VIA JOHN ELLIS, here’s another article on outsourcing, featuring a list of jobs most and least at risk. Ellis thinks that health care will be the big issue of 2004, but I think that this will have a lot of traction, too — especially among voters who tend Republican, but who might be lured away by Democrats over this issue.

ROB SMITH had better never go to Indonesia.

Me, I want a country that offers tax breaks for oral sex, not jail time.

Note to 2004 presidential candidates: here’s your winning issue!

THIS JUST IN: DUCT TAPE IS GOOD FOR EVERYTHING — except, apparently, sealing ducts.

STEVEN DEN BESTE HAS A LENGTHY POST on Iraqi reconstruction that’s worth reading: “We will eliminate our enemies not by killing them in hordes, but by infecting them with ideas which will convert most of them to friends. That process has now begun.”

DRIVING WHILE TIRED — NOW A CRIME IN NEW JERSEY. I agree with the commenter who says: “This is further proof of my theory that any law named after a person is a bad law.”

REPORTERS ENDANGERING IRAQI CHILDREN:

The missiles are filled with volatile rocket fuel and two hundred kilograms of high explosives. Locals fear their children could be injured or their homes destroyed by these deadly weapons.
– ABC TV News, 19 August 2003

Gina Wilkinson: Mr Saadi?
– Yes.
Gina Wilkinson: Can we get these two kids to walk around underneath the missile?
Just around it?
– Mohammad. Mohammad.
Gina Wilkinson: And this one?
– (trans) Come here. Go up there. Go with him. Casually, casually. Walk behind him. Go with him. . . .

You want to show the children on there?
Gina Wilkinson: Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, if they don’t mind.
– (trans) You want them to stand over there to be filmed?
– (trans) Come on sweetie. What’s her name?
– Noona
– (trans) I’m worried about them.
– Sit. Sit on this.
– (trans) I’m worried about them.
– (trans) Sit on the edge.

Gina Wilkinson: Please God, don’t let this thing explode now.
– ABC Camera Tape

This is the Australian equivalent to the BBC (in more ways than one!) not the American Broadcasting Company.

UPDATE: Tim Blair: “I clearly underestimated the ABC’s willingness to harm kids.”

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH thinks that the air is going out of the Plame/Wilson affair as Robert Novak says it wasn’t leaked by the Administration.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner is skeptical, too, if not quite as skeptical as Pejman.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader sends this link to a story from July in which Novak seems to say that someone called him with the information, which would seem to contradict what he’s saying now. So which Novak is telling the truth? The July Novak or the September Novak? (Is either?) Say, maybe his source was George Tenet. . . .

Maybe they should just subpoena Novak. Although Peter Jennings said tonight that courts have consistently held that journalists don’t have to disclose their sources, that’s not true. Novak has no more right to refuse to testify about a crime than anyone else does.

Yeah, I know, that’s probably a non-starter. But that’s because of the political power of the Journalists’ Guild, not because of the First Amendment.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader who says he’s a former CIA employee sends this:

Regarding Pejman Yousefzadeh’s analysis of the Plame/Wilson issue, I thought some information from a former CIA analyst might be useful.

I was an analyst at the CIA from 1990-92 working in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). I was in training for the first year and some of my colleagues were training to be case officers in the Directorate of Operations (DO: the real spies). As a result, my colleagues from the DI and the Directorates of Science & Technology and Administration (DS&T, DA) and I were required to be undercover. The idea was not to blow the cover of the DO folks by association with us during training.

Once I completed my training, I was allowed to drop my cover and be an overt employee. Other DI, DS&T and DA officers chose to maintain their covers. Some DI officers do that so it’s easier to go overseas on Agency business–in which case you travel under cover. Others do it to preserve the option to return to a covert role.

My point is that Valerie Plame, while not in the DO or a traditional covert role, might still indeed have been under cover. On the other hand, the CIA spokesperson that asked Mr. Novak not to use her name may have been operating under standard procedures: CIA officers are encouraged–even if overt employees–to avoid revealing their employment. It helps reduce the chances of being targeted by opposing intelligence services or being the target of terrorist attacks (as happened in 1993 outside the Agency’s gates).

Hope that helps. In keeping with standard procedures (even 11 years later!), please withhold my name.

I have friends who were non-covert types at the CIA, and they do tend to keep that quiet. Eric Kolchinsky has more on this subject.

Meanwhile Mark Kleiman writes that Pejman is wrong, in the item cited above, though weirdly Kleiman also seems to think that this post is my first on the Plame/Wilson affair, which it’s not. In fact, I’ve even linked to Mark on this before. And there’s this rather long post (1,860 words) from yesterday, too. If this is a “wall of silence,” Mark, well. . . .

Unfortunately, that aspect of Kleiman’s post, like the excessive gleefulness and point-scoring of the anti-Bush bloggers in general on this topic, only serves to make this matter look more political, and less serious, than it perhaps is. More and more, these guys remind me of the anti-Clinton fanatics of the 1990s. Which doesn’t necessarily make them wrong, any more than the anti-Clinton fanatics were always wrong. It just makes them a lot less persuasive. (Kleiman also quotes Drezner’s earlier post on this, but not his more recent, and more skeptical, one linked above. Perhaps he missed that one, too, but you shouldn’t, as it offers some perspective.)

Helpfully, Henry Hanks emails:

Actually a close reading of Novak’s statement doesn’t really contradict what he’s saying now…

“I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” he said. “They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.”

versus:

Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson’s report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction.

He never said he was called. The article says, without quoting Novak, that they came to him, which cannot be inferred from his words.

Hmm. Stay tuned, as we keep saying. (Hanks has more, here). One sure-fire prediction: some people will wish the Independent Counsel law hadn’t been repealed, before this is all over.

And in a surprise come-from-behind move, Megan McArdle, who already said something like that, wins the pundit-of-the-week award with this McLaughlin-worthy item:

Question of the day: is the Plame affair good or bad for Wesley Clark?

You’ll have to follow the link to find out. And there’s lots of good stuff, generally, on this and related topics at Tom Maguire’s blog — he’s been covering this for some time.

MORE: Reader Ed Paul emails:

I may have missed this but I have not seen anyone compare the Wilson matter to the disclosure of Linda Tripps personnel and medical records by her boss in DOD to the media. Although it could be argued that revealing a spy’s identity is more serious, both cases involved allegations of a Federal felony. A Justice Department investigation just kind of petered out even thought the guy (Bacon?) admitted enough in public to at least create probable cause. I have too much Clinton scar tissue to be outraged at the hypocrisy but some Democrats ought to at least be made to jump through the hoop of explaining the difference.

I vaguely remember this, and it seems about right.

MORE STILL: Here’s a roundup of the scandal to date. And here’s another.

EVEN MORE STILL: Eugene Volokh responds appropriately to people who want him to blog more about the Plame affair.

Meanwhile, Doug Payton is unconvinced that this story has much to it.

And Charles Johnson links to a speech by Wilson that makes me wonder who thought he could be trusted with the Niger mission to begin with.

MESSAGE TO TED TURNER: It’s best if you don’t open your mouth. Because Jeff Jarvis notices when you do.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster has a more polite response to Turner’s concerns.

I’VE GOT MORE ON THE DEATH PENALTY over at GlennReynolds.com, including a response to my post by Jeralyn Merritt.

ARE JOURNALISTS INFORMATION SERVICE PROVIDERS who have to cough up records on demand from the FBI? No.

But that’s not what the FBI thinks, apparently.

A READER POINTS OUT that the Engineering News-Record — an engineering and construction publication — has a lot of stories on reconstruction in Iraq. Here’s their story index on that subject.

RONALD BAILEY IS COMPARING Wesley Clark to Chauncey Gardiner. But would he still say that if he had read this?

MICHAEL BARONE writes on zigs and zags.

MY SPACE-BLOGGING HAS BEEN SHAMEFULLY INADEQUATE lately, but here’s a good piece on the X-Prize competition, in which people are competing for a prize for a manned private space launch:

In a race to achieve the first privately funded manned spaceflight, two teams of rocket engineers are poised to compete for the $10 million X Prize by launching people to the edge of space and bringing them back safely twice within a two-week period. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said he expects that one of the two teams will launch within the next few months.

Good news, and I wish them success.

WHEN PANTS ATTACK: I’ve seen the Jimmy Neutron nanopants episode that Howard Lovy describes.

JOHN LEO has a column on how Internet fact-checking and bypassing demonstrated problems with media coverage of Iraq. “The Internet campaign is another example of the new media going around the old media, in this case to counter stories by quagmire-oriented reporters.”

We’ll see more of that, I expect.

FISKING GOES MAINSTREAM in this point/counterpoint column by James Pinkerton using colorcoded interjections to respond to a column by Yuval Levin.

WINDS OF CHANGE has a roundup of Iraq news and a separate roundup on the wider war. As always, both are full of interesting stuff that you’re likely to miss otherwise.

UPDATE: Here’s another roundup that’s worth checking out.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy yesterday split from the recent harsh criticism that his father, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, leveled against President Bush for attacking Iraq and said the country is better off without Saddam Hussein.

“I don’t agree with his stance,” the Rhode Island congressman said of his father. “I believe that the U.N. needs to be a viable international organization and the only way it is viable is if its proclamations and resolutions are enforced.”

The elder Kennedy stirred a storm of controversy recently by saying that the reasons for war were “made up in Texas” to help the GOP at election time and calling it “a fraud.”

But Patrick Kennedy, who voted to authorize Bush to use force against Iraq, said Saddam Hussein had “the worst track record of any international leader in the history of the U.N.” for violating human rights and inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

“If he didn’t have (the weapons), then how come he gassed all his people with them?” the younger Kennedy asked. “The fact is, he definitely had them. Whether he destroyed them or not is up for debate. But he had them and he’s got a propensity for invading neighboring countries and causing instability in a part of the world (where) we can’t afford to have a lot of instability.

Patrick Kennedy doesn’t agree with Bush’s approach, but this is a refreshing change from the mindless “Bush lied” agitprop we’re hearing from too many.

DEBORAH ORIN IS PRAISING TOM BROKAW in a story on media reportage and Iraq:

When NBC anchor Tom Brokaw went to Iraq, it was as if he was visiting a different country than that any other TV journalist had reported from, because he left Baghdad and many of his reports actually had an optimistic tone.

Why? Perhaps because Brokaw has chronicled the Greatest Generation and World War II, a time of patience instead of attention deficit disorder and a demand for overnight success. Nowadays, one can imagine critics instantly howling for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s head over the deaths on D-Day.

It’s worth remembering, as critics revive their Vietnam quagmire comparisons, that over 57,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam and so far the U.S. death toll in Iraq is 308, fewer than the 343 firemen who were killed on 9/11.

Every death is a tragedy. But that doesn’t make the war a failure. In fact, it is a success.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S A NEW YORK TIMES story on the Bee blogging brouhaha. It’s pretty good overall, and features Weintraub saying that his Bee editors have committed to being available whenever he wants to post. I suspect that they’ll find that a bit of a strain, but maybe not: the Bee is big enough, I suppose, to have someone on duty at all hours. Weintraub also says that this may detract somewhat from the immediacy and spontaneity of his writing, and I think that pretty much has to be the case.