GREYHAWK BLOGS FROM IRAQ:

How many times has this happened to you:

You’re flying into Baghdad on a C130 along with a lot of other GIs and some members of the Iraq Survey Group whose report will soon be released and while waiting for the plane engines to fire up (after which point conversation becomes impossible) you say: “So what’s the bottom line?”

And one responds: “He didn’t have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but he could have reconstituted his programs in a matter of months.”

Which is exactly what I’ve thought for quite a while (ahem) please see my April 6 2003 post here. Really, it’s short, go read, and note that the Thunder Run was ongoing at that time, but the media spin had already begun. But given the myriad reasons why the time was right for ending the Hussein regime it’s an issue of only minor importance to me – more significant as political strategy than military – but what do I know?

Read the whole thing. Related matters here, too. And there’s some useful perspective here.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus weighs in on the Duelfer Report:

If a man says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted accordingly and he turns out not to have had WMDs, whose fault is that?

Bush’s! Everything’s his fault — at least until November 3d. . . .

BETTER THAN SNIDE REMARKS ABOUT PAJAMAS: Reporter tells critic to keep blogging.

RAND SIMBERG notes a legislative emergency involving commercial spaceflight.

PLAME UPDATE:

A federal judge held a reporter in contempt Thursday for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller jailed until she agrees to testify about her sources before a grand jury, but said she could remain free while pursuing an appeal. Miller could be jailed up to 18 months.

Hogan cited Supreme Court rulings that reporters do not have absolute First Amendment protection from testifying about confidential sources. He said there was ample evidence that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, had exhausted other avenues of obtaining key testimony before issuing subpoenas to Miller and other reporters. . . .

Fitzgerald also has issued subpoenas to reporters from NBC, Time magazine and The Washington Post. Some have agreed to provide limited testimony after their sources — notably Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff — released them from their promise of confidentiality.

Miller and Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, said they would not agree to provide testimony even under those circumstances.

Hmm. I wonder who the leaker was?

JIM GERAGHTY: “A Tony Blair-style Democrat would probably be trouncing Bush right now. Karl Rove & Co. are very lucky to have the opponents they do.” Yes.

Blair seems to have accomplished something in Darfur, too.

JOHN KERRY:

The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position.

(Via Ann Althouse, who has some questions.)

UPDATE: Someone should ask Kerry what he thinks about this:

A state judge Tuesday threw out a Louisiana ban on same-sex marriage overwhelmingly approved by voters on Sept. 18, suggesting its drafters had overreached by making it too broad. . . .

Suggesting he wouldn’t be swayed by the huge “yes” vote, Morvant, a Republican, said his “inescapable conclusion” was that the amendment was itself unconstitutional because of its twin purposes, and he struck it down.

I haven’t read the opinion, so I can’t opine on its reasoning. But at the very least, this may serve to educate those who are inclined to stereotype Southern judges as inevitably prejudiced. . . . (Via GayPatriot).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes a significant error in the NYT story linked at the beginning of this post, though the error concerns stem cells, not gay marriage.

THE COLLAPSE OF KERRY’S FOREIGN POLICY CASE: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

I also suggest a new approach for Kerry: “We’ll outbid the bad guys!” Hey, it could work.

UPDATE: Powerline has related thoughts.

MAX BOOT has a column on Burt Rutan and the X-Prize that’s worth reading. Best bit:

Skeptics will scoff at what Burt Rutan, the designer of SpaceShipOne, accomplished. They will note, rightly, that spending a few minutes in suborbital flight is no more than what Alan Shepard achieved in his Mercury capsule 43 years ago. And the method Rutan used, hauling a cigar-shaped rocket plane into the sky aboard a mother ship, duplicates the approach of the X planes from that same long-gone age.

Rutan’s achievement is nevertheless enormous: He rescued manned spaceflight from the dead end that NASA reached after the last of the Apollo moon landings in 1972. SpaceShipOne has shown the way toward the development of a space industry that can pick up where government left off by turning space travel into something approximating airplane travel in the 1930s: an attainable luxury for regular, if well-to-do, folks. . . .

What’s NASA’s role in all this? The president’s space commission, which issued its report in June, had the right idea: NASA needs to get out of the business of hauling cargo into orbit. It should leave that mission to the private sector and concentrate on deep-space exploration and scientific research, sharing the fruits with industry.

The model should be the early days of aviation in the 1920s and 1930s. Washington didn’t set up its own airline. Instead, it offered contracts to private carriers to deliver airmail. Many of them began hauling passengers on the side, giving birth to major airlines like United, American and TWA. Likewise, space travel needs to be developed primarily by private companies with some federal subsidies.

That represents a huge change from the government-centric paradigm that the U.S., Russia, Europe and others have been pursuing for decades, and it is sure to be resisted by old NASA hands. But who can argue with success? SpaceShipOne has just blasted a hole in the argument that private space travel can’t get off the ground.

Indeed. There’s a bill that would accelerate this process — it passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate — but it could use some help.

UPDATE: Read this, first.

TAKE A TOUR of the Indian Blogosphere (well, part of it) by visiting Blog Mela, a roundup of posts by Indian bloggers.

HAVING EARLIER MADE THE HAWKISH CASE FOR JOHN KERRY, Michael Totten now makes the liberal case for George W. Bush.

JAMES LILEKS is photoblogging, and, as usual, his efforts are far more profound than mine.

A COUPLE OF READERS wrote to ask why I didn’t post anything about the elections yesterday. Hey, if Kerry could take the day off, why not me?

And although people make fun of Kerry for his vacations and days off, I think it’s smart. Running for President is exhausting and miserable. (Hell, blogging about people running for President can be that way.) Like Ronald Reagan’s naps, these breaks are a good thing, even if people make fun.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Is this a surprise?

SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.

Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France – having been granted oil contracts – would veto any American plans for war. . . .

Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions – which stopped him acquiring weapons – were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.

To keep America at bay, he focusing on Russia, France and China – three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the “primary motive for French co-operation” was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.

Iraqi intelligence officials then “targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac,” it said, including two of his “counsellors” and spokesman for his re-election campaign.

I’m shocked, shocked. But wait, there’s more:

Focusing his attention in particular on France and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, Saddam awarded oil exploration contracts and financial inducements to individuals.

The bribes were at first funded by the Iraqi government, but later derived from Saddam’s illegal misuse of the oil-for-food programme, which was supposed to provide food for the poor and medicine for the sick.

Some US estimates have suggested that the Iraqis siphoned off $10 billion (£5.6 billion) from the scheme.

“He [Saddam] targeted friendly companies and foreign political parties that possessed either extensive business ties to Iraq, or held pro-Iraq policies,” said the report.

Of course, the story that’s getting big play is the WMD angle:

But the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which returned its full report last night, said Saddam was telling the truth when he denied on the eve of war that he had any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He had not built any since 1992.

The ISG, who confirmed last autumn that they had found no WMD, last night presented detailed findings from interviews with Iraqi officials and documents laying out his plans to bribe foreign businessmen and politicians.

Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the “guiding theme” of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible.”

So this is perhaps something less than a complete vindication for Saddam. Me, I’ll just quote something that a prominent Kerry supporter said back in the day:

[W]e don’t know for certain whether the reports of defectors are completely true and our satellites cannot determine with complete accuracy whether new buildings and construction are designed to build weapons of mass destruction. So the question becomes: who gets the benefit of the doubt? A dictator who has used such weapons and declared the United States as an enemy or a democratic country that has already experienced terrorist catastrophe?

[LATER: A couple of people wonder if it’s fair for me to call Andrew Sullivan, who’s the one quoted here, a “Kerry supporter,” rather than “Bush opponent.” Hmm. I’ve certainly thought of him that way recently, but I take the point. LATER STILL: Lo and behold, I just opened the latest issue of Reason and it says that Andrew isn’t supporting anyone this election, so I guess he’s anti-Bush, not pro-Kerry. I regret the error.] Personally, I find it hard to fault the Bush Administration for thinking this way. And had they failed to engage Saddam, we’d be hearing — from many of the same critics of the war — that their failure to do so was evidence of ineptitude (“How could you leave such a vicious dictator free to cause us trouble, smack in the middle of the mideast?”) along, probably, with claims that it was somehow a way of enriching Halliburton.

UPDATE: Reader Terry Gain emails: “So how do you pass the Global Test when those marking the test have been bribed to give you a failing mark?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Nathan Lanier emails:

It’s truly remarkable. The Duelfer Report seems to make the most compelling case yet that war was the necessary and last option at the time of invasion last March. But somehow the mainstream media feels it’s necessary to put the fact that no WMD’s were found as the headline for the 487th time. Hopefully the general public gets the full picture this time. Hopefully.

Funny that the press hasn’t been playing this up. It’s almost as if the media “wants Kerry to win.”

LEFT, RIGHT, AND RELIGION: My Guardian column for this week is up. Among other things, it looks at why politics are so vicious this election cycle.

UPDATE: Reader Stan Brown emails:

Liked your Guardian article, but any comment on religious or quasi-religious fervor making politics more bitter since Reagan was elected in 1980 should at least mention Krauthammer’s point – Republicans think Democrats are wrong and Democrats think Republicans are evil. I don’t think anyone can begin to understand politics over this time period without it.

I hadn’t heard that one, but it sounds about right — though perhaps less true than it used to be.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes an effort by some Democrats and cooperating journalists to recast the oil-for-food scandal as something that’s all about (drum roll please) Halliburton. Sheesh. Absolutely pathetic.

Plus, he looks in the Vault and finds, well, more than Geraldo did!

BUSH HQ SHOOTING UPDATE: The Knoxville News-Sentinel has more, including this quote:

Jim Gray, chairman of the Knox County Democratic Party, deemed the vandalism as “just unbelievable.”

“I’ve gone there personally to express my outrage that something like this could happen,” Gray said.

On the one hand, Gray noted it’s “a big assumption that it’s a Democrat” responsible for the shooting. On the other hand, he said, Republicans “could be happy that at least one Democrat supports the Second Amendment.”

“Obviously, there’s no way of knowing now who did it,” Gray said. “But I mentioned it could be someone mad that their yard sign was stolen.”

WBIR has photos, here. Meanwhile, it’s a thug-o-rama over at Professor Bainbridge’s as he rounds up similar incidents around the country. It’s a climate of fear out there!

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

TOOK A WALK AROUND CAMPUS TODAY, while waiting for the symposium to start. It was another one of those beautiful East Tennessee fall days, and since I’m always getting emails from alumni asking for more photos of campus, I took a few more.

Strolling around campus always reminds me that there’s more to life than surfing the Internet and thinking about politics and the war. I should do it more often.

If looking at these pictures makes you feel that you should get away from the computer and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine, well, maybe you should take the hint.

There’s a whole world out there that’s not rendered in pixels. (Er, except for these photos, I mean. . . ) When stuff on the Internet starts seeming too real, or too important, it’s worth taking a little while to remember that. The blogosphere will still be here when you get back.

INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO-CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, sends the above picture, with this report:

What better way to get ready for the historic Presidential election here than to…open a girl’s school. The people here are interested in the election, and all have told us how wonderfully different it is to be involved in choosing a leader. However, security concerns regarding the election and such will not get in the way of their fierce determination to provide a better life for their kids – not by one day. School repair or construction is the number one request for assistance we get. And now, these girls will get schooling the same as the boys, here in Aibat Khil.

Sounds like a good thing to me.

OFF TO A SYMPOSIUM on Jeffrey Stout’s new book, Democracy and Tradition. Blogging may or may not continue over the next few hours, depending on whether I feel I can blog and pay attention or not.

In the meantime, Bill Whittle has an essay posted, which should ensure that you do not lack for reading matter.

UPDATE: Well, it seemed as if blogging would have been both distracting and discourteous, so I didn’t. I did take a picture (sans flash) though, as you can see.

Several readers want to know what I think. I’m not sure. I think Stout was definitely right in saying that efforts to remove talk of religion from public discourse, though largely the result of leftists, have in fact weakened the left morally, intellectually, and politically. (In fact, my Guardian column for tomorrow is not unrelated.) And his notion of a civil civic conversation in which people argue about such things is appealing to me.

I wonder, though, how it would play out in reality. Stout was very critical of talk radio, cable news channels, Time magazine, and the presidential and vice presidential candidates. There’s certainly plenty of room to criticize all of them — God knows, I do — but I think Stout’s case would have been stronger had he presented examples of good contemporary discussions. I also felt that his talk would have been easier to follow had he made clear why invocations of religion by Lincoln and Martin Luther King were good (as he seemed to think), while the singing of “God Bless America” by members of Congress on the Capitol steps after 9/11 was bad. Stout seemed to regard it as self-evidently bad, and many in the audience seemed to agree, but I think that point would have done better with more explanation.

Meanwhile, in response to the pre-update part of this post, reader Jenny DeMonte from the University of Michigan emails:

If you like Stout, consider Jonathan Zimmerman at NYU. He’s written a book that works in the same area, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. He argues that public schools have throughout history included teaching in morals and ethics that encompass many backgrounds, but religion is thornier. He also argues that America’s civic nationalism is moral and ethical, and because it is inclusive and usually tolerant, should supercede religious and ethnic moral systems. Hard to explain, but good to read.

After 9-11, Zimmerman wrote an interesting column for the NY Post. He had taught HS history, and at one point told students he would call on them to read essays they had written. He called on a female student, who declined to read. She said that because she was Muslim, she couldn’t read first, that she had to read only after a boy had read.

The question he asked is: how should he have responded as a public school teacher?

His answer: The girl reads first, because in the US our civic, national morality does not allow gender bias and discrimination. Girls and boys are equal in our public schools. What happens at home is not in the public domain, and therefore, the state doesn’t reach in and force the girl to recite first at home. But in a public school, she does.

Interesting, I think.

Yes, especially in light of the post, and photo, from InstaPundit’s Afghanistan correspondent, just above this one. It strikes me that Afghans are having precisely the kind of public conversation and engagement regarding religion and politics that Stout wants us to have, and with far higher stakes.

HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT BLOWBACK: I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this, coupled with a sudden increase in academics’ regard for free speech . . . .

A VERY GOOD EXPERIENCE WITH DELL: The computer crashed. I called their customer service guys Monday. They shipped the parts that day, and this morning the tech came in — showing up precisely when promised — fixed the computer (new hard drive and motherboard required) and departed with me up and running. I guess the extended-service was worth it.

Anyway, I’d surely be complaining if this hadn’t worked out right, so it’s only fair to give them credit when things have gone so well.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Following in the footsteps of the New York Times, CNN has filed a DMCA complaint trying to shut down the National Debate over its CNN parody.

CNN should be ashamed. And perhaps they should read this.

BULLETS, MONEY, AND BALLOTS: Austin Bay, recently returned from service in Iraq, has a column on our strategy there. He has thoughts on Afghanistan, too. It’s very much worth reading.

UPDATE: Read this column, on the troops, too.

IF YOU’RE JUST READING INSTAPUNDIT, you need to branch out. Check out this week’s Carnival of the Vanities and see if you don’t find some other blogs worth reading regularly.

THOUGHTS ON THE AIR FORCE’S PLANS FOR SPACE WARFARE: My TechCentralStation column is up.