LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 3/17/06

5 posts: (1) TSA's Banner Week--Weenie Watch; (2) US & Iraq & Iran: Triple Trouble?--Us v. Them; (3) Islam's "Fifth Horseman" Approaches?--Us v. Them; (4) Iraq: Eliot Ness, Call Your Office--Us v. Them; (5) 1968: Recall 1st Arab Terror Strike Here--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

TSA's Banner Week

The Transportation Security Administration outdid itself this past week.  First, we learn that a lawyer for TSA violated the trial judge's instructions not to coach witnesses, and thus 7 important witnesses are barred from the "20th hijacker" punishment trial (death penalty or life sentence) of Zaccharias Moussaoui.  And yesterday NBC reported that in tests conducted at 21 airports last fall, TSA screeners failed to detect bomb material smuggled on planes at any of the 21 test airports.  TSA even failed to detect bomb materials in bags taken aside for special screening.  Think of this the next time you see TSA morons invasively pat down a Scandinavian grandmother.

US & Iraq & Iran: Triple Trouble?

Thomas Friedman often gets carried away, but when he is on the money he is one of the best in the business.  Today he argues that the only thing worse for Iran than a US withdrawal from Iraq is a US success in building Iraqi democracy, with a US stalemate the best outcome for Iran.  Friedman cautions that by withdrawal he does not mean an instant cut-and-run.  But having our troops tied down there is ideal for Iran, which fears an untethered Iraq.  Assumptions that Iranian and Iraqi Shi'a are cozy are false.  Persians and Arabs don't like one another.  That is why, TF notes, they fought an eight-year war (1980-1988).  Most Iraq Shi'a are moderate, unlike the Twelver (think "Twelfth Imam" millenarian) mullahs who rule Iran.  Iraqi democracy would spur pro-democracy discontent in Iran.  A US pullout would free Iraqis to turn on Iran.  Look for the career bureaucrats at State to offer Iran, in upcoming talks, more influence in Iraq than it could ever hope to get otherwise, in order to placate the mullahs and speed troop withdrawals.  Be afraid; be very afraid.

Islam's "Fifth Horseman" Approaches?

Ever provocative, Arnaud be Borchgrave writes that re Iraq & Iran the "Fifth Horseman" of the Apocalypse has appeared.  He salutes Bush summoning former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton and Bush 41 top man James Baker to head an Iraq study group.  He argues that 43 : (a) is losing Iraq to Iranian influence; (b) slighted Pakistan via his nuke deal with India; (c) ignores future Palestinian rocket threat despite Israel's fence; (d) should thus negotiate secretly with Iran, despite Iran's current president being a "fifth horseman" and despite UN sanctions being doomed from the start.  He argues that 43 should pursue a geopolitical bargain with Iran that prevents a terror axis from Hamas to Baghdad to Tehran to Islamabad.  He concludes that if the US cannot strike a deal, Israel will take out Iran's nuke assets, and fears that $200 oil will result.

In agreeing to talk with Iran, 43 has accepted one  suggestio: negotiations--except the talks will be public.  (The Fifth Horseman was about a Qaddhafi plot to nuke NYC; not bad, but not nearly as good as two other books by Dominique Lappierre & Larry Collins (Oh, Jerusalem & Is Paris Burning?).  My thoughts re AdeB's points (sorry for small format type, but I pasted my comments from Outlook, having commented on this in response to an e-mail sent me earlier by an LTFC reader):

1.  Iraq.  Liberal democracy is not in the offing.  Partition will probably prove necessary.  The key is to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr & his allies.  Bullets OR ballots--not both.

2. Iran.  AdeB is right that diplomacy or sanctions--or both--cannot stop the mullahs.  No strong, determined proliferator has ever been stopped by either, nor by treaties.  Because we waited so long we are left with horrid choices.  Before end of 43's term either Israel will strike or we will.  If Israel is smart they will get us to do it by telling us they will if we do not, and US will be blamed anyway, so why not do a more thorough job?  43 will punt only if Giuliani or McCain wins in 2008, as they can be trusted to act.

 

3.  India.  The US deal is a must.  Pakistan does not get a similar one because they have significant Islamist presence in circles of power.  Yes, this will considerably irk Pakistan, but we are caught there, as elsewhere, between the proverbial rock and hard place.

 

4.  Oil.  $200 oil will not happen.  The price system constrains even oligopolists.  A huge price hike would be casus belli for war against OPEC regimes.  In the event, cartel price cheating will happen if oil gets anywhere near $100, let alone $200.

 

5.  Israel.  Israel will finish the fence.  AdeB is right that rockets will fly over the fence.  But Israel's great fear is suicide bombers, not rockets.  Israel has concluded, rightly, that in neither Hamas nor PLO is there a potential partner for meaningful peace negotiations.  This is the price paid for awarding Arafat power after 1991, despite Arafat having backed Saddam, instead of freezing him out forever.

 

6.  Advice.  Which brings me to the scariest item in AdeB's article.  Bush desperately does need advice.  But Lee Hamilton, a dovish guy who led the charge on Iran-contra, which criminalized a foreign policy dispute, and James Baker, architect of the post-Gulf War disaster are awful candidates.  In 1991 we had 540,000 troops in Iraq--enough to keep even General Shinseki happy (he wanted 200,000 this time).  We could have backed the uprising that Bush 41 called for.  Instead we betrayed them & let Saddam butcher those who rose up, having foolishly trusted us.  Which explains the uphill battle we have faced in winning Iraqi trust.  Arafat--who backed Saddam in 1991--should have been kept in Tunis to rot in exile. Once Saddam torched 700 Kuwaiti oil wells the predicate was laid for expanding the war aim beyond mere expulsion from Kuwait.  And think of these three changes from 1991: (1) no fedayeen were organized to resist then; (2) no al-Qa'ida then; (3) no al-Jazeera.  It would have been a cakewalk.  The insanely reviled "neos" wanted to topple Saddam then, but were scorned by their critics.

 

7.  1991.  We then should have destroyed Iran, Syria & Hezbollah--with Israel--in southern Lebanon.  And told the Saudis if they did not like it we would topple them, too.  (Ideally, Saddam would have invaded Saudi in 1991, destroyed the royals and Wahhabis.  We could then have retaken it, and given King Hussein's clan back Mecca & Medina, that they lost to the al-Saud/Wahhabi alliance in 1925.  Then there would have been no spread of Sunni fanaticism.)

8.  Bottom Line.  In sum, we pay the price today of failing to fix matters in 1991, when it would have been a lot easier, less risky and cheaper.

Iraq: Eliot Ness, Call Your Office

Ralph Peters, ever sharp, sees in Iraq not civil war but gang war between thugs.  He believes that we should have partitioned Iraq in 2003 (so do I, as I have written on LFTC) but thinks a unified Iraq is possible.  Let the thugs kill (mostly) one another while Iraqi security is beefed up.  But RP warns to have a Plan B (partition) ready in case unity fails; hope is not a strategy.  Amen.

1968: Recall 1st Arab Terror Strike Here

We are reminded by an op-ed in the NY Sun that the first Arab terrorist strike on US soil was June 5, 1968 when RFK was assassinated by a Palestinian terrorist who hated Israel.  We are informed as well that this week double-Sirhan, spared death by the Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision, came up for the 13th time at a parole hearing, thankfully denied; he comes up again in 2011.  That act changed history, in all probability.  Had RFK won the Democratic nomination--very possible--he would, I think, have beaten Nixon.  No Nixon = no Watergate and no China opening (RFK could never have gotten away with it).  No President Ford.  So Reagan runs against Carter in 1976?  Carter was the "outsider" sent to clean up after Watergate ("I will never lie to you").  More likely, we would have seen Scoop Jackson v. Reagan.  As for the Palestinians, they have learned nothing since 1968.

Ironically, Andrew Wolf's Sun column today recounts how the other night he saw a film today's Hollywood could never make: "Cast a Giant Shadow."  Wolf recounts the bio of David "Mickey" Marcus, the American general who saved Israel, and is the only US soldier buried at West Point who died in the service of a foreign army.  Wolf hates the film, unjustifiably.  I saw it last summer and it holds up beautifully.  No moral ambiguity here.  Wolf objects to Hollywood tarting up the film by adding a ficitious love interest, played by sultry Senta Berger, and having lovely Angie Dickinson play Marcus's wife.  But he is too much the biographical purist.  The film is, after all, entertainment.  And speaking of Angie & Senta they were, in their day, considered second-tier sex symbols, after the likes of Sophia Loren, Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch etc.  Today?  Compared to Angie & Senta (let alone yesteryear's top female tier) today's female sex stars are either (a) teen tarts, (b) tomboys or (c) silicon inflatable dolls.  Better girls--and better films then, too.  Pray that Spielberg refrains from making a film whitewashing Sirhan's foul deed.

Index 3/16/06

9 posts: (1) Iraq: Al-Qa'ida's Near-Tet--Us v. Them; (2) Iraq: Unity Possible?  If So, What Price?--Us v. Them; (3) Cherie Blair's Islamist Tendency--Weenie Watch; (4) Indonesian Turnaround--Us v. Them; (5) UN Flip-Flop: Burying Bolton--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (6) Law Leapfrogs Chapel Hill Terror--The Home Front; (7) Spending: Deficit of Governance--The Home Front; (8) Ports Deal Lobbyists: Guess Who?--The Home Front; (9) McCain Straw Poll Media Miasma--MSM Murders.

Iraq: Al-Qa'ida's Near-Tet

James Robbins reveals on NRO that al-Qa'ida almost pulled off a replay of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive that shocked American television viewers in 1968, and turned key elites against the war.  Iraqi internal security cracked an al-Qa'ida plot to plant 421 phony guards inside the Green Zone, from where the terrorists were to storm the US & UK embassies and take hostages.  Robbins reports that the plotters were "one bureaucrat's signature away" from success.  He cites Clausewitz's "trinity" of targets--military, leaders and national will--and notes that only as to the last do the terrorists have a decent chance.  He then quotes Osama himself: “It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its share may reach 90 percent of the total preparation for battles.”  When Robbins says a Tet II defeat would seriously wound the war effort he understates the case.  It would spell complete psychological defeat, destroy the White house and most of the support Republicans in Congress still give the war effort.

Iraq: Unity Possible? If So, What Price?

David Ignatius, a frequent 43 critic, now says that there are growing signs that Iraqi politicians are moving towards unity.  He notes that Iraqi leaders have decided to pull back from the brink of civil war, and that the US wants to engage Iran on Iraq issues.  And in a "curious and curiouser" twist, secularist Ahmad Chalabi supports the al-Jaffari/al-Sadr alliance.   Jim Hoagland, often a 43 supporter, argues that the US should side with Iraqi PM al-Jaffari in bringing radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr into the political process.  Engaging Iran, of course, means not striking at Iran's nuke assets or its leaders, at a time when Condi Rice calls Iran a "central banker of terrorism" and Iran is considered the number one security threat we face.  Cragg [sic] Hines, a Houston Chronicle columnist based inside the Beltway, writes that due to ethnic mixing in major cities partitioning Iraq three ways, as I advocate, cannot work.  Worth a read.  But we may have no choice, depending upon how things play out over there.  I am tempted to say "Stop the world, I want to get off" and leave it at that, but LFTC readers deserve more.

Muddling through and accepting a middling result is likely the best we can do with Iraq.  Withdrawal and defeat is unthinkable.  Not only would efforts to remake the Mideast collapse, but our fair-weather friends there would write us off for a generation.  Muslim radicals worldwide would be energized; restive Muslim populations in Europe would be energized as well.  People who worry that Iraq is minting thousands of recruits for terror should contemplate how many more an American retreat would create.  Think Somalia, which energized Osama.  Failure is not an option.  We likely must define success down, but on some minimally digestible terms we must prevail.

Cherie Blair's Islamist Tendency

As stalwart as Tough Tony has been on terrorism, Cherie Blair has been the opposite.  In many ways she is Hillary without the post-9/11 makeover.  She is a prominent barrister, and has taken on a case defending the right of Muslim schoolgirls to wear the veil.  As peerless social commentator Theodore Dalrymple explains, the schoolgirls are not competent to make this choice which in reality was made by their Islamist parents in pursuit of cultural separation.  Such parents often take their Muslim female offspring out of school around age 12 and send them back to Pakistan to be forcibly married.  True, the Amish, too, seek cultural separation, but adherents of their faith neither commit terrorist acts nor intimidate cartoonists.  Laws that treat Islam differently rightly recognize this reality--one Cherie Blair implicitly denies.

Dalrymple, who works in a lot of underclass settings including hospitals (he is a physician), sees bright, ambitious Muslim girls, well-mannered, who try to kill themselves to avoid the fate of consignment to the darker corners of their faith.  The Muslim girls come from intact families, unlike many of Britain's whites.  Dalrymple concludes:

"Yet the Muslim families clearly were doing something right, or at least much better than the white, non-Muslim families around them (if you could call the loose patterns of association found among the whites “families”).

"Here, then, is proper material for reflection, of the kind that the opportunistic Blair couple will never give it. Discipline without freedom leads to misery, but freedom without discipline leads to chaos, shallowness, and misery of another kind."

Indonesian Turnaround

A Wall Street Journal editorial reports a welcome turnaround in Indonesian attitudes towards the US: an NGO survey shows that since 2003 the share of Indonesians with a positive view of the US has tripled, from 15 to 44 percent; by 40 to 36 percent they support the US in the war on terror, the first Muslim country to show a plurality in our favor on this.  Why the shift?  US aid after the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, that we distribute to 600,000 Indonesians.  A gain in the world's most populous Muslim country is a big win for us.

UN Flip-Flop: Burying Bolton

A Wall Street Journal editorial gives the grim news: outvoted 170-4 the US still will pony up its 22 percent share for the new UN Human Rights Council; Israel, Palau & the Marshall Islands joined us in the vote.  John Bolton, it seems, was outvoted inside the Administration.  Those who want more gory details can find them at Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayevsky's Eye on the UN website.  Yech.

Law Leapfrogs Chapel Hill Terror

It may well be that the Iranian student who attempted to murder his Chapel Hill fellow students cannot be prosecuted for committing a terrorist act due to gaps in the set of applicable federal and state laws.  He was a lone wolf, did not use WMD, did not succeed in killing anyone and if he himself was motivated by religious animus it will be difficult to apply hate crime laws because he didn't target his victims because of their religion, but rather because of his, and his anger at US policy.  A garden-variety reckless endangerment case will have to suffice.

Spending: Deficit of Governance

Peggy Noonan, ever poetic, wonders if 43 ever cared to cut spending or if, as a self-styled "compassionate conservative" he really believes as much in Big Government as LBJ.  Noonan thought after 9/11 that 43 may have decided not to fight certain domestic battles in pursuit of wartime unity.  Had that been the result of spending largesse it would have been a defensible bargain.  It understates the case to observe that 43 has purchased nothing but contempt for his no-veto Presidency, and that opposition to the war has been spiteful and opportunistic.  PN notes a USA Today report that since 2000 US population has risen 5 prevent, while spending on 25 key government entitlement programs is up 22 percent and at $1.3 trillion represents more than half the total federal budget.  This is a massive failure of conservative governance.  It is something 43 does not even discuss, and we will, it seems, get no explanation from him, ever.

George Will explains why a line-item veto would likely not work to control spending: Legislators could pass more dreck, knowing the President would veto while showing their constituents that they fought the good fight; and Presidents would still strike deals, trading support for small spending items for legislative support of favored Presidential items.  Worse, a line-item veto statute may fail to pass constitutional muster, as it arguably re-arranges spending powers in violation of the Constitution.  Will notes that on March 23 Bush will have gone without casting a veto longer than anyone since Thomas Jefferson, who went two terms without casting a single veto.  He quotes historian Forrest McDonald, who explains that Mr. Jefferson simply refused to spend funds he thought ill-considered, and that massive bills did not exist then.  This, of course, is the impoundment power that Nixon surrendered during Watergate in 1974.  Budgets have exploded since.

Ports Deal Lobbyists: Guess Who?

Youssef Ibrahim has a revealing article on the ports deal, which I had not intended to write about again.  He details Dubai's miscalculations.  Incredibly, the two lobbyists Dubai hired to manage the Washington end of the deal seem to have been caught flatfooted.  They were two people with considerable Washington experience: Bob Dole and Madeleine Albright.  How come?

McCain Straw Poll Media Miasma

Newsday pundit James Pinkerton interprets last weekend's Nashville straw poll differently than those in MSM who adore McCain.  Pinkerton sees a deep disconnect between McCain and the Republican base.  McCain's defections, Pinkerton writes, and as well his fondness for MSM's fawning coverage of him hurt him badly with the core of the GOP.  In addition to what Pinkerton cites there are other reasons to see McCain denied his party's nod.  In 2008 McCain will be 72; his health, besides cancer in recent years, cannot be too robust given five years in hellish captivity by the North Vietnamese.  He has a severe shortcoming not shared by rivals who have governed states (or, in Rudy's case, NYC): the largest group McCain has ever managed is his Senate staff.  Coming on the heels of an Administration that is becoming legendary for epic managerial incompetence this could give many Republican activists pause.  I do not see McCain winning his party's assent unless all other major candidates self-destruct.

Index 3/14/06

8 posts: (1) If It Takes A Village To Raise A Child....--Us v. Them; (2) Iraq: 43 & Ralph Report--Us v. Them; (3) Cobra II: The Story of Iraq Round Two--Us v. Them; (4) War: A Split Among Hawks--The Home Front; (5) Terror on Trial: Mousaaoui Meltdown--Weenie Watch; (6) Ben Bradlee Names Plame Name--MSM Murders; (7) CBS Goes Pro-US?--Class & Crass; (8) Al-Jazeera America?--Weenie Watch.

If It Takes A Village To Raise A Chlid....

John Gibson reported on his Fox Cable News program yesterday on a letter sent in by one viewer, who noted that a Hamas website touted kids as suicide bombers.  Quipped the viewer--who may not have been fond of Hillary's first book: "I guess it takes a child to raze a village."

Iraq: 43 & Ralph Report

Here is the White House fact sheet which formed the basis for 43's Iraq progress speech yesterday.  43's goal is to have Iraqis carry the lion's share of the burden by year-end 2006.  Meanwhile, Ralph Peters provides more good news not reported widely on Iraq progress.  But more important is RP's account of how Iraqi "stringers" peddle distorted bad news to credulous foriegn reporters too lazy to find out the real story on their own:

"The dangerous nature of journalism in Iraq has created a new phenomenon, the all-powerful local stringer. Unwilling to stray too far from secure facilities and their bodyguards, reporters rely heavily on Iraqi assistance in gathering news. And Iraqi stringers, some of whom have their own political agendas, long ago figured out that Americans prefer bad news to good news. The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims, while the Journalism 101 rule of seeking confirmation from a second source has been discarded in the pathetic race for headlines.

"To enhance their own indispensability, Iraqi stringers exaggerate the danger to Western journalists (which is real enough, but need not paralyze a determined reporter). Dependence on the unverified reports of local hires has become the dirty secret of semi-celebrity journalism in Iraq as Western journalists succumb to a version of Stockholm Syndrome in which they convince themselves that their Iraqi sources and stringers are exceptions to every failing and foible in the Middle East. The mindset resembles the old colonialist conviction that, while other "boys" might lie and steal, our house-boy's a faithful servant.

"The result is that we're being told what Iraqi stringers know they can sell and what distant editors crave, not what's actually happening.

"While there are and have been any number of courageous, ethical journalists reporting from Iraq, others know little more of the reality of the streets than you do. They report what they are told by others, not what they have seen themselves. The result is a distorted, unfair and disheartening picture of a country struggling to rise above its miserable history."

Cobra II: The Story of Iraq Round Two

New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon co-authored with retired Marine Corps Lt. General Bernard Trainor the definitive account of the Gulf War, The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (1995).  Now they aim to repeat that feat with their second book, due out Thursday, March 16: Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.  The Sunday New York Times published a front-page teaser telling how Saddam's worst fears on the eve of Iraqi Freedom were internal--an uprising by the Shi'a whom he had crushed--within easy reach of over 500,000 US troops held in check by 41--in 1991.  A second excerpt shows how far off base US intelligence sources were in targeting Saddam--the Dora Farms site we hit on the eve of the war had not seen Saddam since 1995!

Monday's paper carried two more article excerpts: one reveals that proconsul L. Paul Bremer pushed aside Zalmay Khalizad, vastly knowledgeable and now our superb Ambassador to Iraq, in order to preserve his own suzerainty; Bremer, it seems, had Douglas MacArthur's ambition but not his talent.  Neither Colin Powell nor Condi Rice was consulted by the White House before this disastrous decision was made.  Bremer also nixed a local elections staged by the military in Najaf because the candidate he wanted failed to win, making us perceived as occupiers rather than liberators.  A second Monday excerpt traces conflicts among military commanders.

I have pre-ordered the book from Amazon.  If it is anywhere near as well done as the authors' first book this one promises to be a first-rate read.

War: A Split Among Hawks

John Podhoretz divines a new category, between hawk and dove, regarding the war against Islamist terror: what he calls to-hell-with-them-hawks.  He refers to folks like William Buckley, who have turned against the democracy project in the Arab and Muslim world.  Instead, the THWTHs argue that we should kill as many of the bad guys as possible, end Iran's nuclear program from the air and avoid the impossible task of spreading democracy in an Islamic polity whose believers prefer the "stark certainties" of a religious faith to the "ambiguities and confusions" of modern Western-style liberal democracy.  Elections gave us Hamas, and we face folks who riot for weeks over a bunch of stupid cartoons.

Podhoretz counters by arguing that the genesis of Bush's democracy project was the belief that tyrannical, fundamentalist and terrorist regimes were a vast collective incubus for Islamist terror.  Only by changing the terms of debate within such societies could such a production line possibly be shut down.  Podhoretz warns that sooner or later one person willing to die will find a way to carry off a WMD strike for terror sponsors.

Missing from the THWTH arguments are the political errors that have gravely endangered the Iraq project.  As noted earlier on LFTC, a nationwide party-list electoral system creates opportunities for minorities to exert decisive influence, in excess of what their popular support would dictate.  Worse, we allowed radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr to continue to captain armed militias while working the electoral system to undermine our project.  We should have insisted on "bullet or ballots but not both."  Perhaps our inability to suppress the insurgency convinced our leaders to allow bullets and ballots as a short-term fix to allow elections to go forward on schedule, seeing delay, rightly, as a severe setback.  But such short-term peace was purchased at the expense of medium- and long-term success.  Meanwhile our "values" doves were blocking efforts to clandestinely fund pro-democracy interests, knowing that our adversaries were under no such handicap.   State waged nuclear war against pro-US, pro-secular democracy leader Ahmad Chalabi while assisting the radical al-Sadr.  No wonder we are in serious trouble.

For another view on the flaws in the Iraq political system, here is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by a Duke law & political science professor that warns of the dangers not only of muddled government but also of partition, a policy LFTC favors.  The op-ed also, however, agrees with LFTC that a party-list system is not likely to produce salutary outcomes.  Missing from the analysis is anything about al-Sadr.

Terror on Trial: Mousaoui Meltdown

An NY Sun editorial sums up the sheer stupidity of wasting taxpayer money putting "Fifth Pilot" Zacharias Mousaoui on trial in search of the death penalty--ZM has pled guilty to enough offenses to get life already, so the trial is on punishment.  As the Sun notes, a Clinton appointee wants to toss the death penalty off the table on a technicality, and that instead we should just hold ZM indefinitely at Gitmo as an unlawful combatant and be done with it.  NRO's Andrew McCarthy offers a legal analysis of the government's trial goof; McCarthy, who prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, gives his usual top-notch take.  Executing ZM, in any event, would give him a martyrdom to which he is not entitled.  Lock him up in well-deserved obscurity, with a white-supremacist Nazi cell-mate 100 pounds heavier who wants a girlfriend.

Ben Bradlee Names Plame Name

Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who ran herd on Woodward & Bernstein during the Watergate salad days, opines in a Vanity Fair interview going on sale today that he thinks the likely source who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA identity was none other than Colin Powell's top deputy, Richard Armitage.  If true, and Bradlee is as sharp a guesser for this stuff as anyone alive, it proves anew that in 43's first term his own State Department did a better job of waging internecine warfare against the White House staff than they did implementing his foreign policy.

There is more: The Chicago Tribune (free subscription; minimal info to register) has run an article blowing Valerie Plame's "cover" status out of the water, citing intelligence sources who explain that because Plame was stationed at the US embassy in Athens her status would have been known to friend and foe alike; the information about Plame's embassy status was obtained by the Tribune online!  A source identified by the paper as a "senior U.S. intelligence official" told the paper that ..."it would be a fair assumption that a true-blue NOC is not someone who has a headquarters job at any point or an embassy job at any point."  The article quotes one CIA agent with 20 years experience as saying that "the key is the [embassy] address.  That is completely unacceptable for an NOC.  She wasn't an NOC, period."  Another agent is quoted as follows:
"[Genuine NOCs] never use an official address.  If she had [a diplomatic] address, her whole cover's completely phony.  I used to run NOCs.  I was in an embassy.  I'd go out and meet them, clandestine meetings.  I'd pay them cash to run assets or take trips.  I'd give them a big bundle of cash. But they could never use an embassy address, ever."

The Washington Post has a story today in which Bradlee hedges his VF story.  NRO's Byron York details today a likely war between the CIA and career officials at Justice that went on for two months, until CIA Director George Tenet's letter to Justice was leaked in late September 2003 to the Washington Post, setting off the media firestorm that led to Patrick Fitzgerald being appointed special counsel in December.  The plot thickens.  Still it looks more and more like no cover blown, no crime.  Yet Fitzgerald sits tight as his case looks more insane with each passing disclosure.

CBS Goes Pro-US?

Tonight at 9 PM is the second episode of a new CBS show, The Unit, which combines, according to a review in The Weekly Standard, the best of Fox's 24 and ABC's Desperate Housewives.  Seems that it is "jingoistic," in the eyes of a Washington Post critic.  (Last night I saw my first episode of 24, a big hit on Fox; it is a 24-part season with each show covering an hour, High Noon-style.  Much like Mission Impossible, except you cannot miss an episode.  I will thus pass.  But I plan to check out The Unit tonight.  Nothing like dead terrorists to liven a TV evening.

Al-Jazeera America?

The NY Sun reports that al-Jazeera is having trouble attracting sponsors to launch an English-language station in America.  This is a test of how foolish and self-destructive America can be.  Are we willing to allow a terrorist network masquerading as a news outlet to broadcast to Muslims in America?  They need alienate only a small percentage US Muslims (think Chapel Hill last week) to create a pool of potential suicide bombers.  This is not the Oxford Union debates.  We did not give Axis Sally access to US airwaves in World War  II.  Nor does former CBS anchor Dave Marash, who would be al-Jazeera's man in America, inspire confidence.  Even if, against all odds, the American subsidiary does provide honest news, as al-Jazeera continues to spread lies in the Mideast it must be required to stop lying elsewhere as the price of a ticket to broadcast here.  Or will "our values" hand another victory to Islamist terror?

Index 3/13/06

10 posts: (1) Norton Leaves; Jessica Pines--The Home Front; (2) Mideast: Sharon Stone's "Indecent Proposal"--Weenie Watch; (3) 9/11: Et Tu, Syria?--Us v. Them; (4) "Terrorist Containers Only" Inspection?--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (5) Supreme Court: Roberts Rules--The Home Front; (6) Fukuyama v. Fukuyama: A "Neo" Responds--The Home Front; (7) Tom Wolfe: America's "Right Stuff"--Class & Crass; (8) Slobo: R.I.P., But Not Serbia--Weenie Watch; (9) Is College--or K-12--Worth It?--The Home Front; (10) Zeroing Out Ground Zero--The Ap & The Cap.

Norton Leaves; Jessica Pines

The imminent departure of Interior Secretary Gale Norton brings to mind a classic from brainy Hollywood sexpot Jessica Simpson, who when visiting the White House in 2004 congratulated Norton on the wonderful job she (Norton) had done decorating the White House.  Don't believe me?  Check it out here.  Life can be an adventure when one's IQ is smaller than one's bust-line, eh?  That said, be glad that Gale did the decorating job--can you imagine how James Watt would have decorated the Reagan White House?

Mideast: Sharon Stone's "Indecent Proposal"

How's this for a presumably irresistible offer from Hollywood siren Sharon Stone: Sharon, visiting Israel, kissing a nonplussed Shimon Peres, offered to kiss-yes, smooch--"just about anybody" who could bring peace to the Mideast.  Fred Barnes noted on Beltway Boys that Sharon probably never met Yasir Arafat, but Sharon, no dummy she, said "just about anybody."  Here's another "indecent proposal" for Sharon to make: kiss whoever turns in Osama, a-Zawahiri or al-Zarqawi.  Then again, whoever does faces for sure a thousand fatwas, and may wish compensation that exceeds the value of connubial bliss in the after-life with 72 black-eyed virgins.  Even for Sharon, that may require a proposal more "indecent" than a kiss.  Oh, and North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-Il is known to have a preference for movie-star blondes.  Now, if Sharon can get together with Kim and reprise her famous ice-pick scene in Basic Instinct....

9/11: Et Tu, Syria?

According to a classified report from the office of German PM Angela Merkel, the 9/11 hijackers are known to have made at least 206 calls from the USA to destinations overseas, including 29 to Germany (no surprise--Muhammad Atta's cell resided in Hamburg), 32 to Saudi Arabia (no surprise--15 of 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia) and 66 to...Syria.  President Bush said that those who aid or harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves.  Israeli intelligence says that Russian commandos moved Saddam's WMD arsenal to Syria for storage.  And Syria has been aiding insurgents in Iraq.  What is 43 waiting for?

Supreme Court: Roberts Rules

Terry Eastland, a scholar and astute observer of the Supreme Court, sees already after just five months a "Roberts effect" in Supreme Court rulings.  It is an effect salutary on two counts.  First, Roberts writes opinions in clear, concise language, as did his predecessor, William Rehnquist.  But where Roberts departs from Rehnquist is in a second aspect: conferences held by the Justices.  Rehnquist regarded conferences as a forum to announce votes but rarely held substantive discussion.  Roberts, promoted from a court--the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit--where collegiality is highly prized, seeks consensus resolution whenever possible.  Such discussions reduce the proliferation of separate opinions, which make deciphering split court holdings akin to examining tea leaves to divine what the Kremlin was really thinking during the Cold War.  "Roberts rules" make for common sense and comprehensible rulings, both qualities that have seemed in short supply for about five decades at the Supreme Court.

Fukuyama v. Fukuyama: A "Neo" Responds

Recently LFTC published Francis Fukuyama's assault on his former neo-conservative allies.  This weekend Wall Street Journal editor Bret Stephens, razor-sharp as always--rebuts Fukuyama, in no small measure with Fukuyama's own words.  Stephens states that Fukuyama overstates the antipathy to America generated by Iraq and understates the degree to which jihadist fanaticism is being driven by Mideast sources, and not Muslims in Europe.  Well worth a read.

Tom Wolfe: America's "Right Stuff"

Saturday's Opinion Journal ran an interview with legendary literary lion Tom Wolfe.  TW praises America, and notes that those who live in what he calls the "parenthesis states"--New York & California--have not a clue about the rest of their countrymen.  Vintage Wolfe.  Do not miss.

Slobo: R.I.P., But Not Serbia

Retired General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander during the 1999 Kosovo War, rates Milosevic a petty Hitler and sees more trouble ahead for Serbia.  His article is a compelling portrait of the vain, deceitful and murderous thug Clark came to know very well in the 1990s.

Is College--or K-12--Worth It?

Forbes editor Rich Karlgaard wonders if college is worth it.  At today's prices he is not sure it is--especially as colleges do not teach what was inculcated a generation earlier.  More reason why schools are increasingly of dubious value is provided by Sol Stern, who sees "pinko" teachers as a continuing problem at the K-12 level; the Colorado teacher who likened President Bush to Hitler has been reinstated in the sacred name of academic freedom.

Zeroing Out Ground Zero

The New York Post's Steve Cuozzo details the utter train wreck Gov. Pataki has made at Ground Zero, and suggests that for the remaining 9 months of his gubernatorial term he leave it alone.  Good advice.