Author: N.Z. Bear

Everybody’s been commenting on Kerry’s editiorial in the Washington Post laying out his plan for Iraq more clearly, so since I him for it the other day, I figure I owe him another pass.
I’m lazy and tired, though, so I’ll just reproduce some of my favorite passages here for your edification. I might have mistranscribed a word here or there, though, so fair warning…
A Strategy for Iraq
By John F. Kerry
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime. To date, that has not happened in Iraq. It is time it did.

Continue reading “Kerry’s Super Plan”

At the 9/11 hearings yesterday, Commissioner Fred Fielding opened his questioning of former FBI Director Louis Freeh with following statement:
FIELDING: I am sure it’s no surprise to you or anybody here that there’s a lot of interest in today’s hearings and there’s a lot of interest simply because on September 11th we were totally beaten. We were beaten and all our systems failed.
Our systems to stop hijackings failed. Our intelligence, domestic and foreign apparatus failed. We had 19 people who were able to — some of whom were known by the CIA to be terrorists — entered our country, got visas, were living under their own names in this country, took flight lessons. They beat the security screening with knives to get into the aircraft and turn four aircraft into missiles.
And they had to have — it was interesting — they had to have 100 percent success in order to do this and they did.
What troubles me about Fielding’s statement is that all of our system’s did not fail. One of them succeeded — the ability of the citizens of this country to identify a threat and take action as individuals to elminate it. The ability that was demonstrated so dramatically — and successfully — by the passengers on Flight 93, the only hijacked plane where the terrorists failed in their mission to crash into a valuable target.
As I wrote one year after the 9/11 attacks, I don’t believe that America began responding effectively to Al Qaeda when we invaded Afghanistan. I believe we began responding effectively the moment that the passengers of Flight 93, fed information via cellphone calls from the ground, recognized what the terrorists on their flight planned to do — and acted to stop it.
After all the hearings that the commission has had on the failures of our government to prevent 9/11, or even to respond effectively while it was happening, shouldn’t there be at least one hearing to discuss what went right on that day? Where is the session devoted to studying the actions of the passengers of Flight 93, and their success at foiling the terrorists they confronted? Is there nothing at all to be learned from their actions, and their sacrifice — or is the comissison just more interested in finding fault than in actually recognizing success?
Or is it a more basic blindness — is the 9/11 commission, and our government in general, incapable of recognizing a defense against terrorism that merely consists of individual Americans willing to fight when it becomes necessary? That a defense that doesn’t require a huge appropriation bill and a massive administrative army simply doesn’t fit with the Washington mindset?
Update: Jay has related thoughts.

Glenn to know what the Democrat’s plan is for Iraq, as opposed to their simple sniping from the sidelines.
Why, it’s right here, of course!
That’s the page on John Kerry’s web site that you get when you click on “Iraq Plan for Peace” on his home page. And it outlines “precisely” what Kerry believes we should do, as outlined in two speeches at the Brookings Institution (oooooh!) and the Council on Foreign Relations (aaaaah!).
I’ll save you the trouble of reading them (although read them you should). Kerry’s plan for saving Iraq is to get the U.N. to pass a resolution, of course! And place the entire operation “under a UN umbrella”.
Hey, makes sense to me. Should solve all of our problems, since after all, we know that the enemies we are fighting in Iraq have great respect for the United Nations.
In semi-seriousness: no, really, you should go read Kerry’s site and see what he has to say on Iraq. Which is to say, he has nothing to say, beyond “internationalize it”. If this is the best the Democrats can offer, I will take a highly flawed Bush policy over their complete absence of policy any day…

I haven’t heard anybody else do it yet, so I’ll call “bullshit” on Kerry’s new ” index“.
Why? Well, first, because the description of the formula used is utterly incomprehsible, and he doesn’t provide any data to actually review to check his work. (Don’t give me hard numbers and a spreadsheet, ’cause I’ll kick your ass).
And second: why, praytell, not use the “misery index” that has been in use as a standard measure of such things for years? Because I’m sure it would show exactly the same negative trend for Republican administrations as Kerry’s newfangled one. Or, maybe not.
PS – Yes, I realize that me not hearing anyone else call Kerry on this is more a function of me not looking hard than of any particular lack of people doing so. Get over it.

Has anybody ever asked why the two presidential candidates’ sites are .coms, as opposed to .orgs?
Recognizing that politicians tend to make a buck at their trade, aren’t they supposed to at least pretend that they are not in it for profit? The .com kinda gives the game away, no?
PS – In related news, the Official Bush-Cheney ’04 Blog is dull as dirt.

Observing the 9/11 hearings, I’m struck by exactly how awful it is to have the process of election taking place at the same time as the process of governance . I understand the Democrats need and desire to prove to the electorate that they represent a superior choice to govern the country; this is all fine and good. But it is hard to watch the pile-on regarding the Bush administration’s failures prior to 9/11 and in Iraq without cringing at the focus on assigning blame, rather than on helping to find constructive solutions to better defend our country. Sometimes, it seems that the effect — and perhaps the actual goal — of partisan sniping is not simply to ensure that the other guy doesn’t get re-elected, but rather, to ensure that he is incapable of getting anything done during his remaining time in office.
This is of course the same complaint the Democrats made during the Lewinsky scandal, and the point was equally valid then.
I don’t have a solution to this problem, other than half-heartedly urging everyone to “play nice”. It seems a natural byproduct of a two-party system with free elections and an open press.
But damn, some days I think that our system of governance, and more to the point, elections, is roughly equivalent to stuffing two NASCAR drivers in the front seat of a speeding stock car and telling them to arm wrestle to see who gets to drive the next lap…

Is it me, or is the lefty side of the blogopshere getting even more partisan lately?
We’ve got Kos, a previously vaguely rational lefty, gleefully degenerating to ANSWER-like hysterics, and now (who steadfastly refuses to decide which team he’s playing for — not that there’s anything wrong with that) is beating up on Josh Marshall for bogus complaints about Mickey misquoting him.
Pre-election calcification of political battle lines? Dunno. All I can say is, Kevin, don’t flip out on us now — our supply of non-party-line lefty commentary is dipping towards dangerous levels…

Kos bravely on: after all, it’s just “typical right-wing shit”.
Hat tips: Roger and LGF.
PS: Kos is down; Spoons passes on word that it is probably just a server move.

Ok folks, the Ecosystem should be back to normal. Quite a passle of problems.
For those who care, there were not one, not two, but three separate issues that turned out to be causing the difficulties we’ve seen over the past few weeks.
1) A database corruption occurred to the massive ‘links’ table. This happens periodically, as I’ve mentioned in the past, and I haven’t found a way to prevent it. The fix is to simply drop and recreate the table. That’s what caused the actual database errors you might have seen on your details pages. (This was fixed a week or so ago).
2) I goofed and when I separated out “blog directories” (see the lower-right side of the Ecosystem display) introduced a code bug that has prevented new weblogs added to the Ecosystem since then from evolving past Microbe status. My bad; fixed now.
3) To top it all off, somebody deliberately tried to hack the Ecosystem to put a passle of not-very-amusingly named replacement blogs at the top of the listings. Ironically, the combination of the above problems prevented this hack from ever being seen by the Ecosystem-viewing public. And now, the bogus entries have been deleted. So, to my unknown assailant: ha-HA!
There’s a new scan running right now that will finish in a few hours, so you might see an anomoly or two (particularly if you are comparing your history stats to your current rank) between now and 2pmish PST. Other than that, all should be well.
That’s about it. Please check your stats, if you care, and let me know if you see any further problems…
-NZB
PS – I also spent some time this morning de-spamming many comments, and updating my version of Allen’s fine fine MT Blacklist plugin to get auto-updates from the master blacklist. Hopefully that will cut down on the spamminess around here…

ANGELES (Reuters): A California judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit that could have cost Walt Disney Co. (DIS) hundreds of millions of dollars from Winnie the Pooh product sales, saying Disney’s foes lied and stole evidence.
Stephen Slesinger Inc., the family firm suing Disney, “is dishonest and shows no remorse,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles McCoy wrote in his decision. He ruled that Slesinger’s actions threatened the integrity of the legal system and the 13-year-old case should be dismissed as punishment.
I’ll give you the straight scoop here: Pooh knows where the action is, and despite Eisner being unable to find his backside without assistance of the Hubble telescope, Disney is where the Benjamins are at. And Pooh is one bear who knows how to look out for himself.
So a bear whispers a word here, a suggestion there, and whamo — a friendly judge issues a ruling, and its bye-bye Mr. Slesinger, hello penthouse suite at the Grand Californian.
I’m tellin’ ya: don’t mess with Pooh.
PS – Yah, I know the Ecosystem is foobared. No, I don’t know what’s wrong. Yes, I know your details page shows one thing and the rankings shows another. No, I haven’t fixed it yet.

If you haven’t already done so, you should take a few moments to check out the Provisional Authority web site, which has tons of interesting information on the reconstruction of Iraq.
You can check out all the official “regulations” and “orders” of the CPA, which are the de facto law of the land in Iraq. Download day-by-day Excel spreadsheets full of data on power production and consumption. Or check out images of the new Iraqi currency.
Good stuff, all, and pretty impressive transparancy for an “occupation” government.
One recent order, though, leaves me wondering. Order 62 (PDF) was published on March 1st — just a few days ago — and states in part:
“When determined necessary for security and public order within Iraq, the Administrator of the CPA may disqualify an individual from participating in an election as a candidate for, accepting a nomination to, or holding public office, at any level, if that individual:
a) Has engaged in, ordered, or publicly incited violence against Coalition Forces or CPA personnel;
b) Was a full member of the Ba’ath Party holding the rank of `Udw Qutriyya (Regional Command Member) `Udw Far’ (Branch Member) , `Udw Shu’bah (Section Member) or `Udw Firqah (Group Member), as determined by the Higher National De-Baathification Commission;
c) Is an agent of a foreign government;
d) Has been convicted of a serious offense;
e) Is reasonably suspected of having committed, participated in, ordered, or permmitted war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, atrocities, or gross violations of human rights; or
f) Has publicly espoused political philosophies or legal doctrines contrary to the democratic order and rule of law being established in Iraq.”
This is obviously a pretty broad power. And I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, particularly given that the order explicitly states that it “shall remain in effect only until the CPA is disolved.
The odd thing to me, though, is that I had assumed that the June 30th handover of power would disolve the CPA as well. So why publish an order like this now, a mere four months before that happens? Does Bremmer expect to actually use this power? And if he doesn’t, why bother with the order?
I would certainly hope that if he does plan on using it, he has an ironclad reason for doing so — because clearly, even if this order gives him the authority to do so, the political fallout from using this power could be catastrophic if it were abused.
Yet again, I don’t have answers here, but am asking the questions. Anybody else have thoughts on what, if anything, this might mean?
Update: Well, I’m not crazy on one point at least. The November 15th Agreement (PDF) explicitly states that June 30th is it for the CPA: “By June 30th, 2004, the Iraqi Transitional National Assembly will elect it’s leaders and assume full sovereignty for Iraq. The Governing Council and the Coalition Provisional Authority will be dissolved.” So clearly Bremmer could only use this power between now and then.

Sullivan, 3/2/04: “It seems clearer and clearer that the religious right amendment to ban civil marriage rights for gays is not really intended to pass any time soon. The point is to use the issue electorally – threaten the civil rights of some Americans to get a few percentage points in a few Senate races and possibly against Kerry…”
Good morning, Andrew! Glad you could join us!
We’ll let you slide just this once, but next time, you’ll be marked as “tardy” on your class report…

John Kerry makes a habit of bragging about his refusal to accept PAC money. In fact, does his campaign website:
Facts on John Kerry and Special Interests
JOHN KERRY’S MONEY: NO ONE BUYS JOHN KERRY