JIM DUNNIGAN HAS AN INTERESTING ANALYSIS OF THE SITUATION IN IRAQ:

It’s more of a civil war than a rebellion, and one the government wants to resolve with as little bloodshed as possible. With enough well trained troops, the government could round up a lot of the looted weapons, arrest known Sunni Arab troublemakers and shut the rebellion down. That’s because, unlike the two previous rebellions, the current one involves only a small fraction of the population. Most Shias are not interested in any more fighting, none of the Kurds are, and a majority of the Sunnis are not disposed towards violence either. There are also over a thousand hostile Sunni Arabs coming in from other Arab countries, and some hostile Shia from Iran.

After over a year of fighting this “rebellion,”, U.S. combat deaths are less than 600, Iraqi and other coalition forces have suffered about as many. The rebels have lost over 10,000 dead. The rebellion isn’t over yet because, unlike the earlier ones, the rebels are so outnumbered, they cannot fight battles. In 1920 and 1941, large groups of armed Iraqis would confront British troops, in addition to guerilla attacks by small groups. The current hostilities are a very lopsided civil war, with over 90 percent of the population on one side. The Sunni Arabs fight on partly because they fear war crimes trials for atrocities committed when they served Saddam, and partly because they really believe that Iraq can’t do without them. The foreign terrorists fight because of the non-Moslem foreigners, and later will fight because Iraq will be seen as not Islamic enough because of cooperation with infidels (non-Moslems).

Read the whole thing.

MORE SLOPPY AND UNSUBSTANTIATED CHARGES THIS POLITICAL SEASON: They’re from the New York Times, which writes:

In fairness to Mr. Kerry, his aides were faced with a strategic dilemma that has become distressingly familiar to campaigns in this era when so much unsubstantiated or even false information can reach the public through so many different forums, be it blogs or talk-show radio.

As is usual with such big-media comments about unsubstantiated information on blogs, no examples are given. (Specific examples with hyperlinks to sources are for those evil untrustworthy blogs, not the meticulous Big Media!) As reader Richard Kleiner emails:

A couple of thoughts here:

Could you imagine the NY Times sneering at the blogosphere’s coverage of the Trent Lott affair as “unsubstantiated and even false?” As I recall, blogs were hailed as heroic for pointing out something that was public record, but which the Big Media studiously ignored.

Apparently, reading old copies of the Congressional Record when the New York Times can’t or won’t now constitutes peddling “unsubstantiated and even false” information.

Indeed.

TOM MAGUIRE NOTES that the Kerry campaign has inadvertently endorsed the Swiftboatvets ad. He also observes:

It has been widely reported that Kerry was honorably discharged prior to becoming a war protestor. Not So! When Kerry was meeting with the North Vietnamese, accusing his fellow officers of war crimes, and meeting with a group that discussed the assassination of US Senators, he was an officer in the Naval Reserve. This was only acknowledged by the Kerry campaign in May of this year, correcting a phony Harvard Crimson interview from January 1970. Readers of the NY Times, the LA Times, and the Boston Globe are in for a surprise.

More information on that in this earlier post from Maguire, who has been tracking this issue for a while, and with far more dedication than the Big Media outlets mentioned above.

As I’ve said before, the medals are a distraction, and Kerry’s real problems lie elsewhere. So expect the pro-Kerry spin to involve a lot of talking about the medals, as if that were the only issue.

I’VE DONE A BIT OF RECIPEBLOGGING MYSELF (here’s a review), but now there’s a Carnival of the Recipes to give that sort of thing a home.

And I made this tonight, complete with fresh roma tomatoes grown by the InstaDaughter. She brought a little tomato plant home from school in a paper cup last spring, and it’s producing more tomatoes than we can eat.

SEARED! The blogad to the right is pretty funny. So is this.

EXCERPTS from Douglas Brinkley’s forthcoming work.

LAW PROFESSOR TOM SMITH notes an interesting admission from Tom Oliphant.

UPDATE: Several readers mention this story in response to Oliphant’s remarks on journalistic standards.

Another reader notes that Oliphant’s high journalistic standards probably should have led him to disclose that his daughter works for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Hmm. Maybe — though in the world of journalism, I think such connections are assumed, and thus aren’t regarded as requiring disclosure.

BUT AT LEAST HE WASN’T A VICTIM OF ETHNIC PROFILING: Ted Kennedy was caught by the no-fly list. Plenty of people are yukking it up at his expense (Julian Sanchez: “As Dangerous in the Air as Behind the Wheel?”) but the worrisome part is that it took him three weeks worth of calls to Tom Ridge to get the problem fixed.

How long would it take someone who wasn’t a Senator to take care of this problem?

I’VE LONG SINCE STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION TO ALAN KEYES, but TaxProf is looking at his call for reparations.

THERE’S A NEW ANTI-KERRY AD FEATURING FORMER VIETNAM P.O.W.s that the Kerry campaign will find it hard to respond to, since it’s built around his 1971 Congressional testimony. It certainly seems to contradict the way he presented his Vietnam service at the Convention. And unlike the Purple Heart issue, there’s no dispute here about what happened. (Via Powerline).

And The Mudville Gazette offers background on the former P.O.W.s who appear in the ad. I think it’s going to be hard to spin this one away, though of course people will try. Basic problem: “This is devastating. The day after John Kerry complains about having his war service questioned, the new ad underscores how Kerry did far worse to thousands of vets. Kerry built himself up over the years into a brave captain traveling deep into Cambodian waters to run guns, drop off SEALs and CIA men (hatless) etc. He did so after condemning a generation of soldiers and Marines as war criminals.”

UPDATE: Roger Simon: “These veterans are furious with Kerry for implying, essentially, that they were all William Calleys. . . . Kerry’s words in the ad are extremely harsh. Now I wonder… even more than I previously did… why the Senator chose to base his campaign on his Vietnam service.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: These guys have to be working for Karl Rove:

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam veterans supporting John Kerry for president made their case Friday in the heart of what was once enemy territory.

Calling President Bush a draft dodger, the veterans in Hanoi donned T-shirts emblazoned with “Americans Overseas for Kerry” and showing Bush’s face with a line crossed through it.

This seems unlikely to benefit Kerry. Meanwhile, Beldar does some sleuthing! And here’s a Micah Wright sighting!

THE INSTA-WIFE’S MOM got food poisoning last night and is in the hospital. (Stay away from the cut rate Chinese buffets!) We went out to visit her and take her some things (downside: it’s a hospital — upside: with free valet parking!) and just got back a little while ago. Sorry for the limited blogging. I’ll be back later.

SOXBLOG: “I have great respect for all Olympic athletes. Well, maybe not the synchronized swimmers.”

The folks at Powerline are showing their respect, too, with a photo tribute to beach volleyball. “I’ve long been aware of volleyball, but I had no idea what a cerebral sport it is.”

DEAN ESMAY: “The Internet has detected the mainstream media as a form of censorship and simply routed around them.”

MICKEY KAUS has much more on the SwiftVets story, and reports: “Respectable big-time journalist friends who met with the anti-Kerry vets recently found them a lot more credible than expected.”

And he has this to say about the New York Times:

I do know that if freedom of speech means anything it means that a group of citizens can get together to bring up this sort of charge against a presidential candidate, subject to the laws of libel. But read this New York Times editorial. . . . The Times thinks the ad should be stopped because you just shouldn’t be able to make such “outlandish” independent charges in a campaign. They’re against the speech, not the financing. Like Kerry, they’re trying to come up with a “process” reason that avoids the inconveniently messy issue of truth. But their process reason–an attack on “independent” criticism per se–seems particularly dangerous.

Indeed. But that “inconveniently messy issue of truth” is getting harder to avoid.

PATTERICO WRITES on the New York Times SwiftVets piece mentioned below:

I don’t think I have ever seen such a partisan hit piece in my life. . . .

The article then spends an incredible amount of space detailing this “web of connections,” which boils down to this: John O’Neill, a successful lawyer in Houston, knows some influential Republicans in Texas. He even knows people, including current and former law partners, who know George Bush and Karl Rove. Wow.

Full disclosure time: I feel an ethical obligation to reveal my “web of connections” to Democrats. I share an office with someone whose friend is married to Democrat California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. No kidding. The grandmother of one of my best friends is an ardent Democrat who knows Hillary Clinton. I have good friends, colleagues, and former employers who have contributed thousands to John Kerry. I am married to a Democrat, and her entire family is 100% Democrats. At least one of her family members thinks George W. Bush is one of the most evil men alive.

This is all absolutely true. And I could go on. Why, if I were any good at Photoshopping, I could make you a pretty cool chart with these facts.

Anyway. Apparently, some of the Republicans that O’Neill knows don’t like Kerry. Go figure.

Tellingly, he notes that the Cambodia story is buried at the end:

What is both amazing and utterly predictable is that the “Christmas in Cambodia” story is saved for the very end. This is the one accusation made by the Vets where the facts are clear — and the facts show that Kerry was not truthful, as even the Kerry campaign has had to admit. How does the New York Times characterize the “Christmas in Cambodia” story? Take a deep breath. It says that the story is “the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry’s campaign has not been able to put to rest.”

Not “the allegation that has forced Mr. Kerry’s campaign to explain that Mr. Kerry has not been telling the truth.” Just the one allegation that they haven’t yet “put to rest.” . . . If you think that the New York Times would downplay a clear story of Bush unmistakably lying about an event he claimed was a turning point in his life, raise your hand.

They’re spinning furiously. Ed Morrissey has much more on this:

Curiously, the story that the Times has yet to cover for its readers is put last on the list: the Cambodian Christmas myth. After impugning the credibility of the Swiftvets for four full sections, the Times finally acknowledges that the Swiftvets were right about the story that Kerry once said was “seared — seared” into his memory and has used for at least 25 years to explain his political activism.

The Cambodia story is straightforward, and easy to understand, and the Kerry campaign has already admitted that it wasn’t true. It makes Kerry look terrible. So naturally it’s minimized in favor of complex eye-glazing stuff. Did I call it, or what? On the other hand, here’s someone who gets it right:

Not one of Kerry’s Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy, recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 — and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam.

Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident — of being sent on a covert mission to “a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops” was “seared” in his mind and changed his view of America.

Team Kerry’s excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won’t square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was “seared — seared — in me.”

Unlike the conflicts over Kerry’s medals, this isn’t a he said/he said dispute — Kerry either was or wasn’t in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas — yes or no. . . .

The other fascinating part of this story is the key role that bloggers on the Internet have played in pointing out the holes in Kerry’s story — even as much of the press tries to ignore them.

For instance, when Team Kerry held a press conference featuring his crewmates this week, one was conspicuously missing — David Alston — after the Internet-fueled revelation that he may have only served on Kerry’s boat for one week.

It’s nice that someone’s noticing.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Bender emails: “With all the fuss and charges about coordination between 527 organizations and campaigns, I wondered, given today’s article in the New York Times, if they are coordinating with the Kerry Campaign?”

EVERYONE comes to Knoxville eventually. I spent this evening at the Downtown Grill and Brewery with Tim Blair, who’s passing through on his way to New York City and the Republican National Convention.

I heard lots of insider stuff — like how Ken Layne has been bought off by Barbara Streisand via a combination of huge wads of cash and music-industry pull, and some stuff about Margo Kingston’s cat — and we enjoyed numerous adult beverages.

It was a good time. See you tomorrow! Er, today. . . .

CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED, in which Iraqi bloggers suggest that we’re blowing it with Al Sadr. They think we (and the Allawi government) aren’t being tough enough. Iran rears its ugly head, too.

I WAS FEELING GUILTY about spending so much time on politics and not enough on space, until I read this post by spaceblogger Rand Simberg.

CBFTW: I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS MILITARY BLOG FROM IRAQ a couple of weeks ago. Be sure to read this interview with an Iraqi, too.

NOW HERE’S A PROTEST AIMED AT THE MILITARY that I might be able to get behind.

Or not. I might have to look into things more closely before making up my mind.

I’LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW shortly. Listen live online here.

UPDATE: Something I said there that bears repeating — the reason why the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is getting the media cold-shoulder, and why what SwiftVet coverage there is focuses on the medals, etc., is that the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is clear, and has already been proven false. It’s easy to understand, and that makes it much more devastating for Kerry.

The medal stuff is complex, and can be spun in a way that makes people’s eyes glaze over. So that’s what we’ll mostly get, along with “political” stories that will treat the SwiftVets stuff as partisan hackery in a way that Michael Moore never gets treated by the same outlets.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here’s an example, in the “budget” from the New York Times, advising affiliate papers of what’s coming:

ANTI-KERRY-ADS (Undated) – The story of how swift boat veterans with a grievance were found by Republicans looking to tarnish Kerry’s image, and soon came to be running ads, writing books and blanketing cable television in a modern day tale of the creation of a political attack machine. But some of the veterans have recanted their stories or made charges that military records prove untrue. A look at how the veterans were organized and what they claim. By Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg.

With photos and a graphic.

Editors, will move in both full and abridged forms.

Will it say that the Cambodia story has already panned out? I doubt it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Paul Shelton emails:

Looks like two weeks after having “fled the scene” of the swiftboat vets story, the big media is finally returning to pull Kerry out of the water. O’Neill was on CNN’s Lou Dobbs show and then on Newshour with Jim Lehrer. I guess Kerry’s apublic acknowledgement of the story today in front of the firefighters gave the coded signal for the big media to finally return to the scene to save him.

Heh. Anybody know if Lehrer mentioned Cambodia?

And maybe someone should look into the Kerry reminiscences from the crewmembers of the U.S.S. Gridley too. (Note — I haven’t personally verified the authenticity of these, and my lunch hour is over. I suppose that would be easy for bigshot journalists, though — but according to the page, at least, there have been interviews but not much coverage.)

FILE-SHARING UPDATE: Big Win for Grokster in the 9th Circuit.

UPDATE: You know, this is sort of off-topic — but if I were running things for the Bush Administration, I would have filed an amicus brief on behalf of Grokster. Just look at the lineup of parties here.

And for that matter, I’d have taken a strong position in favor of file-sharing, with an appropriate slogan (“Keep your grubby laws off my computer!”). Instead of Orrin Hatch’s dumb INDUCE Act, I’d be supporting user-friendly legislation, short copyright times on motion pictures (10 years? Do I hear 5?), a ban on DVD encryption (or at least an end to DMCA penalties for cracking it) and all sorts of other consumer-friendly measures where digital media are concerned.

Now I support a lot of these measures (not actually the short copyrights) anyway. But here are the advantages for the Bushies:

1. It’s cool. Right now, being pro-Bush isn’t cool in many sectors. If they’d started this move a couple of years ago, it would have helped a lot.

2. It hurts an industry that hates them and gives a lot of money to the Democrats. And doing that is cost-free to the Republicans.

3. Because it hurts that industry, it would make the anti-Bush stuff from stars and celebrities look self-serving, and let the Administration dismiss it all as the economic self-interest of rich people trying to hold down the little guy.

Why didn’t they do this? Beats me. It’s not like I haven’t pointed this out before. (More than once!) The only explanation I can come up with is that to the Republicans, even a big business that hates them is still a big business worth defending. That’s a big mistake, and they’re paying for it now, I think.

ANOTHER UPDATE: By the way, you should also read this excellent takedown of the music industry by Ken Layne from a couple of years ago:

What happens when an industry mistreats its customers and its suppliers? When 8,999 of 9,000 audits show shoddy accounting practices? When a core business is bungled and the marketplace shrugs and moves on? When scandals and greed lead to massive layoffs and massive disgust?

I’m not talking about Enron. I’m talking about the record industry.

He doesn’t mention the political opportunity for the Republicans, but they sure would have had a lot to work with, based on this piece.

LOCALBLOGGING: SoundPolitics is devoted to the Puget Sound area.

MORE ON THE MEDIA AND THE ELECTION — In response to my post below, a journalist whose name you’d probably recognize sends this:

Glenn- I completely agree with your observations about the threat this election presents to the credibility of the Fourth Estate. Too much of my own energy has been spent trying to convince colleagues of the danger — my point being that if the public loses faith in our capacity for basic objectivity and fairness, the public will find/create other means of collecting information. (My own impression from the inside, by the way, is that the media aren’t “liberal” so much as simply partisan. Think of it like a sporting event where folks desperately want one team to win and the other to lose.)

If Walter Cronkite doesn’t like the wild west nature of the blogosphere, he ought turn his attention to the mainstream outlets that violate the trust of their readers/viewers and thereby drive many to the Web for their news. The Swift Boat matter provides one clear example. The Post ignored the story, and then addressed it only in the context of seeking to refute it; most of the paper’s regular readers probably had no idea that the accusations (from the Swift Boat Vets) existed in the first place. Here’s another example that popped out at me today: The NYT has a story on Democrats launching a massive effort to disqualify Nader petitions in the states. Somehow, in reporting this, they could find only one person (a Nader lawyer, at that) to call this effort antidemocratic — and that was in the second-to-last paragraph. (The last paragraph had an official from the anti-Nader effort disputing this contention.)

Now, of course, invalid signatures on petitions should be disqualified. But are these the same folks who hollered “Count all the votes” in 2000? Who wailed about voters being disenfranchised? Who disdained the Bush campaign for seeking to have ex-cons scratched (as the law requires) from the voter rolls? Are these the same folks who are dispatching lawyers to the states this year in order to ensure that REPUBLICANS don’t deny voters their franchise? My point is, there IS something undemocratic (though not entirely unjustifiable…) about seeking to limit the options provided to voters. And using the arbitrary, arcane and sometimes ridiculous state laws to do so is weaselly, to say the least. And Kerry’s campaign really condones this? Chutzpah!

If you reprint this, Glenn, please don’t use my name.

I think that the team-sports analogy is especially apt.

UPDATE: Reader Lewis Wagner emails:

The comparison of partisan journalists to sports fans in a recent post led me to a partial solution to the problems of mainstream journalism.

When reading the sports section of a local paper, I expect to see a wish for the local team or some favored team to win. I can see this position openly
stated, along with serious critiques of the favored team and honest evaluations of the strengths of opposing teams. Further, I can see detailed statistics on teams and individuals laid out in a reasonable form daily. I can see detailed statistics at a level to satisfy a knowledgeable enthusiast at least periodically.

I’ve just described a level of professionalism and competence that is the norm for sports sections of even small town newspapers. It is so far above and beyond the level of political journalism at any major paper that writing what such standards of excellence might look like in, for example, the NY Times would seem like a parody.

This suggests a simple and workable solution. Put sports writers in charge of political reporting. Make the political journalists write for the sports section. The sports writers turned loose in the political arena will carry with them the standards of honest and detailed reporting from sports. The political journalists will find themselves in an arena where much higher standards than they are used to will be expected.

One might argue that the sports writers might lack specific expertise in the political arena. However, given that the current political journalists have not
demonstrated they possess expertise, this point is moot. The only serious downside is that sports coverage would suffer.

I think it would be worth it, but some might disagree.

JEFF JARVIS: “The McGreevey story is, of course, getting weirder and weirder; these stories always do.”