The Financial Times reports on one of Libya's incentives to change its pariah-state image:
Now where did I read something similar a few days ago? Oh yeah.Libya's pledge to dismantle its programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could pave the way for the return of US oil companies that left the North African country in 1986 when then President Ronald Reagan imposed sanctions on the country.
The US is expected to lift the Libyan portion of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act next year. However, this may not occur until after the presidential elections in November. The United Nations lifted sanctions against the regime of Muammer Gadaffi in September.
[snip]
Libya is trying to woo international oil companies as its seeks $30bn of investment in its energy sector.
It hopes to increase oil production from 1.3m barrels a day to 3m by 2010. However, its oil target is still short of the 3.5m barrels a day it produced in 1970.
Oil export revenues account for about 95 per cent of Libya's hard currency earnings. Libya's oil refinery capacity, its gas reserves, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) industries have all suffered from underinvestment due to the economic sanctions, which included a ban on importing refining equipment.
Note this juicy little concession, buried in the fourth paragraph of a NY Times article:
Well, isn't that interesting?The rebuilding of Iraq's oil industry has been characterized in the months since by increasing costs and scant public explanation. An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing.
Here's an interesting bit of news:
It would seem to be an appropriate time for liberals to start referring to their utopia, NYC, as a quagmire.Startling new Army statistics show that strife-torn Baghdad - considered the most dangerous city in the world - now has a lower murder rate than New York.
How can you tell Mad Howard Dean from a Mad Cow?
Richard Bennett has the answer.
The Kerry campaign continues to experience... problems:
One is reminded of the time Jimmy Carter, then President, admitted to being attacked by a psycho swimming rabbit while boating.As if things weren't going badly enough for John F. Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts has been bitten by a Psycho Chihuahua.
Sometimes, it's best just to say nothing.
A few days ago, Howard Dean made another outrageous statement that was picked up all over the internet:
Now, he's attempted to retract that statement:"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean told New Hampshire's Concord Monitor.
"I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials," he said.
The bigger problem here is not that Dean says silly things that he has to clarify, but that even his clarification betrays the view of most Dems of terrorism as a law-enforcement issue rather than a national-security issue. In this sense, Dean and his people are completely consistent with the Clinton administration (which viewed terrorism in the same manner), and the Dem establishment more broadly.It took the former Vermont governor a few hours after the story got picked up on the Internet and on wire services to realize that even if the American way is "innocent until proven guilty," it might not be a courtesy extended the terror mastermind.
Dean later told The Associated Press, "As an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves."
The Dean for America press office also weighed in, issuing this statement by Dean: "I share the outrage of all Americans."
He continued: "Bin Laden has admitted that he is responsible for killing 3,000 Americans as well as scores of men, women and children around the world. This is exactly the kind of case that the death penalty is meant for."
President Bush and his most prominent foreign-policy advisors view terrorism more as a problem of international security, hence the consistent warnings that the United States will make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them. That's a direct response to 9-11. The Dems are going to find it difficult to gain traction on foreign policy if they persist in this pre-9-11 view of terrorism as a law-enforcement problem.
Ashbrook's David Tucker posted these thoughts on Libya on the No Left Turns blog:
Tucker's observation is astute, because people who don't study international politics carefully have a tendency to think of the behavior of nations in terms of one, maybe two, variables. In reality, many variables drive behavior, and different variables may be ascendant at any given time. That's why it's very difficult to predict behavior in international politics (and why people who do so with some degree of success can make a living at it).Libya reached a deal over the bombing of Pan AM 103 before the current administration was in office. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that neither the policies of the Bush administration nor the war in Iraq explain that change in Libyan behavior. What appears to explain it is the regime of international sanctions that the United States, Great Britain and France put in place on Libya through the UN in the early 1990s. The recent agreement over Libya’s WMD is a continuation of this process. Did the war in Iraq help persuade Libya to give up its weapons? Yes, probably. Was the war in Iraq the sole cause of the Libyan decision? No, probably.
It's interesting (perhaps telling) that hardly anybody has mentioned the U.S. Iran-Libya Sanctions Act by name, or its impact on American E&P firms with holdings in Libya like Marathon and ConocoPhillips, or the fact that Libya desperately needs foreign (really, American) expertise to rehabilitate its hydrocarbon E&P infrastructure. Coupled with the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration's efforts to isolate other rogue regimes internationally, the various sanctions regimes give Libya some serious incentives to play nice in the international arena, and particularly to abandon sponsorship of terror as state policy.
The sanctions regime in itself most likely would not have been enough. The war against Iraq in itself most likely would not have been enough. But the credible threat of the use of force against rogue regimes coupled with effective diplomacy almost certainly has moved Libya somewhat.
General Clark is the latest among the dwarves to espouse passive internationalism in lieu of a coherent foreign policy:
And so, General Clark would bring John C. Calhoun's notion of the concurrent majority to foreign policy decisionmaking.Well, if I were president right now, I would be doing things that George Bush can’t do right now, because he’s already compromised those international bridges. I would go to Europe and I would build a new Atlantic charter. I would say to the Europeans, you know, we’ve had our differences over the years, but we need you. The real foundation for peace and stability in the world is the transatlantic alliance. And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we’ll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We’ll bring you in.
Rousseau would most likely be proud (that general will thing and all). Calhoun most likely would not, since he was at least an American patriot (whatever one thought of his political philosophy).
(link via Kevin Patrick)
The left likes to liken US foreign intervention to gangrene where we use the place up and leave it in turmoil. Dr. Weevil points to two cases to the contrary (one of which liberal blogger Max Sawicky cited as examples of American moral ineptitude): Panama and Grenada.
The graphs are particularly demonstrating that our involvement there has, in fact, left the countries considerably better off. One could argue that it would have evolved naturally, but given that there were brutal dictators in place when we intervened and that they compare favorably to neighboring countries where we did not intervene, that seems unlikely.
Dr. Whited is more of an expert in these matters, so I'd be interested to hear what he has to say.
John Eastman turns us onto this bit of hilarity in the Boston Globe:
Perhaps the writer will have a Not-At-Albright moment, and try to convince us that he's joking.With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant. Civilian deaths constituted justifiable homicide. America was again above the law. We have taught the next generation that many wrongs equal a right. In arrogance, we boasted, ''We got him!'' The shame is that we feel none for how we got him. The capture of this dictator, driven by the poison of lies, turned America itself into a dictator.
I'm not holding my breath. And so goes the extreme (or is it mainstream now?) Left, hurtling towards the precipice.
We frequently refer to Madeleine Albright as the least impressive Secretary of State in recent history.
Let this be the most recent exhibit of evidence in that regard:
Exactly. Pretty embarrassing, frankly.MORT KONDRACKE: "I was here at Fox News, Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state was in the Green Room getting made up for a different show. And she said do you suppose that the Bush administration has Usama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?"
MARA LIASSON: "The October Surprise."
KONDRACKE: "The October -- she was -- she was not smiling, you know."
BRIT HUME: "What did you say?"
KONDRACKE: "I said you can't seriously believe that. And she said, well, she thought it was a possibility. I mean, you know, that is just unthinkable. That's irrational. It's -- but they will believe anything about George Bush, the Democratic Party. And this is not some kid in sandals, you know, working in the Dean campaign. This is the former secretary of state."
(Transcript from Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume, 12/16/03)
(12-18-03 Update) Madeleine Albright says she was just "joking" (now that all sorts of criticism of her buffoonery is starting to come in). Morton Kondracke is not a crazy right-wing ideologue, and he's been a political journalist for a long time. I have difficulty believing he completely misunderstood and misinterpreted his conversation. The former Secretary IS a joke, but not intentionally so (in my view).
Syria is a Baathist dictatorship and remains on the State Department's list of official state sponsors of terror.
So, of course Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat, Houston) thinks it would be swell to invite that nation's dictator to Texas:
As Sting once told us, the Russians love their children too. Unfortunately, that sentiment didn't translate into a very effective foreign policy (ask Jimmy Carter). Neither does Sheila Jackson Lee's.Jackson Lee said she was so impressed with Syrian President Bashar Assad during her visit that she invited him to speak in Texas, even though his country is designated by the United States as a rogue state and a sponsor of terrorism.
"I'm sure someone will write a headline, `Congresswoman invites a terrorist'," Jackson Lee said. "But that's not what I'm trying to do."
She said Assad showed his willingness to negotiate by meeting despite President Bush's signing on Friday of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, which could impose sanctions on Syria.
"He's a 39-year-old president who even gave us a picture of him and his children," Jackson Lee said. "Let's see what he can do. He's not his father," a reference to Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron grip for 30 years before his death in 2000.
The Democrat Congresswoman from Texas sounds like a perfect running mate for Howard Dean.
And I couldn't resist the very headline this unserious woman suggested. It really is appropriate.
Earlier this morning, a friend and I were speculating in email how long it would be before someone would start expressing sympathy for Saddam Hussein after seeing those photos of the Army doctor examining him.
The answer -- not long at all:
This is a war criminal, a genocidal megalomaniac who, frankly, does deserve to be treated like a beast (though I'm not willing to the cardinal that the Army doctors treated him anything but humanely).Cardinal Renato Martino said he had felt pity watching video of "this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a beast".
The cardinal, a leading critic of the US-led war in Iraq, said he hoped the capture would not make matters "worse".
[snip]
Cardinal Martino said on Tuesday that the US "could have spared us these pictures".
The Vatican is on the alert for a terror attack over Christmas
"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he told reporters.
Saddam Hussein has committed untold crimes against humanity. He deserves the same compassion we would afford, say, a serial killer, or a serial rapist, or a serial child molester (oops, the Church may have to recuse itself on THAT one). He is the beast.
A couple of weeks ago, the LA Times published an op-ed (reproduced at Common Dreams) by celebrated political scientist Benjamin Barber, who basically blasted the Bush doctrine of pre-emption.
Interestingly, the newspaper identified Barber as follows (presumably this was supplied by him):
Fair enough.Benjamin R. Barber is a University of Maryland political scientist and the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" and the newly published "Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy"
But look what I learned today about Professor Barber:
Now, I don't begrudge the good professor hitching his wagon to Howard Dean. He's the latest greatest hope of McGovernite academics everywhere. But I do think it's a little misleading for Professor Barber to neglect to mention his affiliation with Howard Dean in an op-ed attacking the President's foreign policy.In addition to Daalder, campaign aides said, Dean's core foreign policy team includes former national security adviser Anthony Lake; retired Gen. Joseph Hoare, a former chief of U.S. Central Command; retired Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, former chief of staff of the Air Force; two former assistant secretaries of defense, Ashton Carter and Frank Kramer; former assistant secretary of state Susan Rice; and political theorist Benjamin R. Barber. Danny E. Sebright, a former Defense Department civil servant who works for the consulting firm headed by Clinton defense secretary William Cohen, is Dean's foreign policy coordinator.
Over at my other blog, Reductio contributors Owen Courreges and Michael Ahlf had it out over campaign finance reform. Never leaving a dead horse unkicked, I thought of a new angle of the debate.
The Supreme Court determined that corruption in politics was sufficiently bad that a narrow interpretation of a Constutitional guarantee was an appropriate remedy. I've been trying to think of a parallel, but only today did I succeed:
Everyone knows that on some level criminal justice favors the wealthy. OJ Simpson got off as much (if not more) due to his tax bracket than his race. There has been a recent case in Galveston, Texas, where a wealthy eccentric got off (rightly or wrongly) thanks to high-powered Houston criminal defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin.
So if it's okay to level the playing field politically by capping how much a candidate can spend getting his message out, would it also be unconstitutional to limit how much an accused criminal can spend on his defense? After all, he's still getting a right to a defense (as politicians still have the right to speak), but now his rights are no more or less than that of a homeless guy.
Let's take it a step further, let's say that criminal defense lawyers are appointed and paid for by the court.
If the right to free speech is subject to fair elections, why can't the right to counsel be subject to equal representation?
Would supporters of campaign finance reform support similar proposals for criminal justice reform? If not, why not?
After all, aren't there loftier goals than civil liberties?
Our friend at The Conservative Observer takes Patrick Buchanan to task for "his jaundiced and perverse view of the Civil War." It's a short post that packs quite a punch.
The surest indicator of how things are going for the Bush Administration always seems to come from William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Every time they issue one of their apocalyptic, even hysterical, pronouncements, events shortly prove them completely wrong.
And so it was just a month ago that Kagan and Kristol were insisting that the Pentagon was trying to undermine the President in Iraq, and was even on the verge of succeeding.
Flash forward a month, and to reality:
And so the Kristol/Kagan streak continues. It would now be helpful if they would pronounce that we're never going to find Osama bin Laden, and the whole Administration is on the verge of collapse.And this afternoon, I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again. All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side. The goals of our coalition are the same as your goals -- sovereignty for your country, dignity for your great culture, and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life.
In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived. All Iraqis can now come together and reject violence and build a new Iraq.
The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq. The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them. (President Bush address to the nation, 14 December 2003)
Houston poli-blogger Greg Wythe throws out what has become a favorite candard among Texas Dems, in a recent post about Pennsylvania and Texas redistricting:
That's not as strident as some have been on the issue of race, but the point is the same.One thing that may impact the Texas case is if there's any application to the "shut out" test - that is, if the map shuts out a political group or party - to mean that white Democrats qualify as such. That, after all, is the target of the Texas map.
To which I will respond in two ways:
First, my tried and true response -- the Texas redistricting was about bringing representation by party more in line with voting patterns in this state, not about persecuting white Democrats. If whites are no longer competitive in the Democrat party, then that's a concern of that party, not the GOP.
Second, how ironic that the party of affirmative action now wants to create yet another group for special minority protection: WHITE DEMOCRATS!
Sorry, not buying.
There's a fine line between military abuses during a quasi-occupation, and legitimate actions taken to protect both the military and civilians.
In my opinion, Lt. Col Allen West's actions in Iraq are an example of the latter, not the former. So this is relatively good news:
Administrative punishment is still too harsh, but at least he won't lose his retirement benefits for a career of service with the Army (which would be the case in a court martial conviction).An Army hearing officer has recommended administrative punishment — but not a criminal court-martial — for Lt. Col. Allen B. West, who is charged with assault for firing a gun to scare a confession from an Iraqi detainee.
I can't help but wonder if this is an Army that's serious about fighting the war on terror.
May he rest in peace and his family find comfort in the fact that his achievements were many.
One thing that probably isn't well-known about Senator Simon is that he was a great proponent of foreign language study and funding for government employee/military language training. He was instrumental in saving the Defense Language Institute from the Base Realignment and Closure committees when some bean counters wanted to save money at the expense of national security.
Thank you, Senator Simon.
In response to today's latest episode of the Supreme Court making law as it goes along, John Eastman had this observation:
That's your Supreme Court today, creating absolute rights never contemplated by the Founders and found nowhere in the text of their Constitution, while denying fundamental rights protected by direct prohibitions in the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law respecting....").In recent years, Congress has passed major legislation restricting 1) pornography on the internet; 2) kiddie porn on the internet; and 3) issues advocacy 60 days before an election--core political speech. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of one of these restrictions, held that one was unconstitutional, and strongly suggested the remaining restriction was also unconstitutional. If you guessed that the ban on political speech was the restriction ruled unconstitutional, you would be wrong -- at least according to Justices Stevens, O’Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. For them, apparently, kiddie porn and internet pornography receives more First Amendment protection than political speech during an election.
Not that the Supreme Court is entirely to blame in this mess. This is that rarest of decisions in which the Supreme Court actually defers to unconstitutional legislation put forth by Congress and the Executive.
That means that Congress and President Bush deserve the lion's share of the blame for this constitutional abuse.
It's another sorry day in the history of our constitutional republic.
The wacky general says he's not ruled out Hillary as his potential VP running mate.
Funny, but after his disastrous campaign performance so far, I suspect Rodham has ruled out Clark as her potential VP running mate.
Just a minor question -- but has anyone noticed that John Kerry is incapable of speaking more than about 10-15 seconds without licking his lips?
I wouldn't normally notice something so trivial, but it's just creepy. Really creepy.
Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed this?
Orrin Judd finds this interesting bit of news about Howard Dean:
The emphasis is in the original. I presume it's added because Dr. Dean emphasized it while speaking, and not as editorial commentary.As the current frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and the only physician in the field of candidates, has been clear about his support for abortion rights, but adamant that he never performed an abortion himself.
"I did not perform abortions. I'm a medical doctor. Nor did my wife," Dean told a Boston television station in July. Dean's wife Judith also is a physician.
Since abortion is the litmus-test issue for Dems (one might even call it the organizing principle of their party), it seems odd for Dean to take the position he supports abortion (but never performed one) and to intimate those who do perform abortions are not quite full medical doctors. Is this just positioning for the general election? Or what?
Our friend Admiral Quixote has been doing a bit of investigative blogging, and posts some information on the behavior of the New York Times in Iraq.
Well worth a read.
Longtime Dem strategist Bob Beckel, whom I've always thought of as a pretty sensible (though certainly partisan) guy, has started a blog.
I know, whoopee sh!t, everyone and their dogs have started a blog.
Beckel, thankfully, is bucking a recent trend in Dem blogs, in that he is not emphasizing that ghastly LA Lakers combination of purple and yellow.
But it's a disappointing blog, in that I used to respect Beckel, and apparently he (and his people) have decided weblogs are simply nasty partisan hit media. I'm certainly not a "blogs will save the world" cheerleader, but I do think they are an effective mechanism to reach intelligent masses, easily.
And Bob Beckel is a guy that I'd like to read if he treated his blog as a way to spread his political insights to the masses.
Instead, we get things like a "Wingnut Of The Month" feature, with a picture of Texas governor Rick Perry, and this comment from Beckel:
Butt boy?Gov. Rick Perry
For being Tom Delay’s butt boy in the illegal redistricting of US House seats in Texas.
Excuse me?
For one thing, are we implying something negative about being a "butt boy?" Homosexual anal sex is a constitutional right now, after all, and something celebrated by the Left as just another "lifestyle choice." Does Beckel now disagree with the overwhelming majority in his party? If so, he should be more precise in stating his views.
More importantly, I can just imagine the outrage from the Left if, say, a Republican strategist like Karl Rove said something along the lines of, "Terry McAuliffe is just a butt boy for Bill Clinton."
He'd be forced to resign by an unrelenting media!
Elsewhere on Beckel's blog, the Progressive of the Month is "coming soon." That Beckel gets to Rick Perry before he can even figure out a "Progressive of the Month" certainly illustrates the evolution of the Dems into the reactionary party.
The folks at RCP have also commented on this topic.
(crossposted to PubliusTX.net because of Texas and political themes)
Kudos to Texas A&M President Robert Gates.
Although stupid comments on race and a recent bake sale have recently flown out of the mouth of his athletics director, Gates has recommended that Texas A&M not use race as a discrete factor in admissions, contrasting one great university in Texas with two others (the public University of Texas, and the private Rice University):
Perhaps Texas A&M will deservedly stand out as a bastion of sensibility on this matter. We shall see."My recommendations ... involve two objectives about which I feel quite strongly," Gates told the scores of students and faculty members who attended an open forum Wednesday evening. "The first objective, as I have stated before, is for Texas A&M to better serve all of the citizens of the state of Texas, and that includes a better record in attracting and enrolling minorities. The second objective is that students at Texas A&M should be admitted as individuals, on personal merit -- and no other basis."
This guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to the technology - I don't think I've seen a better article on the 2001 anthrax scare.It's important to note, as Matsumoto stresses, that there is no evidence linking Battelle to the 2001 anthrax.
But to even bring up Battelle? C'mon! They do BW dismantlement for crying out loud.
Link via Instapundit.
Tom Pangle recently delivered a lecture on Leo Strauss (at AEI, which should excite nitwits like Shadia Drury and Jeet Heer). It's a good brief (but dense) introduction to Strauss's thought:
Print the thing out, and have a good read. Pangle, of course, has a certain (defensible) perspective on his old teacher. It will be interesting to see if Harry Jaffa responds with his own perspective.For manifold reasons that I am not competent to explain, the "serious" media in Europe and in America have recently been rife with dramatic surmises about the possible significance of the impact of Leo Strauss’s political theorizing on contemporary American policy makers and policy shapers. The media have become aware of an important fact about contemporary intellectual life: Strauss’s complex philosophical reflections do exercise a quietly growing deep influence, not only in America but abroad, in the East (near and far) as well as in Europe. And the chief good that might conceivably result from the flurry is the spurring of some to a more serious consideration of Strauss’s writings. Unfortunately, however, it does not appear that the journalists who have recently been moved to pronounce in print about Strauss’s teaching have been able to devote much time to a study of his philosophic corpus. At any rate, they have advanced all sorts of extravagant (and even preposterous) claims about what Strauss thought or taught. These assertions have been marked by their lack of substantiation through genuine quotations from, or even through accurate summaries of, what Strauss wrote. In what follows, I would like to try to provide a brief, introductory guide to some of the most manifest ways in which Strauss’s writings may be said to offer a deepening of our understanding of contemporary politics. As goes without saying, I must be selective: I will stress especially those aspects of Strauss’s published reflections that have been most grossly misunderstood in the media.
Unlike the nitwits, those two actually have studied with Strauss, and have taken the time to read him carefully, and over a long period of time.
The Rocky Mountain News has a good editorial on the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to throw out redistricting in Colorado.
As the editorial points out, in order to reach its decision, that activist Court had to define Assembly to include the judiciary, and then make up a general rule about timing of redistricting that is found nowhere in the text of that state's constitution. All to uphold an earlier redistricting plan determined by -- you guessed it -- the judiciary rather than the legislature!
This is hardly surprising, of course, in a nation where the Florida Supreme Court basically took it upon itself to rewrite election deadlines and procedures, and the New Jersey Supreme Court took it upon itself to do the same thing so a Dempocrat crook could be replaced on the ballot by a nearly dead man. It's still shocking to me that the California Supremes didn't throw out the recall election.
It is the age of judicial activism, after all. Political questions are decided -- even legislated -- by judiciaries all the time. And despite occasional lip service, most conservative leaders really don't ever try to do much about it.
(Update) Here's a good editorial from Al Knight in today's Denver Post.
This has to be the best opening paragraph of any book review I've read in the past couple of years (maybe ever):
Those Brits sure do know how to spice up a review of what probably was a most tedious read.Jimmy Carter, the American president who once confessed to 'adultery in my heart - although never in body', has become the first former White House incumbent to write a sex scene.
Among other odd incidents, the man also claimed to be attacked by a swimming rabbit.The comment that did more than any other to define him appeared in Playboy in 1976. Pressed on his sex life, the faithfully married Mr Carter, referred to Matthew 5.27, and confessed: "I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."
Somehow, it seems appropriate that Howard "The Duck, M.D." Dean has sought his counsel recently. Ducks need advice on how to fend off assaults by amphibious rabbits, I'm sure.
There has been some commentary on the cool reception of Hillary Rodham Clinton by troops in Iraq, but I've been hesitant to post on it because it seems so much like hearsay.
But Dean Esmay has a pretty interesting entry on the topic, if you're so inclined.
We've long noted that Barry McCaffrey seems to have a personal grudge against Secretary Rumsfeld, and that he seems determined to carry water for his former colleagues in heavy artillery.
So, here's yet another column along those lines.
Jay Nordlinger thinks this is an even weaker effort than usual:
Most of his columns on Rumsfeld have been worse. Still, it's good to see Nordlinger take note.Barry McCaffrey is a man I admire quite a lot, but I do not admire the op-ed piece he placed in the Wall Street Journal last week. It is a blast against Donald Rumsfeld. If he wants to blast Rumsfeld, fine — in fact, the world would welcome intelligent criticism of Rumsfeld from Barry McCaffrey. But, in knocking Rumsfeld, McCaffrey doesn't really say what he himself would do, if he were in charge. He says, essentially, "Rumsfeld has messed up royally" . . . but he doesn't go on to say what a McCaffrey treatment of Iraq would look like.
He writes, "Donald Rumsfeld is in denial of reality." Oh, yeah? Seems to me that Rumsfeld is a man who has been fixed on reality, as opposed to illusion and wishfulness, for his entire career, usually to the cat-calls of the grandstand. McCaffrey later writes, "Some argue that Mr. Rumsfeld has ill served the president." What a weaselly thing to say! "Some argue . . ." Well, what does McCaffrey argue? I could say, "Some argue that Barry McCaffrey is a horse's ass" — I don't think that's true (as I made clear at the outset of this item), but I could say it, and if I didn't weigh in myself, I'd be weaselly.
Wouldn't I?
I was prepared for McCaffrey to assert, as so many Rumsfeld critics do, that we need more troops. Instead, he says, "We do not need more U.S. troops in Iraq." But "we do need to increase the active-duty strength of the U.S. Army in order to sustain the current effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan" — so that is a policy recommendation, of a kind.
I don't believe that McCaffrey had enough substance to warrant space on that sterling op-ed page. A blast from the great General McCaffrey — hero in Vietnam, hero in the Gulf, now a professor at West Point — should have had more pow. And, if I may, "some would argue" that McCaffrey came off looking like a bitter old man who resents being out of the power loop! I'll say again, I admire McCaffrey — who has done more in life than I'll ever do — but I do not admire this column.
The pro-abortion New York Times just published quite an editorial, entitled "Frank Talk About Abortion."
The conclusion is just stunning:
Darn that technology! Now people can actually SEE what it is that they are terminating (or, as some prefer, what is dying during the exercise of the woman's "reproductive rights")! And darn those pesky people who believe killing the fetus is wrong at any stage for actually trying to make it difficult to do so! Because the silly thing might actually develop into something that looks human, and people might actually see that, and the "pro-choice majority" that the Times imagines to exist might just turn into the 75% or so who supported the partial-birth abortion ban.There is no denying that America's pro-choice majority has become increasingly queasy about even second-trimester abortions. Modern sonogram technology has contributed to that feeling by allowing people to view the features of a developing fetus with amazing clarity. But too often obscured in the ruckus over "partial birth" is a perverse fact: It is the opponents of reproductive freedom, not pro-choice advocates, who pose an obstacle to achieving the humane goal of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and second-trimester abortions. Through political harassment and the imposition of various restrictions, they have made it increasingly difficult for women who are young or poor, or who live in rural areas, to obtain access to abortion services in the first weeks of pregnancy, thereby needlessly delaying procedures until the fetus is further along. While the pro-choice movement has been fighting to protect women from the need to have abortions later in pregnancy, the other side has been vigorously engaged in a battle that will inevitably make them more common.
So this is the new argument for "reproductive rights?" Kill 'em fast, before they turn into something people might recognize as human?
Have I mentioned the conclusion is just stunning?
Yes, I think I did.
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