WELL, THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG: “U.N. Reinstates Joseph Stephanides, the Only U.N. Official Fired Over Iraq Oil-For-Food Scandal.”

AVIAN FLU UPDATE: Michael Fumento thinks that there’s too much avian-flu hysteria. I certainly hope he’s right. Meanwhile, this article in Scientific American makes a useful point:

Some mysteries do remain as scientists watch the evolution of a potentially pandemic virus for the first time, but the past makes one thing certain: even if the dreaded H5N1 never morphs into a form that can spread easily between people, some other flu virus surely will. The stronger our defenses, the better we will weather the storm when it strikes. “We have only one enemy,” CDC director Gerberding has said repeatedly, “and that is complacency.”

That’s right. These two points aren’t necessarily at odds, of course: Hysteria in the short term can too-easily shift to complacency over the long term. We really need the kind of accelerated antivirus program, aimed at developing antiviral drugs and rapid vaccine production techniques, that Ray Kurzweil has called for.

Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen has much more on the subject.

SOME QUESTIONS FOR E.J. DIONNE: But of course, the point of columns like his is to keep such questions from being asked. Guess it’s not working . . . .

UPDATE: Jon Henke has more on Dionne.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Revisionist history explained here. And read these thoughts by Michael Barone.

JOHN YOO AND NEIL KINKOPF debate the limits to executive power over at the Legal Affairs debate club.

A “DOUBLE SUPER-SECRET FLAMEWAR” singes Rogers Cadenhead.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

THE OFFICERS’ CLUB looks at the media and the war on terror.

A HYPOCHONDRIAC’S DREAM: Can you be a hypochondriac when there’s actually something wrong with you?

IS BUSH ACTUALLY ISRAELI? When he defends himself, the press says he’s escalating.

ETHAN WALLISON IS DEFENDING JUDY MILLER and savaging Jack Shafer.

UPDATE: If only the press corps could muster as much outrage about, say, Walter Duranty as about Judith Miller.

MORE PUSHBACK: The GOP has rolled out this TV commercial featuring leading Democrats talking about Saddam and WMD as far back as the 1990s. Whether the use of Traffic’s The Low Spark of High-heeled Boys as the soundtrack was deliberate or not, I don’t know, but I think we’re seeing another Karl Rove sucker-punch unfold.

UPDATE: Reader Sylvia Lutnes makes an interesting point:

Two days after 9/11 78% of Americans thought Saddam had something to do with the attacks according to a Washington Post poll (note prior polls at the bottom):

Could it be that Clinton and the Democrats had led us to believe Saddam was dangerous and capable of such a thing? Nah. They’d rather blame Bush.

I think it’s about time the ‘Bush led Americans to believe Saddam was connected to 9/11’ meme has to die.

As I say, interesting point.

MORE: Reader Rob Collins says Firefox can’t handle the embedded video, and suggests this direct link to the video for Firefox users.

STILL MORE: Reader Matt Nettleton emails: “How is playing somebody’s actual words, IN CONTEXT no less, a sucker punch?”

Depends on the sucker.

JIM PINKERTON:

Welcome to the next installment of the continuing saga: Mary Mapes vs. the Blogs, in which, for good measure, she takes on reality, too. And at the same time, we can consider the rise, fall — and possible comeback — of Mapes as part of the ongoing power-struggle between the MSM (Main Stream Media) and the New Media (NM).

Read the whole thing.

THE PUSHBACK CONTINUES, with some reminders to Senator Levin about his earlier positions on the war.

THE FRENCH OFFER TO HELP INVADE IRAQ:

France was not always opposed to the American invasion of Iraq. One persistent Pentagon rumor, however, might explain why the French came to oppose the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. In December, 2002, a French staff officer visited the Pentagon with a proposal from his government. France would send 18,000 troops (about what they contributed in 1991) to join the Iraq invasion force. However, France wanted a specific area of occupation after the war, with full authority in that area for as long as Iraq needed to be occupied. The American State Department backed the French proposal, but the Department of Defense didn’t trust the French, and were suspicious of their motives. So the French officer went home empty handed, and the French government decided that invading Iraq was really an evil thing to do.

What exactly were the French up to? No one is sure, but the most plausible theory was that the French wanted to be in Iraq, after Saddam fell, to make sure no embarrassing documents, or witnesses, showed up.

Read the whole thing. I suspect that there’s a lot of interesting diplomatic history yet to come out.

HAVING CHANGED THEIR MIND about delinking me for excessive ACLU-love, the folks at Stop the ACLU have posted this interview.

VARIOUS READERS want to know why I’m not going after Sen. Jay Rockefeller for this remark:

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The – I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I’ll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

This hardly reflects well on Rockefeller’s judgment, and it may well have had some bad consequences, but in fact Senators, for better or worse (usually worse) do this sort of thing a lot. I don’t think it’s in a league with the Bonior / McDermott lovefest with Saddam (which Andrew Sullivan called “perilously close to treason” at the time). Rockefeller wasn’t giving PR cover to the enemy. It was just irresponsible behavior, which sadly is nothing unusual where the Senate is concerned. Nor do I think it did much harm — if I recall correctly, Saddam nonetheless didn’t think we’d invade until we did, and I don’t think this tipped him off to anything. Indeed, had Saddam taken Rockefeller’s advice to heart, it might have helped.

If you want really bad behavior, on the other hand, there’s always George Galloway.

I FINISHED the latest Harry Turtledove book last week, before my current crunch began, and a good thing, too. Jim Bennett, meanwhile, has some thoughts on Turtledove and alt-history though, due to Turtledove’s fecundity they’re actually inspired by a different recent Turtledove book.

THE PUSHBACK CONTINUES: N.Z. Bear has posted Bush’s latest remarks on revisionist history. Key bit: “Some of our elected leaders have opposed this war all along. I disagree with them, but I respect their willingness to take a consistent stand. Yet some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They are playing politics with this issue and sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible.”

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin offers pushback on the pushback, but Paul Mirengoff calls Froomkin’s piece “deeply misleading,” and notes an important omission.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I should have linked this column by Fred Hiatt earlier. Excerpt:

“Iraq’s is a life-or-death agenda — how to build a democracy,” Mahdi said. “Others’ are political agendas.”

Whether Iraqis are in fact committed to a life-or-death struggle for democracy will become clear as its army does, or does not, continue to shoulder a greater burden. But the aptness of Mahdi’s view of the United States is already evident in Congress, which pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war.

“Those aren’t irrelevant questions,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). “But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war.”

What Lieberman doesn’t say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush’s war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy — to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Yes.

MICKEY KAUS’S BLOG TV PROJECT with Robert Wright has gone public.