perfidy

While I'm on an Instapundit kick, he excerpts a report from the Telegraph saying that Newsweek says that a joint congressional inquiry found that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in the 9/11 attacks. (How's that for a chain of references?) The administration has apparently not released an entire section of the congressional report that has all the juicy details of how individuals working in Saudi consulates were intimately involved in the plot.

This, not to put to fine a point on it, is wrong. The administration should not be coddling the Saudis for at least ten reasons right off the top of my head, but certainly not if they were involved in the worst assault on America since the Second World War.

Though I have consistently defended the the decision to invade Iraq, and in general support the administration (I am a conservative, after all) I most certainly do not approve of this. This information needs to be disseminated, the American people (and everyone else, for that matter) need to know. There are good reasons for what we are doing in the war on terror. But it should not be me (God forbid) or the USS Clueless or other warbloggers pointing this out. The Bush administration should be out in public, letting us know and making the case for taking the fight to these terrorist sickos.

And while I'm on a roll, I hear that Adm. Buster Poindexter's TIA got its funding zeroed by the Senate. Good. The Patriot Act: I, II and N is a bad idea. Not increasing military funding or the size of the military when you're in a war is a bad idea. Not taking a really close look at how our intelligence system is working (and in terms of human intelligence, not working at all) is a very bad idea. There are questions, and I think the administration should be a lot more vocal about either answering them (if only to shut certain people up) or saying flat out that we don't know the answers yet. And with the Saudis, its time to call a spade a spade.

Buckethead,

Having finished Steven den Beste's twenty-page post (man needs an editor), I need to take some time to ruminate and compose a brief response.

You are correct-- SdB does articulate almost exactly what you've been saying since we started our weblog and before. My difficulty comes not with the overarching structure of his arguments, but in the half-truths, omissions, and arrogantly stated howlers he sometimes tosses off as asides, and with his choice to address his post to America-hating liberals (though such a tone may be an appropriate response to Hesiod, sure). I am not one of the Children of Chomsky. I'm an America-loving centrist who does not question the existence or worth of the Anti-Terror Bus we are all riding, but instead wonders if we shouldn't take the bypass rather than the business loop, and whether the driver really knows if this is the road to St. Louis.

One thing SdB did do exceedingly well was to remind me that we are in the early stages of a long, hard campaign, and that many things are still fluid. It is easy on the internet to become shrill and blinkered (easy?? I thought it was required!!), and in the interest of maintaining my sense of perspective, I'm going to take a break from the big-picture and warblogging and return to the anklebiting that comes so naturally to me.

Well, we know that millions of dollars were going from Saddam's government to Palestinian terror groups, and to the families of suicide bombers. I think we can safely assume that Bremer has not continued those payments. How deep an effect this will have remains to be seen, considering that the EU sends millions to the PA, at least a goodly chunk of which probably ends up in the hands of Al Aqsa or other terror groups; and Iran and Syria are still sending home the bacon to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On the flip side, America and other nations have seized or frozen millions from the accounts of suspected terrorists. That's gotta hurt.

But, as I might have mentioned, we are still in the early stages of the war. Lots more work to do.

Mike "Screedy McScreed" Hendrix links to an interesting article which claims that the libervasion of Iraq has put the money squeeze on many Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, which had been receiving funding from Iraq.

Huh. The linked article, which is from WorldNetDaily and therefore not exactly without bias, doesn't cite any sources for this information, so I am taking it with an enormous grain of salt. Hopefully this is true; it would be a big victory in the War! On! Terror!, not to mention a nice bit of action-not-words to put the critics of Iraq policy to bed.

If it is true, I hope that very soon we see somebody from the Administration, maybe Rummy or Bremer, parading around with heads on sticks for all to see. That would be a big help.

Steven den Beste has a lengthy (even by his standards) discussion of the whole iraq invasion thingie. (Thingie! Thingie!) It sums up, no it explains in great detail most of what I think about the subject. That sounds pathetic, but it is convenient having someone like Clueless around - as he has vastly more time available than I do, and can write these articles while I am reduced to saying, "Yeah, what he said!" 

Despite Clueless' exhaustive treatment of the subject, I do have some comments.

If we are not complaining about the sixteen words in particular, but are saying that this is indicative of a larger misdirection-spin-maybe even lying pattern on the part of the Bush administration, there are certainly arguments that can be made.

But the reason that all of the rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration back before the livervasion centered on WMD is simple - because the diplomatic battles were being fought in and around the UN. I remember the administration saying that WMD was not the only reason to invade. I also remember that they were discussing WMD as a direct result of the decision to go to the UN for a resolution, and then a second.

Even from the bully pulpit, there is a limit to how much you can address. Given the international political situation (the domestic was never much of an issue - Congress had signed off months before) it is understandable that much of what they were saying was all about WMD. And they were trying to make the most persuasive case that they could.

I also remember that there was little if any debate over the fact that Saddam had WMD - those who were against intervention were saying that inspections could solve the problem - but they agreed that it was a problem. And Saddam was in clear violation of countless UN resolutions.

I never thought that going to the UN was a good idea, and one of the reasons was that we would end up here, having this argument. This is a war on terror, not on Iraq, or on Al Qaeda in particular. This is one part of it. And one reason we are there is because Iraq is low hanging fruit.

It is indeed a mystery where the WMD went, because we know for a fact that Iraq had them as recently as five years ago. But this was never the primary issue. It was merely the most convenient reason to focus on, of many. So, this doesn't bother me because I never thought it was the primary reason. (Although, it definitely was a reason.)

Moving on to some other issues, we have gotten terrorists in Iraq, and closed terror training camps. Most of this related more to the Palestinian terrorists than Al Qaeda, but that is not an issue - terrorism is terrorism. The ultimate fate of the WMD is important, and I think we'll eventually figure it out.

Heads should start rolling in the intelligence community. More on that later. We don't have enough troops, and more on that later. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are still allies, but look how Pakistan has altered its behavior for the better. I think some have hoped that the Saudis would do the same, but I think that given their internal politics that is unlikely. I fervently hope that the day of reckoning for those bastards is near.

Dan Drezner has linked to an interesting discussion about the WMD/16-words debate. Drezner himself operates along Buckethead's lines, and has very kindly collected responses to his views. Kieiran Healy of Crooked Timber agrees with me in maintaining that in and of itself, the question of who let the African Uranium thingy into the State of the Union Address isn't that important. Rather,

The substance of the President's case for war is what matters, and it had everything to do with "the WMD issue." If that case was built on a series of lies - immediate threat, 45-minutes to deployment, uranium from Niger and all the rest of it - then that is something to get exercised about.

That pretty much fits with what I've been saying, and predictably many conservatives differ.

John Cole argues that there were four main arguments for going to war with Iraq: The Weapons of Mass Destruction; Iraq's being in material breach of UN resolutions; the humanitarian mission; and terrorist ties. Since the missing Uranium was only part of one of the reasons, it is insignificant.

I disagree with the importance and even accuracy of these arguments, as detailed elsewhere. What really sticks in my craw is this: the overwhelming message coming from Bush in early '03 was not one of humanitarian missions (otherwise we'd be libervading half the countries in the world). Nor was it Iraq's terrorist ties, which didn't get a whole lot of speech-time (I at least was never convinced, and believe me, I wanted to be). The argument that we were merely upholding the UN's own good name and reputation sort of fell through when the UN curled up and wept back in February. What is left? Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam Hussein's will to use them.

Interestingly, in the same discussion linked to by Dan Drezner, James Joyner helps me make my case. He attempts to minimize the Uranium scandal by reprinting the entire section of the State of the Union where the "16 words" originally appeared, and pointing out that Weapons of Mass Destruction in general were the front and center reason for going to war.

Interesting. Granted, these people are minipundits like me (albeit smarter and better established), and not "news" sources. But the fact that there exists such a large range of opinions on just why it was we went into Iraq to begin with suggests to me that there was no one clear reason, just a lot of muddled talk and mangled statistics.

Once again. I am delighted Saddam Hussein is gone. I am delighted that the humanitarian side-effects of our libervasion of Iraq will soon make that country a better place to live. But at the end of the day, the Weapons of Mass Destruction-- the fear of death raining from the sky or sneaking into Boston Harbor on a zodiac at 3 AM-- and the connected matter of Iraq's UN-noncompliance, were the main stated reasons for going to war. A thousand pundits spinning isn't going to change that, and all the chattering is starting to piss me off.

The chattering class can't seem to agree on anything, least of all why we libervaded Iraq. Some say WMD's. Some say a NeoCon plot. Many say that whatever it was, it was right. And need I mention that terrorism isn't in the top three topics of discussion on Iraq? In a perfect world we would have rolled into Baghdad and found terrorists and cans of Sarin cowering in the light like a teeming family of rats when you turn over a piece of plywood in downtown Baltimore. That we didn't begs some incredibly important questions, like "where are all the damn terrorists?" and "where the hell is all the goddamn anthrax?" I'm not interested in any more dog and pony shows or rhetorical magic. Where the hell did the anthrax go? And whose head is going to roll for losing track of it?

[moreover] Buckethead, I have heard your theory that Iraq is to be used as a wedge to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East. It's a nice theory, but I don't believe it. We don't have nearly enough troops to pull it off, and, last I checked, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were still allies of a sort.

[moreover] This is not my most finely crafted argument. Perhaps when I have some time I will sharpen it. In the meantime, feel free to get out your long knives.

In his most recent bleat, Lileks tosses this out:

When I hear a speech like Blair's, I have to check the calendar. And the calendar is usually wrong. It may say 2/23, or 7/16, or 4/30. But I know what the date is, and the date is 9/12. It's going to be 9/12 for a long time to come.

While I'm on the subject of Lileks, I should mention that we shamelessly stole the name of our blog from one of his bleats. In a bleat shortly after the beginning of the war, but before American troops reached Baghdad, Lileks had this to say:

These pictures are fascinating - it's a capital in wartime, and it looks like it's had a few bad gas main leaks, nothing more. The giant black plumes of fire come from oil trenches set alight by the Iraqis, and looking at them from above you realize they make excellent visual markers for incoming bombers. (If they needed such a thing, which they don't.) The first picture shows a Presidential Palace - two words that ought not cohabitate, really - and it's had the crap blown out of it. Across the street is a gigantic assembly building of some kind, perhaps the National House of Enthusiastic Rubber Stamping. It's untouched. I'd wager a five-spot that they left it for whatever legislative body comes next. There's no sign of bombing anywhere else, except for a small building down at the bottom of the picture; perhaps that was the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, or the State Bureau for Interrogative Dentistry. Something naughty happened there, in any case. I'd thought that the first phase of the air war would see the atomization of all the palaces, but perhaps that's not so; good. Turn them into bed & breakfasts. Give every Iraqi citizen a coupon good for one free night in a room in the palace. Thin Mints on the pillow, courtesy the US Military.

The phrase just caught us, and we ran with it. If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

ZM should get a fair trial. If they were going to go the route of military tribunals, they should have gone that way from the start, and then it wouldn't have the feel of a Kafka novel, where rules change randomly, and never to the benefit of accused. The accomplices of the Rosenbergs weren't brought to trial at the same time because the gov't didn't want to reveal the fact that we were reading the Soviet's communications. (Btw, McCarthy and Cohn began their hearings to try and get info on those same people.)

Since I'm not a lawyer (my degree is in video game testing), I can't say with 100% accuracy, but probably not. It would be worse. The DoJ may refuse to comply with the standards of the civilian court in which they wished to try him, and then move the proceedings to a military tribunal.

At least in double jeopardy you get a real freaking trial, albeit twice. The filthy terrorist Zacarias Mossaoui won't get the one which our fundamental principles say he deserves.

[moreover] Calpundit has more punditry:

This whole thing is way too much like the Salem witch trials for my taste, where guilt is preordained and nothing a defendant can say will prove otherwise. I don't have much sympathy for Moussaoui, who's certainly an al-Qaeda terrorist of one kind or another, but considering what we've learned lately about the quality of U.S. intelligence in matters like this, I'm also not inclined to simply accept the government's word that he was a participant in the 9/11 conspiracy. Moussaoui should be allowed a fair trial.

(comments weren't working) Is it double jeopardy if he was never tried in a civilian court?

I see via South Knox Bubba that the Federal Government have ruled that Zacarias Moussaoui may not bring a witness in his defense. Well, great!

Even better, if this ruling results in dismissal of all charges-- because, after all, in a court of law, you get to have witnesses-- Atty Gen Johnny A has promised to declare ZM an enemy combatant and start a military tribunal. Hey, now that can't fail! Ha haaaa! We'll get this bastid! Double Jeopardy? Fair and Speedy Trial By One's Peers? Fifth Amendment? Sixth Amendment? Our dignity? What use have I for these? I am John Ashcroft! The Law Is My Plaything!

Why not have a damn regular trial, bring a solid case, and convict him? This military tribunal BS smacks of the third world.

The problem with cesspools is that there are so many of them, and the temptation to try to drain them all is so strong. You can try all you want, but you'll just end up covered in filth.

Mmmmm, pithy!

Mike, in my opinion the case for libervading Afghanistan was much, much more compelling than that for Iraq. In September '01 all that was clear was that al Qaeda had planned the attacks, that they were currently being housed and supported by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, and that swift action was called for. Fair enough. Ass-whupping and libervasion to follow. And, despite what I have said in the past about the US's role in muddling the situation in Afghanistan, I'm willing to count many things as total improvements there. Life is better. That being said, the libervasion of, and the improvement of life in, Afghanistan are two separate issues. The improvements are merely welcome side-effects to the real mission of crippling al Qaeda and their backers.

The same applies to Iraq. The difference is that, in the case of Iraq, the stated reasons for needing to invade at the moment have not, in my opinion, proven compelling.

Buckethead, I disagree with you on three fronts. First, you wrote in response to Windy City Mike, "Is it impossible for you to imagine that there might be good in this, and that the effect on the Iraqi people is net positive?" That's not the point. Of course there is good in this! But the effect on the Iraqi people is not the question at hand. The question is, was the President being straight up about the threat that the Hussein regime's Weapons of Mass Destruction posed to the US and other nations, and was he being straight up about Iraq's deep and abiding connections to Islamic terrorism? As I've said before, the net postive effect on the Iraqi people is a fabulous boon, but diplomatically, and for the purposes of whether Bush's case to the world was sizzle or steak, it doesn't enter into the question, for us or Bush. In his State of the Union address, the President devoted two paragraphs to Hussein's human rights violations. He devoted sixteen-- about 1,200 words-- to Weapons of Mass Destruction.

On that matter, you write, "But remember, this is not a court of law. We simply do not have to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that these nations are threats. So, the fact that we haven't found (yet) ironclad evidence of WMD is not that significant." I disagree totally. The Weapons of Mass Destruction were the main reason that Dubya offered to the American people and the world in the SOTU. Bush was careful to frame his argument in the context of Hussein's noncompliance with the UN, but also expressed certainty that Hussein was intending to use his WMD's shortly. His closing statement was "We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."

Fine. We led the coalition. Now where the hell are the 30,000 warheads, 25,000 liters of Anthrax, and the 38,000 liters of Botulin toxin? And why did he cite the "significant quantities of uranium from Africa," knowing as we now do that the intelligence behind it was shaky? I find it disturbing that the President may have overstated his intelligence for the sake of a Grand Middle East Plan (as you posit), and horrifying that absolutely none of the material we went into Iraq to find has been located. 25,000 liters of Anthrax is pretty damn significant, whether diplomatically or otherwise.

Furthermore, our failure so far to find them has concrete results-- for example, India's decision not to send troops to Iraq to relieve the 3rd Infantry, currently in their 10th month of continuous deployment. India will send troops only under an "explicit UN mandate." Oooh-- burn!! That's not to mention the heat that Tony Blair continues to take for his bold decision to back the US. When you say that international opinion simply doesn't matter, you are simply dead wrong. We needn't be slaves to it, but it bears remembering that those once bitten bite back.

Buckethead, you also wrote: "We were attacked, and we are taking steps to assure that it does not happen again. If, in the process, we violate some nations' soveriegnty, so be it. If, in the process, we sledgehammer some fascist regimes and liberate their people, great. Eliminating international terrorism is doing a favor for the world. Like eliminating the international slave trade was when Britain did that in the nineteenth century." What are we, the Incredible Hulk? "Hulk smash! Napster bad!" Like the Onion put it, you are limiting our choices to two: blind rage, or measured, focused rage. Are these really our only choices? Besides, does defining our mission in this way excuse us from attending to the complexities of the situations we create? In the past, you have conceded that "with great power, comes great responsibility," adhering to the Spider-Man thesis of American foreign policy. Why ignore that now?

The justifications that the administration offered for going to war with Iraq were smoke. Here's an organized crime analogy. Think of the United States as a crime family. Hussein was a Capo working for the family who got out of line and refused to do things the way the boss, IE the first Boss Bush, dictated. Therefore, more eager underbosses, street bosses, and the consilgiare, not so much loyal to the boss as they were to a previous boss (IE Reagan) wanted Hussein whacked. When the first Boss Bush attacked Hussein's crew, Boss Bush 1 employed some restraint and just cut down his crew. But Bush left Hussein alive, and even letting him earn at subsistence level provided he kicked more upstairs.

When leadership passed to Bush's son, the underbosses and consilgiare remained in power. Pressured by attacks from rival families, the underbosses, etc. who wanted Hussein whacked before saw an opportunity to clean their own house and try to whack Hussein for good. Instead, they stepped on their dick, the other heads of the five families lined up against them, and they succeeded only in purging more of Hussein's crew. But Hussein went on the lam when the U.S. decided to go to the mattresses, and they can't find Hussein to whack him. Not to mention they can't even find the head of the rival family who started all this shit in the fist place, and he remains unwhacked as well. It's a good thing the U.S. isn't really an organized crime family, or they'd be out of business quickly.

While I'm on the subject, something else that's been annoying me lately deals with the pronounciation of Iraq. Many people, including the current boss of the U.S., pronounce it "EYE-rack." It is in fact "Ear-ACK," dumbasses.

In an interesting tidbit in the UK Independent, a political scientist in Ramallah was assaulted, and his office trashed, by a mob of 100 refugees when word when out that he was about to publish the results of a recent poll his organization conducted.

Why were the Palestinians so exercised? The rioters were delivering, "a message for everyone not to tamper with our rights." This, because the poll demonstrated that only a small fraction of actual Palestinians actually wanted to return to Israel. Khalil Shikaki's survey showed that five times as many refugees would prefer to settle permanently in a Palestinian state than return to their old homes in what is now Israel.

The poll, conducted among 4,500 refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan, was the first to ask where they would want to live if Israel recognized a right of return. Only 10 per cent of the refugees chose Israel, even if they were allowed to live there with Palestinian citizenship; 54 per cent opted for the Palestinian state; 17 per cent for Jordan or Lebanon, and 2 per cent for other countries, and 2 per cent didn't know.

Interestingly, 13 per cent rejected all these options, preferring to wait for the destruction of Israel.

In a related news item, the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad warned yesterday they would end a truce announced last month if the Palestinian Authority continued to try to disarm them. I guess they're serious about the roadmap to peace.

Our justification for invading Iraq was not centered on the certainty that, after we invade, we would find all the evidence we wanted. This is not analogous to law enforcement, or a "fishing" warrant. We had intelligence estimates, we had a history in Iraq of WMD use and manufacture (ask the Kurds!) and an assessment of our risk. You make risk assessments based on capabilities, not intentions. Iraq had the capability to develop WMD, this is incontrovertible. (And he had shown willingness to use them - bonus insight into intentions.)

In the wake of 9/11, our tolerance for risk, well, plummeted. The risk of having a chemical or nuclear attack on the United States is intolerable. Look how damage was done with three airliners. Al Qaeda operated with state support - Afghanistan certainly, Saudi Arabia and Iraq likely, Syria and Iran possibly. But remember, this is not a court of law. We simply do not have to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that these nations are threats. So, the fact that we haven't found (yet) ironclad evidence of WMD is not that significant. Saddam is gone (though sadly not to his eternal reward) and if we can be even moderately succesful in creating a decent soceity in Iraq, we have gone a long way toward winning the war on terror.

I've mentioned before that right after 9/11, Bush did not declare war on Al Qaeda. He declared war on Terrorism. This is different. Iraq is unquestionably a state supporter of terrorism. (And so is Iran, and Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and Libya...) I believe that Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz and their teams of pointed headed strategic planners have come up with a plan to transform the Middle East. Bush has signed off, Powell perhaps with reservations, but it follows the general outlines of take out the low hanging fruit of Iraq, and then use that as a lever to destabilize the middle east. Owning (for the moment) Iraq gives us a tremendous strategic advantage. We can use it to influence neighboring states that support terrorists that attack the US.

At the time, I felt that going to the UN and going off on WMD was a mistake. The UN is a cesspool, and world opinion is irelevant when it is being generated by cynical european governments, third world dictators and pathetic leftist protestors. We were attacked, and we are taking steps to assure that it does not happen again. If, in the process, we violate some nations' soveriegnty, so be it. If, in the process, we sledgehammer some fascist regimes and liberate their people, great. Eliminating international terrorism is doing a favor for the world. Like eliminating the international slave trade was when Britain did that in the nineteenth century.

I think that most of our diplomacy for the last couple years, and for the near future is purely tactical. We have allied with the military government of Pakistan. We continue to profess our love for the Saudis. We talked to the UN (though not so much anymore.) We have extended our ties with Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe. Those who help us now will get some consideration. Those who hinder us are on our list. But relationships, even long standing ones, will not prevent us from pursuing the war on terror.

I don't know much about North Korea as a place (after all, how much can one really know about a nation that has sealed itself off from the rest of the world?), but the lead article in this week's Boston Phoenix comes to the opposite conclusion as Buckethead's citation below. According to this piece, North Korea is an Orwellian nightmare in which all ills-- poverty, fear, etc.-- are all attributed to the USA. Result: a nation of fanatical America-hating militarists, as if we needed another one of those. . . . Read on!

Air-raid drills are a fact of life in Pyongyang, along with scheduled blackouts that plunge this city of two million into an eerie darkness through which even the trams ghost along without lights. This may be the most militarized nation on earth, but people here believe the nuclear threat comes from the outside. "The Americans were the first to threaten a pre-emptive nuclear strike," says my guide, O Jin Myong, as he leads me through the cavernous subway passages decorated with enormous glass chandeliers, Romanesque arches, and huge murals extolling the country's founder, Kim Il Sung. The platforms, carved more than 100 yards underground, will serve as shelters in an attack, Mr. O tells me. "Here the American bombs can't get us."

At first, the talk of nuclear bombs and first strikes sounds premature, even paranoid. But during my weeklong visit to the world's most isolated nation last February, I hear this mantra so many times that it takes on a logic of its own. "Tell the world we are not afraid of nuclear weapons," says an elderly female guide, Ri Ok Hi, after finishing up a tour of a monument to the Workers Party. "We will fight to the death for our leader."

As one of the first Western journalists allowed in since North Korea's latest nuclear crisis with the United States began last fall, I experience firsthand the paranoia that marks everyday life for North Koreans. For seven days, I am watched, followed, and fed propaganda. From doctors to parsons, everyone I am introduced to - and I have no choice about whom I meet - parrots the same line: hatred of the Americans, matched only by their love of the "Great Leader," Kim Jong Il. . . .

At the Grand People's Study House, North Korea's national library, two huge reading rooms are dedicated to the works of Kim Jong Il, including treatises on filmmaking, journalism, architecture, agriculture, and, of course, military strategy. Some are so well thumbed that the tattered pages look ready to crumble. The young librarian, Hwang Sun Ryol, insists that her country's leader wrote 1500 books during his university days. When I doubt that anyone could write a book a day for five years, she does not hesitate: "He is the most outstanding theoretician. No one can match his creativity and enthusiasm." (I thank her and, in the spirit of cultural exchange, donate an anthology of George Orwell's essays and a video of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)

Certainly, some of this overwhelming Kim-love can be chalked up to lip service, but how much? In a nation where radios must be left on at all times, where air-raid drills are a daily occurrence, and managed starvation-- blamed on America-- is a way of life, one wonders just how Orwellian a place can possibly be.

Also, Buckethead, I would like to point out that the North Korean emigre you cite recommended that we preemptively nuke another nation. Your arguments a few months ago about nuclear fears being overblown notwithstanding, is that man on effing crack?

While we have come to expect media doommongering as the default view of any world situation, things are not always so bad as they seem. While conditions are not up to western standards in Afghanistan (nor have they been any time recently), according to actual Afghanis, things are getting better since the removal of the Taliban.

CalPundit writes about another failed test of missile defense. Money quote, with which I predictably agree:

I'm not philosophically opposed to missile defense, but I am opposed to sinking money endlessly into a program that never seems to achieve anything. Conservatives rightly castigate social programs that don't produce results, so why are they willing to put up with it here?

Furthermore, is this assertion from the same post true?

(Oh, and don't forget that Bush has decided that missile defense will be deployed in October 2004 regardless of whether it works or not. October 2004. Does that date sound at all suspicious to anyone?)

[moreover] A quick Nexis search shows me that Bush publicly vowed in December 2002 to have Missile Defense ready for October 1, 2004.

Or maybe just a highly placed aide... whichever... go read his thoughts on Iran and Newcular weaponry.

If the evidence was so ironclad, so bulletproof, why haven't our armies found any evidence of Weapons of Mass Desctruction in Iraq? Wasn't that the President's stated goal for going to war-- to forestall a threat that was at any moment forty-five minutes away from dumping nerve gas on us or our allies? Again, yes, I'm glad Hussein is gone. I'm elated that his human rights abuses can now be set to rights. But those are collateral benefits of an invasion that supposedly defused a concrete and measurable threat to the US and its citizens.

So where is this ironclad proof? Most Americans don't care--- hell, most Americans think we've found WMD's already, that it was France we invaded, and that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11/01 attacks. But I care, because it's the difference between a President doing the the tough thing for right reasons and a President cynically manipulating public opinion for gain. Like Clinton did. I will allow that, now that the dust has settled, it's possible that the administration finds that some of its intelligence is less useful than they thought. Fine. The emperor is pantsless. But if that is the case, can someone please say so? There's nothing sadder than a man trying to act dignified while not wearing any pants.*

*Trust me-- I should know