Is all of the talk about the White House and UFOs unique to the 2008 presidential elections? Hardly.

Ufologists have been inserting themselves into the American political scene for decades. And one website - www.presidentialufo.com - is devoted to the subject. Although you would think that they would be happy with Dennis Kucinich's extraterrestrial musings, they are not. In a blog post, Kucinich is upbraided for his failure to embrace his UFO experiences more publicly:

Dennis Kucinich has always been a darling of the UFO community. He has been viewed as a visionary congressman outside the mainstream and thus prepared to take on the important task of leading the US government to disclosure of the truth about the ET presence. Following Shirley MacLaine's disclosure that Kucinich had experienced a UFO up close, Kucinich was even anointed by some in the UFO community as the ET candidate, implying that he had been chosen by the ETs to be President just like Jimmy Carter who had a similar UFO experience in 1969 prior to becoming President in 1977. Kucinich's popularity in the UFO community is also supported by things he did which appeared to aid the UFO cause such as when he introduced the Space Preservation Act of 2005 designed to ban the weaponization of space. This move appealed to a huge segment of UFO researchers who believed the 'star wars' weapons being proposed for space are actually to be used against extraterrestrials.

This same "UFO community" had great hopes for Dick Cheney, too. I explore the subject in Cheney, a biography of the vice president.

It's just that so little of it seems to get much attention in the major media! Leave it to THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own Dean Barnett to capture the situation:

SO WHAT'S HAPPENED the past several months? One thing's for sure--you wouldn't know the story by reading the New York Times. Throughout Iraq, Iraqi citizens have decided that the fighting must end. They have tired of the sectarian strife that made swaths of their country a killing field. Having sampled something that could be called a civil war, they have collectively decided that they would rather live in a peaceful society. This means that each sect will have to tolerate the other sects' presence.

Throughout Iraq, ordinary citizens have tipped off American troops to the presence of not only Al Qaeda forces but members of their own sect bent on violence. They have also tipped off American troops to the presence of hundreds of IEDs, saving countless American lives. And they have done all of this knowing that they were risking death by doing so.

Although grassroots politics in America is of a less perilous sort, this too is a form of grassroots politics. Ordinary people have involved themselves with the fate of their nation, and made an enormous difference. While the Iraqi government remains mostly dysfunctional and enmeshed in squabbling, the Iraqi people have chosen the course their country will take.

Ace of Spades covers this ground as well. He notes that a Washington Post reporter explained recently that the encouraging numbers on casualties got short shrift from the Post because they do not yet constitute a trend. Now that the Congress's GAO has declared a trend, does it get prominent play in the Washington Post? Read Ace's post--I'm sure you'll be shocked by the answer.

And credit where it's due: a reporter for McClatchy's Raleigh News and Observer reports that "high blood pressure, bad backs, bum knees and other mundane health problems" are three and a half times more common than combat injuries in Iraq right now.

If the New York Times and Washington Post were McClatchy papers, I'm sure they'd be reporting the story as well.

The American Spectator's Phil Klein has a great catch. Turns out Giuliani never said the leading Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House, which the AP has reported he said. Here's Klein:

Now, it's perfectly accurate for Giuliani to hit Obama for wanting to invite Ahmadinejad and Assad to Washington, as Obama said he was willing to do ... Clinton later joined him, at least on Iran, ... If you want to argue that Giuliani went overboard by joking that the Democrats 'are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball,' that's one thing. But clearly what sensationalized this entire story is the idea that Giuliani was saying that Democrats want to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. That's a claim that Giuliani clearly did not make, and the AP, as well as bloggers who picked up the story, should correct the error.

Don't hold your breath.

Via our buddies at Op-For, the official caption: "A pirate skiff burns after being hit by several rounds from a 25mm gun aboard guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78). The skiff belonged to a group of pirates that had taken a cargo ship."

You can read the full story here at Military.com. The long and the short of it is that the United States Navy seems to be increasingly engaged in a campaign to suppress the rampant piracy off the coast of Somalia. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of this recent success happen to be North Korean, but as CSBA's Bob Work told the Virginia Pilot, "The Navy does this for all mariners." Though he also said that this may not be the best allocation of naval resources:

"Essentially, you don't want to use a billion dollar DDG [guided missile destroyer] to suppress pirates," Work said. "That's a mission for a much smaller ship. But we have a lot of ships in that area because of ongoing operations in the Horn of Africa. These are ships designed for high-end war fighting, not chasing pirates."

Don Surber looks for an upside for U.S.-Nork relations in all this, but I'm not so optimistic. I suspect the only American warship that ever gets a shout-out on North Korean radio is the USS Pueblo.

Karen Hughes, a longtime friend of the president, has announced her resignation as undersecretary of state, effective at the end of this year. Hughes was supposed to enhance the image of the United States in the greater Middle East, but, in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen Hayes writes that she was never very well suited to the job as she "had never been to the region, had no expertise in the Muslims who largely populate it, and had never shown any real interest in it either." Hayes goes on:

It showed. On her first trip to the Persian Gulf, she approached foreign dignitaries as if they were soccer moms and began with a campaign slogan: "The four E's of diplomacy: Engagement, Exchange, Education and Empowerment." In one meeting, she told her host that the most famous phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance--"One Nation, Under God"--came from the U.S. Constitution.

So why did George W. Bush pick Karen Hughes for such a critical mission? Her words upon emerging from a meeting with an Egyptian sheikh provide one clue: "I think I was able to have a wonderful meeting with His Eminence to talk with him about the common language of the heart."

We don't know what His Eminence thought about his introduction to the common language of the heart. But George W. Bush, who years earlier declared that he had seen into the soul of Vladimir Putin, speaks it fluently. Hughes knows Bush as well as anyone other than his wife. And when Bush needs help on the big issues, he often seeks assistance from those most familiar to him, whatever their qualifications and without regard to what the rest of world might think.

And so it was that, as Hughes finished her trip, a reporter approached her for a comment on Bush's likely Supreme Court nominee: "Harriet would be a wonderful Supreme Court justice!"

This is probably for the best.

Do you find American presidential politics sometimes boring? (You're not alone!) Just look at Indonesia, where the politicians sing:

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has released his first music album, a collection of love ballads and religious songs he wrote, state media said. The album, entitled 'My Longing for You,' contains 10 songs written by Yudhoyono after he became president in 2004 and features some of the country's popular singers, Antara news agency said. ...

Yudhoyono is not the only Indonesian general with musical talent.

A former armed forces chief, Wiranto, who is expected to run for president in the 2009 elections, has released a collection of love ballads he sings himself.

Think of Yudhoyono's LP as the Indonesian Supernatural.

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim democracy, holds its presidential election in 2009. But I wouldn't expect the singing president trend to cross the Pacific anytime soon - unless, of course, one of these guys runs for president in 2012.

The most important moment of last night's Democratic debate was Senator Clinton's equivocation on issuing driving licenses to illegal immigrants.

Why is this important? Because, you may recall, former California governor (and Democrat) Gray Davis's plan to do exactly this in 2003 fueled the successful movement to recall him from office. Gov. Schwarzenegger campaigned on an explicit promise not to issue licenses to illegal immigrants, and he beat Davis ally Cruz Bustamante by 17 points.

Which is to say: There are plenty of Democrats, believe it or not, who have qualms about issuing licenses to illegal immigrants. The reason they feel this way is that, as Christopher Caldwell pointed out last weekend in an altogether different context, immigration and national identity are related intricately. Here Caldwell is describing a French proposal to base family reunification for immigrants on voluntary DNA testing:

Members of the socialist and communist parties have promised to bring the law before France's constitutional council. Introducing tests for immigrants that French citizens are not required to take violates the principle of equality before the law, they say. But how, exactly, is equality violated? Traditionally this equality principle holds among citizens, not between citizens and non-citizens. To say otherwise is to suggest that immigration laws do not have the full force of law. Patrick Weil, an immigration expert at the Sorbonne, has criticised Mr Sarkozy's immigration policies for attacking 'people who aren't delinquents, who are merely committing a breach with respect to their residence situation.' There is a logic to this. Since many identities (racial, sexual) are more important to their holders than national identity, denying someone rights over a 'mere' question of citizenship looks like an archaism. But as soon as the distinction between citizens and non-citizens fades, rights do, too.

People tend to predict that immigration will tear the GOP apart. But I have a suspicion that its effects will influence the future course of the Democratic party as well - heightening tensions between lower-income native Democrats who still cling to a sense of American identity and the graduate-schooled elites who run the party and believe that opponents of illegal immigration seek only to punish those who, to quote Prof. Weil, "are merely committing a breach with respect to their residence situation."

Update: And there's none forthcoming...see the email from the L.A. Times below.

I wrote earlier in the week about Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten's attempt to weigh in on the Beauchamp story with this piece that was riddled with factual errors. Rutten described the disfigured woman Beauchamp claimed to have mocked as Iraqi--even in Beauchamp's imagination she was always American. Rutten said the editor at TNR had conceded that the story was "concocted." It is, but they haven't, choosing instead to shift its location to Kuwait. Rutten claimed TNR had been unable to communicate with Beauchamp. This is obviously untrue, they've been able to communicate with Beauchamp, they've just refrained from communicating the substance of those conversations to their readers. And finally, Rutten accused Drudge of reporting the existence of a "Memorandum for Record" and not posting a copy of it. Of course, Drudge did post a copy of it, but Rutten failed to read all the documents before filing his sorry excuse for a column.

Since then, a number of bloggers have pointed out these serious factual errors, including Bob Owens, Mickey Kaus, and Patterico. Patterico has even taken the time to help Rutten craft a correction:

In an October 27 column, Tim Rutten wrote that the editors of The New Republic had been “unable to communicate with” Scott Thomas Beauchamp since an Army spokesman had denied the existence of a signed statement by Beauchamp disavowing his piece. As Rutten’s column stated, editors from The New Republic claim to have spoken to Beauchamp at least three times since August 7, when the Army spokesman issued the denial.

In the same column, Rutten wrote that “the magazine determined that the incident involving the disfigured woman was concocted and corrected that . . .” In fact, the magazine did not determine that the incident was “concocted,” but admitted only that the incident took place in Kuwait, and not Iraq.

In the same column, Rutten wrote that Beauchamp had “described the ridicule of a disfigured Iraqi woman . . .” In fact, the woman has never been described as Iraqi.

Rutten also said that Beauchamp “described . . . attempts to run over stray dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles . . .” In fact, Beauchamp actually described three incidents in which military personnel had killed stray dogs.

In the same column, Rutten wrote that Matt Drudge had failed to provide a link to a purported “Memorandum for Record” signed by Beauchamp. Drudge did in fact provide such a link, but later took it down.

Patterico reports that he has been in touch with the paper's "readers representative," Jamie Gold, and I have as well. Gold recently sent me a note explaining that he was "checking with the reporter and editor and will get back to you as soon as possible." That was yesterday, I'd sent him a note the day before that, and Rutten's column appeared last Friday. So it's now nearly a week that the Times has knowingly allowed a number of factual inaccuracies to stand uncorrected. The New Republic's investigation into Beauchamp's tall tales has lasted more than four months and shows no signs of coming to an end anytime soon. Rutten is obviously a fan of Foer's approach, but one would hope that "the editors" at the Times are slightly more serious about accuracy and integrity than their peers at the New Republic.

Update: Los Angeles Times reader representative Jamie Gold just emailed the WWS a note explaining that the Times believes that Rutten's column is error-free. Here is the full text of the email:

L.A. Times columnists, Rutten among them, are encouraged to use their columns as forums for their fact-based assessments of news events. His assessments might not match yours, but that doesn't mean that his assessments warrant correction. (By the way, you might disagree with his opinion column but he did base it on having read the materials that you suggest he was unfamiliar with.)

The chief allegation of error that you seem to make is that Rutten erred in writing that "Drudge provided links to the transcripts and report but not to the purported 'Memorandum for Record.'" You wrote that this is wrong because "the memorandum was appended to the second portion of the transcript."

Rutten's assessment is that it was not clear that the memo at the end of the military officer's report/summary is the same one to which Drudge's original post referred. The columnist's thinking: Drudge lists it apart from the final document, but -- as Rutten wrote -- Drudge provides no link, nor does he say it can be found at the end of the report, seeming to indicate possession of another document, but providing no link. I don't believe that Rutten's column warrants correction on that point.

As to points made by Bob Owens: The July essay did not refer to the disfigured woman specifically as Iraqi. However, Rutten inferred from the fact that she was there (vs. being sent home as a U.S. soldier or civilian would be) that she is Iraqi. Rutten referred to the Bradleys as trying to run over stray dogs, vs. kill the dogs, but I'm not seeing that point as factually wrong (I don't believe that a reader thinks that a Bradley trying to run over dogs is different from a Bradley trying to kill dogs). As to whether the magazine "determined that the incident involving the disfigured woman was concocted and corrected" it, as the column said: Rutten's point is that, as a scene in Iraq, it was "concocted" in that it never happened there. The magazine corrected it, which means editors admit that it never happened there.

Obviously this is a controversial issue that has given rise to a good amount of interest and greater number of opinions. I'm sorry that you feel so strongly that your differences in interpretation are points that need correcting, vs. points of interpretation of various facts.

Thanks again for writing.

Jamie Gold
Readers' Representative

At the end of the day, it's up to each institution to set its own standards for accuracy. If the editors at the Times are comfortable with Rutten's explanation that it was unclear to him that the "Memorandum for Record" described by Drudge, and linked to by Drudge, can not be clearly identified as the "Memorandum for Record" because it was not linked separately, that's their prerogative. But to anyone not drawing a salary from the L.A. Times, it's obvious he didn't read the documents all the way through.

Also, Gold's, and by extension Rutten's, explanation about his exclusive discovery that Beauchamp's mysterious disfigured woman was Iraqi is . . . creative. Maybe if we go to grad school some day, we'll learn how to find hidden meaning in texts.

Missing is any excuse for the paper's failure to correct the Rutten whopper that "Beauchamp has remained in Iraq with his unit and the magazine has been unable to communicate with him" since August. Even the New Republic--which like Lewis Carroll's queen believes six impossible things before breakfast when it comes to defending Beauchamp--doesn't believe this.

That the Times would reduce all these errors to a mere difference of opinion is fascinating, and not a good sign for those who still root for the survival of traditional newspapers.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Real Iraqi Miracle, by Dean Barnett.

From National Review: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, by Andrew McCarthy.

From the Wall Street Journal ($): Bush's North Korea Meltdown, by John Bolton.

From the Washington Times: Winning in Afghanistan, by Harlan Ullman.

From the Washington Post: Partners In the War On Terror, by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV.

Bonus Video: A Successful Mission in Iraq, by JD Johannes.

The House has now joined the Senate in passing an extension of the Internet Tax Moratorium:

A bill to extend a moratorium on Internet access taxes for seven years was approved 402-0 by the House Tuesday, less than two days before it was set to expire.

The House initially approved a four-year ban, but last week the Senate passed a seven-year prohibition, despite considerable support for a permanent ban.

"Seven years is better than nothing, and that's what we're doing today," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich, during remarks on the House floor.

A House bill that would make the moratorium permanent has 238 House co-sponsors, more than a majority.

The tax ban, first approved in 1998 and twice renewed, is set to expire Nov. 1.

While an extension of the ban was supported by nearly all Members of both House and Senate, the fight was whether to enact a temporary ban or a permanent one. Action was forced last week when Senator Sununu (R-NH) filed an amendment to Amtrak reauthorization legislation that would have forced a vote on the permanent ban he had introduced. That led to a compromise on a 7-year extension, which was longer than the Democratic leaders in the Senate wanted.

The measure has already been sent to the president, who is expected to sign it promptly.

The Hill reports that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has announced that the House is not likely to vote on FISA 'anytime soon,' apparently waiting to see how the Senate handles the issue:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has postponed a vote to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for at least a week, and a Hoyer aide told The Hill there was no indication the bill would go back to the floor “anytime soon...”

Hoyer’s spokeswoman also denied that House Democratic leaders were waiting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will start its markup of the bill’s Senate version Wednesday.

The Senate Intelligence panel has passed a FISA rewrite that includes limited retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program. Many Democrats oppose that provision, which is not in the House bill, and some on the Senate Judiciary panel may try to change or strip that language...

“Nothing’s new. Democratic leadership is still in limbo,” said Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.). “The best thing to do is to have a solid bill, not the bill the Democrats cobbled together. That was a mess.”

When asked whether she had heard that Democratic leaders were having trouble with gathering the votes on the measure, especially from conservative freshmen and Blue Dog Democrats, Wilson said, “That would make sense.”

Wilson is quite right. Whether out of conviction or political survival instincts, the Blue Dogs have been reluctant to vote for the leadership bill, which would afford terrorists significantly more protections than they have under current law. The Democratic leadership seems frustrated that they cannot find a way to force them to support such a measure--for now, at least.

For an excellent assessment of just how irresponsible the Democratic leadership position is, check out this piece from Gary Schmitt in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

In a perfect (or just more reasonable) world, the House and Senate Intelligence committees would start over. Constantly trying to amend FISA presumes that FISA's underlying structure (with its secret court of review) and its standard for issuing warrants ("probable cause") are worth preserving. We might remember our own system of separation of powers while picking up a thing or two from our European allies. Searches, electronic or otherwise, should be "reasonably" connected to the government's legitimate function of protecting us from terrorist attacks...

Read the whole thing.

The last part of the piece from the Hill drips with irony, by the way. We covered here the problems that Democrats created for themselves when they shut Republicans out of the process completely. Not having learned from the experience, it seems Democrats may try it again:

Democrats were mum about which tactics they may use to curtail other possible motions by Republicans, who vehemently opposed the bill’s closed rule. But when asked whether the Rules Committee may tweak the rule to limit Republican input on the floor, panel member Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) smiled and said: “We are aware of the options.”

Rather than hinting at another attempt to ram this through with no amendments, Hastings may be referring to an another attempt on the part of House Democrats to change the rules of the House completely to deny minority rights.

This exchange between Tim Russert and Dennis Kucinich is from last night's Democratic debate:

RUSSERT: Congressman Kucinich, I want to move to a different area, because this is a serious question. The godmother of your daughter, Shirley MacLaine, writes in her new book that you sighted a UFO over her home in Washington state. ...

(Laughter)

RUSSERT: ... that you found the encounter extremely moving, that it was a 'triangular craft, silent and hovering,' that you 'felt a connection to your heart and heard directions in your mind.'

Now, did you see a UFO?

KUCINICH: I did. And the rest of the account - I didn't - it was an unidentified flying object, OK? It's, like, it's unidentified. I saw something. Now, to answer your question, I'm moving my -- it's -- and I'm also going to move my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico, and other one in Exeter, New Hampshire, OK?

And also, you have to keep in mind that more - that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO and also that more people in this country have seen UFOs than I think approve of George Bush's presidency.

Whereupon Russert pointed out that Kucinich is wrong; 14 percent of Americans claim to have seen a UFO, while Political Arithmetik's current trendline for Bush's support is at a meager 32.6 percent. I wonder how many Bush supporters claim to have seen a ... actually, maybe I don't want to know that.

Also, it's worth pointing out that Kucinich's UFO encounter is not the first time aliens have come up during the presidential campaign. Notice how each candidate's views on interplanetary contact reflects his broader political philosophy: Kucinich for peaceful communication, Giuliani for strength and preparedness.

Christmas may be cancelled, at least in Iowa, according to this Advertising Age story. Ira Teinowitz reports:

TV spending on the 2008 presidential campaign is climbing so fast in the Hawkeye State that between now and the Jan. 3 primaries it threatens to overwhelm outlays by holiday-related marketers.

As of Oct. 22, spending in Iowa by four presidential hopefuls alone has reached a combined $8.7 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence's Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Already, two candidates - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney - each have spent $2.6 million in the state, equivalent to the total Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry heaped on Iowa during 2004 when he won the Democratic presidential nomination. Bill Richardson, with a $1.9 million Iowa outlay, isn't far behind. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton spent only $1.6 million so far, but has been steadily increasing spending.

Iowa is where the Democratic candidates have spent the most money on television ads and, not incidentally, the Democratic race is most competitive there. How will Clinton's increased media spending affect her numbers? And now that the other Democratic candidates have attacked Clinton and realized that she actually is vulnerable, when will the negative media begin?

It's 11:00 p.m. Do you know where your 21- to 34-year-old is? They are probably in a bar!

According to an advertisement for "I Am TV" - I have no clue what that means either - in the current Advertising Age, 75 percent of bar-goers are 21 to 34 years old. They average two evenings per week at their favorite bar. They average two and a half hours per visit. All this from an Arbitron study conducted in September.

I have a quibble with this study, however. It says bar-goers average two evenings per week at their favorite bar. Most bar-goers I know go out around two evenings per week, but not to the same place. And since the Arbitron study does not conform to my anecdotal impressions, it must be flawed, right? Either that, or there's a lot more drinking taking place across America than I had previously thought.

Have the Afghan government and NATO forces cracked the code with dealing with the Taliban-controlled district of Musa Qala in the violent province of Helmand? A report from the em>Telegraph indicates Afghan and NATO forces may have found a pro-Taliban commander and tribal leader willing to turn on the Taliban in Musa Qala.

Diplomats confirmed yesterday that Mullah Salaam was expected to change sides within days. He is a former Taliban corps commander and governor of Herat province under the government that fell in 2001.

Military sources said British forces in the province are "observing with interest" the potential deal in north Helmand, which echoes the efforts of US commanders in Iraq's western province to split Sunni tribal leaders from their al-Qaeda allies.

The Afghan deal would see members of the Alizai tribe around the Taliban-held town of Musa Qala quit the insurgency and pledge support to the Afghan government. It would be the first time that the Kabul government and its Western allies have been able exploit tribal divisions that exist within the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

One year ago, the British cut a deal with the Taliban, under the guise of dealing with the local tribes. The deal essentially signed over Musa Qala to the Taliban, much like the Pakistani government signed over multiple agencies in its tribal regions to the Taliban. U.S. commanders were furious over the agreement, and it is rumored the French threat to pull its special operations forces out of the south was due to the Brit’s actions in Musa Qala.

Just after the agreement was inked, the Taliban ran up its black flag over the Musa Qala district center, and fighting between the Taliban and Afghan and NATO forces has been intense. Over 250 Taliban have been killed during five intense ambushes on Afghan and NATO patrols, with few Afghan or NATO casualties. The Taliban lost 80 fighters in the latest attack. Three senior Taliban leaders--Mullah Dadullah, Mullah Berader, and Qari Faiz Mohammad--have been killed in strikes in Helmand province over the past several months.

Jay Cost devastatingly argues against the idea that Giuliani is only "now playing to win" in New Hampshire. Has Giuliani "changed strategy"? Here's Cost:

OK - so we have the logic of the political campaign dictating that a candidate like Giuliani amp up his pitch in the fall. We have an alternative explanation - the changed strategy theory - that makes no internal sense, that does not fit the facts, and paints the picture of a campaign team that is inconsistent (this is the same campaign team that has been run professionally and well for eight or so months). AND we have Giuliani's people telling us that the strategy has been that they were always going to amp up in the fall.

And yet the thesis of the story is: Giuliani changes strategy.

A better headline to the Politico story Cost discusses may have been, "Press wakes up to the fact that Giuliani is trying to win in New Hampshire."

John Edwards said last night that the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the 2008 Defense appropriations bill expressing the sense of the Senate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards should be designated a terrorist organization was written "in the language of the neocons."

What does that mean? Kathryn J. Lopez says the "language of the neocons" must be Yiddish.

I'm not certain about that, however. Most neoconservatives speak and write in standard American English. Still, today the seeds of neoconservative thinking can be seen sprouting in Europe, where those ideas may be expressed in Portuguese, Spanish, and even French.

One thing's for sure: There's no way the language of the neocons is Esperanto.

In honor of Halloween, I've been collecting the top 10 spookiest tidbits buzzing around the blogosphere this past week. Drumroll please...

10. While munching on your candy corn (or if you are lucky enough to work in TWS office, my signature devils food cupcakes), have a laugh with Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall.com as she and her brother carve "the scariest jack-o-lantern ever."

9. Yikes! That cackle reminds me of a former Democratic candidate's hoot. Try one of these spooktacular guffaws on the trick-or-treaters tonight!

8. In fact, I'd recommend using the Dean Scream on little girls that are dressed like this tonight. Maybe that will scare them into wearing something more modest. I'm pretty sure I was a scarecrow for Halloween when I was 8...

7. Hopefully, all you Commies out there were able to catch Turner Classic Movies' celebration of the Hollywood Ten last night. Is TCM preparing for a socialist takeover in 2008? Scary!

6. Even more frightening is the stupidity of some liberals. The AP reported that Americans are more likely to believe in ghosts (34 percent) than support President Bush (31 percent).

5. In other truly scary news (no joke), Saudi Arabia says Britain isn't doing enough to fight terror. As Jawa Report says, this wrist-slapping comes from "the world’s #1 financiers of terror." Now THAT is chilling.

4. The Democratic leadership is pushing "The Mother of All Tax Bills," which the NRCC has dubbed "The Mother of All Tax Hikes." Michelle Malkin’s got the NRCC's fear-inducing video.

3. During Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a female GW student told an Incorrect U camera, "I want the sharia law imposed. I want it in my country…I don’t want to live in a secular state." As Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes, she doesn't say what "her country" is, but I’d bet money it’s the United States.

2. Kind of old news, but Al Gore winning the Nobel for his film of falsehoods, An Inconvenient Truth, is still pretty frightening. What's next? Gore runs for president? SCARY! Oh, wait…

1. Lastly, this Halloween, be on the lookout for those monstrous neocons, such as the “unprincipled hack willing to countenance butchery as long as it's done by people he approves of" and those other evil bloggers who were recently "making fun ('just for laughs')" of the Frost family "with a demented sense of glee." Pure evil! And be especially wary of neocon thugs--they're out to get you!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

President Bush and congressional Republicans shouldn't worry about political fallout from blocking the Democratic legislation to expand the children's health insurance program known as S-chip. They have a good argument against it that most Americans will buy and a credible alternative. So there's no reason to be anxious.

Supporters of S-chip expansion point to polls that show widespread public backing, including among Republicans. But once a single piece of information is added to a poll question on S-chip, the public's attitude changes. That information: the bill would allow kids in families making up to $61,800 a year to get free, taxpayer-paid health insurance.

Gallup asked this question of adults two weeks ago: "Based on what you have heard or read about this bill, who do you have more confidence in to handle this issue - George W. Bush or the Democrats in Congress?" Bush got 32 percent, Democrats 54 percent. Bush, of course, opposed and then vetoed the Democratic S-chip bill.

That question went to half the polling sample. The other half got this question: "As you may know, the Democrats want to allow a family of four earning about $62,000 to qualify for the program. President Bush wants most of the increases to go to families earning less than $41,000. Whose side do you favor?"

The response was almost the reverse. Bush got 52 percent, Democrats 40 percent. And the response likely would have been more pronounced in opposition to S-chip expansion if Bush, a relatively unpopular and highly polarizing figure, had been left out of the question.

It's that time of the year, folks. Project Valour-IT has turned into a blogosphere monster, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy voice-activated laptops for soldiers' who have lost the use of their limbs.

About this amazing project, from the horse's mouth:

Valour-IT has had a great year of fundraising, but the needs of the wounded continue, and our coffers are empty.

Just in time, because the 2007 Valour-IT Veterans Day Fundraising Competition begins on Monday, October 29. Last year a merry band of milbloggers and friends raised over $230,000 dollars. This year, need among the wounded hasn't changed, with as many as 100 laptops going out each month. But every year, the amazing bloggers who participated have exceeded Valour-IT's wildest hopes. Let's do it again!

Here's the who, what, where, when, why and how of the competition:

Who: Bloggers of any and all stripes who support the U.S. Military
What: Raising $240,000 ($60,000/team) for Project Valour-IT,
Where: Starting on the blogs, then spreading through your community and into major media
When: Monday, 29 October through Saturday, 11 November (Veterans Day)
Why: Because reconnecting the wounded with the world is a vital part of their recovery
How: Signing up for your favorite military branch, blogging, auctioning, emailing, and spreading the news

Once again, OPFOR will be supporting Team Air Force (ignore any subversive treason from Marine/Navy/Army OPFOR bloggers). Here's the donation link:

Please consider donating! You won't find a more noble cause.

Cross-posted at Op-For.

Mike Huckabee has made it into the "top tier" at least in Iowa, to judge by the latest Rasmussen poll of likely Republican voters in the Hawkeye state.

Huckabee's position on Hillary is that he can beat her. During a lunch with 20 or so reporters here in Washington today, Huckabee said, "Assume Hillary is going to be the Democratic nominee, and I do. Of those running for president, Democrat or Republican, no one knows her better than me."

Why is that?

"No one else has every really run against her. And in a way I have. I ran against the Clinton machine and political organizations that dominated Arkansas politics all these years. In every election I ever ran in, Clinton has campaigned for my opponent. I won not once, twice, three, but four times. In statewide elections. So [this is] something I'll bring to this whole race that no one else has."

One of the most lame and tiresome things about the American anti-war movement is the way some activists both spout off about how brave they are in speaking truth to power, and then complain about the legal penalties they suffer for breaking the law as part of their protests. Few seem to recognize that you can't be a martyr unless you suffer a little. For example, one penalty that a war protester ought to be able to take without too much whining is getting barred from entry into to Canada due to prior convictions.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Codepink Women for Peace and Global Exchange, was also invited by the Parliamentarians, but had been arrested the previous day for holding up two fingers in the form of a peace sign during the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified on Iraq, Iran and Israel-Palestinian issues....

I presented to immigration officials our letter of invitation from the Parliamentarians that explained that Medea and I had been denied entry to Canada at the Niagara Falls border crossing on October 3, 2007 because we had been convicted in the United States of peaceful, non-violent protests against the war on Iraq, including sitting on the sidewalk in front of the White House with 400 others, speaking out against torture during Congressional hearings, and other misdemeanors.

The Canadian government knew of these offenses as they now have access to the FBI’s National Crime Information database on which we are listed. The database that was created to identify members of violent gangs and terrorist organizations, foreign fugitives, patrol violators and sex offenders—not for peace activists peacefully protesting illegal actions of their government...

I call on the US Congress to conduct hearings to determine who ordered the FBI to place peaceful, non-violence protest convictions on the international data base and for what purpose.

It feels to me like purposeful intimidation to stop dissent—but I can guarantee you, it won’t work!

To all those concerned about free speech, freedom to travel, ending an illegal war, stopping torture and other violations of domestic and international law, come to Washington and help us!!!

As this piece mentions, Benjamin has been denied entry to Canada before--so Code Pink is clearly familiar with the rules and the consequences. As to their complaints about the decision of the Canadian government to deny them entry, is that truly George Bush's fault? Liberals frequently complain that the United States does not treat our international partners with respect; would they have the U.S. government refuse to disclose information about U.S. criminals traveling abroad? Surely the government of our enlightened neighbor to the north can make its own decisions about whom to allow to enter.

And as to that latter point, is it really all that surprising that Canada denies entry to a group that claims to be a non-violent protest organization, but which actually organized the violent anti-WTO protests in Seattle (which caused about $20 million in damage), and which has disrupted Congressional hearings and proceedings, as well as political conventions.

Perhaps Code Pink ought to look at the bright side; who wants to go to Canada anyway?

The good news for Democrats: there's plenty of time for improvement.

The bad news: this is starting to look like one of the most ineffective, unproductive, Congresses in memory. Approval of Congress overall has fallen to 22 percent. Speaker Pelosi's approval rating among Californians has fallen to 35 percent. House leaders cannot corral moderate Members into supporting legislation to make it harder to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists. Inter-party and intra-party fights dominate every policy issue. And Congress has fallen further behind on the simple business of running the government than at any time in the last 20 years. Half of the bills signed into law this year are measures to name courthouses and other federal facilities. Even padded with those largely meaningless measures, this Congress is on pace to enact fewer laws than any one since 1973--which at least had impeachment of the president to deal with. Democrats have announced that they plan not to spend so much time in Washington next year, which led one House moderate to warn that Speaker Pelosi won't hold the majority in 2009 unless Democrats start to accomplish... something.

Some argue that Democrats are not in as much electoral danger as it may appear, since voters are not especially enamored of Republicans right now, either. However, it's worth noting that before the 2006 elections, just 29 percent of voters thought Congressional Democrats were doing a good job. It was public dissatisfaction with Republicans that gave Congress to the Democrats, not approval. Another year like the one Democrats are having now, and who can predict what the result will be?

The November 2007 AEI Political Report begins with a comparative look at candidate standings in the Gallup poll a year before the election:

In November 1975, Ted Kennedy led all comers among the Democratic faithful in Gallup's polling, including the eventual nominee, Jimmy Carter, who barely registered in the poll at 3 percent. On only two occasions in the modern era did the eventual Democratic nominee place first in the polls among fellow Democrats a year before the election. Republican voters have coalesced around their nominee earlier than the Democrats have.

The two occasions when the eventual Democratic nominee placed first in the Gallup poll a year before the election? November 1983, when Walter Mondale led the field with 47 percent support nationally, and November 1999, when Al Gore held a 58 percent to 33 percent lead over Bill Bradley. Hillary Clinton's current lead over Barack Obama in the Gallup poll is 50 percent to 21 percent. Hillary: the Walter Mondale of our age.

The Republican race is more interesting. Giuliani's first place position with 32 percent support nationally in the current Gallup poll is most similar to ... Ronald Reagan's first-place position with 35 percent support in November 1979. We know how that turned out. Of course, unlike Giuliani's foes, Ronald Reagan's liberal opponents didn't call him a "crazy," "deluded" "warmonger" ...

Oh, wait. They did call him those things.

On July 6 of this year, I pointed to a survey showing that 60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran. I also noted at the time that given "the substance of the left/libertarian opposition to a more confrontational approach in dealing with Iran," I wouldn't be "too surprised when that 60 percent opposing a war with Iran starts to dwindle--it has dropped five points in just the last six months."

Well, today we have new poll from Zogby showing that a majority of Americans now favor military action against Iran:

A majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows.

Remember when Barnett Rubin "reported" in August that:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

The unsourced rumor was picked up by George Packer at the New Yorker, among others. Now if anyone from Cheney's office was giving "instructions" on how to roll out a war with Iran, I didn't get the memo, so I'm going to stick with my previous explanation for the increased support--the left has done a terrible job of laying out their case against a strike, or maybe it just isn't possible to lay out a persuasive case against a strike. In any case, if 35-40 percent support was considered "plenty" by the veep, what do you think he'll make of an outright majority? And what does George Packer make of it?

WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor, and regular DAILY STANDARD columnist Irwin Stelzer has come in at #68 on the Telegraph's list of the most influential American conservatives. Stelzer is wedged in between David Brooks--a former senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD--and WWS pal Erik Erikson of RedState.

These lists are obviously subjective, but I'm surprised Stelzer didn't rank higher, though perhaps his influence is felt greater in Britain, where he has been referred to as "Murdoch's representative on earth," and has been the subject of some outrageous stories in the British press. Consider this one from the Observer, published in October 2004:

Last spring was seen as a brutal example of who really runs Britain. Stelzer visited Blair in Downing Street. Soon after, the Prime Minister made the biggest U-turn of his career by announcing a referendum on the European Union constitution, a matter on which he had originally said he would not budge. Political commentators were in no doubt: Stelzer had threatened Blair with an ultimatum that, unless he let the people decide, the Eurosceptic Murdoch would order the Sun and the Times to withdraw their support and back the Tories at next year's general election.

'Think of all the pieces of silliness you've just said,' admonishes Stelzer, 72, stepping out of the media's fabled shadows to give his first newspaper interview. 'Number one: I would threaten the Prime Minister. That's an idea that's crazy. The Prime Minister is standing there being threatened by 600 people almost every day in Parliament but doesn't cave in. They can question his job; Rupert Murdoch can't do that. I know "it's the Sun wot won it" and all that - that's great stuff - but I don't really believe it.

True or not, our hearty congratulations to Dr. Stelzer.

There are tons of interesting facts in the November 2007 AEI Political Report.

One fact struck me as particularly interesting, however. In September, when ABC News / Washington Post pollsters asked respondents whether they approved of Bill Clinton's presidential job performance, 66 percent approved and 32 percent disapproved. Furthermore, when those pollsters asked whether respondents were "comfortable with the idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House," 60 percent said yes, they were comfortable, while 30 percent said they were uncomfortable.

I'm pretty sure those numbers would begin to move if the pollsters scanned likely voters in a presidential election. And if the Republican National Committee spent millions on a slew of negative ads reminding the country of Clinton's bad karma. I'm just not sure how much the numbers would move - or in what direction.

Still, as it stands, about two-thirds of the country wouldn't mind if Clinton were back. Republicans to whom I've talked have long thought that if people realize that a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean the return of Bill Clinton and all of his, you know, baggage, then those people would not want Hillary Clinton to become president. Maybe that's not quite true.

Leaders from both sides of the aisle have said they are willing to compromise on the S-chip legislation, but the Washington Post reports today:

The breaking point may have come Thursday, when Democratic leaders brought to the House floor a slightly revised bill to expand SCHIP by $35 billion over five years. Republicans cried foul, saying the vote was unfair because they had no time to review the measure and because several of their members were out of town, touring fire damage in Southern California...

But Democratic leaders refused to budge. Rather than winning the dozen or so additional Republican votes they needed to override a presidential veto, they lost two GOP votes…

The revised SCHIP bill was supposed to establish a firm eligibility cap, limiting coverage to families with incomes at 300 percent of the poverty level, about $62,000 for a family of four. But Republican leaders complained that the bill's cap would allow families to exclude certain expenditures, such as clothing, transportation and child care, when figuring their eligibility.

Doesn't really look like the Dems are willing to compromise, does it?

Bush doesn't think so. Michelle Malkin reports: "Bush lambastes the new S-CHIP entitlement bill. 'We want to sit down in good faith and come up with a good bill that’s responsible.' Criticizes Dem ploy to hold military spending hostage unless GOP coughs up social and education spending with it."

And Kathryn Jean Lopez posted an email from the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the White House, which says, "The Democrat Congressional Leadership's new SCHIP bill continues to reject President Bush’s calls to put poor children first and still increases spending 121%...We hope the Democrats stop playing politics and send the President a bill that puts poor children first and avoids increasing taxes and moving children from private to government coverage."

S-chip is still captivating the blogosphere, especially now that the DCCC has launched ads attacking Republicans on the bill. From Politico's Crypt blog:

This latest round [of ads] steps up pressure on Republican House members who opposed the measure - and feeds the perception that Democrats are using the issue solely for political gain.

Republicans complained last week that Democrats were scheduling these ads, even as they complained about the GOP for failing to work with them to craft a compromise. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois told one of the Republican leader's aides last week that the majority intended to hang the issue around the necks of Republicans.

More on the ads from Don Surber.

And in the wake of this, bloggers have posted a great video mocking the Dems' proposed cigarette-tax-for-healthcare plan.

The Influence Peddler, aka our own Brian Faughnan, notes that this plan is "a paperwork gimmick to make it look like the program is paid for, so they can pass the measure under Congress' pay-go rules. Instead, the additional cost will simply be tacked on to the national debt -- to be paid for down the road by higher income taxes on all Americans."

And a commenter at Captain's Quarters adds: "And when the smoking tax dollars dry up due to the high cost and people quitting, the politicians couldn't possible let the chir'n down and eliminate the new ‘critical’ health program. So they'll find new taxes to raise to maintain the ‘essential’ program."

Looks like the S-chip battle isn't ending anytime soon--especially since the Dems want three-day weekends!

Yesterday I noted that Barack Obama stepped in the proverbial macaca when his campaign headlined a southern concert tour with gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, a gentleman who speaks optimistically about "curing" homosexuals. At least you can’t call McClurkin a hypocrite; he proudly boasts of curing himself of his own homosexuality through faith and prayer. The dust-up over McClurkin’s presence on the Obama campaign bus began last week. Since that time, Obama has refused to distance himself from McClurkin, and instead tried to reassure the gay community that McClurkin had no designs on "curing" gays who are happy with their status.

Predictably, the progressive blogosphere has turned on Obama like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas. Influential lefty Chris Bowers even went so far as to title a post, "Obama Campaign Post Mortem." Bowers went to some length to prove his point, carrying on for 3,824 words--that’s over 15 double-spaced pages to you and me.

Bowers’ co-blogger at Open Left, the somewhat-less-influential Matt Stoller, opted in his post-game analysis for the lefty blogger’s default reaction to any situation--self-congratulation. Stoller titled his piece "We Reacted Like a Movement Should to Obama," while also managing to point out that he was smarter than the average blogger when it came to judging the Democrats’ erstwhile savior. "I’ve been criticizing Obama for years now," Stoller wrote. "I never really thought he was teh awesome."

Predictably, the king of the progressive blogosphere, Markos Moulitsas, has seized upon the occasion to show that he remains the master of risible self-importance. In more halcyon days, Moulitsas was lauding Obama for starting a "movement" and acknowledging the young senator’s inevitability. Now that Obama has stumbled, the Democrats will need a new savior. And Moulitsas has an idea who that savior will be.

"Obama isn't the be-all savior for what ails our country," Moulitsas wrote. "No one is. If there's a message I thought we were successfully delivering in the netroots is that it was up to US to move this country in the right direction since we couldn't depend on our so-called ‘leaders’."

You’ll note that the leader of the "US" in the above equation is one Markos Moulitsas. Meanwhile, the countdown to Hillary Clinton’s inevitable "Sistah Soljah" speech at the Netroots’ expense continues apace.

From the Washington Times: Getting LOST, by Senator James Inhofe.

From the Politico: New Congress at War Over Everything, by Patrick O'Connor.

From Ares: Russian Stealth Bomber, Fighter, MaRV, by Bill Sweetman.

From the Guardian: Welcoming the Tyrant, by Peter Tatchell.

From Contentions: The Closest of Strangers, by James Kirchick.

BUMPED
Update: Readers are emailing more gems...click on the extended entry at the bottom of the piece to read them.

The Huffington Post routinely allows its authors to write about subjects with which they are completely unfamiliar, largely uninformed, and generally ignorant--take Laurie David and global warming for example--but today's post by Barry Sanders (I wish it was that Barry Sanders) sets a new standard. Sanders's piece is about "the military's addiction to oil," and his point is to illustrate the military's contribution to global warming, but not content merely to opine on something he didn't understand...he had to make his own facts up, too.

Sanders writes:

But, we do know that President Bush ordered the USS Stennis and the USS Ronald Reagan to the Gulf in January 2007 as part of the surge. He also sent a "strike group," led by the nuclear aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower, along with a cruiser, a destroyer, a frigate, a submarine escort, and a supply ship. Already sitting in the Gulf were ten other "Carrier Task Forces" built around the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Chester W. Nimitz, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Harry S. Truman, and the Abraham Lincoln. Ninety attack planes sit on each carrier's deck, ready at any moment to fly into combat.

The United States has never, ever, had twelve carrier task forces stationed in the Gulf, not this year, not any year.

Exhibit 2:

The USS Abraham Lincoln, familiar to us as the ship on whose deck President Bush declared to the nation, on May 2, 2003,"Mission Accomplished," remains in service, but the military keeps classified all the numbers about its fuel consumption. The USS Lincoln helped deliver the opening salvos and air strikes in Operation Iraqi Freedom. From March 2003 until mid-April of that same year, during its deployment in the Gulf, the Navy launched 16,500 sorties from its deck, and fired 1.6 million pounds of ordnance from its guns.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has no "guns," other than those used in air defense. The 1.6 million pounds of ordnance should refer to bombs dropped in Iraq via aircraft.

Exhibit 3:

Of all the branches, the Air Force uses the most fuel. In 2006, for instance, the Air Force consumed nearly half of the DoD supply, 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel, the same amount of fuel consumed from December 1941 to August 1945, during World War II. Flying machines, like the Apache helicopter, blow through fuel at an astonishing rate. Powered by two General Electric gas-turbine engines, each rated at 1,890-horse power, the Apache gets about one-half mile to the gallon. Just one pair of Apaches in a single night's raid will consume about 60,000 gallons of jet fuel.

This is getting a little ridiculous...Apaches aren't part of the Air Force, they are Army.

Exhibit 4:

To all that, we must add the 1,000 jets stationed on aircraft-carrier groups in the Gulf, along with 22 stealth bombers and another 700 planes in Saudi Arabia.

One thousand jets stationed on carriers in the Gulf? Wrong. 700 in Saudi Arabia? Wrong. And our whole fleet of B-2 Stealth Bombers stationed in Saudi Arabia? Way, way, way wrong.

Exhibit 5:

Some environmentalists insist that aircraft carriers pollute more than any other piece of armament in the military arsenal. Besides spreading the ocean surface with its own CO2 and residual oil, sea-going vessels create something called "Ship Tracks" that tail off, like vapor trails, in the atmosphere and have the potential for changing the microstructure of marine stratiform clouds.

Only one aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy isn't nuclear powered. So there is no CO2, no "ship tracks," and no potential for changing the microstructure of marine stratiform clouds. And you know what, I don't know much about clouds, but given Sander's wide-ranging ignorance, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has no idea what he's talking about here either.

Exhibit 6:

One of those studies, completed in March 2000 and funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, says absolutely nothing about the contamination caused by that same jet exhaust when a squadron of F-22s, say, fly sortie after sortie, at fairly low elevations, over a crowded neighborhood in Baghdad.

Yea, an F-22 has never, ever, flown a sortie over Baghdad, let alone at low altitude and in squadron formation.

I suspect there are dozens more blatant errors in this piece, and if readers want to have at it, I'll post responses in updates here. Sanders makes a bunch of over the top claims about the amount of CO2 and other pollutants produced by the United States military, and I expect that someone with even the most cursory knowledge of such things will reveal that Sanders has no idea what he's talking about in that realm either. And keep in mind, this piece is the second in part of a week-long series on the amount of pollution produced by the military and its effect on global warming. If they allow Sanders to post another piece this misinformed, I'll be shocked--Arianna, this is embarrassing.

A parent bemoans the less-is-more trend in Halloween costumes for teen and pre-teen girls:

Cheryl Cirenza shook her head in exasperated disbelief. 'This is all so inappropriate. It's really disturbing,' she said, eyeing a wall of such girl and preteen costumes as Major Flirt in army green, the bellybutton-baring Devilicious and a sassy, miniskirted French Maid, pink feather duster included. She'd just turned down her 13-year-old daughter's request for a Sexy Cop outfit. 'When I was their age, I was a bunch of grapes.'

O brave new world ...

Earlier this year, our British allies released a powerful new weapon in the war on terror--the badger:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

Well, U.S. forces appear to have upped the ante. From Reuters:

NASSIRIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - A two-meter shark has been caught in a river in southern Iraq more than 200 km (160 miles) from the sea.

Karim Hasan Thamir said he was fishing with his sons last week when they spotted a large fish thrashing about in his net. "I recognized the fish as a shark because I have seen one on a television program," he told Reuters....

Locals blamed the U.S. military for the shark's presence.

Tahseen Ali, a teacher, said there was a "75 percent chance" Americans had put the shark in the water.

"This is very frightening for us. Our children always swim in the river and I believe that there are more sharks. I believe that America is behind this matter," said fisherman Hatim Karim.

What are the chances Hatim Karim is also a diarist at Daily Kos? I say "75 percent chance."

Iraqi police in Anbar province scored a victory against al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership in Anbar province on Monday. Iraqi police killed Abu Tiba al Karbuli and two aides and captured another during an engagement north of Ramadi.

"A police patrol came under fire from two civilian cars carrying al-Qaeda members," said Colonel Salan al Gi'ud, a senior police official in Anbar province. Police returned fire, and killed al Karbuli and two aides. Abu Hamza al Iraqi, another aide, was captured and is said to be providing intelligence information on al Qaeda's operations in western Iraq.

Like the majority of al Qaeda's leadership in Iraq, al Karbuli was foreign borne. Although Karbuli is the name of a major Iraqi tribe, he is actually from Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has suffered a major setback in Anbar province.The rise of the Anbar Awakening and the integration the tribes and former insurgent groups into the security forces has deprived al Qaeda in Iraq of its former safe haven.

The Awakening weathered a winter and spring of fierce fighting and deadly chemical suicide attacks from al Qaeda. The terror group's last major attack in Anbar was defeated by U.S. and Iraqi forces at Donkey Island just south of Ramadi. Al Qaeda was able to assassinate Sheikh Sattar Abu Rishawi at the onset of Ramadan, but the Awakening held its ground.

Iraqi and Coalition forces continue to target al Qaeda's leadership throughout Iraq. Today's raids against al Qaeda's network resulted in four al Qaeda operatives killed and 17 captured.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the stunning success of Representative John Murtha in channeling taxpayer dollars to pork-barrel projects in his district, including awards for companies under FBI investigation and others which show no results, as well as many for projects the Pentagon did not request.

Johnstown's good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else. Defense contractors have found that if they open an office here and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha's Johnstown Minute Car Wash.

A review by The Wall Street Journal of dozens of such contracts funded by Mr. Murtha's committee shows that many weren't sought by the military or federal agencies they were intended to benefit. Some were inefficient or mismanaged, according to interviews, public records and previously unpublished Pentagon audits. One Murtha-backed firm, ProLogic Inc., is under federal investigation for allegedly diverting public funds to develop commercial software, people close to the case say. The company denies wrongdoing and is in line to get millions of dollars more in the pending defense bill.

Is any of this a surprise? It is entirely consistent with Murtha's whole career.

We've covered the fact that Murtha has received donations from every interest to which he granted an earmark--many in the last few days before he introduced the earmarks in legislation. He's funneled money to a group headed by a former staffer which supposedly helps wounded veterans find jobs--but there's no evidence that they've helped anyone. He falsely claimed that the Department of Energy supported one of his earmarks. He falsely claimed Department of Justice support for another. He's threatened his colleagues. He's broken House rules to get earmarks.

And all that is merely this year! We have not yet touched upon Haditha, or 'slow-bleed,' or the draft, or AbScam.

According to Eli Lake's profile of Giuliani senior foreign policy adviser Charles Hill, Team Rudy wants you to know that its candidate's foreign policy is his, not just his advisers':

Like President Bush and Senator Clinton, Mr. Giuliani has said repeatedly that military options remain on the table with regard to Iran, but Mr. Hill said yesterday the mayor and the campaign by no means believed other options such as sanctions were exhausted.

Mr. Hill yesterday said he was frustrated in particular with a New York Times story last week on the Giuliani campaign that he said exaggerated and distorted the influence of some foreign policy advisers, such as Daniel Pipes, Mr. Podhoretz and Michael Rubin. 'The subtext seems to be war crazy neocons have captured the campaign and that is a distortion. Even the run down of the featured people is not accurate and I think the reporter had to know that,' he said.

One should note that the Times piece to which Professor Hill refers was a knockoff of an equally exaggerated and misinformed Newsweek story in which that magazine's art directors couldn't identify correctly Giuliani's supposed "neocon" advisers.

One of the joys of campaign season is coming across the entertaining websites that ask you questions about your politics and then match you with a presidential candidate. Another friend of the Campaign Standard sends me this link to another of these candidate-match sites called Connect 2 Elect. It's like eHarmony meets What It Takes. It's all random and bears little relation to whom one actually ends up voting for, but who doesn't like talking about oneself?

So I filled out the information, and apparently my closest match is ... Duncan Hunter! Scary, I know. I can't say I was expecting that. I mean, I like Hunter and all, but protectionism isn't exactly my bag. Apparently Ann Coulter and I have more in common than I had thought.

A friend sends in a link to this funny S-CHIP parody commercial:

Someone give this guy a contract!

In Shirley MacLaine's new book, the actress-turned-mystic describes Dennis Kucinich's encounter with an unidentified flying object:

Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. ...

It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind.

Maybe they were telling him to run for president.

A life-size replica of the original G.I. Joe at
the 2004 Comic-Con convention.

A few weeks ago, THE WEEKLY STANDARD ran one of its better parodies, this awesome bit in response to the news that Paramount was planning a film adaptation of G.I. Joe in the wake of the powerful box office performance of Transformers. The Not-a-Parody origin of the gag was news that Paramount was re-conceptualizing the G.I. Joe team to make it a multi-national force based in Brussels, and whose acronym stands for “Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity." Since then, the project has picked up a director, Stephen Sommers, best known for his bland 1999 The Mummy (and his terrible 2004 Van Helsing).

The G.I. Joe team’s enemy in the movie is reported to be a Scottish arms-dealer/terrorist (Destro, we presume); Cobra Commander and his shadowy terrorist organization--which have credible real-life analogues today--are to play only a minor role. Which is silly, of course.

Mind you, back when G.I. Joe was last popular during the 1980s, the idea of a global terrorist outfit seeking to overthrow Western civilization sounded kind of far-fetched. It was a bit odd to have the Joes fighting Cobra when America had a real enemy, right in front of it in the Soviet Union. But the toymakers and comics writers who gave us G.I. Joe weren't comfortable depicting an enemy force that looked like the enemy the country was actually facing. Instead the Russians were rarely depicted and when they were, it was in the guise of the Oktober Guard, a group of highly-trained, totally sympathetic soldiers who were just like the Joes. So there is a (dishonorable) precedent for Paramount going out of their way not to have the Joes facing off against an organization that looks uncomfortably like al Qaeda. But whatever.

All of this seemed more amusing than insulting until I came across Vin Suprynowicz’s excellent column on the origins of the G.I. Joe toy-line:

On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield that could threaten the Japanese route to Australia. Admiral Yamamoto knew how dangerous that was. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings on that hillside, 65 years ago this week--manning their section of the thin khaki line that was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942--it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 armed and motivated attackers?

But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. . . . The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

Perhaps it's time to back away from the ledge. There's at least one sign that a Clinton Restoration isn't inevitable.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen's latest pits Hillary Clinton in head-to-head match-ups with some of her likely GOP opponents. There's good news all around. Giuliani defeats Hillary by two points. Thompson also shows surprising strength, trailing the Democrats' presumptive nominee by a mere two points.

The pollster seems particularly dumfounded by Thompson's surge. A month ago, Thompson lagged a full ten points behind Clinton. What accounts for this uptick in support? After all, Rasmussen says, Thompson's initial debate performance was "passable" and his second debate "stronger" than the first but still "uneven."

That's where you find the real good news. Rasmussen sees Thompson's improvement in particular as a sign of growing Republican strength in general - or at least diminishing Republican weakness. Regardless, for the last month anyway, things have been trending in the GOP's direction. Perhaps the GOP's improving position has something to do with the improving situation in Iraq and an inept Democratic congress. If the situation in Iraq continues to improve and the Democratic Congress continues to be hapless, 2008 may be a much better year for the GOP than many of us have feared.

Just 24 hours after the capture of 11 Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi Army has freed eight of the sheikhs. Meanwhile, Multinational Forces Iraq has identified the Mahdi Army commander responsible for the kidnappings and has begun to name other Mahdi Army leaders as being involved in criminal and insurgent activity.

Iraqi soldiers conducted the raid in an as yet unidentified region near Baghdad, likely with the aid of U.S. Special Forces, and killed four of the kidnappers. "We have rescued eight of the hostages and are working to free the others. We killed four of the kidnappers," Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al Askari said.

Earlier today, Multinational Forces Iraq "identified Arkan Hasnawi, a former brigade commander in Jaish Al Mahdi [Mahdi Army], as responsible for the kidnapping of Shia and Sunni tribal leaders from Diyala Province yesterday." Hasnawi was identified as a leader of a "gang of criminals" that has "joined forces with Iranian-supported Special Groups that are rejecting Muqtada al Sadr’s direction to embrace fellow Iraqis."

The identification of Hasnawi as a former Mahdi Army commander and leader in the Special Groups is new pattern of releasing the names of Shia terror leaders. In a recent briefing on the Baghdad security operation, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, singled out Mahdi Army commanders sheltering in Sadr city by name. Five Mahdi Army commanders were directly named.

"Unfortunately, there are some individuals who are not interested in reconciliation," Odierno said. "These individuals continue to use violence to incite sectarian hatred for political gain, to promote foreign interests and to achieve personal wealth through criminal activity. They commit extortion, kidnappings, intimidation and murder against the Iraqi people. We are working hard to prevent men who do this, such as Arkhan Asnawi, Nasr Anad al-Masawi, Haji Duwad, Ahmed Atu, Abu Bolil, and Haji Mahti from seeking sanctuary within Sadr City. They have not honored the ceasefire announced by Muqtada al Sadr. And they only bring harm to the people of Sadr City."

Tim Rutten's latest column for the Los Angeles Times, titled "Drudge, New Republic battle over 'Baghdad Diarist'," is remarkable for the number of factual inaccuracies it contains. Granted, the Beauchamp affair is complicated, and for those of us who have followed it closely there has been a great deal of frustration with the attempts by MSM journalists to report the details, as it often seems they do very little research before writing. Still, Rutten's work stands out for its deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. And I say deliberate because I wrote Rutten a perfectly pleasant email over the weekend informing him of the piece's most significant error, which he has yet to correct.

Bob Owens has done a pretty good job of enumerating each mistake in the piece here, but the mistake I find most troubling is that Rutten repeatedly admonishes the Drudge Report for referring to, but failing to provide a copy of, the "Memorandum for Record" signed by Beauchamp. Here's Rutten:

The fourth document, according to Drudge, was "a signed 'Memorandum for Record' in which Beauchamp recants his stories and concedes the facts of the Army's investigation -- that his stories contained 'gross exaggerations and inaccurate allegations of misconduct' by his fellow soldiers."

It was interesting to note that Drudge provided links to the transcripts and report but not to the purported "Memorandum for Record." (In fact, signing such a document -- if it exists -- is not an admission of guilt, but merely an acknowledgment that the person under investigation has been shown the contents.) Far more interesting was the fact that within several hours, Drudge had, without explanation, removed the "exclusive" from his website. The item still can be found in the report's archives, but links to the documents have been disabled. No notice or explanation is appended to the archived item.

So Rutten is basically implying that Drudge pulled the documents because this memorandum didn't exist. In fact, if Rutten had actually read the transcript of the phone call between Foer, Scoblic, and Beauchamp before writing a half-baked piece, he would have noticed that the memorandum was appended to the second portion of the transcript. Apparently he did not read the documents. Again, go read Owens's post to see the catalogue of other errors in the piece. But Rutten, despite being informed of the error, has failed to issue a simple correction. Frankly, this is pretty disturbing behavior for a journalist who covers the media. If you would like to read the document that Rutten didn't, it's available here, and if you're only slightly less lazy than Rutten, you can scroll down to the last two pages and see for yourself.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel has been promising for months that his legislation to 'fix' the AMT would promote fairness and equity. It already seems to have won strong support from Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the House Democrats.

Harvard's Greg Mankiw, however, calls attention to the analysis done by the Tax Policy Center:

• The bottom three-fourths of households, those making less than $75,000 a year, are not much affected. They each would receive a tax cut of about $100 per year.

• The next 24 percent, those making between $75,000 and $500,000, would receive much more substantial tax cuts. Those in the $200,000 to $500,000 range, who are in the 96 to 99 percentile of the income distribution, would get a tax cut of about $3,600 per year.

• The top 1 percent, those making over $500,000, would pay substantially more in taxes. Those making more than $1 million would see their tax bill rise by an average of more than $100,000.

The Tax Policy Center is a joint effort of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute--hardly the sort of conservative groups that would try to tear down Rangel's proposal. If anything, they would be more likely to sugarcoat it.

And to the extent that Democrats argue that tax reform is needed to address inequities in the current structure, they may want to explain why the rich grew to earn so much more under President Clinton, but have not fared so well under the Bush administration.

From the OC Register: War, like life, is not a movie, by Mark Steyn.

From the Washington Times: Iran Continues to Meddle, by James Lyons.

From the Raleigh News & Observer: A Fading Fighting Force, by Joseph L. Galloway.

From Foreign Affairs: Losing Russia, by Dimitri Simes.

Bonus Video: CNN Covers the TNR/Beauchamp Story.

Half Time is Game Time: Move over Cadets and Cavaliers!
Next year’s Drum Corp International competition will also feature the Iranian Marching band.

Thomas B. Edsall writes that Clinton is "going for the kill" in Iowa:

The decision of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to send 100 or more new staffers into Iowa demonstrates that she and her aides have determined to their own satisfaction that she can cripple Barack Obama in the first-in-the-nation caucus.

Iowa is the only state where current surveys show Obama to be within shooting distance of Clinton. In late August, Clinton took a small lead of 5.2 percent in a poll of likely Democratic caucus goers. That lead, the smallest Clinton holds in any early primary or caucus state, has held up through seven of the eight most recent polls, increasing the willingness of the Clinton team to gamble on a new offensive.

The Obama campaign has already described the January 3 Iowa contest as a must-win event. Clinton's burst of hiring is a declaration that she intends to go for a knockout punch.

Couldn't you also say this move by Clinton suggests that her campaign is seriously worried about Obama winning Iowa? That the campaign recognizes it is more vulnerable than it appears? Such an interpretation does not comport with the current Hillary-is-unstoppable media storyline, of course. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.

What is Condoleezza Rice thinking? Last week, the Secretary of State turned to former President Jimmy Carter for advice on Middle East, which, to put it in terms that Rice, an avid NFL fan might understand, is like asking Rex Grossman how to play quarterback. Or it would be if Grossman had publicly insulted you first.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." That is what Carter said about the Bush Administration less than six months ago. Although he later tried to soften his criticism, the attack was harsh enough that it even provoked a response from the White House press office, which labeled the former president "increasingly irrelevant."

Not any more, apparently.

Carter is the author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, a volume so tendentiously anti-Israel that it prompted this response from Dr. Kenneth W. Stein:

President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary.

Stein speaks with authority on the subject. He co-authored a book with Carter and served as the Middle East Fellow at the Carter Center of Emory University. Stein leveled this criticism in his resignation letter, leading a widespread condemnation of the book and its author.

Then, just three weeks ago, Carter was at it again. This time, he attacked Vice President Dick Cheney. "He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter said in an interview with the BBC.
"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

So, Jimmy Carter attacks the vice president as a disaster, writes a deeply flawed book on the Middle East, and claims that the Bush Administration is the worst in U.S. history. Why does he deserve an audience with the Secretary of State?

It’s a good question.

Oh, by the way, here is what Carter said about Rice in his interview with the BBC:

"I'm filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to (Cheney) which she did even when she was in the White House under President George W. Bush," Carter said. "Now secretary of state, her influence is obviously greater than it was then and I hope she prevails."

Over at his new blog "connecting the dots," Gabriel Schoenfeld--who is always a "must read" when it comes to intelligence matters--is discussing Kenneth Timmerman’s new book, Shadow Warriors. I have not yet read Timmerman’s book, but Schoenfeld is discussing one of Timmerman’s claims that I have looked into--that is, I’ve tried to look into it as much as I can. According to Schoenfeld, Timmerman writes that "to this day, the CIA has no spies in Iran" and he attributes this claim to "numerous agency insiders and other sources."

Schoenfeld points out that if the CIA did have spies inside Iran, Langley would have an incentive to tell journalists like Timmerman that they didn’t. It is a fair point. The Agency certainly does have a strong incentive to protect its most important sources. Despite his "distrust" of Timmerman’s account, Schoenfeld says his "best guess, knowing a bit about CIA difficulties in recruiting human sources, is that his claim about the agency’s non-coverage of Iran is accurate."

I am also inclined to believe Timmerman is right. Here’s why.

In 2006, Chris Wallace of Fox News interviewed Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra was asked what we know about Iran’s nuclear program:

WALLACE: Congressman, how close is Iran to actually developing a nuclear weapon, or don't we really know?

HOEKSTRA: I'd say we really don't know. We're getting lots of mixed messages. Obviously, we're getting lots of different messages from their leadership, the stuff that they are saying in public.

It all points out the fact we need to do much better in rebuilding our intelligence community, reshaping it, transforming it, making sure that we give public policy--that we give policymakers the information that they need so that we can make better decisions.

We've got a long way to go in rebuilding our intelligence community. We're focused on this in a bipartisan basis, and we're going to keep trying to build the intelligence community that we outlined in the reform bill that we passed a couple of years ago.

WALLACE: But, Chairman Hoekstra, I mean, almost everyone agrees this is the major foreign policy issue or challenge facing this country today, and you're saying we really don't know what's going on in Tehran?

HOEKSTRA: Hey, sometimes it's better to be honest and to say there's a whole lot we don't know about Iran that I wish we did know, and we as public policymakers need to know that as we're moving forward and as decisions are being made on Iran, we don't have all of the information that we would like to have.
And that's nothing more than being honest, being honest with the American people of saying in some of this stuff, we wish we had the information, but right now we don't.

During the same session, Wallace also interviewed Jane Harman, Hoekstra’s Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee. Harman concurred with Hoekstra: "We don't know. Our intelligence is thin. I don't think we have enough sources. I don't think our analysis is sharp enough."

Is it possible that the CIA hid its sources inside Iran from the senior ranking Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, so much so that they went on television warning that we didn’t have any real significant intel inside Iran? Maybe, but that certainly isn’t likely. You could argue that Hoekstra and Harman did not say that the CIA had no spies at all inside Iran, which is Timmerman’s claim. That’s true, but their statements leave us in the same place--the U.S. intelligence community is blind when it comes to Iran.

After days of sporadic fighting, intermixed with beheadings and ceasefires, the Pakistani military has again called for a halt in fighting with the Taliban in the settle district of Swat. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is bragging about the number of "militants" (read: Taliban) it killed in Swat over the past few days:

"The reports which I have from the police and Frontier Corps people who were doing this law enforcement action was about 50-60 militants died yesterday," Army spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said.

What Major-General Arshad fails to tell you is the number of Pakistani troops killed in the fighting. While there is no official count, a casual scan of the news will provide it. The Pakistanis have taken casualties equal to that of the Taliban:

October 25: 30 Pakistani soldiers killed in suicide bomb attack on a convoy.
October 26: 7 Pakistani soldiers captured and beheaded.
October 28: 10 Pakistani soldiers killed in fighting.

Forty-seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in four days of on and off fighting in Swat. These are numbers that makes U.S. casualties in Iraq seem like child's play. The high casualties encounter have demoralized the military and made military operations very unpopular in Pakistan.

Whether they want to recognize it or not, the Pakistani military and government is fighting an intense Taliban insurgency in the settled districts and the tribal areas of Northwest Frontier Province. Their solution has been half-hearted combat, followed up by "peace accords" which cede territory to the Taliban. If history is a good indicator, the government will again cave to the Taliban in Swat as it has in Bajaur, Mohmand, and North and South Waziristan.

The Cardinal is back, after a few days in the tropics chasing Huguenots and converting the lost. I see Romney has captured his long sought endorsement from Sen. Judd Gregg. While endorsements are worth little in New Hampshire, they are very helpful in spinning elite media and keeping donors happy. Romney will get some good mileage from this. And it will be a nice press big-foot on Rudy's New Hampshire trip this week.

In Iowa, a new University of Iowa poll is out, with interesting results. Romney is still ahead at 36 percent, with Rudy and Huckabee tied for second at 13 percent each. Not the expectations-reducer Romney could really use, but winning is still winning. This is a wide-sample poll and as such it is likely to include some non-caucus-goers, so Romney and Rudy are probably higher than reality, but not that much higher. (Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Iowa caucus is not an ultra-low-turnout event; these numbers are probably close to where the race stands at this still early and unsettled moment.)

Rudy's Iowa expectations ruse is becoming more and more transparent; trash talk Iowa and pretend you don't care at all about it while working a serious but stealthy effort to score second or third and bounce into New Hampshire with big momentum. Then you can beat Romney there and run the table. Not a crazy plan at all, especially if the media are thick-headed enough to fall for such an obvious expectations manipulation. Meanwhile Thompson's Iowa standing is waning a bit. He should give campaigning a try. Look for paid ads up on the air, and soon.

The big news in the Iowa poll is a statistical tie between Hillary Rodham Clinton at 29 percent and Barack Obama at 27 percent. The same wide-sample discount mentioned above applies to these Democratic numbers as well, but the fact is Hillary has nothing like a lock on Iowa. Nonetheless, the national media continue to crown HRC as the nominee - which is not so bad for Obama, because all this Hillary hype now merely cranks the guillotine blade higher and higher into the air should she lose Iowa. That would open the windows of Heaven to another great flood. In this new poll, it looks as if some of Edwards's support is melting off to Obama. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth saying again. If the combined Edwards/Richardson/Biden vote - 32 percent in this poll - declines in the final stretch to, say, 21 percent, where does that lost 11 percent of the caucus vote go? I think it breaks two to one or better to Obama. And if that's correct, this poll approximately would read: HRC 32 percent, Obama 35 percent.

In case you need more evidence that a socialized government-funded health care system is a bad idea, London's Daily Mail reported yesterday:

Record numbers of Britons are traveling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 "health tourists" will fly as far as Malaysia and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report...

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.

That's funny. Didn't Michael Moore promote Britain's NHS as a top-notch system in his movie Sicko? Minette Marrin at London's Sunday Times says:

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”...

While there are good doctors and nurses and treatments in the NHS, there is so much that is inadequate or bad that it is dishonest to represent it as the envy of the world and a perfect blueprint for national healthcare. It isn’t.

Is this what we want? Inefficient, government-controlled health care that will force Americans to fly halfway around the world for life-saving surgeries? This is scary news, especially since leading Democratic presidential contenders are all for universal health care.

Ed at Captain's Quarters notes, "The longer trips to India and Malaysia indicate a measure of desperation." Clearly, NHS is NOT working, and a similar system in the United States likely wouldn't work either.

Blue Crab Boulevard agrees, adding, "What's interesting here is that people are avoiding the 'free' health care if they can afford it. That speaks volumes about the socialized medical system in Briton - none of it good...Meanwhile, the left in this country continues to push for socialized medicine."

John Hawkins at Right Wing News tells us this could be our future, too: "Don't you look forward to the day when you have to fly to India or Hungary because you're 'simply frightened of going' to a Hillary hospital? Of course, they'll assure you that won't happen."

Macsmind adds that the "backlog on critical medical care especially in the wait for new organs such as heart, kidney, liver" will only increase if the country turns to socialized medicine.

More from the Daily Telegraph and Don Surber.

And you wonder why Hillary was voted "scariest Halloween costume" among all the presidential candidates.

Early in 2007, Congressional Democrats split their conference--pitting moderates against liberals--as they considered whether and how to fund the Iraq war. They ultimately held their troops in line to pass an Iraq funding bill with a forced date for surrender. But when the president vetoed the measure, Democratic leaders stepped aside and allowed Republicans and moderate Democrats to pass legislation funding the war 'with no strings attached.' It seems that they're intent on staging a replay.

Reports in the last week in the Hill and Congressional Quarterly agree that Democrats are leaning toward giving the Pentagon part of the funding needed for the war before Christmas, but then waiting a few months on the rest. They'll consider the remainder of the funding request early in 2008, in the hope of forcing surrender in Iraq. They'll apparently do so even though the drawdown will be beginning by then, in a plan supported by the American people. From CQ:

The chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee signaled that Congress is likely to delay its consideration of President Bush’s new war spending request until early next year and instead would probably provide interim funding to tide over the Pentagon.

The estimated $50 billion to $75 billion interim spending, called a “bridge fund,” would be included in the final version of the Defense appropriations bill (HR 3222), which a House-Senate conference is expected to approve Nov. 1.

“I think you’ll see bridge funding,” said subcommittee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, on Oct. 23. “Because otherwise, what are you going to do?”

The plan for Democrats will be to fund the war through the spring or early summer--after General Petraeus has provided Congress with the March update he promised. Democrats hope that with the 2008 election bearing down, Republicans will be wary of voting against a forced withdrawal.

That's a possibility; politicians are notably sensitive to the electoral cycle.

But it could also be that Iraq continues to shrink as an item of concern in the public consciousness, so that there is little appetite for a fight that may undercut our troops at a time when we're winning.

It's unwise to draw too many conclusions from polls, but it seems that Iraq is diminishing in importance in the eyes of voters. While 37 percent of Americans rated Iraq/the War as the top issue in July, the most recent poll shows it as the top concern of just 26 percent--with health care right behind at 25. If Iraq is indeed fading as an issue of public concern it may be because the media attention to the war seems to be declining.

Congressional Democrats have so far failed to change course in Iraq, and they face pressure from the antiwar base simply to cut off all funds. They have suffered politically when they have forced confrontations with the administration over the continued presence in Iraq. It could be that this time will be different, but do they really want another go-round? If things continue to improve in Iraq, will it be wise to force Democrats either to disappoint the base, or to cut-and-run from an improving Iraq, just a few months before the election? And by then the Democrats will have a presidential nominee. Do they want to force her (or him) to take a position on their attempt to force a surrender?

This could wind up being a very costly strategy for Democrats.

Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin note here that Mike Huckabee may soon overtake Rudy Giuliani in Iowa polling. Giuliani is trending downward, while Huckabee is on the rise.

Looking at Blumenthal and Franklin's data, it becomes clear that the Iowa GOP caucus currently is a two-tier race, with Mitt Romney alone in the first tier and Fred Thompson, Giuliani, and Huckabee together in the second. Since it is likely that there will be three tickets out of Iowa, one of those second-tier candidates will be left out. Which suggests that the second-tier will be where a lot of the exciting Iowa jousting takes place.

As always, one should note that four years ago today Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were battling for the top-spot in Iowa. John Kerry, who won Iowa in the end, was in third-place.

I'm one of them! (There aren't too many of us.) Patrick Ruffini updates his analysis of Facebook demographic data here. Ruffini adds more context here.

Note that about the same number of self-identifying liberals (35 percent) and conservatives (35.48 percent) express interest in the Will Ferrell movie Anchorman.

Ron Burgundy: He brings people together.

A Mitt Romney partisan once told me that the former Massachusetts governor's campaign strives to win every news cycle. If so, the campaign hasn't done its job that well ever since Romney won the Ames, Iowa, straw poll back in August. And even then the political class seemed to conclude that the "real story" was Mike Huckabee's strong second place finish.

Well, it's only 10:00 a.m., but it probably is safe to conclude that New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg's endorsement of Romney means the former governor "wins" today's campaign news cycle.

Gregg is an influential Republican senator and a friend of President Bush's. His endorsement of Romney is another signal that Bush-allied elements in the GOP establishment are sympathetic to the businessman-turned-governor-turned-presidential candidate. But it may also provide some caution to those in the GOP who think the party needs a break from the Bush family.

Last Wednesday, the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India held a meeting in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. This was the first time that the trilateral forum had taken place in China.

In the joint communiqué issued afterwards, it was emphasized that trilateral cooperation among the three "is not targeted against any other country or organization."

On the same day, People’s Daily and Liberation Daily ran the exact same article titled "Who says India is being lured into the ‘NATO family’ that the U.S. and Japan are attempting to construct?" It begins:

For some time now, America’s neo-conservatives and Japan’s right-wingers beset with a menacing Cold War mentality have been peddling the idea of an "alliance of democratic countries" and the "arc of freedom and prosperity" (i.e., the so-called "value-oriented diplomacy"). Of all the important countries they are trying to rope in, India is ranked at the top.

According to the article, such talk does not upset China; however, it has "displeased" India and put New Delhi in an "awkward" position. To support this assertion, the piece quotes Pranab Mukherjee, India’s external affairs minister, as saying during his recent visits to Thailand and Korea that "China remains an important priority of our foreign policy and a key component of our ‘Look East’ policy."

The article ends by urging America’s neo-conservatives and Japan’s right-wingers to abandon their "Cold War thinking" and their attempts to draw India into their sphere of influence in hopes of containing China. Otherwise, it warns, they risk becoming "the laughingstock of history."

On the heels of the trilateral forum in Harbin came a five-day visit to China by Sonia Gandhi, the chair of India’s ruling Congress party. Last Friday she met with president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao. She is the first foreign political leader to be received by Hu and Wen following the 17th party congress. Given that Gandhi is not a head-of-state, the Indian press called the meetings "a rare honor."

To underscore the "great importance" Beijing attaches to Gandhi’s "milestone" visit, last Saturday People’s Daily and China Daily both gave front page coverage to her meeting with Hu.

The day Gandhi met with Hu and Wen in Beijing, Xinhua ran a piece titled "Indian futurist predicts: China, Russia and India together may save the world." In it, Jagdish Chandra Kapur, publisher and editor-in-chief of India’s World Affairs Journal, is quoted as saying that only by uniting China, India, and Russia can the world "be saved from the brink of collapse."

The concept of a China-Russia-India "strategic triangle" was first proposed in 1998 by then-Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. While Beijing dismissed the idea at the time, there has been increasingly favorable treatment of the notion in the Chinese media.

Bill Kristol makes the case for a wide-open Republican race for president. Among the scenarios Kristol outlines:

Thompson wins or runs a strong second in Iowa, as almost everyone else underperforms (except Huckabee?). Having over-performed in Iowa enough to be the story, Thompson over-performs in New Hampshire and then Michigan, and wins South Carolina. He'll then be on his way, as a center-right candidate running up the middle between Huckabee and Giuliani. (For examples of how being positioned in the center can pay off, consider Kerry in '04 between Dean and Gephardt/Lieberman, or Bush in 2000 between Forbes and McCain, or Dole in '96 between Buchanan/Forbes and Alexander.)

Thompson wins Florida and most of the delegates (remember the overweighted South) on Feb. 5. In this scenario, Thompson will have exploited the distinction between what Jay Cost calls the 'perpetual campaign' (or the pre-campaign) and the 'real campaign.' He will have gotten credit with voters for flouting what Cost calls 'fake rules' that voters dislike (e.g., that you have to start running a year early), while obeying enough real rules (Thompson already has over 75,000 donors, few of them maxed out, and some $7 million cash on hand) to afford TV at key junctures.

A major variable in this equation is how Thompson continues to perform as a candidate - something Cost observes here:

It comes down to execution. If you break the rules, break them well. Thompson is not breaking them very well. A case in point came last Saturday - when his speech before the Florida Republican Party was about a third of the time that the other candidates' speeches were. This was a mistake - pure and simple. If Thompson deemed the event important enough to participate, he should have participated as fully as the other candidates. He looked really bad because of that five minute speech (some reports actually offered the length down to the second ... yikes). Now - personally, I think the fact that he is doing fewer events is just fine. I think he is on to something. The public is sick of this endless campaign. A candidate who rejects it could find some sympathy and support from the voters. So, it is all right for Thompson to do fewer events. However, if he does fewer, he has to make sure that the ones he does are done with vigor and verve. That Florida speech lacked both - and it was not the first time that a Thompson speech has fallen flat. We have been hearing that for much of the year - since he gave what Robert Novak called his 'ordinary' debut in May.

At the center of every presidential scenario is the candidate. So far, Thompson has out-performed extremely low expectations. The question is whether he can continue to do so as the "real" campaign begins.

Iran was the topic of the day on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain laid out the basic problem to George Stephanopoulos on This Week, saying

“This is the most unstable part of the world right now. The Iranians have dedicated themselves to a certain proposition, and that is the extinction of the state of Israel. They continue to foment unrest and terrorism in the region, they support terrorist organizations, so this is a major challenge for America.”

On Face the Nation, Sen. Carl Levin explained how he would take care of the Iranian problem:

“I think the sanctions are the right way to go. A lot of diplomatic pressure, a lot of economic pressure. Most importantly, keep the world together against Iran. Right now we've got most of the world, I think just about every country, that does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It's in no one's interest that they have it, and I think most countries, including Russia, as well as Israel, obviously, but other countries in the region are not going to stand by and just simply watch if Iran gets to the point where they actually are getting to a nuclear weapon.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham wasn’t sure that sanctions are the most effective way to handle Iranian ambitions:

“Well, I have a little different take. I think Russia's sending all the wrong signals to Iran. When the Russian president goes to Iran and does a news conference with the Iranian president, embraces him, calls for other nations not to consider attacking Iran, it sends the wrong signal. I think the United Nations efforts to sanction Iran have been pitiful because of Russian--Russia and China vetoing a resolution. The European Union has some sanctions; they're fairly weak.”

And on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol chided Sen. Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues for his naïve (lack of a) response to Iran’s increased activity within Iraq’s borders.

“Is the position of the Democratic party and Senator Obama that the Revolutionary Guard sends those rockets into [Iraq], trains fighters to fire against and try to kill … American soldiers, and we’re to do nothing. Nothing. No sanctions, no pressure, just talk to them, try to persuade them to be nice guys. Is that really the position the Democratic party wants to take?”

Also on Fox News Sunday, there was this exchange between first lady Laura Bush and Chris Wallace inspired by an item that appeared last week on THE WORLDWIDE STANDARD:

Reading the blog of the Far Eastern Economic Review, you come across the parody video below, produced by the folks at Hot Air. It's about everybody's favorite fugitive Democratic fundraiser. There are moments when the singer is a little off-key, but he compensates with his enthusiasm:

Here's the pull-quote from the Washington edition of this story in today's Times:

"Washington wants to tighten the screws on Iran, but there's not much thread left."

Next time I need to thread a screw, I know whom to call.

UPDATE, 5:00 p.m.: A handy reader points out that I'm incorrect; the above metaphor is unmixed. This Wikipedia entry on screw threads exlains why I'm wrong. Mea culpa. The reader further suggests that "somebody needs to get out from behind a desk."

Good point! On that note, have a great weekend.

It's been clear for several days that the House of Representatives was going to defer consideration of the controversial resolution to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The New York Times carries the obituary today.

How quickly did the U.S. relationship with Turkey get 'back to normal?' Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Lantos introduced legislation on Monday to transfer four decommissioned Navy ships to Turkey, and the Committee approved the bill on Tuesday.

Navy Times has the story:

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill to grant to Turkey three decommissioned U.S. military ships and to sell a fourth to the allied nation at a large discount. The panel passed the bill on a voice vote.

Under the arrangement, the U.S. should transfer to Turkey two Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigates and an Osprey-class coastal minehunter. Another coastal minehunter was offered to Turkey at the sale price of nearly $28 million...

According to Navy Times, the four ships are valued at about $500 million altogether. Turkey will pay $28 million, but will pay for refurbishment at U.S. Navy Yards, as well as purchase accompanying equipment--such as helicopters.

It's a sign of the close relationship between the U.S. and Turkey that this transfer is expected to go through without a hitch, notwithstanding the recent kerfuffle. As Navy Times notes, the U.S. has granted eight Perry class ships to Turkey in recent years, in a move to bolster its influence (as well as to increase sales of accessories).

And before you jump to conspiracy theories about the transfer being some payoff related to the spiking of the genocide bill, the deal has been in the works for months. Senator Biden introduced identical legislation in June, and it was approved in committee in July.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Torture Logic, by Gabriel Schoenfeld.

From the New York Post: A Maginot Line in the Sky, by Ralph Peters.

From the Christian Science Monitor: Osama bin Laden's Growing Anxiety, by Fawaz A. Gerges.

From Hot Air: Response to TNR, by Bryan Preston.

From the Wall Street Journal: Apocalypse No, by Peggy Noonan.

From the Times: Now what would a huge US bomb be aimed at? by Gerard Baker.

The pollster who must not be ignored, Scott Rasmussen, has produced a couple of doozies today.

In his daily presidential tracking poll, Rasmussen shows Mike Huckabee surpassing Mitt Romney for the first time nationally. Huckabee now sits at 12 percent while Romney is at 11 percent. Although Huckabee's lead over Romney is a single, slender percentage point and could be the product of statistical noise, the result unmistakably heralds Huckabee's arrival into the top tier - as have the numerous attack pieces that popped up this week targeting the latest man from Hope. Also noteworthy is how compressed the now five-man top tier has become. Only nine points separate the frontrunning Giuliani from the fifth place Romney.

Perhaps more interesting and more relevant to who will eventually get the prize is Rasmussen's latest New Hampshire poll. According to the pollster, Mitt Romney has "reasserted his lead" in the Granite State, extending his lead to nine percentage points from the three-point lead he held in September.

So what does it all mean? Romney still has not gained traction in the national polls, but he's looking more solid than ever in the early states. If the early states still matter, Romney's where he wants to be. For what it's worth, I think the compressed campaign schedule makes New Hampshire and Iowa more important than ever, but that's far from a universally held sentiment.

As for Huckabee, he has advanced to the point where he will get a serious look from voting Republicans. Given that he started with no money and no standing, that in itself is quite a feat.

So apparently those annoying emails you get in your inbox from right-wing friends and relatives are part of a larger conspiracy to spread lies and misinformation about the left. Who knew? Apparently Christopher Hayes does, as he's written a long, detailed examination of the issue for the Nation.

The idea that there is some kind of mysterious and malevolent force out there that prompts bored, and one would assume largely middle-aged, conservatives to forward chain emails is absurd on its face. People do this of their own free will, and besides, I'm not sure what Hayes's solution would be other than to form some new government bureaucracy to monitor people's email to make sure that the contents have been properly fact-checked (after all, some magazines don't even fact-check stories before publication). Still, there's one part of his story that is itself a smear:

That leads to the $64,000 question: are these anonymous attacks organic emanations of the diffuse political consciousness, or are they deliberately seeded by professional political operators? Mikkelson is skeptical that anyone could intentionally write the kind of e-mail that would take off virally. "Even people who are steeped in it, it's very, very difficult to start something deliberately that will catch on." Still, there's some evidence it's been done. Snopes determined that a gushing pro-Bush e-mail from 2004 about watching the President worship in the pews of St. John's Church in Washington was actually written by the press spokeswoman for Republican Senator Lamar Alexander. Her name is Laura Lefler, and she now works for Senator Bob Corker. I tried to contact Lefler to get a sense of what inspired her to write the e-mail and how, exactly, she disseminated it, but she wouldn't return my calls or e-mails.

So Hayes couldn't get a hold of Lefler, and what does he do? He insinuates that her email is "evidence" of a smear that has been "deliberately seeded" by a professional political operator. First off, I know Lefler very well and I discussed her now famous email (or it would be famous if anyone read the Nation) with her at the time. She didn't smear anyone, she wrote a note about her own experience of a chance meeting with the president of the United States during Sunday morning mass. She sent it to her family and friends, who in turn sent it to their friends, who in turn forwarded it to their church congregations, until just about every person south of the Mason-Dixon line had received a copy.

Lefler was horrified that the missive had garnered so much attention. She had sent the email from her work account, which is against Senate rules, and which led to hundreds of phone calls to Senator Alexander's office seeking to verify that it was genuine. She had a pretty rough time with the whole thing--she'd erred in using a Senate email account for a personal communication, and her office was inundated with calls about the note for weeks. No one there was happy with the outcome, including Lefler.

But the note was neither a smear against a political opponent, nor part of some larger conspiracy to soften the president's image among religious conservatives. And the fact that Lefler wouldn't return Hayes's calls shouldn't have come as a surprise. The entry about the note at snopes.com, which Hayes clearly read, contains a statement from Senator Alexander's spokesmen that makes quite clear the office's displeasure with the whole affair.

But Hayes didn't let a lack of evidence prevent him from drawing conclusions that would paint his political opponents in a bad light. He smeared her, and not in some personal correspondence, but in a publication that is supposed to have higher standards.

Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.

One day after the Taliban launched a devastating suicide attack which killed over 30 paramilitary policemen in Swat, the Pakistani military launched an offensive. The Pakistani military targeted the religious seminary run by Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, the leader of the local Taliban. He is said to have gone into hiding just prior to the beginning of the offensive.

"Paramilitary troopers, after Friday noon prayers, raided a seminary of local militants' commander Maulana Fazlullah at Imamdehri village," the Kuwaiti News Agency reported. "A fierce gunbattle erupted between the supporters of Maulana and troopers when they tried to enter into the seminary... the two sides were still exchanging heavy fire ... troops fired mortar shells as well."

The Pakistani military is said to be employing helicopter gunships and is believed to have taken over the Taliban training camp next to Fazlullah's madrassa.

Fazlullah is one of the more radical and eccentric Taliban leaders in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province. Known as Mullah FM, he preaches jihad and calls for the imposition of sharia law on his illegally run radio station. He campaigns against girls’ schools and polio vaccinations. Fazlullah also conducts campaigns where he organizes the burning of television sets, digital and video cameras, computers and other electronics as they are a "source of sin."

The 28-year-old radical cleric is leader of the local al Qaeda linked and outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law), which is also referred to as "the Pakistani Taliban." The TNSM sent over 10,000 of its fighters into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces in 2001 before the fall of the Taliban.

In nearby Bajaur, the local Taliban destroyed five military checkpoints. "Meanwhile, commander of the local militants, Waliur Rehman, has warned that they would punish anyone doing illegal activities in the name of the militants," The Daily Times reported. "Our main objective is to promote Islam and the imposition of Shariah," Rehman said.

Bajaur is run by TNSM's Faqir Mohammed, who has close connections to al Qaeda's Ayman al Zawahiri. Bajaur is an al Qaeda command and control node. The Pakistani government negotiated with Faqir and the TNSM in the spring of 2007, and the cut a "peace deal" that turned the province over to he terrorists.

The Pakistani military has repeatedly launched offensives in the tribal agencies and settled districts of Swat, Tank, and North and South Waziristan, only to halt after taking heavy casualties to conduct negotiations with the Taliban.

This Reid Wilson post at Real Clear Politics is worth reading. Wilson argues that there are parallels between Mitt Romney and Howard Dean, and that either John McCain or Rudy Giuliani will become the 2008 version of Dick Gephardt who takes Dean/Romney down with him in a flurry of negative campaigning, while the other may become the 2008 version of John Kerry and win his party's nomination.

It may sound like a tortured historical analogy to you - and maybe it is! Regardless, here's Wilson:

The increasing bitterness of the Republican race, centered around three candidates' struggles to win New Hampshire, are only likely to get worse in the coming months. The turning point, from running a positive campaign to a comparative campaign, could be an ominous sign for either McCain or Giuliani. As they both train their fire on Romney, one will likely become this year's version of Dick Gephardt.

The other could become this year's John Kerry, who stays above the fray, and out of harm's way, bound onward to a general election.

It is worth thinking about the possibilities. What is clear, though, is that probably we will have a much more definite sense of the field after New Hampshire, should New Hampshire take place after Iowa. The early states matter more, not less, than the others.

Representative Dennis Kucinich has apparently told a blogger conference call that he'll raise the issue of impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives -- through a point of personal privilege:

...Rep. Dennis Kucinich announced he will go before the U.S. House of Representatives on a point of personal privilege to move the impeachment of Dick Cheney. Mr. Kucinich stated he will bring the impeachment forward before Thanksgiving. As soon as we learn more details we will post them immediately. NOW's the time to put pressure on all representatives, to impeach Cheney.

Support is already building in the fever swamp left to make sure this measure gets traction:

Kucinich proves yet again his courage and leadership in Represntative Democracy against fear and political calculation. He proves that he will not play party politics if it is against the interests of the United States and American citizens. He proves, again, his credentials for holding our highest office. Support Dennis Kucinich!

A point of personal privilege relates to an offense against the dignity, integrity, or reputation of the House. Kucinich will presumably rise to argue that the failure to bring articles of impeachment against Cheney is a stain on the institution. It will be up to the Speaker to rule whether Kucinich's argument is valid, and rule on whether he may speak on his point.

House rules don't provide for a vote on Kucinich's impeachment resolution, merely a chance for him (and others) to make the argument. Will Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership allow Mr. Kucinich and other impeachment supporters to make their case, or force them to stay silent?

Today's David Brooks column on technology and autonomy is filled with great lines, but here's my favorite:

Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like.

I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I've never heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I've shed all that knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the Reindeer Section - a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music featured on the soundtrack of 'The O.C.'

I know the feeling! It was through an "O.C." soundtrack that I discovered The Album Leaf, a band I highly recommend.

You can read the rest of Brooks's column here.

According to the New York Sun and the Washington Post, the UN Secretary General has published a report linking an al Qaeda affiliate in Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, to Syrian intelligence. Fatah al-Islam has engaged in heavy fighting with Lebanese forces at times, but under constant pressure seems to have been significantly degraded in recent months.

The UN’s analysis reportedly draws heavily from a letter Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora wrote Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. According to the Sun, the "letter draws upon information gathered during the interrogation of captured leaders." Indeed, the Sun says that Siniora wrote: "Direct contact between some of Fatah al-Islam's leaders and some senior Syrian intelligence officers, which were revealed in the interrogations, are consistent with the suspicion that Syrian intelligence has used Fatah al-Islam to serve its political and security objectives in Lebanon."

MEMRI has posted excerpts from Siniora’s letter as well as Syria’s response here. See also MEMRI’s previous report.

Now, there are some who have claimed that Fatah al-Islam could not possibly cooperate with both al Qaeda and the Syrian regime. After all, don’t we know that the Baathist, Alawite regime in Syria is simply incapable of colluding with Sunni Islamists? Such thinking, however, is flawed for a variety of reasons. And this is precisely why I and others have argued that it does not make sense to carve up our terrorist enemies into impenetrable ideological boxes. Al Qaeda’s members, including its most senior leaders, have proven willing to work with the enemy of their enemies, despite any theological or ideological differences, time and again. Indeed, there is a lengthy history of collaboration between Syria’s senior partner in terror, Iran, and al Qaeda.

Getting back to the case of Fatah al-Islam, included below are just some of the threads tying the group to both al Qaeda and Syrian intelligence. In addition, links to some of the reporting on the controversy over Fatah al-Islam are included:

• As the BBC noted in September, Fatah al-Islam is an offshoot of "Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah Uprising), a Syrian-backed Palestinian group based in Lebanon." The BBC also notes that Fatah al-Islam is led by Shaker al-Abssi, who has spend much of his time living in Damascus. Interestingly enough, during his time in Syria, al-Abssi "is believed to have become a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, with whom he allegedly helped plan the assassination of a US diplomat, Laurence Foley, in Amman in 2002."

I don't know why we never thought of this:

While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam.

Before we reject this out of hand, lets seriously consider it for a moment: Osama Bin Laden promised the wars would be over if Americans convert to Islam.

This may sound like a lot to ask from the most religious country in the industrialized world. But of all the Christians in America today who profess to be religious, how many of us are seriously devout?

To be fair, this post isn't from Markos or any of the lead contributors to the Kos site; it's simply a stunningly simplistic simple idea from a Kos diarist.

Some say that the war on terror is all about preserving the western way of life -- the pluralist societies that respect women and minorities, and encourage freedom of thought and religion, as well as economic freedoms. Why didn't we realize that if we're just willing to give those up, we can win?

Lest you think this is entirely in jest, 133 Kos readers have voted in the poll to show their support for the idea.

Jonathan Martin reports here that Kansas Senator Sam Brownback warmly received Mayor Giuliani on Capitol Hill yesterday:

Standing just outside his Senate office suite next to Giuliani, Brownback, an ardent abortion opponent, said twice that he was 'much more comfortable' with his former rival's stance on what he called the issue 'of life.'

'He's talked about a number of key pieces of what a president would have, whether it's funding, appointments on the court, I'm much more comfortable with that,' Brownback said.

Asked if he could support somebody who supports abortion rights, Brownback said, 'I don't know that he would ... whether he'd describe himself as a pro-choice mayor or a pro-choice candidate.'

I'm unsure about the practical consequences of Brownback endorsing Giuliani, should such an endorsement occur. As more Republican voters learn about Giuliani's position on abortion, it is likely that a significant portion of those voters will rule out voting for the mayor under any circumstances. They'll just sit 2008 out, with unknown consequences for the GOP.

What a Brownback endorsement of Giuliani certainly would signify, however, is that social conservative elites are divided over important questions of policy, politics, and message. And from the place where Giuliani stands, it appears that a divided social right increases the chances he will win the Republican nomination.

From today's Washington Post story on Syria's latest shenanigans:

Syria has cleared away all traces of a large building that experts say was bombed by Israeli jets last month because it was suspected of housing a partially finished nuclear reactor, according to a new satellite image that shows only freshly groomed dirt at the site.

The tall, box-like building visible in aerial photographs before the Sept. 6 bombing raid has been dismantled down to the last brick, the image taken Wednesday by a commercial satellite service shows.

Nuclear weapons experts who studied the photo sequence said the starkly different images indicate that Syria must have moved quickly to hide what remained after the site was bombed.

'They are clearly trying to hide the evidence,' said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit nuclear research group that was the first to publicly identify the facility as the apparent target of the Israeli raid. 'It is a trick that has been tried in the past, and it hasn't worked.'

The story goes on to report that State Department officials continue to downplay suspicions that North Korea was somehow involved in the construction of the buildings the Syrians are tearing down while saying they were never there in the first place.

People always talk about how one of the Republican candidates will have to "break from Bush" in order to help his chances in next year's general election. Typically, the people saying this imply the candidate should "break with Bush" by disavowing the Iraq war - a foolish thing to do.

And yet here's an issue that is ripe for one of the candidates to take. I suspect one of the reasons the administration downplays North Korea's suspected involvement in the Syrian affair is that to admit that Kim's regime was somehow involved would embarrass those in the White House and State Department who advocate a conciliatory approach to North Korea. A presidential candidate who wants to prove his or her hawkish credentials could call the administration's bluff and argue that the world is a dangerous place where strength, not wishful thinking, is necessary to maintain global order and American security.

Here's hoping.

In the first of two columns on Fred Thompson's campaign, Jay Cost argues that Thompson is breaking the media's rules - and winning support because of it. Here's Cost:

People outside the Beltway, whose daily lives are not regimented by the news cycle, appreciate that the perpetual campaign has reached a point of asininity. Accordingly, a candidate could win supporters over in the real campaign by claiming that he ignored all of these rules, which essentially mandate twenty-two months of nonstop campaigning. This is a twist on running against Washington. It is running against the Washington press corps. A Republican candidate can do this all the more. After all, the perpetual campaign is mediated by the press, which conservatives loathe. Instead of saying that he broke the media's rules, a candidate instead can say that he broke the Drive By Media's rules. That is a great way to win conservatives over: run against the Drive By's.

I also would note that another Republican presidential candidate often receives heavy applause when he mentions the "liberal media."

Thompson's breaking of the media's rules, Cost argues, is an example of "Good Fred." Cost writes that he will discuss "Bad Fred" next week. The labels refer to the Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde performance of former Chicago Bears starting quarterback Rex Grossman. When Rex was good, he was called "Good Rex." When Rex was bad - which was pretty often - he was called "Bad Rex." Thompson may not appreciate Cost's analogy, however. In the end, Grossman lost his job.

The invasion in Iraq was always a gamble in that it gave al Qaeda a cause to fight the "crusaders" in the heart of the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has called the U.S. a "paper tiger" in the past, and predicted the U.S. would shy away from combat in Iraq once the fighting got tough. And the United States came perilously close to a forced withdraw from Iraq at the beginning of 2007, but changed its counterinsurgency strategy and encountered dramatic results.

The upside of the Iraq invasion was that an open confrontation with al Qaeda in Iraq forced the terror group to show its true self to the Muslim world. At its core, al Qaeda is a ruthless, inflexible, and highly ideological organization that preys on Muslims more than it preys on Westerners. In an effort to enforce ideological and organizational purity, al Qaeda resorted to terror tactics against its natural allies, the Sunnis.

My friend Evan Kohlmann, a counterterrorism expert who tracks jihadi communiqués on the Internet, has been highly critical of the U.S. invasion and subsequent strategy in the past, but has come to believe al Qaeda has failed in Iraq. In a quote from a Christian Science Monitor article titled "Al Qaeda reveals signs of weakness," Evan states:

"Iraq was Al Qaeda's greatest achievement and its greatest failure... At one time they were riding high from what was happening in Iraq, people were talking about [similar] movements popping up in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and that time has come and gone."

"Al Qaeda has gone, in the minds of many Muslims, from being this kind of chivalrous organization run by Muslim knights seeking to defend the purity of the Muslim world and, instead, they've been revealed for what they are. They've done it to themselves."

Evan has become convinced of al Qaeda's failure after reading numerous denouncements and criticisms of al Qaeda from formerly allied insurgent groups. In an email communication with Evan several weeks ago, he stated:

Al Qaeda seems to have fallen victim to its own worst impulses in Iraq. Then again, when you resort to gleefully digging up the buried corpses of fellow jihadists in order to make off with their severed heads as war trophies, it might just be time for a serious re-frame...

I poked fun at [Vice President] Cheney for his "last throes" line back two years ago, but if he were to repeat that prediction now about al Qaeda, he might actually be right... The combined impact of "the surge" and "the putsch."

Osama bin Laden seems to agree. In his latest audiotape, not only did he criticize his leaders in Iraq for "negligence" and other misdeeds, he stated that for al Qaeda in Iraq "the darkness has become pitch black."

Bill Kristol puts on his contrarian's cap in his latest Time magazine column and explains why things may not be as bad as they seem for the Grand Old Party:

The Democrats are going to nominate either a one-term Senator (Clinton) or a half-term Senator (Obama), neither with much in the way of legislative achievements. Against that, the GOP will offer one of the following: a remarkably successful two-term mayor (Rudy Giuliani), a business leader as well as Governor (Mitt Romney), a four-term Senator and war hero (McCain), an effective two-term Governor (Mike Huckabee) or a Senator with as much experience as Clinton and who was a star prosecutor and has an appealing personal story (Fred Thompson).

Kristol concludes:

At a time of war, in a culturally conservative country with voters suspicious of Big Government liberalism, it would be foolish to underrate the chances of the presidential nominee of the more hawkish, socially conservative and anti-Big Government party.

Republicans were guilty of hubris after the 2004 election - and look at what happened next. Now you could argue Democrats, after the 2006 election, are just as guilty of hubris - and what does the future hold for them?

Time to give credit where it's due. As Souther California suffers through one of it's worst fire seasons on record, a friend sends along a six month old article from the Politico. In a piece titled "Perfect storm brews in California," author John J. Pitney Jr. displays deep insight into the intersection between politics, geography, and nature:

California's rainy season is ending, and it has been especially dry in the populous southern part of the state. Since last July, Los Angeles should have had about 15 inches of rain. Instead, it has had a little more than 3.

Even in a normal year, Southern California's climate spawns wildfires. Barely a drop of rain falls during the summer, so the region turns into a big brown pyre. In the autumn come the warm, dry Santa Ana winds that fan minor fires into major ones. This year, the fire season will be somewhere between merely bad and truly catastrophic. In the latter case, think of Katrina with flames in place of floodwaters.

Pitney goes on,

The final months of the primary campaign, in fall and winter 2007-2008, may unfold amid frequent disasters and universal anxiety. In the event of wildfires, Democrats will link the charred landscape to global warming. Whatever form the state's misfortune takes, they will blame the Bush administration for skimpy preparation and shoddy response.

And so it has come to pass. The other day on Capitol Hill, Senator Reid explained the wildfires in Southern California:

As you know, one reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming. One reason the Colorado Basin is going dry is because of global warming.

So Pitney called it, and he warned specifically that Republicans were likely to be hit hardest by the fires. I think his prescient prognostication deserves a second look at his suggestions for the candidates:

More than policy proposals, Californians will be looking for candidates who have shown leadership and compassion. Obviously, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a built-in advantage because of his performance in the face of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But any candidate could make a favorable impression by doing something dramatic and concrete. Picture one of the contenders temporarily suspending campaign fundraising in order to gather money for a relief fund -- and challenging the others to do likewise.

Campaigns need to focus on the basics. And nothing could be more basic than fire, water and earth.

The candidates will ignore this at their own peril.

When, earlier this week, I saw the pictures of the first lady sitting on a pink couch bracketed by, well, you couldn’t quite tell what they were, because they're wearing head-to-toe burqas, I thought she was making a powerful statement. Americans don't force their women to wear those ridiculous outfits, and by all rights they shouldn’t be forced to do so just because they are visiting a Muslim country. We live in a free country--if Muslims (or anyone else trying to go incognito) want to wear those things over here, that’s their prerogative. By the same token, any American woman wishing to brazenly flash a little ankle is also free to do so.

Most Americans traveling the Middle East have little recourse but to don the black sheets, but the first lady certainly does. She can dress as she likes. Which is why I find the image (at right) from Saudi Arabia so disturbing. The first lady represents the American people, she is not a private citizen, and she certainly isn't acting as a private citizen in her tour of the Middle East. That she would oblige her hosts by wearing a shmata on her head is a tacit endorsement of Islam's subjugation of women. Do I expect a visitor to a synagogue to wear a yarmulke? Yes, though I wouldn't force them, and a yarmulke isn't a sign of subordination to another group of people, but to God. And also, radical Jews didn't attack this country, radical Saudi Muslims did. This isn't merely a question of being a polite guest.

And what will happen if Hillary wins the White House in 2008? Will she be expected to don the burqa on her trips to Saudi? One would hope not. Sitting presidents don't take fashion commands from foreign dignitaries, and neither should first ladies. Where are the feminists when we actually need them?

Reading Best of the Web Today, I came across this New York Sun review of Valerie Plame's new book. Here's the best quote:

Mr. Wilson comes out badly according to his wife's account: invariably abusing her, storming off, or on the verge of tears, and when the White House concedes that the yellowcake mention was wrong, he does not accept victory graciously but needs to hurl himself angrily onto the national stage to draw the apology to everyone's notice. While Ms. Plame is left home in Washington looking after 7-year-old twins, anxious and exposed, her job in jeopardy, he is gallivanting around America talking to conspiracy theorists and peaceniks in community colleges.

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV is a larger-than-life figure, a man seemingly drawn from an opera bouffe, not the U.S. diplomatic corps. Of course, these days more and more Washington figures seem drawn from satire, not reality.

PBS aired a new FRONTLINE documentary this past Tuesday titled "Showdown With Iran." The documentary was produced with the intent of highlighting the source of tensions between the U.S. and Iran since 9/11, but it fell well short of providing an accurate portrait for a variety of reasons.

At one point, for example, the documentary implies that relations between the two nations were improving until President Bush included Iran in the "Axis of Evil" during his January 2002 State of the Union speech. This verbal assault supposedly emboldened Iran’s hardliners and further marginalized the reformists, thereby damaging a real opportunity for meaningful change in the relationship between the two nations. This tripe is frequently repeated, but it is a hollow critique.

In reality, Iran’s reformists have no control over Iran’s terrorist proxies or national security apparatus and, therefore, are and have been incapable of curtailing the hardliners for decades. The ayatollah and his attending mullahs are the real power in Iran, and until this changes the reformists are feckless. So, whether Iran was in or out of the "Axis of Evil" made no difference at the end of the day because the reformists had no real power to speak of in any event. Moreover, the PBS documentary skirts the issue of the hardliners’ unsavory activities at the time and throughout history, which the reformists have never been able to remedy. (More on this later.)

The documentary also implies that the United States spurned a legitimate Iranian offer to settle all debts, so to speak, by striking a "grand bargain." This offer supposedly came in May 2003 via a Swiss Diplomat named Tim Guldimann. The offer is oft-cited by the left as evidence that the Bush administration recklessly flopped a legitimate opportunity to engage in meaningful dialog with Iran. But again, this is nonsense. As Michael Rubin explained in THE WEEKLY STANDARD previously, the Guldimann memo was the work of a wishful thinking, freelancing, Western diplomat, and not a serious attempt by the Iranians to strike a deal.

To its credit, PBS did include some doubts about the Guldimann offer. But the overall impression I got watching the documentary was that PBS thinks there was a legitimate opportunity for setting aside our differences in May 2003. Offering a dissenting view was Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state during President Bush’s first term. A transcript of PBS’s interview with Armitage, snippets of which were included in the documentary, is available online. Armitage was asked about the Guldimann offer and he confirmed Rubin’s take:

PBS: After the invasion [of Iraq], there's been a lot of discussion about the so-called "grand bargain" fax that came through from the Swiss ambassador. Tell us your recollection of that.

Armitage: Our discussions with Iranians were handled by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, for which we were very grateful, but it had been our view that the Swiss ambassador in Tehran was so intent -- and I mean this positively -- but he was so intent on bettering relations between "the Great Satan," the United States, and Iran that we came to have some questions about where the Iranian message ended and the Swiss message may begin.

I remember talking with people from our Near East division about a fax that came in from the Swiss ambassador, and I think our general feeling was that he had perhaps added a little bit to it because it wasn't in consonance with the state of our relations. And we had had some discussions, ... particularly through intelligence channels with high-ranking Iranian intelligence people, and nothing that we were seeing in this fax was in consonance with what we were hearing face to face. So we didn't give it much weight.

PBS: What were you hearing face to face?

We were getting no cooperation on questions of terrorism, particularly ... turning people over. We had in Europe some very high-level discussions in intelligence channels and were getting a lack of cooperation. ...

Others disagree with Armitage, but he has the better of them on the facts. He rightly points out that the U.S. was already in face-to-face talks with the Iranians, they did not make an offer anything like the Guldimann memo in these talks, and the Guldimann memo was out of step with the rest of Iran’s behavior.

Interestingly, the hardliners themselves say that the offer was not genuine. Hossein Shariatmadari, a mouthpiece for the Ayatollah and editor-in-chief of Kayhan, the regime’s state-run newspaper, was also asked about the Guldimann memo:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States government faces a budget deficit of $343 billion from 2008-2017. With total spending over that time near $36 trillion, the projected deficit is essentially a rounding error--one that could easily be closed by trimming projected spending growth by a fraction of a percent. How do Democrats propose to close it, though?

With the largest tax increase in American history.

Chairman Rangel is touting the benefits of the plan, but Jim McCrery--the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee--explains that the tax increases called for under the Rangel plan total $3.5 trillion over the next ten years.

The bill will add a 4% surtax on Americans earning more than $150,000 a year ($200,000 for couples). That is on top of the scheduled expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So, under Democrats’ plan, over the next few years, the individual income top tax rate in the United States will rise from 35% to 44%. By way of comparison, the other 29 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries – basically other developed nations - have an average top marginal tax rate of 35.7%. In fact, only five OECD countries would have higher top marginal tax rates in 2011 than the U.S. if the Democrats’ bill is enacted...

Chairman Rangel will claim that these tax increases go to provide tax cuts to 90 million Americans, but he is selling pure snake-oil. Many if not most of those taxpayers are getting a purely imaginary “tax cut.” Some of them are the roughly 20 million people that Republicans shielded with the Alternative Minimum Tax patch. Millions more are people who have benefited from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and only get “tax cuts” if you assume that the 10% bracket, marriage penalty, and $1,000 per child tax credit will expire. Others, like single people who will now be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, are getting a tax refund from the government even though they don’t actually pay income taxes...

That’s right. $3.5 trillion. The baseline that the Democrats are using for “paygo” includes revenue from an “un-patched” AMT and from the tax increases that occur when the 2001 and 2003 tax laws expire after 2010. Together they total $3.5 trillion over ten years. If we play by the Democrats “paygo” rules, that is the size of the tax increase we are imposing on the American people. That will hurt our nation’s competitiveness and cost us American jobs. The Rangel bill is the first step down a road none of us want to follow, and I urge you to oppose it strongly.

The frustrating aspect of the Democratic plan is that it purports to raise taxes to make up for revenues lost to tax cuts. But the federal government never intended to collect these revenues in the first place. The AMT was intended to ensure that a few hundred of the wealthiest Americans did not escape taxation entirely. The Democratic argument is that by correcting the error that would have caused the AMT to unintentionally touch millions of taxpayers, they are giving those taxpayers a tax cut.

Think of this analogy: suppose Democrats in Congress announced that they were going to raise the taxes of middle-income workers by a trillion, but then repealed the increase before it took effect. Would you count yourself the beneficiary of a tax cut? Under Rangel's plan, that's exactly what you are.

Take it a step further though. Suppose that in order to cancel the planned tax increase, Democrats announced that they needed to 'make up the lost revenue' elsewhere. That's what House Democrats are proposing here.

The House Republican Study Committee has set out an alternative to the Rangel plan, which doesn't use the AMT as an opportunity to raise taxes. They explain it here.

Also note that while Rangel is claiming that his plan offers a tax reduction for many businesses, it took the National Association of Manufacturers only a few hours of review to grow suspicious:

While the package includes some tax relief supported by the NAM, including corporate tax rate cuts, we are extremely concerned about the tax increases that will impact manufacturers of all sizes. Based on our initial review, for many manufacturers, the proposed tax increases could well exceed the benefits of the proposed tax relief.

Americans for Tax Reform points out some clear problems with the plan:

• Small Businesses: There are 3.3 million Subchapter-S corporations in America, making them the most popular business form for most mature small businesses. Rangel's tax bill increases the tax rate on S-corps by up to 15.3%...

• Americans Doing Business Overseas: The U.S. is already the only country that double-taxes international business income. Rangel's tax increase will force more companies offshore as they seek to avoid punitive double taxation.

Other groups are sure to weigh in over time, but the first impression of Rangel's plan is not a good one.

Across the board, German political and media circles breathed a big sigh of relief after the defeat of populist Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski by Donald Tusk, leader of the pro-EU and market-friendly Civic Platform party, in early parliamentary elections on Sunday. Until two weeks ago, the older of the identical Kaczynski twins (his brother Lech currently serves as Poland’s president) still seemed poised to win another term in office with an aggressive election campaign based on the fight against post-Communist corruption as well as rather obsessive friend-or-foe thinking, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s fate was sealed, however, after he lost a high-profile TV debate against Tusk and when Poland’s young, educated, urban, and increasingly mobile population (more than 1 million Poles have moved to the UK since 2004) turned out at the polls in record numbers to get rid of a government that had left the country often completely isolated within the 27-nation EU bloc on issues ranging from EU institutional reforms to the death penalty. In the end, it was, essentially, only elderly, conservative Catholic voters from Poland’s poor rural areas who remained faithful to Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, thus underscoring the country’s growing deep cultural and political divide.

Since coming to power two years ago, the Kaczynski twins and their political allies have repeatedly launched aggressive political attacks on the German government in Berlin, using bellicose rhetoric and conjuring up memories of the Second World War in an effort to deflect attention from their mounting political problems at home. From the Germans’ perspective, it was disappointing to see that a country they had sponsored for entry into the EU (and NATO for that matter) was now using membership as a way of settling old scores. For sure, former Chancellor Schroeder’s cozy relationship with Russian President Putin and their planned Nord Stream gas pipeline bypassing Poland certainly sounded alarm bells in Warsaw. However, since taking office in late 2005, Merkel has repeatedly tried to allay Polish fears over the Russian-German project, which Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s hawkish former defense minister Radek Sikorski (who subsequently fell out with the twins and decided to run for Donald Tusk’s party on Sunday instead) even compared to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to partition Poland. It is unfortunate that Merkel’s repeated overtures to Warsaw, which also included an invitation to join the consortium by building an additional spur of the pipeline from the Baltic Sea to Poland, were rejected by the two hard-line twins, who insisted that Russia and Germany scrap the deal altogether.

In this fascinating extract from his new book, John Lee of the Australian Center for Independent Studies invokes Robert Conquest and goes on to explain Beijing's predicament:

That the reported instances of [Chinese social] unrest are rising exponentially obviously suggests a rising tide of discontent. However, most analyses stop there because little information is revealed by the Government about the nature of these instances and what they concern. What we mostly hear from the Chinese Government is talk of procedures established to mitigate the seriousness of these incidents. Piecing together a picture of what is happening has mostly been left to intrepid insiders and determined reporters. These piecemeal reports, which are becoming more lucid and comprehensive, point to scenarios that have variously been described as a tipping point, a time bomb and a precipice for the regime.

Indeed, official media channels can no longer hide (and perhaps no longer want to hide) the rising instances of social unrest. These instances are the most tangible signs of an increasingly disgruntled population.

Social unrest in China: Officially reported instances of social unrest (involving 15 or more people) have risen from 8700 in 1993 to 87,000 in 2005 (the latest available figures). This is about 240 instances each day.

The first important point about the rising instances of social unrest is that it indicates a citizenry that is increasingly defiant or unafraid of the authoritarian coercive apparatus. This means the level of discontent is so profound that the protesters no longer care about the consequences of unrest or that the regime's ability to enforce compliance and order has been seriously compromised.

As the truth is undoubtedly a combination of both, this is worrying news for any authoritarian government.

Lee no longer views China as a totalitarian state, but as an authoritarian state with little control over its own populace. When you combine Lee's analysis with reports like this, the scope of the crisis facing the Chinese Communist party begins to sound familiar.

Thomas DeFrank was a young reporter for Newsweek when he encountered Gerald Ford for the first time. Ford was vice president at the time. The two became friends, a phenomenon that was rare in those days and is all but extinct today as a wall of distrust divides politicians and the press. DeFrank covered the Ford presidency, after which he did an unusually smart thing. He kept up with Ford, visiting him often and taking notes. The result is a wonderful book, Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford.

This is the best collection in years of the private thoughts of a man who was president. The only book in its class is the one, decades ago, that captured Harry Truman in moments of unusual candor. Ford was a likable guy with a quick laugh. He knew everyone, including professional athletes, Hollywood types, writers, and historians, as well as hundreds of world leaders and politicians. And he had something to say about all of them.

One of the stories DeFrank tells is about Ford's friendship with Frank Gifford, the football star and announcer. In 1997, Gifford was caught in a one-night fling with a former stewardess. The tabloids went wild. But Ford, who never strayed in years of marriage to his wife Betty, was loyal to his friend. He called Gifford to say, as DeFrank tells it, "You're in our thoughts and prayers and we hope everything works out."

Ford was philosophical about man's tendency to succumb to sexual temptation. "You have to think of the ten bad things that could happen to you from something like that and the one good thing," he said, "and tell yourself the one good thing will get taken care of some other way."

From ABC News: Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs, by Jonathan Karl.

From RealClearPolitics: Who's Afraid of an Iranian Bomb? by Victor Davis Hanson.

From the Washington Post: Baghdad Diarist Was On Guard When Questioned by Editors, by Howard Kurtz.

From Michael Yon Online: Beauchamp and the Rule of Second Chances, by Michael Yon.

From National Review: Shattered Diarist, by James Robbins.

Bonus Audio: Army Medevac Unit Races Against 'Golden Hour', by Guy Raz.

Reading today's Opinionjournal Political Diary, you come across a reference to this op-ed on running for president in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The article is by Donald J. Boudreaux, who is the chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Here's Boudreaux:

It's the filthiest, grimiest, most unpleasant job that any human being can ever suffer to perform: run for political office. ...

To begin with, as a candidate you must eat endless lunches and dinners of nothing but rubber chicken. And while doing so you typically are seated beside people whose only interest in you is their desire to cozy up to someone who either already has, or might soon acquire, impressive political power.

Because political power in modern America means the power to take money from A and give it to B, bevies of wannabe Bs swarm to get a piece of you. It must be suffocating and morally disorienting constantly to be hounded by people begging you to assist them in their efforts to take what doesn't belong to them.

Worse, to keep or win office, you must actually engage in such dirty behavior (or promise to do so once elected). You must determine which innocent people are the easiest marks for your grabbing hand - which people are least likely to be aware that you're picking their pockets - and then grab fistfuls of their wealth, all the while assuring them that you're their boon companion and great protector.

I guess no one has to worry about Boudreaux running for office anytime soon, right?

From General Sherlock's briefing yesterday:

GEN. SHERLOCK: “In Iraq, since the final surge forces arrived in June, our operations against terrorists and extremist groups have had a sustained positive effect.

“Overall violence is down in many areas of Iraq. For example, in and around Baghdad, terrorist operations are down by 59 percent; operations targeting Iraqi security forces are down over 60 percent; car bombs are down by 65 percent; fatalities due to car combs have decreased by 81 percent; casualties due to enemy attacks are down by 77 percent; and the violence during this last Ramadan period was the lowest in three years.

“Another example: in Al Anbar province, last week we had no casualties, killed or wounded in action. And that's the first time in recent memory that I can be able to say that.

“Overall casualties in Iraq have continued to decrease, even though coalition forces have conducted a variety of operations throughout the country.”

It should also be noted that not a single American has been killed by an IED in Anbar province since September 10. I think I mentioned this a few days ago, but, of all the metrics that indicate progress in Iraq, I find that to be the most startling.

Afghanistan is often referred to as 'the forgotten war," but in the case of NATO, it should be called the ignored war. Radio Free Afghanistan details NATO's lack of serious commitment to the Afghanistan mission. "As NATO's defense ministers begin a two-day meeting in the Netherlands today, the United States is criticizing member states' inability to dedicate more resources to the alliance-led mission in Afghanistan."

The United States, which has over half the NATO forces in Afghanistan, is frustrated by NATO's failure to pony up resources for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not mince words as the latest NATO meeting.

Speaking after a meeting of the Council of Southeast Europe Defense Ministers in Kyiv on October 22, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly attacked NATO members for not living up to the commitments they have undertaken. "I am not satisfied that an alliance, whose members have over 2 million soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, cannot find the modest additional resources that have been committed for Afghanistan," he said.

NATO commanders in Afghanistan have been screaming for an additional two battalions of combat troop--about 1,000 soldiers--to reinforce ISAF units in heavy contact with the Taliban in southeastern Afghanistan, but no troops have been offered.

Many of the units in Afghanistan operate on what are called caveats--restrictions on when, where and how the units can fight. Countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Italy have significant troops in Afghanistan, however they are restricted to securing the peaceful northern and western portions of the country (in defense of the French, they have a 200-man special forces team in southern Afghanistan which I am told does some bloody work.) The Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, and the Dutch are left shouldering the load of the fighting, and the Canadians and Dutch, which are respectively deployed in the southern hotspots of Kandahar and Uruzgan, may have to withdraw from the mission due to a lack of political support.

Most of the units lack organic air and logistical support, and rely on the United States or Britain for this support. NATO is considering leasing--leasing--30 helicopters to support combat and logistical operations. The greatest military alliance on the planet cannot spare 30 helicopters.

I'll pass on a short story from my embed with the Canadian Army in the southern province of Kandahar during June 2006. The Canadians were in the midst of fighting the Taliban in the Panjwai and Zari districts. As part of Operation Mountain Thrust, we moved out into the deserts of neighboring Helmand province and pushed eastward. The heat was so intense that I dehydrated and developed a kidney stone (if you haven't had one, trust me, the pain can be quite intense).

The medics offered to medivac me, but said it could take time to get a helo out there. I was aware of the real problems the Canadians had with air support, and declined. The Canadians were in a hot fight, and I didn't want to divert the valuable air resource for my very painful but non-life threatening condition when a soldier could potentially need it. But the point is, NATO does not have the resources it needs for this fight.

First Read's Matthew Berger has an entertaining post on the Rudy Giuliani / Red Sox controversy. Writes Berger:

For the past few days, I have been defending Rudy Giuliani on the whole Yankees-Red Sox thing. I am a die-hard Yankees fan myself and have been known to travel to New York in October if I can find a ticket. I never root for the Red Sox, but my father does. He's an American League fan, he says, and roots for the American League team in the World Series. I distinctly remember watching the Mets-Red Sox series in 1986. I was rooting for the Mets because my friends were Mets fans (I was 8, after all); he was rooting for the Red Sox, but neither of us were happy about it.

But now things have changed:

But today I called my father, and he said he just couldn't do it anymore. After the blowout Wednesday night, he changed his tune. He can't back Ortiz and Manny; it makes him sick in his stomach. His loyalty to the American League is surpassed by his hatred of the Red Sox.

So is Rudy just more loyal to the AL than my dad? Or is he more loyal to New Hampshire voters? You be the judge.

Go Rockies!!!

For what it's worth, I agree with Berger's dad. Josh Beckett is an incredible pitcher who deserves to be rewarded for his excellence, but watching the Sox drub the Rockies last night just seemed kind of ... cruel.

Reading Berger's post, it occurred to me that there is something in Giuliani's political DNA that attracts controversy over the most trivial details. A few weeks ago everyone was talking about Rudy's cellphone habits. Now this week everyone is talking about Rudy's baseball loyalties. Love him or hate him, we're talking about him - and in ways that have little to do with politics.

It clues you in to how Giuliani embraces controversy of all kinds. And it opens a window onto what America in the age of President Giuliani might be like.

The Democratic margin of control in the US Senate is one seat, and Harry Reid has apparently decided to flip one seat to the GOP in 2010.

Reid has told [his circle of advisers] that he will definitely seek a fifth term, according to McCue and others who have attended the sessions, and he is bringing back McCue, a top political adviser, to fortify his standing here and at home.

“He’s committed to running again,” said McCue, who announced on Wednesday that she is leaving her post as president and CEO of the anti-poverty ONE Campaign to return as a senior adviser to Reid.

McCue also said that Reid “intends to retain his position as Democratic leader as long as his colleagues will have him.”

The Politico points out that while Harry Reid may have a high profile right now, that he would manage to avoid the limelight if Democrats win the White House. While true, that would put him in the position of defending the president's liberal agenda in a midterm election in a red state. It won't exactly help his re-election chances.

And given his collapsing poll numbers and the chance to be seen as a giant-killer, there's not likely to be any shortage of strong GOP challengers.

Democrats ought to wonder how Reid's re-election campaign will affect his management of the Senate. He can't simultaneously pursue both the liberal agenda and a fifth term.

Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino is in a state about the new schedule for the Big East conference, which forces his team to play Georgetown and Marquette twice and away games at Pittsburgh and Connecticut. When asked by the Washington Post's Camille Powell about his feelings toward Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, Pitino responded:

'I'm very close with Mike Tranghese and [senior associate commissioner] John Marinatto. They're both Italian. I was coaching at Providence when they both were there. They like me a great deal; we're very close friends. But they like God more. They're much closer to the Catholics than they are friendships. They could care less if I'm floating in the East River. They just threw me into the East River, floating with a lot of my Italian friends, because that's the way that schedule was made.'

Also: Marinatto is a pimp. He could've never outfought Santino. But I didn't know until this day that it was Tranghese all along. ...

In a little-noticed interview with Michael Tomasky in the Guardian America this week, Hillary Clinton was asked, "What specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example, the power to declare a U.S. Citizen an enemy combatant?" Clinton didn't name any "specific powers" she might "relinquish." But consider what she did say:

Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection. But when you take the view that they're not extraordinary powers, but they're inherent powers that reside in the office and therefore you have neither obligation to request permission nor to ask for ratification, we're in a new territory here. And I think that I'm gonna have to review everything they've done because I've been on the receiving end of that. There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the Constitution. There were other actions they've taken which could have obtained congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.

Tomasky followed up by asking whether a president can "actually give up some of this power in the name of constitutional principle?" To which Clinton said, "Absolutely," and suggested that she might be doing that as a result of "the review that I undertake when I get to the White House."

MoveOn.org has sent a message to its members announcing the start of a coordinated campaign to prevent the U.S. from a military strike against Iran. From their E-mail:

To be honest, I don't even like to think about the possibility of war with Iran. But here's the unfortunate truth—plans for an aerial attack have been drawn up. There's nothing stopping Bush from launching that attack any day. And right now the progressive movement's main strategy for preventing it is simply to hope that it doesn't happen.

To paraphrase my ninth-grade sex-ed teacher, "Hope is not a method." We need to do something. There are increasing indications that war with Iran may be imminent. And experts agree it would be a catastrophe.

So today we're proposing a major campaign to expose the danger of a new war with Iran (see below for details). It'll cost about $200,000, and if we can raise the money, we'll start today. Can you chip in $25?...

Observers across the political spectrum, from Senator John McCain to former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, say the threat is closer than it appears. And it's never a good idea to underestimate this president's capacity for recklessness.

We can't run the risk that they're crazy enough to do it. That's why it's so important that we make sure policymakers understand the cost of war, and we pressure Congress not to roll over on Iran. If we can raise the money today, here's what we'll do:

• A number of top retired generals and military experts are willing to say publicly that attacking Iran would be a strategic disaster. We'll put them on tour to speak to political leaders, editorial boards and big audiences.

• We'll run ads challenging the Bush administration and key presidential candidates—and remind people that the last time we heard many of these phony arguments was in the lead-up to war with Iraq.

• We'll commission polling to show wavering politicians that if they stand up against war with Iran, the public will stand with them.

• We'll run a major grassroots campaign urging Congress to confront the administration on Iran.

None of us know how likely a strike against Iran really is. But I'm going to do more than just hope it doesn't happen. The signs and signals have become too glaring. We have to act.

It's ironic that MoveOn's theme on Iran seems to be 'hope is not a strategy.' There's not a mention in their missive about how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It appears that the only coordinated campaign they are interested in is a campaign against the White House. As far as Iran goes, hope is their strategy.

MoveOn knows that the American people oppose military action against Iran; they even know what the polling will show before they take the polls. But if the American people truly oppose preserving a credible threat of military action, why are all the major presidential candidates of both parties staking out a contrary position?

Obviously, this isn't really about Iran; it's just another political campaign. Their strategy is to use the nation's number one security threat as a political football, and to try to score points against Republicans before the 2008 elections. But as with Iraq, the likely outcome is to elevate an issue that divides Democrats, and separate them from their political base. You can bet that if MoveOn raises the money they're seeking, in a few months there will be stories about angry liberal Democrats targeting Blue Dogs and other moderates who refuse to take an oath to oppose military action against Iran. There will be new fodder for primaries against the Democratic representatives and senators whose victories helped end the Republican majorities.

Has MoveOn really thought this through?

Here's a Soren Dayton post that summarizes many of the questions surrounding the GOP primary. Dayton wants to know eight things: When will the primary calendar coalesce? Will Giuliani falter? Will Giuliani still be able to compete in Florida and on February 5 if he under-performs in the early states? Will McCain benefit from Rudy's fall, if it happens? Why hasn't Thompson attacked Romney? Who will be the first to go negative on Romney? Where does Huckabee go from here? And could Huckabee translate a first- or second-place finish in Iowa into a solid finish in South Carolina?

Dayton concludes:

This is unsettled. It is plausible that the story out of Iowa is Huckabee. And the story out of New Hampshire is McCain. Michigan is a jump ball. Rudy could come in 2nd in all of these. Romney could be in first in all of these. There are just a lot of moving parts.

It's confusing! And yet the fundamental dynamic in this "perpetual campaign" has been relatively unchanged. Romney leads in the early states while Giuliani leads nationally. Thompson, without much organization or executive experience, is second in the national polls, in Iowa, and in Florida, and is tied in South Carolina. To date, the two variables have been Huckabee's surprise performance and McCain's tenuous comeback. But that's not many variables at all. In fact, the campaign has been relatively boring.

So here are two more questions for Dayton's list: When will the next variable enter the equation? When will the "real" campaign begin?

Just one week after the Taliban fought the Pakistani military to a standstill in the al Qaeda safe haven of North Waziristan, the military has deployed over 3,000 paramilitary forces from the Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary, and Frontier Reserve Police to the settled district of Swat in the Northwest Frontier Province. The troops have purportedly been sent in to quell the activities of the Maulana Qazi Fazlullah. The Pakistani government negotiated a peace accord with Fazlullah in May of 2007 which essentially turned control of the district to him.

Fazlullah and his followers openly rule large swaths of the district of Swat. The provincial home secretary said "the government had lost its writ in 59 villages and supporters of the cleric had set up a parallel government," Dawn reported. "The cleric had over 4,500 armed volunteers, he had set up an armed wing called Shaheen Force and established courts... foreign militants and members of the banned organisations were also hiding in the troubled area."

In early October, Fazlullah formed the volunteer Shaheen Commando to “control the law & order” in Swat. Fazlullah's commandos, said to number in the thousands, patrolled in trucks with machines mounted in the beds, and enforced sharia law.

The Pakistani troops are reported to have deployed to the hilltop of the rugged terrain, but have not begun combat operation. Fazlullah "told followers on his FM radio that troops had been deployed to kill innocent people" and "denied that he had challenged the writ of the government and set up a parallel administration." He said if attacked, his commandos would "kill many people" and should "attack security forces and members of a Swat jirga."

On October 10, Fazlullah threatened the government if it launched combat operations in Swat. "We will give a befitting answer. We are peaceful citizens. We have picked up arms for our own defence and protection and not against the law and order or the government,” the Daily Times reported. "We will sacrifice our lives to maintain peace in the region."

Fazlullah is a 28-year-old radical cleric and leader of the local outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law), also referred to as "the Pakistani Taliban." The TNSM sent over 10,000 of its fighters into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces in 2001 before the fall of the Taliban. Fazlullah is nicknamed Maulana FM Radio due to his operation of an illegal FM channel where he preaches jihad and campaigns against girls’ schools and polio vaccinations. Fazlullah also conducts campaigns where he organizes the burning of television sets, digital and video cameras, computers and other electronics as they are a "source of sin."

UPDATE: Fazlullah's Taliban attacked a Pakistani police convoy in Swat with a suicide bomber. Over thirty were killed, including 17 police.

Followers of Maulana Qazi Fazlullah gather in a village in Swat. AP Photo.

This Newsday story contains many fascinating details about a mob plot to assassinate then-prosecutor Rudy Giuliani in 1986. Here's the key quote:

In September 1987, [alleged FBI double agent Roy] DeVecchio reported that [Colombo captain Gregory] Scarpa told him that the five mob families talked about killing Giuliani approximately a year earlier, said [FBI agent William] Bolinder. It was in September 1986 that Giuliani's staff at the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office prosecuted bosses of La Cosa Nostra families in the so-called 'Commission' case.

The Commission trial, a springboard for Giuliani's reputation as a crime buster, resulted in the conviction in October 1986 of Colombo boss Carmine Persico, Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo and Genovese street boss Anthony Salerno. Gambino boss Paul Castellano was assassinated in December 1985 and the case against Bonanno boss Philip Rastelli was dropped.

The purported discussion about murdering Giuliani wasn't the first time he was targeted. In an interview in 1985 Giuliani stated that Albanian drug dealers plotted to kill him and two other officials. A murder contract price of $400,000 was allegedly offered by convicted heroin dealer Zhevedet Lika for the deaths of prosecutor Alan Cohen and DEA agent Jack Delmore, said Giuliani. Neither Cohen nor Delmore were harmed.

In the end, of course, Giuliani defeated his targets. That's what tends to happen, actually.

Also: Can you believe how much hair Rudy had in the '80s?

Today Bob Kerrey announced he will not seek the Nebraska U.S. Senate seat that is up for grabs in 2008. This is good news for former secretary of agriculture Mike Johanns, an early favorite to replace retiring U.S. senator and antiwar Republican Chuck Hagel.

Meanwhile, according to the Evans-Novak Political Report, Democratic state representative Grier Mier, an Iraq war veteran, says he won't challenge Senator Elizabeth Dole next year in North Carolina. Martin is only the most recent in a series of Democrats, including Governor Mike Easley, who have passed on the chance to challenge Dole.

And in Texas, where U.S. Senator John Cornyn appeared slightly vulnerable in recent months, Cornyn's opponent Mikal Watts has quit the race. Watts was Cornyn's strongest challenger. Now he's gone.

Add all this to the news that the antiwar campaign against Mitch McConnell seems to have stalled in Kentucky, and you get the sense that 2008 may not turn out to be the Republican wipeout that so animates Democratic imaginations.

Today's Page Six highlights two items of interesting political gossip. One item deals with Barack Obama's low-impact workout habits:

Barack Obama barely breaks a sweat when he works out. The presidential candidate visited the Century City Equinox gym in L.A. on Saturday at 7 a.m. for a five-minute treadmill walk, followed by a half-hour of wandering from machine to machine, doing one set on each, reports blogger Nelson Aspen. 'He did do a lot of deltoid presses, five sets, to be precise. I guess he's preparing to carry the weight of the world on those shoulders.' Aspen said. 'He had his iPod on, he didn't stop bopping.'

Interesting stuff - I wonder what Obama listens to while exercising? - but the deltoids-whole-world-on-shoulders quote seems a little too good to be true.

In item two, Bill Clinton enters into the fray over whether Peyton Manning or Tom Brady is the better NFL quarterback:

Tom Brady celebrating his record six touchdown passes with his supermodel girlfriend, Gisele Bundchen, at Prime 112 in South Beach, where Bill Clinton introduced him to his party as 'the greatest quarterback in the world.'

Hmm. Is Clinton angling for an endorsement? Or maybe a donation? Maybe, like this guy, Clinton is trying to appeal to New Hampshire sports fans.

Of course, Clinton probably also recognizes that Peyton is a Republican (and a Fred Thompson supporter), while Brady's politics - if he has any at all - are up for grabs.

The Drudge Report has posted a a series of documents that reveal the lengths to which the New Republic’s editors, specifically Frank Foer and Peter Scoblic, went to cover up the truth about the Scott Beauchamp stories. This is the end of the road, and a long road it's been.

When we started looking into Beauchamp's stories back in July, we believed that the New Republic had simply been taken in by a huckster--that despite being over-eager to publish a story that cast our troops in a negative light, TNR's editors had done so good faith, believing the stories to be true. So we emailed Frank Foer, who agreed to provide us with some of the corroborating details in order to demonstrate his author's credibility.

Foer told us that the incident with the disfigured woman had taken place at FOB Falcon and that the "Saddam-era dumping ground" was located a few miles south of Baghdad International Airport. With that information, we asked our milblogger friends to help us confirm the details of the story. It quickly became clear that no one at Falcon had ever seen this woman, that no "Saddam-era dumping ground" had ever been discovered, and that the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was not capable of dissecting stray dogs with the precision described by Beauchamp.

Nevertheless, the editors at TNR insisted in their first official statement that they had "much to corroborate" the soldiers account. Beauchamp himself stepped forward to attack his critics and affirm the accuracy of his reports. Still, not a single person could corroborate the existence of the mystery woman at Falcon. When confronted with this fact, Beauchamp confessed that the incident had not taken place as he'd described, a mere 48 hours after lashing out at those who questioned his account. And yet, the New Republic still determinedly stood by the rest of his story, declaring that its own "investigation" had found the claims about killing dogs and desecrating children's remains to be accurate. Once again, TNR produced not a single on the record statement to back up these claims.

It is now clear that somewhere along the way, TNR stopped acting in good faith and started doing damage control. They cited a Bradley expert who purportedly confirmed that the vehicle could be operated as Beauchamp described. But when Bob Owens tracked down said expert, BAE spokesmen Doug Coffey, he denied making any such statement, saying that TNR had mischaracterized his comments and that the editors had never shown him Beauchamp's stories. He added that having read the stories, they were indeed "suspicious," and that he did not believe the Bradley could be operated as described. TNR never acknowledged Coffey’s later statements or its apparent misrepresentation of his earlier statement.

And then came our report that Scott Beauchamp was no longer standing by his stories. The editors at TNR responded to this report by insinuating that THE WEEKLY STANDARD was not a credible source. They also accused the Army of "stonewalling" and preventing them from speaking with their author. That was on August 10. Bob Owens subsequently reported that TNR spoke to Beauchamp on September 7--the transcript now posted on Drudge--but TNR never returned to the subject, despite their claims of a "commitment to the truth" in that August 10 statement.

The documents posted by Drudge reveal that the New Republic’s editors have known for several weeks that the central anecdote of the story was untrue, that the other anecdotes were deeply suspect, and that the author was no longer standing by his work. And yet they remained publicly silent even though they had long ago promised to be open and forthcoming on the matter. Worse still, they asked Beauchamp to cancel pending interviews with the Washington Post and Newsweek, lest their complicity in Beauchamp's slanders come to light.

Foer attacked his magazine's critics as "reckless" and "ideologically motivated," at one point even demanding an apology from the bloggers who did so much to advance this story and find out the truth of the matter. He now has more than a little 'splaining to do.

Update: The transcript and documents are no longer available at Drudge. They can be found here. Also at MM's site here.

Today's Jay Cost post on Clinton and Obama is worth reading. It's long and complicated, but here is Cost's conclusion:

Rudimentary analysis is really all that is valid right now. So, here is mine. Clinton and Obama both have a ton of cash. They both have good messages that could appeal to the Democratic primary electorate. Both of them stand a chance at victory. I would estimate that Clinton has an advantage over Obama that is probably due to her greater name recognition as well the fact that she is a known quantity from a family of proven electoral winners.

If you want to argue that Clinton has an advantage because of the size of her national lead - you are simply on unsolid ground. Recent history has demonstrated quite clearly that these national poll numbers are far from stable. They are subject to sudden, dramatic, and decisive changes because of tiny shifts in the early contests.

Cost points out that, in 2004, Kerry's 6-point victory in Iowa propelled him from a second-tier national poll position to the top of the heap and, eventually, the Democratic party's nomination. There's no guarantee that what happened in 2004 will happen again in 2008, of course. If anything, this election is even more volatile.

The new issue of First Things features a symposium on the 2008 presidential election. Nat Hentoff, John J. DiIulio Jr. and Weekly Standard contributing editor (and First Things editor) Joseph Bottum all contribute. Bottum's piece contains this interesting analysis:

Which leaves Fred Thompson. He does seem genuinely Reaganesque - Reagan-lite, yes, but with some of that old great-communicator touch and Teflon feel that Ronald Reagan had. And on the combined issues of church-state relations, abortion, and economics, he seems (for the little we know) the best of the major candidates.

Or, at least, so far. Rudy Giuliani will have to run the table on Super Tuesday, winning nearly every primary on February 5 after losing all the ones before. Maybe he can do it. But the deeper into the winter the campaign goes, the more Thompson benefits. A Fred Thompson nomination, a slim election victory over Hillary Clinton, a stealth pro-lifer slipped on the Supreme Court through a Democratic Senate - that weak scenario is about the best a social conservative can hope for today. Everything else is bad. Very bad.

It's not guaranteed that Giuliani will lose every single one of the pre-Feb. 5 contests, however. Of course, if the former mayor doesn't place in the top three in Iowa and/or the top two in New Hampshire, his campaign probably will be, for all intents and purposes, finished. Giuliani must sense that as well - which is why he's been spending a lot of time in New Hampshire.

Bottum's fundamental analysis seems about right, though. We may be heading into a Rudy vs. Fred showdown. And based on the duo's brief but tendentious exchange during the most recent GOP debate, that would be quite a fight.

American universities pride themselves on being bastions of free speech and diversity of opinion, where all are given respect and a chance to voice their views. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for instance, was given a courteous reception (and TV time) at Columbia University in September, where he revealed the truth about his regime: "Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom" and "We don't have homosexuals, like in your country." Sure, some were outraged that this radical dictator and Holocaust denier was given such a forum, but he was overall given respect during his visit.

And now, as David Horowitz's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is in full swing at campuses across the country, the conservative pundits and anti-jihadists who are speaking about the atrocities of radical Islam are being given the same respect, right?

Wrong. The left is not only protesting, but also inhibiting these speakers' ability to voice their opinions at campus events.

Blogs have more on the atrocious treatment of Nonie Darwish at UC Berkeley, the "epicenter of the 60s free speech movement," as a commentator at Incorrect U says. Darwish says she was raised in a "jihadist" Muslim family in Gaza. Her father, an Egyptian lieutenant, was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1956, but rather than avenge his death, Darwish renounced radical Islam and jihadism. She became a U.S. citizen and writes and speaks of her support for Israel and the war on terror. She also promotes peace between Arabs and Israelis--not hatred and racism, as the leftist Berkeley students proclaim.

The Berkeley student newspaper reports:

“I ask the support of the American left,” [Darwish] told the audience. “The terrorists are not the freedom fighters, moderate Muslims in the Middle East are the freedom fighters.”

Darwish was introduced to an equal mix of boos and applause and was unable to begin speaking for about a minute because of heckling from the audience. She was noticeably flustered by the various protests during the speech and was flanked by a bodyguard...

“I left the Middle East because there was no freedom of speech and now I am here and there is fascism,” Darwish exclaimed in frustration as a loud debate was taking place in the audience.

The Berkeley conservative students' blog, California Patriot, outlines the details of her speech. Some highlights:

7:14 Ms, Darwish takes the stage to jeers of “Fascist; you are nothing but a tool of the United states." Shouter is rebuked and removed...

7:16 the interruptions continue: “That’s a lie! Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent!” and such continue to come from the audience...

7:40 On the topic of Shari’a: it allows only men to obtain an easy divorce; having up to four wives for a man, it allows wife-beating, women have half the testimony of a man in court. “Woman is respected only when she shields….her identity. Half the women in Pakistani prisons are in prison for being raped”
“We wonder why the Arab world is run by dictators? Shari’a exempts them from most laws”.
(continuing noise from the hallways, banging on doors)

Classy, Berkeley.

Incorrect U has video coverage of the protests and the speech--definitely worth watching. Protesters state that the event’s organizers “don’t care about women” but are trying to incite hatred of Muslims. One of the IFAW organizers, Andrew, denies this and says, "A lot of people on this campus are not separating Islam from Islamofascism. Our event is meant to raise awareness about radical Islam, not all Muslims...We can’t say, well radical Islam is the enemy. If we were to do that, of course, we’ll be named ‘fascists’ or ‘bigots’ or ‘prejudiced.’”

Via Little Green Footballs, Zombie posted photos of the protesters and notes that "the majority of the disrupters were not Muslims but rather left-wing radicals."

As Michelle Malkin notes, recalling her own visit to Berkeley, these students are "beserk." Her commenters offer witty insights, as well.

But of course, the left just doesn't get it.

And if you need more evidence of the wrong that sharia does to Muslim women, check out this photo.

The Politico reports on the refusal of some moderate Democrats to make required donations to the party's campaign committee:

A large group of “Blue Dog” Democrats has refused to give money to the party’s campaign committee so far this cycle, underscoring simmering tension inside the Caucus and concerns about the caustic language of at least one anti-war Democrat.

According to a review of Federal Election Commission records, 15 Blue Dogs have given no money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as of Sept. 30, despite heavy pressure from party leaders.

Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (D-Ga.), one of the 15, said he had donated on Oct. 1, but his staff would not say how much the congressman gave to the DCCC.

Angry Blue Dogs are angry at anti-war Democrat Lynn Woolsey and her encouragement of primary challenges to some or all of them:

“What [Woolsey] said was reprehensible,” said one Blue Dog who has so far declined to hand over any money to the campaign committee.

A Democratic strategist with strong ties to the Blue Dogs said the Woolsey incident is being seized upon by some conservative Democrats, even those who don’t yet have an opponent, as an excuse not to give to the party committee.

“Some of these Blue Dogs are saying, ‘If I have to defend myself in a primary, the DCCC is just going to have to wait,’” said the strategist.

It was noted here at the time of Woolsey's comments and her subsequent lame non-apology that this was likely to cause trouble in the Democratic caucus. The fights over FISA,SCHIP, and other issues are also pitting moderate Democrats against liberals and the Netroots. It would be no surprise if the tension continues to increase in the runup to the 2008 election.

Democrats vowed to change the culture in Washington. And while their ethics reforms were criticized by clean-government advocates for not going far enough, they're tried to take credit for 'draining the swamp' anyway. How will they do that now though, considering that even with the additional ethics restrictions they've enacted, lobbyists are paying more for travel by Members and staff than in 2006 when Republicans controlled Congress:

Despite new House travel restrictions, lawmakers accepted free trips worth nearly $1.9 million during the first eight months of this year — more than in all of 2006, records show.

The increase in travel spending needs to be monitored closely, say watchdog groups that fear Congress may return to business as usual after corruption investigations landed some lawmakers in prison.

"There's a realization that these trips and meals are getting extra scrutiny," says Meredith McGehee of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which supported the reforms. "That will last for a while, but we know it won't last forever. The ethos of politics is, 'What can we get away with?' "...

But there was a spike in travel expenses in August, when lawmakers took 85 trips worth $828,808 — the highest since August 2003. August is typically a high travel month because Congress is in recess.

The number of trips fell from 588 in the first eight months of 2006 to 337 over that time period this year, but the cost of them doubled. Senators accounted for only $130,000 of the travel.

In a second piece on Congressional travel, USA Today makes it clear that many of those taking advantage of travel opportunities are Democrats:

The Michigan Democrat [Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick] stayed overnight at the Gaylord Palms Resort near Orlando. Her trip was one of 30 trips taken by lawmakers this year under an exemption in the new House travel rules that allows for one- or two-night stays sponsored by companies that employ lobbyists. Most of the trips were to resort areas, including eight to Florida and three to Las Vegas.

In all, 22 House Democrats and three Republicans accepted nearly $40,000 in travel under that exemption, according to reports filed with the House ethics committee. Kilpatrick and an aide accepted $2,500 worth of airline tickets, ground transportation, lodging and meals from DaVita, records show.

Public perceptions notwithstanding, lobbyists often find that it can be hard to convince Members to accept free travel. Therefore, they go to great lengths to make a trip hard to refuse. If trips overall are down, but costs have risen significantly, it might be a sign that lobbyists are loading trips with frills and extras to entice elected officials to attend. Whatever the reason, it's just another indication that not much has changed since Democrats took over Congress.

Watching An Inconvenient Truth for the second time last night, I was struck by the way in which the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate's film makes blatant emotional appeals at every opportunity. Isn't this a little odd, considering that the film's star recently authored a book that bemoans the end of rational political discourse?

An Inconvenient Truth is an entertaining movie. It's entertaining because it's a morality play, with Al Gore and science on one side and Big Business and other assorted yahoos on the other. And while the truth claims Gore makes in his PowerPoint presentation are subject to debate, in the end those claims aren't what you take away from the film. Instead you take away images of beautiful or despoiled environments, and the hypnotic soundtrack. The images and music provoke emotional, not intellectual, reactions.

Or, as Andrew Ferguson put it in a slightly different context:

HATERS DEAL IN AGITPROP, being impatient with the more deliberate forms of persuasion. The practical problem with agitprop, when it enters the political conversation, is that it isn't argument. Often it doesn't even rise to the level of assertion. [Michael] Moore bragged that fact-checkers from the New Yorker magazine had vetted his script, proving, he said, that it was without factual error. He had a point, in a way. The movie contained relatively few straightforward factual assertions. There was very little for the fact-checkers to check, and very little to argue with. Moore's method was not to present evidence but to assemble insinuations, piling one on top of another. The method may be suitable for propaganda and entertainment; it is disastrous in a nationwide political campaign aimed at unseating a well-known incumbent. It means you will gain the serious attention of only those who already agree with you. Everyone else - which is to say, a large chunk of the electorate - is left out; puzzled at first, and then turned off altogether.

Documentary film is a serious and powerful art form. In politics, however, a documentary becomes a long advertisement for whichever cause the director espouses. And advertisements, because they are visual and aural, appeal to our heart, not to our heads. Assault on reason, indeed.

Dean Barnett has an excellent piece on THE DAILY STANDARD today. It's the greatest story never told--the recent drop in U.S. casualties that has gone, up until now, largely unnoticed by the mainstream press. Barnett covers a lot of ground, it's well worth reading. Also worth reading is this story today from the Associated Press titled "Sharp Drop Seen in US Deaths in Iraq":

October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and Americans commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaida and Shiite militia extremists.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch points to what the military calls "Concerned Citizens" — both Shiites and Sunnis who have joined the American fight. He says he's signed up 20,000 of them in the past four months.

"I've never been more optimistic than I am right now with the progress we've made in Iraq. The only people who are going to win this counterinsurgency project are the people of Iraq. We've said that all along. And now they're coming forward in masses," Lynch said in a recent interview at a U.S. base deep in hostile territory south of Baghdad. Outgoing artillery thundered as he spoke.

Go read the whole thing.

Ramesh Ponnuru continues to make the case for John McCain and, both practically and ideologically, he's not unpersuasive.

Ponnuru sees McCain as an excellent conservative candidate:

He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade ... Even on taxes, he has righted himself. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but he has never voted to raise income taxes and, this spring, ruled out any such move in an interview with me.

And with a McCain boomlet in progress, Ponnuru proposes that this may be a time for bold - nay, unprecedented - action: McCain could announce that he would term-limit himself to just four years in the White House:

A one-term promise would also serve McCain well in the general election. We are nearing the end of two long presidencies, which we have not done since 1960. (And these last two have been more polarizing than Truman and Eisenhower were.) It would highlight his devotion to service, and Senator Clinton's calculating ambition.

To me, this sounds a little too much like Bob Dole taking the gloves off and giving up his Senate seat during the 1996 election - a bold move that did nothing but set him on the road to Doritos and Viagra commercials. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't work!

Of course, I'm not convinced that McCain absolutely must take drastic action. As I noted last week:

In October 1999, McCain sat a bit lower in the polls than he does today. George W. Bush was the overwhelming favorite, with support in the high 60s and low 70s. In the end, McCain gave Bush all he could handle. In October 2003, Howard Dean led a crowded field with support of about 16 percent. John Kerry, who had at one time been the front-runner, sat at 8 percent in the polls. By December, Dean had pushed his lead to the 30s and Kerry had fallen to 4 percent.

This is not to say McCain's a shoe-in. If the time is right for him and his ideas, however, the voters will figure it out. And none of the candidates has such a strangle-hold on the nomination as to make it impossible for McCain to ride a wave all the way to the Twin Cities.

While much of the reporting around Osama bin Laden’s most recent audiotape focused around the failure of leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq and the problems with cooperation between Sunni insurgent groups and tribes, a small but important detail slipped by the press. Bin Laden clearly addresses a tactical failure of al Qaeda in Iraq's IED cells. Bin Laden is unhappy with their performance, and indicated the failure to employ IEDs efficiently against U.S. forces is due to "negligence." He is also concerned about the infiltration of Iraqi and American spies.

From an excerpt of the SITE Institute translation which is not available online:

And I tell my brothers: beware of your enemies, especially the hypocrites who infiltrate your ranks to stir up strife among the Mujahid groups, and refer such people to the judiciary. And you must check and verify, and avert the Hudood [punishments] through doubts. You must protect your secrets and excel in your actions, for among the things which sadden the Muslims and the delight the unbelievers is the hindering of some combat operations against the enemy because of negligence in any of the stages of preparation for the operation, whether it be reconnaissance of the target, training, integrity, and suitability of weapons and ammunition, quality of the explosive device or other such arrangements. And when you lay a mine, do it right, and don't leave so much as one wounded American soldier or spy.

Osama bin Laden is often portrayed as a spiritual leader and figurehead detached from day-to-day operations, but this recent speech merely reinforces what we already know about him. An engineer by training, bin Laden is very interested in the planning and execution of attacks and operations. The 9/11 Commission Report stated bin Laden was personally involved in reviewing the operational attack plans for the embassy bombings, the Cole, and 9/11. He immerses himself in the technical details and the tactics used by his operators, and keeps apprised of the situation on the battlefields. In Anbar province, al Qaeda in Iraq has failed to kill a single U.S. servicemen by IED since September 10. It seems bin Laden is acutely aware of this.

Slowly, Mitt Romney is rediscovering the rationale for his campaign: a Washington outsider with significant business experience who governed successfully a heavily Democratic state. Over the last year, Romney's large, unwieldy crew of consultants, media types, and pollsters have focus-grouped the candidate to the point where he's become a strange mix of George Allen, George Hamilton, and Ward Cleaver. The turnaround artist has disappeared.

Now it looks like he may be resurfacing:

It works! This probably is the least annoying Romney ad of the campaign to date. Romney should ignore those advisers telling him to run as the social conservative alternative to Giuliani, and instead re-focus his energies on deliving messages like the one above.

Last night on Fox News Channel, political consultant and author Dick Morris presented an intriguing metaphor for the GOP primary. Basically, Morris said, one should think of the Republican race as a tennis tournament.

On the center court, you have Giuliani and McCain competing for the moderate and Republican-leaning independent vote. Giuliani's winning that one, Morris says. On another court, you had Huckabee and Brownback competing to be the candidate of the Christian right. Huckabee won that match, and has advanced to the third court, where he, Romney, and Thompson are in a three-way match (yes, the metaphor breaks down a little bit here - but use your imagination!) to take on Giuliani in the center court.

One thing about Morris's metaphor, though. He said McCain was losing badly to Giuliani. That's true, at least so far. But McCain turned in a stellar performance at the recent debate in Florida. There's an argument for his candidacy no one else has: it increasingly looks like he was right about the central issue of our time, the war in Iraq. It's true McCain's candidacy faces serious problems. But no one should count him out of the finals just yet.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Nick Swezey turned in a dominant performance on Jeopardy! last night, pulling in a total of $32,001. In a key moment early in the contest, reigning Champ Shad Small was flummoxed by a question dealing with a "type of [weather] front with little or no movement." Swezey, showing a deep knowledge of climate, moved in for the kill. “What is a stationary front?” asked the new champ. Later in the show, Swezey surprised even his own fans by deftly moving down the board in a category called "Royalty and Ballet."

Swezey was in the lead heading into Final Jeopardy! and the category was "Quotations from B.C." He bet big, banking on his well-spent undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins to carry him through to the finish. The answer:

This work says, "Victorious warriors win first & then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first & then seek to win"

Of all the fortune cookie wisdom in The Art of War, the producers at Jeopardy! chose that gem. Hmmm... No matter, Swezey nailed it and we like his chances of repeating tonight. The Tournament of Champions awaits.

It's a good thing Congressional Democrats didn't wait until the last minute to begin figuring out how to revise and renew FISA. It's clear that it's a very divisive process for them.

Senator Kit Bond--the senior Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee--held a conference call yesterday with some bloggers interested in the FISA debate. Bond pointed out the recklessness and poor logic of the House's approach to FISA.

The bill that the House failed to vote on last week allows U.S. intelligence agencies only to listen in on calls that they know to be from one foreign terrorist to another foreign terrorist--a very small subset of all threatening communications. But because it's almost impossible to predict in advance who a target will call, most surveillance requires a warrant under the Democratic approach. As a result, the judges who grant FISA warrants face a huge backlog of applications and U.S. surveillance is forced to 'go dark.

When asked about Senator Dodd's promise to put a hold on the legislation, Bond noted that as of the time of the call, Dodd had not yet placed a hold. And he also commented that Dodd 'must be spending too much time on the campaign trail' and he 'doesn't know what he's talking about.' Bond had insight into how Democrats would tackle the issue.

Roll Call reports this morning that Congressional Democrats don't know what they'll do on FISA, either. The House is trying to figure out how to pass a bill without empowering the majority--who favor a strong FISA bill--to get their way:

Another option would restyle the GOP’s amendment as a stand-alone bill that would be moved to the House floor under suspension of the rules, limiting debate on the measure but requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. That plan would allow Members to effectively vote in support of the amendment before voting against it.

So Democrats may consider a procedure that allows the majority in favor of strong surveillance get a straight up-or-down vote, but then render that vote meaningless by requiring a supermajority to pass their bill. For a party that constantly claims to be in touch with the majority of Americans, this is high irony.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are similarly unsure about their plan:

From this AP story on the recently released Bin Laden tape:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden called for Iraqi insurgents to unite and avoid divisive 'extremism,' speaking in an audiotape aired Monday and apparently intended to win over Sunnis opposed to al-Qaida's branch in Iraq.

Um, isn't it a little too late for UBL and his allies to avoid "extremism"?

Looking les and less likely.

According to a weekend report from Reuters news agency, one of Washington’s closest Asian allies may be ending a several decades-long practice of purchasing its advanced weaponry from the United States. On Wednesday, Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba gave an interview which seemed to indicate that the country’s air force was saying "sayonara" to their earlier expressed wishes to purchase an export version of the Lockheed Martin (LM) F-22A Raptor.

Japanese military officials have been discussing a possible F-22A purchase with the United States for more than two years, and several of the aircraft have made visits to Japanese air bases, but Congressional and other opposition to selling the U.S. Air Force’s top-of-the-line stealthy fighter appears to still be enough to block the sale. Despite the fact that Japan is perhaps the number one security partner of the United States in the region, there is still a mindset within the U.S. Government that is hesitant to export the new-age technologies that are the basis for the Raptor’s performance and combat effectiveness.

This past August the House Appropriations Committee passed legislation banning the export of the F-22A to any foreign government. DoD officials in Washington said this would derail plans by Israel and Japan to obtain the advanced fighter sometime during the next three years, Middle East Newsline reported.

Conventional wisdom has been that the Japanese would try to outwait this resistance and just postpone their procurement for another year, but the problem facing Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force (JSDAF) is that time is not on their side. The JSDAF are still operating a number of the aging McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantoms that need to be retired and replaced with a later-model platform. Some of the F-4s have been in service in Japan for nearly 35 years.

If the past week’s statements are to be believed, the need to buy something now appears to be winning out over Tokyo’s desire to continue to "buy American."

"The F-22 is an exceptional aircraft," Ishiba was quoted as saying. "But we at the Defence Ministry have not decided that it is absolutely necessary for Japan." Ishiba went on to say that of the several other competitors to replace the F-4s the most likely choice was the four-nation consortium Eurofighter. Eurofighter’s major industrial participants are BAE Systems in the UK, EADS in Germany and Spain, and Alenia Aeronautica/Finemeccanica in Italy.

Other competitors in the race have been ruled out for other reasons. "The French [Dassault] Rafale is difficult to use. We certainly wouldn't choose a Russian fighter plane. So I think it would be the Eurofighter Typhoon," he said.

Observers of the F-22A program in the United States are puzzled as to why the U.S. Government continues to hold back from selling the Raptor. They point out that the other major LM program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), utilizes many of the same technologies as the F-22A and will likely be sold to more than a dozen nations.

"The major new technologies that make the F-22A the next generation in fighter aircraft are also the building blocks of the F-35," said a Washington, D.C.-based expert on combat aircraft and stealth technology. "The low observable materials, the active electronically scanning array (AESA) radar, new avionics--these and more are part of the F-35’s design. The USAF also need an export sale to bump up the total numbers of F-22As to be produced. It is the only way to put any economies of scale into this program."

Today Team Rudy attacked Fred's record on immigration. Jim Geraghty notes some sloppy opposition research from the Giuliani campaign. Here's Geraghty:

[Reader] Jeff notes that on the four votes cited by Giuliani, the percent of Republican Senators who voted the same way as Thompson were 96 percent, 62 percent, 98 percent, and 87 percent, for an average of 86 percent. So if Thompson was insufficiently conservative or tough on these votes, then vast swaths of the Republican caucus were, too.

Then a Campaign Spot reader in Texas (who isn't Governor Rick Perry) notes that on Thompson's missed vote, 'the cloture vote passed 91-0. Thompson's presence wouldn't have made one bit of difference ... Bottom line - if this is the best Guiliani has, he's got nothing. And I say that as a Guiliani fan ...

Last week, Giuliani unloaded some pre-debate opposition research on Thompson's record on tort reform. I thought Giuliani put this information to good use during the debate - it allowed him to pivot from his own deviations from the movement conservative agenda to Thompson's weaknesses - but, overall, a candidate's opposition to federal tort reform is not going to make or break his candidacy. And now we have an unpersuasive Giuliani attack on Thompson's immigration record.

This suggests a few things: Team Rudy may be overconfident in its ability to dismiss challenges from other candidates. (Neither McCain nor Thompson is Romney.) Or Team Rudy may be worrying that the laid-back gentleman from Lawrenceburg is seriously threatening the hard-chargin' former mayor's southern support. Or both things may be true.

From the New York Post: Why the Surge is Working, by Pete Hegseth.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Warden Stone, by Christian Lowe.

From the Wall Street Journal: A Kurdish Lesson, by Brett Stephens.

From the International Herald Tribune: Russia's Doing Great. Or Is It? by Eugene Rumer.

From Contentions: Michael Scheuer: Innocent Until Proven Guilty, by Gabriel Schoenfeld.

And congratulations to our friends at the Danger Room, winners of the Online Journalism Award for beat reporting.

At the Values Voter Summit, held this past weekend in Washington, Mike Huckabee gave a speech that confirmed his status as the best orator among the Republican presidential candidates. "The audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den," writes Rich Lowry. What struck me about the speech was not just that it gripped the audience, but that it was more explicitly religious than what Huckabee normally offers on the stump.

Consider: "I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you. You are my roots." Those roots are religious, as Huckabee indicated in his next sentences, which dealt with his years as a Baptist pastor.

Charlie Cook is one of the nation's leading election analysts and progonosticators. In his latest column (sent by E-mail, with no link currently available), he warns that while everything seems to be going Democrats' way, their streak of good luck is bound to end. Further, he says that Democratic sloppiness about foreign policy may seriously weaken the chance of a Democrat winning the White House in 2008:

Cook criticizes Congressional Democrats for scheduling a vote on the Armenian genocide resolution, then pulling it from consideration. He says that it highlights the weakness of Democrats on foreign policy issues. He then says:

It is important to remember that the Democrats' only presidential victories since 1976 were in 1992 and 1996; the first two elections after the Iron Curtain fell and the Cold War was over. At that point, the foreign policy aspect of the presidency was pretty much discounted, and Democrats nominated Bill Clinton, widely considered to be a moderate.

While many voters might disagree with the Bush administration on foreign policy issues, it doesn't mean Democrats get a free pass. They have to be very careful...

But the important takeaway is that while Republicans might not be a credible threat in terms of recapturing majorities in the House or Senate, congressional Democrats should still be more concerned about the consequences of their actions on their party's chances of winning the White House next year.

Voters seem angry enough at Republicans today to take the presidency away from them, but putting a Democrat into the post can't be seen as a risk.

Cook is right, but the question of the Armenian genocide is the minor one; the real question is whether Democrats will be seen as credible on national security. If the situation in Iraq continues to improve, some swing voters will reconsider how much might have been lost by the precipitous withdrawal pushed by Democrats. They will wonder why Democrats have been so conciliatory toward Iran, and why they are fighting against reasonable measures to continue surveillance of foreign terrorists. According to the ABC News/Washington Post poll, in October 2006 Americans favored Democrats over Republicans by 6 points on the question of who was more prepared to handle the war on terror. According to the most recent poll, that margin in now at 1 point. That is an awfully tenuous edge on such a critical issue.

If the voters anticipate that Democrats will retain control of the Congress, it will mean that the Democratic presidential nominee will face an even higher degree of scrutiny. Voters will need to decide not only whether Democrats can be trusted on national security, but also whether they can be trusted to handle it with no meaningful Republican input. As things currently stand, it would be no surprise if the issue is a drag on the Democratic nominee.

Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.

As the situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate, the Pakistani government continues its charade of negotiations with the Taliban. Last week's sophisticated suicide strike and ambush against returning former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto not only came close to killing her; it was the largest terrorist attack inside Pakistan to date. Over 136 were killed and 500 wounded.

The Pakistani government has followed up this affront by extending its hand to the Taliban and Gulbadin Hekmartyr, the brutal, murderous Afghan warlord allied with al Qaeda. The Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper with a strong track record in following the developments in the tribal regions and the Northwest Frontier Province, reports:

“It is hoped that representatives of the Taliban and former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hikmatyar Khan will attend the next jirga,” MNA Munir Khan Orakzai told Gulf Times on Wednesday, referring to the Pak-Afghan jirga scheduled for November.

He said credible sources had indicated that the Taliban and other militant groups were ready to sit down and talk. He said a lasting solution to the “growing menace of Talibanisation” could only be achieved after taking all concerned parties, including the Taliban, into confidence.

Pakistan has been down the "peace" path numerous times in the past year. The result has been the Taliban and al Qaeda takeover of North and South Waziristan, Mohmand, Bajaur and Swat, with multiple tribal agencies and settled districts either unofficially under Taliban control or strongly influenced by the Taliban. Multiple terror attacks against the West, India, and Pakistan itself have been launched from the Northwest Frontier Province, but Pakistan continues to cave in to demands for negotiations.

I was asked what needed to be done for the Taliban and al Qaeda to be uprooted from their safe havens in the Northwest Frontier Province and beyond. The solution is not easy, and very likely is not politically feasible. But the only way the Taliban and al Qaeda can be denied their sanctuary is to conduct a full scale counterinsurgency campaign.

You may recall the left-wing attempt to to smear GWU's Young America's Foundation ahead of the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which is sponsored by David Horowitz and features events at campuses across the country. Seven students with no affiliation to YAF or IFAW posted phony anti-Muslim fliers and falsely claimed that the events would promote hatred of Muslims.

Well, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is here and liberal students and university staff across the country are doing what they do best--protesting.

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch sums up the liberals' reaction the best: "the campus Left is placing itself squarely on the side of those who want to implement the institutionalized oppression of women and religious minorities sanctioned by Islamic Sharia law, who deny the freedom of conscience, and want to impose upon the world a supremacist and totalitarian code."

Protesters at schools such as Berkeley are launching a campaign called "Peace Not Prejudice." But just how "peaceful" are these protesters? Let's take a look...

The Berkeley protesters created posters that slam College Republicans and say they must "expose and defeat" Islamo-Fascisim Awareness Week. The conservative Berkeley students' blog California Patriot says this is "disturbing, because the event is specifically for 'Awareness'. It’s not a promotion of anything but education and is happening in order to bring in new perspectives, so 'defeating' awareness sounds like suppression of expression to me." And according to Gateway Pundit, Nonie Darwish, an Arab-American who has denounced radical Islam, was constantly interrupted while speaking to Berkeley students.

Robert Spencer describes his visit to DePaul University, where he spoke on a panel with an Iranian freedom fighter. He notes that the protesters "restricted their chanting about racism--an absurd charge to hurl in any discussion of Islam and jihad, but particularly inappropriate to shout at a former inmate of the mullah' prison cells--to before and after the event." He also notes that he had difficulty speaking during the panel. Classy, DePaul.

NRO's Phi Beta Cons reported yesterday that Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency released a statement encouraging students to protest and "disrupt" David Horowitz's speech at Columbia University this Friday. Phyllis Chesler will also attend a Columbia panel with the threat of disruption, and notes: "Today, speaking the truth about fascism means that you have to do so under hostile and perhaps even dangerous working conditions. The truth-tellers are defamed as 'fascists' and 'racists.'" And to think that Ahmadinejad had a relatively peaceful visit to the same university.

Keep checking Incorrect U for coverage of events and the left's (non-peaceful) reactions.

And of course, liberal bloggers are pooh-poohing the threat from radical Islam and launching ad hominem attacks on Horowitz, but we can't find a substantive critique that doesn't tar the whole event, and even its name, as racist.

For more on that, read Christopher Hitchens's Slate column, which outlines the history of the term "Islamofascism," and deftly defends its current usage.

After almost a year of silence, Osama bin Laden has issued his third tape in less than two months. Based on excerpts from bin Laden's latest audio tape, titled "Message to the people of Iraq," he views the situation in Iraq as dire. Bin Laden is clearly concerned with the defection of Sunni insurgents to the Awakening movements and local security forces, the possibility of the Sunnis reconciling with the government, and the failure of al Qaeda leaders to unite the Sunni fighters under al Qaeda's banner.

Bin Laden takes on the failure of al Qaeda leaders to recruit Sunni insurgent groups into the fold of the Islamic State of Iraq, and the defection of previous allies to the Iraqi government and Coalition forces. "Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks," bin Laden said. "Beware of division ... Muslims are waiting for you to gather under a single banner to champion righteousness. Be keen to oblige with this duty." According to the Associated Press, bin Laden said leaders should not build themselves up as the sole authority, and that instead mujahedeen should follow "what God and his prophet have said."

Bin Laden also acknowledges the grave errors made by the leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, and warned that the violators of al Qaeda's laws should be punished. "Everybody can make a mistake, but the best of them are those who admit their mistakes," bin Laden said. "Mistakes have been made during holy wars but mujahedeen have to correct their mistakes ... The mujahideen are the children of this nation ... they do right things and wrong things ... Those who are accused of violations of God's commandments should face trial."

A still of Osama bin Laden for As Sahab, al Qaeda's media wing. Click to view.

While it is unclear what "mistakes" he is referring to, it is likely he is addressing the deterioration of al Qaeda's standing in the Sunni insurgency due to the leadership's violent response to the slightest affronts to al Qaeda and its Islamic State of Iraq.

He directly addresses the defections of Sunni insurgents such as the 1920s Revolution Brigades, the Mujahedeen Army, and elements of the Islamic Army of Iraq and other insurgent groups. He implored "scholars, jihadist and tribal leaders to work for reconciliation between fighting groups." Several insurgent groups have attacked al Qaeda in Iraq for murder, intimidation, wanton violence, and the desecration of corpses. He implored these groups to uphold the "tradition of resisting" foreign armies.

He also addresses both the tribal "Awakening" movements which have spread into former al Qaeda strongholds and have driven al Qaeda from power. Bin laden warns that the ideology of jihad outweighs any feelings of nationalism or tribal affiliations.

"I advise myself, Muslims in general and brothers in al Qaeda everywhere to avoid extremism among men and groups [note, in this context, the extremism he refers to is adhering to nationalist and tribal loyalties] ... The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group ... the interest of the (Islamic) nation is more important than that of a state."

The direct involvement of Osama bin Laden in the leadership issues with al Qaeda in Iraq speaks volumes on the problems the terror group is facing in Iraq. Violence is down 70 percent since June and al Qaeda is being chased from its stronghold. Over the past several days a clash between the Islamic Army of Iraq and al Qaeda near Baghdad resulted in 60 dead. Al Qaeda's much touted Ramadan campaign resulted in the death of the leader of the Anbar Awakening, killed dozens of Sunni and Shia leaders in Diyala, and missed its targets in Salahadin. But the attacks failed to break the movement, and even served to strengthen the will of the leadership and followers.

Excerpts from Osama bin Laden's speech were compiled from the following sources:
Associated Press: Report: Usama bin Laden Calls for Iraqi Insurgents to Unite
Associated Press: Bin Laden urges Iraq rebel unity, admits wrongs

The rationale for John Edwards's presidential candidacy appears to be that he is a southern, white-male Democrat with broad appeal who, in a general election, could capture some of the states that make up the region where he grew up.

But what if he can't capture those states even in a primary election? According to this chart, the Edwards trendline in South Carolina, where he was born, has been heading downward since the beginning of 2007. Today the Edwards trend is around 8.3 percent of the Democratic vote in South Carolina. Whatever John Edwards is selling, South Carolina Democrats don't appear to be buying it.

From the first line of today's editorial:

The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse.

What can you say to that? The editors at the Times have clearly stopped reading their own newspaper. Here's an AP story published in today's paper:

A U.S. helicopter opened fire on a group of men as they were planting roadside bombs in a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad on Tuesday, then chased them into a nearby house, killing 11 Iraqis, including at least six civilians, the military said.

The airstrikes came a day after Osama bin Laden scolded his al-Qaida followers and other insurgents, saying they have ''been lax'' for failing to overcome fanatical tribal loyalties and unite in the fight against U.S. troops.

The message of his new audiotape reflected the growing disarray among Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgents and bin Laden's client group in the country, both of which are facing heavy U.S. military pressure and an uprising among Sunni tribesmen.

That's the lede...I'm sure the AP would have stacked it with bad news if they could have. And here's more from the same piece:

U.S. and Iraqi forces, meanwhile, banned vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles in the streets of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi to protect a celebration to commemorate Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the founder of the first anti-al-Qaida group of Sunni tribal leaders who was assassinated by a bomb Sept. 13.

Abdul-Sattar's brother, who has taken over the movement, said it was important to keep pressure on insurgents, recalling that about 50 al-Qaida militants marched through downtown Ramadi a year ago in a show of force.

''The people felt weak and afraid because of al-Qaida. Now there is a feeling of strength,'' Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha told The Associated Press at his heavily guarded compound as a band practiced for the parade. ''This year, I want to have a good parade to show that we support the law.''

Given the actual state of things in Iraq, and Osama's message confirming that things are as bad for al Qaeda as they seem, I'm starting to think the editors at the Times aren't being completely honest with their readers, or themselves. Even Richard Clarke has turned on them. But the editors at the Times don't seem to have much of an interest in al Qaeda, or terrorism, or the Army, or General Petraeus. What are they interested in? Check the list of the "popular tags" at their new blog--it's self-parody.

Now this is just silly. Mitt Romney, traveling in South Carolina today, plans to propose a "'Reagan Zone Of Economic Freedom' to fuel a new wave of global prosperity." Here's a portion of the press release:

The Reagan Zone Of Economic Freedom would act as an alliance working together internally, in the World Trade organization and elsewhere to push reforms and work cooperatively in areas like labor and the environment. Governor Romney would seek to expand these efforts to include the European Union and other nations that agree to meet these standards, while challenging China and others advancing agreements that exclude America.

You can view Romney's PowerPoint presentation - I'm serious - on the "Reagan Zone" here.

Free trade contributes to global economic growth and lower prices. It promotes peace. It's worth championing on its merits, and Mitt Romney, as one of the best businessmen in America, is well equipped to make the case for trade. But the gimmicky idea of a "Reagan Zone" smacks of a consultant-driven campaign. Besides which, Romney's near-constant invocations of Reagan provide his opponents the opportunity to bring up this video, in which he is, shall we say, less charitable to the great president.

In case you hadn't noticed, Newsweek has launched a brand new website. It's part of a larger redesign:

The simple idea behind the redesign of Newsweek is the theory that people want to read more, not less, according to editor Jon Meacham. “Some people in our business believe print should emulate the internet, filling pages with short, weblike bites of information. We disagree,” he writes in his editor’s note.

Funny then, because what you'd think would be a pretty big story--the drop in violence in Iraq--has been relegated in this new issue to a very 'short, weblike bite of information." Here's the whole story:

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime. According to three senior U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, the decline in Iraq violence also includes a decrease in the number of attacks attributable to insurgents backed or armed by Iran. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell confirmed to NEWSWEEK that "there has indeed been a drop" in such attacks, but he added that "it's not entirely clear what the reason for that is."

Overall trends show a significant drop in violence over the last several months, according to previously unpublished military statistics obtained by NEWSWEEK. During a single week in mid-September, attacks in Iraq totaled about 900—down from about 1,700 a week in June. The number of attacks increased slightly in late September and early October during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But according to the statistics, the just-ended Ramadan holiday was significantly less violent this year than in the previous two years.

The crucial question is, why? Administration spokesmen have publicly attributed the decline in violence to the success of the administration's troop "surge" policies as well as military operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Other factors include improvements to Iraqi security forces and growing revulsion among Sunni tribal leaders over jihadi attacks on their communities. The decline in Iranian-backed violence is harder to explain—and despite the new data, some officers on the ground in Baghdad still aren't buying it. But officials back in Washington cite numerous possible reasons for the turnaround. Multiple sources suggest that U.S. operations against Iranian influence—which have included rounding up alleged Iranian operatives and Iranian-backed insurgents—have taken "quite a bite" out of insurgent cells and supply networks, one official says. Another factor could be that the insurgents have decided to wage fewer attacks. Multiple officials note that radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has close ties with Iran, recently ordered his militia to settle down. It's also possible, two U.S. officials say, that Iranian leaders are responding to diplomatic lobbying from the Iraqi government and scaling back some of their support for the insurgency.

No one in Washington believes that Iran-fomented violence has ceased to be a problem. A senior official noted that a recent arms convoy seized in Herat, Afghanistan, and destined for Taliban rebels, contained IED components similar to those seized earlier in Baghdad and southern Iraq. U.S. officials believe that the Herat consignment originated with elements from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. They concede, however, that they do not know how high up in the Iranian government authorization for the shipment came from or whether it was part of a high-level Iranian strategy to bleed U.S. forces in the region.

That's it. Four paragraphs, mostly dealing with the question of is the administration lying to us about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Enjoy the new Newsweek, it's going to be a lot like the old Newsweek.

Michiko Kakutani tears apart Susan Faludi's silly new book in today's New York Times. Writes Kakutani:

[Faludi] insists, 'a feminist perspective on any topic was increasingly AWOL' after 9/11. Thus, she argues, various antifeminist impulses ('the cumulative elements of a national fantasy') surfaced after 9/11, including 'the denigration of capable women, the magnification of manly men, the heightened call for domesticity, the search for and sanctification of helpless girls.'

Not only are many of these assertions highly debatable in themselves, but Ms. Faludi's overarching thesis in this book rings false too. In fact, her suggestion that the 9/11 attacks catalyzed the same fears and narrative impulses as those unleashed by our frontier ancestors' 'original war on terror,' leading to a muffling of feminist voices and a veneration of 'the virtues of nesting,' runs smack up against her own 'Backlash,' which suggested that similar assaults on women's independence were being unleashed in the 1980s - a time not of war or threat but a decade that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the coming end of the cold war.

Such errors of logic are typical of this ill-conceived and poorly executed book - a book that stands as one of the more nonsensical volumes yet published about the aftermath of 9/11.

Kakutani neglects to mention in her review - I wonder why! - that many of the administration's criticisms of the Taliban are grounded specifically in the rhetoric of women's rights. The U.S. secretary of state is a woman. A woman is in charge of promoting America's image in the Middle East. A woman is speaker of the House of Representatives and second-in-line for the presidency. A woman currently is the frontrunner for president of the United States. The power of these wom