MICKEY KAUS takes a sharp look at Howard Dean’s foreign policy positions, and also observes: “The better things are going in Iraq, the more air leaks out of Dean’s balloon.”
UPDATE: Reader Ali Karim Bey sends this rather critical account of a Howard Dean fundraiser from which the TV cameras were barred, while profanity and ethnic slurs flew.
Somebody smuggle in a miniature videocam, next time!
I MENTIONED HEROMILES.ORG earlier, but I thought I’d mention it again. I donated my Delta miles — not the stash that I once had, since I don’t fly nearly as much as I used to, but the recipients will get more good out of them than I will.
UPDATE: Reader Stephen Hill of Delta emails:
I was reading your post about Operation Hero Miles, and wanted to thank you for donating. Delta SkyMiles customers have donated almost half of all donated miles to date (100 millions of 220 million donated). Thought you’d be interested to know. Thanks for your business, and your generosity.
And thanks to Delta.
RX-8 UPDATE: Several readers — including one who says he’s a product analyst at Mazda — have emailed recently to ask for a longer-term evaluation of the RX-8. So here it is.
The short answer is that I continue to love the car, and in fact appreciate it more as time goes on. It has a wonderfully balanced feel. It’s a car that you wear as much as drive. It’s not the fastest car I’ve ever driven, though it’s quite fast, but it’s definitely the most fun to drive. Pushing down on the accelerator going into a curve causes it to plant itself even more solidly on the road and just zip through. (The only problem is that you can wind up going a lot faster than you realize; fine as long as you stay on the road, but as Tim Blair noted, if you get in trouble at that speed, you’re really in trouble. . . ). The feeling is extremely secure and taut.
The gearshift is a joy: smooth and positive. Unlike the shift in the 350Z or the Infiniti G35 coupe, it’s very slick and not at all notchy. As with the steering, you think it, you don’t think about it. Braking is just terrific, and although the ride is fairly taut, it’s not uncomfortable. The seats are very comfortable — to my surprise, they’re some of the most comfortable seats I’ve ridden in, even over some distance. Trunk space, while nothing to write home about, isn’t bad for a car this small (though the trunk opening is narrow), and you honestly can put grownups in the back seats. You wouldn’t want to ride back there for a cross-country trip, but for normal-sized adults it’s fine for a cross-town ride. There are plenty of cupholders (4) and storage compartments in the cabin, and the sound system is great.
Reliability so far has been fine — no problems at all. The only complaint I have is that the oil dipstick is hard to reach — buried down deep amid hoses and pipes. It looks as if they could have made the dipstick longer; I don’t know why they didn’t. That’s a pretty minor flaw, though. Except for the fact that the passenger door can’t be opened with a key from the drivers’ side (you have to use the wireless clicker, or hit the unlock button inside the car) that’s my only real complaint. The “night” setting on the control panel could be a bit brighter, as it washes out a bit even on maximum brightness if you have the headlights on during the day, but you can override that by selecting the “day” setting easily enough.
I’ve enjoyed the car very much, and I’d certainly buy it again. Here’s my earlier post.
SAVE SOME SOLDIERS: Something Awful is having a fundraiser for the troops. “We do not want our soldiers and especially not our valued readers getting shot and killed because they don’t have the trauma inserts they need!”
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER THERE’S ANYTHING to this report of a fundraising scandal involving MoveOn.org, but if it does turn out to be true it could be a big deal.
UPDATE: Not much to this story beyond embarrassment, judging by this post from PoliPundit.
TYLER COWEN reports from Paris that the mood is “subdued” and adds:
The Parisians, however, have never been nicer to me. I find not a trace of snobbery or hostility. Everyone is quite willing to speak English once they hear my miserable French.
I use the same technique to ensure linguistic submission. It works every time, but now I can’t go back, as the Academie Francaise has a warrant out on me for the murder of the French language.
It’s a fair cop.
IT’S A RATHER RACY VERSION of the Carnival of the Capitalists this week.
I MISSED DEAN’S SPEECH, but here are some comments from LateFinal.
UPDATE: More here, from Jeff Jarvis, who says that Dean hasn’t been paying attention.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, if you missed it on Friday you might want to read Lee Harris’s take on Dean’s foreign policy approach.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Daniel Drezner has more.
MORE: Kevin Holtsberry isn’t impressed.
THE WAR IS THE FAULT OF COLIN POWELL’S PROSTATE? “I wonder if we went to war in part the way we did because Powell was too sick to mount a fight and did not have the courage to resign.”
I don’t think so. On the other hand, unlike the fictional plastic turkey invoked by Bush’s critics, Colin Powell’s prostate at least actually exists.
SORRY, but these words don’t upset me at all.
THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE had, er, a high operational tempo this weekend.
HOWARD DEAN — French-basher?
Though Dean has repeatedly criticized Bush for failing to win international support for the Iraq war, for instance, in June 1998 he defended Clinton’s bombing of Iraq by arguing on the Canadian program, “I don’t think we could have built an international coalition to invade or have a substantial bombing of Saddam.”
During another 1998 appearance on the show, “The Editors,” Dean said it was not worth trying to woo French support on foreign policy initiatives. “The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we’re never going to have a consistent policy,” he said.
Asked about the comment, Dean said he now thinks that because the French “have seen how bad things can get with the United States, they might respond to a new president who’s willing to offer them respect again.”
No flipflops there. Just an acknowledgment that Bush’s policies have left the French chastened, and malleable!
UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is more than just a flipflop.
IT’S ANOTHER PLEDGE DRIVE, over at Tacitus.
These things seem to be all the rage. Maybe I should have one.
“DON’T GET COCKY!” Han Solo’s advice is worth remembering in the wake of Saddam’s capture, especially in light of this report from U.S. News on the Pentagon’s turf wars and how they’re slowing intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Excerpt:
“It’s not that al Qaeda has ways of hitting us we can’t understand. It’s that they operate in ways we weren’t structured to deal with,” says Robert Andrews, the Pentagon’s top civilian in charge of special operations until July 2002. “Their decision loop is a lot smaller than ours.”
That means that ours needs to be smaller, doesn’t it?
THE FALL OF THE DICTATORSHIP — and I’m not talking about Saddam. It’s over at the newly-redesigned GlennReynolds.com site on MSNBC.
SADDAM’S CAPTURE is already yielding benefits:
“We’ve already gleaned intelligence value from his capture,” Hertling said. “We’ve already been able to capture a couple of key individuals here in Baghdad. We’ve completely confirmed one of the cells. It’s putting the pieces together and it’s connecting the dots. It has already helped us significantly in Baghdad.”
The intelligence has also given the U.S. military a far clearer picture of the guerrillas’ command and control network in the city, and has confirmed the existence of rebel cells whose existence was previously only suspected, Hertling said.
From the initial batch of successes, Hertling said it was apparent that Saddam still played some role in leading the anti-U.S. insurgency.
“I’m sure he was giving some guidance to some key figures in this insurgency,” Hertling said.
Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty looks at some questions about the hunt for Saddam.
SADDAM AND ME: LT Smash offers some personal reflections.
JAMES LILEKS has come back from vacation to comment on Saddam’s capture:
Saddam’s failure isn’t his alone. The entire political construct he represents is a miserable man too tired to resist when it’s finally pushed against a wall. One hopes the point is made: when the US Army turns your way, your barber and your tailor are no help at all. When you’re a ragged hairy thug dragged from a bolt-hole who’s having his back teeth interrogated by a grim buff Murcan soljur who would really prefer to be home for Christmas, there’s a chance Paris and Berlin won’t take your calls.
Read the whole thing.
NEARLY MISSED in all the Saddam-capture news was this story on Pervez Musharraf’s near-assassination. However, this story suggests that Musharraf faked the attack to shore up U.S. support. I’m skeptical, but stranger things have happened.
MICHAEL TOTTEN has a gallery of Saddam-capture celebration photos from Iraq.
TIM BLAIR has a new poll on his site. I cast my vote for “inflatable Robert Fisk.”
LANCE CPL. JOHN GUARDIANO has an oped in the Wall Street Journal on Saddam’s capture. Excerpt:
Our comfort level with the Iraqi people grew considerably in the coming weeks and months as we assumed effective governing control of Al Hillah and the surrounding province. We came to realize that the gratitude and affection we experienced on that first day was far from fleeting and ephemeral. It was instead deeply rooted in the people’s recent collective conscience. . . .
I was therefore not surprised to see ordinary Iraqis cheering Saddam’s capture and firing rifles into the air. What has been surprising is the negative media coverage and the shameless exploitation of the war for partisan political purposes that I’ve seen since returning from Iraq in September.
“It’s almost as if what we did over there never happened and doesn’t matter,” one of my staff sergeants told me. But what we did, and what the U.S. military is still doing, does matter, as the Iraqis whom I was privileged to know and befriend will tell you.
You keep hearing this sort of thing from returning soldiers and Marines.
COLIN POWELL has prostate cancer, according to my local talk-radio host, Hallerin Hill, who says he got the news from ABC. That’s why he’s been so low-profile recently. More when I hear more.
UPDATE: They just played an ABC bulletin saying that he’s undergoing surgery now. Wish him well.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the story from the Washington Post.
What’s at issue here is whether the American Defence Department should use American taxpayers’ money to offer American government contracts in Iraq to companies from countries that actively obstructed and continue to obstruct American policy in Iraq. That’s a legitimate national security interest, and no more “illegal” than, say, Belgium’s refusal to sell Britain artillery shells during the Gulf War.
The snubbed Euro-weasels were not as pithy as Mr Bush. But the new Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is worth quoting. “This shouldn’t be just about who gets contracts,” he said. “It ought to be about what is the best thing for the people of Iraq.”
Good point. The best thing for the people of Iraq was to get rid of Saddam, and back in the spring Mr Martin didn’t want to be a part of that. The best thing for the people of Iraq, according to Mr Martin and Herr Schroder and M de Villepin, was that Saddam should be allowed to go on killing and torturing them for another decade or three.
Read the whole thing.
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