Advisory Opinion

Memorial Day Reading

If you missed the tearjerker about Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham in Tuesday's WSJ, you really have to read it. I just read it today, after a friend insisted last night that I get to it. He was right, it's not to be missed.

I Love Jet Noise has the full article here (via Blackfive). It's all about sacrifice.

Cpl. Jason Dunham is a real hero.

And here's a letter from today's WSJ reflecting on the article:

I'm sorry. I've been crying. And I can't stop.

After reading your article about Mr. Grasso's compensation (legal or not), his blistering op-ed response, and your editorial -- and whatever all that petty bickering suggests about sums so enormous that few Americans can even imagine them -- I read Mr. Phillips's moving story about Cpl. Dunham's selfless heroism. I lingered on his every word, every moment, every explosion, every turn for the worse, every hope for survival. Then the devastating news: "At 4:43 p.m. on April 22, 2004, Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham died."

Look, I'm just a businessman. And a Republican, too. But I hope and pray that all of us who have basked in the glorious financial excesses of modern-day managers' capitalism will take a brief timeout from all of our getting and our self-important lives, get down on our knees and say a prayer for those who have given -- sadly, on our behalf -- what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion."

Maybe then my tears will dry. But I hope not.

John C. Bogle
Valley Forge, Pa.
(Mr. Bogle is founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group.)

A Little Too Defensive

Why is the left so outraged by this? Seems like a pretty uncontroversial point to me.

A Matter of Will

A Victor Davis Hanson Q&A:

Q: How did previous military leaders deal with such foes, like in the Missouri conflict during the Civil War or in other cases where the US military faced guerilla forces that disregarded the rules of combat? What are our real obligations toward the Geneva Convention agreements, for example, when it comes to opponents who disregard all conditions of organized warfare?

Hanson: In some ways it is irrelevant, since we live in a postmodern, CNN, NPR world where all the rules have changed. We worry about the 21st century global audience, while our foes appeal to the ghosts of the 8th century. Still, we can win this war and abide by the Geneva Convention and will. Remember, we could have taken Fallujah and followed the Geneva Convention, but chose to back off—a terrible setback. Right now the problem is will, not the Geneva Convention.

And in light of the ceasefires in Fallujah and Najaf, I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't have the will to win.

Why the Watchdogs Need Watching

Here's a fine essay by Bruce Thornton on Victor Hanson's site. An excerpt:

But if the media are really, as they claim, merely "objective" recorders of the facts, then surely they would at least cover the negative and positive facts equally. Indeed, one could argue that in the context of war, civilian deaths or abuse of detainees isn't really "news" but an unfortunate constant of war. What is really "news" in Iraq is that the U.S. military has taken remarkable steps to minimize civilian casualties, and is attempting an unprecedented task: to destroy an enemy and rebuild a society simultaneously. Certainly that wasn't the tack taken in WWII, when Japan and Germany were literally destroyed before the task of rebuilding began.

The "news" in Iraq, then, isn't the behavior of the prison guards, for such brutality occurs every day in every prison in America. If there had been a cover-up, then that would be newsworthy, but the only reason the media know about the story is because the military initiated an investigation. What the whole sorry episode shows is not the failure of the military or the administration, but rather the constant reality of evil in human hearts, an evil that war has always provided an excuse to indulge. That out of 150,000 troops in Iraq a dozen would be sadists should not surprise us.

Another problem with the media is their failure to provide an adequate context for the "facts" that usually are presented in isolation. Sometimes this context is historical: for example, what sorts of things typically have happened in wars? Civilian casualties, massacres, rape, death from friendly fire, execution of prisoners, torture, all have occurred in war throughout history. Unleashing the violence of human beings is never neat or precise. We try to have in place laws, training, and regulations that minimize such brutalities, but they will still occur and have to be accepted--though never condoned-- as part of the cost of resorting to force. Again, what needs emphasizing is not the constant brutality of war but the novel attempts to create a free, functioning society in a land that has never known one. When we condemn the bad, we need also to remember the worse.

To mention this larger context does not excuse the behavior, of course. To say that getting shot in the head is worse than getting stabbed in the arm is not to approve of wanton arm-stabbing. But the media needs to keep the proper perspective and judge actions by the standard not of perfection but of flawed human nature and the complexity and unforeseen consequences of all action. One way to do this is to be careful with language. In describing the abuse in Abu Ghraib, the New York Times' favorite word is "horrific." If intimidation and humiliation are "horrific," what word do we use to describe Auschwitz, or what went on in Abu Ghraib under Hussein? The use of such rhetoric is a sure sign that partisan interpretation rather than objective reporting is driving the news. . . .

Finally, and most importantly, where ultimately do the loyalties of the media lie? To profit, professional standards, or partisan ideology? And what if pursuing these harms the interests of their own country? We are not asking that the media be cheerleaders for the government, but simply be objective and fair in their coverage and not work actively against the aims pursued by a democratically elected administration, particularly when the lives of fellow Americans are at stake.

Warfare's Changing Landscape

Belmont Club has a very interesting post arguing that urbanization, the media, and other factors have broken down the wall between military affairs and civilian governance:

But the really frightening aspect of Col. Leonhard's argument is not that the military and political aspects of warfare have fused, but his realization that foreign battlefields and home front have merged into one integrated area of operations. There is now no real distinction between winning the "media war" and cleaning out a sniper's nest in Ramadi; between Abu Ghraib the prison and Abu Ghraib the media event. Many readers have criticized the Belmont Club's An Intelligence Failure as being too "soft" on the liberal press, arguing that the media's distortions are not simply the effect of incompetence but the result of a deliberate campaign of partisan information. Doubtless many in the liberal press harbor symmetrical resentments. Yet I have held back from framing the argument in these terms until I could place it in the framework of Col. Leonhard's concept of a global battlefield: one in which the WTC towers and the New York Times newsroom are front line positions no less than any corner in Baghdad; and where victory is measured not simply by the surrender of arms but the capitulation of ideas. We have begun the 21st century just as we inaugurated the 20th: at the edge of old familiar places and on the brink of the unknown.

One thing seems clear to me -- the adminstration has mishandled the media war both overseas and, most disturbingly, here at home. While it is certainly difficult to get positive information through the media's negative filter, I can't help but conclude that the administration has done an incredibly poor job on this front.

In the latter part of 2003, for example, the administration was silent as Howard Dean, the other candidates in the Democratic primary, and the media tore apart the justifications for the war in Iraq. The administration did not meaningfully challenge them or correct their misinformation. Indeed, the anti-war types were so successful that otherwise intelligent people I know actually believe that we went into Iraq because the president wanted to settle the score with Saddam over the attempted assassination of Bush I -- it was a personal vendetta. Likewise, the lied-about-WMD meme is now conventional wisdom among many -- and the administration did little to counter the misinformation that caused this.

Naturally, some are predisposed to believe such wild theories, but when otherwise intelligent people start to believe them, you've got to conclude that the administration has done a very bad job in the media. And that's not to even mention the adminstration's handling in the media of Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, and Najaf.

Productivity

Bruce Bartlett gives us a lesson on "why productivity is good and why it is worth making efforts to increase it":

At the simplest level, productivity is about doing more with less — less labor, less energy, less capital. It is because each worker today produces far more than those in the past that we have a higher standard of living. According to the [Dallas Fed] report, output per person is about 25 times higher today that it was in 1776. And unless productivity increases, businesses will not have the resources to increase real wages and raise future living standards.

Some workers incorrectly view productivity as a kind of dirty word. They imagine bosses prodding them to work longer and harder, with fewer breaks and vacations. In fact, productivity is all about getting workers to work less and more easily, not longer and harder. As the report notes, a key benefit of higher productivity is that we work far less today than in the past. In 1830, the average worker put in a 76-hour workweek. This fell to 60 hours in 1890, 39 hours in 1950, and just 34 hours today.

Workers are able to work less because capital, technology, education and training, and managerial innovation have combined to raise output per hour. . . .

Historically, labor productivity in the U.S. has grown 2.3 percent per year. At this rate, living standards will double every 31 years — about a generation. Thus, at this rate, every generation will live about twice as well as the previous one. But after 1973, this historical trend took a nosedive for reasons economists are still unclear about. From 1973 to 1995, productivity increased only 1.5 percent per year. At this rate, it would take 48 years for living standards to double.

Since 1995, productivity has rebounded and even accelerated to 3.2 percent per year — enough to double living standards in just 22 years if sustained.

Praising the EITC

Tyler Cohen is praising the Earned Income Tax Credit "as one of our government's best policies."

Sadr Update

StrategyPage:

May 27, 2004: Muqtada al Sadr's gunmen continued to withdraw from Najaf, as al Sadr tried to make a deal that would get the murder charges against him dropped. A ceasefire agreement has been negotiated with al Sadr, with the help of members of the Iraqi Governing Council. In most of the areas that al Sadrs gunmen took over in April, the gunmen are dead or gone, and the Iraqi government and police are back in control.

Over a hundred of al Sadr's men have been killed by coalition troops in the last few days, with few coalition casualties. This has been demoralizing for the al Sadr gunmen. The American troops are especially scary, with their use of UAVs, snipers and tanks. No matter what the al Sadr men do, the Americans seem to know where they are, and what they are up to. Show yourself, and an American sniper gets you. Try and shoot it out with the Americans, and they tend to hit you with their first shot. Fortify a building, and an American smart bomb hits it, and leaves neighboring buildings intact. Al Sadr's men receive more scorn than help from other Iraqi Shia, even though al Sadr had a lot of popular support in Najaf. The shrinking popular support, and continued pressure by the senior Shia clergy to get out of the Najaf shrines and mosques have put al Sadr in a difficult position. Even having his men fire at some of the Najaf shrines, and then blaming it on the Americans, didn't work. His chief lieutenant was captured yesterday and there is a feeling that the walls are closing in. They are.

Gore Horror

Power Line:

One of the great differences between liberals and conservatives is how the two camps go about explaining misconduct. Conservatives prefer straightforward, old-fashioned explanations that focus on a flaw in those who commit the misconduct -- greed, lust, cruelty, or (in extreme cases) evil itself. For liberals, such explanations are unsatisfyingly superficial. Misconduct must have a root cause, but liberals regard basic human instincts such greed, lust, and cruelty as insufficiently rooted. Thus, an intellectual posse must be recruited to track down the real culprit. And the search always seems to lead to the liberals' version of the heart of darkness -- "Amerika," in other words the policies adopted by America's elected leaders. By rejecting the obvious explanation and shifting the blame to American policy, the liberal accompishes that which is most important to him -- he proves his intellectual and moral superiority.

Al Gore accomplished this yesterday. A person of ordinary intelligence and moral discernment would only be able to identify two possible explanations for the misconduct at Abu Ghraib -- (1) a combination of cruelty and kinkiness and (2) the desire to coerce prisoners into providing information that might save American lives. But Al Gore is not ordinary. Thus, he was able to penetrate the heart of darkness and there locate a deeper explanation -- George Bush's post-9/11 policies. Had Gore not been so modest, he would have reported (instead of merely alluded to) the most deeply-rooted explanation he found on his intellectual voyage-- the country's failure to elect Al Gore.

Meanwhile, John Podhoretz thinks Gore has actually lost it.

Linking Iraq and Al Qaeda

From the WSJ editorial page:

We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?

One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.

It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. The chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since.

As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.

There are more connections set forth in the editorial.

Abu Ghraib

A Victor Davis Hanson Q&A:

Q: Is Abu Ghraib prison the work of perverted minds or merely very efficient intelligence procedures?

Hanson: I wrote about that for the Wall Street Journal (included on this webpage). The causes are all there: individual roguery most of all, poor training, poor supervision, elements of our pathologies at home, stress, the fallout of a dirty war against killers and terrorists, knowledge that sexual intimidation, while horrific and disgusting, probably brought some intelligence coups that were felt to have saved lives. It is a mess that tars everyone who tries to discuss it dispassionately; thus congressmen talk at length and say nothing other than sanctimonious blather and platitudes. Real discussion, coupled with commitment to punish the guilty, would be both condemnatory and realistic, as it was in past wars.

UPDATE: From the WSJ essay:

Right now we see only revolting pictures that properly shock our sensibilities. But because we do not know the circumstances of the interrogations, the conditions of confinement, or the nature of the acts that warranted imprisonment, we are also ignorant to what degree, if any, these men were responsible for horrendous acts -- or if their clumsy interrogators were trying to shame and humiliate them to extract information to save other lives.

We who are appalled in our offices and newsrooms are not those who have had our faces blown off while delivering food in Humvees or are incinerated in SUVs full of medical supplies -- with the full understanding that there will be plenty of Iraqis to materialize to hack away at what is left of our charred corpses. War is hell, and those who do not endure it are not entirely aware of the demons that are unleashed, and thus should hold their moral outrage until the full account of the incident is investigated and adjudicated.

If a small number of soldiers has transgressed, then let us punish them severely, as well as the officers who either ordered or ignored such reprehensible behavior. But let us also accept that the reaction to this incident is indicative of larger moral asymmetries that are the burdens of the West when it goes to war, a culture that so often equates the understandable absence of perfection, either moral, political, or military, with abject failure -- a fact not lost on our enemies.

There'a a lot of wisdom in that last sentence.

The Hopelessly Devoted

To the Editor:

When I read "The Times and Iraq," I thought: Not good enough. You're The New York Times.

Those of us in the air-conditioned wilderness with our minds still intact need your eyes — accurate and each morning.

Failure and self-flogging won't unspill the blood in Iraq.

Getting the truth every day, on each piece, is an impossibly high standard. But it is the mark of The New York Times. Back to work.

JON BELL
Tucson, May 26, 2004

Where Is the NAACP Leadership on Personal Responsibility?

Bill Cosby was widely praised for his speech last week at the NAACP gala commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education in Washington, D.C., where he called for personal responsibility among the "lower income people" of the black community. (If you missed his remarks, see this post, this article recounting additional parts of his speech, and this Cosby press release).

Richard Leiby, who broke the story, initially described the reaction of a few of the prominent black leaders in attendance as follows:

When Cosby finally concluded, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and NAACP legal defense fund head Theodore Shaw came to the podium looking stone-faced. Shaw told the crowd that most people on welfare are not African American, and many of the problems his organization has addressed in the black community were not self-inflicted.

Several days later, Clarence Page described what might be behind those "stone-faced" reactions:

Why is this news? Because Cosby violated what I call "BPC," black political correctness.

We should not hang our dirty laundry out in public, according to BPC, especially in front of white folks--as if white folks didn't already know when our clothes are not clean.

Instead of being candid in our public self-appraisals, BPC tells us to sound like President Bush does on Iraq: If we've made any mistakes, we can't remember what they are.

Indeed, Cosby's press release of several days after the NAACP event hints at this too. Cosby says:

"I feel that I can no longer remain silent. If I have to make a choice between keeping quiet so that conservative media does not speak negatively or ringing the bell to galvanize those who want change in the lower economic community, then I choose to be a bell ringer."

He is obviously responding to criticism that he shouldn't be speaking out so critically -- lest his comments be praised by "conservative media."

Finally, today we have an op-ed in the Washington Post from one of the stone-faced NAACP leaders, Theodore Shaw (the director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.). He's apparently not too happy with Cosby's frank speech:

I knew, even before I reached the stage, that Cosby's comments would be hijacked by those who pretend that racism is no longer an issue and who view poor black people with disdain. So, departing from my own prepared remarks, I embraced the notion of personal responsibility, at the same time calling attention to problems faced by African Americans that are not self-inflicted.

One example is the now infamous Tulia, Tex., drug sting. With no drugs, no money and no weapons recovered, 10 percent of the black population of this small town was arrested and convicted on the word of one corrupt undercover police officer. The sentences ranged from 20 to 341 years. Only after the Legal Defense Fund and other lawyers represented these individuals in post-conviction proceedings were they released.

Predictably, conservatives are applauding Bill Cosby for saying that the problems of the black community stem primarily from personal failures and moral shortcomings. But just as we in the progressive African American community cannot countenance the demonization of poor people, we must not cede the issue of personal responsibility to ideological conservatives. Most poor black people struggle admirably to raise their children well. Parents, including single mothers, work for low wages, sometimes in multiple jobs, to support their families. Recently Cosby recognized this in a press statement in which he emphasized that he was not criticizing everyone in the "black lower economic classes" but intended to issue a "call to action" and to foster "a sense of shared responsibility and action."

Unlike much of the world, we ignore human rights protections against discrimination on the basis of economic status. As a nation, we wage war on poor people in this country, not on poverty. In many ways we are a nation struggling to maintain our moral compass. Violence and dysfunction in poor black communities are under an especially glaring spotlight. But many of the problems Cosby addressed are largely a function of concentrated poverty in black communities -- the legacy of centuries of governmental and private neglect and discrimination.

Cosby's observations about the senseless violence perpetrated within black communities are undeniable. I do not know anyone who does not condemn it. But Amadou Diallo, shot to death in a hail of 41 bullets by New York police, did not steal a poundcake. He and countless other innocent black people have been killed while unarmed in communities in which policing is driven almost entirely by a "war on drugs" that makes all residents presumptive targets.

Following a recent conversation, Cosby and I agreed on this much: To the extent that he is frustrated and angry about the failure of people to be responsible parents, and about senseless crime and violence, I stand with him; to the extent that we continue to be challenged by the systemic issues of race and racism that the Legal Defense Fund has confronted since the days of my predecessor, Thurgood Marshall, Bill Cosby stands with me.

There is no either/or for anyone who truly works in the interests of African Americans and our nation.

Make your own judgments as to what role personal responsibility plays in Shaw's view of the world. I've made mine.

UPDATE: Thomas Sowell:

Bill Cosby and the black "leadership" represent two long-standing differences about how to deal with the problems of the black community. The "leaders" are concerned with protecting the image of blacks, while Cosby is trying to protect the future of blacks, especially those of the younger generation.

Far from just bashing blacks, Cosby has given generously to promote black education. But he is still old-fashioned enough to think that others need to take some responsibility for using the opportunities that were gained for them by "people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education."

Now, in too many black communities, dedicating yourself to getting an education is called "acting white."

These are painful realities and they do not become any less real or any less painful by hushing them up. Nobody enjoys being made to look bad in public. But too many in the black community are preoccupied with how things will look to white people, with what in private life would be concern about "what will the neighbors think?"

When your children are dying, you don't worry about what the neighbors think. When the whole future of a race is jeopardized by self-destructive fads, you put public relations on the back burner.

Law Firm Practice

Volokh has a cartoon posted that will tell you something about what it's like to be a lawyer at a large law firm.

Iraq Death Toll

James Joyner has a very informative post that provides some perspective on the current death toll in Iraq.

More Troops Needed in Iraq?

A Victor Davis Hanson Q&A:

Q: Do you have any other interpretations or thoughts on what is going on with Fallujah, and its broader implications?

Hanson: We should have moved immediately and taken the city, an act of resolution that would have reverberated throughout the country. Again, we are sidetracked with a false debate about troop strength when the real issue is how the troops that we have there are in fact used. The present hysteria is analogous to saying Alexander the Great needed 250,000 rather than 50,000 soldiers to subdue an empire of 50 million or that Caesar could not take and hold Western Europe with 40,000 legionaries, or that we could not land and move into Normandy when outnumbered 5-1 in Western Europe. I don’t think the problem in Vietnam in 1967 were only a half-million ground troops, but rather the absurd idea that we could not attack those in the North who were ordering millions southward.

Was the NY Times Part of the Neo-Con Conspiracy?

Will Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd now include the NY Times in their hysterical and wrongheaded rants about the neo-cons who misled us into war and the supposed lies about WMDs?

Perhaps they should in light of this mea culpa from the editors of the NY Times today:

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves. . . .

[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

Shocking? There's also this juicy bit from the Washington Post:

One of [Judith] Miller's prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile whose organization was subsidized by the Pentagon and who "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper," according to an e-mail she sent to a colleague.

Seems like the NY Times lied and people died -- at least that's what those on the left are bound to say. Ridiculous, you say? Well take a look at this post from Daily Kos, one of the most popular blogs on the left:

They [at the Times] wish they had been more aggressive. So probably did 913 allied troops and thousand of Iraqis killed in the war. Not to mention the thousands more wounded in the war. . . .

Idiots. The editors, Judith Miller, and every other journalist who helped enable the administration's lies have blood on their hands.

I'm sure the chickenhawk warblogging cabal (or, as TBogg calls them, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders) will be more than happy to share some of that blood on their hands. And if there's ever a shortage, there's barrels of it in the offices of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Powell, etc.

I wonder whether Krugman and Dowd will take a similar tack in their upcoming columns?

Consider, for example, this clever Dowd piece from earlier this week, in which she derides Chalabi, his neo-con enablers in the administration, and ultimately Vice President Cheney and President Bush. Dowd describes Chalabi as a "con man" who fed us "fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the case for ransacking the country." He propounded "a far-fetched scheme that took on life when he hooked up with Mr. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Doug Feith." Dowd further informs us that the "hawks dismissed warnings from their own people — such as the Bush Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni — that the Iraqi National Congress was full of 'silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London.'" And, according to Dowd, "Cheney & Company swooned over Mr. Chalabi because he was telling them what they wanted to hear."

By Dowd's own wild logic, isn't the NY Times also guilty of many, if not all, of the same purported offenses?

Sadr Update

He's becoming more marginalized every day.

Hating the Occupation

I can't help but wonder sometimes about the sincerity of the Iraqi rhetoric about hating the occupation. Often it seems like a pro forma device used by normal Iraqis to shield them from accusations of being pro-American (which can result in death). Take this quote for example:

Some merchants said that although they despised the American occupation, they were angry at the Mahdi Army for bringing the fight into Karbala. "We all hate the occupation, but resisting it should take place outside the city," said Yusef Mosawi, a shop owner. "Many shops have been burned and destroyed, and even the Shrine of Hussein has been damaged. Anyone who wants to fight can go to the American base."

Mr. Mosawi is essentially telling the fighters to go to the American base and die. That would be the very likely consequence of his advice at least -- because without their urban surprise attacks and civilian shields, the holdouts have no chance against American forces.

Of course, Mr. Mosawi may nevertheless hate the occupation. But not enough to sacrifice his blood and treasure to fight it. And that's a good thing. Ineed, if he really hates the occupation so much, I wonder how he feels about the fighters who are mucking up his business.

Quite a Story

From John Kerry's website:

About Teresa Heinz Kerry

Teresa Heinz Kerry brings an extraordinary range of experience and talent to the campaign trail for her husband. She has been deeply involved with a number of issues that are equally important to her husband, including the environment, children, women's issues, and health care and wellness. She has been an outspoken advocate for human rights, and a strong supporter of the arts.

Born in Mozambique, fluent in five languages, she has combined compassion and common sense to become a force for innovation and social progress as leader of one of the nation's largest private foundations. After studying in South Africa and Switzerland, she moved to the United States to work for the United Nations. In 1966, she married Senator John Heinz, with whom she had three sons. Shortly after celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in 1991, she lost her husband in a plane crash.

Turning down offers to run for her husband's Senate seat, she became chair of The Howard Heinz Endowment and the Heinz Family Philanthropies. . . .

Their mutual interest in environmental issues brought Teresa and John together. She was first introduced to John Kerry by Senator Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. In 1992, she ran into Kerry at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where she was representing U.S. non-governmental organizations. In 1993 they began dating, and were married in the presence of her three sons and his two daughters on Memorial Day weekend in 1995.

"Their mutual interest in environmental issues brought Teresa and John together."

Unintended Consequences?

Blackfive has a letter from a airman in Iraq who's not too impressed with the media's coverage of the war, to put it mildly. I doubt he'd agree that everyone supports the troops.

John Kerry's Principled Positions

Perhaps this is old news to many, but I found this helpful: John Kerry's Principled Positions.

New Yorkers Are Nuts

Here's a story of a couple with a 160 pound English mastiff:

"Beyond a slob," said the wife, Shane Markus-Kellman, 30, in a telephone interview. Brutus, she said, was too much to bear in a 740-square-foot apartment with a baby on the way. "The baby's whole head could fit into his mouth."

Mr. Kellman would not give Brutus up, so the dog went to live at Biscuits & Bath Doggy Gym, which offers overnight boarding a few blocks away from Mr. Kellman's Murray Hill office. On visits, he sneaked Brutus his favorite treats: steak and beer.

"We used to keep Brutus behind the front desk with us just to see people's reactions to this big head," said Meyghan Hill, 25, a receptionist.

But nothing compared to living with his owner, and Brutus lost weight.

"I think he sensed all along that he was traded in for a baby," said Mr. Kellman, who has photos of both his baby boy and Brutus on his cellphone.

After three months, at $55 a night, the boarding bills piled up. So Mr. Kellman did the next logical thing (in his mind): he rented a one-bedroom apartment for Brutus last July and found him a roommate. In exchange for living with Brutus, Mr. Kellman agreed to pay the rent in full - $1,800.

Only in New York City.

Go Ralph!

Ralph Nader, the independent candidate for president, condemned President George W. Bush yesterday as a "messianic militarist" who should be impeached for pushing the nation into a war in Iraq "based on false pretenses."

Mr. Bush's actions "rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors," Mr. Nader said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan. . . .

Mr. Nader also accused President Bush of exaggerating the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"To say that President Bush has exaggerated the threat of Al Qaeda is to trip into a political hornets' nest," he said. But he said it was time to raise "the impertinent question" about whether the threat had been "exaggerated for a purpose."

Mr. Nader said he believed such a deception had taken place, and had been intended in part to draw popular support for more militaristic policies and to generate military contracts for companies with close ties to the Bush administration.

Yes! Ralph! Keep ratcheting it up! Give the left a candidate it can love. Give progressives a real choice.

Wrong Answer

Wonkette notes:

Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Gore in 2000, wonders "what it would say" about the Democratic party if Kerry selected John McCain as his veep, and her candor is admirable: "Have we run out of steam? Have we stopped producing leaders like Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Mondale, Ferraro, Clinton, Gore, and Lieberman? The answer, clearly, is no."

Sorry, Donna. Regarding Truman, Kennedy, and Lieberman, the answer clearly is "yes."

Top Ten List

Drumroll please.

Here are the top ten reasons why the "international Islamic community has been silent" about the slaughter of black Muslims in Sudan by government-assisted Arab Muslims:

10. Neither Al Jazeera nor the various state controlled media outlets have alerted the Islamic community to the problem.

9. Muslims in the Middle East are too concerned with local issues to focus on Africa.

8. The humiliation that took place at Abu Ghraib is all-consuming.

7. The Sudanese don't destroy Islamic culture with Coca-Cola and McDonald's, so it makes sense to cut them some slack.

6. The Sudanese didn't lie about WMD as a pretense to steal the Islamic world's oil, destroy Islam, and rape Muslim women.

5. Sharon's racist policies against the Palestinians.

4. No evidence yet that a neo-con (read: Zionist) conspiracy has hijacked Sudanese foreign policy.

3. The Sudanese are not Crusaders and Jews.

2. The international Muslim community really doesn't get all that riled up about the slaughter of fellow Muslims when there's no good angle to attack the United States or Israel.

1. Staging a flag burning for CNN cameras is difficult when no one knows what the hell the Sudanese flag looks like.

What Is the Role of the Press?

Andrew Sullivan accurately describes the roll the mainstream press is playing in the war effort and upcoming election:

Threading the needle of sovereignty, transfer of power, battling terrorism and coordinating elections is still a massive undertaking. But I was reassured by the president's speech. It's a beginning. He now has to make a version of it again and again and again. He is up against a press corps determined to make this transition fail, in order to defeat a Bush presidency. He will need true grit to withstand it.

It's not so much that they want our enemies to win, they just want the president and our military to lose.

Sadr and Baghdad Update

StrategyPage:

May 25, 2004: In Najaf, al Sadr gunmen continue to be pinned down and killed by constant pressure from American troops. It is feared that the gunmen will do some serious damage to one of the Shia shrines there, and blame it on the Americans. The al Sadr militia have not got many options left. The people of Najaf want the al Sadr gang gone, but are unable to do it themselves, so they stand aside and let the coalition troops do it.

There are almost daily car bombings in Baghdad. These attacks show little skill, and do little damage. But they indicate an active terrorist organization. Not giving, or seeking, much publicity, are several new Iraqi police organizations working on counter-terrorism operations. Apparently, these new police operations are expected to show they have the right stuff by nailing one or more of these Islamic terrorist organizations in Baghdad. One problem with the new Iraqi investigation squads is their tendency to use the traditional interrogation methods. These are considered war crimes by many in the West, and coalition officials have had to step in and stop the roughness. The Iraqis complain that this is limiting their progress, and they have not got time to learn new interrogation methods.

The Long View

A Victor Davis Hanson Q&A:

Q: How much damage to our cause in Iraq has been done by the revelation of Iraqi POW abuse by U.S. soldiers?

Hanson: In the short term, a great deal of damage; but in the long term there may be unintended consequences that will work somewhat in our favor: Iraqis may see Americans disciplining their own—a very, very small number of those deployed— for maltreatment of prisoners in a very public and legitimate way, many of whom were murderers and torturers and recognized as such by millions of Iraqis. Let us wait until the trials are conducted and the guilty punished to see the final effects. We need also to know whether the pictures captured horrific things in medias res and were simply incidental to ongoing brutality or were in fact staged instruments of coercion in which guards posed and used the prisoners as actors in set scenarios for the psychological intimidation of those interrogated.

More on the Supposed Wedding Party

Unnamed Reporter: What happened yesterday at 3 a.m. in Al Qaim? Was there a wedding on? A wedding celebration?

Gen. Mattis: You joined us a little late, as I said to the young lady here, I said how many people how many people go to the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border and hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization? Over two-dozen military-aged males... let's not be naïve. Let's leave it at that.

That's from a press conference involving the major of Fallujah, the commander of the Iraqi Fallujah Brigade, and Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

UPDATE: Belmont Club has more analysis, with inconclusive findings.

Iraqi Blogs

It is great to see the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq mentioned in John Podhoretz's column today.

As reported on the brilliant Healing Iraq blog (healingiraq.blogspot.com), Najaf clerics laid the blame for the entry of U.S. forces into that holy city: "It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada [Sadr] that has encouraged the occupiers to cross the red lines," the senior clerics in Najaf wrote. "And it is clear that the organization of Sayyid Muqtada - and whoever follows the Sadrist movement - were the first to violate the sanctity of" the city's holiest shrine.

The Iraqi blogs certainly provide a view of events in Iraq that is refreshing -- primarily because it is not colored by the knee-jerk negativism of the American media. In addition to Healing Iraq, also check out Iraq the Model.

Michael Moore: Just Another Lie

I had never really paid much attention to Michael Moore until just recently. But in the little time I have been paying attention, one thing I've noticed is that there appears to be no end to stories like this one by Fred Barnes:

A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group. I had whined "on and on about the sorry state of American education," Moore said, and wound up by bellowing: "These kids don't even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are!"

Moore's interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. "Fred," he quoted himself as saying, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are." I started "hemming and hawing," Moore wrote. And then I said, according to Moore: "Well, they're . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine, you got me--I don't know what they're about. Happy now?" He'd smoked me out as a fraud, or maybe worse.

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It's a fabrication on two levels. One, I've never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for the record, I'd learned what they were about even before college. Like everyone else my age, I got my classical education from the big screen. I saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

So why didn't I scream bloody murder when the book came out in 2001? I didn't learn about the phony anecdote until it was brought to my attention by Alan Wolfe, who was reviewing Moore's book for the New Republic. He asked, by email, if the story were true. I said no, not a word of it, and Wolfe quoted me as saying that. That was enough, I thought. After all, who would take a shrill, lying lefty like Moore seriously?

More people than I thought.

Rumor or Wild Conjecture?

Tom Shales, the Washington Post's style columnist, give us the following on the President's speech last night:

Of course, most people by now have probably heard the rumor, or the wild conjecture, that Osama bin Laden either will be caught just in time for the November election or has in fact already been caught and is being held in captivity so he can be sprung strategically as an "October surprise" -- one that will clinch the election for Bush. If that's true -- and this is an age of incredible-but-truisms -- Bush can make the worst speeches of his career and no one will care.

In that sense only, last night's was a good beginning.

Winning the Peace

A Victor Davis Hanson Q&A:

Q: In both Afghanistan and Iraq we seem to be winning the war and losing the peace. What strategies would you employ?

Hanson: The two are quite different; Afghanistan is much calmer and of course was liberated 14 months earlier. Iraq, for all the chaos, can be saved, but we must remember that it is an Arab country with a uniquely terrible past, located in the strategic Persian Gulf, and with consequences for some 20 Arab autocracies that simply cannot abide a truly free Arab society on their borders. The transition to rapid Iraqi self-rule is a good thing— fraught with problems, but a good thing; if we use the troops we have more forcefully, give the Iraqis more credit and exposure, speed up elections, and maintain our will while historical forces start to kick in—an improvement in the economy, Iraqis in control of their government, and foreign aid—things will settle down.

Wedding Party Redux

Belmont Club has revisited the topic of the supposed U.S. attack on an Iraqi wedding party. Check it out if you're interested in getting a better idea of what happened there.

Letter from Fallujah

Blackfive points to this highly recommended letter from Marine Major Dave Bellon (Operations Officer of 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion), who is serving in Fallujah. Here's an interesting bit:

I will close with something that was on my mind this morning when I punished myself by watching CBS news. I saw the anchor come on and just before he spoke, I told my rack mate "Lets see what the opening line is going to be...." Sure enough before he said anything else, he said "It just keeps getting worse and worse...." Yes, he was talking about Iraq. Honest to God we laughed at him. I'm not kidding. It is getting to the point where the Marines are getting past their anger at the talking heads and are laughing. To really get a rise out of them, requires a retired military officer who betrays his oath and stokes the fear mongering.

Do you remember when I came back last fall and people would ask about WMD and I would say that I did not care if we ever found any? The day we found the mass grave is vivid to me still. We found it up near the Iranian boarder. Very quickly people came from miles and miles away. We stood and watched the family members digging up bones and clutching remains as they sat in the dirt, rocked back and forth and cried. They were adamant that we should come over and look as they dug them up. Every single body had its hands and feet wired together with ROMEX. Each skull had a bullet hole in it except for a few that were smashed with a club or rifle butt. There were clearly men but also women and children. The grave never made the news as there were no media with us and it was small by Iraq standards. One detail that I found particularly outrageous was that the assassins left the identifications on the bodies as if they were so arrogant that it never occured that someday, someone would dig up the bodies and hold them accountable. I will never forget it.

That memory is vivid and relevant to me today as I feel like I was blessed to have been there and see it personally. To the people that cry that we should leave Iraq because we came here for the wrong reasons I would say "I don't care." Honestly, if I found out tomorrow that everyone in government knowingly lied and brought us here because Iraq grows the best sunflower seeds in the world it would not matter to me. We liberated a people from a regime that will go down in history as one of the most brutal ever. That would be enough.

However, we are now in a life and death struggle with an enemy who wants nothing more for us to leave so that they can bring their own brand of terror to the same people. Our biggest failings have been that, as a coalition, we have not been able to overcome our own-ham handed actions and horrible mistakes/crimes and simply convince the Iraqi people that we do in fact want to leave them a free and prosperous country where there is hope. The most successful way to do that is to continue to go out and show them every day and not to cut and run. And you know what? It is working. People are coming to us and talking to us even in the face of Abu Garayb and in the real threat of their own death.

Inside this country right now, there are extremists who have set up courts where in one room, they try Iraqis and in the next they kill them minutes later. Not fantasy - reality. Again, the death sentence? Accepting payment for damage we have done in fighting or in an accident. Taking a job working on a coalition base. Having a brother who has done his job in the police or ICDC.

Are people so naive as to think that if we left, things would get better? The country would implode and thousands of people would be killed. When the dust settled, a more dangerous Iraq would emerge and we would be even more hated throughout the world. It is that simple. We came here to help these people and at the same time to make the world a safer place for free people everywhere. If we leave too early, the people will suffer horribly and the world will have taken one giant step backward. Maybe we are slow on the uptake but it is pretty clear here what the right thing to do is and it is not to abandon the people to the terrorists.

I recommend reading the rest.

Why Are the Rich Healthier than the Poor?

Alex Tabarrok points to this interesting article challenging the traditional explanations for the health gap between the rich and poor and proposing an alternative explanation.

According to the article, the first of the traditional explanations -- that "greater wealth and social status mean greater access to medical care" -- is undercut by the fact that access to health care has increased by way of government services and employer-sponsored insurance plans, but the health gap between rich and poor has nevertheless widened. Likewise, the second explanation -- that "inequality itself is the killer" because "low status translates into insecurity, stress and anxiety, all of which increases susceptibility to disease" -- is belied, at least in part, by common sense: The most stressed out and anxiety-ridden folks are those in the upper income brackets.

So what is the alternative explanation set forth in the article?

The rich live longer . . . mainly because the rich are smarter. The argument rests on several different propositions, all well documented. The crucial points are that (a) social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence;(b) intelligence correlates strongly with "health literacy," the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment; and (c) intelligence is also correlated with forward planning--which means avoidance of health risks (including smoking) as they are identified.

The first leg of that argument has been established for many decades. In modern developed countries IQ correlates about 0.5 with measures of income and social status--a figure telling us that IQ is not everything but also making plain that it powerfully influences where people end up in life. The mean IQ of Americans in the Census Bureau's "professional and technical" category is 111. The mean for unskilled laborers is 89. An American whose IQ is in the range between 76 and 90 (i.e., well below average) is eight times as likely to be living in poverty as someone whose IQ is over 125.

Second leg: Intelligent people tend to be the most knowledgeable about health-related issues. Health literacy matters more than it used to. In the past big gains in health and longevity were associated with improvements in public sanitation, immunization and other initiatives not requiring decisions by ordinary citizens. But today the major threats to health are chronic diseases--which, inescapably, require patients to participate in the treatment, which means in turn that they need to understand what's going on. Memorable sentence in the Gottfredson-Deary paper in the February 2004 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science: "For better or worse, people are substantially their own primary health care providers." The authors invite you to conceptualize the role of "patient" as having a job, and argue that, as with real jobs in the workplace, intelligent people will learn what's needed more rapidly, will understand what's important and what isn't and will do best at coping with unforeseen emergencies.

It is clear that a lot of patients out there are doing their jobs very badly. Deary was coauthor of a 2003 study in which childhood IQs in Scotland were related to adult health outcomes. A central finding: Mortality rates were 17% higher for each 15-point falloff in IQ. One reason for the failure of broad-based access to reduce the health gap is that low-IQ patients use their access inefficiently. A Gottfredson paper in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology cites a 1993 study indicating that more than half of the 1.8 billion prescriptions issued annually in the U.S. are taken incorrectly. The same study reported that 10% of all hospitalizations resulted from patients' inability to manage their drug therapy. A 1998 study reported that almost 30% of patients were taking medications in ways that seriously threatened their health. Noncompliance with doctors' orders is demonstrably rampant in low-income clinics, reaching 60% in one cited study. Noncompliance is often taken to signify a lack of patient motivation, but it often clearly reflects a simple failure to understand directions. . . .

And then there is the third leg of the IQargument: the lifestyle question. Smoking, obesity and sedentary living are more prevalent among low-status citizens. A 2001 study by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention found that college graduates are three times as likely to live healthily as those who never got beyond high school. Not clear is what the government can do about this.

I'm sure the left can come up with something, most likely involving more government spending and coercion.

UPDATE: Ooops. An earlier version of this post stated that Tyler Cohen pointed to the article above. It was actually Alex Tabarrok, which the text above now reflects. Sorry for the mistake.

Sadr and Fallujah Update

StrategyPage has good news:

May 24, 2004: American and Iraqi troops captured a mosque held by al Sadr gunmen in Kufa. Some three dozen of the al Sadr militiamen were killed. Several hundred al Sadr followers still occupy Shia shrines in Najaf, but there they are also being pressured by local tribal and religious leaders to leave the shrines. The gunmen realize, however, that if they leave the shrines, which American troops won't attack, they will be easy pickings for coalition troops and hostile Iraqis. Coalition forces insist that all the al Sadr gunmen surrender their weapons, and al Sadr himself surrender to face murder charges. Al Sadr himself continues to call for widespread uprising against coalition troops, but this isn't happening and the number of al Sadr gunmen shrinks daily.

In and around Fallujah, anti-government gunmen are rarely seen, but there are still roadside bombs going off and some sniping. There's another war that is rarely reported on, and this is between the traditional Sunni Arab Iraqi leaders (clergy and tribal elders) and the still feisty members of the former government (the Baath Party.) The Iraqis don't want Baath back in power, even though Baath is largely Sunni Arab. And Baath still has guns and men willing to use them. The Iraqi traditional leaders don't have the firepower to fight Baath, but they do have the family and tribal connections that allow discussion, and even arguments, with the Baath leaders. Most Sunni Arabs now want peace and reconstruction. It's become obvious to even the diehard Sunni Arab Saddam supporters that the Shia and Kurds are prospering because of the reconstruction. Many of the Sunni Arabs are not getting any of this economic benefit, because so many of the Sunni Arabs are supporting the Baath party and Islamic radical gunmen and terrorists. While the Sunni Arabs won't fight the Baath (Saddam's henchmen are too well armed, and too expert at applying terror), they are increasingly supplying information, and joining the police and security forces.

But I thought we already lost the war?

Michael Moore and Me

The leftist Guardian -- of all publications -- has published a balanced piece on Michael Moore and his new film. As it turns out, you've got to give the Guardian some credit for taking a critical look at Moore -- after all, it's something the NY Times couldn't bring itself to do. Here's one clutch excerpt:

After the conference, Moore went to the official screening of his film, which is in competition for the main jury prize. The end of the film brought a standing ovation that, observers estimated, lasted somewhere between 12 and 15 minutes, a Cannes record, and possibly unmatched since Stalin's audiences used to continue clapping for mortal fear of being the first person to stop.

The applause here, though, was genuine. For the Americans who made up a large section of the audience, this was their first opportunity to stand up straight after the shaming horrors of Abu Ghraib, and for the French, well, there is nothing the French love more than an American criticising America. The following evening on French TV, I watched Moore thank the French people for being 'friends who can tell you the truth to your face'. He might have returned the favour and told the French about their government's appalling role in Rwanda a decade before - but there are limits to truth-telling, even among friends.

It's worth remembering that for Michael Moore and his ilk, the French are "friends who can tell you the truth to your face." I would have put it a bit differently -- perhaps something like: the French are fair-weather friends who will lie to your face just before they stab you in the back. But I guess that's the difference between Michael and me.

For anyone interested in knowing more about Michael Moore, the Guardian article is pretty well done. (Via Adam Smith Institute Blog.)

Bullish on Iraq

Here's a Council on Foreign Relations interview with a Stanford doctoral candidate who spent seven months in Iraq, "mostly in Shiite areas in the south, [and who] says the country will overcome its difficulties and emerge from the current upheaval a unified state." An excerpt:

Q: What are the chances for a united Iraq? Several observers have said Iraq should be a loose federation, with significant autonomy for the Kurds. Do you think the country can stick together?

A: I think the country can definitely stick together, and I think it will. I was surprised at the degree of Iraqi nationalism. There is an Iraqi identity. It's going to be a challenge to convince the average Kurds up in the northern areas that they have some stake in this larger country. A lot of them recognize it, but they haven't fully absorbed it yet. I do think the country will stick together, and I think that plans for a U.S. pullout or plans to divide the country up are very short-sighted.

The biggest mistake that people in the West make about Iraq is [they fail to grasp] that most Iraqis do not primarily define themselves in ethnic or religious terms. They don't define themselves as Sunni Arab or Shiite Arab or even Kurd. The more we constantly reinforce this and say that [Iraq] is three nations, you are going to start seeing people in Iraq following that. But I don't think that's a natural tendency. I don't think that the cleavages are primordial or ingrained. We need to be very careful about this. The coalition made a few wrong steps early on by assuming that you need to have representation of Sunni Arabs and Kurds in proportion to their demographic constituency. We need to encourage the development of constituencies that are not just along ethnic or religious lines. . . .

Q: Are Iraqis happy with the idea of the United States remaining as a security force, or do they want the United States to leave?

A: Most Iraqis, even though they have been frustrated at the slow pace of progress and the slow process of reconstruction, realize that a continued American presence is necessary for the short to medium term to maintain stability. That's what all Iraqis want. Most Iraqis aren't that interested in the political process. They want some sort of stability. Most Iraqis haven't been able to consume any foreign goods since 1991. On the street now, the economy is booming. People with disposable income are buying cell phones, satellite dishes, microwaves, air conditioners, food processors, used cars. This is what Iraqis want: they want some sort of government to provide them stability where they are able to reintegrate themselves into the world, be able to travel, enjoy what they haven't had since 1991 [when economic sanctions were imposed], if not earlier.

Q: Has life improved in the past year?

A: Look at what Iraqis say. [According to an ABC-ARD-BBC-NHK poll ], 56 percent say their life has improved. More important, even more Iraqis think their life is going to improve further in the next year. I think that's the best indication.

Q: Did you have trouble moving around the country? Did you try to keep your American identity unknown?

A: No, I told people I'm American. As long as I didn't speak, they assumed I was an Arab. In the south, I was arrested five times because they thought I was a foreign Arab. They thought I might be Syrian or something like that. I've been picked up five times: three times by the Iraqi police and twice by religious militias. Once they found out I'm American, they let me go. [All brackets in original.]

He is, in his own words, "bullish on Iraq," which is a substantially different view than the Iraq-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket story we're getting from the mainstream media.

Did North Korea Sell Uranium to Libya?

WASHINGTON, May 22 — International inspectors have discovered evidence that North Korea secretly provided Libya with nearly two tons of uranium in early 2001, which if confirmed would be the first known case in which the North Korean government has sold a key ingredient for manufacturing atomic weapons to another country, according to American officials and European diplomats familiar with the intelligence.

A giant cask of uranium hexafluoride was turned over to the United States by the Libyans earlier this year as part of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's agreement to give up his nuclear program, and the Americans identified Pakistan as the likely source.

But in recent weeks the International Atomic Energy Agency has found