Category: Politics

I was irked that John Kerry wasn’t releasing his military records, but he fixed that. The difference between Bush’s definition of releasing and Kerry’s definition of releasing is pretty substantial. Kerry put his military records up as PDFs on his web site, and anyone can see them. Bush showed his records to reporters and gave some of them 20 minutes to review some medical exams.

In all fairness, I don’t see Kerry’s military medical records on his web site, and I think they should be there. I still believe there’s a difference between handing your records out to a small group of reporters and making them available online for anyone to see. Someone at the Kerry campaign gets the Internet.

In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey is running against Arlen Specter in the Republican Senatorial primary. Toomey is a hard-right conservative who currently serves in the House of Representatives. Specter is a center-conservative Senator who fails many hard-right litmus tests, most noticably by being one of the handful of prominent Republicans who supports abortion rights. Both Bush and Rick Santorum have endorsed Specter.

This is one of those wedge issues — Bush’s hard-right supporters can’t be pleased that he endorsed someone so centrist, particularly since he differs with the Republican Party on such a hot button issue. Run, Roy, run!

I really haven’t had a lot to say about the Iraqi insurgency. Or, if you prefer, rebellion. Or terrorism. Or uprising. Me, I’ve been thinking of it as “the Iraqi disaster,” but I must admit that’s a somewhat loaded term.

I think in retrospect I’m a little wary. There’s this great debating tactic: when someone posts about problems in Iraq, and says “this is the sort of thing I was worried about; this is the sort of thing that proves my point” you go over and say, at the top of your lungs, “Look! She’s happy that American soldiers are dying!” It’s not a great tactic because it convinces people. It’s a great tactic because it reinforces the convictions of the people who use it, and allows them to feel all morally superior.

Still. This is the sort of thing I was worried about, and it’s the sort of thing that proves my point. I wish I’d been wrong.

Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has a fairly firm hold on Najaf. Najaf is a holy city, and if American troops attack it, the Mahdi Army will swell with recruits. The United States cannot afford to allow rebels to control a major Iraqi city. The wicket is more than a little sticky.

It wouldn’t matter if it was UN troops. The only armed force that could do anything about the problem without making the problem worse is an Iraqi armed force. Unfortunately, we don’t have the kind of credibility and authority in Iraq which would make it possible for us to convince a sizable Iraqi military effort in Najaf. Not that there was going to be any way to establish that kind of credibility.

The only likely path out of this is negotiations, and those are going to be difficult for entirely different reasons — mostly issues of face. Muqtada al-Sadr doesn’t have to back down, and Bush won’t.

The current casualty levels are high in relation to what we’ve seen over the course of the last year, but low in absolute terms. This is cold, but it is also true. It also doesn’t entirely matter, because the question is how longer we’ll be willing to watch a hundred Americans die every month with no exit strategy in sight.

Juan Cole is still the best place to go for analysis of the Iraqi situation. The Command Post has a conservative bias but that doesn’t keep them from posting both good and bad news.

From last night’s press conference:

“The report itself, I’ve characterized it as mainly history. And I think when you look at it you’ll see that it was talking about a ‘97 and ‘98 and ‘99. It was also an indication as you mentioned that that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane, but as you said, not to fly into a building but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, serving as a blackmail. And of course that concerns me. All those reports concern me.”

I gotta wonder. What steps do you take to prevent a hijacking carried out in order to fly a plane into a building, and what steps do you take to prevent a hijacking carried out in order to free someone from jail? And how are they different? I can’t help thinking that the purpose of a hijacking doesn’t have so very much to do with how you prevent it.

Glenn Reynolds finds the differences between the popular reaction to Senator Chris Dodd’s statements and the popular reaction to Senator Trent Lott’s statements "particularly disturbing." I’m not entirely sure why, as the two cases aren’t all that similar beyond the initial foolhardy statements.

OK, OK, I am sure why. There’s a rapidly spreading meme which makes Lott look a lot better, and it goes like this: “Lott suffered for saying nice things about Strom Thurmond.” There’re also a lot of right-wingers who don’t know why Senator Robert Byrd, former KKK member, gets a free pass for his history. There are times when I’m not sure either, just like I wasn’t sure why Strom Thurmond got a free pass.

Anyhow, the assertion that Lott got in trouble for simply praising Strom Thurmond is blatantly untrue. Lott got into trouble a) for saying nice things about Thurmond’s segregationist past, followed by b) revelations about his association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, c) the discovery of his racially-inflected interview with Southern Partisan; and d) relevations about his efforts to keep blacks out of his college fraternity. Lott turned out to be a long-time associate and friend of white supremacists. That’s why he’s not Senate Majority Leader anymore.

Dodd’s comments were dumb and he should issue an apology immediately. However, you can’t really compare the two situations unless Chris Dodd proves to have fairly recent ties to the KKK or other white supremacist groups. If he does, the two situations are comparable. Otherwise — not quite.

Well, this is an alarming new trend. That’s a total of thirteen foreigners kidnapped in Iraq in the last week or so. Hopefully it’s coincidence rather than a concerted effort, and hopefully everyone kidnapped will make it through the ordeal.

The victims include Christian evangelists, journalists, and human-rights workers. Doesn’t look like any common thread except that they’re foreign.

Ten years ago, the Rwandan genocide began. On April 6th, 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda, was killed when his plane was shot down. On April 7th, the Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis. Over the course of the next three months, approximately 800,000 Tutsis were killed.

The West, including the United States, did very little to prevent this.

Kerry raised $50 million last quarter. This isn’t even close to what Bush raised (and both Bush and Kerry are also going to benefit from 527 money), but it’s going to be very important to the Democrats in the months ahead.

Note that had Edwards won the nomination, he would have bumped into the federal matching fund caps already. Like it or not, that’s a powerful electability argument. Me, I don’t particularly like it. Maybe I should spend some time teaching my neighbors how to do their own research instead of relying on TV ads.

The Washington Post has transcripts of the public 9/11 commission testimony, which are fascinating reading. Here’s Tuesday’s testimony, and here’s Wednesday’s.

A while back Jere commented that he thought the best way to handle gay marriage civil disobedience was to stop giving out marriage licenses — you still make the point about equal treatment, but you don’t give out licenses which are unlikely to remain valid.

Benton County, Oregon, agrees.