Right Wing Nut House

This is shaping up to be quite a Christmas for our thuggish friends in al Qaeda. Thanks to an anonymous donor who told tales out of school to the New York Times while kissing the old whore under the mistletoe, visions of sugar plums (not to mention the bloody, mangled bodies of thousands of infidel dogs) are dancing in their heads. For unless something is done to stop it, every loving detail of how the United States government has been listening in to their conversations with their cells and supporters here in America are about to be plastered all over every front page and top every satellite newscast on the planet.

Don’t believe me? The ACLU has already bought the wrapping paper and is about to send a Christmas card with some FOIA requests:

The requests submitted today seek all records about “the policies, procedures and/or practices of the National Security Agency for gathering information through warrantless electronic surveillance and/or warrantless physical searches in the United States …”…. Information received by the organization will be made public on its Web site.

Words fail me at this point. The generosity of the ACLU to the deadly enemies of the United States is beyond belief. The only possible explanation for wanting to expose “all records about the policies, procedures and/or practices of the National Security Agency” with regards to the NSA intercept program is that the ACLU wishes to make it harder for the government to thwart a terrorist attack.

The reason I say this is because this FOIA request is not necessary if one wishes to take an absolutist position in defense of our Fourth Amendment rights. It’s only purpose would be to sabotage the program. For once al Qaeda knows the details of how we keep track of them, it becomes much easier to develop communications strategies to thwart our attempts to monitor their activities.

If the ACLU is against warrantless searches, it is their duty to protest it in a responsible manner, one that would not harm national security so grievously. And please note there is nothing in the FOIA request that would seek to uncover who the government listened in on with the program. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd? Rather than ask for the names of specific Americans who have been targeted, they instead seek to shut the program down by revealing its operational secrets.

The more I read about the technical aspects of the program - both hints revealed by participants and intelligent speculation by SIGINT veterans - it is becoming apparent that there is much more to this intercept program than meets the eye. Here’s some general information about the procedures NSA employees went through before they could carry out a “warrantless search:”

At a news conference at the White House on Monday, General Hayden also emphasized that the program’s operations had “intense oversight” by the agency’s general counsel and inspector general as well as the Justice Department. He said decisions on targets were made by agency employees and required two people, including a shift supervisor, to sign off on them, recording “what created the operational imperative.”

An intelligence official who was authorized to speak only on the condition of anonymity said, “It’s probably the most scrutinized program at the agency.” The official emphasized that people whose communications were intercepted under the special program had to have a link to Al Qaeda or a related group, even if indirectly. The official also said that only their international communications could be intercepted. Other officials have said, however, that some purely domestic communications have been captured because of the technical difficulties of determining where a phone call or e-mail message originated.

While the left continues to go bonkers over this and compare the NSA program with what Nixon did a couple of salient facts should be pointed out:

* There is not one scintilla of evidence that any political opponents, anti-war groups, media people, or John Conyers Aunt Sue was caught up in this digital dragnet.

* There is not a shred of proof that the NSA deliberately targeted domestic-only calls.

* There is no evidence that Bush was trying to set up a dictatorship (I know…I know. But I had to put that in there because so many loons on the left actually believe that is what the program is about)

* It is more than probable and in fact likely that one or more terrorist attacks on American soil was thwarted as a result of this program. I have as much proof for saying that as critics have that this is the most egregious case of domestic spying in history. Which is to say, I have zero proof but at the same time have a better chance of being right than the lickspittles who are blowing smoke out of their ass about the criminality of the program.

In the meantime, al Qaeda sits, waits, and watches knowing that they’ve been good little terrorists and that Santa won’t forget them as long as they have the ACLU doing their dirty work for them.

Merry Christmas to all - and to all the self-important, arrogant sons of bitches at the ACLU - a goodnight.

UPDATE

Blogbud Jay at Stop the ACLU has THE question of the day - one that reveals the total hypocrisy of a once admired civil rights organization whose leadership has led it down a partisan political path that is destroying it:

Isn’t it ironic that the ACLU wants our government’s secrets released so the enemy can see, yet they tell our enemies they have the right to keep their secrets from our interrigations?

And the hell of it is, the idiots will never be able to enjoy the irony that question implies. They are that clueless.

In an excellent report on the Iraq War last night, ABC’s Nightline correspondent Terry Moran had a fairly balanced and thoughtful take on the state of Iraq on the eve of parliamentary elections this week. The report married up the most recent optimistic Iraq poll numbers with some fascinating man in the street interviews that was so much a cut above the usual network Iraq coverage I felt it worthy to impose on my brother to get me a rush transcript of the show and relay some of the more interesting segments.

What made the report different was the admission up front that network war coverage had been inadequate:

There’s a fascinating poll out today. A poll of Iraqis and the results may surprise you. One thing I learned our our trip to Iraq a couple of weeks ago, it’s not the place Administration officials describe every day from their podiums. Iraq can above all be a complicated place. A place where real people are struggling every day to get by and to build their nation amid terror, occupation, and the wreckage of three decades of tyranny. Much of the media coverage here is one dimensional. Many of our politicians lack all credibility, so listen as we did to the voices of Iraqis themselves.

That results of the recent poll taken by ABC, Time Magazine and other media organs came as something of a shock to those who had become inured to the idea of Iraq as a place where if you stick your head out of the door you’re more than likely to get your nose shot off.:

It was in a tea shop in this village north of Baghdad that we heard something we hadn’t really expected; optimism.

(Questioning patron of tea shop): If today is better than it was last year, why? Why did that happen? What happened?

Because we have elections now. It’s much better, he told me.

And that, it turns out, is how most Iraqis feel. According to the new ABC News poll conducted with Time Magazine and other partners. Get this. 71% of Iraqis say their own lives are going well now. 64% say they expect their lives will improve eve more in the coming year. But how can that be? The bombings. The kidnappings. The beheadings. Isn’t that the reality of Iraq?

Is it any wonder that Senator Lieberman and others who have recently been to Iraq are qualitatively more optimistic than 6 months ago?

There must be something in the air. And listening and watching the Iraqis being interviewed on the segment last night even a blind man could see it; it is hope. Hope born of the recognition that the democratic process is moving forward and cannot be stopped. Listen to this Iraqi doctor who sees the worst of Iraq everyday - bloodstained civilians who are victims of both Zarqawi’s mad suicide bombers and the Sunni insurgency:

(Doctor) We have helped and we think the future for Iraqis will be so good. Now we are, every day, there’s a point from everything. Those civilians still fall down and the blood everywhere on this. I don’t know if that will stop or no. I hope that in the next elections that will be different.

(Reporter) Have you lost hope?

(Doctor) No, not yet.

(Reporter) No? After all you’ve seen?

(Doctor) We have changing to democratic. We have to pay the price. We are paying the price.

As the segment points out, that price is more and more being paid by the Iraqi security forces. On the road to Baquba, the convoy my brother was riding in was attacked by a roadside bomb, killing an Iraqi policeman. Earlier, he interviewed the dead policeman’s Commander who showed him a wall where a handwritten list of the fallen had been placed. There were 41 names on that wall. And that could be one reason why the Iraqi people have so much confidence in their security forces. The poll showed that more than 2/3 have confidence in the police and the military. Not only are the people expressing confidence but I suspect they are grateful that not only so many are willing to try to do a very dangerous job but that their numbers keep growing. The Iraqis are apparently not intimidated that the insurgency has specifically targeted police recruiting stations as well as the police in general.

But there is also trouble with the police force in some areas as the segment points out:

In Anbar, overwhelmingly Sunni - heartland of the insurgency and scene of the fiercest fighting only 1 in 10 said they have confidence in the Iraqi army and only 3 in 10 are confident in the police. They fear the country’s security forces are becoming dominated by Shia militias. In the offices of a Sunni political party we met a man that said he was picked by Iraqi police while walking in his neighborhood. They beat him, burned him, and strung him up by his arms. His crime it seems - he’s a Sunni man out one night and fell victim to a predatory Shia gang operating as a police force.

I posted on this problem with Shia militias here. This is how I described them:

Herein lies the seeds of destruction for the new Iraqi state. Because of the nature of the insurgency and the inability of both American and Iraqi forces to protect the population, dozens of Shia militias have sprung up over the last few years. Some are small adjuncts of tribal and village councils and operate sometimes as death squads, targeting Sunni inhabitants who may or may not support the insurgency. Others like Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army engaged in operations against Americans until soundly defeated last year in Najaf and Sadr City. Al-Sadr has since laid down his arms and several of his followers have joined the new government.

But by far the largest and most problematic militia has been the Badr Brigade (renamed the Badr Organization of Reconstruction and Development ) which controls large areas in southern Iraq and is closely associated with the largest political party, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The militia dominates police and government offices in several southern provinces where they have attempted with varying degrees of success to establish a strict Islamic code of law.

One of these militias may or may not have been responsible for the death of Stephen Vincent, the National Review journalist who was killed in Basra last summer.

And the other worry is the revelation today by a former Iraqi general that there may be as many as a dozen secret prisons run by militias connected to Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a former Badr militiaman with close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. In fact, this article in the Washington Times quotes the general, Muntazar Jasim al-Samarrai, as saying that an Iranian intelligence chief was in charge of interrogations and the insurgent suspects were routinely tortured and killed.

If true, this is extremely worrying for the future of an independent Iraq. It is unclear how much influence the mad mullah’s wield with the SCIRI, the party almost guaranteed to receive the largest plurality of votes in the elections. Their spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is a fiercely independent patriot, a conservative who recognizes that Iraq’s future must be a secular one that embraces all religions and ethnic parties. But some politicians like Jabr may have dual loyalties or could even be working to undermine the new government.

But before the problems with the militias can be solved. Before Iran can be confronted for aiding and abetting the killing of thousands of Iraqis. Before Zarqawi and his Merry Band of Beheaders can be driven from the country and the Sunni insurgency tamped down to a manageable level. Before all this, there must be hope:

All Iraq is struggling to recover from the wounds of decades of war, oppression, and now occupation. One thing you keep coming across, a sense of what is central in that struggle; elections. And in our poll, 76% of Iraqis said they are confident this week’s elections will produce a stable government in Iraq. And nearly everyone we talked to expressed that hope - that these elections will finally set Iraq on course.

I certainly hope the Iraqis are a people blessed with a lot of patience. They’re going to need it.

UPDATE

The Captain links to a New York Times story highlighting Sunni participation in the election and thinks there is a possiblity we’ve “turned the corner” on defeatism at home:

The Sunni participation puts the last of the building blocks in place for the establishment of a consensus democratic republic. The reporting of the Times indicates that the American media might finally start recognizing what will shortly become obvious to all whether they do so or not: that a free Iraq exists, thanks to an administration that steadfastly refused to listen to the Chicken Littles of the opposition and the whiners of the Exempt Media at home. The war may finally have turned the corner in the only place it could be lost — here in America.

What a difference a year makes, eh Mary Mapes?

Just think…a year ago you were a big shot producer at the “Tiffany Network” of CBS. You had gofers at your beck and call. A nice, fat, expense account. A couple of awards under your belt. The fawning admiration of your colleagues. Dan Rather even said hello to you in the CBS cafeteria.

Now, you’re a wreck:

I was extremely battered,” she said in an interview yesterday. “I’d had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup.”

Just goes to show that the more elevated your own opinion of yourself, the farther you fall when you blow it. And Mary, let’s face it; you screwed the pooch big time.

But don’t worry. It appears you are landing on your feet, as your ilk usually does. And what better parachute to hang on to than a chatty, tell-all book in which everyone is accused of being against you, or undermining you, or trying to destroy you. It makes for great copy if not very accurate story telling. But hey! At this point, who’s keeping track?

“I’m a human being; I do things wrong from the first breath I take in the morning,” Mapes said. “I don’t in any way feel I am without responsibility in this. . . . I probably shouldn’t have been as pliable or as malleable as I was” when her bosses were finalizing the story. “This is a huge shortcoming. I didn’t know how to say no. . . . I was trying very hard to please them.”

There, there, little one. You also seem to have trouble saying “no” to partisanship. Remember that call to Kerry campaign mouthpiece Joe Lockhart offering to put serial liar and mentally disturbed Bill Burkett in touch with the Kerry campaign? Of course, that was just in furtherance of the story, right? It had nothing to do with trying to get the opposition party to help you smear the President of the United States in a time of war. After all, you’re just a victim of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

“Truth and Duty” unloads on Rove, the White House senior adviser, calling him “the mastermind of the Republican attack against the story.” Asked about this, Mapes said Rove was “an inspirational figure” for the critics. “I’m not saying I had any proof at all” of his involvement.

I am continually fascinated with the left’s fear of Karl Rove. It reminds me of the way the Union Army looked upon Robert E. Lee during the civil war. Prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, Union Generals were fretting that Lee would slip around their flank as he had on numerous occasions. The usually phlegmatic Ulysses S. Grant exploded upon hearing this saying “Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time.” This is the way the left sees Rove - as some kind of magic man who can not only cast a spell to bewitch the American people but also call upon his minions to do his evil bidding. I wonder if Captain Ed, the Powerline boys, Charles Johnson, and Michelle Malkin - the biggest conservative bloggers - laugh out loud when they read that they’re in Rove’s pocket and can be activated whenever The Evil One feels the need.

It takes a special kind of stupidity to believe that you are right when everyone else on the planet says you’re wrong:

She is disdainful of Moonves, the CBS president who ordered the outside investigation. “He doesn’t know journalism from dirt farming,” Mapes said. In the book, noting that Moonves courted and then married “Early Show” anchor Julie Chen, she writes: “I used to say everything Les knows about journalism had been sexually transmitted. Now I know even that hasn’t taught him much.”

She says Viacom, CBS’s corporate parent, threw her overboard because Chief Executive Sumner Redstone feared regulatory retaliation by the Bush administration.

There’s a clinical term for that kind of fantasy; paranoid delusion. There is not one shred of evidence that the Bush White House has ever even contemplated using the FCC to “intimidate” networks. In order to posit that notion, you’ve got to make it up out of whole cloth; something Mary Mapes is an expert at doing.

She’s also an expert at the put down:

Mapes is dismissive of Marian Carr Knox, the 86-year-old former secretary to Bush’s late squadron commander, who told Rather she believed the memos were fake but the substance of the documents was true. Mapes called her “maddening” and “a quite self-righteous typist.”

Being an expert in “self-righteous,” I can see where Mary Mapes would recognize that personality trait - especially in an 86-year old woman who by all reports knew a helluva lot more about the authenticity of those memos than you did.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why?” Why go after a story that’s 30 years old?

“Bush didn’t keep his promise to the country,” Mapes writes. “He swore he would fly military jets until May 1974 . . . .”

No Mary, he swore to serve the country until May of 1974 , something he did honorably which is more than can be said about you . The last time I looked, the oath taken upon entering military service does not specify anything like “I will faithfully drive a tank” or “I will gladly work as a PR flack” or even “I will command a swift boat for a couple of months and then carry on with traitorous anti-war activities while still in uniform.”

And what about us, your favorite people, the bloggers?

Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the “vicious” bloggers who pounced on the “60 Minutes II” report within hours — and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including The Washington Post, essentially followed.

“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes said. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.” Some of the key bloggers, however, posted criticism under their own names.

Okay, let me get this straight. The “map” supplied by bloggers to newspapers like the Washington Post contained information vetted by thousands of individuals with more expertise than any of the “experts” you retained to authenticate those memos (whose judgment you ignored anyway) and you have the unmitigated gall to say that bloggers were “attacking” you? Could it be because you were standing by a bogus story that you had cooked up for partisan political purposes?

The story of Mary Mapes is classic tragedy. There are two elements that mark the difference between tragedy and melodrama. The first is the main character’s “tragic flaw” which is usually one of the seven deadly sins. In Mapes case, you can take your pick; pride, envy, or anger will do. But it is the second element in tragedy that is the most difficult to achieve for both the playwright and the actor playing the tragic character. And that is the character’s cluelessness regarding why they are suffering this downfall. Look at the great tragic characters in literature and you will see that they go to their deaths without any idea of why their world collapsed around them. In that respect, their sin is always the sin of overweening pride and ambition.

Reaching for the brass ring carries with it the danger that eventually, you’ll fall of the horse. Mape’s fall may have been written in the stars long ago when she ceased being any kind of an impartial journalist and decided to become an advocate. It may have been emotionally satisfying for her to see herself on top of the battlements waving a bloody shirt. But in the end, her belief in her own moral superiority was her achilles heel. How can anyone so good she might have asked herself, be wrong?

The fault, dear Mary, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.

Italian TV station RAI News 24 will broadcast an “expose” tonight of the use of phosphorus shells as a weapon when US forces attacked and took the rebel stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq. From A Kos diarist who didn’t bother to link to any original story in English. Here’s a link to an English language news video via Americablog. And this is a story in The Independent giving the one side of the story that is currently out there:

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: “US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein’s alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.”

The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: “The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons.”

“Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists,…”

You know what? He’s right. There wasn’t a single reporter covering this story. Not one.

Uh huh.

Be that as it may, the government acknowledged using white phosphorus shells for illumination only:

“Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used ‘outlawed’ phosphorus shells in Fallujah,” the USinfo website said. “Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.

“They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.”

A “former American soldier” is quoted as saying:

“I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it’s known as Willy Pete.

That particular quote doesn’t confirm anything except what the military was saying; that they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. Any more proof? The soldier is identified as ex-Marine Jeff Eglehart. Eglehart identifies himself in the video on the RAI 24 website as “former US military.” While he may in fact be everything he says he is, I can’t recall an ex-Marine identifying himself as anything but a Marine - “ex” or otherwise. The pride those people take in belonging to the Corps lasts a lifetime.

That said, the 2 1/2 minute snippet on RAI’s site shows Mr. Eglehart as the only American military eyewitness. There may be others quoted in the full program.

Also in the video are some shocking scenes of dead bodies so be forewarned: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF DEAD BODIES.

Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: “A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.”

Would a biologist be an expert or even know anything about wounds made by white phosphorus shells? I don’t know about you but that struck me as odd. I mean, couldn’t RAI 24 find a military expert who could have confirmed from the pictures whether or not the wounds were caused by battlefield weapons?

There is also night video of the phosphorus shells exploding a couple of hundred feet off the ground and what appears to be some kind of anti-personnel effect as shards of the shell fall by the dozens, burning even after they hit the ground. I can see where some would conclude that these shards were in fact designed to kill people on the ground. But I can also see where low level explosions of these shells would be desirable in an urban setting. The closer to the ground the illumination, the shorter the shadows caused by buildings on the street. This would make sense for night fighting. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that our troops fighting at night should be equipped with night vision goggles. Any illumination from a white phosphorus shell would temporarily blind them.

Many questions and I’m afraid my expertise is very limited when trying to write about the tactical use of 40mm white phosphorus shells.

There is also a charge that the Marines used a napalm-type shell:

The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.

Could a house full of people shooting at you be described as a “military target?”

So far, only lefty bloggers are writing about this with predictable glee. I would hope that some military fellows will post on this today. Watch for updates as the day goes on and I will link to whatever I find.

UPDATE

James Joyner gives some details about the use of WP, linking to the SF Chronicle article:

Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns. Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, “The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted.”

Joyner also has links to information on the legality of WP. It is, in fact, legal but not against civilians. The fact that civilians were hit was a tragedy. But who was the target? Only those predisposed to believe the worst about the military could believe they would “target” civilians. That would be a waste of munitions to begin with not to mention morally wrong.

One thing is clear; the WP was used for more than “illumination.”

John Cole agrees with me I about the anti-personnel nature of the rounds. He also disabuses those so inclined of the notion that the weapon is “chemical” in nature. It is considered a conventional round.

UPDATE II

Here’s an email I got from chris@lenape.com:

I’m a Marine with combat service from the 1st Persian Gulf War. I was an 1833 AAV (Amtrack) operator in 1st Marine Div. batallion 3/9 who has some direct knowledge of the weapons and tactics described above.

1st White phosphorous or Willy Peet (WP) is a marker used to direct artilery, mortar or tank fire. Trust me you don’t want to be in the area when stuff is employed.

2nd If you are unlucky enough to be in the way of WP it will burn your close and anything else for that matter. It doesn’t carmelize anything it burns the crap out of whatever it touches.

3rd Consider the above. We don’t use WP when our troops are any where near its intended impact zone. Unless we’ve adopted some new tactics, killing our own people, since I got out in 1992.

4th The USMC does not use poison gas. Not only is it a violation of international law but it is a major pain in the ass. Once you’ve dooshed an area with gas you can’t send in troops because even Marines protected by NBC gear would need to decontaminated. Any Marine or Soldier who has any experience with decon knows what a major tedious slow down that is.

5th Marines rely on fire power and close air support to overwhelm the enemy. These two tools best fit the strategy of closing with and destroying the enemy. As stated earlier gas slows you down. Marines move quick they have no time for gas or similar bull s**t.

The RAI piece sounds like a load of bull. Perhaps they should learn a little bit about USMC tactics before they run their cake holes on something they obviously know nothing about.

Semper Fi!

I have watched during the last week as bloggers and the MSM have finally started to focus on the real story in the case involving the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name; the fact that there is a rogue faction at the CIA who opposed the policies of the President of the United States and tried to defeat those policies by selectively leaking classified information to friendly reporters.

Last summer as I began a series of posts on this subject, there was literally no one focusing on this aspect of the Plame controversy outside of Tom McGuire at Just One Minute. On July 13, I wrote:

This is the dirty business of government being exposed to the light of day. On the one hand, you have the White House with a President duly elected that has made the tough decision to go to war. On the other side, you have a political faction at the CIA who can justify their opposition to the Administration by chalking it up as differences in policy. The amazing number of selective leaks prior to the election that constantly put the administration on the defensive with regards to what they knew about WMD before the war was another manifestation of the partisanship of this faction. Given the mountains of intelligence analyses prior to the Iraq war on WMD, to cherry pick opposing views and then leak them to the press was an outrageously partisan attempt to discredit the President.

On July 21st:

If Joe Wilson could sit by a pool sipping mint tea and talk with a few officials, why couldn’t such an inquiry be handled by agency personnel already in country? Why a “special mission?”

The answer is that the CIA wanted to make sure they got the right answers from the “investigation.” So they send glory boy Wilson on a made up errand to insure that the intelligence is “fixed” to absolve the Niger government of colluding with the Iraqis in what two separate inquiries have concluded was a real attempt to circumvent sanctions to purchase uranium. And to obscure that fact, Wilson has to make it appear that his talent and contacts alone were the reason he was sent to Niger not that his wife was part of a faction out to discredit the Administration’s WMD claims prior to going to war with Iraq.

This may in fact be the real cover-up. What started as a policy dispute between WMD experts at CIA and the “Neocons” in the Bush Administration may have escalated to include the CIA selective leaking of classified information in order to swing an election. And right in the middle of this cover up may be the Wilson-Plame connection regarding the Niger mission.

On August 2nd, I covered more selective leaking from the CIA for The American Thinker. This time it was a National Intelligence Estimate with regards to Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

The point is that regardless of recent steps to reform our intelligence capability, it appears that we’re still working with a dysfunctional system where agency personnel feel perfectly comfortable with leaking classified information in a bid to influence both Administration policy and the political process. No one expects everybody to agree on everything. But the American people have a right to expect that the unelected bureaucrats who work at the CIA allow policy making to reside with those we have entrusted for the task – the elected representatives of the people.

Now we have a host of bloggers and mainstream media columnists calling for an investigation of the CIA. Victoria Toensing:

“The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.”

Deborah Orin:

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division where his wife worked — because it served to shift blame for failed “slam dunk” intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush “twisted” intelligence was to presume — falsely — that the CIA had gotten it right.

When the White House ineptly tried to counter Wilson’s tall tales by revealing that he wasn’t an expert and his wife set up the trip, the CIA demanded a criminal probe — and then itself broke the law by leaking that news

Investors.Com:

We believe that someone needs to answer the questions raised recently by Joseph F. DiGenova, a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel:

These aren’t the musings of the tinfoil-hat brigade. A sober-minded case can be made that at least some people in the CIA may have acted inappropriately to discredit the administration as a way of salvaging their own reputations after the intelligence debacles of 9-11 and Iraqi WMD.

Newsmax:

But the Agency’s double-dealing on evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction begs another question: Was the CIA an honest broker of information that seemed, early on, to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks?

Then there are bloggers like Michael Barone, Mark Noonan, and Scott Johnson who are calling for an investigation of the CIA. While I wholeheartedly endorse such a probe, the question is how focused could such an investigation get?

The wide range of malfeasance on the part of the CIA has been breathtaking. Their leaking of classified information has encompassed so many aspects of American policy all over the world that it must be the work of some very senior intelligence officials. Only top level officials would be in a position to gather and collate such wide ranging intel to be put in regular briefings for policy makers or be the ones giving the briefings themselves. The latter is less likely but not out of the realm of possibility. In short, we aren’t just looking at the kind of leaking done by low-level analysts who may be disgruntled with the way the Administration used a specific bit of intelligence. We are talking about people at the highest levels of the Agency who are in a position to decide what intelligence is passed on to policy makers and what intelligence is withheld.

And no investigation would be complete without hauling before the Committee members of VIPS - the so-called “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” whose membership includes some of the most radical left wing Democratic party partisans working today. Did members of this group act as conduits between their friends still working at the Agency and national security columnists like Walter Pincus and Nick Kristoff? Inquiring minds want to know, indeed.

The last major Congressional investigation of CIA activities was the Church Committee. Most inside observers at the Agency claim that the revelations and subsequent fall out from the Committee’s hearings nearly destroyed the CIA. Morale hit rock bottom when Admiral Stansfield Turner became the DCIA under President Carter. Turner dismantled our human intelligence capability (HUMINT) and stressed the gathering of intel by so-called “National Technical Means.” We found out to our detriment on 9/11 how vitally important HUMINT is to the overall picture intelligence analysts try to draw for policy makers.

The satellites and other technical means we have at our disposal to gather and analyze intelligence are the most closely guarded secrets in America. By leaking some of the classified intelligence about Saddam’s capabilities and intentions prior to the war, the leakers have given our enemies hints as to what we can see, what we can hear, and what we can read from nations and individuals that try and hide these things from prying eyes. In short, leaking by Agency partisans did far more damage to national security than the “outing” of an Agency staffer whose husband apparently bragged about her CIA employment to anyone and everyone who he met.

So any investigation of the CIA must be done with considerable care. It cannot be a scattershot fishing expedition. Too much is at stake to cripple the work done by the CIA in this time of war. But an investigation must be done in order to rid the Agency once and for all of people who place partisan or career considerations above the good of the nation.

With all the stories and articles about the Miers nomination, the imminent denouement of the Special Prosecutor’s investigation into L’Affaire d’Plame, and the Republican party crack up, you may be forgiven for missing the biggest news of all.

War has been put on the endangered species list.

Yes. it’s true. The number of armed conflicts around the world have declined by 40% since the early 1990’s. And that’s not all. Several other indices of human suffering and wanton slaughter have also gone south. To wit:

* armed secessionist conflicts are at their lowest point since 1976

* the number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001

* International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001

* The dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003. Global military expenditure and troop numbers declined sharply in the 1990s as well.

* The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end

Is this some kind of witchcraft? Are we humans finally, after warring, butchering, murdering, and torturing each other for thousands of years, learning to live with one another in peace? What could possibly account for this sudden transformation of the human condition? Religious revival? Intervention by aliens?

If you guessed Kofi Annan and the United Nations, you win a cookie.

Yes, that United Nations. And yes, that Kofi Annan. It seems that while the United States was busy winning the cold war, containing Soviet expansionism, not to mention overthrowing two of the most repressive regimes on the planet, we were completely unaware that the good old UN was right there with us, standing shoulder to shoulder and cheek to cheek as together we overcame the odds and brought freedom and democracy to the peoples of eastern Europe, Asia, and Afghanistan and Iraq.

At least, that’s the UN’s story and they’re sticking to it.

Actually, the information is contained in a report by the Human Security Center, a non-profit group funded by public and private foundations from 5 countries including Britain, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The UN connection comes from one of the Center’s co-chairs, Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The report finds that “the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War.” The document is full of neat little graphs and charts all showing a downward trend in political violence over the last decade or so. From the looks of it, it seems that the Center has done a most thorough and complete treatment of the subject.

All but the part where America is largely responsible for these surprising developments. That particular element seems to have been misplaced in the report. Perhaps the authors screwed up the footnotes because for the life of me, I couldn’t find a single reference to the United States in the entire screed. Evidently, being a hyper-power has its limits. Maybe we should have bought an ad on their website.

The Human Security Center is puzzled that these remarkable trends have not been picked up by the media and trumpeted to the skies. The answer to that is a no brainer. Richard Fernandez has the easy explanation:

That’s not surprising given that probably nowhere has the process lauded by the Commission on Human Security been more in evidence than in Afghanistan, and more studiously ignored. The UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] itself admits that “more than 3.5 million Afghans have returned to their homeland since the end of 2001″, one of the most remarkable reversals of refugee flows in history — and then gives the credit to the United Nations — “when the Bonn Agreement set Afghanistan on the long and bumpy road to political stability and socio-economic development.” But what else happened in that time frame? Inquiring minds want to know.

Indeed. This kind of willful blindness is prevalent throughout the report. The Center’s myopia regarding US diplomatic and military triumphs in places like Kuwait, the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere is symptomatic of a more troubling deficiency among global elites; a studious and deliberate obfuscation of history to achieve a desired political end. It’s not that the facts are hidden away collecting dust in some obscure academic institution. One would hope that at the very least, the authors of the report would have had access to the New York Times or The Washington Post to fill them in on what was going on in the world during the period under study.

Then again, maybe they did have access to those publications which is why they wrote what they did.

In a recent email exchange with a friend of mine, we both spoke of our emotional response to pictures of Iraqis going to the polls and how because of the disinterest of the national media, our grandchildren will probably be better informed of the struggle of the Iraqi people for freedom than we are today. Will they ask what it was like to be alive at such an exciting time in history when human freedom was on the march, spearheaded by the indomitable spirit of the United States? Sadly, reports such as this one will probably be more important to the historical record than contemporary accounts from eyewitnesses. Will our offspring notice the discrepancies between history as written by Internationalist organizations like the Center for Human Security and the first-person dispatches of observers like Michael Yon whose inspired writing of the struggles of the Iraqi people and the American military detail what our own media is either too lazy or too biased to report?

Clearly, the Center for Human Security’s report has succeeded in bringing to light the under reported drama of the progress being made around the world in conflict resolution and the sidebar story of the spread of freedom into areas where it never existed except in the dreams and aspirations of oppressed people. But to not mention the role of American leadership in these encouraging developments is pure cynicism. It bespeaks a mindset among many internationalists that the nation state is dying out and only supra-national organizations like the United Nations are relevant in the power calculations of the dictators, the holy men, the corrupt colonels and Generals who are responsible for so much human misery on the planet.

They see no correlation, for instance, between 135,000 American troops going through Saddam’s vaunted army with ease and Libyan strongman Ghaddafi giving up his weapons of mass destruction programs. Nor do they see that the powerful words spoken by an American President at his second inaugural could inspire democrats around the world to take to the streets and demand freedom and justice.

These are the underlying forces of history at work around the world, not the vainglorious pomposities and empty rhetoric of a powerless and cowardly United Nations. It must be up to us as contemporary witnesses to this transformational era in world history, not to let future generations be confused as to just who and what is responsible for these monumental changes. It is American power and American ideals that are rocking the world not the platitudinous nonsense of international elites.

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald readies his indictments against probable targets Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove, the unfortunate truth is that any criminal proceedings against these or other current and former White House officials will validate the partisan political tactics used by the CIA to undermine the Bush Administration’s case for war.

This was not a case of a faction at the CIA resisting White House blame shifting. It was not a case of “setting the record straight” or “protecting the integrity” of the CIA. It was a case of naked, power politics played out at the highest levels of government as a small, partisan group of CIA analysts and operatives sought, through the use of selected leaking of cherry-picked information to friendly reporters, to influence the Presidential election of 2004.

As this Daily Telegraph article points out, the succession of leaks by CIA officials (or surrogates like Joe Wilson) had one goal in mind; to bring down the Bush Administration:

A powerful “old guard” faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such “viciousness and vindictiveness” in a battle between the White House and the agency.

Whether Valerie Plame was an “analyst” or an “operative” in the CIA may be relevant to any criminal indictments regarding the leaking of her name. But in the CIA’s war against the Bush Administration, the fact that she worked for a division of the Agency that was doing most of the leaking of cherry-picked reports and analyses showing Saddam not to be a threat should be the focus of the “why” in the scandal.

Joe Wilson was sent by his wife’s superiors to Niger supposedly at the behest of Vice President Cheney, to discover whether or not the Iraqis were trying to buy yellowcake uranium in order to reconstitute their nuclear program. It was the most curious “fact-finding” trip in history. Wilson sat in a hotel while a succession of current and former Niger government officials were paraded before him each solemnly telling him that the charges were false, that the Iraqis had never asked the Niger government to circumvent international restrictions and sell them the uranium.

It was never explained why a group of Iraqi “businessmen” had met with former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki in 1999:

The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [redacted] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.” [page 43]

Maybe the Iraqis were interested in importing cowpeas.?

The Wilson trip stinks to high heaven of a set up. Talk about predetermining the outcome of intelligence! It seems incontestable that the group in the Agency working for the ouster of President Bush knew full well what the result of Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger would be. One pertinent question might be to ask why did they choose to send a retired, minor diplomat to do a job that could have been done by any number of other current State Department or even Agency people whose contacts were as good or better than Mr. Wilson’s?

The answer is that the cabal would have been unable to control someone else’s reporting on the matter of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. Wilson was the perfect errand boy. He was also to prove over the next several months to be something of a loose cannon and a self-aggrandizing, vainglorious blabbermouth. In this interview with LA Weekly, Wilson admits he was shopping the story of his trip long before either the Nicholas Kristoff piece of May 6, 2003 where the Niger trip is first mentioned in print or Wilson’s own OpEd in the New York Times that led to the outing of his wife:

So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

That was probably part of the set-up all along. As we know now, no one at the White House or State Department knew of Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger or what he found out there.

There are numerous questions associated with the entire Niger caper that will probably never be answered satisfactorily: Who forged the documents used by the British and passed along to the US that indicated Saddam was attempting to purchase the yellowcake in the first place? Why wasn’t Wilson’s report passed on to the Vice President, the man who Wilson ostensibly went to Niger for in the first place? Did Wilson use his contacts with the media to pass along other classified information given to him by his wife that were damaging to the President’s campaign?

When it comes to the CIA and its numerous leakers, it appears that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has a blind spot. And because of that, the cabal that worked to defeat the President last November will probably be toasting their success later this week when indictments are handed down.

Conservatives are outraged once again that the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to a stark, raving, drooling moonbat. British playwright Harold Pinter is the latest old time socialist to receive the prestigious award and righty web sites are full of examples of Pinter’s outrageous and unreasoning hatred of the US.

Yes, the Nobel Committee is made up of a bunch of Anti-American jackasses who apparently live for sticking it to the United States with their selections - especially in the arts and the over-hyped “Peace Prize.” The poorly named award has gone recently to some of the most clueless denizens of the fever swamps as well as some of the most anti-peace thugs around. In the last 15 years, the prize has gone to Yassar Arafat (baby killer), Kofi Anan (corrupt, cynical exploiter), Jimmy Carter (No. Words. Necessary), and Mikhail Gorbechev who received the prize the same year that 10,000 Russian citizens were incarcerated in lunatic asylums not because they were mentally ill but because they disagreed with him.

But I would say to my righty friends that when it comes to awarding a prize to Harold Pinter, the Nobellers have hit the jackpot for once.

Pinter’s politics have nothing to do with the way the man revolutionized the English speaking stage. His sparse use of dialog and frequent pauses as well as the sheer ordinariness of his characters which sometimes masked a degeneracy of unfathomable depth, shocked audiences in the 1950’s. Here is critic Martin Eslin:

“Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet.”

Pinter achieved this effect by doing some unusual first hand research. As a young, struggling playwright in the 1950’s, he would spend countless hours in the park just sitting on a bench and listening - really listening to the way people talk. He was especially fascinated with the wordplay between older couples whose monosyllabic questions and responses held much deeper meaning than just the words themselves. The result was sheer brilliance, a combination of free verse and dialog so bitingly ordinary that the incongruity between the situations the characters found themselves in - usually something dark, menacing, and unknowable - and the spare, barest of bones language made for a sometimes shocking, sometimes sublime night of theater.

More than most, Pinter’s plays are best judged when performed rather than simply read. This is because of the playwright’s deliberate use of “the pause.” In many plays where stage directions are written into the script by the author, the results are desultory or, more likely logical outgrowths of dialog between characters (ex.: “Mary looks at paper, frowns, then looks at Mark”).

Pinter’s frequent and planned use of pauses - actually writing into the script “short pause” or “long pause” - establishes a rhythm for the actor that allows the unnatural dialog to flow. The pauses are as much a part of character development as anything else in the script and, at the time, was truly innovative.

His characters are simple, lower middle class Brits usually with family “issues” - some of them bizarre or surreal. In The Homecoming (1963) we find a long lost son coming home to a father and two brothers ( a boxer and a shadowy low life). He brings his enigmatic wife with him and by the end of the play, the father and the low life are negotiating with the woman to become a quasi-prostitute/mother to the dysfunctional group. When performed well, the play is both laugh out loud funny and shocking in its implications.

Critics at first were universally negative. But theatergoers both in Britain and the United States were starved for something different than the relentlessly up-beat musical comedy and the boilerplate dramas and melodramas of the post war period. As a result, Pinter’s plays were like a splash of ice cold water on a hot day - a bracing and sometimes exhilarating experience. As the years went by, Pinter dramas have gone Hollywood (with uneven results) and the playwright himself has written some screenplays such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman. But in the end, Pinter’s brilliant originality and revolutionary use of language established the playwright as one of the most dynamic forces of the English speaking theater in the 20th century.

Is Pinter worthy of a Nobel Prize? For the totality of his work, yes. In the last 20 years however, Pinter has become something of a caricature of himself and his plays and other writing output (he has published an anthology of rather insipid and obscure poetry) have degenerated into political screeds against capitalism, the west, and especially the United States. But I can’t imagine what the theater would be like today without his contributions from the 1950’s to the 1970’s.

The question arises should we condemn authors and artists for their politics even if their work is a cut above brilliant? I find such a construct puzzling. Just because John Updike is a loony lefty that doesn’t make Rabbit Run any less of a joy to read. And Joan Didion’s essays are achingly well written despite a political content that runs to the left of Marshall Tito. Can we accept talent and beauty in art despite disagreeing with the artists personal politics?

I would think that this would be the essence of artistic expression and criticism. Although a good case can be made that the more conservative authors and artists - or at least artistic endeavors that express conservative themes - are deliberately censored and given short shrift in a world dominated by liberal purveyors and critics of many artistic forms, should this lessen our enjoyment and appreciation of artistic expression even by people whose extremist views are totally at odds with ours?

Personally, I would find such a world very limiting and boring. Consequently, we should pity liberals who refuse to see the brilliance of a Tom Wolfe or even Ayn Rand, whose books have inspired several generations of conservative thinkers and writers. By rejecting art based on the artist’s politics, we are only hurting ourselves.

And so, I congratulate the Noble Committee for recognizing the brilliance of Harold Pinter. However, I wonder if for next year’s peace prize, we couldn’t actually get someone who, you know, actually works for “peace” and not “surrender” or the “peace of the grave” like Yassar Arafat. Maybe they should consider a liberator, someone who has freed 25 million people from the clutches of two of the most bloodthirsty and oppressive regimes in history. Do you think it’s possible…

Maybe when hell freezes over.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin rounds up reaction to Pinter’s Nobel Prize on the right with a link to an interesting Roger Kimball piece in The New Criterion. I think Roger speaks for a lot of conservatives who are simply sick and tired of the relentless anti-Americanism, especially in international organizations.

Joe Gandleman agrees with the award although his support is more tepid and more the result of resignation that the prize was in fact awarded for Pinter’s virulent anti-Americanism.

Roger Simon also believes the award is “well deserved” and makes the same point I did about the body of Pinter’s best work decades behind him.

The headline from this New York Times article that analyzes how many prisoners sentenced to life in prison are never paroled had me scratching my head trying to figure out what the point was:

To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars

I guess I’m just not sophisticated enough to follow the Time’s reasoning here. If a “life term” doesn’t mean “life term,” why give one out in the first place.

The Times explains:

But now, driven by tougher laws and political pressure on governors and parole boards, thousands of lifers are going into prisons each year, and in many states only a few are ever coming out, even in cases where judges and prosecutors did not intend to put them away forever.

Well, that explain everything! When judges and prosecutors want to pull the wool over our eyes and give some violent criminal a wink and a nod about his incarceration, they sentence him to what should be called a “not really for life” life sentence.

My jaw dropped a little lower after I read this:

Indeed, in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.

I hate to seem like an idiot but when someone convicted of a particularly heinous crime - one where a life sentence is either mandated by law or given by a judge in lieu of the death penalty - where is the societal interest in letting these people out of jail so that they can potentially prey upon other people? The New York Times is certainly being free and easy with other people’s lives and well being.

Is it the Times contention that most of these people are innocent? Not at all. What the Times is saying is that habitual offenders just aren’t being released to prey upon the rest of us like they used to in the good old days of liberal ideas regarding our penal system.

Fewer than two-thirds of the 70,000 people sentenced to life from 1988 to 2001 are in for murder, the Times analysis found. Other lifers - more than 25,000 of them - were convicted of crimes like rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, assault, extortion, burglary and arson. People convicted of drug trafficking account for 16 percent of all lifers.

Here are a few facts and figures that the Times evidently missed in it’s research for this article:

FEDERAL BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS

Rates of Recidivism of State Prisoners - Rearrest Rates by Most Serious Offense for Which Released

Homicide: 40.7%
Kidnapping: 59.4%
Rape: 46.0%
Other Sexual Assault: 41.4%
Robbery: 70.2%
Assault: 65.1%
Other Violent Crimes: 51.7%

In summary, 67.5% of violent criminals were rearrested within 3 years of being released for a new crime. This is a point made by the Times article, albeit with the caveat that those who spend a long time in prison tend to be less enamored of criminal behavior. And of course, it just doesn’t look good when compared to our betters over in Europe. In fact, it must be downright embarrassing for the Times editors when they attend those cocktail parties with their European counterparts:

Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that issued a report on life sentences last year, said that about a fifth of released lifers were arrested again, compared with two-thirds of all released prisoners.

“Many lifers,” Mr. Mauer said, “are kept in prison long after they represent a public safety threat.”

In much of the rest of the world, sentences of natural life are all but unknown.

“Western Europeans regard 10 or 12 years as an extremely long term, even for offenders sentenced in theory to life,” said James Q. Whitman, a law professor at Yale and the author of “Harsh Justice,” which compares criminal punishment in the United States and Europe.

Don’t you feel a lot better knowing that there’s “only” a 20% chance that a violent criminal will either kill again or rape again, or commit some unspeakable act against you or a loved one?

For you see, the Times likes those odds. Sounds about right…2 out of 10 ex lifers who, despite spending a couple of decades behind bars, are willing to recommit crimes for which they were sent up in the first place.

What do you suppose the chances of any New York Times editors being affected by those 20% of criminals who end up killing or raping or assaulting you or your loved ones? Which is the point, of course. Better to look good in the eyes of the rest of the world than keep us safe.

There’s a reason people are sentenced to life in prison. And while there may be a few exceptions to the so-called “Three strike” rule in sentencing (and these should be dealt with on a case by case basis) the fact is that sentencing guidelines are in place because too many judges and prosecutors think like the editors of the New York Times; that criminals are in jail not because they’re horrendously violent sociopathic thugs but because they are misunderstood by society or that they’re the wrong color or that they’ve spent time in jail and have actually “reformed” and gone straight.

This kind of thinking caused crime to skyrocket in the 1960’s - 1980’s. It wasn’t until legislatures and the Congress passed mandatory sentencing laws that crime finally began to drop. Yes judges complain they have little leeway in sentencing anymore. But that decision wasn’t taken in a vacuum. It was because judges routinely abused their positions to foist their ideas about crime and society on the rest of us that those laws were passed in the first place.

I have no doubt some lifers, if released, would make solid citizens. But until we come up with a way to positively identify those people - an almost certain impossibility given that it would require both a working crystal ball and the ability to read minds - I recommend we keep people who have been sentenced to life in prison right where they are thank you.

Knowing they are in there and I am out here helps most of us sleep more soundly at night.

UPDATE:

John Cole had a similar thought when he saw the Times headline.

Also, go Inside Larry’s Head and read Larry Bernard’s thoughts on this.

Cole just IM’d me to say when he read the headline he spit milk through his nose. For me, it was hot coffee - not a pleasant experience.

The late, great ABC newsman Frank Reynolds was angry.

The date was March 30, 1981 and President Ronald Reagan victim of an assassination attempt, was at that moment being operated on to remove a bullet in his chest. Three other people had been wounded in the hail of shots from John Hinckley’s gun including White House Press Secretary James Brady.

Reynolds, an old-school newsman had been his usual calm, unflappable self despite the chaos in the newsroom around him. He had two producers talking to him in his ear piece as well as several reporters updating him every few minutes. But anchoring a live newscast had its own set of problems, not the least of which was that rumors were swirling about any number of things. Unconfirmed reports had Reagan slightly injured. Others had him at death’s door. Still other rumors dwelt with the condition of James Brady who was struck in the head by one of Hinckley’s bullets. One of Reynold’s producers reporting from George Washington University Hospital said that he had just talked to a doctor who confirmed that James Brady was dead.

Of course, James Brady was not dead, although he was in critical condition. According to his account, even after being told that Brady was gone, Reynold’s hesitated. Some reporter’s instinct told him in his gut that the information just wasn’t solid enough. Despite his misgivings, Reynolds went ahead and announced it with appropriate solemnity.

Within minutes, the ABC reporter on the scene at the hospital was frantically telling Reynolds that Brady was still alive. Reynold’s, angry and embarrassed, lost his composure on air for a moment and said “Let’s nail it down, let’s get it right.”

Critics rightly took ABC and Reynolds to task for reporting what turned out to be a rumor. In those days, it was considered bad journalism to pass along speculation and gossip. These days, as Dan Rather put it, sensationalizing the news by reporting wild rumors and unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, 2nd hand accounts of events, the press is “speaking truth to power.”

Rather isn’t the only media apologist who is excusing the MSM’s shockingly bad performance during coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs is pleading for understanding because of “conditions:”

Media analysts noted that conditions in New Orleans were chaotic and that reporters relied on fragmentary accounts, collected from often unverifiable sources.

“The fog of war and the gusts of a hurricane both cloud and obscure vital truths,” said Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

“What we’re seeing here is no different than the reports of museum looting right after U.S. troops entered Baghdad. It’s not that different from election night 2000 when some journalists prematurely declared a winner. In all three cases, the public would have been served by a bit more patience and less feigned certainty.”

Note that Mr. Felling excuses the numerous factual errors and rumormongering by reporters as he pleads that journalism is too difficult to get right when things are confusing and besides, it’s happened before so it’s okay.

Contrast this attitude with the attitude of Mr. Reynolds following his faux paux and you get a perfect summary of what is wrong with journalism. News today is about “the story” not “the truth.” Part of the story of Katrina was the chaotic and violent conditions at the Superdome and Convention Center. Any information that contributed to that storyline was run without first being filtered through any kind of fact checking or confirmation process. Television producers and executives today want “flow” to the news, as if events unfold in a nice, tidy sequence. The broadcast should “march” at a swift pace. This contributes to the “drama” of the news. In short, the more entertaining we can make the news, the more viewers we will attract.

What happens to the truth in all this show-biz is predictable. When a bystander comes up to a reporter and tells a story of a 7 year old girl being raped and murdered in the bathroom of the Convention Center, since it fits into the storyline of the narrative, it is passed along and becomes part of “the first draft of history.” Except this draft is of a TV drama script, not a history book.

But other accusations that have gained wide currency are more demonstrably false. For instance, no one found the body of a girl - whose age was estimated at anywhere from 7 to 13 - who, according to multiple reports, was raped and killed with a knife to the throat at the Convention Center.

Many evacuees at the Convention Center the morning of Sept. 3 treated the story as gospel, and ticked off further atrocities: a baby trampled to death, multiple child rapes.

Salvatore Hall, standing on the corner of Julia Street and Convention Center Boulevard that day, just before the evacuation, said, “They raped and killed a 10-year-old in the bathroom.”

Neither he nor the many people around him who corroborated the killing had seen it themselves.

This widely reported story was a rumor. Part of the problem was the irresponsible behavior of Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass who continuously passed along rumors of the most spectacular atrocities including the rape of babies:

Compass told Winfrey on Sept. 6 that “some of the little babies (are) getting raped” in the Dome. Nagin backed it with his own tale of horrors: ”They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”

But both men have since pulled back to a degree.

“The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible,” Compass said, conceding his earlier statements were false. Asked for the source of the information, Compass said he didn’t remember.

Nagin was also the originator of the “10,000 dead” speculation, a figure that the Mayor still refuses to say who gave him.

These sins are more venal in nature in that when an authority figure like the Chief of Police or the Mayor says something - even if it’s off the wall - it must be reported as news. However, to take these accounts at face value without a hint of caution or skepticism and then fail to make any but the most cursory attempts at correcting the record later illustrates how far television news has fallen. During coverage of the Reagan assassination attempt, reporters, producers, and anchors were not overly concerned with the slow pace at which new information was coming in. The good journalists like John Chancellor and Frank Reynolds reminded the audience constantly that since this was a live news event - still something of a novelty in 1981 - that reporting on events was necessarily difficult. I distinctly remember Frank Reynolds ruefully pointing out that coverage of the event was not like a story on the nightly newscast; that the confusing and conflicting stories coming out of the the assassination attempt was an illustration of just how hard a job gathering the news was.

Unfortunately, the reporters on scene in New Orleans during coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina didn’t seem to have the same problem.