Free Frank Warner

For U.S. troops, this is the quietest December in Iraq

This December has been the quietest for American troops in Iraq since the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

With the end of the month hours way, the number of Americans killed this December in defense of Iraq’s new democracy is 21. That’s just over half the U.S. deaths of the previously least violent December.

Here’s the record on post-invasion Decembers:

U.S. deaths in Iraq war:

December 2003:   40.
December 2004:   72.
December 2005:   68.
December 2006: 112.
December 2007:   21. [The final December total was 23.]

Hope for victory. Most importantly, the fascist violence against Iraqis also is down, raising real hope that the forces of democracy are consolidating a major victory.

Again, a note of caution: History reveals that a period of relative calm toward the end of a war doesn’t mean it’s over. Then again, sometimes the calm does come before the calmer.

Here’s to a New Year in peace and freedom.

Frank Warner

A reminder: That quietest December for Americans in Iraq followed the quietest November for Americans in Iraq.

79 degrees in Sydney

An Australian-American friend constantly complains to me that U.S. news ignores the weather in Australia.

That’s true, but our news media seems to ignore Alaska and Hawaii, too. It’s all about the 48 contiguous states. Would it be so hard to mention the other two? Why should they be like "the professor and Mary Ann" in the first season of Gilligan’s Island?

It’s 79 degrees right now in Sydney, and the toilets are spinning backwards. I don’t know what’s happening in Anchorage or Honolulu.

Frank Warner

China’s economy is 40% smaller than previously thought

This is one benefit of free trade with Communist China. Eventually, we see more clearly exactly how big China’s economy is.

Apparently it’s about 40 percent smaller than previously thought.

It took some time to figure this out. Because it ended communism with a small “c,” and opened up to free markets, Communist China’s economy has been expanding for at least 20 years. Nevertheless, that nation’s repressive politics kept the true pace of its expansion secret.

China, it turns out, isn't a $10-trillion economy on the brink of catching up with the United States. It is a $6-trillion economy, less than half our size. For the foreseeable future, China will have far less money to spend on its military and will face much deeper social and economic problems at home than experts previously believed.

What happened to $4 trillion in Chinese gross domestic product?

Statistics. When economists calculate a country’s gross domestic product, they add up the prices of the goods and services its economy produces and get a total -- in dollars for the United States, euros for such countries as Germany and France and yuan for China. To compare countries' GDP, they typically convert each country’s product into dollars.

The simplest way to do this is to use exchange rates. In 2006, the World Bank calculated that China produced 21 trillion yuan worth of goods and services. Using the market exchange rate of 7.8 yuan to the dollar, the bank pegged China’s GDP at $2.7 trillion.

That number is too low. For one thing, like many countries, China artificially manipulates the value of its currency. For another, many goods in less developed economies such as China and Mexico are much cheaper than they are in countries such as the United States.

To take these factors into account, economists compare prices from one economy to another and compute an adjusted GDP figure based on "purchasing-power parity." The idea is that a country’s GDP adjusted for purchasing-power parity provides a more realistic measure of relative economic strength and of living standards than the unadjusted GDP numbers.

Unfortunately, comparing hundreds and even thousands of prices in almost 150 economies all over the world is a difficult thing to do. Concerned that its purchasing-power-parity numbers were out of whack, the World Bank went back to the drawing board and, with help from such countries as India and China, reviewed the data behind its GDP adjustments.

It learned that there is less difference between China’s domestic prices and those in such countries as the United States than previously thought. So the new purchasing-power-parity adjustment is smaller than the old one -- and $4 trillion in Chinese GDP melts into air.

Freedom’s effect. The size of China’s economy still seems a little murky, but the more recent numbers make more sense. And if China were free politically, the analysis would be even better.

Frank Warner

London Telegraph: David Petraeus is Person of the Year

It’s safe to say the blogosphere reads The (London) Telegraph more than it reads Time magazine. Today, The Telegraph named David Petraeus 2007 Person of the Year.

In explaining its choice, The Telegraph says:

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative -- 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope. …

When the White House called, confirming him for the job, President Bush was looking not just for an outstanding leader but also a diplomat, a politician and a negotiator. It seems he got them all. …

Nine months on, things do seem to have improved, thanks largely to Petraeus's extraordinary coup of turning Sunni insurgents against their extremist allies in al-Qaeda.

With the chief accelerant in the civil war gone, Shia militias such as the Mehdi Army have also been deprived of their main raison d'être, and with extra US troops on the streets, Iraqis who had previously felt vulnerable to the gunmen now feel safe enough to return home.

Things are far from perfect but, after four years in which events did nothing but get worse, the sight of a souk re-opening, or a Shia family being welcomed back home by their Sunni neighbours, has remarkable morale-boosting power. …

[H]e has given another last chance to a country that had long since ceased to expect one. And for that, Gen. Petraeus is Person of the Year.

Clear vision. General Petraeus was the obvious choice as most influential human of the year. Fortunately, he was a force for freedom. Unfortunately, in a world fogged by fascist fads, the obvious is often missed.

Frank Warner

Captain Coulson does the Iraq year in review

U.S. Army Capt. Eric Coulson, who has been in Iraq for more than a year now, looks at the year in review in his blog, Badgers Forward.

For him and his Badgers company, it was a year principally in Anbar, aiding the Awakening by hunting IEDs in the Ramadi and Falluja areas. Before the relative calm of the year’s second half, there was a tough first half, in which three men in his company were killed Feb. 8 by a roadside bomb.

Coulson reviews his own blog posts of the time:

Shortly after Team Cobra lost Corporal Shannon, Team Badger experienced our own losses. A few days later I went home on leave. Looking back February seems a little incongruous. Writing about life and death, but also making posts about very mundane and trivial things. I suppose that is part of the nature of life; the mundane and trivial go on even in times of great sorrow. Going home on leave here recently really revealed to me how much shock I was in from this entire event.

‘Fortunate Son.’ Despite the stresses and real risks in Iraq, Coulson considers himself a “Fortunate Son” to be there with other Americans in uniform.

We’re fortunate to have him there, doing good.

Frank Warner

Rare moment to agree with Josh Marshall and Paul Krugman

Josh Marshall and Paul Krugman came down hard on how the Democratic candidates for president tried to politically exploit the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan.

I had to agree with them, and, in fact, a few Republican candidates looked pretty stupid, too. Do they all have to pretend they have something important to say about everything?

But I was surprised Marshall and Krugman finally found a major calamity they were unwilling to blame on President Bush. They wouldn’t even claim the Democrats would have prevented it.

Common sense. Holy cow, Marshall even asked good questions about Bhutto’s wounds. (She may not have been shot at all, but violently tossed by the suicide-bomb explosion against her car.) Marshall wasn’t raising silly conspiracy theories, but good common-sense questions.

What gives? I guess if you’ve been following Pakistan at all, you know too well its problems are not America’s fault.

And if Marshall and Krugman were to claim now that the U.S. had any real control over Pakistan, such a stand would require that they demand a Democratic president, if elected in 2008, do something big about Pakistan in 2009.

No quick fix. They know there’s nothing -- not even something big -- that anyone can do to calm and re-democratize Pakistan fast.

Frank Warner

Ralph Peters ain’t sad Benazir Bhutto is dead

Ralph Peters doesn’t grieve for Benazir Bhutto, murdered two days ago in Pakistan. Says Peters:

Her country’s better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country. …

But she always knew how to work Westerners -- unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Better martyr than leader? Peters usually thinks things out, so this is an interesting view. He believes Bhutto’s death actually might have a beneficial side effect.

After the inevitable rioting subsides and the spectacular conspiracy theories cool a bit, her murder may galvanize Pakistanis against the Islamist extremists who’ve never gained great support among voters, but who nonetheless threaten the state's ability to govern.

As a victim of fanaticism, Bhutto may shine as a rallying symbol with a far purer light than she cast while alive. …

A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will now become a martyr. In death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country.

“I come to bury Bhutto, not to praise her.” Some eulogy!

Frank Warner

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination kills Pakistan’s best chance for early return to democracy

The Pakistan people have lost patience with their dictator Pervez Musharraf, but except for Benazir Bhutto, they haven’t had any promising democratic alternatives.

Now she is dead, murderered today at a rally in Rawalpindi, probably by boneheaded Islamists sympathetic to al-Qaida.

Because al-Qaida operates in the shadows, and because al-Qaida is more likely to kill its opponents than Musharraf, Pakistanis are most likely to assign the loudest blame for Bhutto’s death to Musharraf.

Fanatical opposition. Of course, he did have some responsibility for her security. On the other hand, one suicide bomber already had nearly killed her on her return from exile in October, and suicide bombers are not easy to spot or stop, particularly at open gatherings.

Bhutto’s death leaves Pakistan with an unpopular non-religious dictatorship whose only real remaining opposition consists of religious fanatics intent on taking power and seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

A presidential election was scheduled for Jan. 8, and Bhutto probably would have won. Even if Musharraf postpones the vote by a few months – and that move itself would be met with suspicion – it won’t be time enough to develop another credible and popular candidate who believes in freedom.

Democracy postponed. This is a bad day for Pakistan. The assassination of Benizir Bhutto ruins the only real chance for a relatively rapid and peaceful return to democracy.

Frank Warner

Also, here's Christopher Hitchens' take. Bhutto, who once supported the Taliban, then turned against it.

‘Crow for Christmas’: Don Surber nails Kevin Drum on the Iraq war ‘surge’

Don Surber today digs up Kevin Drum’s prediction a year ago that the U.S. troop “surge” would fail, giving democracy a defeat in Iraq. Drum said the “surge” also would prove once and for all that there was no way to save South Vietnam from enslavement to Communism in 1975.

As Surber points out, Drum has been proven spectacularly wrong.

Drum was eager to see the fascists win. On Dec. 23, 2006, he declared the “surge” plan folly. He wrote:

Still, honesty compels me to say that I’m glad this is going to happen. I know this makes me a bad person with no concern for human life etc. etc. (feel free to expand on this sentiment in comments), but at some point we have to come to a conclusion on this stuff. Conservatives long ago convinced themselves against all evidence that we could have won in Vietnam if we’d only added more troops or used more napalm or nuked Hanoi or whatever, and they’re going to do the same thing in Iraq unless we allow them to play this out the way they want. If they don’t get to play the game their way, they’ll spend the next couple of decades trying to persuade the American public that there was nothing wrong with the idea of invading Iraq at all. We just never put the necessary resources into it.

Well, screw that. There’s nothing we can do to stop them anyway, so give ‘em the resources they want. Let ’em fight the war the way they want. If it works — and after all, stranger things have happened — then I’ll eat some crow. But if it doesn’t, there’s a chance that the country will actually learn something from this.

Learning something? Kevin Drum shows what’s wrong with the Democratic Party today. They are so eager for a Republican president to fail that they delude themselves into believing that their wishes are good, or at least inevitable. They are neither good nor inevitable.

There’s a chance that Drum “will actually learn something from this.” Maybe now he and all his pseudo-liberal, selfishly racist friends can apologize to the Vietnamese and Iraqis they were willing to abandon forever.

But let’s see him eat that crow first.

Frank Warner

The doomed search for the perfectly fought war

I’m often asked about this mistake and that mistake in the Iraq war. Every war is full of mistakes, the most egregious of which is that tyrants make wars necessary.

But for those who sometimes wonder why freedom’s armies can’t calculate every strategy and tactic to perfection, when all the best moves look so obvious in hindsight, read this piece by Victor Davis Hanson.

Ultimately, the battles for Iraq and Afghanistan may be recorded as the most efficient liberations of 50 million people ever accomplished.

Frank Warner

George Washington gave America its first Christmas present

George Washington, by giving up his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and refusing to become king, on Dec. 23, 1783, gave this nation a Christmas gift that keeps on liberating.

For more on this historical Christmas story, click here.

And don’t forget that earlier Christmas of 1776, when Washington crossed the Delaware River for an inspiring victory. He was a veritable Santa Claus of freedom.

Merry Christmas!

Frank Warner

9-11 Commission didn’t ask for interrogation tapes; it didn’t even ask for transcripts

The 9-11 Commission didn’t ask for the tapes of interrogations of 9-11-related terrorists, and more bizarrely, the 9-11 Commission does not appear to have even asked for transcripts of those interrogations, according to John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The point: It’s hard to believe 9-11 Commission members are upset that the CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes if the Commission knew about the interrogations -- and it appears its staff did know -- but never formally asked to see the transcripts.

It’s not a crime to withhold or destroy a document or recording that an authorized investigative panel never asked for.

9-11 Commission inept? Hinderaker notes that a Dec. 13 memo by Philip Zelikow, the 9-11 Commission’s former director, raised the possibility that the CIA committed a crime in not revealing the existence of the tapes. But that same memo -- leaked to The New York Times -- recites a history of what the Commission asked of the CIA, but fails to cite one instance of asking for interrogation transcripts.

Concludes Hinderaker:

There are three possibilities here, none of them reassuring. If the CIA doesn’t make or keep transcripts of its interrogations of terrorists, the agency is more incompetent than we could have imagined. That seems inconceivable. If the September 11 Commission asked for transcripts and the CIA pretended not to have them, that would be far more serious than the alleged withholding of the video tapes. And if, as seems possible from Zelikow’s memo, the Commission failed to obtain transcripts (or video tapes) because it never asked for them, then the Commission was more inept, and its report less reliable, than we had believed.

What’s so odd is that the 9-11 Commission staff seems to have had many contacts with the CIA in the preparation of the Commission report, and yet it seems no one can find a document in which the Commission or its staff asks specifically to see exactly what the interrogated terrorists said.

Wouldn’t such a request be on the record somewhere?

Frank Warner

A Christmas story: GI makes an Iraqi orphan his son

In case you haven’t seen the story of U.S. Army Capt. Scott Southworth of Wisconsin and Ala’a, the Iraqi boy he adopted in Baghdad, you have to read it.

Carrie Antflinger of The Associated Press has done a wonderful job of reporting with detail and feeling.

Ala’a has cerebral palsy, and he wasn’t doing too well living with it in a Baghdad orphanage. Capt. Southworth changed that. “Forever started.”

Frank Warner

Tony Blair becomes a Catholic

Tony Blair’s conversion to Catholicism surprises me, but then he was one of Britain’s more complex prime ministers.

I’m always surprised when an adult chooses a religion that has even stricter rules than the faith he grew up in. In this case, there’s also the irony that a noted English leader is leaving the Church of England.

Certainly Blair’s decision was influenced by his wife Cherie’s Catholicism, but he also must have felt something strongly.

Politics and religion. Yes, there is a political angle to Blair’s religion. His detractors now say he delayed switching churches during his tenure as prime minister for fear of losing Protestant votes. Others ask how he could allow abortions as prime minister and then “go Catholic.”

Nothing’s simple.

Frank Warner

Harry Reid on ‘the surge’: ‘IT’S HELPED’

Merry Christmas, now even Sen. Harry Reid says President Bush’s so-called “surge” strategy has benefited Iraq’s new democracy.

“There are a lot of reasons the surge certainly hasn’t hurt,” he told Ray Suarez on the PBS News Hour two days ago. “It’s helped. I recognize that.”

This is from the same man who on April 19 said:

“This war is lost and … the surge is not accomplishing anything.”

Force and reconciliation. Of course, Reid and other victory-is-not-an-option Democrats will continue to make the internally incoherent arguments that (1) military force has no role in winning a war, which can be won only by political reconciliation, which the Iraqis reject; and (2) military force isn’t winning the war, but violence is down since July because the Iraqis themselves decided to live and let live (which sounds a lot like political reconciliation).

Somehow, freedom’s side of the Iraq war is winning. One big reason is time itself. Another big reason is, in the war’s darkest hour, when the fascists had high hopes for a U.S. surrender, Bush backed a plan that added troops. Suddenly, the fascists lost their will.

But Reid can’t take his eye off his party’s First Principle, which is to sabotage the Republican president’s principal project.

Moving out, moving back. Reid claims Iraq is calmer mainly because many Iraqis moved out of mixed neighborhoods to all-Shiite or all-Sunni areas -- or out of the country -- to escape unfriendly sectarian militias. “Segregation,” he calls it. “Ethnic cleansing,” he calls it. Whatever it was, while the bullets were flying, it made sense to move. Now tens of thousands of Iraqis are moving back to their old homes. Is that “desegregation”?

Reid won’t stop to think how much bloodier the Shiite-Sunni clash would have been had American troops withdrawn a year ago, as Reid wanted, and turned Iraq over to the forces of hatred.

So go with Bush’s new direction, Senator Reid. As you said, the “surge” has helped. As Congressman John Murtha said Nov. 29, “The ‘surge’ is working.” That means democracy is winning, and Iraq has a chance for a lasting peace. Learn to love it!

Frank Warner

The fortunate failings of Reid and Pelosi

Captain’s Quarters does an excellent analysis of how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed in the last year, and how fortunate the world is these two partisans were too incompetent to be effective:

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid never quite adapted to the reality of razor-thin majorities. Instead of attempting to split the Republicans by offering bipartisanship -- which they pledged to do in the 2006 midterms -- they immediately fell back on the same highly partisan tactics used by Republicans and Democrats alike in previous leadership of Congress. They shut out Republcans from the drafting of legislation, stacked the rules to limit amendments from the GOP, and in general acted as if they had a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

They discovered quickly the perils of such an approach. Faced with an inability to work with the majority, the Republicans relied on parliamentary tactics to stall bad bills. They demanded 60-vote supermajorities on dozens of bills, unable to gain access to the legislative process any other way. In the House, where they had less leverage, the Republicans formed a battle line on key issues and attracted conservative Democrats on several occasions to thwart Pelosi.

Nowhere was this more true than on Iraq. At the beginning of the session, some Republicans in both chambers had sympathy for the notion of forcing Bush to limit the scope and length of the mission, especially given the results of the midterms. Had Pelosi and Reid seriously attempted to reach a compromise with these factions in the late winter or early spring, they may have split the GOP and forced Bush into a corner.

Instead, both demanded nothing less than a complete surrender, both figuratively and literally, with Reid declaring defeat from the floor of the Senate. No Republican would sign his or her name to that kind of policy. When Reid tried to hold an all-nighter to embarrass the Republicans, they met him with full force -- and Reid didn't even bother to attend his own pajama party. After that, events in Iraq demonstrated the fecklessness of Democratic military analysis, and even the chief critic of the war, John Murtha, had to admit that the surge has worked.

With every step, the Democratic leadership showed their incompetence.

Too many public rudenesses. This is the cunning of history. The boldly hateful arrogance of the Democratic leadership gave President Bush the opening he needed to win the Iraq war.

Sometimes freedom counts on big blunders like this. Unfortunately, after U.S. troops left South Vietnam in 1973 and President Nixon left office in 1974, the Democratic Congress of 1975 was able to disguise its arrogance with quiet, but decisive betrayals. Subtlety lost South Vietnam and Cambodia.

Frank Warner

Your mother dies while you’re orbiting the Earth. Do you want to know?

Astronaut Daniel Tani was orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station two days ago when, 220 miles below him at an Illinois railroad crossing, a freight train struck his mother’s car, killing her.

On the ground, NASA called in a flight surgeon and Tani’s wife, Jane. The two promptly notified Tani on a private video channel that his mother, Rose, 90, was dead.

“We are letting him set the tone for how hard he would like to work and get through the process,” said Dr. Gary Beven, a psychiatrist and chief of behavioral medicine at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “The difficulty is that he is essentially stranded on the space station.”

Tani, 46, isn’t due back from space until at least late January. What if you were an astronaut on a long mission and something terrible happened to a loved one back home? Would you want to know?

Some say no. Astronauts have a choice. Before each flight, NASA asks them specifically if they want such information immediately, or after they return. According to the space agency, a few astronauts elect to hold off the bad news.

It makes some sense. If you have to take a risky space walk tomorrow, and you’re grieving over a lost relative, the mission might become even riskier.

Then again, if you’re in space for three months, and after one month, you stop hearing from your wife by radio or e-mail, you might feel a different kind of stress.

It’s a unique dilemma.

Frank Warner

Time snubs Petraeus, names Putin ‘Person of the Year’

Garry Kasparov knows better than Time magazine.

Frank Warner

Like sex: Sign Kyoto and have a smoke

You might have seen the American Thinker report yesterday that gave poor environmental grades to nations that signed the 1997 Kyoto protocol.

As it turns out, the United States did better than 75 percent of the world’s Kyoto signers at slowing greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. emissions went up 6.6 percent from 1997 to 2004. Kyoto signers blew 21.1 percent more CO2.

America did better than 75 percent! Instapundit declared President Bush a “climate-change hero.” Start writing up the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize nomination!

Japan, up 11%. American Thinker has the goods:

If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.  Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers.  (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)

* Maldives, 252%.
* Sudan, 142%.
* China, 55%.
* Luxembourg, 43%.
* Iran, 39%.
* Iceland, 29%.
* Norway, 24%.
* Russia, 16%.
* Italy, 16%.
* Finland, 15%.
* Mexico, 11%.
* Japan, 11%.
* Canada, 8.8%.

Non-signers rule! So I guess the U.S. Senate was right when Republicans and Democrats voted 95-0 on July 25, 1997, to tell President Clinton not to offer the Kyoto protocol for a Senate vote.

Had we signed the greenhouse-gas accord, we might be part of the 75 percent that polluted even more. We might be building two new coal-fired power plants a week, like the Chinese.

Frank Warner

Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price: Only one knew subprime risk when it saw subprime risk

Here we are, watching Chinese Communists bail out our Morgan Stanley investment bank.

Morgan Stanley of New York City has lost $8 billion in bad loans. The Chinese are buying a $5 billion share to bail the company out. It didn’t have to happen.

Consider the T. Rowe Price investment firm in Baltimore, and you’ll see what I mean.

Fads and formulas. Last year, T. Rowe Price analyst Susan Troll noticed one bad batch of mortgage loans after another coming to market. These “subprime mortgage securities” were selling fast, and that’s all that the analysts of other firms noticed. They fell for the fad. Troll saw danger ahead.

What did she do? Troll referred to the standard formulas for deciding whether certain mortgages are worth holding, and whether they are so high a risk you can be fairly certain they’ll never be paid off.

By last February, after sorting through T. Rowe Price’s holdings, she made sure the firm had sold off any and all of these bad bets.

Bad days and bonuses. The subprime mortgages were a little unusual, but evaluating them wasn’t rocket science. Troll was doing what bankers and financial analysts are supposed to do. Calculate risks realistically, protect your investors and protect your company.

That didn’t happen at Morgan Stanley. That’s why Morgan Stanley’s CEO is waiving his year-end bonus and studying Chinese.

My guess is, Susan Troll is having her best Christmas ever.

Frank Warner

Democrats’ sad legacy on slavery and Iraq

Power Line today posts the Democratic Party’s presidential platform of 1864, during the Civil War.

The Democrats are saying 1) The war is lost; 2) Let's negotiate; 3) The Constitution is trashed; 4) They steal elections; 5) We support the troops.

You've got to hand it to these Dems. They're certainly consistent. They revere their history, except for the corrupt, neo-con deviations between 1941 and 1963. I wonder if Nancy Pelosi’s great, great, great grandfather was there in 1864, inking the quill.

Oh, by the way, as most of you know, George B. McClellan - "Little Mac" as he was called – was Lincoln's first commander in the Civil War. Now, here he was, turning on Lincoln and running against him.

Close calls. Lincoln barely won re-election in 1864, assuring the end of slavery in America and avoiding a likely follow-up war over the same gross violation of human freedom. Today’s Democratic leaders have likewise nearly handed Iraq back to fascism several times.

For more on similarities between the Democrats’ positions during the Civil War and the Iraq war, click here.

Frank Warner

Cheney, Halliburton and conspiracy theories

“John” left a comment to an old post of mine today, and in it he suggested the U.S. chose to invade Iraq, not because Saddam Hussein was a mass-murdering tyrant, but because war would profit Halliburton and Blackwater.

I replied essentially that peace is far better than war for the United States, morally, politically and economically, and that the best hope for a lasting peace is a fully Free World.

I also noted that, from the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I’ve argued that Vice President Cheney should have resigned before the Iraq invasion, simply to avoid loony conspiracy theories involving Halliburton.

Back-up theories. Of course, had Cheney resigned, the theory inevitably would have been that he put Congress up to the war, then bailed out to collect millions on the war he left President Bush with. The sad fact is, Cheney should never have had that Halliburton job, and selfish fears always conjure up conspiracy theories.

JJ Mollo put together a list of my earlier posts on Cheney, but apparently the TypePad blog spam filter made it hard to post, so here is his comment:

Frank has spoken against the Halliburton involvement in Iraq on previous occasions:

VP shooting
How Many People
Halliburton to …
Kerry
Halliburton Loses Contract
Profiteer or Not
No More Breaks
Halliburton Needs …

For example: ... "Even if Halliburton has done everything technically and legally right to this point, it’s long past time to invite other companies to bid for the continued work. The fairest way to award government contracts is to periodically open them up to competitive bidding.

"But there is a bigger point to be made. Everyone knows that Vice President Cheney not long ago was chief executive of Halliburton, and everyone knows he landed that job only because he had been Defense Secretary before. Considering those facts, preferred treatment to Halliburton dishonors the U.S. troops who every day dodge bullets and grenades to build democracy in neighborhoods far from their homes.

"Halliburton's bold-faced appearance of conflict gives political ammunition to those who opposed the liberation of Iraq, and who insist Saddam Hussein was toppled out of a profit motive, not in the service of freedom…." 

Thanks, JJ!

There always will be conspiracy theories, but there also always will be causes so important you have to put the illusions aside.

Frank Warner

Castro, the ultimate ‘clinger’

In a much-discussed letter two days ago, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro wrote:

“My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, or even less to obstruct the path of younger people, but to share experiences and ideas whose modest worth comes from the exceptional era in which I lived….

“[But] I think like [100-year-old Brazilian architect Oscar] Niemeyer, that you have to be of consequence up to the end.”

So he won’t “cling” to power, but he’ll be “of consequence” to the end? No one really knew what Castro meant.

As State Department spokesman Tom Casey said:

“Listening to Fidel talk about what will happen after him is like the old country song: ‘How can we miss you, if you never leave?’”

Frank Warner

Huckabee’s righteous wit

Just when I thought Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had become a total religious goofball, he comes back with a great one-liner.

He got a lot of criticism today for his new Christmas-season television commercial, in which he is positioned in front of part of a bookcase that looks perhaps too much like a Holy Cross. Maybe if he were in front of a church talking about Christmas, no one would have cared, but this looked so subtle it seemed sneaky.

Candidate Ron Paul complained that, with that TV ad, Huckabee was wrapping himself up in Christianity to the exclusion of all other Americans. (“When fascism comes, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”)

But Huckabee responded:

“I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, ‘Paul is dead. Paul is dead.’”

Good one. If only we could be sure he’d be that sharp on the big issues….

Frank Warner

Bill Roggio: Iraq progress by the numbers

Bill Roggio has the numbers on Iraq’s improving security. Check them out at the Long War Journal.

On that day-to-day graph of IED explosions from early 2004 to now, the numbers go up gradually until about July of this year, and then drop off fast. I have to wonder if that graph reflects the success of the “surge,” or if it is simply the “zeal curve” of any insurgency. I assume it’s at least a little of both.

If you want to know when the Iraq war is over, listen to Roggio. He’ll know first.

Frank Warner

Harry Reid, called on his ‘This war is lost’ declaration, lashes back, calling John McCain a failure

Sen. Harry Reid doesn’t like to be reminded that, on April 19 of this year, he declared with hateful dishonesty that democracy had been defeated in Iraq.

“This war is lost,” he said.

Well, Sen. John McCain had every right to remind New Hampshire voters this week that Reid, as one of the Democrats’ top two leaders in Congress, was much too eager to issue that surrender notice.

‘Responsible end to war.’ So Reid lashed back at McCain, saying McCain is a failure dedicated to an “endless” war in Iraq.

“While I understand that Senator McCain is fighting to revive his failed presidential campaign, his remarks are at odds with the vast majority of the American people, who are demanding a responsible end to this war,” said Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman. “These kinds of attacks — and his consistent support of a failed strategy that has kept our troops mired in an endless civil war in another country — will only undermine Senator McCain’s credibility with voters.”

McCain might be trying to win a political campaign he is destined to lose. But Reid is destined to eternal shame for trying to lose to the fascists a war that democracy would win.

Frank Warner

2 pictures of Hillary Clinton

You might have seen the one shot. The picture of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s tired, wrinkled face and yesterday’s Drudge Report headline: “THE TOLL OF A CAMPAIGN.”

It isn’t exactly a flattering picture, but some reacted as if that one photograph is the end of her drive for the White House. It isn’t. In some ways, the picture is the warmest view of her that we’ve seen. And right now, she has a right to be tired and look tired.

Then there is the other picture. In the foreground are her feet, and in the background is Bill Clinton off-stage, on a level with those feet.

Bill’s new place. It’s funny what a picture can do, but the second picture said more to me. It said Hillary Clinton is a woman fully in charge of her own campaign, and if she is successful, Bill Clinton will have to tame his lust for the spotlight.

On the other hand, Wonkette decided the picture shows only that Hillary is incapable of picking shoes that match charcoal gray pants.

Frank Warner

It’s serious now: Castro is preparing for Hell

Ailing 81-year-old Fidel Castro yesterday said he might quit his formal posts, and allow “younger people” to succeed him.

His statement was interpreted widely as meaning he is out permanently, and that probably means two things: (1) He is near death. And (2) he wants a “younger” person -- younger than his 76-year-old brother Raul -- to carry on his totalitarian legacy just long enough to demonstrate that the Cuban people actually liked his nearly half-century of stifling repression.

It ain’t going to work. Cubans want to be free.

Frank Warner

Muslim cleric who once inspired al-Qaida: 9-11 was a sin

Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, whose teachings once were included in al-Qaida training manuals, has published a book that denounces al-Qaida’s methods as sinful, and complains that its twisted ideas have killed and harmed Muslims and ruined Afghanistan.

Sharif was serving a life sentence in an Egyptian prison when he wrote his new book, “Document of Right Guidance for Jihad Activity in Egypt and the World,” so it’s possible his writing was influenced by his jailers. (It’s not clear if he’s still in prison.) Nevertheless, his words reflect the anti-violent-jihad arguments most likely to resonate with fundamentalist Muslims.

One of his most fascinating points is that the Sept. 11th suicide hijackers were forbidden to “raid” the United States because all 19 of them had visas.

Visa as a promise. According to the translation by MEMRI, Sharif says those visas (though most were obtained illegally) included a promise to obey all U.S. laws, and that was a promise that Muslim guests could not break. He seems to view a visa as equivalent to a flag of truce.

The Egyptian writes:

“This was perfidy towards the enemy, because they entered America with a visa, which is a contract of protection. There is no dispute about this among the scholars - even… [if someone] forges the signature of the residents of [the Abode of] War, and they believe it to be authentic, and then he enters their land, he is forbidden to betray them in anything - their lives, their honor, their property, without any distinction between combatants (military) and non-combatants (civilians) among the residents of [the Abode of] War, as long as he remains in their country.”

As Jules Crittenden noted when he saw this, “Call me an ignorant infidel, I still say among the crimes al-Qaeda committed on 9/11, the paperwork issues don’t loom that large.” But all right, a promise is a promise. That’s as solid a reason as any not to murder 3,000 people.

‘What good is it?’ Sharif says Sept. 11th accomplished nothing good:

“It was a catastrophe for the Muslims. [Al-Qaeda] ignited strife that found its way into every home, and they were the cause of the imprisonment of thousands of Muslims in the prisons of various countries. They caused the death of tens of thousands of Muslims - Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others. The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate was destroyed, and Al-Qaeda was destroyed. They were the direct cause of the American occupation of Afghanistan and other heavy losses which there is not enough time to mention here. They bear the responsibility for all of this. …

“People hate America, and the Islamist movements feel the hatred and the impotence, and they applaud anyone who locks horns with America, whether it’s bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, or Saddam. Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of your people?… That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.”

A trial for bin Laden? Sharif says Osama bin Laden, bin Laden’s closest adviser Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their followers deserve harsh punishment.

“Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, and others fled at the beginning of the American bombing [in Afghanistan], to the point of abandoning their wives and families to be killed along with other innocent people.

“I think that a shari’a court should be established, composed of reliable scholars, to hold these people accountable for their crimes -- even if in absentia -- so that those who are ignorant in their religion do not repeat this futility.

“The Taliban used to punish a woman who left her house with her face uncovered -- so how could the leaders of Al-Qaeda not be held accountable -- they who caused the destruction of their country, the spilling of their blood, the destruction of their houses, whose children were orphaned and wives widowed -- all of this in disobedience to their Emir?”

Stinking rule breaker. Hey, Osama, you’re worse than a woman without a veil. Put that in your new training manual.

And next time you send your stupid friends to Hell, do it without visas. What were you thinking?

Frank Warner

London Times: ‘Iraq – the best story of the year’

Why does a London Times columnist call Iraq “the best story of the year”? Because “against all odds, an optimistic prediction comes true.”

Tim Hames, who a year ago wrote in The Times that Iraq would be “more peaceful in 2007 than at any time since the 2003 invasion,” now gloats. On the second half of 2007, he was right.

Hames says:

By any measure, the US-led surge has been little short of a triumph. The number of American military fatalities is reduced sharply, as is the carnage of Iraqi civilians, Baghdad as a city is functioning again, oil output is above where it stood in March 2003 but at a far stronger price per barrel and, the acid test, many of those who fled to Syria and Jordan are today returning home. …

[T]he country will now have the time to establish itself. A year ago it seemed as if American forces would have been withdrawn in ignominious fashion either well before the end of the Bush Administration or, at best, days after the next president came to office. This will not now happen. The self-evident success of the surge has obliged the Democrats to start talking about almost anything else and the calls to cut and run have abated. …

Secondly, the aspiration that Iraq could be some sort of “beacon” in the region is no longer ridiculous. It will never be Sweden with beards, but there has been the development of a vibrant capitalist class and a media of a diversity that is unique in the region. Were Iraq to emerge with a federal political structure, regular local and national elections and an economic dynamism in which the many, not the few, could share, then it would be a model.

U.S. ‘surge,’ British ‘slump.’ Hames says General David Petraeus finally has proved that the words “intelligent American policy” are not an oxymoron, but he is not so complimentary of British resolve:

[T]here is a telling contrast between what has been won by the American “surge” and lost through the British “slump”. We once boasted about the virtues of a “softly-softly” style, allegedly honed in Northern Ireland, but the truth is that the British Forces have been so softly-softly that the local militias long ago decided that we were not very serious about using our troops to exercise influence.

The British yesterday handed control of Basra province to the provincial government’s control. That was one of the more rushed actions in the liberation of Iraq, but it eventually might work out.

Are the 2007 successes in Iraq permanent? Hames should give us some predictions for the second half of 2008.

Frank Warner

Basra becomes 9th of Iraq’s 18 provinces turned over to provincial control

In another sign of progress in Iraq, coalition forces (the Multi-National Force-Iraq) have turned Basra province over to the provincial government. It’s the ninth of 18 provinces turned over to the Iraqis.

Some wonder if the British are setting Basra loose too soon, but at least it’s a try. Its experience might help the U.S. decide how fast to withdraw from other parts of Iraq.

On the map, the provinces are numbered by population. Dahuk, the least populated, is No. 1. The most populated, Baghdad, is No. 18. (Click on the map to enlarge it.)

A halfway mark. Here is the list of Iraqi-run provinces, in order of their transfer to provincial control:

Muthanna
Dhi Qar (Thi Qar)
An Najaf
Maysan (Missan)
Irbil (Arbil)
Sulaymaniyah
Dahuk
Karbala
Basra

Last week, U.S. Marine Major General W.E. Gaskin said Anbar (No. 11 on the map) could be turned over to its provincial government in 19 months.

It looks like a winning pattern. Nine to go!

Frank Warner

Second Amendment: Every American has a right to major arms stockpiles

Instapundit reminds us that the Second Amendment isn’t limited to the individual’s right to have small arms. It was written to give individuals the right to keep enough arms on their property to form an army -- a militia -- if needed.

As I’ve said before, it’s the right to keep and bear everything from muskets to warships.

But to those of you who say, great, this means the government can’t limit my purchases of handguns, rifles or any other weapon, I say again, think again. It may mean that the Second Amendment is so out of touch with reality -- do you really want to allow every American to keep nuclear weapons at home? -- that it is useless.

Amend the amendment? The Supreme Court seldom has ruled on the meaning of the Second Amendment, and it’s possible it has stayed away from those cases because the Second Amendment’s intent is unrealistically all-encompassing.

The high court’s decision on the District of Columbia’s handgun controls, expected next year, may give us a clearer picture of the Second Amendment legal meaning. Right now, all of us are only guessing.

We should rewrite the Second Amendment and send it to the states for 21st century clarity, but wouldn’t that be a war?

Frank Warner

More rumors freedom has won in Iraq

The rumors are flying. The Allies of freedom have won in Iraq. Could it be true?

Bartle Bull, the foreign editor for the British magazine Prospect:

Understanding this expensive victory is a matter of understanding the remaining violence. Now that Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved--break-up? No. Shia victory? Yes. Will violence make the Americans go home? No. Do Iraqis like voting? Yes. Do they like Iraq? Yes—Iraq’s violence has largely become local and criminal. The biggest fact about Iraq today is that the violence, while tragic, has ceased being political, and is therefore no longer nearly as important as it was. Some of the violence--that paid for by foreigners or motivated by Islam's crazed fringes--will not recede in a hurry. Iraq has a lot of Islam and long, soft borders. But the rest of Iraq’s violence is local: factionalism, revenge cycles, crime, power plays. It will largely cease once Iraq has had a few more years to build up its security apparatus.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute:

[T]he odds are decent that Mesopotamia's Sunni Arabs will reconcile themselves to the new Iraq without the official reconciliation legislation that the Bush administration and the Democratic party have viewed as essential elements of success. It is likely that the political Shiite elite, who are often depicted in the press as being selfishly stubborn in their resistance to the American-backed reconciliation initiatives--chiefly the de-de-Baathification and oil-distribution bills--are reflective of the vast majority of Iraq’s Shiites.[10] Some form of these bills will likely pass eventually, but only after the Sunni Arab community proves to the Shia that the violence of the past, in particular the Sunni Arabs’ tolerance of insurgent and extremist attacks, is over.

One of the first to raise the victory flag Don Surber, who on Nov. 27 said:

The headline in the New York Sun this morning read: “Talks Are Set on Ending Battle of Iraq.” This may be the story of the year. Reported Nicholas Wapshott: “Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start talks early next year to bring about an end to the allied occupation by the close of Mr. Bush’s presidency.” Quagmire, eh? Looks like victory at last is here. The terrorists have been routed and the insurgency quelled…. This should have made Page 1. With a sailor kissing a nurse on Times Square. Funny how while the Democrats were calling for a troop withdrawal and the surrender of Iraq to al-Qaeda — while the New York Times was even condoning genocide — President Bush changed course and won the war.

That story was preceded by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack declaring on July 30, that Iraq is “A War We Just Might Win”:

We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms…. [W]e were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with…. Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

It sure appears that, unless our leaders decide to lose this war on purpose, democracy has prevailed in Iraq.

Frank Warner

Lieberman to endorse McCain

Sen. John McCain has been liberal or moderate on several big issues, including the Iraq war. But he is a Republican and he is basically conservative.

So I’m surprised that Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, true liberal that he is, today will endorse McCain for president of the United States.

On the other hand, name the Democratic president candidate you’d trust fully with preserving democracy in Iraq. The Middle East’s liberalization, and its prospects for a lasting peace, depend in large part on whether Iraq survives as a free nation.

Other reasons. Iraq’s success remains the top priority. That makes Lieberman’s choice a little more understandable. But I want to hear all the reasons he’s endorsing McCain.

Frank Warner

Turkey had better be careful with attacks on Kurds in Iraq

Turkey attacked northern Iraq yesterday, bombing and shelling what Turkey said were the camps of Kurdish terrorists who have attacked Turkey.

The Turks said they took the action with U.S. support and intelligence.

Doesn’t it seem that everything in this region is either suffocating under ruthless oppression or straining to keep the most delicate democratic balance?

Careful calibration. Turkey’s government, and the U.S. and Iraq, have to be extremely careful in Iraqi Kurdistan. So far, it appears these Turkish operations have been calibrated wisely.

Frank Warner

Victory in hand, but an enemy in denial

On another December 16th in 1944, the Germans looked near defeat. Paris had been liberated on August 25th. Berlin had been bombed so many times it was nearly rubble. There was talk U.S. troops would be coming home from Europe for Christmas.

But on this day 63 years ago, Adolf Hitler ordered a surprise offensive against the Allies on the Western Front. German tank divisions stormed into Belgium, hoping to split and cut off Allied supply lines. Thus began the Battle of the Bulge.

The six-week campaign turned into the biggest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army. The Americans were victorious, thanks to the bravery of such leaders as U.S. General Anthony McAuliffe. But 19,000 GIs died, and slightly more Germans were killed.

Lesson of history. The Iraq war is different, of course. However, the common lesson is that, even when an ideologically repressive enemy is defeated in every practical way, its ideology will motivate at least one more thrust than makes military sense.

The insurgents and terrorists in Iraq are starting to understand their deadly campaigns have failed. But the most ideological of them still have murders to commit.

Frank Warner

Top 11 hottest years on record have been in 1998-2007

Maybe the Earth isn’t heating, but it sure seems to be hotter than the 1980s.

The World Meteorological Organization reports that the top 11 warmest years ever recorded have been in the last 13 years. “Ever” means since 1850.

Here now are officially the hottest 10 years of the last 158:

1.   1998
2.   2005
3.   2003
4.   2002
5.   2004
6.   2006
7.   2007 (through November)
8.   2001
9.   1997
10. 1995

It looks suspiciously like global warming.

Frank Warner

Pro-war Nancy Pelosi says the other party likes the Iraq war

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq immediately, guaranteeing a longer war, two days ago said the pro-victory Republicans “like this war.”

The Associated Press reports:

“They like this war. They want this war to continue,” Pelosi, D- Calif., told reporters. She expressed frustration over Republicans’ ability to force majority Democrats to yield ground on taxes, spending, energy, war spending and other matters.

“We thought that they shared the view of so many people in our country that we needed a new direction in Iraq,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference in the Capitol. “But the Republicans have made it very clear that this is not just George Bush's war. This is the war of the Republicans in Congress.”

Asked to clarify her remarks, Pelosi backed off a bit.

“I shouldn’t say they like the war,” she said. “They support the war, the course of action that the president is on.”

Defining Democrats down. Considering the fact that, when the battle was going against the forces of democracy in 2006, the Republicans lost control of Congress to Democrats promising a vague “new direction in Iraq,” it’s hard to imagine the Republicans have liked the war, even politically.

But considering how violence is dropping and security appears to be improving in Iraq, it’s even harder to imagine why the Democrats would oppose “the course of action that the president is on.”

Is it that the Democratic leaders want fascism to win in Iraq? Are there any liberal leaders left in the Democratic Party, or have they all gone to hell?

Frank Warner

Iraq oil output tops pre-liberation level

Yes, this trend could reverse, but it’s another sign of hope for a stable and free Iraq.

Right now, democratic Iraq is pumping 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. Before the 2003 invasion and liberation of Iraq, Saddam was selling 1.9 million barrels a day to prop up his fascist police state.

Here’s a healthy change.

Frank Warner

The Baseball Steroids Era

How many cups of pee will it take to wash away this scandal?

Frank Warner

Bill Roggio: Iran plants land mines in Iraq

Just had lunch with Bill Roggio in Haddonfield, N.J.

Now there’s a man who’s sincerely committed to gathering the facts on Iraq and Afghanistan. Again and again, he’s been there. I think he’s been everywhere.

We talked about 100 things in two hours, and one of the many interesting points he made is that Iran is manufacturing land mines and planting them in Iraq, principally to kill innocent Iraqis. And they are killing innocent Iraqis.

Sanctions for land mines? Roggio’s recent post on The Long War Journal reports on Iran’s “ratlines,” the routes over which Iran smuggles the land mines into Iraq. The devices, also called explosively formed penetrators, clearly are produced in Iran, and we even have a good idea they are produced in the Iranian cities of Mehran and Anvaz.

The odd reality about this development is that tyranny’s appeasers might be more likely to get tough on Iran over its land mine production than over its enriched uranium production. Many of those who turn a blind eye to atomic bomb proliferation tend to worry desperately about land mines.

So where’s the outrage? Sanctions now?

Growing Iraqi army. Roggio tries to stay away from predictions and politics, but he said the U.S.-led coalition appears to be “on the right path” to securing Iraq’s democracy. He’s hopeful about Afghanistan, too.

For the deep background on daily events in Iraq and Afghanistan (and vicinity), I recommend that everyone keep an eye on Roggio’s Long War Journal.

One of the blog’s fantastic and fascinating contributions is its regularly updated Order of Battle in Iraq, detailing how the Iraq army is growing, and where it is growing. That map is amazing. Keep in mind that, once the Iraq army has 400,000 trained soldiers, we’ll probably start seeing Americans return home “on success” in the tens of thousands.

Concerned Local Citizens. Roggio said we also should watch for the the spread of Concerned Local Citizens groups in Iraq. They’re another sign that Iraqis want to take control of their own security.

We can thank Bill Roggio for getting out there and giving us the facts to help us make more reasonable judgments on these life-and-death struggles. It was an honor to meet him today.

Frank Warner

P.S. Roggio is pronounced RAH-jee-oh.

Cara Buckley of The New York Times returns to deception on the 2003 thefts from the Iraq National Museum

John Burns of The New York Times is the only journalist I know of who has apologized for the outrageously poor reporting on the April 2003 theft of antiquities from the Iraq National Museum. So why couldn’t The Times get the story right yesterday?

Exactly when the United States most needed the good will of the Iraqi people -- from April 12 to the end of May 2003 -- news agencies throughout the world gave big headlines to reports that American troops watched uncaringly as the museum in Baghdad was looted of 80 to 100 percent of Iraq’s precious artifacts.

But the stories weren’t true. If you caught the fewer, smaller, and much more subdued reports six to eight weeks later, you found out that, in fact, 95 percent of the archaeological pieces never left the museum, and another 2 percent had been stored safely elsewhere.

‘Believe the worst.’ When Burns discovered the truth, he was mortified over how he inadvertently fed into the fascist propaganda that the U.S.-led coalition had come to destroy or steal everything the Iraqis hold dear:

“We were disposed to believe the worst,” Burns admitted later. “We were tremendously distraught, and passion got the better of us.”

The “we” he talked about was the entire press corps in Baghdad. Unlike Burns, the rest of the reporters did little to repair the harm. Burns was unique in displaying some humble, even-handed decency.

So it is shocking to see that Cara Buckley, reporting in yesterday’s issue of The New York Times, repeats the libel of April 2003. Buckley carelessly writes:

For a few brief h