The Eleven Day Empire

2002-10-24T20:10:00.000-04:00

Movin' On Up!

Well, it's been great here at BlogSpot, but the Empire has outgrown its current home, and so it's time to move on.

Henceforth, you'll find the Empire at its brand new home:

www.elevendayempire.com/movabletype

See you there!

2002-10-24T14:12:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Baseball Moments

Last night, during game four of the World Series, the top ten moments in baseball history were announced (as voted on by the fans).

Cal Ripken's breaking of Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak was the number one moment. But of course, with all due respect to Cal, the voters were wrong. The real top ten moments are:

10. Jim Leyritz's three run homer to tie game four of the World Series, October 23, 1996.

9. Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter and Scott Brosius, all homering in 9th inning comebacks, game four and five of the World Series, October 31st and November 1st, 2001.

8. Derek Jeter's amazing relay toss to Jorge Posada in game three of the American League Division Series, October 13, 2001.

7. Reggie Jackson's three home runs in game six of the World Series, October 18, 1977

6. Bucky Dent's home run in the American League East one-game playoff, October 2nd, 1978.

5. The first-ever game at Yankee Stadium, complete with a home run by Babe Ruth, April 23, 1923.

4. Chris Chambliss' walk-off home run against Kansas City to win the American League pennant, October 14th, 1976.

3. Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, May 15th through July 17th, 1941.

2. Don Larsen's perfect game, game five of the World Series, October 8th, 1956.

1. Lou Gehrig's farewell speech, July 4th, 1939.

Obviously all the greatest moments don't fit into a top ten list. There's also the "Boston Massacre," September 7th -9th of 1978, in which the Yankees swept a four game series from the Red Sox by a combined score of 42-9. There are the perfect games by David Wells (May 17, 1998) and David Cone (July 19, 1999); and no-hitters by Dwight Gooden (May 14, 1996), Jim Abbott (September 4, 1993), Andy Hawkins (in a losing effort, July 1, 1990), Dave Righetti (July 4, 1983), and Allie Reynolds (July 12 and September 28, 1951) - and of course Bill Bevens' bid for the first ever World Series no-hitter, foiled with two outs in the bottom of the ninth (Ovtober 3, 1947). There's Roger Maris' sixty-first home run (October 1, 1961), and Babe ruth's called shot in the World Series versus the Cubs (October 1, 1932) - but we did have to draw the line somewhere.

2002-10-24T13:44:00.000-04:00

Talk Among Yourselves

Jeff Durkin emailed this to me (among others) this AM, and I thought it was worth putting it out for my 68 readers a day to contemplate and comment on as well (you can also email Jeff directly, if you like):

So, the question to answer is: Can we live in harmony with the Islamic civlization? Can we have effective, peaceful relations with a worldview so different from ours? Or, is it not that different? I would say it is, that Islam, unlike religion in the modern West, is the core of its civilization and that modern Islam is opposed to the values that are at the core of the West, but I could be wrong.

Is it possible to come to terms with a worldview that sees us as infidels to be conquered and either converted or killed? Many claim that Islam is a religion of peace. This is true only in the same way that Christianity, Judiasm, hinduism or any other major belief system are. No religion that I know of advocates constant warfare and slaughter; but all are used to justify such things. All have in them a component of strife: against one's self and aginst the evil in the world, whatever that may be. Islam, like its relatives Christianity and Judaism, is an expansionistic, absolutist creed. In the West, humanism has tempered many of the worst aspects of religion; in the Islamic world, Western humanism or an equivalent does not exist.

If we our two civilizations are incompatible, then what do we do? Global war? Retreat into a siege state and hope we outlast them? Modify our beliefs to make them acceptable to the Islamic world? Sit back and do nothing? Convince ourselves they are just like us and hope we are not proven wrong?

To answer the first question, and this is a gross oversimplification, I think there is a significant different between Islam and Christianity. There is no Islamic equivalent to Jesus' directive to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's." There is a Biblical basis for separation of church and state, and for believers to respect a temporal authority entirely distinct from God. As I understand the Islamic view - at least the one that seems to be widely held in the Middle East - there is no such distinction. All law derives from Allah. There cannot be a secular state as such.

Aside from that, I agree with Jeff's contention that humanism (I'm not sure if that's exactly the word I'd go with, but I can't think of a better one at the moment) has sanded down the rough edges of Christianity, and that a similar process has not happened in the Islamic world. The Catholic Church made its peace with the modern world a couple of hundred years ago (an overgeneralization, I know, but not totally wrong), and Islam, for the most part, hasn't.

I think that the fact that the largest single "flavor" of Christianity has a distinct, strong, unquestionable hierarchy, also makes a difference. There is one Pope, who is the spiritual leader of all Catholics, and whose words are, if not always heeded, are at least heard and usually respected. There is no equivalent in Islam; when Osama bin Laden claims that it is Allah's will to fly airplanes into buildings, there is no one indisputable Islamic authority to brand him a heretic and excommunicate him.

All that said, we get to Jeff's last paragraph. What do we do? I think war is probably inevitable. The question is whether we will fight it on our terms (with operations like the coming removal of Saddam Hussein as a first step), or on theirs (the siege state approach, waiting for the next Al Qaeda attack). I don't think that doing nothing is an option for us.

But that's just me; your comments are encouraged...

2002-10-24T07:22:00.000-04:00

Foolishness and Lies

Well, it's the NY Times editorial page, so I guess that's to be expected. In this instance, Gail Collins and the gang are unhappy abuot executing people who committee crimes as juveniles.

Last June the Supreme Court barred the execution of the mentally retarded as cruel and unusual punishment, noting that such criminals have limited capacity to understand their moral culpability or be deterred by the threat of execution. This week, sadly, the court declined to extend that same reasoning to juveniles. In rejecting the appeal of a death row inmate in Kentucky, the court's majority dashed hopes of overturning its appalling 1989 ruling permitting executions of those who are 16 or 17 when they commit capital crimes.

Four members of the court — Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — issued a forceful dissent arguing for an end to the "shameful practice." The majority's abdication perpetuates America's dubious distinction of being the sole Western country to impose death sentences on people younger than 18.

As opponents of the death penalty endlessly remind us, we're the only Western country to impose death sentences, period, so the last sentence there is pointless.

As is the reasoning. If someone has "limited capacity to understand their moral culpability," that's a defense against their conviction in the first place, as it is with the retarded or the mentally ill. As one would hope the Times editorial writers know, mens rea - criminal intent - is a necessary component in order to convict a defendant of a crime. If that doesn't exist, because the defendant is deemed incapable of understanding the crime in question, or of telling right from wrong, then that issue should be raised at trial.

But if a jury, taking that into account, convicts, well, the defendant should be subject to the death penalty if that's an option for the crime at hand. Even if they were 16 or 17.

As Jeff Durkin notes at his site, 16 year olds, generally, ought to know that rape and murder are wrong (those being the crimes in the "shameful' Kentucky case).

But of course, that isn't the point; the point is to find any possible reason to complain about the death penalty, because our "betters" in europe have abolished it, and, as always - at least if you write for the Times - they know best.

2002-10-24T07:11:00.000-04:00

You Could Almost Take Him Seriously...

Certified Idiot Richard Cohen bleats on again today, continuing to draw that paycheck from the WashPost, and he almost manages to make a couple of points. Almost. But th we remember that he is Richard Cohen, and we remember things he's said in the past and his arguments, such as they are, are blown to hell.

Today's topic is the honesty of the Bush Administration:

Appearing on the old "Dick Cavett Show" back in 1980, the writer Mary McCarthy said of her fellow writer Lillian Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' " The same cannot yet be said about George W. Bush and his administration -- but it has not been around as long as Hellman was and is not nearly as creative.

Richard must have been really cracking the whip on his interns this week to come up with that little reference (not literally, hopefully, although given his history with interns, one never knows).

In any case, the same could be said of Richard.

The evidence is accumulating, though, that neither Bush nor his colleagues are particularly punctilious about the truth. For good reason, they sorely want a war with Iraq -- but good reasons are not, it seems, good enough for this administration.

Sure they are.

And they do not "want" a war. They want Saddam Hussein removed and Iraq disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, because that is what is in the interest of the American people - and the Iraqi people, and pretty much everybody else in the world. War is, unfortunately, the best - only - means of accomplishing that.

Instead, both the president and his aides have exaggerated the Iraqi threat, creating links and evidence where they do not exist. Even before this war starts, its first victim has been truth.

In your opinion, Richard. Which, given your track record, is less than persuasive.

Take Bush's oft-proclaimed assertion that there is a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. If there is, it is tenuous and coincidental. The senior al Qaeda official Bush said was in Baghdad seems not to be there anymore -- and it's not clear whether Hussein and his guys knew he was there in the first place. As for any link between the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and Hussein -- maybe none exists.

"Maybe." Well, that's certainly convincing, Richard. Is it possible, d'you think, Richard, that they can't give out the details you want because doing so would compromise intelligence sources? Maybe?

But in Bush's telling, all qualifications disappear. In speaking about Hussein last week, Bush said, "This is a man who we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army."

Sure he would. He'd love to use them as an army.

Maybe in his judgment -- but not really in anyone else's. Similarly, Bush appears to be alone in thinking that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." As my Post colleague Dana Milbank has reported, the CIA indicates Iraq may have such aircraft, but their range is another matter altogether. In all likelihood, Baghdad has nothing -- no plane, no missile, no box kite -- capable of reaching the United States.

At least Richard gives credit to Milbank for his article the other day. I guess that's something.

Bush also has said that Iraq was "six months away from developing" a nuclear weapon. This is news to every expert I've talked to or read about. It is just not the case -- or, if it is, the administration has not supplied the intelligence to support its claim. At the moment, Iraq is believed to be as many as five years away from developing a bomb.

And you believe the "experts" you've talked to, who base their opinion on what, exactly, Richard? The weapons inspectors haven't been in Iraq for 4 years.

What kind of intelligence would satisfy you, Richard? And how do you think it might be given out without compromising security or sources? Or doesn't that matter to you?

At the same time, administration officials and their key allies outside of government have continued to claim that a meeting took place in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the supposed leader of the Sept. 11 terrorists, and an Iraqi intelligence official. But no evidence of that meeting exists -- not that the White House acknowledges that. Maybe it's been too preoccupied with withholding news about the North Korean nuclear program.

We discussed Richard's lies and sistortions about North Korea on Tuesday, so no need to rehash that here. As for Atta-in-Prague, up until this week, the Czechs were swearing that the meeting happened, so it's entirely reasonable for the White House to discuss it.

What's disturbing about these exaggerations is that they fertilize the growing paranoia of what must now be called the antiwar movement. Not since the Vietnam era have we seen the vilification of a president as a scoundrel and a liar -- not to mention a fool. In caricature, Bush is as dumb as Lyndon Johnson was ghoulish.

Um...your side didn't vilify Reagan? You might want to set the Wayback Machine for 1980 and do a bit of research. Maybe the intern can do it for you, Richard.

And why "must" we call it the antiwar movement? How about the "anti-American" movement? That's a lot more accurate.

Equally disturbing, we are beginning to realize that Bush's campaign tactics in the Republican primaries against Sen. John McCain were not an aberration. When Bush's allies and minions in New York distorted McCain's position on breast cancer research and earlier attacked him in personal terms in South Carolina, we got a first peek at Bush's willingness to tolerate almost any tactic on his way to a goal.

Um...just like almost every elected politican out there?

Richard, if youo're going to whine about distorting positions, you need to go back and revise your remarks on the previous President. Unless you want to be dishonest and hypocritical.

Oh, right, I forgot who I was talking about.

Bush's remarks are sometimes characterized as off the cuff and therefore not to be taken literally. But some of his not-so-precise statements were made in speeches -- and anyway, I don't see why precision is not required in all cases. All the president is doing is weakening his own arguments. His opponents can say -- as they have been saying -- that if he is sloppy about this or that fact, maybe he's sloppy about them all.

His opponents can say whatever they want. But since their views can be called, at best, at variance with reality, it's kind of hard to take them seriously. Tommy Daschle? Robert Byrd? Terry McAuliffe? The dingbats who occupy the NY Times editorial pages? None of them, or their pals, have more than a passing familiarty with the truth, and that only by accident.

If Americans are going to die in Iraq, then the reasons for war cannot be embellished. The majority of Americans who now believe that there is a hard link, virtually a working alliance, between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, between Sept 11 and Baghdad, are going to feel betrayed when they find out afterward that no such relationship existed.

Whatever.

The majority of Americans want Saddam removed because he's a dangerous tyrant who threatens the United States. As long as he is removed, they're not going to feel betrayed, because they won't have been.

Ack.

2002-10-23T16:53:00.000-04:00

Partners For Peace

Courtesy of Right Wing News, check out the comments of the mother of the latest Palestinian mass murderer. Some highlights:

"I was very happy when I heard that [Mahmud] killed Jews in the attack," she said. "When a warrior of jihad follows Allah's path to kill Jews, [it is the act of jihad] that gives him strength. Even if he does not kill any Jews, it is an honorable act, because he dies the death of a martyr."

"I was happy when they told me that my son had died,"

"From the first time that I said goodbye," the mother said, "I asked him not to be afraid [of fighting] against the Jews, as they are cowards, that he prepare his weapons well before embarking, that he kill [as many] as he can and leave none alive."

"I prayed that my son be killed in action, so he could be rewarded with the [72] virgins in heaven,"

And yet, somehow, Israel is to blame, and if only the U.S. would get more involved there could be peace.

Amazing.

2002-10-23T16:44:00.000-04:00

Ack

Andrea Harris passes along a truly disturbing item from Samizdata.

Go there and check out the new poster that the Metropolitan Police are putting up in London.

Don't you just feel better already?

It really begs the question: what in God's name were these people thinking?

2002-10-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

Down With the Merry Widow!

Juan Gato points out this AM that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has endorsed the Widow Carnahan in the Missouri Senate race.

Among other things, they cite:

She sponsored successful school construction legislation and a measure to require immediate electronic reporting of major stock sales by corporate insiders.

Mrs. Carnahan has a visceral dislike of the supercharged partisanship of the closely divided Senate.

That's all well and good, but what about my Mom? She's a widow, too. And we in the Empire want to see her appointed to the Senate by a governor out there somewhere.

My Mom is in favor of building new schools.

My Mom doesn't like insider trading, either, and would obviosuly support tough rules to deal with it.

And my Mom has a visceral dislike of lots of things, and people.

Plus, as noted earlier this week, my Mom would never lie about phony endorsements from the AARP, as Jean Carnahan has.

So contact your governonr and tell him or her to appoint my Mom to the Senate from your state!

2002-10-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

Getting What They Deserve?

Greg Hlatky passes on this appalling item from today's Washington Times.

It concerns Mary Ryan, formerly head of Consular Affairs, architectrix of the "Visa Express" program, and the person under whose watch most of the September 11th hijackers were allowed into the United States. It seems that, despite being forced to resign, she has received a $15,000 bonus for "outstanding performance" during the period between April 16, 2001 and April 15, 2002.

For your enlightenment, here's the transcript of a session between reporters and the horrendous Richard Boucher, spokesweasel for the State Department (and also a recipient of an "outstanding performance" bonus). This comes courtesy of National Review Online.

QUESTION: The pay bonuses, the $10,000 to $15,000 each for over 200 members of the Foreign Service, can you give a few details about that?

MR. BOUCHER: It's an established, annual procedure. It's part of the OPM rules; it's part of the government rules; it's been around for a long time. The performance of people is examined very carefully by committees and they determine who gets the pay benefits. And it was done, I think, a long time ago by the government in order to assure that they stay competitive with the private sector. And people get these performance awards based on things that they've done and how they performed in their jobs and met the needs of the service. And in our case, it's a sign that they have performed well in terms of serving their country and their government.

We could ask the families of the 3,000 or so victims on September 11th how well served they feel by the folks who let the hijackers into the country. I wonder what they'd say?

QUESTION: Okay, a couple thoughts on that, then. By my math, then, we're talking about a ballpark $3 million going out in bonuses to these members of the Foreign Service.

MR. BOUCHER: I'm sure if you check with OPM you'll find the total figure for the entire government.

QUESTION: Yeah. No, and that's fine. But does that seem to make financial sense when State Department is complaining about understaffing at consulates —

MR. BOUCHER: It makes an awful lot of sense in terms of the way the government has, for many years, had these programs, has run them efficiently, carefully and confidently and wants to retain senior executives in the government so that we, as taxpayers, have the benefit of their services.

Again, I'm sure we're all glad to have had the benefit of Visa Express.

QUESTION: Okay, well, again, I guess going to the benefit of their services, the GAO report which came out yesterday was not terribly flattering, I suppose, about the benefit of the services provided by some of these officials. And if you — you know, the award is for outstanding performance.

Do you think that it is — that it constitutes outstanding performance to have visas applications that were not filled out properly still being issued to terrorists during this period? This was April 16th of last year to April 15th of this year, and it includes 9/11. Do you think that that track record from Consular Affairs — in particular, Mary Ryan got the bonus as did Thomas Furey, who was the Consul General at Riyadh who helped establish visa express, which let in three of the 9/11 terrorists — what exactly about that constitutes a track record of outstanding performance worthy of these bonuses?

MR. BOUCHER: I want to stop this right here. You've said things that I disagree with and I've said things that you disagree with. I have not gone after your paycheck.

It's not the paycheck. These awards are, specifically, for "outstanding performance." And, of course, since we as taxpayers are ultimately the employers of everyone at the State Department, we do have the right and responsibility to question whether they are earning their pay.

QUESTION: I'm not going after yours.

MR. BOUCHER: I have not gone after — I got one of these bonuses.

This one is too easy...

QUESTION: Congratulations.

MR. BOUCHER: Thank you.

QUESTION: I wasn't questioning whether you deserved one.

MR. BOUCHER: I have not said that you didn't deserve to be paid for your services. I didn't say that you didn't deserve to be paid for your articles or your appearances.

QUESTION: Now, Richard, I'm not making this personal.

MR. BOUCHER: And I'm not going to do it now.

QUESTION: I did not go after you —

MR. BOUCHER: You're attacking friends of mine, people who dedicate their lives to their government and their country.

QUESTION: They are government officials. They owe a certain responsibility to the country.

MR. BOUCHER: People who dedicate their lives to their government and their country.

QUESTION: That's fine, but they don't have — they don't owe accountability?

MR. BOUCHER: If you want to talk about the GAO report, we'll talk about the GAO report, but I'm not going to talk about whether or not they deserve their bonuses. It's an established procedure. It's done very carefully by the government. It's done under an open set of rules that have been around for a long time. If you want to question those rules, you can go question those rules. But don't question whether these individuals deserved them or not.

And why not? These people are lucky they're not being prosecuted for criminal negligence; they damn well don't deserve bonuses!

QUESTION: Okay. And I did not make this personal. You did. And just for the record —

MR. BOUCHER: No. I'm sorry. You started naming names.

QUESTION: — I want to make sure you don't take this as —

MR. BOUCHER: You started naming names.

QUESTION: Well, they are names of people who set policies and then people need to decide —

MR. BOUCHER: Now, do you want to talk to about the GAO report?

Well, the utter contempt for the American people, and the fanatical sense of entitlement of Mr. Boucher and his pals at State comes through good and loud here. A thorough housecleaning at State is long, long overdue.

One more time: Fire them all!

2002-10-23T07:24:00.000-04:00

Well, Tommy...?

PostWatch points out this item noted by Croooow Blog, from Fox News Sunday.

It's a conversation between host Tony Snow and Tommy Daschle:

SNOW: I want to ask you about the quote we played for Secretary of State Colin Powell, or actually put up on the screen. I want to read it again and I want to try to parse it, because you were harshly critical the other day at the Bush administration's foreign policy. Once again you said, "I don't know if we've ever seen a more precipitous drop in international stature and public opinion with regard to this country as we have in the last two years." Typically, people cite several things with regard to this. One was the Kyoto protocol, correct?

DASCHLE: Correct.

SNOW: You voted against that.

DASCHLE: I did.

SNOW: OK. The International Criminal Court, you voted against that.

DASCHLE: That's correct.

SNOW: And Iraq, where you voted with the president.

Well, there you go. There's nothing I can really add, except that the sooner Daschle is relegated to minority leader status again, the better.

2002-10-23T07:16:00.000-04:00

This Guy Needs to Die

I'm listening to the radio, and they're talking about the DC sniper.

Apparently (according to the letter he left, I guess), he claims to have called the tip line six times, and he claims that he was "blown off" by some of the folks who answered the phone, and that one particular tip line operator is "responsible" for five of the people the sniper killed.

No. Without knowing the details, sure, it's possible that operators and police screwed up. But the only person responsible for these deaths is, obviously, the sniper.

Apparently the sniper has also asked for $10 million, to be deposited in a bank account of his choosing.

Lovely. This guy really, really needs to die, and soon.

2002-10-23T07:10:00.000-04:00

Does He Read His Own Words?

Tommy Friedman tries to coin a new term this mroning: the "Arab basement." Checking in from Qatar, Tommy writes:

At a seminar here this week on relations between America and Islam, one of the questions discussed by American and Muslim scholars was that elusive issue: Where is the Arab street and how might it respond to a U.S. invasion of Iraq? For my money, the most helpful answer was provided by the Jordanian columnist Rami Khouri, who said that "what's really important today is not the Arab street, but the Arab basement."

OK. This does invalidate a lot of what Friedman has said before, and it'd be nice for him to admit that. But maybe we can take this as an implicit admission of error and move on. We'll try and be generous.

This is an important distinction. The "Arab street" is the broad mass of public opinion, which is largely passive and nonviolent. The "Arab basement" is where small groups of hard-core ideologues, such as Osama bin Laden and his gang, have retreated and where they are mixing fertilizer, C-4 plastic explosives and gasoline to make the bombs that have killed Westerners all over the world.

Some of them are ideologues. But some of them, like Osama, are simply power-hungry, see themselves as the heirs to the Caliphs of old, and use any provocation or ideology that comes to hand to justify their deeds and recruit canon fodder.

And there's no solution except extermination for them.

Over the years, Arab leaders have become adept at coping with the Arab street, which is why not a single one of them has ever been toppled by it. They know how to buy off, or seal off, its anger and how to deflect its attention onto Israel. They also know that the street's wrath can be defused by progress on the Arab-Israeli front or elections at home.

Um...there's a problem here. If Arab leaders deflect the "street" by inflaming anger against Israel, then the problem on the "Arab-Israeli front" is pretty much entirely an Arab-created and exacerbated problem, isn't it?

Which is what a lot of us have been saying all along.

And which also means that any "progress" on that front will be undermined by those same Arab governments whenever their "streets" need to be distracted, which means that there's never going to be any real progress on that front as long as any of these awful governments are in power. Which a lot of us have been saying all along.

The Arab basement, though, is a new and much more dangerous phenomenon. These are small groups of super-empowered angry men who have slipped away from the street into underground cells, but with global reach and ambitions. While issues like Israeli and U.S. policy clearly motivate them, what most fuels their anger are domestic indignities — the sense that their repressive societies are deeply failing, or being left behind by the world, and that with a big bang they can wake them up and win the respect of the world.

Or; they have boughtinto an ideology which tells them that everyone not them is the enemy and must be brought to heel or destroyed.

They don't want the "respect" of the world, they want the rest of the world to live as they live, or not to live at all.

"These guys started in their living rooms," said Mr. Khouri, "then they went out into the streets, got pushed back, and now they have retreated to the basements." Unlike the Arab street, no diplomacy can defuse the Arab basement. It doesn't want a smaller Israel, it wants no Israel; it doesn't want a reformed Saudi monarchy, it wants no Saudi monarchy.

A lot of them went to other countries, took advantage of Western education and prosperity, and then decided to commit mass murder. Not quite the same thing.

So what to do? The only sensible response is to defeat those in the Arab basement, who are beyond politics and diplomacy, while at the same time working to alleviate the grievances, unemployment and sense of humiliation that is felt on the Arab street, so that fewer young people will leave the street for the basement, or sympathize with those down there — as millions of Arabs do today.

Substitute "annihilate" for "defeat" and I'm OK with that.

But as for alleviating the grievances, the only way to do that is to replace the horrendous governments that currently run every Arab country. Nothing else will do it.

There is no question that America can help by making a more energetic effort to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by speaking out for the values that America has advocated everywhere in the world — except in the Arab world: namely democracy. I met yesterday with 50 students from an elite Qatari high school and the new Cornell Medical College in Doha. They were so hungry to talk, to have their voices heard; and what you heard when you listened was how much they still looked up to America, but how much they thought America looked down on them.

Defuse the conflict? The same Arab-Israeli conflict that Arab governments stoke to distract their people from their own unhappiness? Wrong. Won't work.

But the Arab states have a huge role to play too. You cannot seal the door between the Arab street and the Arab basement without addressing the reasons for Arabs' backwardness and humiliation cited in the U.N.'s Arab Human Development Report, which are their deficit of freedom, their deficit of women's empowerment and their deficit of modern education.

They have the only role to play. They can transform themselves into modern societies, or we can.

"It takes many years of political, social, economic and human degradation to create a terrorist," notes Mr. Khouri. "So fighting terror can only succeed by rehumanizing degraded societies, by undoing, one by one, the many individual acts of repression, obstruction, denial, marginalization and autocracy that cumulatively turned wholesome developing societies into freak nations, and decent, God-fearing people into animals that kill with terror."

My guess is that the only way to stop the drift of young Arabs from the street to the basement is by administering some shock therapy to this whole region. Could replacing Saddam Hussein with a progressive Iraqi regime be such a positive shock? I don't know. I don't know if the Bush team really wants to do that, or if the American people want to pay for it. But I do know this: If America made clear that it was going into Iraq, not just to disarm Iraq but to empower Iraq's people to implement the Arab Human Development Report, well, the Arab basement still wouldn't be with us, but the Arab street just might.

Well, that all sounds great. Too bad your employers aren't on board with that program, or the Democrats...

2002-10-23T06:52:00.000-04:00

It's the Little Things That Make Life Worhh Living

Like this.

WARNING - the above link can be very addictive and is not recommended if you're at work and other people can see what you're doing...

(link courtesy of Steve Jackson Games)

2002-10-22T22:34:00.000-04:00

Well, We're All Screwed Now

We are doomed.

At least we'll have some time to get our affairs in order; ten billion years ought to be long enough to get everything settled...

(thanks to Christopher Johnson for pointing this one out)

2002-10-22T14:16:00.000-04:00

More on the Clinton Legacy

Following up on some postings from last week, check out this rundown from North Georgia Dogma.

Very enlightening.

2002-10-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

One Big Happy European Union

I wouldn't take this too seriously, but it is pretty amusing:

what various Europeans "really" think of each other...

2002-10-22T14:10:00.000-04:00

Yeah

From Jay Nordlinger on NRO:

Caught Bill Bennett on television the other night, and he said something interesting, as always. He was on a panel in Colorado, with Karen Hughes, and the professors there — this was at a college — were calling the two Republicans “Talibanic” and “despicable.” The Left always does this, Bennett pointed out.

At which point Alan Colmes broke in and said, “You should read my e-mail, Bill! They say I’m unpatriotic, they say I should defect to Iraq,” etc. To which Bennett responded — perfectly — “Yes, but I suspect those e-mails are from cranks. I’m talking about tenured college profs, who shape the minds of our kids.”

College profs...and columnists and editors at the WashPost and the NY Times, reporters and anchors at ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN...

2002-10-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

Wrong, Richard!

If it's Tuesday, it's time to see what new stupidity Richard Cohen has unleashed upon the world.

He's unhappy, again, with the President.

The smug spirit of Enron pervades the Bush administration.

When in doubt, mention Enron. Page one of the anti-Bush playbook. Doesn't matter how irrevelant it actually is to the topic at hand.

When it learned that North Korea had a secret nuclear arms program, it moved the disclosure off the books lest it complicate the confrontation with Iraq. The information that Congress needed as it held another one of its self-proclaimed "historic" debates was withheld -- a footnote known to only a few key members who, as with Enron's board, passively kept their mouths shut.

Well, that's not what Colin Powell said on "Meet the Press" on Sunday. He said that Senators and Congressmen were being briefed for the past couple of weeks - before the Iraq vote. Now, as noted many times, we are not fans of (hopefully soon to be ex) Secretary of State Powell, but we will still take his word over that of Tommy Daschle or Dickie Gephardt, both of whom are fundamentally dishonest, morally repugnant human beings (and calling them human is giving them both a very generous benefit of the doubt). So, Richard, before you throw out allegations, you might want to listen to both sides. Just a thought.

But Japan knew. President Bush told Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Sept. 12. It was the same day that Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly, providing the clearest rationale yet for going to war with Iraq. He said nothing in that speech about North Korea. Unlike Iraq, it is not plodding toward producing nuclear weapons. It may already have at least two.

The speech was not about North Korea; and had he mentioned them, he'd have been bashed for trying to widen the war and extend his imperialist grasp yet further. Cohen would probably have been leading the charge.

Undoubtedly, other governments also knew that North Korea was cheating on the agreement it had reached in 1994 with the Clinton administration. It was supposed to abandon its nuclear weapons program -- which, in a way, it did. But it started up another one -- and this is the one that Washington started to substantiate last summer. Washington and Pyongyang had at least one thing in common: They were both keeping a secret from the American people.

Well, from what's come out, the first hints of this came in 2000. Who was President in 2000? Let's say it all together, for Richard's benefit: Willian Jefferson Blythe Clinton.

And by the way, "in a way" North Korea did abandon their program? Well, since Cohen can't ever stay mad at his idol, the former Narcissist-in-Chief, he has to compliment him. But this, of course, is like arguing over what "is" is. Or saying that, "well, in a way he stopped cheating - he did dump Gennifer," without noting that he then started cheating with someone new. I think the phrase above was "fundamentally dishonest." It fits here, too.

In too many respects, the Bush administration operates as if it -- and not Congress or, for that matter, the American people -- owns this entity called "the government." It has told Congress to buzz off when it asked for documents telling whom Vice President Cheney met with in formulating the administration's energy policy. Enron, perhaps?

Well, he does raise a vaild point here. Unfortunately, he didn't raise this point during the eight year regime of the Clintons. I don't recall Cohen calling for Lady MacBeth to release notes about her secretive health care reform committee way back then. I don't recall criticism of executive priviledge when Billy Jeff used it.

He's not wrong about Bush, but since he carried water for the Clintons when they did the same thnigs, Cohen is certainly not the man to make that point.

It has been downright uncooperative in granting Freedom of Information Act requests from the news media and other interested parties. It fought a proposal to create an independent commission to investigate what went wrong before Sept. 11, 2001, then reluctantly agreed to one -- and now has reneged on that agreement. The intelligence community, it seems, did just a swell job -- the hole in Lower Manhattan notwithstanding.

About FOIA requests, that may be true. But without specifics, which we can't reall expect from Richard, i guess (unfounded allegations are so much easier), we can't evaulate this claim. And there may be legitimate reasons to oppose those requests due to security reasons - again, without knowing what's being asked for, there's no way to assess this acusation.

As for the commisison, I agree with him, amazingly enough. Broken clocks and blind acorns, I guess.

The news that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons -- that it just might already have them -- might not have changed the course of the Iraq debate in Congress one bit. It does not change my mind. In fact, it confronts us with what might happen when a desperate, despotic power gets its hands on such weapons. The South Korean capital of Seoul is just 40 miles from the North Korean border. If North Korea really has a nuclear arsenal, not to mention the means to deliver it, war might well be unthinkable. This, too, could happen with Iraq.

Gee, you think?

But the North Korean program certainly complicates matters -- maybe in ways that I cannot envision. This is the virtue of debate -- the teasing out of facts, arguments, positions that might never have occurred to you. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, for instance, I did not much consider whether toppling the Iraqi regime might also topple some others. I did not dwell on what would happen when Saddam Hussein was gone -- who would govern the country and whether in fact it would be governable. I was enraged. It was enough.

Well, I imagine that there's quite a lot that Richard can't envision.

And you have to love the narcissism here; how many times does he use "I" in one paragraph? It's all about how Richard feels.

The debate -- the one in Congress, to some extent, but really the one conducted on the op-ed pages of newspapers -- was extremely instructive. My bottom line did not change, but it wavered from time to time. I wanted all the facts, and in the end I thought I had them.

You still don't have them, Richard. First because no one has them, including the Administration. Second, because there are things that the Administrationand Congress know that you don't. So get over yourself already.

And of course it's all about the OpEd pages; not aming the public, because,really, who gives a damn about them? What's important is what Mo Dowd, and E.J. Dionne, and Sally Quinn think. That's what counts for Richard.

Not so, it turns out. An important piece of information was withheld -- from me, from you and from our representatives in Congress. I am reminded of the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Secret from whom? Not from the Cambodians. They surely noticed they were being bombed. Not from the North Vietnamese. They knew, too. The ones in the dark were the American people.

And of course we go back to Vietnam. Always Vietnam.

Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice deny that news about the North Korean program was withheld for political reasons. Bush needed time to study the matter, they insist. But he had plenty of time -- and some of that time Congress was engaged in the Iraq debate, playing the role of the oblivious board of directors. Bush is not that slow a learner. In fact, it was he -- remember? -- who included North Korea in his "axis of evil." What did he know then?

That they were a secretive, militaristic, Stalinist regime with a loon in charge. Which we all knew.

It would be one thing if this were an isolated example of the Bush administration either exaggerating threats -- the imminence of an Iraqi bomb, for instance -- or forgetting to mention one that already exists, such as the North Korean program. But this administration keeps one set of books for itself and another for the public and Congress. It's Enron on the Potomac.

And one more Enron mention, just for good measure. It doesn't matter how far you have to stretch it, as long as you can get your digs in at the President.

Blah.

2002-10-22T07:28:00.000-04:00

Hey, Paul!

Paul Krugman continues to push the Howell Raines anti-Bush agenda.

Today's column talks about the lack of serious corporate reform.

But there's something curious; Krugman notes that:

The S.E.C. has been underfunded for years...

and

Since 1995 Congress has systematically forced the Internal Revenue Service to shrink its operations; the number of auditors has fallen by 28 percent. Yet it's clear that giving the I.R.S. more money would actually reduce the federal budget deficit; the agency estimates that it loses at least $30 billion a year in uncollected taxes, mainly because high-income taxpayers believe they can get away with tax evasion.

The SEC has been underfunded for "years" - presumably more than two. Who was President for the eight years prior to January 20, 2001?

The IRS has been shrinking since 1995. Who was President from 1995 through January 20, 2001?

You wouldn't know from Krugman's column, which doesn't once mention the name of the man who presided over the underfunding of IRS and SEC for half a decade.

Is his memory that short, or is it simply that it doesn't serve the agenda to point out that the former Narcissist-in-Chief is equally responsible for the the problems that Krugman sees?

Just wondering.

2002-10-22T07:22:00.000-04:00

Mixed Messages

Why can't the Bush Administration keep a coherent message out there? Yesterday, the President said:

the United States was trying diplomacy "one more time" to disarm Saddam Hussein "peacefully" and suggested that if the Iraqi leader complied with every United Nations mandate it would "signal the regime has changed."

as reported in the NY Times. But the White House also said:

Mr. Bush was not backing away from his past insistence that Mr. Hussein must leave office.

If that's true, why issue the first statement? Can't these people stay on message at all?

2002-10-22T07:19:00.000-04:00

The Barbarians Act Again

This was noted elsewhere yesterday: barbaric Palestinian murderers slaughtered 16 Israeli citizens, in yet another demonstration of their desire for peaceful coexistence.

This attack happened shortly after Israel lifted a curfew on Jenin; and that's where the attack is believed to have originated.

And that says it all. The moment Israel lets up, even for a few hours, Israeli civillians die. Peace is impossible. The Palestinians don't want it; they want to kill Israelis, and that's the beginning and the end of things.

When will the world wake up and realize that truth?

2002-10-22T07:14:00.000-04:00

Another Shooting

This one in the Maryland suburbs, about an hour ago. It happened at a bus stop on Connecticut Avenue. The victim was shot in the chest and is (at the moment; let's hope he remains so) still alive.

No word yet on whether or not it's connected to the sniper.

And on an "irresponsible media" note, the local morning radio show I'm listening to noted that the victim was airlifted to an undisclosed trauma center, and police did not want to reveal where he was taken. I agree; it seems that there's no real burning public need to know which hospital the victim was taken to. But when they cut to their "canned" national news report, that did reveal which hospital despite apparent police requests not to.

2002-10-21T21:52:00.000-04:00

The Merry Widow Strikes Again!

Well, Jean Carnahan, the Merry Widow of Missouri is still fighting tooth and nail for the Senate seat she was handed two years ago. Unfortunately, she's being less than honest while doing so.

It seems that her campaign literature includes an AARP logo, implying AARP endorsement of herquest to be given four more years in the Senate because, gosh darn it, she's a widow and she deserves it!

Only one problem: the AARP doesn't actually endorse her.

Now, my Mom would never do such a thing. Which is yet another reason that all you readers need to contact your governor and tell him or her that you want them to appoint my Mom to the Senate for your state.

As I've pointed out before, my Mom has exactly the same qualification as Jean Carnahan (her husband passed away), and the same prior political experience as Jean Carnahan (none). But my Mom is a fundamentally upstanding person who would never dishonestly claim an endorsement from a group, as the Merry Widow has done.

Besides, my Mom, as a senior citizen, already is a member of the AARP. Forget their endorsement, my Mom will represent their views because she's one of them!

And as I've said before, she's willing to move to any state that will appoint her to the Senate, and she'll even pay the moving expenses herself.

So get in touch with your governors right away! You have nothing to lose but your current Senator, and you have my Mom to gain!

2002-10-21T21:44:00.000-04:00

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse

Racist con-man Jesse Jackson is at it again, talking about (hopefully soon-to-be ex) Secretary of State Colin Powell. We here in the Empire have no real love for Powell; his views are, we think, dangerous, destructive and contemptuous of American sovreignity.

So this is not really a defense of Mr. Powell. But we do have to wonder what, exactly, Jesse Jackson means when he tells a roomful of sycophants:

''He's not on our team. If he wins, Trent Lott wins. We're not on that team. If he wins, we lose. If he wins, poor folks lose.''

Wins what, exactly, Jesse? Colin isn't running for anything. He is not in a position to win or lose anything, politically. And in any case, considering that Colin finds himself at odds with the more pragmatic voices of the Administration, I'd think that Jesse and his gang of extortionists would prefer to see Colin prevail over his opponents within the Bush Administration.

But of course they don't. Because Colin doesn't toe the traditional liberal black Democrat line; that makes him "not part of the team." Because we all know that "real" black people are all, unquestionably and evermore, liberal Democrats. And they always agree with Jesse.

Maybe someone could explain to me why, exactly, anybody takes this racist jerk seriously anymore?

2002-10-21T17:10:00.000-04:00

National Review Versus the State Department, Continued

Joel Mowbray weighs in, discussing a newly issues GAO report which savages the State Department both for its pre September 11th visa issuance policies, and for the lack of substantative change in said policies since then.

It is, as always, both depressing and illuminating. Heads really, really need to roll. And they're not going to. And it's only a matter of time before more Americans die thanks to the "courtesy culture" that permeates State when it comes to immigrants from societies deeply hostile to the United States.

Ack.

2002-10-21T09:15:00.000-04:00

National Review Versus the State Department

Interesting article at NOR this morning, arguing that the State Department had knowledge of terrorist threats in Bali but did not warn Americans of the danger.

The most recent travel advisory on the State Department website for Indonesia prior to the Bali bombing is dated August 10, 2001. The advisory states: "The tourist destination of Bali has been largely free of the disturbances seen in other parts of Indonesia. All tourist facilities are operating normally, and to date foreigners have not been the specific target of any group."

Unfortunately the State Department was giving out advice it knew was wrong.

Writing in the New York Times, Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner reported on October 15 that the U.S. government had repeatedly warned the Indonesians "a group linked to Al Qaeda was planning attacks to kill Americans and other Westerners…." According to the Times, the "warnings contained no details about where and when attacks might occur…" However, the Sydney Australia Morning Herald reported: "The Prime Minister, John Howard, yesterday admitted that Australia received recent US intelligence identifying Bali as a possible target of a terrorist attack on Western tourists but had decided not to change its advice to Australian holidaymakers." The paper goes on to report that the prime minister "told Parliament that Bali had been mentioned in recent intelligence reports as a site, along with other tourist locations across Indonesia, in which there was a risk of "possible terrorist activity against United States tourists."

The phrase we're looking for here is, maybe, "dereliction of duty."

As the NRO piece notes:

The first duty of governments is to protect their own citizens from harm. Indonesia was not a Conventry situation — that is, we did not need to protect the source of the intelligence we had, which is what Winston Churchill had to do when he allowed Coventry to be bombed in 1941. Nor did we have to kowtow to Indonesia and keep private our concern about a looming danger. American citizens, and the citizens of America's allies need accurate and timely warnings of danger. When we have credible intelligence we need to get it to the public without delay.

How come the State Department doesn't understand that?

2002-10-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

The Media Sucks! Film at Eleven!

Howie Kurtz seems to think so, anyway.

This morning, he laments the fact that:

(the Congressional elections have) seemingly been relegated to back-burner status

He notes that:

In years past, journalists have sounded a drumbeat about pressing issues -- say, health care or budget deficits -- and virtually demanded that candidates respond. In recent weeks, however, the loudest sounds have been the war drums over Iraq, the confrontation with North Korea and wall-to-wall coverage of the Washington sniper.

And further, that:

With the economic downturn, 45 states are facing deficits, but the press -- with its usual fixation on polls and attack ads -- has largely failed to force candidates to talk about specific spending cuts or tax increases.

Without being snide here (really!) this does raise an interesting point. What, exactly, is the role of the media in election season?

Is it to simply report what the candidates say and do, and let the public decide what to make of it all?

Or is it to try and "force" the candidates to address the issues? Which of course begs the question, if that is the media's role, who decides which issues the candidates should be forced to address?

Kurtz's above comment, about "pressing issues" gets to the heart of the question; if the public isn't clamoring to hear about a particular issue, is it really pressing? Is it the media's job to try and force the public, as well as the candidates, to care about an issue that it deems pressing?

I'd be curious to know what Kurtz's take on those questions is...

2002-10-21T08:59:00.000-04:00

Oh, He's So Funny

Garry Trudeau has noticed the Blogosphere! Yes, now we've really made it - we're an object of ridicule in "Doonesbury."

Today's strip, which I'd assume is the first in a series, depicts two of Trudeau's annoying, redeeming-quality-less college age characters (as distinct from his older, redeeming-quality-less characters) talking 'bout blogs.

"Wait, don't you have to have something to say?" one of the characters asks, to which the other replies, "A common misconcepetion."

Oh, the humor! Oh, the cutting sarcasm!

Oh, the pointless vapidity. As if Garry Trudeau's got any standing to talk about "having something to say" - the last time he had anything resembling an original thought was probably sometime back in the 70's.

2002-10-20T23:04:00.000-04:00

Go. Read. Learn.

Check out this gem of an article from Mean Mr. Mustard. There's lots more there, also worth reading.

2002-10-20T20:47:00.000-04:00

Well, Here's the Agenda

In today's NY Times magazine, weekday columnist Paul Krugman was handed several pages to expound on his views of the state of the economy. Needless to say, he doesn't like what he sees.

This is no surprise, given his constant attacks against the current Administration, against the Republicans generally, and against free-market capitalism as an economic system.

He argues that the middle class is disappearing, and that we are seeing the growth of a "plutocracy" not unlike the Great Gatsby-esque 1920's (his reference, not mine).

Krugman argues that:

the United States, for all its economic achievements, has more poverty and lower life expectancy than any other major advanced nation. Above all, the growing concentration of wealth has reshaped our political system: it is at the root both of a general shift to the right and of an extreme polarization of our politics.

Nowhere does Krugman mention any other possible reasons for the poverty and life-expectancy rates in the U.S. - massive immigration, expecially from Mexico; and racial/ethnic disparities. The fact that the U.S. is massively more diverse (with all the good and ill effects implied by that) than one of the European states Krugman compares the U.S. to (Sweeden), is utterly ignored. Is it possible that that's a factor in poverty, life-expectancy and income distrubution figures?

He argues as well that politics are more polarized now than ever before in the U.S., which is simply absurd.

And it's all the fault of the New Plutocrats - as when, near the end of the piece, Krugman says that:

The point is that it is no accident that strongly conservative views, views that militate against taxes on the rich, have spread even as the rich get richer compared with the rest of us: in addition to directly buying influence, money can be used to shape public perceptions. The liberal group People for the American Way's report on how conservative foundations have deployed vast sums to support think tanks, friendly media and other institutions that promote right-wing causes is titled ''Buying a Movement.''

Of course. And who bankrolls People for the American Way? Multimillionaire television producer Normal Lear. And in any case, quoting an avowedly liberal group's report on the practices of its ideological opponents is hardly ironclad proof of an argument, as Krugman wishes us to believe it is.

Krugman also says:

Although America has higher per capita income than other advanced countries, it turns out that that's mainly because our rich are much richer. And here's a radical thought: if the rich get more, that leaves less for everyone else.

That statement -- which is simply a matter of arithmetic -- is guaranteed to bring accusations of ''class warfare.''

Well, yes, because it is class warfare.

The real way to look at it is that when the economy grows, everyone gets more. We're not talking about a zero-sum game here. There is not a fixed pie of wealth that is redistributed, even if that is how Krugman would like us to see things. As we experience more economic growth, the amount of wealth increases, and both rich and poor benefit.

Since this article is billed as "part 1", we can expect, no doubt more of this, with Krugman's perscriptions for fixing the illusory problems he's identified. I'm willing to bet that these answers will include higher and more "progressive" taxes, legislation to control the pay of corporate officials, probably an expansion of the estate tax, and other such things. Because, of course, people should not be allowed to keep the wealth they generate, nor should private organizations be allowed to decide how much they will pay their employees. It should all be decided by the Government - and by experts such as Krugman, who of course know what's good for all the rest of us lumpenproles.

It's all quite depressing, and wrongheaded. But it does serve as a great statement of the Times' economic agenda.

2002-10-19T22:54:00.000-04:00

The Stupidity Continues

Speaking of people whose continued employment by major American newspapers is inexplicable, we have Mary McGrory of the WashPost.

She still doesn't like our foreign policy:

At a glance it would seem as if the warlords in the White House are as clueless as the frustrated police pursuing the shooter who has been rampaging through Washington's suburbs for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

George W. Bush, who had been doing a credible imitation of Alexander the Great conquering the known world, was stopped in his tracks by North Korea.

Excuse me? While "warlords" is just precious, and the Alexander the Great ref is hilarious, what, exactly, have we conquered?

Has not the President gone to Congress to seek authorization for the use of force? Has he not gone before the United Nations? Do his State Department minions not even now negotiate with France and Russia to hammer out a UN resolution acceptable to all?

In short, Mary, what the hell are you talking about?

Yes, representatives of Pyongyang's demented leader told a State Department envoy, they are working on a nuclear bomb.

Despite promises bought from them by appeasement as dictated by BIll Clinton and brokered by Jimmy Carter.You'd think that such a complete and utter failure of precisely the policy she advocated would at least cause McGrory a moment's pause. You'd be wrong.

Iraq, Bush's obsession, has been six months away from a nuke for years, and Bush wants to bomb, invade and occupy it. But here's North Korea's Kim Jong Il, who fits perfectly Bush's description of Saddam Hussein as "a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction."

Bush doesn't want to raise a finger against him.

"We seek a peaceful solution," said he.

We do?

How come?

Um...because Kim Jong Il has a couple of million men on the border with South Korea, and tens of thousands of artillery pieces within range of Seoul, which is only 40 miles from the border, and which is the capital city of an ally, and which contains several million civillians? Did you ever consider that, Mary? That an attack on North Korea will be orders of magnatitude more costly in terms of both U.S. military casualties and allied civillian casualties than an attack on Iraq?

Just wondering.

It is true that there is a difference between Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il. Hussein is power mad; Kim is mad -- certifiably so, which could make him even more dangerous. And his nuclear program -- aided and abetted by our principal ally in the war against terror, Pakistan -- is farther along than Iraq's. Moving into the broken-promises area, North Korea has been no piker: Hussein has broken more U.N. resolutions, but Kim violated the all-important 1994 agreement on nonproliferation.

Signed by whom, Mary?

As for mass murder of their own people, they are twins. The president has been telling us of the crimes of Hussein, the gassing of the Kurds and the cruelties toward his real and official family. Kim has chosen another means of exterminating his citizenry. In the wake of flood and drought, North Korea faced famine, and some think as many as 2 million died. Kim manipulated humanitarian aid programs and starved people he deemed nonessential.

Bush has no comment.

What would you have him do, Mary? What is your policy? You've been writing this crap since the early 70's. Surely you must have some ideas of your own.

Oh, never mind. I forgot who I was talking about.

What has been drained off his crusade for sending the bombers over Baghdad is the moral imperative of regime change. If Hussein has to be removed because he is so loathsome, why not Kim? You had to go to the small tent city outside police headquarters in Rockville, where frustrated cops brief press from all over the world about what they don't know, to find a more flummoxed crew than the White House warlord. The most recent shooting was of a 47-year-old woman who had survived cancer; she was felled by a single shot as she and her husband loaded their car with Home Depot purchases. The horrible event was thought to have a redeeming feature -- a harvest of clues and eyewitness accounts. But it all vanished. Chagrined officers and officials said the cream-colored van, the olive-skinned man and the broken taillight were imagined and not seen.

Fuck you, Mary. There's no more polite way to say it.

Your gloating over the fact that our nation and our leader has had an awful, intractable, horribly dangerous problem dropped in our and his lap is disgusting. This is not about politics, or about scoring cheap points, or about stupid namecalling. This is about potentially millions of lives.

Bush is moving fast these days. The commander in chief spends all his time waging war on Democrats. He should perhaps pause long enough to explain to those in Congress why he withheld the news about North Korea's nuclear program from them for 12 days, making sure that the war resolution was safely passed without any distracting revelations. Democrats who voted for the resolution, particularly those who railed against it while doing so, might find an explanation to mitigate their embarrassment. They were prodded to a roll call by Bush's hard sell about the importance of every minute; they were also being hammered on the right for being "appeasers." Democrat Paul Wellstone, despite a stiff Republican challenge, bucked the tide and voted against the war. He is so far not paying any price. Even pro-war voters have commended him for showing guts.

Gasp! the President, a Republican, wants to help his party win, and help defeat members of the opposition party. Let's impeach the bastard!

Voters have long been accustomed to living with a double standard from both parties in dealing with troublesome foreigners. Little Cuba is still caught in a 40-year-old embargo because of its Communist dictator, while humongous China, with its brazen human rights violations, religious persecution and ruthless repression, is a partner.

There is a reason for that. You might remember the Cold War, Mary? It is, perhaps, time to change our policy towards China, but there were valid reasons for our behavior towards them.

But as we barrel down the road to war with Iraq, maybe we ought to quiz our unilateralist president about why it is necessary for us to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq while North Korea gets the striped-pants treatment. Is it because North Korea has a million men under arms? Is it because Kim Jong Il never threatened to kill Bush's father, or because he has no oil, or is not a Muslim? Maybe we should ask the advocates who dreamed for 10 years of invading Iraq. Do Richard Perle, Richard Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz believe in equal opportunity for tyrants? Their leader seems to be pointing the other way.

As noted above, Mary, since you're so goddamn ignorant - or willfully blind - our ally South Korea has a big say in the matter, since they will take thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties, if there is war with the North.

Maybe the President is not quite the evil "warlord" you'd like to believe he is, Mary, and he's not prepared to sacrifice thousands of South Korean lives simply in order to placate you.

Disgraceful.

2002-10-19T22:37:00.000-04:00

Well, She's Gone Off the Deep End

I'm not even going to link to Mo Dowd's column today. It's an entirely psychotic rant, which, as Josh Chafetz puts it, is "a precipitous plunge into utter incoherence."

That's really the only description. And, again, it amazes me that even with Howell Raines' anti-Bush agenda, that such drivel is considered fit commentary to appear in the nation's Newspaper of Record.

Ack.

2002-10-19T12:02:00.000-04:00

The Eye of the Beholder

Ombudsgod discusses the controversial "Boondocks" comic strip and its "edgy" creator, Aaron McGruder, in response to columns from the Chicago Tribune and the WashPost.

The background is that McGruder last week penned a strip unfavorably contrasting President Bush to Hitler. The Trib ran the strip, resulting in numerous complaints from readers; the WashPost did not, instead running an old, substitute strip in its place.

The Trib's ombudsman said:

As to McGruder's being allowed to say the things he says only because he is black, it would probably be more accurate to say that he is able to see the things he sees because he is black. Loath though many Americans are to accept it nowadays, having a different historical experience--whether it be slavery and segregation for blacks; pogroms and Holocaust for Jews; Communist totalitarianism for Eastern Europeans; extermination and reservations for Native Americans, or whatever it is we'll eventually call what's happening now to people who look Middle Eastern--gives one a different perspective on life and issues.

And that perspective, while not the sole determinant of a person's point of view, will assert itself in ways and places both expected and unexpected--even, sometimes, on the funny pages.

In other words, it's acceptable to be racist if you're black.

WashPost ombudsman Michael Gettler calls "Boondocks" "clever and edgy," but otherwise merely quotes the Trib and doesn't bother to add any actual thoughts of his own; it can be inferred, I think, from his presenting the Trib's words without commentary that he agrees with them.

I suppose to a certain mindset, saying inflamatory, racist, potentially slanderous things and falling back on the excuse that "it's a black thing" is what passes for clever these days.

As with today's "Boondocks" - which compares McDonalds french fries to heroin. McGruder draws one of his hateful and hate-filled characters watching a TV news report, which states:

"Following the lead set by McDonalds with their new "healtiher" french fries, the organization of worldwide heroin manufacturers announced that a new "low calorie" version of the popular narcotis would hit the streets by January. A spokesperson for the organization said: "Like McDonalds, we have learned that just because your product is highly addictive and deadly, doesn't mean you have to kill your customers off quickly. Healthier heroin is just good for business."

Yes, that's clever and edgy. McDonalds = heroin. Fried potatos are equivalent to a heavily addictive drug. McDonalds wants to murder its customers.

Well, that is a worldview, that's for sure. And it is a different persoective, no doubt one stemming from McGruder's "historical experience." Of course, it's also a perspective that is flat-out nuts.

But, hey, McGruder's great-great-great granddad might have been a slave, so of course he'll see things that I, as a child of White Opporessor Priviledge cannot see.

Yeah, that's really clever and edgy.

Or maybe it's just stupid, paranoid and hateful. I think that's a lot more likely.

2002-10-19T08:30:00.000-04:00

Legacy? Here's a Legacy!

The usually irritating E.J. Dionne of the WashPost doesn't fail to disappoint today (well, techinically, tomorrow, since this piece is from the Sunday paper).

He writes about the former Narcissist-in-Chief, and his seeming omnipresence in the current campaign season.

Dionne writes that the Left is using Clinton to energize their base, and the Right is using his vile spectre to similarly energize theirs (as, frex, in North Carolina, where Liddy Dole's campaign ads tie opponent Erskine Bowles to the loathsome Clinton whom he served).

But of course it's not actually about control of Congress, as Dionne notes with what sounds frightening like approval, it's about Bill. It's about Bill's Legacy. Dionne compares Clinton to other forner Presidents, and decides that the only ones who really compare (in terms of age, health and political engagmenet post-White House) were Herbert Hoover and Teddy Roosevelt:

Unlike T.R. and Hoover, Clinton can't run again. So if there is a genuinely illuminating post-presidential comparison -- and neither left nor right will like this -- it is with Reagan. Why? Because like Reagan, Clinton's obvious legacy is political. That's why it matters to Clinton, really matters, that Democrats prosper.

After Reagan left office, his followers sought to build a usable and powerful past that could inspire another generation of success for the Republican right. The peripatetic conservative Grover Norquist formed an organization which he called, unapologetically, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project.

Clinton, too, hopes to create a political legacy that would celebrate a move back to the center-left after the Reagan interlude. If you understand this, all his current political activity falls into place.

Well, E.J., President Reagan's legacy was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing of hundreds of millions of people from Communism. It was also a rebuilt military capable of handling any challenge the world could throw at it. And it was a strong economy.

Clinton's legacy is a weakened military, nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea, al Qaeda terrorists running free and slaughtering Americans, a recession that began in early 2000 and that continues to this day, not to mention debates over the meaning of "is" and pardons of fugitives who bribed their way to freedom at Bill's hands.

Yes, we can certainly see the comparison.

But of course E.J. still likes the old "comeback kid," which he actually calls Bill in the article. It's an embarrassing love note to a man who disgraced hiself, disgraced his office, and did harm to the country that we will spend the forseeable future trying to repair.

2002-10-19T00:35:00.000-04:00

Why Are We So Angry All the Time?

We here in the Empire are, it might seem to some readers, very angry at a lot of people, a lot of the time.

This is not an incorrect observation.

It is probably worthwhile to explain one of the important principles which underpins the thinking here in the Empire. Stated simply (and with apologies to Stan Lee), with great power comes great responsibility.

Whether we're discussing the FBI, or the Senate, or the White House, or the Catholic Church, the principle is the same. The people whom we criticize are not in the positions they're in by accident. They are there because they have actively sought out power, be it in an agency, or by elective office, or in the Church, or elsewhere. They want the ability to write laws, to carry a gun and badge, or to take responsibility for the spiritual health of thousands (or millions, in a big archdiocese) of people.

And they claim, either explicity (as with our political class, who call themselves "public servants") or implicitly (as with the Catholic hierarchy) to be servants of the public rather than masters. They promise to put the good of those they claim to serve ahead of their own interests (or the interests of their organization).

We here in the Empire take them at their word; and our ire is raised when that word is broken, when the trust we give to these servants is betrayed. Because we both expect and demand that they will truly behave like servants, and that they will prove worthy of the power and responsibility they have sought out.

In short, we expect them to be better than we here in the Empire are. Because we here in the Empire do not seek the power to write laws, or to carry a badge and gun, or to be responsible for the spiritual health of a flock of millions. We know that we do not want such responsibility.

But the people who do want it must be held to the highest possible standards of behavior. They must put the good of those they serve ahead of their own interests.

This is obviously a high standard, but we believe that such a standard is the price for the power that is granted to those in such positions; and that only people capable of meeting such a standard ought to be in such positions in the first place.

When the standard is not met, as for example at the State Department with the ongoing saga of visa issuance; or the Catholic Church with the sexual-abuse matter, we here in the Empire believe it is not just right, but required that we cry out to the heavens about the failures of those who claim to serve, until they are removed from the positions of power they occupy. We believe that to do otherwise is to implicitly condone the behavior of these people, and that is unacceptable.

We admit that this is a simplistic view of the world. But sometimes things really are simple. Sometimes wrong and right are very clear. And we will keep crying out until such time as we deem it not to be necessary.

We suspect we won't be out of a job anytime soon.

2002-10-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

More on the Vatican

The NY Times reports today on reaction from the American Catholic Church to the Vatican's decision not to endorse the "zero tolerance" policy adopted by American bishops in Dallas earlier this year.

Needless to say, this is appalling. There is a singluar lack of recognition, or understanding, or concern that sexual abuse is a crime. It is a motherfucking felony! It destroys lives!

It is not simply a matter for church law.

According to the article:

many bishops, priests and even some laypeople privately breathed a sigh of relief.

They said they welcomed the Vatican's decision as a corrective measure that will put the brakes on a policy that many of them now say was adopted at the American Roman Catholic bishops meeting in Dallas in June with too much haste, with too much attention to the pain of victims and not enough to the rights of priests accused of abuse.

Well, excuse me for being vulgar here, but if the church hadn't sat on its goddamn ass for the past 30 years while report after report of abuse came out; or, worse, if bishops and other church officials hadn't actively covered up abusers and even enabled their further predation on children, then there wouldn't have been a goddamn problem, and there would be no need to worry about the rights of priests accused of abuse, now would there?

Right now, the pain of the victims, and the removal of the victimizers ought to be the only priority of the church. Anything else is a direct slap in the face of both the victims and the lay membership of the church generally.

The article also notes:

Many victims' advocates and even some church officials observed that yesterday's terse Vatican letter would now give bishops who never intended to implement the Dallas policies the perfect excuse to delay doing so now. Some bishops have been hesitating to take some of the steps called for in the Dallas policy, especially permanently removing from ministry all priests with credible accusations against them. Dozens of the nation's 195 dioceses have even disregarded other measures required by the Dallas policy, such as setting up lay boards to review abuse cases, or appointing a diocesan coordinator to handle accusations.

Lovely.

Maybe it's time to take matters out of the hands of the church. Actually, scratch "maybe" - there's no question. Crimes have been committed. The authorities need to be arresting priests who are credibly accused of abuse, as well as the bishops and other officials who have sheltered them and obstructed investigation of their crimes. People like Cardinal Law and others of his ilk need to be behind bars for their criminal and destructive actions.

I could keep on, throwing around words like "disgraceful" and "criminal" and so forth, but those don't begin to do justice to this situation, or to the unforgivable conduct of the church officials who care more for covering the asses of accused priests than for the lives and souls of the people they have pledged to shepherd. In the end, all I can really say is that I hope that they burn in hell, and I'm confident that if there is such a place, that's exactly what will happen to them.

2002-10-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

Also in the Times

The editorial board of the NY Times (hello, Gail!) tells us lwhat lessons we should learn from North Korea's revelation of a massive nuclear weapons program, which they had explicitly forswore back in 1994:

North Korea has stunned the world by acknowledging that it has been working to produce nuclear bomb fuel despite a 1994 agreement with the United States to freeze nuclear weapons development.

Well, it did not shock those of us who didn't believe that North Korea would honor the agreements it signed; who believed that the giveaway of aid and technology to the Stalinist government of Kim Il Jong was nothing less than appeasement on the part of former Narcissist-in-Chief Clinton and deal broker Jimmy Carter.

People on both sides of the Iraq debate will use this alarming news to prop up their views. Hawks will say this demonstrates the futility of treaties with megalomaniacal dictators, while doves will say this gives the lie to the administration's argument that Iraq is uniquely dangerous. But the one lesson we should have learned from the murky and frustrating tussle over Iraq is that there is no single approach to foreign affairs. North Korea's weapons pose an acute problem that must be dealt with on its own terms. Tough multilateral diplomacy is the right first step, as Washington understands.

Um..."tough multilateral diplomacy" is what, we were told, got us the 1994 agreement. It's also that the farce currently playing at the UN is being called. It abjectly failed with North Korea.

There can be no justifying what North Korea has done, and no minimizing its seriousness. Besides the 1994 agreement with the United States, Pyongyang committed itself by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and a joint declaration with South Korea not to develop nuclear weapons.

Well, we agree with this paragraph, at least.

When caught, North Korea neither denied the program nor promised to end it. Instead it declared that supposed American actions had ``nullified'' the 1994 agreement, and asserted that it had even ``more powerful'' unconventional weapons. It is not known whether the North has actually produced nuclear bombs yet, but it is within reach. Having recently opened channels of discussion with Tokyo and Washington, North Korea's leaders are now less isolated than before. But they have again shown themselves to be erratic and untrustworthy. A nuclear-armed North Korea could threaten South Korea, the nearly 40,000 American troops stationed there, and Japan as well. It would also be a highly unsettling neighbor for China and Russia.

They've been erratic and untrustworthy all along; some of us recognized that. Others (such as, say, some Democratic ex-Presidents and a lot of writers at the Times) did not.

America's two most important allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, strongly favor a firm diplomatic response to North Korea's nuclear program. They can contribute to one by linking further help for the North to a complete and verified dismantling of its nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs. Russia and China, which also prefer diplomatic solutions, can usefully add to the pressure on Pyongyang by announcing a similar linkage. President Bush should urge such measures when he meets with the leaders of South Korea, Japan and China later this month. If Pakistan turns out to be the source of the uranium-enrichment equipment used by North Korea, as American intelligence agencies suspect, Washington must demand an immediate end to such reckless transfers.

Because North Korea has now violated solemn international weapons agreements, any new understandings will have to be verified unconditionally and highly intrusively. If there is one analogy appropriate to Iraq, it is this: Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of dictators who want them requires more than signed agreements.

It does require more than signed agreements. That much is true. But what the Times means by that is "extra-serious signed agreements," not any real action.

It is interesting to note that nowhere in the piece are the architects of the failed and delusional 1994 agreement mentioned. I wonder why that is?

2002-10-18T08:57:00.000-04:00

The Vendetta Continues

The NY Times' campaign against the Bush Administration continues today with yet another hit piece from the increasingly vile Paul Krugman.

Today he trots out Hitler; attacking Republicans for analogizing Democratic lies about the tax cut to Hitler's "big lie" tactics. Says Krugman:

As far as I know, in the past it wasn't considered appropriate for the occupant of the White House to declare that members of the opposition party weren't interested in the nation's security. And it certainly wasn't usual to compare anyone who wants to tax the rich — or even anyone who estimates the share of last year's tax cut that went to the wealthy — to Adolf Hitler.

But it was usual, Paul, for Democrats to compare then-candidate Bush and other Republicans to the Nazis for virtually everything they said or did back in the 2000 campaign, and after. It was usual for Democrats to accuse Bush of complicity in the racist murder of James Byrd because he opposed hate crime laws.

And as for the opposition party not being interested in the good of the nation, well, that sort of rhetoric has been thrown around by both sides for as long as the nation's been around.

Get off your high horse, Krugman; your side has no moral standing in this debate, nor do you personally, you dishonest creep.

The rest of the column is equally dishonest and offensive; which has been for a while now the tone of the Times' editorial pages.

2002-10-18T08:43:00.000-04:00

Vive La France?

Emperor Misha (among others ) points out France's "crucial" role in shaping a new UN resolution on Iraq.

Misha is fairly blunt in his take on the matter:

If you're still in doubts whether the UN in general and the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys in particular are about as useful as teats on a bull, consider this:

"Any kind of authenticity in the use of force will profoundly divide us," (the French Ambassador to the UN) said.

The only thing surprising is that they admit it.

Go to Hell, you useless pricks, and take your surrender culture with you!

We here in the Empire agree completely.

2002-10-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

They Still Don't Get It

"They" in this case being the leadership of the Catholic Church, which apparently does not recognize the seriousness of priest sexual abuse.

The Vatican is not fully backing some of the American bishops' stricter prescriptions for punishing sexually abusive priests and has expressed deep concern that the bishops went too far in devising their abuse policy in Dallas last summer...

...the Vatican had reservations about several aspects of the bishops' zero-tolerance policy, which mandated the removal from active ministry of any priest who sexually abused a child, including its lack of a statute of limitations and its broad definition of child sexual abuse...

...the Vatican believes the policy may lead to the removal of some priests without due process. They said the Vatican also had qualms about the policy's requirement that American bishops report all sexual abuse claims to the police.

Well, that's just great.

The Vatican has made it abundantly clear what all Catholics know - the Church is not a democracy. What Rome says, goes. If parishioners don't like it, tough.

That's fine for internal church matters; it is most certainly not fine when it comes to allegations and evidence of felonious behavior by priests. The Vatican doesn't like the idea of reporting claims that priests have sexually abused parishioners to the authorities?

Too fucking bad. It's the law. Sexual abuse is a serious crime. It is not an internal matter for the Church. And if Church officials are unwilling to report allegations of sexual abuse when they become aware of them, then it's going to be up to the authorities, when such claims finally do come to light, to prosecute not only the abusers themselves, but the Church officials who failed to report the abuses. The phrases "obstruction of justice" and "aiding and abetting" come to mind here.

Even though I'm a "lapsed" Catholic, I still am a member of the Church, and I am disgusted by its attitude towards horrible, life-scarring criminal behavior on the part of its priests. The Church has - and continues - to display utter contempt for the parishioners it claims to shepherd, and that's unacceptable, not to mention entirely contrary to the teachings of Jesus that the Church claims to follow.

There will be a reckoning, whether in this world or the next, and the officials in Rome and elsewhere (hello, Cardinal Law!) who have such disregard for what is right, and care only for the "image" and procedures of the Church will not find that reckoning a pleasant one.

2002-10-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

What Do Willy Wonka and Gordon Gekko Have in Common?

Check out this article from Forbes and find out...

2002-10-17T14:26:00.000-04:00

Great Timing!

In a column he wrote yesterday for Salon, Robert Scheer writes that President Bush ought to behave more like Nobel "Peace" Prize winner Jimmy Carter.

He goes on and on about imperialism and blah blah blah, and ends with this:

While Carter has exhibited the patience of the peacemaker, a sweet Jesus for our time, willing to rebuke contemptible leaders while offering them a path for redemption, Bush has become a self-fulfilling prophet of war, delighting in the discovery of what he defines as immutable evil, thereby justifying an endless crusade against the infidels.

Jimmy Carter is a Jesus for our time. Amazing.

The beauty of this is that, in today's newspapers reporting North Korea's admission of a massive nuclear program that was entirely undeterred by the wonderful "deal" that Mr. Carter brokered back in 1994, we see the results of "the patience of the peacemaker."

We see how the "path for redemption" was followed.

We see what "rebuking contemptible leaders" without any intention to actually do anything about their behavior got us.

Amazing.

2002-10-17T14:09:00.000-04:00

Yes, This Will Help

The NY Times opines today in favor of allowing released/paroled felons to vote.

They refer to the practice of disallowing those who have been convicted of felonies to vote as "felony disenfranchisement," as though the felons in question did nothing to earn such action; and also making the process sound like a crime in itself.

It's not, of course; people who have committed felonies should most certainly not be given back their right to vote; such is the wages of sin. If citizens do not wish to be "disenfrahcnised," they should not commit felonies which result in their arrest, conviction and imprisonment. Seems fairly straightforward to me.

2002-10-17T13:43:00.000-04:00

The Fruits of Appeasement

Well, we got an unmistakable lession in what happens when you appease psychotic third-world tyrants yesterday; they lie, they cheat, and they develop nuclear weapons in direct violation of the agreements they make with you.

We have former Narcissist-in-Chief Clinton and exPeanut-Farmer-in-Chief Carter are directly responsible for this; Clinton with his urge to buy off Jim Jong Il, and Carter with his "help" in the diplomacy that led to the agreements which - we now know - Pyongyang flagrantly violated from day one.

I wonder if we'll hear about the role Mr. Carter played in this debacle, what with him being in the news for his Nobel Peace Prize and all?

2002-10-17T12:31:00.000-04:00

Who Is the Snpier?

Instapundit posts abot the possibility that the DC sniper may be an islamic terrorost, a possibility that Jeff Durkin believes is not merely a possibility but pretty much a certainty.

Jeff's argument is that the authorities know much more than they're telling, and their refusal to release a composite sketch (as well as their dismissal of reports of partial license plate tags) is due to their knowing that it's a terrorist, and their belief that confirmation of same would spark outrage and demands for action that the authoriries are unwilling or unable to carry out.

I have to say that that argument makes a lot of sense to me.

2002-10-17T09:11:00.000-04:00

Dickie Serves Up a Softball

As regular visitors to the Empire know, we are not big fans of WashPost columnist Richard Cohen.

In spite of our distaste for Idiot Richard, we've been forced to agree at least partially with a couple of his recent columns (which just goes to prove, as we say in the Empire, even a blind acorn finds a squirrel sometimes). Today, though, Richard is back in full Moron Mode:

Ever since the sniper first struck in the Washington area, the police -- not to mention every quasi-expert on early-morning television -- have been trying to come up with a profile of him. A more productive exercise might be to come up with a profile of a nation that is awash in guns and refuses to keep track of who has them. That's the profile of an idiot.

No, Richard. That's the profile of a country that actually (gasp!) lives by both the letter and the spirit of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the one you keep skipping over, in the hopes that if you ignore it maybe one day it'll disappear?

Lest you think that my own profile is of a gun-control zealot, you are wrong. I am not talking of outlawing guns, even pistols, or taking them away from people who use them for hunting or self-protection.

Well, Richard, I do think that you are a gun-control zealot, as well as a fool and a terrible writer.

I am talking instead of taking reasonable measures to track those guns and the ammunition used in them so that the authorities have a fighting chance to stop killers before, as has been happening over and over, they kill again. If the Constitution forbids such measures, then I ought to have the right to own an unregistered car and drive it without a license.

Well, if the Constitution spoke to your right to drive on public roads, you might have a point. As it doesn't, you don't.

I'd also point out that licensing of drivers and registraiton of automobiles is a state, not a federal matter. You might want to bone up on such concepts, Richard. You can probably find a copy of the Constitution online somewhere, or at least, I'm sure one of your interns could find one and read it to you.

But the Bush administration, fearful of the National Rifle Association, opposes what is known as "fingerprinting." Don't get me wrong. In the name of anti-terrorism, George Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft would fingerprint everyone in sight. But guns? Not a chance. This, though, is a scientific reality: Because every weapon leaves unique markings on the fired bullet, it is possible to store these markings in a national database so the cops would know what specific gun was used and -- maybe someday -- who owned it.

I wonder if anyone on the gun-control side ever considered the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, people who believe in the Second Amendment are not automatically wholly owned tools of the NRA, and that they came to that view on their own?

There are also many things wrong with ballistic fingerprinting as the wonderful solution tro all our gun-violence problems. They've ben discussed elsewhere in exhaustive detail, but, for Richard's sake, here's the highlights:

It's fairly easy to alter the fingerprint of a gun, which makes it untraceable.

Guns can be stolen, which stops the trail cold at the home of the person who was robbed.

It only works going forward, unless you plan to have every gun owner in America come forard and have their guns fingerprinted. How will that be enforced? Who will pay for it? And who will do the finterprinting of the tens of millions of legal guns? The fingerprinting elves?

It will not affect the tens of millions of illegal guns out there.

I wonder if Richard knows any of that? I wonder if he cares?

Science is one thing, politics another. At the moment, it's possible to buy a weapon in, say, the currently terrified state of Virginia -- the site of four of the shootings -- almost at will. A background check is required to weed out mass murderers and psychopaths, but there is no regulation of the secondary market -- private sales. As for ballistic fingerprinting, only two states -- Maryland and New York -- require it. That's not much help when the other 48 don't.

Well, Richard, how exactly would you regulate private sales? Police cameras in every home?

The NRA stands athwart such common-sense measures. It opposes almost all regulation, of course, and fingerprinting is no exception. As for George Bush, it's not quite clear where he stands. His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, was asked whether fingerprinting would have aided the police in the search for the serial killer, and he had this to say: "These are the acts of a depraved killer who has broken and will continue to break laws. And so the question is not new laws; the question is the actions here represent the values in our society."

The NRA opposes such measures because (1) they won't work, and (2) they are backdoor routes to registration and eventually confiscation of all guns.

Huh? The remark seems to put Fleischer in the company of the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed gays, liberals, the ACLU, etc., for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For the life of me, I cannot see what societal value the serial killer represents. Maybe he's a liberal.

On the other hand, I also cannot see the societal value of ammunition such as the .223 bullet the killer has been using. It shatters within the body, causing catastrophic trauma -- and leaves a gaping exit wound. I also cannot fathom the value to society of assault rifles, such as the Galil, which, again, is the weapon he may be using.

Except that it isn't. Witnesses say that the gun is an AK-74, which is not made (nor is it legally available for sale) in this country.

And "assault rifles" is a meaningless phrase designed to scare people, which, as used by Richard, is a substitute for logic or any sort of cohjerent argument.

I can understand the value, though, of restricting the sale of such ammo and weapons to those, like the police, who have a need for them. I can understand the value also of fingerprinting the guns so that when -- as is bound to happen -- some nut uses them to kill people at random, we can "dust" the bullet. Yet the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is only now getting some attention for its efforts to push this common-sense measure.

Maybe because, as noted above, it won't actually work?

Fleischer aside, the Bush administration is supposedly reviewing the matter of ballistic fingerprinting. This is undoubtedly a ploy, as the serial killer has presented the staunchly pro-gun president with an exquisitely awkward moment. But when Fleischer's "deranged killer" is caught, the White House will forget about the matter -- until, of course, the next deranged killer gets his hands on a weapon, locks and loads it with ammo meant for warfare, and goes on a killing spree.

Look, gun nuts, this is not about taking away your weapons. Increasingly, I have become less and less convinced of the efficacy of strict gun control -- the English experience has been just awful -- and at times, such as the night a burglar broke into my house, I hanker for a gun myself. All that I and others like me want right now is to make it harder to kill and harder to escape apprehension.

"Gun nuts?" Nice. The problem, Richard, if you'd bother to listen to what folks on the gun-control side say, is that it is about taking away guns, about subverting the Second Amendment. It's funny that a columnist who's acutely sensitive to the "slippery slope" argument and backdoor tactics of opponents when it comes to, say, abortion (and, funny, "abortion nuts" is not a phrase in common use. I wonder why?) is so tone deaf to the same ideas in the gun debate.\

Maybe it's because, despite his protests, he's for gun control after all. Or, more accurately, gun control for the unwashed masses, but not for him. sounds like another writer for the WashPost once upon a time, Carl Rowan. Or Senator Feinstein of California (who, as Mayor of San Francisco, had the only gun permit in the city). Rules are for other people, not for Richard.

That's our profile, Mr. Fleischer, Mr. Bush and the NRA. If we had our way, we might not need one for the killer.

Of course! Pass the magic new law and all problems go away!

Except when they don't, which Cohen would know if he bothered to read the newspaper he works for!

But that would be too much work, I guess.

2002-10-16T18:02:00.000-04:00

I Wonder if We'll Hear This in a Campaign Ad?

Via Instapundit comes this little tidbit from Maryland. I wonder what gubenatorial candidate and sitting Lieutenant Governor Kathy Kennedy! Townsend has to say about it?

Hundreds of people with criminal records in Maryland may have been allowed to purchase guns illegally this year because the state temporarily stopped conducting background checks for the FBI, state and federal officials disclosed yesterday. . . .

Maryland's state archivists notified the FBI in March that they would no longer perform criminal background checks of people who had applied to buy firearms because budget cuts had left the agency shorthanded, documents show.

"We just didn't have the staff to do it," said Edward C. Papenfuse, the head state archivist. "We had been doing it quietly for free but we got to the point where everyone's budgets were being cut, and we couldn't do it anymore."

Papenfuse said his agency did not received any of the $6.7 million in federal funds allocated to Maryland since 1995 to modernize its criminal record-keeping and comply with federal gun control laws.

He said he wrote to Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) in March to ask for money to pay a staff member to perform the background checks for the FBI, but was told that no funds were available until July 1.

Kathy? Kathy? We can't hear you!

2002-10-16T17:06:00.000-04:00

The Widow Speaks!

Via Midwest Conservative Journal, check out these wonderful comments from Jean Carnahan, the Merry Widow of Missouri:

"I'm the No. 1 target of the White House. Since they can't get Osama bin Laden, they're going to get me"

As everyone knows, the Merry Widow was appointed to the Senate after the accidental death of her husband, Senate candidate Mel Carnahan, only a couple of weeks before the 2000 election.

Carnahan is now campaigning to keep the seat she was handed for four more years, the remainder of the term. She's currently trailing in the polls (perhaps because the only real argument for her candidacy is: "I lost my husband, so I deserve a Senate seat to dull the pain of my terrible personal loss"), which perhaps explains her outrageous comment.

Since we're discussing the Merry Widow, whose only qualification for office is that she's a widow, I'll take this opportunity to once again promote my campaign to have my Mom appointed to the Senate.

She has the same basic qualification as Jean Carnahan (she's widowed)

She has the same political experience as Jean Carnahan did prior to her appointment (none)

And I'm willing to guarantee that she's a much nicer and more honest person than Jean Carnahan (my Mom would never make a comment as awful as Carnahan's quote above, for one thing)

My Mom would be willing to move to any state whose governor will appoint her to the Senate, and she'll even pay the moving expenses herself.

So get out there and contact your governor and let him or her know you want to see my Mom, Vilma DiBenedetto, appointed to the Senate. You'll be glad you did!

2002-10-16T11:49:00.000-04:00

Left, Right and Center

Bill Quick points out this great piece by Ben Shapiro, concerning the problem the American Left sems to have with the "new media" - talk radio, Internet commentary, bloggers, etc.:

The American left can't restrict Internet usage or ban talk radio, so it de-legitimizes these news sources. Ripping alternative news sources as illegitimate is the left's only remaining option -- it cannot compete with the right wing in the new media.

Not that the left hasn't tried. Mario Cuomo attempted to parlay his political fame into a talk-radio gig; he was so badly received that his show was pulled off the air. Jerry Brown met with the same fate, as did Alan Dershowitz. Jim Hightower, a self-described progressive populist, passed through the talk-radio world without notice.

On the 'Net, liberal failure has been just as complete. While Matt Drudge's Web site receives nearly 5 million hits per day, liberal news sites are virtually non-existent. Salon.com is going the way of the dinosaurs, and Slate.com is a mere facade. The only liberal Web sites that get any hits are established television channels like BBC, CNN and ABC News. There are no major leftist commentary sites to compete with conservative monsters like Freerepublic.com and lucianne.com, where normal news followers can post their opinions on the story du jour. The left has been left behind on the Web.

Shapiro points out that the problem is that, in the New Media, the audience can talk back, and challenge the received wisdom presented to them by their betters in the intelligentsia:

The left cannot survive criticism. It is easy for liberals to air their views when the audience cannot challenge them. Network news is a perfect example -- when Peter Jennings sympathizes with Palestinian suicide bombers, viewers can kick their televisions and scream at Jennings, but Jennings cannot hear them. If Jennings had a talk show, though, he'd have to deal with the views of his audience. Print media is similar. Maureen Dowd can write nasty things about President Bush but would be hard pressed to respond to a reader's challenge.

Since it can't compete, the left turns to degrading the opposition. NBC's Lisa Meyers attributes the success of conservative talk-radio hosts to their portrayal of the world as "black and white -- and revolving around them." The left demonizes Rush Limbaugh, calling him an extremist and hoping that his popularity will diminish. His audience numbers continue to climb. They call Matt Drudge a muckraker and a yellow journalist. His hit count continues to rise.

Bill Quick adds:

I've often felt that the intellectual left functioned much as the priesthood did in medieval Europe, where the priests were unassailable interpreters of God's word, in large part because most of the populace was illiterate, and even if they hadn't been, copies of the bible were harder to come by than chicken's teeth. But the printing press appeared in 1440, and less than a 100 years later, along came the Protestant Reformation.

Not a bad analogy at first glance. So who's the Martin Luther of the New Media Reformation, and what are his or her 95 theses?

2002-10-16T07:08:00.000-04:00

Well, What Would He Do?

Leon Fuerth former national security adviser to Al Gore (and therefore someone whose views are automatically suspect) opines in the WashPost this AM about post-Iraq plans:

According to recent news stories, the Bush administration may have decided that if the United States ultimately invades Iraq, it will establish a military government under the control of an American military officer who will simultaneously run and redesign the country, on the model of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Japan after World War II. Whether this turns out to be the policy of the Bush administration, the fact that consideration of such an approach has reached this level warns us that there may be a dangerous intoxication with American power, and a serious loss of judgment as to its limits, among the most senior persons in our government.

Why is this? Because:

We apparently would not conduct this operation under U.N. auspices, and therefore it would be a direct and unilateral extension of American military power. We would betray the Iraqi National Congress, which the Republicans championed in Congress, by making it clear that it would not be the next government of Iraq. We would take responsibility for suppressing Kurdish national ambitions, so as to keep Turkey calm. We would take control over decision-making for Iraq's oil resources, which would raise problems for Vladimir Putin, who would be seen to have lost Russia's stake in Iraq to the United States. We would have U.S. troops in all sorts of interesting places, including on the border with Iran. We would have assumed responsibility for the costs of reconstruction in Iraq. We would presumably be trying, convicting and punishing persons we deemed guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity in courts of U.S. jurisdiction, most likely military, not before international tribunals.

And this is bad because:

it could well be a step toward a debacle, and a giant step at that. The United States will be seen as having decided to establish its security on the basis of empire. Few will believe that we will be able to successfully withdraw from this kind of occupation; many will believe that this administration does not intend to withdraw rapidly as a matter of policy. It will be assumed that this occupation is intended to be of long duration, or that if it is to give way, what follows is meant to be a puppet government beholden to Washington.

And what would be better is:

One can imagine that if the president takes his time, plays out his hand with the United Nations, allows inspectors to return to Iraq and awaits the inevitable demonstration of bad faith by Saddam Hussein, he might be able to deal with Iraq with meaningful, rather than nominal international support; and he might then also be able to deal with the aftermath of a change of regime in the same way.

Right.

Because the UN has done such a good job with nation-building and guaranteeing of security, and promotion of human rights and democracy.

It's interesting that Fuerth mentions Japan, which is (if the "recent news stories," which Fuerth doesn't cite, of course) are correct the model for this policy. Most people, I think, would agree that the occupation of Japan and reconstruction of its government under our direction was a great success.

Certainly there's an argument to be made that there are significant differences between post-WW2 Japan and a post-Saddam Iraq and that the same strategy would not work; but Fuerth does not make that argument. Instead, he whines about imperialism, as the President's critics have taken to doing lately.

He also talks wistfully of the Iraqi National Congress, which most opponents of acting against Iraq have dismissed as ineffective at best; and he whines about the Kurds, who are going to be an issue no matter what is done about Iraq, and who will have to be dealt with regardless of whether Saddam is removed by force, or by natural causes a decade from now.

And of course he champions the UN and multilateral action; because, of course, there's just so damn much support around the world for Saddam's removal, or for a peaceful and democratic Iraq.

As noted yesterday when writing about Jimmy Carter, good intentions and wishful thinking are a dangerous and deluded way of running a foreign policy, and that's what Fuerth is proposing. It's madness.

2002-10-16T06:52:00.000-04:00

Perspective, Please!

Mo Dowd of the Times writes this morning about the DC sniper, and manages to repeat all the conventional wisdom we've heard for two weeks without saying anything new. Still, some of what she says needs to be addressed:

Chief Moose says he's looking for "closure." I wish he'd simply look for sniper.

Closure is a chimera, if not a canard. And Fussy Charlie, who hates giving out any information about what he delicately calls "the situation," even whether the shooter's van is beige or white, makes one long for Dirty Harry.

Does anyone seriously think he's not doing his job?

The media's response to him is amazing; they treat his dislike of the press as nearly as grave a crime as the shootings themselves.

Chief Moose ludicrously objected that the Virginia police revealed Monday night that the sniper's white van had a faulty left taillight. He still seems to be coming to grips with the idea that we're in the era of instant communication, Amber Alerts and police scanners.

Some freak has been driving around the Washington suburbs in a van popping people for two weeks and we still don't know much of anything.

Well, that's not true; there are, apparently, a lot of clues (at least from the most recent shooting), which Mo would know if she, say, read her own newspaper. They just haven't all been given to the press.

We know that Virginia's governor, Mark Warner, is bucking to be the Rudy Giuliani of the crisis; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is trying to capitalize on her personal history with tragic gun killings to save her limp gubernatorial bid; Democrats in Congress tried to capitalize by rushing to pass a small-bore gun control measure that was going to pass anyway; President Bush and the G.O.P. are still taking dictation from the N.R.A.

Ari Fleischer leaped from abstruse to absurd, explaining why the president opposes an urgently needed proposal for a computerized system of tracing bullets to gun owners: "Certainly, in the case of the sniper, the real issue is values." Certainly, in the case of the president, the real issue is N.R.A. cash for the G.O.P.

It could be, Mo, that "ballstic fingerprinting" is not the wonderful solution that its proponents make it out to be; that it's - at best - a placebo, and at worst a backdoor ploy for registration of all firearms, which is not a good thing.

The sniper has outsmarted the police. It takes just one minute for him to pull the trigger, once, and then hit the exit ramp and vanish. On Monday night it took the police 20 minutes to set up roadblocks on all the main highways in Virginia, causing gridlock for hours. But by then the sniper was probably already at home, savoring it all on TV.

Well, gee, Mo, I'm sure the police are sorry that they're not precognitive; that they don't have cars and officers pre-placed near the scene of the shootings. Considering the time from the first report of the shooting, to getting the info to the police, to it getting up the chain of command, to getting police forces where they need to be to set up roadblocks, 20 minutes really doesn't seem that terrible.

Usually, fear in this affluent grid of shopping malls and subdivisions focuses on whether the zoning regulations are strict enough and whether property taxes have been kept in check.

One of the biggest fears here, pre-sniper, was getting caught in the terrible traffic jams. It is surreal that the sniper is the only one who's figured out how to navigate them.

I was a reporter in Montgomery County for five years, when fracases among the fox-hunting set and sexually perverse dentists passed for big news. The most heinous case I covered was the Murder Most Fowl, when a golfer at Congressional Country Club became so infuriated by a honking goose that he bludgeoned him to death with his putter. In those days the top cop had an even more unfortunate name, Chief Crook.

You have to love the snide and pointless aside here; there's - almost - a tone of "these obnoxious rich folks kind of deserve to be hunted like animals" coming through here.

Americans, once insulated and carefree, are not used to being the hunted. Since 9/11 they have struggled with looking over their shoulders at unseen predators, with weapons both invisible and catastrophic, waiting for the next strike that the government assures us is coming.

Celebrities had stalkers. But now average Americans have stalkers too, who might smash their lives while they are going about some mundane task like opening mail or pumping gas or shopping at Home Depot.

These shootings are unique in method. But killings that sow fear in the populace are not unique. Does no one remember the Son of Sam, just for one?

The difference here (other than that it's a sniper) is that the victims are apparently random, while David Berkowitz killed only young women. But I'm sure women in New York City in the summer of 1977 felt every bit as hunted as folks in DC do right now.

I'm not belittling what's happening, but to say that the fear is something new and unique in American history is just wrong.

Hell, we've had plenty of serial killers hunting people; we just don't know it until after the fact. The people who lived near Ted Bundy, to name one, were targets every bit as much as people who live in fear of the sniper; they just had no idea that they were being sized up for murder.

Osama and Zawahiri still lurk, and Al Qaeda is still incinerating innocents. The anthrax killer, whose deadly letter was received by Tom Daschle's office a year ago yesterday, is still hovering.

Yes, and anyone who believed that we'd have utterly eradicated Al Qaeda in a little more than a year was nuts. Did no one listen to the President, or Don Rumsfeld, or anyone in the Administration, when they came out and said that this would be a long struggle, that it would take years, that our enemy was a shadowy force that would be terribly difficult to root out because of its dispersed and decentralized nature?

Well, no one who writes for the Times' editorial page did, obviously.

2002-10-15T22:43:00.000-04:00

Unbelievable

Others have commented about the Iraqi election today, but I have to say a few words about this NY Times article.

The crowds gathered in Tikrit appeared to be in a trance, transported by their worship of Mr. Hussein, and by their contempt for President Bush, from the grim realities of everyday life in Iraq to a state of bliss.

Women carrying pins punctured their fingers so they could mark their "yes" votes in blood. Men followed suit, using the blunt edges of paper clips as makeshift knives to start the blood flowing.

This is, simply, insane. I mean insane as in "let's all drink the Kool-Aid together" insane.

The respectful, almost worshipul tone of the reporting is equally insane; is this really what the Times has come to?

Much about the occasion seemed Orwellian, at least to those accustomed to Western-style democracies. In 1995, the first time such a referendum was held, official results gave Mr. Hussein a 99.96 percent "yes" vote, on a voter turnout of 99 percent. With nine million voters, that meant, taken literally, only about 3,600 Iraqis, give or take, spoiled their ballots or voted no.

"at least to those accustomed to Western-style democracies."

Yeah, those places where loyalty is not enforced by the secret police; where the laws do not mandate a one-candidate election; pesky little things like that.

On the face of it, it might seem hard to believe that any exercise so plainly lacking in the basics of democracy as practiced in other parts of the world — no opposition candidate, no election campaign, no public appearances by the secretive Mr. Hussein, and no semblance of secrecy in the balloting procedures — could be regarded as anything but the illusionism of a profoundly authoritarian state.

But Iraqis approached the voting with a deadly earnestness, for many reasons, not least the importance of registering their loyalty to Mr. Hussein.

A distant comparison would be China during the Cultural Revolution 30 years ago. While the crowds then were vastly greater, the messianic fervor appeared to be much the same.

In Mao, China's Red Guards found a leader whose every word was the graven truth, and whose actions, however harsh, were embraced with unquestioning zeal.

That's wonderful. How many millions of lives were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution?

Interesting that the piece doesn't mention the consequences of that little episode in the history of the People's Republic. And "harsh" is hardly a reasonable description of actions that, over the course of his rule, resulted in tens of millions, possibly as many as a hundred million deaths.

This is just shockingly bad - contemptible is not too strong a word for it. Yet another sign of Howell Raines' Times spiralling into the gutter.

2002-10-15T22:33:00.000-04:00

Ballistic Fingerprinting

I was going to write something about the sudden mania for some sort of "ballistic fingerprinting" program, and why it really doesn't make any sense, and would not be of any use in catching the DC sniper, but Rachel Lucas beat me to it, so I'll just point y'all her way rather than rehash the excellent points she's made.

2002-10-15T10:37:00.000-04:00

Answering His Own Question

Byron York at NRO this morning asks: "Is Patrick Leahy a liar?"

The answer, of course, is yes.

Last week, committee Republicans Strom Thurmond and Orrin Hatch appeared in the Senate to denounce Leahy for reneging on a promise to hold a vote on the federal appeals-court nomination of Dennis Shedd. Both Thurmond and Hatch suggested, but did not explicitly say, that Leahy had lied to them. "Chairman Leahy assured me on numerous occasions that Judge Shedd would be given a vote," Thurmond said. "I took him at his word." "Senator Leahy promised me," Hatch said. "We operate under the presumption that a senator's word is as good as gold."

Leahy did not deny that he lied; instead, in response to the Republican complaints:

Democratic whip Harry Reid spoke on Leahy's behalf, saying the committee simply needed more time to consider the Shedd nomination, given the level of opposition to Shedd among African-American groups.

Leahy also complained that the Republicans were pushing against the limits of Senate Rule 19:

"No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator."

Which may well be true, since it's impossible to discuss the tactics Leahy and his fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have employed in dealing with recent judicial nominations without imputing unworthy motives to them.

Regardless, it's clear that Leahy has been utterly dishonest, and, worse, he's going to get away with it. Which just proves, one more time, that, just like election laws, the truth is something that Democrats feel is optional, and can be dismissed as needed

2002-10-15T10:16:00.000-04:00

He's Almost Right!

Glenn Reynolds notes today's Richard Cohen column, and comments that even regular Cohen critic Charles Austin will have trouble criticizing Mr. Cohen today.

I have two things to say to that. First, Charles isn't the only one who's a regular watcher and commentator on Mr. Cohen, and second, we'll see about that...

Richard writes today about the awarding of he Nobel Peace Prize to former Peanut-Farmer-in-Chief Jimmy Carter:

It would have been asking too much of Jimmy Carter -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to have told the Nobel committee to take its Peace Prize and stuff it. But the committee, which used Carter to criticize George W. Bush, not only cheapened the prize, it distracted from the very good reason Carter was so deserving of the honor: his lifelong commitment to peace.

It most certainly would not be asking too much of anyone who was truly worthy of the award to refuse to accept it. Honestly, any person who really merits an award dedicated to peace should refuse to accept it until the committee revokes Yasser Arafat's award from a few years back.

But we all know that there'll be figure skating in Hell before that happens.

Mr. Cohen also praises Carter's "committment to peace." Well, he's demonstrated that committment by sucking up to some of the most vile people our species has ever produced: Castro, Arafat, and a whole colleciton of other horrendous dictators, most of whom are also steadfastly opposed to America and our interests.

In their official announcement, the Norwegians -- the Peace Prize is the only one not awarded by the Swedish academy -- contrasted Carter's approach to the Iraq crisis to Bush's and then, as if no one got the point, its chairman, Gunnar Berge, told a reporter he was "unequivocally right" when he asked if the prize represented "a kick in the leg" to Bush. Unequivocally wrong! The kick was aimed a bit higher than that.

Well, Cohen is right here. Broken clocks and all that...

I have some questions for Berge. What if Bush is right on Iraq and Carter is wrong? What if the president's seemingly steadfast march to war mobilizes the rest of the world to finally do something about Saddam Hussein's concurrent march to acquire weapons of mass destruction? What if Bush actually gets the United Nations to enforce resolutions demanding that Iraq abide by the agreements it has signed? Who then will deserve the Peace Prize?

Almost a good point here, but Cohen ruins it. "Hussein's concurrent march?" Hussein has been seeking nuclear weapons since at least the early 1980's (remember Osirak, Richard?). It is not some kind of pissing contect between George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, no matter how much you'd like to believe and imply that it is, Richard.

Or, to put it another way, what would you say, Mr. Berge, if the United States and its allies did nothing and Hussein got his hands on a nuclear weapon? What if he was then able to intimidate his neighbors or obliterate Israel, a nation where most of the population lives in two metropolitan areas? What would you say then, Mr. Berge?

Considering the atittude of most of the European governments and press towards Israel, I doubt they'd shed a tear.

In honoring Carter, the committee evoked the smugness of little powers -- the many nations whose role is to carp from the sidelines while America does the necessary business of protecting them from their own folly. In this regard, it will be a minor miracle if next year's prize does not go to French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who criticized the United States last week for its "simplistic vision of the war of good against evil."

"Young countries," Raffarin told the National Assembly, "have the tendency to underestimate the history of old countries." Oui! But old countries are sometimes world-weary and cynical, urging a "realism" that is sometimes a misnomer for the moral corruption they know so very well. I will take the idealism of the young any day.

Wonder of wonders! Two whole paragraphs that I agree with more or less completely.

Iraq is a hard one. The threat is not immediate and it is not directed at the United States. I happen to support Bush, but only because he now seeks international support and has given Saddam Hussein a chance to come clean. But the latter is not likely to happen. The "mediation and international cooperation" for which the Nobel committee lauded Carter has already been tried with Hussein. He has been uncooperative, downright truculent. It just could be that this time Carter, who has vocally opposed the president's approach to Iraq, is wrong.

But Cohen loses it again here. He's obviously back on the meds - remember last week that he was ready to go to war? Now, apparently, he's ready, kind of, but only because the President went to the UN. I know that "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," but is it too much to ask that a columnist for the WashPost not go back and forth every four days on what he says he believes?

More's the pity then that the Nobel committee used Carter's award to whack Bush. All by himself, the former president eminently deserved to be honored -- and not just for arranging the Camp David peace between Egypt and Israel. He stands in contradistinction not just to the incumbent president, but to all living former presidents. To a man, they seem to have dedicated their lives to the unselfish pursuit of golf and whopping honorariums.

And here's where he goes off the rails completely. Jimmy Carter is a nice guy. Fine. He has good intentions. Fine.

But good intentions are not enough! Good intentions married to a hopelessly wrongheaded view of the world and America's place in it are a very dangerous thing, as Carter's embrace of Yasser Arafat (to the point of writing speeches for him) proves.

Not Carter. Wherever there is a miserable little war, some hot and muggy place where room service amounts to little more than a creaking ceiling fan, there you can find Carter -- and, often, his wife, Rosalynn. It is a little thing, I grant you, but I once saw Carter shake hands with everyone on a New York-to-Washington air shuttle -- because, you see, he was their ex-president, still doing their work. He told me he was going down to the State Department to be briefed on some obscure war.

And he's nearly always on the side that opposes freedom, democracy, and American interests when you do find him.

In the past, the Nobel committee has honored Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for (not) making peace in Vietnam, Yasser Arafat for (rejecting) peace in the Middle East and Rigoberta Menchu Tum for (not) writing a book about experiences she may (not) have had.

You would think that with a record like that, the committee would show some humility and acknowledge that Norway, unlike, say, France, does not have a monopoly on wisdom. Instead, it arrogantly used the award to take a swipe at Bush. In so doing, it diminished the honor to Carter and the prestige of the award itself. The committee had lousy aim. The foot it aimed at Bush wound up in its own mouth.

Well, Cohen is right here. This is, at least, far better and closer to sanity than his usual drivel, but it's still pretty far divergent from reality.

I guess, though, with Cohen we have to grade on a (very) steep curve.

2002-10-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

Those Wacky Kennedys

History shows us that there isn't a Kennedy who can pass up the opportunity to take advantage of someone else's tragedy to advance their own awful agenda. So it is with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and her new campaign ad, as Henry Hanks points out.

2002-10-14T21:42:00.000-04:00

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Just a note...it's nice to see PostWatch back and, well, posting regularly again. He's always worth reading; give him a look.

2002-10-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

Our Friends the Palestinians

Chris Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal writes about a little-discussed topic; the treatment of Christians who live in the "Occupied Territories" by the Palestinians and their leadership.

As one might expect, it's not a pretty picture. Here's a small sample:

And there is general, day-to-day abuse:

Anti-Christian graffiti is not uncommon in Bethlehem and neighboring Beit Sahur, proclaiming such things as: "First the Saturday people (the Jews), then the Sunday people (the Christians)." The same has often been heard chanted during anti-Israel PLO/PA rallies. Accused of wearing "permissive" Western clothing, Bethlehem Christian women have been intimidated. Finally, rape and abduction of Christian women is also reported to have occurred frequently (especially in Beit Sahur), as was the case in Lebanon.

Christian cemeteries have been defaced, monasteries have had their telephone lines cut, and there have been break-ins to convents.

In July 1994, the Wall Street Journal reported that Palestinian Moslems would not sell land to Christians and that Christian facilities and clubs had been attacked by Moslem extremists. Christian graves, crosses, and statues had been desecrated; Christians had suffered physical abuse, beatings, and Molotov cocktail attacks.

And these are the peace-loving people whom the rest of the world feels so sorry for. It's illuminating to see how they treat a religious minority in their midst.

And we want to give them their own state why, again?

2002-10-14T09:07:00.000-04:00

Bali

There isn't anything I can say about the horrifying bombing in Bali that hasn't already been said by others, so I'm going to just let them say it:

Clayton Cramer writes:

Some of you are probably wondering: why would al-Qaida launch this attack in Bali? There were apparently Americans killed, but the vast majority of the dead are likely to be Australians. Why attack Australia? While it is allied with the U.S., it has not been particularly loud in its support for the U.S. actions against terrorists, or Iraq, nor has it been noticeably pro-Israel. These sort of attacks, if anything, are likely to strengthen support for the U.S. desire to clean out Iraq and other outlaw nations that are believed to have an interest in supporting al-Qaida.

A few weeks back, I warned that al-Qaida and the broader Islamfascist movement was looking to get the West as upset as possible--that theirs is an apocalyptic vision, one that believes that in a battle between Islam (with them leading, of course), and the degenerate post-Christian West, that Islam's morality purity will give them victory over our purely materialist advantages. This attack makes sense as part of a campaign to get the Australians good and angry. The attack against a French oil tanker a few days ago makes similar sense (though the French seem to be doing their best to not let this little matter disturb them excessively). I would expect an attack against Britain next.

Wake up. There is something terribly sick going on in the Islamic world--a dangerous movement that deludes itself that its moral purity (murdering non-combatants) makes it immune from our moral resolve and technological superiority. This group of fanatics need to be informed that they are incorrect. An example needs to be made of brutal thugs like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden--an example that will remind people throughout the world that brutality and savagery will be dealt with accordingly.

Steven den Beste writes:

This attack didn't happen in Australia. It happened in Indonesia. It didn't happen because Australia is a belligerent in the war; it happened because Indonesia refused to become one.

This attack was a failure in the shadow war, but it happened because Indonesia refused to fight it. It happened because security in Indonesia was lax, and because the government there refused to make an active effort to seek out and eliminate terrorists. It happened because the government of Indonesia hoped that by wishing really hard they could make the war happen somewhere else, and that by pretending there was no threat there actually would be none.

Australian blogger Tim Blair writes a lot of important and insightful things about the attack at his site; too many to quote here, so just go there and see for yourself.

And of course from the appeasement-and-surrender side comes this disgraceful rant from Robert Fisk, which I can't allow to go without comment:

Why? Yesterday's crime against humanity in Bali provoked an almost identical reaction to the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Everyone wanted to know who had planted the bombs – almost certainly a satellite of al-Qa'ida – and everyone wanted to know how the killers planned their massacre.

We know precisely why. Because Al-Qaeda and its allies despise the West, despise Western civilization, and want to see it destroyed. They have made that clear; their goal is nothing less than an entire world living under Sharia law, under their domination. They want a general war between Islam and the West, a war that they believe they will win because Allah will grant them victory.

But no one – neither the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, nor Tony Blair nor Jack Straw – wanted to talk about motives. "Terrorism" was the all-important word (an accurate one too), which was used to smother any discussion about what lay behind the crime.

It was not a "crime." It was an act of war. It was an act of war against tourists partying in a nightclub. It was an act of war against civilization. To treat it as anything else is madness.

Entirely aside from that, if the cowardly animals who planned this bombing wanted us to know their "real" motives, they certainly have the avenues to tell us; Al Qaeda has not been shy about getting its message out when it wants to. But their motives are clear from the act itself; slaughter as many innocent people as possible; shatter the sense of normality and security that our civilization has created for us.

Australians were the principal victims and their murderers must have known they would be. So why were they targeted? John Howard has been among President Bush's toughest supporters. Australia lined up to join the "war on terror" within 24 hours of the attacks on New York and Washington last year. Australian special forces have been operating with American troops in the Afghan mountains against al-Qa'ida. It's a fair bet that yesterday's savagery was al-Qa'ida hitting back.

Ah. So the political actions of the Australian Prime Minister justify the deliberate targetting of tourists in a nightclub. If the leader of your country supports George Bush, you deserve to die. This really is beneath contempt.

The French have already paid a price for their initial support for Mr Bush. The killing of 11 French submarine technicians in Karachi has been followed by the suicide attack on the French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen. Now, it seems, it is the turn of Australia.

Yes. It's all because of George Bush. Of course.

Fisk, terrorist-sympathisizer that he is, cannot see that the deliberate slaughter of innocent people by a shadowy trans-national group that doesn't actually speak for anyone, is wrong. In his mind, it's simple: if you're part of the West, you deserve random death delivered to you by Islamic sociopaths.

If the group which set off the three bombs in Bali is one of the "Islamist" movements on the edge of al-Qa'ida, the choice of target was familiar: a nightclub, a place associated in the mind of Islamists with sex, alcohol and immorality – the same type of target Palestinian suicide bombers have struck in Israel.

Ah. So what should they do? Close down all the nightclubs? Throw out the tourists? Impose Sharia law? I'm sure Mr. Fisk would approve of that; at least until they got around to him.

If millions of Muslims are revolted at the Bali massacre, few will approve of nightclubs. The usual moral slippage can be employed; the bombing was terrible, but ... Or so the murderers will hope.

The victims were largely young civilians, just as innocent as the thousands who died in the World Trade Centre. Civilians get no quarter in this war, whether they are investment brokers in New York, Afghan families or Australian honeymooners.

Nice addition there of Afghan families. The difference, of course, is that our forces made a deliberate effort to avoid civillian casualties, often at the cost of military effectiveness. Our enemies targt civillians deliberately. Anyone who cannot see a fundamental difference there is beyond reason; which of course Fisk is.

So who is next? When is Britain's turn? Where are Britons most at risk? Alas, they are scattered across the globe in embassies, on holidays, on every airline of the world. Our support for the United States – an infinitely closer alliance than any support from France – makes Britain the most likely candidate for attack after the US. Then there are the small, more vulnerable nations that give quiet assistance to the American military; Belgium, which hosts Nato HQ; Canada, whose special forces have also been operating in Afghanistan; Ireland, which allows US military aircraft to refuel at Shannon.

And the answer, obviously, is to tell the U.S. and the Evil Bush to go to hell, and withdraw all support.

And when the barbarians still attack and slaughter civillians, Fisk will no doubt say that it was caused by the historical support for the U.S.; there is no outrage tha the cannot explain away or justify in his hatred for his own civilization and his desire to excuse terrorists for their atrocities.

Bali only emphasises what the last year should have taught us: that individual innocence no longer protects us, that we are living – whether we know it or not – in a terrifying new age.

An age that people like you, Mr. Fisk, with your willingness to excuse, justify or even approve of such atrocities, have helped lead us into. Thank you so very, very much.

2002-10-13T11:35:00.000-04:00

Hypocrites of the First Order

Another point in the NY Times article previously mentioned about the disgusting ingratitude of Kuwaitis towards the United States that needs to be raised is this.

One of the big reasons, we're told, for their hatred of the United States is:

anger over the treatment of Palestinians by Israel, which many Muslims consider an American puppet.

If they were so fucking concerned about the Palestinians, then why did Kuwait expel over 300,000 of them from Kuwait after the Gulf War?

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is apparently the worst crime in the whole history of humankind, a rallying cry for every Arab, or so we're told.

But the ethnic cleanising of them en masse from Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia) isn't even a blip on the screen. Funny that none of these oh-so-thoughtful folks quoted in the Times article about their contempt for the U.S. don't have anything to say about it.

It's sickening.

2002-10-13T11:30:00.000-04:00

Who Our Friends Are

They are not the folks in Kuwait, at least not according to this article from yesterday's NY Times.

Here are some choice words from Muhammad al-Mulaifi, head of the information department at Kuwait's Ministry of Islamic Affairs:

When asked about the September 11th attacks:

"I would be lying if said I wasn't happy about the attack," he said, sitting on the floor of his air-conditioned home office, a carpeted, cushioned oasis amid the harsh heat of this small, dry country. Mr. Mulaifi said that many Kuwaitis were delighted about what had happened to the United States and that he had attended parties held in celebration.

"Only then did we see America suffer for a few seconds what Muslims have been suffering for a long time," he said.

Indeed. Parties held in celebration. Fucking barbarians. For this we restored their country a decade ago.

More about Mr. Mulaifi:

He himself is a study in the radical change in attitudes toward the United States since the gulf war. After Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Mr. Mulaifi spent three months in Iraqi prisons, accused of being a spy because he was caught with a camera in his car. His family bought his release with bribes to Iraqi judges, and he was back home by the time the war began.

Though he was 18 at the time, Mr. Mulaifi did not join in the fighting against Iraq, because "it was not an Islamic war."

After the war, he said he felt "love for America." One reason he cited for his change in attitude was America's support for Israel and that country's control of Jerusalem, one of Islam's holiest cities. He also quoted Muhammad's command to "drive the infidels from the Arabian peninsula."

At home this week, he stood leafing proudly through his private archives of Qaeda material, housed in a small, locked room with an electric sliding door. He pointed out Mr. bin Laden's signature on some documents. He showed off photographs of Mr. bin Laden's spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, visiting his home.

Mr. Mulaifi says he is not a Qaeda member, but is "close to Al Qaeda thought." He is cagey on whether he remains in contact with the group ("That's a C.I.A question," he said), but claims knowledge of its plans.

He said the network had postponed a major attack that would surpass Sept. 11, so that it would occur just after any American invasion of Iraq, when a strike against the United States would win the most support in the Arab world.

Wonferful. And this guy is an official in the Kuwaiti government, supposedly an ally. In a sane world, we'd have troops dragging this bastard out of his nice home, and bringing him somewhere where the CIA could interrogate him about his friends in Al Qaeda and his knowledge of planned attacks against the United States.

So much for our "friends" in the Arab world.

2002-10-13T09:10:00.000-04:00

Didn't He Used to Be a Grownup?

He being Tommy Friedman of the NY Times. He's got an especially whiny and stupid column today.

Writing about the sniper attacks in the DC area, Friedman says:

There is something about these shootings that is touching deeper nerves in us all.

The fact that the president speaks only about Iraq, while his neighbors down the street speak only about the shooter, reinforces the sense that this administration is so obsessed with Saddam it has lost touch with the real anxieties of many Americans. Mr. Bush wants to rally the nation to impose gun control on Baghdad, but he won't lift a finger to impose gun control on Bethesda, six miles from the White House.

Um...because the President's job includes the duties of Head of State and Commander in Chief, and not local police chief or state legislator? Could that be why?

In any case, as has been discussed many other places, gun control is not the answer, and anyone using these attacks to push that agenda is simply lying.

Maryland, where most of the attcks have taken place, has several hundred gun laws, as discussed here a couple of weeks ago. Many of them are useless, or, worse, counter-productive, resulting in consequences that the writers of the laws never intended. But of course, More Laws! are the answer. As always. Thanks, Tommy.

Personally, I'm glad Mr. Bush is focused on disarming Iraq's madman and tracing Iraq's Scud missiles and weapons of mass destruction. It's a worthy project. I just wish he were equally focused on disarming America's madmen, and supporting laws that would make it easier to trace their .223-caliber bullets and their weapons of individual destruction. A lot of us would like to see more weapons inspectors on the streets here, and in the gun shops here, not just in Baghdad.

To hell with the 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments, so long as Tommy feels safer!

Why is it that all these folks who can talk forever about civil liberties, and who say "those who would trade freedom for security end up with neither" are willing to throw all that away the moment the word "gun" is mentioned?

By gunning down people pumping gas, mowing lawns and walking to school, the shooter is making America's capital area squirm. That's power. No wonder the note he apparently left said, "I am God."

And no wonder the Bethesda Gazette, which normally covers school board meetings, carried a big headline that I never thought I'd see in my local paper. It said, "In the Grip of Terror," and the article included little bios of all the people killed. It could have been The New York Times on 9/12: "A County Challenged."

It doesn't help that every single columnist is writing page after page about the attacks, and speculating about the sniper and his motivations. Maybe if every media outlet in the country wasn't feeding the sniper exactly what he wants, and deliberatley magnifying the sense of fear and panic people feel, people might be a little more rational about all of this.

After all, while these attacks are frightening, the odds of any particluar individual in the DC area becoming a target are infintesimal. 8 people have died; that's horrible. But it's 8 people out of several million in the metro DC area. The chances of dying at the hands of, say, a drunk driver, are higher - and while this sniper can be in only one place at a time, there might be hundreds or even thousands of drunk drivers on the roads at any given time.

The paranoia that has been instilled because of these attacks is irrational, and columns such as this do not help at all.

whether or not this shooter is a twisted copycat, he is part of a larger post-9/11 trend. That trend is the steady erosion of our sense of security, our sense that while the world may be crazy, we can always crawl into our American cocoon, our sense that "over here" we are safe, even if "over there" dragons live.

Well, "over here" is starting to feel like "over there" way too much. Over there, they just shot up U.S. marines guarding Kuwaiti oil fields, but over here, when I filled my car with gas the other day, I ducked behind a pillar so no drive-by sniper could see me; others hide in their back seats. Over there, Saddam terrorizes his people, but over here, my kids are now experts in the fine distinctions between Code Blue and Code Red. Code Blue means they're locked in their public school building because a potential shooter is in the area, and Code Red means they are locked in their classroom because there may be a gunman in the building.

Frankly, I don't want to hear another word about Iraq right now. I want to hear that my president and my Congress are taking the real steps needed in this country — starting with sane gun control and sane economic policy — to stop this slide into over here becoming like over there.

Thank you so much, Tommy! You want the President to "feel your pain", and, what, tuck you into bed at night too?

Short of throwing out the Seconjd Amendment entirely, and instituting house-to-house searches of every residence in the country to find every gun, there is no gun control law that would prevent these attacks; and even that wouldn't work anyway.

But that doesn't matter - Tommy wants "sane" gun control, which I have to assume means more laws that will inconvenience law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to inhibit criminals.

And then, of course, he throws in "sane economic policy", entirely unsupported, just to get another cheap shot at the President. What's that mean, Tommy? Ran out of space to tell us? I think we can guess - more taxes, more free ice cream from the government that will please Democratic voters like Tommy.

Thanks but no thanks.

Why don't you go back to writing about foreign policy, where you're at least vaguely qualified to speak with some degree of knowledge?

2002-10-13T08:53:00.000-04:00

The Difference Between Us and Them, Part LXVII

A District Court judge has ruled that an Arab-American airline passenger can sue United Airlines for discrimination.

The passenger, Assem Bayaa of Irvine, California, was removed from a United Airlines flight last December 23rd

because the crew wasn't comfortable having him aboard.

If that was the sole reason; if there was no reason to worry about Mr. Bayaa other than his ethnicity, then, yes, I think he's got a good case. The more important point here is that, despite the screaming about throwing civil liberties to the winds, and racist hatred of Arabs, the judge's decision shows that all is not lost yet.

Compare this to what would happen if a Christian or Jewish citizen of Saudi Arabia was removed...oh, right. There aren't any of them. Never mind.

2002-10-12T09:53:00.000-04:00

More From the WashPost - Or "Why We Hate the Media!"

Readers also responded with harsh criticism to the WashPost's publication of photos of victims of the DC sniper.

One reader writes:

Did your paper receive permission from the family of one of the sniper's Oct. 3 victims to print a photo of her corpse on the front page of the next day's paper? The caption misleadingly stated that the picture was of a police officer collecting statistics. But the focus of the picture was the dead body, which was demeaning and showed a galling lack of sympathy for both the woman and her friends and family.

I agree completely.

A second reader writes, more damningly:

Why would you run the photo of the dead man at the gas station in Prince William County [front page, Oct. 10]? The photo, which ran on Page A22, showed his license plate, but the article said the family had not been notified. Well, your photo took care of that, didn't it? I am all for freedom of speech, but I think it was insensitive to print the photo at this time.

There are two big things wrong here. First, as the reader notes, the family had not been notified, and to find out on the front page of the WashPost is pretty awful - insensitive doesn't begin to cover it.

Second, showing the victim's license plate identifies him not only to his family, but potentially to everyone who saw the photo and has the inclination to do a minute or two of research. With that license plate, anyone who wants to could quickly learn not only the victim's name, but lots of other information, including where he - and, presumably, his family - lives.

That's not just insensitive, that's incredibly irresponsible, putting the family at risk for anyone who chooses to use that information to harrass them or harm them. Would it have been so difficult to blur out the license plate number in the photo?

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to endanger the lives and the peace of mind of innocent citizens because you can't be bothered to take minimal precautions to protect their privacy.

2002-10-12T09:45:00.000-04:00

Ha! I Knew It!

As I noted in my discussion of Richard Cohen's column of Tuesday, October 8th, I agreed with his view that the taxpayers of New Jersey shouldn't be forced to subsidize the vile, anti-Semetic poetry of Amiri Baraka. I also noted that I was hesitant to praise Mr. Cohen, since I believed that he had, in the past, expressed precisely the opposite view of government funding of the arts; but I was unwilling to pay the $2.99 to search the WashPost archives for proof.

Well, thankfully, WashPost reader Brian Bisonnette was willing to pay that $2.99, and he writes about the fruits of his search in today's "Free For All" section.

A similar public debate took place in New York City three years ago, when then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to deny taxpayer funding to the charlatans masquerading as artists in the Brooklyn Museum's 1999 "Sensation" exhibit. This exhibit included, among other items, a painting of the Virgin Mary complete with smatterings of dung. The work was offensive to many Catholics, who were displeased with having their tax dollars support it.

The circumstances of the two events could hardly be more similar. Yet Cohen's response to those calling for a retraction of the Brooklyn Museum's funding was different from his response to the Baraka controversy. In a Sept. 30, 1999, op-ed column titled "Mayor of All the Museums," Cohen concluded that "New York cannot play the role of curator. Once it makes a commitment, it must rely on the good judgment of its recipients not to do something reckless with the money." He went on: "boldness, daring, experimentation, the artistic imagination itself, will surely suffer if politicians like Giuliani use the power of government to police creativity." (Not any politicians, mind you, just those "like Giuliani" -- a polite way, perhaps, of describing Republican politicians, or any others who would do the bidding of an obviously irrational Catholic mob.)

So, Mr. Cohen, what's the story?

Have you honestly changed your mind - in which case, perhaps you'll do us the courtesy of disavowing your earlier words and retracting your criticism of Mayor Giuliani?

Or do you feel that anti-Catholic bigotry is acceptable, but not anti-Semetic bigotry?

Or that it's acceptable for a Democratic governor to pull funding from offensive artists, but not for Republican mayors?

I'm very curious what the answer here is.

2002-10-12T09:35:00.000-04:00

Morons on Campus

This is not news, but since the WashPost writes about it today on the front page, we'll discuss it again. The topic, of course, is the campaign of hatred against Israel on college campuses across the nation. This campaign is now taking the form of an organized movement to force schools to "divest" themselves of any holdings in Israeli companies, just as was done to South Africa in the 1980's.

The reason, of course, is the "apartheid" imposed on the Palestinians by Israel, during their 35 year "occupation."

Some 400 activists from 90 campuses around the country are converging on the University of Michigan for the Second National Student Conference on the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, a three-day meeting that begins today and is aimed at expanding the Israel divestiture movement

"We plan to brainstorm on ways to spread our message," said Fadi Kiblawi, a Kuwaiti-born senior who grew up in St. Louis and is the lead organizer of the conference. "If you look at a map of the occupied territories, it looks like apartheid South Africa. Palestinians can't travel from one place to another without heavy restrictions. And all the laws they face are predicated on the fact that they are not the correct religion."

Where do we begin with this? The restrictions are not about religion; they're about the fact that the Palestinians are conducting a murderous war against Israeli civillians.

But entirely aside from that, even if it were all about religion, well, coming from a Kuwati citizen, where religions other than Islam are outlawed entirely, it's really hard to take such a criticism seriosuly. Hey, Mr. Kiblawi, why don't you go protest against your government for its religious intolerance before you attack Israel?

Oh, right. Israel is the devil. Silly me, I forgot.

There's more, but it's all hateful, vile, and we've seen it all before, and it's all beneath comtempt.

2002-10-12T09:25:00.000-04:00

Just Wondering

Re: the DC area sniper attacks. Amongst the speculation online and elsewhere that, possibly, the attacks are a terrorist act rather than the actions of a serial killer, I'm curious why the possibility of eco-terrorists hasn't been mentioned.

I've read musings that it could be Al Qaeda, or unaffiliated Islamic terrorists sympathetic to Al Qaeda's cause; or that it could be McVeigh-esque terrorism, or white supremacists.

Now I'm not 100% serious here, but look at it: four of the eight killings have been at gas stations; another was of someone using a (resumably) gasoline powered lawn mower. Public statements from the extreme fringes of the green movement - folks like ALF and ELF - have not shied away from the possibility of using murder to further their goals, and really, since they've already commited large-scale arson attacks, how much of a step would this really be for them?

As I said, I'm just asking why those folks aren't mentioned as a possibility right next to the other usual terrorist suspects. They've provedn that they're dangerous, and violent, and have little if any regard for the lives of those they oppose, and they're organized into anonymous cells much like Al Qaeda is. So why don't we hear more about them?

2002-10-11T22:26:00.000-04:00

Winning Ugly is Better Than Losing Pretty

And that's exactly what Our Nation's Capitals (tm, I'm sure) did tonight in their opening game, which I've just returned from.

The Caps beat the Nashville Predators (do they have any predators native to Tennessee?) 5-4, with the game winner coming from new addition Robert Lang with a minute to go.

The game was sloppy and penalty-filled (including four five-on-three situations, and a penalty for an "illegal stick"), but hey, a win is a win, and hopefully the first of many for the Caps this season.

2002-10-11T08:47:00.000-04:00

Well, You're Wrong

Salon this morning published the text of the "firey" speech by Representative Pete Stark of California on the House floor, in opposition to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. It's helpful to see the logic, such as it is, used by opponents of the President...

"Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution (authorizing military force against Iraq). I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with U.N. resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.

Like, oh, the last ten years? The endless attempts to get productive weapons inspections? The reason we've reached the point we're at, Mr. Stark, is because every attempt has failed, and the Iraqi government has proven to be entirely untrustworthy.

"The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors.

Well, we don't trust you, so we're even.

The question is, do you trust Saddam Hussein and his generals more than the President of the United States, as your comptriot from Washington State, Mr. McDermott, does?

"Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the president, who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history. It sets a precedent for our nation -- or any nation -- to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.

We've been through this argument too many times; there is more than sufficient provocation.

And as for a precedent, well, did Russia need a precedent before going into Chechyna? Did Iraq need a precedent to invade Iran and later Kuwait? Did India and Pakistan need precedents to start lobbing artillery against each other's forces? Did we need a precedent before we went into Kosovo without provocation or UN authorization?

Get back to us when you've got the answers, Mr. Stark, why don't you?

"Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence."

Um...the fact that we've waited over a year to do this; the fact that we've gone to the UN, that means nothing, obviously. And "callous?" I think that callous would be waiting until thousands of Americans are killed by a biological or nuclear attack from Saddam or his terrorist pals.

"You know, three years ago in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics, wrote: 'For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy.'

"'Somebody,' she said, 'should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein.' How prophetic, Ms. Ivins.

Well, gee whiz, quoting a whiny populist columnist who's despised the Bush family for two decades! That's certainly convincing. I mean, that ends the argument right there, doesn't it.

Moron.

"Let us not forget that our president -- our commander in chief -- has no experience with, or knowledge of, war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War. He skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And, he reported years later that at the height of that conflict in 1968 he didn't notice 'any heavy stuff going on.'"

Neither did the prior President. He, in fact, wrote once that he "loathed the military." I wonder if Mr. Stark approved of his vasous and sundry uses of the military.

"So we have a president who thinks foreign territory is the opponent's dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.

Bush is Stooopid! Thank you, Mr. Stark. The floor of the House is certainly the place for childish insults.

"What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?

Yes! The just cause of the removal of a brutal tyrant who supports terrorists, who seeks weapons of mass destruction, who is an avowed enemy of the United States. Pretty clear to me.

"Is the president's need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American?

If that were the sole cause for war, of course not. But that is not the reason, and only a dishonest creep like Mr. Stark would suggest that it was.

"I submit the answer to these questions is no.

"Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion!

"World domination?" Yes, Bush wants to be Emperor! Jim McDermott said so, and of course he must be right!

"Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.

Deferments? We don't have a draft, Mr. Stark. We have an all-volunteer military. If you don't know that, you probably shouldn't be voting on these kind of issues, now should you?

And tax cuts don't mean that "wealthy ndividuals don't pay." They mean that the government takes less of the money they earn away from them. And, by definition, the wealthy get larger cuts, because they're paying more taxes to begin with! Math is hard, I know, but you are a Congressman, Mr. Stark. You ought to at least make an effort.

"Well then, who will pay?

"School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war.

Drugs will be "more unaffordable?" Why, exactly?

No drug benefit? Well, there isn't one now, and why exactly should there be more free ice cream for the AARP crowd anyway?

As for privatizing Social Security, well, that's good policy in any case. And "robbing the trust fund," well, that's done now anyway, so stop your lying and whining, Mr. Stark.

"Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

Really? Women's rights? Civil rights? Civil liberties, maybe, but there's a big difference there; and in any case, where were you, Mr. Stark, when the former Narcissist-in-Chief was trashing the Bill of Rights?

"The questions before the members of this House and to all Americans are immense, but there are clear answers. America is not currently confronted by a genuine, proven, imminent threat from Iraq. The call for war is wrong.

It's wrong if you don't mind being vulnerable to deadly attacks from a murderous tyrant who's clearly expressed his hatred for us and desire to attack us.

"And what greatly saddens me at this point in our history is my fear that this entire spectacle has not been planned for the well-being of the world, but for the short-term political interest of our president.

"Now, I am also greatly disturbed that many Democratic leaders have also put political calculation ahead of the president's accountability to truth and reason by supporting this resolution. But, I conclude that the only answer is to vote no on the resolution before us."

Accountability to truth and reason? You wouldn't know either of those things if they jumped up and bit you, you lying weasel!

But he's a Congressman from California. I guess we can't really expect anything better.

2002-10-11T08:16:00.000-04:00

And They Complain About US

Via Right Wing News...it seems that the European Union is refusing to treat Hamas as a terrorist organization, which is obviously making life more difficult for our policies, not to mention making life impossible for the Israeli civillians that Hamas murderes.

Apparently "the EU maintains a distinction between the military and political wings of the Palestinian group."

That is simply disgraceful.

2002-10-11T07:57:00.000-04:00

Well, It's Official

The Nobel Peace Prize is entirely worthless. It was awarded yesterday to failed ex-President Jimmy Carter, for his

"decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

Which mostly consists of kissing up to - and doing PR work for - horrendous dictators and the occasional murderous terrorist (Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat come to mind).

"It should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken," Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Nobel committee, said in Norwegian. "It's a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States."

I'd think that Mr. Carter would, given that statement, be embarrased to accept the award. But of course he won't be.

What a joke.

2002-10-11T07:53:00.000-04:00

Every Home Should Have One

Here's a product that you absolutely need in your home or office. Remember:

Are you prepared for the inevitable???

Consider these sobering facts

Ninety-five percent of Americans live within two miles of a cemetery or mortuary.

Most Americans use and value their brains -- the natural food of zombies.

Ninety percent of zombie related fatalities occur in the home.

The only proven defense against zombie attack is an effective early warning system.

How can you say no?

2002-10-10T17:16:00.000-04:00

Fire Him! Now!

The State Department, in the person of flack Richard Boucher, has responded to the allegations levelled by Joel Mowbray of National Review.

Boucher's words are, at best, unconvincing. Before you read them, here again for your reference is one of the one of the applications that was approved.

Now to the upsetting part:

QUESTION: And my last one. You guys have come under some pretty intense fire today about the issuances of visas to the hijackers in at least three publications that I found.

MR. BOUCHER: Only one author.

Because of course that negates the allegations of negligence, right, Dick?

QUESTION: One author, three different publications, obviously shopping it around to a variety of places. But one former State Department official is quoted as saying that there was criminal negligence involved, and I'm wondering what you make of this allegation.

MR. BOUCHER: I don't make a lot of it. The Department has, first of all, cooperated fully and supported the efforts of our investigators to find out everything they could about the hijackers and about the circumstances under which they came to the United States. What information our US Government agencies might have had or might not have had, the fact is that with 20/20 hindsight, I'm sure one can always find a reason that you might have turned down a visa or turned down or made a different decision. But at the time, we had no information on any of these people in the namecheck system or any other indications that they didn't qualify for a visa.

Jesus Christ! Hindsight? Look at the damn application! "Name and Street Address of Present Employer or School" - "South City". Right there, without going further, the application is, by any conceivable standard, incomplete at best. Denied. Next.

I would note that since September 11th we've done an awful lot to improve the detail and the rigor of our screening of visas. We require much more information from applicants. We have much more extensive screening procedures. We have vastly expanded the information in our databases about potential terrorists and criminals. We've dramatically increased the percentage of applicants who must come for personal interviews. In Saudi Arabia, all men between the ages of 12 and 70 are being interviewed unless they are government officials or personally known already to the embassy.

So we have made any number of changes to try to improve standards of visa processing worldwide to make sure that the primary goal of keeping out the people who don't belong here, keeping out the people who may do us harm, that that goal is being met.

Then why did your Department lie and stonewall about Visa Express for so long?

"More extensive screening procedures?" They'd have to be! Apparently the pre-9/11 procedures didn't even include a cursory reading of the application!

QUESTION: Well, of course, the article doesn't talk about post-9/11, it talks about pre-9/11, and says that — and alleges that even under the standards that were applicable at the time, pre-9/11, these applications should have been rejected on their face because they contained either incomplete or factually incorrect information. What do you have to say to this?

MR. BOUCHER: That's easy to say now and I'm sure all of us would like to say that now. 214(b) is a catch-all that says that if the applicant doesn't establish to the satisfaction of the consular officer that he's going to the United States for a temporary period and limited purposes — you'll see the exact language in the law — then he can be turned down for a visa and should be turned down for a visa. And that's the way we operate around the world.

In each particular case, we look at the application, whatever interviews, whatever other information we have, we do the name checks and, you know, we turn down the people who don't deserve visas, who don't clearly qualify for visas. As I've said, it's easy sort of as a Monday morning quarterback to say somebody would have made this different decision, but I don't think that's fair to the process, and in any case, the process is vastly different now than it was then.

Dick, did you even look at the applications in question? You can find them online now, you know.

But you have to love this answer. Everything was done correctly, and it's not fair to question the process, but we've changed it all even though it was correct then. Right.

QUESTION: Yeah, yeah, but the — but Richard, the argument that's advanced is that these people should have been turned down, and you're saying that they would have been if they were — if their applications were — I mean, you're saying in a sense, I think — and correct me if I'm wrong — that these people did qualify for visas under the existing rules at the time.

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah.

QUESTION: They did?

MR. BOUCHER: They did. That was what the consular officers determined. And in the end, that's what matters.

No, Dick, what matters is that 3,000 people died, either because the consular officer on duty the day these folks came through forgot his reading glasses, or because there was a policy to let Saudis into the U.S. regardless of the completness and accuracy of their applicatons. Neither one of those is acceptable, nor are your smart-assed, dishonest answers.

QUESTION: Okay, but —

MR. BOUCHER: To establish to the satisfaction of the consular officer, based on all the information the consular officer had.

QUESTION: Right.

MR. BOUCHER: So, you know, you can second-guess these decisions, but the fact is now the situation is different: the processing is different, the information available to our consular officers is different, the amount of information required of applicants is different, the databases are different. So whatever one thinks about what could have happened, should have happened, might have happened, with those applications that were deemed legitimate at the time based on all the information we had, one has to say that it's a different situation now. We have vastly improved the processing and the security of the applications.

why don't I believe this?

Could it be that Boucher is a lying son of a bitch? I think that's pretty likely.

"Deemed legitimate?" That must be some new definition of "legitimate" with which I'm not familiar.

QUESTION: Okay. Well, then, so you do not take a position on whether the consular officers who approved these visas were wrong in determining that these people were eligible?

MR. BOUCHER: No.

QUESTION: They — so at the time —

MR. BOUCHER: At the time, the consular officers, based on what they had available to them, okay, which is a lot less information than somebody would have now, which wasn't the entire US Government database because we didn't get that information from all th agencies at that time — but even then, I'm not sure we would have had a hit.

Circle the wagons at any cost, Dick? This isn't the Mafia with the Omerta code! You are a fucking public servant! You are responsible to the American people, not to the other career bureaucrats whose asses you're covering here.

QUESTION: Okay. So the long and short of it —

MR. BOUCHER: So based on what they knew at the time, they issued the visas. That's a judgment that they had to make. I'm not checking that judgment now. I'm just saying the whole process is different now.

QUESTION: So you reject outright that there was criminal negligence as to this —

MR. BOUCHER: I saw the phrase. I think that's rhetorical and not judicial, so I'm not going to try to deal with it.

They ought to put that on the State Department's official seal - "I'm not going to try to deal with it." It fits right up and down the line.

Every day this man draws a government paycheck is a crime.

2002-10-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

Campaigning the Democrat Way

Check out this item, via Ranting Screeds.

It seems that the Republican candidate for Senate was smeared with a Democratic ad that implied that he was homosexual:

State Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, and program director for the Montana Human Rights Network, said Thursday morning the ad "is an overt and obvious appeal to the homophobic (voter) that is playing to that stereotypic imagery."

So much for the party of inclusion, and tolerance, and respect.

Once again, we see that thre is no line the Dems will not cross, no lie they will not tell, no standard of decent behavior they will not violate.

This goes along nicely with other slanderous tactics we've seen from the Donkey Party, such as the race-baiting that the Dems are famous for (which we sometimes see even within the party, as in the New York primary campaign, when Andrew Cuomo tried to imply that his opponent, a black man, was not "black enough"), as anyone who remembers the disgraceful ads that equated then-candidate Bush with the killers of James Byrd.

One wonders what the Dems would say were the shoe on the other foot, and how much we'd hear about it in the NY Times and on the network evening news.

As always, disgraceful.

2002-10-10T08:11:00.000-04:00

They Must Have Switched his Meds Again

It's Thursday, which means, of course, that we are treated to a brand new Richard Cohen column.

I think they've lowered his Prozac (Paxil? Valium?) dosage, apparently, because today, we get Agressive Richard. Keep in mind as you read that two weeks ago today he praised Al Gore's speech that opposed war in Iraq; and three weeks ago today he wrote:

The further we get from Sept 11, 2001 -- the more the clock ticks and passions cool -- the harder it gets to make a case for war. Speaking just for myself, time has taken a toll. I may just settle for peace.

and

Do we want an Iraq without Hussein or merely one without weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear ones? Frankly, I don't know anymore.

What does Richard say today?

In listing his reasons for (probably) going to war against Iraq soon -- the threat of weapons of mass destruction, the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime and its flouting of international law -- President Bush the other night failed to mention the most important one: Now's the time.

Um...maybe on Bizarro World, Richard heard a different speech than I did. But he did make it clear that "now's the time," because waiting will only make Saddam Hussein stronger and more dangerous.

Just as the attack on Pearl Harbor enabled President Roosevelt to go to war against Germany as well as Japan, so did the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 give Bush the opportunity to do what three administrations -- his, his father's and Bill Clinton's -- had wanted to do for some time. The attacks galvanized the nation and altered the political climate. Hussein hadn't changed any. America had.

That -- and only that -- makes up the link between Hussein and Osama bin Laden. There is not now, nor has there ever been, any evidence of cooperation between the two.

Um...do you ever read any history, Richard? Germany declared war on us shortly after Pearl Harbor. The devil's in the details and all that.

And...um...that's an awfully forceful statement, that there's no evidence of cooperation between Hussein and Osama (really, it should be Al Qaeda here, rather than just Osama personally). There is evidence of meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda pre-September 11th; a lot of people just choose to ignore it because accepting that makes it much harder to oppose removing Saddam.

Skipping down...

Finally, the term "weapons of mass destruction," while frightening, is an obfuscation. Chemical weapons are weapons of limited destruction -- horrible but restricted in practicality. Biological weapons are scary beyond imagination, but much more potent in the movies than in real life. They are difficult to deliver -- the explosion immolates the germs -- and not all that effective.

"Not all that effective?" On September 10th, most people would not have considered an airliner a terribly effective weapon, either. Nuclear weapons are a different matter. They truly are weapons of mass destruction -- certainly weapons of mass intimidation. Iraq is probably five years or so away from developing an atomic weapon, but why wait for that to happen? Recent history tells us that when this crisis passes, the world will lose its interest and Hussein's weaponeers will return to the labs. Sooner or later, this vampire is going to rise out of his coffin.

So, now -- or soon -- is the moment. But this administration has to be carefully watched. It is fundamentally contradictory, enunciating a doctrine of unilateralism while reluctantly seeking a multilateral coalition against Iraq. It kissed off Congress and then embraced it. It is confusing. It is confused.

Confused? Um...no. They're doing everything that their critics - people like you, Richard! - have asked them to do. Go to Congress, the critics say. Bush does. Go to the UN, critics say. Bush does. Try to build a coalition, critics say. Bush does.

And then the critics say Bush is inconsistent. Well, they're idiots, and should be ignored.

Richard concludes thusly:

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, I felt, why wait? Since then, I have questioned and probed, wondered and worried, but my bottom line has not changed. For the sake of international law, for the sake of preventing nuclear blackmail, for the sake of ridding the world of a leader with Hitler's megalomania and the weapons to fuel it, war may be the only course. Saddam Hussein is the target. But time is the enemy.

So he's ready for war, but we may not have to fight. Or we may have to.

Does Richard even know what he thinks? Or is it just the meds talking?

Does anybody at the WashPost edit this guy for...I don't know...coherence? An actual viewpoint?

What a pointless, half-assed waste of column inches Cohen is. If he hadn't already demonstrated that he's incapable of the emotion, I'd say that he ought to be embarrassed by this.

2002-10-10T07:47:00.000-04:00

Why Are We Listening to This Man?

Ku Klux Klan alumnus Robert Byrd, Pharoah of West Virginia, has an OpEd in today's NY Times.

It's titled:

Congress Must Resist the Rush to War

Thank you, Mr. Byrd. Why don't you go back home and have some more off-ramps and garbage dumps named after yourself? That's about the only thing you're actually good at these days.

I'm not going to go into his whole piece, because the arguments he makes have all been hashed out here and elsewhere, and Byrd is clearly and utterly wrong.

But I will answer, yet again, one point he raises:

The president's case for an unprovoked attack is circumstantial at best. Saddam Hussein is a threat, but the threat is not so great that we must be stampeded to provide such authority to this president just weeks before an election.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention: it is not unprovoked!

After the '91 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein signed a cease-fire agreement. That agreement terminated hostilities, with the imposition of certain conditions on Hussein and his government.

Those conditions have been violated, almost from day one. They have been violated ever since then; repeatedly and brazenly.

Therefore, Iraq has already provoked any action we might choose to take against it.

In addition, Iraq has brazenly and repeatedly violated several UN Security Council resolutions.

And Iraq has, brazenly and repeately fired on U.S. and British forces in the no-fly zone.

And Iraq has, brazenly and repeatedly, given aid, both financial and otherwise, to terrorists. Saddam brags of giving aid to Palestinian suicide bombers and their families - who have killed Americans as well as Israelis; this is not in dispute.

There is more than ample provocation. If Pharoah Byrd does not understand this, he is unfit to serve as a Senator due to stupidity - which is almost certainly true in any case.

2002-10-10T07:35:00.000-04:00

Take That!

Rachel Lucas rips Maryland candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend a new one, over Kathy's support of stupid and counterproductive gun control measures.

Rachel is...um...an outspoken defender...yeah, that's it...of the Second Amendment, and we in the Empire wholeheartedly agree.

She asks:

KKT, wherefore art thou brain? If existing gun control laws save lives, why are you talking? What's the problem? Oh wait, I know. It's that those laws are fine and good, but we need more. Right?

I think the question answers itself. Where's Kathy's brain? She's a Kennedy! Why does she need a brain, when she's got the Kennedy name, and the Kennedy billions earned through an organized crime empire, behind her?

And, besides, she's a Kennedy! How dare any of us peons question her! It's her divine right to rule over us, and impose whatever laws she deems necessary, because we're unworthy of questioning the perfect logic and impeccable motives of a Kennedy.

2002-10-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

What a Great Idea!

Via Instapundit and Orrin Judd comes a wonderful suggestion.

It seems that horrendous California Governor Gray Davis is calling on Republican opponent Bill Simon to quit the governor's race due to an ugly situation regarding accusations Simon levelled against Davis that can't apparently be backed up.

Orrin says, and Glenn agrees, that:

Mr. Davis is right. Bill Simon should take one for the Party and bow out of the race. Arnold Schwarzenegger stands ready to replace him and would likely beat Gray Davis by 15+ points. One can hardly wait to hear Democrats and the NY Times explain why this would be unjust.

Exactly! After all, as we've been lectured by various and sundry Dems, it's all about giving voters the best possible choice, isn't it? And archaic "rules" and "election laws" shouldn't get in the way of that.

Governor Schwarzenegger. That has a definite ring to it, doesn't it?

2002-10-09T11:48:00.000-04:00

There Are No Words

Go to National Review Online right now. What you'll read at the link I've provided is a piece by the State Department's favorite reporter, Joel Mowbray.

Mowbray has obtained copies of the visa applications for 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers. Mowbray ran them by a panel of experts, which included:

four former consular officers, a current consular officer stationed in Latin America, and a senior official at Consular Affairs (CA) — the division within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance — who has extensive consular experience

The conclusion? None of them should have been approved:

even allowing for human error, no more than a handful of the visa applications should have managed to slip through the cracks. Making the visa lapses even more inexplicable, the State Department claims that at least 11 of the 15 were interviewed by consular officers. Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence."

NRO has also helpfully made available five of these applications, so that we can judge for ourselves (the links are within the article at NRO. Here's one of them).

Entirely aside from security concerns, the fact that they're all filled out improperly and incompletely (for example, under "Name and Street Address of Present Employer or Schol", one application lists "South City" - that, by itself, ought to have gotten the application rejected).

I'm not even going to rant about this; it's so obviously appalling, with no conceivable explanation or justification that I can even imagine, that I don't have the words to do it justice.

It's just...there aren't any words for this.

2002-10-09T11:08:00.000-04:00

Our Partner For Peace

Via Right Wing News comes this item, from a forthcoming book by terrorism expert (and former consultant to both the Defense and State Departments) Yossef Bodansky:

It seems that, back in April of this year, when our (hopefully soon to be ex)Secretary of State was trying to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians bent on its destruction, our Partner for Peace Yasser Arafat attempted to arrange Mr. Powell's assassination.

It was, according to Bodansky, only the alert action of Israeli forces that prevented it from happening:

"During a meeting with [special negotiator Gen. Anthony] Zinni, Arafat made a special request - a personal favor. A police officer from a very important family in Gaza had just been killed at Arafat's compound. It was imperative to get the body to Gaza for proper burial, Arafat pleaded. Zinni requested Jerusalem to make an exception to the siege. Jerusalem consented on April 7-8. However, the PA was not ready to dispatch the body until the evening of April 11 - at about the same time Powell was due to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport.

Unbeknownst to the Palestinians, Israeli security forces were following the ambulance bearing the officer's body as it left the Ramallah area.

Their suspicions deepened when the ambulance made a "wrong turn" and headed toward Highway 1 - connecting Ben Gurion Airport and Jerusalem - instead of taking the road to Gaza. As the ambulance was about to enter Highway 1, it was ambushed and stopped by an Israeli anti-terrorist unit. A quick search netted a huge bomb installed under the policeman's body and a martyr's bomb-web under the seat next to the driver.

The two supposed Red Crescent medics told their interrogators that their plan was to park the ambulance near a bend in the road where Powell's convoy was bound to slow down. They would open the vehicle's hood as if they had an engine problem. Once the limousine got close to the ambulance, the driver was to blow it up, in the expectation that the convoy would stop and the security personnel would rush to investigate the explosion.

Exploiting the confusion, the other "medic" was to run to the limousine, try to get in, and blow himself up either inside the limousine or pressed against its exterior"

Let's count all the ways we should be appalled by this:

First, obviously, the attempted assassination of an American, any American, by these barbarians is an act of war.

Second, it was also a direct attack on the Bush Administration.

Third, it was stupid, because Powell's the most sympathetic ear the Palestinians have in the current Administration.

Fourth, he was there tying to end the siege of Arafat's compound and reach some sort of accord.

Fifth, the attempt utilized the pretense of an humanatarian action and all the trappings thereof, which violates the Geneva COnvention and every other rule of civilized behavior, and also makes life worse for the Palestinian people, since even ambulances and Red Crescent personnel can no longer be assumed to be benign and neutral - but must be presumed to be hostile and dangerous, as the rest of the Palestinians are.

This proves, although we have already had enough proof for a dozen lifetimes, that the Palestinian leadership cannot be trusted, cannot be negotiated with, and does not want peace.

What will it take for those not yet convinced to understand this? A successful assassination of one of our high officials? Or something much worse? Or, and this is more likely, is there no convincing those who toe the Palestinian line and scream about Israel's "occupation"? Is there no deed so henious that they will see the truth? No amount of innocent blood that will wash away their delusions?

Who am I kidding? We already know the answers to those questions.

2002-10-09T06:45:00.000-04:00

Back in the Quagmire

Some people, like the WashPost's David Broder, can find Vietnam paralels and influences everywhere. So this AM, Broder takes a break from whining about political advertising and the evils of fundraising to bleat about the lingering effects of that war in Southeast Asia that ended 30 years ago.

The disarray and despondency among Democrats this week demonstrate once again the damage that Vietnam did to the generation now leading that party. Those who went to war in Southeast Asia when they were young and those who protested it in the streets and on the campuses both carry the scars of the experience into the current debate on the showdown with Saddam Hussein.

Maybe the scars, at least among those who protested in the streets, were self inflicted. Just a thought.

While some significant Republicans -- such as Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel -- have offered modulated and intelligent criticism of President Bush's approach, most in the GOP have fallen quickly into line behind Bush's determination to force the issue with Iraq, even if it means war.

Maybe they actually agree with it; maybe they, like most rational people, would prefer war to remove an enemy of the United States who seeks nuclear weapons over the possibility of that enemy getting one such weapon and detonating it in New York, or DC - or Tel Aviv, for that matter. Again, just a thought.

By contrast, the Democrats' most prominent leaders and spokesmen have taken wildly opposing positions, leaving the public with no clear idea where the opposition party stands.

Um...the Dems are not legally required to oppose the President, if they - or at least some of them - agree with his poilcies (or at least some of them). And certainly it's not required, or even necessarily desirable, for the Dems (or the Republicans) to speak with One Big Loud Voice that brooks no dissent.

Hey, just a paragraph above, Broder talks approvingly of the fact that some Republicans publicly disagree with the President. But since Broder obviously disagrees with the President, he demands that all his Democratic pals must be on the same page as well.

The last Democratic presidential nominee and the party leader, Al Gore, has argued that Bush is being hasty and is risking the larger war on terrorism by leaving most of our allies skeptical or opposed to his Iraq policy. But his former running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, is foursquare behind the president and the ultimatums to Saddam Hussein.

So?

And who says Gore is the party leader? I think Tommy Daschle would disagree with that. So would Terry McAuliffe, I bet.

While others in the prospective 2004 Democratic presidential field, including Sen. John Kerry and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, challenge the assumptions behind Bush's policy, another of the likely contenders, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, is collaborating with the president in framing and passing a congressional resolution that will let Bush begin a preemptive assault on Iraq when he thinks it necessary. Left-wing House Democrats are furious with Gephardt -- including many of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose constituents must be lured to the polls next month if the party is to have any chance of winning the House and holding its one-vote Senate margin.

"lured to the polls?" Are they so devoid of a will of their own that they must be lured to come out and vote? I'd be insulted if I were one of those constitutents; but then, they've been insulted by the Dems who take them for granted for so long that it's clear their capacity to take insults is pretty much infinite.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle finds himself in the middle between powerful elders such as Sens. Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy, who say Bush has failed to make the case for war, and a squad of embattled incumbents who do not want to impair their reelection prospects by challenging the president on his strength as commander in chief. Senators such as Max Cleland in Georgia and Tim Johnson in South Dakota and challengers such as Erskine Bowles in North Carolina and Alex Sanders in South Carolina want no daylight between themselves and Bush on the Iraq issue.

Is there no possibility at all that any of these people actually believe that Iraq is a threat and that Saddam must be removed?

All this would make the situation difficult enough for the Democrats, heading into a midterm election. But it is the echoes of Vietnam that inflame passions and raise political risks. You could hear them in the mutterings among other Democrats about Reps. David Bonior and Jim McDermott, who turned up in Baghdad and sounded as if they were saying that Saddam Hussein's history of recalcitrance should be overlooked in weighing the credibility of his current promises to cooperate with weapons inspectors. It was all too reminiscent of Jane Fonda in Hanoi or antiwar protesters marching under Viet Cong flags.

It didn't "sound as if they were saying" that, they were saying that! Look at McDermott's comments since his return!

And you could hear the echoes of Vietnam also in Daschle's extraordinarily emotional speech condemning President Bush's comment that the Senate is "not interested in the security of the American people." The off-the-cuff remark, made in reference to the dispute over the Department of Homeland Security, not Iraq, was one that never should have passed Bush's lips; it was an offensive exaggeration and an imprudent venting of presidential frustration.

It was also true. Daschle would rather appease the public employee unions than pass a homeland security bill.

But you cannot avoid thinking that the fury of Daschle's response had much to do with memories of the way Presidents Johnson and Nixon questioned the patriotism of Daschle's contemporaries who opposed the war in Vietnam.

It was a temper tantrum, thrown because Daschle is losing relevance, and seeing his chances for the Presidency vanish like the burning off of a morning fog.

The people now governing the country -- men and women from their late forties to their early sixties -- have not yet come to terms with the issues that divided them when they were coming of age politically a quarter-century ago. Vietnam was not the only such issue -- civil rights, women's rights, abortion rights also split the country -- but it was the most contentious.

Both sides still maintain they were right. The protesters still believe the war was unnecessary, unwinnable and even immoral. The supporters still argue that it could have been won, and should have been, were it not for the dissent at home.

Gasp! People with strong political views...disagree! Boy, Broder is an amazing talent, if he figured that one out all by himself!

The scars of that unresolved argument make it even harder to judge today's security policy questions -- as this Iraq debate is demonstrating.

No. It's demonstrating that people with radically different assumptions about the world will come to very different conclusions; and it's demonstrating that most politicans will...gasp!...consider the political implications of their votes. Why in God's name is this new, or surprising in any way at all?

Ack. Ack. Ack.

2002-10-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

Tom Harkin: Crook

You may have heard about the scandal emanating from Tom Harkin's campaign, wherein he sent a staffer with a digital recorder into a strategy session of his opponent's, and then leaked the transcript.

Unfortunately, it seems as though, as in New Jersey, the Dems may get away with blatant disregard for the law, as well as for any ethical norms.

Here's Jeff Durkin's take on the matter, with which I agree fully:

In case you thought the Democrat's contempt for democracy and the rule of law was limited to New Jersey, here are some details about the Harkin controversy in Iowa. Harkin sent one of his campaign goons to tape covertly tape a strategy session of his Republican opponent. When caught, he fired the a hapless staffer who was supoposedly responsible and let his campaign manager go. This after first denying any knowledge, of course. When Nixon did something similar he was hounded from office. Why is Harkin not being dropped by the Dems? Oh, that's right, because the Democrats hate the idea of following the law. They'll use the law to bludgeon Republicans and the American people; but let a law stand in their way and they'll either ignore it or try to get some spineless court (Florida and New Jersey come to mind) to overrule it. Like most Leftists, they want to use the law to control the masses; but hte 'enlightened' social and political leaders are above that law. The sooner Americans realize that the current crop of Democrats are a threat to the Nation, the better.

2002-10-08T12:56:00.000-04:00

What Might Have Been

A bit of a change of pace...check out this very cool site: Uchronia: the Alternate History List.

It's a clearinghouse of information about, well, alternate history, with exhaustive lists of books both fictional and nonfictional.

If you're a fan of such tales, this site is an absolute must-see.

2002-10-08T12:52:00.000-04:00

All the News That's Fit to Lie Abut

Stanley Kurtz at NRO's Corner points out this article from the which takes issue with this article from yesterday's NY Times.

The article is headlined:

Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy

and opens thusly:

majority of Americans say that the nation's economy is in its worst shape in nearly a decade and that President Bush and Congressional leaders are spending too much time talking about Iraq while neglecting problems at home, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll

Only one problem. The poll data doesn't actually say that at all, as David Tell points out in the Standard.

He notes that the Times piece doesn't, anywhere, give a breakdown of the poll questions and the response data. Fortunately, CBS News does.

Tell notes three questions on the poll in particular which give the lie to the Times' interpertation of the story:

Question Three. "What do you think is the single most important problem for the government--that is, the president and Congress--to address in the coming year?" Nagourney and Elder write that voters answered they are "more concerned about the economy and domestic issues than with what is happening to Saddam Hussein." In fact, however, Times/CBS poll respondents identified "Terrorism/War/Security" as the one "most important problem" facing government (30 percent), with "Economy/Jobs/Stock Market" ranking second (26 percent). And even this result understates the truth: Listed third among the responses is an additional foreign policy category, "Iraq" (7 percent)--which means that voters principally concerned with international matters outnumber those who prefer to think about issues that "Democrats had hoped to capitalize on" by an almost 3-to-2 margin.

Question Eighteen. "Which of these should be the higher priority for the nation right now--the economy and jobs, or terrorism and national security?" This, of course, is simply a forced-choice restatement of the more open-ended Question Three, above. And its results therefore speak more directly to the conclusion suggested by the Times' front-page sub-hed: "Poll Finds Lawmakers Focusing Too Much on Iraq and Too Little on Issues at Home." Trouble is, Question Eighteen's results flatly contradict that sub-hed. A full 50 percent of respondents said terrorism should be a higher priority than the economy. And only 35 percent said the opposite--again, a nearly 3-to-2 preference for foreign policy.

Question Twenty-Nine. "In deciding how to spend their time, presidents have to weigh the importance of foreign policy problems and problems here at home. Given the importance of each, do you think George W. Bush has been spending too much time on foreign policy problems, OR too much time on problems here at home, OR has he been spending his time about right?" According to the Times, which ran it as a five-column headline across the top of page A14 yesterday, the answer is clear: "Public Says Bush Needs to Pay More Heed to Economy, Less to Iraq." Unfortunately, though, Actual Results Prove Times Account of Poll Dishonest. A majority of respondents (52 percent) told Times/CBS researchers they think the president is dividing his attention "about right" and another two percent complained that Bush spends too much time on domestic issues. Only 41 percent of respondents said they think the president overemphasizes foreign policy. Among key, swing-voting independents, the trend is even starker: 58 percent of respondents said they believe the president devotes enough or too much effort to domestic questions, while just 35 percent complained that he is neglecting them.

"All the News That's Fit to Print," indeed.

2002-10-08T09:40:00.000-04:00

Well, It's a Good Question

Over at the previously mentioned Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiller, Emperor Misha notes this article from MEMRI - a letter from a Palestinian, the father of a suicide bomber.

The letter is directed towards the leaders of the Intifada:

"Do the children's lives have a price? Has death become the only way to restore the rights and liberate the land? And if this be the case, why doesn't a single one of all the sheikhs who compete amongst themselves in issuing fiery religious rulings, send his son? Why doesn't a single one of the leaders who cannot restrain himself in expressing his joy and ecstasy on the satellite channels every time a young Palestinian man or woman sets out to blow himself or herself up send his son?"

The letter goes on to cite specific Palestinian leaders who are so keen to send the children of their followers to die, but who are more reluctant to send their own flesh and blood:

"But what tears at the soul, pains the heart, and brings tears to the eyes more than anything else is the sight of these sheikhs and leaders evading sending their sons into the fray – such as Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Isma'il Abu Shanab, and Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Rantisi. The moment the Intifada broke out, Al-Zahar sent his son Khaled to America; Abu Shanab sent his son Hassan to Britain; and [as she stated to the press], Rantisi's wife has refrained from sending her son Muhammad to blow himself up. Instead, she sent him to Iraq, to complete his studies there."

Interesting questions and observations there. What it shows is something we've been saying here in the Empire all along; the "leadership", such as it is, of the Palestinians, cares not at all for the people they claim to lead; they are abject cowards whose only means of coping with the world is the murder of civillians, and whose only tool is the thrown-away lives of the children of their subjects.

As always, appalling.

2002-10-08T07:30:00.000-04:00

Friends Everywhere

Alert readers will note another new site in the link list: the The Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiller. It's an absolutely excellent site, and it is, of course, as you'll see when you visit there (you will visit there, won;t you?), the Headquarters of the Rotweiller Empire.

And we are proud to announce that we are in return now citizens of that noble Rotweiller Empire. Many thanks to the honorable Misha, lord of all he surveys in the land of the Rotweillers!

2002-10-08T07:20:00.000-04:00

If a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day, It's Wrong The Rest of the Time

The WashPost has no shortage of awful columnists. Richard Cohen shockingly makes sense this morning, so it falls to E.J. Dionne to take up the mantle of stupidity.

And he certainly does so. He bleats about the President's speech and about the upcoming removal of Saddam Hussein.

Says E.J.:

The public's ambivalence is obvious from the polls. Most Americans share Bush's view of Saddam Hussein as a dangerous tyrant, think the world would be better off without him and fear what would happen if Hussein ever got his hands on nuclear weapons.

But the public still wonders whether this war needs to be waged immediately. It worries about the effect of a war that the United States might have to fight almost alone. And it longs for an approach short of war to disarm Hussein.

"Maybe, but why now?" is a perfectly reasonable position. But it's not much of a slogan. Is it any wonder that a Democratic Party whose broad middle ground is defined by what you might call principled ambivalence is having so much trouble finding its voice?

This is idiotic on it's face. If, as Dionne agrees, Hussein is a dangerous tyrant who seeks nuclear weapons, and whom the world would be well rid of, then it seems clear that "it it were done when 'tis done, 'twere well it were done quickly."

It's a simple question: do we fight at a time of our chosing, or Saddam's? Do we fight on our soil or that of our allies, or on Saddam's? I would think that the answer is obvious.

And what the hell, exactly, does "principled ambivilance" mean?

The rest of Dionne's column, as is typlcal of him, is mushy and filled with qualifications doubletalk and is generally embarrassing.

Ack.

2002-10-08T07:11:00.000-04:00

Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day

Amazingly, the WashPost's awful Richard Cohen gets something right today.

He's writing about New Jersey Poet Laureate Amir Baraka, who penned an inflamatory, blatantly bigoted and anti-Semetic poem about the September 11th attacks:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

Cohen cites the view of former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, who suggests that New Jersey simply eliminate the "job" of Poet Lauerate, thus ceasing the state's subsidy of Mr. Baraka.

It pains me to say so, but I agree with Cohen. Especally when he says this:

Then came the usual warnings: Baraka must not be censored. So spoke the Times and other newspapers. Yes, indeedy. But withdrawing a state subsidy is not censorship. Why do the people of New Jersey -- including not a few Jews -- have to subsidize the anti-Semitic lunacies of this second-rate poet?

Precisely. Refusing to pay for something is not censoring it. Baraka has a right to say whatever he liked; he does not have a Constitutional right to have taxpayers, or anyone else, pay for it.

Since this is Richard Cohen we're talking about, I'm uneasy leaving this here, because - I suspect, but I don't know - that he probably opposed attempts by Republicans to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts which used precisely the same logic Cohen employs in today's column. Unfortunatley, the WashPost charges to go into the archives past a month or so, and, frankly, Cohen isn't worth a penny of my money to do such research. But I will call on my loyal 68 readers a day; if any of you know of such statements from Cohen in the past, please pass them on and I'll publish them.

2002-10-07T22:53:00.000-04:00

Civil Rights?

It appears that some "civil rights" groups are unhappy with a bill currently making its way through both House and Senate to reform election procedures.

What do the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the League of Women Voters of the United States and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus object to?

Three things:

A provision requiring first-time voters who registered by mail to produce some form of identification, like a photo ID card, a bank statement or a paycheck.

A provision requires all state mail-in registration forms to include the question, "Are you a citizen of the United States of America?" with boxes to answer yes or no.

And a provision that mandates that an application for voter registration "may not be accepted or processed by a state" if a person with a driver's license fails to write the license number on the form.

And why, exactly, are these bad?

"voter registration drives will become much more difficult to pull off" because the sponsors would have to obtain more information from would-be voters.

and

"In their rush and haste, it appears that some members of Congress have agreed to things that will have a negative impact on the Latino community, making it harder to register and to vote. That's a tragedy.

Um, no. It'll have a negative impact on those members of the Latino community who cannot honestly answer yes to the question of whether or not they're a citizen, or who have no legitimate identification proving that they are a citizen - and those people are not legally permitted to vote anyway, so we damn well ought to be making it harder for them to register and vote.

It seems that these measures are designed to combat voting fraud, to ensure that citizens can vote only once each, and that only citizens actually can vote, and those are both good things, which we should all wholeheartedly support.

2002-10-07T22:24:00.000-04:00

The Big Speech

The President tonight laid out the case for the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from power in Iraq.

His speech was very clear, and, really, there isn't much to argue there. He explained why the policies of the past (ineffective sanctions, toothless inspections, pinprick air raids) have failed, and why stronger, more permanant action is now required. This paragraph really says it all, I think:

There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait -- and that's an option. In my view, it's the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace -- we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.

Precisely. Thank you, Mr. President. Now go and do it already!

2002-10-07T17:25:00.000-04:00

Why We Don't Trust The Media

Because sometimes they flat-out make stuff up.

Like this story from the Independent (thanks to Instapundit for pointing this out).

It describes President Bush's speech in the past tense, and discusses reaction to it.

There's only one problem: the President hasn't spoken yet, and won't do so until about three hours from now.

And they wonder why so many of us distrust and mock them...

2002-10-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

Aiding and Abetting

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to review the New Jersey Supreme Court's extralegal decision to allow the Democrats to attempt to steal the NJ Senate election by replacing incumbent Robert Torricelli with former Senator Frank Lautenberg.

This is bad, obviously, as it legitimizes a dishonest tactic expressly designed to subvert the democratic process.

I'd love to know the USSC's reasoning, since it did intervene to prevent a similar Democratic Party attempt to steal an election in the state courts back in 2000 in Florida.

2002-10-07T14:24:00.000-04:00

Imperialism-Lite

That's what Jeff Durkin calls the rhetoric coming from the Bush Administration re: Iraq.

Jeff doesn't have a problem with this, if our actions match or words:

As long as the current regime is destroyed and the Iraqis are brought into the West by us, and not some collection of UN bureaucrats, the surest way to screw them up, then we should have few troubles.

I agree.

2002-10-07T11:25:00.000-04:00

Well, It Takes All Kinds

It seems that self-described spoiled yuppie columnist Mo Dowd has a defender (aside from the despicable Eric Alterman, of course, who'd have a good word for Satan himself if only he'd criticize the Bush Administration and Ariel Sharon).

Brian Griffin looks at this piece from the Weekly Standard (by Josh Chafetz) and declares it to be conservative "propaganda."

Brian contrasts Josh Chafetz's "Immutable Laws of Dowd" with his own views of them:

Josh: THE FIRST IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The first and most important rule is what might be termed the People magazine principle: All political phenomena can be reduced to caricatures of the personalities involved. Any reference to policy concerns or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passé. And, of course, with every caricature goes a nickname.

Brian: Law One Translation: You can make fun of Bill Clinton all you want, but you can't make fun of George Bush, after all we are in a war.

That's not really what Chafetz says; what he said is that, when dealing with matters of life and death (rather than matters of what the meaning of "is" is), caricatures and nicknames aren't good enough; and that goes directly to...

Josh: THE SECOND IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It's easier to whine than to take a stand or offer solutions.

Brian: Law Two Translation: Life is Black and White. Either you are with “us” or with “them.”

Well, breaking complex issues into simple caricatures and derisive nicknames certainly is a way of making things very Black and White; those who La Dowd likes are good, and don't get cutesy little nicknames; those who La Dowd disapproves of are bad, and are mocked and derided.

And certainly La Dowd doesn't actually offer solutions. While it's not her job to solve all the world's problems, if she's going to write column adfter column trashing the President and his Administration and ridiculing their plans and policies, at some point it might be nice for her to say what she'd like to see done instead. Throwing rocks is all well and good, but sooner or later it becomes unhelpful.

Josh: THE THIRD IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It is better to be cute than coherent. Along these lines, Dowd's favorite rhetorical device is parallelism.

Brian: Law Three Translation: Coherence is best illustrated with Dick and Jane. Literary devices are only for the intelligent, and the magnanimous thinker must lower oneself to the lowest common denominator. If you must use things like satire, make sure it is obvious enough for uneducated blue state voters.

Well, literary devices are fine, but they still need to make sense. And there's nothing wrong with satire, but it has to have at least one foot in the real world, which La Dowd's writings often don't.

Josh: THE FOURTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The particulars of my consumer-driven, self-involved life are of universal interest and reveal universal truths.

Brian: Law Four Translation: Consumerism and truth are only good if you are buying from a conservative who is selling the word of “God.”

Um, no. That's not the point here at all. The point is that many Dowd columns go into nauseating detail about La dowd and her personal behavior, especially as it relates to what she buys and what she wears. And, frankly, there are better things - and far more important things - that ought to be on the editorial page of the nation's newspaper of record than what kind of shoes La Dowd has, or what kind of gloves she bought after the anthrax scare.

Josh: THE FIFTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: Europeans are always right. Whenever Dowd quotes a Continental, she allows the quote to stand on its own, as if it were, by virtue of the very Europeanness of its speaker, self-evidently true.

Brian: Law Five Translation: Non-Monarchist Europeans are bad, except for the Spanish and Italians who elected conservative governments.

Not sure where that comes from. Josh's point, which is true not only of La Dowd, but of many on the left and in the media, is that the European view is, often, uncritically considered to be correct; that's usually followed by wonderment that the Bush Administration won't listen to the Wise Men of Europe. It's madness, basically.

The fact is that La Dowd gets by on being cutesy, and she's indulged by Howell Raines and Gail Collins because her vapid columns go along with their agenda. That doesn't make her a good columnist, or a good writer, and it doesn't make those of us who don't like her "propagandists" or "dumbed down blue state voters".

2002-10-07T10:54:00.000-04:00

What's Wrong With Empire?

The latest charge from opponents of removing Saddam Hussein from power is that it's the first step towards an American Empire; otften they also cite the enwly released National Security Strategy as further evidence of this.

If it's a grab for empire that the Bush administration is making, it's not like any other empire in history. Take Iraq; folks like Robert Scheer of The Nation whine that regine change in Iraq is all about oil.

Well, if that's so, and if, as he argues, we don't care how dictators treat their people so long as they behave with regard to us, why don't we simply reach an accomodation with Saddam? Why have we promised the Russians and French that their lucrative dealings with Iraq will be honored under whatever regime we place there post-Saddam? Why...on and on and on...

Because we're not out to conquer Iraq and steal its resources, no matter what the hard left chooses to believe. We're out to remove a threat to both our national security and that of the Middle East generally.

That's the entire premise if the National Security Strategy; not conquest, but defense. We want to ensure that we cannot be threatened militarily; not to oppress or subjugate the rest of the world, but to protect ourselves from it. Especially since we cannot simply disengage from the world; the global economy and ever-advancing technology have seen to that.

The "anti-imperialists", I guess, see peace and security as being obtained through diplomacy, and treaties, and, eventually, disarmament. It's a lovely vision, but it flies in the face of reality. Had we listened to such voices in the early 1980's and unilaterally disarmed, we would have indeed found peace - the same peace that France got in June of 1940, after it surrendered to Germany.

So it is today. Even if we did everything that the anti-war, "anti-imperialist" left demanded; there would still be vast reservoirs of hatred and envy against us, and we would still face threats, and we would still be attacked, and Americans would die. We would not be secure, and we would be weaker. That is an undesirable outcome.

Our "imperialism" is simlpy a recognition that we will have to fight our enemies, because they are set on a course to fight us. Our "imperialism" is a policy that says we will fight on our terms and on their soil, rather than on their terms and our soil.

And entirely aside from that, there's the question of whether imperialism is bad in any event. The fact is that the majority of people on the planet live under regimes that quite simply don't give a damn about them; that treat their economies as piggy banks; that answer dissent with arrest or execution; that are unacceptable by any civilized standard of behavior. Certainly, just about every government in Africa can be described thusly, as can every one in the Middle East save Israel. The People's Republic of China, as well as North Korea also fall under that dexcription.

Why shouldn't we want to see those regimes replaced with governments that actually try to serve their people, that build real economies, that do not threaten their neighbors or murder their own citizens for the crime of wanting to run their own lives?

The West has come up with the best way yet invented to run a society; whether you prefer America or Europe, you're still talking democratic capitalism, which creates the most wealth and the most opportunity for the most people, of any system yet designed. Why shouldn't that be brought to every corner of the globe?

Is it really preferable to sit back and watch half or more of the world's population suffer under kleptocratic, murderous thugs? Or to blindly give money to those same thugs in the hope that it will encourage better behavior and that some fraction of the money might make it to the people we'd actually like to help?

That's madness - and that's what the "anti-imperialists" seem to want.

2002-10-07T10:02:00.000-04:00

A WashPost Writer Embarrasses himself - Nothing New Here

This AM it's sports columnist Tom Boswell, who gloats over the awful Yankee collapse this weekend.

He writes:

The New York Yankees dynasty is dead. At least for now. Those mighty devils with the $141 million payroll, and their exotic dancers "Mystique" and "Aura," have been slain by 25 Angels. Though the Yankees are still a threat to win a World Series -- next year -- their reign of almost unchallenged dominance is finally over. And just in time, too.

Baseball, with its new labor agreement and fresh hopes for economic sanity, needs an age of reinvigoration and competitive fairness. Teams with sensible payrolls, such as the $60 million Angels, need proof that they cannot merely contend but actually win -- and even beat the Yanks. So, this regicide comes at an ideal time to inspire the whole sport.

Years - maybe decades - of bitterness and envy shine through from Boswell.

"Sensible payrolls."

What would Boswell prefer? That baseball owners pocket all the money they make from fans, concessions, and television? One more time, for those people who weren't paying attention: the Yankees have a big payroll because they make a lot of money. They make a lot of money because there are more people in New York to pay cable-TV fees than there are in Oakland, or Kansas City, or anywhere else in the U.S.

If they don't spend it on their players, there's two places that money could go: to the other owners as welfare payments, or in George Steinbrenner's pockets. Because it sure isn't going to go back to the fans. And even if Steinbrenner charged less for the rights to Yankee games, does any rational person think the cable companies would charge their customers less to reflect that?

Nope. It would just go into the pockets of Comcast, or AOL-Time Warner, or whomever.

So shut the hell up about the Yankee's evil big payroll already!

Especially when we're talking about a team owned by Disney (which owns ESPN, which broadcasts baseball's regular season nationwide, as well as the first round of the playoffs) being the ones to dethrone them. A team owned by Disney and playing in Southern California. If baseball ever opened its books honestly, I think we'd see that the Angels make plenty of money, and that their "sensible payroll" simply allows Disney to pocket a very nice profit.

The Yankees, not the D'backs, have been baseball's major problem in recent years. The game needs the Yanks, the Big Ballpark and Bronx legends such as Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams, who anchored five pennant winners and four world champs in six years. But it doesn't need too much of them. We need flawed Yanks, powerful but beatable Yanks, almost over-the-hill Yanks. And in the last week, we realize that's what we've got.

You hypocritical jerk! What you want is for George Steinbrenner to lay out money for a losing team, so that you can play out your own personal "Damn Yankees" fantasy!

How about, isntead of bitching and moaning about the success of the Yankees, you itch and moan about how Peter Angelos fields a cheap, crummy, sub-par team for your newspaper to cover, and also prevents, with the connivance of Lying Buddy Selig, a team from being placed actually in the city wherre your newspaper is published.

Maybe the point is that other teams need to do more, not that the Yankees need to be cast down so that you can feel better, you pompous, self-important twit.

And I'll point out one other thing: while everyone oohs and aahs over the small market, low budget, marked for termination Minnesota Twins and their improbable season - and chance at the World Series - let's not forget that one of the reasons they were marked for terminiation is that their owner, Carl Pohlad, volunteered them for termination, so that he could cash out to the tune of $150 million or more.

This is the same Carl Pohlad who's one of the wealthiest (if not the wealthiest) owners in baseball (and significantly richer than George Steinbrenner, for one), and who has, for years, refused to spend any money on his team. They've won in spite of their ownership, in spite of an owner, who, if he'd had his way, would have seen his team contracted rather than competing to go to the World Series this week.

Remember that when you read jerks like Boswell gloating about the downfall of the Yankees. At least George Steinbrenner actually gives a damn and wants to win. He'd never volunteer his team for destruction just to add to his already inflated bank account. Remember that if Minnesota wins it all, and a smiling Carl Pohlad is accepting the trophy from Lying Buddy Selig.

And remember that Steinbrenner wants more than anything to win, and no matter hnow baseball tries to change its rules to spite the Yankees, he'll find a way - and the money - to overcome the roadblocks put in his way. The Yankees will be back, and all the detractors will have to eat their bitter, venomous, jealous, hateful little words this time next year.

2002-10-07T09:45:00.000-04:00

They're Still Out There

Another shooting in the DC area this morning. This one happened in front of a school; a 13 year old boy is in critical condition.

The WashPost report doesn't mention any witnesses, so there's no way to know if this shooting is related to the sniper attacks of late last week.

2002-10-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

The Bait and Switch Works

According to a new poll, the dishonest and undemocratic sham that the Dems are attempting to pull in New Jersey is, so far, working. According to the poll, placeholder candidate Frank Lautenberg leads Reupublican Doug Forrester, 46-40 (with a 4 percent margin of error).

Hopefully the Supreme Court will overturn the New Jersey Supreme Court's legislation from the bench and disallow the Democratic switch, just as they rightly prevented the Florida Supreme Court from rewriting eleciton law to help Al Gore steal the 2000 Presidential election.

2002-10-06T10:57:00.000-04:00

Lies, Damned Lies, and Senate Majority Leaders

Tom Daschle is on Meet the Press right now, lying through his teeth about, well, pretty much everything. Every time he's confronted with his own past words, he explains why they don't mean what they plainy do mean. Black is white. War is peace. The man's a master of doublespeak, and this performance is more evidence why the Democrats must be defeated in November, and control of the Senate returned to the Republicans.

2002-10-06T08:27:00.000-04:00

More Terrorism in Yemen?

It's possible. Yesterday, a French-flagged oil tanker exploded. The tanker was coming into port when it began leaking crude oil, and then an explision occured:

Reports of a boat approaching the tanker raised the spectre of an incident in 2000 when suicide bombers rammed a boatload of explosives into the U.S. destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 servicemen.

The French military attache in Yemen, identified as Colonel Vial, told France's LCI television: "This explosion occurred at the same moment as a small boat approached the tanker, which could indicate it is not an accidental explosion.

Yemen's government has been somewhat cooperative in the war on terror, but it's also been a longtime haven for Al Qaeda and oter terrorists.

With all the threats and alerts that have been going on, it wouldn't be at all surprising if this were a terrorist incident. Yet more reason to move into Iraq as soon as possible.