KENNETH POLLACK has a roundup of good news and bad news on Iraqi reconstruction, in Foreign Affairs:

There is enough going well in Iraq that there is no reason to believe that the U.S.-led reconstruction effort is doomed to failure. Indeed, quite the opposite. There is so much good in Iraq, even in the face of numerous and crippling American errors, that pessimists need to be cautious in making prognostications of doom. . . .

As important as the positives in Iraq are, they must be contrasted with a range of problems in the reconstruction. None are unsolvable, and so they should be seen as challenges, not pitfalls. In every case, if the United States takes appropriate action, there is no reason these challenges cannot be met. That said, tackling some of these challenges will probably require the Bush Administration to shift or even reverse course on a range of issues it has so far resisted. . . .

There is enough good in Iraq and enough positive developments there that if the United States and its Coalition allies are willing to address the challenges listed above, there is every reason to believe that Iraq could be a stable, prosperous, and pluralist society within a period of 5-15 years. In contrast, there is great danger for the United States in disengaging from Iraq. Without a strong American role, at least behind the scenes, the negative forces in the country would almost certainly produce Lebanon-like chaos and civil war that would quickly spill across Iraq’s borders and destabilize politically and economically fragile neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and Syria, and possibly Turkey and Kuwait as well.

The piece is rather long, but interesting.

MORE ON CHIRAC AND THE EXECUTIVE LIFE SCANDAL:

The French parliament has bowed to pressure to launch a fact-finding mission into the way President Jacques Chirac’s centre-right government handled negotiations with US judicial authorities over the Executive Life affair. . . .

Opposition politicians have accused Mr Chirac of putting his personal friendship with François Pinault, the retail magnate at the centre of the scandal, ahead of taxpayers’ interests in negotiations with Californian prosecutors.

They say he intervened at the last minute to block an earlier $585m deal that had the approval of the finance ministry, purely because it excluded Mr Pinault, owner of the Gucci fashion group through his Artemis family holding company.

It looks as if there are efforts in both France and America to keep this from blowing up completely. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

RON ROSENBAUM has an interesting piece on journalists, bloggers, and error correction:

I’ve been thinking about this subject for a number of reasons. For one thing, the new realm of the “blogosphere” has focused attention in a more vigilant way on the errors made by “dead-tree journalists”—and by other bloggers as well. The ease of making corrections on the Web has made the exposure of errors made by dead-tree journalists—and the pressure to correct those errors—greater than ever. And it has opened up a whole new set of questions about the correction of errors.

It’s a very interesting piece, which should be read by both journalists and bloggers alike. My corrections policy — er, to the extent you can call it a “policy” — is that factual errors will be fixed in the original post, since that’s the one that people will link to. If it’s important, and the original post has scrolled far enough that I think people won’t notice the correction, I’ll put a pointer up top. If the error is minor, and I notice it very shortly after a post, I’ll just go back and fix it in the text. If enough time has passed, or if the error is such that I think that the change will make links to it nonsensical, I’ll note the correction in an update. If it’s a stylistic error — often a harsh word that I decide to soften after seeing it on the screen, occasionally something that’s not quite as clear as I thought when I typed it — I generally don’t note the change.

Anyway, that’s pretty much how I operate, but I don’t have a Department of Corrections here, with a Corrections Policy Manual. It’s just me. And I’m not suggesting that this is how everyone should operate. I do find the “stealth correction” policy of places like the BBC a bit irritating, as I’ll occasionally link to one of their stories with a complaint, then get email a few hours later from people saying “but they do talk about X, even though you say they don’t.” (In once case, the “X” item — at the moment, I’ve forgotten what it was — was originally absent, then appeared at the bottom of the BBC story, then gradually migrated to the second paragraph over a period of hours. I think at some point in this process Kevin Drum accused me of making the whole thing up, then retracted his accusation when he realized the BBC was making changes to the story.) Still “stealth corrections” are better than no corrections, I guess. And there’s something perhaps a bit too self-important about posting an audit-trail note every time you make a minor stylistic edit to a post. It’s all a question of balance, and reasonable people may disagree about where the balance-point is.

Greg Djerejian has observations, too. He notes the role of Technorati — though lately I’ve found it so slow as to be not terribly useful. There’s trackback, too, but it only works with blogs, and then only if you remember to ping the URL. But the technology keeps improving, and it’s already a lot better than newsprint.

UPDATE: Jim Miller has a post saying that I’m better at correcting errors than Atrios is. I’m happy for the praise, but I don’t know whether that’s really something that you can quantify in any useful way. As I say, most of this stuff involves judgment calls about which reasonable people can differ.

DIGITAL CENSORSHIP IN FRANCE? “The bill’s proposal to oblige access providers to filter internet content entering the country is like a ‘digital Maginot Line’, according to an association of broadband internet users.” Disgraceful.

HEH.

REPORTEDLY, the U.S. government wants to shut down this useful antiterror website, Internet Haganah, which identifies terrorist-supporting sites and then writes ISPs and asks them to shut off service.

This sort of thing seems like a good idea to me, and I’m surprised the government doesn’t like it. Here’s a column I wrote on the subject a while back.

UPDATE: Reader David May emails:

So you are surprised that the FBI is not happy about what that web site is doing?

Touches two big no-nos:

1. Flirts with some sort of “cyber vigilantism” (lets be honest, the ultimate goal is the shut down of the islamist sites by the ISP).

2. Can be seen to paint Islam in a pretty bad light.

Both bad ju-ju these days.

The government has been insisting over and over again that the public not be involved in the fight against Islamic terrorism, we’re just supposed to keep shopping.

Course, on the other hand, maybe the FBI would rather these sites stay up so that they can investigate them. I think that’s pretty stupid though, if the price of that knowledge is that some jihadist just learned to make a fertilizer bomb.

Yeah. It occurred to me that some of these sites might actually be run by the government, as lures for jihadists. But still. . . .

And at any rate, as best I can tell Internet Haganah is doing nothing illegal, or even unethical. And given the FBI’s rather spotty record in this area, and Bush Administration statements in favor of this sort of action, they should be glad for the help, instead of threatened by the competition.

THIS PIECE BY JOE CONASON may be the dumbest bit of oil-based conspiracy-theory yet. First he recycles the already-debunked Paul O’Neill Iraq oil-memo story, but then he suggests that Bush’s Mars plan is all about Halliburton getting oil from Mars, an idea that could only occur to someone utterly ignorant of the laws of physics:

Yes, the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney — fabled beneficiary of no-bid multibillion-dollar military contracts and high-priced provider of Kuwaiti oil — is determined to drill on Mars and the moon. Surely this scheme has nothing to do with the Bush space initiative. But somehow, no matter what worthy motivations lie behind the president’s policies, he and Cheney always appear to be shilling for their corporate clientele. . . .

Dreams about drilling on Mars date back several years at least. In 1998, a handful of top firms, including Halliburton, Shell and Schlumberger, showed up for a NASA “workshop” at Los Alamos, N.M., to discuss the prospects. Research seems to have intensified since 2001, with Halliburton and other firms engaged in proprietary research on such advanced technologies as laser-powered drills.

Maybe this is just a brilliant send-up of the left’s increasingly absurd “it’s all about OILLLL!” arguments. Er, well, intentionally or unintentionally, it is!

UPDATE: Oliver Willis emails that Conason isn’t talking about oil. Well, read the column yourself — it sure seems like it to me, and a whole bunch of readers who emailed with the link. Meanwhile, reader Mark Curtin writes:

This is no secret at all. I have a friend at Johnson Space Center, Houston, who is working on the drill. Not only for Mars, but for future comet missions as well. The purpose of the drill is to take a core sample at some depth, and returning that core back to Earth for analysis. Now if you need to drill into geological formations, you know the surface mineralogy and geology from past exploration missions and you’re based in Houston, who do you consult? Obviously you go to the drilling companies, including Halliburton and Baker Hughes for bit technology as well as drilling technology in general. These guys have already tested the drill in Spain and the Arctic (right mineral makeup of the surface layers, right temperatures and composition if planning a Mars polar mission).

If Joe had any economic sense he, well, why bother….

Come on, Mark. Next you’ll be saying we should have hired a Halliburton subsidiary with lots of oil-well fire experience to fight oil-well fires in Iraq!

UPDATE: Reader Matt Laflin emails:

Oliver Willis doesn’t think Conason is implying that Halliburton is somehow angling about Martian oil? The article Conason quoted is from *Petroleum* Times. What else would he be implying?

Yeah. Maybe the constant everything-is-about-oil whining has gotten to me, but it didn’t occur to me that it was about anything else, and I think this is more O’Neillesque backpedaling. But hey — maybe Conason’s trying to have it both ways, or maybe he’s just a miserably unclear writer. Your call..

Astrono-blogger Jay Manifold has made his call, anyway:

It’d be really scary if Conason were on the level, but he also recycles the already-debunked “scandal” about the “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts” document. So the column is reassuringly inaccurate throughout.

And note Conason’s scare quotes around “workshop.” Anyway, in response to Jay’s post’s title, I’d like to believe that I’m at least halfway between the gutter and the stars. . . .

MORE: Here’s an interesting article on Mars drilling.

STILL MORE: Reader Nathan Okerlund emails:

I guess it’s just barely possible that Mr. Conason is talking about Halliburton making a killing selling equipment to NASA, but if that were the case surely he would focus less on the drilling and exploration of Mars per se and more on the sale of equipment to NASA?

Then why all the oil and petroleum references? Unless he was trying to put an oleaginous spin on the story?

ONE MORE UPDATE: Sean O’Hara writes: “I emailed Conason about his Mars piece and he responded that it is indeed a joke, and he expected people to read the Petroleum Times article and figure that out.”

Sadly, the lefty hysteria about Halliburton is — like so many things today — beyond parody.

TENNESSEE V. LANE was argued before the Supreme Court today. The facts are pretty appalling:

Plaintiffs George Lane and Beverly Jones, both with paraplegia, sued Tennessee for failing to ensure that courthouses are accessible to individuals with disabilities. Both plaintiffs were denied access to courtrooms on the second floors of buildings lacking elevators. One plaintiff, Beverly Jones, worked as a court reporter. The other, George Lane, was a defendant in a criminal case. The state arrested Lane for failure to appear when he refused to crawl or be carried up the stairs.

The actual ADA question involved is somewhat less clear-cut. Personally, I think this case fits under the “Open Courts” provision of the Tennessee Constitution. Here’s a photo blog from the protests outside the Court.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has much more on this. And several readers asked about the “Open Courts” provision of the Tennessee Constitution. It’s found in Art. I sec. 17 and provides, in relevant part :

That all courts shall be open; and every man, for an injury done him in is lands goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.

This is generally interpreted as guaranteeing a right of access to the courts, which would seem to me, without much strain, to reach the facts of this case. Note, though, that the remedy would probably be an injunction, not money damages, and that the case before the Supreme Court is all about the Benjamins. I’m not very familiar with this case but I don’t believe the Tennessee Constitution issue was ever raised anywhere. Since I’m teaching a seminar in state constitutional law this semester, I guess I’m more likely to notice this sort of omission than I otherwise would be.

BLOG-IRAN REPORTS:

Plan for the peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime:
This Sunday, January 18, 2004

A Plan for the peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime of Iran will be announced during a live program broadcast on many Iranian satellite TV and Radio stations. The program starts at 10 AM PST from NITV studios in Los Angeles and will last for 6 hours, including a fundraising segment to support the plan. Other media who have confirmed the live broadcast of this program include Pars TV, Radio Sedaye Iran, Radio Yaran, Radio Sedaye Emrooz, Rangarang TV, Apadana TV, and Lahzeh TV.

This program can also be seen live via the Internet at www.IranRadioTV.com who will provide a FREE link on that day.

We’d all love to see the plan.

MARK STEYN:

Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you’re Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain.

But, if you’re Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers on the West Bank “should be shot dead” because “they are Nazis” and “I feel nothing but hatred for them”, the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London’s cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.

I think he’s got it about right. But wait, there’s more — and it’s not quite so amusing:

So, while the BBC is “investigating” Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the Corporation website: “His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive.” “The Jewish question”? “Notoriously sensitive”? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?

Mr Paulin’s style is only metaphorically knockabout. But, a few days after his remarks were published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, some doughty Palestinian “activists” rose to his challenge and knocked about some settlers more literally, murdering among others five-year-old Danielle Shefi. In a touch of symbolism the critic in Mr Paulin might have found a wee bit obvious, they left her Mickey Mouse sheets soaked in blood.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S A PAPER ON JUDICIAL RECESS APPOINTMENTS, coauthored by blogger Stuart Buck.

CHRIS SUELLENTROP writes in Slate that Wesley Clark is saying some pretty odd things.

The trouble with the Internet, where candidates are concerned, is that when they say odd things, word tends to get out.

UPDATE: The Loonatic Left blog is defending Clark.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Kleiman says that everybody (including him) has misunderstood Suellentrop’s piece.

I don’t know — if this is satire, it’s failed miserably, and still does on second read. Does this mean that the campaign is beyond parody?

NOW EVEN PAUL O’NEILL IS SAYING IT:

He described the reaction to Suskind’s book as a “red meat frenzy” and said people should read his comments in context, particularly about the Iraq war.

“People are trying to say that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be a regime change in Iraq.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: John Cole wonders if O’Neill is another Rove operative tasked with embarrassing gullible Democrats.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Becky Bacon sees wheels within wheels:

I think that O’Neill is tasked with elevating gullible Democrats alright! But rather than Bush-bashing, this seems an attempt to elevate the Clintons. “They” are getting you to spread the fiction that Clinton was diligently working behind the scenes to prevent terrorism. I think this quote makes my point, “Actually, it was a continuation of work that was going on in the Clinton administration”. Yeah, like Bill and Hill would have done what GW did…if only they’d had the chance.

I think you’ve been suckered!

The truth is out there!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Great summary of the whole O’Neill flap:

This pattern of saying something, being surprised by the reaction, and wanting to take it back is why he got fired in the first place.

Heh. Indeed.

DID THE UNITED STATES CREATE SADDAM HUSSEIN? In a word, no.

I was on a local talk-radio show a while back and some, er, underinformed soul said that we had backed Saddam against the Russians because he was a friendly right-wing dictator. I guess this is a leftist trope that’s so well established it’s become independent of the actual facts. Saddam was, in fact, a Soviet client. I pointed out that the presence of all those AK-47s and T-72s in Iraq made that point rather clear, and the caller retreated. But you keep hearing stuff like this from people who, I guess, can’t believe that there are dictators anywhere who aren’t the creation of the United States.

OF COURSE, INSTAPUNDIT READERS ALREADY KNEW THIS:

In fact, not only did plans for “regime change” in Iraq NOT originate with the Bush White House, the “sinister plot” was actually ratified by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton a full three years before President Bush came to Washington.

According to Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House,” after which Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature.

What the Journal didn’t note was how bold Clinton officials were about their plans to topple Saddam.

According to a report in Newsweek just three months ago, after Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, “the U.S. government convened a conference with the [Iraqi National Congress] and other opposition groups in London to discuss ‘regime change.'”

In Jan. 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who reportedly had “a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam.” . . .

Two months later, the Clinton administration’s plans for a post Saddam Iraq were already well underway, with State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin explaining to reporters: “What we’re trying to do . . . is strengthen an Iraqi opposition movement that can lay out solid plans for the post-Saddam recovery in all sectors of national life.”

As the Washington Times noted at the time, “President Clinton has said that getting rid of Saddam is a major U.S. objective.”

Told you so.

A WHILE BACK I linked to an account of serious misconduct by American troops from Iraqi blogger Zeyad. Zeyad has posted an update, and Major Sean Bannion emails from Baghdad with this information on the investigation so far:

The investigation continues but what we know right now is the same as what I told you the other day. That is….

The car was stopped by elements of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry from the 3 Brigade Combat Team (4th Infantry Division). The unit says they did have a checkpoint in the area and may have processed them, but prior to any resolution of the situation the occupants of that car and checkpoint itself were turned over to personnel from the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC). This puts the ICDC in the cross-hairs of an investigation now and we’re following it up.

Sorry I can’t do better right now. Go ahead and post if you like. And you’ll be right to stay on me and the military in general if we let this one slip.

Stay tuned. Chief Wiggles is looking into it, too.

FOUGHT DOWN, THE NEW CD BY KEN LAYNE AND THE CORVIDS, showed up in yesterday’s mail. I listened to it on the monitors in the studio last night. As I wrote in my review on the Amazon page (not up yet) it’s an Exile on Main Street for the 21st century. Not only are the songs great, which you can tell from the MP3s on Ken’s site, but the recording quality and production are absolutely first rate. I highly recommend it.

PAUL O’NEILL has found a new friend in Paul Krugman, who previously had not been an O’Neill fan.

HOLDING NGOS TO ACCOUNT: The Christian Science Monitor writes:

As they gain in number, size, and strength, some NGOs run into trouble, such as by mishandling money or simply not delivering on what they set out to do. And since many are on the left and very influential in government policymaking, NGOs are naturally coming under a conservative spotlight.

One example is a new website, ngowatch.org, recently launched by a Washington think tank, the moderate- to conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the conservative legal group, the Federalist Society. . . .

Even so, the best NGOs hold themselves to high standards and are willing to be open and held to account for their practices and results (or lack of them). Independent corroboration of the work of NGOs can only help lend authenticity to their efforts.

Indeed.

UPDATE: BaySense is a blog dedicated to monitoring environmental NGOs.

IS THIS NEW YORK TIMES STORY on Howard Dean’s wife unfair? From Tacitus:“Frankly, I thought their treatment was a little creepy. Nobody is going to confuse me for a Dean supporter, but I thought this was unfair to Dean and his wife.” Interesting discussion in the comments.

COWBOYS ON MARS? In my TechCentralStation column, I discuss the merits of a “Wild West” approach to space settlement.

One advantage: It’s cheaper! The other is that it might work.

Some people have questioned my lukewarm enthusiasm for a massive Battlestar Galactica-style Mars mission. I love space, and I’m deeply committed to seeing humanity move off Earth on a long-term basis. As I’ve written before, I agree with Stephen Hawking that humanity probably won’t survive the next thousand years if we don’t do that. But I’m pretty sure that massive government programs aren’t the way to do it.

NO, REALLY, CRY ME A RIVER:

THULUIYA, Iraq — Less than a year ago, Ismael Mohammed Juwara lived high in the food chain of President Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He was a secret policeman feared and respected among his comrades and in his hometown, enjoying a cornucopia of privileges from the government.

Now, as he scrapes out a living by selling diesel fuel illegally, he is a pariah in the new Iraq. “We were on top of the system. We had dreams,” said Juwara, a former member of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that reported directly to the now-deposed president.

There’s nothing wrong with looking into why anti-American forces feel this way, though there’s also not much news here — former swaggering thugs resent loss of status! — really.

But I agree with Captain Ed that the absence of any attention to the moral component here makes this Post story by Daniel Williams a bit iffy.

MOLLY IVINS APOLOGIZES for plagiarizing the wrong guy.

JUST SENT OUT THANK-YOU EMAILS to the folks who hit the tipjar. (They’re real, typed by my own hands, not auto-generated form notes, as I was raised to respond appropriately to gifts.) There were some old ones in the queue that I thought I had responded to, but I went ahead and responded anyway. If my reply was late — er, or duplicative — I’m sorry about that. I very much appreciate the donations, which offset the hatemail rather nicely. . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails: “You should raise your maximum contribution limit — some of your fans are partners in big law firms!” Well, Amazon has a fifty-buck limit, which is still more than I deserve. But there’s always PayPal, you know.

SOME PEOPLE have been making fun of Wallace Shawn’s interview in which he makes overheated statements about the war. But what I liked was the juxtaposition of this statement:

The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

With this one:

I saw ”South Pacific” as a child and thought it was terrifying.

By the transitive principle, then, the United States is like “South Pacific.” I can live with that.

UPDATE: Spoons on what’s terrifying: “He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.”

Heh.