Bush re-election effort could hinge on the economy and Iraq

Wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and to let you know my wife gave me a copy of Rich Lowry's book for Christmas...she says she saw me rearranging the book display at our local Waldenbooks - replacing all of the Franken tomes with Legacy. She then thought, correctly, that I should have one in my collection.

Ever since I read the news...that Howard Dean is going to sell himself south of the Mason-Dixon line as a "committed Christian," I have been bothered by an appalling thing I heard Dean say...one morning when, as it happened, I was on my way to Mass. He was chattering away about being "spiritual, really," and then said -- drumroll, please -- "I consider myself a Christian in the best sense of the word."

In the BEST sense of the word! Unlike what other sense, Howard? Now he's recasting himself, and it's sickening. He was sneering at Christianity for the with-it crowd, and I would love for every Christian voter -- the very people who will understand exactly how sneering the comment is, unlike, say, TV news hosts -- to hear it.

Rival weighs Galardi lawsuit Sapphire owner studying civil case in San DiegoBy ADRIENNE PACKER REVIEW-JOURNAL

The owner of the Sapphire topless club is considering filing a lawsuit against Michael Galardi, claiming the former Jaguars owner gained an unfair business advantage by bribing elected officials.

Pete Eliades, who purchased the Sporting House fitness center and turned it into Sapphire, is fashioning his lawsuit after similar legal action taken by a San Diego club that competed against Cheetahs, a Galardi-owned club in that city.

New Hampshire's Concord Monitor reported that Dean said he would not state his preference on a punishment for bin Laden before the al Qaeda leader was captured and put before a jury.

"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said in the interview. "I will have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."

BURLINGTON -- "I share the outrage of all Americans. Osama bin Laden has admitted that he is responsible for killing 3,000 Americans as well as scores of men, women and children around the world. This is the exactly the kind of case that the death penalty is meant for.

"When we capture Osama bin Laden, he will be brought to justice and treated in the same manner that President Bush is recommending for Saddam Hussein."

From a reader:

Jonah:

A slight correction to that email you received from whomever. It's not that we didn't kill "all" of the Jews here, it's that we didn't kill "any" of the Jews here. That's the beauty of the U.S.

From a reader:

Regarding your email friend - when some European says something about how many Jews live in America, I always take the time to remind them that the reason why is that we didn't kill all of ours.

A Frenchman writes:

France

Dear Mr. Jonah Goldberg,

I read with high interest your article which i kept :
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg012403.asp

I am now "laughing my ass off" !
Now your good "American-Zionists" friends are in Irak, what have they found ?
Nothing, except "Weapons of Mass Deception" and rotten tanks !

Even Saddam Hussein was not captured by the American army, but he was sold for a couple of million dollars reward.
Like the Jessica Lynch affair, this is only a very good "Hollywood show".

As Sharon said : "We control America and the Americans know it" !
I should add my personal one :
"America is the first jewish state and the Europeans know it !"
(6 millions jews in America and only less than 5 millions in Israel !)

You should be much wiser, before writing another article, to really know hat you are talking about and please don't read Wolfowitz, Perle, or whatever neocons articles appearing in the AIPAC or the JINSA.

By the way, let me give you a "scoop" :
Richard Perle, the "consigliere" of the "Kasher Nostra" godfather (Wolfowitz) owns a beautiful house, not far from mine... in the southern part of this country you and he are criticizing (yes, France!) where he comes three/four times a year to get back to civilization.
But don't tell him, i should not like to have him as my guest.

Herod was not the first aspiring totalitarian tyrant, and his ilk are with us still. And beside the brutal tyrants who oppress religion outright, there are those in the West who speak the language of tolerance but whose worship of the secular state necessarily turns against religion.

Into the world of Herod was Jesus Christ born. And in our world today, the cry of the baby of Bethlehem is still heard.

I'm not buying, but I'll get the crowbar and get to work on Lowry's liquor cabinet.

The glass ceiling is broken, but somehow I doubt this is the end of the complaints:

More U.S. women crack glass ceiling

CHICAGO, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- For the first time since tracking began 20 years ago, U.S. women outnumber men in higher paying, white collar managerial and professional occupations.

The gap will continue because of a self-perpetuating cycle of workplace gains for women, according to international outplacment firm Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas.....

This is interesting, but I kind of find hard to believe. From a reader:

The government has to treat every civilian who died in the Indo-China theater of operations exactly the same, otherwise we will positively identify to enemy intelligence services exactly who our agents were. Even after 30 years, it could be harmful for us to freely confirm or deny the accuracy of the information that our enemies have learned about our intelligence services.

From a reader:

So let me get this straight...according to Clark, Clinton is responsible for an event (Libya) that happens 3 years into the Bush presidency, since he laid the groundwork for it throughout *his* 8 year presidency...BUT he is *not* responsible for an event (9/11) that happens 8 months into the Bush presidency, although he laid the groundwork for it throughout his 8 year presidency.

How did this bozo become a Rhodes Scholar?

First, what the hell are you doing here? I thought I was going to be all alone here for a while. I had my feet up on the desk and I was going to get drunk and Xerox body parts later.

Second, yes, those are excellent points. And, I did say, I raced through the piece earlier. I will reread tonight and get back to you on the major stuff tomorrow.

I'm less taken than you, Jonah, with Adam Wolfson's Public Interest essay. There is a lot of intelligence and learning in it, as one would expect. In totality, however, it is an expression of the kind of triumphalism that is perhaps the worst feature of neoconservatism. In conclusion, he writes, "Conservatism’s other strands are strangely anti-democratic. Traditionalists"--he is speaking of Russell Kirk and his heirs, not the modern religious-conservative movement--"pine for aristocracy; libertarians look to limited government by technocracy; while paleoconservatives dream vaguely of postmodern utopias. Only neoconservatism among contemporary conservative modes of thought has made its peace with American democracy, and so long as it flourishes, so will neoconservatism." I am not at all convinced that these modes of thought are the only, or even the chief, ones available to contemporary conservatives--particularly when these modes of thought are presented on Wolfson's terms.

These categories lead Wolfson to one serious error about our recent political history: the description of the 1994 "Republican revolution" as a triumph for libertarianism. There was a libertarian element to the victory. But that election was famously won, particularly in the South, on "God, gays, and guns"--and libertarians, particularly as Wolfson defines them, were not with the Republicans on two-thirds of that platform. During the 1994 election, the Republican message was really a kind of watered-down fusionism: big government was a threat not merely to economic efficiency (as Wolfson describes, or really parodies, the libertarian critique) but to "values." The moment the Republicans acted as though the election were a victory for libertarian economics, when they decided to take on Medicare, was the moment of their undoing.

Here again is another bit of deck-stacking: "Anyone of us can’t help but have a gut feeling about modern American life--its possibilities and limits, whether it is humane and decent or alienating and corrupting. Those of us who regret much of modern American life and find solace in old, inherited ways will cling to traditionalism. Others, who celebrate the new freedoms and new technologies, will turn to libertarianism. As for those who see in modernity admirable principles but also worrisome tendencies, their persuasion will be neoconservatism."

Notice, first, that the entire left half of the political spectrum has been chopped off. Second, that anyone with a nuanced take on modern American life--indeed, anyone with the only take on American life that any intelligent person could possibly hold--is defined as a neoconservative. If that really were the case, then I suppose it would be the only outlook that could be compatible with democratic politics. But I'm not buying.

From a reader:

I must have missed this in my once-a-millennium reading of the Boston Socialist, er, "Globe", but apparently it's clever and newsworthy to devote space in a Sunday issue to articles claiming North Korea is a socialist paradise, and that George Bush *caused* the NorKs to start a nuclear weapons program by lumping them into the Axis of Evil, because, "All we have to go on is what Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly said the North Koreans told him, and the North Korean official statements that came out later," according to "historian" Bruce Cumings.

See, the NorKs had created this chummy self-sufficient kibbutz-like paradise where everything was going swimmingly until big, bad Ronald Reagan made the Soviet Union collapse and withdraw all of its [apparently-unneeded] aid. At least Cummings believes it's "inexcusable that North Korea... allowed at least half a million of its citizens to starve to death." Too bad he has no idea *why* the government would let that happen.

Shameful, but I thought someone should read this filth ....

From a reader:

Since you're all alone in the Corner today... do it! Pull the trigger! Start talking about Star Trek: this is your big chance! Or show how Howard Dean is like Denethor from the Lord of the Rings! All this fun you could be having and instead we're getting speculation about whether Howard Dean's brother was engaged in an early crunchy-con vacation gone awry or not. Sheesh...

From a reader:

Dear Jonah:

I knew Charlie Dean and Howard Dean well in our early teenage years, though not as well during the college years. It is extremely unlikely that Charlie had any connection to the CIA. I think he was just having fun, pursuing some adventures after completing college, the same as Howard did (and with Howard’s encouragement). It is true that many Wasps went into the CIA, but that was from the generation that graduated from college before 1965 or thereabouts. (Howard’s book understates his background somewhat, though even he realizes it is hard to turn Park Avenue and East Hampton into a log cabin.) By 1972, Charlie’s year of graduation, the mood was entirely different and very few upper crust types went into the CIA. Many more went on journeys of discovery, or whatever they were called back then. Charlie was a popular guy (much more outgoing than Howard), a McGovern worker, University of North Carolina, preppie….no chance he went into the CIA from that background. During that time, any CIA recruits would have been determined mavericks, while Charlie was exactly the opposite, with a great many friends. Charlie was also sunny and optimistic, and there is some chance that these great qualities caused him to underestimate the dangers of the Mekong River.

However, I am not going to criticize Howard for the controversy this week about listing Charlie as a possible POW. Charlie’s death was a terrible tragedy, and I know it had a huge impact on Howard. I saw Howard a few months after Charlie disappeared. Any of us might wish that our brother died on a mission with some purpose, rather than just an ill-advised adventure, even if we know (as Howard himself has said many times) that the CIA theory is wrong. This theory perhaps lurks in Howard’s heart, and justifiably so, even though he knows in his head that it must be wrong. Go easy on Howard about anything involving Charlie. Howard loved him a lot and perhaps fears that he gave Charlie some bad advice, directly or indirectly, about seeing the world. To this day, the emotions must make it difficult for him to think or speak clearly about Charlie.

Sincerely,

An NRO reader in California

Since I'm all alone here, from another reader:

I do not know why Dean's brother was there. I have no insight. I have heard he was a civilian working for the US government, I have heard he was a tourist. Frankly, until the body was found, I did not even know Dean had a missing brother.

While I doubt he was a CIA agent, the CIA did take some people with backgrounds you would not expect. Read Robert Baer's biography "See No Evil." He was a CIA field agent who was hired in the mid-1970s. His mother was a relatively well off hippy (daddy supported her). She owned a left-wing book store in California. She also went on a long term trip through Eastern Europe.

When he applied for the CIA, he doubted his background would pass muster but it did. He noted that in class he had a real mixture of people. If I recall correctly, one of his classmates was a naval officer thrown out of the navy for opposing the Vietnam War.

The CIA wanted funky people. As he pout it, the CIA was willing to overlook the past and give people another chance.

From a reader:

I know you're tired of my e-mails, but I thought I'd add to the Charles Dean theory. Dean firmly believes his brother was NOT an agent, even though some of his family members believe Charles Dean was a member of the CIA. As for me, I find it odd that he would take a river rafting expedition in the middle of a war zone with an aussie photographer, who was killed with Charles Dean. Whether he was a CIA agent, possibly a communist sympathizer, or even a tourist, nobody knows. There is as much evidence that he was a sympathizer as there is evidence that he was a CIA agent. He worked for McGovern and was staunchly anti-war. Could that have been cover? I guess so. But could he have had a great stoner moment (pure speculation) and decided to help those Laotians realize their socialist utopia? That's possible too. Tragically, he turned out to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and lost his life.

Here's the third reader review from the top of Atlas Shrugged at Amazon:

Reviewer: A reader from Richmond, VA United States

Go ahead, capitalists, read this awful book and enjoy its laughable message that you are somehow virtuous. Enjoy this fantasy as long as you can because justice will soon be served to you. Howard Dean will become president and you will then pay for your rape of the environment, exploitation of workers and selfish pursuits. No more slaps on the wrists. Jail time will be the norm, as it should be! There's no place you'll be able to hide, and no one will be able to save you. Your reign of darkness will come to an end. Mark my word!

From a reader:

Here's my Krugman analogy:

Krugman's the gambler who keeps doubling down on his bet in the hopes that after losing so many times in a row, he'll be able to recoup his losses in a single hand. With every new article, Krugman seems to spout some new conspiracy theory or idiotic lefty-cliché that he hopes will stick. He's hoping that one of his columns will be able to make up for all of the idiotic columns over the past two years. His fans are gambling enablers who continue to feed his addiction by writing him and encouraging him to continue to gamble with his columns.

The economy is growing better than at any time in 20 years. So:
click here.

I think I've figured it out. Paul Krugman is the media equivalent of John McCain. McCain was a reasonable, decent conservative who was implicated in a money-scandal. In response, he went batty about campaign-finance-reform. I think he's still a decent guy in other ways. But when it comes to CFR he lost the ability to think seriously. He claimed that everyone was corrupt even though he could not name anyone in particular who was corrupt.

Something similar is going on with Krugman. He used to write some pretty reasonable stuff in the mid-1990s. He got paid boatloads for speeches, to sit on boards etc. He was up to his beard in academic-media-business incestuousness. Then he got his NYT column and he was forced to sever all such relationships. This freed him up to denounce everyone else even while claiming his pwn purity, even when it was revealed that he'd taken big dollars from Enron himself. Rightly exposed as a hypocrite -- and quite often a hack -- he did what is natural to most humans. He dug deeper into denial. He became more strident. More angry. he protested too much over and over again to prove he was the exception to the very rule he has asserted but not proved. He probably also became addicted to his fan mail (and convinced himself is biggest fans are wise and perceptive), a real danger in the internet age.

Anyway, when I read him now iI see him as a psychological and political phenomena, not as a serious person who thinks about things in a serious way. I have no doubt his fans think the same thing about me and many of my NR colleagues. That's fine. My only complaint is that I wish we, as conservative cronies of corporate America, could get paid a fraction of what this shining paladin of the proletariat makes (working for the War Room of corporate media, I might add).

Bernard Goldberg (no relation, except in the whole Zionist-cabal-ruling-the-world-sense) gives an interview to Townhall:

Townhall: In a recent article on National Review, Jonah Goldberg talks about how conservatives are crowing victory over the Reagan movie. He argues instead that conservatives aren't winning and in heartbeat they'd be willing to trade Fox for ABC...

Goldberg: I agree with him totally.

Any time I hear liberals say, "Conservatives have Fox and the Washington Times and talk radio," I say, "You know what? If you want Fox and you give conservatives ABC, NBC and CBS, and you want the Washington Times and give conservatives the New York Times, they'll take that switch in a heartbeat."

Because while conservatives have clout in the world of opinion, liberals also have clout in the world of opinion. They have the editorial pages of almost all the big-city newspapers and the columnists in almost all the big-city newspapers are liberal.

But they also dominate the general culture. They dominate Hollywood. They dominate sitcoms. Comedians are liberal. People in the music world are liberal. Who are we kidding here?

They dominate the bigger culture, not just the news culture. So, any time liberals want to swap with conservatives, my guess is that my conservative friends would say, "Let's do it, where do I sign?"

In case you are beside yourself, hoping for some brilliant gift suggestion for the last few people on your lists, here are a few ideas from some familiar faces:

JOHN DERBYSHIRE
History. Empire by Niall Ferguson. The rehabilitation of the British Empire goes on. Nice to see people catching up with me. And my great discovery this year was the beautiful state of Alabama. This was followed by the further discovery of two very fine histories dealing with that state: Wayne Flynt’s Poor but Proud--Alabama’s Poor Whites, and Alabama--The History of a Deep South State, by William Warren Rogers, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and that same Wayne Flynt. Excellent history in both books: plenty of supporting facts and statistics imbedded in good strong narratives, enlivened with quotations and anecdotes.

Travel. The grand tradition of travel writing in English is alive and well in Stephen J. Bodio’s Eagle Dreams, a book about the Kazakh eagle-hunters of western Mongolia. These are not people who hunt eagles, but people who hunt with eagles--a sort of ultimate falconry. Fascinating, brilliant, often moving, and sometimes very funny--as I said, this book is firmly in the great travel-writing tradition of Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Eric Newby and Paul Theroux.

And speaking of that tradition, the cover of the December 2003 Literary Review features a drawing of Norman Lewis, the fine English travel writer of the 1940s and 1950s who died in July at the age of 95. Lewis’s 1951 book A Dragon Apparent, about his travels in what was then French Indo-China, is a real classic, an ideal introduction for anyone who wants to know about that misty, jungly, strangely cruel part of the world.

Math and science. I very much liked Julian Havil’s book Gamma--Exploring Euler’s Constant, notwithstanding the fact that Julian disappeared mysteriously in the middle of a lunch date I was having with him in Manhattan. I hope he found his way back to England all right. Euler’s constant is one of those numbers, like pi and e, that crop up all over the place in math. Its value is a tad larger than 0.57721566490153286060651. Julian Havil’s book will tell you all about it.

Another book I have enjoyed was Stephen Webb’s Where Is Everybody?, an exploration of the outstanding scientific conundrum of our era, the problem of the Great Silence. (The book came out in 2002; I have only just caught up with it.) According to what we think we know about the origins of, and development of, living things, the universe ought to be teeming with life, some fair proportion of it much more advanced than homo sapiens. So... where are they? How come we can’t detect their radio and TV broadcasts? Or spot any of their star-transforming engineering works? Why haven’t they visited us? Webb surveys all the available speculation about this tremendously important but desperately data-poor subject, and boldly offers his own opinion.

Just one small quibble with both these books, and indeed with most pop-math and pop-science books: What is this thing about putting literary, historical or philosophical quotes at the head of each chapter? Havil and Webb both do it; everybody in this area seems to do it. I have made a brief foray into my own bookshelves in the hope of finding out who started this habit, but it goes back into the mists of time. H.S.M. Coxeter’s Introduction to Geometry (1961) does it; James R. Newman’s multi-volume World of Mathematics (1956) does it; and so on. My sense of the thing is that math and science types feel they have to offer some evidence that they are widely read, that they don’t spend all their time with formulas and test tubes. Could they please find some other way to do this? Write an occasional novel, perhaps? If they want a model for how to write a pop-math book without this irritating embellishment, I have a suggestion for them.

MEGHAN COX GURDON

I urge every NRO reader to buy, give, and pore over Gulag, Anne Applebaum's stunning, gut-wrenching history of the Soviet work camp. NRO readers are probably more likely than most Americans to understand already the hideous nature of the Soviet system, and the special brutalities of the Stalinist era. But Applebaum's meticulous research--she cross-references survivors' memoirs with documents from newly opened archives--and austere writing will take that understanding to a deeper and more bitter level. It is an astonishing and terrible tale, and not to be missed.

On the other end of the Russo-spectrum, may I also recommend George MacDonald Fraser's brilliantly witty Flashman at the Charge, in which the swashbuckling coward, Harry Flashman, leads the Charge of the Light Brigade in one of the funniest scenes of flatulance ever to make it into print.

JOHN J. MILLER
Blood is the Sky, by Steve Hamilton: The fifth and latest in a series of engrossing whodunits set mainly in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This is one of Hamilton’s best.

Bandbox, by Thomas Mallon: True, this novel doesn’t officially come out until early January. But Mallon’s other novels are excellent and I try to read most of what he writes. This one is set in 1920s New York and I gather that Calvin Coolidge has a cameo.

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien: Have you heard of it?

Napoleon, by Paul Johnson: An impressive takedown of a horrible little man whose lust for power led to some 6 million deaths.

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, edited by David Stephen Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler: An outstanding resource--not cheap, but unbelievably comprehensive. And who wouldn’t want to own a book with 2,733 pages?

From a reader:

As much as Khaddafi did learn from the “Saddam in the hole” example there is an important angle of this story that is being ignored and its importance can’t be understated. In a word the angle is soccer.

One thing everyone in the world agrees on is that Khaddafi is obsessed with soccer. This fact goes double for his sons, one of whom is on the roster of a major Italian soccer team. Khaddafi owns large shares of a few top European teams and is reported to watch/attend games constantly.

The World Cup for 2010 has been promised to an African country. It will mark the first time the tournament will be played in Africa and getting the World Cup means that the host nation gets an automatic spot in the field of 32 teams. Getting the World Cup means Khaddafi’s son will either play on and or coach the Libya team and it will signal to the world that Libya has arrived. In soccer it is the ultimate stage and as you know soccer is king in about 98% of the world. It is far bigger than getting the Olympic Games.

If Libya is to have a legitimate shot at getting the World Cup it will need the support of a majority of the regional confederations which vote on the location of the World Cup. Over the past several years the regional confederation which includes the US (CONCEFA) has proved a critical swig vote in determining the location of the World Cup. Without US support Libya stands almost no chance of getting the 2010 World Cup because the European confederation has already indicated that they will back South Africa’s bid (this stems from guilt surrounding Germany’s strong arm tactics to pull the 2006 World Cup away from South Africa with some fancy last minute political maneuvers).

The idea of a Libyan bid would have been a non-starter with the US just days ago but after Khaddafi’s statements the idea of a World Cup in Libya looks possible. Khaddafi will continue to make announcements about Libyan disarmament and in the months /years ahead will distance himself from radical Islam. He might be afraid of ending up in a hole but he also wants to be seen as the leader of Africa. Nothing would help that status more than getting the World Cup.

His full statement from Saturday:

Statement of John Kerry on Libya’s Dismantling Weapons of Mass Destruction

December 20, 2003

For Immediate Release

“If the President can put aside his go it alone unilateralism to engage with a longtime enemy like Qaddafi, why are the ideologues in this Administration so hesitant to negotiate with North Korea to end their nuclear weapons programs?”

"Libya's agreement to terminate their weapons of mass destructions program is an important step forward in addressing the great security challenge of our time, proliferation. It is particularly important that it will be done within the international non-proliferation treaty regime and using the IAEA, the bases of international law and multilateral cooperation and verification. After all, if anyone has any illusions about the true character of Qaddafi and the importance of vigilance in holding him to his word, they need only remember the victims of Pan Am 103 and their families who have paid the price for Qaddafi's past brutality.

Ironically, this significant advance represents a complete U-turn in the Bush Administration's overall foreign policy. An Administration that scorns multilateralism and boasts about a rigid doctrine of military preemption has almost in spite of itself demonstrated the enormous potential for improving our national security through diplomacy. If the President can put aside his go it alone unilateralism to engage with a longtime enemy like Qaddafi, why are the ideologues in this Administration so hesitant to negotiate with North Korea to end their nuclear weapons programs? Why not rally the United Nations and NATO to forge a new cooperative effort to combat proliferation around the globe?"

This is like the text version of one of those "What's wrong with this picture?" games. Kerry wants Bush to put aside his "go it alone" unilateralism to negotiate with the North Koreans the way he did with Libya. And the Libya negotiations were good because they were multilateral. Um, okay. But Bush wants to negotiate with the North Koreans multilaterally and Kerry wants him to do it unilaterally. In other words Kerry wants Bush to abandon his unilateral approach to multilateral negotiations in order to embrace a multilateral approach to unilater negotiations. Follow that? Probably not. And neither will voters.

I was in Cambridge, Mass., this weekend for my wife's family Christmas party. Yes, there are still people in Cambridge who celebrate Christmas. That being said, the anti-Bush sentiments are as thick as the Christmas shoppers on Mass. Ave.

I was browsing in the Harvard Coop, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a stack of Legacys.

I can not report how they were selling, there in the heart of darkness. I can report that they were wedged between "Howard Dean In This Own Words" and "Making Dough: The 12 Secret Ingredients of Krispy Kreme's Sweet Success." What conclusion should be drawn from such marketplace positioning, I can not say.

Andrew Sullivan has found a nice encapsulating quote from Clare Short, a former Blair minister, and now a "bitter old lefty" in Andrrew's words:

"Any pretence that this means that the tactics of their so-called war on terror are succeeding is sadly false. Obviously the news about Gadaffi is welcome, but it has been a long process, and any suggestion that events in Libya are linked to the war in Iraq is unfounded. The co-ordination of the Blair-Bush press conferences claiming a big success in the war on terror has a pathetic tone that reflects Blair's desperation and the two men's continuing belief that they can prosecute their war with half-truths and deceptions."

Andrew does a nice job smacking this idiocy. But he -- as well as all of the establishment media as far as I can tell -- has missed the most money quote refuting this sort of nonsense and denial. Gadaffi apparently told Sylvio Berlusconi:

"I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."

That sums it up quite nicely, no?

I'm getting increasingly tired of the locution that Saddam "deserves" a fair trial. Yes, yes, he should get a fair trial and then a fair execution. But he deserves nothing, nada, bupkis. I don't want to get into all of that procedural due process stuff, so let me just say that if we had a machine which could prove with 100% percent certainty that a suspect committed the crime he was accused of, there would be no reason to have trials in this country at all (except, perhaps, as a means of educating the public). We wouldn't need evidence, Miranda warnings, none of it. Instead, we'd simply plug the guy in, read his brain, and go straight to sentencing. Our legal rights are not and should not be conceived as protections for guilty people. They are necessary safeguards against falsely convicting the innocent. It is never unfair to the guilty if they are convicted without proper due process. The danger is that the system will grow accustomed to such slackness and might falsely convict the innocent. In that sense, circumventing due process is unfair to the rest of us.

Saddam is guilty of crimes too numerous to catalog let alone charge him with. The only thing he deserves is a hot poker. In the eyes of man, God (I presume), and history he deserves nothing but the punishment. In other words, the argument shouldn't be over what we "owe" Saddam. The argument is over what good can we squeeze out of this meat prop -- for the Iraqi people, America and the world. If it helps establish an indpendent judiciary, the rule of law, increased stability in Iraq to give this guy a team of Johnny Cochrans, so be it. But let's not let the tail wag the dog here. He doesn't "deserve" a fair trial. He doesn't deserve a trial at all. He deserves a painful death.

I know this isn't a new insight, but can anyone doubt that Al Gore simply has terrible luck, terrible instincts and terrible prospects? Gore endorses Dean and burnishes both of their images only to be smacked on the left cheek with the wet flounder of Saddam's capture, then on the right cheek with the news that Libya is the latest strategic domino to fall. Gore predicated his endorsement on Dean on the Vermont doctor's vision in understanding that Iraq is a quagmire and nation-building is folly there (despite the fact that Gore endorsed Japan and Germany as the models for nation-building during the 2000 race). All of a sudden, Americans support the effort in Iraq by a margin of 2-1 and even the Washington Post is denouncing Dean's foreign policy as out of the mainstream.

I still think Dean's the guy to bet on for the nomination, but since Gore picked "Primary Howard" -- i.e. angry, lefty, Howard -- rather than General Election Howard, Gore presumably will be less than psyched when Dean moves back to the center, leaving Gore alone with his smattering of fans and followers, including of course his son, who will probably keep getting his tie caught in the mimeograph machine.