So let me see if I understand the reasoning here:

1. Oil prices increase, the economy is hurt, Bush alienates millions of voters.
   
2. Bush also presumably alienates those businesses who are hurt by higher oil prices and the economic slowdown that it causes. (I don't have the numbers handy, but my sense is that the oil business provides a small fraction of the total money the Republicans spend on Presidential races.)
   
3. Bush also gets some extra campaign contributions indirectly flowing from oil businessmen, though given that Republicans have "greater corporate backing" and the oil businessmen are supposedly Bush's "cronies," they'd presumably have backed him quite substantially anyway.
   

6:45 PM

 

Well, sounds like those aluminum tubes weren't for use in centrifuges after all. This doesn't remove the fact that Blix confirmed the existance of that chemical warfare drone. Win some, lose some.

5:52 PM

 

What Blix didn't say in his presentation to the UNSC. Somehow he left out the fact that inspectors confirmed the existence of the remotely piloted drone aircraft fitted with chemical spray tanks. And:

Times Online
The report says there is “credible information” indicating that 21,000 litres of biological warfare agent, including some 10,000 litres of anthrax, was stored in bulk at locations around the country during the war and was never destroyed.

Anyone who says Iraq isn't hiding WMD just can't be taken seriously anymore.

By way of Andrew Sullivan.
5:34 PM

 

Wow, powerful stuff. The blogmistress here thinks that the problem between EU-space and the US is that Europe believes the UN exists to prevent a resurgence of nationalism, assigning it a spiritual importance in the world. The US takes a purely pragmatic view that the UN exists to keep the peace. This misunderstanding is about to tear apart both the UN and the cross-atlanic relationship.

Steven den Beste suggests that the UN, driven by European and Europe-influenced members, has now adopted opposition to America as its purpose. I agree that this is the effect of what's happening. But I don't think anti-Americanism is the fundamental principle driving UN actions. I also don't think that the European conception of the organization's purpose has suddenly changed.

Rather, I think that Americans and Europeans have always accepted the UN on fundamentally different grounds. I think that for a long time these different principles resulted in the same practical positions, so the differences could be ignored. I think that the new divergence of opinion on the subject of UN legitimacy, and the limits to UN moral relevance, is not really new, but simply exposes a fundamental difference that has been there all along.

Do, do, read the whole thing. I can't express how important this is.


4:25 PM

 

I agree broadly with this article, although I obviously don't agree with the conclusions about Iraq. And I'm beginning to believe that the U.N. is no longer useful to anyone.

The Guardian | If we are going to intervene, there will have to be rules

That will mean rules, and institutions to enforce them. Much work has been done on the former, none more serious than that of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. That body of notables came up with a rulebook for when action is justified and when it is not. There needs, they said, to be a threat of large scale loss of life or ethnic cleansing; the prime motive of the interveners has to be averting suffering; action has to be multilateral; war must be a last resort and the means proportionate "to the magnitude of the original provocation"; and the consequences of action must not be worse than the consequences of inaction. What strikes you reading that 2001 report today is that an attack on Iraq would meet almost none of those criteria.

As for the institution to do the enforcing, the UN is the obvious candidate. It is deeply problematic that two of the five veto-wielders on that body are serious human rights abusers themselves, but there are solutions to that. (If intervention is blocked in the security council, a demand can always be taken to the general assembly.) The UN may be flawed, but it's the only UN we've got.

As the coming war is about to show once again, we cannot stay out of each other's lives, no matter how much we might like to. What we need is a set of principles telling us when we have to get involved - and how. And the need can never have been more urgent.

I think his five criteria are all met, obviously. Possibly you could say that self-defense is not the same as "averting suffering", but I say it is. And I think it's more than "deeply problematic" that most of the Security Council isn't fit to run a rural county in Mississippi with a county commissioner named Hogg, much less a nation. Saying the U.N. is "the only UN we've got" is a cop-out, pure and simple.

By way of Tacitus.


2:46 PM

 

Oh my. I really don't know what to make of this report, but as Tacitus says, it's awfully specific sounding. I've been reading rumors about this kind of thing all week. Something big is up. Hope it comes to fruition.

ABCNEWS.com : Officials Narrow Bin Laden Search to Caravan
The CIA and Pakistani army are electronically tracking the large caravan of people on foot and horseback through the rugged mountain area of Pakistan between the borders with Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials told ABCNEWS.
Bin Laden may be traveling with the caravan and may be on foot.

2:33 PM

 

Hmmm... yup.

JoeUser.com
Next week, the UN dooms itself to the fate of the League of Nations. Which is ironic because it's usually Americans that are accused of not being familiar with history.

2:24 PM

 
Wow. This is pretty much my attitude, too.

A Thai lawmaker warned a war would create a "great likelihood of terrorist retaliation," but said he would side with Washington if it decides to act against Iraq.

"There really is no other viable option," said Kobsak Chutikul, the deputy leader in one of the parties in Thailand's coalition government. "For all its flaws, I would feel safer to have my children grow up in a world dominated by the United States than by any other country."

Again, by way of den Beste.


2:17 PM

 
I don't know exactly how much credence to give this Telegraph article, but it makes sense. It's got lots of unverifiable off-the-record sorts of sources, but it hangs together.

So much attention has been focused on Iraq that most observers have ignored what stares us in the face. When President Bush made his "axis of evil" speech, singling out Iraq, North Korea and Iran, he was not simply looking for good headlines. He was revealing a template for action.
The war on terror is not simply about destroying the Taliban and taking down Saddam; it is a far more complex operation. The President has carefully set about action in ascending order of difficulty. First the Taliban. Then Saddam. Then the next step, Iran - the world's leading financier of terror. North Korea will be left to China to deal with, with Mr Bush making clear to China that, if it does not take its responsibilities seriously, Japan will be given nuclear weapons.

There's much more, including claims that the Bush administration intends to withdraw from the U.N. if the Security Council doesn't support the attack on Iraq.

By way of den Beste.


2:06 PM

Friday, March 07, 2003  

So much for destroying those Al-Samouds:

New missiles for Iraq, Blix suspects
The UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was to tell the Security Council overnight - in what may be his last report on Iraq, before a war begins - that he suspected Iraq might be trying to produce new missiles, even as it destroyed its stockpile of illegal, al-Samoud 2s.

4:54 PM

 

The Bush administration is getting serious about promoting democracy. From Stratfor.com:

U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Zimbabwean Regime
Mar 07, 2003

U.S. President George W. Bush has issued an executive order, freezing the assets of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and 76 other government officials. The sanctions, which take effect immdiately, bar Americans from doing business with any of the named officials, whom the Bush administration accused of undermining democracy in the African nation. The Commonwealth and the European Union have imposed some travel, aid and economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.

4:04 PM

Thursday, March 06, 2003  

Surprise! The French are still selling stuff to Iraq.

A French company has been selling spare parts to Iraq for its fighter jets and military helicopters during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The unidentified company sold the parts to a trading company in the United Arab Emirates, which then shipped the parts through a third country into Iraq by truck.

The spare parts included goods for Iraq's French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters.

11:34 PM

 

Why Arab governments suck so bad. It's the Europeans' fault!

The new state was built around an army created by the colonial power largely for policing purposes. In almost every case the newly created army relied on ethnic and religious minorities to constitute its officers corps. In Iraq, Assyrian,Turkmen, Kurdish, Faili, and Arab Sunni Muslims provided the backbone of the British-made army from the onset. In Syria, the French favoured the advancement of officers from the minority Alawaite community. In Transjordan, Bedouin, Circassian, and Chechen fighters provided the bulk of the officers' corps. In Egypt, many senior officers had Turkish and Albanian ethnic backgrounds.

By way of Andrew Sullivan.

10:36 PM

 

A good article on the plans for urban warfare within Baghdad:

"I am talking about attacking those things from which the regime draws its power but being very careful about it so that we don't get large bodies of young Americans caught up in a house-to-house Berlin, World War II type scenario," Wallace said.
.
As the commander of V Corps, Wallace is in charge of the army force that is poised to invade Iraq. His comments represented the most extensive account of the American military's thinking about how to take Baghdad and appeared intended to tell the Saddam regime that U.S. forces would not shrink from urban warfare, while reassuring the American public that all efforts would be made to hold down casualties.

10:28 PM

 

A good metaphor for understanding how failed states and terrorists cooperate with each other.

Telegraph | Opinion | Britain's role is crucial in next stage of war on terror - Iran
"The best way to think of the terror network is as a collection of mafia families. Sometimes they co-operate, sometimes they argue, sometimes they even kill one another. But they can always put aside their differences whenever there is a common enemy."

9:14 PM

 

This is a good summary from den Beste

Islam as a religion is not the problem, and we will not try to eliminate Islam as a religion. But Islam as a political movement, and a form of government, and a legal system cannot be tolerated, because it won't tolerate us. Their preachers are saying that there isn't enough room on this planet for both of us.

5:30 PM

Wednesday, March 05, 2003  

An article summarizing Pollack's book:

Tom Brown's bankstocks.com

Once Saddam has a nuclear weapon, he expects to deter the U.S. and Israel under all circumstances. His weapons of mass destruction program have been so important to him that he’s been willing to give up $130 to $180 billion in oil revenue in order to hang on to them, sacrificing his people, the Iraqi economy, and conventional military power. Pollack believes, as many other experts do, that Saddam may achieve that nuclear capability within one to four years, and could become emboldened by its possession. He is far more of a gambler than were the Soviets.

9:34 AM

Tuesday, March 04, 2003  

This sums it up perfectly.

There are inevitably times when the darkest powers of the human heart find the means and opportunity to threaten not just the world's peace but its sense of decency. And while international coalitions or U.N. peacekeeping forces would, in a better world, be the best way to respond to these explosions of evil, the sober truth is that -- from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kabul -- only the United States has demonstrated the force and the will to do so effectively.

2:39 PM

 

An interesting point. It tries to solve the dilemma of how to be the global cop without wearing ourselves out. By way of Den Beste.

Stability, America's Enemy

Of late, we have heard all too much about the United States being the world's policeman. We are not, we cannot afford to be, and we couldn't bring it off if we tried--not least because policemen have to be on the beat everywhere, around the clock, and their most successful work is preventive (a concept that democracies, which are reactive in foreign policy, find anathema). Apart from our new and essential crusade against terrorism, which must pursue preemptive measures, our role should be that of a global referee, calling time out when the players hit below the belt or get too rough, and clarifying the rules of the game (no genocide, no ethnic cleansing, no mass rape, no torture, etc.). Instead of trying to stop the game, which was our approach across the past decade, we should try to facilitate it when it is played by legitimate players for legitimate stakes. In the case of terrorists, of course, we need to throw them out of the game permanently.

1:28 PM

 

Another of Hussein's crimes, the destruction of the Marsh Arabs. Purposeful environmental destruction and genocide, wrapped up into one. You'll not find anyone marching on Washington to protest this, however. And note the BBC's use of scare quotes around 'devastated'...

BBC NEWS Iraq's 'devastated' Marsh Arabs

Many fled their remote homeland in the marshes of southern Iraq when the central government reasserted its authority across the country after uprisings following the 1991 Gulf War.
In addition, massive government drainage schemes have turned the region from one of the world's most significant wetlands to a wasteland of cracked, salinated earth.
Baroness Emma Nicholson, Chairman of the Amar Foundation, which provides aid to Marsh Arab refugees, believes they are the victims of genocide.

1:43 AM

Monday, March 03, 2003  

I suspect that this is why the military is not so worried about fighting in summer. They've fully fitted the in-theater troops with lightweight and disposable chimical/biological suits.

Military personnel in the region have been issued at least two advanced Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology sets, all of which have been checked and are impermeable to poison gases or biological agents. The military has reserved at least two battle dress overgarments for each person deployed.

11:09 PM

 
As I've said before, I don't think that the Bush administration gets enough credit for doing what they say they're going to do. If I'm right, then this UPI report is the death warrant for Hussein, Aziz, and a number of others.

"Nobody should think -- not even for a second -- that military action could be possibly taken to disarm Saddam Hussein that would leave Saddam Hussein at the helm for him to re-arm up later. No, that's not an option," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters Monday.

Also, Fleischer said, "nothing less, nothing less, nothing less than complete, total, immediate" disarmament would allow Iraq to evade military invasion.

10:58 PM

 
From so warmongering a source as PBS, an interview with Sabah Kodada about Iraqi terrorist-training camps.

PBS - frontline: sabah khodada

What kind of training went on, and who was being trained?
Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism.

9:11 PM

 

Wow, got this from den Beste's page. A great example of the intellectualism and progressivism that has often been found in the U.S. military throughout its history.

PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Spring 1998
The Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States

These key "failure factors" are:

Restrictions on the free flow of information.

The subjugation of women.

Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.

The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.

Domination by a restrictive religion.

A low valuation of education.

Low prestige assigned to work.

5:29 PM

 
Josh Marshall sez that the sacking of a couple of Middle East experts at the National Security Council is representative of a wholesale sacking of civil servants that "tender any advice which [conflicts] with the administration's favored policies."

Let's be clear: this tension always exists. Probably a bit more after a two-term presidency when the incoming crew believes the career bureaucracy has been shaped for a decade by the opposite party. But in this administration it's gone to unprecedented levels.

I'd be curious to know if it really is "unprecedented", and if the replacements are really yes-men. Bringing in people who reject the conventional wisdom and stick to their alternative analysis is not the same as bringing in people who will write whatever they're told to write. And if the policies of the last 15 years are an indication of what the old civil staff advocates, then perhaps that housecleaning is overdue.

3:26 PM

 
This is all over the rightish blogosphere today. A bunch of Swedes have put forward the heretical notion that recycling is not as useful as the greens all said. And it's about time.

The Swedish group said that the "vision of a recycling market booming by 2010 was a dream 40 years ago and is still just a dream".
The use of incineration to burn household waste - including packaging and food - "is best for the environment, the economy and the management of natural resources", they wrote in an article for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

2:37 PM

 

Color me ill-informed. James Lileks has at least a couple of books out, but they have nothing to do with foriegn affairs. Check out The Gallery of Regrettable Food and the Amazon companion purchase, Bad Hair.


1:53 PM

 
Peggy Noonan in an open letter to Democrats about the problems they are facing as a party:

There is another problem. You have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.

It's an interesting piece, tracing her journey from the Democratic party to the Republicans. And it underscores why I say the Democrats are now the elitist party. I've heard too many liberals, friends of mine, express too much contempt for fellow citizens that happen to have less education or less income.

12:28 PM

 

By way of Andrew Sullivan, the words of a true progressive in the Guardian:

Labour leftwinger Ann Clwyd, a long-standing supporter of Kurdish rights in northern Iraq, last night in the Commons recounted individual horror stories of the suffering inflicted on ethnic minorities by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Ms Clwyd told MPs: "I believe in regime change, and I say that without any hesitation at all, and I will support the government tonight because I think it's doing a brave thing."

Returning from Kurdistan this week, she said she had cried after hearing from victims of torture.

12:04 PM