Right Wing Nut House

It is an unseemly thing to be debating how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion and occupation by US troops. I’m absolutely sure that most opponents of the war feel that way. They would, I’m sure, wish that we would all just sit back and accept the politically motivated study released today that purports to show 600,000 more Iraqis have died since 2003 than would have if we hadn’t invaded:

A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.

The figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, a number that is quadruple the one for July given by Iraqi government hospitals and the morgue in Baghdad and published last month in a United Nations report in Iraq. That month was the highest for Iraqi civilian deaths since the American invasion.

But it is an estimate and not a precise count, and researchers acknowledged a margin of error that ranged from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.

First of all, the Times makes a common mistake by lumping civilians, insurgents, and Iraqi Police and Army units all together and simply referring to them as “civilians.” In fact, the study makes absolutely no effort to differentiate between civilians and insurgents, Police and army. All the researchers asked were the number of dead over the last 3 years.

But why is the study politically motivated?

This is the same crew whose 2004 study showing 100,000 Iraqi dead was thoroughly debunked by a wide variety of experts from both sides of the debate.

Fred Kaplan of Slate on the 2004 study:

“Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I’ll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn’t an estimate. It’s a dart board.

Imagine reading a poll reporting that George W. Bush will win somewhere between 4 percent and 96 percent of the votes in this Tuesday’s election. You would say that this is a useless poll and that something must have gone terribly wrong with the sampling. The same is true of the Lancet article: It’s a useless study; something went terribly wrong with the sampling.”

As you can see from the above New York Times excerpt, these purveyors of wildly exaggerated mortality have tried the same technique this time around as well: they have “a margin of error that ranged from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.”

What’s more, this excerpt from the original NY Times article of October 29, 2004 could have been pasted into their article today:

“Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the election.”

Funny how these studies seem to show up around election day, eh? Color me suspicious, but if the study had come out 3 weeks after the election, I would be more sanguine about the author’s motives.

The Washington Post tries to put the best face on the study by quoting non-experts who seem satisfied with the results but curiously, all seem to be unanimously against the US occupation. But putting a ball gown on a sow still gives you a pig all dressed up with nowhere to go:

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method “tried and true,” and added that “this is the best estimate of mortality we have.”

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, “We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy” of the survey.

“I expect that people will be surprised by these figures,” she said. “I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq.”

Ms. Whitson’s take is interesting. There is “no reason to question the findings” of a study using, despite what Mr. Waldman says, questionable methodology 3 weeks before an election. She actually wishes critics would just sit back and shut up because - and here she inadvertently debunks the study herself - “there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq.”

At least give the Times credit for including some cautionary voices in its article:

Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, said interviewing urban dwellers chosen at random was “the best of what you can expect in a war zone.”

But he said the number of deaths in the families interviewed — 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion — was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country.

Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.”

In other words, the researchers were able to discover and confirm 547 dead in the post invasion period by interviewing a little more than 1800 families. And from that sample, they extrapolate 600,000 dead.

What’s wrong with that picture?

There are other sources for counting Iraqi dead. The well respected Iraq Body Count, run by academics opposed to the war, lists nearly 49,000 civilian dead since the invasion. Their methodology is sound and their numbers are based on actual reports from morgues, the media, and the military. Their number of confirmed dead is still less than half the number estimated in the 2004 Lancet study.

Someone is wildly off base here. Could it be the group that says that the US military has killed 180,000 Iraqis as a direct result of military actions?

Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and other explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said.

The fact that those three percentages totalled up equal 101% isn’t as ridiculous as 31% of deaths were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes. And here we get to the number one critique of this study and why it so totally useless:

Again, the study makes absolutely no effort to differentiate between innocent civilians and Iraqis trying to kill our troops. Nor does it differentiate between civilian deaths and the deaths in the Iraqi police and armed forces.

In addition, the study includes deaths that the researchers have arbitrarily determined were caused by the invasion but not caused by violence. If they are using the same criteria as the 2004 study, some of these causes of death include:

* Malnourishment due to bad economic conditions as a result of the invasion.

* Illness due to degraded health care infrastructure.

* Deaths due to domestic violence.

* Deaths due to criminal activity unrelated to the insurgency.

* And “… civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.”

Of course, the political problem engendered by this pseudo-scientific hit piece is that the left will use this figure without any caveats and state flatly in their critiques of the war that 600,000 civilians have died as a result of our invasion. And by the time the study is once again debunked by those who know a helluva lot more about statistics and such than I, the lie will have taken hold and the myth will have been set in stone.

And the American people are treated to one more October surprise before casting their vote on November 7.

One can imagine the almost unrestrained glee being exhibited at the editorial meetings of the WaPo, the Times, and other more liberal newspapers as the various in-house organs for the Democratic party gear up for the final push that will guarantee victory for their clients in November.

The Republicans in the meantime, celebrating Christmas early by bearing gifts for their foes of scandal and stupidity, careen toward a disaster of mid-epic proportions:

Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley.

Democrats need to pick up 15 seats in the election to take back control of the House after more than a decade of GOP leadership. Two weeks of virtually nonstop controversy over President Bush’s war policy and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s handling of the page scandal have forced party leaders to recalculate their vulnerability and placed a growing number of Republican incumbents and open seats at much greater risk.

GOP officials are urging lawmakers to focus exclusively on local issues and leave it to party leaders to mitigate the Foley controversy by accusing Democrats of trying to politicize it. At the same time, the White House plans to amplify national security issues, especially the threat of terrorism, after North Korea’s reported nuclear test, in hopes of shifting the debate away from casualties and controversy during the final month of the campaign. These efforts are aimed largely at prodding disaffected conservatives to vote for GOP candidates despite their unease.

Even 30 seats wouldn’t be a cataclysmic loss. Give the GOP a chance to pick up one or two seats themselves and the Dems would settle for a majority in the House of a dozen or so. And most of those will be in GOP leaning districts making those freshmen congressmen ripe pickings for 2008.

The only problem is that if the worst case number is 30 seats today, what will it be in a month? I’ll go with political prognosticator Charlie Cook who said a while back that if second tier GOP targets are in play - Republicans who won with 57% of the vote or less in the last off year election - then the number of vulnerable congressmen could reach into the 70’s. Needless to say, a loss of 50-70 seats would pretty much indicate a complete repudiation of the Republican party and a probable decade long slog for the GOP back to the top.

But even a blowout like the one scenarioed above could be squandered by a Democratic leadership and, more importantly, a net community absolutely ravenous for Republican skin and scalp. And while I hope they do go after the corruption, the cronyism, the political favoritism, and the who venial mess on the Hill, the way they do it will determine whether or not the American people will turn on them in disgust and put a severely chastened Republican party back on top in 2008.

Blowback from the culture of investigation on Clinton the late 1990’s almost cost the GOP in ‘98 and 2000 the gains they made in 1994. And the Special Prosecutor binge that Republicans went on got to be expensive, tiresome, and an easy political mark for the Democrats to charge the GOP with frivolity.

Special Prosecutors are one thing. John Conyers armed with every conspiracy theory this side of Area 51 is something totally different.

While there is little doubt that Democrats will seek to impeach the President, having the Congressman from Michigan (who claims to have already conducted his own “investigation” and found Bush guilty) trot out the “Bush lied, people died” battle cry may satisfy the rabid netsharks who seek the feeding frenzy a grand old Bush bashing party that would publicize most of their more outrageously ignorant and exaggerated charges. But it won’t sway any Republicans whatsoever. This would doom impeachment to the same kind of partisan show that the Clinton extravaganza ended up being.

A word of advice to my friends on the left; settle for the truth. In many investigations, that will probably be bad enough to shame the Administration but fall short of impeachable actions. To cheer on the Conyers wing of the party whose conspiratorial mind set will embarrass the Democrats could end up biting the Democrats in the behind in 2008.

I plan on watching the whole thing - the whole bloody mess - with one eye on history and another on 2008. And since there is little doubt that the netnuts will claim full credit for the Democratic victory and be the driving force behind the whole investigatory side show, I have little doubt that Democrats will give GOP and independent voters ample reason to kick the kooks out of office in 2008.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

More fallout from North Korean nuke test this morning. We’ll also look at a different kind of fallout - political fallout from the Foley mess.

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If we’ve heard that saying once over the last century, we’ve heard it a million times.

As diplomatic manoeuvrings failed miserably in the summer of 1914 to prevent the cataclysm of World War I, exhausted negotiators were at a loss to figure out what happened. Why did the old diplomatic verities that had worked so well for more than a century fail in this instance to prevent a general European war?

The short answer is that most of the parties wanted war. Or refused to take advantage of any “out” that was offered. This was due to the suicidal interlocking alliance system that assured smaller, weaker states dictated whether the great powers went to war or not.

Germany was at the mercy of Franz Joseph’s Austria-Hungarian Empire whose ultimatum to Serbia following the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination automatically dragged the Czar and Russia into any potential conflict. This made French participation inevitable as well as Britain’s forced march to disaster. Talking, it appears, was useless.

The war so horrified civilized people everywhere that new diplomatic paradigms were invented to deal with conflicts. International organizations were constituted in order to give belligerents a forum to air their grievances. A blizzard of treaties were agreed to outlawing war itself, placing limits on naval tonnage, establishing uniform methods of dealing with POW’s, chemical weapons, and a host of other war related issues.

A fat lot of good it all did. Almost exactly 20 years after the Versailles Treaty was signed ending the first World War, Adolph Hitler deliberately launched the second.

But Hitler’s actions prior to the war were unique in history. He used diplomacy not for the purposes of conflict resolution, but to legitimize his power grabs. Skillfully blending a masterful propaganda campaign with an in your face negotiating style, Hitler cowed both the British and French into accepting his vision of “A Greater Germany” that included a re militarization of the Rhineland, Aunchluss with Austria, the absorption of the Sudetenland into the Reich, and the final destruction of the Czech rump state as poor President Emil Hacha was verbally abused into handing what was left of his country over to the Nazis.

And yet, even as evidence of Hitler’s use of diplomacy as another kind of warfare piled up before their eyes, both Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier convinced themselves that as long as they were talking, Hitler wouldn’t go to war. This use of negotiations not to solve problems but simply to carry on with the diplomatic niceties - negotiations for the sake of negotiating - led directly to World War II. Thanks to extensive records captured after the war, we know now that Hitler always intended to go to war with France and England and nothing those two nations did would have stopped him. But would the Allies have discovered this if they had not been so in love with the diplomatic process? If, for instance, a more hard eyed approach to dealing with Germany exposed Hitler for the deal breaker that he turned out to be, could France and Britain have been forced to act militarily before Hitler was ready?

This has been bothering me for months as the Israel-Palestinian war erupted and the Iranian/North Korean problems moved center stage. The fact of the matter is, I have zero confidence that negotiations with any of those parties will serve any other purpose than advancing their own plans for evil. Negotiations have been nearly continuous between Israel and the Palestinians for nearly 60 years and one must look realistically at what those talks have achieved. Is Israel safer? Do the Palestinians have a homeland? How much real progress has been made? Diplomats point to concessions made by Israel that have ceded land and sovereignty to the Palestinians. But has this made Israel safer, more secure?

Does anyone save Hosni Mubarak in Egypt view the Israelis with anything but hate and loathing? A similar question could be asked of the Jordanians or any other Arab state. Despots all whose hold on power is dependent on the barrel of a gun could be overthrown tomorrow. And 60 years of “negotiating” would be seen for the utterly futile exercise it truly is.

The Palestinians have no interest in living peacefully with a Jewish state. They wish that state gone. Through 60 years of negotiating, they have refused to recognize even the reality of that state’s existence. But somehow, “negotiations” are the end all and be all of statecraft and the proprieties must be observed.

I find similar myopia when it comes to Iran and North Korea. Here’s former Carter National Security Advisor who sums up the striped pants position perfectly:

Why won’t the Bush administration talk bilaterally and substantively with NK, as the Brits (and eventually the US) did with Libya? Because the Bush administration sees diplomacy as something to be engaged in with another country as a reward for that country’s good behavior. They seem not to see diplomacy as a tool to be used with antagonistic countries or parties, that might bring about an improvement in the behaviour of such entities, and a resolution to the issues that trouble us. Thus we do not talk to Iran, Syria, Hizballah or North Korea. We only talk to our friends — a huge mistake.

Talking solely for the reason that this is the way it’s always been done and doing or trying anything differently is crazy seems to be the position of our foreign policy elites. You can’t really blame them. It was how they were trained. The diplomatic dance is successful when both parties are rational and both parties see an advantage in reaching an agreement. Civil wars in Africa especially have lent themselves to negotiated settlement for this reason.

What advantage would accrue to Iran in reaching an agreement? I mean a real agreement that totally dismantled their nuclear program under strict and intrusive inspections. More importantly, how could we be sure that they would adhere to the agreement in the first place? Diplomats like to talk about “confidence building measures” and other intermediate steps before reaching an accord with an adversary. But what do you do when one party to the negotiations is not interested in settlement but rather in using the talks as a way to delay sanctions, or military action, or world condemnation, or any other fallout that would occur if and when the negotiations fail?

This is the great conundrum facing the Bush Administration with Iran. North Korea proved that they couldn’t be trusted as the paper mache “Agreed Framework” turned out to be nothing more than a way to put American policy makers to sleep while Kim continued his enrichment activities. When the Bush Administration called the North Koreans on their cheating, they unilaterally abandoned the agreement and brought their activities into the open. The six power talks, where it was believed China and Russia could convince Kim to stop his mad rush for the bomb, proved in the end to be useless. One wonders if China, who supplies the North Koreans with 90% of their fuel oil couldn’t dissuade Kim how the United States in bi-lateral talks could have done any better (without giving Kim another huge bribe as the Clinton Administration did with the Agreed Framework).

In a very roundabout way I am questioning this paradigm that posits the notion that negotiations - even if they won’t accomplish anything - are always preferable to the alternatives (not necessarily military). If only one side in the negotiations is seeking agreement while the other side wishes to use the talks to achieve the goals that the negotiations are trying to forestall, isn’t it common sense to ask why bother?

The old verities and certainties did not work on North Korea. They are not working with the Palestinians. And it is an open question whether they will work with Iran. One could legitimately ask then that if we don’t have negotiations, don’t we de facto have a state of war?

Not necessarily. There are still measures short of war that could be undertaken to dissuade an adversary from engaging in activities that are clearly unacceptable to the world at large. Sanctions and other measures that isolate an aggressive nation could - if they are broad enough and sting enough, threatening the stability and survival of the regime - accomplish far more than any negotiations ever could.

Unfortunately, that just wouldn’t be possible. Diplomats live to negotiate. And negotiating simply for the sake of talking would appear to be the preference of a world community who one day will wake up and realize that all of the talk expended over Iran and North Korea was as worthless as the rubble that will be left behind when one of their cities lies in ruins.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

No Foley today. We’ll have wall to wall coverage and analysis of the North Korean nuclear test including some thoughts on how the Iranians and other potential nuke powers are watching developments.

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The apparently successful North Korean nuclear test - long expected but still a shock to the world’s nervous system - signals a change on the strategic threat board at the Pentagon the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Soviet Union acquired the bomb in 1949.

It isn’t just that North Korea is unpredictable, bellicose, and led by what some observers believe to be a mentally unstable leader in Kim Jong Il. If the problem was confined to North Korean nuclear capabilities, the situation would be troublesome but not dire. What has most of the world’s leaders worried this morning is that the North Korean nuclear demonstration will initiate a chain of events in other countries that could lead to a nuclear arms race involving Japan and South Korea as well.

The only other option is for the United States to extend its nuclear umbrella to cover both countries by clearly annunciating a policy of nuclear retaliation for any attack by North Korea on their neighbors. There is a possibility that the Japanese would reluctantly accept such a guarantee and forgo building the bomb. Pacifism is still deeply rooted in Japanese politics and the constitutional changes necessary for Tokyo to build up its defensive force into a nuclear power would be difficult to enact. Nevertheless, Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has already indicated a willingness to alter the nature of the armed forces, making them more robust and able to respond and participate in international military efforts. It is also thought that Japan has the ability to construct a nuclear weapon in approximately 6 months using its homegrown uranium enrichment industry.

South Korea would probably politely refuse such protection from the United States, demonstrating in the past a preference for not angering the North Koreans by getting too close to Washington. Seoul’s own nuclear efforts came to light in 2004 when they were “outed” by the IAEA who discovered that the South’s nuclear efforts stretched back all the way to 1982. However, given the minuscule amount of resources dedicated to South Korea’s program to date, most experts believe that they would be at least 3 years away from being able to build their own nuclear device.

Japan also has to consider the reaction of China to any attempt to construct a nuclear arsenal. The Chinese have very long memories about World War II and the brutal occupation of much of the country by the Japanese military. Beijing is extraordinarily sensitive about any signs that militarism is resurgent in Japan, going so far as to protest the visit by Abe to a shrine that honors Japanese war dead, including war criminals. You can bet if Tokyo decides to build nuclear weapons that the Chinese will feel that they have little choice but to cool relations with Japan and build up their own nuclear arsenal as fast as they can.

In fact, the nuclear test by the North Koreans has been a bitter blow to Chinese prestige. Both China and Russia have demonstrated extreme reluctance in the past to initiate sanctions against the North Koreans, preferring enticements in trade and aid to some of the more draconian measures advocated by the United States. In that respect, the Chinese have given the North Koreans billions in direct aid over the last few years, supplying them with almost all of their refined oil products as well as giving them massive amounts of food aid to keep millions of rural North Koreans from starving to death.

The nuclear test by the North Koreans has been an embarrassment to China and has now caused the so-called “Six Party Talks” to collapse. This may have been part of Kim’s plan in conducting the test because the North Koreans have stressed repeatedly that they would prefer to deal with the United States directly in bi-lateral talks. The reasons are quite simple; they feel they can get more diplomatic goodies from the US in direct negotiations than they could in talks involving the South, Japan, Russian and China.

For our part, the Bush Administration believed that only China and to some extent Russia had the necessary clout to make the North Koreans cease their nuclear efforts. We also felt freezing South Korea out of any bi-lateral arrangements with the North would be detrimental to our relationship with Seoul.

All of this is moot now as the world community is forced to deal with another nuclear power - the most problematic in history. You can bet that the mullahs in Iran are watching how the world handles this crisis very closely. They have gambled that the UN will bicker and argue a bit and then impose some kind of sanctions on North Korea that are either so watered down as to be useless or easily circumvented by those wishing to do business with the North anyway.

Another interested party in watching world reaction to the news of North Korea’s nuclear test are the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan. A little more than a year from now, they could very well be in power in Islamabad - if elections are held as scheduled next December. How will the world community react to a government openly sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and one which possesses up to 60 nuclear weapons of their own?

There are some nightmares best left unspoken and unimagined. The consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.

UPDATE

All I can say about the coverage at Michelle Malkin’s blog is “Wow.” Very comprehensive for such a short period of time elapsing.

How much trouble are Republicans in with the voters?

At the moment, it appears that it may be more efficacious for some Republicans to change their party affiliation to “Independent Wiccan.” At least that way they could probably get the pagan vote. And they may even be able to siphon away some votes from the hedonists, although it’s a tough sell what with the Hollywood crowd overwhelmingly Democratic.

When Tom Reynolds, the Chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee trails in his own race for re-election by 15 points a month before election day, you can take that as a sign from heaven that there will probably be a lot of new faces sitting in the House on January 6, 2007 - the day the new Congress will convene for the first time.

And very few of those new faces will be Republican.

Political analyst and polling guru Stuart Rothenberg (a Democrat but a respected professional) believes the dam has already broken and a Democratic tidal wave on election day is almost a virtual certainty:

The national atmospherics don’t merely favor Democrats; they set the stage for a blowout of cosmic proportions next month.

No, that’s not a prediction, since Republicans still have a month to “localize” enough races to hold onto one or both chambers of Congress. But you don’t have to be Teddy White or V.O. Key to know that the GOP is now flirting with disaster.

Let’s forget all of the niceties and diplomatic language and cut to the obvious truth: From the White House to Capitol Hill, Republicans look inept. And that assertion is based on what Republicans are saying. Democratic rhetoric is much harsher and, therefore, easier to dismiss as partisan claptrap.

[snip]

You can be sure that the Foley mess will percolate for a while, as Democrats and journalists ask House Republicans what they knew and when they knew it. Instead of being able to focus on their accomplishments in office or their challengers’ warts, Republican House Members running for re-election will have to spend too much of their time answering questions about the scandal.

Indeed, this WaPo piece highlighting the problems of long time Congressman Clay Shaw from Florida seems to confirm Rothenberg’s analysis while pointing up the potential difficulties for even safe Republicans:

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) was trying to talk about security Friday at bustling Port Everglades, but with planes roaring overhead and containers slamming onto trucks, nobody could hear him.

That’s a common problem for Shaw and Republican candidates around the country these days — trying urgently 30 days before Election Day to frame a winning message but finding their efforts drowned out by the furor over former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.).

“It’s sucking all the air out of the room,” Shaw said in an interview after his news conference at the port. “It’s a tough time; there’s just total saturation right now.”

Back in Washington, Republican strategists acknowledge privately that, even under their best-case scenario, Foley’s sexually charged messages and allegations that House leaders were too passive in responding to them will remain an all-consuming distraction for GOP.

The constant drip, drip, drip of revelations, charges, counter charges, and thundering denunciations from Democrats (who seem more interested in reading the private messages of a pervert than they do in listening to the phone calls of people who want to kill us) are political stilettos thrust into heart of the GOP, disgusting decent people everywhere from both parties not only for their content but for the cavalier attitude of Hastert, Reynolds, et al to Foley’s cyberstalking. With each new revelation, people are reminded that Foley could have - should have been stopped. Any kind of investigation would have revealed the raunchy IM’s and perhaps even Foley’s contact with pages after they left the program.

I predicted here that a page would come forward by Friday acknowledging that he had sex with the Congressman. I was off by less than 48 hours:

A former House page says he had sex with then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) after receiving explicit e-mails in which the congressman described assessing the sexual orientation and physical attributes of underage pages but waiting until later to make direct advances.

The former page, who agreed to discuss his relationship with Foley with the Los Angeles Times on the condition that he not be identified, said his electronic correspondence with Foley began after he finished the respected Capitol Hill page program for high school juniors. His sexual encounter was in the fall of 2000, he said. At the time, he was 21 and a graduate of a rural Northeastern college.

I don’t think there is any doubt that if proper procedures had been followed, Foley would have been discovered long ago as a member who was using the page program as a sexual bullpen, sizing up potential lovers (online or in person) while they were still teenagers and then soliciting sex after their graduation.

The question really isn’t whether his behavior was illegal in the strictest sense of the word. Despicable conduct knows no boundaries of legality when it is practiced against children of 17, 18, or 19 years old. And some conservative bloggers seem to think that it is possible since no law was broken, the entire scandal is a trumped up effort by Democrats to elicit outrage at Republicans for their actions in the matter.

I have no doubt that much of this scandal has been orchestrated by Democrats to gain maximum political advantage. I think one would have to be brain dead to think otherwise. But Foley and his enablers (consciously or unconsciously ignoring the signs of trouble and warning bells for years) don’t need Democrats to make themselves look negligent or worse, like a bunch of calculating, back room politicos more concerned with the electoral impact of Foley’s misdeeds than in protecting the children whose safety had been entrusted to them by their parents.

Foley was a bomb waiting to go off. Whether some Democratic operatives nudged the scandal along by feeding the media is really not the point, although I find it fascinating in a historical sense to trace the origins of the information to expose the creeps who apparently wish to out gay Republicans regardless of whether or not they wish to have their sexual orientation made public. These low lifes are the hypocrites not the gay Republicans. To browbeat the GOP for supporting a President whose anti-terrorist measures they believe violate American’s privacy while looking on with satisfaction and cheering as the most personal, private details of a person’s life are plastered all over some bottom feeder’s website is where the real hypocrisy in this whole scandal resides.

As it now seems likely that the GOP will be given the boot by voters on election day, America will turn toward the Democrats looking for leadership on budget issues, entitlements, the War on Terror, and other vital issues facing the country.

It says volumes that the American people will not find any new ideas or solutions from Democrats - only the promise that they will “drain the swamp.”

Given the Foley mess and the culpability of the GOP leadership in failing to act on it, that should be more than enough to keep the Democrats busy for a while.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

All was peaches and cream late last month when President Bush sat down with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan as well as efforts by Musharraf to help the United States fight the War on Terror. That is, if you believe the public pronouncements of the three heads of state.

In fact, there were several strained moments between Karzai and Musharraf that illustrate the rising tensions between the two countries. Karzai has complained bitterly about Musharraf’s lack of action in closing off the border to Taliban incursions into Afghanistan while Musharraf accuses Karzai of not doing enough to defeat the Taliban who have already established a toehold in the southern part of the country.

All three men have tried to put the best face on what is rapidly becoming a crisis situation. Indeed, President Bush had this to say about Presidents Musharraf and Karzai in his remarks at the dinner:

“These two men are personal friends of mine,” Bush said, with Karzai and Musharraf standing by his side, not looking at each other. “They are strong leaders who have a understanding of the world in which we live. They understand that the forces of moderation are being challenged by extremists and radicals.”

What was left unsaid is that regardless of how well Musharraf understands the situation, he is rapidly becoming powerless to do anything about it - a result of internal Pakistani politics, external pressure by the United States, and the perilous state of his own hold on power in a country sliding toward religious extremism and potential rebellion.

It is not possible to overstate the danger Musharraf and by extension, the United States is in as a result of several recent developments in Pakistan that have backed Musharraf into a corner where all he can really do is play for time. With his own life in constant danger from half a dozen different sources and with his need to satisfy both domestic factions as well as the United States, his chief economic benefactor, Musharraf has been attempting to juggle an anti-terrorist and pro-terrorist policy that has only served to please no one and make his own situation dicey indeed.

Simply put, Musharraf has promised too much to both the United States and the Taliban and is unable to satisfy either side. Throw in the growing power of religious political parties and the constant interference and independence exercised by the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) as well as a brewing crisis in Baluchistan where separatists have resumed their 50 year old rebellion against the central government and one can see where Musharraf is being overwhelmed by events and circumstances.

On top of all this, his power base in the Army must be tended while fending off calls for him to step down next year in time for elections. Those elections (if they are held) could legitimize religious extremists in sympathy to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The people of Pakistan are extremely angry at Musharraf for his cozying up to Washington and they may, if given the opportunity, raise up anti-Western leaders who would make Pakistan a Taliban ally rather than a country on the front line in the War on Terror.

To deal with all of this, Musharraf has chosen to give in to pressures placed on him by external forces while trying to keep some of the internal factions from uniting against him. His policies - sometimes wildly contradictory - reflect the realities of a nation being buffeted by militant extremism and a desire among its intelligentsia for modernity. Pakistan has been an “on again, off again” democracy in its turbulent history with democratic forces usually thwarted by a strong military who seize power from time to time when the army feels itself threatened by civilian control.

Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999 when then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attempted to remove him from the position of Chief of Staff. Refusing to leave, the army backed Musharraf and he took over in a bloodless revolution, later making alliances with some of the larger religious parties in Parliament to push through a measure naming him President.

These alliances with the religious parties have proven to be problematic. When the United States requested that he close some of the more radical Islamic schools or Madrasses where anti-western hate is regularly preached, Musharraf tried to oblige but was ultimately blocked by those same religious parties who supported him in Parliament. Now those Madrasses are being used by the Taliban to radicalize their fighters before sending them off to fight in Afghanistan.

As with so many other promises he has made to the United States, Musharraf says he has already done what we have requested or is trying his best. The fact is, much of what Musharraf claims as cooperation with the US would be described otherwise by all except those with a stake in pretending things are going smoothly in our relations with Pakistan; namely, our own State Department and the Administration who seem to walk on eggshells when it comes to criticizing anything Musharraf has done.

And what he has done recently has been a shocking example of his weakness in the face of threats to Pakistan’s independence. His recent deal with what Washington and Musharraf describes as “northern tribal elders” but who are in actuality Taliban leaders and their al-Qaeda allies in North Waziristan virtually assures the Taliban and the terrorists a safe haven where they can live, train, and plan for attacks on Afghanistan which is just across the border

While Mushrraf points out that the Taliban promise in the agreement not to carry out any cross border raids into Afghanistan, there are plenty of indications that they have already violated that part of the agreement:

Taliban attacks along Afghanistan’s southeastern border have more than doubled in the three weeks since a controversial deal between Pakistan and pro-Taliban militants, the US military said yesterday.

Pakistan’s military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, had promised the agreement with militants in North Waziristan would help to bring peace to Afghanistan. But early indications suggest the pact is having the opposite effect, creating a safe haven for the Taliban to regroup and launch fresh cross-border offensives against western and Afghan troops.

A US military spokesman, Colonel John Paradis, said US soldiers had reported a “twofold, in some cases threefold” increase in attacks along the border since the deal was signed on September 5, “especially in the south-east areas across from North Waziristan”.

For Musharraf’s part, he has also reneged on the deal by not releasing several hundred captured al-Qaeda members as he agreed to do. This is in response to enormous pressure from the CIA who point out that several high level al-Qaeda leaders are among those that would have been released (and still may be). The Taliban responded in typical brutal fashion; they launched a rocket that landed within yards of the Presidential palace and were evidently planning on attacking the Pakistani Parliament before two missiles were discovered in the vicinity. Asia Times reports that the “incidents were a clear show of disapproval in Waziristan over Musharraf’s basking in ‘Washington’s charm’, and that he had not implemented a key aspect of the peace accord - the release of al-Qaeda suspects - despite numerous promises.”

Thus, a demonstration of the dangers - both personal and militarily - of trying to play both ends against the middle.

But it is in Baluchistan where the Taliban now threatens both the permanence of the Pakistani state and the government of Afghanistan. And part of the problem has been one of Musharraf’s own making when he had the army assassinate Nawab Akbar Bugti, a respected tribal elder and former governor of Baluchistan.

That assassination set off waves of violence directed against Pakistani infrastructure including a vital natural gas pipleine that supplies badly needed foreign currency for the government. And it is here that the confluence of an incipient rebellion, the Taliban, and rogue elements in the ISI have all combined to endanger the government’s hold on the province as well as cause huge problems for NATO troops in Afghanistan directly across the border.

The recently concluded “Operation Medusa” in the southern Panjwai district largely involving British and Canadian troops, caused the almost unprecedented call by NATO commanders for the alliance to deal with the political situation in Pakistan which allowed the Taliban to cross the border from Baluchistan with impunity:

The cushion Pakistan is providing the Taliban is undermining the operation in Afghanistan, where 31,000 Nato troops are now based. The Canadians were most involved in Operation Medusa, two weeks of heavy fighting in a lush vineyard region, defeating 1,500 well entrenched Taliban, who had planned to attack Kandahar city, the capital of the south.

Nato officials now say they killed 1,100 Taliban fighters, not the 500 originally claimed. Hundreds of Taliban reinforcements in pick-up trucks who crossed over from Quetta – waved on by Pakistani border guards – were destroyed by Nato air and artillery strikes.

Nato captured 160 Taliban, many of them Pakistanis who described in detail the ISI’s support to the Taliban.

Nato is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Balochistan, from ISI- run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban’s new weapons and meeting places of the shura, or leadership council, in Quetta, which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group’s leader since its creation a dozen years ago.

Incredibly, NATO discovered two Taliban training camps over the border near Quetta while the terrorists are using hundreds of Madrasses to fire up their fighters before sending them over the border. Many of those Madrasses are run by Jamiat-e-Ullema Islam, the main Baluchi political party who helped organize the Taliban back in the 1990’s.

NATO commanders are asking that Bush and Blair confront Musharraf over this blatant support for the Taliban by the ISI but to no avail. Besides, it is probable that Musharraf is powerless to do anything about it even if he wanted to. There are few Pakistani troops in that area by both agreement with the tribes and tradition. The fiercely independent Baluchis have never overtly acknowledged being part of Pakistan so it unclear what Pakistan could do to alter the situation.

So Musharraf is forced to let the situation work itself out. He is currently negotiating with the Baluchis so it is possible we may see some kind of a deal similar to the fig leaf agreement he signed with the tribes in North Waziristan - something that satisfies NATO with regard to atmospherics but falls short when it comes to implementation.

Beset as he is on all sides, is there anything to be done with Musharraf? Outside of supporting him as much as we can, there really is nothing to be done. Replacing him is out of the question because the chances of someone coming to power who would be much less friendly to the United States and more accommodating to the Taliban are too great. And the likelihood of elections throwing up even more radical extremists is very high.

In this way, Musharraf is almost like an American tar baby. We’re stuck with him for as long as he can survive.

How long that will be depends on Musharraf’s knack for avoiding the assassins blade and his complex political manoeuvrings. Because like it or not, Musharraf is still the best ally we have in the War on Terror. And he will remain so as long as he can continue to juggle the clashing interests and competing factions that threaten to bring him down at any time.

UPDATE

Bill Roggio covers much of the same ground I do above and adds the speculation (via the SAAG) that perhaps the attempts on Musharraf’s life were by Balochi rebels. Bill himself dismisses the speculation, pointing out that being able to get so close to Musharraf’s compound implicates the army or the ISI.

Of course, NATO was complaining about ISI assistance to the Taliban in Balochistan so perhaps the possibility of Balochi involvement should not be overlooked.

In a rather plaintive post, Glenn Reynolds bemoans the loss of “momentum” in the Iraq War , wishing to “take the war to our enemies.” rather than “sitting on our bayonets.” He believes that the way to recapture the advantage is by going after the foreign support given the insurgency and that perhaps it is time to “revive the pre-emptive war” strategy and take the war to Iran and Syria.

I had to blink and shake my head after reading what Mr. Reynolds wrote. Was he perhaps stuck in some kind of time warp, believing that it is 2004? The idea that any kind of momentum is possible to recapture - or that we ever had it in the first place - is an illusion. And how we can win in Iraq by widening the war to include the two strongest regional powers arrayed against us is, well, mind boggling.

I have become disenchanted of late with Greg Djerjian and his spiteful, hateful, personal attacks on Mr. Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, Richard Fernandez, and others bloggers and commenters (Mark Steyn being a particular foil for Mr. Djerjian’s over-the-top barbs and rifled bric-a-brats). His disdain for the President and his advisors - unbalanced in my opinion - makes him a bore to read at times.

However Djerjian also offers clarity on many issues relating to Iraq and the War on Terror. And if there is one thing that he has been harping on for many months that rings true above all others is the crazy idea that taking the war to Iran and Syria is going to help the situation in Iraq.

The fallout from an attack on Iran would be especially suicidal. The Iranian backed militias in Iraq would almost certainly take up arms and challenge the Americans, complicating an already desperate situation enormously. And it would be expected that the Iranians would retaliate against our troops with rocket attacks from their stockpiles of long range missiles. And what of the delicate political dance al-Maliki is currently undertaking in his efforts to reform the police and army whose inaction allows Shia death squads to operate with impunity?

As for Syria, while Bashar Assad imperfectly implements our demands that he close off the border to foreign fighters entering Iraq, an attack will actually make the situation worse as he would be under no obligation to continue even the limited cooperation he has shown up to now.

Perhaps most importantly, we might want to ask what form our momentum establishing attacks would take? Would we initiate ground operations against the Iranian army? The Syrians? What would be the goals of such attacks? To punish? To interdict?

Punishment may make us all feel better but would hardly affect the efforts of either two countries to supply the insurgency in Iraq. As for interdiction of men and supplies, only more troops and vigilance on the borders can have an effect on the steady dribble of arms and terrorists that end up aiding the insurgents. A truck here and a bus there moving through a poorly guarded border crossing or making their way through the vast deserts of Iraq make poor targets for any kind of large scale military action.

As we know now (blessed with 20/20 hindsight), the egregious mistakes and numerous blunders by both civilian and military authorities that have led us to our current perilous position in Iraq were made in the context of false assumptions, wishful thinking, and a lack of understanding of the nature of the enemy. It just seems to me to be the height of stupidity to believe that we can improve what’s happening on the ground in Iraq by attacking Iran and Syria.

Yesterday, I wrote a post on the potential political fallout from the Foley affair. I thought then that the scandal was being orchestrated by Democrats in order to target one group of voters; the conservative evangelical Christan “values voters” who have been such an important part of the Republican coalition for the last 15 years.

According to this Washington Post article, the most recent Pew Research poll on the attitudes of this vital GOP group indicates that this voting bloc may be undergoing a seismic shift as far as its allegiance to Republican candidates:

Even a small shift in the loyalty of conservative Christian voters such as Sunde could spell trouble for the GOP this fall. In 2004, white evangelical or born-again Christians made up a quarter of the electorate, and 78 percent of them voted Republican, according to exit polls. But some pollsters believe that evangelical support for the GOP peaked two years ago and that what has been called the “God gap” in politics is shrinking.

A nationwide poll of 1,500 registered voters released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of white evangelicals are inclined to vote for Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a 21-point drop in support among this critical part of the GOP base.

Even before the Foley scandal, the portion of white evangelicals with a “favorable” impression of the Republican Party had fallen sharply this year, from 63 percent to 54 percent, according to Pew polls.

To say that these are catastrophic numbers for a Republican party fighting for its political dominance in Congress is an understatement. Since it is generally assumed that only the most committed voters from each party will turn out to vote this November, a smaller base of voters quite simply translates into fewer votes. Considering how tight some races are in the heartland where evangelicals (more accurately, “white Christian protestants”) can constitute as much as 40% of a Republican’s vote, the devastating effect of losing a fifth of that number either to the Democrats or, as the Pew study shows, to voter apathy, illuminates clearly how the GOP could be in big, big trouble.

Even those voters who might be considered mainstream protestants - people who attend church once a week - are falling away from the GOP:

Nationally, the Republicans’ once formidable hold on churchgoing voters has begun to slip. Among those who say they attend church more than once a week, the GOP still holds a commanding lead. The main shift is among weekly churchgoers, about a quarter of all voters. Two years ago, they favored the GOP by a double-digit margin. But in the new Pew survey, 44 percent leaned toward Republicans and 43 percent toward Democrats, a statistical dead heat.

The slippage is particularly striking among evangelicals. According to Pew data, the portion of white evangelical Protestants who identify themselves as Republicans rose steadily from 2000 to 2004 but leveled off this year at about half. The percentage who support keeping troops in Iraq has dropped to 55 percent, from 68 percent in early September.

The survey was taken the last 10 days of September and first 4 days of October - not entirely within the time frame of the Foley matter but close enough to give a flavor of how the once reliable Christian GOP voter is viewing it. And, not surprisingly, those voters appear to be very upset with the leadership in the House:

Lynn Sunde, an evangelical Christian, is considering what for her is a radical step. Come November, she may vote for a Democrat for Congress.

Sunde, 35, manages a coffee shop and attends a nondenominational Bible church. “You’re never going to agree with one party on everything, so for me the key has always been the religion issues — abortion, the marriage amendment” to ban same-sex unions, she said.

That means she consistently votes Republican. But, she said, she is starting to worry about the course of the Iraq war, and she finds the Internet messages from then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to teenage boys “pretty sickening.” When she goes into the voting booth this time, she said, “I’m going to think twice. . . . I’m not going to vote party line as much as to vote issues.”

Does this mean that conservative Christan’s are about ready to abandon the Republican party and vote Democrat? Not hardly:

But before Democrats take credit for the shift, they might ponder one of the findings in a recent survey of 2,500 voters by the Center for American Values, a project of the left-leaning People for the American Way Foundation: Republicans have lost more support (14 percentage points) than Democrats have picked up (4 points) among frequent churchgoers.

That rings true to Michael Cromartie, an expert on evangelicals at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think tank. “Erosion for evangelicals doesn’t necessarily lead to Democratic voting. It leads to nonvoting,” he said.

This despite the well publicized effort by Dr. Dean and the DNC to “reach out” to the church going public in order to siphon support away from Republicans.

Apparently, Republicans are perfectly capable of driving voters away from the polls altogether without much help from Dean and Co.

Does all this necessarily lead to a certain Democratic victory in November?

Let’s not forget Karl Rove and what many observers believe is the most sophisticated get out the vote operation in political history. The Rove plan uses huge networks of ordinary citizens to contact voters, identify not only those who support Republicans but more importantly, those who are likely to vote on election day, and then assign something like a guardian angel to that voter to make sure that they go to the polls.

It proved wildly successful in 2004 as the Rovian machine marched 14 million new GOP voters to the polls and offset a determined Democratic effort, the most expensive in that party’s history.

Can he repeat that magic? Is there one more rabbit in the Rovian hat that he can pull out and save the GOP on election day by the sheer brute force contained in the millions of volunteers who will go the extra mile to get their friends and neighbors to the polls?

At this point, it just doesn’t seem probable. The discouragement and disgust felt by many of those volunteers may overcome any enthusiasm they may have felt at one time for Republicans and victory. And failing to enervate their spirits in the face of so many tight races across the country could very well mean that the Democrats will succeed and the GOP will go down to an embarrassing defeat.