Woodward Gets Belated Hindsight

The narrative gets starker from Woodward, whose tone in his third book on Bush apparently has scuttled leftward after Bob was flamed about Plame. Gotta keep those fences in repair on both sides and the Henry James-wannabe keeps fact and docudrama balanced tenuously in his new book, which I'll read just because Woody wrote "Wired," one of my fave Hollyweird chronicles.

In a separate story, the Post's Peter Baker reveals: "The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black 'felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about.'

"Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. 'We didn't know about the meeting itself,' she said. 'I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.'

"White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results."

So Tenet and Black, as well as the Bushies, held back from telling the Commission about their self-justifying July 10th meeting? Methinks Jamie Gorelick is the least credible member of that Commission, with her fingerprints all over the FBI/CIA logjam on intelligence. Tenet was not shy about boosting his Agency in the past. Why should he now come out and give a highly-sensationalized "gun-to-her-head" rendition of a meeting they thought unfit to share with the 9/11 Commission in the year or so it was investigating the run-up? Or is Woodward eliciting and inciting enhanced memories as the facts fade into time?

Or is he just making things up, as in this little fools-gold nugget?:

"According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. 'It's getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,' says Woodward.

After his fabrications and prevarications about being at William Casey's deathbed, unattributed sources should be inspected closely. Rumsfeld is not the only one with little credibility inside the Beltway. After Plamegate and "The Veil," Woodward deserves to be taken with multiple grains of salt.

Condi Rice Backpedaling?

The Opinion Journal interviews Condi, who is ten minutes EARLY for her meeting. [Egocentric narcissist Billy Jeff C. kept Kofi Annan waiting for fifteen minutes, although that is far less than his average of at least an hour.]

Condi sounds as though she is sipping a bit of the Eurotrash Kool-Aid, perhaps to get an immunity dose.

"I don't think that this is a battle, if you will, or a struggle that's going to be won on George W. Bush's watch," she says of the war on terror. Maybe this accounts for her sang-froid--at times seeming to border on emotional detachment--in the face of all the reversals in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah: She chooses to read the present as if it were already the past.

There's something to be said for thinking about the world this way, and Ms. Rice is nothing if not clear about the nature of the enemy, the shape of the conflict, the need to rally "moderate democratizing forces" throughout the Middle East as the great antidote to Arab and Islamic radicalism. On the terrorists: "They're not going back into the woodwork. They have to be defeated." On Iraq: "We just have to fight tooth and nail for the victory of the Iraqis who do not want Iranian influence in their daily lives." On Iran: "We've got a chance to resist the Iranian push into the region, but we better get about it. I mean, it's not the sort of thing that you can just let continue in its current form." On Lebanon: "You have to resist Hezbollah . . . [and] try to strengthen the moderate Lebanese forces, which is not an easy matter." On the Palestinians: "You have to resist the Damascus Hamas, creating a situation in the Palestinian territories where moderates can emerge."

The interlocutor comes back to this trope late in the session:

Something else is disconcerting, albeit so subtle that I only noticed it in the transcript of the interview. Rewind the tape and linger over the words "the Damascus Hamas." What's with the definite article? Ms. Rice circles back to the subject later in the discussion, when the subject of Islamist gains in democratic elections comes up. "Hamas," she says, "has learned a pretty tough lesson. They have not been able to govern. . . . You know, all of the talk about . . . all this Iranian money coming in and they . . . were going to be supported, it hasn't happened. People are on strike, they can't make their peace with the international community, and it's been really tough. And, in fact, it's been especially tough if you are [Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail] Haniyeh in the territories, as opposed to [overall Hamas leader] Khaled Mashal in Damascus."

The lesson here would seem to be that by putting a diplomatic and economic quarantine on Hamas after its victory in January's election, Palestinians have been made to recognize that there is a price to be paid for electing the Martyrs' Party. But the suggestion--which is gaining increasing currency in the foreign-policy establishment--is that Hamas is, or may with encouragement become, two parties: A radical, IRA-type wing led by Mashal in Damascus and a "moderate," Sinn Fein-like one led by Haniyeh in Ramallah. Does Ms. Rice really believe this? I kick myself for not asking, but someone should.

Granted, Condi elsewhere in this interesting interview refers to "Iranian reasonables" as opposed to the famous Iranian moderates, i.e., those that have run out of ammunition! But the interviewer notices her long-term metaphor of an airline flight that is experiencing "turbulence" as the ground of her thinking.

Wouldn't a more appropriate trope be "snakes on a plane?"

Fence a "Berlin Wall?"

Mexican President Fox surprises no one with his comparison of the newly-mandated Fence as a Berlin Wall. Obviously his remarks are for domestic consumption, since only people south of the border would be so clueless as to forget that the Berlin Wall was to keep people IN their own country rather than keeping riff-raff OUT of East Germany.

Fox has presided over a sleazy, crime-ridden crony capitalist RICO kleptocracy, where about 90% of the people are near or below the poverty level. And Fox and his cronies want the US as a "safety valve" to keep domestic unrest from boiling over.

The fact that Congress could muster enough energy to get the Fence bill passed is surprising, given their track record.

But Bush has promised to sign the bill, and he'd better act soon before the Dems arrive and ruin the last two years of his already badly-misfiring tenure.

In the meantime, there is still an encampment in the Zocalo claiming their guy won.

Carter, Clinton, Woodward, Al-Qaeda All Together Now

Dr. Zawahiri joined motor-mouth Carter, Sen. Clinton, and Bob Woodward in the Democratic anti-Bush brigade's onslaught versus the Repubs in general and GWB in particular.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows. Carter's short reign of incompetence, from getting rid of the neutron bomb, dismantling the CIA, abandoning the Shah to Islamic militants, mucking up the economy, encouraging by his fecklessness the Sovs to invade Afghanistan, and other eff-ups too numerous to enumerate. Carter did more to weaken the US than Zawahiri has done so far. Thank God Reagan came along to return the USA to some sort of sanity. If Carter were re-elected in '80, does anyone seriously think the Soviet Union would have been disassembled?

This midget twerp usually saves his insults toward the USA for when he is overseas.

Woodward is a highbrow Kitty Kelly and Sen. Clinton is not withdrawing her tentative support for Bush's Iraq policy. So not too much harm done. Dr. Z says:

"Why don't you tell them how many million citizens of America and its allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people's sons in order increase your profits?"

A little AQ Marxism never hurts in the company of Clinton and Carter.

Woodward book: Post gets Scooped by NYT

Rick Moran has a short critique of the new Woodward book. I always suspect Woodward because I was working for Larry Casey, William's nephew, for a short time after the book and Larry swore stacks of bibles that Woodward was lying about the deathbed confession, as Moran repeats above.

I share Woodward's deep revulsion over Rumsfeld, and the Jay Garner anecdote shows that Rummy was not the only clueless dolt in the WH concerning the insurrection. And it looks like Bremer tried to get more troops at some point. But Garner had already been overruled on keeping the Iraqi soldiers mustered, and the hornets began exploding themselves and others very quickly. On the whole, colossal mismanagement and WH indifference appear to be the order of the day.

As usual, it's the tidbits that tantalize. Tenet briefing Rice in July over NSA intercepts that weren't, or couldn't be, translated because of the lack of Arabic language translators. Rumsfeld dissing Rice at every opportunity, and using his bureaucratic ham-fist to squelch opponents inside the Beltway, leading to fatally-flawed policies on the ground in Iraq. Andrew Card calling on Bush to fire Rumsfeld twice.

This is a cornucopia for the Dems just before elections this fall. Mark Foley's downfall may presage a real cascade of popular disgust with Republicans who are hypocritical on morals [Foley founded an anti-internet child predator initiative!] and incompetent on management issues. Especially foreign policy management issues. And there's more:

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year.

And Kissinger is advising Bush Jr. on Iraq, another forked hoof in the mix! This would be more credible if the NSA intercept of the Al-Qaeda chief Al-Masri had not revealed that 4000 insurgent fighters had been killed, AQ recruitment was dwindling, and a related news item, buried by the MSM, has the Sunni tribal leaders eradicating foreign insurgents in western Iraq.

The MSM is utterly unreliable on most of what comes out of Iraq, period. And so is the Pentagon and the White House. Somewhere in the middle lies the truth.

It is evident that Woodward is apple-polishing for the left after they savaged him for not going along with the Plamegate Disinformation Scam last year, drawing blood and an apology to the Wash Post for not sharing his tiny info coup. He's slithering back to where he thrives---smack dab in the middle.

Last laugh is on the Post for plumping the Plamegate and dissing Woodward---it was the NYT that got the scoop. Leonard Downie Jr. must be unhappy, to say the least.

Death Threats in Belgium & France by Islamist Terrorists

It's not news anymore for the US MSM that Muslims in countries with a certain critical mass of believers are making death threats right and left. The Eurotrash themselves are eagerly avoiding the issue, as it is embarrassing to their nannification agenda. You see, everyone should agree to talk things out and come to agreements about how everyone should respect everyone else's rights. Except, of course, for Muslims. Who get a passe-partout when it comes to telling other people what they can say and do in their own country.

The articles linked above are scary, so the MSM in Europe are not publicizing these embarrassing lapses in their utopian social-engineering project. I thought the pre-emptive capitulation on the part of the editor of Figaro, which when I lived in France still had integrity, was interesting:

Meanwhile in France, a philosophy teacher is under police protection after receiving death threats over an op-ed article [French text here] which he wrote in a national newspaper. In the article, which was published in the conservative daily Le Figaro of September 19th, Robert Redeker accused Islam of "exalting violence." Mr Redeker has not attended classes at his school near Toulouse since the article was published. Pierre Rousselin, the editor in chief of Le Figaro, apologized on Al-jazeera for the publication of the article. A number of Islamic countries, including Egypt, banned Le Figaro following the publication of Redeker’s piece. Mr Rousselin said the publication of the op-ed was a mistake. He said the article did not express the paper’s opinion. The article is no longer available on the Figaro website.

Mr. Redeker describes his plight in much detail in a letter to a distinguished French philosopher:

"I am now in a catastrophic personal situation. Several death threats have been sent to me, and I have been sentenced to death by organizations of the al-Qaeda movement. [...] On the websites condemning me to death there is a map showing how to get to my house to kill me, they have my photo, the places where I work, the telephone numbers, and the death fatwa. [...] There is no safe place for me, I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there. [...] I am under the constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences. And the authorities urge me to keep moving. [...] All costs are at my own expense, including those of rents a month or two ahead, the costs of moving twice, legal expenses, etc.

It's quite sad. I exercised my constitutional rights, and I am punished for it, even in the territory of the Republic. This affair is also an attack against national sovereignty – foreign rules, decided by criminally minded fanatics, punish me for having exercised a constitutional right, and I am subjected, even in France, to great injury"

Don't look for the ACLU or George Soros or the highbrow hypocrites of the US MSM to point out this professor's infraction of their unwritten code: "Don't mess with someone who actually believes and will violently carry out their barbaric codes under the guise of religion."

I wish the WSJ or other responsible US media can point out the barbarism in a supposedly "civilized" country of cowards and deniers. The ones who loved to turn in Jews under the Nazi occupation, then claimed they were responsible for freeing their own country.

You know, the EU country that flies under a white flag!

Lyin' Al Gorebot on Cigarette Smoke

The dodissimo bored the UN with his usual dog-and-pony slides on how the end is near, Chicken Little is right, and cigarette smoking contributes to global warming!

There's no end to imbecility after, like Alzheimer's, it gains a bridgehead into the liberal secular-progressive neo-cortical ridges and valleys.

To the guy who managed to lose his home state of Tennessee and his ex-prez's state of Arkansas in 2000, plus stealing Wisconsin with phony ballots in Milwaukee and Madison [never investigated by the ruling Dem tax-and-spend mafia in Madison], and then reinvent himself as a scientist [after failing to get into Harvard or even Vanderbilt because of low grades], to this guy we say, what about alcohol? Or cigars? [His friend Fidel wouldn't like that!] Or burning leaves in your backyard this fall? Maybe we should outlaw barbeques and bonfires?

Earth-tones suit this chattering-class wannabe. I'm sure the earth-toned GA approved his fake science. I'm sure fake journalist Miles O'Brien from CNN will be interviewing him soon to promote Al's bogus theory on cigarettes.

Pakistan Becomes the Essential Keystone

Pervez Musharraf got the celebrity-blitz treatment in DC and NY last week, even going on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to broaden book sales.

Back in the eighties, while working for Denis Neal's lobbying operation [which you can read about in the excellent book "Charlie Wilson's War" about Afghanistan in the mujahideen era], I was commissioned to found a Political Action Committee which I dubbed South East Asia Peace Committee. My job was to scratch up funds which, Denis told me long afterwards, were needed to give to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which would get Pakistan the $475 million in "security assistance" that General Zia was asking for. My friend Arnie Raphel, US Ambassador to Pakistan, gave his blessing and Denis, in a moment of glee at the Xmas Party in the Neil & Co. offices, told me that Sens. Dodd and Kerry had voted along with all the Repubs in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to get the Pak aid sent to the Senate floor, where it passed the Dem Senate even though most Dems were opposed to funding Zia, a military dictator. The sanctimonious Kerry was the originator of the funds for votes scheme, as he was the head of the DSCC. He is quoted in Wikipedia with his usual perfidious change of mind:

The United States Democratic Party Presidential nominee in 2004, Senator John Kerry, stated in 2003 that President Zia "purposefully misled" him on the issue of Pakistan's nuclear programme when he visited the country in 1985.

In those days, less than $100K to the right coffers leveraged umpty millions in arms sales. [Soon thereafter, Amb. Raphel died with Prez Zia in a C-130 explosion that has never been solved, though conspiracy theories abound].

I still have my Deputy Grand Marshal's green shoulder sash from the "Pakistan Day" parade in NYC. I met money-grubbing congressmen like Torricelli and Solarz during my rounds soliciting funds for the Pakis in homes and meetings, one in the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC that I still have a VHS of my uninspiring fund-raising speech.

The best part of the whole several years I spent to-ing and fro-ing from Pakistan was trying to peddle Gulfstream 4 private jets for the province governors of the country. Met a Deputy Minister of Defence who wanted to do business, which in that part of the world is always a shell game. Had a personal interview with the Dep Chief of ISI and a drunken dinner at the Russian Ambassador's home in Islamabad {Russia was still an uninvited guest in Afghanistan next door}. Also three weeks in "Shangri-la," a mountain resort in Azad Kashmir, near Nanga Parbat, which our plane flew way too close to on our flight to the tourist aerie.

My wife Marilyn and I got lost in the casbah back streets of Peshawar, as she was trying to get Edelman a client through our Paki friends. The NorthWest Frontier Province is the "wild East" and I once had the NWFP Finance chief tell me that western Pakistan was ready to peel off and become Iranian at the drop of a hat [as the Baluchis and Pushtuns were more Iranian-oriented than the Punjabis and Sindhis, who in turn preferred India to Pakistan, in his august opinion. The Pakis are free with their opinions and it is difficult to generalize such a voluble and friendly bunch, although their xenophobes can be verrry scary.

So I can understand why Musharraf has captivated a lot of the chattering-class illuminati and the neo-con Wilsonian atavists at the same time. Neighboring India can inspire all sorts of hyperbole, as Thomas Friedman demonstrates periodically. But Pakistan is fascinating and repulsive at the same time, with a necessity that has kept Americans at its side ever since Reagan [after Gen. Zia famously called Carter's aid package "peanuts."]

The Old Libs are Gone: Long Live the Retardos!

FOX News is becoming an iconic scarecrow to the fidgety flighty hysterics on the left, for whom any resistance to their Oprahfied nannification agenda is Hitler personified. I just bought "Culture Warrior" and find O'Reilly right on the money. He quotes his friend Peter Jennings as telling him he was crazy when he started to criticize the media on the Factor. "These people will not allow anyone to scrutinize them. They will come after you with a vengeance." Like Dan Rather did to Bernard Goldberg, until Dan's many journalistic crimes caught up with him and ended him on the garbage heap of anonymity---although libs like Chris Mathews have him on just to see if he is a hopeless recidivist. And the Billy Jeff episode on Fox now raises the hysteria to a new level. O'Reilly and FOX have scrutinized the MSM and they are coming back with a vengeance. As Ron Reagan, the tutu-boy on MSNBC said recently on an unwatched program, "Fox's ratings are plummeting." Yeah, sure, Ronette.

Of course, Peggy sticks to a gentrified East Side conservatism which harkens after the good old days when there was a CW, or consensus, on fighting the Cold War [though the Carterite Dems were wishy-washy on these issues]. Finally, against a lot of leftie cognitive dissonance, Ronald Reagan, a real man, put Pershings into Europe and Star Wars onto the balance of MAD. The Soviets crumbled, although the MSM gives credit for that to all sorts of reasons except Reagan and the Pope. Gotta keep the agitprop free from cumbersome human voluntarism on the traditionalist side of the ledger! Peggy's comments:

The left sees Fox as a symptom and promoter of anarchy. The old unity, the old essential unity one used to experience when one turned on the TV in 1950 or 1980, has been fractured, broken up. We are becoming balkanized. Fox, blogs, talk radio, the Internet, citizen reporters--it's all producing cacophony, and heralds a future of No Compromise. No one trusts the information they're given anymore, as they trusted Uncle Walter. This is bad for the country.
It is an odd thing about modern liberals that they're made anxious by the unsanctioned. A conservative is more likely to see what's happening as freedom. It isn't that honest and impartial news lost its place of respect, it's that establishment liberalism lost its journalistic monopoly. And it was a monopoly.

Not everyone believed Uncle Walter. Uncle Walter, and Chet and David, were all there was. But while they reigned, Americans were buying "Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater, and Reagan was quietly rising way out in California, and Spiro Agnew and Bill Safire were issuing mainstream hits like "effete snobs" and "nattering nabobs." In the time liberals think of as the last great unified era, Americans were rising up.

You can get "Culture Warrior" for $13.88 at Wal-Mart. Bet that will rile the "secular-progressives" to more gnashing of teeth in their own outer darkness!

Dems: Surreal Unseriousness

Daniel Henninger puts forward the case that the Democrats are trying to beat something with nothing: Huge NYT flame-out headlines misrepresenting the NIE memorandum, par exemple. Here are his own words.

The Democrats are back in the national-security game alright, but the playbook is opinion polling first, with belief a second option. One result is their national-security offensive has taken on a surreal unseriousness.

A fortnight ago, the big political story suddenly became ABC's made-for-television movie, "The Path to 9/11." Out of the woods to dominate the news cycle came the ghosts from the Clinton past--Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright--condemning the film as a slander on their long years before the antiterror mast. Up to this point, Democratic candidates had seemed to be surfing smoothly toward control of the House on waves of bad media news out of Iraq. Suddenly they've got to deal with a movie suggesting we're in Iraq because their president failed to pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden.

This sideshow culminated last Sunday morning in a bizarre exchange between Bill Clinton and Chris Wallace of Fox--Mr. Clinton wagging a familiar finger at Mr. Wallace and accusing the anchorman of smirking at him. Personally, I think Mr. Wallace generally looks bemused, which is a distant, more innocent cousin of the smirk. Bill O'Reilly, now there's a big-league smirk.

Some pundits surmised that the Clinton eruption was planned to rally the liberal base, depressed at the sight of bad Bush's approval rating crawling back above 40%, and rising. This was Bill Clinton so my guess is it was both--planned and over the top. The fact is, the Democrats found themselves back in Afghanistan with Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, rather than where they wanted the news to be, amid Baghdad's bombs. A messy week.

Then came the leaked NIE story in the New York Times this past Sunday. What a bombshell. This would put them back on message: Iraq as failure. But by now it's evident that the whole workweek invested in the National Intelligence Estimate story was a colossal waste of the time devoted to it. What began Sunday as the Times's towering bonfire--16 intel agencies and 12 anonymous sources writing off Iraq--by Wednesday had burned down to embers.

After the White House released the NIE summary late Tuesday afternoon, reporters reading it for the first time on the Web undoubtedly kept hitting the Page Down button on their PCs. This is it!? Three crummy pages that anyone could have boiled down from a Foreign Affairs "Wither Iraq?" symposium.

Now I notice that the blogo-nut-roots are attacking Mark Foley in our county for an allegedly salacious e-mail, which turns out on examination to be just normal questions for a politician who likes people rather than humanity. The over-anxious 16-year old might be just another self-absorbed south Florida mess for reading some sort of inappropriate motives into the pol's friendly prose.

But you can bet that the slurs will hit the MSM, an outlier of the Dem-dumbs and moral relativists who believe the end of defeating Repubs justifies any means, even lies and insinuations that ruin reputations. Henninger finishes up:

The Democrats' problem is this: They are trying to beat policy with politics and weaken belief with polls. This may work for Social Security. I don't think it works with war. Don't be surprised if come November, Democrats are still on message--Iraq as failure--and still in the minority.

And now a flurry of NYT agitprop summons up the nasty masses with stories that the Dems are way ahead instead of almost neck and neck. That ought to scare any decent citizens in this country to the polls to whack down the defeatists and appeasers before they make free speech hate speech---depending on which party you support.

Eurotrash Chicken Out: No Mozart if it Riles Muslims

Roger Kimball is one of the most erudite and profound critics of the current downward spiral of values and traditions. His piece on the spineless Berliners is rich in irony, as their nannified highbrow critics of religion balk when they might be on the receiving end of the Near East version of their own recent barbarous invasions of peaceful and peace-loving countries.

It is not--not yet--too late to put a stop to our habit of appeasing a murderous fanaticism that demands privileges and indulgences it refuses to grant to others.
The spectacle of Deutsche Oper's decision to cancel "Idomeneo" suggests that the West's dealings with Islam have entered a new phase. Yesterday, we waited until after the Muslims took to the streets before capitulating; today, it appears we have moved on to pre-emptive capitulation.

Self-exploding ragdolls scare these hypocrites. Ann Althouse has more.

Kimball ends the Op-Ed with a great quote by G.K. Chesterton.

Where will it end? I suppose that depends on how much we really care about the liberty and freedom we champion with words. Freedom, as some wit observed, is not free. Will we have the gumption to pay the cost? The jury is still out on that question. I hope and pray that the answer will be yes. "There is," G.K. Chesterton noted nearly 100 years ago, "a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped."

Every generation faces its own challenge and, as was the case in the last century [two and a half times], the Europeans are failing to measure up.

Fouad Ajami On Iraq

Fouad Ajami marvels at the "naivete" and "innocence" of the American project in Iraq. I think he should marvel more at the mismanagement and miscalculations of the post-war pre-insurrectionary US policymakers like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and L. Paul Bremer, to mention three of the most culpable and malfeasant.

Fouad came from a Shi'ite family originally from South Lebanon, but even further back from Iran ["Ajami" means "Persian" in Arabic], so his thoughts on the new Shi'ite ascendency in Iraq are particularly insightful:

The case against the war makes much of Iran's new power in Iraq. To the war critics, President Bush has midwifed a second Islamic republic in Iraq, next door to Iran. But Iran cannot run away with Iraq, and talk of an ascendant Iran in Iraqi affairs is overblown. We belittle the Iraqi Shiites--their sense of home, and of a tradition so thoroughly Iraqi and Arab--when we write them off as instruments of Iran. Inevitably, there is Iranian money in Iraq, and there are agents, but this is the logic of the 900-mile Iranian-Iraqi border.

True, in the long years of Tikriti/Saddamist dominion, Shiite political men persecuted by the regime sought sanctuary in Iran; a political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and its military arm, the Badr Brigade, rose in those years with Iranian patronage. But the Iraqi exiles are not uniform in their attitudes toward Iran. Exile was hard, and the Iranian hosts were given to arrogance and paternalism. Iraqi exiles were subordinated to the strategic needs of the Iranian regime. Much is made, and appropriately, of the way the Americans who prosecuted the first Gulf War called for rebellions by the Shiites (and the Kurds), only to walk away in indifference as the Saddam regime struck back with vengeance. But the Iranians, too, averted their gaze from the slaughter. States are merciless, the Persian state no exception to that rule.

We should not try to impose more order and consensus on the world of Shiite Iraq than is warranted by the facts. In recent days a great faultline within the Shiites could be seen: The leader of the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, Sayyid Abdulaziz al-Hakim, has launched a big campaign for an autonomous Shiite federated unit that would take in the overwhelmingly Shiite provinces in the south and the middle Euphrates, but this project has triggered the furious opposition of Hakim's nemesis, the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Hakim's bid was transparent. He sought to be the uncrowned king of a Shiite polity. But he was rebuffed. Sadr was joined in opposition to that scheme by the Daawa Party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, by the Virtue Party, and by those secular Shiites who had come into the national assembly with former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. A bitter struggle now plays out in the Shiite provinces between the operatives of the Badr Brigade and Sadr's Mahdi Army. The fight is draped in religious colors--but it is about the spoils of power.

A recent article by the New York Times claims that Moqtada al-Sadr is losing part of his militia which is peeling off into ad-hoc Death Squads. This bodes ill for any reconciliation in the near future. Also very troubling is PM al-Maliki's close ties to the al-Sadr contingent in the elected Iraqi government. Fouad ends with a coda dismissing the importance of Iranian influence over a Shi'ite-led Iraq:

For their part, the Iranians will press on: The spectacle of power they display is illusory. It is a broken society over which the mullahs rule. A society that throws on the scene a leader of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's derangement is not an orderly land; foreigners may not be able to overthrow that regime, but countries can atrophy as their leaders--armed, here, by an oil windfall of uncertain duration--strut on the world stage. Iran's is a deeper culture than Iraq's, possessed of a keen sense of Persia's primacy in the region around it. What Iranians make of their own history will not wait on the kind of society that will emerge in Iraq. On the margins, a scholarly tradition in Najaf given to moderation could be a boon to the clerics of Iran. But the Iranians will not know deliverance from the sterility of their world if Iraq were to fail. Their schadenfreude over an American debacle in Iraq will have to be brief. A raging fire next door to them would not be pretty. And, crafty players, the Iranians know what so many in America who guess at such matters do not: that Iraq is an unwieldy land, that the Arab-Persian divide in culture, language and temperament is not easy to bridge.

At the same time, the only thing worse than staying in Iraq until a resolution would be to leave Iraq in a state of anarchy:

We needn't give credence to the assertion of President Bush--that the jihadists would turn up in our cities if we pulled up stakes from Baghdad --to recognize that a terrible price would be paid were we to opt for a hasty and unseemly withdrawal from Iraq. This is a region with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. The heated debate about the origins of our drive into Iraq would surely pale by comparison to the debate that would erupt--here and elsewhere--were we to give in to despair and cast the Iraqis adrift.

Bush and his subordinates have taken far longer and over a much more nasty set of road bumps---often by poor navigating on their part---than they expected. But let's leave the place in a reasonable state of order. Or else Iraq will be an historical landmark of American lack of leadership and will.

Euro-Craven Belgians Cowering Before Riots

The Brussels Journal has one of those key sentences that says volumes about Euro-cowardice, Euro-fecklessness, and plain Euro-Stuck-On-Stupid. Since there are no photos and only one Reuters report on the riots breaking out in Brussels during Ramadhan for three years now, it is evident that the MSM doesn't like to cover instances of Muslim brutality, violence, and lawlessness---it makes Bush look good in their benighted vision. But those audacious Belgian ragheads are beginning to forget about boundaries:

Around 8:30pm last night violence erupted again in Brussels, the capital of Europe. The riots centered on the Brussels Marollen quarter and the area near the Midi Train Station, where the international trains from London and Paris arrive. Youths threw stones at passing people and cars, windows of parked cars were smashed, bus shelters were demolished, cars were set ablaze, a youth club was arsoned and a shop was looted. Two molotov cocktails were thrown into St.Peter’s hospital, one of the main hospitals of central Brussels. The fire brigade was able to extinguish the fires at the hospital, but youths managed to steal the keys of the fire engine.

During the month of ramadan Muslims are required to fast during the day and are only allowed to eat after sunset. As Esther pointed out “What should be noticed about the riots is that they start after sunset. Besides the fact that they start after dark, it also gives the rioters enough time to break their fast and enjoy the traditional family meal. Sunset is around 7:30pm.” Tuesday’s and Monday’s riots began around 8:30pm.

Last night the police arrested 45 rioters. One of them will be prosecuted for assaulting the owner of a shop. Philippe Close, the chef de cabinet of the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, said that the authorities would continue their efforts to defuse the situation in a peaceful manner, but he announced that the police will be less complacent in future, "since we cannot tolerate that this [Marollen] neighbourhood falls victim to a problem from outside the neighbourhood."

Yes, they are actually going to prosecute one of the forty-five arrested rioters! Qu'est-ce qui'l sont brave!

And as long as they burn down and riot in their own neighborhoods, that presumably is "tolerable."

Mayor Giuliani broke the back of crime in NYC when he started arresting all those guilty of the least public infractions, like jumping subway gates or washing windshields without permission. Suddenly, being soft on crime as the Dems in New York had been for decades was understood to be a cause of crime. Now of course, the Dems believe being soft on terrorists will just cause them to go away and leave us alone. Always wrong, but never in doubt, those Dems.

But Giuliani had a backbone and still does, and notochords are in short supply in soft-on-crime Europe!

David Ignatius on Dem Blindness

David Ignatius cuts through the Dem denial and delusional delirium to the main point in this WaPo piece that has the lefties screaming, a sure sign of truth and apt commentary:

No matter how you slice it, the National Intelligence Estimate warning that the Iraq war has spawned more terrorism is big trouble for President Bush and his party in this election year. It goes to the heart of Bush's argument for invading Iraq, which was that it would make America safer.

Many Democrats act as if that's the end of the discussion: A mismanaged occupation has created a breeding ground for terrorists, so we should withdraw and let the Iraqis sort out the mess. Some extreme war critics are so angry at Bush they seem almost eager for America to lose, to prove a political point. Even among mainstream Democrats, the focus is "gotcha!" rather than "what next?" That is understandable, given the partisanship of Republican attacks, but it isn't right.
The issue raised by the National Intelligence Estimate is much grimmer than the domestic political game. Iraq has fostered a new generation of terrorists. The question is what to do about that threat. How can America prevent Iraq from becoming a safe haven where the newly hatched terrorists will plan Sept. 11-scale attacks that could kill thousands of Americans? How do we restabilize a Middle East that today is dangerously unbalanced because of America's blunders in Iraq?

This should be the Democrats' moment, if they can translate the national anger over Iraq into a coherent strategy for that country. But with a few notable exceptions, the Democrats are mostly ducking the hard question of what to do next. They act as if all those America-hating terrorists will evaporate back into the sands of Anbar province if the United States pulls out its troops. Alas, that is not the case. That is the problem with Iraq -- it is not an easy mistake to fix.

Ignatius then brings up the synaptically-challenged clown half of the Post's Dana-twins to point out on just how the dodge-em Dems run away after fingerpointing and calling names.

An example of the Democrats' fudge on Iraq was highlighted yesterday by Post columnist Dana Milbank in his description of retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste's appearance before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Senators cheered Batiste's evisceration of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but tuned out Batiste's call for more troops and more patience in Iraq, and his admonition: "We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge."

No one has ever accused Dana Milbank of being a serious reporter or commentator, as he lards his reportage with leftie-bias filler at ever opportunity, except in the occasions like the one above, where he omits the lede 'cuz it doesn't fit his bias.
Ignatius goes on to prove why integrity at the WaPo is not completely absent:

Here's a reality check for the Democrats: There is not a single government in the Middle East, with the possible exceptions of Iran and Syria, that favors a rapid U.S. pullout from Iraq. Why? The consensus in the region is that a retreat now would have disastrous consequences for America and its allies. Yet withdrawal is the Iraq strategy you hear from most congressional Democrats, whether they call it "strategic redeployment" or something else.

I wish Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) were asking this question: How do we prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state? Many critics of the war would argue that the worst has already happened -- Iraq has unraveled. Unfortunately, as bad as things are, they could get considerably worse. Following a rapid American pullout, Iraq could descend into a full-blown civil war, with Sunni-Shiite violence spreading throughout the region. In this chaos, oil supplies could be threatened, sending prices well above $100 a barrel. Turkey, Iran and Jordan would intervene to protect their interests. James Fallows titled his collection of prescient essays warning about the Iraq war "Blind Into Baghdad." We shouldn't compound the error by being "blind out of Baghdad," too.

Given the double-digit collective IQ of the Dem troika of Reid/Dean/Pelosi, no solution short of surrender will come out of that quarter. However, Joe Biden has at least given it a shot:

The Democrat who has tried hardest to think through these problems is Sen. Joseph Biden. He argues that the current government of national unity isn't succeeding in holding Iraq together and that America should instead embrace a policy of "federalism plus" that will devolve power to the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions. Iraqis are already voting for sectarian solutions, Biden argues, and America won't stabilize Iraq unless it aligns its policy with this reality. I disagree with some of the senator's conclusions, but he's asking the right question: How do we fix Iraq?

As one of the few Dems with a spinal cord, Biden does get a B-plus on thinking and an A for effort----putting him several marks above his dismal colleagues on the left.
Ignatius sums it up fairly and squarely:

America needs to reckon with the message of the National Intelligence Estimate. Iraq has compounded Muslim rage and created a dangerous crisis for the United States. The Democrats understandably want to treat Iraq as George Bush's war and wash their hands of it. But the damage of Iraq can be mitigated only if it again becomes the nation's war -- with the whole country invested in finding a way out of the morass that doesn't leave us permanently in greater peril. If the Democrats could lead that kind of debate about security, they would become the nation's governing party. But what you hear from most Democrats these days is: Gotcha.

Perhaps Ignatius is right and the Dems have caught the French disease of white flag first, terms of disengagement later. One can only hope that what the Constitutional framers called the inherent "manly virtue" of the American citizen has not completely evaporated on the southpaw side of the aisle.

French Toasted & Fried

In honor of President Chirac's decision last week to announce publicly France's capitulation to Iran on the nuclear negotiations [before the EU & US agreed on a common position], here are some comments by observers of this former world power since its decline and fall[h/t: Marty Peretz]

I don't know who collected these comments on France. Let me assure you though that I am not a Francophobe. It is true that for a few years in recent times I have not bought French wines. But I did drink the ones I had in my cellar. In any case, there is some silliness in what follows. But there is also some wisdom, wisdom garnered from historical experience. If you are a Francophile, you may not want to read this. It's your choice. Feel free to send this to friends if you like. That's how I saw it in the first place.

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." --Mark Twain

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --General George S. Patton

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf

"We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." --Marge Simpson

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." --Jacques Chirac, President of France

"As far as France is concerned, you're right." --Rush Limbaugh

"The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." --Regis Philbin

"You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it." --John McCain, U.S. Senator (AZ)

"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get Hitler out of France either." --Jay Leno

"The last time the French asked for "more proof'' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." --David Letterman

"War without France would be like ... uh ... World War II."

"What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Macs than the Nazis?" --Dennis Miller

"It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us." --Alan Kent

"They've taken their own precautions against al-Quaida. To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag, and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house." --Argus Hamilton

"Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day--the description 'Never shot. Dropped once.'" --Rep. Roy Blunt (MO)

"The French will only agree to go to war when we've proven we've found truffles in Iraq." --Dennis Miller

"Raise your right hand if you like the French. Raise both hands if you are French."

"Question: Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?
Answer: It's not known, it's never been tried." --Rep. Roy Blunt (MO)

"Do you know it only took Germany three days to conquer France in WWII? And that's because it was raining." --John Xereas, Manager, DC Improv.

"The AP and UPI reported that the French Government announced after the London bombings that it has raised its terror alert from 'Run' to 'Hide.' The only two higher levels in France are 'Surrender' and 'Collaborate.' The rise in the alert level was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively disabling their military."

"French Ban Fireworks at Euro Disney. ... The French government announced today that it is imposing a ban on the use of fireworks at EuroDisney. The decision comes that day after a nightly fireworks display at the park, located just 30 miles outside of Paris, caused the soldiers at a nearby French Army garrison to surrender to a group of Czech tourists." --AP Paris

Frist Fence Fakeout

Bill Frist has been as bad as Dennis Hastert in carrying out his leadership obligations. If this fellow has presidential ambitions in 2008, he is seriously and deliriously delusional.

If he's not trying to kill the Fence Bill, he certainly looks like he's not a serious supporter.

Oh Yeah, good work on John Bolton's ambassadorship, too!

I think Frist and George Allen should put their presidential aspirations on hold until they gain competence in the skill-sets required in their present day-jobs.

Mickey Kaus shares my skepticism.

The Hitchens I Knew!

At the end of swatting David Corn's puffballs out of the park in Slate, Christopher Hitchens explains why he left that dreary little agitprop rag.

This difference among others led me to separate myself from The Nation, where neither my prose nor my socializing were as stellar as Corn recalls. Incidentally, I begin to tire of this sickly idea that I used to be a great guy until I became fed up with excuses for dictators and psychopathic murderers (let alone for mediocre CIA fantasists). Alexander Cockburn is surely nearer the mark when he says that I was a complete shit and traitor all along.

Actually, Chris was great until he passed a blood-alcohol limit of around 0.3, I'd guess, at which point he would become a misogynist and mean-spirited towards certain persons [often female] who were not in the room. As I recall, he was always a gentleman more or less to their face, but if they were in another room or otherwise absent, they were fair game.

But his friends knew that he could be easily deflected in this state into other less personal passions, and would bring up Reagan and his administration to throw Chris off the scent of personal pique. And even in the bluest funks [we had Xmas dinners at a Greek friend's house for several years running and Hitch was blue at the Feast of Christ's birth among believers], the verbal pyrotechnics would proceed to amuse and amaze the small party of four onlookers as he found new ways to express his disdain for our Cowboy Prez.

He could be a shit, but never a complete shit. And he was never a traitor to the far-left, until the scales dropped from his eyes.

US Competitiveness Lags a Bit

The US fell from First to sixth in a scare headline by the anti-American BBC, which just can't keep its editorials out of the straight news. The fact that the cum populations of the other five countries ahead of the US total around one-tenth of the US pop means the World Economic Forum has its own milestones and yardsticks. Germany and the UK fell slightly and Japan is just behind the US now.

More importantly, large economies such as China, Brazil and Russia fell rather farther down the list.

The US twin deficits are responsible, a worrisome aspect of the US's status as the still prevailing engine of world growth. Japan went into Carter-mode stagflation & double-digit interest ratesback in the '80s for two decades. If that happened to the US, stagflation would slow the entire world growth pattern for a good long while.

Reagan vs. Clinton = Mature Man vs. Pouty Girlie-Child

Under the Headline "Clinton Doth Protest.." in the LAT it is appropriate that the original quote is "The Lady" doth protest...

Clinton is no specimen of manhood and barely even a bully-boy in his feminized life in the rearview make-up mirror. The LAT takes the manliest fellow to be prez since Ike and compares the Bubba-boychile to Ronald Reagan, a real man on and off the set.

"THERE'S NO LIMIT to what a man can do," President Reagan used to say, " ... if he doesn't care who gets the credit."

Former President Clinton's motto seems to be a little different: "There's no limit to how much credit a man can get, if he doesn't care what he's actually done."

Reagan came to office after the Jimmy Carter catastrophe. He pulled the American economy out of a graveyard spin, restored the country's military and its confidence and helped bring one of the most oppressive empires on Earth to the brink of collapse. But in those days, my children, there was no Internet, no Fox News, no Rush Limbaugh — the media was almost all Colmes and precious little Hannity — and if you got your news from the New York Times, say, or CBS, you would've thought the country was being run by a miserly, warmongering idiot instead of the greatest president of the century's second half.

And yet even after his two terms were over, when left-wing news sources sourly continued to portray his administration solely in terms of its faults, as nothing but a big deficit and the Iran-Contra scandal, I cannot remember Reagan ever "defending his legacy" with anything more than a quip and a smile.

Compare and contrast Clinton. Questioned mildly on his anti-terrorism record by Fox's Chris Wallace on Sunday, President Me went absolutely medieval on the newsman, leaning forward threateningly, rapping his fingers against Wallace's notes and proceeding to, well, lie — and in a very angry voice too!

"And you got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever," Clinton told Wallace, sounding for all the world like a 6-year-old girl scolding her playground rival. He then proceeded to try to rewrite his coulda-woulda-shoulda presidency by claiming to have had a much more focused and hard-lined approach to terrorism than any reading of his administration can support. Even Clinton counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke's book — which Clinton cited repeatedly during his tantrum — shows the president as too weak to order Osama bin Laden's death. Other accounts are much less favorable.

But let the political observers fight that one out. My beat is human psychology and the nature of reality and fiction. It's in those realms that at least one key difference between Reagan and Clinton can be found — a difference that sits at the heart of our current divisions.

Reagan was a man who believed in truth. Not your truth or my truth but "the truth," the one that is out there whether you happen to believe in it or not.

"I never thought of myself as a great man," he said, "just a man committed to great ideas." Those ideas — our founders' ideas — were great because they recognized a central truth: the good of individual liberty. And they guaranteed human beings those rights endowed in them by the "big truth" — their creator.

Clinton, on the other hand, is a narcissist who finds it difficult to grasp in any real sense that there is a place where his "inner man" ends and the rest of the world begins. Clinton's stock phrase, "I feel your pain," is really the insistence of a man who does not truly feel anyone else's pain, does not truly understand that there are other inner realities as urgent as his own.

Take Clinton's misuse of women. One way to understand it is as a symptom of his inability to come to terms with anything that would not conform to his own desire, imagination and grandiose sense of himself.

To put it in his own terms, Clinton has never understood what the meaning of "is" is, the fact that some things happened and others didn't, that some things are true and others simply are not. He believes that his legacy will be created in the spin cycle of history rather than in the fitful but persistent human search for history's truth.

Of course he panics and rages like a child when the spin goes the wrong way, when he is given his portion of the blame for encouraging Bin Laden through his military retreat from Somalia or for allowing the terrorist to escape by refusing to put a kill order on him.

He thinks reality itself is being wrestled away from him, that he can wrestle it back and mold it into the shape he wants it to have.

But he's wrong. That's just "is" being is. That's just "truth" bearing away the victory.

Historians not enthralled with the bogus imposter will someday tote up the pluses and minuses and probably give Bubba-boychile a C-minus or D-plus, better than Carter's D-minus or F. And Reagan will get an A, while the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness continues.....

Bush NIE Declassification Responds to Kagan Article?

Robert Kagan has the breadth and depth of a real old-fashioned intellectual, an intelligent man with a broad perspective on the past, present and future. I look forward to reading Dangerous Nation, his upcoming book about US foreign policy. He unmasks the NIE selective leaks that propose that the Iraq War has somehow increased the number of terrorists, although the number of signature overseas terrorist hits has diminished.

In his declassifying the NIE memo, Bush may have already responded to Kagan's piece in the WaPo which condemns selective leaking by the Bush-bashing duo, the WaPo and the NYT:

As a poor substitute for actual figures, The Post notes that, according to the NIE, members of terrorist cells post messages on their Web sites depicting the Iraq war as "a Western attempt to conquer Islam." No doubt they do. But to move from that observation to the conclusion that the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat requires answering a few additional questions: How many new terrorists are there? How many of the new terrorists became terrorists because they read the messages on the Web sites? And of those, how many were motivated by the Iraq war as opposed to, say, the war in Afghanistan, or the Danish cartoons, or the Israel-Palestine conflict, or their dislike for the Saudi royal family or Hosni Mubarak, or, more recently, the comments of the pope? Perhaps our intelligence agencies have discovered a way to examine, measure and then rank the motives that drive people to become terrorists, though I tend to doubt it. But any serious and useful assessment of the effect of the Iraq war would, at a minimum, try to isolate the effect of the war from everything else that is and has been going on to stir Muslim anger. Did the NIE attempt to make that calculation?

Obviously, there are no methodologies to quantify such strange vectors in the graphing of terrorism recruiting motives. Kagan keeps making sense:

Finally, a serious evaluation of the effect of the Iraq war would have to address the Bush administration's argument that it is better to fight terrorist recruits in Iraq than in the United States. This may or may not be true, although again the administration would seem to have the stronger claim at the moment. But a serious study would have to measure the numbers of terrorists engaged in Iraq, and the numbers who may have been killed in Iraq, against any increase in the numbers of active terrorists outside Iraq as a result of the war. Did the NIE make such a calculation?

The fact that there has been no great instance of a terrorist attack since 9/11 and that a recent airborne attempt from the UK [complete with martyrdom tapes and corroborative evidence] was thwarted by intercepts and by a Pakistani who fessed up under duress appears to prove, if a negative can be proved, that no terror equals successful anti-terrorism.

There is, in addition to all this, a question of context. What should we do if we believe certain actions might inspire some people to become potential terrorists? Should we always refrain from taking those actions, or are there cases in which we may want to act anyway? We have pretty good reason to believe, for instance, that the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the war, was a big factor in the evolution of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We are pretty sure that American support of the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviet occupation forces in the late 1970s and early '80s also contributed to the growth of Islamic terrorism.

This is the sort of thinking which makes foreign policy development headache-inducing. Even if one is "successful," one can be accused of making a mistake. Kagan knows this and continues to ask unanswerable questions:

Knowing this, would we now say that we made a mistake in each of those cases? Would an NIE argue that we would be safer today if we had not helped drive the Soviets from Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein from Kuwait? The argument in both cases would be at least as sound as the argument about the most recent Iraq war.

The ceaseless self-mutilation of the left is not only the onset of an "Age of A Scary Us," [h/t: Mark Steyn], but the sort of feminized, girlie-man foreign policy first initiated by the feckless incompetent Jimmy Carter which seeks approbation from abroad and smug self-righteousness among its proponents.

This tranquilized passivity will lead to more 9/11s than an alternate path stressing a muscular foreign policy which respects the rights of other nations. Of course, like the MSM proposing the Carter-coma above, I can't prove my suggestion will be "successful." However, the US must enforce international law unilaterally if the UN is too politically flummoxed to carry out Security Council resolutions. America must not be a giant Gulliver tied down by hundreds of puny Lilliputians. America must assert itself.

The alternative is to once again become a hyper-lawyered over-firewalled Clinton/Berger/Albright trio of monkeys hearing, seeing and speaking no discouraging words. Could get someone upset and move the polls!

Foreign Policy is not a popularity contest, Clinton and Carter to the contrary notwithstanding. Kagan ends his article with the ultimate standard: safety.

In fact, the question of what actions make us safer cannot be answered simply by counting the number of new terrorist recruits those actions may inspire, even if we could make such a count with any confidence. I would worry about an American foreign policy driven only by fear of how our actions might inspire anger, radicalism and violence in others. As in the past, that should be only one calculation in our judgment of what does and does not make us, and the world, safer.

No more Iraqs, but there are other ways to enforce UN resolutions that the GA and Security Council want to walk away from.

Global Warming the Latest Hoax?

Sen. Inhofe actually gives a speech on the Senate floor with details, statistics, and evidence that a cabal of "climate alarmists" are trying to shove a political agenda by misusing and abusing the scientific method.

Inhofe is head of the Senate Environment Cte and has plenty of PhD go-fers who have backed up his assertions with a good deconstruction of the so-called "hockey stick" graph showing global warming to increase exponentially. Inhofe actually quotes a scientist who was told "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period" because it was inconvenient to the Chicken Little crowd in the Royal Society and other official politicized science havens. The hockey stick does not work with that inconvenient 500-year warming episode that ended around 1450, when vineyards thrived in England and wine was cheaper than beer. So the Commissar at the Royal Society decreed "heresy" and the inconvenient truth disappeared, to be replaced by Lyin' Al Gorebot's latest run for office.

Of course, the Little Ace Age from about 1600 to 1850 makes the hockey stick look great, as the contrast is magnified. Also, the Teensy-weensy ice age from 1940-1970 when the MSM was worrying about another glaciation also makes the hockey stick look better, but the fluctuations are hard for the Lysenko-wannabes to explain. So they don't.

Sixty prominent scientists recently wrote the Canadian PM about the fake science touting global warming:

"“If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." The letter also noted:

"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.'"

Lest common sense and actual science prevail, the MSM under-reports and mis-reports or doesn't report any evidence contrary to the Gorebot twaddle, which parallels the credibility of his invention of "the information superhighway." Here is the nub of the entire question. What if the Sky-is-falling crowd happens to be right? Will the Kyoto Accords the airheads like Gore and Kerry tout halt the hothouse hell?

My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future.

The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict. These failed predictions are just one reason I respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest scaremongering on climate change. Scientists like MIT’s Richard Lindzen, former Colorado State climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr., the University of Alabama’s Roy Spencer and John Christy, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, Colorado State University’s William Gray, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Oregon State climatologist George Taylor and astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.

But more importantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be asked the question -- "What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?" -- because they have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades that they have been hyping this issue.

If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis. The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including 13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission reduction promises.

Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.

So the Malthusians and the Luddites want to de-energize the economic engine that drives the West and East Asia and India into widespread prosperity? Is that their game? Have us all pedal to work a la Holland or the little old lady in tennis shoes from Pasadena? Of course, no palatable alternatives are offered by the Thought Police mandarinate of scientific PC panjundrums.

If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer. Last week my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and has organized some of the world’s top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 "Copenhagen Consensus" which ranked the world’s most pressing problems. And guess what?

They placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet’s priorities. The "Copenhagen Consensus" found that the most important priorities of our planet included: combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty. I have made many trips to Africa, and once you see the devastating poverty that has a grip on that continent, you quickly realize that fears about global warming are severely misguided.

Senator Inhofe then pulls the rug out of the pontificators on the MSM left [meaning everybody except FOX-News] with a lot of quotations that appear at first glance to be unduly alarmist. Which they are, until you get the punchline: the alarmist gibberish from Time mag and the NYT, well, read for yourself:

Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on global warming and instead become committed advocates for the issue.

Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

"There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."

A headline in the New York Times reads: "Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output." Here is a quote from Time Magazine:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval."

All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974.

They weren’t referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age. [Teensy-weensy ice age I refer to above Ed. remarks]

Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970's and warned of a coming ice age.

In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:

"[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer."

Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore’s movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939.

Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."

Inhofe runs down a long list of further media mischief---alternating between cold and hot scare stories depending on the theme of the decade [heating up after 1850-1940; then cooling from '40-'70 with frozen hell scare stories abounding; then a re-relapse into climate warming after the '70s til today---often based on single sources]. But the Al-Qaeda Press [AP} has the most spurious balderdash, quoting five out of a hundred scientists they questioned [the other 95 didn't give the "leftist" answer?] concerning the agitpreppie Gore movie. Then Inhofe spanks the blundering fool who managed to lose Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida [although he stole Wisconsin] in the millenial election, snatching defeat out of....:

What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:

• He promoted the now debunked "hockey stick" temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate

•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age

•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.

•He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer

•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.

•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing

•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices

•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific "consensus" and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing

•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits

•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving

•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004

Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in "An Inconvenient Truth." Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.

The leftist MSM have turned the climate alarmism of Global Warming into a shibboleth assumed, like the non-existence of terrorists, to be true because it is the watchword of the International Left. The lapdog MSM, brain-dead Hollyweirdos, and politico-academics all slobber at the trough under the watchful eye of the PC Thought Police. Inhofe sums it all up after defrocking pious little acolyte Tom Brokaw for journalistic fraud:

The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production. Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans.

According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all.

In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.

Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.

The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.

The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.

Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific "consensus"" that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.

Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells -- it’s very profitable. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.

The Hack Attack is being rebuffed by common sense.

The sophomoric morons who peddle Global Warming without countervailing arguments that might mitigate the evidence should give it a rest. They drop trou and assume the position whenever their MSM PC Thought Police approach. Maybe it would be better if they could JUST SAY NO!










:

Global Warming the Latest Hoax?

Sen. Inhofe actually gives a speech on the Senate floor with details, statistics, and evidence that a cabal of "climate alarmists" are trying to shove a political agenda by misusing and abusing the scientific method.

Inhofe is head of the Senate Environment Cte and has plenty of PhD go-fers who have backed up his assertions with a good deconstruction of the so-called "hockey stick" graph showing global warming to increase exponentially. Inhofe actually quotes a scientist who was told "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period" because it was inconvenient to the Chicken Little crowd in the Royal Society and other official politicized science havens. The hockey stick does not work with that inconvenient 500-year warming episode that ended around 1450, when vineyards thrived in England and wine was cheaper than beer. So the Commissar at the Royal Society decreed "heresy" and the inconvenient truth disappeared, to be replaced by Lyin' Al Gorebot's latest run for office.

Of course, the Little Ace Age from about 1600 to 1850 makes the hockey stick look great, as the contrast is magnified. Also, the Teensy-weensy ice age from 1940-1970 when the MSM was worrying about another glaciation also makes the hockey stick look better, but the fluctuations are hard for the Lysenko-wannabes to explain. So they don't.

Sixty prominent scientists recently wrote the Canadian PM about the fake science touting global warming:

"“If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." The letter also noted:

"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.'"

Lest common sense and actual science prevail, the MSM under-reports and mis-reports or doesn't report any evidence contrary to the Gorebot twaddle, which parallels the credibility of his invention of "the information superhighway." Here is the nub of the entire question. What if the Sky-is-falling crowd happens to be right? Will the Kyoto Accords the airheads like Gore and Kerry tout halt the hothouse hell?

My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future.

The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict. These failed predictions are just one reason I respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest scaremongering on climate change. Scientists like MIT’s Richard Lindzen, former Colorado State climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr., the University of Alabama’s Roy Spencer and John Christy, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, Colorado State University’s William Gray, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Oregon State climatologist George Taylor and astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.

But more importantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be asked the question -- "What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?" -- because they have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades that they have been hyping this issue.

If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis. The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including 13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission reduction promises.

Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.

So the Malthusians and the Luddites want to de-energize the economic engine that drives the West and East Asia and India into widespread prosperity? Is that their game? Have us all pedal to work a la Holland or the little old lady in tennis shoes from Pasadena? Of course, no palatable alternatives are offered by the Thought Police mandarinate of scientific PC panjundrums.

If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of people will continue to suffer. Last week my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and has organized some of the world’s top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 "Copenhagen Consensus" which ranked the world’s most pressing problems. And guess what?

They placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet’s priorities. The "Copenhagen Consensus" found that the most important priorities of our planet included: combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty. I have made many trips to Africa, and once you see the devastating poverty that has a grip on that continent, you quickly realize that fears about global warming are severely misguided.

Senator Inhofe then pulls the rug out of the pontificators on the MSM left [meaning everybody except FOX-News] with a lot of quotations that appear at first glance to be unduly alarmist. Which they are, until you get the punchline: the alarmist gibberish from Time mag and the NYT, well, read for yourself:

Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on global warming and instead become committed advocates for the issue.

Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

"There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."

A headline in the New York Times reads: "Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output." Here is a quote from Time Magazine:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval."

All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974.

They weren’t referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age. [Teensy-weensy ice age I refer to above Ed. remarks]

Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970's and warned of a coming ice age.

In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:

"[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer."

Before you think that this is just another example of the media promoting Vice President Gore’s movie, you need to know that the quote I just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from January 2, 1939.

Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."

Inhofe runs down a long list of further media mischief---alternating between cold and hot scare stories depending on the theme of the decade [heating up after 1850-1940; then cooling from '40-'70 with frozen hell scare stories abounding; then a re-relapse into climate warming after the '70s til today---often based on single sources]. But the Al-Qaeda Press [AP} has the most spurious balderdash, quoting five out of a hundred scientists they questioned [the other 95 didn't give the "leftist" answer?] concerning the agitpreppie Gore movie. Then Inhofe spanks the blundering fool who managed to lose Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida [although he stole Wisconsin] in the millenial election, snatching defeat out of....:

What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:

• He promoted the now debunked "hockey stick" temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate

•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age

•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.

•He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer

•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.

•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing

•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices

•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific "consensus" and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing

•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits

•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving

•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004

Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in "An Inconvenient Truth." Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.

The leftist MSM have turned the climate alarmism of Global Warming into a shibboleth assumed, like the non-existence of terrorists, to be true because it is the watchword of the International Left. The lapdog MSM, brain-dead Hollyweirdos, and politico-academics all slobber at the trough under the watchful eye of the PC Thought Police. Inhofe sums it all up after defrocking pious little acolyte Tom Brokaw for journalistic fraud:

The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production. Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans.

According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all.

In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.

Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.

The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.

The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.

Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific "consensus"" that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.

Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells -- it’s very profitable. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.

The Hack Attack is being rebuffed by common sense.

The sophomoric morons who peddle Global Warming without countervailing arguments that might mitigate the evidence should give it a rest. They drop trou and assume the position whenever their MSM PC Thought Police approach. Maybe it would be better if they could JUST SAY NO!










:

The Real Clinton Emerges

Dick Morris has the ticket on Clinton as the BJ man tries to bully and lie about why he did little to avert 9/11:
The real Clinton emerges
From behind the benign fa?ade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace’s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator’s space.

But beyond noting the ex-president’s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the “definition of ‘is’ is” could perform.

Clinton told Wallace, “There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.” Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.

Clinton said conservatives "were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day" after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military’s request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied. The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.

The president told Wallace, "I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden." But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.

Clinton claims "the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there." But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.

Why didn’t the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden’s involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against "over-reaction."In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a “failed bombing” and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.

In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.

Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to "certify" him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.

The former president says, "I worked hard to try to kill him." If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999? The answer to the first question — incompetence; to the second — he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.

President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a "nice little conservative hit job on me." But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.

The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.

One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?