Petrified Truth

Cautious optimism

Insightful Steven den Beste conducts an extensive examination of the pitiful state of affairs in which the Palestinians find themselves, thanks to the cynical, blockheaded maneuverings of Yasser Arafat and their other so-called "leaders." Incidents like the recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem, claimed by both Hamas and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, may be the violent death throes of the Palestinians' long, futile struggle. If so, credit will due to the fortitude of both Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush.

Israel is about to unilaterally implement a two-state solution, and it is Arafat who is running out of time. Once the wall is complete and Israel disengages from the West Bank, there will be no hope that the Palestinians could eventually take Israel back. And there is a very high chance, approaching certainty, that the Palestinian interfaction power struggle would turn violent and lead to an extremely bloody Palestinian civil war similar to the one that took place in Lebanon.

The old strategy of making incremental gains against Israel over a period of years is about to fail. I think that the decision to put up the wall around the West Bank was a brilliant stroke by the Sharon government, because it offers a way for Israel to "win" without cooperation by the Palestinians, even though that win would be partial.

In every way, the decision to build the wall puts time on Israel's side, where time used to be viewed as being on the side of the Palestinians. Once the wall is complete, the Israelis can withdraw their military forces from the West Bank. Part of why the Palestinian power struggle hasn't turned violent is that the Israelis have been keeping the peace. When they are gone, it will turn ugly very rapidly.

And with the wall in place, it will become far more difficult for the Palestinians to make attacks on Israel.

Worst of all, the wall de facto draws the line of demarcation for the two-state solution, and the longer that it exists without any formal agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, the less chance there would eventually be of renegotiating the border, even if the Palestinians ultimately accepted a two-state agreement.

Meanwhile, America's war continues and shows no sign of being abandoned, and the deep American strategy in the war (to inspire political and cultural reform in the entire region) has become apparent. Our efforts to try to create a functioning democracy in Iraq are, and are intended to be, a profound threat to the corrupt autocratic governments in neighboring nations, and since they're the primary source of support for the Palestinians, it's a threat to the Palestinian cause as well.

Read the whole thing.

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This is pretty fun: a map of the countries outside the U.S. that I've visited. Lots more to go.

You can go create your own visited country map

Tip via Backcountry Conservative

Beyond Iraq

The Bush Administration never saw the war in Iraq as either a stand-alone operation or as distinct from the generalized war on the Islamist movement that al Qaeda was part of. As clumsy and, at times, devious the public presentation of the war was, it had a clear logic. Despite ongoing tactical problems in and around Baghdad, the broad strategic goals of the Iraq campaign are being realized. Therefore, the question now is: What will the next stage of the U.S.-Islamist war look like?

In order to project forward, it is important to recall the strategic purpose of the Iraq war. This was two-fold. First, the United States had to establish its ability to carry out extensive military operations to the conclusion, despite casualties. The perception in the Islamic world -- a perception that al Qaeda attempted to systematically exploit -- was that the United States was unwilling to undertake the level of effort and endure the level of pain needed to impose its will on the region. The war in Afghanistan, rather than proving American will, was seen as the opposite -- another demonstration that the United States is averse to casualties and unable to bring a campaign to a definitive conclusion.

The second goal was geopolitical. The United States knew it could not defeat al Qaeda on the retail level. They were too well dispersed, too few and too secure. Defeating al Qaeda meant inducing several enabling countries -- particularly Saudi Arabia. These countries had little interest in the internal destabilization that engaging al Qaeda would entail, and in some cases, they sympathized with al Qaeda. The United States had no direct means for inducing these countries to change their behavior. Iraq -- bordering on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran -- was the single most strategic country in the region, and a base from which to exert intense pressure throughout the region.

The occupation of Iraq was intended to solve both problems. By invading, occupying and pacifying Iraq, the United States would be able to reverse the perception of American weakness. In addition, U.S. forces based in the Iraqi pivot, would force fundamental reconsiderations of national strategies in Saudi
Arabia, Iran and Syria -- and in other countries also.

The strategy ran into a major challenge with the discovery that the Iraqi government had planned an extended resistance after the collapse of Iraq's conventional forces and the fall of Baghdad. The United States miscalculated the extent and intensity of Iraqi resistance and the extended difficulty in suppressing that resistance. This created a situation, starting in the summer of 2003, and reaching its greatest intensity during the October- November offensive, in which the United States appeared to have failed to achieve either of its strategic goals. It appeared unable to bring the conflict to closure, and its forces appeared incapable of threatening any neighbor.

The perception had a kernel of truth to it, but only a kernel. Most of Iraq was not involved in the guerrilla war. Neither the Kurdish nor the Shiite regions were involved. The war was confined to the Sunni regions and, when compared to guerrilla wars in Vietnam or Afghanistan, was neither particularly intense nor particularly effective. Its significance was magnified by the Bush Administration's consistent and curious inability to manage public perception of the war's status. The loss of credibility the administration suffered over weapons of mass destruction and its inability to express a coherent strategic sensibility made benchmarking the war impossible for the administration.

In spite of this, the behavior of regional powers began to shift. Saudi Arabia began shifting its behavior before the Iraq war began, once it realized it could not longer prevent it. Iran began shifting its behavior by the fall, when it became apparent to it that the United States was prepared to create a Shiite-
dominated government. All of these processes accelerated in December 2003, when the United States succeeded in penetrating the Baathist guerrillas' security system and began making headway in shutting down that segment of the insurrection. Attacks today are, in spite of headlines, a small fraction of what they were in October-November 2003.

The situation in January 2004 is startlingly different than it was in November. The guerrilla movement is contracting, and the core problems in Iraq have become primarily political, involving the transfer of power. The Saudis are intensely involved in an internal conflict with Islamists and are paying a significant price to wage the war. The Iranians are discussing the public price of reconciling with the Americans while privately collaborating. The Libyan government has reversed policies dramatically, while the Syrians have also begun to search for a path to policy reversal, having massively miscalculated the course of the Iraq war in the summer of 2003.

Finally -- and this may be the single most important fact -- threats that an explosion in the Islamic world would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq proved to be in error. The single most important fact is that the genuine anger in the Islamic street has not had any political repercussions. Rather than trending away from the United States, the political behavior of Islamic states has been toward alignment. This tendency has accelerated since the decline in guerrilla activity until it is difficult to locate an Islamic state that overtly opposes the United States. When even Syria is asserting its desire to cooperate with the United States, the situation is utterly different than what some expected in February 2003, before the war began.

The situation, therefore, is much better than the administration had any right to expect last fall and substantially better than the general perception. It might be put this way. Even while the tactical situation in Iraq deteriorated, the strategic situation in the region improved. Once the tactical situation in Iraq improved, the improvement in the strategic situation accelerated. The United States is in the process of securing -- to the extent anything in the Middle East can be called secure -- the Middle East from the Nile to the western reaches of the Hindu Kush. All of the states on this line are aligned with the United States or in the process of aligning to the extent that they are no longer willing to facilitate al Qaeda in any way, and are prepared to act against the Sunni Islamist movement. That is an extraordinary achievement, but is not in itself sufficient.

First, the situation throughout this line remains fluid and can deteriorate. Second, the Arabian Peninsula has not stabilized and is likely to remain a battleground in which al Qaeda will seek to reverse its fortunes by destabilizing the Saudi regime and, if possible, bringing it down. Third, the situation in the Hindu Kush is, from the U.S. point of view, entirely unsatisfactory. Al Qaeda remains embedded in that region, particularly in the Pakistani Northwest Territories, and the war cannot be concluded until al Qaeda loses its Pakistani sanctuaries -- as well as whatever footholds it retains on the Afghan side of the border. Indeed, the situation in Afghanistan itself appears to be deteriorating.

>From the U.S. point of view, therefore, the next steps are obvious. First, having changed regime behavior in Saudi Arabia, it is now in U.S. interests to stabilize the situation there and prevent the fall of the Saudi government, or facilitate a shift to a more favorable regime. Since the latter is unlikely in the
extreme, it follows that the next step must be a change in policy that is more supportive of the current regime but still rigidly opposed to al Qaeda. This will be difficult to achieve.

Second, the United States must, at some point, liquidate the remnants of al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistani theater of operations. Ideally, the Pakistani army will bear the burden of moving into the tribal areas in the northwest and will do the job for the United States. In reality, it is extremely unlikely that the Pakistani military will have the ability or motivation to undertake that mission. Therefore, it is likely that the United States will try to close out the war with a final offensive into northwestern Pakistan, preferably with the approval of a stable Pakistani government, but if that is impossible, then on its own.

We would be very surprised if the United States launched this offensive prior to its elections. The administration has no appetite for another military campaign until the election is finished. Therefore, we would expect the United States to be in a defensive mode until November 2004. It will seek to consolidate its position in Iraq and in the Egyptian-Iranian line. It will work to assist the Saudi government, while carrying out covert operations throughout the region to mop up identified remnants of al Qaeda. This could include increased operations in northeastern Africa and in Afghanistan. Until then, the task of General John
Abizaid, head of Central Command, will be to focus on developing a plan for moving into al Qaeda's homeland, if you will, and terminating the war by liquidating the final command centers. Assuming that the preference is not to launch this campaign during the winter -- not necessarily a fixed principle -- the
offensive would take place in spring 2005.

Al Qaeda's mission is to prevent this end game. It has three potential strategies, all of which can be used together. The first is to intensify its operations in Saudi Arabia to such a degree that regime survival is in doubt and the United States is forced to intervene. We cannot help but note that in the rotation of forces into Iraq, an excessive amount of armor for the mission
remains there. It is excessive for Iraq, but not if U.S. forces should be forced to move into Saudi Arabia. If al Qaeda can bog the United States down on the Arabian Peninsula, it might by time for itself in its redoubt.

The second strategy is to completely destabilize Pakistan. It is no accident that two attempts have been made on President Pervez Musharraf's life. There will be more. There are powerful forces within Pakistani intelligence and military that oppose Musharaf's alliance with Washington and sympathize with al Qaeda. You can add to this number those who would oppose any American
intervention in Pakistan under any circumstances. Invading the northwest while Musharraf is nominally in control of the country is one thing. Invading in the face of a hostile government or total chaos is another. The United States does not have the forces to occupy and pacify Afghanistan or Pakistan. It has what
it needs to execute a large-scale raid against al Qaeda. Therefore, it is al Qaeda's strategy to protect its redoubt by intensifying operations in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

Finally, al Qaeda might seek to break U.S. will by conducting extreme operations in the United States, obviously focusing on weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda's initial read of the United States was that it didn't really have the stomach for this war. It is unclear how al Qaeda reads the current political situation in the United States. Indeed, that situation is not altogether clear. However, if al Qaeda determines that the United States lacks the will to prosecute the war in the face of massive U.S. civilian casualties, it might try to carry out an extreme attack. Certainly, Sept. 11 did not achieve what al Qaeda wanted. Therefore, another attack on the order of Sept. 11 is unlikely. It is not clear if al Qaeda can carry out a more extreme operation, or if it views such an operation as helpful, but the strategic possibility remains.

We would, therefore, expect that between now and the U.S. elections, it will appear that Islamist forces have the initiative. They will press hard in both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and the United States will appear to be in a passive
and defensive mode. In fact, during the next nine months, in our opinion, the United States will be engaged in intense preparations, coupled with defensive actions designed to shore up the Saudi and Pakistani regimes.

The fundamental issue now is what al Qaeda and its Islamist allies can achieve between now and November. This is their open window and the period in which they must reverse the direction the war has taken. If the current trend continues, and the Saudi and Pakistani regimes survive, the United States will attack in Pakistan; Al Qaeda, an organization that took a decade to create,
will be shattered. The Islamist movement will become a widely held sentiment rather than an effective politico-military force. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not really that easy to construct a group such as al Qaeda, which is effective and resistant to intelligence.

Therefore, the United States has had an extremely good few months. It has recovered from its imbalance in Iraq -- and although the resistance has not been destroyed, it is in the process of being contained. The U.S. strategic position has improved markedly, to the point that it is actually possible to
begin glimpsing the end game. But between the glimpse of the end game and the end, there is al Qaeda, which must move vigorously now to reverse its losses and regain the initiative.

Via Stratfor's The Stratfor Weekly 21 January 2004
("Please feel free to send the Stratfor Weekly to a friend or colleague.")

The only choice

Unlike most of the country, Charles Krauthammer does not have a short attention span, and he remembers the context of President Bush's decisions about Iraq over the past three years, not just the controversy over WMD or not-WMD. He says the President made the right-- and only -- choice.

People forget that when the Bush administration came into office, Iraq was a very unstable situation. Thousands of Iraqis were dying as a result of sanctions. Containment necessitated the garrisoning of Saudi Arabia with thousands of "infidel" American troops -- in the eyes of many Muslims, a desecration (cited by Osama bin Laden as his No. 1 reason for his 1996 Declaration of War on America). The no-fly zones were slow-motion war, and the embargo was costly and dangerous -- the sailors who died on the USS Cole were on embargo duty.

Until Bush got serious, threatened war and massed troops in Kuwait, the United Nations was headed toward loosening and ultimately lifting sanctions, which would have given Saddam carte blanche to regroup and rebuild his WMDs.

Bush reversed that slide with his threat to go to war. But that kind of aggressive posture is impossible to maintain indefinitely. A regime of inspections, embargo, sanctions, no-fly zones and thousands of combat troops in Kuwait was an unstable equilibrium. The United States could have either retreated and allowed Saddam free rein -- or gone to war and removed him. Those were the only two ways to go.

Under the circumstances, and given what every intelligence agency on the planet agreed was going on in Iraq, the president made the right choice, indeed the only choice.

Via the Houston Chronicle

The illusion of debate

Ralph Peters has a general idea of what's been going on inside the intelligence apparatus.

Few human beings argue with conclusions they want to believe. When the U.S. intelligence community insisted that Saddam's regime possessed hidden weapons of mass destruction, President Bush and his advisers welcomed the "evidence."

Bush believed correctly that Saddam needed to go. And the supportive analysis provided by U.S. intelligence was seconded by the British. Even the French and German intel organizations believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Remember that the pre-war argument was not about Saddam's capabilities. It was about the best means to de-fang him.

What went wrong?

Three factors led our intelligence apparatus down the garden path: decades of overreliance on technology; a corresponding neglect of the human factor, and group-think.

Intel professionals — many of whom are far better than their sullied reputation — will respond that there was a great deal of internal debate on the issue of Iraq's WMDs. But it's the terms of the debate that matter: Once the system concluded, as it had done over a decade before, that Saddam had WMDs and wanted more, the internal discussions declined a fatal notch. It was no longer a matter of if, but of how much and where.

"Serious" questions could only be asked within the accepted paradigm. We had only the illusion of a debate.

Certainly, the evidence of WMDs was plentiful: Saddam had used chemical weapons in the past; inspections after Desert Storm found a vigorous WMD program, which the United Nations demanded must be dismantled; and Saddam, suicidally foolish, played cat-and-mouse games to the end — even though his stockpiles were gone.

Now we learn that even Saddam didn't have a grip on the situation — lied to by his subordinates, he, too, believed he had more advanced programs than actually existed. All the while, craven Iraqi exiles told us what they knew we wanted to hear.

It would have taken brilliant "out of the box" analysis to get it right. But our intelligence system is, above all, a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies cherish consistency, while shunning the risks of excellence. Bureaucracies only deliver what executives demand. Left to their own devices, they plod along in a defensive crouch.

Administrations come and go. If we truly want to improve our intelligence system, only sustained, bipartisan congressional action can force the critical changes. We all know that members of Congress have a genius for criticism. But can they summon the will to fix a system that their own neglect and rhetoric has crippled?

Via the New York Post

Posted by Alan at 11:20 AM

Right so to do

Victor Davis Hanson wants America to feel confident about the ongoing struggle in Iraq. Among other thoughts, he reminds me of what JFK said about a prospective landing on the Moon: "not because it's easy, but because it is hard." If this were easy, it would not be so important.

Take September 11 away and the United States would never — despite the conspiracists' theories of pre-9/11 mediation — have gone into either Afghanistan or Iraq. Both reactive military campaigns were waged humanely to minimize civilian casualties, often at risk to American military lives. The defeated were odious; their oppressed deserved to have been freed, and their nations returned from the graveyard to the family of nations.

For all the rhetoric about American corporate profiteering — the "Afghanistan pipeline," the Halliburton bonanza, the carving up of the Iraqi petroleum pie — the ultimate cost of restoring the two countries will be enormous, yet justifiable not in economic advantages, but in both national-security interests and, yes, moral terms. This is as it should be, since we Americans recently have had a prior relationship with both the Afghan and Iraqi nations. Unlike the British or Russians, we have never attempted to colonize them, but we are nevertheless obligated to set things right since, at critical times when we had the ability to offer aid, we chose isolationism and retreat — and thousands died as a consequence.

Arguments against our efforts have already evolved precisely because of the moral nature of our enterprise. Two years ago, American leftists and most Europeans alleged that America was after oil, or sought global hegemony in its plans to take out the havens of terror. Now those same voices — more strident than ever — are cynical and coldly rational: We are spending too much money, too many Americans are dying, the mythical "Afghanistan pipeline" and "Iraqi oil" won't pay for the costs after all, such countries can never adopt democracies, and so on.

Only the ossified Left is shameless enough to have screamed for one year that we were after the petroleum of Iraq, and then harangue that we are breaking our treasury through foreign reconstruction, hoodwinked into thinking Arab natural resources might instead have shouldered the costs of mammoth aid.

Only the ossified Left objects to American foreign aid if it involves first taking out fascists and mass murderers in the bargain.

Only the ossified Left for a year condemned Afghanistan as either hopeless or immoral, but now claims that, in comparison to Iraq, it was a necessary and understandable multilateral response all along.

And only the ossified Left could decry poor intelligence for prompting us to go into Iraq, and then suggest we should have acted earlier on poorer intelligence prior to 9/11, as they now suggest with regard to North Korea.

We are winning a difficult peace. It is not surprising that we have made scores of mistakes, since nation rebuilding in the Middle East has no recent pedigree...Yet throughout this tumultuous year, what amazes is not that we made errors, or major blunders even — but how quickly we reacted, adjusted, and learned from our mistakes. So we press on, learning as we go, combining power with justice, determined to leave behind something better than we found. We are comforted by knowing that for all the current yelling from Democratic candidates, our own intelligentsia, and the European mainstream, this has not been a war of conquest or exploitation, but something altogether different — a needed effort that, if we see it through, will end up doing a great deal of good for everyone involved.

Our efforts in Iraq to remove a genocidal murderer and inaugurate democracy are not a "quagmire," but one of the brightest moments in recent American history — and we need not be ashamed to say that, again and again and again.

Hard truth

Scrutiny of the CIA is mounting, with the baffling case of Iraq's WMD providing fuel for the fire. Now an internal CIA review is coming to similar conclusions as those made by David Kay: the agency has fundamental problems in intelligence collection and analysis. President Bush seems to have utter confidence in George Tenet and his team, but it's hard to see how that is justified.

Either the President and the GOP will lead a hard look at the CIA or the Democrats will make relentless use of these criticisms as a political weapon in a crucial election year. It's Bush's choice.

The beleaguered CIA faces new criticism in an internal report submitted this week by a veteran officer, who found serious fault with the agency's analysis on Iraq and said he believes intelligence officials have not come to grips with the causes or scope of the failure.

After spending three months reviewing virtually every piece of raw intelligence that went into the CIA's assessments on Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War, Richard J. Kerr, the former deputy director of the agency, said he found failings with the way the data was analyzed and presented, and gaps in the underlying intelligence itself.

"It is very hard to see (the prewar analysis on Iraq) as anything but a failure in terms of the specifics that we provided" to policy-makers, Kerr said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. He said he submitted a report of his findings to CIA Director George J. Tenet this week that in many respects echoes the criticism raised in recent days by David Kay, who resigned last week as head of the U.S. weapons search team in Iraq.

Kerr stressed that Iraq was an extremely difficult target, and that many of the intelligence community's judgments were understandable, even if they were wrong. Kerr, like Kay, said he found no evidence that analysts shaded their estimates to support the Bush administration's case for war.

But Kerr challenged some of Kay's broader criticisms, saying he did not believe the former weapons inspector was qualified to pass judgment on whether the intelligence community needs wholesale restructuring or reform.

Even as he came to the CIA's defense on certain points, Kerr said that, overall, the agency has not owned up to fundamental problems exposed by the failure to find banned weapons stocks in Iraq.

"They're going to have to face up to it and deal with it in a direct way, and I don't think they have," Kerr said. "I don't think they have systematically looked at how they did this, at this whole problem, looking at the lessons and trying to understand the strengths and shortcomings" of their assessments on Iraq.

Kerr submitted his report during a week in which the agency was tossed by a storm of criticism. In his appearance on Capitol Hill and a series of interviews with the media, Kay said there had been "major shortfalls" in the intelligence on Iraq, and that he did not believe there were any stocks of weapons in the country when the United States invaded last year.

Kerr's comments are likely to carry particular weight within the intelligence community because he is a respected, 32-year veteran of the agency. A Soviet analyst during the Cuban missile crisis, he went on to hold a number of prominent positions, including interim director of the agency during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. He retired in 1992.

Kerr said his inquiry focused on the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate -- a document that represented the intelligence community's most thorough assessment of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities. It concluded that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

As the suspected stocks of weapons failed to turn up after the war, Tenet tapped Kerr to lead a team of agency retirees to review the document and determine whether its assertions were supported by the raw intelligence collected over the past decade by spies, inspectors, satellites, signals intercept equipment and other sources.

Kerr said the outcome of his review "is a fair report, and I think it understands the problem, but it's critical in some areas of how the analysis was done and the presentation of the estimate."

Via the Los Angeles Times (registration required)

Brutal realities

The Foreign Ministry of Israel has decided to show the world graphic details of what it means for Israelis to live and die with Palestinian suicide bombers in their midst.

Israelis started their morning today having to face shocking pictures of dead commuters - victims of a yet another suicide bomber. The anti-terrorist fence could have prevented this massacre. The sheer absurdity cannot be ignored.

While Palestinian terrorists continue to murder Israelis, the pro-Arab majority at the UN is forcing Israel into the dock at the International Court of Justice over the fence. Thus, the supporters of terrorism condemn the victims of terrorism for simply trying to protect themselves.

All those who criticize Israel for building the fence should take a good look at this morning's pictures from Jerusalem. (Caution: Video contains very graphic footage.)

On a day when Israel is exchanging hundreds of imprisoned terrorists for the freedom of a kidnapped Israeli civilian and the bodies of three missing soldiers, Palestinian terrorism claims the lives of ten innocent victims, while maiming dozens more. This proves once again that in contrast to Israel's humane outlook, which views each individual as an entire world, the terrorists murder indiscriminately and disdain the sanctity of human life.

Taking a stand

Nat Hentoff expands on his earlier reaction to the American Library Association's hypocritical refusal to condemn Fidel Castro's imprisonment of former independent librarians in Cuba, and takes a personal stand in protest.

Karen Schneider, a member of the governing council, proposed an amendment to the section of the final report on the proceedings of the mid-winter meeting that concerned Castro's imprisonment of the librarians along with 65 other independent journalists and human rights workers. She said, "In calling for the release of the people arrested in [Castro's] March 2003 crackdown, we join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, President Jimmy Carter, journalist Nat Hentoff (recipient of the 1983 ALA Immroth [Intellectual Freedom] award), and other organizations and individuals who champion free speech everywhere."

In her amendment, Karen Schneider emphasized that demanding Castro free these prisoners of conscience "is consistent with ALA policies, including ALA Policy 58.8, which affirms our support for Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression[,]' . . . and especially [ALA Policy] 58.1 (2) . . . to 'support human rights and intellectual freedom worldwide.' "

And this is how the vote went down on Schneider's amendment to free the prisoners, some of whom are of an age that makes it likely that, unless liberated, they will die in the gulag for the crime of thinking and acting as free individuals in a dictatorship.

Karen Schneider's amendment was overwhelmingly voted down by the 182-member ALA council. Only about five hands were raised to support it. Next week, I will report on praise from a high Cuban official for the ALA's rejection of the Schneider amendment.

So much for the ALA leadership's devotion to "free speech everywhere."

It is the leadership I accuse of hypocrisy, of being whited sepulchres. As a reporter on intellectual-freedom issues, I have known and respected many librarians around the country as they fought, sometimes in peril of their jobs, against censorship by local politicians, library boards, and right-wing and left-wing politically correct pressure groups.

It is hard for me to believe that the majority of rank-and-file librarians agree with the spinelessness of their governing council, which couldn't bring itself to ask the luminous Fidel Castro to let these people go.

Karen Schneider, in her scorned amendment to the final report, mentioned my support of her amendment, and that I had received the prized ALA Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom. The citation reads: "For courageous and articulate advocacy of the First Amendment as an author, speaker, and activist for human rights" (June 1983).

I now publicly renounce the Immroth Award and demand that the American Library Association remove me from the list of recipients of that honor. To me, it is no longer an honor. Someone I know in the ALA, who was at the San Diego meeting, explained to me that some members of the council whispered privately that they agreed with the amendment calling for freeing the librarians but had to vote it down because they didn't want to be vilified as being "on the wrong team." They have put themselves in their own prison.

Via the Village Voice
Visit The Friends of Cuban Libraries

Blockbuster news

The United Nations announced yesterday that the kingdom of Gondor has officially been granted member status effective February 1, 2004.

"We are very excited about bringing this stalwart nation into the fold," said Secretary General Kofi Annan. "I think this is a great day, not just for Gondor, but for all nations."

Gondor is a relatively small coastal kingdom which has received considerable media attention recently due to the Peter Jackson docu-drama. Although it claims a history thousands of years old, this marks the first time it has been officially recognized as a sovereign nation.

Some member states objected to the admission of Gondor on the grounds that it is not a real country. Annan brushed aside these concerns.

"Come on now," he replied. "Neither is Luxembourg, but we let them in.

Read more via The Watley Review

Vietnam redux

Candidate John Kerry mentions his Vietnam service at every opportunity, and now a lot of veterans are armed and ready to refight the argument about the way our troops were sold out at home by Kerry and other protesters.

Terry Garlock of Georgia seems to be one. A recipient of the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross, he has a few things to say about John Kerry.

Like Kerry, I have a couple of medals, but who has what medal among combat veterans doesn't make a dime's worth of difference between us. What matters is that we are, for the rest of our life, brothers who kept faith with one another in a miserable war.

A young Kerry, however, broke faith with his brothers when he returned to the United States. With the financial aid of Jane Fonda, he led highly visible protests against the war. He wrote a book that many considered to be pro-Hanoi, titled "The New Soldier."

The cover photo of his book depicted veterans in a mismatch of military uniforms mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, holding the American flag upside down.

Kerry publicly supported Hanoi's position to use our POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a peace agreement. Kerry threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building in protest, on camera of course, but was caught in his lie years later when his medals turned up displayed on his office wall.

Many good and decent people opposed the Vietnam War. Many of us who fought it hated it, too. I know I did.

But like Fonda's infamous visit to Hanoi in 1972, Kerry's public actions encouraged our enemy at a time they were killing America's sons. Decades after the war was done, interviews with our former enemy's leaders confirmed that public protests in the United States, like Kerry's, played a significant role in their strategy.

Many of us wonder which of our brothers who died young would be alive today had people like Fonda and Kerry objected to the war in a more suitable way.

Now that it serves his ambition to be president, Kerry reminds the public of his war record daily. But the dark side of that record is not being told. Many Vietnam veterans have taken notice, and many of us will vigorously oppose Kerry's election to any office.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Hooey

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the media's conventional wisdom brigade predictably examines another conventional liberal and concludes... gosh, he's more complex than all that.

"In Kerry's Record, A Liberal Strain With Complexities"

John Kerry may look like a tax-and-spend liberal and a Washington insider at first glance, but an inspection of the Massachusetts senator's record reveals a man who hasn't been afraid to swing to the right and who many believe has the heft to challenge Bush.

Via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only)

Note that Kerry's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is a 5, only slightly ahead of Ted Kennedy with a 3 (score of 100 = a perfect conservative).

One would like to expect better than pathetic hooey from the WSJ, but, alas, it is often not to be. Their political reporting is as conventional as the rest of the herd. The reality gap between the WSJ's news coverage and their perceptive editorial page is often striking.

Falsity

Tony Blair's statement in the House of Commons about the David Kelly tragedy and its aftermath was pointed and devastating. Are the ilk of Ted Kennedy and Wesley Clark listening

Let me make it plain: it is absolutely right that people can question whether the intelligence received was right; and why we have not yet found WMD. There is an entirely legitimate argument about the wisdom of the conflict. I happen to believe now as I did in March that removing Saddam has made the world a safer and better place. But others are entirely entitled to disagree.

However, all of this is of a completely different order from a charge of deception, of duplicity, of deceit, a charge that I or anyone else deliberately falsified intelligence.

The truth about that charge is now found. No intelligence was inserted into the dossier by Downing Street; nothing was put in it against the wishes of the intelligence services; no-one, either in Downing Street or the JIC, put any intelligence into it, "probably knowing it was wrong"; and no such claim to the BBC was made by anyone "in charge of drawing up the dossier". Indeed, Lord Hutton's findings go further. The claim was not even made by Dr Kelly himself.

The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie. And I simply ask that those that made it and those who have repeated it over all these months, now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly.

I repeat what Lord Hutton said in his Summary, at page 322.

"The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media."

That is how this began: with an accusation that was false then and is false now.

We can have the debate about the war; about WMD; about intelligence. But we do not need to conduct it by accusations of lies and deceit. We can respect each other's motives and integrity even when in disagreement.

Let me repeat the words of Lord Hutton:

"False accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others ... should not be made".

Let those that made them now withdraw them.

Text via 10 Downing Street
Video in Real and Windows Media via 10 Downing Street
Lord Hutton's report via BBC

Toast and worse

British journalist Melanie Phillips examines the David Kelly affair following the release of Lord Hutton's devastating report, which completely exonerated Tony Blair, and says both the BBC and the leader of the opposition Tories have lost all shreds of credibility.

If the BBC is in dire trouble, the Conservative party's recent smirk now deserves to be wiped off its face. Michael Howard's performance in the Commons was simply jaw-dropping. Having previously repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of lying about the naming of Dr Kelly -- a conclusion emphatically rejected by Hutton -- he not only failed to apologise but dug himself further into the hole by claiming that the naming strategy had not been covert but overt, on the basis that the government's statement revealing that an unnamed civil servant had come forward was bound to lead to his being named. Such sophistry didn't stop there; Howard also wrenched other remarks by Hutton out of context in order to arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposite to Hutton's own. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, he had the bare-faced cheek to try to move the goal-posts altogether by demanding an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the decision to go to war on the basis of the missing WMD -- a quite staggering demand, considering the Tories had originally supported the war and the reasons for it to the hilt. Yet now the Tories are apparently leaping on the anti-war bandwagon.

This disgraceful performance was quite sickening to watch. I am normally the first to criticise Tony Blair's government, not least for the way I think it has misled the public over a number of issues. But on this occasion, he had it absolutely right when he told the Tory leader in tones of withering contempt: 'Being nasty is not the same as being effective, and opportunism is not the same as leadership'.

Right from the time Iain Duncan Smith first started on this line about Blair having lied over Dr Kelly, the Tories have been told over and over again that they were calling this one completely wrong. First, there was no evidence that Blair had lied. Second, by deciding that Blair was the villain of the piece, the Tories were effectively siding with the BBC, when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the BBC was entirely in the wrong, that its position was utterly indefensible -- and that in the long run, it is the BBC, not the Labour party, that is actually the Tory party's biggest enemy because of the role it plays week in, week out in subverting the values of this country and the nature of truth itself.

But the Tories simply would not listen. They were warned again when Michael Howard came to power. They still would not listen, because they were transfixed by the mantra of 'Blair the liar' which they have elevated to their main plank of opposition. Now they have been well and truly caught out on the wrong side. The roar of derision from the Labour benches that greeted Howard's feeble and glancing nod towards Hutton's demolition of the BBC was well deserved.

The BBC is toast. The Tories are beneath contempt.

"An open till waiting to be robbed"

Well, this is just shocking news from the sainted world of Eurocracy.

The European Commission has overseen an "intolerable" breakdown of EU financial control while subjecting whistleblowers to vindictive treatment, Euro-MPs said yesterday.

The European Parliament's annual report on the EU's £70 billion budget expressed "extreme alarm" over failures in the commission's accounting system, finding that the books did not add up and large sums of money could not be traced.

The report, drafted by Paulo Casaca, a pro-EU Portuguese socialist, complained that no commissioner had taken the blame for the disappearance of £3 million into "black accounts" at the EU's data office, Eurostat.

Pedro Solbes, the economics commissioner in charge of Eurostat, has refused to accept the blame for abuses described by investigators as "a vast enterprise of looting".

Not "sexed-up" please, we're British

The Sun newspaper in London has been the recipient of a stunning leak of Lord Hutton's secret official report examining the suicide of Dr. David Kelly amid charges by a BBC reporter that Tony Blair's government "sexed up" the evidence against Saddam Hussein. Lord Hutton's conclusion: Tony Blair did nothing wrong and the BBC reporter is a liar. "Sensational" indeed.

Tony Blair is today sensationally cleared of any “dishonourable or underhand” conduct leading to the suicide of tragic scientist David Kelly.

Lord Hutton’s long-awaited report into Dr Kelly’s death also exonerates ex-Downing Street media boss Alastair Campbell. And it makes only passing criticism of the Defence ministry headed by embattled Geoff Hoon.

But the document — top secret until it is published officially at noon today — is a devastating indictment of the BBC and its defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan is effectively accused of LYING in a bombshell broadcast blaming Number Ten for “sexing up” a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Beeb bosses are blasted for failing to check the notes of the journalist, who was already under a cloud over his misuse of language. And chairman Gavyn Davies, director-general Greg Dyke and the BBC board of governors are implicitly blamed for dereliction of duty to licence-payers.

The Prime Minister ordered Lord Hutton’s inquiry hours after the MoD weapons scientist was found with his wrists slashed a few miles from his Oxfordshire home.

The contents of the retired Law Lord’s 320-page report are known only to a handful of people directly affected by their findings.

But The Sun has learned from other sources that the judge will say it was RIGHT for Downing St to suggest changes to a Joint Intelligence Committee dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

He will insist suggestions the report was sexed up are “unfounded” — and that the BBC’s editorial system was “defective”.

ALA's shame - cont.

Old-style liberal and patriot Nat Hentoff looks again at the failure of the American Library Association (ALA) to stand up for the rights of independent librarians jailed by Castro's regime in oppressed Cuba. As noted here before, ALA should be shamed by its failure to live up to its own credos. Then again, double standards have always been a characteristic of those who would fellow-travel with despots.

From Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, libraries across this country will invite their communities to the annual Banned Books Week, decrying censorship. I've spoken, by invitation, during those weeks at libraries around the country. Will any library invite me this year to talk about the burning of library books in Cuba?

It's a shame that librarians around this country have a leadership that mocks the ALA's Library Bill of Rights, which requires its members to "challenge censorship" — but refuses to call for the release of 10 librarians among Castro's prisoners of conscience, who indeed challenged censorship.

Via the Washington Times

The Ketchup Kid & friends

Ubiquitous columnist Mark Steyn has been up-close with the Democrats' primary campaigning in New Hampshire and is less than impressed.

After spending the best part of a year listening to the Democrats' strolling minstrels strumming their way round the White Mountains, I'm staggered by how little any of them have to say. If you go to a Kerry rally – something of an oxymoron, but let that pass – the senator's stump speech is a karaoke tape of floppo populist boilerplate. If he'd downloaded it for free from the internet, that'd be one thing. Instead, he paid a small fortune to hotshot consultant Bob Shrum, who promptly faxed over the same old generic guff he keeps in the freezer: "I (insert name here) will never stop fighting for ordinary people against the powerful interests that stand in your way."

This shtick worked so well for Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008) that he evidently sees no reason why it shouldn't elect a fifth president this time round. Throw in a few mandatory sneering references to Enron, Halliburton and Attorney-General John Ashcroft plus a handful of local hard-luck stories of doubtful general application – "47-year-old Arlene Claxton of Hooksett worked 20 years to build up her hairdressing business only to contract a rare skin disease from a conditioner manufactured overseas by corporations George W Bush has given tax breaks to in order to export American jobs abroad to jurisdictions lacking environmental safeguards thanks to a sweetheart deal negotiated by a lobbyist for Halliburton and then learnt that her health insurer wouldn't cover the cost of treatment because etc etc."

Sen John Edwards, the pretty-boy southern lawyer, does a much better job of this sort of thing. I caught him at Gorham Town Hall way up in the mountains on Saturday morning. It was a brutally cold morning – 40 degrees below freezing – but the place was packed and we all came away enthused, unlike at a Kerry rally where you come away trying not to think about why you're not enthused. Next to the groggy, haggard Kerry, Edwards has a fabulous, glowing complexion. In Gorham, surrounded by leathery weatherbeaten chapped blotched Yankee faces on all sides, the North Carolina trial lawyer looked like a star. If he'd taken my question, I'd have asked him for the name of his moisturiser. True, his stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he'd like to get a piece of – we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc – and he has nothing of interest to say about the war. But his qualified support – or qualified lack of support – seems to suit a Democratic electorate that recoils from Joe Lieberman's full-throated backing of the Iraq liberation and isn't quite suicidal enough to nail its colours to the mast of the fruitcake anti-war Left.

That's the real story here: for all Howard Dean's talk that you can't beat Bush with "Bush Lite", the candidates who'll survive to the southern primaries next week are doing their best not to sound anti-war, anti-tax cuts or anti-guns. In other words, even in the Democratic primary, this election's now being fought on Republican terms.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Dreaming of Mars

Now we know why the Republicans are supporting an aggressive program for exploring Mars. And, after all, someone has to go.

The fundamental dilemma of the new century

Just consider the implications of this. The mind boggles.

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority.

As forecast in 1973 by Jean Raspail in his controversial novel The Camp of the Saints?

Dennis Miller primetime

Looking forward to the new Dennis Miller show in CNBC, starting Monday night at 8:00 p.m. Central time.

Miller has two words for people concerned about his credentials as host of a quasi-news show: lighten up.

"I don't have credibility, I'm a comedian," he said. "I'm not Ed Murrow up on the roof in a London fog reporting on the blitz."

As a viewer, Miller believes one of the titans of objective network news ABC anchorman Peter Jennings couldn't appear more liberal.

"At least I come out upfront and tell people about my politics," Miller said. "He sits there and displays it through subtle poker (expressions) all year long the raised eyebrows, the arch tone of the voice. We get it that he's liberal. We get it that he doesn't like Bush. Just come out and say it!"

Miller cautions against making too many assumptions about his politics. He's conservative on taxes and defense issues but more liberal on social policy, he said.

"If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn't care less," he said. "It's their business. If some foreigner wants to blow their wedding up, I want my government to eliminate him."

The United States right now is simultaneously the world's most loved, hated, feared and admired nation, he said.

"In short," he said, "we're Frank Sinatra."

He's been having fun putting the show together, posing with a chain saw in promos and promising to obliterate the line between news and entertainment. He's bought a bunch of Bill O'Reilly paraphernalia and promises to give it away to viewers.

The show will feature interviews, a rant on a selected topic, a "Weekend Update"-like comic newscast and a pundit panel he calls "The Varsity."

And a monkey.

via ABC News

More David Kay

David Kay has now given a more detailed interview to National Public Radio after leaving the Iraq Survey Group. It's helpful and at least more complete than his sketchy comments to Reuters and The Telegraph earlier this weekend.

The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said Sunday he believes Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. David Kay said the challenge for the United States now is to figure out why intelligence indicated that the Iraqi president did have them.

"We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why," Kay said Sunday on the National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition."

Asked whether he feels President Bush owes the American people an apology for starting the war on the basis of apparently flawed intelligence, Kay said: "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people.

"You have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It is not a political 'got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future."

"It's not a political issue. Its an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."

Since Kay's resignation Friday as the top U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, Kay has said Iraq had no large-scale weapons production program during the 1990s, after it lost the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and no large numbers of mass destruction weapons were available for "imminent action."

Still, "that is not the same thing as saying it was not a serious, imminent threat," he said Sunday. "That is a political judgment," he said, "not a technical judgment."

Kay said he believes the American public and politicians now have to grapple with the question of whether the Iraqi dictator posed an imminent threat. Given the reality on the ground, as opposed to estimates, some may reach different conclusions than they did before the war, he said.

"I must say I actually think Iraq — what we learned during the inspections — made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war," Kay added.

Article via Yahoo! News
Interview available at NPR

Opportunity

Opportunity has landed on the surface of Mars. Now we wait to see if it survived and can talk back.

More good news: Spirit has been partially restored as well.

UPDATE: Opportunity has sent back its first photos, which the experts at JPL already call "bizarre."

Zinger

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has the best final take on the Democratic "debate" earlier in New Hampshire.

There can't be much doubt about who turned in the best performance in last night's New Hampshire debate. Only one man on that stage was consistently calm and thoughtful, well-spoken and well-prepared.

He didn't wilt under pressure, he was forceful without being discourteous -- if anyone appeared ready for the responsibilities of the White House, it was he. Too bad Brit Hume isn't running for president.

And too bad Wesley Clark is.

Tip via Outside the Beltway

Cheney at Davos

Vice President Dick Cheney's speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was focused on the War on Terror and typically steadfast in tone, even while sounding conciliatory as well.

We must act with all urgency that this danger demands. Civilized people must do everything in our power to defeat terrorism and to stop he spread of weapons of mass destruction.

These tasks that we face are tasks that we'll face far into the future. And our success will depend on meeting three fundamental responsibilities. First, we must confront the ideologies of violence at the source, by promoting democracy throughout the greater Middle East and beyond. Second, we must meet these dangers together. Cooperation among our governments, and effective international institutions, are even more important today than they have been in the past. Third, when diplomacy fails, we must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary. Direct threats require decisive action.

He also disclosed a remarkable statistic about European military preparedness that was news to me.

As Lord Robertson, NATO's former Secretary General, has said, "NATO's credibility is in its capability." Today Europe and Canada have 1.4 million soldiers under arms, but only 55,000 deployed, and many European militaries still maintain they are overstretched.

Reality checking

Donald Sensing is all over Wesley Clark's callow willingness to share the stage during a false public charge by asshat poseur Michael Moore that President Bush was a "deserter" during the Vietnam War.

He also has a lot to say about the ignorance of those who want to pontificate on the subject with no experience with, or knowledge of, the subject.

Clark, a retired four-star general, admits he is entirely unconcerned that an ideologue celebrity has made this most serious, unfounded charge against the commander in chief. In fact, he strongly implies that he is not bothered at all that the charge was made. He admits he is not interested in the facts. He admits he is "delighted" to have the support of the man who made the accusation. I find that just incredible and utterly repugnant.

Obfuscatory David Kay

David Kay has resigned and been replaced as head of the Iraq Survey Group, and has given an interview with Reuters that is getting a lot of play this weekend, for obvious reasons.

Former chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay has concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, a potential embarrassment for President George W. Bush and ammunition to his election-year Democratic rivals.

Undercutting the White House's public rationale for the war on Iraq, Kay told Reuters by telephone shortly after stepping down from his post on Friday that he had concluded there were no such stockpiles to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.

"I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find," said Kay, who returned from Iraq in December and told the CIA that he would not be going back.

"I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and that's what we're really talking about," Kay said.

In a fresh interview, this time with The Telegraph in London, Kay is also confirming that "a lot" of Iraq's WMD materials were moved to Syria, which is also highly provocative.

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

It seems to me that this subject is far too important to be argued only through summaries in foreign media reports. David Kay needs to either give a public extended interview in the U.S. with a knowledgeable questioner or testify before an appropriate Congressional committee and say what he's ready to say. Neither of these media interviews seem to be in-depth and are not being presented in full detail. Kay's non-definitive comments are more hurtful than helpful to his country.

Sick puppies

Essential Victor Davis Hanson casts a skeptical eye on the never-ending "harangues" directed at President Bush from candidates in the Democratic primary campaign. One of his many useful observations concerns Europe:

What is strange about our new European relationship is not that it has deteriorated, but that its Orwellian premises had not been questioned long ago. The Iraq war woke us from a deep, dangerous coma, and raised questions unasked for decades: Why defend a continent larger and more populous than our own? Why consider the German and French governments staunch allies, when, by any measure of their rhetorical and diplomatic anti-Americanism, they appear no different from — and indeed, far worse than — what emanates from a China, Brazil, or Middle Eastern "moderate" nations?

Europe, not America, has proved most interested in Iraqi oil over the last decade. Europe, not America, is apt to tolerate massacres in the Balkans or Iraq. Indeed, the victory in Iraq emphasized that our greatest sin is in being cumbersome and often acting belatedly to stop autocratic killing — but this is a far different moral quandary than never acting at all. When you look at Iranian fascists being wined and dined in Paris, count up all the corpses from the August heat wave, and contemplate the explosive issue of school scarves, France, not the United States, is the real sick puppy.

via National Review Online

Land of the plushy elites

Canadian Elizabeth Nickson, writing in the National Post, is just a bit jealous of the lively scene to her south.

The Americans can have a war of ideas and we can't discuss anything. Because anything not out of the Bigger Government playbook is called right-wing extremism, and worse Christian, and thus demonized. Meanwhile, the sleepiest country in the world, which lives next door to the most vibrant country in the world, continues to tumble into the wormhole of complete irrelevance. Unluckily for us, the extraordinary American growth and innovation can float even our dozy economy, and we never have to grow up and behave like adults.

And on Tuesday, the State of the Union. You'd have to go back to the Greeks to find theatre like that. There was the scarlet-faced Ted Kennedy stuffed into his $2,500 suit, and the harridan Hillary, her selfish little ferret face looking punched and puffy, like the schoolyard bully she is. As every policy initiative slipped from their grasp, the Democratic side of the aisle, visibly shrank. It was bliss, bliss, bliss.

What do we have here? Crony capitalism, and every 50-year-old with a graduate degree still left in the country, running around under the big Ottawa money tree, hands grasping at a nice six-figure gov'mnt job with travel allowance, car, driver, and big entertainment budget. The highest form of Canadian accomplishment: to spend your 60s living high off waitresses in Kamloops, discussing impenetrable and useless things. Just as long as they are so boring that no one notices.

Does anyone else wish they were living in a real country?

Tip via Relapsed Catholic

The supermarket

The Bush administration's success in getting WMD cooperation from Libya has uncovered a large failure in both intelligence and non-proliferation efforts. Pakistani expertise seems to be the upstream source.

Libya's quest for atomic weapons was aided by a sophisticated nuclear black market that offered weapons designs, real-time technical advice and thousands of sensitive parts -- some of them apparently manufactured in secret factories, according to diplomats and experts familiar with the probe of Libya's weapons program.

The scale of the black-market operation -- described by one expert as an "international supermarket" for nuclear parts -- exceeds anything seen before, and it was undetected by Western intelligence agencies until recent months, the officials said. The same operation also is believed to have aided Iran, they said.

The smuggling enterprise supplied Libya with thousands of parts for gas centrifuges -- machines that enrich uranium for nuclear weapons -- as well as machine tools for making additional centrifuges, the sources said. It also provided Libya with designs for making a nuclear bomb, officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Friday.

The identities of the people behind the smuggling operation have not been revealed, but investigators say the centrifuges provided to Libya are of the same design as machines used in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

via the Houston Chronicle

Now the Libyan connection is forcing Pakistan's culpability out into the open. All in all, it appears that the military overthrow and capture of a despot is more powerful and persuasive than just mucking around with spooks and informers.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, personally acknowledged Friday that scientists from his country appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations, probably "for personal financial gain." He denied that the Pakistani government knew of the sales at the time but vowed that those involved would be dealt with "as anti-state elements."

Musharraf's statement at a global economic forum in Switzerland came after several weeks of delicate efforts to force Pakistan to deal with the scientists, according to diplomats and U.S. officials. Technical documents from Libya on its nuclear program, and documents relating to Iran's nuclear activities, undercut years of Pakistani denials and appeared to forced Musharraf's hand.

Musharraf continued to insist that there was no government involvement in the sales, portraying the actions as the efforts of corrupt scientists. U.S. officials, however, are skeptical of those claims.

They note that when Pakistan received missile parts from North Korea -- believed to be the quid pro quo for nuclear aid -- a Pakistani air force cargo jet was dispatched to Pyongyang, North Korea, to pick up the parts. They also note that the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories are the crown jewel of the Pakistani nuclear program, with close ties to both the military and the intelligence agency.

via the Houston Chronicle

Library science

Now even staff from the Library of Congress are engaged in the de facto debunking of uncorrected myths about the supposedly spontaneous "looting" of cultural sites in Baghdad during the Iraq campaign.

The Library of Congress (LoC) has stepped in to help rebuild and restructure Baghdad’s National Library after it was devastated by arson and looting in April.

On an 11-day State Department-sponsored trip that began in late October, three LoC experts became the first non-Iraqi group since the spring fires to view the entire collection firsthand. The door to the library’s stacks, which had been welded shut after the crime spree, was opened for the team to assess the damage.

“They waited until we landed in Iraq to unseal those doors,” said Mary-Jane Deeb, the LoC specialist on the Arab world who led the trip. “That shows you the trust they have in our efforts as librarians.”

The team’s most significant finding was that the looting was “highly targeted” and “highly focused,” Deeb said. “You had rooms turned to ashes and other rooms full of documents that were untouched.”

The LoC group determined that the rooms in which materials were turned to ashes were burned with incendiary substances. “Only security of the Baath regime would have had that type of material,” Deeb said.

Furthermore, the only collection destroyed in the stacks was Saddam Hussein’s “Republican Archives” — documentation from 1977 to the present that included the entire microfilm collection and all documentation related to acquisitions. Earlier archives covering the period 1920 to 1977 had been placed in rice bags and were not damaged.

“It’s tremendously important to show that it was not your average looter,” Deeb said.

The LoC staff also discovered for themselves what kind of soldiers we have serving in Iraq. Doesn't sound like an imperialist stormtrooper to me.

The LoC group quickly determined that the Baghdad library building had been damaged too extensively to be useful.

“Even if repaired, the present building would be inappropriate to represent the Iraqi cultural heritage regionally and internationally,” the team’s report said. “Its location is unattractive, its facilities limited and it is rather undistinguished architecturally.”

The team recommended that the library be relocated to a senior officers club on two acres overlooking the Tigris River that is currently occupied by more than 300 U.S. troops.

In its report, the team said that the three-story building, situated in a historical district, is “perfectly suitable for a great national library.”

Deeb said that a U.S. officer who was also a civil engineer led the team around the facility. The officer had drafted “kind of a blueprint” of how the building could be transformed to a library.

“It was absolutely wonderful,” she said.

via The Hill

Capt. Kangaroo, RIP

This is a shame. Bob Keeshan was a cool guy.

Bob Keeshan, who gently entertained and educated generations of children as television's walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76. Keeshan, who lived in Hartford, Vt., died of a long illness, his family said in a statement.

Keeshan's "Captain Kangaroo" premiered on CBS in 1955 and ran for 30 years before moving to public television for six more. It was wildly popular among children and won six Emmy Awards, three Gabriels and three Peabody Awards.

The New York Times has a well-prepared obituary, as is so often the case. After chronicling all Keeshan's accomplishments, there's this:

Asked on one occasion how he found time to star in his own show and still engage in lecturing, volunteerism, the study of French, reading, and also spend time with his family and his hobbies of photography, fishing and sailing, Mr. Keeshan replied, "one of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television."

Strategy

Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of the Washington Times, has an election-year warning for President Bush.

The pessimists among the president's best friends see an eerie similarity in the election-year prospects of father and son.

The elder Mr. Bush went into 1988 with sky-high approval ratings, which collapsed with his pursuit of votes he was never going to get. George W.'s approval rating sparkles at 60 percent or so, enough to fuel a landslide if it holds up. But that's a big "if," because he, too, is chasing phantoms at the expense of turning out big numbers from his base.

Almost any reading of the senior-citizen constituency finds that seniors are counting on Democrats, not Republicans, to expand the drug-prescription program. Hispanic voters see the Republican resistance to amnesty and expanded illegal-immigrant rights, notice that the president couldn't get away from the subject fast enough in his State of the Union address, and put it down to half-hearted pandering. The first President Bush signed on to many of the Democratic favorite things, too, environmental, civil rights and disabilities initiatives, and all he got for his trouble was personal satisfaction. Liberal voters treated him to Bronx cheers on their way to the polls. Many of the voters who wanted to be his friends felt snubbed and frost-bitten by what they regarded as a cold shoulder. If history repeats itself, the result this time will be tragedy, not farce.

Red Moon Rising

A report in today's New York Times reads between the lines of President Bush's State of the Union address and perceives an outreached hand to China in the area of space exploration. Interesting idea since China is making significant strides in space right now. I don't want their flag on the Moon without ours right beside it.

In all, China plans to launch 10 satellites this year, and a total of 30 by 2005; it currently has 16 in orbit. The satellites have scientific, commercial and military applications.

More bold are China's plans to build on the success of last year's Shenzhou 5 space orbit, and eventually to land on the Moon. Officials say next year's Shenzhou 6 mission is expected to carry two astronauts on a five- to seven-day space journey.

Efforts to reach the Moon are beginning in earnest this year, and some experts in the United States speak ominously of a "Red Moon" — the possibility that China might one day launch military astronauts into space with the aim of setting up a Communist lunar base.

Last March, Luan Enjie, director of the China National Aerospace Administration, described the Moon as "the focal point wherein future aerospace powers contend for strategic resources."

But Mr. Luan and other Chinese officials say China's lunar ambitions are wholly peaceful. Mr. Luan suggested that one of China's primary motivations for reaching the Moon was possible economic exploitation. He told People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, that China was also interested in developing lunar energy resources, like helium-3, a rare form of the element that scientists say could power advanced reactors on Earth.

In an interview this week, Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for China's Moon program, said the program was part of China's larger efforts to become a leader in space.

Cheney interviewed

Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview to NPR's Juan Williams.

Primal scream

In the hall of mirrors that is politics as presented by America's media, Howard Dean's wacky speech/rant to his dazed foot soldiers in Iowa Monday night (now dubbed his "I Have a Scream" speech) has (a) had an undeniable impact on prospective voters and (b) become a self-referential story of its own. Check out Fox News, the Houston Chronicle, NPR, the New York Post, Newsday, and USA Today for just a sample.

Since the next stage in the short-lived evolution of such a thing will be handwringing analyses ruing the fact that too much was made of the story... it's best just to enjoy some of the jokes at Howard Dean's expense, like Jay Leno did:

Did you see that speech Howard Dean gave last night? I heard that the cows in Iowa are now afraid of getting mad Dean disease.

I’m not an expert in politics, but I think it’s a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun.

Howard Dean is a doctor. He acts more like a postal worker.

What kind of a bedside manner is that? "We’re gonna go in there and pull out your spleen! Then fix that appendix! Then take out your tonsils, then we’re going to take your darn heart and replace it!!!”

One-liners via NewsMax