JOHN KERRY APOLOGIZES ON IMUS:

In an unscheduled call-in interview this morning, Senator John Kerry (D-Ma) spoke with Don Imus about his misstatements in a speech Monday. He said that he is “sorry for the botched joke,” and that “everybody knows I botched a joke.” He also says he is going back to Washington so that he is “not a distraction” to the campaigns.

Be sure to read the transcript. One thing this affair illustrates is just how badly the Democrats did to nominate Kerry in 2004. I’m reminded of what John Zogby wrote a year ago about a poll he had run:

In our new poll, every president since Carter defeats Bush. But Kerry still loses to Bush by one point. What am I missing here?

What he was missing was that Kerry was an extraordinarily weak candidate. Bush himself was a pretty weak candidate; he was just stronger than Kerry. I’d really like to see the Democrats run somebody decent next time around. Even Hillary! As I’ve noted before:

I still maintain hopes that she might turn out to be “the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history.” After all, she argued that President Bush had “inherent authority” to go to war against Saddam!

Plus, we might see the tough-talking Secretary of State Atrios!

You go, girl. Meanwhile, Tom Maguire offers some thoughts on how Kerry — and the Democrats — got themselves in this fix.

UPDATE: James Taranto observes:

Even if the statement was a “botched joke,” what on earth would possess Kerry to think that this excuses what he said? George Allen and Trent Lott didn’t get passes for “botched jokes”; indeed, here is what Kerry himself said about Lott, according to Salon . . . . “I simply do not believe the country can today afford to have someone who has made these statements again and again be the leader of the United States Senate.”

I thought that about Lott, too. And I think the same about Kerry, though happily he’s unlikely to ever have the opportunity to resign any office of greater consequence than Senator.

UPDATE: The Anchoress notes that the formerly uncompromising Hillary is now compromising her position on the war. Dang.

ON THE OFFENSIVE: Bush is thumping Ted Kennedy for his irresponsible statements on the war. “It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein.” Kennedy deserves it.

And I note that the most public faces of the Democratic Party lately have been Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. It’s hard for me to see how that can work out well for the Democrats.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has much more, including this:

Left unexplained – how the Democrats’ unrelenting focus on the use of pre-war intelligence is going to substitute for a plan to resolve the situation in Iraq. Was it really only two weeks ago that Harry Reid forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss that?

Perhaps Sen. Reid was simply intending to commemorate the second anniversary of the leak of the strategy memo explaining how the Democrats could politicize the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings for maximum benefit.

This political posturing by the Dems is understandable – their party is pretty well united around the desire to have a mulligan on the decision to go to war against Iraq.

However, on the slightly more topical question of where we go from here, the problem that crippled John Kerry continues to vex the Democrats – their anti-war base wants to declare Bush beaten and leave Iraq, while many of their leaders continue to argue that defeat is not an option. This conflict leads to such spectacles as the Sheehan v. Clinton showdown. . . .

And my point is what? Bush did what he believed in, Democrats chose to vote expediently rather than lead, and here we are. Three years later Bush is still doing what he believes in, and Democrats are still looking to evade the Iraq issue.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: InstaPunk is waiting for members of Congress to resign.

WELL, HE DID PUT LEON KASS IN CHARGE OF BIOETHICS: Bush wants to teach Intelligent Design in schools. That’s just pathetic.

It’s not going over well in some places on the right, either. Rick Moran at Right-Wing Nuthouse writes:

Alright then, I’ve got a few more “ideas” that students should probably be exposed to as long as we’re talking about filling their heads with a bunch of nonsense like ID:.

1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?

2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune). The Ojibwa’s believe it…I did too until I was about 5 years old. . . .

6. Gerry Thomas, who recently passed away, invented the TV Dinner. Hell, the MSM believed it, why not teach it?

One can go on and on.

Who the devil cares if some people believe that “Intelligent Design” is the “correct” interpretation for the massive amount of fossil and anthropological evidence showing how human beings evolved? If it were up to you Mr. President and the right wing idiotarians who are pushing this “theory” humans would still believe that the earth was the center of the universe and that stars were fixed in the sky in a series of crystal spheres.

Ouch. And The Politburo observes: “Sheesh. Trying to prove the Dems right, one stupid f*cking statement at a time. Is Bush ‘playing to the base’ or does he believe it? I don’t know which is worse.”

Of course, if Bush were more than a fair-weather federalist, his answer would be that the President shouldn’t have anything to say about what’s taught in schools anyway.

Hmm. Maybe he’s trying to convince everyone of that? This just might do it . . . .

UPDATE: Don Surber is quoting Billy Carter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Andrew Hazlett emails a link to the full transcript, which he says is a bit more — dare I say it? — nuanced. And it does begin this way:

Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts . . .

But more context doesn’t necessarily help. Here’s the full passage:

Q I wanted to ask you about the — what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

THE PRESIDENT: I think — as I said, harking back to my days as my governor — both you and Herman are doing a fine job of dragging me back to the past. (Laughter.) Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

Q Both sides should be properly taught?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people — so people can understand what the debate is about.

Q So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I’m not suggesting — you’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.

Now if I were a White House spinmeister I’d say this was just about teaching children the shape of the debate. But I feel sure that Bush wouldn’t be satisfied by a curriculum that exposed the many fallacies of Intelligent Design (the biggest being that its proponents start with a particular Designer in mind and then try to marshal the evidence). And certainly the constituency that he’s trying to satisfy wouldn’t be.

Nor would various other hypotheses (e.g., that our universe is actually a computer model itself, being run by unknown others for unknown purposes) satisfy, I suspect, even though there’s more evidence for them — we see computer models every day — than for creation by a deity.

As I said earlier, if only the Democrats weren’t so lame . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein argues that Bush is being misunderstood:

I have no problem with Intelligent Design being taught alongside evolution in the context of questions concerning the origin of life—which, whether the President meant to do so or not, is in fact the context into which he placed the question. The origin of life—or first cause—is properly asked within the realm of philosophy or religious studies. And in that context, evolution is simply another theory (materialism) that competes with metaphysical theories that posit intent or active creation at some point in time (ID, Deism).

Personally, this CITIZEN JOURNALIST would have pressed the President on the question and asked him if he was indeed advocating the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes specifically, and if so, how—and to what degree (in relation to microevolution? macro? how?). I would further follow-up and ask those on the right who have been so quick to howl over this vague news item if they support the teaching of the “origins of life” (which I take to be different than the evolution of life) in science classes. As it stands though—using my best Scalia-type textualism—what the president said is unproblematic and, on its face, at least, eminently reasonable.

Nicely argued, but I’m still not buying it.

MORE: John Cole: “I have no problem with a brief fifteen minute discussion of intelligent design as part of a religious/philosophy class, provided schools offer those courses. But I don;t think that is what Bush meant.” Neither do I. He also notes, however, that Bush’s position polls well — even among Kerry voters.

MORE STILL: Cole did note that, but he was quoting this post.

ETHIOPIAN ELECTIONS UPDATE: The E.U. observers are very critical:

Ethiopia’s electoral board appears to have lost control of the vote counting for the May 15 legislative polls, European Union election observers said in a report obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The confidential report went on to say the EU might have to make a public denunciation of developments to distance itself from “the lack of transparency, and assumed rigging” of the vote

“Ten days after the polling day, the situation is of political uncertainty and informational chaos regarding the results of the election,” according to the confidential report.

What’s more, Jimmy Carter made the problem worse:

The EU report also said former U.S. President Carter, who led a team of 50 election observers, undermined the electoral process and EU criticism with “his premature blessing of the elections and early positive assessment of the results.”

Unless there is a “drastic reverse toward good democratic practice” the observer team and EU “will have to publicly denounce the situation.”

“Otherwise, the EU jointly with ex-President Carter will be held largely responsible for the lack of transparency, and assumed rigging, of the elections.”

It’s Venezuela all over again for Jimmy, apparently. Meanwhile, several thousand Ethiopian-Americans protested the elections, at the State Department.

REVEALING COMMENTS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:

For a certain segment of the population, Nascar’s raid on American culture — its logo festoons everything from cellphones to honey jars to post office walls to panties; race coverage, it can seem, has bumped everything else off television; and, most piercingly, Nascar dads now get to pick our presidents — triggers the kind of fearful trembling the citizens of Gaul felt as the Huns came thundering over the hills. To these people, stock-car racing represents all that’s unsavory about red-state America: fossil-fuel bingeing; lust for violence; racial segregation; run-away Republicanism; anti-intellectualism (how much brain matter is required to go fast and turn left, ad infinitum?); the corn-pone memes of God and guns and guts; crass corporatization; Toby Keith anthems; and, of course, exquisitely bad fashion sense. What’s more, they simply don’t get it. What’s the appeal of watching . . . traffic? It’s as if ”Hee Haw” reruns were dominating prime time, and the Republic was slapping its collective knee at Grandpa Jones’s ”What’s for supper?” routine. With Nascar’s recent purchase of a swath of real estate on Staten Island, where it intends to plop down an 80,000-seat racetrack and retail center for the untapped New York City market, the onslaught seems poised on the brink of full-out conquest. Cover your ears, blue America. The Huns are revving their engines.

As a reader suggests, “Replace ‘NASCAR’ with ‘Hip-hop,’ and then ask yourself whether this would have run in the Times.” Certainly the editors would have objected to the condescension and stereotyping that run throughout.

On the other hand, perhaps this NASCAR stuff has gone a bit too far. . .

UPDATE: My race-car-driving brother notes that if you want real diversity, you should forget NASCAR and check out drag racing. Note the very cool photos. Meanwhile, reader Tom Carter emails:

Wow – what an article. Jonathan Miles has it all wrong. I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that a contributing writer for what is typically held as a good paper would fall into such blantant prejudices. Once again this smacks of the “blues” having a free pass at throwing stones. I wonder if Miles has ever been to a NASCAR function or even driven a stock car.

“The cars the drivers pilot — modified Chevy Monte Carlos, Ford Tauruses, Pontiac Grand Prix — are not so different from the cars Nascar fans use daily to pick up their groceries, shuttle their kids and get themselves to work.”

Statements like that are just an indicator that this man has absolutey no idea of what he’s writing about, and this just fuels the granishing disatisfaction with traditional media and their inability to effectively research their material.

Yeah. There’s not much overlap between a NASCAR “stock” car and the actual stock vehicle of the same name, and hasn’t been in ages.

I don’t mind these articles in which the Times tries to explain red states to its readership (and unlike my brother, I don’t care much for racing as a spectator sport) but I’d like them to do a better, and less-condescending, job of it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: SSgt J.P. Dawson emails:

Hey InstaDude,

In the Air Force (I’m active duty) I encounter a small group of hip-hop fans and a couple of Nascar fans every night at work on the midnight shift. There are conversations about Jay-Z and Nelly, as well as Dale, Jr. and Jeff Gordon. I tease both crowds, as we all tease each other about something. My New Yawk accent and thinning hair are the targets for them.

I’d never be so condescending of either group. Perhaps those of us in the military are just much more tolerant than the staff at the NY Times.

I think so, actually.

A LATE-BREAKING ELECTION — Michael Barone has thoughts:

We have had close elections before but not usually ones attended by such bitterness and anger. The 1968 race beween Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey and the 1976 race between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter turned out to be very close, closer indeed than expected. But few partisans on the losing side considered the winner unacceptable. That’s not the case today.

In the debates, John Kerry recalled that Bush campaigned in 2000 as a unifier, not a divider, and criticized him for dividing the nation as president. Yet the harshest rhetoric of this long, long campaign season has come not from Bush and the Republicans but from Kerry and the Democrats. Democrats have called Bush and Dick Cheney unpatriotic, not the other way around; Democrats have charged that Bush was ” AWOL” in the Texas Air National Guard; Democrats have claimed that Bush “lied” about Iraq. The Democrats are the opposition party and as such can be expected to attack the incumbent. But they are not conducting a campaign that will make it easy for them to unify the country if they win.

Nor have they been conducting themselves in a way that will make it easy for them to govern. One of the hardest things in politics is to come up with campaign proposals that will help you win the primaries, help you win the general election, and help you govern. Bill Clinton did a good job of this in 1992, though he made a detour on healthcare in 1993-94. George W. Bush also did a good job of this in 2000, although the September 11 attacks led him to refashion foreign policy as no other president has done since Harry Truman in the Cold War. John Kerry has not done such a good job.

I agree, and think that if Kerry should be elected he will find it very difficult to govern effectively. Read the whole thing.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY!!! One by one, the undecided voters in my family have fallen, two to Bush and one to none of the above. I’ve lingered, though. I know that few people believed this, but this wasn’t some stunt; I’ve honestly been undecided. A couple of times I came {imagine two fingers pressed together} this close to deciding for Kerry, on the grounds that Bush is a pigheaded incompetent; one time I decided I was going Bush, because Kerry is a rank opportunist and a multilateralist naif. But then something has always pulled me back into the battleground of indecision. I’ve been here before; I voted for Gore in 2000 at the last minute, and then switched my allegiance during the Florida Ballot Wars. What can I say? I’m a flip-flopper nuanced.

But now I’ve decided. You can read the endorsement at my blog (where you can comment), or click for an extended entry. As you can see, I was up into the wee-sma hours writing this, so be kind on any grammatical errors or typos you may find.

One more thing: though I’ve decided who to vote for, it wasn’t an easy choice, and I won’t be too jubilant if he wins, nor downcast if his opponent comes in. Like all Americans (I hope), I’ll be wishing whoever wins the best of luck in Iraq and a rising economic tide to lift all boats.

(more…)

A WHILE BACK, I wrote this:

I think it’s fair to say that if Kerry wins, he’ll win based on anti-Bush sentiment among Democrats and swing voters. But although the anybody-but-Bush vote might be good enough to get him into office, once he’s elected it will evaporate: the dump-Bush voters will have gotten what they wanted, and they won’t have any special reason to support any particular policy of Kerry’s — or even Kerry himself. . . .

So Kerry might find himself elected, but with support that rapidly fades away, leaving him subject to Washington crosswinds and a slave to his party’s interest groups. That’s pretty much what happened to President Jimmy Carter. He owed his election to backlash over Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, and the lingering residue of Watergate. But that turned out to be an insufficient base on which to govern. Carter’s own party (especially, though not only, rivals like Ted Kennedy) cut him to ribbons. We lost ground both at home and abroad as a result.

This week, The Economist wrote (via Prof. Bainbridge):

Because the election is largely a referendum on Mr Bush, he can claim, if he wins, a clear mandate for his policies—particularly cutting taxes at home and smiting terrorists abroad. If Mr Kerry wins, the only mandate he will have will be for not being George Bush. In 1993, Mr Clinton had a difficult enough time holding his party together despite laying out a compelling vision of a new Democratic Party. The singularly unvisionary Mr Kerry will have to deal not just with the same struggles (for instance, between health-care reformers and deficit hawks) but also with a new civil war between the party’s rabid Michael Moore faction and its more sensible Tony Blair wing.

Advantage: GlennReynolds.com!

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Matt Welch, who probably never read the GlennReynolds.com post above, wrote this at the close of the DNC:

I can’t begin to fathom how that lack of specificity might play to the sliver of a minority of swing-state voters who haven’t already made up their minds. Maybe they just needed to know that John Kerry was 6’4″, served in Vietnam, and never much liked commies. Whatever the efficacy, this anti-Bush unity is almost certain to dwindle if and when the Dark Lord is dethroned, and I’ll bet the hot political story in 2006 and 2008 will be about how the governing coalition is in disarray while the Republicans are newly unified against the haughty, chin-secreting liberal. This may be deeply unsatisfying to my tiny and incoherent demographic of non-partisan internationalist free-market Bush opponents, but within this projected disunity lies a silver lining — if John Kerry presides over a divided government, backed by a bickering party that doesn’t have George Bush to kick around anymore, then we will see endless new variations on the concept of “gridlock.” Aside from not being slaughtered by Islamicist madmen, this may be the best thing we can hope for.

Well, that not-being-slaughtered bit is pretty high on my list, and it strikes me as Kerry’s big weak point.

SUM UP: Overall, a pretty good performance by both guys, neither of whom is a stellar orator. As I’ve said before, my judgment on these things isn’t to be trusted — I thought Carter beat Reagan — but it looks to me like a pretty solid Bush win here for two reasons. First, the expectations were low, and he was drastically better than the previous debate, especially in the closing statement. Talk about beating the point spread. Second, he stayed focused and on-message, and looked firm instead of exasperated. As some talking head said, Bush came to play tonight. He wins the comeback prize, and the momentum shifts.

That’s my take, but as I’ve said my judgment is suspect. We’ll see what others think.

On the debate as a whole, well, it was pretty good and pretty substantive. A high point in the campaign, I’d say.

Hugh Hewitt: “No way to call this other than a big Bush win.” Of course, he said that last week.

N.Z. Bear: “Bush connected with the audience with humor (self-deprecating and otherwise), while Kerry utterly failed to do the same. It was Bush’s room: Kerry was just visiting. Combining that with solid answers which hammered Kerry on his weakest points made tonight a clear win for Bush on points, if not an utter knockout.”

Bush is getting good reviews from the Hardball crowd.

Polipundit, which unlike Hugh Hewitt called the last debate a major defeat for Bush, thinks this was a big win.

Tom Maguire says Kerry abandoned Israel.

Power Line: “I had underestimated Kerry. I’ve always thought of him as a rather dull-witted stiff. But that’s wrong. . . Two, Bush was much better tonight, more animated and energetic. He had several good spontaneous moments, one or two of which were funny. Did he ‘win’? Beats me. But he did fine; he certainly didn’t lose any ground tonight.”

A reader emails:

I think Bush did so much better this time around because of the audience.
The first debate had the audience mostly invisible, and I don’t think Bush
is comfortable if he doesn’t have people he can see and try to connect to.

Interesting point.

Spoons:

My initial impression was that both candidates did a pretty good job. Bush was dramatically improved over his performance from the first debate.

I think Bush was the clear winner, although Kerry did okay. . . .

I thought Charlie Gibson, and the audience, both did great jobs.

In contrast to a few of my questioners, I thought the overwhelming majority of the questions were fair. Most of the Bush questions were tough on Bush; most of the Kerry questions were tough on Kerry.

I think Gibson did a good job, too.

TalkLeft: “John Kerry won, hands down. He had concrete answers. He was Presidential. He showed his knowledge and exposed Bush’s mistakes.”

Robert Prather: “Bush won. It was an unambiguous win. I wish he hadn’t waited until tonight to sound this articulate.”

Hillary Clinton on CNN: “Senator Kerry hit it out of the park tonight.” Says Bill thought so, too.

Roger Abramson from The Nashville Scene: “Bush wins, but only because he made up for last time.”

Ann Althouse: “I think both men performed well in terms of style and getting their statements across. There is little basis for going on about who performed better tonight. People will have to pick between the two based on substance this time. . . . Ah, wait. One key style point. After it’s all over, Bush plunges into the audience and interacts warmly and enthusiastically with the people, while Kerry goes over and hangs around with the moderator and then hugs his wife. Bush is posing for pictures with people. Where’s Kerry now?”

Election Projection: “President Bush hit at least a triple tonight. He clobbered Senator Kerry on substance and even bested him on style. I thought the questions tonight were solid, fair, and impartial – way to go Charles Gibson!”

Kathryn Lopez: “Bush and Yankees win.”

Jeff Jarvis — who was liveblogging — “Draw. Which is to say nobody wins, including us. More lively. Both were more in command. Come to think of it, if it’s a draw, then it’s a Bush victory, since this time, he was coming up from behind.”

Alarming News: “We had two French reporters covering our party from Radio France, for a show called Interception. I talked to them for a little while, they’re against the war in Iraq, pro-Kerry and they thought that Bush obviously won.” French reporters are never wrong!

Andrew Sullivan: “A draw.”

Ann Coulter on CNN: Bush beat a Democrat on Democratic issues. Paul Begala: Close, but Kerry won.

Pundit Guy, meanwhile, thinks both candidates lost. “I think tonight, we saw the death of the town hall meeting format.”

Joe Trippi on Hardball: The online polls aren’t scientific, but the fact that Kerry’s winning them proves he’s ahead. (Huh?) He thinks the town hall format was a big success. I’m inclined to agree with him about that latter point — though I don’t know how town-hallish this really was. But I think it was a good debate.

Joshua Zader: “There was a clear winner in tonight’s debate — and it was Ronald Reagan.” Heh. Yeah, he did get bipartisan props. . . .

Reader Shivan V. Mahendrarajah emails: “I live in NYC: limousine liberals hated Guiliani publicly, but voted for his reelection because they trusted him to keep them safe. I think the same phenomenon exists with GWB, and he reminded voters why they should vote for him. . . . Finally, some talking hairpiece on CNN called it a draw, so it must be a Bush win!”

Josh Marshall: “I thought it was basically a draw.”

Note that ABC apparently nailed Kerry on the Shinseki story.

And so, after fighting a migraine for two days, to bed.

UPDATE: Soxblog observes:

Kerry was himself last night, which is to say he was a condescending jerk. Mickey Kaus points out the following: How could he tell looking around the room that none of the people there made more than $200k a year? Did he stroll around the parking lot and see nothing but Corvairs and Pintos? Did he do a quick scan and see no hair coifed by Christophe? Did he sneak a peak at the questioners’ cuticles and note the pitifully unmanicured state of their sorry digits?

He also says I “blew it” with my analysis of Kerry’s abortion remark, below.

And echoing what was reported above last night, the Euro-press is calling it a Bush victory.

Transcript and web video are available here. Don’t you love that?

Meanwhile, the spin wars are going on. And hey, they worked last week:

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and NBC’s David Gregory conceded on Imus in the Morning this week that they thought George W. Bush won the debate last week, but changed their mind in the face of the media line. “I was quickly informed I was wrong and that Kerry had won,” Thomas quipped Monday morning. Thomas said that while “Kerry did well,” he “didn’t think that Bush was as terrible as everybody else did.” Gregory stated that he “initially” saw Bush as the winner, but then “there was kind of a debate in the press corps, those of us who were watching in the main filing center where we were watching the pool feeds, as opposed to watching some of the other networks that had the reaction shots and the split screens.”

As I noted on Kudlow & Cramer yesterday, even Joe Lockhart called it a draw after the debate, but by Monday it had morphed into a crushing defeat for Bush. It’s as if the press wants Kerry to win!

LARRY DIAMOND offers a lengthy critique of Bush Administration policy in Iraq.

If Kerry had an Iraq policy that made sense, perhaps he could be making hay out of this. In fact, I want to offer a clipping from a parallel universe, one much like our own except for a different John Kerry campaign strategy:

EAST HAMPTON, NY (IP) — Democratic Presidential nomineee John Kerry laughs when told that most voters don’t realize that he served in Vietnam, winning three purple hearts, a bronze star, and a silver star.

“Why should they? That’s several wars ago,” Kerry laughs. “Old stuff. I’d much rather people be talking about my detailed plan to rebuild Iraq, using an oil trust mechanism that would give the Iraqi people a stake in reconstruction. That’s why I focused on that in my acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. What was I going to do, rehash events from 35 years ago?”

Kerry’s friends say that, like other veterans, he’s been known to tell a few tall tales about his service over beers with others who served, but that he seldom talks about his combat experience otherwise. “He’s put that behind him,” says his wife Teresa. “And he thinks it would be unbecoming to make a big deal about his service when others, like [Senator] John McCain or [former P.O.W.] Paul Galanti went through so much more.”

“I would have invaded Iraq regardless of the WMD issue,” Kerry observes. “Saddam Hussein was a threat, and a menace to his own people. And a free, democratic Iraq will be the first step toward addressing the ‘root cause’ of terrorism — despotic Arab regimes that spew hatred to distract their people from their own tyranny. But as I said last year, the reconstruction needed more resources. That was why I voted for the $87 billion in reconstruction money, but urged the Bush Administration to ask for more, to do it right.”

Kerry also takes a dim view of leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. “I think that his film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ was scurrilous and dangerous to the morale of our troops. That’s why I asked that he be excluded from the Democratic Convention, despite Jimmy Carter’s wishes. And that’s why he wasn’t seen there. In a time of war, we don’t need guys like that. We can win this campaign based on our ideas, not propaganda films. That’s also why I told Chris Matthews to ‘stuff it’ when he tried to make an issue out of President Bush’s National Guard service.”

Kerry’s detailed plans for Iraq, and for carrying the war on terror to Al Qaeda and its backers elsewhere, seem to have left the Bush Administration floundering. Sources close to the Bush campaign say that some Bush operatives are considering an attack on Kerry’s Vietnam record, but many are skeptical. “I don’t think that’ll work,” says cyber-pundit Glenn Reynolds, who calls Kerry’s Iraq plan promising. “Most voters have no idea Kerry was even in Vietnam. He never talks about it, so where’s the traction? It’s ancient history.”

Others are even harsher. “They can’t attack the message,” says Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect, a liberal publication. “So they’re attacking the messenger. That’s because they don’t want to talk about Kerry’s real accomplishments, the ones Kerry touted at the Convention, like his role in busting BCCI, the terrorists’ money laundry. Kerry’s talking about that, and his plans for Iraq, and they’re talking about Vietnam? Who cares about that? Pathetic.”

I’d actually prefer that parallel universe.

UPDATE: Tom Carr observes: “The Kerry ‘Parallel Universe’ wouldn’t be so parallel if you replaced all the instances of Kerry w/Lieberman…including on the ballots. *sigh*”

Yeah. And reader Dave Schuler emails: “You’ll make me weep. Why can’t our reality be more like that beautiful fantasy?”

Beats me. Because Kerry couldn’t have gotten the nomination if he’d sounded like Lieberman?

ANOTHER UPDATE: N.Z. Bear comments on this scenario.

MORE: Chris Lawrence: ” Left unpondered is whether or not ‘parallel Kerry’ has one of those cool-looking goatees like Spock did in ‘Mirror, Mirror.’” Yeah, definitely.

JOURNALISTIC ETHICS: I’ve missed the Richard Clarke hype, but now Drudge is reporting that CBS, which pumped Clarke’s book hard on “60 Minutes,” didn’t disclose a financial stake in the book’s success.

UPDATE: Well, I haven’t been following it, but somebody has:

Richard Clarke is a bitter, discredited bureaucrat who was an integral part of the Clinton administration’s failed approach to terrorism, was demoted by President Bush, and is now an adjunct to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Ouch. Roger Simon says it’s all about the Benjamins for Clarke, and Stephen F. Hayes wonders why Clarke is giving Clinton — who had a lot more time than Bush to focus on Al Qaeda, but didn’t — a pass.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. Clarke seems to have had trouble deciding who to worry about, despite his claims now. And here’s Condi Rice’s response. Meanwhile Hugh Hewitt observes:

Al Qaeda took root in Afghanistan and metastasized during the Clinton party. Repeated strikes on the U.S. abroad, culminating in the bombing of the Cole, went unpunished except for the symbolism of tossing some cruise missiles into the Afghan mountains. The attempt to pin blame on the eight months of Bush Administration control on the basis of “warnings” delivered is transparent posturing from the same gang that gave Osama a pass for eight years while his camps trained and dispersed thousands of fanatics throughout the world.

The political operation on the Democratic side is in chaos, repeatedly attempting to rewrite the national security situation and repeatedly failing. Their focus groups and polls must be telling them that they have to move public opinion on this issue or lose big in the fall. But that’s like trying to move Mount McKinley from Alaska to Hawaii. The perception that the Democrats are weak on defense and hesitant to engage the terrorists is out there because the Democrats are weak on defense and hesitant to engage the terrorists.

Well, I’d give Clinton a bit more of a pass on this than Hewitt does. I think a lot of people — including me — viewed Islamic terrorism in the 1990s as a minor threat that could be contained until it collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity. That was wrong, but I don’t blame the Clinton people for getting it wrong. (Clarke, by the way, spent the 1990s worrrying publicly about cyberterrorism). I do, however, blame them intensely for trying to rewrite history now for partisan political reasons while a war is going on.

I’d also like to believe — as Andrew Sullivan is hoping — that a Kerry Administration would be more serious about this sort of thing. But so far, “hope” is the operative term.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Phil Carter is skeptical of the White House’s response to Clarke. That’s reasonable enough — I myself have been repeatedly skeptical of the absurd claim, made earlier but happily not repeated this go-round, that no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks. In fact, some people (and not just Tom Clancy) did. On the other hand, Clarke wasn’t one of those people, and his assault seems rather political in nature.

MORE: Reader T.J. Lynn emails:

We’ve finally managed to find the guy who actually lost his job over 9/11.

And now he’s written a book blaming everyone else for what he was specifically charged with preventing.

Heck, is there any wonder why Bush didn’t clean house? Can you imagine the breathless coverage?

Interesting take.

BOMBINGS IN MADRID: 131 killed. Basque “separatists” — the usual suspects — say it wasn’t them, but the “Arab resistance.” Should we believe them? Beats me. If it is Arabs — and that’s probably the way to bet — this is likely the harbinger of more attacks in Europe.

There’s much more over at Iberian Notes and Backseat Drivers.

UPDATE: Jan Haugland has more, and notes:

Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi has stated on Basque radio that he does not believe ETA is responsible. Interestingly, Batasuna officially denies being the political front of ETA, but now they are forced to be its public front in denying ETA responsibility. So is there any credibility to the claim? What is the point of terrorism if you don’t take responsibility? There has been speculations that the attack was far more successful than planned, or that the ETA had intended to issue a warning but somehow failed to do it. Alternatively, that ETA has been radicalised by a new leadership. The fact that Spanish police has foiled semilar plots by the ETA in the near past counts against this denial.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Josh Chafetz observes:

Some are skeptical that this was the work of the ETA. That’s ultimately for the police and intelligence services to figure out, but I’m skeptical of the skeptics. ETA hasn’t always announced its attacks ahead of time, and Spanish authorities had been worried about an ETA attack ahead of this weekend’s elections. Given ETA’s history, it seems to me that the default assumption should be that it was them.

I think that’s probably right, though I claim no special expertise. I also think that it’s entirely plausible to imagine cooperation between the ETA and Al Qaeda groups, something we were hearing about as long ago as 1996 (scroll down past the story where President Clinton talks about Iraq as a sponsor of terorrism, to the one about Islamic terror in France). Thanks to reader Sarah Gossett for the link.

The Spanish government seems convinced that this is an ETA attack. John at Iberian Notes says it fits the ETA’s pattern.

Gerard Van der Leun has some thoughts that are worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Phil Carter has many useful observations, and this important conclusion:

Finally, let us consider that the “war on terrorism” is really much larger than what even American thinks of it. Liberal society, broadly defined, is at war with the forces of terror which seek to undermine the global civil society that prizes such things as liberty, equality, interdependence, free trade, self-determination, human rights, education, and science. (This is essentially Paul Berman’s thesis from his brilliant book Terror and Liberalism) At times, the values of liberal society clash with each other, such as the clash between free trade and human rights. But ultimately, I believe this society to be far better than the alternative, and to be the ideal that we all must strive for. Terrorism seeks to undermine this global order through fear and violence; it seeks to destroy liberal society in order to replace it with a far different vision of the world.

Whether you are Spanish, Turkish, Indonesian, French or American, you are a target. We have all been victims of this terrorism in the last decade; we will continue to be targeted in the next. Our challenge is to face such attacks as this and to confront them with the appropriate tools of law, statecraft and war. But we must do more. We must also beat the terrorist enemy with our ideas. It is not capitalism of democracy per se that terrorism seeks to destroy — it is global civil society itself. To prevent that, we must make global civil society as strong and resolute an institution as possible, and to make it good enough that it will ultimately prove the fallacy of the terrorist ideology. That is the challenge.

Read the whole thing.

MORE: A possible Arab link? Hard to say. Early reports are usually wrong. All we really have to know is that this sucks, and that either Al Qaeda or ETA or a host of other groups would have done it if they could have. So there’s no reason to be overly-discriminating in our response. As Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly noted, it won’t be a lick amiss, regardless.

Meanwhile Politica Obscura wonders how long it will be until someone blames Bush. It’s probably already happened.

STILL MORE: Is this claim of Al Qaeda involvement credible? Beats me. Plausible, certainly. Meanwhile BoiFromTroy observes that if Al Qaeda is behind these attacks, it just underscores that “the only people in the world who believe that the liberation of Iraq was George Bush’s unilateral action are the people who seek to replace him in the Oval Office.”

And read Roger Simon’s thoughts on what this is likely to mean in terms of European responses to terror.

MORE STILL: They’re already blaming Bush at Democratic Underground. No surprise there. A lot of the folks at Daily Kos seem to think the same thing.

STILL MORE: Donald Sensing has more, and some TV screenshots.

YET MORE STILL: Mark Steyn:

As Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, neatly put it, “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.” . . .

And now Spaniards. “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.” And by “you”, they mean not just arrogant Texan cowboys, but any pluralist society – whether a relaxed tourist resort like Bali or a modern Muslim nation like Turkey or – come to that, one day down the road – a cynical swamp of appeasement like France.

Which adds meaning to this passage from an LGF comment thread (I couldn’t find it among the myriads there, but the poster, Ernest Gudath, emailed it to me):

I am an American. A Californian to be exact. From nowhere special. I have never been to Spain. I may never go to Spain. I don’t even speak Spanish. But today, today I am a Spaniard. We are all Spaniards. Your country has suffered a disaster that I can not now, nor will likely ever, fully comprehend. Men of evil did this. Yes, I say evil, for there is no other word to describe the hatred, the callous disregard for human life and God granted dignity of men, of those who would commit such an act. I wish to express my greatest sympathy to the people of Spain, who suffer now because of the scourge of terrorism. This suffering shall not just die away. It shall linger, linger on in the hearts of those who must bury their dead, who must visit the graves of them each year on this day, those who must explain to their children why Mother, or Father, or Brother, or Sister will not be coming home again. To those who will mourn the passing of loved ones their whole lives, this day shall never end. My prayers are with you all. This is a wound that shall never fully heal, and that is the greatest sorrow of all. Buildings and trains may be rebuilt, but lives can not. Spain stood by America in its darkest time in recent years, something that I, or any American, shall never forget. You stood by us in our hour of darkness, now let us return that favor. Whatever it is that you need now of us, just ask. We shall be there for you. My prayers are with the people of Spain. May God bless you, and all the people of Spain, and may His justice be swift, and sure.

Well said. And if you’re reading this as an individual post, go here for something you can do.

EURSOC has more observations. And so does Bjorn Staerk: ” We can at least hope that warnings against terrorism will now be taken more seriously, and clever justifications of it less.”

FINAL UPDATE: Look to later posts for more on this. But reader Ernest Gudath sends the link to the item posted above and notes that — contrary to the impression I had gotten from his email — he’s not the author.

BILLY BECK NOTICES that Wesley Clark is claiming he wasn’t relieved of his command in the Balkans. The problem with that claim is that, well, he was. I think that the quote that Beck points to is a distillation of this kind of unconvincing spin, from Hardball:

MATTHEWS: Did Bill Clinton agree in your policy?

CLARK: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: Why did he relieve you?

CLARK: First of all, I wasn’t relieved.

MATTHEWS: You weren’t?

CLARK: No. Uh-uh.

MATTHEWS: You weren’t relieved as supreme commander as NATO.

CLARK: No, I wasn’t. No. I was asked to retire three months early.

MATTHEWS: How is that different?. . . .

CLARK: If you relieve someone, you take them out of command. What happened here was, I was asked to retire early and then it was then leaked to “The Washington Post” in an effort to keep me from talking to Bill Clinton about it. So this was a behind the back power play. Bill Clinton told me himself he had nothing to do with it, And I believe him.

Matthews isn’t convinced by this story, and neither am I. And I’d very much like to hear the whole story behind Clark’s departure.

UPDATE: Reader Robin Burk emails:

Clark is technically correct (if I remember correctly) in saying he was not relieved of his NATO command. Relieving a commander is a major step that occurs with a formal declaration by superiors and transfer of command authority without the necessity for consent from that commander. It is a very public rebuke. My understanding is that Clark was urged to retire so that they would not need to take the drastic step of formally relieving him.

Hmm. I see the point, though Clark’s angle still seems like spinning to me. Meanwhile, the not-exactly-impartial Ann Coulter offers this as the reason for Clark’s, er, disemployment:

Clark’s forces bombed a civilian convoy by mistake, killing more than 70 ethnic Albanians, and then Clark openly lied about it to the press. First he denied NATO had done it, and when forced to retract that, Clark pinned the blame on an innocent U.S. pilot. As New York Newsday reported on April 18, 1999: “American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the staff of Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO commander, pointed to an innocent F-16 Falcon pilot who was castigated by the media for blasting a refugee convoy.” Eventually, even a model of probity like Bill Clinton was shocked by Clark’s mendacity and fired him.

If this is the reason for Clark’s “early retirement,” it’s news to me.

UPDATE: Phil Carter has a lengthy post on what it means to be “relieved of command.” Here’s the short version, from his email to me:

Bottom line: I don’t think he was technically relieved, but I think it’s easy to see how someone would casually use that word to describe his situation. Relief is a term of art in the Army, and it carries specific administrative and legal meaning. Clark wasn’t relieved in that sense, but he may have been relieved/fired/terminated in the civilian sense of those words.

I’ll defer to Phil’s superior knowledge, though it’s made more confusing by the fact that Admiral Quigley refers to Clark as being “relieved” twice in this press conference quoted by Billy Beck above. So does this article (also quoted by Beck) from the Command and General Staff College of the Army, which refers to Clark as having been “initially shocked to find himself relieved and retired.” So it’s not just us civilians who are using the term loosely, if that’s what’s going on. Compare that with James Ridgway’s report (which formed the original basis for Beck’s post) that “Clark said he wasn’t relieved, but in the interests of helping the Kosovo people, he quit his job as supreme NATO commander.”

MORE: In response to an email from Mark Kleiman, I want to be clear: I think that Clark is spinning. He’s trying to say that he wasn’t “relieved” (maybe, technically, true in terms of a narrow military meaning of the word) while implying that he wasn’t given the boot, which he pretty clearly was. In fact, in the Ridgeway quote — though it’s an indirect quote, which is why I also quoted the Hardball bit above — he seems to suggest that it was all a generous act on his part.

That’s rather implausible, to put it mildly. People don’t generally get asked to retire early because they’re doing a great job. I don’t necessarily endorse Ann Coulter’s version above, as I thought I made clear, but Clark did something that got him booted, and I’m still not clear on what. It seems to me that we ought to be clear on it, since he’s running for President.

MORE EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE FORD FOUNDATION:

The quip going around nonprofit circles these days is that the Ford Foundation’s support for Palestinian extremists is the one area of funding it could defend on the grounds of donor intent–an allusion to the notorious anti-Semitism of automaker and founder Henry Ford.

But Chuck Grassley, for one, is not amused. In response to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency series detailing Ford’s support for Palestinian NGOs crusading against Israel, the Iowa Republican has announced that the Senate Finance Committee will review the matter. In so doing, we hope it raises a question long overdue for Congressional scrutiny: How U.S. tax laws intended to encourage charity have had the unintended effect of spawning a foundation priesthood funded into perpetuity and insulated from public accountability.

The NGOs and foundations deserve much, much closer scrutiny than they’re getting, both in terms of their activities, and in terms of where the money goes. And that’s even before you get to basic questions of accounting, oversight, and general honesty in advertising. The kind of financial shenanigans that go on in this world make the for-profit business scandals look minor.

UPDATE: A reader emails that this investigative series by the Boston Globe regarding the Cabot Family Foundation is a model for the kind of inquiry that ought to be going on. (Look to the lower right for links to more stories).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Greg Djerejian, who works in NGOs, says I’m wrong to compare NGO corruption to Enron and Parmalat. (Though his suggestion that we should compare dollar amounts seems to miss the point.) But fellow nonprofit reader Rudy Carrasco emails:

Good to see your details about Ford Foundation et al. Big foundations like Ford regularly grill and dissect small nonprofits, and they need to be grilled themselves. Truth is that all ngos need the grilling (it’s usually helpful for us) but there are times when the close inspection is about gate-keeping (keeping ngos that don’t toe the party line out of the money pool) and not about good governance. . . .

Made me mad again – because I get pressured, as a nonprofit bringing in under 400k a year, to govern well and properly – which is fine, it makes us better. But to see this double standard irks me. Good to see Ford held to same standards they hold us to.

Well, I’ve heard a number of horror stories from people I trust who work with NGOs. But, of course, without monitoring it’s hard to know just how deep the problem is. Personally, I think it’s probably pretty deep — because when you have large sums of money, few clear metrics for success, and little accountability to outsiders, it usually is. One useful article on this subject, though it’s now a bit old, is David Samuels’ Philanthropical Correctness: The Failure of American Foundations, from the September 18, 1995 issue of The New Republic. It doesn’t seem to be on the web, but here’s an excerpt:

In the past twenty-five years, however, a startling shift in foundation funding has occurred, away from research and toward the support of advocacy groups and the kinds of social service programs best accomplished by government and private charity. Of 240 grants made by the Carnegie Corporation in 1989, totaling $37 million, only 27.5 percent (sixty grants) went to American universities. Most were relatively small, and many went to non-research oriented projects such as an “international negotiations network” at Emory University’s Carter Presidential Center, or “Reprinting and Disseminating the Handbook for Achieving Sex Equity Through Education and the Sex Equity Handbook for Schools.” Most of the Carnegie grants fell into one of two categories: funding and disseminating a host of high-flown reports by Carnegie-sponsored commissions; and funding advocacy groups including the Organizing Institute, the International Peace Academy, the aclu Foundation, the National Council of La Raza, the Fund for Peace and the Children’s Defense Fund. It is the stuff of which Republican careers will doubtless be made: a multi-billion-dollar tax exemption for the political agenda of liberal elites.

Those who share the broader social concerns of the foundations might wonder as well whether doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to ideologically driven advocates–who lack the time, the training or the inclination to evaluate what they do–is the best prescription for future innovations in public policy. Foundations enjoy their present tax-free moorings because they claim to operate as a nonpartisan force dedicated to the pursuit of innovative solutions to our pressing social ills, sheltered from the shifting partisan winds. The preponderance of foundation grants to advocacy groups, however, suggests that foundations are less devoted to the reasoned pursuit of the public good than to the multiculturalist dogmas propounded by their staff. . . .

No longer subject to academic review, evaluations of foundation programs today are carried out by foundation staff and by grantees themselves. Certainly many of these recipients are worthy and well-intentioned. The trouble is that, under the new system, it’s almost impossible to evaluate what actual good they do. One recipient of major foundation grants, an educator in a Northeastern city who refused to allow his name to be published, described the process with a cynicism that appears to be general: “They think they’re being clever by asking you to come up with your own criteria for success–60 percent of children in the eighth grade will be reading at a ninth-grade level in two years, or whatever. And they ask you to select an independent evaluator’ to report on whatever progress has been made. It’s all very numerical: but the goals you select are always goals that you know you can reach. Maybe 60 percent of eighth graders are already reading at a ninth-grade level. Maybe it’s 70 percent. The foundations don’t know. And the evaluators you select are people with a stake in the project. They’re getting a salary–from you, or an organization related to yours; some part of their income comes from that grant. And so the project is evaluated, declared a success, and everyone–the program officer, the trustees and you–can go home happy.”

Samuels isn’t so much concerned with bags-of-cash corruption, exactly, as with the pumping of huge amounts of money into politics instead of actual effort to help people, and he notes the way in which many foundations have abandoned, or shifted, metrics for “success” so as to make real accountability difficult. Though that’s a form of corruption in itself, and it tends to lead to more traditional kinds of corruption, as well.

I believe that this article created something of a storm at the time, but it doesn’t seem to have changed things, much.

MORE: A reader sends a link to this transcript of an interview with Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) who’s looking at foundation practices. Here’s an interesting fact: “The Ford Foundation, a $9 billion foundation, the government says you need to give away roughly half a billion every year. Almost $100 million of that, almost $100 million of that is overhead.”

As I say, more scrutiny is needed, at a number of levels.

A LOT OF PEOPLE seem to suddenly miss the Independent Counsel law, just as Megan McArdle predicted. Funny, I remember when the very idea of this sort of thing was anathema to the Republic. You’d almost think that people’s views on these questions were driven entirely by political concerns.

In The Appearance of Impropriety, (now available in paperback! — and at an irresistible price! — makes a great birthday, wedding, or Bar Mitzvah gift!) Peter Morgan and I wrote about these dynamics. (And it was considered a largely pro-Clinton book at the time, which Lanny Davis used in a class he taught on political communication. How things change.) Of course, Ashcroft can appoint a Special Prosecutor, which is not quite the same thing as an Independent Counsel, even though the Independent Counsel law has expired. Should he? Perhaps, though I think the right way to investigate this is to get the journalists involved — and perhaps Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, and George Tenet — under subpoena and just ask them who said what to whom. Then you can fire, or prosecute, the leaker if it’s warranted. You don’t need a Special Prosecutor to do that.

UPDATE: Here’s the model approach, right here:

James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna sit right here and talk about it. Now if you get tired of talking here, Mr. Marshal Elving Patrick there will hand you one of them subpoenees he’s got stuck down in his pocket and we’ll go downstairs and talk in front of the grand jury. …Elliot? Jim? …Fine. All right, Elving, hand whichever one of these fellas you like a subpoenee and we’ll go on downstairs and talk in front of the grand jury.

District Attorney James A. Quinn: Gallagher’s a government witness.

James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Wonderful thing, a subpoenee.

——————————————————————————–
James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: You had a leak? You call what’s goin’ on around here a leak?! Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat.

——————————————————————————–
James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General: Now we’ll talk all day if you want to. But, come sundown, there’s gonna be two things true that ain’t true now. One is that the United States Department of Justice is goin’ to know what in the good Christ — e’scuse me, Angie — is goin’ on around here. And the other’s I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in muh briefcase.

Too bad Wilford Brimley isn’t available.

UPDATE: Click “more” below for a piece I wrote for Newsday on the expiration of the Independent Counsel Act, which has at least some relevance to today’s issues. And here — far more timely — is a lengthy post by Bill Dyer on the legal issues involved. He also suggests Rudy Giuliani as the special prosecutor, should one be appointed.

Sounds good to me. And here’s a call for Senate hearings. Just make the journalists testify under oath?

(more…)

THIS ARTICLE says that Americans are likely to support the war more in response to casualties, as long as they think President Bush means to stick it out. That does seem to be what the polls are showing.

“A few years ago, it was conventional wisdom that the American people would tolerate no casualties in war,” said James Burk, a sociologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. “My own research and the research of others has pretty well demonstrated that the American public is tolerant of casualties as long as the casualties are incurred in pursuit of a mission that they think is reasonable. The public will be patient as long as the casualties don’t seem to be the result of carelessness or incompetence.”

The public did not support, for example, President Jimmy Carter’s botched attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran because it was seen as ill-conceived and halfhearted, Burk said.

The Bush administration clearly understands that the American people are more “defeat phobic than casualty phobic,” said Peter D. Feaver, associate professor of political science at Duke University.

The article also includes the obligatory quote from Charles Moskos, who immediately makes clear that he doesn’t know what’s going on:

Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University, said support could start to dissipate quickly unless the nation’s elite are also sending their children to war.

If Moskos had read this piece instead of recycling Vietnam-era quote-mongering, he’d know he’s behind the curve:

Here’s a report about the earlier casualties.

The first is the U.S. pilot killed in the mid-air collision of the two helicopters, U.S. Navy Lt. Thomas M. Adams.

“He’s one of these amazingly clean-cut, all-American kids,” said his aunt, Elizabeth Hansen of La Jolla. “He’s the kind of kid that if you had a very special daughter, you would hope that she could snag him. He was just amazingly bright, funny and kind.”

Adams’ lineage can be traced to Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, his aunt said.

* * *

Adams’ late grandfather, Richard Croxton Adams, helped found Grossmont Bank and Heartland Savings and Loan. His grandfather, who moved to San Diego from Cleveland in 1948, helped rebuild the Old Globe Theatre and the Aerospace Museum after they were destroyed by arson.

Of course, you won’t find this on CNN. But isn’t an expert like Moskos supposed to know things that aren’t on CNN?

FIFTH COLUMN ALERT: Andrew Sullivan writes:

What, after all, is the difference between this and the 1990s? Nothing. But somehow we all knew it would come to this, didn’t we? The Times has been campaigning for appeasement of Saddam for over a year. The hawkish pirouettes in between were diversions. What this editorial is really about is the first shot in the coming domestic war – to undermine this military campaign once it begins, to bring down this administration, and to advocate the long-term delegation of American power to an internationalist contraption whose record has been to facilitate inaction and tyranny. The Times, in campaigning against war, has actually fired the opening shot in the coming domestic war. Hostilities have begun.

I guess this would matter more, if the editorial positions of the Times mattered more.

UPDATE: I guess it wasn’t clear, but the post above was supposed to be archly indicating that I think Andrew is a bit over the top with this point. “Domestic war?” And against the Times? I guess it was a little too arch, though, since neither Josh Chafetz nor Arthur Silber read it that way.

I think we’re quite a ways from “domestic war.” I do think that there are people in positions of influence who would rather see us lose this war. Some are honest about it, like Chrissie Hynde, and some aren’t. And some are just positioning themselves to take advantage if things go badly, but don’t otherwise care. Is that a “fifth column?” It’s enough of one that I think Andrew has won that point over the people who said he was over the top when he originally used the term.

But it’s not “domestic war.” And I don’t know whether the editors of The New York Times fall into this category. While they clearly have an irrational dislike for President Bush, my sense is that they want what’s best for America — however misguided their views on that subject might be — and aren’t calling, after the fashion of Chrissie Hynde, for America to be given “what it deserves.”

With regard to the latter group, though, I tend to agree with Susanna Cornett.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew responds, noting that:

By domestic war, I simply mean a deep domestic fight over the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. That’s a wrenching experience I hope won’t happen. But in many ways, it already has. To take one simple example: has there ever been a case when a former president has actually publicly undermined a sitting president at a critical time in U.N. diplomacy, essentially advising critical foreign governments to balk at America’s requests on the eve of a war? If someone knows of a precedent for Jimmy Carter’s op-ed, please let me know.

Good point. Imagine if Gerald Ford had been writing op-eds criticizing Carter’s handling of the hostage crisis, even as the negotiations were going on.

Then again, it could hardly have turned out worse. In fact, much of our problem with radical Islamism today is because of Carter’s weakness and ineptitude nearly twenty-five years ago.

THIS POST OF MINE has upset some of the antiwar folks because I said that the peace movement is playing into Saddam’s hands and is thus “objectively pro-Saddam.” (Jim Henley has been all over this — scroll up and down from this post — and it rates a mention in Tapped, which calls the statement “uncharacteristically simple-minded”).

Well, Saddam says — in a passage quoted in that very post — that he’s stalling because he thinks that if he waits long enough American public opinion (which I interpret, reasonably enough, I think, to mean “the antiwar movement”) will force Bush not to invade. And there’s nothing new about that strategy – it’s been the strategy of every U.S. adversary since Vietnam. (What’s more, the “antiwar movement” that they’ve relied on has been pretty much the same people, using the same slogans, regardless of the actual circumstances involved.)

But regardless of whether members of the anti-war movement subjectively support Saddam (many of them, as David Corn has reported, are more accurately described as anti-American than pro-Saddam, but there are plenty of thoughtful folks like Henley who don’t fit that mold) the fact is that their opposition to the war is a key element in his strategy. That doesn’t make it necessarily wrong, of course: what’s best for Saddam could conceivably also be what’s best for America, though that’s not much of a slogan. I’d take the misreport of Charlie Wilson’s statement about General Motors over that one any day.

But when your movement is the key tool of a nasty dictator, well, it should give you pause, shouldn’t it? Jim Henley’s response is that he regards war as sufficiently undesirable that “the fate of some tinpot tyrant on the other side of the globe” doesn’t matter to him. That’s fine, and it’s a reasonable argument even if it’s one that I disagree with. But don’t pretend that such an approach isn’t, in fact, beneficial to Saddam, and that while it may not matter to you, it does matter to him and he’s basing his strategy on it. What moral obligations flow from that fact — and I think there are some — is perhaps another topic, but don’t deny the fact itself. Personally, it’s not Saddam’s fate that concerns me, but ours. I just think that Saddam’s fate has a lot to do with our own.

Okay, that’s the reasonable argument. Here are the not-so-reasonable ones. Hesiod emailed me that by supporting war on Iraq I was “objectively pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Arab,” etc. This is just dumb. People who oppose war on Iraq want to cover themselves by setting up a false dichotomy: war on Al Qaeda or war on Iraq. But, since there’s no reason that one conflicts with the other, that won’t wash. Indeed, I think it’s more likely that the two reinforce each other.

Meanwhile Tapped asks if George Bush is “objectively pro-Kim Jong Il” because he’s not in favor of invading North Korea. Well, actually, I think Bush would be in favor of invading North Korea if we could. (And I’d be interested to hear what Tapped would say in that event. I doubt it would be anything along the lines of “at last!” But be careful what you wish for. . . .)

The reason why we aren’t invading North Korea is that it would be too hard, not least because North Korea has managed to pull off what Saddam Hussein is still trying to accomplish: a military position that makes invasion prohibitively expensive. Since North Korea achieved that position largely under the umbrella of Chinese and Russian protection during the Cold War, there’s not much we can do about that — though Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton’s “nonproliferation” efforts there look pretty lame now — but that’s hardly an argument for giving Saddam Hussein the same opportunity, and certainly an argument against the inspections-and-blather approach taken with North Korea. In retrospect, it’s clear that if we could have prevented North Korea from acquiring the weapons it has, we would have been better off doing so. I think that’s the lesson we should take from this, and I think the antiwar movement needs to be awake to the possibility that Saddam is playing it for a sucker. Because I think that’s what’s happening.

Saddam will do what he can get away with. The question is, what are you willing to let him get away with?

UPDATE: Boy, it doesn’t get much clearer than the headline on this article: “Saddam banks on protesters to quash effort to strike Iraq” — does it?

“The demonstrations in the Arab and Western world include hundreds of thousands of peace-loving people who are protesting the war and aggression on Iraq,” he said, apparently referring to protests in the United States and around the world last month. . . .

Most of Saddam’s statements were standard Iraqi rhetoric — he blamed “Zionist schemes” for Iraq’s troubles and said invading Iraq would not be “a picnic” for American and British forces.

But his references to anti-war demonstrations in the West were the first signal he believed protests could undermine President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the chief advocates of attacking Iraq.

And I don’t think it’s any answer to say, as Micah Holmquist does, that: “This is exactly why nuclear weapons are going to be a sought after commodity by countries around the world for the forseeable future. They provide protection, something many countries are trying to obtain in light of the White House’s imperial ambitions.”

That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. And here’s what Zach Barbera wrote when the Saddam interview came out: “Don’t let the anti-war folks, as well as the French and Russians, tell you they are not on Saddam’s side. He knows they are.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh suggests that something like “pro-Saddam in effect” is better. Okay, I can live with that — since it’s what I was saying anyway. I don’t think that these people (well, most of ’em) really like Saddam. But I think that he’s counting on their efforts, and that they ought to be troubled by that.

LAST UPDATE: Hesiod seems to think I misrepresented his email above. He offers an edited version of it at this link. I don’t have the original handy, but I really don’t see that my paraphrase above departs significantly from what he quotes. But my perceptions differ from Hesiod’s in a number of ways.

READING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TEA LEAVES: William Sjostrom spots an agenda. Meanwhile ScrappleFace is hailing the Committee’s success.

Personally, I think it’s just another shameful year in which Arthur C. Clarke’s contribution was overlooked.

And if you’re looking for something a bit more recent, these guys did more for peace than Jimmy Carter has done. Here’s some perspective on Carter’s commitment to human rights. And here’s what another Peace Prize winner is doing.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner has posted this defense of Carter, which you should read to get the best possible case for Carter getting the prize. Me, I’ve never liked the guy. I thought he was phony and inept when he was President, and whenever he’s opened his mouth on public issues afterward he’s reminded me why I thought that.

WOBBLY WATCH UPDATE: Reader Craig Schamp says that I’ve ruined his day:

You say that “gun rights supporters should be very unhappy with Bush.” Of course, you’re right, but why did you have to go and say that? Bush’s gun rights stance was one of the things I hadn’t yet lost hope in. Now I have nothing, with the war on terrorism looking more and more like the war on drugs (endless and ineffective, full of political posturing), the domestic policy front completely in shambles (steel tariffs, anyone?), and the cabinet full of idiots and clueless political losers.

Unless things change, and PDQ, I think any political capital that would help Republicans in the fall will have been wasted. I also think that Bush is opening himself up for more hawkish challengers. Not that any of this would be bad. It shows the dynamics of our political system. But my concern is that Bush’s loss may turn out to be more than just a political one, if all of his bumbling on the war (at home and abroad) brings more death and destruction to the home front.

Best regards.

— Craig Schamp

P.S. I have voted for a Republican for president since 1980 (voted for Carter in 1976, first time to the pools, I’m ashamed to say). I will gladly cast my vote for a hawkish Democrat next time, given the chance.

Well, a pro-gun Democrat could do pretty well, I think, and Bush is vulnerable to attack from the right on the war unless more hawkish undertakings are forthcoming. Bush did well when he kept a clear vision. He’s been muddled lately, and it’s going to hurt him if it lasts. What’s more, I predict that if his stock falls substantially it will do so very rapidly, as a number of these matters reach critical mass.

To be fair, the prosecution in DC is (I think) only for “carrying” a gun illegally and there’s a respectable argument that laws governing the carrying of weapons don’t implicate Second Amendment rights. There’s no evidence that that’s what’s motivating the Justice Department, though.

UPDATE: Bill Quick says this is a problem for Bush, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Best of the Web is noting the contradiction between the Justice Department’s actions and its Second Amendment position, too.