The Monitor

2005-05-22T11:12:00.000-05:00

Parting Shots

I haven't been able to post much lately. Here are a few points that I want to make:

Alger Hiss got a standing ovation after he testified before Congress. George Galloway probably won't face charges, but he shouldn't get cocky. His story has all sorts of holes.

I've been meaning to cancel my gift subscription to Newsweek. I'll be sending a postcard to their subscriptions department. Their standard is that if a story should be true they'll run it. I flipped through their latest edition. It's mostly puff pieces. I thought one section was an advertising supplement. Instead it was a collection of related stories.

The new Star Wars movie is excellent. It's by far the best of the last three. George Lucas shows a humorous touch that was absent from it's two predecessors. Especially funny is the scene where Palpitine becomes disfigured. It neatly leads into the original Star Wars movie, though I'm a bit surprised that they started the Death Star when Luke was a baby.

2005-04-24T14:37:00.000-05:00

Indiginous Forces

One thing I want to mention about the Rick Steves' essay. Steves criticizes America for supporting efforts to stop Communism in Central America. He never once criticized the U.S.S.R. for supporting communist movements.

We used to hear a log in the 1980s about "indiginous forces" opposing us in Central America. Yet their efforts fizzled out at the same time the Soviet Union's finances did.

2005-04-24T10:27:00.000-05:00

What Pacifism?

In the last paragraph of his El Salvador essay Rick Steves complains about pacifists being assassinated. While assassinations are justly condemned, there are a few things wrong with this complaint. First, he omits assassination attempts against non-pacifists. Examples include the Marxist-Leninist Oswald's successful murder of JFK or the Soviet Union's failed attempt to murder the pope.

Second, Steves isn't aware that at least a few pacifists on his list really weren't pacifists. John Lennon donated money for the Irish Republican Army. Gandhi praised Subhas Chandra Rose, who organized an Indian army with Nazi and Japanese support to fight the British. Gandhi said "I would not flinch from sacrificing a million lives for India's liberty!" Unfortunately, this estimate turned out to be accurate, only it was fellow Indians doing the killing, not the British.

Rick Steves himself is only a pacifist when it's time to oppose American military action. He complains about Ronald Reagan preventing the FMLN from winning El Salvador's civil war (actually it was Jimmy Carter who first provided aid against the FMLN). Steves says nothing about FMLN's practice of murdering mayors or shooting voters. The United Nations said that FMLN practiced terrorism.

In other writings Rick Steves condoned violence. He removed a paragraph from his web site sympathizing with a Palestinian suicide bomber. He provided justification for the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Steves seems completely unaware that Marxism goes with violence, not religion. He reveals his real goals when he says Cuba had a successful revolution. Non-pacifist Fidel Castro never had more than 3,000 followers when he fought Batista. The results of Castro's rule are a complete failure in terms of morality, material prosperity, and personal freedom. When Rick Steves says that Castro's Cuba is a success we should be grateful. Steves has revealed what his real goals are.

2005-04-21T19:56:00.000-05:00

Mondale, McGovern, and Goldwater Were Threats Too

As noted below, Rick Steves wrote that in 2004 the FMLN presidential candidate threatened to win the presidential election. Knowing his indifference to facts, I decided to check this out. FMLN lost, 58-36.

2005-04-20T18:12:00.000-05:00

Premises, Premises

I was planning on responding to every silly thing Rick Steves wrote in his El Salvador trip report. Instead let's look at its flawed premises:

1) There are poor people in the Third World.

2) There are rich people elsewhere.

3) If people are rich, or even just comfortable, it must be at the expense of poor people.

4) Therefore, rich capitalist countries like America are the cause of other people's poverty.

Steves' attempts to blame capitalist America for the world's ills leads to some obvious contradictions.

Contradictions, Contradictions

Steves' denunciation of the emphasis on economic growth is contradicted by his later complaint about the lack of economic growth. Steves doesn't appreciate that its economic development that leads to a cleaner environment. Countries are poor in part because of the lack of property rights. Countries with well-established property rights are generally cleaner; people have more motivation to take care of what they own. Poor countries have to worry about basic subsistence. Developed countries can afford the costs of environmental protection.

Steves complains about religious fundamentalists. Yet he uses the concepts of the Jubilee Year and Liberation Theology to support his views. He misrepresents the concept of the Jubilee Year as an income redistribution scheme. He skates around the fact that senior officials in the Catholic Church have repudiated Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology is Marxist. There's nothing religious about Marxism. In talking about El Salvador's Marxist party, Steves writes:

In the 2004 presidential elections, the FMLN candidate threatened to win. It must be frustrating for the White House (which has so much on its plate these days). I can imagine a scene similar to the one Poland caused the Kremlin during another people’s struggle. Khrushchev, exasperated by the spirit of the Polish people, famously complained, “Making Poland communist is like trying to saddle a cow.”

Steves doesn't realise it, but this disproves his whole point. Communism lost in El Salvador just like it lost in Poland. It's Communism that fits El Salvador like a saddle on a cow. Like FMLN's opponents, Bush won the election. Bush helped win the people's struggle in Iraq. In Iraq, Poland, El Salvador, and the U.S. the people always end up voting against Rick Steves.

2005-04-16T17:08:00.000-05:00

Thinking Globally, Act Foolishly

Who sponsored Rick Steves’ trip to El Salvador? The Center for Global Education. What’s the next part of Rick Steves’ essay will we address? The one titled "Globalization is a big train, and it’s moving out." Yet Rick Steves is against globalization, unless it helps with his trip. Here’s the dictionary definition of globalization:

Growth to a global or worldwide scale; "the globalization of the communication industry"

Rick Steves isn’t against globalization when it means the United Nations runs things. His real problem is with private multi-national companies. Let’s try to make some sense of this essay.
People in the Third World are told "Globalization is a big train and it’s moving out. Get on or get run over." Even proponents don’t claim anything compassionate about this power. It’s presented simply as an unstoppable force.

America’s passion for freedom is more accurately a passion for free trade. It’s driven not by altruism, but by a desire to open new markets to US firms and products. If you have resources, laborers, or potential customers, you must play.

First of all, it’s odd that the big train comment is in quotation marks when no one is quoted. Who said this? Every country is free to adopt its own trade policies. Globalization provides trade and employment to millions. Certainly that’s compassionate. Capitalism is far more humane than socialism. Its premise is that transactions should be voluntary and people need to provide something to get something. It delivers the goods. Socialism is based on the attitude that one should resent one’s neighbors’ success. It produces a disproportionate share of misery and mass murderers. Free trade benefits both buyers and sellers.

Some believe this is just tough love as the rich world tries to pull up the poor world. The score card tells a different story. In the last 40 years, the average annual income in the world’s 20 poorest countries has barely changed. In 1960 it was about $200. Today it’s about $270. In that same period, the income in the richest 20 nations has nearly tripled, from about $12,000 to about $32,000.

The bottom half of humanity lives on roughly five percent of the planet’s resources. The top 20 percent lives on over 80 percent. The greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the human race is happening at the same time our world is becoming a global village. A planet with more and more window shoppers is unstable, fragile, and — sooner or later — promises lots of broken glass. Rather than call the poor end of our world the Third World and the Developing World, I think it’s more accurate to use the terms "Two-thirds World" and "Underdeveloped Nations."

It was a little over 40 years ago that the West’s colonization of the Third World ended. Isn’t it revealing that the Third World has had so little growth since then? Doesn’t the Third World have some responsibility for its situation.

Earlier Steves complained that globalization is being "presented simply as an unstoppable force." Yet he himself says that "our world is becoming a global village." Steves must agree that globalization is an unstoppable force. The distribution of wealth reflects the comparative superiority of the West’s economic systems. Later on Steves talks likes he’s a pacifist. It’s hypocritical and irresponsible for him to talk about "window shoppers" delivering "broken glass."

Rather then developing, these nations are systematically kept underdeveloped. It’s part of the big plan emanating from the USA. For instance: trade levies increase with processing. It’s O.K. for a poor country to export peanuts but the prohibitively higher tariff for processed peanuts makes producing peanut butter almost impossible outside of the already developed world.

Can we get a copy of the "big plan"? Steves complains about America’s "passion for free trade." Yet in the above paragraph he complains about tariffs for processed peanuts. Does Steves object to free trade or not? Steves has unwittingly stumbled on the real problem: Protectionism (lack of free trade) hurts the Third World.

America’s leadership in the drive for globalization is powered (and made possible politically) by politicized, militaristic, generally-fundamentalist Christians. Read to a neo-liberal Christian: "I was hungry and you fed me. Imprisoned and you visited me, naked and you clothed me. What you have done to the least of people, you have done to me." Most will look at you with disdain, turn their back, and continue to pound plow shares into swords.

Again, what’s the problem with neo-liberals? Later on Steves justifies a "Jubilee Year" based on religion. Is he the only one who can use religion to justify his principles, such as they are. Actually fundamentalists, free traders, libertarians, and national security types don’t always agree with each other.

Steves provides no evidence that he ever read the quote to anyone. It’s the American military that provided humanitarian relief to Afghans, Iraqis, and Asian tsunami victims. It was Americans that ended the imprisonment of Afghanistan and Iraq. Steves won’t mention this; apparently because he disapproves of humanitarianism when is consists of practical action instead of moral grandstanding.

2005-04-14T18:57:00.000-05:00

Why Read Rick Steves?

Let's resume our analysis of Rick Steves' El Salvador essay. This post examines the section "Why Visit El Salvador?"

In spite of my privileged position, I have an appetite to know the truth. For many Americans, privilege brings with it the luxury of obliviousness. We don’t need to know what the forces of globalization are doing because they don’t effect us. We don’t need to know the impact of a new International Money Fund (IMF) regulation on a person who sews clothing in Honduras or plants beans in Panama. Paul Wolfowitz may well be running the World Bank. Who cares?

For someone who has an appetite to know the truth, Rick Steves sure has trouble with facts. Check out the Amazon reviews of his book Europe 101 (mine's entitled "Gullibles' Travels"). It has all kinds of obvious errors. For example, Lenin did not overthrow Russia's czarist government. The Algerians weren't 90 percent literate before the French took over. One thing I learned since I posted the review is that the Hessians weren't drunk when George Washington crossed the Delaware to attack them. Instead of traveling, Rick Steves should read a decent history book.

It's ludicruous to argue that the forces of globalization "don't effect us" (or affect us for that matter). America is heavily involved in world trade. IMF and World Bank regulations affect us a great deal, since we often foot the bill when their loans go bad. Let's hope that Paul Wolfowitz helps the World Bank as much as he helped Iraq.

The victims of structural poverty care. Free trade, neo-liberalism, and globalization are all concrete and real issues to the half of humanity trying to live on $2 a day. When it comes to these issues, you’d be impressed by their savvy.

Here's some Economics 101: When Jones buys a loaf of bread from Smith, both Jones and Smith are better off. Jones would rather have the bread. Smith prefers the money. Voluntary transactions increase human happiness. The more the better. If half of humanity is living on $2 a day, they can't be too savvy. And when did neo-liberalism become a bad word? I thought Wolfowitz and the neo-conservatives were the bad guys.

When we learn that people in the poor countries know so much about us and our policies, I’m inclined to figure it’s merely out of admiration of our way of life. When we are ignorant about others and their struggles we are also ignorant about ourselves and our impact on others.

This blissful ignorance seems innocent and innocuous. But, combined with power, it can bring smug self-delusion, belief in our own superiority and a presumed right to dictate morality to others. This is the evil cocktail that causes good Americans to celebrate American Imperialism.

Again, if Americans are so ignorant, and poor countries are so wise, why are we the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of the world? Why do Salvadorans come to America to earn money? Americans aren't imperialist. When Iraq is ready for us to leave, we'll leave.

This privilege-rooted ignorance makes Americans easy to mislead into war. “Fighting for freedom,” we willingly send thousands of our children to die and almost eagerly divert billions of much needed dollars from domestic spending to “defense.” To populations on the receiving end of the American crusade, the “freedom and liberty” our president touts is freedom for corporations to exploit natural resources and liberty to take advantage of the labor of weaker countries.

Americans entered the war to liberate Iraq with its eyes open. No one was misled. There are no children in the American military. Everyone is a grown-up who volunteered. The military believes in the mission in Iraq. So do the Iraqi people. So far little significant money was diverted from domestic spending to the defense budget. Our bloated domestic budget is the real problem.

Both the Afghans and Iraqis seem to appreciate being on the "receiving end" of their liberation. Let's hope their transition to self-government is successful. America didn't enter the war to get good business deals from Iraq. If that was our main goal we would have imitated the French and made corrupt deals with Saddam Hussein.

Like El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan will benefit from more trade with America. I hope the sour grapes from the Rick Steves of the world don't prevent freedom and prosperity in those countries.

2005-04-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

Jay Nordlinger

His latest Impromptu is more terrific than usual. The foreign policy article by Martin Peretz that he links to is also well worth checking out.

2005-04-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

Maximum Nonsense

One easy way to judge a public figure's grasp of economics is to check out his position on regulating prices. This includes price controls (maximum prices) and minimum wages. The surest way to cause a shortage is to set a maximum price below the market rate. For example, the gas lines in the 1970s were caused by government controls over the price of petroleum.

It works the same way in reverse. Minimum wage laws result in less demand for low-skilled workers and more workers seeking employment. The result is more unemployment at the bottom of the economic ladder. Being employed at $3 per hour beats unemployment at $5 an hour. The real minimum wage is zero.

Rick Steves reveals his economic foolishness:

The minimum wage is about $1 an hour ($144 a month). It costs $3.50 to go to a movie. Cesar explains that, in El Salvador, a worker is happy to be employed. While in the USA minimum wage is at rock bottom level, most Salvadorans aspire only to minimum wage and that’s all they get.

I guess American workers aren't happy to be employed. (By the way, the U.S. minimum wage is not at "rock bottom.")

Let's look at what happens when the minimum wage is reduced (please scroll down):

In the wake of the earthquake devastation, Salvadorans saw compassionate capitalists roll up their sleeves and move right in. Shirt manufactures moved into the earthquake devastated area to provide jobs…on condition that the government allowed them to lower the minimum wage from $144 a month to $85 a month. No problema.

Steves misses the whole point. It was the lower minimum wage that made Salvadoran workers employable. Employers don't hire people out of charity. $85 a month is all that they can afford to pay Salvadoran workers. If the minimum wage doesn't affect employment, why not make it $1,000 an hour? Basically minimum wage laws cut off the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Leftists don't notice that what helps to impoverish the Third World is its imitation of the West's welfare state and regulatory policies. El Salvador lacks the prosperity and skilled work force to absorb minimum wage laws. The same applies to taxes. Third World countries impose progressive rates that kick in at much lower levels than those in America. The result is slower growth. The Third World would do better to imitate Hong Kong's laissez faire.

2005-04-10T17:19:00.000-05:00

New Whine From El Salvador

It's true that because of the War on Terror we're overlooking problems closer to home in the Americas. Eventually this will come back to bite us, especially if President Bush doesn't get strict on illegal immigration.

Unfortunately, travel writer Rick Steves is providing the wrong type of attention. Since the end of the Cold War Steves has said, much to the benefit of Central America, very little about Central America. Now he has a long essay about El Salvador.

I'll have future posts on the essay, but for the time being I'll only comment on a photo caption on this page. The photo shows Steves posing with a soldier. The caption reads:

Rick Steves revisits El Salvador for an update after a decade of right wing-imposed peace.

This caption is strange for several reasons. "Right wing-imposed peace" is a strange choice of words. Does Steves prefer "right wing-imposed war"? He seems unhappy that the Marxists terrorists, FMLM, didn't win El Salvador's civil war. In the last paragraph of his essay Steves implies that he's a pacifist. Pacifists shouldn't complain about peace.

Another problem with the caption is its deceptiveness. El Salvador's peace is "imposed" by a democratically elected government. According to Freedom House, El Salvador is a free country, no thanks to FLMN's old practice of shooting at voters. Like other leftists Steves is a big supporter of "the people." His essay refers to "the people" 11 times. Yet his essay is basically one long whine about the results of El Salvador's democratic process. For someone so concerned about "the people," Rick Steves sure has problems with election results.

So according to the caption, Rick Steves is unhappy that a free country is "imposing" peace. Shouldn't we be happy that a democratic government is maintaining peace?

A final question is this: why isn't Rick Steves picking on Cuba instead of El Salvador? Cuba has much less freedom, peace, and prosperity. Freedom House puts Cuba at the bottom of the human rights barrel. As far as I can tell, Steves has never singled out Castro's Cuba for criticism. The reasons for this are probably as follows:

1) El Salvador isn't an enemy of the United States; and
2) Cuba already has a Marxist economy.

2005-04-03T12:35:00.000-05:00

MSM At Work

Power Line shows the benefits of screen capture software. The New York Times had trouble finding someone who liked the pope.

Cassandra shows the benefits of having media critics. To her list I want to add the treatment of scandals. Individuals making accusations against Republicans get very favorable treatment (Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson) even if facts and logic contradict them. When was the last time 60 Minutes had a sympathetic interview with someone making accusations against Democrats?

2005-03-28T19:28:00.000-05:00

Sullivan's Law

As I said before, Andrew Sullivan doesn't have much of a grasp of the U.S. Constitution or the principles of self-government. Bill Bennett quotes Sullivan:

If the American principle of federalism means anything it means that the local state’s courts are the only relevant instruments to deal with such a tragedy.

Bennett points out that under the 14th Amendment Sullivan's reasoning is pure baloney. Here's Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

So who enforces the amendment? The courts? In Section 5 the principles of self-government kick in:

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

So under the principles of American federalism, Congress is within its authority to intervene in the Schiavo case. It's Sullivan who doesn't understand the Constitution.

Bennett also catches Sullivan's hypocrisy in supporting majority rule. As far as I can tell, Sullivan has always resisted the results of state-wide votes on same sex marriage. Sullivan isn't much on the rule of law either. He supported San Francisco city officials when they illegally issued marriage licenses.

Some federalist. When it comes to religion, Sullivan is the theocrat. He'll support anything short of violence to get same sex marriage, including rule by judges.

2005-03-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

I Was Wondering About This Myself

More evidence that campaign finance reform is a fraud.

2005-03-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

Not Finished

I guess I'm not finished with Dan Rather after all (see below).

For me one of the best way to judge writers is to ask the following questions:

1. Do they omit important and relevant information that I know; and
2. Can I catch factual errors

I don't make a living reporting on current events. So if I know more in some respects about the writer's subject area than the writer does, the credibility of the story goes down the drain. Consequently, The New York Review of Books has shot whatever credibility it has on Rathergate:

In the end, even the panel, without saying so explicitly, has to concede the accuracy of Mapes's statement that "there is nothing in the official Bush records that would rule out the authenticity of the Killian documents."

What about the fact that Bush received a performance appraisal 3 months before Lieutenant Colonel Killian allegedly wrote the August 1973 memo saying that he was resisting pressure to rate Bush? The contents make no sense.

Like 60 Minutes, the reviewer isn't aware that a "not observed" performance appraisal is harmless. I received a "not observed" report after spending 6 months in a Navy training school.

One of the Killian documents purports to order Bush to complete a physical by Mother's Day. Neither the reviewer not Marla Mapes is aware that Bush's unit was closed on Mother's Day weekend. If Bush reported on deadline it would have been impossible to get a physical.

The reviewer also plays down the "chain of custody" problem. As far as we know the people who had the documents before Mr. Burkett don't exist. The reviewer is unaware that Lt Col Killian didn't like to type and wasn't much of a typist. The reviewer ignores the oddity that documents would appear from a dead man's personal files 30 years after they were written, but only 2 months before an election.

Also unexplained by the reviewer is how a typewriter from the 1970s could produce a perfect match for an MS Word document. Or why Lt Col wouldn't just prepare a handwritten note for himself. Or why he would violate regulations and maintain personnel records outside of the military's recordkeeping system.

So for the documents to be authentic a dead man who hated to type, and wasn't a good typist to begin with, typed a memo to himself threatening to do something that had already happened and wouldn't have caused any harm to begin with. He illegally kept the records for years after they were needed and by coincidence they are a perfect match for documents typed in MS Word. Congratulate yourself if you don't buy it.

The reviewer has problems with matters other than the reliability of the documents:

The panel also labeled as "misleading" Dan Rather's interview with the then speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, who made a call to get George Bush in the Guard. Why is this misleading? Because, the panel said, CBS has no proof that the person who received the call was influenced by it. Can the panel be serious about this? Should CBS not have reported this call?

The reviewer accepts Barnes' assertion without question. Actually, there's no proof that the call was ever made. Like Lt Col Killian, the person who called Barnes is dead. (This coincidence is what made me suspicious about the documents when I first saw them.) The reviewer doesn't know or mention that Barnes has changed his story and was a major Kerry supporter and fundraiser.

No one had to pull strings to get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. While there was a glut of people trying to get into the reserves, there was a shortage of people who could qualify as a pilot.

Dan Rather apparently asked few such questions. According to the panel, he knew little about the background of the charges he broadcast and depended on the reporting and research of the program's producer, Mary Mapes.

Isn't this really evidence that Rather failed to do his job? Isn't he supposed to ask questions. If he knew so little, why did he insist that the source was "unimpeachable"? Why not check out the story? Could it be that Rather was in a rush to harm Bush?

Time doesn't permit discussion of other problems with the review. For The New York Review of Books, Dan Rather's shoddiness is contagious.

Update:

TigerHawk blows away whatever credibility NYROB had. I wish I had the time and skill to do this type of work.

It was William F. Buckley, Jr. who said NYROB was the "last court of appeal for highbrow screwballs."

2005-03-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

The Little Corporal

In a poll to determine the greatest Frenchman, one figure came in surprising low:

Admirers and impartial academics alike were aghast yesterday at the news that the little Corporal who became an Emperor had only made it to No 16 in the top 100 names in a poll for the state-owned TV channel France 2.

Before writing this post I checked Napoleon's biography. I couldn't find any evidence that Napoleon was ever a corporal. After completing military school Napoleon was commissioned as a second lieutenant. It was Hitler who was a corporal. These two men have a lot in common, but they didn't share the same military ranks.

Between the two dictators, it's not just Napoleon's life that's being misrepresented. Victor Davis Hanson has a long summary of the attempts to group Hitler and President Bush:

In fact, what do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At first glance, all this wild rhetoric is preposterous. Hitler hijacked an elected government and turned it into a fascist tyranny. He destroyed European democracy. His minions persecuted Christians, gassed over six million Jews, and created an entire fascistic creed predicated on anti-Semitism and the myth of a superior Aryan race.

Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.

In a world that is almost uniformly opposed to the democratic Jewish state, Israel has no better friend than Bush, who in turn is a believer in, not a tormentor of, Christianity. Afghanistan and Iraq, with 50 million freed, have elected governments, not American proconsuls, and there is a movement in the Middle East toward greater democratization — with no guarantee that such elected governments will not be anti-American. No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn.

The left's grouping of unlikely people to Hitler didn't start with Bush. Consider this excerpt, since revised, from Rick Steves' Europe Through The Back Door (1997):

For us to understand Islam by studying Khadafy and Hussein would be like a Turk understanding capitalism and Christianity by studying Hitler and Reagan.

People who can't see distinctions between Reagan and Hitler (or Bush and Hitler) have to be pretty far out there. They also have to be pretty ignorant. Hitler didn't believe in Christianity or capitalism. He was a pagan and a socialist.

Frequent comparisons to Hitler seem odd coming from the left. Charles Krauthammer points out that they don't have much trouble with modern day monsters:

After all, going back at least to the Spanish Civil War, the left has always prided itself on being the great international champion of freedom and human rights. And yet, when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, gassing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability.

A leftist judge in Spain orders the arrest of a pathetic, near-senile Gen. Augusto Pinochet eight years after he's left office, and becomes a human rights hero -- a classic example of the left morally grandstanding in the name of victims of dictatorships long gone. Yet for the victims of contemporary monsters still actively killing and oppressing -- Khomeini and his successors, the Assads of Syria and, until yesterday, Hussein and his sons -- nothing. No sympathy. No action. Indeed, virulent hostility to America's courageous and dangerous attempt at rescue.

The international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism. Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out this selective concern for the victims of U.S. allies (such as Chile) 25 years ago. After the Cold War, the hypocrisy continues. For which Arab people do European hearts burn? The Palestinians. Why? Because that permits the vilification of Israel -- an outpost of Western democracy and, even worse, a staunch U.S. ally. Championing suffering Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese offers no such satisfaction. Hence, silence.

Until now. Now that the real Arab street has risen to claim rights that the West takes for granted, the left takes note. It is forced to acknowledge that those brutish Americans led by their simpleton cowboy might have been right. It has no choice. It is shamed. A Lebanese, amid a sea of a million other Lebanese, raises a placard reading "Thank you, George W. Bush," and all that Euro-pretense, moral and intellectual, collapses.

In addition to ignorance Hanson attributes the Hitler comparisons to arrogance. That's part of it. I also think that the left keeps bringing up Hitler as a form of projection:

From the Nazi-Soviet pact through Hitler's invasion of the U.S.S.R., the international left opposed attempts to stop Hitler.

Most of the left's economics is based on socialism. Hitler was a socialist himself, though unlike the left his socialism was based on race instead of class.

Many of the most brutal dictators of the past century were supported by the left. This includes the U.S.S.R., Mao, Castro, the Sandinistas, and the Khmer Rouge.

It's really the left that seems attached to the thugs of the world.

2005-03-17T17:39:00.000-05:00

Why I Like Mark Steyn

Consider this excerpt from his latest column:

The New York Times wondered what Mr Bush’s next appointment would be:
‘Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission?’

Okay, I get the hang of this game. Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam’s Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man UN operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else. All of which happened without the UN fetishists running around shrieking hysterically. Why should America be the only country not to enjoy an uproarious joke at the UN’s expense?

Why I Like George Schultz

If you keep reading Steyn's column, you'll find this gem:

Yet the assumption behind much of the criticism of Bolton from the likes of John Kerry is that, regardless of his government’s foreign policy, a UN ambassador has to be at some level a UN booster. Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration’s ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who’d just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. ‘No,’ Schultz would say, ‘this is your country’ — and point to the United States. Nobody would expect a US ambassador to the Soviet Union to be a big booster for the Soviets. And, given that in a unipolar world the most plausible challenger to the US is transnationalism, these days the Schultz test is even more pertinent for the UN ambassador: his country is the United States, not the ersatz jurisdiction of Kofi Annan’s embryo world government.

You really should read the whole thing.

2005-03-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

Rather Finished

It's always interesting to hear what the media say about each other. Here's a paraphrased summary of what Fox News Watch says about Dan Rather's retirement:

Eric Burns -- Rather is the first anchor to leave under a cloud of negativity.

Cal Thomas -- Rather didn't report, he read off a teleprompter. His career began with a lie -- the claim that Dallas children cheered JFK's assassination.

Jane Hall -- Disagrees with Thomas. It is sad. There is tremendous sadness and disarray at CBS. Rather was not a natural anchor. But he was present at various events. Hall doesn't know if Dallas story is true or false.

Jim Pinkerton -- In early 1990s Rather put out phony story that 1 of 8 American children go to bed hungry. Rather was a liberal propagandist. That's why Jane Hall likes him. Rather's colleagues trashed him.

Neil Gabler -- Rather's crime was not carelessness with documents. The right hated him because he didn't kowtow to power. Did other anchors ever say a memorable sentence? (Editor: What good is a memorable statement if it's an embarrassment to the person who made it?) Rather asked tough questions.

Pinkerton -- Rather should have been tough on the documents. His problem was shoddy journalism.

Gabler -- Documents were never discredited. Cites CBS report. (Editor: Get real. MS Word didn't exist in 1973.)

Burns -- Rather leaves under a cloud. Is it fair?

Hall -- Pieces by colleagues were snide. Tom Shales was friendly. (Editor: Shales' favorable opinion of Rather is surprising because?)

Thomas -- Rather didn't ask tough questions of Clintons.

Burns -- Rather didn't get over struggle with Roger Mudd over CBS anchor slot after Chronkite retired.

Pinkerton -- With the upcoming lawsuits Rather will have to testify.

Discussion of bloggers getting White House press credentials:

Pinkerton -- Not enough room in White House for 8 million bloggers to participate.

Hall -- First blogger missed the daily briefing because he was being interviewed about being the first blogger to participate in the daily briefing.

Thomas -- Need definition of journalist.

Gabler -- It's difficult enough to get a White House day pass.

2005-03-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

More on Prisoners

Nowadays I visit Andrew Sullivan's web site about as often as I visit any other train wreck. It's only been a few days, but so far he has no response to Admiral Church's report on the treatment of prisoners. Contrary to claims made by Sullivan and others, the Bush Administration did not encourage mistreatment of prisoners. Jed Babbin manages a nice summary of the report:

The Church report proves those assertions wrong. It says, "We found, without exception, that the DoD and senior military commanders responsible for the formulation of interrogation policy evidenced the intent to treat detainees humanely, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the notion that such officials or commanders ever accepted that detainee abuse would be permissible . . . [and] it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater."

But what about Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay? Weren't the interrogators just turned loose? In fact, no. Church wrote, "We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse."

Sullivan needs to write a rebuttal or an apology. Better yet, he should really take the hiatus he promised his readers.

2005-03-12T10:13:00.000-05:00

Civil War

The issue about detaining American citizens without filing charges has come up again. While all detentions should be scrutinized, the Civil War provides ample historical precedent for the American government to detain its own citizens.

During the Civil War there were all sorts of controversies about each side's treatment of prisoners. There was no controversy about the Union's constitutional authority to hold Confederate soldiers without filing charges. And Confederates were American citizens. The Union's position was that secession was illegal. Consequently, the Confederate soldiers never lost their citizenship. The Democrats recognized this. In 1864 their platform denounced the "shameful disregard" of "our fellow-citizens who now are, and long have been, prisoners of war in a suffering condition." This was a complaint about the Union's treatment of prisoners, not the fact that it held prisoners. (For more details, see James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.)

Again, the government can't act arbitrarily or inhumanely. But it can imprison American citizens who serve the enemy.

2005-03-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

Kool Aid

Today's Best of the Web has some good posts on the Democrats' attempt to get religion. It also reveals the left's disdain for religion. Mixing religion and politics is never objectionable when it helps Democrats. Witness Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. Don't forget, John Kerry campaigned in churches.

The Democrats need to be careful about the religious figures they approach. Ask Walter Mondale. The man who criticized Reagan's connections to the Religious Right has his own problems. I remember the following from page A16 of the November 21, 1978 New York Times:

Among the documents made public was a section of a letter from Mr. Mondale that said in part, "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."

Mondale's letter was to the Reverend Jim Jones.

2005-03-06T15:30:00.000-05:00

Ted Raw

Ted Rall needs to take a history class:

Adolf Hitler wasn't elected democratically. He never won a free election. He became Germany's chancellor through a series of threats and maneuvers.

Building the autobahns didn't interfere with Hitler's military plans. Hitler build the autobahns to make military transportation more convenient. President Bush's budget provides more money for domestic purposes than Hitler's did.

President Bush's military campaigns have been far more successful than Hitler's. We don't know what's in the future, but it's a good bet that Bush won't end up surrounded in a White House bunker preparing to shoot himself.

Maybe it's Bush's success that bothers Rall. Rall's ignorance is only exceeded by his viciousness.

Via Michelle Malkin.

Update:

Do cartoonists have a problem making analogies? Jim Geraghty catches Tom Toles treating Syrian dictator Assad like Winnie the Pooh.

2005-03-06T13:35:00.000-05:00

Justic Kennedy's PowerGrab

As much as I agree with PowerLine about the Supreme Court's abuse of its authority, I have to acknowledge that the court has the implicit authority to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Part of the court's role is to interpret the law. If laws contradict each other, the justices have to decide which one applies. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence.

Federalist 78 recognizes this:

... whenever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former.

Alexander Hamilton recognized the possibility that justices like Anthony Kennedy:

... may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature ... The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.

Hamilton goes on in Federalist 78 to say that permanent tenure of the judiciary is intended to prevent this from happening. In Federalist 79 Hamilton says that impeachment and removal from office is the only way to deal with power-hungry judges. In the past attempts to impeach justices backfired.

In Federalist 80 Hamilton seems to rule out another remedy sometimes suggested by conservatives, limiting the court's jurisdiction under Congress's Article 3 authority. Hamilton says that this provision is intended to deal with inconveniences.

I hope the folks at PowerLine look into what The Federalist Papers say about the Supreme Court. They are much keener on the law than this amateur. George Neumayr tells us where we're heading:

The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his?

The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress.

The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse.

Update:

George Will doesn't think much of Justice Kennedy either:

Last Tuesday Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4 decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute people who committed murder when they were under 18 years old. Such executions, it said, violate the Eighth Amendment proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishments because. . . . Well, Kennedy's opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined, is a tossed salad of reasons why those five think the court had a duty to do what state legislatures have the rightful power and, arguably, the moral responsibility to do.

2005-03-05T08:15:00.000-05:00

De-Certifying the Spectator

Jay Rosen is worried that the Bush Administration is trying to de-certify (whatever that is) the news media. Basically, he's worried that some people besides Democrats may break some stories.

Where was Rosen at in the 1990s? Back then a lot of damaging stories about the Clinton Administration originated with The American Spectator. A palm reader made a spurious allegation that the Spectator paid off a witness to make false statements regarding Whitewater. Unlike its handling of the fundraising scandals, Clinton's Department of Justice moved with alacrity to investigate. The Spectator was eventually cleared, but not before the legal expenses practically put it out of business for several years.

Can you imagine the reaction if this had been the other way around? Do you think John Ashcroft would get away with harassing The New Republic? Not a chance. Yet back then we heard barely a peep about the Clinton Administration trying to shut down a magazine. What does Rosen have to say about this?

Rosen agrees with Eric Boehlert that "If the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate." Too late, Dan Rather and Eason Jordan have already taken care of that.

2005-02-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

On The Mark

President Bush did not cave in to Europe:

And at the end what's changed?

Will the United States sign on to Kyoto?

No.

Will the United States join the International Criminal Court?

No.

Will the United States agree to accept whatever deal the Anglo-Franco-German negotiators cook up with Iran?

No.

Even more remarkably, aside from sticking to his guns in the wider world, the president also found time to cast his eye upon Europe's internal affairs. As he told his audience in Brussels, in the first speech of his tour, ''We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands.''

The president, in other words, understands that for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations before they provoke the inevitable resurgence of opportunist political movements feeding off old hatreds. Difficult trick to pull off, especially on a continent where the ruling elite feels it's in the people's best interest not to pay any attention to them.

Mark Steyn understands Europe's fix:

For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

I'd quote all of Steyn's good stuff, but then I'd have to paste the entire article. Read the whole thing.

2005-02-21T18:19:00.000-05:00

Lincoln Would Be Proud

I'm always mystified about why so many Americans think Europeans are wiser than us. All of the ideologies that cause so much trouble in modern times originated in Europe in the past few centuries. This includes Marxism, communism, Leninism, fascism, and Nazism. All of these ideologies have one thing in common: socialist economic policy. Maybe that's why American leftists want the United States to take Europe's advice.

For all their sophistication over Americans, it's always the Europeans who turn to the cowboys for protection. It was Americans who fought and died to save Europe from the two World Wars. It was America who risked everything to protect Europe during the Cold War. Economically, it was America's Marshall Plan that bailed out Europe, especially France and Germany. Europe can only afford its elaborate welfare states because America relieves them of much of the burden of defending themselves. Of course if current demographic and economic trends continue, France and Germany will find their welfare states too burdensome.

Paul Johnson gets at the root of the problem:

France and Germany have remained on the sidelines, greeting America's costly efforts to bring democracy to the Arab world with a mixture of vicious criticism, sneers and obstructive tactics. But then, neither nation has much of a democratic record.

The Germans have had democracy imposed on them twice by the victorious Allies, each time after a world war Germany started. German democracy is a superficial growth, and if the Socialists there continue to mismanage the economy and impoverish the people, who can say whether freedom in Germany will survive?

The French have had 12 written constitutions since 1789. None has given ordinary French people the feeling that they are really in charge of their affairs. If they have a real grievance they take to the streets and block the roads and ports, knowing from bitter experience that force is more likely to get results than arguments or votes . . .

As for European intellectuals, who command so much power in the media, universities and opinion-forming circles, they have done everything they possibly could to abuse America's initiative in Iraq and to prevent the installation of freedom. Some make it clear that they would much prefer Iraq to be run by men like Saddam than by American-backed democrats. Of course, intellectuals pay lip service to free elections but in practice have a profound (if secret) hatred of democracy. They cannot believe that their votes should count for no more than the votes of "uneducated" people who run small businesses, work on farms and in factories and have never read Proust.

The intellectuals wanted the Iraqi elections to be defeated by terror. But now that the elections have actually taken place, they want the new government to fail. They want democracy to fail in Afghanistan as well so that they can smile smugly and say, "We told you so." For if democracy were to triumph everywhere, what role would there be for the intellectual critic? As Shakespeare put it, "Othello's occupation's gone."

Denis Boyles has some blunt advice for Europe. President Bush is likely to be more diplomatic; France and Germany probably don't have the sense to follow it. On this Presidents Day, Paul Johnson gives us reason to be grateful to President Bush:

I think Abraham Lincoln would be proud of what George W. Bush and the U.S. forces have done. After the freeing of the slaves, what more logical and benevolent step could there be than to free millions of Arabs from the slavery of terror? So I say, God Bless America. And I'm confident that countless millions throughout the world say so, too, even if they do not dare--yet--to say so aloud.

2005-02-20T17:31:00.000-05:00

Presidents Day

Lets give special credit to Abraham Lincoln. His critics point out that his priority was saving the Union, not ending slavery. Lincoln knew that his policy, tolerating slavery where it already was established but prohibiting its spread to new states, would lead to the decline of the South's power and the end of slavery. Lincoln used the Civil War to end slavery.

Speaking of slavery, Thomas Sowell points out that the forces that ended slavery would be regarded as politically incorrect by today's standards:

The anti-slavery movement was spearheaded by people who would today be called "the religious right" and its organization was created by conservative businessmen. Moreover, what destroyed slavery in the non-Western world was Western imperialism [through the British Navy].

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.

As anti-slavery ideas eventually spread throughout Western civilization, a worldwide struggle pitted the West against Africans, Arabs, Asians and virtually the entire non-Western world, which still saw nothing wrong with slavery. But Western imperialists had gunpowder weapons first and that enabled the West to stamp out slavery in other societies as well as in its own.

2005-02-13T09:48:00.000-05:00

Fox News

Fox News panel discusses Eason Jordan and Jeff Gannon. Comments are paraphrased:

Brit Hume -- Without the bloggers Eason Jordan would have survived. Noted that videotape hasn't been released. Noted that Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd were present and took serious exception to Jordan's comments.

Paul Gigot -- It's not Rathergate. Jordan backtracked. CNN should stand up for its people. This wasn't a firing offense. Doesn't understand why Jordan left.

Juan Williams -- Jordan may have revealed what he truly thought. (LL -- Isn't that the real problem here? Putting someone with Jordan's outlook in charge reveals the CNN's bias.)

Hume on "Jeff Gannon" of Talon News Service-- Left wing blogs are making much too much of this. He's a gadfly with a White House day pass, not a permanent pass. Gannon's not any more of a pest than others. No worse than Helen Thomas, who doesn't do any reporting and asks questions just as opinionated as Gannon's. Would it have made any difference if he had used his real name?

Mara Liason and Williams objected -- You should be who you say you are. Use real names so it's easier to check reporter's credibility. Williams also defended Thomas.

Chris Wallace -- Shouldn't there be objective credentials to identify journalists?

Hume -- There are always oddballs in the White House press.

LL -- I suspect conservatives will be glad to sacrifice Gannon for Jordan. The videotape must be damning; neither Jordan nor CNN has called for its release. Jordan controls a major part of the MSM. He should back up his claims.

Michelle Malkin quotes Jordan's defenders. It's pretty pathetic when they're reduced to charges of McCarthyism. Where were they when Jordan was making his unsubstantiated allegations of murder? Lets see the videotape!

UPDATE: PowerLine addresses the McCarthyism charge. Let me address it too. A few years ago Jordan had information damaging to Saddam Hussein. He didn't disclose it. Now he makes public charges against the American military, without any evidence. Jordan has a double standard and it's not pro-American.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin for pointing out that that the program was Fox News Sunday. If you're following this link you're in the blogosphere's low minors. This site isn't very busy but if you check back once in a while you might find something interesting.

2005-02-06T16:42:00.000-05:00

Football Prediction

I like both teams, but New England has the Super Bowl experience. They had a better record against a tougher schedule.

Patriots, 17-13.

2005-02-06T16:33:00.000-05:00

Iraq Prediction

Alterman's reference to "death squads" (see below) leads to speculation on the left's next line of attack. Since they've been repudiated by the Iraqi people they will adopt a fallback position to make President Bush's policy fail: they will attack the new Iraqi government. This week Senator Kennedy criticized the U.S. military because the Iraqi people weren't doing the fighting and dying (a ludicrous statement in itself). As the Iraqis take over more government responsibility, the left and the MSM will attack the Iraqis for human rights violations. Attacking America's allies on human rights grounds was a standard tactic in the 1970s and 1980s. It was Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. The left doesn't like to admit it's wrong, so they'll try this next.

2005-02-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

Andrew's Bandwidth and Me

Once again Michelle Malkin gets the goods on Andrew Sullivan. She did a lot last year to expose Sullivan's "bandwidth" pledge drive as a hoax. Sullivan's bandwidth needs were trivial; he just wanted more money. Now he's on hiatus, using the money to travel and write a book.

I have to disclose my personal experience with Sullivan. In the summer of 2003 I decided to make a modest donation to Sullivan's fund drive. I sent a $20 personal check to Sullivan. The check didn't show up in my bank account until the spring of 2004. It must have taken 8 or 9 months for Sullivan to make the deposit. I always chuckle when Sullivan talks about President Bush being incompetent.

2005-02-03T20:35:00.000-05:00

Getting Desperate?

Opponents of Social Security reform are already sounding desperate. Senator Reid was on the radio saying that President Bush's proposal will mean a 40 percent reduction in benefits. In reality benefits will only be reduced on a voluntary basis. Those who partially opt out will have to invest their retirement money in the private sector. Traditionally this provides a much better return than Social Security.

Harold Meyerson may be misrepresenting Milton Friedman's position:

When Milton Friedman was calling for privatization a half-century ago, it wasn't because he feared the system would run out of money when the boomers retired. (The boomers were at that point just midway through being born.) It was because he was a committed advocate of laissez-faire capitalism.

I don't know what Friedman wrote half a century ago, but I still have a copy of Free To Choose from a quarter-century ago. The following paragraph appears on pages 95-95:

Workers paying taxes today can derive no assurance from trust funds that they will receive benefits when they retire. Any assistance derives solely from the willingness of future taxpayers to impose taxes on themselves to pay for benefits that present taxpayers are promising themselves. This one-sided "compact between the generations," foisted on generations that cannot give their consent, is a very different thing than a "trust fund." It is more like a chain letter.

Pages 96 and 97:

The long-run financial problems of Social Security stem from one simple fact: the number of people receiving payments from the system has increased and continued to increase faster than the number of workers on whose wages can be levied to finance those payments.

Friedman doesn't want to reform Social Security solely out of dedication to laissez faire principles. He has long recognized that Social Security is financially unsound. What's new is that it's gradually dawning on people that Friedman is right. The opponents of reform need to say what their solution is.

2005-02-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

Better To Stay Silent

On Monday I addressed some foolish statements by Eric Alterman about the Iraqi elections. Today Power Line talks about individuals who have stayed curiously silent about the Iraqi election, such as Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter. A third category is the media organs that appear to have been victimized by lead time. Meet the Press's decision to book John Kerry on Sunday only makes sense if Tim Russert assumed that the election would be a shambles, giving Kerry a chance to gloat. (It's hard to figure what Kerry would have done in the 10 days after the inaugural to fix the elections.) Newsweek put the insurgents on this week's cover. They must have assumed that election day would be a good day for the insurgents.

One question I have is this: Who do the anti-war groups represent? They complain about military casualties, yet the the military is a group that overwhelmingly supports President Bush. They are all volunteers. They want their mission to succeed. Do the anti-war groups represent the people of Iraq? The Iraqis appreciate the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. They want the American military to defeat the insurgents. They don't want a pullout. They don't hate Bush.

Could it be that the anti-war groups only represent their own political interests and hatred of Bush?

2005-01-31T19:55:00.000-05:00

Cone Of Silence

Unlike other leftists, Eric Alterman has something to say about the Iraqi elections. He's not impressed. It reminds him of the 1984 elections in El Salvador. That election was boycotted by communist guerillas, who fired on voters.

Reporting out of Baghdad in 2005 mirrors reporting out of San Salvador in 1984. That was said to be a magnificent success and an expression of a people’s willingness to brave violence in order to express their commitment to Western style democracy. We heard the same stories; people waiting on long lines; telling off guerrillas, walking miles for the right to exercise their democratic rights. Most of this turned out to be an illusion, created by the U.S. military and intelligence forces there, and the voting percentages turned out to be a fraction of what a quiescent media reported at the time. U.S. supported (and perhaps created) death squads continued to exercise their campaign of mass murder, unconcerned with the results of meaningless elections.

Unfortunately for Alterman, but fortunately for Central America, El Salvador was a success story. The real death squads, the communist guerillas, disbanded and El Salvador became a democracy. For Alterman that's an unhappy ending. Lets hope that Iraq's death squads, the "insurgents," meet a similar fate.

Alterman is better off staying silent and letting people think he's a fool.

2005-01-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

Only If Bush Knows Of Employees Who Have Forged Documents

"Isn't CBS actually being tougher on its miscreants than the Bush administration ever is?" -- Andrew Sullivan.

2004-12-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

The Cover-Up Will Continue

Robert Novak quotes Kofi Annan on the oil-for-food program:

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Annan asserted that the Volcker report ''will be made available to the public in a form that will take into account the rights of staff members and, where necessary, respect any undertakings as to confidentiality that may have been granted by the inquiry.''

What will result from the report? ''I will take such action as I may deem appropriate,'' Annan said. It is as if Enron executives could edit and act on the Justice Department investigation.

2004-12-11T10:34:00.000-05:00

Sullivan Award

Andrew Sullivan named his new award after Michelle Malkin. Initially I had trouble figuring out why Sullivan is going after Malkin. Sullivan usually makes things personal and she hasn't said much about him recently.

Malkin's July archives provide the answer. Malkin helped exposed Sullivan's phony claim that his fundraising was for to pay for more blog "bandwidth." Malkin not only exposed an absurd falsehood; she also hit Sullivan in the pocket book. Sullivan's Malkin award had to be one of his personal vendettas; he doesn't have the knowledge to debate Malkin on any subject.

I have started my own award. It is for individuals who adopt or sell out conservative principles due to self-promotion or personal opportunism. The first winner is the pundit who abandoned the war on terror to improve his chances of marrying a man. Congratulations Andrew.

2004-11-28T14:29:00.000-05:00

Before We Forget

Before Colin Powell leaves, Joel Mowbray reminds us that Colin Powell told the truth when he spoke before the U.N. Security Council:

One of the first pieces of evidence offered by Mr. Powell was a telephone intercept of a conversation between two senior officers from the Republican guard on Nov. 26, 2002 — the day before U.N. weapons teams started up inspections. The most damning line: "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."

Moments later — after pointing out that "the inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16" — Mr. Powell played another intercept, one of a Republican Guard officer issuing an order to a subordinate in the field. In the recorded conversation, the superior reiterated a previous instruction: "And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there. Remember the first message: evacuate it." Lest anyone had any doubt how to interpret this clandestine conversation, the senior officer said, "After you have carried out what is contained in this message, destroy the message because I don't want anyone to see this message."

In other words, Saddam Hussein was a genuine threat who was violating U.N. Security Council resolutions. The war was justified.

2004-11-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

Secession

Reactions to President Bush's victory are becoming increasingly hysterical:

In a telephone interview, Mr. O'Donnell said the red states that went to Mr. Bush "collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut — the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from ... Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing."

What Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't say is that the people who pay most of the taxes (middle class and the wealthy) are red staters at heart. The UBSA (United Blue States Of America) will raise taxes further, causing a flood of refugee Republican taxpayers to the Red States.

2004-11-01T18:32:00.000-05:00

Final Thoughts On Election

I was planning to write a long post responding to arguments that a victory by Senator Kerry will improve national security. Under this arguments Democrats will be forced to take responsibility for the war on terror. Consequently, Democrats will have no alternative to buying into our success in Iraq.

But driving home from work I saw a young man wearing a signboard. I was driving too fast to read the whole thing, but the top said "Kerry" and the next line said "United Nations." As president Kerry couldn't afford politically to let down his core supporters.

At least the young man was responsibly exercising his freedom. President Bush's enemies, both partisan and "objective," have few scruples about tactics. Fred Barnes puts it best:

THE SCARIEST THING about this election is not the prospect of a contested outcome with no winner declared for weeks, just as in 2000. No, the most scary thing is the sense of entitlement that many Democrats and their allies have about tomorrow's election. It goes like this: Bush stole the presidency four years ago, then proceeded to act as if he had a mandate, so now we're entitled to do whatever it takes to defeat him, to say whatever we want. . .

You see it in the now exposed plans of Democrats to claim intimidation
of minority voters even if no intimidation actually occurs. You see it in the voter registration efforts by Democrats that have made the number of people on the voting rolls in some jurisdictions larger than the voting age population. You see it in the plans of Democratic lawyers to file lawsuits all over the country, challenging the outcome unless Bush is defeated.

You see that same sense of entitlement in elements of the national media--especially CBS News--who jettison the normal rules of journalism when Bush is the target. CBS not only rushed out with forged documents to torpedo the Bush campaign in September, the network intended to take another bite at Bush two days before the election by airing a dubious story about stolen explosives in Iraq. Would CBS have dared to do this against any other public figure but Bush? No.

And you see it in the victimization that is claimed for John Kerry. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Anything they say about Kerry is automatically a smear and thus doesn't have to be examined or even considered. And Kerry has no obligation to answer questions about his Vietnam experience, though he's played it up in the campaign. Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, however, is fair game.

And you see the feeling of entitlement in comments by the Democratic candidates and their backers, who seem to feel they're free to say anything they want about Bush and Vice President Cheney. So we get the targeting of Mary Cheney as a lesbian and the criticism of Laura Bush for having worked in jobs that weren't real jobs. And when anyone accuses Democrats of debasing the campaign, the answer is always: it's Bush's fault. Bush is hardly without fault, but the shabby style and substance of this campaign is the fault of his opponents.

Let's make sure these tactics aren't rewarded.

2004-10-31T19:04:00.000-05:00

Armchair Apologies

We frequently hear complaints that President Bush doesn't acknowledge mistakes. Actually he admitted to making mistakes, he just doesn't get specific. The reason he isn't specific is that requests to admit a specific mistake are "gotcha" questions. Once Bush admits to a specific mistake that's all we'll hear about.

Bush could have handled it better. He should say "I planned to be bipartisan, but the Democrats wouldn't even allow votes on my judicial nominees." Or "I trusted the news media to be objective. Instead they used forged documents to try to help my opponent." Or "In the debates I was too flabbergasted to respond when Senator Kerry praised Ronald Reagan. Back in the 1980s Senator Kerry said the Reagan years were a period of 'moral darkness.'"

Senator Kerry is now saying that the failure to capture Osama bin Laden is a failure. Of course, if Kerry's votes had prevailed we wouldn't have the resources to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan, let alone pursue bin Laden. It's newspeak of the first order to present the Afghanistan campaign as a failure.

Kerry points out that President Kennedy owned up to the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Let's look at the three invasions pursued by Kennedy and Bush:

Bay of Pigs, 1961 -- PURPOSE: Drive Castro out of power in Cuba. RESULT: Complete failure.

Afghanistan, 2001 -- PURPOSE: Drive Taliban out of power in Afghanistan. RESULT: Success.

Iraq, 2003 -- PURPOSE: Drive Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq. RESULT: Success, though it's not finished.

So only Kennedy needed to apologize for his invasion. If Kerry wins, how often will he be apologizing?

2004-10-26T19:30:00.000-05:00

The Case For Bush

One thing frequently overlooked about President Bush is that he took office in the worst circumstances faced by a newly elected president since the 1930s. He knew when he took office that the country was heading into recession. What almost no one anticipated was that America would be attacked by terrorists. By and large he responded well, going after terrorists at the source in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sure he's made mistakes. I wish that he had vetoed a few spending bills. On immigration and transportation security he often bows to political correctness. But on war and taxes he got the main things right. Senator Kerry seems unlikely to improve the situation in these areas. Quite the contrary. I wish he had a better communications operation. Bush is often tardy in responding to attacks, such as this week's late hit on missing explosives.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Bush is willing to take on a lot of sacred cows. This includes the United Nations and conventional wisdom on things like the so-called Middle East peace process. He's made some tough decisions in the world's long term interest. It will be unfortunately if they're reversed.

Hopefully Bush will withstand the final attacks. Let's hope for the best.

2004-10-25T18:30:00.000-05:00

The Problem With Kerry

It's pretty sorry that Senator Kerry makes false claims about meeting with the United Nations Security Council. What's scary is that he thinks his actions are worth bragging about.

Remember, after the meeting Kerry voted to authorize the war. He must have believed that the United Nations, including France, would be helpful:

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

Kerry, so skilled in diplomacy, didn't see that the U.N. would let us down. Worse yet, he still doesn't understand that he was double-crossed. He'd rely on the same folks to help make his presidential decisions.

All of his tough talk is intended to conceal Kerry's opportunism. Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, then criticized the first President Bush for not going after Saddam. In 2002 he votes for war, then votes not to fund it. He then says that the war was wrong, but promises to fight it better. In 2001 Kerry praised operations in Tora Bora. Now he complains about letting Osama bin Laden escape. Today he sees nothing wrong in campaigning with the president who passed on chances to arrest bin Laden.

One thing that's overlooked in all the flip-flopping is the reason the Democrats didn't do more to oppose the 2002 vote for war. They wanted to put Iraq off the table for the fall Congressional elections.

The opportunism is necessary to conceal the Democrats' and Kerry's real feelings. They want to bail out on the fight against terrorism. Kerry criticized the liberation of Grenada. He voted against liberating Kuwait, even when this action passed his "global test." Michael Moore isn't supporting Kerry because he wants America to wage a better war. Moore wants America and the Iraqi people to lose to Iraq. If Kerry follows through on his promises and continues the war effort, a lot of his base support will be furious.

A final reason to oppose Democrats is their tactics. For the last four years they've been the meanest and most irresponsible opposition party I can recall. I used to think they'd do anything short of violence to get their way. Now we're seeing a lot of vandalism against Republicans. Mrs. Edwards is saying that there won't be riots if the Democrats win. The Democrats need more time in the wilderness to appreciate responsible behavior. Kerry needs to get to do some actual work in the Senate.

UPDATE: There are a few tactics I forgot to mention in the original post. The completely bogus charges that Bush would reinstate the draft and cut Social Security. The claim that Kerry will cure cripples. Picking on Cheney's daughter. Nothing's too outrageous for Kerry.

2004-10-24T18:11:00.000-05:00

Take A Flyer

I don't think we get as much political literature and advertising in the DC metro area as other regions do. Washington, DC is overwhelmingly Democratic. Suburban Maryland is reliably Democratic. Northern Virginia is more conservative than the rest of the region, but it's relatively liberal compared to the rest of Virginia. (For what it's worth, the ratio of bumper stickers is more pro-Kerry than usual in NorVA; maybe Bush should spend a little time in Virginia.)

My condo's rules prohibit soliciting, but that didn't stop some Democrat from leaving a flyer on my door. Let's hope this is the Democrats' worst rule violation. Anyway, Senator Kerry's criticisms of President Bush "failed policies" are surprisingly easy to refute:

A go-it-alone invasion of Iraq that cost America $200 billion and weakened the war on terror by diverting forces from destroying the terrorists in Afghanistan.

"Go-it-alone"? Forty countries have joined the coalition at various times. Apparently Kerry isn't happy unless the French approve our action. We're capable of defeating the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban are pretty much defeated and Saddam Hussein's been captured. I suspect the Democrats' real complaint is that they can't spend that $200 billion on their constituencies.

Rushing to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence, a fateful miscalculation of the war's consequences and without a plan to win the peace.

Saddam Hussein had been violating United Nations resolutions for 12 years. That's not a rush. Senator Kerry was on the Senate Intelligence Committee from 1993 through 2001. His most notable action was to attempt to cut the intelligence budget. If he has any realistic plan to win the peace he's been awfully quiet to provide it. In fact, his proposals to make America "respected in the world [and] safer at home] are very lame:

A more effective war on terror through a new era of stronger alliances.

Basically Kerry's complaining that Bush proceeded without France's approval. What concessions does Kerry intend to get France to cooperate with us? [Ed: Probably Israel.] What help will France actually provide? [Ed: Very little. They'll only get involved to help themselves.] Has Kerry heard of the Oil-For-Food scandal?

Win the war on terror by strengthening the military and implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations for stronger intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

Over the years Kerry has strived to weaken the military. He voted against the $87 billion after he voted for it. He's now against the Patriot Act after he voted for it. We already talked about his past lack of concern on intelligence.

Deploy America's entire arsenal -- military power, diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and the force of our values -- to keep America secure.

President Bush seems to be taking care of this.

2004-10-07T19:33:00.000-05:00

Style

When I was in the military we often had to go through inspections and exercises that often seemed pointless. One officer told me the key to surviving these things: show interest in the exercise. Above all, inspectors want their concerns to be taken seriously. Likely, no matter how often Kerry reverses himself or pointless it seems, President Bush needs to sell himself at the debate and engage.

Substance

In making preparations, President Bush should emphasize two things: (1) That Saddam had a WMD program that was a genuine threat; and (2) it's Senator Kerry's supposed allies that failed the "global test" and formed a "coalition of the bribed." Hopefully, Glenn Reynolds is on Bush's debate reading list:

The weapons of mass destruction case is a bit more, um, nuanced than a lot of the press treatment makes it sound, of course. No weapons have been found, but the Iraq Survey Group's report makes clear that Saddam wanted to outwait sanctions and then start making the weapons again:

The ISG, who confirmed last autumn that they had found no WMD, last night presented detailed findings from interviews with Iraqi officials and documents laying out his plans to bribe foreign businessmen and politicians.

Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the "guiding theme" of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible."

But hey, Kerry voted for the war, so his arguments on that topic boil down to either (1) Bush lied, and I'm gullible: or (2) Bush and I both got fooled, but I'll do better next time. Neither is very compelling.

The real centerpiece of Kerry's foreign policy stance, though, has been that he would be better than Bush at getting allies together, and at passing the "Global Test" before taking military action. And that case is in total collapse this week...

The "Global Test" bit looks kind of bad, in this light. But it looks even worse when you consider the other revelations of the Iraq Survey Group -- namely, that most of the opposition to the war came from people who were being bribed by Saddam:

Saddam Hussein believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.

2004-09-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

Debate

Like Instapundit, I think John Kerry will probably "win" tonight's debate. Not necessarily on merit, but because the mainstream media will provide the necessary spin. The MSM not only wants Kerry to win, they want a horse race. The other advantage for Kerry is that the debates naturally help the outsider, since the incumbent is already established.

This may be the last chance for Kerry to win the election through his own effort. If the debates don't help him his only hope is bad news on the war. Kerry should try to emulate Walter Mondale's performance in the first 1984 debate and be positive most of the time.

In addition to avoiding big slip-ups, George Bush needs to be confident without being cocky. He should go after Kerry on his attacks on our allies.

While the debates are Kerry's big opportunity, they also presents a risk. Kerry needs to give straight answers to questions. So far this is a skill that's eluded him.

2004-09-16T17:32:00.000-05:00

Reverse Rooney?

To use Watergate terminology, CBS has ended its stonewalling phase and is entering its "modified limited hangout" phase. Maybe someday we'll see "Operation Candor." While CBS seems determined to wait this out, the Drudge Report provides one thing that might motivate CBS to become responsible: lower ratings (and lower revenue). A previous 60 Minutes episode may be instructive.

Years ago Andy Rooney did an interview with a gay magazine and was quoted as making a derogatory statement about gays and AIDS. Rooney denied the quote, which wasn't covered by the interviewer's notes. CBS fired Rooney. 60 Minutes' ratings dropped precipitously. Within a few weeks Rooney was back on the air.

So CBS could pull a reverse Rooney, stopping the ratings bleeding by firing Rather. It's one thing to be an accomplice in perpetrating a fraud. But to cost CBS tons of money is unforgivable.

2004-09-15T17:06:00.000-05:00

High Noon

First CBS was to provide a clarification at 12 p.m. Then 3:30 p.m. Then 5:00 p.m.

One can only speculate about the reason:

- They don't want to mess up CBS's stock price.

- They're working on Lt. Col. Killian's secretary to make her story better fit their accusations.

- They want to delay so that the obvious problems with the new story won't be noticed until after the 6 p.m. news cycle is over.

- They're saving it for tonight's 60 Minutes.

- They have to bounce the new story against what they said before.

- They're making better forgeries.

- They're trying to get their source to talk.

- A grown-up at CBS has finally stepped in.

- Some senior person at CBS has a conscience.

2004-09-11T17:52:00.000-05:00

Birds Of A Feather

I just finished watching Fox News Watch. They briefly talked about the phony memos used by 60 Minutes. Their consensus was that CBS was trying to make up for their biased coverage against John Kerry on the Swift Vets book, just like a referee making up for a bad call in a basketball game by making a bad call for the other side. Nobody substantiated this claim, for the simple reason that they have no facts to back them up. The Swift Vets are serious folks who base their claims on eyewitness accounts or the public record, including John Kerry's own public statements. CBS used forged documents. The mainstream media (MSM) avoided examining Kerry's record and the Swift Vets as long as they could. They mostly got involved in the issue to discredit the Swift Vets. The MSM moved with alacrity when they received unreliable evidence against Bush. It was "too good to check."

The Fox News Watch panel assumed as a matter of course that the Swift Vets were lying. Actually it's Kerry who backed down. He wasn't in Cambodia in 1968. His first Purple Heart probably wasn't deserved.

The MSM media critics still have to defend the MSM. Eventually they will have to accept the blogosphere. Journalism is now a wide-open field.

A few years ago nobody would have noticed CBS's dirty work until it was too late. CBS would have briefly shown the memo on the TV and then used their own graphics to display the quotes. The actual documents would not have been available for scrutiny. This week they put the documents on the web, where the blogosphere quickly noticed their many problems.

Good journalists will welcome this type of scrutiny. It will keep them honest. The ones who complain about blog scrutiny need to shape up.

2004-09-09T19:52:00.000-05:00

Glass Houses

It remains to be seen whether some of the documents CBS used were forgeries. One odd thing about the CBS story is that the people that could confirm or deny the complaints are dead. Lt Col Killian died in the mid 1980s; his son questions the veracity of the reports. It seems odd that between them Killian and his estate would maintain work-related documents for 30 years only to have them appear 2 months before a presidential election. It's even odder that the documents use print fonts and styles that were uncommon in the early 1970s.

And the person who allegedly pushed Ben Barnes to get preferential treatment for Bush is also dead.

A few months before Mr. Bush would become eligible for the draft, Barnes says he had a meeting with the late oilman Sid Adger, a friend to both Barnes and then-Congressman George Bush. "It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard," says Barnes, who then contacted his longtime friend Gen. James Rose, the head of Texas' Air National Guard.

CBS doesn't tell us that Barnes swore under oath that Bush didn't get special treatment. The headline should be that possibly forged documents and an unreliable Kerry support may implicate Bush in a minor kerfuffle 30 years ago.

We don't know what Mr. Adger or Lt Col Killian would say. Both CBS and the Boston Globe are saying that Bush's records don't persuade them that Bush completed his service. If an honorable discharge isn't good enough for them, then the burden is on them to prove the documents aren't fake.

By the way, Senator Harkin was on television today complaining that Bush lied about his service. This is the same man who falsely claimed to have flown combat missions in Vietnam.

2004-09-08T20:56:00.000-05:00

Much Ado About Nothing

This article by Yahoo (from the AP) erases any doubt that the media is out to help Kerry. Or is it a sign of increasing desperation?

CBS reported Wednesday night that it had obtained personal files from one of Bush's Texas commanders saying Bush discussed with him how to avoid drills during 1972. The report on "60 Minutes" said the files were from the personal records of Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

In the memos, Killian complained of pressure from higher-ups to give Bush positive evaluations and said Bush talked about how to avoid taking a physical exam in 1972, when Bush eventually skipped six months of training and lost his pilot's wings for missing the exam.

First of all what takes precedence, personal files or official records, like an Bush's honorable discharge?

Second, it's probably no big deal to miss a physical. And it's OK for reserves to "avoid" a drill if they make up the time later.

The Defense Department on Tuesday released more than two dozen pages of records about Bush and his former Texas unit. They showed Bush flew for 336 hours in military jets after his flight training and ranked in the middle of his class.

So there probably was no need to pressure Killian to provide favorable evaluations. Objectively, he had a good record.

The newly released records also showed that while Bush says he was in Alabama training with another Guard unit in 1972, his home unit in Texas was participating in the air defense of the southern United States by keeping two jet fighters constantly ready for launch within five minutes' notice.

When I was in the reserves people were often permitted do work for units outside their home units. This is no big deal at all.

Democrats said that meant Bush passed on a chance to defend his country. Bush flew the F-102A jets his unit kept on alert but was grounded in August 1972 because of the missed medical check.

Passed on a chance to defend his country? Did Mexico attack Texas in 1972?

"When his unit was placed on a 24-hour alert mission to protect our country from surprise attack, why did George Bush not report for duty?" Democratic National Committee head Terry McAuliffe said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

Because Bush had permission had permission to drill elsewhere? Again, what surprise attack occurred in 1972? Is there a secret part of American history that only McAuliffe knows about?

McAuliffe also suggested Bush lied when he said he had released all available records and had fulfilled his Guard obligations.

Bush signed the standard form to release all of his military records. If something is missing, it's probably because of the inherent difficulty retrieving records that are over 30 years old.

There is one candidate who hasn't released all of his records. Perhaps McAuliffe will talk to Kerry about releasing his records.

The Associated Press is also suspicious that not everyone in the military met Bush in the early 1970s. It then acknowledges the obvious

"I never met the man and I'm sorry I didn't because he's somebody important," Mintz, 63, said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. Mintz acknowledged Bush could have performed office duties for the 187th without crossing paths with Mintz.

American Daily, which doesn't have the resources the AP has, provides the relevant facts and logic that the AP seems determined to miss:

Here is some information that the "objective" media avoids telling you. John Kerry joined the Navy Reserve, he did not JOIN the Navy. The Reserve was just like the National Guard. Kerry did NOT know he would be sent to Vietnam. ..

The folks at aerospaceweb concluded.........

While Bush did not see combat in Vietnam, it is also obvious he was not seeking a way to avoid the risk of being sent to Vietnam. At the time he was training to be an F102 pilot, ANG units and that aircraft type were based in Vietnam. In conclusion, there is no evidence Bush got special treatment to join the Guard. He did NOT miss any meetings, he was not assigned to the Alabama Guard. The reason the so called "objective" media holds on to this myth is that it lets them keep asking, where was Bush? The issue of his being grounded is also answered because he would no longer be flying since his plane was obsolete and he did not have enough Guard time left to train in a new jet. You dont need to report for a physical if you are not flying. Duh! Kerry joined the Navy Reserve and did not expect to go to Vietnam. When Kerry did go to Vietnam the swift boats were not during river patrols. They were doing coastal patrols and were not in much danger. That is when he volunteered to join the Swiftees. The assignment of those boats was changed after he was accepted for the duty. Surprise, he got action and the rest is disputed history.

In other words, Bush trained to be a pilot when Air National Guardsmen were being sent to Vietnam. Kerry joined the Navy Reserve, not expecting to go to Vietnam. He then volunteered for swift boats, think that they wouldn't see combat.

If the American Daily can figure this out, why can't the AP?

2004-09-06T12:47:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Clinton

Bill Clinton also reportedly told Senator Kerry to stop talking about Vietnam. Since Kerry is now trailing by double digits, he may actually follow this advice.

The reason Kerry talked about Vietnam so much -- inviting the Swift Boat attacks -- was to deflect criticism of his national security record. Daniel McKivergan describes what Kerry will now have to talk about:

Kerry also proposed a $53 billion cut in Reagan's fiscal year 1985 defense budget and called for the termination of the following defense programs: MX missile, B-1 Bomber, Anti-satellite weapons, Strategic Defense Initiative, AH-64 helicopters, Patriot Air Defense System, Aegis Air-Defense Cruiser, battleship reactivation, AV-8B Harrier jet, F-15, F-14A, F-14D, and the Phoenix and Sparrow air-to-air missiles. Kerry also proposed cutting funds for the Tomahawk cruise missile by half, as well as reductions in other weapons systems.

Back to Vietnam.

McKivergan's list also shows that Zell Miller's attack on Kerry was substantive, contrary to Andrew Sullivan's complaints of a smear.

Speaking of Sullivan, and Bush's double digit lead, I recall Sullivan saying that Bush's ceiling was around the mid-40s. Bush's lead may not last, but it certainly proves Sullivan wrong. If Sullivan was right, Bush would have maxed out a little above 45 percent. (I'd link to Sullivan's archives, but I don't go through Sullivan's archives for the same reason that I don't wade in septic tanks.)

Sullivan's month long vacation in Provincetown -- after pledge week no less -- doesn't seem to restore any perspective to his opinions. In the past 10 days Sullivan said that leading Democrats weren't involved in the attacks on Bush, just the rank and file. He apparently hasn't heard of the claims by Al Gore and a Kerry official that Bush "betrayed" his country. Sullivan apparently doesn't know about Howard Dean suggesting that Bush knew about September 11 in advance. Or Jimmy Carter's speech at the Democratic convention. And he's forgotten about the leading Democrats who embraced Carter's special guest.

Sullivan attacks the Swift Vets, without providing any evidence that they're lying. He suggests collusion between the Swift Vets and Republicans. But then Sullivan probably blames Hurricane Frances on Karl Rove.

We don't need any quisling conservatives. Sullivan's unhappiness with the reversal of fortune is a good sign for Bush. Sullivan should spend more time on vacation.

2004-09-06T10:25:00.000-05:00

The First Advisor

We all wish Bill Clinton well as he approaches heart surgery. But you have to wonder about this advice:

Clinton, according to those familiar with the conversation, urged Kerry to draw a sharper contrast with Bush and to explain to voters the effect of going to war in Iraq on domestic policies.

Both Clinton and Kerry (at least sometimes) supported the war on Iraq. Shouldn't they have taken the effect of going to war into account before supporting the war? Last week a Kerry staffer talked about Bush lying to get us into war, even though at the beginning of August Kerry said he would have supported the war anyway. Is Kerry about to reverse his position on Iraq again?

There's been a lot this weekend about Kerry imitating Dukakis and not responding to attacks. The real problem for Dukakis was that he didn't have a leg to stand on to defend the Massachusetts furlough program. While the facts concerning Kerry's Vietnam service are murkier, Kerry can't deny making false statements about being in Cambodia in order to influence the outcome of a Senate vote.

2004-09-04T12:04:00.000-05:00

Pathetic

The Guardian's article raises a question: Do Democrats want to talk about anything that happened less than 30 years ago?

The US president, George Bush, was transferred to the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam war because his drunken behaviour was a political liability to his father in Texas, the wife of one of his father's former confidants revealed yesterday.

Linda Allison told the political website Salon.com that throughout the time Mr Bush was in Alabama she never saw him in uniform and had no idea he was supposed to be in the National Guard.

I like the use of the word "supposed." It's intended to imply that Bush was AWOL, even though you can't go AWOL from a reserve weekend. It doesn't occur to either The Guardian or Ms. Allison that folks in the National Guard normally drill one weekend every month. Once a year they do 2 weeks of active duty for training. The vast majority of time a reserve wouldn't be in uniform.

The attempts to concoct scandals about Bush are getting desperate. As mentioned below, Kerry needs to give people a positive reason to support him.

2004-09-04T10:01:00.000-05:00

1980 Or 1988?

Democrats are hoping the election follows the 1980 model, where a close election breaks against the incumbent near the end and gives the outsider a decisive victory.

This week gives Republicans hope that it's 1988. The liberal candidate from Massachusetts is attacked by an independent group. He's shown to be weak on national defense. He doesn't know how to respond. The Republicans have a good convention.

The obvious difference is that Democrats have time to recover. The media and Hollywood are more determined to help John Kerry than they were to help Michael Dukakis. In addition to hating George Bush, the media loves a horse race. The Democrats need to stop emphasizing Bush-hatred and Vietnam. Kerry needs to find a way to sell his Senate record and describe his future plans in detail.

Another difference is that Dukakis didn't invite the independent attack ads. Dukakis avoided mentioning the Massachusetts prison furlough program while the only part of his biography Kerry wants to talk about is his 4 months in Vietnam.

A similarity is that neither Dukakis nor Kerry anticipated the attacks. Dukakis could have ended the furlough program and apologized to the couple Willie Horton terrorized. Kerry should have realized that claiming to be a war hero and a war criminal would rankle many of his brothers.

The failure to foresee how voters would react to certain matters is the result of another similarity. Being Massachusetts Democrats they have only campaigned in environments that heavily favors Democrats (Massachusetts elections and presidential primaries).

2004-09-03T15:58:00.000-05:00

Dixiecrat For Kerry

The increasingly shrill and hysterical Andrew Sullivan should keep these quotes in mind before denouncing Zell Miller for being a "Dixiecrat":

"I believe the peanut farmer is the right man," Lester Maddox in the 1970 Georgia gubernatorial campaign.

"Lester Maddox is the embodiment of the Democratic Party ... He has brought a standard of forthright expression and personal honesty to the governor's office and I hope to measure up to this standard," Jimmy Carter in 1970.

Quotes are from Steven Halbrook's fine book on Carter. Halbrook also points out that Carter and Maddox were de facto running mates in 1970.

2004-08-15T10:48:00.000-05:00

No Name

One of the criticisms of Senator Kerry is that no major legislation bears his name. To me this is a selling point. Back in the 1980s a congressman (can't remember who) faced this criticism. His response: "I'm here to kill legislation." In fact passing new laws for us to obey isn't necessarily progress. Personally, I'm glad my name isn't "McCain" or "Feingold."

What irritates me is when government programs are named after their sponsor. When I first heard of Fulbright Scholarships I thought that Senator Fulbright must have been very rich and generous. Later I figured out that Fulbright's generosity was with my money. The name should be changed to "Taxpayer Scholarships." Likewise, Pell Grants should be "Joe Sixpack Grants." Lets honor the people who actually pay.

Getting back to Kerry, his problem isn't lack of laws with his name. It's his overall record in the Senate. In the 1980s his big effort was to throw Central America to the dogs. Fortunately for the U.S. he failed. He was also wrong on various defense programs and national security in general. If his vote had prevailed Saddam Hussein would control Kuwait and probably Saudi Arabia. No wonder the only part of his biography Kerry talks about is Vietnam. And his obsession with Vietnam is a bit weird, and according to Mark Steyn his recollection is a bit flawed.

2004-08-09T19:42:00.000-05:00

Benefit Of The Doubt

Kerry deserves the benefit of the doubt on Vietnam until proven otherwise. Still, the Democrats behavior is less than admirable. Democrats didn't hesitate to go after Bush on his National Guard service, even though there's no evidence Bush ever did anything wrong. It was Kerry who emphasizes Vietnam over the rest of his record. The ad hominem attacks on Kerry's critics doesn't raise confidence in Kerry's version. Jim Geraghty finds something revealing about the attacks on Kerry's critics:

“I am the doctor [who treated Kerry],” he [Lewis Letson] said. “Let me explain that. My critics are pointing to the [signature on the medical record], J.C. Carreon. If they look it carefully a scribble after the words, saying, “HM1.” HM1 is a hospital man first class. Jesus C. Carreon was one of my medics at that naval base. He was a top-notch fella. Real prince of a fella.”

“Unfortunately, my friend Carreon died about 1992. He’s not around to back this up,” he said.
“Kerry might have thought my name was J.C. Carreon. I was the only medical officer at that base. September 68 to Sept. 1969. I can verify that with commanding officer.”

“I didn’t want to be a public figure. This has its downside, don’t have any desire to be notorious. This has some ill effects on an individual and my family. I had TV crew on my front lawn in the last hour, they just appeared at my house and rang my doorbell.”

Kerry's supporters are saying that Jesus C. Carreon treated Kerry. Carreon's enlisted rating was HC1, a first class petty officer. As a fairly senior corpsman he was qualified to treat minor cases and do technical work. He was probably authorized to make medical record entries for Letson. Basically he was like a nurse or a medical technician. Nothing wrong with that at all. But if Kerry's defenders are right, and Carreon treated Kerry, then Kerry received a Purple Heart for a wound that didn't require a doctor's attention.

2004-07-27T19:08:00.000-05:00

The New McCarthyism

As I mentioned yesterday, events and the candidates' performance will have more relevance to the election results than historical trends. A lot of the events are predictable: the debates, the convention "bounce," etc. The biggest wildcard would be a terrorist attack.

One event that I've been waiting for is the Democrats' demagoguery to blow up on them. Al Gore says Bush betrayed his country. Wesley Clarke calls Bush a deserter. Howard Dean suggests that Bush somehow knew in advance of the September 11 attack.

And the worst of all is Michael Moore. For some reason Kerry didn't want him to address the convention, even though he's probably the most popular Democrat. Kerry wants the benefits of the support of people like Moore without the revulsion that scrutiny of Moore would invite. Hopefully some day a reporter will get a straight answer from Kerry on what he thinks of Moore's latest movie.

Scott Simon doesn't think much of Moore:

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica. . .

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Jim Geraghty gets at Moore's real motive:

With Michael Moore sitting next to Jimmy Carter last night, and one of the biggest, largest, widest celebrities at the Democratic convention, it's worth recalling a key quote from him:

"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win." — Michael Moore

Yeah, Zarqawi's a regular Paul Revere. As Instapundit says, they're not anti-war, they're just pro the other side.

Neal Boortz interviewed someone who's already disgusted with the Democrats:

Had a Boston taxi driver yesterday from Iraq. He's going back home to visit his parents in a few weeks. He was none-too-pleased with the Democrats. He believes that Democrats hate his country and want Saddam to be back in power. He was adamant that things are much better in Iraq than the media is saying ... and he's at a loss as to why all of these media types won't tell the truth.

I don't think this is true of Kerry. But there are already too many Democrats who feel this way.

2004-07-26T18:59:00.000-05:00

Predictions

One of the things I dislike about pundits is that they try to predict the future. Most of them can't get the past and present right. "Often wrong but never in doubt" seems to be their motto.

Naturally there's a lot of forecasting about the election results. As of this writing most polls have Kerry in a slight lead or a statistical tie with Bush. Democrats think this is a good sign for them because the historical trend is for the undecideds to swing against the incumbent at the end.

Instead of trying to predict the future, let's review past results.

1996 -- Clinton led almost all of the way. There was a slight swings towards Dole near the end.

1992 -- Clinton trailed until the Democratic convention, and then tood the lead for good. Bush got within a few points near the end, but Lawrence Walsh stepped in with a last-minute Iran-Contra indictment of Casper Weinberger.

1984 -- Reagan took a big lead after the conventions. Mondale made up some ground with a win in the first debate. Reagan wrapped up the election in the second debate. It was never really close.

1980 -- This is the scenario that Kerry's hoping for. The race was nip-and-tuck in September and most of October. Momentum swung towards Reagan, who won in a landslide.

There have been several elections where several "semi-incumbents" were on the ballot.

2000 -- Gore took the lead after the Democratic Convention, then fell behind after the debates. The election turned into a dead heat during the final weekend.

1988 -- Dukakis led by a big margin after the Democratic Convention. Bush took the lead following the GOP Convention. Following the second debate Bush increased his lead to landslide margins. Dukakis made some mild gains in the final weeks to make it respectable, but the election was never in serious doubt.

There's some encouraging news here for Kerry. Incumbents who are in a shaky position tend to lose. On the other hand, Bush's approval ratings aren't that bad. He's withstood a lot of attacks and is still basically even. Democrats are entitled to be upbeat, but they shouldn't get cocky. Events and the performance of the candidates will decide the election, not past trends.

2004-07-26T18:54:00.000-05:00

Back In Business

Due to technical reasons I couldn't post last week. Now things are fixed. A lot happened while I was gone. My prediction on Andrew Sullivan has been vindicated. The folks at Little Green Footballs mostly share my opinion.

I won't say anything about Sandy Berger's problems, except to not that John Kerry has a nack for picking advisors. Berger, Wilson, and Chappaquiddock.

2004-07-18T13:10:00.001-05:00

Sullivan's Attack

In his desire to get married, Andrew Sullavan uses some very weak reasoning to attack Bush on other subjects. Consider the weapons of mass destruction:

To my mind, the war to depose Saddam is still justifiable, morally important, and will, if we stay the course, eventually be regarded as an important milestone in the war against terror. But at the same time, it seems to me that there's no denying that the actual case made by the Bush administration for war was built on false information. Listen to what Republican Senator Pat Roberts said on "Meet The Press" yesterday. He was asked if the Senate would have voted for war if Senators knew then what we know now, in terms of the WMD intelligence fiasco:

"I think the whole premise would have changed, I think the whole debate would have changed, and I think that the response would have changed in terms of any kind of military plans. Very difficult to look in the rear-view mirror, 20/20 hindsight and say what you would have done under those circumstances. Jay [Rockefeller] has indicated he wouldn't have voted for it. Jay has also indicated that there probably wouldn't have been the votes to go to war. I think if we went back to the no-fly zones and the resolutions by the U.N. and an awful lot of talk, I doubt if the votes would have been there."

So if we had had accurate intelligence, the war would not have taken place. I reiterate: I'm still glad we fought it. But this remains one of the biggest government screw-ups in recent history. It has made future pre-emption based on intelligence close to impossible. And President Bush is ultimately responsible for this. Tenet has taken the fall, but it will take years and years before the U.S. regains the reputation for credibility that this president has destroyed. Even if you believe that Bush is still the best man to fight this war, you also have to concede that his record includes at least one massive error, and one that will cripple our ability to fight the war in the future.

Sullivan resorts to illogical reasoning. His position, like most of the media, is that if the WMDs haven't been found, then they never existed. There are any number of valid reasons why the WMDs haven't been found. Michael Ledeen provides an explanation:

Finally, we come to the really big question, and the weird answer of the committee. The big question is this: How could every serious intelligence agency on earth have come to believe there were WMDs in Iraq when (as the current article of faith has it) there were none? Senator Roberts likens it to a global epidemic. The CIA got it wrong and then infected all the others. A worldwide virus, so to speak. The WMD flu, if you will.

I don't buy it. I don't think the French were swayed by the CIA. I don't think the Israelis and the Russians were infected by our views. I think this is like the David Kay theory of WMDs. Remember? He said that Saddam really believed he had some, because all his guys lied to him about it. He didn't actually have WMDs at all, because the Iraqis had failed, and they feared for their lives if Saddam found them out, and so they lied, and he bought the lies.

These are pretty complicated theories, you must admit. What about a simpler approach? Let's say that there were WMDs. Then, in the disgracefully long period between Afghanistan and Iraq, Saddam, knowing he was gonna be overrun, exported some (mostly to Syria and Iran), destroyed some, and hid some.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it for the time being. I'm sticking with it because I know — as Senator Roberts and the committee staff know, because I told them — that there are very credible reports of WMD sites, but the CIA chooses not to go look at them. Since I told my own story I've learned about others, one of which comes from a very high-ranking former official of the American government. I'm also sticking with it because the Polish government insists that their guys in Iraq found warheads with chemical weapons, even though a CENTCOM press release denies it, and because Zarkawi's killers arrived in Jordan with large quantities of chemical weapons. And because I don't believe the Iraqis would have bought all those funny suits that protect you from chemical and biological weapons unless they had such weapons and expected to use them.

Ledeen also describes how our intelligence culture was seriously broken before Bush took office. Among the senatorial overseers of the CIA were Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Rockefeller. When Kerry was on the Intelligence Committee he normally voted to weaken our capabilities. Sullivan won't acknowledge this because then he'll have a few less reasons for opposing Bush. Then he'll be stuck with his real reason.

And Sullivan doesn't mention Rockefeller's WMD credibility problem. Fortunately The Weekly Standard does, quoting Rockefeller's October 2002 speech:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources--something that is not that difficult in the current world. We should also remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction . . . But this isn't just a future threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East. . . .

2004-07-18T13:10:00.000-05:00
Sullivan's Attack

In his desire to get married, Andrew Sullavan uses some very weak reasoning to attack Bush on other subjects. Consider the weapons of mass destruction:

To my mind, the war to depose Saddam is still justifiable, morally important, and will, if we stay the course, eventually be regarded as an important milestone in the war against terror. But at the same time, it seems to me that there's no denying that the actual case made by the Bush administration for war was built on false information. Listen to what Republican Senator Pat Roberts said on "Meet The Press" yesterday. He was asked if the Senate would have voted for war if Senators knew then what we know now, in terms of the WMD intelligence fiasco:

"I think the whole premise would have changed, I think the whole debate would have changed, and I think that the response would have changed in terms of any kind of military plans. Very difficult to look in the rear-view mirror, 20/20 hindsight and say what you would have done under those circumstances. Jay [Rockefeller] has indicated he wouldn't have voted for it. Jay has also indicated that there probably wouldn't have been the votes to go to war. I think if we went back to the no-fly zones and the resolutions by the U.N. and an awful lot of talk, I doubt if the votes would have been there."

So if we had had accurate intelligence, the war would not have taken place. I reiterate: I'm still glad we fought it. But this remains one of the biggest government screw-ups in recent history. It has made future pre-emption based on intelligence close to impossible. And President Bush is ultimately responsible for this. Tenet has taken the fall, but it will take years and years before the U.S. regains the reputation for credibility that this president has destroyed. Even if you believe that Bush is still the best man to fight this war, you also have to concede that his record includes at least one massive error, and one that will cripple our ability to fight the war in the future.

Sullivan resorts to illogical reasoning. His position, like most of the media, is that if the WMDs haven't been found, then they never existed. There are any number of valid reasons why the WMDs haven't been found. Michael Ledeen provides an explanation:

Finally, we come to the really big question, and the weird answer of the committee. The big question is this: How could every serious intelligence agency on earth have come to believe there were WMDs in Iraq when (as the current article of faith has it) there were none? Senator Roberts likens it to a global epidemic. The CIA got it wrong and then infected all the others. A worldwide virus, so to speak. The WMD flu, if you will.

I don't buy it. I don't think the French were swayed by the CIA. I don't think the Israelis and the Russians were infected by our views. I think this is like the David Kay theory of WMDs. Remember? He said that Saddam really believed he had some, because all his guys lied to him about it. He didn't actually have WMDs at all, because the Iraqis had failed, and they feared for their lives if Saddam found them out, and so they lied, and he bought the lies.

These are pretty complicated theories, you must admit. What about a simpler approach? Let's say that there were WMDs. Then, in the disgracefully long period between Afghanistan and Iraq, Saddam, knowing he was gonna be overrun, exported some (mostly to Syria and Iran), destroyed some, and hid some.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it for the time being. I'm sticking with it because I know — as Senator Roberts and the committee staff know, because I told them — that there are very credible reports of WMD sites, but the CIA chooses not to go look at them. Since I told my own story I've learned about others, one of which comes from a very high-ranking former official of the American government. I'm also sticking with it because the Polish government insists that their guys in Iraq found warheads with chemical weapons, even though a CENTCOM press release denies it, and because Zarkawi's killers arrived in Jordan with large quantities of chemical weapons. And because I don't believe the Iraqis would have bought all those funny suits that protect you from chemical and biological weapons unless they had such weapons and expected to use them.

Ledeen also describes how our intelligence culture was seriously broken before Bush took office. Among the senatorial overseers of the CIA were Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Rockefeller. When Kerry was on the Intelligence Committee he normally voted to weaken our capabilities. Sullivan won't acknowledge this because then he'll have a few less reasons for opposing Bush. Then he'll be stuck with his real reason.

And Sullivan doesn't mention Rockefeller's WMD credibility problem. Fortunately The Weekly Standard does, quoting Rockefeller's October 2002 speech:

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources--something that is not that difficult in the current world. We should also remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction . . . But this isn't just a future threat. Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East. . . .

2004-07-17T13:11:00.000-05:00
Sullivan's Constitution (And Hypocrisy)

Andrew Sullavan says that the Bush Administration has "undemocratic" impulses. He also complains that the lack of Congressional representation makes the District of Columbia a "colony."

This is the same Andrew Sullivan who wants marriage to be defined by state judges, not the legislatures. This is the same Andrew Sullivan who opposed a vote on a constitutional amendment regarding same sex marriage. This is the same Andrew Sullivan who this week celebrated a filibuster on the amendment. This is the same Andrew Sullivan who thinks judges should be allowed to rewrite the Constitution, bypassing the amendment process. This is the same Andrew Sullivan who doesn't want Congress to exercise its Consitutional authority to limit the courts' jurisdiction.

Who has undemocratic impulses? It's Sullivan who wants to avoid votes and let judges determine policy.

I finally figured out why Sullivan started bringing up the District's lack of representation. A 1913 Massachusetts law says that nonresident couples can't marry in Massachusetts if the marriage would be void in their home state. If Congress doesn't permit gay marriage in the District, then Sullivan can't go to Massachusetts to get married. As anyone who reads his blog should know, Sullivan lives in D.C. and spends a lot of time in Massachusetts.

2004-07-15T19:04:00.000-05:00
Wilson Lied, His Credibility Died

There is so much the web about Joe Wilson's loss of credibility. It's hard to pick the links.

If you're ever looking for good quotes, go to the Hugh Hewitt at The Weekly Standard has good analysis and a good collection of links.

Robert Novak points out that the Democrats don't want to reach any conclusions about Wilson's charges. It's understandable. They, along with our mainstream press, will be burying part of their own credibility along with Wilson's.

In a way the Wilson episode does damage the Bush Administration's credibility. Given that Wilson's allegations were a fabrication, they could have easily debunked it a year ago. They naively assume that they can wait for the truth to come out.

And why would anyone trust a doofus like Wilson for an important task?

2004-07-12T19:40:00.000-05:00
What Liberal Media?

If you're ever looking for good quotes, go to the Media Research Center:

On Inside Washington, a weekend discussion show taped at and run by the Gannett-owned CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, WUSA-TV, and carried by many PBS stations across the country, Thomas pointed out the boost to the Kerry/Edwards ticket provided by the press corps:

“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.”

Evan Thomas should know what he's talking about, he's an editor at Newsweek.

2004-07-05T17:59:00.000-05:00
Moore Is Less

I don't have much to say about Fahrenheit 911 that hasn't already been said, except that it's a good test to figure out who's stupid, gullible, and uninformed. Dave Kopel lists 59 deceptions in the movie. It would take an encyclopedia to list the deceptions and hypocrisies Moore has used in all of his work.

Kopel saves the worst deceit for last:

As reported in the trade journal Screen Daily, affiliates of the Iranian and Syrian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah are promoting Fahrenheit 911, and Moore’s Middle East distributor, Front Row, is accepting the terrorist assistance:

In terms of marketing the film, Front Row is getting a boost from organizations related to Hezbollah which have rung up from Lebanon to ask if there is anything they can do to support the film. And although [Front Row’s Managing Director Giancarlo] Chacra says he and his company feel strongly that Fahrenheit is not anti-American, but anti-Bush, “we can’t go against these organizations as they could strongly boycott the film in Lebanon and Syria.”

Nancy Tartaglione, “Fahrenheit to be first doc released theatrically in Middle East,” Screen Daily.com, June 9, 2004 (website requires registration). The story is discussed in Samantha Ellis, “Fahrenheit 9/11 gets help offer from Hezbollah,” The Guardian, June 17, 2004; and “Moore film distributor OK with terror support: Exec says firm doesn’t want to risk boycott of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ in Mideast,” WorldNetDaily.com, June 22, 2004.

According to Screen Daily, Moore’s film will open in mid-July on ten screens in Lebanon and two screens in Syria. Syria is a terrorist state which invaded Lebanon in the 1970s and controls the nation through a puppet government. The main al Qaeda commander in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has worked with Hezbollah and has operated out of Syria.

Moore accuses the United States of sacrificing morality because of greed: “The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.” David Brooks, “All Hail Moore,” New York Times, June 28, 2004.

Yet it turns out that the self-righteous Moore is the one who is accepting aid from a terrorist organization which has murdered and kidnapped hundreds of Americans--and also an organization that works with Zarqawi and al Qaeda. Just to avoid a boycott on a dozen screens in a totalitarian terrorist state and its colony?

One thing often overlooked about Moore is how shabbily he treats his employees. The Weekly Standard dusted off a Matt Labash story about Moore's work relationships:

Conversations with some dozen former employees turn up such descriptions of Moore as "mercurial," "demanding," "paranoid," and a "fork-tongued manipulator" who is "totally disingenuous" and "feeds on people's insecurities." Former TV Nation staffers compare their working conditions to "a sweatshop," a "repressive police state," "indentured servitude," and a "concentration camp." One former staffer says, "Most people hated Michael, not because he was a perfectionist, but because he was an a--hole." A former producer, casting about for a despot appropriately "large, with gluttonous appetites--not just ruthless, but sadistic," finally compares a stint with Moore to "working for Idi Amin--without the laughs." Another staffer simply states, "My parents want him dead."

Former employees tell tales of random firings, of no health benefits, of having to crank out daily story-idea quotas that often went unread. Like a surly bear, Moore required gentle care and regular feeding. He often ate in front of staffers held hostage well into the night, their stomachs rumbling as he gorged on chocolate confections and Chinese takeout. They tell stories of Moore's fighting "tooth and nail to try to avoid paying writers in the Writers Guild"; of his threatening to fire the assistant who sent a yellow cab instead of a limo to retrieve him from the airport; of his pouting in his office for hours in the middle of shoots and making assistants cover the windows with tape so he couldn't be seen.

2004-07-04T11:22:00.000-05:00
Nothing Personal?

One of my main criticisms of Andrew Sullivan is that his columns are preoccupied with promoting his personal interests. While everyone's affected by their individual experiences, we shouldn't think much of an opinion leader who pushes certain policies out of self-interest.

Sullivan is gay, so his top priority is same-sex marriage. It overrides everything else.

Sullivan doesn't drive a car, so he supports higher energy taxes.

Sullivan lives in the District of Columbia. So guess what? Last week he came out for giving the district Congressional representation.

[C]an anyone provide me with an actual argument for the fact that the inhabitants of the capital city have no fundamental right to govern themselves (without some strangers from other states' vetoing or amending their decisions)?

Well, there's the Constitution, which gives Congress exclusive legislative jurisdiction over the district.

Is there even the faintest justification for residents of DC paying federal taxes when they have no senators and only one Potemkin representative in the House?

If the district ever became a state, the first thing it would do would be to enact a tax on out of state commuters. Many jurisdictions impose income taxes on people without voting representation. (Ed. -- So that's why the license plates say "Taxation Without Representation.)

Sullivan doesn't mention that the district is heavily subsidized by out of state taxpayers.

But when you see people from elsewhere simply using DC as an experiment on a "test-vote", the sheer contempt these people have for democracy and for the residents of their own little colony is overpowering. So I repeat: can anyone defend this? Seriously? I'll publish the best ones.

Michael Barone does a pretty convincing job. Given his belief in self-government, why does Sullivan want judges to impose same-sex marriage?

It's also impossible, I think to understand the history of this without appreciating the power of racism. If DC had always been a predominantly white city, this disenfranchisement would have ended long, long ago. Sad but true.

Not true. For a long time blacks didn't have voting rights in the district. Congress still retained control even though it meant that whites had no representation. And home rule was created after blacks became a voting majority in the district.

2004-06-14T18:50:00.000-05:00
A Final Word

Before concluding discussion of Ronald Reagan's role in ending the Cold War, let's at what Jimmy Carter said in 1976:

The Soviet Union "will continue to push for communism throughout the world and to probe for possibilities for expansion of their system, which I think is a legitimate purpose for them." (Thanks to Steven Hayward.)

Carter didn't think the Soviets were approaching implosion. He didn't expect them collapse. He thought it was legitimate for them to continue their aggression. Can anyone think the U.S.S.R. would have imploded if Carter had won?

Speaking of Reagan and Carter, Reagan's biggest mistake was the Iranian arms-for-hostage deal. The funny thing is, in 1980 Jimmy Carter agreed to an arms-for-hostage deal in a desperate attempt to get the hostages released before the 1980 election. The Iranians finally turned him down. An arms-for-hostage deal almost ruined Reagan's presidency. Carter thought such a deal would save his.

2004-06-13T17:34:00.000-05:00
Bedtime For Gorbachev

As discussed below, when liberals don't want to give Reagan credit for winning the Cold War, they say that the U.S.S.R. would have imploded anyway. Another line of reason is to give Mikhail Gorbachev credit. As Rick Steves puts it:

Then in 1985 came Mikhail Gorbachev, the first modern, truly post-Stalin, post-World War II Soviet leader. His reforms and personal charisma made him the man of the decade. "I 'heart' Gorby" pins were common across the Warsaw Pact countries as the Soviet leader ended the Brezhnev doctrine, basically, if you want to split and do your own thing economically, good luck, but we'll need to maintain foreign policy control (as in Finland) for defensive purposes.

When Gorbachev finally condescended to run for office, he got 1 or 2 percent of the vote. Leaders should have followers. The Soviet Union never had to worry about an attack from Finland, they didn't control the Fins' foreign policy for defensive purposes. (Finland was never part of the Evil Empire.)

George Neumayr notes some other problems with this type of analysis:

If Gorbachev still smarts over Reagan's accurate assessment of the "evil empire," that's because Gorbachev was part of it. When Gorbachev dies, will newspapers like the Times -- which praise Reagan in between plenty of hedges and qualifications -- offer similar qualifications in obits about Gorbachev? Will they record, for example, that he supported persecuting the kulaks?

Before it was fashionable to treat Gorbachev as an oracle of bottomless moral authority, press accounts would acknowledge that he had been a Stalinist (When that was de rigueur in the Soviet Union, he penned essays on the glories of Stalinism) and a supporter of Lenin's "one step forward, two steps back" doctrine. As a party hack on the rise, Gorbachev had no problem implementing ruthless Communist policies (such as ousting from schools children whose parents had committed ideological sins). Back in the 1980s Time magazine quoted a Soviet who remembered Gorbachev explaining to him the importance of "brute force, which alone secured working discipline on the working farms." Even when Gorbachev was supposedly on his new path, he was pining for the old one. "In politics and ideology, we are seeking to revive the spirit of Leninism," Gorbachev wrote in Perestroika. As Baltic nationalists remember, Gorbachev didn't want the evil empire to break up. He sought to preserve it aggressively, sending off checks to thuggish Soviet client states until the treasury ran dry.

In 1990 Jules Feiffer of all people had one of his cartoon characters explain liberals' faith in Gorbachev:

When that fool Reagan called the Soviet Union "The Evil Empire," I knew we were headed for war.

When the Soviet Union went broke, surrendered its sphere of influence and called off the Cold War, I knew it was Gorbachev's genius and Reagan had nothing to do with it.

Because if that fool, Reagan was right, all along ...

What kind of fool am I?

The type of reasoning that gave credit to Gorbachev became totally implausible in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared. No one can say that he planned to bury the Soviet Union, he set out to save it.

Gorbachev himself recognizes this. Last week he said that both sides lost the Cold War. This is ridiculous. The United States is now the greatest superpower in world history. Unlike Reagan, Gorbachev ended his term with thinly veiled calls for a military coup against a democratic government. Neumayr notes the irony:

As a disciple of Lenin, Gorbachev should remember Lenin's phrase, "useful idiots." Lenin, had he witnessed the demise of Communism, would have called Gorbachev Reagan's useful idiot. Contrary to Gorbachev's patronizing -- in his second term, writes Gorbachev, Reagan "emphasized a different set of goals. I think he understood that it is the peacemakers, above all, who earn a place in history" -- Reagan gently pulled a frightened Gorbachev toward peace. Reagan's gentility was a function of his strength. He didn't mind letting Gorbachev wallow in his own vanity and delusion if that made it easier to end the Cold War and dismember the Soviet Union.

Historians won't pay much attention to Gorbachev's self-justifying remembrances. But they will record Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The irony of Reagan never caring about who got the credit is that history will heap it on him while ignoring those who did.

2004-06-13T10:04:00.000-05:00
No Implosion Predicted

Most liberals, such as John Kerry, have been gracious about the death of Ronald Reagan. But they are in denial about his role in ending the Cold War (see below). One line of argument is that the Soviet Union would have imploded anyway. As Mark Steyn puts it:

Those who disparage him [Reagan] say it would have happened anyway. It was obvious to all that the Soviet Union was on the verge of total collapse. After all, as big-time Ivy League history prof Arthur Schlesinger wrote in 1982, ''Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse'' are ''wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves.''

No, hang on, I must be thinking of Professor J.K. Galbraith, who in 1984 was marveling at ''the great material progress'' of the USSR. In fairness to Galbraith, as the Associated Press would say, he has almost no schooling in economics, aside from being a Harvard economics professor for several decades.

Galbraith and Schlesinger aren't the only liberals who didn't foresee the U.S.S.R.'s implosion. Mona Charen provides some more quotes:

Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize winner and author of a leading economics textbook wrote in 1985: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth."

Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer in 1981, when Reagan took office: "The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decde, in the throes of a true systemic crisis." The Soviet Union was gone by 1991.

MIT economist Lester Thurow praise the Soviet economy's "remarkable performance": "Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States." This was written in 1989, months before the Berlin Wall came down.

Dan Rather didn't even think the collapse of the Soviet Union would be a good thing: "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."

No wonder liberals are grudging towards Reagan. The above statements indicate that they are professionally incompetent. If Sovietologists, news anchormen, and leading economists can't see the problem with communism, then they are the dunces, amiable or not.

Mark Steyn gets it right about Reagan:

Something similar happened last week. Hundreds of thousands of Americans waited quietly in line in California and then in Washington to say goodbye to their president. Meanwhile, back on the air, the big networks struggled to find the tone. On the day itself, the assembled media grandees agreed that he was an amiable fellow with a big smile who told a good joke. If you'd tuned in 10 minutes late to ''Larry King Live,'' you'd have assumed he was doing one of his special tributes to some half-forgotten comic or TV host from the '50s that no one had very much to say about.

Back in the real world, the people waiting hours to get in to the Rotunda were there not just because Ronald Reagan was amiable but because they grasped that he was a significant figure in the life of this country and the world. Here too the events of two years ago are instructive: The Queen Mother was the last living representative of Britain's wartime leadership. She didn't win any battles, of course, but, advised to go to Canada, she instead stayed on in London, toured bombed-out streets in the East End, and took a direct hit at Buckingham Palace. To those on the streets of Westminster in 2002, she symbolized resolve and then victory in a great cause.

That's what this week's mourners understand about Reagan, too. He also symbolizes resolve and victory -- in a slyer, slipperier war, but one which he won just as decisively. Some saw it then. More see it now. One day even the network anchors and Ivy League professors will get it.

2004-06-12T18:19:00.000-05:00
End Of The Evil Empire

A crucial part of the debate on Ronald Reagan's presidency is over how much credit he deserves for ending the Cold War. Liberals now say that the U.S.S.R. "imploded." It would have ended anyway no matter what we did.

In fact, as Arnaud de Borchgrave tells us, Reagan started planning the U.S.S.R.'s demise before taking office:

"First," Marenches responded, "I would always pepper my speeches with references to the Soviet Empire, throwing in the occasional 'evil empire.' It is an empire with both inner and outer empires, and both are equally vulnerable.

"I would respectfully suggest that you read 'The Splintering Empire" (1980 by Helene d'Encause). It has at least 100 different ethnic groups, all ruthlessly supressed but bubbling just below the surface. The Soviet bear must now be surrounded by millions of mosquitos. The bear will weaken himself by using both front paws to swat them. Eventually he will tire of swatting."

"And what can we substitute for mosquitos?" the president-elect wanted to know.

Marenches then explained what he and the French CIA had done in sub-Sahara Africa to discourage Moscow's "mercenaries" in Angola. His agents bought Soviet-made SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles for $35,000 each on the Beirut black market. They were dispatched to anti-Marxist guerrillas fighting Luanda's Marxist government.

Soo, Marenches continued, a Soviet transport plane was shot down by a SAM-7, and two Russian survivors were held prisoner in the jungle where this reporter journeyed to interview them. Cuban helicopters and Soviet planes stopped flying.

"This is the model that could be applied against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan," Marenches suggested to Reagan.

In other words, Reagan meant it when he said that he expected the Soviets to end up in the "dust bin" of history. In the middle of the Reagan Administration some liberals noticed this. Leftist Richard Barnet summarized Reagan's strategy:

"In Soviet-American relations, the United States has signaled its intention to dash rather than build a relationship based on mutual interest. In Washington's view, our Soviet adversary is to be managed by steadily increasing the threat we pose to it. Indeed, the Administration appears to deny that we have any interest in common with the 'evil empire' . . . Washington evidently prefers to rely instead on our own technological edge and superior economic power."

Barnet was wrong in saying that the United States wanted to dash its relationship with the U.S.S.R. In his second term Reagan improved our relationship in order to manage the U.S.S.R.'s destruction. But in most respects Barnet was right. Reagan adopted a deliberate strategy to defeat the U.S.S.R.

2004-06-06T17:52:00.000-05:00
Ronald Reagan, RIP

Sam Donaldson and George Will were debating whether President Reagan was popular because of his personality or his policies. I think it was a good bit of both, but mostly policy. Domestically he brought down inflation and restored optimism and economic growth. If this hadn't happened his popularity would have dropped.

There's also a lot of debate about how much credit Reagan deserved for ending the Cold War. Did the U.S.S.R. implode or did Reagan defeat it? In the 1970s and early 1980s just about everyone but Reagan said that the Soviets were a reality we had to accept. And Reagan's policies pushed their economy towards collapse. He took deliberate action to deny the Soviets access to Western currency.

Of the presidents I can actually remember, Ronald Reagan was the one I admired most. Mark Steyn puts it best:

Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.

At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who’d plunge us into Armageddon. Everything you need to know about the establishment’s view of Ronald Reagan can be found on page 624 of Dutch, Edmund Morris’ weird post-modern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:

‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: APPLAUSE.

What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost’s poem on the subject, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lines, which he surely holds in memory…

Only now for the first time I see
This wall is actually a wall, a thing
Come up between us, shutting me away
From you ... I do not know you any more.

Poor old Morris, the plodding, conventional, scholarly writer driven mad by 14 years spent trying to get a grip on Ronald Reagan. Most world leaders would have taken his advice: You’re at the Berlin Wall, so you have to say something about it, something profound but oblique, maybe there’s a poem on the subject ... Who cares if Frost’s is over-quoted, and a tad hard to follow for a crowd of foreigners? Who cares that it is, in fact, pro-wall - a poem in praise of walls?

Edmund Morris has described his subject as an “airhead” and concluded that it’s “like dropping a pebble in a well and hearing no splash.” Morris may not have heard the splash, but he’s still all wet: The elites were stupid about Reagan in a way that only clever people can be. Take that cheap crack: If you drop a pebble in a well and you don’t hear a splash, it may be because the well is dry but it’s just as likely it’s because the well is of surprising depth. I went out to my own well and dropped a pebble: I heard no splash, yet the well supplies exquisite translucent water to my home.

But then I suspect it’s a long while since Morris dropped an actual pebble in an actual well: As with walls, his taste runs instinctively to the metaphorical. Reagan looked at the Berlin Wall and saw not a poem-quoting opportunity but prison bars.

I once discussed Irving Berlin, composer of “God Bless America”, with his friend and fellow songwriter Jule Styne, and Jule put it best: “It’s easy to be clever. But the really clever thing is to be simple.” At the Berlin Wall that day, it would have been easy to be clever, as all those ’70s detente sophisticates would have been. And who would have remembered a word they said? Like Irving Berlin with “God Bless America”, only Reagan could have stood there and declared without embarrassment:

Tear down this wall!

- and two years later the wall was, indeed, torn down. Ronald Reagan was straightforward and true and said it for everybody - which is why his “rhetorical opportunity missed” is remembered by millions of grateful Eastern Europeans. The really clever thing is to have the confidence to say it in four monosyllables.

2004-06-03T20:07:00.000-05:00
Bush 1, Sullivan 0

For a while it appeared that Andrew Sullivan was coming back to his senses. Then he posts this:

BUSH: "I never apologized to the Arab world." That was his message to the editors of Christianity Today about the Abu Ghraib abuses. It speaks volumes about Bush's sense of personal responsibility. He is a walking example of the following culture: "If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else." But he just can't or won't see it.

If President Bush had apologized to the entire Arab World you'd think Sullivan would be able to produce a quote. He can't. Here's what Bush actually said:

We also talked about what has been on the TV screens recently, not only in our own country, but overseas -- the images of cruelty and humiliation. I told His Majesty as plainly as I could that the wrongdoers will be brought to justice, and that the actions of those folks in Iraq do not represent the values of the United States of America.

I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America. I assured him Americans, like me, didn't appreciate what we saw, that it made us sick to our stomachs. I also made it clear to His Majesty that the troops we have in Iraq, who are there for security and peace and freedom, are the finest of the fine, fantastic United States citizens, who represent the very best qualities of America: courage, love of freedom, compassion, and decency.

Bush apologized to the prisoners and their families. As he said in Christianity Today, he never apologized to the Arab world. What makes Sullivan mad is the venue for the interview, a publication of what Sullivan calls "theocons."

As far as personal responsibility and doing what "feels good," keep in mind that a while back Sullivan blamed Ronald Reagan for not stopping the spread of HIV. Maybe Sullivan should own up to his personal responsibility for contracting an illness that's easy to avoid.

2004-05-31T19:12:00.000-05:00
Long Remember

On my way back from Pennsylvania this weekend I stopped by the Gettysburg battlefield. Next the visitors' center is a monument to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This is part of the cemetery Lincoln dedicated in 1863. Tombstones of Union soldiers are nearby. Most of the stones are nameless; only a number is provided. I'd like to express my gratitude to these men who kept the country together and ended slavery.

Likewise I wish to pay my respects to the soldiers fighting the war on terror. I can't say how proud I am that my country produces soldiers with such bravery and skill.

2004-05-26T18:18:00.000-05:00
Uncivil War

Al Gore, George Bush, John Kerry, and Michael Moore are linked by the Civil War. How so? Consider Gore's speech today:

The same dark spirit of domination [that caused Ghraib] has led [the Bush administration] to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort.

Kerry may want to send Gore on a trip to Antarctica during the convention. Gore doesn't even understand his own party's history. In 1864 its platform referred to Confederate soldiers imprisoned by the Union as "our fellow-citizens." This was because the Union held that secession was illegal; consequently Confederate soldiers remained American citizens. They also remained in prison without being charged with a crime, etc. On average they lived under much worse conditions than the terrorist and Iraqi prisoners.

That same 1864 Democratic platform basically called for the Union to cave in to the Confederacy. It was repudiated by nominee George McClellan. While Kerry and McClellan aren't as bad as McClellan and the 1864 Democratic Copperheads, this 1864 Republican orator provides a quote that seems familiar to the present:

Neither you nor I, nor the Democrats themselves, can tell whether they have a peace platform or a war platform ..., Upon the whole it is both peace and war, that is peace with the rebels but war against their own government.

Ouch.

Tony Blankley points out that Bush has something in common with Abraham Lincoln's situation in 1864. Both needed military success to get reelected.

By August of 1864, Lincoln wrote to a friend; "You think I don't know I am going to be beaten. But I do and unless some great change takes place badly beaten — then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards."

Lincoln got his big victory with General Sherman captured Atlanta. Will Bush have the same results as Lincoln?

Finally, Fred Barnes shows that Michael Moore is no Honest Abe. It seems that Moore concocted a fictitious interview with Barnes concerning Barnes' education on Homer.

Moore’s interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. “Fred,” he quoted himself as saying, “tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are.” I started “hemming and hawing,” Moore wrote. And then I said, according to Moore: “Well, they’re . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine, you got me—I don’t know what they’re about. Happy now?” He’d smoked me out as a fraud, or maybe worse.

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It’s a fabrication on two levels. One, I’ve never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for the record, I’d learned what they were about even before college. Like everyone else my age, I got my classical education from the big screen. I saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

So why didn’t I scream bloody murder when the book came out in 2001? I didn’t learn about the phony anecdote until it was brought to my attention by Alan Wolfe, who was reviewing Moore’s book for the New Republic. He asked, by email, if the story were true. I said no, not a word of it, and Wolfe quoted me as saying that. That was enough, I thought. After all, who would take a shrill, lying lefty like Moore seriously?

The answer is no one.

2004-05-24T17:51:00.000-05:00
What WMD? What Liberal Media? Where's Eric Alterman?

LT Smash points out a few things about the sarin found in Iraq last week.

Sometime between 1988-95, Saddam developed and manufactured sophisticated, “mix-in-flight” binary chemical weapons.

He failed to declare these weapons, as required, to UN weapons inspectors.

Iraq did not destroy all of its chemical weapons.

A stockpile of artillery shells, including at least some that contain chemical warheads, has been found by “insurgents” in Iraq.

So Saddam had prohibited weapons that he was never supposed to have.

Ordinarily one would expect the news media to smoke this out. But given their political tendencies, this is unlikely.

Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew's latest study released today. . . .

At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.

This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative. . . .

While it's important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%.

Keep in mind that "moderate" is the preferred term for those who don't want to admit that they're liberals.

2004-05-20T18:12:00.000-05:00
Secret Plans

Glenn Reynolds makes an interesting point about Senator Kerry's plans for Iraq. Kerry has not publicly revealed a viable strategy for Iraq. The only difference between him and President Bush is that Kerry will give the United Nations more authority. Considering the U.N.'s track record and its disgraceful Oil-For-Food program, this is like putting out a fire with gasoline.

If Kerry wants the country to trust him he needs to be more specific. His approach so far resembles Richard Nixon's strategy in 1968: be as vague as possible and be all things to all people. It's hard for me to believe that Kerry will stick it out in Iraq. Many of his supporters are disposed to fault America for the world's problems and don't want us to succeed in Iraq.

Reynolds provides a link to a story about Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. This appears to be based on folklore; no one has ever produced any evidence that Nixon claimed to have a secret plan. The article is also incorrect in suggesting that Nixon didn't try to deAmericanize the war. Nixon substantially reduced America's role. He called his program Vietnamization. He succeeded in reducing America's involvement. But the treaty was flawed and Nixon didn't try to get Congressional approval. A few years later Congress, controlled by Democrats, cut South Vietnam off at the knees.

Reynolds provides some good links to the media's biased coverage of Iraq. This article by John O'Sullivan is also good. One point in particular is the media's limited attention to U.N. scandals.

Objectively considered, the U.N.'s "Oil-for-Food" scandal is a far bigger story, implicating not one international statesman but about two dozen, and involving not the abuse of suspected terrorists but the starvation of children. Interestingly, the media has been happy to forget it entirely in all their excitement over Abu Ghraib.

2004-05-15T19:20:00.000-05:00
Great Minds Think Alike

Mickey Kaus is perhaps my favorite liberal. He's noticed somethng about Andrew Sullivan that I've pointed out before.

Doesn't Mr. Knight have a point? I was thinking some of the same things myself--in particular that the public tolerance for porn contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal (certainly to the willingness of soldiers to preserve the images on CDs). And the story of Private Lynndie England is not exactly a triumph for the new sex-integrated military (or for the broader argument that you can introduce new sexual dynamics into a long-standing institutional environment without any ill effects). ...I haven't quoted Knight's criticism of gay marriage, which is probably a big part of what got Andrew's goat. Still, he ridicules the whole thing, the way people do when they subconsciously realize their opponents have a powerful new argument and want them to just go away ...

2004-05-15T19:10:00.000-05:00
American Cannibalism

No one can put the current situation better than Victor Davis Hanson:

Rumsfeld and Meyers have presided over two amazingly successful wars. In an aggregate of 11 weeks, and at the tragic cost of 700 combat dead, the American military defeated the two worst regimes in the Middle East and stayed on to implant democratic change where no such idea has ever existed. Had anyone envisioned, say in 1999, that the United States could do such a thing — that Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar would both be out of power, and that governing councils would be there in their place — he would have been dismissed as unhinged. What they are attempting to do is not to keep some psychopath "in his box" or lob over cruise missiles. The latter are palliative but ultimately solely punitive measures that kill a few hundred or thousand anonymous Middle Easterners and keep the nasty business off the evening news, thus in the long term inciting rather than solving the problem.

No, the transformation of Afghanistan and Iraq has always been the most audacious, the most dangerous, and, yes, the most idealistic American effort since the end of World War II — one that alone had the chance of ending the quarter-century-long terrorist assault against the United States. And these necessary measures were not "cooked up in Texas," but rather inexplicable apart from the murder of 3,000 Americans.

We scream now about the lack of planning for the occupation, forgetting entirely that Iraq is not quite like any other post-bellum situation in history. We also forget that it was liberated almost fifteen months after Afghanistan, which is logically further along in its path to reconstruction...

Yes, there are thousands of prisoners in the jails of Iraq — but not hundreds of thousands in recent graves. And that is precisely because the warcraft of Rumsfeld and Meyers was rightly targeted, measured, and humane — and even in war did not seek massive annihilation of the enemy (although, in the brutal arithmetic of war, that ensures a better chance of successful occupation later on)...

The amazing thing remains not that we have seen a depressing year of chaos, but that the forces of change are still in our favor after all of our setbacks and often mistaken assumptions. In Iraq, regardless of what The New Yorker or the New York Times attests, the stuff of life — electricity, water, food — is far more accessible than before. We see nightly bombings and chaos, but even CNN cannot hide in its background shots stores open, people speaking freely on the street, and the economy taking off...

The irony of the prison scandal is that the military blew its whistle on its own. When the senators woke up (having ignored a public press conference announcing the transgressions months ago), an exhaustive Pentagon dossier had already been prepared for their perusal. It is a report, an investigation, a prosecutorial brief if you will, but not yet a definitive conclusion based on trial testimony and transcripts of the convictions of the guilty...

One final jarring scene from the televised spectacles was the image of the lone, beleaguered Joe Lieberman calling for patience and sobriety, and worried about our troops in the field and the pulse of the war. This decent and honest man reminds us of what the present party of Ted Kennedy and Terry McAuliff used to be. The confidence of a Truman, JFK, and Scoop Jackson — caricatured now for dropping the bomb, a fiery "pay-any-price" speech, and heating up the Cold War — is now nowhere to be found.

This is a vital point, because either this year or sometime in the next decade a Democratic administration may well take the reins of power and in matters of national security it will be far to the left of the Liebermans of the world. And the disturbing events that we saw in the 1990s — constant appeasement of Middle East terrorists and their national sponsors, the emergence of a nuclear Pakistan and North Korea, sudden withdrawal from messy places like Mogadishu, a jetting special envoy Jimmy Carter — will return, though made worse through the prism of the present fury over Iraq.

If it were not so tragic it would be ironic to see what the present prescient critics are going to say — much less do — when they confront the hideous reality that Iran and perhaps Syria will have acquired nuclear weapons and with them the ability, without a neighboring nuclear India staring them down, to blackmail most of the Middle East and the oil-hungry world at large.

We will soon learn what Middle Eastern nuclear honor, atomic loss of face, or radioactive jihad really means. Most who now damn unilateralism and preemption won't find their beloved but shaken U.N., EU, or NATO at their side. More likely there will come a day when in exasperation they will call up someone like Don Rumsfeld for advice — albeit in silence and off the record.

Indeed. Hanson should be required reading.

2004-05-11T18:16:00.000-05:00
Geneva Convention, Article 13

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

We already violated part of this, but wouldn't be a further violation of the Geneva Convention to release any more pictures to the press?

2004-05-11T18:09:00.000-05:00
Comparative Outrage

John Kerry is using outrage about our prison abuse to raise money. A few months ago Democrats complained about Republicans using images of September 11 in campaign ads.

It's revealing to analyze what motivates each side's base. Republicans are most motivated about attacks on America. Democrats are most concerned about America's sins.

2004-05-11T18:03:00.000-05:00
Dueling Outrages

John O'Sullivan on how America handles prisoner abuse:

The argument that Rumsfeld was guilty of a cover-up is even thinner. The U.S. Army first learnt of the allegations on January 13. The following day a criminal investigation was launched. Two days later the Army announced publicly that it was investigating allegations of prisoner abuse. All in all, since the whistleblower first blew his whistle, the Department of Defense has initiated no fewer than six investigations into different aspects of the prisoner abuse.

Indeed, what the media and the public know about the scandal comes almost entirely from one of those investigations — the Taguba report — that was leaked on the Internet. But details of the alleged abuses were not officially released earlier because, as with normal criminal investigations in the U.S., the rights of the accused have to be protected.

The Wall Street Journal on how the United Nations handles revelations that it looted money meant to help the people of Iraq and propped up a mass murderer:

So now there's a third "hush" letter from the United Nations demanding that an Oil for Food Program contractor cease cooperation with Congressional investigators. Dated April 27, the note--like earlier ones to inspection companies Saybolt and Cotecna--is signed by another U.N. official "for Benon V. Sevan," the outgoing Iraq Program chief. In this case the recipient was an individual consultant whose name was blacked out by our Capitol Hill source.

The letter informs the consultant of a contract clause stating: "contractors may not communicate at any time to any other person, Government or authority external to the United Nations any information known to them by reason of their association with the United Nations which has not been made public, except in the course of their duties or by authorization of the Secretary-General or his designate."

2004-05-10T16:45:00.001-05:00
Stand Up

Last week Senator Kerry said that if he's president he won't be the last to know about things like the Iraqi prison abuse. He also cited President Kennedy's handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion as an example of a president taking responsibility.

First of all, Kerry is conceding that Bush (and by implication Rumsfeld) did not make prisoner abuse a matter of policy. Otherwise Bush wouldn't be the last to know.

Second, Kerry doesn't seem to have a sound grasp of presidential power. Normally presidents don't find out about rogue operations until the damage is done. It's not like Kerry's going to moonlight as a prison warden after he takes office.

Third, Kerry doesn't get his history right. The Bay of Pigs and the prisoner abuse are very different. Bush didn't know anything about the prisoner abuse until after it happened. Kennedy knew in advance about the plans for the Bay of Pigs. In fact he selected the site of the invasion, overturning recommendations from subordinates and helping to doom the invasion. Kennedy also reduced air support, further reducing the invasion's chances. Kennedy had to assume responsibility because his administration previously claimed that the U.S. was not involved in the invasion.

Kennedy had some advantages that Bush must envy. At a press conference Kennedy said "I prefer to let my statement of yesterday suffice for the moment." According to Michael Beschloss Kennedy tried to spread the blame, pointing fingers at the military, CIA, and the Eisenhower administration.

Based on his own background, why should we expect Kerry to be a stand up guy? He did not report Vietnam atrocities that he testified about after leaving the military. Recently he blamed a Secret Service agent for a fall on the ski slopes. Weirdest of all, he blames his speechwriters for his own actions:

Maybe that's why he (and they) did it again. Lawrence Kaplan reports in the New Republic about a meeting the senator had with Jewish leaders to assuage their concerns about his offer to dispatch Jimmy Carter or James Baker (both regarded as pro-Arab) to the Middle East. ''One of the first things Kerry did at the meeting was to blame his aides for the mention of Carter and Baker as possible envoys in his December speech,'' writes Kaplan. ''The names, Kerry said, had been inserted by mistake, and he had even asked that they be removed.''

But apparently his request to the overzealous speechwriters to remove the names was turned down. So Kerry dutifully went ahead and read out the speech complete with the mistakenly inserted names. ''There are a number of uniquely qualified Americans among whom I would consider appointing, including President Carter, former Secretary of State James Baker or, as I suggested almost two years ago, President Clinton,'' he told the bigwigs at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''And I might add, I have had conversations with both President Clinton and President Carter about their willingness to do this.'' So not only did he read out the mistakenly inserted names he'd asked to be removed from the speech but he even went ahead and met with one of the mistakes about offering him a key role he didn't want him to have.

Why would he do this? The New Republic obtained this explanation from the campaign: ''The candidate eventually did speak with Carter -- but only after noticing that a draft of his speech said that he spoke with Carter.''

Those pesky speechwriters again! As Slate's Mickey Kaus mused, what's next? ''Kerry reveals he went to Vietnam after reading a draft of his autobiography that said he went to Vietnam?''

Who is John Kerry? They weren't his medals he threw away, just some non-name World War II vet he happened to bump into. Those aren't his four gas-guzzling SUVs in the drive, just ones owned by his ''family.'' They're not his words coming out of his mouth, just words wholly owned and operated by employees of a subsidiary unit of his wife's holding company, Benedict Arnold Heinz Kerry Campaign Rhetoric Inc., registered in Bermuda.

It takes a big man to blame everyone around him. Which is at last a rationale for the Kerry campaign: If you're the kind of fellow who likes blaming your underlings, at least when you're president there's no end of underlings to blame.

There's no reason to think that Kerry will change if he wins the election.

2004-05-09T11:07:00.000-05:00
More On WMDs

Larry Elder provides some clues you won't find in the news media.

"Week after week after week after week," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, about President Bush's rationale for going to war with Iraq, "we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Were we?

Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al Qaeda members who brought it in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others. But the media seem curiously incurious whether one could reasonably trace this stuff back to Iraq. Had the terrorists released a "toxic cloud," Jordanian officials say 80,000 would have died.

So, I interviewed terrorism expert John Loftus, who once held some of the highest security clearances in the world. Mr. Loftus, a former Army officer, was a Justice Department prosecutor. He investigated CIA cases of Nazi war criminals for the U.S. attorney general. Author of several books, Mr. Loftus once received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
John Loftus: There's a lot of reason to think [the source of the chemicals] might be Iraq. We captured Iraqi members of al Qaeda, who've been trained in Iraq, planned for the mission in Iraq, and now they're in Jordan with nerve gas. That's not the kind of thing you buy in a grocery store. You have to have obtained it from someplace.

Q: They couldn't have obtained it from Syria?
A: Syria does have the ability to produce certain kinds of nerve gases, but in small quantities. The large stockpiles were known to be in Iraq. The best U.S. and allied intelligence say that in the 10 weeks before the Iraq war, Saddam's Russian adviser told him to get rid of all the nerve gas. It would be useless against U.S. troops; the rubber suits were immune to it. So they shipped it across the border to Syria and Lebanon and buried it. Now, in the last few weeks, there's a controversy that Syria has been trying to get rid of this stuff.
They're selling it to al Qaeda is one supposition. We know the Sudanese government demanded the Syrian government empty its warehouse in Khartoum where they've been hiding illegal missiles along with components of weapons of mass destruction. But there's no doubt these guys confessed on Jordanian television that they received the training for this mission in Iraq.... And from the description it appears this is the form of nerve gas known as VX. It's very rare, and very tough to manufacture... one of the most destructive chemical mass-production weapons that you can use....
They wanted to build three clouds, a mile across, of toxic gas. A whole witch's brew of nasty chemicals were going into this poison cloud... over shopping malls, hospitals.

Q: You said the Russians told Saddam, "There is going to be an invasion. Get rid of your chemical and biological weapons."
A: Sure. It would only bring the United Nations down on their heads if they were shown to really have weapons of mass destruction. It's not generally known, but the CIA has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program of various types. It was completely illegal. But no one could find the stockpiles. And the liberal press seems to be focusing on that.

Q: It seems to me that this is a huge, huge story.
A: It's embarrassing to the (press). They've staked their reputations that this stuff wasn't there. And now all of a sudden we have al Qaeda agents from Iraq showing up with weapons of mass destruction.

Q: David Kay said, in an interim report, there was a possibility WMD components were shipped to Syria.
A: A possibility? We had a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January. The guy is dying of cancer, and he said, "Look, my friends in Syrian intelligence told me exactly where the stuff is buried." He named three sites in Syria, and the Israelis have confirmed the three sites. They know where the stuff is, but the problem is the United States can't just go around invading Arab countries.... We know from Israeli and defectors' intelligence that the son of the Syrian defense minister was paid $50 million to bring the stuff across the border and bury it.

Q: Why would al Qaeda attack Jordan?
A: Jordan is an ally of the United States. It's at peace with Israel. And Jordan has a long history of trying to prosecute terrorists.... There are a lot of reasons.... They want to make an example of them. They want to terrorize as many of the Arab states as possible. This is sort of a political dream for the president. The worst nightmare is al Qaeda gets weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. And it looks like it's coming true.

A Syria/Iraq/al Qaeda/WMD connection? Why, this calls for a congressional investigation.

Indeed. And if Saddam Hussein having WMDs was a big deal, then so is possession of WMDs by Syria and al Qaeda.

2004-05-07T16:29:00.000-05:00
Crack Up

Andrew Sullivan's writing skills are slipping.

The crackhead Rasmussen tracking poll shows Kerry with a real lead again.

Does Sullivan think Rasmussen is a crackhead? Is he aware that a crackhead is someone addicted to crack? If Rasmussen's poll is so unreliable, why quote it?

Sullivan lets slip what is really bothering him:

It's a long, long way to go, and I'm predicting nothing (except a massive gay-baiting campaign by Karl Rove in the summer).

If you're concerned about uncivil tactics, shouldn't you avoid calling people crackheads?

2004-05-06T17:31:00.000-05:00
The Double Standard

Appalling as the prison in Iraq was run, this appears to be a rogue operation. Naturally Kerry will exploit this, even though he testified to knowledge of atrocities himself. Our leftists judge America by its faults and America's enemies by its claimed ideals. The National Debate has one reason.

ABSTRACT - Op-Ed article by Eason Jordan, chief news executive of CNN, says now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, world can expect to hear many gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about decades of torment; says he has tales as well, learned during 13 trips he made to Baghdad over last 12 years to lobby government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders; says he saw and heard awful things that he could not report because doing so would have jeopardized lives of Iraqis, particularly those on CNN's Baghdad staff; says secret police terrorized all Iraqis working for international press services; says some vanished forever, others disppeared and then surfaced later with tales of being tortured; says one of CNN's Iraqi cameramen was abducted, beaten and horribly tortured; says he is still haunted by story of woman captured by secret police after speaking with CNN on phone; says plastic bag containing her body parts was left on doorstep of her family's home; drawing (M)

It is too kind to call CNN's decade of turning a blind eye to the brutality of Iraq under Saddam Hussein a failure because it was a conscious decision of the network's senior news executives to trade favorable coverage of Iraq for access to a "hot story". In fact, a "story" that had MADE CNN in the days when Peter Arnett was the "last man out" of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.

CNN's complicity - and the failure of the other news organizations described by Jordan (as well as The New York Times' John Burns in the book Embedded) - is coming home to roost as media outlets around the world make the claim without contradiction that there is no difference between Iraq under Saddam and Iraq under U.S. occupation. Where is the CNN file footage of interviews with Saddam's torture victims? Where are the shocking Saddam torture photos?

Despite their record of complicity in covering up years of brutality and torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, CNN has lost no time in running endless reports on the Iraqi prison photos. Besides practically non-stop reports on the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story, CNN's line up has been stocked with guests booked to discuss the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story. Take a look at yesterday's list from TND's Daily Run Down:

Check it out. It's quite a list.

.

2004-05-04T17:54:00.000-05:00
News Blackout

Unlike other Bush-bashing authors, Joe Wilson's new book isn't getting much attention. Matthew Hoy provides the reason why.

It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.

That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.

2004-04-24T15:30:00.000-05:00
Dear Father Reese:

The idea is so absurd that when Tim Russert interviewed Kerry and quoted Democratic foreign policy adviser Ivo Daalder as saying that handing political and military responsibility to the U.N. and other countries is not realistic, Kerry simply dodged the question. There was nothing to say.

Which might help inside-the-Beltway Washington find its way out of its conundrum over the latest polls. No one can understand how, with the president being pummeled daily on the front pages by Richard Clarke, the Sept. 11 hearings, the Woodward book, and the eruption of Iraq into open warfare again, Bush nonetheless has gained over Kerry on the issue of national security.

The answer is simple: Americans are a serious people, war is a serious business, and what John Kerry is offering is simply not serious. Americans may be unsure whether Bush has a plan for success in Iraq. But they sure as hell know that going to U.N. headquarters, visiting foreign capitals and promising lots of jaw-jaw is no plan at all.

I give Kerry credit for not taking the easy antiwar path. He agrees that abandoning Iraq would be catastrophic for the United States and for the war on terror. Kerry did flirt with Howard Dean in the primaries, but has consistently opposed ``cut and run.''

Charles Krauthammer has let the cat out of the bag. The main difference between Bush and Kerry is that Bush is realistic on the United Nations and doesn't waffle. If Kerry wins his options are to stick with Bush's policy or create a disaster. There's no way the U.N. can be trusted on Iraq. They did all they could to keep a mass murderer in power there and swindle Iraqi's from Oil-For-Food proceeds. Kerry's waffling and lack of realism gives Nader and Bush their opportunities.

2004-04-24T15:15:00.000-05:00
Quisling Christians

Andrew Sullivan provides the following quote at his web site:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president - should he be Catholic - how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote." - John F. Kennedy, the nemesis of theocons everywhere.

As is often the case, Sullivan -- like Kennedy -- gets the Constitution wrong. The First Amendment is a restriction on government, not religion. It restricts the federal government's authority to establish an official religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion. It does not mention the separation of church and state. Like everyone else, religious figures are free to say whatever they want, whether they're Sullivan's "theocons" or black preachers.

The Washington Times identifies the real problem:

Cardinal Francis Arinze, speaking at a press conference in Rome, did not mention Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Mr. Kerry, who is pro-choice, has said that church doctrine allows Catholics freedom of choice on the issue.

The cardinal quashed that idea, insisting that the church is solidly against abortion.

"The norm of the church is clear," he said. "The church exists in the United States. There are bishops there. Let them interpret it."

Like Kerry, Sullivan wants to pretend to be a good Christian while rejecting Christian theology (Sullivan rejects Christian teaching on homosexuality). When political figures misrepresent religious beliefs the church is obliged to set the record straight.

Kerry has at least one religious figure on his side:

The Communion issue and questions about whether the Catholic Church gave its blessing to the end of Mr. Kerry's first marriage are taking him off message, Father Reese said.

"The Republicans must love this," he said. "Kerry has had two points: unemployment and Iraq. That is all he can talk about. Now he has to talk about whether he can go to Communion and whether he has an annulment."

Actually unemployment is going down. As we shall see, Iraq doesn't work for Kerry.

2004-04-20T18:25:00.000-05:00
Answer Man

John Leo responds to those who question the questioners:

Q: Oh, yes. Why don’t reporters ask different questions instead of rephrasing the same one over and over? I know the reporters couldn’t ask about the economy, because that’s going pretty well. But what about indications that India, Russia, and even France are getting nervous about what a terrorist win in Iraq would mean for worldwide jihad. Why not ask him about Kerry or whether he sees signs of life at the U.N.? Why the fixation with “You screwed up” questions?

A: One explanation, perhaps harsh, is that most questions at televised news conferences are actually the opinions of the reporters, lightly garnished, with a question mark placed at the end to imply objectivity. Thus “I think you screwed up” becomes the more palatable and totally professional, “Sir, didn’t you screw up?” There are many variations on the basic screw-up question. The “apology” query is surely a promising growth area here. I think we’re going to see a rich flourishing of apology questioning. The journalism schools are probably working on it right now.

Q: Let me ask something nuanced and slightly different: Why do these reporters ask the same badgering question over and over? Is it because they think a lot of viewers tuned in late and simply don’t know what the previous badgering question was?

A: Not at all. But you should look at another factor. Reporters who are selected to interrogate the president for five seconds on national TV do not take this responsibility lightly. And there’s more to it than just getting your hair done that morning. They have to think a lot about what to ask and how to frame it. Then they polish and rehearse it, perhaps in front of a mirror. So if it turns out that they are the fourth or fifth person in a row asking, “Mr. President, didn’t you screw up?” it’s too late to do anything about it. Should all these preparations go to waste, merely because their question has already been asked and answered? Of course not.

Q: Yes, but it’s like going to a six-person panel discussion and hearing all six panelists start off with the same joke. Couldn’t these reporters prepare an emergency backup question?

A: Say, that’s a pretty good idea. Rehearsing two questions instead of one!

Q: Let me add this. When two reporters ask the president three times if he feels responsible for 9/11, do they realize they are enraging people from coast to coast?

Not likely. Check out the whole thing.

2004-04-19T18:02:00.000-05:00
Was Karl Rove's VCR Running?

One has to wonder why there's any finger-pointing about our inability to prevent 9/11. John Kerry wants to return to the policies that permitted the attacks to occur in the first place! According to the Washington Times:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said yesterday that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action even as he pledged to remain committed to Iraq and to personally plead for international help in policing and rebuilding that nation.

"In order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law-enforcement cooperation in the world," the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort," he said. "And we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight."

It gets worse. Best Of The Web provides a roundup of Kerry's Meet the Press appearance. Kerry can't give a straight answer on his testimony about war crimes:

Kerry: There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

So based on his own words Kerry is either a war criminal or a fraud.

He still can't shake loose that foreign leader business:

Tim, what I said is true. I mean, you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader. There are plenty of places to meet people without traveling abroad.

Kerry also raises doubts about the likelihood that his economic policies will succeed:

Russert also asks Kerry if he will pledge not to seek re-election in 2008 should he become president and fail to meet his goals of creating 10 million new jobs and halving the deficit. His answer:

Well, it would depend on the circumstances. If I don't [succeed] because there's a war or something terrible happens, of course I'm not going to make that pledge.

So poor economic performance is OK if "there's a war on or something terrible happens"? Like the war in Afghanistan and Iraq or September 11? Don't forget, in addition to these problems Bush also inherited a budding recession.

2004-04-19T17:54:00.000-05:00
More Bad News

National Review and the Washington Times provide more bad news for Jamie Gorelick.

Anthony Lake provides more bad news for the commission. He said today that it's hopelessly partisan and a distraction from the war on terror. This is the first time in history we've investigated ourselves in the middle of a war.

2004-04-18T12:29:00.000-05:00
Not Getting The News

It's at least forgivable that families of September 11 victims don't understand that government's slow to move (see post below). They suffered a great loss and aren't expected to provide news in a knowledgeable and objective manner.

The same can't be said about our news media. Little Green Footballs has compiled some of the questions from this week's presidential press conference. Here are a few:

Two weeks ago, a former counterterrorism official at the NSC, Richard Clarke, offered an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11. Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you be prepared to give them one?

Sir, you’ve made it very clear tonight that you’re committed to continuing the mission in Iraq. Yet, as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year. Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?

After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?

...with public support for your policies in Iraq falling off the way they have — quite significantly over the past couple of months — I guess I’d like to know if you feel in any way that you’ve failed as a communicator on this topic?

I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way? You don’t have many of these press conferences, where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?

It's bad enough that they have thrown away any pretense of objectivity with their gotcha questions and debating points. They reveal a basic lack of understanding of how government operates, the September 11 timeline, and principles of journalism. As mentioned below, government doesn't change immediately when a new administration takes over. September 11 would have happened almost no matter what Bush had done.

And a basic principle of journalism is that interviews are intended to get information. And the best way to get new, and revealing, information is often through friendly questions. That's one type Bush shouldn't need to prepare for.

2004-04-15T17:45:00.000-05:00
Naughty And Nice

One of the odd characteristicis of liberals is that they seem to think that the President of the U.S. has dictatorial power, at least when Republicans are in office. When a recession started in March 2001 it was President Bush's fault. It made no difference that the economy was headed for recession before Bush took office. It didn't matter that Bush had changed no law affecting the economy that could have triggered the recession. It didn't matter that the president has little day-to-day influence over the economy. The harm September 11 caused for the economy didn't matter. They think somehow the President of the U.S. can change things immediately.

This attitude holds true in regards to September 11. To Bush's critics it doesn't matter that even Richard Clarke conceded that September 11 would have happened even if Bush had immediately adopted all of Clarke's advice. It doesn't matter that the plan was well underway before Bush took office. It doesn't matter that Bush couldn't change things overnight. Here are some quotes from Dorothy Rabinowitz from a few politically motivated relatives of September 11 victims.

"I watched my husband murdered live on TV. . . . At any point in time the casualties could have been lessened, and it seems to me there wasn't even an attempt made."
--Monica Gabrielle

"Three thousand people were murdered on George Bush's watch."

". . . how many victims would have taken notice of these Middle Eastern men while they were boarding their plane? Could these men have been stopped?"
-- Kristin Breitweiser

Like Santa Claus, Bush was somehow supposed to know which airline passengers would be naughty or nice. They have no awareness of how long it takes to change the policies, culture, laws, and personnel of government. They don't know about Clinton's many mistakes, such as his failure to arrest or kill bin Laden when it would have been easy. They say nothing about Jamie Gorelick's conflict of interest.

Despite their close connection to September 11, these critics don't know basic facts about the events of that day. Gabrielle says nothing about the many firefighters who died trying to save September 11 victims.

And their grasp of reality isn't too strong. Prior to September 11 they would have been among the first to complain about profiling Middle Eastern men boarding planes. In fact a lot of liberals don't care for this after September 11.

2004-04-15T17:32:00.000-05:00
More On Gorelick

Jed Babbin provides more questions for Jamie Gorelick.

One of the appendices to Rowan Scarborough's book, Rumsfeld's War, is a previously classified study of why Clinton never used special ops troops to attack bin Laden. That study says that when the Clintons considered employing special operations forces against bin Laden, questions arose whether the Defense Department had the legal authority to engage in such covert operations. Part of it says, "Pentagon lawyers in the 1990s argued that DoD did not have the legal authority.…Only the CIA…had the license to conduct covert action..."

But, as the study found, the Pentagon lawyers' objection is wrong, and specific authority exists for the president to assign covert missions to the armed services. And who was the chief lawyer in the Pentagon in 1993 and 1994? None other than our gal Jamie. She left DoD for the Justice Department before bin Laden became a household word. But DoD top lawyers would have consulted with Gorelick on an issue that would be -- as that one was -- briefed to the Secretary of Defense, and probably to the president as well. Did Gorelick participate in the decision to nix spec ops? What advice did the DoD ask for and receive from her and the Justice Department on that subject? The Commission needs to find out. Under oath.

2004-04-15T17:30:00.000-05:00
WMDs Found

In Europe. And we should trust the U.N. why?

2004-04-13T17:13:00.000-05:00
Misery Loves Company

Back in 1976 the Democrats invented a new economic statistics called the "misery index." It combines the unemployment and inflation rates. While it's not suitable for an economics term paper, it is simple and concentrates what's most important to people (jobs and prices).

After 1976 the Democrats stopped using the statistic. To find out the reason, ask Jimmy Carter. Senator Kerry has developed a new misery index intended to conceal the fact that the original index has improved since President Bush took office.

This isn't the first time someone has tried to change the index to benefit the Democrats. Back in 1982 when Reagan was in office and we were in recession a local professor developed a new index for the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial page. It added the unemployment rate, inflation rate, and "real" interest rate. The real interest rate is the difference between the nominal interest rate and the inflation rate. In effect, this formula took inflation completely out of the misery index. As you've probably guessed, inflation had declined drastically under Reagan. It was his misfortune to have reduced inflation more than he had reduced interest rates.

Look for more tortured use of economic statistics as the economy improves under Bush.

2004-04-13T17:03:00.000-05:00
What Liberal Media?

The AOL headline: "Ashcroft Plays Blame Game." That's rich, considering that it was the Democrats who have turned the hearings into a witchhunt.

It was the same on the radio coming home from work. Peter Jennings went to ABC's Capitol Hill correspondent, who mentioned a couple of things intended to hurt Bush (they aren't any big deal). There was no mention of the embarrassing Gorelick memo.

2004-04-11T18:19:00.000-05:00
Another Chapaquiddock?

Robert Alt shows that Teddy is wrong again.

Notwithstanding the predicted holiday violence this weekend, and contrary to popular wisdom, there was no major change in the nature of the opposition during the last week. Ramadi and Fallujah were known opposition territories that held a disproportionate number of Saddam supporters, Fedayeen, and international terrorists. Similarly, Muqtada Al Sadr and his followers were known to be hostile to the Coalition long before he made a statement last week aligning himself with Hezbollah and Hamas. These contingencies respectively were believed to be responsible for the continuing guerilla-style terrorism in the country which was claiming the lives of Coalition members and civilians alike. The one major change in the last week was tactics. The insurgents chose to attack hard targets directly, and paid dearly.

But the recent attacks did demonstrate that the insurgents have a very powerful weapon: not bombs or bullets, but the media. By interpreting a series of attacks in which the insurgents were soundly defeated as a crisis, the media has been used as a dull pawn by Coalition opponents. And make no mistake: Those seeking to aggrandize their power and to destabilize Iraq are attempting to use this pawn to wage war against the king. Having witnessed the change in resolve from President Clinton to President Bush, the eyes of friend and foe in Iraq are fixed on November. To provide but one example, a local Iraqi priest in Baghdad recently grilled me about Senator Kerry. Would his policy be different than that of President Bush? The priest was gravely concerned, because a change in course would have dire consequences for Iraq. And a change of course is what undoubtedly motivated the futile attacks this week.

By objective criteria, the past week has witnessed victories for Coalition forces, and stunning losses for the extreme anti-Coalition factions. But for all the cries of despair, the only real crisis in Iraq is in the subjective eyes of a media unwittingly being used by extremists, and in the jaded eyes of politicos like Senator Kennedy, who are willing to concede American defeat in their quest for Democratic victory.

Mr. Alt may be incorrect in one respect: this time the media may be willfully being used by the extremists. And Ted Kennedy's prophecy of doom could be self-fulfilling. He was one of the politicians who helped arrange our political defeat in Vietnam (we weren't defeated militarily).

2004-04-11T18:09:00.000-05:00
Not All Of The Thugs Are In Iraq

Best Of The Web proves that Richard Ben-Veniste is a jerk, to say the least.

Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration.

"Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did."

Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."

According to Professor Bainbridge, Ben-Veniste has company in one Chris Matthews.

Then Matthews said this:

He didn’t say warn. He asked what the title was. The direct question – she didn’t want to give a direct answer. How did that hit you?

He did say warn! Here again is the question Ben-Veniste asked: "Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country?" Rice was perfectly correct that he had asked it and, of course, perfectly entitled to answer the question as asked. It's bad enough for a partisan thug like Ben-Veniste to misrepresent a question he just asked, but this was either the dumbest thing Chris Matthews ever said or the most brazenly partisan lie he's ever told. He had, after all, just played the tape of Ben-Veniste asking if the PDB "warned"!

For what it's worth, Ben-Veniste had the memo and already knew the answers to the questions he was asking. Pure grandstanding.