And the leaker is...

...Richard Armitage.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source who revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in 2003, touching off a federal investigation, two sources familiar with Armitage's role tell CNN.

The sources said Armitage revealed Plame's role at the CIA almost inadvertently in a casual conversation with Novak, and it is not clear if he knew her identity was classified at the time.

So what does this mean?

Well, it does lighten the accusations levied at the Bush administration, namely that they revealed Plame's identity in order to discredit her husband. Armitage is an unlikely avenue for a Bush administration smear campaign, since he was a critic of the decision to invade Iraq.

But it doesn't appear to change some fundamental facts.

Cheney did ask Libby to find out about Plame's role in her husband's trip. That inquiry is why Armitage knew Plame's identity. Then, once Novak began asking questions, both Libby and Rove were only too happy to discuss the situation with reporters. And then tried to hide that fact later.

Nor does this directly change the basis for the charges against Libby: that he lied about his contacts with reporters.

Nor does it change the fact that a CIA agent's identity was revealed, however inadvertently.

Still, the likelihood that there was a crime committed here seems remote. If Libby had nothing to cover up, the cover-up charges make little sense.

It appears that what you have here is a bunch of senior officials being surprisingly careless with what they ought to have suspected was sensitive information, then trying to hide their actions; and the irony that Cheney's inquiry is what started the ball rolling on a scandal that roiled the White House for years. Incompetence and cowardice, yes, but not criminal intent.

Whether the Libby case should go to trial or be dropped depends on the basis for the charges. If they are independent of the Armitage revelation -- in other words, if Libby really did lie on the stand -- then he should be charged. But the prosecution will have to demonstrate that Libby had some sort of motive for doing so.

Armitage, Libby, Plame, politics, midtopia

Polls and a grain of salt

The New York Times has produced a nice primer on the strengths and weaknesses of polls, and how to read them with a skeptical eye in order to draw insights while rejecting spurious data.

The main lessons: Look at the size and makeup of the sample and how it was selected; beware of attributing much significance to subsamples, most of which are too small to be valid; know what "margin of error" means; and look at how the questions were phrased.

As well roll into the election season, you will hear myriad polls quoted supporting one side or the other. A good rule of thumb is to treat polls the way you should treat horoscopes: "for entertainment purposes only." But if you want to take them seriously, do your homework first.

polls, politics, midtopia

Annan and Hezbollah

Some right-wing enthusiasts have accused the United Nations of being pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel. Aspects of that criticism have merit: The UN has done little to curb Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon. And who can forget the abduction of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 -- an abduction that may have been aided by bribed Indian peacekeepers, and the investigation of which was flawed?

I think they miss the point. Reining in Hezbollah was outside both the mandate and the capabilities of the lightly-armed UN observers; trying to do so would at a minimum have compromised their neutrality, upon which their presence in Lebanon depended.

As for the 2000 incident, The UN is a self-protective bureaucracy with generally weak institutional oversight. As such there will almost inevitably be corruption, and the UN will never be good at admitting mistakes. But there's no evidence that the United Nations itself assisted or condoned the attack.

That said, sometimes things are clearer than that. And Kofi Annan provided one such moment today.

Sitting beside Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, Annan demanded Hezbollah return two captured Israeli soldiers, whose July 12 abduction touched off the 34-day war, and said Israel must lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon. ...

"It's a fixed menu. ... It's not an a la carte menu where you choose and pick," he said at the end of the first day of his 11-day Mideast swing that will include stops in Iran and Syria, the main backers of Hezbollah.

The demand that Hezbollah release the soldiers had been missing from much of the discussion leading up to and after the ceasefire. It's good that he said it so clearly, in Lebanon, with the Lebanese prime minister sitting next to him.

His words do, however, illustrate the complexity of the situation. He also called for Israel to end its naval blockade -- a blockade that Israel, reasonably, refuses to call off until the UN force is in place. And he once again reiterate that the UN force will not disarm Hezbollah, placing that responsibility squarely on Lebanon -- which has already indicated it will not do so.

Annan is correct not to want peacekeepers drawn into the conflict by attempting to disarm one side when Lebanon is unwilling to do so. Lebanon, besides having conflicting feelings regarding Hezbollah, faces the practical problem that any attempt at forced disarmament would likely fail, and fail bloodily.

The New York Times had a piece this weekend describing the dilemma. Disarmament is not a tactic; it's the end result of a political and diplomatic process. Unless a force has been thoroughly broken and defeated, it can only be disarmed with its consent -- and such consent only comes when that force comes to believe that it can gain more by laying down its arms. There's an element of hardball to the process -- the negative threat of military action. But barring the application of overwhelming force -- which neither the UN nor Lebanon is able or willing to do -- Hezbollah will not be disarmed at gunpoint.

So we have a ceasefire. We have Lebanon taking responsibility for the south. We have Hezbollah under pressure to keep its weapons out of sight and to release the captured Israelis. We have the parties trying to adjust the political reality so that Hezbollah is forced into a corner where disarmament becomes an appealing option.

On the Israeli side, there's the carrot/stick of a permanent peace and agreed-upon border with Lebanon, which might then stop providing a haven to anti-Israeli elements.

It's not clear what will come out of this situation, a situation so deeply dissatisfying to all involved. But there is reason to hope. And for now, with the guns silent, it's enough.

Annan, UN, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, politics, midtopia

Iranian brinksmanship

So over the weekend, Iran got frisky.

First, they called attention to the fact that they're building a heavy-water reactor.

Then, they test-fired a submarine-launched anti-shipping missile.

Neither of these are major events in and of themselves. The reactor move isn't helpful, but its far from complete and only a step in the nuclear process. And the missile sounds like more hype than major capacity. Even in the unlikely event that the missile is all it's cracked up to be, there's a big gap between being able to build a nuclear bomb and being able to miniaturize it and make it robust enough to form a reliable missile warhead.

Consider it, instead, one more splash of paint in the target Iran is painting on itself. A target that Israel, for one, appears to be preparing to hit if necessary.

Take that last link with a grain of salt. It's the Washington Times, after all. But they name their sources, and Israel would be stupid not to be developing some kind of contingency plan for dealing with a nuclear Iran. They hit Iraq's Osirek reactor back in 1981; there's no particular reason to think they'll be shy about doing the same to Iran.

Hmmm... maybe that prediction about an imminent nuclear war isn't so nutty after all.

nuclear, Israel, Iran, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld's brain

Donald Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq with 50,000 troops and has steadfastly refused to deploy enough troops to quell the violence there.

So what to make of this?

The presence of several thousand extra U.S. troops in Baghdad in recent weeks showed that sectarian violence can be quelled by force of arms. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the gains will be lost unless the Iraqi government reconciles rival religious sects.

"There ... is no question but that you can go in and clear out an area and achieve a reduction in violence, and the test is not that," Rumsfeld told reporters in a joint appearance Friday at the Pentagon with Iraqi Deputy President Adil Al-Mahdi.

"The test is what happens thereafter. And the important thing is for the Iraqi government to achieve success with respect to its reconciliation process," he said. "It's important that they deal with the militia issue."

So let me get this straight. More troops actually does equal more security? And so, as Iraq has spiraled more and more out of control, we've refused to send more troops because.... why? Because what's more important is the reconciliation process, as if that's supposed to take hold while Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other due to an inadequate security presence.

He's right that a reconciliation process is the only way to achieve long-term stability. But he just blithely ignores that short-term stability is needed to get the reconciliation process started.

Further, Rumsfeld is taking credit for the local success of a strategy that he and the administration have fought against, tooth and nail, since the Iraq invasion was nothing but a gleam in their neocon eyes. A strategy that everyone with any experience in peacekeeping was practically screaming at them to adopt.

And now not only does he brag on the success in Baghdad, but he point-blank refuses to draw the larger lesson.

Why does this guy still have his job?

Rumsfeld, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Nuclear war predicted for Sept. 12

You know, it's bad enough that my birthday falls the day after Sept. 11; talk about a buzzkiller.

Now there's this:

Yisrayl Hawkins, well known Bible scholar and author, reports that the Bible predicts the exact date and the location that nuclear war will begin. Hawkins states that the current crisis in the Middle East will go nuclear on September 12, 2006 in the area around the Euphrates River. Calling upon his 50 years of biblical research, Hawkins correlates numerous Bible prophecies with world events to support his claim.

According to Yisrayl Hawkins, the countdown to nuclear war began with the signing of the Oslo accords on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993. He says that the book of Daniel shows that although this is a seven-year agreement, it would take fourteen years to be fully carried out, ending on October 13, 2007. He then cites prophecies in the book of Revelation showing that nuclear war would begin a year, a month and a day prior to the end of the Oslo agreement.

Maybe I'll hold off on painting the house this year.

Update: A pretty funny video report on Mr. Hawkins at World of Wonder.

Yisrayl Hawkins, nuclear war, Armageddon, politics, midtopia

The cracks appear

Iran hoped its nuclear proposal would split the six-nation group that is attempting to tame Iran's nuclear program.

Looks like it might have succeeded.

Russia rejected talk for now of sanctions against
Iran and France warned on Friday against conflict with Tehran, raising doubts whether it will face swift penalties if nuclear work is not halted by an August 31 deadline.

Spain and some other European countries expressed reservations on that score, as well.

If it all works out in the end, then no harm, no foul. And we still have plenty of time to let negotiations work. But failure to enforce a self-imposed deadline only weakens the credibility of the six-nation coalition, and encourages Iran to play even more diplomatic games. Unless something emerges in the next few days to justify backing off from the deadline, this round will go down as an Iranian victory.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Lebanon roundup

Lots of stuff happening in Lebanon now.

The French agreed to contribute 2,000 troops to the new, beefed-up UN peacekeeping force, breaking a logjam that had threatened to derail the deployment. European countries eventually pledged to provide a little less than half of the 15,000-man force -- 6,900 troops, including 3,000 Italians and an undisclosed number from other parts of Europe. Another meeting is scheduled for Monday to flesh out the committments.

The bulk of those troops won't arrive for weeks or months, but a small French force of 150 engineers arrived today, and more are expected to trickle in over the coming days.

Israel, meanwhile, is maintaining its blockade of Lebanese ports to prevent resupply of Hezbollah, and wants UN forces to patrol Lebanon's border with Syria for the same reason -- something that Syria objects to. The Lebanese Army, meanwhile, has already deployed troops to that end, trying to close smuggling routes across the Syrian border.

Delays and such aside, the situation continues to look promising. The ceasefire is holding, Lebanon is taking responsibility for its borders, the UN force is developing. ... so far, so good.

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, politics, midtopia

Iranian proposal draws more fire

The West looks likely to reject the recent Iranian nuclear proposal because it doesn't mention suspending uranium enrichment.

The diplomats variously described the reaction to the Iranian reply in the capitals of the six powers as disappointed and even angry because of the lack of response to the main demand — a freeze on enrichment, which can be used to generate energy but also to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

The Iranians had to know that would be the response from the four Western powers. What remains to be seen is whether they will retain support from Russia and China -- or whether those two countries are sufficiently disappointed to let sanctions or some other censure proceed.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Not 12 planets; just 8

Speaking of numbers, the members of the International Astronomical Union have rejected a proposal by the union's leadership to expand the definition of planet, and instead have decided to kick Pluto out of the "planet" class, reducing the official number of planets in our solar system to eight.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of “dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed “minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — “small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

At least we have a definition. And while it would be neat to have more planets, I mentioned in my previous post that the leadership's proposed definition was pretty loose -- covering objects as small as 250 miles in diameter -- and would probably cover all sorts of as-yet-undiscovered space debris. So this more exacting standard does a nice job of keeping things manageable.

My only regret is that the old system would have designated Pluto-Charon as a double-planet -- two planets orbiting each other. That would have been cool.

solar system, Pluto, planets, politics, midtopia

A nice round number

In the next few minutes Midtopia should record its 10,000th visitor. Not too bad for a blog that launched less than 6 months ago. I've enjoyed publishing it, and thanks to everyone who makes Midtopia a part of their day.

politics, midtopia

U.S. unimpressed by Iranian proposal

Only scant details of the Iranian nuke proposal are emerging, but there don't appear to be any real surprises. Iran refuses to give up its enrichment capability, The U.S. is unimpressed, and Russia and China are pushing for further negotiations.

The real test is whether Iran will successfully split the six-nation coalition, a question that will be answered on Aug. 31. Expect negotiations to be extended in one form or the other, as Europe and the United States try to keep pressure on Iran while keeping Russia and China on board.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Gutknecht gets on the ballot

Rep. Gil Gutknecht will be on the ballot after all, avoiding what would have been an embarassing way to lose re-election.

That's good for him -- although his race has just been upgraded to one of the most competitive in the country. He's got his work cut out for him.

But what about Brian Smith, the Independence Party candidate I wrote about in the same post? He's petitioned the court to be allowed on the ballot, but there's been no decision yet.

They both deserve to get on. Bureaucratic snafus are not sufficient reason to deny voters a choice at the polls.

Brian Smith, Gutknecht, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Marines to recall troops to active duty

Up to 2,500 of them, the first such callback in the Iraq war.

Anyone out there still claim that our military isn't being stretched thin by Iraq?

Anyone out there still think it was a good idea to reject proposals to expand the Army by a couple of divisions?

Anyone out there think it's a good idea that Bush's budget proposal calls for cutting 30,000 Army soldiers next year?

Anyone out there think this administration is handling this in a responsible manner?

Because I don't.

military, Iraq, Bush, politics, midtopia

Iran finally responds....

And we'll have to wait and see what they said, because the parties involved aren't saying.

But since Iran has publicly vowed not to give up its enrichment program -- the main purpose of the six-nation proposal -- it doesn't seem likely that their offer, whatever it is, will be acceptable.

Iran recently prevented UN inspectors from examining its main nuclear site at Natanz, a violation of its Nonproliferation Treaty responsibilities. Which would suggest that it is not seriously interested in compromising on the program.

And given that it has taken them weeks and weeks to reply to the Western proposal, it seems apparent that they're content to simply stall and play for time and put off a confrontation as long as possible. It plays well domestically and in certain world quarters, and it lets them pursue the program as far as possible before they have to make a hard decision or face retaliation.

Luckily they're a long ways away from having the bomb. So, irritating as stalling tactics can be, patience is called for. We need to make clear that we prefer to resolve this diplomatically -- but we will take military steps if that is what the situation requires.

And we should identify interim steps to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, like targeted sanctions and inspection demands.

The first decision facing the six-nation coalition is what to do when Aug. 31 rolls around -- the deadline the group gave for Iran to agree to the proposal or face sanctions. Iran clearly is betting that either the coalition is bluffing, or that its proposal will split the coalition and prevent it from acting if the deadline passes.

What they do, and whether I agree with it, will depend on the content of the Iranian proposal. So, once again, we wait.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

I swear, conspiracy theorists are dumb as posts

Here's the latest one: Did you know that the actual U.S. military death toll in Iraq is 12,000?

We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The actual death toll is in excess of 10,000. (See the official records at the end of this piece.)... When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources

Yeah, I'm holding my breath.

The government gets away with these huge lies because they claim, falsely, that only soldiers actually killed on the ground in Iraq are reported. The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. Anyone who dies just as the transport takes off from the Baghdad airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the US military hospitals.

This claim is itself false.

It's true that injuries and deaths caused by non-hostile action -- a soldier getting run over by a truck in his convoy, for instance -- aren't counted as combat casualties.

The reasoning for that is that accidents happen, war or no war, and it's wrong to attribute a death to a given war simply because it happened to occur during that war.

That rationale isn't perfect: Operations in a war zone are probably inherently more risky than the same operation in peacetime, in a well-controlled domestic environment. So there are likely to be more accidents in Iraq than the unit would have experienced back home.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, and the overall reasoning is sound. Accidents are a separate category from KIA and WIA.

And even though they're not counted as combat deaths, they are counted. Noncombat deaths are listed on the weekly report under a separate column.

The only category that isn't reported in any coherent way is soldiers who are injured in non-combat situations. Estimates put that number at around 15,000, for what it's worth.

Another category that isn't counted is psychiatric issues that manifest themselves after a soldier leaves Iraq. So a soldier that kills himself after arriving back home doesn't count against the Iraq total. That will tend to understate the total human toll of Iraq, but again the basis is reasonable: how is the military supposed to determine that an action taken after leaving Iraq is related to Iraq? And to what degree? How much time and effort should it put into such classifications?

So one can plausibly argue that the true human toll of Iraq is not reflected in the official casualty figures. But to claim the Pentagon is hiding 8,000 deaths is ludicrous. It doesn't matter what you think about what Bush would be willing to do; it's physically impossible.

If there were 8,000 uncounted deaths, that would mean an average of 160 families per state wondering why their kid's name never appeared in the newspaper as a war casualty.

In addition, these soldiers come from units. The soldiers live together at home as well as fight together abroad. They know each other; the families hang out. They talk. If a given unit lost 20 people but only 5 were listed as official casualties, everyone would know. For your conspiracy to work, EVERYONE in the unit, their families, friends and up and down the chain of command would have to be in on the secret. Which just isn't going to happen.

When constructing conspiracy theories, maybe these folks should construct ones that are actually plausible.

casualties, conspiracy theories, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Are large sums of cash illegal?

Apparently, yes.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

Clearly, the details are important here. But shouldn't the money -- or at least the owner -- be actually connected to a crime before police can seize his property?

crime, midtopia

More excessive secrecy

In example #2,912 of how the Bush administration has a heard time learning:

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

Aargh! Stop it!

National Security Archive, Bush, secrecy, politics, midtopia

As the pundits turn, insiders seek to sway Bush

A couple of interesting developments.

Publicly, conservative pundits are rounding on Bush with increasing ferocity.

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, James Baker leads a rescue effort:

Amid the highly charged political infighting in Washington over what to do in Iraq, you might be excused for not noticing that a bipartisan commission quietly started work last spring with a mandate to help the Bush administration rethink its policy toward the war. Of course, anything labeled "bipartisan commission" seems almost guaranteed to be ignored by a highly partisan White House that is notoriously hostile to outside advice and famously devoted to "staying the course." But what makes this particular commission hard to dismiss is that it is led by perhaps the one man who might be able to break through the tight phalanx of senior officials who advise the president and filter his information. That person is the former secretary of state, Republican insider, and consigliere of the Bush family, James A. Baker III.

Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in--or, perhaps, to get the hell out of--Iraq. But as with all things involving James Baker, there's a deeper political agenda at work as well. "Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home--that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics," a member of one of the commission's working groups told me. Specifically, he said, if the Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress in November, they would unleash a series of investigative hearings on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and civil liberties that could fatally weaken the administration and remove the last props of political support for the war, setting the stage for a potential Republican electoral disaster in 2008. "I guess there are people in the [Republican] party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they've called in Baker to try to reroute the train."

I wish Baker well; I respect the deft foreign-policy hand of Bush the Elder, and Lord knows someone needs to break through the barriers surrounding this administration and convince them that their chosen strategy isn't working.

If Bush persists on his current course, it would seem to be only a matter of time before the Republican-led Congress tosses him overboard in order to save their own skins in November -- while non-Congressional conservatives and other party operatives throw him overboard in order to strengthen their hand for 2008. The next two years may feature Bush being used as a whipping boy not just by the left but also by the right, as they look past him and try to figure out a way to detach the anchors of his presence from their political ambitions.

Iraq, Baker, Bush, politics, midtopia

Relearning expensive lessons

One thing that bothered me about the Israeli campaign in Lebanon was the clear belief that they could win largely through the use of airpower. I'd end up talking to myself or yelling at the television: "Don't you guys read history books?!?"

I'm an ex-tanker, and some of my best friends were groundpounders, so maybe I'm biased. But if there's one thing that's clear from reading military history, it's that airpower alone does not win wars -- however often the Air Force commanders make that argument, and however enticing the idea is to a casualty-wary politician.

I missed this article when it first came out, but it sums up the situation very nicely.

Military historians have a name for the logic behind Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. It's called the "strategic bombing fallacy." Almost since the dawn of the age of military air power, strategists have been tempted by the prospect that the bombing of "strategic" targets such as infrastructure and transportation hubs could inflict such pain on a population that it would turn against its leaders and get them to surrender or compromise.

Unfortunately -- as the United States itself discovered during World War II and Vietnam, to cite just two examples -- strategic bombing has almost never worked. Far from bringing about the intended softening of the opposition, bombing tends to rally people behind their own leaders and cause them to dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are destroying their homeland.

What's surprising is that the above fallacy is very well known -- or should be to anyone who pays attention to military history. It astonishes me that an organization as practical and experienced as the Israeli military would fall for such a thing.

Is it me, or is the entire world suffering from a giant case of the ignorant stupids?

airpower, Lebanon, Israel, politics, midtopia