VIETNAM VS. IRAQ....Is Iraq a quagmire like Vietnam? Hell, according to John O'Sullivan at NRO, even Vietnam wasn't a quagmire like Vietnam:

[The Tet Offensive], in addition to being a strategic defeat for the Vietcong, was also ample justification for America's Vietnam intervention on both humanitarian grounds.

But that is not how it was presented to the people by the U.S. media at the time. As the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his magisterial study, Big Story, the mainstream U.S. media depicted Tet as a severe defeat for the United States and as the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of both the media and political elites. And as a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated — the American home front.

It was all just media spin? Talk about revisionist history.

1967 was the year of the "light at the end of the tunnel." LBJ and Robert McNamara kept telling us that North Vietnam was on the ropes, that the war was winding down, and that our boys would soon be coming home.

Then came Tet. It was indeed, as everyone agrees, a military debacle for the Viet Cong, but although the Tet Offensive did little objective damage, it did show that North Vietnam had plenty of fight left. Public opinion turned not because of media spin, and not because anyone mistakenly thought it was a massive defeat for U.S. forces, but because it demonstrated that our leaders had seriously deceived us about the course of the war. We had been led to believe the war was almost over, but in fact it was just getting started.

And the lesson? Wartime leaders need to tell the country the truth about how things are going and how long our troops are going to be fighting. If there really is a parallel between Vietnam and Iraq, that's where it lies.

POINDEXTER TO RESIGN....The infamous futures market in terrorism may or may not have been a good idea, but it turns out that it's had one positive effect: the resignation of John "Technically I'm Not A Felon" Poindexter from his position as head of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office.

It's about time. After all, just how often to you have to demonstrate appallingly poor judgment before the Bush administration finally decides you're no longer welcome?

DEAN AND ISRAEL....As long as I'm kicking Howard Dean, there was one sentence in his speech that just floored me:

While we focused on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was neglected. The President, despite knowing how critical his personal involvement was, refused to engage for over two full years, squandering the momentum he inherited from the Clinton administration.

Momentum? WTF was Dean smoking when he said that?

Look, I give Clinton credit for doing everything he could to make the 2000 summit work, but he failed. The intifada was in full swing by the time Bush took office and Sharon beat Barak bloody in the Israeli elections just a couple of weeks later. Things spiraled completely out of control in the ensuing months.

Maybe Bush should have engaged earlier, but the only momentum bequeathed to him by Clinton was barreling headlong in the opposite direction of peace. So what was Dean talking about?

UPDATE: OK, I'm maybe half convinced that I overstated things. I well remember the last ditch Taba negotiations right before Clinton left office, but my impression of them was that they were pretty hopeless and Clinton was just keeping them going because — well, because why not? The horse might learn to sing, after all. However, perhaps there was more progress being made there than I thought.

On the other hand, I think some of the commenters on this thread might be remembering those negotiations a bit too fondly. It's possible they were going a little better than I recall, but I honestly don't think there was a whole lot of serious momentum there. What's more, once Sharon got elected I'm not sure there was an awful lot Bush could do. The whole situation sure seemed pretty hopeless to me at the time.

HOWARD DEAN ON NATIONAL SECURITY....Yesterday I noted in passing that while the DLC attacks on Howard Dean were probably misguided, I think the DLC is basically right that Dem candidates need to have a better national security story if they want to have a chance of beating George Bush. Matt Yglesias responded with a suggestion that in addition to good policies, Dems also need some good sound bites.

Now, I've made casual comments like this before about the Democrats in general and Howard Dean in particular, and have gotten a number of comments in return telling me that I really ought to go look at Dean's official position statements before I criticize him. This is obviously a fair comment, so today I hopped over to his website and did just that.

Luckily for me, Dean gave a major address to the Council on Foreign Relations just a few weeks ago that outlined his thinking on national security. Unluckily for Dean supporters, my reaction is short and pungent: it stinks.

(I'll explain this, of course, but first a note to Dean's legion of fans before they descend on my comment section: I admit that my reaction might be unfair. It might also be overly harsh. But I am a veritable Mary Poppins compared to the gang of Republican fixers and spinners who are going to light into Dean if he wins the nomination, so consider this nothing more than a popgun shot across the bow.)

I'm going to focus on one part of Dean's speech. After a long warmup that includes some moderately effective rhetoric about the challenges we face and how Bush has muffed them, he finally gets around to specifics:

As President, I would set four goals for American leadership:

First, defeat the threat posed by terrorists, tyrants, and technologies of mass destruction.

Second, strengthen our alliances and ensure Russia and China are fully integrated into a stable international order.

Third, enlarge the circle of beneficiaries of the growing world economy.

And fourth, ensure that life on our fragile planet is sustainable.

Already I'm skeptical. It's not that I disagree about points 2-4, it's just that I don't think they make a very credible national security presentation. What people want to know is what are you going to do about terrorism during the next four years?

In fairness, that is Dean's #1 point, so let's take a look at how he expands on that:

In this fight, it is essential that America lead by example and exercise power responsibly. Only in that way can we hope to eliminate support for the next generation of extremists who regard our culture and our actions not simply with envy or jealousy but with a deep-seated hatred over the manner in which we conduct our affairs.

The Clinton administration was committed to military engagement with friends and allies around the world, helping to train and equip these countries so that they were better prepared to work with the U.S. in shouldering this burden. As President, my administration would redouble these efforts.

Here at home, we need a real commitment to homeland security....

[282 words follow about shoring up homeland security.]

I'm sorry, but this is just pathetic. A few pro forma words about being responsible and working with our allies, and that's it? Followed by a quick jump to homeland security?

What does he think about military transformation? Relations with Saudi Arabia? The neocon domino theory? Reform of the CIA? Etc. etc.

Fairly or not, Dean more than anyone has to prove that he's not just a squishy peacenik who doesn't really know anything about national security issues. And while I realize that campaign speeches aren't white papers, this was a major address to a serious audience, so I assume he put a good deal of thought into it and consulted with foreign policy experts in its preparation. If he had any major proposals for actively fighting terrorism he would have mentioned them, but I don't see much there, and I don't see any sound bites that he could extract from this speech either.

This kind of thing might sound good on the blogosphere, but if Dean wins the nomination he's going to get pummeled on this stuff starting next summer — and BushCo's phasers are going to be set firmly on obliterate. He'd better have a bit more to say than this, or else we'll be scraping him off the floor come November.

POSTSCRIPT: All the usual disclaimers apply. It's early days. This speech was for a professional audience, not the general public. Dean might propose other ideas and hone his prose over the next few months. The mood of the country might move in Dean's direction if postwar Iraq bogs down. Bush might get involved in some major gaffe. And it's not fair that Republicans largely indulge in platitudes themselves and it doesn't seem to hurt them.

All true. I just wouldn't count on any of these things actually producing a victory, that's all.

UPDATE: And please don't tell me that George Bush sounded similarly clueless in 2000. I know that. But national security wasn't front and center in 2000 and it is today — and Bush has plenty of credibility on the subject, whether he deserves it or not. Them's the breaks, and you'd better have some real firepower if you want to fight back.

YOUR RAISE: NADA....THE BOSS' RAISE: 84%....The Guardian reports that even over in socialist Britain executive pay is up. Way up:

Boardroom pay rose seven times as fast as average earnings last year, with the senior directors of the UK's biggest 100 companies receiving an average 23% rise.

....Last year's 23% rise is higher than the 17% recorded by the Guardian survey for the year 2001. A year earlier the rise was 28%.

Too lazy to do the math to figure out what that means? No problem, that's what I'm here for: that's an 84% increase over the past three years.

84%.

And this is during a time when the share prices of these companies have fallen by 50%, workers are being laid off to cut costs, and corporate earnings have been anemic.

When are shareholders and workers going to start seriously revolting against this kind of obscenity? Isn't the law of supply and demand — not to mention being paid for performance — supposed to apply to executives too?

A DIFFERENT VIEW ON THE WMD HUNT....Yesterday the Washington Post reported that we were making no progress on finding either WMD or WMD programs. Today, presumably based on different sources, CNN takes a somewhat more optimistic view:

[David] Kay and Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the head of the Pentagon's Iraq Survey Groups, met for three hours behind closed doors with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee....Kay and Dayton were due to also brief the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday afternoon....Sources told CNN the men were to make the following points:

• No confirmed chemical or biological material is in hand. Although they have tested suspect material, "there is nothing you could take to court," said one source.

• More leads have emerged since the deaths of Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein.

• The conclusion that Iraq had an "active WMD program" is based on recent interrogations of Iraqi regime officials, as well as documents that the United States has seized. Those documents, the sources said, show that Iraq had plans to destroy weapons stockpiles quickly; shift dual-use plants from weapons to commercial production as part of a deception effort; and reconstitute its weapons if it had to destroy them in the face of inspections or a U.S. attack.
  

Offering one example, one official said a document was found a few weeks ago that detailed how a dual-use commercial chemical plant might operate. The document specified in detail how equipment should be shifted to weapons production.

So who's right? Stay tuned.

HOW FAST IS THE ECONOMY GROWING?....The BEA announced today that GDP increased 2.4% in the second quarter. That's better than predicted and generally good news.

However, General Glut points out an interesting anomaly. First, here's how the increase was calculated:

• First quarter GDP was $9,552 billion
  

• Second quarter GDP was $56.1 billion higher.
  

• That's an increase of .587%.
  

• Multiply by 4 (actually a bit more than 4) to get the annualized rate and it's a 2.36% increase, which gets rounded off to 2.4%
  

But here's an interesting factoid: the war in Iraq provided a one-time spike in defense spending (and therefore GDP) of about $40 billion, all of it deficit spending. Without the war, GDP would have increased by only $16 billion, an annualized rate of .67%. That's not so hot.

So, um, are we going to have another war this quarter to keep the numbers up?

UPDATE: As it turns out, this crude analysis overstates the effect of the war. More details here.

GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT....Glenn Reynolds wonders whether a smart politician would really want to put his reputation on the line over a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:

Most Americans, I think, are increasingly comfortable with gay people, but not as comfortable with the idea that gayness itself is truly acceptable. That's changing, but the process is still underway. That means that there's a lot of support for non-discrimination, but a lot less support for things seen as "mainstreaming" gays, or at least gayness. On the other hand, I suspect that this ambivalence translates into weak support for affirmative action against gays, too, but I don't know how that would shake out in terms of a battle over a constitutional amendment.

I'm not sure anyone else does, either, which makes me doubt that canny politicians would want to bring this to a head. But I could be wrong.

I think I would guess differently. Although passing a constitutional amendment would be difficult, social conservatives must realize that this is their last chance since public opinion is obviously trending against them. Right now they control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and if they're ever going to pass a gay marriage amendment, now's the time. Ten years from now it will be out of the question.

So....I wouldn't be surprised if there's a big push for this. Whether President Bush will end up supporting it I don't know, but luckily for him he doesn't have to take any official action on it and thus might be able to weasel around on it.

UPDATE: Of course, canny politicians might also decide that it's just a good grandstanding move. There's only a miniscule chance of such an amendment passing, since all it would take is 12 13 states to block passage, but they might figure that forcing Democrats to oppose it was good politics. And they might be right....

UPDATE 2: Jay Caruso and I sort of agree on this. Hey, there's a first time for everything!

What's ironic is that, as Jay points out, I've been saying for a while that gay rights are a winning issue for Democrats. But what I really said was that gay rights of all kinds are a winning issue with the single exception of gay marriage.

So what do we get as an issue? Gay marriage. Go figure.

(For what it's worth, my view is that the Democrats should all oppose gay marriage but favor civil unions, which gives them a good reason to oppose a constitutional amendment. I think civil unions are a perfectly good compromise, and the battle really ought to be fought on grounds of insurance benefits, inheritance rights, etc. If we can leave the emotionally charged issue of "marriage" out of it, I still think all this stuff favors Democrats.)

HOW MANY CANDIDATES?....We still have ten days to go before the filing deadline, and already 123 people have taken out papers to run for governor in the recall election.

Time for a pool: how many people will be on the final ballot? I've got dibs on 300. The glory of a prominent mention here on Calpundit goes to whoever gets closest.

IS TONY BLAIR A WAR CRIMINAL?....Via Michael Totten, the Telegraph reports that the Athens Bar Association has filed a lawsuit in the new International Criminal Court against Tony Blair accusing him of "crimes against humanity" in connection with the Iraq war. (George Bush was not named because the United States is not a signatory to the ICC treaty.)

This is little more than idiotic grandstanding, and the Telegraph warns us not to take it too seriously:

The case is highly unlikely to reach court since it can act only in cases where national courts are unable or unwilling to pursue abuses. The ICC already has more than 500 complaints to review, at least 100 involving the war in Iraq.

As we know all too well here in America, pretty much anyone can file a lawsuit, and courts have to review them all regardless of how frivolous they are. My money says this suit and others like it get dismissed pretty quickly.

THE HUNT FOR WMD PROGRAMS....Terminology update: we're no longer looking for weapons of mass destruction — that was all just a misunderstanding, apparently — we're looking for weapons programs. But apparently that's not going too well either according to officials who have been briefed on the progress so far:

The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.

No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Hussein was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.

Before long, George Bush is going to be reduced to saying that what we're really looking for is evidence of "a strong desire on Saddam's to start thinking about weapons again someday."

Unfortunately, it's a poor jest. At the end of the day, if it turns out there's no WMD and there isn't even any credible evidence of WMD programs, then just what the hell were our intelligence agencies doing? I can't think of another intelligence failure of this magnitude anytime in recent history.

Why do I have the sinking feeling that someday, when the definitive histories of this era finally get written, it's going to turn out that the sum total of our WMD evidence was the say-so of Ahmed Chalabi and his buddies? Man oh man oh man, I sure hope there was more to it than that, I really do....

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES....The 45th edition of Carnival of the Vanities is being hosted this week by Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. Check it out.

BUSH FALLING IN POLLS....There are a few bits of interesting polling data that have come out recently. First off is the July poll from PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes), which shows some dramatic changes in attitudes toward the war over the past three months:

• Support for the UN taking a lead role in Iraq is up from 50% to 58%.

• The number of people under the misimpression that we have found WMD in Iraq has declined from 34% to 21%

• The number of people who flatly say the war was a bad idea has increased from 22% to 32%.

• 40% say the recent controversy over uranium has lowered their confidence in the president, and 50% say they will be more wary in the future if he says a country has a secret WMD program.
  

Overall, Bush is still getting modestly positive ratings for his handling of Iraq, but those ratings are clearly declining and the recent controversies seem to be part of the reason.

In another report based on the same data, PIPA reports that "swing voters" are much more negative than the overall populace:

• 46% say President Bush is handling Iraq poorly (vs. 33% of all voters)
  

• 72% think the rebuilding is going badly (vs. 57% of all voters)
  

• 51% say the war was unnecessary (vs. 44% of all voters)
  

• 53% think Bush was being misleading during the runup to war (vs. 36% of all voters)
  

This is important stuff since it's those centrist voters that are going to make the difference in the 2004 election. Needless to say, these attitudes will change once Bush starts campaigning, but overall it's still positive news for Democrats.

Meanwhile, Ruy Teixeira reports on another pair of polls with good news for Democrats:

Democrats are now favored by 17 points over Republicans on the economy. That’s up from a 1-point Democratic disadvantage in January. The Democrats also have increased their margin on the federal budget deficit from 4 to 13 points over that same time period. Their margins on unemployment (+19), education (+12) and, significantly, prescription drugs for older Americans (+22) remain impressive, despite Republican attempts to co-opt the latter issue.

Furthermore, while Democrats remain behind on foreign affairs, they have shaved that deficit from 17 to 5 points. Similarly, while still behind by 15 points on the situation with Iraq, that deficit has declined from 24 points in January.

....These findings are underscored by results from the latest Democracy Corps survey. According to the Democracy Corps data, Bush’s approval rating is now 55 percent, down 6 points from their poll last month. His margin over an unnamed Democrat for reelection in 2004 is 6 points, down from 11 points last month. And the classic right direction/wrong track question has flipped from slightly positive to 6 points negative (43 percent right direction/49 percent wrong track).

It's important that the polling deficit on foreign affairs and Iraq continue to drop. However, to really make any headway is going to require the Democratic candidates to offer up some good, positive proposals on national security and foreign affairs, and so far I haven't seen it.

A note to my more liberal readers: The DLC may be taking the wrong tack in its criticisms of Howard Dean, but we shouldn't let that blind us to the essential correctness of their views on national security. Dean and the others really need to get their act together on this if they want to have any chance of beating George Bush in 2004.

POSTSCRIPT: As usual, take all these poll results with a grain of salt, especially the PIPA survey, which is done over the internet. (Their methodology is sound, but it's still an internet poll.) These polls represent good news for Democrats, but there are a few bits of bad news in there as well and the results are far from conclusive. In any case it's a long time until election day.

THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO THE PRESS....So what does our president think of gay marriage? Not much, of course, but here's a more specific reply from his press conference today:

Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own. I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country. On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage. And that's really where the issue is heading here in Washington, and that is the definition of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think we ought to codify that one way or the other. And we've got lawyers looking at the best way to do that.

Um, "one way or the other"? I mean, I appreciate the New Testament warmup and all, but exactly what kind of codification are you thinking of? There's only one kind I can think of that's likely to pass constitutional muster.

And then there was this about Saddam's WMD:

And in order to placate the critics and the cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons program.

Apparently (a) it's official that we're only looking for weapons programs, not actual weapons, and (b) we're only going through the motions to placate critics, not because we really think it's any big deal. Glad we got that straight.

And then there's this

Now, I know....that there's a level of frustration by some in the media. I'm not suggesting you're frustrated. You don't look frustrated to me at all.

I'll leave analysis of that as an exercise for the reader.

TIMES OPENS COMPLAINT DESK....Based on the recommendation of a team that included three outside journalists, the New York Times has agreed to hire an ombudsman who will have "license to write about issues of our coverage, and to have those independent, uncensored commentaries published in our pages."

Finally, someone for Andrew Sullivan to direct his complaints to.

HOW ARE THINGS GOING IN IRAQ?....Tacitus links to an optimistic report of how the occupation is going in the town of Fallujah:

In the turquoise-domed Abdelaziz Samarrai mosque, prayer leader Mekki Hussein Kubeisi used to rail against the presence of U.S. troops in this city. On Friday, he urged hundreds of men in ankle-length tunics to “be patient” and not to tolerate people who resort to violence.

At city hall, the U.S.-endorsed mayor, Taha Bedawi, said residents “have become much happier because they don’t see as many American Army vehicles on the streets.”

“The tension is reducing every day,” he said. “We are seeing a change. People are starting to realize that the soldiers are not here to occupy Fallujah forever — they’re here to help us rebuild.”

Generally speaking, I think hawks are off base when they complain that the media present an overly bleak picture of how things are going in Iraq. Overall, things really have been pretty bleak and confused for the past few months, and reporters are just passing along what they see. The hawks may not like this, but they shouldn't kid themselves that things are really hunky dory and it's only media bias that prevents us from seeing how great things are.

Still, it's worth noting that there are plenty of positive stories about Iraq too. I linked to a couple of them last week, and this is another one. Overall, things are bound to be pretty dicey in the immediate aftermath of any war, and it's important to judge our progress by a fair metric. This means not pretending that every American death is a sign of impending doom, but also not pretending that the media is deliberately hiding the joy of the Iraqi people at being invaded by a Christian superpower that they've hated for decades.

It's hard enough figuring out the right thing to do even if we try to stay objective about the facts on the ground. We shouldn't make things even harder by deliberately avoiding them.

PERVERSE INCENTIVES....Instapundit weighs in with a typically sober assessment of the Pentagon's decision to kill its "terrorism futures market":

THE IDIOTS WIN A ROUND: Faced with know-nothing criticism from members of Congress, the Pentagon has abandoned its plans for a "futures market" to predict terror.

....Did the Congressional critics know about any of this stuff? Fat chance. Do they care that they were responding lamely and out of ignorance? Nope. Does it matter that this sends exactly the wrong signal to the Pentagon about the consequences of efforts to find original ways to fight the terror war? Yes. Will the members of Congress take any responsibility for that? Nope.

Since no one in the pro-war camp seems to understand the actual issue here, let me take a stab at it. The problem isn't that the Pentagon's idea wouldn't work — that's an empirical question that can only be answered with actual research — the problem is the perverse incentives it supplies. Suppose, for example, that a terrorist killed Dick Cheney and a couple of days later there was a photo of some guy in the New York Times grinning because the government had just sent him a check for $10,000 thanks to his shrewd investment. Does it still sound like a good idea?

Do we really want to create a government sponsored market that creates a whole class of people who are actively rooting for terrorist events to occur? Remember, there are some things that are bad ideas even if it turns out that they work well for their ostensible purpose. It's the law of unintended consequences, something that Paul Wolfowitz apparently understands better than the blogosphere.

(And given his recent experience with it, I suppose that comes as no surprise....)

UPDATE: Brad DeLong has some expert commentary, although it's more about whether the plan would actually work, not about the issue I raised.

OSAMA VS. SADDAM....Via Tom Spencer, an NBC report suggests that as early as spring of 2002, only a few months after the defeat of the Taliban, the war against al-Qaeda was already being compromised by preparation for war in Iraq:

“There were decisions made,” says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, “to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.”

....NBC News has learned that in one still-classified incident in Yemen, commanders wanted to engage what sources call a “viable mission against an al-Qaida target.” After all, in the past they had used the missiles on the remotely piloted drones to strike at terrorists. But in this case, because of the Iraq war, there was not a Predator they could use. The al-Qaida target got away.

What’s more, members of the CIA’s elite special activities division and the Army’s entire 5th Special Forces Group (Green Berets), who’d hunted down hundreds of al-Qaida terrorists, were pulled out of Afghanistan. The 5th, based in Fort Campbell, Kent., specializes in the Middle East and Central Asia. These soldiers are the ones who speak Arabic and Central Asian languages.

....Rick Francona, a retired Air Force colonel and an NBC News analyst, says that another valuable resource in the war against al-Qaida was a high-tech surveillance plane called the RC-135 “Rivet Joint.” “It’s not just the platform itself, it’s the linguists that man the platform,” Francona says. “They were being really overworked.”

A squadron of the RC-135s was deployed to “Operation Enduring Freedom” in 2001, says Air Force spokeswoman Beth Kelly, but they stopped prowling the skies over Afghanistan in May 2002....“I don’t think there is any question that the effort against al-Qaida was degraded,” Francona says.

Food for thought. It's hard to say how much of this was the result of normal duty rotation and routine force deployment decisions, but Leverett's descriptions are disturbing.

It's been apparent for some time that much of al-Qaeda — and possibly Osama bin Laden himself — escaped capture because we committed too weak a force to Afghanistan, but that kind of criticism is always all too easy to make in hindsight. However, if that weakness was actually the result of a deliberate decision to refocus on Iraq before the job in Afghanistan was finished, it displays astonishingly poor judgment. I hope we see a followup to this.

VALERIE PLAME UPDATE....We all remember Valerie Plame, the CIA operative whose cover was blown by two "senior administration officials," right? Well, what exactly was her job, anyway? Josh Marshall adds a few details today in his column in The Hill:

My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.

Josh mentions that a couple of senators have asked for an investigation, but wonders if that's really necessary:

Let’s be honest. We don’t really need any investigations, with all their depositions and fancy lawyers and public grandstanding. If the president wanted to, he could wrap this up with a few quick phone calls. So why doesn’t he?

Good question.

"FUCK" VS. "APPLE PIE"....I admit it: I have a weakness for the word "fuck." Today, via Unfogged, I learn of the 2003 Legal Document of the Year award from The Smoking Gun, awarded to Colorado public defender Eric Vanatta for his brief in defense of a high school student accused of calling his principal "a fucker, a fag, and a fucking fag." It apparently so impressed the Smoking Gun judges that they decided to announce their winner even though, technically, there are five months left in the year.

In his brief, Vanatta appeals to history, linguistics, popular culture, Google searches, legal opinion, and, finally, to appropriateness:

Fuck is certainly a controversial word that may be appropriate in certain venues and locales (Florida Elections Commission, speed eating contests, public defender offices) and may be inappropriate in others (weddings, Chuck-E-Cheese pizza parlors, district attorney offices). Some people may believe it is always inappropriate. But in all but a very few circumstances, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits our government from making that determination. This case falls outside of those very limited circumstances and as such, no conviction can result from Mr. X's alleged statements.

As they say, read the whole thing.

POSTSCRIPT: I am in no way defending the right of high school students to swear at their principals, or of their right to be defended using tax dollars better spent defending murderers and crooks, or anything else for that matter. OK? But it's a pretty funny document and Eric Vanatta deserves a wider audience than just a local judge.

In any case, the kid copped a plea and Vanatta never got a chance to argue his motion. But I'll bet the judge had a laugh or two.

MICHAEL VS. ARIANNA?....You know, usually when people get divorced they confine themselves to arguing over custody of the kids and who get the cuisinart. Here in California, they run against each other for governor.

Sheesh.

GAY MARRIAGE....Eve Tushnet writes to draw my attention to MarriageDebate.com Blog, which, while it has the disadvantage of sounding like a failed dotcom, has the non-dotcommish virtue of being clear in its mission: to debate marriage. In particular, gay marriage.

The site is run by Maggie Gallagher, and although Maggie herself opposes gay marriage Eve suggests that the site is "about 50/50 pro-con" and "passionate but respectful." I'm not sure I can agree with the 50-50 description, since with the exception of one valiant trooper named Dale Carpenter the posts seem to be pretty heavily opposed to gay marriage, but the tone is indeed sober and nonconfrontational. Check it out for yourself if the topic interests you or if you want to contribute.

As for me, I don't blog on this kind of thing much because it's hard to think of anything to say that's not just a gussied up emotional reaction. Basically, I favor gay marriage because it just doesn't bother me and I can't think of any good reason to deny it to anyone. There's no telling why, really, and I'd have a hard time trying to invent an intellectual superstructure to justify my instinct.

Conversely, even among social conservatives it's considered gauche these days to say flat out that homosexuals are yucky, but to my ears the arguments against gay marriage mostly sound like attempts to search out plausible intellectual arguments that, at their core, say exactly that. Gay marriage is bad because (a) it will lead to polygamy, (b) gays make lousy parents, (c) it will make marriage less attractive to virile straight guys, (d) it violates a biological imperative, etc. etc. These mostly seem rather desperately plucked out of the air, rather than the result of any serious analysis.

In a nutshell, social conservatives argue that gay marriage will rend the fabric of society in various ways, but it strikes me that this is one of a handful of issues in which, ironically, the actual damage is not caused by some objective harm to society but by the very fact that conservatives themselves insist on fighting the change tooth and nail. Just as the civil rights movement of the 60s turned sour largely because southern conservatives fought so bitterly against it, the same thing is happening here.

On the other hand, if they could just relax and realize that gay marriage or no, the kids will be fine, the institution of marriage will be fine (despite the, um, rather substantial damage it's taken from heterosexuals for the past few decades), and bridal magazines will continue to publish thousand-page spring issues, then, in fact, everything would probably turn out fine.

Not that I think there's any chance of that happening, mind you....

CALIFORNIA DREAMING....Justene Adamec emailed last night to draw my attention to Tom McClintock, a Republican candidate for governor in the recall election. Justene warns that he "swings right" on social issues, but for now I'm willing to ignore that and just examine what he has to say about the budget. After all, that's issue #1.

Justene says she likes his specifics, and here they are:

The moment I have taken the oath of office, I'll sign the order to rescind the illegal tripling of California's Car Tax. If this governor can claim that he has the authority to raise the car tax by fiat, then by God I'll claim the same authority to lower it right back down by fiat.

I'll then sign a stipulation to the Superior Court in Pasadena in the case I filed last year to void the $42 billion of outrageously priced electricity contracts that Davis approved. Those contracts were negotiated under a clear legal conflict of interest by Davis' chief negotiator. This governor won't stipulate to these simple facts because it would require him to admit wrongdoing. I'll certainly admit Davis has done some things wrong!

Then I will sign a third document, calling a special session of the legislature to deal with our Workers Compensation insurance crisis. They will have 30 days to enact Arizona's Workers Compensation law—slashing workers comp costs by 2/3. And if they fail in 30 days, I'll take it to the ballot and let them explain to the people why they refused to act while our job market was collapsing.

Mark me down as unimpressed. Item #1 will actually widen the budget deficit. Item #2 depends on the judge ruling in our favor, which isn't likely even if McClintock does take the bold step of criticizing his predecessor, and will be tied up in appeals for years in any case. So it does nothing. And item #3, while it addresses an important issue, has very little to do with the budget.

Then, in another speech, he sets out in more general terms his can-do credentials for fixing the budget:

I set only two requirements for my vote on this budget: it must be balanced and it must not require tax increases.

Earth to McClintock: that's been the Republican position since last June and it hasn't worked. McClintock is surely right that the budget process is seriously broken and we need to start fixing it now, not continue putting it off forever. But I would take his toughminded stance a lot more seriously if it was accompanied by a proposed budget that included no tax increases, no borrowing, and $38 billion in spending cuts. If you're a straight talking guy and that's your position, after all, then let's see your straight talking budget. As far as I'm concerned, if you talk big but don't have the courage to show us your plan, warts and all, and then base your campaign on it, you're just another Sacramento shill.

UPDATE: On the other hand, let's give equal time to Democratic shilling. This column by Daniel Weintraub suggests that despite appearances the current budget plan actually includes virtually no spending cuts at all. For example, due to arcane allocation rules, the vehicle fee increase has been counted as a spending cut. (No, I refuse to try and explain. Read Weintraub if you want to know more.)

I just hate California politics. I always have. National politics is bad enough, but Sacramento is just a cesspool, and it seems virtually impossible to ever get a straight answer about anything. I can't figure out what's really going on with the budget, but for the record here's my best guess: (1) spending really did skyrocket starting around 1998-99, (2) the dotcom bust hurt us worse than most states for obvious reasons, and (3) we lost a fair chunk of change due to gaming of the energy system. But I might change my mind tomorrow if I learn something new.

NATIONAL SECURITY?....OR WHITE HOUSE CONVENIENCE?....Gee, it looks like everyone wants the classified portion of the 9/11 report to be declassified:

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister will meet today with President Bush to mend relations strained over the war on terrorism and to ask Bush to declassify portions of a congressional report that many believe implicate Saudi officials in the Sept. 11 attacks, diplomatic sources said Monday.

Prince Saud al Faisal traveled from Riyadh specifically to hand-deliver a written request that Bush declassify portions of the report pertaining to Saudi Arabia so Saudi officials can respond to them, according to sources familiar with the visit.

The Saudis want it declassified, Congress wants it declassified, and congressmen who have seen the classified section don't seem to think there are any legitimate national security reasons not to release it.

That leaves the White House all alone. What are they afraid of?

PATRIOT UPDATE....Here's some good news. It looks like PATRIOT II is dead:

The sequel — dubbed Patriot Act II by critics but never officially proposed by the department — would have made it easier to hold suspects and deny them bail and included provisions that would set up a DNA database for people associated with terrorist groups and lift court orders barring police from spying on dissidents, among other features.

But the recent release of a joint congressional report investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — and the nearly 900-page document's portrayal of the intelligence community as stunningly inept in tracking down clues before the attacks — has given some members of Congress pause about giving the same agencies much new clout.

The Justice Department already seems to be adjusting its sights. One person familiar with the department's agenda said the original Patriot II proposal is now "dead."

In addition, an amendment that would eliminate the "sneak and peek" searches authorized in the original PATRIOT Act seems to be gaining ground. As one unnamed Democrat put it, "I had no idea that we had so many Republican friends on this issue. It shows a lot of discontent on their side."

Good for them.

INTELLIGENCE GATHERING IN IRAQ....OK, I just put two and two together. As usual, it was only after about the third time that I saw this article blogged that something finally clicked. Thanks, Mark.

Here's what clicked. A few days ago I linked to a Dan Drezner post in which he suggested that the attack on Uday and Qusay Hussein was good news because it was evidence of a "shift in intelligence-gathering" that would serve us well in the future. His optimism was prompted by this Washington Post story:

After weeks of difficult searching for the top targets on the U.S. government's list of most-wanted Iraqi fugitives, U.S. military commanders two weeks ago switched the emphasis of their operations, focusing on capturing and gathering intelligence from low-level members of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who had been attacking American forces, according to military officials.

...."You get a tip, you pull a couple of guys in, they start to talk," a Central Command official said. Then, based on that information, he continued, "you do a raid, you confiscate some documents, you start building the tree" of contacts and "you start doing signals intercepts. And then you're into the network."

And here's today's story:

In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.

These stories were both written by Thomas Ricks.

This is, to say the least, disappointing. At first we're led to believe that we're gaining ground in Iraq due to a simple shift in tactics, but a few days later we learn that what this really means is that we're kidnapping families and holding them hostage in order to increase the "quality and quantity of intelligence." This may seem like a good idea in the world of 24, but in the real world it's a war crime. It should end right now, and I hope everyone who linked to the first article links to the second as well and denounces these tactics as unworthy of us. The world should know that we're better than this.

FIGHTING TERRORISM....Over on Winds of Change recently I left this comment in response to Michael Totten:

Serious people understand how complex this problem [i.e., terrorism] is and how many different things need to come together for us to win. The unserious ones are the people who think that a bigger military is going to do the job.

Sending the marines in is easy and feels good. But if you're really serious about winning the war, you need to go far, far beyond that.

Michael replied, "Yes I very much agree that we need to go far beyond using only the military."

But today, via Matt Yglesias, I see that Michael has a TechCentralStation column in which he explains his skepticism about the Middle East "road map" and suggests a different approach:

The first phase should be simple. Terrorism must be punished. And anti-terrorism must be encouraged. The Palestinian Authority should be given one last chance to eliminate terror. And if the PA refuses, the U.S. must do the following:

• Classify the Palestinian Authority as a terrorist organization.
  

• Declare "regime change" in the West Bank and Gaza the official United States policy.
  

• Support to the hilt every anti-terror operation by Israelis short of war crimes.
  

The first phase would not be complete until the enemies of peace are defeated, deported, imprisoned, or killed. These include Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Yasser Arafat's Fatah, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It may also include the Palestinian Authority.

Since all it would take for the PA to fail its "one last chance" is a single extremist lunatic, I think we can take it for granted that Michael's alternate plan would quickly come into effect — and he knows it. And while Michael does say that there would be subsequent phases in which we would dictate the terms of a Palestinian democracy, that only comes later. In the here-and-now, there's little question that his plan relies entirely on a massive application of military force, and the followup depends on a continuing military presence as well.

So back we come. It's one thing to simply disagree: perhaps hawks like Michael think fighting terrorism is primarily a military operation and perhaps I don't. But why say that you agree that we should "go far beyond using only the military" and then write a lengthy piece in which you advocate a solution that includes nothing else?

I keep running into this problem when I engage with hawks. I'm moderately hawkish myself, but that doesn't make me blind to the reality that massive military force is neither practical nor sufficient to solve the problem of terrorism — unless you're advocating a war of total annihilation. Most hawks say they aren't, and claim that of course they understand that there are important non-military aspects to this fight and that I shouldn't make a straw man of their arguments. But when they put words to paper, all I ever hear about are plans for massive military reprisals if terrorism doesn't stop right now.

If Michael thinks the solution to Palestinian terrorism is a replay of World War II — all-out war followed by a lengthy occupation in which we impose a system of government and dictate national boundaries — fine. But let's not pretend that's anything but a purely military solution, OK?

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS....Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has broken his promise to abide by the tradition that it takes a two-thirds majority to debate a bill in the Texas Senate. What a surprise. I always thought conservatives were supposed to cherish traditions, like the one that says redistricting is done once per decade, for example, but they seem rather unfond of tradition these days.

Anyway, leaving the state to prevent a quorum is a Texas tradition, and since Governor Rick Perry has called yet another special redistricting session and Dewhurst has thrown in his lot with the Tom DeLay brigade, the Democrats have all decamped to Albuquerque.

It's not just California that's having all the fun these days.

RECALL ROUNDUP....For California readers, here's the latest on the recall:

• Justene Adamec links to California Insider, who reports that Arnold is definitely not running.

• A New York Times op-ed (and why do I have to read the New York Times to find this out?) points out something interesting. There are two questions on the recall ballot:

  First, do you want to recall Governor Davis? Second, assuming a majority of voters support the recall, whom do you want elected in his place?

  By law, only voters who answer the first question can have their vote for a candidate in the recall election counted. Those who would prefer not to vote on the merits of the recall face a dilemma: they must either vote on the first question against their will, or forgo their chance to vote for a candidate.

  The authors suggest that this is unconstitutional, something that I'll have to defer to Eugene Volokh about, I suppose, but it does seem odd, doesn't it? In any case, it's good to know.

• On a lighter note, New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff went the extra mile and tried to contact Californians who happened to be named Gray Davis and Bill Simon to find out if they were planning to run:

  Consider this possibility: If voters choose to remove Mr. Davis, the second question on the ballot asks for his replacement. Governor Davis may not appear on that part of the ballot, by virtue of the state Constitution.

  But this does not prevent Gray Davis — not the governor, but a private citizen from Contra Costa County — from doing so. He could, by advantage of his shared name with the Democratic incumbent and the mass confusion his candidacy would cause, find himself the governor-elect on Oct. 8. Mr. Davis, the citizen, was away on business and could not be reached for comment on any political aspirations.

  Bill Simon, the corporate recruiter from central Los Angeles and a Democrat, could pull votes away from Mr. Simon, the Republican millionaire from west Los Angeles who was the loser in the last race for governor, through simple slight of name. Not that he would. He does not support the recall effort.

  "I may or may not be a huge fan of Gray Davis, but that's not the point," says Mr. Simon, a Democrat who worked as deputy staff secretary to President Jimmy Carter. "Six months from now, does someone go out and spend another million to throw this election out? That's not how the Republic was built."

  Now that's good journalism.

Next up: with Arnold out, will Richard Riordan run?

Or how about me? All I need is either (a) 100 people to chip in $35 apiece or (b) 100 people to collect 150 signatures apiece. But before anybody gets started on this, my first order of business to to change my name to Arnold Schwarzenegger....

DO NOT PASS GO....TalkLeft reports today that a full 1% of American adults are in prison. What's more, 10% of the country's black male population between the ages of 25 to 29 is in prison.

Lovely.

NO, REALLY, I THINK DACHSHUNDS ARE REALLY CUTE....Asta, a half-dachshund who is the official mascot of AtlanticBlog, has declared war on me over this post. But it's just a misunderstanding. I didn't mean that dachshunds were dispensable, just that baby dachshunds are really small. I mean, if that fish had swallowed a German Shepherd, then I would have been impressed.

The killer fish in question was German, by the way, and anywhere else in the world perhaps a vicious giant catfish would have been hunted down and destroyed. However, as AtlanticBlog points out in another post, the Germans are really, really serious about protecting their, um, wildlife.

Marian would definitely not be pleased if this particular regulation ever made its way to Irvine.

GEORGE BUSH VS. THE WORLD, PART 2....By coincidence, South Knox Bubba points today to a Joe Klein column in Time on the same meme I mentioned last night: George Bush's lack of interest in actual facts. As Klein says, it's not that Bush lies, it's "weirder than that":

The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so — and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter. He misleads not only the nation but himself. Every worst-case Saddam scenario just had to be true, as did every best-case post-Saddam scenario.

Bush's talent for self-deception extends to domestic and economic policy. He probably believes that he's a compassionate conservative, even though he has allowed every antipoverty program he favors to be eviscerated by Congress. This week's outrage is the crippling of AmeriCorps, which he had pledged to increase in size. He probably believes that his tax cuts for the wealthy will help reduce the mammoth $455 billion budget deficit (which doesn't include the cost of Iraq), even though Ronald Reagan found that the exact opposite was true and had to raise taxes twice to repair the damage done by his 1981 cuts.

Yes, I realize this kind of analysis is completely subjective, but Bush's ability to unblinkingly endorse policies that simply won't do what he (says he) wants them to do is hard to explain any other way.

What originally brought this to mind was a conversation I had a few days ago about my old company. It turns out they're shuffling their board of directors around and decided to add a financial analyst to the board, apparently because they remain convinced that their low stock price is a purely financial phenomenon. If they can only get better analyst coverage or repackage their story a bit, the stock price will go up.

It's a remarkable bit of self-deception, since even a nodding familiarity with the company (and the world at large) would convince you that their stock price will go up only when the actual performance of the company improves. But they just refuse to accept that.

And this reminded me of George Bush. He is incurious about the real world and surrounds himself with people like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes who feed his preconceptions and decline to challenge him. He famously decides whether he likes people within minutes of meeting them, and convinces himself that anyone who disagrees with him is not worth listening to. And he is stubborn to the point of bullheadedness, refusing to ever admit that a plan isn't working or that a different approach might be necessary.

If it were only tax cuts at stake here, I wouldn't be that worried. Tax cuts can always be repealed if things get out of hand. But it's more serious than that, and conducting the war on terror as if facts on the ground don't matter is not something that can simply be repealed in a few years by a more openminded administration. By then it might be too late and instead of a few thousand Americans dead, it might be a few hundred thousand or a few million.

We've been lucky in the past. FDR was able to moderate Churchill's stubborness and insist on opening a second front. JFK kept his advisors calm during the Cuban Missile crisis. In this administration Colin Powell appears to be the voice of reason, and I hope he's enough. The stakes are simply too high to keep ignoring the real world. Way too high.

UPDATE: A corollary to this is the Bush administration's well known dislike for scientific information that conflicts with its policy desires. Tapped has a good post about this today.

DARPA MEETS NOSTRADAMUS....What's the best way to predict the likelihood of a terrorist event? Amy Sullivan reports that the Pentagon thinks the market can tell us:

DARPA has launched a pilot program that creates a financial market based on various possible terrorist events -- including the overthrow of the King of Jordan, the assassination of Yasser Arafat, a biological weapons disaster -- in an attempt to predict their occurrence. The initial funding for financial Web site, which will begin accepting bidders on August 1, was a mere $750,000, but DoD is currently asking for an additional $8 million to expand the program.

Jeez, talk about faith in the power of the free market. In the same vein, maybe instead of employing civil engineers to design our bridges, we should just let the public pick a design via auction. That's assuming, of course, that you don't mind your bridges being suspended by an invisible hand.

As Amy points out, DARPA is famed for funding rather, um, experimental projects. But even so, aside from the fact that markets are generally thought to be best suited to allocating resources, not predicting the date of World War IV, surely they realize the diplomatic implications of this? "Wonder how the King of Jordan is going to feel when he finds out his American buddies are letting people buy shares in the possibility that he will be overthrown?" Amy asks.

Well, we could ask him. Then again, maybe we could just run a market to predict his answer.

Amy promises more on this later. I can't wait.

UPDATE: Via email, Ogged of Unfogged points to this New Yorker article about "decision markets" that suggests the DARPA scheme isn't that farfetched.

That's true, and even though I already knew that I guess the chance to make fun of DARPA was too good to pass up. However, the article actually raises an interesting question: what if the DARPA plan works? What if it actually provides better predictions than expert analysis?

The New Yorker points to several markets that apparently do work better than the experts, but I note that in all these cases the experts continue to make their own predictions regardless. Why? Maybe the lesson of all this is that we need to have fewer experts....

UPDATE 2: More on this from AP.

JUSTICE IN INDIANA....Darnell Williams is on death row in Indiana, and his attorneys want to perform a DNA test to try and establish his innocence. Last week the Indiana Supreme Court said no:

The justices ruled that, in the context of his trial as a whole, the blood evidence Williams seeks to retest was not that important. Not so important, in any event, that his execution should be delayed.

Oops, did I say his attorneys? I meant the prosecuting attorney:

I strongly disagree. As the lawyer who prosecuted him, I saw and heard every bit of the trial, and I knew then — and still think now — that the blood evidence in question played a big role in his death sentence. For that reason, I joined his attorneys in asking for the DNA retest.

The resistance of the legal community to making DNA testing routine is simply astonishing. This man is on death row, both the defense attorneys and the prosecuting attorney agree that a DNA test ought to be performed on a piece of critical evidence, but the court won't let them. It would probably take all of a week or two and cost a few thousand dollars.

Nor is there a chance that allowing this will open the floodgates for every prisoner in the state to demand DNA testing. After all, everyone knows that the tests are reliable and highly accurate, so there's not much point in demanding a test if you know that you really are guilty.

DNA testing is routine in active cases, and there's no reason not to use improved modern techniques in older cases as well, especially capital ones. After all, what are they afraid of? That they might find out he didn't commit the crime after all?

UPDATE: Unlearned Hand adds something I didn't know: if you are exonerated of a crime, your felony conviction still isn't expunged. So even if you've been found actually innocent, you still have a criminal record.

That's unbelievable. If a court finds you not guilty, regardless of whether it's now or 20 years from now, you shouldn't have a felony conviction on your record. How on earth does a rule like that stay around?

GEORGE BUSH VS. THE WORLD....Brad DeLong links to an AP story suggesting that if you challenge George Bush's worldview with accurate information, you're sent packing:

Lindsey, while chairman of Bush's National Economic Council, suggested in September that the cost of war with Iraq could range from $100 billion to $200 billion....Zinni, a retired Marine general who was Bush's Middle East mediator, angered the White House when he told a foreign policy forum in October that Bush had far more pressing foreign policy priorities than Iraq and suggested there could be a prolonged, difficult aftermath to a war. He was not reappointed as Mideast envoy. Shinseki, then-Army chief of staff, told a Senate committee in February that a military occupying force for postwar Iraq could amount to several hundred thousand troops.

As the article notes, "These men are no longer in the picture."

Now, everyone has an ideology, and everyone has preconceived notions of what works and what doesn't. That's just part of being human.

But a hallmark of good managers is that they are willing to look at real-world data honestly and eventually adjust their thinking if the data requires it, even if it's painful or embarrassing to do so — which it usually is. In my business, that means cancelling a product that was your idea in the first place, or admitting that sales was right about that trade show you made them go to. If you're the president of the United States, it might mean reconsidering the notion that bankrupting the country is a good idea.

Bad managers are either unwilling or afraid to do this. They either insulate themselves, or ignore the data when it's given to them, or deliberately choose to interpret the data in perverse ways. This is how George Bush strikes me. He simply doesn't care about whether things really work or not, or what the true effect of his plans is going to be, or what the data says. He just charges ahead because he's absolutely sure that his instincts are all he needs.

The real world eventually has its way, of course. The only question is how long it takes, and how much damage gets done in the meantime.

SHORTER KIERAN HEALY....James Joyner summarizes Kieran Healy's review of The Elements of Mentality thusly:

The book purports to Explain Everything but, according to Kieran, fails.

Another dream shattered.

MAKING RACE GO AWAY....Jeanne d'Arc brings to my attention something about the Gray Davis recall that I heard in passing yesterday but didn't quite absorb:

The recall won't be the only thing on the ballot. Ward Connerly's suspiciously financed anti-affirmative action "racial privacy initiative" qualified last year to go on the ballot in the March 2004 primary. The initiative would stop state and local agencies from collecting racial statistics, except for medical research.

However, since we now have an election scheduled for October, the Connerly initiative has been moved up.

As Jeanne points out, although the initiative sounds superficially appealing, its actual result is to make racism disappear as if by magic — regardless of whether it's really gone or not. Racial profiling? Gone! Pay discrimination? Never happened! Driving while black? Prove it! Like Winston Smith attempting to change reality simply by altering records, Connerly apparently thinks that race problems can be made to go away simply by forbidding the government to talk about them.

Jeanne also wonders about the effect of this initiative on the recall itself: "Will the threat to affirmative action bring out progressives who won't rush to the polls only to support Davis?" That's one possibility, but another is that it might bring out the angry white males who hate Davis in even larger numbers.

In any case, it certainly changes the political calculus of the election.

POSTSCRIPT: There are some things the initiative won't do. The LAPD, for example, tracks race every time it stops someone as part of a federal consent decree designed to reduce its history of racial profiling. Since that's a federal agreement, it would not be affected by the initiative.

SAUDI BASHING....Matt Yglesias thinks Glenn Reynolds is right to "consistently point out that the Democratic Party could get a lot of mileage from criticizing the Bush administration's coddling of Saudi Arabia." Bob Graham has been pushing this line pretty hard, and the idea that we should get tough on Saudi Arabia seems to have considerable support on both the left and the right on the blogosphere. This is an issue I need to learn more about.

The problem is, I can't help but think that as emotionally attractive as this idea may be, it's fundamentally barroom talk. It's like that hardy election year perennial, promising to "get tough" with China, which magically disappears whenever a challenger takes office and starts seriously looking at the upsides (minimal) and downsides (substantial) of actually doing anything to make good on his promise.

Now, there's no question that we would all like Saudi Arabia to stop subsidizing Wahabbist extremism and do more to clamp down on terrorist activity within its borders. On the other hand, "getting tough" with Saudi Arabia might have just the opposite effect:

• Whatever their faults, the House of Saud is basically friendly toward the United States. Destabilizing them has a very high probability of bringing to power someone even worse from a U.S. perspective. Much worse, in fact.

• We could send in troops, of course, but surely no one is seriously considering that? Aside from the fact that we're stretched thin already, it's hard to imagine anything we could do that would stir up more hatred toward us in the Arab world. An American presence in Mecca and Medina would set the entire region in flames.

• Economic sanctions are a possibility, but the Saudis, needless to say, can fight back. They depend on oil money, to be sure, but even so they can probably withstand a decrease in oil revenue far better than the industrialized world can withstand oil at $100 a barrel. The Saudis are instinctively committed to stability, but piss them off enough and the