I’m going to be muddling through the next few days, as I’m fighting a pretty ugly sore throat (and the meds that go with it) while still having to attend to other things.
Postings will either be light, or brief, or both.
After I get through this, I’m lifting the self-imposed moratorium I’ve placed on commenting about local and Ohio politics, with the exception of the 2nd District Congressional race.
From OpinionJournal.com’s Political Diary e-mail for March 3 (link not available)”
“As an Israeli company, security is of the utmost importance to us, and we require rigorous security measures from terminal operators in every country in which we operate, but especially in Arab countries, and we are very comfortable calling at D.P. World’s Dubai ports. During our long association with D.P. World, we have not experienced a single security issue in these ports, or in any of the terminals operated by D.P. World” — a letter to Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York from Idan Ofer, head of Israel’s largest shipping company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services Limited.
March 4: Wizbang Weekend Carnival participant.
An OpinionJournal.com editorial (registration required) about yet another layer of intelligence bureaucracy, the DNI (Directorate of National Intelligence) raises important questions about why the public has learned so little about conditions and events in pre-war Afghanistan and Iraq:
(DNI is reluctant) to release what’s contained in the millions of “exploitable” documents and other items captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These items–collected and examined in Qatar as part of what’s known as the Harmony program–appear to contain information highly relevant to the ongoing debate over the war on terror. But nearly three years after Baghdad fell, we see no evidence that much of what deserves to be public will be anytime soon.
For example, if it hadn’t been for the initiative of one Bill Tierney, we wouldn’t know that Saddam Hussein had a habit of tape-recording meetings with top aides. The former U.N. weapons inspector and experienced Arabic translator recently went public with 12 hours (out of a reported total of 3,000) of recordings in which we hear Saddam discuss with the likes of Tariq Aziz the process of deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors and his view that Iraq’s conflict with the U.S. didn’t end with the first Gulf War.
In one particularly chilling passage, the dictator discusses the threat of WMD terrorism to the United States and the difficulty anyone would have tracing it back to a state. With the 2001 anthrax attacks still unsolved, that strikes us as bigger news than the DNI or most editors apparently considered it.
….. But these tantalizing tidbits represent only a fraction of what’s in U.S. possession. We hear still other documents expand significantly on our knowledge of Saddam’s WMD ambitions (including more on the Niger-uranium connection) and his support for terrorism, right down to lists of potential targets in the U.S. and Europe. Former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle accuses the DNI of “foolish restraint” on releasing information that could broaden understanding and bolster support for a war that is far from won.
….. And our alarm bells really rang when the intelligence official added another category of information that’s never slated to see the light of day: “We cannot release wholesale material that we can reasonably foresee will damage the national interest.” Well, what exactly does that mean and who makes the call? The answer, apparently, is unaccountable analysts following State Department guidelines.
But consider just one hypothetical: Is it in the “national interest” to reveal documents if they show that Jacques Chirac played a more substantial role in encouraging Saddam’s intransigence than is already known? No doubt some Foggy Bottom types would say no. But we’d strongly disagree. The “national interest” exception is so broad and vague that it would end up being used to justify keeping secret the merely embarrassing.
What’s more, according to Mr. Hoekstra, the DNI release plans don’t call for making any documents publicly available per se, but only through scholars in the manner of the West Point study. As he puts it, the decision to move everything through analysts and carefully chosen outsiders is an “analog” method in a “digital” age, when we could be calling on the interpretive wisdom of so many by putting much of it on the Internet.
….. America went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan because we believed that the truth about the regimes in those countries justified it. Why should so much of that truth now be deemed so sensitive?
I would say it is against the national interest NOT to reveal as much as possible. I believe that the only information that should be exempted should be that which might reveal the identity of agents or spies who were able to gather the information, and even then only if revealing the information would put that person in danger.
It’s pretty safe to say that the bulk of the information in the withheld treasure trove will support a portrayal of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq as brutal thugs deserving to be overthrown, and of “allies” (like Mr. Chriac) who did much to accommodate them — which in my opinion explains why The Wall Street Journal is one of the few national media outlets expressing an interest in their full contents. Someone should ask the rest of the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the Mainstream Media) why they seem so uninterested in all of this.
And for that matter, where are the people who are so supposedly so intent on prosecuting “crimes against humanity”? They should be demanding access to these records so that those who committed crimes under the Taliban and Saddam can be identified and brought to justice. Instead — silence.
Cross-posted at Newsbusters.org.
Daniel Henninger, in an OpinionJournal.com piece about the decay of Washington’s media culture, recorded this exchange between Larry King and Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” about what Henninger called “the low ebb of the Democrats and Republicans”:
King: So, in a sense you’re happy over this.
Stewart: No.
King: This gives you fodder.
Mr. Stewart replied that if government “began to solve problems in a rational way rather than just a way that involved political dividends, we would be the happiest people in the world to turn our attention to idiots like, you know, media people, no offense.”
King: So, you don’t want it to be bad?
Stewart: Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad?
King: Yes because you–
Stewart: What are you–I have kids. What do you think? I want things to corrode to the point where we’re all living in huts?
King: You don’t want Medicare to fail?
Stewart: Are you insane?
Good question.
Free Links:
Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.
Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state’s basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district’s racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: “Today, I can’t recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world.” Mr. King’s advice? “The best way to get attention is not to protest, but to shop somewhere else.”
They can do so because of the state’s longstanding commitment to school choice. In 1990 Minnesota allowed students to cross district boundaries to enroll in any district with open seats. Two years later in St. Paul, the country’s first charter school opened its doors. (Charter schools are started by parents, teachers or community groups. They operate free from burdensome regulations, but are publicly funded and accountable.) Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.
More states need to build the same tradition to give parents an escape valve from failing public schools.
In a coma with life support switched off, given up for dead, a man in South Africa recovered and gave his daughter away in marriage — ten days later (HT Don Surber):
Comatose man wakes up to give daughter away
A man from Handforth, near Wilmslow, Cheshire, woke from a coma after his life support was switched off - and ten days later gave his daughter away at her wedding.
Brian Paolo, who has emphysema, began to breathe on his own after the machine was switched off, according to The Sun.
His daughter Anne-Marie said: “The doctors had prepared us for the worst and it looked like they were right. But dad fought back.
“I couldn’t believe it when he started to recover and we realised he would be there for the wedding. The doctors and nurses said they had never seen anything like it - they were astounded.
“They had told us there was no way he would be coming to our wedding and we had watched them take the tubes out of his neck. I’ve never seen anyone look so grey.”
Brian added: “I didn’t think I would make it… the doctors had given up on me. I’ve no immune system and my lungs are badly damaged. It was touch and go whether I would make it. But I pulled through with a bit of determination.”
Anne-Marie said she collected her dad on the wedding day - just three hours after he was discharged.
She said: “My dad was supposed to get me in the car but in the end I had to collect him. I was crying when I saw him - but we had the happiest day ever.”
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