SOMEHOW (I THINK IT STARTED WITH SEVERAL MARGINAL “BUSHISMS OF THE DAY”), The Volokh Conspiracy has become Slate-watch. Here’s the latest Fisking, of a movie review that seems to equate Fascism with “the unabashed use of force in defense of innocent people (whether oneself or others).”

But that is what a lot of people mean by the term, which of course is why the term has so thoroughly lost its original weight that few lefties even considered that Saddam Hussein was literally a Fascist. How could he be a Fascist, after all? — he was an enemy of America!

UPDATE: Volokh responds to the “Slate-watch” point.

BAD NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN? Maybe. I can’t find any more on this story than Grim has, so we’ll have to see.

Meanwhile, StrategyPage has this report about Iraq:

August 8, 2003: In the last four weeks, attacks on American troops have declined from about 40 a day to about three dozen. Defining what is an “attack” is sometimes difficult. US troops hearing nearby gunfire often discover they have come upon a crime being committed, or two groups of Iraqis settling a dispute. But the lethality of the attacks is going down. In the past week, there were four straight days without an American fatality.

American intelligence efforts have gathered a growing mountain of information on what’s going on among Iraqis and that has made it possible for troops to more effectively go after the Baath Party resistance. The same “battlefield internet” that was so useful doing the fighting is now enabling commanders to quickly share information on the situation inside Iraq. This has led to the rapid development of new tactics and understanding of the rapidly changing situation in Iraq.

And don’t miss this firsthand report from Iraq, either. And I think that Daniel Drezner is right when he says that we shouldn’t look too hard for a single narrative on Iraq.

UPDATE: This post from Iraq by Chief Wiggles is worth reading, too. Excerpt:

This is the classic struggle between good and evil that has been going on since the beginning of time. These people have been in bondage, chained by the ruthless hands of Saddam Hussein. They have been forced to live according to his evil desires, teaching them for the past 30 years that if you are going to get ahead in life, you need to take what ever you can get anyway you can get it. Life according to Saddam is about acquiring wealth, power and fame through being deceitful, dishonest, ruthless, willing to go to extreme means to get what you want, at the expense of others. Thus perpetuating the evils of society in every aspect of their lives, creating the very things I spoke of earlier in my journal, such as; distrust, disbelief, dishonesty, greed, strife, selfishness, and on and on.

I am not saying all the Iraqi people are like this only that this was their example and they were rewarded for pursuing an evil course of action. So many of them followed the path to fame and fortune outlined by Saddam himself, through being abusive, taking advantage of those weaker, it was survival of the fittest. The wild west of the Middle East.

We came to their rescue bringing a new freedom perhaps for most never before experienced; the large majority of people welcoming our relief from the chains of Saddam, cutting his evil control of their lives. Even now that I drive around Baghdad people waive, kids run out to greet us, people all over the country giving us thumbs up. Just yesterday, a car full of young men pulled up along side of us to express their great joy for what we have done for them.

There is good happening all around us. So many good people are stepping forward to bring us information about bad activities going on against the coalition forces. Little by little we are weeding the society of those that would desire to perpetuate the evil doings of their former ruler, still seeking to take control of these people. Evil doings of people wanting power or wealth through wicked means.

Every day people come to our office to inform us of activities in their community that are illegal or pro-Saddam or are against the coalition forces. We dispatch a team to conduct a raid on the location to take down the bad people. We do this almost every night. It is happening, one raid at a time, one good act of kindness at a time, one honest deed, one kind gesture, it is catching on and the wave is building. It is going to happen.

Read the whole thing. There may not be a single narrative on Iraq, but the press has certainly tried to create one. These first-person reports make clear that there’s more going on than we’re hearing from Big Media.

STILL MORE: Sylvain Galineau has some thoughts that are worth reading.

I’VE BEEN HANDING OUT LOTS OF ADVICE TO DEMOCRATS LATELY. Now, over at GlennReynolds.com, I offer some advice to the Republicans. I suppose they’re just about as likely to listen to me as the Democrats are . . . .

NOW THIS IS INTERESTING:

WASHINGTON — A top Bush administration weapons investigator told Congress in closed testimony last week that he has uncovered solid information from interviews, documents, and physical evidence that Iraqi military forces were ordered to attack US troops with chemical weapons, but did not have the time or capability to follow through, according to senior defense and intelligence officials.

The alleged findings by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector now working for the United States, would buttress the administration’s claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction — a key component of President Bush’s case for war that has since fallen into dispute.

Of course, this could have been a bluff by Saddam — expecting his orders to be intercepted — and it’s also consistent with the Saddam-thought-he-had-WMD-but-his-underlings-were-lying theory.

FORGET AHNULD: Here’s your real celebrity ticket!

Heh. I think this falls more in the “Gary Coleman” category, but . . .

HERE’S AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION of the Mike Hawash case, from a bunch of fellow chipgeeks. As reader Jim Loan, who forwarded the link, notes:

What is interesting to me is the not-very-left-leaning nature of the majority of the comments. A really minor item, but interesting to me. It is just another indication of the MASSIVE shift in the baseline point of view of many Americans since 911.

I think that the shift has been bigger than the “opinion leaders” have realized.

MATTHEW HOY LOOKS AT A CORRECTION and wonders if the New York Times has another Jayson Blair on the payroll.

JAMES LILEKS WEIGHS IN on the bloggers – vs. – Limbaugh controversy, and offers some surprising advice to NPR.

THIS OP-ED FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES is subscription-only, but here’s the key part:

The first United Nations inspection unit, Unscom, operated in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Its mission was to destroy weapons that, it was assumed, would be handed over by a defeated and co-operative regime. The reality was rather different.

With an area twice that of Britain, Iraq could easily withhold information from a few hundred inspectors. Through infiltration, bugging and physical threats, it systematically obstructed the UN’s efforts. . . .

The nuclear weapons Iraq was aiming to produce depend on highly enriched uranium, which may still be available on the black market. Given the documentation from previous work, and the know-how in scientists’ heads, the time required to assemble a crude bomb would then be a matter of months.

If the US had yielded to UN pressure to give Unmovic more time, it is unlikely the inspectors would have found significant WMD. The troop concentrations around Iraq would have been dispersed and the pressure on Mr Hussein to co-operate would have diminished accordingly. Ultimately economic sanctions would have been lifted – and a rehabilitated Mr Hussein could have resumed his quest for WMD.

That would have been disastrous for global security. The possibility of links to terrorist groups was one of the weightiest motives for war. Regimes in possession of clandestine WMD must be tempted to use them by proxy, since countermeasures cannot easily be directed against anonymous assailants.

What matters is not whether Iraq’s WMD can be tracked down but whether the production of such weapons has been inhibited for the foreseeable future. That required the overthrow of the regime. Preventive wars are not a desirable response to the threat of nuclear proliferation; far better – though very difficult – would be to strengthen the present ineffective mechanisms for preventing proliferation without unacceptably infringing sovereignty. In the meantime the military option may be unavoidable.

Curt Mileikowsky is former head of Asea’s nuclear power division. Evelyn Sokolowski is former head of the joint analysis group for Sweden’s nuclear utilities

I wonder why we’re not hearing more about this.

SAMIZDATA has a firsthand report from Iraq. Reportedly, a major Ba’ath Party figure in the post-war resistance has been nabbed, but it’s getting no attention.

MICKEY KAUS is all over the California recall, with an interesting slant on the Arianna / Arnold relationship.

TODAY IS INSTAPUNDIT’S SECOND BIRTHDAY. Follow the link to see what was news back then.

We’ll celebrate here by blogging, of course, just like any other day. But feel free to hit the tipjar if you like!

WHO WAS JAMES ABOUREZK? Do you remember? No? Well, that’s hardly your fault. He was an undistinguished U.S. Senator, whose term in office is remembered by few and celebrated, I suspect, by none. Right now he’s cementing his place in history as an exceptionally dumb former U.S. Senator by filing a rather baseless lawsuit against a blog for calling him a “traitor.”

My prediction: when it’s over, Abourezk will be out some money, and those few who remember him will say “Oh, yeah, the ‘traitor’ guy.” Not much of a capstone for a political career, but some will regard it as fitting, in a way.

UPDATE: In an unusual occurrence, Volokh’s permalinks are hosed by the Blogger bug. Just go here and scroll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Claire Berlinski emails:

I read your post and had a twinge of recollection — Abourezk, Abourezk, who’s he? And then I remembered: Oh, yes, I wrote my doctoral dissertation about him. I went back and had a look at the thing (for the first time in eight years) to see what I’d once decided about him. I don’t know whether he’s a traitor, but Abourezk is certainly a pest, a well-known exponent of the thesis that Israel controls the United States’ foreign policy by means of a secret and sinister Jewish-American cabal. Consider, for example, this 1977 statement: “I have sworn to uphold the government of the United States, but I never dreamed that I would be required to swear allegiance to any other government.” He has been cited admiringly by former Congressman Paul Findley, a pest par excellence, as a fearsome adversary of AIPAC, an organization that, Findley holds, “has effectively gained control of virtually all of Capitol Hill’s action on Middle East policy … AIPAC means power — raw, intimidating power.” As any doctoral student of United States arms transfer policy toward the Arab-Israeli antagonists from 1967-1988 (a set of which I am the sole member) can tell you, these ideas may be handily disproved. If Abourezk wishes to sue me, too, my coterie of clannish Jewish lawyer friends are standing by. I got this thesis past my dissertation committee, and I can get it past any jury. Readers eager to consult my dissertation should instead buy Loose Lips, (www.berlinski.com) which is much more entertaining and can be read in an afternoon. It has sex and clever plot twists in it, too, which my dissertation does not.

Useful information, a solid slam, and a book plug — all in one paragraph! Somebody get this woman a talking-head slot on Fox or CNN!

NICE TO SEE that the Justice Department has plenty of resources for the terror war and can even spare the time and money for, ahem, lower-priority cases like this one:

Federal prosecutors said today they have charged a North Hollywood wholesaler of adult films with violating federal obscenity laws as the government steps up a campaign against the major distributors of adult entertainment.

The U.S. Justice Department said that its 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates and the husband-and-wife team that owns it is part of a renewed enforcement of federal obscenity laws after more than a decade in which they were rarely imposed.

Obviously, there’s no need for a budget increase this year. Coming soon: a crackdown on interstate parking-ticket scofflaws, and a multi-agent, years-long investigation into New Orleans bordellos. Oh, wait. . . .

UPDATE: David Bernstein says that the Ashcroft Justice Department is turning into a “disaster:”

Let’s see: little respect for state sovereignty (medical marijuana, same sex marriage, etc.), attempts to deny American citizens charged with terrorism-related offenses and arrested on U.S. soil access to federal courts, use and abuse of antiterrorism statutes for unrelated law enforcement purposes, and, as Instapundit reports, a nascent crackdown on that ever-present threat to American society, the pornography industry, in the middle of what is supposed to be a war on terrorism. Geez.

Geez, indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more disappointment with Ashcroft, from a conservative lawblogger:

When Democrats lambasted Ashcroft in the process of his confirmation, I largely disregarded their criticism because it was so often over-the-top and poorly reasoned. It had that President-as-Fuhrer quality to it that criticism of Bush so often takes on. For that matter, Ashcroft is still subject to some truly ridiculous and reflexive (i.e., knee-jerk) attacks. However, since becoming Attorney General, Ashcroft has established a genuinely unflattering record. I have come to believe that Ashcroft is unfit for the position that he occupies.

Ouch.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Glen Jones emails:

The worst thing about this, to me, is that Ashcroft is making it all-that-much-harder for us conservatives to have a defensible position. Yeah, the leftists throw out that “Bush=hitler” and “Ashcroft=satan” or whatever signs and slogans of the week they have, and I think only about 3-5% of Americans really give that any serious thought – they know it’s over-the-top drivel. But with Ashcroft going off the deep end, they will start wondering. “Hmmm, Ashcroft is getting more and more hitler-like, so maybe Bush is …”

Anyway, final point, I’m really starting to think that the conservatives should start calling LOUDLY for Ashcroft to resign so that we can disavow him.

Ashcroft is becoming a liability. I doubt he’ll survive past this term. Look for him to be replaced by a William French Smith type who won’t be a magnet for controversy. At least, that’s been my feeling all along, but I could certainly be wrong here. So far — and this just makes it easier for opponents to tie Ashcroft to Bush — there’s been no sign of dissatisfaction from the White House.

STILL MORE: Ashcroft has his defenders, though. Reader Mike Steele writes:

I am mightily distressed that Ashcroft’s record appears to be so dismal. I mean there has to be some obscure religious sect HE can set fire to, or some poor wanna be immigrant kid he can send back to a Stalinist hellhole. And then there’s all the abortion clinics he’s closed, all the camps he’s opened, all the….

Now there’s a slogan to fire up the electorate: “John Ashcroft — better than Janet Reno!” Reno was a liability, and should have been let go, but Clinton wasn’t in a position to do so. It hurt him.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING, and generally positive firsthand report from Iraq:

Over the course of the next few days, we conducted daily patrols around the city, locating schools and inspecting them. Despite the fact that looting and destruction had even taken place at the primary schools, it looked good. Teachers were going through neighborhoods on foot making calls to get students to come in and help repair the damage that had been done to their schools. Some were holding impromptu classes already, though not ‘officially’. Every teacher we met was very happy to see us. They expressed hope that we would help stabilize the city, and they were noticing it getting better as the days progressed. They were also surprised to see U.S. forces specifically concerned with education. The third day we were on patrol, we got lucky. A teacher we encountered told us that even though the administrative staff of the education department had been burned out of their offices, they were meeting that day at a nearby kindergarten to discuss the prospect of restarting classes and giving exams. We asked the teacher to lead us to the meeting place.

We arrived at the girl’s kindergarten school where the administrators were located, and they too were extremely happy to see us. They invited us into their meeting and explained their situation. They were determined not to let the war stop education for their children. They wanted to immediately restart classes as best they could, and develop a new curriculum that was free of mandatory Ba’athist doctrine (for example, every children’s textbook had a photo of Saddam on the front page). There were obstacles to this. Many schools were in dire need of repair and reconstruction. Many were looted to the point that even the toilets had been ripped from the floors (when the majority of a society has been so deprived by their government for so long, this is what happens). Another problem was that these administrators did not know how to take charge of things on their own. The government had been so centralized that everything came from Baghdad. Begin classes this day; give this exam on this day, etc. Since Baghdad was “out of commission” so to speak, no one knew where to start. The only leadership that they recognized was the U.S and Coalition forces. Realizing where they were coming from, I explained that we, the U.S. forces in Mosul, held education as a top priority. Essentially, I gave them permission to go ahead and start classes. The next question was “What day”? We tentatively scheduled a date for two weeks ahead. This would give us time to assess the school repair situation, and get the message out by radio and leaflet to students that school was going to restart. It was a poignant moment, meeting with this group of educators in an overcrowded room in a city that was still a combat zone, to ensure that their children would continue their education. Their determination, and their gratitude to the United States for removing Saddam, was humbling. . . .

Usually things are very good. We are helping people that need it, and they are very happy that we are here. We still do not have a date to return home. I miss my girlfriend, my band, and my friends. But I know that what we are doing here is positive, and that when we leave, we can do so knowing that we came with an important mission, and helped improve the lives and the future for many thousands of people.

It’s from the SuicideGirls website, interestingly enough, and the author plays bass in a punk rock band in civilian life. There’s much more, and you should read it all.

BILL QUICK MAY HAVE FINALLY HIT UPON the economic model for successful blogging that everyone has been looking for.

JOHN SCALZI HAS “TAKEN THE BOEING” — he’s going to be a house blogger for AOL in support of AOL’s new blog-publishing platform.

I hope they’re paying you more than MSNBC is paying me, John!

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION continues to drag its feet on the arming of pilots and Bill Quick isn’t happy about it:

George W. Bush supports the Second Amendment exactly the same way BJ Clinton supported gay rights: In no meaningful way.

If terrorists take over the unarmed cockpit of even one American plane, the blood will be on President George W. Bush’s hands.

Sounds like a good issue for a pro-gun Democrat.

THE SHAME CONTINUES: TAPPED still hasn’t linked Skippy.

I blame Kuttner.

UPDATE: So does Roger Simon, who calls him a bluenose. But not about the capitalization.

INTERNET RONIN SAYS KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:

No, not John Ashcroft. California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, sitting atop a $10 million campaign war chest, is the man to watch until Saturday’s deadline for candidates to replace California Governor Gray Davis.

Well, Lockyer already has Spike on his side. . . .

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Katie Couric is already carrying water for Gray Davis. Boy, that was fast!

BRIAN CARNELL SAYS THAT AL GORE DIDN’T TELL THE TRUTH in his MoveOn.org speech.

UPDATE: A couple of readers say that Carnell over-reads Gore’s statements, and that Gore isn’t saying that the Bush Administration misled voters, only that voters had the wrong idea. I don’t know — I read the speech, and while Gore leaves room for that sort of back-pedaling, I think his message is easy to figure out. Then there’s this story, which certainly suggests that Gore is calling the Bush Administration a bunch of liars. I suppose you could call this another example of the “I have not raised these questions, but others have” phenomenon, one which does Gore no credit.

But don’t take my word for it, or Brian’s — follow the links and make up your own mind.

JAMES TARANTO EXPANDS on a topic raised by James Lileks:

Schwarzenegger offends Old European sensibilities because he’s a flamboyantly macho American, of course, but there’s more to it than that. He’s an American by choice, a native of Old Europe who left the Continent for America in 1968, when he was in his early 20s, and became a U.S. citizen just 20 years ago. His is a classic immigrant success story, a reminder that America is the land of opportunity while Europe is a place opportunity-seekers flee.

Yep. And that’s one of the answers to the “why they hate us” question.

PHIL BOWERMASTER HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH AUBREY DE GREY, of the Department of Genetics at Cambridge University. De Grey thinks that aging is curable, and will be cured. If you’re interested in such things, it’s well worth reading.

MINNESOTA BLOGGER MITCH BERG compares Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Overall, they’re not that similar, he says.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON just lost a fan.