Just One Minute

Posted 7/31/2003 06:21:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Christopher Shays On The War In Iraq

Perhaps you could care less, but he is my Congressman, and also Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, so here we go, only a bit of commentary, we don't "Fisk" our Congressman:

July 25, 2003

Dear [constituents];

Thank you for your letter of January 18 expressing opposition to the use of force against Iraq, as well as your support for the creation of a Palestinian state. I appreciate you taking the time to share your views with me as well as your patience in awaiting my reply. I supported President Bush's decision to lead a coalition of nations to disarm Iraq.

The need to disarm Iraq had lingered not just for four months, but for 12 long years. This crisis needed to be resolved now - not two, three, or four years from now.

That is an open question, if that debate I hear roaring means anything.

...Regrettably, the world community remained divided, but the consequences of allowing Saddam Hussein to continue developing his weapons of mass destruction were just too great.

Based on all we have learned during four years of hearings by the Subcommittee on National Security, which I chair, the following cannot be disputed: Saddam Hussein had a robust chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program before the Gulf War; he had a robust chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program after the war; and he ejected United Nations inspectors just when they had begun to succeed in dismantling his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program by going after the roots - the engineers and scientists who sustain the program.

Please don't start - we took the inspectors out because Saddam would not let them do their job and we wanted to bomb him. Fine, he didn't "eject" them. Whatever.

No credible source, public or classified, has been able to prove Saddam Hussein stopped pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and U.N. weapons inspectors determined that Iraq had not disarmed.

Hmm, putting the burden of proof on the other side! As a debating ploy, I like it. But if we are going into Iraq on "probable cause", I do not find the news that no one has proven the probability to be zero wholly reassuring.

...Having learned he cannot dominate his region through conventional combat, Hussein was more determined than ever to deploy chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. His past behavior and his support of terrorist groups also meant he was likely to deploy these weapons using surrogates.

We note that Al-qaeda is not the only significant "terrorist groups".

...Some have argued that until Iraq posed an "imminent threat to the United States and until Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and threatened to use them, the United States should have been content to contain and deter an Iraqi regime amassing weapons of mass death. I could not disagree more.

I am sure he is correct that some have argued that. Whether he is rebutting the best alternative to war, or one of the weaker alternatives, is not clear to me. Is there a consensus Plan B somewhere? (NO, I'm serious, why do you assume I am being snarky just because I so often am?)

...As a free and open society, we are vulnerable to catastrophic attacks by those who see no moral or political "red line to constrain them. Sept. 11, 2001 was a wake-up call from hell. On that day, quaint Cold War doctrines justifying action only against clear and present dangers died with the 3,000 innocent men, women and children in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

Containment, deterrence and mutually assured destruction no longer assure our national security. Our policy must be proactive and preemptive. The mere existence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of despots, tyrants and terrorists constitutes an imminent threat to our security. That threat must be addressed before it manifests itself in a smallpox epidemic or a mushroom cloud.

Hmm. "Existence"? Earlier, it was an inability to prove he had disarmed. And has he been smoking mushrooms with the President?

I don't take these times or the use of force lightly. But I am convinced this action is long overdue and believe that in time the rightness of this action will be evident to those who may not see it today.

[He continued on the subject of a Palestinian state].

End.

Well.

Posted 7/31/2003 05:11:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Weirder And Weirder

The Kobe Bryant Show delivers a new chapter:

When ‘No’ Means ‘No’

NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and his alleged rape victim had some intimate contact, sources told ABCNEWS, but prosecutors will argue that their intercourse was not consensual.

Oh, please. I was actually discussing this case last week with two women that could probably pass in many circles as feminists - mid-forties, successful professionals, married, kids, and ardent, table-pounding lefties (I bring that out in some people, do you believe it?).

So there we were, what do you think about this Kobe Bryant mess, and they both go off on the accuser - where is the accountability, when are women expected to take responsibility for their own decisons? Hmm, a new tack for liberated women.

Uhh, ladies, I am confused, I say. Where might you be on the "What part of "No" don't you understand" question?

Well (I was informed), maybe he didn't understand the part of "no" that came after she went back to his room. Or maybe he didn't understand the part that came after she took off all of his clothes and most of hers. But there ought to be some responsibility on both parties for the choices they make, they explained to me.

Whoa. Well, they aren't lawyers, and if I understand the Colorado statute, consent can be withdrawn at any time, so there.

As lawyers, my friends were useless. As proto-typical jurors, on the other hand, they were quite interesting. Yes, it is the classic "she asked for it" defense, but I have a sneaking suspicion that jurors can make subtle distinctions between a man leaping out from behind some bushes, and this.

More from Slate, and "The Man", who continues to marvel at the monochromatic world in which we live. TalkLeft has lots, natch.

And, we note the plot twist reported by ABC:

...She gave him a tour of the facility's hotel and spa.

The sources say the tour ended at Bryant's room, where he allegedly invited her to come inside and she accepted. It had been reported earlier that the woman returned to the front desk after the tour, but went to Bryant's room after he had called the desk asking for her.

UPDATE: End the madness. Now, ABC News reports that one of the deputies investigating this case was on the wrong side of a racial profiling settlement in 1995 (many more details here). This somewhat undermines the prosecution, one would think. More from the Man Sans Q.

Posted 7/31/2003 03:02:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Moving The Goalposts

Josh Marshall, among others, has spent most of July pretending that the famous "16 Words" from the President's State of the Union Address defined the enitire Administration rationale for the war in Iraq. Now, he notices that in a recent press conference, George Bush is discussing Saddam's weapons programs, and concludes that the President is moving the goalposts.

Let me wave in a rebuttal witness:

The question is not whether there was any reason to believe there was a threat. There was.

I'm sorry, Mr. Marshall, I only cut you off in tribute to Maureen Dowd. I am sure you have more.

The questions were whether that threat was imminent and whether we dealt with it in the best possible way or the stupidest possible way.

Well. I am surprised that there is no middle ground between "best" and "stupidest". Perhaps a Third Way! But I'm glad we all agree there was a threat.

As to what the President said in his State of the Union, I will get back to you. Meanwhile, here is the Congressional Resolution titled "Joint Resolution to Authorize the use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq", from October 2002. I see the phrase "continuing threat" twice, and it clearly refers to Iraqi activites dating back to the 90's; the phrase "imminent threat" does not appear.

Posted 7/31/2003 09:18:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Believe The Rumors!

Well, if you can believe Snopes. As a sidebar to the predictive power of markets and the "Futures on Terror" (see below), lots of folks have mentioned rumors that there was odd stock market activity prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Over to Snopes Urban Legends, in a report from October 2001:

Claim: In the days just prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the stocks of United and American Airlines were shorted by parties unknown.

Status: True.

...In the month prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, highly unusual trading activity involving American and United Airlines stock was noted by market analysts who at the time had no idea what to make of it. Wildly unusual discrepancies in the put and call ratio — 25 to 100 times normal — were observed in stock options of the two airlines. In one case, Bloomberg's Trade Book electronic trading system identified option volume in UAL (parent of United Airlines) on 16 August 2001 that was 36 times higher than usual.

...it was during the final few trading days (the market closes on weekends) that the most unusual variances in activity occurred. Bloomberg data show that on 6 September, the Thursday before that black Tuesday, put-option volume in UAL stock was nearly 100 times higher than normal — 2,000 versus 27 on the previous day.

On 6 and 7 September, the Chicago Board Options Exchange handled 4,744 put options for United Airlines' stock, translating into 474,000 shares, compared with just 396 call options, or 39,600 shares. On a day that the put-to-call ratio should have been roughly 1:1 (no negative news stories about United had broken), it was instead 12:1.

On 10 September, another uneventful news day, American Airlines' option volume was 4,516 puts and 748 calls, a ratio of 6:1 on yet another day when by rights these options should have been trading even.

No other airline stocks were affected — only United and American were shorted in this fashion.

Accelerated investments speculating a downturn in the value of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch (two New York investment firms severely damaged by the World Trade Center attack) were also observed.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange is investigating each of these trades and at this time is declining to offer comment on its progress...

Last updated: 3 October 2001

One might expect a final report to be available. Assistance would be appreciated.

Posted 7/31/2003 08:13:00 AM by The MinuteMan

More On The "Futures On Terror"

Glenn Reynolds comments that "THE IDIOTS WIN A ROUND: Faced with know-nothing criticism from members of Congress, the Pentagon has abandoned its plans for a "futures market" to predict terror."

I'm sure he's right that most Congressfolk understand nothing about the workings of a futures market. However, this "know-nothing" wave would not have swept the program away if Hillary! had been in the meeting. [When cheap shots go bad - here]

Most of the criticism of this proposal amounted to "reasoning by extreme example", and ran as follows: A contract pegged to the assassination of Jacques Chirac would be a bad idea; therefore all contracts this program might develop will be bad ideas. [Note: for "bad", insert "immoral", "repugnant", "insane", or some such].

Or, there are serious conflicts with the incentives created by having intelligence officials bet on the same activities they are meant to stop; therefore, this program is a terrible idea.

I apologize - it is hard to summarize the "bad program" arguments in a way that does not make them sound silly, and I really am doing my best. But illustrating the fallacy behind this is (painfully) simple - it is easy to prove that driving a car at 80 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood is a bad idea. To then leap to the conclusion that all driving is a bad idea is probably not something most of us would do.

Similarly, in the context of "futures on terror", it is easy to think of a million terrible ideas. But proving the foolishness of the "Wack Chirac" contract hardly constitutes proof that all the ideas that might have come out of this program are terrible. The challenge facing the designers was to come up with good, creative ideas (and explain them - more on that to follow), not bad ones.

From the depths of the comments at Prof. DeLong, we extract this:

I spent some time today talking to the CEO of Net Exchange, the company that had set up and was going to be running PAM. As far as I can tell, PAM was going to be a market in which there were essentially two types of futures contracts offered. The first would be contracts relating to three categories: economic health, civil stability, and military preparedness. (Contracts would be available in these categories for eight countries.) These contracts would be pegged to indices compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. (There are obviously problems with how accurate any such index could be, but the point is that it would serve as an independent arbiter that could measure improvements or declines.) In other words, if the value of the index on the day trading began was assumed to be 100, a contract might be something like: "the civil stability index in Jordan will be 86 in August 2004." It's more complicated than this, since combinatorial contracts would be available, but in essence these contracts would attempt to forecast predict, in broad strokes, the region's economic, political, and military future.

The second type of futures contract would be event-specific. These contracts would not attempt to predict things like when Hamas' next bombing in Israel would occur. Instead, they would attempt to forecast major events, events which arguably have some component of non-randomness built into them. These contracts might ask questions like: "Will Mahmoud Abbas still be in power by the end of next year?" or "Will the U.S. still be taking daily casualties in Iraq six months from now?" or even "Will Hamas join a coalition PA government?"

Now, the idea that this market might offer good forecasts seems not just reasonable, but likely. It's not asking anyone to penetrate an opaque terrorist cell. (In any case, the idea that Hamas does not have long-term patterns of behavior which can be interpreted seems to me wrong.)...

That tracks, with more detail, the description provided by the developers in the NY Times (you have to read well past he critics hypotheticals to find it), and at P. 68-69 of the DARPA proposal (B-8 in the Appendix).

OK, props to the commenter. And shouldn't he have a blog? Well, he is a bit too lofty for that, if we accept Slate as an upgrade. And, although we note that a contract on the political survival of Abbas may create PR problems, the rest of this sounds eminently defensible.

So, my question - how dumb were the developers? They lost the PR battle before it started. When they needed a clear press package providing sensible examples of what might be done, they came up virtually empty, and left the stage to the caricaturists of the other side. If the developers are this politically tone-deaf and inept, they may have earned their fate. In this round.

And following that thought, what motivated the opponents? Are they honestly that unimaginative, or was this just an opportunity to embarrass the Administration generally, and Adm. Poindexter specifically?

They weakened a country today. Well, yesterday. Whenever. I'm sort of ready for the weekend my self.

UPDATE: Lots of comments have floated around about odd behavior in the stock market prior to 9/11. Believe the rumors! Well, some of them - Snopes has more, from Oct. 3, 2001. Huh? Updates?

MORE: Rupert Murdoch's Post editorial. You knew what side they would take, but did you know they would make sense (i.e., agree with me)?

MORE: Adm. Poindexter to resign. Mission accomplished? And now the "futures on terror" idea is radioactive. But, depending on the half-life of the contaminants, it will be back, under much clearer political guidance.

THE LAST: I have TAPPED on my side, and Lambert of the Atrios site (anf the problematic links), and who will stand against us!

UNTIL LATER: This is the only person I saw making a connection to the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle. Cool.

Posted 7/31/2003 12:59:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Sports, Decision Theory, And Rational Behavior

The NY Times takes us out to the ball game with Richard Thaler, U of Chicago economist, Steven J. Sherman, a psychology professor at Indiana University, and David Romer, an economist at Berkeley.

We love this game. We also love the fact that the reporter makes it all the way through this story without mentioning "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis.

Excerpt:

...But there is also a more serious undercurrent to the work. In recent years, economists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the ways that people do not act rationally. Known as behavioral economics, the field examines why stock-market bubbles happen and why many people do not save enough money for retirement, among other things.

Sporting events, which are played out step by step in the most public of settings, allow the researchers to determine the precise moment that somebody veers from good sense.

"My justification for doing this is that it's the one really high-stakes activity where you get to watch all of the decisions," Thaler said. "If Bill Gates invited me to watch all of his decisions, I'd talk more about that."

As the article notes, you get to watch all the decisions, and similar decisions have been addressed hundreds of times before. The more you think about this, the more you realize that all those hours spent watching baseball were not wasted. Well, for Yankees fans, anyway - it's hard to imagine a positive lesson that could be drawn from watching the Red Sox or the Mets. Other than the importance of keeping one hand on the remote, that is.

Posted 7/30/2003 09:34:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Bright Lights Continue To Shine

Backers pressure Gore to run again next year:

Former Vice-President Al Gore is coming under pressure from political supporters and friends to jump into the 2004 presidential campaign even though he ruled himself out in December.

Gore’s spokesperson denied that there was any change of plans, but a former Democratic National Committee official close to Gore told The Hill he believes the former vice president may enter the Democratic primary this fall.

The story also notes that the Democratic Part is afflicted with "donor-freeze", in which big donors sit and wait for a candidate to emerge. This sort of chatter about Al Gore (and soon, no doubt, Hillary!) will surely exacerbate the situation, even in the heat of summer. And depicting the current crowd of candidates as lacking Presidentiality is neither helpful to the party, nor accurate.

A note to Big Al - please don't annoy us and embarrass yourself by extending this flirtation. We don't love you, we don't miss you, it's over, good-bye.

All that said, I would pay extra for a ticket to watch Big Al debate Dr. Dean and my man Al Sharpton. Whichever persona Mr. Gore sent that evening would be trounced.

UPDATE: Or, I might be recycling b***s***.

Posted 7/30/2003 01:34:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Colin Powell Talking Trash

"Powell: Saddam Is 'Piece of Trash' to Be Collected".

The era of macho rhetoric may not be fully behind us, Dick Gephardt's pleas notwithstanding. Bring it on!

Posted 7/30/2003 01:31:00 PM by The MinuteMan

What Took So Long?

"Bush Accepts Blame for African Uranium Charge"

"Did you order the Code Red?"

"You're damn right I did!"

If I may change channnels slightly, this just makes my day.

UPDATE: The Brits won't back down:

The Foreign Office has again defended the Government's contraversial claim that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium for its nuclear weapons programme from the west African state of Niger.

In a letter to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), it insists that there had been no need to include a "health warning" on the claim in the Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons as it was confident in the underlying intelligence.

Posted 7/30/2003 01:23:00 PM by The MinuteMan

If They Can't Be Bothered To Read Their Own Paper, Why Should We?

The NY Times editors fulminate on the subject of the proposed Pentagon futures market on terror (links), with their emphasis added to mine:

The insensitivity of the idea boggles the mind. Quite apart from the tone-deafness of equating terrorist attacks with, say, corn futures, the plan would allow speculators — even terrorists — to profit from anonymous bets on future attacks.

And from yesterday's original NY Times story, we learn:

According to descriptions given to Congress, available at the Web site and provided by the two senators, traders who register would deposit money into an account similar to a stock account and win or lose money based on predicting events.

...The initiative, called the Policy Analysis Market, is to begin registering up to 1,000 traders on Friday.

Well, if terrorists want to phone up the Pentagon and register themselves, I am not sure that I am opposed to it. The NY Times position is clear.

UPDATE: The Pentagon Papers. This is the DARPA doc, with the futures program described on p 68-9 of the .pdf file.

Posted 7/30/2003 12:08:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Here Is An All-Seeing Eye

TAPPED found it, I perma-linked it, but this was my source for it, so there.

Setting information free sometimes seems a bit like opening the cages in the zoo, if I may steal a metaphor from another from another story.

Posted 7/30/2003 12:02:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Man Without Qualities Is Wrong!

Despite a stunning lack of self-awareness, he demonstrates his possession of at least two qualities - a long attention span, and a good memory. He is connecting dots on Enron.

Posted 7/30/2003 11:59:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The Always Interesting Nathan Newman

On the recent gay-rights Supreme Court decisions here, and commentary here. Progressives calling for judicial inactivism - admit it, you are surprised.

And let's sneak in this side bar - segregation for diversity's sake?

Posted 7/30/2003 11:35:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Valerie Plame Wilson - July 30

Josh Marshall enters the fray. For fans of hand-to-hand combat, I dissect Mr. Marshall's piece below. For SportsCenter fans, the sound bite is this: we are thrilled that a respected Washington journalist is taking this seriously and attempting to crack this story, but almost no one is talking to him, at least on the record.

The only clear bit of light that emerges seems to be this:

My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.

My alternative spin on this:

This advances our understanding a bit, and aids the White House side that she may not be all that covert. Lacking knowledge of her current status or mysterious past, it is arguable that the White House aides did not commit a felony in outing her, if I understand the statute. Please remember, I am not an attorney. Mark Kleiman has commentary on the statute here, and I see many potential avenues of escape.

That said, regardless of the law, it was stupid and rude to drag his wife into it.

Now, wild speculation - maybe, off the record, other big-time Washington reporters have been assured that there is no "there" there. I would still like a story about a non-scandal, but who am I?

UPDATE: An intrepid blogger fights through to Dana Priest at the WaPo. Check his update for more! And yes, the exclamation points are a bit of a ruse. But check anyway! It could be breaking news!

TIMELINE

Posted 7/30/2003 10:03:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Josh Marshall On Valerie Plame Wilson - My Full Monty

Josh Marshall enters the fray! As a well connected Washington journalist/blogger who has been covering the uranium side of this, we expect he has useful sources and valuable insights to contribute to this story.

[Oh, just say it - the guy is a partisan attack machine (T4?) who is on every Bush scandal like a junkyard dog on a T-bone. His silence up to now has been reminiscent of the curious incident of another non-barking dog.]

We welcome all attempts to publicize this story and drag it into the light of day, so let's see what Mr. Marshall, writing in "The Hill", can add to the story:

[Let's rip into this! Emphasis added throughout.]

Enough already. Enough excuse-making.

We know that two senior members of the Bush administration intentionally blew the cover of an undercover CIA officer whose job is combating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. And their motivation was pure politics.

This is a very exciting lead! David Corn quite clearly did not know this when he wrote his heavily caveatted column on July 16. We reprise Mr. Corns's opening:

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

Question marks, "it sure looks that way", and "if ...Bob Novak can be trusted". Is Mr. Marshall ready to take us past Mr. Corn's questions?

In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, let me explain...

Which he does. Then:

...To get back at Wilson, they blew the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative specializing in tracking other countries’ efforts to acquire WMD.

How do we know this? Because two weeks ago syndicated columnist Robert Novak fingered Wilson’s wife as an “Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction” on the say-so of “two senior administration officials.” They told him Plame had suggested Wilson for the job.

Now, as it happens, it’s not even clear that this charge — that Wilson’s wife got him the gig in Niger — is true. The more relevant point, however, is that two senior administration officials publicized her identity which they almost certainly knew only because of their access to government secrets.

Oh, dear. So far, this is recycled David Corn, which was fun once. And the "almost certainly" suggests, again, that we just don't know. Still, he wouldn't be writing unless he had some news, so let's be patient, he is just getting us up to speed now. Eventually he will tell us what he has learned, beyond Mr. Corn, to confirm the story. The suspense is gripping!

I would also like to point out, to anyone who thought they knew the answer to this, Mr. Marshall's uncertainty on the matter of whether Ms. Wilson really was involved in selecting the Ambassador for the trip. Continuing:

Consider what that means.

Hey, wait. Shouldn't we consider whether it is true, before we consider what it means? Mr. Corn was not sure. Why, based on the same evidence, is Mr. Marshall? Sentence first, then the trial? Unless Mr. Marshall intends to dismiss the charges, we want evidence!

CIA agents work under different sorts of “cover.” There’s “official cover” — like when an agent is assigned to a U.S. embassy under the guise that he or she is a foreign service officer. Then there’s “nonofficial” cover — like when your business cards say you’re a manager at Acme Overseas Energy Corporation, but you really work for the CIA.

Plame is in that latter category.

OK, I think that might be news. It is unsourced, so perhaps Mr. Marshall is relying on the speculation provided by Mr. Corn.

By telling the world who she really works for, those senior administration officials not only jeopardized her career, they also compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, whatever networks she may have developed or relationships she may have cultivated.

Here is what Mr. Corn wrote, quoting Ambassador Wilson:

"Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career.

I am just not sure that we are getting independent confirmation, or recycling. I am sure that Mr. Marshall is a skilled journailist, entirely capable of describing, however discreetly, his sources. I am also sure he is a skilled polemicist. Press on:

According to one highly-respected retired CIA officer who I spoke to Monday, revealing the identity of a “NOC” like Plame could literally put the lives of those who cooperated with her at risk. To reveal her identity, he told me, was “grossly irresponsible.”

I know people will insist to me that the retired CIA chap was speaking of Ms. Wilson specifically, and not making a general observation about covert agents. It will be inconceivable to supporters of this viewpoint that he was making a hypothetical statement, such as "IF she is an NOC, this would be grossly irresponsible, but I am retired, and anyway I would not confirm her status if I knew it, which I don't", which Mr. Marshall shortened for our benefit. And anyway, why shouldn't he shorten it, he has already "established" that she is an NOC.

The debate may or may not swirl - I am open to the possibility that we are getting a bit of spin here, and I suspect others may not be. Press on:

Some of the White House’s spinners have been putting out the word that Plame may not that been that covert an agent after all. So maybe broadcasting her identity wasn’t such a big deal. This isn’t that easy an argument to refute since, precisely because Plame is a covert agent, it’s difficult to find out just what she does or precisely what her status is.

Sorry, I tricked even myself there. Evidently, Mr. Marshall has not yet established whether Ms.Wilson is really "covert" covert, or just covert. Well, that is news.

And note the sourcing - "White House spinners". This almost surely does not mean "White House officials". Don Luskin may have found some, with his "Washington contacts". In fact, I imagine I might qualify, on this story at least, as a "White House spinner". Time to update the business card!

My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.

However that may be, though, just how deep undercover does a CIA operative have to be before blowing her cover becomes a problem?

Back to the White House spinner for re-write - Mr. Marshall is warning us that, at a minimum, bad things might possibly have happened. Well, yes, we have said all along (Sorry, in non-spin mode), that that is one of several possibilities. Whether Mr. Marshall has identified a global minimum, or a local minimum will be left for the mathematically inclined.

And we note his question - when does blowing her cover become a problem? Well, we are all wondering. A key point of this story hinges on whether national security compromised. Evidently, we are still not sure.

A second element is, was Ms. Wilson's prospective future covert career ruined? Not knowing the career path she is on, or to which she aspired, we do not know. Doesn't look good, however, as I have said before, and will say again.

So far, the White House’s reaction has been awfully weaselly.

In the company of strangers.

Frankly, I think Novak’s column gives us plenty of evidence.

Complete agreement that it gives us evidence of something. Felonies? Far from clear.

To date, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called for investigations and any number of other senators have told reporters that some sort of inquiry is probably in order. But let’s be honest. We don’t really need any investigations, with all their depositions and fancy lawyers and public grandstanding. If the president wanted to, he could wrap this up with a few quick phone calls. So why doesn’t he?

We don't need no stinkin' badges either. Sentence first!

OK, let me find my way back to the center of the fairway - sometimes I slice right.

As to Mr. Marshall's point that we don't need a formal investigation, I concur. I would hope (my minimum) that the President, Mr. Tenet of the CIA, and top Congressional leaders of both parties would meet, have a candid discussion about whether national security was really compromised, and resolve this. As a bonus, I would love some sort of public acknowledgement that this conversation has occurred, if only so I could shut up about this.

As to "new" news in Mr. Marshall's piece, the main news is that he is working on it at all - we have a talented Washington journalist publicly working on this story, and it is evidently a b**** to get anyone to say anything helpful.

Other news: the bit about his sources describing Ms. Wilson's current role does point in favor of the White House. A possible defense against criminal charges would be lack of knowledge or intent - if she has not been obviously covert (yes, that makes sense, stay with me), but simply has "covert" stamped on her file, it is possible that no one at the White House knew her mysterious past. I am not an attorney, but this seems to help them out, as I understand the statutes. We highlighted earlier a moment when Mr. Marshall inserted a similar qualifier, so we are not making this up.

Does this help the White House against charges of stupidity, or worse (hey, I'm a conservative), bad manners? Not at all. If they want to dump on Ambassador Wilson, fine, but leave the little woman out of it (sorry, unreconstructed troglodyte moment).

Other news - if it is here, I am missing it. Mr. Marshall obviously has made some phone calls, and come up with very little, and we applaud his effort. Believe me, we are deeply sympathetic to any sense of frustration he may be feeling on covering this.

Now (end applause), under "glaring omissions", we note that he never mentions that Mr. Novak cited CIA sources in his original column, nor does he mention that TIME has some coverage of this story which can lend itself to an alternative explanation, as noted in this timeline.

Where does this story go next? One open avenue would be to follow up with Susan Whitson, an FBI spokeswoman, who said the agency would "look at the issue and make determinations about whether there is an investigation that is warranted", if I may plagiarize Newsday. Even a "we don't comment on investigations, or even on whether this has become an investigation" might stir the pot.

So, Big Finish: Mr. Marshall, thanks for joining the conversation. Now pipe down.

UPDATE: More bricks in the bag? Yes, we are puzzling over the "highly-respected retired CIA officer" Mr. Marshall spoke to. Could it be the "former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to a Muslim country. He also studied military strategy at the National War College with retired four-stars like Wes Clark, Hugh Shelton, and others"? You may remember that chap as the one who, during the "too few troops" debate this spring, wondered if we could spell Dunkirk.

Or, perhaps Mr. Marshall has tracked down the "former intelligence official" who gave such helpful input to Sy Hersh.

Just wondering.

Posted 7/30/2003 09:00:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The NY Times Swoons For Dr. Dean

The only attempt at restraint is the placement below the fold of the front page. The headline proclaims that "Defying Labels Left or Right, Dean's '04 Run Makes Gains". Dean defies the labels! Read on:

Dr. Dean, who began as an antiwar gadfly, has in the past month burst from his obscurity to rank among the top contenders in a crowded field of Democrats for the party's presidential nomination.

Thanks to his stunning surge as the top fund-raiser among the potential Democratic candidates in the second quarter, Dr. Dean now has a campaign budget to match those of more-established candidates like Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.

I have added emphasis only because the Times format does not.

With his early and intense opposition to the American-led attack on Iraq, his call for universal health insurance and his signing a bill that created civil unions for gay couples in Vermont, Dr. Dean, 54, is seen as the most liberal of the major Democratic candidates.

A devastating litany of positions with which NY Times readers will never get comfortable. Ever.

Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus [He's Bill Clinton!], cut taxes [He's George Bush.], forced many on welfare to go to work [He's Clinton again (quiet, Newt)], abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures [He's smarter than Hillary!!], antagonized environmentalists [credible on the environment!], won the top rating from the National Rifle Association [Bush again?] and consistently embraced business interests [unnerving, but maybe in a good way? Clinton!]

After winning the first of his five elections for governor by more than 50 points, he barely got a majority in 2000, in part because of third-party challenges from the left that, in the 2002 election absent Dr. Dean, helped hand the governor's chair to a Republican. [without Dr. Dean, the party was lost!]

It is a much longer profile, but I stopped here, as I find this sort of PDA a bit awkward. Get a room!

Posted 7/29/2003 10:14:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Bon Jovi Fans, Name That Tune!

Shock and awe
And you're to blame
Bush gives war
A bad name (bad name)

You got it!

And why do I ask? Surely no one could possibly be so silly as to be staggering about the country with the message that Bush gives war a bad name. Could they?

Almost. And don't call me Shirley. Joe Lieberman delivers the principled case for disallowing vanity campaigns, and tells us that President Bush's mishandling of Iraq "'threatens to give a bad name to a just war".

And as for his Democratic rivals, Sen. Lieberman informs us that "they don't know a just war when they see it."

Fascinating. Bush has been dropping a bit in the polls, but surely he is not so weak that Sen. Lieberman can hope to challenge for the Republican nomination.

Posted 7/29/2003 02:22:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The CalPundit Gets Results!

Ignore this me-too NY Times story. They're a day late for the futures market in terror.

UPDATE: Whoa, a linkfest at the InstaPundit. We also find Jane Galt and the VodkaPundit offering their thoughts.

I believe I can pitch two cents into the mix. Several folks mentioned the Iowa Electronic Markets. Please, that is sooo yesterday. The action is at TradeSports.

As a gambling man, I will bet that Trades Sports initially emphasized sports betting. However, they currently offer a wide range of "propositions". Obvious ones are the Democratic Presidential nominee race, and the 2004 Presidential election. However, they also offer contracts on upcoming Supreme Court vacancies, Gray Davis Ascendant, European elections, and, my current fave, the Kobe Bryant legal situation. Right now, punters figure Mr. Bryant has a 65% chance of going to trial, and an 18% chance of being found guilty by jury (plea bargain pays zero).

And, for the benefit of the folks at DARPA, there are contracts on Finding Saddam, Finding WMDs in Iraq, and Finding Osama. You can also bet on the Homeland Security Threat level for different dates. If enough "insiders" (intelligence officials and terrorists, for eample) are participating in these markets, then prices should reflect significant non-public information. Otherwise, prices should represent the cash-weighted consensus of the great unwashed, and are an interesting measure of informed public speculation. And yes, market participants may just be a bunch of sports junkies and bored bond traders watching the wire services, in which case, profit opportunities may abound!

The site is easy to navigate, and they have fairly straightforward explanations where necessary. Full disclosure - not only am I not a shareholder, I haven't even opened an account. Yet.

TradeSports has been mentioned recently in the New Yorker, and the NY Times (sorry, lost to their archive), but caveat emptor.

ANOTHER UPDATE: We deliver mock and awe to the NY Times.

Posted 7/29/2003 12:05:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Dirt On "Dowdification"

Posted 7/29/2003 10:59:00 AM by The MinuteMan

More On Professor Krugman

It's Sullivan v. Krugman today, based on a fascinating effort by the Earnest Professor, describing the promotion of the Iraq war in both Britain and the US. It's titled "You Say Tomato". Mr. Sullivan excerpts the same bit that caught my eye, and yes, it is a HUGE time-saver when you can channel Mr. Sullivan directly through your dental fillings. We will flip it to him:

KRUGMAN OFF THE WAGON: Of course he thinks the BBC is innocent of all charges. But this passage is simply wacko: "The BBC apparently has evidence, including a tape, that Dr. Kelly made the key allegations it reported. Moreover, Dr. Kelly was, in fact, in a position to know what he claimed. More information may emerge as a judicial inquiry proceeds, but at this point the BBC seems largely in the clear, while the government looks like a villain." You read the British press and see if you get that impression. The only committee looking into the matter has backed the government. Gilligan is refusing to have his testimony to Parliament released. Kelly said to Parliament that he could not have been the source for the BBC's allegation. Yes, some people are backing the Beeb. But the notion that the BBC isn't severely on the ropes over this is a delusion....

Well, as a casual observer, I was surprised to learn from the Earnest Prof that all is well with the BBC. However, I agree with Mr. Sullivan on this point: "...read the British press and see if you get that impression. "

Casting about, I find this opinion survey reported in the Independent: BBC winning battle for public trust, which is related.

Independent: Hutton inquiry into scientist's death to start this week.

Hmm. I quickly note that two stories are running as one - did the BBC misrepresent the Dr. Kelly story, and did Blair misrepresent the WMD story. Obviously, both might have happened, so saying "Blair is a liar" hardly resolves the BBC case, although it is a clever tactic for BBC supporters.

So, on BBC reporter Gilligan, we have this in the Berkshire something or other: Gilligan evidence may still be revealed , suggesting that further inquiries may proceed, as the Earnest Prof noted.

Here, the (left-leaning) Guardian explains the "Murdoch conspiracy theory" about the press coverage, and concludes it is probably false. It does make clear that at least some Brit papers are screaming for scalps at the BBC.

Here is an article from the Telegraph, aka, the Torygraph. Registration required? It only took me a minute (I type slowly), and the piece is fascinating.

Again, it appears that the Times and the Sun are screaming about the BBC.

This, reprinted from an owner of the Telegrapph, appears in the Guardian, and is quite critical of the BBC.

Well, the qualified "in the clear", from the Earnest Prof, may be overly optimistic. The suggestion of "delusion" from Mr. Sullivan is not immediately supported, either.

Calls for reform of the BBC in the Telegraph.

Oh, man. We seem to have a heavily politicized BBC that opposed the war. War opponents are now BBC supporters, which muddies the waters considerably. And as the columnist points out:

So what is to be done about the virtual political party based in the BBC? If the Irish experience is any guide, things will go on getting worse. The BBC is adept at blackmailing politicians with the implied threat of giving them a bad image.

...The BBC is the big issue in the Iraq dossier affair. Like Iraq itself, it needs to be liberated from fundamentalists and ideologues and returned to those who love fair play - which includes the free play of ideas.

Given the "blackmail" angle, this is not a fight a politician will want to lose.

Developing...

LATE HIT: This is after the whistle, since the news broke after his column was published. Still, it let's us back-test Prof. Krugman's predictive power. From the Guardian:

Labour and Tory MPs accused the BBC reporter at the heart of the Iraqi weapons row of "leading the public up the garden path in a most staggering way", according to confidential transcripts of a cross-examination of Andrew Gilligan by the Commons foreign affairs committee seen by the Guardian.

Posted 7/29/2003 10:06:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Valerie Plame Wilson - July 29

Good story from The Hill.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has demanded a criminal investigation into who exposed the wife of retired ambassador Joseph Wilson as a covert CIA agent.

Their lead is old news. Now, good stuff:

The chairman of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), has also not ruled out an investigation. “It could be part of a wider weapons-of-mass-destruction investigation,” Goss, a former CIA operative, told The Hill.

And not ruled it in.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) told reporters last week that “whoever released the information regarding Mr. Wilson’s wife may have committed a felony, may have actually violated federal law. I think that it ought to be investigated.

...What happened is very dangerous to a person who may be a CIA operative,” said Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, adding: “[The leak] came from the executive branch, in my view. Its intent is to stop other people like Joe Wilson, and I am going to insist on getting to the bottom of this any way we can.”

Charles Tiefer, a former special counsel on the House Iran-Contra Committee, said this is just the latest eruption in tensions between two branches of government over leaks of national security information.

The anger over leaks goes back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Bush restricted classified information to eight key lawmakers.

In June 2002, the FBI investigated 37 lawmakers and 60 staff members investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks over leaks of classified information from the National Security Agency. [link]

Tiefer added, “By the White House apparently ‘outing’ the identity of a CIA operative just to savage Ambassador Wilson, that war has gotten nastier and hotter and much closer to the core of legally violative revelations.”

And some people who might know argue about whether a felony might have been committed:

...Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), a former CIA agent, said he was not convinced anyone had violated the law by naming Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative.

“The law criminalizes identifying covert agents as a pattern of activities,” Simmons said. “The intent is to criminalize a behavior … and the routine functioning of the media would not be covered.”

But some intelligence experts disagree with Simmons’ characterization of the law.

“It is true that the letter of the law refers to a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents,” said Steven Aftergood, executive director of the Project on Government Secrecy.

“The law views such disclosures with the utmost seriousness. … Until we know that exactly what the motive was, the law is not inapplicable.”

Well, I did not know the question of whether this was a felony was that unclear.

But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) disagreed. He told reporters that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee would investigate the leak.

Sen. Durbin joined this story last week (Newsday, July 23). But the other names are new, which suggests there is a bit of activity.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman wonders about this "pattern of disclosure" mentioned by Rep. Rob Simmons.

Nothing on this at the daily WH press briefing. A donnybrook on declassifying the Saudi section of the 9/11 report, however, if you like that sort of thing.

Posted 7/29/2003 09:32:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Is That Your Final Answer?

As former Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, co-chairman of the panel that investigated the intelligence surrounding 9/11, and a current Presidential candidate, Sen. Bob Graham deserves special attention when he speaks on the subject of the 9/11 report. The NY Times delivers this:

The attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to task, said Senator Bob Graham of Florida..."

Pretty strong. Left unremarked is that, with a bit of worse luck in 1993, the terrorists who bombed the WTC might have changed the location of their explosive-laden truck by twenty feet and brought down the Tower.

Luck? My goodness, is the Senator taking inspiration from that well known socialist, "Lefty" Gomez?

Posted 7/29/2003 08:28:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Perception Drives Reality

That is why it is so important to "diffuse the perception in reality" of American occupation in Iraq, according to Sen. John Kerry.

Sen. Kerry further believes the US effort in Iraq could be aided by a broader coalition:

The obligation of the United States government is to rapidly internationalize the effort in Iraq, get the target off of American troops, bring other people, particularly Muslim-speaking and Arab-speaking Muslim troops, into the region," Kerry said.

Well, it is diffuse at this point, but my emerging perception is that Kerry might want to find some Catholic-speakers for his staff. Without engaging in religious or ethnic discrimination, of course, and I am sure the speakers of many other religions could help as well.

And it seems unfair to spoil the fun by addressing the substance of his proposal, but I wonder if the notion of bringing Muslim or Arab troops in to assist with the occupation is a good idea. American, British, and Polish troops will be viewed by the locals as transitory. On the other hand, among Muslim and Arab candidates, Turkey once ruled what is now Iraq, and their troops might be viewed with suspicion. Pakistan is also Muslim, but they seem to be pre-occupied doing their outstanding work on the Afghan border.

Jordan's king has some historic ties to Iraq, a point which might not be lost on Iraqis if Jordan was to participate in the occupation.

Well, Sen Kerry is the expert - one wonders who he had in mind?

Posted 7/28/2003 12:41:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Circular Firing Squad Assembles

UPDATE: Bit of an odd format, but, yes, this is an update.

The Democratic Leadership Council met recently, and is concerned about the leftward drift of the Democratic Party. They directed fire at Dr. Dean, but expressed broader concerns:

It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."

Evidently, Sen. Bayh was not satisfied that "Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" was an adequate soundbite, as we see:

When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.

"Assisted suicide," he said.

This comment may attract some criticism, but we note his political sensitivity even here. In deference, we presume, to NARAL, the Senator did not characterize his party's effort as a late term abortion.

Posted 7/28/2003 10:29:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Thanks For The Memories

Bob Hope dead at 100.

I was much younger when this got stuck in my brain, as Hope and Crosby staggered across the desert in "The Road to Morrocco" - "Let's go over that hill and see what's dune".

UPDATE: Vincent Canby from the NY Times. There is a wide selection of quips on offer, but let's use this:

Mr. Hope was often at his best sticking barbs in politicians. In "Bob Hope: My Life in Jokes" (Hyperion, 2003), his daughter Linda helped compile some of his jibes decade by decade. His perspective on the 1984 presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Walter F. Mondale was vintage Hope, a theme and variations with only the slightest pause for laughter.

"Hey, what a victory for the Reagans . . . or, as they're now being referred to . . . `Dynasty.' "

"I wonder if anyone woke up the president and told him?"

"Mondale knew this was gonna be a bad day when he called Dial-a-Prayer and the taped message answered him by name."

"Remember, Mondale said God has no place in politics, and apparently God feels the same way about Mondale."

"George Bush decided to sleep late this morning. He left a wake-up call for 1988."

"The farmers hate to see it end. All those campaign speeches were good for the crops."

And Road to Morocco was more influential than I knew:

Woody Allen was among those comedians who often credited Mr. Hope as an influence on their work. "When my mother took me to see `Road to Morocco,' I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life," Mr. Allen once said.

UPDATE: One person reflects, very nicely.

Posted 7/27/2003 10:59:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The Valerie Plame Affair - July 27 - Speak Out!

Sometimes people need to feel the heat before they see the light.

We are stealing shamelessly from a suggestion by Mark Kleiman that we contact our Congressfolks. Below is contact information for some people who might be delighted to learn of your interest in the Valerie Plame affair.

Although I am sure they will be intrigued by general expressions of interest (or outrage), it might be worth suggesting a specific news angle they can pursue. My thought is to follow on the announcement reported on July 25 by Newsday, that the FBI is considering this.

Another "answerable" question might be, has anyone at the White House or the CIA taken steps to determine whether national security has, in fact, been compromised by this leak.

Finally, Mr. Kurtz himself will be appearing in an on-line forum Monday, July 28, at High Noon, Eastern time. His preferred topic seems to be the clash of various media. Valerie Plame seems to be off-topic, but there is a possible hook - what is the process by which a story such as the Valerie Plame leak [insert diatribe] is overlooked by the big media?

NY Times
David Sanger: DaSang@nytimes.com
His byline appears here.

James Risen: No contact info. Yet. Hint!

Richard Stevenson: No contact info.

Washington Post
The WaPo directory

Howard Kurtz: KurtzH@WashPost.com
Mr. Kurtz noted the Newsday coverage here.

Joel Achenbach: AchenbachJ@WashPost.com
Mr. Achenbach noted the story in an on-line chat. [An Alert Reader has since advised me taht this is not Mr. Achenbach's normal area.]

Dana Priest: PriestD@WashPost.com

Dana Milbank: WhiteHouse@WashPost.com

Dana Carvey: JustKidding@GetIt.com

US Senate

Sen. Charles Schumer provides a Webform here.

Sen. David Durbin has some contact info here (please include a US Postal address, you non-constituents, you). His e-mail is: dick@durbin.senate.gov

Loose the hounds! Well, politely and calmly, of course.

TIMELINE of Scandal, from before the beggining.

Posted 7/26/2003 05:09:00 PM by The MinuteMan

We Lead With A Cheap Shot

Doc Drezner links us into a Marshall - Den Beste debate about the neocon strategy for transforming the Middle East - "neocon neocolonialism", as Jeff Hauser of the puzzling permalinks calls it.

The gist of the debate - is the public signed up for this long term commitment, and does it matter?

Now, I have always found Mr. Den Beste to be a gentleman. In addition, I take intermittent personal inspiration from his columns, since I, too, rarely manage to limit myself to one word when two dozen might suffice.

Mr. Den Beste's half of this debate was printed in the Wall Street Journal, which is quite upmarket, and I, at least, am finding further inspiration. I hope to marshall my thoughts for a substantive reaction, but the best I can do right now is leave you with two headscratchers.

First, on the subject of American resolve and the importance of an informed public, Mr. Den Beste braces our spirits:

...does America have the stamina to finish the job? Yes. This kind of thing takes on momentum. Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968 on a platform that essentially opposed the war in Vietnam. (The catch phrase was "Peace with honor.") But we fought for several more years before finally giving up.

Hmm. Few of us are able to find inspiration in the Viet Nam story, so we will salute his optimism. Feel the Big Mo!

And, secondly, on both American resolve and the incidence of early-onset Alzheimer's in Europe:

...there's a tendency to think that we used to have that kind of steel, but that we don't any longer. That's wrong, and every generation the world learns that anew. Going into World War II, many in Europe said that Americans used to be willing to fight back in the days of Lincoln but had become decadent and soft. History proves otherwise, of course.

Why the Europeans were unable to remember the "doughboys" of World War I is a medical mystery.

UPDATE: A typo? C'mon, at the Journal? They don't make mistakes, especially on the editorial page. So many non-believers.

Reading List: Josh Marshall, "Practice To Deceive"

A summary of Ken Pollack's "The Threatening Storm" for lamers, uhh, really busy folks. The summary is provided by a hawk, and Pollack's views evolved.

And the NY Times had an article on the effect of sanctions on Iraq, which I excerpt below.

MORE: Hints on the "Secret" plan from Andrew Sullivan, Sept 11, 2002, writtne as a commemorative "fisking" of Susan Sontag.

Excuse me, but war was not disclosed or declared by the United States. It was declared quite emphatically and unapologetically by Islamist terrorists years ago, and has been going on in the Middle East and elsewhere for the better part of three decades. (Sontag might read Lawrence Wright's superb reporting in this week's New Yorker (summary here) to see how deep this war goes and who is really galvanizing it. Hint to Susan: not us.)

...in the sense that war and politics can make the Middle East a less barbaric, depraved and despotic place, the answer is that the anti-terror war absolutely can end. But only if we wage it with conviction and skill, and recognize that all the belligerent components, from Iraq and Iran to Saudi Arabia, are connected - exactly the response Sontag opposes.

Shh, Andrew, not so loud!

Jonah Goldberg

Stanley Kurtz

James Taranto

Posted 7/26/2003 10:14:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The Must-Read Article This Weekend

This Sunday's NY Times magazine has a long story by David Rieff titled "Were [Iraqi] Sanctions Right?" (also here).

The author recounts sanctions as a humanitarian disaster, and a foreign policy problem, prior to 2003. He then presents a bit of history:

The actual history of American sanctions on Iraq is fairly straightforward. On Aug. 2, 1990, in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 661, imposing comprehensive multilateral international sanctions on Iraq and freezing all its foreign assets.

...By early 1993, opposition to sanctions was growing, especially in the Arab world, and so was dissension within the United Nations. Albright, then Washington's newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, recalls that when she arrived in New York to take up her post in February 1993, there was confusion about sanctions policy. As she put it: ''No one had thought they would be in place for so long, but then, no one had really thought Saddam Hussein would still be there either. The intelligence was that he'd be gone fairly soon.''

That ever-reliable intelligence. Describing her trip to Arab capitals in 1993, then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright says:

''I went to various Arab capitals with photographs we'd declassified that showed how much money Saddam Hussein was spending on his palaces,'' she told me recently. ''The Arab leaders were amazed. They hadn't known any of this. But in turn they told me about how much the Iraqi people were suffering under sanctions. They also talked about the anger over sanctions that was building in the Arab 'street.' Of course, this protest was affecting them, too. But I was appalled by what they told me, not just worried about the political consequences. And it was when I returned to the U.N. that I began to try to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of the sanctions. That's when the idea of 'food for oil' was born.''

The premise of the oil-for-food program, which was administered by the United Nations, was that Saddam Hussein would be allowed to sell a certain amount of oil. With the proceeds, Hussein's government would be permitted to buy essential humanitarian supplies, including food, medicine and materials needed to keep Iraq's crumbling infrastructure running.

...although the Security Council agreed to the oil-for-food program in April 1995, Saddam Hussein at first refused to participate, holding out for a total lifting of sanctions.... It was only in December 1996 that Hussein accepted the oil-for-food program, and only in 1997 that it became effective in alleviating some, though not all, of the torments of the Iraqi people.

At the same time, the French and the Russians were pushing hard within the Security Council either for a ratcheting down or an outright lifting of sanctions. Nancy Soderberg [then with the NSC] states flatly that the French and the Russians allowed their eagerness to develop business deals with Iraq to affect their work on the 661 Committee. ''The French and Russians wanted to make money,'' she told me. ''By the time of the second gulf war, the Russians had $40 billion in prospective deals with Saddam Hussein's regime.'' (As for the French, as the International Peace Academy's David Malone puts it, ''Paris never offered an effective alternative to sanctions, simply grandstanding on humanitarian questions while doing business with Iraq.'')

And, summarizing the discussion of the paucity of alternatives:

...James Rubin [State Department spokesman under Albright] asks: ''What should we have done, just lift sanctions and hope for the best? I believed then and believe now that that was just too risky, given Saddam Hussein's past, his repeated attempts to invade his neighbors, his treatment of his own people and the weapons we knew he was developing.''

On the other hand:

These observations do not answer the question of whether any policy, no matter how strategically sound, is worth the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children -- a figure that originated in a Unicef report on infant mortality in sanctions-era Iraq and became the rallying cry of anti-sanctions campaigners. And the argument against sanctions on Iraq went beyond even this single, horrifying statistic. Sanctions, their opponents insist, transformed a country that in the 1980's was the envy of the developing world in terms of investments in health, education and physical infrastructure into a place where everyone (except the half-million or so members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and their families and cronies) was dependent on United Nations food aid, where infant mortality rates had skyrocketed, educational outcomes had collapsed and diseases that had disappeared were reappearing, sometimes at epidemic levels.

American officials may quarrel with the numbers, but there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthdays. The damage, according to those who fought against sanctions, was terrible, medieval. It was, in the literal sense, unconscionable, since those who died had not themselves developed weapons of mass destruction or invaded Kuwait. Rather, they were the cannon fodder for Hussein's war and the victims of his repression.

The author then describes the ways in which Saddam used sanctions to strengthen his grip on his country, enrich himself, and score propaganda points against the US.

In an earlier post, I had addressed one of the puzzles of this war - if Saddam had no WMDs, why did he not say so, and let the sanctions be lifted? Part of my answer - the sanctions helped him maintain tight control over his economy. The author details how, with control of food ration cards, this was achieved. Sound-bite: "It was a secret policeman's dream":

''Saddam could do many things to the people,'' a former Iraqi Army officer named Raed Mohammed told me, ''but while he could kill them, he could not afford to starve them. So yes, he made sure the Ministry of Trade organized things correctly. As a result, the rationing was popular. It helped the regime maintain its legitimacy. Most people thought, 'Saddam is feeding us while the Americans are trying to starve us to death.'''

...there were other, unanticipated, advantages that accrued to the regime from the rationing system. Every Iraqi head of household had to have such a ration book, issued by the Ministry of Trade, which named every immediate family member and listed the precise quantities of foodstuffs to which the bearer was entitled. Every food agent had a computerized list from the Ministry of Trade of the people he was supposed to supply with these staples.

What this meant in practice was that the regime could maintain a database on every Iraqi citizen and constantly update it, without recourse to the security services or even a network of paid informants. It was a secret policeman's dream -- and it was all provided, however inadvertently, by the sanctions the United States and Britain had conceived as a way of limiting Saddam Hussein's power.

On corruption and graft:

...the Iraqi government was able to set up a well-orchestrated system of kickback schemes in which a contract would be signed at far more than the cost of fulfilling it, with the difference deposited secretly by the selected contractors in Iraqi government-controlled accounts all over the world. As a result, Saddam Hussein and the Baath elite got rich off the sanctions, and a great many international businessmen, notably in the Arab world, in France and in Russia, made handsome profits as well.

''The Syrians, the Jordanians, the Turks -- they all had their own deals,'' Nancy Soderberg recalls.

On the propaganda battle:

...Saddam Hussein used the pretext of the sanctions to wage a propaganda war -- one that even many American officials would later concede he probably won. Not only did Hussein use the sanctions to rationalize to Iraqis every shortage they were enduring, but he also proved himself a kind of genius at exaggerating and exploiting the effects of sanctions that were already tragic enough when reported truthfully. To rally his population, and probably also in a bid to win support from Western sympathizers and the international media, Saddam Hussein orchestrated a kind of traffic in suffering -- all meant for the television cameras.

One doctor I spoke to who spent several years in a hospital in the provincial city of Baquba, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, told me that the hospital staff had instructions, whenever a child died, to keep the corpse in the morgue rather than burying it immediately as mandated by Islamic custom. ''When a sufficient number of bodies accumulated,'' he explained, ''the authorities would stage a mass funeral, railing against the sanctions, even though as often as not there was no connection between a particular child's death and the sanctions.''

...I inquired whether there had been other manipulations of the system to make things seem worse than they had really been.

''Of course,'' he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ''It happened all the time. For example, we would get a shipment from the Ministry of Health of vaccines provided by the World Health Organization. But then we would be instructed not to use them until they had reached or even exceeded their sell-by date. Then the television cameras would come, and we would be told to lie and tell the public how the U.N. made ordinary Iraqis suffer. You have to understand: this was a system where everyone knew what was expected of them. Most of the time, we didn't even have to be told what to do.''

So, the choices - endless appalling, unpopular sanctions, or quick, unpopular war:

...The reality of sanctions is very likely the one adduced by Lee Feinstein of the Clinton-era State Department. For implicit in his description of why the Clinton administration acted as it did is the sense that sanctions were less a policy than a stopgap -- one that was a tragedy for the Iraqi people but that also turned into a trap for the United States. Soderberg says that the controversy over sanctions allowed Saddam Hussein to transform the debate from one about his compliance with United Nations resolutions to one about the lifting of the sanctions. As a means of containing Hussein, she says, sanctions were successful, but they were a ''deteriorating'' policy.

...had sanctions really succeeded, presumably there would have been no need for the war at all. Not that every Iraqi I met preferred sanctions to war. To the contrary, some even insisted that given the choice between being subjected to open-ended sanctions and the bloody resolution of an American invasion, they would opt for the latter. ''I detest the Americans and want them to leave Iraq now, immediately,'' one Shiite notable told me. ''But they got rid of Saddam, and now they have lifted the sanctions. That's good. Otherwise, who knows how long this slow death by water torture, which the sanctions were for us, would have gone on?''

And internationally, sanctions were not a popular choice:

...[Rubin] points to the fact that in the run-up to the second gulf war, many of the same countries and campaign groups that had pushed hardest for the lifting of sanctions began to insist that sanctions and containment should be given time to work. ''After spending 1995 to 2000 criticizing Iraq sanctions, the Germans and French fell in love with containment,'' Rubin observes sardonically. ''They wanted better, more extensive containment. They were ready to rethink their opposition to sanctions.''

The author closes with a discussion of the role of sanctions as an effective tool of diplomacy, and notes:

We did not see the end of radical evil with the demise of Saddam Hussein. One has only to think of Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il or Charles Taylor to recognize that. Sooner or later, powerful states confronted by such a figure are almost certain to turn to sanctions as part of what Albright calls the diplomatic ''tool box.'' In fact, the United States now has sanctions in place against about a dozen countries, including North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Syria and Libya. Just this month, Congress imposed a new array of economic sanctions against Myanmar after the military government in that country detained the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

...And there is always the example of apartheid South Africa -- the one instance where comprehensive, multilateral sanctions do appear to have succeeded in producing ''regime change.'' To anti-sanctions campaigners, however, the South African case is the exception that proves the rule, rather than serving as a model for future confrontations with unsavory regimes. In South Africa, they point out, the humanitarian costs were low (South Africa was nowhere near so dependent on imported staples), and there was an effective and viable opposition in the African National Congress.

I don't suppose many folks care to rally to the defense of the South African government, so what the heck - would if be reasonable to wonder whether the white regime in South Africa did not possess the quality of "radical evil" that the author ascribes to Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il or Charles Taylor? This point would connect to the argument that a Gandhi could succeed in India, or a Martin Luther King in the American South, in a way that a similar figure could not succeed in, for example, Iraq. Maybe sanctions worked in South Africa because the white regime was not as brutal or evil as the alternatives noted above.

[Note - if you have an unpopular cause, send it in, let me take a look, and who knows? And I did say "maybe" with South Africa, so don't belabor me with hate mail, thanks.]

UPDATE: The Brothers Judd comment on the article. They don't quite say "Give war a chance", settling for:

Is it not the lesson of the two easily successful Iraq Wars and the failure of the sanctions regime that rather than try "peaceful" means we should more readily resort to force? War saves lives; it's "peace" that kills.

Yes, that would seem to be the point.

Daniel Drezner, who wrote the book on sanctions, comments. On the "give war a chance" implied by Mr. Rieff's article:

One of the reasons I preferred an invasion of Iraq was that the other policy options -- including sanctions -- had a more devastating humanitarian impact. But Iraq is a special case. Rieff is trying, in this article, to suggest that military intervention may always be preferable to sanctions -- and that is just wrong.

So, as to the general rule, not so fast! But for Iraq, we can make an exception.

Oh, and I have a minor quibble with the good Doctor. He criticizes Mr. Rieff for reporting the UN figure for infant casualties, and argues that it is wildly inflated. Mr. Rieff did lead with that figure, and buried his modification, but we should note that he did, after delivering the figure of "500,000 infants" twice, say this:

American officials may quarrel with the numbers, but there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthdays.

From Dr. Drezner, we have:

The most precise study of this topic-- conducted by people hardly sympathetic to the sanctions regime -- concludes that between 100,000 and 227,000 children died during the acute period of sanctions imposition. These are still appalling numbers. But claiming between 273,000 to 400,000 more deaths is cheap and manipulative. [But Rieff is only quoting the UNICEF figure!!--ed. Rieff is also bright enough to know that UNICEF relied on the post-1991 Iraqi government for much of their data.]

Well, it seems that Mr. Rief exaggerated an already strong case.

Posted 7/26/2003 09:52:00 AM by The MinuteMan

WTF At The Tour De France

I am watching the rain come down on the many riders, and wondering, what sort of a way is this to settle the Tour de France?

Yes, yes, it is raining on all of the riders. But that reminds me of a quip made when someone said, in defending a (network) decision to play a World Series game in the rain, that it's raining on all the players.

Yes, said the skeptic, so it is. And would you say the same thing if there were alligators in the outfield?

The conditions may be equal, but they are not equal to the importance of the moment. The best deserve the best!

UPDATE: OK, Ullrich is the first (of the Top Two) to slide and crash, losing the two (maybe six?) seconds he had picked up, but he is getting back up and carrying on. The announcers say he has lost his nerve, and is clearly riding more cautiously.

END: Lance Armstrong does not fall, and will win the Tour.
And this post-race comment by Armstrong will trigger speculation. I paraphrase - "this has been a difficult tour, for reasons people know, and reasons they don't know."

Posted 7/25/2003 11:47:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Valerie Plame Affair - July 26

Those who do not understand the past are doomed to watch summer re-runs. I have a theory about why the media is ignoring this affair, and with a tip from Charles Schumer, we take you back one glorious summer:

Ashcroft Demands Records of 17 Senators Probing Sept 11th. Attacks

The FBI has intensified its probe of a classified intelligence leak, asking 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars and schedules that would reveal their possible contact with reporters.

In an Aug. 7 memo passed to the senators through the Senate general counsel's office, the FBI asked all members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to collect and turn over records from June 18 and 19, 2002. Those dates are the day of and the day after a classified hearing in which the director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, spoke to lawmakers about two highly sensitive messages that hinted at an impending action that the agency intercepted on the eve of Sept. 11 but did not translate until Sept. 12.

Important leaks, a big investigation, FBI involvement - Valerie Plame could take us right back there. And how many want to go? The media is interested in source protection, not source prosecution. And many folks express concern when John Ashcroft commences investigations in the name of national security.

Let me reprise a point I have made earlier - At this moment, journalists are attempting to cajole their sources into divulging classified information about the October NIE, only portions of which were released; and the 9/11 report, portions of which dealing with the Saudi connection were redacted.

These leaks would, I suspect, represent felonies, and, one might imagine, compromise national security. Yet the press, and at least some of the public, want these leaks. For Aschcroft and/or the Congress to clamp down on the Valerie Plame leakers without clamping down on this seems unlikely.

Be careful what you wish for.
Glenn Reynolds commented last summer, as did Atrios.

UPDATE: This, from the NY Times, is what I am talking about:

Classified Section of Sept. 11 Report Faults Saudi Rulers

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, July 25 — Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it.

The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said.

Who thinks we should call Ashcroft?

Posted 7/25/2003 02:08:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Facing The Issues

The Mans Sans Q tiptoes around the question of whether the media can address the racial issues swirling around the Kobe Bryant case.

Well, inspired by his courage, I will engage the question of whether the media can address the issues swirling around the emerging likelihood that the accuser is nuttier than a fruitcake, to use the term recently endorsed by the HRC.

Now, I don't have enough facts to pre-judge this case, and perhaps, after a long pause to digest his evidence, the prosecutor concluded that he had compelling supporting testimony, or some other evidence. And I certainly don't want to suggest, as a general rule, that wackos are not entitled to their day in court. And, lacking a background in psychology, I am scarcely able to comment on the actual mental health of the young woman involved in this case.

That said, let me add - gimme a break. If I have the math right, the young woman in the case attempted suicide last winter, was hospitalized for observation (aka, put on suicide watch) in March, and attempted another suicide in May. And now, she is meant to be the star witness in what may boil down to a "he said / she said" rape case?

What I think would be appropriate would be for the DA who brought this case to host a press conference. He can announce that he was aware of her troubled and troubling past, does not think it will affect her credibility, and is not worried that the stress of a trial will endanger her mental health or, God forbid, her life.

Then we can say, "What a dope."

Alternatively, the DA can announce that this is all news to him, he's as surprised as we we are, but that's what makes our legal system so damn exciting, and the trial will proceed.

Then we can say, "What a dope."

This will not go to trial.

UPDATE: Commentary from Planet Earth. And a puzzling profile from the AP.

Posted 7/25/2003 05:35:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Excellent Column By Josh Marshall

I expect I disagree with some bits, but I can not say why.

UPDATE: Fortunately, I don't have too! Dan Drezner will explain all.

Posted 7/25/2003 05:20:00 AM by The MinuteMan

When Images Collide

If you think about Yellowcake and sports for too long, you realize things that others had not suspected. George Bush is Kobe Bryant. Some part of the nation is a nineteen year old former cheerleader. And we know what happened, but we are struggling to determine if there was meaningful consent.

Meanwhile, the "generic" versus "prescription" controversy continues.

Posted 7/25/2003 05:17:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The Valerie Plame Affair - July 25

Newsday [Schumer Seeks CIA Leak Probe, By Anne Q. Hoy, July 25] tells us that Sen Charles Scumer is calling for a criminal probe, and adds this:

Susan Whitson, an FBI spokeswoman, said the agency would "look at the issue and make determinations about whether there is an investigation that is warranted."

And, night owl Demosthenes watched Ambassador Wilson appear on the Daily Show. Darn my TiVo, anyway. Thanks to my kids, it is "All Degrassi, all the time". Anyway, this was the key bit:

The second segment, though, was the one where I expected the CIA outing story to be addressed. Jon was certainly leaning in that direction, asking "so what was the White House's reaction". Wilson, however, was extremely circumspect, saying only that "people are looking into allegations that were made about my family" and not going any further than that. Jon didn't press the issue, and although it somewhat frustrated me at first, I can respect that decision... he didn't want to alienate his guest, and Wilson had clearly made his choice.

It did, however, lead to what is, for me, perhaps the defining moment of this entire scandal . Wilson said that things were probably going to be patched up, and mentioned a letter Dick Cheney had sent him asking for his support to the tune of a cool grand. He then produced the letter, to Jon's amazement and delight, and showed Dick Cheney's hand-written signature on the letter. Funniest thing I'd seen all week.

That is pretty funny - Wilson was showing off one of the Bush-Cheney fund-raising appeals I pitch in the trash unless the lefty cocktail party circuit I inhabit is really annoying me.

Anyway, it reminds me of my own Republican fund-rasising story, which is not as funny. Well, scary might be a better word, actually, depending on your politics.

It was during the Trent Lott debacle that I got one of those phone calls: "Mr. Minuteman, the Republican party needs your support...". I told the chap that I could not even consider giving the party a dime while Trent Lott was disgracing it as Senate Majority leader, and said good-bye.

A few days or weeks later, Trent Lott also said good-bye, in the best "announce bad news on Friday" manner. Well, Saturday morning I get a phone call: "Mr. Minuteman, the Republican Party needs your support...".

I made up new excuses, but it was an impressive display of organization and follow-up.

Be very afraid.

Posted 7/24/2003 05:08:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Valerie Plame Wilson Affair - July 24

Some days there is very little news, and other days there is none. Today, the Washington Post joins the hunt, sort of. In an on-line chat, Joel Achenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer, says this in response to, basically, where is the coverage of the Novak-Plame scandal:

Joel Achenbach: I don't think they're going to throw Novak in jail for that, no. Nor are they likely to beat the bushes at the White House to see who Novak's source was.

Well, the media prefers its sources to feel chatty and expansive. If one consequence of the sort of investigation that would resolve this is a silent White House, journalists, at least collectively, may prefer to let this go.

As we speak (type?) it is likely that reporters are begging their Washington sources to release the parts of last October's NIE that we have not yet seen. Doing so might serve the national interest, as was argued with the Pentagon Papers. But it occurs to the assembled staff of "Just One Minute" that such a leak would be a felony.

If John Ashcroft were to have a press conference where he announced that the Justice Deparatment took all such allegations seriously, and would aggressively pursue any leaks that might compromise national security in any way, I suspect there would be howls from many of the same people calling for a more aggressive ivestigation of the Plame incident. [ed. - More aggressive investigation? What would less aggressive look like?]

Should the press hound the White House over a possibly criminal leak in the Plame affair while begging their sources for a criminal leak of the NIE? (Or the Saudi section of the 9/11 report?) Headspinning, even for me. Us. Whoever.

So, the New Motto, until we veer of in yet another direction - These guys walk, so others will talk.

[Mini-Update: "Cynical assertion"? How about "Glum prognosis"? But, with reader support, the sun will come out tomorrow! ]

So, let's lead, here at the bottom, with the Don Luskin piece. I think I can safely say that few folks out there would characterize Mr. Luskin as a Dem sympathizer. However, he has made a few phone calls to his "Washington contacts", and tells us:

...This story is just not going to go away, despite the big-press silence this week. Based on my conversations in the last 36 hours with Washington contacts, here's how I'm very sure it's going to turn out -- and it will hinge on two key questions.

Was Plame really a covert operative? Yes, but this will be difficult to officially confirm and there will be debates as to just how covert she really was, and what real harm was done by outing her.

Who outed her, the White House or the CIA? Both.

...I think [some right wing blogger - go read the piece] may be trying a bit too hard to put the best face on what is, in fact, an incident of some importance, and one that does not exactly cover anyone with glory.

OK, Messrs. Novak and Luskin, neither known as being Dem partisans, say we have both Admin sources, and CIA sources. Mr. Luskin explains how the Administration might wriggle away, depending on what the meaning of "covert" is, and we get a bit of insight into just how covert Ms. Wilson was from the post below. But he is not pretending this is no big deal.

Mark Kleiman and the Cal Pundit comment, as we wait for Godot.

The President traveled, so instead of a formal briefing, there was a press gaggle. Jolly. Nothing on this.

TIMELINE of Scandal

Posted 7/23/2003 09:22:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, our man in Niger and star of "The Valerie Plame Wilson Affair", demonstrates that the "C." does not stand for "Credibility". Seamole points us to the July 21 Newsday article:

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

Seamole then finds another shot across the bow, evidently meant to intimidate adjunct scholars at the Middle East Institute. From Ambassador Wilson's on-line bio:

He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters.

Bullies. And get a screen shot.

Seamole has more.

UPDATE 1: With help from Barry, whose kung fu dwarfs mine on this sort of thing, I learn that Ambassador Wilson made the "maiden name claim" on Katie Couric's Today Show. I don't know where he got the transcript, but you can find it here. So, did the Ambassador lie on national television? Well, he was pretty misleading, since he does cast it as "hypothetically", but he must know (assuming he is aware of his own bio) that his hypothetical does not hold up.

Since Newsday dropped the "hypothetically" qualifier, either he "lied" to them, or they engaged in sloppy reporting. In his defense, on the Today Show he corrected Andrea Mitchell's report, which dropped the "hypothetically", so I can believe he used the qualifier with Newsday, if they are reporting a separate interview. But what pattern is emerging? The Ambassador is presenting a "hypothetical" that he ought to know is false, and reporters are dropping the qualifier. That is a lie, or pretty close. I'll tell you what I think - this Ambassador is spinning it mighty fine, here.

UPDATE: Hey, Justin Katz has a fine blog, and a fine eye for this detail.

OK, wild theory as to why there is so little media attention - probably the press can't find sources, but maybe they smell a rat. And anyway, television loves him. The earnest whistleblower, the honest little guy battling big bureaucracy, David v. Goliath - what's not to like?

The alternative script - partisan attack dog who is making it up as he goes along - is still in development. But, Bold Prediction - if the media runs out of news on this, they may decide to re-focus on the leading man.

MORE: I posted this once, but it is well worth repeating - from the Novak column:

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism."

Worth remembering. 800 people, plus family and friends, could make a heck of a Chrismas card list.

MORE: This fellow picks through an address Ambassador Wilson gave on June 14. Let's call him "undecided". Does this speak to the Ambassador's motivation? And, careful readers note that Ambassador Wilson "auto-outed" his wife there, as well.

Posted 7/23/2003 02:21:00 PM by The MinuteMan

You Already Knew That Jon Stewart Was A Genius

So this interview will not surprise you.

...MOYERS: Which is funnier? CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL?

STEWART: CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL? Which is funnier? Which is more soul-crushing, do you mean? Both are equally dispiriting in their… you know, the whole idea that political discourse has degenerated into shows that have to be entitled CROSSFIRE and HARDBALL. And you know, "I'm Gonna Beat Your Ass" or whatever they're calling them these days is mind-boggling.

CROSSFIRE, especially, is completely an apropos name. It's what innocent bystanders are caught in when gangs are fighting. And it just boggles my mind that that's given a half hour, an hour a day to… I don't understand how issues can be dissected from the left and from the right as though… even cartoon characters have more than left and right. They have up and down.

I mean, how... it's so two-dimensional to think that any analysis can come from, "It's the left and it's the right and well, we've had that discussion and that's done."

Posted 7/23/2003 10:48:00 AM by The MinuteMan

The Air, The Balloon, And Our Man Bill

Happy Birthday to Bob Dole, whose "Where's the outrage" campaign of '96 may be reprised in '04. And where is the mesage discipline from Bill Clinton?

Posted 7/23/2003 10:44:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Wild Celebrations In Baghdad

Alaa Hamed, regularly beaten with clubs while he worked as a producer for Uday's television station, said: "I don't want him dead. I want to torture him first.

Your number is three hundred and foty-seven thousand, nine hundred and eleven. We are now serving number thirteen. Please remain in line.

Posted 7/23/2003 08:00:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Newsday: Probes Expected in ID of CIA Officer

By Anne Q. Hoy
WASHINGTON BUREAU

July 23, 2003

Washington - Democrats yesterday denounced the alleged disclosure by administration officials of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, and members of both parties indicated a congressional investigation is likely.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), an Intelligence Committee member, said it plans to investigate who revealed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, who is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In a move that sparked the current controversy over allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger, Wilson revealed two weeks ago that he had warned the Bush administration the reports were unfounded.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence panel, called the disclosure of Plame's identity "vile" and "a highly dishonorable thing to do; highly, highly dishonorable." He, too, said a probe is probably necessary and accused the White House of strong-arm tactics aimed at those who question their policies. "To go after him [Wilson] is one thing, but to go after his wife is another thing," Rockefeller said...

Posted 7/22/2003 09:37:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The Valerie Plame Wilson Affair - A Timeline

The allegation, from Howard Dean's "16 Questions": "...senior officials in [the Bush] Administration may have retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally disclosing that his wife is an undercover CIA officer. "

I intend to put the key elements of the story in one place, and update as necessary, with brief commentary.

[July 29 Late addition: Insta Readers in a hurry can skip the agonizing path that brought us to our current point, and get the highlights here, leaving out the exciting details. And I bet you watch Sportscenter, too! I know I do.]

July 6, 2003: The article that started it all: Ambassador Wilson, "What I Didn't Find in Africa".

July 11: George Tenet, Director of the CIA, comments on "The Wilson Report", among other things. Key points - Tenet describes the content of the Wilson report differently from Wilson's July 6 account; and Tenet describes the selection of Wilson as having been a CIA idea. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describes the Wilson report here.

July 14: Robert Novak "outs" Ms. Wilson, aka Valerie Plame, in "Mission to Niger". The fateful sentences, with emphasis added for sources. Note the absence of a specific source in the first sentence:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

July 16: David Corn writes about the Novak column in "The Nation".

His question:

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

His key excerpt from Novak, which drops the third sentence beginning "The CIA says...":

Novak's July 14, 2003 column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer.

And this:

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it." And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.

The distinction between "administration" and "government" officials haunts this story. TIME clearly makes a distinction, and so does Mr. Corn here. My impression is that "Administration" means what it says; "government" is non-White House executive branch. In this story, the CIA would be "government", and White House officials would be "Administration".

So, when asked directly by Mr. Corn, Mr. Novak says his sources for the key personal information are "government". This agrees with the TIME formulation. The phrase "and its accurate" may suggest, to deep de-constructionists, that Novak got independent verification from a second source.

And Mr. Wilson's description of Mr. Novak's discussions with him? We know that Mr. Novak claimed some "senior administration" sources in his own column, so the fact that he also claims that with Ambassador Wilson is not news. Since the specifics of his conversation with Ambassador Wilson are not available, I deem this to be inconclusive.

However, Mr. Corn was surely eager to get Mr. Novak to admit to "administration" sources, and could not, although Mr. Novak does not describe his sources as shy. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others...., such as TIME, perhaps.

July 17: I provide extended commentary on Novak and Corn in a piece merrily titled "Let's Enjoy Some Popcorn". Nice to know I was still smiling then.

July 17/22: TIME magazine had a story, "The War On Wilson", since revised, dated July 17, 2003. I noticed the revision on July 22.

...some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate...

Notes: First, the parenthetical information that TIME's sources also talked to Novak was added in a revision. Secondly, TIME carefully distinguishes, in the rest of the story, between "Administration officials", and "government officials". I mention this, because Professor Krugman will, eventually, misrepresent the TIME reporting in his own column. And, David Corn will (July 23) write a follow-up arguing (pretending?) that TIME's "government" equals Novak's "senior administration". TIME may tell. TIME may be on my side!

July 17: Mark Kleiman summarizes the story up to this point, subject to the caveat that the TIME revison was not yet available.

July 18: Howard Dean puts this question at number four of "16 Questions".

In a bit of a diversion, we also note the Dean poster -"We Can Handle The Truth". It seems, in a peculiar bit of bipartisanship, to be coordinated with the new White House media strategy.

July 22: Prof. Krugman calls attention to the charges and mis-states the TIME reporting in "Who's Unpatriotic Now?".

July 22: Newsday provides "Intelligence officials" who confirm that Ms. Wilson had a clandestine role at the CIA. This increases the stakes, since identifying a covert agent can be a felony, as noted by Mr. Corn.

July 22: A non-responsive Scott McClellan provides a White House press non-briefing. Word search down for "Novak". Good bloggerage by Lis Riba, and my own, lame by comparison, introductory excerpt:

Q The Robert Novak column last week identified the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson as a CIA operative who was working on WMD issues. Novak said that identification is based on information given to him by two administration sources. That column has now given rise to accusations that the administration deliberatively blew the cover of an undercover CIA operative, and in so doing, violated a federal law that prohibits revealing the identity of undercover CIA operatives. Can you respond to that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Thank you for bringing that up. That is not the way this President or this White House operates. And there is absolutely no information that has come to my attention or that I have seen that suggests that there is any truth to that suggestion. And, certainly, no one in this White House would have given authority to take such a step.

Surprisingly, that did not end the discussion. And we note, approvingly, that the original questioner was open on the possibility that Novak had non-administration sources.

July 22: Wilson hits the talk show circuit. We are looking for transcripts here, since we understand from much-appreciated reader feedback that he appeared on Hardball on July 22. Correction, it was the "Today Show", with excerpts on Hardball, tip our hat to Barry. The Ambassador will be caught with dangerously over-inflated hypotheticals, as noted here.

July 22: My Current Guess - At this point, we have spies, scandal, and cover-up - a perfect media mix. [Hey, and sex, too, if we ignore this!] The press is paying attention, Ambassador Wilson has appeared on a number of news shows, and the scandal is nearing lift-off.

My current evaluation - Novak was coy in his original column as to sources, but there is a lot to suggest he got a lot of his details from the CIA. TIME pretty probably had CIA, or at least "government" sources, for info similar to Novak's. Consequently, the headline for this scandal may one day be "CIA in Disarray - Feud Outs Agent". If the fallout from the Iraqi war includes a politicized and divided CIA, that is bad for the nation.

But it may better for Bush than the alternative, which is that his own aides outed a covert agent and compromised national security in order to punish a political opponent. For Bush supporters (hey, that includes me!) the choices seem to be bad, and worse.

A Reader Reminds Me: The first commandment for Presidents ought to be, "Don't Pick a Fight With The CIA". [Daniel Schorr later agrees].

July 23: Newsday: Probes Expected in ID of CIA Officer

Durbin (D), Rockefeller (D), and Hatch (R). But Hatch is unimpressed with the allegations.

July 23: Mark Kleiman: PLAME UPDATE: SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TIME
And scroll down for more commentary. He is a strong proponent of the theory that the sources came from the White House.

July 23: Dr. Manhattan gets into the mix as, pardon my simplistic labeling, a concerned righty: "I am no fan of Congressional investigations, but this situation is too important to be left to the journalists.

July 23: David Corn of "The Nation" writes again. Little new info, which suggests that people are not talking. He does conflate Novak's "senior administration officials" with TIME's "government officials", and I hope TIME is on my side here, as mentioned on July 17. We extract this:

This is as serious--if not more so--than the FBI files flap that occurred during the Clinton years... [Note to self: "as serious as, more serious than, I wonder if I have company at the bottom of the grammar-barrel]

...Representative Henry Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the [House government affairs] committee, is interested in the Wilson case. But don't bet on the Republicans in control of the committee to rush ahead. Even some Democrats are not eager to deal with an issue like this.

July 23: White House Press Briefing: Another brick in the stonewall. But Ms. Wilson was the first question! It is interesting watching the press try to ask the question in a way that does not provoke a response of "I answered that already." Without new food supplies, the pack will starve, or move on.

And the CalPundt points out that a little bit of help from the NY Times or the WaPo might advance this. This would not be overlooked if Howell Raines were in charge!

July 23: Shock and awe from Bill Hobbs, who suggests a plot twist - Novak was his own primary source! And, check his update for links to "Seamole", who has been providing background dirt on Ambassador Wilson.

Oh, and "seamole" directly refutes a claim made by Wilson that the release of his wife's maiden name compromised her. Nice catch! These evil rightys have game, too (and you know I am green with envy when I say that.)

July 23: No thunder on the right here - Don Luskin speaks to some "Washington contacts", and thinks this is big, the White House is involved, and it is not going away. And, because this is a full service psychic blog, I know what you are thinking and I have already asked. [And, I learn, I cannot help you, or myself].

July 23: Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post notes the Newsday story.

July 24: The Washington Post again, sort of. In an on-line chat, Joel Achenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer, says this in response to, basically, where is the coverage of the Novak-Plame scandal:

:Joel Achenbach: I dont think they're going to throw Novak in jail for that, no. Nor are they likely to beat the bushes at the White House to see who Novak's source was.

Ok, as we scrape the bottom of the news barrel, we note this - media types do not want to create an environment where sources feel a need to clam up. The "media" might think, better to let this slide, and let my sources be free. Why individual journalists don't go for the Pulitzer, or even the front page, I can not tell you, but there may not be a big community push to tackle this. The media is about source protection, not source prosecution.

[Mark Kleiman picks up on the Eerie Silence of the Lambs. NO, he didn't call it that!]

July 24: Sen. Charles Schumer calls for an investigation, and reminds us that we did this just one year ago. Since the shoe was on the other foot, all roles reverse.

July 25: And Schumer gets results! From Newsday:

Susan Whitson, an FBI spokeswoman, said the agency would "look at the issue and make determinations about whether there is an investigation that is warranted."

July 25: No questions at the White House press briefing. Sharon, Abbas, Liberia, Iraq, 9/11 report, Total Recall - c'mon.

July 26: The Baltimore Sun profiles the Ambassador. I know what Evil Righties will do with this:

This is not to say that Wilson, 53, a native Californian who has never shed the laid-back manner of the "hippy surfer" he says he once was, is either bitter or shaken by the episode.

Suddenly, he jokes, he is a "darling of the left." A business consultant who once operated only on the fringes of Washington policy debates, Wilson is now a sought-after media pundit.

Combined with his dangerously over-inflated "hypotheticals" on national television, this gives an odd appearance.

July 29: The Hill moves, and speaks! Good coverage, many lawmakers quoted. My excerpts here.

July 29: Mark Kleiman presents what seems to be the relevant statute. I apologize, I know I am leaving folks out, we are working on it.

July 30: Josh Marshall gets into it. My soundbite, and the director's cut.

Aug 1: Josh Marshall won't let go - he reports that the CIA appears to be investigating this incident. Which may explain the media blackout, since presumably the CIA has lowered the Cone of Silence.

Aug 4: Ambassador Wilson appears on "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer, and recycles old hypotheticals.

Aug 8: A NY Times story by Douglas Jehl adds nothing, but we are thrilled to know they care. And a more durable Common Dreams link.

Aug 10: Coverage in the St. Petersburg Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

From St. Petersburg:

[Ambassador Wilson] said he believes that political operatives in the White House gave his wife's name to Novak, and he thinks he knows who they are. But he's "not ready, yet" to name them. He hopes an investigation - by the FBI, Congress or both - will take care of that.

And, a bit of a chuckle from Seattle:

In carefully discussing what he called the hypothetical possibility his wife is a CIA employee, Wilson noted that the use of her maiden name would compromise work done before their marriage five years ago.

We were alerted to the fact that her maiden name is part of the Ambassador's on-line bio back on July 23. The Ambassador's credibility on this point is, hmm, limited.

Aug 15: John Dean, Nixon's former counsel, on the law; more David Corn on the process. If you read one, read Corn. Briefly, his argument: until the CIA decides there was a security compromise, no investigation occurs. Tenet will be loyal to Bush, game over.

Aug 26: A bit of a break from Mark Kleiman: Ambassador Wilson suggests that Karl Rove is the source of the leak. We comment.

PLEA FOR ASSISSTANCE: Posts, links to stories, cool ideas:
Mr_Minuteman@hotmail.com

Posted 7/22/2003 03:15:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Prof. Krugman Helps Me Twice

Although his reading comprehension skills have failed him, his polemical skills remain unimpaired. Consequently, Prof. Krugman turns a double-play today: he calls attention to a brewing scandal that merits attention, and he discredits his own reputation for accuracy.

Hmm. In fairness, I should point out that, depending on just what the Earnest Professor's reputation for accuracy is, perhaps he enhanced it. Well, here we go:

...while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.

Emphasis added.

Now, TIME has revised its story since Mr. Krugman went to press. But neither the original, nor revised versions confirm his reporting. Let's see what TIME wrote:

...some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger...

Interesting. TIME claims to have "government" officials as a source in a story which clearly distinguishes between "government" and "Administration" officials. I wonder how Prof. Krugman chose to write that Time magazine had as its source "administration officials".

Inevitably, the next bit of the polemic collapses. Think about it: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative.

I have thought about it, as have others. Quite a bit, and the links are below. Mr. Novak's sourcing was originally ambiguous, although, in the revised TIME story, we learn that "government officials" discussed the professional background of Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak. (Whether they were his only, or original source remains a puzzle). TIME never suggested that "Administration officials" had identified Ms. Wilson as an undercover agent, although it would have fit nicely into the theme of their story. TIME was restrained by facts, a barrier that did not impair Prof. Krugman.

Now, it turns out that the characterization of her professional role is probably correct. But neither TIME, nor Novak, point exclusively at White House sources for this.

And where is the story now? At this point, it appears that a CIA agent has had her cover revealed. Since the CIA was quite forthcoming about this, I am not convinced that her secrecy was a big deal, although Newsday and Mr. Wilson offer some exciting, and clearly qualified, speculation on this point.

And perhaps White House officials were involved. Or perhaps this is an internal CIA feud. The current reporting is simply incomplete, Professor Krugman's assertions to the contrary. However, I suspect we agree that further inquiries are warranted. Howard Dean includes this at number four on his "16 Questions", and we have a story of spies, scandal, and cover-up, so we expect the media will perk up.

Sources: Robert Novak, "Mission to Niger";
David Corn, The Nation; revised TIME story.

Mark Kleiman, CORRECTION AND UPDATE ON THE PLAME STORY.

An excerpt of the original TIME story can be found here, but the link no longer works. The key revision seems to be the insertion of the parenthetical information that TIME's sources also admitted speaking to Mr. Novak.

Posted 7/22/2003 10:51:00 AM by The MinuteMan

It Takes A Big Man To Admit He Is Wrong

Fortunately, I am neither "big", nor wrong, so I can continue the battle!

Wait a minute! If Mark Kleiman said one thing, and you disagreed, and he was right, doesn't that make you..

Don't say it! And what are you doing in this blog? If I wanted my conscience to have a blog, I would set it up at "My Inner Torment", or some such darn site. Probably use Movable Type, too.

Why don't you tell people what happened?

I was just about too, thanks.

I'm watching.

I'll give you something to watch. Later.

Sorry, a bit of a problem with crowd control. Anyway, Our Story So Far: David Corn wrote a piece in the Nation last week alleging that White House officials had outed Ambassador Wilson's wife from her undercover CIA post. This was in revenge for the Wilson account of his trip to Niger which, said the Ambassador, debunked the White House uranium claim.

Mark Kleiman, and others, said, ah ha, the evil White House in action. I said, not so fast, the Corn story and the TIME follow-up are vague on sources, other explanations are possible. At that point, I was stilll on firm ground.

Mr. Kleiman then wondered (by e-mail) whether I had a theory of the case. I posted that I had several, but then picked one, and that won't happen again, believe you me. My pick - the White House would be vindicated, Ms. Wilson would turn out not to be undercover, and no crime has been committed.

Then, the ice cracked. Newsday certainly seems to have confirmed that Ms. Wilson was undercover.

Leaving me where? Well, clinging at straws, basically. A careful reading of the Newsday story does not confirm that Novak had White House sources for the news about Ms. Wilson's career. In that sense, we can re-hash my objections to his original piece. Speaking to Newsday, Novak said this - nothing. Everything Newsday has on Novak comes from the Corn article or his own column.

Newsday also contains some speculation:

Wilson and a retired CIA official said Monday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment.

Well, they don't know what Novak heard from the "senior Administration officials" either.

Unless I have missed some money quote, the rest of the Newsday story is similarly full of caveats. For example:

A current intelligence official said that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk.

Leaving us where? Well, I am abandoning any thought at all that this will not be a big scandal. The basic theme, as articulated by my go-to guy, is that the Adminsitration manipulated intelligence to drag us into war, and then compromised national security (by outing an undercover CIA agent) to preserve the cover-up.

The media loves cover-ups, they love spy stories, and if this story does not have legs, then I am wrong yet again. Furthermore, since Dean promoted it in his "16 Questions", score a point for Dean.

But do we know, at this point, that it was Administration officials that outed Ms. Wilson to Novak? I don't believe the Newsday story takes us beyond the Corn article on that point. Whether I am being cautious, or simply in denial, is an open question.

So, I was wrong about Ms. Wilson not being covert. I am in the oxygen tent (but alive!) on the possibilty that Novak's source was CIA, or even something else altogether. I had noted, in my posts, that if the CIA outed one of their own as part of an internal feud on the handling of intelligence, that is still a big story and bad for Bush. Bad in a different way then if the source was the White House, arguably not as bad, but still bad.

I am staying with "not proven" as to sources, Good luck getting that from Novak. The next step is a media firestorm, and some sort of investigation.

Watching my team in action on this, I feel like a Mets fan. But this is far from over!

Well, that is OK. But don't you provide links anymore?

Sorry. They are in other posts, and I have to run out to lunch. I hear the crow is tasty....

UPDATE: YES, my go-to guy mentions the Ms. Wilson Caper and is WRONG! We rely on Prof. Krugman to overstate even the credible charges. And NO, I was not having a Michael Lewis moment in my opening. Big-hearted!

BIG, SERIOUS UPDATE: TIME has moved the story to a new address, and the old links don't work. The new story also contains a parenthetical addition that strikes me as significant. Well, hugely significant, actually. Here we go:

...some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger.

Whoa. You will recognize the quote from the original TIME piece, but the news is that the CIA types, sorry, "government officials", are admitting that they might be Novak's source for his bit that begins "The CIA says...". His only source? We don't know. Are they taking the fall for cronies in the White House? No idea. But this moves me a few steps along on the comeback trail.

Posted 7/21/2003 10:43:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Everything Old Is New Again

Rep. Henry Waxman spent his St. Patrick's Day sending a letter to the White House criticizing Adinistration hyping of Saddam's nuclear threat.

It is hard to find a point he is making then that is not being repeated now. This discussion really did freeze for four months, didn't it?

I will pitch in an excerpt:

Your statement to Congress during the State of the Union, in particular, raises a host of questions. The statement is worded in a way that suggests it was carefully crafted to be both literally true and deliberately misleading at the same time. The statement itself — “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — may be technically accurate, since this appears to be the British position. But given what the CIA knew at the time, the implication you intended — that there was credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa — was simply false.

Reads like it was torn from today's headlines.

Posted 7/21/2003 09:48:00 PM by The MinuteMan

I Will Have A Better Day Tomorrow

Or soon. From both Dan Drezner and the CalPundit, we have this from Dr. Drezner:

The power of the critique against Bush would be strengthened if it could be shown that a significant fraction of the American public -- as well as the legislative branch -- supported action against Iraq only because of the claim that Hussein's regime had an active nuclear weapons program.

Well, I have just begun! But it is a fairly grim beginning. Here we have a Pew Research Center survey from January 16, 2003:

Public Wants Proof of Iraqi Weapons Programs
Majority Says Bush Has Yet to Make the Case

Summary of Findings

A two-thirds majority of the public continues to express qualified support for the idea of using military force to end the rule of Saddam Hussein. But the Bush administration may face a major challenge in winning public support for the use of force if U.N. weapons inspections yield anything less than evidence that Iraq has been hiding weapons of mass destruction. Only about three-in-ten Americans say they would favor war in Iraq if no weapons program is discovered, even if there is no proof that Iraq is not hiding weapons.

I am not going to add emphasis, you can figure out for yourself what the juicy bits are.

And, reading from their table, I see that 76% support war if UN inspectors find WMDs; support eases slightly to 28% if UN inspectors cannot find weapons, but also cannot be certain that there are none.

[Sidebar: "eases slightly" is a technical term I learned from my broker a few years ago; it means, roughly, "I meant to call last week". ]

Now, I should mention that I have been taking a very similar position to Tom Friedman and Dan Drezner on this issue, so I am hoping to see Drezner Ascendant! And, in the hope of achieving that, let me suggest some interpretations of this poll:

(1) What poll, it never happened. OK, that won't work, and no more clowning around.

(2) People respond to the question being asked. This poll was framed in terms of WMDs, so people agreed that not finding them was significant. If the pollster had asked about Iraq as a human-rights disaster, respondents might have shown a similar reduction in support for the war if
evidence of human rights violations was not found.

Convincing, huh? It makes sense, now if only I had even a little bit of evidence to support it. Otherwise, we have another faith-based initiative.

Which has worked for me (so far), but has obviously left some folks troubled.

UPDATE: Any more help like this and Dr. Drezner is going to enlist me in the French Foreign Legion. From the useful ABC News Poll Vault, I found a summary, with more detail in the WaPo. I will excerpt question 10:

10. Say the United States has circumstantial evidence suggesting that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but the United States does not have direct evidence proving it. Do you think circumstantial evidence, without direct evidence, would or would not be enough to justify going to war with Iraq?

Would be enough - 42% / Would not be enough - 52%.

This seems to compare to baseline support for a war to remove Saddam from power (Question 3) of 61% in favor, 31% opposed.

Which sort of suggests that about 20% of respondents were focusing on WMDs.

And here is another interesting summary, but I haven't found the details.

What Factors Affect War Support?

Respondents in this poll were asked, in an open-ended question, why they support or oppose war with Iraq. Among those who support war, 40 percent cited a threat — to the United States or the world in general — including a threat of terrorism. A quarter also spoke of a need to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Among those who oppose it, top answers were a lack of justification, a need for more international support, other problems here at home, and the human cost of war.

Vague.

Here is reaction to Powell:

Powell's presentation appears to have been particularly compelling on the assertion that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons. Seventy-eight percent of those who watched or heard about the speech say the United States has "strong evidence" of this; among non-watchers, 60 percent think the United States has strong evidence.

Seventy-eight percent of speech-watchers also think the United States has shown strong evidence of Iraqi non-cooperation; that compares to 66 percent of non-watchers.

Somewhat fewer see strong evidence that Iraq is trying to develop nuclear weapons — 64 percent of speech watchers, and 56 percent of non-watchers. And Powell appears to have had the least impact in asserting links between Iraq and al Qaeda; 50 percent of speech watchers see strong evidence — almost the same as it is among those who didn't watch or hear about Powell's presentation. (Previous ABCNEWS polling has shown, however, that most Americans do think such a link exists.)

Posted 7/21/2003 07:10:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Cats And Dogs

TAPPED and Vincent Davis Hanson of NRO in agreement on a permanent peacekeeping corps.

OK, Hanson was waaay first. Still, a good job by TAPPED.

Posted 7/21/2003 06:50:00 PM by The MinuteMan

BTW

IMHO, this is a great title for a blog. And, IIRC, this is another of my favorite titles.

Posted 7/21/2003 05:57:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Be Careful What You Wish For

I ask for a quote where Bush says Saddam has nuclear weapons, and what do I get? Another opportunity to tap-dance, and me with all my best clothes at the cleaners. Another time, maybe?

George Bush, Dec 31, 2002:

Q: Sir, why should we be more worried about Saddam Hussein, who has no nuclear weapons, than Kim Chong-il, who is unstable and does have nuclear weapons?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it's important to remember that Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon. We don't know whether or not he has a nuclear weapon. We do expect him to disarm his weapons of mass destruction, that's what we expect.

Emphasis added. And waddya mean, we don't know? You mean he might? Gimme a break.

Sorry, I thought that was my main man Armando out there.

UPDATE: Yes, I have read the follow-up Q&A. I am already having a long day - are you trying to make it longer?

Fine, my comment - It was a slow news day, and he was responding in the context of North Korea and the nuclear threat to America; he was not addressing the full case for disarming Saddam.

Ahh, I can feel my spine stiffening already!

UPDATE: My source for the above quote was Joseph Cirincione, gentleman and scholar, who was recently misquoted in the NY Times.

Posted 7/21/2003 01:48:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Mark Kleiman Covers My Bet - [UPDATE - And Looks Good]

I have a long post below, laying out scenarios on the Ms. Wilson Caper. I put my money, tepidly, on the idea that Ms. Wilson is an overt CIA agent. In Mr. Kleiman's latest post, that would be (3).

Mr. Kleiman favors (4), "She works for a consulting firm as cover for her real work as a spy for the CIA."

Well, at least we agree on what the bases are and I think we have covered them.

Now, my headscratcher - why do we think Ms. Wilson is a consultant? I have carried that belief for several days, but when I tried to verify it, the best I could do was this David Corn excerpt:

"If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer.

Have I forgotten some source? That is pretty thin. Telling your friends that you are an energy analyst for a private firm is like telling them nothing. Which a person at the CIA might do, just to avoid a lot of silly conversations.

Just wondering. If this is the only source for her "consultant" cover, and you discount it a bit, my choice of (3) looks a lot better.

UPDATE: The subliminal power of the CalPundit:

July 16, 2003
ABUSE OF POWER....Valerie Plame is an energy analyst for a private firm. She is also the wife of Joseph Wilson...

Groan. I have no doubt that it seemed inconsequential at the time, and I am sure that dropping the qualifier hardly seemed important. Repeat groan.

Posted 7/20/2003 11:22:00 PM by The MinuteMan

At Number Four - With A Bullet!

I spent some time on Thursday examining an article by David Corn in The Nation which raised questions about "senior officials" in the Bush White House. Now, this has become number 4 of Howard Dean's 16 questions, and we will let him ask it:

4. Mr. President, we urgently need an explanation about the very serious charge that senior officials in your Administration may have retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally disclosing that his wife is an undercover CIA officer. (The Nation, Corn, David, 7/16/2003)

(Hey, how come I provide a link to the Corn article and the Dean site does not? Who is web-savvy now?)

[Mini-Update - Breaking news, and my spin, here]

Sorry, levity-free zone ahead. First, it is worth noting that Mr. Corn did not make "the very serious charge". He raised it as a question, with a number of caveats. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Dean, and many others, that a more complete explanation is in order. However, I believe there are many possible explanations. I should also note that, if the Dean staff is doing its job, they have already investigated this, and wouldn't be asking unless their legwork pointed to "scandal". Well, we may learn something about Dean's staffwork, too.

I have had a chance to reflect on this, and have exchanged views with some other bloggers. The highly regarded Mark Kleiman had two posts on this subject. The first, "WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME THIS ISN'T TRUE?", describes the situation. The second, "LOOKS LIKE A BIG ONE", seems to conclude that TIME magazine had verified the David Corn story:

...We don't have to rely on the Nation and Novak; the Time story I linked to (but, obviously, hadn't read carefully enough) says that "officials" had identified Plame as "a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." So we still have only Novak's word on "senior officials," but that the information about Plame's status was revealed to the press as part of an Administration campaign to discredit her husband is no longer subject to reasonable doubt.

[Mini-Update - like blogs passing in the night, Mr. Kleiman has posted as I type. His latest thoughts are here, and some of my questions seem to be answered. Man, do I re-write? Groan. No. But the places where I say Mr. Kleiman does not have reasonable doubt? Modify - his doubts have re-surfaced.]

Emphasis added. I had less than 16 questions for Mr. Kleiman, but they were longer. My gist was, look, neither of us are professional journalists, but in its reporting of this story, TIME seems to be distinguishing between "Administration officials" and "government officials". Ari Fleischer, for instance, is an "Administration official"; George Tenet is a "government official". In the quote that you [Mr. Kleiman] excerpt as conclusive, what TIME actually says is "Some government officials, noting that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, intimate that she was involved in his being dispatched Niger...". (My emphasis added).

In fact, in his original column, Mr. Novak strongly suggested that he had sources in both the White House and government, to wit, the CIA:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction [Let's note the absence of a source for this statement]. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

Furthermore, in The Nation column, Mr. Corn makes a similar distinction:

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it." And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.

So, my first question for Mr. Kleiman was - if TIME, Mr. Corn, and Mr. Novak are characterizing the source as "government", as distinct from "Administration", why aren't you?

And, next, if TIME does not mean Adminstration officials in the sentence where they refer to "government officials" (a defensible proposition, I think) then what is it about the TIME story that erased any doubts held over from the heavily caveated Corn story?

Well, Mr. Kleiman has been kind enough to entertain my questions, and may find time to post a reply. I am reluctant to attempt to paraphrase his e-mails until he does so, although he has graciously given me permission to take a stab at it.

Mr. Kleiman was also sufficiently wicked to ask me a seemingly innocent question - what did I think happen, and is it a big deal?

Hey, not so fast, was my quick reply. I shoot down other people's theories, I don't build my own. But if I may make a topical analogy, someone can ask me what I think happened with Kobe Bryant, and I may have a theory (Actually, I do. Several.) But do I really imagine that my explanation is worth much? No.

Similarly in this case. I am balancing in my mind four basic theories, with variations, all of which seem to fit the facts as we know them. I have no way of knowing which is true, but I can say three things - I have reasonable doubt about all of them, my guess as to the explanation that will ultimately pan out differs from Mr. Kleiman's "no reasonable doubt" scenario, and I hope the Administration provides enough disclosure that we, the people, learn the truth.

Right then, four theories. The source revealing Ms. Wilson to be CIA was either the Administration or the CIA; and her role at the CIA is either sensitive, in which case national security may have been breached and lives threatened, or it is not, in which case this gets a bit of a ho-hum. Two possibilities for the first variable, two for the second, multiply, four theories.

Now, variations - Since we have Congressional oversight of the CIA, maybe it was evil Republicans in the Congress that outed Ms. Plame, off the record. Hey, I am just putting that out there for completeness.

And, there is a possibility that Ms. Wilson really was involved in the selection of Ambassador Wilson for this trip. Since the process by which he was picked has been in the news (see Wolf Blitzer transcript), then arguably, there is a legitimate news interest in revealing that fact. Of course that would not trump the importance of maintaining her CIA cover if it really is clandestine, but if her CIA role is not an official secret, then maybe she really does belong in the news. In which case, even the idea that this is a "smear" campaign becomes suspect.

OK, in favor of the theory that Mr. Novak's primary source was the Administration - well, he offers the news that Ms. Wilson is CIA with no source, and the next sentence describes information gleaned about Ms. Wilson from "Administration officials". Set against that, the information so attributed is not directly relevant to her CIA background - they "told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report."

Mr. Corn surely asked Mr. Novak specifically about his source, since that was the whole point of his story, and got "government officials". TIME could not seem to buttress their "War on Wilson" thesis by tracking down the "senior Administration officials" that told Novak that the wife suggested him for Niger. However, TIME did find "government officials" to pass on that rumor, and confirm her CIA connection.

A possible explanation - a White House official gave Mr. Novak a detailed run down of Ms. Wilson off the record, and the "She suggested him for Niger" rumor on the record. So armed, Mr. Novak then tricked the CIA into confirming her status. Figuring her story was out anyway, the CIA kept talking when TIME called.

Is it possible? I suppose the CIA could be that stupid and casual about blowing an agent's cover. And that is where my "Congressional Republicans" idea comes in - maybe they gave Mr. Novak enough, off the record, to get him started. But I have two problems with this theory. If Ms. Wilson's CIA role is sensitive, it requires both criminal activity at the White House and criminal stupidity in the CIA; and it seems to strain to re-interpret Mr. Novak's own description of his sources. Is it conceivable that Mr. Novak is being deceptive? Hmm.

Next idea - the source for the news that she is CIA came from the CIA. If her role is sensitive, this is a big story in its own right - "CIA in Disarray; Internal Feud Compromises Security". Not a good headline for Bush or the country, but not as bad for Bush as the scenario proposed by Mr. Corn and endorsed by Mr. Kleiman. I happen to think this theory fits everyone's descriptions of their sources quite nicely. Oh, are you asking me about this, from the Ambassador:

"...Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials."

Well, Novak admits to having Administration officials for part of his story. Without knowing how the conversation developed between Mr. Novak and the Ambassador, or how Mr. Corn chose to depict the Ambassador's account, I am willing to discount this. To zero.

Now, is Ms. Wilson in a sensitive role at the CIA? The best evidence for that is Mr. Novak's use of the word "operative". What was TIME able to get from their chatty "government officials", plural?:

...Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction...

You know,"operative" is a lot more glamorous than "official". Could Novak be spicing up his column? Could Novak's source be spicing up his own leak? Could the chatty chaps at the CIA be trying to cool speculation, by stonewalling TIME down from "operative" to "official"? We're on a fine line here, but I am not prepared to cast aside all doubt and conclude a crime has occurred on the basis of this word.

Leaving us, or at least me, where? My guess is that Ms. Wilson has some role at the CIA (yes, I am on a limb here), but that her presence on the payroll is not a state secret. George Tenet, for example, is in a similar situation. Mr. Corn tells us that Ms. Wilson is "...a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm". Well, she could be CIA and not prefer to chat about it with the neighbors, even though it is not an official secret. I know dentists and psychologists who take a similar tack. Or, her friends might not discuss her background with reporters. Or, she might be a deep-cover agent that the CIA just can't stop talking about to Mr. Novak, TIME, and anyone else who calls, but I don't think so.

If her job is not a secret, no crime has been committed. Maybe folks at the CIA are mad at the Ambassador, and are spreading this story. Apparently it spread to the White House, so that Mr. Novak got it there and TIME got it at the CIA. Maybe it is a bit of a smear, maybe it is valid news. Maybe David Corn is just trying to pop up a story.

Then again, this is the White House crowd that outed a gay Canadian reporter. Well, outed is wrong, he was already out, although maybe not to the troops he was covering in Iraq. And the White House statement was legal and accurate, which is not what we are alleging here. But we don't need to pretend that we are dealing with choir-boys, or brain surgeons.

And Ricky West's colleague points out that we have the British suicide. If there is a trans-Atlantic cabal pushing for this war and attempting to intimidate the opposition (NOT his theory, nor mine, but I'm just sayin'), they have had a good week, intimidation-wise.

So yes, I would like to know more. But I continue to have what I think are very reasonable doubts that a crime was committed by White House officials. I don't hold any of these theories strongly enough to say "I believe this". But if I had to bet, I would say, CIA source, her CIA role is not a state secret, and she had some involvement in, or at least prior knowledge of, his selection. And yes, I am troubled that my calm, carefully reasoned position exactly tracks my partisan prejudices.

Fortunately, I don't have to bet. And I want someone to find out.

EPILOGUE: A few afterthoughts - if I answer each of Dean's 16 questions like this, the election will be over before we finish. Hope he's not waiting for me.

Secondly, I just L-U-V the banner in the Dean website photo- "We Can Handle The Truth". It could not tie in better with my new media strategy for the White House. Code Red!

UPDATE: And a final, lede-burying idea! Proper lawyers (if I can believe what I see on TV) are trained not to ask a question in cross-examination unless they already know the answer. Avoid surprises.

Of course, Dr. Dean is, uhh, a doctor. They ask all sorts of questions, hoping to learn something.

Well, if the Dean staff is doing a good job, they have checked around Washington and have already apprised themselves of the reality of the Valerie Wilson situation. This would not be one of Dean's questions unless they already know that at least some parts of the "Corn Scandal" are true. Ms. Wilson's employment status, for example, should be relatively easy to check.

OTOH, if this scandal dissolves into laughter, then we learn something quite different about the Dean staff.

Posted 7/20/2003 06:33:00 PM by The MinuteMan

We Rebut A Point TIME Made In "A War On Wilson?"

Among other interesting comments, TIME says:

When Tenet issued his I-take-the-blame statement on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium connection last week [note: July 11], he took a none-too-subtle jab at Wilson's report. "There was no mention in the report of forged documents — or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all," Tenet wrote. For his part Wilson says he did not deal with the forgeries explicitly in his report because he never saw them.

I have previously pointed out that this may not have been meant as a jab at all. Folks have wondered where the forged documents fit into this mess, and Tenet may simply have been explaining that examining the documents was not part of the Wilson assignment.

Now, should examining the documents have been part of his mission? Is it plausible that the CIA would have a former Ambassador meet with officials in Niger while other experts [forget to] examine relevant documents? Works for me.

In any case, Wilson made no mention of a role for himself with respect to forged documents in his infamously incomplete July 6 NY Times account of his mission to Niger. However, let's roll the tape of his July 6 appearance on "Meet The Press":

MS. MITCHELL: One the things that a lot of people don’t understand is why did it take more than a year for someone to even look for the documentation? Because a year later, after the—a month after the State of the Union address, finally somebody turned this issue over to the U.N. inspectors. They looked at the documents, and noticed right away on the face of it that they were frauds.
AMB. WILSON: I can’t answer that except I would fully suspect that if there was any importance attached to the documentation that there would have been a serious effort to get ahold of it. When I came back from Niger, and debriefed, I had not, of course, seen the documents, but one of the points that I made was if these documents did not contain certain signatures—specifically, the signature of the Minister of Energy and mine and the prime minister—then they could not be authentic.

So as of July 6, the public record was clear - Ambassador Wilson had not seen the documents. Consequently, the "none-too-subtle jab" was also nonsensical, and easily refuted, if we accept the TIME characterization. Or maybe it was not a jab at all.

Now, a sidebar on Ambassador Wilson's African expertise. We should not doubt his qualifications, given his resume, but we cannot explain this:

AMB. WILSON: Well, first of all, Andrea, when the president made the comment, he was referring to a British White Paper Report that came out in September of the previous year, September 2002; again, referring to uranium sales from an African country to Iraq. Now, there are four African countries that produce uranium or have uranium stockpiles: South Africa, Namibia, Gabon and Niger.

Well, Somalia fooled me and the BBC as well, but it is mentioned in the NIE, and here. James Robbins, writing in NRO, mentioned Somalia on July 9. One can only imagine the surprise Ambassador Wilson must have felt upon seeing the published NIE excerpts.

UPDATE: Darn, did I bury the lede again? I am feeling like Armando, but more self-referential.

Posted 7/20/2003 05:53:00 PM by The MinuteMan

My Secret Vice, Revealed

I bury the damn lede all the time. I like to think of it as building to a big finish. Heck, I had to read 800 pages to find out that [SPOILER ALERT!] Voldemort was not able to kill Harry, and a lot of my posts are shorter than that.

Sometimes, I start off making one point, and another one creeps into the post, almost unannounced. Other times, the original point mysteriously vanishes, leaving me with nothing. If it is nearly as much fun for you as it is for me, then fine.

Oh, and one more point - the notion that Ambassador Wilson was not fully forthcoming in his original NY Times account of his trip to Niger seems to be gaining a bit of traction.

Posted 7/20/2003 12:37:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Fair And Balanced At The NY Times

The Sunday Week In Review publishes an article by Christopher Marquis titled "How Powerful Can 16 Words Be?". Powerful enough to fog men's minds, evidently, based on this excerpt:

Today, those 16 words haunt the administration. They are the best-remembered flourish in a portrait of Iraq that today seems unrecognizable. They are a leading rationale for a war that has resulted in the death of 224 Americans. And they are either unsubstantiated or based on a lie.

"We did not go to war because of mustard gas or Scuds," said Joseph Cirincione, senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We went to war because President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or might already have, a nuclear bomb, and we could not afford to wait. Now it's obvious that's not true and there was no solid evidence it was true at the time."

"Would we have gone to war if the president hadn't uttered those 16 words?" he asked. "Clearly, the answer is yes." But, he added: "We wouldn't have gone to war without the nuclear threat. The president's case for war was centered on the nuclear threat."

Well, as to whether they were the "best-remembered flourish" in January 2003, I don't know. They certainly have become famous in the last two weeks.

But I know this bit, "We went to war because President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or might already have, a nuclear bomb, and we could not afford to wait", is false. Journalists and bloggers have scoured the public record, and the most incendiary quote out there seems to be Dick Cheney's famous mis-statement on Meet The Press "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons".

Now, the Times reporter must know this. I suspect that Joseph Cirincione, in the cold light of day, realizes he was misquoted, or else mis-spoke. So, my question is, why did Mr. Marquis of the Times not get a correcting quote from and Administration official, or simply note his own inability to find such a statement attributable to President Bush?

Gee, I have no idea. But some will suspect that it is more of the old Times bias, more of which is on display elsewhere in the story:

The fallout from the uranium charge hung over Mr. Bush and his entourage during their recent African tour. The president and White House officials initially pointed fingers at the C.I.A. over their vetting of the speech; George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, took responsibility, though it was soon disclosed that he had removed the same charge from a presidential speech just three months earlier.

False again. As Tenet made quite clear, he did not remove the same charge from the Cincinnatti speech; the proposed allegation in that speech was much more specific, and deemed to be unverified. Granted, it was a similar charge, but it was most certainly not the same charge.

Here is the long explanation from a White House Press Briefing:

Q You referred to it, Ari, as a minor element, but it was important enough to delete in the October speech, a reference to this.

MR. FLEISCHER: A reference to what?

Q A reference to Iraq's alleged attempt to get the uranium from Niger. In that case, the CIA Director asked Mr. Hadley to delete it, and it was deleted. Should that not have raised all kinds of red flags come January, when a similar reference pops up in the speech? Should not Mr. Hadley or someone from the White House made sure to check this out with the CIA?

MR. FLEISCHER: It was a different reference in the State of the Union speech.

Q Well, it was similar.

MR. FLEISCHER: But it was different. And it's similar in the fact that it's Iraq and Iraq pursuing weapons -- that's similar, of course. What is dramatically and markedly different and makes the Cincinnati speech different from the State of the Union speech, is the Cincinnati speech had a sentence in it about Iraq pursuing a specific quantity of weapons from one country -- Niger. The Director of Central Intelligence suggested to the White House that that statement should be removed. It was removed.

The State of the Union address had different language, and it was that Iraq is pursuing uranium, seeking uranium from Africa. That's because there was additional reporting from the CIA, separate and apart from Niger, naming other countries where they believed it was possible that Saddam was seeking uranium. So it's an apple in Cincinnati and an orange in the State of the Union. The two do not compare that directly.

Q Well, but it's an African country versus Africa. I'm just saying, should that not have raised red flags for someone in the White House to double check?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that's why it was double-checked. And this is where we have acknowledged that the vetting process didn't work. Now, what did work was the vetting process in Cincinnati. And that's why the sentence specific to Niger with a specific quantity was taken out. But the broader statement about seeking uranium from Africa was vetted through the CIA. And the vetting process as it took place in Cincinnati did not take place for the State of the Union, and we've acknowledged that that is regrettable. But, again, over one issue of did he or did he not seek uranium from Africa, not whether Saddam Hussein was a threat and he needed to be removed.

retrace@nytimes.com

UPDATE: Or, Mr_Minuteman@hotmail.com. I stand by the first, and more annoying bit, about "President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or might already have, a nuclear bomb"; however, the bit about different claims in the Ohio speech and the SOTU is looking uncertain. From Monday's WaPO:

...yesterday, a senior administration official with knowledge of the Tenet-Hadley conversation disputed the White House version. "The line he asked to take out wasn't about 500 tons of uranium or a single source. It was about Africa and uranium," the official said. Even the broader assertion about Africa "wasn't firm enough. It was shaky."

I could have stopped with one strong item. But no, I had to dilute it, and get sidetracked on something that may come out in favor of the NY Times. Note to self: Quit while ahead!

UPDATE 2: I try to learn something new every day. Today, I learned that George Bush siad this, while chatting with reporters on New Years Eve:

QUESTION: Sir, why should we be more worried about Saddam Hussein, who has no nuclear weapons, than Kim Chong-il, who is unstable and does have nuclear weapons?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it's important to remember that Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon. We don't know whether or not he has a nuclear weapon. We do expect him to disarm his weapons of mass destruction, that's what we expect.

OK, there are few slower news days than Dec. 31, Trent Lott was the buzz, I was away - blah, blah, blah. Did everyone know about this but me, or can I quit with the excuses?

And yes, it is hard to take this seriously, since it is, after all, our non-verbal President speaking, and the charge was not repeated. Still, I asked for it...

NOTE: The source for the Bush quote was Joseph Cirincione, the chap quoted above. He also corrects his quote in the Times, since I had asked him about the odd grammar. It should have been as follows:

"We went to war because President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or soon could have, a nuclear bomb..."

Well, that is better.

Posted 7/19/2003 11:33:00 AM by The MinuteMan

How Great Is This?

Bloggers have never had it so good. JeraLynn Merritt of TalkLeft is a total media rock star who, in her day job, is a defense attorney in Colorado. Naturally, she is all over the Kobe Bryant story. Some of her regular readers have questioned whether she is posting too often on this subject. Oh, please. In the land of "All OJ, all the time", this story will be even bigger, and who better to cover it than Ms. TalkLeft? More!

UPDATE: Shockingly sensible commentary, with interesting anecdotes, from Ethan J. Skolnick, my new go-to guy at the paper of record, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Posted 7/19/2003 10:58:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Fans of "Peter Pan" Will Get This

Armando Benitez, the fireballing relief pitcher with the egg-shell psyche, has left the Mets and joined the Yankees.

When he pitches with confidence, Armando can throw a steak past a hungry dog; when his confidence is gone, he can't get a pitch past my grandmother.

Last night, he made his Yankee debut. The Yanks had a big lead, there was no pressure, and he was excellent for two innings. Right now he can help the Yanks by providing a live arm and working some innings. However, we all wonder if he can help the team in a big game against the hated Red Sox in September.

Time will tell. But the Yankee players and coaches are all repeating one message - if we keep this guy's confidence up, he can help us win. Yankee fans, being smarter than Mets fans, have (mostly) figured this out as well. Booing Armando makes sense, based on his history, and may feel good, but it does not help the club win ball games.

Personally, if he could throw 95 miles per hour and keep his pitches low in the zone, I would cheer Bill Clinton in pinstripes. [NO, those aren't pinstripes! Looks good, though.]

Sorry. Re-focus. Peter Pan. Yes, as a kid, I vividly recall Tinkerbell's dramatic near-death, where only the enthusiastic clapping of the audience could keep her alive. You gotta believe! And every time, we would clap, and Tinkerbell would live. OK, one year I tried not clapping, and got a stern lecture from my mom about the problems with free-ridership. And I was never quite sure how it worked when Tinkerbell was on televison, but I figured it must be like ESP, or praying, or something. Fortunately, this was pre-VCR and DVD, so her near-death was not happening five times daily, as in my own household.

I had a point when I started. Oh, yes - Armando Benitez is Tinkerbell. Clap for him.

Posted 7/18/2003 08:45:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Two From TAPPED

I agree with this, and with this. Carville is a smart one.

Posted 7/18/2003 01:45:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The White House Strikes Back

The embattled White House, struggling with questions about uranium, intelligence, and "what did Bush know and when did Rice know it?", is planning a media counter-push aided by Mary Matalin.

And, being the connected kind of guy I am, I can provide a glimpse into what is, for the rest of you, still a double-super-top-secret media strategy.

Just a hint, though, as to how the White House will defend itself:

Q: Did you order the Code Red?

Bush: You're damn right I did.

Actually, the strategy is in effect! Bush did this yesterday, as Ms. Notes reminds us.

Good weekend, all

Posted 7/18/2003 01:05:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Closing The Circle

The restless, endless quest for truth, or at least plausible deniability, never stops. From the July 17 White House press briefing:

Q: ... Vice President Cheney said flatly at one point that Iraq is reconstituting it's nuclear weapons.

MR. McCLELLAN: He was referring to its nuclear weapons program. If you go back and look at that interview, I know which one you're citing. And repeatedly throughout that interview he was talking about reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. You're right about that one statement was said, but he was referring to reconstitution of a nuclear weapons program.

From the time vault, back in May.

Posted 7/18/2003 02:01:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Whose National Intelligence Estimate Is That, Again?

Did the Wall Street Journal get ahold of a phony NIE? We wonder. [Check the UPDATE to see how wrong I am]

Andrew Sullivan sends us off to the Wall Street Journal, which has gotten a source to tip it to the contents of the now famous NIE from last fall. YES, we are stuck on this uranium debacle, what else?

Let me clip the highlights from the WSJ, since not everyone is a subscriber:

We're reliably told that that now famous NIE, which is meant to be the best summary judgment of the intelligence community, isn't nearly as full of doubt about that yellowcake story as the critics assert or as even CIA director George Tenet has suggested. The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."

Regarding the supposedly discredited Niger story, the NIE says that "a foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement."

That foreign government service is of course the British, who still stand by their intelligence. In the next paragraph, the NIE goes on to say that "reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." It then adds that "we cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."

I somehow suspect you are not laughing out loud. Yet. This is very cool, inside stuff - the straight dirt, as it were. Yet, you wonder why I am smiling.

I relent. Take a look at George Tenet's statement of July 11, when he took the fall for the 16 words. Every sentence in the WSJ piece appears in the Tenet statement, most of them word for word. A demo:

WSJ: The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."

Tenet: These paragraphs also cited reports that Iraq began "vigorously trying to procure" more uranium from Niger and two other African countries, which would shorten the time Baghdad needed to produce nuclear weapons.

WSJ: ...the NIE says that "a foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement."

Tenet: The NIE states: "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of pure "uranium" (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out the arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake." The Estimate also states: "We do not know the status of this arrangement."

And so on. However, I stumble on this last bit from the Journal:

In the next paragraph, the NIE goes on to say that "reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." It then adds that "we cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."

The best I can do from Tenet's statement is:

With regard to reports that Iraq had sought uranium from two other countries, the Estimate says: "We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."

So, the Journal has evidently added something. Now, since the NIE is purported to mention Somalia and Democratic Republic of the Congo, perhaps this bit if trivia can be explained to me, as taken from the BBC:

Three countries in Africa are officially listed by the World Nuclear Association as uranium producing countries.

They are Niger, Namibia and South Africa.

But other sources say Algeria, DR Congo, Gabon, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe also produce uranium.

It's late at night, I am tired, I could be wrong. But it looks like the WSJ got ahold of a recycled version of Tenet's statement, with a few fun science non-facts thrown in. The gist of their editorial does not change if we correct "Somalia". But who is pretending that they have a special peek at the NIE? Source check, please, gents.

UPDATE: OK, put Somalia back in the mix, and don't trust the BBC.

As to what is happening, the White House released excerpts from the NIE. Quite possibly, WSJ reporters got a sneak preview.

Posted 7/17/2003 11:57:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Let's Enjoy Some Popcorn

It's fun, fluffy, and insubstantial. And speaking of David Corn's recent piece in The Nation, it was a tour de force. With a Jayson Blair-flair that would make Maureen Dowd proud, he demonstrates that with selective excerpts, careful quotations, and dramatic hypotheticals, a mini-scandal can be generated from virtually nothing.

[Mini-update: The David Corn article has inspired the fourth of Howard Dean's 16 Questions, so this is quite topical].

[Breaking News, and my spin, here]

His charge? It's more of a question, really, but here it is:

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

Well, if a fellow begins with a question, you should probably ask yourself a question, too, namely, if he is not sure of his story, why should I be? And our sense of uncertainty only deepens as we progress.

Mr. Corn is discussing the case of former Ambassador Wilson, who went to Niger to investigate the possibility that Iraq was purchasing, or attempting to purchase, uranium. After providing background, Mr. Corn takes us to the critical bit:

Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. [Robert] Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

...So [Wilson] will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it.

The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover"...

Well, I know you want to see what Mr. Novak said.

"...Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me. "

OK, we recognize the first two sentences from Mr. Corn's excerpt. But does that third sentence really say "The CIA says..."? The CIA is the source for the news that Ms. Wilson is with the CIA?! Where did Mr. Corn pop the idea that the White House was the source? When Mr. Corn says that "The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." , that appearance only develops because the third sentence is dropped.

Based on Mr. Novak's column, the CIA, at a minimum, confirmed that Ms. Wislon worked there. At a maximum, they were the only source for that tidbit. Here is what Mr. Novak attributed to "administration officials":

Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.

Well, then, is it only the CIA that makes this sort of suggestion? Surely there are folks at the State Department, the Defense Department, or even the White House that might have input into this sort of decision.

Now, perhaps Mr. Novak is being a bit cute himself. His first sentence in this paragraph tells us, with no source, that Ms. Wilson is CIA. The second sentence mentions administration officials, but with no direct CIA link. The third clearly relies on CIA sources to describe her role. Might the White House people have mentioned her CIA connection? Sure. But Novak did not source it to them. If she really were some super-top-secret operative, would the CIA blithely confirm it? Of course not. Or, if the CIA is outing its own spies in a bitter in-house feud, then Mr. Corn really missed a story.

Does Mr. Corn have any evidence? He and Mr. Wilson engage in a flight of fancy, playing "what-if" to the question of how serious this is:

Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."

Yes, and if I were Bill Gates blogging away here, I would pay one million dollars to the first ten folks to e-mail me! Live it up, make it ten million! But don't run out and spend it just yet.

And yes, I agree with Messrs. Wilson and Corn - if Ms. Wilson really was a top level spy, then it would be a disaster for the CIA to out her (Auto-out her?). Which sort of suggests, to me if not to Mr. Corn, that she is not a top level spy.

You are wondering about motive. OK, you are also wondering about your ten million, but don't - focus on motive for a moment. After Mr. Wilson presented a misleading account of his trip to Niger in the NY Times, the yellowcake hit the fan. Folks at the CIA and the White House were, no doubt, irked.

However, as some of us suspected, and TIME magazine confirmed, there were serious differences of opinion as to just what Mr. Wilson had (orally) reported. Mr. Wilson now has a new story about what he learned in Niger. However, I suspect that he would prefer to change the subject off of his selective memory and back to the Wicked White House. Hence, this attempt to depict himself as a victim.

A number of bloggers posted on this, with some mix of skepticism and other emotions. I will have to try my rebuttal out on the CalPundit, Mark Kleiman, Demosthenes, and Brad Delong. Well, I say that, but I have been warming up in their comments sections, so there are no surprises coming.

UPDATE: A careful look at the TIME article adds this:

...Some government officials, noting that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, intimate that she was involved in his being dispatched Niger...

At other points in the TIME story they mention "Administration officials". Since this is "government", it suggests that TIME at least, if not Mr. Novak as well, is getting this from the CIA rather than the White House.

And one more big link above.

UPDATE 2: Mark Kleiman has a fascinating follow up. I will excerpt just his intro:

LOOKS LIKE A BIG ONE

Most of the reasons I gave last night for doubting the Valerie Plame story have dissolved in the morning light.

We don't have to rely on the Nation and Novak; the Time story I linked to (but, obviously, hadn't read carefully enough) says that "officials" had identified Plame as "a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." So we still have only Novak's word on "senior officials," but that the information about Plame's status was revealed to the press as part of an Administration campaign to discredit her husband is no longer subject to reasonable doubt.

Moreover, the fact that the piece was in Time and there's been no denial so far from the White House is pretty conclusive. Whoever planted that story surely read it closely....

This just gets more interesting.

Posted 7/17/2003 09:54:00 AM by The MinuteMan

More On WMD Intelligence

TIME magazine presents Wilson II, Mr. Wilson's latest version of what he told the CIA. I took a long look at Wilson I here.

TIME magazine crushes the rest of the Bush intelligence effort.

Tom Brokaw interviews David Kay, the man leading the search for the smoking gun.

From the Kay interview, we get a sense of the timetable for presenting the case against Saddam:

Brokaw: How long is that going to take?

Kay: No longer than it takes.

Brokaw: Six months?

Kay: I think in six months from now, we’ll have a considerable amount of evidence, and we’ll be starting to reveal that evidence. Will we get to the bottom of the program? It took them over twelve years to build this program. This is a tough country to work in. They hid a lot. I think we’ll probably still be finding stuff well beyond six months. I think we will have a substantial body of evidence before six months.

Well, "six months" was Mr. Brokaw's suggestion. However, six months from this interview is January 15. The Iowa caucuses are January 19, and the New Hampshire Primary is a week later. This timetable is going to cause outrage (or, I suppose, laughter) if it is actually achieved.

Posted 7/17/2003 09:10:00 AM by The MinuteMan

From Drudge: "Bill Would Put Internet Song Swappers In Jail".

Darn that Clinton! The guy is practically a wife-swapper, and now he comes out with this? I need to follow the link...

Posted 7/16/2003 10:27:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Bob Graham And The Italian Job

It is easy to love Presidential candidate Bob Graham's resume - former Florida Governor, current Senator, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - but he is not going to be nominated.

I went to his website with the idea that, with his intelligence background, he might be interesting on the subject of Iraq. I was not disappointed.

October 10, 2002 - Senate Vote Autorizing the Use of Force in Iraq

They say that passing this resolution is the equivalent of if the Alllies had declared war on Hitler. I disagree with that assessment of what this lesson of history means. In my judgment, passing this resolution tonight will be the equivalent of declaring war on Italy. That is not what we should be doing. We should not just be declaring war on Mussolini's Italy. We should be declaring war on Hitler's Germany.

Now, there are good reasons for considering attacking today's Italy, meaning Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity. But the briefings I have received have shown that trying to block him and any necessary nuclear materials have been largely successful, as evidenced by the recent intercept of centrifuge tubes. And he is years away from having nuclear capability. So why does it make sense to attack this era's Italy, and not Germany, especially when by attacking Italy, we are making Germany a more probable adversary?

Personally, I would pay extra to watch Graham debate Bush. After Graham declares war on Italy, Bush may invade the Bay of Pigs. Sorry. Anyway, the added emphasis was there to add emphasis to the bit about Saddam's nuclear capabilities and intentions.

January 28, 2003 - On Bush's SOTU Address

[Sen Bob Graham] said [Pres. Bush] had still not made the case for going to war with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

“I think the President moved forward tonight and presented some new information. The test is going to be whether he is persuasive enough to cause a significant number of other countries to join us in an alliance. We don’t want to be in the situation of waging the military action alone, and then undertaking the reconstruction of Iraq alone,” Graham said.

Good point. But no comment on the famous 16 words relating to Africa and uranium, which would have been uncanny.

Febrary 5, 2003 - Comments on the Colin Powell UN Presentation

I applaud Secretary Powell for finally making available to the world the information on which this administration will base its actions against Iraq. In my judgement, the most significant information was the confirmation of a linkage between the shadowy networks of international terrorists and Saddam Hussein, the true coalition of evil.

“Since October, the American intelligence community has been warning us that, when Saddam Hussein is on the verge of being toppled, he will be the most dangerous, including striking out against Americans here in our homeland and abroad.

““In my opinion, this linkage of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah - with a substantial number of trained terrorist operatives placed inside the United States - represents the greatest danger to our people. I am outraged that four months have passed with little effort having been made to increase the security of our people.

Again, he talks about Saddam's links to terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda.

As former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bob Graham could have been pounding the table about Administration manipulation of the intelligence and mismanagement of the intelligence community. Instead, silence.

Posted 7/16/2003 08:23:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Pretty Bright

From the quaintly faux-interactive "Letters to the Editor" at the NY Times:

To the Editor:

Though not a "bright" myself, I support Daniel C. Dennett's call for equal rights for his peers (Op-Ed, July 12).

I don't doubt that life can be uncomfortable for brights in ordinary civil society and in politics.

On the other hand, in intellectual and academic circles, brights usually feel free to make disparaging remarks about those with religious beliefs.

Mr. Dennett's equating of belief in ghosts, elves and the Easter Bunny with belief in God is not a bad example of the disdain that secular naturalists commonly show for religious believers.

I also don't doubt that brights are frequently the victims of arrogant religious bigots. But as arrogance goes, his remark that brights are "the moral backbone of the nation" sets a pretty high standard.

JOHN C. MOORE
Bloomington, Ind., July 13, 2003

Get this guy a blog.

And if the Brights are an oppressed minority, shouldn't they be welcome to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention next year? I am sure the RNC would be delighted to defray the cost.

Posted 7/16/2003 04:42:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Required Reading On the Fog Of Intelligence

Alice in Wonderland is pretty helpful.

But I think that The Tailor of Panama, by John Le Carre, tells it all. This needs to be re-worked as "The Tailor of Niger", to explain the many and conflicting intelligence reports we are getting.

Posted 7/16/2003 02:15:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Josh Marshall Is A Dupe

Or, he stands on the brink of a Pulitzer Prize. But there is a glaring inconsistency in his reporting surrounding Joseph Wilson's investigatory visit to Niger.

What caught my eye was Mr. Marshall's denunciation of Condoleeza Rice's performance in her July 13 appearance with Wolf Blitzer. From Mr. Marshall:

...Here [sic] presentation was incoherent, contradictory and filled with several more extremely misleading statements.

One in particular jumped out at me. I don't have the transcript of her remarks yet. But she said, essentially, that Joseph Wilson's report was comprised of official denials from Nigerien government officials and the suggestion that a private businessman acting as an intermediary for the Iraqis had made an overture to one of those officials about possible uranium sales.

I know on what I can only call extremely good authority that that is a woeful and wilful misrepresentation of what Wilson reported back to the CIA. That's just not what he told them. (See this earlier post for more details.) Has Rice still not tried to get a hold of Wilson's CIA debriefing?

Excerpting his earlier post, Mr. Marshall describes the Wilson report as follows:

...A number of administration officials have stated that Joseph Wilson's report from Niger was largely made up of Nigerien officials denying that their country had sold uranium to Iraq. My reporting tells me something different. Wilson's report went into great detail about how the uranium ore was processed, how the processing was regulated, and most particularly who had physical custody of the product from the time it was in the ground to the time it was delivered to the customer. Wilson adduced various findings relating to the custody, oversight and regulation of the state uranium mining industry which, in his view, made the alleged sale highly unlikely.

Mr. Marshall then suggests the possibility that officials are confusing the Wilson report with an earlier report prepared by a US military official.

Well, as the transcript makes clear, Ms. Rice was referring to the statement released on July 11 by DCI George Tenet describing the Wilson report. And what did Mr. Tenet say?

...In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn. He reported back to us that one of the former Nigerien officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. The former officials also offered details regarding Niger's processes for monitoring and transporting uranium that suggested it would be very unlikely that material could be illicitly diverted. There was no mention in the report of forged documents -- or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all.

This agrees quite closely with Ms. Rice's account, which at a minimum suggests that the cover story is being well-coordinated. It also overlaps with the Marshall Plan, as to there being lots of detail about the controls over Niger uranium. However, the Tenet account does differ from Mr. Marshall's reporting, and from the account provided by Mr. Wilson, who made no mention of Iraqi inquiries into uranium sales in his NY Times piece.

Another straw in the wind is provided by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who described the Wilson report as follows:

We have now seen a detailed account of Ambassador Wilson's report. It does indeed describe the denials of Niger government officials in early 2002 that a contract had been concluded for the sale of yellowcake (uranium oxide) to Iraq.

"But, as CNN have reported, Ambassador Wilson's report also noted that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation sought the expansion of trade links with Niger -- and that former Niger government officials believed that this was in connection with the procurement of yellowcake.

"Uranium is Niger's main export. In other words, this element of Ambassador Wilson's report supports the statement in the government's dossier.

Mr. Straw is not referring here to the Tenet statement, but rather to the underlying report.

Finally, Ari Fleischer was asked about this in his last press briefing. Here we go:

MR. FLEISCHER: ...you know, if you take a look at Director Tenet's statement about Niger, there's some interesting information in there. Director Tenet, when he talks about the former ambassador's mission to Niger, and then he reported back to the CIA on what he found when he went there --

Q When was his mission?

MR. FLEISCHER: He reported -- when was his mission to Niger? I don't have the date when he went. But when the former ambassador went to Niger, he reported back that officials in Niger denied that they had any contracts with Iraq. They said they did not sign any contracts with Iraq. But in Director Tenet's statement, it also reads that the former official who the ambassador met with, the former Prime Minister of Niger, interpreted an Iraqi overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. So there still is reporting that they attempted to discuss -- that Iraqis attempted to discuss uranium sales in Niger.

Well, in his statement Mr. Tenet did not explicitly identify Wilson by name, or as a "former ambassador", so perhaps Mr. Fleischer is confirming the obvious here. Mr. Tenet also did not mention a former Prime Minister of Niger - did Mr. Fleischer break news with this?

The point is, the Administration has a unified description of the Wilson report based on the Tenet statement. Mr. Straw of Britain supports it, making reference no to the Tenet statement but to the underlying report.

It is worth remembering that Mr. Wilson did not file a written report - he underwent an oral de-briefing, and the CIA prepared a report of some sort. TIME is on my side here:

Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue. Wilson never had access to the Italian documents and never filed a written report, he told TIME. When he returned to Washington in early March, Wilson gave an oral report about his trip to both CIA and State Department officials. On March 9 of last year, the CIA circulated a memo on the yellowcake story that was sent to the White House, summarizing Wilson's assessment.

OK, I would love to see that March 9 memo. Has Mr. Wilson seen it? Has Mr. Marshall's source actually seen the Wilson report? Mr. Marshall characterized Ms. Rice's statement as "a woeful and wilful misrepresentation of what Wilson reported back to the CIA." Does he still stand by that characterization?

I am open to suggestions here. Maybe the Wilson report, as originally circulated, is as Mr. Marshall's source described it, and Mr. Tenet is participating in a cover up, along with Ms. Rice and Mr. Fleischer. This should be a huge story, since we seem to have sent a doctored report on to the British as part of our pattern of deceit. A Pulitzer Prize awaits Mr. Marshall if he can document this.

Or, since Wilson never filed a written report, maybe there is a gap between what he remembers as important, and what the CIA de-briefers chose to emphasize. Might Mr. Wilson have dropped in a throw-away line about the former Prime Minister and the Iraqi trade mission, which the CIA seized on? In his NY Times account and his comments to TIME, Mr. Wilson does not mention Iraqi inquiries about uranium. Is he certain that he did not touch upon that subject with the CIA back in the spring of 2002?

Now, Mr. Marshall mentions the possibilty that several reports have been conflated into "The Wilson Report". If that is the case, then, unless Mr. Marshall's source has seen the memo, he doesn't have much. Mr. Wilson may think he remembers what he said, but he doesn't know what the CIA wrote.

Is the nation being manipulated and deceived? Is Mr. Marshall?

UPDATE: YES, this looks a lot like a re-cycling of an earlier post. I'm obsessing.

MORE: Background, and bio, on Joseph Wilson. This deserves lots of notice:

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism."

BIG UPDATE: TIME has a follow-up chat with Mr. Wilson which reviews this extensively.

Government officials are not only disputing the genesis of Wilson's trip, but also what he found. Last week Bush Administration officials said that Wilson's report, far from undermining the President's claim in this year's State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, had in fact reinforced it. They say that when Wilson returned from Africa in Feb. 2002, he included in his report an encounter with a former Nigerien government official who told him that Iraq had approached him in June 1999, expressing interest in expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The Administration claims that Wilson reported that the former Nigerien official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. "This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters last week, a few days before he left his post to join the private sector. "Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it...reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."

Wilson's version of the story has a crucial difference. He says the official in question was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary who inquired if the official would meet with an Iraqi about "commercial" sales — an offer he declined. Wilson dismissed the suggestion, included in CIA Director George Tenet's own mea culpa last week, that this validates what the President claimed in this State of the Union address: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged? These guys really need to get serious."

So now Mr. Wilson is pooh-poohing something that he didn't mention at all last week? I eagerly await next week's revelations.

Posted 7/15/2003 10:51:00 PM by The MinuteMan

What Does Ken Pollack Think Now?

Mr. Pollack, the former Clinton NSC member and author of "The Threatening Storm", wrote in the June 20 NY Times:

Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately we don't yet have a good answer.... In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the search for Iraq's nonconventional weapons program has only just begun.

On the Iraqi nuclear program:

...it wasn't just the United States that was concerned about Iraq's efforts. By 2002, British, Israeli and German intelligence services had also concluded that Iraq was probably far enough along in its nuclear weapons program that it would be able to put together one or more bombs at some point in the second half of this decade. The Germans were actually the most fearful of all—in 2001 they leaked their estimate that Iraq might be able to develop its first workable nuclear device in 2004.

Nor was it just government agencies that were alarmed. In the summer of 2002 I attended a meeting with more than a dozen former weapons inspectors from half a dozen countries, along with another dozen experts on Iraq's weapons programs. Those present were asked whether they believed Iraq had a clandestine centrifuge lab operating somewhere; everyone did. Several even said they believed the Iraqis had a covert calutron program going as well. (Centrifuge and calutron operations allow a country to enrich uranium and produce the fissile material for a nuclear bomb.)

At no point before the war did the French, the Russians, the Chinese or any other country with an intelligence operation capable of collecting information in Iraq say it doubted that Baghdad was maintaining a clandestine weapons capability. All that these countries ever disagreed with the United States on was what to do about it.

Dedicated Bush partisans will want to stop there. However, pressing on, we find:

Which raises the real crux of the slanted-intelligence debate: the timing of the war. Why was it necessary to put aside all of our other foreign policy priorities to go to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003? It was always the hardest part of the Bush administration's argument to square with the evidence. And, distressingly, there seems to be more than a little truth to claims that some members of the administration skewed, exaggerated and even distorted raw intelligence to coax the American people and reluctant allies into going to war against Iraq this year.

Before the war, some administration officials clearly tended to emphasize in public only the most dire aspects of the intelligence agencies' predictions. For example, of greatest importance were the estimates of how close Iraq was to obtaining a nuclear weapon. The major Western intelligence services essentially agreed that Iraq could acquire one or more nuclear bombs within about four to six years. However, all also indicated that it was possible Baghdad might be able to do so in as few as one or two years if, and only if, it were able to acquire fissile material on the black market.

This latter prospect was not very likely. The Iraqis had been trying to buy fissile material since the 1970's and had never been able to do so. Nevertheless, some Bush administration officials chose to stress the one-to-two-year possibility rather than the more likely four-to-six year scenario....

Moreover, before the war I heard many complaints from friends still in government that some Bush officials were mounting a ruthless campaign over intelligence estimates. I was told that when government analysts wrote cautious assessments of Iraq's capabilities, they were grilled and forced to go to unusual lengths to defend their judgments, and some were chastized for failing to come to more alarming conclusions. None of this is illegal, but it was perceived as an attempt to browbeat analysts into either changing their estimates or shutting up and ceding the field to their more hawkish colleagues.

More damning than the claims of my former colleagues has been some of the investigative reporting done since the war. Particularly troubling are reports that the administration knew its contention that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger was based on forged documents. If true, it would be a serious indictment of the administration's handling of the war.

As important as this debate is, what may ultimately turn out to be the biggest concern over the Iraqi weapons program is the question of whose hands it is now in....

Nor can we allow our consideration of weapons of mass destruction and politicized intelligence to be a distraction from the most important task at hand: rebuilding Iraq. History may forgive the United States if we don't find the arsenal we thought we would. No one will forgive us if we botch the reconstruction and leave Iraq a worse mess than we found it.

It's the sensible critics that are most troublesome.

Posted 7/15/2003 05:38:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Joseph Wilson On the Saddam - Al Qaeda Connection

Mr. Wilson has become better known as the envoy who debunked the reports that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger. However, let's get his thoughts on the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq:

"It does seem to me entirely possible and likely that Saddam's intelligence services may have had ties or may have had links or may have had contacts with al-Qaeda."

Oh, I can wear my Maureen Dowd button proudly. A more complete excerpt paints a somewhat different picture:

I discount to a certain extent the assertions that the links between al-Qaeda and Saddam's government are operational in nature. It does seem to me entirely possible and likely that Saddam's intelligence services may have had ties or may have had links or may have had contacts with al-Qaeda. That would be prudent. Most intelligence services that didn't have their hands tied behind their back would welcome the opportunity to have contact with enemies of their enemies so as to know what was being planned.

It does not stand to reason, however, that the operational links would have been such or any links would have been such as to be operational and particularly with respect to September 11th as was being asserted, as, in fact, was the first of the assertions that were made by the neo-conservative crazies, as Dr. Cordesman likes to call them.

Non-operational links. Does that mean we had nothing to worry about down the road? Interesting.

Posted 7/15/2003 04:57:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Al Sharpton Brings Props, And Gets Some

From today's NY Times account of Monday's NAACP convention:

...it was Mr. Sharpton who brought the crowd to its feet. Mr. Sharpton compared the Democratic Party to the late Lester Maddox, the former governor of Georgia who in the 1960's chased black patrons from his restaurant with an ax handle.

"Any time we can give a party 92 percent of our vote and have to still beg some people to come talk to us, there is still an ax-handle mentality among some in the Democratic Party," he said, raising an ax handle. "I want to stop people from wanting our vote but not wanting to be seen with us in public, treating us like we are some political mistresses."

Posted 7/14/2003 11:30:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Better Than "Blame Canada"

Blame the French. The plot line for the Niger-uranium controversy becomes even more complex. Let's go to Michael Smith of the Daily Telegraph, a righty Brit paper:

The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" intelligence showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, US intelligence sources said yesterday.

MI6 had more than one "different and credible" piece of intelligence to show that Iraq was attempting to buy the ore, known as yellowcake, British officials insisted. But it was given to them by at least one and possibly two intelligence services and, under the rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared with anyone else without the originator's permission.

US intelligence sources believe that the most likely source of the MI6 intelligence was the French secret service, the DGSE. Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are run by a French company that comes under the control of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

A further factor in the refusal to hand over the information might have been concern that the US administration's willingness to publicise intelligence might lead to sources being inadvertently disclosed.

US sources also point out that the French government was vehemently opposed to the war with Iraq and so suggest that it would have been instinctively against the idea of passing on the intelligence.

Oh, boy. This is so damn clever, we hardly know where to begin. We'll start off slowly - Michael Smith is "a former intelligence officer, now a senior journalist for the London Daily Telegraph", and evidently quite knowledgeable. And whose side might he be on in this story, and what spin might he prefer? I have no idea. As a Le Carre fan, I am only certain that he is better at this than I am.

Now, can we connect this to the fact that the Brits are standing by their story? Yes, and I will have to backpedal to do so. A few days ago, I linked to a March 22 WaPo story which offered this:

British officials said they "stand behind" the original allegation. They note they never mentioned "Niger," the subject of the forged documents, and imply, but do not say, that there was other information, about another African country. But an informed U.N. official said the United States and Britain were repeatedly asked for all information they had to support the charge. Neither government, the official said, "ever indicated that they had any information on any other country."

My observation was that the Brits did not seem to have much. However, it is possible that the Brits were internally invoking the "sharing rule" mentioned above, and relying on the French, the Italians, or whoever, to separately approach the UN with supporting information.

Now, Tony Blair is coming to the US this week, and I expect we will have some answers during his visit. A few scenarios for the Bush/Blair press briefing occur to me:

-- The French gave the British intelligence which, in the cold light of day, we can now agree was flawed. Apologies all around.

-- The French gave the British some weak intelligence. As the UN process deteriorated and relations soured, they never gave the Brits a heads-up. Awkward.

-- The French gave the British great intel which we still believe. However, more we can not say - go ask the French. Let Chirac decide if he wants to cover for Bush and Blair. If Bush and Blair are exaggerating the quality of the intel, maybe Chirac will do them a favor and support them. Or, if Chirac doesn't support them, then we are left scratching our heads as to who we believe, and efforts to heal the trans-Atlantic rift collapse.

We may be headed for a situation where Bush and Blair say, in effect, the intel was good - you can trust us, and you can ask Chirac. Chirac will then support them. At that point, how we will know the "real" truth is anybody's guess.

This week could be the mousetrap for the Dems who had a great run attacking Bush on the Yellowcake-fake-gate. Max Sawicky will NOT be caught, however.

UPDATE: Jack Shafer of Slate provides a review of the forgery story, and a link to Tenet's statement.

UPDATE 2: Don't Blame The French. Well, that is for the record, anyway. Now.

Posted 7/14/2003 10:12:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Who Is Joseph Wilson?

The very short answer is that he was the former US Ambassador sent to Niger in early 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, as he describes here.

So, a seemingly easy question - who sent him? According to Mr. Wilson,

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the CIA that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report.....

After consulting with the State Department (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip.

Fair enough. But Condoleeza Rice had this to say, when asked about this trip by Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: But 11 months earlier, you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Niger, to find out whether it was true. He came back, reported to the CIA, reported to the State Department, it wasn't true, it was bogus. The whole issue was bogus. And supposedly, you never got word of his report.

RICE: Well, first of all, I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger. And if you look at Director Tenet's statement, it says that counterproliferation experts on their own initiative sent Joe Wilson, so I don't know...

BLITZER: Who sent him?

RICE: Well, it was certainly not a level that had anything to do with the White House, and I do not believe at a level that had anything to do with the leadership of the CIA.

BLITZER: Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.

RICE: No, this is simply not true, and this is something that's been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out.

The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger. The vice president did not know. I don't think he knew who Joe Wilson was, and he certainly didn't know that he was going.

The first that I heard of Joe Wilson mission was when I was doing a Sunday talk show and heard about it.

I think we score this in favor of Ms. Rice. Mr. Wilson does not say that VP Cheney asked him to go; he says that CIA folks asked him to go in response to a question posed by Cheney.

But now we get to a confusing bit. Let's cut to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, commenting on the Rice/Blitzer interview:

Here [sic] presentation was incoherent, contradictory and filled with several more extremely misleading statements.

One in particular jumped out at me. I don't have the transcript of her remarks yet. But she said, essentially, that Joseph Wilson's report was comprised of official denials from Nigerien government officials and the suggestion that a private businessman acting as an intermediary for the Iraqis had made an overture to one of those officials about possible uranium sales.

I know on what I can only call extremely good authority that that is a woeful and wilful misrepresentation of what Wilson reported back to the CIA. That's just not what he told them. (See this earlier post for more details.) Has Rice still not tried to get a hold of Wilson's CIA debriefing?

Well, here is the transcript, and here is what she said:

The other thing is that the reporting, at least, of what Ambassador Wilson told the CIA debriefers says that, yes, Niger denied that there had been such a deal made, that they had sold uranium to the Iraqis.

It also apparently says, according to this report, it also apparently says that one of the people who was meeting with the Iraqis thought that they might, in fact, be trying to use commercial activity to talk about yellow cake.

So what the director says in his statement is that they believed, when they looked at what was reported about the Wilson trip, that it was inconclusive. They therefore did not brief it to the president, the vice president or any senior officials.

So no, the Wilson trip was not sent by anyone at a high level. It wasn't briefed to anyone at high level. And it appears to have been inconclusive in what it found.

Well, Mr. Marshall seems unconvinced. However, today we had some comments from British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw:

We have now seen a detailed account of Ambassador Wilson's report. It does indeed describe the denials of Niger government officials in early 2002 that a contract had been concluded for the sale of yellowcake (uranium oxide) to Iraq.

"But, as CNN have reported, Ambassador Wilson's report also noted that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation sought the expansion of trade links with Niger -- and that former Niger government officials believed that this was in connection with the procurement of yellowcake.

"Uranium is Niger's main export. In other words, this element of Ambassador Wilson's report supports the statement in the government's dossier.

Pretty impressive cover-up. The National Security Advisor to Bush and the British Foreign Secretary both mis-representing the Wilson report? Let's go to the BBC for a third opinion:

The CIA sent fomer US diplomat Joseph Wilson to Niger, where he had once been based. He spoke to Niger officials who were in government when the deal allegedly took place. One said that he had been approached in June 1999 by a unnamed businessman about expanding trade between Niger and Iraq. This raised a suspicion that Iraq wanted to buy uranium ore since Niger has little else to offer.

Now, the BBC source for this may be Mr. Straw or Ms. Rice, but we are not finding support for Mr. Marshall's position here. As to the substance, however, the IAEA seems to address and dismiss this rumour in their March 2003 report.

That said, the account provided to the press by Mr. Wilson, as noted earlier, does not mention this incident at all.

[Mini-Update: From Ari Fleischer's last briefing on July 14, we learn that the Rice-Straw version was also in the statement released by CIA Director George Tenet.]

Leaving us where? Mr. Wilson makes it clear that he provided only an oral report to the CIA. He may know what he said, but he may only be able to guess at what they reported. If Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw are right, and Mr. Marshall is wrong, then the rest of the Rice argument - that the Wilson report was considered to be inconclusive - seems plausible.

UPDATE: Mr.Wilson discusses Saddam's "aggressive" attempt to acquire nuclear weapons on Hannity and Colmes.

Posted 7/14/2003 10:44:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Dean Asks; I Eagerly Await An Answer

On the question of Iraq, I nominate Howard Dean for the sound bite du jour. Buried in the Adam Nagourney story on p. 11 of the Dead Tree Times, titled "Democrats Attack Credibility of Bush", we find this attack by Dean on his rivals:

And the changing sentiments about the war have provided a new affirmation for the position taken by Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor whose opposition to the war has helped power him into the front tier of the Democratic competition. Dr. Dean said today that he foresaw the shortfalls of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy from his perch in the Vermont Statehouse last fall — and mockingly questioned why his opponents in Congress had failed to do so.

"I think they bear some responsibility here," Dr. Dean said. "If I as governor of Vermont can figure out the case is not there to invade Iraq, how can three senators and a congressman who claim to have authority in public affairs manage to give the president unilateral authority to attack Iraq?"

"It looks like my analysis was the correct one and theirs was the incorrect one," he continued. "It's going to be hard for them to make the case that I don't have the credentials on foreign policy after this."

At 20 on TradeSports, Dean is a buy. 30 by year end, 40 next spring. Minimum.

INSTANT UPDATE: Ooops, 20 was sooo yesterday. I see Dean is currently 20 bid, 25 offered, up 6 on a Monday morning. I seem to be late with the right idea.

Posted 7/14/2003 10:38:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Carnage

From my dictionary, I get this definition: Massive slaughter, as in war; a massacre..

From Adam Nagourney of the NY Times, I get this:

Democratic presidential candidates offered a near-unified assault today on President Bush's credibility in his handling of the Iraq war, signaling a shift in the political winds by aggressively invoking arguments most had shunned since the fall of Baghdad.

...The shift in the debate from the Democratic side reflected a sudden confluence of events: the administration's admission of error regarding the State of the Union speech, the continuing carnage in Iraq and the failure of the United States to find the weapons that it used as a justification for invading Iraq.

OK, people aren't happy with the developments in Iraq, based on this poll. However, I also see that "At least 32 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks in Iraq since May 1, when the United States declared an end to major combat operations."

Which is 32 soldiers too many, but is it carnage? And I don't believe I have missed a headline about huge casualties amongst the Iraqi civilian population, either.

Get a thesarus, Mr. Nagourney. Off the top of my head, I would suggest dropping "carnage" and substituting "combat", "difficulties", or "killing".

Posted 7/14/2003 10:30:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Why The Uranium Doesn't Matter

The CalPundit explains "Why The Uranium Matters". My terse reply - time will tell. Unlike the Monica and Iran-Contra examples he cites, the Iraq story is still playing out. If, a year from now, the occupation of Iraq is going well (OK, better), and the road map seems to be taking us somewhere in Palestine, then this will be forgotten.

Conversely, if the Middle East is more of a mess a year from now, the uranium puzzle will be the least of our worries, and the credibility and judgement of the Bush team will be wide open to criticism.

That said, the Democrats are on the right track attacking this now, if only to put down some markers (self-query - can we work in an "Old Yellowstain" reference?).

UPDATE: My new best friend Tom Friedman is won to my viewpoint just a few days later!

Eyes on the prize, please. If we find W.M.D. in Iraq, but lose Iraq, Mr. Bush will not only go down as a failed president, but one who made the world even more dangerous for Americans. If we find no W.M.D., but build a better Iraq — one that proves that a multiethnic, multireligious Arab state can rule itself in a decent way — Mr. Bush will survive his hyping of the W.M.D. issue, and the world will be a more hospitable and safer place for all Americans.

Posted 7/13/2003 11:01:00 PM by The MinuteMan

The League Of Extraordinarily Sensitive Gentlemen

The NAACP will have a candidates forum, aka, a cattle call, on Monday, giving delegates a chance to hear from the various Democratic Presidential candidates. As of Saturday, the Party of Extraordinary Racial Sensitivity can not quite seem to get it together;

The NAACP's top leadership lashed out Saturday at several of the major Democratic candidates for president, calling their intention to skip Monday's candidate forum an ''affront'' to the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

As many as four of the nine candidates have refused to participate in the forum, expressing reluctance to appear on stage with their rivals in a debate format, NAACP officials said.

As of late Saturday, Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Reps. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio were not expected to attend. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida was scheduled to attend, along with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry plans to go to the convention, but his campaign is pressing for a change in the debate format.

The actions drew outrage Saturday from NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and Chairman Julian Bond, who told The Herald that any candidate who skipped the forum would lose credibility with black voters.

''If you can't come to the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization's national conference to lay out what you believe in and the direction you think our country should go in, you certainly have no legitimacy going into black communities asking for votes,'' said Mfume, as he prepared to welcome delegates to the NAACP's annual conference. ``If you can't do a forum where you're simply asked a question and asked to respond, the question is can you really lead?''

And what might the problem be? Candidates are citing scheduling conflicts, but there is another view:

[NAACP President] Mfume suggested a different theory for the candidates' reluctance: a fear of matching wits with Sharpton or Dean, whose lively style and support for positions backed by the NAACP are likely to win enthusiastic applause.

''If you're afraid to appear against Al Sharpton, then maybe you need to be running for another office,'' he said.

As Charles Barkley famously inquired about one of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team opponents, "Why don't ya'll take your ass-kickin' like men and go on home?"

UPDATE: Edwards and Kerry elect to take Barkley's advice.

Posted 7/13/2003 03:16:00 PM by The MinuteMan

For Punters Only

The august NY Times (well, July 13 Week in Review, actually), directs us to TradeSports.com for a look at the betting odds on various Presidential candidates. I can't seem to create a direct link, but look at the menu on the right, and it should be there.

An interesting exercise would be to compare these prices with those in the Iowa Electronic Market, which are here.

With a quick glance, I see that Kerry is at 32 in TradeSports versus 29 in Iowa; Gephardt is 11 versus 17; Lieberman is 16 versus 10; and Ms. Clinton is at roughly 4 in each market. (Briefly, if Kerry wins the nomination, TradeSports contract holders collect 100, on a purchase price of 32; this implies a 32% probability of his winning the nomination.)

So, arbitrageurs need to get busy, although I can not promise that, after transactions costs and interest, the profit opportunity is significant.

For the general election, TradeSports has Bush at 67; Iowa does not seem to have a comparable contract.

UPDATE: Cool New Yorker article.

Posted 7/13/2003 08:52:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Tour De France

Big day, good web site.

Posted 7/12/2003 04:45:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Now I Am Useless As A Righty

First Jim Capozzola irritated me. Now Screaming "J" Hawkins is irritating me. I am a bi-partisan curmudgeon. Go off and have a great weekend before you irritate me too.

UPDATE: Oh, for heaven's sake, where is my brain? Screaming Jay link courtesy of Jane Finch, who I am sure would be irritating me too if I were not like, totally summer crushing on her. Not that she even notices.

Posted 7/12/2003 12:36:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Yellowfake

Pejman Yousefzadeh and Josh Marshall are having a brawl on the Uranium/Urain'tium Bush State of the Union speech "scandal".

For my own selfish convenience, I am throwing in some links: a round-up by Pejman, and a Talking Point about Rumsfeld.

Now, for Pejman's benefit (and shouldn't I put this in his comments?), let me respond to his argument that we should "keep in mind the fact that the Brits are standing by their story".

Duly noted. However, here is a WaPo story from March 22, 2003 addressing that point. Yes, this story broke in March, and I can't tell you why it is headline news now. Regardless, the IAEA declared the documents to be false on March 7, and here is the follow-up:

British officials said they "stand behind" the original allegation. They note they never mentioned "Niger," the subject of the forged documents, and imply, but do not say, that there was other information, about another African country. But an informed U.N. official said the United States and Britain were repeatedly asked for all information they had to support the charge. Neither government, the official said, "ever indicated that they had any information on any other country."

Emphasis added.

Now, a tidbit for Josh, who is puzzled by the news-unconsciousness of Donald Rumsfeld:

Is he kidding? Here's a clip from John Lumpkin's Wednesday evening AP story ...

"Rumsfeld, in a terse exchange with Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said he learned only "within recent days" that the Africa claims were based on faulty evidence. U.N. officials determined the documents were forgeries before the war."

I guess it depends on what the definition of 'recent' is...

Roll the transcript, please, and let's check the "terse exchange":

SEN. MARK PRYOR (D-AR): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary Rumsfeld, I only have six minutes here, so I'm going to try to keep my questions very short, and I'd appreciate you if you could try to keep your answers fairly concise, if you could.

... when did YOU know, Secretary Rumsfeld, when did YOU know that the reports about uranium coming out of Africa were bogus?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available.

SEN. PRYOR: So in other words, you didn't -- right after the speech, you didn't know that, or even before the speech you had no knowledge of that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've just answered the question.

SEN. PRYOR: You're trying to say that in no briefing, in no documents that you had or that you were exposed to, that was never communicated to you in any way?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't say that. I see hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper a day. And is it conceivable that something was in a document? It's conceivable. Do I recall hearing anything or reading anything like that? The answer is as I've given it. No.

Ok, I find this a bit weird, since I knew about the forgery question in March. I've got Mark Kleiman, he has George Tenet - go figure. Still the obvious responses are, first, their was a war on, and he may have been pre-occupied; secondly, Rumsfeld may not believe everything he sees in the Washington Post, or hears from the IAEA.

In his famous chat with Tim Russert on March 16, Cheney was directly asked about the March 7 IAEA report, although not about the specifics of the uranium allegation. From Meet The Press:

MR. RUSSERT: And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree. Let’s talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We’ve got, again, a long record here. It’s not as though this is a fresh issue. In the late ’70s, Saddam Hussein acquired nuclear reactors from the French. 1981, the Israelis took out the Osirak reactor and stopped his nuclear weapons development at the time. Throughout the ’80s, he mounted a new effort. I was told when I was defense secretary before the Gulf War that he was eight to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon. And we found out after the Gulf War that he was within one or two years of having a nuclear weapon because he had a massive effort under way that involved four or five different technologies for enriching uranium to produce fissile material.

We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past.

Fans of Mr. Cheney will notice the infamous "reconstituted nuclear weapons" mis-statement. And if the Admin didn't believe the IAEA (broadly, not on the specific uranium point), this issue may have remained as background noise for Rumsfeld. If Rumsfeld has been asked about this point since March, the Defense Dept. transcripts should show it. Things To Do!

Sidebar: Admin critics will find this transcript to be a target rich environment. 'Nuff said.

More for the To Do list - what did Bush say in his March pre-war address? The transcript is helpfully titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception", which is a boon for the irony-poor dieters amongst us. And let's put his September 2002 Remarks at the UN General Assembly in the mix.

Posted 7/11/2003 08:12:00 PM by The MinuteMan

Persevere!

It took me thirteen months, but I finally found the missing link!

Posted 7/11/2003 07:08:00 PM by The MinuteMan

C'est Le Temps du Mois

Mais oui, it's that time of month when all young men's fancy turns to thoughts of the French trade deficit. Our inspiration flows from Mr. Den Beste's post of last month, and our very own reply.

Here we have what may be the final word on last month's figures.

Here is the headline for May; we eagerly await further insight, however it may strike.

Posted 7/11/2003 08:15:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Perhaps The Bush Admin Can Pick Up Some Pointers

More subtle Euro-diplomacy.

Posted 7/10/2003 09:02:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Mad Max Loves Kerry

From his day at the Kerry website, he lerned this:

KERRY IS SO VERY liberal, as far as domestic policy goes, which is fine with me.... I checked what his web site had to say about two issue areas -- economic policy and health care. I didn't find much not to like...

The basic spiel on economic policy is fine.... A lot of the other measures fall under the rubric of what I call "democratic money": extending grants and credit to aspiring entrepreneurs to foster economic development at the roots. Good populist fare.

There is also a section entitled "The American Labor Movement."... these are good economic priorities.

Taken together, these two areas show Kerry to be decidedly more progressive than Howard Dean (whoops!). There don't seem to be any sour notes in the social issues area either.

Health is a bit of a replay of the economic presentation... The measures are worth consideration...

In any case, my bottom line is that if Kerry hadn't waffled on the war, or found some way to avoid backing or not opposing the invasion, he would be the odds-on liberal/progressive standard bearer.... as far as domestic policy goes, there is zero reason for a progressive or liberal to prefer Howard Dean to John Kerry.

Ironically, the aftermath of the invasion narrows the foreign policy differences between Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, and Edwards. If they all agree we are stuck now and must commit more troops and resources, then the only genuine anti-war candidates are reduced to Kucinich and Sharpton.

Oops, my bad. Mad Max hates Kerry!

KERRY IS SO VERY liberal... I checked what his web site had to say about two issue areas -- economic policy and health care.... I think he's got a huge communications problem, and this stems from what I see as a policy problem.

The basic spiel on economic policy is fine.... I agree with the bullet points, but I note that they are bullet points. The frame is missing. The leading items pertain to the recession, but there seems to be a lack of emphasis.

There is also a section entitled "The American Labor Movement." This oddly pigeon-holes measures that pertain to the population at large, such as raising the minimum wage and providing a middle class tax cut.

Health is a bit of a replay of the economic presentation, in terms of the laundry list approach. In this case, however, the list is long and bewildering. His speech is not much better focused either.... the material is insufferably wonky, not fit for general lay public consumption. There is some slipperiness in that in some places the language rails against "bureaucracy," but on the whole a lot of regulation seems to be proposed.

The policy problem I would say is the failure to craft simply-described, large measures that capture the most important problems the next President should address.

In any case, my bottom line is that if Kerry hadn't waffled on the war, or found some way to avoid backing or not opposing the invasion, he would be the odds-on liberal/progressive standard bearer. If anybody could figure out exactly what he was proposing.

Man, it must be great to have Maureen Dowd's job. And you know I am just having fun. Kerry seems to be generating amongst Dems the sort of ambivalent support normally associated with a trip to the dentist. C'mon, you know it's good for you...

Posted 7/10/2003 08:44:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Jonah Goldberg Is Not Pro-Life

And Justice Scalia is not pro-"dead", although Mr. Goldberg is.

Posted 7/10/2003 08:30:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Extremism In The Defense Of Liberty Is No Vice

Orrin Judd explains Bush's choice on the WMD question, and leaves us with a new puzzle with a headline about a missing pony. One more thing we may not find.

UPDATE: And now we hear from the left half of my brain.

Posted 7/09/2003 09:07:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Four Walls Of A Prison Were Three Walls Too Many

Great line. And if I may steal an old punchline from Charles Schulz, suddenly he's writing Country and Western.

Posted 7/09/2003 08:45:00 AM by The MinuteMan

Maybe The Latinos Don't Have A Word For It

Orrin Judd on the difficulties Dems are having in translating their ideas.

Posted 7/09/2003 08:21:00 AM by The MinuteMan

I Want To Believe

David Warren's "flypaper" theory gets support from some heavy hitters in the blogosphere.

The gist:

... [The "experts"] notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade.

It more likely demonstrates the opposite. While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq -- the first democracy, should it succeed, in the entire history of the Arabs -- President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.

Clever spin - we think we see guerrilla insurgency, but it is really the Bush/Rumsfeld master plan in action.

But my question is, what evidence might we look for to see if this "flypaper" notion is applicable? A quick scan of my imagination suggests at least four competing scenarios:

1. "Not Enough Troops": We sent enough troops to win the war, but not enough to win the peace. This is either stupid Administration arrogance, or a correctable error in an otherwise reasonable plan, depending on one's preferences. Fred Kaplan has more.

2. "Mission Impossible": Iraq was destined to be ungovernable. The good news, such as it is, is that we did not send too few troops. The bad news is, no reasonable number would have sufficed; chaos and descent into anarchy and/or civil war were inevitable. This may be politically tolerable for Bush if (I say IF) the elimination of the WMD threat and the new progress in the Palestine peace process appear to be sufficient justifications for the war.

3. "Flypaper": as noted above.

4. "Give Me Just A Little More Time": Scattered urban resistance and sabotage was not wholly unexpected. Persevere!

So, which scenario is actually playing out? The official line, as I infer from this AP story, seems to be a combination of "Not Enough Troops", and "More Time".

I am not sure what I ought to look for to distinguish "Flypaper" from these two alternatives. But I am pretty sure that Bush's speech from the aircraft carrier was not necessary to bait this particular trap, if that was indeed the plan. And I am pretty sure that if Cheney or Rumsfeld appeared on a Sunday talk show to explain that the occupation was likely to be long and bloody, that would not jeopardize the strategy.

If "Flypaper" is the plan, the Administration has done an unnecessarily poor job of prepping the American people for it.

UPDATE: A bit of Belgravitas on this. Look for the Brit timestamp of 8.7.03, which is July 8 for you Yanks. Another chap with a righty default setting who is not buying this.

UPDATE: If Technorati is with me, who shall stand against me?

The Viking Pundit thinks Warren's essay is "excellent"; The folks wiith Common Sense coyly deem it to be "interesting".

The Sully Watchers can't say enough bad things about "flypaper", and "Bring 'em on". Try here, here, or here for starters.