'Assassinated'?

Earlier today, I wrote about my reluctance to celebrate the well-deserved execution of Saddam Hussein. However, I also don't intend to protest it or call it anything other than justice. CQ reader Stoo sends this YouTube of an anchor at WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, who called the event an "assassination":

Uh, no. Saddam got convicted in a trial in which he put on a defense, although he used the "I'm in charge and therefore everything I do is legal by definition" defense that Nixon tried, with even worse results. An Iraqi court sentenced him to die for the mass and serial murders of Dujail residents, and deserved it for the hundreds of thousands of others he committed.

Executed, yes. Killed, if you like. But "assassinated"? Absolutely ridiculous, and yet another example of the media's abject failure to cover Saddam Hussein with any intelligence or objectivity.

CORRECTION: It's WESH in Orlando. I misread the screen, and have corrected the text above.

'Iraq Without Me Is Nothing'

The final moments of Saddam Hussein found their way to the pages of Newsweek, as a Michael Hastings interview with witness Ali al-Massedy hit the Internet within hours of the event. For all of the breathless coverage of yesterday, the Hastings article feels like an anti-climax:

Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday. "I saw fear, he was afraid," Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator's last moments. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists," he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, "Saddam said, ‘Iraq without me is nothing.’"

Ali says he followed Saddam up the gallows steps, escorted by two guards. He stood over the hole and filmed from close quarters as Saddam dropped through—from "me to you," he said, crouching down to show how he shot the scene. The distance, he said, was "about one meter," he said. "He died absolutely, he died instantly." Ali said Saddam's body twitched, "shaking, very shaking," but "no blood," he said, and "no spit." (Ali said he was not authorized to disclose the location, and did not give other details of the room.)

Ali said the videotape lasts about 15 minutes. When NEWSWEEK asked to see a copy, Ali said he had already handed the tape over to Maliki's chief of staff. "It is top secret," he said.

The quote from Saddam should find its way into the history books along Louis XIV's L'etat, c'est moi (see update). He died as so many megalomaniacal dictators do -- believing themselves to be the center of the universe and somewhat nonplussed at the notion that the world will spin without them. He attempted to manipulate events until the last moment, as was to be expected.

Many have taken the occasion to celebrate Hussein's death, but I'm not going to shout huzzahs. I believe the world to be a better place without him, and I think his death was necessary to keep uprisings from focusing on his restoration to power. Even a few Westerners had floated the notion as an answer to the sectarian violence, apparently believing that Saddam's proven willingness to kill everyone would bring a grim equality to Iraq. Still, all this does is put an end to a great evil of our time, which deserves recognition but not a party atmosphere. Andy McCarthy says it best:

This wasn't victory. It didn't end suffering. It was, in the heat of a war that has actually gotten more vicious and more uncertain since Saddam's capture three years ago, the carrying out of an essential but unpleasant duty. It marginally enhances Iraq's propects, and ours. But Saddam's death (as opposed to his deposing) has no impact whatsoever on the deep dysfunction and hatred that is rending what passes for Iraqi society. The unbridled display of dancing and shooting says more about that than the death of one man — monstrous though he was — who has been imprisoned for three years.

Saddam's death is a marker worth observing. It is not something to go up in a balloon over.

It did, however, confirm once again the vacuousness of our media. The FM and I have taken the weekend to get away and relax, and she and I watched the coverage on CNN and MS-NBC. The latter was marginally better than the former, where their pre-execution coverage came close to insisting that Saddam was being martyred for the American government. On MS-NBC, we only had to put up with the bubbleheaded anchor seriously floating the notion that the man who had been held for three years and whose identity had been confirmed through DNA analysis and numerous witnesses was really a body double who was going to die in Saddam's place.

The dictator has met his end, at the hands of the people he tormented for decades. He received more justice in a single day of his trial than he ever gave anyone during his reign of terror. Yet the American media covered that trial as if it were the Saddam show, rather than provide coverage of the many witnesses to his genocides and crimes against humanity. This was the most consequential and historic trial of a mass murderer since Nuremberg, and the only points of interest to the American media were the self-serving disruptions of the defendants -- and they questioned the fairness of the trial because the monsters tried turning the trial into a circus.

It wasn't just the execution coverage that was a joke; it was the entire coverage of Saddam Hussein, going back to Eason Jordan's deal with the devil that kept their Baghdad bureau open. The last 24 hours just confirms their soullessness. (via Memeorandum)

UPDATE: L'etat, c'est moi is associated with Louis XIV and not Napoleon, according to Wikipedia, which also calls it inaccurate. Thanks to Mark1971 in the comments.

Don't Call Hitchens For My Eulogy

Christopher Hitchens has begun to build a reputation as an anti-eulogist, the kind of pundit who gets contrarian whenever a significant political figure passes away. In the midst of the mourning over Ronald Reagan, Hitchens released a scathing attack on the deceased President, dredging up the tired memes of his purported idiocy, although he managed to find a few stinging examples of his rhetorical mistakes. Now Hitchens remembers Gerald Ford in much the same manner:

One expects a certain amount of piety and hypocrisy when retired statesmen give up the ghost, but this doesn't excuse the astonishing number of omissions and misstatements that have characterized the sickly national farewell to Gerald Ford. One could graze for hours on the great slopes of the massive obituaries and never guess that during his mercifully brief occupation of the White House, this president had:

1. Disgraced the United States in Iraq and inaugurated a long period of calamitous misjudgment of that country.
2. Colluded with the Indonesian dictatorship in a gross violation of international law that led to a near-genocide in East Timor.
3. Delivered a resounding snub to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the time when the Soviet dissident movement was in the greatest need of solidarity.

Instead, there was endless talk about "healing," and of the "courage" that it had taken for Ford to excuse his former boss from the consequences of his law-breaking. You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a "long national nightmare," but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal president successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford's ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In this respect, the famous pardon is not unlike the Warren Commission: another establishment exercise in damage control and pseudo-reassurance (of which Ford was also a member) that actually raised more questions than it answered. The fact is that serious trials and fearless investigations often are the cause of great division, and rightly so. But by the standards of "healing" celebrated this week, one could argue that O.J. Simpson should have been spared indictment lest the vexing questions of race be unleashed to trouble us again, or that the Tower Commission did us all a favor by trying to bury the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal. Fine, if you don't mind living in a banana republic.

One might expect a certain amount of piety and hypcorisy from everyone except Hitchens. He scores more points in this screed than in his earlier essay about Reagan, but that is because of way Ford's presidency really faded into nothingness after the end of his term. By comparison, people remember Reagan's terms in office because Reagan made them so consequential; love him or hate him, everyone remembers him. Ford's tenure has largely been forgotten by most people as a brief hiatus between the embarrassments of the two presidencies surrounding his.

Hitchens brings us back to the actual business of governing, and reminds us that Ford made some large unforced errors. Perhaps people cannot recall how we saw freedom activists in the Soviet Union before Reagan, but the Solzhenitsyn snub recalls that more than one administration considered them something of a hot potato, especially when detente was so popular among the Western congescenti. The appeasement of the Indonesians as they conducted their attempt at genocide against East Timor has a more relevant tone, considering the issues of appeasing aggressive Muslim societies these days.

However well or badly Ford managed his presidency, however, it seems more than a little churlish to attack him with the vigor Hitchens demonstrates in this column. During the mourning period, which is short enough even for former Presidents, a little acknowledgment of the challenges of the position should balance the criticism of the mistakes made by each. Afterwards, Hitchens would have plenty of time to set the record straight.

And Then The Second Half Arrived

When one hears that a college football team suffered a historic fourth-quarter collapse, one only thinks of two teams, both of them in the Big Ten: Michigan State and Minnesota. Last night, it was the Golden Gophers who gave their opponent an entree into the record books, as they have up a 31-point lead in the second half to lose the Insight Bowl in overtime to Texas Tech:

The Gophers football team played arguably its finest half of football this season before halftime and built a 38-7 lead against the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the third quarter of the Insight Bowl ...

And then gave it all away.

Shannon Woods' 3-yard touchdown run in overtime capped the largest comeback in NCAA Division I-A bowl game history as Texas Tech stunned Minnesota 44-41 before an announced crowd of 48,391 at Sun Devil Stadium.

"Needless to say, that was a game of two different halves," Gophers coach Glen Mason said. "All coaches preach that no lead is sufficient until the clock says it's mathematically impossible to come back."

Unfortunately, I watched the Michigan game in 2001, coached by Glen Mason, and saw pretty much the same thing -- a team that ran up a decent lead and then forgot that football games last 60 minutes. I missed this collapse on TV, but somehow I don't feel badly about that this morning.

The Gophers have their first losing season since that 2001 season. Perhaps it's time for a change.

Northern Alliance Radio Live Today

The Northern Alliance Radio Network goes back to live broadcasting today after the Christmas break. That means that all six hours will be fresh, but none so fresh as Mitch and I broadcasting live from the showroom of White Bear Lake Superstore! The six-hour block starts at 11 am CT on AM 1280 The Patriot (and on the Internet stream at that link), but Mitch and I will go live between 1 - 3 PM CT. If you're on the east side of the Twin Cities, make your way to the best car dealership and say hi to Paul Reuben and the gang -- especially if your New Year's resolution is to upgrade the ride.

So what will we be discussing? I'd say Saddam's execution will be the hot topic today, but we'll also cover the revelation that our own State Department knew for decades that Yasser Arafat had murdered two of its own diplomats. I'm sure we'll have time to discuss the sale of the Star Tribune and its ramifications. And of course, we'll talk about Gerald Ford and perhaps even debate the pardon. If you can't join us at White Bear Lake Superstore, you can call 651-289-4488 and join the discussion.

It's Over (Live Blog)

Three Arabic news stations and MS-NBC are broadcasting the report that Saddam Hussein has been executed this evening, right around 10 pm ET.

Right now, without any text reports, MS-NBC is telling viewers that a delegation of seven witnesses saw Saddam hanged a few minutes ago. The witnesses included members of the tribunal that convicted and sentenced him as well as a doctor to declare him dead. They also report that the Iraqi government recorded the event, and that the images and/or video will eventually be released to demonstrate that the former dictator and genocidal monster has truly died.

Sic semper tyrannis? Unfortunately, no, although it's certainly an appealing thought. I'll settle for an "et tu, Brute?" from each of them, if we can get it.

Here's the first wire report -- from Reuters, reporting on an al-Hurra TV broadcast:

U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.

Also, the Iraqi government executed Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar after hanging Saddam. The three were sentenced to death together, and they have now been put to death at essentially the same time.

UPDATE: MS-NBC reports that Americans "were present" at the execution. I assume that means the security detail that delivered Saddam to the gallows. Meanwhile, here's USA Today with a bare-bones announcement and a recap of the activity today.

UPDATE II: 'Hanged', not 'hung', and thanks to Only One Cannoli in the comments. So far, not much new on the internet or on TV about the executions.

9:47 PM CT - May as well make this a live-blog, if you'll pardon the irony. The updated AP wire describes the announcement on Iraqi TV:

Saddam Hussein has been hanged, state-run television reported Saturday. "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

Perhaps the Maliki government still believes it can use this as a unifying event for Iraqis. It would be nice ...

9:52 - MS-NBC, which I'm forced to watch in my hotel room, now reports that the Iraqi witnesses to the execution were cheering and dancing around the body of Saddam Hussein.

9:56 - Reportedly, the Tikrit area had roadblocks put up all around it. Apparently the Iraqis want to isolate the Tikritis in case they get a little too boisterous in their disapproval. The Iraqis control Tikrit, and the MS-NBC analysts say that it has been a success story for the Iraqi Army.
More ...

10:09 - Not much new in the details, so let's take a look at the politics. Will this help or hurt in Iraq? I think this will be a net positive by a wide margin. In the first place, history has shown that leaving a deposed tyrant alive makes their return likely -- Napoleon would be one example. It at least keeps hope alive among their partisans, and the Jacobites might be an example of that. That cuts two ways; it's not just Saddam's dead-enders who foresaw his return, but also those who would oppose him and those on the fence. His death removes all doubt and clears the deck for the future.

10:13 - How about American politics? I don't think it moves the needle here at home. For one thing, we've just finished a national election, and we won't have another for two years -- and Bush won't be running. It might give a slight bump upward in support of the war for a brief period, but the death sentence has long since figured into the support figures. I don't see it having much of an effect one way or the other.

10:40 - CNN now reports that video and images will be given to the media. I'm going to pack it in for the evening, but I'll check to see what they have in the morning.

The Execution Is A Go For Tonight ... Perhaps

The execution of Saddam Hussein will take place within hours, as I predicted, according to "top Iraqi officials". Meanwhile, Saddam's lawyers try a more friendly court system to get him a stay of execution:

The witnesses to Saddam Hussein's impending execution gathered Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities.

A top Iraqi official said Saddam will be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, Baghdad time, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. ...

"Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow," Haddad said. "All the measures have been done. ... There is no reason for delays."

That puts the execution at 9 pm CST, which will make this a prime-time execution. One can suppose the cable news networks will go wall to wall with Saddam coverage, and the broadcast networks may even be tempted to pre-empt their entertainment schedules. However, Saddam's legal team has decided to try the American courts for a restraining order that would prevent US authorities from transferring physical custody of Saddam to the Iraqis:

Hussein's lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of the condemned former Iraqi leader to Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman for a federal court in Washington D.C. said.

The documents were being processed and were not immediately made public. The Justice Department had not yet responded to the request.

A similar request by the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, was denied Thursday and is under appeal. Al-Bandar also faces execution. The Justice Department argued in that case that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with the judicial process of another country.

This is a stretch. The Iraqis have legal custody of Saddam and have had it for over two years. They have asked the US to provide physical security, but they can end that arrangement whenever they like, and the courts have no power to restrain the Iraqi government. The Americans would like to maintain physical security of Saddam until the noose is placed around his neck, but that doesn't mean they have to do so, or that courts could force them to do so.

Having the witnesses on alert means that the execution will indeed occur shortly. The story of this genocidal monster is about to come to an abrupt end.

Question: The Iraqis supposedly plan to tape the execution, if not show it live. Do CQ readers believe that American networks should broadcast the execution, either live or on tape?

UPDATE: I'm late in linking to this, but please read Bill Ardolino's look at the "Not To Forget Museum" in Kuwait. It will remind people of a few of the many reasons Saddam should exit this world at the soonest possible moment. While you're at it, toss a few dollars into his tip jar for his embed mission among the troops.

UPDATE II: I didn't notice this before, but Dafydd notes that the request for a restraining order came to the US district court of Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. If you will recall, this is the same Clinton appointee that forced the FEC to regulate Internet political speech. This should be ... interesting.

UPDATE III: Don't forget to keep checking Memeorandum for blogger coverage of the news.

Saddam To Transfer To Iraqis Today

The confusion in Baghdad regarding custody of Saddam Hussein appears to have lifted somewhat. After a rumor circulated that the US had handed over the genocidal dictator to the Iraqi government, officials in Washington have told ABC News that they will complete the transfer later today:

A senior official in Washington tells ABC News that Hussein will be transferred to Iraqi custody by the end of today.

The actual date for the execution is still a closely guarded secret, and will be decided on solely by Iraqis, the official says.

Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki was quoted on Iraqi television this morning, saying there should be no delay in implementing the sentence, but he said nothing about the timing.

Hussein's lawyers say they have been told to prepare to pick up his personal effects, but they do not know when they should do that.

My guess is that they should do it expeditiously. Technically, the Iraqis have had him in their custody all along, but the US provided the security for his detention. If the US transfers the security responsibility to the Iraqis, it would only be for days or even hours before his execution. We would not run the risk of an escape via some infiltrator into the Iraqi security team until it became absolutely necessary.

Yesterday, MS-NBC reported that Saddam would die by Eid, almost a poetic palindrome. This seems to support the report. It could happen even more quickly than that. Personally, I think this is just a conspiracy to keep Mitch from claiming victory.

Three Years Later, A 'Rush'

A little more than three years after Saddam Hussein meekly came out of his spider hole, the Iraqis have finally removed the last obstacle to his execution. Saddam attempted, with some success, to transform his trial into a political showpiece, using it to rail against the American occupation and to inspire the Ba'athist remnants to terrorist attacks. Despite having several members of the court assasinated or attacked, the tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes consistent with the evidence. And yet, this is not enough for the New York Times:

The important question was never really about whether Saddam Hussein was guilty of crimes against humanity. The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners.

What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future. A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness. It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions.

It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.

So let's get this straight. What is really important isn't the hundreds of thousands of people that Saddam had killed on his whim. It isn't lengthy public record of his "vile atrocities". It isn't the long string of living victims that had to bear witness under difficult circumstances to those who could not appear in court. What really matters, the Times insists, is that the process did not "nurture hope".

Well, the purpose of trials is not to nurture hope -- it's to determine the truth regarding guilt or innocence of the accused. In this, the tribunal succeeded, although as the Times notes, the issue was not in much doubt. The trial also succeeded in giving voice to many of Saddam's victims, something the Times must have missed in its zeal to find hope-nurturing elements in a genocide trial. The tribunal also established solid legal precedents for a fledgeling judiciary that has to establish itself mostly from scratch.

The reluctance of the Times to support Saddam's conviction is puzzling, given that they concede all available evidence paints him as one of the worst monsters in the past few decades. It seems to spring from an objection to his sentence rather than his conviction, as they end with a warning that Saddam's execution will not create a "new and better Iraq," but that's not the purpose of criminal sentencing, either. Sentences serve dual purposes: to protect society and to serve as a deterrent to others, neither of which has anything to do with creating a new and better anything.

As I am opposed to the death penalty in civilian courts, Saddam's execution presents an interesting challenge. Michael Stickings says he cannot support the death penalty under any circumstances, but I think there is a large distinction between civil death sentences and those under wartime and genocidal conditions. The execution of spies and saboteurs, for instance, offers a deterrence to those who would commit those acts during wartime, and the elimination of that as an assured result of capture would create a flood of saboteurs and spies, especially if they received the same treatment as POWs. Similarly, genocidal tyrants tried by their own people and executed for their crimes serve as an example for other tyrants to fear -- and it removes the jailed tyrant as a focus for restoration, a situation that history has proven to be dangerous to recovering societies.

In any case, the Times proves itself laughable once again by proclaiming a three-year process towards Saddam's execution as a "rush" and complaining about a verdict and sentence that even they admit were completely justified by the evidence at hand. Perhaps next time, the editorial board should not be in such a "rush" to opine. (via It Shines For All)

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers from both links! And don't miss Jules Crittenden's take on this story.

UPDATE II: Stephen Bainbridge addresses Pope Benedict's objection to the execution and agrees with my take in a post well worth a full read.

Supplying The Means Of Their Destruction

Ehud Olmert has decided to go all out for his new bestest buddy, Mahmoud Abbas, with the blessing of the United States. Olmert has arranged for Abbas and his Fatah faction to receive new guns and equipment from Egypt in an attempt to tilt the balance of Palestinian power away from Hamas:

After coordination with Israel and the United States, Egypt has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip to forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, Israeli officials said today.

Senior Palestinian officials denied the report, including the spokesman for Mr. Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, calling the story “Israeli propaganda aimed at aggravating the situation between Fatah and Hamas.”

But Israeli officials confirmed a report in the Haaretz newspaper that the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, approved the shipment in his meeting Saturday evening with Mr. Abbas. Four trucks with some 2,000 automatic rifles, 20,000 ammo clips and some 2 million bullets passed from Egypt through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, where Gaza, Israel and Egypt meet. The shipment was turned over to Mr. Abbas’s Presidential Guard at the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel.

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli cabinet minister and former defense minister, appeared to confirm the transfer to Israeli Army Radio, saying that the weapons are intended to give Mr. Abbas “the capability to hold his own against those organizations that are trying to spoil everything.” That was an apparent reference to Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and rejects previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements that call for a permanent two-state solution.

Two million bullets. I wonder how many of those will find Israelis as their point of impact. If they fall into the hands of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the number will not be insubstantial. And yet Olmert and the US have decided to place these weapons and ammunition into the care of Fatah, which has never -- never -- taken any concrete steps towards recognizing Israel or towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

It's difficult to see the larger strategy here, unless it's just to ensure that the radical-Islamist terrorists do not overwhelm the somewhat less religious terrorists. It could be more cynical than that; the weapons shipment could be meant to create an open war between the two groups in order to expedite the rise of leadership dedicated to peace. A source within the Bush administration tells the New York Times that this isn't the intent of the mission, but to restore a balance between the two factions in Gaza.

I can understand a desire to see Abbas prevail over Ismail Haniyeh, but it seems to me that rooting for that outcome is literally choosing the lesser of two evils. Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat never have unequivocally committed to a two-state solution in front of their Arabics-speaking constituences. Both have toyed with the Israelis to keep the Oslo cash flowing, but neither have supported any of the other Oslo terms. It certainly won't happen now, when such a change in policy would hand the Palestinian territories to Hamas.

And that's the real problem here. So far, the Palestinian people do not want a two-state solution -- they want the elimination of Israel altogether, and it's people like Abbas and Arafat who insisted for decades that they could get it. The Palestinians have yet to hear any differently from Abbas, and Arafat went to his grave insisting on that solution. Hamas now offers it if Abbas changes his mind. It's hard to see what "balance" between the factions buys except more of the same noise we have experienced for the last five decades. Instead of supplying anyone of any money or materiel, the world should just cut off the Palestinians altogether until they develop leadership interested in peace.

Chavez To Shut Down Independent Television

Even after winning his re-election bid in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez wants to eliminate any hint of dissent. He has ordered an end to the broadcast license of Radio Caracas TV, which opposed him and supported a 2003 strike in protest of his regime:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he will not renew the licence for the country's second largest TV channel which he said expired in March 2007.

In an address to troops, Mr Chavez said he would not tolerate media outlets working toward a coup against him.

Radio Caracas Television, which is aligned with the opposition, supported a strike against Mr Chavez in 2003.

RCTV also came out in support of the coup that briefly removed Chavez from power, a coup for which Chavez blames the US. The two editorial positions as well as consistent criticism of his regime has long irked the Castro acolyte, and he has started down a path that will bring him closer to the governing philosophy of his mentor. Venezuela already has issues with freedom of the press, but this is his biggest move against independent journalists thus far. Before this, he has contented himself with forcing reporters to register with the government and passing onerous laws against ostensibly irresponsible reporting.

Chavez enjoys some fairly uncritical press here in the United States. His efforts to give heating oil away garnered friendly headlines, and his unhinged rant at the UN got a lot of attention in the press, most of it approving or neutral, of the comparison between George Bush and the devil. One wonders whether Chavez' assault on free speech will generate any effort at all by the American media to start taking a far more critical look at Chavez and his accelerating efforts to transform Venezuela into Little Cuba.

Hint: that's not a good thing. Perhaps some in the media still don't realize that.

Nifong In Trouble

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong faces charges of ethical violations at the North Carolina Bar Association due to his inflammatory and misleading comments to the press during the rape investigation of three Duke lacrosse team members. The statements that the NCBA highlights look especially questionable, given the withdrawal of the specific counts of rape last week, and the complaints could result in Nifong's disbarment:

The North Carolina Bar Association filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke University rape case, accusing him of saying misleading and inflammatory things to the media about the lacrosse players under suspicion.

The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.

Among the four rules of professional conduct that District Attorney Mike Nifong was accused of violating was a prohibition against making comments "that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused."

The comments made by Nifong come from the first weeks of the investigation of the supposed gang-rape at a team party. He told the press that he was convinced that a rape occurred, despite the later revelation that Nifong had not even spoken to the complainant until December. Nifong tried to explain away a lack of DNA evidence linking any of the men to the supposed attack by suggesting they wore condoms, even though he knew the accuser had already insisted to a nurse that they had not. He called the Duke players "hooligans" and derided their decision to seek representation, saying in effect that hiring lawyers was a suspicious act.

The NCBA opened its investigation almost as soon as the case hit the papers, and it looks like they have focused on just the earlier peccadilloes of Nifong. It does not include the revelation that Nifong conspired with the head of a laboratory to keep exculpatory findings from the defendants in violation of not just ethics but the law. That came out just last week when Brian Meehan testified under oath to the agreement he and Nifong made to keep secret the findings that the DNA of several men had been found on the victim, none of whom were the accused rapists, despite the insistence of the accuser that she had not had recent relations with anyone else.

Perhaps the charges that Nifong does face do not rise to a high enough level to disbar him, but the disciplinary committee should consider how badly Nifong has twisted the system even outside of the specifics in front of them when considering his fate. Durham and these defendants should not have to wait for the NCBA to play catch-up to his latest and most egregious malfeasance. Nifong has made it clear that he has no business inside a courtroom, and the longer the NCBA takes to reach that conclusion, the more damage Nifong does to the community. Prosecutions should be about exposing the truth, not hiding it to save the reputation of a thoroughly incompetent district attorney at the expense of the unfairly accused.

And think about this: we only know about this one case, and that's because of the high profile of the defendants. Think about what Nifong may have done that flew under the national or even regional media's radar.

Grassroots Lobbying 'Disclosure'?

Mark Tapscott and Brad Smith both warn about a new initiative from Nancy Pelosi to require disclosure of grassroots "lobbyists" in the next Congress. Instead of disclosing contributors, it appears that Pelosi wants the names of the individuals involved. Smith has written several essays warning that disclosure, in this case, can chill dissent:

In proposals to disclose grassroots lobbying, we are witnessing two canons of political law on an apparent collision course: that government corruption is cured by disclosure; and that the right of individuals to speak and associate freely depends upon their ability to do so anonymously. But the conflict is a false one — a byproduct of fuzzy thinking — because each canon, when properly applied, protects citizens from abusive lawmakers. Disclosure of campaign contributions protects citizens from lawmakers who can confer benefits on large contributors (and pain on opponents) through legislation. Disclosure of true lobbying activities, that is, consultants engaged in face-to-face meetings with lawmakers, protects citizens in a similar manner. Because disclosure is beneficial in these contexts, people presume it is always harmless. This is wrong. The right to speak anonymously with fellow citizens about issues or pending legislation also protects citizens by reducing lawmaker ability to visit retribution on those who oppose his policy preferences. ...

Disclosure is not always a good thing. The rationale for requiring disclosure of contributions to candidate campaigns, and disclosure of direct lobbying activity, is the same for protecting anonymity in the discussion of policy issues: to protect citizens from retribution by abusive officeholders. History demonstrates that while such retribution may be uncommon, it is real. Indeed, even today we read of a Texas prosecutor who has subpoenaed donor records for a group after the group ran grassroots lobbying ads that took a position contrary to that of the prosecutor.

Mark continues the thought:

Smith also warns, as I have in this space and in many other forums over th e years, mere registration is never the only thing the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington want. After registration will come regulation of content, followed by prohibition of some kinds of content officeholders find threatening.

Once again, it seems we have the burden of cleaning up corruption placed on those who would use the right to free political speech to accomplish it. I agree that there is a difference between registering lobbyists who directly contact legislators and registering citizens who band together in affiliations for the purposes of engaging in political speech, but I can also see that there will be some gray areas between the two. After all, lobbyists represent groups of citizens who band together for political purposes, but the critical difference is the direct interaction with legislators and the kinds of favors that pass when that occurs.

The burden of disclosure belongs on the politicians. It will be enough to know the sources of their contributions and their favors without having to expose everyone who works in true grassroots organizations. I'm not sure I buy into the doomsday scenarios painted by Smith; after all, anyone making any political contributions already has to "register" with their legal name and full address, so anonymity has mostly gone by the wayside. Let's focus on getting the politicians to fully and immediately disclose their contributions and their earmarks first, and then see where else we need to work to reduce or eliminate corruption. The Senate would be a good place to start.

State Dept Confirms Arafat Masterminded Murder Of American Diplomats

A newly declassified report from 1973 shows that Yasser Arafat personally commanded the terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat. Moreover, the two murders appear to have been the entire point of Arafat's attack:

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian embassy.

Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of the Fatah/BSO [Black September Organization] leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da'ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals of the operation was to strike at the United States because of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.

The State Department had proof all along that Yasser Arafat not only masterminded this attack, but deliberately plotted to kill American diplomats as a means to pressure the US out of the Middle East. In other words, the PLO/Fatah/BSO conducted a terrorist attack on American interests, murdered Americans, and got away with it. They sat on this information while the US insisted on negotiating with Arafat, even though many suspected he had planned the murders all along.

The State Department should have warned successive administrations from dealing with this terrorist and instead recommended that we capture him and try him for the murders of Noel and Moore. These men worked for the State Department themselves. I guess the lesson here is that State won't lift a finger to bring assassins of diplomats to justice, a lesson that current diplomats may want to consider now. (via It Shines For All)

UPDATE: Want to know what kind of man Yasser Arafat had murdered? Read Cheat Seeking Missiles for a first-person remembrance of Cleo Noel.

Ford On Iraq

The blogosphere is abuzz today about the Bob Woodward interview that took place in July 2004 with now-deceased former President Gerald Ford about Iraq and other topics. In the interview, Ford criticized the Iraq invasion, opposing the decision and claiming that he would have looked harder for other options:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do." ...

The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death.

It's the last part I want to address first. It seems more than just a little craven to issue such biting criticisms to a journalist like Bob Woodward, but then insist that they be released only posthumously. It's a shame, because Ford had real political courage -- no man could have survived the post-Watergate mess without it -- but this is a sad denouement. If Ford opposed it, he could easily have spoken out against the invasion, either before or after the interview, and yet he decided to keep his mouth shut until such a point when he did not have to face criticism himself for his statements. I think that's something on which proponents and opponents of the war could find agreement.

Even in getting to the heart of his argument, though, Ford is just plain wrong. Further sanctions would not have changed anything, which we knew by the time Ford gave this interview. We had imposed sanctions on Saddam Hussein for twelve years, and he still regularly attacked the forces imposing them on him. By summer of 2004, the complete corruption of both the sanctions and the UN program to feed and succor ordinary Iraqis had been completely exposed, and we knew about the billions of dollars both placed into Saddam's pockets.

In fact, George Bush had planned to impose a slate of so-called "super sanctions" on Iraq just before the 9/11 attacks. That day changed all the calculations. Every Western intelligence service reported that Saddam had continued to retain his WMD stocks, and the UN had reported that Saddam refused to account for known WMD materials throughout the sanctions regimes. The question then became whether we wanted to wait for Saddam to attack us or whether we would end twelve years of low-level war and useless sanctions with a regime that had thumbed its nose at the UN and violated the terms of the cease-fire that kept it alive in the first place.

And by the fall of 2001, the sanctions had effectively collapsed. France and Russia sold Saddam military materials by routing them through Syria in defiance of their own votes at the UN Security Council. Both campaigned endlessly for an end to the sanctions regime, not for an increased set of economic penalties on Saddam. Both wanted to start exercising the oil leases that Saddam arranged as an incentive to lift the sanctions off of his regime.

Ford spent his two years as a non-confrontational President on the world stage. He championed detente and peaceful co-existence with the Soviets, although he never went anywhere near as far as Jimmy Carter, who infamously bussed Leonid Brezhnev just before Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan. Ford was no isolationist, but he didn't believe in actively fighting for American security abroad in the manner dictated by the Islamist threat. That's no great shame, but it isn't exactly a surprise, either. I would not have expected anything else from Ford and would have been surprised had he supported the Iraq invasion. I am a little surprised that he would have taken the easy way out in opposing the effort, however.

UPDATE: Bill Bennett agrees with my first point.

UPDATE II: I took Germany out of the sanctions-breakers, per Ralf in the comments; I don't have citations for any German sanction-breaking on military equipment.

Message Delivered

The US has delivered a message to Moqtada al-Sadr in the ongoing struggle to contain the violence in Baghdad and end the sectarian militias. A raid by US and Iraqi Army forces killed a high-ranking aide to Sadr who had supplied IEDs used in attacks against Iraqi forces:

A top deputy of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was killed Wednesday during a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops in the southern holy city of Najaf, sparking protests from Sadr's followers and complicating an already tense relationship with the powerful anti-American leader.

Hurling rocks and shouting expletives, thousands of angry Sadr loyalists marched through the streets of Najaf after Sahib al-Amiri was shot and killed by a U.S. soldier during an early morning raid. "Agents and stooges!" protesters shouted at Iraqi soldiers and local authorities.

U.S. military officials declined to confirm that Amiri was a Sadr aide, saying only that he had provided explosives for use against Iraqi and U.S. forces. Sadr officials said Amiri was an aide and a lawyer who ran an educational organization that helped orphans and impoverished children. They said he had no connections to illegal activity.

In a statement, the U.S. military said Iraqi and U.S. forces were trying to detain Amiri and shot him only when he pointed an assault rifle at an Iraqi soldier.

Up to now, the US has deferred to Nouri al-Maliki on the question of Sadr, and predictably Sadr has taken the opportunity to grow more aggressive. However, after walking out of the governing coalition recently, Sadr has reduced the deterrent to act against his militias -- and the US took advantage of that opportunity in kind.

The message? The US has tired of Sadr and his death squads, and we have apparently decided not to defer to Maliki on that issue any longer. Maliki no longer enjoys much confidence with the US at any rate, and earlier this month was the potential victim of a government reorganization that got scotched at the last minute by Ali al-Sistani. That failure seems to have convinced American forces to switch to Plan B in order to marginalize Sadr.

The intent, according to the American military spokesman, was to capture Amiri, not to kill him. Even the Amiri family said that the soldiers told them they wanted him for questioning when they conducted the raid. Amiri tried to run, however, and once on the roof of his house found himself unable to jump to the next house. They shot him when he pointed a weapon at the forces that followed him onto the roof, at least according to the military; his family doesn't have an alternate version but says all the gunshots came from the US/Iraqi forces.

What could the Iraqis and the US have wanted to ask Amiri? Besides his efforts at bomb-building, what else did he know about Sadr that made him interesting enough to conduct a joint operation in the newly-transferred province of Najaf? Whatever the answers, Sadr knows that the US might be knocking on more doors in the future, perhaps even his.

Iran Pays For Kassam Attacks In Israel

The Iranian proxy terrorist group Hezbollah transfers thousands of dollars for every Kassam rocket attack launched by Palestinian terrorists from Fatah and Islamic Jihad, the Jerusalem Post reports. The scale escalates if the attack kills or wounds Israelis, and the money originates in Iran:

According to Israeli intelligence information, Hizbullah is smuggling cash into the Gaza Strip and paying "a number of unknown local splinter groups" for each attack.

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) sources said the Islamist organization paid several thousand dollars for each attack, with the amount dependent on the number of Israelis killed or wounded. ...

According to the officials, while Islamic Jihad was behind most recent rocket attacks - including the one on Tuesday night that critically wounded 14-year-old Adir Basad in Sderot - several splinter terrorists groups are also involved and have received direct funding from Hizbullah. ... Islamic Jihad gets the money via its headquarters in Damascus while Fatah's Tanzim terror group and the Popular Resistance Committees receive payment from Hizbullah in Lebanon.

All of the money originated in Iran, the officials said.

Once again, Iran shows why negotiations on any kind of security arrangements for Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East will prove fruitless. Iran occupies the central position for terrorism throughout the region; it assists the militias in Iraq, it supports the Hezbollah push to overthrow the Lebanese government, and now we see that it directly funds the Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli citizens. It even funds Fatah terror groups while Ehud Olmert insists on propping up their leader with a hundred million in cash.

Olmert, meanwhile, has implemented a policy that hopes to maintain a cease-fire that doesn't really exist. While the missile attacks continue from the PA areas supposedly participating in this cease-fire, Olmert has freed the IDF to attack only "pinpoint" locations where the Kassams originate. Olmert insists that the cease-fire has great strategic importance, because -- get this -- Israel's restraint had earned it "a lot of understanding and appreciation" around the world. Not only that, but the cease-fire had given Israel some undefined future "leeway".

Leeway to do what? Stop abiding by a phony cease-fire? I must have missed all the "appreciation" thrown Israel's way for its restraint. Israel has shown restraint for years in not giving the Palestinians the total war that for which they have voted and for which they have given ample provocation, and it has bought them nothing from the global community except criticism even from their friends, who sometimes seem to prefer Israel as victim rather than as victor.

I'm all for peaceful solutions, but that takes two sides that want peace. Israel clearly wants peace with the Palestinians, while the Palestinians want Israel and nothing less. And one of the reasons why that remains so is because of Iranian funding for the extremists and terrorists who get richer with every terrorist action. The ISG got it backwards; only when we convince the other states in the region that their support for terrorism carries an existential threat to their regimes will there be peace in the Holy Land, and not the other way around.

Islamists Disappear From Mogadishu

In a lightning-fast collapse, the Islamists in Somalia have apparently disappeared. The largest city in the nation has erupted in gang warfare as tribal chiefs retracted their support for the radical Islamist forces that just days ago issued a call for jihadis around the world to attack Ethiopia:

The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.

In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.

Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.

Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said.

This shows the result of a full military response to Islamist provocations. After watching half of their comrades torn to pieces by combat helicopters, one deserter told the Times that the Islamists assumed that the war would be fought like the others in their experience, which meant hardly fought at all. Ethiopia had no intent to allow the Islamists to give tit-for-tat terrorist responses to measured military action, and the Islamists quit when they started dying in droves.

In fact, they quit so fast, they literally left their last holdout completely undefended. By late last night, the former leaders of the UIC had to ask them to return to their posts just so the new internationally-recognized government could take over without any power vacuum. They were too late; their Shebab (youth) armies had already stripped off their makeshit uniforms and blended back into the civilian population.

The UIC collapsed, prosaically enough, when clan leaders demanded the return of the trucks they lent to the Islamists for military operations. Clan leaders took note of spontaneous demonstrations erupting all over the capital against the Islamists and in support of the new government. The loss of the equipment meant that their forces could offer no real resistance to a determined military effort to crush them -- and they threw in the towel.

This loss crushes the reputation of the Islamists as dedicated to fighting to the death. They will if they see an advantage in it, and that advantage has been gained by Western reluctance to fight an all-out war against them. Ethiopia, after having been threatened by both a traditional attack from Somalia and a guerilla/terrorist war, responded with overwhelming force, and they crumbled. Somewhere there is a lesson for the West.

UPDATE: The Baidoa government now claims that it has captured Mogadishu:

A Somali lawmaker said the government had captured the capital Mogadishu on Thursday after Islamist rivals abandoned it, but a government spokesman could not immediately confirm the report.

"The government has taken over Mogadishu. We are now in charge," MP Mohamed Jama Fuuruh told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu port.

But government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari was more cautious. "We are taking control of the city and I will confirm when we have established complete control," he said.

Earlier he said Ethiopian and Somali government troops held the main routes into the capital and were poised to capture it.

Either way, their first item of business has to be gaining control of the streets and imposing order on the capital. Ethiopian troops will have to assist in that if the Somali government is to succeed.

Belarus Doubles Down

Belarus has decided to call Vladimir Putin's bluff on the standoff over energy prices and transit rights. Instead of acquiescing to Putin's demand for half of Belarus' revenues from its pipeline service to Europe and a doubling of their own energy prices, Belarus has threatened to shut off the pipe altogether, interrupting service to Europe and cutting off revenues to Gazprom:

Belarus has implicitly threatened to stop Russian gas deliveries through its pipelines to Western Europe unless Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom takes back its demand that Minsk pay steep price increases in 2007.

"We are inter-dependent. If I don't have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won't have a transit deal," Belarus's Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said at Minsk airport late on Tuesday after his return from failed talks in Moscow.

About 80 percent of Russian exports to Europe are pumped via Ukraine, with the rest going through Belarus. Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas to more than 20 countries.

If that's implicit, then I'd hate to hear an explicit threat. The Belarussian envoy made it pretty clear that Russia needs to consider all of the implications of its threats. The Belarussians may figure that they have nothing to lose from their brinksmanship, considering the difficulty they will have in paying the new prices. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has already started warning people to find alternate means of heating their homes this winter, and that will be even more urgently necessary with the latest developments.

Putin may withstand a standoff better than Belarus, but that will only be seen in the event -- and Putin has a lot to lose in Belarus besides some energy sales. Lukashenko may well decide to play footsie with the West, a move that could put an end to Putin's long-range goal of reabsorbing Belarus. He already has NATO members on his borders in the Baltics, and Ukraine could also eventually go that way. A breakaway Belarus could isolate Putin even more from Europe and threaten his influence on the entire region, especially in the Caucasus, where Putin has enough trouble.

Europe may feel constrained by a potential energy crisis, but Belarus only accounts for 20% of their imports. Putin could try driving the difference through Ukraine, but that would give Victor Yushchenko even more leverage than he has now, after facing down a similar situation last year with Putin. The Russians have the ball in their court now, and they have to decide whether losing 20% of their revenue this year and possibly losing all influence in Belarus is worth the price hikes and the shakedown racket that Putin wants to implement.

Reid On Ford Funeral: I'm Busy

The death of a former President usually means that the leadership of all three branches of the government gather to mourn on behalf of the nation and to pay final respects to those once chosen to lead it. These events come rarely and allow for a moment of ceremonial unity in the political world. Not every politician attends, but leadership is expected to make their appearances.

However, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his chief deputy Dick Durbin apparently can't be bothered. They had a junket scheduled to tour Macchu Picchu, and by golly, no dead President will convince them to reschedule:

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will miss the state funeral for former President Gerald Ford at the Capitol Rotunda on Saturday night, opting instead to lead a delegation to South America with an expected stop at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins.

Reid, D-Nev., left Wednesday afternoon from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with a bipartisan group of five other senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the incoming assistant majority leader, for what has been described as a weeklong visit to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

The highlight of the trip is said to be separate meetings with the presidents of the three nations, with the last one scheduled in Peru on Tuesday morning.

"They would be difficult to cancel," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said via mobile phone as the congressional delegation took off in a U.S. military plane.

Baloney. It's not hard to cancel; all one has to do is to contact the consulates of those nations and explain that when one of our former Presidents pass away, elected leadership is expected to attend the funeral. Nor is it the case that Ford died after they left the country, as the junket started with an afternoon flight today.

They do have an excuse, however. Their spokesman noted that relations with the three nations are in need of improvement. Apparently, Reid has a deadline for improved relations that requires him to accomplish it on the day of Gerald Ford's funeral.

What a classless act, and Reid, Durbin, Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar should be ashamed of themselves. If Harry Reid can't figure out that his new position as Majority Leader carries some extra responsibilities, then perhaps the Democrats need to find someone who does understand it.

UPDATE: Hugh says --- Turn. The. Plane. Around.

Belarus Gets The Ukrainian Treatment From Its Pal

Despite its insistence on remaining the last dictatorship of Europe and a lackey of Russia, Belarus has found out the limits of friendship with Vladimir Putin. It turns out that Putin wants to stop charging the Belarussians "friend" rates for natural gas, charging them double now and forcing them to give half of its revenue for pipeline services to the Russians (via The Florida Masochist):

Residents of Belarus's capital stocked up on warm clothes and electric heaters as fears rose Tuesday that Russia would soon cut off the natural gas supply on which the country depends.

Russia says Belarus must pay more than twice as much for gas next year -- and even more later -- and turn over a half-share in its pipeline system, a major transit route to Europe, if it wants to avoid a New Year's gas shutoff. ...

The dispute strongly echoes last year's crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which briefly disrupted supplies of Russian gas to Western Europe. But in that case, Russia's price demand was seen as political pressure against a Western-leaning government; this time it is against a country whose longtime leader has close ties with Moscow.

Belarusan opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich suggested Gazprom's demands were aimed at forcing President Alexander Lukashenko to cede control over the pipeline network and other attributes of sovereignty in exchange for continued Russian support for his authoritarian regime.

"Through energy pressure, the Kremlin is trying to force Lukashenko to integrate according to the Russian scenario, which is extremely dangerous for Belarus," Milinkevich said.

The last we heard from this former Soviet republic on Russia's western border was this spring, when Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko jailed his opposition for "unsanctioned" protests. Alexander Milinkevich had led the rally to highlight oppression on Europe's doorstep, as well as to urge Belarus to leave the Russian orbit and align itself with the freedom of the West in Europe. Belarus' large Polish contingent wants closer relations with Poland as well.

Lukashenko did Putin's bidding, stopping a repeat of the Orange Revolution that occurred in neighboring Ukraine last year. His reward for his loyalty to the growing Putin empire? A takeover of Belarussian energy transfers that bears more resemblance to a bust-out on The Sopranos. Not only does Putin want to charge Belarus essentially what he charges Ukraine for their energy, but he wants a large piece of the little action Belarus gets from having Russia's pipeline to Europe run through their country.

This is a ballsy move for Putin. Lukashenko might well start looking to better-deal Russia by looking westward for assistance, although it's not likely. Europe cannot supply Belarus with energy, considering that they get it from Russia through Belarus now. If Belarus and Ukraine acted in concert to shut down Russian exports to Russia, however, they would get everyone's attention very quickly -- but they couldn't survive the winter with an energy boycott in place.

Putin has Lukashenko where he wants him, for the moment at least. However, Lukashenko now knows that kissing Putin's rear gets him zero discount on goods and services and Putin's hand thrust deep within Lukashenko's pocket. If Lukashenko and Europe can find another distribution channel for energy, Lukashenko might rethink the relationship between Minsk and Moscow -- or Belarussians might find someone who will.

Sane, Relatively Speaking

With the Minneapolis Star-Tribune changing hands from the McClatchy Company to the private investment group Avista Capital Partners, one has to wonder what effect the Strib's readers will see as a result. As I noted yesterday, the group's website gives little indication of their political bent; they describe their media acquisition strategies thusly:

Avista targets companies that have strong, often proprietary, positions in attractive niche sectors of the content-creation, content-packaging and content-distribution segments of the media industry. These businesses are characterized by stable cash flows, attractive margins and low capital-expenditure and working-capital requirements.

Avista prefers media businesses with lower technology risk and those that offer the opportunity to capitalize on Avista's operating expertise to build more robust revenue growth. In addition, Avista has particular interest in well-branded companies that can exploit additional and emerging distribution channels and/or improve the geographic reach of their content. Avista believes attractive investment opportunities will be found in niche markets and mid-sized companies that are not the focus of most mainstream media investors.

The current publisher of the Strib, J. Keith Moyer, described it differently to Strib employees, as Fraters Libertas noted. Moyers wrote that "They are progressive, very smart, good-hearted people who believe that no other media platform can reach a local audience as effectively as newspapers." It's hard to know whether he meant progressive in political terms or as a description of their management style. Brian "St. Paul" Ward drew an inference of the former from looking at a couple of the political contributions of Moyer's new Avista boss, Christopher Harte.

I decided to take a closer look at Harte's political activity, given the far-left positions taken now by the Strib's editorial board. His donation activity doesn't seem very strident or extreme, especially in comparison to the Strib. While definitely a Democratic partisan, his money appears to go towards more centrist candidates. In the 2006 cycle, this seems especially true.

The only two contributions listed at Open Secrets went to two Democrats associated with moderation -- $2K to Joe Lieberman and $1K to Hank Johnson, both contributions coming in the primaries. Lieberman faced off against the netroots candidate, Ned Lamont, while Johnson challenged Georgia loon Cynthia McKinney. I find it interesting that of all the races this last cycle, Harte only chose to contribute to these in the primaries (reporting is still out, I believe, on the general election contribution cycle), and that he chose the more moderate candidates.

Perhaps this will make little difference, as Harte has apparently committed to Moyer to keep current management in place, including Moyer himself. However, the massive drop in the Strib's value means that Harte and Avista will have to address the root causes of the erosion sometime, and the strident nature of the Strib might garner the attention of a man who puts his money towards moderation. And, quite frankly, anything at this point would be an iimprovement.

So The Message Got Delivered, Then

Iran has acknowledged that its oil industry has fallen on hard times, and guess who they blame for their troubles? The Great Satan, this time, might not mind:

Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has lamented that the development of Iran's oil industry was suffering from US pressure.

"Iran has been under different sanctions for years and many companies have not been able to cooperate with our country for fear of US pressures," Vaziri Hamaneh said, according to the semi-official news agency Fars on Tuesday.

"They even do not easily deliver some dual-purpose equipment that we had previously bought. They cause trouble for us under different pretexts," he said.

Thanks for confirming the receipt of our messsage, Vaziri! Their own government has made it clear that they see us as an enemy at conferences where attendees were asked by their president to imagine a world without America and Israel. I guess imagining that would also imagine a world without the spare parts they need to fix their production issues at their oilfields.

The fact that they even offer this as an excuse demonstrates the tough economic position in which the existing sanctions from the US has placed Iran. Even with the weak-kneed sanctions offered by the UN this week, those woes will only increase. As the economic noose tightens, the Iranians -- who by and large oppose Ahmadinejad's excessive provocations -- will start preparing political nooses, or perhaps even real nooses, if their disaffection grows large enough.

An internal removal of the mullahcracy and the establishment of a real democracy offers the safest and most effective path to prevent nuclear proliferation. The US and the West should insist on strict enforcement of the economic sanctions to expedite this development and to thoroughly discredit the theocracy that placed Iran in this poor position. At this rate, it looks like Iran will be unable to export oil by 2015, but their final economic collapse will happen long before that. If we can remain firm, we could avoid a lot of the bloodshed that would accompany our other options to stop Iran's nukes. (via It Shines For All)

Will Assad Flip?

The Washington Times reports this morning that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad might be considering a change in foreign policy that would move him out of the Iranian orbit and closer to the other Arab states. Recent visits to American allies in the region and a snub towards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has observers buzzing with anticipation:

Recent visits by Syrian President Bashar Assad to U.S.-allied Yemen and the United Arab Emirates are prompting speculation that Syria is seeking to leave the Iranian orbit and pursue closer ties with the West.

Such a move would fulfill a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, which suggested it might be possible through diplomacy to pry Syria away from Iran. ...

Mr. Assad's talks in Yemen 11 days ago reportedly dealt with regional issues, including the infighting in the Palestinian territories, instability in Lebanon, Iran's nuclear program, Iraq and Somalia. But eyebrows were raised by the timing of the trip, which came just two days after a visit to Yemen by U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch.

"I'll leave it to President [Ali Abdullah] Saleh to convey their views to President Assad," Mr. Welch said of the timing. "They know the views of the United States."

In another apparent overture yesterday, Mr. Assad told visiting Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, that he was willing to host a conference where all the factions of Iraq could seek a consensus on the country's future.

Assad's visit to the UAE came after his no-show at a regional conference in Teheran, hosted by Ahmadinejad, that was supposed to be a show of regional unity. He didn't even bother to offer a public excuse, the Times notes, and his immediate trip to Dubai demonstrated that he had some space on his dance card. This really started tongues wagging about the opportunity to split Assad away from Ahmadinejad.

Well, maybe, but I rather doubt that it will come to anything. Assad may have some financial reasons to separate himself from the collapsing Iranian economy, but the West doesn't have much to offer Assad. We pressured him out of Lebanon and won't ever acquiesce to his return there. We support Israel's right to exist and will undoubtedly side with Israel if hostilities break out between them. We want his help mostly to help establish a democracy on his eastern border with the (mostly) unspoken aim of destabilizing his regime. We've made it clear that we want Assad and his lieutenants investigated for conspiracy to murder Rafiq Hariri, among others.

Other than that, of course, he'd jump at a chance to align himself with the West.

This appears much more to be an attempt to set himself up as the moderate, Arabic wing of the Teheran axis. The other Arab nations in the Gulf worry about Persian domination, spiritual as well as political, and they have created a need for an Arab liaison to Teheran. This offers Assad a golden opportunity to expand his influence and to quietly ease the path for Teheran to achieve its hegemony in southwest Asia. If that means playing a little nicer with their Western allies, including the US, then Assad will do just that -- but don't expect him to act against all of his interests this late in the game.

The ISG couldn't get this right, either. I'm surprised the Washington Times fell for it.

Should Ford Have Pardoned Nixon?

One of the most contentious decisions in American political history will get thoroughly revisited in the coming days now that Gerald Ford has passed away at the grand old age of 93. The Accidental President had enjoyed a polite and unspoken consensus among political pundits not to thrash out that question too much while he was alive, but it will no doubt get more analysis now.

In fact, in the blogosphere, two people from both sides of the divide have already asked the question. Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft (via TMV) and Jack Yoest from Reasoned Audacity (via The Corner) both feel that Ford short-circuited a needed path to justice, while Charmaine Yoest in the same Reasoned Audacity post believes Ford did the right and necessary thing to move us past Watergate.

Certainly, I think Ford pardoned Nixon for the purpose Charmaine notes. Ford built a reputation for a tough but fair Minority Leader in the House but never had a hint of scandal in that capacity. He was not a natural for the kind of quid pro quo payoff that conspiracy theorists saw in his appointment to the Vice Presidency and his subsequent rise to the White House. In stronger days, Nixon would have looked for a partisan, but by the time he selected Ford, he needed a get-along kind of man to win confirmation, and even then it wasn't unanimous (but it was overwhelming).

My first hints of political awareness came during the Watergate hearings, which I watched with my grandparents. Understanding the status of our nation at that time puts Ford's decision in context. We had just emerged from the turbulence of the civil-rights movement, the Summer of Love, and the anti-war movement that had generated domestic terrorism on a scale unsurpassed since the Civil War. With America just about fully withdrawn from Vietnam (and the resultant collapse just around the corner), the last thing America would appear to have needed would have been a provocative trial for corruption and abuses of power -- and the worst of those perpetrators, J Edgar Hoover, had already died.

However, in the long run of history, I have to side with Jeralynn and Jack on this question. Ford had good and understandable reasons for his decision, but it did short-circuit the one quality about America that had always made us different from other nations: our leaders were not above the law. In an era where we started to discover the worst about leaders such as Nixon, LBJ, and even JFK, we lost that sense of ourselves as a nation bound by its dedication to the Constitution and the rule of law. At that time, we needed a way to bind ourselves back to that to restore a national identity in which all could share.

And I would argue that if Ford intended the pardon as a healing gesture, it didn't work. Our politics have remained poisoned by Watergate, and I believe that the Nixon pardon has contributed to that. Had Nixon stood trial, we might not have had the escalating use of independent (or special) prosecutors. That was a necessity born out of Watergate, when Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, was believed too corrupt to effectively investigate the abuses of power of the Nixon administration. We could have set an example of executive accountability that would have restored some trust in politics. Instead, we got the example of one career politician letting another off the hook, and all we bought with that act was a deepened cynicism about the nature of America's democracy.

True accountability would have been a palliative, eventually, for the wounds of Watergate on the body politic. It would also have created a solid record of Nixon's alleged abuses that would stand the test of time, rather than the continuous argument we now have as to whether his crimes were overblown. A trial could also have exonerated Nixon (which prompts another question -- could Nixon have received a fair trial?). Our justice system could have provided an answer for history, but all we have left is competing memoirs and parlor arguments.

Ford was a good man and a good President. However, his first significant act as President was a mistake, though well-intentioned. America never suffers when leaders face accountability for their actions, and it never benefits when its leaders escape it.

REACTIONS: Jonathan at MyDD, interestingly, disagrees with me. His readers, even more interestingly, do not. Daniel Freedman warns against getting hung up on the pardon. Lobal Warming points out the political courage it took to issue the pardon, a point I neglected (via PJM). Atrios agrees, saying that the decision helped Washington to heal, not the nation. (I originally wrote "disagrees"; my bad -- sorry, Duncan.)

Bruce Kesler has an excellent post regarding Ford's pardon compared to Carter's pardon. Be sure to read it.

Maybe They Were Serious

The Pakistani agreement with tribal chiefs in the North Waziristan region called into question Pervez Musharraf's will to fight the Taliban he once supported in Afghanistan, now that they have most likely crossed the border into his nation to use it as a launching pad for cross-border attacks. That question may have found an answer in Musharraf's latest proposal:

Pakistan has told its army to examine a plan to fence off and mine part of its long and porous border with Afghanistan, a move likely to further fuel tensions between the two countries.

Foreign secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan told a press conference yesterday that safe-transit passages along the newly fortified stretches of the 1,490-mile border would allow the cross-border movement of both Afghans and Pakistanis. However, he gave no timetable for carrying out the work.

Pakistan is not a signatory to the anti-landmines Geneva Convention and other international agreements that restrict building of fences along international borders and "does not require permission from its neighbours," Mr Khan explained.

"This decision reflects Islamabad's policy to stop militants from using its soil against Afghanistan and we will do our utmost to stem the flow of militants across the Durand Line [border]," Mr Khan said adding that "while mining can be done expeditiously, fencing will take longer".

Mining has some touchy political ramifications in the West, although not so much in southwest Asia. The US will likely take care to keep from any association with Musharraf's plans, although it might be a good solution to the problem of unenforced borders in the Waziristan region. It will certainly once again call into question the American insistence on using land mines in North Korea as part of its DMZ effort, although American mines can be deactivated remotely once hostilities have ended, unlike those of some other nations.

Part of the problem is that the tribal areas in that region do not follow the political boundaries. Pashtuns, the majority ethnic group among Afghans and a large minority in Pakistan, consider the territory crossing the border as their land. Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun himself, objects to placing mines across what he sees as a Pashtun right-of-way. Musharraf's plan could lead to bloodshed as it will be difficult to restrain people from traveling through lands they have always accessed freely.

However, all of this sensitivity to Pashtun nomadic life costs Karzai dearly. The Taliban remnants that make use of the free access could topple Karzai and the democratic government in Afghanistan if they cannot be stopped from roaming in and out of Afghanistan. Musharraf has already stopped trying to fight the Pashtuns in Waziristan, and that means that some other method of ending the free passage must be found.

At least Musharraf is thinking of solutions, even if he's doing so to avoid the deadly consequences of continued war in Waziristan. I had thought Musharraf had given up entirely on fighting the radical Islamists.

Win A Date With Saddam! (Necktie Required)

Apparently, the Iraqi unemployment situation must be fairly dire, as men would kill to get a job. More accurately, they would kill one specific person:

An advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told ABC News that hundreds of Iraqis have inquired about the job as Hussein's hangman, even though officially, no such position exists and the government has not advertised for it.

Bassam al-Husseiny said he receives eight to 10 phone calls a day, and 20 to 30 e-mails by those who want the assignment. The interested Iraqis, he said, come from all three of the country's major religions and ethnicities and from high-level government officials to "the tea boy."

One of those interested, a Shiite Muslim named Abdul, said there is not a house in Iraq that has not held a funeral because of Hussein. He explained that he is "not the only one" who wants to execute the former dictator.

It's an equal-opportunity position! The Iraqi government could probably save on the salary, too, as most of the applicants would probably work for free. It won't take much experience, either. Applicants will have to demonstrate how to pull the floor from beneath someone's feet, a trick Saddam taught Iraq over and over again during his disastrous reign as the 100% Dictator.

They won't take too long in the interview process. Considering all of the trouble that could already be brewing over Saddam's execution, they will want to do this quickly. I'd suggest that Nouri al-Maliki choose the technique used by magicians the world over ... pick a Kurd, any Kurd.

Gerald Ford Passes

CNN and FOX is now reporting that Gerald Ford has died (via Michelle Malkin). No links yet, but CNN is covering it wall to wall at the moment.

We can expect plenty of analysis of Ford's impact on American politics, but to me he will always be the Accidental President. Plucked from near-obscurity to be Nixon's VP in the wake of Spiro Agnew's resignation, he never appeared at ease in the glare of presidential scrutiny. He soon garnered an undeserved reputation as a klutz, thanks to Chevy Chase, but in truth he was a star athlete. His was the first presidency to get defined by video bites and cheap shots, but unfortunately he was not the last.

His first action as President pretty much ensured his defeat in the 1976 election. He pardoned Richard Nixon, an act that still inspires debate among people all along the political spectrum. Critics accused him of conspiring with Nixon to let him off the hook in exchange for the Presidency after Nixon knew he would have to leave. Nor was that his only brush with conspiracy theorists. Ford was a member of the Warren Commission that insisted that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Most Presidents try to find a little more immortality after they leave office, but Ford mostly shunned the limelight. He kept to himself, spending time with his wife Betty and their family rather than chase after the press or attend splashy public events. He received visitors and kept mentally alert, but his physical health began to fail a few years ago. He surpassed Ronald Reagan as the oldest former President in American history earlier this year, but none thought he would live much longer than that.

Gerald Ford may have been at the center of more than one controversy, but he left with his reputation as an honest man more or less intact. Unlike Jimmy Carter, he never felt the need to campaign for affection or respect; it came to him naturally. He did an admirable job leading the nation during one of the worst times in our history. Our prayers go out to his wife Betty and their entire family in their grief, and we hope our respect follows him into the next life. Godspeed, Mr. President.

UPDATE: George Bush has a written statement on Ford's death out now.

Also, I forgot to note another odd tidbit of the Ford presidency -- he was the only President to survive two serious assassination attempts. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore both attempted to shoot him from close range with handguns within three weeks in autumn 1975. Moore fired a shot but got thwarted by a quick-thinking bystander, who hit her arm as she fired; Fromme forgot to load the firing chamber before she pointed the gun at Ford. Both women continue to serve life sentences.

UPDATE II: Here are some links: Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, AP. I assume that most news agencies had their obituaries updated frequently in the past few months.

UPDATE III: See-Dubya at Hot Air calls him the best President of the 1970s, a brilliant example of damning with faint praise. I believe him to be a good President for the times, but a man who would not have won the office otherwise -- nor would he have pursued it. Also, Rick Moran has a touching remembrance of Ford at Right Wing Nuthouse.

One Is The Loneliest Number (Updated!)

NOTE: Be sure to read the updates.

It seems that the troops who got "stuck in Iraq", according to John Kerry, have not accepted the explanation Kerry gave for his little joke before the midterm elections. Radio host Scott Hennen got an e-mail from a serviceman in Iraq that shows Kerry having a private lunch in a mess hall full of soldiers:

"This is a true story.....Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops. ..."

Check out Scott's page to see the photo. It's apparent that no one took much interest in the visiting Senator, who swears that he doesn't think our fighting men and women are uneducated and/or lazy. I don't think we'll be seeing a lot of photo ops from Kerry's visit. (via Power Line)

UPDATE: Via Michelle Malkin, TPM Muckraker, and CQ commenter Dirk, there is some question as to whether Hennen's photo is of Kerry's visit to Iraq. The embedded data in the JPG file shows a date of January 9, 2006, not anytime in December. However, it also shows that the photo was taken with a Vivitar Vivicam 8400 digital camera, a model that wasn't released until February 13, 2006. The date could have been entered wrong in the camera itself, or it could be that the default date is 1/1/2006 and the owner never updated it after powering it up the first time. If so, then the picture was taken five days after that point.

Still, this is obviously questionable enough to flag readers of a lack of confidence in the authenticity of the picture.

UPDATE II: Much ado about nothing. As I suspected, the photographer simply didn't set the date on his camera, and other photos taken at the same time confirm the original story. See Michelle Malkin (same link) and Power Line for details.

Swingin' Saddam

Saddam Hussein may have an expedited date with the hangman. In a move that surprised no one, the highest Iraqi appellate court upheld Saddam's conviction and death sentence in the Dujail case, forcing the Iraqi government to execute him within 30 days:

Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail.

The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation." ...

Under Iraqi law, the appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf _ a substitute that was legally accepted.

Raed Juhi, a spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted Saddam, said the judicial system would ensure that Saddam is executed even if Talabani and the two vice presidents do not ratify the decision.

"We'll implement the verdict by the power of the law," Juhi said. He did not elaborate.

Saddam will have company on the gallows. The same court upheld the convictions and death sentences for Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, his intel chief and the judge who sentenced the Dujail victims to death, respectively. The court also emphasized its outlook on genocide by sending the life sentence of Saddam's "vice president", Taha Yassin Ramadan, back to the tribunal with a note saying it was not enough. They insisted that he get the death penalty, too.

So far, it looks like Mitch Berg won the betting pool; he alone put in January 2007 as the probable date for Saddam's execution. Not too many others thought it would take this long to put Saddam to death for his genocides. The instability of the Iraqi government and the inconsistency of his tribunal accounts for the delay, and that delay has fed the Sunni insurgencies to some extent, making matters even worse.

Will his execution help matters? It might, at least to the extent that it will eliminate the silly rumors that the US would cut a deal with Saddam to take over the country once again to quell the Shi'ite militias. One of the people who believed that silly rumor was apparently Saddam himself, who might only stop believing it as the rope jerks to a stop.

I suspect that the Maliki government will actually execute Saddam within 72 hours, before the protests can gather steam. I also predict that they will televise it, just to ensure that the Iraqis don't fall into a new conspiracy theory that they executed someone else as a stand-in for Saddam. (via Memeorandum)

Strib Goes In A Half-Price Fire Sale

The Minneapolis Star Tribune got sold by its owner, the McClatchy Company, for half of what McClatchy spent to buy it. A private investment group with other media interests will take over its operations in the next few months:

A private equity firm has reached an agreement to buy the Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co., publisher Keith Moyer announced today.

Avista Capital Partners, an investment group focused on media, health care and energy companies, will pay $530 million for the newspaper, which Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy bought from Cowles Media Co. in 1998 for $1.2 billion. Avista has offices in New York and Houston.

The deal is expected to close formally sometime in the early spring. Chris Harte, a member of Avista's advisory board, will serve as chairman of a board overseeing the Star Tribune. Harte is a former publisher of newspapers in Akron, Ohio; Portland, Maine and State College, Pa.

The value of McClatchy management can be measured in the substantial loss the company took to unload the Strib. It lost $670 million on a $1.2 billion purchase, making the Avista group the beneficiary of a half-off sale.

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt claimed that the sale benefits his company because it can then take the loss against its taxes. He said that the newspaper had generated a billion in revenue over its eight-year period of ownership, and that the Strib was the only newspaper it could see for a large loss at a time when McClatchy needs the tax relief. However, it's difficult to understand why any company would dump an asset that generates an average of $125 million per year for essentially four years' worth of revenue, taxes or not -- and he didn't explain why the Strib's value tanked so badly during their stewardship.

Avista hasn't learned from McClatchy's experience, at least not so far. They have so far insisted that they will keep the current management team intact, minus Anders Gyllenhaal, who leaves at the end of the month for the Miami Herald. Bear in mind that this management team took the paper from a $1.2 billion outfit to a $530 million K-Mart blue-light special. Not much can be gleaned about their intentions from their website, but if they stick with the same management as before for very long, one can assume that Avista might need the same kind of tax breaks that McClatchy just got. (h/t -- CQ reader and good friend L)

Addendum: L reminds me that McClatchty had to sell the St. Paul Pioneer Press when it bought Knight-Ridder chain back in March, due to antitrust concerns. That decision looks rather foolish now, doesn't it? Especially since one of the reasons that they have to sell the Strib now is to pay down the debt from the purchase of KR.

Incidentally, this can't be blamed on the general decline of the newspaper industry. Certainly one might expect that the value may have declined over the last few years, but the industry has not lost over half its valuation. This fire sale comes as a result of the mismanagement and editorial disaster that the Strib has become. Despite having some talent, the Strib's editors have turned it into a laughingstock as an objective journalistic endeavor. The sale price confirms the embarrassment that our local newspaper has become.

UPDATE: Be sure to read what Power Line has to say about this sale, as well. None of us can figure out why a company would want to sell off a large asset at more than a 50% loss, even for tax purposes. Meanwhile, Fraters Libertas' Saint Paul calls the sale "A New Hope" -- appropriate, because the Strib under McClatchy could have been called the Phantom Menace.

Unable Danger?

The Able Danger story has come to an end, at least for the moment, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has dismissed claims made by former Rep. Curt Weldon and members of the AD team about their data before 9/11. The SSIC says that the claim that the AD effort had identified Mohammed Atta resulted from a confusion of names and that the effort actually identified none of the 9/11 attackers not already known to intelligence agencies (h/t CQ reader LEJ):

The Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected as untrue one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — a congressman's contention that a team of military analysts identified Mohamed Atta or other hijackers before the attacks — according to a summary of the panel's investigation obtained by The Times.

The conclusion contradicts assertions by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and a few military officers that U.S. national security officials ignored startling intelligence available in early 2001 that might have helped to prevent the attacks.

In particular, Weldon and other officials have repeatedly claimed that the military analysts' effort, known as Able Danger, produced a chart that included a picture of Atta and identified him as being tied to an Al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weldon has also said that the chart was shared with White House officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security advisor.

But after a 16-month investigation, the Intelligence Committee has concluded that those assertions are unfounded.

"Able Danger did not identify Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker at any time prior to Sept. 11, 2001," the committee determined, according to an eight-page letter sent last week to panel members by the top Republican and Democrat on the committee.

I and many others have documented the efforts of Weldon and AD team members Tony Shaffer and Scott Philpott. The latter two men put their military careers on the line with their statements that positively asserted Atta had been identified prior to 9/11. It is difficult to see how they would have benefitted from becoming whistleblowers by insisting on this point even after Shaffer essentially got fired from his job by losing his security clearance. Philpott and Shaffer both insisted that they had discussed this with the 9/11 Commission, which the panel at first denied and then retracted, claiming that the program had little significance to their efforts.

So what does the SSIC say happened? The AD unit made charts of known AQ members, one of which bore a superficial resemblance to Atta. The profusion of names and aliases, along with the usual confusion of transliterating Arabic names, led to even more confusion on the point. Essentially, the SSIC says that Able Danger did not produce anything not already known to the intelligence community, and that Weldon is wrong about Hadley seeing Atta's name on the chart after 9/11.

This still leaves plenty of questions. Why did the House Intelligence Committee meet with Able Danger lead analyst Dr. Eileen Preisser a month after the 9/11 attacks, a meeting that apparently is still classified? What happened to Shaffer's materials between his initial contact with Philip Zelikow and his subsequent attempt to inform the 9/11 Commission? None of these issues get adequately addressed by the "confusion" answer. Either Shaffer is a fool or a liar, and that makes Philpott one of the two as well -- and no one has ever come up with a convincing argument for the latter choice.

Hopefully, the full report will be declassified to determine how the SSIC reached its conclusions.

'A Measure Of Law To A Lawless Country'?

CQ reader LS Mope sends this interesting look at the AP, which has had its share of credibility problems of late in reporting on Islamist terrorism. I missed this passage in the AP report:

The Islamic militia, which grew out of a network of ad hoc Muslim courts, has brought a measure of law to a lawless country: The international airport reopened in July after being closed for a decade.

This passage by Salad Duhul did not leap out at me at first -- and LS told me the reason why: the AP deleted it from its report after its first publication. The original can be found at the Washington Post, which ran the original content of Duhul's reporting.

Kudos to the AP for editing this out, but one has to wonder about the supposed journalistic objectivity of anyone who would write that passage. No one doubts that Somalia has been chaotic, but to describe the imposition of shari'a-by-decree as "a measure of law" is to set the bar rather low. After all, this is the same UIC which insisted in Bulo Barde that anyone not praying sufficiently would get summarily executed. That may be Duhul's idea of law, but it hardly sounds any different than the previous rule of the warlords.

And as for heralding the operation of the Mogadishu airport, that sounds a lot like congratulating a group of thugs for having the trains run on time ... a reference that should serve as a warning, not a mitigation.

In the future, watch out for anything run under Duhul's by-line. His reporting appears to be a measure of Islamist bias in a biased organization.

NSA Wiretaps 17-1 In Court

The fight over the NSA warrantless surveillance program has continued quietly in federal courtrooms, and perhaps part of the reason for the quiet has been the results. The NSA has won seventeen challenges to the program thus far:

Defense lawyers who had hoped that the public disclosure a year ago of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program would yield information favorable to their clients are being rebuffed by the federal judiciary, which in a series of unusually consistent rulings has rejected efforts by terrorism suspects to access the records.

In at least 17 criminal cases, federal district judges nominated to the federal bench by presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush have ruled against requests to force the government to tell defendants, most accused of terrorism-related crimes, whether the NSA eavesdropped on them without a court warrant. ...

Still, even in cases in which the NSA program is believed to have played a role, it is not clear that judges would rule any differently. Officials in the Bush administration have credited the NSA program with helping uncover the terrorist plot of an Ohio truck driver, Iyman Faris, to topple the Brooklyn Bridge, according to a New York Times report. In October a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., Leonie Brinkema, declined Faris's request for government documents about the NSA program's role in the case. Last month, Judge Brinkema upheld Faris's guilty plea from 2003, ruling that Faris did not have standing to bring his challenge even if "electronic surveillance" had first led the government to him.

In only one case has a federal appeals court looked at the relationship of the NSA program to criminal prosecutions. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., in April remanded a separate case to Judge Brinkema, questioning whether the government possessed "undisclosed intercepts" that should have been turned over. The case involved a Muslim cleric, Ali al-Timimi, who was found guilty last year of encouraging Muslims to join the Taliban's war efforts.

In only one case has the challenge been upheld. That was the ruling of Anna Diggs Taylor, whose August decision garnered plenty of criticism even from opponents of the NSA's program. Her decision awaits an appellate court decision, which appeared to favor a reversal given the tenor of the court's statement granting the appeal.

I find it fascinating that Taylor's decision drew so much attention, but that the 17 decisions that went the other way have barely cracked the national press. One might suppose that these cases are also under appeal, but we have heard nothing about their existence nor their progress.

Eventually, the Supreme Court will have to rule on this program and its use in prosecutions in order to settle the question. Even if Congress had passed the Arlen Specter compromise, it still would have been challenged through the federal courts. However, I wonder if the press will cover the results if the Supreme Court rules that the NSA's program did not violate the Constitution by tapping into international calls without a warrant. So far, it would seem that the answer will be ... silence.

British Turn Against Basra Police

One of the differences between the British and American zones in Iraq has been the more laissez-faire approach taken by the British in the South when it comes to the Shi'ite militias. They have infiltrated the local police forces in greater numbers in that region, turning what should be law-enforcement positions into vigilante gangs attempted to seek retribution for decades of Sunni oppression. The British have apparently tired of this, and this week they have taken action against the worst of the offenders:

About 1,000 British and Iraqi troops raided a police station in the southern city of Basra on Monday, killing seven gunmen and taking custody of more than 100 prisoners who were believed to be marked for execution by a renegade police unit.

Many of the prisoners at the Jamiat police station showed signs of torture, including cigarette and electrical burns, gunshot wounds in their legs and knees, and hands that had been crushed, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces in Iraq. The station, a base for a squad known as the serious crimes unit, was later blown up by British forces.

The targeted unit "was in fact living up to its name," Dunlop said. "It was conducting serious crimes rather than preventing it."

Iraqi police forces are widely thought to be infiltrated by Shiite militias, but British military spokesmen said the rogue elements in this particular unit were involved in gang-like activity rather than sectarian killings. Still, the episode highlighted the challenges U.S.-led coalition forces face in preparing the Iraqi army and police to secure their own country. Training Iraqi forces to do so is considered key to any U.S. troop withdrawal.

The British warned the Iraqis that they intended to forcibly disband the unit, and last Friday started by arresting the commanders of the precinct. The Coalition believes one of them masterminded the murder of 17 civilian employees of the police department. The prisoners then got freed in the commando-style raid on Monday and handed over to the Iraqi Army, where discipline is better.

This demonstrates a big problem in the Iraqi government, specifically the Ministry of the Interior, which has responsibility for the police. Moqrada al-Sadr controls that ministry as part of his support for Nouri al-Maliki and the ruling political coalition. Under Sadr's influence, the militias have far too much infiltration into the command structure of the police departments, making it almost impossible to rely on them for actual law enforcement.

This is one of the observations that the ISG got right, and their recommendation to move the national police from the MoI to the Ministry of Defense should get more attention -- if Sadr allows it. The MoD has a much better track record of staying within its mission, and thankfully Sadr has not been allowed to infiltrate it to anywhere near the extent of the MoI. Unfortunately, the ISG also recommended more law-enforcement power for the MoI and their local police units, which would only exacerbate the problem of Sadr's vendettas.

The best solution, and one the ISG pointedly avoids, is the removal of Moqtada al-Sadr from the scene. Maliki has opposed this action, but the source of Maliki's problems and that of Iraq in general have been Sadr's radical influence within the MoI. Once he gets jettisoned from the government, his Mahdis then get stripped of any quasi-official sanction, and the Coalition can resolve the issue permanently, assuming they have the resolve this time to do it.

Islamist Forces Retreating In Somalia

Ethiopian advances have forced the Islamists in Somalia to fall back, abandoning some of their bases and towns. Their reverses prompted the weak Somalian government to offer amnesty for surrender, but the Islamic Courts Union has thus far refused:

Islamic fighters were in a tactical retreat Tuesday, a senior Islamic leader said, as government and Ethiopian troops advanced on three fronts in a decisive turn around in the battle for control of Somalia.

Somalia's internationally backed government called on the Council of Islamic Courts to surrender and promised them amnesty if they lay down their weapons and stop opposing the government, spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said from Baidoa, the seat of the government. ...

Islamic troops withdrew more than 50 miles to the southeast from Daynuney, a town just south of Baidoa. The retreat along the western front follows the bombing by Ethiopian jets of the country's two main international airports.

Advancing government and Ethiopian troops captured Bur Haqaba, one of the Islamists' main bases after it was abandoned early Tuesday.

Ethiopia has advanced on two fronts, led by their air strikes on poorly-defended areas in the north and south. Besides Daynuney, the Ethiopians also captured Bulo Barde in the north. Bulo Barde recently made news when the leading UIC cleric announced that anyone who did not pray five times a day would face execution. The citry of Dinsor in the south has also fallen, and the next objective appears to be Jowhar, just north of Mogadishu in the southern region.

The Ethiopians will not capture Mogadishu, they claim. They will instead encircle it, pressuring the Islamists to negotiate for their surrender to the Somalian government. The Ethiopians do not want to spend much time in Somalia -- they characterized their mission length as "a few weeks" -- but they do want to strip the Islamists of their aura of invincibility.

They seem to be accomplishing that mission rather handily. The UIC apparently did not anticipate the Ethioppian thrust into Somalia and obviously did not prepare for it. The UIC has pledged to take their war into Ethiopia as a guerilla campaign, even to Addis Ababa, but perhaps they should concentrate on the one war that they are losing rather badly at the moment.

UPDATE: I agree with Michael van der Galien at TMV -- this should prompt us to pay more attention to Africa, at least in terms of building stronger democracies where we can. At one point, this was the thrust of the so-called neocon strategy: ending terror by ensuring the liberation of people from oppression. Africa, with its dictatorships, hunger, and rampant disease, represents another cauldron for radicalization, and we had better start thinking about those contributing factors in terms of national security.

Merry Christmas To The CQ Community!

The First Mate and I wish all of our friends in the CQ community a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a terrific new year! We've been blessed to have you with us, and hopefully this video Christmas card will express our gratitude -- especially to our readers in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere putting their lives on the line for our nation. You are all in our prayers, as always.

UPDATE: Bumping to the top. I won't be doing much blogging today, but I do have at least one new post below on the topic of Christmas. I'll be back on schedule tomorrow. Neo-Neocon wonders whether bloggers can keep their Christmas promises to stay off the computer; I'm skeptical, even of myself!

Naughty Or Nice?

For Christmas Eve, the First Mate and I invited a friend of ours over whose family went out of town for the holidays, for dinner and a late Mass at Saint Peter's in Mendota. After a tasty turkey-and-stuffing dinner and some great conversation, we all trekked to Minnesota's oldest Catholic parish for the 10:00 services. Saint Peter's still has its original structure, but it is no longer in use for anything but special ceremonies. It doesn't seat more than 100 people, and that might be pushing it. For a long time, the congregation met in the office building, where they had built a small and humble church. Over the last few years, though, the parish has raised enough funds to build a brand-new church, which opened either late last year or early in 2006. Thanks to cell-phone technology, I snuck a picture of the Cross and the beautiful internal architecture:

It's not our assigned parish, but we live between the Saint Peter's and Saint John Neumann parishes, and attend Mass at both. If you get to Minnesota and are looking for a nice Catholic church, both are wonderful choices.

Okay -- now that we've addressed the spiritual, what did Santa bring you this Christmas? I remember when I was a kid, half the fun of Christmas was calling your friends and comparing notes on all of the great gifts we got. Leave a note in the comments with your favorite gifts (or the whole list, if you like). However, you also have to tell which gift you gave was your favorite, because as we all discover at this time of year, it really is more fun to give than to receive.

My favorite gift to give: I gave the FM a set of emerald earrings to go with a ring I bought her last year for Christmas.

Gifts I got: I had an excellent Christmas, but this year my best gift was the FM's presence; there were points this year where that looked a little iffy. All right, all right, now here are a few of the kind we unwrapped. My mother (Vayapaso around here) sent us a set of gorgeous hand-made linen napkins with the 12 Days of Christmas theme, to go with a set of dishes she bought us for our first Christmas together. The FM bought me an Air Desk, which allows me to have my laptop anywhere in the house, and I'm using it now. My sister sent two Pittsburgh Steelers jerseys, one home (Hines Ward) and one away (Ben Roethlisberger). My father, the Admiral Emeritus, and his wife sent a hefty gift card and a fun Notre Dame shirt that I'll have to model for you sometime soon.

We're about to head over to see our son, daughter-in-law, and the Little Admiral. We have to pack all the gifts in the car, and we're discovering that we really overdid it this year. I'll be getting video and pictures and having a blast, and I hope your Christmas turns out just as merry as ours.

A Little Holiday Snark For Monica

Even eight years after her stained blue dress made international headlines and almost destroyed Bill Clinton's presidency, Monica Lewinsky still inspires some of the silliest commentary across the political spectrum. Today's example appears in the Washington Post, where Libby Copeland uses Lewinsky's award of a post-graduate degree as an occasion for a large dose of holiday snark:

Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.

Even more staggering, the same bubbly gal who once described the act of flashing her thong at the president as a "small, subtle, flirtatious gesture" has now written a lofty-sounding thesis. Its title, according to Reuters: "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."

Monica! We hardly knew ye!

A revelation on this order suggests Lewinsky belongs to a fascinating subspecies, dumb-but-smart. Dumb-but-smart folks defy our low expectations. They appear dull or ditzy but possess unpredictable pockets of intelligence.

I'm wondering if Copeland herself doesn't belong in this category -- perhaps, say, as an example of a journalist who manages to get a job with one of the premier newspapers in the world despite her obvious lack of news judgment. For that matter, perhaps her editor is another example.

For the record, though, it follows the same pattern of attack that the cogniscenti have used on Monica for the past eight years, and not just on Monica. It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to all of the women who have been associated, willingly or unwillingly, with Bill Clinton. In this world, Monica is a bubbleheaded stalker, Paula Jones was trailer trash, Gennifer Flowers was a whore, and so on. Somehow the likes of Libby Copeland never ask about the one figure that links all of these together -- Bill himself -- and ask whether the criticism should be directed more towards him than the women around him.

That doesn't absolve Lewinsky from all responsibility for the affair. She knew he was married, knew he had a high-profile job, and knew that any publicity surrounding an affair would rebound terribly on them both (or at least should have known that). However foolish she may have been, though, she was just 21 at the time and understandably star-struck. Furthermore, it wasn't Monica who took and violated vows of marriage, and neither was it Flowers, and however more there may be.

Lewinsk acted foolishly, partly out of her own desire for Clinton and partly out of his seduction of her. That doesn't make her the poster child for stupidity, but Copeland certainly does her best to sell that. Smart people do dumb things, and they learn from them, especially when they're 21. Painting her as an idiot just savant enough to get a graduate degree from the London School of Economics sounds like a parody of journalism, and it should be, except that Copeland apparently needed to fill a couple of column-inches on Christmas Eve.

Perhaps at some point in the future, people will gather all of the reporting and commentary on the women associated with Bill Clinton and see a pattern -- a pattern of attack intended to protect the man who really deserved the criticism instead. I doubt Copeland has the intelligence to write that story. (via Memeorandum)

Pre-Emption, Ethiopia-Style

Ethiopia decided to join the war on radical Islamist terror by launching a series of airstrikes on jihadi-held sectors of Somalia this morning. The new front will complicate the Islamists' attempt to consolidate the power they seized a few months ago in Mogadishu:

Fighting escalated in Somalia Sunday as Ethiopian planes and helicopter gun ships attacked Islamist targets in several central provinces.

One area that came under heavy attack was the town of Baledweyn, 220 miles south of the capital Mogadishu, the Shabelle Media Network of Mogadishu reported.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's information minister said his country had launched "self-defensive measures" against the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia, known as the UIC. On Saturday, the UIC issued a worldwide call for Islamist fighters to join the jihad, or holy war, in Somalia.

The situation in the Horn of Africa has been unstable for years, and the Islamist triumphs this year ensured that it would get worse. The Ethiopians decided to take the bull by the horns rather than wait for the Islamists to infiltrate their own country and topple it from within. They see the grand strategy planned by the leading Islamists to gradually take over all of the ancient Islamic empire, and they have no desire to wait for overwhelming provocation to keep from becoming their next victim.

This will probably come as a body blow to the Somalian Islamists. Ethiopia has much better strategic positioning than Somalia, which resembles a cap on Ethiopia's eastern border. All of Somalia's cities are within easy striking range of Ethiopia. Although Ethiopia has no direct access to the Indian Ocean, one might suppose that American and British naval operations in the area might be tempted to lend them some intelligence in their efforts to derail the Islamist takeover in Mogadishu.

This points to the need for more attention to the Horn of Africa in the war on terror. Just as Afghanistan could not be allowed to be a puppet state for radical Islamist terrorists, Somalia must be stopped from becoming al-Qaeda's latest de facto state. Even Ethiopia recognizes this, and the West had better get over its embarrassment over colonialism quickly enough to stop it before it grows. (via Power Line)

They're Still Devastated Two Years Later

Last Monday, the Times of London reported on the rise of shari'a police in Aceh, funded by the billions of dollars pouring into Indonesia after the tsunamis of Decmber 2004. These forces have attacked women and established a far more repressive society than existed before the tsunamis, thanks to the money that the local government received. One might hope that this constitutes a single bit of bad news in an otherwise successful campaign to lift the victims of this catastrophe out of their misery, but apparently it's just the beginning of the story. The Times once again reports on the lack of progress made in assisting the victims despite the largest outpouring of international aid in history:

Part of the problem is that in some of the worst affected areas, physical access is difficult and skills are in short supply. Bringing in large quantities of bricks and other building materials to Pulo Aceh, for example, is hampered by the shallowness of the harbour.

There are more insidious issues, too. In nearby Banda Aceh, the international charity Save the Children halted a housebuilding project earlier this year after evidence emerged of corruption, mismanagement and incompetence involving local staff and contractors.

John Bugge, communications director of Save the Children, said the charity had halted the project because contractors had been “playing games” with the charity’s local staff and victims had been left with seriously substandard homes.

“It wasn’t appropriate or safe for the children to live in them,” he said.

Local NGOs said it had become common throughout Banda Aceh for builders to subcontract tsunami housing projects to cheaper local firms and turn a quick profit. One project was subcontracted to a small firm that failed to provide water pipes or electricity cables. It also used untreated wood which was partially eaten by termites before the houses were even completed.

This is a lengthy story, worthy of a full read, and not all of it is bad news. In some areas, the NGOs have done excellent work with the funds they control. In fact, where governments have a lower level of involvement, the money stretches rather far. In one Sri Lankan village, it took only $100,000 to rebuild homes for 25 families, a project already completed. However, these success stories are few and on a small scale.

Overall, according to Bill Clinton -- who made tsunami relief his signature issue -- only a third of the homeless in the affected areas have been rehoused, two years later. The money has gone into corrupt hands. Sri Lanka's president managed to have almost 4500 houses built in his home district, even though it only required half than number and the rest stand empty. Instead of buying new land for vulnerable shore-hugging communities to relocate, local governments have dithered and finally allowed them to rebuild in the path of the next tsunami.

Not all of the money has been collected, either. Private individuals immediately pulled out their wallets, as did the US and other Western nations. However, other nations made pledges which they have yet to meet, notably China, Germany, and Spain. Even the UK has only funded 20% of its total commitment. Normally this would be just cause for a great deal of criticism, but considering how the monies have been spent thus far, it's hard to castigate these nations for contributing to even more incompetence and corruption.

One can come up with plenty of excuses for this debacle; local corruption, a lack of oversight, and so on. However, given the billions of dollars that went towards aid, it's simply ridiculous to see that the victims still lack shelter or even the hope of it two years after the waves first hit. It demonstrates once again how dumping truckloads of cash on a problem without a plan for spending it and a strong organization to enforce that plan can turn into a worse catastrophe than the one the aid was intended to mitigate.

The $100 Million Barbecue

The weekend barbecue hosted by Ehud Olmert for his neighbor, Mahmoud Abbas, turned out to be more expensive than the cost of a beef brisket and a few brews. The long-awaited meeting between the head of the Palestinian Authority and the PM of Israel resulted in the transfer of $100 million in taxes and duties to the PA, with the promise of more to come:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made several concessions to the Palestinians on Saturday, including the release of $100 million in taxes and duties Israel had collected for their treasury but withheld for months, in a bid to revive a peace process stalled for years.

Olmert also promised, in a dinner meeting at his office with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to begin easing travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and allowing more trucks through Israeli cargo crossings to and from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israeli leader came to office in March saying that peace talks were pointless because there was no strong, reliable partner on the Palestinian side. By engaging Abbas, a relative moderate, Olmert has made a politically risky about-face in an attempt to isolate the more militant Hamas movement that controls the Palestinian government and parliament.

The confidence-building steps announced Saturday night do not address the main issues of a conflict that is nearly six decades old. But both sides promised to build on the two-hour summit, the first formal meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in nearly two years.

The LA Times has this correct. Olmert has decided that the best way to break the logjam is to essentially subsidize Fatah. The Israelis will almost certainly ensure that Abbas controls the cash that flows into the PA, and Abbas will use it to strengthen his own position, especially in terms of the upcoming elections that Hamas has pledged to boycott. Fatah will once again control all aspects of the PA, and presumably Abbas will then begin negotiations in good faith on the other issues in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

This solution suffers from a lack of historical perspective. It's understandable to think that Abbas is a better solution that Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh, but the truth is that Abbas wasn't much of a partner for peace before the rise of Hamas, either. Fatah belonged to Yasser Arafat, who also turned out to be an unreliable partner and an unrepentant terrorist. Fatah groups actively attack Israel alongside Islamic Jihad and Hamas at the moment, and Israel will now transfer a fortune to the same leadership that controls the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

How is this progress?

Israel would have been better advised to allow the various factions to fall into civil war in the territories. For one thing, when they fight each other, they don't have time to kill Israelis. More importantly, dealing with any of these terrorist organizations only ensures that terrorists will endure as Palestinian leaders. It keeps more rational and pragmatic leadership from rising out of the dissatisfaction of Palestinian misery, a misery entirely self-inflicted by their insistence on selecting terrorists as their representatives. Hamas, Islamic Jihas, and Fatah have no one whom the Israelis can trust for peaceful co-existence -- and that being the case, Israel has no obligation to send them a single shekel, especially since the PA has backed out of the Oslo agreement that established the payments in the first place.

Olmert knows that he has little chance of holding his office, so he feels free to swing for the fences. Unfortunately, if peace was his hope, he's whiffing badly, and it's time for the other team to come to the plate. Perhaps they have something other than softball and a barbecue in mind.