The Red Pill

Remember that tax cuts first started taking effect in the 3rd quarter of 2003. Looks like they're having an effect. Of course, now what is needed is for this growth to generate jobs - there were 57,000 new jobs in September; hope to see more coming soon.
Economy Grows at Fastest Pace Since 1984

I'm all for liberal talk radio - yes, there are liberal talk shows already, not including NPR. Here's one list from a liberal website.

But isn't this just going too far? I mean, why are members of Congress getting involved in this? This isn't Liberal talk radio, it's Democrat talk radio. Most conservative talk radio hosts/shows describe themselves as Conservative, not Republican. The shows I listen to often disagree with things the Republicans are doing.

Is this even legal? Can members of Congress raise money for a partisan radio show? If ever the fairness doctrine would be needed it would be in this situation. Maybe that's the plan ... do something outrageous to get Republicans to back the Fairness Doctrine; then they will be guaranteed time opposite popular conservative shows regardless of sucess in the market.

This guy Schultz, if the show gets off the ground, will be beholden to the Democrat Party. However, to get off the ground, he'll probably need more than six stations.

Dems Pledge $1.8 Million to Counter Limbaugh
FARGO, N.D. – Democratic lawmakers in Washington are asking a North Dakota radio personality to take on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talk show hosts.

Ed Schultz, who earlier considered running for governor, has been tapped by national Democratic leaders for a talk show to start in January.

Democratic lawmakers in Washington are raising money for the show, and Democrats have pledged about $1.8 million over two years to get it off the ground, Schultz said Monday. He said a half-dozen stations are looking at whether to carry it.

...

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said Schultz impressed Senate Democrats at a meeting in Washington about a year ago, after Democracy Radio officials approached Schultz about the job. Democracy Radio was founded by Tom Athens, the husband of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

A piece from RealClearPolitics.com called The Three Stooges discusses the positions the nine Demo candidates are taking on Iraq.

For reference, here's what David Kay had to report on October 2, 2003 about the activities of the ISG.

Jonah Goldberg

October 22, 2003

Remember "voodoo economics"? The phrase comes from the first President Bush. During the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, the current president's father famously denounced Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics as "voodoo economics."

What seemed like exotic hocus-pocus to the elder George Bush was the idea that if you cut taxes, people might work more, and hence earn more, which would then result in higher tax revenues. I never understood why Bush thought this was akin to Haitian head-shrinking and black magic.

Regardless, voodoo economics became known as "Reaganomics" once the Gipper was elected and the terrible 1980-1982 recession kicked in. Today it's difficult to exaggerate how vicious the press and the Democratic Party were in their attacks on Reaganomics.

And then the economy launched like a rocket. When the government announced that the economy was growing at a 5 percent growth rate, Reagan declared, "It's funny, but they don't seem to call it Reaganomics anymore."

Reagan, alas, was wrong. Instead, Reaganomics got redefined. In the early '80s, it may have been synonymous with economic failure. Later, in the face of a roaring economy in the mid and late '80s, Reaganomics came to mean greed, materialism and indifference to the poor and downtrodden. The press became fixated on income inequality, "junk bonds" and the "go-go" culture of Wall Street.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. According to almost every measure, the Clinton economy was "worse" than the Reagan economy, if you go by these standards. Income inequality increased. More junk bonds were sold in 1993 alone than from 1982 to 1986 (when Mike Milken was the "Junk Bond King"). And don't even get me started about the go-go Wall Street culture created on Clinton's watch - a culture that brought us all of the accounting scandals, Enron, day-trading, etc., which have been unfairly laid at the feet of the Bush administration.

And yet, we're told Bill Clinton's economic success was the greatest accomplishment of the Democratic Party since FDR. As my friend and colleague Rich Lowry notes in his outstanding new book, "Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years," this is all nonsense on stilts.

Clinton started talk of his economic legacy, notes Lowry, by declaring over and over again, that the historically mild 1990-91 recession constituted "the worst economy in 50 years." And that he - and he alone - had to "rebuild" the entire $11 trillion U.S. economy. Never mind that the recession actually ended in March 1991, seven months before Clinton had even announced his candidacy.

I don't think Bill Clinton deserves any credit for creating the 1990s boom. The idea that Clinton's teensy-weensy economic plan - "Putting People First" - launched the high-tech boom of the 1990s is laughable. As were the predictions from Newt Gingrich and others that Clinton's plan would "destroy" the U.S. economy.

Clinton probably does deserve a reasonable amount of credit for not derailing the boom. And I do think Ronald Reagan deserves a bit more credit for the good 1980s economy, in part for the historically radical changes in tax policy, but mostly for his decision to fire those striking air traffic controllers, which sent a major signal that "Eurosclerosis" wasn't going to happen here.

But that's where I get off the reservation.

Presidents like to claim they "create jobs." Well they do - a few thousand of them, mostly around Washington, D.C. But they don't create millions of jobs in the private sector, at least not with any precision or in a way that can be replicated by flipping some job-creation switch. Even the New Deal was largely ineffective until the onset of WWII. What creates economic growth are billions of decisions all over the world, made according to a timeline that only vaguely coincides with the political calendar.

It now looks like the economy's about to take off again. President Bush will surely claim more credit than he deserves. President Bush's tax cuts were in, my book, a good idea. But they surely didn't restructure the U.S. economy.

All of this is the real "voodoo" economics. And by all of this, I mean the nonsense spewed by Democrats and Republicans alike about the economy. Not only does this voodoo economics ascribe powers to presidents they don't have, but it allows the personality of the president to color the morality of material progress. When President Reagan was in office, wealth creation was evil. When Clinton was in office, it was good.

In other words, the voodoo trumps reason. It's all hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo. Howard Dean even believes that a massive tax hike would create jobs simply because that would be the Clintonesque thing to do. "I would go back to the Clinton era of taxes," Dean told NBC's Tim Russert, "because I think most Americans would gladly pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president if they could only have the same economy that they had when Bill Clinton was president."

Why not just say he's got a recession doll and he's going to stick pins in it?

Not only are we having a jobless recovery, but many of the job losses are permanent. However, rather than being due to U.S. economic policy, it is a worldwide situation. This is an excerpt from an email list from InvestorsInsight.com.
THE ECONOMY, STOCKS & THE OTHER GARY HALBERT

by Gary D. Halbert
October 21, 2003Over the past two years, the media has continually told us that the roughly two million factory jobs that have been lost in the US were due to companies moving production offshore. Meanwhile, our soaring trade deficit means that Americans are consuming more foreign products than ever before. All of this would suggest that while US employment has declined over the last two years, foreign employment should be soaring. Not so, according to a new study.

The investment house Alliance Bernstein recently studied employment trends in the world’s 20 wealthiest nations, and some interesting findings emerged. Most importantly, the study found that the loss of factory jobs has been just as bad overseas as it has in the US.

According to the Labor Department, the US has lost 1.95 million factory jobs, apprx. 11.2% of our total factory workforce, since 1996 at the peak. During the same period, the 20 wealthiest nations – including China and Mexico - lost 22 million factory jobs, also apprx. 11% of their total factory workforce.

Manufacturers around the world have learned to do things better, cheaper and with fewer workers. How? Productivity has soared by over 30% during the same period that factory jobs fell by 11%. This is largely due to the quantum leap in technology in recent years.

While this is bad news for those who have lost their jobs, it is good news in the long-run. Higher productivity means cheaper goods, and better ones. Workers who have skills and education will see more opportunities, not less.

The point is, the media would have us believe that the loss of US jobs is almost entirely due to US manufacturers moving production offshore. While that is true in some cases, the employment trends are affecting almost all of the wealthiest nations. The technology revolution is to blame in the short-run, but it will be a good thing in the long-run.

Gross vs. O'Reilly: Culture Clash on NPR

By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
Ombudsman
National Public Radio
On October 9, Terry Gross, longtime host of NPR's Fresh Air aired her interview with populist political talk show host Bill O'Reilly. The e-mails and phone calls of outrage are still arriving.

The interview was taped the day before on October 8. The ostensible reason was to talk about O'Reilly's latest book, Who's Looking Out For You? The book is about, among other things, the claim that America is in the midst of what O'Reilly calls a "cultural war between left and right." And he says the battle is being fought in bookstores by pitting sales of his book against those by liberals.

'Openly Hostile!'

In the Fresh Air interview, the tone was intense from the beginning. By the end of the interview, O'Reilly said he found Gross' line of questioning objectionable and hostile. He walked out of the interview, but not before he accused Gross of conducting the interview "in attack mode" and "full of typical NPR liberal bias." He also told her to "find another line of work."

Knowing that the interview would air the next day, O'Reilly used his October 8 television program to alert his viewers about what would happen the next day on NPR (Bill O'Reilly's Web site).

Here is the interview as it aired on NPR's Fresh Air.

As Gross mentioned in the interview, Bill O'Reilly was invited on Fresh Air in part because of his new book. She began by asking O'Reilly to respond to accusations made against him in a book by Al Franken, the politically liberal comedian. Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, is devoted in part to going after O'Reilly's credibility and his conservative opinions. In his book and on Fresh Air, Franken accuses O'Reilly of mistakes, distortions and outright lies.

Gross interviewed Franken two weeks previously on her program.

For some listeners, the interview with O'Reilly was a continuation of Franken's anti-conservative and anti-O'Reilly attacks.

'Biased and Prejudicial... '

Listener Michael Moritz's e-mail was typical of the more restrained comments:

NPR, you're not going to like this, but I have to say that O'Reilly... was correct: throughout the first 50 minutes of the interview, Terry Gross was clearly focused on discussing the popular left-wing (mis)perception of O'Reilly, misguided though it is, and not substantively dealing with his new book. I thought her interview was extremely biased and prejudicial. I was very disappointed with her transparently obvious agenda -- she's usually much more capable.

From Daniel Kennedy:

Terry needs to apologize to Bill for that interview. She's a much better interviewer than what I just heard from her. I was embarrassed for her. Bill worked up a real head of steam at the end, but he had taken it for long enough. We never did really hear about his book... P.S. I like BOTH of their shows and listen/watch when I get a chance.

'Bullying... hostility'

Robert Black was one of the few who thought Terry Gross' interview worked:

Thank you for the excellent O'Reilly interview. He quickly demonstrated his bullying tactics and hostility, proving himself to be an ass.

In my opinion, Terry Gross did a very tough interview. It was quite unlike many interviews on NPR where the tone is civil but often unchallenging of the guest.

Danny Miller is the executive producer of Fresh Air. I asked him if he thought the critics have a point:

Terry was tough on O'Reilly, not unfair. And I think O'Reilly drove the interview directly towards the conclusion he was hoping for. He was looking to butt heads. He's obviously still really steamed that the case against Franken was thrown out of court -- and came to our interview with the expressed goal of demonstrating his belief that NPR has a liberal bias, and that Fresh Air (like Franken) was out to defame him. On his own show he said: "I'll go on this program [Fresh Air] just to show you what they do, to expose what they do. Cause I knew what was going to happen... " It's pretty difficult to for an interviewer to maintain a high level of rapport with someone who wants to prove that you're out to get them.

O'Reilly is one of the most controversial and powerful broadcasters in the country -- Terry asked him about how he uses that power to pursue issues, and settle scores with his critics. Terry wouldn't have been doing her job if she didn't address that (which is why she brought up the Janet Maslin and People magazine pieces). And O'Reilly is smart enough to know it.

Even so, I agree with the listeners who complained about the tone of the interview: Her questions were pointed from the beginning. She went after O'Reilly using critical quotes from the Franken book and a New York Times book review. That put O'Reilly at his most prickly and defensive mode, and Gross was never able to get him back into the interview in an effective way. This was surprising because Terry Gross is, in my opinion, one of the best interviewers anywhere in American journalism.

Although O'Reilly frequently resorts to bluster and bullying on his own show, he seemed unable to take her tough questions. He became angrier as the interview went along. But by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop.

By the time the interview was about halfway through, it felt as though Terry Gross was indeed "carrying Al Franken's water," as some listeners say. It was not about O'Reilly's ideas, or his attitudes or even about his book. It was about O'Reilly as political media phenomenon. That's a legitimate subject for discussion, but in this case, it was an interview that was, in the end, unfair to O'Reilly.

The "Empty Chair" Interview

Finally, an aspect of the interview that I found particularly disturbing: It happened when Terry Gross was about to read a criticism of Bill O'Reilly's book from People magazine. Before Gross could read it to him for his reaction, O'Reilly ended the interview and walked out of the studio. She read the quote anyway.

That was wrong. O'Reilly was not there to respond. It's known in broadcasting as the "empty chair" interview, and it is considered an unethical technique and should not be used on NPR.

I believe the listeners were not well served by this interview. It may have illustrated the "cultural wars" that seem to be flaring in the country. Unfortunately, the interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias.

It left the impression that there was something not quite right about the reasons behind this program: Bill O'Reilly often loves to use NPR as his own personal political piñata; and NPR keeps helping him by inviting him to appear.

A letter to Terry Gross from Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros summed it up well:

I have been enjoying and learning from your show for more years than I can count, but I have to make one small criticism. Please consider it a word from a friend.

I was astonished that you had Fox's Bill O'Reilly on. I have never been able to tolerate more than a few moments of his programs. Having had a few students who came in quoting him and putting his opinions in their papers, I do know his opinions, but all his on-air shouting is unsupportable. That being said, I really think you were baiting him. Not that what you were saying was wrong or inaccurate but I had to wonder what possessed you to choose him? I guess one could say that he walked into enemy territory but I think it couldn't end any other way. Either you were going to corner him and make him admit the things that have been written about him or he was going to walk out once he realized what you were doing. I heard you do something similar with Gene Simmons. I can't believe that you didn't know how he'd react to your questions.

These louts and loudmouths deserve being embarrassed in public, I guess. But to hear you do it is somewhat unsettling. I would expect that if YOU ever went on his program, he'd do something similar to you. I guess what I'm saying is that I expect them to be that way and am generally glad that you aren't.

Listeners can contact me at 202-513-3245 or by email at ombudsman@npr.org.

Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman

The Terror Ahead - A nuclear attack? Be very afraid.
The Wall Street Journal
BY GABRIEL SCHOENFELD
Tuesday, October 21, 2003

"Under God"
The history of a phrase.
by James Piereson
The Weekly Standard
10/27/2003, Volume 009, Issue 07

Why war in Iraq?

By Craig Trebilcock
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 21, 2003

In recent weeks, Congress, the British Parliament and the media have focused upon whether there was adequate justification for war with the regime of Saddam Hussein. The debate focuses upon the narrow question of whether the evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was sufficient to warrant military action and thereby risk the lives of U.S. and British troops. As one of the troops currently serving in Iraq, I respectfully suggest that the focus of these critics is misplaced.

It is not unusual in our national history for the initial "heated" reason to justify war to fade over time, to be replaced with a more objective rationale that benefits from newly gained information and the passage of time. The fact that the initial reason prompting military action evolves over time based upon new circumstances does not invalidate the legitimacy of the decision to use military force. It simply reflects the complexity of international conflict that the current single-issue debate misses.

History provides several pertinent examples of this phenomenon. Today, when one asks what the primary reason was for the Civil War, most people will invariably answer "to free the slaves." However, the civil war actually began as a clash between two conflicting economic and political systems that pitched a centralized federal system against the South's state rights agenda. World War II began for the United States as resistance to the economic and territorial ambitions of imperial Japan and fascist Germany, but has become increasingly viewed in retrospect as a unified effort by the allied nations to quash the ethnic racism and genocide of those two regimes.

The current debate over Gulf War II appears to have taken a similar myopic turn in the press and Congress, with critics focusing solely upon WMD. If there are no WMD, the argument runs, then initiating military action against Saddam Hussein was improper. However, from the perspective of the troops who fought to liberate Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD has no bearing upon their willingness to fight in this military operation.

The difference between the critics in Washington/London and the opinions of the soldiers serving in Iraq is simple. The troops have actually seen Iraq and based their opinions on experience, rather than forming their opinions from the political agendas of party leadership or the ratings battles of networks. To the soldiers and Marines who liberated Iraq, the war is about ending a rogue regime that threatenedinternational peace, conducted genocide against its own people and methodically terrorized innocent civilians.

Every military service member finds their own reason for tolerating the anxiety, uncertainty and discomfort of a combat zone far from home. First and foremost, soldiers fight to preserve the lives of their comrades with whom they serve. However, this is the most educated military in history, with most noncommissioned officers and enlisted personnel possessing college credits or degrees. They are smart and expect a valid reason for leaving their families to risk their lives. This Army has found that reason in observing the suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein — suffering which reflects his contempt for the values that Americans have fought for since the Revolutionary War.

Upon entering southern Iraq U.S. troops encountered a battered and despised Iraqi Shi'ite population that Saddam Hussein had denied water, electricity, water and medical care for decades. People lived at a bronze-age level in a country possessing the richest natural resources on the planet. Comprising 60 percent of the nation's population, the Shi'ites were treated as enemies of the state by the 20 percent Sunni population that was the core of Saddam's Ba'ath Party. Why is that an issue for the United States? The answer to that crystallized for me in a swampy field in Southern Iraq in April 2003. Escorting a group of U.S. government officials to inspect a recently discovered mass grave 60 miles south of Baghdad, we encountered a killing field, where the Ba'athist regime had systematically executed approximately 5,000 Shi'ite men, women and children in retaliation for the Shi'ite uprising in 1991.

As we searched for the mass grave outside the city of Al Hillah, we drove along a levee between two swampy fields. We soon realized that the levee itself was the gravesite. As we stepped from the vehicles and established a security perimeter, we saw that we had driven into the middle of an area of human remains barely covered by earth. A rib cage was disturbed beneath our front bumper. A section of jaw with the teeth intact lay on the surface next to my vehicle. The ball joint of a hip protruded from the dust a few feet away. AK-47 bullets from the Iraqi military's execution squad laid on the surface next to the remains and the partially decomposed clothing of the victims.

Our Iraqi translator informed us that Saddam Hussein had systematically terrorized and eliminated anyone from the Shi'ite majority in southern Iraq who had not supported him in the first Gulf War. Entire families were seized by the Iraqi security forces and trucked to more than 60 execution sites throughout southern Iraq. Day and night, the trucks and buses rolled into the fields, where entire families were shot down and buried in mass graves. Children were not spared, as their deaths created a strong deterrent to future resistance against the regime. In some instances, buses were driven into large pits and not even unloaded. The victims were shot in their seats and then the entire vehicle buried as their tomb. Over sixty such mass graves have been located thus far in southern Iraq.

The most disturbing memory of that gruesome inspection was not the human remains laying on the surface, but a small dusty sandal lying in the middle of the levee. It belonged to a little girl of approximately 8 or 9 years old. She had been executed with her family simply because she was born in the wrong part of Iraq and was not of the Sunni faith favored by the regime. I could only imagine the terror that that young girl had experienced as she and her parents were marched into the swamp to die. The girl's enthusiasm and joy for life, which we see in the eyes of our own children, was cruelly snuffed out by a bullet. The sandal was the only evidence remaining of the lost potential of that young life.

As I stood there, 12,000 miles from home, any doubt regarding the propriety of our action to remove Saddam Hussein evaporated. As a lawyer, I live in a world where legal justification for an action is more important than the passions of the moment. I tried to think of ways that this slaughter was any different than the organized murder of civilians under the Third Reich who also did not have the "right" religious or ethnic background. These were Arab Muslims, not European Jews or intellectuals, but those distinctions were meaningless. These were mothers, fathers and children who merely wanted to work, live and love their families as we do in the United States.

They were slaughtered for the same reasons as Jews in Germany or Albanians in Kosovo — because of blind religious hatred. I stood there and wondered where the TV cameras and politicians were who are so intensively focused on the single WMD issue. It is rare that one can see evil existing on a scale that is so massive that it is tangible to the senses. The slaughter that occurred to the Shi'ites is such an event and yet it is hardly a blip on the radar of those discussing the justification for military intervention.

We did not go to war for the primary purpose of liberating the Shi'ites of southern Iraq, nor the similarly abused Kurds in northern Iraq. But is that important now? As the game of 20/20 hindsight is being played by political commentators, should not the fact that this military intervention freed millions from terror be given its appropriate place alongside the single WMD issue now being discussed? Shouldn't the more appropriate question be, "Why didn't we do this sooner," as we did in Kosovo, rather than "why did we do this at all?"

Those who fought to liberate Iraq shake their heads in wonder that President Bush and Tony Blair are still under attack as to whether a particular piece of intelligence regarding WMD was good enough to justify military action when the lives of millions have been saved from murder and oppression. Although the fighting continues, the groundwork is being laid every day for Iraq to emerge as a free and stable country in a region characterized by oppression and instability. On the strategic scene, these are issues in the vital interest of the United States worth fighting for.

However, for me and many others in uniform, justification for the war in Iraq will come down to a dusty sandal on a forgotten levee in central Iraq. We were not in time for that little girl, but the children who survived the Ba'athist genocide will have the chance to grow up and live freely because our country had to resolve to say "enough." The United States and Britain have done a great thing by removing Saddam Hussein, which history will judge as another courageous step in our national history of opposing tyranny and genocide.

Lt. Col. Craig Trebilcock is an Army reserve officer serving with the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade in central Iraq. His unit supported the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during the war. In his civilian capacity, he is an immigration lawyer in York, Pa.

The CIA And the WMD

By David Ignatius

Tuesday, October 21, 2003; Page A25


If the CIA's predictions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prove to be wrong, how can Americans have confidence in CIA intelligence warnings in the future?

That question shadows the agency as its operatives sift through files and munitions depots in postwar Iraq, trying to square the surviving evidence about Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons with the prewar estimates.

President Bush has a political problem because of the missing WMD. Already, Democrats are focusing on the issue as evidence that the president misled the country in his arguments for going to war.

A sign of how sharp the debate will be came last week from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: "All the administration's rationalizations as we prepared to go to war now stand revealed as double talk," he said. "The American people were told Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. He was not. We were told he had stockpiles of other weapons of mass destruction. He did not. . . . We were told lie after lie after lie after lie."

The CIA's problem is as serious, at least in terms of the nation's security. For it goes to what might be called the "epistemology" of intelligence: How do we know what we think we know?

Before the war the agency was as sure as intelligence professionals can be that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them. That wasn't a political judgment or even an American one. It was shared by the intelligence services of Britain, France and other nations. And it dated back to the 1990s, long before George W. Bush came to Washington.

Yet the weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who serves on the intelligence committee, probably spoke for many colleagues Sunday when she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "One of the things that's come through to me, based on reading and re-reading the National Intelligence Estimates and the daily intelligence, is that a lot of the key judgments that were made were not correct judgments."

These political criticisms upset CIA officials. But what seems to trouble them more is the prospect that the American public will lose confidence in the agency's work. In an era when the nation's margin of security against terrorist attack depends largely on intelligence, that loss of trust could have devastating consequences.

CIA officials defend the agency's performance in several ways. First, they contend that it's too early to conclude that they were wrong about Iraqi WMD. The process of inspection and analysis is just beginning. The agency's chief inspector, David Kay, has just filed a report on his first three months of investigation, which turned up none of the banned weapons. But Kay has another nine months of work, and will probably file two more reports.

Second, agency officials argue, Kay's initial findings have actually supported the case that Iraq was continuing to develop banned weapons. He found strong evidence that the regime was seeking to build or buy ballistic missiles with ranges of 600 miles or more, far beyond the U.N. limit of 90 miles. He also found new evidence that the Iraqis concealed WMD programs before the war, and systematically destroyed evidence after the war.

The epistemological problem -- of confirming what the CIA thought it knew -- is complicated by the war itself, which contaminated the crime scene, so to speak. "The Iraq that existed March 18 is gone," says one CIA official.

Despite the CIA's caveats and counterarguments, the agency is vexed by the failure to find a smoking gun. Officials have reverse-engineered every statement in the prewar intelligence estimates, reviewing the evidence they used to support the arguments that were made. They describe it as a cascade of reports from agents inside Iraq, intercepted communications, analysis of material recovered in U.N. inspections and other information collected from clandestine sources.

"With all the information we had, if we hadn't issued our warnings about Iraqi WMD, we should have been shot," says one CIA official.

The CIA's credibility is a national asset. Restoring it may be as important to the United States as anything that happens in Iraq.

To guarantee that credibility, the CIA should take some unconventional steps: It should disclose more of its prewar intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction so people can understand why it reached its judgments; and it should convene an outside board to analyze that evidence and assess whether the CIA's warnings were sound.

The worst thing that could happen for the CIA would be for it to become a political football in the 2004 campaign. The only way the agency can avoid that is to level with the public about how it knew what it thought it knew.

davidignatius@washpost.com

Two administrations warned of Iraq's weapons

By Christopher S. Bond
10/21/2003


On Oct. 12, 2003 you carried a commentary by former Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton, "Slant, Slant and More Slant," referring to the positions of President George W. Bush.

I must note that if one believes intelligence was slanted with respect to Iraq, it was slanted during the previous administration as well. Based on intelligence he received, President Bill Clinton on Feb. 17, 1998, said, "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

A day later his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said, "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

Sen. Eagleton and I would agree that the state of our Intelligence prior to Sept. 11, 2001, was not as good as it should be. That is why I have taken a position on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and hope to help strengthen our system. Clearly, one of the great voids we had was in human intelligence. I believe that that resulted from the actions of the Senate's Church Committee in the 1970s, and the previous administration in the 1990s.

Our Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting a very thorough review of documents and extensive interviews of participants to find out what the shortcomings were in our intelligence gathering and how we can improve them. If there is any indication that members of this administration tried to influence or change intelligence estimates, I assure you that will be made public. Our hope, however, is that we can, going forward, do a much better job gathering and analyzing intelligence from all sources.

Sen. Eagleton and I differ on the interpretation of the report from David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group. In his report Kay said, "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002." He stated, "The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that [the survey group] has discovered that should have been declared to the U.N."

Kay went on to explain that because of the deliberate concealment and destruction of evidence, it was very difficult to locate weapons of mass destruction. Saddam's new emphasis on concealment we should find deeply troubling, not acquitting.

The Eagleton column also made references to "the preemptive war" and the "imminent threat." We should be perfectly clear that President Bush stated specifically that we could not wait until the threat became imminent; we had to move against terrorism before the terrorists launched a strike.

On the issue of preventing terrorists attacks, I agree with Presidents Clinton and Bush that we have to move before the terrorists act. The threat of after-the-fact retributive justice is just not an effective way to deter suicide bombers or deliverers of weapons of mass destruction. I believe it is preferable that we fight the war on terrorism in Baghdad rather than in Boston, or Bolivar or Ballwin, Missouri.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Missouri.

Ann Coulter on Rush

So liberals have finally found a drug addict they don't like. And unlike the Lackawanna Six – those high-spirited young lads innocently seeking adventure in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan – liberals could find no excuses for Rush Limbaugh.

After years of the mainstream media assuring us that Rush was a has-been, a nobody, yesterday's news – the Rush painkiller story was front-page news last week. (Would anyone care if Howell Raines committed murder?) The airwaves and print media were on red alert with Rush's admission that, after an unsuccessful spinal operation a few years ago, he became addicted to powerful prescription painkillers.

Rush Limbaugh's misfortune is apparently a bigger story than his nearly $300 million radio contract signed two years ago. That was the biggest radio contract in broadcasting history. Yet there are only 12 documents on LexisNexis that reported it. The New York Times didn't take notice of Rush's $300 million radio contract, but a few weeks later, put Bill Clinton's comparatively measly $10 million book contract on its front page. Meanwhile, in the past week alone, LexisNexis has accumulated more than 50 documents with the words "Rush Limbaugh and hypocrisy." That should make up for the 12 documents on his $300 million radio contract.

The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites.

At least Rush wasn't walking into church carrying a 10-pound Bible before rushing back to the Oval Office for sodomy with Monica Lewinsky. He wasn't enforcing absurd sexual harassment guidelines while dropping his pants in front of a half-dozen subordinates. (Evidently, Clinton wasn't a hypocrite because no one was supposed to take seriously the notion that he respected women or believed in God.)

Rush has hardly been the anti-drug crusader liberals suggest. Indeed, Rush hasn't had much to say about drugs at all since that spinal operation. The Rush Limbaugh quote that has been endlessly recited in the last week to prove Rush's rank "hypocrisy" is this, made eight years ago: "Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

What precisely are liberals proposing that Rush should have said to avoid their indignant squeals of "hypocrisy"? Announce his support for the wide and legal availability of a prescription painkiller that may have caused him to go deaf and nearly ruined his career and wrecked his life? I believe that would have been both evil and hypocritical.

Or is it simply that Rush should not have become addicted to painkillers in the first place? Well, no, I suppose not. You've caught us: Rush has a flaw. And yet, the wily hypocrite does not support flaws!

When a conservative can be the biggest thing in talk radio, earning $30 million a year and attracting 20 million devoted listeners every week – all while addicted to drugs – I'll admit liberals have reason to believe that conservatives are some sort of super-race, incorruptible by original sin. But the only perfect man hasn't walked the Earth for 2,000 years. In liberals' worldview, any conservative who is not Jesus Christ is ipso facto a "hypocrite" for not publicly embracing dissolute behavior the way liberals do.

In fact, Rush's behavior was not all that dissolute. There is a fundamental difference between taking any drug – legal, illegal, prescription, protected by the 21st Amendment or banned by Michael Bloomberg – for kicks and taking a painkiller for pain.

There is a difference morally and a difference legally. While slamming Rush, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz recently told Wolf Blitzer, "Generally, people who illegally buy prescription drugs are not prosecuted, whereas people who illegally buy cocaine and heroin are prosecuted." What would the point be? Just say no to back surgery?

I haven't checked with any Harvard Law professors, but I'm pretty sure that, generally, adulterous drunks who drive off bridges and kill girls are prosecuted. Ah, but Teddy Kennedy supports adultery and public drunkenness – so at least you can't call him a hypocrite! That must provide great consolation to Mary Jo Kopechne's parents.

I have a rule about not feeling sorry for people worth $300 million, but I'm feeling sentimental. Evan Thomas wrote a cover story on Rush for Newsweek this week that was so vicious it read like conservative satire. Thomas called Rush a "schlub," "socially ill at ease," an Elmer Gantry, an actor whose "act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people." He compared Rush to the phony TV evangelist Jim Bakker and recommended that Rush start to "make a virtue out of honesty." (Liberals can lie under oath in legal proceedings and it's a "personal matter." Conservatives must scream their every failing from the rooftops or they are "liars.")

As is standard procedure for profiles of conservatives, Newsweek gathered quotes on Rush from liberals, ex-wives and dumped dates. Covering himself, Thomas ruefully remarked that "it's hard to find many people who really know him." Well, there was me, Evan! But I guess Newsweek didn't have room for the quotes I promptly sent back to the Newsweek researchers. I could have even corrected Newsweek's absurd account of how Rush met his current wife. (It's kind of cute, too: She was a fan who began arguing with him about something he said on air.)

Thomas also made the astute observation that "Rush Limbaugh has always had far more followers than friends." Needless to say, this floored those of us who were shocked to discover that Rush does not have 20 million friends.

So the guy I really feel sorry for is Evan Thomas. How would little Evan fare in any competitive media? Any followers? Any fans? Any readers at all? And he's not even addicted to painkillers! This week, Rush proved his motto: He really can beat liberals with half his brain tied behind his back.

Another piece from Neil Boortz about how the DemaRats want to raise taxes. Remember - repealing the tax cut == raising taxes.

Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman decided that he needed to do something to get some much-needed publicity for his faltering campaign. Well, what the hell! Nothing works better than a little class warfare, so let's give that a try! Lieberman has come up with the absolutely unique idea (yeah, right!) of ... are you ready now? All together .... raising taxes on the rich!

When nothing else works, play the envy card. Lieberman knows that envy is one of the most powerful emotions around, and powerful emotions make powerful tools in the hands of politicians.

Lieberman's income redistribution plan has six main elements:

Raise the tax rates on the two highest income brackets.
Cut the tax rates for middle income families.
To make sure that the evil rich can't take advantage of the lower rates on the first $50,000 or so of their earnings, hit them with an additional 5% surtax. This will bring their tax rates up to nearly 45%. That should teach them to be successful.
Renew the double tax on corporate profits by restoring the taxes on stock dividends.
Bring back the death tax. Whatever government didn't manage to get from you while you're living, it can just take after you're dead.
Expand the hideous income redistribution program known as the Earned Income Tax Credit so more government checks can be written to more wage earners at the middle and lower income levels.
I'm going to break this down for those of you who went to government schools. The higher tax rates on the rich will take even more money from our most productive citizens. The rate on most successful small business owners will be around 45%. The tax cuts for the middle income earners will remove even more Americans from the list of those who actually pay federal income taxes. And the expanded earned income tax credits will mean more government checks for those in the middle and lower income brackets.

Simply put ... Lieberman's tax plan is to take even more money from the evil, hated rich and give that money to the middle and lower income tax brackets. Take the money from those who aren't likely to vote Democrat and give it to those who are. The ultimate goal here is to create a system in which they can get the money from people who's votes they don't need and then spend that money on the people who's votes they do need.

There's something else you need to remember. Those evil rich people who the politicians tell you aren't paying their "fair share?" most of these people are business owners. They have elected to treat all of their business income as personal income. When the government takes more of that personal income away in the form of higher taxes that leaves these businessmen with less money to spend on expanding their businesses and hiring new employees.

Have any of you read "Atlas Shrugged?"

Our pal Neil Boortz comments on giving voting rights to non-citizens who have kids in our schools in San Francisco. I saw councilman Gonzalez interviewed on TV. When asked if this wouldn't set a dangerous precident and lead to calls for non-citizens to vote in all elections (now it is just school district elections) Gonzalez responded that he didn't see a problem with that; that maybe that was something this country should do.

Unbelieveable.

This nutsy idea was started by San Francisco councilman Matt Gonzalez. He wants non-citizen immigrants with children to be allowed to vote in school board elections. He also says that it would be a good idea if these (illegal) aliens could vote in all municipal elections. But wait! This idea isn't that new! In some areas of Illinois and Maryland non-citizens can already vote in local school elections.

Is this going to be the next great liberal movement? It would sure be a good way to cement Democratic power in California, a state where (presumably) citizen voters just voted a Republican into the governor's office. In California there are more births to non-citizens every year than there are to citizens. That should give you an idea as to the potential voting power these non-citizens hold.

I find it odd that immigrants who come to this country to take advantages of our freedoms and economic liberty quickly align themselves with the political party dedicated to the destruction of the very things that brought them here. Democrats are thrilled, though, and the more of these people they can get to the polls, the better.

From RealClearPolitics

TOLERATING RUSH LIMBAUGH: I was one of three panelists on Bruce DuMont's "Beyond the Beltway" radio/television show last night. Bruce had planned on spending the first 20 minutes or so of the program discussing Rush Limbaugh and then moving on to other issues like the California recall election, the war in Iraq, and the 2004 Democrat presidential race.

But within minutes of mentioning Rush's name, the phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree and stayed that way for the next 2 hours. Comments from callers ranged all across the board: everything from "he's a scumbag hypocrite who got what he deserved" all the way to "liberals are liars and cheats with no moral standing on which to judge others." Talk about your rollercoaster.

Anyway, as the only Republican/conservative on the panel, I ended up in the somewhat unenviable position of trying to defend Limbaugh's alleged drug habit. Actually, let me rephrase that. I really didn't defend Rush's actions other than to say I thought that 1) he had a personal problem that required treatment, 2) he made a courageous and poignant effort in addressing the issue on Friday and 3) he should face the consequences of his actions if he's convicted of breaking the law. Maybe this will lead to Rush doing some time, maybe it won't (I'm not a lawyer but I'd be surprised if a first offense will result in Rush going to prison). The point is that Rush Limbaugh shouldn't be above the law.

What I did defend over the course of the show, however, is the predictable argument that conservatives are all hypocrites because they dare to discuss "values" and "morality" and then have the nerve to defend people, including some of the most notable leaders of the movement like Limbaugh and Bill Bennett, whose own personal failings, vices, sins, etc. are exposed.

First, let me say I will concede that, generally speaking, people don't like to be "lectured to." I'll also concede that people have every right to look at an individual's past actions to make a critical evaluation of their positions and/or credibility on a given issue.

But the core of the liberal argument is that in order for anyone to discuss "morality" or "values" of any kind, he or she must be an absolute paragon of virtue in every respect. This is absurd on its face. Taking this argument to its logical conclusion would result in a very small group of people having a very brief discussion on morality in American life - probably somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

I may decide I don't want to take Rush Limbaugh's advice on drugs, Bill Bennett's advice on gambling, or have Bill Clinton give me tips on marriage, but that doesn't mean these men should be automatically disqualified from discussing "values" or "morality" in any way - especially as they relate to the formulation of public policy in this country.

One panelist actually told me the difference between liberals and conservatives is that "we preach tolerance, you preach morality" - as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. I almost laughed. "That's it America! You can be either A) moral and intolerant or B) tolerant and immoral. Make your choice."

In one sense, though, the panelist was correct: the term "tolerance" has become the all encompassing catchphrase of liberals and progressives everywhere. It has, in effect, become their morality.

"Tolerance" used to stand for the simple idea of religious and racial freedom and equality. It used to stand for the concept that while we may not necessarily agree with each other, we would strive to see and respect each other as American citizens, equal in the eyes of God and the law.

Unfortunately, that's only a small part of what "tolerance" stands for today. The word "tolerance" has now been expanded to encompass a whole host of issues, from abortion-on-demand to affirmative action to homosexual marriage to school choice. The list is practically endless.

And by collating all of these various issues under the umbrella of "tolerance," liberals have now defined any opposition to these policies - irrespective of fact, debate or merit - as "intolerant." End of discussion.

This is one reason why, I believe, a good number of liberals have come to see conservatives not just as fellow citizens with a differing world view, but as truly hateful, nasty people who want to roll back the clock to the days of Jim Crow, child labor and back-alley abortions.

It's an astonishing feat, really. Progressives have spent the last few decades carving America up into tiny little pieces, nurturing and germinating a multitude of hyphenated interest groups, and at the same time they've managed to boil everything down to singular litmus test of tolerance.

It's been an effective strategy - especially as practiced in the last decade by Bill Clinton. But the result hasn't been such a good thing for the country. We've now seen the concept of "tolerance" turned on its head. Today "tolerance" is used as a bludgeon to intimidate opponents and stifle debate, and its most devoted practioners are really and truly the least tolerant people in America.

From Thomas Sowell

October 11, 2003

The California recall election and its surrounding hoopla may have confirmed the suspicions of some people in other parts of the country that Californians are crazy. But not all Californians are crazy -- just the most affluent and highly educated ones.

Although the state as a whole voted to remove the disastrous Governor Gray Davis from office by 55 percent to 45 percent, he received a solid majority of support in most of the upscale northern California coastal counties.

In San Mateo County, where the average home costs more than half a million dollars and the environmentalists reign supreme, keeping the vast majority of the land off-limits to building, 63 percent of the voters wanted Gray Davis to remain in office. In even more upscale Marin County, 68 percent of the voters were for Gray Davis. And in San Francisco, the furthest left of them all, no less than 80 percent voted to keep Gray Davis as governor.

There is a certain irony here, since the Democrats like to portray themselves as the party of the working people, with special solicitude for "the children" and for minorities. But working people, families with children and blacks are precisely the kinds of people who have been forced out of these three affluent and politically correct counties.

All three of these ultra-liberal counties have been losing black population since the previous census. Kindergartens in San Mateo County are shutting down for lack of children. The number of children in San Francisco has also gone down since the last census, even though the population of the city as a whole has gone up.

Out in the valleys to which those who are not as affluent have been forced to flee, in order to find something resembling affordable housing, the vote was just as solidly against Davis as it was for him among those further up the income scale. Out where ordinary people live, the vote against Governor Davis was 64 percent in Merced County, 72 percent in Tulare County and 75 percent in Lassen County.

The time is long overdue to get rid of the outdated notion that liberal Democrats represent ordinary people. They represent such special interests as trial lawyers who keep our courts clogged with frivolous lawsuits, busybody environmentalists who think the government should force other people to live the way the greens want them to live, and of course the teachers' unions who think schools exist to provide their members with jobs.

Many of these people are over-educated, in the sense that they have spent many years in institutions which have propagandized them with the politically correct vision of the world -- even if they have not taught them much history, economics, or other mundane things.

Someone has said that people are not born stupid, but are made that way by education. Certainly that is true of what too often passes for education these days. You don't have to be crazy to want to keep Governor Gray Davis in office, but it helps.

This is the same Gray Davis who recently signed a bill to allow illegal aliens to get California driver's licenses. Using driver's licenses as identification, illegal aliens can now do pretty much whatever a citizen can do. Given our lax election laws, that probably includes voting.

Although Governor Davis is best known for the blackouts that his crazy policies on electricity brought on, he has been versatile in the havoc he has wreaked. Nor is he through yet. He could get writer's cramp from all the bills and appointments he signs before leaving office.

What can Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger do for California? Given the Democrats' solid control of the state legislature, Arnold is unlikely to get any laws passed reflecting his own views.

Nevertheless the new governor will have a line-item veto to cut back on some of the reckless spending that California's liberal Democrats specialize in. More than that, Schwarzenegger can use the bully pulpit of his office to educate the public on what is wrong with the bills he vetoes.

In short, he can promote sanity among the electorate, so that they do not keep putting in office the kind of people who make others wonder if Californians are crazy.

Neil Boortz point out the great need to take immediate action on repairing the economy.

In the past year stocks have risen 33% on the New York Stock Exchange. The NASDAQ has risen by 71%. Household income is up, productivity is up, unemployment is down. When in the hell is George Bush going to start paying some attention to our economy?

The media ignored the real WMD news

By Jeff Jacoby, 10/9/2003

DAVID KAY, the US government's top weapons inspector in Iraq, reported last week on his team's first three months of searching for weapons of mass destruction. "We have not yet found stocks of weapons," he testified, nor anything to corroborate "prewar reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW" -- chemical weapons -- "against coalition forces." Moreover, "to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material."

Kay's report drew heavy media attention. "Tonight," began Tom Brokaw on NBC's evening news, "the man in charge of finding those weapons in Iraq, David Kay, went before Congress and said so far he has come up dry: no weapons, no mobile labs, no nuclear weapons or even an advanced program." Brokaw made clear that this was a black eye for the Bush administration, since it justified war on the grounds that "Saddam Hussein had to be overthrown because of his vast stocks of weapons of mass destruction."

The papers struck the same note. "Search in Iraq finds no banned weapons," was The Washington Post's headline the next day.

Other headlines sounded the same note: "No illicit arms found in Iraq, US inspector tells Congress" (New York Times), "Search yields no weapons" (Miami Herald), "US inspectors find no evidence of banned arms" (Baltimore Sun).

But Kay's report was only one summary of WMD findings in Iraq to be released last week. At about the same time that Kay was on Capitol Hill, an international organization called the Iraq Survey Group, or ISG, was disclosing what its highly regarded scientists -- many of them former UN inspectors -- had discovered about Saddam's weapons programs. Far from undermining the administration's rationale for war, many of the ISG's findings strengthened it -- decisively.

It found, for example, that Iraqi officials engaged in "deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs" before, during, and after the war.

It found proof that WMD supplies and facilities had been concealed from UN inspectors, including "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses . . . that contained equipment . . . suitable for continuing" chemical and biological warfare research.

It found, in a grisly echo of Dr. Mengele's sadistic experiments, "a prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials . . . were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN." ISG inspectors interviewed one Iraqi scientist who had hidden in his home "a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B." -- a precursor for botulism toxin, the deadliest poison known. They spoke with a Iraqi chemical weapons official who said Saddam's regime could have produced weaponized mustard gas within two months and Sarin, a lethal nerve agent, within 24 months. And they concluded that only the US invasion stopped Saddam from assembling missiles with ranges of up to 600 miles -- far more than the 90-mile range Iraq was allowed.

There is much more, but the ISG's bottom line removes any doubt that Saddam was in flagrant violation of Security Council Resolution 1441: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."

In short, what President Bush asserted in his State of the Union address -- "The dictator of Iraq is not disarming; to the contrary, he is deceiving" -- has now been confirmed. The ISG has vindicated the administration's case for war: that Saddam continued to flout the UN's explicit mandates; that his WMD programs had not been dismantled; that he went to elaborate lengths to conceal them; and that it was only a matter of time before he used them to unleash another 9/11.

So why did the ISG's highly newsworthy findings get so much less press attention than David Kay's announcement that he hadn't found any WMD weapon stockpiles -- something we already knew anyway? That's a good question. Especially since the Kay report and the ISG report are in fact one and the same.

It's true: There was only one report last week, not two. Kay is head of the 1,200-person ISG, and he briefed Congress on everything his team has learned to date, not just the failure (so far) to find stores of ready-to-fire WMDs. That failure is puzzling, and it raises tough questions about the quality of our prewar intelligence.

But far more significant was what the Kay/ISG inspectors did find: massive evidence that an unrepentant Saddam was in willful defiance of Resolution 1441 right up to the end. That was the menace Bush repeatedly cited -- the threat he said must be crushed before it grew imminent. Kay's report proves he was right. You wouldn't have known it from the headlines.

No Weapons Doesn't Mean No Threat

By Charles Duelfer
Monday, October 6, 2003; Page A23


The Iraq Survey Group headed by David Kay has now made an interim report. Ironically, this group has inherited the obligation previously levied by the United Nations upon Saddam Hussein -- namely, to credibly and verifiably detail Iraq's program of weapons of mass destruction to a skeptical international audience.



The group has had far more access and resources than the U.N. inspectors under Hans Blix and it has been in Iraq longer. How is it faring and what does the interim report tell us? Particularly, does the absence of a major weapons discovery mean that U.N. inspections were working and the war was unnecessary?

Kay states that while no ready-to-use weapons have been found, Iraq is a big country and many depots and other locations are yet to be inspected. However, the Kay report does list evidence of continuing research and development (though not production) in each weapon category. It also describes activities and equipment that Iraq failed to declare to the United Nations and that were not discovered by the inspectors.

Future reports will have to show in verifiable detail the extent of these prohibited programs, but these findings will not greatly surprise experienced U.N. inspectors. Hussein had long differentiated between retaining weapons and sustaining the capability to produce weapons. Experience has also shown that Iraq tended to pursue whatever relevant research was allowed or was deemed undetectable.

The apparent absence of existing weapons stocks, therefore, does not mean Hussein did not pose a WMD threat. In fact, fragments of evidence in Kay's report about ongoing biological weapons research suggest that Hussein may have had a quick "break-out" capacity to threaten his neighbors and, indeed, the United States with biological agents (possibly including infectious agents).

But clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war. Large stocks of chemical and biological munitions have not been found. The WMD threat appears to have been longer term. Assuming this finding does not change, it will be very important for the Iraq Survey Group to establish when all agents and weapons were eliminated. It will also be important to analyze why the picture Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the Security Council in February was so far off the mark.

Future reports will also have to demonstrate what facts about the Iraq WMD program the U.N. teams missed and how Hussein's regime acted to thwart the efforts of the United Nations. This latter issue is vital. Kay makes mention of the Iraqi concealment and deception as one reason why he has found so little. The first U.N. inspection team (UNSCOM) pursued a controversial program to investigate what we termed the Iraqi concealment mechanism. The goal was to show how the enormous resources of Iraq's security and intelligence apparatus undermined the inspection teams. We accumulated evidence that presidential secretary Abed Hamid Mahmoud, now in U.S. custody, directed a government-wide effort to contain inspection activity. This included penetrating the U.N. inspection teams and even obtaining assistance from other prominent countries to fend off the inspectors. Conducting surprise inspections had become almost impossible.

The Iraq Survey Group should now have access to the records and participants of the former regime. Future reports must provide a clear description of the Iraqi system for containing inspector activity. This is necessary to inform judgments about the effectiveness of the U.N. inspections. The argument is made that if no weapons were found in Iraq, then maybe the U.N. inspection process was successfully containing Hussein and, therefore, the war was unnecessary.

This will be proven wrong if the Iraq Survey Group can show that Hussein could outlast and outwit the efforts of the Security Council to keep him from ever obtaining WMD. While the inspection system may have appeared to be successful at a given point, it was not sustainable and eventually the U.N. Security Council would lose focus. Kay's group needs to document the strategy that Hussein's regime was pursuing to counter and erode the U.N. disarmament measures.

The Bush administration appears committed to developing a full picture of the Iraqi weapons program, even if it turns out to be less than was forecast. This task in Iraq, like so many others, is made much more difficult because of early mistakes. Key sites were left unsecured and looters destroyed much evidence. Tons of documents were collected haphazardly, and now they have to be sorted out by experts and linguists -- an extremely time-consuming process.

Finally, the Iraqis who are most knowledgeable have been living in fear of arrest by the Americans or death from various internal Iraqi threats. Most of the WMD program leaders have spent the summer in jail. The second-tier scientists and engineers fear the night when U.S. military surround their homes and take them away to face an unknown future. They do not find much incentive to cooperate.

Kay appears to be making necessary course corrections, and a full verifiable description of Hussein's programs and policies should be forthcoming. It will have to be meticulous. There are many very knowledgeable people in the audience, including U.N. inspectors and former Iraqi officials, who will ultimately pass judgment on its veracity.

The writer, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, was deputy chairman of UNSCOM, the first U.N. Iraq inspection organization, from 1993 to 2000.

Why wasn't Davis investigated too?

By Jill Stewart


I couldn't have been more shocked to see the lurid stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger and the things several women allege he uttered or did to them. But it wasn't over the allegations, which I had read much of in a magazine before. I was most shocked at the Los Angeles Times.

Some politicos dub the Thursday before a big election "Dirty Tricks Thursday." That's the best day for an opponent to unload his bag of filth against another candidate, getting maximum headlines, while giving his stunned opponent no time to credibly investigate or respond to the charges.

It creates a Black Friday, where the candidate spends a precious business day right before the election desperately investigating the accusations, before facing a weekend in which reporters only care about further accusations that invariably spill out of the woodwork.

Dirty Tricks Thursday is not used by the media to sink a campaign.

Yet the Times managed to give every appearance of trying to do so. It's nothing short of journalistic malpractice when a paper mounts a last-minute attack that can make or break one of the most important elections in California history. The Times looked even more biased by giving two different reasons for publishing its gruesome article at the last minute.

Now, there's no time left before the election to separate fact from fiction regarding incidents that happened as long as 20 and 30 years ago.

I should disclose here that I know one of Schwarzenegger's accusers. She is a friendly acquaintance. I have no idea whether she was actually man-handled.

Is it possible that my acquaintance told friends a tall tale, after meeting Schwarzenegger, because back then it made a young woman terribly exotic if one of the hottest beefcakes in the world wouldn't keep his paws off you?

I have no idea.

Or, could she be telling the truth?

I have no idea.

And neither does the Los Angeles Times.

If the Times were a tabloid, this would hardly matter. But the newspaper is influential at times, and claims it has high standards. In this case, the paper gave in to its bias against Schwarzenegger:

Here's my proof:

Since at least 1997, the Times has been sitting on information that Gov. Gray Davis is an "office batterer" who has attacked female members of his staff, thrown objects at subservients and launched into red-faced fits, screaming the f-word until staffers cower.

I published a lengthy article on Davis and his bizarre dual personality at the now-defunct New Times Los Angeles on Nov. 27, 1997, as well as several articles with similar information later on.

The Times was onto the story, too, and we crossed paths. My article, headlined "Closet Wacko Vs. Mega Fibber," detailed how Davis flew into a rage one day because female staffers had rearranged framed artwork on the walls of his office.

He so violently shoved his loyal, 62-year-old secretary out of a doorway that she suffered a breakdown and refused to ever work in the same room with him. She worked at home, in an arrangement with state officials, then worked in a separate area where she was promised Davis would not go. She finally transferred to another job, desperate to avoid him.

He left a message on her phone machine. Not an apology. Just a request that she resume work, with the comment, "You know how I am."

Another woman, a policy analyst, had the unhappy chore in the mid-1990s of informing Davis that a fund-raising source had dried up. When she told Davis, she recounted, Davis began screaming the f-word at the top of his lungs.

The woman stood to demand that he stop speaking that way, and, she says, Davis grabbed her by her shoulders and "shook me until my teeth rattled. I was so stunned I said, 'Good God, Gray! Stop and look at what you are doing. Think what you are doing to me!"'

After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources.

Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger.

Weeks ago, Times editors sent two teams of reporters to dig dirt on Schwarzenegger, one on his admitted use of steroids as a bodybuilder, one on the old charges of groping women from Premiere Magazine.

Who did the editors assign, weeks ago, to investigate Davis' violence against women who work for him?

Nobody.

The paper's protection of Davis is proof, on its face, of gross bias. If Schwarzenegger is elected governor, it should be no surprise if Times reporters judge him far more harshly than they ever judged Davis.

Jill Stewart is a print, radio and television commentator on California politics. She can be reached via her Web site, www.jillstewart.net

Liberal bias in the media - heck, they're blatantly open about it!

Gore close to cable buy

Call him Al Gore, media baron.
The former vice president is close to striking a $70 million deal to acquire Newsworld International, a tiny cable network owned by French media giant Vivendi Universal, media sources said.

Gore and his backers want to turn the digital channel into a liberal-leaning network. His partners include ex-Democratic fund-raiser Joel Hyatt and media investment banker Steve Rattner, who's said to be lining up financing.

Carried in just 20 million homes, NWI airs newscasts from around the world, including reports from the Canadian Broadcasting Co. The net is part of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, the show biz empire that's about to be acquired by NBC.

Reps for Vivendi and Gore declined to comment.

More on the CIA name leak ...

White House under attack

By Helle Dale
"Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both." Those are the words of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who will certainly be a household name for weeks to come.
Chances are very good that we will never know who from the White House leaked the information about Mr. Wilson and his wife to members of the press. For one thing, that's the nature of leak investigations. Journalists don't reveal their sources, and sources have a way of disappearing into the mahogany paneling in the halls of power here in Washington. Most of such investigations end inconclusively.
What we do know is that damage is being done to the reputation of the Bush White House by the controversy over the leak. President Bush came into office with the promise to bring honor and integrity to the office of the presidency after the Clinton impeachment trial, and here we are now with calls for independent prosecutors coming fast and furious from Democrats, who hated the idea when Bill Clinton was the target.
In a politically sound move, and as soon as the CIA reported that "two senior administration officials" had given the name of an agent (i.e. Mr. Wilson's wife) to journalists, the White House lost no time facilitating the leak investigation. It was referred to the Justice Department on Sept. 27. So far, we have seen none of the Clinton-era, Janet Reno-style stone-walling in evidence.
Still, looking at the main players in this case and their statements, there is a sliding scale of truth, which, in the end, will prevent us from knowing what actually happened. Statements shift from moment to moment, and each has his interests to protect. Administration officials obviously do. So do members of the media, especially, columnist Robert Novak, whose article on July 14 caused the initial furor.
Take Mr. Wilson himself, who has been much in evidence on national television screens since this weekend. Could he have an agenda beyond demanding justice?
Well, what would you think of someone who tells people around Washington — as Mr. Wilson did last week — "Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both."
That sounds pretty ugly, doesn't it? It is in fact quite a bit at odds with the reasonable image that Mr. Wilson has been projecting on our television screens in recent days. Mr. Wilson also saw fit back in August to aaccuse presidential adviser Karl Rove of having orchestrated the White House leak. He swore he would see Mr. Rove led out of there "in handcuffs." Now, he says he got carried away by passion and is in possession of no evidence that Mr. Rove was involved.
That Mr. Wilson holds such views in no way excuses the injustice that was done him and his wife Valerie Plame, when a leak to the media identified her as a CIA officer involved in analysis of information regarding weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Wilson — who had been sent to the African country of Niger by the CIA to investigate claims that uranium "yellowcake" had been sold to Iraqi agents — emerged last summer as a severe critic of the Bush administration. He accused the White House of "misrepresenting facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war."
It is for this criticism that Mr. Wilson claims he and his family are being punished. Which may well be true. That would be both illegal and unethical. As Mr. Wilson stated at the time, "Whoever leaked that comment about my wife did it very clearly to smear my good name and my wife's good name." He has not himself, however, had any compunction about smearing Mr. Rove's good name without any evidence.
Now, Mr. Bush might well be able to get this whole affair behind him by finding a scapegoat to fire — had it not been that revealing the identity of a CIA officer is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A simple dismissal would not put an end to the matter.
So, here is another suggestion to get to the bottom of this mess before our policy in Iraq becomes a victim of Washington's politics of long knives. Let's polygraph the whole bunch —White House officials, media types, CIA officials. At the CIA, they at least allow agents who have been accused an "exculpatory polygraph test." In the Washington political jungle, that may be the only way of getting at the facts.

From the WSJ OpinionJournal:

Kennedy vs. Kennedy
A Democratic congressman from Rhode Island is criticizing Sen. Edward Kennedy for his unsober remarks about President Bush and Iraq. "I don't agree with his stance," the Boston Herald quotes the Rhode Island congressman as saying of Kennedy. "I believe that the U.N. needs to be a viable international organization and the only way it is viable is if its proclamations and resolutions are enforced."

If Saddam Hussein lacked weapons of mass destruction, the Rhode Islander asks, "then how come he gassed all his people with them? The fact is, he definitely had them. Whether he destroyed them or not is up for debate. But he had them and he's got a propensity for invading neighboring countries and causing instability in a part of the world [where] we can't afford to have a lot of instability."