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Date ►►► October 29, 2005

The Dog That Didn't Bark

Hatched by Dafydd

In the 1892 Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze," the following exchange occurs as Colonel Ross queries Holmes, the conversation being related by the ever helpful Watson:

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

In fact, this turned out to be the key to the mystery: that the dog did not bark when the horse Silver Blaze was led out of the barn. In the Plame Name Blame Game, what is the curious incident, the dog that didn't bark? It is the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald did not charge Lewis "Scooter" Libby with conspiracy. I saw this mentioned a couple of times, but I was a little slow on the uptake (and also not a lawyer), so the significance of this point escaped me. But at last the penny dropped today.

Here is what I finally realized: I believe a prosecutor can charge conspiracy against one party to the criminal agreement even if he doesn't charge it against anyone else -- hence the phrase "unindicted co-conspirator." That is, you can charge Fred Flintstone with entering into a conspiracy with Barney Rubble to commit mopery with intent to gawk... even if you don't have enough evidence against Barney to charge him as well.

The point is this: even if Patrick Fitzgerald didn't have quite enough evidence to charge Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, but he believed they had all conspired with Libby to leak Plame's name -- or else to orchestrate a series of denials to obstruct his probe afterwards -- Fitzgerald could still have charged Libby himself with conspiracy. Frequently such charges, carrying very significant prison time, induce the charged person to sing, implicating his co-conspirators in an effort to reduce his own punishment... especially if he knows the prosecutor would rather have the scalp of the capo who ordered the hit than the button-man who carried it out.

The fact that Fitzgerald did not charge conspiracy is an even stronger exoneration than the fact that he didn't indict Rove or Cheney: the latter might simply mean he thinks they lied but can't prove it; but since he actually has a case against Libby for lying (as clearly he does), then that supplies the overt act -- and all he would need besides is mere agreement to turn it into a heavy conspiracy charge.

Evidently, Fitzgerald just doesn't have evidence that they all got together either to out Valerie Plame or else to lie about it afterward. In other words, despite ominous words about the investigation still being "open," I suspect that's it: it's over as far as any other big names are concerned. If anyone had been named but not indicted, we might think that Fitzgerald had some evidence, and if he squeezed Libby hard enough, more indictments might forthcome. But with even that possibility gone, "Fitzmas," as Captain Ed puts it, seems to have left the Left only a lump of coal in its collective sock.

My guess is that Libby won't go to trial. I think he'll push on for a few months, trying to raise some doubt; then he'll take the best bargain he can get. Even if he loses his law license, he can still make money writing a book and going on the lecture circuit.

It will end with a whimper.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 29, 2005, at the time of 3:42 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 28, 2005

Survey Says... Whaddit Say?

Hatched by Dafydd

Today, Big Lizards offers a delectable Smorgasbord of poll results... take your pick!

Daniel Weintraub's Bee-blog California Insider links to a poll by the left-leaning* Public Policy Institute of California; he previously linked to Survey USA's poll of the same race; and he quotes from Governor Schwarzenegger's team on their internal polling on the four issues the governor put on the ballot. This table compares all three sources. Note that the governor's campaign polling did not issue actual figures, but they characterized them.

Frankly, I'm inclined to go with the third, the governor's version: first, it's in between the other two; second, campaign polling is often the most accurate of all -- unless they're lying about it, of course. But it doesn't sound like it, or they would have said they were all leading (since then Survey USA would give them cover).

In any event, I'll post 'em all here, so that everybody on all sides can feel depressed and anxious!

Survey USA (in bold) has all the measures up! Public Policy Institute (italics) has all of them down! The Governator's campaign polling (ordinary Roman type) has the results mixed!

Prop 74: Teacher Tenure Reform
53 yes, 45 no (1% undecided) lead: +8
46 yes, 48 no (6% undecided) trail -2
"Dead even."
Prop 75: Paycheck Protection
56 yes, 42 no (2% undecided) lead: +14
46 yes, 46 no, (8% undecided) dead even
"Ahead."
Prop 76: Limit State Spending Growth
54 yes, 41 no (5% undecided) lead: +13
30 yes, 62 no (8% undecided) trail -32
"Trailing narrowly."
Prop 77: Redistricting Reform
54 yes, 41 no (5% undecided) lead: +13
36 yes, 50 no (14% undecided) trail -14
"Ahead."

Well... now you know why I tend not to take polling very seriously!

* "Left leaning Public Policy Institute of California": in the poll, 60% disapprove of George Bush, but only 29% disapprove of Barbara Boxer. There are a lot of liberals in California, but not that many! If there were, then why did the 2002 gubernatorial election go down to the wire with Gray Davis winning only 47.4% to 42.4% against one of the (let's face it) geekiest major electoral candidates ever, Bill Simon?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 28, 2005, at the time of 10:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

What I Don't Get...

Hatched by Dafydd

And maybe somebody can help me, is why bother mentioning Wilson's wife at all?

Here is the problem: Joe Wilson was sent to Africa by the CIA (by whatever means) to investigate the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. When he returned, he said during his debriefing several things that made the charge seem more likely (the speculation from the prime minister of Niger, for example).

But then he turned around and began leaking lies to the press, and eventually went public in an op-ed lie in the New York Times (find it here to avoid those annoying ads), to the effect that he had found the precise opposite: Wilson pretended that he had found no evidence of Iraq trying to buy Uranium in Africa, that he told the CIA this, that it was passed up the chain, and that Bush had deliberately told a falsehood in his State of the Union address.

All right, so there was a problem: the public was being spoonfed the Joe-Wilson confabulation that he had debunked the claim that later made its way into the president's speech. And I agree, that needed to be countered.

But how the hell does it counter that point to say that Wilson was suggested for the job by his CIA wife, Valerie Plame? Who cares?

Suppose Wilson's false leaks were instead true: suppose he had actually disproven the claim, and suppose Bush had deliberately used a false claim to take us to war. Would the fact that Joe had been suggested by Mrs. Joe have made such a presidential lie all right?

Of course not. As juicy a tidbit of gossip as that was, it was a complete non-sequitur to the most urgent point, which was to refute Joseph Wilson's lies. Am I wrong?

The correct line of attack -- why didn't they listen to me? -- would have been for the president to immediately declassify and openly release to the press Wilson's CIA defbriefing. That would have been perfectly legal, and unlike what they did, it would have been devastating to Wilson's slander and libel of the Bush administration.

I guess my conclusion is that Republicans in general and the Bush administration in particular are terrible dirty fighters. I mean that literally: at the skill of being a dirty fighter, they're wretchedly incompetent! The real problem is that they have so little practice. Their hearts just aren't in it. Unlike the Leftist fantasy, Bush just hasn't slimed, smeared, or destroyed enough people, the way the Clintons did every day and twice on Rosh Hashonah.

Republicans need to watch a marathon of Mission: Impossible.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 28, 2005, at the time of 5:00 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

The Grand Mulligan

Hatched by Dafydd

At last, Real Clear Politics has a real clear blog! So far, I love it. I had no idea this was coming; I knew that the paucity of "commentary" was due to an ongoing site redesign, but even before they started that, Tom and John tended to post little each week... I hope they can keep up the current pace.

John MacIntyre's only contribution so far (he posted it twice, first as preview) is also, in my opinion, the most significant:

The politics of this is very simple to distill: 24 hours ago liberals were giddy in anticipation of multiple indictments and what other early Christmas presents the Special Prosecutor might bring. Meanwhile, conservatives were despondent over the prospect of having to beat up on a President they want to support, all because of the unfortunate Miers nomination.

With the announcement of Miers' withdrawal everything changed. Conservatives are the happiest and most energized they have been in months. Liberals like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have a sick feeling in their stomach, because they realize the conservative suicide pact has been called off and the Senate is likely to get a rock solid appointment who is anathema to everything they believe - and they know there is little they can do to stop that person from getting on the court.

Let me amplify that if I can. It's very, very common for the presidential wheels to come off in the second term: it happened to Clinton, who spent years fighting impeachment; to Reagan, who had to deal with Iran-Contra; to Nixon (duh!); and to Johnson, whose Vietnam troubles forced him to withdraw from reelection in 1968. The last president to have a fairly smooth second term was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and that began nearly fifty years ago!

What is not so common is for a president in his second term to get a Mulligan. I don't play golf, but I understand that means a do-over. Reagan earned himself a Mulligan with his magnificant speech in which he apologized to the American people for allowing personal concern for the hostages to overwhelm his common sense, leading him to make an arms-for-hostages deal. (I actually think that Iran-Contra policy was correct, by the way; but the speech was still a transcendent political moment.) After that point, his approval soared, and he was able to complete an ambitious second-term agenda, with more tax cutting and the final vindication of his stubbornness in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), the beginning of the collapse of the Evil Empire.

I do not believe Bush pushed Miers out the airlock. I think that was entirely her idea. And I know that Bush did not armtwist Patrick Fitzgerald into laying the golden egg -- one major indictment after two plus years of high-profile investigation, and it was an indictment of someone that 75% of the electorate has likely never heard of, a man with the improbable name of "Scooter." Yeah, yeah, the investigation continues, blah blah. But the admission that after two years and millions of dollars, Fitzgerald still could not find even a single charge to lay against Karl Rove makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the next couple of years with a different grand jury will turn up anything significant.

So I guess somebody out there just plain likes George W. Bush. (I wonder if he's given God a nickname?)

But gift it was; Christmas came early for the Bush family. And now W. has the chance to start off fresh with a reasonably clear scandal slate -- and a unified base, assuming he takes advantage and names a "consensus" candidate... where the consensus is between the various wings of the Republican Party, and to hell with what Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer want!

There are two main areas where Bush needs to offer a strong proposal: spending and immigration. In both cases, he can build on ideas he has been floating for years, but which he has been too busy with other agenda items -- like, you know, an economic crash he inherited from his predecessor, ditto a staggering terrorist attack, and fighting two wars -- to really pursue: illegal immigration and excess federal spending.

Take a look at a couple of ideas for both of them; I plucked these from ideas that Bush himself has floated, but which are still in "emergent" form, not yet fully articulated to the American people or to Congress:

He really does have an immigration plan, and it really is significantly different from the "amnesty" caricature that the Tancredoites have flung at it.

He has a very good story to tell here: everybody now agrees that with the present flood across (mostly) the southern border, there is no possible way to wall them all out -- let alone round up millions of people already here, hold them (where, in special camps?) while awaiting immigration status determination, and then ship them somewhere, anywhere, especially if the countries of origin refuse to accept them.

The only possible way to get control of our borders is first to reduce the number of otherwise honest immigrants who sneak in solely to work and earn a better life for their familiies. The system must be regularized, giving would-be immigrants a clear path they can follow that will lead from immigration to assimilation to citizenship -- with lots of emphasis on that middle item, how to be an American. Give immigrants a door, and they won't keep trying to come in by the window.

Yes, I've heard the arguments: why should we reward all those illegal immigrants by letting them in? The problem is that finger-pointing has led to nothing but millions more immigrants... completely unregulated, out of control, and invisible to the eyes of the INS. Great plan!

The obvious analogy is to a flood -- and a dam: if you stop and think about it, no matter how strong your dam is, the swelling water will eventually shatter it or overflow the top unless you let just as much water through the floodgates as pours in at the back end. Again, duh! The only question is whether the deluge sneaks over the top and around the sides, or overwhelms us entirely -- or is channeled and controlled through the gates... where it can be harnessed to generate energy and push this increasingly soggy analogy to the breaking point.

If Bush were to couple immigration reform and regularization with a vigorous effort to beef up terrorism-focused border security, particularly at the northern border and the ports, and heavy sanctions on companies that hire illegal aliens, I think he could even get Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) on his side... especially if he were to reach across to Tancredo and John McCain for help in developing the program in the first place.

You can't bring the hammer down on companies now, because they need to hire immigrants to survive; but once they can get that lower cost, unskilled labor legally (which today they cannot), there is no more excuse to get it illegally. I'm talking jail time for corporate officers.

And when the decent and honest immigrants are coming in openly through the door, that frees the border patrol to act more like the military against those evil-doers who still try to sneak in under the wire, since there must be some nefarious reason why they can't just go through the checkpoints legally like everybody else.

We need better checking of ships' cargo and a refocus of the CIA onto tracking known terrorists, even when they're "whitewashed" through the Great White North... something like Able Danger, with no apologies and no bowing to the PC crowd. It's a great idea, and it's about time Bush put the hard choice to Congress with a truly hard sell -- and totally out in the open. I think the American people would be behind it, if you told them of the program's successes, even in the limited form it had. I'll bet most Americans don't even know about it (sadly, most Americans don't read Captain's Quarters!)

A presidential plan to rein in spending. Alas, Republicans discovered that they, too, can imitate drunken sailors when they get control of the Congressional grouch bag. This has got to stop. Republicans disagree on what constitutes valid spending, but every one of us agrees that spending is too high.

Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) approach was well intentioned but stupidly executed: why go after only one senator's pork, and one of the most powerful ones at that -- Senator-for-Life Ted Stevens of Alaska? Everyone in the Senate pushes for "pork," and one man's pork is another man's urgently needed projects for the constituency.

There is nothing wrong with pork; there's just too much of it. So instead of trying to completely eliminate it, why not just reduce it... for everyone? Since everyone in the House supposedly represents the same number of constituents (more or less), give everyone a "pork allotment": that allotment can be traded to other representatives (consolidated) in exchange for various other favors -- keeping a helpful federal program going, for example -- but the total level would be limited, and the president would promise to veto any budget that failed to abide by the pork allotment. For senators, it's a little tricker, because they represent varying amounts of people; but some formula based on the allotments for each representative within the state, so the House and Senate versions of the budget are the same, should work.

Not everyone would go along at first... but if the president were to veto a budget or two, just to prove that he's now serious about it, the American people would cheer. And there would be no way to override such a veto in the face of overwhelming public pressure to "hold down spending," especially since Bush could use the fairness argument: there is an overall pork allotment, and as with Milo Minderbinder, "everybody has a share."

In fact, I think it would be a stroke of genius if Bush were to call it exactly that: a Pork Allotment. He could explain it to the American people with a wry grin, then go on to praise local "pork" projects, and say that he didn't want to stop all that... just hold it down enough that overall spending can be decreased. The amount of pork allowed per budget would be deterimined by the state of the economy: more pork when the economy is good, less if it turns down. Perhaps even an exterior panel, similar to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which determines in a bipartisan way which military bases to close or move, and which has been tremendously successful in Congress. (Everyone grouses about it, but they still accept the recommendations.)

Bush could join that to a general cut in many other, larger budget items -- across the board, even some aspects of the military budget (we can get into that later). The combination would make it clear the Republicans were utterly serious about stopping the spending spree.

With those in place, we would see a reinvigorated presidency, one of those rare times when the second term could produce more substantial achievements than even the first -- which "merely" produced tax cuts, corporate reform, strong economic recovery from the Clinton Recession of 2000-2002, recovery from the worst terrorist attack in American history, the transformation of two terrorist states into democracies, the reintroduction of faith into social work (and I'm not talking about Harriet Miers' nomination!), the realignment of much of the district- and circuit-cout judiciary towards judicial conservatism (that finally began to occur after the 2004 reelection, but the seeds were planted starting in 2001), and the brilliant idea -- which needs to explode forth into new proposals this term -- of the "ownership society."

If Bush grabs hold of this Grand Mulligan and does just a couple things right, the rest will fall into place... and in 2008, the Republican nominee for president will welcome President Bush's help barnstorming across the country!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 28, 2005, at the time of 2:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Where To?

Hatched by Dafydd

I supported Harriet Miers' confirmation (with, as I said, caveats) because I thought it was bad for the party if she were rejected or forced to withdraw.

She was of course forced out, and I do believe damage has been done to the party -- hence to the country, because the Democrats are so wretched and such appeasers that anything that gives them political support is, I believe, bad for America. (If in the future they find their way back home to sanity, I will withdraw this sentiment.)

Damage has been done; do not be deceived. But repairs are still possible... if we act swiftly.

Clearly, the president must nominate someone who is acceptable to the judicial conservatives, but also someone who will not so turn off the Seven Dwarfs that they refuse to pull the trigger on the Byrd option, stopping a filibuster. That is not an easy task.

Hugh Hewitt suggests Michael McConnell. He is trying for an end-run in this case: McConnell was not filibustered last time around; the J-Com sat on his nomination for more than a year, but that was because of Jumpin' Jim Jeffords, ~~Republican~~ Democrat from Vermont, who gave the chairmanship to Patrick "Leaky" Leahy. (What with Leahy and Fitzgerald, I have decided that from now on, I will be instantly suspicious of anybody named Patrick.) Hugh's idea is that, having refused to filibuster McConnell in 2002 -- he was confirmed after the election which gave control back to the Republicans, but before the new Congress was even seated! -- the Gang of 14 would find it very hard indeed to yell "extraordinary circumstances" now in 2005. Thus, Hugh reasons, they wouldn't get the votes they need to stop cloture; so the "nuclear option" wouldn't even come into play.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Both sides are plagued by numbers. Most Republicans (I think) want to eliminate judicial filibusters altogether. The principled argument is that the Senate has a constitutional duty to advise and either consent or reject in a timely manner. The filibuster leaves the nominee in limbo, neither confirmed nor chucked out -- and is an abdication of Senatorial duty. If he were rejected, the president could name another nominee; but with the nomination still pending, the slot just stays open. On the Supreme Court, that would mean an eight-justice panel that could end up splitting 4-4 endlessly, leaving appellate court rulings in place -- even when they contradict each other from circuit to circuit.

But to get this passed, they need at least 51 votes, one of which can come from Vice President Dick Cheney if the Senate splits 50-50. There are 55 Republicans in the Senate; so they can lose up to five Republican senators and still vote to end judicial filibusters; but if they lose six, they lose the vote (I am assuming no Democrats will vote for the Byrd Option).

The "Seven Dwarfs" (Republican members of the "Gang of 14") are John McCain (AZ), Mike DeWine (OH), Lindsay Graham (SC), John Warner (VA), Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), and Lincoln Chafee (RI). Two others not in the Gang but still potentially trouble are Arlen Specter (PA) and Charles Grassley (IA).

I believe Chafee, Snowe, and Collins are very likely defectors on this vote; so the GOP can only afford to lose two out of the remaining six worrisome senators in order to push this through.

But the Democrats have their own numbers to fret about. They need 41 votes to sustain a filibuster (that is, to deny cloture, the calling of the question), and the Democrats have only 45 members in their Senate caucus. I believe that for any reasonable nominee, no Republicans (not even Chafee) will vote to filibuster... thus, the Democrats can only afford to lose four of their number and still possibly prevent cloture. For a popular candidate, they may have trouble with some of their own members of the Gang (the Seven Skunks?), including Ben Nelson (NE), Joe Lieberman (CT), Mary Landrieu (LA), Ken Salazar (CO), and Mark Pryof (AK); plus there are other "red-state" Democrats, such as Bill Nelson (FL) and Kent Conrad (ND). The Democrats must hold four of these seven to be able to sustain a filibuster.

Hugh thinks that there will be too many defections from the Democratic side for Judge Michael McConnell, and they will not be able to get their 41. I take a different tack, since I am always willing to consider politics, so long as it's not at the expense of the party or country. I would rather see Emilio Garza as the nominee, even though he is 58 years old (to McConnell's 50), because -- I will be very naked about it -- Hispanics are a very fast-growing voting group; they tend to be more culturally conservative than blacks, Asians, or Jews; and they have shown a willingness to vote Republican -- as much as 45% may have voted for Bush in 2004; so I want to see them encouraged by a Republican Party that recognizes their contribution. Since even the Rebel Alliance has said in the past that Garza is acceptable, I see no reason not to consider politics when deciding between two candidates who both earn the seal of approval. After all, if you don't win presidential elections, you don't get to name any judges at all.

Regardless of who is "at fault" in the Miers debacle, Bush must move swiftly to repair the breach in the GOP coalition -- both the elections coalition and the ruling coalition. He must nominate someone who will mollify the judicial conservatives, but he cannot nominate someone who will scare off the weak sisters in the Seven Dwarfs. He owes us that much.

But we also owe a duty to the president. If any one group tries to completely take over, it will shatter the coalition, and we may well see Chairman Leahy in the Judiciary Committee... in which case, no appointment will move, not even to the Supreme Court. The power of the chairman to disrupt and delay confirmation hearings is almost absolute.

The Rebel Alliance must be satisfied with anybody reasonable. If Garza or Edith Jones is nominated, they cannot say "no, we demand Luttig!" And the Seven Dwarfs must not insist upon a "consensus" candidate who would be, in reality, impossible to find: nobody who is acceptable to Patrick Leahy (VT), Joe Biden (DE), Ted Kennedy (MA), Chuck Schumer (NY), and Dick Durbin (IL) is going to be acceptable to Orrin Hatch (UT), John Kyl (TX), Sam Brownback (KS), or Tom Coburn (OK). It's just not possible: they have such disparate worldviews that "never the twain shall meet."

Both sides of the recent rift -- the White House and the Rebel Alliance -- must reach across to the other. So long as Bush makes a serious effort to find someone with a track record of judicial conservatism, the Rebels should stand behind the president and his nominee and push to get him or her confirmed. Not only that, but I believe the rank and file Republicans need to be much more proactive in helping pass the president's agenda, even if they don't believe in each and every single plank: there is such a thing as compromise... if all the nativists refuse to support Bush because he won't round up all twelve million illegal immigrants and ship them back by parcel post, and all the fiscal conservatives refuse to support Bush because he didn't veto the Highway bill, and the religious Right turns their backs (or sits on their hands in 2006) because Bush hasn't brought prayer back into the schools, while the libertarian Republicans take a walk because he won't fund stem-cell research... well, "there was nobody left to speak out." Say hello to President Dean and a Democratic Congress.

And then none of these groups gets what they want -- though they may end up getting what they deserve.

Remember what Benjamin Franklin said: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Franklin meant it literally, which, thank God, we no longer have to fear; but if you hang the Republican president out to dry, don't be surprised if you find that your own prospects wind up wilting on the same clothesline.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 28, 2005, at the time of 3:02 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 27, 2005

Double Sourced, Double Trouble

Hatched by Dafydd

It is well known that Sens. Norm Coleman and Carl Levin believe that Respect Party MP George Galloway lied under oath when he testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs; when Galloway was being questioned by the two -- and he was unfurling his usual sneer and condescension -- he seems to have forgotten that in addition to sitting on that committee, the two were also the chair and ranking member of one of its subcommittees: the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Galloway has responded with predictable bravado, practically daring Investigations to refer him for indictment. Per the Belmont Club: "I am ready to fly to the US today, if necessary, to face such a charge because it is simply false," he boasted. But perhaps he'll cash in those plane tickets and plan an extended holiday in Switzerland instead after reading the upcoming report by Paul Volcker, who has hardly been considered a serious investigator of U.N. corruption -- given that he reports directly to Kofi Annan, one of key suspects in the case. Surprisingly, however, Volcker's report strikes hard against a number of targets that the Turtle Bay Illuminati would have preferred be protected... including a certain Respect Party MP from Bethnal Green and Bow (HT Dirty Dingus for correcting Galloway's district):

Among those named in the report as receiving oil vouchers that could be sold for a commission were British lawmaker George Galloway, former French UN Ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

So it's not just those radical right wingers, Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Carl Levin (D-MI)... it's former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and current Elliot Ness of the United Nations, Paul Volcker. Maybe it's time for George of the Bungle to drop the ludicrous posturing and raspberry blowing and simply confess his guilt and expiate his sins, else he may get the opportunity to see how his rhetoric falls on the ears of an American jury.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 27, 2005, at the time of 3:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Miers Withdraws From Supreme Court Consideration

Hatched by Dafydd

As expected, President Bush did not withdraw her; from what I have read, Harriet Miers withdrew herself.

At this point, the best thing for the party would be if Bush were to nominate one of the hard-core judicially conservative women whose names have been floated... and I hope he does; but Hugh Hewitt's prediction of the Democratic response has already come true:

Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush ended his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court Thursday and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party"....

"The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had recommended Miers to the president.

So the question is, will the "Gang of Fourteen" use the replacement of Miers with (say) Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown to declare "extraordinary circumstances" and vote against the Byrd option, allowing judicial filibusters to continue? Or will they inform Bush that they plan to do so -- pushing him to nominate someone like Alberto Gonzales instead? I'm not sanguine about the possibilities.

Hugh made another prediction -- well, more accurately, he proposed this as a possibility and asked whether the Rebel Alliance would accept a measure of responsibility if it happened. AP raises the same issue; are they reading Hugh's blog?

On Nov. 30, the court will hear arguments on New Hampshire's parental notification law for abortion, which a lower court said is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception allowing a minor to have an abortion to protect her health. O'Connor has been expected to vote to strike down the law. That case also could determine the legal standard for challenges to other states' abortion laws.

Also in late November the court may decide whether it will hear the Bush administration's appeal of a 2003 federal law that bans the type of late-term operation known as partial-birth abortion. Lower courts have said the law is unconstitutional, because it lacks a health exception.

So if one or both of these cases turns out to be a 5-4 decision to uphold the lower court with Sandra Day O'Connor in the majority -- and if there is at least a pretty good chance that Miers would have voted the other way... then is it unfair to say that it was the anti-Miers opposition that took away parental notification and/or a ban on partial-birth abortion?

(I believe that if the new justice is seated after those cases are heard, he or she cannot participate in the decision... which means the Court may well split 4-4, leaving the lower-court rulings in place. Am I wrong?)

Time will tell... and not very much time at that.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 27, 2005, at the time of 7:23 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Who Are We Fighting For Anyway -- Déjà Vu

Hatched by Dafydd

In Lizard's Tongue number 3, I asked the question "who are we fighting for anyway?" If America is the champion of liberty everywhere but guardian only of our own, then why are we fighting in such far-flung lands as Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia, the Horn of Africa -- and the Philippines?

My answer is the same as President Bush's: because if there ever was a time when we could retire behind the walls of Fortress America, counting on the two oceans to more or less protect us from attack, that era vanished in a blaze of bombings more than thirty years ago.

And today, we see just what the president meant by that. In Suspected Muslim Militants Caught in Philippines, from AP via FoxNews.com, we learn that seven Islamic terrorist converts were just captured in Zamboanga City, at the tip of the Zamboanga penninsula (south) on the island of Mindanao. This is an area of the Philippines that has seen almost continuous battles for a number of years between the terrorist groups Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (both affilliated with al-Qaeda) on one side and the Philippine Marines and American forces on the other. (The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, MILF, is another Islamic terrorist organization based in Mindanao; but it's currently in peace talks with the Philippine government in Manilla. It does, however, give save haven to members of Abu Sayyaf and JI, from which they can strike against targets across the South Pacific.)

The group whose leader and six other members were just captured, the Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement, is small compared to the two above; but it is also linked to both of them and to al-Qaeda as well. In fact, Philippine authorities on terrorism believe Rajah Solaiman was deliberately recruited and trained by Abu Sayyaf in order to take the terrorist campaign to new level... because the leader of Rajah Solaiman, Hilarion del Rosario Santos III, and most of his followers are Christians who converted to Islam, presumably in order to join the jihad.

This is truly bizarre. They are not Arabs, of course; they are not even natively Islamic. Why on earth would people convert to a religion and immediately begin planting bombs and massacring the innocent in the name of that religion? This indicates that the appeal of lawlessness to the hopeless spans culture and religion: militant Islamism has become the "lingua franca" of barbarity. Anybody or any group with a grievance and smouldering hatred can convert to Islam and receive an immediate terrorism indulgence.

Here is more on Rajah Solaiman from Newsweek International Edition from May 2005:

[Wally] Villanueva calmly entered the office of Norberto Gonzales, national-security adviser to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and in the presence of a NEWSWEEK reporter, surrendered himself.

The nondescript young man, it turns out, was a radical Muslim convert, one of dozens wanted on an arrest warrant in connection to deadly terrorist attacks and recently planned bombings in the Philippines. Filipino authorities hope his ongoing interrogation will reveal the whereabouts of other converts believed to be lurking in Manila, waiting to strike. "This is a bigger threat [than past terrorist plots]," says one official from the government's new antiterrorism task force. "Muslim converts are now one of the strategies that [terrorist groups] like to employ." [Emphasis added]

...

Abu Sayyaf, which dates back to the early 1990s, has promoted its goal of a Muslim state through repeated terrorist attacks and kidnappings. But a previously little-known Islamic group called the Rajah Solaiman Movement, whose membership consists of Filipino Christians who have converted to Islam, is now one of the top worries for the country's intelligence services.

Filipino authorities say the group's members have been trained, financed and directed by Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terrorist group with links to Al Qaeda, for at least two years. They claim the movement has dispatched dozens of its operatives to Manila to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.

The AP story makes clear the American military implications of this arrest:

Santos' group allegedly hid about 1,322 pounds of explosives, including TNT, that the military seized in a hideout in Manila's Fairview residential district in March. Soldiers arrested a brother of Santos in connection with the seizure, military officials said.

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said the explosives appeared to be intended for a 2,204-pound truck bomb that militants planned to use against the U.S. Embassy. That plot, along with other planned bombings by the group in the capital, was foiled with the seizure of the explosives, he said. [Emphasis added]

This is exactly why "Fortress America" cannot work. There simply is no way to tell whether someone entering the United States is a Filipino Christian -- or a recent convert to militant Islamism bent on jihad. Unless we have a workable plan to hermetically seal-off our borders (including all 12,000 miles of coastline), we cannot rely upon stopping these demonically possessed, sociopathic, "ticking time bombs" at the border. Unless we are forward-deployed, disrupting their plans at the source, we will lose this war.

That is why it is so vital to keep the reins of government out of the hand of the unserious, such as Howard Dean, John Kerry, or even Hillary Clinton, for all that she talks a great fight. Certainly, neither she nor her husband had any plan for aggressively assailing these terrorist groups in their heartland... so instead, we had to deal with them in ours.

It was there in the Philippines that the first glimmerings of the 9/11 attacks were planned. From Robert D. Kaplan's essential Imperial Grunts, about America's forever-war with terrorism around the globe:

It was in Afghanistan that AbuSayyaf's founders, Abduajak Janjalani and Abdul Murad, befriended Mohammed Jamal Khalifa -- Osama bin Laden's brouther-in-law -- and Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In 1995 in Manila, Abdul Murad and Ramzi Yousef planned an attack on Pope John Paul II during the pontiff's upcoming visit to the Phiippines.

Following a fire that erupted as they were mixing explosives, Murad was captured; the Philippine security services are believed to have tortured him.

Murad gave Philippine investigators the password to his computer that was recovered from the burned-out apartment. On the hard disk they found the details of several terrorist plots, including one to use eleven jetliners to crash into CIA headquartes and other prominent buildings in Washington and New York. [Emphasis added]

It was this plot, hatched in Manila, that evolved into the most horrific act of terrorism ever committed on American soil.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 27, 2005, at the time of 6:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 26, 2005

Waiting for Anita

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Wo will step forward to be the conservative "Anita Hill?"

Fourteen years ago, a specter was haunting Liberal-land... the specter of Clarence Thomas. A conservative black man was nominated to the Supreme Court, and this was anathema to the plantation politics of the Left.

Worse, they could not bork him the way they had borked Bork: he made manifestly absurd claims -- for example, that he had never thought about Roe v. Wade or discussed it with anyone -- but nobody forthcame to credibly dispute him. The liberals, led by Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), had thrown every negative thing they could find at Thomas, "cherry"-picking the worst statements they could wrench out of context and hit him over the head with, but he had survived, albeit with a split 7-7 vote out of the Judiciary Committee. It was clear that notwithstanding the Democratic majority, the full Senate was going to confirm him. The Democrats were faced with a crisis: something had to be done, and fast.

As David Brock ably demonstrated in the Real Anita Hill -- before he went mad -- frantic liberals recruited a young lawyer who had worked for Thomas, Anita Hill, to make a false charge of sexual harassment. Realizing the flimsiness and absurdity of the charge, they first tried to get Thomas to withdraw; failing that, they tried to float the charge anonymously, hoping to derail Thomas's approval without ever having to reveal the weakness of their hand.

When he refused to withdraw, his nomination was wrenched back to the J-Com for hearings, chaired by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). Senators, including some Democrats, refused to reject him on secret "evidence" without giving him a chance to rebut. At that point, having no alternative, the "shadow Senate" -- a gaggle of left-liberal luminaries and interest groups, including Nan Aron (Alliance for Justice), Kate Michelman (NARAL), Ralph Neas (Leadership Conference on Civil Rights), Judith Lichtman (Women's Legal Defense Fund), Molly Yard and Eleanor Smeal (NOW), Art Kropp and Melanne Verveer (People for the American Way), Benjamin Hooks (NAACP), and Nina Totenberg (NPR) -- and Hill's friend "Judge" Susan Hoerchner prevailed upon Hill to go public.

Hill seemed frightened when called to testify... as well she might be. She was followed by a parade of witnesses that refuted virtually every particular of her claims except those for which there were no witnesses but Hill and Thomas. In the end, the vicious slander melted away in the harsh light of cross examination (mostly by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT). The enemies of Thomas could not keep him off the Court, but the could damage him: the final Senate vote was a bare 52 to 48, the closest judicial confirmation vote of the twentieth century.

Flash forward to today. Today we have another nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers -- and a different "shadow Senate" equally desperate to stop her... but this time made up of "judicially conservative" pundits, writers, and bloggers, dubbed the Rebel Alliance in Captain Ed's nomenclature. As in the case above, they have thrown everything they could find at her, seizing upon every carefully elided innuendo and artfully worded smear, whether from the Washington Post, the New York Times, or even Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), opiners that on any other issue, these conservative Rebels would utterly scorn. And as with the Thomas case, despite misgivings, no Republican senator has publicly said he will vote against Miers or even that he is leaning that way.

Curiously, and unlike the previous case, the Rebels seem very concerned that Miers be forced out before she even has her confirmation hearings. David Frum just argued on Hugh Hewitt's show that he believes that if she goes to hearings, it will become "obvious" that she is unfit to serve on the Court... in which case, one wonders, why not wait for just that to eventuate? It's hard not to conclude that they're less worried about her doing badly than about her doing much better than expected. Hence they want to force her out beforehand, without giving her a forum to respond. This, then, is precisely analogous to the first moves to force Thomas out without allowing him to confront his accuser.

This is likely to fail; the president is not going to withdraw Miers prior to her hearings. So the next question is whether Republican senators will turn on her. They may; I expect the top Rebels will be funneling bork-worthy smears to senators they hope will be predisposed to reject her. But President Bush may well prevail, and we may be facing a looming J-Com vote where it is clear that Miers has the votes to be recommended, as well as the votes on the floor to confirm.

Now....

That is the moment I await: I want to know... who will be the conservative "Anita Hill" to step forward with some explosive, un-disprovable charge? What form will the charge take? Will the accuser attempt to make the charge anonymously? And will the majority Republicans prove as just as a handful of the majority Democrats did in 1991, voting for Thomas when they could have simply borked him?

I worry about the Rebel Alliance. They have worked themselves into such a frenzy, that it would not be beyond belief were they to decide that stopping Harriet Miers was so important, it justified any means necessary to do so. A new "Anita Hill" is not beyond my imagination.

I hope it doesn't happen; I hope the Rebels rebel against the inevitable suggestion, refusing to sink to the level of the "shadow Senate" of 1991. I like these people; I'm friends with several of them, and I hate having to worry just how far they're willing to go.

But I'm just not sure; and that is what saddens me most.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 26, 2005, at the time of 5:03 PM | Comments (35) | TrackBack

What Is Truth?

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I don't know... how about simply saying things that are accurate to the best of your knowledge?

UPDATED: See below!

The New York Times is once again trying to pick a fight with the White House over an absurdity. Here is the setup:

While not commenting on the report about Mr. Libby's conversation with Mr. Cheney [where the vice president is alleged to have told Libby that "Mrs. Wilson" suggested her husband for the mission], the White House took issue with suggestions that Mr. Cheney had not been truthful several months later in a television interview when he said he did not know Mr. Wilson and did not know who had sent him on his mission.

Asked whether Mr. Cheney always told the truth to the American people, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, answered, "Yes."

At issue were remarks by Mr. Cheney in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, 2003. In response to a question about Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cheney said: "I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when I came back."

Mr. Cheney later added, "I don't know Joe Wilson," and said he had "no idea who hired him."

The point the Times makes obliquely, but which is being charged explicitly in the lefty blogs, is that there is a contradiction between Cheney saying he has "no idea who hired" Joe Wilson -- and Libby's notes, which indicate Cheney knew that Wilson was suggested by his wife, "Mrs. Wilson," for the mission to Niger. This is "teen logic" at its worst!

Here, I can settle this whole thing for the country right now. When I went to work for FileNet, I recommended they also hire my friend and former Ashton-Tate co-worker, George.

I suggested George, but I did not hire him; I was just a worker bee. The manager of our division, Mike, hired George.

Valerie Plame was a peon at the CIA. She had no authority to hire anyone, especially not her own husband. She suggested Joseph Wilson, but somebody else actually made the decision to send a know-nothing ex-ambassador to inquire whether Saddam Hussein tried to acquire yellowcake. Nobody seems to know who that "somebody else" was -- not Dick Cheney, and not the Times. And the only thing that Cheney "knew" about Joe Wilson was what George Tenet told him: that Wilson was the guy who was sent to Niger.

'Nuff said?

UPDATE: I think I've read eight MSM stories about this case in the last twenty-four hours... and not one, single story has so far mentioned the most salient feature of this case: that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence determined that Joseph Wilson lied in his teeth about what he found in Niger. Not a single story has noted that he actually found that Iraq had likely tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger, and that Wilson's carefully orchestrated series of leaks to various reporters was a campaign of falsehoods -- capped by Wilson's own mendacious op-ed in the New York Times.

So, Mr. Wilson -- what is truth... to you?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 26, 2005, at the time of 4:33 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Who Are We Fighting For Anyway? The Lizard's Tongue 3

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I found occasion in the previous post to quote from Major E., a frequent corresponder on Power Line... and it struck me that the question in the title above demands an answer: who are we fighting for in Iraq?

I hope those reading this will make the connection between the sacrifice of the troops and the ever-expanding freedom of the Iraqi people.... Every American deserves to know that the sacrifice made on the streets of Fallujah by US servicemembers last year is what made possible last week the jubilant dancing of Iraqis waving their ink-stained fingers after they had cast the first vote of their lives. The Iraqi people know and appreciate what we have done for them, and I hope that the American people will come to know it more and more as well.

Are we fighting for good of the Iraqis? Should we demand appreciation? Do they owe us a debt they can never repay? Or are we really fighting for ourselves, our own land, our own people?

There is an old saying that America is the champion of freedom everywhere but guardian only of our own. The thought might occur to many that we seem to be guarding the freedom of an awful lot of other people lately -- should we be? Are the neocons right that it's in America's interest, or should we listen to the paleocons who want us to withdraw our troops from all these "foreign entanglements" and just defend the dadblamed country?

For a long time, George W. Bush was simply not making the case. I reckon it seemed so obvious to him that he didn't realize that lots of folks may agree that freedom is good but just plain disagree that the United States is reponsible for dispensing it. But lately, he has done a much more conscientious job of defending his position; and it's time for us to really start to listen. Even when the president's strategery is being misunderestimated, he really does make a whole lot of sense.

I thought to write a post to delve more deeply into the president's argument; but it turned out to be too long for a blog post. So instead, it has become the third instance of the Lizard's Tongue column.

Hence, to see what sense we may make of the grand strategy of George W. Bush, read on to the Lizard's Tongue, o wise!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 26, 2005, at the time of 4:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 25, 2005

Fightin' Room With a (New) View

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Scott at Power Line has much more on the attempted attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad; their frequent correspondent Major E. has an eyewitness account, and he states that it was clearly a failed attempt at a much larger and more sinister operation than merely setting off some bombs:

The number of terrorists involved and the follow-on small arms attacks make it clear that the overall goal was to use suicide vehicle bombs to breach the security perimeter, then take over the hotel and hold the international guests as hostages. Instead, they failed to achieve those objectives and the attackers were killed.

(SmallTownVeteran is also on top of this story.)

Yes, this wasn't just a failed terrorist attack: it was an attempt to pull off another Beslan Massacre, except instead of children, the hostages would be a bunch of journalists (no jokes, please).

Major E. has a truly insightful pair of paragraphs about the dilemma the Commander-in-Chief faces trying to get more public support for the war (emphasis mine):

Many Americans seem to know the bad news from last year, but not the good news from last week. While I am glad that the public knows that many gave life and limb for Fallujah, I am saddened that so few know the incredibly positive result of that sacrifice. There is so much good happening in Iraq in terms of rebuilding the society and offering the people the priceless opportunity of freedom and democracy, yet so little of the good is being reported in the media. I hope those reading this will make the connection between the sacrifice of the troops and the ever-expanding freedom of the Iraqi people.

Every American deserves to know that the sacrifice made on the streets of Fallujah by US servicemembers last year is what made possible last week the jubilant dancing of Iraqis waving their ink-stained fingers after they had cast the first vote of their lives. The Iraqi people know and appreciate what we have done for them, and I hope that the American people will come to know it more and more as well.

All this by way of introduction to my next post....

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 7:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Great News for Iraq...

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...But not-so-great for my petty, vainglorious self: I missed my prediction by one province!

From AP via Fox News:

Iraq's Constitution is Adopted
Tuesday, October 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's landmark constitutional was adopted by a majority of voters during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, election officials said Tuesday.

Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission (search) of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.

The commission, which had been auditing the referendum results for 10 days, said at a news conference in Baghdad (search) that Ninevah province, had produced a "no" vote of only 55 percent.

The New York Times has some more. Don't forget the new deal they have, where you have to suffer through an advert on your way to the story. Just click the "skip" button in the upper right corner. ( Why can't the ads hide behind the firewall along with the "premium" columnists?)

Alas for me, I had predicted that only one province would muster the necessary two-thirds to reject; Salahaddin messed me up -- but next-door Ninevah saved the day for Iraq.

Still, I had been confident throughout that the Sunni would not get their three; and on that prediction, I was correct. (Shoulda quit while I was ahead... but that doesn't suit my cheerful, optimistic nature!)

A great day for Iraq, and since I had no money riding on my prediction, I'll laugh it off and say a great day for me, too!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 5:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Son of Secret Polling Man

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Omar at Iraq the Model has also blogged about that "secret military poll" reported in the Telegraph. He comes to pretty much the same conclusions as we while adding a caveat that only a local would know...

And by the way, I almost forgot to tell you this; when Iraqis are performing a poll they tend to do so while trying to keep as low a profile as possible for concerns about being misidentified as spies or intelligence gatherers for the coalition, the terrorists or even the government so they try to interview the first person they meet and think is safe to interview forgetting about all the known standards and requirements of correct sample choosing. This alone is enough to weaken the validity of the poll results.

Bottom line, I will personally ignore the results as a whole as I think it cannot add anything of value to a view of the situation here in Iraq, which is a shame, as it might have done so, had they framed the questions in a more scientific manner. I tend to recommend that you not take it seriously as well for these reasons.

Iraq the Model -- which we have blogrolled on the starboard side of your Big Lizards window -- is Sachi's favorite Iraq blog (and she reads four or five Iraqi blogs every day).

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 3:48 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Great Debate on the Fate of the State

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It ain't too late!

Daniel Weintraub live-blogs the debate last night in Walnut Creek (just across the bay from San Francisco) between legislative Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They each bobbed and weaved and managed to slip many audience jabs; but in the end, voter information was inadvertently generated -- to the advantage of the Governator, in Weintraub's expert scoring.

Start here, then just keep reading and clicking the "forward" links (the ones that include ">>") until you get to the post titled My take.

Lotsa fun and laffs!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 3:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NOW Will Ya Gimmie Some Fightin' Room?

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Uh oh, Zarqawi's in for it now. The mainstream media thirsts for his blood.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Suicide bombers including one in a cement truck packed with explosives launched a dramatic attack Monday against the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, sending up a giant cloud of smoke and debris over central Baghdad. American troops and journalists escaped without serious injury but at least a half-dozen passers-by were killed....

The cement truck was the last of three vehicles trying to break through the wall outside the hotel. The first car drove up to the wall and exploded, blasting out a section of the concrete. According to the U.S. military, the second car was headed for the fresh breach in the wall but exploded near the 14th Ramadan Mosque when it was engaged by civilian security forces.

Within minutes, the truck made it through the breach but apparently became stuck on a road between the Palestine and the neighboring Sheraton hotel. The truck rocked back and forth and then blew up after a U.S. soldier opened fire on it. Had the truck traveled 20 or 30 yards farther and blown up at the hotel entrance, it could have killed many people inside the Palestine.

So after "a U.S. soldier" saved the lives of countless precious and vital journalists in the Palestine Hotel, do you think they'll start cutting the troops some slack on the endlessly manufactured torture/murder/stealing-Iraqi-oil stories? Or will this be another case of "no good deed goes unpunished?"

For some perverse reason, I'm fascinated by the description of the journalists inside the hotel:

There was minor damage to the hotel, which was last hit in an insurgent rocket attack on Oct. 7, 2004. Moments before the second blast, journalists, photographers and technicians were walking up and down hazy corridors in a state of confusion, urging each other to remain calm, put on flak jackets, and to stay away from windows. Thicker clouds of smoke filled the far end of one hallway, with many people coughing and waving their hands.

The second explosion shook the building momentarily. Confusion and panic again set in, with those inside debating whether to exit, but all eventually deciding to stay in the corridor and sit propped against walls, most in flak jackets. Sounds resembling gunshots could be heard outside.

Strips of floorboards were strewn about and air vents were blown in.

"The impact pushed us forward in our chairs," he said.

He noted that the journalists at the Palestine often can hear the distant blast of other attacks. "But I've never felt blasts as strong or as loud as the ones Monday," [AP journalist Thomas] Wagner said.

Did I misread? Is Wagner actually shocked that blasts right next to his location are louder and stronger than distant blasts? All right; so now he knows what the soldiers and Marines must go through every day. What will he do with that information? Will it change how he and his cohorts report the war?

Our newfound allies will surely fight like demons, swinging their cameras and flinging 3/4-inch tape cassettes at future terrorists.

"These appalling attacks are fresh reminders of the myriad dangerous [sic] facing those who continue to report from Iraq," [the Committee to Protect Journalists] Executive Director Ann Cooper said....

"By attacking the Hotel Palestine, which is commonly known to be home to many foreign journalists, those behind this cowardly attack sought to deliberately target the Western media," the press freedom organization [Reporters Without Borders] stated.

We may have entered uncharted waters here: this could be the very first time the press has condemned a suicide bombing in Iraq. The world is topsy-turvy.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 2:53 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 24, 2005

I Support the Miers Nomination

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All right, I suppose I don't mind joining the bear's newest blog survey. Here you go:

I support the Miers nomination.

...With caveats and pending her performance in the hearing. Actually, the real reason I'm participating is that I'm vey curious to see whether her confirmation hearing changes any minds -- and in which direction! I hope NZBear has the wisdom to rerun his scavenger-bot after the hearing is over and see how things have shifted, one way or another. If at all.

So here's my vote, and we'll see what happens.

(Note, this post took six minutes from soup to baklava... but that doesn't quite break my speed record for putting up a post!)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2005, at the time of 4:24 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

And How Are You, Mr. Wilson?

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I am remiss in posting this; Scott from Power Line had this up more than a week ago!

But it's worth noting: the best timeline of the Plame-name blame-game imbroglio is by (no surprise) Stephen Hayes, writing in the Weekly Standard: "The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons".

Note that the "unuseful idiot" of the category is creepy liar Joseph Wilson -- not Stephen F. Hayes!

Read it and shriek.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2005, at the time of 4:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Gen. Pace: Thirty-Nine Iraqi Battalions "In the Lead"

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U.S. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was just this moment a guest on the Hugh Hewitt show, with Jed Babbin (of NRO fame) sitting in for Hugh. Gen. Pace dropped a rather stunning bombshell.

Babbin asked Gen. Pace for an assessment of the Iraqi fighting forces, and the chairman made the following points:

There are now over 200,000 Iraqis either in the Iraqi army or the Iraqi police forces.
There are over 100 battalions of Iraqi army now considered battle-ready; Gen. Pace said he believed it was actually 117 battalions (which matches other reporting).
And in breaking news, the chairman stated that fully one-third of these battalions are already "in the lead" in fighting the terrorists. The other two-thirds are fighting alongside American troops but not yet ready to assume the lead.

Assuming that last figure is correct, that would mean at least thirty-three Iraqi battalions and as many as thirty-nine battalions of the Iraqi army (as many as 39,000 men) are actually taking the lead in fighting for their own country. This is incredibly good news... and even though Sachi is traveling, it deserves to be reported.

I doubt I'll be able to scoop the MilBlogs (some of which you can see blogrolled to the right) -- they probably got this same information weeks ago during one of their weekly breakfast briefings with Gen. Pace -- but at least I have the forlorn hope of scooping Prof. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit!

(I will of course scoop the MSM with this good news... but that would still be true if I sat on it until Shrove Tuesday.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2005, at the time of 3:44 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

While You Were Goofing Off...

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I see that Patterico has reinvigorated his own recap of the weekend's posts, This Weekend On Patterico.... doubtless because he was inspired by me. Few people know this, but I was the one who suggested the idea to him in the first place; even fewer are aware that it was I who took him in as a poor, orphaned child, removing him from the terrible environment of the workhouse (where he was terrorizing all the other kids), and persuaded him to go to law school. I was grooming him to be the next White House Counsel, stepping stone to the Supreme Court, but he decided to go into the DA's office instead; ah, the rebelliousness of youth!

But that's all spoiled water over the bridge. The important thing is that there were five posts on Big Lizards this weekend that you might enjoy reading (and bitterly disputing):

Saturday, October 22th, 2005

The 800 Pound Gorelick, in which I discuss -- but ultimately cannot endorse -- Rep. Curt Weldon's newest claim, that the Able Danger revelations were kept from the 9/11 Commission by "the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick."

Zarqawi's Golden Parachute, in which Sachi and I speculate rampantly that the real reason Musab Zarqawi is creating a "network" of terrorists "across almost 40 countries" is that he has decided that he may soon be ousted from Iraq, and he's preparing various bolt holes to flee to when that happens.

Sunday, October 23th, 2005

US kills 20 Terrorists in Western Iraq, a rather blunt and straightforward title for a post in which Sachi conveys more good news in the global war on terrorism, the GWOT.

Secret Polling Man, in which I draw your attention to a bizarre and inexplicable "secret military poll," funded by Great Britain's Ministry of Defence and conducted by "an Iraqi university research team" (otherwise unnamed for "security reasons"), which purports to show that nearly half of Iraqis support "suicide attacks" against Coalition forces, and "fewer than one per cent" think Coalition troops help the security of the country.

Finally, in the most controversial post in the bunch, George Will: the Old Maid in the Popcorn Bag, I use Will's own prolix style to argue that the famed columnist has long since jumped the shark -- if unpopped kernals can jump over Plagiostomi -- and become increasingly shrill, embittered, and offensive.

And that's the truth, the hole truth, the truth-laid bear, and the truth fairy.

(Note: except for TTLB, which stubbornly insists upon ranking sleek, scaley reptiles lower than those hairy, milk-bearing mammals -- hiss! -- I have no idea what any of these websites are, and I certainly don't endorse them -- again, except for TTLB, which, except for the caveat noted above, is coolness. I just thought it kind of interesting that each was a domain name for some web site.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2005, at the time of 2:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

MPM From the MSM

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Misinformation per minute from the mainstream media, that is. AP has an incredible story up -- with the word "incredible" meant literally: it's hard to count the number of misstatements, malicious manglings, myopic maunderings, and just plain mental missteps. If the author's name were not "Nancy Benac," I would assume Paul Krugman wrote it. (Maybe he has a secret identity.)

Let me just run through a few; but you really should read the original, lest I spoil the best parts.

NOTE: Bulleted points are quotations from the Benac story.

CIA officials asked [Joe Wilson] to travel to Africa in February 2002 to check out a report that Niger sold uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson quickly concluded the report was bogus. (Documents related to the purported sale later were exposed as a forgery.)

Actually, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Wilson quietly concluded the opposite... at least, that is what he told his CIA handlers. I'm sure that was just an honest mistake from Ms. Benac, who is an honorable woman. They are all honorable men (and women) at the Associated Press.

Clifford May is the man-on-the-spot at the National Review to debunk this first set of -- misunderstandings (for Nancy Benac is an honorable woman). (And a tip of the hat to Power Line for the link.) From July 12th, 2004:

First:

Ironically, Senate investigators found that at least some of what Wilson told his CIA briefer not only failed to persuade the agency that there was nothing to reports of Niger-Iraq link — his information actually created additional suspicion.

A former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, told Wilson that in June 1999, a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations." Mayaki, knowing how few commodities for export are produced by impoverished Niger [basically just yellowcake and animal hides --DaH], interpreted that to mean that Saddam was seeking uranium.

Second:

Yes, there were fake documents relating to Niger-Iraq sales. But no, those forgeries were not the evidence that convinced British intelligence that Saddam may have been shopping for "yellowcake" uranium. On the contrary, according to some intelligence sources, the forgery was planted in order to be discovered — as a ruse to discredit the story of a Niger-Iraq link, to persuade people there were no grounds for the charge. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm.

But that's not all. The Butler report, yet another British government inquiry, also is expected to conclude this week that British intelligence was correct to say that Saddam sought uranium from Niger. [And so it did. --DaH]

The Times' Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days before sharing with the grand jury what she knew. After [I. Lewis "Scooter"] Libby personally assured her that he had waived her pledge of confidentiality, Miller told the grand jury about three conversations with him.

In fact, Libby had "waived her pledge of confidentiality" a year before she reported to la calabooza. If she were in any doubt about his seriousness, she had only to pick up the phone and call him or have her attorney do so. Whatever is the reason for her curious decision to don prison gray, like Joan of Arc, and suffer for the cause -- and speculation is delicious -- it was not uncertainty whether Libby had really, truly, actually waived confidentiality when he signed a document waiving confidentiality.

I'm sure that Nancy Benac knew all this and simply thought it too tedious to bring up, for they are all honorable men. Women. Whatever.

One important question is what Bush and Cheney might do if top aides like Rove or Libby are found to have been the leakers. Bush initially pledged to fire any leakers but later gave himself more wiggle room by promising to fire anyone who is found to have committed a crime.

This is pure invention from the MSM, though certes, they are all honorable. Nobody has found any quotation from Bush where he said he would "fire any leakers," or fire anyone who spoke to reporters about Mrs. Wilson, or any other such prejudicial nonsense.

This all stems from a reporter who started asking a question of the president at a press conference. I don't recall the exact wording, but he said as preamble that Bush had promised to fire any leakers, and did he still stand by that pledge.

President Bush tried to answer, but the reporter kept talking, forcing the president to repeat his answer. In a move eerily presaging what was done later to Laura Bush to falsely make it appear as though she were calling Miers critics "sexists," the reporter seized upon the word "yes" that began Bush's answer -- and clearly referred to another point of the question -- to claim that Bush had therefore agreed with the reporter's premise that Bush earlier said he would fire any leakers... notwithstanding the fact that Bush had said no such thing.

Note how this asinine claim has progressed: nobody can find an original quotation of Bush saying he would "fire any leakers;" so the reporter's premise, at least as publicly provable, was factually wrong. But by tacking it onto a question that would certainly draw a "Yes" response (Bush responding that no one convicted of a crime in this affair would have a place in his administration), the reporter could later claim that Bush had retroactively made the reporter's false premise true!

And after that bit of legerdemain, all the news media may take it as read that "Bush initially pledged to fire any leakers." See how easy that was? Though we must absolve Ms. Benac of blame, for she is an honorable woman.

In a way, the whole Wilson saga can be traced back to Cheney and Bush. It was Cheney's interest in the alleged Iraq-Niger deal that led the CIA to dispatch Wilson to Africa.

Well, so sayeth Mr. Wilson. He claims that:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report.

But Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Advisor and now Secretary of State, and a hot tomato in both positions, begs to demur. From a CNN transcript of an interview with Wolf Blitzer, posted by JustOneMinute a couple of years ago:

BLITZER: Who sent [Wilson]?

RICE: Well, it was certainly not a level that had anything to do with the White House, and I do not believe at a level that had anything to do with the leadership of the CIA.

BLITZER: Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.

RICE: No, this is simply not true, and this is something that's been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out.

The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger. The vice president did not know. I don't think he knew who Joe Wilson was, and he certainly didn't know that he was going.

It's still possible that the CIA simply misled poor Joe Wilson into thinking the VP really wanted to know; but if so, why would they send a retired ambassador with no expertise in either Iraq or WMD, no experience as an investigator, and who did not even work for the Company? Heck, they could at least have sent the man's wife instead. In any event, official denials of the administration should disallow AP -- for they are all honorable, all honorable persons -- from stating as fact what is still in dispute.

And it [was] Bush's use of the debunked claim in his State of the Union address that led Wilson to publish his doubts.

Just in case you missed it the first time; for being honorable men, they could not do otherwise than to remind you. And women... honorable women.

I'm afraid I have spoilt it for you after all, those intrepid few who read to the end of this post. But don't fret: I'm sure these honorable persons, variously male and female, will give us another incredible story to digest tomorrow!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2005, at the time of 2:06 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 23, 2005

George Will: the Old Maid in the Popcorn Bag

Hatched by Dafydd

Those of us who support the nomination of Harriet Miers (even reluctantly) were warned repeatedly that we would be devastated, blown away, and inundated by the Noahide deluge of Hurricane Gamma, George Will's unanswerable final whirlwind of rhetorical devastation of Harriet Miers. Instead, all we got was a spritz of seltzer down our pants.

Will's meticulous retailing of yawn-inducing epithets ("perfect perversity," "discredits," "degrades," "justifications," "deficit of constitutional understanding," "gross misunderstanding of conservatism," and "persons masquerading as its defenders" -- all from the first paragraph!); his hand-waving dismissal of counterargument (his entire final paragraph -- see below); the by now comical snobbery ("crude people"), looking down a sharpened beak at the ants crawling about his Ozymandian feet; all this does surely leave me breathless... but with an amazed sense of loss, not cowed submission.

Lately, Christopher Hitchens has turned into the most articulate defender of the global war on terrorism in the administration. Well actually, outside the administration; but he may as well be a presidential spokesman. Hitchens' denunciations of the Left's politics of bending over coupled with their moist invective of personal destruction -- which now takes the place of any attempt at rational debate of the war, its history, purpose, and effect -- has made him, much to his discomfort, the Cassandra of the death of Socialism as a serious force in world affairs: he sees where his beloved Left is headed and what is going to happen, but he cannot get them to beware of Moslems bearing rifts. No more eloquent spokesman for the conservative virtues of liberal western democracy now exists than Chris Hitchens, which must drive the poor man mad.

Did space aliens sneak down and switch the souls of the two polemicists, Will and Hitchens?

I rummaged through George Will's column looking for the big pop; instead, I'm holding just an old maid in my hand: the kernel is barely cracked, just enough to release its meagre store of steam, not enough to burst open and rattle the pot with its noise. The cherry bomb that fizzled. One of my mother's sneezes, where she gasps for air, teary eyes as wide as millstones; she flaps her arms and turns fire-engine red -- then nothing more than the squeak of a deferential churchmouse.

Oh, I cannot stand it. Let's jump right into some of Will's incisive invective.

Such is the perfect perversity of the nomination of Harriet Miers, it discredits, and even degrades, all who toil at justifying it.... Other arguments betray a gross misunderstanding of conservatism on the part of persons masquerading as its defenders.

Miers' advocates, sensing the poverty of other possibilities, began by cynically calling her critics sexist snobs who disdain women with less than Ivy League degrees.

Practically the first words out of Will's pen betray the very quality of discrimination that has served him so admirably for so long... until now, in his dotage. Which "Miers' advocates" would those be? Anyone in particular? In this case, a careful study of the record reveals that these advocates consist of Ed Gillespie -- assuming one is willing to look at a cap gun and call it a Howitzer. Will bravely shoulders that duty: so Gillespie said (according to Will) not only that "her critics" (all of them?) were "sexist" but that they were "snobs" as well.

Did Gillespie say "snobs?" Did anyone? I'm certain someone must have... and in the new world of Will's rhetorical cannonade, that is enough; what was said by one was said by all.

No longer can Will discriminate between one charge (sexism) and another (snobbery), or even between one man and another. Would collectivism be one of those new understandings of conservatism of which Will rises in defense? Alas, in George Will's case, this may not represent degeneracy: a man who calls himself a "Tory" can hardly claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan, or any other American conservative, can he? He rises and falls with the collectivist nature of Europeanism, where even parties on the right see people only as ordinals, never cardinals.

The sharpest piece of recent political dissection I have read is William F. Buckley, jr.'s "In Search of Anti-Semitism," the lengthy essay that underpinned the all-antisemitism issue of the National Review. In the essay, Buckley managed to disciminate between Joe Sobran, whose anti-Zionism, Buckley concluded, had metastasized into full-bore antisemitism -- and Patrick J. Buchanan, who Buckley absolved of that sin (at that time; revisiting, he might come to a different conclusion today). That is, Bill Buckley treated the two as individuals, not as representatives of some class of people.

The latter precisely describes Will's entire sloppy column; it is "Crown Heights" reasoning, named after the infamous New York pogrom: when a car in the motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson ran a red light in Crown Heights, New York City, striking and killing a seven year old black child named Gavin Cato, a mob of black residents, vowing retaliation, went and found the nearest Jews they could and assaulted them. Two men were murdered: Yankel Rosenbaum, for being Jewish -- and Anthony Graziosi, for looking Jewish. It mattered not to the rioters who actually drove the car or whether the collision was intentional; one Jew (or bearded man in black) was the same as any other, and intentions are always irrelevant in tribalist warfare.

Thus, if Ed Gillespie says something that can be interpreted as tarring all critics, including conservative ones, with the brush of sexism or elitism, it is right and proper to today's George F. Will to lash out in retaliation against all "advocates" of Miss Miers' nomination (that is, advocates of waiting to hear what the woman has to say in the hearings). We are all "degrade[d]," we are all guilty of Gillespie's sin, all including Hugh Hewitt and Bill Dyer and Dafydd ab Hugh -- regardless whether Gillespie even meant what Will inferred; intentions are irrelevant to Will.

(But not to Amy Ridenour. Displaying a willingness to listen that eludes Prince George, she writes:

(I just received a gracious phone call -- especially considering what I have been writing -- from Ed Gillespie. He made a compelling case that he was not referring to conservatives when he referred to some critics of the Harriet Miers nomination with the terms "sexism" and "elitism," but to others who said things that, when he described them, did sound rather sexist and elitist.... I believe him when he says he didn't means us with those words.)

Worse, Will's simplistic denunciation does not even understand the charge -- of which he, more than anyone, is truly guilty. The "elitism" or "snobbery" charge is not that the Rebel Alliance looks down upon Miers because she graduated from Southern Methodist University; the charge is that her critics insist that only a person who is a particular kind of professional legal intellectual qualifies for the Supreme Court. Those who make that argument are fond of analogizing the Court to brain surgery; Charles Krauthammer (another snob) japed on Brit Hume Friday, if you needed brain surgery, would you go to a podiatrist? But the Court was never intended to be the supreme legal university; if judicial conservatives are to be believed, the primary purpose of the Supreme Court is to adjudicate disputes, not churn out postdoctoral dissertations on arcane and occult points of constitutional doctrine.

But I must not spend forever on a couple of sentences (though I could). Here is Will's refined elucidation of Miers advocates as know-nothings:

In their unseemly eagerness to assure Miers' conservative detractors that she will reach the ``right'' results, her advocates betray complete incomprehension of this: Thoughtful conservatives' highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution's meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure. Such conservatives understand that how you get to a result is as important as the result. Indeed, in an important sense, the path the Supreme Court takes to the result often is the result.

By contrast, Miers' advocates (all of them) must understand none of this; I'm sure Will's clarification comes as an eye-opener to Hugh Hewitt, for example. In an earlier piece, Will was more explicit:

[President Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

This is the high-verbal lynching carried to the point of low comedy.

Of course a judge must understand the Constitution; but caselaw (common law) is equally important, including an understanding of contracts, torts, legislation (state and federal), and every other area of the law besides con-law that might pop up in a legal dispute. Nobody is an expert in all; every justice must rely on the writings of specialists (often previous judges that they quote at length... at great length).

But equally, every justice must look within himself to decide where he lands when the experts disagree -- which inevitably is always. Judicial philosophy is indeed important, as judicial conservatives and liberals alike argue; and contrary to Will's later snoot-cocking, I do not consider it "inappropriate" for senators to inquire into the nominee's opinions on past cases to determine her judicial thinking. But the "brain-surgery" analogy is infantile; it paints judging as merely a narrow technical skill, rather than a balancing act of competing verities that collide in the instance of a single set of facts.

Reducing the Court to a gaggle of lecturing professors is not only offensive, it's a blunder. Intellectuals, especially truly clever ones, can talk themselves into anything. There is good reason why so many of the brightest lights of the twentieth century talked themselves into joining the Party -- but Ronald Reagan never did. Room must be made on the Court for a person grounded in sanity and the real world, rather than airy theory and lugubrious rhetoric.

Harriet Miers may very well not be that person; I do not know her -- that is the best argument for the Rebel Alliance, that nobody really knows her but George W. Bush. But Will could drip the same sneer with equal indiscrimination onto anybody who fit the Ronald Reagan profile, not simply Miss Miers: if you are not an effete, egocentric, snide, condescending, etherial, arrogant, elite intellectual -- preferably, one who sports the ridiculous affectation of a bow tie -- then you need not apply for the position, in Will's determination.

His argument is sloppy, ugly, and self-important. But can we really expect more from a man who accepted the twin lures of lucre and the chance to strut and fret on a weekly basis in order to stay on at This Week? Will remained long after all the real journalists had left, throwing in his lot with the limp-brained, talentless, preening, no-count, wriggling, pencil-necked, geeky political hack George Snuffleupagus to carry the torch of David Brinkley forward into the twenty-first century.

This is Will's brave, new world, the tiny pond in which he chooses to shimmer. He holds court in Chevy Chase (not quite in but definitely of the Beltway) -- in the pages of the Washington Post -- on the set at ABC treating a former Clinton campaign operative as his journalistic equal (he is probably right) -- looking down his bespectacled nose at the lower classes, such as evangelical Christians (the "crude people" who resort to the "incense defense" of Harriet Miers) -- and whose favorite political figures are all from Europe... yet he has the chutzpah to pontificate to the rest of us about the nature of conservatism. Will, who never attended law school, lectures us on the duties of those who would interpret the law. He is not a minister, but he incessantly enunciates the Gospel of St. George, in which the only mortal sin is to be "unseemly."

I am astonished that Will did not openly campaign for John Kerry, they are so much alike. Perhaps Will was put off by Kerry's overemphasis on athletics: except for baseball, which Will sees as "contemplative," a form of meditation, perhaps, he seems uncomfortable with exhibitions of manhood.

In the end -- the last paragraph -- Will anticipates that some conservatives (or in my case, anti-liberals) may have the bumptious presumption to disagree with his assessment. He prepares for that eventuality with the classically liberal best defense: the cerebral threat.

As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity [almost as good as seemliness]. Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush's reckless abuse of presidential discretion -- or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such -- can never be considered presidential material.

Well! Who could argue with that?

This column is a sad chapter in the long twilight denouement of George Will's career. I doubt the Rebel Alliance can see its errors; they have long since dropped into a form of tribalism themselves, in which any anti-Miers remark is embraced as a sacrament, even if it comes from Arlen Specter or Patrick Leahy (the new arbiters of conservative judicial competence). Doubtless, the Alliance will seize upon the Will piece to wave as they lurch through the streets, sharpened writing quills in hand, looking for some "Miers advocates" to stab (any will do). See how easy collectivist caracature can be?

And that, too, is sad.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 23, 2005, at the time of 4:41 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

Secret Polling Man

Hatched by Dafydd

Yes, Virginia, there should be a Sanity Clause.

The headline nearly bellows its bias: Secret [Ministry of Defence] poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops. It's enough to make you leap up off your chair, full five feet up and higher.

But the harder we look, the more elusive the actual data... providing a salutory lesson why we demand a great deal of disclosure before taking any poll seriously. This "survey" is less about finding the truth than it is about creating a truth more palatable to the Telegraph than the actual facts on the ground in Iraq: military cooperation -- a rush of new intelligence tips to American troops -- and that minor election a week ago.

In today's Telegraph, this article alleges that a "secret military poll" conducted by "an Iraqi university research team" (otherwise unnamed for "security reasons") on behalf of Great Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) shows a catastrophic collapse in support for Coalition forces, a huge rise in the number of radicalized Iraqis -- a country on the verge of an explosion of violent attacks on British and American forces by ordinary civilians, who now hate our guts:

Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.

You know your poll is in trouble when the results fly in the face not merely of previous polling but of the very actions taken by the people you are attempting to model. In this case, we are asked to believe that "fewer than one per cent" think that Coalition presence helps improve security.

Yet it's pretty clear that the Iraqi Army and police likely think that being trained up to superior fighting units helps security... and if you add up the number of Iraqi military and police who are trained, equipped, and deployed throughout Iraq, you have nearly 200,000, according to MG Rick Lynch, the spokesman for Multi-National Force Iraq:

Between the Iraqi police force and the Iraqi Army for the January elections, there were about 138,000 trained and equipped members of the Iraqi security force. Now the Iraqi police service and the Iraqi Army is over 195,000 trained and equipped and deployed across Iraq.

Add in those who are still being trained and equipped but who are very enthusiastic about their mission and the American trainers, such as the Iraqi mechanized-infantry division that MG Bob Scales (ret) discussed on Brit Hume, which we blogged about here, and you already have over one percent of the Iraqi population without even considering civilians, surely some of whom must support the Coalition. Already, the main claim is dubious -- not a good sign for a survey that somebody -- we're never told who -- demands remain "secret."

Read the Telegraph article and note what they do not tell us: who conducted the survey? Who was surveyed? How many, and how many from each province? What was the margin of error? What were the exact questions? Where did the respondents live? How did the pollster assure a representative sample of Iraqi citizens?

Did they ask about "suicide attacks," or simply "attacks?" The Telegraph article uses both terms almost indistinguishably. What were the conditions of the question about attacks on Coalition forces... was this question in the form "if Coalition forces were to do X, would you then support attacking them?" And if so many Iraqis hate us -- then why do they cooperate so enthusiastically with the security training, intelligence tipping, and constitutional voting that we helped them set up?

Can't the Telegraph give us something? Anything?

Contrast the deafening silence on the entire methodology of this alleged "secret military poll" with the transparency of this poll, conducted by SurveyUSA anent the upcoming special election in California. We blogged it here, because we can be confident of the findings -- since SurveyUSA told us nearly everything we need to know to evaluate or "qualify" the poll itself, as an attorney might say about a witness. And a poll is a sort of witness, as it purports to tell you what people would say if you got them in a room and pumped them full of truth serum.

And what the heck does the Telegraph mean by saying the results were "seen by" the Sunday Telegraph? Did the Ministry of Defence hold up the results and let the reporter, Sean Rayment, glance through the survey? Did he see results, or just a summary? How long was he allowed to look? Did they let him take home a copy? As exactly none of these vital questions were answered, I suspect we can guess what the answers would have been.

A dubious claim does not suddenly become plausible when tarted up by an equally dubious "survey"... especially when we're told nothing about the methodology, when the results fly in the fact of not only previous polling but also the attitudes implied by the increasing level of cooperation we're getting from Iraqi military and civilians (see the previous post, US kills 20 Terrorists in Western Iraq), and the poll itself is allegedly a state secret.

There is a lot less here than meets the eye. Just as a good DA can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, a clever pollster can produce a poll showing anything he wants.

Without a track record for the pollster and full access not only to the survey methods but also a complete list of the questions (in order asked) and raw responses, the "results" reported by the Telegraph are utterly meaningless.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 23, 2005, at the time of 2:57 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

US kills 20 Terrorists in Western Iraq

Hatched by Sachi

On Saturday, American forces conducted a series of raids at the Syrian border. In western Iraq, the Anbar province, 20 terrorists were killed during raids on houses believed to contain foreign al-Qaeda fighters. The U.S. is continuing the offensive, not giving terrorists any breathing space.

A statement said U.S. forces found two large caches of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and bomb making materials, during the raids in the western town of Husayba. It said one insurgent was captured in the operation.

In another raid near Qaim, Coalition forces detained five terrorists and seized a large cache of weapons in an al-Qaeda not-so-safe house. The best news about this good news is how we obtained the intelligence in the first place... from ordinary local Iraqi citizens, who are turning against the foreign al-Qaeda invaders at an astonishing rate:

Intelligence sources and tips from local citizens led coalition forces to the location. Coalition aircraft, using precision guided munitions, destroyed the safe house and weapons cache after coalition forces left the scene.

Elsewhere in Iraq, quick thinking by Iraqi police officers attached to the Khalis Iraqi Police station thwarted a potentially devastating attack on the station.

Shortly after noon, a semitrailer approached the Khalis traffic circle and failed to slow and stop as directed. Guards fired on the vehicle, which then veered to the south. Its payload of explosives detonated when it hit a brick wall, killing a police officer.

A short time later, four mortars were fired at the traffic circle, seriously injuring two children in a nearby field. The children were taken to an Iraqi medical facility for treatment.

As the pace of our offensives increases, more and more foreign fighters have been targeted. This year alone, 376 foreign fighters had been captured and over 400 killed. The Fourth Rail reports:

With an estimated 150 terrorists entering the country monthly, well over half of the year’s total have been killed or captured, an exceedingly high attrition rate. General Lynch also points out that al Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership is often of foreign origin.

Okay, okay: 776 out of 1800 is only 43%, not "well over half." Minor arithmetic errors aside, al-Qaeda’s foreign invaders are clearly losing this war -- "big time."

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 23, 2005, at the time of 12:27 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

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Date ►►► October 29, 2005

The Dog That Didn't Bark

Date ►►► October 28, 2005

Survey Says... Whaddit Say?

What I Don't Get...

The Grand Mulligan

Where To?

Date ►►► October 27, 2005

Double Sourced, Double Trouble

Miers Withdraws From Supreme Court Consideration

Who Are We Fighting For Anyway -- Déjà Vu

Date ►►► October 26, 2005

Waiting for Anita

What Is Truth?

Who Are We Fighting For Anyway? The Lizard's Tongue 3

Date ►►► October 25, 2005

Fightin' Room With a (New) View

Great News for Iraq...

Son of Secret Polling Man

The Great Debate on the Fate of the State

NOW Will Ya Gimmie Some Fightin' Room?

Date ►►► October 24, 2005

More Questions to Ask Harriet Miers

I Support the Miers Nomination

And How Are You, Mr. Wilson?

Gen. Pace: Thirty-Nine Iraqi Battalions "In the Lead"

While You Were Goofing Off...

Saturday, October 22th, 2005

Sunday, October 23th, 2005

MPM From the MSM

Date ►►► October 23, 2005

George Will: the Old Maid in the Popcorn Bag

Secret Polling Man

US kills 20 Terrorists in Western Iraq

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