Debate Wraithing

Pundits keep saying that there was no knockout punch. Let's keep the boxing metaphor. Here's the rant.

Kerry had the footwork. He moved around and threw a lot of punches but not enough landed to do Bush much damage. To the casual viewer Kerry won (just like in many boxing matches the untrained viewer scores the fight differently from the judges). He was coherent and concise and avoided his trademark Kerryism. He looked good, was poised and focused. Most importantly he didn't come off as the pompous dick he certainly can be.

Bush was slower and didn't show the dodging and weaving of Kerry. Bush has mastered a jab, a straight right and a hook and he threw them over and over. Bush was not quick on the counter-attack and he missed several prime opportunities.

Bush was quite disciplined though and I thought he effectively hammered Kerry on insulting our allies and Allawi. Those kinds of common sense attacks resonate with average voters. And Bush showed that has pretty much masterd Kerry's record. I bet this will pay off in future debates. Bush's disciplined punches only need to land a few times to send Kerry against the ropes. And Bush also has a strong chin. He can take Kerry glancing blows and go for a rope-a-dope if it comes to that. He has the stamina.

Okay, the metaphor is breaking down. Put simply, Kerry did well, Bush did good enough and in Bush's position 'good enough' wins the election. Kerry needs to repeat this two more times.

However, Kerry made a few tactical errors. He claimed, and his campaign maintains, that the war in Iraq is not part of the war on terror. During the debate he said that "weapons of mass destruction are pouring across the border." Later he made a big deal about increasing border control in Iraq, 'closing the border' was the phrase I believe. These comments passed by without a response by Bush, but they clearly play into his claim that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terror; that we are fighting the enemy abroad so we don't have to fight them at home; that the enemy detontating children in Baghdad is the same enemy that wants to detonate children in Tampa and St Louis.

Another Kerry tactical mistake that Bush failed to counter-punch on was North Korea. Bush favors a multi-lateral approach, joined by our allies and China. Kerry favors a unilateral approach. Yet Kerry spent several minutes desparaging Bush for his unilateralism. Bush should have sent him against the ropes on that one but the opportunity passed.

Other examples where Bush didn't hit back strong enough:

- The Clinton administration dropped the ball on North Korea years ago. The initial North Korean nukes were built under Clinton. Bush started on this then moved to a different issue.
- Iranian sanctions. Didn't Carter impose those sanction way back when? If so, is Kerry proposing we eliminate them? If he is, why hasn't he submitted a resolution in the Senate?
- Port security, Russian nukes, etc. Kerry has been in the Senate for twenty years. Bush could have asked where are all his bills to resolve these issue. It's funny how Kerry has lots of ideas a few months before the election and almost no record on these issues for the years prior.

So Kerry won. But this is a series of bouts, not a one-time championship match. Now the expectations for Kerry in Debate 2 (Electric Boogaloo) will go up. It's a town hall forum, which may favor Bush's down-home style.

Tune in next week for Wraithing the VP Debates.

Missing the Debate

I'll be on a plane tonight, flying home from another week in the consulting salt mines. This means I will miss the Big Debate. If the flight lands on schedule I may catch the last half in the car driving home. Wish me luch. Otherwise I'll be up late watch the repeat on C-SPAN. I'll be blogging later tonight in any case.

But before I sign off I just wanted to thank all my new readers, especially those who have left comments. I appreciate your thoughts so please keep them coming.

Also hello and thanks to a new Rant Wraith visitor reading these pages from the British Parliment. Welcome.

Kerry on the Roller Coaster

ABC's The Note has part of the transcript from Diane Sawyer's interview with Kerry this morning. Kerry walked right into the trap I warned about yesterday. (The Kerry campaign should read Rant Wraith because I'm spoonfeeding them what they need to avoid this shit. Hey, Kerry campaign, I'm available as a consultant anytime. Just send me an email. But if you're going to glom off my free advice how about droping some of that ketchup money in my tip jar?)

Here're the quotes:

DS: So it [the war in Iraq] was not worth it.

JK: We should not — it depends on the outcome ultimately — and that depends on the leadership. And we need better leadership to get the job done successfully, but I would not have gone to war knowing that there was no imminent threat — there were no weapons of mass destruction — there was no connection of Al Qaeda — to Saddam Hussein! The president misled the American people — plain and simple. Bottom line. [Notice how he doesn't quite answer the question or even complete some of the sentences. W is not the only one with articulation issues.]

DS: So if it turns out okay, it was worth it? [Which is what he just said in the paragraph above: "it depends on the outcome ultimately"]

JK: No. [WTF?]

DS: But right now it wasn't [ … ? … ]--

JK: It was a mistake to do what he did, but we have to succeed now that we've done what he's — I mean look — we have to succeed. But was it worth — as you asked the question — $200 billion and taking the focus off of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? That's the question. The test of the presidency was whether or not you should have gone to war to get rid of him. I think, had the inspectors continued, had we done other things — there were plenty of ways to keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein.

DS: But no way to get rid of him. [That is correct. There was no way to remove Hussein short of military action.]

JK: Oh, sure there were. Oh, yes there were. Absolutely. [Huh? Such as? Why didn't he suggect a few of these methods two years ago? Or even now?]

DS: So you're saying that today, even if Saddam Hussein were in power today it would be a better thing — you would prefer that . . .

JK: No, I would not prefer that.

That last exchange is where Kerry is whipsawed by the roller coaster. He cannot bring himself to state what his position implies. If the war in Iraq was not worth it then he would prefer that Hussein was still in power and our troops were not being killed in Iraq. There is no other way to make sense of what he is saying. And there is nothing wrong with that position. It is defensible and coherent. I don't agree with it but it is sound and sensible.

Kerry is in danger of slipping into the untenible position of some war opponents that Christopher Hitchens identified two years ago: people who want Hussein removed but don't want to commit to the only method of achieving that. These are people who substitute wishes for policies, who are at best impotent and at worse are cynically disguising their passivity behind self-contradiction.

I don't think Kerry falls into this group. I think it is much simpler than that. He simply doesn't know what he wants; he only knows what he doesn't want. He doesn't want Hussein in power. He doesn't want US troops being killed. He doesn't want dangerous authoritarian regimes developing nukes. But being an executive leader, as opposed to a legislator, means having to take positive positions, having to makes decisions that result in actions, nor simply in further discussions. You have to know the results you want and decide on the best means to achieve it.

You need a better answer by tomorrow night John. If you need any more advice, email me. I'm quite expensive but you need all the help you can get.

Turkey and the EU: A Lose-Lose Situation

Turkey wants to join the E.U. The U.S. want Turkey to join the E.U. The European Commission wants Turkey to join the E.U. Just one little hang-up, "A majority of the European parliament is anti-accession, the various national parliaments are against it, and the national populations are overwhelmingly opposed." Christopher Caldwell has a scary piece about this and the possibility of an Islamic Europe.

This issue puts Europe in a lose-lose situation. If Turkey joins the E.U. millions of Muslims will have the legal right to migrate throughout Europe, and since Turkey's population grows faster* than any E.U. country, this makes it all but certain that Europe will Islamicized over the coming decades. (Or, as Bat Yeor put it, "Their future is Eurabia. Period.")

If the E.U. does not let Turkey in this will be a huge blow to the Turkish political elite and moderate Turks and a big boost to the Islamist opposition. Look for an Islamists backlash against the establishment and the growth of widespread anti-European sentiment. After all, Turkey has changed several laws to conform to E.U. standards. They've done their part. If the E.U. rejects them the Islamists can say that it was because Europe doesn't want an Islamic nation. And they will be right.

So Europe can let 70 million Muslims into the E.U. now or risk a growing anti-Europe Muslim nation on its least stable border. Not to mention millions of pissed off Muslims inside Europe's biggest cities. Lose-lose indeed.

* According to the CIA World Factbook, Turkey's population growth rate is 1.13%. France's rate is 0.39%. The U.K.'s is 0.29%. Italy's is 0.09%. Germany's is 0.02%. The growth rate for the European countries includes births by Muslim immigrants who have more children at an earlier age than their European counterparts. So in fact the growth rate for native Italians and Germans is more than likely negative.

2004 Weblog Awards - The Dream Lives

That's right, even bloggers have awards. (I'm reminded of that scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen complains there are too many awards in Hollywood. "Award for greatest fascist dictator, Adolph Hitler.") Check out the Official Site at 2004weblogawards.com.

Nominations wil open November 3.

"Shake Hands with Jews? How Ridiculous."

MEMRI has a fascinating piece on Saudi attitudes toward Jews. Eight Saudi's responded to questions like 'Would You, as a Human Being, be Willing to Shake Hands with a Jew?' and 'Would you refuse to shake hands with a Jew?'

Guess what the responses are:

"Of course, so I wouldn't have to consider amputating my hand afterwards." It gets better and better.

Islam vs Orthodoxy

We often speak of the war on terror as a struggle between Islamism and 'the West.' But there is another player in this drama, one that has yet to be mobilized: Eastern Orthodoxy. While Orthodoxy shares many basic beliefs with Western Christians, don't be fooled into thinking they are just another denomination, like Methodists. Eastern Orthodoxy has a long history of resisting Islam and, after the fall of Byzantium, suffering under Islamic rule. The history of this struggle and suffering is not forgotten by millions of Orthodox Christians. A political entrepeneur could easily use this history to resurrect or construct stories and myths for mobilizing believers.

Look into my crytsal ball and let's imagine a possible future.

After another attack by Chechens, the Russian military goes on the offensive with all the subtlety and precision that the Russian military is known for. In response, Islamists in Istanbul use a truck bomb to destroy the Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church, killing His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

From Greece and Ukraine, throughout eastern Europe, Serbia, Russia, and Georgia, to American cities like Chicago, Orthodox Christians go ballistic. Mosques are burned and Muslims lynched from Bulgaria to Vladivostok. Enraged Egyptians retaliate by sacking the Monastery of St. Catherine's at Mt Sinai, killing the monks and pilgrims and desecrating the sanctury. Serbs and Kosovars overwhelm local UN troops and begin armed confrontations. (This area is a tinderbox waiting for a spark. Rioters attacked UN troops with grenades earlier this year. Dozens of churches were also destroyed.)

This scenario may seem unlikely but it is not impossible. Islam and Eastern Orthodoxy share a long 'faultline' that runs through dozens of countries. Millions of Muslims and Orthodox Christians live close together, much closer than do Muslims and Westerners. For millions of Orthodox Christians and Muslims, the "Others" are not far away and seen mostly through the media. They are down the street, in the next village or across a border within driving distance. This creates a situation where armed individuals, farmers, workers, average folks, can be mobilized to take violent action. We saw intimations of this in the Beslan schools seige where Russian men attacked the school with their own rifles and locals lynched a terrorist trying to escape.

Right now it looks like the Caucuses are to our current situation what the Balkans were to the Great War. In my speculation Bartholomew I plays the role of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I'm sure there are other candidates. The situation is so fragile, the animosities so deep and the history so bloody and bleak that any number of events could set it off. And all of this is beyond our control.

Quit Dicking Around with Defeatism

Another must-read column from Christopher Hitchens in Slate. He lambasts the democratic establishment, the Kerry campaign and speifically Teresa Heinz Kerry (or is it Heinz-Kerry?) for the paranoid fantasy that Bush captured bin Laden and will announce it as an 'October Surprise.'

"The unfortunately necessary corollary of this—that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry—is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?"

Don't miss the jab at Joe "Puppet" Lockhart. Read the whole thing, you unclean infidel.

The Roller Coaster vs the Framework: Viewing War with and without Context

The Wraith's blood pressure shot up today on reports that terrorist brainiac and al-Qaeda ideologue, al-Zawahiri, was captured in Pakistan. The reports were quickly denied.

Nevertheless, the story is all-to-believable and illustrates just how quickly things can change. This is a war, with progresses and set backs just like any other war. You never know what the next update will bring. That's why politicians can't fall into the trap of responding to events as they occur. Rather a successful politician must have conceptual framework into which the various events will fit. Otherwise the politician finds himself on an intellectual and emotional roller coaster, optimistic after a capture, defeatist after a successful attack.

It's ironic because Kerry is portrayed as the intellectual and W as the boob, but Kerry is the one on the roller coaster and W is the one with the framework. You may not agree with or like W's framework, but it provides him consistency and steadfastness in the War on Terror and in Iraq, which, not coincidentally he sees as part of one and the same struggle. From the start of the war, through Hussein's capture and the transfer of power to the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf and the current insurgencies (there's more than one) W has maitained one viewpoint and advanced one argument. You may think this is stubborn but it is what all vicotorious war leaders do. (I'm not saying that W is Lincoln but look back on Lincoln during the Civil War. He continually and consistently pushed his generals to take the war to the Confederacy. Through victories and defeats, some horribly bloody, Lincoln maintained a single vision of what the war was and how to win it. History now records McClellan as the general who refused to fight and the eventual loser in the election of 1864 but at the time he was a hero to millions of Americans who saw Lincoln leading them into a war they could not win.)

Kerry's supporters claim that he is not inconsistent, just that his position has 'evolved.' But it's interesting how his position evolves in parallel with events. After Hussein's capture Kerry issued the now famous quote, in a debate against the anti-war Howard Dean, that whoever thought Hussein should still be in power was unfit to be president. Nine months, later after attacks and assassinations, Kerry's position is 'evolving' into something very close to that of Dean's. This is not the flip-flop crap. It's a symptom of something deeper. Kerry does not yet have a mental and emotional (much less spiritual) framework into which he can fit the various facts of the war in Iraq and the war on terror. It is this structure which gives the facts of war a larger context and meaning, so that a tactical defeat can be understood as a strategic advance or vis-a-versa. All Kerry has are facts, events that by themselves provide only the immediate and contextless meaning of an anecdote.

This is not to say that there is no anti-war framework available to him, it's just that it is easy to caricature and hard to defend. There is a consistent anti-war arguement. For example, the capture of Hussein would not be an unqualified good in this framework, the arguement being that if Hussein was still in power Iraq would be stable and the risk of instability outweighs the risk of Hussein ruling Iraq, even if he would be developing WMDs after the sanctions were lifted. Kerry cannot make this arguement without alienating many voters.

If Kerry is elected he will have to decide how to think about the War. Events happen to quickly and there is too much information to patiently and deliberatively consider each fact on its own. Without a method of relating these facts, without a vision of the war in the largest sense, without a political and historical context to judge events as they occur, Kerry's presidency will be like his campaign: always responding, always on defense, always behind events, analyzing the last attack as our enemies prepare for one after the next. And the one after that.

Today's Reading List - No Campaign News Included

Taking a break from the tedious campaign. Here are a few non-campaign pieces worth your precious time.

An article in NYT about a film by a brave ex-Muslim member of the Dutch parliment. She confronts the hidden abuse of Muslim women and receives death threats for it.

A WaPo opinion piece about the lessons of Jenin for US troops in Fallujah. The lesson from Israel's war on terror (detailed further in the New Republic) is that military force, properly applied, works, plain and simple. Islamist terro can be defeated. At a cost.

Also in the New Republic, a Moscow Dispatch on the possibility (or likelihood) that Russia will go fascist.

Here's something we don't hear enough about: Nigeria. Reuters says "Growing concerns over militancy in Nigeria" are partly behind today's record oil prices. Think Sudan is bad? If Nigeria collapses into a religious civil war, it'll make Sudan look like a traffic accident.

Have a great day!

Non-Election News

Another foreigner shot and killed by al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. A French technician for an electronics company.

Iran successfully tests new and improved Shahab-3 missile. This can carry a one-ton warhead at least 800 miles.

The British are holding four men involved in a plot to purchase radioactive material for a possible dirty bomb. The material in question may not exist but the plot was all too serious.

Thoughts Written Late at Night

I am gripped by anxiety, seized by a physical and spiritual trembling. I feel it in my abdomen, below my sternum. I shudder with a dread I cannot articulate. I fear that the world I grew into, the ideals I hold dear, the structure and values of my life are fading into an irretrievable past.

I am not talking about Iraq or bin Laden or the deficit. These are mere details in the foreground. Behind that, blurred by distance, beyond the haze and mist of everyday trivia, the latest beheadings or explosions, the candidates and the passing scandals, I discern the outline of a catastrophe that dominates the horizon, so vast that it is nearly invisible; it looms before us and we mistake it for the sky.

RatherGate 2.0

If you thought the CBS admission that the documents "could not be authenticated" (rather than that they were clearly forged) and Dan's weak apology would end this story then you were wrong. It opened up whole new frontiers. And the story is developing so quickly I don't have time to keep up right now.

Allahpundit links to WaPo, WSJ, and USA Today articles about Burkett and his "source," the shadowy Lucy Rameriz, who Burkett never even met. She transferred the docs to him through a Third Man. Then Burkett burned them.

Things have gotten so bad that Allahpundit feels sorry for Bill. So does Roger Simon who thinks CBS "exploited" him.

... all you can wonder is what was going through the minds of the CBS producers when they trusted this poor man. It is certainly more than possible that Burkett is lying, but it couldn't be more obvious he is a highly disturbed invididual.

Meanwhile, Kerry campaign adviser Joe Lockhart admitted communicating with Burkett just days before CBS aired the story. He is the second Kerry campaign confidant, after Max Cleland, to have some contact with Burkett in the days leading up to this.

The conspiracy theories write themselves.

The Agony of Defeat

CBS surrenders.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward: "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

Rather apologizes.

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry."

Bloggers declare victory. Sweet victory. And this isn't the end.

CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.

Wizbang for one wants Rather's head for a trophy. The struggle continues. But today people will savor the sweet aroma of Dan's defeat. Mmmm... smells like cinnamon.

Crude Moral Calculus

There's an ongoing discussion among Belmont Club, journalists Mark Steyn and Andrew Sullivan, and others, about the number and nature of Iraqi deaths in Iraq. Andrew claims that Iraq is suffering "two 9/11s a month" (whether this is measured in absolute or proportional body counts is unclear but you get the picture). Belmont Club does a fantastic job analyzing the casualty statictics.

But everyone in this argument (which goes far beyond the aforementioned bloggers) is missing the key element of this issue and indeed of the question "Is Iraq better off now than before the war?" Iraqis were dying before the war. Thousands of Iraqis. They just weren't being killed in public.

Look at it in more detail. Saddam Hussein filled mass graves with Iraqi corpses every year for 25 years. (The pictures convey an emotional impact that numbers cannot. Please take some time and visit Massgraves.info.) Even Human Rights Watch said in May 2003 that the mass graves hold at least 290,000 bodies, perhaps as many as 400,000.

However, since Andrew Sullivan is counting not just civilian deaths but those killed in ongoing military actions, let's consider not just the Iraqis who were murdered (many after horrific torture) but also those killed in war during Hussein's reign.

The State Department addresses this question as of 12/19/03: "Over one million Iraqis are believed to be missing in Iraq as a result of executions, wars and defections, of whom hundreds of thousands are thought to be in mass graves."

Do the math people. If an extremely low estimate of 350,000 Iraqis died in the 25 years of Hussein's rule that mean 14,000 people died every year. That number could be doubled or tripled depending on the way you count the victims of the regime. And this was an ongoing effort by the government with no end in sight. If Saddam had died and either or both of his sons taken charge the killing would have continued year after year after year.

Belmont Club compiles a list of various estimates of fatalities in Iraq. Even Amnesty International claims only 10,000 deaths, including combatants.

Of course this is all a sad little game. The numbers are really an attempt to create a moral equivalence between the current situation and the Baathist regime by setting up a crude moral calculus: If regime victims are less than liberation victims then liberation is a moral wrong. Forget everything else about life during the regime and after. Just count corpses.

By this logic if one more person dies during the war/construction than during the fallen regime, then the liberation is a moral failure and by extension it should not have been undertaken. Not only is this a kind of cowardice, it sets a standard for all current and future dictators: you can torture and rape and repress people all you wish, just be sure to kill one less person than it would take to defeat you and rebuild the country. That way none of the Great Powers will confront you. And none will.

UN to Sudan: Stop It. Please

Or what? C'mon, seriously. Do you think a majority of the Security Council will vote for sanctions and that they will actually be enforced? Who's going to enforce this? What if the monsters running Sudan judge that the atrocities are worth the cost?

What are the atrocities? Let's not be squeemish. Mass rape. Slavery. Brutal, hand to hand mass murder. This is from the Telegraph:

Bokur Hamis, 21: "Each of us was raped by between three and six men," said Bokur. "One woman refused to have sex with them, so they split her head into pieces with an axe in front of us."

Baxit Zaruuk, 14: "In Khartoum we were all taken to a place along the Nile and raped at gunpoint." She was handed to a soldier as his "wife".

Regarding the coordination and logistics of transporting abducted women from Darfur to Khartoum, "It is solid proof of collusion between the government and the army in rape, abduction and slavery of children and women."

I will be very impressed if the Security Council can take meaningful action. But my expectations could not be lower.

Western Philosophers on Islam 1: Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), in The World as Will and Representation, vol II, page 162:

"Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendor and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. ... Sometimes it lets inself be satisfied with clumsy fables and fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality.

Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value."

Naomi Klein: Tinfoil Idiot

Naomi Klein co-wrote this bizarre article in the Guardian spinning conspiracy theories about the abduction of two Italian women working in Iraq. Here is one bit of 'evidence' that the abductors were not Islamist fanatics but "foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance."

"And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs."

WTF? I thought AK-47s are Kalashinovs? Technically, the AK-47 rifle is one of a series of submachine guns developed by Mikhail Timofeevitch Kalashnikov. In vernacular usage "Kalashnikov" refers to any of these. The AK-47 is only the most popular. (The AK-47 is the most wide-spread weapon in the world.)

Back to Naomi. After botching such basic facts to back up her wild speculations, she goes on to insinuate that the Italian aid workers were taken by the CIA. The CIA? If we have learned one thing since 9/11, it's that the CIA is yet another borderline incompetent bureaucracy more concerned with preserving itself as an institution (and as a budgertary entity) than anything else. I doubt the CIA could abduct two specific Italian aid workers in Baghdad even if it wanted to. Which it doesn't.

Put your tinfoil hat back on Naomi. The satellites are broadcasting into your teeth again.

Who Doesn't Love Naked Children?

I know what she means. She has good intentions. But the way she says it plays into the out-of-touch weirdo stereotypes.

"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry

There's nothing sinister about her. She was talking about prioritizing emergency shipments to hurricane victims. "Water is necessary, and then generators, and then food, and then clothes."

So far the Kerry campaign handlers have done a pretty good job of keeping her on-message or at least out of the papers since her odd-ball performance in Boston. Is this a rare lapse or a sign that their discipline is breaking down?

Howard: Paralysed UN Unable to Do Anything about Mass Murder

Aussie PM Howard bitch-slaps Kofi after the Distinguish Secretary General declared the invasion of Iraq "illegal." (Yo, Kofi, who died and made you Judge of Humanity and Final Arbiter of Planetary Justice?)

Howard called the UN "paralysed" (which is putting it politely). Then he added this stinging criticism:

Instead, he turned the tables on the United Nations, saying it was structurally incapable of acting on major crises, citing the current one in Sudan's Darfur region.

Howard said more people were dying in Sudan now than in Iraq

Ouch. The reason, of course, is that the mass murder, rape, and organized violence in Sudan is not technically illegal. Thanks Kofi.

Record Traffic Yesterady

Thanks to Allahpundit's link. Welcome new readers, especially our friends at the CIA, Stanford, Harvard, Kent State, Boston College, and of course, CBS. Share the joy by using the Email Post button. Leave a comment. Leave a threat. Glad you're here.

Undecided My Ass

Larry David Disses the Undecideds.

Anyone who can't make up his or her mind at this point in the campaign should forget about the election entirely, buy a pint of ice cream and get into bed.

Amen Larry.

Facts, Fiction, Whatever

Rather either allowed forgeries to be presented as facts or deliberately did so. Add this to the NYT Raines/Blair meltdown over fictional stories presented as fact. And Lewis Lapham reporting "from a parallel universe" on the Republican Convention before it happened.

As Roger Simon points out, this is bigger than Rather, it's "an entire system of news delivery on trial."

This story is snowballing before our eyes. What the suits and pencilnecks at CBS don't realize is that the blogosphere is not doing this for money. I have a different job Dan. The pajama brigade is doing this out of passion. They won't just forget about this. They will stay with this story as it sucks the oxygen out of all other news.

Standards? For You, Yes. For Us, No Thanks

Here are the CBS standards. Talk to someone who saw something in the past and make sweeping statements based on this and this alone.

They have Killian's secretary saying that the contents of the memos are accurate although she declares that the actual memos are not authentic. She is remembering events from 30 years ago.

Ok. We have scores if not hundreds of Iraqi scientists, dissidents, and defectors who claim to have seen and worked on Iraqi chemical munitions and biological stockpiles. Not 30 years ago. Not 20 years ago but five years ago. Three years ago. Now sure, we can't find the actual munitions. But the CBS standard doesn't seem to demand actual proof, just the 30 year old memory of one person.

Well, that's the standard for CBS. The standard for you is an authentic and verifiable document trail and/or physical evidence of any and all claims.

Sorry Dan, you flopped. Welcome to Rathergate: Week Two.

CBS Epistemology

Scuttlebutt in the blogosphere is that the CBS News press release, now re-re-scheduled for 5 pm, will declare the documents to be forgeries but the content to be accurate. (See Allahpundit, Ace of Spades, etc.)

Ok kids, we are now leaving Intro to Journalism and entering Philosophy 101: Theories of Knowledge. If the prediction is correct CBS News will be arguing that regardless of evidence or even in the lack of evidence, the staff at CBS News have non-material access to the Truth. CBS journalists can 'discover' or 'reveal' the essence of reality without perceiving any object or event in the physical world. This is called mysticism.

If that is the CBS News press release then it is no longer a journalistic enterprise but a cult, a Temple of Spiritual Truth, a Church of the Higher Knowledge.

This makes Dan Rather a televangelist. Can you feel the power?

All the News that's fit to forge

NYT: Only the Guilty Will Be Charged

How postmodern! Forgeries are Accurate. Fiction is News. William Gaddis is spinning in his grave.

Killian Signature Comparison

A signature comparison from the 3 docs with signatures. (Click to enlarge.) CBS chose not to air the 24 June memo, for whatever reason. Allahpundit has a post about the possible importance of the various signatures. ABC reported last night that document expert Emily Will warned CBS that she was suspicious based on reviewing only one document.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.

How long until CBS cracks? Place your bets people.

UPDATE: ABC was incorrect. Emily Will reviewed two of the docs but only one was used in the 60 Minutes II story. Nevertheless, she had numerous doubts about what she examined. A CBS press release is due soon. Perhaps it will contain more information. Or more BS. Or unauthenicated information about BS.

"Intellectually Defensible?" Maybe. Politically Disastrous. Oh Yes.

Time magazine intends to praise Kerry but really reveals one of his key weaknesses. Addressing the Iraq War, Time writes:

Perhaps what's most frustrating for Kerry's supporters is that his position is not that complicated—and is intellectually defensible.

He voted for the war to strengthen Bush's diplomatic leverage with allies and against the reconstruction money as a vote of no confidence on the handling of the aftermath

Emphasis added. To my unsophisticated mind, and I bet to most voters, a vote for the authority to go to war is just that, a freaking vote to authorize war. It is not a tactical move to "leverage" our allies. It is not something clever and multi-dimensional. This is not chess. It is what it says it is, a vote authorizing the president to use military force. To vote for it and then claim that the president shouldn't have used the authority may be intellectually defensible but it is not obviously so.

The vote against the reconstruction funding is even worse. Hey, Kerry, this ain't a parlimentary system, pal. We don't have votes of no confidence. At best his vote was election year posturing to outmaneuver the left wing but it was primarily a vote against the funding.

This is why Senators don't win the White House. The slippery, tactical mindset of Senators, thinking three moves ahead, always hedging your bets, never saying never, leaving room for maneuver, does not translate well to the straight talking realm of presidential campaigning.

C.B.S. Confidential

Everything Is Forged... Everyone Is Lying... And Some Things Are What They Seem.

Incumbent Power

The power of an incumbent president running for reelection may be such that it is impossible to defeat him in all but the most extraordinary circumstances. In the elections since 1945 Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all won reelection, usually by a substantial margin. Only twice, 1980 and 1992, was the incumbent defeated (not counting 1976 since Ford was never elected in the first place).

1980 - Carter loses his reelection bid. Three factors lead to the loss.
1) The economy. It was so bad in so many ways that they had to invent a new word for it (stagflation anyone?). Interest rates, inflation, unemployment. There was simply no good economic news in the late 70s.
2) An unprecedented overseas crisis. The Iranian revolution, the hostages, the failed rescue attempt. They invented a TV show (Nightline) just to cover this one mega-story of American helplessness and victimization. Add to this the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter's less-than confidence inspiring response of boycotting the Moscow Olympics and again, bad news all around.
3) An opponent with rare communication skills and charisma, Ronald Reagan.
If any of these three factors had been different, Carter could have won reelection.

1992 – Bush Sr loses his reelection bid. Again, a trifecta lead to the loss.
1) The economy. While not nearly as horrible as it was in the late 70s, the recession of 90-91 came at the end of a decade of growth. People were accustomed to a more or less positive economic environment and they were shocked by the downturn. Add to this increasing nervousness over competition from Japan and the relative economic picture was not pretty.
2) An unprecedented third-party candidate. We tend to forget now that for a while in early summer Ross Perot lead in the polls. People were genuinely enthusiastic. Then he went flaky and dropped out. Then he dropped back in and still finished with 19 million votes.
3) An opponent with rare communication skills and charisma, Bill Clinton.
If any of these three factors had been different, Bush Sr could have won reelection.

Looking at 2004 one sees possibly two of these factors. The economy is stable with signs of growth but enough people feel enough anxiety that the opposition could exploit the situation to his advantage. The war is unpopular or at least enough people are ambivalent about it and open to ideas by the opposition. The third key factor is missing: the opponent with rare communication skills and charisma. (Kerry actually has a kind of negative charisma and a bizarre communication style where the more he says, the less people understand.) Without that, history tells us that the incumbent president, wielding the power of the office and relying on the inertia of the American electorate, will win.

Despite what Dan and his hack expert say, the default settings for Word produces the same effect as the May 4th doc. The 1s looks very similar to the lower case Ls. Notice the exact same spacing for both the '111' and the 'Ellington'. Nice try Danster. You're getting desperate.

Coming soon ...

Exclusive! Secret JFK Memo from Anonymous Source

Exclusive! Must credit Rant Wraith! Documents from anonymous source show JFK thought CBS "idiots".

It was Inevitable: Rathergate.com

Yes, kids, you read that right. Rathergate.com is up and running.

Today there were numerous editorials and columns (NYT, Investors Business Daily, Dallas Morning Herald) devoted to this scandal, some even calling for resignations. I wonder how long CBS can stand the heat. Stay tuned.

Superscript vs Lower Case

Let’s settle this once and for all. The claim that some authentic 70s era TANG documents display superscripting is just plain wrong. This is the doc everyone, including CBS, use as evidence that superscripting was available. Unfortunately of them, this is NOT superscripting as the modern MS Word user understands it. This is merely the use of lower case letters, in the same font and typeface, raised half-way up the height of an upper case character. Notice the ‘th’ after 111 in line 5. The ‘t’ is the same as used in ‘Intcp’ later in the same line.

Compare to this. Notice the ‘th’ after ‘111’ is NOT just lower case letters. The ‘t’ in ‘th’ does NOT match the ‘t’ in ‘Report’. Today’s word processor superscripts are NOT just lower case letters. They are special characters applied by the logic of the software. The typewriter that created the authentic doc did not create the forgery.

It gets worse. Save the authentic doc and examine it up close. Look at how the characters do not quite line up in the authentic doc. The '1's in '111' are not quite even. However in the fake, every character is perfectly level and evenly lined up.

Sorry Salon. Try again.

Provoking a Nuclear Strike

There's a Simpsons episode that takes place in the future where Krusty the Clown tells this joke.

"What's the difference between Pakistan and pancake? I dont know any pancakes that have been nuked by India!! Too soon?"

I thought about this joke earlier this week when a Russian general said that the Kremlin wasn't considering 'nuclear strikes'. The denial leads one to ask: what does it take to provoke a nuclear strike? What kind of atrocity would make the Kremlin consider such strikes? The attack on Middle School #1 killed 350 or more people. The attack on the Moscow theater in October 2002 could have killed many more than the 129 who died there. What if the Chechens attacked several sites simultaneously - schools, hospitals, government offices? What if the death toll was in the thousands?

At what point would the Kremlin say, 'fuck it' and nuke Grozny and other locations throughout Chechnya? I think that the Russian threshold is lower than our own. I believe that a few thousand dead Russians, especially in Moscow or St Petersburg, would the government right to the edge.

What about India? There have been so many terror attacks in the past three years that we have forgotten about some of them. Who now remembers the attack on the Indian parliment on December 13, 2001? Only 14 people died but the intent was clearly to decapitate the Indian government. What attack would finally provoke India to strike Pakistan with its nuclear arsenal to end the threat once and for all?

And once that frontier is crossed, will it make the next strike easier or more difficult?

WaPo Paints a Bleak Picture for Kerry

But as the number of truly competitive states has shrunk, Kerry is faced with the reality that he must pick off one of two big battlegrounds Bush won four years ago -- Florida or Ohio -- or capture virtually every other state still available. To do that, he must hold onto several states Al Gore won in 2000 that are now highly competitive.

Ouch. Kerry's entire strategy (such as it is) hinged on not losing any Gore states from 2000. A single loss win doom his campaign. Don't they know this? Why is Kerry running ads in Georgia? Dude, it's a lost cause in GA. Don't waste your money.

[T]he 10 most competitive states are, in order of electoral vote strength, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia and New Hampshire.

Iowa? Minnesota? Wisconsin? These states have voted Democratic in the last 4 elections, including the Dukakis debacle of 1988. Good Lord, Minnesota voted for Mondale. Minnesota hasn't voted Republican since 1972. Can Kerry manage to lose Minnesota? What a feat!

Bush Has Substantial Lead in Ohio

This NYT article has W ahead by 9 points in Ohio. This makes it mathematically very difficult for Kerry. If W wins Ohio Kerry must win both PA and FL to have a chance. See for yourself on this LA Times interactive electoral map.

Non-forgery News Roundup

If your sick of fonts and typeface and details about the IBM Selectric, here's a roundup of other news.

Mullah Omar to the State Dept in 1998, 2 days after U.S. missiles struck al Qaeda training camps, "He said that in order to rebuild U.S. popularity in the Islamic world and because of his current domestic political difficulties Congress should force President Clinton to resign."

Muslim lawyer demanding sharia in Canada, "Every act of your life is to be governed by [sharia]. If you are not obeying the law, you are not a Muslim. That's all there is to it."

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a speech Friday, "Where America is undoubtedly ahead of us is in a variety of non-material resources - namely a positive attitude, energy and the corresponding mentality."

He goes on to list several American traits that Germans should copy. These, Schroeder said, include: confidence, self-trust, willingness to take risks, courage to face life, and calmness.

He also praised what he said was the general American culture of "encouragement" and "personal responsibility."

Finally, an update to the Saudi Revolution Watch. A car bomb exploded outside a bank in Jeddah. Another small device exploded in front of a different bank sometime later. In case you forgot, it's Sept 11.

Lileks Says It All

James Lileks' really cool blog nails it on the head.

The old-line media, like its Boomer components, got old, and like the Boomers, it preferred self-congratulation to self-reflection. And so the Internet had it for lunch, because the Internet does not have to schedule 17 meetings to develop a strategy for impactfully maximizing brand leverage in emerging markets; the Internet does not have to worry about how a decision will affect one’s management trajectory; the Internet smells blood and leaps, and that has turned the game around, for better or worse. So we’re back to where we were in 1904 – except that the guys on the corner shouting WUXTRY, WUXTRY aren’t grimy urchins selling the paper – they’re the people who wrote the damn thing, too.