Richard Bennett assesses the Dean meltdown:
Maybe the campaign can serve as a dating service for a few more weeks. *shrug*So what is happening? Briefly put, Dean's problem is the Deaniacs. The Internet-driven campaign has enabled him to amass a large following, but they're primarily unbalanced people, fanatical followers, extremists, and wackos. In my experience with Internet-enabled activism, these are the kind of people most attracted to online chat and email wars, so an organization that's going to use these tools to recruit has to prune the weirdos before they run off the mainstream people you need to reach out to the undecided mainstream people whose support you really need in the voting booth. Others have written that the orange-hatted, tattooed, and body-pierced volunteers who flew into Iowa alienated the actual voters, and that's real.
When your core group of volunteers is weirdo, you pretty well guarantee that only wierdos will join the campaign later on, because normal people don't want to hang out with a bunch of lost pups looking for a father figure or a messianic jihad. And when your volunteers are as large in numbers as they are loose in marbles, the constant contact the candidate has with them can't help but rub off in the kind of mania Dean displayed in the "I have a scream" speech. And volunteers are the life-blood the campaign, doing all the indispensable phone calling, door knocking, and talking to voters one by one. Without a core group of people both dedicated and sane, a campaign can't go anywhere. So the Kerry approach, which was traditional politics with a little technology, ramps up slower than a techno-razzle campaign, but it's got quality control that ensures that it won't eat itself in the long run.
So politics, even in the age of the Internet, is still about people, not about technology, gimmickry, or gadgets, and most of the people are moderate, deliberate, and fairly sensible. Dean learned this the hard way, and the only thing that can save his campaign now is the fact that few people are paying attention to what's happening in Burlington or on the Stupid Network.
More on the Dean collapse over at The American Mind.
Richard Bennett highlights an important snippet from David Kay's interview with Tom Brokaw:
George Neumayr elaborates on the American Spectator website:TB: The president described Iraq as a gathering threat — a gathering danger. Was that an accurate description?
DK: I think that’s a very accurate description.
TB: But an imminent threat to the United States?
DK: Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It’s not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.
We note here frequently that after 9-11, the President radically redefined the American approach to terror with his promise that the U.S. would make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them. It's not any weapon in particular that poses a threat (otherwise we would threaten Israel), but rather the combination of weapons, intent, and rogue regimes -- and when we judge the threat to be significant enough, then borders are no longer inviolable (according to President Bush). As is becoming clear from David Kay's reports and testimony, Iraq fit this profile rather nicely, despite the fact we've not found actual WMD. Far from being a distraction in the war on terror, the war in Iraq is/was integral.The conventional wisdom before the Iraq war was that Saddam Hussein had plenty of weapons of mass destruction but no ties to Al Qaeda. It is beginning to look like the conventional wisdom was backwards: Saddam Hussein's regime had ties to Al Qaeda but nowhere near the level of weapons of mass destruction suspected.
Iraq under Hussein was a nest for anti-American terrorists. Little noticed in weapons inspector David Kay's recent remarks was his observation that Iraq was not less dangerous than assumed but more dangerous: "I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."
What Kay means is that terrorists were traveling through a country where free-lancing scientists had nuclear, biological, and chemical programs underway -- erratic weapons programs even Hussein wasn't aware of that these terrorists could have easily exploited: "We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities. I think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country -- and no central control." Up until the war started Iraqi scientists were "actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin," says Kay.
The antiwar Democrats are cheering Kay's report that he found WMD programs but not WMD stockpiles. They conveniently ignore that the assumption of WMD stockpiles was a bipartisan blunder and completely ignore Kay's point that WMD programs, chaotically administered in a haven for terrorists, is itself an imminent threat. Kay's statement in effect punctures their claim that the Iraq war had nothing to do with the war on terrorism.
This new approach is distinguished from the pre 9-11 view of terror as a law-enforcement problem, which is still the view embraced by all the remaining serious Dem Presidential contenders. These Democrats and other leaders are so focused on holding the President to account for an "imminent threat" phrase he never actually uttered in order to score cheap political points that they aren't even engaged in the most important debate of our time -- how to manage national security post 9-11 (Senator Edwards doesn't even bring up the topic in his stump speech -- out of sight, out of mind, at least until the next 9-11 one supposes). The nation would benefit from a vigorous debate on the topic of terrorism as a national-security versus law-enforcement problem. Instead, leading Democrats are more focused on scoring cheap political points against a conservative President they revile, or ignoring the problem altogether. In so doing, all they really show is that they aren't a party to be trusted on national security. And so, the debate largely takes place on the Right (between interventionists and isolationists).
I found this excellent essay on Leo Strauss by Mark Blitz from a link on the Claremont weblog.
Blitz refutes Shadia Drury's (mis)reading of Strauss, and elaborates on Strauss's project.
It's a fine corrective that can just as easily be applied to any number of other people who manage to get Strauss wrong, such as the Mises Institute's David Gordon, whose little screed was linked today by Arts and Letters Daily (which reflects rather poorly on their judgment, but that's nothing new).
The Financial Times ran a feature over the weekend that makes it abundantly clear that trial lawyers intend to make food companies their next "Big Tobacco":
There is no doubt that the rise of convenient foods -- high in refined carbs and sugars and low in fiber and nutrients -- has helped Americans to put on the pounds like never before, and a more sedentary lifestyle has surely contributed. And there's also no doubt that food companies do want to sell Americans food -- junk, nutritious, and otherwise.Nestle's presentation is polished and provocative. Her argument: the "epidemic" of obesity in the US - where two out of three adults are overweight, and nearly one in three clinically obese - is not just the fault of weak-willed couch potatoes. "The deep, dark secret of American agriculture is the enormous overabundance of food in this country," she declares. The US food industry churns out far more food than the population needs. "Food companies have two choices. They can either get you to eat more of their food, or to eat more food in general. They are incredibly good at doing both."
The argument comes from Nestle's book, Food Politics, published last year, a weighty exploration of how the food industry manipulates the public through marketing, and legislators and regulators through lobbying. It has become a seminal text for the lawyers who, improbable as it sounds, want to sue the food industry for making us fat.
But the next step -- that Americans are passive fools who are brainwashed into eating until they turn into obese slobs -- is a bit of a leap.
But, no leap is too much of a leap for a good lawyer, and so the trial attorneys are prepping themselves:
Ah yes, because there's a large contingency fee involved in making food companies stop trying to sell their products.But then I ask the question I have to ask: is this all not just a little absurd?
They answer as they always do: that's what everyone said when they started suing cigarette companies. This meeting, they say, is similar to one in January 1985, also in Boston, that kicked off the litigation movement against Big Tobacco. Delegates back then were similarly dismissed as meddling cranks. But that movement would culminate 13 years later in the Master Settlement Agreement, when cigarette companies agreed to pay $246bn over 25 years to settle lawsuits brought by US states over tobacco-related healthcare costs.
Few believe things will go that far with the food industry. Yet Banzhaf insists that lawsuits aimed at changing food companies' practices - or making them shoulder at least some of the costs of obesity-related health problems - can succeed.
One hardly expects the Reason crowd to like a foreign policy hawk like Richard Perle, but one would hope for a better refutation of his views than this from Jeff Taylor, who tries to employ a professor from the air war college (Jeffrey Record) to do his dirty work:
Either Taylor or Record (or both) seems to have fundamentally misunderstood Perle's argument, and the President's reorientation of American foreign policy towards terrorism as a national security rather than a law-enforcement problem. The argument is not that terrorists and rogue states are the same, but rather that for terrorists significantly to threaten the United States, they must have a willing state sponsor that provides material, support, or (in some cases) a safe training ground. By reorienting America's foreign policy from punishing terrorists after the fact to making no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them (with all its implications), the President has simply recognized what so many foreign policy hawks have been arguing for years. People may not remember, but California's Bruce Herschensohn (who ran against Barbara Boxer for the Senate some years ago) has long advocated just this approach to terrorism. So have a number of other prominent hawks -- not just Perle.Further, Record notes that the Bush administration thus far has conflated threats from various sources into one great meta-threat, oblivious to opportunities and tactics which might cleave the whole jumble of bad actors in coherent, deterable, and defeatable chunks. The greatest mistake, Record reasons, is lumping rogue states together with terrorist groups:
The P-F world view explicitly rejects deterrence against states, groups, and—one suspects—that loud-mouthed kid down the block. Only direct action will suffice, action like a blockade against North Korea until its government falls and China becomes responsible for the resulting basketcase. Oh, but first the U.S needs to move its troops out of range of the nuclear hell that might rain on Seoul.Or to put it another way, unlike terrorist organizations, rogue states, notwithstanding administration declamations to the contrary, are subject to effective deterrence and therefore do not warrant status as potential objects of preventive war and its associated costs and risks. One does not doubt for a moment that al-Qaeda, had it possessed a deliverable nuclear weapon, would have used it on 9/11. But the record for rogue states is clear: none has ever used WMD against an adversary capable of inflicting unacceptable retaliatory damage. Saddam Hussein did use chemical weapons in the 1980s against helpless Kurds and Iranian infantry; however, he refrained from employing such weapons against either U.S. forces or Israel during the Gulf War in 1991, and he apparently abandoned even possession of such weapons sometime later in the decade. For its part, North Korea, far better armed with WMD than Saddam Hussein's Iraq, has for decades repeatedly threatened war against South Korea and the United States but has yet to initiate one.
Returning to the Taylor/Record nonsense -- a rogue state that possesses weapons of mass destruction is more of a threat than they allow, and the libertarian belief in the goodness of man and, therefore, the goodness of deterrence theory, is a pretty slender reed upon which to base national security. But even if one were willing to concede the point, North Korea still has aspirations to be the arms supplier to the world. Deterring them may not deter their clients, some of whom may employ suicide attacks. That's a problem.
Furthermore, there is a case of weapons of mass destruction being used against the United States by terrorists (suicide attackers, even) who trained at their leisure in a rogue state. Apparently, Taylor/Record forget that on 9-11, Al Qaeda terrorists who trained in the rogue state of Afghanistan effectively used civilian aircraft as weapons of mass destruction. There's no doubt that the Clinton Administration knew of the danger posed by Al Qaeda, and the Bush Administration after it. But prior to 9-11, the U.S. was wedded to the notion of terrorism as a law-enforcement problem (a view largely shaped by the State Department). An embassy gets bombed by terrorists? We vow to bring them to justice. The first WTC bombing? We vow to bring them to justice. But never, ever did we consider "violating" the borders of a rogue state to wipe out terrorist training camps and other safe harbors (no, an occasional cruise missile doesn't count).
Until 9-11, that is.
Taylor and Record may not like the Administration's approach -- and we would stress that neither the President's nor Perle's approach has been so undiscriminating as Taylor/Record seem determined to make it out to be -- but they should at least critique it based on what it is, not what they imagine it to be. The Administration's approach to terror (not to mention the approach advocated by Richard Perle) is a radical departure from previous policy. It's worthy of debate. But to debate the policy, one must at least begin with an understanding of it.
Howard Dean seems to be only in the middle of a political implosion the likes of which we have not seen in recent times:
We're not talking about their 401ks, man. We're talking about life and death. I suppose the standard of living for those buried in the mass graves was much better before the U.S. got rid of Saddam Hussein too?Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean (news - web sites) said Sunday that the standard of living for Iraqis is a "whole lot worse" since Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s removal from power in last year's American-led invasion.
"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq (news - web sites). "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."
This guy is a joke.
Byron York argues that Wesley Clark did himself no favors in the Dwarf Debate last night:
How can a Presidential candidate not know about these things? And how can his briefers not prep him?Consider also Clark's response to questions about his embrace of the radical leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. Moore, who famously wondered why terrorists struck New York City on September 11 when there were so many Bush voters they could have targeted elsewhere in the country, endorsed Clark recently, and the two shared an on-stage love-fest. In his remarks at the time, Moore referred to George W. Bush as, among other things, a "deserter."
ABC's Peter Jennings, who shared moderating duties at the debate with Fox News's Brit Hume, asked Clark, "That's a reckless charge not supported by the facts. And I was curious to know why you didn't contradict [Moore], and whether or not you think it would've been a better example of ethical behavior to have done so."
"Well, I think Michael Moore has the right to say whatever he feels about this," Clark answered. "I don't know whether this is supported by the facts or not. I've never looked at it. I've seen this charge bandied about a lot."
Clark then said, "This election is about the future, Peter, and what we have to do is pull this country together." Clark explained that he believes he can accomplish that with "the support of a man like Michael Moore, [and] of a great American leader like Sen. George McGovern."
Still, Jennings did not accept Clark's claim to know nothing about the "deserter" charge. "Since this question and answer in which you and Mr. Moore were involved in, you've had a chance to look at the facts," Jennings followed up. "Do you still feel comfortable with the fact that someone should be standing up in your presence and calling the president of the United States a deserter?"
"To be honest with you, I did not look at the facts, Peter. You know, that's Michael Moore's opinion. He's entitled to say that. I've seen — he's not the only person who's said that. I've not followed up on those facts. And frankly, it's not relevant to me and why I'm in this campaign."
It turned out Clark didn't know any more about Michael Moore than he knew about CAPPS II, the product he had made half a million dollars selling.
Byron York elaborates on the rest of Clark's performance. Particularly revealing was his promise he would repeal all aspects of the Patriot Act that have to do with search and seizure, and make law enforcement get warrants for wiretaps the old-fashioned way. Apparently, the general has no clue that the Patriot Act was intended to allow law enforcement to engage in surveillance of new electronic media (cell phones, computers) that have been difficult to handle under current law. One may think the Patriot Act goes too far, but one should at least understand that it was proposed as a remedy to the deficiencies in "the old-fashioned way" of doing things. Clark's answer suggests he has no idea, but that some junior staffer decided that opposition to the Patriot Act was a winner (and to heck with the details).
One expects a Presidential candidate to have at least some rudimentary understanding of major policy questions like these. One might even fairly expect more from a candidate who is a Rhodes scholar and belittles the other Vietnam vet in the race over his "junior officer" status. Thus far, General Clark is a big disappointment.
(Update) I shouldn't just pick on Clark. In the same debate, Senator Edwards stated that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, and then went on to advocate a position (states should be able to recognize marriage as they see fit) largely indistinguishable from that act. When Brit Hume made that point to him, he feigned ignorance of the provisions of the act he said he opposed, saying he wasn't in the Senate when it passed. Not impressive.
(Update 2) Now Clark is whining that Fox News and Republicans were out to get him, based on Brit Hume's question about when he decided he was a Republican (a question other DEMS have frequently asked of Clark). Interestingly enough, liberal Peter Jennings was the one who pressed him on the Michael Moore endorsement. If the primaries are about weeding out the thin-skinned and folks who can't handle the pressure of a campaign, both Dean and Clark are going to have to improve considerably.
I try not to beat up on the French too much, because it's just too easy.
But sometimes, I just can't pass up the opportunity.
France's little girl of a defense minister apparently has even less understanding of the United States than I would have thought possible:
The little girl really believes that the Bush Administration is out of sync with public opinion in its treatment of France? Where does she get her news briefs, from Terry McAuliffe? Good gawd, if anything, the Administration is softer on the treacherous French than most Americans would like.The mood of improved relations between France and the United States was highlighted last week by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie's visit to Washington and New York. She spoke of "a desire for normal relations" and described U.S. officials as showing "a more open and understanding attitude" toward France.
Addressing the National Assembly in Paris yesterday, Mrs. Alliot-Marie said she perceived a "desire ... to turn the page" during her U.S. meetings.
"The American administration cannot stay too long in the eyes of its own public opinion on such bad terms with one of its oldest allies," Agence France-Presse quoted her as saying.
She's harder to take seriously than most French leaders, which is quite a statement. How appropriate for the French Defense Minister, I suppose.
The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq is hoping to transform the nation's system of agriculture into something more capitalistic:
So, let me get this right -- experts and politicos from a nation that pays its farmers not to grow things and subsidizes mohair and tobacco are going to help the Iraqis STOP doing that sort of thing in their country.The Americans came in the summer with suitcases full of dollars and bought the wheat harvest from miles around. Farmer Faleh Abbas walked away from the sale pleased with the price and pleased that his hard work would help feed his people.
But very little of the wheat he and his colleagues grew ended up as food.
Some was stored in silos, some was processed as feed for livestock. The rest was trucked away to be burned and buried.
Officials of the U.S.-led occupation authority said they felt they had to buy the Iraqi wheat because the nation's 5 million agricultural workers, roughly half the labor force, had come to expect such help after decades of living in a largely socialist state. But the officials worried that some of the grain was of such low quality that it would gum up the mills and couldn't be used for bread. So they destroyed it.
The gap in the food supply was made up with $190 million worth of wheat from Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, courtesy of the U.S. government.
How food will be produced and distributed in the new Iraq is among the biggest challenges the interim authority faces as it tries to reform the slew of state-run or state-subsidized industries that existed under the previous government.
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqis depended on subsidies and handouts as a way of life. The Coalition Provisional Authority is determined to change that and create a capitalist economy where the state provides little, if any, support, except to the neediest.
Wouldn't it be neat if we next tried something like this in... Iowa?
Ken Masugi suggests what I think is a great approach to Dem obstructionism over judicial nominees:
Assuming that the GOP does not pick up enough Senate seats this fall to render the issue moot, I'm all for the President using the full constitutional authority of his office to break the gridlock -- and if that means making the obstructionist Dems boil over because Ken Starr gets a recess appointment to the Supreme Court, too bad.Behind the Bush recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the fifth circuit court of appeals lies a bold strategy. Given the conservative suicide bomber nominees' reception by a Senate requiring 60 votes, the power of recess appointments might be the best means of reining in a lawless Senate. Obviously, Judge Owens and Justice Brown already have important positions and shouldn't be required to surrender those for a brief term on any court of appeals.
But what about the Supreme Court, should Democrats attempt another filibuster strategy. I have a little list of recess appointment possibilities: First, from the academic sector, where a leave-taking would not be so difficult to arrange-- Robert George of Princeton University or Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago. Second, from the private sector: William Barr, the former attorney general, Charles Cooper, former assistant attorney general, or Ken Starr. Or third, prominent judges retired or nearing retirement-- Judge Laurence Silberman of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This should be a chilling prospect that would rush Senate Democrats to want to confirm a more conventional Bush nominee.
R.J. Pestritto defends the approach, in Constitutional and political terms. He's right. There is no reason for a Republican President to refrain from using the full powers bestowed on him by the Constitution out of the mistaken belief that a liberal President might one day refrain in the same circumstances. The judiciary is too important to concede out of some misguided notion of "gentlemanly" politics.
It's terrible to see Latin America slipping back into leftist lunacy:
This will be a complete failure, of course, and if it has any impact at all, it will simply mean that Lula's nutty government will have less fear of being toppled as it carries out its loopy agenda.No country in the world has a higher rate of homicide by firearms than Brazil, and the toll is highest in large cities like this one. But now, in what gun control advocates describe as a bold but risky social experiment, Brazil has virtually outlawed the possession of handguns.
Since just before Christmas, no one in this nation of 175 million except police officers, soldiers and prison and security guards has been authorized to carry a pistol.
The sale and trade of weapons has been similarly limited: the illegal purchase, possession or furnishing of arms has become a criminal offense with no bail and long prison sentences. Gun owners are being told that most of them will have to hand over their weapons within six months.
"This is an expression of the unanimous will of society to cut the spiral of violence that unsettles us and embarrasses us before humanity," President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said when he signed the bill. Noting that a homicide occurs in Brazil every 12 minutes, he added that "this statute is certainly not the solution to everything, but it is an exceptional step forward."
Note the tactics of the gun controllers, however:
Gun control advocates in the U.S. always stress they don't want to take guns away from hunters, and that above all they want to "register" guns for safety purposes (to keep them out of the hands of "bad" people). It's interesting to see the leftists in Brazil have learned the lingo. Thankfully, the trend in this part of the Americas has been towards concealed-carry laws in states, a much better development.Under the legislation, no one who is under 25 or has been convicted of a drug or alcohol offense is permitted to own a gun. To acquire a weapon, an applicant must submit a statement of need — the rural hunters, for example, can qualify, but the standard of need is much stricter in cities.
The applicant must also prove that he or she has no criminal record and is gainfully employed and then register the weapon with a new centralized federal data bank after paying a $350 annual tax.
I don't like Richard Gephardt.
I didn't like him when I lived in Missouri (well away from his district). I didn't like him when he ran for President the first time. I didn't like him as a leader of Congressional Democrats.
About the nicest things I can say about him are: 1) He never disgraced his office with scandal and 2) I'm glad he's finally gone.
I'm pleased to see that Tim Cavanaugh is of the same mind:
It had to be said.The real Gephardt was well past his shelf life, and his bold ideas for America could only please those who regard with less than unmingled horror such skylarks as a nationwide gravy train for public school teachers, federal policing of "hate crimes," an international minimum wage enforced by UN Blue Helmets, and tariffs on everything from your radio to your underpants. It's hard, if not impossible, to think of a single time in his career that Gephardt stood up boldly for principle, or for anything. He's uninspiring in person, uncharismatic in the field, scrupulously dull in speech. Even the unprepossessing Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), who had the discretion to sit this presidential race out, looked more courageous back in 2001, when the Senate (but not the House) braved anthrax in order to stay in session and pass hastily assembled, largely unread legislation with far-reaching consequences. In the end, Gephardt didn't even suffer the most memorable defeat in Iowa: That honor is reserved for former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose febrile concession speech is already being edited and clipped by opponents and radio wags into a campaign version of the Hitler jig.
One thing I dislike about some of my fellow libertarians is that they seem to be acting out that famous Monty Python skit where Michael Palin pays John Cleese to have an argument. Anything Palin says Cleese just responds with "No, it's not." Many libertarians seem to delight in disagreeing with any mainstream political sentiment, just for the sake of disagreeing. I try to avoid that line of thinking.
Except today. Today I'm picking up the contrarian label and running with it.
I don't like the State of the Union (SOTU) speech. I never really got excited about it in the past and I like it less and less every year. I should point out that I only remember a few presidents giving SOTUs: Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and now Bush 43.
The SOTU always turns into a laundry list of new spending that President X wants Congress to authorize. We all know that the list submitted is not the list we are stuck with at the end. It's going to change in the sausage-making of the legislative process, so really, don't waste our time. Send the list to Congress and tell us when you're done.
I don't like seeing the politicians shuffling to get their faces on TV shaking the President's hand as he walks down the aisle into the chamber. Especially after I found out that they have been sitting there for several hours to get the opportunity. I don't care which side of the aisle they're on, all it makes me think is that those guys are some serious suck-ups. Note to politicians: If you want me to vote for you, sit far away from the aisle. For the Republicans, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is sitting at the aisle. Enough said.
My biggest gripe with the SOTU is that it's taken on a seemingly regal air. More than regal, it's almost like those Sovietologists studying who was on top of Lenin's tomb during the parades when our pundits note who's sitting where and who's been invited. President Reagan did a nice little thing inviting that guy who saved people from drowning after a plane crashed in DC and now it's this huge production. Every year it's got to be somebody that gets introduced and now we all know that they were invited because tradition says we have to invite somebody.
The whole idea of the President being so nice as to come down from his perch and address the humble representatives of his subjects is a disgusting notion to me, but that seems to be the way we've taken this one line from the Constitution:
Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;and turned it into something that the Founders never meant it to be. It's almost like a coronation, but we have it every year.
Well, at least I know I'm in good company in this view:
Jefferson also found the State of the Union address to be too magisterial when delivered in person. He performed one and afterwards delivered them, as required by the constitution, only in writing.
Richard Schultz has penned an outstanding article for the Weekly Standard describing the obstacles within the foreign policy/national security decisionmaking apparatus that have hindered the use of special operations forces against terrorists. More broadly, however, the article is a critique of a national security bureaucracy that was designed to fight the Cold War, and has adapted rather poorly to the national security challenges (specifically, terrorism) that we now face. I linked the article on the front page, and encourage everyone to read it in its entirety, but I wanted to list Schultz's "Nine reasons why we never sent our Special Operations Forces after al Qaeda before 9/11" and offer a few comments on each.
1. Terrorism as Crime
Since the late 1980s, the State Department has had virtually free rein in defining terrorism as a criminal problem, effectively neutralizing the Department of Defense as any sort of policy leader in this area. Even now, despite the President's radical redefinition of terrorism as a national security problem (with the premise that borders are no longer inviolable, and that we will not rule out pursuing terrorists militarily wherever they may be), State careerists prefer the older approach. And as we note here frequently, every Democrat presidential contender with the possible exception of Senator Lieberman seems to favor this approach.
2. Not a Clear and Present Danger or War
The military brass has never been excited about treating terrorism as war, instead viewing it as a "force protection" issue. This is hardly a surprising view from a highly structured bureaucracy whose primary focus for fifty years was preventing a Eurasian power from establishing hegemony over Europe and threatening the United States. That war is over, however, and the new threat is terrorism. This is why Secretary Rumsfeld's work in the DoD is crucial, and why he will almost certainly serve a second term in this Administration if the President wins re-election.
3. The Somalia Syndrome
We like to believe we are past "Vietnam Syndrome," but perhaps the real problem is that we suffer from Mogadishu Syndrome -- the fear by the military brass that the use of special operations forces will always lead to a similar outcome. It didn't help that the President at that time put special forces in a difficult situation, or that the entire mission was ill-defined. It also didn't help that the military was so contemptuous of a civilian leader, however disgraceful a man he was. We continue to pay for it.
4. No Legal Authority
President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld have made this a non-issue, but for weaker leaders that might not be the case. Thankfully, they have established good precedent.
5. Risk Aversion
Again, the Joint Chiefs are highly risk averse, and the use of special ops forces is inherently risky. Administrations that have major political worries (say, accusations of "wag the dog" or even impeachment) become highly averse to risk as well. But again, the military bureaucracy is a major culprit here. That's not entirely a bad thing, but the civilian people have to be strong enough to ask questions, and challenge the military brass on their planning. Secretary Rumsfeld is clearly up to the task, leading to idiotic rumblings from people like Barry McCaffrey and Ralph Peters that he shouldn't be challenging heavy forces advocates.
6. Pariah Cowboys
The Clinton Administration was not without advocates of what has become the Bush/Rumsfeld approach. Dick Clarke, notably, was one. Unfortunately, that Administration had so little credibility on foreign policy that it was easy for military brass to isolate him as a "pariah cowboy."
7. Intimidation of Civilians
I've hinted at this, and Schultz gives it a separate entry. He notes that the Clinton Administration was not devoid of aggressive proposals for dealing with terrorism, but that the military brass was often able to beat down civilians (in addition to isolating "rogue" civilians, as in #6), knocking their credentials. Again, we saw that mentality coming from people like McCaffrey and Peters in their columns about Secretary Rumsfeld, whose policy shop is much stronger than the previous Administration's, and actually prevails on some of these matters.
8. Big Footprints
No comment additional to what Schultz has written.
9. No Actionable Intelligence
Secretary Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, Steve Cambone, even Vice-President Cheney have come under some criticism for allegedly "cherry-picking" intelligence. That is, of course, a matter of opinion, usually coming from anti-Bush partisans with no real knowledge of or expertise in foreign policy. Intelligence of terrorists will never be perfect -- and will rarely rise to the level of certainty required for a criminal prosecution (see #1, above). Therefore, defining an "actionable" threshold for intelligence with regard to terrorism is a crucial matter. And 9-11 ensured that the threshold would be re-evaluated.
Many of these same obstacles remain. As Schultz notes,
Secretary Rumsfeld was an inspired choice for this job before 9-11, when he was already hard at work attempting to transform the Cold War DoD into something more appropriate to these times. Now, his work is even more crucial. Twenty years from now, we'll probably know if he ultimately succeeded if he is remembered as a momentarily successful Secretary of Defense who prosecuted two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) effectively, or as a Secretary of Defense who helped reshape more than a decade's conventional wisdom on fighting terrorism, inside and outside of his department.Once again, the problem involves institutions, organizational cultures, and entrenched ways of thinking. "Rumsfeld might think we're at war with terrorism," observed one former general, "but I'll bet he also thinks he is at war within the Pentagon....The real war's happening right there in his building. It's a war of the culture. He can't go to war because he can't get his organization up for it."
Donald Rumsfeld may believe that Special Operations Forces should be in the forefront of the global war on terrorism. But for that to happen, he will have to breach what remains of the phalanx of resistance that blocked the offensive use of special mission units for over a decade--and he'll have to overcome the new showstoppers as well.
I'm watching Howard Dean's little "non-victory" speech.
Man, he's creepy.
The stumpy little fellow keeps waving his little finger and getting redder and redder. I worry that he's going to explode.
And he's bellowing.
You would think after blowing his lead in Iowa because of his gaffes (including his bellowing at an Iowan at one of his rallies, and his bellowing in general), he might tone down the fury just a little, and holster his pointy little finger for a while.
But no. There he is, red faced, sleeves rolled up, pointing away. And bellowing.
These Dems are entertaining.
Is it normally thought of as a compliment to be told one is like a fire hydrant?
In my unscientific survey this morning (I asked Callie), the consensus seems to be that no, a fire hydrant is something often abused by dogs.
Senator Tom Harkin apparently thinks otherwise, according to Maureen Dowd:
What a strange thing to call the man one is endorsing. With friends like that...I quizzed Tom Harkin, Mr. Iowa, about why he had endorsed Dr. Dean, even though it infuriated his spurned Senate buddy John Kerry and disappointed fellow Midwesterner Dick Gephardt. Senator Harkin didn't seem especially close to the Vermont governor. At the 2002 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner here, he twice called the Democrat John Dean (as Martin Sheen did in a speech here last week).
"He's a fire hydrant," Mr. Harkin said over dinner at Bambino's in Cumming. "If you kick it, it's going to hurt you. But it's stable and secure and there when you need it."
You'd think the BBC would try to be a little less shameless in their anti-Israeli and anti-American foreign policy reporting. Then again, you'd also think that they'd be smart enough not to lure away the head of al-Jazeera:
For anyone who has never heard of Al-Jazeera, it's perhaps the most prominent Arab news outlet, and one which often echoes a decidedly Islamist slant. They've been frequently denounced by the State Department, although the BBC, ever the left-wing bastion, has often lept to their defense.The Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera says its editor-in-chief has submitted his resignation.
According to an al-Jazeera spokesman, Ibrahim Helal said he had had "a tempting offer" from the BBC.
The charity BBC World Service Trust confirmed that Mr Helal was joining to work on a variety of media training projects over the next two years.
In short, then, these guys are simply made for each other. Now Western liberals can finally join completely with Mideastern radicals. It was meant to be.
The American media has never met a Communist dictator it didn't adore:
Add Cuba to the list of candidates for regime change.Jeane Kirkpatrick has called indifference to Cuban suffering "both a puzzling and a profoundly painful phenomenon of our times." And the late Vernon Walters said, about Free World journalists: "They would go to the death searching out Franco's or Pinochet's prisoners. But the attitude toward Castro's is, 'They probably deserve to be there anyway.' Anti-Communist prisoners are of no interest to anybody. A prisoner of a left-wing government is highly suspect, probably a fascist."
Oscar Biscet is the kind of man who should attract our media's interest: a fairly young doctor, a democratic idealist, a practitioner of civil disobedience, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He's black. What more could you want? He should be featured on 60 Minutes, his fate should be chronicled in the New York Times — he should be a cause. But Walters was right: An anti-Communist prisoner is of no interest to anybody.
Such prisoners are of interest to us, of course. Along with other conservatives, I have screamed about Biscet, and many of his fellows. But our screaming has done little good; we scream mainly to one another; and we, of all people, don't need to hear it.
If the likes of 60 Minutes and the New York Times got interested in Biscet, they could save him. Castro would move. But because no one is shouting — no one with a sufficient megaphone — Castro imprisons and tortures at will. If our media are at all interested in Cuba, it's to perfume the dictator, revile the Cuban-Americans, or bash U.S. policy (which, of course, they misunderstand).
Yesterday, I was talking with a veteran Cuba hand. He said that Castro's habit is to allow his prisoners to get desperately sick, in some dungeon, and then release them. They die not long after, but not in prison. And they are promptly forgotten, except by their loved ones and the "crazies" in Miami.
Castro has just begun the 46th year of his totalitarian rule: receiving Hollywood stars, trading kisses with Barbara Walters, doin' his thing.
No matter what he does, the President will be charged with pandering to Cuban-American voters. Might as well do it right, while doing some good in our own hemisphere. Besides, we could break that promise by JFK to another totalitarian regime never to invade the totalitarian regime of Cuba. Some promises should be broken.
It appears that former Texas governor Ann Richards is set to endorse Howard Dean:
Actually, the bolded argument doesn't hold water. Indeed, the endorsements come from two people who, despite enjoying the power of incumbency in relatively good times, lost to George Bush, a person both of them (and supporters) effectively deemed an idiot. So what does that make them?Meanwhile, we're told that Dean has secured another big endorsement this week. It may not be Jimmy Carter or Sam Nunn (or is it??), but it's another Southern Democratic ex-officeholder who still draws a crowd.
Sources tell the Grind that former Texas Gov. Ann Richards is set to endorse Dean, probably in Iowa. Like Al Gore, Richards, whose not-so-narrow loss to Bush in 1994 set the stage for his meteoric rise, helps Dean make a key argument about his '04 electability. The argument: Few people are more viscerally focused on beating Bush than Richards and Gore, so they presumably wouldn't back Dean unless they believed he could win.
It was unclear whether Richards would issue her endorsement Thursday or Saturday. In any case, mark our words: she's with Dean.
Maybe Dean can keeps the hits coming, and trot out Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis in rapid succession. Maybe the wacky Greek could even talk Dean into a tank-ride photo op. This CNN writer would probably portray it as brilliant.
USATODAY.com: Dean urged Clinton to take unilateral action in Bosnia
Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, a strong critic of what he calls President Bush's unilateral approach to foreign policy, urged President Clinton to act unilaterally and enter the war in Bosnia in 1995.
An odd caption accompanies a photo of Al Sharpton in this Washington Post story about Washington D.C.'s confused primary today:
Why the quotes? While I do find the man despicable, he is going to capture enough black voters in the South to remain a presence for a while. And the other candidates are most certainly going to have to defer to him and say the right things about his issues in order not to upset the most important Dem constituency. So why does he merit the "major" treatment? It seems to me he's going to have more of an impact on the race than most of the dwarves.Al Sharpton, being interviewed on Georgia Avenue yesterday, is one of the few "major" candidates on the ballot today, and one of fewer who have campaigned here.
The U.S. is trying to move along Russian withdrawal from Georgia:
I bet we would.The United States is prepared to help pay for the withdrawal of Russian troops that remain in Georgia as a holdover from the Soviet Union, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.
"We have done it in the past and have said that we would be happy to provide some assistance ... to pull out the forces," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lynn Pascoe said in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
It gets kind of hard to tell the "doves" at State from those strategic realists at DoD in this administraton sometimes, huh?
North Korea now claims that it does not have any nuclear weapons, but merely the capability to produce them:
Good. It should be that much easier to destroy their facilities without the fear of their retaliating with a nuclear weapon.North Korean officials told an unofficial U.S. delegation last week that many claims about their nuclear program were exaggerated and that they did not have a nuclear warhead or a program to secretly enrich uranium for such a weapon, said sources familiar with the trip.
The North Koreans did, however, reiterate their claim to have produced weapons-grade plutonium and showed the delegation their facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex and what was purported to be a sample of the plutonium.
"They said, 'We have the potential to make nuclear weapons, but we do not have a weapon,' " said a South Korean official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were very adamant in their denials, especially about the highly enriched uranium."
Here's some disturbing news from Houston:
But "they" keep telling us it's a religion of peace.A Saudi Arabian national who slashed a Jewish friend's throat after apparently undergoing a religious reawakening has pleaded guilty to murder rather than face trial.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, 23, faces up to 60 years in prison for the Aug. 6 attack in which Ariel Sellouk was almost decapitated with a knife.
Although Alayed went to a local mosque after the slaying and no clear motive was established, Houston police said they could not find any evidence that Sellouk, also 23, was killed because of his race or religion.
Alayed, of the 2500 block of Winrock, was arrested Aug. 14 in a friend's empty Galleria-area apartment. He initially was held without bail because he allegedly had told his roommate that he would flee to Saudi Arabia, but a judge set bail at $5 million in October.
Sellouk had been attending Houston Community College, but was taking a break from school to work in his father's business at the time he was slain, said his father, Michel Sellouk.
Sellouk, a Moroccan Jew who settled in Houston in 1982, said his son became friends with Alayed a few years ago. He said Alayed underwent "a religious experience" about two years ago, became a devout Muslim and broke off contact with Ariel.
On the day of the slaying, Sellouk said, Alayed called his son and suggested they get together. The two had drinks at a bar before going to Alayed's apartment about midnight.
Alayed's roommate told police the two were not arguing before Sellouk was killed.
According to court documents at the time bail was set, Alayed's family was giving him $60,000 a year to pursue his studies. Prosecutors said they believed he had dropped out of Houston Community College, however.
*shrug*
How curious that it's a Saudi national who committed the murder after his religious "reawakening."
And that he killed a Jew (even though police couldn't find "any evidence" of a religious motive).
And that his family was sending him $60,000/year to pursue his studies AT THE LOCAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE (known for their expense, those community colleges)..
This just doesn't quite add up. I'm not really counting on the dreadful local newspaper to get to the bottom of it, unfortunately.
Liberal Republican Christine Todd Whitman pens an op-ed for the New York Times (who else?) today that is notably whiny, even by Whitman standards:
Ah, persecuted over abortion. Poor Christine.It doesn't seem to matter to conservatives that moderates share their views on the vast majority of those bedrock principles that have always been the foundation of Republicanism: smaller government, the power of free markets, a strong national defense. Because we disagree on a few issues, most notably a woman's right to choose, many conservatives act as if they wish we moderates would just disappear.
This phenomenon is not unique to Republicans. Many moderate Democrats also feel alienated from their party; Senator Zell Miller of Georgia has recently written a book about it. Party estrangement is, sadly, bipartisan, and it is destroying American politics.
The problem is, there already is a pro-abortion party. Indeed, steadfastness on a woman's "right" to kill her fetus may be the very definition of the Democrat party these days. Just a few days ago, General Clark went much further even than Roe, contending that the law shouldn't stop a woman from killing her fetus until the very moment it's no longer a fetus. It seems his aides are still trying to spin what he said into something that doesn't horrify 75% of the electorate, but I give the General credit for honestly vocalizing mainstream thought in his party.
Anyway, a majority of Americans do not support an unfettered right of the mother and her doctor to kill the fetus. And an overwhelming majority of Republicans oppose it. So Miss Whitman is mistaken if she thinks that's the position of a few vocal extremists who have taken over the GOP. She's simply in the (very small) minority in her party.
She's goes on to play political strategist:
What Republican strategist is she talking about? It's the Democrat Party that is speculating about writing off the South and pursuing a strategy that focuses on states of core supporters. Karl Rove engineered holding the GOP Convention in the state of Hillary, for example, and while California may be out of reach even with Terminator as governor, the President is surely going to campaign heavily there if only to boost the chances of picking up the Senate seat and some House seats. I don't expect the re-election campaign to ignore any sections of the country. Miss Whitman simply makes no sense here.What too many Republican strategists seem to have learned from the 2000 election is that the states which voted for Al Gore — the entire West Coast, most of the Northeast, much of the Upper Midwest — aren't worth fighting for. It's the wrong lesson.
Of the 20 states that President Bush lost in the 2000 election, 15 either had then, or have since elected, a Republican governor. Of those governors, almost every one can fairly be described as a moderate Republican: George Pataki in New York, Linda Lingle in Hawaii, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, to name just three. In addition, polls show that in states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maine, voters are evenly split in their party affiliation.
Then again, Miss Whitman frequently makes no sense, so it's not a total surprise. If her forthcoming book at all resembles this op-ed, I can't imagine why anybody would buy it.
The American Spectator's Prowler has this to say about Paul O'Neill:
Since regime change as official U.S. policy towards Iraq preceded President Bush, Secretary O'Neill should not have been so surprised.What former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and other Bush administration blabbermouths failed to mention when leaking NSC documents and the like for the forthcoming book O'Neill worked on, is that the Clinton administration had many of the same documents prepared laying out plans for a Iraq post-invasion Iraq.
"We had the same stuff," says a former senior Clinton Administration aide who worked at the Pentagon. "It would have been irresponsible not to have such planning. We had all kinds of briefing material ready should the president have decided to move on Iraq. In fact, a lot of the material we had prepared was material that the previous Bush administration had left for us. It just isn't that big a deal. Or shouldn't be."
Then again, given the man's near-obsession with implementing Alcoa's safety procedures at Treasury instead of, say, managing the Treasury and related policy, it's hard to say what may or may not have surprised the fool.
Steve Hayward (author of the excellent Age of Reagan, which all fine RAA readers surely own by now) gets off some good blasts at O'Neill over at No Left Turns.
(01-13-04 Update) Bruce Bartlett gets in his shots here.
(01-13-04 Update 2) Stephen Moore piles on.
(01-13-04 Update 3) And now, O'Neill's inevitable backtracking, as bumbling as ever. This is another example of why the guy was fired.
This is my favorite sentence so far today, in my reading of blogs and news sources:
What do you really think, Richard?Sen. Boxer has offered to fix the schools, but it was people like her that broke them to begin with, with their insistence on soft subjects like self-esteem and emoting sessions instead of actual science and math education, and their insistence on affirmative action for middle-class white women to the detriment of actual academic standards.
Eric Siegmund is distressed by the liberal idiocy of NBC's morning news crew.
He's gets no argument from me.
But really, isn't tv morning news vapid and idiotic regardless?
I haven't watched it in years. The time is better spent pulling up newspapers from all over the world over the net.
Howell Raines may be gone, but the stench remains at the New York Times.
As William Dyer points out, the moral equivalency mindset is well entrenched there.
Jay Nordlinger writes the following about General Wesley Clark, whom we frequently refer to as the wacky general here:
That's just a teaser. Read the rest of it -- it's pretty damning.Friends, I have a piece in the upcoming issue — available in our Digital version as early as tomorrow — on Gen. Wesley Clark, about whom I've written a fair amount in this column. He is more appalling than most people know, I think: utterly scoundrelly on the stump. We think of Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley Braun as the fringe candidates. But have you gotten a strong whiff of Wes Clark? Pretty fringy, actually.
In a recent column, I attributed the following comment to him: that President Bush "is more concerned about the success of Halliburton than having a success strategy in Iraq." The Associated Press reported that Clark had said it; Reuters reported that his spokesman, Chris Lehane, had said it. It seems that it was Lehane. Either way, the remark is in perfect harmony with current Clarkian rhetoric.
A few weeks ago, I pointed out that Howard Dean had made a rather curious statement about abortion.
George Neumayr has been digging a bit more:
It's probably another case of Dean's fibbing.The Democrats, as if to underscore that they belong to the party of abortion, appear ready to make a former Planned Parenthood doctor and executive board member their nominee. Dean has said that he is "proud to have served as a Board Member of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England." But he is not so proud that he wants to claim credit for any of its abortions. Though he worked at Planned Parenthood on an OB/GYN rotation and as a "contract physician," according to news reports, he says that he never performed abortions. "I did not perform abortions, I'm a medical doctor," Dean has said. My, what a snob. Perhaps his old colleagues from Planned Parenthood should take offense.
Dr. Dean's work for Planned Parenthood invites further journalistic scrutiny. Is it true he never performed an abortion? Never even assisted at one? Somehow along the way he gained a knowledge of abortion procedures, according to Vermont Magazine in 1998. How did he learn them?
This one's even better (or worse, actually):
When he's not saying goofy things, it appears that Howard Dean is a habitual liar.Recall his NARAL dinner speech last year where, in a attempt to score a debating point against parental notification laws, he described an occasion in his medical office where he lent a sympathetic ear to a 12-year-old who had been impregnated by her father. Under questioning from NBC's Tim Russert, Dean had to admit his incest story was bogus. The girl's father wasn't involved. Russert: "…when you told the story, you knew otherwise." Dean: "That's right." Russert: "Why didn't you say that?" Dean: "Because it didn't make any difference."(It would have made a difference for his argument. He needed the incest fabrication to punctuate the story with the line: "You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea.")
Joe Lieberman's campaign just put out a charming proposal:
Of all the Dem candidates for President, Lieberman is the one most frequently booed and heckled by Dem primary crowds for being too conservative. He frequently defends the Clinton economic approach from attacks by the Dem frontrunner, and he also defends tax cuts to an extent. He is what passes for a "moderate" on economics among the Dems.Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman yesterday said he would limit insurance company profits to 2 percent a year in order to reduce the cost of health care. He would also focus on reducing medical errors in half, he said.
“I think if you put a reasonable profit limit, which is what this is, a reasonable profit limit, then that will have the effect of lowering costs underneath,” he said.
“It’s not government take-over,” the Connecticut senator said about his plan to control health costs. “It’s a public-private partnership that really can provide insurance for people. And I have no doubt that I could sell this to a number of Republicans (in Congress) to support this.”
And he wants to determine "reasonable" profits for private companies. And call it a private-public "partnership!"
He's probably right that he could get a number of Republican members of Congress to support his plan, which only proves, sadly, that there are too many liberal Republicans (or RINOs) in Congress.
I've previously discussed the tendency of most Dems -- not just Howard Dean -- to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement problem, rather than as a national security problem.
Along those lines, John Kerry is the latest Dem to proffer that view. Here's Paul Beston's observation of his most recent debate performance:
Is it a position distinguishable from that of any other Dem running for President, save for perhaps -- perhaps -- Senator Lieberman?On Sunday Kerry stood like a tall piece of furniture on stage, making no impact on the proceedings. The viewer tended to forget he was there and, when he spoke, to tune him out. The only memorable thing he said in two hours was that terrorism was a law enforcement and intelligence problem, a position not immediately distinguishable from that of Dennis Kucinich.
The Dems have not been trusted on national security issues for a long time as a party, and have seen their greatest success politically when those issues are in the background. It's unlikely that national security is going to be a background issue in 2004, and it's just as unlikely that voters are going to opt for the Dems' preference of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement matter over the President's approach.
Monterey County Herald: Monterey prepares strong defense of DLI
Hundreds of Defense Language Institute students left the Presidio of Monterey on Thursday for a two-week break. By the time they return, campus chatter will likely be about Defense Department criteria for base closures.Link thanks to the DLI Alumni Association.
When I was at DLI in 1992 the BRAC folks came by to look at the school. I was part of a dog and pony show put on to impress on them the uniqueness and importance of DLI.
That was pretty easy to do, DLI was one of the few organizations I observed in the federal government that produced a high-quality product. The closure proposals/rumors always seemed to revolve around two ideas:
Idea 1. appeals to the privatization geek in me. It should appeal to everyone, the private sector consistently provides products and service cheaper and better than the federal government. One problem, this case is the exception to the rule. The language education people get in civilian schools is cheaper than what taxpayers shelled out for me to go to DLI, however, we passed up the civilians in reading, listening, and speaking ability in month three of a twelve month course.
Regarding idea 2., I'm sure Arizona is much beloved by its residents and is a wonderful place to live and work. But how many people are going to move there from Monterey, California? Not many, I'd wager. Additionally, when closing DLI came up in the past, the BRAC predicted a savings of $1 million per year. When asked how much the move itself would cost, the reply was (as I remember) $50 million. So, theoretically, in 50 years the move would pay off. And the best instructors would have found jobs teaching somewhere else, or have changed career fields.
The idea of BRACing (closing) DLI never made any sense to me at all.
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
