Right Wing Nut House

How should terrorists and suspected terrorists be treated once they fall into our hands?

Should Congress have oversight over top secret CIA detention practices?

For those of us on the right who strongly support President Bush and the War on Terror, it has become too easy to dismiss such questions or worse, shove them to the back of our minds and try not to think about the psychic consequences of Americans mistreating, torturing, and even murdering prisoners. In fact, it seems to get easier to ignore the problem the more that September 11, 2001 fades into memory.

And that is what worries me.

The number of prisoners killed while in US custody can only be guessed at. Using data gleaned from a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU has released a report that shows that the deaths of 21 inmates held by the US military since the start of the War on Terror could be classified as “homicides” with at least 8 of those deaths attributed directly to violence done to prisoners during or after interrogations:

At least 21 detainees who died while being held in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed, many during or after interrogations, according to an analysis of Defense Department data by the American Civil Liberties Union (search).

The analysis, released Monday, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterized 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or “blunt force injuries,” as noted in the autopsy reports.

The 44 deaths represent a partial group of the total number of prisoners who have died in U.S. custody overseas; more than 100 have died of natural and violent causes.

The good news is that the military itself is investigating and uncovering these abuses. To date, they have investigated more than 400 cases of abuse resulting in punishment ranging from reprimands to court martials for 230 military personnel.

The bad news is that not all of those responsible are being punished and worse, there has been little done to address the command problems that resulted in lax discipline which led to the abuses in the first place.

In fact, the ACLU points a finger at the system itself as a primary reason for the torture:

“There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU’s executive director. “High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable.”

Romero is referring to the ongoing debate in the executive branch over both the status and the treatment of detainees. It is an argument that started literally hours after the attacks on 9/11 and continues to this day. It has involved the best legal minds in the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the White House. And the parameters of the debate go to the very heart of what kind of country the United States is and how we see ourselves.

At the start of the War on Terror, the White House was at a loss as to how to treat detainees in the Afghan War and other terrorists who were connected to the 9/11 plot who were picked up in other countries like Pakistan. A series of memos since leaked to the press showed the White House groping for a policy that was both humane and legal under international law while at the same time not tying the hands of interrogators whose jobs were to head off what was believed at the time was another, imminent attack on the United States.

The White House eventually decided that the prisoners were not eligible for protection under the Geneva Convention since they were stateless terrorists but at the same time finding that they could be designated “enemy combatants” and subject to indefinite detention as well as certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques. Also, since this was a war without precedent, the President alone should determine what rights these enemy combatants were entitled to.

When you think about it a little, you can see the enormous power we have ceded to the executive branch in this matter. The Supreme Court agreed with many of the Administration’s claims last July although they also ruled that detainees had a right to have their case heard in US courts.

And now, the Administration is seeking to redefine its detention policies:

The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting “cruel,” “humiliating” and “degrading” treatment, administration officials say.

Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense and State Department officials and senior military lawyers, contend that moving the military’s detention policies closer to international law would prevent further abuses and build support overseas for the fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.

Their opponents, who include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials, have argued strongly that the proposed language is vague, would tie the government’s hands in combating terrorists and still would not satisfy America’s critics, officials said.

Part of the impetus for this change has come about as a result of pressure from Congress to clearly define the legal status of prisoners in US custody. The legal limbo of detainees has been cited as part of the problem with prisoner abuse as well as undisciplined and inexperienced interrogators going beyond the guidelines for questioning prisoners:

Mr. Whitman confirmed that the Pentagon officials were revising four major documents - including the two high-level directives on detention operations and interrogations and the Army interrogations manual - as part of its response to the 12 major investigations and policy reviews that followed the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

The four documents “are nearing completion or are either undergoing final editing or are in some stage of final coordination,” Mr. Whitman said. But he would not comment on their contents or on the internal discussions, beyond saying it was important “to allow and encourage a wide variety of views to come to the surface.”

The administration’s policies for the detention, interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects have long been a source of friction within the government.

The fact that these issues have not been resolved is, I believe, a national disgrace. I don’t care if the person being interrogated is murdering terrorist, there are just some things that define America and make us different than other countries. And one of those things is a reverence for and an adherence to the rule of law. By not giving these detainees a clearly defined, internationally recognized legal status, we are doing enormous harm to the war effort as well as betraying some of the most fundamental principals that Americans have cherished since our founding.

It is not a question of “rights” for terrorists. It is a question of simple, human decency. And this related story in the Washington Post brings to the fore the most troubling and, to my mind, the most dangerous of all our detention policies; giving the CIA carte blanche to hold, move, and question detainees with absolutely no oversight by Congress and very little direction even from the Administration:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

I will be the first to grant the CIA some latitude in their clandestine efforts to protect this country from another terrorist attack. But this kind of activity would seem to demand oversight by at least the full Intelligence Committees in Congress. The Administration has decided otherwise:

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military — which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress — have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

I have no doubt that what goes on at those “black sites” would not stand up well under the light of Congressional oversight. Do you think that torture goes on at those sites? I would say that would be a very good guess considering that both the Vice President and the DCIA have asked that CIA employees be exempt from the law barring the practice.

What is going on here? Since when should a law that bars the deliberate infliction of pain on another human being - again, I don’t care if he is a murdering terrorist - exempt people who are beyond the oversight of Congress in the first place? By adhering to policies like this, aren’t we in danger of becoming the very thing we are fighting against? At what cost to our souls are we trying to save our lives? Does it matter? Does anyone care?

The simple pap and bromides being tossed about by many of my friends on the right regarding the detention policies and torture of prisoners just isn’t cutting it. You can no longer simply say that the thugs deserve whatever they get, or the abuse and torture is isolated and not policy driven, or even blame the press for reporting the incidents in the first place. We simply must face up to what our policies have wrought and try our best to immediately correct them. This does not mean opening the doors and Guantanamo and letting the terrorists run wild. Nor should we simply send them back to their home countries where all too often it has been shown that they receive a slap on the wrist and cut loose, freeing them to plan and execute more terrorist attacks.

But it may involve a more permanent solution that would bring the US courts and the justice system into play. This does not mean they should be granted the constitutional rights of American citizens. But something must be done to legitimize their detention in the eyes of the rest of the world as well as in the minds of those of us who are enormously troubled by the legal limbo we have created for these prisoners. “Let them rot” is not a policy - it is an invitation to disaster both for the soul of America and our efforts in the War on Terror.

UPDATE

John Cole weighs in on the CIA “black sites:”

The only reasons for these facilities are to subvert domestic and foreign law. And no one gives a sh*t.

And it does not makes us safer to have a clandestine service indiscriminately detaining, abusing, and torturing people around the world in secret prisons.

Um…what he said. And if you don’t think this kind of thing threatens civil liberties at home please remember that there is no stricture against the CIA taking someone from the US and “disappearing” them into one of these hell holes.

As political stunts go, the Senate Democrats’ invocation of Rule 21 that placed the Senate in closed session ostensibly to talk about “pre war intelligence leading up to the Iraq war” was pretty lame. Consider some of the truly imaginative political shows put on by the Democrats recently:

* Max Cleland going out to President Bush’s ranch to beg the President to denounce the Swiftvets for smearing John Kerry. A couple of weeks later, Cleland fields a call from Bill Burkett who has some memos that show Bush is a lying shirker and directs him to the appropriate people at the DNC. Cleland is a great actor.

* The reverence and near canonization of Cindy Sheehan as an anti-war icon. The Sheehan Show was going great until the Rosa Parks of the anti war movement turned out to be the Eva Braun of the loony left. The scramble to disassociate themselves from Moonbat Mama was so side splittingly funny that the vignettes should be up for an Academy Award for “Best Comedy Shorts.”

* The “Pat Fizgerald Show” which was unceremoniously canceled after only one episode due to its failure to meet expectations. Here they were, all dressed up in costume and ready to declare the Bush Presidency over, their nemesis Rove in handcuffs, perhaps even the Vice President resigning in disgrace, and all they got was a guy named Scooter who made false statements to the grand jury.

That last bit of theater led directly to today’s production. It appears the Democrats had planned to put on this show for weeks. They must have felt - for the umpteenth time - that they finally had Bush dead to rights and could bring him down by putting on a righteous morality play about “twisting” pre-war intelligence on the Iraq War. The fact that Fitzgerald said this at his press conference must have gone in one ear and out the other:

This indictment is not about the war. This indictment’s not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel….The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction. And I think anyone who’s concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn’t look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

When a political party loses its way like the Democrats have, they tend to rely on stunts like this for the same reason that two year olds throw tantrums; they are starved for attention. With a united Republican party ready to nuke any filibuster attempt against Judge Alito as well as an ethnic smear campaign being unmasked as a truly amateur attempt by the DNC to play hardball, this Theater of the Absurd was all the Democrats had left to dominate the news day.

What I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall during that closed session…

UPDATE

As usual, Giacomo hits the nail on the head:

As I’ve noted previously, Senator Reid, one of only 100 such men and women in the country, has access to all the pre-war intelligence he wants. He doesn’t want to “investigate.” He wants a show trial with the Bush administration playing the role of defendant. He and his fellow Democrats couldn’t get that with the Plame investigation, so he’s stomping his feet and holding his breath in a political temper tantrum hoping he gets what he wants. He thinks the Libby indictment entitles the left to extrapolate and argue that every utterance of the Bush administration is suspect.

Read the whole thing…

Enough is enough.

I’ve had it up to here with threats, counter threats, promises, assurances, saber rattling, and hand wringing by Republican Senators over whether or not to use the “Constitutional Option” when it comes to exercising the legitimate power granted by the American people at the ballot box and confirm the President’s Supreme Court nominees.

The Republican party won a victory at the polls last November. They achieved that victory in no small measure by promising to apply conservative principals to the governance of this country. This is what elections are about; ideas. Our ideas won. Theirs lost.

So why is there even a discussion about whether or not the nuclear option is on the table in the Alito nomination? The Democrats have made it crystal clear that they consider elections superfluous to democracy, that the results don’t count unless the outcome is in their favor. They have continuously and consistently sought over the last year to delegitimize the victory of both President Bush and the Republican majority by charging fraud or calling their fellow citizens that voted for Bush mouth breathing, tobacco chewing, bible humping red state goobers who vote against their own interests. They have made it clear that they consider the Supreme Court an arm of the liberal establishment. It exists to enact through judicial fiat what liberals are unable to do through local, state, or national legislative action.

The reason, of course, is a small matter of elections; liberals cannot get enough of their ideological brethren elected at any level of government to turn some of their loonier ideas into the law of the land. But being liberals and believing that they know in their bones what is best for the rest of us, they have sought for thirty years to use the courts and turn this country into a nation of simpering, whining victims; a place where every class, every race, every age group, every ethnic and religious minority is granted a special status above and beyond the rights they are normally vouchsafed as American citizens. These are the natural rights of man, brilliantly annunciated and codified into law more than 200 years ago in the Constitution of the United States by men who had more than a passing familiarity with tyranny. The Founders’ experience with oppression along with their reliance on more than 2000 years of western thought regarding a citizen’s relationship with government led to a doctrine that dispersed the government’s power by creating three separate but equal branches to rule the affairs of men.

But something happened to that doctrine as America entered its third century of existence. A small, powerful elite sought to bypass politics and elections altogether by turning the courts into “super-legislatures.” Here’s McQ at Q & O Blog: commenting on a David Corn article urging Democrats to oppose Alito because he is conservative;

I can only hope that the Democrats will do precisely as Corn suggests. Because if they do, they will demonstrate for all to see that they consider the court to be a sort of super-legislature and not a judicial body.

Instead, the court’s job is interpretation and they decide cases through the power of judicial review as outlined in Marbury v. Madison.

It is not a question of “where these men and women may lead the nation”. They’re not leaders. Leaders, in this form of government are elected. Instead, they’re reviewers and interpreters. They make decisions based on their review and interpretation, but only about the Constitutionality of the law upon which the case is based.

Corn’s suggested strategy demonstrates how deeply the left has bought into the premise that it is the court’s job to enact what the left has been singularly unsuccessful in passing in the legislatures of the nation. And, of course, he would argue that his approach isn’t activist, but instead the job of the court as he sees it.

In the upside-down cuckoo land occupied by Democrats like Senator Ted Kennedy, the very fact that Judge Alito has evidenced a conservative judicial philosophy means he is a danger to the republic; an outrageous notion that should be denounced as demagoguery by every thinking American. The point being, of course Alito is a conservative. A conservative President won re election last November. A conservative Senate was seated as a result of a free and fair contest at the ballot box. Kennedy’s ideas lost; Bush’s ideas won. Ergo, unless the Senator is willing to argue that the American people are ignorant fools who wish to sow the seeds of their own destruction by electing people who will enslave them, then he should keep his mouth shut. Especially after issuing this statement in which he outlines exactly what he thinks the courts role in society should be:

Although he is clearly intelligent and experienced on the bench, that is only the beginning of our inquiry. If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.

After stating that he believed in a diverse bench, President Bush took the nation a step backwards today. Apparently, he couldn’t find a woman or minority or a mainstream nominee that meets the litmus tests of the right wing, and instead put forth a nominee with a troubling record on the rights and freedoms important to America’s families.

Putting aside the “diversity” fallacy for a moment, I challenge the Senator to show me where in the Constitution it says that the Supreme Court must be “balanced.” Balanced with nominees acceptable to losers of elections? An interesting concept - if your ideas have been rejected on a pretty regular basis for two decades. I can understand why the Senator wishes “balance” on a court when that is the only way to get judges who reflect his view of what “fundamental rights and freedoms” truly are. I can guarantee you what Ted Kennedy considers “fundamental” to his constituency of racialists, greenies, one worlders, and anti-religious bigots is not the same was what you or I would. That fact alone should cause every Republican Senator worth his salt to stand up and be counted when the time comes to invoke the nuclear option in order to get an up or down vote on Judge Alito.

It will be interesting over the next few weeks to watch as liberal special interest groups try and hold Democratic Senators’ feet to the fire on filibustering this nominee. If they wish to make their Senators walk the plank by trying to block someone that anyone with more than a passing interest in current events will be able to see is well qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, let them have at it. The old political axiom “Never get in the way of your opponent when they’re in the process of destroying themselves” should be in effect for next November’s mid terms.

Now he’s gone and done it.

President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.

Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House high court short list. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.

Some Democrats, including minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), have threatened to oppose Alito, however.

It’s War! War! Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of ditto!

Now, a fat, old, curmudgeonly man such as myself might ask a simple question like “Hey George! Why didn’t you nominate this guy the first time around?” You and I might not like the answer to that one so let’s just let sleeping dogs lie and concentrate on the upcoming Fight of The Century.

If you think you’ve heard apocalyptic rhetoric from the loons on the left prior to this, I’ve got news for you; the outpouring of invective, gloom, doom, and hand wringing on the part of liberals will make anything previously pale in comparison. Listening to them, you may be fooled into thinking that securing the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court will end all life on earth or, at the very least, cause the sky to blacken, the moon turn red as blood, the stars fall from their sphere’s in the sky, and the sun to grow dark. In short, even though many of the Moveon crowd would be angry at the comparison, their rhetorical excesses will evoke images from the bible, the Koran, and probably the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.

I’m laying odds that the first commercial showing a pregnant woman slinking down a dirty back alley to be met at a door by a Dr. Frankenstein look-alike with a rusty saw in his hand will be out by next week. And don’t forget the weeping celebrities who will threaten to move out of the country if Alito is confirmed. This time, let’s send them one way tickets to to Kathmandu just to shut them up.

On a more serious note, the blood left on the floor after this fight will probably mean that Republicans will keep control of the Senate next year. As long as other issues like the economy and the war don’t get much worse, enough of the base will be energized to come out and vote to keep the Republican majority in the upper house secure for 2 more years. While this is good news, it is legitimate to ask about the long term effects of 1) the probable use of the nuclear option to ram the nomination home, and 2) electoral prospects for Republicans in 2008.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the nuclear option will be necessary to confirm Judge Alito. There is no way enough Senate Democrats can be peeled away from their addiction to the far left money machine represented by Moveon, International ANSWER, George Soros, and the Kos Kids to name a few, not to mention the real political power of NOW and NARAL that can be exercised within the party’s presidential nomination process, so that a filibuster can be beaten. Abortion rights is an Ur issue with these groups and they will make it known that they will be absolutely pitiless toward any Democrat who votes to confirm Alito. As the potential deciding vote on overturning Roe, the leftist interest groups simply cannot take a chance that he would vote to negate the decision.

As far as 2008, there is a real possibility that the use of the nuclear option will be seen as the kind of raw exercise of power that the American people so mistrust in politicians. So while Republican prospects in 2006 may not be affected, the breaking of the filibuster by invoking the nuclear option could hurt the party’s chances in 2008. As we’ve already seen, the Democrats will use apocalyptic rhetoric against the breaking of the filibuster as they did last May prior to the agreement involving the “Gang of 14.” Look for the same kind of nonsense used here as well as the Democrats attempt to make it an issue during the Presidential election of 2008.

I’ll leave it to others to dissect Alito’s abilities as well as his decisions. But the political impact is clear already. As Cypher says after Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix:

“It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause Kansas is going bye-bye. “

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin had the story early and does her usual extraordinary job rounding up both MSM and blog reaction.

The Captain seems a bit optimistic:

I expect that the Democrats will get 30-35 votes in favor of a filibuster once Alito gets out of committee. If they do consider a filibuster, too many of them will realize that Stevens might get replaced during this term (he’s 85 years old). They need that potential stop on Senate business to protect a genuinely liberal seat on the Court — and enough of them won’t agree to tossing it aside before the 2006 elections, when they might narrow the gap in the Senate, in order to keep Alito off the bench. They also won’t want to fight over obstructionism again during the next cycle, or the Democrats might well lose more Senate seats in the midterms.

Expect Alito to get confirmed, 65-35.

I hope he’s right. The question is, how many Democratic Senators are beholden to their base for money and votes? If you answered all of them, you win a cookie. There will be a filibuster unless Harry Reid, George Soros, and women’s groups all have a press conference announcing they are supporting Alito. In fact, the prospect of an internal fight within the Democratic party over the use of the filibuster could be in the offing.

In a series of articles I began last July entitled “The CIA Vs. The White House,” I have tried to give context and meaning to the CIA’s war against the Administration and how that war has its roots in both partisan politics and bureaucratic infighting. But at bottom, what the Plame Affair reveals about the CIA is a culture of incompetence whose principals will do anything to avoid responsibility for their mistakes.

This is more than just simple bureacratic CYA. It is one thing for officials to hide some boondoggle or another in the Department of Health and Human Services. It is quite something else to miss 9/11 or be wrong about Saddam’s WMD’s.

One would think that by this time, the CIA would be used to owning up to its spectacular incompetence. Blessed with technical intelligence gathering capabilities that boggle the mind as well as some of the best minds in the country, one would believe that the CIA has its finger on the pulse of events around the world and with penetrating analysis, give our elected leaders a heads-up about what is coming down the pike that might be a threat to the United States and our vital interests.

Think again. While it is undoubtedly true that the CIA has assisted in heading off many threats to the US and its interests, it has also had several conspicuous and, in hindsight, puzzling failures. What these failures reveal is a system that does not punish incompetence - even when mistakes lead to the kind of tragedy we experienced on 9/11. Rather, a huge amount of effort is expended in either trying to explain away the errors or worse, attack those who attempt to find an explanation for the incompetence.

We have seen both tactics on display in the Plame Affair. The CIA’s failures in Iraq go all the way back to the first Gulf War when the Administration of George Bush #41 was taken completely by surprise when Saddam invaded Kuwait. This despite a huge build-up of Iraqi forces on Kuwait’s border prior to the invasion as well as many overt threats by Saddam against the Kuwaiti’s for pumping too much oil thus keeping the price depressed.

Following tactics that they repeated when it was discovered that Saddam’s huge stockpiles of WMD were a chimera, the CIA began to leak cherry-picked analysis which revealed that the the Agency did indeed believe that Saddam was going to invade, that it was the policymakers who missed the clear signals emanating from Langely. The problem, of course, is that those analyses were ignored in the run-up to the invasion as both the State Department and the CIA were telling the White House that Saddam was simply doing some saber rattling in order to get the Kuwaitis to cut back oil production.

The consequences of the CIA’s mistaken analysis about Saddam’s intentions were huge. It has since been revealed by former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that Saddam never anticipated the angry reaction from the United States that led to war. Just imagine what a strong statement from President Bush warning Saddam about the consequences of an invasion could have accomplished.

What the CIA analysis of Saddam’s intentions at that time revealed was a clear bias toward what has become known as the realpolitik faction in government who believed that Saddam was a vital ally and bulwark against radical Islam. There may have been a case to be made for such thinking prior to 9/11 as several high level Bush #41 Administration officials such as National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker believed. But as Howard Fineman points out in this article from October, 2003 in Newsweek, opposition to that policy came from the Department of Defense which, at that time, was headed up by current Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney:

Behind the scenes or openly, at war or at peace, the United States has been debating what to do in, with and about Iraq for more than 20 years. We always have been of two minds. One faction, led by the CIA and State Department, favored using secular forces in Iraq—Saddam Hussein and his Baathists—as a counterweight to even more radical elements, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite ayatollahs in Iran to the Palestinian terrorists in the Levant. The other faction, including Dick Cheney and the “neo-cons,” has long held a different view: that, with their huge oil reserves and lust for power (and dreams of recreating Baghdad’s ancient role in the Arab world), the Baathists had to be permanently weakened and isolated, if not destroyed. This group cheered when, more than 20 years ago in a secret airstrike, the Israelis destroyed a nuclear reactor Saddam had been trying to build, a reactor that could have given him the ultimate WMD.

The “we-can-use Saddam” faction held the upper hand right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait a decade ago. Until then, the administration of Bush One (with its close CIA ties) had been hoping to talk sense with Saddam. Indeed, the last American to speak to Saddam before the war was none other than Joe Wilson, who was the State Department charge’ d’affaires in Baghdad. Fluent in French, with years of experience in Africa, he remained behind in Iraq after the United States withdrew its ambassador, and won high marks for bravery and steadfastness, supervising the protection of Americans there at the start of the first Gulf War. But, as a diplomat, he didn’t want the Americans to “march all the way to Baghdad.” Cheney, always a careful bureaucrat, publicly supported the decision. Wilson was for repelling a tyrant who grabbed land, but not for regime change by force.

Choosing Wilson then to go to Niger to check out the yellowcake story does not seem such a stretch when placed in the context of a faction at the CIA who thought that their judgment about what kind of threat Saddam presented was superior to that of individuals who the American people elected to make those kinds of decisions. By sending Wilson, the CIA knew full well what the result of his “investigation” would be. So why weren’t Wilson’s conclusions widely disseminated by the CIA? Speculation in this regard has run the gamut from a CIA “set-up” of the Administration to simple bureaucratic incompetence. Given a choice, I would settle on the latter. While it may be true that the CIA was trying to undercut the Administration’s case for war, it would be a stretch to believe that they knew there were no large stockpiles of WMD and thus, any use of Wilson’s “report” would be to demonstrate the “twisting” of intelligence charged by many on the left.

What may be true is that by not having Wilson sign a confidentiality agreement, they wished his “findings” to receive the widest possible distribution. Wilson’s contacts in the press included both Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, two reporters who eventually did publish very selective information about his trip Wilson himself admits to shopping his story to reporters for months prior to his OpEd in the New York Times in early July, 2003. This would seem to indicate that the selective leaking of classified information carried out by a partisan cabal at the CIA for more than a year prior to the election last November was done not just to discredit the Administration’s Iraq War case but also to politically damage the President so as to cause his defeat for re-election.

For those who were puzzled by why the Bush Administration was trying to push back against Wilson more than a month prior to his public acknowledgment of the Niger trip as both Cheney and Libby were discussing Wislon-Plame in early June, one need look no further than the Administration’s recognition that they were in the midst of a partisan political attack by a known Democratic party sympathizer who was running around Washington trying to discredit the Bush Administration by giving a skewed account of his CIA “mission” to national security reporters. If they could connect Wilson to both the nepotistic actions of his wife and the partisan cabal in the CIA who, along with those seeking to cover up the Agency’s incompetence with regard to WMD’s wanted to show the Administration “twisted” intelligence on Iraq, Cheney-Libby would be able to blunt the impact of the attack.

What is the connection between lack of WMD and the Administration countering of Wilson? The answer is Valerie Plame whose associates in the Counterproliferation Department at the agency were responsible both for sending Wilson to Niger and giving the Administration uncredible reports with regard to WMD in Iraq in the first place. Any attempt to understand the prosecution of Libby must begin with Valerie Plame herself and her part in the leaking and bureaucratic backbiting that led the Administration to its current dilemma.

Will this part of the story ever fully be revealed? If Scooter Libby goes to trial rather than take a plea deal, it is very possible that the full role of the CIA and their war against the Administration will be revealed. Otherwise, the entire matter will simply remain an interesting footnote in the history of the Iraq War.

UPDATE

Powerline “gets it”…

“…[Is] there a serious journalist among the mainstream media who thinks the story in the Libby case might be the CIA’s efforts to defeat the president. Isn’t that the big story?”

Does Glenn Reyonolds “get it?”

“This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.”

Once again, Mr. Reynolds proves that his gift for understating the obvious with devastating effect is the best around.

How about Tom McGuire?

Come on, we see through this - if the CIA prepared a formal report, it would be subpoenaed as evidence, and the jury would laugh out loud at the “no damage” assessment. So the CIA filed a criminal referral in 2003, got the White House tied up in a two year investigation, and now they are laughing out loud. Well played, especially if you like a spy service that shrugs off executive oversight by inventing crimes and playing dirty tricks.

Perfectly said.

There is a fine line between being clueless and being just plain stupid. The difference can be calculated based on several criteria, usually subjective but also a mathematical sliding scale I call “The Clueless Quotient.”

For instance, Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry exhibited unbelievable stupidity this past week when he said during an interview that the school needed to recruit more speedy players and that there was a dearth of minority athletes in the football program. When asked what relevance that had to football, DeBerry said “”African-American kids can run very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me that they run extremely well.” (HT: Steve Anastasoff )

Forget for a moment that what DeBerry said was true statistically. Forget that what he said is true by observation. Forget that what he said is true according to the record books. DeBerry exhibited incredible stupidity because he forgot that the racialists and their PC allies in the media would give him such a hard time because in their cuckoo la la land, there might be a way the statement could be twisted to mean that the only thing black kids can do is run or some such nonsense.

So DeBerry being stupid rather than clueless gets a Clueless Quotient (CQ) of 2 out of a possible 10. On the other hand, our Cluebat of the Week is given collectively to the Toronto School Board who banned Halloween celebrations in classrooms because they may offend Wiccans:

“Many recently arrived students in our schools share absolutely none of the background cultural knowledge that is necessary to view ‘trick or treating,’ the commercialization of death, the Christian sexist demonization of pagan religious beliefs, as ‘fun,’ ” says the memo.

It gets better:

The memo goes on to remind teachers that, “Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.”

For other students, “food products that are marketed heavily during the Halloween period” may conflict with dietary habits that children know from home. An alternative to eating sweets in class would be to “write health warnings for all Halloween candies.”

The memo also warns teachers that “some students have had first-hand traumatic experiences of violence that make talking about death, ghosts, etc. extremely alienating.”

(HT: Bill Martin)

I’m sure you can tell the difference between the stupidity exhibited by Coach DeBerry and the total cluelessness exhibited by the Toronto School Board. I’d give them a CQ of 10 but that just wouldn’t do justice to the utter inanity of not only writing the memo but also discussing the idea in the first place. True, total cluelessness.

Why not play along and assign your own CQ to the fantastic posts below that make up this week’s Carnival? Perhaps some of you that are more scientifically inclined could improve upon the CQ by adding gradations and subtleties so that we can all get a truly accurate picture of cluelessness from each and every cluebat out there.

“There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one’s own industry or by the stupidity of others.”
(Jean de la Bruyere )

Hey Jean! I see you’ve met Bill Clinton.
(Me)
********************************************************************************
Pat Curley smacks Mama Sheehan around for her continuing efforts to extend her moment in the sun. This time she’s protesting the 2,000 American death in Iraq. Pat has pictures that show exactly what 2000 dead Americans look like.

Orac is spanking a young lady who wrote a most clueless screed about how classroom education is bunkum. Would it surprise you to learn that the young lady is a Journalism student who wants to learn “the journalistic writing style…??”

Kender (Posting at The Wide Awakes) shows how the European Union’s claims to be so generous with foreign development aid are a crock.

Van Helsing ventures into cluebat Transylvania (San Francisco) and flashes a crucifix at Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle who exhibits the kind of bigoted cluelessness only a liberal could.

Here’s some great satire by Mr. Right: “A Halloween Calvacade of Horrors.”

Those preternatural pachyderms at Elephants in Academia have the absolute latest on Cluebat Hall of Famer Ted Kennedy and his asinine reaction to the Libby indictment.

Don Surber is talking about er…sex. Metrosexuals that is. And a new animal called “ubersexuals.” Oooh…gimmie some!

The last I heard, our intrepid Carnival Pin-Up Girl Pamela was in the Bahamas watching as hurricane Wilma started to make her life interesting. But she found time to post about the cluelessness of the MSM and their miasma regarding the 2,000 casualty of the Iraq war.

I love it when people are politically incorrect. And Fred Fry gets about as un-PC as you can get with his post on poverty and the fallacy that poor people can’t afford a picture ID so that voter fraud can be prevented.

The Palmetto Pundit alerts us to a change of schedule for Mother Sheehan and her “die in” that at one time was a “tie in.” Sure sign of moonbattiness is an inability to make up one’s mind.

Random 10 is keeping track of the latest idiocy from John Edwards. This time, the coiffed one is at Madison Square Garden talking about “the poor.”

Iris Blog brings us some jaw dropping stuff from the AP in a post that says it all: “AP Sets Record for Most Bias Crammed into Smallest Space.” Tough record to break.

The Nose on Your Face actually gives us a real story this week. It’s about the most clueless criminal in history whose love for NBA great Larry Byrd knows no bounds. Of course, they give the story that special spin that only the guys at TNYF can give it.

More fun at a new Carnival entrant “The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles.” Great stuff!

Jimmie K has a Michael Totten piece about banning piggybanks in Great Britain. Says Jimmie; “…stop condescending to minorities, and put the piggy banks back.” Yes please.

Two Dogs tears apart my home state moonbat Senator Barak Obama so you don’t have to. And this guy is the future of the Democratic Party? Yikes!

AJ at The Strata-Sphere has more school board tomfoolery this time from Florida and how one school district dealt with a request from terrorist supporting CAIR regarding including a Moslem religious holiday.

Justin of the blog The View from the Cheap Seats has the story of some cluelessness of a local politician and an accusation of conflict of interest…that isn’t.

You’ve heard of liberal guilt? Well Ze’ev of Israel Perspectives has “The Misplaced Jewish Guilt Syndrome.”

Adams Blog has a bizarre bit of cluelessness on the part of an auto dealer who apparently doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

Finally, I take the UN to task for burying an important piece of evidence in the Hariri assassination investigation that implicates the Palestinians in the murder.

NOTE: My email has been kind of screwy this week for some reason. If you sent me an entry and it’s not included, send it to me again and I’ll put it in.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was due in no small part to a tiny, but very influential group of conservative writers and thinkers who viewed the nomination of the President’s personal lawyer as a betrayal of both conservative principles and the President’s own election year promise to nominate strict constructionists to the high court. And now that these advocates have succeeded, the question must be asked of them: What have you gained?

The President has been humiliated and weakened. Democrats have been strengthened and emboldened. The conservative movement is in disarray. And the chances of actually confirming one of their favorites - either Judge Janis Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owens - are about as likely as my pet cat Snowball being capable of reciting the Gettysburg Address.

In fact, I am hard pressed to think of anything the opponents of Miers have gained either for themselves or the conservative movement. Putting on a brave front and declaring that the withdrawal of Miers is a victory for conservative principles is wishful thinking. A fat lot of good those principles will do you when the fallout from this Presidential humiliation depresses turnout in next year’s election and hands the Senate to the Democrats. Of course there are other factors at play when it comes to elections but for good or ill, the base of evangelical Christians who have been the President’s strongest supporters - and the most difficult voters to get to the polls in the first place - were the biggest and most enthusiastic supporters of the nomination. They may decide that their interests lie elsewhere on election day.

I can understand the comeback from Miers’ opponents that the President himself is to blame for nominating her in the first place. There is much truth in that statement as I devoutly wish the President could have seen his way clear in nominating a Brown, an Owens, or a Luttig. Any of those worthies would have been a fine choice for conservatives. Such a selection would have been praised and eagerly supported by the very same folks who opposed the Miers nomination.

But politics is the art of the possible. I daresay that prior to the Miers nomination, it would have been a bruising, uphill battle to get 50 votes for one of those nominees in the Senate. And, since it is extremely likely that the Democrats would desperately oppose the nomination of any conservative of that stripe given that their base would be insistent on countering any move that had the slightest chance of putting a Justice on the Supreme Court who would tip the balance against Roe v Wade, the only option available to the Republicans in the Senate would be the use of the so-called “nuclear option” to break a left-wing filibuster.

Would Majority Leader Frist have the 51 votes necessary to break the log jam? If he couldn’t get the caucus to vote for it last May prior to the deal on lower court nominations made by the so-called “Gang of 14,” how could they possibly believe that Frist would have the votes now? The President is weaker. Republicans are weaker. And we’re that much closer to the 2006 mid terms. Every poll taken on the use of the nuclear option has shown a clear majority of Americans opposed to it. And it is not at all clear that Republican moderates like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chaffee, and others wouldn’t oppose both the nomination of a Pro-Life candidate and the use of the nuclear option to end any filibuster.

Now the withdrawal of Miers has made the nomination of any strong conservative extremely problematic. Democrats smell blood in the water and, given the President’s weakened position,would feel no compunction about a filibuster, daring Republicans to break it. There is little doubt that the left-wing base of the Democratic party would hold their Senator’s feet to the fire in order to prevent at all costs the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice who would vote to overturn Roe. It is the Ur issue for almost all the interest groups who spend so much in “independent” ads on behalf of Democrats.

And yet, the Miers opponents have not seemed to grasp the fact that by opposing her nomination and now causing her withdrawal, it has cut the legs from underneath the President and the party at a crucial time. Is there much doubt as to the timing of Mier’s withdrawal what with the Special Prosecutor’s indictments coming today? The President, as all Presidents must do, has cut his losses by accepting (or asking for) the withdrawal in order to clear the decks to face what is going to clearly be the crisis of his Presidency. These indictments will dominate the news for weeks. And if what I’ve heard coming from Administration surrogates over the past few days about how the charges will not be serious, that the crime of outing a covert CIA agent has been proven wrong, then the White House is seriously underestimating the impact these indictments will have on voters.

Fairly or unfairly, Republicans are in no position to talk about perjury being an inconsequential criminal act. No matter the whys and wherefores of the charges, the American people would see any such effort by Republicans to paint the transgressions of Libby, Rove and the rest as a case where “everybody does it” or worse, “it’s not that serious of an offense” as rank hypocrisy given the Clinton troubles.

The President may have lanced a boil on his Administration by killing the Miers nomination but at what cost? Given that the nomination of a strong conservative is not in the offing, who are we likely to get?

It would have to be someone who has already been vetted for the high court since the White House plans on announcing another choice as early as this weekend. And like it or not, the demands of “diversity” on the court by both the press and the Democrats resonates with a majority of Americans. Plus, it is apparent that the President would love to nominate the first Hispanic Justice. If not a woman, then how about Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez?

These same conservatives who opposed Miers have largely made it clear that Gonzalez would be unacceptable. The Attorney General supports affirmative action and is identified as a moderate on some social issues. Sound familiar? If you thought you heard the same things about Harriet Miers you are correct. Gonzalez would be grilled mercilessly by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee over the so-called “Torture Memos” where, in the first days of the War on Terror the Administration was groping for a policy on detainees and the memos offered options and opinions on what was legal and what should be done. But in the end, like Justice Roberts, Gonzalez may be able to garner enough Democratic votes to kill any possibility of a filibuster.

This is what the President needs at this moment; a slam dunk, fairly easy win. Conservatives have stepped up the rhetoric over the last 24 hours and seem eager for a fight. But did it ever occur to them that maybe the President isn’t quiet as enamored of the idea of going to war with the Democrats in the Senate? Perhaps the President is interested in getting some of his dormant legislative agenda enacted for this term? Any long, drawn out fight in the Senate over a Supreme Court nominee would derail the efforts to reform social security, enact tax reform, or any number of other issues near and dear to the President’s heart.

The clock is ticking on the Presidency of George Bush. I’m sure he is painfully aware of that fact. The derailment of the Miers nomination has speeded up that clock which is now ticking toward a day when the President’s power to affect that national agenda is severely limited by his lame duck status.

While the President’s troubles are not all of their doing, the opponents of the Miers nomination have been most unhelpful. And the fact that they have gained little but ideological satisfaction from their actions makes me question whether or not they truly realize the damage they have done to the Presidency of a man they still profess to support and admire.

The votes are in from this week’s Watcher’s Council and the winner in the Council category is The Glittering Eye for “A Sketch History of U.S. Military Bases in the Middle East: The Overthrow of Mossadegh.” Finishing second was The Gates of Vienna for “The Counterterrorism Blog Looks Into the Face of Evil.”

In the non-Council category, the winner was Iraq the Model for “Iraqis Preparing to Decide.”

If you’d like to participate in the Watcher’s weekly vote, go here and follow instructions.

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers from consideration for Supreme Court Justice is the best possible outcome to a messy, family quarrel. The damage to the President will be minimal within the party although how it will play in the hinterlands is an entirely different matter. The important thing is that a source of friction in Republican ranks will have been eliminated at a most opportune moment.

I have little doubt that the White House sees the writing on the wall with regards to the Special Prosecutors impending indictments of high level administration officials in the Plame Affair. They perhaps even have advanced knowledge of who might be on Fitzgerald’s chopping block. All signs point to at the very least an indictment on perjury for Scooter Libby along with probable obstruction of justice charges. But the President’s real worry is the possible exposure of his top aide Karl Rove to charges of perjury.

In this context, the withdrawal of Miers can be seen as strengthening the President’s hand as now there will be no excuse for Republicans not to stand shoulder to shoulder with the President through what is going to be the roughest part of his Presidency. The storm about to break in Washington among the media and the left will be loud and long. The indictments will dominate the news for weeks. A united party will help offset the drumbeat of criticism that is sure to follow any actions by the Special Prosecutor.

If Rove especially has to walk the plank, Republicans must close ranks around the President to avoid a disaster - near term, anyway. Any hint of Republican disunity could doom the President’s legislative agenda for the remainder of his term. As I wrote here, any fracturing of the Republican party at this point would make Bush a lame duck long before his time. And the question of how this will play in the 2006 midterms is anyone’s guess but I suspect that much will be forgotten by next November and any pickups by the Democrats will be as a result of depressed Republican turnout.

That depressed turnout will be traced to the President’s continuing refusal to address spending and immigration issues - both near and dear to the hearts of his base supporters. And as I suspect that the President many now nominate a Supreme Court Justice even more unacceptable to those who opposed Miers (Justice Gonzalez?), Bush may be faced with more internal problems in the future. But for the moment, Republicans can be one big happy family again - something that will be of comfort to the President after the Special Prosecutor drops the other shoe.

Miers was not just a poor choice, she was the wrong choice. The President has a chance to do things better the next time around, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the nomination of a constitutionalist to the Court. With the Administration on the run because of the coming indictments, Democrats will smell blood in the water and attempt to draw out the nomination battle of such a nominee until after the 2006 elections where they hope to get a majority in the Senate. This would insure a more moderate Justice coming before the Senate for approval.

The opponents of Miers believe they have won. Perhaps they can inform me of exactly what it is they find in victory that makes them happy? The President, temporarily humiliated, the Democrats strengthened, and the probable nomination of someone even more objectionable to them would not seem to be parameters of winning - at least not in my neck of the woods. So beyond ideological satisfaction, what have you really accomplished?

You may have guaranteed a more liberal court than we have now or would have had with Miers. Congratulations, guys. What do you do for an encore?

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin exclaims “Relief!” and links to dozens of others who weigh on on the bad news.

The Captain also seems relieved and writes “Now can we nominate a candidate whose qualities and track record presumes we control the Senate?

Good luck on that one, Ed.

They began to gather in the parking lot across from US Cellular Field almost as soon as the last out was recorded. The young, the old, the black, the white, the brown, - Chicagoans of every size, shape and color streamed toward the site as if on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

They came despite a cold, steady, soaking rain that seemed a metaphor for the entire event as 88 years of absolute and utter baseball futility was washed away by a tide of powerful emotions, sweeping through the city like rampaging flood waters hell bent on destroying all the fruitless years of dashed hopes, bitterness, and betrayal.

The Chicago White Sox are World Series champions.

The significance was not lost on some of us who recall that the parking lot gathering place was in fact the site of old Comiskey Park , torn down more than a decade ago to make room for the new ball yard but still a sacred site for White Sox fans whose allegiance extends back through the decades. The ghosts of Luke Appling, Chico Carrasquel, Shoeless Joe, Eddie Collins, and the rest can be at peace now. Their futility has been redeemed by the most remarkable team in the history of Chicago baseball. More remarkable than the 1969 Cubs team whose historic collapse in September allowed the “Miracle Mets” to make their own mark on the history books.

That team epitomized Chicago baseball; lovable losers. With the most beloved players in Chicago baseball history, including Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, and the irrepressible Ernie Banks, the ‘69 Cubs team first confounded, then captured, and finally broke the hearts of Chicagoans by allowing a 9 1/2 game lead over the Mets on August 14 to dribble away to nothing until, in a final ignominious coda to that frustrating season, saw both the Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals pass them in September.

What does it say about a city that celebrated such utter failure? When toting up success in baseball, Chicagoans have always considered “the near miss” as good as winning. After all, when losing is the norm, people will go to great lengths to create the illusion of success. It gives meaning and purpose to life if, when waiting ’till next year, you can spend that period between disappointment and hope fooling yourself into believing that there is a relationship between coming close one year and actually capturing the brass ring the next.

But baseball is a game designed to break your heart. The 1970 Cubs never even sniffed first place and finished far off the pace.

For the White Sox - the second team in the second city - no such nonsense was vouchsafed by its tough, working class fan base. The Cubs would still pack the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field even if the Northsiders were the laughingstock of the league - as they usually were. Sox fans were much more discriminating and as a result, intolerant of losers. In fact, the teams were so bad at the end of the 1970’s and the falloff of fan support so precipitous, that serious consideration was given to the idea of moving the team to Florida. Only the last minute intervention by the a group headed up by current owner Jerry Reinsdorf kept the team in Chicago.

Now Reinsdorf and his club are world champions. And they did it last night by playing the kind of old-fashioned baseball that has had an enormous appeal to the cynical but hugely knowledgeable working class fans that have formed the basis of the team’s support since they came into being at the turn of the last century.

Casual fans of the game probably found last night’s 1-0 White Sox victory a bore. But for the purist, there is no more sublime example of the way the game should be played. Baseball is the only game where the defense has the ball which is why great pitching can overcome a multitude of sins and win championships. And last night’s pitchers, Garcia for the Sox and Backe for the Astros, proved the adage that the other team can’t win if they can’t score.

The tension engendered by a 0-0 baseball game is the most deliciously drawn out feeling in sports. As the game progresses, each pitch carries a significance far beyond the normal until by the late innings, one is sitting on the edge of their seat in unbearable anticipation of either uplifting triumph or devastating disaster. And by the eighth inning last night, both pitchers had the fans wrung out like a wet wash rag, whipsawed with emotion as every baserunner represented either victory or defeat.

The Astros buckled under the stress as they appeared to do throughout the last two games. After pitching seven brilliant innings, manager Ozzie Guillen lifted White Sox starter Freddie Garcia for a pinch hitter in the top of the eighth. Willie Harris then became the latest in a long line of unlikely White Sox heroes when, pinch hitting for Garcia, he singled sharply to left. Bunted to second by Scott Podsednik and sent to third on a ground out by Carl Everett, it was left to series MVP Jermaine Dye to single Harris home for the only run of the game.

Houston threatened to score in the eighth, but the threat was snuffed out on a nifty defensive play by shortstop Juan Uribe. Then in the ninth, following a broken bat single to center by Jason Lane and a sacrifice bunt, Uribe made two stellar plays to save the game. First, he literally dove into the fifth row of the stands along the left field line to catch a foul pop up off the bat of Chris Burke. And then, with the tying run on third base, pinch hitter Orlando Palmeiro topped a ball into the rock hard dirt in front of home plate causing the ball to bound high in the air and just over the glove of pitcher Bobby Jenks. As the ball landed 10 feet behind the pitcher’s mound, it looked like a sure infield hit to tie the score. But Uribe, streaking in from his shortstop position gloved the ball and in a blur of motion fired it with all his might to first to nip Palmeiro by half a step.

A fitting end to a marvelous game and stellar season for the Southsiders.

The victory was also something of a bittersweet moment for many of us whose first thoughts were for parents and grandparents who had already passed on and were unable to share the joy and fulfillment of a World Series triumph. Chicago baseball fans have become inured to the idea that such miracles will not occur in their lifetimes. So to see the dancing, celebrating players on the field brought a flood of memories of my own parents and grandparents who had handed down a love of the game and of the White Sox to many of their offspring. I’m quite sure that my father’s stoicism would have melted and a huge grin would have creased his face after that last out was recorded. And my other relatives who were as proud of the allegiance to the Sox as they were of their Irish heritage would have seen the victory as an occasion to celebrate. I’m quite sure the telephone wires would have been hot with calls between all of us as we each, in our own way, shared a moment of pure, unadulterated joy.

But even those bittersweet thoughts will not dampen the enthusiasm for those of us whose loyalties lie with the baseball club from the Southside of Chicago. Perhaps in the spring when the mulberries are flowering and the dogwoods are blooming, I’ll pay a visit to some of their gravesides to tell them about it. After all, one thing that a long losing streak does is connect generations to a common goal; winning out in the end. And perhaps that’s the real lesson to be drawn from the team’s triumph.

Good things come to those who wait.