Right Wing Nut House

It appears that the President of the United States will also forgo the proceedings in the Rotunda on Saturday in favor of staying at his ranch for another day.

Lest anyone think my displeasure is reserved exclusively for the Democratic LEADERSHIP (Note: The Republicans on the junket are not a part of the leadership in the Senate. Those in the comments from my last post who have demonstrated their towering ignorance by not being able to tell the difference between the Majority Leader of the Senate passing on this event and two relatively unknown GOP members skipping out might want to deepen their thinking faculties a bit.) anything I said about Reid above goes double for Bush.

Look, friends. Hearken to me.

A nation is an organism, a life form. And what animates this life form, what gives it the power to unite our people - so diverse, so different - are its traditions, myths and legends; in other words, the symbolic over the substantiative. The Constitution does a fine job in defining the powers of government. But its real power is in its iconic symbolism in which we have bound up all the hopes and dreams of our citizenry for a better life.

The United States is a very young country by any standard. We are so young, we really have no “myths” or “legends” per se. That’s because even our greatest mythic heroes like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett left a written record behind along with friends and acquaintance who were able to tell biographers and historians what those two larger than life characters were all about. A “legend” is hardly legendary if we know that the myths surrounding the legend are untrue. And yet we continue to try and conjure up symbolic representations of our mythic heroes because it is through them that we like to see ourselves reflected in our national mirror.

And tied up in these efforts to create legends has been the dominant truth about American public life since George Washington; the presidency as a symbol of nationhood. We have no king, no royal family. Our continuity is the result of civil compact among all of us that the office of the presidency belongs to no man, no party; that it is the one aspect of public life in which we invest enormous power and place enormous trust in the occupant not to abuse that power. Hence, the presidency as a symbolic representation of us, the citizens of the United States imbues the occupant of that office with the status of civic god - especially after he is safely retired and unable to do any damage to our liberties.

I think Bush should be widely criticized for not attending every event related to the Ford funeral rites. The symbolic life of the nation demands that he attend and participate. I believe he and Reid’s failure to take part in the ceremonial, the tradition of laying to rest a former president and former Commander in Chief lessens the hold that office has on our emotional bonds with America - what Lincoln referred to as the “mystic chords of memory” - that allow us to rise above that which separates us and unite in common cause to remember a dead icon.

I fully expect the lefty commenters to belittle this rationalization. So be it. It is probably why in 50 years, long after I’m dust thank god, the way citizens feel about the United States will be unrecognizable to my generation.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “Directions on Iraq: A Blogging Colloquium (Updated)” by The Glittering Eye. Finishing second was Joshuapundit for “Ex-president and Jew Hater for Sale — Jimmy Carter’s Dirty Little Secret.”

Winning in the non Council category was The Fourth Rail for “The ROC.”

Long time Council member and dear blogging comrade Dymphna from Gates of Vienna is going to be spending less time blogging in the future. Hence, she has decided to step down from the Council. If you’re interested in serving, please go here and follow the steps outlined.

Dymphna and her partner at Gates of Vienna the Baron are two of the best minds on the internet. And Dymphna is one of the finest writers it has been my pleasure to read. Clarity and reason were the hallmarks of her articles. And her passion is always on display. She pulls no punches and her only enemy is shallow thinking.

A lady. A scholar. A joy. She will be missed.

This is fascinating. Two interviews with former President Ford before he died and two almost polar opposite positions taken by the ex-President (according to the reporters) regarding his support for the Iraq War.

First, Bob Woodward’s taped interview with the former President that was embargoed until after he died:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford’s White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

Did Ford say that the Iraq War was “not justified?” Or did he say that he would not have used the justification of WMD as a causus belli?

According to Thomas DeFrank, the other interviewer, it’s the latter:

“Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him,” he observed, “but we shouldn’t have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?”

Ford was predictably defensive about Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his two White House chiefs of staff. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. “Dick’s a classy guy, but he’s not an electrified orator.”

If Ford believed “there was justification” to get rid of Saddam, then we are left with something of a conundrum; which Ford should we believe? After all, he told DeFrank that he actually supported the war:

Ford was a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday as we chatted for about 45 minutes. He’d been visited by President Bush three weeks earlier and said he’d told Bush he supported the war in Iraq but that the 43rd President had erred by staking the invasion on weapons of mass destruction.

So why the massive feeding frenzy by the left (and the handwringing on the right) over Woodward’s embargoed interview (that Ed Morrissey believes reflects badly on the ex-President) while few if any bloggers are looking at the DeFrank piece?

First, I have little doubt that our invasion of Iraq made Ford very uncomfortable. One need only listen to his acolyte Brent Scowcroft to discern the realpolitik thinking about Iraq and the Middle East of which Ford was enamored. In the realists world, Iraq was a secular bulwark against radical Iran. It is interesting to note that Ford supported George Bush 41 in not going “on to Baghdad” in 1991. Scowcroft believed (and we might extrapolate that Ford agreed with him) that even a de-fanged Saddam confronting Iran was preferable to a weak and divided Iraq at Iran’s mercy.

But after 9/11 and Dick Cheney’s “One Percent” doctrine (that if there was a 1% chance that a nation was a threat to attack America with WMD, the threat must be eliminated) that kind of “realism” lost out to the seductive idea that not only could the Saddam threat be neutralized but that bringing democracy to Iraq would have a salutatory effect on efforts to promote democracy in the entire region.

Leave aside for the moment the realist’s belief that our real interests in the Middle East lay with the corrupt Kingdoms who sit on most of the world’s oil and that Israel was, if not expendable, certainly a secondary concern and depending on who was advising the President, an obstacle to stability in the region. The fact is, we can both promote democracy and work for stability at the same time.

A tricky balancing act to be sure but not impossible. And judging by recent events, it appears that this may be what we are going to try. Going on under the media radar have been historic elections in Qatar, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia (and earlier, Lebanon). The momentum toward increased participation by the people of the Middle East is growing. And for all the blunders, the mistakes, the tragic stupidities that have marked our efforts in Iraq, the idea that these events have taken place because of the invasion and subsequent elections in Iraq cannot be dismissed out of hand.

I think that Ford told Bush exactly what he wanted to hear; that he supported him. This despite the reservations he expressed to Woodward. And indeed, the fact that he embargoed the interview with Woodward would seem to support that contention. But Ford was if nothing else, a man who treasured loyalty. It is not surprising that he would suppress his misgivings about Iraq while he was alive.

Make sure you read DeFrank’s article about his last visit with the ex-President. It is an uncommonly frank portrayal of a man who knows he doesn’t have long to live and, with misty eyed reflection, watches as the highlights of his life roll past him.

It says a lot about the character of the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would blow off the state funeral of Gerald Ford, the least partisan of our most recent presidents, in order to get in a little holiday sight seeing and engage in some hobnobbing with South American leftists. In fact, I think it a precursor of what we can expect from the Democrats in general for the foreseeable future. Out of power for a decade, I think it safe to say that these ain’t your daddy’s Democrats. In fact, I’m certain that these aren’t the Democrats of the 1970’s either.

The Majority Leader of the Senate during Ford’s tenure as President was Mike Mansfield. The craggy faced Montana lawmaker served in that leadership position longer than anyone in history. Perhaps his greatest moment occurred during the service in the Capitol Rotunda for the assassinated John F. Kennedy when he delivered what is considered one of the most moving eulogies in American political history:

There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a wit in a man neither young nor old, but a wit full of an old man’s wisdom and of a child’s wisdom, and then, in a moment it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a man marked with the scars of his love of country, a body active with the surge of a life far, far from spent and, in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

Somehow, I don’t think our Harry quite measures up, do you?

Mansfield was a brilliant man, an accomplished diplomat. Harry Reid is a political hack. But the differences go beyond talent, beyond intelligence. The fact is, Mike Mansfield was a gentleman. Harry Reid is not.

Mansfield could be as hyper-partisan as any politician today but he always behaved in a way that reflected his belief that the feelings and sensibilities of others was something to be considered. In other words, Mansfield demonstrated the number one trait of a gentleman; empathy.

Harry Reid seems to have a dead spot in his soul where empathy usually resides in the rest of us. Blowing off the government of the United States, his colleagues, the Ford family, and history itself is just the latest in series of actions and statements that show Reid to be unfit to follow in the footsteps of giants like Mansfield, LBJ, and the venerable wise man George Mitchell - all of whom would have blanched in horror at the prospect of the Majority Leader of the Senate missing a high affair of state such as a presidential funeral.

Reid has demonstrated on numerous occasions that his rank partisanship gets in the way of him acting like a normal human being; to wit:

Reid made headlines in May 2005 when he said of George W. Bush, “The man’s father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser.” Reid later apologized for these comments. Reid also called Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an “embarrassment” and referred to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as a “partisan hack.”

He also called the President a “liar” and refused to apologize. Whether true or not, the idea that one politician calls out another for lying is loony. It is beyond the pot/kettle analogy, moving into the sublime territory of stratospheric irony usually reserved for Communists when they name their country a “Peoples Republic.”

Reid’s snub may be unprecedented, although I doubt whether statistics about such insults to the United States government are kept. And I doubt whether we’ll hear a peep of criticism from any sitting Democratic politician either. At bottom and with few exceptions, the values of tradition and etiquette mean very little to the left. After all, they’ve spent the last 40 years trying to overturn tradition and violate etiquette in order to “speak truth to power” or “challenge convention” or some other such nonsense that more often denotes agitating for change simply for the sake of change itself rather than any specific goal for improving society.

The fact that Reid’s deputy, my home state senator Dick Durbin is also on the junket (along with Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar) means that the task of delivering the eulogy may fall to Senator Robert Byrd, President pro tempore emeritus of the Senate. Byrd, for all his faults, is a creature of the Senate and one who reveres and worships its traditions and precedents. I have no doubt that the West Virginia Senator will do a fine job in eulogizing Ford. But frankly, it’s not his job. It’s Reid’s. And the absence of the new Majority Leader at the state funeral of a former president sets a very bad precedent that I hope Republicans will never take advantage.

Jimmy Carter is no spring chicken. There will come a day in the not too distant future when his remains will lie in the Capitol Rotunda and the Honor Guard will stand their solemn watch. And Members of Congress will gather to pay their respects and deliver eulogies to the dead Commander in Chief. Will the Republican leader recall this insult by Reid and find other pressing matters to attend to? I hope not. For if there is one occasion where partisanship should be left at the door, it is in honoring those special men who took up what the Smithsonian referred to as “A Glorious Burden” and guided the United States and the Ship of State through perilous waters.

I’m with Hugh Hewitt 100%: “Turn. The. Plane. Around.”

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey:

What a classless act, and Reid, Durbin, Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar should be ashamed of themselves. If Harry Reid can’t figure out that his new position as Majority Leader carries some extra responsibilities, then perhaps the Democrats need to find someone who does understand it.

Amen. Although with the exception of Byrd, I doubt there are more than a handful of Democrats who see anything wrong with Reid’s excursion and would therefore be equally unfit to lead.

And Heather at my blog bud Raven’s site - And Rightly So - wonders “What ever happened to respect?” Indeed.

UPDATE 12/29

It appears that the President of the United States will also forgo the proceedings in the Rotunda on Saturday in favor of staying at his ranch for another day.

Less anyone think my displeasure is reserved exclusively for the Democratic LEADERSHIP (Note: The Republicans on the junket are not a part of the leadership in the Senate. Those in the comments who have demonstrated their towering ignorance by not being able to tell the difference between the Majority Leader of the Senate passing on this event and two relatively unknown GOP members skipping out might want to deepen their thinking faculties a bit.) anything I said about Reid above goes double for Bush.

Look, friends. Hearken to me.

A nation is an organism, a life form. And what animates this life form, what gives it the power to unite our people - so diverse, so different - are its myths and legends; in other words, the symbolic over the substantative. The Constitution does a fine job in defining the powers of government. But its real power is in its iconic symbolism in which we have bound up all the hopes and dreams of our citizenry for a better life.

The United States is a very young country by any standard. We are so young, we really have no “myths” or “legends” per se. That’s because even our greatest mythic heroes like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett left a written record behind along with friends and acquiantances who were able to tell biographers and historians what those two larger than life characters were all about. A “legend” is hardly legendary if we know that the myths surrounding the legend are untrue.

And tied up in these efforts to create legends has been the dominant truth about American public life since George Washington; the presidency as a symbol of nationhood. We have no king, no royal family. Our continuity is the result of civil compact among all of us that the office of the presidency belongs to no man, no party; that it is the one aspect of public life in which we invest enormous power and place enormous trust in the occupant not to abuse that power. Hence, the presidency as a symbolic representation of us, the citizens of the United States imbues the occupant of that office with the status of civic god - especially after he is safely retired and unable to do any damage to our liberties.

I think Bush should be widely criticized for not attending every event related to the Ford funeral rites. The symbolic life of the nation demands that he attend and participate. I believe he and Reid’s failure to take part in the ceremonial, the tradition of laying to rest a former president and former Commander in Chief lessens the hold that office has on our emotional bonds with America - what Lincoln referred to as the “mystic chords of memory” - that allow us to rise above that which separates us and unite in common cause to remember a dead icon.

I fully expect the lefty commenters to belittle this rationalization. So be it. It is probably why in 50 years, long after I’m dust thank god, the way citizens feel about the United States will be unrecognizable to my generation.

(This update has become a separate post.)

The year was 1980 and Gerald Ford was on a mission. The last two weeks of October, the 38th President of the United States was fulfilling a promise he made during the tumultuous Republican Convention to the GOP standard bearer Ronald Reagan; that he would campaign his heart out for Republican candidates running for the House and Senate. He would help “extend Reagan’s coattails” to bring as many GOP lawmakers to Washington as he could.

The Republican party had placed a jet at Ford’s disposal and he criss crossed the country, speaking at 3 or 4 events (sometimes more) everyday. It was a killer schedule, designed to maximize Ford’s appeal to traditional “Main Street” conservatives as well as moderate members of the party. The Thursday before the election, the former President landed at Washington National Airport (now Reagan National) at 7:00 AM, coming in from California where he had been campaigning until late in the evening. He was to speak to the faithful at a breakfast fund raiser for candidate Frank Wolf, making his third effort to unseat Democrat Joe Fisher in Virginia’s 10th district.

As a volunteer for the Wolf campaign, I was working the registration table that morning, handing out name tags and accepting late donations to the event. Taking a short break, I wandered out into the hallway behind the hotel’s ballroom for a smoke when I saw a lone man walking toward me. There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place. He was striding purposefully but the rest of his body language denoted utter exhaustion. His shoulders drooped. His face, sagged so that the wrinkles came out in bas relief. His eyes were half closed, the circles under them pronounced.

With a shock I realized it was the former President. There were no Secret Service Agents. No clutch of sycophantic aides trailing in his wake. It was just me and the former President of the United States. I was thinking that he might not make it through the speech, so tired and careworn he looked. And then, magic.

He didn’t notice me until he was almost even with where I was standing against the wall. But when he saw me there with what must have been a dumbfounded look of disbelief on my face, he grinned and extended his hand. At that exact moment, his face lit up, the wrinkles disappeared, the eyes snapped open, and he drew himself up to his full height. It was like someone had thrown a switch. He clasped my hand firmly while all I could do was stutter out some meaningless platitude. I think I murmured “Thanks for coming” or some such nonsense that he probably didn’t hear anyway. And then he was gone, striding down the hallway toward the front of the room where he was to be introduced.

Making my way back to the ballroom, I stood along the wall opposite the podium and saw him in the doorway. His body and face had resumed their exhausted demeanor. But after the introduction, someone threw the switch again and he strode confidently to the lectern to deliver a barnburner of a political speech. Ford may not have been noted for his speaking ability. But I can attest to the fact that the wild applause and standing ovation he received was fully deserved. He skewered Carter and the Democrats for defeatism. He praised Reagan to the skies (despite his long standing anger at him for what Ford believed was the unnecessary challenge Reagan made for the nomination in 1976). And he talked about America as only a Midwestern politician can; with a hushed and reverent tone and a catch in the throat.

I always admired Gerald Ford for what he did during that campaign. The results speak for themselves. The GOP won back the Senate for the first time since 1958 winning 12 seats while the party picked up 35 seats in the House. To extend himself physically and emotionally the way he did was an act of selflessness that seemed to be the hallmark of his political career.

No great monuments will be built to honor Gerald Ford, dead yesterday at age 93. Nor will there will be any post mortem scandals that will tarnish his name or sully his image. His quiet retirement, in contrast to other ex-Presidents, assures him a measure of anonymity with most younger Americans today. To the extent that he lives on in popular culture, it is in the hilarious but unfair cheap shots taken by the Saturday Night Live crew who always portrayed the All-Star athlete as a bumbling klutz in their skits. It can fairly be said that Gerald Ford made Chevy Chase and to a large extent, put SNL on the map. And it is to his eternal credit that Ford was always fairly good natured about the spoofs which almost certainly helped defeat him in the close election of 1976:

Question: Really, what DID you think of Chevy Chase’s impersonations of you? Did you ever meet him? — Mrs. Arlene Gaudioso’s Fifth Grade, Rohrerstown Elementary School, Lancaster, PA.

President Ford: I enjoyed, up to a point, Chevy Chase’s impersonations. Yes, my wife and I have met and had an opportunity to get acquainted with Chevy Chase. He is a very skillful entertainer who had a sharp and penetrating sense of humor. I have learned over the years in the political arena that you cannot be thin-skinned. You have to take the good with the bad.

Simple, common, decency.

His political career was a testament to his sunny disposition and good natured, inoffensive personality. In 1959, he was named “The Congressman’s Congressman,” an accolade he relished. Serving as long as he did (1947-73), Ford rose to the post of Minority Leader if not quite by default then certainly as a result of his durability. He served during a time when the Republicans in Congress were not only on the outs but also usually on the wrong side of history as well. Opposing many of LBJ’s wildly popular domestic programs, House GOP members were disorganized and dispirited.

When Vice President Agnew was revealed to be a common criminal, Nixon reached out for the most non-controversial choice possible. Most observers believed that Nixon would have no choice but to name Nelson Rockefeller Vice President, seeing that he was the only nationally known Republican who possessed what Beltway Insiders considered the “heft” or “gravitas” to be President if worse came to worst. But in 1973, Rockefeller’s divorce was still an issue and rather than risk problems, the President reached out to Ford both because he was popular in Congress and because his reputation as an honest and decent man assured his confirmation.

I reject the notion that Ford was in over his head as President. I think history has shown that ordinary Joe’s like Ford have risen to great occasions in the past when the times demanded it. All you have to do is look at Ford’s decisions when he was tested by history to see he performed more than adequately. The Nixon pardon -controversial as it was and still is - nevertheless was perfectly in keeping with Ford’s character as well as his belief that it was of paramount importance that Watergate be put behind the country so that the business of the United States government could continue. People tend to forget that for more than a year the Presidency was an empty shell of an office with Nixon consumed by his defense. Ford rightly thought that the times were too dangerous not to have a presidency free from the ghosts of scandal that would have been resurrected during any trial of the former President.

It is unfair but historically accurate to say that the Ford Presidency (and Carter’s) was an interregnum between the Johnson-Nixon imperium and the Reagan revolution. The nation almost seemed to catch its breath following the devastating shocks of assassinations, race riots, war, protests, and minority agitation for full participation in American life. It was less than a decade between the race riots that began in the “long, hot, summer” of 1964 to the Nixon resignation in August of 1974 - 10 short years that saw dramatic changes in American life, American politics, and American mores. If Ford is to be known as a “caretaker” president, he did indeed, take good care of the country while he was in office. For that reason alone, he should be remembered with fondness by all.

I will always remember him; the only President I ever met. He was a good and decent man who served our country in war and peace the best he knew how. And considering some who succeeded him, I daresay his stellar character stands the test of time much better than some who believe themselves his better.

In June of 2005, the more radical conservative elements on Iran’s Guardian Council helped to engineer the election of President Ahmadinejad, hoping that his fervor would ignite a religious revival and take the country out of the hands of the “original” radicals who used their positions to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the Iranian people.

What Ahmadinejad referred to as the “petro-political mafia” dominated the permanent bureaucracy in Iran for a quarter of a century, lining their pockets with proceeds from oil revenues while using some of that money to grease the skids for their political masters. And the number one recipient of this bounty was former President Ayatollah Rafsanjani who is reported to be the richest man in Iran. Through a network of family and cronies, Rafsanjani concentrated economic power into his own hands during his two terms as President. He waged a war against the left wing Islamists who sought to oppose him by placing economic decisions into the hands of special committees and government bureaucracies.

What Rafsanjani did more than anything was fill the ministries with allies. But this cronyism had one redeeming benefit; they were relatively competent technocrats. In this way, they assisted him in his efforts to dip his beak into a variety of economic pies.

One of his biggest corruption efforts involved a convoluted kick back scheme with Norway’s state run oil company. It is said that Rafsanjani personally oversaw many of the foreign contracts signed by the Iranian oil ministry just to make sure he got his cut.

Enter President Ahmadinejad and his radical brethren who believed that religious fervor was a good enough substitute for competence in running a ministry. By November of last year, Ahmadinejad had sacked hundreds of competent officials in every ministry of government in an unprecedented “anti-corruption” purge:

The rise to power of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, as Iran’s new president last year entailed a sweeping purge of hundreds of senior and mid-level officials in the country’s burgeoning bureaucracy. Supporters of Ahmadinejad’s two predecessors, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, have been fired from key positions in all the ministries, embassies, state banks, and other governmental institutions.

The purged officials include dozens of ambassadors and diplomats, all but one of the ministers, and more than three quarters of deputy ministers, department directors, and provincial governors, according to a confidential government report obtained by Iran Focus. Many of them have been replaced by several hundred officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) seconded to government positions.

Rafsanjani has publicly rebuked the massive purges, but sources inside the Iranian government say he and Khatami have no clout to withstand the onslaught by hard-liners under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership.

Hard-liners justified the first waves of the purges as the “need for fresh blood after 16 years of misgovernment” by Rafsanjani and Khatami. In many cases, rampant corruption among officials close to the two former presidents was given as the reason for the reshuffle.

The results of the purge were entirely predictable; the Iranian oil ministry, for example, is being so badly run, that the country is losing enormous amounts of money and may reach a zero revenue stream by 2015:

Iran is experiencing a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports and, if the trend continues, income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran’s economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 percent to 12 percent annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Mr. Stern predicted…

The shortfall represents a loss of about $5.5 billion a year, Mr. Stern said. In 2004, Iran’s oil profits were 65 percent of the government’s revenues.

“If we look at that shortfall, and failure to rectify leaks in their refineries, that adds up to a loss of about $10 billion to $11 billion a year,” he said. “That is a picture of an industry in collapse.”

The analyst is quoted in the article as saying, “What they are doing to themselves is much worse than anything we could do.”

Be that as it may, this information also gives rise to the idea that if this is true, then the Iranian nuclear program should be seen as an actual necessity and not as a choice of the mullahs to become a regional superpower. In fact, the analyst makes that very case in the article:

The analysis supports U.S. and European suspicions that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of international understandings. But, Mr. Stern said, there could be merit to Iran’s assertion that it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes “as badly as it claims.”

He said oil production is declining, and both gas and oil are being sold domestically at highly subsidized rates. At the same time, Iran is neglecting to reinvest in its oil production.

“With an explosive demand at home and poor management, the appeal of nuclear power, financed by Russia, could fill a real need for production of more electricity.”

The only problem with that analysis is that it’s bull cookies. Iran has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon since at least the early 1990’s according to the CIA and possibly longer. There wasn’t a problem with oil revenues back then nor was any contemplated - as long as they had competent bureaucrats to run the oil industry.

But in Iran, you get what you pay for. And the hardliners bought into Ahmadinejad’s glorious vision of a corruption free, pious Iranian government. What they got is a nightmare of incompetence and stupidity. Ahmadinejad’s first choice for oil minister was a joke; a close friend, tea and carpet trader and former acting mayor of Tehran, Ali Saeedlou who received a geology degree in 2003 from “Hartford University,” a place no one ever heard of or can confirm the existence of. The Parliament refused to be the punchline to the laugher and nixed his confirmation. This is but one example of Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement of government. Throughout the ministries, not only has there been mismanagement, but the same kind of corruption that occurred under previous administrations, seems to continue unabated. So much for “reform.”

It isn’t Ahmadinejad’s loose lips about destroying Israel or his taunting of America that has him in trouble with the elites in Iran. It is his rank incompetence as an administrator that is driving much of the opposition against him. This is important to keep in mind if the so called “moderate” radicals get back into power because the fact is, all segments of the Iranian government agree with Ahmadinejad with regards to Israel and the United States. Changing faces in the leadership will not lead the Iranians to halt or slow down their nuclear program nor will it deter them from meddling in the affairs of Lebanon or in sponsoring terrorism.

I guess Ahmadinejad was too busy looking for the messiah to see to the competent administration of his government.

It may be hard to swallow but the Iraq Study Group may have done the Bush Administration a big favor.

The fact that the ISG Report was so defeatist and so pessimistic about the future in Iraq means that any significant improvement to the security situation will greatly exceed expectations engendered by the report, thus giving the President a modest but welcome success.

Of course, achieving success will depend mostly on the ability of the Iraqi government to address the tangled web of political problems that are fueling much of the violence. But it is significant that the effort to cobble together a new coalition - more broadly based than the current Shia dominated regime - will continue despite the resistance of the iconic Ayatollah al-Sistani.

The old man may have given up on the United States already which could explain his failure to give his blessing to the plan to marginalize Muqtada al-Sadr by booting him out of the governing coalition. If Sistani is looking to the day that Americans are no longer in Iraq, he may see the Iranian dominated SCIRI as a bigger threat to Iraqi sovereignty than the ambitious nationalist warlord al-Sadr in which case, he will need the Mahdi Militia to fight off the expected lunge for power by the Badr Organization, the military arm of the SCIRI. Or, he may simply hate the idea of reducing the power of Shias in any Iraqi government. Regardless of his motives, his approval may not be required in order for a new government to begin taking the steps necessary to dramatically reduce the violence that threatens to destroy the Iraqi state.

And the problems faced by any new government will be formidable. If you only read one thing today, read this piece on Iraq from StrategyPage.com. A sample:

There are several wars going on in Iraq. The most violent one is the war against Sunni Arabs. This community, which was about twenty percent of the population in 2003, is now fifteen percent, and dropping fast. Most of those Sunni Arabs that could afford to get out, already have. Those that remain are either too poor, or too stubborn, to leave. The stubborn ones are the Sunni nationalists who, for personal or altruistic reasons, do not want Iraq run by its majority population, the Shia Arabs.

[snip]

Another war is Irans attempts to dominate the country. Iran is doing this through Shia Arab factions it has influenced, or bought. While the majority of Shia Arabs oppose Iran pulling strings in Iran, there is a realization that Iran is a natural ally against Sunni Arab efforts to put Iraqi Sunni Arabs back in charge of Iraq. This, oddly enough, is where the United States come in. Iraqi Shia Arabs look to the U.S. as a guarantor of Shia Arab dominance in the country. The U.S. is expected to keep both Iran, and foreign Sunni Arab, influence from interfering in Iraq.

[snip]

Islamic radicals, both Sunni and Shia, are also at war with infidels (non-Moslems) and less devout Moslems…

Warlordism is alive and well in Iraq, as it is throughout the Arab world. But in most countries, the tribal and religious factions have been disarmed, and kept in check via favors or fear (or both.) That’s what Saddam did, and with Saddam gone, all the factions got their guns and went into business for themselves. Some of these private armies are there mainly to protect a criminal enterprise. Most of the criminal gangs have political wings, since the gangsters want to make money, not war, and are willing to pay off the government. But the criminals will fight to keep their loot. Some of the gangs provide support services for terrorists (making bombs, transporting weapons and people, whatever). The most notable warlords are those that lead political militias, but even these groups have “business” units that engage in extortion (or “taxes”) and theft (often of oil). Fighting the gangs is a war that can wait, but it will eventually have to be fought.

Viewed in this context, one can immediately see how military force can only be part of any solution to the violence in Iraq. There must be corresponding political moves by the Iraqi government that will mitigate the anger of the Sunnis while blocking the militias from walking the streets and enforcing their will with impunity. This is an extremely tall order for any Iraqi government, no matter how it is constituted. And all of this is happening in the shadow of the ISG Report that many Iraqis and neighboring states see as a defeatist document that will mean the precipitous withdrawal of American forces. Arnoud de Borchgrave:

“WatchingAmericadotcom” conveys a bleak picture of how the rest of the world views the 79 recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG). Whichever way you slice ‘em and dice ‘em, the report’s 104 pages spell failure. Some of its harshest critics in America say they’re a recipe for surrender. Abroad, they’re seen as a tacit recognition of defeat.

From Buenos Aires to Berlin and from Brussels to Beijing, ISG was a devastating indictment of a multibillion-dollar boondoggle. In Tehran and Pyongyang, the two remaining capitals in the “axis of evil,” and in Damascus, axis of lesser evil, cliches bristled about paper tigers and giants-with-feet-of-clay. That is precisely why President Bush is not about to accept ISG’s findings. Mr. Bush sees himself as a lone Winston Churchill figure from the 1930s railing against his somnolent colleagues as they appeased Adolf Hitler. And like Churchill at the end of World War II, he was not elected to preside over the dissolution of the American empire.

Reinforcing Mr. Bush’s gut feeling recently was a paper by Gen. Chuck Wald, recently retired as EUCOM commander, and Chuck Vollmer, President of VII Inc, which does strategic analysis for the Pentagon. “With the entry of Iran into the equation,” they wrote, “the next phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom could possibly include… a major invasion of Iran and pro-Iranian forces against Western forces in the region and Israel, and/or a global energy crisis.

“Rather than planning withdrawal from Iraq,” says the Wald-Vollmer paper, “we may be better served to plan for repositioning in this strategically important region. While withdrawal may be necessary in Iraq, withdrawal from the region would precipitate a global balance-of-power shift toward the Iran-Russia-China axis, which would be very detrimental for the energy dependent West.”

It is a continuing mystery to me why, if the stakes are as high as the President says they are in Iraq, that there has not been an urgency to the deliberations on what to do to change the situation on the ground. The President is proceeding as if the situation is stabilized and he has all the time in the world to come to some kind of decision. Instead, the blood shed has increased dramatically since our elections, the government of Iraq has sunk deeper into chaos and ineffectiveness, and our enemies in Syria and Iran grow bolder by the week. I realize Bush wants to achieve some kind of consensus within the Administration, but time’s a’wasting.

As if to underscore this point, it appears that al-Qaeda in Iraq is planning something spectacular. Counterterrorism Blog:

In response to yesterday’s audio message from Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, commander (or “emir”) of the Al-Qaida-led “Islamic State of Iraq”, Al-Qaida and its Iraqi insurgent coalition partners have announced the start of a “Mighty Raid on the Soldiers of the Crusaders and Apostates.” A statement circulated today by fighters loyal to the “Islamic State” declared, “We are at your service, Our Emir” and indicated that “new strikes by the legions of mujahideen–at their head, the Martyr Brigades, the Anti-Aircraft Brigades, the Assault Brigades, and the Fixed Weapons Brigades–are in progress targeting the fortresses of the crusaders and apostates.”

While the statement did not list any specific targets, there are general ongoing concerns about Baghdad’s international zone, otherwise known as the “Green Zone.” Only two months ago, the U.S. military announced that it had dismantled an Al-Qaida cell in Baghdad that managed to infiltrate the high-security Green Zone and was “in the final stages” of preparing to launch suicide bomb attacks.

A large, successful attack in the Green Zone will only make matters that much more difficult for the President. And the sooner his Administration can come to an agreement on what to do next, the better.

I don’t know if anything we do over the next few months will make a difference in Iraq. I know that we have to try. It’s not bluster or grandiose posturing to admit that things are bad and getting worse, but wanting to alter course in order to try and address the problems that have arisen as a direct result of our invasion and occupation. Many war opponents are accusing Bush of not facing up to reality and advocate withdrawing now before any more soldiers or civilians suffer as a result of our blunders in Iraq. But if, as the President has said time and again, the stakes are too high in Iraq to fail, then Bush would be a poor commander indeed if he threw in the towel now.

If the best that can be achieved is to exceed the lowly expectations engendered by the ISG Recommendations, I would take that over a precipitous and humiliating withdrawal. But time is running out. And sooner or later, our efforts will have to be seen as accomplishing something positive if the continued sacrifice of blood and treasure can be justified.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

He can’t be prosecuted a second time thanks to the double jeopardy clause in the Constitution. But if half of what the Inspector General’s report on Sandy Berger’s escapades at the National Archives can be believed, the former National Security Advisor to President Clinton has a lot to answer for - if not to the law, then certainly to history and the American people.

Berger robbed the American people of the only thing owned by all of us; our shared experiences as a nation. His destruction of documents relating to the Millennium Plot will make that event a little less understandable, a little less clear when historians 50 years from now try and pick up the thread of all that transpired during that time.

A small event in the sweep of history, yes. But no historical event exists as an island. What knowledge we lose from our incomplete picture of the response to the Millennium Plot ripples across other events and prevents us from fully understanding our past in a way that was entirely avoidable and largely without precedent.

From the Executive Summary of the Inspector General’s report, we learn that it was not simply copies of the Millennium Plot After Action Report (MAAR) and “notes in the margins” that were stolen and destroyed as we were originally led to believe. In fact, the MAAR was an attachment to each document taken. There were four separate emails with the attachment, the contents of each not being revealed (for obvious reasons).

This information throws the entire Berger incident into a totally new light. Richard Minter of Pajamas Media, who has the PDF file of the IG report available for download:

What was role of Omar Bashir, President of the Sudan, and his relationship to Berger and President Clinton during the days when he offered to cooperate in the capture of Osama Bin Laden?

What was in the ten to twenty pages of notes Berger is believed to have taken out of the reviewing room against regulations during his first session?

Who was the person or persons Berger contacted during the numerous “private cell phone calls” he was allowed to make during his active review of the classified documents?

Exactly what was in the documents Berger stole from the archives, some of which he has confessed to destroying?

Did Berger have an accomplice? If the person on the other end of those phone conversations knew what he was doing, it would seem logical that he/she would be open to aiding and abetting a crime. There is nothing in the IG report that I can see where any attempt was made to discover who Berger was making all those phone calls to.

Minter speculated on air today that one of the documents removed and destroyed by Berger was a 1995 letter from Bashir to Clinton offering to hand Osama Bin Laden over to us. What would the 9/11 Commission have had to say about this? Would it have altered their final report?

Probably not, which makes these revelations perhaps more of an historical curiosity than anything else. I doubt whether it would have altered any perceptions by the American people about whose failures were responsible for 9/11 and how much blame should be assigned to both Clinton and President Bush. Al-Qaeda would not have disappeared even if we had gotten a hold of Bin Laden. And radical Islamists would have continued plotting against America regardless of his fate.

But none of this lessens the outrage we should feel against Berger. The man might not have to face a court of law again for the crime. But the government can certainly revisit his paltry 3 year national security clearance suspension. Given the facts of the case, there should be no reason why the government shouldn’t make Mr. Berger permanently ineligible to review classified material.

And any Democratic presidential candidate who would use Mr. Berger as an advisor is opening themselves up to well deserved criticism for having such an untrustworthy person as an aide.

Berger should be banished to the outer darkness of the national security establishment for what he’s done. Unfortunately, he will still pull down five figure speaking fees and be in demand as a lecturer and talking head on cable news shows. It is we, the American people who will be poorer for Mr. Berger’s crimes - acts for which he has yet to show much remorse much less being shamed for what he’s taken from all of us.

Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council and Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service officer who participated in the United States discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003, have published a redacted version of an OP-Ed they wrote for the New York Times a few weeks ago that the White House nixed for what appears to be rather specious reasons.

The White House won’t say why they stifled the piece and the authors predictably plead persecution. It could very well be that given the most recent military moves in the Persian Gulf that the White House didn’t want to send the regime mixed signals or, more prosaically, some bureaucrat overstepped their authority.

Regardless, the Op-Ed is instructive in that it gives a short history of Iranian-US relations over the past decade or so while urging the Administration to initiate dialogue with the regime.

The rehash of history is interesting in that while highlighting American “failures” by the last three Presidents to take advantage of diplomatic openings, the piece neglects to mention a few salient facts about what the Iranian regime was up to over the same period that made talking to the fanatics in Tehran extremely problematic.

Assassinations, sponsorship of several terrorist organizations who attacked western interests as well as Israel, unremitting hateful rhetoric spewing from the leadership about “The Great Satan” (even the so-called “moderate” Khatami consistently referred to America this way), and their not very secret push to acquire nuclear weapons indicated that any talks with Iran to “normalize” relations would be an exercise in surrender diplomacy - in effect, handing the Iranians a diplomatic victory by making their criminal and warlike behavior pay big financial and economic dividends.

So what’s changed in the last few years?

Iraq, obviously. But here’s what Leverett/Flynn have to say about the Iranians helping us out in Iraq:

Iran will not help the United States in Iraq because it wants to avoid chaos there; Tehran is well positioned to defend its interests in Iraq unilaterally as America flounders. Similarly, Iran will not accept strategically meaningful limits on its nuclear capabilities for a package of economic and technological goodies.

Iran will only cooperate with the United States, whether in Iraq or on the nuclear issue, as part of a broader rapprochement addressing its core security concerns. This requires extension of a United States security guarantee — effectively, an American commitment not to use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic — bolstered by the prospect of lifting United States unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations. This is something no United States administration has ever offered, and that the Bush administration has explicitly refused to consider.

Indeed, no administration would be able to provide a security guarantee unless United States concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role and support for terrorist organizations were definitively addressed. That is why, at this juncture, resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and Iran inevitably requires resolving all of them. Implementing the reciprocal commitments entailed in a “grand bargain” would almost certainly play out over time and in phases, but all of the commitments would be agreed up front as a package, so that both sides would know what they were getting.

If their analysis is correct, one might legitimately ask why bother? By the time any kind of a “Grand Bargain” was struck, either Iraq would be somewhat pacified or in even worse shape than it is today. If we’re not looking to talk to Iran about what they can do in the immediate future to help tamp down the violence, then we’re back to where we were prior to the war; deciding whether or not to deal with a state that insists on operating outside the norms of civilized behavior.

I see the efficacy of talking to Iran in a regional context regarding Iraqi security. And reality demands that we recognize that the Iranians have once again become a dominant player in the region - perhaps the most dominant. But “normalizing” relations with an abnormal state would be an exercise in futility. Perhaps we should ask those who so eagerly seek direct negotiations with the Iranians why the US must be the one to make concessions while Iranian support for terror groups like Hizbullah continue to sow political discord in Lebanon and their nuclear program continues to make progress - something the Iranians have made crystal clear is not even on the table at the beginning of any talks.

There is one element in the Leverett/Flynn proposal I find intriguing; a guarantee of sovereignty for the Iranian state: A promise by America not to attempt to overthrow the regime and not destroy their nuclear program.

The second part of that diplomatic equation would be that we would ask in exchange a halt in their enrichment activities under IAEA supervision and a halt to their clandestine assistance to the insurgents and militias in Iraq.

Before the howls of protest erupt over this “surrender,” I would like to point out that we’re doing precious little at the moment in assisting elements in Iran who seek regime change anyway while the bombing option will cause more problems than it will solve. For a discussion of some of those problems, you might want to take a look at this post I did last April about the pros and cons of bombing.

The historical forces at work in Iran - demographics as well as a massive unease and chafing at the rule of the mullahs - could mean that changes might be on the way faster than we dare hope. Michael Ledeen:

The recent protest on the campus of Amir Kamir University in Tehran was no surprise; Iran is constantly riven by public demonstrations against the regime. The news was not the demonstration, but the amount of attention it received. Why this one and not the scores of others? The answer, I think, is that this protest was covered by the official Iranian media, which made it safe for foreign correspondents to report it. And why did the official media cover it? Because it was the first move in a campaign–culminating in the “election results”–to demystify Ahmadinejad and his messianic allies, one of whom had declared himself a candidate to succeed Khamenei. So Act One was the protest and Act Two was the “election.” Maybe there will be a third act, maybe not.

At the same time, Act One served another function: it helped the thugs in Tehran identify the current student activists. “The Amir Kabir Newsletter,” as reported by the intrepid passionaria of the Iranian-American community, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, says that the student demonstrators have gone into hiding, most notably the student who bravely held up the sign “Fascist president, you don’t belong at the polytechnic.” Thoughtlessly, various foreign newspapers published his photograph.

This is a dangerous game for the regime to play, and the repression at Amir Kabir provoked, of all people, Italian Youth and Sports Minister Giovanna Melandri, to call for a demonstration in Rome, supporting the Iranian students. Another demonstration is scheduled for tonight, sponsored by a truly bipartisan group of young people, including Jewish organizations already enraged by the Holocaust Conference.

It is possible that the mullahs are feeling a little less secure in their position lately. If so, we may be able to extract some of what we want from them by offering something that they have made clear they would like; a guarantee of sovereignty.

Not the “Grand Bargain” offered up by Leverett/Flynn. But then, the idea that we’d unfreeze Iranian assets and allow that regime into the World Trade Organization while it builds nuclear weapons and undermines other nations is ridiculous - despite the author’s protestations that no agreement would be reached unless all issues had been agreed to “up front.” As the Iranians have proved with IAEA, they are perfectly capable of delaying inspections and hiding parts of their program as well. That’s why de-coupling Iraq and the nuclear issue from the normalization process is what the Administration has had in mind all along. If the Iranians prove they can be trusted, other issues can then be brought to the table. But the mullahs have a long way to go to earn that kind of trust.

Talking is always better than bombing - especially if you can achieve more by talking than you can by bombing. I don’t know if the latter is true as it relates to Iran but I know that it would be unconscionable not to try.