# Posted 11:18 PM by David Adesnik  

MALNUTRITION UPDATE: Tim Lambert thinks that there are fatal flaws in my recent post on malnutrition in Iraq. First and foremost, Tim says I have my facts wrong. He points to this page on the IAIS website as evidence that there were two separate malnutrition surveys conducted in Iraq, not (as I suggested) just one.

According to the page in question (which I saw before adding the final update to my original post), IAIS completed a comprehensive survey of living conditions in Iraq this past June. The website promises that the collected data will be released shortly.

Perhaps it will. According to the WaPo, the results of the new study haven't been released yet, even though the survey was conducted in April and May. (Although presumably someone released them to the Post.)

Hoping to track down the data, I sent an e-mail to IAIS on Sunday asking for further information about their work. In addition, I spent a considerable amount of term searching for related information on Google and Lexis-Nexis, yet found absolutely nothing.

Of course, it may turn out that IAIS really has done a new survey. But for the moment, there is hardly enough evidence to substantiate Tim's allegation.

But what if I were right and there were just one malnutrition survey conducted (in April-May 2003)? Tim says that the United States may still be responsible for widespread malnutrition. First of all, Tim notes that the survey was conducted six weeks after the invasion of Iraq, not (as I said) less than three.

Pardon the ambiguity on my part. I was counting from the fall of Baghdad, which marked the end of major combat operations. But lets just say six weeks for the sake of argument. According to Tim, "Adesnik seems to be unaware that a sick child can lose a lot of weight in a few weeks."

Actually, I'm quite aware of that. What I doubt is that 200,000 thousand children can get that sick in the space of a few weeks. Major combat operations were fairly localized and coalition bombing raids did not target civilian infrastructure.

While most Iraqis probably were dependent on official food rationing programs that may have been disrupted during the war, I tend to doubt that such a disruption would translate so immediately into a national epidemic of malnutrition. Of course, that is just speculation -- but Tim is only offering more of the same.

Next up, we come to the issue of logic. I suggested that malnutrition may have been far more widespread before the invasion than Saddam wanted to admit. Tim responds:

Even if, for the sake of argument, we believe that Saddam could force UNICEF into cooking the statistics, why would Saddam have been artificially lowering the figures? Surely he would have been raising them so that he could point to the harm that the sanctions were inflicting on Iraqi children.

The premise here is that Saddam's propaganda always sought to persuade Western audiences that Iraq was a victim, not an aggressor. That same premise led us to conclude that Saddam had extensive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. After all, if he didn't have them, why wouldn't he allow foreign inspectors to demonstrate that Iraq was a victim, not an aggressor?

The absence of the stockpiles suggests that we don't understand Saddam nearly as well as we thought we did. Perhaps Saddam believed that if he were exposed as a paper tiger, the Iraqi military revolt. The premise behind that bit of speculation is that Saddam was more concerned about his image at home than abroad.

Thus, perhaps Saddam wanted to downplay malnutrition in order to persuade his subjects that things were not so bad. Or perhaps he wanted the hide the degree to which precious supplies of food and medication were being given out only to Sunni children, while the Shi'ite majority was left to suffer.

The bottom line is that speculation about Saddam's motives is futile.

Finally, let me hedge my bets just a bit. Let's say that tomorrow, Tim turns up definitive evidence that there was a second survey done this year and that the child malnutrition rate in Iraq is 7.7%. It was also 7.7% last year, at least in Baghdad -- which suggests that the malnutrition rate has been stable for almost eighteen months now. In contrast, the WaPo reports that the malnutrition rate has "shot up...this year."
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# Posted 2:35 PM by David Adesnik  

PEOPLE POWER IN THE UKRAINE: We can only hope that the democratic movement led by Viktor Yuschenko will prevail over the Moscow-sponsored thugocracy that rigged the results of Sunday's election.

For background on the vote, check out this excellent by Stephen Sestanovich. While the State Department has already spoken out against electoral fraud, it is the reaction from the White House that will matter most.

On a historical note, the official color of the Ukrainian democratic movement is orange, a potent reminder of the bright yellow chosen by democratic reformers in the Philippines in 1986. Just like Corazon Aquino, Viktor Yuschenko is relying on massive peaceful protests to overturn the results of a fraudulent election.

Fashion may not be the most important factor in politics, but bright colors sometimes have bright futures.
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# Posted 2:24 PM by David Adesnik  

IMMINENT TRIUMPHALISM: As Patrick mentioned, Dan Rather has resigned, effective next March. Rather insists that his resignation has nothing to do with Memogate. According to the AP

He made no mention of the National Guard story in announcing the change, saying he had agreed with CBS executives last summer that after the Nov. 2 election would be the right time to leave.

Yet someone at the WaPo clearly thinks that Rather's explanation is pure bulls***. Underneath the link to the AP's report on the ever-changing WaPo homepage, there is a subhead that reads

After flap over forged documents, the anchor will step down in March.

Objectively speaking, this statement is true. Only the most confused of metaphysicians would insist that March 2005 precedes September 2004. Yet the purpose of this objective statement is to advance a (probably correct) subjective interpretation.

Apparently, Dan Rather isn't the only one who needs to refine his definition of journalistic detachment and objectivity. Even so, I hope the blogosphere doesn't embarrass itself by going overboard in celebrating its victory over the notorious MSM.
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# Posted 1:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG: STILL AMONG THE WEB'S TOP hits for 'something interesting'. Somewhat more distressingly, also still the top hit for 'ivory coast porno.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:10 PM by Patrick Belton  

DAN RATHER STEPPING DOWN. You heard it here first (or may have, anyway). Blogosphere one, Lazy Coddled Journalistic Profession zero. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:04 PM by Patrick Belton  

AL QAEDA 2.0: THE CONFERENCE: Just to clear up any potential misunderstanding, our foreign policy society's Washington chapter is not lending its support to a conference with Al Qaeda, but to a conference on it. The conference is being organised by Steve Clemons, who recently spoke to our Washington chapter. Among the speakers are Bruce Hoffman from Rand, the Kennedy School's Jessica Stern, CNN's Peter Bergen, academic Rohan Gunaratna, the WaPo's David Ignatius, and several former case officers from the Agency with a background in operations against the organisation. It is on 2 December in the Russell Senate Office Building (having incidentally worked in the building, SOB truly is the official acronym, with no disrespect of which I'm aware toward the Senator from Georgia). More information here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE QUEEN has delivered the Queen's Speech this morning, setting out the Government's legislative programme for the coming year. Chief proposals include increased powers to local municipalities to deal with anti-social behaviour, a Serious Organised Crime Agency to parallel the American FBI, a national identification card (not immediately to be made mandatory), and creation in law of an offence of incitement to religious hatred. Black Rod has again had the door to the Commons slammed fast in his face; as someone whose aesthetics, if not politics, are rather conservative, all is well, or well as it can get, with the world. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

IS IT JUST ME, OR DO criminal sex rings follow UN peacekeepers wherever they're deployed? (c.f., Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo... I'm looking for this 'superior moral legitimacy' thing, I'm just not seeing it.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:01 PM by David Adesnik  

THE GOP SHOULD SIMPLY DO WHAT'S RIGHT: Stephen Bainbridge says that it was wrong for the GOP to do Tom DeLay a favor by lifting its ban on indicted congressmen from serving in the party leadership. Glenn agrees.

Amy Ridenour doesn't. She says the investigation of DeLay is politically motivated and that the GOP should fight fire with fire. Mark Kleiman says the DA going after Congressman Tom is actually a consummate professional.

I don't know enough to weigh on that subject. I don't like Tom DeLay one bit, but that's not really the point. The GOP decided to ban indicted members from serving in its leadership after an indicated Democrat refused to step down from his leadership position some time ago. To change the rule now that DeLay is in hot water would simply be hypocritical.


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# Posted 8:35 PM by David Adesnik  

IVORY TOWER POLITICS: Last Friday, I attended a colloquium at The Miller Center on the subject of anti-intellectualism in American politics. Over lunch, we discssed a paper on that subject by Prof. Colleen Shogan of George Mason University.

I feel compelled to respond to Prof. Shogan's paper because it embodied so fully the manner in which professional scholarship rests on a foundation of unstated liberal presuppositions. One might describe the tone and style of Prof. Shogan's paper as thoughtful, sedate, and even non-partisan. Yet on almost every page there are statements that strongly suggest an unacknowledged debt to a liberal worldview.

Yet before describing exactly what is in Prof. Shogan's paper, it may be more important to mention what isn't. Based on a close reading of public and private statements by Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush, Prof. Shogan concludes that anti-intellectualism is part and parcel of a Republican strategy to attract less affluent voters. Perhaps. Yet not once does Prof. Shogan consider that the GOP's anti-intellectualism represents a conservative response to the intense commitment of an overwhelming majority of American intellectuals to a passionately liberal ideological agenda.

The conceptual roadblock that prevents Prof. Shogan from recognizing the ideological nature of American intellectuals is her identification of ideology and intellectualism as polar opposites. For example, she refers to President Reagan's "reliance upon ideology rather than intellectual prowess" and observes that

As Reagan demonstrated, ideologues and intellectuals do not make the best bedfellows. (Page 24)

In contrast to her (often justifiable) criticism of President Reagan, Shogan provides an extremely positive, almost glowing description of the academy. She writes that

The intellectual community is inherently critical of the status quo and often serves as the catalyst for social upheaval and development. (Page 8)

Shogan also takes care to point out that the "lasting, negative stereotype of the intellectual" grew out of "a clash between the educated elite and the party machine politicians" in the Progressive era. (Page 4) In other words, Republican anti-intellectualism amounts to nothing less than an embrace of reactionary prejudices that retard social development.

Naturally, this identification of the GOP with social regression begs the question of why Republican candidates have prevailed so often in presidential elections. In the manner of Thomas Frank, Shogan asserts that

For Democrats, fostering a populist connection is an easier task, since liberal policy proposals emphaisze the diffuse benefits of government intervention and social welfare. (Page 7)

According to Shogan, the voting public fails to recognize the advantages of voting Democratic, because television gets in the way. Shogan writes that

The political era of the sound-byte [sic] frustrates an extended intellectual discussion of complex policy issues...

Furthermore, the plebiscitary presidency is dependent upon the creation of "spectacles" that encourage awestruck citizens to become passive spectators rather than active participants in politics. Spectacles lend themselves to the portrayal of presidents as energetic, dynamic, hyper-masculine individuals who defeat evil in the name of American democracy, exemplified most recently by George W. Bush's landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln. [Do I detect a note of sarcasm here? --ed.] The intellectual process of deliberation cannot constitute a spectacle. (Page 6)

Unsurprisingly, Shogan doesn't even consider the possibility that media coverage may favor Democratic presidential candidates (cf. "Rather, Dan").

In any event, Shogan goes on to argue that Republican candidates also benefit from the fact that evangelical voters are decidedly anti-intellectual. According to Shogan,

Animosity between evangelicals and intellectuals in the United States has existed for over a century. As theologians, Darwinists, and scientists discredited religious fundamentalism and literal interpretations of the Bible, evangelicals were displaced from mainstream intellectual discourse. (Pages 10-11)

While I can understand how one might argue that science has discredited creationism, Shogan seems unaware of the fact that science cannot discredit those all-important passages in the Bible that consist of moral prescriptions rather than statements of fact.

'Thou shalt not kill', 'Thou shalt not steal' and other commandments -- including the controversial ban on homosexual behavior -- are simply not amenable to scientific proof or disproof. Thus, it is somewhat misleading for Shogan to write that "Religious and moral imperatives are consistent with anti-intellectual leadership stances." (Pages 10-11)

On a similar note, Shogan writes that

Bush's anti-intellectualism and moralism are complementary and reinforcing.

The example that illustrates this point is Bush's "visceral" reaction to one of Bob Woodward's questions about North Korea. During an interview with Woodward, Bush emotionally shouted

"I loathe Kim Jong Il!" Bush shouted, waving his finer in the air. "I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he is starving his people...It is visceral. Maybe it's my religion, maybe it's my--but I feel passionate about this.

One would hope that even the most nuanced contemplation of Kim Jong Il's brutality would produce a similar outburst. Yet Shogan writes that

By definition, a visceral reaction cannot be reflective; it comes from the "gut" or from deep-seated beliefs that are firmly rooted in place. (Pages 27-8)

It seems that even when Bush is right, he's wrong. Anyhow, Shogan concludes her analysis of Bush's anti-intellectualism with a back-handed compliment:

There is no doubt that the "cowboy" persona performs well as a plebiscitary [read: electoral] tool, but its utility to fight the international War on Terror is more limited.

There is something to this argument, yet the way in which Shogan takes its validity completely for granted demonstrates the degree to which an unstated liberal worldview animates an academic work that presents itself as detached and non-partisan.

At Friday's colloquium, I made many of the same points that I make in this post, although somewhat more briefly. Prof. Shogan responded that my criticism is misdirected, since she has more positive things to say about Bush than any of her colleagues. For example, she recognizes that Bush is sincere and that he is very successful at putting together winning coalitions.

In other words, Shogan has absolutely nothing good to say about Bush's policies, although she acknowledges that he is a formidable politician. However, it is her first statement that is far more revealing. If she represents the right-wing of the American academy, then it should come as no surprise that Republicans lash out so often at the professoriate. Thus it is quite ironic (but not at all surprising) that Prof. Shogan attributes the GOP's anti-intellectualism to its conservatism rather than her own liberalism and that of her colleagues.
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# Posted 8:26 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT SO FAST, PATRICK: Long before Washington had Senators, it had Nationals. According to the selfsame article you cite,

Nationals was the name of the Washington franchise as early as the late 1800s, and it was the official nickname of the team from just after the turn of the century into the 1950s, though Senators gained popularity during the late stages of that period as well. Owner Calvin Griffith officially changed the name to Senators in 1957, and that franchise left town twice.

The name 'Senators' is clearly bad luck, since the Senators have already abandoned Washington twice -- perhaps because the District of Columbia has no representatives in the United States Senate.

However, those committed naming our team after the least representative elected body in the Western Hemisphere may find some consolation in the fact that

The primary [Nationals] cap -- which Williams and other officials donned immediately after unveiling the logo -- are red with a script "W", exact replicas of the old Washington Senators hats.

As for you Mr. Belton, isn't it time for you to come clean and just admit that you your affinity for the nation's capital approximates the affinity of Michael Moore for George W. Bush?
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# Posted 8:21 PM by David Adesnik  

GOING, GOING, GONZALES: The new Attorney General may be here to stay, yet both this editorial and this column argue persuasively that his credibility is already gone.
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# Posted 8:13 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH'S NAIVE MULTILATERALISM: There is no excuse for the decision to accept a watered down Security Council resolution rather than a real mandate to stop the genocide. This embarrassment should remind America's liberal multilateralists that the moral legitimacy of the United Nations is less of a fact than a fiction. And it should remind our conservative unilateralists that the President just doesn't understand his own rhetoric about "the transformational power of liberty."
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# Posted 7:25 PM by Patrick Belton  

MOBILE PHONE CAMERA + WEDDING + SAUDIA ARABIA = bad idea (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:35 PM by Patrick Belton  

IMMODEST PROPOSAL: Joe Gandelman points out that embedding reporters with terrorists may not on reflection be the wonderful idea that Guardian's Alex Thompson is so enthusiastic about... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:38 PM by Patrick Belton  

GRUMBLE: Washington's new franchise has been officially, and stupidly, dubbed the Nationals. Not only is this a remarkably tone-deaf rendering of tradition in a sport for which tradition is its lifeblood - come on, everyone knows that the baseball team that plays in Washington is supposed to be the Senators - but the only thing more regrettable than the bland, distinctive-as-soap name is the justification put forward for it. Thus Mayor Anthony Williams (who, like most American politicians, wise and otherwise, was educated in New Haven rather than that dumb jocks school slightly to the north): by choosing a sucky name for Washington's ball team, so the argument goes, the actual Senators will be embarassed into granting the District representation in Congress. Jesus, where did he learn about politics? As sports misnomers go, this one is up there with moving the Jazz from New Orleans to that second city of jazz, Salt Lake City, Utah (or the Brooklyn Dodgers to that precious borough's geometric opposite, though a substantial contingent of our readers will write back saying 'wait, they're not still the Brooklyn Dodgers?')

On the other hand, 'Nationals' has one thing going for it: at least it boasts several interesting anagrams - A Slain Ton, A Latin Son, A Loan Isn't, A Tonal Sin, a Stalin No, A Nina Lost, A Last In On, A Ann I Lost, Annal It So (that's two n's, people), Ana Sin Lot, Anna I Lost, Satan Olin (a well-known, malevolent philanthropist), Santa Loin, Snail Nato, Satin Loan, Tina Salon, Tan As Lion, Salt An Ion (several of these sound like good band names, incidentally...unlike the Nationals....). I'll be rooting for the Santa Loin, myself. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:46 PM by David Adesnik  

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HARVARD OF THE PROLETARIAT: This coming spring, my father will return to the City College of New York to celebrate his forty-year reunion. For my father, as well as for countless other children of working-class immigrants from Eastern Europe, City College occupies a mythic place in American life.

The College is an institution that opened its doors to those didn't have the financial resources or social connections necessary for admission to the Ivy League. Nonetheless, the intellectual standards for admission to the College were almost impossibly high because there was so much talent waiting to be discovered among the new Americans of New York, Eastern European or otherwise. As a result, City College became known as 'The Harvard of the Proletariat'. It graduates include numerous Nobel laureates as well as the current Secretary of State.

Sadly, the College stumbled into a long era of decline in the decades after my father's graduation. Yet today, there is cause to celebrate once again. This weekend, Lev Sviridov of the Class of 2005 was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship:

For Mr. Sviridov, who scavenged for cans and bottles in trash barrels in his early years in New York, the Rhodes represents not just prestige but a windfall.

His mother, Alexandra Sviridov, was a journalist and filmmaker in Moscow who exposed Russian government officials who were former KGB operatives. They came to New York for a visit in 1993, when Mr. Sviridov was 11, then stayed, afraid to return home when tanks rolled in. He was homeless for a time as his mother fought for the right to stay in the United States and searched for a job. Mr. Sviridov has himself held many jobs to bring in income; he said he would probably send part of his Rhodes stipend home to New York to help his mother...

Mr. Sviridov said that he had found the City College faculty very supportive, and that many professors told him they had followed paths like his.

"No one was born into something," he said. "They were all self-made people. My education there is terrific."

I am proud to see that once again, City College has been able to serve as a gateway to the most ambitious of American dreams.
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# Posted 10:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

STRENGTH WITH PRINCIPLE, AND HOW TO CREATE TRUMAN DEMOCRATS: The co-directors of the Truman National Security Project just sent us their interesting thoughts toward how Democrats can gain public trust on security as the party of principled strength; among other things, they explore the relationship between Realism and Wilsonianism within the Democratic party, as well as the putative values gap. Since one of the directors of the Truman Project happens to be my wife, Rachel, I'm happy to include their thoughts in full here.

It’s been just two weeks since the polls closed, and Democrats have accepted that their defeat stemmed from losing the values-debate. But in the first minutes after the election, conventional wisdom served up another theory for the Democratic loss: Americans don’t trust Democrats to protect them from terror. These voting blocks were only three points apart. But these theories are in danger of becoming mutually exclusive. Instead, they need to be unified. Americans want a candidate with a strong moral vision, and a commitment to their security. For Democrats to win elections again, we must embody strength, with principle.

Values are perennially important in America, but the 2004 election turned on national security. In poll after poll, voters ranked security as a top priority. Even the “town hall” debate, billed as a domestic issues forum, focused almost entirely on foreign policy. Exit polls confirmed that 19% of voters rated terrorism a priority—and Bush had a 86% advantage among these voters. When Americans fear for their lives more than their livelihoods, the old mantra that they vote with their pocketbooks does not hold.

Yet it is hardly the fault of the Kerry team that Democrats could not win on security. Democrats face a perception problem too deep to be addressed with policies and messaging, or to be overcome in a single campaign. It is a problem of values, of the chasm within the Democratic Party between values and strength, between the Party of Idealists, and the Party of Pragmatists.

The Party of Idealists, embodied by the Howard Dean movement, talks in the ethically-based language of Democratic activists. But scarred by the post-Vietnam aversion to American power, they remain deeply uncomfortable with American national interest, and with the harder tools of foreign policy, particularly the military and intelligence communities. This vocal and visible camp scares Americans, who feel that the Democratic Party does not value their safety.

Moreover, while these individuals see themselves as upholding moral values, their first instinct is often to distrust American action. Thus, they embrace human rights—but think words like democracy and freedom are for neo-cons. They build shantytowns to protest apartheid in South Africa, but are silent when terrorists attack a school in Beslan. Their policies often end up supporting repressive regimes and undermining the values they claim to uphold—leading Americans to see our party as confused and morally rudderless.

Many of our foreign policy experts live in another Democratic Party—the Party of Pragmatists. Perhaps out of fear of being lumped with starry-eyed Wilsonians, they invoke pragmatism when attempting to convey hard-nosed strength. This cohort offers strong, sensible policies, but is deeply uncomfortable grounding these policies in values. Their realpolitik turns off our party’s base, who are led to believe that there is little difference between conservatives and Democrats on foreign policy. Meanwhile, by talking policies and methods, not values and vision, they fail to provide a coherent, overarching message that can inspire the American people.

The more our activists trumpet their moral cause, the more our experts avoid values-based language. Instead of harnessing strength and values together, Democrats see these forces in opposition. No wonder we can’t convince Americans that we have a principled and strong foreign policy!

To regain preeminence in national security, we must reunite security and values within the Democratic worldview. This belief has birthed a movement among a new generation of Democrats. We were not scarred by Vietnam. Instead, we are jointly committed to the values that make us Democrats, and to forging a foreign policy strong enough to stop the deadly, asymmetric, ideological threat of fundamentalist terrorism. In a few months, we have become a force of hundreds through word of mouth alone. We have found many mentors among those who served in previous Democratic administrations, who also see the need for a strong and principled foreign policy. We call ourselves Truman Democrats, because we believe that Truman has much to teach us on the cusp of a new age.

Truman believed that a strong foreign policy was one that combined the traditional tools of strength with values that offered hope, justice, and opportunity at home and abroad. Through such enlightened self-interest, America gained legitimacy and power, military and diplomatic strength, the ability to secure ourselves and the ability to lead others for our joint security. This was, and is, the Democratic alternative foreign policy. This is strength, with principle.

So long as we face a real threat of terror at home, national security will remain at the top of voters’ agendas. Democrats will win elections again when we can convince Americans that we value their security, and that we have a coherent, principled posture that provides a real alternative to the Republican vision. It is the time to forge a party that can lead once more. Let’s get started.

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# Posted 9:27 PM by David Adesnik  

RACISM AT THE WaPo? I'm pretty sure that only us folks who subscribe to the print edition of the Post read the Style section. But actually, there's all sorts of political stuff hidden in there. For example:

Several minority staff members lamented that a white man recently was chosen over a woman and a black man as the [Washington Post]'s new managing editor.

Philip Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news, who is white, was selected by [Executive Editor Leonard] Downie to be the paper's No. 2 editor earlier this month, besting Eugene Robinson, assistant managing editor of Style, who is black, and Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news.

"We're crushed," said national reporter Darryl Fears at the meeting. Fears, who is black, organized two meetings of African American staffers in recent days in response to Bennett's promotion. "A lot of our worst suspicions were confirmed about the ability of African Americans and other minorities to rise to the highest level of the best papers in the world," he said...

"I didn't take this personally," Bennett said. "I felt several people made clear that there wasn't hostility toward me as much as a very legitimate series of questions and concerns about the newsroom's commitment to diversity."

This article seems comes across as a consolation prize for the disgruntled minority staff, not an informative account of what took place. Compared to accurate reporting about what goes on, in say, Iraq, reporting about internal affairs at the Post should be pretty easy. So obviously, someone at the Post has decided that a hint should be given, but that the full story should not be told.
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# Posted 9:13 PM by David Adesnik  

OMBUDSMAN MISSES THE POINT: WaPo ombudsman Michael Getler apologizes today for the Post's insufficient coverage of the impact that the war in Iraq has had on civilians.

In spite of OxBlog's loud protest, Mr. Getler has nothing to say about the extremely misleading data on civilian casualties provided by iraqbodycount.net and reprinted by the Post on a regular basis.
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# Posted 3:10 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRATIC DARK HORSES FOR 2008: Reihan Salam has the round-up, including a gratuitious reference to Taco Bell. Meanwhile, Michelle Cottle is arguing that it would be "insane" for the Democrats to nominate Hillary.

I'm not so sure. After eight years of quiet work in the Senate, perhaps she will emerge as a genuinely likable candidate. Or perhaps she will be the same tone-deaf candidate who ran for Senate four years ago and won decisively because she was a national figure running against a GOP novice in a heavily blue State. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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# Posted 1:16 PM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ -- "MALNUTRITION NEARLY DOUBLE WHAT IT WAS BEFORE INVASION": That the headline from today's WaPo. Naturally, the conclusion that malnutrition has doubled depends on the uncritical comparison of statistics compiled while Saddam was in power with those compiled more recently.

Just as naturally, the WaPo never makes this point explicitly and never suggests that the older statistics might be questionable. According to the article's second sentence,

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year.

Considerably later on, we find out that:

International aid efforts and the U.N. oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 1996 to 4 percent in 2002.

I do believe that the oil-for-"food" program improved nutrition for Iraqi children. Corruption at the UN may have been pervasive, but it seems that most of the money still went for food. But why should I attribute any credibility to pseudo-statistics such as the 11 and 4 percent malnutrition figures?

Before continuing with my criticism of the Post, I think it is worth point out that malnutrition rates in Iraq are apalling, regardless of whether they are higher or lower than they were before the invasion. As the Post points out,

Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

So no one should pretend that this isn't problem. But why is this problem on the front page of the Washington Post? Because the problem is supposedly America's fault.

Even so, the Post does illustrate that some of this fault is indirect. For example, one apparent cause for the rise of malnutrition (and the widespread lack of health care) in Iraq is the fact that violence has forced relief workers out of the country. The United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and CARE International have all left the country.

While the Post does mention the specific incidents -- "a truck bombing", a "director...was kidnapped" -- that led these agencies to haul anchor, it never connects the dots to make an obvious point: that the insurgents have deliberately sought to increase the misery of the Iraqi people by violently attacking those who seek to make their lives better.

UDPATE: Reader OV points to this UNICEF study of malnutrition in Iraq which also reports that 7.7% of Iraqi children suffer from acute malnourishment. The problem is that this UNICEF study was conducted less than three weeks after the invasion of Iraq.

This raises a lot of questions. Were two different studies conducted, one last year and one this year? If so, then the malnutrition rate has remained essentially stable since the US invasion of Iraq -- and the increase from 4 to 7.7 percent was Saddam's doing.

Or are the two studies one and the same? Both were conducted by Iraq's Ministry of Health with help from the United Nations. If the two studies are the same, then the earlier date (April-May 2003) is presumably the correct one. The political implications of such a scenario are the same as above.

Finally, did the WaPo simply get confused and report on last year's study as if it were new? I'd put my money on that one. Even so, if any of these three scenarios is correct, then the entire thrust of the Post's article is very, very wrong.

UPDATE: Both this UN press release as well as this one confirm that the 7.7% figure was publicly available by May of 2003. One should note, however, that it applies only to Baghdad.

UPDATE: The WaPo identified two organizations as having worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Health to conduct the nutrition survey. They are Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the UN Development Program. Both IAIS and UNDP have webpages devoted to Iraq, but neither seems to have information about the malnutrition statistics.
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# Posted 3:41 PM by Patrick Belton  

FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! I've been an ardent supporter, for some time, of all attempts to create online libraries across subjects on the internet which are vast, useful, and free to access. In this vein, I've been happy to expend praise on Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia's online encyclopaedia, on Bartleby's compilation of reference works and the Harvard six-foot-shelf, and on attempts by H-net to create academically worthwhile communities of research and scholarship conducted entirely online. (Sneak peak: we're incidentally in the process right now of beginning a listserv there for research on democratization and the promotion of rule of law and human rights, to be called, surprisingly, H-Democracy...)

I've only recently discovered Wikisource, brought to you by the same people who created Wikipedia. Both are free to access, and both, significantly, are completely collaborative efforts, with no editing other than that provided by other users, and depending entirely upon the contributions of volunteers. So, you'd obviously think it'd suck, wouldn't you? Who'd ever realistically think you could leave a blank sheet somewhere accessible to everyone in the world, invite them to write an encyclopaedia on it, and it would end up filled with anything other than graffiti at best, and hate-filled diatribes in a more likely case? Who indeed.

On Wiksource, I've recently been perusing night time reading (yes, Josh) from the Qur'an, from the Iliad and Odyssey (Butler translations both, with Greek available as well), and from the complete Shakespearean corpus. All of Leaves of Grass is on there, along with every state of the union and inaugural address, and several Upanishads. As a new project there are lots of blank spaces, but if you hit one, you just might be able to do something to fill it.....

UPDATE - AND STILL MORE FREE STUFF!: Bo Cowgill by email points out something I hadn't yet known existed - Google's new portal, in beta testing, for academic research at http://scholar.google.com. So if you've gotten so accustomed to reading Professors Drezner, Volokh, and Reynolds online that it seems wrong to read their academic work in print, now's your opportunity!

Also, our friend MB points to a TCS piece by former Britannica editor Robert McHenry, who argues that regression to the mean should apply for Wikipedia. Interesting argument, and I think it bears research. I'm not sure he's right, though, because: (a) regression to the mean involves random distributions, whereas wikipedia writing is an intentional activity; (b) even construed as such, prior versions aren't deleted, but are available for resurrection by subsequent editors if intervening instances constituted retrogression, therefore the relevant probabilistic question becomes whether a retrograding editor will be followed by one perspicacious enough to revert to an earlier version; finally, (c) regression to the mean is generally a better explanation of the behaviour or characteristics of individuals than of groups of individuals. But I'd be interested to hear thoughts on this point. (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:05 PM by David Adesnik  

MAKE WAY FOR THE FIGHTINGEST CHAMP OF THEM ALL! That's right folks, it's JBL: John Bradshaw Layfield. JBL has finally brought a measure of sophistication and civility to the ranks of professional wrestling.

JBL himself was once a barroom brawler with an attitude, but now he's changed his ways and has become a model citizen. His financial acumen has made him a millionaire, and his athletic prowess have made him a champion.

Tonight, I will have the privilege of seeing JBL live at the DC Armory, when the Smackdown! Holla, Holla, Holla! tour arrives in the nation's capital. There are still some tickets available, so head over to Ticketmaster right now if you don't want to miss the chance of a lifetime.

If you're at the Armory tongiht, don't forget to say 'hi'. You can recognize me by my black cowboy hat, my well-tailored sport coat, and my Italian silk tie. Because OxBlog believes in living up to the example set by the greatest champion of the age, JBL.
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# Posted 2:08 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE GAME WATCH: In purely football terms, looks like an easy one for Harvard (9-0), given that The Good Guys are 5-4, and Crimson running back Clifton Dawson has rushed for 16 touchdowns - along with eating his roommate for an automatic 4.0, sorry, 15 for the term*. The Bad Guys, for their part, will wrap up not only the Ivy League title but their first 10-victory season in 98 years; which, as a consolation prize, is roughly how long it's been since one of their alumni has served a complete term as president.... (Have we mentioned, incidentally, that Steven Hadley (YLS '72) has just become national security advisor? Harvard gets the Ivy League football championship...Yale the presidency, National Security Council, and of course, CIA.)

Of course, the real contest is as usual between the student newspapers, to see which can write the funnier pre-game articles. The Crimson has a lame article about rules. Typical. Also, the mandatory in-your-face op-ed isn't, how shall we put it, funny (unless you find sneering oddly hilarious), although it makes for better reading after the 'drama in real life'-style grad student blocks intruder at window article. That said, and any connection by this blog to the place notwithstanding, the YDN wins hands-down in the laughs department, with pieces on how love and one-night stands conquer all rivalries ('Harvard students really are a lot like us: overachieving and ... socially awkward'), and a plea to 'just say no to The Game' ('Smack dealer approach: Just go this once'). There's also a comparative anthropology of parties at both institutions ('kegs, hip-hop music and dancing on a sticky linoleum floor' featuring prominently in both case studies), which seems lame only until you go read the Crimson, then come back and give it a second go. There, much better this time.

This blog's endorsement? We could do worse than second Smita Gopisetty and Katherine Steve's plea for principled centrism and moderation amidst all the passion ('Make love and not war at The Game,' YDN): 'Should we not look to Bob Dylan's presence at Harvard as a sign that we should make love, not football? So if you must go to The Game, do us a favor: attend the Dylan concert, hook up with a Cantab'. We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Just not Mr Tagorda. He's married, ladies.

* Talk about grade inflation. Also, any claims made about Clifton Dawson in this sentence are vicious untrue calumny (hey, he's a pretty big guy, even if he is an Ivy League football player...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE BORDER FOX Dessie O'Hare has been released from Castlerea Prison. Some of my Armagh republican friends are oddly rather fond of him, for reasons that rather escape me. Don't look for him to be able to get any dentists' appointments, though. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:39 PM by David Adesnik  

DUMB CELEBRITIES MEDDLING IN POLITICS:

"You know me as a motion picture actor but tonight I'm just a citizen pretty concerned about the national election next month and more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple years ago". --Ronald Reagan, October 1948

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# Posted 3:17 AM by David Adesnik  

THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE: What was Colin Powell thinking? It's not like anyone didn't see this coming.
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# Posted 2:41 AM by David Adesnik  

THREE COUNTERARGUMENTS ABOUT THE PHILIPPINES: It has been suggested that there were three significant flaws in yesterday's rebuttal of the NYT op-ed by Professors Press and Valentino.

First of all, the op-ed specified that its list of seven historical examples included only those instances in which a "powerful army" confronted a major insurgency. Given that American soldiers never fought against the Filipino insurgents known as Huks, this example should not be included on the list.

I agree with this point in the technical sense that the Filipino example doesn't fit the given definition. However, I think that my analysis still applies, since the reason that American soldiers never had to get directly involved in the Philippines was precisely because we defused the insurgency through an initial strategy of democracy promotion. Had we done the same in Vietnam, the result might have been very different. (For the benefit of EM, I will add that the United States may have had no choice but to cancel the 1956 elections in Vietnam, but there was no reason not to promote democracy there in the late 1950s.)

Speaking more broadly, one might say that compiling a list of instances in which "powerful armies" confronted major insurgencies is an example of what social scientists refer to as 'selection on the dependent variable'. In other words, if your criteria for inclusion is armed intervention by a great power, then you are necessarily looking at those instances in which the great power failed to mitigate the insurgency indirectly.

Had the French chosen to promote democracy in Vietnam rather than reassert their imperial privileges, they could have prevented an armed conflict. I will tentatively suggest that the same is true of Algeria, although I am not so familiar with the situation there. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also belongs in this category because it was basically an unneccessary imperial adventure.

The Russian case is less than clear cut because Chechnya is a part of Russia. However, had Russia promoted Chechnyan autonomy rather than responding with a brutal military assault on Chechnyan civilians, there is every reason to believe that today's insurgency would not exist.

The Israeli case is even less clear cut because the Israeli occupation reflects the outcome of war undertaken in self-defense. Promoting democracy may not have been an option if Israel was supposed to return the occupied territories in exchange for peace. Democracy promotion became more viable as a strategy after Oslo, yet Israel made the not indefensible choice to tolerate an Arafat dictatorship in the hopes that Abu Ammar would destroy Hamas. In hindsight, Israel made the wrong decision.

The second alleged flaw in yesterday's rebuttal is the assertion that the Philippines reflects an example of successful democratization. After all, approximately twenty years after the defeat of the Huk rebellion, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and transformed his elected presidency into a dictatorship.

In response, I would suggest that the passage of so much time between the end of the Huk war and the declration of martial indicates that the United States initial effort to promote democracy was not necessarily flawed. Rather, the problem was that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (whom I do not hesitate to describe as a Kissingerian realist) demonstrated no concern about the breakdown of democracy in the Philippines. Ideologically committed to the belief that right-wing dictators are more reliable allies than center-left democracies, Nixon and Kissinger did irreparable damage to America's standing in the world.

Moreover, I would suggest that those today who consider the emergence of strongman in Iraq to be the lesser of all possible evils are Kissinger's intellectual heirs. They argue that the emergence of a strongman is the most realistic option for Iraq, but see reality through a narrow 'realist' prism. (Conversely, one might say OxBlog perceives reality in Iraq through a narrow Wilsonian prism.)

Finally, the third alleged flaw in yesterday's rebuttal is that the Huk rebellion isn't comparable to the insurgency in Iraq because the Iraqis are a much more committed and capable foe. Yes, that's true. But part of the reason that the Huks never achieved the same level of competence is that the the American and Filipinos defused popular support by relying on a strategy of democracy promotion.

So, then, why are the insurgents so strong in Iraq is we have been applying a similar strategy there? The answer is that the Iraqis have the benefits that come both with being the remnants of well-armed regime. Moreover, the Sunni insurgents can exploit ethnic differences that didn't exist in the example of the Huks, who were also Filipino Catholics.

One should note, however, that there is an Islamic separatist rebellion in the Philippines that has been going on for an extremely long time. It initially gained momentum because of crude and violent efforts to suppress it, but abated in response to a more compromising approach.

Similarly, a second Communist insurgency broke out in the Philippines under Marcos. Thanks to his brutality, a primitve force numbering in the low hundreds expanded to an armed force of more than 10,000 in just over a decade, even in the absence of outside help. Then, after the return of democracy to the Philippines in 1986 (with the help of the United States), the insurgency began to abate. Thus, one might say that the Philippines represents
not one, but two examples of how democracy promotion is the best prescription for counterinsurgency.
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# Posted 2:17 AM by David Adesnik  

JUAN COLE HAS COMMON SENSE! You've got to give credit where credit is due. Cole writes that:

The Marines at Fallujah are operating in accordance with a UNSC Resolution and have all the legitimacy in international law that flows from that. The Allawi government asked them to undertake this Fallujah mission.

To compare them to the murderous thugs who kidnapped CARE worker Margaret Hassan, held her hostage, terrified her, and then killed her is frankly monstrous. The multinational forces are soldiers fighting a war in which they are targetting combatants and sometimes accidentally killing innocents. The hostage-takers are terrorists deliberately killing innocents. It is simply not the same thing.

Now, I don't like the timing of the Fallujah mission...But the basic idea of attacking the guerrillas holding up in that city is not in and of itself criminal or irresponsible. A significant proportion of the absolutely horrible car bombings that have killed hundreds and thousands of innocent Iraqis, especially Shiites, were planned and executed from Fallujah. There were serious and heavily armed forces in Fallujah planning out ways of killing hundreds to prevent elections from being held in January. These are mass murderers, serial murderers. If they were fighting only to defend Fallujah, that would be one thing; even the Marines would respect them for that. They aren't, or at least, a significant proportion of them aren't. They are killing civilians elsewhere in order to throw Iraq into chaos and avoid the enfranchisement of the Kurds and Shiites.

I couldn't have said it better myself. (Hat tip: JW)
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# Posted 7:23 AM by Patrick Belton  

STILL MORE CONTINUING ENTENTE CORDIALE COVERAGE: I'm working on a piece, between now and the end of the year, on France's relationship with its Muslim community. Please do get in touch, if you'd like and you've something to suggest on the topic. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

CONTINUING OUR ENTENTE CORDIALE COVERAGE, Guardian answers the question everybody's been asking - how can French women eat like pigs and still look so hot?* Answer: snobbery, mostly, but a bit of vanity too.

* Usual disclaimer about Jewish Alaskans applies, minus the non-kosher porcine reference. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG SNUBS CHIRAC: First off, may I note that I love France as a country, a people, and a culture - French people, French literateurs, French intellectuals, French taxi drivers, French joie de vivre, French wine, French food, French cheese, French women (who only get sexier as they get older*), the French capital, the French art of living, the Left Bank, the Right Bank, and many other things French besides. I just happen to mildly disapprove of every political manifestation produced by that nation since roughly, oh, 1400 (earlier if you count the Avignon papacy).

More recently, the world leader the tabloids dub Le Worm has referred to the Anglo-French relationship as a 'kind of violent love,' making you worry slightly for Madame Chirac, and says 'we enjoyed hating each other.' After rather wormily cutting a mutually advantageous deal two years ago with the Germans over the Common Agricultural Policy at a European summit before Mr Blair even arrived, Chirac told the Prime Minister that he (Blair, not Chirac) was 'badly brought up.' Demonstrating the concept, Chirac has since told Blair that the Prime Minister's son Leo (who politely says 'bonjour Chirac' whenever Jacques slithers, sorry enters, Number 10) would not thank him for deposing Saddam, and that Blair was not an 'honest broker' in the world scene because of his amicable relations with Washington. And this, mind you, in the lead-up to a visit to London to celebrate the centenary of, oh, the Entente Cordiale, no less. (A much more classy woman by far, Ma'am Herself had earlier gone to Paris to celebrate the anniversary by delivering a self-composed, well-regarded speech, and this in impeccable French.)

So though Chirac will be speaking at Oxford on Friday, I unfortunately must inform M. le President that I had regrettably already made plans to be washing my hair that day.

* um, just like Jewish Alaskans (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

THUS OLD MEDIA: We're not very talented at substantive journalism, so we'll just show unclothed anchorwomen instead. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:09 AM by David Adesnik  

DUKAKIS DEFEATS BUSH! According to the exit polls.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:07 AM by Patrick Belton  

DO YOU THINK Oxford University Press and their other advertisers know that they've bought the adverts for the dictionary entry on minging? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:32 AM by David Adesnik  

FOR IVY LEAGUERS ONLY: David Brooks is at again. Every few months, Brooks feels compelled to denounce the moral decay that has set in at America's great (but excessively liberal) universities.

Brooks may be my favorite columnist at the Times, but every time he writes about this subject his description of reality clashes strongly with my own experiences as an undergraduate. Brooks writes that

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone. And they find themselves in a world of unprecedented ambiguity, where it's not clear if you're going out with the person you're having sex with, where it's not clear if anything can be said to be absolutely true.

In other words, we have constructed this great apparatus to fill their minds - with thousands of Ph.D.'s ready to serve. But when it comes to courage, which is the pre-eminent virtue since without it nothing else lasts, we often leave them with the gnawing sense that they really should develop it, though God knows how.

It's hard to define character or courage. But I can say without reservation that during my time at Yale, the faculty and administration strongly encouraged us to believe that each of us had a personal obligation to make our community, our country and our world a better place.

Contra Brooks, Yale students had no problem figuring out whether the person they were sleeping with was also their significant other (although it usually was). Even though our professors never gave us lectures about chastity and romance, there was a firm set of ethics that pervaded campus life.

One might call it libertarianism. We were taught to respect the decisions and opinions of others. We were taught that imposing our values on others is unacceptable. More often than not, living up to that ideal requires both character and courage.

UPDATE: An anonymous readers suggests that my description of Brooks' column is somewhat misleading because I chose not to linclude the following paragraph from it:

I don't agree with all of Wolfe's depiction of campus life. He overestimates the lingering self-confidence and prestige of the prep school elite. He undervalues the independence of collegiate women, and underplays the great yearning to do good that surges out of most college students. Life on campus isn't really as nasty as Wolfe describes it. Most students are responsible and prudential and thus not as ribald as Wolfe makes them out to be.

This definitely cuts against the grain of the passage that I quoted. But take note: there is no mitigation here of Brooks' criticism of the American university, only a suggestion that the students themselves are not the problem.
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# Posted 3:26 AM by David Adesnik  

YGLESIAS FINALLY GETS LUCKY: And he only needed one hand.
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# Posted 1:44 AM by David Adesnik  

QUAGMIRE=DICTATOR: The logic is simple. If the American struggle to promote democracy in Iraq is futile, then the prudent thing to do is to install a stable but non-democratic government. John Kerry flirted with such a position on the campaign trail, but eventually decided to keep his opinions on the subject to himself and just say that he would "get the job done" in Iraq.

Now, a pair of professors from Dartmouth, Daryl Press and Benjamin Valentino, have begun to edge closer to the logic of dictatorship. After calling on the United States to "set our goals more realistically", the good professors suggest that the only available options are ethnic partition and the installation of a "secular strongman".

So much for thinking "realistically". As the authors themselves admit, partition is the first step toward civil war and perhaps genocide. But where does one find a reliably secular and pro-American (or at least anti-terrorist) strongman these days?

Not long ago, Robert Kagan persuasively argued that democracy is actually the most realistic option for Iraq. If you disagree, ask yourself how you would persuade the Shi'ites and Kurds to accept a Sunni dictator, or the Sunnis and Kurds to accept a Shi'ite dictator.

But isn't history on the realists' side? Our friends from Dartmouth think so. They write that,

The history of counterinsurgency warfare is a tale of failure. Since World War II, powerful armies have fought seven major counterinsurgency wars: France in Indochina from 1945 to 1954, the British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria in the 1950's, the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Israel in the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya. Of these seven, four were outright failures, two grind on with little hope of success, and only one - the British effort in Malaya - was a clear success.

The most important omission from this list is the joint US-Filipino effort to crush a communist insurgency in the Philippines in the early 1950s. As it turns out, I've read multiple books about the Filipino counterinsurgency effort during the past few days while working on my dissertation.

The first thing to be said about the war is that the United States and its allies won. Period. (That's not conservative propaganda. Even Kevin Drum agrees. Not to mention liberal journalists and scholars such as Stanley Karnow and H.W. Brands.)

But the much more interesting thing to note is how the United States and its Filipino allies won. They did it by promoting democracy. In the late 1940s, the extreme corruption of the elected Filipino President, Elpidio Quirino, antagonized rural peasants while undermining the armed forces' ability to perform in battle.

Rather than accepting Quirino as the only alternative to Communism, the United States demanded that Quirino appoint Ramon Magsaysay, a popular reformist, as Minister of Defense. Magsaysay immediately begun to purge the corrupt Filipino officer corps, restrict the use of violence against peasants and implement reforms to increase the government's popularity in the countryside. In addition, Magsaysay prevented Quirino from rigging the 1951 elections for the Filipino House and Senate.

By 1953, the Communists were on their last legs. In order to cement his victory, Magsaysay stepped down as Minister of Defense and ran against Quirino for President. He won by a landslide. Determined to ensure a victory by Magsaysay, the CIA provided extensive financial support to local election monitors in order to prevent fraud. The United States knew that its candidate was the people's candidate.

In the same year that Magsaysay became President, the CIA overthrew a democratic government in Iran. The next year, it overthrow a democratic (but pro-Communist) government in Guatemala. Compare the history of the Philippines, Iran and Guatemala since 1954, and it's not hard to see which strategy served America best.

So, you might say, what good is this one example when our friends from Dartmouth have seven historical examples to support their side of the debate? Well, ask yourselves this: In how many of those seven cases did the great powers involved seek to promote democracy as a means of defeating the insurgents. Answer: zero.

Or perhaps one. That one case -- the British in Malaysia -- also happens to be the only case in which a Western power defeated a Communist insurgency. The government installed by the British fell short of modern standards of democracy, although it was far and away the most progressive in Southeast Asia...except for the American-sponsored democracy in the Philippines.

Also consider the following statment from Valentino and Press:

Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, had less to do with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ethnic Malays; they were recruited almost exclusively from an isolated group of Chinese refugees. The guerrillas never gained the support of a sizable share of the Malaysians. Nevertheless, it took the British 12 years to defeat them...

I think that the resemblance of the Malaysian Chinese to the Sunnis in Iraq is quite striking. Thanks to ethnic and religious differences, the Sunnis have absolutely no hope of winning the support of more than 20 or 25 percent of the population.

The bad news is that it may take another decade to defeat them. That decade will cost us the lives of hundreds and hundreds of American soliders, and many, many more Iraqi ones. But the bottom line is that supporting another dicatorship in Iraq will accomplish nothing, except perhaps antagonizing our current allies. In other words, being realistic in Iraq means being idealistic.
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# Posted 1:40 AM by David Adesnik  

AMERICA MORE TOLERANT THAN EUROPE? Not toward homosexuals, but apparently toward Muslims.
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# Posted 1:18 AM by David Adesnik  

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: From an editorial in Wednesday morning's NYTentitled "Iran Blinks":

Nobody knows whether Iran is really ready to give up its ambitions to have nuclear weapons, but its commitment on Monday to freeze all uranium enrichment work and invite back international inspectors is a welcome step toward nuclear sanity.

From page one of Thursday morning's WaPo:

The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.

Separately, an Iranian opposition exile group charged in Paris that Iran is enriching uranium at a secret military facility unknown to U.N. weapons inspectors. Iran has denied seeking to build nuclear weapons.

This also seems so familiar, doesn't it? Shady exiles insist that a secret WMD program exists. The Bush administration relies on Powell to make its case.

[UPDATE: I'm not the only one with deja vu.]

Perhaps that's why the NYT is downplaying the story for the moment. There will be an article about the exiles' accusations in Thursday morning's Times, in which Powell's comments are briefly mentioned. For the moment, the link to that story is buried on the bottom of the NYT homepage.

So what's really going? I dunno, but trusting Iran is probably not a good idea. Even the NYT closes its editorial by reminding us that

Going down this imperfect road again must not mean letting Iran string Europe's diplomats along indefinitely while secretly readying itself to begin building nuclear weapons. Iran has a long history of cheating on its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, and Europe has a history of refusing to draw the line. Both need to demonstrate greater wisdom in the months ahead.

Amen.
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# Posted 11:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: We have written in this space before (see Leviathan whom thou hast made, March 2003) about very large squid. But we never dreamed, nor do we endorse, their use for this. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

IT'S A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES: A woman in Florida makes a grilled cheese sandwich, then is shocked to discover (after taking several bites out of it) that it bears a resemblance, kind of, to the Virgin Mary. She places it in a bag and keeps it on her nightstand until....

2. ten years later, eBay having penetrated thoroughly even to the heart of darkest Florida, she lists it on eBay, as one does for miraculous appearances of the Virgin, in cheese, that you have been keeping devotedly on your nightstand for ten years, and....

3. with bidding on the Virgin Mary cheese sandwich reaching $16,000, an entire cottage industry appears around the Virgin Mary cheese sandwich, including a nighttable to put your Virgin Mary cheese sandwich in, a lunchbox for your Virgin Mary cheese sandwich, watercolours of the Virgin Mary cheese.... you get the idea.

The internet meets popular American religiosity. Her son was reported to weep; but that was in danger of stimulating a second cycle of online-marketed food products.
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# Posted 7:47 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE FIRST OXFORD: Useless fact of the day #31: the Bosphoros actually derives from the Greek phrase 'Ox ford' (lit: ford of the ox), referencing the myth of the maiden Io, who swam the strait after being changed into a heifer. (Silly cow.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

A PLEA FOR OUR READERS: If any of our friends happen to have a moment or two, and wouldn't mind dropping a note to the President of Iran and (for non-US residents) the Iranian embassy in your country, I think that would be a worthwhile cause. Twenty-five bloggers and civil society activists have been arbitrarily arrested in recent weeks. Here is a message from the World Movement for Democracy on that subject, which I will pass on in its entirety:

The World Movement for Democracy would like to express its concern for the safety of two Iranian women leaders, Fereshteh Ghazi, an online journalist, and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor of a women’s rights journal “Farzaneh.” According to the Women's Learning Partnership, Abbasgholizadeh has contributed to the strengthening of Iranian civil society by conducting capacity building programs as Director of the NGO Training Center in Tehran, and was arrested at her home on November 2, 2004. Ghazi has used her skills to create an increased awareness of the status of women in Iran using the Internet, and was arrested in her office on October 28, 2004. Both women have been denied the right to legal counsel. Over the past two months, a string of Internet writers and civil society activists have been arrested for “propaganda against the regime, endangering national security, inciting public unrest, and insulting sacred belief,” according to Jamal Karimi Rad, the judiciary’s spokesman.

Amnesty International reports that Ghazi and Abbasgholizadeh are among 25 internet journalists and civil society activists that have been arbitrarily arrested in recent weeks. The Women’s Learning Partnership, a World Movement participating organization, has been contacted by colleagues in Iran asking them to help bring attention to the plight of civil society activists in Iran.

Suggested Action: To demand the immediate release of Fereshteh Ghazi and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and express your concern for the rise in human rights violations in Iran, please write to President Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatemi, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of the European Parliament, and the Iranian embassy in your country:

His Excellency Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatemi
The Presidency Office
Pasteur Avenue
Tehran 13167-43311 Islamic Republic of Iran
E-mail

Her Excellency Louise Arbour
High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Fax: + 41 22 917 9022
E-mail

His Excellency Josep Borrell Fontelles
President of the European Parliament
Division for Correspondence with Citizens
L-2929 LUXEMBOURG
Fax: (352) 4300 27072

Iranian Embassies

Additional Information:

“Iran: Web Writers Purge Underway”
Human Rights Watch

“Iran: Civil society activists and human rights defenders under attack”
Amnesty International

“Iran: Call for the unconditional release of Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh”
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:02 PM by Patrick Belton  

ATTENTION CONSPIRACY MONGERS: still no winner in Ohio...

(That's all for now, you can go back to monging....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:07 AM by Patrick Belton  

INDIANA CONGRESSMAN SHOCKED - SHOCKED! - that the Highway Service has a U.S. Highway 69. He's been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation to change it to Highway 63. Except that it's a hoax. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:23 AM by David Adesnik  

OUR GLORIOUS HISTORY OF MULTILATERALISM: Over at YFP, Gene Vilensky deconstructs an anti-Bush, pro-UN broadside by Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson, a pair of realist historians. While it is one thing to imagine the Clinton years as a utopian multilateral interlude in the history of American foreign relations, it is amazing to see professional scholars pretend that

Throughout its history, the United States has made gaining international legitimacy a top priority of its foreign policy. The 18 months since the launch of the Iraq war, however, have left the country's hard-earned respect and credibility in tatters. In going to war without a legal basis or the backing of traditional U.S. allies, the Bush administration brazenly undermined Washington's long-held commitment to international law, its acceptance of consensual decision-making, its reputation for moderation, and its identification with the preservation of peace.

Hello? Vietnam? The Contra war? CIA coups in Guatemala, Chile and Iran? The invasions of Panama, Grenada and the Dominican Republic? Even Jimmy Carter got in trouble with the French and Germans for provoking the Soviets by talking about human rights!

My point here is not that the United States' long history of unilateralist behavior provides a justification for anything that George Bush has done. Rather, the point is that apocalyptic predictions about the breakdown of US-European relations have been standard fare for the last sixty years. These predictions crops up every decades or so and they are always wrong.

Why? Because what unites us with Europe is far more important than what divides us. Our democratic values coincide even if we have very different ideas about how to apply them to the world. When transatlantic relations go bad, strong voices on both sides of the ocean demand reconciliation.

That is the ultimate irony of Tucker and Hendrickson's argument. Their heightened fears of a permanent breakdown are what have brought the United States and Europe back together after each of our confrontations.
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# Posted 1:34 AM by David Adesnik  

A COSTLY VICTORY IN FALLUJAH: Yes, but for whom? As of yesterday morning, 38 American soldiers were dead. American officers claimed to have killed between 1,000 and 1,200 insurgents.

I have no idea if those figures are credible. The incentive to exaggerate success is obviously tremendous, given the political significance of this operation. I don't distrust the military, there are always favorable and less favorable estimates, and it is often the former that get publicized. (Besides, given that the US military adamantly refuses to count civilian casualties, one wonders how it can count the dead insurgents.)

During first eighteen months of the occupation, both the military and the American media did their best to measure the success or failure of the occupation in political terms, rather than Vietnam-style body counts. Yet suddenly, that conventional wisdom is no more. Commentators on left and right seem to agree that destroying enemy forces is far more important than occupying enemy territory. If the insurgents live to fight another day, they can simply retake Fallujah when American forces return to base. If the insurgents die, they can't.
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# Posted 6:45 PM by David Adesnik  

THE MEME IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE MEME! Now David Broder is denoucning the pernicious "values voter" myth. Given that Broder, Dionne and Kevin Drum have all come out against this myth, I think it's safe to say that gay marriage won't become this year's Willie Horton.

On the other hand, I think it's premature to say that the Democrats have finally decided to get serious about national security, because that is the only way to win elections. For example, take a look at Robert Kaiser's essay on the cover of the Outlook section in yesterday's WaPo. Kaiser begins by offering five possible definitions of what it means to be a Democrat. Not one of them has a damn thing to do with national security. Here is Kaiser's advice for the Democratic party:

Yes, America is a conservative society. It always has been...

But we are also, polls make clear, a tolerant and moderate people. Democrats could become the party of tolerance, meaning tolerance for everyone: Bible readers, gay couples and Bible-reading gay couples alike. There is a strain of intolerance in today's conservative Republicanism, and that's an opportunity for the Democrats as they try to bring new people into their tent.

Americans also believe in economic fairness. Most Americans say the Bush administration's policies principally help the wealthy...

And a neoconservative foreign policy is hardly a popular platform -- couldn't Democrats come up with a believable approach to national security that actually makes sense?

It's interesting to note how Kaiser has specific advice to offer on the economic and cultural fronts, but can offer nothing more than a plea for sanity when it comes to foreign policy. Yet if Bush's (allegedly neo-conservative) approach was so unpopular, why did he have such a commanding lead in the polls when voters were asked who they trusted more to handle the situation in Iraq and the war on terror?

For some time now, OxBlog has hoped that the Democratic party would return to the principles of Harry Truman, who recognized that strength and idealism are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. George Bush may have inherited Truman's mantle, at least rhetorically, but his policies still don't measure up. That is the Democrats' opening.

UPDATE: Reader AS cannily points out that Kevin Drum has fallen into the same trap as Robert Kaiser. In Kevin's bullet-point version of Democratic ideals, there isn't a single mention of foreign policy.
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# Posted 4:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

DAVID'S KIND AS ALWAYS, but what caught my eye today was a job opening for Josh, actually: William Safire stepping down from the New York Times's op-ed page, after a stint of 32 years. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:08 PM by David Adesnik  

A JOB OPENING FOR PATRICK: Colin Powell resigns.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman rounds-up the reactions to Powell's departure and the speculations about his replacement. Personally, I think Dick Lugar would do an excellent job at State, although I don't know if his personal relationship with Bush is strong enough to get him the job.

This week, Lugar reminds us once again how strong his personal commitment to democracy promotion is by traveling to the Ukraine to observe the critical election taking place there.

Students of the Reagan administration will always remember Lugar for his indispensable role as an election monitor in the Philippines in 1986. After Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos sought to perpetuate himself in office by stuffing the ballot boxes -- while Reagan blindfolded himself to this reality -- Lugar boldly insisted that the President live up to his own democratic principles. Ultimately, Reagan backed down and Corazon Aquino inaugurated the Philippines' second democratic era.

If one were President Bush, the preceding anecdote might provide a compelling argument against Lugar's appointment. However, I think Bush may just have the guts to appoint someone with a mind of his own.

If Lugar doesn't get the call, my black-horse candidate is Colin Powell's current deputy, Richard Armitage. Never underestimate the value of continuity.

UPDATE: Mr. Yglesias refers to the above post as "hilarous-in-retrospective". He writes that

The issue isn't that Lugar's "personal relationship with Bush" isn't "strong enough to get him the job" the issue is that the plan for the second administration is that the now mandate-possessing Bush can crush all elements of independence and critical thought inside the administration and stock the government entirely with toadies.

Well as long as we're being open-minded...
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# Posted 9:53 AM by Patrick Belton  

TEXAN? LOOKING FOR A GOOD TIME? No, sorry, this isn't a proposition to come back to the Bush compound... But if you're Houstonian and free tonight, stop by the Black Labrador (4100 Montrose, Cézanne Room, 7 pm) for our foreign policy society's discussion of Niall Ferguson's Colossus! More events coming up in other towns, too, as I recover from rather evilly inflicting 150 previously unseen pages upon my long-suffering supervisor's inbox.

UPDATE: We also have a meeting in Washington tonight on what the 2004 election means for American foreign policy, for which we're grateful to Steve Clemons, executive vice president of the New America Foundation, for being our guest speaker (6:30, APSA headquarters, 1527 New Hampshire Avenue). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:14 AM by David Adesnik  

IMAGINARY EXPERTS: Public Editor Dan Okrent writes that

In "Discord on North Korea as Powell Finishes East Asia Trip," Steven R. Weisman, The Times's chief diplomatic correspondent, wrote of current negotiations that "the impasse is not likely to broken soon, many experts say, at least until the American presidential election is over." When I asked him about his posse of experts, he acknowledged that "you caught me using some lazy writing, probably because I was on deadline and exhausted from jet lag."

I'm curious: Is the "chief diplomatic correspondent" at the Paper of Record responsible for ensuring that all of his colleagues subscribe to the same high standards that he does?

(And three cheers for Okrent, who got Weisman to confess. And let's not forget Jayson Blair, without whom the Times wouldn't have a Public Editor.)
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# Posted 3:04 AM by David Adesnik  

AND ONE FOR MY DEAD HOMIES: Farwell to ODB. Wu-Tang forever.
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# Posted 2:51 AM by David Adesnik  

HOW REALISTIC ARE THE REALISTS? Ex-idealist Robert Kaplan indignantly announces that the culture and history of Iraq don't favor American efforts to democratize it. Here's what Kaplan has to say about Afghanistan:

Over sizable swaths of the country there had been only warlords and tribal militias, with whom we had to work for many months before we began to co-opt them into a new legitimate authority: or, as the situation demanded, help that new authority to gradually ease them out. In Afghanistan following 9/11, we did what we had to do, and otherwise accepted the place as it was.

Funny, I don't remember Afghanistan having elections or allowing women into the classroom before 9/11. But that's just me...
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# Posted 2:31 AM by David Adesnik  

WINNING HEARTS & MINDS, A LA FRANCAISE: Dateline Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire --

Chanting, "We want the French!" a crowd of armed and angry young men swept past La Planta, a club owned by an Ivorian. They started to attack the nearby Byblos restaurant, then stopped when the owner pleaded, "No, no! I'm Lebanese!"

But when it came to Club Le Saint Germain, the mob showed no restraint. The elegant eatery had not only a French owner but also a predominantly French clientele, including soldiers from the nearby military base.

Last Saturday night, witnesses said, men armed with wood planks, iron rail spikes and a lust for revenge battered down the club's steel doors. They yanked bars from the windows and bashed a gaping hole through the concrete wall.

As the owner and a friend watched from an adjacent roof, the mob stole everything that could be taken and destroyed what remained, witnesses said. The posh establishment was reduced to little more than a dirt-streaked shell.

If the French get chased out out of Cote D'Ivoire, maybe they can stop off in Iraq on the way home to share their expert advice about nation-building.
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# Posted 1:54 AM by David Adesnik  

SHUT HIM UP BEFORE 2008: According to Wes Clark,

It's hardly surprising that the measure of success in Fallujah is elusive: There's no uniformed enemy force, no headquarters, no central command complex for the troops to occupy and win. At the end, there will be no surrender.

According to the WaPo:

In the southernmost section of Fallujah, where a showdown still loomed, U.S. soldiers discovered an underground bunker and steel-enforced tunnels connecting a ring of houses filled with weapons, medical supplies and bunk beds.

The fighters in the area were armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and dressed in blue camouflage uniforms with full military battle gear.

It's almost as if the insurgents put on uniforms just to make Clark look stupid. Now, there are some good points in Clark's essay (which also happens to be in the Post.) He says that we have to use diplomacy and force together to win the war in Iraq. But sometimes (and this isn't the first), Clark seems to suffer from political amnesia:

U.S. forces don't "lose" on the battlefield these days. We haven't lost once in Iraq. Nor in Afghanistan. Not in the Balkans, or in the first Gulf War. Nor in Panama.

It's as if Clark never heard of Somalia. Someone should send the General a copy of Black Hawk Down. By the way, doesn't the fact that we have to retake Falluja suggest that we have lost at least one battle in Iraq? But moving on:

This has been a tough battle, and the men and women fighting it deserve every Combat Infantryman's Badge, Bronze Star or Purple Heart they receive.

Come on, Wes, the election is over. Besides, are you suggesting that when you were in charge, the army handed out Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts to soldiers who didn't deserve them?

Neither Syria nor Iran could welcome American success in Iraq if they believe it means they'll be next on a list of regimes to be "reformed" by the United States -- and yet that's precisely the goal of American policy. Bringing about change in those countries should be a matter of offering inducements as well as making threats, but not if it adds to the danger for our men and women in uniform. We need to choose: continue to project a grand vision, or focus on success in Iraq.

Right-o! Let's consolidate those dictatorships in Damascus and Teheran! If George Bush stops talking about democracy promotion, then maybe Bashar Assad and the hard-liners in Teheran will suddenly decide that America is no longer a threat (because they were oh so cooperative back when Clinton was President).

It's not that Clark doesn't make good points. It just that he makes so many bad ones, too.
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# Posted 1:48 AM by David Adesnik  

NOT WHAT I WOULD SAY IF I HAD A FACE FULL OF SHRAPNEL: Again from the WaPo:

[Lance Cpl. Matthrew] Vetor, who said he could squeeze shrapnel out of his facial wounds, would not be able to return [to battle] just yet.

"You know it could happen to you, but you really don't think it will be you," Vetor said, looking at the TV screen. "I'm just glad I was part of it. I was glad I got to fight with these guys. It had to be done. We were really fighting. We were doing great. It doesn't stop us. We'll keep going."

Really not what I would say if I had a face full of shrapnel. But that's probably why he's a Marine and I'm not.
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# Posted 1:36 AM by David Adesnik  

INDICATIVE: From the WaPo:

In areas controlled by U.S. forces, loudspeakers mounted on Humvees urged that "all fighters in Fallujah should surrender, and we guarantee they will not be killed or insulted."

"Insulted"? Is that a mistranslation? A euphemism? Anyhow, the insurgents' response to the American announcement was even more indicative:

From a loudspeaker on a mosque still controlled by insurgents, the fighters replied: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."

The insurgents' are only doing us a favor by saying such things. The same goes for Zarqawi's decision to officially rename his outfit "Al Qaeda in Iraq". It's as if Zarqawi had asked himself, "Gee, how could I possibly persuade the American public of the necessity of fighting a war that many of them consider to be hopeless?"

Or even better: "How can I best validate George Bush's claim that the war in Iraq is an integral part of the war on terror?" You heard it hear first: Zarqawi is on the CIA payroll.
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# Posted 3:40 PM by David Adesnik  

VOTING FRAUD: Joe Gandelman dismantles the rumors.
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# Posted 2:43 AM by David Adesnik  

KILL THE BASTARD: Perhaps our nation can come together as one by paying more attention to a fundamental truth that is close to the heart of all Americans: Scott Peterson is human trash and deserves to die.

I guess the only problem here is that most Blue Staters would be against giving Peterson the chair even though he deserves to die. Then again, Peterson is pretty frikkin' white, so you won't get the ACLU crowd all up in arms about how the death penalty is inherently racist.

On a different sort of dissenting note, James Joyner writes that

I'm one of the relative few people who don't much follow these high profile trials. It's never been clear to me why the murder of one person I never met by someone else I've never met is any more noteworthy than any of the thousands of other murders that are committed each year.

Come on, Jim! Peterson murdered his wife and unborn child for no particular reason except for the fact that they made it harder for him to have fun on weekends. Actually, that's a good reason not to give him the chair. Once the other inmates gets their hands on Peterson, his life will be a living hell.

(Hmmm. I'm sounding a little bloodthirsty today. It must be all the wrestling movies.)

UPDATE: JW writes:

Were you drunk when you wrote this? There is no point too it, and it's offensive.

I respond:

Sadly, I was sober. This is just the kind of reaction that normally sane and thoughtful people seem to have when some guy kills his wife and unborn child. But point taken.

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# Posted 2:21 AM by David Adesnik  

THE DEFINITIVE INTRODUCTION TO BLOGGING: Go read Dan Drezner & Henry Farrell's essay on blogs in the current issue of Foreign Policy. If anyone ever asks me, "What one article should I read to learn about blogs?", I now know the answer.

Moreover, you won't enjoy the article any less if you are an experienced blogger yourself. Dan & Henry provide numerous examples and refer to numerous blogs that I've never read or even heard of. Everyone can learn from what they have to say.

Think I'm being too positive about Dan & Henry's work? Well then, in the blogospheric tradition of self-criticism, Dan has linked to this post by Elizabeth Spiers which dismisses his work as "pretty shallow analysis overall". Liz doesn't really elaborate, but, hey, that's the problem with us bloggers -- all opinion no substance.

Come to think of it, that does remind me of one important oversight in Dan & Henry's article -- they don't talk about the backlash against blogs. This oversight doesn't detract from their analysis or result in an unbalanced article, but the fact that so many prominent scholars and journalists consider blogs to be a sort of menacing garbage is a phenomenon worth taking note of.

Hehehe. "Menacing garbage". I like that.
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# Posted 1:42 AM by David Adesnik  

EPISODE III: The trailer is out. The death watch has begun. Professor Dan writes that

You just know that the odds are heavily stacked in favor of the movie being God-awful.

Pejman adds:

I know that this movie will suck much. Yea verily, it is a sure thing that it will suck mightily. But chills still go down my spine at the thought of it.

Offhand I can't remember, but I think it was Pejman who pointed out the extremely annoying (chrono)logical flaw in the premise of Episodes I-III, i.e. that in the interval between Episodes III and IV, which is clearly less than thirty years, the entire known universe has forgotten about the Jedi so much so that they believe the Force to be a myth.

However, the trailer for Episode III includes the famous speech from Episode I in which Obi-Wan describes how Darth Vader, his pupil, hunted down and murdered all of the Jedi, thus ensuring that they -- and the force -- would be forgotten. Now, you might say that Ben is hundreds of years old, which is why he alone remembers the Jedi. But that would mean that Vader himself is also hundreds of years old and the two of them are the only ones who remember the Jedi and believe in the force. (This scenario gets more complicated when we learn about the Emperor's background in Episode III, because he clearly remembers the Jedi, too.)

As a student of politics, this scenario seems especially unlikely, because why wouldn't Vader want to take credit for killing off the Jedi, if only to enhance his own reputation? Sure, it sounds bad, but Vader clearly doesn't have any reservations about presenting himself as evil.

Moreover, the historian in me wonders how even the passage of hundreds of years could lead an entire Empire -- one whose technological sophistication far exceeds our own -- to forget its past. While Vader may be quite powerful, it's completely implausible to think that he could've destroyed the entire documentary record of the Jedi's existence. Face it: Vader clearly has a hard enough time preventing R2-D2 from shuffling around with records belonging to the Rebel Alliance. What are the chances he could get rid of everything else?

A further complication to add to all of this is that, according to the original trilogy, Luke's uncle and aunt knew Darth Vader when he was still Anakin Skywalker. By extension, that means that they were alive and well before hunted down and killed off the Jedi. So in order to make this whole thing work, we need to figure out a way in which Ben Kenobi, Darth Vader, the Emperor and Luke's uncle & aunt can be the only five people in the universe who remember the Jedi.

Goddamn George Lucas!
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# Posted 1:41 AM by David Adesnik  

NEWSFLASH: ARAFAT STILL DEAD. See, the news isn't always bad.
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# Posted 1:12 AM by David Adesnik  

HARD KNOCKS: THE CHRIS BENOIT STORY: It's been too damn long since I did a wrestling post. But it's Friday night, so what the hey.

After dinner, I headed down to Blockbuster and picked up the 2-disc DVD Edition of Hard Knocks: The Chris Benoit Story. I wasn't sure to expect. Would it be a collection of highlights? A serious biography of one of the greatest pro-wrestlers ever?

The biopic itself is around an hour and twenty minutes long. Its biggest drawback is that it can't decide whether or not to pretend that wrestling is real, or just to appeal straight out to mature fans by taking about the artistry involved in its being "fake".

Early in his career, Benoit almost crippled a wrestler by accidentally dropping him on his head. At this point is the film, there is no question that wrestling is "fake". Benoit talks about how he never intended to hurt his opponent but how the accident made him realize how dangerous professional wrestling is. However, promoter Paul Heyman decided that Benoit could win over the fans by pretending that he had intended to hospitalize his opponent. From then on, Benoit was known as 'The Crippler'.

But when it comes to Benoit's time in the WWF (now the WWE), he acts is if is his victories are "real". The culmination of the film is Benoit's victory at Wrestlemania XX this May in Madison Square Garden, when he won the WWE title for the first time.

Apparently, that victory really did mean a lot to Benoit. He actually cried in the ring, and his wife stepped out of the crowd and into the ring in order to hug him. But why was that moment so special? What does being champion mean in a "fake" sport?

More broadly, this element of make-believe prevents Benoit from talking about numerous aspects of wrestling that are most interesting to fans. How does he feel about the development of his character over time? Never considered one of the more charismatic wrestlers, Benoit made it to the top because of sheer acrobatic ability and physical conditioning.

How does Benoit feel about the evolution of the sport in recent years? Has he been comfortable with the more entertainment-oriented style of the WWF? On the other hand, the acrobatic sophistication of WWE wrestling has increased dramatically in recent years, a development which presumably helped Benoit.

The fact that WWE produced the film also limits who we see interviews. Sadly, this means that we don't get to talk to either Stu Hart or his son Bret 'The Hitman' Hart, both of whom played extremely influential roles in both Benoit's personal life as well as his career.

But you know what? Even if you don't watch the Benoit bio (which is worth it just for the pictures of him as a teenager), you should rent or buy this DVD just for the bonus footage, which includes over two and a half hours of Benoit's classic matches. (And don't even think about getting the VHS version, which only has the bio.)

So far, I've only watched two of the fifteen matches in the set. In the first match, from back in 1990, Benoit fights Jushin Liger for an IGWA title in Japan. The array of holds both men use is simply unbelievable. There were at least a half-dozen submission moves that I'd never seen before in North American wrestling. Best of all are the ones where Liger locks in the hold, then pivots onto his back, hoisting Benoit into the air while bending his limbs at the sametime.

The second match I watched was the main event from Wrestlemania XX, the three-way match in which Benoit defeated Triple H and Shawn Michaels to take home the world title for the very first time. It's an excellent match, but not historic. Nonetheless, it's worth it for the emotion alone, when Benoit breaks down at the end and celebrates reaching the pinnacle of his profession after eighteen long years.

Viva el Crippler!
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# Posted 5:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

UMM....YEAH.... Headline of the day, just in time for shabbas: 'Missing fuel tanker worries officials'. (CNN). The attached story includes the memorable line, from an FBI spokesperson, 'We're asking the public to be on the lookout for a fuel tanker in a location inconsistent with where you'd typically see' one. Like, say, in your neighbour's backyard, your son's oddly familiar looking new set of wheels, or underneath the table at your cousin's at Thanksgiving. (Others may not find this as funny as I do. In this case, they are certainly right.)

UPDATE: Oddly, a reader prefers this,
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# Posted 7:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

NOTE TO OUR OXFORD READERSHIP: Go see Michael Ignatieff at the Rothermere Institute at 5. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

I'M CAUTIOUSLY HOPEFUL by the rise once again to the leadership of Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas, who I have long watched with great curiosity. Profiles are here, here and here.

It is well known that he has preferred statesmanship to dirty politics (and in the West Bank and Gaza, that can get fairly dirty), which has not given him the popular base enjoyed by other Palestinian politicians such as Barghouti. As prime minister, at one point a poll had his support rating at four percent. Less remarked on are his international assets - his network of powerful contacts, carefully cultivated through the years of Oslo, that included Arab leaders and heads of intelligence services. He has headed the PLO's portfolio on international relations since 1980; in 1988 he also acquired the portfolio for the Occupied Territories to replace the rather unfortunately named Abu Jihad. His detractors also point out, not without cause, unfortunate comments from his youth about the number of Holocaust deaths, and supposed Zionist-Nazi contacts during the war (which he has subsequently recanted). It must be remembered, though, that alone among prominent politicians in his nation he was the first to make contacts with Jewish civil society groups, to denounce the Intifada Al-Aqsa as a mistake, to recognise Israel, and to make risky moves toward final settlement (at Oslo, and again with Yossi Beilin). People must be allowed to improve; and Abu Mazen has.

I will not hesitate to criticise Abbas if he disappoints, but should he fulfill his liberal democratic potentialities, then he will count me as his ardent supporter. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

SCHAMA LOSES IT: Britain's leading pop historian presents ten insightful, sympathetic paragraphs analysing the counterposed 'godly' and 'worldly' Americas, then promptly implodes at the end into sputtering nonsense:

[I]t's all sand and towelheads anyway, right? Just smash "them" (as one ardent Bush supporter put it on talk radio the other morning) "like a ripe cantaloupe". Who them? Who gives a shit?

Who them indeed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:02 AM by David Adesnik  

AL GONZALES: The wrong man to become Attorney General.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:53 AM by David Adesnik  

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Numerous folks have pointed this article in Slate (by a professor at UVA -- go Wahoos!) as a definitive debunking of the 'values voter' myth. Caveat:

Freedman makes some good points, although I suspect cultural issues are more important than he's giving them credit for. After all, even if they haven't become any more important than they were in 2000, they're still important — and Democrats need to figure out a way to reduce their impact.

Agreed.
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# Posted 2:06 AM by David Adesnik  

EMERGENCY EXIT POLLS: Kevin Drum examines the mystery of why Kerry was so far ahead in the early afternoon. Kevin is also dabbling in ancient Hebrew.
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# Posted 2:03 AM by David Adesnik  

A BRIGHT SPOT FOR WOMEN IN KUWAIT? Brian Ulrich says maybe.
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# Posted 1:58 AM by David Adesnik  

"IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING LIBERALS UNCOMFORTABLE, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WIN": That's what Peter Beinart has to say about John Kerry. I like the sound of it, but I disagree. The Democrats can win by being serious about national security, and they can do that by embracing fundamental liberal principles such as democracy and human rights.
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# Posted 1:31 AM by David Adesnik  

IS THAT WHAT THE BLUE STATES CALL PATRIOTISM? A good rule of thumb for reading the papers is that you shouldn't take political statements too seriously if they aren't made in the first section of the paper. On the other hand, the opinions expressed elsewhere are often more revealing because they aren't subject to the same kind of self-censorship and artificial imposition of balance.

In Thursday's Style section, WaPo correspondent Thomas Ricks reviews the Smithsonian's new exhibit on America's wars. Ricks writes that

Some might be put off by the loaded title, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War." But behind that red-state rubric is a well-balanced show, with enough combat gear to please the warriors, enough emphasis on casualties and Indians and blacks and women to comfort the loyal opposition, and enough balance to satisfy most historians.

So, believing that America fights for freedom is a Red State belief, whereas an emphasis on the suffering that America has inflicted is a Blue State preference?

That's just ridiculous. I bet that a strong majority of those who voted for Kerry (and perhaps even Kerry himself) believe that America does fight for freedom most of the time. And I bet there's a strong majority of Bush voters who understand that America is far from perfect.

However, there is a certain elite (say, journalists) who believe that virtue can only be achieved through constant mea culpas. If one were in a provocative mood, one might refer to such an elite as those who want to Blame America First.

On that note, it is probably worth pointing out that Mr. Ricks is not simply a museum reviewer but one of the lead national security correspondents for the Post. It's been his job over the past year to report on people in Washington are thinking about Iraq. Keep that in mind.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum also linked to Ricks' article in the Post, but sans criticism. Yet for some undiscolsed reason, the article provoked such a vicious set of comments that Kevin had to delete the entire thread.
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# Posted 1:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

REMEMBRANCE DAY:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943), 'For the Fallen', fourth stanza

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

TWO THUMBS UP, THOUGH, FOR GONZALES: A Texas migrant worker turned Harvard Law graduate, and a moderate on the bench - I'll be looking forward very much to seeing more of this guy.

(Even if his middle name is being treated as a state secret by the White House...)

UPDATE: Phil Carter takes a different view, and I take his point, as in my experience, Phil's usually right. Still, having been writing with great interest about California and Texas migrants since my first published piece, it does seem rather worth rejoicing that at least one person could ascend from the most isolated, dusty margins of American society to its highest corridors of power, and might then perhaps help to smooth the way for more; it's also hard to see how the attorney general-designate couldn't represent a vast improvement on his benighted predecessor.

UPDATE SQUARED: Josh Cherniss weighs in. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:21 PM by David Adesnik  

50 YEARS TOO LATE: Arafat dead.
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# Posted 11:15 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG ON THE RADIO: In a few minutes, I'll be talking to Shaun on Subject to Discussion over at LV Rocks. If you want to tune in, just go the LV Rocks homepage and click on the "Listen Now" button in the upper left-hand corner.

If you don't want to listen to me talk, you can go to the LV Rocks homepage and click on the link for Girls of the Internet 5, also sponsored by LV Rocks.
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# Posted 11:00 PM by David Adesnik  

REALITY-BASED: Kevin Drum writes that

If Democrats are going to engage in navel gazing, our gaze really ought to be directed toward the one topic we continue to avoid like the plague: becoming more credible on national security. That's where Kerry and the Dems lost the election. Like it or not — and I can almost hear the outrage brewing already in the comment section over the mere fact that I'm mentioning this — fighting terrorism is the major swing issue of the day, and perceived Democratic weakness toward terrorism is likely to remain our biggest electoral albatross for quite a while.

It's remarkable, really, that in the last week an awful lot of commenters have seemed blithely willing to recommend that Democrats appease the Christian right on things like abortion choice and gay rights, which are core issues for liberalism. At the same time, though, they're silent on the possibility of changing our tune on terrorism, which isn't. John Kerry made significant inroads when he spoke plainly about hunting down terrorists and killing them, as he did in the first debate, but he was never really willing to much further than that.

Why? Why didn't he make a bigger deal out of his plan to increase the size of the Army by 40,000 troops? Why didn't he make a bigger deal out of his desire to get tougher with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Why didn't he make a bigger deal about George Bush's unwillingness to confront the Arab world over their continued funding of radical madrassas?

Beats me. Those were all part of Kerry's official national security package, but you didn't hear much about them either on the campaign trail or in the debates.

Maybe that's because Kerry just didn't care about all of those things. He's a multilateralist at heart, and getting tough is the last things he knows how or wants to do.
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# Posted 10:37 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER QUAGMIRE: Two days ago, Dexter Filkins of the NYT described Fallujah as a "frightening urban battlefield" and saw little hope of swift progress. The WaPo is now reporting that Coaltion forces have basically taken over the city. Belmont Club concurs, providing its usual in-depth analysis of the situation on the ground.

Meanwhile, Dexter Filkins is still warning us about how hard it will be to make any progress in Fallujah. His description of the battle seems to be directly lifted from Stanley Kubrick's Oscar-winning film, Full Metal Jacket:

They fired 35 or so 155-millimeter artillery shells, 10 shots from the muzzles of Abrams tanks and perhaps 30,000 rounds from their automatic rifles. The building was a smoking ruin.

But the sniper kept shooting.

He - or they, because no one can count the flitting shadows in this place - kept 150 marines pinned down for the better part of a day. It was a lesson on the nature of the enemy in this hellish warren of rubble-strewn streets.

In the evasive manner of a professional, objective correspondent, Filkins suggests that Coaltion forces aren't making any progress but never says so directly. In order to convey a sense of futility, Filkins closes his report by describing how a probable sniper escaped from American forces after an epic battle:

Somehow, through a volley of gunfire, whoever it was got away.

At 5 p.m., the marines finally crossed Highway 10 and searched the smoking remains of the two buildings. At 5:30 p.m., a sniper opened up on them.

While there's nothing wrong with conveying the atmospherics of urban warfare, Filkins does owe us an explanation of how Coalition forces managed to occupy so much of the city so quickly and at relatively low cost.

Of course, exposing the negative mindset of American journalists isn't the same as demonstrating that things are going well in Iraq. In all probability, a significant number of insurgents escaped from Falluja. Meanwhile, deadly attacks continue in other cities. I just wish I could depend on the nation's paper of record to give me a somewhat better sense of what's really going on.
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# Posted 8:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

ASHCROFT, IN HIS RESIGNATION letter, has claimed victory (and credit) for defeating both crime and terrorism. Or, to let him speak in his own words, 'the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'

Boy, do I feel safer already. Though admittedly, that's largely because yet another of the people capable of writing a letter of resignation marked by so little humility, or even engagement with reality, is now gone from government. (The previous, for those keeping score at home, was Blackwill, whose self-aggrandising epistle after succeeding in having his embassy in New Delhi taken away from him will stand as a classic of the prose style) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:40 PM by David Adesnik  

UNSPINNING THE POLLS: Steve Waldman, editor of Beliefnet.com, points out that Catholics and non-church goers also came out much more strongly for Bush than they did in 2000. In Ohio and Florida, where Bush did much better than in 2000, church attendance among voters actually went down quite a bit.

Yes evangelicals turned out in record numbers, but so did young voters and African-Americans. Often, evangelicals just added to Bush's margin in the Red states rather than helping him in battlegrounds.

For once, I agree with E.J. Dionne:

John Kerry was not defeated by the religious right. He was beaten by moderates who went -- reluctantly in many cases -- for President Bush. This will be hard for many Democrats to take. It's easier to salve those wounds by demonizing religious conservatives.

Sure it is, but Democrats spent the entire election demonizing Bush & Cheney, insisting that their lies tricked voters into approving of their foreign policy. All I'm suggesting is that Democrats shouldn't flip-flop in the midst of demonization.
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# Posted 9:25 PM by David Adesnik  

THE GOP HAS THE EVANGELICALS, THE DEMOCRATS HAVE THE BLACK VOTE: Imagine that John Kerry had prevailed in Ohio or even nation-wide. Would the experts attribute his victory to surging African-American turnout or to a widespread repudiation of Bush's foreign policy?

Hypothetical questions may not have answers, but I am struck at how far Democratic pundits are willing to go in order to demonstrate that Bush's victory has nothing to do with his foreign policy and everything to do with evangelical homophobia and ignorance.

Laura Rozen says that if you are complacent about Christian conservatives' assault on our civil rights, then you are just plain ignorant (like David Brooks). Laura approvingly cites an e-mail sent to Andrew Sullivan which argues that:

To point out that the evangelicals voted in the same proportion for Bush as they did in 2000 gets a fact right and misses the point. What matters is that the Bush vote by these folks did not erode in the face of catastrophic management of post-invasion Iraq, prisoner atrocities, transformation of the surplus into a suffocating deficit and terrible job performance. It seems to me that their religious views trump everything. You switched your vote - why didn't they? The answer is complex, but you can bet it includes homophobia deftly catalyzed by Mr. Rove et al.

Sullivan responds: "He's got a point, no?" Actually, no, no he doesn't. Leaving aside the issue of whether Kerry would've been even worse for Iraq than Bush, I think it's misleading to suggest that homophobia compensated for evangelicals' hypothetical dissatisfaction with Bush's foreign policy.

Again, think about African-Americans. How badly would a Democratic president or candidate have to perform to lose more than 15% of the black vote?
This trend in black voting doesn't provoke much concern because observers on both sides consider it to be rational.

But when it comes to evangelicals, we presume that their motives for voting Republican are misguided, illegitimate, or even undemocratic. But what if evangelicals, like African-Americans -- and as Richard Cohen points out, American Jews -- consistently vote for one party because of its basic cultural orientation, rather than because of its position on any single issue?

Matt Yglesias wants to know exactly when John Kerry or any other Democratic candidate was condescending toward evangelicals. The answer to Matt's rhetorical is "almost never". But that's not that point.

Negative attitudes towards evangelicals, justified or not, abound in the Blue State Media. Democratic candidates may avoid invoking them, but I don't think that even Matt would deny that Christians, especially evangelicals, are looked down upon by the glitterati. After all, Matt himself refers to the them as "chumps" and suggests that they are "detached from reality".

In essence, evangelicals face the same dilemma as African-Americans. They consider one major party to be anathema, thus ensuring that the other major party takes them for granted.

Steve Waldman, editor of Beliefnet.com, suggests that Christian activists may not let Bush get away with being as non-committal as he was during his first term. (Laura Rozen cites Waldman approvingly.) But how much is going to change while the underlying political dynamic remains the same?
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# Posted 4:01 PM by David Adesnik  

AN UGLY MESS IN FALLUJA? Matt Yglesias points to this NYT article by Dexter Filkins as evidence of how tough and dangerous urban combat is.

Filkins article recaps the most important reasons that urban warfare is so tough: the uselessness of high-tech weapons in confusing terrain, the ability of a small local force to hold off a much larger number of outsiders, unexpected obstacles to movement, etc.

As a result, the offensive Filkins describes became "bogged down" (hint, hint)and

For a time, this frightening urban battlefield became a pulsing cacophony of strange and deadly sounds.

But notice the one really important thing that is missing from Filkins story: American casualties. Or for that matter, Iraqi government casualties. There will undoubtedly be some. It's just hard to make the case that urban warfare is hell on earth if its no more dangerous than your average daylight patrol in Baghdad.

UPDATE: The WaPo reports that 10 American and 2 Iraqi government soldiers have been killed so far in the battle for Fallujah. The general tone of the article is extremely upbeat, but relies almost entirely on quotations from Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of US ground forces in Iraq.

UPDATE: Matt now says we all should've known that the battle would've been this easy, because guerrillas always avoid direct confrontations with better-armed foes. Come on, Matt, even John Kerry didn't flip-flop that fast.
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# Posted 3:43 PM by David Adesnik  

NAIVE CONSERVATIVE OPTIMISM ABOUT IRAQ?

Blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they're you're primary source for information, you're outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works.

That's what Ezra Klein has to say about why so many liberals believed that Kerry was going to wallop Bush. A cautionary tale, perhaps.
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# Posted 1:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

PERSONALLY (and speaking as a genuine supporter of Palestinian national aspirations and all liberal democratic reformers in that land), I think he should have been declared brain dead four years ago when he walked away from viable Palestinian statehood at Camp David. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

MISCELLANY COLLECTED IN A STUDY BREAK:

• Due to the Isle of Man's lack of constitutional incorporation within the United Kingdom, one of the Queen's more grand-sounding royal titles within the UK is the rather theological 'Lord of Man.'

• During WWI trench fighting, from their German opposing numbers, the kilted Black Watch acquired the nickname 'Ladies from Hell.'
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# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik  

DOES DR. CHAFETZ MAKE HOUSE CALLS? With an eye toward the (non-existent) "values voter", Dan Drezner predicts that Thomas Frank is about to become the next celebrity intellectual du jour. That may be a disturbing thought, but OxBlog is getting ready to celebrate. After all, none other than Josh Chafetz is the author of the definitive debunking of Franks' delusional diatribe, What's The Matter With Kansas? If people are getting ready to pay Franks to recite his dogmatic drivel, I bet some of them might also be willing to pay Dr. Chafetz to put in his two cents.
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# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

NOT REALITY-BASED: Via Howard Kurtz:

After Fox News called Ohio for President Bush on Election Night, John Kerry's aides began phoning top executives at the other networks to urge them to hold off, while White House adviser Karl Rove pressed them to join Fox in making the call.

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# Posted 1:24 AM by David Adesnik  

FALLUJAH: Just read a fascinating report from Belmont Club. I hope things are going as well as BC suggests. I admit to being a pessimist about urban warfare, but American casualties were very low in Najaf this summer. However, the Sunni insurgents seem to be much less primitive than their Sadrist counterparts.
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# Posted 1:19 AM by David Adesnik  

DOES OXBLOG HAVE WMD? From the WaPo:

The consequences of a big biological strike could be epically catastrophic, and rapid advances in science are placing the creation of these weapons within the reach of even graduate students.

I reckon that three political scientists have just as good a chance of producing bioweapons as one chemical engineer.
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# Posted 11:47 PM by David Adesnik  

CLARIFICATION/APOLOGY: In my previous post, the reference to "god***n Christian evangelicals" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek satire of liberal condescension toward Christian conservatives. It in no way reflects my persional views, which I have discussed before on OxBlog.
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# Posted 3:11 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW YORK, NY: LEADER OF CORRUPT international cartel decries efforts by elected liberal democratic leaders to remove terrorists from city out of which they have been killing unarmed civilians. World yawns.

"I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition," Annan wrote to Bush, Blair, and Allawi.

"I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections."

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# Posted 1:37 PM by David Adesnik  

OUT HERE IN THE REAL FAKE WORLD: I've been off-line for four days and a whole news cycle has passed me by. Does Bush's victory represent a true mandate, or just the ignorance of those god***n Christian evangelicals? I know what my gut is telling me, but I don't have much evidence to go on since I've been cut off from all my usual sources of information except the NY Times.

Being in NYC and seeing my family and friends seems a whole lot more real than being in the blogosphere, because I see people face-to-face and talk about things other than politics. But then I realize that I'm part of a Sino-Jewish, Ivy League-educated, medico-legal cabal. It doesn't get any more Blue State than this.

Anyhow, I was glad to see that yesterday's NYT had two whole op-eds (one by David Brooks, one by an ABC pollster) devoted to debunking the "moral values" myth.

The Times also had an extraordinary editorial on Yasir Arafat's legacy. In general, I can count on one hand the number of NYT editorials about the Middle East that strike me as being at least 90% right. But this was one of them, so go check it out.

Well, see you tonight, Amtrak permitting.

CLARIFICATION/APOLOGY: The reference above to "god***n Christian evangelicals" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek satire of liberal condescension toward Christian conservatives. It in no way reflects my persional views, which I have discussed before on OxBlog.
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# Posted 3:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

OPEN MUSING: Does Colombia have a House of Drug Lords in its legislature? Corollary musing: does Afghanistan then have a House of Warlords?

(Incidentally, blogger's been down most of the day, hence the light posting...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:41 AM by David Adesnik  

WE MUST CHALLENGE ACADEMIC ORTHODOXY! Just got this on the Rhodes mail list:

Interested in challenging orthodox, mainstream academia? A new series of
workshops is starting this weekend: the Alternative Academics. The idea
is to discuss about alternative topics usually excluded from mainstream
academia, in an alternative format as well (no speaker meeting where the
speaker is on a platform and tells you what to think). I won't tell more
about it; just come and take part in it!

What's this? A secret neo-conservative cabal dedicated to dethorning the Ivory Tower's liberal (or in Oxford, leftist) orthodoxy?

No, of course not. It's actually an effort to push the academy even farther left, because right now it is just a tool of the global corporate hierarchy. How do I know? Well, I know the guy who sent out the message. All you need to know about him is that e-mail signature includes a link to Indymedia. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:32 AM by David Adesnik  

NEVER TO BE OUTDONE BY THE BRITISH, the United States has created an even more maddening public railway system. I am in New York right now, having spent eleven hellish hours trying to get here from Charlottesville.

First, the bus from Charlottesville to Union Station in DC was half an hour late. That was the best thing that happened all day.

Ten minutes after my train left Union Station for New York, the engine died. Around 45 minutes later, another engine arrived. It died, too, but at least it got us to Baltimore. In a haze because I tried to catch some sleep while waiting for the second engine, I left my umbrella on the train.

In Baltimore, they told us another train to New York was coming. Just before it arrived, they told us not to get on because it was too crowded, but to get on the commuter train across the platform which would be redirected to New York. From the window of the commuter train, we could see that the train across the platform wasn't crowded...as it pulled away from the station.

Half an hour later, our commuter train left Baltimore. They never told us we were going to have to wait that long, so I missed the chance to get my umbrella back. It was a nice one, too. Finally, the train left Baltimore. When it arrived in Philadelphia, they ordered us off the train and told us we had to switch again.

At least it wasn't too long of a wait, and the next train turned out to be an Acela, and we got to sit in business class because that's all that was available. But that really didn't make up for being two and a half hours late and for being led around like ignorant cattle.

Amtrak is usually very reliable, but this was simply ridiculous. You can bet I'll be asking for a refund. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:23 PM by David Adesnik  

NOTHING SCARES'EM LIKE A COWBOY HAT: In order to signify my membership in the reality-based community, I wore a cowboy hat to the office today. A little while ago, I got up from my desk to get a (non-alcoholic) drink and happened to pass by the screening room just as Bush was about to make his acceptance speech.

There were two or three folks already in there when I showed up, and a palpable hush fell over the room. I considered letting them know that I'd voted for Kerry, but figured that if they couldn't handle the hat, that's their business. Besides, I had a six-pack of Diet Coke under my arm, and if that wasn't enough of an indication of my political sympathies, then what is?

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to Saturday night, when I get to wear my cowboy hat to a party in the West Village. People will probably just assume I'm a Log Cabin Republican. But if they ask, I'm going to tell that them a little-known clause in the Patriot Act made wearing a cowboy hat mandatory as of Nov. 2, 2004.

More importantly, the reason I'm headed up to New York is that today is my parents' 30th wedding anniversary and they are having a little get together after services at our synagogue on Shabbat morning. So, Mom, Dad, congratulations!
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:34 AM by Patrick Belton  

BEST ELECTION DAY QUOTE TO BE SUPERSEDED BY EVENTS: Mike McCurry of the Kerry campaign: 'We're counting all the votes. At the end of the day, we win. I'm not sure what day, but we win.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

INCIDENTALLY, my piece from The Hill yesterday, which was offline for a bit with election day traffic, is back online. In brief: a surprising number of foreign governments are hoping for a second Bush term, though not always for the best of reasons.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 PM by David Adesnik  

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Last week, the NYT explored the cutting-edge phenomenon of cat-blogging. Congratulations to Kevin and Inkblot.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:08 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH THE LIBERAL RELATIVIST: Some important evangelicals are not happy.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:07 PM by David Adesnik  

INDEPENDENTS' DAY: Ruy Teixiera says Kerry has had a consistent lead in the polls among independents and independents decide elections.

UPDATE: TNR reaches the same conclusion based on different evidence.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:33 PM by David Adesnik  

A RELUCTANT VOTE FOR BUSH: Robert Tagorda decides.
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# Posted 8:58 PM by David Adesnik  

FILMMAKER SHOT DEAD: A young man with joint Dutch-Moroccan citizenship has shot dead Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director of a film that explores violence against women in Islamic societies. Memeorandum has more.

UPDATE: 20,000 protest Van Gogh's murder.
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# Posted 8:45 PM by David Adesnik  

LIVE BLOGGING: Here I am in downtown Charlottesville, in a renovated building just a block or so from the Mall. FYI, the Mall isn't a mall, but a pedestrian walkway with trendy stores and independent coffee shops. It's like a little bit of Greenwich Village in the mountains of Virginia and it's been the driving force behind the revival of downtown Charlottesville.

It's just a small election-watching party here, with three super-intense Kerry partisans and myself. When I called my friend SC to ask if I could come over, he first made me tell him who I was voting for. I lodged an official protest, but I gave in. After all, it's no secret.

8:49 PM: We're watching MSNBC after briefly flirting with Fox, which my friends declared to be intolerable after around 30 seconds. The plan, however, is to start watching Fox if and when Kerry pulls ahead.

9:39 PM: Chris Matthews asks Joe Trippi whom the bloggers are voting for. He also cut to Trippi for a blogging update around an hour ago. Back then, Trippi gave the blogosphere credit for giving Dan Mongiaro [sp?] the momentum he needed to catch up.

Now, Matthews asks Trippi if it's fair that an 18-year-old with a newspaper and a website should have as much clout as a 75-year-old expert with decades of experience in journalism.

Chris, that's a dumb f***ing question. How many important bloggers can you name that are even under 25? Yglesias, and Josh Chafetz started before he was 25. But look at which bloggers were on the NYT op-ed page today: Djerejian, Cox, Kaus, Drum, DeLong, Hinderaker, Johnson and Reynolds. (I don't know how old Jacobs, Byrd and Althouse are.)

How about the in the Ecosystem? The top includes Kos, Marshall, Sullivan, Atrios and Wizbang.

Anyhow, enough navel-gazing. Chris Matthews may be condescending, but he feels compelled to mention blogs constantly and even set up his own.

9:50 PM: Four of us here, every one with a laptop. The internet provides the information you want when you want it. The TV gives you an anchorperson to make fun of. Although it's not their fault. Who can say intelligent things for hours on end when they don't have any new information?

9:58 PM: I just discovered that the Ecosystem now does rankings in terms of traffic as well as links. The top ten blogs all get more than 100,000 hits per day. That's medium-market newspaper territory. No wonder big media have started to pay attention.

11:20 PM: The wifi went down for a while but just came back. All four us immediately flipped open our laptops to start checking results compulsively.

Also, we just switched over to Comedy Central. There was just a point where the networks became intolerably boring.
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# Posted 6:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

SINCE EVEN OSAMA GETS TO BE A PUNDIT THIS ELECTION CYCLE, ABC News Now is having me on tonight to talk about foreign governments' response to the election. You can watch online, and I'll be on sometime between six and seven EST. If any of our readers find a way to record it for me, I'd not only be very grateful but also happy to reciprocate with free Oxford stuff! (Like, say, an MBA degree...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:42 AM by David Adesnik  

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: In a fiendishly subversive satire of news analysis, CJR explains why George Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry in today's election and why John Kerry just managed to edge out the incumbent. (Hat tip: MY)
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# Posted 1:32 AM by David Adesnik  

BLOODY-MINDED: Matt Yglesias defends The Lancet or perhaps just attacks its critics. Matt writes that

I, for one, don't think the humanitarian argument for war really needs to be taken seriously, since, in my opinion, it's rather obviously offered in bad faith.

He also predicts that the civilian casualty will spiral upwards once the Marines begin to exact their "revenge" on Falluja.
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# Posted 1:28 AM by David Adesnik  

TERESA'S SON: Chris Heinz recently told an audience that

One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state.

Dr. JMR responds:

The new liberal bigotry is to despise traditionally religious people and Jews. Go to [the] local University, read the memo board, and you will see it.

What in God's name could he be talking about? (Uh, this.) For a round-up of reactions to Heinz, see Memeorandum.
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# Posted 1:23 AM by David Adesnik  

"THE JEWS": Great title for an op-ed, huh? I guess the Duke University student paper was really desperate for material. Talented writers can usually come up with an argument better than this:

What Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States—amounts to is a stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended...

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans.

What can you say to an argument like that? Well, it turns out that the website for the Duke Chronicle supports comments, so you can hundreds of things in response to an argument like that. For example:

This jewish power must be stopped. You forgot to mention all the Jews who steal all the nobel prizes instead of leaving them for others.
Jahaan Badour
rentgin@hotmail.com
Computers
New York

I enjoyed your article, however you did not dwell on recent Jewish problems such as 9/11 and the war in Iraq.
Mohammed Marouf
giftsoftime@hotmail.com
Engineer
California

I am glad you have the courage to stand up to the Jews. I agree with everything in your article, except you pointed out that the holocaust is a fact, when in reality what happenned is still open for debate.
Ayman Belghazi
Student
Michigan

Among the the comments here supporting your editorial, one denies the holocaust took place, one believes that Jews steal all the Nobel Prizes, and one believes 9/11 to be a Jewish conspiracy. Is this truly the company you wish to keep?
Shan Anwar
shan.anwar@gmail.com

I cannot stomach these words you've written since I object to your complaint as both a child from a Jewish mother and Muslim father.

Hossein
mahdavir@seattleu.edu
Student
Seattle

The responses speak for themselves. For more background on the roots of this controversy, head over to Kesher Talk.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:08 AM by David Adesnik  

WHEN IT RAINES, IT POURS: You didn't think Howell Raines was fair and balanced during his tenure at the NYT? Well, Raines' latest op-ed shows just how much he was holding back during his reign on West 43rd Street:

If George Bush wins the presidential election, Americans can mark it down as a triumph of thug politics...

P. Diddy would be proud.

The New Politics birthed in the '60s, which stressed altruism and good government, has been displaced by an intellectual crudeness that was inherent in the modern American conservatism that began slouching toward Washington after the Republican convention in San Francisco in 1964...

Thank God the convention was isn't Dallas!

The most dangerous trait of the Internet is not merely its speed, but its creation of demand and credulity for unverified information. Perhaps for the first time since invention of the printing press, a new information technology has become more efficient at spreading disinformation than knowledge...

Whereas old technologies, such as television, spread enlightenment and joy. What, you think I'm talking about CBS? I meant Fox!

In another amazing shift, a foreigner, Rupert Murdoch, and his handpicked chairman of Fox News, the campaign strategist Roger Ailes, have become the most important standard setters in the nation's political journalism.

Oh my God! Not a foreigner! What next, a Catholic in the White House? Even worse, a Jew!

By the way, I'd bet Bill Keller and the rest of the NYT would love to hear Ol' Howell say that they've been brainwashed by Roger Ailes.

Will a Kerry victory bring the promised end to the much-discussed division among the American electorate?...I'm not sure that will happen with the best of wills.

You said it.
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# Posted 1:03 AM by David Adesnik  

PATHETIC NYT LOWERS STANDARS EVEN FURTHER: Bloggers on the op-ed page? OxBloggers? What happened, did they run out of real journalists?

Of course, I'm ecstatic. Who doesn't like seeing their byline in the second-most prestigious, third-most respected and fourth-most accurate paper in the nation? On election day, to boot.

(It would've been grammatically correct to say "his byline", not "their byline" since "who" refers to a single individual. But since I'm a blogger, I can do wild and crazy things like disregard the rules of grammer...and speling.)

Well, I guess ought to give some credit to the open-minded folks on the NYT editorial staff, since they asked for contributions from some of the Times' most unrepentant critics, including yours truly.

As I said in the midst of Memogate,

The bottom line is that the media listen. In the spite of their condescencion and self-righteousness toward us non-journalists, the media have much less of an appetite for obstruction than most government officials.

As we head to the polls, we ought to remember that keeping our elected officials honest is priority #1, and that journalists have the same priority. (They just need a little advice from us every once in a while.)
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG ELECTION DAY SPECIAL: I have the election-day featured article in The Hill tomorrow, and it's up online this evening. I'd say go read it, but there's always the chance it's not very good, so (1) go read Voltaire, as something infinitely more worth reading; and (2) if you perversely insist on not doing (1), you can read this instead. Conversely, as I'll be doing a second piece on the same theme as postmortem afterwards, I'd be very grateful for any thoughts or suggestions our readers might like to offer.

My first two paragraphs, which basically introduce the gist of the piece, are these:

In the first American election fought on foreign policy since the Cold War, world capitals have been scrambling to assess how the foreign policies of a John Kerry and a second George W. Bush administration might be expected to diverge toward them and their interests. And in an election where the Democrat's principal claim to office has been his promise to restore the decent opinions of mankind to the nation, and the Republican's has been his willingness to do right (in democracy and counterterror) even when unpopular abroad, one of the principal ironies has been that a surprising number of foreign capitals actually want Bush to win.

In some instances, such as India and Pakistan, this is because of working relationships they have already brought up to speed with Bush and his advisors; others, such as China and Japan, worry about Kerry's vulnerability to domestic lobbies which Bush could ignore either from strength (congressional Republicans, Taiwan supporters) or neglect (labor). Africa prefers Bush because he as a Republican evangelical could push foreign aid through Congress, a miracle they believe beyond the intercessive powers of the Catholic Democrat. While public opinion supports the Democrat in most countries other than Russia and Israel, governments weigh different concerns, such as the value of established understandings and relationships with the current administration, and the susceptibility of each candidate to different forms of domestic pressure.

In general, most autocrats tend to support Bush, though Arab autocrats are backing Kerry.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with this piece, and please do let me know your responses!

UPDATE: Looks as though election day traffic has driven the site off line, at least temporarily. There's a mirror copy of my piece on my website o' clips, though. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE WAPO PHOTOGRAPH-CAPTION MISMATCHES: From the archives, and via a reader....

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# Posted 6:41 AM by Patrick Belton  

SHE'S EVEN BETTER THAN BUBBIE, THEN: Photograph and accompanying caption currently leading the Washington Post website:

Rod Gardner caught three passes for 41 yards and one touchdown. (John McDonnell/Post)
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# Posted 10:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY SAMHAIN: A very happy Oíche Shamhna to all of our readers and friends!

In traditional Ireland, Samhain was the harvest festival marking the end of one year and beginning of the next. The two years wouldn't fully align, though, so for a short bit, time would quite literally be out of joint (thus the Celtic origins of the phrase from Macbeth.) Thus faeries would get lost, wander up around the world of men, and generally not know what they were about - so if you were kindly enough, you'd dress yourself up like a faery and go about, so when they ran into you, they'd run straightaways back to the faery world, and a big fright on them. Hence the original custom, which I've always found much nicer than its contemporary descendant. So a very happy maith Oíche Shamhna ort from OxBlog.

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# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik  

"DEMOCRATS RALLY FOR KERRY, WEED": That's an actual headline from the UVA Cavalier Daily. You see, Al Weed is the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 5th District of Virginia. His signs and buttons are very popular in Charlottesville.

One middle-aged woman complained to a friend of mine that malicious Republicans had stolen the "Weed for Congress" sign from her front lawn. My friend explained that this was very unlikely.

Weed's opponent is incumbent Virgil H. Goode. I had personally hoped that Al and Virgil would run together on a "Goode-Weed" ticket, but the candidates have dashed my hopes and reverted to the adversarial relationship common among Democrats and Republians...which means that I have to figure out who I'm going to vote for.

So, check back here in a little while and I'll have some answers for you.

UPDATE: This Al Weed press release is priceless. It provides a detailed discussion of how "Weed for Congress" signs have been stolen all across the district, but can't bring itself to admit the real reason why.

One woman says that she has caught college students stealing her signs at 11:30 or midnight, but since the last sign was stolen at 4:00 AM, it must have been the Republicans. (Or perhaps college students who realized that they would caught if they kept stealing the signs before people were asleep.)

In another "bizarre case",

a large sign was stolen sometime Thursday night and a deer carcass was thrown over a fence into the yard where the sign had been removed, as if to send a message of intimidation.

Or perhaps a message of "we are really drunk, so we're going to steal 'Weed' signs and play a few rounds of Toss the Carcass.

UDPATE: I'm voting for Weed. He's a real left-winger with a bad position on Iraq, but Goode really doesn't have much going for him. In fact, neither his campaign site nor his government homepage contain much information at all. I even looked for his speeches in the Congressional Record, but couldn't find anything substantial.

In the House, Goode's main accomplishment seems to have been the introduction of a bill establishing English as the official language of the United States. I presume that this effort is an extension of Goode's position on immigration, which is

We need to stop illegal immigration. I am opposed to granting amnesty to those persons who come into this country illegally.

In other words, Goode has no real ideas on this subject, but will waste everyone's time in the middle of a war on stupid symbolic gestures.

On the usual range of domestic issues that I care about, Goode is on the other side. For tax cuts, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, etc. Even on the issues where I prefer the Republican stance, Goode is on the wrong side. In addition to being a protectionist, Goode actually voted agains the No Child Left Behind act.

So what about Al Weed? The thing that I like most about him is that he has an impressive record as a business owner and entrepreneur. He won't be your typical anti-business, anti-market liberal Democrat.

Weed also has a good military record, including a tour of duty and bronze medal in Vietnam, where he was a green beret. He also served in the reserves for almost forty years, including ten months of active duty in Bosnia. Given the importance of Special Forces and the National Guard in our current situation, Weed's experiences should prove beneficial.

The weak point is his position on Iraq, which is a little bit hard to make out. The short version is

With no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and Saddam's regime gone, [Al Weed] thinks it is time for our allies to assume a greater role and for the U.S. to bring our troops home.

Talk about delusional. He says there's no point to staying in Iraq but expects our allies to take over the occupation. Anyhow, the long version of Weed's stance on Iraq is rather different

We owe it to our troops to bring them home when the job is done. [Emphasis added. --ed.]...

Hopefully, we have set the stage for the development of a free, democratic, and pluralistic Iraqi society.

If the new Iraqi government and the people of Iraq want our troops to stay and help rebuild their country, we should oblige. If they want us to leave, we should oblige that wish as well...

There is no risk to our military credibility if we withdraw on an American timetable....

To stay indefinitely puts us at risk of being dragged into a guerilla war without a foreseeable end and cost us dearly in lives and resources. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, I speak from experience when I say that this is a possibility that we must carefully avoid.

Still pretty bad, but at least he understands that democracy is the outcome we are working towards and that we should stay if the people of Iraq want us to (although I'm guessing he assumes that they don't.)

Not that any of this offers much consolation. But my vote for Congress is more about domestic policy, so what I want is to get rid of the Republican majority. By the way, did I mention that Weed is a protectionist who favors single-payer universal health care? So he's not the kind of moderate Democrat I like. But there isn't much future for Weed's ideas in the current political environment, so I'm not too worried.
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# Posted 3:21 PM by David Adesnik  

JOIN THE CLUB at KerryHatersForKerry.com. (Hat tip: SYYC)
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# Posted 11:37 AM by Patrick Belton  

GLAD TIDINGS FOR MAC USERS IN BRITAIN: Recent studies have shown that two out of three OxBloggers use Macs. In that connection, and for all of our friends in the UK who are also Mac users, the first Apple store in Europe is opening in London on 20 November, at Regent Street. Given that local shills have been charging top dollar (er, pound) for the sorts of small useful services that the staff in North American Apple stores would provide for free, for all Mac users in Britain, this is very good news indeed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

IN MEMORIAM, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, at 102.

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# Posted 2:54 AM by David Adesnik  

UNDECIDEDS BREAK FOR THE CHALLENGER? BOLLOCKS! This in-depth debunking has been all over the blogosphere.
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# Posted 2:35 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT EVERY KERRY ENDORSEMENT HAS IN COMMON: Riffing on The Economist, Kaus observes that

It's always a shaky moment in these non-peacenik endorsements when the writer tries to convince himself or herself that Kerry won't bail out on Iraq prematurely, isn't it? (Kerry has been "forthright about the need to win in Iraq," but do you trust him and if so why? Because Andrew Sullivan's blogging will keep him honest?)

As Homer Simpson might say, it's funny because it's true. It's certainly true about my endorsement of Kerry. But I still prefers the risks of John Kerry to the risks of George Bush.

And here's something for all you Bush supporters to ponder: If Kerry wins, how much commitment will congressional Republicans show to promoting democracy in Iraq? Do they share Bush's vision? Or will they revert to type and embrace the inward-looking mercantilism of the GOP in the Clinton years?
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# Posted 2:13 AM by David Adesnik  

BIN LADEN CAUGHT ON FILM WITH PARIS HILTON: Why do you think she was filmed in the dark? Who is more likely to have friends with night-vision goggles -- a dimbulb heiress or a terrorist mastermind?

For more on the Bin Laden tape, see TMV's uber-comprehensive round-up.
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# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

DOUBLE REIHAN! The eminence gris behind David Brooks shares some of his thoughts in a two part series in TNR.
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# Posted 1:52 AM by David Adesnik  

SPEAKING THEIR LANGUAGE: Mike McCurry is a master of spin because

He couches the campaign's message in the horserace and tactical language upon which reporters thrive. He understands the press's obsession with political process, and he dishes it out with relish.

In other words, mimic their neuroses and they'll think you're a genius.
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# Posted 1:47 AM by David Adesnik  

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES UPDATE: For the second day in a row, the WaPo casualty count for Iraq has excluded the IBC data which provoked OxBlog's protest last Sunday. Then along came The Lancet and shunted aside that entire debate by insisting that there have been 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq.

I just came across the WaPo story on the Lancet study and thought it was rather interesting. In order to provide balance, the Post plays off The Lancet against a military expert at Human Rights Watch who describes The Lancet's figure as "inflated" and "a reach". Now how often do you get someone from Human Rights Watch telling you that civilian casualtiy figures have been exaggerated?

On the other hand, The Lancet's higher figure has given accidental credibility to IBC by suggesting that it's methods and conclusions are reasonable. Thus, the Post reports that

Previous independent estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq were far lower, never exceeding 16,000.

Actually, the Iraqi Human Rights Organization has been throwing around a 30,000 figure for a while, which got mentioned in the WaPo world opinion roundup. But that number will also pick up some credibility thanks to The Lancet. And the truth? Damned if I know.

UPDATE: Well, Fred Kaplan seems to know. (Hat tip: MF) He says The Lancet's figure is not just completely unreliable, but that the authors of the study have basically lied through their teeth to get publicity for their work.

So, you might ask, is Fred Kaplan biased? Of course he is. Here's what he has to say about whom he'll vote for next Tuesday:

Bush has done too much damage to America's reputation in the world. His view of the world is naive and, too often, wrong. His victory would mean a victory for the most cynical politics practiced by any president in my memory.

The one drawback to Kaplan's analysis of The Lancet study is his lavish praise of IBC. It looks like someone will be getting an e-mail from OxBlog...

UPDATE: ChicagoBoyz has more on The Lancet's primitive methodology. (Hat tip: LH) Um, so if the problems with this study are so obvious, how the hell did it get into a peer reviewed journal?
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# Posted 1:37 AM by David Adesnik  

ADVICE FOR THE INSURGENTS: I'm not you asking guys to be nice to the Americans or even to stop gunning down your fellow Iraqis. But please stop killing journalists. It's for your own good.

If you read this diary kept by a WSJ correspondent, you'll realize how hard it is for reporters to do their job in Iraq. Now, why should you care about whether American reporters do their job? Because they might turn out to be the best friends you have.

I'm guessing you guys haven't studied much American history. Most Americans haven't either. But I've been reading a lot about US intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. The guerrillas in those countries were smart, because they actively encouraged American reporters to travel with them and see how they really lived. The press coverage they got was invaluable.

Now, it's true that American journalists are also going to tell everyone about it if you kill people. But, hey, they already report about that all the time, so you've got nothing to lose.

(PS If there are any actual insurgents reading this, please ignore my advice. I'm glad that everyone here to the right of Michael Moore thinks you're a bunch of cold-blooded murderers.)


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# Posted 1:29 AM by David Adesnik  

RESPONDING TO MY PARENTHETICAL QUERY, Matt has posted some of his thoughts on Kerry's approach to democracy promotion. Matt describes his position as a "not a very hearty endorsement of Kerry on democracy grounds.
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# Posted 1:10 PM by David Adesnik  

THE NEW MASS-MURDER IN IRAQ: A study just published in the Lancet, a prestigious journal of medicine, uses statistical methods to demonstrate that the United States is guilty of mass murder in Iraq. The article estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the war and that upwards of 80,000 died as a result of US airstrikes.

No, those aren't typos. The numbers are 100,000 and 80,000 respectively. Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the study, has provided some detailed comments about his methodology in an interview with Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic. (Hat tip: WAB)

Burnham's methods seem logical enough, although I have to admit that I am deeply, deeply skeptical of his results. Historically, only out-and-out carpet bombing, as in WWII or Vietnam, tends to have this kind of result. And one has to wonder how Western journalists failed to notice this alleged scale of destruction in Iraq. (NB: If you follow that link, make sure to read the comment by TM, which the second one down from the top.)

Rough estimates of bombing casualties from the first Gulf War, Kosovo war, and Afghan invasion are on the order of 3,000, 500 and 1,200 respectively. Of course, if this new study has any merit to it, we should probably revise those figures upwards by an order of magnitude.

That's all I have to say in the meantime. I guess we'll only know for sure that this story is bogus when Michael Moore starts to tell it.
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# Posted 10:25 PM by Patrick Belton  

IRISH CORNER: NYT pans the Abbey Theatre's centenary Playboy of the Western World, in New York for a few days, but go see it anyway. It features, incidentally, a lovely Galway actress by the name of Cathy Belton. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANTHONY DANIELS fact-checks the Motorcycle Diaries and their deeply illiberal protagonist.

Incidentally, congratulations, Josh! Our readers should know he cut a fine figure in subfusc on his way to his viva. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:52 AM by Patrick Belton  

ELECTORAL VOTE WATCH: It's tipped again, this time toward Kerry, with swinging Pennsylvania and Ohio falling his way (by 3 and 1 per cent, respectively), and Florida toward Bush (by 2, all numbers Zogby, 27 October).

Still haven't received my postal ballot from New Haven, incidentally, so I guess I'll be filling out one of these - which unfortunately doesn't give me the option of voting against Mayor DeStefano, for not sending me an absentee ballot. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

IBC FOLLOW UP: This post will take a detailed look at some of the reports of civilian casualties in the IBC database. It will compare the description of the incidents provided by IBC (in the categories labeled 'Targets', 'Weapons' and 'Min'/'Max' [Casualties]) with the descriptions provided by the newspaper articles they cite as evidence. For purposes of clarity, this post will identify each incident according to the 'Incident code' assigned by IBC.

Incident: k471 Date: 15 Oct 2004 IBC: Police patrol/car bomb; 10/10 dead.
AP: A vehicle bomb reported Friday by the U.S. military blasted near a police station in southwest Baghdad, killing 10 civilians - including a family of four who were driving by at the time of the blast. (16 Oct 2004)

Incident: k467 Date: 16 Oct 2004 IBC: Police returning from Jordan to Karbala/gunife; 9/9 dead.
AP: A militant group claimed responsibility for the killing of nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan, criticizing in a statement Monday the role Jordan is playing in building what it called "the traitor Iraqi police force." (18 Oct 2004)

Incident: k445 Date: 10 Oct 2004 IBC: Possibly police academy/suicide minibus bomb; 9/17 dead. AP: Two car bombs shook the capital in quick succession Sunday, killing at least 11 people, including an American soldier...A suicide attacker detonated a minibus packed with explosives near an eastern Baghdad police academy, police Cap. Ali Ayez said at the scene...The nearby Kindi Hospital received 10 bodies and treated five wounded from the blast, said Dr. Ali Ghazi...Iraq's most feared terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, claimed responsibility for both attacks. (10 Oct 2004)
Reuters: A suspected suicide car bomb killed up to 17 people near Baghdad's Oil Ministry and a nearby police academy on Sunday, a spokesman for the ministry said...The Interior Ministry official put the death toll at six. Police sources said they believed it had been a suicide car bombing and said they could confirm nine dead.

Incident: k444 Date: 8 Oct 2004 IBC: Suspected al Zarqawi safehouse/US airstrike; 11/13.
AP: American warplanes struck a building where the U.S. command said leaders of al-Zarqawi's network were meeting early Friday. Residents said the house was full of people who had gathered for a wedding. The attack killed 13 people, including the groom, said Dr. Ahmed Saeed at the city hospital. Seventeen others were wounded, including the bride, he said. (8 Oct 2004)
Reuters: A U.S. air raid, aimed at foreign fighters led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed 11 people and wounded 17 after a wedding party in the rebel-held Iraqi city of Falluja on Friday, residents and doctors said...At the hospital, where blood pooled on the floor, a doctor named Rafah al-Hayat said 11 people had been killed and 17 wounded. One of his colleagues, Khaled Nasser, said nine females aged between 5 and 50 were among the wounded.

Incident: k437 Date: 06 Oct 2004 IBC: Iraq National Guard recruits/suicide car bomb; 15/16 dead.
AP: Dr. Waleed Jawad Qamar of the Anah health clinic said his facility recorded 13 dead and 25 injured. Another hospital in nearby Hadithah reported three dead and five injured. U.S. officials said no Americans were killed or wounded but had no report of Iraqi casualties. (6 Oct 2004)
Reuters: Local doctors said 16 people had been killed and 24 wounded. Witnesses said they saw a car hurtling towards the National Guard centre on the edge of town just before the explosion. (6 Oct 2004)

Incident: k433 Date: 4 Oct 2004 IBC: Suspected al Zarqawi supporters/US airstrikes; 11/11 dead.
AP: The military, which regularly accuses hospitals of inflating casualty figures, said the strikes targeted followers of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and their associates.
A strike in the central al-Jumhuriyah area killed nine people, including three women and four children, said Dr. Adil Khamis of Fallujah General Hospital...A second strike in the city's southern Al-Shuhada neighborhood killed two more people, Khamis said. (04 Oct 2004)

Incident: k429 Date: 4 Oct 2004 IBC: Army or police recruiting station/car bomb, possibly suicide; 14/14 dead.
AP: Yarmouk Hospital received 15 bodies and 81 wounded from the explosion, said Sabah Aboud, the facility's chief registration official. (4 Oct 2004)

This is just an informal sample of the incidents in the IBC database. I basically chose the incidents because they all occurred in the past month and resulted in approximately 10 deaths, which was above average.

If you total up the casualty figures, you get 57-66 dead from five insurgent attacks and 22-24 dead from two sets of US airstrikes. The credibility of these reports seems to rest on the reports of doctors and hospital officials, who are generally quoted by name.

The motives to exaggerate such casualty figures are obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if doctors in insurgent-held territory are intimidated into revising their estimates upwards. Moreover, there is no local press there to hold anyone accountable.

The situation may not be all that different in government held territory. The Allawi government may bribe doctors to revise their estimates upwards, even if the United States prefers otherwise. There is a nascent press in Iraq, but I have no idea whether it focuses on such issues as the accuracy of casualty counts.

Anyhow, my intentions for the near future are to fact-check all of the October 2004 incidents in the IBC database. I am curious whether the overall ratio of casualties from government and insurgents attacks will be much different from the 2.5:1 ration in my little unscientific sample. Either way, I will defintely let you know.
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# Posted 11:43 PM by David Adesnik  

ENDORSEMENTS THAT MAY ACTUALLY MATTER: The Orlando Sentinel has switched from Bush in 2000 to Kerry in '04. The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Tampa Tribune have gone from Bush in 2000 to 'no endorse' today.
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# Posted 11:29 PM by David Adesnik  

GETTING READY FOR THE RECOUNT(S): An AP poll reports that six out of ten voters don't expect there to be a clear winner by the morning after the election. (Hat tip: Megan-guest-blogging-for-Glenn)

This seems to me like a classic example of the human tendency to predict the future on the basis of the very recent past. Four years ago, no one said to themselves: "A close election? I hope it doesn't turn into another 1876!"

But now, you can open the paper any morning and read about legal battles in a dozen different states, with accusations of dishonesty flying on both sides. These stories are important and they should be covered in considerable detail. Nonetheless, they have the cumulative effect of creating misperceptions among the voting public. It's an inevitable process, but one we should think about more often in a broader set of contexts.
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# Posted 11:08 PM by David Adesnik  

INSTAHIPPIE: This, from Glenn's TCS column:

We were all dancing in abandoned warehouses, under the radar of the authorities, and there was lots of PLUR-talk (Peace Love Unity and Respect)

Can you say 'acid flashback' (to the mid-1990s)?

But even if Glenn is in an altered state, he does make some good observations about the future of the blogosphere:

Over the next few years, blogs will grow both more and less significant. They'll grow more significant because more people will be reading them, and -- at least as important -- more people will be writing them. That will expand their impact considerably. On the other hand, they'll grow less significant, in a way, because they'll grow more ordinary. Like other communications media, from newspapers to email, they'll just become part of the background, and their particular thread of impact will be less noticeable.

And that will make a lot of journalists very happy.
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# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

THE END BEGINNING OF MAJOR COMBAT OPERATIONS? The NYT reports that a major assault on Falluja and Ramadi is inevitable in the coming weeks.
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# Posted 10:48 PM by David Adesnik  

IS IT TOO EARLY TO CELEBRATE? The Cards are down by 3 with two innings to go. It reminds me of the night eight years ago when the Yankees won the World Series for the first time in 18 years.

Eighteen isn't eighty-six, but I had spent my entire childhood desperately rooting for a team that just couldn't win in September. In contrast, all of my friends were Mets fans, who got to celebrate in 1986.

(Boston now has men on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out in the 8th.)

After eight years of near-invincibility it's hard to remember how close the Yankees came to losing it all in 1996. The Braves won the first two games of the series in New York and took a solid lead in Game 3 in Atlanta. Then the Yankees came out of nowhere to win four games in a row.

By sheer luck, I happened to be home from New Haven and having dinner with my family the night of Game 6. It was Rosh Hashana. [CORRECTION: My mother points out Rosh Hashana took place far too early to coincide with the World Series. My mother says that my false recollection of this detail indicates that my memory is no more reliable than that of certain presidential candidates who insist that they were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve.] At the beginning of the ninth, my whole family got up and went to watch the game on my parents' television.

I can still remember Charlie Hayes catching that fly ball just outside the third base line. A single moment made up for two decades of disappointment. I want every Red Sox fan to feel that way tonight.

UPDATE: The curse has been reversed!
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# Posted 1:21 AM by David Adesnik  

TOTALLY UNSURPRISING ENDORSEMENTS: At least Matt Yglesias has a sense of humor about his decision to endorse John Kerry in a formal manner (or at least what passes for formal in the blogosphere; it's not like any of us got up at a press conference with Kerry himself and said, "Dude! This guy is the man!")

On the other hand, the New Yorker has broken with its eight-decade tradition of non-partisanship and come up with an extremely bland and formulaic denouncement of Bush with some praise for John Kerry tacked on at the end.

Frankly, I'm sort of curious about whom the editors hoped to persuade with its endorsement. Isn't the entire magazine sort of an implicit endorsement of Kerry in the first place?

But much more importantly, I'm disturbed by the fact that the New Yorker, like its (what the hell -- "our") candidate betrays absolutely no concern about promoting democracy in Iraq. (Matt was pretty weak on this point as well, but his whole endorsement was sort off-the-cuff.)

Moreover, David Remnick and his fellow editors even describe Iraq as one of this issues on which

Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery.

Huh? You'd think that Remnick & Co. would have at least tried to demonstrate their high-minded concern for balance and self-awareness by pointing that Kerry's plan to bring in the French and the Germans is patently ridiculous.

You know, if the New Yorker really wanted to be clever, it could've just reprinted The Nation's endorsement of John Kerry -- under the heading of science-fiction.
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# Posted 1:04 AM by David Adesnik  

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AN ENDORSEMENT! From Jacob Weisberg:

I remain totally unimpressed by John Kerry. Outside of his opposition to the death penalty, I've never seen him demonstrate any real political courage. His baby steps in the direction of reform liberalism during the 1990s were all followed by hasty retreats. His Senate vote against the 1991 Gulf War demonstrates an instinctive aversion to the use of American force, even when it's clearly justified. Kerry's major policy proposals in this campaign range from implausible to ill-conceived. He has no real idea what to do differently in Iraq. His health-care plan costs too much to be practical and conflicts with his commitment to reducing the deficit. At a personal level, he strikes me as the kind of windbag that can only emerge when a naturally pompous and self-regarding person marinates for two decades inside the U.S. Senate. If elected, Kerry would probably be a mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter. And I won't have a second's regret about voting for him.

More importantly, Weisberg explains why Slate's official policy is to ask each of its staff members to explain in public whom they're voting for and why:

News organizations that, for understandable reasons, are less open about the political views of their staff may have a harder time with the challenge of being fair to both sides. Repressed politics, like repressed sexuality, tends to find an outlet of one kind or another. This may explain how Dan Rather and other conscientious journalists at 60 Minutes ended up promoting some sloppily forged documents thought to be damaging to President Bush's re-election effort. Conservatives were right to point out that an equally flawed story harmful to Kerry almost certainly would not have aired. What if CBS reporters and producers openly acknowledged that the vast majority of them prefer Kerry and the Democrats? Perhaps in openly expressing their political leanings, they would be forced to try harder to be fair to the other side, lest they be dismissed as biased.

The case most commonly made against fuller disclosure of opinion at "straight" news organizations like CBS—as opposed to journals of opinion like Slate—is that the information would be misused by media critics on the right. Movement conservatives would seize on the revelation that most journalists vote Democratic to discredit professionals who are doing their conscientious best to be fair. But wait—conservatives already dismiss the press as biased against them, on the well-supported assumption that most journalists at national news organizations are liberal. Is denying a cheap shot to critics really a good enough reason to withhold information that many news consumers would deem not only interesting, but useful and relevant?

Hat tip: Phil Carter (a Slate contributor who'll be voting for Kerry)
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# Posted 11:19 PM by David Adesnik  

THE CURSE REVERSED? The Red Sox are about to go up 3-0 in the World Series. What are the chances of anyone coming back from three games down? Even as an Yankee fan, I want nothing more than for the Red Sox to redeem themselves after a century of disappointment.

I think my uncle put it quite well in his letter to the NYT last Friday:

The "monumental collapse" (Sports, Oct. 21) of the Yankees to the Boston Red Sox has rekindled memories of my youth, when I was a devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan and spent many wonderful days rooting for them at Ebbets Field.

I remember the decades of Brooklyn's archrivalry with the Yankees and the glorious moment in 1955 when Brooklyn finally won the World Series.

I was heartbroken when the Dodgers moved away, and I refused to seek refuge in any other team until my three nephews, who were growing up to be ardent Yankee fans, persuaded me to convert.

Boston's victory evokes memories of my first love (the Dodgers) and the ecstasy of overcoming seeming insurmountable obstacles.

I applaud the Red Sox victory! Maybe it's time to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

PJH
New York, Oct. 21 1984

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# Posted 9:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

HE'S FAR too nice a guy to mention it himself, so we'll have to do it for him - OxBlog's friend Josh Cherniss has a stunning entry on Isaiah Berlin up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy now, which is quite simply the best introduction to his thought I've yet come across. And when you've got one of our favourite writers Michael Ignatieff beat on that score, that's really quite an accomplishment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:04 PM by David Adesnik  

FINALLY: Sullivan endorses Kerry.
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# Posted 5:56 PM by David Adesnik  

ACHOO! In TNR, Jonathan Cohn takes a look at the flu vaccine fiasco. It's an informative article, although I think Cohn pushes his evidence to far when he says the debacle is a reason to vote against Bush.
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# Posted 11:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

AS BIG a fan as I am of geeky things you can do with technology, I steadfastly refuse to vote for any officeseeker who ever comes to my door riding one of these. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:47 PM by David Adesnik  

"A MAGAZINE OPENED TO REVEAL A PICTURE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL BALLS...FBI forensic testing would later confirm the balls' authenticity."

That is an actual quote from today's WaPo Magazine. It has nothing to do with Bill Clinton. Rather, it concerns the theft of four spherical sporting objects bearing the autographs of Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding and Coolidge.
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# Posted 8:47 PM by David Adesnik  

BAD ROLE MODELS: I wasn't going to write about this story, but it upset my Chinese roommates so much that I figured it must be big news.

So, it turns out that Liu Xiang, China's surprise gold medalist in the 110m hurdles, has signed an endorsement deal with China's #1 cigarette maker.

But hold off before you criticize Liu, because I smell a rat. It turns out that

The official government-backed Track and Field Association has sole right to negotiate product endorsements for the country's athletes, with income split between athletes and the group.

Sounds to me like some bureaucrat is trying to cash in on this national hero's reputation. On a less important but more amusing note, check out this Orwellian statement about the endorsement deal from the CEO of the cigarette manufacturer:

Everyone likes Liu Xiang and hopes he will 'soar' higher and faster, and maintain his sunny, healthy, progressive image.

Sort of like Joe Camel in gym shorts.

UPDATE: Reader DM points out that Baisha, China's #1 cigarette maker, also makes other products. His comment led me to re-read the two articles I linked to above, neither of which explicitly says that Liu Xiang will be endorsing cigarettes.

Instead, Liu will serve as an "image ambassador" for Baisha, which both AP and the BBC describe as China's biggest cigarette maker, with no mention of other products. Moreover, the headline of the BBC article is "Hurdler Xiang to Back Cigaretttes". So did the Beeb confuse its own headline writers, or does it know more about Baisha than it's letting on? (And isn't the guy's surname 'Liu'?)
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# Posted 7:18 PM by David Adesnik  

PROFOUND OBSERVATION ABOUT 60 MINUTES: Ed Bradley should not have an earring. If he is going wear one anyhow, it should be stud, not a hoop.

And notice how Bradley's headshot on the 60 Minutes website is a three-quarters profile that thrusts forward his unpierced lobe while hiding its bejeweled counterpart.
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# Posted 7:05 PM by David Adesnik  

JON STEWART ON CBS: The 60 Minutes profile of Big Jon should be on in around 20 minutes. The CBS internet summary, as well as the commericals I've seen, suggest their going to play Stewart as an equal opportunity critic fed up by American journalists' failures to expose politicians' (read: Bush's) lies. In short, it's the he-said/she-said hypotheis (recently elevated to the status of meme.)

For a better look at Stewart, head on over to Howard Kurtz's profile in Saturday's WaPo. With the help of Ted Koppel and Wonkette, Kurtz pigeonholes Stewart with impressive precision. Wonkette says that Stewart

To say his is just a comedy show is a cop-out in a way. He's gotten so much power. So many people look to him that you can't really be the kid in the back throwing spitballs

Koppel adds:

[Stewart] is to television news what a really great editorial cartoonist is to a newspaper...

A satirist gets to poke and prod and make fun of other people, and when you say, 'What about you, dummy?,' he says, 'I'm just a satirist.'

Naturally, I like Kurtz's message because it's exactly what I've been saying about Stewart for quite some time now. He is gut-wrenchingly funny, but has to stop pretending that his is a noble effort to restore balance to the American political agenda. At least for the past four months, Stewart has been active Kerry partisan who uses his influence to reinforce negative stereotypes about Bush.

That's all fine, it just means that what Stewart deserves is a roasting from his comedic colleagues for adopting as his own the pious ambiguities of the politicians he so loves to mock.

"We don't have an agenda to change the political system. We have a more selfish agenda, to entertain ourselves. We feel a frustration with the way politics are handled and the way politics are handled within the media," Stewart says. Yeah, right.

BONUG LIVE-BLOGGING:

7:37 PM: Stewart resorts to the "I'm just a fake journalist" cop-out.

7:39 PM: Footage of Stewart making fun of Kerry, helping him do the bi-partisan spin.

7:41 PM: Another CBS pairing of Stewart making fun of the GOP, then Stewart making fun of Kerry.

7:42 PM: "Stewart expects to vote for John Kerry, but that's not an endorsement."

7:46 PM: Great clip of Stewart trashing CBS because of the Dan Rather memo f***-up.

Then Stewart asks why Rathergate is the big scandal but no one cares about Halliburton or the missing WMD. Can you say "he-said/she-said journalism"?

7:48 PM: Clip of Stewart wrangling with Tucker Carlson, bashing cable media for its yelling idiot vs. yelling idiot he-said/she-said journalism.

7:50 PM: CBS is really playing this brilliantly. They defuse charges of liberal bias on their part by letting Jon Stewart subtly argue for the unintentional pro-conservative bias of the mainstream media.

To top it all off, they let the liberal Stewart trash CBS's incompetence as if to make it seem that Memogate was just a little accident that had nothing to do with Dan Rather's politics.

7:55 PM: How come no one told me Mickey Andy Rooney was so funny? (In that laughting-at-him-not-laughing-with-him sort of way.)
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# Posted 6:57 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG ENDORSES LAROUCHE as idiotarian menace of the year. I got used to the LaRouche activists in Harvard Square, so I just figured that they weren't all that different from the rest of the left-wing kooks who hang out there. Except maybe a little more anti-Semitic.

But this report in the Washington Post magazine demonstrates that LaRouche is a lot more than a failed politician. He is a paranoid cult leader who ruins the lives of countless young men and women. One of them died on a highway is central Germany, hit by multiple cars just minutes after he called his mother in the UK, begging for help.

LaRouche is also a convicted criminal who spent much of the late 1980s and early 1990s in prison for extensive fraud. When the eight-time presidential candidate tells you that fascist Jews have sent zombie assassins to murder LaRouche and that they, not Al Qaeda are responsible for 9/11, it's really the least of what's wrong with him.
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# Posted 6:55 PM by David Adesnik  

SUPERBOWL QUALITY FOOTBALL: The final seconds are ticking off the clock as the Jets go down to defeat and New England extends its mind-blowing records of 21 consecutive victories. Amazing.
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# Posted 4:11 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT ARE IBC'S STANDARDS? The most appropriate benchmark for measuring the veracity of IBC's information is the standards that it elaborates on its website. According to IBC:

This database includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.

Furthermore:

Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports and eyewitness accounts. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given.

Finally,

The test for us remains whether the bullet (or equivalent) is attributed to a piece of weaponry where the trigger was pulled by a US or allied finger, or is due to "collateral damage" by either side (with the burden of responsibility falling squarely on the shoulders of those who initiate war without UN Security Council authorization). We agree that deaths from any deliberate source are an equal outrage, but in this project we want to only record those deaths to which we can unambiguously hold our own leaders to account. In short, we record all civilians deaths attributed to our military intervention in Iraq. [Emphasis in original --ed.]

The ambiguity of this last paragraph is striking. It asserts that collateral damage caused by either side is the result of "our" , i.e. US-UK, intervention in Iraq.

The application of this standard is even more striking. It includes not just those civilians killed by insurgents' bullets and bombs in the heat of battle, but civlians deliberately murdered by suicide bombers affiliated with the insurgents. This is a total perversion of the concept of moral reponsibility.

In order to understand the method behind this madness, one ought to consult the most recent IBC press release, which explains the political significance of its work:

So far, in the "war on terror" initiated since 9-11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000+ in Iraq, but also 3,000+ civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on.

Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide (see Table 1). Adding the official 9-11 death toll (as of October 29th 2003) brings the total to just under 3500...

For each civilian killed by "terrorists" on and since 9-11, the USA and its allies have brought about almost four non-combatant, civilian deaths in return...

The claim that a strategy which produces 14,000 civilian deaths is the expression of a "philosophy of tolerance and freedom" is a claim which we find incomprehensible. Our incomprehension is shared, we believe, by the majority of the world's people.

The hypocrisy of this statement is stunning. IBC seeks to demonstrate that the United States is more dangerous than its terrorist opponents by blaming the United States for acts of premeditated murder that those same terrorists have perpetrated.

This is why we must work together to reverese the unthinking embrace of IBC's statistics by the Washington Post and other leading publications.
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# Posted 4:01 AM by David Adesnik  

MORE BODY COUNTS: The credibility and integrity of iraqbodycount.net (IBC for short), rest on the information contained in its publicly available data base of civilian casualties. For the reasons described in my previous post, I believe that the time has come for a thoroughgoing investigation and potential repudiation of IBC's data.

This past summer, my investigation of a limited number of the incidents described in the IBC database exposed major factual and interpretive errors. Even though no individual can fact check such a massive data base, the distributed power of the blogosphere can be brought to bear on this task.

What I propose is a coordinated effort to parcel out all of the incidents in the IBC data base to volunteers willing to check IBC's claims against the publicly available news accounts cited as the source of its information.

I'm not sure exactly how to coordinate this effort, so your suggestions are welcome. But I believe that it can and should be done.
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# Posted 2:33 AM by David Adesnik  

FLOOD THE ZONE! FLOOD THE ZONE! Each day, the Washington Post performs an admirable service by updating the number of American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq, while also providing the names of those fallen soldiers identified by the Pentagon.

This morning, however, the Washington Post committed a grave error by including estimates of Iraqi civlian casualties provided by iraqbodycount.net (IBC for short). The Post deceptively states that the figures are provided by Reuters and IBC. Yet Reuters itself states that the figures for civilian casualties come from IBC alone.

(NB: The Post provides the IBC figures on page A18 of Saturday morning's print edition. I have not been able to locate the figures online.)

In the past, OxBlog has demonstrated conclusively that IBC relies on fraudluent data and that its flagrant dishonesty reflects its lleft-wing extremist agenda.
Principal flaws of the IBC count include:

1) Counting the victims of suicide bombings as victims of American intervention.

2) Counting victims of common crime as victims of American intervention.

3) Claiming false knowledge of the names of such victims.

As my partner Josh Chafetz documented in the Weekly Standard in April 2003, IBC's has a long history of blatant deception. As both Josh and I have shown, mainstream publications have a disturbing habit of citing IBC as a reliable source.

However, the Post's decision to rely on IBC for its daily count brings unprecedented prestige and credibility to a malicious organization. Therefore I ask you that join me in contacting Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler to demand that the Post repudiate the IBC count, investigate why it use was approved in the first place, and issue an apology for this failure to maintain professional standards of reporting.

If you are a blogger, I ask that you encourage your readers to contact Mr. Getler. His e-mail address, provided by the Washington Post, is:ombudsman@washpost.com.

I ask you to join me in this effort first of all in the name of truth. But this particular truth matters because IBC's falsehoods unfairly blacken the reputation of the United States and its armed forces, which have made extraordinary efforts to minimize the number of civilian casualties inflicted during this war.
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# Posted 2:20 AM by David Adesnik  

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO ACCOUNTABILITY: Dan Drezner, Ambivablog and The Washington Post have all come out for John Kerry and all for the same reason, more or less.
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