DODD HARRIS has more thoughts on the anti-Kerry veterans and the media.

A NEWLY-DISCOVERED SHERLOCK HOLMES STORY! Seems kind of familiar, though. (“That is a very loose translation, Watson!”)

INTERESTING STORY ON WOMEN’S HEALTHCARE IN AFGHANISTAN, in this Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs employee magazine. (It’s a PDF, so scroll to page 8). My question: Why is this story buried in this relatively obscure magazine? It seems like it would be worthy of more attention. I guess it’s another example of the Administration’s PR program dropping the ball. Or maybe the mainstream press wasn’t interested.

CATHY SEIPP WRITES that Hollywood likes some Republicans.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH doubts that antiwar phony-soldier Micah Wright’s efforts to salvage his reputation will succeed.

ON THE LARGE ANTI-SADR PROTEST IN NAJAF MENTIONED BELOW, reader Matt Edens emails:

Interesting, isn’t it, that we didn’t read about this in the Times until today, buried in a different story.

I don’t recall seeing it on CNN, either.

They’ve got other stories they’re pursuing now.

UPDATE: But the Associated Press considers a solitary anti-Bush protester to be news! (“Supporters greeted him with campaign signs and stickers on their lapels that said ‘Viva Bush,’ but outside the recreation center, a demonstrator waved a sign that read ‘End the occupation.’ “) (Via Spot On! Emphasis added.) It’s like these guys have an agenda, or something. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on AP’s priorities here.

I MEANT TO PRAISE KERRY FOR THESE REMARKS earlier, but my limited-blogging weekend meant that I forgot. But this statement was praiseworthy:

Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush’s Democratic challenger, issued a statement Friday saying: “I am disturbed and troubled by the evidence of shameful mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. We must learn the facts and take the appropriate action.

“As Americans, we must stand tall for the rule of law and freedom everywhere,” Mr. Kerry added. “But we cannot let the actions of a few overshadow the tremendous good work that thousands of soldiers are doing every day in Iraq and all over the world.”

Indeed. And his tone — and substance — were just right here.

UPDATE: David Schuler emails:

Every time I’ve written Kerry off as a total horse’s patoot, he comes up with one of these statements. It kind of reminds me of Al Gore’s concession speech.
I nearly wept. I could only think: why didn’t THIS guy run for President?

Yeah, I know. I wonder if this is why Kerry moved up in the tracking polls?

AUSTIN BAY HAS SENSIBLE THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT TO DO regarding the prisoner-abuse scandal:

In the long run, the public demonstration of American justice –the arc of investigation, trial and punishment — will provide a lesson in democracy. It goes without saying that Saddam’s jailers would never confront a judge for similar outrages. The process will underscore the difference between the democratic rule of law and a dictator’s rule by whim.

However, the long run isn’t here, but a hundred digital photos are, on front pages and a thousand websites, color shots of detainees being hurt and humiliated, camerawork with the smarminess of pornography.

The photos are an anti-American propagandist’s centerfold, and provide America-haters with a new Exhibit A to support their perpetual charges of American hypocrisy and decadence. They stir legitimate anger at a difficult time of transition in Iraq. They damage American military and political efforts.

But there is an odd silver-lining. America’s open society includes its military. U.S. military actions are subject to legal review. The American public’s revulsion is also a healthy indicator. Unlike Baathists who danced for Al Jazeera television after the murder and mutilation of four Americans in Fallujah, the American reaction is regret. The American message is, “We don’t rejoice, we don’t condone or excuse, we investigate and prosecute.”

Immediate candor, supported by verifiable change in procedures and then followed by quick compensation of victims — that should be U.S. policy for addressing the crimes at Abu Ghraib.

Candor in the digital age means more than press conferences. Candor in the digital age means press tours of Abu Ghraib. Candor entails a comparison of current conditions there with those in the October to December 2003 time frame when the mistreatment occurred. Full candor — here’s where the bitter truth begins to seed a better future — also means a comparison of current conditions with those under Saddam’s regime.

Indeed.

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT WRITES on unearned worship.

It’s funny that people who are calling for Rumsfeld’s — or Bush’s — resignation over the Iraq prisoner abuse incident still worship Kofi Annan, who turned a blind eye to genocide.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR KERRY, from the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON — A group of former officers who commanded John F. Kerry in Vietnam more than three decades ago declared yesterday that they oppose his candidacy for president, challenged him to release more of his military and medical records, and said Kerry should be denied the White House because of his 1971 allegations that some superiors had committed ”war crimes.”

Kerry has since said his accusation about war crimes and atrocities was too harsh, but many of his former commanders contended yesterday that they believed the allegations were aimed at them.

”I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief,” said retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who helped organize the news conference and oversaw all of the swift boats in Vietnam at the time Kerry commanded one of those crafts. ”This is not a political issue; it is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty, and trust — all absolute tenets of command.”

The story’s broken out into the major media now. The Kerry campaign says that these are all Republican shills. All of them? (Mitch Berg has thoughts on this, and one of his commenters notes: “Interesting, isn’t it, that the party membership of the swiftboaters is relevant, according to the left, but the activist group membership of the 9/11 families who slam Bush is completely irrelevant.” It certainly gets less media attention.)

Even without this stuff, I think it was a mistake to use Vietnam as a “branding” tool for Kerry — to young voters it seems ancient history, and to older voters it doesn’t exactly have positive associations. But these attacks would be dismissed as old news if Kerry hadn’t opened the door by constantly talking about Vietnam.

LT Smash observes: “Part of the blame lies with Kerry himself. Throughout the primary campaign, he repeatedly called attention to his service in Vietnam in order to differentiate himself from his opponents. He also brought along some of his fellow veterans on the campaign trail. He shouldn’t be surprised, then, that some of his former brothers-in-arms, who weren’t quite so happy about his post-war activities, have decided to speak up.” Yes.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

Iraq, May 4 — Representatives of Iraq’s most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control. . .

On Tuesday, the Shiite leaders, including a representative of a Shiite clerical group that has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand, began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq’s future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations.

But this is probably the most important bit:

Although Shiite leaders have made similar demands of Mr. Sadr before, it has never been in such strength. About 150 leaders attended the gathering, representing many of Shiism’s most influential political, religious and professional groups. . . . Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr. Reports in the past two weeks have spoken of a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army shooting dead at least seven of Mr. Sadr’s militiamen in Najaf, and several thousand people attended an anti-Sadr protest meeting outside the Imam Ali shrine in the city on Friday, according to several of the meeting’s participants.

Mr. Mahdi, from the Sciri group, which is close to Ayatollah Sistani, was blunt about Mr. Sadr’s decline in popularity. “He’s 100 percent isolated across most of the southern provinces; he’s even isolated in Najaf,” he said.

This would seem to vindicate the U.S. strategy there, which many in the blogosphere have criticized as insufficiently militant. It now seems plausible that this will be settled without serious bloodshed — and that if a violent solution is called for, it’s more likely to satisfy than to inflame Iraqi public opinion. Does this suggest that the similar approach we’re employing in Fallujah is also a good thing? I don’t know (and some of the Shiite clerics in this story want us to be more militant there), but it certainly seems that there’s a strategy here, one that stresses Iraqi self-governance as a key element. And that seems like a good thing to me.

This also suggests that those who thought Sadr represented a mass movement among Iraqis were seriously mistaken. The same is true, of course, with regard to the occupiers of Fallujah.

UPDATE: Nelson Ascher says that this development reflects favorably on Belmont Club’s ongoing analyses of the situation, and offers lessons on how to read reports from a biased media.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes that the U.S. move to appoint a former Ba’athist in Fallujah is what brought the Shi’ites into line. Are we that smart? he asks. . . . (“All we were saying was, give peace a chance. And it looks like giving one of Saddam’s henchmen a chance to deliver the peace was enough to bring these folks back to the table.”) My goodness, I hope so.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, Belmont Club has more thoughts on Fallujah, and on what it calls the “more decisive battle” among administrators in the Green Zone, where he thinks they’re doing a much worse job than the Marines. Excerpt:

One of the fascinating things about following events in Fallujah has been watching the USMC adapt to the circumstances as it found them, fulfilling its mission in often surprising ways. How strange that the imperative for survival should enforce a rate of evolution in military formations far faster than for diplomats frozen in their lofty towers. Clemenceau famously said that “war is too important to be left to the generals”. Perhaps he should have added that occupation is too important to be left entirely to the diplomats.

Read the whole thing, which is very interesting.

MORE: Reader David Horwich emails:

The other lesson learned here is that the coalition can trust the Iraqis themselves to clean up their own messes, critical for a functioning democracy. More importantly, the Iraqis are showing some maturity in understanding that it isn’t our job to put a working law and order system into place….it’s theirs.

Yes.

THE PERNICIOUS RISE OF “CORE EUROPE” — now that the EU is bigger, France and Germany are trying to maintain primacy.

HOW TO CREATE A LUNAR KLONDIKE: My TechCentralStation Column is up.

WHAT HATH GOLDBERG WROUGHT? Ed Driscoll looks at the post-Bias media.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett has more on oil-for-food stonewalling at the U.N.:

Both letters, to Saybolt and Cotecna, are signed on behalf of Mr. Sevan, each by a different member of Mr. Annan’s staff. Mr. Sevan was on vacation, pending retirement, when they were drawn up. The letter to Cotecna was a pointed reminder of terms of the U.N. contracts with Cotecna, detailing that all documentation connected with Oil for Food “shall be the property of the United Nations, shall be treated as confidential and shall be delivered only to the United Nations authorized officials on completion of work under this contract.”

In the letter to Saybolt, dated 12 days later, the message had become tougher and yet more detailed, telling the company that any requests for information not already public should be relayed to the U.N., including “the reason why it is being sought.” The letter to Saybolt also made specific mention that if U.N. internal audit reports are asked for, “we would not agree to their release.” These would be the same internal audits that the U.N. Secretariat–which administered the Oil for Food program–did not share with the Security Council and has refused to provide to Congress.

In other words, in the interval between March 19, when Mr. Annan finally conceded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the program might after all need investigating by independent experts, and April 21, when former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was appointed to head to the investigation, Mr. Annan’s office explicitly reminded these two crucial contractors, which worked for the Secretariat’s Oil for Food program checking the imports and exports involved in more than $100 billion worth of Saddam’s oil sales and relief imports, to keep quiet. . . .

It’s that phrase, “unless otherwise authorized,” that needs attention. The U.N. has the authority to open the books if its officials so choose; the main question is whether the boss wants to. A senior congressional staffer notes that “with the stroke of a pen, the U.N. can clear the companies from all confidentiality.”

I can’t think of any legitimate reason for this stuff to be kept confidential. In fact, I can’t see any legitimate reason for the U.N. not to have an open-books policy in general, not just when there’s a scandal. But I’m pretty sure they’re hiding something nasty here.

UPDATE: More here:

Senior government officials, giant oil firms and even the U.N. official directly responsible for the oil-for-food program are among those who have been implicated in a giant bribery scheme by Saddam to evade international sanctions for more than six years.

“This emerging scandal is a huge black mark against the U.N.,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, Connecticut Republican. Mr. Shays heads a Government Reform subcommittee that is investigating the affair.

“Anything short of a prompt, thorough airing would leave the United Nations under an ominous cloud,” he said.

Indeed.

UPDATE: And be sure to follow the Friends of Saddam UNScam blog for more developments.

JOHN KERRY’S VIETNAM: Thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com.

SILVER LININGS? Judging by this post from Iraqi blogger Omar, the prisoner abuse story is a bigger deal in America than in Iraq:

I was surprised when I saw that the reaction of Iraqis to the subject of prisoners abuse by some American soldiers was not huge as we all expected to see, even it was milder than the one in other Arab countries and especially than that in the Arab media.

I mean about a month ago, we had considerable reactions and somewhat large demonstrations in response to the killing of Hamas leader, and in the mid of maniac reactions from Arab media and people, the absence of large demonstrations and outrage on the streets of Iraq becomes really strange and give rise to questions. Why the Iraqi people are not really upset with this issue?

Is it because of the firm and rapid response from the American officials to these terrible actions?

Or is it because the Iraqi people lack compassion with the majority of these prisoners?

Could it be that the Iraqi people and as a result of decades of torture, humiliation and executions, took these crimes less seriously than the rest of the world?

Or have the majority of Iraqis finally developed some trust in the coalition authorities and in the American army, to sense that these actions must be isolated and will be punished?

I can’t say I have the full answer but I guess it’s a combination of a little bit of all the above.

I can say that at least some Iraqis seemed to have understood the situation and were satisfied with the reaction of the American officials and their promises that the offenders will be punished. . . .

Here I would like to provide a conversation I had with some friends whom I haven’t seen for a long time and met just yesterday. After a few words of greetings that friends usually exchange after not seeing each other for a long time, the conversation turned towards the current situation in Iraq, and as the prisoners abuse issue is the hottest topic nowadays, I started my attempts to discover their points of view about it. They were all upset but they showed satisfaction with the fast and firm reaction of the coalition higher officials and were also impressed by the honesty of the American soldier who reported the abuse and uncovered tha awful behavior of those criminals but at the same time they said that they’re looking forward to “see the offenders get some real punishment, not just directing few harsh words. A sentence for 3 or 4 years in prison will be convenient”. Others showed more understanding to the American law system.

It’s not all good news, but this is the main point. Meanwhile, Sissy Willis, who seems to be on a roll lately, quotes Mahmood:

This is something that we Arabs never get to hear, an official apologising for a wrong done. Never! The higher up officials in their own fiefdoms are above error, almost at part with God, hence they can do no wrong. But on the other hand, they think that if they do apologise, then not only do they admit being wrong but more importantly to them, they will appear weak. And that will not do. They’re still thinking that a strong sword arm is the thing that rules a people.

Seeing and hearing an apology by the highest-ranking officials of the US military is a welcome thing.

I don’t know whether these reflect Iraqi or Arab opinion in general. But there’s a lesson, regardless: Instead of viewing this purely as a disaster (though, of course, it’s that) we should view this as a teachable moment. Everybody in the Arab world knows that their govenments engage in torture on a far greater scale, and as a matter of policy. People’s careers are built on it, not destroyed by it. We should be taking advantage of this opportunity to demonstrate the difference.