This article originally appears in The American Thinker

I just woke up from one of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. You’re not going to believe this but I dreamed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York City for one of his semi-annual harangues to the General Assembly of the UN and decided to take a side trip to Ground Zero. Why he wanted to do this was never made clear in the dream. Maybe he wanted to dance a jig or lay a wreath honoring those martyrs to Islam he’s so fond of praising after they blow up a bunch of babies in a crowded market or die while launching missiles aimed at innocents in Israel.

Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous and would never even be contemplated in a million years but let me finish. It gets better. In my dream, would you believe the New York authorities actually negotiated this little scenario, tried to see if it could be carried off? That’s right. The police and Port Authority were seriously looking at the idea of accommodating this Holocaust denying, terrorist enabling scumbag.

As it turns out, someone must have whispered in the ear of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that such a visit might invite a negative reaction from New Yorkers and would cause all sorts of unsightly demonstrations and protests. This just can’t be allowed under any circumstances. It doesn’t play well on TV and there’s always a helluva mess to clean up afterwards. Besides, the Police Department can’t afford the overtime paid to all those cops who would have to guard the life of a man who leads “Death to America” chants at most of his public appearances and speeches.

So in my dream, the Commish turned the Iranian President down, saying Ground Zero was closed to the public because of the construction that’s going on. You would think that this would have been the end of it. But the former Mayor of Tehran, former senior Commander in the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guards (who almost certainly participated in the assassination of an Iranian dissident in Vienna a few years ago), and former “student” kidnapper of American diplomats was not to be deterred.

He decided to go anyway. And being a foreign dignitary, he was entitled to the protection of none other than the United States Secret Service – a dedicated group of selfless and courageous professionals who would be expected to take a bullet for this supporter of Hamas, Hezb’allah, and several other groups who make it their business to murder innocents.

Irony piled upon irony as Ahmadinejad’s entourage approached Ground Zero. New Yorkers lined the streets watching in stunned silence as the Iranian President’s car moved through lower Manhattan. The look on their faces reminded one of the old newsreel pictures of devastated Parisians who watched helplessly as the German Wehrmacht rolled down the Champs d’Elysees in 1940. Their shock and sadness at the turn of events was total. Their devastation, complete.

As his little caravan approached the site of the worst terrorist attack in world history the scene changed abruptly. Several thousand people had gathered to protect the site from being abased by a man who has said recently that he believes that the United States government was responsible for what happened that awful day when the towers fell and not his murderous co-religionists whose announced reason was to martyr themselves for his God.

Hundreds of people were lying in the street blocking the caravan from making further progress, their bodies meshed together forming a solid block of unmovable flesh. Thousands more were screaming obscenities and shaking their fist in his direction, expressing the rage felt by most Americans that this leader of a government that is currently training and supplying terrorists in Iraq who target American soldiers should have been allowed to get so close to one of our nation’s most sacred sites.

Of course, this wasn’t really a nightmare because we just experienced the possibility of this scenario playing out next Monday in real life. The chances of the dream becoming reality have become slim indeed due to what Ahmadinejad told CBS News 60 Minutes a few hours ago; that if the New York authorities can’t arrange security, he won’t go.

But in that interview with CBS, an even greater nightmare is revealed. The President of Iran, the leader of one of the most important nations in the Middle East and a world/historical figure – a beacon of resistance to western powers in the third world – didn’t have a clue that his proposed trip to Ground Zero would cause such resentment among the American people.

Here is the disturbing exchange between CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley and the Iranian President:

PELLEY: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans.

AHMADINEJAD: Why should it be insulting?

PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans.

AHMADINEJAD: Well, I’m amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?

PELLEY: Well, the American nation—

AHMADINEJAD: You are representing a media and you’re a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there.

This is not the tone deafness of an ignorant man. This is the leader of a nation that is striving to build a nuclear weapon and has made it crystal clear it intends to confront the United States in the Middle East and drive us out while “wiping Israel off the map.”

This is a man who is totally unaware of what goes on outside of Iran, a man whose worldview is so warped by fanaticism, religion, and his own messianic self image that the concept that he could be anything except universally loved and admired is foreign to him. I have no doubt he was sincere in believing that his offer to lay a wreath at Ground Zero was a gesture of goodwill. But the towering conceit that allowed him to believe in the impossibility that his gesture would be greeted with anything except outrage shows Ahmadinejad to be an extraordinarily dangerous man.

We are constantly told by Iranian apologists in this country that Ahmadinejad and his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are rational actors and that even if they achieve their goal of building a nuclear weapon, we have nothing to fear because of the certainty that they do not wish to commit national suicide and either launch a nuclear weapon at America or give one to terrorists so that they can do their dirty work for them. This is the MAD doctrine – Mutually Assured Destruction – that kept the world from exploding during the cold war.

But even if Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are “rational” in the sense that they are clinically sane, how in God’s name can you not look at the above statements by the Iranian President and not wonder if his warped, sheltered, and intensely narrow view of the world from Tehran hasn’t blinded him to how the world perceives his rhetoric and actions?

This is a man born to miscalculate America. He isn’t ignorant but rather oblivious – a far more dangerous state of mind when one considers that by the fact that he is unable to grasp certain realities about America and her people, he is more than likely to assume reactions by us to his provocations to be something totally different from what they truly are.

Would he, for instance, believe that exploding a nuclear weapon on American soil not cause us to retaliate? It is not likely but reading the above responses to his proposed visit to Ground Zero causes one to hesitate in saying that there is no chance he could be so obtuse. His reality is so skewed that anything is possible.

And that might be an even bigger nightmare than anything he and the New York authorities could have dreamed up at Ground Zero.

Running around Capitol Hill, their white flags flapping majestically in the breeze, Senate Democrats have desperately been searching for Republican allies to help them in their quest to hand Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

To be sure, the Bush Administration has spent much of the last 4 1/2 years doing the same thing, albeit not trying quite as hard and with considerably less planning. But for the Democrats and their hard and fast timetable for withdrawal of the bulk of American troops (and if the netnuts get their way, there won’t be a corporal’s guard left by the time the withdrawal is done), there don’t appear to be too many takers among Republicans:

Senate Democrats, who have spent weeks trying to woo Republicans to help end the war in Iraq, have taken a hard turn against compromise.

They now believe their best political strategy is to continue to play to a stalemate and blame an intransigent President Bush and his Republican congressional allies for refusing to negotiate an end to the war.

This is actually the safest political strategy possible. Knowing full well that pulling out the troops the way they are advocating would lead to a bloodbath, the Democrats will seek to cash in on people’s war weariness in 2008 by pointing out the obvious; that it was Republicans who got the country in this mess in the first place.

Not that people are liable to forget the previous 4 years of blunders, stupidities, mistakes, and miscalculations that have contributed in no small way to the chaos in Iraq today. But politicians like to think of the American people as children, the difference being the Dems want to play nanny to all of us while Republicans think it best that voters be seen and not heard. So rather than act like grown-ups themselves and cooperate on an Iraq policy that would serve our interests while allowing us to disengage, leaving behind something less than an unmitigated disaster, the two parties insist on playing “Pin the tail on the party that lost the War.”

“We haven’t found much movement with the Republicans. They seem to be sticking with the president,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday. “I think they’ve decided they definitely want this to be the Republican Senate’s war, not just Bush’s [war]. They’re jealous. They don’t want him to have it as only his war.”

That’s our Harry. First, last, and always the fool. Of course GOP Senators aren’t “jealous” of Bush nor do they ” want him to have it as only his war.” That may be the silliest political barb tossed on Capitol Hill this century. In fact, it’s borderline incoherent which makes one ask what time of day he was quoted and from which Capitol Hill watering hole Harry was coming from.

The calculus for getting the 60 votes needed to end the GOP filibuster on Iraq legislation apparently became too difficult for Reid to achieve, and a compromise could have forced anti-war Democrats to vote on softer goals for troop withdrawal, something staunchly opposed by the party’s base.

So Reid has forged ahead with an aggressive list of Iraq proposals, including a key amendment that would place hard timetables on troop withdrawal, shifting the mission in Iraq for U.S. forces from combat to supporting the Iraqi security forces, and completing the deployment.

Reid’s move essentially brings to an abrupt halt the delicate lobbying Democrats had engaged with moderate Republican senators whom they thought were vulnerable on the war issue.

Does anyone actually believe that the “base” would be satisfied with “shifting the mission in Iraq” to supporting Iraqi security forces? This has always been the dirty little secret of the Democrat’s “timetable.” No one is going to be “supporting” the Iraqi security forces. That’s because for the foreseeable future – 2 to 3 years according to the report issued by retired General James Jones – we will have to take the lead in operations involving the Iraqi army and police because only 6 or 7 brigades are judged competent enough to go it alone with Americans in support and advisory positions.

What this means is that beyond the 30,000 or so troops expected to be gone by next summer, there isn’t a whole lot we can do to reduce our troop commitment without severely damaging Iraqi security. But this isn’t about Iraqi security or American interests or fighting al-Qaeda, or any other military/political goal we might aspire to. This is about the raw, cynical use of politics by the Democrats in calculated effort to garner as many votes in 2008 as possible. That, gentle readers, is the bottom line. And what is truly shocking is that the Dems aren’t even trying to hide this fact from anybody. They are boasting about it. They are glorying in the notion of it. They are congratulating themselves, patting themselves on the back for being so clever.

But hey! Don’t call them unpatriotic.

The Iraq Tar Baby has well and truly trapped both parties. Unless Dennis Kucinich is elected president, the next Commander in Chief will come into office facing exactly the same situation in Iraq on January 20, 2009 that George Bush faced on January 19, 2009 and will have to manage the situation in Iraq so that the kind of disaster that would surely follow any “hard” timetables for withdrawal currently being pushed by Democrats can be avoided.

Some are grumbling about Bush “kicking the can down the road” so that withdrawal will be up to his successor. That may be true but I doubt whether the President – any president – would prefer that to be the case. Nor should Democrats fear that anyone who hasn’t lived in a cave for the last four years will blame them for any disasters that would befall Iraq or the Middle East following an American exit – unless they force a withdrawal under the worst possible circumstances and at the worst possible time as they are advocating now.

Simply put, the “hard” timetable pushed by the Democrats will not end up with any kind of “redeployment” but rather a full scale retreat for which their rabid base has been agitating these last few years. To pretend otherwise is to ignore both political reality and the cynicism of those who promote the surrender of American interests in Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

Nobody had to bail Glenn Greenwald out of jail yesterday. Or Markos. Or Jane Hamsher. Or Maha. Or any other lefty who has spent the last 4 years safely ensconced behind their computer monitors telling all of us how morally superior they are because they oppose the War in Iraq and how those who support the mission should either enlist or shut up.

Meanwhile, almost 200 of their compatriots in the anti-war movement – those who are serious about peace – could have used their help and their bodies yesterday. They deliberately provoked their own arrests in order to stop a war they don’t believe in.

A march by thousands of protesters demanding an end to the Iraq war turned chaotic yesterday afternoon near the Capitol, where hundreds sprawled on the ground in a symbolic “die-in.” Police arrested 189 people, including 10 who organizers said were veterans of the war.

Capitol Police used chemical spray against a small number of the protesters and pushed back others who tried to jump a barrier in a self-described effort to be arrested. The “die-in,” on a walkway in front of the Capitol, was generally peaceful, but scores of arrests came when protesters tried to climb over metal fences and a low stone wall…

After being processed and released last night, one of those arrested said he had come by train from the Boston area. The protester, who identified himself as Walter Ducharme, 78, of Cambridge, Mass., said he had been arrested at an earlier demonstration and “figured I had to do it again.”

The fact is, those who are truly dedicated to peace and prove it by their actions make pretenders like Greenwald et al look like the cowardly wretches they truly are. The pretenders have no moral standing whatsoever to criticize those who support the mission in Iraq. They are burdened with their own cravenness when it comes to standing up for what they believe in, putting their hides and their freedom on the line in order to stop a war and an Administration they constantly tell us are evil.

If this is how they fight evil, does anyone doubt that evil is laughing in their faces, certain of its triumph?

In fact, their hysteria over the last few years about Bush “tearing up the Constitution” and “taking away our freedoms” calls into question not only their courage but their sanity. Are they trying to tell us that all they can do to save America from a dictator like Bush is write snotty little essays, vying with each other to see who can call the President the most mean-spirited names in the fewest number of words? What about “resistance?” What about “confrontation?”

Let’s take as an example of what ordinary people can do to affect change, the Solidarity Movement in Poland that overthrew a real dictatorship. Not only did they write snotty little essays about the Soviets and their own government, they also protested in the streets and on the docks; cities, towns, villages, and anywhere they could make their voices heard. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people eventually who risked their lives for freedom from real tyranny not the ginned up, politically motivated, exaggerated, fake frenzy over imagined despotism that the left in this country has accused the Bushies of over the last six years.

Those people had the kind of moral courage to which the left can only pretend. Arrested, beaten, even murdered for their beliefs by a pitiless, all powerful government, the example set by the freedom loving protesters in Poland makes the keyboard peace warriors who hunch over their venom soaked little treatises and blather on about the “threat” the Bushies pose to liberty look like dilettantes and mountebanks.

And the same kind of cowardly, “save my own hide” attitude extends to the antiwar effort as well. The demonstration yesterday was planned for months. It was advertised and promoted on every lefty website worth its salt. It was sponsored by one of the largest liberal “grass roots” organizations in the country.

And all they could muster is a measly 10,000 people – many of whom were there representing causes as diverse as anti-globalization and promoting the vegan lifestyle? And only 200 of the protesters exhibiting the commitment and conscience to get themselves arrested?

Why didn’t Greenwald prove how dedicated he is to peace by at least showing up? Probably because they wouldn’t pay his expenses from Brazil. Ditto for the thousands of other lefty bloggers who write smugly of war supporters not putting their money where their mouth is and enlisting to fight in Iraq all the while showing a yellow streak a mile wide about standing up for their own convictions and filling the jails of this country in order to stop a war they say they oppose.

It’s easy to write those overly dramatic, keening laments about how hard it is to move the country and Congress to end the war. One can just imagine these guys at Point du Hoc. “It’s too high a cliff. Let’s try down the beach a bit.” Or can you imagine Hamsher, Greenwald, etc. at Omaha Beach? “The fire is too intense. Let’s go back to the ship and have some lunch.”

The left will no more fight for peace than they will fight for anything else important. Their “fighting” consists solely of lecturing the rest of us on how we should obey their petulant demands because of their moral superiority. Why no one calls them out on this idiocy is beyond me. The brave souls who marched in Selma proved their moral superiority by peacefully facing down those who would do violence to them. They endured billy clubs, fire hoses, beatings, jail, and even death to affect change.

The modern incarnation of the peace warrior has legs of jelly and serious problems with bladder control when confronted with the choice of claiming the moral high ground rather than actually earning it by putting their bodies and their freedom at risk. There should have been 10,000 people arrested yesterday instead of 200. A few protests like that, with thousands of activists hauled off to jail, and I guarantee this war will be over a lot quicker than if Glenn Greenwald or one of his ilk writes another long winded, impossibly boring essay on the evils of Bush or the chickenhawks of the right and their cowardice in not joining the military to fight.

The left will choose the coward’s way out every time and call it “activism.” Come and see me after you’ve spent just one night in jail or gotten a whiff of tear gas. Then I’ll give your “chickenhawk” argument all the consideration it deserves. If you want to argue that someone overage or with a physical disability or even those who don’t want to make a career in an all volunteer army must keep their mouths shut in the debate over the war, then go ahead and make that argument. But not to recognize that the opposite is true – that those who advocate withdrawal based on some kind of moral superiority (on which the entire “chickenhawk” meme rests) while refusing to go to any legal lengths to personally take responsibility for doing what is necessary to end the conflict – prove their unworthiness to not only declaim against war supporters but also agitate for peace.

In short, put up or shut up. You can hardly call hawks “chickens” while hiding behind your computers trying to prove that you are everyone’s moral betters when you won’t do anything more strenuous than cleaning the spittle off your monitors after one of your unhinged diatribes against your political foes.

The week did not start well for Rudy Giuliani. Several polls were released showing the entrance of Fred Thompson into the race for GOP nominee had tightened up the contest considerably as the former Tennessee Senator cut into Giuliani’s lead significantly in several states.

Suddenly, Giuliani looked very vulnerable – especially among the conservative base who seemed to be warming to Thompson’s down home charm and classic conservative positions on many issues.

But thankfully from Rudy’s point of view, an opportunity presented itself for him to rally the base to his candidacy and show himself capable of standing up to those who would smear the military while taking on the leading Democratic candidate for appearing to agree with the slimers.

Salvation came in the form of the dumbest, the most spectacularly ignorant political maneuver in modern history. Radical anti-war group and huge Democratic party asset Moveon.Org published a full page ad in the New York Times (at an apparent discount) referring to General David Petraeus as General “Betray-Us.”

There is very little disagreement that Moveon’s smear job against General Petraeus actually turned the tide and put the anti-war Democrats on the defensive while rallying and energizing the GOP base to support the General’s plan for Iraq. And Giuliani, seeing the opportunity to exploit that stupidity, emerged by week’s end as the General’s most visible champion by buying his own ad in the Times savaging both Moveon and Hillary Clinton, whose statement that in order to believe the General you would have to “suspend belief” seemed to dovetail with the anti-war group’s message.

Giuliani, calling MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad “abominable,” said his campaign is asking the paper for a comparable rate for an ad to run following President Bush’s speech on Iraq.

The former mayor said his ad “will obviously take the opposite view” from MoveOn.org, which argued in its ad that Gen. David Petraeus is “cooking the books” on Iraq and cherry-picking facts that support his recommendation to keep a large number of troops in Iraq for some time.

Giuliani continued to include Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in his criticisms for her comments that it would take “a willing suspension of disbelief” to accept at face value Petraeus’s report on the situation in Iraq. Giuliani interpreted Clinton’s remarks at a hearing earlier this week as questioning the general’s integrity.

The ad, which Giuliani ended up getting the same rate as Moveon, turned out to be something of a campaign ad for Rudy rather than a defense of Petraeus. Allah and some others were not amused but the ad served its purpose of placing Giuliani front and center in the debate.

Rudy followed up the print ad with a devastating attack ad he released on the web:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani launched his first Internet ad on Friday, an attack on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Called “She Changed,” it links Sen. Clinton of New York with a controversial newspaper ad by the left-leaning group MoveOn.org.

It also accuses her of changing positions on the Iraq war between 2002 and today.

It includes footage of her at the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Army Gen. David Petraeus, whom MoveOn labelled “General Betray Us” in an ad on Monday that drew heated criticism from Republicans.

Again, Allah disses Rudy for “shamelessly exploiting” the Moveon ad and making the point that having the General appear in GOP ads does him no favors, identifying him with Republicans which only buttresses the critics who say he’s “carrying water” for the party.

These are valid points but I think they miss the big picture. The Moveon ad altered the political landscape, the controversy drowning out any criticism directed at the General and anyone who supports him. I believe Rudy’s moves to exploit the controversy – shamelessly or not – will play very well with conservatives who are tired of anti-war Democrats smearing those who support the mission.

Whether any of Rudy’s moves translates into additional conservative support remains to be seen. But I don’t doubt that many are grateful to him for coming to the defense of Petraeus and taking on Hillary and the anti-war left so directly.

The New York Times didn’t like it. The Washington Post was lukewarm. The netroots dismissed it. The right embraced it.

I could make this the shortest post in the history of The House and just leave it at that but then, what fun would that be?

After more than 4 years of war, several different failed strategies for success, three commanding generals, two elections, 70,000 dead Iraqis, 26,000 wounded Americans, and 3700 dead patriots, the single most telling aspect of the debate over the war is how little it has changed. The same arguments, the same criticisms of each side, and we all end up in the same place; irreconcilably divided.

George Bush may think there are some Americans who want to bring the troops home now that would jump at the chance to embrace his token withdrawal of American forces. But on Capitol Hill and other places where it counts – the newsrooms and control rooms of the American media – he has zero chance of finding additional support for his policies.

Whatever small bump in political support the President received this past week was due solely to the calm, unhurried, and forthright testimony of General David Petraeus. Nothing Bush said last night altered the debate. There is nothing he can say about Iraq that will deflect the long term trend toward withdrawal. Both parties are in favor of it, albeit with different objectives. The Iraq Tar Baby has well and truly captured the Republican party and only the stupidity of the Democrats will save the GOP from total disaster in 2008. And perhaps not even then.

The Democrats have cynically tried to exploit the unpopularity of the war while trying to undermine the efforts of Petraeus and Co. who may have hit upon a strategy that will allow us to leave behind something less than roses and buttermilk but also something considerably less than total disaster. In fact, the Dems have failed to acknowledge any change in strategy at all and when they have, they switch tactics and go after General Petraeus by attacking him personally – a dubious strategy that has already backfired spectacularly (see above, “...stupidity of Democrats…”).

What we have seen this past week with the Petraeus testimony and the Bush speech is that facts don’t matter as much as political calculation with regards to the war. No one has been swayed by anything anyone has said about what is happening in Iraq. And no one is likely to be affected in the future by any arguments or even facts on the ground coming out of that country. Everyone’s mind appears to be made up except for a handful of GOP Senators and Congressmen who know what they believe about the war but have not quite taken the step of abandoning the President yet. That may change by January when the funding issue is revisited. Until then, Petreaus gets to continue his good work, hoping to build upon his small successes while Bush can try to push a reluctant Iraqi government toward at least the appearance of reconciliation.

We have been at this point in the Iraq debate for close to two years and nothing has changed. I suppose that there is some benefit of reiterating the same positions over and over, if only to remind us of how very far apart we are on this and other issues. Perhaps that reminder will spur us to greater efforts to bridge the gap between the two sides so that we can find an honorable way out of Iraq without leaving behind a Middle East blood bath but I’m doubting it.

For that to happen, someone would have to make the first move. And as it stands now, both sides are too proud, too rigid to make that happen.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of his own destruction, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, a convicted thief of classified documents, has been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a foreign policy advisor.

Giving an ex-con a helping hand is fully in keeping with Mrs. Clinton’s compassionate nature so I’m loathe to criticize her for hypocrisy. But as a result of the scope of Berger’s crimes – stealing and destroying classified documents that reflected badly on her husband’s presidency – he may be just the man Hillary needs to white wash the historical record so that her foreign policy, instead of being a mish mash of liberal bromides and bewildering zig zags on Iraq and the War on Terror, may actually acquire a coherence so far lacking.

Perhaps he can get started on any documents connecting Norman Hsu to the campaign and work his way up from there.

It will certainly be a novel experience having our next president’s foreign policy shaped by a convicted felon. Aside from the obvious advantage that Berger will bring to the Clinton Administration when having to deal with other criminals like Syria’s Bashar Assad and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, just think of the benefits of having an advisor that actually thinks like a crook. This opens up possibilities far beyond the foreign policy sphere – one reason Berger may have been hired in the first place.

Seriously, this is truly incredible. Richard Miniter outlines Berger’s crimes:

My informed sources suggest that what Berger destroyed were copies of the Millennium After-Action Review, a binder-sized report prepared by Richard Clarke in 2000—a year and half before the 9-11 attacks. The review made a series of recommendations for a tougher stance against bin Laden and terrorism. There are 13 or more copies of this report. But only one contains hand-written notes by President Bill Clinton. Apparently, in the margin beside the recommendations, Bill Clinton wrote NO, NO, NO next to many of the tougher policy proposals.

You can see why Clinton might be happy to see these records vanish down the memory hole.

So Berger was stuffing in pants and socks and later shredding the evidence that President Clinton did not want to take a tougher line on bin Laden, following the 1998 attack on two U.S. embassies that killed 224 people (including 12 American diplomats).

Recall that Berger was ostensibly preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission while at the same time, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Commission investigators:

The commission’s former general counsel, Dan Marcus, now an American University law professor, separately expressed surprise at how little the Justice Department told the commission about Berger and said it was “a little unnerving” to learn from the congressional report exactly what Berger reviewed at the Archives and what he admitted to the FBI —including that he removed and cut up three copies of a classified memo.

“If he took papers out, these were unique records, and highly, highly classified. Had a document not been produced, who would have known?” Brachfeld said in an interview. “I thought [the 9/11 Commission] should know, in current time—in judging Sandy Berger as a witness . . . that there was a risk they did not get the full production of records.”

What do you think the reaction of the Commission would have been to Berger if it had been known that he absconded with or destroyed hundreds of terrorism-related documents from the Clinton Administration?

All of this is water under the bridge, of course. Perhaps Berger was good enough to write a note to future historians to be published after his death exactly what it was he destroyed and why. Someone as intelligent as Berger, a man who spent so many years at the center of history, would, it is hoped, eventually have enough self respect to not keep future historians in the dark.

Berger has now been rehabilitated to the point that Mrs. Clinton is rewarding his service to Bill’s legacy by making him one of her top foreign policy advisors. There is very little chance he would have any job in a new Clinton Administration for which he would have to be confirmed by the Senate. His nomination would never get out of committee. But there are a couple of positions to which he might be considered a front runner – positions where the prying eyes of the Senate would be blocked because he wouldn’t need any confirmation hearings.

How about National Security Advisor?

Now that the Wall Street Journal has made their article on the Hsu swindle of Source Financing Investors available for free, we can see the scope of the grifter’s con of Joel Rosenman is absolutely incredible. I may have been right when I speculated that Mr. Hsu’s entire life was one big Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Rosenman’s partner, Ms. Cheng, met Mr. Hsu while working for an Internet company in 2000. She began investing in one of his businesses and made a profit, according to someone familiar with the matter. In 2002, she joined JR Capital and introduced Mr. Rosenman to Mr. Hsu. That year, Mr. Rosenman invested and also made a profit. He began telling friends and relatives about the investment opportunity.

Mr. Rosenman described the deal in a pitch letter he provided to prospective investors for Source Financing Investors, which he launched in 2005. The investment pool would “lend to U.S. private label designers that needed interim financing to fill orders for a select group of well-known, high-end U.S. apparel retailers.” Since 2001, he writes, “the return of these short-term (typically 4½ months) loans has been no less than 40%.”

That last bit about a 40% return on the investment was pure hooey. It was Hsu up to his old tricks of paying off early investors by victimizing later ones. The idea was to appeal to simple human greed – a get rich quick scheme that seemed to work. The early investor’s excitement would lead him to tell a lot of friends about the “opportunity” and, in Rosenman’s case, even set up an investment company to unwittingly assist Hsu with the scam:

Mr. Rosenman described the deal in a pitch letter he provided to prospective investors for Source Financing Investors, which he launched in 2005. The investment pool would “lend to U.S. private label designers that needed interim financing to fill orders for a select group of well-known, high-end U.S. apparel retailers.” Since 2001, he writes, “the return of these short-term (typically 4½ months) loans has been no less than 40%.”

In a “step-by-step” outline of a typical transaction prepared for investors, Source Financing describes the way a deal worked with Mr. Hsu. Source Financing would agree to provide bridge loans for seasonal high-ticket, high-quality retail goods made in China for exclusive brand names, according to investors. Mr. Hsu told the company that he would obtain from Chinese manufacturers a price quote for apparel production. He would then add a mark-up and give the quote to a high-end buyer in the U.S.

If the U.S. buyer accepted, according to the outline, Source Financing would transfer by wire what Mr. Hsu said was 80% of the necessary loan, with Mr. Hsu saying he would provide the other 20% himself. Mr. Hsu told the investors he would then receive a letter of credit from a Chinese bank and that the manufacturer would ship the apparel to the U.S., where Mr. Hsu would deliver it to the merchant.

That Hsu must be a fast talker. I’m no investment expert but does anyone else see where an investor could get screwed 6 ways from Sunday? The deal is dependent on a rickety house of cards indeed. And how much do you want to bet that some if not all of those “US buyers” who accepted those quotes were shell companies set up by Hsu in order to fool investors everything was on track!

But this to me, would have been the biggest “tell” that something was amiss:

Mr. Hsu would give the investment firm a check, post-dated for 135 days beyond the wire transfer, for the amount of the loan plus profit. When the check matured, Source Financing would deposit it and allocate the money to investors. The company that would carry out these transactions, Mr. Hsu told investors, was Components Ltd., set up in 1997.

Some investors in Source Financing said they got involved through friends who knew Mr. Rosenman. Some did not know who Mr. Hsu was until news about him broke in late August.

Again we see the power of greed at work here. What possible guarantee is a post dated check? It is a worthless piece of paper until the date it can be made good. If Hsu was going to skip out – as he evidently was doing – what possible good would a post dated check be? It still came down to Rosenman placing his full faith and trust in Norman Hsu – his biggest and most tragic mistake.

I may be off base with this and if someone can give me a rational explanation why any sane businessman would think that accepting a post dated check in a deal like this would protect him somehow, I’m open to hearing it.

It is doubtful that Hsu fulfilled any of the promises he made about the deal – the exact same thing he did for 1/40 the amount of money in 1991 in the latex glove scam. No clothing manufacturers were contacted. No letter of credit from a Chinese bank. No product at all. Hsu was able to succeed in his con the way that all grifters make a living; feeding off the avarice of their marks.

As I said in the post below, Hsu is a first team all American crook. I look forward to more revelations about his swindles so that before long, he may be inducted into the Con Man Hall of Fame.

The Wall Street Journal has partially solved the riddle of where Norman Hsu got the money he used to donate substantial sums to Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial and Presidential campaigns as well as numerous other Democratic candidates.

Joel Rosenman, the producer of the Woodstock rock concerts in 1969 and 1994 gave Hsu’s company an astonishing $40 million “investment” with which Mr. Hsu has apparently absconded: (WSJ Subscription required):

New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.

In a letter this Monday, Mr. Rosenman told investors that the 37 outstanding deals with Components Ltd. are set to mature “over the next four months.” But he indicated that was not likely. He said he had deposited two checks from Components that “matured Sept. 7.” He was informed by the banks that there were insufficient funds.
“This development, coupled with recent revelations,” he wrote, “led us to believe that payments due on our recent transactions with Components and Hsu may not be made.”

Forty million dollars? This fellow Hsu must have a golden tongue with an uncanny knack of separating people from their money. And I think it is obvious we underestimated his abilities. Norman Hsu is not some run of the mill grifter. He is a superstar in the world of con men; a first class, top of the line, first team all American crook.

No word on exactly when Rosenman invested this money with Hsu but the Journal article mentioned it was “recently.” If so, that hardly explains the great bulk of donations Hsu has made to Democrats going back at least 3 years. How many others has Hsu bilked? And is his entire life one big Ponzi scheme where he scams mark after mark, using the proceeds from his most recent victims to pay off some of the past investors?

There is nothing “common” about this criminal. Which brings up several troubling questions that few seem to be asking at the moment:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign couldn’t explain yesterday why it blew off warnings about felon-turned-fund-raiser Norman Hsu – and the Daily News learned FBI agents are collecting e-mail evidence in the widening scandal.

Clinton was forced Monday to give back a whopping $850,000 raised by convicted scam artist Hsu after learning his investment ventures were being probed by the FBI as a potential Ponzi scheme.

She earlier gave to charity $23,000 Hsu donated himself after reports revealed he fled sentencing for a $1 million scam in California in 1992.

Yesterday, the campaign insisted it did all it should to vet Hsu after California businessman Jack Cassidy warned in June that Hsu’s investment operation was fishy. Cassidy e-mailed his tips to the California Democratic Party, which forwarded them to the Clinton campaign.

We should also be asking questions about Mrs. Clinton’s security. How could the Secret Service let someone like Hsu within 50 yards of Hillary? Or were their objections overridden?

But the question the Justice Department is going to want answered is who in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign knew about the Cassidy warning and then failed to adequately vet Hsu’s shady dealings? Or, more troubling, discovered Hsu’s history and still took the money anyway.

Meanwhile, See Dubya at Hot Air has dug into Clinton’s donor list and pulled out several contributions from Rosenman’s family as well as others connected with his investment company:

Source Financing, Mr. Rosenman’s company, has asked the beneficiaries of Mr. Hsu’s largesse to quit giving it away to charity in order to recover it for their investors.
No word on whether Mr. Rosenman wants his own contributions to Hillary back, nor those of a Ned Rosenman who also works for Source Financing, nor those of a Molly Rosenman, also of Source Financing–each of whom gave her $4600 back in March.

Mr. Rosenman’s partner, a Mr. Yau Cheng also donated $4600 to Hillary. See Dubya asks whether all of these checks were part of a bundle delivered by Hsu to the Clinton campaign. In fact, there were 260 individual donors whose checks were bundled by Mr. Hsu. Malkin rightly calls on Hillary to come clean and cough up the list. She’s already returned $850,000. Why not make the names public?

Timing will be critical in this case. When did Hsu receive the $40 million? All the donations from Source Financing were made in March of this year. Was there some kind of understanding between Rosenman and Hsu about part of that $40 million when repaid offered as reimbursement to donors scared up by Source Financing? Was more of that $40 million earmarked for political donations to Democrats? How many operations like this exist to get around FEC regulations?

This could be the biggest election financing fraud in history, even surpassing the Nixon crimes committed during the 1972 election.

Some of the questions about the source of Norman Hsu’s largess spread around the country to Democratic candidates have been answered. But as in all scandals, each question answered raises additional problems. This is a very serious scandal for the Clinton campaign, one that could even sink her candidacy even if it doesn’t touch Hillary directly. And depending on how extensive the lawbreaking was, it may pull down the Democratic party a notch or two nationally.

My latest column at PJ Media is about the Petreaus hearings. A sample:

There are few things in Washington that get the political juices flowing more quickly than an important Congressional hearing. Part heavyweight title bout, part high school musical, when the gavel comes down and the kleig lights click on, America’s leaders paste on their most serious faces and prepare for their five minutes of notoriety with all the care and solemnity of a bride getting ready for her walk down the aisle.

This is why rather than asking the witnesses questions, members generally gave speeches about why they support/oppose the surge, usually concluding by asking some rhetorical question along the lines of “How many times did you beat your wife today, General?” or “Why do puppies find you so irresistible, sir?”

What a difference a week makes.

I honestly didn’t expect a large boost for Fred Thompson after he officially declared his candidacy. He had been “on the verge” for so long that I believed most Republicans had already accepted him as a candidate and that any bump he got from announcing would be a blip, barely beyond the statistically significant.

But polls taken in the last 72 hours tell a different story. Apparently, many conservatives who had been flirting with both Romney and Giuliani are taking another look at Thompson, tightening the race nationally while showing a definite “Fred Surge” in one key state.

First, the national numbers. Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that Fred Thompson is enjoying a bounce from his formal entry into the Presidential race.

In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, Thompson is on top for the first time since late July. The former Tennessee Senator is currently the top choice for 26% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. Rudy Giuliani, who has been the frontrunner for most of the year, is close behind with support from 22%. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earns the vote from 13% while 12% prefer Arizona Senator John McCain. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee remains atop the second tier at 6% (see recent daily numbers).

Now that’s what I call a surge.

CBS has Fred moving up as well, narrowing the gap with Giuliani:

After seeing his support among Republican primary voters rise to 38 percent in August, Giuliani was backed by only 27 percent of respondents in the most recent survey, narrowing his lead over Thompson to 5 percentage points after holding a 20-point edge last month.

While Thompson, at 22 percent support, is now a close second to Giuliani, he was not the only Republican to seemingly benefit from Giuliani’s fading numbers. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was written off by some after months of staff upheaval and disappointing fundraising, saw his support increase 6 points since the last survey to 18 percent. On the other hand, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won August’s straw poll in Ames, Iowa, saw little benefit nationwide, scoring 14 percent support – largely unchanged since last month.

Gallup gives Fred a smaller bump (19% – 22%) but still significant.

Obviously, Fred is tapping into a conservative base that was unhappy with Romney and especially, Giuliani – for different reasons. Romney’s calculated moves to the right have not sat well with many while Giuliani makes no bones about his differences with many conservatives, although he’s probably conservative enough for most Republicans. Unease with Giuliani’s experience as well as his stands on root Republican issues like abortion and gay marriage have some of the base looking for an alternative.

Romney, still mired in the mid teens nationally, may be getting a little desperate. A poorly disguised political dirty trick directed against Thompson has backfired:

A top adviser to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appears to be behind the launch of a new Web site attacking GOP presidential rival Fred D. Thompson during his first week on the trail.

The site, PhoneyFred.org, painted an unflattering picture of Thompson, dubbing the former TV star and senator Fancy Fred, Five O’clock Fred, Flip-Flop Fred, McCain Fred, Moron Fred, Playboy Fred, Pro-Choice Fred, Son-of-a-Fred and Trial Lawyer Fred. Shortly after a Washington Post reporter made inquiries about the site to the Romney campaign, it was taken down.

Before it vanished, the front page of the Web site featured a picture of Thompson depicted in a frilly outfit more befitting a Gilbert and Sullivan production than a presidential candidate.

The Republicans have a long way to go as far as being internet savvy. You can bet if a Democratic candidate set up an attack website, there would be no way to trace it back to the campaign. The Washington Post was able to unmask the fake Fred site in no time.

Meanwhile, in California, the latest Survey USA (GOP) poll has Giuliani edging Thompson 28%-26%. Their last poll in early August had Fred trailing Rudy by 11. The Mother of all Primaries on February 5 next year will include California, Illinois, and New York along with 16 other states – at least (it is still not clear whether Michigan and Florida will toe the party line and push their primaries back to February 5 or later). Fred’s best chance for a big state win on Mega Tuesday will probably be California since Romney’s dad was a governor of Michigan and Rudy looks unbeatable on his home turf of New York. Florida is another possibility for Fred as several of his key advisors have ties to Jeb Bush. Regardless, all of these numbers should give a little momentum to Fred as he wades in to the money morass and attempts to raise funds.

That, of course, is the key; turning these surging numbers into a flood of mother’s milk. With the constraints on his fund raising abilities off, Fred is going to have to raise at least $1.5 million a week between now and the end of the year by my calculations in order for him to be competitive in the early primaries and caucuses. This is more than doable if his operation is finally set and he has the people he wants in key positions. Any confusion at the staff level from here on out will reflect badly on the candidate and this will almost certainly affect his ability to raise money.

What The Fred Surge says about the race is that it is still wide open. You have to wonder if New Gingrich isn’t seeing the reaction to Thompson entering the race and contemplating his own prospects.

At this point, anything and everything is possible.

UPDATE

Steve Smith emails from the Romney campaign with an explanation of the “PhoneyFred.Org” website that the Washington Post charges a top aide to the campaign with involvement:

As reported in the Boston Globe, the site has no direct affiliation to our
campaign, and we had no knowledge of its development.

The person responsible is not an employee of ours, but we took immediate action
to make sure it was clear the site was not affiliated with the campaign.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/09/romney_camp_dis.html