The trouble with Gitmo

Just a reminder of the sort of problems we've got with some of our prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and why confidence that all the prisoners there are fairly held is misplaced:

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from two Chinese Muslims who were mistakenly captured as enemy combatants more than four years ago and are still being held at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

The men's plight has posed a dilemma for the Bush administration and courts. Previously, a federal judge said the detention of the ethnic Uighurs in Guantanamo Bay is unlawful, but that there was nothing federal courts could do.

Lawyers for the two contend they should be released, something the Bush administration opposes unless they can go to a country other than the United States.

A year ago, the U.S. military decided that Abu Bakker Qassim and A'Del Abdu al-Hakim are not "enemy combatants" as first suspected after their 2001 arrests in Pakistan. They were captured and shipped to Guantanamo Bay along with hundreds of other suspected terrorists.

The U.S. government has been unable to find a country willing to accept the two men, along with other Uighurs. They cannot be returned to China because they likely will be tortured or killed.

So we screwed up, but we're still holding on to them. Not because of anything they've done, but because we don't want to release them in the United States and we can't find another country willing to take them.

It seems to me that this is a variation of the Pottery Barn rule. We screwed up, and thus we are responsible for fixing the mistake. It is unjust to compound our mistake by continuing to incarcerate men we admit are innocent. They should be released into the United States -- with compensation and reasonable supervision -- until we can find a country to take them.

The alternative is to consider them terrorists because of what they planned to do in China. But that would depend on the nature and extent of the evidence against them in that regard.

In any case, the limbo they are currently in is indefensible.

Uighur, Gitmo, Guantanamo, politics, midtopia

How to manage illegal immigration

Watching the furor over immigration policy during the past week, I felt strangely uninvolved. I heard the arguments on both sides, I saw the protesters, I read the commentary. But up here in Minnesota it's not a burning issue, so I've never had to resolve the conflicting impulses that the subject raises for me.

The only thing that was clear was that the subject is far more complex than activists on either side admit. So I decided it was high time I developed a position on the subject.

First I did some thinking. Then I did some research.

THE BASICS
It seems to me that any immigration policy should recognize the following facts:

1. Every country has a right to control the flow of immigrants into it.

2. In the aftermath of 9/11 border control is a security issue, not just an economic issue.

3. The cost of the solution should not exceed the cost of the problem.

4. Barring seriously drastic measures, illegal immigration will never be eradicated. We need to manage the problem rather than trying to eradicate it.

5. The best way to fight illegal immigration is to give people incentives, both positive and negative, not to come here illegally.

6. It makes no sense to crack down on illegal immigrants without cracking down on the businesses and individuals that employ them.

THE CURRENT DEBATE
Starting from those facts, let's address some of the common arguments used in the immigration debate.

Illegal immigrants are criminals. While technically true, it's a gross oversimplification of the debate. For most illegal immigrants, the only crime they ever commit is crossing the border without permission. Labeling them criminals is a bit like subjecting serial jaywalkers to a "three strikes" rule.

Further, there are huge gray areas that such a simplistic approach does not handle very well. What about the teenager whose parents brought him across the border when he was an infant? He's been raised in America, and culturally is as American as anyone. Is he a criminal? Is justice served by deporting him back to a country he has no connection to?

Then there are the cases where illegal immigrants have children here in the States. Those children are citizens. Do we really support breaking up families by deporting the parents?

Illegal immigrants are a drain on our resources. Like any new arrival in our country, illegal immigrants use a disproportionate share of social services. And that is a cost that should really be borne by the entire nation, not the border communities that are home to the largest populations of illegals.

But that's only part of the picture. Every wave of immigrants starts out poor. What such accounting doesn't reflect is that by the second or third generation most immigrant families are established and moving up the economic ladder. And they bring with them the energy and desire to improve their lives that has powered the United States since its inception. So focusing on the short-term costs misses the larger point. Such a selective analysis could be used to support a total ban on immigration, which clearly wouldn't be in our best interests.

Besides, the cost of illegal immigration are likely overstated.

Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz ... found that the surge in illegal immigration reduced the wages of high school dropouts by just 3.6 percent. Across the entire labor force, the effect of illegal immigrants was zero, because the presence of uneducated immigrants actually increased the earnings of more educated workers, including high school graduates. For instance, higher-skilled workers could hire foreigners at low wages to mow their lawns and care for their children, freeing time for these workers to earn more. And businesses that exist because of the availability of cheap labor might also need to employ managers.

Illegal immigrants are lazy spongers. Fact is, other than their illegal arrival, illegal immigrants are precisely the sort of people we should want to have coming here. They don't just decide to cross the border on a lark one day and start sucking at the teat of American welfare. These are people who see such limited opportunity in their home country -- for both them and their children -- that they are willing to leave everything they know in search of a better life. They pay smugglers thousands and thousands of dollars to sneak them across the border, risking death, injury and capture. All so they can work for $3 an hour in near-slave conditions, with a built-in ceiling on economic advancement thanks to their illegal status. How desperate would you have to be before you considered doing something like that? And isn't that sort of pluck exactly what we claim as the benefit of being a nation of immigrants?

We should not crack down on immigrants, illegal or otherwise, who are simply trying to make a life for themselves and their families. While illegals should be treated humanely, they are here illegally, and they do have unwanted economic effects. We should have a rational method for cracking down on illegal immigration, but we should not simply turn a blind eye or enact elaborate restrictions that make it unnecessarily difficult to identify and arrest illegals.

We should deny illegal immigrants access to public services and schools. This is just plain stupid from a public policy perspective. They're here; we do ourselves no favors by preventing them from getting an education or other kinds of help. Cutting them off would have the effect of turning them into criminals in the full sense of the word, forced to steal and defraud in order to survive. Cutting them off from public health services would just increase our overall health bill in the end. Let's not cut off our nose to spite our face.

Americans don't want the jobs that illegal immigrants do. This isn't provably true, there will always be exceptions, and even if it is true the reason may be less the work involved than the pay rate. A more accurate assessment might be that without the cheap labor of illegals, those jobs wouldn't be in this country in the first place. But either way, it seems clear that illegal immigration does affect the job and earning prospects of American workers at the bottom of the education ladder.

America can't handle too many immigrants at once. In a theoretical sense, this is true; if 1 million illegal Mexican immigrants suddenly descended on Luxembourg, for instance, it would overnight become a Mexican-majority country. But the United States has 300 million people; we're not so easily overwhelmed. WIth the INS estimating there are only about 9 million illegal immigrants in the United States as of 2005, the "we can't handle it" argument starts to look very weak. Looking at history, it gets even weaker. Between 1905 and 1914, an average of 1 million people a year immigrated to this country -- at a time when the population of the United States was about 90 million. Somehow we absorbed that. To achieve the same relative disruption today, we'd have to be letting in 3.3 million immigrants a year. We're not even close to that. In 2004 we admitted fewer than 1 million legal immigrants. Add to that the INS estimate of 500,000 illegal immigrants a year, and it's clear we're not even close to reaching the limits of our absorption rate -- whatever that rate might be.

(For a wealth of information on immigration, check out Homeland Security's 2004 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. It's a pdf; on page 11 is a chart showing immigration by year going back to 1820).

A SOLUTION
The problem with illegal immigrants, then, is not the cost, nor the number of immigrants, nor the immigrants themselves. It's that it is uncontrolled, which makes establishing policy difficult and poses a security risk.

The value of closing that security hole is subjective, but the relatively small objective costs of illegal immigration suggest that spending huge buckets of money to stop it just doesn't pass the cost-benefit test. Any solution should either be cost-effective by itself or have other benefits that justify the expense.

We need a comprehensive approach, not piecemeal solutions. Any attempt to address the immigration problem should include stricter enforcement in this country coupled with incentives to keep people from wanting to come here illegally in the first place.

1. Manage the demand side. Crack down on employers as well as their illegal employees, to reduce the demand side of the illegal labor problem. Fines alone won't do it; that just becomes a cost of doing business. If a business is a chronic employer of illegal workers, there should be jail terms for company executives.

We don't even come close to doing this now:

The lack of vigorous enforcement against employers who hire illegal workers has been widely viewed as the main reason that 850,000 immigrants cross the border illegally each year. Facing little in the way of penalties, employers feel few qualms about hiring them for meatpacking, construction, agriculture and janitorial work....

The number of federal immigration agents who focus on work-site enforcement plunged to 65 nationwide in 2004, from 240 in 1999, according to the Government Accountability Office. Moreover, the government reduced the number of notices of intent to fine employers who hired illegal immigrants to just 3 in 2004 from 417 in 1999.

65 agents nationwide? That's the first mistake.

We may want to tread carefully in this area, because as I noted above some of these industries only exist because of the cheap labor of illegals. But if we're going to arrest the workers, we should arrest the employers as well -- be they a corporation or a private individual with an illegal gardener. A few high-profile examples might have a big deterrent effect -- and would certainly reveal whether we as a country have the stomach for such tactics. If we don't, we need to adjust our strategy to that reality.

2. Work with the Mexican government to increase economic opportunity in Mexico. This may seem counter to our national economic interests -- helping set up Mexican workers to compete against us in the global market -- but the best way to persuade people to stay home is to give them some reason to do so. Assuming cultural and family ties are important, most people would prefer to build a life in Mexico than in the United States. Even slight improvements in economic opportunity in Mexico should have an impact on the flow of illegal immigrants.

3. Increase our legal immigrant quota. It's way too low anyway. And by giving people a reasonable chance of being able to immigrate legally, we reduce their incentive to immigrate illegally in the meantime. I'd consider doubling the quota to 2 million a year, with half of it earmarked for Mexico.

4. Implement selective amnesty programs. Have ways to help illegal immigrants become citizens -- if they go home first. Provide amnesty to children who were raised here and are substantially American, perhaps with requirements that they graduate from high school and hold a steady job. A general amnesty is a bad idea. But allow humane exceptions to a general deportation rule.

5. Border security. If we can reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, that makes it easier to monitor our borders for security risks. Building a fence isn't an answer; it would be hugely expensive and easily circumvented. The only way we get a reasonable chance of catching infiltrating terrorists is if they can't hide in a flood of illegal immigrants. So while we should increase our patrol efforts, improved border security will really be a side effect of the other strategies listed above.

6. Sharing the costs. The federal government should provide aid to border cities and states to help shoulder the cost of providing services to illegal aliens.

7. Education assistance for American workers. This is totally off the cuff, but the study I cite above indicates that the only workers adversely affected by illegal immigration are high school dropouts. Given that, we could lessen the impact by moving at least some of those workers up the educational and professional ladder so they no longer have to compete with low-wage illegals.

Adopting just some of these proposals would be a mistake; they're a package deal. They may not be as emotionally satisfying as walling off our southern border, but it would be a whole lot cheaper and far more practical. The Great Wall didn't work for China; it won't work for us.

As long as America is a land of opportunity, we will have people trying to get into the country any way they can. A rational, humane policy that seeks to manage rather than stop that flow will pay off in both the economic and security arenas -- and perhaps the political and diplomatic as well.

border security, illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, immigration, politics, midtopia

Running from the "evangelical" label

Conservative partisans like to taunt liberals for shunning the "liberal" label. "What are you ashamed of?" they ask. "Is there something wrong with being a liberal?"

No. But conservatives have spent the better part of 20 years actively trying to turn "liberal" into a dirty word. Not by addressing the principles of liberalism -- which might not be possible anyway because liberal covers a pretty wide swath of ground. No, they did it by using "liberal" to describe any words or deeds committed by anyone on the left side of the spectrum, thus tarring every liberal with the actions of their most extreme members -- including many people who are so far left that they wouldn't be considered liberals by either themselves or mainstream liberals.

Which is why it is not hard to find people who seriously believe that all liberals are socialists or communists. That's plain ignorant, but it's a mark of the demonization campaign's success. It's been so successful, in fact, that rather than deal with that baggage liberals have tried to find new undemonized terms such as "progressive".

That's why I found this New York Times article pretty interesting. Turns out that conservative evangelicals are facing the same problem.

The evangelical movement as it is known today emerged in the 1940's and 50's as a middle way between what many Christian leaders perceived as theological liberalism in the mainline Protestant denominations and the cultural separatism of the fundamentalist movement.

Today, with the term, "evangelical" often equated with "fundamentalist," many in the movement are even discussing whether the label evangelical should be jettisoned completely, said David Neff, editor of Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine.

"I did sit in a room with a number of key leaders, some Christian college presidents, some representatives of major college ministries," he said. "They were seriously discussing whether the word evangelical should be used anymore, or should we call ourselves classic Christians or historic orthodox Christians."

Will liberals now ask "Hey, what are you ashamed of? Is there something wrong with being an evangelical?" I hope not.

Will conservative partisans now stop the taunting? I hope so. That's the great thing about reckless polemics: eventually they come back to bite you in the ass.

evangelical, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld roundup

The pro-Rumsfeld generals are starting to speak up. So far we have:

1. Richard Myers, former chairman of the joint chiefs.

2. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq;

3. Michael DeLong, who was the No. 2 officer at Central Command.

None of this is particularly surprising; Myers was closely linked to Rumsfeld, and it was Franks' war plan that Rumsfeld adopted.

Separately, my earlier attempt to quantify the number of generals necessarily left off the number of retired generals. According to the Pentagon, there are about 8,000 active and retired generals.

None of that invalidates David Ignatius' estimate that 75 percent or more of senior officers oppose Rumsfeld.

Also today, David Brooks called Rumsfeld a "past-tense man" and suggested he needed to resign. The relevant quote:

Rumsfeld the reformer never adjusted to the circumstances of wartime. Once the initiator of new ideas, he now strangles ideas. Once the modernizer, he's now the dinosaur. Amid the war on terror, he has unleashed a reign of terror on his subordinates.

If you just looked at his résumé, you might think he was the best person to lead the Pentagon in time of war, but in reality he was the worst because his whole life had misprepared him for what was to come. He was prepared to fight organizations. He was not prepared to fight enemies.

Now the bureaucracy he assaulted is rising up against him. In other times their enmity would be a mark of accomplishment, but now it's a symptom of failure. He has become a past-tense man.

Meanwhile, former ambassador Richard Holbrooke says the criticism is highly unusual, and adds that the evidence against Rumsfeld appears overwhelming (see the excellent walkthrough at the Moderate Voice).
Should be an interesting week.

Myers, Franks, Delong, Holbrooke, Brooks, Rumsfeld, politics, midtopia

Happy Easter

Had an egg hunt this morning. Not to mention the Peep research.

Enjoy!

Peeps, Easter, midtopia

Help the rich, hurt the middle class

While Republicans push to permanently bury the estate (er, "death" ) tax, they appear willing to sock it to the middle class.

Unless Congress takes action, one in four families with children — up from one in 22 last year — will owe up to $3,640 in additional federal income tax come next April.

Few of them realize that their taxes have increased, because Congress has not voted to raise taxes. Instead, Congress let a tax break expire. That break limited the alternative minimum tax, which takes back part of the tax cuts sponsored by President Bush.

That's right. While we argue about a tax that only affects the top 1% of estates, we ignore a tax that everyone agrees is broken and affects far more people.

This makes sense why?

I've argued before that the estate tax makes sense -- or at least, repealing it now doesn't make sense. It's a matter of priorities.

In addition, if AMT doesn't get fixed, it'll be because Congress decided to protect a tax break for dividends instead. The difference:

The A.M.T. will cost Americans who earn $50,000 to $200,000 nearly $13 billion more next April. That is about how much people who earn more than $1 million will save because of the break on investment income like dividends and capital gains.

The next time someone starts talking about why we need to eliminate the estate tax or reduce taxes on investment income or fix anything else in the tax code, tell them "Fix the AMT first; then we'll talk."

taxes, alternative minimum tax, estate tax, AMT, politics, midtopia

Palestine civil war watch

Unpaid members of Palestinian security forces occupied goverment buildings and demanded that they get paid at once -- a demand that the cash-strapped Hamas-led government, hit with a suspension of financial aid from the United States and the EU, is totally unable to meet.

Russia, breaking with the West, promised immediate aid. And Hamas voiced the hope that Arab governments would step in to help, too.

There are a lot of interlocking factors at work here. For instance:

1. The protesters are mostly members of Fatah, Hamas' political rival. So the protest could be a sign of impending clashes -- or simply an attempt to put political pressure on Hamas.

2. If Russia comes through with the aid, and Arab governments do to, than our suspension of aid will have greatly increased their influence at our expense. The worst thing for the West would be for the Palestinians to discover they don't need us.

3. Hamas is unlikely to tolerate being forced to capitulate on recognizing Israel due to financial and political pressure from the West. Even if they do so, will they mean it?

I think suspending the aid so quickly was a mistake. It showed a lack of faith that the Palestinian people could hold Hamas responsible, and it has worsened a bad situation.

What we should have done was gone to Hamas behind the scenes and said "look, you have to recognize Israel's right to exist by such-and-such a date or we will suspend our aid." That would make it clear that actions have consequences, but it would have given them time to review their position without being backed into a corner and having to lose face, as well as maintaining our influence through their continued dependence on Western financial aid.

In dangerous situations, it's good policy to make sure you always have at least one bullet left. Now, having used our one and only bullet, we can only sit back and hope for the best.

Fatah, Russia, Hamas, Palestine, politics, midtopia

U.S. seeks sanctions against Iran

The United States will ask its allies to freeze Iranian assets, impose visa restrictions and perhaps apply some trade sanctions if Iran does not abandon its nuclear program.

And why not? Iran is enriching uranium (though its claims are overblown and it's years away from acquiring strategic amounts of weapons-grade material), and their president is a nutcase. A basic rule of thumb: don't let nutcases have nukes, especially when they've been caught redhanded violating the treaties they say give them the right to have nukes.

Wouldn't it be nice if sanctions caused the Iranians to capitulate? Yep. Unfortunately, even setting aside the question of Iranian psychology, the U.S. will have trouble getting sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council, what with Russia and China opposing the idea. We should still try; it will at least get that debate over with so we can consider other options. But it's a long shot.

Why? Well, the best way to make Iran pay attention without unduly harming Iranian civilians is to cut off military sales and aid. That -- and Iranian oil and trade -- is why Russia and China oppose sanctions: they're Iran's major arms suppliers, and they'd be the ones taking the big economic hit.

Might the West agree to compensate them for the lost trade in exchange for not opposing sanctions? That might work with Russia, which has plentiful oil of its own, but not China: China's economy is thirsty, and Iran's oil is not easily replaced. As well, both see their relationship with Iran as a key one for the future, giving them an oil-rich ally in a volatile region. They're not going to jeopardize that if they can help it. And both would prefer to make their money on trade rather than take handouts from the West.

Maybe careful diplomacy can persuade Russia that Iran getting nukes is just a short step away from a nuclear Beslan. But there's very little we can offer China that will speak louder than Iran's oil.

If either Russia or China refuses to budge, there's not much we can do other than use the IAEA to build the case against Iran and try to build a sanctions regime that bypasses the U.N.

Which is why a military strike must remain an option. An option of last resort, to be sure -- let's exhaust every other avenue first -- but an option nonetheless. Because it may well be that the threat of force -- and, if it comes to that, the use of force -- is the only thing that can make Iran pay attention.

sanctions, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Piling on, and some perspective

Another general joins the anti-Rumsfeld fray.

Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who led troops on the ground in Iraq as recently as 2004 as the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, on Thursday became the fifth retired senior general in recent days to call publicly for Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster. Also Thursday, another retired Army general, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, joined in the fray.

"We need to continue to fight the global war on terror and keep it off our shores," General Swannack said in a telephone interview. "But I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq."

Swannack has actually been critical of Rumsfeld for a while, so he doesn't really count as new -- though this may be the first time he's actually said Rumsfeld should be fired.

By my tally this makes at least nine former generals who want Rumsfeld gone:

Major generals: Paul Eaton, John Batiste, John Riggs, Charles Swannack,
Lt. generals: Gregory Newbold, William Odom
Generals: Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, Colin Powell

Those are split between Army and Marine generals.

We can probably add in Gen. Eric Shinseki as well, plus several active and retired generals who have indicated disapproval of Rumsfeld but declined to be named.

To be fair, this represents a small fraction of all the generals in the military.

The linked chart shows 2002 officer strength by pay grade; To see how that corresponds to rank, check here.

As you can see, in the Army and Marines there are about 380 generals. Now half of those are brigadiers, which can be discounted; they're not usually in on the senior strategy discussions. Neither are most of the 124 major generals, but we need to acknowledge them because four of the critics listed above were major generals, and some of them worked with the Joint Chiefs and/or were offered higher responsibilities.

So depending on how you slice it (and this is a very rough approximation, because they didn't all retire at the same time), the critics represent:

5.2 percent of those with a rank of major general or higher;
6.2 percent of those with a rank of lieutenant general or higher;
28.6 percent of those with a rank of general.

There are vastly more retirees than active-duty generals, but on the other hand active-duty generals are unlikely to speak out and many retired ones won't, either, even if they agree that Rumsfeld should go.

What does it mean? Hard to say, because the sample size is so small. It seems that the more contact generals had with Rumsfeld, the more they opposed him, but that's not exactly proven. If that is the case, the question is whether that's because he was shaking up the Pentagon with his reform program, or because he was blindly arrogant and micromanaging the war planning and execution. People will pick the answer they like best, of course, but I would point to a few key things:

1. The generals were right, and Rumsfeld wrong, about many of the specifics regarding Iraq.
2. Many of the generals support the war in Iraq, but criticize Rumsfeld's handling of it;
3. Most of these generals do not qualify as "disgruntled"; many held or were offered senior positions under Rumsfeld.

So while they may have multiple axes to grind, I think the balance of evidence suggests that it was Rumsfeld's mistakes, not his reforms, that have pushed these generals to go public.

UPDATE: Columnist David Ignatius has joined the call to replace Rumsfeld. But what makes his column relevant to this post is what he says about Rumsfeld's support within the military.

Rumsfeld has lost the support of the uniformed military officers who work for him. Make no mistake: The retired generals who are speaking out against Rumsfeld in interviews and op-ed pieces express the views of hundreds of other officers on active duty. When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low.

When you alienate 75 percent of your officer corps, it's not because your reform program is ruffling a few feathers.

Ignatius, Rumsfeld, generals, politics, midtopia

Vitamins trouble pharmacist's conscience

Apparently some pharmacists in Seattle have moral issues with antibiotics and vitamins:

According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was "morally unable" to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for abortion-related antibiotics.

(snip)

The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she "didn't need them if she wasn't pregnant."

As the same subject is debated here in Minnesota -- thanks to a bill sponsored by the ubiquitous Tom Emmer -- how far are we willing to go in allowing pharmacists to let their conscience be their guide?

With a few narrow exceptions, I don't think we should pass a law compelling all pharmacists to dispense every single medication customers demand. By the same token, I don't think pharmacists should have special legal protection for refusing to do so. They're free to refuse, and their employer is free to fire them.

The exception I see is those rare cases where, for instance, it's a small town with only one pharmacy and no competition for fifty miles. Even then, mail-order prescriptions would solve most of the problem. But there will be times when a patient needs medication right now, and they should be able to get it. If it comes down to a choice, a pharmacist's conscience does not trump a patient's health or well-being.

A hat tip to Moderate Left for the initial link.

Minnesota, pharmacists, politics, midtopia

Generals 6, Rumsfeld 1

A sixth retired general has now gone public with his opposition to Rumsfeld.

Retired Maj. Gen. John Riggs sees fault in the handling of the military's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I think he should step aside and let someone step in who can be more realistic," Riggs told NPR's Michele Norris on Thursday.

Riggs served in the Army for 39 years, attaining the rank of three-star general. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions as a helicopter pilot during Vietnam.

It's not too hard to figure out at least one reason Riggs dislikes Rumsfeld. He was demoted and forced to retire last year, ostensibly for "misuse of contractors." But the infractions were considered so minor they didn't go on his record, and the real reason appears to be that Riggs often and sometimes publicly argued that the Army was overstretched and needed to be enlarged, by tens of thousands of troops.

Related posts here and here, and here is a guest post I did for The Reaction that lays out a more comprehensive case for Rumsfeld's resignation.

UPDATE: The White House has reiterated its support for Rumsfeld.


White House, general, Riggs, Rumsfeld, politics, midtopia

DeLay in line for White House job?

You just can't make this stuff up.

The White House is looking at a list of cost-cutting candidates to head the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, may be on it.

The former House majority leader, who announced he will resign from Congress and is under a state indictment on political money laundering charges, is listed as a possible replacement for Josh Bolten, the U.S. News and World Report said.

Why yes, I think that'd be a brilliant idea. Why shouldn't they appoint a man who is under indictment? Why shouldn't they reward a guy who quit Congress because he feared he couldn't win re-election in his heavily Republican district?

Then again, this is the same administration that turned a man who got outpolled by a dead guy into the goofiest attorney general in history.

My guess is that sanity will prevail and DeLay will not get the job, nor any job, while still under indictment. But sanity and the administration aren't always closely related concepts.

Related post: The Ballad of Tom DeLay

OMB, DeLay, politics, midtopia

A different kind of security problem

While the U.S. grapples with leaks, debates over use of intelligence and whether we should be eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, actual secrets are waltzing out into the world through a more mundane method: theft.

Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors, and other workers from the Bagram base arrive each day offering purloined goods, including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra, and flash memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.

Aside from the obvious question -- what are packets of Viagra doing lying around a U.S. military base? -- this petty pilferage represents a surprising security hole.

A reporter recently obtained several drives at the bazaar that contained documents marked ''Secret." The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a US ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for ''kill or capture," and discussions of US efforts to ''remove" or ''marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered ''problem makers."

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 US service members and their Social Security numbers.

How is this happening? Human failings.

Workers are supposed to be frisked as they leave the base, but they have various ways of deceiving guards, such as hiding computer drives behind photo IDs that they wear in holders around their necks, shop owners said. Others said that US soldiers sell military property and help move it off the base, saying they need the money to pay bills back home.

Yeep. It may be difficult to stop petty theft, but why are computer drives containing sensitive information left lying around to be stolen? Why are they not accounted for? Whatever happened to information security?

Detailed stuff like this is what poses real, operational threats to security, by providing actionable details for enemies to unravel. It seems a bit ludicrous to complain about things like revealing the existence of a CIA prison network or NSA spying program when stuff like this is going on.

leaks, Bagram, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Conyers accused of ethical violations

Rep. John Conyers, D.-Mich., has been accused of improperly using his Congressional staff to babysit his children and work on political campaigns, including his wife's.

Sydney Rooks, whom Conyers hired as a legal adviser in his Detroit office, recalls the lawmaker brought his two young sons into her office several times, saying, "Rooks, they're your responsibility for right now. I'll be back later."...

(snip)

Deanna Maher, who was deputy chief of staff in Conyers' Downriver office, says her baby-sitting duties turned into a stint as a full-time nanny. "He handed me the keys to his car and his house, [said] take care of my child Carl and everything," Maher told CNN from her western Michigan home.

Maher says she moved into Conyers' Detroit home. She took care of his elder son for several weeks, she says, while the congressman was in Washington and his wife attended law classes in Oklahoma.

Maher, Rooks and two other staffers have filed complaints with the House ethics committee.

If true this is disappointing, though not in a "hang him high" sense. Misusing staffers is a petty offense compared to corruption or bribery. Having staffers do campaign work would violate campaign finance laws, but the seriousness of that would depend on the extent of the work.

Of course, the likelihood of this ever being resolved is very small, because the House ethics committee is pretty much nonfunctional.

It was also disappointing -- if predictable -- to see Democrats borrow a GOP tactic and use the "disgruntled former worker" defense:

Sam Riddle, a spokesman for Monica Conyers, said the councilwoman "denies that any of the congressman's staff helped with her campaign." Riddle called the former staff members "disgruntled employees who couldn't cut it in the work force."

At least he categorically denied the charge. But the "disgruntled" defense should be done away with. The motivation of those making charges is irrelevant; what matters is whether their charges have any merit. Claiming a critic is merely "disgruntled" is a way to imply the charges are baseless without having to directly address them. That may be smart in a legal sense, but it's the weasel way out.

ethics, Conyers, politics, midtopia

Closing the circle

In a recent post about voter ID requirements, I agreed with Katherine Kersten that a voter ID requirement was reasonable -- providing, I added, there was a fallback provision so that people without IDs could still vote, using provisional ballots, for example.

What I failed to do is explain exactly what the current voter ID bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Emmers and supported by Kersten, says.

Here's the text of the bill.

It requires a photo ID, period. No fallback options. No ID, no vote.

That constitutes an unreasonable barrier to voting, especially given that there's no evidence that voter fraud is a widespread problem now. If someone shows up to vote, they should be allowed to vote. If they don't have ID, their vote will only count once their right to vote has been confirmed. But they should not be turned away for lack of ID.

Given that shortcoming of Emmers' bill, it should either be amended or rejected.

vote fraud, voter ID, Minnesota, Kersten, Emmers, politics, midtopia

Definitely Diverse

If you've got a spare moment, check out Diverse and Contradictory. I know the owner, and while he started out a bit slowly the site is rolling along nicely now.

His stated purpose is building a movement of individualists, which strikes me as guaranteed lifetime employment if he can ever get it to pay. But his Credo is worth reading, and he's got some interesting takes on subjects like lobbying and immigration reform and privacy.

politics, midtopia

Sen. Bachmann exposed

A couple of blogger scoops about the flagbearer for discrimination in Minnesota.

Over at Always Right, Usually Correct, a conservative calls Bachmann a "coward" for refusing to face the truth face to face.

And Great Plains View notes a letter to the Pioneer Press debunking Bachmann's claim that she consulted her family before launching her anti-gay-marriage crusade.

With Phil Krinkie challenging her for the GOP nomination in the 6th Congressional District, I have high hopes that Bachmann won't be going to Washington. Now if only she can get voted out of the state Senate, too....

Minnesota, Krinkie, Bachmann, politics, midtopia

Military recruiters chased off campus

Some people just don't get it.

Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables.

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted "Don't come back. Don't come back" as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

For a detailed discussion of why everyone, including antiwar activists, should want the military recruiting on campus, see here. It's in everyone's best interest.

As for this specific case, I oppose the war in Iraq. But these students have made the mistake of confusing the war with the warrior.

"We're saying it's not OK to recruit on high school campuses, it's not OK to recruit on university campuses,'' Marla Zubel, a UC Santa Cruz senior and member of Students Against War, said. "In order to stop the war, you have to make it more difficult to wage war."

Nonsense. The military is a tool. If you object to the way it is used, take it up with the tool user. Don't damage the tool so it can't be used at all. I'm sure the survivors of the Asian tsunami were glad we had a globe-spanning military, as were the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. As were the residents of Kosovo.

Moreover, the students are trampling on the First Amendment rights of the recruiters and students interested in a military career.

But at least one student, Cody James, said he was disappointed that he couldn't get in to speak with the military personnel.

"It's frustrating,'' said James, a senior majoring in politics. "I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I don't support the war. It's about finding a career."

The way to counter speech you don't like is with persuasive arguments, not by drowning it out. Don't like the war? Protest the war. But don't deny other citizens their rights, and don't turn everyone in a uniform into scapegoats.

Students Against War, protest, campus, military, recruiters, politics, midtopia

Do any generals actually support Rumsfeld?

Another recently retired general says Donald Rumsfeld has to go.

The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called yesterday for Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the secretary of defense's authoritarian style for making the military's job more difficult.

"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

He joins retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni all of whom have spoken out against Rumsfeld in recent weeks. You could add to that list William Odom and Wesley Clark, as well as criticisms from the likes of Gen. Charles Swannack and Col. Paul Hughes.

Plus a lot of still-active officers, apparently; Batiste said that many of his peers felt the same way.

Batiste isn't some underachiever:

He was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there, but declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Of course, Bush didn't listen to these guys when they were in the military. Why would he listen to them now?

UPDATE: Colin Powell has joined the chorus against Rumsfeld. This isn't particularly surprising -- it was well known that he didn't like Rumsfeld's approach -- but up until now he had kept relatively quiet on the subject. Does this constitute a tipping point?

UPDATE II: If you're looking for posts discussing generals that support Rumsfeld, try here and here.

Powell, Rumsfeld, Odom, Batiste, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Busy busy busy

The site's on pace for it's third consecutive 100-visitor day, thanks to links from the Daou Report, the Moderate Voice and the Reaction.. If the pace keeps up, the site will get its 2,000th visitor today.

The most popular post at the moment is ConBoy: The Ballad of Tom DeLay. Check it out if you haven't yet.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to check out Midtopia.

politics, midtopia

Misusing intelligence

In yet another revelation that serves to debunk administration claims that they were innocent victims of bad intelligence regarding Iraq, we now learn that they ignored inconvenient reports regarding Iraq's bioweapons capacity.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

This wasn't a matter of the intelligence being in dispute:

The technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. ... "There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers.

Yes, earlier, preliminary examinations by military intelligence did conclude that the trailers had biological applications. But those conclusions should have been trumped, or at least balanced, by this one. Instead, this report was ignored and the earlier reports played up and repeated with growing enthusiasm.

This was a postwar incident, so it doesn't speak directly about the intelligence situation during the runup to the war. But it's reasonable to conclude that postwar administration practices were similar to prewar practices -- in this case, trumpeting "evidence" that supported the administration case while ignoring evidence that contradicted it.

That may be human nature, but it's an inexcusable basis for going to war.

Bush, bioweapons, intelligence, WMD, trailers, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Competing to replace Cunningham

The special election to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R.-Calif., will go to a runoff.

In the heavily Republican district, and out of a field of 18 candidates, Democrat Francine Busby took 44 percent of the vote. Her likely opponent appears to be Brian Bilbray, the GOP-endorsed candidate, who got 15 percent.

Turnout wasn't very high, and 18 candidates meant a seriously split vote. So Busby's margin doesn't say much about how the runoff will go.

But does anyone see the irony in the GOP endorsing Bilbray, a former congressman who is now a lobbyist, to replace a man who was forced to resign thanks to his too-close ties to campaign donors? Isn't Bilbray part of the problem?

I suppose electing a lobbyist could be seen as improving government efficiency by cutting out the middle man....

Bilbray, Busby, Cunningham, politics, midtopia

GOP looks to buy votes

Minnesota Republicans -- if they win the unnecessary legal dispute they created by calling the tobacco tax a fee -- want to use some of the revenue to provide a one-time payment to homeowners billed as "property-tax relief."

Great Plains View has a succinct opinion on the matter.

Me, I have a handful of thoughts:

1. A one-time payment is not "relief"; it's a bribe. Restoring cuts in state aid to cities is "relief."

2. Scheduling the payments to arrive three weeks before the general election is not coincidence. Nor should anyone be surprised that if the GOP doesn't win their unnecessary lawsuit, they can still claim that they "tried" to provide tax relief -- but those activist judges on the Supreme Court thwarted them.

3. Relief might not be necessary if the GOP-led state government hadn't decided to balance its budget by pushing costs down to counties and cities, forcing them to raise property taxes -- which, by the way, is one of the more regressive forms of taxation.

4. We've been down this road before, with Jesse Ventura. He rebated the state's rainy-day fund to taxpayers -- just before the economy turned south. When that rainy day came, we had no fund to help cushion the impact.

Prudent financial management says you put some money away in good times in order to help you get through the bad times without huge increases in taxes. Prudent financial management also says that if property taxes are a problem, you address the problem on an ongoing basis, not with a one-year stunt.

If the GOP is so concerned about my property tax bill, they can address their own starring role in its growth.

property taxes, tax relief, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

When government works

The state Senate yesterday approved a bill on identity theft. A similar bill is pending in the House.

What I like about this development is that it represents a fairly thoughtful approach amid a lot of hyperbole and noise about privacy. Given the intemperate proposals from the governor and attorney general, it would have been easy for the legislature to get stampeded into passing a bad bill. Instead, the Pawlenty/Hatch proposals appear dead.

The identity theft proposal is a particularly good one because, as the woman featured in the story says, it can be difficult, time-consuming and expensive to get false information out of your credit report, largely because the people with the power to remove it have almost no incentive for doing so quickly.

My wife and I were the victims of identity theft several years ago, and we still haven't gotten all the smirches off of our records. Trying to do so launched us on a merry-go-round of bureaucracy, with the credit bureaus saying the bank had to request that the information be removed, the bank saying it was the collection agency's responsibility, the collection agency saying they had asked the bank to remove it, the bank saying it had lost the records.... it went on and on.

Only laws with teeth can fix that problem for victims of such theft.

But general restrictions on access to government data are a different kettle of fish. For detailed discussions of why the governor's proposal is a bad one, go here and here.

identity theft, Minnesota, privacy, politics, midtopia

Democracy retreats in the Mideast

Even as women gain voting rights in Kuwait, democracy elsewhere in the Middle East appears to be backsliding.

Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

Follow-through has never been this administration's strong suit, but we can't even muster rhetorical outrage when Egypt delayed municipal elections for two years after a violent attempt to keep opposition supporters from voting. Apparently our committment to democracy doesn't apply when the opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Encouraging democracy in the Middle East is a generation-long project. There will be bumps in the road, but what is discouraging about these bumps is that they come not because of resistance to U.S. pressure but because of inconsistent application of that pressure. We talked the talk, but we've been reluctant to walk the walk.

Further, Bush should have realized that the long-term nature of such a policy requires bipartisan buy-in. That means working with Democrats to agree on a strategy and establish a strong and united front, so that we and the world could be reasonably sure that the pressure for reform won't end once Bush leaves power. Instead the rabid partisanship in our domestic politics have encouraged despots to simply wait for 2008.

Iraq, far from being a demonstration of our resolve and a wake-up call for the Middle East, is increasingly being seen as weak spot, with the assumption that once we withdraw we will not be eager to re-engage in the Middle East for a while. In short, the poorly reasoned and incompetently executed occupation has weakened the push for democracy, not strengthened it.

Regardless of what happens in Iraq, we need to keep up the push for democratization in the region. At a minimum it's simply the right thing to do: supporting some dictators while overthrowing others is simply untenable, both morally and politically. But unless we're willing to invade countries that we consider allies, it's also the only way to see democracy succeed on the regionwide scale necessary to tamp down the flames if Islamic extremism.

Arab, Middle East, Mideast, democracy, Bush, politics, midtopia

Kersten on voting fraud

In previous posts I have excorciated Katherine Kersten for either being wrong or intellectually lazy. So it's only fair to point out that I largely agree with her column in today's paper. It is much too easy to vote illegally in Minnesota.

Does that mean it's a huge problem here? Not necessarily. But since the problem can be addressed with reasonable precautions, we should take them.

Kersten does a good job of laying out the issue, and the solution -- some form of photo ID or provisional ballots -- seems obvious. But Kersten, perhaps because of space limitations, doesn't really get into what we should do. She mentions a bill by Rep. Tom Emmer that would require a photo ID to vote; but all she does is ask "Is Emmer's bill perfect? Maybe not." She does not get into why she thinks it might not be perfect or what she would do instead.

The key is to have some sort of safeguard against fraud without raising undue barriers to voting. The electoral system hasn't collapsed with the current lenient rules, so draconian new rules aren't called for. Some form of photo ID, with a fallback option for people without such an ID, should do the trick.

As an aside, I wasn't impressed with Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer's complaint that she had no idea what had happened to the cases she referred to county attorneys. Her main point -- that there's no system for tracking vote-fraud cases -- is well taken. But her example is weak. She has the suspects' names, and knows which county attorneys she gave them to. How hard is it to pick up the phone and ask what became of the cases? Or look them up in the court database?

Minor nit, though. Kersten found a solid issue and wrote fairly thoughtfully about it. Good for her.

Kiffmeyer, Minnesota, Emmers, voting, Kersten, politics, midtopia

Another general wants Rumsfeld gone

A retired three-star Marine general, Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, is the latest general to criticize Donald Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq after retiring.

His Time Magazine essay is here.

He calls the Iraq war "unnecessary" and writes:

Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda.

He echoes my own sentiment when he adds

The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

Finally, both his essay and the NYT story make clear that he is not alone. From the story:

Though some active-duty officers will say in private that they disagree with Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of Iraq, none have spoken out publicly. They attribute their silence to respect for civilian control of the military, as set in the Constitution — but some also say they know it would be professional suicide to speak up.

"The officer corps is willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, but not their careers," said one combat veteran who says the Pentagon's civilian leadership made serious mistakes in Iraq, but has declined to voice his concerns for attribution.

There's a lot more at both links. The essay is a must-read as a cogent distillation of how one can be a warrior and yet oppose this war, and of how military and constitutional principles go beyond simply "obeying orders."

It's not just "left-wing radicals" who oppose the war in Iraq. The true radicals are the ones in the administration who railroaded the country into war.


Rumsfeld, Newbold, Iraq, politics, midtopia

What does "explain" mean?

Arlen Specter has called on Bush to explain his role in the leaking of information to reporters.

What a refreshing concept: when asked about something, give a direct answer.

But that's not really how the Bush administration has operated. Bill Clinton famously disputed the meaning of the word "is". But that was in court. In the world outside the courtroom, Bush has gone far beyond Clinton in refusing to answer questions, or providing carefully parsed but misleading answers, or changing the subject.

Some examples:

• Providing misleading cost estimates for the Medicare drug benefit;

• Using discredited intelligence in the run-up to Iraq;

• The campaign to paint Iraq as an urgent threat and somehow connected to 9/11;

• Saying Congress had access to the same intelligence, when in fact they didn't;

• Defending the Patriot Act extension by saying the searches all require warrants, while running a secret warrantless eavesdropping operation;

• The recent British memo showing Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless of what inspectors found;

• Saying he would fire anyone found leaking secrets, when he knew full well who was doing the leaking because he had authorized it;

And so on.

An illustrative if otherwise unimportant example was Bush's silence, during the campaign, on his military service record.

Bush supporters argue, correctly, that Bush wasn't running on his military service and so did not need to talk about it. But given the security focus of the campaign and the questions swirling around John Kerry's service, it was reasonable for the media to ask about Bush's service so one could compare the two.

Me, I couldn't have cared less what he did while in the service. That was 30 years ago, in a different time, and he was a different person then. If he spent all of Vietnam high as a kite in an opium den, it wouldn't have mattered to me at all.

In response to questions, Bush released some of his military records. But those records raised more questions. And Bush's response to that? Silence. Complete silence.

This led to the odd spectacle of Bush supporters arguing about what the records did or didn't prove, as if they were dissecting the Kennedy assassination. Except that Bush was very much alive, and could have cleared up the controversy in minutes by simply stating what had happened back then.

But he didn't. And he got hammered for it. Which I found very interesting. It led to three possible conclusions:

1. He truly couldn't remember what he had done;
2. He remembers, and the truth would have done more political damage than stonewalling;
3. He has a reflexive "none of your business" attitude on some things.

The logical conclusion at the time was that he had something to hide. But now I wonder if it simply reflects a character flaw -- an "it's only illegal if you get caught" mindset that rejects the notion of public oversight of his activities. That would certainly explain a lot, including the irritated and occasionally whiny tone he often adopts when forced to explain himself.

So I think Specter's plea will fall on deaf ears. This administration is the most secretive in recent memory, and doesn't believe it needs to explain itself. So its supporters will continue to argue about what Bush did and didn't know, while the man himself sits silently on the sideline, refusing to speak.

Plame, leak, Specter, Bush, politics, midtopia

Army has trouble retaining officers

In another sign that the repeated tours generated by the Iraq war are taking a toll on the long-term health of the military, young Army officers are leaving at an unusually high rate.

Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.

It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.

Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities are also increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning.

Naturally, the Army isn't taking this lying down:

To entice more to stay, the Army is offering new incentives this year, including a promise of graduate school on Army time and at government expense to newly commissioned officers who agree to stay in uniform for three extra years. Other enticements include the choice of an Army job or a pick of a desirable location for a home post.

The incentives resulted in additional three-year commitments from about one-third of all new officers entering active duty in 2006, a number so large that it surprised even the senior officers in charge of the program.

Those are excellent incentives, ones that I wish had been around when I was a young second lieutenant, and they have succeeded to some extent: retention rates are still better than they were immediately prior to 9/11. But the loss rate is rising rapidly despite the new incentives. The incentives just get junior officers far enough along their career path to make captain. And captain is where it starts to fall apart.

But the service's difficulty in retaining current captains has generals worriedly discussing among themselves whether the Army will have the widest choice possible for its next generation of leaders.

Exactly. Vietnam wrecked the military for a decade, as Congress cut the budget and it transitioned to an all-volunteer force that had trouble attracting good candidates because Vietnam had left its image in tatters.

Iraq is different in a couple of important ways: the public is doing a much better job of distinguishing between the warrior and the war, and Congressional support for military spending remains high. But like with Vietnam, an unpopular war of open-ended duration will drive away many of the best and brightest, robbing the military of future leadership.

This is the price we pay for using our military unwisely. It is why we should only put our soldiers in harm's way for the most defensible reasons. Not only is that a moral imperative; it is a practical one, too.

Update: As a sort of counterpoint to the above, USA Today reports that the Army is having better success retaining enlisted soldiers, helping to make up for shortfalls in recruiting.

Iraq, officers, retention, Army, military, politics, midtopia

New probe arrives at Venus tomorrow

The Venus Express, a $260 million mission to find out why Venus is a broiler and earth is not, is scheduled to go into orbit early tomorrow morning. It is designed to answer some specific questions.

Chief among them is what happened to turn Venus into a child's vision of hell, with a superheated toxic soup of an atmosphere that is 90 times denser at the surface than Earth's -- about the same pressure as the ocean at a half-mile depth. ...

There is a lot to understand. Measurements taken by early probes of Venus have made scientists all but certain that the planet once had extensive oceans that heated up and finally boiled off.

Quite probably the resulting cloud of water vapor provided the initial atmospheric blanket that turned the planet into a hothouse. "But where did [the water] go?" asked University of Michigan planetary scientist Stephen Bougher. "Nobody knows."

If they can figure out what happened on Venus, it might do one of two things: rule out the same thing happening to Earth, or provide a glimpse of what our future might be like if things go bad.

Given that Venus once had oceans, it also would be interesting to design a probe to land on the surface and search for fossilized evidence of life. Assuming all the hyperactive volcanism didn't erase the evidence in the eons since the oceans disappeared.

And there are other mysteries:

Another puzzle that has mystified scientists for decades is Venus's winds, which are negligible on the surface but reach speeds of 220 mph in the upper atmosphere, much faster than the planet rotates. Venus, the slowest-spinning planet in the solar system, has a "day" that is the equivalent of about 224 Earth days.

I can't wait for the data to come back and get analyzed.

Venus Express, solar system, Venus, space, midtopia

The Ballad of Tom DeLay

So I was musing a bit about what it would be like if Ronnie Earle were to actually get a conviction or plea deal with Tom DeLay, leading to fines and a prison term for the soon-to-be ex-Congressman. And, well, it happened.

May the fates forgive me.

CONBOY
Sung to the tune of "Convoy" by C.W. McCall
"Convoy" lyrics - "Convoy" Mp3

Uh, Breaker One-Nine, this here's the Lame Duck
How'd they get a copy of that e-mail Pig-Pen? C'mon

Uh, yeah 10-4 Pig Pen, fer sure, fer sure
They say it reaches clear to Flag-Town, C'mon

Uh, yeah, that's a big 10-4 Pig-Pen,
Yeah, they definitely got the smoking gun good buddy,
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a ConBoy

Was the dark of the moon, in a grifter's room
On the Hill, breaking laws,
The head Tom boy and Reefer Roy
An' a Congress full of hogs
But back at home the DA roamed,
'Bout a mile outta Sugar-Town
He said "Pig-Pen, you're plumb out of luck;
Cuz I'm about to take the Hammer down."

Cause we gotta mighty ConBoy, he can't stand the light
Yeah we gotta mighty ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay,
We're gonna run this thievin' ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, breaker Pig-Pen, this here's Lame Duck
Uh, you wanna back off them hogs
10-4, 'bout five months or so, 10-roger
The heat is gittin' in-tense up here

By the time the probe reached Flag-Town
He made it four charges in all
But they's a road block on the committee floor
An' them hogs was wall to wall
With denials as thick as bugs on a bumper
An' claims that it wasn't fair
They passed the buck, but they was out of luck,
The Hammer was a-outta there

Cause we gotta great big ConBoy, he can't stand the light
Yeah we gotta great big ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay,
We're gonna run this weasel ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, you wanna give me a 10-9 on that Pig-Pen?
Uh, negatory Pig-Pen, yer still too close
Yeah, them other hogs is startin' to get nervous
Mercy sakes, you better back off, take a break, you know?

He had rolled up way back in '94,
A Gingrich guy through and through,
But the power went right to his head,
As power so often do.
By the time '05 rolled around,
he was actin' like a king,
From K Street to the money men
And some gerrymandering
There was pork, and sleaze and bank accounts
An' frauds of every size
From bugs he switched to Democrats
as things to exterminize
Well he shot the line, an' he went for broke
With a thousand dirty tricks
A self-proclaimed devout friend of Jesus
WIth a soul like an oil slick

Hey Rovester, listen
We may need to turn that Hammer into a suicide jockey
Yeah, this stuff is dynamite
He needs all the help he can git

Well he vowed to fight but then turned to flight
He decided to resign
He could see the writing on the wall
An' it was gettin' near to trial time
"I say, Pig Pen, this here's Ronnie Earle,
An' this time you're gonna pay in full,
You'll be in Kegans State 'til you're ninety-eight
I sez, let true justice roll, 10-4

Cause we gotta little ol' ConBoy, he can't stand the light,
Yeah we gotta little ol' ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay
We're gonna roll this slimy ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, 10-4 Pig-Pen, what's yer 20?
Clemens?!
Well they oughta know what to do with a hog like you out there fer sure
Well mercy sakes alive good buddy
We gonna back on outta here
So keep the bugs off yer glass
An' the DAs off yer... tail
We gonna catch ya on the flip-flop
This here's the Lame Duck on the side
Wishin' you luck
Bye, Bye...

McCall, satire, Convoy, Earle, delay, Tom DeLay, politics, midtopia

Bush, leaks and history

The New York Times has a nice perspective piece on Bush's role in leaking classified information.

The important quote for me:

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, disputed the charge of a double standard on leaks. "There is a difference between declassifying information in the national interest and the unauthorized disclosure" of national security information, Mr. McClellan said Friday.

I agree. But the key phrases there are "national interest" and what jeopardizes national security.

The president has the power to classify or declassify anything he wants. That makes it legal, but doesn't address whether it's right. If the president improperly classifies illegal information, then the proper thing for someone to do is illegally leak that information. That, in my opinion, is what happened in the cases of the secret CIA prisons and the NSA surveillance. No operational details were released in either instance, so it's hard to see how national security was jeopardized; the mere knowledge that these programs exist may be embarassing, but do not constitute security breaches.

But many critics refused to focus on the merits of the revelations, focusing instead on the narrow legal issue: "revealing classified information is a crime, period." They are right, but they miss the point that law and ethics don't always coincide.

The president comes across as seriously hypocritical when he condemns leaks while leaking himself, and narrowly legalistic defenses don't change that. He also comes across as a liar thanks to his public statements after the Plame affair came to light.

Finally, one can properly ask why, if Bush was willing to declassify information in the normal course of things, he didn't just declassify and release it but instead leaked it to a reporter. The answer, clearly, is that he had a political motive for releasing the information. This isn't in itself unethical; it only becomes a problem if the leak damages national security -- which it didn't -- or if one is hypocritical about such leaks -- which Bush was -- or if one lies about it -- which Bush did.

leak, Libby, Bush, politics, midtopia

Iran: the nuclear option

Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration is making plans for a massive bombing campaign in Iran.

That in itself is not particularly surprising. Such contingency plans are standard fare in military circles, and as I've said before, a bombing campaign may well be necessary to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

And before getting too excited, we should note that all the sources are anonymous. Hersh is a solid investigative journalist, so he gets the benefit of the doubt from me. But don't jump on this as proven fact just yet.

That said, the report contains two remarkable and worrisome details:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Adolf Hitler? Even if Ahmadinejad had aspirations to be a new Hitler, he wields little actual power withint Iran -- and Iran is no Germany in terms of military strength. Bandying that term about so readily indicates a moralistic drive behind the planning, and calls up two bad associations I had hoped were dead and buried. It's very neocon language, and in the runup to the invasion of Iraq the administration repeatedly invoked Hitler in relation to Saddam Hussein. They can't seriously be contemplating the same thing with Iran.

And regime change through bombing? Has that ever worked? Apparently the administration thinks it will this time:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Every conflict I can think of teaches the opposite lesson: that bombing rallies a population behind the government, however despised it may be otherwise. Iranians may dislike the mullahs, but they will dislike American bombs even more. It may be necessary to send in bombers to disrupt their nuclear capacity; but sending in bombers in hopes of toppling the mullahs is pure fantasy.

If this report is true, it means the same strain of naivety and wishful thinking that led to the botched Iraqi occupation is still in control of administration thinking -- which means besides being naive they're also incapable of learning from experience.

The second notable thing is that the administration is reportedly considering using tactical nuclear bunker busters to get at deeply buried facilities. On one level this is simply practical: If the facility is buried deeply enough, like the main Iranian centrifuge plant at Natanz, a nuke may be the only way to destroy it. But the political fallout from America using nuclear weapons again, as well as the irony of using nuclear weapons to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, should give planners serious pause. But apparently it's not.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

We should avoid nukes if at all possible. Maybe we can simply deny use of deeply buried facilities by destroying the entrances, ventilation shafts and the like. Maybe we can simply target and destroy any vehicles moving in and out of it, so that whatever is in the facility stays there. It may take more work, and be less certain of success. But that is probably preferable to the huge downsides of using nukes.

Here's what I worry about:

Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

That's what got us in trouble the first time. And it's impervious to reason.

A bombing campaign to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability is one thing, and something I will support once it's clear the diplomacy is going nowhere -- as I think it is. And if the preparations are part of a campaign to put pressure on Iran and show them that we're serious about using force if necessary, so much the better. Diplomacy based on the threat of force requires that the threat be credible.

But the principles underlying the reported planning go far beyond that -- and are a huge mistake.

nuclear, Bush, bombing, Iran, politics, midtopia

Hamas hints it might recognize Israel

Apparently the responsibility of having to govern -- and the prospect of bankruptcy -- is having an effect on Hamas.

A senior Hamas official said Friday the group is ready to accept a "two-state" solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Hamas prime minister said he is unaware of plans by the Islamic militants to change their hard-line government platform.

The senior Hamas official said the two-state idea was to be raised by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in a meeting Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who advocates negotiations with
Israel.

The meeting was preceded by a series of contradictory statements from Hamas officials about whether a new government would recognize Israel in some fashion.

There's a lot of waffling there, so I'll believe it when I see it. But the fact that they're even willing to float the idea shows the pressure they're under. Not from the outside so much as internally: now that they're in charge, they have to act responsibly.

Apparently even Hamas can be tamed -- not by us, but by the Palestinian people.

Israel, Hamas, politics, midtopia