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...

This is the first time I've read such a categorical statement from a senior U.S. commander. From the Washington Times:

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday. The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps. "They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

But is this view part of a new U.S. intelligence assessment or just based on the general's own judgment?

(This NYT piece, "New Worry Rises After Iran Claims Nuclear Steps," is not good news if true. "The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon," the Times reports. "Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret program — based on the black market offerings of the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan — separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz.")

(The New York Times follows up their recent Iran editorial with a front-page piece today quoting nuclear analysts who say "nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020." But as we know intelligence estimates can overestimate AND underestimate a target nation's nuclear program.)

Posted on April 11, 2006:

The editors at the paper have weighed in on what to do about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons -- in two words, not much. Their argument boils down to this: Tehran is a decade away from a bomb; so all the "saber rattling" is unnecessary and counterproductive. We should encourage Iran's political evolution and let their government know that they're "better off" without nuclear bombs. Sanctions are not mentioned. They make no statement that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which puts them to the left of Howard Dean who has declared, "Under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power." And they say nothing on the consequences should Tehran produce them. One person who has offered his thoughts on the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran is Gerard Baker of the Times (London), who wrote:

If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.

No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.

I hope Iran is "about 10 years away from building" nuclear bombs as the editors claim, but how do they know with such certainty? They don't say where they got that number. In fact, their favorite weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has pegged the number at "five years" and the Los Angeles Times has reported that the number may be "within three years."

Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say

VIENNA — With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program.

If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said....

The three-year time frame for Iran to produce a bomb cited by diplomats is the same as an estimate by former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright.

In a paper that will be released Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, which Albright founded, he and a colleague give a detailed description of how, under a best-case scenario, Iran would be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a crude nuclear device in three years. Albright cautioned, however, that Iran faces many technical hurdles it might find difficult to overcome....

"We're getting to the point where this fundamental difference between the U.S. and EU position and that of the Russians is being overtaken by Iran's … putting new facts on the ground," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who previously worked for the U.S. State Department on nuclear issues. "Iran is closer and closer to enrichment, so the effort to deny them the capability is rapidly failing."

Let's hope the intelligence on the status of Iran's nuclear program is better than the world had on Saddam's program in 1991 -- a Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program that went undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA. It's also a bit ironic that the New York Times Iran editorial was published on the same day Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote the following:

Is the position of the left that America should allow the genocide minded Iranian leader to go along his merry way toward obtaining weapons of mass annihilation until a donkey occupies the White House? One does not have to be a fan of W to recognize the "waiting for the donkey" position to be morally and strategically disastrous....

The American left is increasingly moving toward the position that there is only one threat to our security in the world. Not the jihadists. Not the Iranian leader who denies the holocaust and his mullah buddies.

No, the only foe of the left is W., and if the Iranians get the bomb, so be it. This is the partisanship of fools."

Give that man a raise!

In today's New York Times, Richard Clarke and his Clinton-era NSC colleague Steven Simon write 856 words on why the U.S. should not use force, if necessary, against Iran's nuclear program. Though they raise very legitimate issues that should be virgorously debated, nowhere in the piece do they take a position on whether Iran should be allowed to build a nuclear weapon. And, if not, how do we stop it? Do they agree with Senator Clinton's warning that “a nuclear-armed Iran would shake the foundations of global security to its very core"? They don't say. How do they think Tehran will behave if it gets a nuclear bomb? Will they be bolder in sponsoring terror or more restrained? Will they assume a more aggressive posture in the Middle East or a less assertive one? Again, they don't say. It's seems rather odd that two senior NSC officials would ignore this nuclear elephant in the room and then chastise others for not asking the "hard questions" on Iran.

They do write about how great the 1990s were. We learn that Iranian intelligence hit Khobar Towers, killing 19 Americans, but the Clinton White House decided against an overt retaliatory strike. They hit back covertly but the authors offer few details except to say that it allegedly "immobilized Iran's intelligence service." They also claim credit for ignoring Newt Gingrich's advice to pursue regime change in Iran. Instead they engaged Tehran, which led to "the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997...." Of course, as Reuel Marc Gerecht explains, the Khatami regime was, for starters, "probably the period when the clerical regime made its greatest advances in its nuclear-weapons program." (Update: Monday's New York Times reports that "Dr. Khan had supplied Libya and North Korea with actual P-2 centrifuges in the late 1990's, and they repeatedly heard that he had done likewise with Iran.")

Clarke isn't alone in trying to convince us just how great the Clinton years were. Last month, Madeleine Albright hammered away at the Bush administration's conduct of foreign policy but whitewashed that of her boss. Now it's Richard Clarke's turn -- though next time he'll perhaps answer some of the "hard questions" he chose to ignore in today's NYT.

From Reuters:

A German court sentenced a man of Turkish origin to more than nine years in prison on Thursday for the so-called "honor killing" of his sister but found two other brothers not guilty of conspiring in the murder.

The murder of 23-year-old Hatun Surucu, who was shot while standing at a bus stop in a Berlin suburb last year, shocked Germany and sparked intense debate about a conservative Muslim immigrant community at odds with mainstream society.

Forced to marry a cousin in Turkey as a young girl, Hatun Surucu later broke with her Turkish-Kurdish family in Berlin and was living independently with her five-year-old son, to the intense disapproval of her relatives, prosecutors said....

Public outrage at the murder was exacerbated when boys at a nearby school with many pupils from immigrant families were reported to have openly applauded the killing shortly afterwards because the victim had lived "like a German."

...The case is one of a series of incidents that have added to concerns that Germany's large immigrant community, many out of work, poorly educated and not holding German citizenship, may be drifting further away from the rest of the country....

George Will, in a recent Washington Post column, warned that the U.S. should avoid the mistakes many European nations have made in permanently marginalizing an immigrant underclass. He wrote:

Conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society's crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux conservatives absurdly call this price tag on legal status "amnesty." Actually, it would prevent the emergence of a sullen, simmering subculture of the permanently marginalized, akin to the Arab ghettos in France.

From the (London) Telegraph:

'Islamic terrorism' is too emotive a phrase, says EU

European governments should shun the phrase "Islamic terrorism" in favour of "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam", say guidelines from EU officials.

Backed by diplomats and civil servants from the 25 EU members, the officials are drafting a "non-emotive lexicon for discussing radicalisation" to be submitted to Tony Blair and other leaders in June.

The Brussels officials hope the new lexicon, which would not be legally binding, would be adopted by governments and other EU institutions, such as the European Commission and European Parliament.

An EU official said: "The basic idea behind it is to avoid the use of improper words that would cause frustration among Muslims and increase the risk of radicalisation."

Along with civil servants from the Home Office, the officials have reviewed the impact of such terms as Islamist, fundamentalist and jihad when describing acts of terrorism and murder.

"Jihad means something for you and me; it means something else for a Muslim," EU officials at a Berlin conference on radicalisation said. "Jihad is a perfectly positive concept of trying to fight evil within yourself."

Though British officials have been involved in drawing up the lexicon, Whitehall sources indicated the Government was unlikely to adopt it wholesale or heed any call to ban "Islamic terrorist".

The lexicon is seen in London as more likely to be of use to continental governments with limited exposure to Muslims. A Home Office spokesman said: "We believe there is a balance to be struck between raising awareness of the impact that language can have and not letting extremism go unchallenged."

The lexicon is being discussed only at a "working group level" but has the support of Gijs de Vries, the EU's counter-terrorism co-ordinator.

The fact that the Democratic Party's base is firmly against the Iraq war has put its leading presidential candidate in a tough spot on Iran. Will Senator Clinton continue to embrace a hawkish position on Iran or adopt a softer line? She voted for the Iraq war but, unlike Kerry and Edwards, hasn't abandoned (so far, at least) her position in support of the war -- support that has brought her withering criticism from the Left. Will she defy the anti-war base again on Iran?

Last September, the senator stated, “a nuclear-armed Iran would shake the foundations of global security to its very core.” But she hasn't said much since, except to say that Bush should take the nuclear option "off the table" in reaction to Seymour Hersh's over-the-top New Yorker piece. Presumably she stands by her September position and would support the use of force should it be necessary to prevent a "nuclear-armed Iran" that would "shake the foundations of global security to its very core." But it's extremely doubtful that Democrats who oppose the Iraq war agree with Hillary's current position on Iran. They'd support sanctions but would rather live with a nuclear-armed Iran than with what they believe would be the consequences of an attack. This is probably why Hillary Clinton has been so quiet on Iran lately.

Since her election, Hillary has positioned herself as a Scoop Jackson Democrat on many national security issues. But Scoop didn't win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972; McGovern did. It's not clear today that Democratic activists have learned the lesson of McGovern, which is why Sen. Clinton faces a dilemma on Iran and why her road to the Democratic nomination won't be smooth sailing.

(The New York Times follows up their recent Iran editorial with a front-page piece today quoting nuclear analysts who say "nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020." But as we know intelligence estimates can overestimate AND underestimate a target nation's nuclear program.)

Posted on April 11, 2006:

The editors at the paper have weighed in on what to do about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons -- in two words, not much. Their argument boils down to this: Tehran is a decade away from a bomb, so all the "saber rattling" is unnecessary and counterproductive. We should encourage Iran's political evolution and let their government know that they're "better off" without nuclear bombs. Sanctions are not mentioned. They make no statement that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which puts them to the left of Howard Dean who has declared, "Under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power." And they say nothing on the consequences should Tehran produce them. One person who has offered his thoughts on the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran is Gerard Baker of the Times (London), who wrote:

If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.

No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.

I hope Iran is "about 10 years away from building" nuclear bombs as the editors claim, but how do they know with such certainty? They don't say where they got that number. In fact, their favorite weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has pegged the number at "five years" and the Los Angeles Times has reported that the number may be "within three years."

Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say

VIENNA — With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program.

If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said....

The three-year time frame for Iran to produce a bomb cited by diplomats is the same as an estimate by former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright.

In a paper that will be released Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, which Albright founded, he and a colleague give a detailed description of how, under a best-case scenario, Iran would be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a crude nuclear device in three years. Albright cautioned, however, that Iran faces many technical hurdles it might find difficult to overcome....

"We're getting to the point where this fundamental difference between the U.S. and EU position and that of the Russians is being overtaken by Iran's … putting new facts on the ground," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who previously worked for the U.S. State Department on nuclear issues. "Iran is closer and closer to enrichment, so the effort to deny them the capability is rapidly failing."

Let's hope the intelligence on the status of Iran's nuclear program is better than the world had on Saddam's program in 1991 -- a Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program that went undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA. It's also a bit ironic that the New York Times Iran editorial was published on the same day Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote the following:

Is the position of the left that America should allow the genocide minded Iranian leader to go along his merry way toward obtaining weapons of mass annihilation until a donkey occupies the White House? One does not have to be a fan of W to recognize the "waiting for the donkey" position to be morally and strategically disastrous....

The American left is increasingly moving toward the position that there is only one threat to our security in the world. Not the jihadists. Not the Iranian leader who denies the holocaust and his mullah buddies.

No, the only foe of the left is W., and if the Iranians get the bomb, so be it. This is the partisanship of fools."

Give that man a raise!

Wade Zirkle, executive director of Vets for Freedom and Iraq combat vet, writes in today's Washington Post:

Earlier this year there was a town hall meeting on the Iraq war, sponsored by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), with the participation of such antiwar organizations as CodePink and MoveOn.org. The event also featured Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine who had become an outspoken critic of the war. To this Iraq war veteran, it was a good example of something that's become all too common: People from politics, the media and elsewhere purporting to represent "our" views. With all due respect, most often they don't.

I'd bookmark Vets for Freedom and return often. Wade and his fellow vets have put together an excellent web site.

The regime may be more vulnerable to comprehensive sanctions than many realize. Despite high oil prices, the mullahs are running an economy with little job growth and high unemployment. Radio Free Europe reports that Iran's president has been traveling around the country reassuring people on the economy.

President Ahmadinejad has discussed the issue of unemployment -- estimated to be at least 11 percent and closer to 20 percent -- in several recent speeches, hinting at his recognition that he must satisfy voters' most immediate concerns. He announced in the northeastern town of Quchan on April 11 that 180 trillion rials (approximately $200 million) will be distributed in the provinces for job creation, IRNA reported. In a speech in Mashhad on April 10, he said, "Employment is one of the most important issues to be tackled by the nation and the government," state television reported. "There are so many young people who have a specialization. They have learned and studied but there is no employment opportunity for them."

A sanctions-induced economic tailspin may convince many Iranians that their government's nuclear weapons quest isn't such a good idea. Of course, the most comprehensive sanctions would be those imposed by the UN Security Council. But that would require Russia and China to act responsibly so don't hold your breath. And even if the UN acted with speed and resolve in applying real sanctions it may not be enough to stop Iran's weapons program. But it's worth a try.

Agence France Presse reports that,

Saudi Arabia will exert all efforts to fight terrorism and its financiers, the kingdom's crown prince said, calling it a "disease" that threatens the whole world.

Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is also deputy prime minister and defence minister, said terrorist acts are contrary to the teachings of Islam.

Sounds good. Hopefully, this means the Saudi government will stop funding stuff like this.

Some Republicans continue to whine that Democrats didn't allow them to take out the felony provision contained in the House-passed immigration bill. But why would Democrats help Republicans out? They want to retake the House and believe the felony language helps them in swing districts. House Republicans put the provision in the bill and now the leadership wants nothing to do with it. Perhaps next time they'll listen a bit less to Rep. Tancredo and Company. From the Associated Press:

GOP Leaders to Drop Felony for Immigrants

WASHINGTON -- The two top Republicans in Congress, confronted with internal party divisions as well as large public demonstrations, said Tuesday they intend to pass immigration legislation that does not subject illegal immigrants to prosecution as felons.

A written statement by House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, did not say whether they would seek legislation subjecting illegal immigrants to misdemeanor prosecution or possibly a civil penalty such as a fine....

GOP aides pointed out that Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had tried during debate on the House floor to reduce the penalty to a misdemeanor.

The attempt failed on a vote of 257-164, with 65 Republicans and 191 Democrats opposed. Many of the Democrats, including members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, indicated at the time they favored no criminal penalties, and opposed the suggested change.

In their statement, Hastert and Frist said the Democrats who did so had demonstrated a ''lack of compassion.''

Will the New York Times run a front-page correction for what they reported in this piece based on information that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald now says is incorrect? National Review's Byron York points out that earlier today Fitzgerald sent the following to the judge in the Libby case:

We are writing to correct a sentence from the Government's Response to Defendant's Third Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on April 5, 2006. The sentence, which is the second sentence of the second paragraph on page 23, reads, 'Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That sentence should read, "Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

The Washington Post has posted a piece on Fitzgerald's correction here.

(A reader emails on my April 9 "Joe Wilson's Forgetfulness" post:

This is largely forgotten now but Joe Wilson initially misled the public on a key question when the story first broke in the summer 2003:

Did the former Niger prime minister, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, meet with any Iraqi officials in June 1999?

By not mentioning or even denying this meeting's existence Wilson can conflate his conclusion that it was “highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place” with the weaker British allegation that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Africa.

Timeline [of Wilson's answer to that question] in brief:

1. Wilson says “yes” during his private CIA debrief in March, 2002.

2a. Wilson fails to mention the meeting in his NYT op/ed July 6, 2003.

2b. Wilson fails to mention the meeting during his first “Meet the Press” interview, July 6, 2003.

2c. DCI Tenet says “yes” in a July 11, 2003 CIA statement which brings the meetings existence to the public for the first time.

3. Wilson says “no” during a “Frontline” PBS Interview in August, 2003.

4. Wilson says “no” twice during his second “Meet the Press” interview in October, 2003.

5. Wilson says “yes” in his book “The Politics of Truth” January, 2004.

6. Wilson says “yes” during his third “Meet the Press” interview in May, 2004.

7. Wilson says “yes” to SSCI committee staff --report released in July, 2004.

Detailed timeline/sources follow:

1. March 5, 2002 Wilson debriefed by CIA just after returning from Niger (SSCI report, p.43-44): "Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, XXXX businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.”

2a-b. July 6, 2003: “What I Didn’t Find In Africa” Wilson’s NY Times Op/ed: Wilson fails to mention the Iraqi/Niger meeting, in the NYT op/ed or in his first “Meet the Press” interview that same day.

2c. July 11, 2003: DCI Tenet Statement: "He [Wilson] reported back to us that one of the former Nigerian officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales."

3. August 23, 2003: Frontline Interview:

Frontline: Did you see any evidence that they, the Iraqis, had sought to purchase uranium from Niger?

Wilson: No. The only thing that was explained to me in one conversation was of course there was this Nigerian delegation who came through in 1999 that had preliminary discussions related to the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Uranium was not discussed. There was another request for a meeting on the margins of an Islamic conference meeting that was turned down. …

4. October 5, 2003 Wilson appears again on “Meet the Press” (MSNBC, transcript):

Russert: "...the White House will say Ambassador, ... that your meeting with officials in Niger, including the suggestion that in June ’99 Iraqi officials met with officials from Niger, confirmed exactly that point: that by expanding commercial relations, they could have been talking about uranium, which would confirm the president’s suggestion that they were seeking uranium from Niger.”

Wilson: “Well, there’s a couple of problems with that. First of all, the meeting never took place. An intermediary came to this official, and said, “I want you to meet with these guys. They’re interested in talking about expanding commercial relations.” The person who talked to me said, “Red flags went up immediately, I thought of U.N. Security Council sanctions, I thought of all sorts of other reasons why we didn’t want to have any meeting. I declined the meeting,” and this was out of the country, on the margins of an OIC meeting. So it was a meeting that did not take place."

5. January, 2004 Wilson Speaks Again to His Source [Mayaki] (“The Politics of Truth” p.28) and for the first time changes his public story: Source [Mayaki] tells Wilson that “Baghdad Bob” was probably the Iraqi he [Mayaki] met at the OAU meeting in 1999,.

6. May 2, 2004 Wilson Appears on “Meet the Press”(MSNBC transcript) and contradicts his previous MTP statement:

"MR. RUSSERT: George Tenet in a statement said that a Niger official did say to you there may have been discussions about a potential business dealings and maybe that could have been a suggestion of uranium.

AMB. WILSON: That's right. And, of course, as I put in the book, there was a meeting on the margins of an OAU summit between a senior Niger official and an Iraqi official who turns out to be the former minister of information, Baghdad Bob."

7. July 7, 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report released: “In an interview with Committee staff, the former ambassador [Wilson] was able to provide more information about the meeting between former Prime Minister Mayaki and the Iraqi delegation. The former ambassador said that Mayaki did meet with the Iraqi delegation but never discussed what was meant by “expanding commercial relations.” The former ambassador said that because Mayaki was wary of discussing any trade issues with a country under United Nations (UN) sanctions, he made a successful effort to steer the conversation away from a discussion of trade with the Iraqi delegation.." (SSCI report, page 44.)

Interesting, if the quotes and context stand up.

(From Reuters: "France's students and trade unions prepared a victory parade [today] to mark the demise of a hated youth jobs law, with politicians and analysts split over whether the hope of labour market reform was dead too.... 'Alas, the hope for reform has been buried with them,' [the business daily La Tribune] wrote. 'No important reform can be undertaken in the 12 months ahead of us until the 2007 presidential election. And nothing says it will be easier after that.'")

Posted on on April 6, 2006:

Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia are doing something wrong. They enjoy healthy economic growth rates, attract new businesses, and --- gasp -- have low corporate tax rates. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that several European Union nations are "moving ahead with the long-taboo subject of creating common rules for corporate taxes, despite objections from low-tax nations such as Ireland and Slovakia.... Ireland and Slovakia have benefited from lower tax rates than their neighbors." The current corporate tax rate in Germany is 38.9 percent; France, 35; Italy, 33; U.K. 30; Slovakia, 19; Hungary, 16; and Ireland 12.5. An original EU member state, Ireland has been an economic juggernaut compared to its larger neighbors. This study by two Swedish academics singled out Ireland as one of the few bright spots in the last decade in an otherwise stagnant European economic landscape (former East Bloc nations were not included in their analysis). Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag observe:

Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.

Perhaps EU leaders should learn from Ireland and the nations of Central Europe (see Business Week's "Rise Of A Powerhouse") rather than seeking to penalize them for understanding how to compete in a global economy. Unfortunately, it's a lesson many French "students" have yet to grasp as they protest proposed changes in the nation's job-stifling labor laws.

The editors at the paper have weighed in on what to do about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons -- in two words, not much. Their argument boils down to this: Tehran is a decade away from a bomb, so all the "saber rattling" is unnecessary and counterproductive. We should encourage Iran's political evolution and let their government know that they're "better off" without nuclear bombs. Sanctions are not mentioned. They make no statement that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which puts them to the left of Howard Dean who has declared, "Under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power." And they say nothing on the consequences should Tehran produce them. One person who has offered his thoughts on the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran is Gerard Baker of the Times (London), who wrote:

If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.

No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.

I hope Iran is "about 10 years away from building" nuclear bombs as the editors claim, but how do they know with such certainty? They don't say where they got that number. In fact, their favorite weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has pegged the number at "five years" and the Los Angeles Times has reported that the number may be "within three years."

Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say

VIENNA — With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program.

If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said....

The three-year time frame for Iran to produce a bomb cited by diplomats is the same as an estimate by former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright.

In a paper that will be released Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, which Albright founded, he and a colleague give a detailed description of how, under a best-case scenario, Iran would be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a crude nuclear device in three years. Albright cautioned, however, that Iran faces many technical hurdles it might find difficult to overcome....

"We're getting to the point where this fundamental difference between the U.S. and EU position and that of the Russians is being overtaken by Iran's … putting new facts on the ground," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who previously worked for the U.S. State Department on nuclear issues. "Iran is closer and closer to enrichment, so the effort to deny them the capability is rapidly failing."

Let's hope the intelligence on the status of Iran's nuclear program is better than the world had on Saddam's program in 1991 -- a Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program that went undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA. It's also a bit ironic that the New York Times Iran editorial was published on the same day Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote the following:

Is the position of the left that America should allow the genocide minded Iranian leader to go along his merry way toward obtaining weapons of mass annihilation until a donkey occupies the White House? One does not have to be a fan of W to recognize the "waiting for the donkey" position to be morally and strategically disastrous....

The American left is increasingly moving toward the position that there is only one threat to our security in the world. Not the jihadists. Not the Iranian leader who denies the holocaust and his mullah buddies.

No, the only foe of the left is W., and if the Iranians get the bomb, so be it. This is the partisanship of fools."

Give that man a raise!

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian takes a shot at Google and Yahoo for kowtowing to Beijing. From ComputerWorld:

Taiwan President pans Google, Yahoo on free speech Strong criticisms on anniversary of activist's death

In a speech commemorating a local human rights activist, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian accused Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. of allowing the prospect of corporate profits to lure them into compromising free speech in China.

"I again call on China's Communist government and on multinationals that have sacrificed freedom of speech for corporate profits, including well known companies such as Yahoo and Google, to respect democracy and freedom, because it is the correct way to ensure continuous future development," Chen said in the speech Friday.

Taiwan's president used the 17th annual commemorative ceremony for human rights activist Cheng Nan-jung as a platform for his speech, arguing that countries should not compromise free speech or freedom of the press for any reason.

Cheng, former publisher of a weekly magazine dedicated to protesting government suppression of press freedoms in Taiwan, set himself on fire in 1989 during an attempt by police to arrest him.

Since the incident, Taiwan has developed one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia, with full press and speech freedoms. The island enjoyed its third free presidential election in 2004, with the incumbent, Chen, winning his second term in office.

Neither Google nor Yahoo immediately answered a request for comment about the speech.

Google launched a censored version of its search engine in China in January. It argued that it was better if it offered users there a compromised version of its search service rather than none at all. The company came under fire in the U.S. and elsewhere for the move.

Censors and strong firewalls in China slow the performance of overseas Internet sites. Only by locating servers in China can a company such as Google speed up its site, but putting servers in the country also gives Beijing control over how the company runs its business.

Yahoo has faced criticism for turning e-mails over to Chinese police that put a journalist in jail for 10-years....

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration may severely restrict the movements of Venezuela's ambassador if pro-government activists in Venezuela engage in any more ''thuggish'' activities against U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, a spokesman said Monday.

Meanwhile, Colombia's president remains a popular American ally who doesn't get nearly the same media attention as Chavez. I guess anti-Americanism makes for a better story line.

Schwarzenegger talks sense on immigration in today's Wall Street Journal:

President Reagan memorably described his "shining city on a hill" as a place that "hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here." Perhaps because he'd been a border state governor, Reagan understood the challenges and the opportunities presented by immigration. He believed, as I do, that we can have an immigration policy that both strengthens our borders and welcomes immigrants.

With the Iraq nuclear issue back in the news, here's some background information that didn't make it into yesterday's New York Times piece that readers may have found of interest. 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....

So before the controversy over Niger, uranium and aluminum tubes, US intelligence believed -- or at least told Pollack -- that Iraq had not only "reconstituted its nuclear weapons program" but was "close" to getting a nuke.

Pollack 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).

Pollack's knowledge from his days in the Clinton administration must have been behind this quote he made to the New York Times on March 14, 2003 -- a quote made AFTER the IAEA issued its final pre-war report:

“The choice we have before us is we either go to war now or we will never go to war with Saddam until he chooses to use a nuclear weapon and he chooses the time and place. The question for me is not war or no war. It’s a question of war now, when the costs may be significant, or war later when they may be unimaginable.”

Of course, the rationale for removing Saddam from power was based on far, far more than Iraq's quest for nukes but the revisionist machine -- (Paul Krugman, the NTY editors, etc.) is working hard to portray it that way. More on this later...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, co-founded by former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, makes a contribution to U.S. National Security -- specifically the NSA's al Qaeda spying operation.

You've got to hand it to Joe Wilson. He has certainly cashed in on his celebrity as he tours college campuses making ludicrous statements. Wilson is also someone who is curiously forgetful about facts that involve his behavior and those surrounding his trip to Niger.

''It seems to me that first and foremost, the White House needs to come clean on this matter,'' Wilson told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's ''This Week.'' ''My own view of this is that the White House owes the American people and particularly our service people who have been sent into war, an apology for having misrepresented the facts.''

In case you forgot, Joe Wilson once claimed a role in exposing the Iraq-Niger documents as forgeries. But that wasn't true, as the Senate's 2004 bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq pointed out:

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.

And media reports to the contrary, Wilson did not "debunk" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium. In fact, 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.

And, for the record, the British have stood firm in their intelligence on the matter. In fact, the July 2004 Butler report 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.

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.

I wonder why none of this makes it into Mr. Wilson's speeches.

The enemy. From Reuters:

MILAN - An Egyptian accused of helping plan the Madrid train bombings in 2004 indoctrinated young people in Spain and advocated martyrdom, an Italian investigator told a court on Friday....

Standing trial with Ahmed was his suspected protege, an Arab man named as Yahia.

Ahmed drew inspiration from Berg's beheading nearly two years ago, according to an audio recording by police.

"Together with Yahia, his disciple, he watched a video tape of Berg's execution and made comments referring to jihad and martyrdom," Megale said.

From the Globe and Mail:

Senior federal cabinet ministers will be handed a "snapshot" today of how terrorists have dramatically increased their Internet presence during the past year to create a "virtual university of terrorism."

The [Simon Wiesenthal Center] report documents how terrorists are increasingly using the Internet not only to recruit and train people but also to glorify bombings, sniper attacks and killings.

Manuals on how to build a so-called dirty bomb, make poisons and use global positioning devices are commonplace on the Web, the report states. It also illustrates how terrorist groups use multiple download sites to avoid detection.

on this report from the Associated Press:

Britain Nixes Argentina's Falklands Claim

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Britain reiterated its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and rejected Argentina's claims in a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan circulated Wednesday.

The letter from Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry was a response to a Jan. 9 letter to Annan from Argentina's charge d'affaires protesting ''the illegitimate occupation'' of the islands.

Argentine troops invaded the islands -- which they call the Malvinas -- on April 2, 1982, claiming Argentina had inherited the archipelago from the Spanish crown before they were occupied by Britain in 1833.

Britain reclaimed the islands in a 74-day war.

Argentina still maintains its claim to the archipelago, populated by about 2,000 people of mostly British ancestry, but has pledged never to invade again.

The Argentine government said in its letter that 173 years after Britain's ''illegitimate occupation,'' Argentina remained committed to the islands' recovery.

Argentina cited U.N. resolutions and declarations of the Organization of American States urging both countries ''to resume bilateral negotiations with a view to finding a solution to the dispute over sovereignty.''

Argentina reaffirmed its readiness to resume negotiations ''with immediate effect'' and called on Britain to do the same.

Jones Parry's letter made no mention of any negotiations, saying the British government ''has no doubts about the sovereignty of the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and their surrounding maritime areas.''

See here and here.

Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia are doing something wrong. They enjoy healthy economic growth rates, attract new businesses, and --- gasp -- have low corporate tax rates. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that several European Union nations are "moving ahead with the long-taboo subject of creating common rules for corporate taxes, despite objections from low-tax nations such as Ireland and Slovakia.... Ireland and Slovakia have benefited from lower tax rates than their neighbors." The current corporate tax rate in Germany is 38.9 percent; France, 35; Italy, 33; U.K. 30; Slovakia, 19; Hungary, 16; and Ireland 12.5. An original EU member state, Ireland has been an economic juggernaut compared to its larger neighbors. This study by two Swedish academics singled out Ireland as one of the few bright spots in the last decade in an otherwise stagnant European economic landscape (former East Bloc nations were not included in their analysis). Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag observe:

Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.

Perhaps EU leaders should learn from Ireland and the nations of Central Europe (see Business Week's "Rise Of A Powerhouse") rather than seeking to penalize them for understanding how to compete in a global economy. Unfortunately, it's a lesson many French "students" have yet to grasp as they protest proposed changes in the nation's job-stifling labor laws.

Opponents of President Bush's immigration position like to claim the high ground on national security. They rightly claim that we must secure our border, especially in a post 9/11 world. But at the same time many also contend that a guest-worker program would weaken U.S. security. Well, Mayor Giuliani argues that 9/11 is a reason why we need such a program.

From today's Chicago Sun Times:

Giuliani wants to 'regularize' immigrants to improve safety:

Turning 11 million illegal immigrants into criminals is not the way to secure the nation's borders or prevent another terrorist attack, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Tuesday.

The way to do that is to "regularize," document, photograph and fingerprint immigrants to drive what Giuliani called "this vast underground" above ground....

"The president is right to support a guest-workers program," Giuliani said. "If we recognize it, document it, photograph it and know who and what it is, then we can concentrate our attention on the people who aren't coming in to be guest workers but are coming in to bomb us, or coming in to sell heroin or cocaine or to launder money.

"By having this vast underground, we are much more insecure," said Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney. "And by trying to do the impossible, we're much more insecure. If you have 11 million people in this country who are illegal or undocumented, and you have similar numbers coming in through this underground, that is a much, much more dangerous situation for terrorists to exploit, drug dealers to exploit and other criminals to exploit."

...On Tuesday, Giuliani acknowledged that the immigration issue has divided his Republican Party and the nation. But that's partly because it's being conducted "as a theoretical debate," when immigration is "a fact" of life, he said.

"People want to come to the United States. That is a good thing. We want people to want to come to the United States. That means we're still the shining city on the hill. We're still the place [where] people see greater opportunity, greater freedom, a better way to create a better life for themselves and their families," he said.

It's not hard to find comparisons between President Bush and Hitler on anti-war web sites or on signs carried in anti-war marches. But this may be the first time I've read a comparison of Bush's thinking to Tojo's from a well-known politician. In reviewing an upcoming book by Sen. Ted Kennedy on the president's foreign policy, the Boston Globe notes:

Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Kennedy says, was an example of ''preventive war" -- attacking a nation to prevent it from developing the ability to threaten the United States. A similar manner of thinking led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, he writes, since Japan was seeking to block the US military buildup in the Pacific.

Wonder if the Democratic leadership agrees with the senior senator from Massachusetts? How about all those Democrats who voted for the war?

The news from Sen. Kerry's op-ed today in the New York Times isn't his call to cut and run from Iraq. He's held that position for a while. The big question is whether Sen. Clinton will abandoned her position against setting troop withdrawal timetables. Anti-war Democrats have been pressuring her to do just that for many months. So will Sen. Clinton follow the lead of Sen. Lieberman or roll over for the Party's base like Sen. Kerry has done? Stay tuned...

(Interesting twist in the immigration debate among evangelicals reported in today's Washington Post.)

Social conservatives couldn't have a better friend on Capitol Hill than the Senator from Kansas. On the cultural divide, he stands as far away from Sen. Kennedy as Pluto is from Mars. Yet, Brownback was instrumental in getting the immigration bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Upon passage, he noted the bill, which also tightens border security, isn't "amnesty," which some conservative critics have falsely claimed in much the same way liberals did in accusing Republicans of "cutting" programs when, in fact, they were just slowing the rate of spending growth. It's an effective rhetorical device but deeply misleading. Said Brownback:

I am pleased that we were able to report out a bill that makes positive strides toward a guest-worker program and strong enforcement at the border and on the employer....Committee passage is a big step, but not the final step. Workable immigration reform is one of the biggest issues facing the country today and in the future, and we struck a good balance. We need to continue to work on this bill from the floor of the Senate to ensure that we don’t make the mistakes of the 1986 amnesty bill or the 1996 enforcement-only bill, which together led to an explosion of the illegal immigrant population.

David Brooks in today's New York Times also argues (Times Select, unfortunately) that social conservatives should speak up in support of the Brownback-backed immigration bill and not let opponents claim the moral high ground. Some highlights:

The facts show that the recent rise in immigration hasn't been accompanied by social breakdown, but by social repair. As immigration has surged, violent crime has fallen by 57 percent. Teen pregnancies and abortion rates have declined by a third. Teenagers are having fewer sexual partners and losing their virginity later. Teen suicide rates have dropped. The divorce rate for young people is on the way down.

Over the past decade we've seen the beginnings of a moral revival, and some of the most important work has been done by Catholic and evangelical immigrant churches.... This is evident in everything from divorce rates (which are low, given immigrants' socioeconomic status) to their fertility rates (which are high) and even the way they shop.... By the second generation, most immigrant families are middle class and paying taxes that more than make up for the costs of the first generation. By the third generation, 90 percent speak English fluently and 50 percent marry non-Latinos.... Right now...government pushes immigrants into a chaotic underground world. The Judiciary Committee's bill...would tighten the borders, but it would also reward virtue. Immigrants who worked hard, paid fines, paid their taxes, stayed out of trouble and waited their turn would have a chance to become citizens. This isn't government enabling vice; it's government at its best, encouraging middle-class morality....

(Florida Gov. Jeb Bush weighs in on the immigration debate.)

Posted on March 31, 2006:

Jerry Kilgore lost his bid to succeed the prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner. Though as Election Day drew near, the Kilgore camp believed they had an issue that would put them over the top -- illegal immigration. It didn't work and may be a harbinger of things to come for Republicans if, as the Wall Street Journal editorializes today, the party of Reagan morphs into the party of Tom Tancredo. Just after Kilgore's defeat Fred Barnes noted in the Weekly Standard that Republicans had lost their grip on what had been two solidly Republican counties in Northern Virginia.

From the governor's election in Virginia last week, there's a bit of evidence that the Republican grip on the exurbs may be loosening.... [T]he outcome in Loudoun and Prince William should be alarming to Republicans. Located west of Washington, Loudoun is the second fastest-growing county in the country. Kilgore lost Loudoun by 51 percent to 46 percent. A year earlier, Bush did 10 points better.... The numbers in Prince William, south of Washington, were slightly better. Kilgore was defeated by 50 percent to 48 percent, slipping five points below Bush....

I think there are two better explanations for the Republican retreat in the two exurban counties. First, there's the immigration issue. Late in the campaign, Kilgore played up his opposition to government aid for illegal immigrants. He did so in TV ads and speeches, criticizing Kaine for supporting taxpayer-financed services for illegals and their families. The tagline in his TV spots was: "What part of 'illegal' does Tim Kaine not understand?"

The question is not whether Kilgore was indulging in blatant immigrant-bashing. He wasn't. The question is whether his emphasis on illegals might have been seen as unfriendly to immigrants, especially by the large immigrant communities in the two counties....

"They overplayed the immigrant issue," says Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University in northern Virginia. "They may have caused a counter-mobilization by people who were offended by the ads."

Rozell says he was "stunned" when he heard a Kilgore radio ad on illegal immigrants on a classical music station in Washington. "Is that the demographic their ads were supposed to appeal to?" he says. In all likelihood, Rozell says, the ads appealed only to Republicans already committed to vote for Kilgore.

Loudoun and Prince William were not as vote-rich for Bush last year as many other exurbs. Of the 100 fastest-growing counties, according to Brownstein and Rainey, "Bush took 70 percent or more of the vote in 40 of them and 60 percent or more in 70 of them. In all, Bush won 63 percent of the votes in these 100 counties."

So Loudoun and Prince William aren't quite typical in yet another way: They're not landslide Republican counties. But the fact that Kilgore fell far short of the president's showing in the two Virginia exurbs is bound to be a matter of concern to Republicans as they focus on 2006 and 2008.

President Bush opposes the House-passed immigration bill because it isn't "comprehensive" and has asked for everyone involved in the debate to keep it "civil." Of course, he was talking to House Republicans. Having successfully run STATEWIDE in Texas and twice NATIONALLY, the president may have a better grasp on how to maintain Republican majorities than those from overwhelmingly safe districts who appear to be the most vocal on the immigration issue.

That's how the Democratic Leadership Council's Marshall Wittmann characterized the Left's campaign to take down the Connecticut Senator in the August primary. Unlike Senators Kerry and Edwards, who long ago rolled over for the anti-war folks, Lieberman has stood his ground on the Iraq War. A while back, he even had the gall to remind his fellow Democrats, "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril" -- outraging Howard Dean's brother and many other anti-Bush liberals. Nowadays, Lieberman occupies almost the entire Henry "Scoop" Jackson wing of the Democratic Party. In the early 1970s, "Scoop" Jackson of Washington co-founded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group of hawkish Democrats who opposed the take over of the party by the McGovern folks. Today, as Wittmann observes, the party of McGovern lives on.

From Wittmann's Bull Moose Blog:

Monday, April 03, 2006

Real Security

The Moose weighs in on the donkey's attempt at a hawkish stance.

While the Moose was roaming for the past few days, he noticed that the Congressional donkeys issued a "real security" plan. It contains some commendable elements that are worthy of a party attempting to flex its national security muscles.

However, as Fred Hiatt points out in the Washington Post, the document reflects a party that is without a world vision other than a critique of the incumbent. Hiatt,

"The Democrats do indeed attack the failures and promise an end to incompetence. But they also reveal a different world view, one that is far more cramped and inward-looking. While reassuring voters that they will keep "foreign interests" out of "our national security infrastructure" -- including "mass transit" -- the Democrats do not find space to mention democracy even once...

"Throughout the plan, in fact, there is no discussion of values, of liberty or generosity, of free markets or foreign aid -- of any purpose for American leadership larger than self-protection. The pollsters may be satisfied, but John F. Kennedy would not recognize his party."

The difficulty for the donkey is that, all protestations to the contrary, it is becoming branded as the anti-war party. To one degree or another, the Democrats are increasingly united in their opposition to the war.

Setting Iraq aside, it is not even clear if many Democrats believe that we are engaged in a global struggle against Jihadism. Their loathing of Bush blinds many Democrats from seeing the very real threat to freedom from radical Islam. And even moderate Democrats are silent or even embracing the notion of censuring the President for directing the NSA to listen in on enemy communications. Will the American people really believe that this is the party of strength?

Of course, at the moment, the American people have soured on Iraq. And the Democrats' opposition may profit them handsomely in November.

Despite short-term political gains, the party may pay a stiff price in the long term. Over three decades ago, Democrats opposed another unpopular war and the party has still not recovered from the perception that it is weak on defense and will cut and run.

The anti-war Democratic left is emboldened. They are attempting to purge one of the party's foremost national security leaders - Joe Lieberman. Undoubtedly, his opponent will be awash in Hollywood and blogosphere money. The internet is aflame.

Should lefties realize their goal, they will take a giant step in branding the party as soft on national security and unwelcome to hawks. And no "real security" document will be able to counteract the damage inflicted on the donkey.

From the Telegraph:

Iran has set up a sophisticated intelligence gathering operation in southern Lebanon to identify targets in northern Israel in the event of a military confrontation over its controversial nuclear programme.

Senior Israeli military commanders say Iran has spent tens of millions of pounds helping its close ally, Hizbollah, the Shia Muslim militant group that controls southern Lebanon, to set up a network of control towers and monitoring stations along the entire length of Israel's border with south Lebanon....

"This is now Iran's front line with Israel," a senior Israeli military commander said. "The Iranians are using Hizbollah to spy on us so that they can collect information for future attacks. And there is very little we can do about it."

...Israeli military officers report that teams of Iran's Revolutionary Guards travel regularly to southern Lebanon to help train local Hizbollah fighters in terrorist tactics. Tensions between Iran and Israel have intensified dramatically since the election last summer of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's new leader. Israel has repeatedly threatened to take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the new Iranian government has responded by calling for Israel's destruction....

The BBC reports that Iraqi prosecutors will formerly charge Saddam Hussein with "genocide over a 1980s campaign against the Kurds." Saddam's forces killed about 180,000 in the "Anfal" campaign, which made worldwide headlines after the poison gas attack on Halabja. The BBC also reports that investigators have reviewed "thousands of documents" that will help demonstrate that Saddam was complicit in the murderous campaign and authorized the poison gas attacks. But why would prosecutors waste their time reviewing "thousands of documents"? Haven't they read the latest New York Times editorial on the issue of reviewing documents? The editors are bored by it all -- see here and here. What a strange position for a truth-seeking newspaper to adopt.

(According to the Associated Press, Hans Blix says don't sweat it. Iran is at least five years from getting a nuke.)

Posted on March 25, 2006:

From today's Los Angeles Times:

Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say

VIENNA — With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program.

If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said....

According to one non-Western official who closely follows Iran's progress, engineers at a pilot plant in Natanz are likely to start crucial testing in the next couple of days to ensure that the centrifuges and the pipes connecting them are properly vacuum sealed. They are likely to begin feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a series of 164 connected centrifuges within about two weeks, the official said.

Diplomats and experts say Iran has forgone usual testing periods for individual centrifuges and small series of linked centrifuges, instead apparently trying to put together as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

They said Iran also was likely to begin assembling more centrifuges in mid-April to put together additional cascades of linked centrifuges. The pilot plant can hold up to six cascades of 164 centrifuges each. It could take many months to complete that work, the diplomats said.

The U.S. and its British, French and German allies believe Iran intends to build nuclear weapons, and must be stopped before learning how to enrich uranium. They view the ability to operate a series of centrifuges as a technological tipping point.

"If you can do one centrifuge, you can do 164," said Emyr Jones Parry, British envoy to the U.N. "If you can do 164, you probably can do many more. That means you have the potential to do full-scale enrichment. If you can do enrichment up to 7%, you can do 80%. If you can do 80%, you can produce a bomb"....

The three-year time frame for Iran to produce a bomb cited by diplomats is the same as an estimate by former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright.

In a paper that will be released Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, which Albright founded, he and a colleague give a detailed description of how, under a best-case scenario, Iran would be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a crude nuclear device in three years. Albright cautioned, however, that Iran faces many technical hurdles it might find difficult to overcome....

The European Union and the Americans want to exert vigorous pressure on Iran. They insist on a reinstatement of a total moratorium on uranium enrichment that Iran had voluntarily put in place in late 2004 while negotiating with the EU. The U.S. and EU are willing to use a U.N. procedure that gives Security Council resolutions the force of law, and to impose sanctions.

The Russians and the Chinese, mindful of the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq three years ago, fear that taking too hard a line would lead to an escalation of tensions that could result in military action against Iran. They believe that sanctions and other measures might push Iran to abandon the nonproliferation treaty, which keeps international inspectors in the country.

Russia and China would be willing to allow Iran to retain a small cascade of centrifuges for research purposes....

"We're getting to the point where this fundamental difference between the U.S. and EU position and that of the Russians is being overtaken by Iran's … putting new facts on the ground," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who previously worked for the U.S. State Department on nuclear issues. "Iran is closer and closer to enrichment, so the effort to deny them the capability is rapidly failing."

Let's hope our intelligence on the status of Iran's nuclear program is better than we had on Saddam's in 1991.

From a Worldwide Standard post, January 13, 2006:

Saddam Came Close to Having a Nuke in '91; Today, Iran Follows Saddam's Nuclear Procurement Playbook

It's easy to forget that the resolution authorizing force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait barely passed Congress. It's easy to forget that Iraq had passed frequent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections designed to ensure its compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or that its Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program went undetected by US intelligence. It's also easy to forget just how skilled Saddam became at deception post-Osirak.

Some history --

Iraq ratified the NPT in 1969. Twelve year later, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. According to the June 22, 1981 Newsweek,

[t]he Osirak reactor was theoretically only for research purposes—but Iraq twice refused a French offer to supply it with low-enriched uranium, insisting instead on weapons-grade, 93 per cent enriched fuel. Iraq was also operating an Italian-built “hot cell” lab for extracting plutonium, and had arranged to buy large quantities of uranium from Brazil, Portugal and Niger—all without any investment in a nuclear-energy program.

In his 2002 book, The Threatening Storm, Clinton NSC official Kenneth Pollack wrote that Osirak “was the key to Saddam’s nuclear weapons program and ... was due to go online within a matter of weeks.” The bombing set Iraq’s “nuclear bomb program back by several years,” but it also “taught the Iraqis an important lesson. Thereafter, Saddam ordered a redoubling of the Iraqi program...camouflaged against detection.” (Pollack would subsequently note this regarding Saddam's nuclear program.)

After the Osirak attack, Iraq would pursue a secret nuclear weapons program that had gone undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA until after the 1991 Gulf War. As former U.N. inspector David Kay wrote in a 1995 Washington Quarterly piece, Iraq would pursue this program while maintaining “its status as a full member” of the NPT because it was “the desire of the military and security services not to attract any undue attention to Iraq’s developing nuclear program that would complicate procurement and development efforts.”

The fact that Hussein was able to conceal his nuclear program was even more remarkable given that: 1) as the Washington Post noted in October 1991, the “scope and sophistication” of its program “resembled the Manhattan Project, the American effort that produced the first atomic bomb”; and 2) Iraq had passed regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On August 11, 1991, the Post reported that:

International inspectors...unearthed one of the most important—and disturbing—finds of the post-Cold War era: a huge assembly line for the covert manufacture of equipment to make an Iraqi bomb.

The location of the sophisticated, secret factory for manufacturing hundreds of uranium gas centrifuges was unknown to any foreign intelligence agency despite intense scrutiny and untouched by five weeks of severe aerial bombardment during the Gulf War that supposedly eviscerated the Iraqi nuclear project. As such, it is a monument to the world’s ignorance about what a determined bomb-builder such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein can do.

The factory was a key component in Iraq’s elaborate highly redundant and largely secret network of physics, chemistry and metallurgical laboratories, industrial mines, metalworking factories, electrical power generators, nuclear research reactors and radioactive waste processing sites—all aimed at swiftly putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the world’s most ruthless leaders.

The Post also reported:

Despite repeated warnings and Saddam’s own public statements, Western experts consistently underestimated Iraq’s scientific and technical capabilities. Inspection officials now believe Iraq was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb, not five to 10 years as previously thought.

Kay wrote that Iraq hid its program by keeping it “heavily compartmentalized” and employing a variety of deception techniques. For example, Iraq created a network of front companies to import nuclear-related materials “in quantities that were below the size that triggered controls.” Equipment was imported ostensibly for civilian purposes but was diverted to the nuclear program as well. (see here for UNMOVIC May 2003 report on Iraq's attempt to "conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks" for missiles, chems & bios)

The Iraqis, Kay continued, had an “accurate understanding of the limitations of U.S. technical collection systems...” and exploited these vulnerabilities through various methods, including:

construction of buildings within buildings... hiding power and water feeds to mislead as to facility use... diminishing value of a facility by apparent low security and lack of defenses... moving critical pieces of equipment at night....

Apparently, Iran has taken a page out of Saddam's nuclear weapons procurement book.

The vast ZOG conspiracy grows. You may want to incorporate this into your truly original study, "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy."

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and current resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, offers his assessment on Iraq and US political/military strategy in today's Wall Street Journal:

Americans aside, the attack in Samarra didn't blow apart the democratic Shiite consensus led by Ayatollah Sistani. The various, often mutually hostile, Shiite parties, are likely to plow ahead, however fitfully, to some political deal with the Sunnis and the Kurds, who both now know that the Shiites will no longer passively watch their women and children slaughtered and their holy sites desecrated. Sunni and Kurdish fear of Shiite power--a fickle but growing alliance between Sunni Arabs and Kurds was inevitable--is politically overdue and healthy for all concerned. This is a tightrope act, but the Sunni Arabs must internalize the fact that they cannot leverage the insurgency into power. If they continue to try, they will only convert Shiite "sheep" (the traditional Arab Sunni view of Arab Shiites) into rampant "lions," unstoppable by even the most revered, peace-promoting divines.

And what is most likely to curtail the violence is the U.S. military--not political dialogue among the Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds. Dialogue is important--the all-critical, viscerally anti-U.S. and seriously anti-Shiite Sunni Clerics Association is slowly moving toward reconciliation with a Shiite-led Iraq. But only the U.S. military has the capacity, as recently shown in Tal Afar and brilliantly reported by The New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan, to secure territory against insurgents and holy warriors. The successful operation in Tal Afar is a blatant negation of Gen. John Abizaid's "light footprint" strategy that views large numbers of U.S. soldiers as part of the problem, not the overwhelming part of a counterinsurgency solution. The current approach to counterinsurgency--transfer responsibility to the Iraqis as quickly as possible--will seriously stress Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, perhaps to the breaking point. Do we really want Shiite and Kurdish soldiers taking the lead in killing Sunnis? Unless heavily monitored by Americans for the foreseeable future, these soldiers could well utilize Algerian-style tactics against the Sunni Arabs. It is astonishing that Shiites have not unleashed more vengeance against their former Sunni Baathist masters and current Sunni tormentors.

It is no coincidence that Shiite militias have grown more powerful and more aggressive as U.S. forces have increasingly adopted an Iraqi-centered strategy. Such an approach will not, anytime soon, curtail Sunni attacks. Counterinsurgency warfare is the last thing you'd expect a newly minted army to undertake. Shiite militias, incorporated within the government and outside it, will not be inclined to stand down: They will react even more harshly to continuing attacks on their community. The Iraqification program has actually started to fuel the very violence that Iraqification in theory was supposed to stop. This gradual, perhaps rapid, U.S. withdrawal could well unhinge the Shiite community, giving victory to the militant minority.

We are now in the unenviable position of having to confront radicalized, murderous Shiite militias, who have gained broader Shiite support because of the Sunni-led violence and the lameness of U.S. counterinsurgency operations. The Bush administration would be wise not to postpone any longer what it should have already undertaken--securing Baghdad. This will be an enormously difficult task: Both Sunnis and Shiites will have to be confronted, but Sunni insurgents and brigands must be dealt with first to ensure America doesn't lose the Shiite majority and the government doesn't completely fall apart. Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts. But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place. And the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside. To punt this undertaking down the road when the political dynamics might be better, and when the number of American soldiers in Iraq will surely be less, perhaps a lot less, is to invite disaster.

The Iraqis and the Americans will either save or damn Iraq in the coming months. Quite contrary to the purblind charges of Michigan's Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, the Iraqis really are doing their part--better than what anyone historically could have expected. The real question is, will Gen. Abizaid and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do theirs?

Here's an interesting New York Times piece on how China's growing labor shortage will impact the world economy and swell the ranks of China's middle class:

Persistent labor shortages at hundreds of Chinese factories have led experts to conclude that the economy is undergoing a profound change that will ripple through the global market for manufactured goods.

The shortage of workers is pushing up wages and swelling the ranks of the country's middle class, and it could make Chinese-made products less of a bargain worldwide. International manufacturers are already talking about moving factories to lower-cost countries like Vietnam....

For all the complaints of factory owners, though, the situation has a silver lining for the members of the world's largest labor force. Economists say the shortages are spurring companies to improve labor conditions and to more aggressively recruit workers with incentives and benefits.

The changes also suggest that China may already be moving up the economic ladder, as workers see opportunities beyond simply being unskilled assemblers of the world's goods. Rising wages may also prompt Chinese consumers to start buying more products from other countries, helping to balance the nation's huge trade surpluses....

China's one-child policy is also aggravating the shortages. With the first generation of young people born under the one-child policy now emerging from postsecondary education, many of them see varied opportunities not available to an earlier generation.

You may also find this piece, "China Could Learn From India’s Slow and Quiet Rise" by MIT professor Yasheng Huang, of interest.

(From Reuters: "TEHRAN -Iran said it would test fire a powerful torpedo on Monday and more missiles on Tuesday as part of a week of wargames in the Gulf, a senior naval officer told state television.")

If this piece is an accurate assessment of Iran's terror response should we hit its nuclear installations, how do we think they'll behave once they get one? Will they be bolder in sponsoring terror or more restrained? Will they assume a more aggressive posture in the Middle East or a less assertive one? I didn't find any assessments related to these questions in today's Washington Post article. We also learn from the Post's Dana Priest that Iran has been trying to dictate the foreign policy of Washington, London, Paris and Bonn by threatening terror attacks.

Iran "certainly wants to remind governments that they can create a lot of difficulty if strikes were to occur," said a senior European counterterrorism official interviewed recently.

One would think that such behavior should only reinforce the necessity of shutting down Tehran's nuclear weapons program.

Today, in a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Secretary of State Rice was asked about how many "mistakes" she believed the U.S. has made in Iraq. In answering, Rice admitted mistakes were made but also stressed an extremely important point that Republicans on Capitol Hill should also make as much as possible. Rice said:

The important thing is to get the big strategic decisions right and that I am confident that the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for peace and for democracy is the right decision.

Rice is right. The judgment to remove Saddam Hussein from power was the "right" strategic decision. Even so, Republicans, in the face of constant Democratic attacks about the Iraq war, have been far too defensive about the strategic necessity to topple Saddam. They hardly ever talk about it. For example, they don't talk about what the Middle East would look like today with Saddam in power. They don't talk about the Duelfer finding that Saddam was primed to pump out more wmd or that Saddam's terrorist connection was deeper than the media lets on, including preparations for attacks in Europe.

Some Democrats opposed the war from the start, while many others supported the war resolution but now "regret" their vote. Fine. Democrats believe we should have left Saddam in power and "contained" him. Republicans should aggressively engage them on their position, as Sen. McCain did a while back. "Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war," he argued. "It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents...." Republicans should explain to voters that leaving Saddam in place would have been the wrong strategic decision and that following the Democrats' troop "redeployment plan" today would also be the wrong strategic decision. President Bush made the right call. Saddam is gone. Now we must finish the job -- that's the message.

Let the debate begin.