Petrified Truth

Welcome home

Military units like the 101st Airborne are coming home from the war in Iraq, replaced through an enormous troop rotation that will take months.

The commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division returned from Iraq and uncased the division's colors, symbolically ending the unit's year at war.

"There were few easy days in Iraq ... all Americans can be very proud of what our soldiers accomplished," Maj. Gen. David Petraeus said Saturday after displaying a red and blue flag emblazoned with the division's screaming eagle symbol. Petraeus, 51, of Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., flew home with 188 fellow soldiers.

"I cannot say enough about our young soldiers, they were magnificent," Petraeus said, adding that war brought "numerous episodes of hardship and sorrow."

Sixty soldiers from Fort Campbell have been killed in the war - 58 of them from the 101st, which has had more deaths in Iraq than any other U.S. military unit. "It's been a very, very tough year," Petraeus later told The Associated Press. "There's nothing harder than losing soldiers in combat. It's like losing your sons and daughters, and that takes a bit of a toll on you over time."

But he said he is optimistic about Iraq's future. "I think the potential in Iraq is incredible," he said.

Several thousand 101st soldiers have returned home since Jan. 7. The remainder of the division's 20,000-plus soldiers are expected to arrive by early March at Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky line 50 miles north of Nashville.

Prediction: journalists will soon descend on the returning warriors and try to dig for any comments indicating problems with the war itself and/or how it's been conducted. Normal personal grousing will then be "sexed up" into a generalized diatribe against the war, SecDef Rumsfeld, and President Bush. The personal observations won't be the problem -- we've heard lots just through the amazing Letters section in Stars and Stripes -- but the hype will be. Let us count the days.

The Free One

Alhurra is on the air, a needed step towards breaking the monopoly of anti-American and anti-Semitic media in the Middle East. Only time will tell if it really helps, but the initial opposition from the usual naysayers makes me think they are worried it might.

A U.S. government-financed satellite television station aimed at Arab viewers made its debut broadcast Saturday, airing an interview with President Bush in which he praised Iraqi determination to achieve democracy.

Al-Hurra, or The Free One, began broadcasting at 11 a.m. with footage showing windows being opened, symbolizing freedom.

Al-Hurra is broadcast from the Washington area but with facilities in several capitals, including Baghdad. With a largely Arab staff, it will at first broadcast 14 hours a day, building up to 24-hour programming within a month. The station, costing about $62 million in its first year, promises a balanced approach.

Just a question of resources

Here's something for Japan to ponder. Everyone is a target, sooner or later.

A senior member of al-Qaida has told U.S. security authorities that the terrorist network came up with a plan to carry out attacks targeting the 2002 World Cup soccer matches held in Japan, informed sources in Tokyo said Saturday.

The United States has told Japanese authorities of the information provided by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the No. 3 official of the terrorist organization who is believed to have played a major role related to the attacks on the United States on Sept 11, 2001, the sources said.

Mohammed said the plan for attacks in Japan was never realized because al-Qaida did not have a network in Japan.

Savagery

A long-held suspicion has been confirmed: not only have the customer reviews at Amazon.com become a battleground for non-literary ideologies, they are also being rigged for both sales and ego. Caveat emptor!

Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: The company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the U.S. site under signatures like "a reader from New York."

The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan a book -- when they think no one is watching.

But even with reviewer privacy restored, many people say Amazon's pages have turned into what one writer called "a rhetorical war," where friends and family members are regularly corralled to write glowing reviews and each negative one is scrutinized for the digital fingerprints of known enemies.

Eco-imperialism

Here's a useful antidote to the conventional wisdom: how "rich-world" environmentalists are in fact responsible for massive suffering and death in the underdeveloped world. Well-known civil rights group the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is helping to raise awareness.

"We must put humanity back into the environmental debate," said CORE national spokesman Niger Innis. "We all want to protect our planet. But we must stop trying to protect it from bogus or illusory threats - and on the backs, and the graves, of the world's most powerless and impoverished people.

"The green movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates their most basic human rights," he said.

Paul Driessen is the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (and a former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth). "Eco-imperialism perpetuates poverty and misery," he said. "It's hypocritical and immoral, unethical and socially irresponsible. Worst of all, it's lethal. It simply has to end"

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore said that when he helped create Greenpeace in 1971, "I had no idea it would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. I had no idea the movement would oppose genetic engineering and other programs that could benefit mankind - and adopt zero-tolerance policies that so clearly expose its intellectual and moral bankruptcy."

"The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity," Moore said at the CORE teach-in. "The pain and suffering it inflicts on families in developing countries can no longer be tolerated."

Via the Rocky Mountain News
Related site: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death

Whitewash?

Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz has a personal connection to the nuclear proliferation activities of "rogue" Pakistani scientists: his own father. The difference is that Dr. Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz was involved in peaceful applications of nuclear power. Mansoor takes a tough stance on Pakistan today.

Whitewashing Pakistan's official complicity in such activities, as the Bush administration seems to be doing, will only result in rogue proliferators sprouting up everywhere. But if making Khan the scapegoat protects Pakistan's military and intelligence institutions so they can earnestly - albeit secretly - debrief international investigators about which other countries and terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have received Pakistani nuclear materials and technologies, so be it. Dismantling the threat is more important than assigning blame if we are to prevent a dirty bomb from going off in Los Angeles or New York.

To ensure such transgressions are not repeated, however, the Bush administration should tell Congress it is making all US taxpayer aid to Pakistan contingent immediately on Pakistan's acceptance of verifiable nuclear safeguards.

If, as the weekend's news reports suggested, a secret US antiproliferation team is already in the process of taking control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by installing safekeeping vaults, tamperproof coded entry systems, sensors, alarms, closed-circuit cameras, and other technologies that give President Musharraf the ability to internally monitor and track nuclear materials and prevent their unauthorized use, then a key first step has been taken. But much more needs to be done.

Pakistan has a right to maintain its nuclear deterrent. It does not have the right to hide from the world how many nuclear monsters it created in our midst, a fact that the real heroes of Pakistan's nuclear program - like my father - understood all too well.

Via the Christian Science Monitor

"Pakistan Braces for the American Storm"

Summary

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has begun warning his country that if it does not root out al Qaeda, the United States will.

Analysis

As part of its self-declared "war on terrorism," the United States has been involved in the Afghan theater of operations for more than two years, since it succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban government in late 2001 by employing a strategy heavily dependent upon local allies. Since then, U.S. efforts have followed a bifurcated path: maintaining some semblance of order in Kabul -- where the "national" government resides -- and bombing any concentrated pockets of resistance.

The strategy makes sense. Unlike the Soviet occupation of 1979-1989, the United States is not attempting to control the entire territory of Afghanistan. Split as it is by the Hindu Kush mountains -- and a plethora of ethnic groups with little to no sense of a shared history -- the country probably is not capable of forming a unified state in the traditional sense. The least violent existence that Afghanistan can hope for is probably to have a very weak central government in which the various regional capitals -- Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif -- exercise de facto sovereign control.

The U.S. strategy, then, is geared toward maintaining the fiction of a "united" Afghanistan, without providing any troops to enforce central rule. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrols only Kabul and the immediate surrounding area, while various regional militias rule their respective territories.

The strategy is not exactly brilliant, but -- considering Afghanistan's history and geography -- it is probably one of the few that could work. As a side effect, it leaves al Qaeda and its sympathizers free to prowl largely where they will and conduct hit-and-run nuisance attacks.

For al Qaeda, this is far from a happy state of affairs. Afghanistan can no longer be used as a major training facility, and the network has been funneling most of its fighters into Iraq. A smaller presence in Afghanistan is a more vulnerable one, so al Qaeda has done what any business would do under similar circumstances: move.

The mountainous border region of the Afghan-Pakistani border region is porous, relatively unguarded and home to the Pushtun ethnic group that straddles national boundaries. Al Qaeda, unhobbled by state loyalties, has most likely moved its core personnel into this region, where it is more complicated for U.S. forces to operate.

But more complicated does not mean impossible.

The Bush administration is looking for the end game. Al Qaeda has proven unable to mount a major strike on U.S. targets since Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks that have occurred -- Casablanca, Bali, An Najaf, Riyadh, etc. -- have been far less ambitious in scope, carried out by affiliate groups and, most importantly, have not touched the U.S. mainland. The next major push from the United States will be an attempt to roll up al Qaeda's prime senior members themselves.

As with all other major policy pushes in 2004, the White House has its eye on domestic politics as well. Melting down al Qaeda into a commemorative coin set to present to the American voter just in time for Nov. 4 would, of course, be a nice touch from a White House perspective. Doing that, however, means rolling into Pakistan with a lot more than a disposable State Department officer with snazzy shoes and a sharply worded demarche. Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan is a real country with a real army -- and real nuclear weapons. Hence, at the highest levels, Washington has been tightening the screws on Islamabad -- most recently regarding the indiscretions of its nuclear development team.

Musharraf has received the none-too-subtle message, and this week began preparing his country for the inevitable onslaught -- and spurring it into action so that the United States might not need to come calling with a whole division of troops when it comes.

In a Feb. 10 interview with the New York Times, Musharraf made it clear that the onus of responsibility for the nuclear technology leaks was on the CIA, which he said had not provided any proof about the nuclear proliferation until quite recently. While the primary message of "don't blame me or push me around" came through loud and clear, there was also a secondary, more subtle, message: "Show me proof and I'll act."

The buzz in Pakistan this week, at least according to the Daily Times, is that CIA Director George Tenet paid Islamabad a secret visit on Feb. 11. In short, Musharraf was preparing the public for what sort of terms would be necessary for him to cater to Washington's wishes, and Washington just might have provided the appropriate information about al Qaeda's new digs in Pakistan.

That brings us to a more recent statement by Musharraf concerning militant activity. Speaking at Pakistan's National Defense College in Rawalpindi on Feb. 12, Musharraf said, "Certainly everything [within Afghanistan] is not happening from Pakistan, but certainly something is happening from Pakistan. Let us not bluff ourselves. Now, whatever is happening from Pakistan must be stopped and that is what we are trying to do."

On Feb. 10, Musharraf outlined what Washington would need to do to get him to move. On Feb. 12, he made it clear to other power brokers within Pakistan what needed to be done. Stratfor expects a third, more direct, statement to tumble from Musharraf's lips in the near future.

The issue now is simply one of timing. The Afghan-Pakistani border currently is difficult to navigate: Mountains plus winter equals no tanks. Once spring arrives, however, the United States can roll in and -- in theory -- nab all the appropriate
personalities, just in time for the Democratic National Convention in July. If the Bush administration can pull it off, more Democrats than Howard Dean will be screaming.

The plan is not quite as neat as it seems. Northern Pakistan is rugged territory, but people actually live there and like it. Most are none too pleased with what the United States has been doing across the border in Afghanistan of late. This region, dubbed the Northwest Frontier Territories, is heavily Pushtun and is rife with al Qaeda supporters. Rolling into it would not be pretty.

In the hopes of heading off what would likely be a bloody U.S. intervention in Pakistan, Musharraf is trying to make the case for a major Pakistani military offensive against al Qaeda and its supporters in these tribal areas.

The Pakistani president is in quite an uncomfortable position, attempting to balance his role as a trusted U.S. ally in the war against militant Islamism, while leading a country where anti-Americanism is at a fever pitch. Despite Musharraf's attempts to proceed with caution, decisions resulting from the U.S. pressure are critically injuring his domestic image.

Musharraf has long stressed that his government furnished the United States with only minimal assistance in terms of logistical support, intelligence-sharing and so forth, and that Pakistani troops are not committed to campaigns outside the country. Both Interior Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat and Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed routinely deny that U.S. intelligence and military forces are engaged in any operations in Pakistan against al Qaeda/Taliban suspects, particularly when arrests are made or suspected militants are killed in shoot-outs.

Hayat and Ahmed have gone to lengths to underscore that Pakistani forces are doing the actual work, while the United States is merely providing intelligence and logistical support in the background.

U.S. troops conducting a large-scale operation inside Pakistan would take away the Pakistanis' we're-doing-it-ourselves factor and could well fracture the Pakistani military, not to mention prompt a backlash from the public.

But Musharraf has no illusions about where he falls on the U.S. priority list. If destroying al Qaeda once and for all means losing the Pakistani president, well, the United States has survived Pakistani regime changes before. Therefore, Musharraf issued an oblique warning to his country that it needs to do a housecleaning -- before the rat-a-tat of U.S. M16s is heard across the Northwest Frontier.

It is unclear just how Musharraf will be able to muster the support necessary for this latest step his government has had to make in the wake of Sept. 11. Initial signs are promising. So far jirgas (councils) of the Utmanzai and North Waziristani tribes have decided to set up militias to hunt down foreign militants. It is far too early to evaluate the tribes' seriousness -- much less their success -- in the matter, but it is obvious that the political dialogue has been sparked.

Islamabad does not have much time to get results. Warmer weather soon will set in, and the ISAF already is taking over policing duties in Afghanistan from U.S. forces, which will free up even more U.S. forces for a counterinsurgency offensive, should Islamabad fail to get the job done.

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY - 13 February 2004 (c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

Via Stratfor
"Please feel free to send the Stratfor Weekly to a friend or colleague."

Tag and release?

I don't suppose these Guantánamo detainees received GPS implants before we released them back into the wild?

Terrorists freed from the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay have rejoined Taliban and al-Qaida cells in Afghanistan, sources said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to make the bombshell admission today in a speech in Miami, military and political sources said yesterday. Rumsfeld's revelation about the few prisoners in Cuba who shouldn't have been let go will be used as justification for indefinitely detaining approximately 650 terror suspects held there, said one defense official.

The Pentagon chief will argue for greater scrutiny of each detainee, but he'll also "talk about the intent to release more" than the 87 freed to date, the official said.

Pentagon officials have refused to discuss one reported case of a Taliban commander, Mullah Shehzada, who rejoined comrades in Afghanistan after his October release from the Guantánamo, Cuba prison.

Shehzada convinced his interrogators he was an innocent civilian captured by Northern Alliance troops and turned over to the United States, Time magazine reported last year.

Bad luck?

Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia Day!

The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times; their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Folklorists say it's probably the most widespread superstition in America (and no doubt in other parts of the world, as well) — some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.

How many people at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias and credited with coining the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia," as many as 21 million do in the United States alone. If that figure is correct, something like eight percent of Americans are still in the grips of an old superstition.

Read more via About.com

Another wardrobe malfunction?

In an online-only column entitled "The Real John Kerry," NPR basks in admiration for John Kerry's newly-revealed leadership qualities. Apparently a willingness to chat it up with reporters is the key consideration for reporter David Welna.

What a difference a presidential campaign makes. Kerry now has time every day for reporters -- not just for interview sessions or press conferences, but also for wandering down from the first-class cabin of his chartered Boeing 737 and schmoozing with the several dozen scribes, photographers, sound recorders and cameramen flying behind in steerage. This is a John Kerry I'd never known before: affable, funny, relaxed. Most striking of all, he is not so self-absorbed. Presidential candidate Kerry is, as Tom Wolfe might put it, a man in full -- rather than full of himself, as he seemed in the halls of Congress.

So what gives with this transformation? Sure, he needs the media more now. But here's my theory: Kerry has, for better or worse, the natural temperament of a leader, a loner in charge. That's his manner whether he's in charge of a gunboat, a movement of anti-war veterans, or, if things keep going his way, of the nation that brought you the Electoral College.

Being just one of 100 never seemed to quite suit the guy all these years in the Senate. His ambitions to lead were constantly thwarted by the realities of a collegial body where nobody ever really leads. It's decision-making by committee, legislating by compromise. Striking a pose there of being above that fray just may have been Kerry's way of saying "this isn't really me." Now with the brass ring of the Democratic presidential nomination within reach, we see the other Kerry, the one who's finally hit his stride.

With an unfortunate (for Welna) sense of timing, Matt Drudge is at this moment headlining a breaking story that Kerry is being investigated by numerous major media organizations for "recent" infidelity with an intern.

If true, it might explain why Howard "Dr. No" Dean has not withdrawn from the race in the face of a dozen defeats in a row. It would also seem that such a bombshell would benefit John Edwards more than damaged-goods Dean. Or could Hillary even ride to the rescue? Stay tuned.

"Knock it off"

Game, set, match on this whole "Bush was AWOL" nonsense. Read the entire, detailed account from someone who served alongside young George W. Bush.

How long until Kerry, McAuliffe, and the panting press realize they're in a hole and stop digging?

Finally, the Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a terrible slander on those who served in the Guard, then and now. My Guard career parallels Lt. Bush's, except that I stayed on for 33 years. As a guardsman, I even got to serve in two campaigns. In the Cold War, the air defense of the United States was borne primarily by the Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of others. Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions.

While most of America was sleeping and Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mexico. We were the pathfinders in showing that the Guard and Reserves could become reliable members of the first team in the total force, so proudly evidenced today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It didn't happen by accident. It happened because back at the nadir of Guard fortunes in the early '70s, a lot of volunteer guardsman showed they were ready and able to accept the responsibilities of soldier and citizen — then and now. Lt. Bush was a kid whose congressman father encouraged him to serve in the Air National Guard. We served proudly in the Guard. Would that Mr. Kerry encourage his children and the children of his colleague senators and congressmen to serve now in the Guard.
In the fighter-pilot world, we have a phrase we use when things are starting to get out of hand and it's time to stop and reset before disaster strikes. We say, "Knock it off." So, Mr. Kerry and your friends who want to slander the Guard: Knock it off.

COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired); U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard; Herndon, Va.5

"Biases and predilections"

A somewhat astonishing posting today on The Note, the blog-like website of ABC News. Such candor is long overdue.

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:

Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.

Via ABC News The Note

Whose fault?

SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was rockin' last Saturday at NATO's Munich Conference on Security Policy.

Saddam Hussein could have opened up his country to the world -- just as Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and South Africa had done -- and as Libya is doing today.

Instead, he chose the path of deception and defiance. He gave up tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues under the U.N. sanctions, when he could have had those sanctions lifted simply by demonstrating that he had disarmed. He passed up the “final opportunity” that was given to him in the UN Resolution 1441 to prove that his programs were ended and his weapons were destroyed.

Even after the statues of Saddam Hussein were falling in Baghdad, the Iraqi regime continued to hide and destroy evidence systematically going through ministries destroying what they could get their hands on.

We may never know why Saddam Hussein chose the destruction of his regime over peaceful disarmament. But we know this: it was his choice. And if he had chosen differently -- if the Iraqi regime had taken the steps Libya is now taking -- there would have been no war.

The last 12 months have proved the world’s rogue regimes have provided two different models of behavior -- a path of cooperation and the path of defiance. And the lessons of those experiences should be clear: the pursuit of weapons of mass murder can carry with it costs. By contrast, leaders who abandon the pursuit of those weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the free nations of the world.

He also looked to the past for the lessons of history.

The advance of freedom does not come without cost or sacrifice. Last November, I was in South Korea during their debate on whether or not they should send South Korean forces to Iraq. A woman journalist came up to me and put a microphone in front of my face -- she was clearly too young to have experienced the Korean war -- and she said to me in a challenging voice: “Why should young South Koreans go halfway around the world to Iraq to get killed or wounded?”

Now that's a fair question. And I said it was a fair question. I also told her that I had just come from the Korean War memorial in Seoul and there's a wall that has every state of the 50 states in the United States with [the names of] all the people who were killed in the Korean War. I was there to put a wreath on the memorial and before I walked down there I looked up at the wall and started studying the names and there, of course, was a very dear friend from high school who was on a football team with me, and he was killed the last day of the war -- the very last day.

And I said to this woman, you know, that would have been a fair question for an American journalist to ask 50 years ago -- why in the world should an American go halfway around the world to South Korea and get wounded or killed?

We were in a building that looked out on the city of Seoul and I said, I'll tell you why. Look out the window. And out that window you could see lights and cars and energy and a vibrant economy and a robust democracy. And of course I said to her if you look above the demilitarized zone from satellite pictures of the Korean Peninsula, above the DMZ is darkness, nothing but darkness and a little portion (inaudible) of light where Pyongyang is. The same people had the same population, the same resources. And look at the difference. There are concentration camps. They're starving. They've lowered the height for the people who go in the Army down to 4 feet 10 inches because people aren't tall enough. They take people in the military below a hundred pounds. They're 17, 18, 19 years old and frequently they look like they're 13, 14, and 15 years old.

Korea was won at a terrible cost of life -- thousands and thousands and thousands of people from the countries in this room. And was it worth it? You bet.

The world is a safer place today because the Coalition liberated 50 million people -- 25 million in Afghanistan and 25 million in Iraq.

Rumsfeld made an impression during the Q&A as well.

Facing some critical audience questions afterward, Rumsfeld became animated and loud at times. Asked what the United States could do to improve its much-deteriorated image in the world, Rumsfeld blamed news coverage by Arab television networks for contributing to the decline by promoting "highly negative" stories.

"I know in my heart and brain that America ain't what's wrong with the world," he said.

Cutting through the air with his hands for emphasis, he recalled the situation in Iraq before the war, "with people being tortured, rape rooms, mass graves, gross corruption, a country that had used chemical weapons on its own people."

"There were prominent people from represented countries in this room that opined that they really didn't think it made a hell of a lot of difference who won," he said, looking out at the packed hotel conference room. "Shocking. Absolutely shocking."

Video snips (in Real format) via The New York Times

Prediction

Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor for National Review, has a prediction at NRO's The Corner. Sounds about right.

In about a week, Republicans will be in full-blown panic mode about the election. In three to four weeks, the panic will start to subside.

Hero Kerry vs. Hanoi Kerry

"Vietnam-era veteran" Chris Ward says John Kerry is no hero in his eyes.

In 1970, during the Vietnam War, I enlisted in the Navy to do my part, as I believed was my duty. I assumed I would someday sit late at night around a kitchen table, recalling my experiences with my veteran friends as had my father.

But Vietnam was not WWII, and the vets who served during the '60s and the '70s drew -- and still draw -- a distinction between those who saw combat in Vietnam and those who did service elsewhere. Ours was a band of brothers divided.

I spent four years in Europe as an enlisted man working in signals intelligence. Those who served with me, and thousands of others who never saw combat, almost always refer to themselves as "Vietnam-era veterans," rather than Vietnam vets.

We draw a distinction between those who actually saw combat and those who served in other roles, and unlike our fathers, who thought all vets equal, we believe the title "Vietnam veteran" belongs only to those who saw service in the war zone.

But all those who served during the Vietnam years hold clear that each of us did our job and had, for the most part, no control over what position we were given or where we were stationed. Each who did serve is special and a brother veteran.

For this reason I find it difficult to understand why Sen. John Kerry's campaign is attempting to belittle the service of President Bush during the Vietnam conflict.

We all know the differences. Bush was a pilot in the National Guard; Kerry was a combat veteran. The Boston Globe recently pointed out that Kerry, in less than two months of combat, received the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts, which made him a hero and allowed him to request early termination of his combat duty.

But what happened next bothers me. According to the Globe, Kerry became involved in the anti-war movement upon his return, and asked for and received an early discharge from the Navy so he could continue those efforts.

How could Kerry so easily abandon his comrades in Vietnam, and then, 30 years on, call on those same men and women to back his presidential ambition?

Kerry now holds himself up as a war hero and asks for my vote. Yet, 30 years ago he stood with Jane Fonda and gave aid and comfort to an enemy still killing our brother veterans by the hundreds.

Bush's honorable service in the National Guard bothers me less than Kerry's abandonment of his brothers, his switching sides and his active contribution to an enemy's efforts to kill Americans.

Time often softens the dark edges of military service, leaving grown men the ability to sit around a kitchen table late at night to laugh about the exploits that left them less than whole. But the dramatic difference between Hero Kerry and Hanoi Kerry leave me to wonder who he might next abandon, and at what cost to America.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Double trouble

A merger of two scourges of our time: jihadism and rap music. Jeez.

Al Qaeda's newest weapon against the West is a violent English-language rap tune urging young Muslims to wage holy war. The song is being broadcast on the Internet in an attempt to lure music-loving youth into the terror network, which is blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and other bombings around the world.

Titled "Dirty Kuffar" or "Dirty Infidels," the song is performed by a London-based group which Islamists said was deeply sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's network.

A music video accompanies the catchy yet violent lyrics, belted out by the group's lead singer Sheikh Terra -- rap lingo for terror -- and the Soul Salah Crew, a take-off on gritty British rappers So Solid Crew. Salah means righteousness or piety in Arabic.

The song calls on Muslims to wage jihad, or holy war, against "Crusaders and apostate Arab rulers," saying they will be "thrown inna fire."

"Be prepared for the battle with the infidels," it says.

Not one, but several

A military officer blogging from Iraq notes that an AP reporter doesn't have all the facts about what's happening with the combatants there.

The answer lies in understanding that there is not just one insurgency, but several.

MG Odierno is right--the pro-Baathist, former regime loyalist guerrilla apparatus has been defeated. It's been crushed. When Saddam was captured, all those losers started singing like nightingales, and much of what was left of the former regime elements were rolled up within a month.

Those are not the guys giving us the trouble any more.

The real danger to U.S. troops now is from the 'foreign fighters,' the mujahedeen, the Ansar Al Islam types, and the Al Qaeda franchisees.

Running parallel to this, there is a third layer of insurgency--which is not a huge danger to U.S. troops, but a huge danger to the Iraqi people: the internecine warfare between Sunnis and Shias, and between Kurds and Turkomen.

And beneath this, there is a fourth insurgency: the vendettas among the rival clans, even within the larger ethnic groups.

MG Swannack was right. We have turned a corner. We are focusing on an entirely different kind of insurgent, now. The foreign fighter-dominated jihadist terrorist cell is a very different animal from the former regime loyalist. Their tactics may be similar at times, but the channels through which they receive support --hence their set of critical vulnerabilities--are totally different. They are financed differently, they are armed differently, they are motivated differently, they are recruited differently. They pray differently, they communicate differently, and have an entirely different set motivations.

They even talk differently. A native Iraqi can hear a Saudi or Jordanian or Syrian accent the same way Americans can tell a southerner from a New Yorker.

Which means our sources of information must become different. Our public relations focus becomes different. Our intelligence gathering means and methods must change, in order to focus on the emerging threat.

Confrontation

The current effort to shore up the image of the CIA and MI6 continues with a detailed report that Pakistan's recent efforts to put an end to illicit nuclear proliferation were a direct result of intelligence work and tough diplomacy.

America closed down the Pakistani-based "nuclear supermarket" by confronting President Pervaiz Musharraf with "mind boggling" evidence and threatening isolation and economic sanctions, it emerged yesterday.

A high-powered American delegation met Gen Musharraf last October and demanded that he deal with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who has confessed to trading atomic secrets.

The pressure on Gen Musharraf was comparable to the aftermath of September 11, when America demanded - and received - Pakistan's support against al-Qa'eda and the Taliban regime.

Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, met Gen Musharraf at his official residence in Rawalpindi on Oct 6 last year. Mr Armitage came armed with evidence compiled by the CIA and MI6.

Gen Musharraf was "stunned" by the detail. Khan's meetings with dealers in controlled weapons technology had all been tracked. Bank accounts holding payments made for nuclear secrets were recorded.

The Americans had tracked every journey Khan had made outside Pakistan. A senior Pakistani official said the evidence against the scientist was "mind boggling".

Via The Telegraph (UK)

The Bush method

Well, here's a refreshingly unapologetic view on President Bush, Saddam Hussein, and those "missing" WMDs, from Yale computer science professor David Gelernter.

Thank God for those phantom Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Politically, they are a nonissue. Morally, they are an amazing piece of luck. Strategically, they are a guide to the future. The missing WMD were not merely an honest mistake; they were a providential mistake.

Saddam Hussein was the slaughterer of his own people, benefactor of Palestinian terrorism, enemy of the United States. But political realities here and abroad meant that all we could do was draw a bead on the man and tell him, in effect: Make our day. And he was so stupid, he did.

Truth is invisible without marketing, and WMD were Saddam's idea for an advertising theme. He had used poison gas to great effect, murdering Kurds and Shiites by the thousands. And now, thanks to WMD he seemed to have but didn't — perfect justice! — Saddam qualified for invasion. We took him out, Iraq rejoiced and the world breathed easier. Without those phantom WMD, he would still be lording it over his helpless, bleeding people, still be bribing Palestinians to murder Israelis, still have his blood-filthy sadist's hands at humanity's throat.

"But the administration's 'honest mistake' duped us into thinking there was some sort of urgency to this war." Perhaps, but are you examining things from the standpoint of a macroeconomist or a human being? No doubt "urgency" takes on a new coloration when you are next in line to be fed into the wood chipper. When congressional Republicans finally get around to holding hearings on Iraq under Saddam, when the broken survivors of his regime talk to us day after day, BBC-style sneers will disappear from all over the planet.

WMD by themselves without Saddam could never have induced us to invade. France has loads of them, a.k.a. nuclear bombs, and we don't plan to invade France. (Not at the moment.) Saddam by himself without WMDs is just as evil as Saddam with tons of them. But luckily he convinced us he had them, which made it possible for us to march in and take him out with the trash.

So, the real mistake was not President Bush's, not British Prime Minister Tony Blair's. It was Saddam's. It might have been a little smarter under the circumstances, what with the U.S. pointing its military in his face, not to play games with the United Nations. To suck in that ugly, leering arrogance just this once. He could easily have made the U.N. inspectors welcome, in which case the world would still be eating out of his hands. And Saddam would still (O melancholy thought for the unhappy captive!) be siccing rabid dogs on unfriendly generals and driving nails into the skulls of Shiite clerics to his heart's content, just like old times, if only he had swallowed his pride and played along. What a lesson for aspiring young dictators.

But the phantom WMDs made it possible for us to strike the swaggering sadist down, to overthrow one of the greatest evildoers of the 20th century, which is saying a lot.

What happens now? We institutionalize the phantom-WMD maneuver. It was all a mistake, but it worked beautifully.

The end of the Cold War brought big changes to the moral universe. Any nation has a duty to alleviate suffering. Any totalitarian dictatorship is a threat to world stability and therefore to the United States. Yet the Hippocratic Oath applies: If forcibly removing a tyrant generates more net suffering than leaving him, leave him.

The end of the Cold War greatly expanded our scope of action and, therefore, our moral obligations. How do we react to our new, expanded duties? Today there are lots of tyrannized nations we could liberate without provoking world war. But we can't march into them all, all at once. What procedure do we follow?

The Bush method. We publish an official list of tyrants we consider it our moral duty to overthrow. The implied next sentence is obvious: Give us an excuse and we'll do it. Play games with the U.N.; show us your true colors. Meanwhile, we might pray for the strange, accidental wisdom to make another providential mistake.

Read the whole thing.
Tip via Power Line

Hughes redux

Karen Hughes, who was President Bush's best communications strategist in the 2000 election, will be returning to close involvement for the re-election campaign, when the time is right. That's good -- the White House's communications efforts seem to be spotty without her.

She still refers to the president as her boss, and she is in communication with the White House almost daily, particularly with her former deputy, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. She also went to Camp David, with her family, shortly before the State of the Union address.

She'll be in the adviser saddle full time again this fall. At her departure, she promised the president she would travel with him during his re-election campaign.

It will be a re-creation of her early days as communications director for Bush's 1994 campaign for governor of Texas.

"We spent a lot of time together traveling in a small plane. We heard all of each other's jokes and we heard all of each other's stories," she says. "On a campaign like that, you end up either not liking each other at all or liking each other a lot, and we ended up liking each other a lot." It was during this time that Bush, the chief executive of nicknames, dubbed Hughes "The High Prophet," playing on her maiden name of Parfitt.

This fall, she'll be more than a media adviser.

"I'll be helping on communication strategy issues, and also I'll just be there as a friend," she says. "I'm someone he doesn't have to entertain; if he doesn't want to talk, that's fine; if he does want to talk, that's fine, too."

Bush and Russert

Still waiting here in Central Time for the broadcast of President Bush's interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, but NBC has already posted the transcript. I'll peruse it afterwards.

UPDATE: Not bad, but not great either -- a B-minus I'd say. Those of us who think that he is the right man at the right time to be President will always wish he were more smoothly articulate, but he just isn't that kind of speaker. As hapened during the 2000 campaign, his comfort level will improve with time. He does need high-quality soundbite answers for these questions, 'cause soundbites are all most people will hear.

I'm just glad (at this point) to see he's coming out to fight. As Gandalf advised King Theoden when his kingdom was threatened by implacable foes, "Ride out -- ride out and meet them!"

UPDATE: An alert reader points out in a Comment that the above "Ride out" dialogue was spoken by Aragorn, not Gandalf. Strictly speaking, true: Aragorn says to Theoden in the Hornburg, "Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them." But I was thinking of the earlier scene where Gandalf sits next to Theoden (after Grima has been tossed out of Edoras) and says "Ride out and meet him head on. Draw him away from your women and children. You must fight." Sorry for the confusion.

How to draw Hispanic votes

UPI's John Hendel ponders a veep choice for John Kerry should his current success carry him to the Dem nomination: Bill Richardson. It's just the first of many such speculations, but an interesting one nonetheless. Richardson would go a long way to blunt Karl Rove's strategy for attracting Hispanics for President Bush.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has a lot of momentum, perhaps enough to carry him to the 2004 Democratic Party nomination, and may be looking at potential vice-presidential candidates.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has the résumé -- former Cabinet secretary, former U.N. ambassador, former member of Congress -- and as a Hispanic executive from the Southwest, might be a strong counterbalance to a ticket topped by a senator from New England.

"He is, depending on how you look at it, a three-fer, or a four-fer or a five-fer," said University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato. "He's Hispanic, enabling the Democrats to target that key group of 2004. He's a governor from outside of Washington, so he's not responsible for the mess in Washington. He has national security-experience, having been U.N. ambassador. He's from the Southwest, which could be the critical substitute region for the South on the Democratic side. And finally, experience. He's not only a governor, but he has federal executive experience and legislative experience."

Via Insight Magazine

Spin

Australian columnist Paul Sheehan is enraged at the dishonesty rampant in his own profession, including the phoniness and spin of opinion polls and what he calls "omission syndrome." Too right.

And all the while Media World rages about the mendacity of elected politicians, it confects the most brazen fabrications. The technique for imposing these fabrications can be called "omission syndrome". It works like this: a highly complex, morally ambiguous sequence of events is boiled down, after the events, into a super-simple accusatory narrative which omits all major inconvenient facts.

The invasion of Iraq has provided a paradise for omission syndrome, and the latest fabrication is that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the invasion, thus the entire premise for the invasion was wrong, was almost certainly known to be wrong before the war began, and politicians have lied to us.

Everything about this mantra is a half-truth, and I write this as someone who opposed the invasion of Iraq (in columns on February 6, 24 and March 31). I have not changed my mind. In recent days the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Howard hunting pack has leapt upon the admission by Dr David Kay, a war hawk sent to Iraq by the Bush Administration as chief investigator for weapons of mass destruction, that "we were almost all wrong" about the threat from such weapons in Iraq.

While his admission has been given prominence, omission syndrome required that other significant observations by Kay be ignored, such as his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28 when he said: "Let me be absolutely clear about it, Iraq was in clear material violation of [UN Resolution] 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their [weapons] programs. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing that was illegal.

"... I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein. I actually think this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought. I think when we have the complete record you're going to discover that after 1998, it became a regime that was totally corrupt ... in a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood at some point in the future of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated..."

Tip via Tim Blair

Little time bombs

Even while Al Qaeda is increasingly on the ropes, the terror threat is evolving around the world. This is why President Bush has said from the beginning that the War on Terror has only just begun.

The landscape of the terrorist threat has shifted, many intelligence officials around the world say, with more than a dozen regional militant Islamic groups showing signs of growing strength and broader ambitions, even as the operational power of Al Qaeda appears diminished.

Some of the militant groups, with roots from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus to North Africa and Europe, are believed to be loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda, the officials say. But other groups follow their own agenda, merely drawing inspiration from Osama bin Laden's periodic taped messages calling for attacks against the United States and its allies, the officials say.

The smaller groups have shown resilience in resisting the efforts against terrorism led by the United States, officials said, by establishing terrorist training camps in Kashmir, the Philippines and West Africa, filling the void left by the destruction of Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan. But what is also worrisome to counterterrorism officials is evidence that like Al Qaeda, some of them are setting their sights beyond the regional causes that inspired them.

The activity of such organizations is one reason intelligence officials believe that the threat of terrorism against the United States and its allies remains high. But the mobility and murky associations of the groups, most of which were operating before the Sept. 11 attacks, makes it difficult for agents to monitor their communications or follow their money.

"They are like little time bombs that have been sent out into the world," said Gwen McClure, an F.B.I. agent and the director of counterterrorism at Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France. "You never know where it might go off."

Via The New York Times

The real MATRIX

Here at home, law enforcement agencies are exploring technological solutions to the enormous information access challenge posed by counter-terrorism, including the new MATRIX system. As always, privacy rights will be in potential jeopardy.

Although privacy worries led several states to pull out of a federally funded crime and terrorism database project, others are actively considering joining and thereby sharing information on their citizens, The Associated Press has learned.

Mark Zadra, chief investigator for Florida state police, which runs the Matrix project, said organizers have given presentations to more than 10 Northeastern and Midwestern states in recent weeks, arguing at each stop that the database is an invaluable law enforcement tool.

Officials in Iowa and North Carolina said Friday that they are exploring the system. And documents obtained through a public-records request in Florida indicate Arizona and Arkansas also may have interest in the quick-access information repository, which combines state records with 20 billion pieces of data held by a private company.

For now, Matrix -- short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange -- involves Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Michigan.

Law enforcement officials say Matrix is an ultra-efficient way for investigators to get information about suspects that authorities previously had to obtain from disparate sources. They insist it includes only public records and does not make predictions about crime or terrorism.

But privacy advocates say Matrix gives law enforcement too much access to private details on millions of people, resembling the Pentagon terrorism data-mining program that drew public rebuke and lost Congressional funding last year.

The likelihood of Matrix expansion remains hard to gauge.

Via Wired News

The MATRIX project has a website with background information, FAQs, and more. So far, it doesn't appear to be self-aware....

The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) is a pilot, proof-of-concept project initiated in response to the increased need for timely information sharing and exchange of terrorism-related and other criminal information among members of the law enforcement community. The MATRIX pilot project is an investigative tool that will help ensure that local and state law enforcement officers have timely, accurate, and effective information. It provides law enforcement a technological, investigative tool allowing query-based searches of available state and public records. An investigator can conduct a MATRIX query using incomplete information, such as a portion of a vehicle license number, and assemble information matching the partial description.

MATRIX is not an intelligence system. It is an information sharing initiative of the participating states that allows investigators to share information and query available state and public records in seconds. MATRIX does not provide access to magazine subscription lists, reading lists, telephone calling records, bank transactions, lists of credit cards, or credit card transactions. Under federal law, when such data is required in law enforcement investigations, it can only be obtained with a judicial order.

Bird flu and more

This is intriguing, and creepy.

Groundbreaking research using the virus that caused the worst influenza epidemic in history, the Spanish flu of 1918, has provided some intriguing clues about how flu jumps from birds to humans and how a bird virus can catch the human immune system off-guard, with devastating consequences.

British and U.S. researchers found that the more birdlike the virus, the more dangerous it is. But, for a particular strain of the flu to be a big killer, there also need to be subtle alterations that allow it to bind more efficiently to human cells.

The researchers, whose work was published yesterday in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science, cautioned that their findings do not necessarily have direct implications for the current outbreak of avian flu in Asia. That strain, A(H5N1), is substantially different from the Spanish flu strain, which was from the H1 family.

The British and U.S. scientists worked with DNA taken from young American soldiers who died of the Spanish flu in 1918 and whose bodies were frozen in the Alaskan permafrost.

Using a technique called X-ray crystallography, they reconstructed a three-dimensional structure of hemaglutinin. That exercise showed that the Spanish flu retained most of the features of the avian virus but underwent seemingly insignificant though crucial changes to allow it to attach more easily to human cells.

This capacity to latch on and the lack of mutation explain why the Spanish flu was so deadly. Death estimates vary, from 20 million to 100 million, but there is no doubt the Spanish flu was one of the most deadly outbreaks in history. It killed more people than the Black Plague and was just as gruesome: People who contracted the Spanish flu literally drowned in their own lung fluid. Often, their faces and feet turned black from internal bleeding.

The UN's World Health Organization says not to worry about recent reports about bird flu in Vietnamese pigs.

WHO has today received the results from studies of two viruses taken from members of a family cluster of H5N1 infection in Viet Nam. The family cluster has been under investigation as the first possible instance of limited human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 avian influenza strain. Virus genetic materials from two fatal cases in this cluster – sisters aged 23 and 30 years – have now been fully sequenced by the Government Virus Unit of Hong Kong’s Department of Health. Both viruses are of avian origin and contain no human influenza genes.

This finding, which indicates that the virus has not changed to a form easily transmitted from one person to another, is consistent with earlier findings from epidemiological investigations. No illness has been reported in other family members, in the local community, or in health workers involved in care of these patients.

Keep it!

Here's how far gone things are in Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the world: the nation's president is essentially a hostage to the public popularity of a nuclear rogue.

President Pervaiz Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world.

As Gen Musharraf provoked worldwide consternation by pardoning Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, he said last week that he would also spare the scientist's property or assets.

"He can keep his money," Gen Musharraf said, adding that there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Dr Khan's suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. "We wanted the bomb in the national interest and so you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb."

Dr Khan is believed to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funnelled through bank accounts in the Middle East. His assets include four houses in Islamabad worth an estimated £1.5 million, a villa on the Caspian Sea, a hotel in Mali and a valuable vintage car collection.

Gen Musharraf said he understood the need for Pakistani scientists to develop a secret overseas network when building their first nuclear weapon. "Obviously, we made our nuclear strength from the underworld. We did not buy openly. Every single atomic power has come through the underworld, even India."

Via The Telegraph (UK)

UPDATE: Other press reports do indicate that the U.S. is taking as active a role as possible in safeguarding Pakistan's nuke arsenal. That is somewhat reassuring, but not a lot.

The United States is working with Pakistan to protect its nuclear technology from falling into the hands of extremists, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

"We have had discussions with Pakistan on the need for Pakistan to safeguard its technology and its nuclear material. We are confident they are taking the necessary steps," the official told Reuters.

He commented after NBC Television's "Nightly News" program reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, American nuclear experts grouped as the "U.S. Liaison Committee" have spent millions of dollars to safeguard more than 40 weapons in Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

"Meeting every two months, they are helping Pakistan develop state of the art security, including secret authorization codes for the arsenal," the network reported.

But the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that U.S. law and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, a cornerstone of efforts to curb the spread of weapons, "prevent any direct involvement with (Pakistan's) nuclear weapons."

"So we've had discussions with them generally about how they safeguard nuclear material," he said. "We don't want their materials to get into the wrong hands but won't go over the edge of our law and the NPT," he said.

Via Yahoo! News
Tip via Little Green Footballs

ALA's shame, or lack thereof

Leftie thinker and columnist Nat Hentoff, no particular friend of conservatives or the Bush administration, returns again to the shameful -- or worse, shameless -- silence of the American Library Association concerning the imprisonment of independent librarians on the island penal colony known as Cuba.

I have enormous respect for the 75 nonviolent, pro-democracy rebels now serving sentences in prison of 20 or more years after Castro's crackdown in April of last year. The fearful dictator acted after tens of thousands of courageous Cubans put their names to the nonviolent, nationwide, pro-democracy Varela Project. Castro could not fit all those rebels in his gulags, so the crackdown was intended as a warning to future projects advocating an end to the dictatorship.

Because of my respect for these rebels, I am focusing on the stunning refusal of the great majority of the governing council of the American Library Association—so safely fearless in resisting John Ashcroft and his Patriot Act—to tell Fidel Castro to release the 75 prisoners, including the librarians.

There are those on the council who claim the April crackdown was Castro's response to increasing moves by the Bush administration to bring about regime change in Cuba—ranging from the embargo and other punitive laws to statements by Bush and Colin Powell indicating the need for Castro's removal.

These administration calls for the end of Castro's rule will, I believe, lead to further Castro crackdowns on independent Cuban journalists and human rights workers, who are not agents of the United States government any more than are the individuals in a number of countries who sent books and other materials to the independent librarians in the spirit of the Varela Project and to show independent Cubans that they were not alone.

I agree with many of the Varela signers who want the embargo lifted, and I think the administration's loose talk of regime change in Cuba is counterproductive macho posturing that does no one any good.

But why do the Castro defenders on the ALA's governing council have such influence that they have placed the entire American Library Association in the humiliating position of refusing to at least demand the release of fellow librarians in Cuba who have risked—and now suffer—so much to defend the freedom to read?

A key official of [the official] Cuban library system is Eliades Acosta Matos, director of Cuba's National Library (Biblioteca Nacional). He kept track of the proceedings of the ALA's council during the mid-winter meeting in San Diego, maybe through the ALA's website.

After Karen Schneider's free-the-librarians amendment was overwhelmingly defeated by the ALA's governing council, there was an exchange of messages between Acosta and Steve Marquardt, an ALA member who believes in everyone's right to read—everywhere.

From Acosta's message to Marquardt: "I send to you the text of the report on Cuba approved in San Diego." Clearly pleased that Schneider's amendment had been rejected, Acosta said triumphantly, "Ask yourself why the resolution proposed by Ms. Schneider was defeated."

Acosta then gave the same answer for the defeat of the resolution that a number of members of the ALA council have also been giving: the "aggressions" of the American government against Cuba, including "lies and subversion, such as the 'independent libraries.' "

Here we have a Castro official understandably approving of that particular part of the ALA's final report that avoids any direct affront to the Maximum Leader by refusing to tell him to release the independent librarians.

By the way, the final report recommended that the UN Commission on Human Rights conduct a special investigation in Cuba of "freedom of access to information and freedom of expression, especially in the cases of those recently imprisoned."

Among the members of the UN Human Rights Commission are: Cuba, and such other protectors of free expression as China, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. Has the ALA's governing council no shame?

Mr. Acosta in a subsequent message asks tartly, "What does Mr. Hentoff know of the real Cuba?" I know that if I were a Cuban, I would be in prison.

Lies? You bet

Jonathan Rauch, senior writer for National Journal magazine, says the war with Iraq was in fact based on lies.

So it is time to admit that the war was premised on a mistake. Had I known then what I know now, I would have opposed it. Next question: Does that mean the war itself was a mistake? Yes. But it was a special kind of mistake: a justified mistake.

A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. The policeman expects a thorough investigation (and ought to cooperate). In the end, if he is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.

George W. Bush and the CIA thought they saw a gun. So did French President Jacques Chirac, who last February warned of Iraq's "probable possession of weapons of mass destruction." So did Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, a former Vermont governor, who last February said, "My personal belief is that Saddam may well possess anthrax and chemical weapons. That being the case, he must be disarmed."

If reasonable people thought Saddam possessed forbidden weapons, that was because Saddam sought to give the impression that he possessed them. He may have believed he possessed them. (His fearful and corrupt scientists, Kay hypothesized, may have been running a sham weapons program.) For four years after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq successfully hid its chemical weapons program. When a defector blew the whistle, weapons inspectors were stunned at the extent of Saddam's deception. The Iraqis responded not by coming clean but by redoubling their efforts to obstruct and intimidate -- for example, interfering with inspectors' helicopter flights and, at one point, firing a grenade into their headquarters. No one could have failed to conclude that Saddam was hiding the truth.

The truth he hid, however, was not his weapons but his weakness. Or perhaps his minions were hiding his weakness from him. In either case, his power and prestige depended upon his fearsome reputation at home and his defiant posture abroad. He was contained but could not afford to let anyone know it, for fear of being invaded or overthrown. So he waved what looked like a gun and got shot.

Many people now demand to know why American intelligence was so badly fooled. The subject certainly merits investigating. Questions should be asked. Chins should be stroked. But even without an investigation, we know the most important reason we were fooled: Saddam Hussein did everything in his power to fool us, and by the time he stopped trying to fool us -- if he stopped trying -- it was too late for anyone ever to believe him.

The war was based on lies. Not Bush's or the CIA's; Saddam Hussein's.

Very good points. For myself, I still want to know what was in all those 18-wheelers leaving Iraq for Syria just before the war started, and what's underground in Syria now, before I believe a final determination that Saddam Hussein's WMD did not exist.

Knavery? Not so

Former CIA director James Woolsey looks at the dustup over WMD and the Iraq war, and the Bush administration's tactics of public persuasion.

What about the Bush administration's alleged knavery?

Mr. Kay dismisses the idea that knavery existed. There is, however, an element of misjudgment within the White House that should be noted. A year ago September it set out a sound policy for the post-Cold War era of rogue dictatorships, terrorism and proliferation of WMD. It said, essentially, that if a terrible dictatorship has both WMD programs and ties to terrorists it may be a candidate for preventive war--in no small measure because such a regime may supply WMD to terrorists. But in the run-up to the war, instead of equally emphasizing the nature of Saddam's regime, with its massive human-rights violations and its ties to terrorist groups, the administration focused almost exclusively on WMD, especially in Mr. Powell's speech to the Security Council.

It has been suggested that bureaucratic compromises drove that decision--since WMD was the one issue all relevant agencies could agree on. But the history of murder, rape and torture by Saddam's regime is one of the most extraordinary in human history. If one counts the Iranians who died in his war of aggression in the 1980s, he has killed two million people--about 10 times the number killed by Slobodan Milosovic, with whom the Clinton administration went to war twice in the 1990s on human-rights grounds.

And Iraq's ties with terrorist groups in the '90s are clear. Even if one focuses only on Iraqi ties to Abu Nidal and Ansar-al-Islam, the requirements of the administration's policy would seem to be met. And in the fall of 2002, Mr. Tenet wrote to Congress outlining a decade of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in poisons, gases and explosives. There was no need to show that Iraq participated in 9/11 or even that it directed al Qaeda in any operations--describing occasional cooperation of the sort that is well chronicled was quite sufficient. The Baathists and al Qaeda were like two Mafia families--they hated, insulted and killed one another, but readily cooperated from time to time against a common enemy. Why not say so?

Such a three-part emphasis on human rights, terrorist ties and WMD programs would have been solidly in line with the president's own explicit policy. A three-legged stool is more stable than a one-legged one, but for some reason the administration decided not to make all three parts of its case in justifying the decision to go to war. As a result, its very heavy emphasis on WMD to the exclusion of the other two bases of its strategy has left the administration vulnerable to the failure to find WMD stockpiles. Whoever caused that decision to be made may have succeeded in papering over some bureaucratic feuding, but reaped a political whirlwind.

Via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

So, based on what we have seen in public, the blame for the over-emphasis on WMD must lie with cautious Colin Powell and the State Department. This is all indeed the end-product of the same thought-process that led to the fruitless quest for UN approval of the war.

It's useful to remember that even a doomsday scenario of fully operational stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was not enough to convince the craven Eurocrats, the fellow-travellers, the bought-and-paid-for clients of Iraq, and the minions of various third-world despots who make up the UN that action was required to remove a cancerous state from the open wound of the Middle East. And that should have been obvious from the beginning.

What Tenet said

The news headlines this week screamed that CIA Director George Tenet "admitted failures" in the CIA's assessments of Iraq's WMD program. Well, read for yourself what he said or watch the video via C-SPAN (Real format).

I can't find the word "fail" or "failure" anywhere. I do see a strenuous defense of the intelligence process and a strong reluctance to think this tale is finished by a long shot.

Let me tell you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as “established and reliable.”

The first, from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle said:

• Iraq was not in possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam had recently called together his Nuclear Weapons Committee irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object and they possessed the scientific know how.
• The Committee members assured Saddam that once the fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in just 18-24 months. The return of UN inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.
• The same source said Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides, under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production.

The source said that:

• Iraq’s weapons of “last resort” were "mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel."
• Iraqi scientists were “dabbling” with biological weapons, with limited success,
• But the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real weapons program.

A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access to senior Iraqi officials said he believed:

• production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place,
• that biological agents were easy to produce and to hide, and
• prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use facilities.

This source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner circle believed, as a result of the UN inspections, Iraq knew the inspectors’ weak points and how to take advantage of them. The source said there was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure prohibited items would never be found.

Now, did this information make a difference in my thinking? You bet it did. As this and other information came across my desk, it solidified and reinforced the judgments we had reached and my own view of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein and I conveyed this view to our nation's leaders.

Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports at the time? Absolutely not.

Now, I am sure you are asking: Why haven’t we found the weapons? I have told you the search must continue and it will be difficult.

As David Kay reminded us, the Iraqis systematically destroyed and looted forensic evidence before, during and after the war. We have been faced with the organized destruction of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate rather than random acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are still being intimidated and attacked.

Making a missile miss

The New York Times Magazine this weekend has an interesting layman's overview of what can be done to protect civilian aircraft from the threat of anticircraft weapons, like heat-seeking, shoulder-fired systems, in the hands of terrorists. Work is underway, but decisions about deployment won't be easy.

Each proposal still has design and mass-production kinks that need to be ironed out, and cost will be a major factor, given the size of the American fleet, nearly 7,000. Engineering and price problems aside, defense contractors will also need to contend with the issue of liability. If an F-15 is shot down over a war zone, the pilot's family doesn't sue. The same can't be said of the civilian sector, where attorneys would most likely swoop down on contractors if their countermeasures failed to neutralize a missile.

There are other regulatory hurdles, too -- for example, under current legislation civilian planes fortified with hardware derived from classified military technology would require special export permits from the State Department every time they left U.S. airspace.

All these complications have led a number of people in Washington to question whether defending against shoulder-fired missiles is worth all the trouble. Are they really a serious enough threat to merit the $7 billion to $10 billion it would cost to outfit all U.S. passenger planes? That larger sum represents roughly twice the F.B.I.'s annual budget and almost a third of next year's budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism operations, says no. ''The whole thing is not practical, and will give a false sense of security,'' he argues. ''There's a universe of missile threats out there, and this only protects against one type.''

The great man

Today is Ronald Reagan's 93rd birthday. Now near the end of his life, he will not notice, but we can on his behalf.

His daughter Patti Davis writes online about what this day means to her:

My father turns 93 today. He has had Alzheimer’s for a decade. His world has narrow boundaries—a room, a bed, the soft hands and tilted down faces of nurses and family members who may or may not be familiar to him from one moment to the next. Anyone who has a friend or relative with Alzheimer’s (and there are many) knows how strange and disquieting birthdays are. Another year. A year marked by experiences, events, memories… none of which have been shared by the person who has been claimed by this mysterious disease. For that person, the year was just another long stream of days and nights - slow and indistinguishable.

We mark birthdays because it would seem wrong not to. There is nothing to give my father except our presence, and hopefully that is a balm to whatever desolation he experiences. Alzheimer’s is, quite simply, a wasteland. The only thing that loved ones can do is try to reach into it, grasp whatever we can.

The ache of a day like this is its ordinariness. My father will sleep for many hours as he usually does. He will wake up for dinner and we will be with him; there will be a cake, and people will have sent flowers, so his room will feel festive, but it’s doubtful that he will notice. My mother and I will tell him, Happy Birthday. And, silently, we will wonder who we’re saying it for. We are marking another year of life, but not of living; no one can look at an Alzheimer’s patient without mourning the loss of a fully alive life.

When I leave my parents’ house tonight, the moon will be sailing across the night sky—white and full and calm. My father will probably have drifted off to sleep by then. The stark truth is that there will be some relief when this day is over. There is no blueprint for how to mark a birthday like this.

Celebration seems inappropriate, so does sadness, although that part can’t be denied. I wish I could offer some remedy for others who experience days like these, but I can’t. Maybe the best we can do is trust that our presence at a loved one’s side—the sound of our voice and the touch of our hand—is felt in the deep shadows of their souls. Their voices can’t answer us and their minds can’t grasp the difference between one day and the next, but there is a chamber in their hearts that hasn’t forgotten, and doesn’t want us to either.

Scholar Dr. Paul Kengor has written a new book, God and Ronald Reagan, and believes he knows what Reagan would think of his current plight.

Reagan wrote a November 1982 letter to a friend whose wife had just died. “It isn’t given to us to understand the why of such things,” said the president. “We can only trust in God’s infinite mercy and in His purpose that we go on to a better life where there is no pain or sorrow. Believe in that and have faith in His wisdom.”

Though Alzheimer’s is a tragic final stage, Reagan would surely view it as a transition to something better-to a rainbow waiting around the bend. No matter what Ronald Reagan was robbed of by that evil called Alzheimer’s, the disease can’t take that away from him.

Dr. Kengor also quotes Michael Reagan's moving comments:

His son, Michael, is one of a small circle permitted to visit him in these final days. “I sit with him, grab his hand, and silently pray,” says Michael, whose unresponsive dad no longer squeezes his hand in return. “I pray that God takes him and relieves him of his situation. God does what He believes is best. My dad always believed that.”

Ronald Reagan’s last days are very similar to his mother’s. Nelle ebbed away from what the Reagan family termed “senility”-what we today would likely diagnose as Alzheimer’s. Nelle and her boy not only shared the same faith but the same fate.

Nelle’s son explained that her passing was for the best, particularly because of her mental state-an attitude he bequeathed to his own son. “I know where my dad is going,” said Michael. “When he dies, I’ll have no reason to be sad. I’ll be saddened that he’ll be leaving this place. But I’m overjoyed over where he’s going. I guarantee he would be overjoyed-thrilled.”

We wish them all strength and peace. God bless.

Just to shake his hand

Si Frumkin, Holocaust survivor and human rights activist, remembers his last meeting with Ronald Reagan.

The last time I met Reagan was after he had left office, sometime in the early 90`s. I got a call from someone in Washington who told me that a member of the Russian Duma was coming to Los Angeles to see President Reagan and asked if I’d be willing to interpret during the visit, just in case the Russian didn`t speak any English.

As it turned out, my services were not really needed. Ilya Zaslavsky, the young Russian parliamentarian, was quite fluent in English. We met in the lobby of the Century City office building where Reagan`s office was on the top floor. Secret Service agents accompanied us into the elevator that didn`t even have the top floor marked on its control panel. Our escort used a special key to go up and President Reagan came out. smiling, to greet us.

Our meeting lasted less than twenty minutes. Mr. Zaslavsky, who is handicapped and uses crutches to walk, had been elected to the Duma in 1989 on a disabled rights platform. In 1990, still in his early thirties, he was elected to head the Oktyabrsky district in Moscow, a ward of 230,000 people. (I got this information off the Internet. Mr. Zaslavsky never mentioned how important or clever or powerful he was — he just sat there, awed, listening to Reagan).

He and the former president complimented one another, Reagan told a few jokes, and we had our pictures taken. Eventually Reagan presented Mr. Zaslavsky with an autographed copy of his book, we all smiled, shook hands and the visit was over.

We took the elevator down and when we walked into the Century City sunshine I had a brief farewell conversation with Mr. Zaslavsky. I then understood much that hadn`t been clear to me before and probably isn`t yet clear to people like those CBS executives who approved the Reagan miniseries that raised such an outcry. It never will be clear to the show business attack mongrels whose salaries exceed their IQs by a million to one.

I asked Zaslavsky what his plans were for Los Angeles and offered to drive him around and show him the city.

He seemed surprised. "I am not staying in L.A.," he said. "I am on my way to the airport. I am catching a plane back to Washington."

"Oh?" I said, smiling. "It doesn`t seem that it was worth a trip from Washington to L.A. and back again just for twenty minutes with Reagan. Was it?"

He looked at me in honest amazement. I had a distinct feeling that he thought me surprisingly stupid.

"Not worth it?" he said in disbelief. "What are you talking about? This is a man who saved our country. He saved Europe. He probably saved the world — and America as well. Are you kidding? I would travel a week, a month, just to shake his hand."

He slowly turned and limped away. I stood there, embarrassed. Zaslavsky`s contempt for my ignorance was well deserved.

He was right. Ronald Reagan did win the most important battle of the 20th century. He recognized the Evil Empire for the evil that it was, he took it on, and he won. He recognized and believed that America`s destiny and America`s duty is to fight evil.

If it weren`t for President Reagan, the Soviet Union might still be a superpower and the U.S. might be isolated, alone and facing a hostile, Soviet-dominated world.

The mental midgets and historical illiterates who denigrate his accomplishments will be forgotten, but the generations of those who will live as free men and women will honor his name.

Bush starts campaign

Mark your calendar: President Bush will be interviewed for an hour by Tim Russert on Sunday's Meet the Press. Enough of the past year's 10:1 nattering negativity from the Democratic pack -- let the real contest begin.

The axis of evil

The Telegraph in London reports that Iran's nuclear program suddenly looks more ominous, and the connection to Pakistan's nuclear storefront has been the key enabler.

America has convincing new evidence that Iran is hiding an atomic bomb project despite Teheran's promise to open up all of its nuclear facilities to international inspectors, a senior US official has told The Telegraph.

He said the Teheran regime was secretly trying to build a second and more advanced uranium enrichment plant in parallel to the large facilities in the town of Natanz revealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year.

"There is no doubt in our mind that the Iranians have a lot that the IAEA does not know about," said the official. "The Iranians have a military programme that the IAEA has never set eyes on."

Another western source confirmed that the nuclear technology smuggling network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear weapons scientist, had sold much more equipment to Iran than Teheran has so far admitted to.

The latest intelligence on Iran, if corroborated, will ignite an intense international crisis with the Iranian regime.

The US seems, for the moment, to be seeking to strangle Iran's nuclear programme through inspections and diplomatic agreements brokered by Europe.

But the presence of US troops either side of Iran - in Iraq and Afghanistan - is a reminder to the regime that Washington retains the declared option of "pre-emptive" military action.

Western intelligence agencies are trying to find out whether Iran and other countries have bought a design for a nuclear bomb that was sold to Libya by Pakistani scientists.

Officials will not say precisely how they have established that Iran is still working on an atomic bomb. But a wealth of information is emerging from the unravelling of the "nuclear supermarket" supplied by Mr Khan. Western intelligence services were already acting against the nuclear black market before Pakistani authorities began to "debrief" Mr Khan.

It is possible that along with the seizure of maraging steel shipments bound for Libya and North Korea, the intelligence agencies found a similar trail leading to Iran.

Nevertheless, officials admit that their information is still "sketchy".

It is unclear whether Iran has assembled a secret "G2" centrifuge plant, or even whether it has all the necessary components.

Diplomats in Vienna say, for instance, that Libya still had large "holes" in its centrifuge programme before abandoning the project.

"There is much that we don't know," said the senior US source. "We don't know how far the Iranians have gone, but they are making progress. "They are developing a completely indigenous capability. At some point cutting off the external support will not be enough to stop it."

WMD dominoes falling

The editors of The Wall Street Journal credit President Bush with the new progress on exposing the extent of WMD progress among the world's rogue states.

All of this anti-WMD progress contrasts dramatically with what took place during the late 1990s, when the U.S. was supposedly just as worried about nuclear proliferation. We now know that those were the years when Mr. Khan spread his nuclear wares, when Gadhafi gathered his centrifuges, when Iraq kicked out U.N. inspectors and Iran deceived the world, and when North Korea was preparing to enrich uranium even while it negotiated new "disarmament" deals with the Clinton Administration. One obvious conclusion is that none of these proliferators believed the U.S. or U.N. were serious about confronting them. And at the time they were right.

All of that changed with the Bush policy of challenging terrorists and the states that support them after 9/11. With the fall of the Taliban and Saddam, the world's dictators have learned that protecting terrorists or pursuing WMD can interfere with lifetime tenure. So they are deciding to turn state's evidence, against themselves and others. Or to put it in terms even Washington may understand: The Bush strategy is working.

Ouch

New research on economic freedom in North America comes to a sobering conclusion for our northern neighbors.

"Aside from Alberta, all of the Canadian provinces, including Ontario, are in the bottom 10 in economic freedom and have levels of prosperity matched only by a few poor U.S. states, like Mississippi."

Tip via Relapsed Catholic

Danger Man

Treaty-based non-proliferation efforts don't seem to work very well. But invading one or two dangerous, oppressed countries and overthrowing their dictators seems to get great results, like convincing fellow despots to give you all his banned stuff and thereby expose an active clandestine network.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is alarmed by revelations of a large global nuclear black market and is calling on countries to deal with companies and individuals involved in such trafficking.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, told reporters experts need to overhaul export controls on nuclear components. He said the Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed to transferring secret nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran was just the "tip of the iceberg."

IAEA spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, says Mr. Khan was not working alone.

"This apparent nuclear supermarket is the most dangerous phenomenon we've seen in many years," said Mark Gwozdecky. "Unfortunately it doesn't end with Mr. Khan and for us what we need to know is who supplied what, when and to whom and did anyone else get this kind of assistance."

However, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is still walking his tightrope and the outcome is uncertain.

President Musharraf said the two-month-long government investigation into the proliferation of nuclear secrets will not be passed on to any international agency, and Mr. Khan will not be handed over to any other country for further interrogation.

"This is a sovereign country," said Mr. Musharraf. "Nobody, no document will be given, no independent investigation will take place here, and we will not submit to any United Nations coming inside here. But if anyone in the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] wants to come here and ask us, and come and discuss whatever we have found and investigated, by all means we are open, we will tell them every thing."

Pakistan, with a nuclear arsenal sitting in a sea of corruption, poverty, and Islamic radicalism, is still the most dangerous place on earth. Mansoor Ijaz, interviewed today on Fox News, thinks the U.S. should cut off all aid if Pakistan won't submit to external controls and audits.

Standing firm

British journalist Melanie Phillips has found grounds to admire Tony Blair at last, over the case for war with Iraq.

I am an implacable opponent of most of what this government does. But the tenacity with which Tony Blair is standing his ground on this issue, in the teeth of widespread catcalls, ridicule and pressure from so much of the country and the media, is heroic. He is doing so, it seems to me, because he still genuinely believes what he was told when he came to office, that Saddam was an unconscionable threat that had to be dealt with and that the nexus between terrorism and WMD was the most deadly danger facing the whole world. Like him, I still believe that to be the case.

Bores

Sci-fi magus Ray Bradbury was interviewed by Fox News about the current and future state of space exploration. This passage was enjoyable:

Foxnews.com: So you think for a while we were ahead of what you predicted, but since then we've fallen behind?

Bradbury: Today we’ve lost interest. It’s a shame. Most members of Congress are politicians. They’re bores. They’re damn boring. They have no imagination, and they don’t know how to imagine the future. So my word to them is, get out of the way and let me happen. Let me predict it for you.

Foxnews.com: So when Bush announced his plan to send people to Mars, what was your reaction?

Bradbury: I sent him a copy of an article I wrote called "Destination Mars." And I’m sending him a copy today of "The Martian Chronicles."

Foxnews.com: Did you hear back from him?

Bradbury: Well that’s too soon, too soon.

Foxnews.com: Do you think his proposal was a good one?

Bradbury: Oh, yes, of course.

Foxnews.com: Do you think the government is going to follow through on it?

Bradbury: Well, most of the politicians are bores, aren’t they? We just don’t know. But I’ll keep yelling at them.

The piggy paganism

Not to dwell overmuch on flasher Janet Jackson, but wise Peggy Noonan said some good things today about the "controversy" that are worth noting.

I got home about 9 p.m. and put on the television. It looked like a good game. I logged on to Drudge, and saw the big picture of Justin Timberlake, whose expression could have been described as evil if his face had more intelligence, turned toward Janet Jackson, whose famous breast was exposed to show the famous nipple decorated by the famous Goth-looking metal sunburst.

Oh no, I thought. We're back to the pre-9/11 freak show.

You have all followed the great controversy, although I'm not sure controversy is the right word for an incident the facts of which no normal human would debate. Was it deliberate? No, the Goth pastie, the lyrics "I'll have you naked before the end of this song," and Janet Jackson's slowness to cover her breast and quickness to enact what she thinks is a look of shame, make it clear it was all an accident. Did MTV know it would happen? No, when they put out the announcement promising "shocking moments" from Ms. Jackson, they didn't mean anything by it. Did the--let's be generous--perhaps retarded Justin Timberlake realize he'd gone too far? Of course--that's why he issued the winking statement about "wardrobe malfunction." Was the NFL taken aback? Gosh, they must have been--who would think MTV would do something vulgar and highly sexualized? Will an FCC fine of $27,500 stop the networks? Oh sure, in their tracks.

Now they're saying the answer is a tape delay. Believe me, half the country would like to put the entire culture on a tape delay.

Why was the piggy paganism of the Super Bowl so obnoxious? Our culture has been sick for a while--highly sexualized, violent, inspirational to the unstable. Our media have for decades been robbing our children of the not-knowingness that is the hallmark of childhood. It's not new; it's just worse, or perhaps I mean more obvious. This was the Super Bowl, after all, a football game in early-evening prime time with children watching, and nice people who hadn't bought into the concept of seeing a sex show.

But at least indignation is broad and deep. So broad and deep there may be hope in it. Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, in stepping over the line, could wind up being remembered as the entertainers who reminded us there is a line, or should be.

This might be a frog-in-the-water moment. You remember: You put a frog in a nice cool pot of water, and he's happy and swims around. But if you put a flame underneath the pot and slowly raise it, chances are he'll boil to death. On the other hand, if you dump a frog in a boiling pot of water, he'll jump right out and be saved.

Our culture has been on a boil for years. Then it cooled a bit. The other night at the Super Bowl they put the flame higher and the water began to boil. The frog--that would be us--is still alive. And may, in his shock, jump out of the water.

But the question is: How? How to turn it around.

Strategy

Thomas Lifson, who says he graduated from Harvard Business School one year after George W. Bush did, examines the Bush presidency through the lens of what is taught in that famous MBA program, and comes to some interesting conclusions about setting strategic goals, management style, and... playing poker. Very interesting.

One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.

By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.

Only time will tell, whether Saddam ever had any WMDs. Their non-existence has not been proven. Only time will tell whether or not Osama bin Laden (or his corpse) will be taken into custody by American Troops. Only time will tell whether or not Iraq will continue to make progress toward a transition toward a peaceful democratic government. George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.

We will see by November who has the winning hand.

Read the whole thing
Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit

Fun with software

Veteran journalist William Safire looks back at a 1980s Cold War covert operation under President Reagan, in part because "now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way." What a great story.

The technology topping the Soviets' wish list was for computer control systems to automate the operation of the new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. When we turned down their overt purchase order, the K.G.B. sent a covert agent into a Canadian company to steal the software; tipped off by Farewell, we added what geeks call a "Trojan Horse" to the pirated product.

"The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

Our Norad monitors feared a nuclear detonation, but satellites that would have picked up its electromagnetic pulse were silent. That mystified many in the White House, but "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry. It took him another 20 years to tell me why."

The booboisie?

Does anyone besides me ponder that it's an odd experience to listen to radio host Glenn Beck go on and on (and deservedly so) about the sleazy Super Bowl halftime show, only to be hear (on Houston's KPRC) an ad for "male enhancement" wonder pills during a subsequent commercial break?

The debauchment of our culture is being actively promoted by America's leading corporations, not just a nefarious few exploiters.

Greater KHANistan

Pakistan's radioactive dirty laundry is getting aired at last. Traditional approaches to non-proliferation don't work when expertise and materials can be shared easily through back-channels, or with the complicity of irresponsible governments.

The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, A.Q. Khan, has signed a detailed confession admitting that over the past 15 years he provided Iran, North Korea and Libya the designs and technology to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, according to a senior Pakistani official and three Pakistani journalists who attended a special government briefing here Sunday night.

In a 2 1/2-hour presentation to 20 Pakistani journalists, a senior government official gave an exhaustive and startling account of how Khan, a national hero, made millions of dollars selling secret technology to three countries that have been striving to produce their own nuclear arsenals.

Two of them, Iran and North Korea, were among those designated by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil."

If the Pakistani government account is correct, Khan's admission amounts to one of the most complex and successful efforts to evade international controls to stop nuclear proliferation. The account provided by Pakistan on Sunday night came after years in which the government strongly denied that the government or scientists at the Khan Research Laboratories had sold critical technology to other nations.

Officials detailed how Khan presided over a network that smuggled nuclear hardware on chartered planes, shared secret designs for the centrifuges that produce the enriched uranium necessary to develop a nuclear weapon, and gave personal briefings to Iranian, Libyan and North Korean scientists in covert meetings abroad.

Peace through strength

They'll never win, although they deserve to. But it will be fun to watch Leftists around the world have a collective fit for a few days just over the nomination. Of course, some thoughtful folks think the Peace Prize should go to the American military.

Tony Blair and George Bush have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for waging war on Saddam Hussein.

They have been put forward by a Norwegian politician who said ousting the dictator had reduced the threat of a war with weapons of mass destruction. It also laid the foundation for the development of democracy in Iraq, he said.

The five-member Norwegian awards committee will announce the winner on December 10.

The move has been condemned by anti-war campaigners. Andrew Burgin of the Stop the War Coalition said: "This is completely unbelievable. It shows the stupidity of this peace prize that it is given to people for starting wars rather than stopping them."

The nominees are also believed to include Pope John Paul II and the European Union itself.

Nominations closed earlier. Although the list is secret those making the nominations often announce who they have put forward.

Mr Blair and Mr Bush have been nominated several years in a row, this time by Jan Simonsen of the right-wing Party of Progress.

Hillwatch

Conservative publisher and thinker R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. says the Democratic race is, as usual, really all about Bill and Hillary Clinton.

To understand the 2004 presidential campaign we must bear in mind that there are actually two campaigns going on. The first appears to be a campaign among Democrats for the party's presidential nomination. Actually, as is becoming clearer every day, it is a campaign for control of the party for years to come; and that the Clintons are waging it is increasingly apparent. The second campaign is a historic struggle between the two factions of the 1960s generation--once known as the young right and the young radicals--to claim that generation's identity once and for all. That explains the Democratic contenders' already active vituperation of President Bush, who never joined with fellow Yalies Howard Dean or Sen. Kerry in the peace demonstrations.

The most imminent of these campaigns now is the Clintons' campaign to maintain control of the Democratic Party. Last summer's noisy rise of Mr. Dean, the outsider, sent alarm through the Clinton camp. The open field after New Hampshire is more to their liking. It allowed for Bill's high-profile trip to Washington last week. His influence will grow, and the arrival of a bruised Democratic front-runner at the convention this summer will allow Senator Hillary to play a dominant role. What that role might become will be the topic of many a cable television talk show in the months ahead.

There are Democrats who want to loosen the Clintons' grip on their party. That grip has always been good for the Clintons but bad for the party. Will front-runner Mr. Kerry be the next victim of the Clintons' political research teams? Possibly not--he is the Washington insider that Mr. Dean is not. And it is not clear that he will be sailing into the summer convention with a great deal of brag and bounce. He may be limping in after still more primary battles. Then Hillary will make her grand entrance. With Mr. McAuliffe smiling from the podium her power will be vast. Possibly she will allow herself to be nominated to the No. 2 spot to assist her party in its moment of peril. Either way, Hillary and her husband will remain the Democratic powerbrokers for 2008. Or possibly just the powers.

Speaking of fraudulent

Columnist Mark Steyn has Democratic frontrunner John Kerry in his sights and is underwhelmed, to say the least.

Kerry is the perfect embodiment of the nullity of the modern Democratic Party. It was once said of the British TV host David Frost that he'd ''risen without trace.'' That's John Kerry, a man who's risen without trace, from lieutenant governor to senator and maybe to president, with no accomplishment to show for it other than his own advance in status. Kerry the soldier was a brave man in Vietnam. But Kerry the politician uses his military record as cover for his public service record, which boils down to a quarter-century of finger-in-the-windiness passed off as bold and courageous. How typical the senator is of Vietnam veterans I leave for others to judge. But he's an all too apt embodiment of the Vietnam era: of the fatal lack of resolution that damaged America's standing in the world and emboldened its enemies. And, if Kerry genuinely believes that Tony Blair is ''fraudulent,'' it helps explain a lot of what's wrong with the modern Democratic Party, which would be in much better shape if it was headed by a Blair rather than a Kerry.

No doubt the senator would say that's not what he means. No doubt he has some convoluted answer to explain that when he sneers that Blair and Australia's John Howard are ''fraudulent'' allies it is in fact a sign of his great respect for them. That seems to be his standard explanation -- that all his big votes mean the exact opposite of what they appear to. His vote against the first Gulf War was, he says, a sign of his support for the first Gulf War. Whereas his vote in favor of the Iraq war was a sign of his opposition to the Iraq war. And his vote against funding America's troops in Iraq is a sign of his support for America's men and women in uniform.

On the same principle, I think the best way voters this November can demonstrate their support for Kerry is by voting against him. Just a suggestion.

Via the Chicago Sun-Times

The escaper

Kwon Hyok, a former North Korean intelligence agent, was persuaded to defect to South Korea. Now he's been interviewed about the shocking reality of North Korea's deadly concentration camps.

I listened to his cold and logical testimony remembering the phrase "the banality of evil". His words lacked emotion. He appeared to feel no remorse. He seemed proud that he had earned promotion in the army on the strength of his cold-blooded ruthlessness.

There have been many rumours of human experimentation on political prisoners in North Korea, but never has anyone offered documentary proof. Until now. In Seoul I met Kim Sang Hun, a distinguished human rights activist. He showed me four documents that he told me had recently been snatched illicitly from Camp 22.

They were headed Letter of Transfer, marked Top Secret and dated February 2002. They each bore the name of a male victim; his date and place of birth. The text read: "The above person is transferred from Camp 22 for the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons."

The location was named: Vinalon Plant 2.8. There was a North Korean stamp saying Prison Camp 22.

Kim Hang Sun was convinced that this was not a forgery. The paper, the handwriting, the bureaucratic format, the official stamps and the document's provenance all convinced him that it was authentic.

I took one of the documents to a Korean specialist in London who examined it and confirmed that there was nothing to suggest that it was a forgery. I wanted to run a check of my own with Kwon Hyok. Without showing him the Letter of Transfer, I asked him, without prompting him in any way: "How were the victims selected when they went for human experimentation? Was there some bureaucracy, some paperwork?"

"When we escorted them to the site we would receive a Letter of Transfer," he said.

Kim Hang Sun had two explanations for why Kwon Hyok seemed so lacking in emotion. First, they are damaged people, he said, brought up in a perverted value system. But second, he said that many defectors bring stories of chemical weapons experiments in North Korea and they are always surprised at the shocked reaction. In North Korea, they claim, it's common knowledge. They are surprised that we're surprised.

Via The Telegraph (UK)

Brandi bras

The U.S. Army's ingenuity extends into all areas as needed, according to US News & World Report.

When Army Reserves chief Lt. Gen. James Helmly talks about troop support in Iraq, he doesn't just mean hot food and letters from home. Lately, it's been about sports bras. Yup, those undergarments made famous by soccer star Brandi Chastain, who ripped off her shirt in the excitement of winning the 1999 World Cup. He tells us that women reservists want them--now. "I don't really know anything about these things," the crusty 37-year vet says somewhat shyly. But he's not passing the buck. He told his staff to skip the normal purchasing rules to buy them, even at the corner store if they have to. "I told them to go out to the Sports Authority and buy them," crows the three-star general. His order is already having a big impact. Female reservists don't get clothing allowances like active-duty soldiers to buy sports bras. But soon the bras will be standard issue when reservists are mobilized. As for those already in Iraq sans "Brandi bras," the Army says it'll be sending care packages of sports bras to Baghdad.

"None of the above"

Commentary on the New Hampshire primary is pretty much yesterday's news by now, but Mark Steyn's cutting take on Wesley Clark's dismal performance is too close to the bone not to take note. Read the whole thing for more insight into winner-by-default Kerry and the other also-rans.

General Wesley Clark hailed his spectacular triumph — of getting 12 per cent — when he’d only got into the race four months ago. This is true. Nor did he need to rent an apartment. But four months ago a CNN poll showed him beating Bush 49 per cent to 46 per cent, and in the end he could barely find 12 per cent of Democrats willing to vote for him. New Hampshire is said to have more veterans per capita than any other state. Kerry campaigned with veterans at every stop. Clark campaigned with the support of Michael Moore, the corpulent conspirazoid; George McGovern, who rivals Walter Mondale as the Greatest Living Democratic Party Loser; and Madonna, the well-known resident of the United Kingdom. September’s white knight had shrivelled away to the candidate of the carny-folk Left. He was supposed to be the sane alternative to Dean; instead, Kerry snaffled that role, and left Clark to frolic on the grassy knoll as the crazy alternative to Dean.