Right Wing Nut House

More than 300,000 supporters of the Siniora government pack Martyr’s Square on the second anniversary of the assassination of the beloved ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

They came by bus, by car, on foot, even by boat. They came from the north, from the south, east and west. The traffic jams were so bad that many simply abandoned their cars and walked 5 miles or more to Martyrs Square where more than 300,000 Lebanese citizens came to honor the memory of one man and support another.

Two years ago today, a massive car bomb killed 23 people including the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. He is credited with taking the small, war torn, nearly bankrupt country and a tired, dispirited people and injecting hope where there was only despair while rebuilding much of downtown Beirut so that citizens could once again take pride in their capitol city.

To honor the memory of Hariri was one goal of the massive demonstration today. The other was more practical; support Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in his efforts to resist Syrian-backed Hizbullah in their efforts to overturn the government and re-establish Syrian hegemony over the tiny country.

The demonstration comes one day after explosions ripped through two mini-busses carrying people to work in the northern Metn province, killing three and injuring more than 20. The terrorist act was the first such attack targeting civilians in many years and helped ratchet up tensions on the eve of the historic demonstration. Most analysts (and the Lebanese themselves) blame Syria for trying to scare people into not attending the rally.

If that were the case, Assad and his henchmen failed miserably. As of mid afternoon in Beirut, people were still streaming into the square to hear speaker after speaker denounce Syria, denounce Hizbullah, and call for the approval of the International Tribunal to try the assassins who killed Hariri:

Lebanon’s majority leaders told a sea of supporters marking the second anniversary of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination in Beirut that agreeing on the international tribunal to try his murderers is the only gateway to dialogue and unity.
Hundreds of thousands of March 14 supporters streamed from north, east, central and south Lebanon to Martyrs’ Square in cars, buses, and boats raising Lebanese flags and chanting slogans against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The March 14 majority coalition accuses the Assad regime of masterminding the Hariri assassination on Feb. 14 2005 and the serial assassinations, the latest of which killed three civilians and wounded 23 in a twin bombing that targeted commuting buses northeast of Beirut on Tuesday.

Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea said the international tribunal, which Syria reportedly rejects, “will certainly be created.”

He stressed that “whoever fights against what is right will be knocked out … The international tribunal will certainly be created.”

Geagea escalated the confrontation with Hizbullah pledging that “henceforth, we will not accept any weapons outside the Lebanese army’s frame of control…The Lebanese army is the resistance, the Lebanese government is the resistance, the Lebanese people is the resistance.”

Geagea’s words drew thundering chants of support that echoed across the whole of Beirut and reached the ears of protestors taking part in a Hizbullah-led sit in at the nearby Riad Solh Square since Dec. 1 with the declared objective of toppling Premier Fouad Saniora’s majority government.

Perhaps the emotional peak of the rally was when the dead Hariri’s son Saad addressed the crowd:

Parliamentary Majority leader Saad Hariri, son of the slain ex-premier, delivered an emotional speech in which he thanked all those who took part in the ceremony and stressed that the Lebanese are “committed to freedom, independence, the truth, justice and the international tribunal.”

“We adhere to justice to punish the murderers” who committed the Hariri killings and related crimes, he said.

He condemned recent “aggressions on peaceful neighborhoods” by masked followers of the Hizbullah-led opposition on Jan. 23.

“Despite all that, we are in the final phase of the march to create the international tribunal soon, very soon,” Hariri said.

Recognizing perhaps that a gesture toward the wildly popular ex-Prime Minister’s memory was good politics, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah wrote an article for Hizbullah propaganda newspaper as-Safir in which he said that “revealing the truth” about Hariri’s killers was desirable. Nasrallah declined to attend the memorial ceremony however, saying of the Tribunal that “because our sole guilt is that we had refused to make charges lacking evidence,” he could not participate in the event.

No matter. Hizbullah finds itself at an impasse in their campaign to oust Siniora’s government. As long as the Prime Minister holds fast, Nasrallah is stuck. If he tries violence, he will become isolated as there is an almost universal desire among all Lebanese to avoid a resumption of the civil war at all costs. But trying to maintain pressure on the Siniora government without resorting to blood is sapping his coalition while angering his patron in Syria, President Bashar Assad.

Assad has already shot down at least one compromise to end the standoff. That’s because the negotiators for the government - in this case, the Saudis - refuse to budge from their position that the International Tribunal must sit. Assad simply can’t let that happen. As Michael Totten points out in this fascinating interview with the old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt, even though everyone knows Assad is guilty of ordering the assassination of Hariri, the naming of names by the Tribunal would be devastating:

“Why do you suppose Bashar al-Assad is so afraid of the Hariri tribunal?” I said. “Everybody already knows he’s guilty.”

“Because they killed Hariri,” he said. “If [Assad] wasn’t that nervous and if he wasn’t enhancing his people – Nasrallah and others – to block the process of the tribunal…it means that he’s guilty.”

“Right,” I said. “But we all know he’s guilty anyway.”

“Yes, okay,” he said. “But I mean blocking the tribunal will delay his indictments.”

What most frightens Assad is that an international conviction against him and his government might authorize an American-led regime-change campaign in Damascus. Few Americans actually want that, though, mostly because of what is happening right now in Iraq. Assad’s role in Iraq’s destabilization is an effective life-insurance policy.

A real wild card that may be emerging in the cabinet crisis is Nabih Berri, Speaker of Parliament, who so far has rejected calls to order parliament into session to approve the final form of the Tribunal. While still a member of Nasrallah’s coalition (Berri heads up the Amal Party, a Shia dominated group), Berri has shown flashes of independence since the crisis started in December. Now he may be trying to find a compromise on sitting the Tribunal:

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri was reported Sunday to be setting up a “working group” of law experts where rival political parties could discuss the U.N.-Lebanon agreement on an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri and related crimes.

The daily Al Hayat, citing prominent Lebanese political sources, said Sunday that Berri had intensified contacts aimed at creating the working group, where the Hizbullah-led Opposition could “suggest amendments” to the tribunal bylaw.

The paper said the pro-government March 14 coalition has approved Berri’s initiative.

The U.N. on Tuesday signed a treaty creating the international tribunal.

Berri will almost certainly not abandon Nasrallah. But his willingness to at least talk about a compromise on the Tribunal may be significant.

Today, however, belonged to the March 14th Forces and their supporters who flooded downtown Beirut with a sea of humanity to stand up once again and be counted as a free and independent people. By demonstrating their determination to stand with the elected government, they have shown the Syrians and the Iranians that they will not give up their independence easily. And they have put Hizbullah on notice that their patience is not infinite and that a resumption of the violence that tore this country apart for 15 years will not be tolerated.

A good day for freedom in Lebanon. A good day for freedom.

The US says he’s in Iran. Some of his supporters say that he’s still in Iraq. Just where is the butchering sadist?

First, the US view:

While members of the U.S. House of Representatives take turns weighing in on President Bush’s planned troop surge in Iraq, the focus in Iraq is not on the arrival of more U.S. troops, but the departure of one of the country’s most powerful men, Moqtada al Sadr and members of his army.

According to senior military officials, al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.

Al Sadr commands the Mahdi army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.

Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, “He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house.”

Sources say some of the Mahdi army leadership went with al Sadr.

AP, however, is reporting that Sadr is still in Iraq:

Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr said Wednesday that the radical Shiite cleric was still in Iraq, denying a report that he fled to Iran ahead of a security crackdown targeting his militia.

An Iraqi government official said al-Sadr was in the Shiite holy city of Najaf Tuesday night, when he received delegates from several government departments. The official, who is familiar with one of those meetings, spoke on condition of anonymity because he has no authority to disclose information on his department’s activities.

The denials came after a senior U.S. official said Tuesday that al-Sadr left his Baghdad stronghold some weeks ago and is believed to be in Tehran, where he has family.

The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. monitoring activities, said fractures in al-Sadr’s political and militia operations may be part of the reason for his departure. The move is not believed to be permanent, the official said.

Al-Sadr’s militia is blamed for much of the sectarian violence and is widely seen as the main threat to Iraq’s unity and high on the list of targets for the Baghdad security operation.

I wonder if the “anonymous official” is related to Jamil Hussein?

Actually, I think both stories are correct. It is possible that al-Sadr has moved his base of operations to Tehran but could very well make periodic trips back to Iraq. But what is really troubling is the thought that Mookie has lost control of his militia and now fears some of them as much as he fears the Americans.

As long as al-Sadr was the leader of a radical religious militia opposed to the occupation (and any Iraqis who cooperated with us), his followers were united. But once the radical cleric stepped into the political arena, he risked the cohesion of his organization. Indeed, this appears to be what has transpired. Al-Sadr has spoken out frequently the last few months against sectarian violence. While most observers see his denunciations as pro-forma and insincere, some of his commanders apparently went off on their own and formed death squads in order to “cleanse” Iraq of Sunnis. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told Newsweek back in August:

“There are forces that are controlled by Moqtada, but there are commanders that are not controlled by him; there are death squads that are not controlled by him.”

This is what our people saw from the Mahdi Army 6 months ago:

Under the leadership of Sadr, the Mahdi Army was considered a containable force, susceptible to political bargaining. But as Sadr has leaned toward moderation—his party now has 30 seats in the National Assembly—men fighting under his militia’s banner have become more aggressive. In interviews with NEWSWEEK, Mahdi Army members, Iraqi politicians and Western officials describe an organization in which local commanders are increasingly independent from Sadr, splintering into cells of fighters committed to civil war. There are at least four offshoot Mahdi leaders in Sadr City alone; some groups are taking orders from Iran. There’s similar fragmentation in the largely Shiite cities of Najaf and Basra. According to a U.S. military intel official in Najaf, Coalition forces have been attacked by individuals who get their inspiration from the Mahdi Army but are not official members—men with “an AK-47, an RPG and a Sadr poster,” says the official, requesting anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

The situation is so volatile that, according to the U.S. officials, Sadr now fears for his own safety and position.

According to the AP article, Sadr sleeps in a different place every night and rarely appears in public. This could be due to a combination of fear of his own people and fear that the Americans have placed a bullseye on his forehead. Either way, Sadr has limited choices open to him. He can continue to try and work within the political system (where his radical anti-Sunni positions have been a hindrance to the government’s efforts to draw the Sunnis into greater participation in Iraqi political life) or he could become even more radical and begin open warfare against the United States.

In fact, there is some evidence that while many of us here in America have been critical of the Bush Administration for not “going after” al-Sadr, the military may have been trying to draw the Mahdi Army into open conflict with the Americans all along.

Bill Roggio:

While much of the public’s perceptions of the efforts against Sadr are shaped by operations in Sadr City in Baghdad, the Coalition and Iraqi government are chipping away at his power base outside of Baghdad. The series of raids and clashes, often masked as efforts against “criminals,” “thugs,” “death squads,” and “kidnappers,” are being conducted against the extreme elements of Sadr and his Mahdi Army. The goal is to remove Sadr from a position of influence, either by force or his surrender, and split his power base. Sadr’s lieutenants are being systematically targeted, which will drive him to either fight or withdraw.

You may recall the operation carried out by the military in late October following the kidnapping of an American serviceman where all of Sadr City was sealed. Only the intercession of Prime Minister Maliki who ordered a lifting of the blockade saved the Mahdi Army from a confrontation then. At that time, we were targeting known death squad leaders - some of whom had denounced Sadr for joining the political process and for not being radical enough in trying to cleanse Iraq of Sunnis.

Now it appears that we are once again prepared to hunt down and destroy al-Sadr’s creation. But should we target Sadr himself? Ed Morrissey feels that by driving him out of the country and into Iran, the anti-American cleric may have destroyed his own credibility:

And as for Sadr, this will destroy him and his Mahdi Army. ABC reports that Sadr wants to try to run the Mahdis from Tehran, but his credibility as a jihadi just tanked. Who’s going to fight for someone who won’t stand up for himself?

And the Iranians surely have to be thumping their foreheads over his bug-out. The US had just demonstrated that the Iranians had backed the insurgencies, which the Iranians disputed, and the chief of the Shi’ite militias announces that he’s going to become a remote-control general from their turf. It’s going to be very difficult for anyone to pretend that Iran has not actively fueled the insurgencies while Moqtada directs his armies by long-distance telephone calls.

This demonstrates that the US forces have seized the initiative in Baghdad, and that the Maliki government has apparently completely abandoned Sadr. It’s a tremendous victory in the preliminary stages, and it sets the table for an end to the hottest part of the insurgencies in the Iraqi capital.

I’m not in complete agreement with Ed. This “victory” is actually part and parcel of what we’ve been seeing not only from the Mahdi Army but also insurgents and death squad members. They are leaving Baghdad in anticipation of the crackdown. Once a modicum of peace is restored and the Americans begin pulling out, they will probably be back - with a vengeance.

I agree with Ed that this knocks the chocks out from underneath the argument made by war critics that the surge will have no effect on the violence in Baghdad. The fact is, it already has. It is now up to Maliki and the Iraqi government to take advantage of any lull in the violence and reach out to the Sunnis in order to build a truly national government where all Iraqis feel they have a stake in the future.

Since Sadr refuses to change his ways or alter his ultra Shia nationalistic beliefs, he has become a political liability for Maliki. This could be why the Iraqi Prime Minister has abandoned him to the tender mercies of the American military and why Sadr sleeps in a different bed every night.

UPDATE

Did Maliki set up Sadr’s exit to Iraq in order to avoid capture by the Americans?

Alphabet City:

Question: A cowardly act by the Shia Benedict Arnold who fled into Iran because Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki abandoned him?

Or is there more to this story? Maybe.

Letter Said From PM on Plan To Hide Al-Mahdi Leaders in Iran From US Forces

Originally published on 2/1/2007 by Jihadist Websites — OSC Report in Arabic

Terrorism: Website Claims Iraqi PM and Al-Sadr Will Hide Al-Mahdi Leaders in Iran from US Forces

On 1 February, a website posted a letter allegedly from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, marked “Secret, Personal, and Urgent”, in which the prime minister, following consultations with his National Security Adviser and cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, decided “to hide the leaders and commanders of Al-Mahdi Army in Iran to keep them from getting arrested or killed by US forces”. The alleged letter was dated 14 January 2007, and was signed by the prime minister. The letter was posted without comment.

The OSC report says the letter was posted to a jihadist website. Most likely Sunni. If so, it could be an attempt by Sunni jihadist and/or insurgent elements to discredit Maliki’s pledge of religious impartiality in Operation Secure Bagdad. In other words, more fanning of sectarian flames.

The other possibility, the document is genuine and Muqtada has not run with his tail between his legs but has been secreted away in Iran with the blessings of PM Maliki and NSA Mowaffak al-Rubaie. Both belong to the Dawa Party which forged it’s ties to the Khomeinists during Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s exile in Najaf in the late 1970s.

Since it would fully be in keeping with Maliki’s efforts to protect al-Sadr over these last months, I would tend to think that the letter is genuine and represents a sell-out by Maliki of our military and of the man who has sacrificed his personal and political standing with the American people to support him; George Bush.

The extent of this betrayal is too ghastly to comprehend. What it says to me is that Maliki has no intention of seeking a political solution to Iraq’s troubles and has thrown in his lot with the ultra Shia nationalists who want a Sunni-free Iraq. How they get to that point will make Bosnia look like a picnic and Darfur pale in comparison. Tens of thousands of Sunnis killed with millions on the move as refugees. Utter, complete chaos and disaster.

Is there no one in Iraq with the vision and the guts to lead the country to something better?

When I read this on Glenn Reynold’s blog this morning, I could hardly believe it. In response to an Ed Morrissey piece on Austrian weapons sold to Iran ending up with the insurgents in Iraq, the Professor drops his normally mild mannered personae and advocates hitting the Iranians with targeted assassinations:

I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines.

The outrage from all the usual suspects had to have been anticipated by Reynolds. He’s too experienced in the ways of the blogosphere not to have realized the second he wrote those words about assassinating “radical mullahs” and atomic scientists that a full blown blogswarm wasn’t in the offing. Sure enough, leading the pack of finger waggers and tsk-tskers is the number one hysteric in the blogosphere:

Just think about how extremist and deranged that is. We are not even at war with Iran. Congress has not declared war or authorized military force against that country. Yet Reynolds thinks that the Bush administration, unilaterally, should send people to murder Iranian scientists and religious leaders — just pick out whichever ones we don’t like and slaughter them. No charges. No trial. No accountability. Just roving death squads deployed and commanded by our Leader, slaughtering whomever he wants dead.

How Lambchop managed to wangle a column at Salon is a mystery. They obviously haven’t been reading his shallow, calumnious, hate filled rants toward conservatives and Bush supporters. His generalized assaults on people who disagree with him are wildly beyond the pale of decency and common sense - coarse, exaggerated, full of laughably simplistic analysis coupled with nauseating, moralistic lecturing. Lambchop is a Calvinist without the redeeming belief in God’s mercy.

“Cartoonish,” Goldstein correctly avers:

What I do find repugnant, however, is people like Greenwald(s) who hide their immense contempt for “the values of this country” behind pieties and outrage offered in bad faith, a rhetorical position intended to keep those who are trying to puzzle through difficult issues on the defensive, making them endlessly “prove” they aren’t “rogue” elements in the war against Islamism. And for all of Greenwald’s(’s) constant carping about how Bush supporters “routinely” label the loyal opposition “traitors,” he is fairly quick to insist that those who float the idea of covert warfare tactics are somehow hostile to individual liberty, freedom, representative government, and rule of law.

Lambchop’s absolutist, unyielding, unbending logic when it comes to anything the United States might do to protect itself does not carry over into criticizing the barbarians who violate every known international codicil that relates to establishing comity between nations. Nor does his resolute moral compass allow him to take the enemies of civilization to task for trying to achieve their goal of, if not destroying us, most certainly grievously injuring our interests and killing our citizens.

And we have no acknowledgement from Lambchop about Iran’s declaration of war against the United States on November 4, 1979 when they violated his precious international law, international tradition, and the rules of civilized behavior by attacking United States soil, capturing our diplomats, torturing them, and holding them hostage for more than a year. That, my dear sock puppet, is an act of war as surely as anything that has occurred in the international arena since the end of World War II. The fact that you choose not to recognize it as such is immaterial. For someone who pretends to be “reality based,” Lambchop’s concept of what is real seems to depend entirely on what he believes - which puts him in the same league as the holy rollers, the evangelicals, and other conservative Christians he takes such delight in savaging on a regular basis.

Leaving aside Lambchop’s bloviations, is it ever morally permissible to act like a barbarian to defeat a barbarian?

Conventional wisdom says no, that once started down that road we lose our identity as a nation and become exactly what we are fighting. I don’t know about that. We did some pretty horrific things in World War II to defeat Japan and Germany and managed to maintain our democracy while retaining a certain moral authority in the world left over from the Wilsonian era. The fact that we appear to have lost some of that authority today says more about the rest of the world’s refusal to acknowledge the threat of radical Islamism than it does about any actions we’ve taken to fight that menace.

By its nature, war is barbaric. I find it curious that absolutists like Lambchop somehow believe there is a “civilized” way to fight and win. We don’t target civilians. We don’t bomb cultural or religious symbols. We don’t behead our captives. Torture is a stain on our honor but it is apparently not a widespread problem. How much more “civilized” should we be? Idiots like Lamchop won’t be happy until we start warning the jihadis we’re coming because surprise attacks are barbarous.

From a purely practical standpoint though, Reynold’s proposal won’t work. Mathew Yglesias gets it about right:

I mean, how is this going to work? We’re talking, presumably, about the clandestine branches of the same intelligence agencies who can’t decide what the state of the Iranian nuclear program is, don’t know where Iran’s nuclear facilities are, and are unsure who, if anyone, in the Iranian government is responsible for Iranian weapons winding up in Iraq. Nevertheless, Reynolds believes they have an off-the-shelf plan for placing assassins in close proximity to key Iranian nuclear scientists. But not only for doing this, but for doing it quietly! American agents are infiltrating Iran killing Iranian scientists and religious leaders and none of them get caught. How? Are there really dozens of Farsi-speaking ninjas working for the CIA? I was going to compare this to a fun-but-stupid movie like The Bourne Identity but the point of that movie (and its sequal) is actually that if you somehow did build a hyper-competent utterly secret government agency it would likely become a cesspool of corruption and abuses of power.

Actually, I’m pretty sure our Special Forces boys, if tasked with specific targets, would probably have the capability to carry out a couple of missions. After that, I daresay the Iranians would increase security to the point that the question of assassinations would be moot.

And, at the risk of agreeing with Lambchop, how do you define “radical” mullah? You don’t get to be a mullah in Iran without possessing some fairly radical views like opposing the existence of Israel. How radical is too radical? What factors or beliefs do your base your targeting criteria?

Lamchop highlights the Executive Order outlawing assassination, something every President since Ford has followed. And if you lift that stricture, why target some obscure mullah? Why not go for the gold and kill Khamenei or Ahmadinejad? For the same reason no President has lifted the Executive Order on assassinations; what goes around, comes around. We kill one of theirs, don’t you think they’d do their damndest to kill one of ours?

And I’m not sure targeting atomic scientists is such a good idea either. The Iranians have had help from a number of countries including North Korea, Pakistan, and there is some evidence that former Russian scientists have also worked on the Iranian nuclear program. Besides, would it really do any good? Would it really cause the program any damage? Would it really make the mullahs think twice about helping the insurgents in Iraq? I doubt it.

I understand Reynold’s frustration with our inaction regarding Iran. We’ve dithered for 28 years about working to establish a genuine democratic movement there. It’s not like we haven’t done it before. One need only look at Poland or the former Czechoslovakia where we clandestinely set up a democratic facade for potential reformers that allowed for an indigenous movement to sweep those countries when the time was right. Of course, that type of operation takes patience and a lot of spade work.

The problem has always been that anything we do to Iran will result in counter measures that have the potential of hurting us even more. And anything we do to Iran will enormously complicate if not totally doom our efforts in Iraq. Fighting a Shia insurgency against our occupation along with war against the Sunnis and al-Qaeda would be a disaster. If Professor Reynolds believes that assassinations of the kind he is suggesting won’t set off the Shias in Iraq, he should read some recent speeches from al-Sadr where he warns against any American actions against Iran. And of course, the political situation - already tenuous - would go to hell in a handbasket. Forget about the Shias sharing power with the Sunnis or Kurds at all. In fact, that turn of events would make staying in Iraq a complete exercise in futility.

I too wish to avoid a generalized conflict with the Iranians. But assassination isn’t the way. And I believe that despite the sabre rattling by the Administration in sending 3 carrier battle groups to the Gulf, they too wish to avoid military action because of the consequences domestically and in the Middle East. In fact, it appears to me that the Administration may be willing to allow the Iranians their enrichment program, hoping that the technical problems they have been experiencing will continue while working to undermine the regime from the inside.

Short of war, that’s the best we can do.

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt applauds Reynold’s idea while drawing a conclusion about Hizbullah:

Note that Hezbollah hasn’t kidnapped any Israeli soldiers lately. There’s a reason.

Nasrallah has his own reasons for not tweaking Israel’s tail at the moment, not the least of which is that he needs his militia to assist him in his efforts to overthrow the Siniora government and not trying to fight off Israel’s retaliation for such an act. For the last several months, Hizbullah has been trying to show that they are good Lebanese citizens who only want what they believe they deserve; increased representation in the Lebanese cabinet. Of course, that’s a crock. But that, plus the UNIFIL force have kept Hizbullah from any confrontations with Israel recently.

Vito Corleone’s advice to his son Michael was exactly the opposite. “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” In the case of our mushy headed President, however, Assad’s advice that he watch his back rings true.

The “Right Wing Plot To Take Over The Government” gambit is a time honored plot line in Hollywood. And the granddaddy of all right wing conspiracy movies is a film based on the taut, well written thriller Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey (who also collaborated on the political pot boiler Convention).

The equally engrossing movie starred some of Hollywood’s most prominent liberals at the time; Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Frederic March. Lancaster played an Air Force General James Matoon Scott who, angry with the President (played by March) for signing a nuclear arms treaty with the Russians, plots to take over the government with the backing of a shady conservative Senator as well as some other generals. The hero of the movie, Jiggs Casey (Douglas), senior aide to the general, discovers the plot and brings it to the attention of the President who then must counter General Scott, trusting only his Secret Service protection and a drunken Senator marvelously underplayed by Edmond O’Brien.

Complicating matters was General Scott’s mistress, the lovely Ellie Holbrooke, played by the ravishing Ava Gardner. She has in her possession some love letters from Scott that Jiggs is tasked to steal so that the counter-plotters have some ammunition.

Of course, being liberals, they are much too principled to use the damning letters and in the end, the President does what he should have done 5 minutes into the movie; fire General Scott and save the republic. Jiggs, who also thought the President was a loon for trusting the Russkies, ends up getting Ava Gardner in the end so sometimes I guess it pays to be the conservative hero in a liberal movie.

All kidding aside, the film is extremely well written and as suspenseful as any movie you want to see. But if you think about it, 7 Days in May and all the films like it that posit a military (or politically conservative) coup d’etat have one gigantic flaw.

It would never happen in a million years. Only a paranoid lefty could believe that any high ranking military officer would violate their oath and tradition in such a manner. It may say more about the left that they have these fantasies in the first place than it would ever say about the military or conservatives.

And while we’re on the subject, can you think of one movie or TV show that ever showed a left wing plot to take over the government? Of course not. That too would never happen in a million years. The plotters would be too busy sitting around arguing about the make up of the post-coup government and could never come to an agreement. Besides, liberals talk too much. All those angst-ridden soliloquies about what they were about to do would put the audience to sleep in about 15 minutes. There would probably be more action in a movie detailing the mating habits of Three Toed Sloths than in a left wing coup film.

For President Palmer, it appears that all the left wing fantasies about heroically battling the evil conservatives who, like Bush, are seeking to overthrow the Constitution and lock up every Muslim in America in concentration camps, are about to come true. And right in the center of the plot, a man who bridges the two worlds of the terrorists and the conservative plotters - Philip Bauer. What is the end game here? What “shipment” is coming from Las Vegas?

Things are starting to heat up. And Jack is just starting to realize that the price he is paying to save the country may be more than he can personally bear.

SUMMARY:

The hunt is on for poor Morris who has been seized by McCarthy and his Ditzy Blonde girfriend. Bill tasks Chloe with uplinking to the satellite to see if they can’t track McCarthy’s car but something is terribly wrong. Chloe has lost her geek magic! She is no longer Super Geek but a mere shadow of a geek, an ordinary low rent techie who can’t even access a super secret military satellite - something any geek worth their salt could do with their eyes closed.

Chloe insists she’s fine but she is obviously distraught over the kidnapping of her beloved ex husband. When Bill asks what the problem is she snaps, “The only problem is people like you bothering me when I’m trying to do my job.”

Being inured to Chloe’s pungent personality, Bill simply shakes his head and slinks away. It is finally up to Milo to shoo Chloe away and take over after Jack, who is circling the area where Morris was abducted in a helicopter, wonders out loud why the geeks at CTU can’t do something as simple as uplinking to a top secret military satellite.

Right away Milo finds McCarthy’s car proving that Milo is not without some geek gifts himself. He vectors the helicopter toward the vehicle and, after McCarthy realizes the helicopter is after him, a wild chase ensues in suburban Los Angeles with Ditzy Blonde weaving in and out of traffic, crossing the center line, and nearly getting killed several times. What Ditzy Blonde and McCarthy don’t seem to realize is that the helicopter, being several hundred feet up and capable of flying about 4 times as fast as the car, easily stays with their efforts at escape.

That is, until McCarthy ducks under an interchange and pulls off the road. While McCarthy looks for another car so they can ditch the helo, Morris works on Ditzy Blonde. He tells her about McCarthy’s connection to the nukes. This seems to make an impression on the clueless woman - that is until McCarthy makes a much bigger impression. He reminds her of the $7 million Fayed will pay them for Morris. Jack goes to ground too late to ID McCarthy’s new vehicle and once again, the trail goes cold for CTU.

You can almost see those rusty wheels turning in Blondie’s head when Fayed calls and demands to know where his nuclear enabler is. McCarthy assures him they are on the way and Fayed gives him the address of an apartment building nearby to bring him. After punching the address into his TomTom, a light bulb appears above Blondie’s head and she gets a scathingly brilliant idea; why share that $7 mill when it could all be hers? Ditzy may not be smart but she has a gun and uses it. McCarthy will not help set off nukes no more forever.

At the White House, Lennox is having a cow about the President rejecting his plan to scrap the Constitution and replace it with his idea of a “No Muslims Need Apply” America. He figures that since he has no more influence with the President, that he should resign. His aide Reed tries to talk him out of it but Lennox orders the young man to draft a resignation letter for him.

And here, as in past seasons of 24, we are treated to the shocker that the most innocuous of people harbor the deadliest of agendas. In a phonecon with Carson who could be either a lobbyist or bureaucrat, we discover that Reed is part of a dark conspiracy that is about to take “extreme measures” against the President so that Lennox’s plan will be initiated. Reed is ordered to feel Lennox out on joining the conspiracy so that the plotters can maintain their access at the highest levels of the executive branch.

At CTU, Bill is informed of Graem’s death and he immediately tells Jack. Jack appears unmoved by the news, more concerned with Maryiln’s reaction as well as his dad’s. And when Marylin arrives, it is left to Bill to break the news of her husband’s death to her. She takes it rather well all things considered. Josh however (who speculation threads are hot with guesses as to whether or not he is somehow actually Jack’s son) grieves over the loss.

At Fayed’s apartment, the Ditzy Blonde delivers Morris to the terrorist and immediately demands her money or McCarthy will “give him up” to the Feds. Not batting an eyelash, Fayed tells her that she’ll get her money after Morris reprograms the trigger on the nuke. Poor Blondie is totally clueless what she has walked into here. Her lifespan is now measured in minutes.

We’re really beginning to like Morris. He’s a male Chloe only blessed with interpersonal skills and a sense of humor. When Fayed orders him to reprogram the nuke trigger, Morris shoots back, “Not bloody likely, mate.” Of course Fayed socks him one. And each refusal brings more pain, progressively worse while Blondie begins to feel sick realizing for the first time that she is in far over her head.

Meanwhile, picked up by a trailing TAC team near the underpass, Jack and the boys find McCarthy’s body on a quiet suburban street along with his phone. Bill orders Jack to download the phone’s info to the CTU’s computers and let Milo work a little geek magic and retrieve recent phone numbers and locales. But something is wrong. Milo is good. He is wise in the ways of the geek. But he is not a geek warrior, a true Super Geek. Seeing Milo’s distress in being unable to crack the phone’s encryption protocols, it’s Chloe to the rescue. Snapping out of her funk over Morris, Chloe dons her Super Geek cape and tights and begins to work some truly remarkable geek miracles. After telling us about the National Security Agency surreptitiously backing up every cell phone call in the US and relaying it to a satellite (causing civil liberty advocates’ heads to explode all over America), she finds the call from Fayed and immediately gets the address of the building it originated from. Jack races to the address to save Morris.

Back at the White House, Assad shows up for a meeting with the President. Both men look very uncomfortable - the terrorist and the President forced by circumstance to work together and neither one very happy about it. Palmer, as the aggrieved party, demands that Assad prove his bona fides by making a televised address asking for the assistance of radical Muslims around the world and in the United States in getting the nukes and Fayed or there will be war - not just against terrorists but against nations that sponsor them as well.

I don’t know about you but if a nuke went off on American soil, I don’t think any President in their right mind would be having a conversation like this even if a terrorist leader was seeking “peace.” And there is a distinctly unreal quality to this notion that Lennox and the national security apparatus would be more concerned with domestic security than in blowing the terrorists and the nations that enable them to kingdom come. But in service to the storyline about jailing innocent Muslims, reality is sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

Jack makes it to Fayed’s apartment building and deploys his team. The problem is that there are more than 100 apartments that need searching. A way must be found to narrow their search considerably.

For Morris, rescue can’t come too soon. After giving us a demonstration of “waterboarding,” Fayed still can’t get the snark out of Chloe’s boy toy who continues to refuse to cooperate. The terrorist then decides to use a drill to convince Morris to give in. Truly horrific. And effective. Seeing this is too much for Blondie, she begs Fayed to let her go, foreswearing the money owed her in exchange for her freedom. This obviously disgusts Fayed who doesn’t trust anyone who would so easily give up $7 million and he turns around a drills a hole in Ditzy Blonde’s head with a bullet. For Morris who perhaps finally realizes he is going to die, it only takes one drilling through his shoulder to make him give in and agree to do Fayed’s bidding.

Jack has decided on a course of action to determine which apartment holds the terrorists. When in doubt, use the fire drill gambit. Chloe hacks into the city services computer and sets off the fire alarm for the building.

With the alarm, Fayed realizes that the jig is up but, like any good leader in a crisis, knows there is time before CTU can figure out where they are. He puts Morris to work reprogramming the trigger.

Back at the White House, Lennox can’t believe his eyes. He’s just gotten the memo on Assad’s upcoming speech:

“Not only are we providing free air time to a mass murderer, an avowed enemy of democracy, but we’re proving terrorism works.”

Good points but too late to do anything about it. Reed comes in and feels out Lennox about the plot. He is very cautious and guarded in how he broaches the idea of overthrowing or killing the President but Lennox still bristles at the idea. Simply saying he was “musing out loud,” Reed goes back to his office to write the resignation letter after Lennox appears to reject the conspiracy out of hand.

Back at Fayed’s apartment building, CTU narrows down their options and by process of elimination, hits the jackpot. Morris, goaded on by Fayed, completes his task and watches helplessly as Fayed arms a nuke. Fayed seems satisfied and orders Morris killed. And just when things look blackest for him, CTU TAC springs into action. They blow a hole in the wall, stunning the terrorists inside momentarily. Jack takes the lead pumping a 12 gauge into 2 bad guys while the crack shots with him account for 3 more. The last terrorist, hiding in a doorway, is dispatched when he is flanked by two window crashing TAC team members.

And Fayed? Flown the coop. A ready made escape hatch in the wall leading to the basement and freedom through the sewers allows their nemesis to escape capture. But Fayed was kind enough to leave a little present behind, just a small token of his esteem: an armed and ticking nuke.

Never fear. In CTU’s vast data base are instructions to disarm this particular brand of nuke. Must of been in the file marked “allpurposedisarm.exe.” Chloe pulls up the schematics and talks Jack through the nerve wracking procedure. No clock on the bomb itself so CTU helpfully supplies us one on Chloe’s screen. Working feverishly, Jack does everything that Chloe says but he still can’t access the timing mechanism to shut it off. We then discover that there is an updated disarm file (”fooledya.exe?”) and with Chloe telling him to hurry, Jack successfully disarms the nuke.

And Morris? When Jack finds out that Morris actually built Fayed a trigger, Jack screams into his face “You gave him something that worked?” One of the few times that I’ve seen Jack actually not act solicitously toward someone who had just been through what Morris had to endure. But he has a point. Morris has broken the CTU Code of Heroic Conduct and will have to redeem himself sometime later in the show. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to give his life for that redemption. Morris is one of the more interesting characters on the show.

Lennox gets the update from hell; Fayed escapes, nukes can be armed at will, CTU has no leads on where they are. He reconsiders his opposition to Reed’s poorly disguised “musings” and calls him back to tell him he wants in. The die is cast. And Lennox has crossed his own little Rubicon.

On the run now, Fayed calls his partner in this terrorist enterprise, the Russian General Gredenko. It is here we get the first hint of a wider plot involving a shipment of something from Las Vegas, presumably not poker chips. A hint might be that a lot of nuclear testing has been done in Nevada over the years but who knows? Maybe it’s poker chips after all?

At CTU, the hunt swings toward trying to track Gredenko. The agency’s data wizards spring into action trying to find him. An email fragment found on a hard drive at McCarthy’s gives them a clue that Gredenko is in Los Angeles. Jack (who received some interesting stares from CTU employees when he walked in either because everyone thinks he killed his own brother or because they haven’t seen him for two years) decides to go down to the morgue and talk to his dad about Gredenko.

Philip Bauer is deleting numbers from Graem’s phone. An interesting activity considering that someone - CTU, the police, perhaps the janitor - should have secured Graem’s personal effects as part of the evidence chain of custody as would occur in any criminal case. No matter. Jack is still clueless about dear old dad’s perfidy. Lying through his teeth, Philip denies knowing much about Gredenko, pointing to Graem’s dead body and saying “Whatever you needed to know, died with him.” .

Jack sees Marilyn and apologizes for killing her husband. Marilyn tells him that she’s been trying to leave Graem for years but that he threatened to cut her off from Josh if she did. It’s obvious she is pining for Jack which may set up an interesting conversation between her and Audrey when Jack’s flame makes an appearance later in the show.

And now the parameters of the plot are completely fleshed out when we discover that the nexus of all of this criminal, treasonous activity centers around Philip Bauer. Philip calls Carson about CTU being on to Gredenko. He orders that Gredenko be killed at all costs.

So Philip is not only involved with selling the nukes to Fayed, he is at the center of the plot to get rid of Wayne Palmer. What are the connections between the two? All we know is that Philip has some grand design that will be revealed shortly.

Back at CTU, Bill has a sit down with Jack about the death of Graem. Bravely, Jack takes full responsibility, even going so far as to insist that Bill not alter his report to protect him. Jack will take the consequences of his actions but he assures Bill he didn’t want to kill Graem. This may be true up to a point. Even Jack says he lost control when Graem admitted to killing David Palmer and his friends. But, you know, stuff happens. Jack reminds Bill that he didn’t think he could do the job anymore but Bill once again convinces him to stay on.

At the White House, Palmer reviews Assad’s speech remarking that it appeared to be “too religious.” Assad explained that since that was the worldview of most of the terrorists he would be addressing, he must talk to them in those terms. The President then receives a call from Noah the Veep who is upset that Lennox’s plan for concentration camps and mass roundups of innocent Americans was shot down. Patiently, Palmer starts to explain but the Veep doesn’t want to hear him. He says flat out that the President is weak and that he’s a fool to boot. Referring to Assad’s upcoming speech, the Veep says “The man has murdered countless innocents over the past 20 years and you are putting your hope for the country’s safety on him?”

Well…not exactly. But close enough to the truth to make Palmer uncomfortable. The Veep then reminds the President that the reason he was put on the ticket was because people thought he might be weak on national security. Now that he’s seen him in action, the Veep is forced to agree with that assessment. “Is that all?” asks the President? They hang up and you realize that Palmer has one more major league headache to worry about with the Vice President.

In fact, Assad suggests the President watch his back, that these are men who will stop at nothing in opposing him.”They will come after you,” he tells the President. Palmer doesn’t believe such things could happen in America. He’s right of course. But don’t tell Hollywood that.

Down in the bowels of the White House, in a power maintenance room, Lennox is initiated into the plot by Reed. He has a thousand questions. Reed doesn’t have many answers. He does say that the Vice President is not involved although we can’t quite believe that. When Lennox says exactly what is being proposed, Reed answers “Definitive Action.” A military coup? Assassination? Whatever is going to be done, the Vice President will be in charge before long, that’s the important thing says Reed. He wants Lennox to give him the President’s itinerary relating to Assad’s speech which leads us to believe it will indeed be an assassination attempt of some kind. Lennox agrees to get it but still appears a little wishy washy. Will he jump ship and help the plotters? Or will he stay loyal to the President and the Constitution. Suddenly, Tom’s character is becoming much more interesting.

Back at CTU, After Jack starts asking her about Gredenko, Marilyn tells Jack that one night, when she suspected Graem of cheating on her, she followed him to a house where she heard him speaking to people who talked with a Russian accent. Agreeing to help Jack find the house, Marylin asks Philip to look after Josh. Philip, who finds out that CTU may get to Gredenko before his goons can find and kill him, suggests that Josh come with him back to his house. We realize immediately that young Josh is about to become a pawn in Philip’s game - especially when Philip calls Carson and tells him to find a house in West Los Angeles, presumably to set a trap for Jack.

Chloe sees Morris in the infirmary and tries to snap him out of his self pitying mode. When her pep talks seems to be falling flat, she slaps him across the face. But Morris appears too far gone into feeling sorry for himself, calling himself a coward. Chloe tells him to get back to work because the techies are going to be short handed what with Milo joining Jack in the hunt for Gredenko.

And that hunt takes a bad turn when Philip calls Marilyn who is in Jack’s car trying to remember the route she took following Graem. Telling her to keep Jack in the dark about who is on the line, he calmly informs her that if she doesn’t do exactly as he says, Josh will die. He convinces Marilyn that he will kill his own grandson by telling her that he’s already killed her husband. Shocked, Marilyn agrees to Philips terms. As they pass Gredenko’s house, she almost tells Jack about her troubles but decides against it.

In that house, Gredenko lets on that the nuke plot was really hatched as revenge for America winning the cold war. He says, “Russia lost the cold war because they were afraid to use these weapons. Today, we will use them and the Arabs will take the blame.”

Could this plot now be an international one? Is this an effort to carry out two coups - one in Russia and one here - that would bring back the cold war and make defense contractors like Philip’s company rich and fat again?

This would be hugely disappointing, a real downer. And Gredenko’s ultimate play has not been revealed yet. But the writers have done worse so I wouldn’t put it past them.

Marilyn takes Jack to the address Philip gave her and is given to Milo for safekeeping while Jack and the 5 TAC team members make their way to the house. Bursting in, they find no one. Just in time, Jack sees the bomb and jumps out of a window. The huge blast levels the house. Seeing this, Milo takes off in the van with Marilyn. Cut off by some of Philip’s thugs, Milo blows up the van and makes his escape on foot with the thugs in hot pursuit.

Jack is down but not out. As he takes off after the van on foot by himself, he realizes that Marilyn has betrayed him. He may not want to know the reason why.

BODY COUNT

A grim night for the Grim Reaper.

McCarthy gets his just desserts.
Ditzy Blonde gets a second hole in the head.
6 of Fayed’s men are martyred.
3 CTU agents killed in blast

That last is taken from scenes from next week’s show where Jack says he lost “more than half” of his team. Since he had 5 men with him, we can logically assume 3 bit the dust.

TOTALS:

Jack: 6
Show: 365

Haven’t seen it like this since ‘79. Snow, 40 MPH winds that popped a power line out here in the boonies. Lost power from about 4:00 - 7:00 AM. Also lost heat which put new meaning to the term “drafty house.”

If the weather weren’t bad enough, the two hour episode means double the time to write the post. All of this combined will delay my recap until at least 11:00 AM.

Sorry for the inconvience.

UPDATE

We lost power again at about 9:00 Central causing me to lose about half of what I had written. It came on briefly at about 9:15 and went down again. Called the electric company. The downed line is a “feeder” line and they say to expect outages off and on for the next few hours while they attempt to fix it.

I hope to have the summary posted by sometime this afternoon. Very frustrating situation and I hope you’ll bear with me today as this winter storm works its way through the area.

I realize the incendiary nature of this post but frankly, the candidacy of Barak Obama puts us in unchartered waters with regards to several issues. And one of those issues has to be the realization that black leaders in America have been targets of assassins in the past.

Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King are only the most prominent names on a long list of shameful murders - usually at the hands of extremist whites - that have stained this country’s honor and darkened the pages of our history. From those who sought to teach the recently freed slaves how to read who were hunted down and killed like animals, to martyred pioneers in the struggle for voting rights in the south at the turn of the century, to the devastating murders of civil rights workers in the 1950’s and 60’s, blacks who have stepped forward and offered to serve the cause of freedom in America have been at risk of being slain. And while few deny the steady and resolute progress toward achieving the goal of a truly color blind society, the fact is that there are dozens of groups like the Klan, Skinheads, Nazis, and Aryan Nation whose hate could erupt in a spasm of violence that would have tragic consequences.

Even though there have been serious African American candidates for President before, neither Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton appealed to many Americans outside of the far left of the Democratic party and black Americans in general. In effect, both men were what used to be called “Favorite Son” candidates with limited appeal beyond their relatively small constituencies.

By any measure, Senator Obama’s candidacy is different. He is attracting big time money and picking up big time endorsements while a growing, enthusiastic grass roots movement is propelling him forward. His appeal spans race, region, and party. He has as good a shot of winning the Presidency as any of the front runners in either party.

Does it matter that his race makes him more of a target for assassination? I believe it does indeed but perhaps not in any way that would cost him votes. I think what the increased likelihood of danger for Obama does is change the external dynamic of the campaign for both the Senator’s Democratic challengers and, if it comes to it, the man he will face in the general election.

Not that the extremists need an excuse to murder anybody. But experts who study political assassinations have noted that most of these murders take place in an enabling atmosphere where the assassin actually believes he will be considered a hero for carrying out his deed. The Warren Commission, driven by politics to go easy on Dallas, nevertheless made it clear that the atmosphere of hate in the city found a receptive vessel in Oswald.

Oswald’s Marxism was a mile wide and an inch deep. It is doubtful he understood anything about Communism except that it set him apart from the crowd and gave his attention starved ego a boost. Oswald’s pretense of murdering Kennedy for the world communist revolution masked his real reason. As William Manchester so brutally pointed out in his masterful Death of a President, Oswald “shot the President of the United States in the back to get attention.”

Indeed, the FBI’s profiles of assassins include this singular fact; the assassin seeks a public venue for his murder to validate his need for recognition. It is not hard to imagine the kind of hate directed toward Kennedy in the south as a result of his civil rights proposals. One need only look at the hate directed toward President Bush to get an inkling of the kind of unbalanced, inarticulate rage that was felt toward Kennedy. And driving that rage in Dallas was the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, Ted Dealy.

Dealy printed a poster of Kennedy on the day before the assassination, with the caption “Wanted for Treason.” His vitriolic editorials practically invited someone to take a shot at the President. And for some reason, Dallas seemed to be the capitol city of the unhinged in America at that time. Birchers, Kluxers, radical anti-communists, race baiters, all made Dallas a place that worried many of Kennedy’s close supporters, many of whom strongly urged him not to make the trip at all.

How much of that atmosphere rubbed off on Oswald? According to Ruth Paine, who put up Oswald’s wife Marina following several brutal beatings by her husband, Lee read the News everyday. And Oswald could hardly have been unaware of the Birchers since he took at shot at General Edwin Walker, a notorious extremist just months prior to his killing the President.

But it wasn’t just the Kennedy assassination where we see this hatred explode into violence. Many have pointed to the atmosphere of hate in Memphis when Martin Luther King came to support the garbage workers in their strike for a decent wage and better working conditions. And in 1968, the recent Arab-Israeli conflict and the outrage in the Palestinian community that was felt as a consequence of American support for Israel apparently contributed to the rage of Sirhan Sirhan and his desire to strike back at America by killing Robert Kennedy.

Even John Hinckley, Ronald Reagan’s would be assassin, may have been affected by the unhinged nature of much of the criticism being directed against the President for his budget and tax proposals and most especially for his stated desire to confront the Soviet Union. I distinctly remember commenting to friends at the time that at this rate, Reagan wouldn’t survive; that some nut with a gun would get the idea they were doing the world a favor and kill the President.

And the hate and spite directed at President Clinton resulted in two serious assassination attempts. Francisco Duran fired nearly 30 rounds through the White House gate in 1994. And while he tried to mount an insanity defense, he also claimed that he was inspired by conservative radio talk show hosts who had talked about “cleansing” the government and “armed revolution.” Even if Duran is lying about what actually motivated him, no serious observer could fail to note that for much of Clinton’s presidency, there was an undercurrent of hysteria that animated his extremist critics.

So how does this affect the Presidential campaign? First and foremost, it places a responsibility on candidates, their staffs, and their supporters to be circumspect in their criticisms of Obama. You can lay into a candidate without inviting the public to hate them. One can even personalize their criticism without it degenerating into the kind of mindless hate that is so often directed at Bush. And this challenge will be monitored by a more sensitive press who will probably come down harder and quicker on transgressors.

It also behooves those of us who write for political blogs to be cognizant of the danger. Obama is one of the most liberal candidates ever to seek the Presidency. I doubt whether many conservatives agree with much of anything he espouses. But will it really kill us if we keep our criticisms focused on the issues of the campaign - including personal issues like his lack of experience and an emerging portrait of a mushy headed idealist? I think not.

I’m not telling anyone what to write or to limit themselves in any way except to understand the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy and the very real danger that the same kind of treatment the right gave Clinton could prove tragic. As I said, it isn’t just the odd, angst ridden social deviant armed with an automatic weapon that would feel enabled by such an atmosphere. There are very serious men fully capable of making serious plans who might not need an enabling atmosphere to kill but who might actually be encouraged by it.

In his book In God’s Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, writer-blogger Dave Neiwert paints a startling and disturbing portrait of some of these extremists. Anyone who believes that these people are just a bunch of red necks hiding in the woods needs to be disabused of that notion entirely. And the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project has detailed files on dozens of hate groups, some of them heavily armed and made up of former members of the United States military.

They have the means and the motive (by their lights) to bring unspeakable tragedy once again to this country. It will be up to the dedicated and motivated professionals at the Secret Service to deny them the opportunity.

And it will be up to us to deny them any semblance of an idea that their violent action would be greeted by anything except outraged contempt.

Winter in all its fury has descended on northern Illinois. Today is the first day in more than a week that the temp has climbed into the 20’s after a low last night that once again plunged below zero. The previous high for the last 8 days was 11 degrees with nightime temperatures so bitterly cold that keeping a trickle of water running from each faucet in the house was a necessity lest one of the water pipes burst.

It has been so cold that the Coke and Pepsi in the refrigerator we keep in the garage froze and exploded. It has been so cold that joints in the walls of the house have been contracting and expanding, making loud, worrisome popping noises in the middle of the night. If you were dumb enough to be outside for any length of time as I was on Thursday shoveling a couple of inches of snow that dusted the area, you begin to notice within 5 minutes or so that you’ve either lost your nose or that it’s so cold, frostbite becomes a real danger.

The cold makes you feel like a trapped animal. I can imagine Cro Magnon man dealing with winters in Europe 40,000 years ago. This is before the current global warming trend that started when the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago and when winters were really bad - not these blessedly warm winters we are experiencing thanks to man-made Global Warming. Our ancestors only had a roaring fire and crude shelters to keep the cold from killing them. During stretches like the one were experiencing now, I’ll bet the smell in their living quarters gave new meaning to the word “ripe.” Too cold to go outside and use the Necessary.

I wonder how they amused themselves? Probably by talking about how cold it was. There is nothing that breaks the ice between strangers in weather like this than, well, talking about weather like this. We commiserate with each other, united in our misery while relating amusing anecdotes that exaggerate our distress. Surprisingly, it makes us feel better to know that everyone else is suffering. And if you’re a real cad, you hope they’re suffering more than you.

Actually, our ancestors almost certainly had a rich, oral storytelling tradition so if you were a kid, it was probably a fascinating time to sit around the fire, munching on a deer haunch, and listening to how the clan’s elders had to walk 5 miles to school with a bear on their back when they were your age or maybe sit in awe of some old greybeard while he talked about the time he singlehandedly brought down a Mammoth with nothing but a hunting ax and a broken spear.

But even that must have gotten old after a while. Maybe that’s when early man invented the board game. Or perhaps playing cards. Must have been pretty awkward trying to figure out whether you should bid 4 or 5 hearts when holding 13 pieces of tanned animal hide. And can you imagine playing Clue? “My guess is Mr. Boarstooth. In the cave. With a Mammoth tusk.”

Boredom killing is an ancient human concern. It almost certainly contributed to the development of speech in our species. Here we were, hundreds of thousands of years ago with these great big brains, going out of our minds just sitting in front of a fire with the rest of the clan watching wood burn. What do you suppose were the first words spoken? I’ve got an idea that some brilliant guy, much smarter than the rest, who had his eye on the comely brunette sitting across the cave from him picking lice out of her hair probably caught her eye, winked, and said “Yuwanna?”

Because obviously, sex is the best way to kill boredom. Put a little Barry White on the stereo (I prefer metal actually. Zsu Zsu likes Enya) and you can kill a couple of hours no problem. Of course, when I was younger, I could kill two or three days so occupied. Whoever said “Growing old sucks” had it just about right. “It” is not the first thing to go as you age. But about the time you realize that bending down to pick up a penny you dropped wasn’t quite as easy as you remember it and when you can’t think of the last time you saw the clock strike midnight, it’s time to start worrying.

If you’ll excuse me, Zsu Zsu just put on A Day Without Rain so I’m going to be busy for the next few hours - at least.

A day without rain is nice. A day where the temp gets above 40…priceless.

It’s been a long time since we here in Illinois had a favorite son to cheer on in the Presidential race. The much beloved former Illinois Senator Paul Simon, was a candidate in 1988 and ran a throwback race. The gentle man with horn rimmed glasses, bow tie, and professorial manner was an unreconstructed liberal in the classic sense. Perhaps one of the smartest men ever to serve in government, Simon’s cerebral campaign never caught on with the voters and he ended up in the back of the pack - a shame in many ways since politicians who are honest, smart, and actually care about the people are something of a rarity. I don’t think I would have agreed with Simon if he said the sun set in the west. But I would have given serious consideration to voting for him if he had been the Democratic nominee for President.

Simon had been in politics for nearly 35 years before making his attempt at the brass ring. He served in the Illinois House, as Lieutenant Governor, the US House, and was elected to the Senate in 1984. Rarely has a man with such breadth of experience in government, keen intellect, and passion for politics offered himself up as a candidate for high office. I suppose time had, in many ways passed him by in that the slick, media driven campaigns he was up against overwhelmed his efforts. Hard to condense his thoughtful and articulate ideas into 30 second sound bites.

Illinois’ current favorite son in the Presidential sweepstakes does not have 35 years of experience in politics. He is not possessed of a great intellect. But Barak Obama is many things - smart, charismatic, articulate, an excellent public speaker, and something of an idea man. And as of today, he is a candidate for President of the United States:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama formally entered the 2008 race for the presidency today, contending he has the experience to know that “Washington must change” and billing himself as the leader who will bring a new generational attitude to address the nation’s challenges.

Speaking in a single-digit, morning chill and sunshine to thousands of supporters outside the Old State Capitol, the first-term Democratic senator delivered an address that built upon his biography as a community organizer in Chicago, state legislator and U.S. senator to call for quick action on issues ranging from bringing a close to the Iraq war to the need for universal health care and an end to foreign-oil dependence.

The historic announcement by the state’s 45-year-old junior Democratic senator–launching a three-day wave of campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire with a Chicago fundraiser in between–is heavily tinged in symbolism for the first black candidate with a realistic chance of obtaining the broad-based support necessary for securing a major party presidential nomination.

And befitting a favorite son from Illinois, Obama summoned the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, calling forth the spirit of the Great Emancipator in an effort to unite the nation under the banner of the first black candidate of either party who is seen as having a good chance at winning through to victory:

Using the home of Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech as a backdrop, Obama frequently paid homage to the 16th president for using his will and words to bring a country divided by war together as one through the goal of freedom.

“In the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States,” Obama said.

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness–a certain audacity–to this announcement,” he said. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

Now that he’s in the race, if history is any guide, the national press will do their best to tear him down. After months of building him up and making his candidacy seem more like a coronation, all of the pundits and scribblers who have urged him to run will now shift gears and start digging into his past. Every word he has uttered will be scrutinized. Every vote will be analyzed. They will interview his high school sweetheart, his teachers, his minister, his boyhood friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and most especially, any enemies he’s made as he climbed the ladder of success.

The problem that the press and Obama’s opponents will have, however, is that there really isn’t much there to criticize - yet. Not much of a record. Not many votes. Very few public pronouncements. Obama is still something of a cipher. His public personae - cool, controlled, collected - gives few clues as to what’s behind the engaging smile and confident bearing.

One thing is certain. In the crucible of the marathon that is a Presidential campaign, it will be next to impossible to hide any shortcomings. Obama will be tested as he has never been tested before. The campaign will have its way with him and we will discover together whether he truly has what it takes to be president.

Can he win? He and Hillary will battle it out in the early primaries (assuming Obama doesn’t collapse in the next year due to a scandal or some major faux pas) along with John Edwards whose longshot effort will collapse if the former North Carolina Senator can’t win one of the first 4 contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina. But Hillary and Obama will probably be well funded enough that they will be able to absorb some early setbacks and stay competitive at least through the first “Super Tuesday” on February 5th when 10 states will hold primaries. Beyond that, it is impossible to say. That’s because it is difficult to gauge Obama’s appeal to different regions, different constituencies.

Frankly, I think he doesn’t have much of a chance. Not because he’s black. Not because he doesn’t have enough experience. Quite simply, he is too liberal for this new Democratic party that is emerging in the south and west:

When Obama’s record and views are separated from the mythmaking and rock star rapture he’s wrapped in, the problem of his electability looms large. Obama got a perfect 100 rating from the NAACP, National Organization for Women, National Education Association, the Children’s Defense Fund, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, and the Illinois Environmental Council (during his stint in the Illinois legislature), and a huge plus rating from the ACLU. He got his perfect rating from them for his Senate votes on labor, education, the environment, choice, civil rights and civil liberties. These are America’s top liberal advocacy groups, and they are some of his most ardent cheerleaders.

Meanwhile, Obama bombed badly in the ratings he got from the conservative National Taxpayers Union, National Right to Life, the Gun Owners of America, the NRA, the Federation for Immigration Reform, and the American Conservative Union. These are some of the nation’s top conservative advocacy groups, and they reflect the interests and views of millions of voters on immigration, spending, guns, abortion, and military prowess. These are the voters that will scrutinize his record and his views with a laser eye.

In short, Obama could very well be blown away in many midwestern and western states where the black vote is less important and where many of these “new Democrats” were elected in 2006. Less liberal, more socially conservative than Democrats in the northeast, Obama will have to sidle toward the center if he wants to be competitive in many of those states.

And under the proportional distribution system for allotting delegates, this would mean that he would have to win big in the larger northeastern states as well as delegate-rich states like Texas and Florida in the south in order to remain viable. It could be that by the March 18 Illinois primary, Hillary will be seen as the inevitable choice, rendering the rest of his campaign an exercise in futility.

Then again, Hillary could stumble early and make Obama seem inevitable although that scenario presupposes that the more than $100 million dollars that she can raise by forgoing public financing between now and the primaries won’t be a difference maker.

This is not Obama’s time. And he is young enough that he could absorb a defeat and still come back in 8 or even 12 years to try again. But any way you look at it, his candidacy will be historic and, for those of us who love politics, exciting to watch.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey has a great civil war analogy that refers to Obama’s invoking Lincoln in his announcement:

Obama, on the other hand, wants to inherit the mantle of Lincoln while essentially arguing for everything Lincoln opposed. He wants to assume the leadership of the new Copperheads, who believe that the present war cannot be won and that America should withdraw forthwith. Obama seems closer to George McClellan in this regard, who lost against Lincoln in 1864 after getting fired by Lincoln as commander of the Union Armies.

The world has changed since 1864, and the United States is a very different nation. In 1864, when Lincoln ran for President, the nation was an agrarian state just beginning to industrialize in a serious manner. The federal government had much less power and impact on the lives of everyday Americans, who usually only had contact with their local government except in extraordinary circumstances. Executive experience meant less in those days, especially since the party that won swept out the existing federal workers in a spoils system that later was replaced by the bureaucracy-cementing civil service system. It’s so different as to be an apples-to-oranges comparison.

No one can doubt that Obama has charisma beyond anything seen on either side of the political divide at this time, and he’s no dummy, either. He lends an aura of gravitas to every debate in which he participates, and his confidence will attract plenty of support in the primary cycle. However, he’s only 45 years old and has almost no track record on which to run. Even John Kennedy, one of the nation’s youngest Presidents, had fourteen years in Congress and a Vice Presidential run on his resumé when he ran for the Presidency at 43. Obama has won one national race, and that one was against the carpetbagging Alan Keyes, where Obama didn’t even have to break a sweat.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

I have called Jack Bauer a thug, someone who would be in jail if he weren’t out saving the country every week. And yet the fact that Jack seems to be remarkably untroubled by the methods he uses to battle the terrorists has always been one of his more attractive attributes. We want the kind of certitude exhibited by Jack. We long for it. We crave it. A black and white world where we don’t have to wrestle with our consciences about what to do with real terrorists and where the choices made by our government to protect us would meet with universal approval is something most Americans would give their right arm for. This, more than anything else, helps explain the popularity of the show.

The moral choices made by characters on 24 do not necessarily shed light on contemporary America so much as they illustrate time-honored thematic constructs from great literature and drama of the past. By definition, these themes are “conservative” in that they reflect a traditional approach to drama while offering a point of view regarding the threat of terrorism that more conservatives seem to be comfortable with than liberals. But at the same time, the show seeks to redefine the moral universe inhabited by the characters who are asked to sacrifice traditional values for the greater good of saving the country.

But we don’t live in Jack’s world. The world we live in is a many layered, textured nightmare of progressively darker shades of grey. What is torture? Is it right to make someone stand for 12 hours straight? Can you “waterboard” someone? Beyond the moral choices regarding torture, does it work? Is it necessary? The rest of the world is appalled at some of our answers. Shouldn’t we be?

And so, 24 remains what it is; a television show with a devoted following among the political class in America with the consequence that its impact on our culture and politics travels far beyond the 15 million people who watch the show every week.

In this serious and thoughtful piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer explores the personal politics of 24 creator and producer Joel Surnow. In the process of dissecting Surnow’s beliefs, we discover that some of our country’s most authoritative sources on matters of interrogation and torture feel that the character of Jack Bauer is a bad influence on the troops and that the show may even be responsible for the mistreatment of some prisoners.

Mayer gives details of a visit to the set last November by U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with several senior FBI and CIA agents who have conducted thousands of interrogations in their careers. Their verdict was simple and straightforward; the torture scenes in the show were affecting the way that cadets at West Point as well as troops in the field were approaching the interrogation of prisoners:

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors-cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24″?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do…”

The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as “24″ circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.” He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture “victim,” in a similar intimidation ploy. Lagouranis intervened: such scenarios constitute psychological torture.

Finnegan said that he’d like to see a show “where torture backfired.” All the experts agreed that torture, even when used in the show’s “ticking bomb” context, would never work. They pointed out that the fanatics, knowing that the bomb would go off soon, would simply hold out, secure in the knowledge that their suffering couldn’t last much longer.

They also pointed out that terrorist prisoners actually looked forward to torture as the first step towards martyrdom. An interrogation professional would never use it and would, instead, take the opposite tack of trying to build a relationship with the prisoner, drawing him out gradually by gaining his trust. Besides, the “ticking bomb” scenario itself was totally unrealistic and would never happen in the real world.

Of course, changing the parameters of the show by taking away the clock and interrogating prisoners the right way would make for lousy television which is why the producers would never agree to pursue such a storyline. More interesting is the idea that our troops actually think that this is the best way to get information from a suspect. Is what Finnegan and the others say true? Can our young men and women be so stupid as to reject their training and simply copy what a character on a fictional television show does, thinking that it is both legal and will get the job done?

I have no doubt that General Finnegan and the agents are genuinely concerned about the show’s impact on the troops. But the idea that some of the abuse of prisoners meted out by American soldiers is the result of watching a television show is absurd on its face. Blame it on our not giving the prisoners Geneva Convention protections or on poor discipline or leadership. But the intelligence professionals who carry out the overwhelming number of interrogations on prisoners can’t all be that stupid.

In fact, in an article in City Journal, Heather McDonald described how truly professional these dedicated men and women are and what they were up against when it came to interrogating al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners:

Army doctrine gives interrogators 16 “approaches” to induce prisoners of war to divulge critical information. Sporting names like “Pride and Ego Down” and “Fear Up Harsh,” these approaches aim to exploit a detainee’s self-love, allegiance to or resentment of comrades, or sense of futility. Applied in the right combination, they will work on nearly everyone, the intelligence soldiers had learned in their training.

But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,” writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.”

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture-a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

The solution was to initiate a series of extraordinary mild “stress techniques” that didn’t harm the prisoner but did put doubt in his mind that perhaps what he had heard about the Americans and their restraint wasn’t true:

Many of the interrogators argued for a calibrated use of “stress techniques”-long interrogations that would cut into the detainees’ sleep schedules, for example, or making a prisoner kneel or stand, or aggressive questioning that would put a detainee on edge.

Joe Martin-a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance-explains the psychological effect of stress: “Let’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and he’s had resistance training. He knows that I’m completely handcuffed and that I can’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. He’s been told: ‘They won’t physically touch you,’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesn’t know where your limit is.” Grabbing someone by the top of the collar has had a more profound effect on the outcome of questioning than any actual torture could have, Martin maintains. “The guy knows: You just broke your own rules, and that’s scary. He might demand to talk to my supervisor. I’ll respond: ‘There are no supervisors here,’ and give him a maniacal smile.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been torture committed by Americans. There have been more than 700 investigations carried out by the Army involving prisoner abuse and 25 detainees have died in American custody that have been ruled homicides. But to posit the notion, even tangentially, that the actions of Jack Bauer on a fictional TV show somehow contributed to this state of affairs strains credulity.

In Mayer’s New Yorker piece, she points out that while the show is fantasy, it sometimes crowds reality by depicting torture that actually occurred in real life, citing an incident last year where a terrorist was denied pain medication mirroring a similar event that occurred in Afghanistan. But the show’s senior writer Howard Gordon says that he makes up the torture scenes himself:

Howard Gordon, who is the series’ “show runner,” or lead writer, told me that he concocts many of the torture scenes himself. “Honest to God, I’d call them improvisations in sadism,” he said. Several copies of the C.I.A.’s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual can be found at the “24″ offices, but Gordon said that, “for the most part, our imaginations are the source. Sometimes these ideas are inspired by a scene’s location or come from props-what’s on the set.” He explained that much of the horror is conjured by the viewer. “To see a scalpel and see it move below the frame of the screen is a lot scarier than watching the whole thing. When you get a camera moving fast, and someone screaming, it really works.

So does the show “enable” torture by sanitizing it while showing that it is necessary? Clearly, the audience is asked to accept the illegal methods used by Jack Bauer as the price that must be paid to save the country. But are we asked to approve of it? Mayer makes the case that in fact, by making the audience complicit in Jack’s law breaking and by showing Bauer to be basically untroubled by his use of torture, the show removes any moral complications the audience might feel:

The “24″ producers told the military and law-enforcement experts that they were careful not to glamorize torture; they noted that Bauer never enjoys inflicting pain, and that it had clearly exacted a psychological toll on the character. (As Gordon put it to me, “Jack is basically damned.”) Finnegan and the others disagreed, pointing out that Bauer remains coolly rational after committing barbarous acts, including the decapitation of a state’s witness with a hacksaw…

Although reports of abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have angered much of the world, the response of Americans has been more tepid. Finnegan attributes the fact that “we are generally more comfortable and more accepting of this,” in part, to the popularity of “24,” which has a weekly audience of fifteen million viewers, and has reached millions more through DVD sales.

Frankly, I think that because the show is so popular with the politically active segment of the population that we tend to overestimate its impact on the rest of America. I doubt whether the majority of Americans who may be aware of who Jack Bauer is actually take his methods to heart. And as far as being more accepting of torture, 63% of Americans oppose physical abuse according to an ABC Poll conducted in 2004 with 35% supporting torture. And even higher majorities (75% in a USA Today poll) opposed the kind of treatment meted out to prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This hardly seems “tepid.”

In the end, it’s just a television show. A rollicking good show to be sure. It is well written, well acted, with production values that are the envy of series television. But basically the show functions as a safe outlet for our fears about terrorism and security. And Jack Bauer may be a goon but his dedication to duty and his patriotism are so attractive that the audience is more than willing to forgive him his shortcomings.

Most of us like to think that there is someone out there in real life with that kind of tough, no nonsense approach to protecting America but without the moral baggage that Jack carries. In that sense, the show succeeds in what it sets out to do; entertain us for an hour every week with thrilling, edge-of-your-seat action while making us wish that next week’s episode would hurry up and get here.

Can a pro-choice candidate win through and capture the GOP nomination for President?

Conventional wisdom would seem to mitigate against it. For more than a quarter of a century, the pro-life lobby has been the most consistent and reliable of GOP interest groups. Their ranks have fleshed out GOP presidential campaigns with volunteers and fundraisers. And it is no exaggeration to say that their advocacy contributed mightily to GOP victories in the House and Senate during the decade and a half of GOP control of Congress.

The pro life lobby has also shown that it has muscle at the state level, passing laws in numerous legislatures regarding parental consent, strictures against late term abortions, and something known as “informed consent” where the woman is told about the development of her fetus before the procedure.

But with the Republican party in turmoil and conservatives re-examining everything about themselves, it might just be possible for a nominal pro-choice candidate like Rudy Guiliani to squeak through and capture the nomination.

This is because his main pro-life rival John McCain has his own problems with conservatives despite his near perfect opposition to abortion. If Rudy could capture the bulk of conservatives who don’t assign as much weight to pro life issues as some others (and if Rudy can avoid a few other landmines on guns, affirmative action, and questions regarding his personal life), I think he has a decent chance of winning.

I characterized Guiliani’s pro-choice stance as “nominal” above. In fact, his views are very close to the mainstream of the country which, in the end, is pro-choice but supports most of the restrictions placed on the procedure at the state level. And the out of control, rabid positions of pro choicers with regards to partial birth abortions as well as their curious reluctance to acknowledge that neo-natal science has progressed since Roe v. Wade in 1973 makes Rudy’s views much more mainstream than say, Hillary Clinton who supported a “mental health” exception in a partial birth abortion bill in 2003.

That amendment failed to lower the bar for “viability of the fetus outside the womb” below 24 weeks - a totally unscientific and arbitrary time period given the fact that 21 week old fetuses routinely are delivered and survive.

But “mainstream” views on abortion are different than those held by pro lifers. And as this NR piece points out, if Rudy can make it through the primaries, he can probably expect the support of the pro life crowd in November, 2008:

In many cases over the years, pro-lifers have been willing to overlook politicians’ pasts and embrace their conversions. It is never too late to begin protecting life. In other cases, pro-lifers have reached a modus vivendi with politicians who continue to disagree with them. The late Sen. Paul Coverdell, for example, supported legal abortion. But once he won his primary, pro-lifers supported him since he promised to vote to ban partial-birth abortion, oppose public funding of abortion, and support conservative nominees to the judiciary. He lived up to those promises. He stayed theoretically pro-choice, but was operationally pro-life. The bar for Giuliani will be higher, since he is running for president — and so far he has done less.

He has moved on partial-birth abortion. On Meet the Press in 2000, he said he would “vote to preserve the option for women.” He also said, “I think the better thing for America to do is to leave that choice to the woman, because it affects her probably more than anyone else.” Partial-birth abortion is inches away from infanticide, and more than 60 percent of Americans — including many people who consider themselves “pro-choice” — think it is abhorrent and should be prohibited.

Giuliani has now joined this consensus, which is the bare minimum a presidential candidate who wants to find common ground with pro-lifers must do. On Hannity & Colmes on Monday night, Giuliani said that he supports a ban on partial-birth abortion, so long as it allows the procedure when necessary to save the mother’s life. The qualification is puzzling: Nobody has ever presented a persuasive hypothetical case in which a woman’s health would depend on partly delivering her child and then crushing the child’s skull and sucking out the brains — let alone an actual case in which her life was at stake. But we applaud the mayor’s newfound willingness to endorse a ban at all.

But the primaries is where the power of the pro life lobby is most keenly felt. And from what I’ve read from some of the leading lights of that group, they are by no means taken with the candidacy of John McCain. Aside from McCain’s other problems with conservatives on judges and campaign finance reform, the Senator has actually muddied the waters a bit with regards to his pro-life stance, calling legalized abortion “necessary” at one point while saying he would not be in favor of repealing Roe v. Wade:

McCain said, “I’d love to see a point where Roe vs. Wade is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” A spokesman said that McCain “has a 17-year voting record of supporting efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade. He does that currently, and will continue to do that as president.”

This may cause the pro life lobby to either turn to another candidate - someone like Sam Brownback or Duncan Hunter - or perhaps even split their support several ways. This would help Rudy even more in the primaries as he and McCain slug it out.

I frankly think Rudy’s biggest problem will be a limited appeal in the south. He will be competitive in Florida and Texas but I think McCain has a real chance to shut him out elsewhere, racking up large majorities in the old cotton south as well as most of the border states. Perhaps that perception will change but if you think about it you’ll see what I mean: The last northeastern candidate from either party to win the Presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960. And the last northeastern candidate to win the Republican nomination was Tom Dewey in 1948.