Obsidian Wings

Charming.

This is not a 'how dare they call X a Nazi' post: I got my recommended daily allowance of Nazi posts this afternoon, and there's a part of me that actually doesn't care all that much in this particular case* about the poor victim's feelings, possibly because she's shown no particular interest in sparing the feelings of anybody else. Yes, yes, I'm not a Buddha.

Still, completely aside from the Godwinization, I will still note that if dKos' ad policy is such that ads from the New Republic are to be disdained while those from Agitproperties.com, a company whose merchandising motto is "Educating America's Moron Majority since 2002" are permitted... well, I guess he didn't want to go all that mainstream anyway.

Moe

Assessment of the Primary

Because, really, we don't have enough people analyzing this already.

Guess Who Got Sucked into Civ III Tonight?

Yup, that's right. So much for fanatical bloggers bringing you the finest in political entertainment, huh?

(looking around quickly)

Here: it's the latest Dave Barry article about Edwards and bowling. Why did I pick this? Umm... it was on the Post-It note... lemme read.... right, because of this:

As the crowd dispersed, I overheard this exchange between an Edwards volunteer and a bowler:

Bowler: Go Bush. You guys suck.

Volunteer: You shouldn't generalize. We don't ALL suck.

Bowler: Yeah, you do.

That's what's so great about the primaries: people talking about issues.

(pause)

Well, it seemed hysterical at 3 PM. Or symbolic. Or something. Work with me, I'm out of material and still seeing Civ III maps whenever I close my eyes.

A Seven-Nation Army Can't Hold Me Back . . . .

Finally, someone is taking my advice:

The White House began to back away on Monday from its assertions that Iraq had illegal weapons, saying it now wanted to compare prewar intelligence assessments with what may be actually found there.

Grasp that nettle, baby -- grasp it with both hands!

Ow! That knife hurts!

I just caught Howard Dean on The Daily Show. Jon Stewart had his "Sister Souljah" moment. Unfortunately, Dean was cast in the role of the good Sister. (Where is Sister Souljah, anyway? For that matter, where's MC Ren? How 'bout Slash?)

Good luck up in the wilds of New Hampshire, Katherine. That you're supporting Dean, well, gives me hope for Dean.

Bound for the North Country

So I'm up to NH tomorrow to drive people to the polls and do assorted other scut work. Probably to Portsmouth headquarters, followed by a massive gathering in Manchester to celebrate or mourn--more likely the latter--as the results come in. The weather forecast is a balmy twenty degrees and overcast, but no snow.

(This is my candidate, as you may know. (That's an old interview from back in 2000 with him, which I saw for the first time yesterday--worth reading.) He'll also be appearing on the Daily Show tonight at 11, for those interested.)

I'll report back on Wednesday, assuming I have anything interesting to say about the primary. After that, I'm going to be on hiatus for a while, as I move from writing blog posts about non-U.S. citizens' legal rights (or lack thereof) to writing asylum petitions defending their legal rights (such as they are). I'll be working 20 hours a week at an immigration legal clinic on top of my classes--this is very exciting but also pretty intimidating.

(I may stop by now and again, but I think once a week is the absolute most I can get away with and it might well be less.)

Thanks to everyone who's read, linked, commented etc., and especially to my co-bloggers.

All the Federales say, they could've had him any day; we only let him slip away out of kindness, I suppose . . . .

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed Miranda (via Glenn Reynolds) with a nine-to-zero vote.

There's no word about concurrences,* but I'm frankly surprised that at least one conservative justice didn't peel away from the pack. Although the Miranda warnings have infiltrated US popular culture, they're really not part of the Constitution. Indeed, the Miranda Court itself suggested that communities might be able to opt-out of the Miranda warnings, so long as they replaced those warnings with other, equivalent measures. (What form those measures could take, it didn't say.)

UPDATE: A federal District Judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated international terrorist organizations.

The Humanitarian Law Project, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were threatened with 15 years in prison if they advised groups on seeking a peaceful resolution of the Kurds' campaign for self-determination in Turkey.

The judge's ruling said the law, as written, does not differentiate between impermissible advice on violence and encouraging the use of peaceful, nonviolent means to achieve goals.

The decision on the Patriot Act seems about right to me. (As for the Supreme Court's decision, well, I've never been particularly fond of Miranda . . . .)

Forget Everything But This:

Last year, David Kay (search) had confidently predicted weapons would be found. But after nine months of searching, he said Sunday: "I don't think they exist." . . .

. . . Asked whether President Bush (search) owed the nation an explanation for the discrepancies between his warnings and Kay's findings, Kay said: "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people."

Forget politics. Forget the fact that the search for WMDs isn't yet over. Forget, "Bush lied, people died." Forget the other good reasons for getting rid of Saddam. Forget to draw the devil horns on Cheney. Forget the torture chambers and rape-rooms. Forget to chant "it's all about oiiiiilllll." (Please, forget to chant "it's all about the oiiiiilllll.") Forget it all. Remember only this:

Our national security and our national credibility depend upon accurate intelligence. Our intelligence failed in Iraq. There must be an investigation. The investigation must include the offices of those in the administration charged with overseeing the US's intelligence services: George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice.

You say that's tough to do during an election year? Well, I'll tell you a secret: Sometimes, it's tough to do the right thing. Doesn't keep it from being right.

UPDATE: Bird Dog, at Tacitus, reaches the same conclusion, though he focuses his ire on Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (essentially absolving Rice and Tenet). I deliberately omitted mention of Cheney because I fear that any investigation of the Vice President will politicize -- and thereby paralyze -- the investigative process, given the current electoral cycle. It may be that Cheney is Spiro Agnew, back from the dead. Before we start j'accusin', though, let's determine what the people with actual oversight over the intelligence (Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld) did, or did not, do.

(How Bird Dog absolves Rice and Tenet of responsibility is, frankly, beyond my ken.)

Arar #20

1. Juliet O'Neill says that "sources are drying up" in the case after the search on her house.

2. There is increasing political pressure on Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to order a public investigation.

3. I don't think I've ever mentioned the fact that "Arar and his family are on welfare. He is charged with nothing, yet unemployable as long as this shadow hangs over his head." Link here. That's an editorial, but news articles have noted the same thing. This makes the D.O.J.'s continued accusations against Arar--backed by secret evidence or no evidence--that much worse.

Nuclear Wal-Mart

In reading this article, and studying for my exam tomorrow, I think I've finally come up with a concise, non-emotionally loaded explanation of the fundamental strategic problem I see with the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine.

A nuclear Wal-Mart does not necessarily sell only to rogue nations. It might also sell directly to terrorist groups. And a state, however brutal, will not wage a direct nuclear attack on us if it wants to continue to exist. So the two plausible scenarios for a nuclear attack on the U.S. are:

1. nuclear supplier (e.g. Russia, Pakistan, North Korea*) to non-nuclear rogue state (e.g. Iraq, Syria) to terrorists

2. nuclear supplier to terrorists

Our strategy, from summer of 2002 to the present, has been to direct a huge majority of our resources to eliminating the middle-man of scenario #1--and only one middle-man at that, and not the middle-man who was closest to getting nuclear weapons or the middle-man who had closest ties to terrorists. (In fact, one of the suppliers--to wit, Pakistan--has closer ties to Al Qaeda than Iraq ever did.) We knew all this at the time. Now, of course, we also know that he had no chemical or biological weapons.

So the war in Iraq is an incomplete response to scenario #1. It does absolutely nothing about scenario #2. I'd say it did worse than nothing, given the credibility problem, the "hearts and minds" problem (at least in the short run) and the overextended military problem.

You can argue that there were other justifications for invading Iraq. Fine. I'm not convinced by them, but what's done is done. The problem is, I see very little indication that the administration has changed its strategy going forward. I get the impression that we're delaying confrontations with say, Syria, because of public opinion, allied opinion and lack of manpower--not because we think there was a fundamental problem with our strategy or intelligence.

That really worries me, to put it mildly.

*North Korea seems to be in transition from a non-nuclear rogue state to a nuclear rogue state, and they already are in a position to sell some nuclear technology & material. Also note that I'm listing these countries as geographical locations where the nuclear material is, not necessarily as governments. The nukes could be stolen from a poorly guarded facility, or sold illegally by a corrupt or extremist individual with access to them.

P.S.I wonder if this story would have gotten the same amount of attention if El-Baradei had not been clever enough to use a memorable soundbite? Probably not; good for him. Would that the Democratic presidential candidates could make these arguments with similar flair. "Nuclear Wal-Mart" gets people's attention in a way that "To reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation we must increase the funding of the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program!" never will.