Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

It's good to have the weekend to relax, enjoy the company of good friends, and talk about everything they have in common:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a long-overdue summit Saturday, reviving hopes that peace talks can resume after years of fighting, hostility and distrust.

Israeli officials say agreement reached on some issues in Olmert-Abbas summit, but no deal on releasing Palestinian prisoners.

The meeting, announced just hours before it began, marked the first substantial talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in 22 months. It comes at a time when both men are facing serious political problems at home and stand to gain domestic support with a peace breakthrough.

Olmert emerged from his official residence in Jerusalem to greet Abbas.The two shook hands and also kissed each other on the cheek. Abbas as then introduced to Olmert's wife Aliza, an artist known for her dovish views. The two leaders took seats opposite one another at a long table, set for a meal and covered by white cloth. Israeli and Palestinian flags served as table decorations.

I hope that the meeting went well. However, until Abbas proves that he can deliver any kind of cessation of hostilities, this is nothing more than a weekend barbecue.

Sistani Balks

The carefully-laid plans to form an ecumenical political coalition in Iraq hit a major snag today when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani refused to endorse it. Sistani wants nothing to do with any project that undermines the unity of Shi'ites:

Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric withheld support Saturday for a U.S.-backed plan to build a coalition across sectarian lines, Shiite lawmakers said, jeopardizing hopes that such a show of political unity could help stem the country's deadly violence.

Members of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that dominates parliament, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf after traveling to the holy city over the past few days. Al-Sistani holds no political post and rarely emerges from his home and adjacent office, but he has strong influence over Shiite politics.

Some members of the Shiite alliance have sought a coalition that would include Kurds and Sunnis, and sideline Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose militia is blamed for much of Iraq's sectarian violence. Lawmakers who attended the meeting with al-Sistani said the cleric opposed any move that would divide Shiites.

"There are obstacles in the face of forming this coalition, because al-Sistani does not support it. So we will work to strengthen the (Shiite) alliance," said Hassan al-Sunnaid, of the Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

This certainly comes as a blow to the US and the Coalition, as well to hopes of ending the militia war in Iraq. The only manner in which Iraq can come together as a nation is to move beyond sectarian divides, but Sistani's disagreement will prove a major stumbling block for any reconciliation.

Sistani's refusal comes after Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to return to the Shi'ite coalition, after walking out of the National Assembly earlier. Sadr found himself increasingly isolated after his stunt, and Sistani could have rendered him a political eunuch if the elder cleric had blessed the new coalition. His return to the Assembly appears to have headed off that disaster, at least for the moment.

What next? The various moderate parties will probably still try to form some sort of Iraqi equivalent to the Gang of 14, but they will find success elusive as long as Sadr and his Mahdi Army remain potent in the field. The US may have run out of options for Iraqis to marginalize the Mahdis, and it may take American force to put an end to Sadr's death squads.

Michelle's 'Whatever-Happened-To' For 2006

One of the blessings of having Michelle Malkin in the blogosphere is her journalistic sensibilities. Yesterday, she posted a follow-up to several of the most affecting stories that she had covered in 2006. Be sure to read it all.

Major Blow For Taliban

The Taliban has taken a body blow in its continuing war with NATO and democratic Afghan forces. Coalition forces killed their chief of operations, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, in fighting near the border this week:

A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. A Taliban spokesman denied the claim.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. Two associates also were killed, it said.

There was no immediate confirmation from Afghan officials or visual proof offered to support the claim. A U.S. spokesman said "various sources" were used to confirm Osmani's identity.

Osmani, regarded as one of three top associates of Omar, is the highest-ranking Taliban leader the coalition has claimed to have killed or captured since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting bin Laden.

Osmani has run the Taliban's military operations since November 2001, shortly after Mullah Omar discovered his own shortcomings as a commander in the process of getting routed out of Afghanistan. The posting was supposed to be temporary as Osmani reorganized the Taliban to hold positions in the hills in order to re-engage the Northern Alliance, but Omar ran out of options as the rout grew into a crushing defeat.

In the last five years, Osmani has rebuilt the Taliban forces enough to start challenging NATO and Karzai's forces significantly in some areas. They have returned to their raiding tradition, but Osmani gave them enough discipline to do real damage. They still have not won a single stand-up fight against NATO, but Osmani made them into nasty pests that rarely fight one.

Now that Osmani has gone to his 72 virgins, Omar has to find another field commander that can do what Osmani managed to do over the last five years. No one doubts that the Taliban will fight on after Osmani's death, but whether they can maintain his discipline remains a large question. Certainly, if Omar decides to take control of the armed forces once again, we can expect a major degradation in their fighting effectiveness.

The Deadbeat Does Not Go On

Some of the mystery surrounding the odd departure of Turki al-Faisal as Saudi ambassador to the US has begun to unravel. The Washington Post reports that Turki left millions in unpaid bills and found himself undercut by Bandar bin Sultan, his predecessor, as Bandar apparently conducted higher-level diplomacy than Turki:

Eighteen months ago, Prince Bandar bin Sultan ended a legendary 22-year career as the face of Saudi Arabia in the United States. Word at the time was that he was bored, preferring his palatial Aspen, Colo., lodge to Washington. As it turns out, however, Bandar has secretly visited Washington almost monthly over the past year -- and is at least as pivotal today in influencing U.S. policy as he was in his years as ambassador.

Last week, his successor, Turki, abruptly resigned from the post -- partly, sources close to the royal family said, because of Bandar's back-channel trips to meet with top U.S. officials, including Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

Turki was kept so out of the loop that Bandar often did not inform him he was in town, much less tell him what he was doing, the sources said. Twice, the Saudi Embassy was told by an outsider that Bandar had arrived -- and the embassy sent someone to the airport to look for his private plane to confirm it, according to the source who provided the tip.

The rise of Bandar, who is now Saudi national security adviser, may reflect the waning influence of the sons of the late King Faisal, who dominated the diplomatic and intelligence services for decades, say sources close to the family. Turki, who was intelligence chief before becoming ambassador to Britain and then the United States, has poor chemistry with King Abdullah, they note. His brother Prince Saud al-Faisal, who has been foreign minister since Henry A. Kissinger's era, is ill.

As relations among the royals frayed over the past year, Turki was increasingly squeezed financially. The kingdom did not provide the millions needed to pay Saudi bills, according to contractors and sources close to the royal family. A single contractor -- Qorvis Communications LLC, which oversees Saudi image-building -- has not been paid more than $10 million this year, its entire annual contract, confirms Qorvis partner Michael Petruzzello. Because Qorvis subcontracts to smaller firms, the unpaid bill has left the most high-profile American lobbyists for the kingdom unpaid all year. Others have also not been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to contractors.

The Saudis appear to have some difficulties in their approach to foreign policy, and it's splitting the family. The continuing influence of Bandar made it clear that Turki had not earned enough trust across enough of the royal princes to be left alone to do his job. The lack of communication between Bandar and Turki made these interventions a particular humiliation to the recently-departed ambassador, and it's hard to see that as anything short of deliberate. It explains his abrupt and unheralded resignation; he probably got tired of all his American contacts pretending that Bandar had never been in town.

More troubling is the string of debts that Turki left behind. Foreign governments are notorious for paying their bills rather leisurely, and the Sauds have cash literally erupting out of the ground. Still, one has to wonder why the Saudi government has taken so long to clear some of these debts, especially to Qorvis. Recall that the Saudi government considers its public-relations offensive in the US a high priority after 9/11, especially given that so many of the attackers came from Saudi Arabia. Does it make sense to have the public relations firm in charge of sweet-talking America put them into Collections?

One might think that the money went someplace else -- which also might explain why Bandar has spent so much time in Washington without Turki's knowledge.

At the heart of the conflict, though, is policy. The al-Faisals have favored dialogue with Iran, and the bin Sultans oppose any dealings with Teheran. Bandar kept coming to DC primarily to counteract Turki's advice to the Bush administration, and relied on his long-time personal relationships with Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley. While Turki spoke publicly about the need to engage Iran in 'all things", Bandar furiously tried to prevent that advice from gaining a toehold among American national-security decision-makers. The nadir of this chaotic Saudi policy came when Cheney visited Riyadh and Turki pointedly did not receive an invitation to attend. When Bandar resumed his contacts after the trip, Turki quit and returned home.

Given Turki's reported contacts with jihadis, it's probably for the best. In the meantime, the Saudis have apparently chosen a non-royal to replace Turki -- which means Bandar will probably continue his "unofficial" diplomacy for the foreseeable future.

Lufthansa Bars Air Marshals On Flights

If you're flying betwen the US and Europe, you may want to avoid flying Lufthansa. According to Der Spiegel, the German airliner has begun denying Germany's air marshals the expensive seats near the cockpit where they can protect the flight crew -- and often refuses to give them any tickets at all:

The officer swore an oath of secrecy on becoming a sky marshal, so his name can't be revealed -- in fact no sky marshal has spoken about his work since the German government created the jobs in October 2001, shortly after 9/11. "Inspektion 6," the sky-marshal unit of the Federal Police Authority at Frankfurt airport, is the most secretive German police organization next to the elite GSG9 force.

But the situation for sky marshals has never been as depressing as it is now, says the officer and a one of his colleagues. Official figures claim that 200 police officers travel constantly on German passenger jets to prevent 9/11-style attacks with civilian aircraft. In fact, there are only 112 (as of Nov. 1 2006) -- and they aren't flying as much as they used to, according to the two officers.

The men say Lufthansa keeps cancelling first- or business-class tickets that would put them close to the cockpit -- and sometimes bumps them off flights entirely. "They don't want to give out expensive seats anymore," complains one of the officers.

The head of Germany's police union, Konrad Freiberg, finds the notion alarming. "If the price of a ticket is more important than a central security task, then the balance has shifted in the wrong direction," he said.

Der Spiegel's source is apparently the first German air marshal to give an interview to any publication, as they consider themselves an elite force dedicated to the clandestine protection of travelers against terrorism. However, they have increasingly found that the airlines themselves -- most particularly Lufthansa, the largest airline -- have tired of the revenue lost to the air marshals. Five years after 9/11, the lack of a repeat episode has convinced them that the risk is lower than the cost of the increased security.

Amazingly, the most common flights for cancellations are Lufthansa's intercontinental flights. Despite the obvious focus that terrorists would have on these flights, especially to the Middle East and North America, Lufthansa has refused to issue tickets to the marshals unless they cannot sell out the flight, which forces the marshals to wait until the last moment to make their flight choices, if they get on at all. That means that Lufthansa flights from the US, especially the heavily-traveled routes, will almost certainly have no extra security on board.

And if that's not bad enough, Der Spiegel says another major airliner refuses to allow any air marshals on board any of its flights. DS refused to name the carrier for "obvious security reasons".

Lufthansa denies that they have been uncooperative with German air marshals. DS has more than one source in the program, though, and even an anonymous Lufthansa pilot that confirms the story. It seems that Lufthansa may be less that fully forthcoming about its relationship with the German air marshal service.

Perhaps people should rethink their travel plans and use another airliner other than Lufthansa. If enough travelers opt for Lufthansa's competitors after getting commitments to full cooperation with air marshals, then Lufthansa will have plenty of available seating for the men who would protect Germans and Americans from another terrorist attack on the airline industry.

Northern Alliance Radio Takes A Break

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will not broadcast today on AM 1280 The Patriot. We're taking a break this holiday weekend to spend some time with our families, but we will return next week at our regularly scheduled slots. Mitch and I will actually be doing a live remote with our friends at White Bear Lake Superstore, so if you're near the east side of Saint Paul, be sure to join us on the showroom floor between 1-3 pm CT.

Posting at CQ will likely be light through Tuesday, but I will have a few posts to share with everyone, so keep checking back. I'm hoping to do something special for a Christmas greeting for all of my friends in the CQ community. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this time of year with your families and friends. The First Mate and I wish you a very merry and blessed Christmas and a happy (and belated) Chanukah!

Zawahiri To Democrats: You're Not All That

Al-Qaeda's number two nutcase sent a new message to the West as expected, and this time he had a special message for the winners of America's last election. Ayman al-Zawahiri wants Democrats to understand that they owe a debt of thanks to radical Islamist terrorists for their control of Congress, and he expects some gratitude ASAP:

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.

"And if you don't refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate," he said.

I know that a number of my friends on the Internet will be tempted to peg this onto the Democrats, but they should refrain from doing so. We have to remember that, like any delusional psychopaths, the AQ jihadis claim credit for everything under the sun. If he could, Zawahiri would assure his followers that trees consume carbon dioxide as a direct consequence of the faith of the mujahideen, and it would make just as much sense as this ludicrous assertion.

Zawahiri has plenty more to say, and he apparently takes all day in saying it, according to my friend John at Power Line. He emphasizes that the only form of government acceptable to the jihadis is that based on shari'a. That comes as an instruction on the nature of Palestine, about which he says:

And the second of these facts is that the recovery of every land which was once a land of Islam is the personal duty of every Muslim. Therefore, as Muslims, we cannot possibly concede to Israel so much as a hand-span of Palestine, and there is no difference as far as we are concerned between Palestine 1948 and Palestine 1967: all of it is Palestine and all of it belongs to the Muslims ...

In the first words of his message, he refers to the Balfour Declaration, which he describes as a decision that allowed "someone who didn’t own the Holy Land of Palestine gave it to someone who didn’t deserve it", giving one an early glimpse into the ignorance to follow. He points out Britain as a particular villain in this message, saying that it was the British who stabbed the Ottoman Empire in the back in order to foist the Jews onto Palestine. Zawahiri also spits some venom towards the UN for creating Israel as a state, even if the organization spends much of its time now attacking its creation.

The mention of Britain is the only really troubling note in a dull and dreary screed. It's unusual, in that AQ has held America up as its most hated enemy. Combined with the warnings from British security forces over the near-inevitability of an attack this Christmas, it appears that Zawahiri's message is meant as a signal to his forces.

Otherwise, however, this is a meaningless and unimaginative load of tripe. Taking any part of it seriously is a mistake of the first order.

Another Conviction On UN Corruption

Federal prosecutors have successfully concluded another case of corruption at the United Nations, this time getting a guilty plea from an Indian businessman who coughed up favors in order to garner millions in procurement contracts:

A businessman representing an Indian state-owned company pleaded guilty to bribing a former senior U.N. official with an unspecified amount of cash, a cellphone and a discounted Manhattan apartment in exchange for more than $50 million worth of business contracts, federal authorities announced Thursday.

Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Nishan Kohli, 30, admitted making the illicit payments to Sanjay Bahel, then a high-ranking U.N. purchasing official, as compensation for steering business to Kohli from 1998 to 2003. Kohli faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Bahel last month pleaded not guilty to related charges.

Kohli's attorney, Jacob Laufer, declined to discuss his client's role in the scheme. But he said Kohli signed an agreement with federal authorities on Thursday to cooperate in their ongoing investigation into corruption at the United Nations. "He has made a mistake, and he's contrite about it," he said.

It's interesting to see that Kohli offered a Manhattan apartment as part of his bribery scheme. Apartments appear to be very popular as unofficial perks at the UN these days.

This isn't the first time that UN procurement has been under the microscope, either. Alexander Yakovlev appears in the Volcker investigation as a man who used his access to over a billion dollars of contracts to spread wealth and favors to his family and close associates. Yakovlev pled guilty to corruption charges shortly after this became public.

Bahel now has to face his indictment alone. He has been charged with various corruption charges, and with Kohli pleading out, he has to understand that his trial has just become much more difficult. Of course, Bahel may also have information on corruption at the UN that could help alleviate his loneliness. Certainly, the US continues to prove that corruption at Turtle Bay is hardly a solitary pursuit -- in fact, it looks like it may be the one unifying theme of the world's debating society.

No Agreement On North Korea

The six-party talks have adjourned without any agreement, the BBC reports:

Despite five days of negotiations in Beijing, the talks broke up and no date for a resumption has been announced.

The talks involved the US, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

They had resumed after a 13-month break, and two months after North Korea sparked international condemnation by carrying out a nuclear test.

Chinese envoy Wu Dawei released a statement that simply reaffirmed an agreement from September 2005 that the North would agree to disarm in return for aid and guarantees of security.

The US accused the Kim regime of failing to take the talks seriously, which in this case is akin to noting the sunrise in the East. Kim Jong-Il wants his nukes, and diplomatic niceties will not shake him from his pursuit of WMDs. Only China can put enough pressure on him to achieve that result, and China still has not found the will or the desire to do so in sufficient measure. As Christopher Hill pointed out, each day the DPRK came up with a different excuse -- the banking sanctions that shut down their profitable counterfeiting ring, some perceived diplomatic slight, or another impossible demand. It all adds up to continued intransigence by Pyongyang.

What next? If China cannot get Kim to agree to any concessions, then we will probably see Japan take further steps towards militarization and possibly nuclearization. The US will start to fortify its positions in the Pacific Rim, and we have already begun talking about military expansion. China, which wants to establish East Asia as its economic playground, will see their efforts eroded by the projection of power from America and its allies -- and at some point, they will find the motivation to get Kim to agree to take the talks seriously.

Or, perhaps, the Chinese will find someone to take Kim's place. That possibility still exists, and since Kim is not as successful in keeping the North Koreans benighted these days, they may have plenty of help for that kind of mission. At this point, it's hard to see how we could do much worse than Kim.

Trusting Jezebel

The New York Times takes the extraordinary step today of offering its readers an op-ed column about an op-ed column. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann wrote the original column about the Bush administration's failure to engage Iran after 9/11 when it appeared that the mullahcracy might be open to a general improvement in relations. However, when the two submitted the column to the CIA for national-security review, it came back with a heavy treatment of black ink:

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves.

Leverett provides a number of citations for the redactions for his argument that the actions taken by the CIA represent an attempt to block information purely for political protection. I agree with Leverett that classification of material should only be made for the purposes of national security, and that if the CIA did what he claims, those officials should be held accountable for abusing the process.

However, I cannot help but be skeptical of any protest lodged by the New York Times on matters of classified material. They have spent most of the last two years leaking protected material, during which they showed much less concern for national security than they do in Leverett's pious essay here. The programs they revealed still have been shown to break no laws and all of them had Congressional oversight, including the ranking Democrats on the appropriate committees in both the Senate and the House. In the case of the SWIFT program, they even reported that the program had broken no laws, had no apparent abuses, and had been instrumental in catching an Al-Qaeda mastermind -- but they effectively torpedoed it anyway.

Jezebel may have spent some time as a truth-teller, too, but who would have trusted her? The Gray Lady has earned the same emnity on this point, and the same amount of trust.

As far as Leverett's original point goes, it has been known for some time that Iran wanted to improve relations with the US after 9/11. However, even his citations show why it didn't work. The Washington Post essay by James Dobbins, here in abstract form, points it out clearly:

Of course, even as Iranian diplomats and military officers were supporting U.S. efforts to install and sustain a successor government to the Taliban, other Iranians with official connections were, and are, rendering support to radical Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). It was this Iranian support of terrorism directed against Israel, along with the Iranian nuclear program and the refusal of Iran to turn over senior al Qaeda operatives in its custody, that caused Washington to limit and eventually curtail dialogue with Tehran on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Leverett's column asks us to believe that the Iranians only started developing their nuclear program in earnest after getting the Bush brush-off in 2003, when in fact the brush-off came in large part because of the Iranian nuclear program and their refusal to end it. This program had been growing clandestinely throughout the 1990s, a fact finally admitted by Iran when the IAEA caught them at it a few years ago. Their insistence on becoming a "nuclear power", as they put it this week, transcended anything they desired from a relationship with the US.

And why is that? They need the bomb to destroy Israel. The other part that Leverett doesn't mention is Iran's funding and support of both Hamas and Hezbollah in the proxy war against our ally in the Middle East. The Iranians would never have traded that away for diplomatic relations with the US, and in fact have spent several years increasing the violence from both groups against Israel. We can hardly fight a war on terror while caving into terror's leading sponsor, a fact that the ISG also conveniently overlooks.

Perhaps the CIA redacted part of the article to help convince Leverett of his folly in criticizing the Bush administration over its failure to surrender to Iranian demands while they fund terrorists around the world. That's not their role either, but it's too bad someone didn't convince Leverett of that before these two articles hit the stands today. (via Memeorandum)

Iraqi Shi'ites Deal For End To Insurgencies

Two of the major Shi'ite factions in Iraq have agreed on a deal to end the Shi'ite insurgencies that have fueled the death and destruction in Baghdad. The Dawa and Sciri parties have thrown down a gauntlet to both Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sunni parties that have backed their own insurgents:

Two of the senior Shia political leaders in Iraq agreed in principle to crack down on death squads within their own ranks yesterday. The rival Shia factions struck the deal in an attempt to salvage the country from collapse, said Haidar al-Abadi, a Shia MP in the Dawa party, who is close to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister.

The Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) agreed that the national unity Government had been rendered impotent by the failure of the Shia coalition to take on militants who have been killing Sunnis and fuelling sectarian strife.

The Sunni parliament bloc has backed extremist groups that are killing Shias. The violence backed by the two camps has led to many experts calling the conflict in Iraq a civil war.

Last night a delegation was on its way to the shrine city of Najaf intent on convincing the anti-Western cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is blamed for much of the widespread killing of Sunnis, to join the crackdown. Officials close to Hojatoleslam al-Sadr said he had agreed to rejoin the Iraqi Government.

It appears that Nouri al-Maliki has just about run out the string in Baghdad. Even the Dawas appear to have lost patience with Maliki, a bad sign for the beleaguered Prime Minister; there appears to be no other reason why Maliki would forsake Sadr for Abdul Aziz Hakim. It also portends some dark days for Sadr, if he doesn't agree to go along with the program. So far, the Dawas and Sciri speak only of the "criminal elements" that have infiltrated the Mahdi Army, but is Sadr resists, they may shift from elements to leadership. Maliki's agreement with his former opponents in Sciri appears to be a last resort for his hold on power, and it looks like he finally got tired of relying on Sadr for his political muscle.

This agreement will put more pressure on the Sunnis to respond in kind. The Shi'ite militias, after all, arose as a response to the original Ba'athist remnants attempting to extend their reign of terror after the fall of Saddam, and the Sunni political parties have done little since then to stop it. Perhaps the Sunnis now understand that the continuance of the insurgencies puts them at risk of annihilation by the Shi'ites if Iraq descends into civil war. If they haven't up to now, they should, and they should take this opportunity to calm the waters.

If this agreement holds, it could represent the first break in the political logjam that has fueled the insurgencies and the destruction in Iraq. A temporary alliance between Maliki and Hakim that marginalizes Sadr can only be good news for everyone. It's just too bad that it took this long for the Dawas and Sciri to divorce Maliki from Sadr.

But Will He Wait 120 Days?

The UN will finally address the failure of Iran to comply with the UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to its uranium-enrichment activity. The UNSC will pass limited sanctions on Iran, which has pledged to retaliate:

The United Nations security council is finally expected to pass a resolution today to impose international sanctions on Iran for the first time since the 1979 revolution, a punitive move that will heighten diplomatic tensions and risks a military confrontation in the Gulf.

Iran has threatened immediate retaliation, even though the proposed sanctions have been significantly watered down this week. Tehran's options include withdrawal from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, which would mean Iran would conduct its nuclear programme free from international monitoring, and possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for 20% of the world's oil supplies.

Western diplomats think that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his colleagues are bluffing but, just in case, the US announced this week it is reinforcing its fleet in the Gulf.

The British government is also increasing its naval presence. Two minehunters arrived in Bahrain on Tuesday but the Ministry of Defence said their deployment was mainly for training with Gulf states and "not to counter any increased threat". Tony Blair, on a visit to the Middle East this week, portrayed Iran as a major threat.

The Iranians can hardly afford to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, as much as they'd like to threaten it. They already have a collapsing economy, and a blockade in the Straits would mean the end of their own oil revenues. It might also provoke a military reaction from the US, which has suddenly sounded much less interested in diplomacy of late.

They can, however, withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, officially as well as in fact, and they almost certainly will do so. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will then lose the need for IAEA inspections and any restrictions on nuclear development, except for the reaction of the US and UK. Realistically, this changes nothing for Iran except that the sanctions will damage an already sinking economy and raise the level of restiveness among the Iranians. They may support nuclear power, but they already have tired of Ahmadinejad's unnecessary provocations and his isolation of the Iranian people on the world stage.

No one doubts that Ahmadinejad will react quickly to this decision, certainly faster than the foot-dragging the UNSC has done in the face of the Iranian refusal this summer of the compromise package offered to them by the US and the EU. However, the sanctions themselves got watered down enough at the insistence of Russia to temper the Iranian reaction. Likely it will remain limited to the withdrawal from the NPT, and when the sanctions fail to move the Iranians, the US and UK will have to up the ante outside of the UN -- which was always the only method available to really push the Iranians away from their nuclear pursuit.

First Hit On The BCRA

The fundamental attack on free speech that McCain-Feingold foisted upon America has finally received recognition from the federal judiciary. Portions of the BCRA got struck down today in a lawsuit filed by a right-to-life group, as a judge ruled that the campaign-finance restrictions violated the First Amendment:

A federal court on Thursday loosened restrictions on corporations, unions and other special interest groups that run political advertising in peak election season.

The 2-1 ruling said groups may mention candidates by name in commercials as long as they are trying to influence public policy, rather than sway an election.

The ruling came in a challenge to the so-called McCain-Feingold law designed to reduce the influence of big money in political campaigns. The law banned groups from using unrestricted money to run advertisements that name candidates two months before a general election or one month before a primary.

Wisconsin Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, has been fighting the law since 2004, when it sought to run an advertisement urging voters to contact Wisconsin Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, both Democrats, and ask them not to hold up President Bush's judicial nominees.

Because Feingold was running for re-election in 2004, the ad was prohibited. Wisconsin Right to Life argued that it wasn't trying to influence an election and said the law restricted its constitutional right to petition the government.

It's not for nothing that many have termed the BCRA the Incumbent Protection Act. The restriction on political speech that keeps groups from buying advertising that names politicians violates the fundamental reason for the First Amendment -- to allow Americans to criticize their elected officials. While the court did not recognize the entire egregiousness of this BCRA provision, it did recognize that the idea of never being able to name elected officials in advertising within 60 days of an election regardless of the nature of the reference is a ludicrous standard.

The case will now go back to the Supreme Court, which has a few choices regarding this case. They can overturn the ruling of the judges, reaffirming the BCRA and its assault on free political speech. They can, as the AP notes, uphold the narrow nature of today's ruling and create a complicated test for "honest" references to elected officials in issue ads. Lastly, the newly-constituted Roberts court can take this opportunity to reverse the biggest assault on overtly political speech unmatched in generations.

New co-blogger Paul Silver at TMV feels conflicted about this development and asks how we reconcile free speech with some protection against people trying to buy influence -- not a bad question. We certainly cannot fight influence by protecting politicians from critical speech in the last 60 days before an election. The history of campaign-finance reform since its inspiration of Watergate shows that artificial designations on contributions does far more to help hide the influence of money and distance politicians from the messages the money buys.

The real solution is to remove all of these financial shelters for campaign contributions and require nothing but full and immediate disclosure of all donations. It will cut the funding to phony issue organizations and 527s and push the money back to the candidates and the political parties, who can then be held accountable for the messages of the entire campaign. Transparency allows the voters to clearly see whose money funds which candidates, and their votes will determine the legitimacy of those associations, not the FEC and certainly not some prior restraint on political speech.

Two Essays From Right And Left

Two worthy essays written today should get your attention. First, we have our good friend and fellow CQ reader Michael Ledeen writing about the meaning of the recent vote in Iran. I wrote about the precarious political position in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finds himself, and Michael goes into more detail at the American Enterprise Institute:

The first step toward understanding the Iranian “elections” is that they weren’t. Elections, that is, at least in our common understanding of the term, namely the people vote and the counters count those votes and so we find out what the people want. That’s not what happens in Iran, where both the candidates and the results are determined well in advance of the casting of ballots. Yes, people get mobilized and go to the polls and mark their ballots and put them in the ballot box. But then Groucho comes into play: “I’ve got ballots. And if you don’t like them, I’ve got other ballots.” So, as usual, candidates (featuring, as usual, the unfortunate Mehdi Karubi, the eternal loser who nonetheless remains at the top of the mullah’s power mountain) complain that ballot boxes disappeared, and new ones magically appeared, and numbers change, and counters are replaced. It’s all part of the ritual.

Which is not to say they weren’t significant. They certainly were. And, as most every news outlet has noticed, they brought bad news to the country’s madcap president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian electoral ritual doesn’t tell us what the people want; it tells us what the tyrants have decided. This time, the decision had to do with the very intense power struggle going on inside the regime, catalyzed by the recent evidence of the worsening health of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In considerable pain from his cancer, for which he consumes a considerable quantity of opium syrup, Khamenei recently was forced to spend 2-3 days in a Tehran hospital after complaining of a loss of feeling in his feet and breaking out in a cold sweat. His doctors told him several months ago that he was unlikely to survive much past the end of March, and he seems to be more or less on schedule.

Ledeen, who always writes with such insight about Iran, makes the case that Ahmadinejad serves a purpose familiar to bloggers: sock puppet. The recent demonstrations have served as a check against the more radical factions of the mullahs in a power struggle that Ahmadinejad's antics help to mask. With Khameini's health failing, Ledeen argues that the US and the UK have to start pressing hard in support of the current student activists if they want to bring an end to Iranian radicals and their dreams of regional hegemony -- and that we are missing the opportunity.

Speaking of missing an opportunity, Alan Dershowitz castigates Jimmy Carter for missing one to conduct a public debate on Israel and the Palestinians. Carter blew off the Harvard professor and Constitutional attorney, and Dershowitz does not much care for the snub:

YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when a public figure has written an indefensible book: when he refuses to debate it in the court of public opinion. And you can always tell when he's a hypocrite to boot: when he says he wrote a book in order to stimulate a debate, and then he refuses to participate in any such debate. I'm talking about former president Jimmy Carter and his new book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." ...

The fact is that Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz had invited Carter to come to Brandeis to debate me, and Carter refused. The reason Carter gave was this: "There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

As Carter knows, I've been to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, many times -- certainly more times than Carter has been there -- and I've written three books dealing with the subject of Middle Eastern history, politics, and the peace process. The real reason Carter won't debate me is that I would correct his factual errors. It's not that I know too little; it's that I know too much.

I usually disagree with Dershowitz, but have always respected his intellect and his entertaining delivery -- and he doesn't disappoint here. In this case, Dershowitz is obviously correct. He calls Carter a bully, but that doesn't even cover it; Carter is a coward. I'm not sure I blame him -- I'd be nervous debating Dershowitz, especially if I had to defend the book Carter wrote. Unlike Carter, though, I think I'd agree just to see Dershowitz in action.

Be sure to read both worthy essays.

Not All Obama Nonsense Resides On The Right

It's refreshing, if a little disheartening, to see that the nonsense about the true identity of Barack Obama is not limited to the fringes of the conservative blogosphere. Agence France Presse provides an interesting analysis of Obama's early support, which does not include the demograhic one would assume:

US political darling Barack Obama has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid -- except from fellow African-Americans, a group many believed would be among his staunchest backers.

In contrast to the effusive reception Obama has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, saying that while they may share skin color with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history.

"Obama did not -- does not -- share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves," wrote African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch last month in an article entitled "Barack Obama -- Not Black Like Me." ...

"While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own -- nor has he lived the life of a black American," Crouch wrote in his New York Daily News column.

"If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door -- which might, at this point, be the only one that's open."

It's pretty early in the electoral cycle for this kind of analysis, but it does point up the problem with identity politics -- getting the identities correct. Despite his experiences as a baby-boomer ethnic mix, he has not found acceptance with African-Americans, or perhaps because of it. It's a strange argument, because although Obama's ancestry does not flow through American slavery, it would have mattered little to his formative experiences. After all, bigots rarely ask politely about parentage before attacking people, and to the extent that anyone experiences racism and bigotry, it occurs because of their appearance. Getting to know people almost always reduces or eliminates hatreds.

One has to wonder whether any African-American with a successful life story could garner support with the dynamic reported by AFP in play, if it really exists. Radio host George Wilson describes the anti-Obama sentiment as a reflexive reaction to the support he has garnered from whites, saying that such enthusiasm makes African-Americans automatically suspicious. If true, it would be terribly self-defeating.

Obama hasn't used a side door for anything so far in his political career, although the Republicans made it very easy for him in the 2004 Senate race by nominating Alan Keyes. Nor will he do so in a presidential run. For some reason, however, people do not want to allow him to run as his own person on his own platform, choosing instead to assign him one identity or another, with the result of denying him his individuality -- the inevitable end product of identity politics.

Obama would make a lousy President, but not because of his supposed identity issues. His policy choices are lockstep liberal, and his rhetoric is superficial, even if expertly delivered. He will remain a top-drawer political figure because of his genuine nature and his likability. Obama will remain enough of an outsider to produce pithy analyses of the Capitol Hill environment, and he will represent the liberal constituencies of Illinois well. Even if he doesn't win the White House, he may help to end the ridiculous practice of identity politics over the next couple of decades -- and if he does, that will be legacy enough for any man or woman of this era.

Let's quit focusing on skin color and middle names, and start focusing on policy.

Sadr Reconsiders, Part 37B

With the US talking about sending more troops to Baghdad and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani organizing a coalition to strip Nouri al-Maliki of his position as Prime Minister, Moqtada al-Sadr has apparently blinked yet again. The radical Shi'ite cleric has begun to consider a unilateral cease-fire in the sectarian war that he has masterminded in an attempt to bolster his political viability in Iraqi politics:

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads a militia feared by Iraq's Sunnis, is considering a one-month unilateral cease-fire and may push his followers to rejoin the political process after a three-week boycott, officials close to him said.

The issue is expected to come up at a meeting Thursday in the holy city of Najaf between al-Sadr and a delegation representing the seven Shiite groups that form the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament, the Shiite officials said on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the talks.

Half the delegates traveled to Najaf on Wednesday night, and were gathered Thursday morning at the home of the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an official in al-Sistani's office said on condition of anonymity because of political sensitivities. The others were traveling to Najaf on Thursday, he said.

The visit is intended to allow the Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, to work out some of Iraq's biggest political obstacles in front of al-Sistani, and to pressure al-Sadr to rein in his fighters and rejoin politics or face isolation, participants said.

Sadr has had marvelous political instincts in the three post-invasion years. He narrowly avoided assassination, and then played a cat-and-mouse game with the Americans, both in Baghdad and in Najaf, where the Iraqis just took control. He edged close to total defeat on more than one occasion, rescuing himself on those occasions by promising to engage in the political process rather than in terrorism. When sufficiently freed from oversight, he invariably returns to his radical and violent ways.

That's what makes this so frustrating. We should have fought until we defeated Sadr and crushed his militias when we had the opportunity and the momentum. By cutting deals with Sadr, we only postponed the inevitable and undermined Sistani. Once again, we find ourselves in a position where we have to organize massive forces to neutralize Sadr politically, an effort that would not have been necessary had we executed the original warrant for his arrest following his role in the assassination of a competing moderate cleric in the days following the defeat of Saddam Hussein.

Our effort shows once again that Sadr is a slippery and clever foe. When outmatched, he retreats and regroups. The unilateral cease-fire he proposes would go a long way towards ending the sectarian violence in Iraq, since he seems to inspire most of it anyway. Such an effort will convince Iraqis to protect him from arrest and marginalization yet again -- and we'll have to keep repeating this strategy until the Iraqis get tired enough of this game that they allow the US to decisively deal with Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

Turkmenbashi Shuffles Off

One of the last of the Soviet-era strongmen and a genuine oddity has finally died. State-run television announced the death of Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov, and given his personality cult, that says volumes:

Turkmenistan's authoritarian president Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled the Central Asian country for 21 years, has died aged 66, state TV has reported.

Niyazov, who named cities and airports after himself in a bizarre personality cult, left no designated successor.

Turkmenistan, which has large gas reserves, now faces an uncertain future with rival groups and outside powers scrambling for influence, analysts say.

Niyazov died at 0110 local time (2010 GMT Wednesday) of a heart attack.

For those who think Kim Jong-Il is a master of the personality cult, Niyazov may be the all-time champion. He has more facilities named after him than Robert Byrd, and his rule in the post-Soviet era was absolute and relentlessly personal. In fact, it was so much so that Niyazov simultaneously held the posts of President and its successor office, the head of the legislature -- meaning that Niyazov succeeded himself in case of his death.

Niyazov ruled with an iron will. His dictates on law, culture, science, and the calendar were accepted without question. He fashioned himself as Turkmenbashi, the Father of Turkomen, and his subjects followed. Almost exactly two years ago, Niyazov held elections for his rubber-stamp People's Assembly that had so little meaning that pollers had to go door-to-door to get Turkomen to vote. Outside corporations wishing to do business with Niyazov had to publish his autobiography in order to curry favor. Still, he remained so distrustful of outside influences that he barred international couriers such as Federal Express and DHS from operating within Turkmenistan.

Niyazov certainly provided a strange sort of entertainment to the outside world, but his rule has serious consequences. The primarily Islamic state sits atop a large reserve of oil, one of the reasons foreign entities put up with Niyazov in order to do business with him. The suddenly rudderless nation has a useless legislature and no serious candidates to succeed Niyazov now that he has died so suddenly. The shocked nation could turn towards the next strongman to come down the road, and given the volatility of that region, that could be a radical Islamist just as much as it could be another Russian puppet with delusions of grandeur.

Neither of those choices sound entertaining at all, considering the position Turkmenistan occupies. It is the northern neighbor of both Iran and Afghanistan, sharing the Caspian Sea with the former as well as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The potential for radicalization appears very high, and the vacuum left by Niyazov's death gives Iran an opening to expand its influence in the region -- and the influence of radical Shi'ite Islam. It's a volatile mix that requires vigilance during the war on radical Islamist terror.

UPDATE: Registan also ponders a Turkmenbashi-free future.

Subsidizing The Elimination Of The Small Farmer

When the topic of farm subsidies arises, it evokes an image of a subsistence small operator, barely keeping up with the bills, while employing and supporting a large family. Politicians from my region of the country sell this narrative when funding massive subsidy programs for agriculture, telling voters across the country that the federal government has to secure the food supply by supporting price structures to keep the small farmer from bankruptcy. However, as the Washington Post reports, this portrait of the American farmer has more in common with Norman Rockwell than modern-day agriculture -- and these very subsidies are the reason:

Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before.

The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out.

"Historically, when you think of family farms, you think of mom and dad and three generations working a small or mid-sized farm. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling," said Alex White, a professor of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech. "In the real world, it might be a mid-sized farm. But it also might be a huge farm. It might be a corporation."

Large family farms, defined as those with revenue of more than $250,000, account for nearly 60 percent of all agricultural production but just 7 percent of all farms. They receive more than 54 percent of government subsidies. And their share of federal payments is growing -- more than doubling over the past decade for the biggest farms.

These programs appear more like land bonuses than subsidies for struggling farmers. The more one produces, the more subsidies they earn. The Post tells the tale of an Illinois farmer who grossed almost a half-million dollars in soybean production, and got $120,000 in subsidy checks from the feds, which he called "embarrassing". Meanwhile, a farmer in Iowa with one-third the land received much lower subsidy checks, even though one would think that the smaller farms need the subsidies more.

Last year, the total amount of agricultural subsidies was $15 billion. The largest farms -- those grossing $500,000 or more in production -- accounted for over 30% of all subsidy payments. As noted above, when one adds in the farms that produce more than $250,000, the group gets more than 54% of all farm subsidies even though they comprise only 7 percent of all farms. Even that number is misleading, however, as the government counts "hobby farms" in the mix, adding more than a million sites that produce as little as $1,000 a year.

In fact, the number of actual family farms has steadily decreased over the last couple of decades. Looking at the subsidy payments, it isn't difficult to see why. The incentives have all been weighted to land ownership, and so the subsidies get reinvesting in purchasing more land for bigger production. Small farms get squeezed out by their poor position in the real-estate and agricultural markets, thanks to the distortion provided by the federal subsidies. Since 1989, the portion of subsidies paid to the largest farms has skyrocketed from 13% to 32%, providing plenty of resources for the consolidation of farms into larger corporate entities.

And do these larger farms employ more people? Not at all -- they actually reduce the amount of farm jobs available. Since the subsidies have touched off a real-estate brushfire, the farms have to improve efficiency in order to free up funds for land acquisition. That means more automation, more technological improvements, and therefore fewer hands required to get crops to market.

Even the farmers wonder why the government feels that they need special assistance. The subsidy programs have seriously distorted the agricultural and land markets and actively undermines the very people they claim to save from economic disaster. It's time to rethink government involvement in agriculture and allow the market forces to work properly.

Could Ahmadinejad Be In Serious Trouble?

For a man who came out of near-oblivion to the presidency of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to face serious restlessness among his subjects. Despite having the backing of the hardliners in the Guardian Council who arranged his victory, or perhaps because of that support, Ahmadinejad has become the center of widespread scorn and dissastisfaction among Iranian students, a volatile and powerful force for radical change in the nation. Combined with a humiliating setback in local elections, Ahmadinejad may find himself on the same career path as the Shah:

As protests broke out last week at a prestigious university here, cutting short a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Babak Zamanian could only watch from afar. He was on crutches, having been clubbed by supporters of the president and had his foot run over by a motorcycle during a less publicized student demonstration a few days earlier.

But the significance of the confrontation was easy to grasp, even from a distance, said Mr. Zamanian, a leader of a student political group.

The Iranian student movement, which planned the 1979 seizure of the United States Embassy from the same university, Amir Kabir, is reawakening from the slumber of recent years and may even be spearheading a widespread resistance against Mr. Ahmadinejad. This time the catalysts were academic and personal freedom. ...

The protest, punctuated by shouts of “Death to the dictator,” was the first widely publicized outcry against Mr. Ahmadinejad, one that was reflected Friday in local elections, where voters turned out in droves to vote for his opponents.

Earlier reports had the Iranian leader shocked by his treatment at Amir Kabir, but that analysis has been somewhat eclipsed. The protest at the university only got organized after the students saw busloads of Ahmadinejad supporters coming into the school, apparently to provide a cheering section for the president that would otherwise have been lacking. Quite obviously, Ahmadinejad and his lieutenants understand how unpopular he has become, and tried to pack the auditorium to prevent it from becoming common knowledge.

He may have looked stricken, as the Guardian reported, and on the verge of tears. However, it's not likely that came from a surprise at his unpopularity, but at the fact that the protesters had made their way into the auditorium despite his best efforts to keep them out. Ahmadinejad may also have wondered whether these bold protests would give dissenters a huge boost in credibility and inspire others to follow their example. What we know with certainty is that the regime had to go out and find supporters to put on a facade of unity, a facade that has cracked significantly in the last few days.

The students, more than a few of them now in hiding, turned down an opportunity to meet with the president. He offered to meet them to address their concerns about academic freedom at the university, but they told him they would not give him the public relations victory such a meeting would have produced for Ahmadinejad. They also pointedly castigated him for his lack of rhetorical sophistication and used the pre-revolutionary name of the school, Teheran Polytechnic, rather than Amir Kabir.

These men may be in hiding, but they're showing some serious courage in their efforts to strip all pretense of openness from the regime. If this keeps up, the students may repeat history and conduct a second revolution to rid Iran of all the excesses of the first. Ahmadinejad will not rest too easy from this point forward, especially since it looks like he will be the first against the wall in the coming event.

The Common Ground In 2007

George Bush held a press conference today to smooth the way for better relations between Democrats and Republicans in the last two years of his presidency. In a performance that recalled his old promise to be a uniter in Washington, Bush talked about the common ground that could be found between Congress and the White House -- and it has a familiar ring to it:

Eager to show he heard the message of voters who stripped his party of majorities in both the House and Senate in the November elections, Bush said he'll work hard on what he called "an interesting new challenge" — trying to find common ground with Democrats who will lead Congress for the first time in his presidency.

"I don't expect Democratic leaders to compromise on their principles, and they don't expect me to compromise on mine," he said. "But the American people do expect us to compromise on legislation that will benefit the country."

He said initial consultations with incoming Democratic leaders revealed openings for cooperation in several areas. One was an immigration policy overhaul, including a way for some illegal workers to move toward citizenship. That was stymied this year primarily by conservative Republicans who favored a get-tough-only approach.

Other openings Bush saw for cooperation were increased federal spending on alternate energy sources; reform of Congress' appropriations process that has made it common for lawmakers to slip pet projects into spending bills, and giving American workers new skills and businesses help investing in new innovations.

So what do all of these issues have in common? With one exception -- earmark reform -- every one of them envisions increased federal spending. This should surprise few who have paid attention to the last six years; the level of discretionary spending has risen significantly above inflation in each new budget proposed and approved by Republicans. With Democrats and their pro-interventionist policies coming to the fore in 2007, this agenda seems tailor-made for a new era of comity.

The main story is that Bush agreed to increase the minimum wage in exchange for tax breaks and deregulation for the small businesses most likely to be impacted by the change. That didn't please Ted Kennedy, who demanded -- and I quote -- "a clean bill giving them the raise they deserve" after having worked at the current minimum for 10 years. Even beyond the economic idiocy of artificially raising an income floor and creating inflationary pressures that wipe out the buying-power difference, Kennedy's rhetoric demonstrates how disconnected he is from the private sector. The minimum wage is an entry wage, a starting point for workers who would then earn raises through their work and not from government intervention. Anyone who started in 1996 at the current minimum in the same job they have now without a raise in 10 years likely doesn't deserve one.

Ted Kennedy aside, the people who abstained from the 2006 elections as a protest against the big-government Republicanism of the last six years will not likely enjoy the next two, either. Combining the compassionate conservatism/Rockefellerian Bush with a free-spending Democratic Congress will recall the worst of the 1980s without the saving grace of bringing the Soviet Union to its knees via economic warfare. Government investment in alternate energy research may be a good idea on national-security grounds, but the rest of the R&D budget for new innovations in the private sector sounds like corporate subsidies.

I hope Bush restrains his spending habits and tries to rebuild the fiscal conservatism that for a time characterized the GOP. He still might do so, but this press conference does not leave me with confidence for the next two years.

A Little Song, A Little Dance, National-Security Documents Down Your Pants

The Inspector General of the National Archives has released his report on the security breach committed by Sandy Berger. Unlike the characterization given for the theft of classified data from the Archives by his political allies, the IG clearly accuses Berger of intentionally stealing the documents for their later destruction:

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash.

The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger _ who had been President Clinton's national security adviser _ was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of they failed to notify any law enforcement agency. ...

"In total, during this visit, he removed four documents ... Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building)."

Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

Bill Clinton and other former members of his administration claimed at the time that Berger habitually mislaid documents, and that his theft of the documents from the classified area of the Archives was just absent-mindedness. This shows that Berger deliberately lifted the documents. He put them in his pants, took a break without escort, and then hid them under the construction trailer. After he returned to the locked room to officially check out, he then went back and retrieved the documents -- which have all disappeared.

And what were these documents? Copies of reports that dealt with the Clinton administration's handling of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, copies that likely had unique handwritten notes from the high-ranking officials to whom they were published. They had direct bearing on the counterterrorism efforts of the administration -- especially regarding Sandy Berger -- at a time when the nation demanded an accounting of the failures that led to 9/11.

Berger got a $50,000 fine and 100 hours of community service for this theft. Had this sequence of events been known at the time he pled guilty, the sentencing would have been seen as the sham it is. Even at that point, all he admitted was that the theft was "not inadvertent". This strongly suggests that it was planned in advance for a specific purpose, and it's too late for the Department of Justice to lean on him to discover exactly what that was.

Will Hillary have Sandy Berger on her national-security team for the 2008 election? His three-year revocation of clearance will expire just a few months before the election ...

Now Digg This

Among the changes I've made over the last couple of days has been the addition of a Digg icon on each post. Digg is an aggregator of news articles and blog posts that allows Digg users to add articles and vote for them; the more votes, the higher up the rankings the articles go. CQ readers can help bring new readers to the site by clicking on the icons and casting votes for each blog post they deem worthy of a larger audience.

Also, don't forget the new Sphere widget. That's more for the readers than for the blog, as it will display a pop-up window that shows CQ posts related to the topic, and blog posts from other blogs that discuss the topic as well. I've found it a bit addictive, and I hope you find it helpful and entertaining. Sphere will be adding even more content after they've fine-tuned the filters, so keep clicking on it!

Do We Need A Bigger Military?

President Bush reversed course from his six-year effort to make the military smaller and more nimble by saying that America needs a more robust military. In an interesting interview with the Washington Post, Bush also backtracked from his earlier insistence that the US is winning the war in Iraq:

President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.

As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."

In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.

But in a wide-ranging session in the Oval Office, the president said he interpreted the Democratic election victories six weeks ago not as a mandate to bring the U.S. involvement in Iraq to an end but as a call to find new ways to make the mission there succeed. He confirmed that he is considering a short-term surge in troops in Iraq, an option that top generals have resisted out of concern that it would not help.

Bush tried to cast his new assessment on Iraq as consistent with his earlier statements, but that's risible on its face. Before the election, he said that we "absolutely" were winning in Iraq. Now he says that he meant it as an absolute commitment to winning there, but that was not how he phrased it then. Insisting that the two statements are somehow equal undermines his credibility in a silly cause. We're obviously not winning in Iraq, and while we're not be losing, it's not the same thing.

And let's not pretend that the expansion of the military represents some continuity of thought, either. Bush fully backed Donald Rumsfeld's vision of military transformation from a Cold War strength-through-numbers paradigm to the modern rapid-response force that would address the post-Soviet world. It hasn't worked as planned, mostly because the strategies it was designed to support did not get used. Once we decided to stay in Iraq after Saddam's removal -- a decision made for good reasons in the war on terror -- the Cold War style of military was needed for the long-term administration of the country. It takes boots on the ground to pacify insurgencies, perhaps not as many as Eric Shinseki predicted, but more than we have now.

Our greatest issue may not be boots on the ground, but sailors in the water. The Chinese have enjoyed massive economic growth, and they have begun to invest a large chunk of that in their blue-water navy. That buildup threatens our position in the Pacific Rim, and we have done little to counter the threat. We have allowed ourselves to fall far behind the curve in building new ships for the Pacific Fleet. If the Chinese will eventually rise to challenge us as a world superpower, then we have to rethink the small-but-nimble strategy for our traditional channel for global power.

This will force us to spend even more money on defense than we have in the past, which will create difficult choices for us in the next few years. We need a bigger military both for the war on Islamist terrorism and to counter the rising strength of China. It looks like we've finally agreed on that. Now we have to agree on how to fund it -- and where to get the money to do it.

The Kurds Respond To The ISG

The Iraq Study Group delivered its recommendations for changing strategies in Iraq at the beginning of the month, a report that has received criticism from all sides -- liberals for not demanding an immediate withdrawal, and conservatives for its recommendation to turn to the sponsors of terror to "stabilize" Iraq. Some of the strongest criticism came from Iraq itself, and today the Washington Post hosts a column from Mansour Barzani, a leading Kurd, on the lack of credibility of the ISG:

Our federal constitution, which the majority of the Iraqi people voted for, is treated flippantly, as though it were a negotiable document rather than the hard-fought result of lengthy negotiation among those willing to participate in the new Iraq. Further, the study group's approach is driven by the concerns of the countries in this region rather than by the concerns of the Iraqi people.

Many Iraqis, especially the Kurds, are justifiably concerned about this. No one from the study group visited Iraqi Kurdistan, which the group admits is safe and pro-American, and where there has not been a single U.S. casualty since the war. Kurds not only fought alongside Americans but lost some of our best men to American friendly-fire incidents. Yet we staunchly support the work of the coalition and are eternally grateful for the sacrifices the American people have made for our future. ...

The plan would reward regimes that have undermined the U.S. effort at every turn. Iraq would fall under the regional powers, and the Iraqi people would come out the losers. Any vacancy left in Iraq by the coalition forces before Iraq is ready to stand on its own would be filled by those opposed to democracy. American credibility would dissipate, and any chance for success in Iraq would evaporate. If this comes to pass, hopes for real democracy in the Middle East will be history. The regional powers that border us have an interest in keeping us weak and divided.

Once again Kurds are about to be sold out. Should the U.S. administration adopt the recommendations of Baker-Hamilton, the Kurds will be sacrificed to protect the interests of Iraq's neighbors. We were massacred in 1975 and 1991 by Saddam Hussein because we thought that our commitment to democracy and tolerance made us natural U.S. allies.

The Kurds put aside their aspirations for independence in favor of the American insistence on a united Iraq under our protection. We pressed them to back away from their historical goal of an independent Kurdistan because of the instability it would wreak throughout the region, and they agreed to do so. They have pressed for a federal solution in Iraq that would allow them significant autonomy, but they have not argued for secession, at least not yet. The Kurds have done their best to uphold the pact between themselves and the US.

Barzani is right to be suspicious of the ISG. Given how much more safe the Kurdish areas are than the Green Zone, one has to wonder why the ISG never bothered to meet with the Kurds of the region. That kind of snub, after years of alliance with the US, sends a very disturbing message about our intentions for the future of that alliance. An American failure puts the Kurds in a fatal squeeze between the Turks and the Shi'a and Sunni -- setting up yet another genocide.

We need new directions in Iraq, but reverse shouldn't be one of them. We have responsibilities to the people who believed in us and in our mission, and a second betrayal in two decades would devastate our ability to win allies anywhere in the world. It could also convince the Kurds to act pre-emptively in their own defense by declaring their independence, which could touch off a war with the Turks. An American withdrawal without establishing Iraq's sovereignty and internal security will result in death and destruction on a far greater scale than anything we have seen from Iraq to this point, on top of the exposure of American will as non-existent.

Failure cannot be an option in this war.

His Record Is Enough

Barack Obama has had a dramatic effect on the blogosphere since dropping his fat hint that he might run for president in 2008. I've written about Obama on more than a few occasions, since I think Obama will be with us for the long run, especially given the political balance in Illinois and his potent speaking skills. The port side of the blogosphere has mostly swooned over his steadfast support for the liberal party line, while the starboard side has started to look unhinged over his potential candidacy in 2008.

The latest round started with Debbie Schlussel, who insists that Obama is a closet Muslim:

I decided to look further into Obama's background. His full name--as by now you have probably heard--is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali's son--Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father, the late Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., apparently a Muslim.

And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that's not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he's a Christian, but they do not. ...

Obama went to a Muslim school for two years in Indonesia. His mother, Anna, married an Indonesian man (likely another Muslim, as Indonesia is Muslim-dominated and has the largest Islamic population in the world). And Obama has a "born-again" affinity for the nation of his Muslim father, Kenya, and his Kenyan sister.

I like Debbie and think she contributes an important voice to the blogosphere, but this is not serious thinking. First, it makes little difference to me who the "Arab and Muslim streets" considers Muslim. The Arab street also thinks that the Holocaust never occurred but that it sounds like a nifty idea. In reading the Qur'an, we get the opinion that Jesus was Muslim, and certainly Muslims today will argue that point; does that make it so? People decide their own religion and are responsible to God for that personal choice. "Muslim streets" do not get to determine the faith of free men. The very statement that Obama "may think he's a Christian" in a sense that minimizes his own choice of faith is, well, unhinged.

Baldilocks takes Debbie to task for this:

Like me, Senator Obama wasn’t even raised by his biological father* and, though he had an Indonesian step-father who was probably a Muslim, he says that he is a Christian. And, like me, Obama has been long interested in knowing more about his heritage--probably since, like me, Obama was born and raised here in our beloved USA with a zero amount of it, outside of our middle and surnames. And, unlike most black Americans, the senator and I are blessed enough to know at least some part of our African heritage--something that is very prized among the mostly slave-descended black American population.

But Debbie Schussel determines such interest as something else. Well, guess what. I was raised as a Muslim also. My mother and (black American) step-father subscribed to the creed of the Nation of Islam back in the day. And like Obama, I went to a Muslim school—for longer than he did. I even have a high school diploma from Clara Muhammad Elementary and Secondary School, obtained when I was fifteen, since the school didn’t take summer breaks.

But things change. Both my mom and my step-dad are now Bible-believing Christians, as am I. Dad is now even a Methodist pastor. However, I wonder whether our conversions will be questioned as Senator Obama’s is being even now by Schlussel, who calls the senator’s middle name “a Muslim name.” Well, no. It’s an Arabic name. And there are many Arabic Christians who, obviously, have Arabic names.

Baldilocks warns conservatives that these kinds of attacks will backfire, and I agree. They will do much more damage to us than Obama simply because they are completely unreasonable. They attack Obama not for what he says or does, but for aspects of his life over which he had no control.

Besides being self-defeating, these arguments detract from the Senator's record, which gives ample basis for criticism. For one thing, Obama has almost none at the federal level, save for the federal spending database that he co-sponsored with Tom Coburn. His record in the Illinois legislature has more substance, but is chock-full of the kind of liberal orthodoxy that puts him closer to Russ Feingold than Hillary Clinton. The Right hasn't even bothered to scratch the surface of that record, a more worthy effort than trying to include Obama's last name in every reference.

Better yet, try reading his The Audacity of Hope, which I received earlier this week on audio CD. I've slogged my way through 40% of the tome, and so far, I'm unimpressed. Obama seems like a nice enough fellow, and fairly genuine, which puts him above average in Washington DC. However, his liberal tropes are so shopworn and so insubstantial as to almost fly out the window of my car as I drive along the highway to and from work. His point appears to mostly be that both sides are (almost) equally guilty of rancid partisanship and that Americans should come together for solutions, and that bipartisanship should take the form of agreeing to the Democratic platform because it's nicer than the Republican. And for all his speaking prowess, which is considerable, his pleasant voice comes across in this reading as oddly clipped, somewhat irritable, and lecturesome.

Perhaps it gets better as it goes along. I'll let you know.

Conservatives looking to head off the Obama Express should start here and work their way back through his public life. There will be plenty of policy points to mine in the debate, believe me. Obama is the kind of doctrinaire liberal that will find less appeal as people get to know him better -- but that will not happen while some of us focus on the ethnicity and religion of his father. That path will only insulate him against proper political criticism and will almost guarantee his election to the Presidency at some point in time.

End Of The Country Club At LSC ... Maybe

Three months ago, I wrote about the financial shenanigans at the Legal Services Corporation, which provides low-income Americans with legal assistance. The LSC had used its Congressional mandate and ever-increasing budgets to get itself some fancy Georgetown digs and treat its lawyers to limousines for cross-town traffic in DC instead of cabs. They leased the new offices specifically for the spacious meeting rooms, but instead held their conferences in resort destinations like San Juan.

The days of wine and roses (and expensive Death by Chocolate desserts) have come to an end, however:

The $13 per person "high tea" service and $12 bagel breaks will be gone from the January directors meeting of the government's legal aid program for the poor. And the meeting will be held at the headquarters conference room rather than the upscale hotel used in the past.

After severe criticism from Congress, stinging reports from a financial watchdog and several articles by The Associated Press, the Legal Services Corp. has decided to temper the expensive tastes of its top officials while poor clients are turned away for lack of program funds.

Internal memos, provided to the AP voluntarily by a Legal Services official, made clear there would be no more $70 lunches and $14 "Death By Chocolate" desserts at board meetings.

Only in special circumstances would there be a repeat of hotel costs that shot through the government's room rate ceiling, limousine services and first-class air travel.

The new agreement at the LSC requires them to use the same guidelines as federal agencies on travel and entertainment costs. The LSC is an independent non-profit, which has allowed LSC executives to avoid the restrictions in the past. However, Congress provides all of its funding, and Congress got embarrassed by their excesses once the AP discovered them earlier this year.

So there will be no more $27 lunch breaks, no more $400 limousine rides for meetings within the DC area, and no more double meal allowances when executives dine together. San Juan will have to learn to live without LSC executives. Hotels will have to find other people to use their suites.

Now if we can just get them to quit padding their caseload reports at budget time, we'll make real progress in reforming the LSC.

A Limit To Media Bashing

Rich Lowry wrote a provocative column at National Review Online yesterday -- a challenge of sorts to his conservative readers regarding their war against the mainstream media. Lowry warns against building up an image of the media as a vast liberal conspiracy, an image as false as the media's own self-image of objectivity:

The conservative campaign against the mainstream media has scored notable successes. It exposed Dan Rather’s forged National Guard memo and jumped all over Newsweek’s absurd report of a Koran-flushing incident at Guantanamo Bay. The mainstream media is biased, arrogant, prone to stultifying group-think and much more fallible than its exalted self-image allows it to admit. It also, however, can be right, and this is most confounding to conservatives. ...

The “good news” that conservatives have accused the media of not reporting has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of schools and hospitals is not particularly newsworthy, at least not compared with American casualties and with sectarian attacks meant to bring Iraq down around everyone’s heads in a full-scale civil war. An old conservative chestnut has it that only four of Iraq’s 18 provinces are beset by violence. True, but those provinces include 40 percent of the population, as well as the capital city, where the battle over the country’s future is being waged.

In their distrust of the mainstream media, their defensiveness over President Bush and the war, and their understandable urge to buck up the nation’s will, many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq. They thought that they were contributing to our success, but they were only helping to forestall a cold look at conditions there and the change in strategy and tactics that would be dictated by it.

I suspect that Lowry has it more right than many of us in the blogosphere would like to admit. Certainly the media has its biases, but it simply cannot be as wrong as many of us would like to believe. Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets undermine their own credibility when they continue to insist that obvious examples of egregious malfeasance, such as Rathergate and the Eason Jordan scandals, never occurred.

Someone commented here a few days ago that we go to war with the media we have. In this case, we have done better than that -- we have found sources on the front lines who report directly to us, so that we can hear good news when it occurs. However, the bad news is also occurring, and we cannot write all of it off to bias. Lowry talks about realism in the non-political sense, which is to base policy and decisions on fact and not wishful thinking. Again, though, the issue is still one of credibility: can we trust the media sources that have played fast and loose in the past?

The only solution is for news consumers to get their information through multiple sources, a lesson that bloggers learned long ago. Talk to the prime movers directly when possible, insist on metrics when they exist, and compare and contrast versions of events told from several perspectives. None of this is new advice, but it is good advice. We cannot become so paranoid that we fail to listen to anyone except ourselves, because as Lowry points out, that's when bad decisions and disastrous policies occur.

Mainstream media outlets have their biases; they also have plenty of good reporting on which one can rely. It's up to us as discriminating consumers to find the difference.

Addendum: Of course, we could do without the sneering and condescending attitude towards their readers, embodied today by Joseph Rago. Too often the self-appointed high priests of journalistic purity forget that bloggers represent their most committed readers, and wind up issuing silly pronouncements about the failings of the blogosphere -- and poorly edited pronouncements at that, as Chris Muir points out in today's DBD.

Also, make sure you read Jules Crittenden's take.

UPDATE: I made a mistake with Jules' name, which I just corrected. At least I had it right in the link ...

No Blood For Blood

Have the Palestinians finally begun to reject the terrorism that they have championed for more than four decades? The London Times reports that they have started sending a message that they have had enough of bloody violence -- by refusing to replenish what's been spilled:

As gunmen spilt it and warring politicians hailed its sanctity, ordinary Palestinians showed their disgust for feuding Hamas and Fatah gunmen by refusing to donate blood.

Doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital are used to a plentiful supply of volunteers queuing up to donate blood for victims of Israeli attacks. But faced with the selfinflicted wounds of the nascent Palestinian civil war, that supply has all but dried up. “We are all frustrated and depressed,” said Dr Jumaa al-Saqqa, director of publicity at the Shifa hospital. ...

“We have a shortage of blood in the bank now. During Israeli incursions hundreds of people come to donate blood but now nobody. Why give your blood? For whom? For one to kill the other? I want to just take my white coat off and go home.”

Outside, Ismail Haniya, the Islamist Prime Minister, protested that the “smallest drop of Palestinian blood is dear to us”. Yet even as he spoke, his Hamas fighters were kidnapping, killing and wounding security personnel loyal to President Abbas.

The Palestinians seem to have lost their thirst for blood, at least their own. So far, that hasn't been the case with the terrorists around them. One cease fire has been called for this morning, after Monday's fell apart on its inception. Gangs of armed and masked men prowl streets, looking for someone to kill; eleven have already died since Abbas called for new elections. The hospital that has run short on blood has an abundance of wounded terrorists from both sides, and their focus has shifted from healing to refereeing the two sides into a truce within the wards.

Some seem rather taken aback by having their own tactics turned onto them. Fatah has used ambulances to convoy its fighters and even to attack Hamas outside the hospital, which surprised one Hamas terrorist interviewed by the Times. Of course, all sides have used that particular trick against the Israelis, but it somehow shocks their sensibilities when Palestinians use the same tactic against other Palestinians.

Perhaps the Palestinians not hauling weapons to kill their fellows have finally realized how empty this path has become. Terrorism once used becomes seductive; a group that can intimidate another through low-risk attacks on civilians will use the tactic again and again, with rationalizations gradually disappearing until the violence is both the end and the means. When two such groups collide, the bystanders take the worst of it, and it looks like they've finally decided to stop fueling their own demise.

No blood for blood, the Palestinians have started to insist. If they remain consistent in that message, it will be the smartest action they have taken in decades, perhaps ever.

Buck Passing As An Art Form

One of the more egregious developments of the Watergate era has been the rise of the "independent investigator". Having burned both parties, one might expect such constructs to fall out of favor in Washington, but that would underestimate the desire of politicians to shirk responsibility for difficult tasks. An unsigned OpinionJournal editorial today covers the proposed expansion of the buck-passing state:

Congressional mores could certainly use an upgrade, but it pays to beware of reformers promising to clean up politics by letting someone else do the dirty work. Exhibit A is the strange new enthusiasm for an "independent" office of public integrity for Congress.

One warning sign is that the proposal is being marketed by the same folks who gave us "independent counsels" such as Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr for the executive branch, as well as the glories of "campaign finance reform." Instead of the current practice of having complaints against Members vetted by the House and Senate Ethics Committees, the idea is to create a new outside body to do the work for Congress. To her credit, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi hasn't let the browbeating by the usual goo-goo editorial pages intimidate her, and has suggested a task force to study the idea.

A better name for such an "independent" ethics body would be the office of public buck-passing, because it would allow Congress to spare itself the heavy political lifting of judging colleagues. Handing over that duty to outsiders would make Congress less politically accountable, not more, while creating a whole new set of political problems and disputes.

This kind of effort sounds great -- in theory. In a town that too often sees politicians act to protect partisans of their own tribe, the kind of Deus Ex Machina of an "independent" commission or investigator promises a pure form of politics. Instead of acting in the favor of beholden interests, the theory goes, it will follow the clues and pursue the policies that the evidence illuminates.

Unfortunately, the American experience over the past thirty years shows that when commissions and investigations shake loose those political ties, they also free themselves from accountability. Time after time, these panels and investigators expand far beyond their mandate and transform themselves into self-perpetuating monstrosities -- so much so that their original mandate sometimes falls by the wayside. Patrick Fitzgerald's probe into the supposed leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, later admitted by Richard Armitage, is a classic case in point, although both Democrats and Republicans can point to outrageous witch hunts on both sides over the last couple of decades.

Congress has oversight over the executive branch, and the executive branch has the authority to investigate malfeasance by legislators. Neither want the responsibility, however, of conducting such investigations in case they blow up in someone's face, so they outsource it to crusaders and busybodies. When the investigation collapses, the elected representatives can simply shrug their shoulders and refuse any responsibility for the damage caused by it.

We need our elected officials to take responsibility for their mandates and to quit passing the buck, especially on ethics. We do not need a star chamber of unelected officials to mete out punishments to our representatives; if the current batch of Congresspeople and Senators can't handle self-government, then how in hell can we trust them to govern us? Congress need to bring accountability back into the process, before the notion of government by unelected appointees threatens the entire notion of representative democracy. That goes for ethics, criminal investigations, and development of policies as well.

What Happened To Fruitcake?

Remember when people gave each other fruitcake for Christmas? No one ever ate it, of course, but we all gave it like it was manna from heaven. Even if the fruitcake inevitably exited the house in much the same condition it entered -- harder, perhaps, but intact -- at least it didn't come pre-ingested:

In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed four pounds. There was no receipt in the box.

Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000.

“I called my sister and asked her, ‘What the heck did you send me?’ ” recalled Ms. Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. “She said: ‘I don’t know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You’re the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.’ ”

And just when one would think this story gets weird enough, it turns out that the reason whale vomit gets that much attention and cash is because it's particularly valuable ... for perfumes. Ambergris has commanded large amounts of money and is fairly rare, which means that Ferreira may have been given a four-pound lottery ticket. Only two problems remain for Ferreira: no one can find an ambergris expert any more to identify it, and its sale is forbidden in most cases due to anti-whaling laws.

I think I'd prefer the fruitcake. It's just as inedible, but I don't need to hire a non-existent expert to tell me that.

Democrats Disappoint Bono

Acclaimed U2 rocker and aid activist Bono tried getting the Democrats to support George Bush's commitments to African aid after they take control of Congress, but left disappointed. It seems that Bono has discovered the blessing and curse of divided government:

Meetings in Washington last Thursday between rock star Bono and Democrats, including Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada, yielded a nice photo-op but not much else, according to Bono.

Bono, the U2 frontman and anti-poverty activist, was on Capitol Hill to seek assurances that $1 billion in planned U.S. spending to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa would not be lost if Congress freezes agency budgets in the coming year.

Bono said he also was seeking to close a "commitment gap" between what President Bush has requested for anti-poverty efforts and what Congress has agreed to spend in the past.

After meetings with incoming Senate Majority Leader Reid, House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, Bono said he came away empty-handed.

"I'm alarmed we could not get a commitment from the Democratic leadership to prevent the loss of $1 billion in the continuing resolution," Bono said Thursday in a statement.

Democrats told Bono that the Republicans would block the aid, while Republicans reminded Bono that they will not be in charge next year. Frustrated, Bono lashed out, saying that the million families that would not get mosquito netting to protect them from malaria didn't give a damn which party had control of Congress; all they would know would be that the Americans didn't make good on their promises. Later, he softened that statement, but his anger clearly shone through.

I can understand the frustration, but that doesn't change a couple of basic facts. First, the mosquito netting would be unnecessary if the use of DDT could be approved for those areas. DDT, when used for specific targets, eliminates malaria by killing the mosquitos that carry it. It eliminates the secondary and less effective screening methods intended to keep the mosquitos off of the people at risk for the disease. However, the same people who demand large blocs of grant aid for these kind of situations block the use of DDT after Rachel Carson's popular but hyperbolic "Silent Spring" unfairly demonized the pesticide.

Second, while Bono and his group maintain that they support intelligent and targeted aid, the use of the monies more often than not go to support kleptocrats and warlords in the areas where the aid is needed. Yesterday we heard about how tsunami aid freed funds to create shari'a police in Aceh. If Democrats want to get stingy with aid, that may not be a bad thing as long as the distribution channels exist as they do now.

I'd rather that Bono focused on the long-term solutions for poverty and suffering in Africa, which is the political structures and dynamics that perpetuate it. Africa for the most part should produce agriculture in such abundance as to be net exporters to the world, and while tariffs do bar some of that from the market (which Bono also fights, to his credit), mostly they don't produce because warlords ravage the land. Under those circumstances, where the West clings to political correctness and bogus environmentalism, avoids the hint of colonialism, and allows the bullies to abuse the weak, aid will make no long-term difference except to make those situations even worse than they are now. In this case, the Democrats probably have it right. (via the indispensable Memeorandum)

Annans Ace Out Low-Income New Yorkers

One runs the United Nations and has a spouse from a wealthy Swedish family. Another serves as the Ghanian ambassador to Morocco and holds gala parties at their residence there of the last several years. Claudia Rosett wonders, then, why brothers Kofi and Kobina Annan have managed to hold onto a Roosevelt Island flat for more than a decade despite its being intended for low-to-middle-income New Yorkers on a list with a four-year waiting period:

As Secretary-General Annan prepares to leave his post at the United Nations, a mystery is surfacing surrounding his apartment on Roosevelt Island, subsidized by New York taxpayers, which is still in use by the family of his brother, Kobina Annan.

The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income New York families.

One question Mr. Annan has never addressed is why he and his wife felt comfortable availing themselves of this generous arrangement. Another is how it is that, since Mr. Annan and his wife left that Roosevelt Island apartment 10 years ago to move into the rent-free residence on Sutton Place supplied to the secretary-general, their former low-rent apartment was handed over to be occupied by the family of Mr. Annan's brother.

For a man who just finished lecturing Americans on his retirement from the position of UN Secretary-General on the need to help the poor and downtrodden, this seems incongruous at the least. The Mitchell-Lama housing has requirements that obviously have not been met by the Annan family, most clearly that the apartment be used as a primary residence by the lessee. Since Kofi has also availed himself of the S-G residence in Sutton Place and has not lived on Roosevelt Island for a decade -- and his brother hasn't lived there for several years -- it means that the Annans have forced strapped New Yorkers to wait longer for affordable housing.

And this is no small discount involved in this case, either. The market rate for a Roosevelt Island residence would be around $4500, but the state-subsidized rate paid by the Annans for their second home amounts to less than $2,000 per month. That amounts to a subsidy of $30,000 per year, which certainly would be a boon to low- and middle-income families in New York -- but would be wasted on a man who has a free apartment in tony Sutton Place, and certainly wasted on the Ghanian Ambassador to Morocco, neither of which come within two time zones of Roosevelt Island.

Rosett, of course, makes the investigation rather entertaining. She got no cooperation from Kofi, so she decided to let her fingers do the walking through archived New York telephone books. Kofi maintained a listing showing his occupancy of the apartment from 1978 right up to the time when he became Undersecretary General in 1993, the #2 slot at the UN. Of course, in the intervening period, he was working in Geneva for a few years, once again apparently violating the terms of the program. His son Kojo then used the same address and phone number in some correspondence during his featherbed job at Cotecna, a key issue in the Oil-For-Food scandal.

After Kofi rose to the top of the UN, Rosett finds records tying Kobina and his wife Ekua to the apartment, both in telephone books and in business cards. Like any good reporter, she contacted Kobina and Ekua, both of whom confirmed their residence at the Roosevelt Island flat -- but then grew much less cooperative when asked about how they managed to secure the lease. Ekua told Rosett that their sons use the apartment now.

It's a remarkable story of hypocrisy and greed from the man who set himself up over the last week as the global scold for rich nations. Instead of modeling the behavior he demanded of us, he abused the programs we set up to assist the working-class families of New York just so he and his family could maintain a second residence at a discount rate, even while none of them paid no rent for their own primary residences. What a fraud.

Early Setback For Brownback

In an attempt to set himself apart from the GOP field in the upcoming Presidential race, Brownback put a hold on a judicial nomination for her attendance at a same-sex union ceremony. However, Brownback overreached when he demanded that Janet Neff recuse herself from all cases regarding gender-neutral marriage issues:

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who blocked the confirmation of a woman to the federal bench because she attended a same-sex commitment ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbors, says he will now allow a vote on the nomination.

Mr. Brownback, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said in a recent interview that when the Senate returned in January, he would allow a vote on Janet Neff, a 61-year-old Michigan state judge, who was nominated to a Federal District Court seat.

Mr. Brownback, who has been criticized for blocking the nomination, said he would also no longer press a proposed solution he offered on Dec. 8 that garnered even more criticism: that he would remove his block if Judge Neff agreed to recuse herself from all cases involving same-sex unions.

In an interview last week, Mr. Brownback said that he still believed Judge Neff’s behavior raised serious questions about her impartiality and that he was likely to vote against her. But he said he did not realize his proposal — asking a nominee to agree in advance to remove herself from deciding a whole category of cases — was so unusual as to be possibly unprecedented. Legal scholars said it raised constitutional questions of separation of powers for a senator to demand that a judge commit to behavior on the bench in exchange for a vote.

Well, it's not just unprecedented, it's ridiculous. Can you imagine the outrage had Ted Kennedy demanded that Samuel Alito recuse himself on all cases involving abortion? How about if Pat Leahy insisted that Janice Rogers Brown recuse herself on all affirmative-action cases? Conservatives would have had fits -- and rightly so.

Neff's attendance at a private function on her own time has no bearing on her fitness to the bench. A union ceremony breaks no laws and infringes on no one's rights. It involves two people celebrating their relationship without demanding any recognition from the government or special rights as a result. The two women invited family and friends to attend, and Neff decided to support her friend and help her celebrate a ceremony that would have taken place regardless.

No one expects Brownback to attend such an event. However, whether he did or not would have no bearing on his fitness for office. Unfortunately, even while allowing the vote to proceed, Brownback still demonstrates that he doesn't get it. He claims that Neff's attendance at this event merits an investigation as he would "like to know more factually about what took place." Since nothing illegal took place and Neff did not do anything in her capacity as a judge at the ceremony, it's none of Brownback's business what "took place" there.

I understand that recognition of marriages is a public policy and that the electorate should make that decision. However, that does not give the government any right to interfere or investigate relationships between consenting, non-related adults. The government does not belong in the bedroom, and the Senate has no business extracting pledges of recusals from judicial nominees for any reason. If Brownback doesn't understand these two concepts, then he has no business anywhere near the White House.

UPDATE: I'm not surprised that Glenn agrees with me on this.

Blair Rejects Hamas

Tony Blair made clear yesterday that he considers the Hamas government to have no legitimacy in the Palestinian Authority. Blair endorsed Mahmoud Abbas' call for early elections despite uncertainty of his authority to do do:

Rival Palestinian factions ignored an overnight truce and resumed fighting in Gaza as Tony Blair placed himself in the middle of the nascent civil war.

Hamas fighters abducted a senior Fatah official, who was later released, and another Fatah supporter was killed. “This ceasefire risks being blown away in the wind,” a Fatah spokesman said.

The fighting came hours after Mr Blair publicly backed President Abbas, head of the secular Fatah party, in his power struggle with Hamas, his Islamist rivals. Mr Blair declared Hamas to be an obstacle to peace because of its refusal to recognise Israel. “Nobody should have a veto on progress,” he said.

Standing alongside Mr Abbas in Ramallah, the Prime Minister said: “The international community needs to mobilise its efforts to support you in your office as President, to support the Palestinian people and make sure we stand ready to do everything we can.”

Blair went farther than the US has in endorsing Abbas on a personal level, perhaps a bit too far. The US has rejected the Hamas government from the beginning, refusing to deal with a terrorist group whether or not they win election. The Bush administration has cut off funding for the PA while Hamas remains in charge, but they have been careful not to bolster Mahmoud Abbas on such a personal level.

Blair will probably regret the gesture. Abbas, after all, runs Fatah -- an organization that also uses terror to hold power. Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade conducts the same kind of operations as Hamas gunmen in Gaza -- including attacks on Israelis. Fatah doesn't have the same streak of radical Islam as Hamas, but that's a small consideration for the Israelis. It matters little whether Islamist or secular terrorists wipe them out, even if it apparently matters to the West.

In any case, the early elections will not matter much, and for the same reason. Palestinians still will have the choice between two flavors of terrorists. Fatah will not sign off on an Israeli state even if Abbas might -- might -- agree to it. The British and the Americans might be encouraging elections just to get a civil war going that could finally force the Palestinians to jettison all of their current leaders and to find a leadership class that will work towards a true and lasting peace.

Widgeting On A Monday Night

I've been tinkering with the blog tonight, and you may have already noticed the new addition to CQ. At the bottom of each post you will notice a new link titled "Sphere It". If you click on the link, it will display a two-column Java pop-up window. The left side of the window will display related posts from CQ, and the right side will show links to posts at other blogs in the Sphere universe. Clicking the links will open up a new window, so you do not have to navigate away from CQ to follow the threads.

This is an initial version; Sphere will add more content as we go along. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

How Foreign Aid Hurts Rather Than Helps

For long-term disasters like famines, one can usually find a political problem that keeps food and medicine from the people who need it, rather than a purely environmental issue. This has been true of African catastrophes like Ethiopa and Somalia, where the means for food production have fallen victim to dictatorships that use food as a weapon against their enemies. It turns out that the same dynamic can be found in shorter-term disasters -- like tsunamis, for instance. The massive aid sent to Aceh in the aftermath of the killer tidal waves of two years ago has not funded relief, but instead enabled a new shari'a police that have subjugated the women of Aceh:

WHEN people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women’s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves. ...

In one town, Lhokseumawe, the authorities are even planning to impose a curfew on women — a move that social workers warn will force tsunami widows to quit night-time jobs as food sellers or waitresses and could drive them into prostitution.

The entire spectacle has more than a whiff of repressed sexuality about it. Women accused of moral crimes get hauled in front of a crowd of jeering men, who work themselves into a state of hysteria while the charges are read. Then the women get caned as many as ten times to the exultation of the men watching the punishment. It sounds like a strange outlet for a severely repressed society, especially as the morality squad has conducted more than 140 times now.

The problem with foreign aid for disaster sites is the prevailing political structure of the country or area. When the government is corrupt, the aid will not go to its intended recipients but instead to support the corrupt government. Massive amounts of cash only serve to allow these regimes to keep and extend their grip on power. In this case, some could be forgiven for forgetting the lesson, given the random and acute nature of the disaster, but it shows that even in these circumstances aid will get diverted to purposes other than those intended.

Western nations need to develop new methods of aid delivery. We cannot simply refuse to help when people starve to death or when tsunamis strike, but we also cannot fund the imposition of shari'a and other kinds of oppression. We need to insist on controlling the delivery channels for aid to ensure that it reaches the real victims. When we have successfully done so, we have seen the benefits of our generosity reflected in the improved lives of the downtrodden. When we do not, we become accessories to the violence and abuse that the powerless receive.

Did Hillary Snub French Socialist?

French Socialist sensation Ségolène Royal postponed a tour of the US, purportedly because of exhaustion. However the London Telegraph reports that Royal planned to meet Hillary Clinton as a way to highlight two female presidential candidates, but that the Democratic front-runner wanted nothing to do with the French or Socialists at the beginning of her candidacy:

Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, postponed a "triumphant" US tour planned for this week after Hillary Clinton declined to meet her, it was claimed yesterday.

Miss Royal, the first Frenchwoman with a realistic chance of becoming president in elections in April, officially put off her tour until late January or February due to fatigue after visits to the Middle East and Portugal.

But in reality the decision appears to have been influenced by her failure to secure what would have been a symbolic meeting with Mrs Clinton, the Democrat senator whose ambition is to become America's first female president.

An unnamed advisor to Mrs Clinton told the newspaper Le Parisien that appearing next to a French Socialist who recently met an official of the Hizbollah movement in Lebanon could be construed as condoning the beliefs of the militant Shia group. The Democrats also have little in common with French Socialism, which supports massive state intervention, a huge civil service, and regularly lambasts "US world hegemony".

But the main problem, said the advisor, stemmed from Miss Royal's association with the Hizbollah official, who denounced the "unlimited dementia of the American administration" and likened Israel's foreign policy to "Nazism".

It's too bad this took place behind the scenes. Hillary could have secured a good part of the center and possibly a few on the right had she publicly denounced these statements. In fact, Royal could have provided Hillary with that all-important Sister Souldjah moment that helped her husband win the White House.

Alas, though, Hillary did not have the courage to do so. It's an opportunity lost. She will not have many more chances to denounce terrorism, Hezbollah, and Socialism in real terms. It's almost as if she doesn't want to do so openly, and one has to wonder why that might be.

As for Royal, her dance card remains full. Despite Hillary's full reverse on Royal, she still plans to meet with Bill Clinton when she does finally tour the US, as well as Barack Obama. Will Obama take the opportunity to denounce Royal's association with Hezbollah and her initial endorsement of his analysis of US policy as indicative of "unlimited dementia"? Or will he agree with that official that the Israelis practice "Naziism"?

Everyone First

Thanks to the compressed news cycle and the impatience of the political class, we have seen the earliest serious launch of a presidential season in long memory. Normally candidates play coy until no more than eighteen months before a presidential election, but this cycle already has declared candidates and exploratory committees abound. In this rush to commitment, Newt Gingrich has decided to take a different and somewhat novel approach:

A former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, said yesterday that he will consider entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination only if no other potential candidate looks to be a prohibitive favorite by September 2007.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press," Mr. Gingrich also praised several Republican politicians who are expected to make announcements soon about their presidential plans, Governor Romney of Massachusetts, Mayor Giuliani, and Senator McCain of Arizona.

"Romney's had a good year. He's emerging as a serious player. Giuliani is wildly popular for national security reasons. John McCain has built a base for years of hard work. If one them seals it off by Labor Day, my announcing now wouldn't make any difference anyway," Mr. Gingrich said. "If none of the three having from now to Labor Day can seal it off, the first real vote is in 2008. And there's plenty of time in the age of television and e-mail between Labor Day and 2008."

Gingrich is nothing if not clever. He knows that the field has already gotten crowded, and some question whether anyone else could find the financial backing to challenge the three frontrunners. In that environment, Gingrich figures that he can keep his powder dry until he really needs it. Labor Day 2007 would have been the traditional launch period of presidential campaigns anyway, and it leaves him plenty of time to rally his faithful.

The strategy still has its risks. Big-ticket donors are already feeling the pressure to get behind a specific candidate. Potential staffers may decide to sign onto other campaigns, leaving Gingrich with fewer and less influential choices by September 2007. The same could be said for voters as well, although thankfully voters don't commit until the primaries. Still, he's leaving the field open for someone to take control of the race and roll into the winter with commanding momentum.

However, Gingrich may have the one strategy tailored specifically for him. He has some strong negatives still within the party and outside of it, and he doesn't need another nine months for those to get dragged through the limelight. He has made a name for himself as an astute political pundit, and as long as he's still at least nominally an outsider he can continue to get media attention (and get paid for it). The lack of a credible conservative candidate also plays to this strategy. He can allow himself to get drafted late in the process, avoiding some of the internecine fighting of the early campaigning and perhaps even be a figure of unity within the GOP.

Clever indeed. Gingrich has always been clever, but he has miscalculated in the past. We'll have to wait until Labor Day to see whether he has this time.

You First

Kim Jong-Il has rejoined the six-party talks aimed at ending his nuclear-weapons program and opening North Korea for foreign aid and trade. The other parties have promised an end to sanctions and economic assistance if Pyongyang ends its development of nukes, but the Kim regime has challenged them to act first:

North Korea has said it would only consider scrapping its nuclear weapons when all international sanctions against it are lifted, as disarmament talks resumed here after a 13-month break.

Declaring itself "satisfied" with becoming a nuclear power following its first-ever atomic test on October 9, North Korea offered no signs of compromise at the six-nation talks Monday, according to officials who were at the forum.

Instead North Korean chief envoy Kim Kye-Gwan called, in his opening remarks to the talks, for
United Nations and US sanctions to be lifted, as well as repeating long-held demands for help in developing a nuclear power industry.

So once again Kim has come to the table only to emphasize his intransigence. That, of course, is his opening position, but it won't be his final word on the subject. Kim came back to the table because he knows that China has just about decided to wash their hands of him, particularly him. Beijing found him useful only until he disobeyed them and made them look impotent by actually detonating his nuke earlier this year.

He's just about finished unless he can get the sanctions lifted, and he knows it. Kim survived three coup attempts in the 1990s with China as his ally, but he won't survive another with them disaffected from his regime. If he cannot feed his Army, they are likely to start looking for a leader who can, revered father or not.

What's worse is that the nature of the six-party talks almost guarantees that he will lose on this point. All five other nations want him to recommit to his previous disarmament plan and are not looking to take no for an answer. They will not allow Kim to wriggle off the hook; Japan will drive that more than the US. China and Russia understand that an end result of failure will be a nuclear and more militarized Japan, and they both want to avoid that more than they want Kim Jong-Il as a client.

North Korea will, in the end, give up its nukes. Whether Kim remains in charge at that point is the real question.

Dissent In Iran And Its Aftermath

Last week we noted the bravery of Iranian students that challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Holocaust denial at his Festival of Ignorance. This week, the same students have gone on the run, in fear of the Iranian president:

Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives after his supporters threatened them with revenge.

One student fled after being photographed holding a banner reading, "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you", during Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran's Amir Kabir university. At least three others have gone underground after being seen burning his picture. Vigilantes from the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group have been searching for them.

In a startling contrast to the acclaim Mr Ahmadinejad has received in numerous recent appearances around Iran, he faced chants of "Death to the dictator" as he addressed a gathering in the university's sports hall last week. Several hundred students forced their way in to voice anger over a clampdown on universities since he became president last year.

While his aides played down the incident, the Guardian has learned details of the violent and chaotic events.

The Guardian has more details of the original protest. Apparently, Ahmadinejad was shocked at the outburst, after having had his staff arrange for rock-star receptions wherever he appears. When the chanting began, Ahmadinejad tried to get his supporters to counter-chant, but wound up leading it himself. He looked so stricken by the display that he looked ready to cry, according to one of the witnesses quoted by the Guardian.

The protests apparently resulted from heavy-handed tactics by the university regarding the rise of moderate opinion on campus. Several student groups were forced to disband, and officials demolished two buildings belonging to a moderate Islamic group. The visit by Ahmadinejad came so close to these events that the students saw it as a deliberate provocation, which inspired the courage we saw last week.

However, the images broadcast around the world allowed the regime to identify the students, and Ahmadinejad's goons have made them nervous indeed. His thugs have stood guard at dormitories looking for the protestors, and the leaders of the protest have gone underground. Students told the Guardian that the entire student movement could follow them ... just as before the 1979 revolution that put the radical Islamists in power.

CORRECTION: I wrote "Abbas" instead of "Ahmadinejad" in the first paragraph; thanks to Gina Cobb for the correction.

The $10 Million Man

In the speculation surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko, people keep coming back to the central fact: the assassination method. The poison used eliminates all but the most powerful suspects, and not just because of its relative rarity. As the Times of London points out, the amount of polonium used would cost its assassins millions of dollars:

British investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko’s killers used more than $10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose.

Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market.

They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message — it made it easier for British scientists to detect — or is evidence of a clumsy operation.

A British security source said yesterday: “You can’t buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers.”

In an age where nations keep close track of nuclear material for fear of terrorist acquisition, the thought of that much polonium going unnoticed in a black-market transaction stretches credulity. The only way that much could find its way into Litvinenko's system would be from an entity that produces polonium in bulk. That leaves out all but the nuclear powers, as polonium comes from the nuclear cycle.

This seems to undercut the notion that Litvinenko dosed himself, either accidentally or for some purpose known only to Litvinenko -- and as for the latter, the excruciating nature of his death argues against that anyway. Litvinenko would hardly have spent $10 million on polonium without someone noting the transaction, nor would the Russians have just given it to him, given his dissident status.

So which nuclear power would have wanted Litvinenko dead? Only Russia. The overkill of so much polonium was meant to send a message, which is that they will spare no expense in eliminating opponents of the Putin regime.

The Real Civil War (Updated)

The Palestinians have slid closer to outright civil war after Mahmoud Abbas attempted to end the current Hamas-led government and call for new elections. Hamas responded by rejecting any participation in early elections, and Fatah responded by attempting to assassinate the Hamas foreign minister:

Gunmen attacked the convoy of the Palestinian foreign minister and raided a training base for an elite security forces unit Sunday, stepping up factional violence over a decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to end nine months of Hamas leadership and call early elections.

A 19-year-old woman and a Palestinian security officer were killed in the chaos, while at least 13 people were wounded in gun battles across Gaza City. In one symbolic attack, Abbas' empty residence came under fire. Militants also fired two mortar shells at Abbas' nearby offices.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, in a first response to Abbas' decision, said the Islamic militant group would boycott a new vote and accused the moderate president of inflaming an already tense situation.

"We confirm that the Palestinian government refuses the invitation to early elections because it is unconstitutional and could cause tension among Palestinians," Haniyeh said. He said Abbas' speech calling for new elections was "insulting to the sacrifices and the pain of Palestinians everywhere."

The Palestinian Authority keeps coming closer to dissolving into two separate governments and two major bases of operation for each. Hamas already has primary control of Gaza, while Fatah holds the West Bank, although each has plenty of representation in both places. Both have their own armies, and both seek to gain full control over the state apparatus. The early elections will likely set off enough anger to end the facade of the PA altogether.

Perhaps this is the only way in which the Palestinians will get tired of war. It's unfortunate, because this could have been resolved a decade ago if Yasser Arafat had the courage to accept Ehud Barak's two-state solution. The Palestinians want it all from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, however, and they will instead reap the bitter harvest of all the violence they have sown. When they have had enough death, perhaps they will select leaders interested in peace. If that never happens, though, it seems more likely that they will exterminate themselves in an orgy of destruction.

UPDATE: Someone called the war off, at least for now:

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah say they have reached a deal to end violence in the Gaza Strip.

Officials of Hamas, which runs the Palestinian government, said they had agreed a truce with Fatah, loyal to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Fatah officials also spoke of a deal, but there were reports of heavy gunfire continuing into Sunday night.

It seems like neither side feels they can win a civil war, or that they can maintain their political support if hostilities erupt to that level. At some point, that hesitation will disappear; they cannot maintain the discipline of their militias if they keep calling off the fight.

Person Of The Year, Suck-Up Version (Updated And Bumped)

I'm not much of a fan of the Time Magazine Person of the Year fuss. They usually do a decent job of picking someone significant enough to qualify, but often miss the best choices. Of course, sometimes they completely misfire, such as in 1982 when they selected the computer, or in 1988 when they chose "Endangered Earth". Of late, they have tended to select choices that within a few years makes readers say, "Who?" Those examples came in 1996 (David Ho), 1997 (Andy Grove), 1999 (Jeffrey Bezos), and one complete suck-up choice in 1991 (Ted Turner).

This year, they have made their second complete suck-up choice ... everyone:

The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Eh. So this is the year for the great huddled masses? Wouldn't that have been 1989, when the momentum of freedom and liberty felled an Evil Empire and tore down a wall in Berlin? Instead, Time selected Mikhail Gorbachev, and also named him its Man of the Decade for managing to take the Soviet Union into oblivion. The fact that they selected him over the two men responsible for forcing him into that position shows the problems Time has always had in seeing the long view of history.

At least, however, they made a decision and selected someone. The entire point of a Person of the Year is to acknowledge that some people play larger roles in history. Naming all of us may make us feel good about our anonymity, but in the end it's either pandering to millions of readers or a refusal to take a stand on anyone. Choosing everyone is an abdication on the entire purpose of the project.

Even Salon did better than that -- but not by much. In a year of so much turmoil and such electoral drama, they selected S. R. Sidarth, the opposition researcher for James Webb that got himself notoriety by being the target of George Allen's weird "macaca" moment. It's a silly selection by an unserious publication, perhaps much more demonstrative of Salon than it could possibly be of 2006.

Who would I have selected? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with second place going to Kim Jong-Il. It's been that kind of year. (via Hot Air)

UPDATE: I clicked on the Time link to re-read the article and got a Chrysler ad. Chrysler obviously missed the editorial meeting -- it's ad text starts, "You may not be Time's Person of the Year ..." But I am!

UPDATE II: Danny at Beltway Blogroll has a more sanguine approach to sharing 1/6 billionth of the honor. Gaius says his readers are better looking than mine -- I wouldn't take that, if I were you. Jeralynn is also unimpressed, and has a rational selection for the honor. I don't agree with her, but they at least qualify as a significant movers this year, unlike the eventual (or even current) Trivial Pursuit answer Sidarth.

UPDATE III and BUMP: Bill Buetler at Blog PI predicted this outcome in October. So maybe Bill should have been the Person of the Year? Oh, wait ... he is! Tom Maguire is reveling in his newfound status, and is giving his readers a blow-by-blow account of his first day as POTY ... which has something related to the potty, actually.

Maybe They'll Supply Them With Polonium, Too

Russia has announced that it will move forward with plans to supply the Iranians with nuclear fuel for their reactors, despite Iran's refusal to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions demanding an end to uranium enrichment. Following suit, Iran has told visiting diplomats that it plans on transferring its nuclear technology to other nations as soon as it perfects its own processes:

RUSSIA is to begin supplying Iran with nuclear fuel early next year despite mounting concern in the West that this could accelerate Tehran’s plans to build a nuclear bomb.

Sergei Shmatko, head of Atomstroyexport, Russia’s state nuclear fuel exporter, said last week that preparations to send fuel to Iran would start next month and the first consignment was expected to reach the Islamic republic in early spring.

The announcement, at a time when Russia is asserting itself as an energy power, has caused anxiety in western countries which are trying to convince the Kremlin to end its nuclear co-operation with Tehran.

The concerns were strengthened yesterday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reported to have told a Kuwaiti envoy that Iran was ready to transfer its nuclear technology to neighbouring countries.

The nuclear fuel will be sent to Bushehr, Iran’s first nuclear power station, which has been built by Russia over the past decade as part of a £450m contract. Iran says the plant will be used to produce energy and that its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes.

Russia under Vladimir Putin has become increasingly arrogant and wants to keep playing all of the worst aspects of the Great Game. Not even a healthy dose of self-interest has kept Putin from trying to woo Iran into his orbit of influence. After all, the Islamist uprising in the Caucasus certainly will benefit from Iranian technology transfers of nuclear expertise, and it isn't much of a stretch to see that Putin has likely handed the means of Russia's extortion to its most likely extortionists.

One would think that the threat of proliferation on the southern belly of Russia would give Putin and his regime some pause, but the Russian autocrat has his eyes on the wrong front. He sees his great conflict with Europe and the Western powers, which have come all the way to the doorstep of Russia, absorbing all of the buffer states that once shielded Russia from the West. That evolution of Westernization -- begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall -- has rattled Putin far more than it should, and it has kept his focus off of the real existential threat of a nuclear-armed radical Islam.

And we have no doubt that Ahmadinejad will share with his friends once he has a fully-developed nuclear process. His tip to the Kuwaitis only confirms his intentions to spread nuclear weapons throughout Southwest Asia in an attempt to eject the West from the area. He wants an end to the Israeli nuclear deterrent, and he's going to get it unless he's stopped. That would be true whether Putin hands him the fuel for his Messianic ambitions or not, but the day will come much more quickly now than before.

Guilty Of Acting In Our Own Interest

Easily one of the most amusing articles of this year appears in today's Observer regarding a pattern that analysts have discovered in our foreign-aid allocations. It seems that the US allocates more aid to nations when they serve on the UN Security Council for two-year terms than at other times, and the Observer isn't happy about that at all:

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. 'Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,' said Duncan Green of Oxfam. 'In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.'

Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call 'vote-buying' will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year's Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.

Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation. Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

Well, what a shock! America acts in its own interest, and we use our foreign aid to advance our foreign policy. It must be the first time that's ever happened in world history! Or, perhaps, I only imagined the calls from organizations like the Guardian/Observer to withhold aid and trade from places like apartheid South Africa, among others.

People can't have it both ways. The United Nations has emerged as the preffered method to tie down America in order to control our foreign-policy impulses, a strategy that had been successful of late. The vast majority of that body consists of autocracies and dictatorships whose goals are diametrically opposed to ours, but the US has played along with the UN in order to bolster our standing with allies more enamored with people like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro.

Given all of that, the same people who hold this debauched and corrupt organization as the pinnacle of human government cannot complain when we decided to direct our foreign aid to those Lilliputians who make up part of that effort to tie use down that might be in a position to keep the ties at a minimum. In the first place, the Observer fails to recognize that our foreign aid is our money, and it belongs to the American taxpayer. It should get spent in ways which benefit Americans as well as people abroad, and the outrage of the analysts at that simple truth speaks volumes about their political agenda.

To the larger point, the same people who try to stack the deck against the US at the UN seem particularly incensed that we have decided to respond in kind. The nations that make it to the Security Council play hardball with the US, expecting us to cut deals to garner their support. The Non-Aligned Nations made this into an art form during the Cold War, and extorted both us and the Soviets in that manner. The French explicitly did the same thing when it came time to debate the invasion of Iraq in January and February of 2003, threatening to cut off aid to nations which supported us.

The Observer should spare us the moral outrage. Their analysts apparently expect us to use no discretion in our foreign aid allocations and just allow the UN to run roughshod over our interests without us raising a single objection to it. When the UN becomes the paragon of moral virtue, then maybe we'll take them seriously enough to consider it.

Amnesty For The Ba'athists

One of the pressing problems in Iraq has been the exclusion of the Sunnis since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. The new Iraqi government needs to find a way to get the Sunnis engaged in the governance of Iraq without allowing them to dominate it as they have done throughout the nation's history. Nouri al-Maliki has taken a step in that direction this weekend, throwing open the doors to former members of Saddam's security forces, a move that has unnerved Maliki's Shi'a allies and even some Sunnis:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his Shiite-dominated government reached out to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime Saturday, inviting them to claim government pensions and rejoin the army in a gesture meant to calm the country's sectarian passions.

"The Iraqi army opens its doors to officers and soldiers from the former army who wish to serve the country," Maliki said at a national reconciliation conference of politicians and sectarian leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Maliki has been under increasing U.S. pressure to improve security forces. But, exposing fissures that have plagued his struggling government as the country descended into civil war, several Shiite and Sunni Arab groups rejected the proposal, saying it would reward insurgents and stalwarts of Hussein's regime.

Therein lies the problem. If Iraq is to survive and thrive in its post-Saddam version as a representative democracy, then at some point the various factions will have to find a way to reconcile their differences. The Shi'ites lived under the thumb of the Sunnis in the region for decades as Iraq and for centuries prior to that as the Ottoman Empire. They have battled the Sunnis since 2003, and the Sunnis have battled them in return. That cycle shows no evidence of slowing down at the moment.

The only end to this will come when the factions move beyond the past and work towards the future. Maliki wants to jump-start this process by eliminating one of the barriers to Sunni participation, and it's the right thing to do, as long as it's properly managed. Regime leaders need to face prosecution, and they have, but Iraq had too many lower-level Ba'athists to exclude them all indefinitely and still get any significant Sunni participation in the government.

At some point, the Iraqis have to learn to write off the past, and it won't be easy. The Arab tribal culture places a high premium on blood revenge for insults and attacks. The Iraqi government and the Coalition partners have to find ways to address that outside of the cycle of violence without undermining its deterrent effect until Iraqi security forces can keep the peace themselves. Arabs aren't the only people with this problem, either, as Westerners get reminded once a generation in the Balkans. That shows how long it takes to change paradigms, and the level of commitment needed to endure through a reconciliation.

This will not provide a complete solution to the problem, but it is a necessary first step. De-Baathification had its uses in the early days of occupation, but it has been a stumbling block for quite a while now. The Iraqis need to reconcile all of its internal factions to create a working civil society and to rebuild its infrastructure. Deliberately excluding the Sunnis only continues to divide the nation along sectarian lines. If they can agree to forgive all but those who crafted and carried out the worst of the atrocities, they could emulate South Africa and set their nation on a new course towards unity.