Right Wing Nut House

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The report released by the United Nations today that details Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri reads like a bad spy novel. It seems unbelievable, but the facts are clear; so many people were involved in the conspiracy to kill the popular Lebanese nationalist that it was inevitable that the truth would eventually come out.

The list of accomplices is staggering. Not only Syrian President Bashar Assad himself, who personally threatened the life of Hariri by telling him in a meeting on August 26, 2004 he would “break Lebanon over your head” unless Hariri backed an extension of the term of office of Lebanon’s puppet President Emil Lahoud for three years, but also the Syrian intelligence service, a faction of the Lebanese armed forces loyal to Syria, and even the personal bodyguards of Hariri himself.

The detailed report was authored by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis and involved more than 400 interviews and a review of more than 16,000 pages of documents. Among those interviewed was Ghazi Kanaan, the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, who committed suicide last week under suspicious circumstances. President Assad declined to be interviewed, and interviews with top Syrian cabinet officials only seemed to confirm the extent of the conspiracy. According to Mehlis, these top government officials gave “uniform answers” that contradicted the weight of evidence.

One other thing that the Mehlis investigation found was that Syrian influence on the day-to-day operation of the Lebanese government was “pervasive” and was managed by an extensive network of Syrian intelligence officials. While this comes as no surprise, it is shocking to read in black and white the bullying from Damascus that the Lebanese people had to endure for more than a quarter century.

In an interview with Hariri’s son Saad who was recently elected to the Lebanese parliament, investigators got a flavor of Bashar Assad’s brutality as well as some insight into the extent to which Lebanon was treated like the personal fiefdom of the Syrian President:

Saad said: “I discussed with my father, the late Rafik Hariri, the extension of President Lahoud’s term. He told me that President Bashar Assad threatened him telling him: “This is what I want. If you think that President Chirac and you are going to run Lebanon, you are mistaken. It is not going to happen. President Lahoud is me. Whatever I tell him, he follows suit. This extension is to happen or else I will break Lebanon over your head and Walid Jumblat’s. (…) So, you either do as you are told or we will get you and your family wherever you are.”

Jumblat is the old, canny, Druze warlord who has survived these many years by staying one step ahead of the assassin’s knife. He basically kept his mouth shut about the extension of Lahoud’s term until more than a million Lebanese went into the streets to demand the ouster of Syrian troops last spring. To his credit, he then joined with Saad Hariri and several other factions in a grand coalition that swept to victory in the elections last summer.

In addition to being personally threatened by Assad, Hariri was warned by Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to Washington Walid Mouallem, in a meeting just days before the assassination, who told him that Syrian security services had him “cornered” and not to “take things lightly.” The former Prime Minister said after the meeting that “it was the worst day of his life.”

Four Lebanese Generals (who are imprisoned on unrelated charges) have also been implicated, as well as the notorious head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, Ahmad Jibreel. The PFLP Commander has been a thorn in the side of Israel for many years and is the author of dozens of terrorist attacks directed against the Jewish state.

One curious note is that there was an intervention at the last moment by the US State Department, who asked that a portion of the report be redacted. The Daily Star report linked above says that “Sources have stated that the uncensored report names the primary suspects in the crime as: Assef Shawkat, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law and head of Syrian intelligence; Bahjat Suleiman, a high ranking Syrian intelligence officer; Ghazi Kenaan, the former Syrian Interior Minister and commander of Syria’s intelligence apparatus in Lebanon between 1982 and 2002.”

One shadowy Lebanese operative appears to have been a conduit for several of the factions involved in the killing. Sheikh Ahmad Abdel-Al, a prominent figure in the Al-Ahbash, Association of Islamic Philanthropic Projects, and a close friend to President Lahoud, made a call minutes before the blast, at 1247 hrs, to the mobile phone of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and at 1249 hrs had contact with the mobile telephoneone of one of the Lebanese Generals implicated in the plot, Raymond Azar.

The Hariri assassination has clearly been a disaster for Assad’s regime. Showing little of the guile of his father Hafez al Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for nearly 30 years, Bashar has placed his country in an impossible position. Kicked out of Lebanon by a combination of massive protests by the Lebanese and international pressure led by the US and France, Assad’s strategic position in the Middle East is in shambles.

Assad’s father Hafez al Assad was a classic “strongman” controlling the army and intelligence service through a combination of fear and bribes (Assad milked Lebanon commerce dry and used the proceeds to stay in power) while using an efficient and deadly secret police to stifle dissent and maintain control of the populace. His Soviet allies sold him modern weaponry while backing him diplomatically in his quest to use Lebanon as both a buffer state against Israel and a foward staging area to precipitate attacks on the Jewish homeland.

Hafez Assad was a player in the sometimes deadly game of Middle East politics because he could stay one or two steps ahead of his adversaries in Beirut as well as Washington and Tel Aviv. He was sure-handed in his dealings with other Arab states, especially his fellow Ba’athists in Iraq. And he was a survivor, realizing after the first Persian Gulf War that, in order to maintain his position, he would have to at least give the appearance of talking to Israel.

His son Bashar succeeded to the Presidency upon Hafez’s death in 2000. Bashar, an ophthalmologist by training, came to politics late. His older brother Basil, groomed by his father to succeed him, died in a car crash in 1994. Bashar, then, was thrust into the role of putative successor. After 6 years in the military, Bashar was “elected” by the Syrian parliment to the presidency.

There have been reports of dissatisfaction in both the military and factions in the Ba’athist party itself over young Assad’s rule, and this botched conspiracy may threaten his hold on power. The fact that Bashar couldn’t see all this coming has apparently troubled many of the old guard Ba’athists who saw Lebanon as a cash cow, filling their pockets by exploiting that country’s commercial enterprises to the fullest. This begs the question: why kill Hariri in the first place?

A clue may lie in Assad’s relationship with the fanatical Islamists whose guns once did his dirty work in Lebanon. They may have forced his hand regarding Hariri due to the former Prime Minister’s non-sectarian approach to the muddle that is Lebanese politics.

Rafik Hariri was a much-respected political figure. He favored giving women and young people the vote, as well as reconciling with Lebanon’s Christian minority. Although a Shia Muslim by birth, he had a knack for drawing support from all segements of Lebanese society. Two events may have sealed the former Prime Minister’s fate. On January 31st, Hariri met with the Pope in Rome, an event obviously opposed by the Islamists who saw the meeting as confirmation that Hariri was cozying up to the Christian minority. Then, the very next day Hariri gave an interview to the Lebanon Daily Star in which he said he was “not concerned with sectarian issues” and was friends with everyone.

This may have been the last straw for the radical Islamic terrorists who are very concerned with sectarian issues, wanting more than anything else to have Shar’ia law govern the country. Assad may have felt that he had little choice, especially since Hariri’s opposition to an extension of President Lahoud’s term would have complicated the political situation enormously. Under pressure from the international community Syria had granted Lebanon the right to have parliamentary elections in June. With Hariri a logical choice for the opposition to rally around, Assad may have forseen what occurred anyway; instead of the usual fractured sectarian muddle, a powerful, united opposition emerged and is in the process of sweeping away Lahoud and his henchmen.

A second U.N. report on Lebanon is expected next week. It will focus on the implementation of Resolution 1559, which calls for the end of Syria’s meddling in Lebanon and the disbanding of armed groups that are tied to Syria. This would include the terrorist organization Hizballah, whose militia has so far refused to disarm. This has caused problems for the United States because Hizballah may be considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, but the Lebanese people just elected two dozen of its members to parliament. There have been some proposals to incorporate the militia into the regular Lebanese army, but that has been so far rejected by Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah’s senior political leader. However, Nasrallah has shown some flexibility in the matter and a compromise may still be reached.

The assassination of Rafiq Hariri was a Syrian blunder of monumental proportions. It has isolated Syria from most of the international community. It has placed Syria in a much weaker military position in the Middle East. And it has placed the rule of Bashar Assad himself in danger. On top of all that, the act of assassinating Hariri failed to achieve the desired result, and indeed had the opposite effect: it united the Lebanese opposition who, with the courage of and determination of the Lebanese people, kicked the Syrians out of Lebanon for good.

UPDATE

Michael Young has a fascinating explanation for why several Syrian official’s names were redacted from the published report. While The Daily Star is reporting that it was the US State Department who asked that the report be censored, Young has evidence that it was actually done at the highest level of the UN: The Office of the Secretary General:

It was especially interesting that initial copies of the Mehlis report released to journalists at the United Nations last night came as a Word document, with tracked changes in the text. The final emendations were made by the office of Secretary General Kofi Annan.

This seemed to indicate timidity from Annan’s office, or at least a desire to avoid any accusation of high-level Syrians in the context of a statement by a single witness. However, that may be half the story: Why was the document released in this fashion? It would have been very easy to just make the changes and leave no editing marks. Was this a compromise between Mehlis and Annan, so that people like me could mention that detail, while the U.N. could later claim that the official version was “clean” of the names in question? Judge for yourselves.

For some reason, I trust the Daily Star on this. While UN “timidity” would be perfectly in keeping with Anan’s lack of spine, the only possible explanation I can think of for the UN redacting the information on its own would be its concern for peace in the streets of Lebanon. This kind of censorship would be logical only if Anan’s office feared a bloodbath in Beirut. It would make better sense if Anan censored the report at the behest of the State Department for the reasons I listed here.

Nevertheless, a fascinating theory in that once again, the UN proves its spinelessness. This is the consequence of trying desperately not to offend anyone; you end up covering up murderer’s names.

I apologize for the trouble being experienced by most of you today in accessing this site.

I have no clue as to what is causing it. And since my hosting company uses the same server, I cannot contact them to find out.

Not a very satisfactory state of affairs…

With all the stories and articles about the Miers nomination, the imminent denouement of the Special Prosecutor’s investigation into L’Affaire d’Plame, and the Republican party crack up, you may be forgiven for missing the biggest news of all.

War has been put on the endangered species list.

Yes. it’s true. The number of armed conflicts around the world have declined by 40% since the early 1990’s. And that’s not all. Several other indices of human suffering and wanton slaughter have also gone south. To wit:

* armed secessionist conflicts are at their lowest point since 1976

* the number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001

* International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001

* The dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003. Global military expenditure and troop numbers declined sharply in the 1990s as well.

* The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end

Is this some kind of witchcraft? Are we humans finally, after warring, butchering, murdering, and torturing each other for thousands of years, learning to live with one another in peace? What could possibly account for this sudden transformation of the human condition? Religious revival? Intervention by aliens?

If you guessed Kofi Annan and the United Nations, you win a cookie.

Yes, that United Nations. And yes, that Kofi Annan. It seems that while the United States was busy winning the cold war, containing Soviet expansionism, not to mention overthrowing two of the most repressive regimes on the planet, we were completely unaware that the good old UN was right there with us, standing shoulder to shoulder and cheek to cheek as together we overcame the odds and brought freedom and democracy to the peoples of eastern Europe, Asia, and Afghanistan and Iraq.

At least, that’s the UN’s story and they’re sticking to it.

Actually, the information is contained in a report by the Human Security Center, a non-profit group funded by public and private foundations from 5 countries including Britain, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The UN connection comes from one of the Center’s co-chairs, Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The report finds that “the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War.” The document is full of neat little graphs and charts all showing a downward trend in political violence over the last decade or so. From the looks of it, it seems that the Center has done a most thorough and complete treatment of the subject.

All but the part where America is largely responsible for these surprising developments. That particular element seems to have been misplaced in the report. Perhaps the authors screwed up the footnotes because for the life of me, I couldn’t find a single reference to the United States in the entire screed. Evidently, being a hyper-power has its limits. Maybe we should have bought an ad on their website.

The Human Security Center is puzzled that these remarkable trends have not been picked up by the media and trumpeted to the skies. The answer to that is a no brainer. Richard Fernandez has the easy explanation:

That’s not surprising given that probably nowhere has the process lauded by the Commission on Human Security been more in evidence than in Afghanistan, and more studiously ignored. The UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] itself admits that “more than 3.5 million Afghans have returned to their homeland since the end of 2001″, one of the most remarkable reversals of refugee flows in history — and then gives the credit to the United Nations — “when the Bonn Agreement set Afghanistan on the long and bumpy road to political stability and socio-economic development.” But what else happened in that time frame? Inquiring minds want to know.

Indeed. This kind of willful blindness is prevalent throughout the report. The Center’s myopia regarding US diplomatic and military triumphs in places like Kuwait, the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere is symptomatic of a more troubling deficiency among global elites; a studious and deliberate obfuscation of history to achieve a desired political end. It’s not that the facts are hidden away collecting dust in some obscure academic institution. One would hope that at the very least, the authors of the report would have had access to the New York Times or The Washington Post to fill them in on what was going on in the world during the period under study.

Then again, maybe they did have access to those publications which is why they wrote what they did.

In a recent email exchange with a friend of mine, we both spoke of our emotional response to pictures of Iraqis going to the polls and how because of the disinterest of the national media, our grandchildren will probably be better informed of the struggle of the Iraqi people for freedom than we are today. Will they ask what it was like to be alive at such an exciting time in history when human freedom was on the march, spearheaded by the indomitable spirit of the United States? Sadly, reports such as this one will probably be more important to the historical record than contemporary accounts from eyewitnesses. Will our offspring notice the discrepancies between history as written by Internationalist organizations like the Center for Human Security and the first-person dispatches of observers like Michael Yon whose inspired writing of the struggles of the Iraqi people and the American military detail what our own media is either too lazy or too biased to report?

Clearly, the Center for Human Security’s report has succeeded in bringing to light the under reported drama of the progress being made around the world in conflict resolution and the sidebar story of the spread of freedom into areas where it never existed except in the dreams and aspirations of oppressed people. But to not mention the role of American leadership in these encouraging developments is pure cynicism. It bespeaks a mindset among many internationalists that the nation state is dying out and only supra-national organizations like the United Nations are relevant in the power calculations of the dictators, the holy men, the corrupt colonels and Generals who are responsible for so much human misery on the planet.

They see no correlation, for instance, between 135,000 American troops going through Saddam’s vaunted army with ease and Libyan strongman Ghaddafi giving up his weapons of mass destruction programs. Nor do they see that the powerful words spoken by an American President at his second inaugural could inspire democrats around the world to take to the streets and demand freedom and justice.

These are the underlying forces of history at work around the world, not the vainglorious pomposities and empty rhetoric of a powerless and cowardly United Nations. It must be up to us as contemporary witnesses to this transformational era in world history, not to let future generations be confused as to just who and what is responsible for these monumental changes. It is American power and American ideals that are rocking the world not the platitudinous nonsense of international elites.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until tonight at 11:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week’s Carnival was the best yet with 29 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

From the moonbats that gave us the telling slogan “Better Red than Dead” comes this bit of cheer regarding the annual Veterans Day Celebration in Berkeley:

Berkeley’s Veterans Day ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 11, was abruptly canceled on Monday because the volunteer organizing committee split over the political content.

At issue was a proposal by the chairman, singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, to have Bill Mitchell, a co-founder of Cindy Sheehan’s organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, as the keynote speaker.

Mitchell’s and Sheehan’s sons were killed in Iraq the same day.

Some committee members worried that Mitchell would inject an unwelcome note of partisanship into the event, which has been scrupulously non-political in years past.

Michelle Malkin said it better than anyone; “File this under “We support our troops…by refusing to honor their service.”

Berkeley isn’t just a bastion of liberalism. It is one of only a handful of genuine communist communities in the country. As far as being better red than dead…I report, you decide. Here are some of the resolutions passed by the City Council in the last few years:

“Request the City Manager send letters to our elected national representatives asking them to take whatever action they can to cease the bombing of Afghanistan and to seek a legal, nonmilitary resolution; 2) Endorse and send to these officials, the attached letter recently presented by Vice Mayor Shirek to the Congressional Black Caucus, which acknowledges and grieves the tragic events of September 11th; and 3) adjourn this Council meeting in memory of the innocent civilians in Afghanistan being harmed and made refugees due to the bombing.”

This resolution was passed less than 6 weeks after 9/11.

In an historic vote on September 10, 2002 the City Council of Berkeley, California enacted Resolution #61744, declaring the space 60 kilometers and above the City is a space-based weapons free zone. On September 14th, Congressman Kucinich, was officially presented the Resolution by Councilmember Dona Spring, who initiated this milestone Resolution, before 700 people in Wheeler Auditorium, who gave Kucinich and Spring a cheering ovation.

This resolution violates several treaties to which the US is a signatory, not to mention being just plain batty.

WHEREAS, the citizens of the City of Berkeley consider it to be our sovereign right and civic duty to recognize that corporations remain artificial entities created by the people through our state legislatures; hope to nurture and expand democracy in Berkeley and in our nation; and reject the concept of corporate constitutional rights based on “corporate personhood” or any other factor.

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Berkeley supports amending the United States and California Constitutions to declare that corporations are not granted the protections or rights of persons, and supports amending the United States and California Constitutions to declare that the expenditure of corporate money is not a form of constitutionally protected speech.

This from our friends who began the so-called “Free Speech” movement of the 1960’s. I wonder if they would outlaw similar spending by labor unions?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Berkeley City Council has banned log-burning fireplaces from new homes. Not content to stop the madness there, however, Jami Caseber, the “environmental activist” who led the drive to institute the ban, also wants to ban the use of existing fireplaces.

The ban also applies to wood-burning cooking equipment, a condition of the legislation that has pissed off some Berkeleyites. Alice Waters, owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant and a world-famous advocate for organic foods, says she burns half a cord of oak and fig weekly in her grill and oven, which has no pollution-control equipment. Although her appliances are grandfathered under the just-passed law, Walker is nevertheless opposed to the law. As she (needlessly) explains to the Times, “‘we’ve had a fundamental connection between fire and food since the beginning of time.’”

Anyone else find the irony of burning oil or natural gas to keep warm rather than wood to be as delicious as I do?

Berkeley Food Policy Council

Mission Statement

To build a local food system based on sustainable regional agriculture
that fosters the local economy and assures all people of Berkeley
have access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food
from non-emergency sources.

I hate to ask what “culturally appropriate” food might be. And who decides what is “sustainable regional agriculture?” Berkeley is smack dab in the middle of some of the most productive farmland on the planet. Now, you and I might call that “sustainable.” But to the food Nazis in Berkeley, corporate farming is a rape of the land.

This is what it would be like living under the thumb of these crazies. And the fact that they have canceled a Veterans Day celebration because they couldn’t agree that it was appropriate to inject politics into a memorial service for people who gave their lives so that the Berkeleyites could play at being mini-commissars and regulate people’s lives inside and out only goes to show that the left has no concept of what it takes to defend what they so cavalierly exercise.

It begs the question; is there anything they would consider dying for to protect outside of their own miserable hides?

News that will surely disappoint the Kos Kids, DU denizens, and others on the unhinged left; they are going to have to wait a while to celebrate any indictments in L’Affaire d’Plame:

The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.

By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury’s findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.

The focus of Mr. Fitzgerald’s inquiry has remained fixed on two senior White House aides, Karl Rove, who is President Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Both had conversations with reporters about a C.I.A. officer whose name was later publicly disclosed.

It is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has learned who first identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003.

Some of the lawyers in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald seems to be wrestling with decisions about how to proceed, leaning toward indictments but continuing to weigh thousands of pages of documents and testimony he has compiled during the nearly two-year inquiry.

So not only will there be no final report - at least in the formal sense - there will be no indictments this week. This may in fact be damaging to the mental health of our leftist friends who are so beside themselves with anticipation over possible indictments in the case that they have wet their pants, their beds, and the high chairs they sit in to eat their granola and nuts.

Their incontinence notwithstanding, according to this Murray Waas piece in the National Journal, Fitzgerald has narrowed the scope of his inquiry to the following:

1. The substance of the June 23, 2003 meeting between Times reporter Miller and Scooter Libby where, according to Miller’s notes, Libby mentioned Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame and her employment at WINPAC - the CIA’s arms control and WMD monitoring group - and was apparently a pre-emptive strike by the Veep’s office to counter leaks by Ambassador Wilson who had spent months shopping his charges of White House malfeasance on WMD intel to any and every reporter who would listen to him.

The problem for Libby? Either he didn’t mention the meeting in his grand jury testimony or didn’t say that it was the first time he had mentioned Plame’s name.

Possible Charge: Perjury

2. Substance of a July 8th breakfast meeting between Libby and Miller:

Libby and Miller’s two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 8. Libby has told federal investigators, according to legal sources familiar with his testimony, that he told Miller at the meeting that he had heard that Wilson’s wife had played a role in Wilson’s being selected for the Niger assignment. But Libby also testified that he never named Plame nor told Miller that she worked for the CIA, because either he did not know that at the time, or, if he had heard that Plame was a CIA employee, he did not know whether it was true.

Miller’s grand jury testimony as well her notes on the July 8 meeting contradict Libby’s version. Miller’s notes indicate that Libby did indeed tell her that Plame worked for the CIA. Her notes said, according to Miller: “Wife works at Winpac.” Asked for an explanation by the grand jury, Miller has said she testified she knew that Winpac meant Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control. That was a CIA unit tracking chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons proliferation.

The problem for Fitzgerald here is that Miller has testified she is certain that while Plame’s name came up, she is unclear in what context (did she herself bring up Plame’s name?)

Possible Charge: Perjury

3. A third area of interest to Fitzgerald is the series of communications between Libby’s attorney Joseph Tate and Miller’s attorney Floyd Abrams. Was the waiver given by Libby to Miller so that she could testify last year coerced? Was Tate, on behalf of his client, trying to influence Miller’s testimony? Did Tate leak the grand jury testimony of Libby in hopes that Miller would corroborate his story?

Here is another conundrum for Fitzgerald as all of the lawyering back and forth smacks of both parties hearing what they wanted to hear. Miller’s situation was complicated by the fact that Abrams was an attorney representing the Times. Later, she acquired the services of a personal attorney, Democratic mouthpiece Robert Bennett who has since given the most one-sided renderings of these conversations to date. Tate has all but called Bennett a liar and even Abrams has contradicted some of Bennett’s spin. Read the Waas piece for all the ins and outs of this confusing muddle but in summary, it would seem there is a huge gray area that Fitzgerald is trying to sort through to determine if any lawbreaking occurred.

Possible Charges: Perjury, Obstruction of Justice, Witness Tampering

4. The fourth area of Fitzgerald’s inquiry has to do with the circumstances surrounding the release of Judith Miller from jail. It involves a letter sent by Abrams to Tate in which Abrams (apparently looking to make a record) accuses Tate of warning Miller not to testify last year because the waiver he gave at the time was coerced. Tate has hotly denied both the substance and the inference of Abrams letter to the prosecutor.

Possible Charge: Witness tampering

5. Another letter, this time the personal one sent by Libby to Miller telling her it was okay to testify. Just to show that when you are enmeshed in the wheels of justice that it is best to keep both your mouth and pen shut, Libby’s personal reminisces about their conversations are being construed as a possible tipoff to Miller about what he said before the grand jury. Even Bob Bennett thinks that Libby wasn’t trying to tip Miller off but rather was just being chatty.

Possible Charge for being Chatty: Witness Tampering

6. Finally, the night before Miller was set to testify before the grand jury, a source “sympathetic” to Libby sought out three separate news organizations and spilled the beans about what Libby told the grand jury. Fitzgerald may want to know if Libby was behind the leaked testimony and whether he hoped to influence Miller’s testimony.

Possible Charge: Obstruction of Justice. Witness Tampering

Do you notice anything strange about the focus of Fitzgerald’s inquiry? Most of what Fitzgerald is looking at occurred in the context of getting Judith Miller out of jail!

Um…correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this an inquiry into the outing of a covert operative? That aspect of the case seems to have fallen by the wayside due to the fact that it is now almost certain that no laws were broken in outing Valerie Plame - although a despicable act in and of itself for which the perpetrators should be fired forthwith. But it appears at least in Mr. Libby’s case that much of his exposure is a result of trying to clarify his waiver to Miller so that she could testify before the grand jury.

It would be ironic indeed if Libby was indicted because of the goings on surrounding Judith Miller who was ostensibly trying to protect him in the first place and whose stay in the hoosegow was probably unnecessary from the outset.

Another thing you might have noticed about the focus of Fitzgerald’s investigation is the absence of any scrutiny of the man the left has apoplectic fits over, Karl Rove. Is Rove in the clear? It would seem so although anything is possible.

Finally, I find it hugely ironic that once again, government officials have shown that they never, ever, learn anything from past probes of this nature. How much easier for Libby if he had been 100% truthful from the outset? And Rove himself wouldn’t have had to sweat bullets about being indicted if he had come clean to both his boss the President and been more specific about his conversations with Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper.

And Fitzgerald? He’s decided that in order to justify 22 months of investigation into what was apparently a non-criminal act, he must indict people who can be charged for faulty memory or the actions of their attorneys and surrogates. In the Special Prosecutor’s case, better to shoot the horse after the barn door has already been closed rather than let the animal go.

UPDATE

Tom McGuire has much more insight into the Waas piece. His take is that Libby is all but being measured for a prison jump suit. Given that Mr. Libby apparently perjured himself regarding the June 23 meeting, it still begs the question as to how Fitzgerald views any kind of conspiracy charges - something Waas never mentions in his article. Was it conspiracy or just a general Administration wide push back against the CIA for their partisan antics? Since no crime was committed in the first place in outing Plame, conspiracy in that regard may be off the table although conspiracy to obstruct justice may still be in the offing if the reports we hear about Cheney aid John Hannah and his cooperation with Fitzgerald are true.

Kevin at Wizbang is advocating a constitutional change that would limit a President to one six-year term:

Perhaps it’s time to look seriously at changing the Presidency to a single 6 year term. You have to go all the way back to the Eisenhower administration to find a two term Presidency that didn’t go to hell (in the form of investigations, impeachment, or resignation) in the final years of their second term. Sure we’d have to live with future Jimmy Carter’s for a couple extra years, but it might be a gamble worth taking…

By the same token, such a move would deprive us of a Reagan for two extra years. Besides, somehow the idea of not having a President to stand for re-election diminishes democracy in my mind. Maybe not substantively, but perceptions are important also and a one term President almost smacks of an elected monarch to me.

Some of my righty friends who have been telling me for months that Rove, Libby, et. al. will not be indicted in Affaire d’Plame have been whistling past the graveyard. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, Special Prosecutors don’t sit around for 22 months without indicting someone.

A parallel would be what went on with the Manhattan Project during World War II. The government had spent billions (back when billions actually meant lots and lots of money) developing an atomic bomb. But as the “gadget” got closer to completion, some scientists began to have second thoughts about even setting it off.

Enter Leslie Groves who had been in charge of building the Pentagon which at the time was one of the biggest construction projects in human history. Groves had a Roman Catholic’s sense toward taxpayer money - the people paid for a show and they were going to get one by hook or by crook. Groves ended up managing the mini-mutiny by placing a couple of scientists on the targeting committee and then tried convincing Harry Truman that the taxpayers would boil him in oil if the bomb wasn’t used against Japan.

This little by play has been used by revisionist historians to supposedly show that President Truman wanted to use the bomb because of the enormous cost involved that had to be justified to the American people. Anyone who has read anything about Harry Truman knows that to be a crock, as the Missourian was much more worried about facing the mothers, fathers, and wives of men who would have been lost in an invasion of Japan if he had not used the bomb. Truman was convinced if it came out after the war that he could have ended the conflict a full year earlier if he had used both “Fat Man” and Little Boy,” he would probably have been impeached.

The point being, that Fitzgerald has to have a scalp or two to hang on the wall. If he thinks he has a conspiracy to out Valerie Plame, he could cast a wide net indeed, capturing at the very least Scooter Libby and perhaps even Karl Rove, although it appears that Rove is not a target.

And then there was this curiosity about where Fitzgerald was going with the investigation:

Evidence is building that the probe conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, has extended beyond the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s name to include questioning about the administration’s handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence.

According to the Democratic National Committee, a majority of the nine members of the White House Iraq Group have been questioned by Mr Fitzgerald. The team, which included senior national security officials, was created in August 2002 to “educate the public” about the risk posed by weapons of mass destruction on Iraq.

Mr Fitzgerald, who has been applauded for conducting a leak-free inquiry, has said little publicly about his 22-month probe, other than that it is about the “potential retaliation against a whistleblower”, Joseph Wilson. After Mr Wilson, a former ambassador, went public with doubts about the evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, the name of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA official, was leaked to reporters.

“According to the Democratic National Committee…??” Wha? Who? WTF? Since when has the DNC been a reliable source of news out of the Special Prosecutor’s office?

At any rate, I have no doubt he has talked to the Iraq Survey Group. That would make perfect sense if he has another candidate for the perp walk; how does an indictment of Joseph Wilson, III grab ya?

Fitzgerald may just throw up his hands, indict the lot of them (including Judith Miller) and let the courts sort it out. After all, Wilson has admitted to leaking classified information himself which may explain the interviews with the ISG. Perhaps Fitzgerald was trying to ascertain just how classified Wilson’s trip was so that he can decide if the former ambassador illegally leaked info to Nicholas Kristoff of the Times back in May - more than 2 months before his OpEd appeared in that publication.

Speaking of curious, what’s with E.J. Dionne? Is he off his meds again?

We are on the verge of an extraordinary moment in American politics. The people running our government are about to face their day — or days — in court.

Those who thought investigations were a wonderful thing when Bill Clinton was president are suddenly facing prosecutors, and they don’t like it. It seems like a hundred years ago when Clinton’s defenders were accusing his opponents of using special prosecutors, lawsuits, criminal charges and, ultimately, impeachment to overturn the will of the voters.

Clinton’s conservative enemies would have none of this. No, they said over and over, the Clinton mess was not about sex but about “perjury and the obstruction of justice” and “the rule of law.”

The old conservative talking points are now inoperative.

Huh? I have yet to hear a single Republican say a word in support of the idea that outing a CIA agent should not be punished severely be the target Rove, or Libby, or any other Administration official. Not. A. One.

So where does he get “The old conservative talking points are now inoperative…?” The fact that the Cavalcade of Comedy involving Keystone Cop Ronnie Earle down in Texas and his continuing easter egg hunt for first, a grand jury sufficiently ignorant of the facts to indict Tom Delay a second time (after the first one didn’t quite take, it not being a crime in 2003 to do what Delay did in 2002) and second, to search for a document that the bumpkin told the grand jury he had in his possesion but has since, er…vanished. If that’s history, it’s more like Mel Brooks than Richard Brookhesier.

Unlike Clinton’s wild-eyed apologists who yelped for years that selling the office of the President for first, campaign contributions and then to build the ugliest Presidential Library in America was only a venal sin (kind of like thinking impure thoughts about Mary Wilson in 8th grade but not doing anything about it), conservatives have said in no uncertain terms what would happen if Rove or Libby, or anyone else was indicted. It’s just that, being conservatives, our equanimity about waiting for the Special Prosecutor to actually charge someone - anyone - with a crime can be misinterpreted. Wait and see is a good attitude to have when the political fires are being stoked by a bunch of morons who actually believe that voting machines in Ohio were hacked to give Bush the election last November.

Predictably, the Kos kids are all aflutter with anticipation. It’s actually quite entertaining. If Fitzgerald were not to indict any of the biggies, can we imagine the meltdown over at Kos Kingdom and other lefty sites?

This diary post at Kos has some advice for those who can’t stand the suspense:

10. Put down the caffeine: For the next 48 hours, cleanse your body of java, aspartame, splenda, and whatever other shit you’ve been putting in your system. Your body will be producing more adrenaline during Fitzmas than it did when you were a hormone-crazed teenager, so don’t fuel the fire.

1. Enjoy the moment: Take a DEEP breath, and savor the fact that you’re witnessing history being made. The outing of Plame was a vicious act, but nothing will be as sweet as watching justice being served.

Whatever the outcome, I can’t see the Kos kids being very happy. After all, Bushitler is there for three more years - plenty of time for them to have more apoplectic fits over Bush successes in Iraq and other spheres.

UPDATE

John Cole is actually worried about the mental health of the moonbats if Fitzgerald doesn’t indict anyone. I would say, for the reasons annunciated above, not to worry John. But it’s a pity that those lefties don’t appreciate you for your concern, John. Tomorrow, they’ll just be back to blasting you.

IN ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ACTS IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, MARTIN LUTHER NAILS HIS HERETICAL 95 THESES TO THE DOOR OF A CHURCH IN WITTENBERG, GERMANY

I confess to being something of a heretic regarding this whole “Porkbusters” crusade that is being championed by some of the heavy hitters in the Shadow Media.

What am I saying? Not just some of the biggest but the biggest conservative websites around. Glenn Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, and Michelle Malkin, are promoting the idea that if enough bloggers can find specific instances of “pork” in the federal budget and have their Congress Critter commit to cutting that spending request from the budget, the cost of rebuilding several thousand square miles of United States territory along the Gulf Coast can be offset and the budget deficit can be reduced.

First, let me congratulate those worthies for initiating and supporting this exploration of the capabilities of the New Media. In all seriousness, unless we try and understand just what the blogosphere can and can’t do, we’ll never get a handle on what is real and what is an illusion about blogs. Perhaps a campaign like this will actually define the political part of the conservative blogosphere in that it will measure true political influence in Washington and in the nation at large.

That said, this is an effort doomed to fail from the start. It isn’t just that most of the “pork” to be cut, even if taken together, represents a painfully small pittance when placed against what actually needs to be spent to make the Gulf Coast whole again. The entire “Porkbusters” campaign misses the point of what the federal budget is and what it represents.

I hope you are not naive enough to believe that the federal budget is even remotely related to what we generally think of as our own household budgets. In real life, we have a certain amount of money coming in and another amount that goes out. Hopefully, after the numbers are tallied there is even a little left over to put away for our retirement.

But the federal budget is not real life. It represents the dreams, the hopes, the desires - both noble and base - of 270 million of our fellow citizens. The long and short of it is one man’s pork is another man’s bread and butter. And while it may be tempting in carrying the metaphor even farther by stating that the two together make a BLT, it isn’t that simple either.

I have no doubt that if we look closely enough at the budget, we’ll experience many “aha!” moments where we will find several million dollars to build a bridge to nowhere. Or several hundred thousand dollars to construct a Post Office for a town of 12 people. Or a couple of million to redecorate the offices of top bureaucrats. Or, if we’re really looking with gimlet eyes at the whole budget, we could probably find a couple of billions to cut from the Department of Defense.

The same could be said for every other department of government. Great red swathes could be cut through the federal budget, inking out programs for rich corporations, anti-poverty NGO’s, as well as various freaks, bunkum scientists, and just plain charlatans.

In the end, you would barely scratch the surface of what would be needed to offset Katrina spending over the next few years. And the dent made in the budget deficit as a whole would be a joke.

And the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the Congress but in ourselves. The fault lies in our own expectations for what government should be doing for us. It lies in what we think government is capable of doing for all of us. And it lies in our own projected aspirations of what we think freedom and democracy are in this modern, industrialized, urban country of ours.

This is not a political dispute as much as it is a clashing of dreams. In perusing NZ Bear’s excellent web pages on the work being done by hundreds of individual bloggers in ferreting out spending they see as wasteful, I am struck by how cavalierly people wish to cut transportation funds. Now clearly, in legislation that proposes spending as much money as the transportation bill, there are literally billions of dollars being spent that would have a hard time passing the rancid bacon smell test. But what most of my conservative and libertarian friends fail to grasp is that almost every one of those projects represents the dreams of individual communities to improve the quality of life just a tiny bit or, more fundamentally, the return of a small portion of monies the people send to Washington to redeem expectations that people have of the federal government.

I’m sure my libertarian friends would point out that those expectations are unrealistic and should be discouraged or even changed. I would say go ahead, be my guest. Don Quixote needs some companionship. For in order to change those expectations, you must not only elect representatives that will reflect your desire for reform but you must also change the fundamental relationship in the United States between the people and the government as it exists in the 21st century.

If you are so inclined, might I suggest you attempt something more simple at first? Like, say changing the gravitational constant of the universe?

Simply put, only national defense is more important in America than building or improving roads and transportation. In a continental nation, road building is an Ur issue, as vital to small and medium sized communities as it is to large cities and the nation as a whole. Trying to pick out “unnecessary” road building projects is an exercise in futility. An outsider looking at any specific project has no clue about local conditions that may have necessitated the request in the first place. What looks like pork to some means something entirely different to the people directly affected.

This is not to say that there aren’t thousands of projects that are wasteful from the perspective of those who wish to place the good of the nation above the good of individual communities. Or even that opposition in communities to specific projects that will tear up green spaces (although this is done less and less recently) or allow property to be seized by local government to make room for these roads and improvements shouldn’t be looked at carefully. But it should be noted that the ancillary benefits including job creation, reduced traffic congestion, and safer travel are rarely mentioned when talking about a particular project’s designation as pork. I daresay few who propose such cuts are qualified to make that kind of analysis so that this kind of criticism is, in the end, an exercise in sophistry.

The Transportation Bill is part of the federal government’s discretionary spending as opposed to the mandatory spending on entitlements. For FY 2006, discretionary spending represents approximately 1/3 of the entire $2.5 trillion dollar budget request. Even if we were to freeze discretionary spending at last year’s levels, we would save barely $30 billion dollars - a good start but hardly the meat and potato cuts necessary to affect the amount that will be needed to rebuild a large part of three states, not to mention the reconstruction of a modern, industrialized city like New Orleans. Only cuts in basic entitlements like food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), housing, and most important of all Social Security will reductions be significant enough to make a difference in both hurricane rebuilding and the budget deficit in general.

And here is where the budget leaves the realm of what is real and enters the stratosphere of hopes and dreams, expectations and necessity.

There is a story told by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s OMB Director, of how he tried to show the President how hard it was to cut entitlements. Stockman, a former Congressman and a man with a nimble and penetrating intellect, was charged with turning Reagan’s campaign rhetoric about cutting the fat from the budget into reality. In the course of educating the President, he gave Reagan a list of programs and asked him to check off which one’s should be cut. When he got the paper back he made some quick calculations and showed Reagan that he had just cut less than 10% necessary to reduce the then ballooning budget deficit.

The story proves it is one thing in the abstract to advocate cutting programs for all but the “deserving” poor while it is quite another to actually change the relationship between government and the people. For what makes entitlements almost impossible to cut is contained in their very name; the government comes up with criteria of eligibility and as long as you meet that criteria, an individual or family is “entitled” to receive that benefit. It doesn’t matter if we’re at war. It doesn’t matter if we have massive budget deficits as far out as can be projected. As long as a citizen (and, of course, non-citizens as well) qualify under the law, the government is obligated to dispense the benefit.

And while it may seem easy to simply change the criteria of eligibility, in practice it is a virtual impossibility. For example, in order to deal with the crisis of social security solvency in the past, Congress has responded by usually raising the age of retirement so that today, one cannot receive full benefits from social security until age 70. But Congress cannot raise the age fast enough to keep up with the longer life spans experienced by the American people. Hence, our current crisis and one that requires even more fundamental tinkering with the system in order to avoid catastrophe.

And if all this isn’t enough to torpedo any kind of blogosphere-wide effort to cut the budget, there is always the politics of the budget to consider. You may notice how many of those Congressmen and Senators who have responded to the questionnaire say that it is important to cut spending but that most spending bills they vote on contain both elements they support and parts they oppose. This makes it virtually impossible for Congress to cut much from the budget as those bills represent deal making both in conference between the House and the Senate as well as in the cloakroom between parties so that the bill would garner as much support as possible. If these elements were not present, the federal government would come to a standstill and no spending bills would have a chance of passing. The art of politics has always been the art of what is possible. Perhaps a line-item veto for the President would solve such an impasse, but it is doubtful whether enough Congressmen and Senators could be found to support the emasculation of their own power. And it is by no means certain that such a measure would be constitutional under the separation of powers articles.

So while I applaud the effort of the blogosphere to take on the federal budget, I question whether such a project could even partially succeed. It may be that even tens of thousands of citizen journalists are no match for the tens of millions of Americans who would be directly affected by the kinds of cuts being proposed.

UPDATE

Jon Henke and I were on the same wavelength this morning. The difference is that John, being much smarter than I am (that’s okay, I’m better lookin’), actually has some common sense ways to change the dynamic of the budget debate as well as some very interesting thoughts along the lines that I was struggling to elucidate; that there must be a change in the relationship between citizens and their government.

That’s very nice, but—like Porkbusters—it’s the tip of the iceberg. Without structural reform, they’re merely playing at the corners of the budget. As Steve Verdon wondered, “Where was this kind of drive a year ago, or for that matter from the day Bush opened up the Federal coffers and started spending like a heroin junkie with a major jones? I’ll tell you where, nowhere. Nobody cared. Nobody will care in a few more weeks”. John Cole wrote of Porkbusters, “it is a short-term gimmick, when what is needed is a long-term shift in attitudes about spendings, taxes, and priorities”.

RTWT.

Also, Matthew in the comments points out that there is no such program as AFDC any longer. It has been replaced by something called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which replaced AFDC in 1996.

Thanks to Matthew for the correction…I’ve been away from Washington for 15 years and it shows sometimes…

The votes are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council and the winner in the Council category was Wallo World for his thoughtful post Controversy, Christians, and Condemnation. Yours truly finished second for my piece on the Miers nomination In George We Trust.

Winning in the non Council category was Waiter Rant for his theological post Legion. If you want to participate in this week’s Watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions. Also, the Watcher is looking for another member for the Council. If you’d like to join the Watcher’s Council, go here.

Since I missed the last vote as well, I should tell you that the winner in the Council category was Gates of Vienna for LGF Spots the Gilded Cage. Finishing second was The Sundries Shack On Harriet, Hurt, and a Huffy

Finishing first in the non Council category was Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred’s Lessons from a Decent Man.

I HAVE TURNED OFF MY ANTI-SPAM PLUG IN WHICH SHOULD SPEED UP PAGE LOADING. IT MAY ALSO HELP THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE HAD YOUR COMMENTS REJECTED AS SPAM.

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I APPRECIATE EVERYONE’S PATIENCE AS I TRY TO MAKE THIS SITE MORE USER FRIENDLY.