Thoughts on Income Inequality

I am fascinated by the topic of income inequality because, to some extent, I think like a liberal on this issue. Although I believe that individuals should be rewarded for hard work, even if the reward involves a lot of money, I also believe that there is some degree of income inequality that might be too much for a stable society to bear. I do not know if we have reached the point where something needs to be done about this issue, but it is worth keeping an eye on because there is some evidence that income inequality is increasing relentlessly.

As I have noted quite a few times, income inequality in America is greater than income inequality in Europe, but that's only because almost everyone is economically better off here, except that it's a tie at the bottom:


Details on how I computed these numbers can be found in prior posts (e.g., here). The greater equality in Europe is achieved not by increasing the welfare of the poor but by dragging everyone else down. Maybe that's a good idea, but someone would need to give me a good explanation before I would come around to that way of thinking.

As I noted here, a recent analysis by European economists suggests that Europe is 10 to 20 years behind the US in terms of economic development. That being the case, I suppose I could modify the chart shown above like this (note that this next chart is hypothetical):


That is, perhaps income inequality in America over the last 20 years or so has occurred because the lowest incomes have remained about the same while the upper incomes have increased (more so the more you make). In fact, as I am going to show you now, that appears to be the case.

The pre-tax and after-tax income data reported by the Tax Policy Center was recently updated to include values for 2004, so I analyzed those data again (you can find the data here). First, let me show you what after-tax incomes look like from 1979 to 2004:


The chart breaks the population down into fifths (or quintiles), and the numbers are in constant 2004 dollars to remove the effects of inflation. As you can see, the upper quintile (i.e., the top 20%) exhibits a clearly increasing trend over the years. But before you fly into a fit of anti-Bush rage over that fact, note the vertical lines in the graph. The blue line marks the beginning of the Clinton years; the red line marks the beginning of the Bush years. The rich were doing very, very well under Clinton, and income inequality was increasing enormously during his watch. The bump in the road that you see for the top 20% at the start of the Bush administration occurred because the stock market bubble crashed at about the same time we were attacked on 9/11. Shortly thereafter, the incomes of the top 20% began to increase again. But the point is that the income inequality issue is not a Bush phenomenon. It's been going on for a long time, even when Saint Clinton was in charge.

Are only the top 20% doing better? It looks that way at first glance, but let's remove them from the chart and look at the remaining 4 quintiles:


Now you can see that almost everyone is getting better off in America. The one exception is that incomes for the lowest quintile have not been increasing over the years. Thus, it really does look like Europe today is much like America was 20 years ago.

Why does income increase faster the more you make? No one is sure, and there is a debate about whether it is a real phenomenon or simply reflects where income is reported on tax forms. Alan Reynolds of the CATO Institute makes this argument:

There are frequent complaints that U.S. income inequality has increased in recent decades. Estimates of rising inequality that are widely cited in the media are often based on federal income tax return data. Those data appear to show that the share of U.S. income going to the top 1 percent (those people with the highest incomes) has increased substantially since the 1970s. However, there have been large changes in U.S. tax rules over time that have made a dramatic difference on what is reported as income on individual tax returns. Tax changes induced thousands of businesses to switch from filing under the corporate tax system to filing under the individual tax system. ... Studies of inequality that are based on tax return data usually exclude transfer payments, which results in exaggerating the shares of income received by those at the top by ignoring growing amounts of income at the bottom.

I don't know if there will ever be a resolution of this debate, but I do know that charts like the ones that I show above are going to lead to demands that we increase taxes on the wealthy.

Maybe we should, but I think a better approach would be to obtain a greater understanding of why this is happening and then deal with any inherent unfairness in the system that might be causing it. If it is not a tax-rate phenomenon, then I wouldn't immediately use the brute-force tax-rate solution. And one point that cannot be made enough in our hyper-polarized political environment is that increased income inequality, if it is real, is not the result of the Bush tax cuts. To appreciate that, look at this next chart that I constructed using data from the Tax Policy Center:


I like this graph. First, it illustrates the progressive nature of our tax code. That is, the less you make, the higher the percentage of your earned income that you keep. The lowest 20% now keep 95% of what they make. The richest 20% keep only 75% or so. In other words, the tax code is progressive. Also, you can see that everyone benefited from the Bush tax cuts. The poorest 20% have never kept such a high percentage of what they earned. The second poorest quintile is also doing very well in this regard. Thus, increased income inequality is not occurring because of the Bush tax cuts no matter how much you want that to be true. If you doubt that, remember what incomes for the rich looked like during the Clinton years. The rich were more heavily taxed while he was in office, but their incomes skyrocketed anyway.

When the stock market is doing well, the rich are going to benefit disproportionately. That's what happened during the Clinton years, and my guess is that it is happening again now. Whatever the reason for the increasing income inequality, it has little or nothing to do with tax policy (including the Bush tax cuts that supposedly only benefit the wealthy). That's the point to keep in mind as you try to decide what, if anything, should be done to address this issue.

So, incomes for the poor have remained steady for years, whereas incomes for those who make more have been steadily increasing (more so the more you make). Keep in mind that although incomes for the poor have remained steady, there is simply no doubt that they have been getting steadily better off over the years anyway. The best example of this (but there are an infinite number of examples) is penicillin: not so long ago, you could not even treat a simple infection, which therefore made it a life-threatening condition. Now, you can buy it for next to nothing, which means that an infection is easily treated even if you are poor and have no health insurance.

The liberal mind wants to address income inequality with a sledge hammer: raise the minimum wage to bring up the bottom and tax the rich to bring down the top. The reflexive mindlessness of that approach bodes poorly for its ultimate success, unless it induces a recession that brings us back to where Europe is now (and to where America was 20 years ago). But income inequality is an issue worth thinking about, and if a creative solution comes to my attention (one that might actually address the problem without making everyone worse off), I'll let you know.

Al Qaeda in Action

Do I really need to explain it to you? Unless you are a Democratic Senator, it's probably pretty clear to you by now. Here is the latest news from Iraq:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Bombers launched two deadly strikes Thursday in crowded Shiite marketplaces in Baghdad and a town north of Iraq's capital, killing 119 people and wounding 171. At least 17 others died in other bombings and gunfire around the country.

The attacks erupted as Iraqi shoppers filled marketplaces Thursday to buy goods at the start of the weekend and the eve of the Muslim holy day of Friday.

In the deadliest attack, at least one suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated in a crowded open-air marketplace in Baghdad's Shiite district of Shaab. At least 76 people were killed and 85 were wounded.

"It was a very, very crowded market. All those killed are innocent," a man who was wounded in the explosion told Reuters news agency.

OK, go through your check list:

1. Indiscriminate slaughter of innocent, non-threatening men women and children? Check.

2. Victims primarily of the Shiite sect? Check.

3. Suicide bombers and/or truck bombs? Check.

All of that is the signature of al Qaeda in action. As you know -- but as Democratic Senators and Representatives do not know -- al Qaeda is seeking to incite sectarian conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq. That's their objective, and they are very good at making it happen. Obviously, these bombing were conducted by al Qaeda in an effort to move that nefarious plan forward. Don't you find it just a little creepy that the Democrats want you to conceptualize this as nothing more than a civil war?

It is not a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. It is a war between al Qaeda and the Iraqi people. Muqtada al Sadr's Madhi Army and the Sunni tribes of the Anbar Province are fighting against al Qaeda, but they have taken on a formidable foe, one that now has the Democratic leadership of America in the palm of its hand. It's as if al Qaeda has a remote control that they can use to prevent the Democrats from even acknowledging al Qaeda in Iraq and to say ridiculous things like "we need to get our troops out of Iraq and back to Afghanistan so they can finish the fight against al Qaeda there." Here is Nancy Pelosi speaking about this just last month:

“Proponents of the President’s escalation are equating the war on terror to the war in Iraq. As our esteemed Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Ike Skelton of Missouri, great patriot, has observed, ‘Two conflicts. Two wars. And the two should not be confused. There are those who attempt to fuzz the two conflicts together as 'the war on terror,' but the wars are truly separate and distinct.’

“The war in Iraq continues to detract from our ability to fight the war against international terrorism effectively. We need to finish the job started more than five years ago in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and address other conditions around the world in which the appeal of terrorism breeds.

“The longer it takes us to resolve the situation in Iraq, the longer resources and attention will continue to be diverted from the war on terrorism.

Diverted from the war on terrorism? Yesterday alone, al Qaeda killed more people in Iraq than they have killed anywhere in the world (including Afghanistan) for the last year. And they did so because (a) they have Iraq (not Afghanistan) in mind for their new base of jihadist operations and (b) their goal is to chase America out of Iraq, which will restore their reputation throughout the Muslim world.

Remember the Iraq Study Group report? I disagreed with some of what they recommended, but at least they did not pretend that reality differed from what it actually is in the way that Democratic leaders do. Here are some selected quotations from that report:

Iraq is vital to regional and even global stability, and is critical to U.S. interests...It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves. It is now a base of operations for international terrorism, including al Qaeda.
...
A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe...Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations.
...
As one Iraqi official told us, “Al Qaeda is now a franchise in Iraq, like McDonald’s.” Left unchecked, al Qaeda in Iraq could continue to incite violence between Sunnis and Shia. A chaotic Iraq could provide a still stronger base of operations for terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally. Al Qaeda will portray any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their cause in the region and around the world. Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, has declared Iraq a focus for al Qaeda: they will seek to expel the Americans and then spread “the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.” A senior European official told us that failure in Iraq could incite terrorist attacks within his country.
...
A premature American departure from Iraq would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.

If you are a Democrat who is proud of the fact that Congress is finally "standing up to Bush" by demanding a withdrawal on a deadline, why don't you care that they have all adopted an eerie code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq? It would be one thing to acknowledge that reality and then state that we should withdraw anyway (for whatever reason). That would be making an actual argument. Instead, Nancy Pelosi and others in her party appear to be under remote control by al Qaeda in Iraq, so much so that they refuse to acknowledge the problem despite the fact that we see al Qaeda in action every day in Iraq. It's right there before your very eyes, but it goes unnoticed by Democrats. It's creepy.

Why aren't more Democrats -- including liberal Bush haters -- creeped out by their leaders? Don't worry, you can acknowledge the reality about al Qaeda in Iraq and still hate Bush with every fiber of your being. You can completely blame him for this mess we are in. You can rage against him and call him a liar and put Joe Wilson on a pedestal and everything. You can angrily rant at Bush and Cheney about "blood for oil" and Haliburton and "incompetence" using profanity-laced speech to your heart's content. You can do all of that and still acknowledge that the war with al Qaeda is right there in Iraq. And then you can say what we should do about that. That's the hard part, and that's why (I assume) Democrats have adopted an eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq.

In Iraq yesterday, al Qaeda made itself heard yet again. The suicide bombers indiscriminately and intentionally slaughtered dozens of innocent civilians. As such, the word "terrorist" applies according to any reasonable definition, but you won't find that word anywhere in the CNN report (as usual). Why not? Because, I assume, calling this "bomber" what he is would be far too judgmental. This bizarre pact among liberal reporters is another surreal phenomenon, but it is so common that I assume it goes unnoticed by most readers. I wish someone would explain to me why reporters cannot say that word even when a prototypical act of terrorism takes place.

Although the reporters who wrote this article cannot bring themselves to use the word "terrorist," I give them credit for using the words "al Qaeda" one time late in the article:

The Thursday attacks reflect what U.S. military officials have been saying is a recent trend -- an increase in car bombings and high-profile strikes by al Qaeda in Iraq, which is a Sunni-dominated movement.

Note the quick emphasis on the fact that al Qaeda is a Sunni-dominated movement. Is it just me, or are these reporters trying to say "don't worry, I know we had to mention al Qaeda, which is a problem for our side, but you can still think of this as a big ol' civil war because members of al Qaeda are Sunnis."

It's not a civil war. It's al Qaeda vs. the people of Iraq. What you saw yesterday was not an example of the civil war in action even though the vast majority of Americans will see it that way (helped along by liberal reporters and Democratic leaders). Instead, it was an example of al Qaeda in action. There is a world of difference between these two interpretations, and whether or not we end up losing to al Qaeda in Iraq depends on which interpretation wins the day (the true one, or the false one). Right now, the false interpretation that views Iraq in terms of a civil war and that scarcely acknowledges the existence of al Qaeda in Iraq dominates America's thinking despite the fact that al Qaeda fills your TV screens and computer screens with the blood of innocent Iraqi civilians almost every day. Isn't it remarkable that it can be that way? What must al Qaeda do before Democrats wake up to what that terrorist organization -- the one that attacked us on 9/11 -- is doing in Iraq?

UPDATE: Read this report by Bill Roggio. Notice how he just matter-of-factly describes one confrontation after another with al Qaeda in Iraq. Put that article alongside any speech by a Democrat about what is happening in Iraq and there will be almost no overlap. To a Democrat, all you need to know is that it is a civil war, and all this stuff about al Qaeda just does not really compute (therefore, it does not exist). Creepy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The incomparable Charles Krauthammer is on the same page that I am:

The Senate and the House have both passed bills for ending the Iraq war, or at least liquidating the American involvement in it. The resolutions, approved by the barest majorities, were underpinned by one unmistakable theme: wrong war, wrong place, distracting us from the real war that is elsewhere.

Where? In Afghanistan.
...
Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, the greater importance of Afghanistan is the least serious.
...
Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one whose presence in Afghanistan (or some cave on the border) presumably makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that "the most . . . serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, has declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era."

And it's not just what al-Qaeda says, it's what al-Qaeda does. Where are they funneling the worldwide recruits for jihad? Where do all the deranged suicidists who want to die for Allah gravitate? It's no longer Afghanistan but Iraq. That's because they recognize the greater prize.

The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no strategic sense.

No, it certainly doesn't. Who ever said that the Democrats are not serious about national security?

A Looming Confrontation With Iran?

A confrontation with Iran looms in our future. Whether the 15 British hostages will be the trigger for that confrontation or not, I do not know. I actually doubt it. But a military confrontation seems almost inevitable unless Iran's growing economic troubles ultimately lead to regime change (as I hope will happen), so it's worth thinking about.

The issue, of course, is oil. Iran exports about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and if that came to a sudden halt, the price of oil would skyrocket. But keep in mind that the Saudis claim that they have the capacity to dump an extra 4 million barrels of oil a day onto the world market, which is obviously more than enough to offset the loss of Iranian oil:

Saudi Arabia maintains crude oil production capacity of around 10.5-11.0 million bbl/d, and claims that it is "easily capable" of producing up to 15 million bbl/d in the future and maintaining that production level for 50 years.

I hope that's true. Also keep in mind that the US has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which now holds about 700 million barrels of oil. It exists largely because of the inevitable confrontation with Iran. President Bush wisely decided to double its size, but that will take a long time to accomplish:

The reserve will increase from its current capacity of 727 million barrels of oil to 1.5 billion barrels over the next two decades, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today. Bodman said the U.S. will start buying 100,000 barrels of oil a day this spring to expand the stockpile.
...
"We will have to fill the reserve at the rate of 100,000 barrels a day for the next 20 years,'' said Robert Ebel, chairman of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Taking 100,000 barrels a day will take some oil off the market, but keep in mind the world produces about 85 million barrels day.''

Of course, this effort to increase the size of the reserve will increase the price of oil, so we will essentially be paying now, gradually, instead of paying later, all at once, when Iran's oil output comes to a sudden halt. That seems worth it to me, though some economists disagree.

For now and for the near future, though, we have 700 million barrels of oil at the ready. There are other strategic oil reserves in the world as well, amounting to more than 1.4 billion barrels altogether (and that number jumps to 4 billion when you count reserves held by private industry). When the confrontation with Iran comes, it will be time to dump some of this oil onto the world market to minimize the oil shock. With the Saudis increasing their output somewhat, and with oil being released from our reserve, the loss of Iranian oil could be very easily offset.

On the other hand, there is a larger problem. Look at this map of Iran and the Persian Gulf:


A lot of oil flows through that tiny area known as the Strait of Hormuz near the southern part of Iran. In fact, according to this article, here is how much oil per day passes through that region:


That's about 15 million barrels of oil per day. If Iran could shut that down militarily, the loss would create an oil shock that would be harder to overcome even with global reserves as large as they are. That's the real problem.

Could Iran shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz even with our significant military presence in the region? I don't know, and I'd suggest not starting a military confrontation with them until we are reasonably confident that we could keep oil flowing. In fact, if I were George Bush, I'd have long ago ordered the military to come up with a plan to eliminate Iran's capacity to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. This article suggests that the problem may not be as severe as it seems:

Now, the ultimate challenge for decision-makers and strategic planners alike lies in accurately assessing the ability of Iranian forces to attempt to and, if possible, keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

The US intelligence community judges that Iran can briefly close the Strait of Hormuz, relying on a layered strategy using predominately naval, air, and some ground forces. During 2004 it purchased North Korean torpedo and missile-armed fast attack craft and midget submarines, making marginal improvements to this capability. Tehran's ability to interdict the Strait of Hormuz with air, surface and sub-surface naval units, as well as mines and missiles remains a concern. Additionally, Iran's asymmetrical capabilities are becoming more robust. These capabilities include high-speed attack patrol ships, anti-ship missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and hardened facilities for surface-to-surface missiles and command and control.

Well, if it's true that Iran can only briefly close the Strait, then it is not the great problem that it seems to be. Also, because it would be economically suicidal for Iran to disrupt the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf (their economy is in bad shape, and their oil exports flow through the gulf as well), perhaps it is not really that much of a concern. In fact, that's the thesis of this article:

For Iran, the use of its own oil as a bargaining chip has limited value. Iran gets 90 percent of its government revenues from oil. Its exports of about 2.5 million b.p.d. amount to 80 percent of its total exports. Oil provides some 40 percent of Iran's gross domestic product.

Yet Iran is the only major producer of oil to suffer from a budget deficit. The Iranian public, notes Alhajji, is heavily dependent on government subsidies for staple goods and fuels. From 1980 to 2005, Iran's population grew by 22.4 million and now stands at 68 million. Its daily oil output during that period rose by only 600,000 barrels.

So a cut in oil exports by Iran would be risky at home. "If they are willing to commit suicide, they could do it," says Alhajji.

The blow to the US would not be so severe. Hurricane Katrina shut off 1.5 million b.p.d. from the Gulf of Mexico, but oil prices rose only $10 a barrel. Any Iranian embargo could be countered by more exports from other OPEC nations and tapping the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

So perhaps the best plan would an idea I heard Dennis Prager mention on his radio show the other day: impose a naval blockade on Iran, but allow Iran's oil to pass through. The Iranians would still get their oil revenue, which they badly need, and they presumably would not take action to close the Strait of Hormuz under those conditions. But other imports to Iran would be cut off.

Here are Iran's neighbors:


I'm not sure any if any of those neighboring countries would rush to help if Iran were isolated through a naval blockade (and I'm not sure how much they could help even if they wanted to). Thus, the blockade sounds like a reasonable idea. Whether to use it now in response to the 15 British hostages or not is a hard call.

I'd suggest not doing that. The latest provocation by Iran is demonstrating to the world that the regime is still in an adolescent stage of development, so if any on the left believe that Iran should be allowed to have a nuclear bomb (because Israel has one, after all), they may begin to think harder about that.

This goofy action by Iran will serve to isolate them economically even more than they already are isolated. For example, note this interesting column, which again highlights the fact that Democratic senators are behaving in impressive fashion with respect to Iran. First, the column summarizes these oil deals with Iran since 1999 despite their relative isolation:


We've been fairly patient in our reaction to such deals, but...

That patience may be ending now that Iran is kidnapping British sailors, supplying bombs that kill Americans in Iraq, and defying U.N. orders to stop enriching uranium. The Bush Administration is pressing financial sanctions against Iran especially hard, but pressure is building on Capitol Hill for firmer action. Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg is talking about more severe penalties for U.S. firms that do business with states that sponsor terrorism, and stricter sanctions on the U.S. interests of foreign companies could be in the cards as well.

Frank Lautenberg? Taking a sensible stand on an issue of national security? It's hard to believe, but he is not the only Democrat sounding this theme. As I noted here, Democratic Senators Menendez and Dodd also want to further punish specific companies that invest in Iran. This seems like the way to go. And if there are any insurgent groups in Iran being trained by the CIA, they should be trained to disrupt Iran's oil industry (and to kill members of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard). The Iranians should be made to understand that if they continue their pursuit of a nuclear bomb, their economy will eventually be made to match that of North Korea.

Americans Misperceive Iraq

Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas proposed a curious plan, but at least his rationale was sound:

Democrat Proposes Making Withdrawal Date Secret
Only Congress, White House and Iraqi Government Would Know Plan

In one of the more unusual proposals to emerge in the Senate debate on Iraq withdrawal, Sen. Mark Pryor wants to keep any plans for bringing troops home a secret.
...
"My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress," Pryor said yesterday. A public deadline would tip off the enemy, "who might just bide their time and wait for us to leave," he said. "Then you'd have chaos and mayhem and instability."

That's the obvious problem with announcing a deadline to your enemy, and it's nice to see a Democrat other than Joe Lieberman who is capable of appreciating that obvious fact. Unfortunately, the funding bill just passed by the Senate contains this publicly announced deadline for withdrawal:

(b) On or before October 1, 2007, the President--

(1) shall certify to the Congress that the Government of Iraq has enacted a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis; adopted legislation necessary for the conduct of provincial and local elections, taken steps to implement such legislation, and set a schedule to conduct provincial and local elections; reformed current laws governing the de-Baathification process to allow for more equitable treatment of individuals affected by such laws; amended the Constitution of Iraq consistent with the principles contained in article 137 of such constitution; and allocated and begun expenditure of $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis
...
(d) If the President makes the certification specified in subsection (b), the Secretary of Defense shall commence the redeployment of the Armed Forces from Iraq not later than March 1, 2008, and complete such redeployment within 180 days.

As best I can tell, the bill requires that redeployment take place regardless of the security conditions in place at the time and regardless of whether or not al Qaeda will emerge as the victor (and be widely perceived as such). Senator Mark Pryor clearly explained the problem with setting such a deadline, but the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected the following amendment to the troop funding bill by a vote of 50 to 48:

To strike language that would tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief by imposing an arbitrary timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, thereby undermining the position of American Armed Forces and jeopardizing the successful conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Too bad. As Senator Pryor noted, this amendment was an attempt to avoid advertising a withdrawal date to the enemy, who would simply bide their time and then create chaos when the opportunity presented itself. What's really odd, though, is that Senator Pryor himself voted against this sensible amendment. How very strange given that he provided a compelling argument in favor of the amendment when justifying his preference for a secret troop withdrawal deadline. So much for the idea that another sensible Democrat has been identified. He would appear to be just another robot under the control of Harry Reid.

The Democrats who supported the war have their fingers in the wind and are now voting accordingly. Most Americans want to set a timetable for withdrawal, but that's because they have Iraq improperly conceptualized. It's not a spontaneous civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, as most Americans believe and as virtually every Democrat and every reporter suggests. Instead, it is a deliberately provoked "civil war" between al Qaeda on the one hand and the Shiites and Sunnis on the other. It's only because Americans fail to appreciate the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq that they are ready to accept defeat by pulling out. In their minds, we would be just getting out of the way of an ancient ethnic rivalry.

Why do Americans not get it? Well, look how the violence is covered by the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD — Two truck bombs shattered markets in Tal Afar on Tuesday, killing at least 63 people and wounding dozens in the second assault in four days on a predominantly Shiite Muslim city hit by a resurgence in violence a year after it was held up as a symbol of U.S. success.

After the bombings, suspected Sunni insurgents tried to ambush ambulances carrying the injured out of the northwestern city but were driven off by police gunfire, Iraqi authorities said.

Stories like these, coupled with pronouncements by leading Democrats, explain why Americans have it wrong when it comes to Iraq. Bombings like these that indiscriminately slaughter Shiite civilians are conducted by al Qaeda terrorists, not former Baathist insurgents seeking to restore themselves to power. Terrorists intentionally and indiscriminately slaughter innocent civilians. Is that so very hard to understand? And these terrorists are jihadists seeking to incite reprisal attacks against Sunnis. It works, but those reprisal attacks are meant to stop al Qaeda, and that's what few people understand. But it is critical to understand.

The same news story also notes how Sunni insurgents are turning against al Qaeda (note that these Sunni insurgents actually are insurgents, unlike those who set off truck bombs to slaughter civilians):

A major Sunni Arab insurgent group reported its military leader was slain outside Baghdad, an assault likely to deepen an increasingly bloody rift between Al Qaeda in Iraq and opponents of the terror group in Sunni communities west of the capital.

The American people do not understand what is happening in Iraq. I suspect that leaders in the Democratic party do, but they prefer not to disabuse the American public of their erroneous belief that it's all just a big ol' civil war now, with a few scattered al Qaeda terrorists, too. So long as Americans buy into the false civil-war scenario, they will be against Bush and in favor of the Democrats. That is too precious for the Democrats to tamper with, so they constantly push the false view that they cannot possibly believe to be true (and in that false view, al Qaeda scarcely exists).

It is President Bush's job to change the way Americans think about Iraq. As I'll soon document, he has Iraq properly conceptualized. In fact, he sounds so much like me on this issue that he could be ghost-writing my blog. Why, then, do Americans mistakenly believe the big-ol'-civil-war scenario? Because he explains his understanding of Iraq in detailed interviews that few people pay attention to. He needs to communicate more often to the American people, and he needs to (a) summarize how Americans think about Iraq and (b) tell them that they are wrong to think that way. Like this:

"My fellow Americans. I just vetoed a bill that would set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, and I'd like to explain why I did that. I know that many Americans would like to see our troops withdrawn, and so would I. As I have said before, I will not keep our troops in Iraq if the Iraqis choose to have a civil war. Many Americans believe that a civil war has spontaneously broken out, so the time has come to get our troops out and let the Iraqis have their fight. But that's not how it is. What's missing from that way of thinking is the critical role played by al Qaeda in Iraq. This civil war, if you prefer to call it that, has not emerged spontaneously. It has been deliberately and repeatedly provoked by al Qaeda because civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis is their stated goal. That's how this civil war differs from other civil wars from the past. Al Qaeda's method is to indiscriminately slaughter innocent Shiite civilians and to destroy their holy sites using suicide bombers and truck bombs. The media generally reports that these attacks are carried out by Sunni insurgents, but these attacks, which kill hundreds of innocent people every month in Iraq, usually represent al Qaeda in action. These are not insurgents, they are terrorists. Increasingly, both the Shiites and the Sunnis are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq, but they need our help. The Shiite militias entered the battle to put a stop to these attacks by al Qaeda, but they are now starting to cooperate with our efforts, so executions in Baghdad have come down recently. And the Sunni insurgents are also finally starting to join our fight against al Qaeda because they have come to realize that al Qaeda is not their friend after all.

Tomorrow, the headlines might say: 'Bush says it is not a civil war in Iraq,' but, tonight, the message you should hear is that the so-called civil war in Iraq is a war between al Qaeda and the Iraqi people. We have taken the side of the Iraqi people in this war, and what Americans need to understand is that setting a timetable for withdrawal does nothing more than set the date that America will finally accept defeat at the hands of al Qaeda. As president, I will never do that, and that's why I vetoed this bill."

Well, that's what I'd say, both because it is actually true and because the American public has not yet gotten the message.

UPDATE: Here's and even better speech the president may want to consider giving.

About That "Planetary Emergency"

As you know if you read my blog, I have worked tirelessly to dispel the notion that the US economy is somehow in the doldrums (with "huge deficits" and a "jobless recovery" and a class of poor folks who have been left behind) while other economies of the world (e.g., in Europe) are doing much better. In truth, it is the other way around, which is easy to prove if you just gather the objective data and take a look at it for yourself (as I have done here, here, here, and here). The US economy has been booming for the last 15 years, except for a brief pause when the stock market bubble burst at the end of the Clinton administration and we were attacked (on 9/11) at the beginning of the Bush administration.

Which brings me to the topic of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Which countries produce the most greenhouse gas emissions? The ones with the largest economies, of course. Here is a nice chart showing which countries generate the most emissions:


And here is another nice chart showing how the various countries of the world break down according to economic activity:


Notice anything in particular when you compare these two charts? Obviously, greenhouse gas emissions correlate with economic activity, and economic activity is a function of the strength of a country's economy and the size of that country's population. No one is suggesting that we kill off large swaths of our population, so the only way to seriously address the greenhouse gas emissions problem would be to curtail economic activity. And if you do that, who do you think is going to suffer? The wealthy? I don't think so. When the unemployment rate increases from 4.5% to 9%, it is not the wealthy who are going to pay the price. Of course, if this really were a "planetary emergency," as Al Gore theatrically suggests, then sacrificing the well being of the poor and down-trodden might be worth it.

Or would it? What would the Kyoto Protocol actually accomplish in terms of reducing global warming? Haven't you ever wondered? The overall cost of adhering to the Kyoto Protocol is debated, with liberals claiming that it would save money and conservatives arguing that it would cost a fortune. But, given the obvious correlation between economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions, I think it is fair to say that one would not be insane to entertain the possibility that the wealthier nations of the would incur a considerable cost. What would be gained for that cost? Scientists generally agree that the gain would be minimal, and given that most scientists are liberal academics, the estimated gain -- small as it is -- is probably exaggerated. Here is one estimate of what it might accomplish (this is Figure 9 from the linked article):


There you have it. Looking 100 years into the future, there is not much of an effect at all. Looking 300 years into the future, the effect is still rather small. And this assumes that the countries that sign on to the Kyoto Protocol actually live up to its stipulations. But you must know that the liberal mind does not think like that. The goal is the feel-good agreement itself, not actually doing what was agreed to. Here is a story about how various countries are living up to their agreement (or not):

Most of Europe set to miss Kyoto goals: study

AFP, 27 December 2005 - Most of Europe, which has criticized the United States over its stance on global warming, looks set to miss a set of goals to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, a study revealed on Tuesday.

The findings by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) will make embarrassing reading for European governments that have berated Washington for its refusal to ratify the United Nations pact.

Of 15 countries in Europe signed up to Kyoto, only Britain and Sweden were on target to meet their commitments on reducing harmful gas emissions by 2012, said the IPPR, Britain's leading progressive think tank. In contrast, 10 nations -- including Ireland, Italy and Spain -- would fail to do so unless they took urgent action, it said.

And it's not just Europe:

Topping the list of Kyoto slackers is Canada, which last year became the first signatory country to announce that it would not meet its Kyoto target of a six percent emissions cut by 2012. New oil production in the tar sands of Alberta has instead forced Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions up significantly, as the government has chosen to pursue economic growth as a priority over meeting its Kyoto commitments.

Get the picture? That last sentence tells it all. It's either increased economic activity or decreased greenhouse gas emissions. That's your choice; take your pick. Canada has chosen wisely.

What about Japan, the country that hosted the Kyoto conference? How well are they dealing with the greenhouse gas emissions problem? Not so great:

Japan is also lagging behind. If no additional measures are taken, the United Nations forecasts that Japan’s emissions will instead grow six percent by 2012.

Japan's economy has been in the toilet for years, and they are finally starting to pull out of their economic tailspin. Are they going to allow their economy to recover or are they going to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? Do I even have to ask? No.

The US did not sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, but imagine that we had and that we had dutifully plunged our economy into a severe recession in order to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. Would that have been a good idea even though other signatories to the agreement did not live up to their end of the bargain and even though some other large greenhouse producers (e.g., China and India) are altogether exempt? I wouldn't think so, but here is where the difference between the liberal mind and the post-liberal mind comes into sharp focus. In his recent testimony, Al Gore answered this question by saying this:

Gore rejected the contention by opponents of quick action on global warming that the United States should only impose mandatory controls on greenhouse gases if China, India and other rapidly developing nations agree to do the same.

“The best way and the only way to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership,” Gore said.

In other words, the Chinese will be so inspired by our basic goodness, decency and nobility on this issue that they will not seize the glorious opportunity to replace America as the global superpower (both economically and militarily). Instead, our conspicuously selfless effort to save the planet will inspire them to follow our lead.

Right.

If there is one thing that has become very clear to me in recent years, it is this: I'm not liberal anymore.

Shiites and Sunnis vs. al Qaeda in Iraq

As I have long emphasized, the Shiite militias entered the battle of Baghdad in earnest only after relentless provocations by al Qaeda. Everyone except for the Democrats knows that al Qaeda is intentionally trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq because the jihadists gain from that in every way. That's why they bombed the Golden Mosque in Samarra a year ago, and it's why their suicide bombers relentlessly bomb Shiite civilians even today. The media refers to these bombers as "insurgents," but they are al Qaeda terrorists working toward their avowed goal of civil war. The actual insurgents in Iraq (i.e., the former Baathists) gain nothing from slaughtering Shiite civilians, but al Qaeda has everything to gain.

Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army started executing large numbers of Sunni males in Baghdad in an effort to put a stop to this effort by al Qaeda. One can question the method, but that's their goal. In essence, they declared war on al Qaeda terrorists by attacking the Sunnis who harbor them. They do not indiscriminately slaughter Sunni civilians. Instead, they target young Sunni males (the potential foot soldiers of the insurgency that harbors al Qaeda). That's how they have been working to put an end to al Qaeda's atrocities, and it's exactly what al Qaeda wanted them to do. Lately, they have cut back on this activity because Muqtada al Sadr is giving the Americans a second chance to do that job.

Increasingly, Sunni tribes in the Anbar Province are declaring war on al Qaeda as well:

Sunni Sheiks Join Fight Vs. Insurgency

RAMADI, Iraq -- Not long ago it would have been unthinkable: a Sunni sheik allying himself publicly with American forces in a xenophobic city at the epicenter of Iraq's Sunni insurgency.
...
The 36-year-old sheik is leading a growing movement of Sunni tribesmen who have turned against al-Qaida-linked insurgents in Anbar province. The dramatic shift in alliances may have done more in a few months to ease daily street battles and undercut the insurgency here than American forces have achieved in years with arms.

And here's more from a related story:

Mar 26, 2007 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi officials are in contact with representatives of some Sunni Arab insurgent groups to build an alliance against al Qaeda in Iraq, the outgoing U.S. ambassador said on Monday.

"Embassy personnel and some military officials met (them) on several occasions and that process is continuing," envoy Zalmay Khalilzad told his final news conference in Baghdad.
...
Khalilzad said he did not want to give too many details about who was involved in the talks given "al Qaeda's efforts to derail such efforts."

Al Qaeda militants have launched a string of attacks on a group of tribes in Iraq's western Anbar province that have formed an alliance against the hardline Sunni Islamist group.

This was not part of al Qaeda's plan. They thought the Sunnis would fully embrace them when the Shiite militias entered the battle. But it may not be working out that way. Al Qaeda's plan also called for the Americans to become demoralized by all of this violence and to turn tail and run, as they have in years gone by. Instead, they responded with a surge of troops. Al Qaeda successfully created sectarian violence, but the tide would appear to be turning against them.

Except in America, where the tide is much more favorable. Chuck Hagel, for example, seems to be implying that Bush should be impeached for not withdrawing our forces from Iraq, thereby accepting defeat at the hands of al Qaeda (and immediately restoring their tarnished reputation throughout the Muslim world).

I went to Hagel's web site to see his analysis of al Qaeda in Iraq and could find nothing at first. I finally searched on various spellings of al Qaeda and found one speech in which he actually uttered those words. That's it. That's how important the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq is to him. Except for that single speech, he has joined leading Democrats in steadfastly maintaining an eerie code of silence on the issue (understandably, given his desire to see us withdraw).

Here is some of what he had to say in that speech:

Today, the defining factor in Iraq is widespread and devastating sectarian violence. Al Qaeda terrorists do operate in Iraq and we must confront them. But such terrorists are not the primary threat in Iraq. Iraqis are killing Iraqis. This is sectarian violence.

Gee, that's an impressive analysis. Does he not realize that the sectarian violence he laments was deliberately provoked by al Qaeda? He offers no indication that he does. In fact, he seems to believe that al Qaeda is a bit player in all of this, much like the mainstream media does. That's almost scary. Either he does not know the basics or he is being deliberately deceptive by glossing over critical details. I don't know which is worse.

Incidentally, the bombing of the Golden Mosque in February of 2006 by that minor bit player (i.e., al Qaeda) was even more effective than I previously realized. It not only brought the Shiite militias into the battle, exactly as planned, but it also cut off negotiations between the American ambassador to Iraq and insurgent leaders that had just gotten underway:

The meetings began in early 2006 and were quite possibly the first attempts at sustained contact between senior American officials here and the Sunni Arab insurgency. Mr. Khalilzad flew to Jordan for some of the talks, which included self-identified representatives of the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, two leading nationalist factions, American and Iraqi officials said. Mr. Khalilzad declined to give details on the meetings, but other officials said the efforts had foundered by the summer, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off waves of sectarian violence.

Thus, al Qaeda's bombing of the mosque was doubly effective. Hagel mentioned al Qaeda -- which is obviously a minor, bit player in Iraq's sectarian violence -- one other time in his speech, and here is what he said:

I do not accept the assertion that if U.S. military forces withdraw, Iraq will become a terrorist haven for al Qaeda. I do not believe it is preordained. Could it happen­ yes.

I don't think it is pre-ordained either, but it is surely vastly more likely to happen if we leave on a timetable than if we stay. Well, at least this comment clarifies the difference between Hagel's position and my own: he willing to take the chance of al Qaeda emerging as the victor in Iraq. I'm not. After all, al Qaeda is the enemy, and they are working for our defeat in Iraq (much more so than in Afghanistan). Arranging for their possible victory over America is probably not the best way to enhance our national security.

Here's more from his speech:

Much of Iraq is embroiled in a civil war and 140,000 U.S. troops find themselves in the middle of this civil war. The United States must not take sides in this conflict.

We must not take sides? Not even against the side that is working overtime to incite that civil war? Sorry, Chuck, I take the side of the Shiites and the Sunnis who are working against al Qaeda to bring their country back from the brink. The fact that you don't is remarkable, but perhaps you actually believe your superficial analysis of the situation in Iraq (i.e., it's all a big ol' civil war plus a few random al Qaeda terrorists scattered about). If so, it makes it easier for me to understand why your confused mind would rather impeach Bush than try to stop al Qaeda from plunging Iraq into civil war.

Help Iran Self-destruct

The UN Security Council passed a resolution placing further sanctions on Iran, and Iran, in the days before that inevitable decision, seized 15 British sailors.

The Security Council resolution is pretty toothless, except that it will further discourage much-needed foreign investment in Iran. And that's what Iran needs most. Here is yet another report about that:

Iran’s energy sector is slowly collapsing under the weight of subsidized gas prices and poor development of its aging oil fields, according to a number of Western economists. Despite boasting the world’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, Iran has resorted to rationing its gasoline. As global energy prices slide downward, some analysts predict Iran’s economy, already suffering from UN sanctions, could take a big hit that will have important political ramifications. One economist even predicts Iranian energy exports could dwindle to zero by 2015 without a sufficient influx of outside investment. Iran says it has taken some steps to spur investment, such as striking energy deals with countries like Pakistan and China, but it has proven unwilling to cut gas subsidies and curb its domestic appetite for energy.

I found this chart summarizing Iran's oil production over the years:


As you can see, it fell dramatically after the radical Islamists took over in the late 1970s, and it has never recovered. Production has largely leveled off, which is bad for Iran because domestic demand is increasingly rapidly. That leaves less to export (they can only export about 2.5 million barrels per day), and their economy largely depends on income generated from oil exports. That's Iran's problem, in a nutshell, and that's why they have to actually ration gasoline now. They need to give less to their own people so they can export more. But what they really need to do is to produce more oil from their vast reserves, and they cannot do that without much more foreign investment.

Fighting foreign investment is the way to fight Iran (go here for another fascinating discussion about this). And I must say that, on this point, I find myself in rare agreement with Democratic Senators:

Bush faces fresh criticism on Iran policy

Senators urged the Bush administration on Wednesday to get tougher with Iran but senior Treasury and State Department officials resisted demands to punish European and Asian companies investing in Iran’s energy sector.

”You’ve got to get a lot tougher,” declared Chris Dodd, Senate banking committee chairman, brandishing charts showing $126bn of foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas fields.

Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said: ”We talk tough and act like a pussycat.”

Nicholas Burns, under-secretary of state, and Stuart Levey, Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, replied that imposing US sanctions on foreign investors in Iran would damage the international coalition that the US was trying to keep together to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme.

The US wanted to put pressure on Iran, not its allies, Mr Burns said.

Mr Levey warned of a “backlash” against the US if it imposed sanctions on European or Japanese companies. This risked destroying US efforts to pass sanctions resolutions at the UN Security Council, he added.

He also noted that the extra-territorial application of US law was a controversial issue that would be met with hostility by allies.

Wow. Here, the Bush administration official seems to be suggesting that what the UN does is primary and that foreign investment in Iran is secondary. As I see it, it is precisely the other way around. The UN sanctions will accomplish nothing at all in a direct sense (it's always that way with UN sanctions). But indirectly, the imposition of those sanctions will discourage companies from investing precious resources in Iran. That will cause Iran to continue its economic slide into North Korea-ville.

Democratic Senators Menendez and Dodd want to further punish specific companies that invest in Iran. That sounds like a great idea to me. True, this will probably antagonize some of our allies, but so what? Companies that choose to invest in Iran knowing full well how the US might respond are making a business decision that weighs the benefits against the costs. It's time for the costs to start adding up, and one of those costs should be that those companies do not get to participate in America's economic engine. It's just business, and if anyone feels antagonized, well, that's their choice. They deliberately antagonized us by making a business decision that will ultimately assist Iran in its efforts to make a nuclear bomb, so we should not be bashful about antagonizing them.

It's downright bizarre for the Bush administration to resist punishing companies that do business with Iran under the reasoning that, if we do, we might not get their country's vote at the UN. That's thinking like Democrats who preposterously revere the dictator admiration society known as the UN. I find myself almost giddy with excitement that I can finally take pride in something that Democratic senators are pushing for on the issue of national security.

Meanwhile, what is Iran thinking by taking those 15 sailors hostage? I do not believe they were trying to influence the British to vote against the new UN sanctions. Even the Iranians must know that the British are not like that. That is, the stalwart British are not like the French or the Italians or (especially) the Spanish, who, when terrorist say "hop," they ask "how high?" Attacking the British is like attacking Americans -- it is simply counterproductive.

So, what are they thinking? My guess is that they are, in part, trying to create a mini-crisis so jack up the price of oil. Iran desperately needs high oil prices to prop up their failing economy, and creating little crises like these will help them to generate some much needed income by jacking up the price of oil for a while. Also, there have been reports of Iranian agents being kidnapped in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia by Americans. This may be a retaliatory step designed to stop any more of the from happening:

U.S. special operations forces have been tasked with nabbing Iranian members of the Revolutionary Guards' al-Quds Brigade, the foreign operations arm of the Iranian military, which also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

U.S. forces grabbed six Iranians with alleged ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil in January, reportedly using stun bombs, seizing computers, and taking down an Iranian flag from the raided building's roof.
...
Earlier this month, a former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guards–and is thought to have considerable knowledge of Iran's national security network–left the country and is said to be cooperating with western intelligence agencies, sharing information on links between Iran and Hezbollah in south Lebanon, for example. Iranian officials said the official, Ali Rez Asgari, was kidnapped by western agents.

Shortly afterward, Iran threatened to retaliate in Europe for the supposed kidnapping, what it claims to be the most recent in a series of abductions in the past three months. According to the British Sunday Times, in the Revolutionary Guards' weekly newspaper this week, a columnist believed to have close ties to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote: "We've got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed, blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks. Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis."

What to do? Treat those soldiers as prisoners of war, not hostages to be traded. Let diplomacy take its course so long as no harm comes to those prisoners, and let the increased tensions further discourage any sensible company from investing in Iran. Kidnap more Iranians. Fund Iranian insurgents and train them to attack Iraqi oil infrastructure. As bad as that infrastructure is, the goal would be to make it worse. The Iranians really can't afford that.

Democrats Solve Peanut Storage Problem

By the narrowest of margins, the House passed the "U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health, and Iraq Accountability Act," which you can find here. As you know, it calls for a timetable for surrender to al Qaeda. Oops, sorry, I mean a timetable for withdrawal from the civil war in Iraq. The fact that those two ways of describing the bill are identical does not seem to bother Democrats. I honestly don't know why.

I copied the bill into Word and ran some word counts. Here are the results:

Number of words in the bill: 29,452

Number of words about crop disaster assistance (in the US, not Iraq): 1392

Number of words about the Livestock Compensation Program (in the US, not Iraq): 549

Number of words about Livestock Indemnity Payments: 259

Number of words about spinach growers and handlers: 80

Number of words about the Milk Income Loss Contract Program: 97

Number of words about peanut storage costs (I kid you not): 101

Number of times the words "al Qaeda" appears: 1

This is painful for me. Was there ever a time that Democrats were serious about national security? Perhaps, but that time would appear to be long gone.

The bill says we must withdraw our troops by a date certain, except that we can keep a few there for this purpose:

Engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with global reach.

Well, at least al Qaeda is mentioned (one entire time). For Democrats, that is notable accomplishment. Usually, they can't even bring themselves to mention those words when discussing Iraq. What's missing, though, is any acknowledgement that al Qaeda is a central player in the sectarian violence we see in Iraq. That terrorist organization -- the one that attacked us on 9/11 -- is inextricably interwoven into the sectarian violence. It's not like there is a big ol' civil war on the one hand and a few al Qaeda terrorists running around on the other (who we can target with limited operations, like the one in Somalia a few weeks ago). Instead, al Qaeda is deliberately stoking the violence by slaughtering innocent Shiite civilians and by bombing their holy sites. That's how they brought the Shiite militias into the battle. Pushing Iraq into civil war is their nefarious plan for Iraq because:

(a) it will push the Sunnis to embrace al Qaeda as they try to stave off the Shiite militias

--and--

(b) it will demoralize the Americans, who will set a timetable for withdrawal, in which case al Qaeda will be perceived as having won a glorious victory over America.

Sadly, al Qaeda will be right about that. And that's what's wrong with this silly bill that spends more time on the issue of peanut storage than it does on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Like it or not, Iraq really is the central front in the war on terror. And that's because al Qaeda has decided to make it so. No one denies that they made great strides in 2006 by inciting the "civil war" that is their very goal. The mystery is this: Why are Democrats ignorant of this indisputable reality? And if you are a Democrat, why don't you care? Someone must have answers to these questions, but no matter how hard I look, I cannot find them. It's exasperating.

On Nancy Pelosi's web page, I found this quote by Pennsylvania Representative Patrick Murphy (apparently taken from the House debate):

Rep. Murphy (PA-08): “To those on the other side of the aisle who are opposed, I want to ask you the same questions that my gunner asked me when I was leading a convoy up and down Ambush Alley one day. He said, ‘Sir, what are we doing over here? What’s our mission? When are these Iraqis going to come off the sidelines and fight for their own country?’ So to my colleagues across the aisle - - - your taunts about supporting our troops ring hollow if you are still unable to answer those questions now four years later.”

What’s our mission? This man is a Unites States Representative, yet it would appear that he can't even begin to formulate an answer his own question. Well, here is a letter I am going to send to him by e-mail:

Dear Rep. Murphy,

You state that you are confused about our mission in Iraq, and I hope that I can help you sort it out. Our mission is most certainly not to be chased out of Iraq, on cue, by al Qaeda, thereby restoring their tarnished reputation throughout the Muslim world. Instead, our mission is to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq by making sure that their plan does not succeed. Unfortunately, your support for this bill indicates that you have your priorities exactly backwards, which I guess is understandable given your evident confusion over our mission there. Al Qaeda loses if democracy succeeds in Iraq. Al Qaeda wins if we leave before that democracy can sustain itself. It really is that simple, and I truly wish we did not have to choose between those two options. But we do. Those are your choices, and there are no other choices. Take your pick. Well, I guess you already have.

Engram

I went to Patrick Murphy's web site and found this further testimony on legislation concerning Iraq. I conducted the usual "test of seriousness" by searching for the words "al Qaeda," and I got one hit (which is one more than I usually get when studying what a Democrat has to say about Iraq). Here's the line that reflects this individual's understanding of the problem:

The Iraq De-Escalation Act will refocus the efforts of American armed forces on Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

The mind boggles. This man appears does not appear to realize that al Qaeda is a vastly greater problem in Iraq than Afghanistan (because al Qaeda has made Iraq, not Afghanistan, their central jihadist cause), and he also appears to be ignorant of the fact that Osama bin Laden is almost certainly in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. That's where al Qaeda is regrouping. Is Murphy suggesting that we invade Pakistan? If not, what are all those extra soldiers going to do to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan? Sweet-talk him across the border into their waiting arms?

Democrats are not serious about national security. If they were, they'd indicate some understanding of what is happening in Iraq, and they'd explain how their plan to withdraw will thwart the strategic vision of al Qaeda in Iraq. Running off to Afghanistan doesn't seem like a logical approach to the problem.

A European Analysis of European Economies

A few days ago, I noted that Europe badly lags the US in terms of economic development. The analysis I presented was prompted by a very misleading article in Newsweek by Andrew Moravcsik, who is the director of the European Union Program at Princeton University. The sub-headline of that article said this:

As the EU celebrates its 50th birthday, critics say it has one foot in the grave. But many countries now look there, not to America, as a model.

Well, maybe, but that just means that many countries are suicidal. A particularly astonishing claim by Moravcsik was this:

Europe is now a global superpower of world-historical importance, second to none in economic clout.

I analyzed a lot of economic data that shows otherwise, and I explained why Moravcsik's analysis was misleading. But you might think that I am biased and that I was somehow stacking the deck against the Europeans. To convince you that I am not biased on this topic, I'd like to share with you a recent analysis conducted by Eurochambres, which is described this way:

EUROCHAMBRES - The Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry represents 46 members (45 national associations of Chambers of Commerce and Industry and 1 Transnational Chamber Organisation), a European network of 2000 regional and local Chambers with over 19 million member enterprises in Europe.

They celebrate the EU, and they say "The vision of EUROCHAMBRES is an enlarged competitive European Union." Thus, I assume they are not pro-American, anti-European propagandists. And they just issued a report, which you can find here. All I am going to do is summarize what they say. I would not analyze the data exactly as they do, but I present their analysis to give you the sober European perspective.

Again, here is who they are (click the figure to enlarge it):


And here is a chart that shows how many years behind the US the EU is in terms of several important economic indicators. Various economic indicators are listed on the vertical axis, and the number of years behind America for each measure is indexed on the horizontal axis:


So, for example, the top bars reflect how many years behind the US the EU is in terms of GDP per capita (i.e., productivity per person). The 2003 figure (18 years behind), reflects the EU-15, whereas the 2006 figure reflects the expanded EU-27 (21 years behind). But whichever comparison group you choose to look at, the EU is about 20 years behind America on this key measure of economic success. Think about that the next time you hear someone say "Europe is now a global superpower of world-historical importance, second to none in economic clout. "

The next chart from the report shows the massive economic growth that would be required in the second half of this decade if Europe were to catch up with where America was in 2005:


Such economic growth is inconceivable, but this is just another way of showing how far behind the Europeans really are. The report makes quite a few proposals to enhance Europe's economic competitiveness, and they do so because, they say:

We make these proposals because, compared to the US……we lag many years behind…

What's amazing is that this indisputable fact almost never comes through when you read about the economies of America and Europe in the media. That's because reporters (a) are liberal, so they uncritically accept news that seems to place the liberal Europeans in a favorable light, and (b) they don't really know how to analyze the data for themselves. But Eurochambres knows how to do that, and I doubt they are biased against Europe. Pay attention to what they have to say.

One standard liberal reaction to irrefutable data showing that the American economic engine far outpaces its European counterpart is that only the rich in America are benefiting. Is that true?

As I have noted before, the Luxembourg Income Study is a cross-national study of income, and one of the variables they measure is called Disposable Personal Income, or DPI. DPI is calculated by adding up all income (wages, salaries, self-employment income, pensions, unemployment compensation, means-tested cash benefits, sick pay, etc.) and then subtracting off mandatory expenses (e.g., mandatory employee contributions and income tax). You can see that there is a lot more to the income story than wages alone, which is why liberal reporters used to focus solely on wages in America -- back when that single statistic was not looking too good. Of course, now wages are also rising in America at a rapid clip, so that issue has fallen off the radar screen. After all, how could the dumb bible-thumping cowboy in the White House preside over such economic success? To a liberal reporter, that does not compute (therefore, the issue no longer exists).

The information I previously used to compute income figures comes from a document entitled "The State of Working America" from the Economic Policy Institute (the pdf of that large report can be found here). Their Figure 8D shows the share of US median disposable income received by the lowest income households (10th percentile) and the highest income households (90th percentile). I also found relevant data in Table A-2 of this report and found similar information in Figure 2 of this pdf report.

With this information in hand, I compared median disposable income values for the US vs. the aggregate values for the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Finland U.K., and Belgium (which are the European countries for which these measures are available). These are not the poor nations of Europe. Instead, they are among their better economies. Here is the chart:


Those in the lowest 10% here have about the same disposable income as those in the lowest 10% in Europe. It's almost an exact tie. At the other end of the scale, the highest 10% here have much higher disposable incomes than the highest 10% over there. Are only the rich making off like bandits? Well, look at the middle guy (i.e., look at the median). The European in the middle makes only about 73% of what the American in the middle makes.

Remember that the next time you hear that income inequality is worse in America than it is in Europe. That is undeniably true, but this chart shows you why that is. It is a tie at the bottom of the scale, but Americans are increasingly better off as you move up the income ladder. Or, to put this another way, the social welfare states of Europeans have achieved greater income equality by dragging everyone closer to the bottom 10%, not by lifting the poor out of poverty.

Of course, it had to be that way. The economies of Europe are not thriving. There is no way that stagnating economies are going to create an income picture that is favorable to all. For that to happen, one's economy must be growing smartly, and that's precisely what has been happening in America. While it is theoretically possible that all of the goods are going to the upper 10%, this chart shows that the reality is different. The rich are doing very well, but so are those in the middle. And those at the bottom? Well, however you wish to characterize their condition in the better-off countries of Europe, that's how they are doing in America as well. In light of the information shown in this chart, I prefer the greater income inequality that we have over here.

What if We had Never Invaded Iraq?

Yesterday, I noted that someone deceived the world into believing that Iraq had WMDs, and that someone was Saddam Hussein, not George Bush (or Tony Blair or John Howard or any of the legion of additional good people who you believe lied about that). Bush and others may have suffered from a common problem, one that afflicts many research scientists, called "confirmation bias" (in which evidence consistent with your theory is given great weight, whereas evidence that contradicts it is largely filtered out), but he did not lie.

Once you appreciate the fact that Saddam Hussein lied -- not George Bush -- you can begin to think more clearly about Iraq. In particular, you can think a little more clearly about the question of whether or not we should have invaded in the first place.

Some famed neocons have changed their minds about this. Jonah Goldberg, for example, wrote a column called "Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake." The essence of his argument is this:

And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003.

Jonah Goldberg is a very smart man, but, to me, this is not a sound argument. He may be right when he says that we would not have invaded had we known then what we know now, but that does not prove that the invasion was a mistake. My own position is this: if we had known then what we know now, we would have made the mistake of not invading Iraq (because we would have lacked the political will to do the right thing).

But Iraq had no WMDs and is a complete disaster now, so how could the invasion possibly have been the right decision? The key point to appreciate -- one that Goldberg does not touch -- is that everything is a relative strength model. That is, the wisdom of every action needs to be weighed against the wisdom of the alternative course of action. For example, my liberal colleagues are sometimes aghast that I voted for George Bush. When they ask how I could have done such a thing, my response is that the alternative was John Kerry. Relative to Kerry, Bush was quite strong. Had the Democrats given me the option of Joe Lieberman, I would have voted for him. But the option was Kerry, so I voted for Bush instead. The issue was not Bush, per se. It was Bush relative to Kerry.

The same principle applies to the invasion of Iraq. To say whether or not the invasion was a mistake, you need to specify the alternative in some detail. When you do, the wisdom of invading becomes easier to appreciate. This is where is becomes important to understand that, on the issue of Iraq's WMDs, Saddam (not Bush) lied. Saddam simply could not afford to let the world know that he no longer possessed WMDs. If the Iranians knew that the cupboard was bare, they might invade Iraq in retaliation for Saddam's invasion of Iran in 1980. That was Saddam's real fear, and that fear was never going to vanish. Neither was the idea that he possessed WMDs.

With that in mind, imagine that we had not invaded. Instead, imagine that UN inspectors had been allowed to continue their work while 200,000 troops waited for a few more months on the border. If the inspectors ever came close to fully documenting the absence of WMDs, Saddam would take action to restore their doubts. It was easy to do, and he'd done it many times before. For example, he'd simply deny the inspectors access to a particular site, or he'd fail to turn over some requested document. And, as I said, he'd do that to keep Iran guessing. As such, to this day, we'd suspect that he possessed WMDs. We'd probably be a lot less sure about that given that the UN inspectors would turn up nothing, but Saddam would not allow anyone to be confident that he had eliminated all of his WMDs. That was the game he was playing. He didn't want the world to be certain that he had WMDs (because he wanted the sanctions and no-fly zones removed), but he didn't want the world to be certain that he didn't have them, either (because he didn't want Iran to feel free to invade). Read the Duelfer report if you doubt that.

Imagine that state of mind in the summer of 2003, with 200,000 troops amassed on the border. With our certainty about Saddam's WMD programs reduced, we probably would have sheepishly brought them home, and a triumphant Saddam Hussein would be standing tall throughout the Arab world. The media would now be emphasizing the fact that Saddam still retained WMD capability and that George Bush's strategy of threatening to invade was a colossal failure.

Then what? Even before that, while confidence was high that Saddam had WMDs, support for the UN sanctions was eroding. In 2001, we had this story, for example:

U.S. considers lifting non-military Iraq sanctions

February 27, 2001

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- In what would be a major policy change, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that the United States was seriously considering supporting the lifting of all non-military U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

The U.N. sanctions program was designed to force Iraq to destroy its ability to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction.

Critics say the sanctions failed in their goal but caused the Iraqi people to suffer.
...
The Bush administration has as much as acknowledged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has won the propaganda war and succeeded in convincing the Arab world that the sanctions had caused the Iraqi people to suffer.
...
The Bush administration has made the tightening of sanctions on Iraq a core plank of its foreign relations agenda.

But declining support in the Arab world and international opposition has led to a system which U.S. President George W. Bush compared to Swiss cheese in its effectiveness.

The United States and Great Britain, permanent U.N. Security Council members, strongly support the economic sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Sanctions against Iraq are supposed to remain in place until Baghdad complies with demands to dismantle its ability to produce weapons of mass destruction to the satisfaction of U.N. inspectors.

But Russia, China and France, also permanent members of the Security Council, favor an easing or an abolition of sanctions.

Several "humanitarian flights" originating from France, Russia and various Arab nations have landed in Baghdad during the past year, in breach of the sanctions.

Russia wants the sanctions lifted so it can resume lucrative oil contracts with Baghdad and have Iraq repay $8 billion it owes Moscow in Soviet-era debt.

That's where we were on the sanctions before the inspectors were forced back into Iraq in late 2002. And the no-fly zones that were protecting the Kurds and Shiites? That strategy was crumbling, too, as this article reveals:

Monday, 19 February, 2001
No-fly zones: The legal position
...
Critics add that whatever was justified in 1991 is not necessarily justified more than 10 years later, when the reasons for continuing the air patrols may have changed.

France no longer takes part in policing the no-fly zones, and the US and the UK are now alone in the Security Council in insisting that their frequent bombing of Iraqi targets is covered by international law.
...
Many UK ministers say that under international law, there is a right to intervene to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

They point out that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has hurt his people before - when he used chemical weapons to kill 5,000 Kurdish villagers in the 1980s.

But French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine has called on Washington to redefine its policy on Iraq and criticised the recent US-British airstrikes on Baghdad as having no legal basis in international law.

"We have believed for a long time that there is no basis in international law for this type of bombing," Mr Vedrine has said.

Other countries, notably China and Russia, have condemned the no-fly zones as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and they insist there is no backing for the policy under international law or UN resolutions.

The sanctions and the no-fly zones were already being heavily criticized and were probably on the way out. Had the UN inspectors been allowed to continue their work in 2003, their failure to find any evidence of WMDs would have made it all but impossible to keep the sanctions and no-fly zones in place (even though we'd still suspect that Saddam had WMDs because he would take steps to ensure that we retain some suspicion about that).

With the no-fly zones gone and 200,000 troops removed from his border, the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south would eventually experience the wrath of Saddam Hussein. He had killed them by the tens of thousand before we set up protection zones, and he surely would have reverted to form when we were no longer there, especially if they ever had the audacity to try to free themselves from his genocidal grip. He'd also resume his quest for a nuclear bomb that he felt he needed to keep Iran at bay. Iran would likewise be pursuing theirs (as they are now).

The long-term plan was to keep UN inspectors in Iraq indefinitely, but after the troops and no-fly zones were gone, and after the sanctions were lifted, there is little doubt that Saddam would begin to constrain their movements and complain about the violation of his country's sovereignty. The idea that the UN would again restore sanctions that had been so heavily criticized is beyond imagination, so Saddam would be free to pursue the bomb he always wanted and the he, himself, implied that he would again pursue:

When asked, during a custodial interview, whether he would have reinstituted a WMD programme after sanctions were lifted, his answer implied that Iraq would have done what was necessary.

The Arab world would still strongly support terrorism, and al Qaeda would still be widely admired. The only reason that has changed is because al Qaeda has taken to relentlessly bombing Muslim civilians in Iraq in order to incite a civil war. We did not imagine that this is how al Qaeda would torpedo its reputation throughout the Muslim world, but that's what has happened.

Libya would probably have its nuclear bomb by now. I know it is fashionable on the left to believe that Gadhafi gave up his nuclear ambitions because of diplomacy, but the problem with that theory is that Gahhafi himself disagrees with you:

Gadhafi: Iraq war may have influenced WMD decision

Hans Blix, former chief U.N. weapons inspector, said he imagined "Gadhafi could have been scared by what he saw happen in Iraq."

Asked about his decision, Gadhafi acknowledged that the Iraq war may have influenced him, but he insisted he wanted to focus on the "positive."

Get the picture? Iraq and Iran both well on the way to nuclear capability, with Libya probably being there by now. All three were (and still would be) state sponsors of terror. Support for terrorism throughout the Muslim world would be as high as ever (not low, as it is now). Kurds and Shiites in Iraq would be experiencing brutal repression at the hands of Saddam Hussein now that the no-fly zones are gone (which is why a large majority of them prefer life as it is now to what it was like under Saddam Hussein, not that any opponent of the invasion cares about that).

That's the alternative scenario, the one that Jonah Goldberg did not consider when he decided that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. When you consider that scenario, I am relieved that Saddam bluffed the world into believing that he had WMDs. After all, just think through the question of what the world would be like had he not done that (and be realistic when you do). Then again, I'll join Jonah Goldberg in admitting that the invasion was a mistake if we restore al Qaeda's reputation throughout the Muslim world by allowing them to drive us out of Iraq. This is a war on terror, and prematurely withdrawing from Iraq would amount to losing that war. Al Qaeda has gambled everything on achieving victory over America on the battlefield of Iraq, and if we deny them that victory, we will break the back of the terrorist organization that attacked us on 9/11.

Why Did Saddam Lie?

If you are fixated in the juvenile delinquent phase of intellectual development, you won't be able to get past the idea that Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs. But the truth is that Saddam Hussein lied about that, and the world believed him. That is, Saddam Hussein intentionally deceived the world into believing that he still possessed WMDs, and he was perfectly positioned to pull off that deception because he had proven his ability to do precisely that just a decade earlier. Before the first Gulf War, Saddam denied that he had been working on a nuclear bomb, but after the war we learned that he was actually quite close to completing such a weapon (to our amazement). More recently, he again denied he was up to no good, but, even so, he acted as if he had something to hide. And he did that on purpose so that reasonable people would conclude that he was once again concealing WMDs. And reasonable people did, indeed, draw that conclusion.

But why would Saddam continue to lie even when several hundred thousand troops were massed on his border, threatening to invade if he did not come clean? Again, he lied not by actually stating that he had WMDs (he always denied that) but by his actions. Specifically, he refused to cooperate with UN inspectors, which is the same technique he used back in 1998. That's when then-president Bill Clinton concluded that Saddam had WMDs and needed to be attacked by cruise missiles. In fact, he had no WMDs even then (as I'll document in a moment). He just wanted the world to believe that he did. And Bill Clinton believed him.

But why did Saddam lie? What good did it do him? UN sanctions were in place because of his supposed WMDs, Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy various facilities because of them, and George Bush launched a full-scale invasion over the issue.

Now, before I go on, let me disabuse you of the notion that, this time, Saddam was fully cooperating with UN inspectors. He wasn't, and that's why Bush ordered the invasion. To briefly recap, on November 8, 2002, the UN passed resolution 1441, which gave Saddam one last chance to fully cooperate and prove that he had disarmed (i.e., the burden of proof was placed on him). The resolution said, in essence:

[The Security Council] Decides that Iraq shall provide UNMOVIC and the IAEA immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all, including underground, areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records, and means of transport which they wish to inspect,...and requests the IAEA to resume inspections no later than 45 days following adoption of this resolution and to update the Council 60 days thereafter;
...
Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;

Did Saddam cooperate? In a report to the UN on February 14, 2003, Hans Blix noted that he was getting lots of cooperation as well as some lack of cooperation. The lack of cooperation was not trivial:

In my earlier briefings, I have noted that significant outstanding issues of substance were listed in two Security Council documents from early 1999 (S/1999/94 and S/1999/356) and should be well known to Iraq. I referred, as examples, to the issues of anthrax, the nerve agent VX and long-range missiles, and said that such issues “deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq rather than being brushed aside…”. The declaration submitted by Iraq on 7 December last year, despite its large volume, missed the opportunity to provide the fresh material and evidence needed to respond to the open questions. This is perhaps the most important problem we are facing. Although I can understand that it may not be easy for Iraq in all cases to provide the evidence needed, it is not the task of the inspectors to find it. Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions.

Note the words "...it is not the task of the inspectors to find it." The burden was on Saddam, not on the inspectors. And Saddam was not being completely forthcoming. Then, on March 2, 2003, just days before the invasion and long after the deadline for full cooperation had passed, Hans Blix issued another report to the UN in which he again noted lots of cooperation. But he also said this:

"Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated “immediately, unconditionally and actively” with UNMOVIC, as required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002). The answers can be seen from the factual descriptions I have provided. However, if more direct answers are desired, I would say the following:"

"It is obvious that, while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as "active", or even "proactive", these initiatives three to four months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute "immediate" cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance."

Now, this might have been good enough for you. But Bush was unprepared to give Saddam yet another last chance to cooperate. That's because it was clear to Bush that Saddam would never cooperate. To Bush, that meant that Saddam had something to hide. As it turns out, he did have something to hide, but it was the absence -- not the presence -- of WMDs. It was all a deliberate ruse on Saddam's part. He wanted the world to at least suspect that he had WMDs even though the cupboard was bare. And he was never going to allow the truth to be known, which is a key point that very few people appreciate. All he had to do to keep doubt alive, which was his goal, was to play little games with UN inspectors. And that's just what he did.

But why? What was his motivation?

In the aftermath of the invasion, Charles Duelfer headed the Iraq Survey Group (after David Kay) to find out whether Saddam really had WMDs. We all know that he concluded that no such WMDs existed. But he also explained the puzzling reason why Saddam (not Bush) lied about those WMDs:

WMD Possession—Real or Imagined—Acts as a Deterrent

The Iran-Iraq war and the ongoing suppression of internal unrest taught Saddam the importance of WMD to the dominance and survival of the Regime. Following the destruction of much of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure during Desert Storm, however, the threats to the Regime remained; especially his perception of the overarching danger from Iran. In order to counter these threats, Saddam continued with his public posture of retaining the WMD capability. This led to a difficult balancing act between the need to disarm to achieve sanctions relief while at the same time retaining a strategic deterrent. The Regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach. Ultimately, foreign perceptions of these tensions contributed to the destruction of the Regime.

And there you have it. Saddam feared an invasion from Iran if Iran realized that he had no WMDs. And his fear was well founded given that Iraq had invaded Iran in 1980 and fought a war with them that cost at least half a million Iranian lives, 100,000 of whom were killed with chemical weapons. Saddam had good reason to fear Iran, and that's why he deceived the world into thinking that he had WMDs. His very effective method for achieving that deception was to cooperate with UN inspectors up to a point and then resist further cooperation. The deception worked like a charm, just as he knew it would.

I'll never forget a debate I had with a liberal opponent of the invasion before the war. I said (essentially) "even on the brink of war, with 200,000 troops on his border ready to invade, he is still not cooperating with UN inspectors. What possible explanation could there be other than the fact that he is hiding WMDs?" My liberal opponent said "I don't know, maybe he wants Iran to think he has those weapons." That seemed utterly preposterous to me at the time. As it turns out, he was right.

Now, if you are prone to believing that Saddam was a truth-teller and George Bush was a liar, then I assume you also think that Clinton lied when he said:

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."
--Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003

But Clinton did not lie, and he was not trying to line the pockets of cruise missile executives or to increase his popularity (or whatever) when he launched that cruise missile attack in 1998. This is true even though we now know that Saddam had no WMDs at the time of the 1998 attack. Instead, Saddam was simply tricking the world into believing that he had them by not cooperating with UN inspectors (which is why Clinton pulled the inspectors and launched that attack). Here is more from the Duelfer report:

While it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks, Saddam’s perceived requirement to bluff about WMD capabilities made it too dangerous to clearly reveal this to the international community, especially Iran.

No WMDs by the mid 1990s, but Bill Clinton attacked in 1998. Why? Because Bill Clinton manipulated intelligence? No, because Saddam manipulated Bill Clinton (and Iran) into falsely believing that Iraq possessed WMDs. The same thing happened a few years later when Bush was in office. Saddam lied about his WMDs by refusing to cooperate fully with UN inspectors. Both Bill Clinton and George Bush (and every reasonable person on earth) was deceived by that tactic.

Being clear about who lied -- and why -- is important if you want to analyze Iraq in a level-headed way. You can't do that if you are still stuck in the juvenile delinquent phase of intellectual development, and if you think that Bush lied, that's where you are (sad to say).

Iraq's Civil War & al Qaeda in Iraq are Two Sides of the Same Coin

As I have said before, I don't fault Hillary Clinton too much for pandering to her extremist base on the issue of Iraq. Those extremists consist of the 34% of Democrats who actually hope the troop surge fails in Iraq and who, more specifically, hope that Iraq does not become a more stable place because of what we are doing now. Instead, by implication, they hope that the slaughter of innocent civilians continues at the high rate that we have seen in recent months. I cannot really comprehend the poisoned minds of these individuals (how can they hate Bush that much?), but I do understand that Hillary needs their votes. So, she is required to be a little ridiculous from time to time, and so long as she does not try to maliciously claim that Bush lied, her temporary silliness on Iraq (which is obviously designed to get some of the extremist vote) is fine by me.

Still, I feel compelled to point out the logical absurdity of the position she advocates in order to increase her appeal to the far left:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- If elected president, Sen. Hillary Clinton said, she would likely keep some U.S. forces in Iraq in a supporting role after 2009 because America has "a remaining military as well as a political mission" that requires a presence there.

However, in an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Clinton said the American troops would not play a role in trying to curb sectarian violence.

Rather, they would be positioned north of Baghdad to combat terrorists, support the Kurds, counter any Iranian moves into Iraq and provide logistical, air and training support to the Iraqi government "if the Iraqis ever get their act together."

"If there is not any political resolution, the civil war will continue and we need to get out of the way," she told the Times.

OK, we need to (a) combat terrorists and (b) get out of the way of the civil war in Iraq (i.e., troops should not play a role in trying to curb sectarian violence). Hold that thought.

Next, consider what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has to say:

Al Qaeda Stoking Sectarian Violence in Iraq, Gates Says

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2007 ­ Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have worked hard to provoke sectarian violence in Iraq, yet the situation there cannot be called a traditional civil war, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

“Stoking sectarian violence is a conscientious strategy of al Qaeda and some of the extremists,” Gates told reporters during a flight to Washington from U.S. Central Command in Florida. “These big car bombs going off in sensitive places, like the golden mosque, are not an accident. These guys have a very clear strategy aimed at provoking this sectarian violence.”

Gates said some aspects in Iraq resemble a civil war, but the situation is much more complex than that, with essentially four wars going on at once. These include sectarian violence, an insurgency, al Qaeda terrorism and Shiia-related violence, mostly in the south. “And maybe even five if you include crime and thuggery,” Gates said.

Thousands of people are not in the streets fighting each other in Iraq, he noted. “These are targeted assassinations that are affected,” he said. “We don't see mobs of Shi'a, mobs of Sunnis attacking each other. You see hit squads for all practical purposes. You see gangs of people going after targeted neighborhoods and so on, and often not from those neighborhoods.”

Sounds like he could be writing my blog. His analysis of Iraq fits closely with my own, though I'm not sure why he singles out "sectarian violence" as a separate category from the other three. In the past, I've advanced a tripartite analysis in which the various militant groups were conceptualized as follows:

1. Sunni insurgents (who attack Iraqi and American security forces, as well as infrastructure)
2. Al Qaeda terrorists (who indiscriminately slaughter Shiite civilians in an effort to provoke civil war)
3. Shiite militias (who target Sunni males in Baghdad if an effort to inhibit al Qaeda)

Gates seems to agree with this conceptualization, but he adds the fourth category of "sectarian violence," and I'm not really sure what he means by that. But, for the most part, his analysis seems to square with my own. And the most important part of his analysis, by far, is that al Qaeda is deliberately provoking a civil war. That's how this civil war (if you want to call it that) differs from past civil wars. It's not a spontaneous outbreak of ethnic hostilities, like we saw in Bosnia. Instead, there is a group working in Iraq that is dedicated to provoking that violence because civil war is the goal. And that group is al Qaeda.

In light of what Gates says about that, do you see the problem with Hillary Clinton's analysis? As I indicated above, she says we need to (a) get out of the way of the civil war and (b) fight terrorists instead. Unfortunately, these two issues are inextricably interlinked. Is is the terrorists -- al Qaeda suicide bombers in particular -- who are provoking the sectarian violence that Hillary wants to avoid. It's not like there is a civil war on the one hand, and a problem with al Qaeda on the other. They are one and the same problem. That being the case, to get out of the way of the civil war is to avoid confronting al Qaeda in Iraq.

So there you have it. Steer clear of al Qaeda in Iraq by staying out of the civil war or fight al Qaeda in Iraq by trying to put a stop to it. That's your choice. Take your pick. It's not like there is some other choice we have despite what Hillary Clinton would have you believe. Like it or not, Iraq's civil war and al Qaeda in Iraq are two sides of the same coin. And that's the problem you face if you believe that it is time to bring the troops home.

Making the Case for European Utopian Ideal

In the past, I have documented the fact that European economies are struggling to keep up with America's. And as bad as things are now, they are destined to get a lot worse because ridiculously generous social welfare states with low fertility rates are simply unsustainable.

I was therefore intrigued by a new article by Andrew Moravcsik (director of the European Union Program at Princeton University). He thinks everything is just fine and dandy in Europe. After reading the article, I am convinced that he does not want you to know the truth about Europe, but I'll let you be the judge.

If you want to misleadingly portray Europe in a favorable light, here is how you do it: compare America with France when the particular issue favors France, switch the comparison to Germany when the particular issue favors Germany, switch again to Britain when the particular issue favors Britain and switch yet again to the minor economies of Europe when the issue in question favors them. Europe has a lot of countries, so for any particular issue, there will a European country that looks good on that score. But a strategy like this misleads instead of bringing you closer to the truth. Still, it's what you have to do if you want to argue that Europe has achieved the utopian ideal.

Let's take a few examples from the article:

"Europe is now a global superpower of world-historical importance, second to none in economic clout."

Superpower? The European Union is a collection of 27 states in Europe. It has no military significance to speak of, at least not if you are using the word "superpower" to describe it, and its second-to-none economic clout comes from the fact that if you cobble together enough countries, the collective economic output will be large even if the individual nations are economically mediocre. So, while it's true that it's aggregate GDP is a scant 8% higher than America's, that's because its population is a whopping 67% larger. If you add in the economic disaster known as Russia, it's population and its GDP would be that much larger, but it wouldn't be telling you very much.

The major economies of Europe are Germany, France, Britain and Italy. They are all members of the G7, and that's why I use them as a comparison group. It makes for a fair and informative comparison, and it prevents me from tricking you into thinking things are even worse by selectively focusing on European countries that have big economic problems (e.g., I don't compare America's per capita GDP with the vastly smaller values of the formerly communist Eastern European nations). So, when I inquire into GDP growth, I look at the four comparable nations. These four major economies of Europe (the EU-4) have a combined population of about 265 million, which is close to the 300 million population of the US. Let's look at the overall GDP of the US compared to that of the EU-4 over the last few years (all economic data in this post can be found here and here):


I've actually adjusted the EU-4 figures upwards to reflect what their GDP would be if their population were 300 million. As you can see, the major economies of Europe lag the US by quite a bit. There's a reason for that.

The author of this helpful article is unlike me in that he does not make a consistent comparison between the US and the EU-4. Here is what he does instead:

It's true that the past half decade has been difficult for some of Europe's largest economies. The trillion-dollar cost of unification has kept Germany from playing locomotive to the rest of Europe. France and Italy have lagged as well. And yet, Britain is booming, as are the Nordic nations. Among the new EU members of Eastern Europe, average growth of 5 percent exceeds that of the United States. Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia are all growing at 10 percent or more annually.

Wow. Britain -- which has an economy most like America's (in that it is not quite the high-tax generous welfare state that the others are) is "booming." Here are some GDP percentage growth figures that I showed before:


Britain is booming -- it is the jewel of Europe in this regard -- but America is doing even better than that. That seems worth pointing out, but you won't find that coming through loud and clear in this article. And the other 3 members of the EU-4 (France, Italy and Germany, which I'll call the EU-3) are lagging way behind. These 3 countries are the major social welfare states of Europe. They represent the liberal utopian ideal more so than the UK does. That's what you'd focus on if you really wanted to know what social welfare states do for an economy as it approaches the status of a major industrialized nation. Instead of doing that, Moravcsik preposterously focuses on the growth of relatively impoverished nations of Eastern Europe, which were recently shackled by communism. That's a good trick to use because, in percentage terms, the growth of backward economies often seems large, especially as they move away from communism and towards capitalism (like China is doing). As an analogy, if a man made only $1000 in 2005 but made $1100 in 2006, he'd have experienced 10% growth in his income. But he'd still be extremely poor. If another man made $100,000 in 2005 and made $105,000 in 2006, he'd have experienced only a 5% increase (an increase that, in absolute terms, is nearly 5 times what the first man makes). But you could, if you were not serious, claim that the first man is doing great because he experienced a 10% increase in salary. It would be a silly game to play, but Moravcsik does it anyway by changing the comparison group to suit his needs. To compare the US to Europe, it only makes sense to pick a comparison group and keep it consistent. This author will not do that because, if he did, he would not have an article to write.

Here he is pulling the same stunt on a different topic:

Output per hour worked is higher in France than in the United States. Daily U.S. productivity is higher than in Europe only because employed Europeans choose to work fewer hours than Americans, in exchange for less pay. Remember those six to eight weeks of vacation every European is assured? Most Americans say they would make the same trade-off—if only their employers would permit it.

The boldness of this intentionally misleading maneuver is staggering. Let's look at the relevant comparison:


This is productivity per hour worked. It's the statistic you'd focus on if you wanted to place Europe in a favorable light. Why? Because they work many fewer hours, and their unemployment rates are high, so overall productivity badly lags that of the US. But the per-hour statistic hides all of that. Also, now you'd suddenly stop talking about the shining example of Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia. Why? Because their per-hour productivity is a mere 43% of what it is in the US. On this statistic, the author switches to the advanced economies of Europe (because, on this particular issue, it suits him to do so).

The per-hour productivity numbers are similar in the US and the EU-4, but U.S. productivity has been increasing at a faster pace over the last few years. And it's true that France has a slightly higher value than America's, but Britain, Germany and Italy all have a lower value. If you are going to single out France on this measure, why not single them out on GDP growth (which has been very low) and unemployment (which is very high)? The reason is obvious: the goal is to convince you that Europe is in fine shape, not to give a clear picture of what is actually going on.

Americans work more hours than Europeans, so the average American worker is much more productive than the average European worker. GDP per capita is the best indicator of that, and here is the relevant chart:


No contest, and the gap is not closing (not even in the UK). Andrew Moravcsik would have you believe that this is because the Europeans simply choose to work less because they value their vacations -- as if they could work more if they so desired. It's surely true that they don't want to work more (they live in the utopian ideal, after all), but the truth is, they couldn't even if they wanted to, and that's because their unemployment rates are already so high:


Look at those unemployment rates in the major social welfare states of Western Europe. If French workers decided to work 40 hours per week (quel horreur!), the unemployment rate would likely be even higher than it already is. The UK -- which has an economy more like America's than the 3 large social welfare states of Europe -- looks good on this score. But that works against the author's liberal utopian theory, not in favor of it. Why would the most Americanized economy stand out as Europe's best if the social welfare state model were the way to go? The author does not say.

And, as I have noted before, the Europeans have decided not to replace themselves as their fertility rates are well below the replacement rate. The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries. If women have less than 2 children each, the population is not self-sustaining. Here are the fertility rates in the EU-4 (France, Germany, UK, and Italy) and in the United States:


In America, fertility rates have stabilized at about the replacement rate. In Europe, it's not even close. Andrew Moravcsik seems aware of the problem this poses:

Europe is also likely to turn to immigration to help replenish its shrinking work force. Says Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister: "Europe will have no choice but to open the doors." This, critics claim, raises the most harrowing scenario of all for Europe—cultural extinction. European societies face seemingly insuperable difficulties integrating Arab Muslim immigrants. Today Muslims comprise only 5 percent of Europe's population; within 20 years, however, their numbers may double, in part as a result of generous family-reunification policies. This incites all sorts of lurid warnings about a future "Eurabia" and the erosion of a purely European civilization.

Well, yes, it does. And why shouldn't we worry about that?

Yet it is easy to exaggerate these trends. For all the problems, statistics show that levels of immigrant and religious violence in Europe are not substantially higher than in America. In the years to come, jobs vacated by retiring baby boomers will open to the young immigrant unemployed, easing fears among natives that the newcomers will steal jobs and erode social-welfare benefits.

Gee, that's a compelling argument. Perhaps it is easy to exaggerate these trends, but it's even easier to minimize them. As I see it, he is just wishing away the problem. Well, I guess he doesn't have much choice in the matter, does he? Except for the French, who have managed to get their fertility rate back up to the replacement rate, the Europeans have decided to extinguish themselves. Even the French may be doing that because, for all we know, it is the Muslim immigrants who are having all of those babies. The French are much too egalitarian to keep statistics separately for different ethnic groups. Either that or they are too afraid of what those statistics might show.

Why does Andrew Moravcsik work so hard to make you believe that the social welfare states of Europe are A-OK? Well, toward the end of his article, he reveals himself. He thinks exactly like a liberal European elitist:

Far from being a product of the past, the EU has emerged as Europe's most innovative and significant contribution to modernity. With its multilateral scope, the EU is the source of around 20 percent of all laws passed in Europe. It has extended the reach of democracy and free markets within and beyond its borders—in a way that American neocons can only dream about—and is becoming a model to the developing world. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin advances a compelling case for the ascendancy of European ideals. "While the American Spirit is tiring and languishing in the past," he writes, "a new European Dream is being born"—one that emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, and universal human rights." The global financier George Soros is putting money behind a similar idea, seeking to create a new European Council on Foreign Relations premised on the notion that U.S. foreign policy "has left the world leaderless and in disarray." Europe and a revitalized EU, he believes, offers a better "model and motive force" for addressing the global challenges of the modern era.

True or not, it's significant that 50 years after the EU's march to unity began, it is now Europe, not the United States, that's held up as a new lamp unto nations.

Good grief. He's a George Soros liberal. As if I didn't know. His head is in the clouds, which is why he doesn't really seem to know how to analyze data in a rigorous way (which is what you need to do if you seek the truth). Good thing, though. Who knows how he'd react to his idealized liberal utopian vision going up in smoke? If the US economy were struggling to keep afloat, perhaps I'd be emphasizing "community relationships" over the "accumulation of wealth," too. I wonder how the community relationships of Europe would be going if they had not had American military power keeping them safe despite their small investments in defense? No so well, I'd guess, but we'll never really know. I don't want to find out (so I'll favor a heavy military investment in the American military) and neither do they (so they will continue to call us when needed).

If you really want to know how well social welfare states work, based on empirical evidence, then just look at the EU-4 relative to America on GDP size, GDP growth, productivity, unemployment and fertility rates. Better yet, look at the EU-3. If you are a one-worlder, you won't like what you see, but you'll at least be looking at the truth. And that will set you apart from Andrew Moravcsik.

How Do Iraqi's Feel About Post-Saddam Iraq?

Readers of my blog -- but almost no one else -- know that Iraqis prefer what they have now to what they had under Saddam Hussein. It is, perhaps, the best kept secret about Iraq, which, according to an uninformed but well intentioned liberal media, is an unmitigated disaster. A failure of the first order. No question about it. Anti-war doves who preferred to leave the Iraqis mired under the brutal oppression of a genocidal dictator were right; those who favored their liberation were wrong because we've only gone and made things worse for those poor souls.

Except for one tiny, insignificant, detail: the Iraqis themselves strongly disagree. According to them (you know, the people who actually live there), Iraq is better off now than it was before. I know how hard that it for you to believe, but that's only because you get your news from a liberal media that cannot imagine it being this way.

Go find a liberal -- almost any liberal will do -- and start a conversation by asserting that the Iraqis prefer life now to life under Saddam Hussein. When they finish laughing, they'll tell you that you are wrong. When you confidently assert that you are right, they will waver a bit and suggest that the Iraqis surely do not feel that way in light of the increased sectarian violence we have witnessed over last year. When you confidently reply that, yes, they do (according a poll taken last September), your liberal conversation partner will do what liberals always do when cornered: they will change the subject (usually, to some other way in which Bush is the root of all evil, except that Cheney is even more evil than that). That's because the poll results that you would be talking about simply do not compute. In that sense, these poll results are like the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq. Does not compute; therefore, does not exist. Hurricane Katrina computed (in the liberal media mind), but Iraqis preferring life as they know it today does not. Hence, saturation coverage of the former story, and virtually no coverage of the latter.

Anyway, as I have noted previously, according to a poll conducted in September of 2006, 61% of Iraqis believed that ousting Saddam was worth it despite the hardships that ensued. If you are shocked, it's only because you fail to take into consideration how bad it was before we invaded. That's the key point that fans of "containment" never, ever factor into the equation. That's why they can seriously say things like "Oh sure, things were bad under Saddam, but look how bad it is now." Well, yes, let's do take a look, and let's compare by asking those who have firsthand experience with both periods which life they prefer.

Of course, the poll I referred to above was taken back in September. Months of sectarian carnage have ensued since them. Surely the Iraqi people have come around to the liberal conceptualization of Iraq, according to which the Iraqi people were much better off under Saddam Hussein. Right? Wrong.

Here are the results of the latest poll that was taken just before the troop surge got underway -- the very worst period Iraq has known since their liberation 4 years ago:

It's better than Saddam, say hopeful Iraqis

DESPITE sectarian slaughter, ethnic cleansing and suicide bombs, an opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants.

The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war.

Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.

The 400 interviewers who fanned out across Iraq last month found that the sense of security felt by Baghdad residents had significantly improved since polling carried out before the US announced in January that it was sending in a “surge” of more than 20,000 extra troops.
...
Yet 49% of those questioned preferred life under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to living under Saddam. Only 26% said things had been better in Saddam’s era, while 16% said the two leaders were as bad as each other and the rest did not know or refused to answer.

Be honest. If the headline had read "80% of Iraqis prefer life as it was under Saddam," you'd knowingly shake your head at Bush's folly in Iraq, and the poll would receive saturation coverage in the media. But, as I said, this poll does not compute, so I'm not sure you'll hear about it on CBS News (but I hope you will).

Well, if you are among the 34% of Democrats who actively desire America's defeat in Iraq, you should be heartened by the fact that although many Iraqis prefer life now to life under Saddam -- even at the very height of sectarian violence -- the veritable landslide of opinion in this direction is not as large as it was in September. So, chin up. Iraq may someday get to the point where a majority would prefer life as it was under Saddam Hussein. I doubt it, but save those champagne bottles just in case. You may someday get your cold-blooded wish.

UPDATE: For a fleeting moment, I thought that CNN actually put the new polling results from Iraq as their headline story. A moment later, I realized that they were fascinated by a different poll:

Poll: Confidence in Iraq war down sharply

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Americans are starkly less confident and proud of their country's involvement in Iraq, according to poll results released Sunday.

If you are reporter in the mainstream media, that's a story that computes (therefore, it makes headlines). Stories that do not compute, by contrast, rarely see the light of day. And the new poll of the Iraqi people simply does not compute.

A "Bush lied!" Point in Need of Clarification

Valerie Plame's testimony before Congress has opened the floodgates of blog discussion about the entire sordid affair involving former ambassador Joe Wilson. No more need be said, but I'd nevertheless just like to expand upon a point I mentioned a few days ago that I believe has been largely overlooked.

The original story, in a nutshell, is this:

Plame also testified that she played no part in deciding to send her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, on a mission to Niger in 2002 to assess the reliability of reports that Iraq's then-president, Saddam Hussein, was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from that country for use in a secret nuclear weapons program. Wilson found that the reports were baseless, but the information nevertheless made its way into Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech. Wilson later went public with strong criticism, writing in a newspaper opinion piece that the White House was twisting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

That is the origin of the "Bush Lied!" hysteria. But here's the issue: as the reporter notes, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was sent on a mission to assess the reliability of reports that Saddam Hussein "was trying to buy yellowcake uranium" from Niger. Note the words "trying to buy." Note also, the famous 16 words from Bush's State of the Union Address (this is the ostensible "lie" that Bush told):

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

According to Bush, Saddam -- sought -- uranium (subject -- verb -- object). That is the core underlying point in these 16 words. It was an important point because if Saddam was actively seeking uranium, it meant that he still had the intent to develop a nuclear bomb (something he had almost succeeded in doing before the first Gulf War). And if he did not acquire uranium in Niger, he obviously would try to acquire it elsewhere. Whether or not he succeeded in acquiring uranium from Niger is a separate issue that Bush did not address in his speech. Bush did not say that Saddam acquired uranium or that he had developed a bomb. In fact, here is what Bush said back in 2002, a few months before his State of the Union Address:

Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem.

And that was the problem. We now know that at the time of his speech, the CIA still believed that Saddam might have made an actual deal with Niger, whereas the State Department seriously doubted that. But neither disputed the idea that Saddam--sought--uranium from Niger even though they knew what Joe Wilson had learned there. Thus, although there was uncertainty about whether or not Saddam got his hands on uranium in Niger, we did know one thing at the time, and it is the very thing Bush mentioned in his speech: Saddam--sought--uranium. The fact that he did so was cause for real concern. Hold that simple thought firmly in mind.

Next, let's review Joe Wilson's infamous New York Times column that prompted throngs of angry liberals to firmly believe that Bush lied when he spoke those 16 words:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

Wilson refers to some report that documented the sale of uranium to Saddam. The basic structure of the message contained in the report was this:

Saddam -- purchased -- uranium (subject -- verb -- object).

That's the essence of what this report apparently said. And that's what Wilson set out to verify. Wilson goes on to say:

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

OK, I believe him. The idea that Saddam--purchased--uranium is false. He goes on to say:

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

Hold on! Now we are suddenly talking about the first issue again (Saddam -- sought -- uranium). Wilson says he discovered that Saddam had not completed the transaction, as some report apparently suggested was the case. But Bush's claim was that Saddam -- sought -- uranium. That is, the claim was that Saddam had an intent to develop a nuclear bomb, one that remained intact as late as 1999. If so, that was a real cause for concern because Niger is not the only place he might go to acquire uranium.

So, what did Joe Wilson find out about Saddam's intent to purchase uranium? Incredibly, he says not one word about that in his infamous column. Not one single word. Logically, then, his column has no bearing at all on the truth of those 16 words. None at all. Perhaps this is well known, but it felt like a revelation when it occurred to me a few days ago. Joeseph Wilson's column simply does not address the validity of Bush's claim. It addresses the validity of a different claim, but his infamous column moves back and forth between those two claims in a seamless way, as if they were identical.

Saddam did seek uranium, unless you really believe that he sent a trade delegation to that impoverished nation in 1999 to buy cowpeas. Niger's only major export is uranium, and only a fruitcake would believe that a "trade delegation" sent by Saddam himself would be seeking anything other than uranium. Clearly, Saddam sought uranium in Niger, and I know of no credible individual who seriously disputes that given what we know today.

Let me summarize:

1. Bush said, in essence, Saddam--sought--uranium (which we now know is true)

2. Wilson only addressed the notion that Saddam--purchased--uranium (which we now know is NOT true)

The fact that Saddam was seeking uranium in Niger almost certainly means that he wanted a nuclear bomb and that he would seek uranium elsewhere if need be. But he did not purchase any uranium from Niger, as we later realized (thanks, in part, to Wilson). So Bush and Wilson both spoke the truth. But in his column, Wilson treated points 1 and 2 above as if they were identical, and virtually no one who read his column would notice the error.

My point: it is simply a giant mistake to believe that what Wilson found contradicts what Bush said. A giant and largely unnoticed mistake that launched the "Bush lied!" pandemic that lives to this very day.

Capital Punishment for a Monster who Preys on Young Girls?

You may have noticed this horrible story from a few days ago:

Convicted Sex Offender John Couey Found Guilty of Murdering Jessica Lunsford

MIAMI — A jury found convicted sex offender John Evander Couey guilty Wednesday of kidnapping and raping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, verdicts that brought to an end a case that led to a nationwide crackdown on people convicted of sex crimes.
...
The girl was snatched from her bedroom in 2005, about 150 yards from the trailer where Couey had been living.

Her body was found in a shallow hole, encased in two black plastic trash bags. She had been buried alive and suffocated, and was found clutching a purple stuffed dolphin. Two fingers poked through the top of the bags.

Let's be crystal clear about one thing: this little girl was innocent, one of about 17000 innocent people murdered in the U.S. that year. I'm just including this reminder in case you have a concern about innocent people being killed.

Now, my question: should this killer be executed for what he did? A jury thinks he should be, but what do you think? If you are like many liberals, you'll think along these lines: "no, put him in prison for life. Killing him would just amount to retribution, the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to murder, and the state might accidentally put an innocent person to death."

There's that concern for innocent people being killed. I see it all the time. I'm just asking you hold in mind the 17,000 other innocent people who were "put to death" (so to speak) in 2005 as you contemplate what I have to say.

If you think along the liberal lines summarized above, you were presumably happy to see this news from a little over a year ago:

Fewer Inmates on Death Row
Sentencing Options May Be a Factor as Executions Decline

Associated Press
Monday, November 14, 2005; Page A02

The ranks of people sentenced to death and the number executed declined in 2004 as the nation's death row population kept shrinking, the government reported yesterday.

Last year, a dozen states executed 59 prisoners, six fewer than in 2003, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Doesn't that news just warm the cockles of your bleeding heart? After all, fewer monstrous murderers being put to death means that the chances of an innocent person being put to death by the state were reduced from, say, extremely low to virtually zero.

Here is some possibly related news from a few days ago:

Study: Big-City Murders Spike by 10 Percent Since 2004

WASHINGTON — The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent among dozens of large U.S. cities since 2004, a study shows in the latest sign of the end of a national lull in violent crime.

Robberies also spiked, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns, according to the report to be released Friday by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement think tank.

Gee, executions going down, murders (of innocent people -- including young, innocent girls) going up. It must be just another in a long string of coincidences. Right? I mean, it couldn't possibly be true, could it, that executions deter murder? Of course not. You have been programmed all your life to believe that there could not possibly be a connection between executions and murder. And the common trick that has been used to fool you goes like this: a liberal reporter tracks down a liberal academic expert to get a quote along these lines: "there is still no proof that capital punishment deters murder." You might be surprised to learn that I completely agree. This issue, like global warming, is not one that will be proven one way or the other. It is not something that anyone can ever have high confidence about. But while there is no "proof" that capital punishment deters murder, there is evidence that it does, and you should be aware of that evidence if you feel very good about yourself for wanting to spare the life of that wretched child killer. Because unless you are quite sure that capital punishment does not deter murder, your self-congratulatory attitude may come at the expense of many innocent lives (which is why I will not add my congratulations to your overdeveloped sense of decency).

I've already shown you this amazing plot:


This remarkable graph shows that when the number of executions per year dropped towards zero in the U.S., the murder rate increased. But it decreased again when executions increased to about 40 per year. Very few people who have been programmed to believe that capital punishment does not deter crime know about this. It is top secret information because it simply does not compute. And when something does not compute in the minds of liberal reporters, it tends to disappear from the discussion. I think this graph should be shown more often than it is. Reporters could still rush out and find an academic expert to explain it all away, but at least the public would appreciate the fact that high confidence in the idea that the death penalty does not deter murder is misplaced.

Let's zoom in and take a look at the data just since the year 2000 (data on executions found here, and data on murders found here). I had not done this before, and it seemed like a worthwhile test because I have repeatedly seen media celebrations of the fact that executions have been coming down in recent years:


The murder rate for the last two years are estimates based on news stories reporting a 10% increase from 2004 to 2006 (because the DOJ web site only has figures through 2004). What do you see in this chart? As usual, when executions decrease, murders increase. It's always that way no matter what country you look at. Another coincidence or yet more evidence suggesting that executions deter crime?

My point: if you are highly confident that capital punishment does not deter murder, you are in error. I don't mean to say that you cannot explain away every coincidence that I have documented on my web site. You can, and any liberal academic who grappled with the same data surely would. My point is just that no matter how comforting you might find that to be, you need to know that the evidence consistently points in the other direction. Such consistency does not amount to proof, but, in light of that evidence, your high confidence about the non-deterrent effect of capital punishment is inappropriate.

Think about this the next time you worry about the state executing an innocent person. That little girl was innocent, too, and there is some chance she'd be alive today had we not been so bashful about executing convicted murderers over the last few years. In fact, more than 2100 extra murders occurred in 2006 compared to the year 2000. Repeat, 2100 innocent deaths in a single year, possibly because we fear that the state might execute 1 or 2 innocent people.

So I ask you again: should we spare the life of convicted sex offender John Couey, thereby increasing the chances that another innocent little girl will suffer a similar fate? Or should we execute this monster even though there is some slight chance that he is innocent? In light of the evidence (not proof, but evidence), I'd give in to my completely normal urge to kill this man. As I've said before, I would inhibit that urge if it were true that there is no evidence whatsoever that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to murder. I'd consider you to be psychologically abnormal if you did not want to kill this man for what he did to that young girl, but I'd join you in opposing the death penalty for him nonetheless.

But the evidence points in the other direction, so sparing the life of this animal means that there is a good chance that you will place other girls at risk. I do not want to take that chance, and I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would. And why you would feel self-congratulatory about your position is far beyond my ability to comprehend.

Don't Exaggerate The Success of the Troop Surge

Top bloggers are touting the early successes of troop surge. For example, the incomparable Powerline blog notes this:

Iraqi officials today released data on violence in Baghdad since the "surge" began a month ago:

In an upbeat assessment of the first 30 days of the security plan, Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad since February 14 was 265, down from 1,440 killed in the previous month.
The number of car bombings, a favorite weapon used by suspected Sunni Arab militants fighting the Shi'ite-led government, was down to 36 from 56, Moussawi told reporters.

That's more than an 80% reduction in fatalities in Baghdad, obviously a good start for the new strategy. The Iraqi official said that violence had increased in areas outside of Baghdad, presumably because terrorists had left the city. No numbers were given for the increase in areas outside the capital.

I heard a similar claim being made on the Hugh Hewitt show.

I obviously want the troop surge to succeed, but I don't think that esteemed bloggers should make the opposite mistake that mainstream media reporters often make by exaggerating the problems in Iraq. To say that there has been an 80% reduction in civilian casualties as a result of the troop surge is to exaggerate the positive in Iraq.

As I noted a few weeks ago (here and here), Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army appears to executing fewer Sunni males in response to the troop surge, but this gain was partially offset by al Qaeda's increased ability to indiscriminately slaughter Shiite civilians. As such, the overall reduction in civilian casualties was modest. American military officials would appear to agree with that assessment:

Execution-style killings, the hallmark of sectarian death squads, were down by more than 50%, said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. But he said "high-profile" car bombings had reached an all-time high in February and had the potential "to start that whole cycle of violence again."

That corresponds to my own reading of the relevant data and, unfortunately, to my theory that the Mahdi Army was serving as an effective deterrent to al Qaeda in Iraq. Once the Mahdi Army stood down, al Qaeda came out of hiding to resume their efforts to ignite a civil war by deliberating slaughtering Shiite civilians.

Looking at the statistics at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, here are civilian casualties in Iraq over the last two years (with a few necessary corrections to the data that I have explained in detail before) :


The last value representing this month (March of '07) is a projected figure based on casualties so far this month. The red line denotes the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra (by al Qaeda), and the circle indicates civilian casualties in all of Iraq since the beginning of the troop surge. As you can see, there has been modest progress, which is nice to see. The fact that there has not yet been more progress is hardly surprising given that the troops won't be there in full force until May.

The numbers in Baghdad per se (not shown in the chart) look better in March compared to February (and February was better than January), but that might just reflect the fact that some of the spectacular al Qaeda bombings of Shiite civilians happened to take place outside of Baghdad (e.g., the mass-casualty bombing of Shiite civilians a week or so ago). Still, this may turn out to be a relatively good month for Baghdad itself, though I am pretty sure that there will not be anything like an 80% reduction in casualties there, sad to say. I'll have my usual end-of-month report in a couple of weeks.

My only point is that the success of the troop surge should not be overstated. The mainstream media has limited credibility on the issue of Iraq because of its tendency to exaggerate the negative. Bloggers should not similarly limit their own credibility by exaggerating the positive. The troop surge does seem to have reduced civilian casualties in Iraq by 15% to 20%. That's real progress, and it is very good to see. But it is modest progress thus far, and we should not kid ourselves about that. Moreover -- and this is a critical point that no Democrat and few mainstream media reporters will say out loud -- the reason progress isn't even better is because al Qaeda is operating with a freer hand than they were before the Mahdi Army melted into the background. Al Qaeda is the enemy, and the choice we face is to lose this war to them by withdrawing from Iraq on a timetable or to defeat them by staying until Iraqi security forces can manage on their own (no matter how long that takes). That's your choice. Take your pick.

Accidentally Heterosexual

General Pace created a bit of a firestorm by saying that he regards homosexual conduct to be immoral, though it looks like he will not apologize for the comment. I'm not really sure why anyone would expect him to apologize given that he was expressing a moral belief. I don't think homosexual behavior is immoral, and I'm not apologizing for that belief either.

The views of Americans on the issue of homosexuality are intriguing to me. In some respects, we are getting a lot more comfortable with people who are attracted to the same sex. For example, should gays be allowed to hold jobs? Interesting poll results on that issue can be found here and are summarized in this chart:


As you can see, we were once not so sure, but we now think that it is perfectly OK by a very wide margin. On the other hand, when asked if homosexual behavior should be illegal, the results look like this:


There still seems to be a trend towards tolerance, but an amazing 40% of Americans think that homosexual behavior should be illegal. I was surprised to see that. I assume that an even higher percentage would regard such behavior as immoral, as General Pace does, but I couldn't find a relevant poll that asked that question.

And on the topic of legalized gay marriage? Things now seem to be fairly stable at 60/40 against (according to polling data at that same Gallup site):


What does the future hold for this issue? Hard to say, but here is an interesting analysis of support for gay marriage broken down by age:


Young people are evenly split, whereas the older you get, the more opposed you are. Does this mean that young people will become more conservative (and more opposed to gay marriage) as they age? Or does it mean that the older generation has always been more opposed to gay marriage (and that they will always be evenly split)? Hard to say. The only thing about this poll that surprised me was that the young were as conservative as they are on this issue. I would have thought that the liberal mindset that goes along with being young would mean that a majority would support gay marriage.

I was also surprised to see the "progressive" French struggling with this issue:

French high court rejects gay marriage

PARIS - France's highest court Tuesday rejected as unlawful the first marriage by a gay couple in France, annulling the union of the two men.
...
In the latest decision, the court ruled that "under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman," backing a 2005 decision by an appeals court in Bordeaux.

No other gay couple has married in France since Charpin and Charpentier's 2004 union.

My own thinking about homosexuality is not all that complicated, at least as it applies to men. It's all just speculation on my part, but it starts with the observation that a man's sex drive is rooted in some very old and primitive part of the brain (not in our evolutionarily newer higher brain centers). The old brain center that governs sexual arousal is not very smart, and it somehow makes a decision early in life about what stimulus will trigger its response. This brain center is so dumb that it can attach its sexual enegery to almost anything, though (fortunately for the species) it manages to attach that energy to the female form most of the time.

In men, the sexually arousing stimulus is almost always something concrete, not something abstract. It's usually a visual stimulus (e.g., the female form), but it isn't always (e.g., some men are really aroused by the laughing associated with tickling feet). Unfortunately, we don't have any say over what concrete stimulus our sexual energy will become attached to. The events take place during a brief critical period relatively early in life, and then it's set forever. It can't be undone, so don't kid yourself. That's true of straights, gays and pedophiles. It's also true of men who have weird fetishes (e.g., being aroused by dressing up in female clothing).

No matter what stimulus causes you to become sexually aroused, you are not immoral because of it. You have a primitive brain center that made a decision about the object of arousal before you were old enough to know what sex is, and you are stuck with the decision it made. That's it. Although the object of arousal is irrelevant to the question of morality, it is obviously immoral for someone who is sexually aroused by children, for example, to act on that urge. It is also illegal, as well it should be. In fact, as I see it, the punishments for that kind of behavior should be a lot more severe than they are because the person is never going to change.

But here's the thing: a person who is sexually aroused by children is not otherwise abnormal (at least not necessarily so) according to my theory. That is, it is not a sign of some deep-rooted psychological conflict. Instead, it is just a sign that an old and not very smart brain center attached its sexual energy onto an inappropriate stimulus and not onto some other stimulus. The higher brain centers (i.e., the thinking centers) were not involved in the decision at all. And psychological conflicts that lead to emotional problems take place in the higher brain centers, not the lower ones. Thus, the object of sexual desire is, in a way, encapsulated from the rest of who you are.

It's that way with homosexuality, too. The higher brain centers are, of course, involved in the decision about whether to act on the urge, but they played no role whatsoever in determining the object of sexual desire. Some unknown experience early in life acting on a primitive brain center resulted in the fact that a man is sexually aroused by another man, not by a woman.

If I were sexually aroused by children, I'd like to think that my higher brain centers would have the will power to resist ever acting on that powerful urge. But if I were homosexual, I have no doubt at all that I would act on the urge with a consenting same-sex adult. And it would not seem immoral to do so.

Don't get me wrong. I don't "celebrate" gayness any more than I celebrate heterosexuality. Why would I celebrate a subconscious decision made by a primitive brain center in response to an experience that can't even be identified, much less remembered? Also, some of the nonsense that seems to be associated with a "gay lifestyle" does not appeal to me at all. Even Garrison Keillor (an ultra-liberal, I believe) has similar feelings:

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

And while I would vote in favor of gay marriage if given the chance, the truth is that I'm not all that wild about the idea (because the logic of it does not really work for me -- thus, my support for gay marriage is based more on emotion than on reason, which is rare for me). Still, given the way I think about how sexual arousal operates in the brain, I think my views fall more into the pro-gay-rights camp than the anti-gay-rights camp.

Joe Wilson and Scooter Libby: Fact and Fancy

The irony that I elaborate upon in this post is that Joe Wilson told a documented lie that turned out to be of enormous importance (in that it inaugurated the worldwide "Bush lied!" fantasy that lives to this day), whereas Scooter Libby, if he did tell a lie, told a trivially inconsequential one (albeit under oath, so he might go to jail).

A new column on the Scooter Libby trial published in the New Yorker is breathtaking in its willingness to ignore well-known facts. The facts in question are well known to those who pay close attention to the details of political scandals, but they are probably not well known to the average reader of a magazine like the New Yorker. I guess that's why one can get away with ignoring the details that, if acknowledged, would completely undermine an otherwise perfectly good anti-Bush rant.

The column in question, by Jeffrey Toobin (via RealClearPolitics), gives its game away by presenting as fact the standard, fact-free liberal fantasy of the "outing" on Valerie Plame. For example:

The investigation arose, of course, after the C.I.A. sent Joe Wilson, a former Ambassador to Gabon, on a mission to Niger, in 2002. He went to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake, which is used in the production of nuclear weapons, in that country. Wilson found no such attempt by any Iraqis, and said nothing publicly about his trip for more than a year. But after he heard President Bush touting the nonexistent African connection as a justification for the invasion of Iraq, including in a now notorious passage in his State of the Union address, Wilson started speaking out, first to journalists and then, on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed piece in the Times. In prose that could have come from a middling spy thriller—“Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River”—Wilson recounted his journey and raised the question of whether the war was based on, as he delicately put it, “the selective use of intelligence.”

Well, yes, Joe Wilson "raised the question" and did so in a way that was received as an accusation. His infamous column in the New York Times began with an accusatory title: "What I didn't find in Africa." It also begins with an accusation disguised as a question: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?" And, as everyone knows, his answer was this "If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

We now know (as I document below -- yet again) that this is an illegitimate argument. However, liberal readers of the New Yorker will read Toobin's paragraph about what Joe Wilson did and then seethe at Bush for having lied to America -- in a State of the Union Speech, no less. Such readers would not necessarily be expected to know that the issue has been painstakingly investigated by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (which included John Edwards as a member). That committee came to several conclusions about this very issue, and the report was unanimously endorsed. This is basic, Joe-Wilson 101 stuff, but readers of this column in the New Yorker are not likely to know about it. Here are some relevant conclusions from the Senate report, with direct quotations from the report highlighted in bold:

The reports officer said that former ambassador Joe Wilson's information "...did not provide substantial new information. He said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting."

Intelligence Community analysts "...had a fairly consistent response to the intelligence report based on the former ambassador's trip in that no one believed it added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story."

Analysts "...did not find Nigerien denials that they had discussed uranium sales with Iraq as very surprising because they had no expectation that Niger would admit to such an agreement if it did exist. The analysts did, however, find it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales."

"For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq."

Is that clear? The idea that Wilson discovered -- much to his horror and amazement -- that Saddam Hussein had not sought uranium in Niger is simply a lie that Wilson himself decided to tell in the pages of the New York Times. If anything, CIA officials became more convinced that the story of Saddam seeking uranium was true based on what he said. Even the State Department did not question Saddam's intent -- instead, they simply doubted that the deal would ever work out. Bush's claim in his State of the Union Address was about Saddam's intent. In his original infamous column, Joe Wilson said: "If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why)." Well, Joe, now you know why.

You can use the discredited Joe-Wilson fantasy to nurture your hatred of George Bush if you like (as Jeffrey Toobin does), but you should know that what you are doing is exposing your own poisoned conception of the president, a conception that lives within you despite the facts that have proved it wrong.

In his New Yorker column, Toobin spouts additional discredited nonsense about the role of Valerie Plame as well:

Ambassador Wilson had questioned the basis for the Iraq war, so he had to be discredited—in this case, by showing that his trip to Africa had been dreamed up by his wife, who was, indeed, a C.I.A. employee. (In fact, Valerie Wilson did not send her husband to Niger, which is not generally a sought-after destination for Washington junketeers.) Cheney’s intention was to defend the war by going on the offensive against critics like Wilson, and he wasn’t the only one in the Administration doing it.

In other words, the Administration reacted to Ambassador Wilson’s perfidy—his decision to tell the truth about one aspect of the fictional justifications for the war—like a crew of deskbound Tony Sopranos.

Sheesh. True, Valerie Plame did not "send" her husband on the trip, but genuinely curious readers would surely be interested in these additional conclusions from the Senate committee's bipartisan report (but Toobin protects his readers from all this):

"...interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip."

"The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region."

On February 19, 2002, the Counterproliferation Division hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and Counterproliferation divisions. "The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.'

It's not like she was completely uninvolved, is it? These facts go a long way toward debunking the left wing fantasy that pervades Toobin's column. Next, Toobin says:

Still, in a moral sense, if not a legal one, it was clear that the business of discrediting the Wilsons was a group undertaking, and it’s therefore easy to see why the jury struggled with laying blame for the whole operation on Libby.

Well, of course there was a group effort to discredit Wilson. He was not being truthful about what he had found in Niger, and when someone lies (or is attempting to tell the truth but is operating from a delusion), it is reasonable to do something other than just sit around and let him get away with it. Liars need to be discredited. That's what the Bush administration set out to do, and the job of discrediting Wilson was finally completed by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Discrediting Wilson was the name of the game (as well it should have been), but there was obviously no vindictive plot to "out" secret agent Valerie Plame (because, as we now know, Richard Armitage, gossip that he is, accidentally outed her). In the fact-free liberal fantasy, the name of the game was to vindictively out Valerie Plame (thereby placing her life in danger and also endangering the lives of her secret-agent contacts throughout the world). That's how evil the Bush administration really is (if you buy into the fantasy, that is).

But the key problem with Toobin's analysis is found in these next few sentences:

The central issue in the case was how Libby learned that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of the diplomat turned Bush critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the C.I.A. Libby testified repeatedly that he had first been informed of her status in a telephone conversation with Tim Russert, the NBC newsman.
...
In the capstone to the government’s case, Russert testified that he did not tell Libby that Wilson worked at the C.I.A., because, at the time of their phone call, he did not know it. It’s one thing to claim a faulty memory, as Libby did, through his lawyers, at the trial. It’s quite another to concoct an imaginary conversation, as the jury ultimately decided that Libby had done.

As I indicated before, memory experts were not allowed to testify at the Libby trial. The decision to exclude them was a key event. If memory experts had been allowed to testify, they would have explained just how easy it is to inadvertently "concoct" an imaginary memory when attempting to reconstruct events from several years ago. In fact, in the 1980s and 1990s, men were being thrown into jail because otherwise well-meaning daughters had concocted false memories of their fathers having abused them long ago. They weren't lying, but their memories were false, having been unwittingly concocted with the help of a therapist. The phenomenon even has a name. It's called false memory syndrome.

But the jurors were not allowed to know this because they were required to rely on common sense about memory, as Toobin did in his column. If you do that, a false memory will be equated with lying every time.

Obviously, Libby might have lied. But one simply cannot be confident about that based on nothing more than competing memories of what happened several years ago. When memories are old, you tend to forget. If you remember, the memory is often a reconstruction that feels real even though it isn't. I'm not suggesting that this always happens. Not by any means. It's just that it happens more often than you'd think if you just relied on common sense. Therefore, to actually convict someone, what's needed is an additional corroborating piece of evidence over and above competing memories (e.g., an e-mail indicating that Libby planned to lie, or something like that). But if all you have is competing memories, and if you want to convict someone whether or not they are guilty, you had better not allow memory experts to testify.

No memory experts testified at the Scooter Libby trial. Patrick Fitzgerald made sure of that.

Global Warming Activists Get Frostbite

Here are a couple of interesting global warming activists:

Join polar explorers and educators, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on their 530-mile (850 kilometer) trek across the frozen Arctic Ocean from Canada's Ward Hunt Island to the Geographic North Pole. Ann and Liv will take students on a two-month journey of hope, taking small steps at a time to not only reach their daily mileage goal but to also focus on the current crisis of Climate Change.

On their web site, you can find a claim that global warming is "the greatest environmental challenge of our time," and you can also read about the cause:

Our emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing the Earth’s temperature, especially in the Arctic. This can have tremendous consequences for both people and animals all over the world.
...
Since pre-industrial times (about 1750), the concentration of CO2 has increased by about 31 percent, and the concentration of methane (CH4) has increased by about 151 percent. The increase comes from emissions from human activities, and intensifies the natural greenhouse effect.

OK, fine. Maybe. But if you believe in man-made global warming, don't try this to call attention to the issue (via Drudge):

Frostbite Ends Bancroft-Arnesen Trek

By PATRICK CONDON
The Associated Press
Monday, March 12, 2007; 5:28 PM

MINNEAPOLIS -- A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.
...
"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.
...
"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.
...
Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Great. Now, global warming is being blamed for arctic freezing, too. Maybe it really is the greatest environmental challenge of our time.

Inadvertently Executing the Innocent

I stumbled across a web site called smirkingchimp.com (and anti-Bush site, I presume), and I found this common argument against the death penalty:

I oppose the death penalty for a lot of reasons, but the primary one is the very real risk of executing an innocent person.

If you're one of those people who still believe that the death penalty is a good thing, tell me: How can you justify the risk of executing an innocent person? After all, we see numerous cases all the time of people being released from death row after new evidence proves their innocence. Is it because these victims of a flawed justice system are faceless strangers? Would you still favor the death penalty if your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter were sentenced to death for a crime that he or she did not commit?

I regard this as "stage-one" liberal thinking. It represents exactly the kind of superficial reasoning that once characterized my own thinking -- before I entered the post-liberal phase of my life. It is stage-one thinking because most normal adolescents and young adults who are trying to form an identity -- one that is good and decent -- would likely think along these very lines when first contemplating the morality of capital punishment.

A stage-two analysis would dig deeper and ask a few questions, such as: how many innocent people does the U.S. mistakenly execute per year? By way of comparison, how many innocent people are killed by murderers every year? The U.S. executes about 60 people per year, and I don't think anyone would suggest that the number of innocent people put to death by the state amounts to more than 1 year. It's probably less than that, but we don't really know. By contrast, about 17,000 innocent people are murdered every year in the US. The SmirkingChimp blogger quoted above asks: "Would you still favor the death penalty if your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter were sentenced to death for a crime that he or she did not commit?"

Good question. Another good question is this: Would you still oppose the death penalty if a murderer who might be deterred by it were planning to brutally kill your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter for no particular reason? After all, it is VASTLY more likely that your innocent loved ones will die at the hands of a murderer than at the hands of the state.

The moral aspect of this debate becomes much more complicated the moment you accept the possibility that the death penalty has a deterrent effect. That's why so many on the left (especially those in the media) go to ridiculous lengths to make sure you believe that capital punishment has no deterrent effect whatsoever. But their confidence about that is way out of proportion to the evidence.

Regardless of what the evidence might suggest, some on the left try to simply reason their way out of accepting a possible deterrent effect of capital punishment. For example, they say things like: "killers don't care about the death penalty. They are not thinking about the consequences of their actions when they kill." Perhaps, but, if you think along these lines, do you mean to say that 100% of 17,000 killers are that way? Are you sure? Or is it possible that only 95% are that way?

Let's assume that 95% -- but not 100% -- of potential killers are undeterred by capital punishment. That might not sound like much of a deterrent effect, but if only 5% of murderers were deterred from killing next year due to capital punishment, there would be 850 fewer innocent people killed. That's what we'd gain by executing 60 convicted killers, 1 of whom might be innocent. Got the picture? 850 to 1. And the lives that are saved might include your brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter.

Programming Your Brain to Adopt the Democratic Scenario on Iraq

According to the Democratic conceptualization of Iraq, al Qaeda does not exist. Al Qaeda terrorists did not intentionally incite sectarian conflict by bombing the Golden Mosque, and they are not relentlessly slaughtering innocent men, women and children of the Shiite sect in a nefarious effort to ensure that the civil war continues. Instead, the folly of Bush's misbegotten adventure in Iraq has reawakened ancient sectarian hatred between Shiites and Sunnis, and it's all just a big ol' civil war now. We had Saddam contained in a box, he wasn't working with al Qaeda before we invaded, and now it's just a 2-sided civil war. That's all you need to know.

That's the Democratic view, and the media is helpfully programming that conceptualization into your brain:

Bomber strikes Shiite pilgrims in Iraq, 31 killed
Attack on truck comes as men, boys returned from Karbala commemoration

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 31 people died in central Baghdad when a suicide car bomber attacked a truck carrying Shiite pilgrims returning from a major religious commemoration on Sunday, police and hospital officials said.
...
Hundreds of Shiite pilgrims have been killed by suspected Sunni bombers and gunmen as they streamed toward Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Suspected Sunni bombers? The attacks of 9/11 were also carried out by suspected Sunni bombers, but wouldn't you think it odd if those killers were described that way? This reporter surely knows that these "Sunni bombers" are al Qaeda terrorists seeking to draw Muqtada al Sadr back into the conflict.

But, no, we must not use the word "terrorist" to describe a killer who intentionally slaughters unarmed, unsuspecting, nonthreatening and completely innocent men, women and children. Because that would be far too judgmental. And we certainly must not acknowledge the obvious, which is that this represents al Qaeda in action. To do that would be to place our Democratic leaders in an uncomfortable light. They have, after all, adopted an eerie code of silence on the topic of al Qaeda in Iraq (though, bizarrely, they seem happy to talk about al Qaeda in Afghanistan).

Remember, it's all just a big ol' civil war between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. That's all you need to know. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Here is more from the story to help you to firm up your conceptualization of Iraq:

The attacks followed a suicide car bombing Saturday in Baghdad’s main Shiite militia stronghold, Sadr City. The blast at a checkpoint killed 20 people, including at least six Iraqi soldiers.

But it carried additional worries for U.S.-led forces, who entered Sadr City last week under a carefully negotiated deal with political allies of the Madhi Army militia, led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

He has agreed to withhold his armed militia from the streets during a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown begun last month. But attacks on his power base could encourage al-Sadr to send his fighters back to protect Shiites if U.S.-Iraqi forces cannot.

They could also rekindle tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have receded since the Baghdad security push began nearly four weeks ago.

And there you have it. Don't worry about al Qaeda because they don't exist. It's all just tit-for-tat sectarian violence. That's all you need to know, so don't ask any questions.

The eerie code of silence is increasingly bizarre to me. No matter what this reporter wants you to believe, al Qaeda is in Iraq. It is the central from in the war on terror. You can blame George Bush for that all you want, but that won't change the reality. Left wing politicians and a left wing media need to come to grips with reality, and to do that, they have to learn to say "al Qaeda in Iraq." They won't, of course, because the withdraw-on-a-timetable policy that they prefer becomes transparently absurd once you factor al Qaeda into the equation. So the solution is simple: factor them out of the equation by simply pretending that they do not exist. It's eerie.

Iran Adopts the North Korean Model

Isn't this nice?

U.S., Iranian envoys hold direct talks on Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iranian envoys spoke directly about Iraq’s perilous security situation on Saturday in rare one-on-one talks that could help ease their nearly 28-year diplomatic freeze.

When they talk, the message from the US should be this: you'd better figure out how to run your cars with plutonium because your economy is going to crash if you persist in your nuclear ambitions and with your meddling in Iraq.

Iraq sits atop a veritable mountain of oil, but they don't have the expertise to get it out of the ground or to turn it into gasoline to run their automobiles. For that, they are dependent on foreign investment. Unfortunately for them, they aren't seeing a lot of that these days, and the consequences are about what you'd expect them to be:

Iran votes to impose petrol rationing

Iranians are bracing themselves for a fresh round of belt tightening after their government voted to impose petrol rationing coupled with sharp rises in the price of fuel.

The rationing system will limit Iranians to 22 gallons (100 litres) of petrol a month, two full tanks for a typical family car. It is a direct result of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's adherence to an economic model, based on Iranian self-sufficiency, that has caused housing and other living costs to soar.
...
Economists predict that the knock-on effect on the average Iranian will be dramatic, with retailers expected to pass on the additional costs to consumers.
...
Some Iranians suspect that the move is also a precautionary measure against further possible sanctions which may be imposed on Iran for pressing ahead with its nuclear programme in defiance of the United Nations security council.

I'd say those Iranians are correct in their suspicions. Pursue your bomb, destroy your economy. That's the equation. It's the North Korean model, and it has worked out really, really well for them, don't you think? For example, remember this nighttime satellite photograph comparing North Korea to South Korea?


Here is what you are looking at:

The regime in the north is so short of electricity that the whole country is switched off at 9 p.m. - apart from the capital of Pyongyang where dictator Kim Jong-il and his cohorts live in relative luxury. But even there, lighting is drastically reduced.

The result, as shown in this picture taken one night earlier this week, is a startling contrast between the blacked-out north and the south, which is ablaze with light, particularly around major cities and the capital, Seoul, in the north-west of the country.

And here is a nice summary of the current state of North Korea:

North Korea's ability to sustain its defiant posture is remarkable because, in contrast to the cases of India or Pakistan, the outside world has the ability to cripple the regime if it chooses. China provides 90 percent of North Korea's oil and most of its food; it also enforces inhumane border controls that prevent brutally repressed and frequently starving North Koreans from fleeing their country. South Korea provides most of the foreign investment in the North. If the two countries were to decide that stopping North Korea from producing more nuclear weapons was more important than preserving its dictatorship, they could remove the lifelines they provide Kim Jong Il. So far, they haven't.

The brutally repressed and frequently starving North Koreans can't leave their country, but at least they have a nuclear bomb, which is something. If only you could eat it, life might be worth living in North Korea. Iran is heading in this direction, thanks to Ahmadinejad and the mullahs:

Iranian consumers said the changes would push up inflation. Djamile Ershadi, 70, a retired government clerk, said: "Everything has gone up. You cannot live on an ordinary salary any more. Life has become much harder."

And you ain't seen nothin' yet. As foreign investment dries up completely, life is going to get much, much harder. But at least you'll have a nuclear bomb, so cheer up.

General Petraeus on the Mahdi Army

According to what I call the "standard" theory of the troop surge, US forces have already succeeded in chasing Muqtada al Sadr out of Baghdad, and we are going to disarm his militia as well. According to my alternative view, Muqtada al Sadr is fighting the same enemy that we are (namely, al Qaeda in Iraq), and he is cooperating with the Iraqi government (and, therefore, with us). This view holds that he was not chased out of Baghdad, nor did his Mahdi Army stand down when the troop surge began because it feared a confrontation with US forces. Instead, an agreement was reached, according to which Muqtada al Sadr would give US and Iraqi security forces a chance to stop al Qaeda from slaughtering Shiite civilians. The Mahdi Army has been trying to do that themselves by executing large numbers of Sunni males in Baghdad, but now it is our turn to give it a try.

With that in mind, consider some recent comments made by General Petraeus, the man who is in charge of the troop surge:

March 9, 2007
New U.S. Commander in Iraq Won’t Rule Out Need for Added Troops
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 8 — The new American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned Thursday that American troops here faced a long road ahead and left open the possibility of calling in even more soldiers as he described the difficult task of calming the country.

In a broad review of the challenges he faces, General Petraeus suggested the need to be open to working with some of the groups at the center of Iraq’s security struggle. He said the future of the Mahdi Army, the ubiquitous Shiite militia that has fought battles with United States troops, should be left up to Iraqi leaders and noted that many countries had “auxiliary police.” He also suggested that political dialogue with some Sunni militants and Sunni leaders was crucial to finding a solution for problems that military action alone would never be able to fix.

Does that sound like someone who is going to confront Muqtada al Sadr and disarm his Mahdi Army? Or does it sound like someone who envisions a future for the Mahdi Army in Iraq (in the form of "auxiliary police")? To me, it sounds like the latter. I noted a long time ago that Muqtada al Sadr is our effective ally in our war against al Qaeda in Iraq, and everything that has happened since then just reinforces that view. I'm surprised that these comments by General Petraeus did not get more attention than they did.

Here is another interview with General Petraeus. I conducted the same test of seriousness on his comments as I always perform on the comments of Democratic leaders when they discuss Iraq. My simple test is to search for the words "al Qaeda" (or "al Qaida") to see what comes up. If it's a Democrat speaking, the search usually comes up empty, but hardly anyone ever calls them on that glaring omission (a bizarre phenomenon that I simply cannot explain). Here is what the general has to say:

Petraeus: Well, I think in fact al-Qaida in Iraq, and some of the other extremist elements connected with them, are looking for another Samarra bombing and they are trying to ignite or to re-ignite sectarian violence, as they were able to do in the wake of that bombing. I don't mean to imply that everything was just swimmingly until the Samarra mosque bombing, but the violence was connected largely with these extremist organizations -- the Saddamists, the insurgents, etc, of which we were familiar for the first couple of years of operation Iraqi freedom. And what transpired in the wake of that was something that was, in fact, different.

General Petraeus is obviously serious about Iraq, and, unlike Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha, he has a grasp of the basics. I wish more Democrats would try to be that way as well. But they have adopted an eerie code of silence about al Qaeda in Iraq, and that seems perfectly normal to the mainstream media, which lets them get away with it time after time (and that's a little eerie, too).

Memo to Democrats: there is an elephant in the room, and it's called "al Qaeda in Iraq." I wonder when you are going to take notice of it? If you don't watch out, it's going to step on you one of these days.

Finally, I'll just note that General Petraeus said one thing about al Qaeda that conflicts slightly with my own conceptualization of Iraq. He said:

Unfortunately this is yet another area in which al-Qaida Iraq has sought to do anything it can to derail the new Iraq. If you look, we actually have slides in our morning update that track the status of the electrical structure and it will show you where they have attacked the wires. Our corps of engineers, Iraqi engineers, all kinds of individuals, contractors, have been engaged in this and again, tragically, there are some pretty savvy terrorists out there.

I generally blame infrastructure attacks on Iraqi insurgents who, unless you are a reporter in the mainstream media, differ from terrorists who deliberately slaughter innocent Shiite civilians. I'm not sure why the general blames al Qaeda for attacks like these, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for more evidence on this (relatively minor) point.

Democrats Have Adopted an Eerie Code of Silence about al Qaeda in Iraq

The eerie code of silence refers to an apparent top-secret pact among key Democrats (and among some in the media) to minimize the public's perception about the role of al Qaeda in Iraq. That's the only reason I can think of for why Democrats never seem to show any appreciation of the fact that al Qaeda intentionally ignited the sectarian violence we see today and that they are relentlessly attacking Shiite civilians with suicide bombers every week or so to keep the civil war going -- all as part of a larger plan to establish a global base of operations for future jihadist operations. I assume that Democrats would like to keep these facts from being too widely appreciated because they want people to believe that it's all just a big ol' civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. The media often lends an assist to this effort by referring to al Qaeda terrorists as "insurgents." Just to recap in case your mind has been completely programmed by the media, you need to think in terms of at least 3 groups in Iraq:

1. Sunni insurgents (also known as "freedom fighters" to some on the left -- these are former Baathists and such fighting against democracy that even a majority of Sunnis profess to want)

2. al Qaeda (these are terrorists who indiscriminately slaughter innocent Shiite men, women and children in a deliberate effort to provoke the Shiite militias into fighting Sunnis)

3. Shiite militias (this is mainly Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, which started executing Sunni males in large numbers in response to al Qaeda's repeated provocations, especially the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra 1 year ago)

We could break these groups down even more, but I believe that, in the minds of many, only the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are fighting. But al Qaeda is the organization provoking that fight, and that don't plan to stop when we leave. That's what you need to add to your conceptualization of Iraq.

Why such reluctance to mention al Qaeda in Iraq on the part of Democrats and many in the mainstream media? Because it's nearly impossible to call for withdrawal from Iraq while simultaneously acknowledging that it would amount to a defeat at the hands of al Qaeda. Hence, the eerie code of silence.

In the latest development, Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha have announced a new bill that would set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Here is the key provision:

...the Administration must start redeploying the U.S. Military from Iraq by March 1, 2008, and complete the redeployment by August of 2008 (180 days).

I conducted my usual test of seriousness by searching for the words "al Qaeda" in the description of the bill, and to my great surprise I discovered actual Democrats have grown bold enough to mention this terrorist organization. This is a rare sighting, so I consider it to be significant.

So, how do the Democrats propose that we deal with al Qaeda in Iraq while also setting a timetable for withdrawal? Well, they don't. Here is what the bill says about al Qaeda according to the description that I found on the Appropriations Committee web site:

The proposal would...Redirect more resources to the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan

This proposal would add $1.2 billion to the President’s request to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

That's it. No mention of al Qaeda in Iraq. Not one word. As if al Qaeda in Iraq is irrelevant, whereas al Qaeda in Afghanistan is operating unfettered. Thus, the eerie code of silence remains fully intact after all (and for the usual reason, I assume).

Here's a brief open letter to the Democratic leadership in the House:

Dear Democrats,

Thank you for your new bill. Now how do you propose to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq? And how do you propose that we avoid creating the impression that al Qaeda has won a glorious victory over America when we withdraw from Iraq, which is something that your own gleefully leaked NIE warned against a while back (and something the Iraq Study Group warned against as well)? And what are we to infer from the fact that you never, ever make any reference to al Qaeda in Iraq? What could that possibly mean?

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen

Now would be a good time for Democrats to break the eerie code of silence. Except that to do so would be to highlight the absurdity of their plan to withdraw on a timetable, so I guess they will continue to pretend that al Qaeda in Iraq does not exist.

Anatomy of a False Memory

As I noted yesterday, the Libby trial suffered from a lack of expertise on the topic of memory. That's because Patrick Fitgerald realized that the truth about the peculiarities of memory would thwart his attempt to get at least a minor conviction in one of the most insignificant federal cases of all time (namely, the non-outing by the White House of non-covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame).

False memories generally go like this: you have no memory whatsoever of the event, even after trying to remember it. Then, at some later point, something triggers the memory, and it all comes back to you. When that happens, the memory feels very real. In fact, you'd swear to it, even in a court of law. The problem is that much research has shown that such memories, no matter how real they might seem (and no matter what "common sense" might suggest) are often false memories. This is not to say that they always are. It's just that they so often are that they cannot be trusted. In fact, "false memory syndrome" is the name given to such memories when they do turn out to be false.

Again, the anatomy of a false memory is as follows:

1. at first, you fail to remember the event, even after repeated attempts to do so

2. sometime later, you suddenly recover memory of the event

3. when the memory comes back, you have high confidence that it is valid

With that in mind, read this account of Judith Miller's damning testimony at the trial:

While being questioned by Fitzgerald, Miller acknowledged that in the fall of 2005 when she first appeared before Fitzgerald's grand jury--after getting out of jail--she had completely forgotten about her first meeting [on June 23] with Libby. She told the grand jury only about the July 8 meeting and the July 12 phone call. On the witness stand, she testified that during her initial grand jury appearance, Fitzgerald had asked her to review her notebooks. That night she did so and discovered notes referring to the June 23 meeting at the Old Executive Office Building. She immediately called her lawyer, and soon she was back before the grand jury to talk about that first conversation with Libby.

Jeffress feasted on this. For years, he noted while questioning Miller, she had not remembered the June 23 meeting at all. Then suddenly she could recall details from it. What Libby had said about Wilson's wife. How Libby was behaving. What his mood was. From the time the leak story broke in the summer of 2003 until her second grand jury appearance in fall of 2005, nothing had caused her to recall that meeting, Jeffress noted. "The meeting of June 23 was not memorable to you," Jeffress said, putting it as both a question and declaration. "I didn't remember that it even occurred," Miller replied.

Miller explained that after she reviewed her notes she had a good memory of certain parts of the encounter. Jeffress then quoted Miller's own statements from before the grand jury and from a media interview in which she said her memory was not so sharp about these matters. And he went on and on, clawing at the wound, making this Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter seem like she was so daft she couldn't remember her own shoe size without notes.

So, she forgot the event, but her notes triggered recovery of the memory. Then it all came back to her. In all probability, her notes caused her mind to reconstruct what likely happened, and that reconstruction was experienced by Judith Miller as an actual memory. But, in truth, she had forgotten, just as Scooter Libby may have forgotten discussing Valerie Plame with Dick Cheney.

Expect famed memory expert Elizabeth Loftus to run an experiment soon that goes something like this: parents of now-grown children will be asked to bring in things their children wrote when they were young (e.g., something they wrote about a trip to Hawaii, for example). Loftus will then create some real-looking notes, apparently written in the hand of the child, about a non-existent event (e.g., a trip to a Las Vegas casino). Then the subject (the now-grown child) will be asked some questions like: "Do you remember a trip to Hawaii?" The likely answer will be "yes," and some details of the trip might be provided. The next question might be "Do you remember a trip to a Las Vegas casino?" The answer will "no," and Loftus will helpfully provide the false notes that this person apparently wrote years ago. Experiments along these lines have been conducted many times, and you don't even need to run this experiment to know that quite a few subjects will suddenly remember the trip to the casino, and they'll provide details about that trip that go way beyond what the false notes say. And they will be confident that it is all true, which means that they are not lying. They just don't realize the tricks that memory can play.

Neither did the jurors in the Scooter Libby case, and that's because intrepid truth-seeker Patrick Fitzgerald managed to ensure that everyone relied on their common sense, not on the science of memory, to convict Libby. If your goal is to convict someone based solely on competing memories from years ago, that's exactly what you should do. If, instead, you have justice in mind, then you'd waste a little time (supposedly) by listening to what experts have to say about the trustworthiness of recovered memories of events that happened several years ago.

Well, this is all quite inconsequential as there seems little doubt that Libby will be pardoned for forgetting (or lying about) something that wasn't a crime, namely, discussing Valerie Plame with Dick Cheney. The main lesson from all of this is that special prosecutors are an embarrassment to the justice system. The evil White House did not vindictively out secret agent Valerie Plame, thereby jeopardizing national security (contrary to the left wing fantasy). Instead, Richard Armitage outed Plame merely because he is a gossip. A prosecutor concerned mainly with truth and justice would have ended his investigation right there since it was quite clear that no crime had occurred. But a prosecutor with other motives would have doggedly prosecuted someone -- anyone -- based on an investigation-induced crime. You can always get somebody that way. Similar considerations apply to the investigation of Bill Clinton (though it was the Senate that did the dirty work of "convicting" him for his lying under oath). Normal prosecutors should be allowed to pursue investigation-induced crimes because you just can't have people lying to investigators. But it now seems clear to me that special prosecutors -- who are always appointed in a politically charged atmosphere -- should not have the discretion to pursue investigation-induced crimes when the alleged crime that prompted the special investigation in the first place did not occur and is not being pursued.

Well, Fitzgerald managed to convict Libby because jurors were prevented from learning what scientists know about how memory works. I suspect that some of those scientists are going to have a field day publishing papers about the wisdom of Fitgerald's actions. In fact, my prediction is that Elizabeth Loftus herself will have a high-profile analysis in the not-too-distant future, which should be fun. I'll keep you posted on that.

The Libby Trial Needed a Memory Expert

The Scooter Libby trial was all about his memory vs. the memories of several reporters. Libby says that he did not recall discussing Valerie Plame with several reporters, but it turns out that he did. It is highly plausible that he simply forgot those details, and that possibility becomes vastly more plausible the more your learn about how memory works. As such, Libby's fate was probably sealed when intrepid truth-seeker Patrick Fitzgerald managed to accomplish this:

No memory expert for Libby trial
Judge called proposed key witness a 'waste of time'

WASHINGTON - A key defense witness - a proposed memory expert - in the CIA/Leak trial of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Cheney, will not be allowed to testify at the upcoming trial.

And it truly would have been a waste of time if the mission was to convict Libby rather than seek truth. Unfortunately, the mission was to convict Libby.

Mission accomplished.

Let's consider a bit more of the reasoning behind Judge Walton's decision to exclude memory experts from this trial (a trial that was all about memory):

Judge Reggie Walton, in an opinion Thursday, wrote the testimony of memory export, Dr. Robert Bjork, chairman UCLA's psychology department, would be a "waste of time," and could mislead and confuse a jury.

Libby's attorneys had argued many potential jurors do not understand the limits of memory and Libby should be allowed to call an expert to make that clear to them.

Judge Walton disagreed, and wrote in his opinion, "the average juror may not understand the scientific basis and labels attached to causes for memory error" but jurors encounter the "frailties of memory" as a "commonplace matter of course" and do not need the guidance of a memory expert to use their "common sense" in the understanding of how memory works.

Decades of important research has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that one's common-sense understanding of how memory works is way off base. That's precisely why, unlike in days gone by, no one is ever sentenced to death solely on the basis of high-confident eye-witness testimony. Here is some news you can use from the Innocence Project:

Eyewitness Misidentification

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; it neither records events exactly as it sees them, nor recalls events like a tape recorder that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully and retrieved methodically, or it can be contaminated.

When witnesses get it wrong
In case after case, DNA has proven what scientists already know – that eyewitness identification is frequently inaccurate. In the wrongful convictions caused by eyewitness misidentification, the circumstances were different, but witnesses, law enforcement officials and juries all relied on testimony that could have been more accurate if reforms proven by science had been implemented.

If you are a liberal, you love the Innocence Project. So do I! But if you love them, you've got to question Patrick Fitzgerald's opposition to having memory experts explain to jurors how memory works. If this were a death penalty case involving a suspected murderer, liberals would clearly understand the problems associated with relying on people's memories to convict, and they'd be outraged (and rightly so) if memory experts were prevented from explaining the complexities of memory to a jury. But, hey, this is Scooter Libby, not a murderer. Screw him.

It used to be that there was an important difference between circumstantial evidence and direct evidence (with eyewitness testimony being an example of direct evidence). But we've learned, much to our surprise, that even very high-confident memories can be quite wrong. Common sense used to suggest otherwise, which is why people once were actually sentenced to death on the basis of eyewitness testimony even when there was no independent, corroborating evidence suggesting that the defendant was guilty. But through years of painstaking research, we've learned that, when it comes to memory, common sense is often wrong.

Here is more from the story:

At a hearing last week, Libby's defense team brought out the first witness in their case, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, who tried to persuade Judge Walton that a memory expert was essential in the Libby trial.

But after nearly three-hours of methodical cross-examination by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Dr. Loftus found it difficult at times even to explain her own writings. Fitzgerald had her backing away from her earlier assertions on memory. And the Special Counsel got Loftus to acknowledge - after citing several of her publications and methodology - that some of her own research was not that scientific, and that her conclusions about memory were conflicting.

Fitzgerald - who read all of Loftus's books and research himself to prepare for the hearing - found a line in one of her books that raised doubts about her research. Loftus responded, saying. "I don't know how I let that line slip by."

This is a travesty. Have you heard of Elizabeth Loftus? If not, you should search on her name. You'll find that she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (the academic Hall of Fame, so to speak). Although she is controversial, she is also justifiably famous for many reasons. One reason is that she almost single-handedly put a stop to a gross miscarriage of justice that was occurring in courts of law all over America in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, jurors were relying on common sense to understand the workings of memory. In fact, the entire justice system was doing that. Here is what was happening:

Fathers would answer a knock at the door, and he'd discover that the police were paying him a visit. They would take him away in handcuffs, explaining that he was to be charged with molesting his 5-year-old daughter. He would protest by saying something like this: "but my daughter is a 35-year-old woman who lives 5 states away -- I haven't seen her is years. I don't even have a 5-year-old daughter!" Eventually, he would learn that his daughter had been in psychotherapy and that, during the course of that therapy, she recovered a 30-year-old memory of her father abusing her. She'd be convinced that her memory was real, the father would be charged, and he'd be sent away to jail on the strength of her testimony (nothing more).

What this woman experienced is now known as False Memory Syndrome. Fathers are no longer being put away because well-meaning therapists unwittingly unearthed vivid -- but false -- memories of abuse. Back then, jurors made decisions based on common sense about memory. Now, they don't, and that's mostly because of the work of Elizabeth Loftus, the very expert that Patrick Fitzgerald theatrically managed to exclude from testifying in the Scooter Libby case. Elizabeth Loftus has put an end to prior miscarriages of justice but, by God, she was not going to put an end to THIS miscarriage of justice. Not if Patrick Fitzgerald had anything to do with it. And, unfortunately, he did.

In the end, I have no doubt that jurors allowed their common sense to guide their decision about Libby's guilt. The problem is that, when it comes to memory, common sense is often wrong, and so, I assume, was the jury's decision.

The Mainstream Media's Dereliction of Duty

I'm referring to the media's duty to report the known truth. The Associated Press has a new story about al Qaeda's latest success in Baghdad. Unfortunately, they can't distinguish an insurgent from a terrorist, so no mention is made of al Qaeda:

At Least 106 Killed in Bomb Attacks on Pilgrims in Iraq
Tuesday, March 06, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two homicide bombers turned a procession of Shiite pilgrims into a blood-drenched stampede Tuesday, killing scores with a first blast and then claiming more lives among fleeing crowds. At least 106 were killed amid a wave of deadly strikes against Shiites heading for a solemn religious ritual.
...
But there was also a louder message in the carnage that left at least 130 pilgrims dead throughout Iraq: U.S.-backed authorities remain virtually powerless to stop suspected Sunni insurgents trying to push Iraq toward a sectarian civil war.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but someone who intentionally slaughters unarmed, unsuspecting, non-threatening and completely innocent men women and children is a terrorist, not an insurgent. This is the work of al Qaeda, and it is al Qaeda that is hoping to incite civil war in Iraq (a fact that is well known). The insurgents are not slaughtering innocent civilians. Instead, they are attacking US troops, Iraqi soldiers, police stations, infrastructure and the like in an effort to restore themselves to power. It is al Qaeda that sends suicide bombers to target and deliberately slaughter the innocent. And, in case you have forgotten, al Qaeda is a terrorist organization (think 9/11, and maybe it will come back to you).

It's sad, but the mainstream media appears to be adopting the eerie code of silence that pervades the ranks of prominent Democrats. The cardinal rule is to never mention al Qaeda because to do so would be to throw a monkey wrench into the "it's just a big ol' civil war" scenario that would justify cutting and running from Iraq. Justifying withdrawal from Iraq while acknowledging that doing so would be surrendering to al Qaeda is much harder to do. Therefore, must----not----mention----al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda wants to get Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army executing Sunnis once again. But, according to my lonely theory, he has pulled back to give US forces and Iraqi forces a chance to protect Shiite civilians from al Qaeda. If they fail, al Qaeda will get its wish and the Mahdi Army will be back. Note this from the story:

In the past two years, the powerful Mahdi Army militia watched over pilgrimages to Karbala. But the group agreed to put down its arms under intense pressure from the government, which wanted to avoid any confrontations with U.S.-led forces during a Baghdad security crackdown launched last month.

And al Qaeda used the window of opportunity to kill as many Shiites as possible. There was evidence of that from last month's casualty statistics that al Qaeda accelerated its evil campaign when the Mahdi Army stood down, as I document here. Why no one else has taken notice of this is a complete mystery to me. This new bombing of Shiite pilgrims is more evidence that the phenomenon I feared most is unfolding right on cue.

Forget Sadr City and the Mahdi Army. It's time to hit the Sunni areas of Baghdad, and hit them hard. That's where al Qaeda lives, and al Qaeda is in the enemy. People should try to keep that in mind.

Academics, Scientists and Politically Charged Issues

For just about any topic, science provides the best answer you can get. Often, scientists have not discovered much about a topic of interest (e.g., how do I cure the common cold?), but that doesn't mean that someone else has a better answer. Someone else may offer up an opinion as if it were fact, but if the scientist does not know, the self-proclaimed expert does not know either. Realizing that fact many centuries ago partly explains why Western societies have prospered, and the failure to realize it even to this day partly explains why Muslim societies have stagnated for last 1000 years (they eschewed science in favor of memorizing detailed religious rules and edicts). So, always go with informed scientific opinion.

Unless, that is, the issue is politically charged. In that case, no scientific study needs to be done because you already know, in advance, that scientists will weigh in on the liberal side of the issue. There are many reasons for this. If you are liberal, you'll be sure it happens because science is objective and liberals are correct; therefore, science will validate liberal theory. But if you are not liberal and you work in an academic setting, you become acutely aware of the actual forces at play.

Most scientists are liberal because most scientists are academics (and no one doubts anymore that academics are liberal). Is affirmative action a good thing? I don't know, but I do know that, as a scientist, I would not touch the issue with a 10-foot pole because I don't know for sure that, in the end, I'd be trumpeting its great virtues. And if you don't trumpet the great virtues of affirmative action in academia, you are a racist. That's how it is in the enlightened academy.

Do gays make good parents? I would not touch it with a 10-foot pole even though I am reasonably sure that they do. But the vilification I would experience if the answer came out otherwise would not be worth the trouble. What feels like an enlightened and tolerant environment to a liberal feels like an intolerant re-education camp to a non-liberal. The consequences you will experience if you fail to march in lockstep compliance with liberal doctrine is personal vilification. As such, the best thing to do is to keep your non-liberal opinions to yourself and to avoid conducting research on politically charged topics that could yield an outcome that is contrary to liberal ideology. But if you are liberal, you can fearlessly pursue these matters because there is little or no chance that you'd ever really try to publish politically charged results that might validate conservative ideology.

Which brings me to the topic of global warming. The fact that this is a politically charged issue already tells you what the scientific verdict will be. My own position on the matter is that there is evidence in favor of liberal doctrine on global warming and other evidence suggesting that the sun may be the culprit. But what I know for sure is that, whatever side of the debate you might be on, the evidence cannot support high confidence one way or the other. To explain why is not easy, but I'll provide an analogy that may help.

Does consuming more fiber reduce your chances of getting colon cancer? Medical scientists were fairly unanimous in believing that it does, and lab studies with animals (and various cell culture studies) supported the idea. It just made a lot of sense, too. But what you really need to do to find the answer is to conduct a large scale, controlled study in which people are randomly assigned to two groups: the high-fiber group and the low-fiber group. The miracle of random assignment is very hard to get across to people. Essentially, it does what the human mind cannot do in that it controls for every conceivable extraneous variable that might be playing a role in the outcome of the study. If people are randomly assigned to 2 groups, and if the groups are large, then they are the same in every respect (on average). Think of something -- anything -- and the two groups will be virtually the same on that measure. Average weight? It will be the same for both groups. You don't even have to check if random assignment was used because it is sure to be true. It takes care of itself. Average weight? The same. Average age? The same. Average number of drinks your mom had when she was pregnant with you? Exactly the same for both groups. Average number of times each person's great grandfather pooped in the woods? Identical. That's how it works, and that's why if you take these two groups and vary only the amount of fiber they get in their diets, you can find out if fiber helps. If the high-fiber group turns out to be at lower risk for colon cancer, it's because they consumed more fiber (not because they were younger or because they weighed less or because their mothers consumed less alcohol during pregnancy or because of any of a million other possible reasons).

When the fiber experiment was finally performed, everyone was astonished to learn that the results were contrary to what everyone thought would be true. No matter how compelling something seems based on models and laboratory analyses -- and the fiber story seemed very, very compelling -- you have to run the actual experiment to find out the answer.

Global warming studies today are a lot like those fiber studies that were conducted before the random-assignment experiments were finally performed. And in the case of global warming, we cannot actually run the critical experiments, so all we are left with are suggestive, but inconclusive, studies. That's precisely why it makes no sense to be highly confident that the earth is warming because of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and planes and power plants (yet high confidence about that abounds on the left). It might be true, and there is evidence that it is, but the results we have cannot support high confidence in that conclusion.

I see that a few prominent scientists are becoming bold enough to speak out about this. Claude Allegre is described like this:

Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.

In case you don't know, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences is the closest thing we have to a Hall of Fame for academics. You have to be a scientific superstar to get elected. Here is some of what he has to say about the topic of global warming (note how the article goes out of its way to make sure people understand that this guy is a liberal):

Allegre's second thoughts

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.

Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

The man is going to be vilified for this. That's what people on the left do. That's why, for example, left wing blogs are filled with profanity. For the most part, those words are being used to characterize those who disagree with liberal ideology. The same phenomenon occurs on Air America, as I noted here. And the exact same thing happens in academia, except the personal vilification tends to involve words like racist, homophobe, and that sort of thing. I'm not sure what word is in store for Allegre, but we'll probably find out soon enough.

Troops Surge into Sadr City

A new development in Baghdad:

Coalition launches largest sweep of new Baghdad plan

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Coalition forces began a massive "clearing operation" in Baghdad's dangerous Sadr City neighborhood Sunday, while in the southern city of Basra, the British military said a raid on an Iraqi intelligence office uncovered prisoners with signs of torture.

The operation in the capital is the largest security sweep of the mostly Shiite neighborhood since an Iraq-led security plan launched on February 14, according to the U.S. command in Baghdad.

The more than 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who took part in the operation Sunday met no resistance, according to the U.S. military. Sadr City is a base for the Mehdi Army, militia loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

"During operations today, local residents were receptive and cooperative with coalition and Iraqi forces," said spokesman Lt. Col. Scott R. Bleichwehl in a written statement. "The operation is designed to set secure conditions for the citizens of Sadr City."

I know that many are hoping that this will be the final military confrontation with Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, but I don't think so. It's been clear for a while now that the Mahdi Army is going to cooperate with the troop surge, and so far, they clearly are. The Lt. Col. says that "The operation is designed to set secure conditions for the citizens of Sadr City." To me, that means they are going to protect those citizens from the one and only threat they face: al Qaeda.

The residents of Sadr City are not under attack from the Mahdi Army. Quite the contrary; they were being protected by them, and things got worse when the Mahdi Army withdrew from the streets in anticipation of the troop surge (as I quantified a few days ago here). According to my theory, Muqtada al Sadr is giving US and Iraqi security forces a chance to protect the Shiites from al Qaeda. And those troops are in Sadr City to do just that.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda will do everything in its power to keep killing Shiites in order to get Muqtada to order his army back into the fight. They are working to keep the civil war alive because it's good for them. Why? Because it pushes the Sunnis into their camp and emboldens Democrats in America to effectively advocate our surrender to the jihadists (which is what a withdrawal of troops would mean, like it or not).

Our troops must protect the Shiites from al Qaeda. That's their main job. Confronting the Mahdi Army is not on their "to do" list, and it shouldn't be (no matter how disappointing this will be to bloggers everywhere). When we turn Baghdad security over to the Iraqis, their main job will be protecting Shiites from al Qaeda as well. If they succeed, then the Mahdi Army will not resume its execution campaign against young Sunni males. That campaign, after all, was not the result of Bush's "misbegotten adventure in Iraq" awakening ancient sectarian hatred. Instead, it occurred in direct response to the relentless slaughter of Shiite civilians and the destruction of Shiite holy sites by al Qaeda.

Well, that's my interpretation of the sweep through Sadr City. So far, events seem to fit the theory I've had for a long time, but I'll be quick to admit I was wrong if the coming shooting war in Baghdad mainly involves the Mahdi Army vs. American and Iraqi security forces. The shooting war, when it comes, is going to be in the Sunni areas (as well it should be). That's where al Qaeda lives.

A Snapshot of America's Economic Standing in the World

Every once in a while, I feel the need to investigate the true state of affairs with respect to the American economy. No mainstream media article ever conveys how well our economy has done over the last few years. The stories are so bleak that I sometimes think that the good times are behind us. For example, this story seems ominous:

The U.S. dollar plunged to 11-week lows against the yen

The U.S. dollar plunged to 11-week lows against the yen as the US stock market plummeted over 1% over carry trade woes. In other news this morning, the dollar rose versus the euro, despite January construction spending fell 0.8%, after ISM data beat forecasts and showed the US manufacturing sector expanded in February. As the US economy moderates, the cycle of Fed interest rates may potentially move towards a rate cut. Look for the dollar to weaken against currencies that have stronger economic growth like Europe and the U.K.

Wow, Europe and the UK have stronger economic growth than the US? I see that implication all the time, and it's been that way for years. But the truth is different. To gather the relevant numbers, I went to the World Economic Outlook database compiled by the International Monetary Fund. I believe they calculate everything the same way for each country, so the comparisons are meaningful. They update their database in September and April, so I'll do this again in a couple of months.

I decided to plot up the latest numbers for the G7 (the advanced industrialized nations of the world) because it doesn't make sense to compare the US economy with, say, the economies of small nations or developing nations. First, I looked at GDP growth from 2003 through 2006 (the most basic indicator of economic health):


As you can see, GDP growth for the US has exceeded that of all other G7 nations, though the UK and Canada look good on this score, too. Stories about GDP growth in the US almost never make this clear because, for some reason, reporters do not believe that context is important. On the most basic measure of economic health, the chart above shows how the US is doing and places that information into its relevant context.

Next, I looked at GDP per capita (the economic output per person):


Here, there is no contest. The US worker leads the world, and the gap appears to be growing. I believe this is due to a combination of factors (e.g., the high output per hour by Americans, the high number of hours worked, and our low unemployment rate).

Speaking of employment, here is a comparison of unemployment rates across the G7 (with the lowest value being 4%, which probably represents the effective "full employment" rate):


Again, the US looks very good, but the UK looks good, too. The fact that it would makes sense given that its economy is more like ours than the social welfare states of France, Germany and Italy. Japan also scores very well here.

What about the deficit? Anyone who reads the news knows that the US has HUGE, record setting deficits, so we have merely bought our way to prosperity at the expense of future generations. Here are the deficits expressed as a percentage of GDP:


Canada is quite impressive here, carrying a budget surplus. Japan is not impressive at all, with budget deficits exceeding those of the other 6 nations. The US was a bit on the high side in 2003 and 2004, but as of 2006 we are at about the same level as the UK, France and Germany (and well below that of Italy). Does that surprise you? If you read the news, it should. Note that the US maintains the largest military in the world (by far) and has been fighting two wars over this period. When considered in that light, the fairly average deficit situation is remarkable.

Finally, inflation:


As you can see, it is low everywhere, but it is slightly higher in the US. I assume that's because an increase in the price of oil has more of an effect on the American economy than the other economies of the world, but I'm not sure about that.

I had a hard time finding information on interest rates, but I found this report which provides information on the rate associated with a 10-year bond in the nations of the G7. Here is the latest on that:


Interest rates are amazingly low in Japan and are about the same in the other 6 nations (though they are slightly higher in two of the strongest economies, the US and the UK). This goes against my prior theory that the weak dollar was due to higher interest rates in Europe and Japan. I'm not sure what the right theory is on exchange rates. The strong Euro, for example, certainly isn't an indication of the health of the European economies. The Euro increased a lot from 2002 to 2005, but why? It has flopped around a bit since then, but hasn't really changed that much. Looking at the economic indicators above, I don't see any compelling reason why the Euro would skyrocket as it did back then and then level off as it has. Thus, exchange rates remain a bit of a mystery to me. Regardless, I don't believe they are a very good indication of economic health anyway (e.g., few in Europe are celebrating the strong Euro -- just ask Airbus about that).

In any case, I believe that most Americans, if they read this blog entry, would be quite surprise by the health of the US economy. Perhaps it is performing below your very high standards, but it is performing better than the economy of any other nation on earth. That's worth knowing. At some point, we will have a recession. One is predicted every year. But in the recent past, our economy has clearly been first rate. And while I am sure my next suggestion would make mainstream media reporters bristle, I strongly suspect that you'd know all this had a Democrat been president over the last few years. Reporters are not intentionally hiding the truth. Instead, they focus on information that makes sense to them, and any hint that the American economy is floundering under the evil and IQ-challenged George Bush just rings true to them. After being inundated with all that nonsense about the "jobless recovery" a few years ago, I learned never to let mainstream media reporters do my thinking for me. You shouldn't do that either. The truth is out there; you just have to go get it yourself.

The Death Penalty, in the News Again

A reader sent a link to this story about the death penalty in the United States. It is shocking how stories in the media fit a pre-programmed script. They are always the same (see here and here, for example). This is how the new story starts:

A lethal habit
Mar 2nd 2007 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com

Is the death penalty gradually falling out of favour?

No, it isn't. Just look at the polling data over the years, as any competent reporter with an interest in the truth might do (all polling data in this post can be found here):


Not much of a change in recent years that I can see.

Also, what's the word on the deterrent effect of the death penalty? Well, this story is superior to most in that it says nothing about it (which is better than implying that the evidence refutes the idea that executions deter murder). The evidence is not conclusive, but it is suggestive, and it suggests that actual executions (but not mere laws) deter murder.

The story is all about various states that have taken steps to impose restrictions on the death penalty. But that kind of thing will always be true. Take a bunch of Democrats who have convinced themselves that the death penalty has a "brutalization" effect on the population (actually increasing the murder rate) and that there is an "evolving standard of decency" against its use, and you'll have people imposing obstacles to the use of the death penalty. It's always going to be that way.

Toward the end of the story, the reporter briefly acknowledges the poll results shown above, but then detours into the standard liberal trick:

Does this glimpse of a trend mean America as a whole may yet abolish the death penalty? Not any time soon. Public opinion continues, heavily, to support its use. But when pollsters add the option of “life without parole” to their questions, the death penalty’s support drops to about even with non-death punishments. The use of the death penalty may yet become rarer, if not extinct, in America.

Reporters always make this move, which merely means that if you search hard enough, you can find a way to ask a poll question that seems to show that Americans favor alternatives to the death penalty. But this is nothing more than a silly little trick despite the fact that the mainstream media is trying to relentlessly program your brain to accept it. Why is it a trick? Because pollsters should ask the question that applies to the way in which the death penalty is actually used. First, consider the question that liberal reporters like:


As you can see, it is about a 50/50 split, and it is also not changing (but reporters want you to be believe that there is a trend on this issue). Instead of asking an irrelevant question like that (irrelevant because, in reality, some murderers should get one sentence while others should get the other sentence), the question should be:

"Do you support retaining the death penalty as an option for prosecutors to consider using for special circumstance crimes (such as the rape and murder of a child), or should life in prison always be the most severe penalty available?"

What you'd find if you asked a question like this is overwhelming support for the death penalty. A better question was asked in a 2002 Fox News poll: "Do you favor or oppose making the death penalty mandatory for anyone found guilty of abducting and murdering a child?" 71% were in favor, with 17% opposed. This question is a bit better because it asks about "special circumstances" instead of asking about murder in general. But even this question is imperfect because it asks whether or not the death penalty should be mandatory in this circumstance. The question should ask whether or not prosecutors should have the option to pursue the death penalty in cases like that. The number favoring that practice (i.e., the actual practice) might be closer to 80%.

Finally, the reporter correctly observes that the number of executions has been on the decline in the US in recent years, and that's true. In fact, it may be precisely why the murder rate has ceased its downward trend and may start to tick back up in this country:


As you can, this amazing graph shows that when the number of executions per year dropped towards zero in the U.S., the murder rate increased. But it decreased again when executions increased to about 40 per year. Executions appear to be on their way down now, and the murder rate has stopped declining. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

February in Baghdad, Part II

The surge of troops will not reach full force until May, but the initial influx prompted Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army to pull back, which greatly decreased the number of executions for the month of February (which, in turn, allowed al Qaeda to indiscriminantly slaughter more innocent Shiites). Here is another way of looking at the data I showed yesterday (from data at icasualty.org):


What I count as "executions" are stories that say something like "Police found 25 bodies in Baghdad yesterday, most showing signs of torture." I infer that these are almost all young Sunni males being killed by the Mahdi Army in an effort to keep al Qaeda in check. The news stories almost never say anything about the victims, so I am always on the lookout for any shred of evidence that bears on my long-standing claim about who they are. Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a story written by a Sunni reporter in Baghdad, who had this to say:

As we noted in earlier reports, we feel safer about moving around in the city now than we did a month before. I have recently been to districts in Baghdad where a month or two ago I wouldn’t have thought of going to. In the last week or two I’ve showed my ID to soldiers and policemen in checkpoints dozens of times. A few months ago this was considered an extremely risky thing to do — especially for someone whose ID shows a name and profession such as mine. “Omar” is a pure Sunni name and everyone here knows that scores of young Baghdadi men were killed by death squads just because they had the name.

That certainly seems to fit my theory. It's always that way. That is, clues to the identity of these victims are few and far between, but when they occasionally show up, they always point to the fact that the victims of the execution campaign in Baghdad are young Sunni males. From the Sunni point of view, they are being killed "...just because they had the name." Not quite. If that were true, there would be lots of female victims who were turning up dead, and perhaps children as well, just because they had the name. And if that were the case, the Shiite militias would be acting just like al Qaeda.

From the Shiite perspective, I surmise that they are killing any Sunni male who they suspect might have something to do with the insurgency that is helping al Qaeda to relentlessly slaughter innocent men, women and children of the Shiite sect in their evil effort to ignite a civil war. I don't mean to suggest that Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army is a highly disciplined, Geneva-Convention-following fighting force. Instead, they are a rag-tag bunch, and some of them are no doubt going too far in their efforts to fight back. But that does not change the fact that what they are mainly trying to do is to protect Shiites in Baghdad from being slaughtered by al Qaeda. Now, however, they are giving the American and Iraqi forces a second chance to do that.

This theory seems so obviously true to me that I wonder why I don't see everyone adopting some version of it. Instead, everyone's straightforward theory is that Muqtada al Sadr is largely responsible for the sectarian violence in Baghdad and that he needs to be stopped, if not killed. Well, he is largely responsible for the sectarian violence, but there is method to his madness (i.e., he is targeting young Sunni males, for a reason, not indiscriminately slaughtering Sunni civilians) and what we have been asking him to do (i.e., sit on your hands while al Qaeda relentlessly blows your women and children to Kingdom Come) was asking too much. But now he is sitting on his hands because we have promised to try harder. As such, we must hit the Sunni areas of Baghdad hard. Otherwise, al Qaeda will bring them back into the fight.

Unfortunately, as the Mahdi Army has pulled back, al Qaeda has become more effective (they are responsible for many of the "other killings" shown in the chart shown above). I hope that our troops can get that under control, but I worry that we are going to see some pretty spectacular attacks by al Qaeda for a while yet now that they are no longer being inhibited by the Mahdi Army. I hope I am wrong.

Switching gears, here is a chart that shows civilian casualties across all of Iraq (not just Baghdad):


Whatever else you might say about the troop surge, you've got to admit that the initial signs are somewhat promising. If we see another drop like this in the month of March, the many Democrats in America who actively hope that the troop surge fails will be severely disappointed, but I'll be pleased. This chart is the basic summary chart against which the effect of the troop surge will be evaluated. So far so good.

Unfortunately, the Democrats sent a message to al Qaeda yesterday that will no doubt boost their spirits. Here, in essence, is what it said:

MEMO

To: al Qaeda in Iraq

From: House Democratic leaders in America

Re: How to evict American troops from Iraq

Militants of Iraq need to hang on for only 6 more months. During that time, you should use all of your remaining suicide bombers to kill as many innocent Shiites as you possibly can. With any luck, you'll bring the Mahdi Army back into the fight, and the number of civilian casualties will skyrocket. If that happens, we promise to savage our own president in a time of war and require that our troops be removed from Iraq so that you can get on with your plans to turn the Anbar Province into a center of global jihadist operations.

Of course, the actual message did not mention al Qaeda at all (there is, after all, an eerie code of silence about that among Democrats). Here is what the news story really said:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democratic leaders have coalesced around legislation that would require troops to come home from Iraq within six months if that country's leaders fail to meet promises to help reduce violence there, party officials said Thursday.

The plan would retain a Democratic proposal prohibiting the deployment to Iraq of troops with insufficient rest or training or who already have served there for more than a year. Under the plan, such troops could only be sent to Iraq if President Bush waives those standards and reports to Congress each time.

And, to be sure, there is a hint that the Democrats realize that they have a terrorism problem, because the story also says this:

If the Iraqis fail to live up to their promises, some troops could be left behind under the Democrats' plan to train Iraqi troops or conduct counterterrorism missions, Moran said.

Could this be the start of an awakening on the part of Democrats? Will they next reveal evidence that they actually understand al Qaeda's plan for Iraq? I doubt it, but we'll see. Most likely, these are just meaningless words designed to make them seem serious as they work overtime to find a way to abandon the Iraqis who sided with America on the (possibly wrong) theory that we would not just throw them to the wolves when the going got tough.

February in Baghdad: Month 1 of the Troop Surge

The troop surge that is designed to pacify Baghdad got underway in earnest in February, though it is only in its very initial stages. So what happened in Baghdad in February as a result? As always, I computed casualty figures provided by Iraq Coalition Casualty Count to find the answer. If you just want to see the numbers, skip down to the end of this post for the three relevant graphs. In a nutshell, those graphs show that civilian casualties decreased by about 20% in February, and the decrease occurred because of a very large drop in the number of executions carried out by Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army coupled with a substantial (but smaller) increase in the number of Shiite civilians slaughtered by al Qaeda.

Readers of my blog know that I have a theory about Muqtada al Sadr that differs from the standard theory. The standard theory holds that he is simply part of the problem. According to my theory, he is part of the solution.

How could that be? Isn't his Mahdi Army responsible for the execution of thousands of people in Baghdad? Yes.

And aren't his death squads randomly killing innocent Sunnis because of ancient sectarian hatred that was finally set loose by George Bush's misbegotten adventure in Iraq? No.

Muqtada al Sadr's death squads, according to my theory, have acted in response to deliberate and repeated provocations by al Qaeda. In case you don't already know (i.e., in case you get your analysis of Iraq from prominent Democrats, who have adopted an eerie code of silence about this issue), al Qaeda's plan for Iraq is to incite sectarian conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis by indiscriminately slaughtering Shiite civilians and by bombing their most revered holy sites. One year ago, almost to the day, al Qaeda bombed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which finally provoked the Shiite militias to take up the fight against the Sunnis (who harbor al Qaeda operatives). And al Qaeda has continued to provoke the Shiites -- very deliberately -- by slaughtering innocent men, women and children of the Shiite sect ever since. Civil war is al Qaeda's goal, and they went a long way toward achieving that goal in 2006. Remember that the next time someone says that "our troops should not be in the middle of a civil war."

In response to al Qaeda's deliberate provocations, the Shiite militias are not indiscriminately slaughtering Sunni men, women and children, contrary to what you might think. Instead, they are executing young Sunni males who are suspected of having something to do with the insurgency, and they are executing them by the hundreds every month. Doing so makes it less likely that al Qaeda can succeed in its efforts. It is in that sense that Muqtada al Sadr -- who hates America with a passion -- is nevertheless operating as our effective ally in Iraq.

In January, Muqtada al Sadr began to pull his militia off the streets in an effort to cooperate with the coming troop surge. American military officials also indicated that they were not looking to confront the Mahdi Army. All of that made sense to me. Why should effective allies confront each other?

With all that in mind, let's look at February in Baghdad. First, let's take a look at the overall number of civilian casualties:


Note that the number for February has been adjusted upward to reflect the number of casualties that would have occurred had there been 31 days in the month instead of 28. You can see that there has been about a 20% drop in casualties compared to the previous months. Unlike almost 50% of Democrats, I am quite sure that I want this trend to continue (i.e., I am sincerely hoping for success, both for America and for Iraq).

Now lets look at executions that, in the past, I have attributed to the Mahdi Army. These executions are always described like this: "Police found 20 bodies in Baghdad, all apparent victims of sectarian killings." Such reports do not say if the victims are male, female, young, old, Shiite or Sunni. However, I am virtually certain that almost all of these victims are young Sunni males for reasons that I have explained in the past. Here are the number of such executions over the last few months:


As you can see, there has been a huge drop in the number of Sunni males executed since the peak in December. Again, unlike the 34% of Democrats who actively hope that the troop surge fails and the 15% who are not sure if they want it to succeed (even if it would mean a more stable Iraq), I sincerely hope this trend continues.

If the Mahdi Army has been effectively countering the threat posed by al Qaeda in Baghdad by targeting Sunni males, shouldn't al Qaeda be indiscriminately slaughtering more innocent Shiite men, women and children now that the Mahdi Army has pulled back? Yes. Here is the trend of deaths in Baghdad due to other causes, such as large-scale suicide bombings carried out by deranged al Qaeda fanatics against their fellow Muslims:


As you can see, such killings increased when the Mahdi Army pulled back (starting in January), which is what I thought would happen. Note that the numbers in the second third charts, added together, give you the first chart that I showed.

The key point is this: the Mahdi Army has been executing Sunni males in an effort to keep al Qaeda in check. But now, Muqtada al Sadr's militia is standing down to give the Americans a chance to do that job instead. If we are to succeed in Iraq, we've got to stop al Qaeda in Baghdad. That means sweeping through the Sunni areas of Baghdad in a big way. When people say that we should do more "clear and hold" in Baghdad, I agree. But, with a few exceptions, we need to clear and hold Sunni areas, not Shiite areas (the exception being the need to confront some rogue elements of the Mahdi Army who have chosen not to cooperate with the troop surge).

The problem in Baghdad is that al Qaeda is attacking innocent Shiites in a deliberate effort to incite civil war, and the Shiite militias are fighting back by executing Sunni males. If we solve the problem of al Qeada in Baghdad, we will go a long way toward solving the problem of "sectarian violence" in Iraq because we will remove the primary force motivating the Shiite militias to kill.