Lousy reason to interrupt my "We Three Kings" autorepeat singalong.

More war.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Sunday he was waging war against Somalia's Islamists to protect his country's sovereignty, intensifying a conflict that threatens to engulf the Horn of Africa.

It was Ethiopia's first public admission of military involvement in Somalia, where for the first time it sent warplanes on Sunday to pound the Islamist fighters now encircling the weak interim government.

. . .

U.N. aid agencies said the conflict would have disastrous consequences for efforts to supply food and aid to 1.4 million people suffering from the floods.

I have nothing to add. Or just, God bless us, every one.

Have a very merry Christmas!

To those of you of Christmassy orientation, at any rate. [Maybe next year I'll actually remember Hanukkah and Kwanzaa when they hit . . . .]

What the hell?

Okay, when this story first broke, I assumed there'd be some innocent explanation, and just ignored it. It was altogether too strange to take at face value, right?

. . .

I was in error.

President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.

. . .

Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the correct classified materials.

Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, said in a statement that the contents of all the documents exist today and were made available to the commission.

But Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., outgoing chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said he's not convinced that the Archives can account for all the documents taken by Berger. Davis said working papers of National Security Council staff members are not inventoried by the Archives.

"There is absolutely no way to determine if Berger swiped any of these original documents. Consequently, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials," Davis said.

Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. He was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

That strikes me as being rather generous.

More signs of life in Iran.

The Iranian student movement, which planned the 1979 seizure of the United States Embassy from the same university, Amir Kabir, is reawakening from the slumber of recent years and may even be spearheading a widespread resistance against Mr. Ahmadinejad. This time the catalysts were academic and personal freedom.

“It is not that simple to break up a president’s speech,” said Alireza Siassirad, a former student political organizer, explaining that an event of that magnitude takes meticulous planning. “I think what happened at Amir Kabir is a very important and a dangerous sign. Students are definitely becoming active again.”

The protest, punctuated by shouts of “Death to the dictator,” was the first widely publicized outcry against Mr. Ahmadinejad, one that was reflected Friday in local elections, where voters turned out in droves to vote for his opponents.

The students’ complaints largely mirrored public frustrations over the president’s crackdown on civil liberties, his blundering economic policies and his harsh oratory against the West, which they fear will isolate the country.

But the students had an additional and potent source of outrage: the president’s campaign to purge the universities of all vestiges of the reform movement of his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.

Last summer the newly installed head of the university, Alireza Rahai, ordered the demolition of the office of the Islamic Association, which had been the core of student political activities on campus since 1963 and had matured into a moderate, pro-reform group.

Since then, students say, more than 100 liberal professors have been forced into retirement and many popular figures have been demoted. At least 70 students were suspended for political activities, and two were jailed. Some 30 students were given warnings, and a prominent Ph.D. candidate, Matin Meshkin, was barred from finishing his studies.

The students also complain about overcrowded and crumbling dormitories and proscriptions against women wearing makeup or bright colors, rules that were relaxed when Mr. Khatami came to power in 1997.

It really does bear repeated emphasis: Mr. Ahmadinejad doesn't have a whole lot of direct control over Iranian foreign policy, no matter how loudly he squawks. Instead, his fingerprints are mostly on domestic policy - and there he's incompetent, intransigent, and offensively reactionary.

Unless we start dropping bombs on Iranian soil, I can pretty much guarantee there's more of this on the way.

Zimbabwe: the hellaciously bad and the reward.

Okay, both these points are old news - all I can say in my defense is that it's Christmastime, and I've been sick, and . . . um . . . look. Elephant.

Anyway, I stumbled onto both newsflashes via Obsidian Wings, and for one of them I'm gonna link to the Wings commentary rather than the original source, `cause, man, this deserves every layer of horrified commentary that can be applied. The summary, for those who can't stomach the details: Zimbabwe's female life expectancy might be on the verge of a drop from its current, oh-so-robust 34 to something like 20. Why? Because the lack of sanitary napkins/tampons/what have you is forcing women to use old newspapers, dirty rags, and tree fiber, making them rather more prone to infection - and, of course, delivering wounds that aid in the transmission of HIV. Meanwhile, pubescent girls are missing school, female members of the workforce are dropping out when their periods hit, and the economy - already in shambles - is taking little beatings from more angles than any ten economists could likely catalogue.

And, again, let's not overlook the fact that the average life span of a Zimbabwean woman is only 34 to begin with.

So, naturally, Robert Mugabe has declared that he's gonna spend another two years in office after all; presidential elections, and the old dog's retirement, have been pushed back (or are in the process of being pushed back) from 2008 to 2010.

God help the people.

Primary sources.

Muqtada al-Sadr: autocratic mastermind or frazzled thug in over his head? You decide!

This doesn't say anything conclusive about anything, but it does show me that I've been making a kind of mistake I grumble about in other contexts - specifically Syria. It's become fairly routine for our professional pundit class to attribute most of Syria's most appalling decisions personally to Bashar al-Assad, but I have the sense that that presumes facts not in evidence. Bashar wasn't a political figure in Syria for most of his father's reign - the designated heir was his (now deceased) brother Basil - and from what I can tell he led a very Western kind of life, with a British-born wife and some kind of medical credentials (he was an ophthalmologist, maybe?), and then when authentic gargoyle Hafez al-Assad died, a group of Syrian generals swept the kid (okay, he was thirty-four or thirty-five) up and designated him figurehead. There were some early signs of political relaxation and liberalization at that point, and then after a year the state cracked back down on its unhappy public.

So, this guy. Maybe he's a monster, and maybe he's gotten his hands firmly on the reins of power since 2000 - but I don't think anybody knows for sure. Given that, making him the face of eeeeevil for that corner of the region is kind of dangerous - it makes us less inclined to watch for alternative centers of power, and it makes us more likely to misread the politics and the logic behind any given decision. All I want is a bit of clear-headedness.

And here I've been, talking about the Mahdi Army as though it was primarily Muqtada al-Sadr's tool for political advancement.

My mistake.

By the way, I don't really understand this one.

President Bush signed legislation on Monday to let America share its nuclear know-how and fuel with India even though New Delhi refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

I know both parties supported it in Congress, but - given the place Pakistan holds in American foreign policy as it pertains to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda - is this really the best time to be holding India's hand as it amplifies its nuclear resources? The law itself might be perfectly reasonable, but the diplomatic messages it sends are complicated and a little bit dangerous.

Oh, well.

Out of control.

The New York Times has a piece up today on a couple of American security contractors who found themselves suspected of crimes they didn't commit, wrongly imprisoned, stripped of their rights, sleep-deprived, and kept in such isolation that their families and loved ones were running letter-writing campaigns to Congress to determine whether they were alive. They were, of course, in the custody of the U.S.

Remember, gang, we're doing all this to advance the cause of freedom.

The latest victory in the War on Science!

The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.

New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

. . .

Some agency scientists, who until now have felt free from any political interference, worry that the objectivity of their work could be compromised.

"I feel as though we've got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that's a very scary thing. I worry that it borders on censorship," said Jim Estes, an internationally recognized marine biologist in the USGS field station at Santa Cruz, Calif.

"The explanation was that this was intended to ensure the highest possible quality research," said Estes, a researcher at the agency for more than 30 years. "But to me it feels like they're doing this to keep us under their thumbs. It seems like they're afraid of science. Our findings could be embarrassing to the administration."

The new requirements state that the USGS's communications office must be "alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature."

. . .

The changes amount to an overhaul of commonly accepted procedures for all scientists, not just those in government, based on anonymous peer reviews. In that process, scientists critique each other's findings to determine whether they deserve to be published.

From now on, USGS supervisors will demand to see the comments of outside peer reviewers' as well any exchanges between the scientists who are seeking to publish their findings and the reviewers.

The full article's over here.

And from Iran?

Genuinely genuinely good news: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just been embarrassed in the latest elections.

Iran's moderate former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has won election to Iran's powerful clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, results show.

With more than half the votes counted, Mr Rafsanjani, who was defeated in the 2005 presidential election, had a clear lead at the top of the list.

The election - and simultaneous local polls - was seen as a test of support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Early results suggest liberals and moderates have regained some influence.

Mr. Rafsanjani has a certain reputation for crookedness, deserved or otherwise, but he's not a lunatic. So, yay.

The Assembly of Experts, by the way, is the outfit that selects and monitors Iran's Supreme Leader - in this generation, that's Ayatollah Khameini. Mr. Khameini is currently sixty-seven, and this Assembly of Experts is to be empaneled for ten years - your guess is as good as mine as to the odds of a change at the top being needed in its lifetime, but I think we can at least say they're not negligible.

As for the regional showdowns:

Friday's main battleground was Tehran City Council, where Ahmadinejad supporters competed against backers of a more moderate conservative, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Final results for Tehran are not expected until Tuesday but partial tallies reported by Iranian news agencies showed Qalibaf's group dominating with about nine of the 15 seats.

The rest were split between Ahmadinejad backers and the pro-reform camp, seeking a comeback after being routed in a series of polls.

Reformists said they had won at least six Tehran seats, and demanded election officials announce the results. They said the delay raised questions about the counting process.

"We have serious doubts about whether these problems are due to a lack of organization at the Interior Ministry or whether there are some efforts to tamper with votes," Mohammad Ali Najafi, a reformist candidate in Tehran, told Reuters.

Seriously, this is a welcome sign of sanity from a complicated part of the world. Now we can all just hope it doesn't get sabotaged.

Genuinely good news from Iraq?

Maybe.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite-dominated government reached out to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime Saturday, inviting them to claim government pensions and rejoin the army in a gesture meant to calm the country's sectarian passions.

"The Iraqi army opens its doors to officers and soldiers from the former army who wish to serve the country," al-Maliki said during a national reconciliation conference of politicians and sectarian leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

. . .

Supporters of the plan said it will not only dispel simmering Sunni unrest by giving the once-powerful sect a positive role in Iraqi society, but also raise the skill level of the army, which has been criticized for its dependence on U.S. forces.

It may be too late to do any good, but it's at least a move that isn't inspiring me to smash my head into my keyboard - rare enough to deserve a mention.

More from Abeworld.

In a move that raised concerns about the news media’s freedom, Mr. Abe recently ordered the public broadcaster, NHK, to further emphasize abductions [Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea] in its international radio broadcasts. NHK agreed, even though it had already been devoting about a third of its news content to the topic in the first nine months of this year, according to NHK.

The National Police Agency announced last month that it had identified yet another Japanese abductee, Kyoko Matsumoto, the 17th. The police offered no fresh evidence to back up its announcement. Its chief, Iwao Uruma, said simply of the abduction issue, “I want to send a signal that Japan has not forgotten about it.”

. . .

Later, in an interview in Tokyo, Mr. Araki said he believed the decision to name Ms. Matsumoto was a political one. “I think there was almost no new information,” he said of the police investigation. “The Abe administration came into power and told everyone to do something, and so the police offered this card.”

In an interview inside his home in Yonago, Hajime Matsumoto, 59, the brother, said the family was relieved that Ms. Matsumoto had finally been recognized as an abductee. He said he felt uncomfortable that nationalists were trying to advance their causes through unresolved abductions, but he was also philosophical about it.

“In a sense, that can’t be helped,” he said. “For example, if they try to work on educational issues and constitutional revision without the abduction issue, I think it would be extremely difficult to make a breakthrough in Parliament.”

“It’s easier for them to put a substantial agenda on the table and place an issue like the abduction issue on top, grouping four or five issues together,” he said. “It’s a means to an end.”

Indeed, this week Mr. Abe’s governing Liberal Democrat Party passed an education law that emphasizes patriotism, moral values and the public good. The government built support for the law by paying people to ask leading questions and make supportive statements at town meetings across the country, a government report said.

. . .

“The abduction issue is something that everyone, even schoolchildren, can understand,” said Yoneyuki Sugita, a historian at Osaka University. “Prime Minister Abe is using this issue to try to carry out certain political goals. North Korea is evil, and to respond against it, he is effectively saying that Japan must revise its Constitution and promote patriotism in its schools. This is the direction in which he is pushing this country. This has been very successful.”

“But it’s also very dangerous,” said Mr. Sugita, who received threats from the right wing after publishing an essay on this subject. “It’s become such an emotional issue, and fanned nationalism in such a way, that it has already encroached on freedom of speech.”

Now, clearly, there are separate issues on the table here: North Korea has snatched Japanese citizens, has failed to account satisfactorily for all of them, and is therefore a criminal regime - even setting aside all of the country's nuclear follies, and the atrocities to which it subjects its own citizens. This really should be the subject of a global outcry; we should all be pounding on the doors until the North Korean government returns every last strand of Japanese hair it took, along with apologies and whatever reimbursement the cesspit can produce.

But Mr. Abe's campaign is apparently largely about something else; he wants his citizens scared and angry so that they won't notice as he slowly poisons them. This is not a hard principle to grasp: when a government manipulates its citizens in order to help enact policies designed to make said citizens less aware of their history and the nature of their relationships with the world around them, this government is doing something wrong. Another subtle hint comes from the fact that its allies burn down people's houses.

Check the hopes and dreams of an Abe supporter:

In Mr. Abe, Mr. Imaoka said he believed he had a leader who would redress what he saw as the perversions of postwar Japan, like the overemphasis on individualism and loss of male prerogative, which, to him, had given women and children too many rights.

Yep. The loss of male prerogative. That's what's been dragging Japan down.

If I'm giving more space to Shinzo Abe's crowd than to Kim Jong-Il's, it's only because I like Japan more, and it has farther to fall.

Sometimes you gotta lie . . .

. . . if you're gonna get the chance to lie somewhere else.

Yes, we turn now to my old nemesis, Shinzo Abe, whose standing in Japan has taken a hit following revelations that - under Junichiro Koizumi - he arranged for some good, old-fashioned bogus political theater to help move Japanese society a bit closer to embracing the admirable goal of pretending all the bad parts of World War II were somebody else's fault.

They were supposed to be exercises in grass-roots democracy, events during which Japan’s political leaders met and talked with voters more accustomed to a political system in which decisions were simply handed down.

The government even baptized them “town meetings,” or “TM,” using English to suggest perhaps that they were something so new, so revolutionary, that their essence could hardly be captured in Japanese.

But a government report released Wednesday concluded that two-thirds of the town meetings organized by the Japanese government since 2001 were Soviet-style performances with people paid to ask planted questions — favorable to the government.

The report was the latest blow for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose approval ratings have plummeted to below 50 percent because he has backed off on political and economic changes undertaken by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. The town meetings took place during Mr. Koizumi’s administration, but Mr. Abe had been in charge of the meetings as chief cabinet secretary.

Out of 174 meetings, 115, or 66 percent, were staged in some fashion. In 71 meetings, organizers mobilized participants and, in at least one case, excluded a perceived troublemaker who had spoken in a loud voice and held posters in previous meetings. In 29 meetings, government officials posing as audience members asked questions; in 15, organizers coached audience members.

In total, 65 people were paid $43 each to ask questions, according to the report, which was commissioned after earlier revelations about planted questions.

The prearranged questions raised concerns that “public opinion was being misled in order to instill government policy,” the report said.

In six town meetings focusing on education, the government coached audience members to ask questions that advanced the government’s goal to bring patriotism, discipline and moral values to public schools. Revising the Fundamental Law of Education, which was drafted in 1947 during the American occupation to prevent a revival of prewar nationalism, is one of the main goals in Mr. Abe’s conservative agenda, which also includes revising the American-imposed pacifist Constitution.

“It is extremely unfortunate that this happened, and the people in charge must take responsibility,” said Mr. Abe, who said he would forfeit three months of his salary.

Extremely unfortunate. Really, you have no idea how bad a day Mr. Abe was having when all this started - he stepped in a puddle on the way to work, and then his favorite food dispenser took all his yen and didn't give him so much as a stick of pocky, and then he accidentally launched a lengthy campaign designed to mislead the Japanese public, and then his pen broke in his shirt pocket and dyed his right nipple blue!

You gotta hate when that happens.

And, anyway, doing nothing has worked so well for us!

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday rejected a bipartisan panel's recommendation that the United States seek the help of Syria and Iran in Iraq, saying the "compensation" required by any deal might be too high. She argued that neither country should need incentives to foster stability in Iraq.

"If they have an interest in a stable Iraq, they will do it anyway," Rice said in a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post reporters and editors. She said she did not want to trade away Lebanese sovereignty to Syria or allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon as a price for peace in Iraq.

Because, of course, diplomatic contact would inevitably lead to Syria and Iran getting everything they ever wanted. Conversation equals surrender!

These guys just never fail to weaken themselves; every chance they get, they repeat the message that anything short of absolute domination weakens them. It'd be restrictive enough even if they had a realistic sense of what they could achieve and went about it effectively, but they don't. They're not nearly that smart. Implicit in what Ms. Rice is saying here is that the Bush administration will deal directly with Iraq's most influential neighbors only if said neighbors first independently come to the conclusion that the United States is the Light and the Way and then come to us and do a little bit of public groveling so that they can be allowed to help us on our own terms. It's not unrealistic so much as unhinged, and they commit themselves to it over and over and over again.

And let's stress: we're six years in now. Any defense of this approach has to begin by confronting the simple fact that it has failed disastrously right on down the line.

And yet here we are.

Rice's remarks indicated that, despite a maelstrom of criticism of Bush's policies by outside experts and Democrats, the administration's extensive review of policy in Iraq and the region will not yield major changes in its approach. Rice said that Bush could be "quite expansive" in terms of a policy review and that the new plan would be a "departure." But the president will not radically change any of his long-term goals or commitment to Iraq, she said.

Indeed, Rice argued that the Middle East is being rearranged in ways that provide the United States with new opportunities, what she repeatedly called a "new strategic context."

She said the range of struggles in the Middle East, such as the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the conflict between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, and strife in Iraq, represents a "clarifying moment" between extremists and what she called mainstream Arabs.

"This is a time for pushing and consulting and pressing and seeing what we can do to take advantage of this new strategic context," Rice said.

Making things worse actually makes it more likely that cool heads will prevail! Up is down! Black is white! When Sunnis and Shi'ites spark a regional war, President Bush's wisdom will be made clear!

Science Strikes Back!

Thankfully, Hitler's brain is in no way involved.

Some 10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting about political interference in the scientific process.

The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy.

According to the American Union of Concerned Scientists, data is being misrepresented for political reasons.

It claims scientists working for federal agencies have been asked to change data to fit policy initiatives.

The Union has released an "A to Z" guide that it says documents dozens of recent allegations involving censorship and political interference in federal science, covering issues ranging from global warming to sex education.

Campaigners say that in recent years the White House has been able to censor the work of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration because a Republican congress has been loath to stand up for scientific integrity.

. . .

Michael Halpern from the UCS said the statement of objection to political interference had been supported by researchers regardless of their political views.

"This science statement that has now been signed by the 10,000 scientists is signed by science advisers to both Republican and Democratic administrations dating back to President Eisenhower, stating that this is not business as usual and calling for this practice to stop," he told BBC News.

From the BBC.

Please get better soon, Senator Johnson.

Meanwhile, more joy out of Mogadishu.

The inevitability of war hangs over Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked seaside capital. But unlike the internal anarchy that has consumed the country for 15 years, the looming battle is now with Ethiopia, threatening to further destabilize the troubled Horn of Africa.

In the past week the increasingly militant Islamists in control of Mogadishu and much of the rest of the country have begun a food drive, a money drive and an AK-47 assault rifle drive, and have sent doctors and nurses, along with countless young soldiers, to the front lines.

For its part, Ethiopia, with tacit approval from the United States, has been steadily slipping soldiers across the border, trying to hold off the Islamists and shore up Somalia’s weak, unpopular and divided transitional government.

Though that government has been recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate authority in Somalia, its power barely extends to the municipal limits of Baidoa, the inland town where it is based.

The Islamist forces, on the other hand, seem to be very popular here, having defeated Mogadishu’s warlords earlier this year to pacify one of the world’s most murderous cities.

Their troops, which United Nations officials say are secretly getting weapons from several Arab countries and Eritrea, have encircled Baidoa and are vowing to wage war against the Ethiopian forces unless they leave. Ethiopian convoys have been attacked, and the Islamists recently skirmished with soldiers from Baidoa, with dozens reported killed. That taste of war seems to have whetted the appetite for more.

More here.

Scary stuff.

Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, is apparently still in surgery. Yesterday, he fell ill with "stroke-like symptoms" (but not, at last report, an actual stroke or a heart attack) while working, and he's been hospitalized for several hours. There doesn't seem to be anything more about his condition to report right now than that.

For all my political obsessing, I didn't figure out the possible consequences of this until the blogosphere spat them out at me: the Democrats could lose the Senate. South Dakota law apparently says this . . .

12-11-4. Temporary appointment by Governor to fill vacancy in United States Senate. Pursuant to the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the Governor may fill by temporary appointment, until a special election is held pursuant to this chapter, vacancies in the office of senator in the Senate of the United States.

12-11-5. Special election to fill senate vacancy. The special election to fill the vacancy of a senator shall be held at the same time as the next general election.

. . . and Governor Rounds is a Republican. That said, there's apparently some institutional precedent for the party with the majority at the start of the Congressional session to retain its chairmanships and administrative powers in the event of sudden change, so, hey, there's a whole new dimension of uncertainty now.

The political dimensions here don't outweigh the personal - I'd rather have the man alive and recovering than holding his seat at any further cost to his health - but it should still be said that this generation of Republican-led government has led to shame and disaster, and if whatever happens here expands their powers for another two years then the initial tragedy is going to be multiplied a million times over.

Good luck to the senator.

If I'm gonna knock Japan for spinning its role in WW2 . . .

. . . I'm pretty much obligated to flag this ugliness from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and company.

A gathering in Iran billed as a conference to “debate” the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews continued on its second day to spark outrage in the West, drawing fierce criticism today from European leaders, the Vatican and the White House.

The hail of criticism came as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told participants of the conference in Tehran today that a committee should be set up to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred. Among the more than 60 participants in the conference was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who asserted today that Israel feared an inquiry into the Holocaust more than it did the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons.

Any chance we can keep David Duke in Iran for the next few decades? Maybe tell him he won a free vacation?

Sigh.

Back when Mr. Ahmadinejad was starting his ascent, I read an article (I think in the New Republic) that traced out a bit of his personal history. If I recall correctly, his job during Iran's war with Iraq was to teach kids to walk out into minefields to clear the way for proper troops. I don't know if he was born damaged, raised badly, or took to destruction as a career choice, but I don't get the sense that this is a man who's brought much good to the world in the course of his adult life.

The fact that he's a monster shouldn't distract us from the fact that an awful lot of what he believes is completely preposterous, though. Voice of America should probably be piping translated late-night comedy routines about this idiot into Iran three times an hour . . . .

The Washington Post editorial page is run by monkeys.

Actually, it's worse. It's run by Fred Hiatt.

Here's how the Post wrapped up its official apologia for Augusto Pinochet:

The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

Yes, and that's why we'd all choose to live in Bolivia thirty-some years after Hugo Banzer instead of modern Prague. `Cause right-wing dictators always do better for their countries in the long run than left-wing dictators.

Look, clearly, it's a fatuous generalization. The Post wants to say that Chile turned out mostly all right, while Cuba is Cuba, and, well, okay - but the congratulatory air with which Mr. Pinochet's sins are set aside and the hurry to codify Ms. Kirkpatrick's thesis aren't cool at all. What's particularly galling about it is that it probably doesn't even fully reflect the more serious thoughts at the `paper; it's just an oh-so-clever way to tie a bunch of current events together into one thematic bombshell. It's the sort of thing a high school kid might do, just to win points on style.

Or else it's a sign of really poor thinking at the most fundamental level. Either way, it's well below what I expect from the editorial pool of a great paper.

Just about par for the course for the Post these days, though.

Quick follow-up.

A day or so ago, I posted a short critique of the "bipartisan" angle of the report on the misdoings surrounding the sexual adventures of ex-Rep. Mark Foley. Accusing Democratic operatives of malfeasance in trying to get the story to the press seemed kinda weak to me.

Glenn Greenwald has done me the annoying service of highlighting the mistake I made. Maybe trying to sneak the information out was itself legit, but then misrepresenting one's knowledge of it for political gain - if only in one specific, high-profile case - crosses lines that we don't want crossed. We're not talking about the Democratic Party as a whole here, but still . . . .

Bad show, Rahm.

I've got an ethical problem for you.

So, the Post's write-up of the Foley report duly notes that there was some blame going around on the Democratic side of the aisle as well. Sure, the Republican leadership (including Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and - front and center - Jim Kolbe) apparently knew a lot, and did a very aggressive nothing until the story broke on ABC, but the Dems? The Democratic Caucus communications director apparently found out and (gasp) tried to use the story for political gain.

Democrats receive their share of scrutiny in the report. In August 2005, a former page of Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) sent Alexander aide Danielle Savoy e-mails he had received from Foley asking him for a picture and asking what he wanted for his birthday. Savoy passed them on to a friend, who showed them to her boyfriend, Justin Field, who worked for the House Democratic Caucus.

Democratic Caucus communications director Matt Miller saw the e-mails as inappropriate, but rather than taking them to authorities, he shopped them to the press, first to the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times that November, then to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. He also gave the e-mails to the communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a point apparently validating Republican charges that senior Democrats were behind the revelation of Foley's conduct.

So, here's my concern: why didn't the Florida papers follow up on evidence suggesting a local congressman was sexually harassing pages?

`Cause, honestly, the bit about inappropriate behavior on Mr. Miller's part only passes the laugh test if you manage to completely ignore all the context set out in the rest of the article (and the rest of the investigation). The House leadership was either being willfully passive or else actively hushing up Rep. Foley's behavior, and apparently had been for years. Assuming the man's actions didn't rise to the level of criminal malfeasance (which, admittedly, I guess is still up in the air), to which authorities might Mr. Miller have productively turned? The vitiated House Ethics Committee? Jim Kolbe?

I obviously can't attest to Mr. Miller's motives - maybe they were venal and purely partisan. Still, it takes a lot of gall to blame someone for failing to turn to the system in the middle of an extensive report of how the system had been subverted and abused.

So, again, those Florida papers: did their editors think the readers wouldn't care?

Why the 2006 elections were important.

President Bush's victory in getting the rules he wanted to try suspected terrorists could be diminished.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled this week that he'll join prominent Democrats in seeking to restore legal rights to hundreds of suspected terrorists confined at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

While the measure to restore the right of habeas corpus has almost no chance of passing before Congress adjourns later this week, the message is clear: When Democrats take over in early January, the issue could resurface.

More here, with a nod to Andrew Sullivan for finding it in the first place.

Meanwhile, I know I haven't commented on the Baker report since its release - a nice, lingering blackout yesterday shut me down at exactly the time it was most on my mind. Now, though, I'm fairly convinced that there's not much point: from what I can tell, the commission's observations are reasonable, its suggestions might've done some real good had they been made and accepted in 2004, and the president is likely to do everything in his power to convince the American public he's learned his lesson while steadfastly rejecting any drastic change. So what is there to say?

They really want to believe.

Okay, so I opened this morning's Washington Post, and - lo and behold - I found the Op/Ed page devoted five columns out of six to the subject of the Baker Commission report and our future plans for Iraq. [The sixth column, I should add, seemed to be about using the Baker Commission as an inspiration for a Clinton-McCain Social Security commission.]

Considering today's release an opportunity to stage some much-needed public discussion on Iraq is by no means unreasonable - or even unwelcome. That said, I have the sense that the political classes of Washington may be suffering from overly high expectations; after all, they've got a genuine, old school éminence grise in James Baker, and they're getting that ol' bipartisanship fetish stroked in a way poor Joe Lieberman and John McCain haven't been able to manage for years. On a superficial level, everything's working the way the Post editorial board's script would have it work, and in the next scene the heroes step up, demonstrate their wisdom, and save the nation.

That'd be great, but - much as I hate to say it - the Bush administration makes some legitimate points in trying to cover its collective ass. This is a Congressional commission with no real authority, and probably not as much regional expertise as a couple of really good universities could scrape together; whatever the commission members say may well be instructive, but any government would be derelict in its duties if it simply substituted the judgement of a bunch of outsiders for its own.

But, of course, I think we can expect this government to be derelict in its duties in the opposite way: I expect any recommendations that would make George W. Bush fidget will ultimately be abandoned without reflection. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't expect to be; the president and Tony Snow have both been signaling for some time that executive hubris remains unshaken.

I'm afraid some hearts may be broken at the Washington Post over the next few days.

And then, the not-so-good news.

In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.”

Thanks go to Josh Marshall for the link.

Okay, I'm not reflexively of the "get out immediately" school, but I'd like Mr. Reyes to explain exactly what twenty or thirty thousand more troops on the ground are likely to be able to accomplish - apart from further eroding military capacity, anyway. I mean, it's not that our current troops are losing battles because they're short-staffed; what we seem to be lacking, apart from indigenous support, is training capacity and cultural knowledge and intelligence. We can't get the Iraqis to do what we want them to do, basically.

Disarming militias is an entirely worthy goal, but I'm afraid that doing it on our own would require a force whole orders of magnitude larger than what we've got; we'd need to secure and sustain peace over the entire country for a long enough period of time that Iraqi sects would feel that they no longer needed the militias for defense - we couldn't leave Anbar or Sadr City to fester and explode all over again. We'd probably need to secure the borders in a way we haven't been able to manage so far. And, in fact, we'd pretty much need to overthrow the current government, `cause I can just about guarantee that Muqtada al-Sadr wouldn't be down with disarming the Mahdi Army, and SCIRI would feel the same way about the Badr Brigades. We're talking hundreds of thousands more troops, not tens.

And, of course, it would all be coming at a time when a majority of Iraqi citizens think we're making things worse and should be packing our things, so there probably wouldn't be rose petals strewn on the streets.

If Mr. Reyes can convince me I'm wrong, more power to him. But, as it stands, I'm afraid he's panicking; I'm afraid he's suggesting we do everything we can do, just in the vague hopes that we'll be rewarded and it will somehow be enough.

This is a bad sign - the House Intelligence Commitee chair would be a really good place to have a realist these days. It's not like it's a job where policy is set; it's more a place from which good questions can be asked.

Good questions don't often come from denial.

Not-so-bad news roundup.

Robert Gates, for all my earlier misgivings, earns at least a few points by not being visibly crazy or ill-informed. As the Times so gently puts it . . .

Still, Mr. Gates seems at least game to try to break through the wall. He said that Iraq was only “one of the central fronts” in the war on terror — a departure from the official litany. He said that he did not believe that the president had been given authority — either under the 9/11 war resolution or the Iraq war resolution — to attack Iran or Syria (and would counsel against it). And he said bringing both countries into negotiations about Iraq’s future at least “merits thinking about.”

In any other time that would all be considered pretty bland stuff. But for an aspiring member of this administration, that came close to speaking truth to power.

Exactly.

Now, even if Mr. Gates is, in fact, a grown-up, he can't do much for the country if the president and the vice president don't let him - and who among us really believes that the Little Prince and the Troll are going to change their ways? - but there is reason to believe that Don Rumsfeld's managerial style made things worse than they had to be, and maybe that'll now change.

[That said, I think the real popular unrest over Mr. Rumsfeld really coalesced around State of Denial - and that's harder to interpret than I think most commentary suggests. It's not that Rumsfeld's sins weren't real; it's that one gets the sense that Bob Woodward's sources were just more willing to talk about his role in ongoing disasters than about anyone else's. The president and vice president come across badly whenever they're in the spotlight, but for the most part they're neglected and incidental. Maybe they're being protected, or maybe they're secretive enough that few people can intelligently describe their roles in anything, or maybe they really did just stay aloof from the war; regardless, no description of Mr. Rumsfeld's role in our ongoing disasters can be complete unless we also know something about what his bosses have been up to.]

At any rate, since Colin Powell left, I don't think there's been anyone in the administration who might have stood up in front of witnesses and said that George W. Bush doesn't have the authority to blow up anyone he pleases; now we may at least be getting a new lonely voice of dissent. Hoorah!

Also tentatively good are Mr. Maliki's stated plans for a regional conference. I refuse to get too optimistic; I don't know how much positive influence Iraq's neighbors can bring to bear (or, for that matter, how much negative influence they can withhold), and I don't know what kinds of leverage the Iraqis and the Bush administration have to make those neighbors change their current habits. Still, trying to establish regional consensuses is almost certainly better than not trying - and, hey, maybe President Bush will have some sort of head injury between now and then and will suddenly become willing to utilize new channels of communication with Syria and Iran!

Help us, Obi-Wan Concussion, you're our only hope!

. . .

Cough.

Also good? Restoration and preservation work is going strong where the Buddhas of Bamiyan once stood. I wish I were more confident that Afghanistan wasn't going to end up in the hands of people who approved of the statues' original demolition, but . . . well, one step at a time.

Assassination nation.

Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorised by the Russian Federal Security Service.

Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a “highly sophisticated plot” and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London.

“We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,” a source said yesterday.

The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and to distance its bosses in the Kremlin from being directly implicated in the plot.

Intelligence officials say that only officials such as FSB agents would have been able to obtain sufficent amounts of polonium-210, the radioactive substance used to fatally poison Mr Litvinenko only weeks after he was given British citizenship.

More here.

Funny how I only mention Russia in this blog when something horrible happens to someone in Vladimir Putin's way; last time, if I recall correctly, it was all about the arrest and conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Of course, these days a show trial looks pretty damn good - radioactive poison is the new hardcore.

The good news (I hope) is that Mr. Putin really does seem to intend to leave the Russian presidency in 2008. The most recent issue of the Economist quite rightly observes that, bad as his government is, Russia's capable of a whole lot worse - but, at the moment, I still think there's room to hope for better. If we assume that United Russia is going to keep on abusing its media monopolies on behalf of whomever Mr. Putin designates as a successor, that means we'll probably be spared a neo-Communist ascent under Gennady Zyuganov (I don't think the liberalization of the economy could be turned back regardless, but things could ugly if it were tried). At the moment, then, I'm led to believe we're likely to be left with a choice - Mr. Putin's, really - between the relatively moderate (if Gazprom-tainted) Dmitry Medvedev and the next ex-KGB autocrat in line, Sergei Ivanov. Sure, Mr. Ivanov is probably the safe bet, but . . . well, fingers crossed.

What Lizardbreath says.

We seem to be systematically ill-treating our prisoners in a way that doesn't make any legitimate sense. If it's punishment, it's simply wrong because they haven't been tried. If it's for interrogation, it seems insanely excessive. If the argument is that "We are certain enough that Padilla had vital information that we are justified in confining him for years and treating him in any manner, no matter how psychically damaging not likely to cause organ failure in the hopes of extracting that information," I really want that argument to be made explicitly. What do they hope to find out from these people? And if we're claiming that the ill-treatment is necessary for security, that is patent nonsense. What was done to Padilla (and is being done to prisoners at Guantanamo) is obviously not necessary to keep them from escaping or hurting other people, and anyone putting forth that justification for blindfolding Padilla on his way to the dentist is either deceiving themselves or a liar.

From here, with a nod to Scott Lemieux for the link.

Moonbase Halliburton!

Oh, who am I kidding? I grew up on science fiction - I love the idea of permanent digs on the lunar surface! In fact, I hope they romanticize the hell out of this; it seems like it's been a long time since anything even remotely science-oriented got trotted out in front of the world's children and made to look daring and sexy.

Do your homework and learn your math and one day you can live on the moon, you lucky little beasts!

Adieu to John Bolton.

I was going to send him off with a sneer, but Steve Clemons - almost certainly the most prominent and influential anti-Bolton voice in the public forum - went out and shamed me with graciousness.

[He also raises the possibility that Mr. Bolton's resignation was timed to take the heat off of Robert Gates. To be honest, though, I'm not at all convinced that even the Democratic players in Congress were ever all that eager to abuse Candidate Not-Rumsfeld. It's not like the American public actually cares about Iran-Contra, and, anyway, there's some evidence to suggest that the man has moderated some of his approaches during his years away from government.]

So, anyway, farewell to Mr. Bolton. I disagreed with him about almost everything of substance, but I can't deny that he probably wouldn't have taken the jobs he did if he didn't think it was for the good of the nation. That, I can respect.

And I hope he's very, very successful in his next career.

Leadership.

President Bush and his top advisors fanned out across the troubled Middle East over the last week to showcase their diplomatic initiatives to restore strained relationships with traditional allies and forge new ones with leaders in Iraq.

But instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president's journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy — and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse.

Go team.

A very easy good deed.

Go here, and virtually light a virtual candle. Bristol-Myers Squibb then sends a buck towards AIDS prevention. [Thanks to Ezra Klein for flagging it!]

Fine judgement on display!

The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews.

GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.

Doan also has chided Inspector General Brian D. Miller for not going along with her attempts to streamline the agency's contracting efforts. In a private staff meeting Aug. 18, Doan said Miller's effort to examine contracts had "gone too far and is eroding the health of the organization," according to notes of the meeting written by an unidentified participant from the Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The GSA is responsible for managing about $56 billion worth of contracts each year for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security and other agencies.

Doan compared Miller and his staff to terrorists, according to a copy of the notes obtained by The Washington Post.

From the Post. For the record, it was just yesterday that word got out that Halliburton was coughing up eight million dollars "to resolve accusations of overbilling related to the firm's work for the Army in the Balkans." Not the biggest rip-off the American people have enjoyed in recent years, but still . . . .

They pretty much had me at "Not Jane Harman."

Rep. Silvestre Reyes gets the House Intelligence Committee gig. Let me just note: he's a Vietnam vet who joined the Border Patrol (before going into politics) and goes by "Silver." I am absolutely amazed he's never been turned into a Donald Bellisario series.

Beyond that, I know nothing about the guy - but I am glad that someone with a history in law enforcement is getting this particular committee at this particular moment in American history.

In other Congressional good news, Rep. Ed Markey is accepting the reins at the Telecommunications Subcommittee. Net Neutrality needs the push.