SOME SIGNS OF PROGRESS at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. About time.

NEW MEDIA SAVING THE OLD MEDIA? Interesting. Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis says this is a bad thing.

LOVING MONSTERS: My TechCentralStation column is up. What sort of person likes the idea of being prey?

DON’T MISS this Africa regional briefing from Winds of Change.

THE INSTAWIFE AND I HAVE DECAMPED to a secure, undisclosed location. There’s Internet access here (obviously) but I don’t know how much blogging I’ll do. Back later.

In inside-the-blogosphere news, meanwhile, there’s a joint statement from Atrios and Donald Luskin. (It’s here, too.)

SPINSANITY has a lengthy sum-up on the “imminent threat” debate:

As a factual matter, conservatives are largely correct and liberal critics and journalists are guilty of cheap shots or lazy reporting. However, the evidence is not completely clear and both sides are guilty of distorting this complex situation for political gain. Specifically, while there’s some evidence indicating the Bush administration did portray Iraq as an imminent threat, there’s much more that it did not. Those attempting to assert that the White House called Iraq an imminent threat are ignoring significant information to the contrary. Similarly, those who say the Bush administration never used the phrase or implied as much are ignoring important, though isolated, evidence.

Read the whole thing, if this interests you.

WANT TO HELP IN IRAQ? Consider donating via the Spirit of America.

WHO CARES ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION, when we’ve got international law?

These sorts of sentiments will do more to delegitimize the Supreme Court than just about anything else I can imagine. I have no idea what the Justices are thinking in making such statements, and I strongly recommend that they think again.

PERSPECTIVE from Iraq.

VOTER INTIMIDATION is reported in Philadelphia.

WHY HAS NO ONE IDENTIFIED THE CULPRIT in this shocking leak of private information?

CHIEF WIGGLES GETS A MENTION (well, more than that, really) in this story from The Globe and Mail. They did their homework a bit better than Newsweek did.

KIM DU TOIT says that we’re all wimps.

I don’t have time to write the lengthy response that this calls for, so just go read it and see what you think yourselves. But what’s interesting is that much of his analysis parallels (if more profanely) this article from Salon by Kim Morgan.

UPDATE: Hmm, speaking of “wimp” — Kim’s server is, um, not big enough to handle the traffic from this link. He asks me to post a notice pointing out that he’s having trouble, and to suggest that you try later. Happy to oblige.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Seems to be working now. Celinda Lake and some other Democrats want to win over “NASCAR dads.” But can they really do what it would take? Maybe they should hire Kim du Toit as a consultant. Naomi Wolf won’t be able to help them with this. . . .

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob Smith has thoughts on manhood.

Meanwhile, Spoons and his readers weigh in on Kim’s post.

DOG BITES MAN: “Terrorists Escape Saudis.”

HEADS SHOULD BE ROLLING: Michael Ledeen makes an important point:

It’s long past time — since September 12, 2001 to be precise — for people to be sacked for failure, and the fact that virtually no one has — except for Larry Lindsay (seemingly for insufficient aerobic exercise) and a couple of others dealing with “the economy” or with faith-based initiatives and volunteerism — is the greatest failure of this administration. The bureaucracy has learned that there is no penalty for failure. The only way to change their mindset is to do to them what Reagan did to the air controllers.

Unfortunately, Dubya has embraced the Loyalty Thing that is one of the Bush family’s most cherished values. He doesn’t turn on his own loyal aides, even (perhaps especially) when they come under attack. But this is no way to wage a war, where the only thing that matters is victory.

I’m surprised that the Democrats aren’t calling him on this.

CERP UPDATE: Maj. Sean Bannion emails:

I sat in a CPA hosted conference here in Baghdad today and the budget guy, an OMB type, stated that there was 180M for CERP for FY 2004 as part of the supplemental. Heard it with my own ears.

Only catch, it’s for both Iraq and Afghanistan — exact split to be determined.

I still say it’s a win.

Sounds good to me.

IN THE POST BELOW, I ask if we should have stayed home in World War II. That’s not an entirely rhetorical question: Some people thought so then, though they quickly shut up once the war started. But I’m reading Harry Turtledove’s In the Presence of Mine Enemies — in which the United States did just that — and I think we’re better off still stuck in the European “quagmire” than we would have been if we’d tried to stay out.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN — reader Kathy Nelson has typed in a second Saturday Evening Post article from 1946 on how the occupation was going in Germany. Not terribly well, is the answer, and once again there are quite a few familiar bits.

In response to the previous post along these lines, a reader pointed out that the Marshall Plan was introduced later, and perhaps in response to critiques like these. [LATER: Another reader emails: “I wonder how many who point that out are actually FOR the $87 billion reconstruction package for Iraq?” Me, too.] I think that’s probably right and that criticism did lead to the Marshall Plan, but I think that his implied point — that therefore I shouldn’t be criticizing the kind of sloppy-and-snarky coverage of Iraq that we’re seeing from places like Newsweek — is wrong. I’d love to see thoughtful coverage of what’s going well and badly in Iraq. I’m complaining because I’m not seeing much of it.

Some excerpts follow — just click “MORE” to read them. I wish that I could reproduce the whole thing, but I’ve tried to be representative here.

(more…)

IT’S THE WORLD, STUPID: Jonathan Rauch writes on unilateralism:

The only way to placate today’s angry Europeans is to change the ends, not just the means, of U.S. foreign policy. And the only way to have avoided the trans-Atlantic falling-out over Iraq would have been for Bush to condition America’s use of force upon the approval of the Security Council (read: France). No responsible American president, of either party, would have done that.

Indeed.

A READER wonders why I’m not blogging about the huge, multibillion-dollar Indian Trust Fund scandal. It’s important, I just don’t have a lot to say about it except that it calls into question the ability of the federal government to manage large amounts of other people’s money without accountability. Whenever you have that, you get something like, well, the Eurocracy. . . .

Anyway, Indian Country Today is all over this story, and I keep a link to it on the left. It’s worth checking out anyway, as there’s a lot more Indian-related news going on than generally gets Big Media attention elsewhere.

READER WIJNAND VAN DE BEEK (yes, he’s Dutch) emails:

I find you apologizing more and more for not blogging enough. . . .

Please don’t. You’re a busy man, and I understand blogging is insustainable if it’s not fun.

Please enjoy yourself blogging and forget about us. It’s your hobby, and I’m sure you’ll be better at it when you do it in a way that suits you.

If that means a format change, don’t worry about it. Do it. . . .

Don’t get jailed by your audience. We’re only visitors.

Several other people have sent similar sentiments lately. Thanks very much. I’m much busier than usual this semester at my actual job, and sometimes blogging has to take a back seat. That’s okay. Please rest assured that my occasional apologies for not blogging enough are largely a matter of politeness, and do not represent any actual anguish on my part. . . .

THE ECONOMIST has a good piece on Iraqi reconstruction.

POWERLINE notes a story I missed:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 2 — The CIA has seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi Intelligence Service that is spurring U.S. investigations of weapons procurement networks and agents of influence who took money from the government of Saddam Hussein, according to U.S. officials familiar with the records. . . .

The recipients of the Iraqi funds were described by U.S. officials not as formal intelligence agents, but as prominent personalities and political figures who accepted money from Iraq as they defended Hussein publicly or pressed his causes.

I’ll be fascinated to find out who those “prominent personalities and political figures” are. Think there are some nervous folks out there tonight?

REID STOTT: “We Southerners are all alike.”

DANIEL DREZNER NOW HAS AN ARTICLE IN SLATE criticizing the Center for Public Integrity’s rather bogus report on Iraq reconstruction contracts:

The CPI devoted six months to research and filed more than 70 Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals to get to the bottom of the story. The conclusion of the report, “Windfalls of War,” is that a clear quid pro quo exists between government procurement and campaign contributions to George W. Bush. Charles Lewis, the group’s executive director, released a statement arguing that the report reveals “a stench of political favoritism and cronyism surrounding the contracting process in both Iraq and Afghanistan.”

There’s just one problem: The CPI has no evidence to support its allegations.

Sorry, but this is a pretty embarrassing performance for an outfit with “integrity” in its name.