-- "a kind of American fascism"

In the foreword to the just released "National Intelligence Strategy of the United States," the Director of National Intelligence says democracy promotion is the "stoutest pillar" in strengthening U.S. national security. And far from enhancing U.S. security, realist notions, where stability trumps democracy, promote "international instability."

Negroponte writes:

But even though the future holds dangerous challenges both within our borders and beyond, it also presents us with opportunities to support the spread of freedom, human rights, economic growth and financial stability, and the rule of law.

We must identify these opportunities for democratic transformation because autocratic and failed states are breeding grounds of international instability, violence, and misery. For US national security, democracy is that stoutest pillar of support.

The Strategy document itself lists five "Mission Objectives," including:

1. Defeating terrorists at home and aboard by disarming their operational capabilities and seizing the initiative from them by promoting the growth of freedom and democracy. (page 6)

And:

3. Bolster the growth of democracy and sustain peaceful democratic states. We have learned to our peril that the lack of freedom in one state endangers the peace and freedom of others and that failed states are a refuge and breeding ground of extremism. Self-sustaining democratic states are essential to world peace and development.

One pundit recently described realist foreign policy as "clear and sober," and Brent Scowcroft argued much the same in a recent New Yorker profile. But Charles Krauthammer sees it a bit differently here.

For example, Rich writes:

Murray Waas reported Thursday in The National Journal that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby had refused to provide the committee with ''crucial documents,'' including the Libby-written passages in early drafts of Colin Powell's notorious presentation of W.M.D. ''evidence'' to the U.N. on the eve of war.

Rich, like other liberals, are desperately trying to get the nation to believe that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was manufactured by a small band of zealots in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, including Cheney himself. Last week, Iraq opponents like Rich were abuzz over the remarks of Lawrence Wilkerson who called the relationship between Rumsfeld and Cheney "a cabal" during a speech in Washington. This week it's the Waas piece. But Wilkerson's other remarks in the same speech combined with the Waas piece actually undermine the "zealots made the wmd up" line.

For instance, Waas, a contributor to the American Prospect, writes:

…whether dissenting views from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR], the Department of Energy, and other agencies that often disagreed with the CIA on the question of Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction…

His phrase "programs to develop weapons of mass destruction" leaves the clear impression that INR dissented not only on the nuclear issue (for the record, DOE believed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program) but also on chemical and biological weapons . But that is not true, according to Wilkerson. Here's what Secretary Powell's chief of staff Wilkerson said the same "cabal" speech:

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

According to Wilkerson, most, if not all, of the content in Secretary Powell's address -- a speech, Waas writes, that deputy CIA director John McLaughlin told Congress was reviewed to take "out material…that we and the secretary's staff judged to have been unreliable" -- to the UN was believed to be "the truth" by British, German and French intelligence. And INR, Wilkerson states, was "right there with the chems and the bios."

So Powell's speech didn't include the "Libby-written" passages, yet British, French and German intelligence believed it to be "the truth," and INR was "right there" with Powell on "the chems and bios."

Boy, that's quite a conspiracy the vice president engineered.

More on the Murray Waas piece may be found here and Wilkerson's "cabal" speech here.

Sunday's frontpage article by Elizabeth Bumiller and Eric Schmitt is a classic -- essentially an editorial masquerading as news. Naturally, Lawrence Wilkerson is quoted but only the nasty ones about "the cabal." His other remarks made in the same "cabal" speech aren't quoted. Guess they don't quite fit in with the liberal talking points on the war.

And what's with the "rid Iraq of Mr. Hussein" line? "Mr. Hussein," well, that's one way to characterize the butcher of Baghdad. Here's an alternative the Times may want to consider next time. How about the vice president's

longtime desire to rid Iraq of a onetime poison-gas-making, biological-weapons-manufacturing, mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring, serial war-starting, UN-obstructing, Security Council resolution-violating dictator?

And, it wasn't only Cheney's "longtime desire." Regime change was official US government policy going back to 1998 when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act sponsored by Senators McCain and Lieberman, to name a few.

Gee, it must have been pure hell for Joe Wilson doing that glamorous photo spread in Vanity Fair

Yesterday, the National Journal publicized an "online exclusive" on the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence claims. Last night, Chris Matthews cited the Murray Waas piece and today its contents are pinging around the blogosphere. But the piece has one passage, in particular, that doesn't quite square with the public record.

For instance, Waas, a frequent contributor to the American Prospect, writes:

…whether dissenting views from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR], the Department of Energy, and other agencies that often disagreed with the CIA on the question of Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction…

His phrase "programs to develop weapons of mass destruction" leaves the clear impression that INR dissented not only on the nuclear issue but also on chemical and biological weapons. But here's what Secretary Powell's chief of staff said just the other day:

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

So, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, most, if not all, of the content in Secretary Powell's address -- a speech that deputy CIA director John McLaughlin told Congress was reviewed to take "out material…that we and the secretary's staff judged to have been unreliable" -- to the UN was believed to be "the truth" by British, German and French intelligence. And INR, Wilkerson states, was "right there with the chems and the bios."

Wilkerson's comment on INR reflect what was released publicly in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

In that document, for example, INR concluded that “Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors.” INR cited the Department of Energy's judgment that the tubes were “poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment” and other factors to conclude that “the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program.”

But the Department of Energy, which presumably only had a role in the nuclear assessment, apparently did not dissent from the Estimate's broader judgment on Iraq’s nuclear program. The “Key Judgments” section of the NIE stated that

DOE agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.

INR also stated in its “Alternative View” that “the activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons.” But INR still concluded “that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons-related capabilities.”

But what did U.S. intelligence tell the Clinton administration on the reconstitution issue?

Well, Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration, commented in the January/February 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly on what U.S. intelligence believed regarding Iraq's nuclear program:

The U.S. Intelligence Community’s belief toward the end of the Clinton Administration [was] that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and was close to acquiring nuclear weapons....

And, he also wrote:

In the late spring of 2002 I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: Did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has an excellent piece today on the "realism" of Brent Scowcroft.

Even today Scowcroft says, ``I didn't think that calling the Soviet Union the `evil empire' got anybody anywhere.'' Tell that to Natan Sharansky and other Soviet dissidents for whom that declaration of moral -- beyond geopolitical -- purpose was electrifying, and helped galvanize the dissident movements that ultimately brought down the Soviet empire.

It was not brought down by diplomacy and arms control, the preferred realist means for dealing with the Soviet Union. It was brought down by indigenous revolutionaries, encouraged and supported by Ronald Reagan, a president unabashedly dedicated not to detente with evil, but its destruction -- i.e., regime change.

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal a short time ago, the French ambassador to the US wrote, "Opposing a military intervention in Iraq at a time when U.N. inspections were working and Iraq was not an imminent threat to peace was a decision my country is proud of, one based on principles and shared by many other nations. The behavior of my country and the French diplomatic approach toward Iraq deserve respect, not insults or innuendoes."

From an Associated Press piece today on the massive oil-for-food scandal:

Tracing the politicization of oil contracts, the report said Iraqi leaders in the late 1990s decided to deny American, British and Japanese companies allocations to purchase oil because of their countries' opposition to lifting sanctions.

At the same time, it said, Iraq gave preferential treatment to France, Russia and China, which were perceived to be more favorable to lifting sanctions and were also permanent members of the Security Council.

Here is another example of bogus information on the issue of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger that is circulating on liberal web sites that may make its way into some sloppily researched editorial. The web posting claims the following:

It’s [the British government's July 2004 review of intelligence on wmd] review of prewar intelligence included the claim was unfounded. Here’s the relevant bit (pg. 124):

'Based on through [sic] analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.'

But as most who read page 124 of the British report will immediately grasp, the "relevant bit" quoted above is the conclusion of the IAEA, NOT the British government. In fact, the British report flatly states that the president's uranium reference in his 2003 State of the Union address was "well-founded" and based on intelligence having nothing to do with the forged documents cited by the IAEA. Here are the "relevant" bits, on pages 123 and 125:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa'

was well-founded.

And,

From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, unleashed lots of vitriol in his Los Angeles Times piece yesterday, which was inspired, he says, by the speech have gave last week in Washington, DC. But what Wilkerson left out of his Times piece was the answer he gave during the Q&A following the speech. He said that French and German intelligence believed what Powell presented to the UN was "the truth" and that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) also believed Powell was "right" on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons. Wilkerson's revelation doesn't quite square with the "cabal made it up" theme peddled by anti-Bush liberals -- which probably explains why the media ignored it.

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP – Ammunition Supply Point – with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [then deputy DCI] was convinced that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate….

Wilkerson also said that French intelligence believed the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges.

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

Today, Senator Kerry called for the president to begin the withdrawal of troops from Iraq "over the course of the holidays." Military historian Fredrick Kagan explains why Kerry has it exactly wrong here, and Senator John McCain is expected to soon deliver an address on Iraq that will respond, in part, to the war's critics on the left.

Yesterday, Democratic Senators Byrd, Kennedy and Leahy took to the Senate floor to honor the sacrifice US troops have made in Iraq by launching a broad assault on the Bush administration. Invoking Vietnam repeatedly, Vermont's Leahy offered the most detailed attack that touched on all the talking points of the war's opponents. But Leahy added a twist reminiscent of Congress' actions during the Vietnam era -- the cut-off of funds for US forces.

Without answers -- real answers, honest answers -- to these questions, I will not support the open-ended deployment of our troops in a war that was based on falsehoods and justified with hubris.

In the past, Leahy has been a reliable weather vane pointing in the direction Senate liberals are headed. The bigger question for Senators like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman is whether they allow Senators such as Byrd, Kennedy, Leahy and Durbin to define where the Democratic party stands on Iraq and other major foreign policy challenges facing the nation.

Senator John McCain today:

I would hope that the sacrifice made by young Americans would not be used for political reasons…. I still believe they have sacrificed in a noble cause, and I believe that they and their family members, the majority of them, believe so as well…. But to somehow use the tragic loss of…brave young American[s] as a way to criticize the conduct of the war, I would hope they [critics] would find a more appropriate vehicle. (Congressional Quarterly transcripts)

MoveOn.org's fundraising pitch today:

MoveOn.org

Political Action

"How Many More?" TV Ad

Today, we received grim news: 2000 American soldiers have now died in Iraq. Their caskets have been hidden from view, and the news of their deaths has receded to the back pages. But the men and women who died in recent days were no less brave or less honorable than those who died in the first days of the war. It's time for us to honor them—to remind the public that they're dying every day in the quagmire of Iraq—and ask, "How many more?" Can you help put this ad on the air?

You can also donate by check.

Weekly Standard contributor Dan Twining offers his insight on the push for democracy east of the Black Sea:

In the new 'Great Game' underway in the Caucasus and Central Asia pitting the United States, Russia, and China in a bid for strategic influence and access to natural resources, not only America's power but its democratic ideals give it a decisive advantage against the designs of regional countries' great power neighbors. In this Washington Post piece on the upcoming elections in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan -- both autocracies, both oil-rich, and both keenly interested in moving closer to America strategically and economically -- Jackson Diehl highlights the welcome price the Bush Administration is setting for strategic partnership with Washington: a commitment to free and fair elections. Democratic revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan -- as in Eastern Europe in 1989 -- demonstrate that people free to choose, choose to partner with America. The crushing of the popular uprising in Uzbekistan, and consequent rupture in U.S. strategic relations with Tashkent, demonstrates the danger of alliance with fickle autocrats. The West has a lot to offer transitional and emerging democracies, and we should be confident in the power of our values to attract them to our cause, not insecure that our values handicap us in any geopolitical contest. Holding leaders in Baku and Astana to democratic standards is not only right; it is good policy.

In the latest New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg has a revealing profile of Brent Scowcroft in which the former national-security advisor defends his foreign policy "realism," which, Goldberg writes, holds that "America should be guided by strategic self-interest, and that moral considerations are secondary at best." Scowcroft is highly critical of the current president's foreign policy precisely because it places too much emphasis on moral considerations and the promotion of democracy. But as Richard Cohen laments in today's Washington Post, Scowcroft's "realist" critique of the Bush administration has been adopted by too many Democrats "who often speak the cold language of realism." He notes:

Both JFK and FDR were Democrats, of course, and the party has always been associated with internationalism. Somehow, though, that moralism -- that urge to do good abroad -- has drifted over to the GOP. It is Republicans, particularly neocons, who talk the language of moralism in foreign policy and who, weapons of mass destruction aside, wanted to take out Saddam Hussein because he was a beast. It mattered to them that he killed and tortured his own people. It says something about the Democratic left that it cheered Michael Moore's infantile "Fahrenheit 9/11" even though the film made no mention of Hussein's depredations, not even his gassing of Kurdish villages.

Former Clinton administration official Richard Holbrooke expressed similar sentiments in the New Yorker piece.

A good foreign policy…ought to "marry idealism and realism, effective American leadership and, if necessary, the use of force."

…Democrats like Holbrooke take issue with Republican realists. "Support for American values is part of our national-security interests, and it is realistic to support humanitarian and human-rights interventions."

Frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard Tom Joscelyn sends along this piece, "Report alleges rebels trained in Venezuela," from Sunday's Miami Herald:

An Ecuadorean military intelligence report alleges that leftists from Ecuador and seven other Latin American nations received guerrilla training in Venezuela this year from backers of President Hugo Chávez.

The report does not link Chávez personally to the training in explosives, weapons and urban guerrilla tactics. But it notes that part of the training took place in two Caracas military bases, one used by the army reserves and another that houses the Defense Ministry….

The report's key assertion of guerrilla training could not be verified independently by The Herald. But a senior civilian government official here with access to intelligence information verified the existence of the report and described its contents as ''undeniable.'' Several military intelligence personnel here also told The Herald that the report was indeed the work of their agency.

Saturday's Post ran this piece under the headline, "Hughes Misreports Iraqi History Envoy Vastly Overstates Fact in Justifying War to Indonesian Students." Unfortunately, such vigilance by the Washington Post to keep its readers well informed doesn't apply here or here or here. Of course, the Post isn't alone. Somehow, I doubt the New York Daily News corrected this one.

Reuters

France said on Monday it was too early to seek sanctions against Syria, whose officials have been implicated by a U.N. report in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Nowhere in Frank Rich's column yesterday or Bob Herbert's today will you find these comments made by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, last week. He said that French and German intelligence believed what Powell presented to the UN was "the truth" and that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) also believed Powell was "right" on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons.

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP – Ammunition Supply Point – with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [then deputy DCI] was convinced that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate….

Wilkerson also noted that French intelligence concluded that the aluminum tubes were for centrifuges.

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

Wilkerson's INR comment is also quite interesting because critics like Rich like to pretend that State's intelligence varied widely from the general consensus presented in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. It didn’t, according to Wilkerson. [T]hey were right there with the chems and the bios…."

To be continued…

USA Today reports that

six months after announcing a plan to give $3 million to promote democracy in Iran, the State Department has yet to spend the money….

Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said the delay is bureaucratic. "There are no outside political considerations affecting these decisions," he said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who put the $3 million in the budget, expressed frustration with the delay. "This money should be made available immediately for those seeking to express their opposition to the hard-line Islamic government and to promote internationally recognized human rights," he said.

Today, on NBC's Meet the Press, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said that he did not regret having voted for the Iraq War resolution.

Tim Russert: Based on what you now know today, do you regret having voted for the war?

Sen. Schumer: Well, no, Tim, because my vote was seen and I still see it as a need to say we must fight a strong and active war on terror.

Yesterday, in an address at Tufts University, former UN inspection chief Hans Blix harshly criticized the Bush administration over Iraq and then added something quite interesting and very much at the heart of the debate over the March 2003 decision to remove Saddam from power. According to the Boston Globe,

Blix said, 'We did not say there aren't any weapons of mass destruction, partly for being cautious.' But, he said, the inspectors had been to more than 700 sites in 500 places in Iraq, and 'we didn't find anything.'

The "anything" Blix is referring to includes the unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction -- the anthrax, VX, chemical & biological precursors, chemical rockets & shells, etc. -- that UN inspectors knew Saddam had produced but could not verify had been destroyed. The inspection regime agreed to by the Security Council was never about the number of inspections completed. It was about Saddam's regime actively engaging in disarmament and providing "verifiable evidence" to the Security Council that it had. The UN insistence on this "verifiable evidence" standard began in 1995 when Iraq was caught in a massive deception campaign to hide the scope of its weapons programs from the inspectors. From then on, the UN inspection team's conclusions on the state of Iraq's disarmament were to be solely based on "obtaining verifiable evidence including physical materials or documents; investigation of the successful concealment activities by Iraq; and, the thorough verification of the unilateral destruction events." In other words, Saddam had to prove he got rid of the stuff to ensure that he did not just stash it away somewhere beyond the eyes of the UN. Clinton Defense Secretary Cohen explained it this way in 1998:

[Inspectors] have to find documents, computer disks, production points, ammunition areas in an area that size [California]. Hussein has said, 'we have no program now.' We're saying, 'prove it.' He says he has destroyed all his nerve agent. [W]e're asking 'where, when and how?'"

Here's what Hans Blix said on the verification standard in late January 2003 –– though somehow I doubt he reminds today's audiences of what he said back then.

Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance—not even today—of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. As we know, the twin operation “declare and verify,” which was prescribed in resolution 687 (1991), too often turned into a game of “hide and seek.” Rather than just verifying declarations and supporting evidence, the two inspecting organizations found themselves engaged in efforts to map the weapons programmes and to search for evidence through inspections, interviews, seminars, inquiries with suppliers and intelligence organizations.

Blix also gave some concrete examples of the difficulty in verifying Iraq's disarmament without the active help of Saddam's regime. For instance,

January 27, 2003

The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions…. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

March 6, 2003

The result, so far, is that no underground facility of special interest has been found. Although they may be easier to find than mobile facilities, they are still a difficult target and it is always possible that inspectors have missed a hidden entrance. Like mobile facilities, any dedicated underground CW or BW facility could also have been dismantled prior to inspection. UNMOVIC does not dismiss the possibility that such facilities exist and will continue to investigate reports as appropriate. Given the vast number of potential underground “sites” capable of hosting CW or BW production or storage facilities in Iraq, inspections in this area will have to be dynamic and rely on specific intelligence information….

The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was neither shortened by the inspections, nor by Iraqi declarations and documents.

The fact the Saddam Hussein never complied with UN disarmament resolutions led Defense Secretary William Cohen to state on CNN one month AFTER coalition forces entered Iraq:

I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them.

And, according to the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the French and the Germans believed Saddam had the weapons.

Apparently, opponents of the president's decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power are doing their own twisting of the truth when it comes to the historical record on Iraq.

But will the Security Council Act ?

The speech delivered yesterday by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, got a lot of press attention. But while all these reports highlighted the negative remarks he made about the Bush White House, they didn't mention Wilkerson's other seemingly newsworthy comments. Take the Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Brian Knowlton of the New York Times. Apparently, they couldn't find space in their "reporting" pieces for stuff like this:

Wilkerson confirmed that the US and other foreign intelligence agencies believed that what Powell presented to the UN was "the truth" and that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research also believed Powell was "right" on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons.

…I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios….

When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP – Ammunition Supply Point – with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [then deputy DCI] was convinced that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate….

Wilkerson also said that French intelligence believed the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges.

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

There's another lesson in the Wilkerson coverage. Relying solely on the news media to be informed of what's in all the publicly available speeches and reports produced before and after March 2003 on Iraqi WMD is a mistake. Here and here and here and here are just some examples.

The BBC has an interesting piece on China's "village elections."

China's tough handling of recent protests by villagers in Taishi, southern Guangdong province, has thrown into fresh doubt its claims to be introducing genuine democracy "from the bottom up".

The media distortions and outright falsehoods just keep on coming. For example, the New York Daily News claims that Joe Wilson

debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa…. When Wilson was sent by his wife to Africa to research the claims, he showed the documents claiming Saddam tried to buy the uranium were forgeries.

Actually, Wilson had no role in identifying the forgeries. As Stephen Hayes points out,

Wilson's trip to Niger took place in February 2002, some eight months before the U.S. government received the phony Iraq-Niger documents in October 2002. So it is not possible, as he told the Washington Post, that he advised the CIA that "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." And it is not possible, as Wilson claimed to the New York Times, that he debunked the documents as forgeries.

And the Senate's 2004 bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq concluded:

Page 45

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article…which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

The Daily News' assertion that Wilson "debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush" is just plain old bunk. Most intelligence analysts believed his trip "lent more credibility" to reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, and the CIA continued to approve the use of the Iraq-Niger-Uranium language "in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union." The same Senate report states:

Conclusion 13 (page 73)

The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be wiling or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

Conclusion 12 (page 72)

Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.

Conclusion 19 (page 77)

Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.

Here's what the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell had to say yesterday at a Washington, DC think-tank:

When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions on us out of the blue on that bureaucracy, you can’t expect that bureaucracy to carry your decision out very well….

Remember what I said about the bureaucracy if it’s going to implement your decisions having to participate in those decisions….

What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made….

So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.

And so it’s not too difficult to make decisions in this, what I call Oval Office cabal….

Let's see. Voters elect a president and vice president. Once in office, the president and vice president attempt implement the principles and policies they campaigned on. They direct the unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch to carryout those policies, including those who disagree with those polices. This process apparently meets the definition of a "cabal" in the mind of the former chief of staff. Of course, others may characterize a group of unelected bureaucrats who act in an insubordinate manner and decide not to carryout the decisions made their elected leaders as a "cabal."

William Kristol writes:

Condoleezza Rice's testimony today could be a major step forward in the Administration's implementation of an Iraq victory strategy. It's certainly a major step forward in the presentation of that strategy –– as Gary Schmitt points out, the first comprehensive statement of a real counterinsurgency and nation-building plan by the administration. It represents a total (and, I trust, final) repudiation of the Rumsfeld doctrine of "as Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down." Instead, Rice outlined a victory strategy rather than an exit strategy, refused to speculate about reduced troop levels, spoke of Americans and Iraqis fighting side-by-side, and pledged a long-term commitment to success. If the administration's actions now match Rice's words, and if they can build on the success of the constitutional referendum and some of the military progress of the last few months, this could be an important milestone on the path to success in Iraq.

Commenting on Rice's testimony today, Gary Schmitt writes:

This is the first comprehensive statement made by a senior administration official that lays out a sensible counterinsurgency strategy and accepts the fact that we will be deeply involved in the business of helping build a state. For that reason alone, it is a major step forward. Now, of course, it has to be backed up with institutional support and a sound inter-agency process here in Washington. As we've come to learn over the past few years, the administration can have all the great ideas in the world but fall short in actually carrying them out in an effective manner. Nevertheless, if the deeds in fact match the words, then Secretary Rice's statement will be seen as a significant milestone on the war on terror and transformation agenda for the Middle East.

In testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Rice outlined a bold strategy to "break the back" of the insurgency. She rejected largely Democratic calls (like the one delivered this morning on the Senate floor by Sen. Durbin of Illinois) to soon begin troop withdrawals –– noting that the terrorists want us to "quit" and "believe we do not have the will to see this through."

In short, with the Iraqi government, our political-military strategy has to be to clear, hold, and build: to clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely, and to build durable, national Iraqi institutions….

We know our objectives. We and the Iraqi Government will succeed if together we can:

* Break the back of the insurgency so that Iraqis can finish it off without large-scale military help from the United States.
* Keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven from which Islamic extremists can terrorize the region or the world.
* Demonstrate positive potential for democratic change and free expression in the Arab and Muslim worlds, even under the most difficult conditions….

Our strategy is to clear, hold, and build. The enemy’s strategy is to infect, terrorize, and pull down….

But their ultimate target is the coalition’s center of gravity: the will of America, of Britain, and of other coalition members. Let us say it plainly: The terrorists want us to get discouraged and quit. They believe we do not have the will to see this through….

Clear the toughest places -- no sanctuaries. As we enlarge security in major urban areas and as insurgents retreat, they should find no large area where they can reorganize and operate freely. Recently our forces have gone on the offensive. In Tall Afar, near the Syrian border, and in the west along the Euphrates valley in places like Al Qaim, Haditha, and Hit, American and Iraqi forces are clearing away insurgents....

As this strategy is being implemented, the military side recedes and the civilian part – like police stations and civic leaders and economic development -- move into the foreground. Our transition strategy emphasized the building of the Iraqi army. Now our police training efforts are receiving new levels of attention....

[W]e must build truly national institutions. The institutions of Saddam Hussein’s government were violent and corrupt, tearing apart the ties that ordinarily bind communities together. The last two years have seen three temporary governments govern Iraq, making it extremely difficult to build national institutions even under the best of circumstances. The new government that will come can finally set down real roots....

We are moving from a stage of transition toward the strategy to prepare a permanent Iraqi government for a decisive victory….

"China has reacted angrily to a decision by the internet search engine Google to stop calling Taiwan a Chinese province," reports the BBC.

Of course, the Google folks got off easy. In 1997, the Danish government sponsored a United Nations resolution calling attention to the poor human rights record of Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry countered, the Washington Post reported, by warning that

"relations with Denmark would be 'severely damaged in the political or economic and trade areas.' In case that was too subtle, China added that the human rights resolution would 'become a rock that smashes on the Danish government's head.'"

The same Washington Post frontpage article that pushed the "imminent threat" myth today also reports the following:

Before the war, he [Vice President Cheney] traveled to CIA headquarters for briefings, an unusual move that some critics interpreted as an effort to pressure intelligence officials into supporting his view of the evidence. After the war, when critics started questioning whether the White House relied on faulty information to justify war….

Deliberate or not, this statement strongly suggests that Cheney's visits to the CIA contributed to the "faulty information" used to "justify" the war. What's more, the Post apparently decided that the following conclusions from the Senate's 2004 bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq were too insignificant to mention.

Conclusion 83 (p. 284)

The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Conclusion 84 (p. 285)

The Committee found no evidence that the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.

In today's Washington Post, Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus write, "Cheney, a longtime proponent of toppling Saddam Hussein, led the White House effort to build the case that Iraq was an imminent threat because it possessed a dangerous arsenal of weapons."

This statement is not true and just one more example of media distortions related to Iraq. As Stephen Hayes has reported,

the case for war was built largely on the opposite assumption: that waiting until Iraq presented an imminent threat was too risky. The president himself made this argument in his 2003 State of the Union address:

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans--this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

A Syrian national has been arrested in France in connection with the assassination of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik al-Hariri, and this week a UN report is "expected to implicate Syrian officials in [the] assassination that plunged Lebanon into its worst security crisis since a 1975-1990 civil war."

And Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, reports that it's a good thing Syrian democracy is thriving–"in exile."

It is hard to say exactly where Syria's tipping point may be. It could be the Mehlis report--the inquiry by U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The hard-nosed investigator from Germany will publish a report, which many believe will implicate Damascus in the murder. The suicide (some claim liquidation) of Syria's interior minister Ghazi Kanaan on October 12 piques one's curiosity. Kanaan was responsible for security in Lebanon through 2003 and had just been interviewed by Mehlis. The Mehlis report is due any day, which makes me think that if Ghadry and his colleagues want a parliament in exile, maybe they had better hurry.

Today's Financial Times reports on "a scathing denunciation of the US portal Yahoo for its role in helping Communist authorities to prosecute an independent-minded local journalist, jailed for 10 years for 'leaking state secrets.'"

Courtesy of The History Channel

1989 East Germany and Hungary move toward democracy

On October 18, the Hungarian constitution was amended to allow a multiparty political system and free elections (which took place in 1990). Many of the state controls over the economy were removed and Hungary moved toward a limited free market system. Meetings of workers, students, and others across the nation issued statements denouncing past "crimes" committed by the communist regime.

The changes were perhaps even more dramatic in East Germany, where on October 18 the nearly 20-year rule of communist strongman Erich Honecker came to an end. Honecker had been the Communist Party General Secretary in East Germany since 1971, and had ruled as head of state since 1976. With vanishing support from the Soviet Union, the effective end of the Berlin Wall (through Hungary's action), and widespread criticism of his government from the East German population, Honecker fled to the USSR and was replaced by a more reform-minded regime.

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal today, the French ambassador to the US writes, "Opposing a military intervention in Iraq at a time when U.N. inspections were working and Iraq was not an imminent threat to peace was a decision my country is proud of, one based on principles and shared by many other nations. The behavior of my country and the French diplomatic approach toward Iraq deserve respect, not insults or innuendoes."

Someone at the Journal may want to point the ambassador to this report, which quotes extensively from United Nations inspection reports.

The onus is clearly on Iraq to provide the requisite information or devise other ways in which UNMOVIC can gain confidence that Iraq’s declarations are correct and comprehensive….

[T]he long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was not shortened either by the inspections or by Iraqi declarations and documentation….

Iraq was required to declare the import of dual-use items and supply UNMOVIC with details as to their origin. However, Iraq’s recent semi-annual monitoring declarations, starting with the 'backlog' of declarations since 1998 supplied to UNMOVIC in October 2002, showed a trend of withholding pertinent information....The biological imports were of a slightly more significant kind, and included the import of a dozen autoclaves, half a dozen centrifuges and a number of laminar flow cabinets.

Missile imports, however, were more substantial and could have contributed significantly to any missile development programme. One example was the importation of 380 Volga engines that Iraq planned to use in the production of the Al Samoud 2 missile, a missile system UNMOVIC later determined to be prohibited since its range exceeded 150 km. In its declaration of 7 December 2002, Iraq declared that it had imported 131 such engines but failed to supply any information about their origin (suppliers, exporting countries) until inspectors observed 231 such engines at an Al Samoud production facility.

A trend that was especially pronounced in the missile area (but to a lesser extent also present in the biological and chemical fields) was the use of the term 'local market' to classify the import of some very sophisticated pieces of equipment….UNMOVIC came to understand that Iraq used the term 'ocal market' when an Iraqi import company imported a commodity and then sold or transferred it to a government facility, which suggested that Iraq was trying to conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks….

There has been a surge of activity in the missile technology field in the past four years….

In today's New York Times, the editors write, "Washington helped produce first, in January, a constituent assembly in which Sunni Arabs were drastically underrepresented…."

Actually, the Sunnis boycotted the January election, so THEY are responsible for their current numbers in the assembly. Many Sunnis have acknowledged this and have vowed not to make the same mistake in the December election.

They continue: "Washington helped produce…in August, a constitutional draft that slighted the rights of Sunnis, women and secular Iraqis."

This is quite a statement considering Saddam Hussein would still be in power had the president followed the advice of the Times editorial board. Now, the editors are arguing that the US hasn't imposed its values enough on the Iraqi political process--a process that led two major Sunni parties to support the constitutional referendum on Saturday. As to its content, US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad responded to critics of the constitution. He wrote:

It contains an enlightened synthesis of universal values and Iraqi traditions. It states that no law may be enacted that contradicts 'the established provisions of Islam,' 'the principles of democracy,' and 'the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this constitution'--rights that are far-reaching. This formula requires that Islam be interpreted to be consistent with democracy and human rights.

The draft states that all Iraqis are equal before the law regardless of 'gender, race, ethnicity, origin, color, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic and social status.' It protects the rights of personal privacy; the sanctity of the home; public trials for criminal defendants; and the freedoms of movement, expression, association and political organization. It states that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty. It prohibits extrajudicial punishment, group punishment, property seizures without compensation, and intellectual, political, or religious coercion.

The draft guarantees women the right to participate fully in public life. In fact, it requires that electoral laws ensure that women hold no less than 25 percent of seats in the legislature. It prohibits all 'forms of violence and abuse in the family' and 'tribal traditions that are in contradiction with human rights.' It accords Iraqi citizenship to all children of Iraqi mothers -- a provision that is revolutionary in this region.

The editors also write that the US "commit[ed] American forces to fight the Sunni insurgency on behalf of the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition…."

Of course, many would say our forces are fighting an enemy of the US, al Qaeda. Its leader in Iraq, al-Zarqawi, seeks to destroy Iraq's democratic development and install a terror state. They are also confronting Baathists who aren't happy about losing their dictatorship. They, along with many Iraqis (see Michael Yon's coverage in Mosul here), are fighting for a decent and democratic government in the heart of the Middle East -- an outcome that Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger argued in December 1998 would enhance American security.

As long as Saddam remains in power and in confrontation with the world, the positive evolution we and so many would like to see in the Middle East is less likely to occur. His Iraq remains a source of potential conflict in the region, a source of inspiration for those who equate violence with power and compromise with surrender, a source of uncertainty for those who would like to see a stable region in which to invest.

Change inside Iraq is necessary not least because it would help free the Middle East from its preoccupation with security and struggle and survival, and make it easier for its people to focus their energies on commerce and cooperation.

For the last eight years, American policy toward Iraq has been based on the tangible threat Saddam poses to our security. That threat is clear. Saddam’s history of aggression, and his recent record of deception and defiance, leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance. Year after year, in conflict after conflict, Saddam has proven that he seeks weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, in order to use them….

We will continue to contain the threat Iraq poses to its region and the world. But for all the reasons I have mentioned, President Clinton has said that over the long-term, the best way to address the challenge Iraq poses is 'through a government in Baghdad—a new government—that is committed to represent and respect its people, not repress them; that is committed to peace in the region.'

And last year, Senator John McCain responded to critics of the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power:

After years of failed diplomacy and limited military pressure to restrain Saddam Hussein, President Bush made the difficult decision to liberate Iraq. Those who criticize that decision would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone.

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal.

Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents….

Whether or not Saddam possessed the terrible weapons he once had and used, freed from international pressure and the threat of military action, he would have acquired them again.

The central security concern of our time is to keep such devastating weapons beyond the reach of terrorists who can't be dissuaded from using them by the threat of mutual destruction.

We couldn't afford the risk posed by an unconstrained Saddam in these dangerous times.

By destroying his regime we gave hope to people long oppressed that if they have the courage to fight for it, they may live in peace and freedom.

Most importantly, our efforts may encourage the people of a region that has never known peace or freedom or lasting stability that they may someday possess these rights. I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission was necessary, achievable and noble.

During a news briefing in London today, Secretary Rice responded to those demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq:

I just want to emphasize again the President's point is that when the Iraqis are ready, they'll be ready. Our goal is to provide the kind of support for Iraq that this process plays out with a stable -- a foundation for a stable and democratic Iraq.

Because if we leave prematurely, we will have failed in our -- what our goal is here, which is to have a different kind of Middle East so that we do not have a terrorist base in the Middle East of the kind that's been producing these extremists.

On Meet the Press Sunday, Secretary Rice acknowledged that the Syrian government has apparently ignored the warning President Bush delivered in his recent speech at the National Endowment for Democracy.

She stated:

What we have focused on is getting a Syrian -- getting the Syrian regime to change its behavior. The Syrian regime is out of step with what is going on in the region. And, Tim, this is not a problem between the United States and Syria; this is a problem in which the Syrians have caused destabilization in Lebanon through their presence there for 30 years, and they finally now are out. But the question is: Are they fully living up to their obligations under Resolution 1559, which we co-sponsored with the French, to not destabilize Lebanon, to not sanction assassinations in that region?

They are stirring up difficulties in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which is a problem for the Palestinian territories and the work that Mahmoud Abbas is trying to do in bringing a Palestinian state to bear.

And yes, they are permitting the use of Syrian territory for terrorists to cross Syrian territory. And by the way, in many cases they're coming through Damascus airport. This isn't crawling across the border, as they do in Pakistan or Afghanistan. And so yes, they're using -- that territory is being used to kill innocent Iraqis, innocent men, women and children, because suicide bombers are coming through there.

So this is about Syrian behavior. I think we will see over the next couple of weeks that we will have to address these issues in a multilateral fashion because the reports that are coming out on UN resolutions about Lebanon are going to have to be dealt with, and we will see what that means for Syrian behavior.

As the Iranian government moves forward on its "peaceful" nuclear program, President Putin is there to lend a hand to help Tehran build better missiles and acquire enriched uranium.

Tom Joscelyn sends in the following:

Upon reading Brzezinski's recent piece, I was reminded of a similar article he wrote for the New York Times on December 6, 1981 entitled: "What's Wrong With Reagan's Foreign Policy? In his first major statement since leaving office, President Carter's national-security advisor says the United States is approaching a critical point of paralysis in its international relations."

The article is a good example of what's wrong with Brzezinski's way of thinking and ability to prognosticate. The parallels between his misguided critique of Reagan and his current critique of Bush are striking. Brzezinski began his 1981 piece with a dire prediction,

If present trends continue, American foreign policy is likely to be in a state of general crisis by the spring of 1982. What makes matters potentially even worse is that this could coincide with a serious economic downturn, causing the global position of the United States to be placed in jeopardy. There is urgent need for President Reagan to take serious stock of the unfolding situation, so that the needed responses, both substantive and procedural, can be generated.

Brzezinski begins his critique in the Los Angeles Times with an equally dire prediction, likening the Bush administration's foreign policies to "suicidal statecraft."

Fortunately, his bleak view of the future was wrong in December 1981 and he is most likely wrong again in October 2005.

Maureen Dowd, New York Times, June 19, 1994

At the end of the day in Normandy, Bill Clinton walked down to the beach with three veterans of Omaha Beach -- Joe Dawson, Walter Ehlers and Robert Slaughter. The tableau was appealing: the young President enjoying the company of the aging heroes. But suddenly the President's aides began tugging the veterans away, mid-conversation, so that Clinton could walk off at sunset down the beach in his dress shoes and have a preplanned meditative moment, with the bluffs on one side and the sea dotted with warships on the other.

Originally, the White House told photographers they were considering a "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" moment, where Clinton and children would throw flowers into the sea.

But they settled on "a moment of solitude." The President knew he was supposed to look reflective for the three cameras and dozen photographers who joined him. But after looking soulfully out at the ocean for a moment, he seemed at a loss for what to do next, according to a photographer on the scene, who was scared that Clinton was about to mouth the words "What do I do now?" But then, spying the stones at his feet left by his advance staff to show him where his camera mark was, the President crouched down and began to arrange the stones into a cross. He gathered more stones to finish the cross, and then bent his head as though in silent prayer.

The White House aides were ecstatic. "Wasn't it great?" they asked reporters.

Last Sunday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter, wrote a harsh critique of the current president's foreign policy. Historian Victor Davis Hanson responds here. He notes the "unintended irony"

that such criticism comes from a high official of an administration that witnessed on its watch the Iranian-hostage debacle, the disastrous rescue mission, the tragicomic odyssey of the terminally ill shah, the first and last Western Olympic boycott, oil hikes even higher in real dollars than the present spikes, Communist infiltration into Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian holocaust, a gloomy acceptance that perpetual parity with the Soviet Union was the hope of the day, the realism that cemented our ties with corrupt autocracies in the Middle East (Orwellian sales of F-15 warplanes to the Saudis minus their extras), and the hard-to-achieve simultaneous high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates, Mr. Brzezinski is at least a valuable barometer of the current pessimism over events such as September 11.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has posted a translation of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's endorsement of the constitutional referendum that will be voted on tomorrow. Sistani is Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric. Terrorists are also not pleased that "two prominent Sunni Arab groups, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Sunni Endowment" have endorsed the constitution and called on Sunnis to vote "yes" on Saturday.

The full text of the October 13, 2000 New York Times article may be found here.

…The 1995 agreement allowed Moscow to fulfill existing sales contracts for specified weaponry, including a diesel submarine, torpedoes, anti- ship mines and hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers. But no other weapons were to be sold to Iran, and all shipments were to have been completed by last Dec. 31.

In exchange for the Russian promises, the United States pledged not to seek penalties against Russia under a 1992 law that requires sanctions against countries that sell advanced weaponry to countries the State Department classifies as state sponsors of terrorism. Iran is on that list.

…The Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement appeared to undercut a 1992 law, the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act, known as Gore-McCain after its principal sponsors, Mr. Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, and Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican. The law was rooted in concerns about Russian sales to Iran of some of the same weapons that the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement expressly allowed.

Senator McCain said this month that he was unaware of the deal that Mr. Gore struck with Mr. Chernomyrdin, which was codified in a document stamped "Secret" and signed in Moscow on June 30, 1995. Mr. McCain said a 'strong case can be made' that the Russian delivery of arms, especially the submarine, should have triggered sanctions against Moscow under the provisions of the Gore-McCain law.

'If the administration has acquiesced in the sale, then I believe they have violated both the intent and the letter of the law,' he said

…For example, E. Wayne Merry, former director of the political section of the American Embassy in Moscow, said in Congressional hearings earlier this year that the Gore- Chernomyrdin Commission had required hundreds of hours of busywork to pad its list of achievements, racking up piles of 'taxpayer-supplied evidence of American good will regardless of Russian performance, honesty or even desires.'

And the 1995 accord, which essentially exempted Russia from American sanctions on arms deliveries to Iran, emboldened Moscow to ignore other agreements, particularly on sales of missile and nuclear technology to Iran, according to Gordon C. Oehler, who directed the Nonproliferation Center of the Central Intelligence Agency until he retired in 1998.

'It was one more of these strange deals that Gore and Chernomyrdin had that were kept from people,' said Mr. Oehler, now a vice president with the Science Applications International Corporation in La Jolla, Calif. 'If this had been disclosed to Congress, the committees would have gone berserk, absolutely. But the larger problem is, if you have these under-the-table deals that give the Russians permission to do these things, it gives the signal that it's O.K. to do other things.'

...A classified annex specifies the weapons Russia was committed to supply to Iran: one Kilo-class diesel- powered submarine, 160 T-72 tanks, 600 armored personnel carriers, numerous anti-ship mines, cluster bombs and a variety of long-range guided torpedoes and other munitions for the submarine and the tanks. Russia had already provided Iran with fighter aircraft, surface-to- air missiles and other armored vehicles.

The weapons are not the top of the Russian lines, but they are among the best in the region and bolstered a military force in Iran that continues to grow in quality and quantity....

Newsweek's Howard Fineman's latest piece, "The Conservative Crack-up," is an interesting read but it could use a bit more fact. Take, for example, his first line that it was "the 'neocons' who convinced him to go to war there [in Iraq]" as if no others supported the president's action. Fineman, of course, isn't the first to airbrush the historical record as Robert Kagan explained in this Washington Post piece, "On Iraq, Short Memories."

If you read even respectable journals these days...you would think that no more than six or seven people ever supported going to war in Iraq…. That's not the way I recall it. I recall support for removing Saddam Hussein by force being pretty widespread from the late 1990s through the spring of 2003, among Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, as well as neoconservatives.

Soxblog.com's Dean Barnett comments on a recent speech delivered by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (see Romney profile here) that "triggered a spasm of activity from America's grievance industry," including "the tolerant progressives at the Daily Kos."

Appalled by Romney's insensitivity to those of another faith, Kos diarist "Skralyx" observed, "Actually, Mormonism strikes many as a sort of deviant faith, so maybe Mitt himself should be hooked up to a surveillance device." "Skralyx" was done one better by commenter "Brother Dave" who broke it down into a mathematical proof:

Romney = Mormon
Mormon = Rascist [sic]
Mormon = Fascist
Mormon = Republican
The math was never simpler.

Dan Darling, counter-terrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute, writes on what the Ayman al-Zawahiri letter tells us about the enemy. He states:

The letter does not suggest a man cut off from outside information ("More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media," he notes), but rather an opponent who is intelligent enough not to believe his own propaganda (or the view of Iraq brought to him by the international media). Instead, he earnestly seeks a candid assessment of the situation on theground from Zarqawi, so that he can better advise him and the rest of the network on how to proceed.

Darling also notes that al-Zawahiri's interest in Iraq goes back well before the March, 2003 invasion. Indeed, page 66 of the September 11 report states the following:

In March 1998, after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis.

The full text of Ayman al-Zawahiri's letter to the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may be found here.

Under the frontpage headline "Review Faults Pre-War Plans," USA Today reports on a CIA analysis completed in July of 2004, a portion of which has just been made public. Reading the article one gets the distinct impression that this latest CIA report is another attempt to put the agency in the best light and the Bush administration in the worst. Another perspective on the state of the CIA may be found here.

It's also apparent that the editors of USA Today decided these other Iraq-related stories, "Deal Sways Some Sunnis to Back Iraqi Charter" and "Al-Qaeda Letter Talks of U.S. Forces Leaving Iraq"(headlines appear in print edition), were of such minor importance that they should be buried on page 13A of the newspaper.

The Financial Times reports that "two of NATO's most respected retired generals will on Wednesday issue a stinging indictment of European military capabilities…and argue that European leaders have 'lacked the political will' to improve military capabilities." Of course, this indictment isn't a surprise. From Desert Storm to Afghanistan, the qualitative gap between the US and European armed forces has been growing rapidly.

Looks like Ayman al-Zawahri hopes the Out of Iraq Caucus gets its way.

Secretary of State Rice is now in the midst of a trip that will take her to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and finally to Afghanistan. UPI reports that during a stopover in Ireland Rice said that "one of the elements of a strong and deep relationship with the United States these days is moving forward with democracy," and that she would carry this message to the capitals of Central Asia. Another place the Secretary may want to consider delivering this message to is Azerbaijan, where parliamentary elections are scheduled for November 6. Just as former Secretary of State James Baker's trip to the Republic of Georgia in July of 2003 helped advance democracy there, a brief stop in Baku on her way back to Washington spotlighting the need for a free and fair election may help deepen democracy in this important region.

Today's New York Times reports on just how bad relations were between the head of the FBI and the counterterrorism chief.

Settling a score, Louis J. Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under President Bill Clinton and in the first six months of the Bush presidency, asserts in a new book that Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, was 'basically a second-tier player' who had little access to power and was in no position to issue credible warnings in advance of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

'If he was rushing around the executive branch trying to make a case that we were in imminent danger of a terrorist attack on our shores, he wasn't trying to make that case with me,' Mr. Freeh writes of Mr. Clarke in a memoir to be published this week called 'My F.B.I.: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton and Fighting the War on Terror.' The publisher is St. Martin's Press.

In his own book, 'Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror,' published last year, Mr. Clarke describes himself as a herald of the dangers of terrorism and paints a scathing picture of Mr. Freeh and the F.B.I., criticizing the former director and his agency as ignoring the possibility of terrorism in this country.

And Clarke's relations with two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff weren't much better. In his 2004 memoir, "American Soldier," General Tommy Franks wrote:

When I mentioned that my staff had scheduled an afternoon office call with Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism specialist on the National Security Council, Hugh [Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh Shelton] frowned….

'Clarke's been over at the NSC so long that he thinks he owns counterterrorism--and knows more about the subject than anybody in government,' Hugh added. 'He likes to talk, drops a lot of names, and thinks highly of himself. But in many ways he's not very practical. Be careful in dealing with him.'

… I was interested in destroying the al Qaeda threat. But my visit with Clarke had not moved me any closer to that objective. I left his office hoping that my emphasis on practical solutions to real problems would spur him to home in on some real targeting opportunities. But I suspected that Dick was better at identifying a problem than at finding a workable solution. (209-11)

A onetime terrorist now works on a new television show airing in the Middle East that directly challenges al Qaeda's claims of Quranic justification for their attacks. A few don't like it and want it taken off the air. Will they get their way?

Carter national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski pens a scathing op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times that is highly critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy. In the same pages, William Shawcross takes a different view. He writes:

Thanks to the coalition Iraqis have more confidence in their future than we do. Iraqi refugees are not fleeing abroad in vast numbers, as happened during previous crises. The Iraqi dinar has strengthened, not weakened, against the currencies of other oil-producing nations. The mistakes that have been made in Iraq since its liberation do not alter the fact that the overthrow of Hussein has given Iraqis a chance they never had before and has shaken the ramshackle, corrupt and dictatorial foundations of the Middle East.

Christopher Hitchens also has a very different perspective than Brzezinski here. Hitchens writes:

DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, and would include:

(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.

(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)

(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.

(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.

(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.

(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.

(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.

During the Reagan years, the Tory party was riding high with Margaret Thatcher at its helm. Today, as Irwin Stelzer writes in the current Weekly Standard, the party

has seen its vote total sink from 14 million in 1992 to 9 million earlier this year. This decline is particularly galling to a party that once was the mightiest electoral machine in the Western world--'the natural party of government' as it came to be regarded both by supporters and opponents.

Will they return to Downing Street anytime soon?

Michael Goldfarb on the Nobel winner:

Mohamed El Baradei interpreted the Nobel Prize as a "strong message [from the Norwegian Nobel Committee] to keep doing what you are doing." So what has El Baradei been doing? After 6 months on the job, in May of 1998, both India and Pakistan conduct nuclear tests, 11 in all, and declare themselves nuclear powers. In February of this year, North Korea declared itself a nuclear power. And, in August, Iran's new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced at the United Nations General Assembly that his country has an "inalienable right" to complete the nuclear fuel cycle. (Proliferation expert Henry Sokolski has an analysis of this "right" claim here.) And, of course, the International Atomic Energy Agency failed to deter or discover the proliferation activities of the A.Q. Khan network during El Baradei's tenure.

If this is success, I'd hate to see what failure looks like.

On Wednesday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed, 90-9, an amendment to the Defense spending bill that would "establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees." Opponents of the McCain amendment are expected to try to gut the Senate-passed measure during conference negotiations with their House counterparts. That would be a mistake, according to Tom Donnelly and Vance Serchuk of the American Enterprise Institute. They write:

[C]onfusion on detainee treatment is also bad for America's soldiers, who deserve clear guidance from their commanders. As a collective letter by several dozen retired general officers noted, the net effect of the current Pentagon policy is that service members have been given conflicting instructions, then 'left to take the blame when things went wrong.'

Dan Twining writes in that China isn't the only big story in East Asia these days:

China's rise in Asia is real, and is transforming Asia's strategic landscape. But breathless scholars and analysts already heralding a new political order in Asia centered on Chinese power and influence are missing part of the picture. Asian countries are deeply concerned, and worried, about China's rise: in Japan, for example, 78% of the public views China's growing military power negatively, according to the BBC. Japan still has Asia's largest economy, which is growing again after a decade of stagnation. Japanese forces have deployed to the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. Moreover, a new, assertive nationalism is emerging in Japan, partly in response to China's rise.

As this editorial in the Economist points out, Japan may be a tortoise to the Chinese hare, but if Japan's economic reforms are successful and its diplomacy skillful, 'it could face up to China on equal, or even superior, terms.' China's rise is one of the stories of our time, but so is Japan's reemergence as a strategic actor in East Asia.

Senator Joe Biden took to the Senate floor yesterday to respond to the president's speech earlier in the day. Biden spoke of the "many fundamental mistakes this administration has made over the past four years." The first? According to Biden: "This administration took our eye of the ball in Afghanistan and diverted our attention and resources to Iraq." Is it impolite to point out that Biden voted to authorize Bush to do so? Details.

Biden's second point is one Bush administration critics have made repeatedly since shortly after the fall of the Baathist regime.

The result is a terrible irony: Iraq now risks becoming what it was not before the war: a haven for the very radical Islamic fundamentalists who would do us harm. Today, the President seemed to recognize some of this self-inflicted damage and that's a good thing. He said that 'the terrorists have now set their sights on Iraq' finally acknowledging that they had not before.

We can debate just how many Islamic fundamentalists used Iraq as a "haven" before the war. But this notion that Iraq and terrorism were, in essence, separate issues before the war is plainly false. And yet the Bush administration does nothing to challenge these silly assertions. The evidence is abundant. Abdul Rahman Yasin, a participant in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, fled the U.S. to Iraq with "Iraqi assistance," according to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the most dangerous man in Iraq today, was there a year before the war. Abu Wael, a senior officer in Saddam's Mukhabarat, also served as the No. 3 official in Ansar al Islam.

There's much more.

One example: What has come of the document exploitation project in Doha, Qatar, a DIA-led effort to translate and analyze hundreds of thousands of pages of Iraqi Intelligence documentation? What do those documents tell us about the regime?

Journalist Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Mosul, Iraq is a must read.

Tactics based on faulty assumptions often backfire. The insurgents apparently were expecting that their strategy of targeting the police would make those who survived less committed. But the new cops were cut from stronger cloth, and similar to how those American troops who see a lot of combat in Iraq seem to have the highest morale, the increased targeting of the Iraqi Police fostered greater unity among them and elevated their status. The increasing competence of the police department in Mosul was pinching the insurgents. The better the police became, the more confidence local people had in their ability to maintain control. This confidence resulted in more tips against insurgents, more subsequent raids and arrests, the discovery of munitions caches and bomb factories, and an ever-diminishing capacity for large-scale attacks. Every bit of ground the police gained came at the expense of enemy territory. In order to maintain their tenuous grip on the local population, they resorted to another form of terrorism, but this tactic also seriously backfired.

The president gets a solid "B" for his remarks on the War on Terror today. There's much to like about the speech. First the basics: Two months ago, the Bush Administration was publicly considering a move from the Global War on Terror (GWOT) to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE). The switch was roundly and rightly mocked. So for Bush to give a strong speech essentially redeclaring the War on Terror is helpful.

In one paragraph, he called out both Syria and Iran for their continued support of terrorists. (Bush actually said "sheltered." Given what we know about Syrian and Iranian support for the terrorists in Iraq, one can imagine that was a word chosen after spirited debates among the speechwriting staff and policy types.) In the same graph he chided some Arab journalists for feeding anti-American and anti-Semitic hysteria. It was a good passage:

The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran, that share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews. These radicals depend on front operations, such as corrupted charities, which direct money to terrorist activity. They're strengthened by those who aggressively fund the spread of radical, intolerant versions of Islam in unstable parts of the world. The militants are aided, as well, by elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories and speak of a so-called American "war on Islam" -- with seldom a word about American action to protect Muslims in Afghanistan, and Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Iraq.

Later, a restatement of the Bush Doctrine:

We're determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes. State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists, and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror. The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they're equally as guilty of murder. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.

Again, good to reemphasize that fundamental position. But at what point do these "state sponsors of terror" begin to relax? We've known for some three years that Iran is harboring senior al Qaeda leaders, reportedly including Saad bin Laden, OBL's son. Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported that Bashar Assad attended a January 2004 planning meeting for the insurgency in Iraq. If these reports are true, and there are doubtless others like them, what are we doing about it?

Is it pure coincidence that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair singled out Iran's terrorist activities on the same day? In his address, the president cited Iran's "long history of collaboration with terrorists" and stated that the U.S. "makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them." Blair followed up on comments made yesterday by a British official regarding Iranian involvement in supplying weapons used to attack British soldiers in Iraq. He specifically noted that Britain will not "be subject to any intimidation in raising the necessary and live issues to do with the nuclear weapons obligations of Iran under the (International) Atomic Energy Agency treaty.''

In his address today before the National Endowment for Democracy, the president made the case that "by standing for the hope and freedom of others, we make our own freedom more secure." Stanford professor Michael McFaul's The Liberty Doctrine, published in Policy Review, further explains why "the spread of liberty should be the lofty and broad goal that organizes American foreign policy for the coming decades."

The Iranian regime adds a new twist to its rope-a-dope strategy employed against the U.S., EU and IAEA over its nuclear program. An official with the British Foreign Office says that Iranian-supplied weapons have been used to attack British forces in southern Iraq. The same official says that Iran may be sending a message to London that the Blair government should reconsider its efforts to get Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Perhaps the Saudis could pay for this by spending less money on this.

Today, the Iraqi parliament did an about face on its recent rule change that would have made it more difficult to defeat the constitutional referendum on October 15. But even with this reversal, are Sunnis still likely to reject the constitution at the ballot box? Not necessarily, says one Iraqi pollster, despite the fact that Sunnis have registered to vote for the upcoming referendum in high numbers.

The Post's Kennicott continues his coverage of the upcoming vote in yet another test of what Secretary Rice describes as "the forward march of democracy."

Yesterday, in an address to Marines at Camp Lejeune, Vice President Cheney stated that the lesson of the last two decades is not that the U.S. responded too aggressively to terrorist attacks but that it didn't "hit back hard enough."

Although we've been in the struggle against terrorism for four years now, the terrorists were actually at war with this country even before 2001. But for a long time, they were the ones on offense. And they grew bolder in their belief that if they killed Americans, they could change American policy. In Beirut in 1983, terrorists killed 241 Americans -- and you're well aware of that attack because most of those men were Marines from Camp Lejeune, members of the First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment.

Following that attack, the United States forces were withdrawn from Beirut. Time and time again, for the remainder of the 20th century, the terrorists hit America and America did not hit back hard enough. In 1993 we had the killing of American soldiers in Mogadishu, and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. We had the murders at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995, the killings at Khobar Towers in 1996, the destruction of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. The terrorists came to believe that they could strike America without paying any price.

And so they continued to wage those attacks, making the world less safe and eventually striking the United States on 9/11. Now they are making a stand in Iraq, testing our resolve, and trying to shake our commitment to democracy in that country. If the terrorists were to succeed, they would return Iraq to the rule of tyrants, make it a source of instability in the Middle East, and use it as a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations. As President Bush has said, the only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission. But this nation has made a decision: We will stand by our friends. We will help Iraqis build a nation that is free and secure, able to defend itself. We will confront our enemies on this and every other front in the war on terror. With good allies at our side, we will prevail, we will destroy the enemy.

The European Union has slapped an arms embargo on the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan for its refusal to allow a legitimate investigation into the shooting of hundreds of protestors there last May. But Moscow will not honor it. Southwest of Uzbekistan, Moscow will not stop selling its nuclear technology to the regime in Iran. And the possible consequences may be found here should that regime someday join the nuclear weapons club

The Democratic Leadership Council has released a statement on the Iraq war and rejected calls to begin withdrawing US troops from groups like the Center for American Progress and the "Out of Iraq" Democratic caucus in the House. Following such a course, the DLC writes, would "give the terrorists a victory."

The Washington Post's Jackie Spinner reports that the Syrian-Iraq

border area serves as a key crossing point for foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. Hussain Ali Kamal, the head of intelligence for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said in an interview Sunday that Syria had failed to keep promises to help stem the flow of insurgents into Iraq.

"A Syrian delegation came to Iraq two months ago," said Kamal, a deputy minister who represented the Interior Ministry in talks. "They promised to take steps, but so far we didn't get any response. There is no cooperation from the Syrian side in preventing the insurgents from coming into Iraq."

And, according to the Financial Times, investigators are close to fingering Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.

Weekly Standard contributing editor Irwin Stelzer offers his thoughts on Prime Minister Blair's speech to Labour Party delegates last week:

I have seen him leave a trade union conference in mid-session and head directly for the United States after September 11, and then stand with President Bush in a coalition of the willing when France and an anti-American, Saddam-purchased clique paralyzed the United Nations.

And last week I saw him once again defy his party and much of the electorate to reiterate his resolve to stay with us in waging war on terrorism, in the firm belief that helping to spread democracy is what he likes to call "the right thing," and that the spread of democracy is our ultimate defense against Islamic terrorism. That's what he told his party last week, as they gathered on the shores of the Channel, across which some of them, and some of their parents, had traveled to unseat another tyrant who threatened their way of life.

Philip Kennicott has a piece in the Washington Post on the upcoming parliamentary election in Azerbaijan scheduled for November 6. With neighboring Georgia to the east and Iran to the south, the election is a critical test of whether the Bush administration’s democracy promotion can establish deeper roots in the region. Azerbaijan’s last election in 2003 was widely viewed by international monitors as illegitimate with the Baku government engaged in a "pattern of intimidation against opposition supporters."

In July of 2003, the Bush administration sent former Secretary of State James Baker to Georgia prior to their parliamentary election to signal Washington’s deep commitment to a free and fair vote. Will the administration put as high a priority on Azerbaijan’s?

The Secretary of State delivered a forceful address on "the forward march of democracy" during an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.