Centerfield

A sign from God?

Redskins lose today; so Kerry wins Tuesday? Maybe Tom Harkin was right.

Hitchens for Bush (Barely)

Christopher Hitchens, arguably the most famous recent refugee from the left, has endorsed Bush.

The sardonic Hitchens prefaces his endorsement by stating that he hopes that Kerry wins:

I can't wait to see President Kerry discover which corporation, aside from Halliburton, should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. I look forward to seeing him eat his Jesse Helms-like words about the false antithesis between spending money abroad and 'at home' (as if this war, sponsored from abroad, hadn't broken out 'at home'). I take pleasure in advance in the discovery that he will have to make, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a more dangerous and a better-organised foe than Osama bin Laden, and that Zarqawi's existence is a product of jihadism plus Saddamism, and not of any error on America's part.

I notice that, given the ambivalent evidence about Saddam's weaponry, Kerry had the fortitude to make the presumption of guilt rather than innocence. I assume he has already discerned the difference between criticising the absence of postwar planning and criticising the presence of an anti-Saddam plan to begin with. In other words, I look forward to the assumption of his responsibility.

Then he makes a very cogent point about Bush's detractors:

Should the electors decide for Bush, as I would slightly prefer, his excruciating personality strikes me as a second, or third, order consideration. If the worst to be said of him is true - that he is an idiotic Sabbath fanatic with nothing between his large Texan ears - that, presumably, was just as true when he ran against Al Gore and against nation-building and foreign intervention.

Next, he compares the two candidates:

It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me sceptical.

To those who have criticized Bush's smirking, he has this to say:

Don't like 'the smirking' of Bush? What about the endless smirks about the administration's difficulties, whether genuine or self-imposed? The all-knowing smirks about 'the secular' Saddam, or the innocuousness of prewar Iraq?

The sneers about the astonishing success of our forces in Afghanistan, who are now hypocritically praised by many who opposed their initial deployment? This is to say nothing of the innuendos that are now part of pseudo-radical rumour-mongering and defamation.

. . . and this:

In Kabul recently I interviewed Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. 'For us,' she said, 'the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing.' I dare you to smirk at such simple-mindedness as that.

He ends with another Bush-Kerry comparison:

The President, notwithstanding his shortcomings of intellect, has been able to say repeatedly the essential thing: that we are involved in this war without apology and without remorse.

He should go further and admit the possibility of defeat, which might concentrate a few minds, while abjuring any notion of capitulation. Kerry is also capable of saying this, but not without cheapening it or qualifying it, so that he is offering you the worst of both worlds.

Before anyone asks, I plead guilty: I'm posting this in a last-ditch effort to persuade those of my fellow centrists who haven't irrevocably made up their minds to vote for Bush. No one can say it better that the former Trotskyite and long-time Nation columnist Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchen's original endorsement of Bush was posted on the Nation website on October 21. Here it is:

article | Posted October 21, 2004
Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush
by Christopher Hitchens

The election season is always hellish for people who fancy that they live by political principles, because at such a time "politics" becomes, even more than usually, a matter of show business and superficial calculation. Ever since 1980, when I bet the liberals of New York that Reagan would win easily (and didn't have to buy my own lunch for months afterward), I have sympathized with the "prisoners' dilemma" that faces liberals and leftists every four years. The shady term "lesser evil" was evolved to deal with this very trap. Should you endorse a Democrat in whom you don't really believe? Is it time for that deep-breath third-party vote, or even angry abstention, of the sort that has tortured some Nation readers ever since they just couldn't take Humphrey over Nixon? This magazine prints columnists who regularly describe the terms of the captivity with more emotion than I can now summon.

But absent from this triangular calculation is the irony of history. Do you know anybody who really, deeply wishes that Carter had been re-elected, or that Dukakis had won? Implicit but unstated, in the desire of the prisoner to escape, is the banal, unexciting assumption of our two-party oligopoly: Sometimes it's objectively not so bad that the "other" party actually wins. Thus I ought to begin by stating my reasons to hope for a Kerry/Edwards victory.

Given my underlying stipulation, which is that this is a single-issue election and that that is a good and necessary thing, I have no formal quarrel with the Kerry/Edwards platform. It ostensibly calls for military victory over the alliance between autocracy and jihad. It does not shade the moral distinction that has to be made between "our" imperfect civilization and those who want to turn Islamic society into a medieval but still-lethal dust bowl. (Not even by MoveOn.org are we being told, of the racist janjaweed death squads in Sudan, that they are the expression of pitiable, deep-seated Muslim grievances.) The Kerry camp also rightly excoriates the President and his Cabinet for their near-impeachable irresponsibility in the matter of postwar planning in Iraq.

I can't wait to see President Kerry discover which corporation, aside from Halliburton, should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. I look forward to seeing him eat his Jesse Helms-like words, about the false antithesis between spending money abroad and "at home" (as if this war, sponsored from abroad, hadn't broken out "at home"). I take pleasure in advance in the discovery that he will have to make, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a more dangerous and better-organized foe than Osama bin Laden, and that Zarqawi's existence is a product of jihadism plus Saddamism, and not of any error of tact on America's part. I notice that, given the ambivalent evidence about Saddam's weaponry, Kerry had the fortitude and common sense to make the presumption of guilt rather than innocence. I assume that he has already discerned the difference between criticizing the absence of postwar planning and criticizing the presence of an anti-Saddam plan to begin with. I look forward, in other words, to the assumption of his responsibility.

Should the electors decide for the President, as I would slightly prefer, the excruciating personality of George Bush strikes me in the light of a second- or third-order consideration. If the worst that is said of him is true--that he is an idiotic and psychically damaged Sabbath-fanatic, with nothing between his large Texan ears--then these things were presumably just as true when he ran against Al Gore, and against nation-building and foreign intervention. It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the parallel lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me skeptical. You don't like "smirking"? What about the endless smirks and smarmy hints about the Administration's difficulties, whether genuine or self-imposed? The all-knowing, stupid smirks about the "secular" Saddam, or the innocuousness of prewar Iraq? The sneers about the astonishing success of our forces in Afghanistan, who are now hypocritically praised by many who opposed their initial deployment? This is to say nothing of the paranoid innuendoes I don't have to name that are now part of pseudo-"radical" rumor-mongering and defamation. Whichever candidate wins, I shall live to see these smirks banished, at least.

I can visualize a Kerry victory, in other words (and can claim to have written one of the earliest essays calling attention to the merits of John Edwards). What slightly disturbs me about most liberals is their hypertense refusal to admit the corollary. "Anybody But Bush"--and this from those who decry simple-mindedness--is now the only glue binding the radical left to the Democratic Party right. The amazing thing is the literalness with which the mantra is chanted. Anybody? Including Muqtada al-Sadr? The chilling answer is, quite often, yes. This is nihilism. Actually, it's nihilism at best. If it isn't treason to the country--let us by all means not go there--it is certainly treason to the principles of the left.

One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause. In Kabul recently, I interviewed Dr. Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. "For us," she said, "the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing." I dare you to snicker at simple-mindedness like that.

I could obviously take refuge in saying that I was a Blair supporter rather than a Bush endorser, and I am in fact a member of a small international regime-change "left" that originates in solidarity with our embattled brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and Iraq, brave people who have received zero support from the American "antiwar" movement. I won't even consider any reconsideration, at least until Islamist websites start posting items that ask themselves, and not us: Can we go on taking such casualties? Have our tactics been too hideous and too stupid? Only then can anything like a negotiation begin. (Something somewhat analogous may be true, and I say it with agony, about the Israel-Palestine dispute, which stands a very slightly better chance of a decent settlement if an almost uncritically pro-Israeli Democrat is not elected.)

The President, notwithstanding his shortcomings of intellect, has been able to say, repeatedly and even repetitively, the essential thing: that we are involved in this war without apology and without remorse. He should go further, and admit the evident possibility of defeat--which might concentrate a few minds--while abjuring any notion of capitulation. Senator Kerry is also capable of saying this, but not without cheapening it or qualifying it, so that, in the Nation prisoners' dilemma, he is offering you the worst of both worlds. Myself, I have made my own escape from your self-imposed quandary. Believe me when I say that once you have done it, there's no going back. I have met a few other ex-hostages, and they all agree that the relief is unbelievable. I shall be meeting some of you again, I promise, and the fraternal paw will still be extended.

Pundit Predictions Roundup

Here are the predictions of many pundits, courtesy of RealClearPolitics. With the exception of Tucker Carlson (who has said that he feels "foolish" for supporting the Iraq war) and John McLaughlin (who I stopped watching a few years ago but I assume still embraces the maverick conservative image), every prediction appears to be along ideological lines.

Based on my knowledge of this cast of characters, the only real nonpartisan of the group listed is Charlie Cook. His prediction: Bush 271, Kerry 267.

As a soft Bush voter-to-be, my overriding hope this year is that one of these guys wins by a relatively comfortable (i.e., unchallengeable) margin.

Europe and the US Election

New York Times: An article published in Friday's paper speaks of a "deeply pessimistic view" taking hold in Europe. Interestingly (and perhaps prophetically), the article suggests that a Kerry -- not a Bush -- victory might result in an immediate transatlantic crisis:

If President Bush wins, the reasoning goes, pro-Kerry Europe will be astonished at what it will see as the bad judgment of the American electorate. Europeans will be confirmed in their sense that they are from Earth and Americans from some other planet.

But if Senator John Kerry wins, the result may well be an almost immediate trans-Atlantic crisis. Mr. Kerry, having presented himself in the campaign as the man who can restore a functioning alliance, will ask Germany and France to come to the aid of the United States in Iraq. Germany and France will refuse, and Americans will feel angry and betrayed.

According to William Drozdiak, the director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center,

If they were to say no to Kerry, the risk of a backlash against Europe in America would be large. Americans would say, 'We can't depend on Europe, even though we protected Europe for 50 years.' It will cause lasting damage to the relationship, a great sense of disillusionment.

Read the whole thing.

Guardian: After attending a meeting at which Grover Norquist, the very conservative president of Americans for Tax Reform spoke, Will Hutton penned a column that contains several anti-American cultural cliches:

Norquist is on the side of working Americans living in the outer suburbs springing up like topsy around every US city; the network of soulless shopping malls, never-ending cloned streets and newly built churches created by the appetite of US property developers. This instant developments are communities only in name; their rootless inhabitants, questing for meaning in their lives, are the prey upon which the New Republicanism feeds.

I'm not sure I understand this next quote, which is Hutton's explanation for "the genius of the conservative position:"

It is a crusade fuelled by a never-ending tide of complaint that is compelled to set itself unachievable objectives in its battle to reduce women's rights and against the commercial ethic that so beleaguers religion but their non-achievement only proves the malevolent hegemony of the liberal elite and thus the correctness of the right's analysis.

The conservatives are against the commercial ethic? The commerical ethic beleaguers religion? Has Hutton read de Tocqueville? Doesn't he know that Americans are far more religious than any other industrialized country, despite our "crass" materialism?

Not satisfied with being wrong, Hutton then proceeds to contradict himself:

This hostility to modernity and sense of beleaguerment spills over to fuel an ugly American nationalism. Foreigners, and especially Muslim foreigner, are part of the threat to the values and lifestyles of ordinary God-fearing Americans.

Notwithstanding our soulless shopping centers and cloned steets, Americans are hostile to modernity? Despite immigration laws that many feel are to lax, we're afraid of foreigners?

Hutton's views may be laughable (at least to me), but the Guardian is read by millions of people across the globe. We need better soft diplomacy not just in the Islamic world, but also in the Mother Country.

Read the whole thing.

The NY Daily News: George W. Bush for President

Yes, endorsements don't matter, but since many bloggers have been quick to point out how many papers that endorsed Bush last time are now endorsing Kerry, I thought I would point out that a paper, in one of the most liberal places on earth, that endorsed Gore the last time around, is now standing with the President because of the War on Terrorism.

Read the full endorsement here.

An excerpt:

"The News endorsed Clinton and Gore in the three races beginning with 1992, each time judging their domestic agendas in the best interests of the American people. But it is no longer Sept. 10th. The world has changed. And nowhere has it been more tragically altered than in New York. And nowhere are the stakes higher.

As the preeminent symbol of America, this city remains Ground Zero, primary target of Islamic radicals. How best to win the war against terror so the country and its leading city emerge from jeopardy is the overriding concern in the election. The News believes Bush offers the stronger hope in this urgent regard."

Oliver Willis is the Problem

Reacting to a suggestion from John Kerry that he will choose Republicans to serve in his administration if he wins, Oliver Willis says:

Have we learned nothing? Bipartisanship is dead. The much beloved John McCain sat silent as Rove & Bush orchestrated the Swift Boat smear, and gave a speech for them right after it. These guys want nothing to do with us, and we should have nothing to do with them.

If we win, we make them play by our rules. And if they win, we make 'em hurt. I didn't used to think this way, but then, I was naive before.

First of all, I heard nothing from John McCain after the "Swift Boat smear" other than the people making those ads where wrong and that the President of United States should say so and demand the ads be taken off the air. He then proceeded to do the right thing and attempt through a court of law to close the 527 loophole that he intended to close by working for the passage of campaign finance legislation that he created, and the President of the United States signed I might add.

You cannot be angry over those who smear John Kerry over his Vietnam record and then accuse someone who served just as bravely from ignoring that smear and doing nothing about it. It is just plain hypocritical.

Second of all, if Oliver Willis gets his way the divisions in this country that exist will continue to exist and the Democratic, or the Republican, Party will be worse off because of it. Whoever wins is going to govern a divided country and they cannot do so effectively without reaching out to the other side. I have said over and over that the Bush polarization is over exaggerated, and it is, but there is not a doubt in my mind that if the President wins he has to do a better job in his second term of doing what he did in Texas as Governor by befriending Democratic Lt. Governor Bob Bullock.

Oliver is a disappointment. What used to be a pretty good blog from a partisan "new Democrat" has joined the usual ideological, “hate Bush” or “hate Kerry” BS that is prevalent in the blogosphere today… And yes Erasmus, I have no problem with calling the rhetoric on Oliver Willis’s blog hate speech. It is a shame that such a useful tool as a blog is misused by so many.

Because of my "new" job I, unlike most Americans, will have no choice. I will support either Bush or Kerry because the winner will be the President of the United States, and to do so will be an honor. However, it is likely that many Republicans will never give Kerry a chance if he is elected, nor will many Democrats give Bush a chance if he is re-elected. A leader would have the vision to see beyond that problem and attempt to reach out to the other party regardless, rather than join all the other hacks in the mud like a bunch of pigs.

I commend Kerry for suggesting he would appoint Republicans. It was a very Presidential thing for him to do.

My New Hope

I've waited since I was a little kid to see my team, the Boston Red Sox, win a World Series championship. My gramps and dad died waiting, and I had been hoping that I'd see it happen just once before I died. So it's a very sweet feeling of deliverance that we Red Sox fans are savoring these days.

But now I find I need a new "Once before I die" hope. Here it is:

Just once before I die, I hope I get the chance to cast a vote proudly for a presidential candidate who shows leadership, wisdom, and a determination to put the needs of our country and all of its people ahead of partisan politics. Someone who loves and understands this nation in all its promise and contradictions, and who can't be bought. And I want to cast this vote for such a man or woman who has a legitimate chance to win.

I have even less expectation of this happening than I did for the Red Sox. So if you too feel how very bleak the prospects are of this happening, then you know how it felt to root for the Red Sox prior to this last week or so.

Daily Qaqaa

By demand of our readers, let's restrict posting about Al Qaqaa to a single thread today, this one, adding links in the comments (HTML is allowed, by the way)

Here's an interesting post mortem on the story from Salon

The Kerry campaign immediately made the news its top issue. And instantly, battle over the facts was joined. The Bush White House questioned the validity of the report and insisted the explosives were likely removed from the dump while Saddam Hussein was still in power. Along with allies in the conservative media, the Bush campaign, perhaps emboldened by its win last month over CBS's "60 Minutes II" story about Bush's National Guard service -- which fell apart after questions were raised about the authenticity of the documents used as evidence -- and convinced they could make any press story they challenged go away, decided to wage an all-out war on the story and the newspapers and broadcast networks that advanced it. But this time, instead of getting the press to back down, conservative media helped keep the story alive for a week -- to the delight of the Kerry campaign -- and ultimately ended up on the wrong side of the facts.

As I see it, the looting of an ammo dump was not that important an issue. It could have been a one-day story. Despite the fact that Rudy Giuliani has been reamed for not "supporting our troops" with his comment, I'm almost in agreement with him. If it indeed happened, it reflects poorly, not on the grunts, but on the commanding officers who planned the campaign. I'm not convinced it's the President's fault.

What does get me upset, however, is the right-wing response, and blogs like Powerline, which has gotten overly sure of itself as it has ascended to prominence. Rather than admit to imperfection in the military campaign, the right tried to kill the messenger. There was an attempt to dismiss all mainstream media, so as not to have to adequately address the issue. I do recognize a liberal leaning among the elite media in their framing of stories (i.e. that the missing explosives are a big deal) but they usually get the basic facts right, and the Jayson Blair and Rathergate fiascos are the exception.

Dirty Tricks

Here's a clever one

election officials received a flurry of phone calls about fliers handed out at a Pittsburgh area mall and mailed to an unknown number of homes. The flier, distributed on bogus but official-looking stationery with a county letterhead, told voters that "due to immense voter turnout expected on Tuesday," the election had been extended. Republicans should vote Tuesday, Nov. 2, it said -- and Democrats on Wednesday.

Last Minnesota Polls

StarTribune: Kerry 49, Bush 41.
Pioneer Press: Bush 48, Kerry 47.

Who is right? I don't know, but for a long time the conservatives at Powerline have been highly critical of the StarTribune poll methodology and the recent track record favors the Pioneer Press. Here are the last poll results and ultimate election results for 2000 and 2002.

2000:
StarTribune: Gore 47, Bush 37.
Pioneer Press: Gore 44, Bush 41.
Election: Gore 48, Bush 46.

2002:
StarTribune: Mondale 46, Coleman 41.
Pioneer Press: Coleman 47, Mondale 41.
Election: Coleman 50, Mondale 47.

My only point is this -- Don't look at the StarTribune poll and assume that Minnesota is out of play. I don't think that Bush will win here, but I do think that he will get close.

Sex Offenders In Oregon

I vaguely heard of Rep. David Wu's troubles, stemming from the allegation of improper behavior during his college years, which turns out to be an allegation of attempted rape. I totally missed this story about former Portland Mayor, Oregon Governor, and Carter Administration Cabinet Secretary Neil Goldschmidt admitting to having had sex many years ago with a babysitter, a case of statuatory rape which is now beyond the statute of limitations. Both politicians happen to be Democrats, but Oregon Democrats can point to Bob Packwood to show that bad behavior is bipartisan in their state.

Early Voting

The Kerry campaign is keeping track of the early voting, and claims its doing well, at least in 2 states:

More than 5 million people have already voted across the country, and information that the campaign has acquired indicates that Kerry has a big advantage over Bush in Iowa and Florida amongst those who have voted early.

Democrats And Republicans Are Kicking Each Other Out Of Bed

So says the Village Voice

With the country deeply divided over the current presidential race—with Republican George Bush and John Kerry in a dead heat and many voters in a blind rage over their guy—political affiliation has ascended to the top of requirement lists for potential mates. It now sits conspicuously next to "earning potential" and "full head of hair."

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Centerfield recently received an email promoting the sites datingdemocrats.com and datingrepublicans.com. I'm posting the links for your amusement. Centerfield does not vouch for these sites in any way.

Nail the Hammer: Stenholm, Frost, and Morrison for Congress

Elections are about a lot of things, but it isn't very often that we get an opportunity to amend a great wrong. Voters of the 19th, 22nd, and 32nd Congressional districts of the state of Texas, have an opportunity to do just that this election.

Congressman Charlie Stenholm, and Congressman Martin Frost are blue dog, centrist Democrats who where left without a constituency after a highly partisan redistricting process in Texas, created to increase the power of House Majority Leader Tom Delay. Both Stenholm and Frost are running in re-drawn Republican districts designed for their defeat, which are currently represented by two party-line, conservative Members of Congress. It is admirable that both of them have chosen to run in the face of some pretty big odds.

Attorney Richard Morrison is running against the criminal himself, Delay, who is responsible for the redistricting. “The Hammer”, a nickname Delay earned after the Clinton impeachment trial, along with the redistricting fiasco has been known to rule the Republican House with an iron fist, excluding GOP centrists and Democrats from even having a voice in the decision making process. He has also possibly broken some election laws along the way, and several of his closest contributors are in pretty hot water with the FEC. Republicans should be embarrassed by Delay, this one is… He has not earned re-election by any measure and he has no business sitting in the same legislative body where great men like John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, and Sam Houston once sat. Voters in his district should do the right thing and elect Morrison, who is running on a centrist platform of fiscal responsibility, increasing funding to Homeland Security, and expanding health care to all Americans.

Ron Gunzburger predicts that "the Hammer" is going to get his way, Stenholm and Frost are going to lose, and the Republicans will gain five seats in Texas, but many polls show that these races are close. Morrison has pulled within in seven against Delay, proving that even his own conservative district is sick of his tactics.

My Republican friends look at me in shock when I tell them how I feel about Texas. It's about the majority they say. Maybe that is what conventional wisdom tells us, but I don't really care. If we have to do it this way then Republicans don't deserve the majority, and I would rather have the Democrats in charge than ever have to hear the words, Speaker of the House Tom Delay. If he loses, then Republicans will probably maintain the majority anyway, but the party and the American people will be better off.

On the lighter side (final pre-election edition)

- Blogger's head explodes on eve of election (here)
- A candidate flees debate because of stage fright (here)
- His name is "Kerry Edwards" (really) and he is undecided (here)
- Football Fans for Truth launch smear campaign against Kerry (here)

Political Violence Ahead?

The attempted rundown of Rep. Katherine Harris is no laughing matter. Political violence around elections is the first step toward becoming a banana republic. Will violent rhetoric spill over into physical acts? 2000 was flukey, and odds are the election of 2004 won't be quite so close. But if it is, the Miami-Dade bourgeois riot of 2000 may only be a foretaste of what's to come.

New Osama Bin Laden Tape

He looks healthy, unfortunately. It seems to be recent, because he refers to Kerry as well as Bush. If he's trying to influence the election, it's not clear which way.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic. (though if you have a great joke to share, it probably belongs in the previous thread)

Humor

By popular demand (or at least from sheer All CaCa fatigue) I hereby dedicate this political & campaign & media humor thread. No serious stuff, please. But give us the best silly and funny stuff from the joke factory! Or even from real life.

Let's face it, we're going to get nothing but noise and blather from the politicos for the next several days, so we might as well kick back and have some fun. Decompress. Pop a beer or two.

I'll lead off, with this real story I lifted from the Philadelphia Inquirer from a bit over a year ago...and then there's this headline I saw earlier today....

Dems, GOP working to capture early voters: The rush is on to beat the crowds

(Can't we have an election without kidnapping and torture?)

Qaqaa Is Not The Issue

The photos shown in the New York Times taken by embedded reporters which clearly show Qaqaa on the boxes would seem to put to rest the charge that the liberal media has created a fake story. The real question is the relevance of this story, and it's been my position from the first that this is a relatively minor screw-up, and not a voting issue.

An article in the Washington Post puts it into perspective.

Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University expert in nuclear weapons and terrorism, said that although he is concerned by the removal of the explosives, he is far more worried by IAEA reports that large quantities of sophisticated equipment, such as electron beam welders, were looted and removed from Iraq's nuclear weapons program. "That material, which would be quite useful to a nuclear weapons program, was also well known to the United States, was not guarded and today is probably in hostile hands," with Iran being a likely recipient, said Bunn, who noted that he has been advising the Kerry campaign but does not speak for it.

This to me is inexcusable. I can understand the desire to rush to Baghdad, and end the war as soon as possible. I can understand bypassing ammo dumps containing conventional explosives. But the key reason for the war is the threat that Iraq posed, and that potential threat was embodied in the WMD programs. What justification could there be for failing to secure suspected WMD sites, and possibly allowing biotoxins or nuclear material to fall into the hands of terrorists?

We're lucky there seem to have been no WMD's, because if there were, Zarqawi would probably have them, and would no doubt transfer them to his godfather, Osama bin Ladin.

IAEA Al-Qaqaa Document

Fox News has obtained and published an IAEA Action Team Confidential document dated 2003-01-14 that is a record of the monitoring inspection of Al-Qaqaa. This is the document referenced by ABC News and mentioned in an earlier post.

This is the key quote from the ABC News article:

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

These are the exact words from the IAEA document:

All the 9 HMX bunkers were sealed after the verification by attaching metal seals on their front entrance doors. Of note was that the sealing of the bunkers was only partially effective because each bunker had ventilation shafts on the sides of the buildings. These shafts were not sealed, and could provide removal routes for the HMX while leaving the front door locked.

Note the difference between the ABC News description of the document and the actual document: whereas ABC News uses the phrase "ventiliation slats," the IAEA document uses the phrase "ventiliation shafts." Perhaps the ABC reporter was describing slats that partially covered the shafts. In any event, the use of the word "shaft" causes me to visualize a larger opening into the bunkers than I did before reading the IAEA document.

What we don't have is an explanation for the IAEA allowing the bunkers to be constructed in a manner that "could provide removal routes for the HMX while leaving the front door locked." The bunkers were not really sealed, and the IAEA knew it. Maybe the Bush administration had some good reasons for not trusting the UN inspectors.

"ABC Airs Videotape of Man Making Al Qaeda Threat"

Drudge has been hyping this for a few days. Now it is out.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ABC News on Thursday broadcast a videotape it obtained last week of an English-speaking man who threatens bloody new al Qaeda attacks on the United States, but the network said U.S. intelligence officials could not authenticate the man's voice. . .

The tape was broadcast with five days left in a U.S. election campaign in which the battle against global terrorism has been one of the biggest issues between Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry. . .

The speaker vows new attacks worse than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. "After decades of American tyranny and oppression now it's your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America shall run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America's victims," he said.

Quite honestly, I think that the senior leadership of al-Qaeda wants Bush re-elected for this reason: "[H]e's a provocative figure, and the more they can push people to the extreme, the better for their case."

Those Iraqi Explosives

At least temporarily, the "missing explosives" story seems to have simmered down. Here's the most recent media reports:

Washington Post: "Missing & Explosive"

MosNews: "Russian Defense, Foreign Ministry Refute Reports on Smuggling Iraqi Arms"

Associated Press: "IAEA Says It Warned U.S. on Iraq Ammo"

New York Post: "The Myth of the 'Missing Explosives': A Shameless Lie"

Political Bohemian Rhapsody

This is pretty funny.

Bush Remakes The GOP

A chewy artilce in Opinion Journal BY JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE about how the Republican Party has been remanufactured by Bush and Rove.

Yet there is one area where Mr. Bush has exceeded the expectations of everybody on the right--party building. He is arguably the greatest Republican party builder since William McKinley. Presidents always have a temptation to put themselves above their parties. Thus Nixon pursued a policy of "lonely victory" in 1972 and Mr. Clinton "triangulated" between the House conservatives and his own party's liberal wing. Mr. Bush has eschewed this temptation.

He put the full credibility of the post-Sept. 11 White House on the line when he campaigned for his fellow Republicans in 2002--an election that ended with a GOP majority in the Senate. The White House has also paid enormous attention to building an organization to get out the vote, with a captain in every precinct and volunteers in every county. Mr. Bush has done nothing less than reinvent the party machine for the world of far-flung suburbs and exurbs.

The article suggests that the new Republican Party tilts more toward the religious right and away from libertarians than the party under Reagan. I think this is so. I flirted with the Republican Party in the 1990's, then Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld was considered a rising star. His combination of social liberalism and economic conservatism is becoming more and more remote from what the Republican Party is today.

Kerry Campaign Backtracks

From today's Miami Herald:

". . . news reports have also indicated that there could have been a period between the last IAEA inspection in March 2003 and the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 when Hussein loyalists could have emptied the installation. Kerry advisors conceded that possibility Wednesday.

''There is a window that's available there where, either just prior to or just after the invasion, there could have been an opportunity for either Saddam to move the weapons or for something happening after that facility had been abandoned,'' Kerry senior advisor Michael McCurry said.

However, U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday said it was unlikely that the Iraqis could have moved that quantity of explosives without being spotted by U.S. reconnaissance satellites, planes or aerial drones.

Kerry also retreated from his assertion Tuesday that ``our young American forces are being shot at from weapons stolen from the ammo dumps that this president didn't think were important enough to guard.''

Reply to Rick Perlstein and "Sucking Democracy Dry"

Last week, Marc Schulman linked to an article by Rick Perlstein in the Village Voice re “Sucking Democracy Dry” that apparently had a cover showing Bush as a vampire. (The associated story is called “The End of Democracy” at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0442/perlstein.php.

This thread involved a broader discussion of civility and partisanship in politics. Rick posted a comment inviting the blog readers read and discuss the discuss his article and, as usual, decried what he calls “knee-jerk centrism.”

Frankly, I was prepared to trash the article because I find Rick’s views about political moderates somewhat infuriating. However, the article is well worth reading and discussing. I am not presuming to respond for the entire blog, but these are my thoughts about it and, hopefully, we can discuss it. Hopefully, Rick will see this and join in.

The main point of the article, as I read it, is that the Bush Administration has taken numerous actions, that while not necessarily illegal, are injurious to American democracy, including using the Secret Service to advance Bush’s campaign, systematically suppressing Democratic votes, and “ramming through” a radical legislative agenda even though he lost the popular vote. One problem here is that the assumptions predetermine the conclusion. Rick’s article reads in some way like a good legal brief, shaping the facts to support the conclusion. If you accept that the actions of the Administration and/or the GOP go beyond the pale for normal partisan activity, then obviously, they are a danger to the polity. But you have to accept that his factual statements are true, for example, that the Republicans are systematically trying to disenfranchise minority Democratic voters. If you don’t accept his factual allegations, then his argument loses a lot of weight. For example, I'm not sure how "ramming" his agenda through is a danger to democracy. The laws are passed by Congress. The fact that Bush does not have much of a mandate doesn't mean he shouldn't try to govern. People criticized the Kennedy Administration which had been elected by a razor thin margin for not being more aggresive in pushing civil rights legislation. I suspect that if the positions were reversed and Al Gore was pushing through a Democratic agenda, Rick wouldn't be so concerned.

I think his more important theme is that neither the MSM or even the mainstream political elites in the Democratic Party have shown much interest in exposing what he considers the Administration's abuses. He quotes media (Jeff Greenfield) and party officials to the effect that that the rest of the country considers this stuff “inside baseball” and is not concerned.

As it applies to us, I think the gist of the argument would go as follows: The conservatives are trying to hijack our democratic traditions and are inflicting great harm on the political system. The Republicans have been far guiltier of bad acts than the Democrats. The pragmatic, nonpartisanship that centrists profess is too relativist and does not recognize that one party is worse another. The focus on "civil discourse" is ill-suited to addressing these dangers to the country because it dilutes the anger we should be feeling and impedes the ability to take effective political action. By always being in the middle and chastising both sides equally, moderates are abdicating their responsibility to hold the political elites accountable. Rick, if you read this, I hope this is a fair synopsis of your article and your views. I encourage everyone to read the article.

I agree with much of Rick's article. I find many of the actions and the tone of this Administration disturbing and dangerous. That is why I am voting for Kerry even though I find him less than an ideal candidate. I also agree that partisanship plays an important role in the political process because it helps keep the ruling party on its toes. And not all bad things are equal in politics. “A pox on both your houses” is not always appropriate because it conflates lesser evils with greater evils.

However, separate from the article, I think Rick misunderstands the nature of centrism. I suspect true partisans are rarely, if ever, been troubled with doubts about their opinions. They tend to be suspicious of moderates whom they see as being too malleable and having no principles. Centrists are different. Without being too postmodern, I believe in a degree of skepticism about all political opinions, including my own, and a willingness to modify those opinions when confronted with superior facts. I don't think anyone on this blog thinks that centrism requires a slavish devotion to a middle ground between right and left. There are plenty of people on the blog that have staked out positions on the right or left. What it does require is the willingness to consider and think about issues rather than blindly adopting a doctrinaire position.

I also believe that Rick's apparent dismissal of civil dialogue is misplaced. I don't necessarily think that this election is particularly more vicious than elections in the past. But I do think the demonization of both sides has gone too far. This morning, I saw someone wearing a tee shirt with pictures of Mao, Hitler, and (you guessed it) George Bush. Now, I think even Rick would acknowledge that this equation of Bush with Hitler goes way too far (Rick in fact says that Bush is not a fascist). I find this kind of stuff offensive not only because it’s ridiculous analogy but because it diminishes the enormity of the evil that Mao and Hitler committed. But it does two other things. First, its exaggeration poisons the political environment and coarsens our dialogue. If person A thinks that person B is essentially a fascist because he supports Bush, how can they hope to ahve any kind of rational discussion. Maybe that's not important to Rick (clearly it's not important to the guy wearing the shirt). But I think it is important. Democracy entails compromise and the willingness to accept the opposition. If you consider the opposition to be scum, how can you accept them. (And I say the same thing with respect to conservatives. I have seen plenty of conservative blog comments on other blogs that make me question their sanity.) Second, it weakens the argument against the Administration (much as Fahrenheit 9/11 did) and makes it much easier to dismiss all legitimate criticism. The general nastiness in tone makes it much more difficult to distinguish the wheat of valid criticism from the chaff of partisan exaggeration. Both sides become more polarized and unwilling to consider each other’s position. I don’t see how that helps the political culture. I’m not claiming, of course, that all partisan rhetoric is of that caliber. But I think Rick underestimates the destructive potential of overheated rhetoric from both sides and the effect it has on the willingness to participate in the political process. In the best tradition of American politics, coalitions coalesce around particular issues regardless of party; thus, in Watergate, Republicans were heavily involved in ousting Nixon. Rick thinks that conservatives are so far gone that such a coalition is impossible. But I’m not convinced of that; plenty of conservatives are concerned about the Patriot Act, for example. But overheated rhetoric doesn’t help this process; it can only hurt it.

THE END OF THE MODERATE AMERICAN?

There is an interesting editorial by Thomas Friedman 0f the NY Times on the damage political polarization is having not just on America but the rest of the world.

Most of us have watched with horror as, after a chance to be united on 9/12, the country has only grown farther and farther apart. Many blame Bush, but I think there is enough blame to go around. What we're left with is the seeming absence of civility.

Friedman gives some suggestions as to how we can return the majority of America to the middle by changing our place on the world stage. In the end, he sees Bush's ability to get this done as almost impossible. When it comes down to it, if he isn't willing to admit he did anything wrong, how could he begin to fix things in his second term? Valid question.

What Friedman doesn't say is how Kerry could get it done either, but maybe he thinks the fact that it's Kerry instead of Bush is a first and necessary step to getting anything done.

New Centrist Blog

Man Without A Party is a new centrist blog. Check it out.

Explain This, Senator Kerry

From ABC News:

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the start of the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

QUESTION: If 138 tons of RDX were removed before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, who did the removing?
POSSIBLE ANSWER: The Russians

From the Washington Times:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

This AP story lends credence to the argument that post-invasion looters weren't the culprits:

The infantry commander whose troops first captured the Iraqi weapons depot where 377 tons of explosives disappeared said Wednesday it is "very highly improbable" that someone could have trucked out so much material once U.S. forces arrived in the area.

Two major roads that pass near the Al-Qaqaa installation were filled with U.S. military traffic in the weeks after April 3, 2003, when U.S. troops first reached the area, said Col. David Perkins. He commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, the division that led the charge into Baghdad.

Perkins and others in the military acknowledged that some looting at the site had taken place. But he said a large-scale operation to remove the explosives using trucks almost certainly would have been detected.

Perkins, now a staff officer at the Pentagon, was made available to reporters by Defense Department spokesmen.

If 138 tons were removed before the invasion, it means that the removal took place while UN inspectors were in Iraq. How much more would have been removed, from Al-Qaqaa and elsewhere, if the inspectors had been given more time to complete their work, as the French and Russians wanted? If this is an example of what can happen while awaiting the completion of a "global test," how many global tests can we afford to administer? If true, this casts a whole new light of "the rush to war."

I wonder what Senator Kerry (and the New York Times) will have to say about this. Will he ignore it? Can he ignore it? Is this the October surprise? Stay tuned.

[Cross-posted at americanfuture.typepad.com]

Workman's Comp?

Judge Rejects Salt Lake Ballot Changes

Sorry, folks, it was too good a pun to pass up!

Red Sox Break The Curse!

The Red Sox have won the World Series!

Does Nader have a chance next Tuesday?

George W. Bush's Middle Finger

Here's a cute little quicktime movie of then-Governor George W. Bush flipping the bird to the camera. Salon comments

There's nothing wrong with a little playful obscenity among friends, but our preacher in chief has worked hard to hide the smirking frat boy within. The video isn't likely to energize the evangelical base the White House cares about most.

I doubt this will sway any votes. Might even help with people who think he's too beholden to the religous right.

Even More on Missing Iraqi Explosives

Today's article from the New York Times: "No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says"

Mainstream Media:

CBSNews.com: "U.S. Searches 'Suspicious Iraqi Site" (4/4/03)

Fox News: "Allies Find Signs of Iraq's Chemical Preparedness" (4/4/03)

Wall Street Journal: "Munitions Overkill" (10/27/04)

Miami Herald: "U.S. Military Unit Allegedly Lacked Order to Hunt Missing Explosives" (10/27/04)

Agence France Presse: "Iraq Says 'Impossible' Explosives Taken before Regime Fall" (10/27/04)

Bloggers:

Instapundit: "Al Aqqaa Thoroughly Searched"

Captain's Quarters: "CBS Reported Suspicious Powder at Al Qaqaa in April 2003"

Belmont Club: "The RDX, Part 2"

Belmont Club: "The RDX Story Develops"

Belmont Club: "The RDX Problem Resolves Itself"

QandO Blog: "Nytrogate"

Pandagon: "My Incompetence is Grosser"

The Road to Surfdom: "It's the Incompetence, Stupid"

Daimnation!: "Negligence"

Talking Points Memo: (No Title)

JustOneMinute: "The Times Begins the Rowback"

Southern Appeal: "Turn the Wheels"

INDC Journal: "The Real Lesson from the NY Times"

LiLPoH: "Kaboom"

Obsidian Wings: "Wrong, Mr. President"

Hitch and Kaus for Kerry. Really?

Endorsements may not matter, and it's no surprise that Slate's writers are liberal, but I am mildly surprised that Hitchens and Kaus both will support Kerry. Kaus has been the biggest Kerry basher among Democrats aside from Zell Miller, Hitchens used to be a leftist, of course, but seemed to be on a trajectory to the right.

Iraq and our National Security

An op-ed in the New York Times co-written by Daniel Benjamin, former Clinton NSC staff member and author of "The Age of Sacred Terror" argues that the U.S. presence in Iraq has strengthened the worldwide jihadist movement. The jihadists see the US as strategically overstretched and our presence there has enabled the jidhadists to portray the WOT as a war against Islam. He argues that the U.S. is caught between a rock and a hard place--if we take decisive military action, we risk killing and alienating the populace, but if we back off, the jihadists see this as weakness. It's not clear what the authors believe our next actions should be, but they certainly think Iraq was a mistake.

Here is the link- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/opinion/27benjamin.html

Although I generally agree with the tenor of the article, without some recommendation, it is sort of pointless. A recent article in the New York Review of Books did recommend that we set a date certain to withdraw and, according to The New Republic (liberal but it did support the war), a spokesman for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, Thamir Al Adhami, said the same thing. The idea here is that removing the occupation would make it more difficult for the insurgents to justify the insurgency on nationalist grounds.

Election Lawsuits Update

...and a few odds and ends.

The Des Moines Register reports a GOP suit to prevent provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct from being counted. The U.S. Sixth District Court of Appeals has overturned previous decisions in Michigan and Ohio to allow such ballots (as had the Florida Supreme Court) but as each state's laws differ, the relevance of the appeals court decisions to the Iowa suits is unclear.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that Dems are suing to stop the GOP from challenging thousands of new registrations. The state GOP sent a bulk mailing to new registrants, and is challenging all those whose mailers were returned as undeliverable. (Amusingly, the GOP has already been forced to drop several thousand of the challenges for failing to fill out their paperwork on them properly.)

The Miami Herald reports that a federal court judge has tossed out a lawsuit seeking to allow defective registrations, saying county and state officials didn't have to process incomplete voter registration applications.

The Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that 60,000 absentee ballots have gone, well, absent in Broward County. Authorities are investigating, and blaming the US Postal Service.

The Washington Times is reporting that Democrats are pursuing nine lawsuits in Florida, all claiming attempts to illegally discriminate against minority voters. Some of the underlying issues (voting provisional ballots in the wrong precinct, incomplete voter registrations) have already been ruled on by both the Florida Supreme Court and the federal courts.

The Smoking Gun reports that a man is under arrest for allegedly trying to run down GOP Congresswoman Katherine Harris with his car. The man claims that he was "exercising my political expression...."

A Florida stem cell research advocate and Kerry supporter in Florida is under arrest for stealing almost 80 Bush/Cheney and Mel Martinez signs. She also appears in statewide television commercials urging people to vote against a medical malpractice reform initiative on the ballot.

This chart shows the states where Ralph Nader is on the ballot. Nader failed to get ballot placement in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Remains of New Species of Hobbit-Sized Human Found

That last has absolutely nothing at all to do with the elections, I just found it interesting and included it as a reward for those who read this far!

Final Days Grab Bag Thread

Because so many little odds and sods of stories are floating about, I thought this would be a good time start a thread to collect remarks and impressions about the election end game. Here are a few of mine:

---I saw a commercial last night where the GOP team recounts Bush comforting a daughter who lost her mom in the WTC, and the daughter says "He's the most powerful man in the world, and he just wants to make sure I'm safe."

I don't know if it's new, not being in a battleground state, but I think it's EXTREMELY effective. If I'm running the campaign, that's the one I play over and over, everywhere. Its power is visceral, so its not refutable, not emotionally.

---I thought NBC did a tremendous job on the missing explosives story, stressing that it was complicated and not all facts were in evidence, and then slowly explaining what they did and did not know. Admirable job, I wish it would be approached like this more often.

---Consumer confidence is down in the latest reports. I think people are feeling worried about oil and gas prices and making the connection to continued unrest abroad. This could be good for Kerry, but I'm not convinced that's the right conclusion. My sense is that the more people are afraid for the future, the more this plays into the Bush campaign's "strong protective daddy" theme. We'll know in a week.

What things are you noticing in the last days?

Kerry Leads On Newspaper Endorsement Switches

It's no surprise when New York Times endorses Kerry, or the Washington Times supports Bush. But when a newspaper's endorsement switches from 2000 to 2004, that's interesting.

The Sentinel is among 36 newspapers that endorsed President Bush four years ago and have flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, into Kerry's corner. These include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, according to industry magazine Editor & Publisher. Bush has won over only six papers that backed Al Gore, including the Denver Post, which received 700 letters -- all of them protesting the move.

Nine more papers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday, abandoned Bush after four years but did not support the Massachusetts senator. Instead, these papers -- the Detroit News, the Tampa Tribune and the New Orleans Times-Picayune among them -- threw up their collective hands and made no endorsement.

The question is whether these swing opinion leaders reflect the opinion of swing voters, or are out ahead of them. If the latter, Bush may win re-election, only to be faced with buyer's remorse.

Allawi

Kevin Drum wonders if Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is attempting to manipulate the U.S. election in favor of Kerry. I can't figure out what his motive would be but, if anyone is in a position to do so, it might be him.

The Law of the Instrument

We've all heard them--those cynical maxims of insight that help distill experience into simple "laws" for dealing with reality. The classic example is Murphy's Law. "If anything can go wrong, it will." And of course, there's O'Toole's Corollary to Murphy's Law. "Murphy was an optimist."

Then there's Abraham Kaplan's Law of the Instrument, often mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain. "Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding." This is also often stated as "If you give a child a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Accountants see all problems as solvable by accounting methods, lawyers use legal means to address them, doctors view everything as organic systems that can be sliced or medicated, etc. And that leads me to Tully's Corollary to the Law of the Instrument.

"When you really want to drive a nail, everything starts to look like a hammer." It doesn't matter if it's a rock or a wrench, a blender or a board or a baguette, if you really want to drive that nail, you'll try anything that comes to hand.

At no time is this more evident than during election season.

Still More on Iraq's Missing Explosives

Here's the article from the Los Angeles Times about the relationship between CBS and the New York Times:

CBS Had Iraq Story, Just Not in Time

The network was the first to know about the missing explosives, but getting interviews on tape proved a problem.

By Elizabeth Jensen
Times Staff Writer

October 26, 2004

NEW YORK — CBS News' "60 Minutes" landed a major story last week: the disappearance in Iraq of a large cache of explosives supposed to be under guard by the U.S. military. But the network nevertheless found itself in the journalistically awkward position of playing catch-up when it wasn't able to get the piece on the air as soon as its reporting partner, the New York Times, which made the report its lead story Monday.

Breaking the story would have been a welcome coup for CBS News as it seeks to emerge from the cloud cast by its use of unverified documents in reporting on President Bush's 1970s military service.

Instead, CBS was relegated to airing a report Monday evening, and "60 Minutes" merely got credit in the newspaper, which ran an unusual box noting that the article "was reported in cooperation with the CBS News program '60 Minutes.' '60 Minutes' first obtained information on the missing explosives."

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold, so the decision was made for the Times to run it." [i.e., two days before the election, leaving little time for independent fact-checking.] "That's what happened, and it was only fair to credit them," said Lawrie Mifflin, executive director of television and radio for the New York Times.

Both organizations declined to comment further. People familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified, said the source on the story first went to "60 Minutes" but also expressed interest in working with the newspaper. The two media organizations have worked together in the past and agreed to join forces again.

The tip was received Wednesday, and reporters from both organizations were in place Thursday, but by Friday, when the story came together, only a single TV interview had been taped, said one person familiar with the chronology. Over the weekend, the newspaper got wind that other journalists were on the story, and decided it had to break the story Monday, this source said.

CBS, however, had another major story set to air on "60 Minutes" Sunday: new reporting on the racially motivated slaying of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. It also could not tape enough Iraq interviews in time for the Sunday broadcast.

Fager "reluctantly" agreed when the New York Times said it had to go with the story, one person involved said, adding that Fager was "distraught but understood." The Times agreed to credit "60 Minutes."

From Instapundit:

J. TREVINO AT RED STATE points out that NBC’s Milkaszewski story doesn’t quite debunk the New York Times article that says the Iraqi explosives at al Qa Qaa were lost under American watch. NBC reports that when the 101st Airborne arrived at the site the explosives were already gone. But the Third Infantry Division was there a week earlier.

There are still at least two things we don’t know.

Was the Third Infantry Division the first to arrive at the site? If so, what did they find?

Trevino issues an appeal, which I’m happy to post:

If you are military, or know how to navigate the maze of PAO personnel, lend a hand. The logical person to track down is COL John Peabody, cited as 3ID EN BDE CDR, and quoted in the relevant press reports. Any other avenues of inquiry that present themselves should be pursued -- respectfully and professionally.

Other bloggers react:

Begging to Differ: "Explosive"

The Truth Laid Bear: "NYT's October Surprise Collapses"

Angry Bear: "A Really Lame HMX/RDX Excuse"

JustOneMinute: "John Kerry, Candidate of the IAEA"

Andrew Sullivan

Sullivan has declared his support for Kerry. Here is how he framed the issue:

So we have two risks. We have the risk of continuing with a presidency of palpable incompetence and rigidity. And we have the risk of embarking on a new administration with a man whose record as a legislator inspires little confidence in his capacity to rise to the challenges ahead. Which is the greater one?

More on Iraq's Missing Explosives

YOU BE THE JUDGE:

According to the Drudge Report, CBS' 60 Minutes planned to unleash the story on election eve. Getting even for Rathergate?

Read the whole thing

CNN reports that "The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a television news crew embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material could not be found when American troops arrived."

Read the whole thing

Bloggers react:

Pejmanesque: "All the News That's Fit to Twist"

Talking Points Memo: "Let's note a few more problems . . ."

brothersjudd.com: "The Gray Lady's Case for War"

JustOneMinute: "Missing High Explosives, Day Two"

Power Line: "The Spirit of Walter Duranty"

Belmont Club: "That Missing RDX"

Roger L. Simon: "How Duranty Happened"

Chrenkoff: "380 tons of nothing"

Begging to Differ: "Final Moves"

Countercolumn: "NY Times Blows Another One"

Balloon Juice: "A Failed October Surprise"

Electoral College Reform Revisited

We talked about this several weeks ago, and I thought I would bring it back up but to discuss a different aspect. The big talk around EC reform is about having states split their votes either by congressional district or proportionally by popular vote. What about scrapping the whole EC and going to a straight up popular vote? I don't recall any talk recently about this on the blog so let’s mix things up.

I'm not firmly pro or anti-EC. However, I haven't heard anything that makes me think that a change shouldn't be considered. I understand that the EC helps insure that smaller states in the 3-5 EV range don't get drowned out by the big states with 20+ EVs. One could argue though that since California (by itself) is considered one of the top ten global economies maybe they deserve that larger influence over the electoral process?

I live in a die-hard red state (South Carolina), but I consider myself independent (Who will probably be voting Libertarian). As important as it is to vote, I find it very hard not to be cynical and apathetic when I know South Carolina is going to go for Bush by double digit margins. Likewise, how does a Bush supporter feel in Massachusetts?

Here is how I see it breakdown for a straight up simple majority popular vote. I believe it's been described like this before, but this is what I like.

1. A candidate must receive 51% of the popular vote in order to be the winner.


2. Should no candidate meet the first requirement the two candidates with the largest percentages of the vote would face in a run-off two weeks later.


3. Should the run-off vote be split within the statistical margin of error (e.g. Candidate A has 50.6%, and Candidate B has 50.4%) then the decision would go to the House and continue as described in the constitution.

Here are the benefits I see.

1. Candidates would have to campaign to the whole country. No longer could Ohio, Florida, or Michigan be the center of attention for months.


2. No longer would we have the dichotomy of one candidate having more electoral votes, and another having more popular votes. A situation I find to be awkward.


3. Voters in strong red and blue states should feel more empowered that their vote counts, and that the state majority will not overrule the minority on the national scale.

Here are the downsides.

1. Considering the size and population of the country getting exact vote counts to verify a statistical tie will be difficult. (Not to say counting votes now is easy or accurate)


2. Who will collect and count the votes after the states have? Will the FEC have to create a division just to handle the presidential election? How will this be managed and regulated?

I like the idea of a popular vote, but I'm not behind it enough that my mind couldn't be changed. I'm curious what everyone else has to say on this, and why they would be for or against it.

Voter Registration Issue

I saw a piece on CNN this morning (I tried to find a link, but failed) that talked about people being registered to vote in more than one state. It is not illegal to be registered in more than one state, just to vote in more than one. Still, apparently at least 1300 people voted in Florida in the last presidential election that also voted in another state.

The problem is that states do an extremely poor job of contacting each other to get voters off the rolls in their former states. Jeffrey Toobin said that it's not just a problem of there being no national database to track these things, but many STATES do not even have one centralized database of voter information. With all of the problems from the last election and the efforts taken to try to avoid them this time around, I find it appalling that more hasn't been done about this before now. I mean, to find out that 1300 people voted illegally in Florida and another state last time should send up some warning signals, shouldn't it?

My Take on the Horserace

I've been telling myself that it would be roughly doable to figure the winner of this presidential race a week before the vote. My theory has been that Bush needs a modest lead, perhaps 4 points, going into the final stretch, due to the likelihood that undecideds would break for the challenger.

That theory only applies, say, a week out from the vote. Those undecideds would no doubt be "breaking" during that last week, when they presumably realize "Holy crap, we're about to vote!"

So I say a 4 point lead a week prior roughly corresponds to a tie on election day.

Where are we? Below are the latest results from all the polls I could find that concluded within the last two days. (Bush's numbers are first, followed by Kerry's.)

TIPP	Zogby	Rasmussen	ABC/Wa.Po.	LA Times	Gallup
10/23-25	10/24-26	10/23-25	10/22-24	10/21-24	10/22-24
50%-42%	49%-46%	46%-48%	48%-49%	48%-48%	51%-46%

Basically, you have three polls showing a Bush lead (of 8%, 5%, and 3%), two polls showing a smaller Kerry lead (of 2% and 1%), and one showing a dead heat.

The center of gravity is somewhere around the 4% I think Bush needs a week out, but perhaps a little toward the Kerry side. If you average all the polls out, you get a 2.2% Bush lead.

That being the case, I will predict a Kerry win in the popular vote next Tuesday. It's hard to say how the Electoral College piece of it comes out, but I suspect we will see Kerry get more votes.

My sense of that is reinforced by the feeling that Kerry benefitted from the current news cycle. On his side, we have the missing explosives story and the reemergence of a pretty compelling-sounding Bill Clinton. On Bush's side we have the bombing in Fallujah that killed a Zarqawi aide.

Overall advantage in the current cycle to Kerry, even if I personally think he could have followed up much better to Clinton's pitch for a candidate who preaches hope rather than fear (by, for example, not sounding like the angry attack-dog he accuses Bush of being).

Acting Like A Republican

Taxprof has a post pointing out the irony of Teresa Heinz Kerry being attacked by Republicans for acting like a Republican--for putting much of her money in tax-exempt financial instruments.

More than half of Teresa Kerry's 2003 income was interest from tax-exempt bonds. The Journal hilariously described these on Monday as "the kind of investments that rich people can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to steer their money into." And the paper predicted that "mega-millionaires such as Mrs. Kerry" will avoid her husband's higher taxes through "tax shelters" like this one, leaving ordinary $200,000 taxpayers to shoulder the burden. In fact, tax-exempt bonds are hardly an exotic tax-avoidance technique requiring lawyers and accountants. Anyone with a hundred bucks can buy into a mutual fund of tax-exempt bonds with a simple call to Fidelity or Charles Schwab. The Wall Street Journal got it precisely wrong: The remarkable thing about Teresa Kerry's tax return is that this fabulously rich woman apparently has most of her income-producing wealth stashed in an utterly mundane and non-exclusive form of investment.

Best Blogs Awards

The Washington Post's 2004 Best Blogs Readers' Choice Award winners.

I am surprised that the conservative blogs dominated this popularity contest.

Two stories

IAEA: Tons of Iraq explosives missing (380 tons!)

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

Which one is Chris Matthews et al going to be talking about tonight? Ezra Klein has a prediction.

Iraq--What's Good About It

What you don't see on the 6 o'clock news.

Two Nations in One: A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq

What the hell is going on?

Bush/Cheney are going to spend some time in their home states of Texas and Wyoming during the final days of this election! I don't get it... Polls show the race tied in Florida and favoring Kerry in Ohio, and the President needs a night at the ranch? That dog doesn’t hunt... Karl Rove is up to something.

Carla and Oliver think that the next campaign stop may be in.... Iraq or Afghanistan!?!?!? I went along with Carla jokingly, not thinking that this really was going to happen, but why else would Bush be in Texas? Wasn't that where he was on Thanksgiving?

This thing is more uncertain than I thought it was going to be with a week to go, I don't know what is going on, but this Bush supporter is a little nervous that the Republicans are dropping the ball and looking a little too over confident.

UPDATE: I hate to stoke the controversy fires, but what the hell... There has to be a little fun with this election, right? What if Bush is in Texas and Cheney is in Wyoming because... Cheney is going to resign.

Think about it, if you where going to get rid of him using the health excuse you couldn't do it when everybody was predicting that you would, so you wait until everybody is sure that Cheney is in and then dump him at the last moment.

I doubt that this is what is happening, but you guys keep talking about an October Surprise, so mull this one over. What better way to make voters think about the issues that Bush needs them to think about (9/11 and terrorism) than putting Rudolph Giuliani on the ticket the last week of the election.

Philosoraptor Bites Bush

The intriguingly named blog Philosoraptor supports Kerry, and presents a case against President Bush leading off with the charge of his being a polarizer. Now, we live in a very polarized time, and it preceded Bush's taking office. There was a unique period of unity following 9/11. According to my recollection, it dissipated when the President pursued his conservative domestic agenda as if it were a time of "business as usual." In doing so, he reintroduced partisanship, and it's been downhill from there.

But won't the viciousness continue if Kerry is elected. Won't the Swift Boat people initiate an impeachment campaign on January 21? What is Kerry's plan to be a uniter, not a divider?

Find Your Polling Site

As a public service, mypollingsite.com allows you to enter your address, and find out where you are supposed to vote. I've verified that it works, at least for my home address. It's creator, Keith Kritselis, is asking for help in publicizing the site, and it's something we're happy to do.

Why I'm Voting for Bush

I. My Decision

For the first time in 20 years, I’m going to vote for the Republican presidential candidate. I’m going to cast my ballot for Bush despite disagreeing with his energy policy, opposing his positions on social issues (the constitutional ban on gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion), and being very disappointed with his handling of post-Saddam Iraq. I’m not voting against Kerry because of what he did or did not do in Vietnam, his anti-war activism after he returned from Southeast Asia, his opposition to the Reagan-era defense buildup, his votes to cut spending on intelligence during the 1990’s, or his “liberal” positions on domestic issues.

I’m an independent who wants Bush to be reelected because I’ve decided that his perception of the dangers we face and his prescription for confronting them are closer to mine than are Kerry’s. Here are my core beliefs:

Today’s Islamists have much in common with yesterday’s fascists and represent an existential threat to the West, in general, and the United States, in particular. As such, this threat trumps all other considerations.

Notwithstanding their international nature, Islamic terrorist organizations don’t and can’t exist in a stateless vacuum. Consequently, to be effective, an anti-terrorism policy must not relegate the use of force to a supporting role to law enforcement.

The presumptive source of international legitimacy – the UN – is hypocritical and outmoded. Organized to prevent and, when necessary, deal with aggression by one state upon another, the UN can’t cope with the scourges of our age – genocide and terrorism. The Sudan is condemned for the murders in Darfur, but maintains a chair on the Human Rights Commission. Terrorism still hasn’t been unequivocally condemned, as some members insist that there are circumstances that justify the deliberate killing of civilians. Each of the veto-carrying members of the Security Council is guided by its national interests, not by a shared perception of the “common good,” and, as suggested by the recently-released Duelfer Report, at least some of its members may be subject to economic inducements. The growing pressure to increase the number of permanent members means that the unanimity required to pass resolutions will be even more difficult to achieve in the future.

Given my core beliefs, it’s more or less axiomatic that I favor Bush over Kerry. Everyone agrees that Kerry is more of a multilateralist; indeed, “restoring our alliances” is the central theme of his foreign policy agenda. I have absolutely no idea how grave and how imminent a threat to our security would have to be for Kerry to override his multilateral instincts and act unilaterally. While it’s true that I can’t define precisely Bush’s multilateral-to-unilateral threshold, it’s as clear as anything can be that it’s lower than Kerry’s. I would rather err by setting the threshold too low than by setting it too high. The danger is too great, and the UN too ineffective, to risk a Kerry presidency.

My skepticism regarding Kerry’s threshold level goes all the way back to the 1990-1991 Gulf War. If ever there was a situation that should have passed Kerry’s “global test,” this was it: one state (Iraq) committed an unambiguous act of aggression on another (Kuwait), the Security Council approved the use of military force, an international coalition that included Arab states was assembled, and a vital American national interest – oil – was at stake. Nonetheless, as I detailed in a recent post, Kerry voted against the resolution authorizing the president to remove Saddam’s forces from Kuwait.

Then there’s this from a recent Washington Post article:

Kerry’s belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, “If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can effect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.”

The only things worth dying for are those that the members of the UN Security Council can agree upon? Not in my book. Not when terrorists are executing a sometimes-successful divide-and-conquer strategy in Iraq. Not when al-Qaeda correctly perceives the United States as the primary obstacle to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate. Not when Saddam believed that the French could be bought.

As already noted, I believe that the Islamists have much in common with the pre-World War II fascists. In Sections II and III, I discuss my reasons for making this assertion. In the 1930’s, the democracies tried to prevent war by appeasing fascism – with disastrous results. In Section IV, I present my views on present-day appeasement. Then, in Section V, I describe my reaction to the 9/11 attacks and President Bush’s response to them. Finally, in Sections VI and VII, I discuss two Democratic deceptions: that Bush is solely responsible for the anti-Americanism now prevailing in much of the world, and that, in the run-up to the war, Bush maintained that the Iraqi threat was “imminent.”

[Cross-posted at americanfuture.typepad.com]

II. The 1930’s

The roots of my decision to support President Bush stretch all the way back to my teenage years. I can still remember the day in 1960 when I rushed out to buy William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I was 14 years old. It was the first “adult” book I ever purchased, and it still has a honored place in my personal library.

Even at my then-tender age, I couldn’t understand the myopia of the leaders of the Western democracies in the 1930’s. The League of Nations was created to prevent aggression and to respond militarily when prevention failed. By reacting with words, not deeds, when Japan invaded Manchuria and again when Italy invaded Ethiopia, the League failed to live up to its responsibilities and reassured Hitler that he had nothing to fear.

What happened when Hitler announced Germany would no longer be bound by the terms of the Versailles Treaty? Nothing. What happened when Hitler occupied the Rhineland? Nothing. When he annexed Austria? Nothing. When he demanded Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland? Munich.

Hitler didn’t hide his intentions: they were spelled out in gruesome detail in his anti-Enlightenment diatribe, Mein Kampf. In both word and deed, Hitler threatened the Western democracies. Why did the democracies’ leaders choose appeasement instead of confrontation? These are some of the reasons:

They didn’t want to fight – Hitler came to power less than 15 years after the end of World War I. The psychological wounds of that war had not yet healed and, within the context of the Great Depression, rearmament would have resulted in a nearly unbearable financial burden.

They blamed themselves -- They beli