LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 12/20/07 & Holiday Hiatus

3 posts: (1) Christmas Gift: Al-Qaeda's Family Feud!--Us v. Them; (2) Iraq: Barry McCaffrey Sees Victory Within Reach--Us v. Them; (3) 2008 Campaign Themes: Change, Faith and Fakery--The Home Front.  LFTC goes on holiday hiatus until Monday, January 7, 2008.

Christmas Gift: Al-Qaeda's Family Feud!

The New York Sun reports that a highly-influential radical Egyptian cleric, whose writings sparked the growth of al-Qaeda and its war against America, has now recanted.  The cleric has issued a fatwa calling for ending the jihad, which has infuriated Ayman al-Zawahiri.  To which the cleric responds that in the 1980s al-Zawahiri snitched to the Egyptian authorities, turning in his radical colleagues.  Rejoice when the enemy plunges into civil war.  More details are provided by the Mideast Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in this December 14 translation of the cleric's call.

Iraq: Barry McCaffrey Sees Victory Within Reach

Retired general and war hero (Vietnam & Gulf War) Barry McCaffrey urges us to "seize the moment" in Iraq.  He cites growing reconciliation between ethnic groups, al-Qaeda on the run, radical Shia thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr neutralized, a strong, effective Iraqi army and progress in curbing Iraqi police corruption, as benefits that flowed from the surge.  On the debit side are a hapless central government and a "clumsy" constitution.  McCaffrey believes we will reach the endgame in Iraq in two years, and that victory is within our grasp.  With 34,000 casualties and $400 billion spent, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is not an option.

2008 Campaign Themes: Change, Faith and Fakery

Dick Morris and spouse (Eileen McGann) identify what they see as Hillary's big blunder: making her experience her campaign theme, when voters are looking for change.  They see Hill-Barack as a replay of Nixon-Kennedy.  She is rewriting history, too, taking credit for what her husband accomplished. Hill as Tricky Dick is especially appealing, because as a young lawyer she served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment investigation that ultimately brought Nixon down.  Bill Kristol writes that ending the Clinton era in American politics is worth getting a Democratic candidate who will run stronger than Hillary next fall; he reviews recent hardball political tactics that the Clinton's have used against Obama, which Hill presaged Dec. 2, warning that "now the fun part starts."  Hillary's idea of kiddie fun must have been setting fire to turtles.  Author Sally Bedell Smith writes (in a masterpiece of understatement): "Bill Clinton's mere presence in the West Wing would be intimidating and complicating. Given his unrivaled experience and huge personality, it's safe to assume that he would be no Denis Thatcher, walking two steps behind."  No Denis Thatcher, indeed.  Denis, a successful businessman, was not known for dating behind Maggie's back.  Well, if Bill makes it as First Lug, you can be sure of one thing: There will be no hi-jinks in the Oval Office on Madame President's watch.

Witty Wes Pruden smells the whiff of desperation in Hill's campaign, and in a follow-on column sees Hillary's campaign "cratering."  Columnist David Brooks appraises Obama versus Hillary, and concludes that while Hill has been a better senator, with more legislative accomplishments, Obama  will be the better campaigner in a close contest.  Brooks says that Obama is inner-directed, unlike most politicians, who are insecure and outer-directed.  Further, his past statements are consistent with his current campaign.  Finally, whereas Hillary is of the school of domestic politics that sees opponents as evil, Obama sees the potential for good and evil in everyone, and thus does not play politics as mortal combat.  Brooks concludes, in favor of Obama over Hillary: "The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country."  NRO's Noemie Emery finds strong parallels between Hillary and Al Gore in their clumsy, irritating manner, and predicts that like Gore, Hill will fail.  A Concord Monitor poll shows Obama passing Hillary (within the error margin) in New Hampshire.  Obama has made one misstep, however: It seems that while Oprah drew large crowds, her endorsement cost him support in voter polls.  Score on for sensible, post-9/11, voters.

MSNBC's Howard Fineman reports that Hill will probably lose four early contests: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.  Of complaints coming now from her hubby's campaign crew, Fineman calls that "circular firing squad" behavior, a sign of an imploding campaign.  Fineman sees Obama with momentum that easily trumps Hillary's meaningless national poll lead; Obama & Hillary are even in New Hampshire.  Hill, for her part, has embarked on a "likability" tour that smacks of the periodic "charm offensive" tours of Soviet leaders during latter stages of the Cold War.  It escapes Hill that people who are truly likable do not need likability tours--can you imagine Barack Obama doing one, or John McCain (the latter better liked by voters than by his fellow senators, who have encountered McCain's legendary temper)?

The key for the Democratic outcome is in which primary the 37 percent of New Hampshire voters not declared for either major party decide to vote.  Hillary's strength is with registered Democrats; Obama polls at 40 percent with undeclared voters.  The Iowa returns will decide in which primary these voters go.  If Romney maintains his longtime lead in New Hampshire (much of whose TV market includes Massachusetts stations, making Romney, a former governor of the Bay State, a familiar figure in the Granite State), look for these voters to probably vote in the Democratic contest.  So Hill faces an uphill (sorry about that!) climb if she is to win New Hampshire.

Poetic Peggy Noonan sees Hill's campaign as a Potemkin Village, a "queenly procession" to coronation starting in Iowa.  Here is Peg's money paragraph:

"This thought occurs that Hillary Clinton's entire campaign is, and always was, a Potemkin village, a giant head fake, a haughty facade hollow at the core. That she is disorganized on the ground in Iowa, taken aback by a challenge to her invincibility, that she doesn't actually have an A team, that her advisers have always been chosen more for proven loyalty than talent, that her supporters don't feel deep affection for her. That she's scrambling chaotically to catch up, with surrogates saying scuzzy things about Barack Obama and drug use, and her following up with apologies that will, as always, keep the story alive. That her guru-pollster, the almost universally disliked Mark Penn, has, according to Newsday, become the focus of charges that he has "mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent" and that the top officials on the campaign have never had a real understanding of Iowa."

Michael Barone informs us that the Democrats are running to the left of the races run by the only two Presidents their party has had in forty years.  In part this is because, he opines, the median voter was born in 1964, and doesn't recall the stagflation 1970s.  The result has been to shrink the share of the electorate receptive to small government ideas.

On the Republican side, PN sees Mike Huckabee's rise as signaling a new intensity in the politics of faith among Christians, and wonders if Ronald Reagan could win today.  Charles Krauthammer detects "an overdose of public piety" in the scrap over faith between Huckabee and Mitt Romney.  Noting the Constitution's "no religious test" clause (Art. VI, sec. 3), CK distinguishes between religious faith as a factor in forming a candidate's beliefs on issues, which is legitimate free exercise, and putting faith forward as a unique qualifier, which smacks of establishing an official state religion.  Wes Pruden sees the faith broadsides as the disingenuous use of "artful apology" to keep the issue alive and festering.

WSJ's Kimberly Strassel interprets Ron Paul's campaign as showing (contra Barone) the continuing resonance of limited government and lower taxes among Republican voters.  Morris & McGann opine that the Jan. 15 Michigan primary is "make or break" for Republicans, and that two candidates will emerge as still viable, with Florida (Jan. 29) and Tsunami Tuesday (Feb. 5, 23 states) deciding the Republican contest.  They see Huckabee winning Iowa, Romney winning New Hampshire.  The winner between them and in Michigan (edge to Romney, with roots there--his dad was governor forty years ago), will face either Rudy or McCain on Jan. 29 & Feb. 5.

Fineman thinks Rudy's love tryst security situation undercut Rudy badly, and that Romney is toast if he loses Iowa, where he has lost a big lead.  A Daily News poll shows women voters judging Judi Nathan's affair with Rudy more harshly than they did Bill & Monica, because they see Judi as a home-wrecker.  NRO's Rich Lowry opines that Rudy is in serious trouble, and unlikely to recover.

John McCain doesn't even get a mention from Fineman (who will not be, one suspects, presidential press secretary in a McCain administration).  As I write this, Fox Cable is reporting that the latest Rasmussen poll in Iowa shows Huckabee slipping and Romney recovering, with 10-point swings.  Huckabee has been in various gun-sights, and his negatives are clearly being driven up.  If he loses in Iowa, he could implode quickly.  The Concord Monitor poll re New Hampshire shows Romney with a solid lead over Rudy and McCain, and no sign of slippage.  Rudy, whose Florida poll numbers have plummeted, putting him behind Romney and Huckabee, gave a major speech Saturday.  There is reason to doubt the Rasmussen poll in Florida, as whether an automated poll can reach a representative sample of the state's voters can be, and thus Rudy's advisers profess not to be worried.

NRO's Mona Charen makes a crisp pitch for Romney, as does this endorsement from the editors of National Review.  Stephen Hayes recounts an Iowa town meeting where he feels Fred Thompson showed that he may be getting into a higher gear, at last, in reaching Republican primary voters.  Pat Buchnan thinks that the Republican nominee will either be Romney or Huckabee, with McCain having a shot, and Rudy and Fred already toast.  But Robert Novak cautions that Huckabee has not wrapped up the Baptist segment of the evangelical vote.  The American Spectator's Washington Prowler offers two tantalizing tidbits: Had Thompson entered sooner and embraced conservative immigration policies, Tom Tancredo would have passed the race; and it seems that Huckabee lives on his small pension, his wife's earnings and--get this--speech homoraria paid him by his own company.

A WSJ interview with McCain shows a chipper McCain; pundit Fred Barnes notes that McCain's chances hinge on winning New Hampshire, where some polls now show him drawing even with Mitt Romney, unlike the one taken by the Concord Monitor.  A WSJ editorial divines a "surge" in McCain's campaign, which it attributes to the senator's steadfastness on Iraq, and to Joe Lieberman's crossover endorsement, which should help in New Hampshire.  On Fox Cable, pollster Scott Rasmussen said that as of now it looks as if independent voters in New Hampshire are leaning toward voting in the Democratic primary, which would, if this preference holds, augur well for Obama and ill for McCain, their two preferred candidates.

Which brings us to a more dangerous problem: fakery.  Some fakery is relatively harmless, as it fools no one.  Hillary saying of herself, "this old girl," amuses, because no one thinks of her as a "girl"; she is, as everyone knows, a tomboy on steroids.  John Edwards posing a tribune of the poor contrasts with his trillion-dollar hair coifs and airport-sized living quarters--enjoy William Buckley's dissection of Edward's faux populism.  But Mike Huckabee, of genial charm, is another matter.  NRO's Rich Lowry wonders if Republican primary voters are about to commit "Huckacide": nominating a lightweight with zero foreign policy experience, no serious staff support and a talent for sound bites, who wears his religiosity on his sleeve.  On ABC, George Will cited Huckabee's having, as Arkansas governor, given more clemencies than his three predecessors combined (one of whom was, of course, Bill Clinton), and also his opposition to school choice, hardly a conservative position.  An NRO piece recounts a clemency given to a Huckabee campaign contributer, one that smells.  Kimberley Strassel has more on Huckabee's Arkansas ethics during his gubernatorial stint: He was investigated 14 times for violations, and given 5 admonishments.  No wonder Democrats are salivating.

Worse, Huckabee now has published his first views on foreign policy, on Foreign Affairs Quarterly's Jan.Feb.'08 issue; a report on what he said does not inspire me, nor does the full-length version.  Huckabee accuses the White House of a "bunker mentality" on Iraq, not doing enough to pressure Pakistan, and says that we can contain Iran.  The first charge was true for 2004-2006, when the insurgency, and the administration's insistence on pursuing a strategy that was clearly not creating permanently secured areas, was wrecking Iraq policy.  It assuredly is not true since 43 launched the surge--in defiance of the Iraq Study (Surrender) Group's December 2006 stinker, and after a decisive "change policy" vote in November gave Congress to the Democrats.  The surge has given us a final chance to get a reasonable outcome in Iraq.

Huckabee's Pakistan policy is basically what Barack Obama said, except that Huckabee doesn't advocate sending in more troops.  Pressure Pakistan to do more: what an original idea.  The question is, of course, how to do that, and until January's parliamentary elections we will not know the lay of the political landscape, which will then suggest what options, if any, we may realistically have.  As for containing Iran, which Huckabee says "we might be able to live with," he comes out against putting boots on the ground" there.  No one suggests we do so (except perhaps temporarily, in hot pursuit of Iranian forces if they attack us in Western Iraq).

Huckabee was caught by surprise last week, re the NIE on Iran, which he did not learn about until prompted by reporter's questions, to which he answered that he had not been reading the newspapers while campaigning.  Apparently, no one on his staff did, either, or they'd have (presumably) briefed him.  This hardly gives confidence in his competence, given the monster publicity on the NIE, which upended 43's Iran military options.  Worst of all is a cheap shot Huckabee takes on troop levels in Iraq.  He reaches back to the prewar sacking of Gen. Eric Shinseki, who said we should send more troops (he was sacked by Rumsfeld), and says this: "I would have met with Shinseki privately and carefully weighed his advice."

Really.  Talk about opportunistic shots.  Everyone knows we did not have enough troops.  Huckabee could have made general reference to that, but to pull Shinseki's name out of the hat and assert that he would, five years ago, have met with him (a claim impossible to disprove), is raw opportunism.  Huckabee covers himself, avoiding the "I would have taken his advice" phrasing, an overt fake.  Instead, he says that he would have "weighed" Shinseki's counsel--making Huckabee appear thoughtful.  He thus makes of himself a retroactive sage, one of life's more fun self-designations.  One can be sure that Huckabee had never even heard of Shinseki until well after the first phase of the war.

Stephen Hayes writes that Huckabee also wants to close Guantanamo, end aggressive interrogation techniques, and apply the Golden Rule in foreign policy.  This is a non-sequitur, as al-Qaeda scorns reciprocity.  In open debate Huckabee acknowledged poverty in Darfur (thanks, Mike!), but said that there is poverty also in the Delta, an answer a liberal Democrat would be proud to give.

Recall the last nominee who did combined the politics of faith loudly trumpeted with zero foreign policy experience, a peanut farmer from Georgia.  Alas, he won, and America nearly lost the Cold War.  Huckabee may be at the peak of his public reputation, as scrutiny has only become serious in the past few weeks.  NRO's Peter Wehner has more on Huckabee's shallow thinking on world affairs.  Huckabee counters the charge that he lacks foreign policy credentials by asserting that Ronald Reagan lacked them.  This is not true: Reagan's published radio broadcasts include lots of detailed discussions of foreign policy and defense matters, and show a candidate with a keen grasp of both.

So, while Democrats pursue change, which WSJ reporter Gerald Seib says is driving voters to "want to send change roaring through the system like a gale-force wind in 2008," Republicans wrestle with candidate authenticity and illegal immigration: WSJ editor Jason Riley explains why Hispanic voters are furious at Republicans--they now lean 57-23 for Democrats, a 21-point loss for Republicans in the past 18 months.  On the Democratic side, Hillary has a million ideas, but, she says, we cannot afford all of them (true), and Barack basks in Oprah's mega-star celebrity halo.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is contacting consultants as to their availability should Mayor Mike make a third-party bid.  Presumably, after Tsunami Tuesday (Feb. 5) the state of the Democratic and Republican fields will be sufficiently clear to enable him to decide if he has enough running room to potentially win.  The first day he can register to run as a third-party candidate is Mar. 5, just after the Mar. 4 Texas primary.  As a lifelong Democrat who registered Republican solely to have an easier primary race in his bid to succeed Rudy, and who since his re-election conveniently discovered he really is an Independent (as a liberal, he could never get the Republican nod), Hizzoner can run as the "change" candidate.  Who better than a political chameleon to promise change?  Mayor Moneybags, who makes Mitt Romney's demi-billionaire bankroll look like a pauper's wallet, can finance a billion-dollar campaign with ease.

Bloomie's record as Big Apple Mayor is uneven, with his most notable achievement being continued crime rate reduction; also, he is a solid crisis manager, always good in a chief executive.  He strongly pushed education reform, and fought the educrat class on some issues (not others), with mixed results.  His worst failure was that he relented, after the obscene three-day transit strike at Christmastime two years ago, and let the union get off mostly scot-free, after a strike that cost the city a billion dollars, forced businesses into bankruptcy and forced commuters to walk in bitterly cold weather.  No Reagan he, Bloomie did not decertify the union (as Reagan did with the air-traffic controller union in 1981), and re-hire at reasonable rates, say, two-thirds of the swollen transit worker roster.

It is unlikely, however, that political opponents can make much of what is an essentially local issue, in a national race.  Mayor Mike's ideas are mostly liberal Democratic, though, and he may draw more from the Democratic nominee than from the Republican.  In an election where neither major party candidate is likely to articulate a clear ideological position, and where the electorate is anxious and fragmented, and with Bloomberg, unlike Perot, being of even, reassuring personal temperament, a third-party candidacy looks more viable than it was in 1992, unless the major parties and their standard-bearers get their collective acts together.  The latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows voters disgusted with the President, both parties in Congress, and Washington in general.  Figure that Mayor Mike will see these numbers.

George Will sees in this season a replay of the 1970s campaigns, with Nixonian indirect character assassination (Nixon used paralepsis: "I'm not going to talk about my opponent's x, y, or z") plus Carteresque hyper-piety.  Will also sees Hillary's experience card as a resume of one bad judgment after another: two failed attorney-general nominations, then the ghastly Janet Reno, who gave us 86 dead at Waco; then kidnapped a 6-year-old child, whose mother had drowned to give him a life in America, and sent him back to a tyranny; and the endless Whitewater mess.  Reno also gave us, which Will is too kind to mention, the full-bore "Chinese wall" between law enforcement and intelligence that helped pave the way for 9/11.  Hill's one priority was a female A-G--consider 86 dead collateral casualties of gender identity politics.  And, of course, there was Hill's health care debacle, which gave the Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years.  On the Republican side, Will shows that Huckabee is the anti-Reagan, far more divergent from conservatism than Rudy.

WSJ's Dan Henninger laments the endless 2007 campaign, much of it in Iowa, and is relieved that it is nearly time to start counting votes.  His remedy: repeal campaign financing laws, which force candidates to spends zillions of hours raising funds.  This is a good idea, for First Amendment reasons as well.  Ex-43 guru Karl Rove suggests longer primaries within a shorter campaign season.  Rove points out that in 2000 there were 7 primaries in the five weeks beginning with the Iowa Caucus, but that in 2008 there will be 32 in the same time period.  This time around 50 percent of delegates will have been chosen by Feb. 5 and 75 percent by March 4, thresholds reached one and two months earlier, respectively, than in 2000.  Rove suggests multi-region primary days spaced far enough apart so that voters around the country have a chance to meet the candidates in person, instead of having such evaluations effectively out-sourced to voters in a few early contests, with media bandwagons rolling for the early victors.

One final note: By now I have seen a passel of XMAS videos from the candidates, from Barack's all-American family, kids chirping at the end--a 21st century "Bill Cosby Show"; to Hillary's incredibly contrived shtik: "Where did I put universal pre-K?"; to Edwards's forgotten folks, who must never be forgotten again, which belongs in a 1930s Depression-era movie; to Huckabee's Christmas scene with the bookshelf shaped like a cross, allegedly a subliminal message (Peggy Noonan thinks so), that exudes holiday sweetness; to a smiling Rudy Giuliani jesting his way ISO a likability booster shot, to John McCain using his tale of a cross drawn in the prison dirt for him by a North Vietnamese captor, concededly more moving than any of the others; to...zzzzzzz  Can't one politico give a "Bah, humbug!" message?  Such as:

"Hi, I'm running for President, not First Pop, not First Mom, not First Sibling, not First Friend, and not fFrst Santa.  Your life--and your Christmas--is your affair.  If you want a cuddly candidate, vote for someone else.  If you want a war president who can get the job done and not cry on the air, vote for me.  I won't make you love me, nor will I send you XMAS cards, but I will keep you alive and in one piece!"

Alas, it will never happen.  In all, it's enough to make one look longingly at 2012.  or 20011, or will they start the 2012 campaign the day after the 2010 election, or after the 2008 election....

Oh, here is LFTC's own  Christmas message for our readers: the 1897 New York Sun editorial entitled "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus."  N.B., Santa is a resident of the North Pole, not Washington, DC.

Index 12/20/07

5 posts: (1) 2007: "Bali-Baby, It's Cold Outside!"--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (2) Iran: A Defense Heavyweight Weighs In--The Home Front; (3) FISA Court Mugs ACLU!--The Home Front; (4) Women's Rights: As the Feminists Turn (Away)--Us v. Them; (5) President Bush: A Mideast "Berliner" Moment?--Us v. Them.

2007: "Bali-Baby, It's Cold Outside!"

Geophysicist David Deming gives us the news Al Gore refuses to hear, and the delegates at Bali's enviro-love-fest will ignore: 2007 was a year of record cold in many places.  2007 was the third quietest hurricane season since 1966 (in 2006, no hurricane made landfall in the U.S.).  South America had one of its coldest winters in decades, with snow falling in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918.  Australia had its coldest June ever; exceptional cold hurt New Zealand vintners.  2007 was a very cold year throughout the Southern Hemisphere.  Record, crop-killing lows were set all across the U.S.  A New Zealander, for his part, plans a March 1, 2008 departure on world-record attempt o circumnavigate the globe in 65 days, in a boat powered only with biodeiesel (i.e., renewable) fuel, and with a zero carbon footprint; check the link out, as the boat is a dandy.  The current record is 75 days.

So where does that leave the global warming set that descended upon Bali?  It reminds me of a true tale from 1945.  On a sizzling summer day in LA, songwriter Jule Styne and lyricist Sammy Cahn decided to cool off by writing a winter tune.  The result: "Let it Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!"  A far better, and surely cheaper, product than anything Al Gore and his enviro-pests will ever dream up.

Iran: A Defense Heavyweight Weighs In

Former SecDef and Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger writes that if Iran did slow its nuclear program, President Bush's policies had something to do with it.  He scolds the NIE authors for failing to distinguish clearly in the text (it was hidden in a footnote) between covert uranium enrichment, which the NIE includes in its definition of what constitutes a nuclear weapons program, and overt enrichment, which the NIE deems commercial.  The ex-SecDef notes that the latter is, in fact, "dual-use," and is deemed by amalysts "the long pole in the tent" of nuclear proliferation.  Schlesinger cites four factors that likely influenced Iran's decision to suspend its covert program (if, in fact, the NIE is right that Iran did so): the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq, Libya's decision to end its nuclear program, and our exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

Schlesinger attributes the NIE's silence on what factors influenced Iran to a return to a "hard evidence only" standard for intel reports.  He notes that such limited intel reporting can itself lead to failures to spot things, as happened when the intel community rejected soft evidence indicating that the North Vietnamese were infiltrating supplies into the South via Sihanoukville, in Cambodia (named after Cambodia's then leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk).

FISA Court Mugs ACLU!

Hallelijah!  In a Dec. 11 ruling, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by (who else?) the American Civil Liberties Union, that had sought release of all unclassified documents associated with the administration's electronic surveillance program, with FISA Court review of the government's classification choices, a review that the government asserted the FISA Court lacked jurisdiction to perform.  Judge John Bates held that the FISA Court did have jurisdiction, but dismissed the ACLU's claim in its entirety. 

The FISA Court released its opinion to the public, something it has done only twice before (1981 and 2002) in the Court's three-decade history, out of its thousands of rulings.  Judge Bates noted "an unquestioned tradition of secrecy, based on the vitally important need to protect national security."  He held that the FISA Court lacked authority to review executive branch classification decisions.  The ACLU, he wrote, has neither a common law nor a First Amendment right to gain access to the requested documents.

The good judge then cited considerations for denying such access: compromising sources and methods, that could enable adversaries to evade surveillance, mislead investigators, chill potential sources and damage relations with foreign governments.  He added: "All these potential harms are real and significant, and, quite frankly, beyond debate."

Further, there is a risk that the court might, in ordering disclosure, accidentally disclose information useful to an enemy, and thereby chill its relations with the executive branch.  Finally, the ACLU's most clever argument, that the government's previous defense of its program undercut its entitlement to have documents pertaining to the program kept secret, the Court summarily rejected.  The Court declined to say that the government was, as a practical matter, forced to defend its program, lest it lose it entirely, once the New York Times put selected details on its front page.  Perhaps that was implicit in the judge's thinking.  One hopes so, lest in future instances where the government finds secret data on page on, it is forced to choose between defending the program and having details made public, or dropping the program on grounds of secrecy considerations.  Such a Hobson's choice, common (as "graymail") in criminal cases, where the government drops prosecutions to preserve secrets, must not be forced on the government in wartime national security matters.

Women's Rights: As the Feminists Turn (Away)

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, back in fine form, slams feminist rights groups for ignoring the atavistic anti-women practices of radical Islam.  N.O.W.--which Applebaum names an easy target to pick on--is too busy trying to get women into the Augusta National golf club to worry about Saudi Arabia's misogynist policies (Saudi women can't vote, can't drive and can't leave home without a male relative as escort).  Nor did N.O.W. play any part in criticism of the hideous honor killing of a Canadian teenager by her fanatic father, because his daughter had the temerity to refuse to wear a head-scarf in public.  Applebaum calls for a new worldwide women's movement to stop atavistic radical Islamist maltreatment of women (who get far better treatment in moderate Islamic countries).

Columnist Kathleen Parker credits First Lady Laura Bush with an assist in getting King Abdullah to issue a pardon, due to the First Lady's breast-cancer awareness campaign in the Kingdom, and also in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.  Here are Ms. Parker's money paragraphs:

"Americans, who take breast cancer awareness for granted, also take Laura Bush for granted and underestimate her powers. As witness to her meetings with King Abdullah and others, I can testify that the first lady's personal touch is both deft and profound. What her quiet manner conceals is a fierce spirit; what it reveals is respect for others and the understanding that baby steps precede great strides.

There's no way of knowing what compelled King Abdullah to spare a young woman 200 lashes, but we do know that America's first lady had his ear for a little while.

  It can't have hurt that he listened."

President Bush: A Mideast "Berliner" Moment?

A New York Sun op-ed by Rick Richman, editor of "Jewish Current Issues," suggests that President Bush visit the Israeli town of Sderot in southern Israel, and declare himself a citizen of a town that has been under constant Palestinian rocket fire for more than seven years.  The idea is to replicate JFK's famous words in his "Let Them Come to Berlin" speech.  If 43 declines to do that, Richman concludes that he will show solicitude for a faux "peace process," rather than a commitment to real peace, by rallying world opinion against Palestinian terror.

Here are JFK's money paragraphs from that famous 1963 speech, which 43 will not repeat when he visits the Mideast, at Sderot or anywhere else:

"There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin.

"There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.

"And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.

"I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. …

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

Little known is that JFK made a grammatical error that transformed his intended meaning into a howler, which Germans thankfully ignored--as did global media, understanding his intent.  When Germans declare themselves a Berlin resident, they say: "Ich bin Berliner."  Inserting the indefinite article "ein" changes the meaning, as "ein Berliner" is German for, "a doughnut" in English.  Thus, JFK actually said: "I am a doughnut!."

If someday 43 does give that kind of speech, let's hope he has a better translator than did JFK.  Unlike JFK, 43 would not get a pass from today's media.

Index 12/19/07

3 posts: (1) Iran's Nuclear Push Accelerates--Us v. Them; (2) UN: Living Large in '08-'09?--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (3) English: Queen's Non-English Spoken--Weenie Watch.

Iran's Nuclear Push Accelerates

A jubilant President Ahmadinejad declared victory over the U.S., calling of the NIE report recently released a "declaration of surrender" by the U.S.  Vlad the Bad sent Russia's first nuclear fuel shipment to Iran, for the Bushehr I reactor, which may be put into operation as soon as March 21 (which will give the northern hemisphere a "nuclear springtime").  Iran is supposed to ship spent fuel to Russia for reprocessing, but clandestine diversion is always a prospect, especially as the IAEA inspection process is not designed to catch deliberate cheaters.  Worse, delivery of fuel steeply raises the political cost of a strike at the Bushehr facility, as Vlad no doubt intended.  An Iranian official announced that Iran will not halt its uranium enrichment program.  Indeed, Iran has disclosed plans to build a second nuclear plant.  A confident Iran has just shut down 24 Internet cafes, and detained 23 people too, citing "moral grounds" as justification.

On Fox Cable, Dennis Ross raised two issues: Did Iran stop a covert weapons program?  Will Iran continue its enrichment program?  Ross said (correctly) that the latter is more important, because enrichment is the hard part, not final weaponization; he noted that Israel disagrees with even the U.S. assessment as to Iran's covert program.  The Saudis and other Mideast nations, Ross said, have concluded that the U.S. is walking away from the Iranian issue, and that thus they should relax their own stance towards Iran.  Accommodating the new Big Mideast Kahuna, it seems, will become the order of the day.

The negative wages of the campaign by U.S. intelligence and Foggy Bottom's ambush of the White House increase daily.  President Bush issued this astonishingly lame statement yesterday, on the shipment of fuel by Russia to Iran, stating that now "there was no need for them to learn to enrich."  (43 apparently missed, or else chose to deliberately ignore, the explicit statement by the Iranians that enrichment would continue.)

Meanwhile, and Israel official conceded the obvious: Israel does not have "smoking gun" intel that establishes Iran's program as military.  Had Israel such intel, no doubt it would be sitting on DNI Michael McConnell's desk, and the politically lethal U.S. NIE would never have been issued.  A "smoking gun" as to these matters comes, if at all, when a country actually detonates a nuke.   Thus, between 2002 and 2006, the U.S. took the position that it was unable to confirm that North Korea had nukes, despite the North's 2002 announcement that it had crossed the threshold.  We asserted that the announcement might be a bluff--to be fair, always a possibility when dealing with a mendacious regime.  Only in October 2006, when the North actually set one off, was the issue resolved once and for all.

And so it will be with Iran: Certitude will come, if ever, only if and when Iran generates a mushroom cloud.  A "smoking gun" intel standard thus is a prescription for acceptance of a nuclear Iran, coupled with the hope that Iran does not morph its civilian program into a military one, a transition achievable rapidly once the infrastructure is in place and fuel enrichment is in full swing.

Alan Dershowitz, a veritable Rock of Ages on Israel issues, aptly applies the label "stupid intelligence" to the NIE.  Here is AD's money paragraph:

"Whatever the agenda and whatever the motive this report may well go down in history as one of the most dangerous, misguided and counterproductive intelligence assessments in history. It may well encourage the Iranians to move even more quickly in developing nuclear weapons. If the report is correct in arguing that the only way of discouraging Iran from developing nuclear weapons is to maintain international pressure, then the authors of the report must surely know that they have single-handedly reduced any incentive by the international community to keep the pressure up."

One is reminded of Winston Churchill's acid comment on Neville Chamberlain's infamous "peace in our time" return from the Munich conference in 1938, that the British PM had a choice between war and dishonor, and chose dishonor.  He would get war later.  And so Britain, and the world, did.

UN: Living Large in '08-'09?

A Wall Street Journal editorial gives the UN budget request for the coming fiscal year (2008-2009): a mere 25 percent  increase.  Not included are a couple of billion for "peacekeeping" operations that rarely keep true peace. and where a UN investigation has now found pervasive corruption--illicit contracts to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Oh, and guess how much of the UN's basic $4.8 billion budget (which the U.S. estimates will actually turn out to be $5.2 billion) goes to salaries and administrative overhead?  Try 75 percent--NOT a misprint.  Worse, the UN is planning for 2009 a repeat of its infamous 2001 Durban anti-Semitic hate-fest, as this New York Sun editorial details.  Here is more from ace UN scourge Claudia Rosett, who exposed the UN oil-for-food mess, and warns that U.S. UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is asleep at the switch on this.

When John Bolton was nominated to represent us at the UN, he caught lots of flack for a past remark that if 10 stories were taken out of the 38 stories at Turtle Bay, productivity would improve.  How about keeping 10 and taking out 28?  All of which tees up John Bolton's proposal that the entire UN budget be funded as are the WHO and UNICEF (and a few other agencies), with voluntary contributions.  The result would be to shift control from the General Assembly, with its legions of freeloader recipient nations, to the core major donor nations who actually pay most of the bill.  Put simply, the top eight donor nations fund 72.5 percent of the UN's total budget, while the bottom two-thirds (128 of the UN's 192 members) pay a combined share of less than one percent.  The bottom quarter (48 members) pay all of 0.001 percent, an average of $19,000 per country.  This creates classic moral hazard: underwriting bad behavior by subsidizing costs associated with such behavior.

It has been said by wags that the only difference between Congress and kindergarten is that the former lacks adult supervision.  Turtle Bay, it seems, has too much supervision and too little quality output.  Something for the incoming American administration to ponder, come January 2009.

England: Queen's Non-English Spoken

The Daily Telegraph reports that in about one in 20 English schools, a majority of pupils don't speak English as their native language, with one in 10 schools having no more than one-third of pupils with English as their first language.  Many of these schools are in London, where 20 of the top 30 non-English majority councils are located.  This far from purely a matter of Muslim arrivals, who have been much in the news; since 2004, 600,000 residents of Eastern European countries have emigrated to the Sceptered Isle.  Sir Laurence Olivier, wherefore art thou?

Index 12/18/07

4 posts: (1) Bali: Road Map II and a Big Boo-Hoo--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (2) Syria: Sandbagging Uncle Sam--Us v. Them; (3) Subprimne Bailout: An Entitlement?--The Home Front; (4) The Great White Fleet: A Centennial--Cyber Serendip.

Syria: Sandbagging Uncle Sam

A WSJ editorial notes that last week's assassination of a top Lebanese general, who defeated the Fatah-al-Islam terrorists last summer, has the fingerprints of techniques mastered by Syria.  Syria condemned the killing, as they did when they assassinated Rafik al-Hariri.  Condi has been meeting with Syria's thug-President, Bashir al-Assad, instead of isolating him until he cooperates with the inquiry into the Hariri murder.

Bali: Road Map II and a Big "Boo-Hoo"

There's news from the enviro-pol smog-fest in Bali: It adopted a "Road Map" (not a positive sign, given how the first map, in the Mideast, has been faring).  And in an episode beyond satire, the Dutchman who captained the climate change resolution at the conference which, thanks to the U.S. not caving in, failed to agree on binding carbon emissions targets, burst into tears at the end of the session, and had to be helped off the podium by his colleagues.  (Would you send this guy to hunt for bin Laden?)

Mark Steyn regales us with politically incorrect enviro-stats, for the seven years between the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol and 2004: (a) emissions worldwide increased 18 percent; (b) emissions from Kyoto signatories increased 21.1 percent; (c) emissions by non-signatories increased 10 percent; (d) emissions from the world's Enviro-Bad Boy. the U.S., increased 6.6 percent.  Yep: Emissions from the sanctimonious signers increased by more than triple the U.S. increase.  Don't comb your Bali transcripts ISO worldwide praise for our performance, from either the delegates or the media.  I doubt our own delegation even mentioned it.  But Al Gore, whom Ed Koch nails for it, trashed his own country at Bali, blaming us for sabotaging the summit; Koch rebukes gore for doing so, as a prominent former leader, and notes that China and India will have a larger impact on warming pressures than will the U.S.

Subprime Bailout: An Entitlement?

George Will, at his tart best, skewers bipartisan proposals for bailing out holders of subprime mortgages.  He (accurately) calls it "a government entitlement for risk-takers."  With 93 percent of subprime loans repaid on time, and at most 15 percent in trouble due to mortgage "resets" (rate adjustments), Will opines that it is unfair to bail anyone out, when many borrowers "scrimped and sacrificed to fulfill the obligations of their contracts."  He cites economist Alan Reynolds of CATO (a top-flight one, at that), that about 1/3 of adjustable rate mortgages are with subprime borrowers, and that barely half of subprime loans are at variable rates.

Will's money quote is this: "[I]t is unsurprising that many people who until recently were criticizing lenders for not making money available to marginally qualified borrowers are now caustic about lenders who complied."

Besides retroactively impairing the obligations of contracts, prohibited the states (but, alas, not Congress) by the Contracts Clause of the Constitution, a subprime bailout will have two harmful effects: (1) it will create moral hazard by subsidizing imprudent borrowers; (2) it will discourage lending institutions from creating new instruments to give lower-income borrowers a chance, one many took to their benefit with subprime loans.

The Great White Fleet: A Centennial

Washington Times columnist Austin Bay reminds us of a grand episode in early 20th century American naval history: The Great White Fleet, which set sail Dec. 16, 1907, from Norfolk, Virginia, on a 43,000-mile journey that took 14 months, ending on February 22, 1909--fittingly, George Washington's calendar birthday.  Bay points out that it took private logistical assistance for the voyage to succeed, which led the Navy, a generation later, to develop full-scale logistical support.  Anticipating the military's role in disaster relief, the fleet provided assistance after the Dec. 28, 1908 earthquake that devastated Messina, Italy, killing 100,000 and destroying 90 percent of buildings in the two towns on opposite sides of the Straits of Messina.

WSJ editor Bret Stephens cites two points about the GWF: Teddy Roosevelt was rebuffing pacifists in Congress who opposed its mission, and the GWF sent a cautionary signal to japan, which allied with us in World War I; only with the scrapping of the GWF, per the disastrous Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, was the road to World War II in the Pacific opened.  Maintaining our naval posture in the 21st century, Stephens writes, is essential to sending the right signals to a rising, aspiring Asian hegemon: China.

Here is a naval history site with more on the fantastic voyage of the Great White Fleet.

Index 12/17/07

3 posts: (1) America's Heroes V--The Home Front; (2) Exporting Terror From Iraq--Us v. Them; (3) Baseball's 'Roid Rage Smash-Up--The Home Front.

America's Heroes V

Ralph Peters' final installment in his heroes series introduces us to more heroes.  And a contribution to the charity that sponsors the rehabilitation of severely wounded vets is a sound investment: 97.3 percent of funds received go to help beneficiaries.

Exporting Terror From Iraq

The New York Times reports that al-Qaeda Iraq (AQI) was behind the failed June 2007 bomb plots at airports in London and Glasgow.

Baseball's 'Roid Rage Smash-Up

Former Senator (D-ME) George Mitchell's 409-page report (feel free to read it; I will pass) found pervasive use of performance-enhancing steroids by major league baseball players, including some of the game's most famous names (and not just the new, now-indicted home-run "king").  Several questions are raised by this grand slam at the players: (1) Does widespread use of pharmaceutical boosters, a practice known to, and tolerated by, the owners, and protected, as it were, by a militant players union, undermine the integrity of the game?  (2) How can athletes be role models if drug use is known to be common, even by fans?  (3) What kind of society idolizes such people?

Integrity.  One friend who raced competitively in cycling told me that cyclists considered drug-free competitors (like himself and Lance Armstrong) in a separate class from drug abusers.  This should also be done with baseball records.  Better yet: How about the following rule: We have two leagues, one drug-free and one for abusers.  Anyone in the drug-free league caught abusing drugs is prosecuted criminally and sent away for a long time.  The druggie league can be classed with pro wrestling, as a faked show, instead of true sport.

Role Models.  There seems to be no way to get teenagers to stop idolizing athletes.  So long as girls go for guys who can hit a ball 400 feet, and not eggheads who can name all the presidents, this seems a constant.  Perhaps the only cure is people like Cal Ripken, or football's Darrell Green, who met the sports talent test and also are civilized human beings.  President Bush issued a statement in support of the report, but it was marred by his having called Barry Bonds when Bonds passed Hank Aaron (N.B., passed, not surpassed, as Aaron overtook the Babe the old-fashioned, sportsmanlike way).  While Bonds, in court, is innocent until proven guilty, and may, like O.J., get off, there simply is no other explanation for his suddenly hitting many more homers in his late thirties and early forties, and associated sudden massive gain of muscle, than steroid abuse.  This is one case where trial in advance by public opinion has it right, regardless of how the courtroom case goes.

Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell impales two fallen Gods: Bonds and pitcher Roger Clemens.  Part of the misfortune of the accused superstars is that George Mitchell, as Boswell notes, has public credibility they lack:

"Pete Rose had 10 times the chance against the Dowd report than Clemens has against the august Mitchell. What a public-relations mismatch: a tobacco-chewing, hot-tempered Texas right-hander against a former federal judge and Senate majority leader who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. This time, the Rocket's out of gas and the bullpen is empty."  Especially as Mitchell expressly recommends against punishing past sins.  George Will, on ABC, noted that Yankee Andy Petite used steroids for two days, to aid healing of an injury, and that this is radically different from a sustained regimen designed to artificially boost performance.  Will also read from the criteria for baseball's Hall of Fame, which includes evaluating a candidate's "integrity, sportsmanship and character."

Fans.  Not for nothing is the root of "fan" the word "fanatic."  How else to describe idolizing punks, many of whom have open contempt for the fans?  I blame Curt Flood, the St. Louis Cardinal star whose 1969 lawsuit broke the reserve clause that tied players to teams.  Flood saw himself as a slave, albeit a highly paid one: His $90,000 salary is worth $503,860 in 2006 dollars.  Some slavery.  What free agency did was emancipate athletes from any semblance of managerial control (a power, to be fair, often abused by managers and owners).  Players who are paid more than their managers do not respect them as superior in rank.  Who today would do what Mickey Mantle did, after a dismal season in 1958: the Mick walked into GM George Weiss's office and proposed that he take a 10 percent salary cut, and offer Weiss graciously refused.  Deprived of much disciplinary authority by (naturally) the courts, managerial control collapsed, and player drug abuse soared.  (True, baseball has never been a genteel sport, and no one ever accused Ty Cobb of being an angel.  But performance enhancement in those days was largely confined to abusing baseballs, with substance abuse--alcohol in those days--hardly a performance enhancer.)

Perhaps Mantle summed up today's sports world best when asked, in the early 1990s, what he thought of player salaries.  Mantle answered that in his playing days the players were dumb and the owners smart, but that today it is the other way around.  Fans, alas, are not too bright either, in continuing to reward these folks despite their conduct.  I gave up on baseball when my favorite team, the Yankees, fell into the clutches of two people I despise: Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner, of whom the then-manager of the bombers, Billy Martin (hero of Game 7 of the 1952 World Series, as a Yankee second baseman, when he caught a towering infield fly with two outs and bases loaded, seventh inning, all runners going) said: "One's a born liar; the other's a convicted one."

Billy, we miss you, and the wonderful era of baseball then, truly the National Pastime, gone forever.

Index 12/14/07

4 posts: (1) America's Heroes IV--The Home Front; (2) "Religion of Peace" Breaks New Ground--Us v. Them; (3) Iran: Kissinger Speaks--The Home Front; (4) Interrogations: Pardon Time--The Home Front.

America's Heroes IV

Ralph Peters posted his fourth installment on heroes who make us proud, and whose contributions we can never fully repay.  He has a second column on a Holocaust survivor who works with injured veterans.  Both are worth a read.

"Religion of Peace" Breaks New Ground

Benazir Bhutto says that the suicide bombing that targeted her for assassination upon her return to Pakistan, was wired to a one-year-old baby--BB thinks, a girl, whose clothes were wired.  The "father" offered her baby to Bhutto, who, fortunately, passed on the offer and moved on.

Iran: Kissinger Speaks

Henry Kissinger writes that the NIE's language "blurs the line between estimates and conjecture."  After opining that Iran's 2003 cessation of warhead design work (while uranium enrichment and missile design work proceeded) was due to America's invading Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, HK notes that in 2005, with America faltering in Iraq, Iran pressed enrichment, and then states: "In short, if my analysis is correct, we could be witnessing not a halt of the Iranian weapons program--as the NIE asserts--but a subtle, ultimately more dangerous, version of it that will phase in the warhead when fissile material production has matured."

HK further writes that the intel community "must recognize that the more it ventures into policy conjecture, the less authoritative its judgments become."  He then adds that he is "extremely concerned about the tendency of the intelligence community to turn its self into a kind of check on, instead of a part of, the executive branch."  "Check" is a kind word.  "Scourge" might fit better.

HK thinks the next administration needs to look at this issue.  An understatement.  Especially given a Republican presidency, foreign policy priority number one is, arguably, neutralizing the foreign service and intelligence bureaucracies, and ending their guerrilla warfare against presidential policies they dislike.

Interrogations: Pardon Time

A New York Times article informs us that CIA interrogators, told that aggressive tactics (such as waterboarding) were legal, "sense" that the ground is shifting.  They fear, if not legal liability--their reliance in Justice Department legal opinions likely shields them--loss of their reputations and financial tribulations if they are taken to court, even if they ultimately prevail.  John Yoo, the former Justice Department officials whose legal opinions sanctioning aggressive interrogation are now under attack, said: "The administration's success in preventing attacks has become the enemy.  The political environment has changed because people feel that the threat is less than it used to be."  Bob Tyrrell captures the hypocrisy of Democrats in Congress, how that homeland attacks appear (to them, at lest) less likely.

NRO's Byron York reports on how waterboarding saved lives.  Here is an exchange between an ABC News interviewer and a CIA operative, that sums it all up:

“So in your view the waterboarding broke him?” Ross asked.

“I think it did, yes.”

“And did it make a difference?”

“It did. The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

“No doubt about that? That’s not some hype?”

“No doubt.”

But get this exchange that follows, after the operative said he now opposes the technique:

“What happens if we don’t waterboard a person and we don’t get that nugget of information, and there’s an attack on a -— on a movie theater or a shopping mall or in midtown Manhattan, you know, at rush hour?” Kiriakou asked, apparently of himself. “Then — then what do we do? I would have trouble forgiving myself.”  Daniel Johnson, writing in the New York Sun, agrees.

Dozens of attacks stopped.  Dozens.  Thousands of lives saved, to be sure.  Thousands.  If the American people grasped this, how would they vote--in a fair poll that asks realistic, not slanted, questions--on using the technique?  I submit: They would vote in favor of using the technique.  That said, the public revelation probably saps the technique of its value.  Much of its utility probably stems from the factor of surprise.  A detainee who knows about the technique knows he won't be drowned, and can thus resist more effectively.  The technique is thus kaput, courtesy of adverse publicity and fear of lawsuits.

The New York Sun reports that 43 is considering mass pardons to head off legal assaults.  Another shield: the statute of limitations, re interrogations where death did not result, is five years.  43 should do so.  We are seeing, as noted in the NYT article above, a climate similar to the witch-hunt launched against intelligence operations in 1975.  The CIA never recovered from that excess.  Today's intel community will not recover from a repeat exercise.

Stop it, now.

Islam's Two Faces: Two Stories

Brace yourselves for the latest excess of Islamist piety: in Canada, an Islamist "father" strangled her 16-year-old daughter for her failing to wear the hijab (covers only the hair).  But there is a brighter holiday tale too, from the Big Apple.  A Muslim youth from Bangladesh rescued a Jewish man and his girlfriend who were assailed by thugs --TEN of them--on the subway, after they overheard him saying "Happy Hanukkah."  To bad he could save the Canadian girl from her homicidal maniac pseudo-dad.

Index 12/13/07

5 posts: (1) Islam's Two Faces: Two Stories--Us v. Them; (2) Afghanistan: NATO Stalls--Weenie Watch; (3) Heroes III: More Inspiring Tales--The Home Front; (4) Surveillance: The A-G Weighs In--The Home Front; (5) Mideast: Condi in Jim Baker Mode--Us v. Them.

Afghanistan: NATO Stalls

In a very unusual move, SecDef Robert Gates publicly nailed our continental European "allies" for failing to meet their force commitments.  This is one reason why things are getting tougher over there.  Only the English-speaking Commonwealth countries are pulling their weight.

Heroes III; More Inspiring Tales

Ralph Peters gives us more tales of bravery in the face of monumental adversity.

Surveillance: The A-G Weighs In

Attorney-General Michael Mukasey has an LA Times op-ed explaining why the Senate Intelligence Committee reported out the best bill to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  It has protection for companies who install taps at the government's request, and doesn't entangle the government in too much procedural stuff as a predicate to surveillance.  Alas, Congress probably will not take the Judge's advice in full (they should).

Mideast: Condi in Jim Baker Mode

A Jerusalem Post column by Michael Freund nails Condi for disgraceful asymmetry in her comments.  She is, it seems, more exercised by Israel building Jewish homes in Jerusalem, than she is about Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets: She condemned as inimical to building confidence Israel's plan to build 370 new homes in the Holy City, but was silent about Palestinian attacks last week.  Condi, it seems, is in full Jim Baker Mode: blame Israel first.

Index 12/12/07

3 posts: (1) More True American Heroes--The Home Front; (2) Iran: The Brits Trash U.S. Intel, Too--Weenie Watch; (3) Habeas Corpus: Supremes Hold Trumps--The Home Front.

More True American Heroes

George Will gives us a touching story of one Anh Duong, a Vietnamese lady who as a child fled South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, and now, armed with degrees in chemical engineering, computer science and public administration, designs munitions and explosives for the Department of Defense (which she joined to "pay back" her adopted country).  After 9/11 her team completed designing a new thermobaric (heat energy dispensing) weapon that could incinerate targets inside caves.  The project was accelerated from a planned three years to completion, to 65 days.  Ms. Duong calls America "a paradise" because of its generous people.  Read about an American success-story heroine, and learn what "swish and boom" refers to.

Ralph Peters introduces us to another American hero-soldier, the second in his "heroes" series.  Another "don't miss" item.

Iran: The Brits Trash U.S. Intel, Too

The plot thickens.  A Sunday Telegraph article presents the view from British intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.  Put simply, they believe: (a) that U.S. intel was 'hoodwinked" by the Iranians, who planted false information knowing they were being monitored; (b) that the timing of the NIE undermined the quest for stronger sanctions; and (c) that the result is to increase the chance that Israel will strike.  Said one Brit, in a masterpiece of understatement: "It's not as if the American intelligence agencies are regarded as brilliant performers in that region.  They got badly burned over Iraq."   One British intel official says that Bush will escalate to war with Iran over Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, then, strike Iran's nuke sites, or launch a broader strike, before he leaves office.  The source claims that V-P Cheney wants tactical nukes used to bust bunkers, and that Rice will only support a strike if Congress is on board first.

Mideast maven Laurie Mylroie has a TAS piece detailing the CIA's sorry Mideast intel record.  LM helpfully links us to the CIA's "biggest bloopers": from the Washington Post and the National Interest compilations.  Ace journalist Claudia Rosett writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the NIE's refusal to acknowledge the role that our toppling of Saddam in 2003 was the "international pressure" that may have induced Iran to slow its nuclear program, hardly gives her confidence in its latest intel assessment.  She is, of course, right on this (as on so much else).  Two senior members of Congress with considerable intelligence committee experience (California Democrat Jane Harman and Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra) offer a cautious thumbs-up.  I do not agree, but they represent a serious alternative point of view worth a read.

Habeas Corpus: Supremes Hold Trumps

Last Wednesday, oral argument was held in Boumediene v. Bush, the case in which petitioners seek to confer habeas corpus rights as a matter of constitutional law, asking the Supremes to overturn an adverse D.C. Circuit Court ruling, and thus push aside both the Bush administration and Congress, which had agreed on military tribunal review in lieu of the "Great Writ" (whose Latin name means "produce the body").  The administration faces a ton of legal firepower: of 22 amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs filed, 18 oppose the administration.  (The briefs are online, plus those of the parties--you will have to scroll down to reach the briefs in the Boumediene case.)  Basically, pretty much everybody in the legal community--here and abroad--is pulling for the detainees to win.

Unusual in this case, and ominous for the administration, is that after rejecting a request to hear the case, in April 2007, two months later, as last term ended, the Court reversed itself and agreed to hear the case.  Most of the time--perhaps 75 to 80 percent--the Supremes take a case to reverse outright (remanding to the lower court with a directive to enter judgment in favor of petitioner), or to vacate (remanding to the lower court with a directive to reconsider the case in light of the principles stated in the Supreme Court's majority opinion).  Adding to the climate in favor of petitioners are the Courts four wartime opinions (three in 2004 and one in 2007), all of which were adverse to the administration, and evinced hostility to attempts to limit rights of detainees to use American courts and enjoy the full panoply of legal rights accorded litigants.  As if to throw in its own two cents, the day before oral argument the Washington Post published a "guide" to detainee treatment; the Post's online edition carries a link to the entire 250-page document.)

Legal eagle Andy McCarthy writes that bad Supreme Court decisions since 9/11 have eviscerated the traditional constitutional rule that enemy aliens have no constitutional rights before our courts, and thus the Boumediene case will be decided in light of those cases, which have created a novel legal entitlement, of uncertain extent, for just such access--even as to combatants judged unlawful.  Legal scholars David Rivkin and Lee Casey explain that the Constitution's Framers clearly did not contemplate protecting unlawful enemy combatants, let alone those held overseas.  They write: "The Court has already meddled more in this area in the last several years than in all of prior history.  It has no right to demand more."  Alas, their laments may well prove in vain.

ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg opines that Justice Kennedy, the swing vote on an often divided 4-4 Court, may not side with the petitioners, because the procedures under challenge were adopted by both the executive and legislative branch, and because the appeals court did not pass on them.  My own impression of the oral argument, which I attended, was that it did not go well for the government (though ably argued by Solicitor-General Paul Clement, he was matched by former S-G Seth Waxman for petitioners).  But Ms. Greenburg has a point, and has reviewed the oral transcript, which I have not been able to do.  Stay tuned to which frequency Justice Kennedy hones in on, as his choice likely will decide the case.

Index 12/11/07

4 posts: (1) Saluting Heroes--The Home Front; (2) The Gitmogate Tapes--and a More Typical Tape--The Home Front; (3) 2008: Andrew Young Lets Fly; Oprah Says "Buy" (Barack)--The Home Front; (4) Hollywood and the Cold War: A Generation's Distance--Class & Crass.

Saluting Heroes

Ralph Peters pays warm tribute to soldiers who have paid the high price of being severely wounded, fighting for their country in shooting wars against Islamist barbarism.  Kudos indeed.  Better yet, at the end of the article is how you can help, as we enter the height of holiday season.

The Gitmogate Tapes--and a More Typical Tape

A New York Times article says that two top al-Qaeda leaders--Abu Zubaydah, whose confession led the U.S. to financial planner Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashriri, planner of the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole (which killed 17 American sailors)--may escape justice, because videotapes of their interrogations, both reportedly rough, were destroyed by the CIA.  The Agency says it did so to protect the interrogators from possible retaliation.  Yet another case where the wrecking ball that our legal system has become may force us to free the worst captives.

Perfect process will thus take pride of place over protecting us.  There have been around 100,000 interrogations since 9/11, and if two videotapes were destroyed--even assuming the act covered up torture (narrowly defined under American law, and many aggressive interrogation techniques wouldn't qualify as torture)--we fly into a tizzy, as if there is nothing worse on the planet.  There is: a WMD terror attack, suicide bombers, etc.  The concept of "lesser of evils" has, it seems, escaped our grasp.  The winners are the terrorists.

On a gentler note, the Times also ran a piece on a friendly interrogation of a Sudanese suspect whose testimony has been used to convict terrorists in a Manhattan trial.  It is a very interesting story, showing how interrogators deal with a succession of crises, concerns of the suspect about his family's safety, anger from his wife on how much cooperation he is being asked to give, and concern about their children.  It is well worth a read.

2008: Andrew Young Lets Fly; Oprah Says "Buy" (Barack)

Andrew Young, who became an albatross (one of countless) for the Carter administration--my favorite of his gaffes was that the Ayatollah Khomeini was "some kind of saint" (some kind, indeed).  Now Young has let fly at Barack Obama, saying that he is too inexperienced to win the White House, and that Bill Clinton is "every bit as black as Barack", and that Mr. Bill has, according to Young, probably dated more black women than Barack.  Young than added, in his TV interview, that he was "just clowning."

Oprah may challenge the traditional view that stars do not win votes for their candidates. She is a mega-star, never before a political presence, and someone who won her fame in part due to her brains and hard work, not being a brainless twit like Paris You-Know-Who or Sean Penn (who thinks Hugo Chavez a great El Supremo).  Her "O & O" campaign brings sheer viewer legions: 8.6 million viewers, scattered in 2.6 percent of the nation's households (some 110 million); her strongest demographic is white females over 55.  Look for "O" to help "O" in key primaries.  She needn't persuade, if she brings out an audience that actually listens to Obama's pitch.

Oprah versus Hillary's big celeb--her hubby, not Malibu Babs--represents possibly a new level of political campaigning.  In the past generation our country has become Clinton-ized, Oprah-ized and Diana-ized: Clinton-ized in its tolerance of most scandal, Oprah-ized in its addiction to therapeutic problem-solving, and Diana-ized in its infatuation with super-celebrity.  Oprah, in this, is a twofer: celebrity plus therapy.  Hillary's rock-star-hubby buys "lovable lug" immunity from certain scandals, but more from his than hers.  (Hill ain't lovable.)  Advantage to "O & O" over "C & C."

Hollywood and the Cold War: A Generation's Distance

Three major films made in the 1960s addressed the issue of nuclear war.  "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) is best-remembered, with a brilliant all-star cast and the memorable ending, as Slim Pickens rode The Bomb to global oblivion.   "Fail-Safe" (1964) brought the novel of the same name to the silver screen, in which Henry Fonda, upon the accidental destruction of Moscow by an American bomber, makes the Presidential decision to sacrifice New York City to avoid a full-blown nuclear holocaust.  The least remembered is probably "The Bedford Incident" (1965), a well-made film in which Richard Widmark plays a mentally unstable destroyer commander who precipitates an accidental sinking of a Russian submarine, touching off World War III.

"Strangelove" was, of course, savagely satirical.  But all three were intended to be taken seriously.  Two ("Strangelove" & "Fail-Safe") incorporated a factually false major promise: that bombers sent aloft on a mission would proceed to target unless recalled--the "fail-safe" device was supposed to work otherwise, but with mechanical malfunction the bombers in the movies proceeded to target.  The reality was exactly contrary: bombers would turn back unless given a final go-ahead and reconfirmed.  Further, ICBMs could not launch without two keys turned within two seconds, spaced twelve feet apart so that one renegade launch officer could not launch; missiles in the field were dual-armed (PAL--"Permissive Action Linkage"), so that local launch officers required a second, remote authorization to successfully launch.  Missile silos were created, and submarine platforms developed, to prevent the prospect of a successful "Bolt from the Blue" first-strike, by ensuring that forces sufficient to massively retaliate were in place.  That eliminated "launch-on-warning" hair-trigger postures, under which a flight of geese on radar sets might trigger accidental war.

All of these measures were, of course, no guarantee that accidental war would never occur.  But the two nuclear crises of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and the Mideast confrontation (1973), while both "eyeball to eyeball," ended peacefully.  The 1962 confrontation led to installation of the "Hot Line" between Washington and Moscow.

The common premise of the three films--all excellent, with "Strangelove" one of filmdom's greatest films ever--is that the world was a single unstable individual (the general in "Strangelove" & the destroyer commander in "Bedford"), or one fatal error, from nuclear extinction.  This was, on the facts, simply untrue.  Eternally to their credit, the makers of "Fail-Safe" posted a notice at the end of the film, to note that the Department of Defense believed that the sequence in the film could not happen, and that safeguards in place were adequate.

Hollywood sought to defuse Cold War tensions, as well, notably and humorously, in "The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming!" (1966), in which a Soviet submarine runs aground near a New England town, resulting in a farce of grand dimension and a suspenseful moment near the end before all ends well, and we are told by director Norman Jewison, that the Russians are human, and just like us.  Well, fair enough, except that Soviet leaders, while human, were not "just like us."  Only when Mikhail Gorbachev decided not to order a bloodbath in 1989, did a Soviet leader act "just like us."

There is no reason to attribute deliberate malice to the nuclear-war film-makers.  And "Russians" was delightful entertainment, with its implied "just like us" premise, one that could be undone by Soviet conduct, as when Afghanistan was invaded in 1979.  And that makes the 1960s Hollywood set better than the willful malice of today's antiwar films and their creators.  All three bomb films are worth watching, and enjoy "Russians," too.  Fearless prediction: No one will make a comedy titled: "The Islamists are Coming, the Islamists are Coming!".

Index 12/10/07

3 posts: (1) Iran: The Public, the Pundits, Plus Bolton--The Home Front; (2) Motor City: Run Over by Drive-By Liberalism--The Home Front; (3) Jet-Age Missile Defense--The Home Front.

Iran: The Public, Pundits, Plus Bolton

Despite a week-long propaganda blitz trumpeting Iran's "abandonment" of its nuclear weapons program, one poll shows that by 66-18 Americans do NOT believe that Iran has halted its nuke weapons quest.  By 67-19 Americans believe that Iran remains a threat to U.S. security.  By 59-20 they believe we should maintain sanctions against Iran.  47 percent believe that Iran is "very likely" to develop a nuclear weapon and 34 percent believe it is "somewhat likely."  Even self-styled liberal voters, by 54-29, believe Iran continues its effort.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed captures the confusion and epic mismanagement of an administration in disarray, unable to effectively answer a set-up ambush from officials adamantly opposed to Bush's foreign policy (details here from the WSJ).  John Bolton, architect of the Proliferation Security Initiative, called the NIE document "politics disguised as intelligence."  Charles Krauthammer cautions that the part of the project Iran is now said to have halted is harder to monitor than the part still underway, and that the parts still underway suggest a weapons program.  Yet regimes, he notes, like Saddam, sometime behave irrationally, and therefore that Iran is bluffing can't entirely be ruled out.  CK also notes that 2003, when Iran suspended (if they did), was a time when the only new "international pressure" applied was America's toppling Saddam, which surely got Iran's attention.

The dishonesty of the NIE--remember that the "E" stands for "estimate," not fact--is best illustrated by noting that even the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose chief, Muhammad el-Baradei, thinks Iran is entitled to get a nuclear weapon (because if we and Israel have it, etc., etc.), declines to go as far as the NIE.  One IAEA official said: "To be frank, we are more skeptical."  When the IAEA is to the right of our intel agencies, something it rotten in the State (Beltway) Denmark.

In the end, if preventive war is to be waged the case cannot rest on intelligence from agencies of dubious reliability and trustworthiness.  It has to be done, if at all, the way Israel struck in 1981 against Saddam, based not on specific evidence of a program, but to preclude the prospect of Saddam getting the bomb, period.  If sanctions aren't strengthened, Israel may decide to try again, now that the U.S. seems sidelined for the foreseeable future.

One other sleeper option is raised by author Max Boot in a crisp op-ed on Opinion Journal: the Gulf States.  Vis-a-vis Iran, the six gulf States have real military power: 627 combat aircraft vs. 286, and better technology, with F-15s, F-16s & F/A-18s, compared to F-4s and F-5s for the Iranians.  They are now powerhouses in other ways, too.  Boot notes that whereas Israel's 6.4 million people generate a $140B GDP ($17,813 per capita), the 39 million in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia & the United Arab Emirates--Dubai & Abu Dhabi) generate $522B GDP ($13,385 per capita), which is about 3/4 of Israel's per capita GDP figure.  Further, the GCC air forces are not 1,200 miles away, as is Israel's air arm, but rather are next door.  The UAE also has great potential economic leverage it declines to use: Iran has $300B in assets in the UAE, and over 10,000 Iranian companies operate there; trade between the UAE & Iran was $11B in 2006.

They lack bunker-busters, would would face less political fallout if they acted.  They are desperately afraid of an Iranian nuke, and think Iran's Prez is nuts.  It is quite unlikely that they can get their act together to do it.  But stranger things have happened: In 1977 Jimmy Carter's feckless imbecility in inviting the PLO to a conference in Geneva spurred Anwar Sadat to accept, a month later, an offhand invitation to come to Jerusalem, which led, a year later, to the Camp David Accords.  American fecklessness this time, especially if compounded by the 2008 election of a Democrat who surely will not strike Iran, might produce yet another of history's grand surprises.

Meanwhile, Iranian students protested the wrongful internment of three students last spring.  No one at the State Department is listening.

Motor City: Run Over By Drive-by Liberalism

A Wall Street Journal article details just how awful Detroit really is.  Hellhole is a mild description.  Its murder rate is 47 per 100,000 residents, a rate roughly constant for over 20 years.  Were New York, with its murder rate at 6 per 100,000, down from a peak of 30 per 100,000 in 1990, to be at Detroit's level, instead of a sub-500 murder 2007 the Apple would be at about 4,000, nearly twice its peak rate.  Meanwhile, nearby Dearborn, with 100,000 residents, 30 percent Arab, had two--yes, two--murders in 2006.

A spokesman for Detroit's lefty space-cadet mayor, Kwame Kirkpatrick, says of this: "The city is as safe as any other major American city."  Egregiously misgoverned by a city council elected entirely at large, there is thus no local candidate sitting on the council.  Offered $250 million as a donation by philanthropist Robert Thompson, Detroit's city "fathers" (more accurately, jailers) turned it down, despite the Motor City having one of America's worst public school systems.

Jet-Age Missile Defense

An F-16 launched a missile that destroyed a sounding rocket (details here) in its boost phase.  The plane needs to be within 100 miles of a launch to hit its target, and thus is designed for situations involving ongoing combat.  Step one in a new phase of missile defense.

Index 12/7/07

4 posts: (1) Nuclear Testing: Avoiding a Nuclear Pearl Harbor--The Home Front; (2) U.S. Combat Deaths: A New Perspective--The Home Front; (3) Pakistan: Rocker for Freedom, Hard Place for Islamist Pol--Weenie Watch; (4) Israel: Suicide Pact Legalism--Weenie Watch.

Nuclear Testing: Avoiding a Nuclear Pearl Harbor

On the 66th anniversary of Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, a former chief of the Defense Nuclear Agency warns that were the U.S. to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the Senate declined to ratify in 1999, America would be in real peril.  Retired Vice-Admiral Robert Monroe cautions that there is a huge difference between nuclear nonproliferation (essential) and nuclear disarmament (unachievable).  Further, we will need updated nuclear warheads that must be tested to prove reliability: smaller, more accurate, cleaner, deep-penetration warheads to dig out hidden facilities.  The gravest danger may be that if we went to zero, other countries (Russia, China, for example) might hide a few hundred and gain an insurmountable breakout advantage.  Wise warnings on the anniversary of our (FDR's words) "day that will live in infamy."

U.S. Combat Deaths: A New Perspective

On June 29, 2007, the Congressional Research Service issued a 28-page report (mostly charts) that puts Iraq War combat deaths in perspective.  Loaded with data on casualties from the Revolutionary War to today, there is one chart, above all, that startles.  Table 4 tabulates U.S. active duty military deaths (non-combat, as well as combat) for 1980 -2006.  Until 1996, U.S. military deaths never fell below 1,000 annually, with totals from 1980 - 1987 ranging from 1,983 to 2,392.  With less than 4,000 combat fatalities in Iraq since March 19,2003, there were years when more military personnel were killed in non-combat accidents than in combat in Iraq.  This is hardly to make light of the terrible toll in Iraq, especially, given, more than 25,000 wounded.  But it does confer perspective.