The more things change

A few quick notes about recent items from Andrew Sullivan:

1. Props to Power Line's Scott Hinderaker for breaking with the Popular Front two years ago and finding "The Passion of the Christ" an anti-Semitic movie when he first saw it.

The dude's name is Scott "Trunk" Johnson. Andrew has him confused with John "Hindrocket" Hinderaker, who unlike "Trunk", has never written a sane post. [he has since corrected the above sentence, but forgotten that he reused the incorrect name later in the paragraph]

2. Speaking of Gibson:

Stephen Pollard notices that the BBC, Reuters, and Sky News in Britain have not reported the content of Mel Gibson's "despicable" remarks about Jews. I cannot find a reference in the Guardian/Observer either. I guess exposing anti-Semitism would be off-message given the British media's coverage of the Iran-Israel war in Lebanon.

Try to wrap your mind around that one: the British mainstream media is witholding mention of Gibson's tirade, because it's actually part of the justification for Israel's assault on Lebanon?

His conclusion: "Thank God for Drudge" -- who played no role in reporting the story.*

3. Andrew once had a bad habit of granting his e-mailers the presumption of anonymity, but violating it when it suited him. Free Stater chronicles the appearance of the trend in Ireland.

*UPDATE: In an odd, but almost certainly innocent twist, Andrew seems not to know that the website that originally broke the Gibson story with the unedited police reports, TMZ.com, is a sister website to his own blog, as it is owned by Time Warner. Also, the Irish version of the Sully e-mail confidentiality breach is showing slight contrition, but only after hot pursuit by Irish bloggers.

Step 1: admitting the problem (2)

The National Review's Jonah Goldberg:

Al-Qaeda is our [USA] Hezbollah (and, in a sense, Hezbollah was our al Qaeda before al Qaeda showed up on the scene).

That's right, but not in the way he thinks it is. American foreign policy from 1979 onwards was marked by an obsession with Shia fundamentalism while the more virulent Sunni fundamentalism was spreading from Saudi Arabia. In terms of how this obsession is again dominating US foreign policy, the pre 9-11 mentality has been restored.

[UPDATE: Here, via Dan Froomkin, is a Time magazine article noting the important of the Hezbollah/al Qaeda distinction]

Step 1: admitting the problem

Condi Rice en route to Shannon today:

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, I’m going to try again. I think what Warren was asking was a personal question about how you felt. I think a lot of us were seeing that you looked -- you’ll excuse me -- you looked really bad at several times during this trip. I mean, you always look fabulously, but you looked tense. I mean, tell us what you were feeling, like when you were standing up on that podium in Rome and Siniora was saying some of the things that did not quite jive with U.S. policy. Give us a sense personally.

SECRETARY RICE: I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not as self-reflective as you think I am.

Stale

[NOTE: Here, via YouTube, is the video discussed below.]

The Israeli military video that Fox News is currently running in heavy rotation as a justification for its attack on Qana, allegedly showing Hezbollah rockets being fired from near, not in, the building hit today, is over a week old. The date stamp is 07-22-06.

UPDATE: There's another problem. Fox News is trying to reconcile the IDF video with the claims of Qana residents that they didn't see any rockets being launched from near the building. Fox News says that this is because Hezbollah uses a "shoot and scoot" strategy -- launch the rockets from the bed of a pickup truck and leave the area. In which case, why would a fixed structure, the building, have been bombed?

[Note: the video in question ran on Weekend Live, should be here; there are now additional IDF videos circulating (e.g. here) where the date it was taken is not clear]

FINAL UPDATE: With an old, irrelevant video not doing the trick, the defenders of the Israeli strike have gone to the Katrina playbook, arguing (as with the hurricane and the levy breaches) that there were two separate events, the missile strike and the building collapse.

Shannon: There is an alternative

It's not clear what exactly prompted the US and UK governments to jointly draw the conclusion that running military operations through civilian airports had become too much of a hot potato, but now it's happened:

Two flights carrying "hazardous" material were diverted from Prestwick to the RAF Mildenhall military base in Suffolk on Saturday evening.

There has been no official confirmation of the cargo being carried.

A spokesman for the US air force at RAF Mildenhall said the two the Atlas Air cargo flights arrived late on Saturday night. One departed on Sunday afternoon, with the other expected to follow later.

Since the US does seem to have some aversion to running these flights through military bases (otherwise they would have been doing it already), it's now more incumbent than ever on Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern to move beyond photo-op denunciations and find out exactly what is on those planes at Shannon.

Count to ten before hitting "publish"

[UPDATE 3: the NYT Lamont endorsement]

Earlier today, the New York Times posted the web version of a story that will run in tomorrow's print edition [byline: Adam Nagourney], and it dropped a by-the-way scoop -- that the paper will endorse the challenger, not the incumbent Joe Lieberman, in the Connecticut Senate Democratic primary. It was so by-the-way that it was in brackets:

[The New York Times, in an editorial published on Sunday, endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a "warped version of bipartisanship" in his dealings with Mr. Bush on national security.]

But the editorial still isn't posted [see updates], so the news side of the paper jumped the gun on its editorial side. The story now seems to be undergoing hasty additions, again in brackets, because there's a paragraph there now that we're pretty sure is new:

(The Times has endorsed Mr. Lieberman for the United States Senate only once in his four campaigns. A 1988 editorial endorsed the incumbent, Lowell Weicker. In 1994, The Times endorsed Mr. Lieberman. In 2000, The Times endorsed the Gore-Lieberman presidential ticket but made no endorsement in the Senate race in Connecticut.)

Which doesn't address the question of primary endorsements. We suspect that the decision to have this addition in round brackets and the earlier one in square brackets is the least fraught of the discussions in the NYT offices right now.

[UPDATE 4: Brad DeLong lays out in detail the bizarreness of the Nagourney article]

UPDATE 2: The NYT is playing hard to get with the editorial endorsement. Even though there are no links on the main page yet to the Sunday editorials, the ones about John Bolton and the Negro Leagues are already posted, their urls easily guessable. We're guessing that Lieberman's will be here, but they could play trixy and post it as a Connecticut regional editorial.

[UPDATE 1: The commenters in this TPM Cafe thread also find the sequence of events very strange]

Hawks and Bulls

Selected quotes from the Fox News weekend financial show that aired just now, with host Neil Cavuto:

"Anything we can do to help Israel is going to help the stock market" [Wayne Rogers]

"I'm going to be crass for a second -- wouldn't we be better off if this guy [Nasrallah, Hezbollah chief] was dead" [Cavuto]
"Absolutely -- the market loves certainty" [panelist, name TBD]

UPDATE: This style of analysis is getting around.

A story like that is so crazy it must be true

WSJ (subs. req'd) -- But in an interview yesterday, Mr. Landis, who has been suspended and could be stripped of his Tour title, denied using any illegal substances during the race and offered some surprising insights into his preparation for Stage 17 ...

The night before ... Mr. Landis said, while gathered with friends and teammates, he prepared for the strenuous mountain stage by drinking two beers and at least four shots of whiskey ... Last week, after he completed Stage 16, Mr. Landis told reporters his first priority was to have a cold beer. He said yesterday he went to an outdoor veranda with a bar near his hotel and drank two draft beers. After a crowd began to gather, he retired to the hotel with about five other people, including Phonak teammates Axel Merckx and Robert Hunter. Someone produced a bottle of Jack Daniel's, he said, and he had "at least four shots" before going to bed before 11:30 p.m. Because he doesn't usually drink much and was so skinny from weeks of racing, the alcohol definitely had an effect, he said yesterday. "I don't remember much."

Choreography

The outlines of the imminent diplomatic stunt by Bush and Blair are becoming apparent. Blair will meet Bush in about an hour and then there is a short news conference at 17.30 BST. The call for a ceasefire will be firmer than previous efforts, and will include the "news" that Condi is returning to Israel this weekend. However it seems that the background work for the stunt is not going well, as Condi's "surprise" early departure from Malaysia was postponed. The underlying problem is that wars tend to take on their own momentum, often surprising the instigators (weird anniversary today, by the way) -- which is exactly why most people wanted a ceasefire as soon as possible.

We'll update this post as events today warrant.

UPDATE: They're also seeking a UN resolution on Monday to implement a multinational force. Still not clear what the Israelis are expected to do in the meantime. The subtle change in terminology is that "sustainable ceasefire" has moved to "cessation of hostilities with a framework for a longer-term solution." But how does a conflict with "root causes" start "out of the blue"?

At one point in the press conference, Bush seemed to imply that reporters who ask difficult questions are doing the bidding of Islamists:

QUESTION [David Gregory, NBC]: But I asked about the loss of American influence, and are you worried about that?

BUSH: Well, we went to the G-8 and worked with our allies and got a remarkable statement on what took place. We're working to get a United Nations resolution on Iran. We're working to have a Palestinian state.

But the reason why you asked the question is because terrorists are trying to stop that progress. And we'll ultimately prevail, because their -- they have -- their ideology is so dark and so dismal that when people really think about it, it'll be rejected.

They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, you know, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people: Don't come and bother us, because we will kill you.

And in response to the Man from The Sun:

QUESTION: Mr. President and Prime Minister Blair, can I ask you both tonight what your messages are for the governments of Iran and Syria, given that you say that this is the crisis of the 21st century?

BUSH: Want me to start?

Our message is: Give up your nuclear weapon and your nuclear weapon ambitions. That's my message to Syria -- I mean, to Iran.

[Washington Post transcript]; Josh Marshall has a link to the video of the answer to Gregory's question.

Get him rewrite

Given the reputation for the kind of humour that Ana Marie Cox brought to the Wonkette blog, is this really the kind of phrasing that a Time Magazine memo announcing her new Washington Editor job should go for? --

"Ana Marie is a sharp and witty observer of the Washington scene and has the ability to spot political angles in surprising places," says [Richard] Stengel [Time Managing Editor]. "In her new role, she'll bring her great web instincts to covering the hot topics of the day."

Sign o' the times

With the week that's in it, we wonder if some of the more rapturist readers of the New York Times will see another nod from above that everything is going to according to God's design -- in a message from an Irish bog:

The [1200 year old] manuscript, containing approximately 20 pages, was discovered last Thursday in the Irish Midlands when the construction worker noticed it while excavating for commercial potting soil. Museum officials declined to specify the bog’s location, explaining that archaeologists were still exploring the site.

The museum said that the bound pages had slipped outside the book’s wraparound cover, made of vellum or leather, and that the psalms were written directly on vellum and the book was found open at a page showing Psalm 83 in Latin.

In later English-language versions, Psalm 83 exhorts God to act against conspirator nations plotting to wipe out "the name of Israel."

UPDATE: The NYT was apparently more careful than many other accounts, in noting that the Israel phrase only appears in the later King James version of the corresponding Psalm, but did not appear in the manuscript itself. And more on the find, more focussed on the preservation aspects, from Sunday's NYT.

The failure of diplomatic niceties

In a typically meandering column in the WSJ today, Peggy Noonan does raise a noteworthy point:

When Secretary Rice arrived in Lebanon the other day, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora greeted her with kisses on both cheeks. They seemed as if they had a personal relationship unstressed by the current war. They seemed like mature and friendly comrades greeting each other after an absence. This of course was all done for spin. I don't mean it was insincere. It may have been fully sincere on both parts. But it was also spin, both parties agreeing to produce a picture that told a story. The purpose was to show the world that these adults, operating in a good faith implicit in the affection shown, can handle a tense situation, are friends, and can effectively work together. The world isn't ending.

I know it is spin. You know it too. And yet it worked for me.

It didn't work for us. And here's the point: if the Lebanese Prime Minister really believes, as he would be justified in doing, that his country has been sold down the river by his "fellow" Arabs, the Europeans, the US, everybody -- why did he contribute to the diplomatic charade that these greetings and conferences represent?

Meet the new bad guy

As yet another security plan for Baghdad is implemented, it's already clear that the strategists should get to work on drafting the next one, because this one is going to fail. The reason is clear from the structure it has been given by the Pentagon's outside strategy board -- the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. And the plan is: elevate Moqtada al-Sadr and his militia as the new super bad guys and clamp down on them, despite the fact that they are not driving force of the proto-civil war, and many of their activities are defensive.

First, here are the hints from Thursday's WSJ. The lead editorial (subs. req'd; alt. free link):

On the other hand, the followers of hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are a big faction in parliament and a hard problem.

On the same page, usual suspect, Dan Senor (subs. req'd; alt. free link):

Moqtada al-Sadr and his Sadrists, the Sadriyyun, are as powerful and destructive as ever, forcing the prime minister's hand on Israel and other issues.

Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mehdi army, has been responsible for a considerable share of Iraq's sectarian strife, not to mention the deaths of American soldiers in 2003 and 2004. His power is derived from a combination of family lineage, violent intimidation of rival clerics, and agitation on behalf of Iraq's Shiite underclass. His support is largely concentrated in Sadr City (a Baghdad slum, home to some two million Iraqi Shiites), and in a number of other impoverished neighborhoods throughout southern Iraq.

While the Sadriyyun lack the sophistication, weaponry and social welfare services of Hezbollah, both are funded by Tehran; and both organizations represent the same ethnic, religious and socioeconomic demographic within their respective countries. Mr. Sadr's organization is, in fact, about where Hezbollah was 20 years ago.

This is all preposterous. The actual Iranian-backed Shia organisation is not hiding its intentions, carrying the name Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. They are based in the Iraqi south, which is, like, closer to Iran. For all his faults, al-Sadr is an Iraqi nationalist, reflecting his power base in the capital. Consider also the designated good guy amongst the Shia, Ayatollah al-Sistani. Here's a map of Iran. Take a look at it and then make a wild guess as to where he got his surname. For God's sake, even Hitch knows!

Denunciations of al-Sadr are not even a new strategy. Instead, as Senor makes clear, it's driven by being easy to sell through an equivalence with Hezbollah. If the US is trying to make Shiites not feel persecuted (and just why were the Saudis sitting in on Condi's last meeting before she left for the Middle East?), they're going exactly the wrong way about it.

UPDATE: Speaking of Dan Senor, Slate's Fred Kaplan notes that Iraqi PM al-Maliki's speech to Congress yesterday bears the hallmarks of having been written by the White House -- the same trick that Dan Senor did for then PM Allawi's speech 2 years ago (via Dan Froomkin).

And [30 July], Frank Rich (subs. req'd), who should know better, goes for the new bad guy -- hook, line, and sinker:

The most dangerous figure in Iraq, the home-grown radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is an acolyte of neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam but an ally of Iran who has sworn solidarity to both Hezbollah and Hamas. He commands more than 30 seats in Mr. Maliki’s governing coalition in Parliament and 5 cabinet positions. He is also linked to death squads that have slaughtered Iraqis and Americans with impunity since the April 2004 uprising that killed, among others, Cindy Sheehan’s son, Casey. Since then, Mr. Sadr’s power has only grown, enabled by Iraqi “democracy.”

FINAL UPDATE 15 OCTOBER: Yet another reminder that Moqtada al-Sadr is not the main problem; he opposed the "federalism" legislation (=partition) that the Iranian-backed parties pushed for.

It's not just Shannon

Wednesday's Daily Telegraph reports that that the accelerated shipment of precision-guided weapons from the US to Israel over the weekend passed through Prestwick Airport in Scotland. It's not clear what legal issues are raised by this, although the transparent end-use intentions for these weapons might at least pose moral problems for a self-styled Gladstonian like Tony Blair. One unresolved issue in the controversy surrounding the use of Shannon and Prestwick for rendition flights and weapons shipments is how exactly the US decides which airport to use for each flight. Unfortunately, despite occasional flareups in the media, it's still not clear that there is public momentum to restrict these flights in any way. Depending on how damning the circumstances are concerning the killing of the 4 UN observers by the Israeli military, that may change.

UPDATE: Margaret Beckett manages to muster a protest. What are the odds that the cargo on US planes stopping at Shannon gets more interesting?

UPDATE 27 JULY: Two more weapons flights are planned over the next fortnight. If Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern is serious about his display of outrage regarding the Israeli operations in south Lebanon, he could start by ordering audits of US cargo flights through Shannon.

FINAL UPDATE 28 JULY: One the arguments of the Irish government in denying that Shannon would be used for rendition flights is to ask why they would use a civilian airport when they could use military bases in Britain and not attract any scrutiny. But as the Prestwick incident reveals, they are using civilian airports even when military bases would be available:

Questions have been asked as to why the US would use a civil airport when they have military bases in Britain

In other words, this is no longer a valid line of defence for the Irish and British governments, but another part of the puzzle.

VERY FINAL UPDATE 30 JULY: The Scottish Sunday Herald is reporting that Dermot Ahern refused permission for the munitions flights. But note the wording:

A spokeswoman for [Dermot] Ahern told the Sunday Herald: “Minister Ahern did say during the week that permission would not be granted if there was an application made to transport munitions of war to the Middle East.”

i.e. the don't ask, don't tell policy for rendition flights applies here as well.

Iraq: One jury is in

In a remarkable verdict, an Irish jury has acquitted 5 anti-war protestors of charges of damaging a US plane at Shannon in 2003. It's remarkable because no facts were actually in dispute: the accused accepted that they had damaged the plane. Instead they argued that their action was lawful because it helped save lives in Iraq. This was their 3rd trial, the 2nd having collapsed when the judge was revealed to have had unusually familiar contacts with Texas Republicans, including Tom DeLay (and by extension, George W. Bush). Since the protestors' defence probably failed to meet any legal standard of specificity (e.g. showing how this plane would have led to deaths in Iraq), the verdict instead reveals concerns about the overall nod-and-wink policy of the government towards the use of Shannon in US military operations.

Schism=Opportunity

Just in case anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that Anakin Skywalker is back in control of the writings of Andrew Sullivan, consider this:

the Sunni-Shiite division is one the West should exploit as shrewdly and relentlessly as possible to further our interests in the region.

Apart from the thought experiment of changing "Sunni-Shiite" to "Catholic-Protestant" and asking whether the sentence still sounds right, does anyone believe that George W. Bush is the man to be "shrewdly" exploiting religious divisions without lots of people ending up dead?

IRM/A

Following a weekend in which the White House had expressed mystification about how one constructs agreements with non-state "terrorist" actors, this announcement:

President Bush will meet with Minni Minawi, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army Leader, at the White House on July 25, 2006. The focus of the discussion will be on how to broaden support for the Darfur Peace Agreement, facilitate its implementation, and ensure the expeditious deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur.

Not an Irish Coffee?

The Wall Street Journal's politics blog has a brilliant catch today, presumably by virtue of having a reporter on Condi Rice's plane to the Middle East, which stopped for refuelling at Shannon. Given Condi's lack of urgency, it's a miracle she wasn't spotted taking in the sights in Clare, but that's another story. Anyway, while the plane was on the ground, Condi's party headed for the bar, at 5am. Unlucky for them however, there was a group of stranded Lebanese-American evacuees trying to get back to the US, and they were spotted. Read the entire WSJ post, but here's one of the best details:

“Aren’t you a TV person?” one woman asked [Karen] Hughes, a former press aide who was sitting at the bar sipping wine.

“Well you may have seen me on TV,” Hughes replied. She then apologized repeatedly for the group’s travails and promised to make some calls back to State. Within an hour the group appeared to be off to a hotel, though no one knew when a working plane would arrive. Suspecting Rice might be flying to Beirut — as she was — one man begged to get on her plane. “I’d rather go back,” he said

Unclear whether he meant that Beirut was better than Shannon. But what in God's name was Karen Hughes doing drinking at 5 in the morning?

[Karen's Shannon imbibing also noted at The Plank]

Flashbacks

Every so often we're reminded of why it can be worth taking a look at William Rees-Mogg's column in the Times (UK) and today's definitely merits a mention. One doesn't have to buy into his classic Tory worldview to appreciate the little asides, not to mention the benefits of having been around for so long. His topic is the Suez crisis, for which a series of 50th anniversaries are now approaching. But consider his acknowledgment of what would now be considered hopeless conflicts of interest:

In 1956 I was writing leaders for The Financial Times. I had been commissioned to write a brief life of the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, a man whom I liked and admired. I had also become involved as an assistant speech writer to Eden, specialising in economic policy. I saw him during the early months of the Suez Crisis; he was always calm, courteous and thoughtful. I am not sure that my varied connections would be thought acceptable nowadays; they did in fact break down early in November when it became apparent, not least to myself, that I could not properly write The Financial Times’s comments on prime ministerial speeches to which I might myself have contributed.

Nevertheless, I observed the development of the Suez Crisis from a privileged vantage point. In addition, I fought the Chester-le-Street by-election in September as the Conservative candidate; I went around the mining villages saying that we should not appease Colonel Nasser. The Durham miners did not have the least wish to appease Colonel Nasser; unfortunately they had no wish to vote for me. That was the only by-election between the nationalisation of the canal and the invasion of Egypt.

Anyway, his more serious point, which you'll only get if you read the whole thing, is that Eisenhower screwed the British in the crisis and the world has paid the price ever since. And he's referring not just to the US pulling the plug on the Anglo-French-Israeli scheme after its military success in seizing the Canal, but to the preceding summer of fruitless negotiations after the canal was nationalised -- the failure of which led the British to see the virtues of the more radical French-Israeli plan to invade.

It's helpful when reading Rees-Mogg's column to have a chronology of the crisis at hand; note the plus ca change aspect to it, as old friends such as the Gaza strip, Ariel Sharon, the Fedayeen, and a UN peacekeeping force all make an appearance. Thankfully, the world has progressed since then, and Rees-Mogg's account of lackadaisical US diplomacy amid turmoil in the Middle East leading to many unintended consequences couldn't happen today.

UPDATE 26 July: The anniversary of the nationalisation of the canal is today. Nasser had been annoyed by the US blocking a World Bank loan for the Aswan Dam the week before.

Navan Man and the supernotes

Sunday's New York Times magazine has a lengthy story following the trail of extremely high quality $100 bill forgeries that leads back to North Korea. Inevitably the tale gets around to the accusations against Sean Garland:

... increased scrutiny of North Korea’s diplomatic and trading missions ... the regime seems to have changed tactics, harnessing new distribution networks and wholesaling the counterfeits to third parties who would funnel them to criminal gangs. In the late 1990’s, for instance, British detectives began tracking Sean Garland, the leader of the Official Irish Republican Army, a Marxist splinter group of the I.R.A. According to an unsealed federal indictment in Washington, Garland began working with North Korean agents earlier in the decade, purchasing supernotes at wholesale prices before distributing them through an elaborate criminal network with outposts in Belarus and Russia, as well as Ireland. (Garland denies the charges and is currently fighting extradition to the United States from Ireland.)

Incidentally, the story is a tad more tangled than this, since the British actually had Garland in detention following his arrest at the "Official Sinn Fein" annual conference, but he jumped bail and is now back in the Republic. A few months ago, Slugger O'Toole had noted that the US State Department seemed vague about when the extradition request would be sent, and that Bertie didn't sound especially enthused about receiving it.

UPDATE 10 OCTOBER: There's some indication that the increased US aggressiveness towards North Korean financial transactions, of which the Garland indictment is a part, contributed to the NK ill-will regarding nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

The original Chicago boy

will have them sputtering into their coffee as they read Saturday's Wall Street Journal editorial page interview with Milton Friedman. The conversation turns to the Iraq war:

Mr. Friedman here shifted focus. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression." Mrs. Friedman--listening to her husband with an ear cocked--was now muttering darkly.

Milton: "Huh? What?" Rose: "This was not aggression!" Milton (exasperatedly): "It was aggression. Of course it was!" Rose: "You count it as aggression if it's against the people, not against the monster who's ruling them. We don't agree. This is the first thing to come along in our lives, of the deep things, that we don't agree on. We have disagreed on little things, obviously--such as, I don't want to go out to dinner, he wants to go out--but big issues, this is the first one!" Milton: "But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it." Rose: "And we will!"

Mrs. Friedman, you will note, had the last word.

At least as far as the true believers at the Journal were concerned. Note also this makes Uncle Miltie objectively pro-Saddam.

[Friedman's opposition to the Iraq war noted at The Corner, (to be cont'd)]

Israel has its deadline

Just announced by the White House:

President Bush will welcome British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the White House on July 28, 2006. The United States has no closer ally and partner than the United Kingdom, and the President appreciates the Prime Minister's leadership and vision. The two leaders will consult on efforts to secure a lasting peace in the Middle East, consolidate democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, prevent Iran from obtaining the means to build nuclear weapons, end the genocide in Darfur, and promote free and fair trade.

UPDATE: Given the transparency of the above signal to the Israelis that they have until this day next week to scale things back, Condi's supposed tour of the Middle East earlier next week made little sense. Hence, this completely unsurprising change of plan, via the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd, brief here):

In a startling twist that shows how tense the atmosphere now is in the Arab world, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not be traveling next week to any Arab capitals. Instead, she will visit Israel and then loop back to Italy for a meeting with top officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and various European countries.

Diplomats say that Egypt was too skittish to host a gathering on the Lebanon conflict in Cairo, fearing it would spark a popular backlash.

Ms. Rice had originally planned to travel first to Cairo and then to visit other Arab capitals after a stopover in Israel. Now it is thought that she will return to the region after a short visit to Malaysia at the end of the week to attend a regional summit. In that return trip, she may stop in key Arab capitals. Israeli officials say that by then, their bombing campaign may have ceased or seriously abated.

UPDATE 25 JULY: In addition to the Bush-Blair formal call for a ceasefire, Bush has invited along some American Idol guests to entertain himself and Blair. And [27 July] it seems that the PR stunt of the Blair visit will be a joint call to Condi Rice to return to the Middle East this weekend to seal a ceasefire.

FINAL UPDATE 18 NOVEMBER: Confirmation that the White House originally thought that the war would be short from this New York Times article --

The Israelis say Washington was disappointed in their performance against Hezbollah. They are right: inside the White House, said one senior official there, who agreed to speak about internal deliberations on condition of anonymity, “Bush and Cheney believed that this would be another Six-Day War, or on the outside, two weeks.”

It happens to the best of them

There's no reason that the people of Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines should be insulted at their new US ambassador nominee:

The President intends to nominate Mary Martin Ourisman, of Florida, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Barbados and to serve concurrently as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to [other countries above].

because, while her primary qualification is being part of a car dealership empire that of course donates exclusively to Republicans, even the United "Yo, Blair" Kingdom gets a car dealer as its US ambassador.

It's not just a Stone Roses album

This attempt at a witty aside from New Republic part-owner Martin Peretz seems blissfully unaware of its alternative meanings:

No one thinks this really tiny patch of land [Sheba farms] belongs to Lebanon, no one. It actually belongs to Syria, and its disposition awaits the arrival of the Messiah or peace talks between Jerusalem and Damascus, whichever comes first.

Well Martin, with the people that you're ideologically in bed with, those events will in fact be simultaneous:

[Evangelical support of Israel]. The establishment--and continuation--of the State of Israel is essential to set the stage for the imminent return of Jesus. At the time of the Second Coming, these Christians believe, Jesus will descend from heaven, subdue all of Israel's enemies and take believers to heaven in what is known as the Rapture--literally, they will ascend to the clouds to be in heaven. This series of events ushers in the end-times. According to conservative Christians' reading of the Book of Revelation, this won't happen unless Israel exists in the Holy Land. [see also here]

Indeed, how handy for the Revelation to have the serpents assembling as well:

Anyway, Siniora [Lebanese PM] seems to have changed his mind about Hezbollah. Or is he simply speaking with the forked tongue that defines the political culture from which he has emerged?

Also McDonald's, the local eatery

The New York Times today, on the return of British Open golf to the Liverpool area:

A Starbucks and an Armani Exchange are in the same Liverpool neighborhood as local watering holes like "Hog Head’s Pub" and "Slug and Lettuce."

Both of the latter, as their faux pub names suggest, are, like Starbucks and Armani, chains.

"Yo, Brown" won't work quite as well

One almost gets the sense that there is a sudden rush of US criminal indictments of British citizens*; could it be that American prosecutors suspect that a post-Blair environment won't be quite so favourable to the procurement of suspects? Following quickly on the BetOnSports arrest (where the unfortunate Mr Carruthers made things easy for the feds by changing planes in Dallas) comes a new indictment and extradition request related to the Babar Ahmad case. Syed Talha Ahsan from Tooting is now co-accused with Ahmad of running websites in Ireland, Britain, the US, and Malaysia that accepted donations of money and equipment allegedly destined for terrorist groups.

Unlike the NatWest 3, Ahmad and Ahsan's cases fall squarely within the intent of the controversial 2003 extradition legislation -- but the lack of reciprocal action by the US is just as germane as it was to the NatWest 3 campaign (and we haven't heard much in the way of results from Baroness Scotland's visit to see US Attorney-General Al Gonzales to encourage US ratification of the treaty, have we?). Also unlike the NatWest 3, the two, if extradited, would become Muslim non-citizen terrorism suspects in US custody. The case thus merits very close scrutiny.

*UPDATE: we're not sure that the people we refer to in the post are British citizens, although they are clearly British residents. Will try to check this.

Adjective of the day

George Bush: And there's suspicions that the instability created by the Hezbollian attacks will cause some in Lebanon to invite Syria back in ...

[The WSJ also noticed]

Just out of curiosity

Since the National Review's Rich Lowry has just posted an e-mail "from a Republican" quoting odds from Tradesports, does this mean that conservatives have satisfied themselves that Ireland-based Tradesports is in a legally different situation from Costa Rica-based BetOnSports, whose CEO was just arrested for racketeering conspiracy while changing planes in Dallas?

UPDATE: On a related note, bookmaker Paddy Power says that it blocks access to its online site from US users.

The hair of the dog that bit him

Andrew Sullivan admits that the side of the blogosphere that he used to be on has gone, well, looney:

I find myself having to agree with Glenn Greenwald [also here] on how the far-right blogosphere has jumped the rhetorical shark this past year, aided and abetted by more mainstream conservative bloggers.

But he can't quite let go of some of his old tricks:

By the way, one of his commenters again brings up my infamous sentence a few days after 9/11 when I predicted that small enclaves of leftists might blame America for the attack and become what amounts to a "fifth column." I regret that rhetoric, expressed my regret days after the piece was published, and only ever applied it to those who immediately sympathized with al Qaeda in September 2001. As for my later comments about opponents of the Iraq war being "objectively pro-Saddam," that seems to me to be indisputable. If they'd had their way, he'd still be in power.

The apology seems abject enough, but he's again playing games with that quote: it was never qualified to refer to "small" enclaves, or to people "who immediately sympathized with al Qaeda" after 9/11. [Beyond unverified claims about people on the street in Brooklyn cheering and a few ultra-fringe elements, the Right has never produced evidence of any surge in sympathy for al Qaeda after 9/11, and definitely not in proportion to the rage it generated in their keyboarding].

And then there's the definition of "objectively pro-Saddam" -- not the bastardised innuendo of the old left (well, of Orwell, really), as was clearly intended when first used, but now covering anyone who thinks that maybe leaving Saddam in power wasn't necessarily a bad option. Like George Will, who Sully had just gushingly linked to a few posts back:

[Will] Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson -- one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job -- about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies ... As for the "healthy" repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Iraq has inflicted.

One suspects that Will is probably still stinging more from being tagged as "not that bright" by Kramer than as "objectively pro-Saddam" by Sully.

UPDATE: A reader calls him out on the same point. And [21 June] enclave member Eric Alterman responds directly.

Bizarre maybe, but not unprecedented

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, linking to an opaquely sourced Saddam Hussein rumination about the Israel-Lebanon crisis:

Saddam supposedly goes on to offer a rather bizarre conspiracy theory about the U.S., Israel and Iran working in concert.

One element of the Iran-Contra scandal:

In summer 1985, Michael Ledeen, a consultant of Robert McFarlane, asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran. The Israel government required that the sale of arms meet the approval of the United States government, and when it was convinced that the U.S. government approved the sale by Robert McFarlane, Israel obliged by agreeing to sell the arms. In July 1985, Israel sent American-made BGM-71 TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles to Iran for the release of Reverend Benjamin Weir; Weir was released. Despite the fact that arms were being sold to Iran, only Weir was released. This resulted in the failure of Ledeen's plan with only three shipments through Israel.