THIS ARTICLE takes a rather skeptical view of the prospects for democratic reform in the Arab world, notwithstanding the recent declaration at the Tunis conference. On the other hand, not everyone is skeptical:

“Real reform is beginning and will go at a faster pace” in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, said Amri, who is the director and founder of a think-tank in Cambridge, England, the Said al-Amri Center for Security and Strategic Studies.

“I think within the Middle East reform will go faster than we think,” said Amri, speaking from Riyadh.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, Amri now constantly witnesses changes he would not have predicted just several years ago.

I wouldn’t pick Saudi Arabia to be a leader in reform, but I hope he’s right.

TOM CLANCY IS calling the Iraq war a mistake. He’s got a new book out with Gen. Zinni. Richard Baehr, meanwhile, thinks that some of Zinni’s criticisms are dubious.

Professor Bainbridge, who was pooh-poohing my earlier post about Bush’s vulnerabilities, thinks that this is really bad news for Bush, who can’t afford to lose the Clancy-fan vote. That’s absolutely right — though judging by the current Amazon reader reviews Clancy’s fans aren’t persuaded just yet.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman observes a trend: “The bottom line on GWB’s vulnerabilities: each day it seems like another group in the coalition that helped elect him in the nail-biting election against Al Gore is dropping away. What we seem to be seeing now is a slow but steady trend away from Bush, rather than to Kerry, who remains as exciting and palatable as a bowl of frozen chopped liver.”

Meanwhile, reader Chuck Pelto emails:

I think Tom, with his expressed desire for a cause belli, was thinking we needed something like 10,000 dead from a weapon of mass destruction that could be traced to Iraq, as the use of ebola by Iran in his book Executive Orders.

I think Bush is correct in being more pro-active than Ryan. We’ve
already had our mass casualty event.

Well, there’s a possible Russian Ebola bioweapon story in the news today. (Here’s the New York Times link.) It’s probably not a bioweapon, but given that it was a scientist at a “former” bioweapons lab who died, you could certainly spin some Clancy-like speculations if you wanted to.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED in what people who pay close attention to space think, maybe you should check out the International Space Development Conference this weekend.

WANT MORE DIVERSITY IN YOUR BLOG-READING? You probably should, as a blog-diet of just InstaPundit (or even just the blogs I link to) would be a mistake. So check out the Carnival of the Vanities and see if any of the wide assortment of bloggers linked there strike your fancy.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A MAJOR SCREWUP BY THE FBI for which heads should probably roll:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Offering a rare public apology, the FBI admitted mistakenly linking an American lawyer’s fingerprint to one found near the scene of a terrorist bombing in Spain, a blunder that led to his imprisonment for two weeks. . . .

Court documents released Monday suggested that the mistaken arrest first sprang from an error by the FBI’s supercomputer for matching fingerprints and then was compounded by the FBI’s own analysts.

The apology is to the FBI’s credit. But it makes me wonder how many other such matches are wrong. I wonder if this is connected with this homeland security fingerprint initiative that I was criticizing two years ago?

For more on questions about fingerprint evidence, read this and this.

UPDATE: James Rummel weighs in with personal experience.

POLITICAL LOCAL-BLOGGING: Ed Cone has some interesting observations.

THIS ELECTION IS LOOKING LIKE a World Series between the Red Sox and the Cubs, as each side’s fans worry, with some reason, that their guy will blow it. Republicans are afraid that Bush is in trouble, while Mickey Kaus continues his “Dem Panic Watch” feature. There’s bad news for both candidates in the latest polls. Bush keeps falling in overall approval, but the voters seem to think less of Kerry as time goes on. It’s a bizarre race to the bottom. I’ve said for a while that this election will probably be decided by the 5% who haven’t paid any attention until the week before the election. Judging by these polls, they may be the only ones who show up to vote. . . .

There’s always McCain / Hillary!

UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “we are reminded of the famous Winston Churchill quip – the current news is bad for Bush, and Kerry is a deeply flawed candidate, but the news can change.”

Of course, I expect that a lot of folks in the media will be doing their best to see that it doesn’t.

JASON VAN STEENWYK IS CALLING OUT MAJOR MEDIA FOR FAKING QUOTES regarding General Mattis’ statement on not apologizing for his men. He’s got links and transcripts and he’s naming names, which include the New York Times, Reuters, AFP, and more:

Essentially, it looks like they’re quoting each other, or some apocryphal Q source material. They’re not quoting General Mattis. They didn’t even show up at the press conference, and they didn’t bother to get a transcript or listen to the tape. But all these reporters are passing their crap off as if they were right from the source material.

Absolutely, completely pathetic.

If this is what passes for news coverage, then they ought to fire their reporters and hire some boy scouts to write for them. At least they’ll be honest.

Read the whole thing. Interestingly, I once had the same thing happen to me, with a bunch of newspapers reproducing quotes from an appearance on the PBS Newshour as if they’d interviewed me. They didn’t mangle them nearly as badly, though.

And I’ll bet this will be all over talk radio. Hmm. Maybe there is something to the theory espoused below.

UPDATE: More on sloppy quote-recycling from Michael Drout.

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS A QUESTION FOR C.A.I.R.: Is anti-Zionism the same as anti-Semitism, or not?

ZEYAD’S BLOG gets a mention in John Podhoretz’s column on Bush’s speech.

A BUNCH OF READERS are mad because the major networks didn’t cover Bush’s speech last night. (The emails are along the lines of this blog post.) But it’s my understanding that the White House didn’t request the airtime.

True, the networks could have covered it anyway. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame them for not doing so, under the circumstances.

UPDATE: Tim Conaghan emails: “I suspect the White House has developed a rather sophisticated, below-the-radar media strategy in which one component is to allow the major, mainstream media to self-isolate themselves.”

Hmm. That would be consistent with some other reports. Are they that smart?

A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW POSTS FROM VIRGINIA POSTREL, covering everything from highway construction economics to international trade, along with the news that Amazon is now selling beauty products.

I remember when Amazon was just for books. What next? Cars?

ANOTHER SCANDAL INVOLVING U.N. TROOPS:

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 – the victims of multiple rape by militiamen – can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

These just keep coming. Michael Moynihan makes the “>inevitable point.

MORE POLITICAL MEANNESS: Name-calling in South Dakota. I don’t think this is all that big a deal, but some people seem to.

RX-8 REPORT: I turned my grades in this morning, and set out for a picture-taking drive through the boonies. It was nice, and along the way the RX-8 turned over 5000 miles. Since people occasionally email to ask what my longer-term impressions are, I thought I’d record a few here.

Overall, I feel about like I did when it was new. It’s phenomenally balanced — so much so that you sometimes forget just how fast it is. The gearshift is smooth, and the engine is very responsive. The steering is taut, and has good feedback. The brakes are fabulous.

I’ve found that I actually like the interior and the driver’s seat more than I did when I bought it. The seat is more comfortable, even on fairly long trips, than the seat in my Passat, which is saying something.

Fuel economy doesn’t suck, especially given the horsepower, but it’s nothing to write home about. I get in the low 20s on the highway, the upper teens in town. (Extended high-rev trips in the mountains push it lower, though; the Passat’s better, but then it has less than 2/3 the horsepower). Oil consumption — something that rotaries have issues with — hasn’t been bad. I added one quart between buying the car and doing the 5000-mile oil change last week. However, you are supposed to check the oil regularly. I do, and the dipstick location, to put it mildly, sucks. (The oil-volume sensor will sometimes falsely tell you that you’re low on oil; it seems sensitive to a combination of slope and jiggle that a couple of roads I’ve encountered possess, giving a false low reading that goes away after a minute. Be sure to check before you add more oil!)

A guy in a big pickup dinged me with his trailer hitch in the parking lot a couple of months back. I kept honking, but he just couldn’t see me. This made a hole about the size of, well, a trailer hitch in the plastic panel surrounding the right-side exhaust. To my pleasant surprise, replacing the part cost only $36.

Bottom line: I can drive the car all day, have a blast, and get out less tired than when I got in. So I’m happy. If you want more technical stuff, here’s a long-term review from Auto Week. And here’s an interesting article on the hand-assembly process used on the engine. (Thanks to reader Jim Herd for both links.)

JACOB T. LEVY writes on the libertarian threat to Bush and suggests that Bush’s people are in denial. I agree with this. Bush’s positions on stem cell research, abortion, etc., are damaging there, and the war’s pretty much a wash, with libertarians divided.

I’ve gotten some emails asking why I like Bush so much. I don’t really — I support him on the war, but if Lieberman or Gephardt had gotten the Democratic nomination, I wouldn’t have a strong preference. (They’re not my faves on other issues, but neither is Bush, whose policies on stem cells, abortion, etc., differ from mine rather sharply). Despite the claims of some writers that Bush and Kerry will have more in common than we think on foreign policy and the war (which may be true) I don’t have the same confidence in Kerry. I suppose he could change my mind on that, but I don’t really expect that he will.

But my support for Bush has more to do with the character of his opposition, really, than with Bush himself. (You don’t see a lot of Bush hagiography here). And I think libertarians who feel differently about the war have no real reason to support Bush — he’s been wishy-washy on gun control, big on spending, and generally a big-government kind of guy, not a government-off-your-back kind of guy. (And don’t get me started on Homeland Security).

Would Kerry be worse for libertarian principles than Bush? He’d probably like to be. But in reality, it’s not likely to matter a lot.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan says the slide in Bush’s approval ratings is due to the loss of Republican and libertarian support.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon observes: “There ain’t no libertarianism in Tehran or Riyadh–small or large ‘L.’ Hardly anyone even dreams of such things. What there is is a lot of Medievalism. I’m putting some of my stuff on hold for a few years. They can too.”

MORE: Bainbridge doesn’t think libertarians matter, while Brendan Loy thinks that libertarians will get some votes from unhappy Republicans, but then adds:

Of course, this notion of possible Bush weakness among libertarians and Republicans only serves to underscore what a truly terrible choice John Kerry was, and is, for the Democratic nomination. Either Edwards or Lieberman could have realistically won these people’s votes; Kerry’s best hope is that they’ll vote Libertarian or stay home.

It’s a damn shame we picked such a bad candidate when it turns out our opponent was going to be so vulnerable.

As I’ve said all along, Bush has always been vulnerable. But the Democrats have a constitutional problem with doing what it takes to capitalize on it.

Meanwhile Libertarian Dr. Kate is “rock solid” for Bush, and reports: “all the registered Libs I know are planning to vote for Bush. In Massachusetts, that’s saying something.” Stay tuned.

THE DISSIDENT FROGMAN IS WATCHING THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, and he’s appalled to hear a French representative advocating the transfer of nuclear weapons to Arab countries. (The link is from 2001. Have they gotten more sensible since then? I doubt it.)

STOCKPILES AND GOALPOSTS: My earlier post on articles about Bush’s failure to find “stockpiles” of WMD led to some emails from readers noting that the Administration did talk about stockpiles before the war. That’s true, and it’s also true that they haven’t found them. But unless you think that the Sarin shell, and the mustard gas find the week before, were both one-offs, I think they indicate the likelihood that such stockpiles did exist before the war, and may well still do so. (Read this post at Blaster’s and scroll up and down from it). It’s that indication that’s the key, and focusing on the failure to find “stockpiles” now is wilfully obtuse.

This post by David Hogberg, which I linked a while back, has more on the goalpost-moving subject.

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Aronstein points out that Security Council Resolution 1441 doesn’t talk about “stockpiles” but about “any” and “all” weapons (and programs and facilities for developing weapons) of mass destruction. Here’s a collection of the various resolutions. It’s worth reminding people — again — that the burden was on Saddam, found by 1441 to be in material breach, to prove his innocence, and that nobody thought he’d met that burden.

More here.

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER learned to ride a two-wheeler without falling down tonight (perhaps she can give Bush and Kerry lessons). That means I missed most of Bush’s speech as I was busy first helping, then applauding, for a couple of hours after dinner. Caught the last few minutes of the speech, and it seemed okay to me. Bush will never win any oratory awards, but he was focused and to the point, and I thought the ending, where he contrasted the terrorists’ vision of a Taliban-like society versus our vision of freedom was good. (Nice touch styling our approach as a way for the Middle East to regain its historical greatness, too.)

Other folks no doubt saw the whole thing. I’ll try to post links to their evaluations later. Meanwhile, LT Smash’s prediction was borne out. (You can read these predictions by Steven Den Beste too, and decide how accurate they were.)

UPDATE: They were live-blogging it at The Corner.

Adam Harris reacts to ABC’s “Breaking News” update, which he regards as rather disingenuous.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Andrew Morton emails:

He seems to be serious about, and investing a lot in the transfer of sovereignty.

Mark my words: the media meme for the next six months will be that the transfer is fraudulent, that the US is still pulling the strings and that the new Iraqi government is an illegitimate puppet.

This will boost the legitimacy of the killers, will produce a worse long-term outcome for the Iraqis and will result in the deaths of coalition servicemembers, contractors and good Iraqis.

I hope this is wrong.

Daniel Drezner’s running an open comment thread.

Here’s a link to the text of Bush’s speech. (Via Powerline).

Rob Bernard has thoughts.

Andrew Sullivan gives the speech a B+ but says Bush seemed “exhausted.” I don’t blame him. I’m tired myself, and I’m not the President.

Victor Davis Hanson gives Bush mixed grades. More comments here, here, and here.

Finally (for this post, at least) Mickey Kaus points to the three most important words in the speech — “no later than.”

TURNED IN MY GRADES and took the day off; went driving in the mountains, then hung around with the Insta-Wife. Back later.

MICHAEL BARONE offers advice to President Bush and observes: “Roosevelt did not have to deal with one problem Bush faces today. And that is that today’s press works to put the worst possible face on the war.”

IT’S A BUSINESS-AND-ECONOMICS BLOGARAMA over at this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists.

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS THOUGHTS on the legal issues involved in the “Washingtonienne” flap.

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER:

Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew’s latest study released today. . . .

At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.

This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative. . . .

While it’s important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%.

The survey also notes a dramatic “values gap” on issues like gay marriage and belief in God. But don’t worry: “Of course, no one would ever expect this to impact the way news is covered.”

Though, the war and the Second Amendment aside, my views are probably closer to those of the press than the general public, I have to agree with those who find this troubling. If despite aspirations toward objectivity, reporters’ gender and ethnicity is as influential on the news as newsroom diversity advocates tell us, then surely reporters’ views are even more significant. So where’s the move toward greater diversity there?

UPDATE: Reader Mike Gordon emails:

One point that can’t be overstressed is that the Pew findings are based on self-assessment. I worked in the newsroom at three large newspapers for 22 years, and many of the journalists who rate themselves as politically moderate are well to the left of center, especially on social issues. They are moderate by newsroom standards, not by the general public’s standards.

Perhaps the most pervasive way in which journalists are different from normal people is that journalists live in a world dominated by government, and they reflexively see government action as the default way to approach any problem. Journalists’ world is dominated by government because it’s so easy to cover: Public agencies’ meetings take place on a regular schedule and, with rare exceptions, have to admit journalists. As a result, participants in the meetings play to the press, inside and outside the meeting room, and the result is the elaborate dance of symbolic actions – gaffes, denials, sham indignation, press conferences, inquests and endless process – that dominates our news pages and means next to nothing in the long run.

Journalists tend to give private enterprise short shrift because it’s harder to cover: The meetings are private, aren’t announced in advance, and reporters aren’t invited. Unlike politicians, most businesspeople aren’t required to interact with the press, and many avoid doing so when possible – the downside is usually greater than the upside. As a result, journalists are generally reduced to covering what businesspeople do more than what they say. This is more work, so less of it gets done.

It’s no accident that for the most part, the news is dominated by people whose value is largely driven by how much publicity they receive: politicians, athletes and entertainers. The people who actually make the world work – people in private industry, rank-and-file government employees and conscientious parents – are largely invisible in the news, except when they’re unlucky enough to make one of the rare mistakes that reporters manage to find out about.

Interesting.

I’VE GOT A CHAPTER in this book on Presidential leadership, published by the Wall Street Journal press, which also features chapters from lots of eminent and knowledgeable people.