OxBlog

# Posted 2:03 AM by Patrick Belton

LE PLUS CA CHANGE, ET LE CHINE: James Mann, of CSIS and formerly the LA Times and one of the leading analysts of contemporary China within journalism or the academy, contributes a piece to today's WaPo on how in human rights, China hasn't changed over the past decade - the rest of the world has just lowered its standards:

The problem is that in fundamental ways relating to human rights and political repression, China today is not much different than it was a decade ago. Yes, China has been brought into the international community, if we define that phrase exclusively in terms of economics. But ordinarily the international community is not defined solely by membership in the World Trade Organization.

Chirac is right about one thing -- something has changed over the past decade. But it's not China. Rather, the rest of the world has become far more tolerant of the same Chinese political repression that it condemned in the early 1990s. A lifting of the EU arms embargo would be one more big step in this tawdry policy of accepting repression.

From permitting the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit prisoners in its jails, to allowing unauthorised public meetings or making the smallest statement of remorse for using arms against its peacefully protesting citizens, the Chinese regime has not budged in the slightest toward international norms of decency and human rights. On the contrary, from 1989 on, it's the West that has positively run, under three consecutive US presidents, to erase from the public stage all criticism whatsoever of the way Beijing treats its subjects.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:40 AM by Patrick Belton

PUTTING NUMBERS ON A BIG, BIG PROBLEM: Over 4,450 Catholic priests can be documented to have been accused of committing sexual assault on minors over the past 52 years, according to a report commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and written by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. To put this number in perspective - there are only 44,000 priests currently serving in the United States; and even though the report entirely discards incidents involving a further 3,300 priests who had died, and only deals with incidents in which a victim of abuse has come forward, the number still represents over 4 percent of all priests who served in that period.

CORRECTION: 3,300 incidents involving dead priests weren't counted, rather than 3,300 dead priests. (Some dead priests may have been serial pedophiles.) Still, the point remains that even without taking a single dead priest into account over 4 percent of American priests have been accused of sexual assault of minors - an unforgiveably large amount of rape of children, and an unforgiveable betrayal of trust.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:03 PM by Patrick Belton

STRATEGY UNDER SPIRES: Our friends in Oxford are very warmly welcome to come along this Wednesday to listen to our think tank's Eurasia Director, Paul Domjan, lead a conversation on different contemporary analytical techniques which may be used in making strategies for the future. Our meeting will be held in the New Room at St Antony's (Hilda Besse building), at 8 pm on Wednesday, and the more, the merrier. Some optional readings which are useful on the subject are on our foreign policy society's blog.

We also have frequent meetings in Washington, New York, Chicago, the Bay, LA, Boston, and New Haven, and a think tank we're getting off the ground - please just drop us a note if you'd like to be kept in the loop!

UPDATE: And a friend in our San Francisco chapter was kind enough to suggest a few more, which we've added here.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:49 PM by Patrick Belton

CRYSTALIZING THE FOREIGN POLICY CONVERSATION: Charles Krauthammer presented the Irving Kristol lecture at AEI last week, which was a quite good analysis of the four most noticeable currents within the contemporary American foreign policy conversation (i.e., isolationism, liberal internationalism, realism, and global democratization). One of his more interesting moves in this lecture is to propose the rechristening (errr, brising) of neoconservatism as democratic globalism - which, inasmuch as it makes muscular, idealistic democracy promotion into more of an option which both political parties can adopt, is something of which we who are the tradition's partisans can wholeheartedly approve.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:51 AM by Patrick Belton

AMERICA AND ASHURA: Reza Aslan has a piece in Slate on the background of Ashura, and its potential this year for politicization in the context of the Iraqi Shi'a community's flexing of its political muscles.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:58 AM by Patrick Belton

GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED DUMBING DOWN OF CULTURE: While the NYT public editor makes a virtue of his newspaper's reporting on candidates' hairstyles and sartorial choices, the BBC does the Grey Lady one better with substantive, in-depth reporting on crop circles, psychics, and, yes, a webcam of a BBC reporter spending a night in a haunted hotel. Considering that one of the stronger arguments to be made in favour of publicly funded broadcasting is that high culture won't survive in a fully market-driven public sphere (and, therefore, the likes of Classic FM's "relaxing" Mozart will drive out the more serious, undebased cultural coinage of a BBC 3 or 4), it's not entirely clear why funds from the public treasury should be drawn upon to provide broadcasting fare which seems, if anything, a fair cut below what the market left to its own resources will provide.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:02 AM by David Adesnik

JOSH MARSHALL TURNS THIRTY-FIVE: Congratulations to a savvy journalist who has helped the blogosphere earn its reputation as both informed and influential. It's an especially happy birthday for Josh, since he thinks there a real chance that America will get rid of its President come November.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:41 AM by David Adesnik

DEFENDING KERRY: Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum respond to the WaPo. Whereas Matt bashes the media for manufacturing artificial criticisms, Kevin says that

one of the things that has long bothered me about Kerry is the fact that he seems to take such deliberately calculated positions on so many issues. This is a gut reaction on my part, not something I have documentary evidence of, but he often seems to be trying just a little too hard to simply come up with a position — any position — that won't piss off anyone on either side too badly.

Still, Kevin thinks Kerry had solid-yet-complex rationales for all of his positions. And both Matt and Kevin like the fact that Kerry prefers knowledge to ideology when it comes to decisionmaking.

The one issue I really want to take up with Matt concerns Kerry's attitude toward reconstruction. As Matt correctly observes,

Kerry (and Dean and Edwards) all very clearly said at the time was that their "no" votes should not be interpreted as opposition to appropriating large sums of money for the reconstruction of Iraq. Rather, they felt that the $87 billion was being misappropriated and financed in an unsound manner (increased borrowing) and that if the request could be defeated in the Senate it would be possible to negotiate a different, better deal with the president.

That's not a bad justification for voting against the bill. But what has Kerry done since then to show that he actually cares about nation-building and democracy promotion in Iraq? Edwards has at least made a serious effort to lay out a democracy promotion agenda. But with Kerry, you get the sense that he was doing exactly Kevin says he always does: looking for the position that will piss off the fewest people.

What I really want to hear from Kerry is this: "George Bush got us into the wrong war and prevented the UN from giving us any real help with reconstruction. But it is simply wrong to see the occupation of Iraq as a burden. Rather, it is a historic opportunity for the United States to address the root causes of terrorism by bringing freedom to the Middle East. The Bush administration is letting this historic opportunity slip away, but I can guarantee you that my administration won't."

Naturally, I disagree with the first sentence of that paragraph. But I put it in there to show that a sincere commitment to rebuilding Iraq is fully compatible with most Democrats' insistence that the war was wrong and that the peace is being lost. Do I expect John Kerry to say anything like this? No, not really. I think he really does see the occupation as a burden and does not want to antagonize those Democratic voters who share that view. But I do hope that Matt and Kevin, who have consistently emphasized the importance of doing Iraq right, will come out and say that if Kerry really cares about rebuilding Iraq he should say so unequivocally.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:12 AM by David Adesnik

ORIGINAL REPORTING BY CALPUNDIT: Kevin Drum has been doing lots of original reporting on the Bush/National Guard issue. He's convinced that Bush had his military record "cleansed" while governor of Texas, but that there's not enough evidence left to prove it. Also, I agree with Matt that the Administration's stop-and-start release of Bush's military records has made the White House look both incompetent and dishonest.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik

MORE RIDICULOUS THAN MAUREEN DOWD: The Yankees sign A-Rod. That's just crazy. Don't the Red Sox at least deserve a chance to challenge us for the division title?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:40 AM by David Adesnik

WAPO MASTHEAD CHALLENGES KERRY: Read the whole thing.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:26 AM by David Adesnik

JUDEOPHOBIA IN BRITAIN: It's not exactly anti-Semitism.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:21 AM by David Adesnik

A HERD OF BLACK SHEEP: The following paragraph is from a WaPo article about George Bush's National Guard service:

Bush was unquestionably out of step with his generation and, as his mother has said, a late bloomer. While many of his 1960s contemporaries were openly challenging authority and convention, Bush held on to his father's values and ambitions, but with little success at the time. He partied and drank, clashing with his father after a night of carousing in 1972, and supported a war that many of his peers reviled.

But don't those facts show that Bush was actually very much in step with his generation? He didn't want to go to Vietnam, he took drugs, and he didn't follow his parents' advice. Only compared to the rest of the Ivy League and the Northeast was Bush clearly outside of the mainstream. For better or worse, the same could be said today.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:50 PM by David Adesnik

WISHING FOR A LIBERAL HAWK: Tom Friedman is fantasizing about John Kerry. Meanwhile, MoDo is fantasizing that Ahmad Chalabi tricked Bill Clinton and Hans Blix into believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Wait, did I say Clinton and Blix? I meant Bush and Cheney. MoDo conveniently avoids explaining how Clinton and Blix, let alone almost all foreign intelligence agencies, became convinced that Saddam had WMD.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:48 PM by David Adesnik

FOREIGN FIGHTERS LAUNCH DEADLY ASSAULT ON IRAQI POLICE: Fifteen Iraqi police and several civilians died in today's attack. Of the four assailants killed in the raid, one was from Lebanon and two from Iran.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:29 PM by David Adesnik

NYT BLOG DEBUTS! The first NYT blog -- referred to officially as a "Web journal" -- belongs to none other than Public Editor Daniel Okrent. The format of Okrent's journal will be familiar to all those who inhabit the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as the blogosphere. The journal consists of brief posts which contain links to those documents and articles to which Okrent refers. Each post has a permalink attached in order to give it a unique URL. And, finally, readers have the right to respond by posting comments.

(NB: "Kristof Responds" is almost a blog. If it linked to other authors' work, it would be there. Still, there's no question that Kristof deserves considerable credit for interacting with his readers.)

I say that this is a victory for openness and transparency at the New York Times. Its own in-house critic has chosen to adopt the means of communication preferred by the Times' most inveterate critics. I think we are beginning to see a transformation in the way that journalists define their responsibility to their readers.

While journalists' have long -- and deservedly -- insisted that they serve the public by publicizing information about public figures and institutions, they have always hesitated to let anyone outside of the journalistic profession define how such service ought to be performed. As a result, journalists ensured that they themselves were largely spared from the oversight to which they subjected other influential men and women. But we may now be seeing the beginning of a day and age in which journalists acknowledge their responsibility to justify their methods and decisions to the reading public.

The reaction to such oversight is not surprising. As Okrent reports in his most recent column,

A lot of people here believe that The Times should be as open to examination as those The Times itself examines each day; their welcome has been generous and heartening. What's worse than I expected is the overt hostility from some of those who don't want me here...

One reporter ripped me up and down about how offensive it was that the staff had to endure public second-guessing, how it makes reporters vulnerable to further attack, how the hovering presence of an ombudsman can hinder aggressive reporting. When I objected - "I don't think your complaint's with me; I didn't invent this job" - the reporter hissed, "You accepted it!"

I think that this sort of reaction is indicative of many journalists' condescension towards the reading public they are supposed to serve. This reporters response is reminiscent of something that might have been said in the Nixon White House in the midst of Watergate. How dare the public insist on its right to know! That's not in the Constitution!

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the Times' staff has begun to assert its right to criticize Okrent in public. For example, NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller told the WaPo that one of Okrent's columns was "ill-informed". That is something that should happen more often -- a powerful journalist should be forced to empathize with all those who are constantly misrepresented by the news media. Perhaps, over time, this will teach journalists to respect their subjects a little more.

Even now, these initial moves towards transparency are forcing journalists to begin grappling with one of the most complex and explosive issues in the media world: bias. If Okrent's mail is any indication, the criticism he gets is predominantly from the NYT's left. To understand the following quotation from Okrent's column, you have to know that he wrote it as an imaginary interview with himself, i.e. he both asked and answered the questions. Hence:

Q. Speaking of editors, when are you going to write about the editors' evident pro-Bush, anti-Republican, Likud-sponsored, Israel-hating bias?

A. Not soon. I'm reading carefully; I'm taking notes; a few readers have kindly offered to keep track of what they perceive to be bias. I'm going to wait until I've bird-dogged this one over time before I come to any conclusions.

Strangely, it seems that those who object most to the Times' coverage would like to see it become more like The Nation. Perhaps that is inevitable in a liberal metropolis like New York. Perhaps the majority to the Times' right has assumed that there is no hope for change. Which is why I am going to conclude this column with a salute to the one man whose unorthdox and brash journalistic style forced the Times to confront its own failures. His name is Jayson Blair.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:54 AM by Patrick Belton

EXCITING PROGRESS THIS WEEK in Cypriot peace talks, which under substantial coaxing from Kofi Annan, and the shadow of a standing EU offer of accession to at least the Greek moiety of the island if there is no reunification by 1st May, have resulted in a drafted plan calling for reunification refendera in both communities in late April. See VOA,

On May 1...the European Union will grant full membership to 10 countries, including Cyprus.

EU leaders have made clear that they will allow the Greek Cypriot south of the island to join, even if a deal is not reached. And European leaders have also repeatedly warned that failure to re-unite the island could have an impact on Turkey's own chances of opening membership negotiations with the EU.

Analysts say Turkey's decision to persuade veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to agree to resume talks on the basis of the latest U.N. plan is rooted in Turkey's desire to be given a date for the membership talks to start when European leaders meet for their last summit of the year in December.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded the north of the island in the wake of an abortive coup attempt by Greek Cypriot nationalists, aimed at uniting the island with Greece. Under the terms of the U.N. plan, some 35-thousand Turkish troops on the island would gradually withdraw, which could lead to the establishment of a loose federation of the Turkish and Greek communities on Cyprus.

See also NYT:

According to the plan [agreed on Friday, under Secretary General Annan's brokerage], the two sides will reconvene on Thursday in Cyprus under a tight timetable calling for them to agree by March 22 on reunification language that can be put to simultaneous island-wide referendums in April.

Technical committees on laws and treaties will work out details, also starting next week, and the United Nations will preside over a separate committee on the financial and economic aspects of reunification.

If the two parties are unable to reach agreement themselves, the pact calls for Turkey and Greece to enter the talks. If differences still persist by March 29, Mr. Annan will have the power "to fill in the blanks," according to United Nations diplomats. The proposed date of the referendums is April 21.

"Very much as a last resort, the secretary general, with reluctance, will have the last word," said Álvaro de Soto, the Peruvian diplomat who is Mr. Annan's special adviser on Cyprus and who will lead next week's talks.

Athens, Ankara, London and Washington engaged in busy overnight diplomacy, and a European Union official in Brussels said Friday that they had no interest in becoming directly involved, thus taking the air out of the Greek Cypriot proposal.

If the Secretary General is able to succeed in bringing this 40-year conflict to a peaceful close, it will be one of the great successes of his organisation in our decade toward public order and human dignity, and will win justly deserved praise even from this often sceptical quarter.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:43 AM by Patrick Belton

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to all of our readers! We love you guys.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:34 PM by Patrick Belton

OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS are bribing journalists. On the other hand, with a record like this they probably need to.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:01 PM by Patrick Belton

YLS'S LEA BRILYAMER on conflict of laws, full faith and credit, and gay marriage.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:18 AM by Patrick Belton

READING LIST: Here's a quick round-up of a few interesting pieces that appeared recently....

A former intelligence analyst, and current professor at the National Defense University, writes on intelligence community reform in Policy Review. Nicholas Eberstadt writes in the WaPo about the demographic emptying of Russia, and William Safire writes in FT about Russia's withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. Kaus has some wonderful stuff on Kerry, not all of which is about sex. John Gaddis, a friend of all the OxBloggers, goes for a Q&A session with the Council on Foreign Relations on Bush administration grand strategy. Brookings releases a report on global governance and shortcomings in the UN Millennium Declaration (as well as getting the Upstate economy going again). CSIS has loads of good stuff: on political trends in China, the Sudan peace process, AIDS in India, and Mid-East oil. Carnegie has pieces on women's rights in the Arab world (as well as liberalization and democracy promotion), proliferation strategy, and the effects of Nafta on Mexico.

TNR meanwhile runs a piece on France's idiotic veil law, while the Weekly Standard analyzes the administration's human trafficking policy. (The latter, incidentally, was also the subject of a talk here by Yale Law's Dean-Designate Harold Koh last night, who kindly stuck around to talk with some of us after his talk and again over lunch today). Also in the Standard, Jonathan Last writes a requiem for Clark, and neo-con-babe-turned-budget-geek Katherine Mangu-Ward analyzes the Bush budget. In New Haven, the Yale Corporation met and decided to jazz up Science Hill, reach out to China, and hike up tuition 5%. And here in Oxford, Oxford students are getting beaten up by townies left and right - incidentally, just days after a student newspaper printed a cover showing that basically every individual on every side of the BBC-Blair-Kelly-Hutton debacle had done some time in the local uni.

So - nothing to do for Valentine's Day? Don't want to duke it out with local hooligans, or visit a Parisian red light district? It's okay: cuddle up with OxBlog tomorrow.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:14 AM by Patrick Belton

MORE SUPPORT FOR TRANSLATING WESTERN POLITICAL DISCOURSE INTO ARABIC: This time from Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:30 AM by David Adesnik

IT'S MINE! ALL MINE! Matt Yglesias formulates the Adesnik Thesis. I might formulate it somewhat differently myself, but as they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Even better, Matt apparently thinks that I'm so well known that he doesn't have to use my first name, mention OxBlog, or link to anything I've written. And Matt should know, because he is famous.

What this all reminds me of is a story my father used to tell about his ambitions. If memory serves, the son of one of my father's colleagues married the daughter of violinist Itzhak Perlman. In the NYT wedding announcement, it identified the bride by simply saying that "Her father is the violinist." My father said that he would know that he had hit the big time if one day I got married and the newspaper identified me by saying "His father is the scientist."

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:08 AM by David Adesnik

SPINNING THE POLLS: The WaPo reports that

A majority of Americans believe President Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify war, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

If you scroll down a ways, you find out that 21% believe Bush lied while 31% believe he exaggerated without lying. Putting those numbers together to create a majority seems rather suspicious. If the WaPo wanted, it could just as easily have run a headline that emphasized a different finding from its most recent poll: that 68% of Americans think Bush really believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The WaPo also reports that

the president's declining ratings related to Iraq were most striking. Approval of his handling of the situation there has fallen to 47 percent, down 8 percentage points in the past three weeks.

Actually, there's nothing particularly striking about that. If you look at the supplementary data provided on the WaPo website, you discover that Bush's rating on Iraq is almost exactly where it was at the end of last October. His rating shot up when we captured Saddam and has slowly returned to where it was beforehand. The WaPo also observes that

The survey found that, for the first time since the war ended, fewer than half of Americans -- 48 percent -- believe the war was worth fighting, down 8 points from last month. Fifty percent said the war was not worth it.

To put that number in perspective, you again have to go to the supplementary data. It turns out that 58% of American think that the war in Iraq contributed to the United States' long-term security. In addition, 57% believe that the war can be justified even if we don't find any WMD Iraq. In contrast, 24% think that finding the weapons is critical to justifying the war while 17% think the war simply wasn't justified. On a related note, 61% of Americans still believe Iraq had WMD, a 28-point drop since December. All in all, it seems hard to agree with the WaPo's conclusion that

Questions about Bush's use of prewar intelligence, in addition to feeding doubts about his honesty, have sent his performance rating plummeting.

Given that Bush's overall approval rating has dropped 8% while his approval rating for handling the economy has dropped 7%, it seems a lot more sensible to conclude, as a great American statesman once said, "It's the economy, stupid."

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:39 PM by David Adesnik

OCTOBER SURPRISE: MoDo expects Osama bin Laden to suddenly appear in American custody just before the presidential election. Well, at least she's actually predicting something instead of just talking about sweaters.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:31 PM by David Adesnik

THE LITTLE THINGS: This sentence from the NYT amused me: "American soldiers responded with a firestorm of gunfire and cannon, and the shooting lasted for at least a minute." What would you call it if the Americans kept on shooting for two or three or even five minutes? An inferno? Would an hour-long battle count as hell-on-earth?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:24 PM by David Adesnik

THE DANCE CONTINUES: Are inspections working, or are Iranian confessions an indication of the fact that Teheran simply cannot be trusted?

Iran is an interesting case for the concept of inspections because it seems to lie halfway between Libya, the willing participant and Iraq, the intransigent opponent. It seems that Teheran will do its best to keep inspectors in the dark, but compromise when confronted with evidence of its misbehavior.

Given that there is no military option on the table, it seems the best option for the United States to throw all its weight behind ensuring the seriousness of the inspections process. Then again, it may be best for certain top officials to say nothing about the issue, since they have a way of antagonizing the UN and the rest of NATO whenever they decide to speak out.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:42 AM by Patrick Belton

IRANIANS MEET AMERICANS, FIND THEY'RE NOT GREAT SATAN AFTER ALL: In one unusual benefit of having a large number of uniformed and other Americans on their border, a large number of Iranians have been having personal contact with Americans, and liking them. This the same week, incidentally, that marked the 25th anniversary of the declaration of the Iranian theocracy, which that April executed all prominent dissenting Iranians, and in November violated the laws of decent nations by seizing 66 American diplomats to hold as hostages, intended to force America to return the Shah from his exile there to face what would have been certain execution. You've come a long way, baby....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:45 AM by Patrick Belton

CLIMBING UP THE HILL: Several interesting appearances within the last fortnight by State Department officials making the cross-town trip to the oak-panelled committee rooms of Capitol Hill. In particular, Assistant Secretary Anthony Wayne testified yesterday on progress in Iraqi economic and financial reconstruction, DAS Randall Schriver spoke last week on both Chinese military modernization and cross-Strait relations and China's membership in the WTO, Under Secretary Margaret Tutwiler testified on reforming public diplomacy, and coordinator for Afghanistan William Taylor presented a report card on Afghan reconstruction.

Also of interest are recent testimonies by executive branch officials on terrorist financing, Syrian support for terrorism, the state of counterterror operations in South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, and U.S. policy towards Iran, Central Asia and Colombia.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:55 AM by Patrick Belton

EWWWWW: Just ask yourself - does the world really need a magazine devoted to photographs of undressed Harvard undergraduates?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:33 PM by David Adesnik

WISHFUL THINKING: According to a Pentagon report, top Iraqi officials amazingly persuaded themselves that George Bush was not serious about going to war. If only they had listened to Chirac and Schroeder...

Also, I didn't know that

Dr. [David] Kay, the former chief C.I.A. weapons inspector, has said that his team learned that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons — but that all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had them. He said it appeared that the Iraqi officers were the victims of a disinformation campaign by Mr. Hussein.

It makes you wonder. Were all of Saddam's efforts to deceive UN arms inspectors just part of an effort to persuade his own government that such weapons existed? After all, if Saddam believed that Bush wasn't serious about going to war, then he had no reason to be concerned about committing the sort of material breach that would have been picked up by US intelligence agencies.

What I still want to know was whether Saddam thought the US wouldn't attack despite believing Iraq had WMD or whether he assumed that we wouldn't attack because we knew that the WMD were a fabrication designed to fool Saddam's own henchmen.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 PM by David Adesnik

SADNESS AGAIN: Another suicide bombing claims dozens of lives in Iraq.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:53 AM by Patrick Belton

DISCUSSING HOMELAND SECURITY IN THE WINDY CITY: I would be awfully remiss if I did not take very grateful note of the kind support for the inaugural meeting Sunday of our foreign policy society's Chicago chapter that was graciously extended by Dan Drezner ("bipartisan, idealistic, nuanced"), the Crescat authors ("drop by!"), and Proculian Meditations ("dupes and running dogs ... figuring out what national security policy best serves the interests of the capitalist class"). Thanks, folks!

Will Baude and Amanda Butler's notes from the meeting are up here. Tonight, our Oxford chapter is meeting at 8 pm in the New Room in St Antony's (in Hilda Besse - ask the porters) for a talk by Zach Kaufman (Magdalen) on the history of war crimes tribunals from Nurenberg to the present, with a particular view toward the implications for an eventual trial of Saddam. His catchy title: "Dealing (with) the Ace of Spades." Many more events coming up soon in the Bay, LA, New York, DC, and Boston - please drop a note if you'd like to be kept in the loop!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:58 AM by David Adesnik

OXBLOG FILM CLASSICS: I've been watching a lot of old movies lately, so I thought I would review some of them here. After all, you don't hear much about films once they become a few months old, let alone a few decades. And if you want to hear about new releases, the professionals have a lot more interesting stuff to say than I do. So here goes...

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. Offhand, I don't think I've seen any John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart films before (which tells you a lot about how ignorant I am on the subject of film). So what you're getting here are the impressions of a total novice.

First of all, the vintage acting style in Valance struck me as extremely artificial and melodramatic. The characters didn't seem to interact with one another so much as deliver monologues while standing near one another. While this approach seems deficient from a 21st century perspective, I imagine that it has its own strengths which I'll come to appreciate over time.

That said, I still found Jimmy Stewart extremely annoying. He's like a WASPy version of Woody Allen, except not at all funny. While you pretty much know that Stewart, the hero, won't get shot and killed, that didn't stop me from hoping. On the other hand, I liked Wayne's performance a lot more, althought it was hard not to laugh when he ended every sentence with the word "pilgrim" (as in "You look mighty tired there, pilgrim.")

Anyhow, once I got past the culture shock of watching a 40-year old film I really began to like it. Valance is a story about a classic dilemma in American life: should we resist force with force, or strive to establish just laws that prevent others from using force unjustly? The scenario plays out as follows: Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) is a young Eastern-born lawyer headed for the frontier. On his way, he is robbed and beaten by the outlaw Liberty Valance. Upon arriving in the town of Shinbone, Stewart discovers that no one has the courage to make Valance pay for his crimes.

The only thing that prevents Valance from taking over Shinbone completely is the fact that Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) can draw a gun just as fast as the outlaw himself. Apalled by this situation, Stewart resolves to put Valance on trial. Stewart carries on even though Wayne insists that his approach is naive and will only result in Stewart's getting killed.

There is also a very strong political element in the film, since the territory is in the midst of a struggle to decide whether or not it wants to join the Union. At the same time that Stewart tries to bring Valance to justice, he is also trying to organize the townsfolk to vote for statehood. However, it turns out that Valance has been hired by rich cattle ranchers to scare the voters out of joining the Union.

From the perspective of February 2004, Valance seems to be a film about democracy promotion and nation-building. In academic circles, one often hears that democracy is about more than elections. It is about the rule of law. It is about having a free press. It is about ensuring that those with wealth cannot distort the political process.

As it turns out, Hollywood knew that 40 years ago. Thus it might be a good idea to have a special screening of Valance in the White House theater. It might remind George Bush that the challenges facing Iraq and Afghanistan today are similar to those Americans faced in the West 120 years ago.

However, the film might also serve as a reminder to critics of the administration that the use of force is often necessary in order to put American ideals into practice. As Stewart discovers, you can only take the high road in those lands where the law is already sovereign. On the frontier, you need a gun.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:13 AM by David Adesnik

LOOKING FOR BUSH: Kevin Drum has a whole lot of posts on the President's newly released military service records. Just keep on scrolling.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:06 AM by David Adesnik

PUNDITS IRRELEVANT: Not much to say after Kerry's wins in Virginia and Tennessee. I can't say I'll miss Wes Clark, although there was a time in early January when he looked pretty attractive as the only viable alternative to Dean. So much for foresight.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:59 AM by David Adesnik

ONCE A TYRANT, ALWAYS A TYRANT: Saddam rules in prison.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:35 AM by David Adesnik

A SAD DAY IN IRAQ: The terror continues. Our condolences to the victims, whose only crime was wanting to participate in the rebuilding of their country.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:18 AM by Patrick Belton

iBROKE: My iBook is sadly iBusted, so iWill be writing slightly less than usual on the iBlog and iThesis for the next several days. iSorry.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:20 PM by David Adesnik

BLACK IS WHITE, UP IS DOWN: Glenn Reynolds thinks CNN may be spinning the Zarqawi memo as proof that anti-American insurgents are growing stronger, not weaker.

But I think that this is a case of sheer incompetence, not bias, a possibility that Glenn acknowledges. If you read the article attached to the headline, its gets the story right. The headline just seems out of place, like some sort of accident.

Unfortunately, I can't even find the original story on the Netscape/CNN site. Instead, there is a similar report bearing the headline: "Letter: Bin Laden Has Recruiting Problems". Of course, that's somewhat misleading as well, but at least they're getting closer...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:21 AM by Patrick Belton

BRIGHT COLLEGE YEARS, REDUX: Psychologist and current graduate school dean Peter Salovey to replace Richard Brodhead as dean of Yale College; American religion scholar Jon Butler will take over as dean of the Graduate School.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:19 AM by Patrick Belton

IT'S ALL IN THE ADVERTISING, PART 31 OF A SERIES: Statravel.co.uk includes this Valentine's Day special on its website:

If you fancy a quaint little number, then we have the perfect weekend break for you to impress. This delightful hotel located in the area of Montmartre and minutes from the Sacre Coeur and Moulin Rouge has to be a bit of a find.

Area of Montmartre, by Moulin Rouge - so basically, you're saying that it's right plunk in the middle of Paris's red light district? (Unless this is a fairly heterodox species of British "Valentine's Day special"?)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:50 PM by David Adesnik

BUSH VS. RUSSERT: There are two basic ways to think about Tim Russert's hour-long interview with the President, broadcast this morning on NBC's Meet the Press. One is that Russert went soft. The other is that the debate about the missing WMD has been played out to the point at which every thrust and parry on both sides of the aisle has become extremely easy to predict.

While Russert certainly could have been nastier and interrupted the President more often, there is an expectation (perhaps unjustified) that even journalists will show a certain amount of deference to the Commander-in-Chief when talking with him in person. Besides, Bush is usually willing to hang himself if you just give him enough rope.

Anyhow, Russert did get to ask the tough questions that everyone expected. For example:

The night you took the country to war, March 17th, you said this: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."...

How do you respond to critics who say that you brought the nation to war under false pretenses?

Or:

Can you launch a preemptive war without ironclad, absolute intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction?

And:

Looking back, in your mind, is it worth the loss of 530 American lives and 3,000 injuries and woundings simply to remove Saddam Hussein, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction?

Finally:

The Bush-Cheney first three years, the unemployment rate has gone up 33 percent, there has been a loss of 2.2 million jobs. We've gone from a $281 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit. The debt has gone from 5.7 trillion, to $7 trillion, up 23 percent. Based on that record, why should the American people rehire you as CEO?

While relatively tough, those questions are also relatively predictable. How much you wanna bet that Bush's prep team asked him almost exactly the same questions in their rehearsals for the Russert interview?

Of course, the fact that the questions were so predictable makes the President's lackluster responses even more disturbing. While Bush managed to hit his talking points, his stumbling defensiveness made the interview hard to watch, even for someone like myself who thinks that there are perfectly good answers to all of Russert's questions about the war.

Now, we know George Bush is going to stumble. We can forgive him for being less than eloquent. But more important than the fact of stumbling is the way in which it conveyed a total inability to think through the issues in a sophisticated manner. Throughout the interview, Bush seemed like he was struggling to remember what he had been told to say at rehearsals. This, after 18 months of having Iraq in the headlines?

But personally, far more disturbing than this stumbling was Bush's defensiveness. Everyone response came across as an almost desperate effort to pretend that Russert's questions hadn't really hit on one of the administration's major failures. Bush came across as someone who simply couldn't admit to the American public when something had gone wrong. If Bush had just come into the interview and said, calmly and confidently, that of course there were major intelligence failures, I think he would've won a lot of respect without losing anything in political terms. Everyone already knows the weapons aren't there. Admitting is the best damage control strategy.

Now, there was one point at which the confused and defensive Bush gave way to a calm and confident alter ego. In the middle of a question about nation-building (which he was in the midst of fumbling), Bush suddenly got this look in his eye as if he knew exactly what the right answer was. He said that

The best way to secure America for the long term is to promote freedom and a free society and to encourage democracy. And we are doing so in a part of the world where people say it can't happen, but the long term vision and the long term hope is -- and I believe it's going to happen -- is that a free Iraq will help change the Middle East. You may have heard me say we have a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. It's because I believe so strongly that freedom is etched in everybody's heart, I believe that,and I believe this country must continue to lead.

The change in the President's body language was astonishing. It's the kind of thing that doesn't show up in transcripts, the kind of thing that made me glad I actually got up so damn early on a Sunday morning in order to watch the interview.

When Bush started talking about democracy promotion and the universal desire for freedom, his words began to flow in a way they hadn't before. And you couldn't help thinking that the words were coming straight from his heart. With Reagan, you could dismiss it as acting. But with Bush, it's hard not to believe he's sincere.

Now, that doesn't mean that Bush truly understands what kind of effort serious democracy promotion entails. It doesn't mean that he will notice when the US begins to compromise its principles in countries that don't make the headlines. But it gives me a certain confidence that he understands why the reconstruction of Iraq is vital to our long-run victory over the forces of terror. That is why Bush put himself on the line for the $87 billion reconstruction bill. That is why we still have 120,000 troops on the ground. While I can't shake my suspicions that Bush (or Cheney or Rumsfeld) is getting ready to cut and run, the fact is that the President has shown a surprising willingness to stay and fight for what innumerable critics have long dismissed as a lost cause.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:50 PM by David Adesnik

WAITING FOR MODOT: Who says that there's no such thing as good political art? This dramatic tour de force is a masterpiece worthy of Chekov. Letting an author of such brilliance work as a mere columnist is a travesty, an outright betrayal of all that is good and pure about the American theater. Thus, I suggest that the New York Times fire her immediately.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:15 AM by Patrick Belton

IN A STEP OF EXTRAORDINARY IMPORTANCE in the evolution of Japan's use of its military, the first convoy of troops drawn from Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force crossed into Iraq today to participate in reconstruction and peacekeeping activities. They will deploy in the southern city of Samawa, and will eventually build up to 1,000 air, ground, and naval personnel, in line with legislation passed in July to permit the deployment of Japanese military units in non-combat zones abroad. The deployment will likely receive additional legislative authorisation from the upper house of the Diet tomorrow. Christian Science Monitor has a great deal more.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:18 AM by Patrick Belton

JIM WOOLSEY ON this question, in the WSJ op-ed page:

So which is it: Are America's spies a gaggle of fools for believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Or is the Bush administration a gang of knaves for lying us into a war?

One of Jim's most interesting points has to do with the scale of the biological weapons in question:

Take anthrax. The Iraqis admitted they had made 8,500 liters (8.5 tons), and Colin Powell in his February speech to the U.N. Security Council noted that the U.N. inspectors thought Saddam could have about three times as much. But even this larger amount would weigh only some 25 tons in liquid form--slightly more than one tractor-trailer load. If reduced to powder, as Mr. Powell suggested in his speech, it could be contained in a dozen or so suitcases.

His final conclusion, I also think, is also noteworthy:

[A] three-part emphasis on human rights, terrorist ties and WMD programs would have been solidly in line with the president's own explicit policy. A three-legged stool is more stable than a one-legged one, but for some reason the administration decided not to make all three parts of its case in justifying the decision to go to war. As a result, its very heavy emphasis on WMD to the exclusion of the other two bases of its strategy has left the administration vulnerable to the failure to find WMD stockpiles.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:54 AM by David Adesnik

THE GRUNTS' WAR: The WaPo has an excellent article on what fighting insurgents means for the common soldier. But as the article also makes quite clear, there are no common soldiers.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:36 AM by David Adesnik

JUST HOW LIBERAL IS JOHN KERRY? That's the question of the day over at the NYT, which has up an in-depth look at Kerry's two decades in the Senate. The profile opens with lavish praise of Kerry's work as chairman of special committee established for the purpose of investigating whether or not there were still American POWs in Vietnam. I don't know much about the issue, but it does seem that Kerry deserves credit for navigating a political minefield and helping re-establish US-Vietnamese relations. On the other hand, characterizing some of Kerry's critics as "zealots steeped in Rambo movies" doesn't exactly suggest that the NYT is taking an even-handed approach to the issue.

After the POW issue, we get to the bread and butter: Kerry's strong support for abortion rights, gay rights, gun control and environmental protection. I think he's been on the right side of every one of these issues. However, he has broken with the Democratic majority on NAFTA and welfare reform, positions that I also support. Even so, it's probably fair to describe Kerry as "solidly liberal", even if he doesn't seem to want that label himself.

The one major error in the NYT profile concerns Kerry's role in the Iran-Contra affair. The Times writes that Kerry's

ad hoc investigation paid off. Suspicions about Colonel North increased. The Foreign Relations Committee began a formal inquiry. Documents found in a plane that was shot down in Nicaragua indicated involvement by the C.I.A. And in November 1986, a Middle Eastern newspaper reported that United States arms had been secretly sold to Iran with the proceeds diverted to support the contras.

While Kerry's deserves credit for paying attention to the issue before many other Senators did, it is absurd to imply that his work contributed to any major revelations of the Reagan administration's misconduct. What blew the case wide open was the plane crash mentioned above. The fact that a Nicaraguan soldier shot down a plane and that one of its American crewmen survived was a matter of sheer luck -- bad for the President, good for the Constitution. Without that plane crash, there would've been no story.

As for the Iranian connection, the story of American arms shipments was broken by a small Lebanese paper called Al-Shiraa. Again, that was a matter of considerable luck. Kerry did not in any way lay the foundation for it.

But enough about what the NYT did write. Far more important is what it didn't. If you compare the NYT article to it's counterpart in the WaPo, you'll be left asking yourself how the NYT managed to avoid any mention of Kerry's double-speak justifications of his votes against the first Gulf War and for the second. The WaPo reports that

Nowhere has Kerry been challenged more for voting one way and talking another than on Iraq, both for his vote in support of the war in 2002 and his vote opposing the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

In 2002, he voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war unilaterally, but then became one of Bush's harshest critics for having done so. Kerry, in his floor speech before the vote, warned Bush to build an international coalition through the United Nations, but the resolution did not require the president to gain U.N. approval before going to war. Kerry later said he was voting not for the use of force but for the threat of force.

In January 1991, Kerry opposed the resolution authorizing Bush's father to go to war to eject Iraq from Kuwait, arguing that the U.N. sanctions then in place should be given more time to work. When former Vermont governor Howard Dean recently challenged Kerry to square those two votes, aides said that the 1991 vote was not one in opposition to the use of force, just as Kerry has said his 2002 vote was not in support of the use of force.

In his 1991 floor speech, Kerry accused President George H.W. Bush of engaging in a "rush to war" -- language similar to that he used in criticizing the current president on the eve of the Iraq war a year ago. Kerry argued in 1991 that there was no need to pass the resolution to send a message threatening force against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, although that was his justification for supporting the 2002 resolution.

Before and after last year's war on Iraq, Kerry criticized the president for failing to assemble the kind of coalition Bush's father put together in 1991. But in his 1991 floor statement, Kerry was dismissive of the elder Bush's coalition. That effort, he said, lacked "a true United Nations collective security effort," and he was critical of the then-president for trading favors for China's support and cozying up to Syria, despite its human rights record.

"I regret that I do not see a new world order in the United States going to war with shadow battlefield allies who barely carry a burden," he said then. "It is too much like the many flags policy of the old order in Vietnam, where other countries were used to try to mask the unilateral reality. I see international cooperation; yes, I see acquiescence to our position; I see bizarre new bedfellows and alliances, but I question if it adds up to a new world order."

Now how does the NYT spin the issue? It writes that

In 1991, [Kerry] opposed sending troops to fight in the Persian Gulf war. But he voted in 2002 to authorize fighting in Iraq, and he supported military action in Panama, Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

"I think he's a moderate Democrat ? very liberal on social policy and reasonably conservative on foreign policy and defense matters," said former Senator Warren B. Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire.

How clever. Using an out-of-context quote by a Republican to make Kerry seem to have a far more consistent record on national security than he actually does. I doubt Karl Rove will be so kind.

All in all, it looks like I'll be facing the usual dilemma this November. I can get the domestic policies I like by voting Democratic and the foreign policies I like by voting Republican. But no matter which way I vote, the chances of getting a straight-talker in the White House aren't very good.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:48 PM by David Adesnik

SHOUT-OUT TO STARBUCKS: Yes, I know that public praise for Coffee Inc. may result in my being branded as a yuppie reactionary. F*** that. Yesterday, my local Starbucks accepted an expired coupon in exchange for a three dollar drink. Three minutes later, the barista came over to me and admitted that he had forgotten to put the espresso in the mix. He already had a properly-made caramel macchiato in hand.

Would I have known that there was no coffee in my drink if the barista hadn't freely admitted his own mistake? Perhaps. After tasting the replacement the difference was clear. But I was quite happy with my hot milk, caramel syrup and whipped cream. So let's hear it for neo-liberal corporate-led globalization. Because good service is invaluable.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:49 AM by Patrick Belton

RE LEVIN APPOINTMENT TO INTEL PANEL: Well Josh, we did invent the whole dern apparatus - who else should be brought in to fix it?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:09 PM by David Adesnik

MR. DEAN GOES TO WASHINGTON. State, that is. Tomorrow's northwestern caucus gives Dean a chance (albeit slim) to come out on top for once. For an insightful look ahead to next week's primaries, Terry Neal's Talking Points column is the place to go. But what I really want to know is, will Terry Neal have to fight a grudge match against Joshua Micah Marshall for the right to the "Talking Points" name? Or does Marshall's use of the word "Memo" protect him charges of intellectual property theft?

More importantly, Kerry has Michigan sewn up while Edwards and Clark fight over Tennessee and Virginia.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:40 PM by Patrick Belton

WINDS OF CHANGE BLOW THROUGH IRAN TODAY: Winds of Change takes the blogospheric lead in today's coverage of the unfolding election crisis in Iran, with an enormously comprehensive and insightful special briefing, provided by Project Free Iran. It's well worth a read, and warmly recommended.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:28 PM by Patrick Belton

NEW EGYPTIAN BROTHERHOOD HEAD: There's a new head for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef has succeeded the deceased Mamoun al-Hudeibi as head of the organisation which is a parent to many current jihadist-orientated religious groups in the Middle East, including Hamas. The changeover of command occurred on 14th January, according to ArabicNews.com, and Memri has organised a collection of his early speeches, which do not seem to be taking the Brotherhood in a radically different direction from his predecessors. The best profiles of the organisation online are to be found at FAS, the Encyclopaedia of the Orient, and in Economist's broader survey of Egyptian political forces.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:33 AM by Patrick Belton

WORD PLAY: Amateur etymologists (etymophiles?) among our friends will take great pleasure in this site by England's Michael Quinion, an OEDist. You might spend some pleasant minutes there, if by chance you have been vaguely curious since kindergarten about the origin of, say Lb (and £) for "pound", the expression "big cheese" (the origins of which are incidentally Persian and Hindi, not dairy), the semantically nonsensical "I could care less" (which is found only in the States, and derives from Yiddish semantics), and my newly prized term to describe my own academic prospects, sticky wicket.

Also you might check if you're interested in Jesus H. Christ, or conversely the whole megillah (megillah, Heb., "scroll", from the reading of the book of Esther on Purim), the relationship between sycophancy and the Dantean insult "go suck a fig" (Gr. sukon, fig; see also the Sistine Chapel, wherein Michaelangelo shows his true feelings about his Julian patron), snob (from a Home Counties dialectical term for cobbler), keeping mum (with origins more onomatopoeic than Freudian), Elephant and Castle (from Infanta de Castile, translated into Cockney), and - for David and Rachel - bunny, a rural English term of endearment from the 17th century.

And Quinion also has an extraordinary wit which I'd be remiss if I didn't quote here extensively:

from the relevant entry: “I was in a deli recently when the girl behind the counter dropped something between the cabinets. There was an officer waiting on line and she said: ‘Do you think the long arm of the law can get this out for me?”

And on clams, happy and otherwise:

“Do you have any idea of the origins of the phrase happy as a clam? I’ve used it for years without knowledge of just how one would determine that a clam is happy—my acquaintance with the mollusc is strictly through consumption.”

[A] Near that stage in their lives, only the most masochistic of molluscs could be expected to experience anything but a sense of imminent dread. Even the most comfortable of clams, however, can hardly be called the life and soul of the party. All they can expect is a watery existence, likely at any moment to be rudely interrupted by a man with a spade, followed by conveyance to a very hot place.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:24 AM by Patrick Belton

AFTER A STATE SUPREME COURT RULING, THE STATE OF MASSACHUSSETS is to begin issuing marriage licenses to qualified same-sex couples beginning May 16. WaPo covers this important step in the evolution of the United States's treatment toward its homosexual citizens. The text of the recent advisory opinion is here; insightful commentary on the topic is to be found here, here, and here.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:46 AM by Patrick Belton

CHICAGO IS...OUR KIND OF TOWN!: Our foreign policy society is having its first meeting in Chicago this Sunday - with no lesser co-hosts than Will Baude and Amanda Butler from Crescat Sententia! Our chapter in New York co-hosted Assistant Secretary of State (Economic Affairs) Bob Hormats on Tuesday, and our chapters in Washington and Oxford have just met with guest speakers to discuss themes and trends in homeland security. We've also got highly active chapters in San Francisco, LA, Boston and New Haven, too: if you're not already receiving our weekly newsletter of our own events and other foreign policy events and job openings going on around the country, and you'd like to, then please just drop us an email!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:51 PM by David Adesnik

THE FEEDING FRENZY HAS BEGUN: This NYT article gives way too much attention and credibility to cheapshots that Republicans have begun to take at Kerry. While Kerry's defenders get a few good shots in themselves, you've got to scroll down a ways to see what they say. But that is the price of being #1. And while the Times' editors are hoping that John Edwards will do their mud-slinging for them, the fact is that the media will play the lead role in picking Kerry apart.

Now, one particularly disturbing aspect of the NYT article is that it focuses on partisan slurs while ignoring substantive criticisms of Kerry's record. If the RNC can get top billing by calling Kerry an extremist, it doesn't exactly promote serious debate. But it's not as if the Times is letting Bush off the hook. Also in today's paper, the Times reviews the military service issue, which never plays well for Bush.

The basic message of the article is Kerry=hero, Bush=lazy rich boy. That's not exactly wrong, but one might easily say that a balanced article on the subject would point out that war hero John Kerry couldn't make up his mind about whether to support either Gulf War. Also of the note, the NYT reports Democratic accusations that Bush went AWOL but doesn't really say whether there is any merit to the charge. As the Daily Howler point outs in a very comprehensive post, neither the NYT nor the WaPo nor the Boston Globe has ever presented the facts of the case very clearly. Finally, a Campaign Desk investigation shows that all of the recent attention given to the AWOL issue resulted not from Michael Moore's charge that Bush was a "deserter", but from Peter Jennings' interrogation of Clark regarding Moore's charge at the recent South Carolina debate. I wonder how much we'd have to pay Jennings to mention OxBlog...

UPDATE: Phil Carter points out a number of ways in which enterprising journalists might confirm or disconfirm the AWOL charge.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:33 PM by David Adesnik

CLINTON THE DEFICIT HAWK? Steve Sturm says OxBlog must be smoking something. But Steve agrees that Bush's "budget" is indefensible.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:35 PM by Patrick Belton

IRAN WATCH: There are quite good round-ups of the latest events by MaroonBlog (also here), Regnum Crucis, and Free Thoughts (thanks to Winds of Change for pointing out these last few to me). Dead tree coverage includes WaPo, Economist, New Zealand NBR, and Voice of America. The day's big event was a call by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for a second review of about 2,000 candidates whose candidacies were banned by the Guardian Council; he also insisted the election would take place as scheduled on February 20th. The review will be undertaken by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which is comparatively friendly to reformists. Commentators have speculated that Khamenei is grasping for a compromise solution which permits elections to continue with a minimum of protest and, in so doing, preserves as much legitimacy as possible for the unelected clerical organs of governance - the Guardian Council and his own office of Supreme Leader.

(P.S. We wrote a bit more about the subject a day or two ago here, too.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:03 PM by Patrick Belton

ABC APOLOGIZES FOR SENIORS GOLF TOUR BREAST-BARING STUNT: From SportsPickle.com, and courtesy of our friend David Cavalier:

ABC Apologizes for Mickelson Breast-Baring Stunt

Phil Mickelson stunned and disgusted millions of television viewers on Sunday with a shirt-ripping publicity stunt that revealed his right breast as he walked up the final fairway at the FBR Open. ABC, who televised the tournament, and Mickelson both apologized for the incident, saying it was caused by a “golf shirt malfunction.”

(underneath, there's a photo and caption: Chris DiMarco and Phil Mickelson walk up the 18th fairway moments after DiMarco tore away part of Mickelson’s shirt, revealing his right breast. Mickelson is seen throwing the ripped piece of his shirt to the ground.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:30 AM by Patrick Belton

FOR, FORGETTING THEIR FATHERS, THEY KNOW NOT YOU: Only weeks after Joel Engel memorably announced against the Beatles's song "Imagine," the often quite clever Second Breakfast admits she once argued another Beatles' tune should be more aptly and literally entitled "All You Need Is Food." (via Pej).

UPDATE: Someone points out correctly that "Imagine" was actually a Lennon solo. So clump me in under the title of this post....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:26 AM by Patrick Belton

"SMART, NERDY, AND SINCERE:" Judy Dean for President? Anyone?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:38 AM by David Adesnik

GET READY...GET SET...SPIN! So what happened today? Was it an unmitigated victory for Kerry? Or an indication that Edwards and Clark are still strong enough to challenge him? Howard Kurtz argues rather persuasively that the Edwards-as-serious-challenger spin doesn't have much to back it up. He might even be right that some journalists are playing up Edwards' strength because an outright Kerry victory means the end of this spring's biggest story.

Still, Kurtz misses an important point: After watching Kerry come from nowhere to surprise Dean, the media is very hesitant to expose itself to another potential embarrassment in the event that Kerry falls from grace. Besides, with Tennesse and Virginia coming up next Tuesday, Edwards may be able to generate some serious momentum (or the impression thereof). Edwards would then have three weeks until Super Tuesday to make his case while letting the media pick Kerry apart.

And what about Clark? I really don't know why he has such concentrated support in the southwest. One can plausibly argue that Arizona and New Mexcio have more liberal primary voters, since they put Dean in third while decisively rejecting Edwards. Yet Oklahoma went strong for both Clark and Edwards while giving Dean just 4%.

But perhaps none of this is relevant since Kerry took home majorities in three states and 40%+ in two others. Edwards and Clark really have no choice but to play for the breaks. And Dean? Heading back north, you just never know.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:41 PM by David Adesnik

A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN: I got an e-mail just now announcing a seminar series at MIT. The announcement began with the following caveat:

Please note that the Tuesday, March 30 seminar by Harvey Rishikof should be entitled "Prosecution of Saddam Hussein," not "Persecution of Saddam Hussein." Sorry for the mix-up! :)

If only it had been a Chomsky seminar, that really would've been funny.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:09 PM by David Adesnik

PRESS GOES SOFT ON BUSH? Brad DeLong (with an "Amen" from Kevin Drum) denounces the WaPo for publishing a major story on the budget deficit that reads like a White House press release.

DeLong is right that the WaPo article doesn't really provide readers with the information necessary to really know what's going on with the budget. But given its unmitigated denunication of Bush as a fool and liar on the editorial page, I think it's a good idea for the WaPo to stick to the facts in the news section.

The counterargument here is that, presumably, more people read the front page than the editorials. Even so, I suspect that the budget-of-lies concept will get across to anyone who follows the issue. Some voters just won't care, and the media can't change that. But with Bush's credibility on this issue so low and the deficit spiraling out of control so soon after Clinton reined it in, Bush can't come out of this looking good.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:49 PM by David Adesnik

PAPERS SLAM NEW BUDGET: If you read these three columns without knowing who'd written them, you'd probably guess that Paul Krugman had written all three.

Of course, the first is a WaPo masthead editorial, the second a NYT masthead and the third an actual Krugman column. In fact, the WaPo may be the harshest of the three. It opens by asserting that "The Bush administration's 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disingenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting and irresponsible governing." It's hard to disagree.

What really pisses me off is the administration's refusal to acknowledge the continuing costs of our work in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn't amount to a cut-and-run strategy, but it isn't all that much better. What this kind of evasiveness ensures is that whenever the President does submit a funding request for Iraq and Afghanistan, it will become a political football.

Perhaps that's smart politics. Perhaps Bush expects that the Democrats will embarrass themselves again and reinforce their image of weakness on national security by bickering over whether or not to fund the occupations. But one sure result will be a weakening of public support for nation-building and democracy promotion. Whenever one of these funding debates start, it is hard even for the bill's supporters to come out and say that we should spend abroad while cutting back at home.

While spending on Iraqis may be for the purpose of ensuring own security, it's a hard case to make on the campaign trail. Thus, if the administration were 100% committed to promoting democracy in the Middle East, it would try to build bipartisan support for its objectives by stating up front just how it intends to pay for them.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:39 PM by David Adesnik

DAMN THOSE SENSIBLE ISRAELIS! Polls show that Israelis favor Arik Sharon's plan to dismantle the Gaza settlements by a 25-point margin, 59-34.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:21 PM by Patrick Belton

PLUG: It's been my great pleasure before to note here the tour schedule for the Tallis Scholars, and I'd like to do the same today for Chanticleer. Together, they're uncontestably the finest a capella ensembles singing anywhere at present, and I really can't recommend highly enough that any of our readers who might have the chance to attend one of their concerts would certainly do so.

Chanticleer will be performing in the following cities over the next two months:

February
4 Indianola, Iowa: Simpson College, 7:00p.m.
5 Storm Lake, Iowa: Buena Vista University, Schaller Chapel, 712-749-2452, 7:30p.m.
7 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Ted Mann Concert Hall, 612-624-2345, 7:30p.m.
8 Duluth, Minn.: University of Minnesota/Duluth, Weber Music Hall, 218-726-8877, 7:30p.m.
21 San Francisco: One World, Calvery Presbyterian Church, 8:00p.m.
22 Petaluma, California: One World, St. Vincent Church, 3:00p.m.
27 Santa Clara, California: One World, Mission Santa Clara, 8:00p.m.
28 Sacramento: One World, First United Methodist Church, 8:00p.m.
29 San Francisco: One World, Calvery Presbyterian Church, 7:00p.m.

March
5 Palm Springs , California: Annenberg Theatre, 760-325-4490 or boxoffice@psmuseum.org
6 Irvine, California: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 949-854-4646 or tickets@thebarclay.org
7 La Jolla, California: St. James Church, 858-459-3421, Ext 109, 4:00p.m.
10 Anchorage: Anchorage Concert Association, Atwood Concert Hall, 907- 272-1471, 7:30p.m.
29 San Francisco: New Voices, Calvery Presbyterian Church, 8:00p.m.

And the Tallis Scholars, incidentally, will meanwhile be performing on tour in the UK, Europe, and the US:

February
Tuesday 24 February: St. John's, Smith Square, London (020 7222 1061)
Thursday 26 February: at 7.30pm Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (0161 907 9000)

March
Sunday 14 March: Teatro della Pergola, Florence (info@mamusic.com)
Tuesday 16 March: Monfalcone, Italy (same email)
Friday 19 March: Zamora, Spain (porticozamora@terra.es)
Monday 22 March - Richmond, VA
Thursday 25 March - Ann Arbor, MI
Friday 26 March - Lexington, KY
Saturday 27 March - New York, NY
Sunday 28 March - Rhode Island, RI
Tuesday 30 March - Roanoke, VA
Wednesday 31 March - Savannah, GA

April
Friday 2 April - Stanford, CA
Sunday 4 April - Boston, MA
(Further details for US tour are obtainable from: info@franksalomon.com)

Doing things like this is one of the greatest pleasures of having a blog - we're always very happy to support the arts!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:05 AM by Patrick Belton

DETERMINED TO SHOW THAT "SECURITY COUNCIL" IS A EUPHEMISM: After September 11th, the UN Security Council formed a panel to investigate the funding of terrorist organizations, and ways in which the international community could cooperate to halt those organizations' streams of finance. The panel was founded, under the leadership of a British diplomat named Michael Chandler. It released a report saying that the international community was not doing enough to combat Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

So what did the UN do? Well, of course, it dissolved his commission and fired Mr Chandler.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:42 AM by Patrick Belton

CALPUNDIT'S NOTING that in very initial polling, Kerry's opening up a small lead over Bush. Undoubtedly, the Skull and Bonesman (errr...I mean, the one from Massachusetts) is being helped out by his recent bounce from comparative obscurity, and hasn't been front-runner long enough to attract a great deal of criticism - but if it holds up, then we might be in for a very interesting summer and fall....

At the very least, we'll have something to write about.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:40 AM by Patrick Belton

DAVID'S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, the extraordinarily important events going on with the Iranian legislature and scheduled elections this week deserve far more attention from all of us here in the blogosphere. Toward that end, here's a first round-up of what people have been writing about Iran, both in the blogosphere and in print. We'll be furnishing these round-ups regularly, so please let us know if we've overlooked anything or you have suggestions....

First off, BBC is offering up a Q&A about the election crisis and the text of the letter submitted by the resigning MPs, while also summarizing the coverage and editorial positions of the various Iranian newspapers.

Voice of America is repeating a US government call for free elections in Iran, while "refraining from specific comments about developments in the struggle between reform politicians and the conservative Guardian Council out of concern it might be seen as American interference." Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is reporting the Iranian government's alleged deliberations about whether to postpone the elections (a view which is particularly strong in the Interior Ministry. The Financial Times is pointing out the low level of enthusiasm for the Islamic Republic's 25th birthday celebrations over the weekend. According to the FT, pragmatic conservative strategists worry public response may swell the ranks of the reformists, and reformers as well as many analysts hope for the intervention of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to overturn the Guardian Council's ruling disqualifying 2,400 reformist candidates for parliament. EurasiaNet, however, is finding both sides to be digging in and appealing to their bases, and says the Ayatollah has given no indications he will intervene or exercise leadership - his office has indicated he would be "unavailable" for the coming two days. The piece also notes that the boundaries of acceptable criticism of the revolutionary state are expanding - reformists are now openly questioning the existence of the Guardian Council and the office of Supreme Leader, which they had not dared to do before. There is also good reporting to be had in the CS Monitor and NYT, and excellent analysis in the Economist. The NYT, on the other hand, editorializes (too harshly, in my opinion) that the disqualification of the reformist candidates may spell the end of reform in Iran.

Turning to bloggers, Pejman writes:

In addition to the decision of over a hundred Iranian reformers to resign en masse from their parliamentary seats, the the largest reformer party has decided to sit out the upcoming elections:

Iran's reformists are enraged by the decision of the Guardian Council -- an unelected constitutional oversight body run by religious hardliners -- to declare more than 2,000 would-be lawmakers unfit to stand in the election.

More than 120 reformist lawmakers resigned from parliament on Sunday and President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government has called for the vote to be postponed.

"We have no hope that a fair, free and legitimate election can be held on February 20. So in the current circumstances we cannot participate," Mohammad Reza Khatami, head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) party, told a news conference.

He added the party, one of the main backers of his brother President Mohammad Khatami, would only put forward candidates for an election if the candidate bans were overturned and the vote was delayed to allow more time for campaigning.

The hope now is that the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will overturn the ban to avert a legitimacy crisis. However, given the continuous efforts of the hardliners in the Guardians' Council (and elsewhere) to sabotage and undermine the work of elected reformers, there is no way to consider the Islamic regime as anything but illegitimate.

At NRO, Michael Ledeen is pointing out that now might not be the best time for congressional staff to cozen up to the regime in Tehran (see AP and WaPo for more). MaroonBlog has a great deal on the topic, too.

Students at Tehran University are reported to be planning a protest on Wednesday - we'll be following along closely.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:20 AM by Patrick Belton

ONE MORE CONTRIBUTION TO THE ARABIC CONSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE: In a continuing effort to share a humble, brotherly contribution with the free people of Iraq in their constitutional discussions from out of our own Anglo-American constitutional tradition, a small play about the drafting of the US constitution's been written and translated into Arabic. (Thanks to Kelion Kasler for pointing this out to us.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:11 AM by Patrick Belton

BELTON, YOU GIVE ESOTERIC A BAD NAME: This isn't nearly as important as David's post on Iranian democracy below, but for those of you who will be interested in this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll be interested in. Indiana University is in the process of collecting online an exhaustive list of all RFE/RL programs and segments broadcast in Central Asian languages from 1989 or so on. Many, but not all, are also in the process of eventually being posted online in RealPlayer format. (And they also link to the current programming pages of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and BBC World Service in different languages, so you can listen to today's news in Uzbek, Dari, Pahsto, Tatar, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and every other funny language your mom's never heard of.) This is awfully useful if you're interested in learning any of these languages or seeing what the BBC and RFE/RL are broadcasting in that part of the world - it's also useful if you're just curious what Tajik sounds like.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:49 AM by David Adesnik

FLOOD THE ZONE: Jason Broander says today's dramatic events in Iran deserve more attention both in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media. He's right, and we should've been on this one earlier.

All indicators suggest that we are about to confront a major turning point in the history of Iranian democracy. The President's own party -- the most popular and legitimate party in Iran -- is boycotting elections. I can't think of any other country in which that ever happened. Moreover, more than a third of Iran's MPs have resigned.

These actions seem to represent a clear challenge to the conservative clerics who are preventing Iran from becoming a true to democracy. Khatami's party is saying that it will no longer lend its legitimacy to fake elections that install governments without power. What it wants now are real elections that let the people choose who governs.

So dammit, flood the zone! (That means you, too, George W.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:53 PM by Patrick Belton

THE BEST WRITING IN OXFORD IS DONE ON THE BATHROOM WALLS, #5:

(text, written in pencil:)

A Venerable Prof of Divinity
Had a daughter who kept her virginity
Oh! The lads down at Magdalen
They must be a'dawdlin'
It wouldn't have happened in Trinity.

(commentator, writing in blue ink:)

Rhythmically unsound
Dubious rhyming
IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:47 AM by Patrick Belton

VERY RIGHT OR VERY WRONG, BUT NEVER BORING: And today, Andrew takes one of his (admirably rare) detours into the second camp. Viz:

THE CULTURE OF DEATH: A couple of hundred people are dead because they were a little too enthusiastic about stoning the Devil. This happens every year. Is it culturally insensitive to ask whether there isn't something profoundly awry about a religion that sends so many to their deaths as part of a religious duty? The Hajj minister in Saudi Arabia comments: "All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God's will. Caution isn't stronger than fate." Excuse me? God's will to commit hundreds to their deaths? At the same time, Islamist fanatics murder scores by killing themselves in Iraq. What we have on our hands is, in some instances, not that far from a death cult.

Rather than parse or critique the argumentative structure of the paragraph (though I don't quite believe that the concluding smear against Islam generaliter follows at all from the premises, however incontrovertibly true, that the Saudi religious authorities are awfully negligent in permitting Hajj trampling deaths to recur with such tragic frequency, and that religiously-motivated terrorists do pose quite grave challenges to the security and peace of the newly free Iraqis), what I'd prefer to do is to point out one hopeful note which this analysis misses. And that is the bluntness, conciseness, and eloquence with which on the night of Eid al-Adha, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Sheik, the Saudi Grand Mufti and by no means a liberal, denounced terrorism. Noting that the extraordinary majority of victims of the recent terror attacks in Iraq and Turkey have been Muslim, and equally attacking terror against non-Muslims, the Mufti asked in his address to the pilgrims whether "is it holy war to shed Muslim blood? Is it holy war to shed the blood of non-Muslims given sanctuary in Muslim lands? Is it holy war to destroy the possessions of Muslims?" (For reporting of his speech, see Chicago Tribune and LA Times.) And to miss the significance of this condemnation - in favor of instead using a human tragedy aggravated by the incompetence of a tyrannical regime to make a smear against the extraordinarily variegated and broad Islamic swath of the planet - seems to me regrettable.

I'd like to note, though, that I'm criticizing Andrew here precisely because of the high moral tone of his life's work, and because of the great esteem in which I hold his contribution to the political discourse of the two countries of which I am resident. His quite sensible combination of social progressivism, fiscal moderation, and idealistic hawkishness in foreign policy represents a far too rare triumph in our day of humanistic common sense over the partisan and ideological consistencies that are so in fashion for our thoughtless age. With lesser sorts, I do not quibble.

UPDATE: A bit more on this from one of our esteemed friends.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:54 PM by David Adesnik

CORRECTION CORRECTED: MM writes that

"Distractable" is a recognized variant spelling of "distractible," and not incorrect at all.

As Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary put it (see near the end of the definition):
dis.tract vt [ME, fr. L distractus, pp. of distrahere, lit.,
to draw apart, fr. dis- + trahere to draw] (14c) 1 a: to turn
aside: divert b: to draw or direct (as one's attention) to a
different object or in different directions at the same time
2: to stir up or confuse with conflicting emotions or motives
syn see puzzle -- dis.tract.i.bil.i.ty n -- dis.tract.ible
or dis.tract.able adj -- dis.tract.ing.ly adv

Fine by me. I just feel bad for the kid who got tossed in the first round of the National Spelling Bee for using an acceptable variant.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:24 PM by David Adesnik

OXBLOG REPORTS FROM THE FRONT: What could be more fun than a post-Super Bowl riot? Driving home, I watched Boston natives honor their athletic heroes by hanging out of car windows, honking continuously and starting a fire in a newspaper vending machine. Shortly thereafter, four men ran by with a keg in a shopping cart. I expected even more action as I approached the next intersection, but no thanks to some cops in riot gear, I lost the chance to become a full-fledged war correspondent. Dagnabit!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:49 PM by Patrick Belton

RESPECTFULLY NOTED: The Forward notes a few congressional primary races that might interest some of our readers: First, Andy Rosenberg is running against Northern Virginian Congressman Jim Moran, whose nationwide reputation rests mostly on his paranoid and ridiculous (and, now, ironically self-fulfilling) comments that Jews are out to unseat him (see our Moron Watch, from last April). Second, Oxford grad (D.Phil., history, St Antonys) Jamie Metzl's running for an open seat in Missouri's 5th (see his campaign website). Jamie's a really nice guy, and eminently qualified, too - a White House Fellow and Harvard Law grad with experience on the NSC and Senate Foreign Relations staffs, several respected academic books to his name, and enough ties to his district to propel him to a fast lead in fundraising. I didn't think people like him ran for Congress anymore.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:32 PM by Patrick Belton

VAGUELY INTERESTED IN THE SUPER BOWL, but you'd rather read about Lesbians? Well, you can have it both ways - ESPN has a very nice game cast where you can keep an eye on the game while keeping the other free to do whatever you want with it....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:19 PM by Patrick Belton

"WE HAVE AN OBJECTIVE MEDIA" HEADLINE OF THE DAY: "Engineering Geek Names Son Version 2.0" (CNN)

(Incidentally...and since it's somewhat vaguely on the same topic...today is Rachel's and my 40 month, and therefore 3.333 repeating year, anniversary of our first date. So this post goes out with love to the lovely blogosphere wives who put up with us....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:16 PM by David Adesnik

OUR CONDOLENCES to the people of Erbil, Iraq on this day, which should have been a day of celebration.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:02 AM by Patrick Belton

WHICH WAY DO I POINT THIS THING AGAIN?: I'm off, at a dreadfully early hour, to represent Oxford on the athletic field the first time, this time against that pernicious enemy, the villainous British Pistol Association! (cue Darth Vader theme, I suspect). Ideally I'll succeed in at least not doing too dire harm to anyone else or myself....

UPDATE (5:00 pm): Okay, far from being pernicious villains, the British Pistol Association were extraordinarily good sports who not only won a close match against us on a windy day, while showing admirable technique, but also took us out to lunch after, and extended to all of us a kind invitation to shoot there as their guests whenever we liked. Their headquarters, Bisley in Surrey, has for ages been the headquarters of British pistol and rifle shooting, with origins in the officer corps. All national- and Commonwealth-level competition takes place there, and the place has a quite lovely sense of history.

So I'll have to reserve the label of pernicious villain for second-rate universities located in various cities called Cambridge....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:44 AM by David Adesnik

TO HELL WITH CANADA! INVADE MARS! Citizen Smash has more.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:43 AM by David Adesnik

HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS? That quesiton always makes me think of the Sopranos episode where Janice dates an evangelical Christian. Not knowing he's surrounded by mobsters, Janice's boyfriend always begins conversations by asking "Have you heard the good news?" He then tries to convert his newfound criminal and Catholic friends to his brand of Christianity.

Anyhow, Winds of Change has just declared that Saturday, the Sabbath, will from henceforth be a day of good news. Well versed in many religious traditions, Joe will be using his Saturday posts to share the wisdom of Hasidic Judaism, Sufi Islam and Zen Buddhism. Today's earthly good news is that WoC's Armed Liberal has just gotten engaged. AL also has a post from Friday which should count as good news, because it concerns a remarkable display of human compassion.

Of course, if you want some bad news, WoC has plenty of that as well. Thus, I highly recommend the most recent Central Asia briefing, which has some good news, but plenty of bad as well. Torture. Stuff like that.

CORRECTION: Saturday has been good news day for quite some time now on WoC. I just got thrown off by the use of the future tense to describe this practice in the post linked to above. Well, serves me right for not reading WoC more often.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:05 PM by David Adesnik

DON'T READ THIS! Stop now. I told you not to read this. Oh, alright. Fine. If you're going to be that way, just go ahead. Anyhow, in case you haven't heard, Slate media critic Jack Shafter has been launching high-profile attacks on the NYT Magazine for running an allegedly unsubstantiated story about sex slavery in the United States.

The first critic to call the NYT on its questionable reporting was blogger Daniel Radosh, who was rewarded for his trouble with personal threats from the article's author, Peter Landesman. Landesman's editor and then Landesman himself apologized for going overboard. But both of them still stand by the story.

After going through all of this material, I'm left wondering why I bothered with it in the first place. Mainly, I guess, because it involves two of my favorite subjects: First, sex. Second, incompetence at the NYT. (If Jayson Blair had been directing X-rated films in the back offices on 43rd St, you can bet OxBlog would've provided daily coverage.) Even so, I felt after going through it all that I had wasted my time.

Why? Perhaps because it all seemed so petty and sensational. Then again, if sex slavery is a serious issue, we should be reading about it. Perhaps because I found Shafter's criticism persuasive, the seriousness of the issue not the first thing on my mind. So before you go and follow the links in this post, decide if that's what you really want. After all, if you'd followed my advice, you wouldn't have even gotten this far.

NB: I have consistently referred the NYT's offices as being on 44th St, even though they are most definitely on 43rd. This is a particularly embarrassing mistake for a native New Yorker, especially one who had the chance to visit the Times' offices as a student journalist in high school. What I can't remember is whether or not the NYT building goes through the entire block and has windows on 44th St. If so, I'd at least feel somewhat vindicated.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:56 PM by Patrick Belton

HAPPY EID: Tomorrow is Eid al Adha, so an Eid Mubarak to our Muslim brothers and sisters!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:25 PM by David Adesnik

QUEER EYE FOR THE SADDAM GUY: I hope all you network executives are listening. This is going to be a blockbuster. It's time for the Fab Five to give Saddam a makeover. After coming out of that spider hole, Saddam looked just plain terrible. The beard is the first thing that has to go. But why stop there? This is a job for the professionals...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:10 PM by David Adesnik

IS MUSHARRAF GETTING TOUGH? He's fired Pakistan's #1 bombmaker and is forcing rural tribes to turn over Al Qaeda suspects. On a related note, Phil Carter reports that American forces are preparing a major offensive in Afghanistan. Their target is Osama bin Laden and they seem unexpectedly confident that they will find him. (And while you're over at Phil's site, make sure to check out his excellent coverage of the legal debate concerning rhe rights enemy combatants.)

I sense that there is a relationship between all these events but have no ability whatsoever to say what it is. My concern is that Musharraf will once again become uncooperative in the near future, since his efforts to play off the United States against his internal opponents demands that the general make concessions to both sides.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:53 PM by David Adesnik

DEAN-BASHING AT THE NYT? Public editor Dan Okrent examines his paper's record. He find a number of flaws, but nothing serious. I would've been more critical, especially of Jodi Wilgoren, whom Okrent describes as an excellent reporter.

But more importantly, Okrent's column represents a new self-awareness at the Times and a new willingness to subject the Paper of Record to serious criticism. At the moment, Okrent find himself in the somewhat unusual position of defending the Times from the left. Yet by establishing the legitimacy of internal criticism, Okrent is preparing the Times for the much harder task ahead: to admit when it has wronged conservatives.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:36 AM by Patrick Belton

GOOGLE AND DATING, PART DEUX: Hmmm, when yesterday I took note of the manifold useful applications of the internet to dating (see, for instance, this joker's former jdate profile....), I hadn't even thought of this application:

A suspected US fraudster on the run for a year has reportedly been caught after a woman checked his name on the Google website before meeting him for a date. LaShawn Pettus-Brown was wanted in Ohio for allegedly siphoning off city funds from restoration projects.

Mr Pettus-Brown showed up to meet his date only to be greeted by several FBI agents, not the woman of his dreams. (via BBC)

And they made fun of me for googling Rachel before we went out.....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:28 AM by Patrick Belton

PLANES AND TERRORISTS: RAND releases a study on the implications of counterterror operations for air power.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:47 PM by Patrick Belton

NULAND ON GENETIC ENGINEERING: Yale's Professor Sherwin Nuland is one of the most eloquent humanistic voices in the medical profession of our day, and is an extraordinary asset both to his campus and his nation. So it's with great pleasure that I point out he has a piece in the New York Review of Books, on genetic engineering - he's always worth reading, whether in this instance you agree with him or not.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:51 PM by Patrick Belton

RITA KATZ puts out her weekly summary of terrorism-related headlines.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:00 PM by Patrick Belton

MAYBE HE'S NOT IN AS GOOD SHAPE as he appears: "Castro would 'die fighting' any U.S. invasion of Cuba" (CNN)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:38 AM by Patrick Belton

OXBLOG'S MOVIE PICS: The Triplets of Belleville, which played in Europe as Belleville Rendevous, is opening in America. Josh, Rachel, and I saw it here, and it was one of the simultaneously sweetest and most interesting films I've seen in ages.

So if any of our readers have dates tonight, it's most recommended! (And if you don't, then there are websites for that.....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:10 AM by David Adesnik

FARRAKHAN ENDORSES BIN LADEN: At tonight's debate Tom Brokaw said,

Reverend Sharpton, there is a great war going on in the world between the West and the Nation of Islam. And the United States, at the moment, is losing the war for hearts and minds. Everyone agrees on that, whatever their political position happens to be. [Actually, OxBlog thinks we've made progress when it comes to hearts and minds. --Ed.]

Specifically, what should the United States be doing in terms of programs? And how much money should it commit to find common ground between this country and the democratic ideals that we all embrace and the Nation of Islam?

If only Dr. Freud had been there. Why not just come out and ask Al Sharpton if he's an irresponsible demagogue like Farrakhan? (And the answer would be...) But I can forgive Tom Brokaw for his Freudian slip. It was at least entertaining.

However, the rest of Brokaw's questions were terrible. After going through tonight's transcript, I didn't have much an opinion about which candidate made an impressive showing or lost ground to his competitors. Because with questions like Brokaw's, all you wind up getting are evasions and cliches.

At first, Brokaw just asked questions about well-known gaffes that have already gotten more than their share of press coverage, for example Kerry's comments about getting southern votes. But then he started asking softballs that just gave the candidates a chance to launch into their stump speeches. I mean, do you really need to ask Howard Dean (in so many words) whether the President lied about Iraq?

Perhaps the strangest questions were the ones Brokaw had for Joe Lieberman. Basically, he only asked him about policies with which he agrees. Was it OK to invade Iraq without UN approval? Has NAFTA been good for the economy?

All in all, it seemed like Brokaw suffered from split personality disorder. Half the time he asked questions that were supposed to be tough but we're generally just impertient. And the other half of the time he asked questions so easy that there was no hope of learning anything about the candidates. Well, I guess that's how they did things back in the days of The Greatest Generation...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:19 AM by David Adesnik

RECYCLING THE GARBAGE: You'd think the NYT would know better. No, wait. You wouldn't. Nonetheless, I'm going to give the Keller mafia a hard time for writing that

Mr. Bush, whose aides had been plotting a war against Iraq practically since Inauguration Day, has dodged questions about why the American intelligence about Iraq was just as wrong as Britain's intelligence.

Was anyone on 44th St. paying attention when it turned out that Paul O'Neill's claims about pre-9/11 war planning were patently false? Even O'Neill himself admitted that his comments were misleading. Get with the program, people.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik

WHAT'S FRENCH FOR CHUTZPAH? This NYT op-ed defends the proud tradition of French secularism. Its author writes that

In this time of political-religious tensions, school secularism is for us the foundation for civil peace, and for the integration of people of all beliefs into the Republic...

Try telling that to some Jewish kid whose school just got firebombed. If educational secularism is the foundation of civil peace religious integration, I guess that makes it responsible for the fascist anti-Semitism of the French right and the Islamic anti-Semitism of the French left. Not to mention the apathy of those in the middle.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:59 AM by David Adesnik

PAY ATTENTION! ARE YOU DISTRACTABLE? The answer to that question is 'no'. How can I be so damn sure? Because there's no such word as 'distractable'. If you can be distracted, then you are distract-ible.

Now, the reason I'm being so pedantic is that last night I rented Spellbound, a very sweet documentary about eight kids who made it to the National Spelling Bee in Washington. One of the eight gets asked to spell 'distractible', but spells it with an 'a' instead of 'i'. Of course, I thought he got it right and then felt sort of dumb when he got booted from the competition.

The film is different from a lot of documentaries because it doesn't seem to have a message or agenda. It is just a chance for the viewer to meet eight interesting young men and women as well as their families. What they have in common is an almost inexplicable love of language that results in an almost obsessive commitment to spelling every word in sight.

Unless you have a Ph.D. in English, you'll spend the second half of the film with your jaw wide-open while these kids spell words you've never even heard of. Hellebore? Euonym? Thank God I wasn't on that stage.

The final word in the National Spelling Bee represented an ironic choice on the part of the judges: logorrhea -- the excessive use of words. Might apply to certain blogs...

UPDATE: Who knew? Glenn Reynolds was once in the National Spelling Bee.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:07 PM by David Adesnik

EGG-FACED PROPHET? Noam Scheiber comments on the resignation of Joe Trippi, whom Scheiber so recently identified as "The Man Who Reinvented Campaigned".

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 PM by David Adesnik

WHO IS JOHN KERRY? TNR tries to decide. Dan Kennedy suggets that Kerry is "a deceptively formidable candidate, especially when his back is against the wall" and that Kerry is "connecting with these voters -- connecting in a way that perhaps he never had before in his career."

Jon Keller responds: "Let's not pretend that a Kerry nomination would be anything more than the latest eruption of baby-boomer political flatulence." Ouch!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:33 AM by David Adesnik

A SHOT ACROSS KERRY'S BOW: Fred Barnes lays out how conservatives will attack Senator John if he gets the nomination. I don't know enough to say if all of Barnes' criticism is fair, but I think he's right that Kerry's shifting positions on both Gulf Wars will be hard to defend. At the same time, the Standard politely mocks John Edwards' millionaire populism.

UPDATE: TNR reminds us of Kerry's spectacular chameleon act from back in '91.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:32 AM by David Adesnik

WHAT SISTANI BELIEVES: Reuel Marc Gerecht writes that

The point is, you judge a Shiite cleric first and foremost by his writings, his lectures to his students, the younger clerics he has trained, and his mentors. By all of these criteria, Grand Ayatollah Sistani is a "good" mullah. There are two big intellectual currents in modern Shiite clerical thought. One leads to Khomeini and the other leads to clerics like Sistani. There are certainly overlapping areas between the two schools of thought--the place of women in post-Saddam Iraq will likely be a fascinating subject--but on the role of the people as the final arbiter of politics, there is very little reason to doubt Sistani's commitment to democracy. Clerics like Sistani may use high-volume moral suasion, they may suggest that a certain view is sinful, but they understand that clerics cannot become politicians without compromising their religious mission

Not a definitive answer, but a lot more specific than what we've been getting from the daily papers.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:29 PM by Patrick Belton

LIVE IN ENGLAND? WANNA VOTE? And, err...if you're a US citizen...then you just might be in luck. I'm aware this is possibly a comparatively small group of our readers, but I thought the information in this email that I just sent around my college might be useful anyway for the few people who would benefit from it:

Dear friends,

Being pitifully unable to raise myself all the way up to the Olympian level of today's earlier emails, can I just point out that for the US citizens in the crowd, there are a few voting-related activities going on around Oxford and London that might interest at least a few of you. Especially if you've been puttering around on a d.phil. long enough that you've been dropped from the rolls in your proper state (ahem...that's not me though).

In terms of voting in the primaries while overseas, there's a Democratic caucus being held in London on February 9th for expatriate US citizens, to select delegates from the expat community. Passports are necessary to attend, or at least to attend somewhat usefully, and contact information for the event seems to be Democrats Abroad UK at 020 7724 9796 or email vote@democratsabroad.org.uk. There's not a Republican equivalent this year, because of the existence of an incumbent president.

On this Tuesday, to help all of you expats have a Super Tuesday (yes, I'm aware that was bad), the UK Democrats Abroad is holding a primary-watching party and absentee voter registration evening in Oxford, at the Rothermere Institute, at 8 pm. They'll also, in somewhat lesser Tammany fashion, feed you. If on the other hand your preferences tilt Republican, I'm quite sure you can turn up anyway and take whatever sneaking pleasure you wish at having them help you register. Or, if you liked to keep to your own kind, the contact information for the Republicans Abroad UK is the address chairman@republicansabroad.org.uk; though I'm not aware of their having yet announced a voting registration event in Oxford or London. Presumably though they're the sort of people who would take pleasure in sending you the appropriate forms you would need in their spare time.

I hope that's useful to at least some of you. Incidentally, my connection was too slow to attach the virus that's going around, but if anyone feels left out, I'm happy to call them up and read them the appropriate zeroes and ones.

with all best wishes,
Patrick

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:56 PM by David Adesnik

GOING SOFT ON IRAN? The WaPo says that both Europe and the US are endangering hopes of democratic reform.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:50 PM by David Adesnik

KAY SAYS IRAQ INTELLIGENCE "ALMOST ALL WRONG": However, the former chief investigator explicitly refused to hold political pressure responsible for distortion of the intelligence. On a related note, Kevin Drum has concluded his search for anyone, anywhere who denied the existence of Saddam's WMD before the invasion of Iraq.

Kevin's search came in response to Atrios' insistence that before the war

There were also plenty of reasonable people running around saying that this whole WMD stuff was nonsense. Remember how they were treated by our media? They were treated like escapees from an insane asylum who needed to up their Thorazine dose. Remember how radical and controversial it was to even suggest such a thing?

Suspecting that Atrios was wrong, Kevin asked his readers to search high and low for evidence that someone reasonable doubted the existence of Iraq's WMD. Turns out that no one in either the United States or Western Europe expressed such doubts, although Vladimir Putin came close to doing so. If Kevin were inclined to do so, he might have added that Atrios got what he deserved for buying into the indefensible notion that the media has gone soft on Bush.

By the way, while you're over at CalPundit, check out Kevin's post on the economy. Good stuff.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:06 PM by Patrick Belton

STUDENTS PROTESTING TOP-UP FEES OCCUPIED EXAM SCHOOLS LAST NIGHT: And, I really don't mean any disrespect, but as far as I can tell no one noticed. The president of the Student Union accompanied the protesters in occupying the university building, and called loudly on the government to reject the proposal to increase the funds available to the nation's suffering universities. Fortunately, however, the government of Britain often possesses sufficient wisdom to disregard the political advice of Oxford students - as when, for instance, it did indeed in 1939 decide to fight for King and country.

I found out about the protest only late this afternoon, as the President of Malawi was in the midst of making a no-show at Oxford. (Which, given President Muluzi's nasty habits of suppressing critical journalists and denying opposition parties the right to hold peaceful rallies, might not on the whole be that bad a thing....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:30 AM by Patrick Belton

AND A SECOND BIG WIN FOR BLAIR: The Hutton Report has been released, entirely exculpating the Blair government of any involvement whatsoever in David Kelly's suicide. The report's key points are here, and the BBC devotes an entire page to the controversy as it's unfolded. The full text of the report will be up shortly on the Inquiry's website, here.

UPDATE: It's up...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:11 AM by Patrick Belton

AND DISCUSSING HOMELAND SECURITY, SOME MORE: The Oxford chapter of our gang is taking up the subject tonight, at 8:30 pm in the St Antony's College JCR. We'll let you know what we come up with!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:02 AM by Patrick Belton

GOOGLE IN UZBEK! Central Asia hands are awfully happy......

And that includes, incidentally, Nathan Hamm who's just written a Central Asia update over at Winds of Change. (Nathan normally blogs here.) (As opposed to Nathan Hale, who blogs here.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 AM by Patrick Belton

ANDREW SOUNDS TO ME TO HAVE BASICALLY GOTTEN IT RIGHT: Rather than bash Dean's wife for shunning the traditional first lady role, the media should applaud her.

One of the greatest, freshest, most exciting parts of Howard Dean's campaign was always his refusal to play this hideous media soft-lens Oprah game. He wasn't very telegenic; he shot his mouth off; he said things other candidates were too afraid to say. The fact that his wife was completely absent from the campaign was a wonderful new testament to Dean's real feminism.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:39 AM by Patrick Belton

WHAT GOT ME, DAVID, was more the person who got to us by googling "undersexed graduate students"....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:05 AM by David Adesnik

MORE GOOGLE HIJINKS: Someone found OxBlog by searching for "sex change operation pictures". What's really strange is that OxBlog came up sixth in the search even though Google found 149,000 entries.

FYI, it was this post on the relevance of sex change operations to gay marriage laws that caught Google's eye. The previous post had thanked Zeyad for posting pictures of an anti-terrorism march in Baghdad.

In case you were interested, the number one site for sex change operation pictures is here. It doesn't have any pictures either. But it suggests that an appropriate punishment for Osama bin Laden would be for him to have a sex change operation and then be forced to live under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:09 PM by David Adesnik

REAL-TIME COMMENTARY: The WaPo's Robert Kaiser is answering questions online at the moment. I think it's a testament to the WaPo's readership and to internet news junkies in general that their questions tend to be a more interesting than his answers. Here are a few samples:

Toledo, Ohio: Doesn't losing both NW and Iowa doom Dean? 13 out 14 nominees have won at least one of these critical first states.

Robert G. Kaiser: Maybe, but I don't believe in historical determinism, and I have never seen a year like this one.

Washington, D.C.: In the recent past, has any Democratic candidate lost the first position in Iowa and New Hampshire but won the nomination.

Robert G. Kaiser: Bill Clinton did not run against Tom Harkin in Iowa in '92, and came in second to Paul Tsongas in NH. In fact, none of these results from the past "prove" anything about the future...

Boston, Mass..: Paul Tsongas won South Carolina in 1992 by a wide margin -- does this bode well for Kerry down there? Thank you.

Robert G. Kaiser: Well, it suggests that South Carolina won't gote against Kerry on the grounds that he comes from the wrong state. But I'm not sure it means any more than that...

Ames, Iowa: Do you think that the media is so much against Howard Dean because they are owned by the big corporations who would lose if this sort of campaigns built on $100 a little person succeeds?...

Robert G. Kaiser: ...Dean was the big phenomenon of this election. He naturally attracted a lot of attention. He didn't handle it very well. I think that's his problem. [OK, so not all online newshounds are that smart, but the percentage is high. --Ed.]

Now, if you're willing to follow a tangent, take a look at Kaiser's response to a question about the media's role in the election:

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Kaiser, as the fourth arm of government, how would you rate the performance of the media during this primary season?

Robert G. Kaiser: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say that "the media" is a club neither I nor any of my colleagues at The Post ever applied to join. We work, proudly, for The Washington Post, which has, once again, covered national politics with great distinction last year and this, in my insufficiently independent opinion. Television now does a poor job on politics year round. many papers around the country don't pay enough attention to political coverage. Commercial radio has died. NPR is doing a fine job. Etc Etc. "The media" is a catchall that doesn't really catch the reality of the news business.

While there's no disputing the high quality of the WaPo's coverage, Kaiser's answer is still profoundly misleading. Few journalists spend their entire careers at a single papers, especially not the WaPo. Rather, journalists circulate constantly, a process that results in the establishment of a set of professional norms that is almost identical at every major news outlet. In this sense, there truly is a profession known as "journalism" and a collective of professionals known as the "media".

The opinion expressed above reflects the work of numerous scholars, my favorite of whom is Stephen Hess. In fact, while divided on many issues, scholars interested in the media almost all agree on the uniformity of journalistic norms. This finding has endured now for more than twenty years. In the process, it has been confirmed by opinion surveys (of journalists), hundreds of interviews, and many sociological studies in which scholars have spent weeks or even months in the newsroom as observers.

In fact, Kaiser's comments back up another important finding on which media critics have reached consensus: that even journalists at the most prestigious publications are only dimly aware of the norms that bind them to their colleagues. Rather, journalists often perpetuate stereotypes that have little basis in fact, such as the supposedly low quality of TV journalism in comparison to print. Unsurprisingly, most scholars believe that the first step toward the improvement of American journalism is greater self-awareness on the part of American journalists.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:38 PM by David Adesnik

NO SURPRISES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: With the half the votes in, it looks like tonight's results will turn out almost identical to the projections of yesterday's tracking polls. Kerry is running slightly ahead of the projections of the and Edwards slightly behind, but the major story is in place: Kerry sustains his momentum, Dean consolidates second place with a double-digit lead over Clark and Edwards.

The more interesting questions about the race actually come at the bottom of the ballot. If Clark finishes fourth (or a distant third) in New Hampshire after avoiding Iowa, is his candidacy on the ropes? By the same token, will Edwards lose the invaluable media attention of the past seven days as a result of his somewhat lackluster finish?

My guess is that the subtleties of the Edwards-Clark finish won't matter much, since both are depending on a strong showing in the South. That, of course, brings us to the fact that 2/3 of New Hampshire primary voters described themselves as anti-war. Presumably, that statistic favored Dean and, to some degree, Kerry. In pro-war democratic states, will Edwards have an advantage? Or will Clark and Kerry's military records substitute for their having clear positions on the war?

Finally, Lieberman. The NYT suggests (in a straight news article, of course) that Senator Joe's 9% showing "could doom his candidacy". At the end of the same article, it reports that

Some analysts have said that if Mr. Lieberman does as poorly as the pre-primary polls indicated, he will be finished as a realistic candidate.

But given that Lieberman was expected to get 5-6%, doesn't 9% look relatively good? Double digits would look especially nice, suggested that Lieberman is running neck-and-neck with Clark even though the Senator is a supposed also-ran.

With 9-10%, it almost pays for Lieberman to fight it ought until the convention, since those kind of numbers might allow him to play kingmaker.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:57 PM by Patrick Belton

MEETING AN AMBASSADOR: And a Russian one, at that. Grigory Karasin, the Russian ambassador to the Court of St James and a former deputy foreign minister, stopped up at Oxford this afternoon. I typed up a transcript of the discussion, but haven't had a chance to proofread it, so it contains some typos. (Sorry!)

Some of the more interesting selections are quoted below. You can read this text in one of two ways - as presented and without definite and indefinite articles, in which case you'd have to read it aloud and ideally with a marked Russian accent; or with them, as I've optionally supplied. I hadn't meant to only extract unusual (or risible) comments, as his general presentation was articulate, intelligent, and often quite candid. However, there were a few bits - call them, "Karasinisms" - that I just couldn't let slip by without comment....

on the Holocaust
When we think of anti-Semitism, we shouldn’t overemphasize that part of [the] Holocaust. At [the] same time, some people tried to put anti-Semitism into [the] Middle East to discuss [a/the] Middle East settlement. That is [a] different thing, entirely.

on Iraq, and impersonating Madonna
We think that what happened was not optimal, but we recognize that we are living in a material world, and we think the best thing that can be done is to bring back the U.N.

on imaginative construals of what it means to have free and fair elections
Russia is a multiparty democracy with elections, plus and minuses with them, for examples – but take [the] last Duma election, roughly 23 parties took part in that, generally well organized, honest and fair. I can argue with those who think it was not like that.

on having your next presidential election be a foregone conclusion, in a multiparty democracy with elections
also, on the virtues of going to work each day
On march 15, there will be the election of the President, not many people hesitate to predict the result, and it is not because we live in a society where everything is predictable, it is because the personal record of President Putin is absolutely obvious. People trust him, they see that he is really a working President, that every day he tries to handle in a really constructive way some questions with the government.

on optimism
Because Britain is traditionally the land of very good and positive inventions, so let us hope it will invent something to allow us to prosper as an economic power.

on Chechnya (or, having your eggs and breaking them too)
But to try to take an upper hand in political discussions, that can be done later, but establishing that people can go to work and take their children to school, that is priority, and later we can discuss what was optimal.

on Russia, as a new cuddly neighbor
Even if you take the recent Americans’ announcements, not only in Georgia but certainly, Secretary of State says that he thinks, the intonation of the statement was that Russia should be friendly with neighbours, etc., we don’t have to be reminded about that. We’re not pretending to be the patrons of everybody who is neighbouring to Russia. And that is example of Cold War mentality – when Russia is still seen as former Soviet Union. But we should keep in mind that our security, and our national interests, are observed. And we should keep in mind that Russia is either a partner, a full partner, or no partner at all.

on what free speech means to him
It is not yet the end of the road, but people feel themselves living in free market conditions, where they have no limitation to express their views, and where the media represents different views and, fortunately for the state, and fortunately for Russia, it is no longer in the hands of the oligarchs, who like very much to defend, so-called, their own rights, among them, the freedom of speech. It was not freedom of speech, it was the freedom of speech of those who own the news channels.

on those good old days
We can’t say that the former experience of Soviet power was totally negative for my country, there were a number of positive experiences in education, science, and other fields.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:48 PM by Patrick Belton

...AND A BIG WIN FOR BLAIR: The top-up fees bill passes the Commons, 316-311. BBC for more.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 AM by Patrick Belton

WHAT WE PAY THEM FOR, PART DEUX: The State Department releases several documents, including Secretary Powell's op-ed criticizing the lack of democracy in Russia in Izvestia; the selection of the first class of Iraqi Fulbright scholars from free Iraq; Deputy Secretary Armitage's interview on Egyptian television about democracy promotion in the Middle East; and a synopsis of the U.S. government's efforts with regard to female and juvenile refugees.

More, please.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:14 AM by Patrick Belton

MY PREDICTION, PROBABLY WRONG: The last NH polls show a tiny bit of movement away from Kerry, whose post-Iowa surge is starting to cool, and towards Dean, who is solidifying his position as the clear alternative to Kerry. On the other hand, the weather in New Hampshire, while not so great, isn't so bad to depress turnout (i.e., no snow): and lower turnout would have further favored Dean over Kerry, since Dean has a much broader get-out-the-vote organization in the state. So Kerry and Dean move out of New Hampshire tonight to battle it out in the South, with Lieberman (my quijotic candidate), Clark, and Edwards sticking in it until Super Tuesday. Advantage: strongly Kerry, with Dean nipping at his heels to gain on him if he stumbles.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:30 AM by Patrick Belton

CAMPAIGN FLAGGING, CLARK CAMPAIGNS AS THE NON-YALIE CANDIDATE: At a diner in Keene, N.H., Clark assured a group of voters that "I didn't go to Yale." Kerry, Dean, Lieberman, and President Bush all hold Yale degrees. Edwards and Kucinich quickly picked up on Clark's brilliant idea, and announced they too would help to form a "non-Yalie coalition," which would revive the presidential hopes of the three doomed candidates with flagging campaigns. The three university goyim indicated they would first concentrate their attacks on Senator Lieberman, who holds two Yale degrees, and is therefore thought to be most vulnerable.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:43 AM by Patrick Belton

POLLY WANNA RUN FOR PRESIDENT? A captive African grey parrot, named N'kisi, is quite astounding researchers by displaying verbal inventiveness, an ability to deal with novel ideas, and a wisecracking sense of humour. Seeing Jane Goodall, after having seen her photograph, he wisecracked to her: "Got a chimp?"

Hearing about N'kisi's verbal suppleness, ability to confront novel ideas, and affable wisecracking sense of humour, there have been last-ditch efforts by U.S. Democrats to attempt to convince N'kisi to enter into the New Hampshire primary. No word yet, however, as to whether the parrot will say yes, or merely string the Democratic party along for an interminable series of crackers.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:56 AM by David Adesnik

CLARK TAKES EARLY LEAD: Dixville Notch chalks up eight votes for the General. Kerry follows with three, Edwards with two. Last time around they took Bradley, four votes to two.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:37 AM by David Adesnik

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY, GREG! Belgravia Dispatch turns one.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:28 AM by David Adesnik

DEFENDING THE NEW ECONOMY: The WaPo tells Democratic candidates to stop blaming Indian techno-geeks for the supposed jobless recovery.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:19 AM by David Adesnik

THE 20th HIJACKER: And the man who stopped him.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:16 AM by David Adesnik

THE ORIGINAL JOHN KERRY: Via Garry Trudeau via Instapundit.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:15 AM by David Adesnik

STOP JUDICIAL ACTIVISM! In Afghanistan.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:08 AM by David Adesnik

PROBLEM? ANSWER.

Problem:

The procedures in place for choosing [the new Iraqi] government are insufficiently democratic and excessively complex. Unless the transition goes well, Washington's chances of extricating itself from the day-to-day political and security problems of Iraq could fade.

The system for choosing a new government is built around a convoluted sequence of caucuses in which appointed officials are supposed to solicit and then screen nominations from local dignitaries. The process allows no direct participation by ordinary Iraqis and provides no assurance that all important elements of the population will be appropriately represented.

Answer:

Whatever is decided on, not all Iraqis will be happy. That is why any plan needs the international legitimacy U.N. involvement can bring. The current dispute might have been avoided if the U.N. had been included at an earlier stage. Instead, the agreement that set up the flawed caucus plan was drawn up last fall without U.N. participation. It is encouraging to see Washington, however belatedly, now trying to correct that mistake.

Huh? Iraqis deprived of their democratic rights will somehow be happy if the UN sanctions a less-than-democratic transition plan? Or if the UN had drawn up an undemocratic transition plan in tandem with the United States? By the same logic, one might be led to believe that 44th St. would've accepted the result of the Florida recount four years ago if Kofi Annan had told them to.

I think the real problem here is the NYT's inability to recognize that the people of Iraq know what democracy is and value it. And that the people of Iraq, unlike the editors of the NYT, don't see undemocratic international organizations as a source of democratic legitimacy. Perhaps Ayatollah Sistani will accept the American plan if the UN endorses it unconditionally. But then Shi'ites will be accepting the American plan because of their respect for Sistani, not their respect for the UN.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:50 PM by David Adesnik

PLAYING HARD TO GET: You've got to wonder about all these undecided voters in New Hampshire. After two months of having all the candidates parade back and forth across the state, what exactly are New Hampshire's voters waiting to discover in the last hours before the polls open?

If they're all so thoughtful and civic-minded, why didn't they read about the candidates when they had time? Frankly, I sorta think that all those folks in Concord and Manchester and Nashua are just so used to having their butts kissed by politicians that they refuse to decide until the absolute last minute just so that they can milk the primary for all its worth.

But you know what would make them real humble real fast? Moving the first primary to another state. Then watch the New Hampshirites complain about the Nebraskans or whoever and how they think they have some sort of special right to get personal attention from the candidates while the rest of us get nothing more than 30-second commercials.

(Yes, I am in a bad mood.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:39 PM by David Adesnik

HITTING BELOW THE BELT: According to a financial analyst from Nashua, NH:

It hurts to vote this way, but I think George Bush has been a disaster, and if my cat had the best chance of winning the election, then I'd vote for my cat.

If the cat gets enough votes, it will be Pussy vs. Bush in November.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:25 AM by Patrick Belton

TRANSATLANTIC DIFFERENCES: The Oxford, Pennsylvania franchise of LA Fitness offers weights and training facilities. My own LA Fitness chapter, in Oxford, England, offers "dating." I have a number of responses here: first, does this make working out more or less of a meat market? second, if the point of weights and training facilities is to facilitate dating anyway, is it then a good or bad idea to simply cut out the intermediate steps? third, and most importantly, is this because English people can't do the "dating" bit on their own after they've done the "go to the gym" bit?

UPDATE: A reader points out: "if you check the boxes on the dating service though, as a male seeking a male, it only comes up with males seeking females. Does this mean that gay men in England don't need the help with dating that straight men do?" Heh - perhaps!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:44 AM by Patrick Belton

IS THE ROYAL NAVY STILL FIGHTING THE COLD WAR? Prospect Magazine argues that it is:

The most significant threat our ships face is air attack. The only utility of frigates in air defence is as sacrificial shields, and our current destroyers [which are capable of launching surface-to-air missiles: ed] are obsolete. Our fighter screen is cleverly improvised but only works in cold weather. New destroyers may be available in a few years, but we will be without fleet fighters for some time, and will be very weak in airborne radar, which could solve so many of our problems.

In response, author Lewis Page calls for a massive reduction in Britain's frigate and dated destroyer fleet, and a reinvestment in nuclear submarines and an unmothballed third carrier.

With the money saved, we could build effective armed forces and be the terror of the world's dictators and ethnic cleansers, as we should be. Britain would have a capability independent of the US, a situation more dignified than relying on the Americans, while moaning about how they manage each crisis.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:32 AM by Patrick Belton

STRAIGHT IS BETTER: We at OxBlog have never been stingy in our support for gay rights. However, this post from our friends at Crescat Sententia reminds us that there's nonetheless one thing in life which, even we'd have to admit, is much better off straight: and that's whisky.

UPDATE: Our friend John Gould points out that I shouldn't neglect distinguished Irish variants on the whisky theme. Quite correct, and duly noted!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:34 AM by Patrick Belton

THE WASHINGTON POST runs a quite good editorial this morning criticizing the President's remarks on gay marriage in his state of the union address last week.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:25 AM by Patrick Belton

UZBEKISTAN RELEASES 3,000 prisoners in an amnesty to mark the anniversary of the nation's constitution. Many of the prisoners were accused of being members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, although Karimov's government is also known for using the threat of radicalism to imprison political opponents and Muslims from any branch of Islam not directly controlled for the state. No key dissidents (such as Ruslan Sharipov or Muhammad Bekjonov, brother of the exiled opposition leader Mohammad Solih) are to be released.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:21 AM by Patrick Belton

POWELL PUSHES PUTIN ON DEMOCRACY: In a front-page piece run in Moscow's Izvestia, Colin Powell expressed grave American concern with the decay of democracy in Russia, said Russian politics were not sufficiently subject to the rule of law, and indicated there were limits to the U.S.-Russian relationship in the absence of shared values. (There - we knew we paid the Department of State for something....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 AM by Patrick Belton

PUZZLE WRAPPED IN A RIDDLE SHROUDED IN AN ENIGMA: Amb. Sandy Vershbow, a Yalie Kremlinologist for whom I had what was really a great pleasure to work for several years ago in Brussels at the US Mission to Nato, spoke last week at Carnegie on political trends in Russia. The transcript is online, and definitely worth glancing through.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:34 PM by Patrick Belton

TNR HAS A SHORT piece on terrorism in the Americas, by the CS Monitor's correspondent in Bogota.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:24 PM by David Adesnik

MAN IN THE STREET: Hey, Dan, did you meet this guy in New Hampshire?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 PM by Patrick Belton

WOW: More images this evening from Mars, more spellbinding than the last, and reflecting a side of the Martian landscape we'd never quite glimpsed before.

Mars and she played even and odd.

- George Peele (1559–1596), "The Hunting of Cupid," at l. 36.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:37 PM by Daniel

REPORT FROM THE FRONTLINES. No, not Iraq. New Hampshire. I just got back from a nice weekend in the Granite State during which I surveyed the Democratic primary scene. Quite a place.

I spent my first day with a friend who was helping out the Clark campaign by “canvassing” homes in Bedford. This consisted of knocking on Democrats’ doors and handing them Clark literature as well as his 18 minute DVD, "American Son."

In almost every home I visited (sample size: around 30), people said they had watched the previous night’s debate but had not yet made up their minds. On the whole, Bedford residents were very friendly and concerned about us staying warm.

One couple invited me inside and the wife spoke for almost 20 minutes. She said that she was a Democrat and had voted for Bill Clinton. She said she had no problem with “the gays” (which made me think that she does—think of people who say, “I’m not racist, but you see….”) but didn’t appreciate that they could get health care for their partners without having to pay the marriage tax. She also said that she hated paying taxes. This was related to her second point: she could not understand why immigrants didn’t have to pay taxes and why she had to support them with her money. I was not sure what she meant, but she continued, saying, “you know, the people who own the gas stations, the Arabs (pronounced A-rabbs), the Iraqis, you know.” I didn’t know, but I tried to force a smile and said, “I’m pretty sure that immigrants do pay taxes, but maybe you can check the Clark website for more information.” She and her husband said that “five families of immigrants live in one house, you know? And we have to pay for them.” Her husband said he liked Clark but his wife said she had not yet made up her mind.

At another home, a woman yelled at us and accused us of not paying attention to her “Beware of Dog” sign. Actually, we had. I had just mentioned to my friend that the sign reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Far Side comics: the one entitled "Beware of Doug."

I began to wonder what kind of dogs she had, and if they were scary, and what mailmen or invited guests did, but before I could paint the mental picture, out of nowhere two German shepherds came charging toward us. Fortunately, they ran past us. “Who are you?” an older woman asked. “We are here to give you information about General Clark” my friend replied. She shooed us away and told us, “No, I’m for Dean.” Then, she said, “Well, anyone but Bush.” As we walked away, she reined in her dogs and told us to be careful.

I spoke with one voter who said he traditionally voted Republican, but didn’t like what Bush was doing and could potentially vote for a Democrat. He was particularly peeved by Bush’s “damn amnesty program with the illegals.” His solution: we should put up a fence and keep them out for 5 years, so we can catch the ones who are already here. He asked if Clark was the guy who “hated guns.” I told him that I was pretty sure that Clark did not hate guns, but that he believed in enforcing the gun control laws we had, including a limitation on assault weapons. I mentioned that such weapons did not seem to be very necessary for hunting. He agreed that AK 47s are not too important for hunters like himself, but that he also used guns for protection of his property. If the government did try to seize people’s guns, he told me there was going to be “a battle.” Then he said that he liked a lot of Kucinich’s ideas.

The entire experience was a lot of fun, and it was pretty amazing to see how much time and effort hundreds of people volunteer for one candidate. Some volunteers complained that rival campaigns stole their signs, and apparently the local police quietly dealt with many incidents like this, preferring to keep them under wraps. Edwards, Kerry, and Clark "visibility" volunteers (people holding signs and waving to cars passing by) were out late on Saturday night for in sub-freezing temperatures for hours on end. Very impressive. I was also pretty taken aback by fact that so many voters had not yet made up their minds. I guess we will see what happens on Tuesday!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:03 PM by David Adesnik

HYPOCRISY IN A SMALL PLACE: Why is George Bush praising a dictator in Azerbaijan?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:59 PM by Patrick Belton

YOWSERS, it's amazing how even after you're happily and faithfullly married, how dern long it takes to live down one's reputation from New Haven bachelorhood.....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:59 PM by David Adesnik

SHOULD KERRY WITHDRAW? Andrew Sullivan reminds us of last month's conventional wisdom.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:28 PM by David Adesnik

TALK SHOW ROUND-UP: I spent an hour this morning in front of a 60-inch television (not my own) flipping back and forth between Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week. For the first time, I actually saw the primal scream instead of just reading about it. And I thought to myself, "This is news?" Actually, the whole story is total bullsh**.

As one of Chris Matthews' guests pointed out, journalists in the hall with Dean didn't think twice about the scream (or "squawk", whichmight be more accurate) . It was a loud, energetic event. Only the after-spin turned the scream into an issue. But after seeing interviews this morning with Kerry, Clark, Edwards and Lieberman, I have to say that none of them had the energy that Dean displayed in the moments leading up to the scream. Watching Dean was actually exciting, even inspiring. Here's was someone who really cared about politics, whose passion seemed authentic.

Does that mean I'll vote for him? Hell no. But I think it speaks to how the press is spinning Dean's anger management issues. As the LAT's Ron Brownstein pointed out, candidates always get punished for doing something that confirms negative stereotypes about them. If Bill Clinton misspelled potato, no one would've noticed. Then again, perhaps the media should ignore such pseudo-events. Especially in this instance, where I don't think what Dean did says anything about his character.

So, moving on. None of the other candidates particularly impressed me. Whatever you ask them, they have a pleasant sounding answer. Many of those answers are truthful, but still less than informative. The one candidate who seemed to have trouble offering vague platitudes was Wes Clark. When George Stephanopolous asked him about the inconsistency of the war, his answer seemed desperate, as well as misleading. Clark said that his April op-ed was taken out of context.

Actually, as Steve Sachs has shown, the context is the most damning part of it. Any single sentence in Clark's op-ed could be spun as somehow anti-war. But all together, they add up to a clear pro-war message. Which is probably why Clark looked so pleading and defensive during his interview. There's just this look in his eyes that says "Please stop ruining my resume! I'm supposed to look presidential!"

Finally, the comedy highlight of the week: Howard Dean's cameo on Letterman, presenting a Top 10 list poking fun at himself. He really delivered the lines well, with the right timing and the right attitude. But will Howard Dean's sense of humor become next week's meme? No, of course not.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:00 PM by David Adesnik

PATRICK BELTON, AKA "MYSTERY"? Reading about this Casnanova, I couldn't help but think that I'd met him somewhere before...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:55 AM by Patrick Belton

FACT-CHECKING THE DAILY MAIL'S, WELL....: The Daily Ablution points out that even British tabloids can't be trusted nowadays. O tempora!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:15 AM by Patrick Belton

IF ONLY THEY HAD SUED BA: David Bernstein has been posting over at Volokh on a hateful early American variant of the "eenie, meenie" counting rhyme- and a fairly frivolous lawsuit against Southwest Airlines that resulted from it.

The etymological site Word Origins includes an interesting survey of the evolution of the rhyme across British and American history, finding that "chicken" and "tinker" occur in early contemporaneous British versions:

The rhyme was not recorded until 1855, with that early version using the words eeny, meeny, moany, mite. Another version, also published in 1855 but said to date to 1815 begins, Hana, mana, mona, mike. Various versions appear in the mid-19th century in both Britain and America, as well as in many different European languages.

Early American versions of the rhyme tend to contain the line catch a n____ by the toe. In early British versions, chicken or tinker are used instead. With rhymes such as these, there is no "original" version and there are countless early variants. The use of n____ is just one variant among many.

For more pleasant etymological stories, see Etymologically Speaking, for starters. (Ex: biscuit from fr. "cooked twice", "Big Apple" from the New Orleans race track, "barbarian" from the sound Greeks thought they were making (ie, bar-bar-bar-bar) - and these are just for the letter "b".....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:37 AM by David Adesnik

BLOGGING WITH THE PROS: As mentioned last week, the Columbia Journalism Review has started up a blog devoted to evaluating campaign coverage.

From I've seen so far, it's posts are very, very thorough. Specifically, I went through the "Spin Buster" thread devoted to, well, busting spin. Perhaps because it has been such a rough couple of weeks for Howard Dean, most of the posts are devoted to defending him from unfair attacks. The tone of the posts is very protective of Dean, but I think it's too early to say the site is playing favorites.

One post I tended to agree with (unsurprisingly) argues that the whole primal scream angle is a product of the echo chamber. I also like this post tearing into NYT correspondent Jodi Wilgoren, who criticizes Dean for following advice that she herself gave him.

One post that goes over the line begins by asking: "Does the political press have a vested interest in slowing down the Howard Dean juggernaut?" It goes on to warn that the press has begun to manufacture a "Dean is slipping" meme. Of course, the post is dated January 14, so what it really indicates is that the press got one of Iowa's big stories 100% right an entire week before the vote. Does CJR admit its mistake? Of course not.

Another post that almost sounds like a campaign ad for Dean argues straight out that the press is wrong to brand him a radical, when in fact he is a moderate. (After all, Paul Krugman says so.) Actually, I think the press has been pretty good about noting Dean's moderate record as governor. But his both his message and his support come from anti-war activists in the so-called "Democratic wing of the Democratic party." The fact that Dean casts his opponents as faux-liberals who've been suckered by the administration makes it hard to call him a moderate.

Criticism aside, I'm going to keep reading CJR, since it tends to either hit the nail on the head or make a strong argument for what it believes in. A worthy addition ot the blogosphere.

UPDATE: I just did a little more reading on CJR, and it seems like they're pretty protective of all the candidates, whom they see as victims of a scandal-driven media that ignores substantive issues. In this post, for example, CJR reasonably defends Clark for his supposed "guarantee" that there would be no more 9/11's. Yet in this post, CJR actually defends John Edwards (my homey) for shamelessly dodging a controversial question about gay marriage on the grounds that it forces him to address a thorny issue. But isn't that exactly what the press is supposed to do?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:41 PM by Patrick Belton

DISCUSSING ISSUES IN HOMELAND SECURITY: The Washington, DC, chapter of our nationwide Nathan Hale foreign policy society met up this week to discuss current and upcoming themes in homeland security. The conversation was insightful and interesting, and we have some notes from it up online here.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:30 PM by David Adesnik

A TASTY MORSEL OF IRONY: I know OxBlog has been a little heavy on the irony late, but this one is top good to resist. According to this column in Slate (which I found via Volokh), Michael Moore is not just Wes Clark's biggest fan, but also one of his most vicious critics. Apparently, Bowling for Columbine (which I had no interest in seeing) plays up Kosovo as an example of mindless American violence and carpet bombing. I'm guessing Wes Clark didn't see the movie. But how exactly can Michael Moore endorse an alleged baby-killer?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:20 PM by David Adesnik

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Left-liberal FP has published an excellent article by Max Boot that debunks a lot of myths about the neo-cons. While the most recent neo-con moment has passed, this article will be an important resource for the next time that the Wurlitzer gets going.

IMHO, the only point at which Boot comes off as too much of a neo-con apologist is his insistence that neo-cons don't oppose multilateralism. Sure, unilateralism isn't a hard and fast neo-con principle. But neo-con antagonism toward the UN/Old Europe runs so deep -- and overlaps so much with most Republicans' anti-UN sentiments -- that unilaterallism usually turns out to be the preferred option regardless of the situation.l

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:53 PM by David Adesnik

INSIDE THE ECHO CHAMBER: Josh Marshall has a great post up on what it's like to cover a presidential primary debate. (Plus some solid insights into the Kerry and Edwards campaigns.) Josh writes that almost all the correspondents at the debate were:

in a big room somewhere nearby with a bunch of long school room tables arranged as they might be for an SAT test in high school. And space after space at those tables is occupied by journalists with laptops open, a phone at each station, perhaps some other paraphernalia nearby or a parka, watching the debate on a series of big TVs.

In other words, they’re watching the debate on TV just like you are. Only they’re doing it in a big room with all the other journalists.

Now, this can be kind of fun, because you get to see a lot of other people you know, and a number you haven’t seen in a while. And you get a very good sense of how other reporters think everybody did. But that can be a pretty skewed view, an echo chamber in the making in ways you can probably imagine, even if you don’t spend much time talking to the really egregious above-it-all conventional wisdom types.

So when they talk about a herd mentality, they literally mean that there is a herd. Historically speaking, one of the most important interventions by the herd was during Jimmy Carter's final debate with Gerlad Ford in 1976. In that debate, Ford deep-throated his own foot by insisting that Poland was not under Soviet domination.

According to polls taken immediately after the debate, there was no clear winner. However, media coverage that night focused on the Poland gaffe, and polls taken only hours later showed a dramatic shift in perception, with Carter becoming the clear winner in the public mind.

Now, there's a strong argument to be made that Ford got exactly what he deserved. A public opinion poll in Warsaw would certainly have shown considerable disagreement with Ford's description of Soviet benevolence. The irony, of course, is that Jimmy Carter suddenly looked like the toughest anti-Communist on the block, a reputation which didn't last all that long once he took office.

But was this an example of media bias? Perhaps, but not partisan bias. While Republicans might have felt that their man was getting picked on, the fact is that the media always plays up the candidates' foot-in-mouth moments. The real question is whether the public is poorly served by a media that focuses on such relatively unimportant incidents.

Ideally, voters would know to discount some of the hype around such gaffes, e.g. Dean's primal scream. But no one can tell the voters how to think. The real lesson is for candidates, who should appreciate just how much trouble they will get themselves in if they don't watch what they say.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:34 PM by David Adesnik

NYT SOFT ON GOP? TPM thinks so. If you compare this NYT story to its Boston Globe counterpart, there's no question who's being tougher. But the Times certainly covers the facts, albeit in less depth. Is this evidence of "The further decline of a great paper"? No, but this is.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:12 AM by Patrick Belton

AFTER DAVID mentioned the Soviet national anthem, it was all I could do to link to this page with lovely choral renditions of every Soviet national hymn (including Central Asian SSRs), for those of you who might feel nostalgic for a day when the evil we were fighting came at least from the land that produced Dostoyevsky.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:44 AM by Patrick Belton

IN IRAQ, the first Iraqi brigade of the Iraqi army is nearly ready for service, with three battalions of 750 soldiers and officers having been graduated since October. The first battalion is currently in Kirkuk serving with elements of the 4th ID; the second battalion is with the 1st AD in Taji; and the third, slated to graduate this week, will deploy in Mosul. The plan is to have nine divisions with 27 battalions, acording to MGEN Paul Eaton, who commands the coalition military assistance and training team.

Also, welcome home, Screaming Eagles! We've missed you.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:29 AM by Patrick Belton

RITA KATZ has this week's terrorism and counterterror headlines.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:32 AM by David Adesnik

CIA WARNS OF CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ: Both the Bush and Bremer have been notified. (Link via Mark Kleiman)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:18 AM by David Adesnik

GETTING MEDIEVAL ON THE AMERICAN A**: As a little kid, I was always a little disappointed by the fact that modern-day soldiers never got to wear armor. But disappointed I am no more. It seems that 160,000 suits of body armor are on their way to Iraq. Each suit costs $1585. In contrast, a suit of blackened steel chainmail costs $179.99 (plus $29.99 shipping and handling). If you're short on cash, just go for the chainmail bikini.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:02 AM by David Adesnik

STATE OF THE UNION'S ARMY: Phil Carter was disappointed by the national security aspects of the President's speech. And for good reason. Phil also has serious concerns about the state of the Army Reserve. And just in case you need to hear it again, Phil reminds us that Wes Clark was not "relieved" of his command. Forced into early retirement? Given the boot? Thrown on out the street? Perhaps. Just not "relieved".

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:36 AM by David Adesnik

EDWARDS' SPECIAL INTEREST: Robert Tagorda thinks that John Edwards was pushing his luck when he said in last night's debate that he doesn't take money from Washington lobbyists. Rob also thinks that George Soros could benefit from a little more honesty, whereas the Iraqi police already have.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:07 AM by David Adesnik

THE MAN YOU LOVE TO HATE: The top story right now on CNN.com is that Ahmad Chalabi has come out in favor of direct elections in Iraq. Until I found that out, I was leaning towards elections. But if Chalabi is for them, something's gotta be wrong.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:04 AM by David Adesnik

BIG F***ING DEAL: For a while, I thought I was the only one who didn't give a sh** about Howard Dean's primal scream. Not a good political move, not exactly "presidential", but still pretty trivial. So now I'm glad to know that the WaPo agrees.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:01 AM by David Adesnik

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY? It's hard not to suspect that stories like these create news rather than reporting it. On the other hand, stories describing Kerry and Edwards' late surge in Iowa were pretty accurate. Still, looking at the story, you basically hear about one Wes Clark campaign event that failed draw an audience. And that you get some poll numbers favoring Kerry which aren't exactly news. However, I think the poll numbers are key, because journalists can always defend their work as objective if it says the same things as the polls.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about Clark's supposed stagnation. If Kerry dominates Iowa, that accomplishes objective #1, which is to beat Dean. But in November, I'd prefer to see Clark vs. Bush. Of course, what I'd really like to see is Edwards pull it out. If you haven't already, check out his recently unveiled Strategy for Freedom. It's an aggressive and well-thought plan for promoting democracy across the globe and especially in the Middle East.

More importantly, I don't think Edwards is just saying the right things. One of his top foreign policy advisers is OxBlog favorite Mike McFaul, who's feels at least as strongly about democracy promotion as we do. For some recent articles by McFaul, click here, here and here.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:36 AM by David Adesnik

WHAT A REAL INSPECTION LOOKS LIKE: Libya has given international inspectors access to a treasure trove of disturbing information, much of which implicates Pakistan. The most disturbing find is that the international black market for nuclear parts and information was so well developed that there were factories who sole purpose was to produce goods for it. Also, I think it is worth pointing out the dramatic difference between Libya's cooperation with international inspectors and Saddam's documented efforts to deceive them. As we already knew, any nation which truly wants to abandon its WMD programs, e.g. South Africa, works with inspectors rather than against them.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:26 AM by David Adesnik

FAITH VS. EVIDENCE: Say what you want, I still don't believe that Pakistani scientists would've sold nuclear secrets to Iran without someone very high up in the military approving the sale. Moreover, I found it quite interesting that

The leakage of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, officials said, apparently originated in 1987, when former president Mohammed Zia ul-Haq secretly approved a long-standing request from the Iranian government for cooperation in non-military nuclear programs.

Hmmm...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:20 AM by David Adesnik

KAY RESIGNS, SAYS NO WMD IN IRAQ: This is definitely a page one story, but it's still quite amazing how different the NYT and WaPo describe it. After a few paragraphs that get out the basic facts of what Kay said, the NYT observes that

Dr. Kay's statements undermined one of the primary justifications set out by President Bush for the war with Iraq. Mr. Bush and other top administration officials repeatedly cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons as a threat to the United States, and the lack of evidence so far that Saddam Hussein actually had large caches of weapons has fueled criticism that Mr. Bush exaggerated the peril from Iraq.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said the administration stood by its previous assessments that Mr. Hussein had both weapons programs and stores of banned weapons.

"Yes, we believe he had them, and yes we believe they will be found," Mr. McClellan said. "We believe the truth will come out."

Message: Bush lied. McClellan still lies. Now, if you scroll down another ten paragraphs or so, you'll find McClellan saying something about UN Resolution 1441 and how Saddam was in material breach. But who really cares about that?

Over at the WaPo, the money graf also comes after some basic introductory facts. It says:

The transition from Kay to [new team leader Charles] Duelfer underscores a change in emphasis in the U.S. hunt for banned weapons. While Kay began his search with expectations of finding stockpiles, Duelfer has said the mission now is to discover when and how such stockpiles were eliminated.

A good argument can be made that the WaPo is going a bit soft on the administration here. McClellan's quote is so ridiculous that it should have shown up in the WaPo article, albeit toward the end. At minimum, you'd think McClellan would say something like "There is no evidence yet that Saddam had a stockpile of WMD, but we refuse to rule out that possibility until we know exactly what happened to the weapons he had in 1998." Lest you think the WaPo is going too soft, it does report in its second paragraph that

The CIA announced officially yesterday that Charles A. Duelfer, a former senior U.N. weapons inspector, will succeed David Kay, who is resigning after nine months of unsuccessful searches for banned weapons in Iraq. Duelfer, who as a private academic said the Bush administration's prewar allegations on Iraq's weapons were "far off the mark," said yesterday that his goal is to reconstruct Iraq's "game plan" for its weapons and weapons programs.

It's interesting to note that one of the two authors of the WaPo article is Walter Pincus, a veteran national security correspondent not known for pulling his punches. For those of you old enough to remember Mr. Pincus (or have written dissertations on the role of the media in US foreign policy), you'll know that he is the one who turned American production of the neutron bomb into a major controversy in the late 1970s. More specifically, the controversty resulted from Pincus' profoundly misleading description of the bomb as a weapon that killed people but left buildings standing.

Actually, the weapon (if used) would have destroyed a tremendous number of buildings and other physical structures, but less than would've been destroyed by standard nuclear weapons. The purpose of this modification was so that the weapon would do moderately less damage in heavily populated areas such as Central Europe, thus making the process of reconstruction somewhat easier. Until Pincus turned the neutron bomb into a front page story, it had consistent bipartisan support and was considered entirely uncontroversial. Incidentally, Pincus worked at the NYT while all this was going on.

I guess the message here is either that Pincus mellowed with age or that the NYT is trying to be fair and balanced, just like Fox.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:23 PM by David Adesnik

HULKAMANIA RUNNIN' WILD! Combustible Boy observes that

Today is an important anniversary: It's been 20 years since Hulk Hogan won the WWF world title for the first time, defeating the dreaded Iron Sheik, who you knew was evil because he had the word 'IRAN' written really big on his pants and frequently teamed up with the mad Russian Nikolai Volkoff, who insisted on singing the Soviet National Anthem before his matches while the fans loudly booed and pelted him with trash. Hogan became the first wrestler to break out of the Sheik's dreaded "Camel Clutch" hold, then went for the pinfall, getting a roar from the crowd that nearly caused Madison Square Garden to collapse down into Penn Station. Thus began Hogan's first three-year title reign and the sociologically important "Hulkamania" of the mid-1980s.

Brother, just remember to say your prayers and eat your vitamins.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:19 PM by Patrick Belton

THANKS, JOSH, for the chance to clarify! I drew the "seventh" comment from this sentence in the article: "The poll, which interviewed 1,007 people in England, Scotland and Wales, found that 18 percent disagreed with the statement, "A British Jew would make an equally acceptable prime minister as a member of any other faith." (I assume that the disparity comes from the poll's use of a Likhard scale, so 18% fully disagreed with the statement, and, errr..., 29% somewhat disagreed....) I haven't found the actual poll online, so I don't have a basis of judging on that basis whether 1/7 or 1/2 of Brits are raving anti-Semites - so I was merely deciding to be optimistic on Shabbas. :)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:23 AM by Patrick Belton

SOME POSTCARDS FROM THE RED PLANET: Europe's space probe also notes that the mountains are beautiful at sunset, and asks if we can please check on the pets while it's away.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 AM by Patrick Belton

I LOVE THIS COUNTRY DEARLY, but it does appear that it has got a good deal of anti-semitism left in it:

Nearly half the respondents (47 percent) did not fully agree that a Jewish prime minister would be as acceptable as a non-Jewish one. (...) 15 percent of those surveyed agreed the scale of the Holocaust has been exaggerated.

Of course, the vast preponderance of Britain isn't anti-Semitic; this merely suggests there's some core seventh or so of the country which is. Incidentally, the question is slightly less than theoretical as present, as current Tory leader Michael Howard is Jewish.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:57 AM by Patrick Belton

DAVID IGNATIUS looks at the contemporary Iranian political situation as a struggle between two poles, one centred around reformist, neo-Enlightenment intellectual Khatami and the other surrounding streetwise wheeler-and-dealer Rafsanjani. The idea is hardly new, but Ignatius's characterization of the two sides (drawing mostly on Khatami's recent performance at Davos) is memorable. The same goes for his conclusion - that the intellectuals and partisans of the Enlightenment will win out in the long run, but the day is Rafsanjani and Hezbollah's.

Hezbollah, incidentally, is by far one of the most interesting (as well as organizationally complex) terrorist organizations of our time. Worthwhile analyses include MEIB's, the State Department's annual survey of terrorism, and ICT's. (Please let me know if you'd like me to add any significant ones I'm missing.)

UPDATE: Our readers are wonderful! Zach Mears suggests Adam Kushner's piece from the Columbia Political Review last May. I promise a more substantive Hezbollah post before too terribly long, in an attempt to summarize what's known about key trends, dynamics, and proclivities in the organization at the moment.

UPDATE ^2: And Pejman, who probably knows Iran better than anyone in the blogosphere, elaborates on how Khatami has let Iranian reformers down.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:44 PM by Patrick Belton

DAILY ROUND-UP: Richard Shultz writes in the WS on why the US didn't use Special Operations forces against Al Qaeda before 9/11. Kevin O'Connell and Robert Tomes offer ideas in Policy Review on reforming intelligence. Slate's Josh Levin points to a NYT Magazine piece showing you don't have to go to Cambodia to find sex slavery. Atlantic marks Emerson's 200th birthday. New Yorker profiles man-of-the-hour Kerry. NYT Book Review takes on Jung, the Church, and terrorist turned author Gerry Adams.

EurasiaNet comments on the Turko-Pak anti-terrorism agreement, prospects for Iranian reformists, Georgia, and the sad state of human rights in Central Asia. The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute offers up pieces on the Xinjiang province of China, India's new drive into Central Asia (come to think of it, Curzon tried that, too....), and promising economic trends in Kazakhstan.

LRB follows al-Muhajiroun activists around London, and looks back at Tacitus and Bonnie Prince Charlie. New York Review of Books looks at the history of the relationship between the US and Israel, Bosnian refugees, and has a piece by Oliver Sacks on whether consciousness is like Borges's river. Wilson Quarterly remembers the two-hundredth birthday of Marbury, says ideas matter even in pragmatic America, and recalls Britain's earlier go at making a democratic Iraq.

Economist, meanwhile, eulogizes a Geisha, despairs about the Chinese and Japanese economies at the beginning of the year of the monkey, looks into human rights in Morocco and education in the Arab World, and peers into Iran. CS Monitor profiles Al Qaeda's super-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, covers rural-urban migration in China, and an op-ed says the wars on terror and against Saddam are changing Korea and Japan deeply.

In the major op-ed pages, Thomas Friedman is calling Iowa a victory for hawkish, sensible, i.e., Tony Blair Democrats (hey, that's us!), Jim Hoagland is optimistic about a settled peace in Kashmir, and David Brooks is optimistic about moderation and optimism in the Democratic party. Maureen Dowd is plumbing new depths. The Post applauds Bush's quiet (but, they point out, unilateralist) war on AIDS, and decries a hugely porky omnibus appropriations act that was rushed through the legislative process.

Happy reading!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 PM by Patrick Belton

WINNER OF OUR HEADLINE OF THE DAY AWARD: Rover Plays Dead (CNN)

Distinguished Runner Up: Dean's "I have a Scream" Speech (Easterblogg)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:42 PM by Patrick Belton

READING THUCYDIDES IN CARS WITH BOYS: Or, reading him online and with OxBloggers. Along with furiously dissertating, this year I've decided to try to lead a more humanistic and well-rounded life by rereading Thucydides and Aristotle's Politics as my bedstand reading. I'll look forward to having many pleasant conversations on both texts with our readers and friends in the blogosphere as I go along, and I'll try to post on both periodically (much as David did when he reread the Republic last April). Incidentally, The History of the Peloponnesian War is online here, and the Politics is here.

(In a similar spirit, I'm attempting to torment my college's piano more frequently nowadays, along with the memories of Ludwig and Johann; and, in the venerable OxBlog tradition of always having one blogger ready to defend Oxford's honor in a martial art, I'll be futzing about in what may well be a misguided though surely comedic attempt to represent our beloved institution in pistol.) (ed: duck, he's got a gun!) (yes, but it's still fairly unclear whether he can hit anything with it....)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:23 PM by Patrick Belton

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! The year of the monkey is meant to be a quite auspicious one in which to conceive. But not for me, thanks.

Instead, here are some nice funny pictures of monkeys.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:18 PM by David Adesnik

AFTER JOHN PAUL II: Foreign Policy (subscription required) has published a memorandum for the College of Cardinals laying down some guidelines on how to select the next pope. The memo addresses important issues I hadn't thought of, but not in a way with which I necessarily agree.

For example, author Scott Appleby suggests that the next pope must lead the way toward a productive dialogue and possibly even alliance with Islam. According to Appleby, the foundation of such a partnership would consist of Catholics' and Muslims' shared opposition to a secular worldview that disregards the sanctity of life through its support of reproductive rights.

Yet such a proposal seems rather small-minded from an author who also writes that

Advocacy of human rights, including the crucial right of religious freedom, must remain the central message of Roman Catholicism to the world.

If to the world, then why not also to Islam? To be worthy of John Paul II's legacy, his successor must show the Muslim world that Islam, like Catholicism, can thrive by advocating respect for both religious tolerance and human rights.

I would go even further and suggest that the next pope embrace a cause that Appleby does not even dare to mention in his memorandum: democracy. This pope never shied away from identifying himself with the struggle against dictatorship. From Poland to Nicaragua, John Paul II cast his lot with the democratic opposition.

In fact, the College of Cardinals might choose to elevate Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo of Nicaragua, who already knows a thing or two about the struggle for democracy and freedom of religion. Besides, Obando would probably be happy to work with his Islamic counterparts to limit access to abortion and birth control, given his archconservative views on those subjects.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 PM by Patrick Belton

IT'S HARD TO WALK NAKED ACROSS BRITAIN.

Of course, it's even harder to walk naked around the coastline of Britain - since not only is that infinite, but you'd have to step on lots of fractals along the way, and that would hurt.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:14 PM by Patrick Belton

WHAT A CHANGED RACE IT IS! Rasmussen Reports finds Senator Kerry enjoying a nine point lead over Governor Dean, 25% to 16%, with Senator Edwards coming in third at 15% and General Clark fourth at 12%. Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby find Kerry leading Dean by a smaller margin of 27 percent to 24, though in a poll which began the day of Iowa and so may understate Kerry's bounce; they are followed, for Zogby and co., by Clark (15), Edwards (8), and Lieberman (7). Kerry has also erased Dean's once-commanding New Hampshire lead, again according to Zogby and friends.; New Hampshire's WMUR statewide tracking poll similarly registers Kerry has caught up to a statistical dead heat with the good doctor.

Want to be able to tell them apart? CFR has opened for business its traditional website on the foreign policy statements and views of the candidates.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:03 PM by Patrick Belton

A NOTE FROM THE NORTHERN COUNTRY: Karl Francis, a Fairbanksian whom I've had the great pleasure to meet, has an amusing piece in the LA Times today on polar bears and life in the wilderness. Most memorable line: "Cooked right, bears taste really good. Apparently the feeling is mutual."

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:52 AM by Patrick Belton

INTERNET VOTING TO GET ITS FIRST TRIAL RUN IN PRIMARIES: In what could eventually turn into a very good development for expatriate Americans (like, for instance, OxBloggers...), the Pentagon is planning to enable an online voting system for overseas American citizens on February 3rd for its first test run, in time for the South Carolina primary. Known as the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, the Pentagon program is unfortunately limited to voters from certain counties in Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, North and South Carolina, Utah, and Washington, but it will represent the most widespread effort yet at internet voting in America. (The primary contractor working on developing the project is Accenture; subcontractor VeriSign is involved as well with attempting to solve some of the more key authorization and security challenges.)

As exciting as this development is (especially for my own selfish reasons - personally, I have yet to vote at an actual stateside election location on an actual election day), internet voting with current technologies has aroused fairly negative responses from scholars of security issues. In July, Avi Rubin, Adam Stubblefield, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Dan Wallach coauthored a paper on security limitations of an older electronic voting system which had been developed by Diebold Elections.

Other studies of internet voting include ones by the State of California, and a Brookings-Cisco conference last January. Brookings devotes an entire page to the subject. An Oxford Union debate on the subject last summer was, fittingly enough, broadcast online. (Several more resources on the subject are available as well on the Election Center's webpage.)

An NSF panel recommended that internet voting begin only slowly, starting with dedicated kiosks which could be made passably secure with currently existing technology. This might be the prudent course - but in the meantime I will be looking forward embarrassingly much to having the opportunity to blog the casting of my first online vote.

For the rest of us not lucky enough to be Floridian, Utahn, Carolinean, Arkansan, or Hawaiian (and question: do we really want the first major experiment in online voting to involve Florida?), the Federal Voting Assistance Program exists to help expatriate citizens exercise their right to vote, and Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad are also very active in helping overseas voters to vote.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:59 AM by David Adesnik

BRING BACK GEPHARDT! Matt Yglesias writes:

If Gephardt had somehow won the nomination, I think there would have been a serious question as to whether or not I could support the Democrats in good conscience in November. Any of the remaining alternatives would be pretty good as president.

It would be almost worth giving Gephardt the nomination just to see if Matt would actually vote for Bush. Imagine if he did. Four years of merciless taunting...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:26 AM by David Adesnik

NYT COLUMNIST WHORING IN CAMBODIA: Nick Kristof writes

I put out the word that I wanted to meet young girls and stayed at the seedy $8-a-night Phnom Pich Guest House.

In his next column, Kristof writes that

After I decided to buy the two teenage prostitutes, as recounted in my column on Saturday, I swore them to secrecy for fear that the brothel owners would spirit them away.

Did I mention that Kristof has photos of the girls up on the NYT website?

Now, as you might have guessed, I've taken Kristof's quotes ridiculously out of context. As you also might've guessed, Kristof was in Cambodia investigating modern-day slavery, which often takes the form of forced prostitution. While Kristof's approach is unconventional, I think it pays off both in terms of dramatic effect and in terms of understanding the problem.

Incidentally, it must've been pretty funny when Kristof told his wife that his upcoming business trip consisted of spending time with underage hookers. On the bright side, if that's what you tell your wife, she probably won't worry about what your going to do with your free time in Phnom Penh.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:05 AM by David Adesnik

THE MYTH OF THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM: You figure The Nation had to give it a try. To admit that there has been a resurgence of anti-Semitism is to discount much of the fierce criticism of Israel that has recently emerged, especially in Europe. It even suggests that there may be a darker side to the anti-Americanism that has been on display over the past eighteen months. And yet, Brian Klug tells us up front that

There is certainly reason to be concerned about a climate of hostility to Jews, including vicious physical attacks. On one Saturday this past November, for example, two synagogues in Istanbul were truck-bombed during Sabbath services, while an Orthodox Jewish school in a Paris suburb was largely destroyed by arson. Some researchers report a 60 percent worldwide increase in the number of assaults on Jews (or persons perceived to be Jewish) in 2002, compared with the previous year. At the same time, something is rotten in the state of public discourse. Anti-Jewish slogans and graphics have appeared on marches opposing the invasion of Iraq. Jewish conspiracy theories have been revived, such as the widely circulated "urban legend" that Jews were warned in advance to stay away from the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. And recently, certain public figures on both the right and the left have made negative generalizations about Jews and "Jewish influence."

No question, Klug gets points for honesty. And he also deserves credit for providing historical background to the current debate that is quite interesting regardless of whose side one is on. Klug also poses the interesting question of what is new about the new anti-Semitisim. And it is here where our opinions depart.

According to Klug, those who believe that there is such a thing as the new anti-Semitism tend to define it as hypocritical and anti-Semitically motivated attacks on Israel that hide behind the facade of "legitimate criticism". However, I believe that there are two other phenomena that play a critical role in defining the new anti-Semitism. Klug touches on both of them, but either overlooks or explicitly discounts them.

The first issue is the social acceptability of anti-Semitism. While few individuals will go on the record with statements about "the Jews", it has become almost fashionable in certain European circles to think of the Jews as a crude people and to resent the political correctness that prevents one from saying so in public. In a sense, this phenomenon is not new because sophisticated condescension toward upstart Jews was the status quo for much of modern European history.

But we wanted to believe that this sort of parlor anti-Semitism was dead. Moreover, its death was the ultimate guarantor that Europe could never return to the overt anti-Semitism of old. It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that sophisticated anti-Semites do not care much about the violent attacks on Jewish individuals and institutions perpetrated by lower-class European Muslims. After all, they had it coming.

Which brings us to the second point that Klug misunderstands. A second critical aspect of the new anti-Semitism is the way in which the wrongdoings of the Israeli government have become an accepted justification for the assault on European Jewry. While Klug denounces such violence as "repugnant", he nonethless writes that

Israel does not regard itself as a state that just happens to be Jewish (like the medieval kingdom of the Khazars). It sees itself as (in Prime Minister Sharon's phrase) "the Jewish collective," the sovereign state of the Jewish people as a whole. In his speech at the Herzliya Conference in December, Sharon called the state "a national and spiritual center for all Jews of the world," and added, "Aliyah [Jewish immigration] is the central goal of the State of Israel." To what extent this view is reciprocated by Jews worldwide is hard to say. Many feel no particular connection to the state or strongly oppose its actions. On the other hand, in spring 2002, at the height of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, Jews gathered in large numbers in numerous cities to demonstrate their solidarity, as Jews, with Israel. Many Jewish community leaders, religious and secular, publicly reinforce this identification with the state. All of which is liable to give the unreflective onlooker the impression that Jews are, as it were, lumping themselves together; that Israel is indeed "the Jewish collective."

Unreflective? Unreflective? How about hateful? How about anti-Semitic? Imagine if Russians were being beaten up on the streets of Paris, Marseilles and Lyon because of French sympathy for the Chechens. Would anyone describe the assailants in such attacks as simply "unreflective"? Of course not. In doing so, Klug unintentionally validates that new anti-Semitism which supposedly doesn't exist.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:42 PM by Patrick Belton

CATCHING UP ON MY HOLIDAY BACKLOG OF FUNNY STORIES: So on New Year's Eve, having just gotten back into New York after a 30-hour journey from Alaska, I headed straight to Chelsea, to join my buddies (and fellow New Haven exiles amidst the blogosphere) Josh Cherniss and Jacob Remes for caffeination in the environs of a fairly esoteric combination coffee shop/deli/antique store. After a few minutes, I decided that I wanted to eat more than peanuts that day (do follow that link), so I went up to the counter, and, relishing being back on Manhattan island and the ground zero of Western Civilization, triumphantly ordered a bagel with lox and cream cheese. What I got was about four dollars cheaper - a bagel with lots of cream cheese. Much more than a schmear, in fact (the precise quantum, of course, of cream cheese to be applied to a bagel of an ordinary size). Mental image: think Big Mac, with cream cheese in place of the meat. I should note that, at this point, Josh noted my pitifully crestfallen look and decided to personally instantiate another yiddish word: yes, greater love hath no man, that he lay down his lox for his friend. So all lox is well that ends well.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:03 PM by Patrick Belton

WHITHER AFRICA? The Economist sees good things in the continent's future:

Angola and Sierra Leone are at peace. The pointless border clash between Ethiopia and Eritrea has stopped. Congo's war, the worst anywhere since the second world war, is formally over. Liberia's warlord, Charles Taylor, has been driven into exile. Even in Sudan, which has known only 11 years of calm since 1962, government and rebels are on the verge of signing a power-sharing deal.

In the 1960s and 1970s, no African ruler was voted out of office. In the 1980s, one was. Since then, 18 have been, and counting.... Under most of the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, independent newspapers and radio stations were simply not allowed. Today, they are as numerous as they are irreverent.

The main reason the continent is so poor today is that Mugabe-style incompetent tyranny has been common since independence (see our survey). The most important question for Africans now is whether Mr Mugabe represents not only their past, but their future as well. There are encouraging signs that he does not.

The entire article is worth reading. A particularly sad blue note in this chord, however, is the heavy reliance of the continent's two natural leaders upon resource extraction - never a good role for a government seeking to shake off corruption and forge ties of accountability with its citizens (and taxpayers). Think the Gulf, and Mexico in the oil boom of the 70's. Nigeria's economy, like those, is based on the extraction of oil - and Nigerian political economy is in turn based on the distribution of oil rents. South Africa's is a more delicate situation, because the resource being extracted there is the tax dollars of the white population.

But, nonetheless, there are continent-wide trends of democratization and the spread of security and the free press, which are very much on the side of those who would wish its people well - this Economist piece does well to draw our attention to them. And our role in the spread of democracy and conditions of human dignity to Africa over our lifetimes, of course, must be much more than cheering from the sidelines.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:10 PM by Patrick Belton

NEW HEADS FOR THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP, AND OXFORD: Colin Lucas, currently Oxford's Vice-Chancellor (and a former history department chair at Chicago), will be taking up duties as Secretary of the Rhodes Trust; in turn, the vice-chancellorship - effectively, the position of head of the university - will be assumed by the antipodean John Hood (himself Secretary of the Kiwi Rhodes Committee - conspiracy theorists, take note....).

Incidentally, while on the subject of Oxford, there's a J.R.R. Tolkien Professorship in English Literature and Language which is coming open here....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:22 PM by Patrick Belton

SUDANESE PEACE AGREEMENT LIKELY: A tip just in from one of our friends in Washington says chances are high a peace deal might be reached any day now to bring a close to the 20-year Sudanese civil war. The conflict has led to the loss of over 1.5 million lives there since 1983, displacing an additional four million as refugees. There are potential snags still to be dodged, but the implications of a peace deal would be enormous for the Sudan's future political and development prospects. The U.S. and German governments are leading the effort to facilitate the peace deal; the secessionist animist and Christian SPLA based in the south has been battling the Muslim and Shari'a-inclined government in Khartoum; synopses of the conflict are here and here. Sudan.net collates all breaking news stories on the Sudan, and is a good source to follow if you're interested in following the sealing of this monumental peace deal.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:15 PM by Patrick Belton

GIVE THAT ~~TEACHER~~ GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE AN APPLE: Just since some of our readers might be interested in this, and might not know about it - I just read Apple offers discounts (typically hovering around 10 percent) for all purchases for the personal use of federal employees (here defined expansively, to include federal civil service, contractors, active duty military and their dependents, veterans, and employees of state and local governments). People in these categories also have the ability to "sponsor" six purchases annually, i.e., passing on their discounts to anyone they choose to. The website's here, if any of our readers are eligible for the discount and were about to buy an Apple product anyway....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:20 PM by Patrick Belton

COME DISCUSS HOMELAND SECURITY WITH US! If you're in Washington, why don't you swing by our Nathan Hale discussion tonight on homeland security? It's going to be held at Bertucci's in Clarendon (orange line) at 7:30 pm - look for the gang in the back room - and there will be participation by a number of people currently serving in the Department of Homeland Security. (Of course, our discussion sessions are always by Chatham House rule.)

And if you're in another of the cities in which we have a chapter (New York, New Haven, Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, and Oxford/London), please drop us a note to be added to our mailing list, if you haven't already done so!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:46 PM by Patrick Belton

I DON'T OFTEN DISAGREE WITH DAVID, BUT: Pats not going to the Superbowl. Pats got a dissertation. Pats going to the library, therefore.

On the bright side, though, Pats just gotten his Airport working in his flat. (And no, I've never actually gone by Pat, but couldn't resist...)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:21 AM by David Adesnik

IRAQI ELECTIONS ARE VIABLE BY JUNE: At least that's what the British are saying. Juan Cole (link via Kevin Drum) says the Brits' about face is payback for American condescension. Simple fear of the Shi'ites may also have played a role.

But what if the Brits actually believe elections are the right thing to do? What if elections are the best way to promote a democratic and orderly transition? No question the British are respoinding to Shi'ite pressure. But that may be a good idea.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:05 AM by David Adesnik

BUSH IS THE REPUBLICAN BILL CLINTON: Stephen Green explains.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:02 AM by David Adesnik

THE FIGHT IS FOR DEMOCRACY, PART II: In the first installment of my review of George Packer's new collection of essays, I focused on the inability of its authors to distinguish a principled liberal foreign policy from a principled (neo-)conservative one. Today, I want to focus more on the conceptual underpinnings of principled foreign policies rather than the specific initiatives of which such policies are composed.

The two big think-pieces in Packer's book are Susie Linfield's anti-relativist polemic and Paul Berman's attack on Islamic totalitarianism. Both essays direct themselves at the profound intellectual disabilities the authors hold responsible for liberal confusion in foreign affairs. In both cases, I strongly sympathize with the authors' respective messages. Yet again, I found myself asking what distinguished Linfield and Berman's views from those that are supposedly conservative.

The vocabulary of Linfield's essay borrows extensively from the lexicon of conservative culture warriors. Talking about multiculturalism, Linfield writes that "shame [has] spread too far, mutating into guilt and then ossifying into cowardice." (p. 167) Linfield then observes that "judgment is the linchpin on which the health of the culture depends." (p. 173) In the final analysis, this non-judgmental cowardice facilitated the liberal left defense of Stalin and even Pol Pot.

Linfield is right that there is nothing in liberalism inherently averse to pride or judgment. She writes that

We are forced to see that by severing ourselves from our own proud tradition of judgment-as-freedom, we allowed conservatives to "own" the realm of judgment" (just as some black students, in a perverse paroxysm of self-defeat, have relegated intellectual achievement to whites.)

Well, so much for political correctness. Moving on, Linfield runs into trouble when she tries to distinguish a liberal version of judgment-as-freedom from its conservative counterpart. Much like Michael Tomasky, Linfield is only capable of identifying that which is liberal by differentiating it from a conservative strawman. Thus she describes conservatives as being enamored of "cultural hierarchy and 'sacred order'" before tartly observing that

Osama bin Laden, from what I understand, is also an ardent fan of the past's hierarchies and its sacred orders.

Aha! The only problem is that American conservatism has demonstrated little interest in hierarchy, much interest in the sacred, but little interest in order. For more than two hundred years, American conservatives have defied political labels by espousing a revolutionary conservatism. Unfortunately, Linfield never addresses this all-important paradox.

Paul Berman departs from the liberal mainstream by insisting that there is no rational defense of terrorism and there that there should be no effort to empathize with terrorists or assign responsibility to root causes. With regard to violence perpetrated by French Muslims against French Jews, Berman writes that

Liberal-minded thinkers, reluctant to believe that a strictly doctrinal and irrational hatred is at work, have instinctively regarded the violence as a natural and resonable response to Israeli policies in still another part of the world, the Middle East, thousands of miles away...

There has been a temptation likewise to believe that anti-Americanism must similarly reflect genuine greivances against the United States. Yet what has America ever done to, say, Morroco and Algeria -- except help liberate those countries from the Nazis?

In spite of such passages straight out of the National Review, Berman constructs a sweeping historical argument on behalf of semi-pacifist view of democracy promotion. In under twenty pages, Berman summarizes and extracts the essence from two hundred years of Western intellectual history. While I could keep up with what Berman was saying, the breadth of his references and analyses made it all but impossible for me to provide informed criticism of his views.

Yet on those occasions when Berman touched on my areas of expertise, I found myself violently disagreeing with him. His paragraph on the origins of World War I demonstrates a total unfamiliarity with the combatants motives. Berman then writes that

Final victory in World War II was not achieved by troops rolling into Berlin. Final victory was achieved by de-Nazification, which took several decades and perhaps in some respects is still going on. (p. 279)

But the fact is that victory was achieved by force of arms. De-Nazification was a complete fiasco that embarrassed the US occupation authority and angered low-level Nazi officials while ignoring most significant Party officials. What persuaded Germans of the evils of Nazism was not the shining ideal of Western democracy, but the shocking realization that Nazism had brought Germany nothing but death, devastation and despair -- thanks to the Allied armed forces.

I go on at length about Berman's idiosyncratic interpretation of the Second World War because it effectively illustrates how he bends the past to serve his anti-interventionist message. Thus, it rings hollow when Berman says that "America's president has decided to withdraw from the war of ideas". (p. 288) One can argue that Bush's rhetoric is less than persuasive. Yet actions often speak louder than words. More than any speech, the President's bid to democratize Iraq will become the yardstick according to which his intentions are one day measured. As was the case with Germany and Japan, the use of force has been integral to defining America's position in the war of ideas.

The remaining essays in Packer's collection demonstrate just how great a chasm must be bridged in order to unite Linfield and Berman's broad-brush conceptual liberalism with the specific policies favored by their co-authors. Jeff Madrick's discussion of economic inequality in the United States concludes that "Our democracy is no longer working as it should." Presumably, this implies that we have no right to lecture the developing world about freedom until our own house is in order.

William Finnegan's essay on "corporate globalization" is a meditation on the beauty of indigenous cultures, the rapacity of multinational corporations,and the hypocrisy of the IMF and its member governments. If there was one essay in Packer's book that Noam Chomsky could wholeheartedly embrace, this would be it. Speaking more substantively, the problem with Finnegan is that he completely ignores important arguments by first-rate thinkers that globalization promotes growth and even protects indigenous cultures. While the pro-globalization case is far from impregnable, the one-sided nature of Finnegan's attack undermines Packer's aspiration to get away from the kneejerk liberalism of the past.

The contradictions exposed by "The Fight is for Democracy" come across vividly in anti-war patriarch Todd Gitlin's essay on patriotism. On the one hand, Gitlin describes how his decision to hang an American flag from his terrace after 9/11 became an authoritative justification on the Left for accepting the flag as a positive symbol. Yet only weeks later, Gitlin and his wife took down their flag because "the hardening of American foreign policy and the Democratic cave-in produced a good deal more triumphalism than [they] could stomach." (p. 134) This pattern of action and reaction ably stands in for the position of almost all the contributors to Packer's book; they recognize the imperative of breaking away from the guilt-ridden liberalism of the past but can't accept-- let alone comprehend -- the majority's embrace of actual American foreign policies.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:14 PM by Patrick Belton

OXBLOG'S STATE OF THE UNION INSTANT ANALYSIS:

* Basic summary: Opening material introduces counterterrorism as a unifying national project - The choice facing the nation is between pressing forward or turning back. The State of our Union is confident and strong. But with terror attacks in Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Mumbassa, Riyadh, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Baghdad, the US must use every tool in its disposal against the threat of terrorism. One of those essential tools is the Patriot Act (first controversial element). Key provisions of the Act will expire next year (unexpected, and funny, applause from Democrats). One by one, America will bring terrorists to justice.

Shift to defense of assertive foreign policy, and its success: American leadership is making the world a better place. Afghanistan has gone from a training ground for Al Qaeda to a democracy with a constitution enshrining individual, minority, and women's rights; combat forces of the US, Great Britain, Poland, and Australia, enforced the will of the United Nations and ended the rule of Saddam Hussein, and the people of Iraq are free.” Of the top 55 officials of the former Iraqi regime, the US has arrested 45. US will never be intimidated by thugs or assassins. Introduced the president of the Iraqi Governing Council. With force behind our diplomacy, no one can now doubt the word of America; states US commitment to non-proliferation; budget will provide needed resources to the military for anti-terror purposes; against critics, the war on terror is really a war ("terrorists declared war on the United States, and war was what they got"); against congressional opponents of Iraq war, the world without Saddam is a better and safer place; against critics of unilateralism, lists international allies in Iraq; says America will never seek permission slip to defend the security of our country. The desire for freedom is universal; the US will undertake "forward strategy" of freedom (doubling the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy); the US will lead way in democratization.

Shift to trade and economic issues, and argument for strength of economy: the economy in good shape (tax cut money has been invested; list of favorable economic indicators; the American people are using their money better than government would have, and Congress was right to return it); administration is committed to education; support for the No Child Left Behind Act (choice is between the Act's common-sense testing and a retrograde return to shuffling kids along from grade to grade); introduces the Jobs for 21st Century job-training program; promises to continue “pro-growth” economic agenda; “unless you act” (repetition phrase), taxes will come back (booing, probably supportive booing from Republicans); calls for protection from frivolous lawsuits, less dependence on foreign energy; calls for “free and fair trade” (doesn't develop; just dropping a poll-tested phrase); calls for personal retirement accounts; individual ownership of Social Security; promises to cut deficit in half over 5 yrs and calls Congress to hold the increase in discretionary spending this year to less than 4%; foreign worker program is not amnesty, which he opposes, but a way to bring hard-working men and women out of shadows and into the mainstream of American life; calls for combating rising health care costs and expanding access to health care, in a bipartisan way (first reference to bipartisanship).

Sop to senior voters: congratulates Congress on passage of prescription drug benefit for seniors; lists everything the benefit will do for seniors, and that it won't change anything for seniors who didn't want change; calls for association health plans, a refundable health credit, and a second call for the elimination of frivolous and wasteful lawsuits, this time with regard to health care; calls for a deduction of catastrophic health care insurance coverage from taxes; promises to preserve system of private health care.

Bit directed toward social conservatives: values are eternal and country must take steps to keep the family and religious institutions strong in face of challenges from culture; introduces anti drug program; calls on professional sports to eliminate use of steroids; calls abstinence the only sure way to avoid STDs; constitutional amendment against gay marriage: calls for respect for populism and the will of the people against activist judges in defending marriage as between men and women, and promises recourse to constitutional amendment process if necessary to overrule judges; government must respect dignity of individual and individual's value in God’s sight (first reference to God); "unleashing" faith-based communities – calls on Congress to codify into law Bush's regulatory action permitting religious communities to compete equally for government funding; introduces program to ease prisoners' reentry into society, including funding for faith-based programs; America is the land of second chances, including for prisoners.

Closing matter: we are living in historic times; reads letter from Ashley Pearson, age 10, from Rhode Island who believes in troops, wants to help; Bush responds: Ashley should work hard in school, help people in need, and thank troops when she sees them. Democratization is irreversible; the path of US, guided by above, is right and true; may God continue to bless America.

* Analysis of speech: If the amount of time given over to a single idea reflects its relative importance in the State of the Union speech (a reasonable assumption), then the most important themes in tonight's speech, in descending order, are: the need to commit adequate resources to the military for the war on terror (87 seconds); that government will act against single-sex marriage (84 seconds); the administration's commitment to strengthening families and religious communities, and to combat juvenile use of drugs (78 seconds); the government's commitment to education and excellence for each child in America (72 seconds); that the world without Saddam is a better and safer place (69 seconds). The closing matter took 78 seconds, centered around the idea that we are living in historic times.

Incidentally, the average amount of continuous speech between applause lines was 29.28 seconds. In addition, if by speech units we mean a period of continuous speech without intended applause, the speech was constructed of:

16 units of 10 seconds or under
14 units of 11 to 20 seconds
12 units of 21 to 30 seconds
5 units of 31 to 40 seconds
1 unit of 41 to 50 seconds
3 units of 51 to 60 seconds
4 units of 61 to 70 seconds
and 3 units of 71 to 80 seconds. (Disclaimer: this excludes the introductory matter.)

* Thoughts: This is not a cautious speech - Bush makes one reference to bipartisanship, and instead defends his foreign policy record assertively, argues directly to the people of the country that he should be allowed to finish what he has begun, and appeals unapologetically to his most core constituencies on domestic policy. This is a speech which is meant to launch a re-election bid, not one intended to put forward a new program or to call for cooperation across the aisle.

* I'm struck by how much of a State of the Union address is formulaic: it simply wouldn't be a State of the Union if the president didn't say "the state of the Union is strong," read a letter that a young child wrote to him, and ask that God continue to bless America - these tropes are as much part of the annual ritual as the Sergeant of Arms of the House calling out "Mister Speaker, the President of the United States." I would be awfully interested if any of our readers had a sense of the historical background of these tropes.

Incidentally, the texts may be found here of all of the State of the Union addresses which have taken place since President Wilson's reinstatement of the oral (as opposed to written, as took place from Jefferson to Taft) transmission of the report mandated in Article II, Section 3. Lincoln's are here. And one computer scientist has analyzed all Addresses in history to determine what words appear most in bursts (the first years of the Republic see a great deal of "gentlemen," "militia," "British," "enemy," and "savages"; the Clinton years see welfare, bipartisan, college, communities, working, america, challenge, schools, teachers, 21st, ask, century, and help).

The full text of the speech can be found here.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:13 PM by Patrick Belton

COME WATCH the State of the Union with us! (via CSPAN.org)....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:05 PM by David Adesnik

TALK ABOUT AN UPSET! Kerry first in Iowa. Edwards a strong second. Dean an unimpressive third. Gephardt a distant fourth. I have to admit, I really don't know what Iowa was thinking. Why Kerry? Edwards sort of makes sense, but why wasn't there any support for him until the final moments? Conversely, why did Dean look so strong to being with? And how could Iowa abandon the midwest's native son?

Regardless of the answers, this makes New Hampshire a whole lot more interesting. I won't venture any predictions, but I do hope that Edwards can pick up 30% next week as well. Still, one strong showing in an early primary rarely says much about where the race is headed. For a solid assessment of where the conventional wisdom now stands, take a look at the NYT article on Iowa. All I would add is that tonight's results are an indirect but significant setback for Lieberman, who is looking like more and more of an also ran.

For more commentary, visit CalPundit, TPM, and Tapped.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:54 PM by David Adesnik

WAPO PILE-ON: The same WaPo article I criticized last night has come in for quite a thrashing by other bloggers as well.

First, Glenn took the WaPo to task for its casual insistence that Bush described the Iraqi threat as imminent. (By extension, Glenn might have criticized me for writing that nothing in the WaPo article was "necessarily wrong".) While there is no question that Bush et al. were careful not to describe the Iraqi threat as "imminent", they did overplay it in a way that made the threat seem to be, well, imminent. Thus, while the WaPo has no business getting its facts wrong, it's hard for me to get indignant about this one.

Next up, Steven Den Beste provides a lengthy fisking of the article in question. Den Beste does a very good job of showing just how formulaic the WaPo article is by showing how it recites each tenet of the media's conventional wisdom about the war in Iraq.

While the Post's Glenn Kessler gets almost all of his facts right, he could just have easily written an article that presents a very different perspective on the war as objective truth. For example, instead of fretting about American disrespect for the United Nations, Kessler could have described how the UN has come through the war with its influence intact, thus invalidating the multilateralists' predictions that Bush would destory the "postwar international order". Or, ideally, Kessler could have provided both perspectives and fulfilled his journalistic obligation to provide balanced reporting.

At the same time, one ought to note that Den Beste's apoplectic criticism of the WaPo is pretty much paranoid. Den Beste writes:

They say, "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity", but we seem to have gone beyond any possible stupidity now. Have we reached the point where we can assume there's a conspiracy to spread a big lie? And where we can safely dismiss the opinions of anyone who repeats it?...

All the signs are there: this is a straight leftist propaganda piece disguised as straight news reporting.

Leaving aside its bombast, the main conceptual problem with Den Beste's criticism is its (slightly sarcastic?) attribution of a definite motive to Glenn Kessler and the WaPo. First of all, anyone familiar with the Post's pro-war/pro-reconstruction editorial line knows that the paper isn't committed to a leftist policy line. Second, it is improbable in the extreme that a reporter committed to manipulating the public would last very long at a top-flight newspaper.

The real explanation here -- one that is far more complex than either stupidity or conspiracy -- has to do with journalists' professional norms. As numerous studies (many of them by Stephen Hess) have shown, journalists operate according to fairly specific rules of which they are vaguely aware but almost wholly unable to articulate.

One of those rules is the confusion of bipartisanship with objectivity. Notice, for example, how much stress Kessler puts on the fact that Republicans are offering many of the same criticisms one is accustomed to hearing from Democrats. As a result of moderate criticism from Ken Adelman and Richard Haass, Kessler grants himself license to deconstruct speeches by Bush, Cheney and Powell in a manner that reflects their alleged loss of credibility both at home and abroad.

In all likelihood, Kessler agrees with the criticisms that he describes as part of a bipartisan consensus. If he didn't, he probably would've done more to demonstrate that opposing perspectives exist. Yet Kessler does make sure to quote Richard Perle, who makes the reasonable point that intelligence is about guesswork, not certainty. Of course, by the time you get to Perle's quote, Kessler's anti-administration spin makes it seem that Perle is an ostrich-headed defender of the White House party line.

In the final analysis, it is best to approach mainstream journalism as the product of an unspoken yet fairly precise code of conduct that places strict limits on correspondents while enabling them to advance subtle opinions through the process of selecting what to write about. Some articles, such as Kessler's, obey the letter of the law more than the spirit. Some newspapers, such as the NYT, show less deference to the spirit of the law than others. Yet in order to maintain one's status as a professional, one must respect the letter of law, a framework that gives the reader a certain basic confidence in what he reads, regardless of its spin.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:01 PM by Patrick Belton

THERE SOME QUITE INTERESTING things afoot in Pakistan at the moment. Responding to US concern about madressahs, special groups drawn from the security agencies examined the records of madrassas in Faisalabad, paying particular attention to the names of students and staff, connection with other religious organizations, and sources of funding (raids which drew in turn criticism from the Islamist group Jamiat Ahle-Hadith). This comes on the heels of an International Crisis Group report which is highly critical of Gen Musharraf for not having followed through on his promised steps to stem jihadi ideology in the madressahs and bring them under government-approved curricula while making closer examinations of their funding sources. (ICG's Asia director Robert Templer argues in the report that Musharraf is too dependent upon the political support of the religious parties to have been able to move against the religious schools.)

At the same time, raids against Al Qaeda operatives in Karachi have increased in frequency, while in Peshawar similar crackdowns are being attempted against tribesmen harboring suspected Al Qaeda members. Also in Karachi, the operations chief of the Taliban- and Al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Shamim Ahmed, 25) was arrested today for his role in a bombing last Thursday at the city's Anglican cathedral.

What's really happening there? Stratfor believes that the national government in Islamabad has acquired some new level of support from the sundry tribes, enhancing the government's capability to flush out militant Islamists from tribally-controlled badlands and allowing Musharraf to cooperate with the U.S. while irking a smaller amount of anti-U.S. domestic sentiment through countermilitancy operations prosecuted in middle-class neighborhoods. On the one hand, Al Qaeda seems to be feeling under the gun after the organization posted a bad December - this, according to analysts of the Osama tape released in January. On the other hand, Musharraf also is feeling under the gun, as shown by the obvious penetration by militants of his security apparatus indicated by close knowledge of his movements drawn on in the two recent assassination attempts, while international flows of terrorists into his country continue to be exemplified by foreign-born operatives such as Uyghur separatist Hasan Mahsum and the Chechen-born suicide bomber who attacked Musharraf on Christmas Day. Some argue that precisely by appearing so weak in the face of Islamist opposition and two assassination attempts, Musharraf has gained serious negotiating power with both Washington and New Delhi, neither of which wishes to see him replaced with an Islamist successor. Combined with the possible playing out an end-of-term desire on Vajpayee's part to establish a place for himself in history aided by the current strong position of his popular Bharatiya Janata Party (shored, in turn, by a booming Indian economy), then the potential for amicable progress in Kashmir talks along lines fairly favorable to Pakistan seems increasingly likely, which could weaken Kashmiri radicals and their supporters within the lower levels of the ISI. At the same time, the increasing tempo of crackdowns on Al Qaeda members could indicate that the effect of two assassination attempts perpetrated by Islamists may have been to draw Musharraf more firmly into Washington's orbit, rather than toward the propitiation of his would-be murderers. And that would be good news indeed.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:11 AM by David Adesnik

FUZZY MATH, SHARP POLITICS: This WaPo editorial is right; Bush's proposal for immigration reform isn't perfect by a longshot, but it's enabled him to capture the middle ground in political terms and the high ground in moral terms. Much of the Democratic candidates' criticism of the proposal is valid, but only leads one to ask why, if the Democrats are so concerned about immigrants, they didn't make this an issue first.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:03 AM by David Adesnik

NEWSFLASH -- BUSH CRITICIZED FOR NOT FINDING WMD: I'm trying to figure out how this got onto the front page of the WaPo. I wouldn't say that anything in the article is necessarily wrong. But is it news that the failure to find WMD in Iraq has hurt US credibility? Or that serious questions have been raised about the politicization of the intelligence process? Or that the Administration now focuses more on the humanitarian victory in Iraq?

If the NYT ran this article, I wouldn't have bothered posted anything. It's what you expect from them. But the WaPo? I expect better.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:49 AM by David Adesnik

PATS HEADED TO SUPERBOWL: Can New England bring home a second victory in the big game? I'm not sure. While their defense was simply overpowering, questions remain on offense. Why couldn't the Patriots finish drives in the red zone, instead relying on kicker Adam Vinatieri to put up five field goals? Can quarterback Tom Brady turn it up a notch after throwing an interception and a handful of almosts in today's game? I hope so.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:42 AM by David Adesnik

OUR CONDOLENCES to the victims of terror in Baghdad. This was not an attack on coalition forces. It was the murder of Iraqi civilians. It is terrorism.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:50 PM by Patrick Belton

BACK IN OXFORD AND LINKING UP A STORM: Today's theme is democracy promotion, and David Ignatius has a wonderful piece about how education and technology are slowly, irreversibly liberalizing the Arab world - beginning with Dubai. "Education is the future of this region," says Sheik Nahayan bin Mubarak, UAE's minister of education. Under Nahayan, the Higher Colleges of Technology have grown from fewer than 500 students to 15,000, of whom 60 percent are women. Ignatius closes by noting that even at a time when it's hard to find much to be very optimistic about in the Arab world, UAE makes you remember change is coming, even to the land of the dromedary and the scorpion.

Elsewhere, Economist has several thoughtful pieces on the progress of democracy in the Middle East. Jordan and Kuwait recently held relatively free parliamentary elections, though both were marked by gerrymandering - and in Kuwait's parliamentary elections July 5th, Islamist and tribal candidates ousted liberals from all but three of parliament's 50 seats. Syria and Saudi Arabia have made halting steps toward democratic reform since the fall of the region's most infamous dictator - Syria's Ba'ath party has claimed to have ceased all its interference in governemnt policymaking and administration as part of a program of voluntary de-Baathification, and Crown Prince Abdullah hosted a forum of intellectuals producing a blueprint of reform, both for his own kingdom and for the Arab world. Outside the Arab world, the Economist also has surveys of democratic prospects in Central Asia, and - on a slightly different note - inequality in Latin America.

Continuing our survey, Freedom House releases its annual report on the state of freedom in the world. In 2003, 25 countries demonstrated forward progress in freedom, while 13 registered setback. Among the gainers, Argentina moved from Partly Free to Free, and Burundi and Yemen moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Among those losing ground, Bolivia and Papua New Guinea moved from Free to Partly Free, and Azerbaijan, Central African Republic, and Mauritania moved from Partly Free to Not Free. Of the 49 countries Freedom House rated Not Free, 8 were given the lowest possible numerical ratings for political rights and civil liberties - Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan, along with two territories, Chechnya and Tibet.

Still elsewhere, the always excellent Journal of Democracy has insightful pieces on Mid-Eastern liberalism, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Journal also has pieces on Arab democracy and terror, Islam, and democratization.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright provide another assessment of the administration's drive for Arab democracy. One impediment is the unwillingness of Arab governments to cooperate: Egypt, for instance, blocks all funding for democratization programs, particularly to democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Center. On the other hand, a quite nice pro-democracy effort is the Middle East Partnership Initiative, administered in the State Department by VP Cheney's daughter Elizabeth Cheney. The program's funding is not inconsequential but is modest - $129 million for 2002 and 2003, with as much as $120 million coming this year - and democratization scholars like Carnegie's Marina Ottaway charge that the project takes on easy and soft aspects of democracy promotion while not tackling the unwillingness of autocracies to step aside in favour of elections, which can only be promoted at very high levels.

And while speaking of Carnegie, they've produced a great deal of good democracy promotion literature lately, too - Tom Carothers argues the administration needs to commit more resources to democratization and warns that it will be neither a swift nor an easy remedy to terrorism - while Amy Hawthorne, editor of Carnegie's Arab Reform Bulletin (and, incidentally, a Yalie), publishes a number of good pieces, including ones on parties and media in Iraq, and reform prospects in