World roundup

We'll finish off the evening with a quick roundup of notable events.

IRAQ
The British will cut their troop presence in Iraq in half -- events permitting -- by the end of the year. Though apparently Prince Harry will still be going there if the Daily Mirror is to be believed.

GUANTANAMO
A federal appeals court has ruled (in a decision that will be appealed to the Supreme Court) that Gitmo detainees can't challenge their internment in U.S. courts, thanks to the Republican Congress stripping that power from them last year. They can thus be held indefinitely until they are tried before the flawed military commissions that Bush has set up. Congressional Democrats have said they will revisit the commission law to fix the most glaring problems. If they plan to do that, they should get to it; it's an affront to liberty to hold people for years without charge, or try them in a court that doesn't afford them full rights.

IRAN
Iran, in a mirror image of recent U.S. charges, has accused the United States of supplying Sunni militants who last week car-bombed a bus of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Their claim comes complete with bullet cartridges bearing U.S. markings. Does this prove U.S. involvement? No. But it's interesting to note that the Iranians have roughly as much evidence backing up their claim as we have of Iranian involvement in Iraq. And just as it's very likely Iran is meddling in Iraq, would anyone be surprised to discover that we're supporting anti-Iran militants? That is not a reason to turn a blind eye to Iranian meddling; but it is a reason to look askance at the moral outrage the White House has tried to generate over the issue. Meanwhile, there are no updates on the sniper rifles allegedly supplied by Iran. The smoking gun remains elusive.

Separately, Iran is making noises about stopping its enrichment program -- if Western countries do the same. The non-offer comes a day before the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to issue a critical report that will trigger even harsher U.N. sanctions against the country. Iran once again demonstrates it is not serious about negotiating, and the IAEA report will show that it has expanded, rather than slowed, its enrichment activities. The question is what sort of measures Russia and China will allow the U.N. to take.

MITT ROMNEY
Mitt Romney is somewhat ironically attacking John McCain for being inconsistent on abortion. For my money, though, the funniest thing is that Mitt's guy in charge of conservative outreach is named Marx.

SOMALIA
Finally, the U.N. approved an 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force for Somalia, a measure that allows the AU to deploy troops and relieve the Ethiopians that have been propping up the provisional government there. It remains to be seen if such a force will be enough to stop the spiraling violence in Somalia, but it demonstrates the renewed international attention being paid to that country after years of neglect. Let's hope they pull it off.

Gitmo, Romney, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

New Jersey grants gay civil unions

New Jersey becomes the third state to allow either civil unions or marriage.

Meanwhile, a Michigan court ruled earlier this month that the state's recent gay-marriage ban also outlaws domestic-partner benefits to government employees, including those who work for public universities. The logic: health benefits cannot be provided if doing so is based on treating same-sex relationships similar to marriage.

And so while New Jersey expands freedom and fairness, Michigan trips into the minefield of litigation and unintended consequences caused by a hastily passed, too-broadly drawn constitutional amendment that singles out a minority for discrimination. Another 20 states with similar bans probably will face similar troubles -- unless they take the route Alaska took and decide the law doesn't apply to such benefits.

Of course, some people are happy that this will hurt gay families. Take Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association's Michigan chapter:

“For the average Michigan taxpayer whose family does not receive government-paid insurance of any kind, this was a victory because Michigan taxpayers will no longer be forced to subsidize homosexual relationships among government workers as if those relationships are equal or similar to marriage,” he says.

That logic is so disingenuous, not to mention mean-spirited, I don't even know where to begin.

The AFA, by the way, also warns against witchcraft, specifically attacking a middle school newspaper for publishing an 8th-grade girl's article on her Wiccan aunt and Wiccan beliefs. This is a little ironic, considering they have a "religious freedom" section of their Web site where they purport to stand up for religious expression.

Such routine hypocrisy aside, it'll be interesting to see if there is a second wave of constitutional amendments amending the gay-marriage bans. I wouldn't expect outright repeals, but at the very least we might see language exempting domestic partner benefits or allowing civil unions. And the lessons of these first states -- moral as well as legal -- will likely slow the rush to adopt similar measures in the remaining states.

I stand by my prediction that in 20 years, the country will largely look back on this brouhaha and ask "what was the big deal"? Gay marriage laws will go the way of sodomy laws, falling state by state until the Supreme Court repeals the last few holdouts. Because manifest unfairness rarely survives for long, even when it involves something as visceral as homosexuality.

gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Right-wing silliness, continued

More "teachers are terrorists" rhetoric, this time from Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity.

I get Boortz's point, and I agree that the NEA can be part of the problem in some places. I also agree that we should be worrying relatively more about education than about terrorism. But "worse than Al Qaeda?" Sheesh.

education, politics, midtopia

Democrats gone wild

I've been slamming Republicans fairly heavily over the last few days. Time to even up the score a little.

In Fredricksburg, Md., 23-year-old Andrew Stone went to the home of a person listed on a Republican Web site. He argued with the person and his two roommates, then attacked them.

We'll presume he was a Democrat, though that's not clear from the story.

In case any of you need the reminder: don't go to people's homes and attack them for their political beliefs. It makes everyone cranky.

politics, midtopia

Pelosi plane update

The "Pelosi One" plane scandal was always about nothing, and died despite a week of Republican flogging.

Now the main Republican flogger, Florida Rep. Adam Putnam, admits he had no actual evidence to back up his claims -- and he doesn't care.

Putnam now acknowledges he had no personal knowledge of any Pelosi request. He said he was commenting on an anonymously-sourced story in The Washington Times and additional coverage from CNN.

"This was a classic case where the media got out in front of us," Putnam said. "Did we jump on it? Yes."

And he is unapologetic about that. He calls the Pelosi plane story, whatever its legitimacy, "the first break [Republicans] have had from the media in driving our message since before the Mark Foley story broke."

Got that? Republicans' "first break... in driving our message" was a made-up nonscandal.

What exactly is that message, again? Because surely "we're a bunch of liars" isn't it.

Pelosi, Adam Putnam, politics, midtopia

Another terror myth exploded

Terrorists want Democrats to win, right?

Not always, apparently.

A New York man accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan has donated some $15,000 to the House Republicans' campaign committee over three years.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to charges that include terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Does this mean terrorists support Republicans? Of course not. For one thing, you'd have to examine the motive behind the donations, which could include such things as buying protection, buying access or simply trying to look innocuous.

But it does point up the intellectual emptiness of pointing to such behavior -- or the fact that both terrorists and Democrats say mean things about President Bush -- and claiming an ideological link. At risk of running afoul of Godwin's Law, Hitler disliked abstract art; does that make everyone who hates abstract art a Nazi? No.

When you get down to the facts of this case, by the way, it appears that Alishtari is little more than a scammer who was involved in suspicious money transfers for financial reasons, not ideological ones. So maybe terrorists don't support Republicans; maybe they've got the thieves and liars vote instead....

Alishtari, terrorism, politics, midtopia

The genetics of altruism

Are humans innately good, or innately selfish?

That's a fundamental question when it comes to discussing morality, law and society. If humans are innately selfish, then the only way society functions is by the majority forcing everyone to behave, through tools of social control like government, religion and culture. Without such control, the argument goes, society would disintegrate into a Darwinian anarchy where the strongest reigned through force and cruelty.

In addition, this worldview lends weight to the idea that only an extrahuman authority -- such as God -- can effectively impart a moral code, for if humans are naturally immoral or amoral they simply would not bother to develop one. In such a view, religion is not merely a tool for enforcing whatever society defines as morality; it is an essential source of morality that transcends society.

If humans are generally good, however -- if they are hardwired for altruism, for example, or if our social nature makes us seek approval, and render cooperation and compromise common and successful survival strategies -- then the importance of religion and tradition and government all shrink. They are still useful as founts of distilled wisdom and as a way to enable or compel group behavior. But they are not in and of themselves a necessary component of virtue.

The reality, of course, is as variable as the human experience. Like any other distribution, human behavior follows the bell curve. So even if most humans are innately good, there will be some that misbehave. And if our natural state is despotic anarchy, there would still be a few selfless saps trying to help others. Throw in other considerations, like love of family or economic ties, and the picture becomes more muddied still.

That said, a couple of recent developments shed some interesting light on the subject.

Last year, molecular researchers identified what they called an altruism gene that is present in almost all living things. It's not a gene that makes people give to charity; it's a gene that appears to explain why some cells in a multicellular organism give up their ability to reproduce -- and thus commit genetic suicide -- in order to help the organism as a whole function better. Their conclusion? The function arose for a separate purpose -- letting cells shut off temporarily useless processes to conserve energy -- and was then co-opted by evolution in multicell organisms, in something of a biological bait-and-switch. The resulting combination was so successful that all later organisms retained it.

Another study around the same time found that altering a single gene in a species of bacteria turned resource "cheaters" into cooperative organisms. Further, the genetic change occurred naturally in response to environmental stress. In other words, the stress apparently promoted a genetic change that favored cooperation.

Couple that with demonstrated examples of altruism in the animal kingdom, and it's clear that altruism is compatible with evolution.

If altruism can arise spontaneously on the cellular level and among lower animals, it seems obvious that it can arise naturally at the behavioral level of intelligent species, which have an advantage that bacteria do not: the ability to calculate the costs and benefits of cooperation.

It could start out as loyalty to a family group, wherein a parent, for example, sacrifices itself to save its mate or offspring and thus protect its genetic legacy. As populations grow that definition could be expanded to include clan or tribe, based on a reciprocal economic calculation: I'll come to your defense if you come to mine, increasing our overall chances of survival.

Society would eventually develop ideals and traditions that enforce such altruism, allowing it to apply to larger and larger groups. It would confer approval, admiration and reproductive success on those who are generous or take risks in its defense. As social creatures we are especially susceptible to "doing what is expected" and seeking the approval of our fellows.

And that, in fact, appears to be the case, as a more recent experiment shows.

The experiment hooked up college students to MRIs and had them make decisions about whether or not to give money to various charities. What they found was that deciding to give money produced activity in two different areas of the brain: the part responsible for social attachment, and the same pleasure centers stimulated by food, drugs, money and sex. In other words, acting altruistic made them feel good, as well as involving a bit of social calculation.

Such altruism may be learned rather than innate; the study doesn't attempt to establish a root cause. But it demonstrates that good behavior does not necessarily need ongoing external enforcement. People do not have to be coerced or scared into doing good; they simply need to be attached to a society or family group that prizes such behavior.

This also demonstrates that altruism can in fact be quite selfish. Altruistic acts can lead to very real individual benefits, such as increased reproductive success, enhanced social stature or simply feeling good about oneself.

But such benefits must be weighed against the potential cost. At the extreme, altruism is detrimental: the warrior who is killed in combat never gets a chance to enjoy the fruits of his sacrifice. He may still consider the risk worth it, but how can we explain the person who deliberately sacrifices himself to save others, like the soldier who throws himself on a grenade?

In some cases, even such extreme decisions can be selfish, genetically speaking. A suicide bomber, for instance, knows that his family will probably be taken care of. A soldier's family gets a government pension and the thanks of a grateful nation.

But absent those scenarios, I think such examples demonstrate the power of societal expectations. People raised in a given society often internalize that society's values. The stronger their attachment to the society, the stronger the internalization. Further, people who live when others die often experience "survivor's guilt." Many people talk about how they "couldn't live with themselves" if they behaved in a way society disapproves of. The cost-benefit analysis is different for every individual, of course, but many people would apparently prefer to risk near-certain death than live with the knowledge that they chickened out, or let others die so that they could live.

So it turns out the question I posed at the beginning of this article is a bit misleading, because in many cases being good and being selfish are the same thing. But overall I think the evidence points to morality and altruism being biologically based but socially defined. Religion is a part of society, and thus contributes to defining society's morality just like any other philosophical system. Religion is also a singularly powerful social tool for enforcing that morality -- though like any tool it can also be used for ill. But morality can flourish absent religion, just like religion can flourish absent morality.

evolution, ethics, genetics, morality, religion, politics, midtopia

A threefer: Creationist Jew-bashing Republicans

It started in Georgia....

The Anti-Defamation League is calling on state Rep. Ben Bridges to apologize for a memo distributed under his name that says the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools because it is a religious deception stemming from an ancient Jewish sect.

Bridges (R-Cleveland) denies having anything to do with the memo. But one of his constituents said he wrote the memo with Bridges’ approval before it was recently distributed to lawmakers in several states, including Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” the memo says. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools because it is “a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen.”

It gets better.

It also directs readers to a Web site www.fixedearth.com, which includes model legislation that calls the Kabbala “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism.” The Web site also declares “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun.”

It gets better.

The letter was written to Texas lawmakers, and one of them -- House Appropriations Chairman Warren Chisum -- distributed it to colleagues.

In his apology, Chisum (like Bridges) says he didn't bother to read the memo distributed under his name.

That should play well. "I'm not anti-Semitic; I'm just stupid!"

evolution, politics, midtopia

Earmark discipline

You want a Congressional achievement? Here's one.

The spending bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday contains not one shred of new pork. And the bill is not accompanied by a report, which in the past is how many earmarks found their way into the budget.

It's not that simple, of course. Sen. Tom Coburn charges that the bill still contains between $11 billion and $17 billion in hidden earmarks, and there apparently is a growing campaign to keep funding previous earmarks. And Congress has not yet done away with narrowly targeted tax breaks that by some measures cost up to three times as much as earmarks.

But even $17 billion is better than the $64 billion in earmarks that was larded into the budget bills that died with the 109th Congress. That cut dwarfs Bush's call to cut the number and value of earmarks in half. And while keeping previous earmarks alive is odious, at least Congress isn't adding more to the pile.

Even better, the White House is doing more than talking about earmark reform. The Office of Management and Budget has ordered federal agencies to ignore earmarks that are not written into law. That would appear, in one fell swoop, to solve the problem of hiding earmarks in reports, as well as eliminating the pressure to keep funding previous years' earmarks.

A previous OMB memo carefully defined earmarks and made rules for cataloging them, making them that much harder to hide.

Both are moves the administration could have made any time in the past six years, so let's mute the applause a little bit. And it's executive branch policy, not law, so it's rescindable at any time. But give credit where credit is due: it's a powerful and practical move that plugs the holes in Congress' earmark rules. I'll take this sort of hypocrisy any day.

budget, earmarks, politics, midtopia

House leads, Senate follows

The current Congressional session is still young, but already I'm seeing an interesting phenomenon: the Senate is dancing to the House's tune.

On two pieces of major legislation, the Democratic leadership in the Senate has gotten sidetracked or bludgeoned with its own versions, and ended up adopting the House versions. It happened on ethics, and it most recently happened with the anti-surge resolutions.

There are, of course, counterexamples. Congress will likely adopt the Senate version of the minimum-wage bill, for example, though there will be a debate over the size of the small-business tax breaks that will be included.

Why is the House leading? Some of the blame can be traced to the byzantine procedural rules in the Senate, which make it easy for a minority to tie things in knots and encourages all sorts of complicated proposals. As well, the Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative body, and it's commonplace for it to add superstructure to a too-simple House bill -- ideally turning a legal club into a scalpel. It's a good internal check within the legislative branch.

Further, the House speakership is a far more powerful position than Senate majority leader, so it makes sense that Nancy Pelosi is driving the legislative train.

But some of it seems to be either miscalculation or mistakes by Harry Reid. In both cases the House versions were simpler than the Senate ones, and in the case of the ethics bill the House version was stronger, as well. At a minimum the House leadership appears to be better at bill-writing. On top of that, Reid seems to have misunderstood what sort of compromises were necessary to get the Senate version passed, and not be as good as he needs to be at counting noses.

It'll be interesting to see how the push-pull develops through the remainder of the session.

Reid, Congress, politics, midtopia

The House passed it's anti-surge measure.

The vote was 246-182. In the end, despite fears of massive Republican defections, only 17 Republicans crossed over and voted for the resolution.

The Senate vote on an identical measure is scheduled for Saturday, but Senate Republicans have promised to block it until their alternative resolutions are considered.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Backing off, a bit, on Iran

The White House is slowly backing away from some of the more pointed and explosive assertions it has made in recent days about Iran's involvement in Iraq.

On Sunday, U.S. officials in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity alleged that Iranian officials at the "highest levels" of the government, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were behind the smuggling of a deadly type of explosive device used against U.S. forces.

But during news conferences Wednesday in Washington and Baghdad, Bush and Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, appeared to step back from that claim, just as Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did in interviews this week.

Further, the original claims about IEDs appear to be shakier than they looked at first:

Even the issue of where the weapons were manufactured is cloudy. A U.S. military explosives expert at the news conference in Baghdad acknowledged that there was no forensic evidence or labels linking the canister-shaped weapons to munitions plants in Iran.

Rather, Army Maj. Marty Weber said, the weapons were similar to those that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia used against Israeli forces during Israel's late-1990s occupation of southern Lebanon.

That directly contradicts the statements made by the Pentagon on Sunday. What was presented as fact turns out to be a guess -- a reasonable and informed guess, but a guess nonetheless.

Keep in mind, the dispute over the data obscures some fundamental truths. Nobody seems to deny that Iranian weaponry is finding its way into Iraq. The core of the matter is precisely what weaponry, which groups they're being given to and whether the Iranian government is involved.

But the administration has overreached to justify a war before; this incident points out how important it is to make sure of what we actually know -- as opposed to merely suspect -- before formulating policy.

Interestingly, there has been no follow-up on what would be the most damning evidence of direct Iranian involvement -- the capture of .50-caliber sniper rifles in Iraq, although the Austrian gunmaker says nobody has contacted it in order to compare serial numbers -- which suggests that the connection is, once again, conjecture rather than established fact.

Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Republicans come out against "surge"

The debate over a resolution opposing Bush's "surge" in Iraq has exposed some interesting and deep Republican divisions over the war.

On the second day of a four-day showdown over the nonbinding resolution, Democrats looked on as Republican dissidents denounced what they called Bush's ill-conceived plan to put 21,500 more combat troops in the middle of a sectarian civil war.

Some of the 11 Republicans who publicly broke with Bush were long-time opponents of the war, such as Reps. Walter B. Jones (N.C.) and Ron Paul (Tex.). But others, such as Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.) and Jim Ramstad (Minn.), had never sought the limelight and were almost apologetic in their speeches....

Those 11 could be just the tip of the iceberg. One Republican lawmaker close to the leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said GOP leaders have 50 to 60 Republicans on their watch list, with between 40 and 60 expected to break with the White House tomorrow.

Wow.

The article goes on to say that while the resolution exposed deep divisions among Republicans, GOP leaders expect a debate over funding Iraq would rally their members while similarly exposing deep divisions among Democrats, some of whom want to shut down all funding for Iraq.

It also mentions Democratic plans to shut down the military prisons at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. Whether this is a good idea or not depends on what steps are actually taken. Given the notoriety of the two sites, Shutting them down is a smart PR move. But why are they notorious? Mostly because of how they have been used, not their mere existence.

So on the one hand, I'd be satisfied with simple reform: Treat it as a secure holding pen for dangerous people awaiting trial, rather than a legal black hole, and I'm fine with it.

On the other hand, shutting them down doesn't take away the need to put dangerous bad guys somewhere. So some of their functions will simply be transferred elsewhere. Thus unless the legal abuses that led to the notoriety are also remedied, closing them will simply move the same bad behavior elsewhere -- and possibly hide it from sight until, inevitably, it is discovered again in another spasm of bad press.

Should be an interesting month.

Update: The Senate has shelved its troubled version of the resolution and adopted the simpler House version, scheduling a vote for Saturday.

Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, surge, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Baghdad: A clean sweep, so far

The surge is on, and so far, not much.

The good news: U.S. forces sweeping Baghdad haven't encountered much resistance. The bad news: That's mostly because the sectarian fighters are lying low and waiting for us to leave. The sweep will only work if it is more than a sweep. It must be an actual occupation of ground, one that either flushes the insurgents out of hiding or forces them to remain there. Keep them lying low long enough, and actual security might be established.

So as long as we're planning to stay in the areas of Baghdad we've swept -- and that's the plan; follow the sweep with an occupation by Iraqi forces and the 82nd Airborne -- this doesn't bother me:

Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, warned that advance publicity on the security operation had given Shiite militias time to flee the city for bases elsewhere in the country.

"I have information that numerous of their leaders are now in Basra and other southern provinces in safe havens," he told Al-Arabiya television. "I believe that those who were behind the bloodshed and the chaos should be pursued and criminals must face justice."

Good. Let them flee. As long as we don't let them come back, we can slowly expand our militia-free zone across the country until they no longer have a place to flee to.

That's how occupation security works. And it's infuriating that it has taken more than three years for us to actually attempt it. But better late than never; if we can sustain this -- and the Iraqi government continues to be a serious partner -- Bush's "surge" will work.

Those are big ifs, especially because sustaining the surge will probably require more troops than we have committed. But for now, hope for the best.

surge, Iraq, politics, midtopia

This gives "war criminal" a whole new meaning

The bad old days of "join the Army or go to jail" might be creeping back up on us.

The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties.

According to data compiled by the Defense Department, the number of Army and Marine recruits needing waivers for felonies and serious misdemeanors, including minor drug offenses, has grown since 2003. The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003. Some recruits may get more than one waiver.

The absolute numbers are still relatively small, though not insignificant. The Army recruited 80,000 soldiers in 2006. Of those, 9,000 received a "moral" waiver of some sort. 901 of them were for felony convictions, up from 411 in 2005; 6,000 were for misdemeanors, up from 2,700.

So roughly 11 percent of Army recruits received a "moral" waiver, with 8.6 percent having criminal records.

This is not an entirely bad thing. Youthful mistakes do not make someone a hardened criminal or preclude them from becoming productive members of society, and the military has a long history of taking in such people and turning them around.

But coupled with other lowerings of military standards -- notably mental and physical aptitude requirements -- what we have is a serious potential threat to the professionalism and capabilities of our military.

The military works because it's filled with motivated, intelligent soldiers who learn to trust each other with their lives -- believing that their comrades are trustworthy, competent and physically capable. This allows the high degree of initiative and flexibility -- not to mention use of complex technology -- that is the hallmark of the modern military.

If too many soldiers are substandard in the trust or competence departments, it undermines the assumptions on which our military doctrine is built. If it goes on long enough or spreads far enough, that doctrine will no longer be supportable.

The report demonstrates once again the strain the military is under merely to sustain itself at current strength. But the problem is going to be exacerbated by the call to add 92,000 soldiers over the next few years. I support that increase, so it's rather troubling to think that it will be difficult to find that many qualified people willing to serve.

It's not the only inroad that threatens. Recall December's Military Times poll, which found that a majority of those polled think invading Iraq was a mistake and disapprove of Bush's handling of the war. This raises fears that the military will be undercut in another way: by soldiers deciding to get out rather than face another tour in Iraq.

The obvious point to be made here is that this is what an open-ended, unpopular war will do to recruiting in an era of a volunteer military. I'm not advocating a return to the draft -- the economic dislocation that would cause aside, I prefer a smaller, motivated military to a larger, indifferent one. But it does show the long-term dangers of launching ill-defined military campaigns -- not just politically, but securitywise. Our military is an astonishingly fine instrument, but using it improperly damages it, even if actual casualties are relatively light.

Let's hope our leaders have absorbed that lesson, and only commit troops when national or humanitarian interests truly are at stake.

Update: Heres the study the article is based on, and here's the underlying data (pdf).

A few things to note:

1. The data only goes back to 2003, since they were studying the effect of the Iraq war on recruiting. It would be interesting to see what the waiver trend was like before then. Logic says it might have been lower in 2002, thanks to post-9/11 patriotic fervor. But what about 2001 and earlier?

2. If you look at the data, you'll see that overall "moral" waivers fell in 2004 before rising in 2005 and breaking the 2003 mark in 2006. But when you look at the service breakdown, you see why: Army waivers have skyrocketed, Marine waivers are up while Navy and Air Force waivers are way down.

The logical conclusion: fully-qualified recruits are gravitating toward the services that are least likely to land them on a street corner in Tikrit.

Also, I should point out that these numbers are only for recruitment. To get a picture of what this trend might mean for the long-term health of the military, you'd want to know how many of these people washed out in their first year or so. The Army might forgive you past screwups, but they're much less forgiving of screwups committed while in uniform. While a high washout rate would indicate an undesirable level of recruiting "churn", it would also indicate that whatever screening process the Army has in place is working.

recruiting, military, politics, midtopia

More whistleblower protections

A bipartisan effort to strengthen whistleblower and conflict-of-interest laws may actually pass now that Democrats control Congress.

House lawmakers debated measures Tuesday that would strengthen whistleblower protections, restrict "revolving door" employee movement between agencies and industry, and require senior officials to report meetings with lobbyists and others seeking to influence government actions.

Both the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (H.R. 985) and the Executive Branch Reform Act (H.R. 984) were introduced in similar form in the last Congress, and were overwhelmingly approved in committee, only to be sidelined without reaching the floor for a vote.

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va., reintroduced the two bills with the hope that they will make better progress in the new Congress.

Protecting and rewarding whistleblowers is not a partisan issue; it's a corruption issue. Despite various laws preventing retaliation against whistleblowers, most people who pipe up find their careers destroyed: any bureaucracy does what it has to to protect itself.

The bills are not comprehensive or perfect, but they're a step in the right direction. And assuming the bills actually pass out of committee this time -- which seems likely -- it's a step that the last Congress refused to take.

whistleblowers, politics, midtopia

More Iranian weaponry in Iraq?

Could be. But the evidence is far from conclusive.

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

Here's the rifle in question, by the way.

Seems pretty clear, huh? Except that the story is extremely light on details. There is no comparison of serial numbers, for instance, to show that the rifles being captured are the same ones that were sent to Iran.

And as with yesterday's "Iranians supplying insurgents" story, there's an inexcusable fuzziness about who is being armed. We're mostly fighting Sunnis, not Shiites. So while I can see this weapon turning up in the armories of Shiite militias, I have a hard time believing it is being distributed to actual insurgents.

Further, the guns cost several thousand dollars apiece (Iran paid about $20,000 apiece) so they're not exactly flooding the market. It seems unlikely that Iran would provide such expensive and easily-traced weaponry to Iraqis.

Frankly, I have a hard time taking the London press as authoritative sources on anything. In my experience they're highly prone to reporting rumors or slanting stories -- whether out of ideology or sheer sloppiness I don't know. But if this story has legs, it will be a very strong indicator of Iranian government involvement.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming various factions in Iraq. But I want solid evidence before we escalate against them.

iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Al-Sadr flees Iraq

In a story first reported by ABC News, American officials say they think Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, has left Iraq, moving to Iran ahead of the expected "surge" in U.S. forces in Baghdad.

A lot of people are pointing to this as proof that the surge is the right strategy, that it's scaring our opponents because they know it will be effective.

I think that's simplistic. Yes, I'm sure he felt that he might be specifically targeted in the upcoming Baghdad campaign, so it was prudent to leave the area. But I think his departure is less a comment on the surge itself than it is on the growing fractures within the Mahdi Army and (more crucially) the withdrawal of Iraqi government protection. If the Iraqi government was still backing him he wouldn't fear an increased American presence, just like he hasn't feared it very much up until now. Forcing the Iraqi government to show it's serious about reining in its extremists was the second and must-win prong of the "surge" effort. So Sadr's disappearance is a positive comment on that aspect of the new strategy, not on the military surge itself.

Just to play devil's advocate, there's also a more pessimistic interpretation available: that al-Sadr is being sent out of the country with the Iraqi government's blessing just to get him out of the way while the heat is on. In other words, it's a way to protect him without appearing to protect him. The key thing to watch for is what happens to the Mahdi Army in al-Sadr's absence, and what happens to al-Sadr when (not if) he returns.

Speaking of the surge, the House today had a contentious debate on a resolution opposing the troop increase. All 435 members were given five minutes to speak, one reason the vote isn't scheduled until Friday. Democrats talked about sending soldiers to die refereeing a civil war; Republicans warned of undercutting the President, emboldening the enemy and darkly described the dire consequences of failure there.

It was a good, strong debate, though heavily marked by partisan posturing -- including an effort by some Republicans to shift the debate entirely away from the resolution and Iraq.

In a formal letter to GOP colleagues, Reps. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) and John Shadegg (Ariz.) encouraged lawmakers to avoid discussing the resolution and focus instead on a wider war against Islamic radicals.

"This debate should not be about the surge or its details," they wrote. "This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose."

Those two worthys notwithstanding, this is a debate that was long overdue. But in the end the resolution is expected to pass. And that's the important thing. Bush should get his surge -- and if the Iraqi government keeps playing ball, it might even work. But Congress needs to be on record stating its position on the war. If Bush succeeds, he can have his way with a chastised Congress; but if he fails, the resolution is an important first step toward eventually pulling the plug on the whole adventure.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

North Korea agrees to shut down reactor

Wow.

North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its main nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.

North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."

A State Department outline of the deal is here.

After years of doing nothing, this represents actual progress in North Korea -- assuming North Korea actually follows through on its promise.

This is essentially a watered-down version of the deal the Clinton administration gave North Korea in the 1990s -- energy assistance in return for abandoning its nuclear program. But there's a key difference: the Clinton agreement included an agreement to build a couple of modern, proliferation-resistant light-water reactors in North Korea. This deal doesn't include that. So the North Koreans appear to be settling for less than they got before.

The reason for that appears to be twofold. First, they cheated on the earlier agreement, and there was no way we were going to resurrect it. Second and most importantly, their semi-failed detonation of a nuclear weapon last fall cost them much of the diplomatic protection that Russia and China had been giving them.

U.S. pressure on North Korea's various smuggling and weapons-sales schemes surely helped, too, by causing pain directly to the Great Leader's pocketbook.

But let's not be too hasty in breaking out the champagne. North Korea has 60 days before it has to shut down the reactor, and its promise to eventually dismantle it depends on later negotiations. The agreement also put off discussion of what to do about North Korea's existing nuclear stockpile. So there is plenty of room for backsliding.

Then there's the matter of verification. North Korea also said it would let U.N. inspectors return, but the effectiveness of that will depend on the conditions those two bodies negotiate.

Still, give credit where credit is due: after repudiating and harshly criticizing the Clinton approach and following it with five years of mostly empty saber-rattling, the administration finally decided to put results ahead of ideology and develop a workable -- and ironically Clintonian -- solution.

It also raises some questions about the administration's approach in the Middle East, where Bush has categorically ruled out talks with Iran or Syria. But how do we expect to achieve results if we refuse to talk to your adversaries? North Korea demonstrates that sometimes you have to talk to your enemies -- and that such talks can bear fruit. Perhaps this will lead the administration to re-examine it's actions elsewhere.

The deal could face some opposition at home, largely from conservatives who basically don't think we can ever reach a diplomatic solution with North Korea. Prime among them is John Bolton, demonstrating once again why his name and "diplomacy" never really belonged in the same sentence. He's right that the program doesn't address North Korea's uranium program. But he seems to think that that should be enough to destroy the deal. It's a classic case of letting the perfect get in the way of the pretty good. And never mind that Bolton's "no compromise" approach, though it may have felt good, went nowhere. The only good thing to be said about the confrontational approach is that it led North Korea to overreact and actually test a nuke -- a move that backfired on them. But that was luck, not a U.S. policy goal.

So such complaints are so much useless hand-wringing. How else do they suggest we address the problem? The only real alternative is sanctions and military strikes. The former are already in place; the latter have a limited chance of being effective, and are so provocative that they should be a tactic of last resort. This deal is worth a shot, and it doesn't take any options off of the table: we could always bomb them later if we must.

Now we cross our fingers and hope the untrustworthy Kim Jong-Il can be trusted....

nuclear, Bolton, North Korea, politics, midtopia

Iran arming Iraqi insurgents?

It's a reasonable thing to suspect, and now the United States says it has evidence: captured Iranian munitions.

Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.’s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories.

For it's part, Iran says "prove it."

The EFPs are pretty good evidence, and fairly alarming given the sophistication of the weaponry. The technology is 30 years old, but it still isn't the sort of thing people might cobble together in their garage. It requires fairly precise machining and design to create a shape that will deform into an aerodynamic projectile, as well as pack the explosives so that they will produce an explosion of the right amount and shape to do the deforming.

The mortar and RPGs are less compelling or surprising -- they're very common weapons, and could well have been introduced into Iraq long ago by Iran-supported groups fighting Saddam. Call them decent supporting evidence.

But merely having Iranian-produced weaponry doesn't prove Iranian complicity. To do that we have to show that the Iranian government is providing the munitions. That link appears to be shaky:

The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

An "inference"? That's not the most actionable piece of data, especially when it involves something as momentous as accusing another country of arming your enemies.

Further, there's a logic problem: most of these weapons are being used by Sunni insurgents. Why would Shiite Iran supply sophisticated weaponry to the Sunnis, weapons that could just as easily be turned against Iraq's Shiite majority -- and probably will be if Iran achieves its presumed objective of forcing the United States to leave Iraq?

The article says many of these weapons have turned up in weapons caches in areas dominated by Iran-friendly militias. Okay, that makes sense. But as far as I know, such militias aren't generally setting up IEDs to attack U.S. forces. So what we may have here is two sets of EFPs: Weapons with clear Iranian provenance being supplied to Iranian-backed groups, but others of unknown provenance being supplied to Sunni insurgents.

It's also possible that some of the weapons transfers are being done by Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah or Revolutionary Guard members without the knowledge or approval of the Iranian government.

Either way, more proof is needed. I'm entirely unsurprised that Iran might be arming groups it supports. but trying to blame Iran for Sunni IED attacks is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof.

Update: Gen. Peter Pace, when asked about the briefing, said he could not support the assertions of Iranian involvement from his own experience. "It is clear that Iranians are involved," he said. "And it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Office of Special Plans, revisited

Since making my original post on the intelligence work of Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans, the Washington Post has come out with a fairly spectacular correction to the original article. Here it is in full:

A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration" were also from Levin's report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith's office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general's report did not draw.The two reports employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith's office: Levin's report refers to an "alternative intelligence assessment process" developed in that office, while the inspector general's report states that the office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The inspector general's report further states that Feith's briefing to the White House in 2002 "undercuts the Intelligence Community" and "did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."

Ouch; they got their reports mixed up. Somebody ought to be missing part of their posterior over at the Post.

But does that change the underlying point of the article or my post? IMO, no.

For example, the Levin report used the language "Reporting of dubious quality or reliability," and said Feith drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to reach a conclusion "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration".

The IG report notes that Feith's reports drew on sources that were described by the Director of Central Intelligence as "of varying reliability," a fact that (while arguably obvious) Feith left out of his briefings. As for the conclusion Feith reached, the IG report described it as "not fully supported by underlying intelligence." The IG report specifically said that the available data "does not support (Feith's) position of a 'mature symbiotic relationship (between Iraq and al-Qaeda) in all areas.' "

The IG report does not comment on whether such a position was in line with senior administration officials' views, but we know from other sources that it was.

So while an embarassing gaffe for the WaPo (and one that costs us some of the more compelling quotes in the original article), the conclusions remain valid.

One can say that any misrepresentation of intelligence was Feith's fault, not the administration's. But Feith's office was deliberately set up to provide an alternative interpretation of intelligence because the White House didn't like or trust what the actual intelligence folks were telling it. And when Feith's reports began to diverge from what the intelligence agencies were telling it, what did the White House do? Embrace Feith's version. If they were misled, it was because they wanted to be misled.

Is this proof that Bush et al lied us into Iraq? Nope. But it is evidence that the administration, in the person of Feith, was working hard to make the intelligence tell it what it wanted to hear. It remains to be seen to what extent Bush or Cheney were involved in the spin. Did they actively participate in it, or did they simply set up a biased process and let it deceive them? As with so many things involving the Bush administration, it once again boils down to two basic choices: corrupt or incompetent.

Feith, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Gary Miller pleads his innocence

Following up on Rep. Gary Miller's suspicious land deals, he pleaded his case to fellow Republicans this week.

Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) passionately pleaded his innocence before GOP colleagues at a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday, nearly a week after several media outlets reported that the FBI is looking into his land deals.

Miller told colleagues that the press and Democrats had launched a smear campaign against him, singling out The Hill and the Los Angeles Times as perpetrators, as well as a former Democratic mayor of the Southern California city of Monrovia, Lara Larramendi Blakely, who now works for Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), according to GOP sources.

Ah, yes, the old "media smear job" defense....

So far, so unconvincing. He'll have to rebut the actual claims rather than attacking the messenger -- though to be fair, he might have done so and we just don't know it.

The comments came during an open-mic session at the end of a meeting designed as a discussion on House Republicans’ strategic plans to regain the majority in 2008, which were first laid out during a GOP retreat held the weekend of Jan. 24.

Before Miller spoke, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) noted that defining an ethics strategy is critical to winning back the majority and that members need to hold each other accountable, sources said.

The good news is the GOP knows they need to set some standards. The bad news is that Boehner is thus far letting Miller keep his seat on the Finance Committee's Oversight and Investigations panel, which oversees the IRS among other things. Considering the stories about Miller involve tax evasion, maybe that's not such a good idea.

Here's an additional revelation I didn't know about:

Since March of last year, The Hill has reported on various land deals involving Miller, including one in which he worked with Lewis to insert an earmark in the 2005 federal highway bill that shut down an airport in the Southern California city of Rialto. Even before the airport was shut down through the earmark, Miller’s business partner and top campaign contributor, Lewis Operating Corp., had an exclusive deal with the city to develop the airport land into a planned community consisting of 2,500 homes, parks and 80 acres of retail space.

Yeah, that looks good.

Gary Miller, corruption, politics, midtopia

Pentagon: Feith office massaged intelligence

Did the administration's hand-picked intelligence massager cherry pick and spin the facts in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq?

Yep.

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."

An unclassified summary of the full document is scheduled for release today in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs. In that summary, a copy of which was obtained from another source by The Washington Post, the inspector general concluded that Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship" was not fully supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers.

This is the office -- the Office of Special Plans -- that turned into Cheney's favorite intelligence factory, and whose assessments were -- for obvious reasons -- preferred to the CIA's own.

Feith and his defenders are focusing on the finding that his activities were found to be legal. An irrelevancy, since the question has always been whether the administration cherry-picked intelligence, not whether such cherry-picking was legal. It's like Bush leaking classified material -- it's by definition legal, since he has the power to declassify anything he wants. That has nothing to do with whether it is right or proper.

More excerpts:

The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.

Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration."

It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments "inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be "intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus view.

Notably, Feith's office produced the isolated and discredited intelligence behind the administration's claim that Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague in 2001. That's not only an example of Feith's failings; it's proof that the administration relied on Feith's reports to make their public case -- describing them as "classified intelligence" -- even though the inspector general's report contains denials that they viewed Feith's work as intelligence assessments.

Busted. I'll post a link to the actual report once the committee makes it available.

You gotta love it when the opposition takes over Congress. Suddenly we're getting hearings into things we should have had hearings on years ago, and answers are starting to pop out. This goes a long way toward filling the gap left by the Republican Congressional leadership, which never got around to conducting Part II of its analysis of intelligence failures -- the part that was supposed to investigate whether the White House misused intelligence to justify the war.

The initial answer appears to be "yes."

Update: Here's the report's executive summary (pdf). And here's an unclassified presentation on the actual report.

Update II: The Washington Post has issued a fairly big correction on its original report. I discuss it here.

intelligence, Feith, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Palestinians reach power-sharing deal

Prodded by Saudi Arabia and spooked by the prospect of a Palestinian civil war, Fatah and Hamas have finally agreed to a unity government.

The good news: As part of the deal, Hamas agreed to respect past peace agreements with Israel.

The bad news:

The United States and Israel have demanded the new government explicitly renounce violence, recognize Israel and agree to uphold past peace accords. The vague promise to respect past deals — a compromise reached after Hamas rejected pressure for more binding language — did not appear to go far enough.

U.S. and Israeli acceptance is crucial to the deal's success. Unless they are convinced Hamas has sufficiently moderated, the West is unlikely to lift a crippling financial blockade of the Palestinian government, and it will be difficult to advance the peace process.

The main bad news is that the "respect" language was a compromise, after Hamas rejected stronger language. That's a sign that Hamas is not yet prepared to do what needs to be done to reach a peace deal.

That said, actions are more important than words. The Israeli/U.S. position is reasonable and understandable, but they should not let insistence on the letter of the law get in the way of the spirit.

The new, unified government will Give Hamas the prime ministership and nine of 19 Cabinet posts. Fatah retains Abbas as president and gets six Cabinet posts. Four other posts go to independent parties, including the crucial interior ministry -- which controls the security forces -- and the foreign ministry.

A big test will come when Abbas seeks to reopen peace negotiations with Israel. Expecting Hamas to embrace the process is probably unrealistic. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that Hamas, while never publicly admitting a change of stance, will nonetheless let Abbas negotiate a deal that the unity government will ratify and both Fatah and Hamas will abide by. As long as such a deal is seen as binding on the Palestinians -- and a unity ratification would achieve that -- it shouldn't matter whether an individual party like Hamas ever formally accepts it. Breaking the deal would put them in violation of Palestinian law, and trigger severe sanctions.

As always, however, this is the Mideast. We just had a step forward; now it's time to wait and see if the next step will be forward or backward.


Fatah, Hamas, Palestine, politics, midtopia

Another non-scandal

First there was the Starkist stock deal. Then there was "Obama in a madrassa."

Now the latest non-scandal dreamed up by Republicans is "Pelosi One."

At issue is what kind of aircraft the House speaker — second in line to the presidency — should use to get around the country. For years, speakers flew commercial like everybody else in Congress. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was deemed that anyone two heartbeats away from the presidency warranted a military jet.

Until now, the only speaker affected was Republican J. Dennis Hastert, who commuted to his Illinois district in small executive-style military jets.

But those aircraft require ideal weather conditions to make the cross-country trip without stopping to refuel.

The main aircraft that can make the trip nonstop is a modified Boeing 757 that is much larger than the plane Hastert flew in. Hence the attempts to paint Pelosi as "demanding" a plane fit for a king.

Putting aside the fact that Vice President Cheney gets around in a similar plane, let's agree that a 757 is a bit much for one person to have, even if that person is third in line for the presidency. Surely there are smaller planes that can fly cross-country without having to refuel.

Still, there's no "there" there. The negotiations didn't involve Pelosi or her office; they were conducted entirely by the House sergeant-at-arms. Pelosi merely said that she would like to be able to make the trip without refueling, and if there was no plane available with that capability she preferred to fly commercial instead.

Now, one can certainly speculate that she was free to say all that, knowing that only one plane was big enough for the job and that her security people wouldn't let her fly commercial. But there's simply no evidence to suggest that that's what happened.

Other Republican attempts to make hay out of this were simply stupid. They claim Pelosi wants the bigger plane so she can fly family and supporters around. This ignores the fact that Pelosi recently led the House in passing new ethics rule that forbid most such practices, and that in addition the military planes come with rather strict restrictions of their own, including severe limits on family travel -- which must then be reimbursed.

Pelosi did herself no favors by publicly speculating that the White House or the Pentagon were behind the brouhaha.

Pelosi said news reports suggesting that she seeks a lavish jet suggest a "misrepresentation that could only be coming from the administration. One would wonder why the practice deemed to be necessary from a security standpoint would be mischaracterized in the press. I know that it's not coming from the president, because he impressed upon me the amount of security I need to have."

Turns out she was right about the president. Today the White House dismissed the whole thing.

"This is a silly story and I think it's been unfair to the speaker," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.... (he) said the negotiations over Pelosi's transport have been conducted solely by the House sergeant-at-arms and the Pentagon, with no direct involvement by the speaker or her office -- or the White House.

When the White House comes to the defense of the Democratic Speaker of the House, you can be pretty sure there's nothing there.

As I noted in the "Obama madrassa" post, a disheartening pattern is starting to become clear. Unfounded rumors and alleged scandals emerge from conservative sources -- with the Washington Times and its online magazine, Insight, playing a prominent role. Those rumors and scandals are then picked up and flogged as fact by right-wing blogs, commentators, columnists and sometimes -- as in this case -- elected officials, notably Roy Blunt and Patrick McHenry.

And for what? Pathetic attempts to (falsely) smear ranking Democrats. Pelosi, in particular, seems to attract more than her share of wrath.

It's something I remember from the Clinton days, when the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded "Arkansas project" manufactured dirt on the Clintons. It mostly disappeared after Bush won the White House. With Democrats out of the majority everywhere, NewsMax and WorldNetDaily were marginalized and conservatives seemed content to simply toss names and insults at Democrats. It was Democrats who engaged in conspiracy theories and trumped-up spin -- though I don't remember it being to this degree of simply making stuff up.

Now that the Democrats are back in power, parts of the Republican world are reverting to very bad habits. I only hope that such crude smear tactics serve more to discredit those who use them -- on both sides of the aisle -- then to hurt their targets. We deserve better discourse than this.

Blunt, a member of the Republican leadership, should be especially ashamed of himself.

ethics, Pelosi, politics, midtopia

Sorry, I want to give your job to a friend

The Bush administration has a very bad track record when it comes to politicizing the apparatus of the federal government. From politicizing science, to sending unqualified appointees to help run the Provisional Authority in Iraq, to the Katrina debacle, Bush has tended to put political loyalty way ahead of actual competence, to a degree rarely seen in previous administrations.

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the practice has now reached the highest ranks of federal law enforcement. It's been a simmering issue for a while, and today came to a head in Congressional hearings.

McNulty acknowledged that six U.S. attorneys in the West and Southwest were notified in December that they would be asked to step aside, including the lead prosecutor in San Diego, whose office oversaw the bribery conviction of a former Republican congressman.

A seventh former U.S. attorney, Bud Cummins of Little Rock, has said that he was asked to leave last year to open the job for J. Timothy Griffin, who previously worked for Rove and for the Republican National Committee. McNulty did not dispute that characterization yesterday.

Now on one level, there's nothing wrong with this. U.S. attorneys are political appointees, and they serve at the pleasure of the president. Further, the Justice Department insists that six of the seven firings were for cause -- though they don't (and perhaps can't, publicly) back up that claim.

But rarely has politics intruded this deeply or this nakedly into the process.

There's also a constitutional issue, because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is using interim appointments to bypass the normal Senate confirmation process.

Several top lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have been particularly angered by a little-noticed provision slipped into USA Patriot Act legislation last year that allows Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to appoint replacement prosecutors, such as Griffin, on an indefinite basis.

Feinstein and other Democrats in the House and Senate have proposed legislation to return to the old selection process, which allowed district courts to appoint interim U.S. attorneys after 120 days until a final candidate was confirmed by the Senate. Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, said yesterday he will join Democrats in pushing for a return to the previous arrangement.

But McNulty said the Justice Department is in "strong opposition" to that proposal because it puts the judicial branch in the position of hiring people in the executive branch.

You've got to love the administration's argument. In order to keep the judicial branch from appointing temporary replacements, we need to let the executive branch appoint permanent replacements without bothering with Senate review. It's a classic "cure is worse than the disease" power grab. And never mind that the previous process worked just fine for years.

Fire attorneys so you can replace them with more loyal hacks? Legal, if sleazy. Avoid Senate review of the appointments? No. If the administration doesn't want the judiciary appointing temporary replacements, they have two options: get a replacement confirmed within the 120 day period, or remove the "indefinite" status from interim appointments, instead requiring that the appointee be confirmed within a set amount of time like other recess appointments.

law, politics, midtopia

The ultimate Brinks truck

Not much has come out of the widely anticipated grilling of Paul Bremer by Congressional Democrats. The WaPo's Dana Milbank attributes it to Dem rustiness in the art of holding investigative hearings, as well as Bremer's elusiveness.

Still, the one subject they did manage to bring up rather boggles the mind.

Near the end of 2003, as the United States prepared to hand over control of the country to the Iraqi government, the Iraqi finance minister expressed concern over his ability to pay government expenses during the first few months.

A fair concern. So what did we do? Perhaps we helped them set up accounting and finance systems. Or electronically transferred money to their accounts. Or let them channel payments through our own systems until theirs were up and running.

Well, no. Our solution was to airlift in $5.5 billion. In cash. On pallets. 363 tons of it.

The money belonged to the Iraqis, consisting of proceeds from oil exports and frozen Saddam-era assets. This wasn't U.S. aid, which usually has strings and financial controls attached. So perhaps outrage is misplaced. It was their money, and if they wanted it in cash, why not?

All well and good, but who really believes it all went to pay legitimate government expenses? How much of that, I wonder, has ended up helping finance the death squads and insurgents? How much of that disappeared into the pockets of corrupt officials? Dumping billions in cash into a war zone is akin to pouring gasoline on a raging fire. It was simply a dumb thing to do.

Then again, this is Paul Bremer we're talking about, and dumb (or even delusional) things seem to be his speciality. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Bremer, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The end of an error

I don't always agree with the Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman, but in his latest column he efficiently states something I've been saying for a while.

Pardon the extensive quote, but it's pretty good.

Pulling out, the argument goes, would destroy our credibility and embolden the terrorists. Neoconservative Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is among those confidently predicting a parade of horribles: ethnic slaughter, a regional war and a secure base for Al-Qaida to launch attacks on us and our allies.

If we withdraw, he wrote recently in the Washington Post, "the war in Iraq and in the region will not end but will only grow more dangerous." And there is the old argument that if we don't fight the terrorists in Iraq, we will have to fight them at home.

The first flaw in this line of reasoning is that lamenting the dangers of failure is not the same as finding a formula for success. Bush tells us that his new approach offers a path to victory, but that's what he said about the old strategy. Why should anyone believe that this time he knows what he's doing or is telling us the truth?

The forecasts of neoconservatives have generally been as reliable as your daily horoscope. In 2004, Robert Kagan derided those who thought the war was lost, declaring that the United States was about as likely to fail as Derek Jeter (a career .317 hitter) was to hit below .200.

Consider the other horribles that are envisioned. An emboldened Al-Qaida? It's not as though the terrorists are all sitting home playing checkers, having lost the desire to slaughter infidels. In fact, as they demonstrate daily in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're emboldened already. Lost credibility? Our credibility crumpled when we invaded on the cheap and proved unable to preserve basic order.

Ethnic and sectarian killing are occurring with us there and doubtless would continue with us gone. But MIT defense scholar Barry Posen notes that mass murder tends to occur when one group is unarmed, and "everyone in Iraq is armed." We could minimize bloodshed on our way out by offering protection to anyone who wants to relocate within Iraq, and by accepting refugees who have put their lives at risk helping us.

A secure base, Posen points out, is unlikely for the Sunni Al-Qaida in a country dominated by Shiites, and unlikely in a region where the group has few friends and many enemies -- unlike Afghanistan, where it has long gotten help from Pakistan.

There's also little basis to expect a regional war. Iran has no reason to intervene directly because its Shiite allies are already in the driver's seat. Saudi Arabia would be asking to get hammered by Iran if it invaded on behalf of the Sunnis. The Turkish army might cross the border to show the Kurds who's boss, but none of its neighbors would strenuously object, much less fight.

As for the claim that the terrorists would merely follow us back to our shores, history suggests the opposite. Texas A&M political scientist Michael Desch says that during Israel's 18-year occupation of Lebanon, some 1,200 Israelis were killed there. In the following six years (up to last summer's invasion), despite Israel's proximity, only 23 Israelis died in Hezbollah attacks launched from Lebanon. You're much more likely to get stung by bees if you poke their hive than if you keep your distance.

What amazes me is that after all this time people still pull out such hoary bromides as "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here", ignoring fundamentals like the fact that the Iraqi insurgency (which makes up 90 percent or more of our opposition in Iraq) didn't exist until we invaded Iraq. Or that the jihadists who do come to Iraq to shoot at us by and large aren't "terrorists", as that term was widely understood before the administration began using it to describe everyone who disagrees with them -- including, famously and hilariously, teachers.

Pulling out will cause us to lose face. It will lead to short-term damage to our credibility on things like threatened use of force. But those are temporary effects, and anyway, what credibility do we have on that score now? Overall, while a civil war in Iraq will be bad, the direct damage and threat to the United States will be less than that caused by our continuing presence there.

Iraq is an expensive disaster, national securitywise. The only reason to stay at this point is whatever responsibility we feel for creating the current mess. But given the central government's involvement in factional fighting and the refusal of the warring parties to even attempt to talk, that responsibility lessens by the day. If they refuse to help themselves, it's not our job to prop them up.

Give Bush his surge and give Iraq one last chance to show it's serious about national reconciliation. But after all the incompetence and hubris that has gone before, one last chance is all they deserve.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Fumo indicted

Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Fumo, a Democrat and one of the most powerful men in state politics, was indicted yesterday on 141(!!!) counts, mainly charges that he defrauded taxpayers and his own nonprofit out of more than $2 million.

Mr. Fumo, 63, regularly deployed state workers to perform a litany of personal chores, from overseeing construction at his 33-room Philadelphia mansion to spying on his ex-wife to working his 100-acre farm near Harrisburg, prosecutors charged.

Mr. Fumo, one of the most powerful figures in Pennsylvania politics, misused $1 million in state resources and another $1 million from the nonprofit neighborhood group he controlled, U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said.

The nonprofit was a sham, according to prosecutors.

Despite its charity status, the group covertly funded political activities, including a poll and a lawsuit filed against one of Mr. Fumo's political rivals. Mr. Fumo also used the group's coffers to pay for vehicles, farm equipment, trips and a $600,000 renovation to his South Philadelphia office.

Innocent until proven guilty, of course. But then there was the coverup:

Mr. Fumo, a Democrat who has served in the Senate since 1978, also was charged with obstruction for ordering his staff to destroy years worth of e-mails from government computers.

That don't look good.

Hall of Shame has been updated.

Pennsylvania, Fumo, corruption, politics, midtopia