Category: Politics

Iraq update:

I haven’t yet been willing to say that we should give up on finding WMD in Iraq, although I think it’s pretty damned unlikely. Might be about time to take that step. The 75th Exploitation Task Force, which is the group in charge of finding WMD in Iraq, is getting ready to head home. (Via CalPundit.)

Boy. Remember during the war when we were told that Saddam had issued chemical weapons to the Republican Guard? I guess when the Guard was giving up, they remained loyal enough to Saddam to destroy those weapons with methods so complete that we can’t find any traces of them. While they were slipping away into the countryside.

Also, Barbara Bodine has been relieved as US coordinator for central Iraq. That’s good news, since she was the one who made that little mistake about Kuwait and Iraq in the early 90s. Interestingly, the Washington Post reports that Jay Garner will be heading home too.

The political commercial I’d like to see:

OPEN on a shot of Rick Santorum. Smarmy still shot. Something that makes him look like he’s preaching.

VOICEOVER: “This man…”

CUT to similar shot of Bush.

VOICEOVER: “And this man…”

CUT to freezeframe of the infamous Newlywed Game footage. It’s the woman looking embarassed, giggling, caught in the camera’s lens.

VOICEOVER: “Want to send this couple to jail.”

The freezeframe leaps into life. The woman’s speaking, giggling around the words. “I guess that’d be up the butt, Bob.”

CUT to Democratic Party logo. Swelling music.

VOICEOVER: “Vote Democrat. Because we trust you to make your own decisions about that sort of thing.”

More on inconsistent US opinions about the IAEA: we want an IAEA ruling against Iran. “Maybe if you let us do our job in Iraq…”

The thing is, international agencies just don’t have much moral weight if one and only one country has veto power over them. Even if that country is moral and just. Fair? No, but true.

It looks like the whole looting question has been more or less cleared up. Various people were quick to jump on reports that only a handful of artifacts were missing. Turns out that there are only a handful missing… now. Because Customs did its job and found thousands of missing items (mostly manuscripts, some artifacts).

Praise is due to the US for making a strong and serious effort to fix the initial mistake. People who can’t wait for the full story to be in before mocking those who mourned the initial loss might want to consider getting a little more patient.

Dear Raed is back, with the assistance of Diana Moon. (Via Metafilter.)

So, this cartoon. It’s from a newish online comic strip, which has found an audience by being fervently right-wing. The art isn’t bad. OK, all well and good. Occasionally I see right-wing bloggers chuckling at a strip and I can usually see why.

But, y’know, that cartoon.

I gotta ask. Is the artist aware that the Dems are in fact blocking only a handful of nominees? Jeff Sutton got through, no problems. Deborah Cook just got through. Michael McConnell got through. Dennis Shedd got through. Timothy Tymkovich got through.

The claims that the Democrats are trying to block all of Bush’s nominees are just, well, lies. Do a little hunting and you can find a number of progressive groups bitching about the nominees who aren’t being blocked.

You wouldn’t know it from the cartoon, though.

Quick little followup on Jimmy Wynn:

Jay Bookman wrote an editorial about Wynn in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Read it while you can; it’ll move to a paid archive at some point.) From the summaries of his past columns, I wouldn’t call him a conservative — he looks pretty liberal to me. He defended Wynn and praised the decisions made by the GBI. So, I guess that’s who’ll speak out against this injustice. Liberal columnists.

I dropped Mr. Bookman an email discussing the question of Wynn’s propensities towards violence, by the by, and he kindly replied. He went out and did the kind of real research that local journalists can do, and talked to some of Wynn’s friends, so his conclusions regarding Wynn’s personality are based on more palpable evidence than my Web searches. I’m still not totally convinced, given the tendency towards obfuscation that exists in the militia movement, but I’m not unconvinced either.

How times change.

April 24, 2003:

The world must focus on the issue of nonproliferation, says President George Bush.

“One of our goals and objectives must be to strengthen the nonproliferation regimes and get the whole world focused on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” he told Tom Brokaw of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) during an April 24 interview aboard Air Force One on his way to Canton, Ohio.

Of the U.S.-China-North Korea meetings held in Beijing this week, Bush said the message to the North Koreans and the world is: “(W)e’re not going to be threatened.”

“On the other hand we, the world, must come together to make sure institutions like the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) are effective at stopping proliferation,” he said.

May 5, 2003:

A senior U.S. official said on Monday Washington saw no immediate role for the United Nations in its quest for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The remarks by U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton spelled further frustration for International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei, who along with chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix hunted for the banned arms, at being kept out of post-war Iraq.

“I don’t think there is any role for the U.N. in the short term in searching for, or identifying, or securing weapons of mass destruction, but we do not necessarily rule out some kind of U.N. role down the road,” Bolton told reporters in Moscow.

The facilities that the IAEA wants to inspect were under IAEA seal. Nobody’s ever denied that there were potentially dangerous materials inside ‘em. However, Iraq didn’t unseal them. Had they done so, the IAEA would have reported this and provided a causus belli, which perhaps speaks to why Iraq left them the hell alone. The IAEA has good records of what was inside and is the agency most capable of determining the extent of the looting.

The IAEA acts in Iraq under the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 687 (PDF). This is one of those Security Council resolutions that we treat with such respect, even when the Security Council itself won’t. We won the war, but that doesn’t make the resolution vanish. Consider: if Iran had invaded and defeated Iraq, would that mean inspections were unnecessary? Nah. We can trust ourselves, of course, but if the IAEA wants to inspect the nuclear sites, where’s the harm?

It doesn’t create any dangerous precedents other than that the IAEA has the right to carry out actions decided upon in the Security Council. That seems pretty safe to me. What’s more, it’s precisely what Bush said they should do on April 24th — and that’s the meat of the issue. I could respect a consistent stance vis a vis international bodies, but it’s hypocritical to talk about making the IAEA effective while refusing their legitimate, Security Council-backed request.

How effective does the IAEA look when Bush is turning them down out of hand? Not very.

Colin Powell’s concerned about Guantanamo Bay, it seems, or at least he’s writing Rumsfeld concerned letters about it. Man, there’s a wealth of implied information in that article. Not the least of which is anything you can glean from the fact that Powell’s writing letters rather than sitting down for a chat. He wants to be on the record? He can’t get a slot on Rumsfeld’s calendar? He wants amateur political observers like me to make random unfounded guesses?

This kind of thing, by the way, is the answer to left wing calls for Powell to resign. Particularly if you think Powell is a principled man in an unprincipled administration, it is morally correct for him to remain as Secretary of State in order to cushion the excesses of that administration.

Glenn Reynolds wrote about this case as an example of Homeland Security out of control. I figured I’d take a look at it and condemn it; from his description it looked pretty open and shut. In fact, from the article, it looked pretty open and shut. Sure, the guy’s a right winger, but that’s no excuse for persecuting him.

On the other hand, if he’s really taking a job at a gun store in order to collect names and home addresses of police in preparation for violent activity, that’s kind of the sort of thing you’d expect the cops to be worried about. So is Wynn telling the truth?

He claims that he’s never advocated violence. From the Militia of Georgia January 2003 newsletter, which he wrote:

“For years, I’ve given that analogy about a man who does not have a legal right to take away your money but, should he pull a gun and demand your money, he has the power to do so. For years, when I’ve made that analogy, many of you have let your testosterone and macho attitude take over and say, ‘Oh yeah, he may pull a gun but, I’m prepared and he’ll have to eat a few bullets….. blah, blah, blah…’ Well, friends, here it is, put up or shut up time…”

When Jimmy Wynn says he doesn’t advocate violence against police, he means he doesn’t advocate violence against “lawful” police. It’s a cute out. He doesn’t consider the current government to be lawful.

Also from the Patrioteer, by a different author: “If someone wants to know if the militia is ‘kind of skinhead hate group’ you will spend a great deal of time trying to prove that the bulk of the militia movement is not promoting racism.” Here’s the Forsythe Covenant, which was adopted by Wynn’s group in 1987. “The burgeoning non-white population explosion within our borders must be brought under control.” Yeah, they don’t promote racism.

So that’s Jimmy Wynn. He’s advocated violent revolution and he’s a racist. What does that mean about the news story?

Not much, actually. Either the GBI had evidence that he was collecting data illegally or they didn’t. Tipping off the store owner is way out of line. If there’s an issue, the GBI has plenty of power to investigate. Suspicion, even when it’s a guy like Jimmy Wynn, is not a very good reason to get someone fired. Do this kind of thing without due process, and all you’ve got is another martyr with another talking point that he can use to draw more people into the militia movement.

And, um, that’s exactly the position the GBI took on the matter. The agent who made the mistake was reprimanded and transferred. The GBI legal director said “more than likely contributed to, if not caused, the termination of a subject’s job because of his association with a particular group with no evidence of a crime being planned or committed…”

So in answer to Glenn’s question, “Who will speak out against this resurgence of McCarthyism?” I would have to say “The officer’s superiors are doing a pretty good job of that.” Tempest in a teapot.