Right Wing Nut House

I don’t know what’s funnier. This speech by Daniel Ellsberg given a few days ago at American University or the gushing reaction to the idiocy by some of the netnuts.

Ellsberg you may recall, leaked the Pentagon Papers back in the day when such things were actually taken seriously. While it seems pretty clear that national security was not severely damaged by the publishing of the history of our involvement in Southeast Asia, the docs were considered “classified” and Ellsberg took it upon himself to remove that designation.

Since then, Ellsberg has flitted from one radical conclave to another, apparently making a living basically by being a gadfly. Hardly anyone listens to his off the wall diatribes against American policy and the American government - except like minded fools who see Ellsberg as some kind of hero.

How anyone can take this loony bird seriously after he says something like this is beyond understanding:

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

Paranoid blather.

Detention camps? 9/11 trutherism? I know that the Nixon thugs broke into this guy’s psychiatrist’s office. I wonder what they found?

Besides that, Ellsberg evidently does his best thinking while unconscious:

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

Two coups in less than 8 years? Whatever sleeping pill Ellsberg is taking, gimme some. Those kind of delusions are more entertaining than most of my dreams which usually involve my boss, Editor in Chief of AT Tom Lifson, my cats, and very large bowl of double chocolate fudge ice cream.

This kind of exaggerated, ridiculous, outrageous thinking should get Mr. Ellsberg right back up on top of the radical lefty pyramid. I have no doubt he will be even more in demand now that he’s joined the ranks of the truly unhinged.

For three years I have been writing about this kind of hysterical, over the top, insanely exaggerated rhetoric. Why? Why do liberals feel it necessary to throw reality out the window and paint a picture of the government, of Bush, of Republicans, of the United States in such dark, apocalyptic terms?

I know the far right offers similar rhetoric about the government - even goofier if that’s possible. But most of them are inbred crackers, militia freaks, racist skin heads, and Hitler worshippers. These liberals are supposed to be educated, urbane, rational people. What causes such unhinged rhetoric to spew from their lips on a regular basis?

I am not insensate to some of the excesses of the Administration’s anti-terror efforts. Nor do I trust Bush/Cheney farther than I can throw them when it comes to some civil liberties issues. But I also consider myself educated, urbane, and rational and I don’t see the Constitution being torn up or some kind of evil trend toward unlimited executive authority. Nor do I see anything except the usual corruption that power brings when it comes to the GOP in Congress. These same kind of excesses plagued the Democrats in the latter years of their control of Congress. It is the nature of our system that power will corrupt some people. And whether they have a “D” or an “R” after their name doesn’t matter in the long run.

My working theory on why liberals say the things they do is that when they eventually triumph, they can claim to have saved the country from absolute disaster. It may surprise you to know that this has happened several times in our history. What won’t surprise you is that Democrats have been the ones claiming to rescue the rest of us from tyranny.

The most glaring example was the election of 1800 where Jefferson’s “democratic republicans” swept into power, throwing the Federalists out. Their entire campaign was based on hysteria, exaggerated hyperbolic rhetoric, and predictions of doom; that electing the Federalists would mean that the country would degenerate into a monarchy with a full blown aristocracy plus dominance by Great Britain to boot.

President Adams was livid with Jefferson - especially after newspapers in Jefferson’s corner printed slanderous stories about Adams and his plans to make himself king, closely ally the country with England, and set up his friends as dukes and earls to rule over the populace. The campaign was so bitter that the two founders didn’t speak or communicate for 15 years. When they finally sealed the breach in their friendship, the letters they exchanged the last years of their lives left a remarkable record of the thoughts of two great Americans on life, liberty, and the nature of man.

But this isn’t 1800. And the effect of this kind of rhetorical nonsense not only makes public discourse impossible but truly endangers the republic. The vast majority of Americans don’t believe this idiocy either. All it does is turn them off to politics further as the level of political argument descends further and further into the gutter.

The Democrats may very well sweep the elections next year. But the question is; just what kind of country will they have won? Their contribution to the terrible apathy and disenchantment with government comes at a time when we should be uniting against a common, deadly enemy. Instead, the left will ascend to power and stand atop the hill and survey a charred political wasteland, made worse by their unhinged opposition to the policies of the administration and their end of the world rhetoric directed against the GOP.

There is responsible opposition to your political foes. There is even irresponsible opposition that has long been part of the American political scene. But the opposition shown by the left over the last few years is beyond irresponsible. It is destructive. And for that, they should be royally ashamed of themselves.

I have to confess that I’ve always found Keith Olbermann to be a great entertainer. He has a keen sense of timing and an educated eye for the absurdities in life and politics (and in sports as his stint at the anchor desk of ESPN showed) that makes a lot of what he does funny and even provocative at times.

In short, he is a first class clown, a talented comedian whose shtick is, unfortunately, too narrowly defined for stand-up and too intelligent for a sitcom. But he seems to have found a comfortable niche in the Howard Beal inspired “news as entertainment” field that Bill O’Reilly and other prime time cable hosts have settled into.

The problem is, like O’Reilly, Olbermann thinks he’s a journalist. Just where this notion is advanced on his show, I am unable to determine. Only an idiot would see the blatantly partisan attacks and relentlessly exaggerated rhetoric employed by Olbermann as anything except exactly what they are; an attempt to promote an ideology at the expense of informing the public by using tactics worthy of a Goebbels or TASS in order to discredit opposing viewpoints.

Well, meet an idiot:

In short, what CBS (and all the others) need is a new Ed Murrow. Good news! There’s already one out there on the launchpad who has demonstrated his qualifications. I’m talking about Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. He has the journalistic chops and the mind, heart, instincts and courage.

Olbermann, who anchors a one-hour nightly news show on MSNBC called Countdown With Keith Olbermann, closes his show every night by saying “1,547th [for instance] day since Mission Accomplished in Iraq,” an homage to Ted Koppel’s “Iran Hostage” coverage, which evolved into Koppel’s late-night ABC news show Nightline (the MSNBC show was originally Countdown: Iraq). Then Olbermann throws his crumpled script at the camera, which shatters, a simulated digital effect (something Koppel never did).

These quotes are from a gushing piece on Olbermann by Marvin Kitman in the online edition of The Nation magazine. It isn’t surprising or disturbing that Kitman likes Olbermann. But positing the notion that the Clown Prince of MSNBC is a modern day Murrow?

A tip off to Mr. Kitman’s bona fides as a judge of who is a journalist is found in the above quote where Kitman seriously informs us that Ted Koppel never crumpled his script and threw it at the camera - unlike Olbermann who does it to sign off his show.

Perhaps the reason Koppel never crumpled his script and threw it at the camera was because he was, like, you know, a real journalist and not a poseur. Real journalists don’t do histrionics. Olbermann is the master of the craft.

Kitman also shows a breathtaking stupidity about Murrow, about journalistic standards, and the difference between advocacy and news. In fact, Kitman proves himself to be an ignoramus regarding just about everything he comments on in his article with the possible exception of his references to celebrities. There, I am not competent to judge his perspicacity.

For instance, Kitman demonstrates a shocking ignorance about Edward R. Murrow and his place in broadcast news history. He believes the problem with modern day news presentation is that it tries to be balanced and objective rather than taking a decided point of view in order to advocate a clear ideological position (liberal) as Murrow’s broadcasts did:

So, as a TV critic who has logged millions of hours of viewing to help save one of my three favorite commercial networks, I decided to volunteer my services to the Save CBS Campaign. Here’s what I would do: First, I would dump the Walter Cronkite school of reporting, of which Katie Couric is the latest practitioner. The objective that’s-the-way-it-is style they use at all the network evening news shows is so old, so over. No wonder all the network news programs are falling in the ratings. Katie Couric is just the hardest hit.

What the evening news shows need is less “objectivity” and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn’t exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, “The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who’s ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there’s no such thing as objectivity.”

This is the tired, old canard that leftists have used for 40 years; that news written by white males is not “objective” because the journalist has no life experience as a woman or other minority to inform his writing and point of view. Somehow, this is supposed to slight issues and concerns near and dear to the hearts of liberal interest groups.

It is the “journalism as a crusade” school of thought that rejects the idea that news gathering and writing is not art, but craft. Clearly, much of the “craft” aspect of becoming a newsman has been lost today. Everyone wants to be a creative writer rather than a journalist. Newspapers especially encourage this because it makes their product livelier and, I suppose, easier to read. But for an old fuddy-duddy like me who looks in wonder even at wire service copy today and sees jaw dropping examples of blatant bias, I still believe it the job of a news writer to try their best to leave their ideological crusades at the newsroom door.

Not according to Kitman. And he holds up as a shining example of how the news should be reported, none other than the sainted Murrow:

What I’m proposing is nothing new. Before Walter Cronkite became the model “objective” newsman, there was Edward R. Murrow. In the late 1930s Murrow started the tradition of reporting the news and analyzing it, giving his opinion of what it all meant. The Murrow legend was built on his opinionated analyses on the CBS Evening News.

This is true as far as it goes. The fact is, Murrow’s editorials - which usually closed the news broadcast - were clearly labeled as such. Kitman is advocating that the entire news program be given over to editorial analysis:

For those who never saw Murrow’s news show, here’s how it would go: After running through the headlines, he would call on reporters at home and abroad to give reports on the scene. These so-called Murrow’s Boys were real TV journalists, not actors who played them on TV. CBS News in the Murrow years had people we respected because of their expertise, not because they were famous TV names. The foreign correspondents weren’t empty trench coats but real experts like William Shirer, who reported from Berlin on the menace of Hitler in the 1930s. It didn’t matter that Murrow’s Boys were bald like David Schoenbrun, who reported from Paris in the glory days, or older than the 18-49 demographic like Dan Schorr. They were specialists in specific areas.

Then Murrow would do his closing essay, in which he would comment on some hot issue, continually treading dangerous waters: McCarthyism at home, apartheid abroad, J. Edgar Hoover, the atomic bomb, stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction–all of which he opposed. He was pro-union and anti-business. He was a dissident on US foreign policy post-World War II.

The problem here is that Kitman has combined several different Murrow programs over the years in both radio and television in order to make an obscure point; that Murrow’s broadcasts had a definite ideological point of view.

Starting in the late 1930’s, Murrow’s reports from Europe were either special broadcasts (as his famous 1938 round up of European opinion about the Anschluss) or his regular reports from London that were part of H.V. Kaltenborn’s 15 minute news reading at night. Murrow was never an anchor for CBS News as Kitman intimates above. In fact, Murrow’s war reports were so good not because he injected opinion into his pieces but because he was able to write clear, concise summaries of what it was like to be in London during the blitz. Whatever opinions he gave were in the context of the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hitler - hardly courageous or even novel.

After the war, Murrow’s Hear it Now radio program and the TV version See it Now tackled the toughest controversies of the time. But these shows were totally independent of the nightly news program. It is clear by the description above that Kitman doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Murrow’s duties at CBS. He never started See it Now by reading the headlines. The show was a one issue program. It was the beginning of TV documentaries, something that Murrow would continue to perfect until the early 1960’s when he wrote and broadcast perhaps the most memorable documentary in over the air TV history, Harvest of Shame that profiled the plight of migrant workers.

In short, Kitman’s laughable misunderstanding of what Murrow actually did for CBS News makes his subsequent gushing about Olbermann ridiculous.

And this curious historical revisionism about Murrow is almost unfathomable. It is either deliberate obfuscation of the facts or unbelievable stupidity on the part of Kitman:

“No one can eliminate prejudices–just recognize them,” Murrow said. His approach was so successful that all the other network news hours copied him.

Finally, CBS president William Paley made Ed Murrow shut up–by canceling his shows. In the dark ages after Murrow, the most powerful commentary on network news was the raised eyebrow of David Brinkley after reading a piece of news on NBC. A generation of telegenic and totally uninvolved journalists followed.

Um…no, the other networks “news hours(??)” did not try to copy him (news on TV at the time was 15 minutes). In fact, NBC steered clear of controversy as much as possible. ABC News was a joke at the time, not even considered much of a network at all.

And the fact is, See it Now as a weekly program was not cancelled by Paley but rather the weekly show went dark because it lost its sponsor in 1955, Alcoa Aluminum and was unable to secure another permanent one. This was back in the day when corporations would sponsor individual shows and losing a sponsor meant either getting another one or going dark. See it Now was on the air fitfully as a series of specials until 1958 when according to Murrow’s long time producer Fred Friendly, the broadcaster told Paley he refused to do any more shows because of the network’s habit of giving equal time to Murrow’s targets. (Something Olbermann never does).

Putting aside Kitman’s obvious lack of knowledge of who Murrow was and what he did, the question of whether Murrow was “journalist” or an “analyst” remains unanswered. As a first person witness to history he was very good, a pioneer in radio and we have Murrow to thank for much of the structure found in modern news broadcasts. As an advocate for liberal reforms, he was tireless but his legend sometimes outstrips the facts. His McCarthy broadcast was aired in March of 1954, long after most major Democratic newspapers (and even many Republican ones) came out against the Wisconsin Senator. Murrow came late to the bash McCarthy party and most historians agree the Wisconsin Senator sealed his fate a month prior to Murrow’s See it Now broadcast by sliming World War II hero Ralph Zwicker that brought widespread editorial condemnation as well as denunciations from veterans groups and finally, President Eisenhower himself.

Comparing Olbermann to Murrow then is a monumental stretch - just from the standpoint that Murrow relied on a cold, journalistic recitation of the facts in order to make his points. Olbermann wouldn’t know a “fact” if it came up and bit him on his rear end. This from his first “Special Comment” segment where Olbermann tries to evoke the memory of Murrow:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war. I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient…. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent. I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought. I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents. I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience and letting him run roughshod over it….

It would be tiresome to rebut what Olbermann has laid out as his “case” for a Bush resignation. If you believe that Bush “fabricated in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11″ then there is no hope for you. You might as well believe in Santa Claus. I only highlight it to contrast the way Murrow went about savaging McCarthy:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men— not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Murrow could have been referring to Olbermann during most of that analysis.

Olbermann is a clown. An excellent clown but an entertainer nonetheless. It has been said that he is the first on-air blogger in that his rants are reminiscent of much that passes for analysis on the web. Of this, I have no doubt. His exaggeration, his cruel twisting of facts and circumstances, and his outright deliberate obscuring of the truth - 3 Congressional Committees have found Bush did not lie us into war not to mention assigning unproven and unsubstantiated motivations to the President for his actions - are part and parcel of the way many popular right and left blogs operate. But Olbermann as Murrow?

For ten minutes, Olbermann spoke with fierce clarity and surgical precision, drawing a comparison to President Nixon’s resignation. He had obviously done his homework. His recitation of Bush’s crimes concluded with his observation that the President had been “an accessory to the obstruction of justice” in the Libby case. “From Iraq to Scooter Libby,” Olbermann said at the time, “Bush and Cheney have lost Americans’ trust and stabbed this nation in the back. It’s time for them to go.” The highest praise I can give is to say I can imagine Ed Murrow speaking those words.

If Kitman can imagine Murrow saying those words, he’s a fool. Murrow would have marshaled the facts not gone off on ad hoc rants substituting ill formed opinions for clear, concise analysis. The idea that Kitman can’t recognize this only shows him to be an idiot.

Which is why any comparisons between Olbermann and Murrow are found only in the minds of Kitman and Olbermann himself. No serious journalist would entertain such a comparison nor would any serious person period. It is beyond belief that anyone could be so obtuse as to believe that Olbermann was anything except a clever entertainer who knows his audience expertly and panders to their biases and worldview.

Kitman’s vision of a future nightly news broadcast featuring Olbermann-like rants and ravings is pretty frightening. Thankfully, if such a nightmare were to occur, such relentless partisanship would appeal to an even smaller segment of the population than over the air news appeals to now which would cause Mr. Olbermann to retreat ignominiously back to the cable backwater of MSNBC where he belongs.

Every once and a while an issue emerges that exposes in stark relief the great chasm separating right from left - where the differences revealed are so profound that the two sides look at each other across this great divide and see not a political opponent but a strange and unfamiliar form of life whose habits of thought and moral calculus are so dissimilar as to make the gulf that separates them seem unbridgeable.

The on again-off again visit by President Ahmadinejad is such an issue. Rarely has the reaction to an event been so dichotomous. Perhaps not since the Terri Schiavo matter has the lines of understanding and perception been drawn so sharply that bewilderment mixed with outrage have been the dominant themes rather than the usual snark and spite that is hurled back and forth on a daily basis.

For instance, the normally sane lefty Josh Marshall goes off the deep end of idiocy here:

So what’s the problem exactly? Presumably we can be frank enough to acknowledge that the real issue here is that while Ahmadinejad is not Arab to most of us he looks pretty Arab. And he is Muslim certainly — and pretty up in arms about it at that. And we officially don’t like him. And we classify the country he runs as a state sponsor of terrorism. So even though he has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, when you put all these key facts together, he might as well have done it himself. And what business does anyone with the blood of the victims of 9/11 on his hands have going to Ground Zero?

That’s basically it and don’t tell me it’s not.

See what I mean about bewilderment? It is incomprehensible to me that anyone could dismiss the visit to Ground Zero of someone who leads “Death to America” chants during nearly every speech he gives in Iran with the notion that those who are outraged at the thought are racists or ignoramuses who have a problem with enemy identification.

At least Marshall was earnest in his desire to understand what has so many people ticked off about the proposed visit. Others actually hit the nail on the head but dismissed the outrage as “childish:”

In the simplistic narrative that dominates Republican discourse, it doesn’t matter that Ahmadinejad and Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 or that Iran in fact publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks shortly after they occurred. All that matters is that Ahmadinejad is an Evil Islamofascist and that the attacks were carried out by Evil Islamofascists. Ipso facto, it would be the ultimate insult to allow him anywhere near Ground Zero.

And the later, the same author:

And as I wrote yesterday, having an important Muslim leader publicly pay respect to those who died on 9/11 would be a major public relations victory for us. Remember, the primary goal in the war on terror is to reduce the appeal of al Qaeda’s ideology among the world’s Muslim population.

First, as an aside, yes it is true that Iran “publicly condemned” the 9/11 attack - in the context that it mirrored the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The warped sense of history that could place 9/11 in the same moral framework as the wartime attacks on the two Japanese cities is exactly why Ahmadinejad’s visit would have been such an outrage.

But the real headshaker here is the inability of the writer and indeed most of the left to recognize the significance of allowing a terrorist enabler like Ahmadinejad to visit the site of a terrorist attack. For many on the left, because Iran had nothing to do with the event, their hands are clean. In this universe, Ahmadinejad is just some poor, Muslim pilgrim come to make nice with the Americans by piously laying a wreath where his co-religionists so brutally attacked us.

And yes I draw a direct line between Ahmadinejad and Atta. Why? Because despite the differences in their fanaticism (Atta’s inspiration came from Wahhabist radicalism while Ahmadinejad’s is from Shia mysticism), both are adherents of an ideology (not religion) that seeks to destroy the west and replace it with their own version of the Muslim ummah. We are not discussing whether it is possible or not. They both think it is and are therefore equal threats to the safety and security of the United States.

We can make fun of Ahmadinejad’s mystical utterances. They are a product of his extremely sheltered and deliberately closed off existence in Iran. And his obliviousness to American sensibilities about Ground Zero is telling indeed. But it is his determination to spread Islam - the same determination that animated Mohammad Atta - that would have made his trip to Ground Zero so inappropriate.

But for many on the left, a suspension of moral certitude takes place when dealing with America’s enemies. In their haste to see “both sides” in a conflict, many on the left forget (or deliberately choose to ignore) the nature of the Iranian regime and why the spread of that ideology must be opposed and stopped if possible. In fact, the left is so busy being even handed that it becomes impossible to take a moral stand at all.

This then is the real chasm. The right has moral certainty on this issue. The left, a moral relativeness.

Now before everyone gets all bent out of shape let me make a couple of observations. First, I believe criticism by the left of the right’s moral certainty about everything is well founded in some instances. It is just as idiotic to believe that everything is black and white as it is to believe that everything is shades of gray.

There are moral stands to be taken where there is little or no wiggle room. For or against a war would be one example. And then there is the idea that one can oppose terrorism but treat its perpetrators and enablers as they would anyone else. The United States government is at war with this man’s ideology. We are at war with most of what he wishes would come true for the Middle East and the west. We are at war with his notion of human rights and human decency.

We are not a perfect people nor are we infallible. But we can certainly stand up for those things that we feel are “inalienable” rights and therefore natural to the human condition. It has become unfashionable to believe that babies are not born into bondage to government diktats but rather free to live, breathe, speak, write, worship, and associate. It is government that takes these things away or doles out these rights like pieces of candy to little children. What Ahmadinejad/Atta represent is a complete anathema to the idea of natural rights - the basis of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and of the American way of life. There can be no more complete enemy of the United States.

There are variety of reasons the left chooses not to see the moral trap they have set for themselves by excusing Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit Ground Zero. They oppose the Iranian regime on an intellectual level but can’t make the leap to opposing them on the only level you can effectively fight them - the gut churning emotional level where you can feel something is either absolutely right or terribly wrong. Without moral certitude in fighting the Ahmadinejad/Attas of this world, we will lose. We will lose because they are certain that they are in the right .

The outrage felt by many on the right regarding Ahmadinejad’s now scuttled visit to Ground Zero and the left’s mockery and bewilderment of it open the chasm between us just a little bit wider. I have no idea how to bridge the difference between us. I hope it won’t take some cataclysmic event to make it happen.

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.