Anonymous sources are a pain. You have to decide why they don’t want their names associated with the information they’re giving. What axe, if any, do they have to grind? Personal? Professional? Sexual?

In the case of Deep Throat, there was apparently another motivation. Sour grapes.

Woodward said Felt helped The Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy. He said the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Felt’s mentor, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran promoted to succeed Hoover.

Felt himself had hopes that he would be the next FBI director, but Nixon instead appointed an administration insider, assistant attorney general L. Patrick Gray, to the post.

Felt wouldn’t be the first Washington bureaucrat to dish some dirt as the result of being passed over for promotion. Information is power. And Felt’s talking out of school eventually made L. Patrick Gray’s position untenable to the point where the Acting FBI Director declined to be in the running as a permanent replacement for Hoover.

Now I’m sure that Felt sees in his own mind a nobility of purpose and purity of motive that blinds him to the more unsavory aspect of his deed. There’s a reason FBI reports aren’t made public; they alert the target of the investigation to the interest of the Bureau. And in Felt’s case, he guided Wood/Stein in such a way as to throw suspicion on people who could have been squeezed by the Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox before their names were associated with the crime. Would this have made a difference in the final analysis? Probably not. But it certainly made the job of Cox and his successor, Leon Jaworski that much harder.

And what about the $64,000 question? The counterfactual of counterfactuals?

What if Felt had kept his mouth shut? Would things have played out the same way? Would Nixon have been forced to resign?

The answer is a resounding yes. And that’s because Felt was more important to the Post than he was to the overall investigation.

The honor for the single most important cog in the Watergate investigation goes to a minor White House functionary named Alexander Butterfield. Butterfield had a rather unique job in in the White House. He liaised with the Secret Service to maintain the massive bugging system that Nixon, in what could only be described as revealing the tragic flaw of overarching hubris, had installed to record his every sentence, every word, every breath for posterity.

The story of Butterfield’s outing is a classic case of serendipity and best told here. And once the information about those tapes were out there, Nixon’s fate was sealed regardless of anything Deep Throat could tell Wood/Stein about the scandal.

So, the mystery is solved in something of an anticlimactic manner. There will be no more funeral watches of Watergate related figures for Woodward sightings. Instead, a very old and very sick man who may or may not have been angry at being passed over as Director of the FBI, tells a second tier monthly magazine a story that’s pretty much of surpassing interest only to political junkies and historians.

But it’s still a great story. And I’m glad it’s finally been told.

The revelation today that Mark Felt could very well be the “unnamed” source known as Deep Throat for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s sensational Watergate exclusives has set off a wave of nostalgia among Nixon haters and a wave of revulsion among many others.

First, it appears that Woodward had contact recently with Felt looking to make a media extravaganza out of the revelation:

The Vanity Fair article said Felt’s family had convinced him that his actions during Watergate were heroic and worthy of acknowledgment and he should come forward. His daughter had spoken to Woodward, who visited Felt in Santa Rose in 1999, by phone more than a half-dozen times to discuss a potential joint announcement, Vanity Fair said.

But Woodward would often begin those conversations with a caveat, the magazine said, saying, ‘’Just because I’m talking to you, I’m not admitting that he is who you think he is.’‘

Couple this with both Bernstein and Woodward’s failure to immediately squelch the story and you have the makings of a pretty interesting news day.

That being said, what this will do is open a whole bunch of unhealed wounds on both sides of the Watergate divide. Anytime another set of Nixon White House tapes has been released by the National Archives, a veritable feeding frenzy by the press ensues in which Nixon’s every off the cuff utterance is given front page treatment. The themes are familiar; Nixon the racist, Nixon the anti-Semite, Nixon the madman.

Nixon may have been all of those and worse. But what doesn’t get much attention are the recent release of the Johnson and Kennedy tapes that reveal some pretty nasty stuff about those fellows too. When it does make the news (Johnson’s tapes have been written about by Presidential historian and TV talking head Michael R. Beschloss) Presidential peculiarities are chalked up to the “complexity” of the men, not any inherent evil present in their personalities.

With Nixon, it’s different. Any revelation about his Presidency is viewed as further justification for his fall from grace. What’s never addressed in this orgy of self congratulations is the very real role played by the national press in bringing down a President.

In short, unelected elites decided Nixon was guilty of not just the Watergate coverup, but a wide variety of crimes that necessitated his removal from office.

How much better would a Senate trial have been? At least we would have gotten the satisfaction of having representatives of the people remove him. And the consequences that have flowed from the realization of the mainstream press that they can make or break or even remove President’s have been dire. For going on 30 years, every journalist in America has dreamed of being the next Woodward and Bernstein. The fame, the riches, the adulation attendant to bringing down a President has motivated more than one journalist to make every “scandal” in Washington into a “gate.” Koreagate, Contragate, bimbogate…the list is endless.

This is unhealthy for the republic as well as being ridiculous.

If Mark Felt is indeed Deep Throat he probably should be applauded for bringing the corruption surrounding Watergate to the attention of the people through the Washington Post. But like all stories regarding Nixon, there’s very little context to go with the condemnation.

Will historians 100 years from now see things a little differently? Will they take into account that there thousands of Americans actively working to overthrow the government, who believed that by fomenting violence they could achieve a socialist paradise? Will they see that leaks from high government officials on issues like arms control were not only a threat to national security but a threat to human life on the planet as well? Will they see the shortsightedness of the press in their relentless pursuit of a President who they didn’t like personally?

I don’t know. I’m not an historian a hundred years from now. What I do know is that Nixon governed in the most difficult time in this nation’s history since the Civil War. There were thousands of people in the streets cheering for victory by an enemy that was killing American boys on the battlefield (We hadn’t yet become inured to this spectacle. When it happens today we pay it no mind because we’re used to American citizens wishing for the death of American servicemen). The social fabric of the nation was fraying at the edges not just because of Viet Nam but because the pent up demand for equality from so many deserving minorities was spilling out into the streets and rocking the establishment. Add to that Nixon’s secretive, almost paranoid personality that was manipulated by sycophantic aides – small, petty men of much ambition and little talent – who played on the President’s desperation as he tried to understand and deal with the maelstrom threatening to suck the country into a de facto civil war.

It’s too easy to forget that this is the way it was. And while Nixon should never be excused, I have a sneaky suspicion that historians of the future will indeed put his many accomplishments and spectacular failures into a perspective that neither his supporters nor detractors could possibly do today.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

Captains Quarters
Wizbang
Political Teen has video of Felt’s grandson.

UPDATE…WITH A BULLET

WOODWARD, BRADLEE, AND BERNSTEIN HAVE CONFIRMED THAT FELT WAS IN FACT DEEP THROAT.

Here are some interesting (or not) articles from daily newspapers around the world (or at least here and Great Britain).

Bush Calls Human Rights Report “Absurd”

And so it is. Anyone who would compare Guantanamo with the Soviet gulag is a ninny.

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as “absurd” for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners “who hate America.”

“It’s an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,” Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.

Kudos to the Prez for his use of non-diplomatic language to call a spade a spade.

C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights

“Guise” which is short for “disguise” kinda means, you know, SECRET!

While posing as a private charter outfit – “aircraft rental with pilot” is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet – Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency’s Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees.

Behind a surprisingly thin cover of rural hideaways, front companies and shell corporations that share officers who appear to exist only on paper, the C.I.A. has rapidly expanded its air operations since 2001 as it has pursued and questioned terrorism suspects around the world

Maybe we could get the Valerie Palme special prosecutor to look into this.

Ex-FBI official says he’s ‘Deep Throat’

Mark Felt? Mark Felt?

W. Mark Felt, who retired from the FBI after rising to its second most senior position, has identified himself as the “Deep Throat” source quoted by The Washington Post to break the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s resignation, Vanity Fair magazine said Tuesday.

“I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” he told John D. O’Connor, the author of Vanity Fair’s exclusive that appears in its July issue.

Felt, now 91 and living in Santa Rosa, Calif. reportedly gave O’Connor permission to disclose his identity.

In recent years, speculation had shifted from the White House to the FBI. This is because of Wood/Stiein’s promise to reveal the name of “Deep Throat” only after that worthy’s demise. And as aide after aide has died over the years, it’s become pretty clear that by simple process of elimination, it had to be someone pretty high up in the FBI or a Justice Department official familiar with the Bureau’s investigation.

No word yet from Wood/Stein on whether this is the rantings of a 91 year old man or if it’s true. If it’s true, I predict the blogswarm of blogswarms.

UPDATE: Washington Post issues “no comment.” Bernstien doesn’t deny it – says “We’re not going to say anything at this time. When the person is deceased we will identify him.”

Let’s see what happens when this story picks up steam. Bernstien and/or the Post may change their tune about commenting if the heat gets too great.

German Jobless Rate Down to 11.6 Percent

Re-elect Schroeder!

BERLIN —Germany’s jobless rate edged down to 11.6 percent in May, government figures showed Tuesday, but the drop reflected a seasonal upturn instead of economic improvement in Europe’s biggest economy.

The unadjusted jobless rate in May was down from 12 percent the previous month. The number of people without a job in Germany dropped to 4.807 million from 4.968 million.

Wow! Looks like the socialist policies of the German Chancellor have finally caused the economy to turn the corner with prosperity just around the bend and German workers able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then again, it just might be a seasonal blip. There are no cliches for seasonal blips.

Face it: this treaty is dead, says Kinnock

We’re going to listen to a guy who lost 3 elections?

European leaders should accept that the EU constitution is dead after it was rejected in the French referendum on Sunday, said the former EU commissioner Lord Kinnock today.
The former Labour leader warned that any attempt to ratify the treaty against the wishes of the European people would merely serve to increase the alienation millions feel towards the EU.

Lord Kinnock called on the British government, which assumes the six-month EU presidency in July, to reconnect the EU with its citizens by introducing reforms to increase employment and prosperity.

Someday – not anytime soon – Europe will be united under one constitution with one currency and one foreign policy. Not even jolly old England can resist the political and intellectual elites who’ve been dreaming of this “Europe thing” at least since the founding of the European Union in 1919. The question I have is what will Europe look like when it occurs? Will it look like the culturally and racially homogeneous Europe of my ancestors or will it look more like a nightmare version of America where diverse peoples fail to assimilate?

Two Terms of Chaos, Comebacks and Crises

Ronald Reagan? George Bush? Nope.

In a new book, the Washington Post reporter John F. Harris, who covered the Clinton White House from 1995 through 2001, focuses on the Comeback Kid’s “survivalist ethic” – his ability to continually bounce back from adversity, his ability to make it to the end of two terms in the White House despite the ravages of impeachment proceedings, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Whitewater investigations and a noxious atmosphere of vociferous partisanship in Washington.

There is nothing terribly new about Mr. Harris’s assessment of Mr. Clinton in this book. Nor are there insights into his presidency that haven’t been served up many times before – in books by reporters like Bob Woodward, Joe Klein, Elizabeth Drew and John Brummett, in memoirs by former aides and administration members like George Stephanopoulos and Robert Reich, and in the reams of newspaper and magazine articles written about this most psychologically dissected of presidents.

Un. Be. Lievable. Note that the cheerleaders at the Post fail to put “Comeback Kid” in quotation marks. And the easy, dismissive tone about a book that promises to be an eye opener about our putative President in ‘08 as well as her jocular husband.

Some love affairs, you never get over. Just ask the Post.

I’ve complained many times that American history textbooks – especially for middle school children – have become nothing more than shallow, non-contextualized rants against America’s values, highlighting the very real sins of our past at the expense of conceptualizing our national “story.” And while giving some leeway to these same textbook authors due to omissions in the past, I’ve stated that by ignoring or trivializing vast swaths of American history, we’ve raised a generation of children who have no sense of a national narrative.

In Russia, they have exactly the opposite problem:

Russians remember the Siege of Leningrad—a brutal, 872-day blockade of Russia’s second-largest city by Nazi troops that killed 1.7 million people—as a dark, crucial moment in their history. Yet one of the most popular history textbooks in Russian classrooms casually distills the event into a mere four words.

“German troops blockaded Leningrad.”

Glaring omissions abound in Nikita Zagladin’s textbook, “History of Russia and the World in the 20th Century.” The Holocaust is never mentioned. The book barely acknowledges the Gulag labor camps.

And it flits past Russia’s 10-year conflict with separatists in Chechnya, reducing a pivotal episode in modern Russian history to seven paragraphs.

For some Russian academics, Zagladin’s penchant for smoothing over the bumps in Russian history is precisely the reason his textbooks have become mainstays in Russian classrooms.

Clearly, the Russians wish to create a national narrative without the inconvenient and embarrassing episodes that reflect badly on the overarching themes they’re trying to teach. But why?

When President Vladimir Putin met with historians at the Russian State Library in late 2003, he stressed that history textbooks should “cultivate in young people a feeling of pride for one’s history and one’s country.”

At the time, one of the most widely used history texts was Igor Dolutsky’s “National History: 20th Century.” For years, the book had been favored by teachers for its upfront discussion of sensitive topics, including Stalin’s purges, Chechnya and anti-Semitism in Russia.

“They said my book was `blackening’ Russian history,” Dolutsky said during a recent interview. “It was the first prohibition of a textbook in schools in 25 years.”

“Basically, they were dissatisfied with chapters devoted to Stalin’s regime and Putin’s leadership,” said Dolutsky, 51. “Sections that dealt with [Nikita] Khrushchev and [Mikhail] Gorbachev, they ignored.”

Trying to cover up the sins of Stalin’s murderous regime in which at least 20 million and perhaps as many as 40 million human beings were slaughtered is unconscionable. Not only is it dishonest, it leaves a gaping hole in modern Russian history. How can one explain Khrushchev without talking about Stalin’s ghastly regime?

This is what would happen in America if, say we wiped our history books of slavery or Native American genocide. Our modern history would make no sense. How did we get here from there?

Author Zagladin’s view of history in the classroom differs radically from Dolutsky’s. He agrees with Putin—a history textbook should make a pupil feel proud about Russia. It shouldn’t depress, and it shouldn’t shame.

“If a young person finishes school and feels everything that happened in this country was bad, he’ll get ready to emigrate,” Zagladin said during a recent phone interview. “A textbook should provide a patriotic education.

“It’s necessary to show Russian youths,” Zagladin continued, “that industrial development during the Stalin era was successful, and that the repressions and terror during that era did not touch all of the population.”

I’m very happy to learn that Stalin made the trains run – if not on time at least there were more of them to be late – but again, it’s hardly the point. And to be afraid the students will feel so much shame that they’ll leave the country is a novel excuse for cleansing textbooks of non-patriotic or embarrassing material. It assumes that students patriotism is shallow indeed.

Zagladin’s critics say Russian students do not need to be shamed, merely enlightened about history’s darker chapters, especially in a country where the truth has been lacquered over for so many years.

“According to polls, the majority of the population still considers Stalin to have played a positive role in Russian history,” said Yuri Samodurov, director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum. “And the problem here is, our schools don’t do anything to change this attitude.”

Where the Russians have a problem with selective scholarship about its sins, American textbooks (written by committee rather than by individual historians for the most part) give short shrift to national heroes like Washington and Jefferson in order to illuminate America’s “diversity.” This is a result of textbook publishers wishing to sell to as many markets as possible, yielding to multiculturalists (and the religious right in some cases) so that their products are as attractive to a school district in Nebraska as they would be in New York City.

Both approaches are wrong.

American history isn’t locked away in some closet being guarded 24 hours a day by CIA agents. The information is out there for anyone wishing to find it. I remember the brouhaha that erupted following the release of Stephen Spielberg’s excellent movie “Amistad” that told the story of slaves being shipped from the Caribbean to America who staged a mutiny aboard the vessel carrying them here (The Amistad), and the subsequent pleas made on their behalf by abolitionists that resulted in a Supreme Court decision granting them their freedom. Educators were outraged that this “fact” was kept from our school children because it wasn’t in any history textbooks. This is laughable. What isn’t in American history textbooks could fill a building the size of the Library of Congress.

The purpose of a textbook isn’t to “celebrate diversity” or keep students from emigrating. The purpose should be to make students hungry to learn more, to develop their minds by engaging in a little independent thought, or at the very least, to give students a basic idea of how we got here from there.

If Santayana is right – if “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” – both the Russians and Americans are in for some very bad times in the future.

UPDATE

Two interesting takes from opposite sides of the Shadow Media.

From Rob’s Blog:

This is not the example we want to follow. It would be like us censoring out the “bad parts” of our history and then making heroes of people like the Ku Klux Klan, George Wallace, and those who furthered the institution of slavery (and later the practices of discrimination).

While Bush rubs elbows with his chum Mr. Putin, he would discourage this tendancy if he understood the implications himself. I doubt he really cares, though…the idea of complacent citizens who believe whatever the government spews out is probably to his liking, too.

While making a good point about heroes, I doubt whether the President would take it upon himself to lecture Putin about history textbooks. And how we got from Russian textbooks to eeeeeevil Bush wanting to turn the country into a bunch of spoon fed automatons is, well, a crock. If Mr. Rob has a scintilla of evidence to back up that statement (rather than his own outrageously ignorant bias) I’d like to see it.

And here’s a different kind of myopia from No Speed Bumps:

I don’t see any good coming out of grossly whitewashing your history, especially when you are overlooking one of the most prolific mass murderers in history. The Russians could find plenty of heroics to celebrate in their history, in spite of the relentless oppression they have faced throughout their history, without glossing over the hard parts. I know that the Russians are made of tougher stuff than that. In fact, I would think that they would want to know their real history. Some leadership is called for here: Putin get your head out of the sand.

Putin is leading – he’s leading the charge on this whitewash job because he senses that by resurrecting Stalin, his own plans for returning Russia to outright authoritarian rule will get a boost from historical precedent. So while I agree with the assessment that the Russians can take a little truth about their past, the point, unfortunately, is that Putin can’t.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

It’s a shame that the Memorial Day holiday has lost so much of its meaning to many Americans. Graves of veterans go unattended and unadorned in many towns and cities. The day has become little more than a marker for the beginning of summer, or of a long weekend filled with barbeque’s, blockbuster movie openings, and baseball games.

There are some exceptions:

Since the late 50’s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing.

In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day.

More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program).

And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

In an editorial today, the Washington Post has an excellent suggestion:

And while we’re at it on this formerly somber holiday, we’d like to offer a few words in support of a related movement that seems to be spreading spontaneously, with a little encouragement from people who have access to the public ear. It is the simple practice of saying “thank you” to men and women in armed forces uniform—on the streets, in office buildings, malls and other places.

Granted, this doesn’t come easily to a people who often are too self-conscious even to sing the national anthem at ballgames. This is especially true in our own city, where formality and restraint are more pronounced than in most. But in fact it’s here that gestures would have a special meaning to a lot of people—from service members assigned to the Washington area to traveling soldiers and Marines in airports to the young man in a wheelchair seeing his nation’s capital on a day trip out of Walter Reed. Such acts affirm that no matter what one’s view of the country’s current conflicts, there is a common and widespread appreciation of those who carry the burden of war. They deserve one more word from a city that produces millions of them every day, one that isn’t all that hard to offer: “Thanks.”

Thanks indeed. It’s the very least we can do. And in an op-ed piece in the same paper, John Wheeler has another great idea:

Unfortunately, no Memorial Day ceremony or war memorial that I have seen has explicitly honored the wounded. In fact, under House Concurrent Resolution 587 of Feb. 10, 1966, Memorial Day is simply for paying “tribute to those who gave their lives.”

This oversight needs correction. We need to honor the wounded as well as those who died. Their numbers are growing, and society needs to both acknowledge their sacrifice and understand their situation. And it needs, through this tribute, to give support and encouragement to the families of the wounded—families that bear great anguish, time devoted to care and economic loss.

Wheeler points out that because of improved body armour and medical advances, the wounded to dead ratio for the war in Iraq is at 8 to 1, better than the 5 to 1 during the Viet Nam war. Many of these veterans come back scarred in both mind and body – a living testament to the horrors of war and why we should never commit our men to battle unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Here are some links to where you can donate time or money to help wounded vets:

United Spinal Association
Purple Heart.Org
Military Family Network
Disabled American Veterans

And Operation Hearthfire supports wounded vets and has a couple of dozen links to other organizations.

GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN

Congressman John Logan was angry. His party, the Democrats, had just lost the election of 1860 to Abe Lincoln and the Republicans. But his opposition to the fire eaters of the South who were agitating for secession had incurred the wrath of men who just recently had called him a “son of the South.” In a speech on the floor of the House, Logan warned his Southern colleagues that if they persisted in their folly, the union would crush them. He returned to his district and gave a speech at Marion, Illinois that today is widely seen as helping keep that vital part of Illinois – “little Egypt” – loyal to the Union.

Resigning from Congress, he was one of a handful of Democratic lawmakers that fought on the Union side during the war. Most of these political officers were a disaster. Benjamin Butler, for instance, was a Massachusetts Democrat whose ineptitude as a soldier was surpassed only by his incompetence as an administrator. While overseeing the military occupation of New Orleans, Butler issued the infamous “General Order #28” that stipulated that “any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”

Other political generals were equally unfit for command and ended up costing thousands of lives because of their incompetent leadership. But not so John Logan.

Logan organized a regiment of volunteers and was named a Colonel. Immediately distinguishing himself on the field of battle, Logan made it his business to study the art of war. Attached to the Army of the Tennessee, General Grant recognized Logan’s leadership ability and promoted him to General. He played a key role in the victory at Raymond, Mississippi that cleared the way for Grant’s march to Vicksburg and eventual capture of that vital city.

When Grant moved North to take command of the Union armies, Sherman, who had nothing but disdain for political generals, took over the Army of the Tennessee. But after seeing Logan in action during the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman was impressed enough to give Logan command of the entire left wing of his army on its march to the sea. Again, Logan distinguished himself as he fought off whatever resistance the South could throw at Sherman as he devastated the countryside.

Popular with the men under his command, Logan was a rarity – a commander the men could trust. They sensed his concern for their welfare as Logan made it a habit of visiting the company mess to taste the food himself. If he found it inadequate, he’d dress down the company commander and order him to fix the situation. Usually it was something simple like changing cooks or cleaning the cooking pots once and a while. In addition, Logan made sure the men under his command were properly supplied with shoes, blankets, and other necessities that kept the men comfortable during winter months.

Logan’s concern for his men was evident after the war as well. Elected to Congress again in 1866, Logan took part in the first memorial day observance in Illinois. It’s thought that Logan became especially interested in the issue of a decoration day for the nation following a gesture by the women of Columbia, Mississippi who, during a remembrance for the dead, placed flowers on the graves of both Union and Southern soldiers. Logan had fought with Grant at the battle of Columbia and remembered well the hatred of civilians toward the Union Army. Horace Greeley wrote a famous editorial about the Columbian women and Francis Miles Finch wrote a beautiful poem for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Blue and the Grey.”

Logan’s popularity with the men paid off when he was named Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). In 1868 he issued his famous general order that designated May 30th as Decoration Day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

Because of Logan’s leadership, the GAR grew into the most influential voting bloc in the Republican party. For more than 30 years, no Republican could get the Presidential nomination without the support of the GAR. At it’s peak, more than 400,000 veterans of the civil war were members. Their presence during parades and remembrances of that war became a source of inspiration to an entire generation of American historians and writers.

Logan would go on and be elected Senator and even be nominated on the 1884 Democratic ticket for Vice President. He was a strong advocate of public education and served on the Committee for Military Affairs. When he died in 1886, he lay in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Thousands of tearful veterans filed past his coffin to pay their last respects to the man they nicknamed “Blackjack.”

Some historians have taken a less than charitable view of Logan’s motivations for initiating Decoration Day. They point out that Logan probably used the holiday to promote his own political career. His bid for the Senate in 1871 played up his role in boosting the holiday and he never failed to remind audiences of his service in that regard.

However, Logan also wrote a loving tribute to his men in a book that came out after his death entitled The Volunteer Soldier in America which was written partly in response to U.S. Grant’s autobiography that criticized the performance of volunteers during the war.

John Logan didn’t come up with the idea of Memorial Day. But his generous inclusion of Southern dead in his General Order authorizing Decoration Day was a magnanimous gesture that helped heal the wounds of that conflict and bring us together as a nation.

It might not be a bad idea this Memorial Day to take a page from our forefathers and recognize that those on the other side of the debate of the War in Iraq mourn our losses as well. For this one day, let us be united in recognition of the service these brave men performed and the fact that no matter what you believe, they have given that “last full measure of devotion” to a grateful nation.

We’re slouching toward Memorial Day here at the House and yardwork has occupied most of my weekend. Sue is a radical green – gardner that is. By radical, I mean she’s the Ward Churchill of cucumbers, the Nancy Pelosi of Tomatos, and the Barbara Boxer of radishes.

Here’s me yesterday:

ME: Can’t we just like, you know, buy the frickin’ food at the grocery store? What’s the point of all this work? My back hurts like hell, I’ve got blisters on my hands from the damn shovel, and I think I feel my heart palpitating.

SUE: Just think how delicious it will taste!

ME: I’m thinking of the hospital bill if I get a heart attack!

SUE: (Laughs) I love you!

What man can resist the cold, unemotional logic of a woman?

More quickies from blogland.

Maggies Farm is tractor blogging. Huh? Just read it and laugh at that group of very strange, but very nice people. They seem like the sort of folks you’d want to live next door to but wonder if they don’t carry out some kind of weird Wiccan rituals from time to time. In the middle of the night. Naked.

Basil comes clean about his fake sites. One seriously wonders about all that talent locked up inside, ready to explode into some gigantic creative atomic blast that bathes the Shadow Media in an unearthly glow…

But then you look at his site and see he has a picture of himself as a baby. Where’s Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred when you need them?

Wuzzadem: I’m Monty McCain, America’s favorite deal-maker, and it’s time to play Let’s Make a Deal, where everyone is a winner. Let’s go out into our studio audience and find our first lucky contestant.

Channeling Monty Hall is one thing…putting Robert “Sheets” Byrd with Barbara Boxer in the roll of contestants is nothing less than inspired genius.

The guys at Q & O are all over the non vote for the EU Constitution in France. And Llama Butchers has the Netscape market report on the disaster. Pretty graph showing the price going in the toilet the last few days.

God I hate the French! In this one instance though, I’m glad they have their heads so far up their tight little arses that they ruined one of the truly bad ideas in history – a united Europe. Individually, the Europeans are insufferable enough. Can you imagine a whole continent of obscenely self righteous, cynical, lazy, disdainful, anti-American dilettantes whose culture is decaying so fast that in 50 years it will be indistinguishable from the culture of the sheiks, imams, holy warriors, and mullahs of the middle east?

Makes my heart go pitter patter in anticipation.

Beth is doggy blogging. She’s also dog tired which might explain why she linked to Carnival of the Dogs twice in the same post. That’s right…she double linked Carnival of the Dogs. Another patient for Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred. (Did I link them already?)

I know it’s Sunday, but take a look at Mad Tech’s “WTF Friday Rant.”

I was disappointed that I was one of the only bloggers trying to write about the Lebanese elections held today. I say try because trying to make sense of that political muddle is a monumental task. Maybe it’s because there are no protest babes?

Not to worry. Publius Pundit knows what he’s talking about. And he’s got some great links. And he’s a got a picture of Lebanon’s entry for the Miss Universe pageant.

Who needs protest babes when you got eye candy like that?

Pat over at Brainsters puts Robert Kuttner over his knee and spanks him…hard:

You ever notice that economic populists all pine for the glory days of the Depression? So much so that they are constantly seeing just around the corner, like Paul Krugman, still holding out hope for his long-awaited double-dip? Is it because those were great times to be a working man in America? Obviously not. But they were great times to be an economic populist.

So much for blogging today. Maybe one post tomorrow as I wrestle with trying to plant flowers whose names I can’t pronounce and that I’m probably allergic to anyway.

As the Lebanese people make their way to the polls today for the first round of parliamentary voting, the confusing muddle of regional and sectarian candidates has generated some ennui among the populace.

In some districts like Beirut, the opposition, led by Said Hariri (son of the late political icon) and the old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt are united and virtually unopposed. In other districts, the opposition is fractured and contentious races involving other factions including Hizballah and the party led by former Prime Minister and political opportunist Michel Aoun expect to do well.

Here’s an excellent analysis on the strange bedfellows Lebanese politics has created in the last few weeks as both Hariri and Jumblatt seek to get the most out of the election:

The alliance between Saad Hariri and Hizb’allah’s Nasrallah was born out of a supposed deal struck between Nasrallah and the late Rafik Hariri just a week before his death. This deal was based on the notion that Hariri would not call on Hizb’allah to disarm personally, and Saad has affirmed this. Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party is also part of this alliance, and Nasrallah has urged his mainly Shiite followers to vote for Hariri’s lists in Beirut and Jumblatt’s lists in Aley-Baabda. In fact, many of the seats have gone uncontested and the opposition is likely to sweep them all. But Hizb’allah has also struck a sweet deal with another Shiite bloc, Amal, in order to retain total dominance of the South and likely Beqaa.

At bottom, is the electoral law written with the Syrian’s blessing and passed in 2001 that guarantees the various factions a certain number of seats. But the divisions in Lebanese politics go deeper than religion as this analysis points out:

The categories of “Muslim” and “Christian” are all but meaningless politically in Lebanon. The system is not based on the representation of “Muslims” and “Christians.” This is legally wrong, and assumes that “Muslims” are a monolithic, coherent political cluster, and the same goes for Christians. In reality, each one is divided into several sects, which are in turn divided into subcategories (families, regions, political inclination, etc.). Those are the divisions that count and are reflected in parliament and in the elections. The corollary to that are the alliances in the election and in parliament, which create what’s known as “real representation.” In part, this was the complaint of some in the Christian circles, that some “Christian” candidates on certain lists were really the choice of the dominant political figure or alliance in that particular district, as opposed to being the choice of the Christian voters (or certain Christian parties). In that sense, that particular Christian candidate will for the most part be allied in parliament with the non-Christian figure/list on which he ran. Of

These “lists” of candidates worked out in advance by political foes seek to bring some order to the chaos so that vote splitting between the many parties are kept to a minimun. To make up these lists, especially in areas where there’s fierce electoral competition, temporary electoral alliances are forged between parties that are likely to be at each other’s throats when parliament convenes.

Then, there’s the political wildcard represented by General Aoun whose last minute pullout from the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, the main Christian opposition group, has upset the applecart:

In Baabda-Aley, the Chouf, Metn and the North, Aoun will now challenge Jumblatt, Hariri and the scattered Christian parties. Even if these developments do not cause a complete upset (as no one truly expects they will), the unexpected shift has made the race too close to call.

Aoun had allied his FPM with Talal Arslan’s Lebanese Democratic Party, which will run alone against Jumblatt in the Chouf following the voluntary withdrawal of General Issam Abu Jamra to advance the chances of Arslan’s second-in-command, Marwan Abu Fadel, whereas Dory Chamoun and the Syrian Social National Party were excluded from this coalition.

Don’t worry. It gets even more confusing.

Aoun, who’s something of an anti-Syrian icon has made common cause with Talal Arslan’s pro-Syrian LDP. Arslan is a rival of Walid Jumblatt and expects to run well in the North. For Aoun, it was a case of having to align himself with someone and Arslan was about all that was left. Jumblatt has criticised Aoun for weakening the opposition at a crucial moment but in reality, the colorful former head of the Lebanese armed forces had little choice if he wanted to be a player in the new government.

And then there’s Hizballah. The US considers the “Party of God” to be a terrorist group. Indeed, the leader of the radicals, Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, recently bragged that his armed militia has 12,000 rockets aimed at Israel. And while UN Resolution 1599 urging the election called for disarming Hizballah, no prominent politician – including Hariri and Jumblatt – have done so. While tactically necessary, both men will be under pressure from the United States and the west after the elections to negotiate Hizballah’s disarming.

In a recent speech, Nasrallah seemed to lay out the conditions necessary for disarmament:

Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s fiery Liberation Day comments Wednesday in Bint Jbeil come in this context. Nasrallah linked Hizbullah’s disarmament with achievement of a peace settlement in the region and asserted the party will fight to the death anyone who thinks about disarming the resistance by force.

He urged parties that established contacts with Israel in the past and relied on the U.S. not to do so again, and suggested they reach an understanding with their local partners instead, including Hizbullah.

Tying disarmament to a general middle east peace deal would seem to be bad news. Some observers however, thought they saw a little give in Nasrallah’s remarks:

Nasrallah gave Hizbullah’s weapons a regional function when he linked disarming to the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not to Israel’s withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms.

Nasrallah’s speech came at a time when some Western ambassadors are polling opinions of Lebanese officials and leaders regarding implementation of the clause in UN Resolution 1559 related to disarming Hizbullah.

In other words, Nasrallah may have left the door open for the militia’s integration into the Lebanese armed forces, a solution that’s been mentioned by all the major opposition candidates.

Three other rounds in the electoral process are scheduled. It remains to be seen whether these electoral alliances will lead to a stable, independent Lebanese government or if the sectarianism and factionalism of the past will lead to chaos.

With so much at stake and with the “Cedar Revolution” still fresh in their minds, there’s a good chance that the participants will put aside their many differences and reach an equitable solution – one that embraces Lebanon’s political diversity and religious differences.

There isn’t much doubt that former anti-Castro Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles is a terrorist. There also isn’t much doubt that Posada is privy to some of the dirtiest secrets of our intelligence community. Working with the CIA from the early 1960’s on, Posada has been a US intelligence asset until at least the late 1980’s when he apparently assisted Oliver North in running guns and supplies to the Contras in Nicaragua.

Posada’s most spectacular crime was blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing 73 people, including the teenage members of the Cuban National Fencing Team. Recently released documents from the FBI and elsewhere show that not only was Posada responsible for planning and executing the attack, but that the CIA had gotten wind of the plot and that an FBI agent in Caracas had met several times with one of the Venezuelan members of the conspiracy.

Did we know what Posada and his partner Orlando Bosch were up to and not warn the Cuban government of this imminent attack?

No wonder Castro is pissed.

After the attack on the airliner, Posada was arrested by Venezuelan security. Following two trials, both of which ended in his acquittal, Posada escaped custody in1985 by bribing his way out of Venezuela perhaps with American help. He immediately showed up in El Salvador where he went to work for Oliver North in the Contra supply operation. He apparently was also tangentially involved in organizing and training the Salvadoran “Death Squads” that wreaked havoc in that tiny country.

Mr. Carriles wasn’t finished. Posada admitted to a New York Times reporter, that he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and injured others. Then, in 2002 he was convicted in Panama of plotting to kill Castro. Outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him. He has ties to the Cuban-American group CANF (Cuban-American National Foundation) members of which went on trial in the United States and were acquitted in 1999 of trying to kill Castro.

The 77 year old recently snuck into the United States and asked the government for asylum. When Fidel Castro and his stooge Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got wind of this they were furious. Castro’s government organized “spontaneous” demonstrations against the US and blowhard Chavez went on Venezuelan TV and ranted for 4 hours about the US being hypocritical in fighting the war on terror.

He may have a point but 4 hours? I pity the Venezuelan people that they have to put up with this strutting, overblown peacock of a man who in a few short years has taken what was once one of the freest nations in the western hemisphere and turned it into a virtual prison.

Recently arrested on immigration charges, the Venezuelan government has asked that Posada be extradited so that he can stand trial a third time for blowing up the airliner. The initial request was rejected:

The Bush administration on Friday rejected Venezuela’s request for the arrest of Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles so he can be returned to the South American country for trial.

Posada, a foe of Cuban President Fidel Castro, is wanted by Venezuelan authorities for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane in 1976 that killed 73 people. The United States and Venezuela have had a strained relationship recently, with disagreements including the U.S. war in Iraq and Venezuela’s decision to buy Russian assault rifles.

Earlier this month, Venezuela asked the United States to arrest Posada as an initial step toward his eventual extradition there. Days after the request was received, U.S. authorities detained Posada on their own and charged him with illegal entry into the United States

The request was evidently denied on technical grounds. But this gambit won’t work forever. Sooner or later, the Bush Administration will have a decision to make. And that decision could have far reaching consequences for not only our standing in Latin America but also profoundly affect the War on Terror.

There’s no doubt this is a lose-lose situation for the American government. There quite simply can be no good outcome to their dilemma. If we hand the old terrorist over to Chavez, his secret police will go to work on him and probably extract some extraordinarily damaging information about his unholy deeds done on behalf of the American government during the last 40 years. The resulting firestorm would ignite protests from Mexico City to Havana and severely damage our already tarnished image in Latin America.

But if we grant Posada asylum or worse, send him to another country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Venezuela, we’ll either be guilty of harboring a terrorist or facilitating the escape of one. Either way, our credibility and ability to fight terrorism will take a huge hit. And if we send him to a third country that does have an extradition agreement with the Venezuelans, we’ll still be seen as hypocrites.

In this case, I think the Bush Administration is going to have to bite the bullet and hand Posada over to Chavez. Better the strutting peacock than the thug in Havana. Before honoring any extradition treaty with regards to Posada however, the Administration should get an assurance from Chavez that the Venezuelans will not hand him over to Castro. That would truly be a disastrous turn of events and must be prevented.

The Venezuelan judiciary is still semi-independent and would at least give Posada a fair trial – something that only a moonbat would think he’d get in Castro’s gulag.

It may be that the government won’t take this option and instead speed Posada on his way to a third country, possibly Panama. The Panamanians have already tried Posada but would probably turn him over to Venezuela themselves. In which case, we’ll only look like hypocrites – not very pleasant but the government may figure its a better alternative than having our dirty laundry hanging out all over Latin America.

Any alternative will do us no good in the short term in either our relations with Latin American countries or in the War on Terror. And while turning Posada over to Venezuela may seem like the worst option, I think in the long run it may do us some good. It will prove that we’re dead serious about terrorism. It will signal an openness that may eventually resonate with the Latin American people once the initial hub-bub dies down. And it may even have a salutatory effect in the middle east with our efforts at peace making and democracy building.

This is definitely a put-up or shut-up moment for the Bush Administration in its War on Terror. What course we choose will determine our credibility on the issue for years to come.

Cross Posted at Blogger New Network

The news of a bomb blast in eastern Indonesia that killed 19 people could mean that we thwarted an attack elsewhere; the U.S. embassy in Jakarta:

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Two bomb blasts ripped through a crowded market in a Christian town in eastern Indonesia on Saturday, killing 19 people in an attack likely to raise fears sectarian bloodshed could again break out in the region.

Police said the attacks occurred in the lakeside town of Tentena, on the eastern island of Sulawesi, part of an area where three years of Muslim-Christian clashes killed 2,000 people until a peace deal was agreed in late 2001.

Just yesterday, a security warning prompted the closing of our embassy in the Indonesian capitol and consulates elsewhere:

The US closed all of its diplomatic facilities in Indonesia today until further notice, citing an unspecified security threat.

The decision comes a week after Australia urged its citizens to avoid traveling to Indonesia because of a warning by police in Jakarta about possible suicide bombings, particularly at embassies, international schools, office buildings and shopping malls.

In an e-mailed statement, US officials said the American embassy in Jakarta would be closed along with the consulates in Surabaya, Medan and the island of Bali. Other American government offices would also be shuttered.

Could one of the terrorists original targets have been the embassy? While the violence in Indonesia is sectarian in nature as Christians battle Muslims, the radical islamists have targeted westerners in the past:

Attacks against Western targets and blamed on Jemaah Islamiah include blasts at Bali nightclubs in October 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners, and one last September outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10.

When the history of the War on Terror is written a hundred years from now, historians will rely on information that today is highly classified. Only the terrorists and a select few in our intelligence community know for sure how many attacks have been thwarted. Last year, Representative Katherine Harris (R-FL) made headlines when she claimed that the US government had prevented over 100 terrorist attacks around the world:

On Monday, August 2, speaking at a rally for President Bush in Venice, Florida, Harris told the crowd that the administration had thwarted over 100 terrorist plots. She also claimed that “a plot existed to blow up the power grid in Carmel, Indiana,” the Associated Press reported.

The “Carmel” plot was denied by officials in that small, Indiana town. And to this day its not clear whether Harris was lying, exaggerating, or telling the truth. In the press frenzy that followed her remarks, she seemed genuinely sorry she had revealed something she shouldn’t have. Whether that “something” was information from a classified briefing or rumormongering by some government hack won’t be known for a long time.

These kind of dubious remarks have fueled the impression by some the terrorist threat is at best overblown or at worst, an nefarious plot by the Bush Administration to curtail civil liberties.

However, it seems probable that at least a dozen or more attacks have been thwarted in Europe:

Since 11 September 2001, at least 15 major terrorist attacks have been prevented in Europe, according to a Norwegian research institute.

In an interview with Radio Netherlands, a spokesman for the institute claims that all these attacks would have caused many casualties had they not been foiled.

And then there was the very real, very scary planned chemical attack in Jordan that was foiled at the last moment:

Officials close to the investigation told The Associated Press that several terror suspects arrested in Jordan last month have confessed the plots were hatched by Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi (search), thought to be a close associate of Al Qaeda boss Usama bin Laden.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the terrorist cell was planning to attack Jordan’s secret service — the General Intelligence Department — with a chemical bomb that would have killed as many as 20,000 people and caused large-scale destruction within a half-mile radius

So the war goes on. A silent, secret war with the highest possible stakes imaginable. It seems very possible that the sharing of intelligence by the Indonesian government with their American counterparts may have saved American lives today. The Bush Administration, as usual, doesn’t receive enough credit for this achievement in the War on Terror; intelligence swapping with dozens of countries around the world. But this may be the most important aspect in the ongoing battle with Islamic extremists.

And the hell of it is, we’ll never know of their successes. Only their failures.

Cross Posted at Blogger New Network