CHALABI GETS THE BOOT....Yesterday I briefly mentioned that there had been yet another raid on one of Ahmed Chalabi's offices in Baghdad. Today, the reader who emailed me about this in the first place points out that the AP story I linked to has been updated with an explanation:

Police arrived at the Ramadi offices of his Iraqi National Congress movement and ordered everyone to leave the building, according to INC official Haider al-Musawi. He said the evacuation order came from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

....Police Capt. Ahmed Saleh Mohammed said the order to vacate the building was issued by the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, which said the offices belonged to the provincial water and sewerage department.

This actually makes sense. I gather that Chalabi and the INC routinely sieze control of property that isn't theirs — Chief Wiggles provides an eyewitness account here of their appropriation of a boat club — and it looks like Chalabi's fall from grace may have prompted the Interior Ministry to work up the courage to boot him out of one of them.

This is, undoubtedly, merely the surface manifestation of massive political maneuverings between various parties in Iraq. Stay tuned.

BLOGS AND JOURNALISM....Magazine articles about blogs are hot these days. Rachel Smolkin of the American Journalism Review weighs in with the latest addition to the genre today, naturally focusing on the intersection of blogs with mainstream journalism.

So do reporters read blogs? Here's a typical sampling:

"I must confess I don't track a whole lot of them," says Washington Post national political reporter Jim VandeHei....Ron Brownstein, a Los Angeles Times national political correspondent and CNN political analyst, reads campaign blogs, but that's about it....New York Times national political reporter Adam Nagourney...does keep on eye on The New Republic's campaign blog and sometimes looks at Talking Points Memo or InstaPundit, but not regularly.

This claim — I don't read very many blogs, really I don't — is apparently common, even among many bloggers. A reporter working on a blog article talked to me last week and asked how many blogs I read. I told him there were 30-40 that I read daily and probably another 30-40 that I read less frequently. He was surprised: the other bloggers he had talked to had all virtuously claimed to read only two or three blogs a day.

My blog reading habits may be extreme, but I have a funny feeling that mainstream reporters (and apparently some bloggers too) tell little white lies when asked how many blogs they read. After all, it only takes a couple of minutes to read the latest posts on a blog, less if you're skimming via an RSS feed. My guess is that many national political reporters read more blogs than they're fessing up to — not one of them admits to reading Atrios, for example — but are embarrassed to admit it, sort of like a serious novelist not wanting to confess that he likes reality TV shows.

So add this to the great lies of our time: how many blogs do you read? Only two or three? Sure, sure.....

UPDATE: Dan Drezner has some survey data related to this. It's obviously not definitive since it's a self-selecting poll, but it does seem to indicate that media professionals may be reading more blogs than they admit to in public.

THE MILLER CHRONICLES....Since Judith Miller and her prewar WMD "reporting" are Topic A at the moment, I suppose I'm obligated to link to Franklin Foer's long article about Miller in New York magazine. So consider it linked.

The reason I didn't link to it earlier is that I found it profoundly unsatisfying. It is, basically, a long gossip piece in which we learn that Miller is a fanatically hardworking reporter who lets nothing get in the way of a story, and that she's also a superstar bitch who is roundly detested by practically everyone she's ever worked with.

Which is all fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't really shed any light on how she got the WMD story so wrong. The Cliff Notes version is that she was too close to her neocon sources, especially Ahmed Chalabi, and regurgitated their agitprop too uncritically. But we already knew that, and the New York article doesn't go very much further in explaining how it all happened. (Although there is a bit of interesting reporting about NYT editor Howell Raines' role: he was soft on Miller because he was determined to run pro-Bush stories as a way of proving to his detractors "that he could cover a story straight.")

If you want to learn more about Miller's various temper tantrums — and who doesn't? — click the link and read. But if you want to learn what really went wrong with the Times' reporting, I think the story is still waiting to be told.

POSTSCRIPT: If you aren't already up to speed on l'affaire Miller, John Emerson has a complete set of links to other stories about Miller and the Times' prewar reporting over at Seeing the Forest.

"SCARE" QUOTES....This being Memorial Day weekend, not many people are posting over at The Corner. Andrew Stuttaford is, however, and after seeing so many Stuttaford posts in a row I have a question: what's with all the scare quotes? Some examples:

• 11:43 AM: ....good piece in the Guardian on the security failures in ‘Saudi’ Arabia....public debate over the future of ‘Prince’ Nayef....

• 4:22 PM: The war against the ‘obesity’ epidemic continues in all its absurdity....

• 4:21 PM: Interesting story in the Sunday Telegraph on the curriculum of the Saudi-funded ‘King’ Fahd....

• 12:36 PM: One of the reasons that the EU has so little credibility with its ‘citizens’....Romano Prodi, the EU’s shrill, sleazy and incompetent ‘president’....
  

I get the point of ‘citizens’ in the last example, but why ‘president’? Like him or not, Prodi really is the EU president, right? Ditto for ‘King’ Fahd and ‘Prince’ Nayef. And is ‘Saudi’ Arabia some kind of conservative in joke? That's really the name of the country, after all.

And I could understand obesity ‘epidemic’ as a way of snarkily indicating that it's not a real epidemic, but why ‘obesity’ epidemic? Agree or not, they really are talking about the problem of too many people being fat.

I'm not really kvetching about Stuttaford's use of scare quotes — it's a perfectly standard device in polemical writing — I'm just curious about their rather idiosyncratic use in these cases. Is there some kind of code involved? If there is, I want to know what it is.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE....The candidates engage in civil discourse about the issues important to all Americans:

• John Kerry on taxes: "We will fight to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so that we can invest in education and health care."

• Dick Cheney on John Kerry: "Senator Kerry has promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."
  

Hmmm, so "the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans" = "most of the Bush tax cuts." I'm glad to see that Cheney is finally fessing up.

Elsewhere, the redoubtable Dana Milbank has some statistics about campaign advertising:

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

So Bush is three times more negative than Kerry. Just the kind of leader America needs.

CLIMATE CHANGE....From the annals of political movie criticism:

• Instapundit, on the prospects for The Day After Tomorrow: "Once again, the Gore endorsement looks like the kiss of death."

• Weekend box office report from CNN: "Additionally, it opened in 102 other countries, taking in $82.1 million, driving the worldwide total to $152.1 million. [Twentieth Century Fox distribution president Bruce] Snyder said it was the best worldwide opening for a non-sequel, smashing the old mark of $107 million...."
  

If that's the kiss of death, sign me up! I'll be bigger than Drudge!

SUVs AND TRUCKS....By now it's a cliche to note that very few owners of four-wheel-drive SUVs ever take them off road. However, the other day I read that nine out of ten pickup truck owners never put anything in the bed of their truck.

I don't remember where I saw this, but can it really be true? It's pretty easy to see the attraction of an SUV even if you're just driving around town, but what's the attraction of a cramped, crowded pickup truck if you never put anything in the back?

Has anyone else ever heard this statistic? Any ideas if it's really true?

PREEMPTION....A couple of months ago a conservative acquaintance suggested to me that the best thing that ever happened to America was Watergate. After all, he said, Watergate led to the election of Jimmy Carter, and it was only Carter's uniquely horrible presidency that allowed Ronald Reagan to be elected in 1980. Without Watergate and Carter, there would have been no Reagan.

Likewise, I wonder if George Bush will end up being the best thing ever to happen to American liberalism. Bushian excess has energized liberals, of course, but more important may be that in the same way that liberals dejectedly gave up on Carter toward the end of his presidency, conservatives seem to be losing heart over Bush in his final year too. Increasingly, even the most hawkish conservatives are unwilling to drain their credibility further by dredging up pretzel twisting defenses for Bush's obvious incompetence and cluelessness.

We've already heard moaning and groaning from such conservative stalwarts as George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Robert Kagan, and many others (helpfully collected here by Matt Yglesias — just search for "Disgruntlement Watch"), and the latest example comes from Gary Schmitt, executive director of PNAC, ground zero for hawkish neoconism. What makes his piece remarkable is that it's billed as a defense of George Bush's policy of preemption but still says the following:

For the foreseeable future, the Iraq war and its aftermath cannot help but put a hitch in the step of any president contemplating similar action....When the director of the Central Intelligence Agency next tells a president that the case regarding a country's suspected weapons programs is a "slam-dunk," one can assume that that assessment will be greeted with far more skepticism....The reality is that continuing troubles in Iraq will have an effect on presidential decision-making for years, especially when it comes to preemption and wars of prevention.

This is followed by a halfhearted explanation that preemption was never really a linchpin of Bush's policies anyway and that plenty of other presidents have considered preemptive wars even if they didn't actually follow through. So, you know, it's not as big a deal as people think it is, and preemption is still part of the big picture.

It's a far cry from the hawkish exhuberance of only a couple of years ago, especially for the head of a group like PNAC, but it's either the best he could do or else the best he was willing to do. When even guys like Schmitt are too embarrassed to provide a full-throated defense of preemption, it gives you hope. Maybe in a few months we'll be back to having a sane foreign policy after all.

CHALABI WATCH....Another Chalabi raid? What's going on?

CHALABI WATCH....Ahmed Chalabi's supporters are pissed, and they're letting the Bush administration know it:

Last Saturday, several of these Chalabi supporters said, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to complain about the administration's abrupt change of heart about Mr. Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq. The group included Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory group, and R. James Woolsey, director of central intelligence under President Bill Clinton.

....Last Saturday, participants in the meeting with Ms. Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, said Ms. Rice told them she appreciated that they had made their views known. But she gave no hint of her own opinion, participants said, and made no concessions to their point of view.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, also attended the meeting.

Now that sounds like a charming scene, doesn't it? The story goes on to say that although Chalabi's supporters outside the administration have been vocal in supporting him, "there has been relative silence so far from Mr. Chalabi's supporters within the administration."

In other words, the people who actually know what's going on are keeping their mouths shut, and the people who don't are too dumb to follow their lead.

I guess there's no way of knowing for sure who's right here — although my money is very definitely on the folks keeping their mouths shut — but when this has all played itself out there's sure going to be someone whose credibility is forever flushed down the toilet.

POSTSCRIPT: It's worth noting, though, that the source of this story is the Chalabi supporters. But if Chalabi turns out to be guilty as charged, having this meeting publicized to the world in the New York Times will make them look like complete idiots. So apparently, after a week of snooping around and trying to figure out what's going on, they're sure enough of being right that they decided to leak word of this meeting anyway. Very odd.

COSTCO....I was over at CostCo yesterday and they were selling gasoline (regular unleaded) for $2.27 a gallon. Cars were lined up ten deep at each service bay, waiting about 20 minutes each to get to the pump.

On my way home I passed four gas stations. The posted price for regular unleaded at each one was $2.33, $2.34, $2.35, and $2.39. So that's an average of $2.35, or eight cents higher than CostCo.

The CostCo lines had the usual mix of big cars and little cars. Figure the average tank size was about 15 gallons. At eight cents a gallon, that's a savings of $1.20 compared to other gas stations.

That means these folks were all willing to idle away in line at CostCo for 20 minutes in order to save about a dollar. It's amazing, isn't it? It's almost like CostCo has them hypnotized or something.

BROADCAST NEWS....Via Mickey Kaus, ABC News has revamped and improved a web feature no one's ever heard of: a quick rundown of the three evening network news broadcasts. I wonder how long they've been doing this?

In any case, it's genuinely useful, especially for the pathologically webcentric blogosphere. Now if they could just add a bit more detail about, say, the top three stories of the day for each broadcast, and then put in some permalinks so that we can see more than just the previous day's summary, it would be really useful.

PICKING A WINNER....Tom Schaller says that a "bellwether state" is one that always votes for the winner in a presidential election. By this definition, Missouri, which has picked the winner in the past 11 straight elections, is the bellwether-iest state of them all.

Likewise, there have been six counties with a perfect record since 1960 — but only one of them is in Missouri. Therefore, Tom crowns Lincoln, MO, as the bellwether-iest county in the nation. "Somebody ought to commission a focus group in Lincoln to see how they feel about Bush and Kerry," he says.

Good idea. Are you listening, assignment desks?

OIL POLITICS....Here are two questions for everyone to ponder over the Memorial Day weekend:

1. Who do you think legally owns Iraq's oil presently, and who do you think gets the largest share of revenues from selling Iraqi crude oil to the world's refiners since the invasion?

2. Who do you think should legally own, control and benefit from the sale of the Iraqi crude oil after Iraq is stabilized and Iraqi debts are restructured?
   

Serious answers only, please.

IYAD ALLAWI....Seemingly out of nowhere, Iyad Allawi is the new interim prime minister of Iraq. Was he the UN's choice? The IGC's choice? America's choice? Sistani's choice?

There are as many answers as there are media reports about his selection. However, the dust is beginning to settle and the answer appears to be:

• He is the IGC's compromise choice.
  

• The United States and Britain are delighted with it.
  

• The UN's Lakhdar Brahimi isn't all the delighted, but willing to go along.
  

Spencer Ackerman seems to have a pretty good roundup of how the whole deal went down. Here's his not-very-enthusiastic conclusion:

CBS News cited an Iraqi analyst describing Allawi's bent for "military politics." He's not exactly known for his commitment to democracy. His cousin Ali is defense minister. Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman explained that Allawi's nomination "has a great deal to do with security." It may be that the U.S. has decided to bet on a compliant strongman. Right now, though, it's not clear how strong he really is. Then again, that's typically been the way Iyad Allawi has preferred it.

But we'll have real elections next January anyway. Right?

PROOF THAT ATKINS WORKS!....My mother has passed along the following joke and insists that I publish it. As a dutiful son, I have no choice but to comply.

TORT REFORM MEETS BUDGET REFORM....Governor Arnold has proposed a 75% tax on punitive damages in civil lawsuits in California. This probably isn't a bad idea, and it's been tried successfully in other states, but Arnold's proposal has a twist: he's touting it as a way to help us out of our budget mess. He thinks it might raise $450 million a year.

Now, a lot of this depends on details: does it apply to all suits, or only some? All damages or only "excessive" damages? Before the lawyers get their cut or after? Etc.

However, Dwight Meredith, an attorney in Georgia, reports that Georgia has had a similar law on its books for several years and has raised slightly less than you might expect. They've raised exactly nothing. And although Georgia's law is different and more restricted than Arnold's proposal, Dwight still has some pretty compelling arguments that the amount of money raised would be pretty paltry. Taxing punitive damages might be a good idea on other grounds, but as far as the deficit goes it's just smoke and mirrors.

POSTSCRIPT: And speaking of the Governator, the LA Times has an entertaining story today suggesting that the honeymoon is over. Arnold has kept his popularity high by being deliberately vague on a lot of contentious issues, but legislation season is upon us and pretty soon he's going to be forced to show his hand and either sign or veto a lot of very specific bills. Is he in favor of raising the minimum wage? Importing drugs from Canada? Forbidding candidates from, ahem, loaning themselves more than $100,000 in a statewide campaign? Banning sales of cruelly produced foie gras?

Decisions, decisions. On the other hand, Arnold has proven himself a very adroit politician, and it's possible that a few carefully selected vetoes could actually help his cause. He's a clever guy.

30-30-30 NATION....Can you guess what this map represents? Cick the graphic for the answer if you give up.

Hint: it's got nothing to do with politics.

(Via AtlanticBlog.)

THAT LIBERAL, LIBERAL MEDIA....After reading the latest Pew poll about the political views of journalists, Fred Barnes thinks the case for liberal media bias is open and shut:

Does this affect coverage? Is there really liberal bias? The answers are, of course, yes and yes. It couldn't be any other way. Think for a moment if the numbers were reversed and conservatives had outnumbered liberals in the media for the past four decades. Would President Bush be getting kinder coverage? For sure, and I'll bet any liberal would agree with that. Would President Reagan have been treated with less hostility if the national press was conservative-dominated? Yes, again. And I could go on.

He could go on? So why doesn't he? After all, he only has to go as far back as the immediately preceding presidency. I have this dim recollection of massively unfavorable coverage of Bill Clinton during the eight years of his presidency, and I'm pretty sure Clinton was a liberal. Perhaps there's more to this media bias thing than meets the eye, eh?

It's such a tiresome trope, and it misses the point of how the media works anyway. The press bashes whoever's in power, Democrat or Republican, and they cover drama, whether it's in Baghdad or Burbank. For better or worse, that's the main bias of the news industry, not ideology.

At any rate, I wonder what critics like Barnes think the media ought to do. Should news executives give tests or ask cub reporters who they voted for in the last election? And how does he feel about conservative domination of the officer corps in the military or the executive ranks of corporate America? Should we institute some litmus tests there too in order to give liberals a fairer shake?

Sheesh.

MORE CHALABI....More from Laura Rozen: was it Britain that uncovered the incriminating evidence about Chalabi?

Her sources say "maybe." It's interesting speculation, but I do think it's worth a warning or three. After all, if British and American intelligence screwed up so badly before the war, they might be screwing up over this as well. From what I've read I suspect there's something pretty solid here, but it's worth a few grains of salt. After all, if our evidence is so "rock solid," why don't we have him in custody already?

CHALABI WATCH....Laura Rozen:

The key divide between current and former Chalabi supporters I'm told remains between those who've seen what Chalabi is alleged to have done, and those who haven't.

There's more discussion of Michael Ledeen, one of those in the "haven't" category, here. Ledeen's piece in NRO today (here) is a real mishmash, plainly desperate to avoid the one thing that makes Chalabi different from other Iraqis who are also close to the Iranians: he is alleged to have passed highly damaging classified intel to them. That's a big difference.

Then again, as Laura points out, Ledeen still doesn't believe this — for reasons that continue not to make sense to me. (Although at least he calls them "tacit" this time around, which I take to mean he doesn't really know what he's talking about.) One of his friends really needs to clue him in quick before he embarrasses himself further.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW....Julian Sanchez has a review today of The Day After Tomorrow, "the movie George Bush doesn't want you to see." It's very short but seems to hit the high points pretty well.

Now, it so happens that I reviewed the film last November based solely on its title (no really, it's right here), so there's no need to do it again. However, on the issue of potential White House concern with what is, after all, just a summer disaster flick, I've been waiting for opening day to provide some fascinating (yes, fascinating!) historical context for this. It turns out that the Bush administration is hardly the first to concern itself with the political impact of Hollywood extravaganzas.

A few weeks ago, reader Steven McCollum sent me a copy of the minutes for an Eisenhower cabinet meeting held on December 11, 1959. Sandwiched in between discussions of policy toward India and an ongoing steel strike, there's this:

"On the Beach" — Mr. [Karl] Harr stated that this matter was being raised in Cabinet because of the unprecedented publicity given to this movie....He went over the paper summarizing the nature of the film and some of its shortcomings.

Gov. [Leo] Hoegh said that the film was regarded in OCDM [Office of Civil Defense Mobilization] as something very harmful because it produced a feeling of utter hopelessness, thus undermining OCDM's efforts to encourage preparedness on the part of all citizens.

There was also a 3-page "infoguide" to the movie, complete with talking points about scientific innacuracies in the film regarding the dangers of fallout (not as bad as you think!). There's also a 4-page Q&A from the Atomic Energy Commission and a 3-page discussion of the effect of nuclear war that ends with the cryptic phrase, "Simply to understand that 'unprecedented destruction' is not the same as 'unlimited destruction'...is crucial to intelligent discussion of the issues."

So there you have it: George Bush has his main global warming talking point already created for him, courtesy of Ike's spinmeisters half a century ago. All he has to explain is that while global warming might result in "unprecedented destruction," that's not the same thing as "unlimited destruction." Do you feel better now?

THE OSAMA FACTOR....I'm guessing pretty much everyone has seen this already, but here's a slightly longer excerpt from last night's repugnant CNN segment — which apparently has been replayed several times this morning as well. The vital question at hand is: which candidate is al-Qaeda endorsing in the November election?

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Miles, it's something that we've heard a lot about, a possible al Qaeda plot to influence elections. But there hasn't been a lot of discussion about what the objectives might be. So we checked in with some terror experts to find out.

....M.J. GOHEL, ASIA-PACIFIC FOUNDATION: If, for instance, say, George Bush was in the lead in the opinion polls right now and an attack took place and that changes the equation as it did, for instance in Spain, then al Qaeda would feel that it has scored a major success.

....ASHCROFT: We believe, for example, the attack in Spain [which led to the defeat of the incumbent party] is one that is viewed by al Qaeda as particularly effective in advancing al Qaeda objectives.

....BEN VENZKE, INTELCENTER: Al Qaeda feels that Bush is, even despite casualties, right or wrong for staying there is going to stay much longer than possibly what they might hope a Democratic administration would.

Hey, all three terror experts agree! Osama wants Kerry to win!

This goes beyond unbelievable. Are these guys on the White House payroll, or what?

Atrios has the right idea about this: express your opinion directly to Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, at Eason.Jordan@turner.com. Polite emails usually work better, but I'll understand just this once if you find that difficult.

ASHCROFT ON AL-QAEDA....Gallimaufry catches this contemptible quote from John Ashcroft yesterday when he announced the possibility of an al-Qaeda attack in the United States this summer:

The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.

The supposed "consequence" of the Madrid attack, of course, was a victory by the opposition party. So Ashcroft is rather unsubtly saying that al-Qaeda would consider a John Kerry victory to have "advanced their cause."

What a despicable worm. What a revolting, loathsome, toad.

LAKERS....This is your open thread to discuss tonight's Laker game. Go ahead and take your best shots.

BLACK GOLD....Here's the latest news on the crude oil front:

Non-OPEC Mexico this week proposed to pump an extra 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the second half of this year, raising output to a targeted 1.95 million bpd.

....Saudi Arabia said at the weekend it would lift production by 10 percent to 9.1 million bpd in June, and was ready to pump its maximum 10.5 million bpd if demand warranted.

....Most other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are already pumping at full throttle, while non-cartel producers typically do not restrain output, meaning little extra oil is available in the short-term.

....Non-OPEC Russia, the world's second largest exporter, has raised oil production sharply in recent years but is running into export constraints due to pipeline bottlenecks, the head of state pipeline company Transneft Semyon Vainshtok said recently.

Confused about what this means? Let me spell it out:

• Current demand for crude oil is about 80 million barrels per day.

• There is practically no spare producing capacity anywhere in the world except Saudi Arabia. They have spare capacity of about 1.5 million barrels per day.

• Demand for oil increases by about 2 million barrels each year.
  

When people talk about oil, the most common question is "How much do we have left?" The answer is "quite a bit," but unfortunately it's the wrong question. The right question is, "How much can we pump out of the ground per day?" And the answer is, "Not very much more than we're pumping now."

Twenty years ago the world had about 15 million barrels/day of spare pumping capacity. Ten years ago we had about 5 million barrels of spare capacity. Today we have close to none. There are ways of increasing this capacity, of course, but it takes time to build additional pumping, pipeline, and refinery capacity, and time is something we've run out of. What's more, although we can increase pumping capacity in the medium term, we will eventually run into an absolute limit on global pumping capacity, which is something on the order of 100 million barrels/day. We are probably within about ten years of reaching this absolute production peak.

In other words, even though there's a lot of oil in the ground, oil supplies are going to become permanently tight within the next couple of years and will become disastrously tight within the next decade or so. In the meantime, demand will continue to grow inexorably at about 2% per year, which means that over the next few years the price of oil is going to skyrocket and not everyone is going to get all the oil they want.

There's a lot more to the oil story than this, of course, but in its broadest outline this is what we're up against. I'll let you noodle on this for a few days and then I'll have more to say about it.

TORTURE....The Washington Post conducted a poll recently about torture and asked if it was acceptable in the case of "people who are suspected of involvement in recent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan." 64% of the respondents believed that torture was unacceptable in these cases vs. 34% who believed it was OK.

Sigh. I don't know whether to be relieved that two-thirds of the country accepts that torture is wrong or to be infuriated that a third of the country still doesn't. For that one-third, including the 17% who think that electric shocks are OK, the 19% who think threatening family members is OK, and the 29% who approve of punching and kicking suspects, I have two questions:

• Is this OK for other countries as well, or only for the United States?

• Would you have had any moral objections if the Iraqis or the Taliban had done these things to American soldiers during our wars against them?
  

That's the simple moral test. We accept that our enemies in war have the moral right to try to kill us because we're doing the same thing to them. Likewise, they also have the moral right to torture information out of our soldiers if we're doing the same to them.

You can't have it both ways.

NAJAF....Apparently we've decided to cut a deal with Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf. From the New York Times:

The agreement, hammered out between Mr. Sadr and Iraqi leaders and approved by the Americans, calls for the Mahdi Army, whose fighters have held the city since April 5, to put away their guns and go home, and for the American forces to pull most of their forces out of the city. Under the agreement, the Americans can maintain a handful of posts inside the city and may still run patrols through the city center.

....In a major concession to Mr. Sadr, the Americans and Iraqi officials promised to suspend the arrest warrant issued against him for his suspected involvement in the murder of a rival cleric in April 2003.

....The agreement fell into place after the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader, delivered a stern message to the Americans urging them to get behind the deal.

According to two Iraqi Shiite leaders, American officials signed onto the agreement with Mr. Sadr only after they received a forceful note from Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics, passed to them by Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie.

Hmmm, this sounds an awful lot like what happened in Fallujah, and apparently the Army thinks so too. From the Washington Post:

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, compared the development Thursday to the agreement earlier this month that brought relative quiet to the Sunni city of Fallujah, where U.S. Marines had engaged in ferocious combat with insurgents through March and April.

The Fallujah cease-fire "has held since May 3," Kimmitt said. "We're hoping to see the same thing in Najaf."

Since the only alternative — as at Fallujah — was full scale assault, this is probably the right decision. However, the fact that Sistani was apparently ready to side with Sadr if we didn't agree to his terms is not good news, nor is the fact that Sadr's militia is effectively left in charge of the city. Plus his militia is still in charge of the Sadr City section of Baghdad, I think.

All in all, it's pretty messy, and the best you can say for it is that the alternatives were probably all worse. Unfortunately, that seems to be about the best you can say for nearly everything in Iraq these days.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ....Dan Drezner — with attaboys from Matt Yglesias and Von — asks today, "Was the very idea of bringing democracy to Iraq ill-conceived, or did the problem lie in our implementation?" He thinks the idea itself is still sound and it was only our implementation that was faulty:

As I argued repeatedly last year, the social science evidence suggests that democracy was not an unreasonable goal in Iraq. A necessary condition underlying that argument was that there was sufficient security; as James Dobbins and his co-authors pointed out in their RAND study last year on democracy-building in postwar situations: "What principally distinguishes [successes from failures] are not their levels of Western culture, economic development, or cultural homogeneity. Rather, it is the level of effort the United States and the international community have put into their democratic transformations."

According to Dobbins's calculations for peacekeeping in multiethnic states, 450,000 troops were needed in Iraq--a number that was, and is, anathema to the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Our failure to deploy sufficient numbers of troops probably goes a long way towards explaining the current situation.

I am very sympathetic to this idea, but unfortunately my sympathies have run smack into reality over the past year, and I'm just not sure the facts back up Dan's optimism. There are two big problems with this view — one practical and one systemic — that I think Dan (and I) simply haven't taken seriously enough:

• The practical problem is that we don't have 450,000 troops. I don't mean this in the trivial sense that Donald Rumsfeld decided not to use that many troops, I mean that we don't have them. If we used every single active combat division of the Army and Marines — denuding our forces everywhere in the world to do it — and then filled up every possible National Guard and reserve division, we might scrape up a bit more than 500,000 troops. Furthermore, if the war had stronger support around the globe, we might reasonably manage to attract another 100,000 multinational troops. That's a total of 600,000 troops, and since we have to rotate them annually that means we could put a maximum of 300,000 troops in Iraq on a continuing basis.

  But that's it. Unless we're willing to make a World War II style commitment to doubling or tripling the size of the Army, we flatly can't provide 450,000 troops in Iraq (or anywhere else) over a period of several years. So even if our planning and implementation had been flawless, it still would have been a very dicey operation unless we were willing to treat it as a national emergency, reinstate the draft, and commit to building a 20 or 30-division Army.

• The systemic problem might be even worse. Even if we had a 30-division Army, western public opinion requires us to portray our invasion of Iraq as a "liberation," which in turn means that our occupation has to be undertaken with a light hand. As I wrote previously regarding the siege of Fallujah, "In a war of liberation, you are expected to liberate. You are emphatically not expected to raze entire cities at the cost of thousands of civilian lives." The problem is fundamental:

  In a war like the one we're in, the tactics of conquest are the only ones that will work, but conquest itself is both unacceptable to us and conterproductive to our long-term goal of engaging moderate Muslims — a goal accepted by both liberals and conservatives alike as key to long term victory.

  This is the paradox we are faced with in Iraq: as a Christian superpower occupying a Muslim country, there is inevitably going to be a substantial chunk of the population that views us as religious invaders and is willing to fight to the death to make us leave. Against such a force, the only tactics that will provide the level of security needed to make democracy possible are so brutal that they will turn the Iraqis against us and eventually force us out — thus bringing an end to our experiment in forced democratization.
  

The conditions surrounding postwar Germany and Japan — they were the losers of a long, all-out war; they had strong, advanced economies; and there was no serious postwar ethnic tension in either country — make them useless as analogies to Iraq. And Dan's other examples of "successful" democratization via military occupation, namely the tiny regions of Bosnia and Kosovo, are hanging on by a thread despite lots of troops, lots of international support, and proximity to liberal democratic Europe.

I've come to this conclusion reluctantly — too reluctantly, perhaps — but I suspect that "adequate security," which everyone agrees is essential to democratization, is simply not possible for us to attain in Iraq for both practical and systemic reasons. It might be possible if we were willing to conduct a mass mobilization of American troops, but that's not in the cards and everyone knows it.

So if security is impossible, and democratization via military occupation depends on security, it means —

Well, it means that democratization via military occupation is impossible in Iraq. I'd like to be talked out of this gloomy view, but it's going to take some mighty good arguments. Any takers?

WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL....The new World War II memorial in Washington has come in for a fair amount of criticism based on the idea that it's too neoclassical and too militaristic, a "banal, bombastic 'Soviet-style pomposity.'" In the Prospect today, historian Nicolaus Mills explains why this criticism is off base:

You were able to look through all of the designs that were submitted for this memorial. Do you think the right one was chosen?

It was the strongest and the most accessible of the submissions. It not only adapts a neoclassical style (and so is in symmetry with the two memorials that bracket it); it is also a memorial that the troops coming back in 1945 would have recognized as something that spoke in an architectural vocabulary that they knew all their lives.

That's exactly right. Maya Lin's famous Vietnam memorial is built in a style that appeals to its generation and the WWII memorial is built in a style that appeals to its generation — and that's exactly how it should be. Good for Mills for making this obvious, but often overlooked, point.

CASUALTIES....I am really tired of rockjawed war supporters telling us in sober tones that we need to get a little perspective on the level of casualties in Iraq. Heck, the number of combat deaths in Iraq is just a pinprick compared to earlier wars! Real men shouldn't let it get them down.

Max Boot is the latest to make this argument, and he even goes so far as to create a tidy little table for us outlining the casualty rate in various American wars: 22% in the Mexican War, 6.6% in WWII, and only 2% (so far — although he doesn't say that) in the Iraq War. What's to worry about?

But not only is this the most inane, technocratic, McNamara-esque argument possible, it also completely misses the point. As countless of his fellow conservatives have pointed out, Americans are willing to accept high casualties in wartime, but only if the goal is worth it and it looks like we're going to win. Increasingly, Americans are not sure we even have a goal in Iraq, or if we do that the current gang in the White House has the remotest clue how to get there. That's the problem, and Max's time would be better spent finding different ways of saying that on a weekly basis until his pals in the White House get the message.

In the meantime, STFU about how we're taking combat deaths too seriously. And another thing, Max: if you make one more analogy to Germany and Japan after WWII, your op-ed license goes into the shredder. As a historian, you should know better.

HOUSING BUBBLE....Yes, Virginia, there really is a housing bubble. Or at least, there used to be:

Sales of new homes tumbled 11.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.093 million units from an upwardly revised record high of 1.239 million in March, the Commerce Department said.

....April's rate was the lowest level of new home sales since November in what is normally the peak season for real estate sales. The decline — the largest monthly drop since January 1994 — could signal the end of a housing boom fueled by the lowest mortgage interest rates since the early 1960s.

Regular readers know that I've drifted back and forth on the question of whether there's been a housing bubble, though usually landing on the pro-bubble side. These numbers seem to indicate that there really has been a bubble for the past few years and that it's finally begun to burst. Hang on to your wallets.

LOSING THE BASE....Reagan Democrats. Soccer moms. NASCAR dads. You've heard of all of these legendary voting blocs.

But now there's a new one: Tom Clancy conservatives. Alan Wirzbicki says Bush is losing them.

HOW TO LIE WITH EXCERPTS™....I guess this isn't really worth my time or yours, but it will take me a only few minutes to write and you fewer to read — got that? — so here's the latest example from our friends at The Corner in How To Lie With Excerpts™:

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD [KJL]
From Cathy Seipp today on A&E's Ike, a reporter's exchange with director Lionel Chetwynd:

Question: "You did contribute to [Bush's] campaign?"

Chetwynd: "Yeah, the limit was $1,000... Would it make a better film if I'd given $1,000 to Gore?"

Question: "Yes."

Chetwynd: "Why?"

Question: "Because it would show less potential bias."

Goodness! Some Hollywood hack apparently thinks you can't make a good movie about Eisenhower if you've contributed to the Bush campaign. That's lefty nutballism for you!

Except for one little detail: in the original column Cathy specifically noted that this exchange had nothing to do with the movie Ike. It took place last year and referred to Chetwynd's widely ridiculed soap opera version of George Bush's handling of 9/11. You remember: it's the one with dialog like "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!"

Now, Cathy doesn't get entirely off the hook either. She correctly notes that this conversation concerned a movie about Bush, but still insists that this demonstrates some kind of nefarious lefty bias. But surely the reporter's point is that contributing money to anyone except Bush would demonstrate less "potential bias" when you're making a valentine of a movie about Bush.

Still, at least you can make up your own mind. The Corner's version, conversely, is just a lie.

AIR BIN LADEN....Remember those flights shortly after 9/11 that gathered up members of the bin Laden family and spirited them quickly out of the country? Who authorized those flights, anyway?

A few weeks ago, Richard Clarke testified to Congress about this:

The request came to me, and I refused to approve it. I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the — at the time — No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved...the flight.

Today, Alexander Bolton reports in The Hill that Clarke has, um, clarified his previous statement:

It didn't get any higher than me. On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn't get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI....I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again.

This still doesn't tell us whose idea it was in the first place, though. Clarke's original testimony says only that "the request came to me," and he later testified that things were chaotic during those first few days after the attack and he couldn't remember where the request came from.

Does this close the case on this question? Maybe. Clarke has now taken responsibility for approving the flight and says the whole thing is a "tempest in a teapot." But we still don't know who started the ball rolling on this.

CLANCY-PERLE CAGE MATCH....I'm disappointed to learn that famed military novelist Tom Clancy "almost came to blows" with neocon hawk Richard Perle over Clancy's lack of support for the Iraq war. I've always respected Clancy as a guy who sticks up for what he believes in, but that's inexcusable behavior and I think Clancy has some explaining to do.

Why "almost"?

DRUG COSTS....Now here's some shocking news: the cost of prescription drugs is really high. And getting higher:

The Public Policy Institute at AARP, the seniors' advocacy group, found that wholesale prices for drugs most often prescribed for Americans age 50 and over increased an average of 27.6 percent from 2000 through 2003. In the same period, inflation increased only 10.4 percent. The study included the top 197 drugs.

....A separate study by Families USA...found that the top-selling drug among seniors, Lipitor, which lowers cholesterol, increased in price by 27 percent from January 2001 to January 2004. The second most-prescribed drug for seniors, Plavix, which prevents blood clots, rose by 34.8 percent over the same period.

....[But] the reports should have looked at the entire health care spectrum rather than just drug prices, [drug industry flack Jeff] Trewhitt added. For the last three years, inflation in the health care industry has averaged about 4.6 percent a year, while the rate of prescription drug inflation has been about 4.4 percent. "So we're in line with overall medical inflation," Trewhitt said.

Idiot. Medical inflation is higher than overall inflation because of new technologies and different treatment patterns, not because of price increases for existing treatments. Why should the price of Lipitor, which was developed years ago, increase 27% in three years?

And here are a couple of other soothing thoughts. First, those drug discount cards rushed into production in time for the election are "mass confusion." So don't expect much help there. Second, the same Medicare bill that gave us the discount cards also specifically prevents Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Can't let the free market get out of hand, after all.

Nice, eh? And just think: it probably only cost the drug companies a few million dollars in bribes campaign contributions. Just another public service from your Republican Congress.

HOSTAGES....Newsday reports that "the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender."

BeatBushBlog, written by a Chicago lawyer, cites chapter and verse to show that this violates the Geneva Conventions.

It's time for the Bush administration to make up its mind: do the conventions apply to Iraq or not? We could stand to see a little leadership on this issue from the Oval Office.

LAKERS UPDATE....I promised an emailer this morning that I'd have a Lakers post tonight, win or lose. So this is it. If anyone foolishly wants to go on record as predicting that the Wolves are going to come back from their dismal first half performance, this is your chance.

Your last chance....

UPDATE: Justice is done. All is right with the universe.

UPDATE 2: Kind of a bummer ending on 24, though. Chase got his hand cut off, the president has pulled out of the race, and Tony's under arrest. But hey — at least Chloe the IT person survived the whole season! I think she's the first one to do so.

And one more thing: are they really pretending that surgeons are trying to reattach Chase's hand? I mean, it's not like it was cut off with a surgical saw, folks, it was hacked off with a fire axe. It's pulp. Sheesh.

PHASE 4....A few weeks ago I half-jokingly noted that mainstream conservative reaction to Abu Ghraib had shifted over time. Phase 1: horrible, just horrible. Phase 2: yes, it's bad, but keep in mind that it's not as bad as Saddam. Phase 3: give it a rest, OK?

And then I guessed that there might still be a phase 4 to come:

Maybe torturers as heroes, thanks to testimony from someone or other that one of the scraps of information they extracted saved a convoy somewhere? Hey, war is hell.

I am truly disgusted to report today that Phase 4 has now been reached. Here are the words of the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Trent Lott:

"Frankly, to save some American troops' lives or a unit that could be in danger, I think you should get really rough with them," Lott said. "Some of those people should probably not be in prisons in the first place."

When asked about the photo showing a prisoner being threatened with a dog, Lott was unmoved. "Nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him," Lott said. "(They just) scared him with the dog."

Lott was reminded that at least one prisoner had died at the hands of his captors after a beating. "This is not Sunday school," he said. "This is interrogation. This is rough stuff."

He's a real credit to his party, isn't he?

THE JUDY CHRONICLES....An apology from the New York Times for credulously hyping Iraq's WMD threat for 18 months before the war? Jack Shafer says we might see it as soon as Wednesday.

UPDATE: And here it is. They don't name names, though: "The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter," say the editors. Oh well.

WAL-MART....The National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced that the entire state of Vermont is in danger of invasion from Wal-Mart. Dan Drezner thinks they'll be singing a different tune in 2104:

The grand irony, of course, is that a century from now -- when Wal-Marts and other big box stores are threatened from whatever the new new thing in retail turns out to be -- I have no doubt that the National Trust will start landmarking the big box stores and decrying our lost retail heritage.

Now there's a comforting image: a century hence we'll all be misting up when the North American regional planning arm of the United Nations Global Protectorate gives the order to vaporize the world's last remaining Wal-Mart. Old timers, whiling away their golden years in their cyborg bodies in condominums on the moon, will bore their grandchildren with memories of how they spent their childhoods at the local Wal-Mart exchanging money for trinkets and candy bars. Their grandchildren will roll their "eyes" silently, not understanding the meaning of "childhood," "local," "Wal-Mart," "money," "trinket," or "candy bar."

Ah, memories....

POOR REPUBLICANS....Charles Kuffner reports that Republicans are having trouble setting up their own 527 groups to compete with the Democrats, and quotes this particularly laughable reason for their lack of success:

Republican fundraiser Matt Keelen suggests that most Republican donors are businessmen who are inherently more conservative with their money.

Yes, I've noticed over the years how reluctant business interests are to contribute money to the Republican party.

But here's another suggestion: the reason new Republican 527s aren't that successful is because there are plenty of old ones already hoovering up conservative cash. The tricky thing, though, is that the Republican versions aren't called 527s. They're called 501(c)s. Nick Confessore tells you all about it in "Bush's Secret Stash."

CHALABI UPDATE....What information did Ahmed Chalabi hand over to the Iranians? Here is theory #2 courtesy of the Guardian:

An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.

"This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.

In other words:

• The NSA intercepted some information.

• This information was known to very few people in the U.S. government.

• It ended up in Iranian hands.

• The CIA figured out how the Iranians got hold of it, and the answer turned out to be Aras Habib, Chalabi's intelligence chief.
  

This is definitely different from Michael Ledeen's theory that Chalabi informed the Iranians that we had broken their codes. But it's possible that both theories are correct: Chalabi told the Iranians about the code breaking, while Habib passed on some other information. It appears there are at least two distinct breaches that the CIA is investigating.

As usual, Laura Rozen is your one-stop-shop for Chalabi speculation. In addition to the stuff about Habib, she also asks "Who did Ahmad Chalabi piss off?" (Answer: lots of people, but most disastrously White House envoy Robert Blackwill and, eventually, George W. Bush) and also has a bit more speculation about "the real line that Chalabi is believed to have crossed." Go read.

TAX REDUCTION....Noam Scheiber is enthusiastic about a tax proposal from Ted Halstead and Maya MacGuineas outlined in the Washington Post on Monday. The proposal itself is simple: eliminate the payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare and replace it with a consumption tax. The most common kind of consumption tax is a sales tax, but that's not what they're proposing:

A better alternative would be a progressive consumption tax, levied not on individual purchases but rather on total spending. Each year, taxpayers would calculate their total income, subtract their total savings and pay taxes on the difference. The first, say, $25,000 of consumption would be tax-free, and from there the tax rates would be progressive rather than flat. The more you spent and the less you saved, the higher your tax rate would be.

Noam describes this as "that rare proposal that's sound in economic terms and politically." To which I can only wonder if Noam has temporarily taken up residence on Mars.

Is this proposal economically sound? Sure. Would it raise enough money? Sure. Are conservatives traditionally in favor of consumption taxes? Sure. Are conservatives traditionally opposed to business taxes (half of all payroll taxes are paid by the employer)? Sure.

But now let's return to planet Earth and ask: are conservatives traditionally in favor of proposals that reduce taxes on the poor and middle class and increase them on the rich — which is exactly what this would do? Um, no, not exactly. Which means that this proposal is dead on arrival. It's laughable to think it would get any support at all from the Republican party (and, sadly, it would probably also get less support than it deserves from the Democratic party).

The payroll tax is perhaps the worst tax in America. It's bad for business, it's savagely regressive, it discourages job creation, and at the moment it's being used to subsidize George Bush's massive deficits in the general fund. But it does have one saving grace: it's barely noticable to the rich. Someone who makes a million dollars a year pays only about 2% of their income in payroll taxes.

There are hundreds of ways of funding Social Security and Medicare that would be superior to our current payroll tax. It's not lack of ideas that prevents Congress from choosing one of them and eradicating the payroll tax once and for all, it's the 11th commandment of modern Republicanism: thou shalt not raise taxes on the rich.

Ted Halstead, Maya MacGuineas, and Noam Scheiber surely all know this perfectly well. Why do they pretend not to?

POSTSCRIPT: On the other hand, I should make clear that I heartily endorse the idea of John Kerry making something like this a cornerstone of his campaign. He should take the high ground on tax relief for the poor and middle class and let Republicans run around in circles explaining why this would be a bad idea. That would be a show worth watching.

GRASSO'S GOES TO 13....New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has decided to sue Richard Grasso, the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, for using various forms of chicanery to overpay himself. Spitzer listed several main bullet points to support his contention, but this is my favorite:

• On a 1-to-10 performance scale used to determine compensation, Grasso at one point assigned himself a 13, Spitzer said.
  

Quick, someone tell Spinal Tap!

UPDATE: On a more serious note, I should point out that Spitzer's case is built on the fact that the NYSE is a not-for-profit corporation and therefore is not legally allowed to pay its executives exorbitant sums. His suit also lists some instances of alleged deception and fraud on Grasso's part.

I can't judge whether Spitzer's case holds water legally, but I wanted to point out that there really is a case here. It's not just a matter of Spitzer casually deciding that he gets to tell public companies how much they are allowed to pay their employees.

ONE DOWN, FOUR MORE TO GO....I didn't catch Bush's speech last night, but the LA Times headline for their main coverage pretty much tells the non-story:

Bush Offers Plan to End Chaos in Iraq

A more accurate headline, I think, would be "Bush Expresses Sincere Wish for Chaos in Iraq to End," since his "plan" appears to be no such thing. Rather, his intent is to keep doing the exact same thing he's been doing all along and hope that he gets lucky — or at the least, that things don't blow up completely until November 3.

The "news" in his speech, if I can be allowed to abuse the English language a bit, is that Bush reiterated what Colin Powell and several others have already said: after June 30, the Iraqis will have "full sovereignty." This is obviously nonsense since we intend to keep 150,000 troops on their soil and maintain full control of the Iraqi security forces as well. Matt Yglesisas is puzzled:

I'm not even sure why the president is dissembling about this; Iraqis aren't going to be fooled, and I don't know that Americans are particularly going to care, but raising Iraqi expectations of sovereign control and then failing to deliver sounds like a recipe for a lot of very disappointed Iraqis, all for the sake of a somewhat tidier speech.

My guess is that this is semi-backwards. It's true that Iraqis won't be fooled by this, but for that reason they aren't going to be disappointed either. Americans, however, are going to be fooled by it, and that's all Bush cares about. A hundred million people are going to hear that we're handing over "full sovereignty," and maybe 1% of them will read or hear an explanation of why that's not true. So it's a win for Bush.

The real danger is that it sets up Americans for disappointment, not Iraqis. The Iraqis will shrug their shoulders and continue to agitate for American withdrawl, and Americans will be left wondering why the Iraqis continue to be so ungrateful even though we've turned over full sovereignty to them just like we said we would. Of such things is American self-delusion born.