear up that misunderstanding. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told an Italian journalist that any agreement reached with the Israelis only amounts to a temporary solution, allowing them to gather strength to wipe out the Jewish state within a decade:

Hamas will not compromise on one inch of Greater Palestine, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told an Italian newspaper earlier this week.

Speaking to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper, al-Zahar said Hamas would "definitely not" be prepared for coexistence with Israel should the IDF retreat to its 1967 borders.

"It can be a temporary solution, for a maximum of 5 to 10 years. But in the end Palestine must return to become Muslim, and in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the earth."

Asked about Hamas's intentions to carry out terror attacks in coordination with the disengagement plan, al-Zahar said Hamas has already promised not to initiate violence, and that the group's actions would be in response to Israeli actions.

"We won't disrupt the Israeli withdrawal, let them get out of here and go to hell," he said. "The problem will be afterwards, because in the hearts of every Palestinian, the liberation of Gaza must be accompanied by the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank."

Zahar isn't just some bombthrower in the street representing an obscure group of lunatics. Hamas has won a large number of offices in municipal elections across the Palestinian territories, and analysts widely predict a large Hamas victory in the next round of Palestinian parliamentary elections. In fact, President Mahmoud Abbas has suspended those elections indefinitely to avoid losing a majority of seats to the Hamas terrorists that enjoy such popularity with the Palestinians.

Zahar's position reveals the intent of the Palestinian people to either continue the intifada, or merely to use a cease fire as a pretense to gather international aid and enough time to open up a new offensive against the Israelis, perhaps hoping to convince the Syrians to join them. These people will not negotiate in good faith. They want the same thing now that they have wanted for decades -- the extermination of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Cooperating with Hamas, Fatah, and the terrorist-supporting Palestinians by granting them a sovereign state and billions of dollars in foreign aid amounts to giving Afghanistan back to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. We will do nothing but create another terrorist state, and our insistence on allowing Fatah and Hamas to operate as political parties and negotiating partners only encourages terrorists in the region to demand the same recognition without disarming first. The damage done to real democratization will cost us dearly in the next decade; Mahmoud al-Zahar will ensure it. (via Hugh Hewitt)

Dafydd: Abbott and Costello Meet "If It's Rove"...

I probably should not assume that everyone is on the same page of the dictionary. But one of the commenters to a previous post of mine, Dafydd: Bride of "If It's Rove"..., raised a definitional point that deserves response.

Attempting to prove that Bush indeed made some sort of "firing pledge," he notes a press conference on June 10, 2004 in Savannah, GA, in which the following exchange occurred:

Q: Given -- given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?

THE PRESIDENT: That's up to --

Q: And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.

The first point that leaps out at me is that the last sentence indicates that Bush's "yes" was in fact answering the first question -- whether it would be difficult to find the source -- not the second about some "pledge" that in fact cannot seem to be located. The referrant of the word "that" in Bush's response cannot possibly be the pledge, unless Bush is suggesting that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should be trying to discover whether any such "firing promise" was made.

The second point is one that also went unnoticed by the commenter: the rather wide divergence between the "pledge" that Bush is said to have made, to "fire anyone found to have" "leaked the agent's name," and what Sen. Reid claimed yesterday that Bush had pledged: "The White House promised that if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration, his administration."

Even if such a pledge were made, Reid's statement was still a wild-eyed exaggeration of it.

But there is an even more basic question to be asked: what, exactly, is a "leaker," and would the term apply to Karl Rove?

When used as a transitive verb, certainly as the president might have used it, the meaning of leak is clear: to deliberately divulge information that one knows is confidential. (To do so accidentally is called "being a blabbermouth," or having "loose lips," or "running off at the mouth"... not being a "leaker.")

That is, even if such a pledge were made (to fire anyone found to have "leaked" classified information) it would naturally be restricted to a person who had done so deliberately and with full knowledge that the information was classified.

So we are thrown back to the question I discussed in Dafydd: If It's Rove... Part Deux: is there any evidence at all that Karl Rove was aware that Plame's employment was classified information? The answer to that question is no, there is not. If there were, I trust that it would have been a banner headline, above the fold, on every newspaper in the country. Rather, as Andrea Mitchell and others have admitted (and as I mentioned before), Plame's employment was commonly known around the D.C. cocktail circuit, and that is almost certainly where Rove found out about it -- not from classified sources that he would have had no access to in the first place.

There is thus every reason to suppose not only that Rove did not believe that information to be classified, but further that he was under the impression that reporters already knew it... as indeed they may well have. After all, the focus of Rove's comment was not that she was in the CIA but rather that she, not Cheney or Tenet, was the one who suggested her husband, Joe Wilson, for the trip.

Rove, therefore, did not "leak" this information to Matthew Cooper, Judith Miller, or any other reporter; and even if Bush had made a pledge to fire anyone found to have deliberately leaked Plame's identity, it would not apply in this case.

But my wife Sachi just raised the more intriguing question: given all that has come out to date, the general waiver Rove signed, the specific waiver he gave Cooper, and the revelation of Cooper's e-mail by his employer... why is Judith Miller still sitting in the pen? Why hasn't she sung? Aside from the simple possibility of churlish stubbornness, there are only two answers that I can see, one extraordinarily unlikely:

Speculation alert!

1) (The unlikely one) If Karl Rove said to Miller, "now Judy, this is classified information because Plame is an undercover agent, but I'm going to tell you so you can help us take revenge on Joe Wilson;" then Miller might conclude that Rove's waiver to Cooper wouldn't cover all this extra information. This is almost too silly even to bring up... except that if I don't, somebody will post the suggestion in the comments and accuse me of covering it up. Consider this a pre-emptive strike.

2) (Much more likely) Judith Miller may in fact be sitting on two sources. Perhaps she got the same information from Rove that Cooper got. But suppose she decided to nail down whether Plame really did work for the CIA.

Miller might have a contact actually inside the Company who she called to confirm the claim; and that contact may have "authorized access" to the CIA personnel files. He or she may have consulted those files and verified to Miller that yes, indeed, Valerie Plame was an agent. And therefore, that contact may actually be a "covered person" under U.S. Code Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources.

If that is the case, then she really would be shielding her (other) source from likely discharge, indictment, conviction, and prison time, especially in a case as highly charged politically as this... and especially especially after the Democrats have repeatedly claimed (without evidence) that Bush "promised" or "pledged" to "fire anyone found to have" "leaked the agent's name."

If my speculation is correct, we will never know, alas; because Miller will take that information into and out of the country-club jail she now calls home.

Podhoretz On Rove: I Told You So

John Podhoretz writes an excellent column for the New York Post today, asking readers to recall his words from the beginning of the Plame controversy in 2003. Podhoretz predicted that the entire kerfuffle would consist of an administration official explaining why Wilson got selected for the Niger assignment in the first place:

I offered my speculation of what an administration official might have said to a journalist to explain just how Wilson — a Clinton administration official — got the assignment in the first place: "Administration official: 'We didn't send him there. Cheney's office asked CIA to get more information. CIA picked Wilson . . . Look, I hear his wife's in the CIA. He's got nothing to do. She wanted to throw him a bone.' "

Hate to say I told you so, but . . .

According to this week's Newsweek, Karl Rove said something very similar indeed to Time magazine's Matthew Cooper:

In the Cooper e-mails just surrendered by Time to the prosecutor looking into the Plame case, "Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a 'big warning' not to 'get too far out on Wilson.' Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by . . . CIA Director George Tenet . . . or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, 'it was, [Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.' "

There's no mistaking the purpose of this conversation between Cooper and Rove. It wasn't intended to discredit, defame or injure Wilson's wife. It was intended to throw cold water on the import, seriousness and supposedly high level of Wilson's findings.

I think John's lying here. He doesn't hate telling us that he told us so.

John stresses the issue of both intent and legality in this column. As I wrote earlier, the media pressed the White House about Wilson's public flogging of his findings and wanted to know if Wilson's testimony was credible. Rove's comments as noted by Matt Cooper clearly shows that he intended on pointing out that Wilson's wife picked him for this assignment, not the White House as Wilson claimed at the time. It also meant to highlight a conflict of interest on both Wilson and his wife.

The media has made quite a stir recently in its defense of using anonymous sourcing, claiming that such people need to be protected as whistleblowers. In this case, whether Rove was the primary source or not, he clearly tried to show that Wilson had lied about his assignment and lied about what he found in Niger -- both of which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence would determine in its investigation of his intelligence. Why wouldn't this qualify as whistleblowing to the Exempt Media? Wilson lied, and his wife appears to have tried conducting her own personal effort to undermine the administration from within the CIA.

What's more, Podhoretz points out that Wilson's biography on his consulting group's website for CPS, which appears to have been last updated shortly after 1998, included this verbiage at the end (Presto Agitato has it dated as February 2003):

He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters.

If Plame's name was such a secret, why did CPS have it available in Wilson's bio? Since the profession of Wilson's wife was common knowledge in Washington media circles, attaching her name to this understanding hardly required the services of Mark Felt.

Neither Plame's occupation nor her name, nor even her familial connection to Wilson appears to have been kept a secret, not even by Wilson and his associates. The reference to her occupation by Rove looks like the typical inside information that the media claims it needs to hold government officials accountable. Their outrage now appears to be nothing more than manufactured partisan bile, utterly undermining their claimed need for anonymous sourcing.

I will presume this tempest in a teapot will fade away as soon as Bush announces his SCOTUS nominee. Let's hope so, anyway.

UPDATE: Link to Presto Agitato.

Bombers Died, Arrest Made: London Investigation Continues

British intelligence and law-enforcement specialists continued their torrid pace in investigating the terrorist bombings of last week. Today, Sky News reports that the four bombers likely died in the explosions, while the BBC flashes that an arrest has been made in Yorkshire:

It is "highly likely" one of the Tube bombers died in the attacks on the Underground network, police say.

The suspected bombers travelled down from the West Yorkshire and met at Kings Cross station shortly before the attacks were launched on Thursday morning, police said at a press conference.

Their images were captured by CCTV cameras.

Personal documents have been found at all four bomb scenes and although the four attackers are thought to have died police were careful not to say whether Britain had suffered its first suicide bomb strike.

Those personal documents have been received with some skepticism by investigators. They worry that the papers could be a posthumous attempt to provide disinformation in order to protect the masterminds behind the attack. It didn't stop them from making at least one arrest in Yorkshire:

One man has been arrested in Yorkshire and taken to London for questioning after police raids in Leeds and the seizure of a car in Luton.

That skepticism, in fact, might be short-lived. The BBC characterizes the police mood as "buoyant" regarding new developments in the investigation. It sounds as if British terrorist hunters may be close to identifying the major players in this attack. Keep an eye on the news, as well as Michelle Malkin's site, for continuing updates.

A Mystery That They Could Solve Today

The New York Times plays the Rove card to the hilt today, putting their martyrdom of Judith Miller front and center while extending a mystery that the media created and the Times could immediately resolve. Instead, we get breathless accounts of non-comments from the White House that prompt 2,000-word front-page articles that wind up telling us nothing:

Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House refused on Monday to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter.

With the White House silent, Democrats rushed in, demanding that the administration provide a full account of any involvement by Mr. Rove, one of the president's closest advisers, turning up the political heat in the case and leaving some Republicans worried about the possible effects on Mr. Bush's second-term agenda.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, cited Mr. Bush's statements about firing anyone involved in the leak and said, "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Rove, given his stature and the principles involved in the case, could not hide behind legal advice not to comment.

"The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly," Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.

So the update is that the White House has no updates, and that two attack dogs for the Democrats continue to attack. Isn't this a case of dog bites man?

Let's take a look at this case from its beginning. The media (specifcially Robert Novak) revealed that Valerie Plame worked as an undercover agent for the CIA at some point in her career, even though she worked at Langley for the past few years. Plame is married to Ambassador Joe Wilson, who got sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African nation. Wilson claimed that the White House sent him on that trip and that his wife had nothing to do with his selection, and that her outing as a CIA agent came as retribution for his report that the Niger intelligence was flat-out wrong and possibly faked.

However, almost everything Wilson told us was wrong. Niger's government acknowledged that Iraq sent a delegation during the sanctions period to open secret trade talks -- and since the only export of Niger's that could hold any interest in secret trade was uranium, the Niger government assumed that the Iraqis had an interest in the banned material and told Wilson exactly that. Wilson finally acknowledged that to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it investigated Wilson's allegations. The SSCI also found that Plame indeed selected Wilson personally for this mission, calling her motivations (and Wilson's) into question.

When Matt Cooper went on deep background with Karl Rove, before all of this came out, he asked Rove about Wilson's credibility. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson. The White House knew Wilson lied about both the report and the nature of his assignment, and gave Cooper the information to back that up. Plame's status as CIA agent hardly qualified as a secret; NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell concedes that most of Washington's media elite already knew it. Novak simply printed it, although no one knows who gave it to Novak. At any rate, on the evidence given so far, Rove never broke the law as even the Times article makes clear in its final paragraphs.

Now Judith Miller sits in jail because she won't discuss her sources, and the New York Times wants to exploit the situation as much as possible. Sorry, but that's Miller's problem. The media created this issue by publishing Plame's name -- which never appears in Cooper's notes. If the media wants the questions answered, then it will have to cooperate by uncovering its source(s) for the information. The only other way that this will ever come out is if the source admits to leaking the information, and short of torture, law enforcement agencies have no way to force that to happen. If the leaker keeps his or her mouth shut, no resolution will occur. That doesn't indicate a cover-up, it demonstrates that we still can't force people to testify against themselves. For those who can't remember this, it's in the Constitution, four amendments past the one that Miller and the Times claim as their prerogative to hide the wrongdoer -- if in fact anyone can be cast as that.

The only people engaging in a cover-up are the media -- the New York Times and Robert Novak. When they want this mystery solved, they'll tell us who leaked the name. Until then, they'll milk this for everything it's worth to embarrass an administration they dislike.

Hawaiians Want Race-Based Public Policy Too

Today's second entry in racial politics comes from an unlikely source -- the 50th state and tropical paradise, Hawaii. Activists for native Hawaiians who can trace their geneaology to the time of the Hawaiian monarchy want to establish an autonomous reservation system on the Pacific archipelago, similar to those granted to Native American tribes in North America. Despite the decades of corruption and poverty these examples created for Native Americans, Lawrence Downes and the New York Times considers this a splenid idea:

Over decades, the islands emerged as a vibrant multiracial society and the proud 50th state. Hawaiian culture - language and art, religion and music - has undergone a profound rebirth since the 1970's. But underneath this modern history remains a deep sense of dispossession among native Hawaiians, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

Into the void has stepped Senator Daniel Akaka, the first native Hawaiian in Congress, who is the lead sponsor of a bill to extend federal recognition to native Hawaiians, giving them the rights of self-government as indigenous people that only American Indians and native Alaskans now enjoy. The Akaka bill has the support of Hawaii's Congressional delegation, the State Legislature and even its Republican governor, Linda Lingle. It will go before the Senate for a vote as soon as next week.

The bill would allow native Hawaiians - defined, in part, as anyone with indigenous ancestors living in the islands before the kingdom fell - to elect a governing body that would negotiate with the federal government over land and other natural resources and assets. There is a lot of money and property at stake, including nearly two million acres of "ceded lands," once owned by the monarchy; hundreds of thousands of acres set aside long ago for Hawaiian homesteaders; and hundreds of millions of dollars in entitlement programs.

Despite the sudden shift of control over millions of acres of land from presumably both private and public control to a reservation and access to hundreds of millions of dollars, both Senator Akaka and Downes promise that the bill will "preclude radical outcomes". How, exactly, does the shift of so much in real and financial estates fail to qualify as "radical"? Confiscating these lands and the federal assistance monies for the use of people based on racial classification appears quite a radical departure from the current philosophy of mainstreaming and integration that has guided the federal government over the past four decades.

Does anyone still believe that "separate but equal" constitutes anything except an oxymoron?

Creating another reservation system will only stoke the fires of a new racial divide, despite the suggestions that a new American apartheid and Bantustan system will somehow provide "reconciliation". As Downes himself noted, Bill Clinton included Hawaii and the 1893 removal of the monarchy in his Apology Tour, a gesture that at first brought acclaim but later encouraged the small group of separatists to demand reparations from the US government. This new bill continues to pander to these activists, most of whom won't be happy unless the US allows Hawaii to secede.

Let's quit accommodating those who want to live in the warm cocoon of the slights in the past. Separatist movements have no place in the United States. Given the track record of the reservation systems for maintaining viability for the Native Americans, we should avoid duplicating that system at all costs. As long as we keep creating new race-based public policies, we will never achieve true reconciliation or equality for Americans of all backgrounds and ethnicities. (via Michelle Malkin)

FEC Still Considering Blogger Exemption

The Washington Post updates its readers on the efforts by the FEC to determine whether bloggers deserve the media exemption granted by the McCain-Feingold Act, or BCRA as it is more officially known. Brian Faler reports that the panel has not yet issued a decision and covers the thrust of the commentary received by the panel during its public hearings:

A growing number of the online pundits of various political persuasions are urging the Federal Election Commission to explicitly grant them the same wholesale exemptions from regulations governing contributions to political candidates that mainstream reporters, editorial writers and pundits get.

"I'm troubled by the fact that participants in this emerging medium, which allows anyone the opportunity to participate in the national political discourse at a minimum cost, would face stricter regulation and stronger scrutiny -- along with the potential for ruinous legal expenses -- than would participants in media outlets owned by large corporations such as Time Warner, General Electric and Disney," blogger Duncan Black told the FEC at a hearing late last month. Black, under the pen name Atrios, runs the liberal blog Eschaton.

Mike Krempasky, who runs a Republican blog called RedState.org, said at the hearing, "What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program -- but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?"

Some, of course, see blogging as a big loophole for political parties and special-interest groups to advertise through deception and straw men:

[O]thers said bloggers engage in all sorts of activities that are generally forbidden in the journalism community -- working for political candidates, for example, or raising money for candidates -- and questioned whether they should be entitled to the same protections.

"Bloggers want it both ways," said Carol Darr, head of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. "They want to preserve their rights as political activists, donors and even fundraisers -- activities regulated by campaign finance laws -- yet, at the same time, enjoy the broad exemptions from the campaign finance laws afforded to traditional journalists."

She and others said they fear that giving bloggers those protections would create a legal loophole that corporations, unions and wealthy individuals could use to pour big money into politics. A company or union, for example, would be able to create or subsidize elaborate blogs attacking political candidates. Or it could create hard-hitting Web videos that, as the popular "Jib Jab" video ridiculing both President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) indicated last year, can attract large audiences.

This argument makes no sense at all in terms of applying a media exemption. Jay Leno and Jon Stewart have their exemption, and yet no one at the FEC appears particularly concerned about their fundraising for political candidates or their use of their stages as platforms for either endorsing or ridiculing candidates. Leno usually spreads it around, but Stewart has consistently used his pulpit to push a partisan agenda. How about Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, and other comedians who openly target Republicans during their HBO specials? Will the FEC start regulating that as in-kind campaign contributions? The entertainment community spends most of its political efforts in raising money for Democrats. Using Darr's logic, studios and broadcasters should therefore come under BCRA regulation as well.

I don't endorse any of the above. However, I use it to show how destructive the BCRA has become in its zeal to regulate campaign financing by equating speech to money. That's why I believe in the long run, asking for a media exemption can't be our final position, but merely a tactical goal in an overall strategy to eliminate the BCRA altogether. Otherwise, we still have a situation where the government controls who can conduct political speech and under what conditions. Once we've accepted that as a legitimate government function, our hard-won media exemption eventually will give way when the campaign-finance nannies discover that money still makes it into the system.

End the BCRA. That will provide the only guarantee of our rights to free political speech.

Reparations: The New Ransom

The NAACP has decided to extort payments and concessions from companies that transacted business in support of slavery as their next project, along with lobbying cities to cease contracting with such firms until they cooperate with the group:

The NAACP will target private companies as part of its economic agenda, seeking reparations from corporations with historical ties to slavery and boycotting companies that refuse to participate in its annual business diversity report card.

"Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table," Dennis C. Hayes, interim president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said yesterday at the group's 96th annual convention here.

"Many of the problems we have now including poverty, disparities in health care and incarcerations can be directly tied to slavery."

Since slavery ended 140 years ago, that last statement simply cannot be true. The NAACP can't tie anyone's experience directly to slavery. Perhaps indirect ties can be made, but since all people who lived during the time of slavery have died, and most (if not all) of the succeeding generation has passed away as well, direct impact from slavery has long since died with them. Even the direct impact of Jim Crow has thankfully begun to fade. With the Civil Rights era's victories in the 1950s and 1960s in wiping segregation from the legal codes across the nation, two generations of African-Americans have grown up without its direct impact.

That won't stop the NAACP from attempting to guilt and shame owners and stockholders into coughing up money for the organization. They have succeeded with JP Morgan Chase, which in its antebellum incarnation had nothing to do with slavery. The company recently acquired two small Southern banks that did, unbeknownst to them, and wound up paying $5 million for a scholarship fund for Louisiana children to get the NAACP off its back.

Moreover, the NAACP itself acknowledges that the entire effort of tying a company to slavery isn't an exact science. Using records only answers part of the question, an expert in this suddenly necessary field of research explains:

James Lide, director of the international division at History Associates Inc., a Rockville firm that researches old records, said determining how many U.S. businesses are linked to slavery depends upon definition.

Almost every business has at least an indirect link to slavery, he said. For example, some railroad and Southern utility companies can trace their roots to businesses that used slave labor. Textile companies, for example, use cotton that was grown on Southern plantations.

"There's never going to be a solid number because the idea of how you connect a company to slavery is more a political one than a historical one," Mr. Lide said.

In other words, the NAACP has an almost unlimited number of targets.

The problem with reparations for slavery is that it taxes those who had nothing to do with perpetuating the system and gives the money to those who never suffered under it. Reparations for victims of the Japanese internment camps, in comparison, went to those who specifically lost their homes and businesses and suffered under the mandatory relocation orders of the government. In the case of JP Morgan Chase, stockholders -- people like you and me who might have shares in our retirement accounts -- have money taken from us even though we had nothing to do with slavery. My ancestors came from Ireland, Italy, and eastern Europe, mostly after the Civil War, and those who came before lived in New York, an abolitionist state.

In fact, the two cities where the NAACP was successful in passing their contracting restrictions, Philadelphia and Chicago, never allowed slavery at all. What sense does that make?

Still, the NAACP's effort has provided a couple moments of irony. One of the government programs that has been specifically designed to correct the indirect effects of slavery and Jim Crow was affirmative action. This program has recently come under attack as anachronistic, patronizing, and unfair. Democrats have defended its use. So guess which political party has to defend itself against reparations lawsuits?

The Rev. Wayne Perryman of Mount Calvary Christian Center Church of God in Christ agreed that pursuing the federal government is not a fruitful option. The Seattle minister has filed two reparations lawsuits against the Democratic Party, saying its role in defending slavery and opposing civil rights bills during the Jim Crow era deserves an apology.

"One of the problems in courts is that ... you have to show ... the government official who participated in it," Mr. Perryman said. "With the federal government the real problem is that it has never had a totally pro-slavery position, the Democrats did and supported it, while the abolitionists and Republicans did not."

Perhaps they can call Senator Robert Byrd to explain the Democratic positions on race, including his filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that ultimately failed, thanks to Republicans and Democrats like Hubert Humphrey. That might make the lawsuits at least entertaining enough to tolerate.

Dafydd: Bride of "If It's Rove"...

I have received a reprieve from the governor, just as some clod in a mismatched gray jacket and Navy-blue trousers was throwing the switch. I may post a few more. And I have one here that....

But wait --

No, really; you'd better be sitting down for this. Seriously, I don't want to shock your system. Think of me as William Castle: there's a nurse standing by with a blood-pressure machine, checking to make sure you're medically fit to read this next post.

Okay, you in the red pullover! Take a hike! I can recognize a weak heart when I see one.

Here we go: it turns out that... the Democrats lied!

Here is Harry Reid today. Don't tell me he didn't say this; I saw him on video on Brit Hume, and I just had to back up the DVR and get it down exactly, because I could not believe my pointy ears.

The White House promised that if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration, his administration. I trust they will follow-through on this pledge.

-- Sen. Harry Reid (D-Flamingo Hotel & Casino), June 11th, 2005

Uh... is that what "the White House" promised? And how does a big building make promises in the first place?

The Democrats have been flogging this promise to fire anyone who was even remotely or tangentially connected to any affairs Valerie Plame may have had in order to demand the summary discharge and frog-marching of Karl Rove into the nearest calabooza. Heck, if a president can't keep his word about such a momentous and heinous enormity, what can we trust him with?

But literally seconds before, Fox News Channel had helpfully provided me with more video, this time of the most recent occupant of that talking building, George W. Bush. This is what I saw and heard him say with my own eyes and ears, respectively:

If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if a person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.

-- George Walker Bush (president-entire country), September 30th, 2003

Now, I hasten to remind you that I'm not a lawyer. And I don't like to make a judgment before all the facts are in. But it certainly does begin to seem as if Sen. Reid has exceeded his authority.

Oh well. I'm sure we'll imminently have an explanation of the discrepency between what Bush said and what Reid said Bush said; perhaps just as soon as we finish the debate on the intense similarities between Gitmo and Buchenwald.

Dafydd: Hillary Will Never Be the Presidential Nominee

...Not in 2008, not ever.

First, a note: the Captain is now back, so I suspect this will be my last post. I haven't yet spoken to him; but this blog is not really a multi-person venue. Yes, there is Whiskey and a couple of others; but they post rarely. For the most part, this is the labor of love of Captain Ed. Heck, it's called Captain's Quarters, not General Quarters!

So unless I hear different, I will assume that as he stands up, I stand down. But I just wanted to leave with a final controversial prediction.

I absolutely believe, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, that Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham will never be the Democratic nominee for president. (She might not even be a candidate, if she thinks she's going to lose; but her ego may compel her to try, just as John Kerry's did.)

The reason is fairly simple: because she simply cannot win election, and she will be tainted by the Kerry Kurse. Bluntly put, senators are simply not elected president unless they have achieved a position closer to the idea of a chief executive of the country... such as a governorship or the vice presidency.

There have been only two exceptions since 1900: Warren Harding, and of course, John F. Kennedy. And at least in the case of the latter, the election was razor-thin, even against Richard Nixon, a man who was violently hated by half the country even as early as 1960 (due to his work on the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and to his outing of Helen Gahagan Douglas as a Red). Harding was the last convincing senatorial win, crushing the former governor of Ohio, James M. Cox, in 1920.

This is not an accident. A senator is simply one of a bunch of people (currently 100), not single-handedly responsible for "governing" any large governmental organization... and Americans, by and large, do not see the presidency as an entry-level job. Would it make sense for a Fortune-500 company to hire a CEO who had never even been a high-level manager?

But there is an even more basic reason senators tend not to get elected: by the very nature of the job, a senator is a deal-maker... that is, a compromiser. They do not decide, they debate; they do not govern, they negotiate, they cut deals, they sacrifice one principle for another.

Senators are not leaders; even the so-called leadership is not what most folks think of as leading: it's more like herding cats, or trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.

A senator inevitably votes for a bill that is anathema to his constituents -- in exchange for a colleague's vote on a bill that the first senator's constituents want; and both senators pray nobody finds out until after re-election.

But during a presidential campaign, at least in recent years, every least controversial vote of a candidate when he was in the House or Senate is pored over, dissected, deconstructed, and vacuum-molded into an attack ad by his opponents, first in his own party's primaries, then in the general by the even more brutal nominee of the opposite party. You must remember... we saw this exact dynamic in both the 2000 and the 2004 elections: in 2000, Gore was able to rise above his Senate past by pointing to his eight-year stint (seems like eighty) as vice president. He nearly won!

But in 2004, JFK was utterly and irrevocably defined by his Senate career: a mediocre hack who grandstanded his way through the decades, lurching from one outrageous statement to another, and never actually running anything in his entire life... not even his own finances, since his fortune came from inheritance and then a pair of fortuitous marriages. The only things he ever did apart from legislative politics was a very brief stint as a prosecutor, and of course his even briefer stint as a Swift-Boat commander.

Aside from that last, everything I wrote above applies equally to Hillary Rodham... except, of course, that it isn't "decades" in her case but, by 2008, less than a single decade. Other than that, during which she has done nothing of any significance (also like Kerry), her only important jobs were as head of the Legal Services Corporation... and as Bill Clinton's wife.

Every position she obtain after that marriage was "inherited" from her husband, from her disasterous foray into socialized medicine (the Mussolini-esque "Task Force on National Health Care Reform") to her election as a senator from a state she had never lived in her life, procurred for her by her hubby's election team.

Amazingly, she managed, during this period, to rack up the highest negatives that any first lady has ever suffered... another reason she will never be the Democratic presidential nominee. Her nomination would be catastrophic for the party, as it would galvanize Republican voters against her like nothing before, eclipsing even 2004 -- and especially Republican women, who Hillary has scorned and dissed from Day-1. This at a time when the only way the Democrats can hope to win the presidency is if Republican voters are apathetic and fail to turn out; for Ken Mehlman has already proven that when both sides turn out heavy, the Republican wins.

It might be different if there were absolutely nobody to carry the banner of the Democratic Left. She might be nominated then, though she would still lose the general election. But that simply is not the case; there are any number of better-qualified liberals willing to run, starting right at the top with Howard the Dean. Despite his promise not to run if he were chosen as chairman of the DNC, there is actually no law against it. And he is a governor and a former presidential candidate with a proven base of support. Then there is also Gephardt, Biden, Gore, and possibly even Tom Daschle. Slightly more moderate Dems like Mark Warner will probably appeal to the crossover constituency that Hillary is comically trying to woo at the moment.

I believe that Hillary will end up being the forgotten women in 2008. Her borrowed cloak of power will be moth-ridden and threadbare, and she will be "just another senator," one of a hundred, and not a very powerful one at that.

And she will not be the Democratic nominee -- then or ever.

CQ Media Notes

I will appear on MS-NBC's Connected: Coast To Coast with Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley at 4 pm CDT today. The topic: sourcing for news stories, and the media's responsibility to protect its confidential sources.

UPDATE: Once again, the folks at MS-NBC and Connected treated me very well and provided a thoroughly enjoyable experience. My thanks to Ron, Monica, and the producers at the show (especially Elizabeth and Susan) for their kind assistance. Ian has the video on his site -- and I'm about to watch it on my TiVo ...

UPDATE II: Okay, at least it looks better than my last appearance -- although absent rigor mortis, I'm not sure it could have been worse. I was more nervous watching this than actually doing it.

UPDATE III: The Generalissimo at Radioblogger has the transcript posted, along with a critique of my sartorial selection for the appearance. For the record, I did not just come back from a Jimmy Buffet concert. I did, however, finish a fifteen-hour Miami Vice marathon. At least I shaved off the Don Johnson stubble before going on the air!

Hillary's Latest Insanity, And It Ain't Mad

Hillary Clinton has received criticism for her remarks comparing George Bush to Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman in her speech to the first Aspen Ideas Festival. She accused Bush of avoiding tough issues with the character's famous attitude:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the attack against President Bush in a speech Sunday, accusing him of damaging the economy by overspending while giving tax cuts to the rich. ...

"I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Newman is in charge in Washington," Clinton said referring to the freckle-faced Mad Magazine character. She drew a laugh from crowd when she described Bush's attitude toward tough issues with Newman's catchphrase: "What, me worry?"

Hillary appears to have a problem with reality. Unemployment has reached its lowest point in years, down to 5%, lower than the average unemployment rate during her husband's terms in office. The economy continues its strong growth, showing an annual growth rate in GDP for the last two quarters of 3.8%. In fact, the economy has continued to gain so much strength despite the effects of energy-price spikes that the Fed has increased its base lending rate for the ninth time to keep the economy from overheating.

That, however, isn't the only example of Hillary's delusional thinking in her Aspen speech. Later, she argued for additional spending on alternative energy sources, saying that this should be the last generation to depend so heavily on foreign sources for our needs. While that doesn't sound like bad advice, her underlying argumentation comes across as extraordinarily ignorant for a Senator seeking re-election, let alone a major White House contender:

"Ours will be the last generation to rely so exclusively on fossil fuels," she said, adding that the "ups and downs of the global oil market cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion last year ... almost enough to pay off our entire national debt."

Spikes in the oil market cost our economy seven trillion dollars in one year? Really? We need to see Hillary's evidence for this assertion, as our records show that the American GDP for all of 2004 amounted to $11.735 trillion (see table 3). Hillary needs to explain how she can calculate that two-thirds of our economy went into oil-price spikes. Energy only accounts for around $250 billion of our current GDP, and total imports account for only $1.5 trillion.

That assertion exposes Hillary as a demagogue and a liar, someone who throws around false statistics to deceive her audience. It may be effective for now, when all she has to do is motivate the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate of New York. But deceptions like this will come back to haunt her when she runs for the Presidency, as expected, in 2008. Spouting these ludicrous notions in 2005 might demonstrate Hillary's own problems with the "What, me worry?" attitude.

UPDATE: Some commenters at Oliver's blog now say that Hillary "meant" to say billion, not trillion. If these readers can explain how seven billion would cover our national debt -- which she asserted could be done with the price-spike damage -- then I might accept that analogy. I love the way they criticize name-calling while defending Hillary's comments, and call me Captain Cubicle at the same time. Cute. Not especially bright, but cute.

Cadman's Death Presents Liberal Conundrum

The death of independent MP Chuck Cadman from long battle against cancer creates a difficult situation for the ruling Liberal minority. Cadman had provided the edge as one of three independents to back the government during the recent confidence motions that threatened to end Prime Minister Paul Martin's term at the helm of the Canadian executive. Without his vote, it could mean that the Liberals might not survive another such motion, but replacing him could make matters even worse:

The death of independent MP Chuck Cadman leaves a big hole in the political landscape and all indications are it is not one the Liberals will be in a rush to fill.

The vacancy, however, puts the minority government in a dilemma. Should it quickly call a by-election in Surrey North in an attempt to add a crucial seat by taking advantage of Conservative Party disarray in British Columbia?

Or should the government avoid the risk of a devastating loss in the Vancouver-area riding where the Liberals have been historically weak, and wait for the next general election?

Despite electing Cadman as its representative, the Surrey riding favors Conservatives more than Liberals, and a special election in that district would probably send a Tory to replace Cadman. That would amplify the problem created by Cadman's death, resulting in what would be a two-vote swing. The only other option would be to force the seat to remain open until the next general election, which would still give the Grits one less vote on which to depend. In May, that would have caused new general elections by now.

One issue missing from the Globe & Mail's calculations, and apparently the Liberals' as well, is the fact that allowing the seat to remain unfilled means that Surrey will have no representation in Parliament for up to six months. Doesn't that matter to anyone in Canada? The political machinations appear to take precendence over the right of Surrey voters to have their voice heard in the Commons, at least for the G&M and for the Liberals as well.

Shinder Purewall, an expert with "strong Liberal connections", claims that it would be "unseemly" to rush a by-election after the death of a legend like Cadman. I would say that forcing an entire riding to lose its participation in federal politics in order to artificially maintain the minority government of a party that Cadman only briefly supported would be even more unseemly, and certainly undemocratic. Using Cadman's death and legend to disenfranchise Surrey goes beyond that to sheer exploitation and ghoulishness.

Surrey should demand an election to fill its open seat, and Canadians of all political stripes should support them. If the Liberals want to claim to represent the will of the people, it should take care that all of the people have their legitimate representation in the Commons.

Klein's Chickens Come Home To Roost

Ed Klein perceives a conspiracy in his inability to get bookings on television to promote his new biography of Hillary Clinton. Howard Kurtz notices that Klein hasn't received nearly the attention given to Kitty Kelley for her load of tripe about the Bush family:

Despite the enormous hype surrounding Edward Klein's scathing and hearsay-filled book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the author has been ignored by all but two television talk shows.

This collective cold shoulder hasn't stopped "The Truth About Hillary" from hitting No. 2 yesterday on the coveted New York Times list. "It's the biggest example to date of how major media censorship doesn't stop a book anymore from being a bestseller," Klein declares. ...

Klein says that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, CNN's Paula Zahn, Fox's John Gibson and ABC's "Good Morning America" were among those who had tentatively booked or expressed strong interest in him, only to drop him like a hot potato. "I can't prove this," he says, but "the Hillary people" have told the networks "she would be mightily displeased if I got on." ...

Kelley's book "The Family" also relied on numerous unnamed sources. Bush's former sister-in-law, Sharon Bush, disputed allegations of past drug use by the president that were attributed to her, and the White House communications director dismissed the book as "garbage." Yet Kelley was granted a three-part interview on NBC's "Today" and appeared on a spate of other television shows.

That does appear to indict the media, but not in the way that Klein wants people to believe. As Kurtz points out -- and as Bernard Goldberg also pointed out when asked for reaction to Aaron Brown's cancellation of his interview last week -- the media does not have an obligation to promote Klein's book. Ignoring Klein does not equate to censorship. They have the right to determine which guests will appear on their broadcasts -- after all, the shows belong to them, not Klein and certainly not the government. Censorship by definition involves government intervention, and the idea that the Bush administration would want to suppress a book painting Hillary in a negative light is just laughable. Klein's statement that "he can't prove" that Hillary has abused her position to keep him off the air and his publishing of the notion regardless of his inability to offer proof speaks volumes about his book and his publication standards.

However, the red carpet that the media rolled out for Kitty Kelley does show a bias in their approach to truth in publishing. I think that based on the exemplars I've read of Klein's book, the media has made the right choice in refusing to promote it. Too bad they couldn't have had those same scruples when Kelley wrote her similar tome on George Bush. She rounded up rumors and innuendo, offered no substantive proof, and published them in a book almost indentical in ethics to Klein's -- and yet the media couldn't get enough of Kelley. In her case, the blame goes deeper, as she has a track record of writing poorly-sourced and ethically challenged biographies of famous people, usually dead, and almost always in no position to defend themselves.

Did the media freeze out Kelley? No. As Kurtz points out, she made almost all of the usual television shows, eagerly pimping her book during Bush's re-election campaign. It might be nice to think that Kelley's discreditation has played a part in the media's reluctance to grant Klein the same platform for his muckraking. However, I doubt that to be the case. Klein simply picked the wrong target for his literary mudslinging. If he now acts surprised that all of his former friends in the national media have no use for him, then Klein learned nothing from his years working alongside them.

Javier Solana's Fantasy World

One would expect that after the London bombings, European officials might have experienced some change in their outlook on the Middle East peace process and the necessity of self-defense for democracies the world around. However, one would have to ignore the deeply ingrained moral relativism that has infected the European consciousness, especially outside the Anglosphere, to be surprised at the latest nonsense from the EU foreign office. Javier Solana has once again spent his energy criticizing a wall for damaging peace efforts while ignoring the reason why the wall has to be built in the first place:

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana criticized Israel on Monday for a barrier it is building around Jerusalem, and the Palestinian prime minister said it made a farce of efforts to restart the peace process.

srael faced new pressure over its controversial network of walls and fences a day after giving final approval to a segment it said would eventually separate 55,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from the rest of the holy city.

Israel says the barrier it is building in the
West Bank and Jerusalem keeps out Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a land grab. The World Court declared it illegal a year ago, but Israel has ignored the ruling.

Solana, arriving for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said the EU was against the Jerusalem segment for the same reason it opposed the larger West Bank project -- because it cuts into occupied land.

"We think that Israel has the right to defend itself but we think that the fence which will stand outside the territory of Israel is not legally proper and it creates also humanitarian problems," he told reporters in Jerusalem.

Israel needs the wall in order to protect itself from the lunatics which the Palestinian Authority refuses to disarm. President Abbas has stated over and over again that he will not disarm Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or his own Fatah nutcases in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. As long as the PA refuses to control terrorists in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, then Israel needs to take whatever measures that assists in keeping its civilians alive. If that means that Abbas loses ground in any of these areas, too bad. That's Abbas' problem, and it is his fault for not following through on the Palestinian responsibility for centralizing their security and stopping the attacks on Israel.

We are now more than a dozen years after Oslo. In the intervening time since the Palestinian Authority was granted administrative rule over the territories, we have seen two intifadas and Yasser Arafat's rejection of an overall peace plan that would have allowed both sides to coexist peacefully. What has Israel gained from its negotiations with terrorists such as Arafat and Abbas? Israel has suffered thousands of attacks on its civilians, in pizzerias and buses not unlike what happened in London last week.

And yet, Solana feels that a wall is the main hurdle to peace in the Middle East. If this truly represents European thought, then the Islamists will have no trouble reconquering Andalusia and the rest of the Continent. Drawing a moral equivalence between building a security wall and deliberately blowing up women and children demonstrates a surrender of the sense of moral outrage necessary to identify between good and evil.

London should rethink its alignment with the EU. After last week, ask Londoners if building a wall equates to blasting a double-decker bus into pieces and splashing the blood of its citizens all over the facades of the surrounding buildings.

Back From Vacation

I'm back from DC, not exactly well-rested after a whirlwing tour of the nation's capital, but certainly exhilirated from the wonderful events of the week. I doubted that we could have squeezed that much into two weeks, let alone the one week that we had in Washington. I'd like to thank all of the friends that helped make the trip so memorable, especially Mark Tapscott at the Heritage Foundation, who really made the entire expedition possible. I'd also like to thank Dafydd ab Hugh, who filled in admirably in my semi-absence this week to post some provocative and thoughtful essays. One of these days, Dafydd will start his own blog -- and we'll certainly look forward to that.

Back to blogging ...

Dafydd: Point of Order For CQ Readers

In the Navy, we used to say "two percent never get the word."

So maybe this post will reduce that down to 1%....

Whenever you see a post here on CQ, or anywhere else, for that matter (since I'm just a vagabond blogger), that begins thus -- Dafydd: -- it means that the post was not written by Captain Ed. It was written by me, Dafydd ab Hugh, guest blogging on yet another brilliant, controversial, and stunningly popular blog owned by someone else.

Got it? If the blogpost begins with just the title, no name, then the Captain Himself wrote it. But if it begins with my name, Dafydd, then I, Dafydd ab Hugh, wrote it, not the Captain.

Thanks, all!

Dafydd: If It's Rove... Part Deux

In an earlier post, Dafydd: If It's Rove..., I wrote the following:

Lawrence "Creepy Liar" O'Donnell now implies (without much credibility, and without explicitly making the claim) that the original leaker of Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak was Karl Rove.

According to Michael Isikoff in a Newsweek story, luridly titled "Matt Cooper's Source: What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter," this implication appears to be false; while Rove was (one of) Cooper's sources, as O'Donnell claimed, it was nothing like the way the Left has portrayed it: it was not an attempt to retaliate against Wilson for speaking the truth; it was an attempt to warn Newsweek that Wilson's op-ed was, in fact, a lie.

Cooper claims, in the now-famous Newsweek e-mail, that Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA... but it appears that Rove did not even know her name, let alone that she was supposedly undercover:

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

Why is this important? It is because of exactly what I wrote about the law in the previous post. It is simply wrong to say that it is a crime to reveal that someone works for the CIA: it depends entirely upon how you came across that information and why you revealed it.

Here is what I wrote:

But let's play a little thoughtgame: suppose it turned out that Karl Rove was actually the person who outed Ms. Plame. Would Rove be "prosecuted," as a couple of people on the right and a few million people on the left insist? Well... not likely. The reason is the way the law itself is written....

Note that bit about having "authorized access to classified information" that discloses the name of a covert agent. Here is the rub: the disclosure occurred in or before July 2003... and at that time, Karl Rove was the Special Advisor to the President. This was a political position; he was Bush's chief political advisor. But in this position, it is extremely unlikely that Rove had any authorized access to CIA personnel files whatsoever, since those are extremely highly restricted (for reasons that should be obvious), and Rove did not have any kind of a national-security or defense position.

Which means that even if it were to eventuate that Rove was the guy who leaked the Plame name, he would almost certainly not be a "covered person" as far as Section 421 is concerned: however he might have found out about her CIA employment, it would have to have been by means other than "authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent."

And that is exactly what appears to be the case: Rove evidently did not even know Plame's name, nor is there any evidence from Cooper that Rove was aware that she was (allegedly) a covert agent (most CIA employees are not covert) or that the CIA was making any effort to conceal her identity -- both of which are required for the law to cover the "leaker."

There is another point to note here. Consider this line from the above quotation:

The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

But the fact of the matter, as found by the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq intelligence information, is that Joe Wilson's CIA report itself found that the yellowcake-Niger charge was true! Wilson flatly lied about what he found when he wrote his infamous op-ed piece in the New York Times.

But evidently, Karl Rove was completely unaware of this discrepency. After all, he was trying to discredit Wilson's lying attack, and this piece of evidence was utterly devastating to that attack. If Rove had actually seen the report, he would have mentioned it to Cooper. What more killer proof of Wilson's perfidy could Rove have possibly given?

That would have been a bombshell. There is no way that Cooper would have failed even to make reference to it in an e-mail he had every reason to believe would never see the light of day.

Instead, Rove simply said there was "still plenty to implicate" Iraq in its attempt to obtain Uranium from Niger. In other words, 'don't believe Wilson because there are other sources who contradict him' -- not 'don't believe Wilson because he himself said the opposite, then lied in his op-ed,' which would have been infinitely stronger.

So if Cooper is to be believed, Rove not only did not know Plame's name, he was also not privy to the actual report Wilson filed with the CIA. This is the portrait of a man who did not have access, authorized or otherwise, to classified information (certainly not that specific classified information), and who was probably simply repeating what he had heard, just as I suggested, on the Washington D.C. cocktail circuit... where it was fairly common knowledge, according to several D.C. players at the time (including one personal friend of mine) -- the beautiful model/ambassador's wife who worked for the CIA.

It was damage control, but it simply was not a crime.

I believe Rove is completely off the legal hook. But what about the moral question, as opposed to the legal? Is Karl Rove an "agent outer," in the sense of Aldrich Ames or Jack Anderson? Did he leak an agent's identify (name or no name) for reasons of revenge, or to cause her harm, or because he hated the CIA, or for some other disreputable reason? Again, it seems clear that Rove did not; his motive was to protect the president from an attack that Rove, and everyone else in the White House, knew was a vicious and tendentious lie.

There is no question that Rove failed to speak up publicly and say "oh, that was I; I was the source. Me, me, me!" Perhaps he should have, though he certainly had no legal obligation to do so. Well, then why didn't he?

The answer, while irritating, is pretty understandable:

1. The charge was that the Bush administration deliberately blew the cover of a covert CIA operative just to "retaliate" against Wilson for "speaking truth to power."

2. In reality, Rove, probably without bothering to tell Bush (for a number of reasons, political operatives don't keep POTUS apprised of every media contact), discussed the provenance of Wilson's trip with Cooper, and possibly other reporters, in order to show that the trip was not official and not initiated by Cheney or Tenet, as claimed, and to note that even if Wilson didn't find anything (not being unaware that Wilson actually did find something), there was still other evidence.

3. But when the fit hit the shan, during the Democratic hysteria surrounding the supposed outing, Rove would have realized that there was no way to explain the distinction between what was charged and what Rove actually did... and it would end up seriously wounding the very man he was defending. It would have been a PR disaster.

So Rove kept his mouth shut to the press, though evidently he testified honestly to U.S. Attorney Peter Fitzgerald, who officially investigated the leak:

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.

It is also now clear why Fitzgerald was so anxious to hear testimony from Cooper and Miller: Rove presumably testified that he did tell Cooper and Miller that Wilson's wife was in the CIA; but that he didn't know she was an undercover agent, such knowledge being a necessary element for a crime to have been committed. Evidently, Rove simply thought she worked in some WMD-related department.

Fitzgerald doubtless wanted Cooper to testify whether he heard Rove say she was covert... which if true, would mean Rove had lied under oath. However, Cooper's e-mail indicates the answer is no, Rove did not say that, and that "nothing... suggests that Rove... knew she was a covert operative." Since Miller will likely now testify herself -- no reason not to, after this article reveals all -- I suspect we'll find out he said the same to her as to Cooper.

It is easy to predict that the Left is going to have a field day with this, as indeed they should. In their usual nuance-trampling, black-and-white mode of attack, they will spin the Newsweek story like a top, twisting it to make it seem as if it "vindicates" all of their charges. But in reality, it explodes them like a soap bubble.

Dafydd: Weep, Wail!

Is this the whiniest article ever?

Newspaper Withholding Two Articles After Jailing

by Robert D. McFadden

The New York Times

July 9, 2005

The editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer said last night that the newspaper, acting on the advice of its lawyers, was withholding publication of two major investigative articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.

The editor, Doug Clifton, said lawyers for The Plain Dealer had concluded that the newspaper, Ohio's largest daily, would probably be found culpable if the authorities were to investigate the leaks and that reporters might be forced to identify confidential sources to a grand jury or go to jail.

"Basically, we have come by material leaked to us that would be problematical for the person who leaked it," Mr. Clifton said in a telephone interview. "The material was under seal or something along those lines."

All right... why is the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer calling McFadden of the Times, gloating to Cleveland readers that the Plain Dealer is not publishing a story because they obtained it illegally?

Am I missing something here? I mean, who the hell cares?

If the story is that important, surely they could "legalize" it by finding some on-the-record source that said something vaguely similar, then claiming that they deduced the rest by a brilliant puff of logic.

Reading further, however, we discover that the story of the non-story IS the story:

If anything, Mr. Clifton said, The Plain Dealer's potential legal problem with the leaked documents was "even more pointed" than the cases of Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper.

"These are documents that someone had and should not have released to anyone else," he said. If an investigation were pursued, the newspaper, its reporters and their sources could all face court penalties for unauthorized disclosures.

The rack! The Chinese water torture! The Procrustean bed!

Mr. Clifton declined to provide details about the two investigative articles being withheld, but he characterized them as "profoundly important," adding, "They would have been of significant interest to the public." Asked if they might be published at some later date, he said, "Not in the short term."

Wow! It's "profoundly important," but by golly, they just can't bring themselves to tell it because they're afraid. Why... why... could it be that the evil Ashcroft -- oh, wait, I mean the evil Alberto -- is brutally crushing freedom of the press by daring to prosecute people who leak classified information, information that was sealed by a judge, "or something along those lines?" (Nice and precise, Doug old bean.) Worse, they may call in the accessory after the fact and ask him who stole the tarts.

I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Plain Dealer; I sold them my first opinion piece mumblety-mumble years ago (I got very snide about 2,000,000 Japanese who signed a petition in Japan demanding that America tighten up its gun-control laws). But this reads like some ill-mannered, pre-pubescent brat explaining why he didn't do his maths. I fully expected Mr. Clifton to add, "and then you'll be sorry!"

So why is America's newspaper of record publishing an article about a rival newspaper, two hundred and fifty miles away, and its trunk story? Oh, I should have guessed. Here's the money quote:

"Take away a reporter's ability to protect a tipster's anonymity and you deny the public vital information," Mr. Clifton wrote. And to dramatize the point, he concluded his column by telling readers that The Plain Dealer was itself obliged to withhold stories based on illegal disclosures for fear of the legal consequences.

Cue the melodramatic music. Imagine the following read like Lady MacBeth's "out damned spot" soliloquy, as performed by Joan Crawford:

"As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands," Mr. Clifton wrote. "The public would be well-served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn't an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?"

Languish?

Gosh darn those Republicans! For no reason whatsoever, they launched that ridiculous investigation of who sold the tarts to Bob Novak. The Democrats begged Bush not to waste time trying to find out who "outed" Valerie Plame -- but nooooo-ooooo, he just had to sic Patrick Fitzgerald on all those reporters. What a tyrant!

Okay, ready with those violins? Here we go:

Mr. Clifton said he was surprised that there had been so little public reaction to his disclosure of "something that newspapers typically don't reveal - that real live news had been stifled."

"I hoped the public would be bothered by that," he [sniffed].

All right, all right, the last phrase was actually "he said," not "he sniffed." But am I the only one who suspects this story of "profound importance" was actually some trivial little nothing, if it even existed at all, whose only importance was as a club to bash Bush? Look what you made me do!

For God's sake. Grow up. If this is the cream of J-school and the exempt media, then maybe newspapers should start hiring mathematicians, musicians, bakers, or truck drivers: somebody who actually has some professional competence at something useful.

I don't think Mr. Clifton would ever make it as a blogger.

Thin Reed On Rove

The Karl Rove-Valerie Plame link that Matt Cooper supposedly protected appears very weak after Newsweek released its story today on the mysterious sourcing for last year's leak. Newsweek does its best to pump up the volume in its lead:

It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

The ellipsis here makes all the difference. What, exactly, did Cooper warn not to source to Rove? Readers have to move past the jump to find that out:

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "

In other words, Rove did not reveal Plame's name, nor did he tell Cooper that she was on a NOC list or performing any kind of covert work. Moreover, he told Cooper the truth, as the Senate Intelligence Committee found out. As the Washington Post reported almost a year ago, Wilson repeatedly lied about the role Plame had in pushing him for the assignment to Niger, as well as the information contained in his report on Niger. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson or the public-relations offensive Wilson had launched to discredit the Bush administration by pointing out the conflict of interest that Wilson never acknowledged.

So far, this lead has gone nowhere in the Plame leak. Patrick Fitzgerald has done nothing but embarrass himself by jailing a reporter and turning her into a martyr over something that probably doesn't amount to a prosecutable crime in the first place. It will be damned difficult to generate any outrage on behalf of a CIA agent who sent her husband on a public mission to undermine the American government during a time of war, mostly through lies and half-truths, and who now wants to hide behind a covert status that no one can actually establish applied at the time.

Fitzgerald needs to close the case and let Judith Miller out of jail.

Sensenbrenner To Push Voting-Rights Renewal Legislation

Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner has told the NAACP that he intends on shepherding the renewal of expiring portions of the Voting Rights Act, a key issue for the NAACP and other minority groups. The GOP would like to use that effort to bolster its standing with these traditionally Democratic voters, as part of RNC chair Ken Mehlman's outreach efforts:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) plans to announce today at the NAACP's annual convention that he will work to extend portions of the Voting Rights Act that are scheduled to expire in 2007, congressional aides said yesterday.

Civil rights leaders recently reminded President Bush about the expiring passages and have been working to get congressional leaders' attention for the issue. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman has made outreach to minorities and support for enforcement of the Voting Rights Act a hallmark of his chairmanship. ...

"While we have made progress and curtailed injustices thanks to the Voting Rights Act, our work is not yet complete," Sensenbrenner said in a prepared text. "We cannot let discriminatory practices of the past resurface to threaten future gains. The Voting Rights Act must continue to exist -- and exist in its current form."

Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington office, said that it was "very good" to hear about Sensenbrenner's remarks and that he is anxious to work with him. Shelton said the act should be extended in its current form "at the very least," but perhaps should be expanded.

"There also needs to be a commitment to see to it that as we reauthorize, we actually strengthen it so that all Americans have the right to register, to cast an unfettered vote and to have that vote counted," Shelton said.

The pressure to move the goalposts should be resisted. While one expiring portion of the Act should almost certainly be renewed, another should really be rethought.

The slam-dunk portion involves the states getting approval from the Department of Justice before changing the date, time, or manner of casting votes for any election. With the age of mass media, one would expect that such a provision would no longer be necessary to ensure that a municipality would try a sleight-of-hand to disenfranchise a subset of its voters. However, Congress needs to enforce this rule equally and fairly if it intends on extending it. That means places like St. Louis should not be allowed to extend its voting hours suddenly, without notice, and the courts should be enjoined from ordering such solutions. Courts can be as corrupt as local governments, after all; that is one of the reasons why the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act exists.

The second provision should be allowed to expire. In a country where citizenship nominally requires a working command of English, we have no reason to produce ballots in any other language than that. Citizenship, as opposed to legal residency, has its responsibilities for the citizen -- and among them are the responsibility to know and understand the issues, and to make an effort to assimilate into American culture. When we enable people to avoid learning English, we promote the balkanization of our culture. Perhaps we need to provide multilingual options for other government services, but voting requires citizenship, and citizenship requires a functional grasp of our primary language. Forcing states to spend extra money to enable the avoidance of the duties of citizenship not only wastes cash, but encourages the building of cultural barriers we don't need.

Let's hope that the GOP takes a sensible approach to the Voting Rights Act. We need to continue our outreach to the minority communities, but we don't need to become Democrats to do it.

North Korea Returns To The Table

North Korea has agreed to return to the six-nation negotiations that George Bush insists on using to address the nuclear expansion of the Kim regime. After a year of alternately threatening and flirting with the West, Kim Jong-Il has apparently decided that his economic situation has degraded to the point where he needs to engage the US on its terms, rather than his:

The agreement to restart the talks was reached at a rare dinner meeting here between a senior U.S. envoy and his North Korean counterpart, held shortly before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Saturday night for talks with Chinese officials on the North Korean issue.

During the meal, Kim Gye Gwan, the North Korean deputy foreign minister, told Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill that North Korea was willing to attend talks in Beijing the week of July 25, according to a senior U.S. official traveling with Rice. In what U.S. officials took as an encouraging sign, they reported that Kim said the purpose of the talks was the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" and that North Korea intended to make progress at the negotiations.

Kim declared victory in the impasse between his despotic government and the US, claiming that North Korea had forced a "change in tone" from the United States. Bush did start calling the dictator Mr. Kim when referring to him, but neither he nor Condoleezza Rice ever retracted their characterization of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny", the phrase Kim found most objectionable. Despite Kim's assertions, the likeliest proximate cause of his reversal was the suggestions that verifiable cooperation could result in significant amounts of aid -- an unfortunate but probably necessary carrot to rid North Korea of its nuclear program.

Rice made sure that everyone understands that this represents just another step, and that real progress still has yet to be seen:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned Sunday that North Korea's decision to resume nuclear disarmament talks does not mean the United States is any closer to its long-standing goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

"It's only a start," Rice said at a news conference. "It is the goal of the talks to have progress.">/blockquote>

One reason to keep expectations low is that we have been here before. Kim may yet find another reason to pull out before the meetings, hyping whatever real or perceived diplomatic slight into a rationalization into an excuse to abandon the talks. Given his fragile grasp on food and cash, it's less likely than before that he will renege, but it's not inconceivable. Rice is smart to play it safe in setting a low threshold prior to the meetings. It also reminds the North Koreans that talks aren't enough. We will insist on verifiable disarmament before we start giving any energy or financial assistance -- a position we should have insisted on, and were insisting on, before Jimmy Carter jumped in front of Bill Clinton and screwed things up in the 1990s.

Posted by Ed Morrissey at 4:41 AM | TrackBack