May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Unlike John Edwards, who supported the Iraq War when running for president before abandoning his position to cozy-up with the Left, Sen. Joe Lieberman remains a profile in courage. From today's Washington Post:
"I'm not surprised that there's a primary challenge," Lieberman conceded. According to a February poll by Quinnipiac University, 61 percent of state voters said invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do. But the former Democratic vice presidential nominee said he will not back down from his position.
"It's one that I believe is in the best interests of the country," Lieberman said recently, after a trip to the Middle East. If he has put his job at risk, he said, so be it.
Perhaps Iowa Gov. Vilsack, Sen. Hillary Clinton and other members of the Democratic Leadership Council will get around to defending Sen. Lieberman a lot more than they have so far. After all, isn't the Lieberman challenge exactly what the DLC was created for in the first place?
It's no secret that Colin Powell clashed with the defense secretary many times while he was running Foggy Bottom. And Powell's recent critical remarks on inadequate troop levels are not a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. He argued for more troops before the invasion, but most importantly, Powell (and others privately and publicly) pressed for more troops after the invasion in the face of a rapidly deteriorating security situation and an insurgency that was gaining steam. As General Sanchez put it two years ago when asked what he could do with two more divisions, "I'd control Baghdad" (see here for another example).
From Agence France Presse:
Former US secretary of state Colin Powell said Sunday he had expressed concerns to President George W. Bush that they were not sending a large enough military force to Iraq before the US-led invasion in early 2003.
"I made the case to General (Tommy) Franks and (Defence) Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld before the president that I was not sure we had enough troops," Powell told Britain's ITV1 television.
"The case was made, it was listened to, it was considered ... a judgment was made by those responsible that the troop strength was adequate."
Powell, a former US Army general and Vietnam veteran, said he did not agree with the assessment by Bush's military advisers that they were sending enough troops in March 2003 to topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
"The President's military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don't, I don't," he said.
"In my perspective I would have preferred more troops, but you know this conflict is not over."
In an apparent sideswipe at those advisers, he said: "At the time the president was listening to those who were supposed to be providing him with military advice.
"They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad; it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated."
From the Sunday Times of London:
“There were enough troops to defeat the army. (But that) was only part of the battle. The difficult part was taking control of a very large country with 25m people and you have just taken out the whole government. And guess what: who then becomes the new government? You do, under the laws of land warfare. We were not able to take control, nor did we have the right political approach.
“We were characterizing the insurgents as a few dead-enders and saying, ‘This isn’t all that bad’. A larger troop presence would have been helpful. I raised the question. The Pentagon says that is not what the generals thought. But the generals were working under political direction that said ‘this is not going to be that bad’. But it did turn out that bad — we were unable to strangle the insurgency in its crib — and now it is raging.”
While Secretary Rumsfeld deserves a lot of credit for the many things that went well -- the speed of the toppling of Saddam and the Taliban, for example -- reassessing the size of the post-Iraq invasion force needed "to strangle the insurgency in its crib" wasn't one of them.
The following op-ed by Jay Lefkowitz, the president's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, ran today in the Asian and European editions of the Wall Street Journal:
The famous former Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, said it well: "A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors." North Korea is a prime example of a regime that doesn't respect either. It would probably come as no surprise to Sakharov that a government that inflicts on its citizens repression reminiscent of the most cruel totalitarian rulers of the 20th century is today counterfeiting American currency, trafficking in narcotics, building a nuclear arsenal, and threatening other nations.
Under the iron hand of Kim Jong Il, individual rights do not exist in North Korea. Millions have perished from a famine caused by government policies. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are held captive and brutalized in concentration camps. The regime traffics human beings, prohibits free expression of faith, holds its workforce in servitude, and has admitted to abducting foreign citizens.
As Sakharov reminds us, until the North Korean government respects the rights of its own people, the full blessings of peace and prosperity will elude Northeast Asia. So what can be done? First, we should force a ray of light through the veil of darkness and secrecy Kim Jong Il has drawn over North Korea. One defector recently told me that he first learned he was not living in a Socialist paradise when, as a soldier in the North Korean army, he listened clandestinely to South Korean radio. By increasing radio broadcasts from abroad, we can help North Koreans learn about the world outside. Defectors could play a major role, as they can speak with authority to those still in the North. The North Korean people would learn that less than 100 miles away, millions of Koreans who only 20 years ago also lived under an authoritarian regime now boast a vibrant democracy and the world's 12th largest economy. The deceit Kim Jong Il uses to help suppress his people can only be countered by a constant flow of information about the rest of the world. A policy to promote such broadcasts should be supported by America and all free nations.
We must also do more for those North Koreans who have braved great odds and escaped in search of freedom. The United States has long been a haven for vulnerable people fleeing despotic regimes, and North Korean refugees are welcome in the U.S. -- just as Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union and Cambodians fleeing Pol Pot were welcomed a generation ago. Many North Korean refugees have risked their lives to cross into China. Regrettably, they are often forcibly sent back to certain punishment in North Korea in clear violation of China's international obligations under a refugee treaty that it and 143 nations signed. Those refugees deserve better.
Certainly, Kim Chun-hee did. She is a defenseless North Korean woman who sought refuge at a school in Beijing last December, only to be sent back to her tormentors in North Korea. This happened despite the pleas of governments and the United Nations that she be treated humanely. It is not known if Ms. Kim is still alive. Nor do we know the fate of thousands of other refugees China has returned to North Korea.
Just as there are steps free nations can take to help the North Korean people, there are also policies we should avoid. One example of well-intentioned, but counterproductive, assistance is in the area of humanitarian aid. While the U.S. and other democracies stand ready to provide humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people, we properly insist on monitoring that aid to ensure it is not diverted to the military or sold on the black market where the cash can be used for other unintended purposes. By channeling large amounts of unmonitored aid to North Korea, some governments may actually worsen matters and unwittingly help prop up the regime.
America's friends in Asia must be careful not to squander whatever influence they may have to bring about change in North Korea. Near Kaesong, a city just north of the Demilitarized Zone, 15 South Korean companies recently opened an industrial park using North Korean labor. So far, the consortium has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the North with more to come. A South Korean official enthusiastically described it as, "a cooperative project benefiting both the South and the North, and at the same time, a peace project overcoming the wall of the Cold War through economic cooperation."
But the world knows little about what actually goes on at Kaesong, and given North Korea's track record, there is ample cause for concern about worker exploitation. The South Korean companies apparently pay less than $2 a day per worker, and there is no guarantee that the workers see even this small amount. The North Korean government deducts a "social fee" from their wages and empowers "labor brokers" to control the rest. Moreover, the site is fenced in, and the North Korean workers must come and go through a single entrance manned by armed soldiers. While the conditions at Kaesong may be marginally better than elsewhere in the North, substantial economic assistance to North Korea should be linked to human-rights progress for all North Koreans. At a minimum, North Korea should allow an independent party, such as the International Labor Organization, to inspect and assess Kaesong and report its findings to the U.N.
The U.S. will strive to give hope to the people of North Korea and to help them claim their inalienable rights. As U.S. President George W. Bush said last November when he went to Asia, "The 21st century will be freedom's century for all Koreans." But the challenge to expand freedom across the entire Korean peninsula is one the U.S. cannot meet on its own. Those around the world who cherish freedom, and especially America's friends in Asia who stand to benefit most from a peaceful and productive peninsula, must also commit themselves to this goal.
Nearly two years ago I attended a lecture by Samantha Power, author of "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" (a book I highly recommend), at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She spoke on the same day the government of Sudan got a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission. On the negotiations to end the killing in Darfur, Power warned that peace talks are sometimes just cover so nations can look the other way at atrocious behavior. But how do you stop such behavior before it becomes a full-blown genocide and once it does how do you end it before eveyone is murdered or displaced? She answered that what is missing in Darfur, as it was in the Balkans and Rwanda, is the "political will" of the international community to act. Though, citing Iraq, she rejected a "militant unilateralist" approach in favor of a reformed UN armed with a robust force ready to intervene to prevent more Rwandas. This brings me to the superb piece, Crisis Intervention: Iraq, Darfur, and American Power, by The New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan. He writes:
Springtime has arrived on the nation's college campuses, but this year the students out marching in the streets are demanding a foreign intervention rather than protesting one. For months now they've been in full cry, and rightly so, over the international community's disinclination to halt the genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Next Sunday, they and like-minded people around the United States will convene for a massive rally in the nation's capital.
But the marchers will have to contend with an unwelcome guest: the specter of Iraq....
Then again, the use of unilateral U.S. military power isn't the solution most Darfur activists have in mind. Even as western Sudan burns, Darfur advocates such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argue that the United States must employ its military power only on behalf of--and, more important, in concert with--international organizations such as the United Nations. The Save Darfur Coalition, a leading umbrella group for organizations bent on action, intends to save Darfur not by urging the Bush administration to launch air strikes against Sudan's murderous militias but by petitioning the White House to bolster funding for African Union peacekeepers and to lobby the United Nations.
But will the African Union put a halt to the killings in Darfur? Absolutely not. Its Arab members have stymied the force at every turn. Will the United Nations solve the crisis? That seems extremely unlikely as well. The organization amounts first and foremost to a collection of sovereign states, many of them adamantly opposed to violating Sudan's own sovereignty. Can NATO save the day? Not really, given the fears of entanglement expressed by its European members. As in Bosnia before it, the victims of Darfur can be saved by one thing and one thing alone: American power.
Unfortunately for the victims of Darfur, too many of their advocates have come to view that power as tainted, marred by self-interest and by its misapplication in Iraq. Hence, the contradiction at the heart of the Darfur debate, which pits the imperative to halt the persecution of innocents (Darfur activists have enshrined as their motto the biblical admonition not to "stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor") against a reflexive opposition to the only power that can actually do so.
With the latter sentiment in vogue as a result of the Iraq war, it is as if nothing has been learned and nothing remembered from the decade that went before. Never mind Bosnia. Never mind Kosovo. And, as long as Darfur activists like number two Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois cling to the mantra that the United States must be what he calls a "defensive nation," well, never mind Darfur either.
Interestingly, former Clinton official Richard Holbrooke has separated himself from Democrats like Durbin, who have adopted the language of foreign policy "realists." Too bad Durbin and company aren't listening.
has evidently been too light in some places. From Stars and Strips:
U.S. troops entered Mukhisa and the adjacent town of Abu Kharma on Sunday after hearing that the region is home to foreign fighters, members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group and financiers behind roadside bomb and mortar attacks, said Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, battalion commander....
One obstacle his troops face is that the two towns’ contact with coalition forces over the past three years has consisted of three raids, in which hundreds of townspeople were arrested only to be released later, Fisher said.
“When you neglect a town and don’t engage the population, the terrorists who are here and the insurgents can tell them anything they want, and they will believe it because there is no one else telling them anything different,” he said.
Sounds familiar, unfortunately. It is also why Col. McMaster pushed his "clear and hold" strategy while in Iraq rather than continue what some officers have derisively dubbed "whack a mole" operations.
(From today's Boston Globe: "As record oil prices turn attention to the need for renewable fuels, momentum is building in Congress to buck Senator Edward M. Kennedy's bid to block the proposed Cape Cod wind energy project, potentially reviving efforts to construct the sprawling windmill farm in Nantucket Sound.... The maneuver to stop the wind farm 'is clearly a backroom deal, and they're going to get called publicly on it,' said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA. 'The Democrats are going to kill the first big offshore wind farm in the United States because of their relationship with Ted Kennedy.'")
Posted on April 25, 2006:
Gas prices have skyrocketed and the 36th annual Earth Day just passed. So it's hardly surprising that many Democrats have taken the opportunity to bash the president's environmental and energy policies. Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid has demanded a "bipartisan national energy summit to solve the problem of America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil...." And Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida delivered his party's radio address on Saturday. He urged a higher "mileage standard for all passenger vehicles," which is interesting because Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has often led the charge against stiffer mileage standards. Nelson further warned Americans, "We must confront some powerful interests, including the oil lobby" if we our to cut our "dependence on foreign oil."
Like Sen. Nelson, Greenpeace is also confronting "some powerful interests." According to the National Journal, the group has taken on the Senate's premier liberal for his opposition to a proposed wind farm that "would provide 75 percent of the area's energy needs with clean and safe wind power."
Greenpeace takes on a surprising target this week: Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
The 30-second spot features a cartoon Kennedy pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water. A voice meant to be Kennedy's -- but lacking the senator's trademark New England drawl -- complains that "I might see [the wind farm] from my mansion on the cape!"
Kennedy recently backed an amendment to a Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would make the first offshore wind energy project vulnerable to state veto.
Of course, I don't blame Sen. Kennedy (or Sen. Kerry for that matter). I wouldn't want to sit on the porch of my beachfront mansion staring into a sea of turbine generators either.
Texas shares a lengthy border with Mexico, and, in the last 20 years, the state has absorbed many immigrants. Yet, despite the remarks of Rep. Tom Tancredo and others, I was surprised to learn just how well the Texas economy has performed since President Reagan signed the 1986 immigration bill (setting aside the debate over whether the president should have signed the legislation). According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the state's unemployment rate was 8.9 percent in 1986; at the end of 2005 it was 5.3 percent. Real wages have made substantial gains. In El Paso, for example, real wages increased from 647 million in 1986 to about 960 million in 2005. In the Dallas metro area, real wages rose from 7 billion in 1986 to over 11.8 billion in 2005.
Here are some other interesting statistics:
"Following recent revisions, data now show that Texas payroll employment grew more rapidly in 2005 than at any time since the tech bust. Jobs increased by 2.7 percent—half a percentage point stronger than the Dallas Fed’s early benchmark and 1.2 percentage points stronger than initially estimated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics"
"Initial estimates of employment for January and February 2006 show growth moderating to 2 percent. However, anecdotal evidence from Beige Book suggests job growth is actually picking up in Texas. Recent Manpower surveys of hiring intentions also suggest a strengthening labor market, with employers in most major Texas cities far more willing to hire than the nation as a whole."
"Additionally, unemployment rates are flat or declining in all major metro areas even as formerly discouraged workers are re-entering the labor market (Chart 3). Taken together, the evidence suggests Texas labor-market conditions are not moderating at this time."
"Texas exports rose at a 7.9 percent annual rate in fourth quarter 2005, more than offsetting a hurricane-related decline in the third quarter (Chart 6). Exports to almost all of Texas’ major trading partners rose, including a 4 percent increase to Mexico and a 16.3 percent increase to the European Union. Because different countries demand different compositions of goods, the broad-based nature of the export gain provides additional confirmation that Texas’ current expansion encompasses many sectors rather than only a few. One of the few countries to which exports fell was China, but its trade volume with Texas is sufficiently small that the decline had only a modest effect on overall exports."
"The near-term outlook for the Texas economy is favorable. Consumer confidence in the West South Central census region (of which Texas residents make up 68 percent) remains higher than consumer confidence in the nation as a whole."
"Additionally, the Dallas Fed’s leading index soared in the most recent three-month period, with the labor-market component especially strong (Chart 9). Taken together, this suggests good times are ahead for Texas."
As CNBC's Larry Kudlow likes to say, the economic "doom and gloomers" on immigration have a tough case to make when it comes to Texas.
Read the comments of New York Times editor Bill Keller here and then read the latest from Max Boot in the Los Angeles Times here (reg. req'd).
In the past few weeks, a new story line on Iran has gained some currency. It goes something like this. The bluster of the provincial president doesn't truly reflect the mind-set of Iran's senior, grown-up leadership when it comes to acquiring nuclear weapons. If that's the case, someone should let Iran's senior clerics and chief nuclear negotiator in on the secret.
From the New York Times:
April 26, 2006
Senior Iran Cleric Tells Sudan That Nuclear Aid Is Available
TEHRAN, April 25 — Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday at a meeting here with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.
"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country," the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, the news agency IRNA reported. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists."
Mr. Khamenei made his comments just days before the Friday deadline set by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.
At a conference on Tuesday in Tehran on its nuclear program, senior officials vowed that Iran would continue its enrichment activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that in the event of Security Council sanctions, Iran would suspend cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency. If there is a military strike aimed at destroying its facilities, Iran will simply hide its nuclear program, he added.
"You may inflict a loss on us, but you will lose also," he said.
Mr. Larijani said Iran was willing to cooperate if its case was returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency, but warned, "Do not expect us to act otherwise if you drag the case to the Security Council."
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and head of the powerful Expediency Council, speaking at the conference, denounced the role of the nuclear agency and said it had failed to support Iran's program.
"I am not saying that the agency has had bad intentions," he said. "But it has not fulfilled its duty to support countries to enjoy their right to have nuclear technology."
In other words, here's our "Grand Bargain": Let's us pursue our nuclear weapons in peace and quiet or we will give the Butcher of Darfur a nuclear boost.
Today's Wall Street Journal editorial looks at the "unseemly symbiosis between elements of the press corps and a cabal of partisan bureaucrats at the CIA and elsewhere in the 'intelligence community' who have been trying to undermine the Bush Presidency." The editors also note that there were "many selective election-year leaks of prewar Iraq intelligence fed to the likes of the [New York] Times's James Risen, who also won a Pulitzer this year--for helping expose the National Security Agency's anti-al Qaeda surveillance program." But even the NSA disclosure may have been intended as a pre-election leak. The New York Times revealed the program in December but noted it had delayed the article's publication for a year. According to the December 16, 2005 Times piece,
The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.
So the original piece was set to run in December 2004. Assuming it took some time to put together, the original leak tipping off the Times may have occurred some time before the November election. The Times also noted,
Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.
And what are the odds the leaker voted for Bush on November 2, 2004?
Well, they're looking for a new CEO. From TechWeb News:
Yoran, CIA's Venture Capital Chief, Resigns
The head of the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm, Amit Yoran, has resigned his position after less than four months in the position as chief executive of In-Q-Tel.
In a report in the Washington Post Monday, Yoran said he resigned for personal reasons that included a wish to spend more time with him family. "It's a very amicable parting" said Yoran. "I will say I'm sorry and disappointed as well."
With a budget of some $50 million annually, In-Q-Tel invests in emerging technologies that the CIA believes have future use.
In a statement Lee A. Ault, III, In-Q-Tel's trustees board chairman, said: "We look forward to continuing In-Q-Tel's unique and important mission of delivering important and cutting edge technologies to the CIA and the intelligence community." Yoran previously served as head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security.
Send in those resumes.
Gas prices have skyrocketed and the 36th annual Earth Day just passed. So it's hardly surprising that many Democrats have taken the opportunity to bash the president's environmental and energy policies. Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid has demanded a "bipartisan national energy summit to solve the problem of America’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil...." And Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida delivered his party's radio address on Saturday. He urged a higher "mileage standard for all passenger vehicles," which is interesting because Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has often led the charge against stiffer mileage standards. Nelson further warned Americans, "We must confront some powerful interests, including the oil lobby" if we our to cut our "dependence on foreign oil."
Like Sen. Nelson, Greenpeace is also confronting "some powerful interests." According to the National Journal, the group has taken on the Senate's premier liberal for his opposition to a proposed wind farm that "would provide 75 percent of the area's energy needs with clean and safe wind power."
Greenpeace takes on a surprising target this week: Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
The 30-second spot features a cartoon Kennedy pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water. A voice meant to be Kennedy's -- but lacking the senator's trademark New England drawl -- complains that "I might see [the wind farm] from my mansion on the cape!"
Kennedy recently backed an amendment to a Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would make the first offshore wind energy project vulnerable to state veto.
Of course, I don't blame Sen. Kennedy (or Sen. Kerry for that matter). I wouldn't want to sit on the porch of my beachfront mansion staring into a sea of turbine generators either.
Last night, PBS' American Experience chronicled the building of the Alaska Pipeline, which traverses some 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. Planning for the pipeline began in 1968, but a mountain of legal challenges put off construction until 1975. Two years later oil began flowing south. What kick-started actual construction was the October 1973 Yom Kippur War and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo against the U.S. Relying so heavily on foreign energy sources, Congress figured out, wasn't such a good idea. From American Experience:
July 17: With a vote of 50 to 49, the Senate narrowly passes the Gravel Amendment which declares that the Department of the Interior has fulfilled all the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, allowing Alyeska to move forward. Vice President Spiro Agnew casts the deciding vote.
October 6: On the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egyptian forces attack Israel, while at the same time Syrian troops assault the Golan Heights in a surprise offensive. With help from the United States, Israel succeeds in reversing the Arab gains. The clash will have repercussions for the U.S. oil supply.
Pumps closed due to the gasoline shortage October 17: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) strikes back against the United States and the Netherlands for their support of Israel in the war. OPEC imposes an oil embargo. Overnight, the price of a barrel of oil rises from $3 to over $5. Gas at the pumps will soon rise from 30 cents per gallon to $1.20, and drivers will wait in long lines to fill up their tanks.
November 16: In direct response to the oil crisis, President Nixon signs the Trans Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law. Nixon introduces "Project Independence" in a televised speech: "Throughout history, America has made great sacrifices of blood and also treasure to achieve and maintain its independence. In the last third of this century, our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy."
Some things never change on the independence front.
(From today's Wall Street Journal: "Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election....There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices--and the entire cause of recent spot shortages--is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress's friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012....These columns warned Republicans this would happen. As recently as last year, ethanol was selling for $1.45 a gallon. By December it had reached $2 and is now going for $2.77. So refiners are now having to buy both oil and ethanol at sky-high prices. In short, the only market manipulation has been by politicians.")
Posted on April 18, 2006:
Gas prices are way up and it's not just because of soaring oil prices on the world market that are beyond our control. Under the GOP's watch and pushed farm state legislators, Congress mandated more ethanol use in our gasoline. The net result, as Irwin Stelzer explains, is tighter gas supplies and even higher prices at the pump.
Finally, there is gasoline. In the good old American tradition of believing there is a solution to every problem, voters want to know what Congress is planning to do about gasoline prices, which are once again on the rise. Perhaps holding off until Congress was safely out of shouting range, the Department of Energy announced a precipitous drop in gasoline inventories, and released its forecast of gasoline prices. It expects the average price of regular grade gasoline to hit $2.73 next month, $0.57 and 26 percent higher than in May of last year. Part of this is due to the mandated increase in the use of ethanol, which is rising in price as producers find themselves hard-pressed to meet skyrocketing demand--up from 1.8 million barrels a month in 2002 to 7.4 million barrels this month. This is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences--not unforeseen by experts, but neither foreseen nor intended by legislators. In order to blend ethanol into gasoline and still avoid violating air quality regulations, refiners must remove other components, with the net effect of reducing gasoline supplies by 1.7 percent in the face of increasing demand.
Good job, Republicans. ADM may be happy but I doubt most voters are -- for now at least.
(Agence France Presse has the latest,"Mogadishu tensions soar as Islamists declare jihad on warlords," from Somalia.)
Posted on February 20, 2006:
Since the early 1990s, al Qaeda has targeted Somalia. Back then, American forces and U.N peacekeepers were the target. Today, as in other regions of the world, they are also increasingly aiming their gun sights on moderate Muslims. From the BBC:
The fighting pits a new group, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, against the Islamic Courts' militia....
Our correspondent says at least five warlords-cum-ministers in the transitional government are behind the new alliance, which is battling the Islamic Courts.
The courts have set up Mogadishu's only judicial system in parts of the capital but have been accused of links to al-Qaeda.
Their critics accuse the courts of being behind the killing of moderate Muslim scholars.
Last night, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a segment on Iraq pre-war intelligence -- focusing on the Niger-Uranium controversy -- that was so slanted I half suspect that Democratic Senator Carl Levin produced it. Here are just a few examples:
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he'd learned. Despite that, some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputy director didn't buy it. In October, when the president's speech writers tried to put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduled to deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened. In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned "The Africa story is overblown" and "The evidence is weak." The speech writers took the uranium reference out of the speech. Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq's nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq's military secrets to the CIA. Tyler Drumheller [former CIA head in Europe] was in charge of the operation.
Mr. DRUMHELLER: This was a very high, inner circle of Saddam Hussein, someone who would know what he was talking about.
BRADLEY: You knew you could trust this guy?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: We continued to validate the whole way through.
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.
Mr. DRUMHELLER: The president, the vice president, Dr. Rice.
BRADLEY: And at that meeting...
Mr. DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said we--they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of the Iraqis.
BRADLEY: And what did this high-level source tell you?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.
BRADLEY: So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: Yes.
BRADLEY: There's no doubt in your mind about it?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all, no.
Where to begin? Regarding the Niger reference, Bradley failed to inform millions of viewers what the Senate's 2004 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq concluded on the issue:
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.
And on Sabri, I guess it wasn't newsworthy to inform viewers of what else Sabri had to say. After all, are we supposed to believe Sabri on the nuclear program but discount his comments on biological and chemical weapons? According to the Washington Post, Sabri also told the CIA that Saddam was lying, that biological weapons research was underway, and that Saddam had dispersed chemical weapons to loyal tribes.
Publicly Sabri was insisting that Iraq had no prohibited weapons of mass destruction. Privately, the sources said, he provided information that the Iraqi dictator had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.
When it came to chemical weapons, Sabri told his handler that some existed but they were not under military control, a former intelligence official familiar with the situation said. Another former official added: "He said he had been told Hussein had them dispersed among some of the loyal tribes."
60 Minutes further reported:
President GEORGE W. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Mr. DRUMHELLER: I didn't even remember all the details of it because it was such a low-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Union Address, it became huge.
BRADLEY: So, let me see if I have--have it correct here. The United States gets a report that Saddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa, but you and--and many others in our intelligence quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story is removed from the speech that the president is to give in Cincinnati...
Mr. DRUMHELLER: Right.
BRADLEY: ...because the head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: Right.
BRADLEY: And then it appears in the State of the Union Address a short time later?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: As a British report, yeah.
BRADLEY: You oversaw all of the intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: Right.
BRADLEY: Do you think that the British had something that we didn't have?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: No, I don't think they did.
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story, but to this day, they have never shared it.
Again, Bradley doesn't mention that the "CIA continued to approve the use of similar [Niger-uranium] language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union." He also devotes only one line to what British intelligence concluded on the issue. The July 2004 Butler report stated 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. Somehow I think many viewers would have found this information of interest.
Here are the "relevant" bits from the report, 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.
Finally, the case against Saddam Hussein was far broader than 60 Minutes, the New York Times and many others would have you believe. To recap, on March 18, 2003, the day before ground forces entered Iraq, the president confronted a range of concerns regarding Saddam's weapons programs, his connection to terrorism, his history of aggressive behavior, his use of poison gas, and his failure to comply with the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire agreement and subsequent U.N. resolutions.
U.S. intelligence (as Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson has noted but the media has ignored) and other foreign governments concluded at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq's "Unresolved Disarmament Issues." It stated that the "long list" of "unaccounted for" WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998--the month inspections ended in Iraq--and beyond were still "unaccounted for." The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been "weaponized"); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced "3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent." Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials (see more on Hans Blix and the "verifiable evidence" standard here).
The same report noted "a surge of activity in the missile technology field in the past four years" and that while 817 of the 819 Scud missiles Iraq had imported had been accounted for, inspectors did not know the number of missiles Iraq had indigenously produced or still possessed. Similarly, while inspectors had accounted for 73 of Iraq's 75 declared "special" warheads, doubts remained that Iraqi officials were truthful about how many had actually been manufactured. It acknowledged that inspectors had found a handful of 122mm chemical rocket warheads but noted that this discovery may only be the "tip of the iceberg" since several thousand, in the inspectors' judgment, were still unaccounted for. It also stated that no underground chemical facilities had been found but added that such facilities may exist given the size of Iraq and that future inspections in this area would have to rely on "specific intelligence." Finally, the report declared that there appears to be no "choke points" to prevent Iraq from producing anthrax at the same level it did before 1991, that large-scale Iraqi production of botulinum toxin "could be rapidly commenced," and that given Iraq's history of concealment, "it cannot be excluded that it has retained some capability with regard to VX."
And as we know today, Saddam's Iraq never complied with its disarmament obligations. In September 2004 then-Iraq Survey Group head Charles Duelfer issued a report which cited many violations of the sanctions regime and concluded that "Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD production after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserve capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD production as soon as sanctions were lifted." Duelfer continued:
As UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation. He directed that ballistic missile work continue that would support long-range missile development. Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution.
Mary O. McCarthy has reportedly been fingered for leaking the CIA's secret prisons operation to the Washington Post. She also apparently donated to the Kerry for President campaign and other Democrats as well, which, of course, she is free to do. Today's New York Times also reports that McCarthy returned to the Agency in 2004:
H. Andrew Schwartz, a spokesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Ms. McCarthy's relationship with the organization lasted from 2001 to 2003. Several associates of Ms. McCarthy say she returned to the C.I.A. in 2004, taking a job in the inspector general's office.
CIA Director Goss said the prison disclosure, which appeared in the Washington Post in November 2005, severely harmed US national security. Were there any other leaks in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election that caused similar damage to ongoing U.S. intelligence operations? Buried in another New York Times piece on McCarthy is this intriguing line:
Intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the dismissal resulted from ''a pattern of conduct'' and not from a single leak, but that the case involved in part information about secret C.I.A. detention centers that was given to The Washington Post.
In the spirit of President Hu's victory lap around the U.S., reader John Manley sends along two interesting links. This one searches for images of Tiananmen on Google.com, while this one does the same search on Google.cn.
By the way, no one knows what happened to the man, who Google.cn erases, in front of that tank. From Frontline's "The Tank Man":
About midday, as a column of tanks slowly moves along Chang'an Boulevard toward Tiananmen Square, an unarmed young man carrying shopping bags suddenly steps out in front of the tanks. Instead of running over him, the first tank tries to go around, but the young man steps in front of it again. They repeat this maneuver several more times before the tank stops and turns off its motor. The young man climbs on top of the tank and speaks to the driver before jumping back down again. Soon, the young man is whisked to the side of the road by an unidentified group of people and disappears into the crowd.
To this day, who he was and what became of him remains a mystery.
Perhaps someone at Boeing or Microsoft or Google can inquire as to what happened to this man after toasting the next business deal. I'm all for business investment but people like The Tank Man should not be forgotten.
"China Rocks"!
From Yesterday's New York Times:
Alan R. Mulally, president of Boeing's commercial aircraft division, introduced Mr. Hu to a group of 5,000 Boeing workers in an event that had the aura of a pep rally. After Mr. Hu made a glowing tribute to Boeing's tradition of innovation, Mr. Mulally said simply, ''China rocks.''
No doubt "China rocks." A few years back 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, with this cheerful note:
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."
And today, Denmark and China are at odds over the atrocious human rights violations going on in Darfur:
From ABC News:
The U.N. Security Council remained divided...on imposing punitive measures over the conflict in Darfur despite calls for sanctions against Sudanese allegedly blocking peace in the region....
Most of the 15-member council were in favor of sanctions, led by the United States, Britain, France and Denmark but Qatar, China, and Russia were strongly opposed, council diplomats said. Qatar is the only Arab member of the council, China is a major buyer of Sudanese oil, and Russia traditionally opposes sanctions.
"China Rocks"!
From Monday's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
LEHRER: In Washington, a White House spokesman condemned the attack and said it was the Palestinian Authority's responsibility to stop such attacks. ....
In Iraq today,....
Witnesses for Zacarias Moussaoui gave details of his instability today.... Jurors heard testimony from a clinical social worker about Moussaoui's childhood in France. She said he came from a broken, violent home, and his family has a history of mental illness. Moussaoui dismissed the analysis as "a lot of American BS"....
Yesterday, in an interview with Chicago-area newspapers, Secretary of State Rice made a point that Richard Clarke didn't find time to address in his recent New York Times op-ed.
QUESTION: And because you also know that any armed intervention would inflame things throughout the Muslim world?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, Iran is not Iraq. It's a different period of time. It's a different set of circumstances. We also have to acknowledge though that a nuclear-armed Iran would also inflame the region in different ways. If you think about the kind of potential proliferation arms race that that will set off among Iran's neighbors, most of whom are frightened of Iran and Iran's aggressive behaviors, particularly in some cases against minority populations in various countries, we have to recognize that we also can't do nothing because a nuclear-armed Iran would be a very devastating blow to peace and security in the region.
But we have a lot of options ahead of us and we're going to pursue those fully and the diplomatic options are many.
Senator Hillary Clinton made a similar point -- "a nuclear-armed Iran would shake the foundations of global security to its very core" -- last September but hasn't said much on Iran lately.
From the Associated Press:
Moderate leftist prepares to challenge Hugo Chávez
CARACAS - Venezuelan opposition leader and newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff will launch his presidential bid this week to run against President Hugo Chávez, a campaign organizer said Wednesday.
Petkoff will make the announcement in a pre-taped message to be shown on television Thursday night, the campaign organizer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to act as a spokesman. He said Petkoff will run as an independent and plans a nationwide tour starting this weekend.
The center-left opposition leader was a Cuban-inspired guerrilla in the 1950s and 60s, but later split with the Communist Party. Today, he is one of Chávez's fiercest critics.
The counterattack by Secretary Rumsfeld and his staff against his critics has been impressive. The Secretary defended himself at length during a recent press conference. Senior active and retired officers defended him on television and in print. His office sent out fact sheets and called influential commentators to get the secretary's side of the story out. The message offensive was swift, disciplined and effective and put many of his critics back on their heels -- for now at least. But my question is why such a well-coordinated offensive hasn't been waged against critics who week after week and month after month have been pummeling the Bush administration's rationale for taking Saddam Hussein out. Democratic Senators Levin and Rockefeller, the New York Times, and most of the liberal establishment have been pounding away without a vigorous and sustained response from senior Bush officials.
When he's on Rumsfeld is very effective in getting a message out, as we've just witnessed. But one rarely hears him during a press conference or in a speech forcefully challenge at length the following statements constantly by made anti-war critics:
1) Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat.
2) Iraq had no link to al Qaeda.
3) Iraq's connection to terrorism, in general, was insignificant.
4) UN inspections were working before they were short-circuited.
5) The Duelfer report, in fact, proved that containment was working and such a policy should have continued.
6) We'd be better off if Saddam were still in power.
And there many other charges that should rebutted. A Rumsfeld-inspired offensive on all these questions done with the same gusto, precision and reach of the last few days would certainly deliver a different message to the American people than they've been getting from the front-pages of the New York Times or on CNN. Getting such a message out -- week after week -- should also be a part of the Iraq war effort.
Since Jonathan Chait and others have turned their focus to Sen. McCain the last few days I'd like to add one point -- for now at least -- going back to 2001. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I was his legislative director back then.) Yes, McCain voted against the 2001 tax cut. But his collective reasons for doing so were far different than those of the Democratic caucus. Based on the "surplus" projection, he wanted to enact a smaller tax cut primarily targeting the lower- and middle class (including a child tax credit, a cut in the marriage tax penalty, payroll tax reform, and an estate tax cut capped at five million to reduce any negative impact on charitable giving), ramp up defense spending to substantially enlarge our air, land and naval forces (this was pre 9/11 I may add), fund the transition costs associated with moving toward some form of Social Security personal accounts to ensure its long-term solvency, shore up Medicare's solvency (which, I believe, is one reason why he recently voted against the prescription drug bill), and enact stiff spending reforms (pork-barrel projects, etc) because they were long overdue and would also act as a partial hedge against faulty "surplus" projection numbers.
The new and improved UN Human Rights Council will likely include Fidel Castro, that great defender of human rights, as one of its members. From the Miami Herald:
The new Human Rights Council replaced the previous Commission on Human Rights, where countries accused of rights abuses such as Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe regularly became members and then worked to stop its condemnations....
Washington, however, would view Cuba's election as a bad sign.
''It would be an unfortunate and sad statement that it's business as usual,'' said a State Department official, who asked for anonymity to speak freely on a delicate subject.
Max Boot has an interesting take on the Rumsfeld v. Generals flare up in today's Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd):
The retired generals, who claim to speak for their active-duty brethren, premise their uprising on two complaints. First, many (though not all) say we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place. Former Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold calls it "the unnecessary war," and former Gen. Anthony Zinni claims that "containment worked remarkably well."
That is a highly questionable judgment, and one that is not for generals to make. They are experts in how to wage war, not when to wage it. If we had listened to their advice, we would not have gone into Kuwait or Bosnia or Kosovo.
Their second complaint — about how the war has been fought — is more valid. There is no doubt that the president and his top aides blundered by not sending enough troops and not doing enough occupation planning. But what about the blunders of the generals?
To listen to the retired brass, the only mistake they and their peers made was not being more outspoken in challenging Rumsfeld. But that's not the picture that emerges from the best account of the invasion so far: "Cobra II" by veteran correspondent Michael Gordon and retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor.
Why? She explained last night on CNN's Larry King:
"I don't want to give the right wing media and the right wing warmongers an ability to distract from the basic issue, which is that most Americans are opposed to the war and want to bring the troops home."
With any luck, Moveon.org will put Fonda in one of their anti-war ads.
Get ready for another round of "Impeach Bush" talk. The deeply partisan Carl Bernstein has a new piece up on the Vanity Fair web site. Guess what? He's not a fan of the Bush Administration and like many others on the Left is doing his best to criminalize policy disputes. The ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, has already expressed his approval of Bernstein's diatribe on his blog:
This is a fascinating article, drawing many comparisons of the abuses of power perpetrated by Nixon and Bush. Bernstein suggests that the creation of a special committee, like the Ervin Committee in the Nixon era, is the best way to address these abuses. While he does not mention House Resolution 635 by name, I am very pleased to have Mr. Bernstein endorse my legislative proposal.
The Euston Manifesto Group sure has a lot of work ahead of it.
As you've probably guessed, it isn't Sen. Christopher Dodd -- see here.
Gas prices are way up and it's not just because of soaring oil prices on the world market that are beyond our control. Under the GOP's watch and pushed farm state legislators, Congress mandated more ethanol use in our gasoline. The net result, as Irwin Stelzer explains, is tighter gas supplies and even higher prices at the pump.
Finally, there is gasoline. In the good old American tradition of believing there is a solution to every problem, voters want to know what Congress is planning to do about gasoline prices, which are once again on the rise. Perhaps holding off until Congress was safely out of shouting range, the Department of Energy announced a precipitous drop in gasoline inventories, and released its forecast of gasoline prices. It expects the average price of regular grade gasoline to hit $2.73 next month, $0.57 and 26 percent higher than in May of last year. Part of this is due to the mandated increase in the use of ethanol, which is rising in price as producers find themselves hard-pressed to meet skyrocketing demand--up from 1.8 million barrels a month in 2002 to 7.4 million barrels this month. This is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences--not unforeseen by experts, but neither foreseen nor intended by legislators. In order to blend ethanol into gasoline and still avoid violating air quality regulations, refiners must remove other components, with the net effect of reducing gasoline supplies by 1.7 percent in the face of increasing demand.
Good job, Republicans. ADM may be happy but I doubt most voters are -- for now at least.
Britain's Daily Telegraph writes on the terrorist (or "militant" if you work at the BBC) suicide bombing in Tel Aviv:
Ultimately, however, the weasel words of Hamas remind us of how right America and the EU were to cut off funding to the Authority. Hamas apologises for terrorism because, ceasefire notwithstanding, its "militants" are terrorists at heart.
Though it hasn't garnered much media attention, there has been an interesting fight brewing within the political Left. Britain's Oliver Kamm got the ball rolling by writing a provocative piece in Progess, a journal published by British Labour Party members, arguing that the Left has abandoned its anti-totalitarian roots. Now, a "new democratic progressive alliance" has come together in the blogoshere to challenge others on the Left who are consumed with anti-Americanism and have a soft spot for tyrants. Kamm and many others have signed The Euston Manifesto.
Drawing on the "lesson of the disastrous history of left apologetics over the crimes of Stalinism and Maoism, as well as more recent exercises in the same vein (some of the reaction to the crimes of 9/11, the excuse-making for suicide-terrorism, the disgraceful alliances lately set up inside the "anti-war" movement with illiberal theocrats)," the Manifesto's preamble states:
We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not.
The present initiative has its roots in and has found a constituency through the Internet, especially the "blogosphere". It is our perception, however, that this constituency is under-represented elsewhere — in much of the media and the other forums of contemporary political life.
The broad statement of principles that follows is a declaration of intent. It inaugurates a new Website, which will serve as a resource for the current of opinion it hopes to represent and the several foundation blogs and other sites that are behind this call for a progressive realignment.
Stay tuned...
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