Right Wing Nut House

There are times where I actually feel sorry for the far left in this country. Events have conspired to make them such a political irrelevancy that watching them self destruct day after day is like watching that Star Trek Next Generation episode where the Enterprise crew was caught up in a time loop that had them repeating the same day over and over. Unlike the starship crew however, the left is unable to escape their own loop because in order to do so they would have to practice a minimum amount of introspection regarding where their tactics and rhetoric have gotten them. That way lies madness which makes watching them something akin to watching a NASCAR race at Daytona; you wait with a combination of trepidation and excitement for the inevitable crack-up in turn #3.

Witness this latest jaw dropper from our friends at Truthout, a site that combines the looniness of the Democratic Underground with a comical belief in their own importance to the Democratic party a la Daily Kos. One William Rivers Pitt sends an arch, insulting, and in the end uproariously funny memo to Congressional Democrats asking them to “walk out” during the President’s State of the Union speech next week:

I have a wild and crazy idea.

George W. Bush’s delivery of the State of the Union address will take place on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now. It is my strong belief that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out. No yelling. No heated words. Every Democrat should simply stand silently and leave.

Crazy, I know. Crazy, and possibly the best idea ever put before a body of Democrats since the New Deal.

Well Bill, aren’t you the “wild and crazy” guy! Now you’ve piqued my interest - please continue:

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

Aren’t we the bloodthirsty ones!

For the love of God, you are being compared to Osama bin Laden all over network television because some within your ranks have had the courage to question the war in Iraq. It hasn’t been subtle. Bin Laden, according to the right-wing talking heads, is getting his talking points straight from Howard Dean. These are the out-front spokespeople for the folks running the GOP right now. If you think there is compromise to be had with these people, if you think there is quarter to be given to you, then I have a nice, big red bridge to sell you in San Francisco.

For a minute there, I though Mr. Pitt was going to try and defend the indefensible. But as I’ve been pointing out for several days, the left has decided not to try and defend themselves against the charge that Osama’s taped screed was interchangeable with just about anything found on Michael Moore’s website or in Howard Dean’s speeches. Instead, they simply change the subject by comparing their fantastic conspiracies with legitimate anti-war protests. Despite taking a deconstructionist position that words don’t matter, anyone with half a brain knows the truth of the matter and have judged accordingly. If Mr. Pitt would have come out and said that the left recognizes Osama Bin Laden is mimicking their rhetoric in a shameless attempt to divide Americans and by God, we’re not going to let that terrorist scum do that, I would at least have a little respect for the galoot. Instead, he ignores the obvious by sticking his head in the sand and pretending up is down, black is white, and that God didn’t make little green apples.

You’ve been outflanked, Democrats. Abramoff won’t help you, and the noise machine is preparing to terrorize the American people into such a distracted state that anything you say in the next ten months will be lost amid the howling. The midterms are pretty much a done deal, and your continued marginalization will proceed at speed.

You can stomp your feet and yell at the wall. You can put your head in your hands and weep. You can sit silently and be simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home, and be damned to actually doing anything of substance. In other words, you can continue to do what you’ve been doing since this outrageous assault on basic American democracy began.

Hold the phone here. Didn’t Mr. Pitt say that Republicans are out to “destroy” the Democrats? How can we do that if these same Congressmen are “simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home.” Pretty hard to destroy someone who can’t be beaten which, according to analysts like Michael Barone includes around 98% of House members, both Republican and Democratic. Now if Pitt is talking about national elections, perhaps if the Democrats didn’t beg to be destroyed every four years by fielding a candidate with the personality of a cocktail table and the brains of a marmoset - not to mention someone who thinks the politics of George McGovern is the magic key to victory at the polls - then perhaps you would find even red state Americans a little more open to your message. As it is, when people think that Democrats would rather watch them being killed than listen in on conversations by people in America who are talking with the killers, they tend not to pay any attention.

Here’s Mr. Pitt’s grand finale to his fantasy SOTU evening:

Walk outside to the steps of the Capitol Building and hold a Counter-State-of-the-Union. Lay out your plans for a better future. Explain how you will reform the system that spawned Mr. Abramoff. Demand answers and explanations about what is happening in Iraq, what is happening over at the National Security Agency, and why this administration believes itself to be completely above the law.

I can even offer a bit of text for your opening statement. “Three years ago during this very speech,” your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, “Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation.”

First, in order to outline your party’s plans for a “better future” don’t you think that you should, you know, like have some plans in the first place? A small detail after all. There should be no problem in coming up with a complete party platform in a week.

As for the rest, the fact that the President was quoting from a report written by an organization that you and your friends put so much stock in, the United Nations, seems to have been lost in the excitement of carrying on with your deranged missives against the Bush Administration. And since most people can recognize the difference between a “lie” and being given shoddy intelligence, I’m afraid that part of your little speech will fall flat as well.

I would suggest that Mr. Pitt keep trying to encourage the Democrats to participate in more of these made for TV moments of drama. It appears to be all that your party has outside of an irrational and abiding hatred for the President and his supporters.

UPDATE:

Frequent commenter Ken McCracken writes:

Please, please please is there some way we could get them to actually try this?

Such an en masse temper tantrum would be the signal moment of the end of the Democratic party. They would literally be walking out of Congress and into oblivion.

Ken is right, of course. And the fact that Mr. Pitt doesn’t realize this makes him the Cluebat of the Week.

Anyone who has read Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb knows the awesome technical problems that had to be overcome by the scientists and engineers who worked on America’s Manhattan Project. And while the Iranian’s clearly have something of a head start in that many of the concepts worked out at Los Alamos have since entered the public domain via leaks and through books like Rhodes, the fact is that there are some aspects to building a bomb that are still closely guarded secrets and require a level of technical expertise not readily found in a third world country like Iran.

There are several ways around the technical problems that are being encountered by Iran as they seek to construct a nuclear weapon. Experts from other nuclear powers like China, Pakistan, and especially North Korea have probably already contributed to Iran’s enrichment program. This has been a given since we uncovered the nuclear bazaar being operated by the “Father of the Pakistani bomb” A.Q. Khan. There is little doubt that Dr. Khan was able to greatly assist the mullahs in the 1990’s with both the knowledge and sources for hardware that the Iranians will need to go nuclear. And perhaps most frighteningly (and blessedly least likely) is that the Iranians have been able to secure a quantity of enriched uranium (U-235) that they have already used to construct several crude nuclear devices.

That nightmare scenario cannot be ruled out but is unlikely due to the extraordinary difficulty in extracting the highly enriched (HE) uranium from what is commonly called yellowcake or Uranium Hexafluoride. The conversion process is technically challenging and very expensive which would make it difficult for all nuclear powers with the possible exception of China and Russia to be marketing the material to the Iranians. Countries like India, Pakistan, and North Korea would not have enough U-235 to spare. Since it takes around 125-150 lbs of HE Uranium to build even the crude “gun design” device that the US dropped on Hiroshima and since in order to get that amount of nearly pure U-235 you need to have several hundred tons of yellowcake to work with, it would be highly unlikely for any secondary nuclear power to sell the mullahs what they need to construct a nuclear device.

If we assume the Iranians have the technical expertise to enrich uranium, how long then do we have before Iran gets the bomb? A National Intelligence Estimate leaked to the Washington Post and New York Times (natch!) last summer indicated that our government believes the Iranians are a decade away from being able to explode a nuclear device. Given the history of the CIA’s prognostication abilities with regards to countries going nuclear, that time frame should not give comfort to anyone with an ounce of common sense. The Israeli’s on the other hand believe that Iran could be nuclear capable by the end of this decade (2009). The difference is significant in that the Mossad probably has better in country sources than the CIA.

So unless the Iranians have hidden much more of their nuclear program than anyone is aware - a difficult concept to entertain given that the movement of nuclear materials is carefully watched - it is likely that we still have 3-5 years before we would be forced to act.

Some of the major technical hurdles that Iranians have to overcome in order to build a bomb are outlined in this excellent article by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of the blog Arms Control Wonk. Lewis is on the board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and an arms control expert. What impressed me most about this article was his patient explanations of the engineering problems the Iranians have already experienced as well as what lies in store for them as they seek to build the infrastructure necessary to enrich uranium:

David Albright and Corey Hinderstein at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released an estimate that breaks down the steps for Iran to make fissile material for a bomb, along with a nifty satellite image (at right) of Iran’s Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz.

Most references to Iran being “months” away from a bomb are really statements about how close Iran will be once it completes the FEP—something, as you will soon see, that will take a few years.

[snip]

So, the real question, however, is how quickly Iran could assemble and operate 1,500 centrifuges in a crash program to make enough HEU for one bomb (say 15-20 kg).

Albright and Hinderstein have created a notional timeline for such a program:

Assemble 1,300-1,600 centrifuges. Assuming Iran starts assembling centrifuges at a rate of 70-
100/month, Iran will have enough centrifuges in 6-9 months.

Combine centrifuges into cascades, install control equipment, building feed and withdrawal systems, and test the Fuel Enrichment Plant. 1 year

Enrich enough HEU for a nuclear weapon. 1 year

Weaponize the HEU. A “few” months.

Total time to the bomb—about three years.

Please note that this would be a “crash” program and that the date 2009 dovetails nicely with the Israeli estimate.

While most experts believe that the Iranians will eventually have 50,000 centrifuges housed in the FEP at Natanz, the best estimate is that they currently only have 1000 - 1500 on hand, hence the long lead time between getting the enrichment plant up and running and converting enough U-235 to build a workable bomb. At full capacity, the plant should be able to enrich enough uranium to make 25-30 bombs a year.

Is this how the CIA calculated that it would take the Iranians a decade to produce a bomb? It would certainly take years to install 50,000 centrifuges and get them synced up so that they would work properly. If this is the case, it is interesting that they left the fact out of their leaks that the Iranians could engage in a crash program in enrichment that would cut the lead time for bomb building almost in half.

That said, as Dr. Lewis points out, even a crash program in enrichment would not guarantee an Iranian bomb in 3 years:

The interesting question is what technical problems the US IC expects Iran to encounter. The thing about a crash program is that things, well, crash.

The engineering tolerances necessary to spin a centrifuge at supersonic speed in order to separate isotopes are extremely difficult to achieve. And each centrifuge must act in concert with the others so that all 1500 machines are working together. Called a “cascade,” Lewis points out that this may be just one of several technical hurdles the Iranians must overcome even in a crash program.

If all this is true, the good news is we have time - time to get serious about working with dissident groups in Iran to affect regime change. Because in the end, no other option seems viable at this point. The fact is that the Iranians could hurt us in retaliation far more than we could hurt them by taking out their nuclear capability. And with not much prospect of European cooperation on meaningful sanctions, the regime change route may be our best bet to thwart the murderous designs of the mullahs.

UPDATE

Dr. Lewis has published Part II of his 3 part series “Iran and the Bomb” which deals with the difficulties in warhead development for Iranian missiles.

UPDATE II

Aziz P. at Dean’s World nails it:

The analysis by ArmsControlWonk is thorough and detailed and goes into the specifics of nuclear production - including a very relevant discussion of lead. I urge everyone to read the full post. The bottom line: Iran is at least three years away from the bomb, even with the unrealistic assumption that the engineering is flawless enough to avoid even a single technical problem.

It is deeply troubling that instead of discussing how we might facilitate the birth of a new Iran, we are instead talking about “Hobbesian choices” and hinting darkly at 100 million potential dead in the middle east - by our hands. How noble of us! How monstrous. Preemptive war is one thing; preemptive genocide another.

And as Aziz makes clear in his own post (read the whole thing), it would betray our new found sense of mission to spread democracy in the Middle East if we were to bomb the Iranians with all the misery that would entail for the Iranian people - who would surely rally around the mullahs - as well as expose our own vulnerabilities to Iranian countermeasures.

The point I was trying to make is that we have time. Let’s put it to good use.

See also Demosophists analysis of a piece from Stratfor by George Friedman at the Jawa Report that is well worth your time.

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

This post originally appeared December 25, 2004.

It is perhaps the most parodied image in American history.

In countless advertisements, cartoons, sitcoms, movies, and plays, the image of George Washington (or some comical replacement) standing heroically by the bow of a boat as it navigates the frozen ice floes of the Delaware River has etched itself permanently into the American psyche. More often than not, the image has been used to show a haughtiness on the part of the individual substituting for Washington or to poke fun in an iconic way at America itself.

What the painting and its imitators doesn’t show is how near a thing it was that American independence died that night and how the iron will and gambling nature of one man changed the course of history and virtually assured freedom for the colonies.

Just three days prior to the attack on the Hessian outpost at Trenton, Tom Paine published the first of his “Crisis” articles whose ringing words still tug at the heartstrings of patriots everywhere:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

At the time of the crossing, things couldn’t have been worse for the patriot cause. Washington had seen his army continuously thrown back since the previous summer’s ill-advised campaign to meet the British army in New York. Every battle became a humiliating defeat. Every retreat saw his army shrink. From a high of 20,000 at the battle of Brooklyn Heights to its now paltry 4500 ill fed, ill clothed, scarecrows, the Continental army had become something of a joke to their enemies.

New York was lost. New Jersey was mostly occupied with more and more patriots giving an oath of allegiance to King George so that they could buy food for their families. The Congress in Philadelphia had fled to Baltimore where they hoped somehow to carry on a war that seemed all but lost. In effect, George Washington was not only in charge of the military for the young country, he was head of the government as well, acting as something of a military dictator but always careful to inform the Congress of exactly what he was doing.

But George Washington desperately wanted to go on the offensive. Seeing an opportunity with the way the British had spread out their garrisons throughout the New York and New Jersey countryside, Washington decided to take the biggest gamble of his career. An inveterate card player, (Wist was his game of choice) as well as being offensive minded by nature, he knew that his little army was about ready to disintegrate what with enlistments up after the first of the year. In his own mind, he felt he had no other choice but to attack. And attack not just one but two of the more isolated British outposts. He had it in mind to threaten the huge British supply depot at Brunsiwck, New Jersey thus causing General Howe in New York to shorten his lines and relieve the pressure on New Jersey patriots.

The choice of Trenton was based on both geography and necessity. But the attack on Princeton was a strategically brilliant concept. By taking both Trenton and Princeton, Washington would cut off the British Army in New York from their main base of supply in New Brunswick. And such a move would free most of New Jersey from British occupation and rally patriots in that beleaguered state to the cause.

None of this would matter unless Washington could get across the Delaware and attack the overconfident Hessians at Trenton. Using an extraordinarily sophisticated intelligence operation, Washington was able gather enough information about the Hessian defenses at Trenton to make the enormous gamble worth taking. Throughout the war, Washington acted as his own spymaster, developing networks of patriots in and around New York city. The British couldn’t sneeze without Washington knowing about it.

Beginning the crossing at 2:00 pm on Christmas day, Washington’s plan called for three separate columns to descend on Trenton at the same time. But due to an ice storm that came up early that evening, the other two columns never made it to the battlefield. Only the tirelessness of General John Glover’s “Marblehead Regiment” who courageously battled the ice and cold by manning the oars that took Washington’s boats containing 2,500 men, horses, and two precious cannon across the river made the victory possible.

The march from the New Jersey side of the river to Trenton was a nightmare. It was said one could see the progress of the army’s march by following the bloody footprints in the snow; many of the 2,500 men did not have any shoes. Two men died of the cold on the march. And instead of reaching the Hessian encampment while it was still dark, Washington’s threadbare little army didn’t reach Trenton until well after dawn.

Nothing, however, deterred Washington from attacking. After overcoming the sleepy outposts, Washington’s troops entered the town and before the Hessians could get organized, surrounded the enemy, killed Colonel Rall the Hessian commander, and forced the garrisons’s surrender. By noon of the 26th, Washington was back across the Delaware with almost 1000 prisoners and a huge cache of supplies.

A few days later, Washington scored perhaps his most audacious victory at Princeton. Crossing the River again, he confronted General Cornwallis whose 1500 troops had occupied a position between Washington and Trenton. With darkness falling, Washington left 400 men to tend campfires, giving Conrwallis the impression he was staying put while taking the bulk of his army clear around Cornwallis to attack a garrison headquartered at Princeton.

At first, the battle went badly for the Continentals. As the British surged forward and threatened to rout Washington’s army, he spurred his horse forward, rallied his men, and with bullets flying all around him, led the troops to a decisive victory. Then, before Cornwallis could cut off his retreat, he led his force to Morristown where he went into winter quarters.

General Howe in New York was beside himself. He realized that Washington, from his secure position on the heights above Morristown, could swoop down and attack any of his isolated garrisons at will. Accordingly, he pulled back his forces to the immediate vicinity of New York. In the space of 10 days, Washington had defeated two separate British forces, captured tons of desperately needed supplies, rallied the patriots, and levered the British out of New Jersey. No matter what defeats lay in Washington’s future, his reputation and position in American history was secured by his victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Two recent treatments of Trenton are worth mentioning. David Hackett Fisher’s “Washington’s Crossing” a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner for History is eminently readable and is a treasure trove of tidbits on Washington and the continental army. The book also has some excellent background on Washington’s unconventional but very effective intelligence network.

And then there’s the made-for-cable production called “The Crossing” which stars Jeff Daniels as George Washington. Daniels, who gave an excellent portrayal of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain in Ted Turner’s “Gettysburg” falls a little flat trying to play Washington. While the movie is very watchable, I don’t think there’s an actor living or dead who could do justice to the part of Washington. The iconic image of Washington as father, savior, and ultimately civic saint makes the portrayal of such a gigantic historical figure problematic.

UPDATE 12/27

Betsy Newmark has some additional links as well as mentioning the Fisher book. She also links to another favorite Fisher book of mine Paul Revere’s Ride that gave me the idea for this post I called “Founding Brother” which I posted during last April’s anniversery.

I briefly mentioned in the post above that Washington was his own spymaster. To say that Washington’s intelligence gathering efforts were unconventional is an understatement. Washington used people who volunteered to spy and, incredibly, used British loyalists as well - unbeknownst to them, of course. I would not be an exaggeration to say that Washington knew more of what was going on in the British army than he knew about what was going on in Congress.

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald methodically goes about the business of deciding whether to indict one or more White House officials in L’Affaire d’Plame, it is becoming increasingly clear that no one is going to jail for telling reporters that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife convinced the CIA to send him on a mission to Niger to give his consulting business a boost. Rather, it appears that in what can only be described as the cruelest of ironies, Scooter Libby and perhaps (although not very likely) Karl Rove will be charged with crimes related to the investigation of the leak.

Libby especially is in jeopardy thanks to his too cozy relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It appears that Libby is a typical Washingtonienne, a gossip extraordiaire who cultivates his relationship with reporters by passing along juicy personal tidbits about players in both politics and the bureaucracy. The cozy breakfasts, the intimate lunches, perhaps even the late night cocktails at the Mayflower Hotel bar or some other quiet corner of Washington are the standard venues for the purveyors of this gossip. For people like Libby, it gives them a special thrill when they see the tidbits published in important papers like the Washington Post or New York Times - almost as if their names were in the paper. At the very least, they know that the gossip mongers will then be speculating about who let that particular cat out of the bag and the cycle repeats itself.

Only this time, Libby has apparently not been able to keep the timeline regarding his gossip mongering straight. Or, just as likely, he fudged that timeline a bit to protect his boss, the Vice President, from being dragged into the leak investigation in the first place. Either way, it appears that Mr. Libby is toast. This article in today’s New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney knew about Joe Wilson’s wife almost a month before Wilson went public with his tantrum against the administration for not recognizing his brilliance in cracking the Niger-Iraq uranium caper:

. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

A couple of things to note from this article. The fact that Cheney probably asked Tenet about Plame makes perfect sense when one considers the circumstances surrounding Joe Wilson’s curious campaign for recognition and self-aggrandizement in the months following his trip to Niger.

By Wilson’s own admission, he had been shopping the story of his Niger trip to reporters for months before his OpEd in the Times:

I was determined that the story was going to have to get out. I did not particularly want the story to have my name on it. I wanted the U.S. government to say what they said on July 7, that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. So I began responding to reporters’ inquiries, but always on background. I didn’t want the publicity, but more to the point, there is a nasty habit in Washington of attempting to destroy or discredit the message by discrediting the messenger, and it was important to me that the message have legs before those who would want to discredit the messenger found out who the messenger was. So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

Now, put yourself in the White House’s shoes. Here you have this loose cannon running around town 1) blabbing about a classified matter, and 2) spreading falsehoods about what actually happened. As early as May, Wilson had succeeded in getting Administration critic Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times to write a column about his “secret” trip to Niger in search evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellow cake uranium to restart their nuclear program. Kristoff, with his ties to several current and former CIA employees - many of whom have turned out to be partisan Democrats - had been getting selective, cherry picked leaks for months regarding the CIA’s innocence in telling the Administration of Iraq’s WMD capability. This fit in perfectly with Kristoff’s invented narrative that the Administration had “twisted” intelligence to make the case for war with Iraq.

As if to confirm what I have been writing about for months regarding this bureaucratic war between the White House and the CIA, the Washington Post, on the eve of the probable indictments of Administration officials in the Plame case, have finally come out and given context to the entire matter by showing that the Administration push-back against the CIA and not any personal motive of revenge against Wilson was the reason officials tried to discredit him:

The alleged leaking of a CIA operative’s name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.

As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury’s term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration’s handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq.

The article glosses over the election power play made by a group of CIA partisans - probably centered in Valerie Plame’s WINPAC division at the CIA - who sought to interfere in the election of an American President by selectively leaking information about the Iraq WMD to friendly reporters. All along, we’ve gotten hints that have led to speculation that the real reason for Wilson’s trip (besides his wife’s attempt to help get his fledgling consulting business get off the ground) could have been an attempt to embarrass the President. My friend AJ at Strato-Sphere, who has been on top of this case from the outset, has a link to a UPI report that show Fitzgerald was investigating the source of the so-called Niger forgeries; documents that purported to show Iraqi attempts to buy Niger yellow cake.

What makes this effort by Fitzgerald significant is Joe Wilson’s public claim that he knew they were forgeries because “the dates and names” were wrong. Only one problem there: Wilson never saw the Niger forgeries:

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.” Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

“Misspoken” may be the understatement of the week. Wilson out and out lied. What is curious is where he would have gotten that information because indeed, the documents list as Prime Minister of Niger someone who had been out of office for years. In other words, Wilson did not “misspeak” anything; he was simply repeating what he had been told by someone with access to the secret documents. The fact that he falls asleep every night next to someone with access to that classified information should tell you all you need to know about Wilson’s role in this entire affair.

In short, Wilson has been acting like the classic CIA errand boy - a conduit to the outside world who can leak to reporters all sorts of classified information while shielding his masters at the CIA from charges that they violated their oaths not to reveal the nation’s secrets. He has perhaps proved himself a little more flamboyant than his friends at the agency would have preferred with a photo spread in Vanity Fair not to mention a book deal and appearances on every political talk show in Christendom. But he has served his purpose well.

How far Fitzgerald will go in his indictments remain to be seen. He could only charge Libby with making false statements and obstruction. Or, if the Special Prosecutor is going to cast a wider net, he may simply drag 5 or 6 Administration officials before a judge on conspiracy charges. Even though no crime was committed in outing Plame, Fitzgerald may try to make a case that there was a conspiracy to keep him from finding out who said what to whom. If that is the case, expect the worst if you’re a Republican and euphoria if you’re a Democrat.

This week’s Carnival features all sorts of cluebats for your reading pleasure. But by far and away, the award for Cluebat of the Week must go the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for their selection of Mohamed ElBaradei as recipient of this year’s Peace Prize.

It’s not enough that the selection committee has exhibited this kind of cluelessness in years passed. I actually thought they had reached a low point in 2001 when they nominated the most cynical and corrupt UN Secretary General in history Kofi Anan. Unfortunately, they followed that bit of idiocy with the nomination in 2002 of Cluebat Hall of Famer James Earl Carter. A former US President and current best friends with terrorists and thuggish dictators worldwide, Carter has become the planet’s number one busybody as he flits from hot spot to hot spot to sternly lecture pro-democratic forces about upsetting sensitive dictators like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe by challenging the results of their rigged elections.

Other “peace activists” who received the selection committee’s blessing have been baby killer Yassar Arafat and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbechev who received the peace prize the same year (1990) that 10,000 Soviet citizens languished in lunatic asylums not because they were mentally ill but because they disagreed with him.

Not content to nominate thugs and their apologists for the prize, the committee also has a website that has a children’s game called “The Peace Doves Game” where children are encouraged to disarm the world of nuclear weapons. In one of those chillingly surreal images that only liberals can come up with, the “peace doves” have rockets strapped to their backs (along with an olive branch in their beaks) and look more like eagles as they swoop down from space and disarm the 8 “so-called” nuclear powers.

IAEA doesn’t have a children’s game on their website but they do have a page called “The DG’s Corner” where the praises of nuclear enabler ElBaradei are sung. This is the same fella that turned a blind eye while A.Q. Khan and his Traveling Black Market Nuclear Technology Medicine Show made the circuit of terrorist states like Libya, Iran, and North Korea selling sensitive knowledge and hardware to the likes of Ghaddafi and Kim Jong Il. And would someone please explain to me why more than 10 years after Saddam was supposed to be disarmed he was allowed to keep - under the auspices of the IAEA - 500 tons of yellowcake uranium that the Iraqis were just waiting for ElBeradei and his clueless crew to turn their backs for five minutes so that they could reconstitute their nuclear program?

So…for cluelessness above and beyond the call of nature, the Nobel Peace Prize selection committee gets the nod as Cluebat of the Week.

So why not browse through the selections below of other clueless nincompoops? You won’t be disappointed!

“The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Hey Freddie! Any ideas why anyone takes anything you say seriously?
(Me)
***************************************************************************************

Those prattling pachyderms at Academic Elephants have a marvelous post up about the Department of Defense v Academia when it comes to military recruitment. Turns out the liberals can’t have their cake and eat it too.

Go ahead and read The Maryhunter’s hilarious take on the ElBaradei Peace Prize. Afterwards, see an old Buster Keaton flick that features the Keystone Cops for a more serious discussion of the selection.

A.J. from The Strata-Sphere writes about Governor Blanco’s continued cluelessness in the aftermath of Katrina. Can’t those poor people in Louisiana recall her before there’s nothing left to save?

Thank God for Orac! I read the piece by Deepak Chopra and didn’t quite have the inclination to fisk its many idiocies. Orac saves us all the trouble by doing a first class hose job on the clueless doctor.

Blogbud Jay at the ever popular Stop The ACLU has an interesting take on an Oregon law outlawing live sex acts that was declared unconstitutional. Good news for flashers…bad news for constitutionalists.

Ferdy the Cat snarls and hisses at Nicholas Hoffman whose post at HuffPo was a mish mash of lies, half truths and out and out falsehoods on the reproductive right. Serious stuff from a seriously talented cat.

Thomas Bowler has a thoughtful take on the what some are saying the Democrats have to do to win at the polls. I doubt whether they can afford to get rid of the moonbats - too much money at stake.

Raven has a crackerjack article about the UN wanting to take over management of the internets. I can just see my email ending up in Katmandu.

More ElBaradei nonsense from The Slayer. Van Helsing doesn’t pull any punches in the title: “Nobel Prize Awarded for Helping Terrorists Get Nukes.” Uh-yup.

Kender is back! The blogosphere’s most petulant scold is on to Kos and his clueless cohorts who wanted to destroy the moderate Democrat Leadership Council. The only problem is that Kos & Co. have no ideas of their own. And the DLC’s plan for “victory” in Iraq is a joke.

Pat Curley is tracking George Monbiot’s (moonbat?) fatally flawed study of how religion is bad for society. First rate analysis along with some devastating responses by Pat to one of the more curious efforts by the left to discredit religiosity.

Mark Coffey has a well written take on the Harold Pinter Nobel Prize. I happen to disagree with Mark’s conclusion that Pinter doesn’t deserve the prize but I heartily agree with his sentiments about the man.

Don Surber bemoans the fading of Senator Robert Byrd who has recently had some “senior” moments. That said, make sure you vote for Don as he is in the running for King of the Cotillion. I’ll send you a bouquet if you win, Don.

Tony B. from More than Loans points out some real stupidity on the part of Frank Lautenberg who continues to beat the dead horse of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton stock involvement.

Here’s a little satire for your enjoyment from two of our Carnival regulars. First, The Nose on your Face gives us an update on “Doogie Howser, IED.” Then Mr. Right gives us the scoop on George Bush’s newest war - the War against the Smurfs.

And to round out your satirical serenade, how about a little Howard Dean with your coffee? Conservathink has him dead to rights.

Cao of Cao’s Blog (pronounced “key”) rushes to the defense of Laura Bush who was criticized this past week for her remarks about opponents of the Miers nomination. One classy lady defending another…

The lovely Pamela at Atlas Shrugs (check out her profile at PJ Media) writes about God, man, natural disasters, and the clueless mullahs who think they know Him.

Neil Phines at the interesting site Et Tu Bloge (wonder how he got the Latin translation for “blog?”) has some very good analysis on the recent German elections as well as France and Germany as economic models. Did Schroeder really say that?

New Blog Alert! Ruy Diaz of Western Resistance has some words of wisdom from the hemisphere’s second most charming murderous thug, Hugo (The Laughing Goat) Chavez. With Castro getting older, looks like Chavez is about to move up in the “Dictators American Lefty’s Fawn Over” sweepstakes.

Angry in the Great White North shows us why Wesley Clark should go back to whatever he was doing and leave politics and policy to the grown ups.

Kurt at Fly at Night has a little local cluelessnss for us as he relates the adventures of County Supervisor who had a meltdown in front of his constituents. Whenever a an agent for confiscatory entity like government starts comparing people to the KKK, I can’t help but giggle a little.

Ezzie of Serendez Blog fisks the Guardian article that quoted a Palestinian saying that George Bush told him that God requested he free the Iraqis. Even when reporting the correction from BBC, the Guardian can’t quite restrain itself from sticking their knife into the President.

Will Franklin is blogging social security. Now before your eyes glaze over consider the excellent points Mr. Franklin makes in this post and then come back and tell me that all of the political nonsense going on in DC is more important than this one single issue.

I love it when politicians get caught being hypocrites. Alex C. of Pstupidonymous has the skinny on Speaker of the Pennsylvania House and his trip to the schoolhouse to read to the kiddies.

Jimmie K takes the MSM to task for their failure to call a spade a spade in the war against terror. It is just mind boggling that the media has so much of a problem acknowledging Islamic terrorists. One wonders if they were Christian would they have a similar unease.

Finally, guess who was in Sweden making viscously anti-American remarks? I take down Al Gore here.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

We interrupt this scandal to ask a question that, due to it’s “explosive” nature was never asked when the story broke almost exactly a year ago…

What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al-Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Bagdhad?

The fact that the material was under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for more than a decade opens an entirely different line of questioning: Is the entire group of United Nations bureaucrats running the IAEA legally insane?

These issues are somewhat separate from the Plame-Wilson-Rove dust up that’s been roiling Washington recently but nevertheless shed light on why Joe Wilson went to Niger in February of 2002 and why the bureaucratic tussle over those 16 words about the Iraqi-Niger yellow cake connection was so fierce.

The story begins at the end of the first Gulf War when inspectors found a 500 ton cache of refined yellow cake uranium at Iraq’s primary nuclear research facility in Al-Tuwaitha outside of Bagdhad. The cache was part of a huge inventory of nuclear materials discovered by UN inspectors that included low-level radioactive material of the type used for industrial and medical purposes as well as a quantity of highly enriched uranium suitable for bomb production. This HE uranium was shipped to Russia where it was made relatively harmless by a process known as “isotopic dilution” - but only after the Iraqis dragged their heels for more than 6 months following the cease fire by playing a cat and mouse game with the IAEA’s inspectors. The history of those early IAEA inspections can be found here and is an eye opening look at both the gullibility of the IAEA and the lengths to which Saddam sought to keep as much of his nuclear bomb making capability as he could.

The IAEA placed a seal on the nuclear materials in November of 1992. From then until the fall of Saddam, the agency attempted to make sure that Iraq did not use the yellow cake to reconstitute its nuclear program, something the IAEA acknowledged could be done if the Iraqi’s were able to rebuild its centrifuges and gain access to additional fissile material. Keeping track of the material was made extraordinarily difficult by the Iraqis who regularly impeded IAEA officials from carrying out even the most routine inspections.

Flash forward to 1999 when British intelligence found out through multiple sources that representatives of the Iraqi government had met with officials from the Niger government. This fact is not in dispute. The mystery is in what they talked about. A memo obtained by the British - later proven to be a forgery - purported to show the Iraqis were interested in purchasing 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from Niger’s mines. Forgery or not, since Niger’s exports are extremely limited, consisting largely of uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, and onions, one doesn’t have to be an intelligence analyst to figure out which one of those items the Iraqis might be interested in.

Both the Butler Review and the Senate Select Committee on Pre War Iraq Intelligence (SSCI) point to other efforts by Saddam to purchase uranium, most notably from the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The Butler Review states in 2002 the CIA “agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought.” In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents.

This then was the context in which Ambassador Joe Wilson went to Niger in February of 2002. Based on multiple sources and the best judgement of the CIA, Saddam Hussein was trying purchase uranium. Since there were no working commercial nuclear reactors in all of Iraq, his interest could only be based on his desire to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. There was no “fixing” of intelligence or “shaping” intelligence to fit some preconceived agenda. Despite UN resolutions and sanctions, Saddam was looking to build the bomb.

What about that 500 tons of yellow cake under seal at Al-Tuwaitha? As long as the sanctions were in place, the inspectors would be able to confirm, albeit with great difficulty, that Saddam would not be able to use the material for his bomb building program. But that fact doesn’t answer the question of why would any organization charged with keeping a lid on nuclear proliferation allow that much fissile material to be kept by a bloodthirsty tyrant who had already demonstrated a desire to construct a nuclear weapon?

In an article that appeared in The American Thinker on July 20, 2004, Douglas Hanson draws some rather unflattering conclusions about the IAEA and their mission:

The actions, or more appropriately, the inactions of the IAEA regarding Iraq since the end of Gulf War I, betray the agency’s true agenda. Rather than inspect, report, and implement restrictions in accordance with the provisions in the treaty, the agency has in effect become an enabler of rogue nations who are attempting, or who have already succeeded in developing or acquiring special nuclear material and equipment. In other words, the IAEA is simply a reflection of its parent organization, which routinely delays and obfuscates the efforts of the US and the UK in controlling banned substances and delivery systems.

Time after time, the agency has either intentionally or naively bought into the lies and deceptions contrived by nations of the Axis of Evil during IAEA visits and inspections. In most cases, the IAEA avoids confrontation like the plague in order to maintain access to the facilities. If they are booted out, as was the case with North Korea, their impotence is on display for all to see. In other cases, the agency joins in the deception, thereby allowing these rogue states to level the nuclear playing field with the West and Russia.

Clearly then, the IAEA was totally dependent on the sanctions to even carry out the limited inspections it was performing in the 1990’s. But how long would the sanctions be in place?

It is an article of faith with critics of the war that “Saddam was in a box” and there was no need for an invasion to remove him. It’s a pity that many of those critics have such a short memory because a review of what many of them were saying about the sanctions prior to September 11, 2001 would show that they were eager to lift the very same sanctions that they now claim was keeping Saddam in check. Thanks to a remarkable propoganda program that included funeral processions of Iraqi babies whose dead bodies were used over and over again in macabre effort to make it appear that the death toll of infants was higher than it was, the world community was, by 2001, agitating for the lifting of sanctions on the Iraq economy. And while the lifting of economic sanctions would not have meant a lifting of the arms embargo, given the limited resources available to both The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the IAEA as well as Iraq’s demonstrated ability to impede, obstruct, and deceive inspectors, it stands to reason that the continuation of the arms embargo would have been a sham. Even with the embargo, the Dulfer Report showed that Saddam’s ability to evade the sanctions and purchase illicit weapons was extremely troubling.
(more…)

Looks like the New York Times is a bit miffed at Karl Rove and the Bush Administration:

WASHINGTON, July 11 - Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House refused on Monday to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove’s role in the matter.

And that’s just the lead.

The Times senior editorial staff are obviously upset that one of their reporters, Judith Miller, sits rotting in a jail cell because she refuses to name her source or sources to Special Prosecutor Richard Fitzgerald in the “outing” of Valerie Plame, the CIA employee who sent her husband Joe Wilson to Nigeria in order to hobnob with government representatives poolside and “investigate” whether Saddam’s Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake uranium. Wilson received assurances from the Nigerians that this was not the case and subsequently accused the Bush Administration of lying about the transaction.

Wilson himself turned out to be the liar as it was discovered that, despite his repeated denials, his wife did indeed strongly recommend that he be the official to make the Nigeria trip. Wilson also was never able to ascertain whether or not the Nigerians were in fact supplying Iraq with yellow cake, despite repeatedly saying so in the Op-Ed pages of the Times and elsewhere.

In March of last year, the US removed 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from facilities in Iraq, enough to make more than 20 Hiroshima sized bombs.

Does it surprise you that those little nuggets of information are not in this New York Times story?

Make no mistake. The New York Times has declared all out war on the White House with this “news” report.” And they’re putting the White House on notice that they consider this “scandal” every bit as important as Watergate, Iran-Contra, or Clinton’s impeachment:

“The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly,” Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.

In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove’s involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a Time magazine reporter in July 2003 without identifying her by name.

Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer’s identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter.

Ironically, what might save Mr. Rove from prosecution (although his resignation may be in the cards) could be the liberal’s own hatred of the CIA and the how that hate translated into drawing up the legislation covering any crime Mr. Rove may have committed.

In the late 1970’s, CIA whistle blower Phillip Agee, in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published the names of some covert operatives in Europe who ended up being assassinated. While it was impossible to tie Mr. Agee’s revelations to the killings, Congress, or at least the Republicans, was worried enough to pass a law against outing intelligence officials.

The debate on passage of the bill was rancorous with liberals screaming that such a law would discourage other whistle blowers from coming forward, thus depriving the left of any knowledge regarding sensitive intelligence operations. This debate was occurring a little more than 5 years after the infamous Church Committee hearings during which time morale at the CIA plummeted to an all time low and several of the more stupid and disastrous CIA operations were disclosed for the first time. It was during this time that Agee became a hero to the left, almost on par with the patron saint of whistle blowers Daniel Ellsberg, he of the Pentagon Papers fame.

The opposition to this law by the left back then has their protestations against Rove ringing hollow today.

The Times outlines the difficulties facing those who are salivating at the prospect of Rove doing the “perp walk”:

A prosecutor seeking to establish a violation of the law has to establish an intentional disclosure by someone with authorized access to classified information. That person must know that the disclosure identifies a covert agent “and that the United States was taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States.” A covert agent is defined as someone whose identity is classified and who has served outside the United States within the last five years.

“We made it exceedingly difficult to violate,” Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson’s covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove’s disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

“It is clear that Karl Rove’s conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category” of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. “That’s not ‘knowing.’ It doesn’t even come close.”

Since, as the Times story makes clear, Rove is not a target of Fitzgerald’s probe I would have one word of caution for the Times and all you lefties out there who are preparing to charge up the hill and take no prisoners in this affair.

Tread carefully. When it comes out how many reporters actually knew that Valerie Plame was both Wilson’s wife and a CIA operative, this scandal could disappear overnight:

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

“She had a desk job in Langley,” said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.’s headquarters. “When you want someone in deep cover, they don’t go back and forth to Langley.”

Maybe a reporter mistook her super-secret authentic CIA decoder ring for evidence she was a spook.

UPDATE

I’ll have updates throughout the day as the blogswarm grows.

Captain Ed:

The New York Times plays the Rove card to the hilt today, putting their martyrdom of Judith Miller front and center while extending a mystery that the media created and the Times could immediately resolve. Instead, we get breathless accounts of non-comments from the White House that prompt 2,000-word front-page articles that wind up telling us nothing:

Why solve the mystery when there’s a feeding frenzy to feed?

Michelle Malkin points to the agressiveness of the White House Press Corps:

I actually have no problem with McClellan getting justifiably barked at during his daily briefings (if only we had more Les Kinsolvings to press the White House from the right, especially on illegal immigration). But isn’t it funny how Beltway reporters who get all prissy and whiny about one Fox News Channel reporter asking the DNC chairman one mildly aggressive question have no problem turning pack-rabid on McClellan?

Ah! But as you well know, Michelle, Fox doesn’t employ real journalists…only shills for the White House.

National Journal’s Beltway Blogroll has a great roundup of links mostly from the salivating left but also a few from the right.

Betsy Newmark makes a great point:

So the media can rant all they want, but days when we are at war in Iraq, terrorists are bombing Londoners on the way to work, North Korea and Iran are inches away from getting nuclear bombs, and it’s summer and vacation time, I don’t think most people outside the Beltway and the political blogosphere care one jot about Karl Rove.

One of the very things that’s giving life to this story - a news slowdown during the summer - could spell its doom for a long haul, wall to wall, feeding frenzy.

The Commissar believes (as I do) that Rove’s days are numbered - or at least they should be:

The problem is that Rove is more than just a key advisor, more than a member of the C-i-C’s inner circle. Rove and Bush go way back. Some might say that Rove “made” Bush. I don’t know if Bush can fire Rove. Not in a “skeletons in the closet” sense, but in a loyalty sense. Bush is famous for his loyalty; his loyalty to Rove has must be very, very strong. This will have to build to a typhoon-level storm that threatens to bring down Bush himself before Rove gets the axe.

Like Michelle, Lorie Byrd at Polipundit is focusing on the disgraceful exhibition yesterday by the White House Press Corps during their daily briefing with Scott McClellan. And she adds this:

I think that when the White House made their biggest mistake, though, was by not attacking Joe Wilson’s and Democrats’ lies earlier on. This was the beginning of the “Bush lied” mantra by the Democrats and it never should have been allowed. Democrats want to cry that Wilson was attacked by the White House, but by simply saying the guy misrepresented what was in his report and saying that he was not qualified in the first place and was only sent on the mission because his wife got him the job is not exactly hardball. If the Republicans ever grew a spine and decided to play hardball with the Democrats, even their buddies in the media could not save them from themselves.

I’m not sure the “Bush lied” meme started with the Joe Wilson imbroglio but Lorie is right that the White House too often ignored partisan attacks by the media which would later become urban legends. Like Bush saying that Saddam was involved directly in 9/11. Once its out there, a lie is a hard thing to knock down. And the vaunted Bush PR machine has done a piss poor job of handling issues like that.

I’ve done exactly one post on Ward Churchill since the fake indian, fake combat vet, fake scholar, and fake American burst on the scene early this year. The reason I’ve pretty much ignored the guy isn’t that he hasn’t supplied us with a wealth of material. Let’s face it; he’s as daffy as a dik-dik. The reason I haven’t written anything is the same reason I don’t blog NASCAR. Watching slow motion replays of traffic accidents just doesn’t do it for me. Trying to absorb the rapid fire incantations of lies, distortions, false analogies, and jaw dropping misstatements of fact is like seeing a stock car hit the wall at Daytona and roll over and over and over until, after coming to rest on the infield, you wonder how anyone can walk away from such a horrible scene.

I’ve seen the Nutty Professor on C-Span twice since his January coming out party. Both times, my head was killing me about halfway through his presentation due to my brain being overburdened by trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. Churchill appears to be a man in love not only with himself and his own voice, but also in love with a technique commonly used by people who really don’t have anything to say but just can’t keep their mouths shut.

It’s called “bullshitting.”

All of this being said, this article by Matt Labash, senior writer for The Weekly Standard is a real eye opener. Labash has a profile of the Rocky Mountain Moonbat that’s reveals Churchill is much more than your average America hating lefty. The profile of the Mad Professor that emerges is one of an image conscious charlatan.; a money grubbing mountebank who accepts $5000 per speaking engagement while apparently trying to milk his 15 minutes of fame for everything its worth.

I pity Mr. Labash his assignment. According to Churchill’s ex wives, he can be a difficult man indeed to get along with. But Labash doesn’t shy away from the tough questions. It’s just a pity Churchill didn’t see fit to answer them:

Seeing he’s a wee bit sensitive about his Indian identity, I go right for it, asking just how Indian he is. “I am not going to get into pet poodle pedigree,” he says. “I’ve done this twice and I’m not doing it again. It is absolutely racially affrontive.” But everybody wants to know, including his university, I respond. “And everybody can go f–themselves,” he snaps.

What this type of rationale reminds me of is the musings of Hitler’s favorite philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who, after penning the overly verbose and stunningly ignorant treatise on racial purity entitled Foundations of the 19th Century, Mr. H. realized that by writing that “teutons” were superior to other “races,” he had neglected to include himself in that illustrious company of supreme beings. Accordingly, he simply altered the definition to fit; he said that “anyone who believes or acts like a Teuton, is a Teuton.”

Similarly, according to Churchill “Anyone who believes or acts like an indian is an indian.” This is true even if native Americans themselves deny your heritage.

This is a good indication of how Churchill uses words to trivialize the important and complicate the obvious. It’s not the work of a scholar. It’s what bunko artists do.

Then there’s the little matter of Churchill’s combat experience in which Mr. Labash, who is asking these questions as he and the good professor are getting progressively more inebriated, tries to get a straight answer from the increasingly tipsy professor:

MOVING ON TO LESS CONTROVERSIAL FARE, I ask him about the discrepancies in his Vietnam record, in which he’s made himself sound like a ground-pounding trigger-puller, while records suggest he drove a truck, and a résumé claims he worked as a public information specialist. “I performed infantry functions, I ended up in a transportation battalion,” he rolls, before abruptly stopping. “Actually, I said I wasn’t going to do this with anybody, and I’m not.”

Why–it’s under question? I ask.

“I don’t care. Show me some possible relevance to it. . . . I’m not running for f–ing office. I don’t have to vet my life back to potty training stage in order to be entitled.”

I suggest that since people are alleging deception in several areas of his life, doesn’t that go to his credibility as a scholar? “My academic work is subject to being assessed like any other academic work, and it doesn’t matter if I think I’m goddamned Napoleon Bonaparte,” he says. “This is not the National F–ing Enquirer, though it’s been turned into that.” He says no one contests that he’s been in Vietnam, and no one contests that he’s decorated (with a Cross of Gallantry and “this and that,” he adds).

Actually, the good professor has a point of sorts. His Viet Nam experience, or lack thereof, shouldn’t be counted when trying to judge his academic record. What should be counted and indeed, looked into, are the charges of plagerism, shoddy research, and barefaced falsehoods that other scholars have leveled against him and for which he has failed to address in any other manner except by accusing his accusers of being jealous academics with various axes to grind.

All of these questions about Churchill’s past are relevant only in that they reveal him to be the grifter that he is, a lefty fakir of such eminence that even his scholarly tomfoolery is excused by his supporters as just a misunderstanding. The real problem with Churchill is his core philosophy. It springs from the eternal well of victimhood’s identity politics:

Churchill, to his credit, doesn’t subscribe to any meaningless “praxis of personal purity,” so he takes his coffee (black) with a shrug and lights a Pall Mall. I ask if he’s an anarchist, and though they have an affinity, he says no. He’s an Indigenist. Not quite sure what that entails, I ask him to explain. He’s a wordy bugger, and goes on for a good while about a “consciously synchronous level of population” and a “latitude of action that is governed in a self-regulating manner” and a “unity in the differentiation that’s consonant with natural order.” I figure this would all go down a lot easier if I’d first eaten peyote.

Later, on my own, I explore his philosophy in a manifesto conveniently titled “I am an Indigenist.” While Churchill generally shies from being prescriptive–much more fun to talk about what others have done wrong–this essay is the exception. The “highest priority of my political life,” he writes, is “the rights of indigenous peoples,” for whom he foresees the restoration of land. He envisions a “North American Union of Indigenous Nations” that would comprise “roughly one third of the continental U.S.” Ever the pragmatist, Churchill says the region would enjoy as much autonomy as it wanted, and that with Indians controlling all those natural resources, much-needed conservation will prevail in a land now completely overpopulated. (He cites an ecological demographer’s estimate that North America was “thoroughly saturated with humans by 1840,” and figures we’re due for a good dose of population control, possibly through “voluntary sterilization” and “voluntary abortion.”)

Before you burst out laughing at this kind of mountebankery, one should pause and consider that this voice from the “old left” is being married with the ideals of the anarchists, the anti-globalization loons, the “sustainable development” nazis, and others in the new coalition of luddites who seek to destroy western civilization. The fact that Churchill is getting this kind of noteriety gives these other wackos a huge boost in exposure. And the indications are that they intend to ride the Mad Prof’s coattails to semi-respectability and perhaps even an entry into the more “mainstream” leftist elements like Moveon.org.

It’s not enough to say that Ward Churchill is a fast-talking confidence man who continues to make outrageous statements about the country of his birth to simply get rich and get attention. One must recognize that it’s not what he says as much as what he’s coming to represent; the pinnacle of leftist thought synthesized for two generations and nurtured in the propoganda factories that pass for college campuses in America.

Churchill has become a hero to a ready made audience who’ve been conditioned to believe the worst about their own country without discovering where the truth lies themselves. The danger is that his influence will spawn another generation of like-minded nitwits whose worldview has been shaped by the cartoonish intellect of this faux indian, scholar, and activist.

It would be fascinating to revisit Churchill in 10 years to see what his inspiration has wrought. If it’s any more profound than a small cadre of ill clothed, ill fed, foul smelling galoots who rant on about “little Eichmann’s” I’ll be very surprised.

UPDATE

Giacomo at Joust the Facts links to another article on Churchill, this time one that dissects the Nutty Professor’s “scholarship” and shows how he uses deconstructionist techniques to tell tall tales of American History:

The fault, in what can charitably be called his analysis, is that he disassociates cause and effect, picks out bits of history, simply ignoring that which preceded or caused it. History, a la Churchill picks up at a starting point — any starting point — that supports his beliefs. For instance — Churchill whines about the Allies’ “strategic bombing campaign’ (the foregoing words, we suppose, put in quotes to emphasize that it was a cover-up phrase for wanton destruction) against Germany during World War II.” Of course there was indeed a bombing campaign against Germany and its cities from 1940 to 1945. But what was its cause? Who first began the bombings of populations?

His technique could have been lifted from the Jacques Derrida playbook. And Giacomo points out in his own post on the subject that taking things out of context - in this case as it relates to a quote by George Bush - is Churchill’s weapon of choice:

Churchill is upset that his comment about the “little Eichmanns” gets taken out of context, and seeks to defuse that bombshell (though he still calls the people in the towers by that epithet). Here he commits the same effrontery, taking the President’s words out of context to support his own thesis.

I guess in the Mad Prof’s world, what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander.

THE CROSSING
Originally uploaded by elvenstar522.

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776

It is perhaps the most parodied image in American history.

In countless advertisements, cartoons, sitcoms, movies, and plays, the image of George Washington (or some comical replacement) standing heroically by the bow of a boat as it navigates the frozen ice floes of the Delaware River has etched itself permanently into the American psyche. More often than not, the image has been used to show a haughtiness on the part of the individual substituting for Washington or to poke fun in an iconic way at America itself.

What the painting and its imitators doesn’t show is how near a thing it was that American independence died that night and how the iron will and gambling nature of one man changed the course of history and virtually assured freedom for the colonies.

Just three days prior to the attack on the Hessian outpost at Trenton, Tom Paine published the first of his “Crisis” articles whose ringing words still tug at the heartstrings of patriots everywhere:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

At the time of the crossing, things couldn’t have been worse for the patriot cause. Washington had seen his army continuously thrown back since the previous summer’s ill-advised campaign to meet the British army in New York. Every battle became a humiliating defeat. Every retreat saw his army shrink. From a high of 20,000 at the battle of Brooklyn Heights to its now paltry 4500 ill fed, ill clothed, scarecrows whose enlistment would end with the new year, the Continental Army was in danger of disintegrating.

New York was lost. New Jersey was mostly occupied with more and more former patriots giving an oath of allegiance to King George so that they could buy food for their families. The Congress in Philadelphia had fled to Baltimore where they hoped somehow to carry on a war that seemed all but lost. In effect, George Washington was not only in charge of the military for the young country, he was head of the government as well, acting as something of a military dictator but always careful to inform the Congress of exactly what he was doing.

But George Washington desperately wanted to go on the offensive. Seeing an opportunity with the way the British had spread out their isolated garrisons throughout the New York and New Jersey countryside, Washington realized that by attacking not one, but two of those outposts, he could lever the entire British army out of New Jersey and with one blow turn the fortunes of the patriot cause around.

The choice of Trenton was based on both geography and necessity. But the attack on Princeton was a strategically brilliant concept. By taking both Trenton and Princeton, Washington would cut off the British Army in New York from their main base of supply in New Brunswick and force British Commander William Howe to shorten his lines of supply. Such a move would free most of New Jersey from British occupation and rally patriots in that beleaguered state to the cause.

None of this would matter unless Washington could get across the Delaware and attack the overconfident Hessians at Trenton. Using an extraordinarily sophisticated intelligence operation, Washington was able gather enough information about the Hessian defenses at Trenton to make the enormous gamble worth taking.

Beginning the crossing at 2:00 pm on Christmas day, Washington’s plan called for three separate columns to descend on Trenton at the same time. But due to an ice storm that came up early that evening, the other two columns never made it to the battlefield. Only the tirelessness of General John Glover’s “Marblehead Regiment” who courageously battled the ice and cold by manning the oars that took Washington’s boats containing 2,500 men, horses, and two precious cannon across the river made the victory possible.

The march from the New Jersey side of the river to Trenton was a nightmare. It was said one could see the progress of the army’s march by following the bloody footprints in the snow; many of the 2,500 men did not have any shoes. Two men died of the cold on the march. And instead of reaching the Hessian encampment while it was still dark, Washington’s threadbare little army didn’t reach Trenton until well after dawn.

Nothing, however, deterred Washington from attacking. After overcoming the sleepy outposts, Washington’s troops entered the town and before the Hessians could get organized, surrounded the enemy, killed General Rall the Hessian commander, and forced the garrisons’s surrender. By noon of the 26th, Washington was back across the Delaware with almost 1000 prisoners and a huge cache of supplies.

A few days later, Washington scored perhaps his most audacious victory at Princeton. Crossing the River again, he confronted General Cornwallis whose 1500 troops had occupied a position between Washington and Trenton. With darkness falling, Washington left 400 men to tend campfires, giving Conrwallis the impression he was staying put while taking the bulk of his army clear around Cornwallis to attack a garrison headquartered at Princeton.

At first, the battle went badly for the Continentals. As the British surged forward and threatened to rout Washington’s army, he spurred his horse forward, rallied his men, and with bullets flying all around him, led the troops to a decisive victory. Then, before Cornwallis could cut off his retreat, he led his force to Morristown where he went into winter quarters.

General Howe in New York was beside himself. He realized that Washington could swoop down and attack any of his isolated garrisons at will. Accordingly, he pulled back his forces to the immediate vicinity of New York. In the space of 10 days, Washington had defeated two separate British forces, captured tons of desperately needed supplies, rallied the patriots, and levered the British out of New Jersey. No matter what defeats lay in Washington’s future, his reputation and position in American history was secured by his victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Two recent treatments of Trenton are worth mentioning. David Hackett Fisher’s “Washington’s Crossing” a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award is eminently readable and is a treasure trove of tidbits on Washington and the continental army. The book also has some excellent background on Washington’s unconventional but very effective intelligence network.

And then there’s the made-for-cable production called “The Crossing” which stars Jeff Daniels as George Washington. Daniels, who gave an excellent portrayal of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain in Ted Turner’s “Gettysburg” falls a little flat trying to play Washington. While the movie is very watchable, I don’t think there’s an actor living or dead who could do justice to the part of Washington. The iconic image of Washington as father, savior, and ultimately civic saint makes the portrayal of such a gigantic historical figure problematic.

UPDATE: I’M BEGGING FOR TRAFFIC AGAIN

It’s not enough to surf BLOGEXPLOSION on Christmas day…I’m also going down my blogroll looking for unsuspecting posters who won’t mind if I link to their Christmas posts in order to generate some much needed traffic.

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway has just such an offer and I’m going to take him up on it…

So for all you Outside the Beltway readers (an excellent blog by the by) welcome and MERRY CHRISTMAS!